Welcome to the July 2002 issue of Telangana Science Journal. This month, Dr. Vepachedu has put together immense amount of scientific information packed together. It is certainly overwhelming to digest and sort out confusing scientific facts even for a seasoned scientist or clinician. So, I chose a topic- Depression Drug and Weight Reduction , that I am more familiar with and comfortable to make clinical comments with my clinical experience. Each one of these topics deserves in depth cross referential analysis in future.
This is not a new finding at all. It is well known that any drug that stimulates the sympathetic system and central neuro transmitters do have appetite suppressant effect. These are classes of drugs like amphetamines, Sympatho-mimetics (e.g., ephedrine) and SSRIs (serotonin specific receptor inhibitors). The good old drug that was marketed and abused was Dexedrin (Dextro-amphetemine). This amphetamine class drug was originally used as a mood elevator and also an anti-depressant for lack of good drugs like SSRIs in 1950s and 60s. Dexedrin is also marketed as Weight reduction drug even today. Probably the potency of dexedrin is more than the bupriopionSR (zyban). In short term, people feel mood elevation, feeling good, appetite suppression etc. At the most, these drugs are good for starting and motivation for serious commitment of diet and exercise. In the long term all these drugs develop tolerance, decreased effectiveness and develop side effects. The typical side effects are tremulousness, attention deficit, memory difficulties and even cardiac arrhythmias (irregular heart beat that can affect blood pressure and palpitations that can lead to serious heart condition). Dexedrine was popular among student population, and I think it still is, for enhancing attention and help continuous reading and ‘night out’ cramming during exams. Typically it may seem to help to read all the material non-stop but next day, students usually don’t fare well in the exam because the post effects of the drug causes difficulty in analyzing the data presented.
This type of drugs are also commonly used by people who need a ‘zing’ for the work. For example, ephedrine, and dexedrin are sold in all gas stations across America and especially at truck stops and the high way rest areas. These are sold as energy boosters. I have seen many patients who are truck drivers confessed to take these drugs and get on highway for long haul. These drugs temporarily may keep them awake and energetic but continuous usage will definitely affect their analytic abilities. It is surprising that these are not controlled in any manner by FDA.
I use wellbutrin in my clinic regularly as part of a smoking cessation program in chronic pain patients. Smoking and obesity adversely affect chronic pain. However I doubt the clinical effectiveness of the wellburtrin as weight loss agent. Till today we don’t have any substitute for motivation and commitment for a behavioural change of proper diet and exercise. This is just another study by a big pharmaceutical company to claim a piece of huge "weight loss market."
Venkateswar Rao Karuparthy, July 2002
Depression
Drug Reduces Weight
The drug, bupropion SR, is sold as Wellbutrin
for depression and Zyban
for nicotine addiction . In a yearlong study reported in July's
Obesity Research, paid for by the drug's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline,
it was shown to help reduce weight and keep it off when combined with diet
and exercise. Bupropion reduces the flow of behavioral hormones norepinephrine
and dopamine to the brain, helping to reduce the urge to eat.
Fertility
A new study shows that most healthy couples who are worried because
the woman is not pregnant after a year of trying will conceive during the
second year. The study, which analyzed details of 782 couples from
seven European cities, was presented at a meeting of the European Society
of Human Reproduction and Embyrology. Couples are waiting
longer these days before starting families and experts have recently discovered
that the age of the man matters too. Research earlier this year suggested
that fertility declines earlier than previously thought - in the late 20s
for women and late 30s for men. The study found that regardless of
age, the majority of healthy couples with no clear explanation for their
failure to conceive achieve pregnancy by the end of the second year of
trying. In the United States and Britain, couples are often given
treatment soon after a year of trying to get pregnant and many doctors
would like to recommend techniques such as test tube fertilization earlier
than one year of failure. However, fertility treatments, which involve
drugs or in-vitro fertilization carry risks. Treatment increases the chance
of having twins, pregnancy complications, delivering babies that are underweight
or suffering from major birth defects and long-term disabilities. The older
the woman is, the less likely the treatment is to succeed and the more
likely are side effects.For example, recently, Mrs. Harris, a 27-year-old
nurse who had been undergoing fertility treatment, gave birth to six children
within three minutes of each other Sunday (July 7th) morning at the University
of Alabama at Birmingham hospital. They weighed 1 pound, 3 ounces to 1
pound, 12 ounces. The babies, delivered by Caesarean section after
about three hours of labor, were born after 26 1/2 weeks. A full-term pregnancy
is typically about 40 weeks. The babies were in serious condition
in intensive care.
