Iavante English Training Programme

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

People who keep their brains active throughout life - performing brain-stimulating activities like reading, writing, and playing games - appear to have lower levels of the protein that forms brain clogging amyloid plaque. Amyloid plaque is used by doctors and researchers to characterize Alzheimer’s disease.
show

While numerous studies have found associations between being physically and mentally active and having lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers in a study published in the JAMA Archives of Neurology produced brain scan images to show that lifelong mental activities are associated with lower levels of amyloid deposits in the brain. The study was supported by grants from the Alzheimer’s Association and the National Institutes of Health.
show

Lead author Susan Landau of U.C. Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, explained that previous studies have shown more cognitive activity associated with a smaller likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease, but that they didn’t use amyloid PET imaging. She noted that previous studies looked at amyloid in the subjects’ brains and “targeted a biological process,” showing an association between life long cognitive activity and decreased amyloid deposits in the brain.
show

The researchers studied a small group that included 65 healthy adults, ages 50 and older, 10 adults with Alzheimer’s disease (recruited from the Memory and Aging Centre at UCSF), and 11 younger control subjects, ages 20 to 30. Participants completed mental tests and were interviewed about how often they engaged in mentally challenging activities throughout their lifetimes.
show

Subjects’ brains were imaged using PET scans and Pittsburgh Compound B, a radioactive compound that allows the imaging of amyloid plaques in the brain. While using this type of imaging was useful for this study, professor Landau explained that it’s not feasible for use in a typical medical office or hospital setting because the substance must be mixed by a chemist and injected into patients immediately to prevent deterioration of the substance. So while the researchers could use the compound in their carefully controlled study, it’s not something that is readily available.
show

When the researchers ran the data for lifetime cognitive activity, lifetime physical activity with brain imaging results, the most significant association was between past cognitive activity and lower amyloid deposits. They did not find a significant association between physical activity and brain deposits, but Landau concedes that their method of assessing physical activity - using the past two weeks, may have had an effect on their results.
show

“The key thing is that this isn’t a study of Alzheimer’s patients. It’s important for a bunch of reasons,” Landau explained, “Once you have Alzheimer’s with an accumulation of amyloid, it’s too late to reverse, so trying to figure out what you can do at the earliest stages is important.”
show

“In completely healthy older people about a third of them have amyloid, healthy, no memory problems,” she said, “and the thinking is that they’re probably at much higher risk than normal people without [amyloid deposits]” Landau says that understanding why some healthy people don’t seem to be impaired, even with deposits, is “the million dollar question”.
show

While other Alzheimer’s research has looked at brain volume and genetic factors, unravelling the findings on brain activity and deposits is something that Landau says she hopes will spur more research that will reveal how to prevent or eliminate brain deposits. She also said that research is being done to devise brain imaging methods that could allow doctors and researchers to more easily see what is going on inside our brains.
show

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News

A link between eating processed meat, such as bacon or sausages, and pancreatic cancer has been suggested by researchers in Sweden.
show

They said eating an extra 50g of processed meat, approximately one sausage, every day would increase a person’s risk by 19%. But the chance of developing the rare cancer remains low.
show

The World Cancer Research Fund suggested the link may be down to obesity.
show

Eating red and processed meat has already been linked to bowel cancer. As a result the UK government recommended in 2011 that people eat no more than 70g a day.
show

Prof Susanna Larsson, who conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute, told the BBC that links to other cancers were “quite controversial”.
show

She added: “It is known that eating meat increases the risk of colorectal cancer, it’s not so much known about other cancers.”
show

The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, analysed data from 11 trials and 6,643 patients with pancreatic cancer.
show

Increased risk

It found that eating processed meat increased the risk of pancreatic cancer. The risk increased by 19% for every 50g someone added to their daily diet. Having an extra 100g would increase the risk by 38%.

Prof Larsson said: “Pancreatic cancer has poor survival rates. So as well as diagnosing it early, it’s important to understand what can increase the risk of this disease.”
show

She recommended that people eat less red meat.

Cancer Research UK said the risk of developing pancreatic cancer in a lifetime was “comparatively small” - one in 77 for men and one in 79 for women.
show

Sara Hiom, the charity’s information director, said: “The jury is still out as to whether meat is a definite risk factor for pancreatic cancer and more large studies are needed to confirm this, but this new analysis suggests processed meat may be playing a role.”
show

However, she pointed out that smoking was a much greater risk factor. The World Cancer Research Fund has advised people to completely avoid processed meat.
show

Dr Rachel Thompson, the fund’s deputy head of science, said: “We will be re-examining the factors behind pancreatic cancer later this year as part of our Continuous Update Project, which should tell us more about the relationship between cancer of the pancreas and processed meat.
show

