Monday, October 31, 2011
HPV vaccine for boys approved (Human Papilloloma Virus)
CDC guidelines for vaccinating boys against HPV applauded
- October 25, 2011
- Tags: Featured, Prevention, HeadNeckCancers
Robert Haddad, MD The Centers for Disease and Prevention voted overwhelmingly to recommend vaccinating boys against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a finding that a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute head and neck cancer expert supports.
"We are clearly seeing an epidemic of HPV-related head and neck cancer – the numbers are rising dramatically," says Robert I. Haddad, MD, chief of Dana-Farber's head and neck oncology program. "HPV is a cause of many cancers, so it is really important to support endeavors to vaccinate."
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which helps set standards for childhood and other vaccinations voted to bring the recommendation for boys in line with that for girls. The vote was 13 in favor, with one member abstaining.
In June 2006, The US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the vaccine, Gardasil (Merck), for girls ages 9 to 26. The vaccine protects against four strains of HPV, including HPV-6 and -11, as well as the high risk strains HPV-16 and 18, which are a known cause of cervical, oropharyngeal, anal, and vaginal cancers. The CDC followed suit recommending the three dose vaccine become a routine immunization for girls. Gardasil was licensed for use in boys in October 2009.
The full recommendation is a change from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' (ACIP) earlier decision. Full recommendation makes the vaccine routine for boys starting at 11 or 12, and it also requires them to give the vaccine to patients when requested.
"I advise my patients with HPV-related cancers to vaccinate their children against HPV – both boys and girls," says Haddad. “There is a misconception that only girls should be vaccinated and that is the wrong approach. We strongly believe that both boys and girls should be vaccinated against HPV."
Saturday, October 29, 2011
9 Things You Can Do in the Next 30 mins to be Happy
http://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/emotional-health/things-can-happy-next-minutes-10000001809876/index.html
9 Things You Can Do to Be Happy in the Next 30 Minutes
Surprising ways to instantly improve your mood.
Being happier doesn't have to be a long-term ambition. You can start right now. In the next 30 minutes, tackle as many of the following suggestions as possible. Not only will these tasks themselves increase your happiness, but the mere fact that you've achieved some concrete goals will boost your mood.
1. Raise your activity level to pump up your energy. If you're on the phone, stand up and pace. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Put more energy into your voice. Take a brisk 10-minute walk. Even better...
2. Take a walk outside. Research suggests that light stimulates brain chemicals that improve mood. For an extra boost, get your sunlight first thing in the morning.
3. Reach out. Send an e-mail to a friend you haven't seen in a while, or reach out to someone new. Having close bonds with other people is one of the most important keys to happiness. When you act in a friendly way, not only will others feel more friendly toward you, but you'll also strengthen your feelings of friendliness for other people.
4. Rid yourself of a nagging task. Deal with that insurance problem, purchase something you need, or make that long-postponed appointment with the dentist. Crossing an irksome chore off your to-do list will give you a rush of elation.
5. Create a more serene environment. Outer order contributes to inner peace, so spend some time organizing bills and tackling the piles in the kitchen. A large stack of little tasks can feel overwhelming, but often just a few minutes of work can make a sizable dent. Set the timer for 10 minutes and see what you can do.
6. Do a good deed. Introduce two people by e-mail, take a minute to pass along useful information, or deliver some gratifying praise. In fact, you can also...
7. Save someone's life. Sign up to be an organ donor, and remember to tell your family about your decision. Do good, feel good―it really works!
8. Act happy. Fake it 'til you feel it. Research shows that even an artificially induced smile boosts your mood. And if you're smiling, other people will perceive you as being friendlier and more approachable.
9. Learn something new. Think of a subject that you wish you knew more about and spend 15 minutes on the Internet reading about it, or go to a bookstore and buy a book about it. But be honest! Pick a topic that reallyinterests you, not something you think you "should" or "need to" learn about.
Some people worry that wanting to be happier is a selfish goal, but in fact, research shows that happier people are more sociable, likable, healthy, and productive―and they're more inclined to help other people. By working to boost your own happiness, you're making other people happier, too.
