Researchers read drug patterns in European sewage

"The Antwerp city hall. Drug testers sifting through raw sewage in 19 European cities found the highest cocaine use in Antwerp, a Nordic preference for methamphetamines and Amsterdam unsurprisingly leading in cannabis use. (AFP Photo/Herwig Vergult)" title

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Researchers report more condom use among teenagers

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Researchers to test monthly vaginal ring for HIV prevention

Reuters – 17 hrs ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two large clinical trials in Africa are ramping up to test the effectiveness of a vaginal ring that releases an HIV-fighting drug for a month or more, offering women at high risk a discreet way to protect themselves from the virus that causes AIDS.

The studies will test the effectiveness of a vaginal ring containing the antiretroviral drug dapivirine in thousands of women in several African countries to evaluate its ability to prevent new HIV infections and its long-term safety.

If effective, the ring will add "a long-acting, female-initiated technology to the existing toolkit of HIV prevention options," said Dr. Zeda Rosenberg, chief executive officer of International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM), a nonprofit group founded by Rosenberg which is developing the ring.

Because it only needs to be replaced once a month, the ring may help address some of the problems with getting women to consistently use vaginal gels each time they have sex, Rosenberg said during a briefing at the International AIDS Conference in Washington.

Irregular use is thought to be the reason a large study of the microbicidal gel containing the anti-HIV drug tenofovir failed to prevent infections in women in sub-Saharan Africa.

IPM has a royalty-free licensing agreement with Johnson & Johnson's Janssen unit in Ireland to use its dapivirine antiretroviral product in gel and ring forms to prevent HIV infections in low and middle income countries.

Dapivirine is part of a class of antiretroviral drugs that have long been used to treat HIV and prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus.

NIH PARTNERSHIP

The IPM study will enroll 1,650 women aged 18 to 45, who will be randomly assigned to use the ring or a placebo in four sites in South Africa, with plans to expand to sites in Rwanda and Malawi.

It is being conducted in partnership with the U.S. National Institutes of Health-backed Microbicide Trials Network, which just started enrolling women in a separate trial called ASPIRE.

"Developing scientifically proven forms of HIV prevention that women can control is essential," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

"Because the vaginal ring is a long-acting intervention, it has a potential added benefit in that women may find it relatively easy to use."

The ASPIRE study will test the ring in 3,476 women aged 18 to 45 in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Women in the studies will be offered condoms and counseling on HIV prevention, and taught how to insert the vaginal ring. At monthly visits, researchers will keep track of whether women are still using the ring and give them a replacement.

Those women who become pregnant during the study will discontinue use of the ring, and their safety and that of their child will continue to be monitored.

Dr. Saidi Kapiga of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who is coordinating the ring study in Africa and has also conducted tests of vaginal gels for HIV protection, said there are already signs that women prefer the new option.

"It is acceptable," Kapiga told the briefing. "The fact that they use it only once in four weeks was a major advantage."

Both trials are designed to detect at least a 60 percent reduction in HIV risk, but researchers said they hope for even better results, which are expected in 2015.

"If proven to be effective, I think this will really revolutionize prevention for women," Dr. Sharon Hillier, who heads the Microbicide Trials Network at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told the briefing.

(This story corrects Rosenberg's first name to Zeda in paragraph 3 and number of women in study to 1650 in paragraph 8)

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Eric Walsh)

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'Fish Pedicure' a Recipe for Bacterial Infection, Researchers Warn

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Researchers Link Joint Deterioration to Periodontal Problems

For the first time researchers have linked bacterial problems in the mouth to the deterioration of joint health.  They found that the spread of adverse mouth bacteria, through the inflamed gum tissue and into the circulation, could wind up in the synovial fluid of joints and cause major problems associated with both osteoarthritis Degenerative joint disease. Most common type of arthritis that causes a chronic, progressive, breakdown in cartilage in middle-age adults and older. and rheumatoid arthritis.

While this is not the only reason for joint pain and arthritis, I believe it is a common reason for such problems and a contributing factor for a majority of people.  I have observed for many years the relationship between digestive inflammation and joint deterioration.  For example, in children inflammatory joint problems are almost always caused by digestive imbalance.  The same is true for many adults.  The health of the mouth is oftentimes a reflection of general digestive health.

