Medical News

AP Photo/Harvard University, Livett- Weissman-Sanes-Lichtman

Brain cells of a laboratory mouse glowing with multicolor fluorescent proteins.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors the ability of some jellyfish to glow and transforming it into a ubiquitous tool of molecular biology for watching the dance of living cells and the proteins within them.

The fluorescent proteins are now routinely used for observing the growth and fate of specific cells like nerve cells damaged during Alzheimer’s disease.

The winners are Osamu Shimomura, 80, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University Medical School; Martin Chalfie, 61, a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; and Roger Y. Tsien, 56, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.

Each will receive a third of the 10 million krona prize (about $1.4 million) awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Shimomura said he received a 5 a.m. phone call informing him he was a Nobelist. “The reaction was just surprise,” he said.

Dr. Tsien was not caught completely unaware. Last week, the Thomson Reuters news service listed him among its predictions for this year’s Nobel Prize winners. “I didn’t want to put any credence in it,” Dr. Tsien said, noting that the predictions for the physics and medicine prizes this week were wrong.

Dr. Tsien (pronounced chen) added that his work was “only one little piece” amid the work of many. “It wasn’t necessarily the case they had to give it to me,” he said. “Obviously, it’s pretty nice to hear.”

Dr. Chalfie never received the phone call from Sweden. “I slept through it,” he acknowledged at a news conference at Columbia. He said he had inadvertently turned down the ringer on his telephone a couple of days ago. He woke up at 6:10 in the morning and thought the soft ring was coming from a neighboring apartment.

“I was a little bit annoyed that they weren’t answering their phone,” he said. “I then realized because it was after 6, that they must have announced the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year. So I opened up my laptop and found out I was the schnook.”

Biologists have long observed that some sea creatures glow in the dark. In 1962, Dr. Shimomura, then a researcher at Princeton, and Frank Johnson, a Princeton biology professor, isolated a specific glowing protein in the Aequorea victoria, a jellyfish that drifts in the ocean currents off the west coast of North America.

The protein looked greenish under sunlight, yellowish under a light bulb and fluorescent green under ultraviolet light. Dr. Shimomura and Dr. Johnson called it the green protein, but now it is known as green fluorescent protein, or G.F.P. for short.

The green fluorescent protein consists of a chain of 238 amino acids bent into a beer can-like cylindrical shape, and for two and a half decades it remained a little-known biological curiosity.

Dr. Chalfie first heard about the protein at a seminar in 1988, and thought he might be able to use it in his studies of Caenorhabditis elegans, a transparent roundworm.

“It didn’t take much to realize that if I put that fluorescent protein inside this transparent animal, I would be able to see the cells that were making it,” he said. “And that’s what we set out to do.”

He thought that the fluorescent protein could be made to serve as a biological marker by splicing the gene that makes the protein into an organism’s DNA next to a gene switch or another gene.

“That serves as a lantern,” Dr. Chalfie said, and biologists would be able to see when specific genes turn on or off and where different proteins are produced.

He was not able to pursue the idea until Douglas C. Prasher, a scientist then at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, found the G.F.P. gene and shared it with Dr. Chalfie in 1992. Dr. Chalfie said that within a month his group was able to insert the gene into E. coli bacteria.

In 1994, Dr. Chalfie and his collaborators reported that they had inserted the protein into six cells of the C. elegans worm. When placed under ultraviolet light, those cells shined green, revealing their location.

For many biologists, it was a surprise that inserting the G.F.P. gene was all that needed; many had thought that other jellyfish proteins would be needed to help G.F.P. fold into its light-emitting shape.

Dr. Tsien was thinking along similar lines as Dr. Chalfie, also contacting Dr. Prasher. But for the biology experiment he wanted to conduct, he needed two colors of fluorescent proteins. Dr. Tsien started mutating the G.F.P gene and looking at the resulting proteins. Some, he found, glowed blue instead of green.

“That was the first evidence you could change the color,” Dr. Tsien said.

Other scientists have since expanded the palette, enlisting similar proteins from corals to produce fluorescent reds. The multiple colors allow biologists to track different processes simultaneously. In one experiment, the brain of a mouse was transformed into a kaleidoscope of color by tagging different nerve cells with different fluorescent proteins.

