IANS

A possible new blood test based on the presence of a protein released after a heart attack, could help diagnose an attack, new research suggests.

Loyola University scientists said cMyBP-C (cardiac myosin binding protein-C) is a large protein.

“This (cMyBP-C) potentially could become the basis for a new test, used in conjunction with other blood tests, to help diagnose heart attacks,” said study author Sakthivel Sadayappan, assistant professor in molecular physiology.

“A lot of additional studies will be necessary to establish cMyBP-C as a true biomarker for heart attacks,” Sadayappan said.

Sadayappan co-authored the study with Suresh Govindan, postdoctoral researcher in Sadayappan’s lab, the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology reports.

The Loyola study is the first to find that cMyBP-C is associated with heart attacks. Its large molecular size helps quick detection in blood test, according to a Loyola statement.

Between 60 and 70 per cent of all patients who complain of chest pain don’t have heart attacks. Many of them are hospitalized until a heart attack is ruled out.

An electrocardiogram can diagnose major heart attacks but not minor ones. Only one protein, now used in blood tests, called cardiac troponin-I, is specific to the heart.

But it takes at least four to six hours for this protein to show up in the blood following a heart attack.
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One of the components used in present day medication for illnesses like cancer and epilepsy could also prevent heart attacks, a new study has suggested.

Heart attacks are normally caused by the formation of a blood clot in one of the blood vessels that supply the heart with oxygen and nutrients.

The body has a natural defence system to prevent blood clots – the fibrinolytic system, which ’sprays’ a special enzyme over the clots to break them down before they manage to obstruct the vessel.

However, in order to function properly, this system needs sufficient quantities of the enzyme to be stored in the vessel wall. Unfortunately these stores are often depleted because of hereditary and lifestyle factors, such as high blood pressure, smoking and overweight, which probably increases the risk of a heart attack.

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy have been looking at a way to stimulate the clot-dissolving system. The results have been promising and have opened the door to new ways of preventing heart attacks.
“We’re trying to find a medicine that boosts the stores of the enzyme as this probably would help the body to prevent heart attacks,” said Pia Larsson at the Sahlgrenska Academy. or the study, Sahlgrenska researchers used HDAC inhibitors, substances new to this particular context, and managed to stimulate production of the relevant enzyme.

“We found that treatment with HDAC inhibitors dramatically increased production of the clot-dissolving enzyme, and that this occurred at far lower concentrations than expected,” said Larsson.

The advantage of HDAC inhibitors is that they are already in use for treating illnesses such as epilepsy and cancer, which means that their pharmacological properties and side-effects are known.

However Larsson has said that more research is needed before a drug to prevent heart attacks can be launched.
“Our trials have been carried out on cultured cells from the vessel wall and we can’t guarantee that the cells, when present in the body, will behave in exactly the same way.”

“The results must therefore be tested on people before we can draw any firm conclusions,” Larsson added.

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Sejal Vora

Before electricity, people would generally go to sleep when the sun set and rise when it rose, assuring that they got enough sleep to maintain a healthy mind and body.

Animals too change their behaviours such as reproduction, hibernation, and migration based on the season. It is believed that animals perceive the change of seasons by the patterns of light and dark. The mechanism used to implement this behaviour is by the secretion of melatonin. When daylight hours grow shorter during the autumn months, melatonin production in animals automatically increases, helping to make the almost constant sleep of hibernation possible. When daylight hours increase during the spring, the pineal gland secretes less melatonin, triggering a new pattern of physical activity. But in a highly industrialised nation the light bulb has expanded man’s day from 12 to 24 hours.

It is becoming apparent that more and more people are sleep deprived. And with that deprivation, comes not only a mental deficiency, but also a physical one. The attempt to erase the night or to confine it to a small artificially defined window comes with a price.

Melatonin is a natural hormone made by your body’s pineal gland. During the day the pineal gland is inactive. When the sun goes down and darkness occurs, the pineal is turned on and begins to actively produce melatonin, which is released into the blood. That is why melatonin is sometimes called the ‘Dracula of hormones’ – it only comes out in the dark.
In the morning, when we perceive that it is light, melatonin secretion ceases, which stimulates the production of other hormones and hence other body activities to begin.

