StemCell Therapy

By Glenn Ellis

According to the statistics, somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of those reading this column will get the flu this season. The actual average of those who get it is 8 percent. The numbers get higher because some of us get the flu, but never realize that the reason we feel lousy is because we have the flu.

I hope you dont have media fatigue from hearing about the flu all the time, because this is serious business, and could be a health tragedy for you or for someone you love. Depending on the severity of strain of the flu virus, each year the flu kills anywhere from 3,000 to 49,000 people in the U.S. and sends about 200,000 to the hospital. So, dont make the mistake of thinking a bad cold and the flu are the same thing.

When most of us think of the flu, we tend to think of a sore throat, runny nose, cough, body aches, fever and all those other nasty flu symptoms. What you may not realize is that, for people who are less than healthy to start with, the flu can trigger some other serious medical problems: complications as severe as heart attack and stroke.

My biggest personal reason for being an advocate of the flu vaccine is simple: I care about the vulnerable people around us: the elderly; children; cancer patients; people with weakened immune systems.

Even though the sickest among us suffer the greatest consequence from the flu, it is healthy people who need to get vaccinated. The people we come in contact with on a regular basis, who are really healthy, can be just mildly sick from the flu, but theyre the ones who are moving the flu around the community infecting those whose health is far more vulnerable.

Those whose immune systems are compromised are far more vulnerable to infections secondary to the flu. A cancer patients ability to fight infection is hampered by not only their disease but also by treatments, such as chemotherapy, that weaken their immune system. This means that the flu can lead to complications like pneumonia and delays in life-saving treatments for diseases such as cancer.

The underdeveloped immune system of younger children and infants also puts them at greater risk of the flu and ensuing complications. Same goes for pregnant women who experience changes to their immune system, heart and lungs that make them more vulnerable and lead to complications such as premature labor, preterm birth or birth defects in their unborn children.

No one really knows why the flu season happens when or where, but its happening right now.

Flu season has come early this year due to a strain of the virus not typically seen during this time of year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The early activity is primarily being caused by influenza B/Victoria viruses, which is unusual this early in the season. It typically hits in late February or March.

While seasonal influenza (flu) viruses are detected year-round in the United States, flu viruses are most common during the fall and winter. Experts are able to determine that the flu season is underway when there is a significant increase in the number of cases turning up at doctors offices for three consecutive weeks.

I am well aware of the decades of controversy surrounding the flu vaccine. I am also aware of how many of us have no idea what the logic is around the vaccine, or how it works.

Flu vaccines protect against three or four types of flu virus (usually 2 A types and 1 or 2 B types). Vaccine manufacturers produce flu vaccines based on the World Health Organizations (WHO) recommendations. In February each year, the WHO assesses the strains of flu virus that are most likely to be circulating in the northern hemisphere over the following winter. Based on this assessment, WHO recommends which flu strains the vaccines should contain for the forthcoming winter.

The flu vaccine stimulates your bodys immune system to make antibodies to attack the flu virus. Antibodies are proteins that recognize and fight off germs, such as viruses, that have invaded your blood.

If youre exposed to the flu virus after you have had the flu vaccine, your immune system will recognize the virus and immediately produce antibodies to fight it. It may take 10 to 14 days for your immunity to build up fully after you have had the flu vaccine. This is why you must ignore those who say they only got the flu after they receive a flu shot. Apparently, they were already infected with the virus when they got the vaccine, but they got sick before the vaccine had a chance to kick in.

Oh, and by the way, you need to have a flu vaccination every year as the antibodies that protect you from flu decline over time, and flu strains can also change from year to year.

Regardless of your religious beliefs; your philosophical position; or your thoughts about conspiracies, the best way to prevent flu is by getting a flu vaccine each year. It is not too late to get vaccinated. As my friend, bioethicist Dr. September Williams states, Remember you do not know how vulnerable the person next to you may be to your slight response to the flu.

Glenn Ellis, is Research Bioethics Fellow at Harvard Medical School and author of Which Doctor?, and Information is the Best Medicine. For more good health information visit: http://www.glennellis.com.

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Ellis: The Worst is Yet to Come this Flu Season - Birmingham Times

People take part in a pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong on Sept. 29. Adryel Talamantes/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Its become fashionable to wonder whether the liberal international order can survive the malign forces that have been lining up against it during the 2010swhat the Wall Street Journal called the Decade of Disruption.But based on recent trends, its a fair bet that democracy, globalism, and open trade will endure handily into the third decade of the 21st century.

Start with the state of democracy. Nothing has been more alarming to internationalists than the one-two punch of U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who have taken power in two of the worlds oldest and most important democracies by awakening the old demons of nationalism. With Trump focusing his ire on NATO and the World Trade Organization, and Johnson stalking out of the European Union, the two leaders have transformed the once-hallowed special relationship from a bulwark of global stability (sullied though it was by the Iraq War) into what looks more like a wrecking ball. Elsewhere, illiberalism has overtaken young democracies, such as Hungary and Poland, and even threatened mature ones with the rapid rise of nationalist parties such as the Alternative for Germany and Norbert Hofers anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Austria. In the worlds largest democracy, India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party appear to be sending the same message. And there are considerable doubts about whether the democratic body politic possesses an immune system strong enough to fight off a plague of cyber-generated misinformation and disinformation, and systemic hacking by such autocrats as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But democracy just wont give up, and in 2019which could justly be called the year of global protestit kept reinventing itself at the grassroots. This has been happening in the most unlikely of places around the globe, in countries such as Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Chile, and above all in Hong Kong, where thousands of determined protesters have braved bullets and tear gas, embarrassing Chinese President Xi Jinping even as he brutally consolidates his autocratic rule on the mainland. Perhaps the U.S. and British democracies are becoming decadentand 2020 will tell us a lot about that question come Novemberbut the idea of democracy remains a powerful, ever-replenishing urge that, as sociologists and political scientists have long told us, only gets stronger the more that income and educational levels increase around the world.

The international economy is also undergoing some severe stress testsand surviving remarkably intact. The year 2019 began with deep-seated fears that Trumps trade wars would help trigger a global recessionand among the most concerned was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who midway through the year suggested he and other central bank chiefs simply didnt know how bad things could get. The thing is, Powell said, there isnt a lot of experience in responding to global trade tensions. Growth and investment are still slowing due in large part to the uncertainty Trump has created, but fears of a recession have receded. It turns out the U.S. president cannot single-handedly return the United States to the days of Smoot-Hawleyeven his fellow neonationalist Boris Johnson believes in free tradeand the domino effect of retaliatory tariffs that followed in the 1930s, setting the stage for world war. (In June 1930, under the Smoot-Hawley Act, the United States raised tariffs to an average of 59 percent on more than 25,000 imports; just about every other nation reacted in tit-for-tat protectionist fashion, severely depressing the global economy.)

Today, the complexities of a deeply integrated global economy and its supply chains may prove too much to undoeven for the most powerful person on the planet.

And what of the institutions of the international system? The United States has always had an uneasy relationship with its post-World War II progeny, principally the United Nations, the WTO, and NATOdespite helping create themand Trump only gave expression to an American id that was long seething under the surface. True, Trump is demeaning these institutions to an unprecedented degree and demanding far more of them. But hes only saying more stridently what was said by, say, President Barack Obama, who also criticized the NATO allies for being free-riders, and former President George W. Bush, whose administration privately mocked the alliance and sneered at the U.N. (Another little-remembered precursor to Trump was President Bill Clintons feisty first-term trade representative, Mickey Kantor, who once said he wasnt interested in free-trade theology and preferred that Americans behave like mercantilists.)

Trump is making a serious run at denuding the WTO by taking down its appellate court, but even that institution is likely to outlast a 73-year-old president who, at most, has only four more years in office to wreak havoc on the global system. This is especially likely because he is now mostly alone in his anti-globalist passion with the departure of his deeply ideological national security advisor, the militant John Bolton.

Lets not forget either that the advent of Trump and Johnson represents a legitimate backlash to major policy errors made by the elites who have dominated the international system. George W. Bush led the Republican Party badly astray with his strategically disastrous Iraq War and fecklessness over the deregulation of Wall Street, which set the stage for the biggest financial crash since 1929 and the Great Recession. That turned voters off to traditional Republican thinking and opened the door to Trumps unlikely takeover of the party. Something similar happened in Britain, when Bushs partner in these neoliberal economic delusions and his ally in an unnecessary war, the once-popular Labour leader Tony Blair, set the stage for Labours eventual handoff to the socialist Jeremy Corbyn. (A shift that was, in turn, analogous to the ascent of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and the left inside the U.S. Democratic Party in response to the rise of Trumps 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton, who was seen as pro-war and too friendly to Wall Street.)

But the larger point is that Trump and Johnson are only the latest stresses to a system that, since the end of the Cold War, has suffered some pretty major ones and yet endured. In the quarter-century since then, financial markets collapsed several times, and the global economy has remained intact. Islamist terrorists have struck at major capitals around the world, and a clash of civilizations hasnt ensued. The worlds two largest economies, the United States and China, incessantly bicker, but theyre still doing business. Ivory tower realists continue to be dead wrong in their predictions that the international system will fall back into anarchy, even when politicians like Trump are doing their best to make that happen. On the realist view, the so-called West and its institutions should have disintegrated after the Cold War with the disappearance of the Soviet Union; as Owen Harries wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1993, The political West is not a natural construct but a highly artificial one. It took the presence of a life-threatening, overtly hostile East to bring it into existence and to maintain its unity. It is extremely doubtful whether it can now survive the disappearance of that enemy.