Be a Vegetarian to Improve Your Sex Life!
Insulin And
Colon Cancer
In the July 3 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute
, Manjinder S. Sandhu, of the University of Cambridge, and colleagues review
data on the biologic interactions among insulin, insulin-like growth factor
I (IGF-I), and insulin-like growth factor proteins (IGFBPs). They suggest
that elevated insulin levels may block the production of one or more IGFBPs,
leading to an increase in IGF-I, a molecule that can promote tumor cell
growth and inhibit tumor cell death. Earlier studies have suggested that
certain dietary and associated factors may increase the risk of colorectal
cancer by changing blood insulin concentrations.
New mutant AIDS
in San Francisco
A five-year study of new HIV infections in San Francisco, released
here on the eve of the 14th International AIDS Conference and published
in July 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
, found Mutant strains of the AIDS virus resistant to many of the newest
drugs are turning up in larger numbers of newly infected gay men in the
city. The troubling findings are based on a UCSF study of the genetic
fingerprints of virus from blood samples of patients known to be infected
within one year of the test. The difficulty for patients who pick up the
drug-resistant strains is that they will have to start their treatment
with drugs of last resort, so-called "salvage regimes" normally reserved
for those who have failed all prior treatments. Another study of
young gay and bisexual men in major U.S. cities found that more than three-quarters
of those infected with HIV were unaware they had the AIDS virus.
The finding, presented July 8 during the first day of scientific sessions
at the 14th International AIDS Conference in Spain, is a worrying sign
that the epidemic could be in danger of accelerating again in the United
States. The study indicated that ignorance of infection among HIV positive
gay and bisexual men was twice as common as previous estimates, which were
based on HIV tests results of people entering the military or jobs that
require screening. About 1 million Americans are infected with HIV.
Fat
Standards For Asians and East Indians
Asians and East Indians who seem healthy by current Western standards
may actually be in danger of obesity-related diseases, WHO experts said
on July 10th at a conference in Singapore. Asians tend to weigh less
and look thinner than Caucasians, but they carry relatively more body fat.
While Singapore has very few obese people by Western standards, less than
6 percent at the last survey in 1998, it has incidences of stroke, cancer,
and heart disease equivalent to Western countries. Using the same
Western standard for East Indians and Asians is inexact and dangerous.
Some countries, like India, have extremely high obesity-related risk at
levels of weight where you would not expect it in the West (see below).
Asians and East Indians have less muscle and more fat than their western
counterparts. So using a fat ratio, rather than just weight, might
be a better way to measure health risks. The location of body fat is also
important, the experts said. Just a small amount of fat, especially
around the midsection, poses a powerful risk. The WHO now measures obesity
using a Body Mass Index (BMI), calculated by dividing a person's weight
in kilograms by the square of one's height in meters. By this standard,
a woman who is 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 meters) tall and weighs 68.5 kilograms
(151 pounds) would be considered overweight (BMI 24.2). A woman of the
same height who weighs 83 kilograms (183 pounds) would be considered obese
(BMI 29.4). This is valid for Western countries only. Many
Indo-Asian countries have to adopt revised standards for healthy weight.
Indonesia has already adopted a lower height to weight ratio to define
obesity. The proposed measure of BMI for Asians and East Indians:
Low morbidity at <18.5 BMI; Average morbidity at 18.5-22.9 BMI; Overweight
with increased morbidity at 23 BMI; At risk at 23-24.9 BMI; Obese with
high morbidity at 25-29.9 BMI; Obese with severe morbidity at >30 BMI.
East
Indians have the highest rates of heart disease in the world
East Indians are more at risk of heart disease when they're put in
a Western environment. Researchers have determined that East Indians
have the highest rates of heart disease in the world and that Indo-Americans
face a higher risk of heart disease despite the claim that some of them
are vegetarians and most of them lack many of the disease’s other traditional
risk factors (see above), a Berkely study said. Many Indians and Indo-Americans
eat heavier food cooked in ghee or clarified butter (contains saturated
fat and cholesterol) and have a sedentary life style. In addition, many
Indians whose ancestors were traditionally vegetarians for thousands of
years are adopting a non-vegetarian life style in the US and India.
