Scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITG) opened a new front against the cause of sleeping sickness. This parasite is transmitted between humans by tsetse flies. The researchers learned a bacterium living in those flies how to produce antibodies against the parasite. Application in the field is still a long way of, but the technique shows quite some promise.

Sleeping sickness is caused by trypanosomes, parasites being transmitted by the bite of a tsetse fly.

The World Health Organization estimates the yearly death toll at between 10,000 and 20,000 people. On top of that, the parasite also infects cattle, causing considerable economic loss. Many small African farmers depend on their cattle.

Without treatment, an infection is irrevocably fatal. Unfortunately, many poor people present at the hospital only in a late stadium. At that time the Trypanosoma parasites have lodged themselves in the brain, behind the notorious blood-brain barrier that keeps most drugs out. Arsenic compounds can pass the barrier and kill the parasite, but they also kill five per cent of the patients. New drugs are not in the pipeline.

Researchers have identified a way in which men can develop prostate cancer after contracting trichomoniasis, a curable but often overlooked sexually transmitted disease.

Previous studies have teased out a casual, epidemiological correlation between the two diseases, but this latest study suggests a more tangible biological mechanism.

John Alderete, a professor at Washington State University's School of Molecular Biosciences, says the trichomoniasis parasite activates a suite of proteins, the last of which makes sure the proteins stay active.

"It's like switching a light switch on," he says. "Then, if you don't control the brightness of that light, you can go blind. That's the problem."

Alderete and colleagues at WSU and Washington University in St. Louis report their findings in the recent PLoS Pathogens.

Caused by a protozoan parasite, trichomoniasis is often referred to as the most common curable sexually transmitted infection. However, most infected people have no symptoms, so it often goes untreated.

A report recently published by Compassion in World Farming has concluded that meat from animals raised under higher welfare standards such as organic are also much better for you.

The report, which examined over 200 studies - utilising data from the 76 strongest - found that higher welfare meant lower levels of fat, including saturated fat, higher levels of Omega-3, and higher levels of antioxidants.


Some of the most significant differences were found in beef, where pasture-reared cattle were found to have up to 430% higher levels of Omega-3 and 335-700% higher levels of antioxidants than non-grassfed.

The report also looked at lamb, pigs, eggs, chicken and milk with similar results across the board.

Read the full report here.

Doctors may be able to predict as early as a woman's late 30s the age at which she will eventually experience menopause, based on how quickly the levels of one hormone in her blood change, according to a new study.

Researchers studied 293 women in their 30s and 40s, taking blood samples over several years to measure their levels of anti-mullerian hormone, or AMH, which is produced by the ovaries. They found that the amount of year-to-year change in AMH levels provided a good predictor of when the women experienced menopause.

Currently, the only way to estimate when a woman will enter menopause is by using her age - the average age that menopause occurs is 51, but women can also experience the change in their 40s or late 50s, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The new study showed that AMH levels explained nearly 82 percent of the variability between women.

Additionally, the researchers found that the women whose AMH levels changed the most reached menopause two years earlier on average, compared with women whose levels changed the least.

"AMH levels have added another indicator," of the age menopause will begin, said study author Ellen Freeman, a research professor at the University of Pennsylvania. This is helpful because age "is not a wonderfully accurate predictor, it's just an available predictor," she said.

© Guardian UKPortrait, author and activist Naomi Wolf, 10/19/11.

Parents considering male circumcision have a right to expect objective medical advice, untainted by commercial interests.

Matt Williams, an expectant father, stirred up strong debate this week in his Guardian essay on why he won't let his newborn son be circumcised. Referring to a new edict from the American Academy of Pediatrics insisting that "the health benefits of circumcision" outweigh the negatives, Williams spoke for many parents in demurring with this conventional wisdom, expressing the many reasons for his unease.

He pointed out that this delicate decision is often mystified by conflicting advice. The studies upon which the pediatricians rely, he noted, often have to do with highly specific data: the risks in Africa of Aids transmission in uncircumcised men, for instance. And he argued, quite fairly (though he wisely does not equate them), that the pediatricians' odd invocation of parental "religious" and cultural motivations for circumcision, and their assertion that these views should be respected quite apart from medical considerations, is a position that would be resisted if invoked by those who wanted to cut off bits of newborn girls' genitals.

