Knowledge Update

​London, June 25 (IANS) Researchers have found that high-tech scans can spare patients suffering from cancer of the lymphatic system of the serious side effects of chemotherapy as well as predict the outcome of treatment.

In the study, using positron emission tomography (PET) -- a type of imaging test that uses a tiny amount of radioactive glucose to look for disease in the body -- the doctors scanned more than 1,200 patients with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma after they had been given two cycles of standard chemotherapy.

Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer that starts in white blood cells called lymphocytes. 

“Personalising treatment based on how well it works is a major development for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma and sets a new standard of care,” said Peter Johnson, Professor at University of Southampton in Britain.

The patients were divided into two groups - the first group that continued chemotherapy with bleomycin -- an important drug used to treat Hodgkin lymphoma -- and the second group had chemotherapy without the drug.

Bleomycin comes with potential risks of severely affecting the lungs leading to serious breathing problems.

The results showed that patients who stopped having bleomycin had the same survival rates as those who continued it. But, importantly, they were spared of the side effects.

"The good news is that the majority of people diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma can be cured - in this trial more than 95 per cent of patients are alive after three years,” Johnson added.

Three year progression-free survival was seen in patients who underwent chemotherapy without bleomycin was 84.4 per cent.

Further, 85.7 per cent patients who underwent chemotherapy with bleomycin had three-year progression-free survival

For patients with a good outlook stopping bleomycin did not have any negative effects.

However, patients who had a more resistant form of the disease were given more intense chemotherapy treatment, the study said.

“Getting to know the patients that have a more difficult form of the disease means we can select those who need stronger chemotherapy, while sparing everyone else the severe side effects such as infertility,” Johnson said in the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“This approach, along with a reduction in the need for radiotherapy, should substantially reduce damage to healthy tissues and the risk of second cancers caused by treatments,” he concluded.​

Panama City, June 26 (IANS) The Panama Canal is getting ready for expansion that will take traffic through the inter-oceanic passage to a new level, officials said.

With the expansion of the canal's width and depth, the volume of traffic will double, as Panamax-class vessels will now be able to pass through, carrying up to 14,000 cargo containers, Xinhua news agency reported.

Jorge Luis Quijano, administrator of the Panama Canal, said at a press conference on Saturday that this expansion, which will be inaugurated on Sunday, will open up new opportunities in sectors such as logistics and ship repairs.

The main contractor for the expansion was the consortium Grupo Unidos por el Canal.

Espino de Marotta said the project had gone very smoothly, considering the complexity of the works involved. "The expansion of the Panama Canal is one of those projects that happens once every 100 years," he said.​

​Washington, June 24 (IANS) Technology giant Microsoft recently launched a prototype trap for detecting mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue and Zika, says a report.

The prototype trap is being developed as part of the Microsoft's Project Premonition -- a novel autonomous system for monitoring, detecting and preventing emerging infectious

Sydney, June 24 (IANS) A 30-minute walk in the woods each week can help reduce depression and high blood pressure while enhancing mental health, a study has found.

The findings showed that people who made long visits to green spaces had lower rates of depression and high blood pressure and those who visited more frequently had greater social cohesion. 

Visits to outdoor green spaces of 30 minutes or more during the course of a week could reduce the prevalence of depression by up to 7 per cent and high blood pressure by 9 per cent. 

Further, spending more time outdoors may especially benefit children. 

"Kids who grow up experiencing natural environments may benefit developmentally and have a heightened environmental awareness as adults than those who don't," said lead researcher Danielle Shanahan from University of Queensland in Australia.

Visiting parks has been long known to be good for our health, but there has been almost no guidance on how much or how frequently people need to engage with nature, and what types or characteristics of nature need to be incorporated in cities for the best health outcomes. 

"The study finds specific evidence that we need regular visits of at least half an hour to ensure we get these benefits," added Richard Fuller, Associate Professor at the University of Queensland.

More support and encouragement of community activities in natural spaces would encourage people to spend more time in green space, the paper suggested. 

The study, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, examines the associations between the duration, frequency and intensity of exposure to nature and health in an urban population. ​

​New York, June 24 (IANS) A long-term exercise regimen may help boost memory as it triggers a protein that enhances brain cell growth, a new study has found.

The findings showed that the production of cathepsin B -- a protein that can be directly traced from the muscles to the brain in mice -- noticeably increased in muscle cells after exercise.

"In the study, we did a screen for proteins that could be secreted by muscle tissue and transported to the brain and among the most interesting candidates was cathepsin B," said Henriette van Praag, Neuroscientist at the National Institute on Aging in the US.

The more time the mice spent on exercise wheels, the level of protein increased in the blood and muscle tissue.

“In humans who exercise consistently for four months, better performance on complex recall tasks, such as drawing from memory, is correlated with increased cathepsin B levels," van Praag added.

Additionally, when cathepsin B was applied to brain cells, it spurred the production of molecules related to neurogenesis.

"We also have converging evidence from our study that cathepsin B is unregulated in blood by exercise for three species -- mice, Rhesus monkeys and humans,” van Praag noted. 

