CNNMon, 23 Feb 2009 17:04 UTC
Beijing - At least 70 people in one Chinese province have suffered food poisoning in recent days after eating pig organs contaminated by a banned food additive, state-run media reported Monday.
Health officials in the Guangdong province in southeast China said most were treated at hospitals and released, but at least three people remained hospitalized, the China Daily newspaper reported.
The victims complained of stomach aches and diarrhea after eating pig organs bought in local markets since Thursday, China's Xinhua news agency reported. A local health official said initial investigations indicated that the pig organs were contaminated by clenbuterol, an additive that is banned in pig feed in China.
Three people were detained for suspected involvement in raising and selling contaminated pigs, authorities said.
Clenbuterol can prevent pigs from accumulating fat but is harmful to humans and can be fatal. One of the largest food poisoning cases involving clenbuterol happened in Shanghai in September 2006, when 336 people were hospitalized after eating pig meat or organs contaminated with the additive, China Daily said.
Around the globe, giving birth and caring for a baby is mostly women's work.
But that work is fraught with difficulty, and women are often navigating a sea of critical choices as they try to breast-feed and bring up a child, especially under conditions of scarcity.
Recent research by anthropologist Barbara Piperata of Ohio State University has shown that one of the most pressing issues for new mothers is the caloric cost of breast-feeding. Piperata has lived with the Ribeirinha people of the Amazon and analyzed how women in a culture that doesn't utilize a grocery store might cope with the high caloric demands of feeding a baby. Breast-feeding, it seems, takes an extra one-third of calories per day, and that increase is critical among the Ribeirinha, where women eat the meat and fish brought home by their husbands, and food is generally hard to come by.
There's one more reason to put eggs back on the menu.
Researchers in Canada have published evidence that eggs, often frowned upon because of their cholesterol content, may actually reduce a major risk factor in heart disease: high blood pressure.
In fact, they found that eggs may be just as effective in bringing down high blood pressure as ACE-inhibiting prescription drugs.
Robert S. Boyd
PhysOrgSun, 22 Feb 2009 20:00 UTC
Millions of "natural killer cells" -- nature's first line of defense against cancer, viruses and other infectious microbes --- are on constant patrol inside your body.
These tiny assassins, the immune system's rapid-response team, can quickly spot a dangerous cell, poke holes in its outer wall and release poisons to destroy it. They also alert other immune cells to join the attack.
Despite their forbidding name, natural killer cells are the good guys in the never-ending war against disease.
Scientists on Sunday unveiled lab-made human antibodies that can disable several types of influenza, including highly-lethal H5N1 bird flu and the "Spanish Flu" strain that killed tens of millions in 1918.
Tested in mice, the antibodies work by binding to a previously obscure structure in the flu virus which, when blocked, sabotages the pathogen's ability to enter the cell it is trying to infect, according to the study.
Because this structure -- described by one scientist as a "viral Achilles' heel" -- is genetically stable and has resisted mutation over time, the antibodies are effective against many different strains.
The breakthrough "holds considerable promise for further development into a medical tool to treat and prevent seasonal as well as pandemic influenza," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the study.
Comment: To clarify, the proposed "universal flu vaccine" is not, strictly speaking, a "vaccine". The latter is defined as "immunogen consisting of a suspension of weakened or dead pathogenic cells injected in order to stimulate the production of antibodies". Here, what is being injected is the antibodies themselves, which work as an effective medicine against pathogens. They fall in the realm of immunotherapy rather than disease prevention (especially since it is not clear whether these monoclonal antibodies confer long term immunity).
If you've stood in line at a farmers' market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.
But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers' markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.
For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing. How, then, has this seemingly life-threatening behavior remained constant among various species of animals?
A new study by scientists at North Carolina State University shows that the fruit fly is genetically wired to sleep, although the sleep comes in widely variable amounts and patterns. Learning more about the genetics of sleep in model animals could lead to advances in understanding human sleep and how sleep loss affects the human condition.
The study, published online in Nature Genetics, examined the sleep and activity patterns of 40 different wild-derived lines of Drosophila melanogaster - one of the model animals used in scientific studies. It found that, on average, male fruit flies slept longer than females; males slept more during the day than females; and males were more active when awake than females. Females, in turn, tended to have more frequent bouts of sleep, and thus were disrupted more from sleep, than males.
The mystery of how some people can eat and never put on weight while others struggle to shed a single ounce may have finally been solved by scientists.
Slight differences in a single gene may be responsible for suppressing the metabolism, making its carriers permanently sluggish and unable to burn calories as effectively.
In contrast, thinner people seem to use up energy more rapidly, expending it in excess heat.
Scientists have long suspected that genetic differences were responsible for weight gain and singled out the FTO gene as the main culprit.
Abuse in early childhood can dramatically alter the way the brain copes with stress in adulthood, research shows.
Children abused during their formative years can undergo a change in the structure of their brains, which inhibits the expression of a stress hormone-related gene (NR3C1).
This would make such children less able to cope with stress, according to the Canadian study, which examined the brains of 12 people with a history of child abuse who had taken their own lives.
BBCWed, 18 Feb 2009 18:57 UTC
Repeated warnings about so-called tan jabs appear to be going unheeded in the UK, experts believe.
Health experts have warned that using melanotan I and II could damage the immune and cardiovascular systems as well as triggering other problems.
But Liverpool John Moores University's Michael Evans-Brown said it seemed the problem was worsening, not improving.
Comment: To clarify, the proposed "universal flu vaccine" is not, strictly speaking, a "vaccine". The latter is defined as "immunogen consisting of a suspension of weakened or dead pathogenic cells injected in order to stimulate the production of antibodies". Here, what is being injected is the antibodies themselves, which work as an effective medicine against pathogens. They fall in the realm of immunotherapy rather than disease prevention (especially since it is not clear whether these monoclonal antibodies confer long term immunity).