Dining on greasy fast food and adopting a couch-potato lifestyle make the
situation worse. As lifestyles change in India, heart disease is
hitting epidemic proportions there and also among Indo-Americans with more
than 10 percent of urban Indians suffering from the disease. In addition,
for the past few decades India has been experiencing an unprecedented urbanization.
India is almost one third urban and will become two
thirds so before 2050. Simultaneously, coronary artery disease rates
have more than doubled in India in the past three decades, according to
the Coronary Artery Disease among Asian Indians Research Foundation. No
wonder, these rates are significantly higher in urban regions of India
than in rural areas. The problem is coming into sharpest focus
in places such as the Bay Area, where Indians (Silicon Valley high-tech
personnel who do not exercise) are the fastest growing group. Aporoximately
1.6 million Indians sprinkled elsewhere across the United States also are
at risk. Researchers believe that the children and grandchildren
of Indian immigrants could be at the highest risk for heart problems, given
their lifestyle as children is much more inactive than their parents' tended
to be. Researchers caution that those of East Indian origin should
be examined on a different scale. For example, keeping a cholesterol level
under 200 is considered safe for most whites. But Indians should maintain
a cholesterol level below 160, said researchers from the University of
California-Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, which released
the study (see above also
).
African-American
Women
Elevated cholesterol is a risk factor for stroke death in younger women,
particularly African-American women with no history of cardiovascular disease,
according to a large, long-term analysis in the July issue of Stroke:
Journal of the American Heart Association . Cholesterol proved
to be a significant risk factor for stroke death in women. The risk for
ischemic (clot-related) stroke death increased by 23 percent across the
entire spectrum of cholesterol levels, revealing a continuous association
between rising cholesterol levels and increased stroke death risk. For
women younger than age 55 at enrollment, the average age of stroke death
was 63. High cholesterol contributes to stroke risk through
several mechanisms - including its role in the development of coronary
heart disease, a subsequent increase in atrial fibrillation and left ventricular
dysfunction. In addition, high cholesterol also contributes to plaque
buildup in the blood vessels leading to the brain, as well as in the vessels
of the brain itself. A blockage in these vessels causes an ischemic stroke.
Other controllable risk factors for stroke are high blood pressure, diabetes
and smoking.
Clues
about obesity
The idea that obese people eat too much because they find food more
palatable than lean people do has gained support from a new brain-imaging
study at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The study reveals that the parts of the brain responsible for sensation
in the mouth, lips, and tongue are more active in obese people than in
normal-weight control subjects. This study appeared in the journal NeuroReport.
Sleep to Perform
Well
A study by Harvard Medical School researchers, released in the July
3 edition of Neuron, found the performance of those trained in the
evening and re-tested 12 hours later, after a good night's sleep, improved
far more significantly - an average of 20 percent improvement in their
performance, while the group trained in the morning and then re-tested
12 hours later were able to improve their performance by about two percent.
In addition, the research showed the amount of improved performance was
directly correlated with the amount of Stage 2 (a stage of non-rapid eye
movement or NREM) sleep an individual was able to receive, particularly
late in the night. A full night of normal sleep is characterized by a progression
through an orderly succession of sleep states and stages. In a healthy
adult, the first cycle is always initiated by going from wakefulness to
NREM sleep. The first REM period follows the first period of non-REM sleep
to complete the first sleep cycle. The two sleep states continue to alternate
throughout the night with an average cycle period of about 90 minutes.
A full night of normal human sleep will usually consist of four to six
NREM/REM sleep cycles. Stage 2 sleep represents about 50 percent of a full
night's sleep.
In another study, the researchers from Pennsylvania State University found that missing sleep can affect hormone levels and generate harmful chemicals in the body. They found that women tend to sleep more soundly than men. They are also less affected by the effects of sleep deprivation. The research published in the journal Chemistry and Industry showed that women had 70 minutes of deep sleep per night compared with 40 minutes for men. Scientists believe they may have uncovered the reason why women live longer than men!