“There is strong evidence that being overweight or obese increases the risk of pancreatic cancer and this study may be an early indication of another factor behind the disease.
show

“Regardless of this latest research, we have already established a strong link between eating red and processed meat and your chances of developing bowel cancer, which is why WCRF recommends limiting intake of red meat to 500g cooked weight a week and avoid processed meat altogether.”
show

October 12, 2011

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

After the Black Death reached London in 1348, about 2,400 people were buried in East Smithfield, near the Tower of London, in a cemetery that had been prepared for the plague’s arrival. From the teeth of four of those victims, researchers have now reconstructed the full DNA of a microbe that within five years felled one-third to one-half of the population of Western Europe.
show

The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, is still highly virulent today but has different symptoms, leading some historians to doubt that it was the agent of the Black Death.
show

Those doubts were laid to rest last year by detection of the bacterium’s DNA in plague victims from mass graves across Europe. With the full genome now in hand, the researchers hope to recreate the microbe itself so as to understand what made the Black Death outbreak so deadly.
show

So far, the evidence points more toward the conditions of the time than to properties of the bacterium itself. The genome recovered from the East Smithfield victims is remarkably similar to that of the present-day bacterium, says the research team, led by Kirsten I. Bos of McMaster University in Ontario and Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen in Germany.
show

This is the first time the genome of an ancient pathogen has been reconstructed, opening the way to tracking other ancient epidemics and how their microbes adapted to human hosts.
show

The bacterium’s genome consists of a single chromosome, about 4.6 million DNA units long, and three small rings of DNA called plasmids. In the 660 years since the Black Death struck, only 97 of these DNA units have changed and only a dozen of these changes occur in genes and therefore would affect the organism’s physical properties, the researchers report in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature. Dr. Krause and others reported the DNA sequence of one of the plasmids in August. The changes in the genome will be studied one by one to see how each affects the microbe’s virulence.
show

The researchers hope eventually to modify a living plague bacterium so that its genome is identical to that of the agent of the Black Death. Such a microbe could be handled only in special secure facilities. But even if it did infect a person, the bacterium would be susceptible to antibiotics, like its living descendants, said Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, a team member.
show

If the microbe’s genome is so little changed, the deadliness of the Black Death may reflect the condition of its medieval victims. Harsh as the economic stresses assailing Europe today may be, they are a breeze compared with problems in the mid-14th century. The climate was cooling, heavy rains rotted out crops and caused frequent famines, and the Hundred Years’ War began in 1337. People were probably already suffering from malnutrition and other diseases when the plague arrived like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse. “People honestly thought it was the end of the world,” Ms. Bos said.
show

Recovery of the medieval plague bacterium’s full genome is a technical tour de force. The DNA had been degraded into millions of small fragments that were overwhelmed in number by DNA from the human host and from the bacteria that consumed the body after death. Dr. Krause’s team fished out the plague DNA by using DNA from the modern bacterium, relying on the fact that DNA strands bind to DNA of complementary sequence.
show

“This is a major technological step forward, a great advance for the entire field of DNA and pathogens,” said Mark Achtman, an expert on ancient plague at University College Cork in Ireland.
show

But Dr. Achtman disagreed with one issue in Dr. Krause’s findings, that of whether Yersinia pestis also caused the outbreak in the sixth century known as the Justinian plague. When the full genome of the medieval bacterium is compared with DNA recovered from other known human outbreaks, a tree of descent can be constructed. The Black Death genome lies so close to the root of the tree that the human pathogen probably did not exist much earlier or, if it did, has vanished without any descendants, Dr. Krause’s team says. This implies that the Justinian plague was caused by some other agent.
show

Dr. Achtman said this conclusion was incorrect because the Krause team had omitted DNA from several human cases that place the root of the tree much further back in time. Dr. Krause said he had left these cases out because they seemed unreliable.
show

The modern plague bacterium changes its DNA units slowly, but it does quite often rearrange the order of its genes. Some experts believe gene order can affect pathogenicity. Dr. Krause had available only tiny fragments of DNA, so although he was able to reconstruct all the medieval bacterium’s genes he could not establish the exact order in which the genes were arranged, leaving open the possibility that the bacterium was inherently more pathogenic because its genome was differently organized.
show

Paul Keim, an expert on infectious bacteria at Northern Arizona University, said that work by Dr. Achtman and Dr. Krause had shown that the Black Death “was really a series of epidemics coming out of China and sweeping across the susceptible ecological situation” created by the culture of medieval Europe. The plague in each outbreak probably did not persist very long and was repeatedly re-established by new infections from East Asia, where the bacterium is still endemic in small rodents like marmots.
show