1. Raise your activity level to pump up your energy. If you're on the phone, stand up and pace. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Put more energy into your voice. Take a brisk 10-minute walk. Even better...
2. Take a walk outside. Research suggests that light stimulates brain chemicals that improve mood. For an extra boost, get your sunlight first thing in the morning.
3. Reach out. Send an e-mail to a friend you haven't seen in a while, or reach out to someone new. Having close bonds with other people is one of the most important keys to happiness. When you act in a friendly way, not only will others feel more friendly toward you, but you'll also strengthen your feelings of friendliness for other people.
4. Rid yourself of a nagging task. Deal with that insurance problem, purchase something you need, or make that long-postponed appointment with the dentist. Crossing an irksome chore off your to-do list will give you a rush of elation.
5. Create a more serene environment. Outer order contributes to inner peace, so spend some time organizing bills and tackling the piles in the kitchen. A large stack of little tasks can feel overwhelming, but often just a few minutes of work can make a sizable dent. Set the timer for 10 minutes and see what you can do.
6. Do a good deed. Introduce two people by e-mail, take a minute to pass along useful information, or deliver some gratifying praise. In fact, you can also...
7. Save someone's life. Sign up to be an organ donor, and remember to tell your family about your decision. Do good, feel good―it really works!
8. Act happy. Fake it 'til you feel it. Research shows that even an artificially induced smile boosts your mood. And if you're smiling, other people will perceive you as being friendlier and more approachable.
9. Learn something new. Think of a subject that you wish you knew more about and spend 15 minutes on the Internet reading about it, or go to a bookstore and buy a book about it. But be honest! Pick a topic that reallyinterests you, not something you think you "should" or "need to" learn about.
Some people worry that wanting to be happier is a selfish goal, but in fact, research shows that happier people are more sociable, likable, healthy, and productive―and they're more inclined to help other people. By working to boost your own happiness, you're making other people happier, too.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Social Health Issues Worldwide: India
Social Health Issues Worldwide: India
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/24/nakusa-no-more-220-indian-girls-participate-in-renaming-ceremony/?hpt=hp_c2
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/24/nakusa-no-more-220-indian-girls-participate-in-renaming-ceremony/?hpt=hp_c2
What’s in a name? Everything, for girls in India’s Maharashthra state who recently got new names in an unprecedented ceremony that allowed them to shed a label with a bad meaning.
More than 220 girls in the district of Satara received the new names after being labeled “Nakusa” – unwanted – by families desperately wanting a male child.
Bhagvan Pawar, the district health officer who organized the renaming ceremony, told CNN Monday that he started working on the project one year ago and that he saw it as an obligation to help restore some self-esteem to the young girls.
"The parents, they don't want a female, they want a male child," he said. "But we did this to help them (the girls). We are trying to get them beyond this."
Video of the girls, as posted on Youtube, showed long lines of women and girls holding placards in support of the initiative.
Social mores about the enormous expense heaped upon families who have to marry off girls is just one reason they are seen as unwanted, Pawar said. Also contributing to the negativity are the census numbers that show the district’s sex ratio is about 980 females per 1,000 males, according to the Wall Street Journal.
At the renaming ceremony, the girls were allowed a name of their choosing, Pawar said - and they're doing well now. "Most of them are in school," he said. “We have scheduled 30-minute follow-ups with them,” Pawar said. “They are good now. They are very happy with their new names.”
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Machine: speedy pathogen testing: detecting infection quickly
Machine: speedy pathogen testing: detecting infection quickly
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37407/?mod=related
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37407/?mod=related
BIOMEDICINE
New Test Spots Infections in Hours, Rather than Days
A startup has developed a device that uses magnetic particles to identify pathogens rapidly.
A startup called T2 Biosystems is developing a test that uses magnetic nanoparticles to detect blood-borne infections in hours—compared to the days it now takes using conventional lab methods. The company's first device—about the size of a printer—will target Candida, a fungus that is the third-most-common cause of hospital-acquired infections. The detection system can identify Candida in human blood samples in about two hours. Clinical trials involving samples from actual patients are in the works.