Exercise
Physical fitness may have an anti-inflammatory effect that protects
against heart attacks, according to a report in the rapid access issue
of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association .
Researchers compared the level of physical fitness in 135 women from three
ethnic groups to their levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). CRP level indicates
inflammation. Elevated CRP is associated with a two- to five-fold increase
in the risk of heart attack. Cardiorespiratory fitness ("fitness")
is related with lower CHD risk; however, its relationship with CRP is relatively
unknown. The researchers found lower levels of CRP among the most
fit Caucasian and Native-American women compared with their less-fit peers.
African-American women, however, failed to show the same strong correlation.
A study entitled "Waging War on Physical Inactivity: Using Modern Molecular Ammunition Against an Ancient Enemy ," is the latest report from the obesity research team of Frank W. Booth and Espen E. Spangenburg, both of the Departments of Biomedical Sciences and Physiology and the Dalton Cardiovascular Institute at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO; Manu V. Chakravarthy, of the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; and Scott E. Gordon, of the Departments of Exercise and Sports Sciences and of Physiology and the Human Performance Laboratory, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC. Their study appears in the current edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology , a publication of the American Physiological Society. The team set out to identify the underlying genetic and cellular/biochemical bases of why a sedentary lifestyle produces chronic health disorders. They support the hypothesis that humans have inherited a genome programmed for physical activity by selective forces from the Late Paleolithic era (10,000 years ago), when physical activity was necessary for survival. Another associated hypothesis that was examined in this research effort is that a lack of physical activity leads to failure of the maintenance of normal signaling by cellular networks that activate that genome. Since the normal orchestration of protein expression in cells in humans was selected during evolution, when physical activity was higher than today, an altered protein expression of cells from sedentary individuals is associated with a higher incidence of chronic conditions.
Alzheimer's Disease is a degenerative brain disease that causes memory loss, disorientation, depression and decay of bodily functions. The disease afflicts about 12 million people worldwide, including more than 4 million Americans. It is increasing so fast that more than 22 million people worldwide will be affected by 2025, experts predict. A string of new studies to be presented next week at an international Alzheimer's conference in Stockholm establish the big picture for the first time, giving scientists a better understanding of how people may be able to reduce the liklihood of developing the disease. Mounting evidence indicates that the same risk factors for heart disease - high blood pressure, diabetes, excess weight, high cholesterol and lack of exercise may also play a role in Alzheimer's disease. Several studies to be presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders indicate that people may be able to reduce their chances of developing Alzheimer's by taking early steps to treat high blood pressure. The Associated PressThe number of Americans with Alzheimer's disease could rise from 4.6 million today to 16 million by 2050, new research indicates. The projections, presented on July 22nd at an international Alzheimer's conference in Stockholm, are slightly higher than those conducted 10 years ago, mostly because more people are expected to live beyond the age of 85 than were predicted to a decade ago. The Associated Press
Placebo Surgery
Works
A U.S Veteran's Administration study, published in the New England
Journal of Medicine, investigated the benefits of arthroscopic knee
surgery. It involved 180 veterans age 75 or younger with documented osteoarthritis.
They were divided into three groups. Two of the groups got actual
arthroscopy surgery, and one group got placebo surgery. In two years
of follow up, participants in all groups reported less pain an improvement
in knee movement. However, the people who got real surgery performed
slower in timed stair-climbing tests than those who got the placebo surgery.
Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Risks Outweigh Benefits
Under Centuries of Sand, a trading Hub
Colorectal CancerRecommendations
Approximately 57,000 Americans will die of colorectal cancer in 2002.
The U.S.
Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends that all adults
over 50 be screened for colorectal
cancer on July 16, 2002 in Annals of Internal Medicine. The
USPSTF identified that the fecal occult blood test and flexible sigmoidoscopy
have been shown to reduce death from colorectal cancer. Adults with
known risk factors for colorectal cancer, such as a personal history of
ulcerative colitis or a family history of colorectal cancer, need more
intensive screening.
Alcohol Causes
Hypertension
One or two drinks a day can raise the risk of developing hypertension
in some men, according to two Japanese studies, published in the July issue
of Alcohol: Clinical Experience and Research, found that men who had as
few as one or two glasses of alcohol on a regular basis had a much higher
incidence of hypertension than those who did not drink at all. Several
U.S. studies have found that moderate drinking habits can actually decrease
the risk of heart disease. American studies have also found that regular
alcohol consumption does not affect hypertension risk below a threshold
of three to six drinks. This may be because there is significantly more
obesity in the United States than in the Japanese population.
