Filtered Sunlight Is Good Cure for Infant Jaundice, Study Says

Filtered sunlight is a cheap, effective way to treat infant jaundice, according to a study by Stanford researchers.

Jaundice — caused by an excess of bilirubin in the blood — leads to brain damage or death in about 150,000 babies a year in poor countries. The problem is common in newborns, whose livers sometimes need several days after birth to generate the enzymes needed to break down bilirubin, which is released when red blood cells break down. Yellow skin and eyeballs are common symptoms.

In wealthy countries, jaundiced newborns are placed for several days under sunlamps that emit extra blue wavelengths of light and minimal ultraviolet or infrared ones.

It was established during World War II that artificial sunlight cures jaundice, which more than 28,000 soldiers developed after getting yellow fever vaccine made from human blood.

For years, American research focused on drugs to block bilirubin formation, while hospitals relied on lamps and, in extreme cases, transfusions to treat patients.

But hospitals in poor countries may be unable to afford lamps or may lack a steady electricity supply to run them.

The Stanford team, whose work was published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine, tested whether real sunlight —which is plentiful at many hospitals in tropical climes — could be made safe enough for babies to lie in for hours a day.

They treated 433 babies for jaundice at a hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. Half received sunlamp phototherapy, and half slept in outdoor cribs or their mothers’ laps under canopies of plastic film that filtered out ultraviolet and infrared rays.

The sunlight treatment was slightly more effective, and the children did not have more sunburn, dehydration or overheating.

The researchers have designed a small greenhouse to be used in windier or colder climates.

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Spread of Cigarettes in China

Chinese men now smoke one-third of all the world’s cigarettes, and a third of all young men in China are doomed to eventually die from the habit, scientists in China and Britain have concluded.

Their study, published last week in The Lancet, estimated that two-thirds of all males in China smoked, more were still taking up the habit and more were starting as teenagers, which adds risk.

With population growth stagnant, the number of men 60 or older is expected to double by 2030, and the number dying of smoking-related ailments each year will triple, hitting three million a year by 2050.

More smokers are stopping by choice, the study found, but still only 9 percent did so.

By contrast, smoking rates among women in China have dropped sharply; about 10 percent of older women smoke, but only about 1 percent of middle-aged women do. However, another recent study detected rapid increases among teenage girls in some regions.

Before China achieved prosperity, the Lancet study said, smokers typically started at age 25, more smoked pipes and many could not afford multiple cigarettes every day.

The study estimated future smoking-related deaths from many causes, including lung cancer, obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, heart failure and other cancers. Lung disease rates are already high in China, even among nonsmokers, owing to urban air pollution and to indoor wood fires used by the rural poor.

The study was led by scientists from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the University of Oxford.

Antismoking efforts in China face a difficult political situation: The central government has a monopoly through the Chinese National Tobacco Corporation, and more than 7 percent of government revenue comes from it.

According to an editorial accompanying the study, myths about smoking persist in China: that Asians are less susceptible to its dangers, that it is an ancient Chinese tradition and that quitting is easy.

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To Prevent Malaria in Humans, Scientists Try Protecting Pigs

For years , scientists have known of a sneaky way to kill mosquitoes: Give humans a deworming pill.

The active ingredient, ivermectin, kills not only worms infesting people but also mosquitoes who drink their drug-laden blood. (Ivermectin also kills lice, bedbugs and other blood-feeders. The drug’s inventors recently received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.)

Turning everyone in a village into a walking mosquito bomb, many scientists agree, could stop or slow transmission of malaria, yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya and other diseases.

But villagers with worms normally receive only one or two pills a year. Researchers aren’t certain it is possible — or safe — to boost blood levels of ivermectin high enough to wipe out generations of mosquitoes during the biting season, which can last for months.

Scientists at the medical school of the University of Barcelona have come up with a novel alternative: Use livestock.

In a poster presentation at a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Philadelphia last week, the researchers showed how they had implanted two-inch soft silicone rods releasing a steady dose of ivermectin under the skin of pigs.

Many poor farmers keep their animals near or even inside their homes to protect them from predators or thieves.

Some disease-carrying mosquito species alternate between biting animals and humans, said Dr. Carlos Chaccour, a researcher at the University of Barcelona’s Institute for Global Health and the University of Navarra. Ivermectin will kill most mosquitoes, but the dose needed varies by species.

Because not all poor farmers raise pigs — Muslims, for example, do not — the method will still need to be tested in cattle, goats, camels and other livestock.

Animals usually tolerate high doses of ivermectin safely, Dr. Chaccour said, but must be drug-free for some time before they are safe to eat. For example, cattle should not be slaughtered for food until 90 days after a single deworming treatment, according to guidelines by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

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Scientists develop first portable kit to detect cancer

Scientists have developed the world's first portable lab-in-a-briefcase that can operate even at high temperatures, with the aim of boosting early detection rates of cancer in developing countries.

Believed to be the first kit of its kind dedicated to the portable measurement of cancer biomarkers, the concept is the brainchild of Dr Nuno Reis, a Lecturer at the Loughborough University in UK.

With the help of his Research Associate Ana Isabel Barbosa, Reis developed a solution for diagnostic testing in remote areas of developing countries that lack adequate technology to support a full laboratory.