Instead, these international constructs only expandedso rapidly and intensively that they generated a backlash. And that expansion is plainly still outpacing the efforts to block or destroy it, especially as we see other nations forging free trade deals behind Trumps back. Above all, while plainly Americas stature as stabilizer of the international system has been seriously set backfirst by Bush, most recently by Trumpthere is some positive news even in the impeachment drama now underway. Although Trump is all but certain to be acquitted in the Senate, the impeachment vote in the House, following weeks of testimony by career U.S. diplomats, was a dramatic reaffirmation of traditional American values for fair dealing not just with Ukraine, but with all nations.

Perhaps, for now, that will be enough to keep things intact.

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Why the Liberal International OrderFree Trade, Democracy, and GlobalismWill Survive the 2020s and Donald Trump - Foreign Policy

Alice Dreger

Alice Dreger is an historian of medicine and science, a sex researcher, an award-winning writer, and an (im)patient advocate. Dregers latest major work is Galileos Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science.

ALICE DREGER: We don't actually know the extent to which gender is socially constructed because you can't do an experiment where you remove culture and see what happens. So we don't know to what extent what we see as gendered patterns are the result of sex, biological sex, males and females. We know that gender differs according to culture, but we also know that there are patterns that appear to be fairly universal in terms of gender norms. And the ones that are more universal are more likely to probably have a sex bases to it, an evolved-to-sex basis, that is to say biological basis for males and females. So, for example, which gender serves a very important meal may be different by different cultures. So in some cultures a man will serve a very important meal versus a woman. So for example, think about it in the United States that historically speaking the father carves the turkey on Thanksgiving, but in general women prepare food historically speaking. So what we know is that these kinds of things can differ by culture, but that there are some "universals". And one of the universals we find, for example, is in childhood play that we find that children who are girls tend to do more social play, they tend to do more social role-play. Children who are boys tend to do more competitive play, they tend to do more play that mimics aggression or that mimics sport and mimics sometimes building, and so there are these kinds of patterns. But that doesn't mean everybody fits them.

And it's really interesting actually too if you look cross-culturally scientists find evidence that this may have it's not just gender, that there's a sexuality component to it too. So boys who are going to grow up and be gay, and we know who they are because of retrospectively they grow up to be gay, they're what's called androphilic, that is to say they're attracted to males. And the majority of females are also attracted to males, so most females are androphilic and a small percentage of boys will grow up to be androphilic. We know that historically speaking, cross-culturally they tend to be more feminine in terms of their interests, they're more interested in social role-play, for example, they're more interested in helping their mothers, they're more interested in associating with girls as young children and more interested in dressing as girls, for example. That doesn't mean that they are girls, but it does suggest to us that sexuality and gender have interplayed components in them, that gender isn't just about social role but it has something to do with sexuality and that there's a reason females end up with these kind of patterns and males end up with these kinds of patterns and when you have a male who's attracted to males he ends up with a little bit more of the female pattern and in some circumstances if you have a girl and she's attracted to girls she'll end up with a little bit more of the male pattern in childhood.

So gender and sexual orientation seem to have sort of some connection to each other, but it's not a perfect connection in terms of absolute correlation and so we can't say that we can easily predict what would be somebody's gender role or sexual orientation simply by looking at some of the components.

Evolution would naturally favor heterosexuality because that's how you get babies. And so if we're thinking about genes trying to produce genes it would make no sense to have genes that would lead to people who don't reproduce, because those genes would not be reproduced. That said, we know cross-culturally gay people exist. So we know that that's a natural variation in the population. And so then scientists ask the really interesting question, why is that there? Why does that not disappear over time? Because at least in theory that should lead to lower reproductive fitness, which means it should lead to fewer babies, and so it should fade out evolutionarily speaking. One possibility is that it's a side effect, that human variation is good for the species and so evolution is responding to the situation not by reducing necessarily everything that doesn't work, but saying "Let's keep throwing up variation, and some of it will work in some environments and some of it will work in other environments." Being a varied species makes a species more resilient.

So it may be the case that being gay if you're born that way is just a variation on a theme and it will show up every now and then just because variations show up. But some scientists find some evidence that there may actually be advantages to a family of having a certain percentage of the children be gay. And this is work done, for example, by Paul Vasey at the University of Lethbridge. And he's been looking at the population in Samoa as well as other places, but Samoa as a cultural system that actually recognizes that a certain percentage of the boys are going to grow up to be androphilic, they're going to be interested in men sexually. And they actually have a whole cultural system for it. They have a third gender category called the fa'afafine and when a boy it becomes evident is that kind of boy the child is raised as a girl and becomes a woman culturally speaking but that doesn't change her body at all but partners with men. So in our culture that would be called transgenderism, but in this culture it's a third gender category that absorbs what in our culture might just turn out to be gay men. And what Paul has found is that when he looks at the families that have fa'afafine within them the fa'afafine are not using up a lot of resources, because they're not themselves having childrenthese are big-family culturesbut they do take their own earnings and they direct it at their nieces and nephews. And that means you have more adults producing more resources for a smaller number of children. So biologically there may be an advantage for families to have a certain number of gay children, because those people will not reproduce but they will take care of the nieces and nephews. And so overall the population, the genetics of a family will be continued on because that family has a genetic advantage.

And when you think about it we have this sort of stereotype of the gay uncle who takes care of the nieces and nephews in terms of providing for them and providing extra resources, and they're not spending it on their own kids, they're spending it on their sister's and brother's children, that might be a possible evolutionary explanation for why it is that we see homosexuality persist in the human system. It's also the case, we know from work done by Ray Blanchard in Canada, that a certain number of men who will grow up to be gay get that way not through genetics per se, but they get that way in the womb. So it's inborn but not genetic. And what happens is apparently well we know statistically from huge studies now if a mother has lots of pregnancies of males every successive male will be a little bit more likely to be gay. So the farther down you go in that sibling chain the more likely it is that the later-born males will be gay. This has been studied in many populations in the world, large numbers, and it's rigorous. We know that this is true. So why would that be? Well, it looks like it's a kind of side effect: the mother's immune system appears to be reacting to male hormones and maybe dampening them down a little bit, and this results in something called the fraternal birth order effect, which is that later born males are more likely to be gay. It's a surprising finding because it suggests to us that some men are absolutely born gay but not because of genetics, they're born gay because of the birth order in terms of some sort of effect having on a woman's system, which is reacting to her children's system, and it only occurs in males, it doesn't occur in females. And that's part of the reason why the theory is it's an immune response because it doesn't occur with females it only occurs with males born out of the same womb. So that's something I've colloquially called womb-gay, but it's called the fraternal birth order effect. And I think the evidence is very strong that a certain percentage of gay people are born that way. We do not have good evidence that straight people are born that way. We don't bother to look for that evidence. Straight people have been less interesting to scientists than gay people in terms of where they come from. And that's because there's a heterosexist assumption that straight people "require no explanation" and gay people "require explanation."

I mean in terms of evolution gay people do require an explanation. Logically speaking we should say "Well that's not a very 'successful strategy,'" as it's called in science, it doesn't lead to a higher reproductive fitness meaning it doesn't lead to more babies. So logically you would want to explain gay people. But it's also a political issue that basically straight people have required no explanation and gay people have required explanation. And some of the explanations historically have been rather unpleasant, like blaming mothers who are frigid or overly clingy in the case of being gay"over clingy mothers make gay boys." What we know from cross-cultural studies is that gay boys are more interested in being with their mothers than straight boys, and so it's not that the mothers are more clingy it's that the boys are more tolerant of time with their mothers.So we've studied much more about gay people that we have studied about straight people, and straight people remain largely a mystery as to how they operate. What makes them straight? We don't really know. We also don't know why gay people are attracted to each other anymore than we know why straight people are attracted to each other. We have hints about smells and about genetic interactions and about facial symmetry, but we really know very little about why straight people are straight and why gay people are gay.

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#4: What makes someone gay? Science is trying to get it straight. | Top 10 2019 - Big Think

Lose weight, eat less junk food, and stick to a diet top plenty of New Years resolution lists, but many experts say that these goals may set unrealistic expectations and set you up for failure before February even hits. Instead, doctors and registered dietician say that a more sustainable approach to managing weight, feeling good, and changing eating habits is to focus on identifying which foods nourish your body and give you the proper fuel you need to live a great life. So to jumpstart 2020, we rounded up some of the best products to help you eat well and feel your very best.

[Photo: courtesy of EverlyWell]Find your food sensitivitiesSome foods that are generally considered nutritious may not be good for you specifically, thanks to food sensitivities that can cause headaches, joint pain, fatigue, and digestive issues. To identify which foods might be the culprits, you can start elimination diet test from scratch, which can take months or years to execute properly. You can also jumpstart that process withEverlyWells mail-in food sensitivity test($159), which requires just a small sample of blood. The tests, which are reviewed and approved by independent board-certified physicians, measure IgG antibodies in your bloodstream when exposed to certain foods and ingredients. (Its important to note that this test is merely for food sensitivities, not more serious food allergies, nor can it identify is someone is lactose intolerant.) You can then use your test results to start a guided elimination diet.

[Photo: courtesy of Peter Pauper Press]Keep a food journalResearch shows that for people interested in learning more about healthy eating habits, keeping a journal is very effective tool. During onestudyof nearly 1,700 participants, those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. Additionally, a food loglike this handy, self-guidedDaily Food Journal ($8)is crucial in helping to identify eating patterns and certain foods that dont make you feel good or cause bloating, digestive issues, headaches, and the like. If youre going to try an elimination diet, a food journal is key. The only time we wouldnt recommend using a food log is if you aresusceptible to obsessive eating patterns or food phobias; have a history of an eating disorder; or, if for any reason, a food log makes you feel guilt, shame, or fear. If thats the case, skip this step. Because keeping track of what you eat should make you feel mindfulnot bad about yourself.

