Health News

Approach for developing vaccines capable of reducing malaria cases by 75 percent

Date: Nov-18-2013
The world should aim to have vaccines which reduce malaria cases by 75 percent, and are capable of eliminating malaria, licensed by 2030, according to the updated 2013 Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap, launched today. This new target comes in addition to the original 2006 Roadmap's goal of having a licensed vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most deadly form of the disease, for children under 5 years of age in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015."Safe, effective, affordable vaccines could play a critical role in defeating malaria," said Dr Robert D.

Developing drugs to treat heart disease, inflammation and other serious illnesses using new technique

Date: Nov-18-2013
An international team of researchers led by the University of Leicester has "harnessed the power of evolution" to create a new drug for possible use against heart disease, inflammation and other illnesses.Researchers in the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences and Department of Biochemistry at the University of Leicester, together with colleagues in Cambridge, the USA and Italy, have employed a new technique to create protein-based drugs.

First placebo-controlled study in adults with Chagas disease highlights urgent need to scale up treatment for millions of patients at risk

Date: Nov-18-2013
According to results of the first-ever Phase 2 clinical trial in Bolivia, conducted by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), the experimental drug candidate E1224 showed good safety and was effective at clearing the parasite that causes Chagas disease, but had little to no sustained efficacy one year after treatment as a single medication. On the other hand, standard therapy for Chagas, benznidazole, was shown to be effective in the long term but continued to be associated with side effects.

Updated HIV Medicine Association Guidelines indicate doctors should focus on common health conditions

Date: Nov-18-2013
The HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has updated its HIV care guidelines to reflect the fact that people with HIV are now living normal life spans, and their physicians need to focus on preventive care, including screening for high cholesterol, diabetes and osteoporosis."In many HIV practices now, 80 percent of patients with HIV infection have the virus under control and live long, full lives.

Gene mutation identified that makes tumors more vulnerable to chemotherapy

Date: Nov-18-2013
About half of all cancer patients have a mutation in a gene called p53, which allows tumors to survive and continue growing even after chemotherapy severely damages their DNA.A new study from MIT biologists has found that tumor cells with mutated p53 can be made much more vulnerable to chemotherapy by blocking another gene called MK2. In a study of mice, tumors lacking both p53 and MK2 shrank dramatically when treated with the drug cisplatin, while tumors with functional MK2 kept growing after treatment.

Senescence also plays a role in embryo development

Date: Nov-18-2013
Researchers postulate that senescence appeared during evolution as a developmental mechanism: as the embryo grows and its different tissues change, senescence switches off cells that are no longer necessaryOne of the main mechanisms the body uses to protect itself against cancer is to switch off defective cells by making them senescent; these cells do not die but stop dividing: their life cycle stops.

Global healthcare delivery system must be re-engineered to counter threat of antibiotic resistance

Date: Nov-17-2013
The entire structure of health-care delivery for effective antibiotics - from research and development, to distribution and rational use - needs to be re-engineered to address the looming global threat of antibiotic resistance, say the authors of a new report, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, ahead of European Antibiotic Awareness Day, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 'Get Smart About Antibiotics Week' on Monday 18 November.

New psoriasis treatment targets deeper layers of the skin, improves healing

Date: Nov-17-2013
A novel combination anti-psoriasis therapy has potential for superior and longer-lasting therapeutic effects than current topical treatments by targeting genetic abnormalities in deeper layers of the skin. This research was presented at the 2013 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the world's largest pharmaceutical sciences meeting, in San Antonio.Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune skin disorder that significantly impacts a patient's quality of life.

ERGIC-53's role in virus propagation suggested by bleeding symptom

Date: Nov-17-2013
Rodent-borne pathogens like hantaviruses and arenaviruses are simple, but resourceful, and very successful at propagating. Due to a tiny genome generating a mere four proteins compared to humans' thousands, they rely on human biological machinery to do their replication dirty work, facilitating infection, plus a high mortality rate. Vermont researchers have discovered a mechanism that when targeted, may stop these deadly viruses in their tracks.A new study published in Cell Host & Microbe by the University of Vermont's Jason Botten, Ph.D.

Patient-doctor disconnect 'impacts weight loss interventions'

Date: Nov-17-2013
According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 35% of US adults are obese. One might assume that with statistics like these, physicians of patients who are overweight or obese would be discussing weight loss interventions. But according to a new survey, this is not always the case.Investigators from the Obesity Action Coalition (OAC), The Obesity Society (TOS) and pharmaceutical company Eisai wanted to have a better understanding of the communication regarding weight loss between physicians and patients.