Health News Update

HIV News Update – Is there a Cure?

Most recently, in health news in the media, we’ve been hearing the news on a possible HIV cure. This renews interest and hope in finding a cure for this disease. Recently German scientists used a bone marrow transplant for a cancer patient who also had AIDS and discovered that the virus had been eradicated. Four years later, this patient still shows no sign of the HIV infection in his system. This news, HIV which has killed over 25 million people worldwide since the 1980s, certainly renews hope that scientists may be able to use bone marrow transplant technology in the treatment of people with HIV. The research is still to be followed up. This HIV health news is written by Maggie Fox of Reuters.

Doctors declare ‘cure’ in HIV patient

German researchers who used a bone marrow transplant to treat a cancer patient with the AIDS virus, have declared him cured of the virus — a stunning claim in a field where the word “cure” is barely whispered.

The patient, who had both HIV infection and leukemia, received the bone marrow transplant in 2007 from a donor who had a genetic mutation known to give patients a natural immunity to the virus.
Nearly four years after the transplant, the patient is free of the virus and it does not appear to be hiding anywhere in his body, Thomas Schneider of Berlin Charite hospital and colleagues said.

“Our results strongly suggest that cure of HIV has been achieved in this patient,” they wrote in the journal Blood. AIDS researchers have rejected the approach on any kind of scale for patients with HIV. A bone marrow transplant is a last-ditch treatment for cancers such as leukemia.

It requires destruction of a patient’s own bone marrow — itself a harrowing process — and then a transplant from a donor who has a near-exact blood and immune system type. Months of recovery are needed while the transplant grows and reconstitutes the patient’s immune system.

“It’s not practical and it can kill people,” said Dr. Robert Gallo of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, who helped discover the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

“It is possibly a cure, that’s for sure, you won’t know for absolute sure until the person dies and undergoes extreme PCR (genetic) analysis of post-mortem tissue.”

The mutation affects a receptor, a cellular doorway, called CCR5, that the AIDS virus uses to get into the cells it infects.

Since the 1990s scientists have known that some people, mostly of Northern European descent, have the mutation and are rarely infected with HIV.

“They are uninfectable, virtually,” Gallo said.
Some researchers are working on the idea of gene therapy to treat or try to cure HIV, but the technology is still in experimental stages.

“I don’t want to throw cold water on an interesting thing, but that’s what it is — an interesting thing,” Gallo said.

Schneider’s team has been following the patient, taking samples from his colon, liver, spinal fluid and brain as he developed various conditions that justified the tests. They tested all these samples for evidence of the virus, which can be difficult to detect unless it is actively infecting cells.

All these places are suspected “reservoirs” where HIV can hide out for years, to rebound in patients who stop taking drugs that suppress the infection.

This patient appears to have a fully functioning immune system, they found, which appears genetically identical to cells from the donor — not the patient’s own immune cells. Schneider’s team found no evidence of HIV anywhere.

“From these results, it is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient,” they wrote.

The AIDS virus infects 33 million people globally and has killed more than 25 million since the pandemic began in the 1980s. Cocktails of strong drugs can suppress the virus, keeping patients healthy and reducing the chance they will infect others, but there is no vaccine.

Sugar is Bad for your Health

We’ve been hearing it for years that sugar is bad for you.  Long ago, it was bad for you because it rots your teeth and causes cavities.  Then we heard it was bad for you because it made you gain weight.  After that, we slowly began to hear rumours that it actually fed cancers.  We now know also that consuming too much sugar and junk food will cause diabetes.  Now the latest health news updates are showing that sugar increases the risk factors for heart disease.  Sugar is the number one enemy and we should start eliminating it from our diets – sugars in all shapes and forms.

Americans who consumed more added sugars than the average adult were more likely to have risk factors for heart disease than those who consumed less than the average, a new study suggests.  Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta found that among the people they studied, those who ate the greatest amount of caloric sweeteners in processed or prepared foods and beverages had the lowest high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, known as the good cholesterol, and the highest blood triglyceride levels.

The results appear in Tuesday’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found added sugars have no nutritional value, the researchers said.