This orderly daily rhythm is of prime importance to our physical condition, intellectual capabilities, and emotional health. The pineal gland and melatonin are the body’s primary timekeepers imparting information about the time of day, season of the year, and phase of life to the brain and throughout the body. Resetting this rhythm also means that the body is working overtime, making it more out of balance and less efficient. Thus, not only are the necessary chemicals imbalanced, but the body will age faster as it is forced to work for longer and longer hours without being able to restore itself.
Melatonin is believed to influence the internal processes so that all of the body’s systems work together, in coordination. Should this internal structure become disorganised in any way, the body becomes more susceptible to disease as sleep is not just a mental re-charger, but also important for the body as well. When a person sleeps, the body and mind are working just as hard as when the person is awake, correcting chemical imbalances, building immunity, assuring proper blood sugar levels for the next day, and maintaining memory. For all you late night sleeper’s – If you are exposed to light till wee hours in the morning, your melatonin won’t rise to high enough levels to do its job. Light coming in from the window or from another room or even a night-light can disrupt the production of melatonin. Sleeping for six to eight hours in complete darkness is important for good health and looking young.
(The author is a Naturotherapy Practitioner)

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Fears over the safety of breast implants made by a now defunct French firm spread to Australia, South America and across Europe on 22.12.2011 as French officials prepared to decide if thousands of women should have their implants surgically removed.

The silicone gel implants, made by a company called Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) that was shut down in 2010, appear to have an unusually high rupture rate and have sparked an investigation in France into possible links to cancer.
About 300,000 PIP implants, used in cosmetic surgery to enhance breast size or replace lost breast tissue, were sold worldwide before PIP went bust last year.

An investigation into PIP found it was using a type of silicone not approved by health authorities but about 10 times cheaper. The industrial-grade silicone PIP is accused of using is an ingredient in anything from computers to cookware.
“It’s not just France that’s concerned. We’re looking at 300,000 to 400,000 potential victims in the world,” said Alexandra Blachere, leader of a French PIP implant patient group.

She said women from Italy and Spain were in touch with her with worries about their implants and she had seen reports of problems in Venezuela, Brazil and elsewhere.

No one linked to the defunct company was immediately available to comment.

Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said there was no reason for patients to be alarmed and there was, as yet, no scientific evidence to suggest increased health risks.

MHRA officials said they had talked to other health or regulatory experts from France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Denmark and Malta.

“They all agreed that there was no evidence of any increase in incidents of cancer associated with PIP breast implants and no evidence of any disproportionate rupture rates other than in France,” it said in a statement.
Rupture

Founded in 1991, Poly Implant Prothese was based in southern France and for a while ranked as the world’s number three maker of implants, supplying about 100,000 a year.

About 80 percent were exported abroad. Health authorities around the world said they were watching closely for the results on Friday of an inquiry by France’s National Cancer Institute into whether the implants might be linked to cancer.
France’s Health Ministry is expected to make an announcement on Friday about the institute’s findings.

France has had reports of eight cases of cancer in women with breast implants made by PIP. Britain’s MHRA said there were also French reports of a woman with PIP implants who died from anaplastic large cell lymphoma, or ALCL, a rare form of cancer that affects cells from the immune system.

France’s drug and medical device regulator, AFSSAPS, ruled last year that the state would pay for the removal of all PIP implants but only fund replacements for victims of breast cancer, not women who used them for aesthetic purposes.
A French victims’ association is pushing for the state to pay for replacements for all women with PIP implants.

Australia’s healthcare watchdog, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), said about 8,900 of the PIP implants were used in Australian women, some of whom had complained about the devices splitting and leaking.

“The TGA has received 45 reports relating to PIP implants, 39 of which relate to rupture,” it said in a statement. It has had no reports of ALCL in Australian women with the implants.

