Superbug Dangers in Chicken Linked to 8 Million At-Risk Women

Superbug Dangers in Chicken Linked to 8 Million At-Risk Women - A growing number of medical researchers say more than 8 million women are at risk of difficult-to-treat bladder infections because superbugs - resistant to antibiotics and growing in chickens - are being transmitted to humans in the form of E. coli.

"We're finding the same or related E. coli in human infections and in retail meat sources, specifically chicken," said Amee Manges, epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal.

If the medical researchers are right, this is compelling new evidence of a direct link between the pervasive, difficult-to-cure human disease and the antibiotic-fed chicken people buy at the grocery store.

"What this new research shows is, we may in fact know where it's coming from. It may be coming from antibiotics used in agriculture," said Maryn McKenna, reporter for Food & Environment Reporting Network.

The research is part of a joint investigation by ABC News and Food and Environment Reporting Network.

The Food and Drug Administration says 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are fed to livestock and even healthy chicken to protect them from disease in cramped quarters. It also helps the chickens grow bigger and faster.

"We're particularly interested in chickens. They, in many cases, are getting drugs from the time that they were in an egg all the way up to the time they are slaughtered," Manges said.

The chicken industry says there could be other factors such as overuse of antibiotics by humans. And the industry cautions that there's no study that has proven a superbug from poultry transfers directly to humans.

Researchers point out that a study like that would be unethical because it would require intentionally exposing women to the bacteria. They say that there is persuasive evidence that chicken carries bacteria with the highest levels of resistance to medicine.

Adrienne LaBeouf, 29, is one of the 8 million women suffering from a constant infection. "It feels like I have some kind of infection that just won't go away," she said.

LaBeouf has visited her doctor about her persistent bladder infection. "It was cured for a little while," she added, "and then it comes back with a vengeance." ( ABC News )

READ MORE - Superbug Dangers in Chicken Linked to 8 Million At-Risk Women

Americans Haven't Been This Depressed About the Economy for Ages and Ages

Americans Haven't Been This Depressed About the Economy for Ages and Ages - It might not seem that Europe's sovereign-debt crisis and growing concern about the United States' debt position should shake basic economic confidence. But it apparently has. And loss of confidence, by discouraging consumption and investment, can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing the very economic weakness that people fear. Significant drops in consumer-confidence indexes in Europe and North America already reflect this perverse dynamic.

We now have a daily index for the United States, the Gallup Economic Confidence Index, so we can pinpoint changes in confidence over time. The index dropped sharply between the first week of July and the first week of August—the period when American political leaders worried everyone that they would be unable to raise the federal government's debt ceiling and prevent the United States from defaulting on Aug. 2. The story played out in the news media every day. Aug. 2 came and went, with no default, but, three days later, a Friday, Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on long-term U.S. debt from AAA to AA+. The following Monday, the S&P 500 dropped almost 7 percent.

Apparently, the specter of government deadlock causing a humiliating default suddenly made the United States resemble the European countries that really are teetering on the brink. Europe's story became America's story.

Changes in public confidence are built upon such narratives, because the human mind is very receptive to them, particularly human-interest stories. The story of a possible U.S. default is resonant in precisely this way: It implicates America's sense of pride, its fragile world dominance, and its political upheavals. It is arguably a more captivating story than was the most intense moment of the financial crisis, in 2008, when Lehman Bros. collapsed. The drop in the Gallup Economic Confidence Index was sharper in July 2011 than it was in 2008, although the index has not yet fallen to a lower level than it reached then.

Most confidence indexes today are based on survey questions that ask respondents to assess the economy today or in the near future. George Gallup, the pioneer of survey methods and creator of the Gallup poll, created a confidence index in 1938, late in the Great Depression, when he asked Americans, "Do you think business will be better or worse six months from now?" He interpreted the answers as measuring "public optimism" and "the intangible mental attitude which is recognized as one vital element in the week-to-week fluctuations of business activity."

But it hardly seems likely that big changes in people's confidence (the kind of confidence that affects their willingness to spend or invest) are rooted in expectations over so short a time horizon. When George Gallup wrote, almost nine years after the Great Depression began, a sense of ultimate futility—a belief that high unemployment would never end—was widespread. That sentiment probably held back consumption and investment far more than any opinions about changes in the next six months. After all, consumers' willingness to spend depends on their general situation, not on whether business will be a little better in the short term. Likewise, businesses' willingness to hire people and expand operations depends on their longer-term expectations.

The Consumer Sentiment Survey of Americans, created by George Katona at the University of Michigan in the early 1950s and known today as the Thomson-Reuters University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, has included a remarkable question about the reasonably long-term future, five years hence, and asks about visceral fears concerning that period:

Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely—that in the country as a whole we'll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will have periods of widespread unemployment or depression, or what?

That question is usually not singled out for attention, but it appears to address directly what we really want to know: what deep anxieties and fears people have that might inhibit their willingness to spend for a long time. The answers to that question might well help us forecast the future much more accurately.

Those answers plunged into depression territory between July and August, and the index of optimism based on answers to this question is at its lowest level since the "great recession" of the early 1980s. It reached its highest level, 135, in 2000, at the very peak of the millennium stock market bubble. By May 2011, it had fallen to 88. By September, just four months later, it was down to 48.

This is a much bigger downswing than was recorded in the overall consumer-confidence indexes. The decline occurred over the better part of a decade, as we began to see the end of debt-driven overexpansion, and accelerated with the latest debt crisis.

