World's 1st dengue vaccine beats 3 virus strains in clinical trial

A man suffering from dengue fever, sits under a mosquito net while seeking treatment at the Services Hospital in Lahore, in this file picture taken on Sep 18, 2011. The world's first vaccine against dengue, developed by French drugmaker Sanofi, has shown the ability to protect against disease caused by three of four dengue virus strains in a keenly awaited clinical trial in Thailand. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

PARIS (REUTERS) - The world's first vaccine against dengue, developed by French drugmaker Sanofi, has shown the ability to protect against disease caused by three of four dengue virus strains in a keenly awaited clinical trial in Thailand.

Sanofi said on Wednesday the proof of efficacy was 'a key milestone' in the 70-year quest to develop a viable dengue shot, adding the results also confirmed the safety profile of the vaccine candidate.

'1 in 10 will suffer from mental illness': Study

The Singapore Mental Health Study, which involved 6,616 people being interviewed last year, has found that while mental illness starts occurring in most people while they are in their 20s, two in three never seek help, and even those who eventually do take years to do so. -- FILE PHOTO

More than one in 10 people in Singapore will be stricken by mental illness in their lifetime, according to a large, new study here.

Many are likely to face depression, the commonest mental illness here. It is projected to affect 170,000 adults, with more women affected than men.

Antibiotics overprescribed for children: US study

(REUTERS) - Pediatricians in the United States write more than 10 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions every year for conditions such as the flu and asthma, contributing to potentially dangerous drug resistance, a study said.

Researchers looked at a nationally representative sample of almost 65,000 outpatient visits by children under 18 during 2006 to 2008, with findings reported in the journal Pediatrics.

In total, doctors prescribed an antibiotic at one in every five visits, with most dispensed for children with respiratory ailments such as sinus infections and pneumonia.

Benefits of Drinking Plain Water In the Morning

There is some research shown that it is good to drink water immediately after waking up every morning. It is said that this method can help to cure certain disease that is very well known amongst us. The diseases are - headache, bodyache, heart system, arthritis, fast heart beat, epilepsy, excess fatness, bronchitis, asthma, TB, meningitis, kidney and urine diseases, vomiting, gastritis, diarrhea, piles, diabetes, constipation, eye diseases, womb, cancer, menstrual disorder, ear, nose and throat diseases.
The treatment methods are:

Warning over fibroids treatment

UK doctors say a treatment for heavy periods caused by fibroids can seriously harm a subsequent pregnancy.

An Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital study looked at the outcomes of 215 pregnancies following uterine artery embolisation (UAE) treatment.

The researchers found much higher rates of miscarriage, caesareans and heavy bleeding after delivery, and call for caution in recommending the treatment.

The study appears in the journal, The Obstetrician and Gynaecologist.

UAE has been available as a treatment in the UK since 1995.

Dengue vaccine could be ready by 2015

French drugs group Sanofi said on Friday that its vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne infection that kills thousands of people around the world each year, could be launched in about four years. -- PHOTO: AP

BANGKOK - FRENCH drugs group Sanofi said on Friday that its vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne infection that kills thousands of people around the world each year, could be launched in about four years.

'The vaccine could be available... around 2015,' Jean Lang, head of vaccine development at the group's subsidiary Sanofi-Pasteur, told reporters in Bangkok.

German E. coli outbreak 'stabilising'

A patient infected with enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) is being dialysed at the Marienkrankenhaus hospital in Hamburg, northern Germany, on May 24, 2011. -- PHOTO: AFP

HAMBURG (Germany) - AN OUTBREAK of E. coli poisoning that has killed at least 18 people appears to be stabilising, a senior doctor in the German city of Hamburg, the epicentre of the outbreak, said on Friday.

'The situation is that the number of new infections appears to be stabilising somewhat,' said Mr Reinhard Brunkhorst, president of the German Nephrology Society dealing with kidney diseases.

'We are dealing here in fact with the biggest epidemic caused by bacteria in recent decades,' he told reporters.

Botox to treat chronic migraines

Botox injections would be given to adult sufferers of chronic migraines around the head and neck every 12 weeks in an attempt to dull future headaches, said the FDA. -- PHOTO: REUTERS


NEW YORK - THE US Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Allergan Inc's anti-wrinkle injection Botox to treat chronic migraines.

Botox injections would be given to adult sufferers of chronic migraines around the head and neck every 12 weeks in an attempt to dull future headaches, said the FDA in a statement.

Chronic migraine sufferers have a headache on most days of the month. Botox has not been shown to work for people who suffer headaches 14 days or less per month, the FDA said.