[Photo: courtesy of Seedlip]Skip the boozeRegardless of how much (or little) you drink, anyone can all benefit from cutting back on alcohol, since consumption is linked to increased risk of cancer, heart disease, immunity issues, weight gain, muscle loss, and a slew of other not-so-fun side effects. But that doesnt mean your dry January needs to be joyless. The botanical spirits of nonalcoholic distillery Seedlip has become a hit with high-end mixologists. Now you can try them at home with theSeedlip Distilled Non-Alcoholic Spirits Sampler ($107.50, set of 3). With only three ingredients (water, natural botanical distillates, and citric acid), these spirits are good for your health and surprisingly enjoyable for the palate. Beer lovers also have more alcohol-free options available to them, such asWellbeing Brew Cosnon-alcoholic craft beer($12), which only has 68 calories and contains zero grams of sugar. You can also try the award-winningnonalcoholic brews($12) of the breakout Athletic Brewing Company.

[Photo: courtesy of Sun Basket]But dont skip mealsSkipping meals is a bad ideathat can spike your blood sugars and lead to overeating laterand wreak havoc on your metabolism and immune system. If you find youre simply too busy to shop for and cook your own meals and you want to avoid eating unhealthily on the run, consider a subscriptions service like the Sun Basket meal kit($11.99 per serving for 2 people, $10.99 per serving for 4 people, regardless of frequency), which brings you a weekly box of organic and non-GMO ingredients to prepare your own meat-free or vegan meals. For people who are even more pressed for time,Sakara(starting at $239/week) delivers fresh meals, teas, and supplements that are completely organic, plant-based, gluten-free, dairy-free, non-GMO, and contain no refined sugar. No prep or cooking required.

Looking for more goodies and gadgets? Check out our handpicked suggestions.

Fast Companymay receive revenue for some links to products on our site.

Read more:
2020 New Year's resolution: How to eat better and master your nutrition - Fast Company

Megan Sheppard offers some natural health advice.

Q: Following recent surgery, I picked up a superbug called CPE and needed to be isolated in hospital for some weeks. I still have traces of the bug in my system. What would you advise?

A: CPE, or Carbapenemase-Producing Enterobacterales, is the latest in a long line of so-called superbugs which have developed a resistance to nearly all known prescription antibiotics.

These pose a particular threat to high-risk patients, such as those in intensive care, undergoing bone marrow and organ transplants, receiving cancer treatments, and people who require major surgery.

There are two bee products which have had great results in treating patients with the other well-known superbug, MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) one of which is manuka honey.

ManukaCare 18+ from Comvita is rated at a minimum potency of UMF 18, which means that it is equivalent to at least an 18% phenol solution four times greater than standard antiseptics.

Take a teaspoon of honey straight from the spoon once in the morning and again in the evening.

The other bee product with potent antibacterial properties is propolis. Used since the 1960s to fight bacterial infection, including against MRSA, its unique as it also has antiviral, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and immunomodulatory effects.

Propolis alters the management of cytokine production and release in our immune system, allowing the body to quickly respond to antigens. Cytokines are basically chemical messengers which enable cells in our immune system to communicate with each other.

Additionally, propolis contains bioflavanoids which stimulate interferon production, keeping your body in a fit state to fight off infection and remain in a state of health. Propolis liquid costs 8.34 for 30ml and is available from health stores take as directed.

Q: My periods have become irregular. When they eventually arrive, sometimes skipping a month, the flow is very heavy. Im 43 years old. Is there a natural remedy I could take?

A: This sounds very much like you have entered the perimenopausal stage of your journey as a woman. These pre-menopausal changes typically begin anywhere from the age of 35 years onwards.

The wonderful Andean root, maca (Lepidium meyenii) will not only help to bring your cycle closer to the 28-day ideal, but it also works to increase energy levels, improve mood, and is a powerful antioxidant.

Maca is also a complete protein and high in many vitamins and minerals, including calcium and zinc.

Agnus castus (also known as Vitex, Monks Pepper, or Chasteberry) is a wonderful herb for regulating the menstrual cycle.

It can also help with extreme period pains, heavy bleeding, intermittent bleeding, shortened cycle, infrequent menstruation, cystic hyperplasia of the endometrium, secondary amenorrhoea.

Agnus castus is best taken once daily following breakfast; improvements can appear relatively quickly, but treatment should be continued for a minimum of six months for long-lasting results.

If you are taking a tincture preparation (typically 1:5 strength), then you will need to take 1-3ml (20-60 drops) each morning. Capsules should be taken at a dosage of 500-1,000mg daily.

There are so many valuable herbs to help with perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms: red clover, dong quai, black cohosh, wild yam, raspberry leaf, squaw vine, and nettle (leaf and root).

You can do your own research as to which of these seems to fit you best or find a combination formula as many of these herbs work even more effectively when combined synergistically.

It is important to make sure you are supporting your adrenal system and keeping on top of your stress levels.

Eating clean whole foods, exercising regularly, breathwork and meditation, drinking plenty of water, and making time to do the things you love are all important for your mental and emotional wellbeing as well as helping to regulate your menstrual cycle.

NOTE: The information contained in this column is not a subsitute for medical advice. Always consult a doctor.

Go here to read the rest:
Natural Health: 'I still have traces of a superbug in my system. What would you advise?' - Irish Examiner

The biggest gains from these new tools have been in the treatment of melanoma, the cancer Australians suffer from more than anybody else, and non-small-cell lung cancer, the cancer that kills more Australians than any other.

Says Darren Saunders, a UNSW cancer researcher: "The way my clinical colleagues describe it to me is (that it's) the biggest transformation in the way we treat cancer in their careers."

"Without immunotherapy, I'd be a dead man": Warren Penna has seen promising results for the treatment of his melanoma. Credit:Chris Hopkins

It has made an enormous difference to patients who might otherwise have given up hope.

Warren Penna first noticed something was amiss when a large freckle on his right shoulder started to change shape. Then it darkened and began to bleed. The retired horticulturist went to a number of specialists before he was finally diagnosed with melanoma in 2014.

He had the cancer removed from his shoulder at The Alfred, but earlier this year, the 54-year-old Footscray man was diagnosed with throat cancer. As specialists conducted scans of his body, they discovered melanoma tumours in his lungs, liver, armpit and brain.

"When I saw the scans I was certain a dead man," Mr Penna said.

Doctors decided to target the melanoma first and the last eight months have been a blur of radiation treatments and surgery.

But it is the immunotherapy that Mr Penna is undergoing at Peter MacCallum, which involves fortnightly injections of antibodies Nivolumab and Ipilimumab, that has garnered the most remarkable results.

In a matter of months, the largest tumour in his lung has shrunk from 4.5 centimetres to 2 centimetres and specialists remain optimistic. His immunotherapy treatment will continue until mid 2022.

"It can be really tough at times because you are constantly thinking about your own mortality," Mr Penna said.

"But I feel so incredibly grateful I am able to get this treatment here in Australia and that is available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, because I have no doubt I would be dead right now without it."

Immunotherapy is known for its severe side-effects and Mr Penna, who is also due to start radiation next week for his throat cancer, struggles with overwhelming fatigue and sometimes breaks out in a rash.

"I count myself very lucky though because so many others have really significant side-effects like diarrhoea and nausea," he said.

Cancer develops when a normal cells DNA mutates; often this is because it was exposed to a carcinogen like sunlight, but sometimes there is no cause at all. Just bad luck.

Our immune system is designed to sniff out and kill these mutated cells, but sometimes, the DNA mutation changes the cell in a way that makes it invisible to our immune system. Unchecked, the cell multiplies into a lethal tumour.

For the past 200 years, our treatments for cancer have been crude: surgery to remove the tumour; radiation to kill it; and broad poisons that kill the cancer but often the patient as well.

And then, almost overnight, everything changed.

In the '80s and 90s, scientists discovered immune checkpoints, tiny molecular flags that cells run up to mark them as friendly, so the immune system does not kill them.

They then discovered some cancers were covered in these flags, making them completely invisible to the immune system.

What if, the scientists thought, you could get rid of those flags?

"Initially, people were pretty sceptical of this idea. It was pretty unpopular," says Professor Doug Hilton, head of the blood cancer lab at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

Independently, other labs had developed monoclonal antibodies. These are human immune molecules, made by cloned human immune cells living in a laboratory dish and specifically engineered to stick to a certain part of a cell.

With a tweak, the antibodies could gum over the checkpoints on cancer cells. Suddenly, they were visible to the immune system, which killed them.

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The first immune checkpoint inhibitor, the skin cancer drug Yervoy, was approved in Australia in 2011. Lung cancer drug Keytruda which Professor Hilton labels as one of the most important cancer medicines of the decade was approved four years later, and came on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme at the start of December 2019.

"They have been absolutely transformative," says Professor Thomas.

A 2015 review of clinical trials of Yervoy for melanoma found more than 20 per cent of those treated were alive 10 years later and showing no sign of the disease. Before the treatment, the long-term survival rate was less than 10 per cent.

Keytruda treatment has led to complete remission for 22 per cent of patients with Hodgkins lymphoma in one clinical trial; in another, it cut risk of death by 40 per cent compared to conventional chemotherapy.