The protein has even entered the world of art. In 2000, Eduardo Kac, an artist, displayed a green glowing rabbit named Alba, which he had commissioned a French laboratory to modify genetically with the G.F.P gene.

Topiramate Linked to Birth Defects

Study on 203 pregnant women finds a connection...................

Topiramate has been found to raise the risk of birth defects as much as 14-fold when taken by pregnant women, especially in combination with another drug called valproate

But the results are not surprising, as Topamax has been shown to cause similar defects in animals.

Despite the enormous risks, doctors say that epileptic women cannot stop taking the drugs during pregnancy because seizures can also damage the unborn infant, perhaps even more severely.

But women who are taking the drug to prevent migraines should halt its use if they become pregnant or are planning to do so.

Topamax accounts for about 1 in 5 prescriptions for treatment for epilepsy in 2.7 million Americans.

Valproate, another very common drug used in treating the disorder, has previously been associated with birth defects or fetal death in about 20% of women who take it.

Of the 203 pregnancies, 18 ended in spontaneous abortions, two in stillbirths and five in induced abortions. Of the 178 babies born, 16 had major birth defects. In three of those cases, the mothers had taken only topiramate, and in the other 13, the mothers had taken it in combination with other drugs.

Four of the babies had cleft palates or lips, a rate 11 times the normal rate of 1 in 500 expected among women not taking epilepsy drugs. Four male babies had genital birth defects, which is 14 times the normal rate of 1 in 300.s.

'Breakthrough' in malaria fight

A sticky substance allows infected blood cells to stick to the blood vessels

A potential treatment to combat malaria has been identified.

This discovery could be a major breakthrough in the fight against malaria.

The malaria parasite produces a glue-like substance which makes the cells it infects sticky, so they cannot be flushed through the body.

Removal of a protein responsible for the glue can destroy its stickiness, and undermine the parasite's defence.

The malaria parasite - Plasmodium falciparum - effectively hijacks the red blood cells it invades, changing their shape and physical properties dramatically.

Among the changes it triggers is the production of the glue-like substance, which enables the infected cells to stick to the walls of the blood vessels.

This stops them being pased through the spleen, where the parasites would usually be destroyed by the immune system.

A mutant strains of P. falciparum, each lacking one of 83 genes known or predicted to play a role in the red cell remodeling process was developed. And it was seen that eight proteins were involved in the production of the key glue-like substance.

Removing just one of these proteins stopped the infected cells from attaching themselves to the walls of blood . So targeting the protein with drugs - or possibly a vaccine - could be key to fighting malaria.

"If we block the stickiness we essentially block the virulence or the capacity of the parasite to cause disease".

Malaria is preventable and curable disease but it kills more than a million people each year.

MDR-TB Detection in 2 days!

Detecting MDR TB has never been easier... two days instead of the standard 2-3 months is a great news.

Multiple-drug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB, is dangerous. 5% of new TB cases are resistant to first-line drugs. per WHO 9 million new TB cases are detected each year.

“This revolutionary new test called "LINE PROBE ASSAY" described on Monday, detects mutations in bacterial DNA linked to drug resistance and costs little less than $8.

Had there been higher demand and funding, it could have been developed 5 years earlier. It took widespread publicity about an outbreak in South Africa of XDR-TB, a shorthand for extensively-drug-resistant TB, to demonstrate the urgency and duty to bring sophisticated technology.

It is estimated that only 2 percent of drug-resistant cases worldwide are detected and treated appropriately. The potential for outbreaks of MDR-TB to evolve into those of the even deadlier XDR-TB would be disastrous.

The TB test is performed by extracting DNA from a sputum specimen and then large numbers of copies of the DNA is produced by using amplifying techniques.

The presence of certain genetic mutations that are linked to resistance with drugs like isoniazid and rifampin can be determined.

This test is being urged to be used everywhere, particularly in poor countries where H.I.V. is also epidemic.

Technicians need training in performing the test because they are at considerable risk of infection. Also, contamination can invalidate test findings. Technicians who had no prior experience learned how to do the sophisticated molecular test in a week, and experience has shown that high-quality labs in the poorest countries can obtain test results comparable to those in richer countries.