The United Kingdom was the first country to approve the use of Botox for migraine treatment in July. The approval comes just over a month after Allergan agreed to pay US$600 million (S$777.5 million) to settle a federal probe into its marketing practices for Botox. -- REUTERS

New treatment for asthma

LOS ANGELES - RESEARCHERS say they've found a possible new treatment for adults with hard-to-control asthma. Their discovery, however, came at a price.

Scientists of a US government-funded asthma study had to spend nearly US$1 million (S$1.33 million) of taxpayers' money after British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline PLC declined to donate its asthma drug and look-alike dummy medicine for the study, which compared two other treatments.

Editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published the study, chastised Glaxo, saying its actions made the research harder and more expensive to do. Drug companies aren't required to supply their medicines for study, but they often do.

'In the end, the study results provided the truth' - the drug, Spiriva, was as good as Glaxo's Serevent, they wrote. The study was published online on Sunday to coincide with a presentation at a medical meeting in Barcelona, Spain.

About 300 million people worldwide suffer from asthma. In the US, 22 million Americans have asthma, which kills about 4,000 a year. For people who can't control their asthma with inhaled steroid medicine, current guidelines call for doubling the dose or adding a different drug that relaxes the muscles to help patients breathe.

Researchers tested three inhaled treatments: doubling the steroid dose, adding Glaxo's Serevent or adding Boehringer Ingelheim's Spiriva, which is approved for emphysema and other chronic lung conditions, but not asthma. -- AP

Vagina gel fails to block HIV

PARIS - A VAGINAL gel failed to protect women against the Aids virus, doctors said on Monday, reporting on a major clinical trial that enrolled more than 9,000 women.

The formula, known as PRO 2000, was tested in a Phase III trial, the widest and most exhaustive stage of the process to assess a new drug for safety and effectiveness.

Aids campaigners have staked huge faith in the search for a vaginally-used gel to thwart the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It would revolutionise the fight on Aids by empowering women, especially in African countries where coercive sex is a problem.

The first breakthrough in this quest was announced in July at the 18th International Aids Conference in Vienna. Scientists reported that a cream tested in a Phase IIb trial in South Africa called Caprisa 004 cut the risk of HIV infection by 39 per cent overall, and by 54 per cent among those women who used it most consistently.

This level of protection may not be enough to make the Caprisa gel get approval, however. The cream incorporates tenofovir, a drug commonly used in tablet form to quell HIV by disrupting its reproduction in immune cells.

The PRO 2000 formula is different, being a so-called large charged polymer, which is intended to disrupt HIV's interaction with targeted cells. It was tested at two levels of concentration, of two per cent and 0.5 per cent, in 13 clinics in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia in a trial that was closely monitored for ethical standards. -- AFP

Calcium-heart attacks link

PARIS - ORDINARY calcium supplements taken by the elderly to strengthen bones may boost the risk of heart attacks, according to a study released on Friday.

The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggest that the role of calcium in the treatment of osteoporosis should be reconsidered, the researchers said. Calcium tablets are commonly prescribed to boost skeletal health, but a recent clinical trial suggested they might increase the number of heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems in healthy older women.

To investigate further, an international team of researchers led by Ian Reid of the University of Auckland in New Zealand reviewed 11 separate clinical trials involving 12,000 patients. They found that calcium supplements were associated with about a 30 per cent jump in heart attack risk.

The chances of stroke and mortality also increased to a lesser extent. The link was consistent across trials and was independent of age, sex, and type of supplement. While the added risk is modest for any individual, the widespread use of calcium supplements could translate into a significantly larger disease burden across an entire population, the authors warn.

Previous studies have found that upping calcium intake through changes in diet does not increase cardiovascular problems, suggesting that the risks are restricted to supplements.

In a commentary, John Cleland of the University of Hull in Britain and colleagues point out that - regardless of possible impacts on heart attack rates - calcium supplements are probably not very efficient in reducing fractures in any case.

Bacteria Could Play A Wider Role In Obesity

Bacteria may play more of a role in people predisposed to obesity than previously thought, according to studies presented by University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers at the 110th general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in San Diego.

"Work currently under way suggests that an interaction between genetic factors and the composition of the bacteria that inhabit the human gut may predispose certain individuals toward obesity," said Margaret Zupancic, PhD, a research fellow with the Institute for Genome Sciences at the School, who presented one of the studies. "These results potentially provide insight into the mechanisms by which genetics may predispose some people to obesity. They could also help pave the way toward a future in which genetic screening in conjunction with individually tailored treatments could help people at risk for obesity to maintain a healthy weight."