Both the TGA and Britain’s MHRA said they would be looking carefully at the French safety statement on Friday.
Alfred Fitoussi, spokesman for the breast and cancer section of the French Association of Plastic Surgery, told Reuters he expected the report to say there was no cancer risk from the PIP implants. But he noted what he described as an “enormously” high rupture rate of about 10 percent.

“All kinds of tests have been done during many years and never showed any kind of cancer risk from silicone,” he said. “It’s obvious there is a problem with the quality.”

He said the normal rupture rate for breast implants was about 4 or 5 percent.
The MHRA said, based on reports it had so far, about 1 percent of women in Britain with PIP implants have suffered ruptures.

PIP was placed into liquidation in March 2010 with losses of 9 million euros after AFSSAPS recalled its implants when surgeons reported abnormally high rupture rates.

In Argentina, Colombia and Brazil, long a magnet for medical tourists looking for more affordable cosmetic surgery, imports of the implants were banned in April 2010, officials said.

“We know a high percentage of surgeons in Colombia and the rest of South America have used these implants,” said Celso Bohorquez, a spokesman for Colombia’s association of plastic, aesthetic and reconstructive surgery.

Brazil’s Anvisa health inspection agency said 25,000 PIP implants had been used but no complaints had been received so far. In neighboring Argentina, Roberto Lede from the state-run ANMAT drugs regulator said the evidence was “pretty weak” but advised concerned women to consult a doctor.

Legal Limits

Douglas McGeorge, a consultant cosmetic and plastic surgeon and former president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said he expected many patients would want to act sooner rather than wait and risk possible health problems.

A solicitor acting for at least 250 British women taking legal action over their PIP implants said the liquidation of the French company had limited the scope for lawsuits.

“We’re suing about half a dozen clinics that have been involved in implanting the PIP breast implants,” Mark Harvey, a partner at legal firm Hugh James, told Reuters.

“We would have preferred to sue PIP, obviously, but they are bankrupt so they have no money and no assets.”
Amanda Harrison, one of the British women seeking compensation, told Reuters she was disgusted by PIP’s actions.
“It’s sick that they could even think about putting this stuff into a human.” she said. “You wouldn’t even put it in an animal.”

By Kate Kelland
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Describing as discriminatory, the All India Management Association (AIMA) on 17.12.2012 has opposed the Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) announced by the Centre for admission to all management courses. The apex body of management professionals, AIMA, has been conducting the Management Aptitude Test (MAT) for the past two decades.
In a letter to the Human Resource Development Ministry, the AIMA has said MAT’s uniqueness and success lay in its inclusiveness. It is conducted in both the online and paper-based format, reaching out to a much wider audience, accommodating the mixed education background of students while staying rigorous on testing aptitude.
The proposal to introduce and conduct a common management aptitude test (CMAT) exclusively in an online format is ill-suited to a big and diverse country like India. “While such a platform might work for more elite tests like CAT, which are mainly targeted at students in metros seeking admission to Indian Institutes of Management, conducting a common test of this nature in an only online format would only widen the digital divide.”
A large number of students who would avail themselves of this test would be from tier 2 and 3 towns, where accessibility to computers is limited; add to this connectivity, bandwidth and power issues. An online format will hurt the opportunities of many students from non-metros and less-connected areas. Instead of enhancing the scope and accessibility to management degrees, it will only end up being discriminatory, the letter said.
Citing the AIEEE-2011 test, the AIMA said only 4,900 candidates had opted for computer-based test of the 11 lakh applicants which showed that though there had been a significant growth in computer literacy, the reach has not been inclusive with reference to demographic distribution.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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Bim Adewunmi

Nine out of 10 women suffer from period pain — sometimes crippling — but many say their problem is dismissed. So what can be done? The science lesson in which we covered human biology focused primarily on puberty – things would change, we were told in a serious voice: hair would grow in new places, breasts would sprout, shoulders would broaden and voices would break. Girls were informed of the menarche – their first menstrual cycle – one of approximately 500 over the course of a lifetime. We were told to expect “some discomfort”, but given no hint that for some this pain would go beyond mild and descend into pretty damn awful.