The timing and substance of these consumer-survey results suggest that our fundamental outlook about the economy, at the level of the average person, is closely bound up with stories of excessive borrowing, loss of governmental and personal responsibility, and a sense that matters are beyond control. That kind of loss of confidence may well last for years. That said, the economic outlook can never be fully analyzed with conventional statistical models, for it may hinge on something that such models do not include: replacing one narrative—currently a tale of out-of-control debt—with a more inspiring story. ( project-syndicate.org )

READ MORE - Americans Haven't Been This Depressed About the Economy for Ages and Ages

How a simple sugar pill from the doctor may not be a thing of the past

How a simple sugar pill from the doctor may not be a thing of the past - The placebo effect is so powerful that doctors want to make more use of our ability to 'trick ourselves better’

Not so long ago, it wasn’t unusual for your friendly GP to have at hand a bottle of sugar pills for patients’ minor aches and pains. While sugar pills are no longer on offer, a report out last week revealed that half of all German doctors are happily dishing out placebos to their patients for ailments such as stomach upset and low mood.

The study, published by the German Medical Association, said that placebos – here defined as sham treatments without any active constituents – from vitamin pills to homeopathic remedies and even surgery, can prove effective as treatments for minor problems and are completely without side effects.

So if placebo treatments are such a good thing, should UK patients be getting them?

The idea of the healing power of the mind is nothing new

The power of the placebo first came to light during the Second World War. Morphine was in short supply in military field hospitals and an American anaesthetist called Henry Beecher, who was preparing to treat a soldier with terrible injuries, feared that without the drug the operation could induce a fatal heart attack.

In desperation, one of the nurses injected the man with a harmless solution of saline. To Beecher’s surprise the patient settled down as if he had been given morphine and felt little pain during the operation. Dr Beecher had witnessed the placebo effect.

Wind forward 70-odd years and the story of the placebo continues to fascinate, even though in the UK placebo treatments are usually confined to clinical trials, as a comparison with “real” treatments. Recent research suggests the placebo effect is not confined to subjective areas such as pain but may bring about physical changes. In one (albeit small) trial, published in the journal Science, people with Parkinson’s disease given placebo injections showed significantly higher dopamine levels in the brain, similar to the effects of medication.

Interestingly, the German study found that the efficacy of a placebo can depend on the size and colour of a pill and on its cost (with more expensive placebos being more effective) and that injections work better as placebos than tablets.

What causes the placebo effect? No one really knows; but the idea of the healing power of the mind is nothing new. The discovery in the 1980s of the rich supply of nerves linking the brain with the immune system, which led to a new branch of medical research known as psychoneuroimmunology, clearly goes some way to explain it.

Nor does the placebo have to be a pill or injection: just seeing your doctor can work wonders. Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, believes that the key is the relationship between the patient and the doctor or therapist.

“Trust can generate a placebo response. People are already anticipating getting better when they come to the surgery. If the doctor then gives that patient an aspirin for a headache and does it in an empathic manner, the aspirin will have a pharmacological effect and the therapeutic relationship will generate the placebo effect,” explains Prof Ernst.

One widely publicised analysis of clinical trial data on modern antidepressants from the University of Hull found that leading brands of antidepressants worked little better than placebos. Subsequent reporting by the press concluded that antidepressants were useless. However, this failed to mention that the patients’ response to placebos was “exceptionally large”. In other words, it wasn’t that antidepressants didn’t work – but that placebos worked very well. “If the drugs are no better than a placebo, then why not give a placebo which has none of the nasty side-effects?” argues Irving Kirsch, professor of psychology at Hull and lead researcher.

But others say using placebo treatments other than in clinical trials poses an ethical dilemma. While it is not illegal for a doctor to prescribe a placebo if they believe it is in the best interests of the patient, Dr Tony Calland, chair of the BMA’s Medical Ethics Committee, says: “Long ago doctors would give people medication that was scientifically of no value. These days, we believe patients should have an informed choice. Giving a patient a placebo without telling them is regarded as unethical and deceptive.”

But if deception is the problem, could patients be informed they were getting a placebo? A recent study of 80 patients with irritable bowel syndrome at Harvard Medical School in Boston showed that, even though patients were told, their symptoms still improved, compared to those who had no treatment.

Dr Calland points out there is a bigger problem with the placebo response. “In one patient it may be very strong while in another it may be virtually non-existent,” he says. And placebos do not work for everything: they cannot alter blood sugar levels in diabetics, mend a broken leg or cure cancer.

“To hope you will get a placebo effect would simply be not very good medicine,” Dr Calland argues. “Why not just give a treatment that actually works?” ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - How a simple sugar pill from the doctor may not be a thing of the past

British spy files shed light on Nazi saboteurs

British spy files shed light on Nazi saboteurs – The four men wading ashore on a Florida beach wearing nothing but bathing trunks and German army hats looked like an unlikely invading force.

Declassified British intelligence files describe how the men were part of Nazi sabotage teams sent to the U.S. in June 1942 to undermine the American war effort.

Undated image released - Un undated image released by Britain's National Archives Friday April 1, 2011 shows sabotage equipment smuggled into the United States in 1942 by German agents. Newly declassified files from Britain's MI5 spy agency show how the Nazis were determined to use sabotage, subterfuge and even poisoned sausages to fight the war.

They were trained in bomb-making, supplied with explosives and instructed in how to make timers from "easily obtainable commodities such as dried peas, lumps of sugar and razor blades."

Fortunately for the U.S., they were also spectacularly unsuccessful.