Zupancic and her colleagues analyzed the gut bacterial communities of lean and obese individuals in the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pa. For the benefit of such research, their population is relatively homogenous in regard to both genetics and lifestyle. Initially, the researchers found no correlation between the composition of the gut bacteria and obesity, but when they factored in the genetic makeup of the participants, certain patterns began to emerge.

One pattern was a statistically significant correlation between whether the participant carried a given variant of a gene called FTO associated with obesity and the presence of certain bacterial groups in the digestive tract.

The researchers also found that in people with certain genetic variations in taste receptor genes, a low level of bacterial diversity in the gut correlated with a higher likelihood of obesity, while a high level of bacterial diversity correlated with a lower likelihood of obesity.

"While this work is still at a relatively early stage, results such as these could lead to applications such as probiotic [stimulate beneficial bacteria] or antibiotic-based treatments for obesity that could be individualized based on a person's unique genetic and gut microbial makeup," says Zupancic.

The Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) is an international research center within the University of Maryland School of Medicine led by Claire Fraser-Liggett, PhD, and a team of internationally recognized faculty. Comprised of an inter-disciplinary, multi-department team of investigators, the Institute uses the powerful tools of genomics and bioinformatics to understand genome function in health and disease, to study molecular and cellular networks in a variety of model systems, and to generate data and bioinformatics resources of value to the international scientific community. The scientific discoveries that are being made at IGS are helping to unravel the mysteries of biological systems and to improve health care for people around the world.

Source: University of Maryland Baltimore

Low serotonin may cause SIDS

WASHINGTON - SUDDEN infant death syndrome (SIDS) could be caused by low levels in the brainstem of serotonin, a neurotransmitter which controls functions such as heart rate and breathing, a study showed on Tuesday.

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston measured the levels of serotonin and tryptophan hydroxylase, the enzyme that helps make the key neurotransmitter, in 36 infants who died from SIDS and two control groups - babies who died suddenly of other causes and infants who were hospitalised with chronic oxygenation problems.

What they found is that serotonin levels in the lower brainstem of the SIDS babies were 26 per cent lower and tryptophan hydroxylase levels were 22 per ent lower than in the control groups. They also found that SIDS babies had fewer serotonin receptors in the brainstem.

'The receptors are what serotonin interacts with to produce an effect,' David Paterson, one of the lead authors of the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) told AFP. 'In SIDS cases, in the brainstem, they actually have fewer of these receptors, and if there's a lower number of receptors, that's usually an indication that there's something wrong with serotonin.'

Serotonin in the brainstem controls functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and breathing. If the infant has a serotonin deficiency, and if there are other SIDS risk-factors, such as the baby sleeping on its stomach where it rebreathes its own breath, with higher carbon dioxide, the serotonin system in the brainstem could fail to detect a problem and tell the baby to take action, Paterson explained.

'If this system is not working properly, the baby might not respond to this challenge and die,' he said. SIDS is the leading cause of death in infants younger than one year in the United States. -- AFP

HIV/Aids top crises list

NEW YORK - DWINDLING funding for HIV/AIDS threatens to leave an estimated 10 million infected people without treatment in the developing world, making it one of 2009's Top 10 humanitarian crises, according to Doctors Without Borders.

Other crises that made the list released by the medical humanitarian group on Monday include: governments blocking access to lifesaving assistance in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the Sudan; a lack of respect for civilian safety and aid efforts in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia; and inadequate international funds to fight neglected diseases and malnutrition.

Sophie Delaunay, executive director of Doctors Without Borders' US section, said the group wanted to alert policy makers not to let down their guard in the fight against HIV/AIDS, which continues to be a crisis despite the advent of life-sustaining treatment. 'When there are concerning signs of a retreat for access to treatment, it's important to state that HIV/AIDS is an emergency,' Ms Delaunay said.

The international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF for its French name 'Medecins Sans Frontieres,' began issuing its annual list in 1998 after a devastating famine in southern Sudan went largely unnoticed by the US media. The list, which does not rank the crises by order of importance, seeks to foster greater awareness of crises that may not receive adequate attention in the press.

Since pledging to support universal AIDS treatment coverage by 2010 at the G8 Summit in Scotland in 2005, many countries, including the United States, have announced plan to reduce or limit funding, she said.