Period pain is caused by contractions in the uterus. The blood vessels in the muscle wall are compressed by the contractions, which cut off blood supply to the womb, starving it of oxygen and adding to the discomfort.
Dysmenorrhea, as period pain is medically known, generally falls into two camps: secondary dysmenorrhea is caused by a specific underlying condition such as endometriosis (when cells that normally line the uterus are found at other sites in the body — usually the ovaries and fallopian tubes). The more common primary dysmenorrhea, which can affect nine out of 10 women, has no specific cause. It is generally worst in the first few years after starting your period, with symptoms tending to improve with age or after childbirth. Yet many women who report having primary dysmenorrhea well into their 20s and 30s say their pain is dismissed.

My request for painful period stories brought a barrage of responses. A colleague said she experienced such agony she collapsed in the street. Two women wrote to tell me their GP had told them they were exaggerating how painful it was (“I get such cramps . . . there’s nothing that makes the pain less”), while another with endometriosis had been told by her mother (who also suffered from the condition) that the pain was “normal”. I suffered such cramps and other symptoms – vomiting, migraines – that I routinely missed school as a teenager.

Researchers at Oxford University recently found that women with painful periods show increased sensitivity to pain (and lower levels of cortisol, the hormone released by the body in times of stress) throughout their cycles – not just when they are menstruating.

Yet Deborah Mason, from Wellbeing of Women, a charity that has been funding research into all aspects of reproductive health since 1964, says there is little new information in the area – partly because women don’t complain. “Too often we don’t want to make a fuss and this is one of the reasons why so little research is done in this area,” she says. “If period pain is preventing you from continuing your normal activities for more than a few hours, seek medical advice. Just because period pain has been around for millions of years doesn’t mean women should suffer in silence.” Marilyn Glenville, a nutritionist specialising in women’s health, agrees. “I think women still don’t know how much they can ask for,” she says. “Women should know that they can be referred to a gynaecologist – and not just be fobbed off with painkillers when there may be an underlying cause or something else that could be done to actually treat the problem.” Yet Gabrielle Downey, a consultant gynaecologist, says things are getting better. “GPs are much more aware of quality-of-life issues,” she says. “If it’s interfering with a woman’s life, we need to get that under control.” And she says there’s a logical progression to follow in treatment. “Mefenamic acid [an anti-inflammatory] is specifically for period pain. If you don’t get better with that and/or the pill, you should be investigated to make sure you don’t have an underlying condition,” she says. “If it’s not endometriosis, I’d prescribe the pill for three months and see if that helps. If that doesn’t work, the next step is giving something like Implanon – the contraceptive that is progesterone-only – so you don’t have periods, or a Mirena coil, which gets rid of the lining of the womb so there’s less bleeding and less pain.” And if all this doesn’t work? “If you fail to respond to medical treatment, you need a laparoscopy to make sure we’re not missing something.” Glenville, meanwhile, suggests that the anti-inflammatory effect of omega-3 fish oils mean they can lessen the cramping. While Helen Knox, a qualified nurse specialist and director of Sexplained, a resource that promotes safer sexual and reproductive health, says women should listen to advice to take the pill. “A lot of women say they don’t want to take hormones. You’re only taking what your body makes anyway, in a synthetic form, and at a controlled level. The pill has so many non-contraceptive benefits but it doesn’t get promoted properly. Spending a little bit of time with someone who’s a specialist in that area helps.”

Copyright: Guardian News & Media 2011

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IANS
A frantic lifestyle, long working hours and even longer distances to commute in metros and cities make ready—to—eat packaged food an attractive option, which requires only a few minutes of warming.

But the flip side is that their salt content is on the higher side. So regular dependence on fast food or packaged foods promotes greater salt intake, which accumulates in the body and poses serious health risks.

These risks are rising blood pressure (BP) levels, which could act as trigger for cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks, besides cerebral strokes, as well as kidney failure, B. Sesikeran, director of Hyderabad—based National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), told the IANS.

