Ingredient in Bananas May Prevent HIV Transmission
March 16, 2010
Topnews.us
By Jacob Ramsey
A new study reveals that a chemical has been found in bananas which may help prevent the transmission of virus causing AIDS.
The scientists from the University of Michigan said that the chemical lectin in bananas has been found as effective as two anti-HIV drugs, when tested in a laboratory. The scientists are now examining how this lectin could help combat AIDS.
Condoms and drugs are still in use to prevent the transmission of virus during sexual intercourse that causes AIDS. Scientists revealed that women living in poor countries require other forms of treatment to prevent the disease.
Lectin may help prevent the disease as it is very useful and is less expensive.
Lectins are sugar-binding proteins which play a vital role in recognition phenomena. This protein helps to identify the virus.
“That’s particularly true in developing countries where women have little control over sexual encounters so development of a long-lasting, self-applied microbicide is very attractive”, revealed study Senior Author Dr. David Marvovitz.
Click here for the full report.
HIV/AIDS Rises Among Girls and Women
March 12, 2010
Top News
By Jason Ramsey
Women are encouraged to get tested for HIV/AIDS regularly —every six months — and participate in National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD).
NWGHAAD is celebrated with an aim to raise awareness of the rising effect of HIV/AIDS on women and girls.
Launched by the Office on Women’s Health (OWH), on March 10 of every year, organizations across the country extends support discuss and educate women and girls about prevention, the need for regular testing, and the way to lead a normal, healthy life instead of being infected in recognition of NWGHAAD.
The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services claims that a woman in the United States gets tested positive for HIV every 35 minutes and nearly 25% Americans surviving with HIV are women.
Also, less than 15 percent of new HIV infections in the U. S. were among females 13 and older in the mid 1980s, which boosted to about 27 percent by 2006.
The Global Fund is reported to meet in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 24 with a view to examine how it can fulfill its goals eradicating or reducing instances of the three diseases by 2015.
It estimates that between $13-20 billion are needed for the period 2011-2013.
Click here for the full report
Disease Cause Is Pinpointed With Genome
March 12, 2010
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen
The studies, which would not have been possible a year or two ago, are the first real delivery of the promised transformation of medical science from the Human Genome Project’s mapping of the human genetic code.
One was also made possible by some of the $5 billion that U.S. President Barack Obama directed to the National Institutes of Health in September from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.
And in that study, the genetic researcher was himself one of the patients.
Dr. James Lupski of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has a recessive genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome. It affects the nerves stretching from the spinal cord to the arms, legs and feet.
Lupski has been experimenting on himself and his own family for years.
“We tried every other method for 25 years to find out which mutation was important,” he said in a telephone interview.
“With this methodology we were able to do it. This is the first time whole genome sequencing has applied to actually find the cause of a disease.”
Lupski had been taking blood samples from his grandparents, parents and siblings for years. He got close but the research was considered too risky for funding by the National Institutes of Health.
“He was only able to complete this study because of the stimulus money that we got,” said Dr. Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Her institute designated Lupski’s project for about half a million dollars of the money that Obama directed to the NIH.
RECESSIVE GENES
Lupski’s team used a gene sequencer from Carlsbad, California-based Life Technologies to read the entire DNA code in the samples from Lupski and three of his siblings who have the syndrome, his parents and four other siblings who do not.
“It is a recessive disease and neither of my parents have the disease. Each of us who has it got one mutant allele (gene) from my mom and one mutant allele from my dad,” he said.
Researchers know about 40 different genes that can cause Charcot-Marie-Tooth. But in each family, only one of these genes is involved.
The sequencing revealed a gene called SH3TC2, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Other groups are already working on a drug that may affect that gene, Lupski said.
The researchers also found that family members who inherited just one faulty copy of the gene had a predisposition to carpal tunnel syndrome, in which a nerve in the wrist can get pinched.
As prices are coming down on the cost of sequencing a human genome, more such research will be possible.
“We estimate that the entire effort would currently cost less than $50,000,” the researchers wrote.
In a second study, Jared Roach of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and colleagues sequenced the entire genomes of a family of four affected by two recessive genetic diseases — Miller syndrome, which can cause facial disfigurement, and primary ciliary dyskinesia, a lung disorder that raises the risk of respiratory infections because the hairlike extension on cells called cilia fail to move properly.
“Our results demonstrate the unique value of complete genome sequencing in families,” they wrote in the journal Science.