"It was not brilliantly planned," said Edward Hampshire, a historian at Britain's National Archives, which released the wartime intelligence documents Monday. "The Germans picked the leader for this very, very poorly. He immediately wanted to give himself up."

A detailed new account of the mission — code-named Pastorius after an early German settler in the U.S. — is provided in a report written in 1943 by MI5 intelligence officer Victor Rothschild. It is one of a trove of previously secret documents which shed light on the Nazis' desire to use sabotage, subterfuge and even poisoned sausages to fight the war.

Pastorius was a mixture of elaborate planning, bad luck and human error.

Eight Germans who had lived in the U.S. were dropped along the Eastern seaboard — four on Long Island, the rest south of Jacksonville, Florida. They were to go ashore, blend in, then begin a campaign of sabotage against factories, railways and canals, as well as launching "small acts of terrorism" including suitcase bombs aimed at Jewish-owned shops.

But the plan started to go wrong almost as soon as the men left their "sabotage camp" in Germany.

They went to Paris, where one of the team got drunk at the hotel bar and "told everyone that he was a secret agent" — something, the MI5 report notes, that may "have contributed to the failure of the undertaking."

The submarine dropping half the group on Long Island ran aground, and MI5 noted that "it was only owing to the laziness or stupidity of the American coast guards that this submarine was not attacked by U.S. forces."

The Germans were stopped by a coast guard, who — to the evident astonishment of the British — did not detain them. He told his superiors, who were slow to contact the FBI.

The others in Florida also made it ashore, despite their attention-grabbing attire of "bathing trunks and army forage caps."

Unfortunately for the team, their leader, George John Dasch, had decided to surrender. The report describes Dasch "ringing up the FBI in Washington from the Mayfair Hotel and saying that he was a saboteur and wished to tell his story to Mr. Hoover" — FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI was initially skeptical, but Dasch was soon giving a full confession, and the whole gang was rounded up.

Within months, the saboteurs had been tried and sentenced to death. All were executed except Dasch and another who had also backed out. They were deported to Germany after the war.

For the U.S. it was a lucky escape. In World War I, German saboteurs blew up an arms dump in New York harbor, killing several people and injuring hundreds.

The newly declassified files give a glimpse of the Nazis' desperate determination to fight a covert campaign against the Allies, even as they knew the war was lost.

One captured French Nazi intelligence agent told his interrogators he had attended a conference in the final weeks of the war to plan a violent campaign that would sow chaos across Western Europe and "eventually lead to a state of civil war in which Fourth Reich would re-emerge."

The campaign was to involve sabotage, assassinations and even chemical weapons.

One file chronicles German attempts to use poison as a postwar weapon. Intelligence from captured Nazi agents indicated there were plans to contaminate alcoholic drinks with methanol, inject sausages with poison and prepare "poisoned Nescafe, sugar, German cigarettes and German chocolate."

Another elaborate plan involved supplying agents with special headache-inducing cigarettes, which could be given to an assassination target. When the person complained of a headache, they would be offered an aspirin — which had been laced with poison.

The files suggest British agents were unsure how much credence to give some of the more fanciful claims, though a memo was drawn up advising that Allied soldiers should not eat German food or smoke German cigarettes "under pain of severe penalties."

"Nowadays, it's easy to regard such schemes as impossibly far-fetched," said Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5. "But at the time it was reasonable to believe that after the Allied victory there would remain a dangerous postwar Nazi underground which would continue a secret war." ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - British spy files shed light on Nazi saboteurs

TV Watching Is Bad for Babies' Brains

Babies who watch TV are more likely to have delayed cognitive development and language at 14 months, especially if they're watching programs intended for adults and older children. We probably knew that 24 and Grey's Anatomy don't really qualify as educational content, but it's surprising that TV-watching made a difference at such a tender age.

Babies who watched 60 minutes of TV daily had developmental scores one-third lower at 14 months than babies who weren't watching that much TV. Though their developmental scores were still in the normal range, the discrepancy may be due to the fact that when kids and parents are watching TV, they're missing out on talking, playing, and interactions that are essential to learning and development.

This new study, which appeared in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, followed 259 lower-income families in New York, most of whom spoke Spanish as their primary language at home. Other studies examining higher-income families have also come to the same conclusion: TV watching not only isn't educational, but it seems to stunt babies' development.

But what about "good" TV, like Sesame Street? The researchers didn't find any pluses or minuses when compared to non-educational programs designed for small children, like SpongeBob SquarePants. Earlier research by some of the same scientists, most of whom are at New York University School of Medicine-Bellevue Hospital Center, has found that parents whose children watch non-educational TV programs like Spongebob SquarePants spend less time reading to their children or teaching them.

At this point, parents reading this are probably saying D'oh! TV is so often a parent's good friend, keeping kids happily occupied so the grownups can cook dinner, answer the phone, or take a shower. But clearly that electronic babysitter is not an educational aid.

The bottom line: This latest study adds more fuel to a recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics that babies under age 2 watch no TV at all. If you've just got to watch Dexter, it's best to make sure the tots are fast asleep. ( usnews.com )

READ MORE - TV Watching Is Bad for Babies' Brains

Radiation in seawater may be spreading in Japan

Radiation in seawater may be spreading in Japan – Highly radioactive iodine seeping from Japan's damaged nuclear complex may be making its way into seawater farther north of the plant than previously thought, officials said Monday, adding to radiation concerns as the crisis stretches into a third week.

