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Health24.com | Self-proclaimed ‘fittest dwarf on earth’ can lift four times his own weight
While many people cannot even lift a large fraction of their weight, Mikey Witous defied the odds of his dwarfism and built up the strength to be able to lift almost four times his body weight.
The 26-year-old has a history of athleticism, seeing that he played football, took part in wrestling and practiced taekwondo. When he gave up wrestling, he decided to move on to taking part in CrossFit and is now working hard towards an event where he will show how he is the fittest dwarf on earth.
Weighing in at just under 60kg, with a height of 1.35m, Witous has achondroplasia – a form of short-limbed dwarfism as described by the National Library of Medicine’s Genetic Home Reference (GHR).
Achondroplasia is a genetic disorder, causing disproportionate dwarfism. It involves a lack of cartilage formation, but as interpreted by GHR, it doesn’t actually refer to cartilage not forming, but rather the process of cartilage converting into bone. It’s particularly in arms and legs that this conversion doesn’t fully take place.
Health challenges
While there may be unusual skeletal development, people who have achondroplasia generally have normal brain functionality and “normal” intelligence.
There are, however, a few health challenges associated with the condition, such as periods of slow breathing or not breathing at all, obesity and recurring ear infections.
Possible health issues, which are more serious, include spinal stenosis, which, according to Spine-Health, involves the spinal canal becoming thinner and possibly causing pinching of nerves running through the canal. This could result in difficulty walking because the legs may experience tingling, numbness, pain and weakness, according to Spine-Health.
Hydrocephalus, also known as water on the brain, could be experienced, resulting in a larger head size and brain complications, but is believed to be quite uncommon.
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Health24.com | Struggling with a cough? Take this checklist to your doctor
A cough now and then is normal. Coughing helps the body get rid of throat irritants, which may include food, phlegm, mucus or a foreign object.
However, when a coughs persists, you might be dealing with a bigger problem and you may need to visit a doctor.
According to an article in Harvard Health Publishing, a cough can be described as chronic when it lasts longer than three to eight weeks. Using our cough checklist can help you determine just how serious your cough is.
Click here to access the checklist.
Cough categories
Your cough can be categorised into five different groups:
- A dry, non-productive cough is characterised by no or very little mucus.
- A loose, productive cough has a lot of mucus present which is usually coughed up.
- A tight cough relates to a dry cough in the chest area. Tightness in the chest triggers coughing.
- A spasmodic cough, as the name suggests, is a cough that occurs in spasms. This may be due to a chest infection. These coughs can be painful and may be linked to bronchitis and croup.
- An irritation cough is most often caused by the irritation of postnasal drip.
Expert advice
When trying to decide whether or not your cough may be a symptom of a bigger problem, it’s best to consult your doctor. According to Health24 expert, Dr Heidi van Deventer, “The first thing we look for is the duration of the cough, because this will immediately give one an indication of what illness to think of. Then one will want to know if it is a dry cough or a productive cough with lots of phlegm; this will also steer you in the direction of a diagnosis.”
A cough can be a symptom of flu, chest infection/inflammation, allergies, whooping cough or asthma.
Dr van Deventer adds, “Any cough that continues for more than two weeks needs to be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly as this could indicate a more serious disease.”
As serious as some coughs may be, there are some of us who try to fake a cough to our GP in an attempt to get a day off. Depending on how good you are, you may get away with it, but most of the time, your doctor will be able to spot the pretence.
“A ‘fake’ cough is usually very dry and can be done very effectively on demand – but if you are truly coughing, it is mostly involuntary and not produced on demand,” says Dr van Deventer.
Image credit: iStock
Improving cell replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease that affects dopamine signaling neurons in patients’ brains. Cell-replacement therapy shows some promise as a treatment for Parkinson’s. A recent paper in the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics reports a technical advance in selecting cells to use in this therapy.
Cell-replacement therapy involves differentiating stem cells into dopamine-signaling, or dopaminergic, neurons and transplanting them into a patient’s brain to replace dying neurons. However, the variability of differentiated cells — including contamination with other neuronal cell types or residual undifferentiated stem cells — can affect transplantation outcomes. In clinical trials in the 1990s, for example, such contamination gave some patients severe dyskinesia, uncontrollable jerky movements that were worse than the movement problems caused by Parkinson’s disease.
To avoid interference by unwanted cell types, researchers need a differentiation protocol that yields a more homogeneous population of dopaminergic neurons. Researchers led by Hossein Baharvand, of Iran’s University of Science and Culture in Tehran, and Ghasem Hosseini Salekdeh , of the Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research in Iran and Macquarie University in Australia, set out to develop such a protocol.
First, the team developed a special stem cell line that contains a green fluorescent protein, or GFP, reporter for a transcription factor involved in dopaminergic neuronal development. In undifferentiated cells from this line, the fluorescent reporter is not expressed. When cells begin to make the transcription factor, the first step toward becoming a dopaminergic neuron, they also begin to make the GFP protein.