They used a sequencer made by another one of the companies exploiting genomic sequencing, Complete Genomics based in Mountain View, California.
Click here for the full report
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-10-10
Today, Kevin explains why the government is suppressing the free flow of information and why the medical community wants you to be deficient in vitamin D.
At Least 3 of 4 Americans Don’t Get Enough Vitamin D
1 in 6 Americans Infected with Herpes
FDA Approves Drug Banned In 160 Countries
Chemical Substances Found in All Commercial Meat
The Government Regulation of Supplements
Vitamin D Essential For Activating Immune System
Supreme Court Will Decide Whether Drug Makers Can Be Sued
Most Drug Studies Don’t Help Docs Pick Best Treatment
Tainted Ingredient Sold After Salmonella Found
Bone Strengthening Drug Linked to Fractures
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-3-10
Today, Kevin explains how Congressmen are able to exempt themselves from the laws they pass and why America & Russia have spent so much time in Afghanistan. Plus, find out how food companies can get away with working with the drug companies to hurt your health and what needs to happen to eliminate virtual every disease and illness.
Charlie Rangel Steps Down
Anti-Depressant Scam
How to Create a Perpetual Moneymaking Machine
Also, as a special treat, the tables are turned and Kevin gets hit with the tough questions by Corrine Furnari of Take Charge of Your Health. You won’t want to miss this interview!
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-2-10
Today, Kevin explains how corporations are scamming you and exposes the real person behind that politician. Plus, find out why someone would take a drug that has a common side effect of cancer.
More Proof of Government Corruption
FDA’s Approval of Aspartame under Scrutiny
Obama Yet to Kick Smoking Habit
Stop Smoking Now!
They Will Not Control Us
Plus, author & fitness guru, Jennifer Nicole Lee, stopped by to explain how the Law of Attraction helped her get the perfect body. Click here to purchase her new book, The Mind, Body & Soul Diet.
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
‘Preventative’ Mastectomy Found to Not Have any Benefits
Chron
By Todd Ackerman
Breast cancer patients are increasingly having preventive surgery to remove the unaffected breast, but a new study suggests it’s not beneficial for the vast majority of women who undergo it.
Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center on Thursday reported that an analysis of the records of more than 100,000 patients revealed a survival benefit in 6 percent of those who opted to have a double mastectomy. Most who benefited fit a particular profile that doctors can easily identify at diagnosis.
“It’s important for women to understand that, except for one subset of breast cancer patients, they don’t need to do this,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, an M.D. Anderson professor of surgical oncology and one of the study’s two lead authors. “Hopefully, it’ll reassure patients wondering if they should.”
The observational study, which was published online Thursday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found a double mastectomy offers a slight but real benefit to patients 50 and younger whose cancer is estrogen receptor negative and in the early stages. The study is the first to find such an association between the procedure and survival.
The study found no benefit among patients 60 or older undergoing a double mastectomy and murky results among those aged 50 to 60.
Women diagnosed with breast cancer are known to have an increased risk of developing breast cancer in the opposite breast. But the study found that preventive surgery on the opposite breast had little survival benefit, save for the one subset, either because patients die from the cancer they already have or from other medical conditions, or because the risk isn’t realized in their lifetime.
Surgeries increasing
The number of double mastectomies has grown dramatically in recent years. Many patients who choose that option say they do so because it gives them peace of mind.
Previous studies have found that the number more than doubled from 1998 to 2003, and Bedrosian said based on her experience the trend has seemingly continued to escalate. Statistics from 2003 show 11 percent of women having a mastectomy opted for one in their disease-free breast as well.
The increase is attributed to scans that can detect smaller, earlier cancers; genetic tests that can warn women of the inherited risk they face; and better plastic surgery techniques that make reconstructive surgery more appealing than it once was.
Bedrosian’s team identified 107,106 women in the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results registry who had a mastectomy to treat Stage I to Stage III breast cancer. Among that group, 8,902 women also had their unaffected breast removed.
At a five-year follow-up, 88.5 percent of those who had the elective mastectomy were alive, compared to 83.7 of those who didn’t.
After controlling for different variables, the M.D. Anderson team found that the younger women with early-stage tumors not fueled by estrogen had a survival benefit of 4.8 percent at five years, meaning for every 100 patients, fewer than five who would have died without the additional surgery were still alive. The prognosis is usually poorer for estrogen receptor-negative patients.
