Posted: 10 January 2013
SYDNEY: Breakthrough Australian research mapping how insulin works at a molecular level could open the door to novel new diabetes treatments, ending daily needle jabs for millions, scientists have announced.
A Melbourne team have been able to lay out for the first time how the insulin hormone binds to the surface of cells, triggering the passage of glucose from the bloodstream to be stored as energy.
Lead researcher Mike Lawrence on Thursday said the discovery, more than 20 years in the making, would make new and more effective kinds of diabetes medication possible.
"Until now we have not been able to see how these molecules interact with cells," said Lawrence, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.
"We can now exploit this knowledge to design new insulin medications with improved properties, which is very exciting."
Lawrence said the team's study, published in the latest edition of Nature, had revealed a "molecular handshake" between the insulin and its receptor on the surface of cells.
"Both insulin and its receptor undergo rearrangement as they interact -- a piece of insulin folds out and key pieces within the receptor move to engage the insulin hormone," he said of the "unusual" binding method.
Understanding how insulin attaches to cells was key to developing "novel" treatments of diabetes, a chronic condition in which the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or the body cannot use it properly.
"The generation of new types of insulin have been limited by our inability to see how insulin docks into its receptor in the body," said Lawrence.
"This discovery could conceivably lead to new types of insulin that could be given in ways other than injection, or an insulin that has improved properties or longer activity so that it doesn't need to be taken as often."
Importantly, he said it could also have ramifications for the treatment of diabetes in developing nations, allowing for the creation of a more stable insulin that does not need refrigeration.
There are an estimated 347 million diabetes sufferers worldwide and diagnoses are increasing, particularly in developing countries, due to growing levels of obesity and physical inactivity.
It is expected to be the seventh leading cause of death in the world by 2030, with the World Health Organisation projecting total deaths from diabetes will rise by more than 50 percent in the next 10 years.
Complications of diabetes include blindness, limb amputation and kidney failure.
- AFP/al
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Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Insulin breakthrough could see end to needles
Posted: 03 January 2013
MADRID: A team of Spanish researchers say they have developed a therapeutic vaccine that can temporarily brake growth of the HIV virus in infected patients.
The vaccine, based on immune cells exposed to HIV that had been inactivated with heat, was tested on a group of 36 people carrying the virus and the results were the best yet recorded for such a treatment, the team said.
"What we did was give instructions to the immune system so it could learn to destroy the virus, which it does not do naturally," said Felipe Garcia, one of the scientists in the team at Barcelona University's Hospital Clinic.
The therapeutic vaccine, a shot that treats an existing disease rather than preventing it, was safe and led to a dramatic drop in the amount of HIV virus detected in some patients, said the study, published Wednesday in Science Translation Medicine.
After 12 weeks of the trial, the HIV viral load dropped by more than 90 percent among 12 of the 22 patients who received the vaccine. Only one among the 11 patients who received a control injection without the vaccine experienced a similar result.
After 24 weeks, the effectiveness had begun to decline, however, with seven of the 20 remaining patients receiving the vaccine enjoying a similar 90-percent slump in viral load. No-one in the control group of 10 patients experienced such a decline in the virus.
The vaccine lost its effectiveness after a year, when the patients had to return to their regular combination therapy of anti-retroviral drugs.
Researchers said the results were similar to those achieved with a single anti-retroviral drug, used to block the growth of HIV.
"It is the most solid demonstration in the scientific literature that a therapeutic vaccine is possible," they said in a statement.
The vaccine allowed patients temporarily to live without taking multiple medicines on a daily basis, which created hardship for patients, could have toxic side-effects over the long term and had a high financial price, the team said.
"This investigation opens the path to additional studies with the final goal of achieving a functional cure -- the control of HIV replication for long periods or an entire life without anti-retroviral treatment," the researchers said in a statement.
"Although we still have not got a functional cure, the results published today open the possibility of achieving an optimal therapeutic vaccine, or a combination of strategies that includes a therapeutic vaccine, and could help to reach that goal," they said.
The team said it took seven years to get to this point, and the researchers would now work on improving the vaccine and combining it with other therapeutic vaccines over the next three or four years.
According to latest UN figures, the number of people infected by HIV worldwide rose to 34 million in 2011 from 33.5 million in 2010.
-AFP/fl
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Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Scientists say vaccine temporarily brakes HIV
Posted: 03 January 2013
NEW DELHI: India's Supreme Court said Thursday that unregulated clinical trials of new drugs were causing "havoc" in the country as it ordered the health ministry to monitor any new applications for tests.
The comments were made during a hearing on a petition detailing deaths and health problems caused by clinical trials carried out on Indians, often without their knowledge or consent.
"Uncontrolled clinical trials are causing havoc to human life," Justice R.M. Lodha observed.
"There are so many legal and ethical issues involved with clinical trials and the government has not done anything so far."
The judge, who has previously stated that Indians are being used like "guinea pigs", ordered the health secretary to monitor all new applications for trials from pharmaceutical companies.
Low costs, weak laws and inadequate enforcement and penalties have made India an attractive destination for the tests, activists say.