Two Medical Helicopters Collided Killing 6 People

On Sunday, June 29, 2008 in Arizona, USA when this happened, it killed both patients, critically injured a nurse and two emergency workers suffered minor burns.One of the helicopters that crashed Sunday was carrying a patient with a medical emergency . The other helicopter was coming from the nearby community of Winslow.
There have been nine serious accidents with emergency medical aircraft this year, six of them involving helicopters,

Both aircraft were Bell 407 models, it is rare for two medical helicopters to attempt to land at a hospital at the same time. The falling debris set off a brush fire, which spread to 10 acres before it was contained.


HOPE for SEVERE DEPRESSION

The psychiatry researchers in USA are working on Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study. This is the largest study ever on the treatment of major depressive disorder and is considered a benchmark in the field of depression research. The six-year, $33 million study initially included more than 4,000 patients from clinics across the country. STAR*D provided evidence for step-by-step guidelines to address treatment-resistant depression and found that half of depressed patients became symptom-free or had major improvement after the first two treatments with medication.

Based on thEse findings, a computerized treatment system has been developed and is being tested it in a Nashville, TN. The computer software provides a step-by-step guide to assist doctors as they're treating patients.

"This computerized system gives doctors assistance at the time that they are seeing the patient. "It's like walking with someone learning to ride a bike versus just sitting there and telling them how to ride."

"Previous research has pulled out a few drops of water from a pond, whereas now we are looking at the whole pond and all its possible murkiness," Dr. Trivedi said.


MOLECULAR RESEARCH

Two Scientists from UCSF and Yale grabbed America's largest prize for work in medicine, amounting to half a million dollars for their groundbreaking work in molecular research. Elizabeth Blackburn from UCSF has a worldwide reputation for her pioneering work on telomeres, the DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes. She discovered the ribonucleoprotein enzyme telomerase, which strengthens telomeres.Before this research, the "clock" of cellular life was a mystery to scientists. Telomeres becomes progressively shorter over the life of a cell and when they become too short, the cell dies.

Elizabeth Blackburn showed that telomerase can add DNA back to the ends of telomeres and effectively turn back the clock. Blackburn's another work has shown a link between low levels of telomerase and chronic stress that can lead to early onset of a range of age-related conditions such as neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases. She is also looking into ways to stop cancer by manipulating telomerase.

Joan Steitz from Yale achieved global recognition when she discovered how small ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) behave in pre-messenger RNA, the earliest product of DNA transcription. She found out that snRNPs get rid of introns, the useless chunks of DNA and pre-messenger RNA, by "splicing" them out and then joining the severed ends together to make messenger RNA. Messenger RNA then instruct the production of proteins, the essential building blocks of the body's biology.

Steitz's work mainly focus on the formation of proteins, and especially on the intricate transformations that occur as the immune system and brain develop. Understanding more about the "splicing" function of snRNPs may lead to discoveries about how to prevent many human diseases.



Should MEN of 95 eat Broccoli instead?


Just a few more portions of broccoli each week has shown to protect men from prostate cancer.

A chemical in the food could have sparked hundreds of genetic changes, activating some genes that fight cancer and switching off others that fuel tumors.

This study published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS, is the first human trial investigating the potential biological mechanism at work.

Prostate is the second-leading cancer killer of men after lung cancer. Each year, some 680,000 men worldwide are diagnosed with the disease and about 220,000 will die from it.

24 men with pre-cancerous lesions that increase prostate cancer risk were split in 2 groups and were given four extra servings of either broccoli or peas each week for a year.

The researchers took tissue samples over the course of the study and found that men who ate broccoli showed hundreds of changes in genes known to play a role in fighting cancer.

The benefit would likely be the same in other cruciferous vegetables that contain a compound called isothiocyanate, including brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, rocket or arugula, watercress and horse radish.Broccoli, however, has a particularly powerful type of the compound called sulforaphane, which could have given it an extra cancer-fighting kick.

"When people get cancer some genes are switched off and some are switched on"What broccoli seems to be doing is switching on genes which prevent cancer developing and switching off other ones that help it spread."

The broccoli eaters showed about 400 to 500 of the positive genetic changes with men carrying a gene called GSTM1 enjoying the most benefit. About half the population have the gene.