No other group showed a clear benefit.
One expert’s response to the data was to recommend that any woman requesting an elective mastectomy wait a year before having it done.
“In a younger woman with (estrogen receptor)-negative disease, an (elective) mastectomy may be considered,” said Dr. Victor Vogel, national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society. “In the vast majority of women older than 50 with ER-positive disease, prudent waiting is probably the most appropriate.”
Information for patients
One of Bedrosian’s patients was happy to have the data. Diagnosed in December with Stage II estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, the 33-year-old woman hadn’t thought of a double mastectomy until learning of her particular susceptibility to the disease spreading.
“For me, it was a very matter-of-fact decision,” said Rachel Jackson, an Austin triathlete who has yet to schedule either mastectomy. “I’m planning to live to 70 or 80.”
Nearly 200,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and 40,000 die of it. The majority do not have mastectomies.
Bedrosian emphasized that the study findings should not be interpreted as “a uniform mandate.”
“This is still a decision to be made by the patient after talking with her doctor,” Bedrosian said. “A younger woman with early-stage ER-negative breast cancer might have good reason not to want a (double) mastectomy, and an older woman — say, with a significant family history — might have good reason to want one.”
Click here for the full report
16 Year-Old Loses Eyesight After HPV Vaccination
March 1, 2010
The One Click Group
By Francis J. DiMario, Jr, Mirna Hajjar and Thomas Ciesielski
We report the course of a 16-year-old girl who presented with near complete visual loss associated with chiasmal neuritis and a biopsy proven tumefactive demyelinating lesion on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in association with a recent immunization against human papilloma virus.
She had received her second vaccination against human papilloma virus 10 days prior to her presentation. There was no family history of demyelinating disease, collagen-vascular disease, or rheumatological disorders.
In the context of prior vaccination in a 16-year-old girl, acute demyelinating encephalomyelitis is likely to explain the multifocal deficits.
Larger epidemiologic studies will be needed to confirm a role of the human papilloma virus immunization and demyelinating disease.
Click here for the full report
Mad Cow Disease Able to Mutate and Evolve
March 1, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
The Scripps Research Institute has published a study in the journal Science alleging that prions, lifeless protein particles that are believed to cause serious brain diseases, are able to mutate and develop resistance to drugs in the same way that bacteria and other living things do.
Associated with over 20 different brain diseases, prions have typically been thought to morph only once and in the presence of living transformation agents but recent research is suggesting that these proteins can continue to mutate as they transfer from host to host, becoming more virulent each time.
In the presence of infections like mad cow disease, prions are converted from their normal state into an abnormal, malignant state. As the disease gets passed around, it often becomes more deadly due to the ever changing characteristics of the prions which develop increasingly resistant to drugs.
Charles Weissman, head of the department of infectology at Scripps in Florida, remarked that prions have similar adaptive characteristics as viruses, yet without the DNA or RNA. Interestingly, lab tests showed that prions which were removed and placed into a new environment ended up out-performing those that remained in the original host. Each time prions are moved to a new environment, those that survive and adapt do so more quickly and effectively than did the ones at the original source.
Prions are normal and likely exist throughout the body. Though excited about their findings, researchers noted that the implications of their discovery reveal much about the dangers of continually mutating disease. Their solution is to investigate new drugs that can block normal prion proteins in order to prevent them from ever adapting and causing the host to develop resistance to other drugs.
Drugs, drugs, and more drugs seem to be the answer to every medical science problem in the Western world, even when the problem in question was likely caused by drugs. Similar to “superbugs” that are emerging due to overuse of antibiotics, the emergence of mutating proteins which develop resistance to drugs cannot be remedied by more drugs.
Mad cow disease is the result of feeding cows ground cow meal and other animal byproducts. Rather than pursue yet another drug to solve the problem, perhaps the best option is to reassess what cows eat and reformulate it to what is proper and healthful. The same strategy can and should be pursued with other diseases that easily morph and become increasingly virulent.
Click here for the full report
McCain Wants Feds to Regulate Vitamins and Supplements
February 26, 2010 by JP
Filed under Government
February 26, 2010
JBS.org
By Ann Shibler
Most are familiar with those commercials on television promoting prescription drugs that supposedly offer relief from a variety of ailments, if one would only pressure one’s doctor to obtain them. They have become a source of great entertainment and amusement to some, the kicker coming at the end of each commercial when the FDA-approved medication’s obligatory litany of warnings and dangerous side effects is recited: “Tell your doctor if….” and “Side effects may include…..” Some of the warnings are mild like diarrhea and constipation, some list serious effects like cancer or tuberculosis, and others admit that sometimes even death can result.