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Importantly, the effect of the checkpoint inhibitors appears long-term. Even after therapy stops, the immune system is still capable of spotting and killing any new cancers that arise.

"It appears to be a cure for some individuals," says Professor Thomas.

In 2011, as everyone was celebrating Yervoys success, word started to filter out about remarkable results in Philadelphia.

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An American team had completely cured a seven-year-old of a lethal childhood cancer leukaemia, using a new treatment called CAR-T.

That child, Emily Whitehead, is now 14. The cancer has not returned.

CAR-T works in reverse to checkpoint inhibitor therapy. A patients own immune cells are drawn from the blood and placed in a test tube.

A genetically modified virus is used to edit the DNA of those immune cells, giving them the ability to seek and kill the patients tumour.

When CAR-T works, it works extraordinarily well. One clinical trial led to the complete eradication of cancer in more than half the study participants.

Most excitingly, if the technique works, it could be used for almost any form of cancer. All the doctors would need to do is to tweak the T cells DNA to target the cancer in question.

The challenge, says Dr Saunders? "At the moment it costs half a million dollars per patient."

This is the next step. Bringing down the cost of immunotherapy, while also continuing clinical trials to see what other cancers it will work on.

But for the first time, a durable cure for cancer actually seems within our grasp.

Liam is The Age and Sydney Morning Herald's science reporter

Melissa Cunningham is The Age's health reporter.

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'Scarily like a cure': the decade that revolutionised our fight with cancer - The Age

I'm hesitant to give my child the measles vaccine, because I'm worried about long-lasting side effects. Is it dangerous? Sally G., Jacksonville, Florida

As we've said before, it's smart to get your child the vaccine as early as your pediatrician recommends. The risk of getting vaccinated is greatly outweighed by the benefit of avoiding the measles. For vaccinations overall, the ratio of risk to benefit is one to 40,000. Worldwide, the measles kills over 100,000 children annually. In the U.S., since Jan. 1, there have been 880 cases of the disease, which was declared eradicated here in 2000! The real news, however, is that the re-emergence of measles poses a greater risk than we knew.

Harvard researchers have found that measles causes immune amnesia. It wipes out 20% to 50% of your body's antibodies, which are protecting you from a slew of diseases caused by other viruses and bacteria. That may be why bacterial ear infections and pneumonia are common complications after getting the measles. Long-term effects may be even more serious. And that's another good reason to get your child vaccinated as early as recommended.

So why are so many American parents hesitant? Researchers at Brigham Young University thought it may be because folks don't have firsthand experience with the devastating effects of those illnesses. To test the theory, they sent 250 students out to interview locals who had come down with vaccine-preventable diseases, such as polio, shingles and tuberculosis. Some of those students referred to themselves as "vaccine hesitant," but around 70% became pro-vaccine after learning how life-damaging the diseases were.

Bottom line: Don't make yourself go through firsthand tragedy before you realize how smart it is to get vaccinated! Kids should get the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine at 1 year old and again between 28 days later and 6 years old. You can also opt for two doses of the MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella/chickenpox) vaccine; it's approved for children 12 months through 12 years old.

Last week I thought I heard someone at the door, but when I checked there was no one there. Am I losing my mind, or should I get my hearing checked? Sam B., Portland, Oregon

If you have ringing in your ears, doorbells or otherwise, you might want to get checked out by an audiologist. It could be a sign of hearing loss. But if it's just a one-time event, it's probably nothing.

Sensory hallucinations what that was are pretty common, and there are many forms. You can hear, see, smell, taste or feel something that isn't there. While they can be associated with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, they are also related to certain medications, drug abuse, medical conditions like Parkinson's and perhaps sleep deprivation, stress and anxiety.

They can also result from what Georgetown University neuroscientists say is a bottleneck of feed-forward and feedback signals. It's what can occur when the brain is asked to process more information than it can handle. These days, there is more information out there at your fingertips (coming in and going out) than at any time in human history.

In addition, researchers at Stanford University recently discovered how easy it is to provoke hallucinations. In the lab, they altered the neural activity of mice (those rodents have millions of neurons in their brains; humans have billions) by disrupting about 20 individual neurons using light and sound. When they did so, the mice showed signs of believing something was there when it wasn't. This prompted one researcher to ponder, "Why are we not hallucinating all the time, due to spurious random activity?"

Now, that's not to diminish the seriousness of recurrent hallucinatory episodes that interfere with your everyday quality of life. If that's the case, you should keep a journal of when and where they happen and discuss the incidents with your doctor so he/she can pinpoint the cause.

Mehmet Oz, M.D. is host of "The Dr. Oz Show," and Mike Roizen, M.D. is Chief Wellness Officer and Chair of Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic. Email your health and wellness questions to Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen at youdocsdaily@sharecare.com.

Excerpt from:
Oz & Roizen: Measles wipes out parts of the immune system - Bluffton Today

Food allergens are the scourge of the modern school lunchbox. Many foods contain proteins that can set off an oversized immune reaction and one of the fiercest is the humble peanut.

Around 3% of children in Australia have a peanut allergy, and only 1 in 5 of them can expect to outgrow it. For these unlucky people, even trace amounts of peanut can trigger a fatal allergic reaction.

But what sets the peanut apart from other nuts? Why is it so good at being an allergen?

To answer this, we have to explore the pathway from allergen to allergy, and just what it is about an allergen that triggers a response from the immune system.

Read more: What are allergies and why are we getting more of them?

Before coming into contact with the immune system, an allergen in food needs to overcome a series of obstacles. First it needs to pass through the food manufacturing process, and then survive the chemicals and enzymes of the human gut, as well as cross the physical barrier of the intestinal lining.

After achieving all of this, the allergen must still have the identifying features that trigger the immune system to respond.

Many food allergens successfully achieve this, some better than others. This helps us to understand why some food allergies are worse than others.

The most potent allergens like peanuts have many characteristics that successfully allow them to overcome these challenges, while other nuts display these traits to a lesser extent.

The first characteristic many allergenic foods have, especially peanuts, is strength in numbers. Both tree nuts and peanuts contain multiple different allergens. At last count, cashews contain three allergens, almonds have five, walnuts and hazelnuts have 11 each and peanuts are loaded with no less than 17.

Each allergen has a unique shape, so the immune system recognises each one differently. The more allergens contained in a single food, the higher the potency.Additionally, many of these allergens also have numerous binding sites for both antibodies and specialised immune cells, further increasing their potency.

The first hurdle for a food allergen is the food manufacturing process. Many nuts are roasted prior to consumption. For most foods, heating changes the structure of proteins in a way that destroys the parts that trigger an immune response. This makes them far less potent as allergens.

This is not the case for many tree nuts: allergens in almonds, cashews and hazelnuts survived roasting with no loss of potency.

And for the major peanut allergens, its even worse. Roasting actually makes them more potent.

Read more: Can I prevent food allergies in my kids?

From here, the allergen will have to survive destruction by both stomach acid and digestive enzymes within the human gut. Many nut allergens have the ability to evade digestion to some degree.

Some simply have a robust structure, but peanut allergens actively inhibit some of the digestive enzymes of the gut. This helps them safely reach the small intestine, where the allergens then need to cross the gut lining to have contact with the immune system.

This is where peanut allergens really stand apart from most other allergens. They have the ability to cross the intestinal cells that make up the gut lining. Given their relative sizes, this is like a bus squeezing itself through a cat flap.

Peanut allergens accomplish this remarkable feat by altering the bonds that hold the gut cells together. They can also cross the lining by hijacking the guts own ability to move substances. Once across, the allergens will gain access to the immune system, and from there an allergic response is triggered.

The combination of multiple allergens, numerous immune binding sites, heat stability, digestion stability, enzyme blocking, and the effect on the gut lining makes peanut a truly nasty nut.

This leaves us with a nagging question: if peanuts are so potent, why doesnt everyone develop a peanut allergy? We still dont know.

Recently, a potential vaccine developed by researchers from the University of South Australia has shown promise in reprogramming the immune system of mice and blood taken from people with peanut allergy. Will this translate to a potential treatment for peanut allergy? We will have to wait and see.

For now, the more we learn about the action of allergens, and the more we understand their effects on our body, the more we can develop new ways to stop them. And eventually, we might outsmart these clever nuts for good.

Link:
Tough nuts: why peanuts trigger such powerful allergic reactions - The Conversation AU

DetailsCategory: VaccinesPublished on Monday, 16 December 2019 19:29Hits: 279

First allogeneic, off-the-shelf cell therapy approach that enhances T-cell activation through localized OX40-mediated co-stimulation of dormant immune signals

DURHAM, NC, USA I December 16, 2019 IHeat Biologics, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTBX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company specialized in the development of therapeutics designed to activate patients' immune systems against cancer, today announced that the Company has dosed the first patient in the first Phase 1 clinical trial of HS-130, in combination with HS-110, for patients with advanced solid tumors refractory to standard of care.

HS-130 is Heat's allogeneic cell line engineered to locally secrete the extracellular domain of OX40 ligand fusion protein (OX40L-Fc), a key costimulator of T cells, designed to augment antigen-specific CD8+ T cell response. HS-130 was manufactured by utilizing the Company's proprietary process to reprogram a live, genetically modified cancer cell line. In multiple preclinical models, these responses have demonstrated improved efficacy and safety using OX40L-Fc via cell-based delivery compared to systemic delivery of an OX40 agonist antibody in combination with HS-110.