The lab-in-a-briefcase comprises of four components; a manually driven multi-syringe device capable of performing up to 80 simultaneous tests from whole blood samples at any one time; microwell plates pre-loaded with assay reagents; a portable USB-powered film scanner to image the test strips; and a portable computer for real-time data analysis.

The entire system can be carried in a small briefcase, handbag or laptop case, and requires just one operator with minimal training to conduct the test within 15 minutes - with no need for additional equipment or instruments.

One of the remarkable features of the lab-in-a-briefcase is that it uses whole blood without the need for any sample preparation a previously challenging task outside of a laboratory setting. A new affordable and disposable microfluidic test strip comprising of tiny tubes about the size of a human hair is used specifically for the quick measurement of different types of cancer biomarkers in a whole blood sample.

This technology, which operates in a similar way to a pregnancy test, has already been used successfully by Reis in a separate study that detected prostate cancer with the help of a smartphone camera. "Our lab-in-a-briefcase is both inexpensive and simple to use; it means that high precision diagnostic kits, complete with clinical laboratory equipment, can be made accessible to remote populations, and this is what makes it a truly life-changing concept for the screening and monitoring of different types of cancer," Reis said.

"This portable lab can really make a difference, boosting levels of cancer detection in developing countries where ordinarily people would not have such easy access to early diagnostics," he said. The number of people dying from cancer in developing countries is on the increase, partly due to steadily ageing populations, but also due to limited access to proper diagnostic tools.

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for over 8 million deaths per year, and 70 per cent of the world's cancer deaths occur in Africa, Asia and Central and South America.
The number of new cancer cases is expected to rise by 70% over the next two decades, researchers said. The study was published in the Lab on a Chip journal.

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Scientists Have developed a more effective 'multitasking' flu vaccine

Researchers from Australia say they may have uncovered a way to make the seasonal flu vaccine more effective, by adding a string of synthetic fat molecules that boost the body's immune response to the difference strains of the influenza virus.

It is estimated that worldwide, flu infections are responsible for around 3-5 million cases of severe illness and 250,000-500,000 deaths every year.

Young infants, pregnant women, adults aged 65 and older and those with weakened immune systems are at greatest risk for flu-related complications.

The best protection against flu is the seasonal flu vaccine, which is developed every year based on a prediction of which viruses are likely to be circulating. However, such predictions are sometimes far from accurate; earlier this year, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that the 2014-15 flu vaccine was only 23% effective across all age groups.

The low protection from last season's flu vaccine was put down to the emergence of influenza A H3N2 "drift variants" as the most predominant viruses, against which the vaccine had low effectiveness. 

"The holy grail would be to develop a vaccine that cross-protects against different strains, which would be beneficial for the whole community, even if the prediction of circulating strains is wrong," says Brendon Chua, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia and coauthor of this latest study. 

In addition, Chua and colleagues say such a vaccine would also be beneficial in the event that a strain of flu virus from another species evolves to infect humans; this has happened in the past with the H5N1 flu strain from birds and the H1N1 strain from pigs. 

Activating both innate and adaptive immunity to combat flu

The team hypothesized that a more effective, cross-protective flu vaccine could be developed by using an adjuvant that activates a variety of antibody-independent immune responses. 

The researchers had an adjuvant in mind to test - a synthetic lipopeptide, which consists of a string of fat molecules that simulate a lipopeptide found on the outer membrane of a pathogen. They explain that this adjuvant activates both innate and adaptive immune responses. 

The innate immune response is the body's first-wave, short-term defense against pathogens to help prevent cells from becoming infected, while the adaptive immune response is the longer-term defense in which immune cells learn to "remember" pathogens they have previously encountered to launch a more effective attack. 

"Harnessing both types of immunity would provide protection in that period during an outbreak when no [new] vaccine is available," notes Chua. 

Increased protection with adjuvanted vaccine

For their study, published in the journal mBio, the researchers gave a group of mice a low dose of an inactivated influenza A vaccine in which the synthetic lipopeptide had been added, while another group was given an inactivated influenza A vaccine without the adjuvant. Three days later, the mice were exposed to the flu strain that was included in the vaccine, as well as an "unmatched" strain that was not. 

The team found the mice that received the adjuvanted vaccine demonstrated much better protection against both flu strains, compared with mice that received the standard flu vaccine, and they even survived a normally lethal dose of the flu virus. 

What is more, the researchers found the mice that received a low dose of the adjuvanted vaccine produced around 600 times more neutralizing antibodies than mice that received a similar dose of the standard vaccine, and the adjuvanted vaccine also stimulated a higher number of T cells responsible for clearing flu infection in the lungs. 

"The culmination of all these responses is that it reduces the ability of the virus to infect cells, reproduce and spread," says Chua. 

The researchers then infected mice with flu virus strains - only one of which was included in the vaccine - 35 days after giving them either the low-dose adjuvanted vaccine or standard vaccine. 

The mice that received the adjuvanted vaccine showed significant protection against both strains, while mice that received the standard vaccine demonstrated low protection against both strains, according to the results.

"The biggest advantage is that this approach doesn't rely on getting a match between the strains used in the vaccine and circulating virus - you can still get some protective effect at the population level."

The team believes their findings suggest that adding a simple component to the seasonal flu vaccine may not only lead to more effective protection against the flu virus, but it could also offer community protection against a new flu strain in the early stages of an outbreak. 

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