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Cats Protect Newborns From Developing Asthma

Posted on November 11, 2017  Comments (0)

Everyone should appreciate the value of cats (as we do, honoring cats in our blog’s name); yet some people seem oblivious to the greatness of cats. In another demonstration of what we gain by associating with cats, research has shown living with cats as newborns helps protect those with a specific gene variation from developing asthma.

Cats protect newborns against asthma

The results reveal that cats remove the increased risk of developing asthma among children with a particular variation of the gene 17q21, called TT, which has the strongest impact on whether or not a child could develop asthma.

Almost one in three children in the study carried the TT gene variant, regardless of whether or not their mother had asthma.

“it looks like the effect is linked to a particular gene-variant, which goes to show just how complex the development of asthma and allergies are. It’s not only about genes and the environment, but how the two interact, and there’s so much that we still don’t know,”

The research indicates that cats reduce the risk of childhood asthma, pneumonia, and bronchiolitis in genetically susceptible subjects.

And no, dogs do not provide this protection. As with most research the scientists have new paths of inquiry to follow based on these results. Lead author Jakob Stokholm suspects that the reasons cats have this effect but dogs do not, “could be related to the bacteria that cats carry and perhaps fungi or viruses that they bring into the home”. Those questions can be the topic of further research.

Related: Cat Allergy Vaccine Created (2011) – Awesome Cat Cam – The History of Domestic Cats – Parasites in the Gut Help Develop a Healthy Immune System – Hypoallergenic Cats (2006) – The Amazing Reality of Genes and The History of Scientific Inquiry

Gut Bacteria Explored as Medical Treatment – even for Cancer

Posted on March 14, 2016  Comments (0)

The interaction between gut bacteria and human health continues to be a fertile area of medical research. It appears to be in the very early days of such research. Of course, as I have said before, headline making news often doesn’t result in medical breakthrough, and even when it does a decade isn’t a long wait for it to happen.

How Gut Bacteria Are Shaking Up Cancer Research

In November, University of Chicago researchers wrote that giving mice Bifidobacterium, which normally resides in the gastrointestinal tract, was as effective as an immunotherapy in controlling the growth of skin cancer. Combining the two practically eliminated tumor growth. In the second study, scientists in France found that some bacterial species activated a response to immunotherapy, which didn’t occur without the microbes.

The complex interactions involved in human health is another area that has huge room for research going forward.

Related: Some Bacteria Might Fight Cancer (2008) – Cancer Vaccines (2011) – Using Diatom Algae to Deliver Chemotherapy Drugs Directly to Cancer Cells (2015) – Webcast of a T-cell Killing a Cancerous Cell (2012)

200,000 People Die Every Year in Europe from Adverse Drug Effects – How Can We Improve?

Posted on November 15, 2015  Comments (3)

A new integrated computational method helps predicting adverse drug reaction more reliably than with traditional computing methods. This improved ability to foresee the possible adverse effects of drugs may entail saving many lives in the future.

Most computer tools employed today to detect possible adverse effects of compounds that are candidates for new medicines are based on detecting labile fragments in the drug’s structure. These fragments can potentially transform to form reactive metabolites, which can have toxic properties. This is what is known as idiosyncratic toxicity and is a big headache for the pharmaceutical industry, as it tends to be detected in late development stages of the drug and even when it is already on the market, often causing the drug to be withdrawn.

Jordi Mestres, coordinator of the IMIM and UPF research group on Systems Pharmacology at the Biomedical Informatics Program (GRIB) states ‘With this study we have contributed to complementing the detection of these quite unstable fragments, with information on the mechanism of action of the drug, based on three aspects: similarity to other medicines, prediction of their pharmacological profile, and interference with specific biological pathways. The optimal integration of these four aspects results in a clear improvement of our ability to anticipate adverse effects with higher confidence, which entails an extremely positive impact on society’.

In Europe, nearly 200,000 people die every year from adverse drug reactions, seven times more than in traffic accidents. An estimated 5% of hospitalisations are due to adverse effects and they are the fifth most common cause of hospital death. In addition, elderly people tend to take more than one drug at the same time, which multiplies the chances of suffering from adverse effects due to potential drug-drug interactions. In an increasingly aging society, this problem is becoming much more serious.

I think interactions is a hugely important area that needs a great deal more research. Doing so is very complex, which means it isn’t surprising so much more work is needed. The work of my father (and George Box and others) on multi-factorial experimentation is a powerful tool to aid this work (and that connection is likely one of the reasons I find the area of interactions so interesting – along with the realization there is so much benefit possible if we focus in that area more). Previous post on this Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog: Introduction to Fractional Factorial Designed Experiments.

The human and financial costs of adverse effects are very high. That is why the discovery of new medicines is increasingly focused more on predicting possible adverse effects at the initial stages of developing a new drug. This work hopes to contribute to setting the path toward a new generation of more reliable computational tools with regard to predicting the adverse effects of therapeutically-relevant small molecules. Advancing large-scale predictive safety at the pre-clinical phase is now becoming closer than ever, with expectations to lead to safer drugs for the entire population.