The sooner a hospital lab can identify the cause of a patient's infection, the faster that patient can be put on the right antibiotics. Today, microbiologists often try to grow the infectious agent in the lab and run various tests to identify it. This can take a few days, and some organisms, including Candida, grow more slowly than others. Tests based on amplifying genetic material are considerably faster, but require complicated processing equipment. Tests that use fluorescent labels to light up a target are also faster, but samples like blood are too cloudy for the light to pass through.
T2 Biosystems's technology is based on work carried out by researchers at MIT, Harvard, and Massachusetts General Hospital on tailoring iron-oxide nanoparticles to bind to specific biomarkers, and then using a miniature magnetic system to detect the binding. The detector is essentially a tiny, simplified version of a nuclear magnetic resonance imaging system. Such systems usually require very large, expensive magnets, whereas T2 Biosystems's device uses a magnetic detector about the size of a penny.
Company founder and MIT materials science professor Michael Cima says there are two main advantages to the magnetic particle approach: magnetic fields can travel through blood and other media that light can't penetrate, and the magnetic detection system is very sensitive—so it can tell clinicians precisely how much of a particular pathogen is present.
TB Test: Ultra sensitive test on a chip
TB Test: Ultra sensitive test on a chip
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23110/?mod=related
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23110/?mod=related
Remote Microscopy for Smartphones: attachment
Smartphone microscopy for field testing diagnostics
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/20433/?mod=related
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/20433/?mod=related
Remote Microscopy
A modular microscope attachment for cell phones could improve the quality of telemedicine.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a modular, high-magnification microscope attachment for cell phones. The device will enable health workers in remote, rural areas to take high-resolution images of a patient's blood cells using a cell-phone camera, and then transmit the photos to experts at medical centers.
The researchers hope that the innovation will help patients with blood disorders who live far from medical specialists get more accurately diagnosed and treated. "I wanted to make optical design relevant to today," says Daniel Fletcher, a professor of bioengineering at Berkeley. Fletcher's students found it relatively easy to integrate a simple arrangement of lenses with the cell-phone camera and transmit magnified images to a laptop using a Bluetooth attachment to the phone. The work prompted Fletcher to file a patent through the university and try to make a practical microscope. The researchers say that the cameras in late-model phones are capable of capturing all the details that a doctor would need to identify malaria parasites and cancer cells.
"The challenge was to make a low-cost, durable device with a long battery life," says David Breslauer, a graduate student in Fletcher's lab. "As engineers, we initially wanted to make a whiz-bang gadget to take pictures of both skin and blood. But people in the field told us, 'Once it gets too complicated, no one is going to want to use it. Make something simple that just does the task.'"
The total cost of the first prototype, built from off-the-shelf components, was $75. The current version provides its own sample illumination from cheap, low-power LEDs. The device comes in two versions: with a magnification of about 5 times, for taking images of moles and rashes, and with a magnification of about 60 times, for capturing the details of blood cells and parasites. The higher-magnification model--the larger of the two--is roughly the size and shape of a roll of quarters. Both scopes attach to the phone with a modified belt clip.
"Microscopy is still considered the gold standard" for malaria diagnosis, says Katherine Herz, a medical doctor and a fellow in health policy at Stanford University. "If microscopy could be done with portable equipment ... [it] might be adopted far more widely and prove extremely useful."
Fletcher plans to test the microscope cell phone in Uganda this summer. Initially, his lab will make prototypes, but eventually, it plans to hand off the design to a manufacturer. The Blum Center for Developing Economies at Berkeley, which provided initial funding, will help test the device in Kampala. The scheme is to train local personnel and provide them with the necessary equipment to take pictures of patients' blood on special slides, and then phone in the images to specialists who can identify and count malaria parasites.
The researchers also hope to collaborate with a telemedicine program at the University of California, Davis, that serves rural California. Leukemia patients in remote areas could use the microscope cell phone to transmit images for white blood cell counts.
Smartphone Revolution Coming: multi-touch (No Screen) Awesome !!
Smartphone Revolution Coming: ...awesome !!
