Knowledge Update

​London, Nov 8 (IANS) Certain proteins in the blood of children have the potential to predict the development of Type 1 diabetes even before the first symptoms appear, a study has found.

The researchers studied children who have a first-degree relative with Type 1 diabetes and who consequently have an increased risk of developing the disease due to the familial predisposition.

Scientists, from Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen in Germany, analysed blood samples from 30 children with auto-antibodies who had developed Type 1 diabetes either very rapidly or with a very long delay.

They then compared it with children who displayed neither auto-antibodies nor diabetes symptoms.

In auto-antibody-positive children, it was possible to reach a better estimate of the speed of the diabetes development using the peptide concentrations of three proteins in combination with the age of the particular child.

The researchers are confident that the protein signatures they have discovered will be helpful as biomarkers for future diagnostics.

If these clinical symptoms will appear quickly, it could significantly improve the treatment of patients at-risk, the researchers said.

"The progression of Type 1 diabetes into a clinical disease takes place over a period of time that varies from individual to individual and that at this time is insufficiently predictable," said Anette-G. Ziegler, Director of the Institute of Diabetes Research (IDF) at the Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen in Germany.

"The biomarkers that we have identified allow a more precise classification of this pre-symptomatic stage and they are relatively simple to acquire from blood samples," he added.

The results were published in the journal Diabetologia. 

​London, Nov 8 (IANS) Scientists have developed a game-changing blood test that accurately identifies wheteher or not an adolescent athlete has suffered a concussion.

Scientists from Children's Health Research Institute, a programme of Lawson Health Research Institute, and Western University said this blood test gives results with greater than 90 per cent accuracy.

Concussion is a major public health concern, often resulting in significant acute symptoms and in some individuals, long-term neurological dysfunction.

Diagnosis of a clinically significant concussion, or a mild traumatic brain injury, can be difficult as it currently relies on a combination of patient symptom assessment and clinician judgement. 

Equally problematic are the decisions to stop play or activities, or when patients who have suffered a concussion can safely return to normal activities without risking further injury.

In this new study, researchers have demonstrated that a blood test can now accurately diagnose a concussion using a form of blood profiling known as metabolomics. 

Douglas Fraser, physician in the Paediatric Critical Care Unit at Children's Hospital, London Health Sciences Centre and Lawson scientist, led the study with his co-investigator Mark Daley, Professor in the Departments of Computer Science, Biology and Statistics and Actuarial Sciences at Western University.

In the relatively inexpensive test, blood is drawn from an individual that may have suffered a concussion as the result of a sudden blow to the head within 72 hours of the incident. 

The scientists measure a panel of metabolites - small molecules that are the products of the body's metabolism - in the blood to search for distinct patterns that indicate a concussion has occurred.

"This novel approach, to use blood testing of metabolites as a diagnostic tool for concussions, was exploratory and we were extremely pleased with the robustness of our initial results," says Fraser, also an associate professor at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry.

In this latest successful attempt, the researchers took a different approach and investigated a full spectrum of 174 metabolites.

The researchers investigated a full spectrum of 174 metabolites in concussed male adolescent patients and in non-concussed male adolescent patients and it turned out that the spectrum was really different.

"We can now look at sets of as few as 20-40 specific metabolites and maintain the diagnostic accuracy level of the test over 90 per cent," said Daley, who is also Western's Associate Vice-President (Research).

Beijing, Nov 8 (IANS) Doctors in China's Chongqing municipality have successfully replaced a section of a female cancer patient's forehead with a 3D-printed part.

The patient who is in her early 20s has had recurrent tumours for over 16 years, and has kept her hair long at the front to cover the growths, Xinhua news agency reported.

"I have had bangs for over a decade, finally I can grow my hair out and not be paranoid about my tumours," she explained.

When her tumours first began to show, around 16 years ago, the patient had them removed but they returned and grew back larger than before. Despite multiple operations over the years, the tumours kept returning.

The tumours were eventually identified as benign, but due to their location they put pressure against her right eye socket, meaning if they were not removed they would likely impair her vision and limit her motor skills. Doctors agreed that a complete excision was the only suitable procedure.

Moreover, due to the location of her tumours the operation would disfigure her face and the damage would be almost impossible to repair by traditional plastic surgery.

After discussion, a 3D-printed bone replica procedure was agreed as the best operation.

She underwent a high-precision CT scan so that doctors could create a 3D reconstruction of her skull and print a 1:1 replica of the bone part, with a precision of 20 microns.

The replica piece was then implanted and fixed in place with titanium screws. The operation, which was conducted earlier this month, was a success and she was discharged from hospital a week after going under the knife. 

New York, Nov 8 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new system for self-driving scooter that can help mobility-impaired users to get down the hall and through the lobby of an apartment building, or pick up an autonomous car on the public roads.

The autonomous mobility scooter and related software were designed by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the National University of Singapore, and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).

