Posts Tagged ‘disease’
Americans Suffering From Possibly-Imaginary Sensitivity to Wi-Fi Run for Radio-Free Zone In the Hills of Appalachia
Towns like Green Bank, West Virginia are part of the U.S. Radio Quiet Zone, 13,000 square miles of wireless free land created to keep transmissions from interfering with radio telescopes like those owned by the military and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Some of those who believe (and we keep saying "believe" because there is some controversy about the medical validity of the claims) they feel ill effects from Wi-Fi have sought refuge in these hills.
A University of Maryland physics professor quoted in the BBC piece disagrees with the self-diagnoses, saying that Wi-Fi radiation is far too weak to cause changes in body chemistry and make people sick. The World Health Organization fact sheet on EHS says that “the symptoms are certainly real,” but that “EHS is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it clear that it represents a single medical problem.” As of 2010, Sweden was the only country that recognizes EHS as a functional impairment, even paying to have sufferers' homes electronically “sanitized” by installing metal shielding.
However, a study conducted by Louisiana State University claims to prove that the effects of radiation are real, relying on the results of an experiment in which a self-diagnoses sufferer was bombarded with both real and fake rays and asked about her symptoms. But neither this study nor any other similar studies have been accepted by either the medical or or scientific communities. You can read more about this illness, or non-illness, in on the subject.
Still, the sufferers of whatever this is, or isn't, seem to find some relief in moving to the mountains of West Virginia.
[BBC]
Scientists Create Sperm-Free Mosquitoes to Prevent Malaria
Female mosquitoes mate only once in a lifetime, and then store the male's sperm to be used as needed throughout the rest of her life. What's important about the new findings, which appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, is the discovery that the females do not seem to distinguish between sterilized males and fertile males--they mate only once, either way. A process that can sterilize males would thus result in a pretty serious decrease in the number of new mosquitoes.
Sterilization isn't new, but it's usually done via radiation, which tends to make male mosquitoes very weak and unable to take part in what the a "frenzied" mating behavior. Scientists from Imperial College London devised a way to inject mosquito embryos with a bit of RNA that disrupts one of the genes needed for sperm production, leading to healthy, but sterile, male mosquitoes.
Of course, there are lots of problems with using a system that could decimate an entire species--many other creatures, including our beloved bats, rely on mosquitoes for food, and so wide-scale eradication of mosquitoes isn't generally seen as a viable strategy. But the discovery could still be used to control mosquito population--and as malaria accounts for as many as 20% of childhood deaths in Africa, a controlled population could be invaluable.
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Moveable Beasts: Tracking Winged Migrations To Predict Weather, Stop Disease, and Save Species
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Billions of animals are migrating around the planet every second, Wikelski points out, and we have no idea where most of them are going or why. “Fruit bats are the most numerous mammal in Africa,” he says. “They carry ebola. Yet for most of the year, we have no clue where they are. that’s amazing.” For Wikelski, the project to map this dynamic global system, one that has been mostly overlooked until now is no less important than the project to map the human genome. And the potential benefits could extend well beyond conservation. “Could we help African farmers guard against swarms of locusts?” he says. “Sure. We’re talking about something transformational, and it touches everything from public health to climate change.”
Wikelski began his work in the late 1990s, tracking small animals like songbirds. His quest appeared quixotic, he admits. No one had tracked such small species before. Many assumed it couldn’t be done. Working on a shoestring budget, he once mounted a makeshift three-foot-tall antenna on an ’82 Oldsmobile and sped from Illinois to the Canadian border in pursuit of a few dozen thrushes. “I’d show up at people’s homes at 6 a.m. and ask if I could set up mist nets in their backyard. Some people would invite me in
for coffee. Other times I’d hear a shotgun cocking behind the door. I figured i didn’t really need those data points.”
Wikelski later managed to attach radio tags to insects using a syringe plunger and false-eyelash adhesive. he also became a licensed pilot. He chased dragonflies off the coast of New Jersey, bumblebees across Germany, and monarch butterflies in Kansas. “No one had ever done this before,” he says, “so we learned something new with every migration.” Thrushes use more energy during stopovers than in flight, for example, and brown bats navigate long distances using the earth’s magnetic field, not their famous echolocation skills.
