Adrenogenital Syndrome. Monsanto GM maize may face Europe ban after French study links to cancer. France will call for a ban “at a European level” if the national health agency (Anses) backs up the findings of the study by French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told an audience in the Burgundy city of Dijon on Thursday. And a communiqué from Agriculture Minister Stéphane Foll, Ecology Minister Delphine Batho and Health Minister Marisol Touraine said that Paris may demand a ban on the import of Monsanto’s NK603 corn, the subject of the tests. The question will also be taken to the European Union’s Food Safety Agency, which green campaigners have often accused of conflict of interest because several members are alleged to be connected to seed companies.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, found that rats fed on a diet of 33 per cent NK603 corn and others exposed to Roundup, the weedkiller used with it, developed tumours, liver damage and digestive problems. Sharp rise in womb cancer deaths. TEDMED. 2012 Agenda : Sage Commons Congress. “Building Better Models of Disease Together” -Moving beyond the current medical information system and its rewards Part I: Redefining Tools Needed to Do Our Work Starting Point: Stephen Friend, Sage Bionetworks “Why Can’t We Build Better Models of Disease?” View/Download Video Download Presentation Session 1: ”Synapse” as a pilot for building an “information commons” for disease models together.
Leader: Mike Kellen, Sage BionetworksView/Download Video Download Presentation Examination of essential framework and features of the Sage Bionetworks collaborative IT platform “Synapse” to align experts and enthusiasts for the next directions to be taken. Working Session with Breakout Groups Report Outs Part II: Redefining How We Share / How We Work Together Working Session with Breakout Groups Report Outs Session 8: Congress Unplugged! Part III: Redefining Our Roles / “Who does what” Part IV: Redefining How We Build Better Maps of Disease View/Download Video of Breakout Group Reports Breakout Reports. International Cancer Genome Consortium. The Genetic Basis of Cancer - TCGA. The Cancer Genome Atlas: The Genetic Basis of Cancer. Ghanaian women take to the skies to fight waterborne disease - Report: Ghana. The women have begun delivering health-related materials to isolated communities around Lake Volta. They drop specially designed aerodynamic packages containing information on how to prevent schistosomiasis, which is classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a neglected tropical disease.
“The disease is particularly prevalent around the lake due to poor sanitation,” Lester Chihitsulo, a WHO expert, told RFI. “The communities that are worst affected lack access to portable water and hygiene education.” Humans become infected with schistosomiasis through contact with snails that live in stagnant water. Symptoms include fever and passing blood in the urine and faeces. Children are particularly at risk because of their play habits. Although the WHO strategy for combating the disease is increased access to the drug praziquantel, Chihitsulo says, “We also encourage organisations to collaborate with the ministry of health in a given country to assist in delivering hygiene education.”
Surviving HIV. Untreated, HIV is normally a death sentence. But not quite always. A small number of people infected with HIV can survive for decades without symptoms. They’re called “elite controllers”, and — although the fact that they’re healthy makes them hard to identify with certainty — they’re thought to comprise less than 1% of the infected population. Elite controllers, as the name suggests, control the replication of HIV much better than a normal infected person. What makes them special? Let me unpack that a little for non-immunologists. The core of the system is a pair of protein complexes called MHC class I and class II.
Both class I and class II MHC genes are highly polymorphic: there are lots of different alleles in the population, each of which can bind a different characteristic subset of the peptides that might be produced by a pathogen. Which brings us back to the findings of this paper. I’ve shown some of the important amino acids on a sketch of the MHC class I bear trap. Like this: Gene therapy: can it cure Parkinson’s? Ok, let’s start off with the basics: Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder where nerve cells that make dopamine are destroyed. Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter and without it, nerve cells are unable to properly send messages to other parts of the body. Eventually, the destruction of dopamine-producing cells leads to a loss of muscle function that gets worse over time. The typical symptoms of Parkinson’s are shaking and difficulty with walking, movement, and muscle coordination. Unfortunately, not a lot is known about why these nerve cells waste away in the first place.
In gene therapy, a gene variant is used to alter the function of a cell or an organ. The way that genes are transferred into cells is pretty interesting: the gene is put into an inert virus, which is then injected into the target cell to deliver the gene. Now, a new large-scale study suggests that a type of gene therapy (called NLX-P101) may be able to improve Parkinson’s symptoms.
References Like this: E-volution: Biochemistry news. Researchers discover precisely how thalidomide causes birth defects Thalidomide may have been withdrawn in the early 1960s for use by pregnant women, but its dramatic effects remain memorable half a century later. Now, researchers have taken a major step toward understanding exactly how thalidomide causes the birth defects.
This is important as thalidomide is still used to treat diseases like multiple myeloma and leprosy, and is being tested for cancers and autoimmune disorders. This discovery was recently published online in The FASEB Journal. “The ability of thalidomide breakdown products to cause birth defects complicates our attempts to understand how the birth defects arise and the search for safer alternatives to thalidomide, although the rabbit embryo culture model will facilitate both processes,” said Peter G. Wells, a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. The Man Who Was "Cured" of HIV | Think Tank. What's the Big Idea? In the first segment of our interview with Sonia Arrison, the policy analyst and futurist explained how, thanks to biotechnology and the coming longevity revolution, the average person may soon celebrate over 150 birthdays.
Many Big Thinkers wondered whether lifespan extension is even meaningful unless it is also accompanied by an increase in the quality of life experienced by super-centenarians. Arrison couldn't agree more. What would be the point of living longer, if the Golden Years were filled with nothing but physical suffering? “We are at the cusp of a revolution in medicine and biotechnology that will radically increase not just our life spans but also, and more importantly, our health spans," she says. Biology, as Arrison sees it, is an engineering project. She cites the U.S. More anecdotal, and more striking, is the case of Timothy Brown, known as "The Berlin Patient.
" What's the Significance? Image courtesy of Shutterstock. Outlook : Cancer Prevention. Supplements : Nature. Diamonds deliver on cancer treatment.