Knowledge Update

New York, Oct 27 (IANS) Researchers have come up with a new wearable patch for skin that claims to treat children and young adults with peanut allergy, finds a study.

The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, suggested that small amounts of peanut protein through the skin showed promising benefits for younger children. 

The treatment, called epicutaneous immunotherapy or EPIT, was safe and well-tolerated, and nearly all participants used the skin patch daily as directed.

"To avoid potentially life-threatening allergic reactions, people with peanut allergy must be vigilant about the foods they eat and the environments they enter, which can be very stressful," said Anthony S. Fauci, Managing Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). 

The researchers randomly assigned 74 peanut-allergic volunteers aged 4 to 25 years to treatment with either a high-dose (250 micrograms peanut protein), low-dose (100 micrograms peanut protein), or placebo patch. 

Each day, study participants applied a new patch to their arm or between their shoulder blades.

After one year, researchers assessed each participant's ability to consume at least 10 times more peanut protein than he or she was able to consume before starting EPIT. 

The low-dose and high-dose regimens offered similar benefits, with 46 per cent of the low-dose group and 48 per cent of the high-dose group achieving treatment success, compared with 12 per cent of the placebo group. 

In addition, the peanut patches induced immune responses similar to those seen with other investigational forms of immunotherapy for food allergy. Investigators observed greater treatment effects among children aged 4 to 11 years, with significantly less effect in participants aged 12 years and older.

"Epicutaneous immunotherapy aims to engage the immune system in the skin to train the body to tolerate small amounts of allergen, whereas other recent advances have relied on an oral route that appears difficult for approximately 10 to 15 per cent of children and adults to tolerate," said Daniel Rotrosen, Director, Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation at the of NIAID. 

Nearly all of the study participants followed the EPIT regimen as directed. None reported serious reactions to the patch, although most experienced mild skin reactions, such as itching or rash at the site of patch application.

The patches were developed and provided by the biopharmaceutical company DBV Technologies under the trade name Viaskin.

New York, Oct 27 (IANS) Personal values of students are often influenced by school Principals and become more similar to those of them with time, a new study has found.

The findings indicate that principals' values are linked with aspects of school climate which are, in turn, linked with students' own values.

"Given the vast amount of time children spend in school, it is important to assess the impact that schools have on children, beyond their impact on children's academic skills. Our findings show that schools contribute to the formation of children's values," said Yair Berson, Researcher at the New York University.

For the study published in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers collected data from 252 school Principals, over 3,600 teachers and almost 50,000 students in public elementary and secondary schools.

Focusing on four categories of values -- self-enhancement, self-transcendence, openness to change, and conservation -- school Principals filled out a questionnaire in which they read statements about a hypothetical individual and rated how closely they aligned with their own values.

At the same time, students completed age-appropriate measures that tapped into the same values. The students completed values measures again two-years later.

Teachers also rated the degree to which students in their homeroom displayed various behaviours that reflected the same values.

The researchers found that students' values became more similar to those of their Principal over the two-year study period.

"Principals' personal outlook on life is reflected in the overall school atmosphere, which over time becomes reflected in school children's personal outlook and eventual behaviour," said Shaul Oreg, Researcher at the Cornell University.

This pattern was consistent for all of the values except for one: conservation values.

"Values that have to do with maintaining the status quo -- emphasising tradition, conformity and security - showed a different pattern, whereby Principals' values are associated with children's values, but without the mediating role of the school climate," Oreg added.

Ultimately, determining whether Principals' influence on students' values is good or bad will be up to the individual observer, the study suggests.

New Delhi, Oct 27 (IANS) The global wildlife population could fall by an average of 67 per cent between 1970 and 2020 as a result of human activities, according to World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report 2016.

The report indicated that the global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles have already declined by 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012.

"This places the world on a trajectory of a potential two-thirds decline within a span of the half-century ending in 2020," said the report.

The report also highlights the magnitude of human impact on the planet and highlights the changes needed in the way society is fed and fuelled. 

According to the report, the top threats to species were directly linked to human activities including habitat loss, degradation and over exploitation of wildlife. 

The report's findings provide additional evidence that the planet was entering completely unchartered territory, including a possible sixth mass extinction. 

"Researchers are already calling this period the Anthropocene -- an era in which human activities are influencing changes in the climate and the environment," said the report.

New York, Oct 27 (IANS) Political decisions taken at the highest level, not economics, are to blame for rising inequality in the US, sociologists suggest.

Political factors, along with increases in college-educated adults, provided the best explanations for the rise in income inequality in the US between 1978 and 2011, said the study published in the American Journal of Sociology.