But Wikelski was still unable to track his subjects throughout the year, or across continents and oceans. To do this, he would need to create a global satellite system that could work with very small and extremely lightweight transmitters. His team set about designing a low-orbiting satellite that would hover some 248 miles above earth and thus be capable of receiving a low-frequency signal from tags weighing less than a gram. Before the team could finish that project, though, an even better opportunity presented itself.
Last year, Wikelski received permission to establish a global small-animal tracking system aboard the international space station—which conveniently orbits between 173 and 286 miles above earth. By 2014, when the system goes live, he envisions tracking a few dozen species simultaneously. That would mean
keeping an eye on tens of thousands of highly mobile individuals at any given time, each of which could supply several dozen pieces of information in real time, on everything from location to energy expenditure. If all goes according to plan, it’s hard to see how ICARUS (the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) couldn’t soon begin, say, tracking avian-transmitted infectious diseases. And like GPS, which was created to help U.S. troops orient themselves in the field, ICARUS could outgrow its original mission. Daimler-Chrysler has already invested in sensors to communicate with small objects (such as car keys) aboard to the ISS.
Even after ICARUS takes flight, Wikelski plans to continue climbing into his plane and chasing birds and bees across the sky in search of data. “It’s the brute-force method,” he says. “You tag the animals, then you just have to be crazy enough to stay with them all the time."
Experimental “Body Reboot” Drug Begins Trial As Preemptive Preventer Of Diabetes
But a new trial, launched through the National Institutes of Health’s Type 1 Diabetes Trial Net, may change that. Headed by Kevan Herold, M.D., TrialNet Principal Investigator and Professor of Immunobiology and Medicine at Yale University, the – which is currently enrolling -- will test whether a drug called teplizumab might be able to prevent or delay Type 1 in high-risk relatives of people with the disease.
Teplizumab is what’s known as an anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody, a targeted immunosuppressive drug that I wrote about for Popular Science last . I know about teplizumab because I took it myself – after being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2001 at the age of 22, I enrolled in a study that tested whether teplizumab might preserve some insulin production in people recently diagnosed with the disease. In my case, it worked: nine years out, I was still producing a measurable amount of insulin, which in the normal course of Type 1, doesn’t happen. (I’m going in for a 10-year follow-up at the end of March.)
The results of the trial I participated in, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were exciting to researchers and patients alike. But unfortunately, teplizumab is not a cure. Reversing Type 1 diabetes remains a frustratingly complicated challenge, one that would require not just replacements for the cells that have been destroyed, but a successful override of at least two different immune responses: the tendency to reject foreign tissue (transplanted insulin-producing cells would be rejected just like a transplanted kidney), and the immune reaction that triggered Type 1 to begin with.
Mindful of these challenges, researchers have long sought a way to prevent Type 1 from developing to begin with – and the results of the teplizumab studies (later corroborated by other studies using the same drug), suggested an interesting possibility. Researchers have recently discovered that Type 1 takes a long time to fully develop – autoantibodies against the insulin-producing cells can begin to develop up to 10 years before symptoms appear. Teplizumab is thought to work by shutting off the part of the immune system most responsible for attacking the insulin-producing cells. So what if it were to be given to high-risk people before they developed symptoms? Researchers like Herold hypothesize that a preemptive treatment with teplizumab might prevent those immune cells from attacking in the first place.
For people interested in the study – or simply in finding out their risk -- Trial Net offers a screening test kit, available either by mail or in person, to check for the autoantibodies that lead to Type 1. The screening is free for people 45 years old or younger with a parent, sibling, or child with Type 1 diabetes, as well as for people under 20 who have a niece, nephew, aunt, uncle, grandparent, half-sibling or cousin with the disease. People who test positive may be eligible to participate in the trial; people who test negative for the autoantibodies can be retested annually for free until they turn 18.