The point here is that these are all FDA-approved drugs being advertised and used extensively. Drugs that can cause serious diseases like lymphoma. Drugs that can kill. The FDA’s dismal safety record is well documented; even PBS ran a Frontline special that investigated and exposed the FDA’s unsafe drug record, the influence of Big Pharma inside the FDA, and lack of long-term testing and medical review of many, many dangerous drugs. The FDA seldom removes a drug from the market even after it proves to be harmful or deadly, however they do post quarterly reports with details of the latest potentially dangerous side effects of drugs currently under investigation.
Nonetheless, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) wants this same FDA, with its dismal safety record, to regulate dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA), S. 3002 (text of this bill posted on Senator McCain’s website), that McCain has introduced with one cosponsor, would repeal key provisions of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) to “more effectively regulate dietary supplements that may pose safety risks unknown to consumers.”
Under attack by the DSSA is the once-protected field of supplements, as they have always been considered food. Potencies would have to be reduced to comply with what appears to be a plan modeled after the European Food Safety Authority. A new list of “Accepted Dietary Ingredients” would be “prepared, published, and maintained by the Secretary,” in the future. That’s a bit like being handed a blank check and told to fill it out later as one wishes. It could certainly be used to severely limit access to, and even production of, hundreds of life-sustaining and essential mineral, herb, and vitamin products.
All ingredients contained in each supplement would have to be disclosed at the time the company registers all of its “manufactured, packaged, held, distributed, labeled or licensed,” products with the FDA. An onerous burden would be placed on the shoulders of suppliers and retailers of dietary supplements, as they would have to “obtain written evidence” from the seller that the product is registered as required by law, and keep that documentation on file. Monetary penalties for non-compliance “may, in addition to other penalties imposed in this section, be fined not more than twice the gross profits or other proceeds derived from the manufacture, packaging, holding, distribution, labeling, or license of such dietary supplement.” Those are very broad dictates and most likely subject to even broader interpretation.
The McCain bill would change existing mandatory serious adverse reporting regulations, requiring minor adverse effects to be reported as well so that the FDA could arbitrarily pull supplements off the shelves or reclassify them as drugs. This immediate recall authority would be granted to the “Secretary upon determination,” that there is a “reasonable probability” that the product is “adulterated” or “misbranded.” Adulterated in this bill takes on a whole new expanded definition: “A dietary supplement which contains a new dietary ingredient shall be deemed adulterated under section 402(f) unless there is a history of use or other evidence of safety.” The development of new products that contain newly discovered nutritional components may be entirely quashed.
The hypocritical contrast between the regulation of drugs that can kill and the proposed hyper-regulation for food products — vitamins, minerals, herbs — is as plain as the nose on everyone’s face.
A Pandora’s box of intended and unintended legal complications and government harassment of nutritional supplement manufacturers and sellers could very well be unleashed if this bill is passed. There are already existing laws on the books that protect consumers from misbranded, fraudulent, or contaminated products. Granting the FDA additional regulatory authority over nutritional supplements seems a bit suspicious, especially considering the influence the enormous pharmaceutical industry has wielded over the research, development, and approval process inside the FDA. Let’s face it, the FDA has been no friend and often has been positively antagonistic toward the nutritional supplement industry. Therefore one wouldn’t set the wolf to guarding the sheep without dire consequences.
In this perverted overly-regulated country, food is now toxic, and drugs and chemicals are safe for ingestion, no matter the harm that results. This inversion should remind us that those who best have the consumers health and safety interests at heart are the consumers themselves. It is big government that has a proven track record of not protecting the public. And it is big government that is seeking to take away yet another individual freedom, the right to choose one’s own treatment. (Where is the pro-choice crowd on this one; the ones that claim, “my body, my choice?”)
Contact your federal legislators and urge them not to cosponsor, support, or vote for such a power-grabbing, bill. Let them know Americans want unrestricted access to nutritional supplements, and the government out of their health choices.
Sen. McCain described his bill as a “no brainer.” For constitutionalists it’s a “no brainer” that it should be rejected for the dictatorial, power-grabbing, choice-limiting attack on the nutritional marketplace and individual freedoms that it is.
Click here for the full report