Mounting problems, including badly miscalculated radiation figures and no place to store dangerously contaminated water, have stymied emergency workers struggling to cool down the overheating plant and avert a disaster with global implications.

The coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, located 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, has been leaking radiation since a magnitude-9.0 quake on March 11 triggered a tsunami that engulfed the complex. The wave knocked out power to the system that cools the dangerously hot nuclear fuel rods.

AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Masanobu Nakatsukasa

Evacuees from Fukushima, where the troubled Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is located, receive meals for dinner at an evacuation center in Saitama, Japan, Sunday, March 27, 2011

On Monday, workers resumed the laborious yet urgent task of pumping out the hundreds of tons of radioactive water inside several buildings at the six-unit plant. The water must be removed and safely stored before work can continue to power up the plant's cooling system, nuclear safety officials said.

The contaminated water, discovered last Thursday, has been emitting radiation that measured more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour in a recent reading at Unit 2 — some 100,000 times normal amounts, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

As officials scrambled to determine the source of the radioactive water, chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano repeated Monday that the contaminated water in Unit 2 appeared to be due to a temporary partial meltdown of the reactor core.

He called it "very unfortunate" but said the spike in radiation appeared limited to the unit.

However, new readings show contamination in the ocean has spread about a mile (1.6 kilometers) farther north of the nuclear site than before. Radioactive iodine-131 was discovered just offshore from Unit 5 and Unit 6 at a level 1,150 times higher than normal, Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters Monday.

He had said earlier there was no link between the radioactive water leaking inside the plant and the radiation in the sea. On Monday, though, he reversed that position, saying he does suspect that radioactive water from the plant may indeed be leaking into the ocean.

Closer to the plant, radioactivity in seawater tested about 1,250 times higher than normal last week and climbed to 1,850 times normal over the weekend. Nishiyama said the increase was a concern, but also said the area is not a source of seafood and that the contamination posed no immediate threat to human health.

Up to 600 people are working inside the plant in shifts. Nuclear safety officials say workers' time inside the crippled units is closely monitored to minimize their exposure to radioactivity, but two workers were hospitalized Thursday when they suffered burns after stepping into contaminated water. They were to be released from the hospital Monday.

Meanwhile, a strong earthquake shook the region and prompted a brief tsunami alert early Monday, adding to the sense of unease across Japan. The quake off the battered Miyagi prefecture coast in the northeast measured magnitude-6.5, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

No damage or injuries were reported, and TEPCO said the quake would not affect work to stabilize the plant. Scores of strong earthquakes have rattled Japan over the past two weeks.

Confusion at the plant has intensified fears that the nuclear crisis will last weeks, months or years amid alarms over radiation making its way into produce, raw milk and even tap water as far as Tokyo.

On Sunday, TEPCO officials said radiation in leaking water in the Unit 2 reactor was 10 million times above normal — an apparent spike that sent employees fleeing the unit. The day ended with officials saying the huge figure had been miscalculated and offering apologies.

"The number is not credible," TEPCO spokesman Takashi Kurita said late Sunday. "We are very sorry."

A few hours later, TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto said a new test had found radiation levels 100,000 times above normal — far better than the first results, though still very high.

But he ruled out having an independent monitor oversee the various checks despite the errors.

Muto acknowledged it could take a long time to clean up the Fukushima complex.

"We cannot say at this time how many months or years it will take," he said. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Radiation in seawater may be spreading in Japan

Low-dose aspirin may cut colon cancer risk

Low-dose aspirin may cut colon cancer risk – A new analysis suggests that taking a low dose of aspirin may modestly reduce the risk of developing colon cancer or dying of the disease.

But experts say aspirin's side effects of bleeding and stomach problems are too worrisome for most people to take the drug for that reason alone. A U.S. health task force specifically recommends against it for those at average risk.

Previous studies have found a daily dose of at least 500 milligrams of aspirin could prevent colon cancer, but the adverse effects of such a high dose outweighed the benefits. Now, researchers say a low dose, equivalent to a baby or regular aspirin, also appears to work. But side effects are still a concern.

The European researchers pooled the 20-year results of four trials with more than 14,000 people. Those studies were designed to study aspirin's use in preventing strokes, not colon cancer.

The researchers tracked who developed the disease through cancer registries and death certificates in Britain and Sweden, where the studies were done.

They found those who took a low dose daily for about six years reduced their colon cancer risk by 24 percent and their risk of dying from the disease by 35 percent. That was compared to those who took a dummy pill or nothing. There seemed to be no advantage to taking more than a baby-sized dose.

The studies used European baby aspirin of 75 milligrams and regular aspirin, 300 milligrams. US. baby aspirin is 81 milligrams and regular aspirin, 325 milligrams.

Some researchers said the drug would benefit certain people, though no one should start taking aspirin daily without consulting their doctor.

If taken in high doses over a long period, aspirin can irritate the stomach, intestines and bowel, causing lesions and major bleeding.

"Anyone with any risk factors such as a family history (of colon cancer) or a previous polyp should definitely take aspirin," said Peter Rothwell, a professor at the University of Oxford and one of the paper's authors. The finding also "tips the balance" for anyone considering aspirin to prevent heart attacks and strokes, he said.

No funding was provided for the study and it was published online Friday in the journal Lancet. Rothwell and some of his co-authors have been paid for work by the makers of anti-clotting drugs like aspirin.

Other experts warned against aspirin for the general population.