But even higher education levels became less important after the 1980s, lead author of the study David Jacobs, Professor at The Ohio State University, pointed out.

The study found that presidential administrations that were sympathetic to employers but unfavourable to labour drove up levels of income inequality.

"Political decisions, especially at the presidential level, help determine the rewards that Americans get from the economy," Jacobs explained.

The study suggests that researchers need to look beyond economic causes in trying to explain the growth of income inequality in the US.

"You can't explain income inequality without looking at political factors," Jacobs said.

The study used a variety of sources to analyse political and economic factors that could be tied to inequality at the state level for each of the 33 years in the study. 

"The gap between the top earners and the rest of Americans has really been growing and our study was able to capture that change," Jacobs said.

The study found that the presidential administration in power was far and away the biggest political factor linked to economic inequality in each year of the study.

The importance of the presidential administration remained even after the researchers took into account more than 20 other possible explanatory variables, such as stock market values, poverty levels, the number of people employed in finance careers, and the number of people employed in rural occupations. 

Many of these factors, among others controlled for in this study, have been cited by economists in the past as possible causes of growing inequality, Jacobs said.

After all these and other factors are held constant, the Ronald Reagan administration's policies led to an 18 per cent increase in inequality, the study found.

The Reagan administration made tax codes more favorable to the affluent, deregulated many industries including finance, weakened unions and reduced spending on programmes for the poor.

"I believe it was a lot of policies that each contributed a little bit to growing inequality, and when you added them all up the results were large," Jacobs said.

Other than the presidential administration, the remaining parts of government had little or no effect on inequality, the study showed. 

​Moscow, Oct 27 (IANS) In a major step towards improving surgeries after head or face injuries, Russian scientists have developed a new type of 3-D-printed polymeric bone implants that can get absorbed and subsequently replaced with natural bone tissue in the body.

The prototype can be printed on 3D-printers according to specific parameters, contracted to half its size, then heated in the course of the surgery so the implant can obtain its original shape and size and is securely fixed in the section of the bone being restored. 

The implant is installed with a minimum number of metal fixators that are traditionally used in transplantation.

"We have successfully employed the shape memory effect of the lactic acid polymer - a composite based on polylactide. The porous composite structure is capable of shrinking to half its original size and then returning to its original shape," Project Manager Fyodor Senatov National University of Science and Technology MISIS in Moscow, said in a statement.

"This material is bioresorbable: it decomposes in the body without causing any harm," Senatov noted.

The researchers noted in traditional implant insertion after head injury, additional surgery is often required required due to the low rate of integration with the surrounding tissues or wrong implant position. 

The newly invented polymeric implant has a specified geometry and high porosity, and does not require any additional treatment, the researchers said. 

Due to the properties of the material and the use of the patient's own cells, it rapidly adapts and gets replaced with natural bone tissue. 

"Together with specialists at the N.N. Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center, we have developed the technique of colonising the bioengineered structure with cells isolated from the patient's bone marrow," Senatov said,

"The preliminary colonization stimulates budding of blood vessels and tissues inside the implant, which optimises the process and increases the rate of integration with the surrounding tissues, making for more effective transplantation," Senatov said.

The developers plan to use the new implants in oral and maxillofacial surgery to replace small parts of skull bones, up to five cubic centimeters in size. 

The estimated cost of a bioengineered structure colonised with cells isolated from the patient's bone marrow is about $400, the researchers said.

​London, Oct 28 (IANS) Depending on lifestyle choices, taking vitamin E supplements for boosting immunity can have different effects on modifying the risk of pneumonia in older men, a study has found.

The study showed that vitamin E increased pneumonia risk by 68 per cent among men who had the highest exposure to smoking and who did not exercise.

Conversely, vitamin E actually decreased pneumonia risk by 69 per cent among participants who had the least exposure to smoking and who exercised during their leisure time. 

"The effect of vitamin E on health outcomes may depend on various characteristics of people and their lifestyle," said lead author Harri Hemila from the University of Helsinki, Finland. 

Therefore, a single universal estimate of the vitamin E effect might be substantially misleading for some population groups, Hemila said.

For the study, the team studied the effect of vitamin E on the risk of pneumonia on men aged 50 to 69 years old in Finland between 1985 and 1993. There were 898 cases of pneumonia among 29,133 participants of the study.

The author claims that these findings refute there being a uniform effect of vitamin E supplementation on the risk of pneumonia.

Given the current limited understanding about who might benefit, vitamin E should not be suggested for the general population for improving the immune system, Hemila recommended. 

The study was published in the British Journal of Nutrition.

