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Serious Vision Problems and Eye Disease Climbing Rapidly in U.S.

Elizabeth Renter
Natural Society
Sat, 25 Aug 2012 14:33 UTC
Eyes
© Natural Society
It seems as if illness and disease are always in the news, that degenerative conditions are always rising in the United States. And recent news reflects that eye disease is no different, with serious vision problems rising steadily in the U.S. Is this increase able to be reversed through diet, or is it simply something we must live with?

The Scary Rise in Vision Problems and Eye-Disease

A new report from the organization Prevent Blindness America says that numerous eye disorders are climbing at alarming rates - many of them with effects including blindness. Macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and cataracts are all included and seem to be affecting more and more people each day.

According to their report, which used Census data and new research, scientists compared Americans with vision problems now with those who had vision problems in 2000.

According to WebMD Health News, there has been a:
  • A 89% increase in diabetic retinopathy, with nearly 8 million people over the age of 40 affected
  • A 25% increase in age-related macular degeneration, with about 2 million over the age of 50 affected
  • "A 19% increase in cataracts, with more than 24 million people age 40 and older affected"
  • "A 22% increase in open angle glaucoma, with nearly 3 million people age 40 and older affected"
These rates of growth are alarming, to say the least. While some increase would be worthy of note, an 89% increase of diabetic retinopathy, for example, is a sign that something needs to change or we'll end up a nation of blind diabetics.

The rise in diabetic retinopathy is "scary," according to Anne Sumers, MD, a clinical correspondent for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Comment:
Do checkout our Diet and Health section on the forum for some great info on healthy living.

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Health

Imaging Study Sheds New Light On Alcohol-Related Birth Defects


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:24 UTC
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A collaborative research effort by scientists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Duke University, and University College of London in the UK, sheds new light on alcohol-related birth defects.

The project, led by Kathleen K. Sulik, PhD, a professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at UNC, could help enhance how doctors diagnose birth defects caused by alcohol exposure in the womb. The findings also illustrate how the precise timing of that exposure could determine the specific kinds of defects.

"We now know that maternal alcohol use is the leading known and preventable cause of birth defects and mental disability in the United States," Sulik said. "Alcohol's effects can cause a range of cognitive, developmental and behavioral problems that typically become evident during childhood, and last a lifetime."

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is at the severe end of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). First described in 1972, FAS is recognized by a specific pattern of facial features: small eyelid openings, a smooth ridge on the upper lip (absence of a central groove, or philtrum), and a thin upper lip border.
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Health

Sinus Irrigation With Tap Water Linked to Two Deaths


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:11 UTC
When water containing the Naegleria fowleri ameba, a single-celled organism, enters the nose, the organisms may migrate to the brain, causing primary amebic meningoencephalitis, a very rare -- but usually fatal -- disease. A new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases describes the first reported cases in the United States implicating nasal irrigation using tap water in these infections.

Now available online, the study highlights the changing epidemiology of this uncommon disease, as well as the importance of using appropriately treated water for nasal irrigation.

From 2002 to 2011, 32 N. fowleri infections were reported in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In this latest study, Jonathan Yoder, MPH, coordinator of waterborne diseases and outbreak surveillance at CDC, reports the work of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and CDC in investigating two cases in 2011 in Louisiana. Two unrelated patients, a 28-year-old man and a 51-year-old woman, each died within five days of being admitted to the hospital with meningitis-like symptoms. Both had used a neti pot for regular sinus irrigation. Because family members of both patients were certain the patients had no recent history of recreational freshwater contact, which is typically associated with the disease, sinus irrigation using disinfected (chloraminated) tap water was implicated.
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Health

Human Lungs Brush out Intruders


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:59 UTC
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© Adam GregorA runny nose and a wet cough caused by a cold or an allergy may not feel very good. But human airways rely on sticky mucus to expel foreign matter, including toxic and infectious agents, from the body.
A runny nose and a wet cough caused by a cold or an allergy may not feel very good. But human airways rely on sticky mucus to expel foreign matter, including toxic and infectious agents, from the body.

Now, a study by Brian Button and colleagues from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, helps to explain how human airways clear such mucus out of the lungs. The findings may give researchers a better understanding of what goes wrong in many human lung diseases, such as cystic fibrosis (CF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

The researchers' report appears in the 24 August issue of the journal Science.

"The air we breathe isn't exactly clean, and we take in many dangerous elements with every breath," explains Michael Rubinstein, a co-author of the Science report. "We need a mechanism to remove all the junk we breathe in, and the way it's done is with a very sticky gel called mucus that catches these particles and removes them with the help of tiny cilia."
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Magnify

How Does Body Temperature Reset the Biological Clock?


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:53 UTC
Numerous processes in our body fluctuate in a regular pattern during the day. These circadian (or daily) variations can be driven by local oscillators present within our cells or by systemic signals controlled by the master pacemaker, located in the brain. Ueli Schibler, professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, unveils a molecular mechanism by which body temperature rhythms influence the expression of 'clock genes' and synchronize local oscillators. This study, made in collaboration with a team at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale of Lausanne (EPFL), also demonstrates how the production of DBP, a protein involved in detoxification and drug metabolism, is modulated by daily variations of temperature.

This research has been published in Science.