'In some countries doctors are turning patients away, advised to wait until other patients die. What's going to happen is that patients are going to show up at the door of our clinics and there is a high possibility of us getting overwhelmed,' Ms Delaunay warned. -- AP

'Double trouble' antibiotic hope

A "double-headed" antibiotic could lead to powerful new drugs to beat resistance, say UK researchers.

It sticks to bacteria in two places making it more potent and reducing the chance that bacteria will adapt to resist it, the journal Science reports.

Although not itself suitable for use in patients, it is hoped drugs can be created based on the same principle.

But the news comes as experts warn that excessive regulation is preventing new antibiotics being developed.

An editorial in The Lancet medical journal has called for greater efforts to develop new antibiotics.

A recent EU report found that only 15 antibacterial drugs that offer a potential benefit over existing drugs are in development, and only five have reached the final stage of the trials process.

And the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy has set up a working group to try and address some of the barriers.

Natural compound

In the latest study, researchers looked at a naturally occurring molecule made by soil bacteria called simocyclinone.

It attacks an enzyme in bacteria called DNA gyrase, stopping them from growing.

This enzyme is also targeted by a commonly used group of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, but resistance to these drugs is growing.

The team showed that simocyclinone binds to a completely different, previously unexploited part of the enzyme and also latches on in two places or "pockets".

The "double-headed" nature of the antibiotic makes it 100 times more powerful than if each "head" attached to the bacteria individually.

And because bacteria would have to mutate in both binding sites, it cuts the potential for resistance.

Simocyclinone is a fairly large molecule and can not easily get into bacterial cells.

By designing molecules which bind to the enzyme in the same way, researchers say more effective antibiotics could be developed.

Drug design

Study leader Professor Tony Maxwell from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, said: "If you can knock out this enzyme, you have a potential new drug," said Professor Maxwell.

"The fact that there are two pockets means that it might require simultaneous mutations in both pockets for the bacteria to acquire full resistance to the drug, which is much less likely.

"You could say that this is a case of two heads being better than one."

Professor Laura Piddock from the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, said there are huge hurdles to developing antibiotics.

"Antibiotic drug development worldwide is in the doldrums because it's very expensive to get drugs through the regulatory process.

"These results are exciting because having a single molecule that targets two separate parts of the enzyme is new and novel.

"But clearly if someone comes up with a useable version of this molecule they're going to have to overcome some hurdles, which are so profound it makes you very pessimistic."

Cup of mint tea is an effective painkiller

Graciela Rocha with one of her Brazilian mint plants.

A cup of Brazilian mint tea has pain relieving qualities to match those of commercially available analgesics, a study suggests.

Hyptis crenata has been prescribed by Brazilian healers for millennia to treat ailments from headaches and stomach pain to fever and flu.

Working on mice, a Newcastle University team has proved scientifically that the ancient medicine men were right.

The study is published in the journal Acta Horticulturae.

In order to mimic the traditional treatment as closely as possible, the Newcastle team carried out a survey in Brazil to find out how the medicine is typically prepared and how much should be consumed.

The most common method was to produce a decoction. This involves boiling the dried leaves in water for 30 minutes and allowing the liquid to cool before drinking it as a tea.

The team found that when the mint was given at a dose similar to that prescribed by traditional healers, the medicine was as effective at relieving pain as a synthetic aspirin-style drug called Indometacin.

They plan to launch clinical trials to find out how effective the mint is as a pain relief for people.

Lead researcher Graciela Rocha said: "Since humans first walked the Earth we have looked to plants to provide a cure for our ailments - in fact it is estimated more than 50,000 plants are used worldwide for medicinal purposes.

"Besides traditional use, more than half of all prescription drugs are based on a molecule that occurs naturally in a plant.

"What we have done is to take a plant that is widely used to safely treat pain and scientifically proven that it works as well as some synthetic drugs.

"Now the next step is to find out how and why the plant works."

Graciela is Brazilian and remembers being given the tea as a cure for every childhood illness.

'Interesting research'

She said: "The taste isn't what most people here in the UK would recognize as a mint.

"In fact it tastes more like sage which is another member of the mint family.

"Not that nice, really, but then medicine isn't supposed to be nice, is it?"

Dr Beverly Collett, chair of the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition, said: "Obviously further work needs to be done to identify the molecule involved, but this is interesting research into what may be a new analgesic for the future.

"The effects of aspirin-like substances have been known since the ancient Greeks recorded the use of the willow bark as a fever fighter.

"The leaves and bark of the willow tree contain a substance called salicin, a naturally occurring compound similar to acetylsalicylic acid, the chemical name for aspirin."

The research is being presented at the International Symposium on Medicinal and Nutraceutical Plants in New Delhi, India.