For the study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the team compared memory recall in normal mice with that in mice lacking the ability to produce cathepsin B under both sedentary and running conditions. 

Over the course of a week, both sets of mice were given a daily swim test in the Morris water maze, in which a mouse is placed in a small pool and must learn to swim to a platform that is hidden just below the surface of the water. 

After doing this task for a few days, normal mice eventually learn where to find the platform. 

However, when both groups ran before their daily swim test, the normal mice were better able to recall the location of the platform, while the mice unable to make cathepsin B could not remember its location, suggesting the potential of the protein in spatial learning.​

​Lisbon, June 24 (IANS) Portugal's stock market fell to 20-year-lows in early trading Friday as a reaction to the UK's referendum decision to leave the European Union (EU).

The PSI-20 principal index fell close to 11 per cent to 4.17 points in early trading, its lowest level since January 1996, EFE news reported.

​London, June 24 (IANS) BlackBerry, the Canadian mobile company sold just 5 lakh phones globally in the first fiscal quarter - down from six lakh in the previous quarter - reporting a $670 million loss which is its biggest loss in over two years.

​New York, June 24 (IANS) An international team of researchers has discovered a simple, accurate new blood test that can predict the chances of Type 2 diabetes in women with gestational diabetes.

Gestational diabetes occurs in three to 13 per cent of all pregnant women and increases a woman's risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 20 to 50 per cent within five years after pregnancy, the study said.

Using the novel technique called targeted metabolomics, the scientists tested the fasting blood samples of 1,035 women diagnosed with gestational diabetes, within two months after delivery.

Typically, diabetes is diagnosed by measuring blood sugar levels in the form of glucose, an important fuel used by cells in the body. 

However, the metabolomics test identified several other metabolites that indicate early changes that signify future diabetes risk long before changes in glucose levels occur.

The method showed 83 per cent accuracy in predicting women who would develop Type 2 diabetes.

Further, the technique predicted the development of Type 2 diabetes significantly better than the conventional methods of a fasting blood test followed by the time-consuming and inconvenient oral glucose tolerance test.

Once diabetes has developed, it's very difficult to reverse, thus "early prevention is the key to minimising the devastating effects of diabetes on health outcomes," said Erica Gunderson, Research Scientist with the Kaiser Permanente - a health care company, in the US. 

"By identifying women soon after delivery, we can focus our resources on those at greatest risk who may benefit most from concerted early prevention efforts," Gunderson added.

The new method may also be able to predict individuals who may develop Type 2 diabetes in the general population, the authors noted.

The findings, published in the journal Diabetes, would allow health care providers to identify women at greatest risk and help motivate women to make early lifestyle changes and follow other strategies that could prevent them from developing the disease later in life.​

​London, June 24 (IANS) Scientists from University of Bristol have found a new bio-ink for 3D printing with stem cells that allows printing of living tissue known as bio-printing.

The new bio-ink contains two different polymer components: a natural polymer extracted from seaweed and a sacrificial synthetic polymer used in the medical industry.

"Designing the new bio-ink was extremely challenging. You need a material that is printable, strong enough to maintain its shape when immersed in nutrients and that is not harmful to the cells. We managed to do this," said lead researcher Adam Perriman from school of cellular and molecular medicine.

The synthetic polymer causes the bio-ink to change from liquid to solid when the temperature is raised and the seaweed polymer provides structural support when the cell nutrients are introduced.

"The special bio-ink formulation was extruded from a retrofitted benchtop 3D printer, as a liquid that transformed to a gel at 37 degrees Celsius, which allowed construction of complex living 3D architectures," Perriman added.

The findings, published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials, could help printing complex tissues using the patient's own stem cells for surgical bone or cartilage implants, which could be used in knee and hip surgeries.

The team was able to differentiate the stem cells into osteoblasts -- a cell that secretes the substance of bone cells that have secreted the matrix of cartilage and become embedded in it -- to engineer 3D printed tissue structures over five weeks, including a full-size tracheal cartilage ring.

"What was really astonishing for us was when the cell nutrients were introduced, the synthetic polymer was completely expelled from the 3D structure, leaving only the stem cells and the natural seaweed polymer," Perriman noted. 

This created microscopic pores in the structure which provided more effective nutrient access for the stem cells.​

New York, June 24 (IANS) A team of researchers has created a "virtual heart" that could help medical researchers study new drug therapies.

Researchers from the University of California - San Diego have created a detailed computer model of the electrophysiology of congestive heart failure -- a leading cause of death -- that can simulate subtle changes from the cellular and tissue levels of the heart then show the results of the associated electrocardiogram (ECG).

According to the results, published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, the model can show what happens to the heart when the levels and flow of calcium, potassium and sodium ions are changed. 

At the organ level, the researchers created an anatomically detailed model of the heart which shows the big picture of what happens when various critical chemicals and electrophysiologic components of a healthy working heart are tweaked.

The team also found that ventricular fibrillation, where the waves of excitation that pump blood out of the heart become fragmented and discoordinated, can be caused by a heart failure-related slowdown in cellular processes at the top (basal) region of heart. 

The researchers also used their model to plan a new drug strategy against this heart failure form of fibrillation.​