The research is published in closed science journal so I don’t link to it. I happily link to open science publications. Read the full press release which includes a link to the closed science journal.

Related: Lifestyle Drugs and Risk – Root Cause, Interactions, Robustness and Design of Experiments – One factor at a time (OFAT) Versus Factorial Designs – The Purpose of Mulit-Factorial Designed Experiments – 11 Year Old Using Design of Experiments – Over-reliance on Prescription Drugs to Aid Children’s Sleep?

Study After Study Find No Benefits to Multivitamins

Posted on December 23, 2013  Comments (3)

The largest study of its kind concludes that long-term multivitamin use has no impact on the risk of common cancers, cardiovascular disease or overall mortality in postmenopausal women.

“Dietary supplements are used by more than half of all Americans, who spend more than $20 billion on these products each year. However, scientific data are lacking on the long-term health benefits of supplements,” said lead author Marian L. Neuhouser, Ph.D., an associate member of the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center.

The study focused the effects of multivitamins because they are the most commonly used supplement. “To our surprise, we found that multivitamins did not lower the risk of the most common cancers and also had no impact on heart disease,” she said.

The study assessed multivitamin use among nearly 162,000 women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative, one of the largest U.S. prevention studies of its kind designed to address the most common causes of death, disability and impaired quality of life in postmenopausal women. The women were followed for about eight years.

Nearly half of the study participants – 41.5 percent – reported using multivitamins on a regular basis. Multivitamin users were more likely to be white, live in the western United States, have a lower body-mass index, be more physically active and have a college degree or higher as compared to non-users.

The study found no significant differences in risk of cancer, heart disease or death between the multivitamin users and non-users.

These findings are consistent with most previously published results regarding the lack of health benefits of multivitamins, Neuhouser said, but this study provides definitive evidence. Since the study did not include men, Neuhouser cautions that the results may not apply to them.

So what advice do Neuhouser and colleagues offer to women who want to make sure they’re getting optimal nutrition? “Get nutrients from food,” she said. “Whole foods are better than dietary supplements. Getting a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains is particularly important.”

Continue reading →

Another Bee Study Finds CCD is Likely Due to Combination of Factors Including Pesticides

Posted on August 10, 2013  Comments (2)

Abstract of open access science paper funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Crop Pollination Exposes Honey Bees to Pesticides Which Alters Their Susceptibility to the Gut Pathogen Nosema ceranae:

Recent declines in honey bee populations and increasing demand for insect-pollinated crops raise concerns about pollinator shortages. Pesticide exposure and pathogens may interact to have strong negative effects on managed honey bee colonies. Such findings are of great concern given the large numbers and high levels of pesticides found in honey bee colonies. Thus it is crucial to determine how field-relevant combinations and loads of pesticides affect bee health.

We collected pollen from bee hives in seven major crops to determine 1) what types of pesticides bees are exposed to when rented for pollination of various crops and 2) how field-relevant pesticide blends affect bees’ susceptibility to the gut parasite Nosema ceranae. Our samples represent pollen collected by foragers for use by the colony, and do not necessarily indicate foragers’ roles as pollinators. In blueberry, cranberry, cucumber, pumpkin and watermelon bees collected pollen almost exclusively from weeds and wildflowers during our sampling.

Thus more attention must be paid to how honey bees are exposed to pesticides outside of the field in which they are placed. We detected 35 different pesticides in the sampled pollen, and found high fungicide loads. The insecticides esfenvalerate and phosmet were at a concentration higher than their median lethal dose in at least one pollen sample. While fungicides are typically seen as fairly safe for honey bees, we found an increased probability of Nosema infection in bees that consumed pollen with a higher fungicide load.

Our results highlight a need for research on sub-lethal effects of fungicides and other chemicals that bees placed in an agricultural setting are exposed to.

The attempts to discover the main causes of bee colony deaths and find solutions continues to prove difficult years after the problems became major. The complex interaction of many variables makes it difficult. And special interest groups pushing pesticides and the like, which have seemed to be major contributors to the problem for years, make it even more difficult (by preventing restrictions on potentially damaging pesticide use).

The challenges in determining what is killing bees are similar to the challenges of discovering what practices are damaging human health. The success of studying complex biological interactions (to discover threats to human health) is extremely limited. I am concerned we are far too caviler about using large numbers of interventions (drugs, pesticides, massive antibiotics use in factory farms, pollution…).

Related: Europe Bans Certain Pesticides, USA Just Keeps Looking, Bees Keep Dying – Germany Bans Chemicals Linked to Bee Deaths (2008) – Virus Found to be One Likely Factor in Bee Colony Colapse Disorder (2007) – Study of the Colony Collapse Disorder Continues as Bee Colonies Continue to Disappear