"It's not for everybody," said Robert Benamouzig, of Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny, France, who co-authored a commentary in the Lancet. He said he would advise some of his high-risk patients to take aspirin, but only after explaining its side effects.

Scientists think aspirin works by stopping production of a certain enzyme linked to cancers including those of the breast, stomach, esophagus and colon.

The trials analyzed in the Lancet paper were done before the widespread introduction of screening tests like sigmoidoscopies and colonoscopies. Rothwell said taking aspirin would still help, because the drug seems to stop cancers in the upper bowel, not usually caught by screening tests.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cancer in developed countries, and there are about 1 million new cases and 600,000 deaths worldwide every year. The average person has about a 5 percent chance of developing the disease in their lifetime. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Low-dose aspirin may cut colon cancer risk

Viruses vs. bacteria

Viruses vs. bacteria. Bacteriophage (or 'phage' for short) therapy, is an alternative to antibiotic treatment, and has recently been gaining favour and appeal amongst western scientists.

This treatment involves injecting or applying a cocktail of bacteriophages, which consist of a virus that attacks specific infection-causing bacteria. In short, the bacteriaphages "eat" the bacterium concerned.

Phage therapy is currently the subject of mainstream research and application in Georgia in the former Soviet Union.

History

The history of phage therapy can be traced as far back as 1896. M.E Hankin reportedly witnessed the antibacterial action of the Indian rivers Ganga and Yamuna against the bacterial strain Vibrio Chlorae. Hankin’s findings are said to have explained the low numbers of cholera cases among people who consumed the river water.

In 1915 and 1917, Frederick Twort and Felix d'Hérelle from England reported similar results. It was d'Hérelle who named these ultra-microbes ‘bacteriophages’ (bacteria eaters) and who pioneered the use of phages for treating Shigella dysentery in France. Around the same time, a Georgian by the name of George Eliava was conducting phage research of his own.

Eliava met d'Hérelle at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, after which he established the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, dedicated to the further study of phages.

How they work

Bacteriophages are divided into two types: lytic and lysogenic. References to bacteriophages for therapeutic reasons allude to lytic bacteriophages. Lysogenic phages are not useful for therapeutic purposes.

Phages attach themselves onto bacteria and inject their DNA into the cells. In a matter of minutes, a bacterium becomes a phage factory, producing more and more phages after having corrupted the reproductive mechanism of the bacterium. Eventually the new phages burst through the walls of the cell, destroying the bacterium and continuing the process by spreading to other bacterial cells.

By nature, most phages are ‘bacterium-specific’, meaning that they can only affect specific strains within a species. Phage therapy therefore results in less harm to the body than traditional antibiotic treatment. This also helps prevent secondary infections usually caused by the use of antibiotics.

The manner in which phages are applied depends on the type of condition from which a patient suffers. They can be applied topically, during surgery or orally. They can also be applied by means of injection. The nature of the immune system (that automatically fights against any viruses introduced into the bloodstream or lymphatic system) means that injected bacteriophages are only used on rare occasions, such as when no other method of application would be effective.

Better than antibiotics?

Bacteria eventually grow resistant to antibiotics, but phages are able to change and adapt in ways that make them a constant threat to bacteria. All viruses change and adapt themselves in time, and bacteriophages are no exception. Also, phages have the advantage of being able to penetrate deeper into an infected area than antibiotics can, because phages keep reproducing, unlike antibiotics, which eventually lose efficacy.

On a practical level, phages are more viable than antibiotics for a number of reasons. These include:

• There are almost no serious side-effects (antibiotic use can result in secondary infections).


• Selecting new phages to combat an infection is a much quicker process than finding new antibiotics, which sometimes take up to several years.
• Phages replicate at the site of infection, but antibiotics are eliminated from the body after they’re metabolised.

( health24.com )

READ MORE - Viruses vs. bacteria

Meet your new cousins, the flying lemurs

Meet your new cousins, the flying lemurs. Squirrel-like colugos are the closest living relative of primates. A group of creatures resembling large flying squirrels is the closest living relative of primates, the group that includes apes and humans, according to a new genetic study.

The finding, detailed in the Nov. 2 issue of the journal Science, contradicts a study published earlier this year by another team, which concluded that the squirrel-like colugos are more closely related to Scandentia, a group that includes tree shrews, than to primates.

National University Of Singapore

Found in Southeast Asia, colugos are colloquially called "flying lemurs," although they are not lemurs and they don't truly fly. The animals are larger than flying squirrels but have a similar skin fold, called a patagium, which they use for gliding. Coasting from tree to tree at dusk, they look like furry kites.

Unclear relationships

Colugos belong to a classification of mammals known as Dermopterans. Together with primates and Scandentia, they make up the single taxonomic unit, or "clade," known as Euarchonta (meaning "true ancestors").

The exact evolutionary relationships among the three groups are a topic of debate among scientists. There are three possibilities:

• Colugos and primates shared a common ancestor that split from tree shrews
• Tree shrews and colugos are more closely related to each other than to primates
• Primates and tree shrews are sister groups, and colugos are the odd ones out

A study published in a January issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) used morphological comparisons of the three groups to determine that tree shrews and colugos are more closely related to each other than either is to primates.

A different picture

The new study, based on genetic comparisons, paints a different picture. Jan Janecka of Texas A&M University and colleagues compared rare genetic changes, called indels, in the genomes of members of the three groups. Indels are regions of insertion or deletion in areas of the DNA that code for proteins.

The team found that colugos and primates have seven indels in common. Only one indel matched up between primates and tree shrews, and no indels were shared between tree shrews and colugos.