Vatican City, Oct 26 (IANS/AKI) Fences are being erected in some countries to keep out migrants and refugees, but this only aids the criminal organisations who traffick human beings, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

"Today, the current economic crisis unfortunately fosters attitudes of closure instead of welcome," Francis told pilgrims at his weekly general audience in St Peter's Square. 

"In some parts of the world walls and barriers are being built. But this actually ends up favouring criminal trafficking," he stated.

The only solution to the phenomenon of migration is solidarity, Francis said.

"Solidarity with the migrant, solidarity with the 'foreigner'. It appears that the silent work of men and women who, in different ways, do what they can to help and assist refugees and migrants, is being drowned out by the noise made by those who give voice to an instinctive egoism." 

The growing influx of refugees fleeing war, famine and dire poverty requires Christians to welcome and care for them, as they have done through the ages, said Francis.

"Dioceses, parishes, religious institutes, organisations and individual Christians: we are all called to welcome our brothers and sisters who are fleeing war, hunger, violence and cruel conditions of life.

"As followers of Christ, may we never close our hearts to those in need."

New York, Oct 26 (IANS) Adding whole eggs to a colourful salad boosts the amount of vitamin E the body absorbs from the vegetables, says a study.

"We found vitamin E absorption was four- to seven-fold higher when three whole eggs were added to a salad," said Jung Eun Kim from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana US.

"This study is novel because we measured the absorption of Vitamin E from real foods, rather than supplements, which contain mega-dose amounts of Vitamin E," Kim noted.

Vitamin E, which is absorbed along with dietary fats, is often found in oils, seeds and nuts.

Eggs, a nutrient-rich food containing essential amino acids, unsaturated fatty acids and B vitamins, also contain a small amount of vitamin E. 

This study accounted for how much total vitamin E was absorbed when vitamin E containing foods were co-consumed with whole eggs. 

This research supports a way to increase the absorption of vitamin E found in foods that contain low dietary fat. 

Also, this research highlights how one food can improve the nutrition value of another food when they are consumed together.

"Now consumers can easily improve their diets by adding eggs to a salad that boasts a variety of colourful vegetables," Wayne Campbell, Professor of Nutrition Science at Purdue University pointed out.

The findings were published in The Journal of Nutrition.

​Dhaka, Oct 26 (IANS) Bangladesh leads South Asia in gender equity, at world rank 72, followed by India at rank 87, in the Global Gender Gap Index 2016 prepared by the World Economic Forum. Pakistan figures at a lowly 143 in the ranking.

After India comes Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan and Pakistan, in that order.

Iceland is ranked the first country in the Global Gender Gap Index of 144 countries.

According to the report, Bangladesh recorded progress in political empowerment gender gap, but its gap on women's labour force participation and estimated earned income widened.

The report found that the US fell from 28th place in 2015 to 45th when it came to closing the gap. The World Economic Forum (WEF) said that is primarily due to a more transparent measure for estimated earned income.

Through the Global Gender Gap Report, the WEF quantifies the magnitude of gender disparities and tracks their progress over time, with a specific focus on the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy and politics.

​New York, Oct 26 (IANS) An experimental drug developed to combat Alzheimer's disease has the potential to prevent inflammation, remove abnormal protein clumps in the brain as well as restore memory in the patients suffering from the neurodegenerative disease, a study has found.

Development of abnormal protein clumps called amyloid plaques and tangled bundles of fibers in the brain -- key characteristic of Alzheimer's disease -- causes inflammation in the brain and damage to the neurons. This progressive damage leads to memory loss, confusion and dementia. 

The new drug, known as NTRX-07, appears to decrease this inflammation in the brain, while preserving neurons and regenerative cells in the brain, the study stated.

"This drug may reduce inflammation in the brain, which is linked to Alzheimer's disease," said lead researcher Mohamed Naguib, Professor at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine in Ohio, US. 

The new drug improved removal of abnormal amyloid plaques and improved memory performance and other cognitive skills.

"NTRX-07 uses a different mechanism than many other Alzheimer's drugs currently available, as it targets the cause of the disease, not just the symptoms," Naguib said.

In the study conducted on mice, NTRX-07 was found to target CB2 receptors -- receptors on the surface of microglia cells or immune cells that typically remove dangerous amyloid plaques in the brain. 

The mice treated with NTRX-07 also showed an increase in the levels of SOX2 -- protein that helps new brain cells to develop and protect the brain in people with Alzheimer's disease. 

In contrast, mice treated with a placebo showed decreased levels of SOX2, active inflammation in the brain, poor removal of amyloid plaques, and poor memory performance.

The study was presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2016 annual meeting in Chicago, recently.