The first-in-human study is expected to enroll up to 30 patients under the supervision of lead investigator Dr. Rachel Sanborn, Director of the Phase 1 Clinical Trials Program at the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, a division of Providence Cancer Institute in Portland, Oregon. In this study, patients will receive escalating doses of HS-130 in combination with HS-110. The objectives of the study are to evaluate patient safety and to determine the optimal dose for a subsequent Phase 2 trial.

Jeff Wolf, Heat's CEO, commented, "We are pleased to announce the initiation of this combination study, which marks a key milestone for Heat as we advance our latest asset into clinical development. We look forward to sharing clinical proof of concept data to enable the development of a new generation of allogeneic therapy drug candidates in 2020."

About HS-110

HS-110 is designed by engineering gp96-Fc to deliver more than 70 cancer testis antigens to stimulate the patients' immune system and activate a robust cytotoxic T cell response. HS-110 has completed enrollment in a Phase 2 clinical trial for advanced non-small cell lung cancer, in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb's nivolumab (Opdivo) or with Merck's pembrolizumab (Keytruda) (NCT 02439450).

About HS-130

HS-130 is designed with the same parent cell line as HS-110 but is engineered to secrete OX40L-Fc fusion protein, a potent inducer of antigen-specific CD8+ T cell proliferation. The first-in-human study aims to evaluate the safety and dose-response of HS-130 in combination with HS-110 in patients with advanced solid tumors (NCT04116710).

About Heat Biologics, Inc.

Heat Biologics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics designed to activate a patient's immune system against cancer using CD8+ "Killer" T-cells. Pelican Therapeutics, Inc., a subsidiary of Heat, is focused on the development of co-stimulatory monoclonal antibody and fusion protein-based therapies designed to activate the immune system. For more information, please visit http://www.heatbio.com.

Reference

Fromm G, de Silva S, Giffin L, Xu X, Rose J, Schreiber TH. Gp96-Ig/Costimulator (OX40L, ICOSL, or 4-1BBL) Combination Vaccine Improves T-cell Priming and Enhances Immunity, Memory, and Tumor Elimination. Cancer Immunol Res. 2016 Sep 2;4(9):766-78.

SOURCE: Heat Biologics

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Heat Biologics Announces First Patient Dosed in the First Phase 1 Trial of HS-130 | Vaccines | News Channels - PipelineReview.com

DetailsCategory: DNA RNA and CellsPublished on Monday, 16 December 2019 19:43Hits: 277

CULVER CITY, CA, USA I December 16, 2019 I NantKwest Inc. (Nasdaq: NK), a clinical-stage natural killer cell-based therapeutics company, and ImmunityBio, a privately held immunotherapy company, today announced results from their Phase 1b trial investigating a novel, first-in-human immunotherapy protocol consisting of NantKwests off-the-shelf, antibody-targeted NK cells (haNK) combined with ImmunityBios IL-15 superagonist (N-803), low-dose metronomic chemoradiation therapy, adenoviral and yeast tumor-associated antigen vaccines (MUC1, brachyury, CEA) and a PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) who had relapsed after prior therapy.

The results were presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) on December 13, 2019, in San Antonio, Texas, in a poster titled Safety and efficacy from first-in-human immunotherapy combining NK and T-cell activation with off-the-shelf, antibody-targeted CD16 NK cell line (haNK) in patients with 2nd-line or greater metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

This landmark study is the worlds first trial to combine cellular therapy with checkpoint inhibitors and IL-15 cytokine stimulation, as well as with adenoviral vectors, all acting in concert to induce immune simulation of both NK cells and T cells.

We are extremely pleased that the FDA granted us IND authorization to initiate this novel immunotherapy trial enabling the safety and efficacy study of multiple novel biological agents administered as a single protocol in the outpatient setting, said Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, Chairman and CEO of NantKwest. This important trial forms the basis of our approach to induce immunogenic cell death and long-term memory, and avoid the ravages of high dose chemotherapy.

Achieving durable, complete responses in metastatic TNBC patients that have failed all current standards of care is a promising finding and further validates our approach to orchestrate both the innate and adaptive immune system, continued Soon-Shiong. TNBC is a highly aggressive cancer, with limited treatment options and poor prognosis. These results are important proof-of-concept supporting our hypothesis that comprehensively activating the immune responses of the NK, T and Dendritic cells would induce immunogenic cell death leading to durable responses, even among this challenging patient population. We are thrilled with the safety and efficacy data from this first-in-human clinical trial of combination NK cell therapy, cytokine fusion protein, chemoradiation and checkpoint inhibitor, and look forward to advancing this exciting off-the-shelf cell therapy approach to randomized clinical trials in this setting.

Data Highlights Include:

The approximately 10-20% of breast cancer patients who are triple negative are faced with a grim prognosis with limited treatment options. These results are clinically significant, with overall response rates and complete response rates in this highly refractory, advanced metastatic patient population, said Dr. Chaitali Nangia, a Hematologist/Oncologist with the Chan Soon-Shiong Immuno-Oncology Network and study co-author. Importantly, these responses to treatment are also durable, with median progression free survival exceeding 13 months compared to historical controls of approximately 3 months in this heavily pretreated population. We also observed a positive safety and tolerability profile, with no cytokine release syndrome. Taken together, these efficacy and safety results point to the emergence of a new treatment paradigm for TNBC.

About NantKwest

NantKwest (NASDAQ: NK) is an innovative, clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on harnessing the power of the innate immune system to treat cancer and virally induced infectious diseases. We are the leading producer of clinical dose forms of off-the-shelf Natural Killer (NK) cell therapies. Our activated NK cell platform is designed to destroy cancer and virally infected cells from the body. The safety of our optimized, activated NK cells, as well as their activity against a broad range of cancers, have been tested in phase I clinical trials in Canada and Europe, as well as in multiple phase I and II clinical trials in the United States. By leveraging an integrated and extensive genomics and transcriptomics discovery and development engine, together with a pipeline of multiple, clinical-stage, immuno-oncology programs, NantKwests goal is to transform medicine by delivering living drugs in a bag and bringing novel NK cell-based therapies to routine clinical care. NantKwest is a member of the NantWorks ecosystem of companies. For more information, please visit https://nantkwest.com.

haNK is a registered trademark of NantKwest, Inc.

About ImmunityBio

ImmunityBio is a privately held immunotherapy company with a broad portfolio of biological molecules, including an albumin-linked chemotherapeutic, peptides, fusion proteins, cytokines, monoclonal antibodies, adenovirus, and yeast vaccine therapies.

ImmunityBios oncological goals are two-fold: To employ the companys broad portfolio of biological molecules to activate endogenous NK and CD8+ T cells, and to develop a T cell memory cancer vaccine to combat multiple tumor types without the use of high-dose chemotherapy.

The companys platform of technologies has enabled it to achieve one of the most comprehensive, late-stage clinical pipelines, addressing both the innate (activated macrophage and natural killer cell) and the adaptive immune system (dendritic, CD4 and CD8 killer T cells). In 2020, ImmunityBio is planning to enroll patients in late-stage trials with molecules across multiple indications including triple negative breast cancer, lung cancer, head and neck cancer, Merkel cell carcinoma and glioblastoma.

In the field of infectious disease, ImmunityBios goal is to develop vaccine therapies for the prevention and treatment of Influenza, Zika, Ebola, and HIV. For more information, please visit our website at https://www.immunitybio.com/.

SOURCE: NantKwest

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NantKwest and ImmunityBio Present Results of Landmark Trial of First-in-Human Natural Killer Cell Combination Immunotherapy With Durable, Complete...

Feng Li,1 Yan Chen,1,2 Shubo Liu,1 Xue Pan,1 Yulan Liu,1 Huiting Zhao,1 Xiujing Yin,1 Chunlin Yu,1 Wei Kong,1,2 Yong Zhang1,2

1National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, Peoples Republic of China; 2Key Laboratory for Molecular Enzymology and Engineering, The Ministry of Education, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, Peoples Republic of China

Correspondence: Yong ZhangSchool of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Qianjin Street No. 2699, Changchun 130012, Peoples Republic of ChinaTel +86431 85167751Fax +86431 85167674Email zhangyongking1@gmail.com

Background: Zein-based carriers are a promising delivery system for biomedical applications. However, few studies involve systematic investigation on their in vivo biocompatibility and immunogenicity.Purpose: The objective of this study was to identify the immunogenicity, type of immune response, biocompatibility and systemic recall immune response of zein nanoparticles administrated via different routes in mice.Animals and methods: Female Balb/c mice were selected as the animal model in this paper. The effect of particle size, dose and inoculation routes on immunogenicity were systematically explored. The mice were challenged at week 50 via intramuscular and subcutaneous routes to investigate the systemic recall immune responses of zein nanoparticles. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was performed to investigate the biocompatibility of zein nanoparticles at injection sites.Results: The administration of zein particles by parenteral routes led to a long-term systemic immune response. Particle size did not affect zein-specific IgG antibody titers. IgG antibody titers and inflammatory cell infiltration at the injection sites resulting from intramuscular zein particle injection were significantly higher than those from subcutaneous injection of the same dose. For intramuscular inoculation, dose-dependent IgG antibody titers were observed after the third inoculation, while no significant difference was found via the subcutaneous route. For both routes, IgG titer showed a time-dependent decrease at all dose levels from week 5 onward, and finally plateaued at week 28. The IgG subtype assay showed a predominant Th2-type immune response for both administration routes. Challenge with zein nanoparticles at week 50 led to a significant increase in specific IgG titer at all dose levels, indicating systemic recall immune responses. Interestingly, IgG antibody levels in the subcutaneous groups showed a delayed decrease compared to those of the intramuscular injection groups at all dose levels.Conclusion: This study indicated that immunogenicity may be one of the key challenges of using zein nanoparticles as carriers via parenteral administration. Further investigation is needed to illustrate zein immunogenicity in other forms, and the possible effect of systemic recall immune response on in vivo pharmacokinetic characteristics.