"In short, these molecular data strongly suggest that colugos are the sister group to primates," said study team member Webb Miller of Penn State University.

In a second experiment, the team fed genetic data from five mammalian groups, including Primates, Dermopterans, and Scandentia, into a computer model to calculate when they diverged. The results suggested Primates, Demopterans and Scandentia shared a common ancestor as far back as 87.9 million years ago, when dinosaurs still walked the Earth.

According to the model, the three groups separated relatively quickly soon after. At 86.2 million years ago, the ancestors of tree shrews split from that of primates and colugos, and primates and colugos went their separate ways about 79.6 million years ago.

Based on the new findings, the team urges an effort to create a draft of the colugos genome. "Colugos are going to be a much more important species to study now that we know their relationship to primates," Miller said.

For selfish reasons

Mary Silcox, an anthropologist at the University of Winnipeg in Canada who was a co-author on the PNAS study had an open mind about the new findings and the final word on the evolutionary relationship between the three Euarchonta groups.

"Even though it's in conflict with our morphological findings that we've published, I'm not totally closed to the idea that we have the branching pattern among the three Eurochonta groups wrong," Silcox told LiveScience.

She added that a genome of colugos would be "spectacularly wonderful," but that the genome of the most ancient living tree shrew, Ptilocercus lowii, is also needed.

Comparing the full genomes of members from all three groups would allow scientists to chart the evolutionary relationships among them with much more confidence, Silcox said.

Why is knowledge of these relationships important? For one, it will help to answer the question of the origins of our own species, Silcox said. "To some extent, to understand where we came from, we need to put that in a larger context of mammalian evolution," she said.

But Silcox also chalks it up partly to vanity. "I think it's because humans are remarkably self-centered animals," she said. "It's because we're more interested in our evolution than we are the evolution of slime molds that we tend to focus on this stuff." ( livescience.com )

READ MORE - Meet your new cousins, the flying lemurs

It's Not a Tumor, It's a Brain Worm

It's Not a Tumor, It's a Brain Worm. Doctor Surprised to Find a Worm Living Inside a Woman's Brain. Late last summer, Rosemary Alvarez of Phoenix thought she had a brain tumor. But on the operating table her doctor discovered something even more unsightly -- a parasitic worm eating her brain.

Alvarez, 37, was first referred to the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix with balance problems, difficulty swallowing and numbness in her left arm.

An MRI scan revealed a foreign growth at her brain stem that looked just like a brain tumor to Dr. Peter Nakaji, a neurosurgeon at the Barrow Neurological Institute.

"Ones like this that are down in the brain stem are hard to pick out," said Nakaji. "And she was deteriorating rather quickly, so she needed it out."

Yet at a key moment during the operation to remove the fingernail-sized tumor, Nakaji, instead, found a parasite living in her brain, a tapeworm called Taenia solium, to be precise.

"I was actually quite pleased," said Nakaji. "As neurosurgeons, we see a lot of bad things and have to deliver a lot of bad news."

When Alvarez awoke, she heard the good news that she was tumor-free and she would make a full recovery. But she also heard the disturbing news of how the worm got there in the first place.

Nakaji said someone, somewhere, had served her food that was tainted with the feces of a person infected with the pork tapeworm parasite.

"It wasn't that she had poor hygiene, she was just a victim," said Nakaji.

Pork Tapeworms a Small, But Growing Trend

"We've got a lot more of cases of this in the United States now," said Raymond Kuhn, professor of biology and an expert on parasites at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "Upwards of 20 percent of neurology offices in California have seen it."

The pork tapeworm has plagued people for thousands of years. The parasite, known as cysticercosis, lives in pork tissue, and is likely the reason why Jewish and Muslim dietary laws ban pork.

Kuhn said whether you get a tapeworm in the intestine, or a worm burrowing into your brain can depend on how you consumed the parasite.

How Humans Get Worms

Eat the parasite in tainted meat and you'll end up eating the larvae, called cysts. Kuhn said in that case, a person can only end up with a tapeworm.

(ABCNEWS.com)

"You can eat cysts all day long and it won't get into your brain," said Kuhn. Instead, the larvae go through the stomach and mature in the intestine.

"When it gets down into their small intestine, it latches on, and then it starts growing like an alien," said Kuhn.

Once there, the tapeworm starts feeding and gets to work. A single tapeworm will release 50,000 eggs a day, most of which usually end up in the toilet.

"They can see these little packets pass in their feces," said Kuhn. "And ... sometimes people eat the eggs from feces by accident."

Kuhn said it is then feces-tainted food, and not undercooked pork, that leads to worms burrowing into the brain.

Unlike the cysts, the eggs are able to pass from the stomach into the bloodstream. From there, the eggs may travel and lodge in various parts of the body -- including the muscle, the brain or under the skin -- before maturing into cysts themselves.

According to Kuhn, who has traveled to study this parasite, cysticercosis is a big problem in some parts of Latin America and Mexico where health codes are hard to enforce and people may frequently eat undercooked pork.

As people travel across the border with Mexico for vacation and work, Kuhn said so does the tapeworm. One person infected with a parasite, who also has bad hand washing habits, can infect many others with eggs.

"These eggs can live for three months in formaldehyde," said Kuhn. "You got to think, sometimes, a person is slapping lettuce on your sandwich with a few extra add-ons there."