"It's extraordinary to me, because it's a project that the team conducted in about two months," said Daniela Rus, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

The researchers' system includes several layers of software -- low-level control algorithms that enable a vehicle to respond immediately to changes in its environment, such as a pedestrian darting across its path; route-planning algorithms; localisation algorithms that the vehicle uses to determine its location on a map; map-building algorithms that it uses to construct the map in the first place; a scheduling algorithm that allocates fleet resources; and an online booking system that allows users to schedule rides.

The researchers had previously used the same sensor configuration and software in trials of autonomous cars and golf carts, so the new trial completes the demonstration of a comprehensive autonomous mobility system. 

Using the same control algorithms for all types of vehicles -- scooters, golf carts, and city cars -- has several advantages. One is that it becomes much more practical to perform reliable analyses of the system's overall performance.

"If you have a uniform system where all the algorithms are the same, the complexity is much lower than if you have a heterogeneous system where each vehicle does something different," Rus said.

"That's useful for verifying that this multilayer complexity is correct," Rus added.

Software uniformity also means that the scheduling algorithm has more flexibility in its allocation of system resources. 

If an autonomous golf cart is not available to take a user across a public park, a scooter could fill in; if a city car is not available for a short trip on back roads, a golf cart might be.

The researchers described the design of the scooter system and the results of a trial in a paper they presented recently at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

New York, Nov 8 (IANS) Researchers, including one of Indian origin, have identified a human antibody that in pregnant mice prevents the foetus from becoming infected with Zika virus and damaging the placenta.

Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that has emerged as a global public health threat. 

The antibody, called ZIKV-117, also protected adult mice from Zika disease, the researchers said.

"The anti-Zika antibodies are able to keep the foetus safe from harm by blocking the virus from crossing the placenta," said Indira Mysorekar, Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

"This is the first antiviral that has been seen to work in pregnancy to protect developing foetuses from Zika virus," added Michael Diamond, Professor at Washington University.

In the study, the antibody ZIKV-117 neutralised all strains of Zika virus tested, including African, Asian and American lineages.

Pregnant mice that received the antibody and were then infected with Zika virus showed lower levels of Zika virus in their blood and brain tissues than mice not treated with ZIKV-117.

Further, the treated mice showed protective levels of ZIKV-117 in foetal tissues and markedly reduced levels of virus in the placenta and the foetal brain. 

The placentas from the treated females appeared normal and healthy, unlike those from the untreated females, which showed destruction of the placental structure. 

"We did not see any damage to the foetal blood vessels, thinning of the placenta or any growth restriction in the foetuses of the antibody-treated mice," Mysorekar said. 

In addition, male mice that received a single dose of ZIKV-117 even five days after Zika infection were more likely to survive than those given a control antibody, suggesting that ZIKV-117 could treat active Zika infection.

These findings suggested that ZIKV-117 may reduce mother-to-foetus virus transmission and also neutralise Zika virus that reaches the foetus, the researchers said, adding that the study may also aid development of vaccines and therapies for Zika virus infection.

The study appears in the journal 'Nature'.

​London, Nov 8 (IANS) Individuals with Vitamin D deficiency can be at an increased risk of developing bladder cancer, a study has warned.

Vitamin D, which is produced by the body through exposure to sunshine, helps the body control calcium and phosphate levels. It can also be obtained from food sources such as fatty fish and egg yolks. 

According to previous studies, Vitamin D deficiency causes health problems including cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, autoimmune conditions, and cancer.

In the study, the researchers looked at the cells that line the bladder, known as transitional epithelial cells, and found that these cells are able to activate and respond to Vitamin D, which in turn can stimulate an immune response. 

This is important because the immune system may have a role in cancer prevention by identifying abnormal cells before they develop into cancer, said lead author Rosemary Bland, from the University of Warwick in Britain.

"More clinical studies are required to test this association, but our work suggests that low levels of Vitamin D in the blood may prevent the cells within the bladder from stimulating an adequate response to abnormal cells," Bland added. 

In addition, Bland noted that as Vitamin D is cheap and safe, its potential use in cancer prevention is exciting and could potentially impact the lives of many people.

For the study, researchers reviewed seven studies. Five out of these seven linked low Vitamin D levels to an increased risk of bladder cancer.

The findings were presented at the Society for Endocrinology annual conference in Brighton.

​New York, Nov 8 (IANS) Researchers have identified a new way to block the action of genetic mutations found in nearly 30 per cent of all cancers.

Mutations in genes for the RAS family of proteins are present in nearly 90 per cent of pancreatic cancers and are also highly prevalent in colon cancer, lung cancer and melanoma, the most dangerous kind of skin cancer.

"We did not look for a drug or specifically for an inhibitor," said John O'Bryan, Associate Professor at University of Illinois College of Medicine in the US.

"We used monobody technology, a type of protein-engineering technology, to identify regions of RAS that are critical for its function," O'Bryan said.

Unlike conventional antibodies, monobodies are not dependent on their environment and can be readily used as genetically encoded inhibitors, O'Bryan said.

"The beauty of the technology is that when a monobody binds a protein, it usually works as an inhibitor of that protein," he said.