Williams is not alone. A growing movement of men has arisen to decry the practice of circumcision as a mutilation they feel they have undergone, which they say is barbaric, traumatic and sexually desensitizing. But is circumcision indeed emotionally traumatic to newborn boys? And is it, separately considered, physically damaging?

When the parasite responsible for malaria infects human red blood cells, it launches a 48-hour remodeling of the host cells. During the first 24 hours of this cycle, a protein called RESA undertakes the first step of renovation: enhancing the stiffness of the cell membranes.

That increased rigidity impairs red blood cells' ability to travel through the blood vessels, especially at fever temperatures, according to a new study from researchers at MIT, the Institut Pasteur and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

This marks the first time that scientists have identified the specific role of the RESA protein in modulating blood circulation in an environment that mimics physiological conditions, and could help researchers determine new strategies to combat malaria, which infects an estimated 300 to 500 million people worldwide each year.

The study -- coordinated by MIT's Ming Dao, a principal research scientist in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Monica Diez Silva, a research scientist in DMSE; and YongKeun Park, an assistant professor of physics at KAIST -- appears Aug. 30 in Scientific Reports, an online journal of Nature.

Regarding Vaccines, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for Vaccine Damages, and HHS/FDA

Attorney Walter Kyle of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, began representing Plaintiffs with vaccine injuries ten years before the Vaccine Injury Act began, and has argued more than forty cases before the Special Masters of the United States Court of Federal Claims [under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act] - 42 U.S.C.A. §300aa, et.seq. As a result, Attorney Kyle has unique insight into the nuances of vaccine injury law.

To start our interview, may I ask how you became involved in vaccine law?

I began representation of vaccine-injured clients in Arkansas in 1977. My first case out of law school was representing a paraplegic mother who acquired paralytic polio from mutated Sabin live trivalent oral polio vaccine [TOPV] viruses shed from her three-month-old infant's diapers. Centers for Disease control classified the woman in the "immune deficient" category of "vaccine associated contact cases" from Type 2 Sabin vaccine.

For years scientists have been investigating the detrimental effects of gluten on brain and nerve tissue. A recent study published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry is just one more piece of evidence pointing to this overwhelming connection...

"Patients with established coeliac disease referred for neurological opinion show significant brain abnormality on MR imaging."

In the 1980s, audiologists began cautioning lovers of loud music about hearing loss that could potentially result from use of their Walkman or portable compact disc (CD) players. More than thirty years later, the integration of portable digital devices that play music are more abundant than almost every other electronic device in the world, and all of them have an earphone jack. Scientists from the University of Leicester have shown for the first time how noises louder than 110 decibels (dB) cause cell damage which ultimately leads to hearing loss.

Noise-induced hearing loss affects millions and it can be caused by exposure to loud noise over long periods of time, or by loud, short bursts of sound such as gunshots or fireworks.

Although people seem to be more aware of the impact of noise on their hearing, it's not clear whether they're changing their behavior, says Nancy Nadler, director of the Noise Center of the League for the Hard of Hearing in New York City. "We need to help people understand how important their hearing is to them before it's too late. Because once you suffer from a noise-induced hearing loss, there's very little you can do. You cannot get your hearing back," at least not under normal circumstances Nadler stresses.

The researchers said that earphones or headphones on personal music players can reach noise levels similar to those of jet engines, which can reach 140dB at 100 feet distance.

The previous study published in the International Journal of Audiology, demonstrated that teens have harmful music-listening habits when it comes to iPods and other MP3 devices. "In 10 or 20 years it will be too late to realize that an entire generation of young people is suffering from hearing problems much earlier than expected from natural aging," says Prof. Muchnik of TAU's Department of Communication Disorders.

Thanks to aggressive marketing techniques, pharmaceutical companies are raking in profits from atypical antipsychotic medications - drugs originally approved for mental illnesses that are as serious as they are rare.

It's no surprise then that a major portion of the sales of these types of "hard-core" psychiatric drugs come from off-label uses. Drugs such as Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Abilify are now increasingly prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat conditions they were never intended or approved for, such as:

• Anxiety
• Attention-deficit disorder (ADD)
• Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Behavioral problems, and
• Insomnia