The petitioners in the public interest litigation case -- a group of doctors and a voluntary organisation -- claim several patients seeking medical help in the central state of Madhya Pradesh were used in drug tests.
The groups say they have compiled and submitted a report on more than 200 cases in which patients were subjected to trials to check the efficacy of various new treatments without their permission.
Drug trials are an essential step for pharmaceutical companies in order to win regulatory approval to bring new drugs to market.
Earlier this year, 12 doctors were accused of conducting secret trials on children and patients with learning disabilities. They paid fines of less than US$100 each.
Faced with mounting criticism, the Indian Council of Medical Research in 2011 sought proposals from doctors and health activists on new draft guidelines for compensation for people used in drug trials.
-AFP/fl
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Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Drug trials in India "causing havoc to human life"
Posted: 03 January 2013
WASHINGTON: Turns out a few extra pounds may not be such a bad thing, according to a new analysis of nearly three million adults that showed people who are overweight or slightly obese may live longer.
But experts were quick to caution that the possible benefits dropped off when the "few" extra pounds turned into many.
The researchers used data from nearly 100 studies from around the world, with health information from more than 2.8 million adults.
Among the sampled population, there were around 270,000 deaths within the study period.
Even after controlling for other factors, such as age, sex, smoking, those whose weight and height put them in the "overweight" category were six per cent less at risk of dying than those in the "normal" category.
And those who were "slightly obese," with heights and weights that gave them BMIs of 30 to 35, were five per cent less at risk of dying in a given period.
But for those who were more significantly obese, with BMIs of 35 and higher, the mortality rate soared by 29 per cent compared to "normal" weight subjects, according to the authors of the meta-analysis, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
BMI, which stands for body-mass index, is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in metres, squared.
The authors suggested several possible reasons to explain why some extra weight may be good, but too much is bad, including that those with a few extra pounds may be more likely to receive "optimal medical treatment."
They said it was also possible that increased body fat provided metabolic benefits that protect the heart, or that having extra reserves of fat could be helpful for those whose sicknesses make it hard to eat.
Lead researcher Katherine Flegel, of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, published a controversial study in 2005 that indicated there was a link between excess weight and living longer.
This time, her analysis was based on a much larger number sample pool, across different countries in North America, Europe, Asia and South America.
These studies and others show that small amounts of excess fat "may provide needed energy reserves" during illness, or help in other ways that need to be investigated, wrote biomedical researchers Steven Heymsfield and William Cefalu in an editorial also published Tuesday in the JAMA.
"Not all patients classified as being overweight or having grade 1 obesity, particularly those with chronic diseases, can be assumed to require weight loss treatment," they emphasized.
CDC director Thomas Friedan said in a statement that "we still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it."
However, he insisted that "it's clear that being obese is not healthy, it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems."
"Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."
According to CDC statistics, a third of US adults are considered obese.
- AFP/jc
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Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Extra pounds may be healthy -- as long as it's just a few
I still don't understand, whatever the packaging or form, there isn't any good thing coming from cigars and cigarettes... employment? taxation? And these matter more than people's health?
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Posted: 30 November 2012
SYDNEY: All cigarettes sold in Australia will be in identical, plain packages from Saturday in a world first after the government overcame legal challenges from the tobacco industry.
Under new laws which come into effect on December 1, all tobacco products must be sold in drab, olive-brown packets with expanded graphic health warnings which feature images such as gangrenous feet and mouth cancer.
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said the packets, which survived a constitutional challenge from major tobacco firms, were about making smoking less attractive.
"That's the aim of this exercise," she told reporters in Sydney.
"The challenge for us as a government is to make it (smoking) as unappealing as possible. If we can prevent young people from taking it up, that's a lifetime gift to them."
Tobacco companies had fought the change, but the High Court rejected their argument that the new law infringed their intellectual property rights by banning brands and trademarks from packets.
Plibersek said tobacco companies had reported no changes to their products, but there was a possible psychological effect of the new packages making them less attractive to some people.
"I have had a few letters... with smokers saying to me, 'Oh the cigarettes don't taste the same as they used to'," she said.
The minister said after World War II about 50 percent of Australians smoked but this had now dropped to 15 percent and the government was aiming to push it down to 10 percent by 2018.
The new legislation comes into force as a study conducted for the Cancer Council of Victoria found that one in four smokers believes the effects of tobacco on health are exaggerated.
The research looked at the impact of Australia's health warnings on cigarette packages, which for years have included graphic images depicting health issues arising from smoking.
Its study of 4,500 smokers in Victoria state from 2003 to 2011 found that about a quarter still believed the dangers of smoking had been exaggerated and one in 10 did not believe or were not sure that smoking caused illness.
"From tomorrow, the outside of cigarette packaging will finally reflect the ugliness of what's inside and leave no smoker in any doubt of how deadly cigarettes are," Quit Victoria executive director Fiona Sharkie said.
Sharkie said the graphic health warnings had already made a difference.
"While the main intent of plain packaging is to reduce the appeal of smoking among youth, we've already had several calls... from smokers who say the graphic health warnings have pushed them to quit," she said.
Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease in Australians, killing an estimated 15,000 every year.
- AFP/ir
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Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Australia readies for first plain-pack cigarettes