The take-home message is clear.  People suffering from joint pain should also consider their digestive and periodontal health both have potential to affect their joints.  Recently I explained that silver could readily disrupt biofilms (germ gangs) in the mouth, making gargling with colloidal silver one approach to this.  At the most fundamental level of solution is increasing intake of friendly flora and fiber.  Other natural immune support compounds may be needed, including fully addressing the Candida issue.  Dental work as well as routine cleanings may be very important.

There is plainly no reason to watch your joints disappear simply because you have an unmanaged dental or digestive problem.  As the above study points out, even a joint replacement is likely to fail if the problem goes uncorrected.

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Chinese researchers eye anti-AIDS gel

Chinese researchers eye anti-AIDS …

Chinese researchers said Monday they have discovered an HIV-blocking agent that could be developed into a gel to limit the sexual transmission of AIDS.

Scientists from Hong Kong University said joint research with Shanghai Targetdrug Co., Nanjing University and City University of Hong Kong had discovered a molecule that blocks HIV from entering human cells.

Zhiwei Chen, director of the AIDS Institute of the University of Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, said the potency of the TD-0680 molecule against sexually transmitted HIV was "encouraging".

The new molecule could be developed into a microbicide gel to "prevent HIV sexual transmission" by killing off the virus as it tries to enter the body.

This would give people, especially women, an "alternative method to protect themselves from the virus, in addition to condoms", Chen said.

"The ideal solution is to develop an effective vaccine. Since such a vaccine remains elusive, we must explore other strategies such as topical microbicide," he said.

The TD-0680 molecule is several times more potent than Maraviroc, a Pfizer-developed equivalent which has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for clinical treatment, the Chinese scientists said.

Unprotected sex accounts for more than 90 percent of AIDS infections in China, the researchers said in a statement.

Their work was published recently in the peer-reviewed Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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Researchers Repair Damage Caused by Heart Attacks in Mice

HealthDay – 29 mins ago WEDNESDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists report they were able to repair mouse hearts that were damaged by heart attacks.

Researchers from the Gladstone Institutes successfully converted scar tissue in the mice into beating heart muscle. Their findings, they said, might eventually lead to a similar treatment for people who've had heart attacks.

"The damage from a heart attack is typically permanent because heart-muscle cells -- deprived of oxygen during the attack -- die and scar tissue forms," Dr. Deepak Srivastava, who directs cardiovascular and stem cell research at Gladstone, a nonprofit biomedical research institution, said in a Gladstone news release. "But our experiments in mice are a proof of concept that we can reprogram non-beating cells directly into fully functional, beating heart cells -- offering an innovative and less invasive way to restore heart function after a heart attack."

In conducting the study, the researchers delivered three genes, known as GMT, involved in embryonic heart development directly into the damaged areas of the mouse hearts. They found the non-beating scar tissue was transformed into beating heart muscle within one month. The heart function of the mice improved even more after three months, the study added.

"These findings could have a significant impact on heart-failure patients -- whose damaged hearts make it difficult for them to engage in normal activities like walking up a flight of stairs," Li Qian, a postdoctoral scholar, who is also a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine postdoctoral scholar and a Roddenberry Fellow, said in the news release. "This research may result in a much-needed alternative to heart transplants -- for which donors are extremely limited. And because we are reprogramming cells directly in the heart, we eliminate the need to surgically implant cells that were created in a petri dish."

The next step, the study authors noted, is to duplicate their research and test its safety in larger mammals, such as pigs. This will bring the scientists one step closer to testing this type of treatment in people.

"We hope that our research will lay the foundation for initiating cardiac repair soon after a heart attack -- perhaps even when the patient arrives in the emergency room," said Srivastava, who is also a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, with which Gladstone is affiliated.

The findings were published online April 18 in the journal Nature.

In the future, the scientists say they hope this type of direct reprogramming will be used to also treat spinal cord injury and illnesses such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

While the findings of the new study are promising, scientists note that research involving animals often fails to produce similar results in humans.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute provides more information on heart attacks.

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Researchers Find Gene Mutations That May Be a Key to Autism

HealthDay – 2 hrs 26 mins ago WEDNESDAY, April 4 (HealthDay News) -- Genetic mutations that arise spontaneously, as opposed to being passed through generations, could play an important role in the development of autism, new research suggests.

Three research teams sequenced the genes of children with sporadic autism, meaning it did not run in their families, and compared the sequences with those of their parents and siblings. Their results were published in three separate articles on April 4 in the journal Nature.

"We found that 15 to 20 percent of sporadic patients could be explained by 'de novo'

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