'Mental illness gene' discovered by Scots scientists

Scientists have discovered a gene which may help explain the causes of mental illness.

The ABCA13 gene is partially inactive in patients with severe psychological conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

It is hoped that identifying genes which make people more likely to develop psychiatric illness may lead to new treatments being developed.

The international team of scientists was led by Edinburgh University.

They studied the genes of 2,000 psychiatric patients and compared them with those of 2,000 healthy people.

The study suggested that ABCA13 was faulty more frequently in patients with mental illness than in the control group.

Douglas Blackwood, psychiatric genetics professor at Edinburgh University, said: "This is an exciting step forward in our understanding of the underlying causes of some common mental illnesses. These risk genes could signpost new directions for treatments."

The team believes the gene may influence the way fat molecules are used in brain cells and the research will now focus on exactly how this occurs.

The discovery could lead to drugs that restore mental health in patients with psychiatric illness.

Dr Ben Pickard, who was part of the Edinburgh team but now works at the University of Strathclyde, said: "This study is the first to identify multiple points of DNA damage within a single gene that are linked with psychiatric illness.

"It strongly suggests that this gene may regulate an important part of brain function that fails in individuals diagnosed with these devastating disorders.

"I think it opens up a whole new area of biology which indicates that these conditions are perhaps related at a fundamental level."

The Edinburgh University research is in collaboration with scientists at universities in Aberdeen, Queensland and North Carolina.

The study took around five years to complete and involved patients from Scotland.

The results have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Experts to study vaccine reactions

TOKYO - JAPAN sent a team of health experts on Sunday to Canada to investigate allergic reactions to swine flu vaccinations from British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The World Health Organization said last week that an unusual number of severe allergic reactions to H1N1 flu vaccinations have been recorded in Canada, where a batch of the vaccine from GSK has been recalled.

The team from the health and welfare ministry was seen departing from Tokyo's Narita airport. It is scheduled to spend four days in Canada to study precautionary measures against allergic reactions.

Tokyo has ordered doses of GSK-made vaccinations for 37 million people, a shipment due for delivery in December in a country that has a limited supply of domestically-made prophylactics.

Japan started vaccinating medical workers against H1N1 flu in October.

Since May, the A(H1N1) virus is known to have killed 70 people in the country, which is now heading into the autumn-winter flu season. -- AFP

Diabetics to double in 25 years

WASHINGTON - THE number of Americans with diabetes will nearly double over the next 25 years, rising from 23.7 million in 2009 to 44.1 million in 2034, according to a study by the University of Chicago.

In the same period, medical costs associated with treating the disease will triple from US$113 billion (S$158 billion) to US$336 billion, even without a rise in the incidence of obesity, according to the study published in the December issue of Diabetes Care.

The study said its projections, despite being significantly higher than other recent estimates, may be too conservative because they assume the rate of diabetes and obesity, a risk factor for the disease, will remain stable.

In 1991, scientists projected that the number of Americans with diabetes would reach 11.6 million people in 2030, but some 20 years before that date the figure is already double that. The study's authors acknowledge that obesity rates have risen steadily in past years, but predict that they will level out over the next decade and then decline slightly from the current 30 per cent level to around 27 per cent in 2033.

The US health programme Medicare, which provides health care for older Americans, spends some US$45 billion a year on diabetes treatment for 8.2 million people.

By 2034, the number of people with diabetes covered by the program is expected to rise to 14.6 million, according to the study, with associated costs rising to 171 billion dollars a year. -- AFP

H1N1 vaccination is garbage

First, they sold us a war - based on fraud.

Then, the economy collapsed - thanks to government tolerance for widespread financial fraud.

Now, these same people want you to roll up your sleeve and take an injection of something they have so little faith in they've already granted themselves legal immunity if - and when - it goes horribly wrong.

Swine flu hysteria is more government/media/industry fraud.

The so-called "science" behind vaccination is total garbage.

More and more, doctors are willing to stand up and tell the truth.

The "science" behind vaccination is garbage.

The consequences of getting it wrong are catastrophic.

The people pushing this the hardest are the same criminals who brought you the Iraq War and the meltdown of the US economy through financial fraud.

Just say "no" to being railroaded into allowing a dodgy set of chemicals, metals, and live viruses injected into your blood stream by venal idiots who have so little confidence in what they're doing they won't participate without getting total legal immunity in advance.

If you or a loved one are crippled by this vaccine, you will shoulder the burden yourself. The pharmaceutical companies and the government have exempted themselves from all liability.