High levels of vitamin D in older people can reduce heart disease and diabetes

Middle aged and elderly people with high levels of vitamin D could reduce their chances of developing heart disease or diabetes by 43%.  2,000 to 3,000 IU per day is a good level.


High levels of vitamin D in older people can reduce heart disease and diabetes

Seeds from the Moringa tree can be used for water purification, study suggests

The greatest health challenge in the world is simply clean, safe water. In the western world the government infrastructure for at least 200 years has included some form of water management but in Africa and other less developed places, water quality is a family or village matter.

That is why this research from the University of Botswana is so important. Seed extracts readily available have been shown to purify water! Read more below.

Seeds from the Moringa tree can be used for water purification, study suggests

Personalized blood tests for cancer using whole genome sequencing may become routine

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have used data from the whole genome sequencing of breast and colon cancer patients to develop individualized blood tests they believe can help physicians tailor patients' treatments. The genome-based blood tests, believed to be the first of their kind, may be used to monitor tumor levels after therapy and determine cancer recurrence.

Personalized blood tests for cancer using whole genome sequencing

Genomic map spanning over two dozen cancers charted

An international team of researchers has created a genome-scale map of 26 different cancers, revealing more than 100 genomic sites where DNA from tumors is either missing or abnormally duplicated compared to normal tissues. The study, the largest of its kind, finds that most of these genetic abnormalities are not unique to one form of cancer, but are shared across multiple cancers. 


The implication for Personalized Therapy for cancer is significant.  See the entire report.
Genomic map spanning over two dozen cancers charted

Change in mammography guidelines questioned

In November 2009 a national firestorm was set off by a report from the US government changing the recommendations for breast cancer screening by reducing the frequency of screening mammograms and eliminating them completely for 40 year old women.  Both patient advocacy groups and professional societies questioned the outcome.

Now a report looks critically at how the group came to their conclusions and finds significant deviations from proper methods of literature review.

Read the details below but the headline tells it all.

Change in mammography guidelines questioned

Vaccine design: Three is better than two when boosting vaccine effectiveness

Vaccine design: Three is better than two when boosting vaccine effectiveness

Friend or Foe? Six Degrees of Separation, Bacterial Style

Bifidobacteria is the name of the bacteria that are major inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tract of humans. These are the “good bacteria.”  Many bifidobacterial species are believed to contribute to nutrition, development and activity of a strong immune system. These beneficial health effects have driven commercial use of bifidobacteria as live components of many functional foods and can be found in natural food supplement stores.

However, bifidobacteria have also been isolated from the human mouth, where their presence is linked to tooth decay, the “bad bacteria.”  This species is capable of acid production in the mouth to produce a final pH below pH 4.2, sufficient to cause dissolve the calcium out of teeth.

Scientists from China, Italy, France, the UK, Ireland, and Canada (but not the USA!) have determined the complete sequence of the bad guys, all  2,636,368 letters of the genetic code, and have now compared it to prior good guy sequences to answer the question:

How many genetic adaptions does it take to go from being man’s best friend (feather-weight division!) to being responsible for dental  caries, which is one of the most common chronic diseases, remaining untreated in many underdeveloped countries where tooth pain is often alleviated only by the loss or extraction of the affected tooth?

Hint: the term six degrees of freedom refers to the idea that each person is only six steps from every other person on the planet earth. As an aside, the math behind it helps explain the growth rate of popular website visits fairly accurately.  But back to tooth decay.

You guessed it; if Mr. Wonderful acquires just six key genes, out of 2143 protein genes,  it becomes Mr. Tooth Decay!

And the genes acquired are the enzymes that take sugars in the diet and use them for fuel, at the same time making enough acid to dissolve teeth!

After the researchers made these discoveries, they decided to have some fun with the bug as well.  They grew them in the presence of dilute mouth wash, you know, the one you 'love to hate' and looked at which genes were changed.  This exposure turned on 112 genes that helped them break the mouth wash ingredient's molecules in two as well as spit them out of the cell (the multidrug transporter mdrB to be specific).  

What do you do with this information? Well developing a vaccine against these six proteins could lead to a pretty neat picture: eat all the candy you want as a kid and never have to visit the dentist!  And you shouldn't disturb the Good Guys in the GI tract since they don't make those proteins anyway.

Note: science and drug development is never this simple.  At last count there were more than 300 different species of bacteria isolated from tooth cavities. So before you can rid the world of the dental drill we need some more basic science.  I thought the map of the genome was kind of pretty.

Citation:

Citation: Ventura M, Turroni F, Zomer A, Foroni E, Giubellini V, et al. (2009) The Bifidobacterium dentium Bd1 Genome Sequence Reflects Its Genetic Adaptation to the Human Oral Cavity. PLoS Genet 5(12): e1000785. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000785.