Getitng the Worms Out

Dr. Christopher Madden, an assistant professor in the University of Texas Southwestern department of neurological surgery in Dallas, has operated on a number of these cysts himself. He said not every worm needs to be surgically removed; those whose location is not an immediate threat to the patient's health can be treated with medications that cause the worms to die.

But when the cysts are in problematic locations, as was the case for Alvarez, an operation is necessary. Fortunately, the long-term prognosis for most patients is positive.

"Most patients we see actually do very well with medicines and/or surgery to take out a large cyst," Madden said.

Alvarez is not alone in accidentally eating tainted food, but Nakaji rarely sees cases so severe that people require surgery. Nakaji said he only removed six or seven worms in neurosurgery this year.

"But lodging in the brain stem is bad luck," he said.

Nakaji said other parts of the brain have more "room" or tissue to expand around a growing cyst. However the brain stem, which is crucial to life, is only the width of a finger or two.

"She could have recovered," said Nakaji. "But if the compression lasted for long enough, she could have been left permanently disabled or dead." ( abcnews.go.com )

READ MORE - It's Not a Tumor, It's a Brain Worm

When Biology Doesn't Explain Gay: One Woman's Perspective

When Biology Doesn't Explain Gay: One Woman's Perspective. Our Gay Wedding, My Straight Brain . I'm getting married in less than two weeks and can't think about much else.

Mostly I worry about:

A) fitting into my dress (cream-colored Indian cotton, tea-length skirt) and

B) how we're going to unload sixty Ikea champagne flutes after the wedding.

But I've also been thinking about my fiancee's brain. And my own.

ABCNEWS.com recently reported on a Swedish study indicating that the brains of gay people are more like the brains of straight people of the opposite sex than they are like straight members of the same sex. The study bolsters the conventional wisdom — popular among gays and straights alike — that homosexuality is not a choice but a physical condition.

In purely reductionist (and slightly facetious) terms, gay men have girl brains and gay women have boy brains.

No kidding. You've seen them, two women maybe, boy brains both, deeply in love. They dress like twins — identically cropped hair, polo shirts, khakis.

But what about when a straight woman's brain falls in love with a gay woman's brain? How to describe. Butch/Femme? That's very old school, almost vintage, which is why Margie and I secretly like the terms. I chose a retro theme for our wedding invites.

Margie and I will be wed in the garden behind our newly renovated (well, not quite, but more on that later) home in the Berkshire foothills in front of about 60 friends and family.

We found the little Massachusetts stone house two years ago. The stocky, tough-talking real estate agent from Boston couldn't believe her luck when she let us in. We walked across the orange shag carpet to the enormous picture windows looking out onto acres of garden, white birch and mountain laurel in a trance.

Our teenaged Bearded Collie grinned widely, lifted one leg and relieved himself against one of the wooden supports before anyone could do anything.

The rarely emotive Margie stood in front of the ski-lodge style fireplace and made an announcement. "I love it! We'll take it! I don't need to see upstairs!"

We did take it, but I still had my job in the city. It became our weekend DIY project. And my weekend escape from the chaos of a difficult work situation. And also escape from a level of commitment ambivalence that made my pulse race, feeding my impulsivity. In the country with Margie, there was no temptation.

I had affairs, though, with men. Eventually, I fled our home and, ironically, through an intense but short-lived relationship with a near-perfect guy, I realized the depth of my love for Margie.

He was attentive, adventurous, smart. I really liked him, but I couldn't love him, because I was already in love.

I'm so glad she wanted me back.

These days my mother and I are creating and revising the wedding menu by phone (she lives in South Carolina), and my dad (who lives in Cleveland) has come through with the cash for my favorite champagne and an extraordinarily difficult-to-book DJ.

Margie's 80-year-old mother, Juanita, is making the trip from the suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, to sew chair cushions and curtains in preparation for our overnight guests. Margie is her youngest child — her tomboyish baby. Juanita and Margie's older sister knew she was gay before Margie did.

An only child, I gave new meaning to the words eccentric and prissy. I hated wearing pants and didn't get my first pair of jeans until age 12. I cried until my mother sewed lace around the trim of my little white socks. Of all the things she worried about when it came to my future, gayness didn't make the list.

Today I work in New York, writing mostly about health and beauty. Manhattan nurtures my hypochondria, fat-phobia and free-floating angst like no city ever has.

Margie, my foil — an ectomorphic specimen of perfect physical health due to a lifelong preference for an athletic, Spartan lifestyle — is a carpenter and design snob who prefers breathing clean air. Though the odds are against us in this economy, we hope to maintain both residences.

As I type, my beloved — having just finished rebuilding the stone steps — is pouring the concrete for our custom kitchen counter tops. If it was up to me the kitchen would be 100 percent Ikea and completed last year.

But Margie is an artist. Prefab is to carpentry is what MadLibs is to writing; this is something I've had to learn.

She just phoned to ask my opinion (again) about the color she plans to mix in to the concrete. We're really down to the wire (11 days!) and it's hard to keep the tension out of my voice when I tell her not to worry, the dark stain will be fine. But I manage.

I speak softly and soothingly. When we hang up she sounds reassured.

In the early days of our relationship, we screamed at each other like siblings, but I've since learned better.

The way to handle Margie when things get tough is to pretend she is a guy and to "manage" her as such — just like the illustrated 1960s book called something like "Advice and Etiquette for Young Ladies" I once perused on the floor of my grandparent's library. The advice the editors gave was not just for dealing with boys, it was for dealing with boy brains. Who knew?

I've never had an MRI, but I'm pretty sure I have a straight girl brain (if there really is such thing).