“We don’t have a human ecological situation comparable today, plus it is really easy to break the transmission cycle with antibiotics and public health,” Dr. Keim said. There are still small outbreaks, like one in Madagascar in the 1990s, but “a multiyear large human outbreak is inconceivable in this day,” he said.
show

Besides the Justinian plague and the Black Death, a third great wave of plague swept out of China in 1894, causing an epidemic in San Francisco in 1900 and killing millions of people in India.
show

All the teeth used in the study will be returned to the skulls from which they were taken, now in a London museum whose archaeologists excavated the East Smithfield cemetery in the 1980s.
show

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/science/13plague.html 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

The onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, say researchers in the US.
show

It was done by “flushing out” retired cells that had stopped dividing. They accumulate naturally with age.
show

The scientists believe their findings could eventually “really have an impact” in the care of the elderly.
show

Experts said the results were “fascinating”, but should be taken with a bit of caution.

The study, published in Nature, focused on what are known as “senescent cells”. They stop dividing into new cells and have an important role in preventing tumours from progressing.
show

These cells are cleared out by the immune system, but their numbers build up with time. The researchers estimated that around 10% of cells are senescent in very old people.
show

Cleanup
show

Scientists at the Mayo Clinic, in the US, devised a way to kill all senescent cells in genetically engineered mice.
show

The animals would age far more quickly than normal, and when they were given a drug, the senescent cells would die.
show

The researchers looked at three symptoms of old age: formation of cataracts in the eye; the wasting away of muscle tissue; and the loss of fat deposits under the skin, which keep it smooth.
show

Researchers said the onset of these symptoms was “dramatically delayed” when the animals were treated with the drug.
show

One of the researchers, Dr James Kirkland, said: “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
show

His colleague Dr Jan van Deursen told the BBC: “We were very surprised by the very profound effect. I really think this is very significant.”
show

The treatment had no effect on lifespan, but that may be due to the type of genetically engineered mouse used.
show

Eternal youth?
show

The study raises the tantalising prospect of slowing the signs of ageing in humans. However, senescent cells cannot be just flushed out of human beings.
show

Dr Deursen said: “I’m very optimistic that this could really have an impact. Nobody wants to live longer if the quality of life is poor.”

He argued that young people were already clearing out their senescent cells.
“If you can prime the immune system, boost it a little bit, to make sure senescent cells are removed, that might be all it needs.
show

“Or develop a drug that targets senescent cells because of the unique proteins the cells make.”
show

Dr Jesus Gil, from the Medical Research Council’s clinical science centre, said the findings needed to be “taken with a bit of caution. It is a preliminary study”.
show

However, he said it was a fascinating study which “suggests if you get rid of senescent cells you can improve phenotypes [physical traits] associated with ageing and improve quality of life in aged humans”.
show

Read on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15552964

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

BBC News Thursday 22nd September 2011

Doctors at Moorfields Eye hospital in London have been given the go-ahead to carry out Europe’s first clinical trial using human embryonic stem cells.
show

They will inject retinal cells into the eyes of 12 patients with an incurable disease, Stargardt’s macular dystrophy, which causes progressive sight loss.
show

The disease develops in childhood and affects around one in 10,000 people.
show

It causes the gradual loss of central vision leaving only peripheral sight.
show

The trial will test the safety of using replacement retinal cells known as retinal pigment epithelial cells, derived from human embryonic stem cells.
show

‘Milestone’
show

The trial is a partnership with an American bio-tech company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) which has already begun treating patients in California.
show

Gary Rabin, chairman and CEO of ACT described the Moorfields trial as “another milestone for the field of regenerative medicine”.
show

Stem cells are the body’s master cells - those from human embryos have the potential to turn into any of the 200 or so tissue types in the body.
show

The stem cell line was created in the United States several years ago using a donated embryo of just a few cells, smaller than a pinhead.
show

Supporters say embryonic stem cell therapy has the potential to treat not only blindness but a huge range of disorders, from heart disease to cancer.
show

Opponents object to the procedure because it began with the destruction of a human embryo.
show

Another US company, Geron, has also used embryonic stem cells to treat patients with spinal injuries.
show

The Moorfields trial and those in the US involving ACT and Geron are all to test whether the procedure is safe.
show

If it is, then progressively larger numbers of stem cells will be used to check for effectiveness.
show

Prof James Bainbridge from Moorfields Eye Hospital said: “There is real potential that people with blinding disorders of the retina including Stargardt’s disease and age-related macular degeneration might benefit in the future from transplantation of retinal cells.”
show

Prof Chris Mason, Chair of Regenerative Medicine Bioprocessing, Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, University College London, said: “Whilst principally a safety study, it will undoubted significantly add to the growing core of knowledge on cell therapies, thus helping advance the entire field.”
show

