New Angle on HIV / AIDS

New Angle on HIV / AIDS

Scientists are now trying to work around direct attacks on AIDS that don't seem to be working and focusing on a new method of inserting a gene into the muscle that can cause it to produce protective antibodies against HIV / AIDS. The new method has worked in ice and now has also proven successful in monkeys. The Nature Medicine Journals online edition has a story on this same possible breakthrough. There is a team of researchers at a Children's Hospital in Philadelphia that consider this a real possibility, although they agree that much testing is still applicable before a product is ready for human use.

Every angle possible should be utilized for eradicating this disease and this new research may well be the light at the end of the tunnel for millions waiting for and hoping for help. There are over 33 million people living with HIV today, with 56,000 new cases reported annually just in the United States.

Most efforts at blocking AIDS have sought to stimulate the body's immune system to produce antibodies that fight the disease. This approach has worked for diseases like measles and smallpox, however it hasn't done well with HIV / AIDS.

This team however took a different approach. They used what they cal a leapfrog strategy, bypassing the natural immune system response that was the target of all previous HIV and SIV vaccine candidates. The closely related Simian virus, or SIV, affects monkeys. The researchers knew there wer proteins that could neutralize the HIV virus, so they began thinking about whether they could use them to fight the disease.

In a ten year long effort the team developed immunoadhesins, antibody like proteins designed to attach to SIV and block it from infecting cells.

Read more at Johnson Research Laboratory...

Wheat Extract May Fight Alzheimer’s

Wheat Extract May Fight Alzheimer’s

Wheat, the staff of life, also may be used to fight Alzheimer’s disease.
Korean scientists believe that an extract of wheat could be used to develop treatments to treat and prevent Alzheimer’s.

Water extract of wheat suppresses beta amyloid in the brain, said researcher Lee Jong-Wong of Daegu Catholic University. Beta amyloid is the main component of the amyloid plaques in the brains of victims of Alzheimer’s.

In addition to treating and preventing Alzheimer’s, Lee believes the wheat extract could be pivotal in developing treatments to improve dementia and common forgetfulness.
“Aricept and a number of other drugs produce short-time improvements in memory loss and cognition in Alzheimer’s patients, but side effects were an obvious problem,” Lee told Korea Times.

“Drugs like Aricept focus on improving memory assessment through brain cells that are alive, while wheat extract works by preventing brain cells from dying, which would make them complementary to existing treatments and drugs and provide a synergy effect.”

Animal tests showed that the wheat extract can treat damaged cells as well as prevent Alzheimer’s and speculates that as little as five grams daily could prevent the disease, Lee said.

Colon Cancer Connected to Gut Reaction

A medical doctor at the University of Pittsburgh has compiled evidence confirming that what people eat provides the link between diet and colon cancer.

The research learned it's because diet has a direct effect on the diversity of microbes in the gut.That may not be surprising to most people. After all, the typical Western diet, rich in meats and fats and low in fruits, vegetables and complex carbohydrates, has been recognized for years as a risk factor for colon cancer.

Healthy diets with lots of complex carbohydrates provide the gut with significant numbers of micro-organisms called firmicutes. Those organisms use starches and proteins to manufacture short-chain fatty acids and vitamins such as folate and biotin to maintain a healthy colon. But the microbes in the gut also produce toxic products from food residues.

Diets heavy in meats produce sulfur, which decreases the actions of “good” bacteria and increases the production of other possible carcinogens. Colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in adults in Westernized communities. The research results suggest that a diet that maintains the health of the colon wall is also one that maintains general body health and reduces heart disease.

A diet rich in fiber and resistant starch encourages the growth of good bacteria and increases production of short-chain fatty acids, which lessen the risk of cancer, while a high meat and fat diet reduces the numbers of these good bacteria. Colons host more than 800 bacterial species and 7,000 different strains that could be key to treating diseases.