What does that mean?

Is orientation a matter of biology for her and a matter of choice for me? I suspect that what we call "orientation" is not much more significant than any general preference. Like hair color, social class, weight or ethnicity. Sure initial drives play a role, but if we truly seek love, we may broaden our prospects if we put aside our preferences once in a while.

At any rate, I question the premise that falling in love is a matter of choice. Love chooses us, it seems.

Yet on the orientation continuum, is Margie "gayer" than I am? Not anymore. I am devoted to her, and in two weeks we will be married, and we (James, our Beardie, makes three) will be a gay little family. ( abcnews.go.com )

READ MORE - When Biology Doesn't Explain Gay: One Woman's Perspective

Why Nice Guys Finish Last New Research Points to Biological Reason Why Girls Like Bad Boys

Why Nice Guys Finish Last. New Research Points to Biological Reason Why Girls Like Bad Boys. Ricky Menezes, a 22-year-old from Marlborough, Mass., says he knows he will hook up with "about 20 girls" in the next month.

New research suggests that bad boys may indeed beat nice guys when it comes to getting female attention.

(Getty/ABC News)

How does he know this, you ask? Ricky knows this because he's what we call a "bad boy" -- the type of guy who knows exactly how to act, what to say and how to manipulate women into giving him what he wants.

"It all started in high school," Ricky said. "I started being the outgoing, crazy, funny kid that everyone thought was fun and wanted to hang out with."

After being validated by his peers in high school, Ricky said he has more or less mastered the art of being a bad boy, and has done so with one overriding goal in mind -- sexual conquest.

"I don't pretend to be anything I'm not," Ricky said. "I'm honest and outspoken. I say that I'm just looking to hook up. ... I'm not afraid to go for it, and I rarely get rejected.

"Oh, and I'm in a band. You have to be in a band. Girls love guys in bands," he added.

Most everyone knows -- or at least knows of -- a stereotypical "bad boy" like Ricky. The guy with such high self-esteem he could aptly be called a narcissist. The guy who wins women over with deceit, callousness and impulsive behavior. Basically, the type of guy who resembles a real-life version of Hugh Grant's character in "Bridget Jones' Diary."

The success of Ricky and so many other "bad boys" with women seems to add weight to the popular saying "good guys finish last."

And there might be more than just a grain of truth in these mantras about bad boys; new research suggests they might actually be attracting more women than their "nicer" counterparts.

The Positive Side of Negative Traits

Researchers at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces gave 200 college students personality tests to see how many of what psychologists call "dark triad traits" they possessed. These traits include callousness, impulsive behavior, extroversion, narcissism and various other anti-social traits for which "bad boys" are known.

The researchers also asked about the student's sex lives, their feelings about sexual relationships, their number of sexual partners, and what they are seeking in sexual or romantic relationships.

According to Peter Jonason, lead study investigator, although society tends to look down upon these "negative" dark triad personality traits, there seems to be quite an upside to being a bad boy.

"We would traditionally consider these dark triad traits to be adverse personality traits, and we think women would avoid these kinds of men, but what we show is counterintuitive -- that women are attracted to these bad boys and they do pretty well in terms of sheer numbers of sexual partners," Jonason explained. "They're taking quantity over quality as their sexual agenda, being serially monogamous and having multiple partners or one-night stands."

Jonason compared the type of "dark triad bad boy" that the study refers to as a modern-day James Bond figure -- a man with little empathy for others, a penchant for fast cars and even faster women, and a seeker of short-term rather than long-term goals -- especially concerning the opposite sex.

And because these characters appear in this study to be successful at achieving their short-term goals -- which, in this case, is a short-term sexual relationship -- Jonason believes such character traits have persevered in so many people because they seem to be evolutionarily successful.

"Dark triad traits are useful in pursuing our agendas at any given time," Jonason explained. "If you like someone and want to meet them and date them, people who have the dark triad traits appear to be more successful at facilitating short-term mating."

Jonason validated this point with a comparison to the popular VH1 show "The Pick-Up Artist," wherein nerdy, nice guys meet with a typical bad boy to learn how to pick up more of these dark triad traits -- and also more women.

Nice Guys Win in the End

But some experts say it might not be so simple.

Heather Rupp, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, believes that the reason women may be drawn toward the "bad boys" is more because of physiology more than psychology.

"I think it goes back to the physiological underpinnings of such an attraction," Rupp said. "For instance, testosterone is a hormone that in men is linked to more dominant personality traits -- outgoing personalities and charm and things like that. And men with higher testosterone are rated by independent observers as being more outgoing and charming than others."

Some experts, however, believe that these narcissistic males tend to embellish the self-reported tales of their own sexual conquest, leading others to believe they are more sexually successful than they really are.

"People high in dark triad traits tend to say what they think others want to hear," said Everett Worthington, professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Moreover, Worthington notes that while some of these males may be more successful at short-term sexual relationships, their overall success with long-term relationships is often compromised by their dark triad traits.

"The manipulative 'It's all about me, so tell 'em anything to get sex' behavior is likely to have more short-term sexual success," Worthington said. "A strategy of building trust and intimacy and commitment is, by nature, going to take longer. Thus, the payoffs are likely to be greater in the short term. However, long-term relationship survival is likely to be strongly disadvantaged in people with dark triad traits."

So maybe good guys don't always finish last. ( abcnews.go.com )

READ MORE - Why Nice Guys Finish Last New Research Points to Biological Reason Why Girls Like Bad Boys