Earlier this year the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) awarded Moorfields and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology £26m for work aimed at the translation of scientific advances into new treatments for people with sight-threatening disease.
show

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15017664 

show

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

CNN  health news May 4, 2010

Scientists appear to have broken another barrier in stem cell research by creating a better research model to study human illnesses – a pig – actually 34 pigs.
show

It’s an important advance for research because pigs are much more like humans than other lab animals are.
show

The scientists did not clone the pigs – instead they adapted a procedure used in mice and human stem cell research and were able to grow a specific kind of cell, induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPS cells.
show

Pluripotent stem cells have the ability to turn into any cell in the body. IPS cells were first developed about five years ago by Shinya Yamanaka, who used four genes to coax a regular mouse cell into acting like an embryo. Creating stem cells with this method is less controversial than harvesting them from an embryo, which destroys the fertilized egg in the process.
show

According to Dr. Steve Stice, director of the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center, his team took a bone marrow cell from a pig and injected six new genes, which caused it turn into an embryo-like cell.  Pluripotent stem cells were harvested from this embryo-like cell and injected in another pig embryo.
show

The first piglets carrying these new stem cells were born September 3, 2009.
show

The researchers also found that unlike mouse embryonic stem cells, which can turn into cancer cells, none of the pigs developed any signs of tumors.
But it has been very difficult to harvest embryonic pluripotent stem cells from pigs. Stice credits his research assistant Franklin West with finding a way to make the existing IPS technology work in pigs.
show

Now researchers hope to find many different applications for these new pig stem cells and the pigs they can produce.  They are already working with scientists at Emory University to develop insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells, which might be transplanted into people with diabetes.
show

http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/04/scientists-use-pig-embryo-to-create-stem-cells/

show

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

BBC News  Tuesday, 27 April 2010

A brief one-off screening test could prevent thousands of people dying from bowel cancer every year, a study published in the Lancet suggests.

show

There are now calls for the test to be rolled out across the UK after results from 200,000 people aged 55-64 found it cut deaths by 43% over 10 years.
Cancer Research UK described the results from the Imperial College, London, study as a “rare breakthrough”.

show

(more…)

show

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

The Independent, 19 May 2010

The successful eradication of smallpox 30 years ago and the subsequent ending of the mass vaccination campaign of the 1960s and 1970s may have unwittingly created the conditions that allowed the explosive spread of Aids in Africa, scientists have claimed.
show

(more…)

show

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA.
show

The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell.
The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA.
show

The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.
show

(more…)

show

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio: botón derecho - guardar destino como

BBC News, Health reporter, Friday, 23 April 2010

A team of 30 Spanish doctors say they have successfully performed the world’s first full face transplant.

show

A man injured in a shooting accident received the entire facial skin and muscles - including cheekbones, nose, lips and teeth - of a donor.
The man is recovering well after the 22-hour operation, said a spokesperson from Vall d’Hebron University Hospital.

show

Another 10 face transplants have been carried out around the world, but this is believed to be the most complex.

show

Hospital spokesperson Bianca Bont told the BBC: “This is the first total face transplant.
“There have been 10 operations of this kind in the world - this is the first to transplant all of the face and some bones of the face.”

show

The man was operated on in March, but details of the operation have only just been revealed.
He had been left unable to breathe, swallow, or talk properly after an accident five years ago.
He was considered for a full face transplant after nine previous operations failed.
A team of 30 experts carried out the operation on 20 March at the hospital in Barcelona.
The man has since seen himself in the mirror and was calm and satisfied, the leader of the medical team, Joan Pere Barret, told a news conference.

show

‘Achievement’

show

The first partial face transplant was carried out by doctors in Amiens, France, in 2005.
Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old woman who had been mauled by her dog, received a new nose, chin and lips.

show

Since then partial face transplants have been carried out in China and the US.
British experts say the Spanish operation may be the most complex yet.
It appears to include more bone and much more of the lower part of the face.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Facial Transplantation Research Team, which has ethical permission to carry out a full face transplant, said it was “a tremendous achievement”.
“This appears to be the most complex facial transplant operation carried out so far worldwide,” he said.
“It once again shows how facial transplantation can help a small number of people who are the most severely facially injured and for whom reconstructive surgery cannot and has not worked.”

show

How surgeons rebuilt patient’s face:

show

1. Patient lost jaw, nose and other parts of his face in shooting accident.

show

2. Donor’s facial skin, muscles, nose, cheekbones, teeth and jawbone used to rebuild patient’s face. Metal plates used to support new facial structure, which included reconstructing the roof of the mouth.

show

3. Donor’s nerves, blood vessels and skin connected to patient. Patient will have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life.

show

Source: Vall D’Hebron Hospital, Barcelona

show

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8639437.stm