Many of our physiological functions, such as heart beat frequency, hormone secretion or body temperature, are regulated by internal clocks. Most of our body's cells possess one of them, formed by a group of 'clock genes' displaying a cyclic activity that peaks every twenty-four hours. These local oscillators are synchronized by a central pacemaker, located in the brain which adapts to geophysical time by light-dark cycles.
The master clock also controls coordination signals that are sent to subsidiary oscillators. 'Body temperature variations constitute one of these daily resetting cues, but we did not know how it functioned', explains Ueli Schibler, professor at the Department of Molecular Biology of the UNIGE. To address this issue, the researcher's team has developed a system allowing to expose cells to simulated body temperatures cycles.
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Human Melanoma Stem Cells Identified


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:48 UTC
Cancer stem cells are defined by three abilities: differentiation, self-renewal and their ability to seed a tumor. These stem cells resist chemotherapy and many researchers posit their role in relapse. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Stem Cells, shows that melanoma cells with these abilities are marked by the enzyme ALDH, and imagines new therapies to target high-ALDH cells, potentially weeding the body of these most dangerous cancer creators.

''We've seen ALDH as a stem cell marker in other cancer types, but not in melanoma, and until now its function has been largely unknown," says the paper's senior author, Mayumi Fujita, MD, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and associate professor in the Department of Dermatology at the CU School of Medicine.

Fujita's group transplanted ALDH+ and ALDH- melanoma cells into animal models, showing the ALDH+ cells were much more powerfully tumorigenic. In the same ALDH+ cells, the group then silenced the gene that creates this protein, finding that with ALDH knocked down, melanoma cells died in cultures and lost their ability to form tumors in animal models. In cell cultures, silencing this ALDH gene also sensitized melanoma cells to existing chemotherapies. When the group explored human tumor samples, they found distinct subpopulations of these ALDH+ cells, which made up about 0.1-0.2 percent of patients' primary tumors. In samples of metastatic melanoma -- the most aggressive form of the disease -- the percentage of ALDH+ cells was greater, even over 10 percent in some tumors, further implying the powerful danger of these cells.
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Health

Astrocytes Control the Generation of New Neurons from Neural Stem Cells


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:42 UTC
Researchers from the Laboratory of astrocyte biology and CNS regeneration headed by Prof. Milos Pekny just published a research article in a journal Stem Cells on the molecular mechanism that controls generation of new neurons in the brain.

Astrocytes are cells that have many functions in the central nervous system, such as the control of neuronal synapses, blood flow, or the brain's response to neurotrauma or stroke.

Reduces brain tissue damage

Prof. Pekny's laboratory together with collaborators have earlier demonstrated that astrocytes reduce the brain tissue damage after stroke and that the integration of transplanted neural stem cells can be largely improved by modulating the activity of astrocytes.
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Health

Cup of Herbal Tea Could Help Fight Breast Cancer


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:39 UTC
Scientists at Aston University and Russells Hall Hospital have discovered that an extract from a common plant in Pakistan may help treat breast cancer.

The plant, Fagonia cretica, and known as Virgon's Mantlem, is commonly used in herbal tea. It has been traditionally used to treat women in rural Pakistan who have breast cancer, but up until now this treatment has been regarded as something of a folklore remedy. However, patients in Pakistan who have taken the plant extract have reported that it does not appear to generate any of the serious common side effects associated with other cancer treatments, such as loss of hair, drop in blood count or diarrhea.

Now, scientists at Aston University in Birmingham and Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley have undertaken tests of the plant extract and demonstrated that it kills cancer cells without damage to normal breast cells in laboratory conditions.

Professor Helen Griffith and Professor Amutul R Carmichael who lead the study are now aiming to identify which element or elements of the plant are responsible for killing the cancer cells with a view to eventually begin trails with human cancer patients.
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Health

Women With Alzheimer's Deteriorate Faster Than Men, Study


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:26 UTC
Women with Alzheimer's show worse mental deterioration than men with the disease, even when at the same stage of the condition, according to researchers from the University of Hertfordshire.

In the paper published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, the researchers discovered that men with Alzheimer's consistently and significantly performed better than women with the disease across the five cognitive areas they examined. Most remarkably, the verbal skills of women with Alzheimer's are worse when compared to men with the disease, which is a striking difference to the profile for the healthy population where females have a distinct advantage.

The researchers led by Professor Keith Laws completed a meta-analysis of neurocognitive data from fifteen published studies, which revealed a consistent male advantage on verbal and visuospatial tasks, and tests of both episodic1 and semantic2 memory.

Keith Laws, Professor of psychology, said: "Unlike mental decline associated with normal aging, something about Alzheimer's specifically disadvantages women.
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Health

Newly Discovered Genetic Markers Could Signal Colon Cancer Development


ScienceDaily
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:09 UTC
University of Minnesota Medical School and Masonic Cancer Center researchers have partnered with geneticists from Genentech, Inc., to discover how some proteins may cause the development of some forms of colon cancers.

The proteins -- part of R-spondin family -- normally help activate cell proliferation during embryonic development. Now, University of Minnesota researchers have discovered that when two types of R-spondins -- RSPO2 and RSPO 3 -- are reactivated in adults through certain gene mutations, they can signal cells to restart the cell proliferation process, which can lead to tumor growth in the colon.

The discovery, which involved multiple researchers from the University's Masonic Cancer Center, could lead the way to more personalized colon cancer therapy designed around the genetics of a patient's specific cancer. The results are available online now, in the journal Nature.

"These results suggest there is a potential for personalized therapies based on knowing a tumor's specific genetics," said David Largaespada, Ph.D., associate director of Basic Sciences and professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development. "And because these R-spondins are related to embryonic growth, and seem to not have major roles in the adult, targeting them would likely be low in side effects."
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