“Several global studies have clearly indicated that reduction in salt intakes even by small quantities significantly decreases the average blood pressure of a population. The prevalence of hypertension is low among populations consuming less than three grams of salt daily. The usual increase in BP with age is also not seen with such (low) intakes,” Sesikeran said.
Last week, the NIN recommended a reduction of salt content by the packaged food industry, besides limiting maximum salt intake to six grams per day, down from the eight grams permitted under 1998 nutritional guidelines.

“The prevalence of high blood pressure in more than a third of urban Indian population could be largely contributed by higher salt intakes, though several other factors, including stress and other chronic disease, may also be involved,” said Sesikeran.

However, salt, for all its negative publicity, is crucial for the functioning of the heart, adrenals, liver and kidneys, and even for digesting food. It transports nutrients to the cells, keeps calcium and other minerals soluble and maintains the body{gt}s balance of fluids.

Sea or raw salt seems to be a healthier option because it has a number of trace minerals like potassium, magnesium and calcium, but processed salt loses all these micro—nutrients.

A study by Patricio E. Ray, published in the journal Kidney International, has found that potassium deficiencies increase BP and induce salt sensitivity, that is bringing on more adverse effects with the same quantity of salt.
“Potassium has the exact opposite effect on the BP when compared with sodium in the edible salt. Its higher intake also results in more expulsion of sodium from the kidneys,” said Sesikeran.

Simply stated, posassium in diet is effective in lowering BP.Sesikeran suggested blending potassium chloride with sodium chloride to reduce the sodium content for every gram of salt consumed.

The best sources of potassium are provided by fruits and vegetables. However, higher potassium intakes may not be advisable for those with certain forms of kidney or heart disease. It is safe for the general population, he added.
Whether salt is consumed as a processed or sea salt, the body ultimately takes up sodium chloride (salt’s chemical name) which largely determines the BP. The NIN recommendation limits consumption to 2,400 mg sodium chloride daily.
Pickles, preserved foods, ketchups, papads, ready to eat snacks are most of the common sources of significant amount of salt, he added.

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IANS

A mind reading machine has edged closer to reality after scientists found a way of converting thoughts into words.
Researchers were able to render brain signals into speech for the first time, relying on sensors attached to the brain surface.

The breakthrough, which is up to 90 percent accurate, will be a boon for paralysed patients who cannot speak and could help read anyone’s thoughts ultimately, reports the Telegraph.

“We were beside ourselves with excitement when it started working,” said Prof Bradley Greger, bioengineer at the Utah University who led the project. “It was just one of the moments when everything came together.

“We have been able to decode spoken words using only signals from the brain with a device that has promise for long-term use in paralysed patients who cannot speak. I would call it brain reading and we hope that in two or three years it will be available for use for paralysed patients.”

The breakthrough came when the team attached two button-sized grids of 16 tiny electrodes to an epileptic’s brain’s speech centres, says the journal of Neural Engineering.

The patient had part of his skull removed for another operation to treat his condition.
Using electrodes, the scientists recorded brain signals in a computer as the patient repeatedly read each of 10 words that might be useful to a paralysed person: yes, no, hot, cold, hungry, thirsty, hello, goodbye, more and less.
Then they got him to repeat the words to the computer and it was able to match the brain signals for each word 76 percent to 90 percent of the time.

The computer picked up the patient’s brain waves as he talked and did not use any voice recognition software.
Because just thinking a word is enough to produce the same brain signals, Prof. Greger and his team believe that soon they will be able to have translation device and voice box that repeats the word you are thinking.
Besides, the brains of paralysed people are just as healthy and produce the same signals as those in physically-fit people – it is just they are blocked by injury from reaching the muscle.

Researchers said the method needs improvement, but could lead in a few years to clinical trials on paralysed people who cannot speak due to so-called “locked-in” syndrome.

“This is proof of concept,” Prof. Greger said adding: “We’ve proven these signals can tell you what the person is saying well above chance.”

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