Exercise: According to the results of a study led by an investigator from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, USA, presented on July 3 at the 18th UICC International Cancer Congress in Oslo, Norway, a regular, moderate-intensity exercise program lowers levels of blood estrogens in postmenopausal women. The study included 173 women between the ages of 50 and 75 years who were previously sedentary, overweight or obese, and not taking hormone- replacement therapy. The women were recruited from the Seattle, area. At the beginning of the study, there was a strong, statistically significant correlation between body size and levels of estrogens: heavier women had higher levels of all three estrogens studied (estradiol, estrone and free estradiol). After three months, women in the exercise group had a 7 percent decrease in the level of estradiol, the most potent blood estrogen, while women in the stretching group had no change in estradiol levels. Among exercisers, there was a 4 percent decrease in estrone levels compared with a 3 percent increase in controls, and the difference was statistically significant. Previous studies have found associations between high levels of body fat, a sedentary lifestyle and high blood-estrogen levels. More than two dozen epidemiologic studies have found that women who exercise have a 30 to 40 percent reduced risk of developing breast cancer. NYTimes. (Physical activity may be a reason why there is relatively high breast cancer incidence in the developed world compared to the developing world where 80% of the populations work in the agricultural fields. See breast feeding below).
Breast-feeding is a factor that may help to reduce a woman's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, according to a new analysis of research data from 30 countries. The relatively high breast cancer rates found in developed countries are largely explained by the fact that women in those countries have chosen to have few children and to breast-feed them briefly or not at all, according to the detailed analysis of 47 studies by a British research group. Researchers have long known that having a full-term pregnancy before the age of 30 lowers breast cancer risk and that having additional pregnancies further reduces the chances of developing the disease. For the first time, the analysis confirms that breast-feeding itself can protect against breast cancer. The analysis found that a woman's relative risk of breast cancer declines by 7 percent with each birth and by an additional 4.5 percent for each year that she breast-feeds. Although those figures translate into modest risk reductions for an individual, the researchers concluded that if all women in developed countries breast-fed their infants for an extra six months, about 25,000 cases of breast cancer or about 5 percent of cases would be prevented each year. Researchers speculate that breast-feeding may provoke hormonal or tissue changes that protect against cancer. Breast cancer rates had been rising in developed countries while rates in developing countries remained relatively low. Public health researchers and cancer activists have focussed on other risk factors, such as hormone use, diet and obesity, that women can more easily modify. Washington Post . Lack of physical activity may be another reason for cancer in developed countries, since physical activity is a major difference between developing countries and developed countries (see also Exercise above ). See below for the impact of breast feeding on the children's intellectual development .
Children's Intellectual Development
A new analysis of the largest government child care study has found
that early maternal employment has negative effects on children's intellectual
development. The new study, to be released on Wednesday in Child
Development magazine, is based on data from the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care, which
followed more than 1,000 children in 10 cities over three years, examining
maternal sensitivity, home environment, hours in child care and quality
of child care. The study by the institute, a branch of the National Institutes
of Health, is considered the most comprehensive child care study to date.
The analysis found that 3-year-olds from an average home environment,
in average-quality child care, whose mother did not work by the ninth month,
scored at the 50th percentile on the Bracken School Readiness test, which
assesses children's knowledge of colors, letters, numbers, shapes and comparisons.
Children in similar settings whose mothers were employed by the ninth month
scored at the 44th percentile. The report is the latest to use data from
the national institute's study of early childhood development. Last year,
a report based on the data concluded that children who spent long hours
in day care tended to be more aggressive and have more behavioral problems.