Keywords: zein, protein carrier, drug delivery, immune response, intramuscular injection, subcutaneous injection, parenteral administration

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

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The Effect of Size, Dose, and Administration Route on Zein Nanoparticl | IJN - Dove Medical Press

Todays cancer therapies are often hailed for their ability to deliver a more personalized approach one that considers the mutations lurking in a patients tumor or proteins expressed on the surface of a patients T cells and while current therapies are largely considered improvements from some past therapies, they still stand to benefit from even more personalization.

In particular, therapies can become more personalized if they address how a persons own genomics influence response to treatment, also known as pharmacogenomics, and this type of evidence is emerging for immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Specifically, a better understanding of T-cell behavior during immune checkpoint blockade is starting to form.

Its the T cells that actually do the work, Timothy Chan, MD, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, told Cancer Therapy Advisor. He explained that because of this, its even more important that everybodys own individual genetic make-up is examined.

In a study recently published in Nature Medicine, Dr Chan and colleagues looked at the diversity of human leukocyte antigen class I (HLA-I) genes, which help the immune system fight off viruses, and juxtaposed it with the efficacy of antiCTLA-4 or antiPD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor therapy in patients with metastatic melanoma or non-small cell lung cancer. The study revealed that greater evolutionary HLA-1 diversity was linked to higher T-cell infiltration into the tumor and better response to immune checkpoint blockade.1

If youre very diverse, youre likely to benefit, Dr Chan explained. It is probably the most powerful pharmacogenomics signal that I have personally seen.

HLA diversity can vary depending on where a person lives in the world, with more isolated populations being more genetically homogenous and having lower HLA diversity, and the greater the diversity, the more efficient the immune system is at fighting off infections. However, while HLA diversity is a factor thats controlled for in vaccine clinical trials, it is not routinely examined or measured in cancer clinical trials.

I actually think that that is one of the missing pieces in understanding why some trials are positive [and] some trials are negative, Dr Chan said. Its because nobody is controlling for this one aspect that is critical for the success of immune checkpoint therapy.

In fact, the lack of consideration of HLA diversity in clinical trials may even explain the mixed success tumor mutation burden has seen as a biomarker for response to immune checkpoint inhibitors to date.2 According to Dr Chan, tumor mutation burden is only half the story and that trial investigators really need to look at the other half HLA diversity.

View original post here:
Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors on Track for Better Personalization - Cancer Therapy Advisor

The following sections look at makeup ingredients that may have toxic effects. People may wish to avoid products that contain these chemicals.

In 2019, the FDA advised consumers to avoid using certain cosmetic items due to them testing positive for asbestos. These items contained talc, which itself is safe.

People can find talc in various makeup products, including blushes, eye shadows, and bronzers. It works in makeup to absorb moisture, give an opaque finish, and stop makeup from "caking."

However, talc may pose a health risk due to possible contamination with asbestos; both talc and asbestos are natural minerals in the earth that often occur close together. Asbestos is a known cancer-forming chemical and can contaminate untested talc that manufacturers use in certain cosmetics.

Triclosan may be present in some over-the-counter cosmetics. Some manufacturers add it to reduce the risk of contamination with bacteria. Products that might contain triclosan include toothpastes, antibacterial soaps, and body washes.

According to the FDA, high levels of triclosan may affect thyroid hormones and contribute to antibiotic resistance. Research is also currently looking into the long-term effects of triclosan on the development of skin cancer.

Scientists need further evidence to determine the exact effect of triclosan on human health.

It is currently banned from body care products sold at Whole Foods and is scheduled for a ban from CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens.

Cosmetic eye products that contain kohl may contain high levels of lead, which is a harmful heavy metal for the body.

Any eye product containing any of the following could potentially contain lead:

Any product containing these ingredients is illegal in the U.S., as they come under the FDA's list of illegal color additives.

Skin lighteners may contain mercury. Mercury is a heavy metal that is harmful to the body. It may affect the nervous system, cause kidney damage, and harm a developing fetus.

Thimerosal is a preservative that can appear in cosmetics and contains mercury.

Phthalates are present in some nail polishes and hair sprays, as well as the fragrances of many cleaning and cosmetic products.

Phthalates can unbalance hormones, particularly those that work alongside estrogen, such as testosterone. According to a breast cancer charity, phthalates may have a link with breast cancer. This is because certain changes in estrogen levels can cause breast cancer to develop.

Manufacturers use parabens as preservatives in many cosmetics. Parabens may appear on cosmetic labels as the following:

Parabens may be present in makeup, moisturizers, hair products, and shaving creams. Parabens can enter the body through the skin and mimic estrogen.

Although parabens will only act as a weak form of estrogen, it could still be enough to cause breast cancer cells to grow. This is because an imbalance of estrogen can sometimes trigger a certain type of breast cancer called hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.

Breast tissue and breast cancers can contain paraben, though this is not proof that they are linked with cancer. It could simply indicate their wide usage. Further research will help determine whether or not there is a definite link.

Formaldehyde, and chemicals that release formaldehyde over a certain period of time, are present in cosmetics, lotions, shampoos, shower gels, nail polishes, and hair straightening products.

Formaldehyde can cause allergic reactions, as well as irritation to the eyes and respiratory system. Some studies in laboratory animals have also linked the chemical with cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, these cosmetics "may raise the concentration of formaldehyde in the air inside the room for a short time, but the levels reached are far below what is considered to be hazardous."

They also suggest that professional hair smoothing treatments that use keratin can raise the indoor concentration of formaldehyde to potentially hazardous levels.

Toluene is present in some nail treatments and nail polishes. It is a solvent that may be toxic to the brain, nervous system, and a developing fetus.

Like triclosan, toluene is also currently banned from body care products sold at Whole Foods and is scheduled for a ban from CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens.

Carbon black is present in mascaras, eye liners, and lipsticks, as it gives these products their coloring. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) link this chemical with cancer, and research has reported that carbon black is "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

Scientists usually base these studies on industrial-level exposure in factories or laboratory animals. More research is needed to determine the safety of small amounts of carbon black in cosmetics.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) may be present in foundations, concealers, and eyeliners, as well as other cosmetic products.

According to the EWG, there are more than 4,000 chemicals classed as PFAS that may pose the following risks:

Some makeup products may contain ultraviolet (UV) filters. Benzophenone is a type of UV filter that may disrupt hormones and have links with endometriosis.

Follow this link:
Toxic makeup: What to avoid, risks, and alternatives - Medical News Today

A teenager was arrested Monday in connection with mercury spills at three Houston businesses that led to one hospitalization, according to authorities.

Christopher Lee Melder, 19, faces charges of burglary, unlawful disposal of hazardous material and an outstanding felony drug possession warrant, according to the FBI's Houston office. Earlier, the office said a man was being questioned in connection with the spills.

A person called police at about 11:15 a.m. Sunday to report a white liquid on the ground, Houston Fire Chief Sam Pena said at a news conference Sunday night.

Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.

Less than a pint of mercury had been spilled outside a Walmart, a Sonic Drive-In and a Shell gas station, officials said.

Investigators were looking into reports that someone checked into a Houston-area hospital claiming to have been exposed to mercury Friday, as well as reports of a possible recent warehouse break-in.

Between 30 and 60 people at the locations were hosed down, and a pregnant woman was taken to the hospital as a precaution.

Pena said dangers from exposure to the spills were "low risk" because the mercury was spilled on the ground, would evaporate and is only dangerous if ingested or inhaled.

The threat to the public is very low because the spill occurred outdoors and the amount of chemical spilled is small, Dr. David Persse, local health authority for the Houston Health Department, said in a statement. The amount of chemical detected on those exposed is below the level thats dangerous to the average individual.

Mercury is liquid at room temperature, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

High levels of mercury exposure can harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs and immune system, and could affect the development of fetuses and young children, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Symptoms of mercury exposure are headache, stuffy nose and nausea.

A private company was conducting cleanup at the three businesses.

Elisha Fieldstadt is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.

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19-year-old man arrested in connection with Houston mercury spills - NBC News

What is HIV/AIDS?

HIV is a virus that infects humans. It attacks your immune system causing it to malfunction and makes you very ill. HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS.

AIDS is a serious medical condition comprising of a variety of diseases that occur because HIV interferes with your bodys ability to fight off other infections. AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Get tha more details about HIV only at genhealthtips.com

How HIV affects your body ?

A virus is a small infectious organism that can only replicate inside living cells of other organisms; in HIVs case, human immune cells. In order to understand how HIV and AIDS are connected, we need to take a closer look at how the immune system works. Your immune system is a complex network of organs, tissues, and cells, called white blood cells. The white blood cells are made in the bone marrow, migrate to other parts of the immune system such as the lymph nodes, spleen, and thymus and float around in the bloodstream. The components of your immune system work together to prevent germs from entering, growing, and multiplying inside your body.

How do you get HIV?

The most common way to get HIV is by having sex with an HIV infected person.

HIV spreads from one person to another when certain body fluids (blood, semen, vaginal secretions, rectal fluids, and breast milk) from an HIV infected person come into contact with a mucous membrane in the nose, mouth, rectum, vagina, or penis of an uninfected person. Vaginal, anal, and oral sex all set the scene for HIV to spread from one person to another.