“Just like eating a high-fat diet can increase your levels of triglycerides and high [density] cholesterol, eating sugar can also affect those same lipids,” study co-author Dr. Miriam Vos, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Emory School of Medicine, said in a news release. The researchers analyzed U.S. government nutritional data and blood lipid levels of 6,113 adult men and women between 1999 and 2006.
They found that within the sample group, those who ate the least sugar had the highest HDL and lowest triglyceride levels,
Sugar consumption within the group ranged from an average of three teaspoons of added sugars per day (12.6 grams) to 46 teaspoons per day (193 grams).
The average adult in the U.S. consumes the equivalent of 21.4 teaspoons, or 359 calories, of added sugars per day, according to the study.
Spot sugar on the label
The American Heart Association says too much sugar contributes to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.
Last August, the group said Americans need to cut back dramatically on sugar consumption.
It recommended women eat no more than 100 calories per day of added processed sugar, the equivalent of six teaspoons (25 grams), and men no more than 150 calories, or nine teaspoons (37.5 grams).
“If we are concerned about heart disease risk, then we also need to be paying attention to the amount of caloric sweeteners and added sugars in the foods we eat,” said the study’s lead author, Jean Welsh, a registered nurse.
The researchers said Americans are consuming more sugar than 30 years ago. Much of it comes from sweeteners added to increase the desirability of processed foods such as sugar-sweetened beverages, cereals and desserts.
Identifying added sugars on nutrition labels is the first step to reducing sugar intake, the U.S. government site womenshealth.gov suggest.

Added sugars can appear under terms such as:

•    Corn sweetener.
•    Corn syrup.
•    High-fructose corn syrup.
•    Dextrose.
•    Fructose.
•    Glucose.
•    Lactose.
•    Maltose.
•    Sucrose.
•    Honey.
•    Sugar.
•    Brown sugar.
•    Invert sugar.
•    Molasses.
•    Malt syrup.
•    Syrup.
But the industry group the Sugar Association told the health news website Health Day it “disputes the notion that sugar consumption has increased.”  It cited a U.S. Department of Agriculture report that claimed consumption of caloric sweeteners, including sugar, has decreased 9.7 per cent over the past decade.

The Sugar Association said the same advice holds for sugar as for all foods and beverages: consume in moderation.

Source:  CBC News

Vitamin E in Contact Lenses May Treat Glaucoma

Vitamin E has many health benefits when taken as a nutritional supplement, but recent research by Anuj Chauhan, Ph. D., presented at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, the use of vitamin E on contact contact lenses deliver more medication for glaucoma and maybe other diseases to the eye.  Eye drops that treat the pressure build up in glaucoma, are the typical treatment. However, medication delivered by eye drops does not usually meet the targeted tissue. He stated, “Only about one to five percent of drugs in eye drops actually reach the cornea of the eye.” In the following health news article that appeared on Science Daily.com about Vitamin E in contact lenses that may treat glaucoma.  Clinical trials could begin in as little as a year to two years.

Chauhan and colleagues have developed a new extended-release delivery approach incorporating vitamin E into contact lenses. The invisible clusters, or aggregates, of vitamin E molecules form what Chauhan describes as “transport barriers.” that slow down the elusion of the glaucoma medication from the lens into the eye. The drug released from the lens into the eye stays in the tears far longer than the 2-5 minutes with eye drops, leading to more effective therapy.

“These vitamin structures are like ‘nano-bricks’,” Chauhan said. “The drug molecules can’t go through the vitamin E. They must go around it. Because the nanobricks are so much bigger than the drug molecules — we believe about a few hundred times bigger — the molecules get diverted and must travel a longer path. This increases the duration of the drug release from the lenses.”

In research with laboratory animals, the lenses containing vitamin E nanobricks administered drugs up to 100 times longer than most commercial lenses. The lenses could be designed for continuous wear for up to a month, Chauhan said. In addition to treating glaucoma, the contacts could help other eye conditions, such as cataract and dry eye. Cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye, and dry eye involves decreased production of tears. It affects about 2 in 10 people and can lead to more severe eye problems.

“Vitamin E is a proven nutraceutical that in small amounts is good for the eye because of its ant-oxidant properties. Also Vitamin E presence in the contact lenses blocks UV radiation, leading to increased protection against the UV light. Our research has shown that the vitamin can be loaded into the lenses without any reduction in transparency. We believe it could be helpful in disease treatment and in prevention as well,” he said.

“We have developed a novel approach of extending the duration of drug release from contact lenses by including nanosized aggregates of Vitamin E in the lenses. The Vitamin E nano-aggregates force the drug molecules to travel in a tortuous path leading to increased drug release durations. Another benefit of Vitamin E incorporation is that Vitamin E is known to be an anti-oxidant, whose slow release from lenses could also help in prevention of ophthalmic diseases like cataract and glaucoma.

Furthermore, Vitamin E blocks UV radiation, leading to reduced ocular damage from the UV light. Our research has shown that Vitamin E can be loaded into the lenses without any reduction in transparency. The drug release durations from Vitamin E loaded lenses are about 100 times longer than from commercial lenses for several ophthalmic drugs including glaucoma drug timolol, anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone, and anti-viral drug flucanozole. Thus, Vitamin E loaded lenses could be highly effective in synergistic prevention and treatment of ophthalmic diseases through extended delivery of the desired drugs and the nutraceutical Vitamin E. Animal studies in beagle dogs are ongoing to explore glaucoma treatment through Vitamin E laden contact lenses.”

Source: