Knowledge Update

New York, Oct 4 (IANS) Love to drink that sweetened soda, or other sugar-laden fruit juices, sports drinks, energy drinks? Beware, as you can be at an increased risk of developing various cancers, a study has found.

"Recently growing evidence suggests a link between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and the risk of pancreatic and endometrial cancer, as well as the risk of colon cancer recurrence and death among cancer survivors," said Melinda Sothern, Professor at Louisiana State University Health Sciences in New Orleans, US.

Additionally, such individuals may also be at risk of developing health issues like obesity, diabetes and cardio-metabolic diseases.

As more people are surviving cancer, the consumption of added sugar will be an increasingly important risk factor.

The American Heart Association recommends a consumption goal of no more than 450 kilocalories (kcal) of sugar-sweetened beverages or fewer than three 12-ounce cans of soda per week, the researchers said.

"Although consuming added sugar is not recommended, people are not usually aware of how much sugar they get from sugar-sweetened beverages," said lead author Tung-Sung Tseng, Associate Professor of Public Health at LSU Health New Orleans. 

The results of the study indicate that sugar-sweetened beverage consumption behaviour varies across cancers and may be related to age. 

Intervention programs to reduce consumption of added sugar be focused on lower socio-economic status, young males, as well as cervical cancer survivors, the researchers suggested. 

They also recommend that custom intervention to decrease added sugar consumption be conducted for both non-cancer individuals and cancer survivors in communities and the medical care system.

For the study, the team examined data from 22,182 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2012 data. 

The survey measured the consumption of sodas, fruit-flavoured drinks, sweetened fruit juices, sports drinks, energy drinks, sweetened teas and coffees and other sugar-sweetened drinks. 

It also ascertained cancer, smoking and obesity status, as well as demographic characteristics including age, gender, race, educational level and poverty/income ratio.

For the overall study population, 15.7 per cent had high sugar intake from sugar-sweetened drinks. People with no cancer history had a higher sugar intake than cancer survivors, although this could be due to other factors including older age and gender. 

The sugar intake from sugar-sweetened beverages among women with cervical cancer history was much higher (60g/day) compared to other cancer survivors who consumed only around 30-40 g/day. 

The research team also found that individuals who had high sugar intake (80g/day sugar) from sugar-sweetened beverages were younger, male, black, obese, current smokers, low-income, or had education levels at or below high school.

The study is published in the journal of Translational Cancer Research.

Sweden, Oct 4 (IANS) British trio -- David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz -- on Tuesday won Nobel Prize in Physics "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter".

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decided to award the prize to Thouless from the University of Washington in Seattle, Haldane from the Princeton University in New Jersey, US, and Kosterlitz from the Brown University in New Jersey as they have used "advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films".

It is because of their pioneering work that the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics, said a statement at the official website of the Nobel Prize.

New York, Oct 5 (IANS) Medication-resistant bacteria are making it more difficult to treat a common but severe kidney infection, says a study.

Pyelonephritis -- infection of the kidney usually caused by E. coli bacteria and which can start as a urinary tract infection -- causes fever, back pain and vomiting. 

About half of people infected require hospitalisation. If not treated with effective antibiotics, it can cause sepsis and death.

"This is a very real example of the threat posed by the emergence of new antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, which greatly complicates treatment of infection," said the study's lead author David Talan, Professor at David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. 

In an earlier study based on data from 10 large hospital emergency departments in the US, almost 12 per cent of people diagnosed with pyelonephritis had infections resistant to the standard class of antibiotic used in treatment -- fluoroquinolone. That is up from four per cent in a similar study conducted a decade ago. 

The new study -- published in the jurnal Emerging Infectious Diseases -- also documents the emergence of infections caused by a specific strain of E. coli that is resistant to additional types of antibiotics, severely limiting treatment options. 

That strain, dubbed ESBL for the antibiotic-destroying enzymes it produces (extended-spectrum beta-lactamases), was not detected in the previous study. 