The 2nd most common way to get HIV is by injecting HIV directly into your body.

This most commonly happens when HIV contaminated needles or syringes, or other drug injecting equipment is shared by injection drug users.

How to avoid getting infected with HIV

To avoid getting HIV, you must prevent any contaminated body fluids from entering your body through your nose or mouth, vagina, anus, penis, or breaks in your skin. This can be done by practicing safe sex and safe drug use, which means:

Always use a condom

Get tested regularly - this is a must if you are having sex with someone you know has HIV, or if you are worried you might have been exposed to HIV, and

Never share intravenous needles, syringes, cookers, cotton, cocaine spoons, or eye droppers if you use drugs.

There are other ways you can catch HIV, although it very rarely happens. It is possible to become infected through a needle stick injury or blood transfusion, or by getting bitten by an HIV infected person. HIV can also be passed on from an infected mother to a baby during pregnancy, labor, and birth or via breast milk, but with proper medical treatment during pregnancy, this is also rare.

How do you treat HIV/AIDS?

Antiretroviral therapy or ART is the medicine used to treat HIV infection. It is a combination of three different medicines that are often taken as a single tablet and must be taken every day to be of maximum benefit. ART is recommended for everyone infected with HIV. Although it is not a cure, if you have HIV, it lets you live a longer, healthier life, and reduces the chances you will spread the virus to someone else.

HIV medicines work by preventing HIV from multiplying, which lowers the amount of virus in your bloodstream (viral load). Although the medicine does not get rid of HIV entirely, it gives your CD4 cells a chance to recover so that they can fight off opportunistic infections and cancers. If you dont take ART, you are likely to die within 12 years from the time you first got infected. On the other hand, if you do take ART, you can have a life expectancy equal to or even higher than the general population.

HIV is managed with prescription viral suppression medications called Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART). Taking Viraday has become much easier over the past few years. New treatments include two or three medicines combined in one pill. Many people living with HIV are treated with just one or two pills a day.

If you test positive for HIV infection, your doctor will take a medical history, conduct a physical exam, and order some more tests to find out how HIV is affecting your immune system. There are more than 20 HIV medicines available like Tenvir EM, Tenvir L Tablet, Tenvir and several different ART combinations that may be suitable, depending on your individual needs. Three important tests that help your doctor decide which medicines will work best for you are:

CD4 tests that measure your CD4 cell count.

Viral load tests that measure the number of viruses in your bloodstream, and Drug resistance tests that find out whether or not the HIV you are infected with is resistant to any of the anti-HIV medicines that are available.

As HIV medicines are known to interact badly with some other medicines, the choice of therapy will also depend on what else you are taking. Later, your HIV medicine may need to be changed if you have unpleasant side effects, or if your HIV becomes resistant to the medicine. Prep pill is not for everyone. Doctors guide PrEP for some sufferers who have a very high risk of getting in touch with HIV by not using a condom when they have sex with a personality who has HIV infection.

Consider the following:

You might be one of the millions of people who use a lubricant during sex. If you are using latex condoms, you can have safer sex if you use a water-based lubricant rather than an oil-based lubricant. Why would that be? Oil-based lubricants like Vaseline can weaken latex, making it more likely to break. So, only choose an oil-based lubricant if you are using polyurethane condoms. Get best treatment for hiv aids at http://www.genericforce.com

You might think that forgetting to take your HIV medicine now and then is not a big deal, but it is! Why would that be? HIV can multiply very quickly, and sometimes it mutates, meaning it evolves into a new form. Forgetting to take your HIV medicine increases the chances that your HIV will multiply and mutate into a drug-resistant form. If this happens, your HIV medicine will no longer work very well, and HIV will do more damage to your immune system.

More:
Viraday and Tenvir Best HIV Infection and AIDS Treatment - The African Exponent

The fact that Israel has to hold a third election within such a short period of time reflects a grave political crisis. The fact that millions of people will again be exposed to wasteful, inflammatory and uncontrolled advertising campaigns is also far from ideal. And yet, it also carried a reassuring message for everyone who champions healthy democracy.

In fact, Israel must go to the polls again because the system of checks and balances that is the foundation of democracy worked. It prevented, in every manner possible, a situation in which a prime minister who has been charged with criminal offenses, who seeks to escape to the city of refuge of parliamentary immunity, continues to serve.

Killing Palestinians isnt Israels goal. Killing Palestine is. Listen

Since that is exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu attempted and is still attempting to do, it would have been wrong to give in to the natural desire to get it over with that is, to establish any sort of government and return to the appearance of proper governance. The establishment of a government is a means, not an end in itself. It is supposed to reflect the wills and the needs of the voters, and it is not supposed to serve as a refuge for a prime minister who has been charged with criminal offenses.

Therefore, there is also no call for the lamentation and the cries of shame surrounding the failure to form a government. On the contrary: its a badge of honor for the parliamentary immune system, which disgorged from itself the possibility of collaborating with the forces seeking to sabotage Israels democratic infrastructure from within.

Kahol Lavan should be commended for resisting the temptation to join Netanyahu for a promise of half the kingdom, and in so upheld its election-eve promises to its voters. Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman is also deserving of praise, for consistently opposing a narrow immunity government. Amir Peretz of Labor-Gesher should be lauded for keeping his word and for not setting his sights on power for even a moment.

Like a short-circuiting electrical appliance with the potential for disaster, the Knesset dissolved itself after it became clear that its only path forward entailed riding roughshod over fundamental democratic values.

In order to reset the main circuit breaker so as to turn on the light switch once more, all of the political parties that view themselves as guided by the rule of law must join forces and focus on the next election, and tell Netanyahu in the clearest manner possible that his time is up.

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The above article is Haaretzs lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

Excerpt from:
The immune system did its job - Haaretz

News Release

Thursday, December 12, 2019

NIH-funded research suggests changes in the immune system in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.

New findings published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggest that specific immune T cells from people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) show disruptions in the way they produce energy. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

This research gives us additional evidence for the role of the immune system in ME/CFS and may provide important clues to help us understand the mechanisms underlying this devastating disease, said Vicky Whittemore, Ph.D., program director at NIHs National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which partially funded the study.

ME/CFS is a severe, chronic, and debilitating disease that can cause a range of symptoms including pain, severe exhaustion, cognitive impairment, and post-exertional malaise, the worsening of symptoms after physical or mental activity. Estimates suggest that between 836,000 and 2.5 million people in the United States may be affected by ME/CFS. It is unknown what causes the disease and there are no treatments.

Research by Alexandra Mandarano and collaborators in the laboratory of Maureen Hanson, Ph.D., professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, examined biochemical reactions involved in energy production, or metabolism, in two specific types of immune cells obtained from 45 healthy controls and 53 people with ME/CFS. Investigators focused on CD4 T cells, which alert other immune cells about invading pathogens, and CD8 T cells, which attack infected cells. Dr. Hansons team used state-of-the-art methods to look at energy production by the mitochondria within T cells, when the cells were in a resting state and after they had been activated. Mitochondria are biological powerhouses and create most of the energy that drives cells.

Dr. Hanson and her colleagues did not see significant differences in mitochondrial respiration, the cells primary energy-producing method, between healthy and ME/CFS cells at rest or after activation. However, results suggest that glycolysis, a less efficient method of energy production, may be disrupted in ME/CFS. Compared to healthy cells, CD4 and CD8 cells from people with ME/CFS had decreased levels of glycolysis at rest. In addition, ME/CFS CD8 cells had lower levels of glycolysis after activation.

Our work demonstrates the importance of looking at particular types of immune cells that have different jobs to do, rather than looking at them all mixed together, which can hide problems specific to particular cells, said Dr. Hanson. Additional studies focusing on specific cell types will be important to unravel whats gone wrong with immune defenses in ME/CFS.

Dr. Hansons group also looked at mitochondrial size and membrane potential, which can indicate the health of T cell mitochondria. CD4 cells from healthy controls and people with ME/CFS showed no significant differences in mitochondrial size nor function. CD8 cells from people with ME/CFS showed decreased membrane potential compared to healthy cells during both resting and activated states.

Dr. Hansons team examined associations between cytokines, chemical messengers that send instructions from one cell to another, and T cell metabolism. The findings revealed different, and often opposite, patterns between healthy and ME/CFS cells, suggesting changes in the immune system. In addition, the presence of cytokines that cause inflammation unexpectedly correlated with decreased metabolism in T cells.

This study was supported in part by the NIHs ME/CFS Collaborative Research Network, a consortium supported by multiple institutes and centers at NIH, consisting of three collaborative research centers and a data management coordinating center. The research network was established in 2017 to help advance research on ME/CFS.

In addition to providing valuable insights into the immunology of ME/CFS, we hope that the results coming out of the collaborative research network will inspire more researchers, particularly those in the early stages of their careers, to work on this disease, said Joseph Breen, Ph.D., section chief, Immunoregulation Section, Basic Immunology Branch, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which partially funded the study.

Future research studies will examine metabolism in other subsets of immune cells. In addition, researchers will investigate ways in which changes in metabolism affect the activity of T cells.

This study was supported by NINDS grant U54NS105541, NIAID grant R21AI117595, Simmaron Research, and an anonymous private donor.