It can be a difficult decision to have your family members screened, especially children. But personally, I know that if I’d had the opportunity to be screened, I would have taken it – regardless of whether there were a trial to participate in. Not only could screening help you learn about possible opportunities for prevention and early treatment, but the earlier you catch Type 1, the less likely you are to develop diabetic ketoacidosis, a potentially deadly complication brought on by extremely high blood glucose levels. In my case, I might have caught the symptoms – and started insulin – before I landed in the hospital for a week, bewildered and terrified to be diagnosed with a disease for which I never knew I was at risk.
The results of the Anti-CD3 Prevention Study obviously remain to be seen – previous trials to prevent Type 1 have been disappointments. Still, Herold – who has Type 1 himself – is cautiously optimistic. “There is no other trial in the world that is testing prevention of Type 1 diabetes in this particular group of people,” he says. “It’s the most exciting trial I’ve ever done.”
More information about the trial is available at .
Diagnosis of STDs Could Be As Quick As Peeing On A Chip And Putting It In Your Phone
While it’s still too early for the technology to really have taken shape, these nanotechnology chips would be similar to pregnancy tests. After putting urine or saliva on the chip, the user will receive results within minutes that tell them which STD, if any, they’ve contracted. Researchers hope that these confidential self-diagnosis devices would help encourage more people to get tested, without the embarrassment that accompanies seeing a doctor or going to a clinic.
Funders including the Medical Research Council have invested 4 million pounds into the technology’s development, which, if successful, could be a boon for promoting sexual health. Developers expect that the devices will one day be sold in vending machines in pharmacies, supermarkets and night clubs. Wouldn’t it just be easier to buy a condom?
[Guardian]
Science Wages War Against Mosquitoes: Genetic Engineering, Lasers, and Nano-Attacks
How do we defeat the world's deadliest creature?
At a TED talk in 2009, when Bill Gates , the aim was to increase awareness of mosquitos and malaria, and indeed the last year and a half has seen a number of advances. Mosquitos infect up to 700 million people annually, leading to more than 2 million deaths. Malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, and Chikungunya are all potentially lethal, cementing the mosquito's position as the deadliest creature on the planet.
Merely their incessant whine and inevitable bites, let alone the fact that they carry horrible diseases, are enough for most people to call for the eradication of these creatures. But genocide not really being practical, researchers across the globe are working on ways beyond the traditional pesticides, DEET, and mosquito nets to prevent the creatures from spreading viruses and parasites.
our tour of mosquito-crippling research
While eradication probably isn't on the cards, if only due to the potential side-effects, the same questions must be asked of genetic modification of the insects. If they don't live as long, or half their population can't fly properly, what will arise to assume their niche in the ecosystem? Will anything do so? Is there any chance of mutation and transmission to other species? While the reduction in human suffering associated with the better control of mosquitoes and the diseases they spread will be immense, we need to have a thorough handle on the downstream effects that these changes could cause.
Dogs and Mice Could Be Trained as Roving Biosensors to Sniff Out Disease Before It Spreads, Study Says
"Biosensor" dogs and mice could be dispatched to airports and other public spaces to sniff out avian influenza and other pathogens, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study. The key is the animals' keen ability to smell poo. Apparently, excrement from an infected animal smells different from that of a healthy animal. This is the first study to show excrement can be used as a marker for specific illnesses.
In the study, announced Tuesday, scientists trained mice to identify the feces of ducks that had been infected with bird flu. Researchers led by Bruce A. Kimball of the USDA placed mice in a maze and gave them a drink of water every time they sniffed a feces sample from a sick duck. Eventually, the mice became experts at identifying infected excrement.
The study was announced at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Kimball says the study proves the concept of using feces as a front-line defense against disease. Trained dogs, and possibly legions of mice, could screen feces, soil or other environmental samples to provide early warning, he says. He also expects to identify what the mice picked up in the smelly samples, and develop lab instruments and even field detectors based on those specific odor molecules.
The infected excrement was irradiated to protect the mice and the scientists from getting sick, and Kimball tells that scientists need to make sure that process didn't affect the smell.
The study involved the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services and the National Wildlife Research Center, along with Monell Chemical Senses Center.
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