Multi-touch (No Screen) ....amazing (Mircosoft Laboratories)
(watch video)
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=155040
Multi-touch (No Screen) ....amazing (Mircosoft Laboratories)
(watch video)
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=155040
Micro-Fluidics: Lab Tests on chemical paper chip
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38914/?mod=chfeatured
BIOMEDICINE
Monitoring HIV on a Cheap Chip
A microfluidic chip could measure effectiveness of patient treatments in resource-poor countries.
Measuring viral load, or the concentration of HIV in the bloodstream, is one of the techniques that physicians use to monitor the effectiveness of HIV treatments. A spike in viral load can be a warning of drug failure or drug resistance, possibly indicating that the patient should be switched to a different drug. But in resource-poor settings, such monitoring is prohibitively expensive and equipment-heavy. A new microfluidic chip designed by the lab of Rustem Ismagilov at Caltech may make it possible to monitor viral load in HIV and other viral infections more cheaply and easily, and the technique could also be useful for other kinds of genetic tests.
Viral load is often measured with PCR, a standard laboratory tool that copies the DNA or RNA in a sample many times. A newer approach, called digital PCR, makes it possible to get much more precise counts. Using microfluidics, the sample is first divided among a multitude of tiny wells, so that each well is likely to hold no more than one molecule. When the molecules are then amplified, the result is a simple yes-or-no signal for each well.
"The bottleneck of those methods comes when you need a measurement with a large dynamic range," Ismagilov says. HIV viral load, for example, can range from 50 to a million molecules per milliliter. A test to measure it must be able to handle large numbers of molecules, yet be sensitive enough count rare molecules. Normally, achieving such sensitivity requires diluting a sample and spreading it out over more and more wells in order to ensure that no more than one molecule is in each well. Ismagilov says that such large numbers of wells can be cumbersome to analyze. At the same time, the sample can't be spread so thin that scarce molecules will be missed.
Ismagilov and his lab members came up with a trick to handle this dilemma: divide the sample into a series of different-sized wells calibrated to detect molecules at different concentrations, which can be calculated together. "Each volume is sensitive to a particular concentration range," he says. "Together these volumes provide more information than any one volume individually."
Micro-Fluidics: Lab Tests on chemical paper chip
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38914/?mod=chfeatured
BIOMEDICINE
Monitoring HIV on a Cheap Chip
A microfluidic chip could measure effectiveness of patient treatments in resource-poor countries.
Measuring viral load, or the concentration of HIV in the bloodstream, is one of the techniques that physicians use to monitor the effectiveness of HIV treatments. A spike in viral load can be a warning of drug failure or drug resistance, possibly indicating that the patient should be switched to a different drug. But in resource-poor settings, such monitoring is prohibitively expensive and equipment-heavy. A new microfluidic chip designed by the lab of Rustem Ismagilov at Caltech may make it possible to monitor viral load in HIV and other viral infections more cheaply and easily, and the technique could also be useful for other kinds of genetic tests.
Viral load is often measured with PCR, a standard laboratory tool that copies the DNA or RNA in a sample many times. A newer approach, called digital PCR, makes it possible to get much more precise counts. Using microfluidics, the sample is first divided among a multitude of tiny wells, so that each well is likely to hold no more than one molecule. When the molecules are then amplified, the result is a simple yes-or-no signal for each well.
"The bottleneck of those methods comes when you need a measurement with a large dynamic range," Ismagilov says. HIV viral load, for example, can range from 50 to a million molecules per milliliter. A test to measure it must be able to handle large numbers of molecules, yet be sensitive enough count rare molecules. Normally, achieving such sensitivity requires diluting a sample and spreading it out over more and more wells in order to ensure that no more than one molecule is in each well. Ismagilov says that such large numbers of wells can be cumbersome to analyze. At the same time, the sample can't be spread so thin that scarce molecules will be missed.
Ismagilov and his lab members came up with a trick to handle this dilemma: divide the sample into a series of different-sized wells calibrated to detect molecules at different concentrations, which can be calculated together. "Each volume is sensitive to a particular concentration range," he says. "Together these volumes provide more information than any one volume individually."
Saturday, October 22, 2011
New Human Species: coming soon
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38932/?mod=chfeatured
BIOMEDICINE
EmTech: Get Ready for a New Human Species
Now that we can rewrite the code of life, Darwinian evolution can't stop us, says investor Juan Enriquez.