NINDS (https://www.ninds.nih.gov/) is the nations leading funder of research on the brain and nervous system.The mission of NINDS is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIHTurning Discovery Into Health

Mandarano et al. Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients exhibit altered T cell metabolism and cytokine associations, Journal of Clinical Investigation. December 12, 2019

###

Link:
Study finds differences in energy use by immune cells in ME/CFS - National Institutes of Health

The antibiotic vancomycin alters the gut microbiome in a way that can help prime the immune system to more effectively attack tumor cells after radiation therapy. A new study in mice from researchers at theAbramson Cancer Center found giving a dose of the common antibiotic not only helped immune cells kill tumors that were directly treated with radiation, but also kill cancer cells that were further away in the body, paving the way for researchers to test the approach in a human clinical trial. The findings are published inTheJournal of Clinical Investigation.

In recent years, multiple studies have shown that giving patients higher doses of radiation over the course of fewer treatmentscalled hypo-fractionated radiotherapycan induce a stronger immune response in patients. In addition, hypo-fractionated doses have the ability to impact other tumors cells in the body that werent directly treated with radiation. This is known as the abscopal effect.

Our study shows that vancomycin seems to boost the effect of the hypo-fractionated radiation itself on the targeted tumor site while also aiding the abscopal effect, helping the immune system fight tumors away from the treatment site, says the studys senior authorAndrea Facciabene, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the Perelman School of Medicine.

Facciabene and his team chose vancomycin for a few specific reasons. First, it mostly targets gram-positive bacteria, making it disruptive to the gut microbiome. Second, its a large molecule, which means it stays in the gut and does not circulate to the rest of the body the way other antibiotics do. The fact that it is not systemic limits the impact it has on the rest of the bodys microbiome.

Read more at Penn Medicine News.

Visit link:
The new tool in fighting cancer: Antibiotics - Penn: Office of University Communications

A specific fragment of a protein secreted by the parasitic worm liver fluke (Fasciola) has been found to protect the articular cartilage of joints from being destroyed by the bodys aberrant immune system, thus preventing rheumatoid arthritis from progressing. Besides protecting the cartilage from further destruction, the team of researchers from the Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR-CDRI) also found that the protein prevented the joint bone from being destroyed. In rheumatoid arthritis, the joint bone starts getting destroyed following cartilage destruction.

Liver flukes secrete certain specialised proteins that help the parasites to evade recognition by the host immune system and also blunt the killing machinery of the immune system by dialling down the inflammatory responses.

The protein Fasciola helminth defence molecule-1 (FhHDM-1) secreted by liver fluke has similarity with a human protein that mitigates inflammatory responses. So the team led by Naibedya Chattopadhyay isolated a specific fragment of this protein having a high anti-inflammatory function. They then synthesised and tested it in a cell culture system followed by animal testing.

The results were published in FASEB Journal.

A mouse model that is vulnerable to rheumatoid arthritis was used for testing the protective effect of the protein. The type-II collagen protein the major component present in the cartilage matrix of the joints but not as a whole protein seen in blood was introduced in large quantities to trigger an autoimmune response. With this, the process of cartilage destruction was set in motion.

Twenty days after introducing the antigen protein to trigger an autoimmune response, the researchers introduced the synthesised peptide every second day to evaluate its potential to protect the collagen from destruction. The peptide rapidly stopped further damage to the cartilage. The cartilage that has already been damaged was not repaired because the damage is irreversible in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, says Yasir Akhtar Khan from the Department of Zoology at the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, and the first author of the paper. Besides preventing cartilage destruction, the peptide also prevented the joint bone from destruction.

The cartilage of animals that only received the type II collagen but not the peptide was completely destroyed by the end of the experiment (46 days), while the cartilage of the treatment group that received the peptide for four weeks was protected from further damage.

The effect of treatment in controlling cartilage destruction was assessed externally during the course of treatment by measuring paw swelling every day. By 25 days of treatment, there was complete abolition of paw swelling compared with the diseased animals that did not receive any treatment, says Dr. Khan. All the animals were sacrificed at the end of 46 days and the joints examined.

There was extensive structural damage to the cartilage in mice that did not receive the peptide. The barrier that insulates the cartilage was destroyed leading to disease progression, he says. In the treatment group, the barrier was intact and comparable to the control group that did not have rheumatoid arthritis. We also did not see any immune cells in the joints of the treated animals.

In contrast to the currently used anti-rheumatic drug (methotrexate), the biggest advantage of using the liver fluke peptide is that it does not produce a wholesale suppression of the immune system. Even the monoclonal antibodies that act against individual inflammatory molecules have inherent problems. For instance, the monoclonal antibodies target and suppress the tumour necrosis factor (TNF alpha), which is the first line of defence against Mycobacterium. In the Indian context, the anti-rheumatic drug and even the monoclonal antibodies that target TNF alpha will leave the person susceptible to infections, including TB.

The liver fluke peptide only produces selective protection to the joints and does not alter the systemic immune system. So the bodys ability to combat bacterial pathogens will remain intact. Dr. Chattopadhyay says. We are yet to study the mechanism of selective joint protection (cartilage and bone) provided by the peptide.

Thus, in the Indian scenario, the peptide that specifically prevents joint inflammation and destruction without affecting the bodys overall immune function might prove a game-changer in treating rheumatoid arthritis if further tests and trials find it effective.

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New molecule for rheumatoid arthritis may be effective in preventing cartilage destruction - The Hindu

Basic ingredients and dietary supplements such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast can have functional properties in the diet and yield satisfactory results when added to feed as active cells (autolysed or hydrolysed) inactive cells or as cell wall components.

It is known that the fermentation environment that will provide the fundamental differences in the final product composition is more important than yeast strain. The strains used in sugarcane processing to obtain ethanol will result in a product with a higher -glucans concentration. Yeast culture goes through numerous fermentation cycles, which makes cell wall denser, resulting in higher carbohydrate rates and lower fat content, making it less digestible in the gastrointestinal tract.

Photo: Henk Riswick

With the restrictions imposed by regulations in Brazil and abroad, as well as the demand of the consumer market for natural and healthy products in animal feed, several alternatives have been tested and used in the animal industry. However, many factors are considered by producers to obtain the highest cost-effectiveness, such as the action of these compounds on animal metabolis.

Natural additives found on the market are capable of providing compounds that stimulate the body to respond more efficiently to the stressful stimuli imposed in the field. Among the options available, ImmunoWall and Hilyses stand out for being natural Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast-based products, with no use restrictions to any animal species.

ImmunoWall is composed of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell wall and contains a high concentration of -glucans (> 35%) and mannan-oligosaccharides, MOS (~ 20%). Due to the processing conditions to which cells are subjected, the wall becomes denser compared to other yeast cell walls on the market. This yeast cell wall structure is resistant to degradation by digestive tract enzymes and bacteria, and its resistance to digestion in the gastrointestinal tract and fermentation in the large intestine are one of the main criteria for its use as prebiotic. Prebiotics are considered excellent contributors to animal health because they stimulate the immune system and contribute to intestinal mucosa integrity, prevent adhesion of enteropathogenic microorganisms, and have the ability to bind and inactivate mycotoxins in the intestinal lumen.

Mannan-oligosaccharide (MOS) is known for its ability to agglutinate pathogens. By providing a binding site for harmful bacteria present in the intestinal tract that have type 1 and 4 fimbriae, MOS prevents the colonisation of pathogens in the intestine. Since -glucans are not digested, trapped bacteria are excreted with faecal material. Importantly, to achieve full functionality, yeast cell walls must have low digestibility in the intestine. -glucans constitute the indigestible portion of the yeast cell wall so that the higher its concentration, the lower yeast cell wall digestibility.

-glucans are considered immunomodulators that improve immune response effectiveness and agility in animals. These polysaccharides are natural and effective stimulants of the innate immune system, and phagocytic cells, when in contact with -glucans, are stimulated, producing cytokines. Cytokine production provokes a chain reaction, improving animal immunity and allowing the body to fight opportunistic infections. One of these immune system reactions is the increased number of goblet cells responsible for mucus production. With increased mucus production and release in the intestinal lumen, the mucosa (villus protection barrier and the medium that allows the action of various enzymes) increases, providing greater protection to intestinal cells and villi.

Dietary nucleotide supplementation has been studied in several species, and although not considered essential nutrients, these additives play an important role in various metabolic processes and, in particular, in some body tissues and stages of animal life characterised by very high energetic demand due to high cell multiplication.

Free nucleosides and nucleotides can be immediately absorbed by enterocytes in the intestine, and are especially important for rapidly multiplying tissues and due to limited de novo synthesis (major nucleotide production pathway), such as intestinal epithelial cells, blood cells, hepatocytes and cells of the immune system. And this occurs especially in animals undergoing fast-growing stages (early stages), reproduction, stress, and challenges.

Hilyses is a great natural choice of exogenous free nucleosides and nucleotides, obtained through the processing of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast used in the fermentation of sugarcane to obtain ethanol. The process consists of cell autolysis (cell membrane rupture), where intracellular content is extravasated, and after this process, some specific enzymes are inserted for hydrolysis (breakdown) of RNA into nucleotides and nucleosides (which form the nitrogenous bases of the structure). This end product is highly digestible as it contains amino acids, peptides, and short-chain polypeptides and glutamine, and is highly recommended for animal nutrition. It also contains mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS, an effective tool against Salmonella and E. coli.) and high levels of -glucans (immunomodulators that stimulate the innate immune system for a faster and more effective response).

Supplementing diets with natural additives that provide support for animals to better respond to the challenges posed by the field is fundamental in farming systems. ImmunoWall and Hilyses act as prophylactic agents, increasing animal resistance, minimising contamination and high mortality rates, and improving weight gain and health. In highly challenging environments, such as in intensive animal production, strengthening the immune system is crucial for greater productivity gains.

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Synergistic use of yeast-based products - All about feed