Currently, there are only a few intravenous antibiotic options to treat ESBL-related infections, and no oral antibiotics that are consistently effective.

The study included 453 people diagnosed with kidney infection. The study participants were diagnosed between July 2013 and December 2014 in 10 emergency departments at large hospitals in the US.

The rates of ESBL-related infections varied from zero per cent to more than 20 per cent, depending on the location of the emergency room and patient risk factors.

About three of every four people infected with ESBL-producing E. coli were initially treated with antibiotics ineffective against that particular strain of bacteria, placing them at risk for poor outcomes, the researchers reported.

Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Oct 5 (IANS) Horn of Africa countries Ethiopia and Djibouti on Wednesday launched the continent's first modern electric railway connecting their respective capitals, media reported.

The 752.7 km Ethiopia-Djibouti railway was inaugurated in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in a grand ceremony, Xinhua news agency reported.

The railway has a designed speed of 120 km per hour and was constructed by China Railway Group and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation with a total investment of $4 billion.

It is expected to reduce travel time between the two capital cities from seven days by road to about 10 hours only, and provide landlocked Ethiopia faster access to Djibouti port.

​New York, Oct 5 (IANS) Researchers have crystallised and determined the 3D structure of a protein that could help them develop new treatments by understanding nicotine's molecular effects.

The protein, called alpha-4-beta-2 nicotinic receptor, sits on nerve cells in the brain. Nicotine binds to the receptor when someone smokes a cigarette or chews tobacco, causing the protein to open a path for ions to enter the cell. 

The process produces cognitive benefits such as increased memory and focus but is also highly addictive.

Until the new findings were reported in the journal Nature, scientists did not have a way to examine at atomic resolution how nicotine achieves these addictive effects.

"It's going to require a huge team of people and a pharmaceutical company to study the protein and develop the drugs, but I think this is the first major stepping stone to making that happen," said study co-author Ryan Hibbs, Assistant Professor at the Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the US.

The expectation is that the 3D structures will help researchers understand how nicotine influences the activity of the receptor and lead to a medication that mimics its actions in the brain.

The finding may also have benefits in creating medications for certain types of epilepsy, mental illness, and dementia such as Alzheimer's, which are also associated with the nicotinic receptor, the researchers said. 

However, testing of any ensuing treatment would likely take many years, Hibbs cautioned.

Studies have shown smoking cessation drugs have mixed results in treating nicotine addiction, as have other methods such as nicotine patches and chewing gum.

​London, Oct 5 (IANS) A handgrip could be used for early detection of health problems that may lead to premature death, say researchers.

Handgrip strength is a simple test, measured with a hand-held device. On average, handgrip strength peaks in the 30s and 40s and then declines with age.

"When individuals' handgrip falls below some reference value for their age group, sex and body height this can be taken as an indicator for practitioners that further health checks may be warranted," said Nadia Steiber from International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria.

"The measurement of handgrip strength in clinical practice is a simple but efficient screening tool for health vulnerability. It comes at a very low cost," Steiber noted.

The study builds on research conducted as part of the Reassessing Aging from a Population Perspective (Re-Aging) project, which showed that handgrip strength could be used as an alternative measure for age, since it corresponds with other markers of age such as future mortality, disability, cognitive decline and ability to recover from hospital stays.

The new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, provides a comprehensive set of reference values for the measurement of handgrip strength that could be used in clinical practice. 

The study was based on data from the German Institute for Economic Research including over 25,000 measurements of over 11,000 people. 

​New York, Oct 5 (IANS) Does working out feels like more of pain to you? Take heart. Exercise releases a hormone that can help your body shed fat and keep it from forming again, which may also act as potential target to fight obesity, diabetes and other health issues, a study has found.

The results showed that hormone irisin helps convert calorie-storing white fat cells into brown fat cells that burn energy and may be an attractive target for fighting obesity and diabetes.