Other reports based on the data have found no link between long hours in
child care and lower scores on school-readiness tests. The study
analyzed how other factors interacted with maternal employment in shaping
children's development. Children whose mothers worked by the time the babies
were 9 months old, and had insensitive mothers and poor-quality child care,
had scores in the 37th percentile. The 3-year-olds who did best on
the test, scoring at the 56th percentile, were those who had sensitive
mothers who were not employed by the ninth month, and good-quality child
care. As other studies have found, boys were more vulnerable than
girls to the effects of early maternal employment. The new analysis
examined the number of hours the mother was employed rather than the number
of hours the child was in care - and found that maternal employment of
30 hours a week or more by the time a baby was 9 months old was associated
with lower scores on school readiness tests at age 3. NYTimes
Babies who are breast-fed are less likely to become severely overweight as they grow through childhood, according to a major study released yesterday. The study of more than 15,000 pre-adolescents found that those who were formula-fed as infants were 22 percent more likely than breast-fed babies to be obese or overweight by the time they reached ages 9 to 14. The study, conducted by Harvard University researchers, also found that the longer an infant was breast-fed, the less likely he or she would be overweight. A second study of 2,685 younger children ages 3 to 5 by researchers at the National Institutes of Health also found that breast-feeding might help reduce the risk that children would become overweight but concluded the effect was minor. Nevertheless, taken together, the two studies offer compelling evidence that breast-feeding helps protect against weight problems later in life, other researchers said. (If mothers think they can let their kids sit in front of the TV and eat McDonald's because they were breast-fed when they were babies, they're wrong.) Washington Post
Researchers and breast-feeding advocates say that many of the steepest
barriers are for poor and working women. Alexis Neely, a lawyer who works
with the Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles, said, "It takes
a lot of support to keep a breast-feeding relationship going between mother
and child, and lots of women just don't get that," she said. Neely
said women call her almost every week to report being harassed for breast-feeding,
including recent calls from women who were told they couldn't nurse in
a library, a school and a health clinic. She considers the incidents to
be civil rights violations and says they are increasing. But she says that
is not entirely bad. "We're getting more harassment of breast-feeding mothers
because more of them are deciding to do it in public," she said.
" And that'sthe only way breast-feeding will really increase
." Washington Post
Summer and Skin
Cancer
According to Center for the Advancement of Health, the annual sunburn
is still a tradition for many Americans, with nearly 60 percent of young
adults reporting at least one sunburn in the past year. Sun damage
is the leading preventable cause of both the most deadly form of skin cancer,
melanoma, and of the most common forms, basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas.
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer, occurring in more than 1
million Americans annually. Sunburn represents severe skin damage and has
been linked to an increased risk of skin cancer. Reporting
in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine
on data from a national survey with more than 150,000 respondents, the
researchers found that 31.7 percent of Americans had been sunburned within
the previous 12 months. At 44 percent, white men were the most
likely to have had at least one sunburn over the past 12 months. About
40 percent of these men reported three or more sunburns during that time.
Black men and women had the lowest rates of sunburn, with about 5 percent
reporting a sunburn during the past year. There was a strong relationship
between age and sunburns. While 7 percent of adults 65 and older reported
being sunburned, 57.5 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 had been sunburned
at least once in 12 months. These findings complement those of a recently
published study that showed that sunburn rates among teenagers, 12 to 18
years old, might go as high as 80 percent. The researchers
also identified higher rates of sunburn among people with higher education,
higher income and having more children, all signs of Americans with greater
affluence and possibly more leisure time in which to get sunburned.
Cloning
Six couples trying to become the parents of the first clones will be
flown to an unnamed developing country by a leading fertility expert before
the end of the year, a Scottish weekly said on July 21st. One
of the six couples, Americans Bill and Kathy, who did not want to reveal
their surname, told The Sunday Herald that the experiment will be
led by American fertility expert Panos Zavos. Kathy, a sales representative
in her mid-40s, spent a total of 24 months on IVF treatments and for 17
months of this time she was taking injectable drugs, the paper said.
The couple attended the Andrology Institute of America, a fertility clinic
run by Zavos in the southern US city of Kentucky, and were selected for
the process, the paper said. In Kathy and Bill's case, the
child produced would be a clone of the mother and would be made up almost
entirely of Kathy's DNA, the weekly said.
Kamadhenu Arka
The USPTO has granted a patent to Indian scientists to use a distillate
of cow urine for better absorption of medicines in the body.An excited
Union S&T Minister Murli Manohar Joshi announced on Wednesday that
the invention was “a combination of Indian traditional wisdom and modern
science”. US 6,410,059, Khanuja, et al., June 25, 2002.