The prevalence of RAS mutations in human cancers and the dependence of tumors on RAS for survival has made a RAS a prime target for cancer research and drug discovery. 

Scientists and drug developers have long studied RAS oncogenes hoping to find a new treatment for cancer, but they have not yet been able to identify drugs that safely inhibit the oncogene's activity.

The researchers discovered that a synthetic binding protein they call "NS1 monobody," which they created in the lab, can block the activity of the RAS proteins.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, provide important insight into long-standing questions about how RAS proteins function in cells. 

"Development of effective RAS inhibitors represents a 'holy grail' in cancer biology," O'Bryan said. 

"We now have a powerful tool we can use to further probe RAS function. While future studies and trials are needed before these findings can be leveraged outside the lab, this study provides new insight into how we can potentially inhibit RAS to slow tumour growth," he added.

​Sydney, Nov 7 (IANS) The year 2015, which is on record the hottest year globally, could become the new normal by 2040 if carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, researchers have warned.

However, with immediate and strong action on carbon emissions, it is still possible to prevent record-breaking seasons from becoming the new average -- at least at regional levels, the study said.

Only days ago, the historic Paris Agreement came into force, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible to prevent dangerous tipping points in the climate system.

As of now, the Paris Climate Change Agreement has been joined by only 97 countries, including India, accounting for just over two-thirds of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

According to lead author Sophie Lewis from the Australian National University (ANU), no matter what action we take, human activities have already locked in a "new normal" for global average temperatures that would occur not later than 2040.

"If we continue with business-as-usual emissions, extreme seasons will inevitably become the norm within decades and Australia will be the canary in the coal mine that will experience this change first," Lewis added.

For the study, using the National Computational Infrastructure supercomputer at ANU to run climate models, the researchers explored when new normal states would appear under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change's four emissions pathways.

The ANU study coincides with the UN climate change conference in Marrakech, the first meeting of the Paris Agreement's governing body.

The Marrakech conference gives developed countries the opportunity to present their roadmap to mobilise the pledged $100 billion in annual support to developing countries by 2020.

The team of researchers also examined seasonal temperatures from December to February across Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.

The results revealed that while global average temperatures would inevitably enter a new normal under all emissions scenarios, this was not the case at seasonal and regional levels.

"It gives us hope to know that if we act quickly to reduce greenhouse gases, seasonal extremes might never enter a new normal state in the 21st Century at regional levels for the Southern Hemisphere summer and Northern Hemisphere winter," Lewis said, in the paper published in the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society.

New York, Nov 7 (IANS) Children born to mothers who were undernourished during pregnancy are more likely to suffer early ageing of the heart, a research has showed.

The animal study found that moderately reducing a mother's food intake can make it more likely that the baby's organs will show increased disease susceptibility and early ageing. 

These changes in the heart could contribute to decreased quality of life, decreased exercise capability, and increased vulnerability to other diseases such as diabetes and hypertension -- major risk factor for heart disease and stroke, the study said. 

Understanding the effect of maternal nutritional stress on ageing of the offspring will allow for interventions early in life, to prevent later-life heart problems, said a team of researchers led by Geoffrey Clarke from the University of Texas at San Antonio, US.

For the study, the team used MRI scanning to analyse the hearts of male and female baboons whose mothers ate 30 per cent less than the normally fed baboons. 

They found that the offspring of baboons, which ate less, showed signs of reduced heart function that comes with age. 

By five years of life, equivalent to 20 human years, the structure and function of the heart were already impaired.

"Women's health during pregnancy is of fundamental importance to the lifetime health of their babies. Society must pay attention to improving women's nutrition before and during pregnancy to prevent these adverse outcomes in babies," said Peter Nathanielsz, Director at the University of Wyoming in the US.

The study was published in The Journal of Physiology.

​London, Nov 6 (IANS) Music therapy may help to reduce depression in children and adolescents with behavioural and emotional problems, finds a study.

The researchers involved 251 children and young people for the study and found that children and young persons, aged 8-16 years, who received music therapy had significantly improved self-esteem and significantly reduced depression compared with those who received treatment without music therapy.

The study published in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry also found that young people aged 13 and over who received music therapy had improved communicative and interactive skills, compared to those who received usual care options alone. Music therapy also improved social functioning over time in all age groups.

For the study, the children were divided into two groups -- 128 underwent the usual care options, while 123 were assigned to music therapy in addition to usual care. All were being treated for emotional, developmental or behavioural problems.

"This study is hugely significant in terms of determining effective treatments for children and young people with behavioural problems and mental health needs," said Sam Porter, Professor at the Bournemouth University, Britain.

"The findings contained in our report should be considered by healthcare providers and commissioners when making decisions about the sort of care for young people that they wish to support," he said. 

"Music therapy has often been used with children and young people with particular mental health needs, but this is the first time its effectiveness has been shown by a definitive randomised controlled trail in a clinical setting," said Ciara Reilly, Chief Executive of Every Day Harmony.