"Exercise produces more irisin, which has many beneficial effects including fat reduction, stronger bones and better cardiovascular health," said Li-Jun Yang, Professor at the University of Florida. 

The hormone works by boosting the activity of genes and UCP1 -- a protein crucial to turning white fat cells into brown cells. 

Further, irisin, which surges when the heart and other muscles are exerted, also inhibits the formation of fatty tissue.

For the study, researchers collected fat cells donated by 28 patients who had breast reduction surgery. 

After exposing the samples to irisin, they found a nearly five-fold increase in cells with protein UCP1 -- crucial to fat "burning".

"We used human fat tissue cultures to prove that irisin has a positive effect by turning white fat into brown fat and that it increases the body's fat-burning ability," Yang said.

Moreover, among the tested fat-tissue samples, the team found that irisin also reduced the number of mature fat cells by 20 to 60 per cent compared with those of a control group. 

That suggests irisin reduces fat storage in the body by hindering the process that turns undifferentiated stem cells into fat cells while also promoting the stem cells' differentiation into bone-forming cells, the researchers said.

The findings about irisin's role in regulating fat cells sheds more light on how working out helps people stay slender, Yang said.

The study was published recently in the American Journal of Physiology -- Endocrinology and Metabolism.

New York, Oct 2 (IANS) Just as persistent negative thinking is a common trait that characterises most emotional disorders, researchers have found that underlying brain abnormalities in such disorders also have a lot to share.

"This study provides important insights into mechanisms shared across multiple emotional disorders, and could provide us with biomarkers that can be used to more rapidly diagnose these disorders," said study senior author Scott Langenecker, Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the US.

Those disorders, he said, can sometimes take many years to be diagnosed accurately.

The most common difference in white matter structure that Langenecker's group found -- present in every emotional disorder they looked at -- was disruption in a region of the brain that connects different parts of the "default-mode network", which is responsible for passive thoughts not focused on a particular task.

That area is the left superior longitudinal fasciculus or SLF, which also connects the default-mode network and the cognitive control network, which is important in task-based thinking and planning and tends to work in alternation with the default-mode network.

The constant negative thoughts or ruminations associated with most emotional disorders appear to be due to a hyperactive default-mode network, Langenecker said.

"If the part of the brain that helps rein in the default-mode network isn't as well-connected through the SLF, this could explain why people with emotional disorders have such a hard time modulating or gaining control of their negative thoughts," he said.

The findings were published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical.

​London, Oct 3 (IANS) For people with Type 2 diabetes, heart failure is a common condition. According to a new study, individuals with Type 2 diabetes who had undergone coronary artery surgery prior to their heart failure diagnosis have better chances of survival in the long term.

Over 90 per cent of the patients with Type 2 diabetes have one or more other precursors of heart failure, such as high blood pressure, COPD or atrial fibrillation, diseases to which effective treatments are available that improve the chances of long-term survival, the study said.

Heart failure in people with Type 2 diabetes is often attributable to atherosclerotic coronary artery disease (CAD) -- damage or disease in the heart's major blood vessels, and such people are given either a bypass operation or catheter balloon dilation. 

"Our study indicates that revasculising coronary artery surgery can do much to improve the prognosis," said Isabelle Johansson, doctoral student at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

The risk of death within eight years of heart-failure onset was much higher if the patient also had Type 2 diabetes, with those who also had CAD showing the worst prognosis. 

However, the prognosis for long-term survival was better for the patients who had undergone coronary artery surgery before developing heart failure, an observation that held even when controlling for factors such as old age or other diseases, which might have affected the decision to perform revasculising surgery, the researchers explained.

"A decision must be taken as to whether this is possible should be made without delay for all patients with combined Type 2 diabetes and heart failure," Johansson added.

For the study, published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, the team studied data of over 35,000 heart failure patients, over a quarter of whom had Type 2 diabetes.