In Ayurveda cows urine is suggested for improving general health. But
it is never scientifically tested for any utility alone. The applicants
have developed the curiosity about this component in the preparations and
asked many questions to them; whether the component cow urine is having
any activity by itself or it does not have any activity but enhance the
activity of other components in the preparations? What are the components
present in the urine of cow? Whether the urine contains
microorganism, which are beneficial? Whether the degradation products
from the urine are beneficial? To answer these questions the applicant
obtained "Kamadhenu Arka" the urine distillate from "Go-Vigyana
Anusandhana Kendra" Nagpur, India. Kamadhenu Arka is the urine distillate
suggested for drinking to improve the general health and sold and distributed
in different size bottles. The applicants tested the urine on Luria agar
and broth in sterile condition and did not notice any growth of microorganism.
To test whether this is inhibitory to growth of different microorganism,
Escherichia coli and Mycobacterium smegmatis were grown at different temperatures
ranging from 20 to 40 degrees C in presence and in absence of the cow urine
distillate, no significant difference in the colony count is noticed. Surprisingly,
the same distillate enhanced the antibiotic action on these bacteria leading
to this invention. The novelty of the invention lies in the fact revealed
through precise experimentation that the enhancement action and its effectiveness
is achievable only in the range of concentration which is literally in
nano to micro molar levels. And when a higher concentration/dosage is used
in the formulation or combinations the activity(ies) do not appear. That
should be the reason for non-detection such a valuable potential of cow
urine (Go-mutra). From million doses of annual antibiotics consumption
goes waste as these could not be utilized or targeted to the infective
organisms effectively due to various factors like efficient absorption,
transportation to the target site, retention time, operation of efflux
pump, metabolism etc. Thus, large portions of the drugs we apply are wasted
and only a miniscule percentage is being targeted to the infective microbes.
Also, the unutilized drug/antibiotic amount remains as a load in the body
and environment acting as a selection pressure to facilitate emergence
of drug resistance in parasites and their predominance, ultimately leading
to failure of antibiotics against resistant infections. This also is responsible
for side effects, illness and reduction in life expectancy being more acute
in the older population. One of the ways, which has been feasible to reduce
drug dosage, has been synergism between two therapeutic agents. However,
if both have the antibiotic property, still the problem of continued selection
pressure on microbes is likely to continue. So, the applicants thought
of utilizing cow urine, which is not microbicidal but when present with
a drug or active molecule, enhances the drug activity and availability
(bioenhancers). This way, the selection pressure will be counter-balanced
simultaneously reducing the dosage of antibiotics or drugs for minimizing
the side effects, which has also high commercial importance. (US 6,410,059)
Viagra for Babies
Doctors are giving infants and babies the anti-impotence drug Viagra
to save them from a life-threatening lung condition even though it has
not been tested on children. The drug, produced by US pharmaceutical
giant Pfizer, has already been used to treat a small number of children
with pulmonary hypertension (PHT) in India, the United States, Canada and
Britain with promising results. (Online New Scientist magazine)
Cognitive
Difference between Men and Women
A study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July
23rd, reports that when groups of women and men were tested for their ability
to recall or recognize highly evocative photographs three weeks after first
seeing them, a team of psychologists found that the women's memories were
10 to 15 percentage points more accurate. It found that the women's
neural responses to emotional scenes was much more active than the men's.
In the study, Canli and his colleagues individually tested the emotional
memory of 12 women and 12 men using a set of pictures. Some of the pictures
were ordinary, and others were designed to evoke strong emotions.
Women and men had distinctively different emotional responses to the same
photos, when each of the subjects viewed the pictures. In a memory
test tailored for each person, three weeks later they were asked to pick
out pictures that they earlier rated as "extremely emotionally intense."
The pictures were mixed among 48 new pictures. Each image was displayed
for less than three seconds. Men recalled around 60 percent and women
recalled about 75 percent of pictures that were highly emotional.
Serves 6
Ingredients
2 pounds white potatoes
Salt to taste
1/2 cup minced onion
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon sugar
4 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/3 cup white vinegar
1/3 cup water
1 teaspoon (or more) celery seeds
1/4 cup minced onion
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped green bell pepper
Chopped fresh parsley to taste
Preparation
Exchanges: Bread 2; Vegetables 1/2; Fat 1/2.