The ability to engineer life is going to spark a revolution that will dwarf the industrial and digital revolutions, saysJuan Enriquez, a writer, investor, and managing director of Excel Venture Management. Thanks to new genomics technologies, scientists have not only been able to read organisms' genomes faster than ever before, they can also write increasingly complex changes into those genomes, creating organisms with new capabilities.
Enriquez, who spoke at Technology Review's EmTech conference on Tuesday, says our newfound ability to write the code of life will profoundly change the world as we know it. Because we can engineer our environment and ourselves, humanity is moving beyond the constraints of Darwinian evolution. The result, he says, may be an entirely new species.
Enriquez is the author of the global bestseller As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth. His most recent publication is an eBook, Homo Evolutis: A Short Tour of Our New Species.
Technology Review senior editor Emily Singer spoke with Enriquez after his talk.
TR: Why do you think there is going to be a new human species?
Juan Enriquez: The new human species is one that begins to engineer the evolution of viruses, plants, animals, and itself. As we do that, Darwin's rules get significantly bent, and sometimes even broken. By taking direct and deliberate control over our evolution, we are living in a world where we are modifying stuff according to our desires.
If you turned off the electricity in the United States, you would see millions of people die quickly, because they wouldn't have asthma medications, respirators, insulin, a whole host of things we invented to prevent people from dying. Eventually, we get to the point where evolution is guided by what we're engineering. That's a big deal. Today's plastic surgery is going to seem tame compared to what's coming.
How is this impending revolution going to shape the world?
Ninety-eight percent of data transmitted today is in a language almost no one spoke 30 years ago. We're in a similar period now. But this revolution will be more widespread because this is software that writes its own hardware.
People think this technology will just change pharma or biotech, but it's much bigger than that. For example, it's already changing the chemical industry. Forty percent of Dupont's earnings today come from the life sciences. It's going to change everything; it will change countries, who's rich and who's poor. It's going to create new ethics.
New ethics?
It will change even basic questions like sex. There used to be one way to have a baby. Now there are at least 17. We have decoupled sex from time. You can have a baby in nine months, or you can freeze sperm or a fertilized egg and implant it in 10 years or 100 years. You can create an animal from one of its cells. You can begin to alter reproductive cells. By the time you put this together, you've fundamentally changed how you reproduce and the rules for reproduction.
What does it take to make a new species?
We're beginning to see that it's an accumulation of small changes. Scientists have recently been able to compare the genomes of Neandertals and modern humans, which reveals just a .004 percent difference. Most of those changes lie in genes involved in sperm, testes, smell, and skin.
Engineering microbes alone might speciate us. When you apply sequencing technology to the microbes inhabiting the human body, it turns out to be fascinating. All of us are symbionts; we have 1,000 times more microbial cells in our bodies than human cells. You couldn't possible digest or live without the microbial cells inside your stomach. Some people have microbes that are better at absorbing calories. Diabetics have a slightly sweeter skin, which changes the microbial fauna and makes it harder for them to cauterize wounds.
One concern about human enhancement is that only some people will have access, creating an even greater economic divide. Do you think this will be the case?
In the industrial revolution, it took a lifetime to build enough industry to double the wealth of a country. In the knowledge revolution, you can build billion-dollar companies with 20 people very quickly. The implication is that you can double the wealth of a country very quickly. In Korea in 1975, people had one-fifth of the income of Mexicans, and today they have five times more. Even the poorest places can generate wealth quickly. You see this in Bangalore, China. On the flip side, you can also become irrelevant very quickly.
Scientists are on the verge of sequencing 10,000 human genomes. You point out this might highlight significant variation among our species, and that this requires some ethical consideration. Why?
The issue of [genetic variation] is a really uncomfortable question, one that for good reason, we have been avoiding since the 1930s and '40s. A lot of the research behind the eugenics movement came out of elite universities in the U.S. It was disastrously misapplied. But you do have to ask, if there are fundamental differences in species like dogs and horses and birds, is it true that there are no significant differences between humans? We are going to have an answer to that question very quickly. If we do, we need to think through an ethical, moral framework to think about questions that go way beyond science.
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