The team then used standard protocols to differentiate the cells and sorted them by GFP expression. They then identified proteins that were enriched on the surface of partially differentiated cells called dopaminergic progenitors. By selecting for one protein characteristic of dopaminergic progenitors, called contactin 2, they isolated progenitors and transplanted them into rats modeling Parkinson’s disease. Rats that received transplants with contactin 2-enriched cells had better dopamine release, indicating that the transplanted cells were a better match for the dying neurons they were meant to replace. Sorting the cells also reduced motor symptoms of Parkinson’s compared with rats treated that received unsorted cells.
The team’s isolation procedure uses may be an important step toward more successful cell-replacement therapy.
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Materials provided by American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Wind technology advancements continue to drive down wind energy prices
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Wind technology advancements continue to drive down wind energy prices: Key findings indicate wind energy prices at all-time lows as wind turbines grow larger.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 August 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180823143922.htm>.
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (2018, August 23). Wind technology advancements continue to drive down wind energy prices: Key findings indicate wind energy prices at all-time lows as wind turbines grow larger. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 23, 2018 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180823143922.htm
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Wind technology advancements continue to drive down wind energy prices: Key findings indicate wind energy prices at all-time lows as wind turbines grow larger.” ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180823143922.htm (accessed August 23, 2018).
How rabies virus moves through nerve cells, and how it might be stopped
To successfully infect its host, the rabies virus must move from the nerve ending to the nerve cell body where it can replicate.
In a study published July 20 in the journal PLoS Pathogens, researchers from Princeton University reveal that the rabies virus moves differently compared to other neuron-invading viruses and that its journey can be blocked by a drug commonly used to treat amoebic dysentery.
Most viruses only infect the nervous system accidentally when the immune system is compromised. But some “neurotropic” viruses have evolved to target neurons as part of their normal infectious cycle. The rabies virus, for example, is transmitted when an infected animal bites into a host’s muscle. It then spreads into the end terminals of motor neurons innervating the muscle and travels along the neurons’ long axon fibers to the neuronal cell bodies. From there, the virus can spread throughout the central nervous system and into the salivary glands, where it can be readily transmitted to other hosts. Though rabies infections in humans are rare in the United States, the virus killed over 17,000 people worldwide in 2015.
Alpha herpesviruses, such as herpes simplex viruses, also enter peripheral nerve terminals and move along axons to the neuronal cell body, where they can lie dormant for the life of the host.
“Transport to the neuronal cell body is not a passive process, but an active one relying on the neuron’s own motor proteins and microtubule tracks,” said Lynn Enquist, Princeton’s Henry L. Hillman Professor in Molecular Biology, a professor of molecular biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and the study’s senior author. “Virus particles must engage this machinery for efficient transport in axons, otherwise infection cannot start.”
Enquist and colleagues previously found that alpha herpesviruses engage the neuronal transport machinery by stimulating protein synthesis at infected nerve terminals. Viral transport to the cell body can therefore be blocked by drugs that inhibit protein synthesis, as well as by cellular antiviral proteins called interferons.
In the current study, Enquist and colleagues investigated how the rabies virus engages the neuronal transport machinery. The researchers infected neurons with a virulent strain of the virus tagged with a red fluorescent protein, allowing the researchers to observe viral transport in real time by live-cell fluorescence microscopy.
The study was led by Margaret MacGibeny, who earned her Ph.D. in 2018, and associate research scholar Orkide Koyuncu, at Princeton, with contributions from research associate Christoph Wirblich and Matthias Schnell, professor and chair of microbiology and immunology at Thomas Jefferson University.
In contrast to alpha herpesvirus infections, the team found that interferons had no effect on rabies virus transport, perhaps because, until it reaches the neuronal cell body, the rabies virus hides out inside cellular structures called endosomes.
“We also couldn’t detect increased protein synthesis in axons upon rabies virus infection,” MacGibeny said. “But, to our surprise, we saw that a protein synthesis inhibitor called emetine efficiently blocked rabies virus transport to the cell body.”
Emetine had no effect on the transport of endosomes devoid of the rabies virus. But endosomes carrying the virus were either completely immobilized, or were only able to move short distances at slower-than-normal speeds.
Other protein synthesis inhibitors did not block rabies virus transport, however, suggesting that emetine works by inhibiting a different process in infected neurons.
“Emetine has been used to treat amoebic dysentery,” Koyuncu said. “In the laboratory it is widely used to inhibit protein synthesis but there are recent reports indicating that emetine has anti-viral effects that are independent of protein synthesis inhibition. Our study shows that this drug can inhibit rabies virus invasion of the nervous system through a novel mechanism that hasn’t been reported before.”
“The manuscript by MacGibeny et al. both advances and complicates our understanding of how neurotropic viruses make their way from the axon terminus to the cell body,” said Professor Glenn Rall, an expert in neurotropic virus infections at Fox Chase Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study. “Revealing variations in the axonal transport of neurotropic viruses, coupled with intriguing insights into new roles for well-known drugs, has both mechanistic and clinical implications for these life-threatening infections.
“Our next step is to figure out how emetine disrupts rabies virus transport in axons,” Enquist says. “Does it inhibit cell signaling pathways after rabies virus entry, or does it directly block the recruitment of motor proteins to virus-carrying endosomes?”
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Health24.com | You are probably doing this common exercise wrong
The information on Health24 is for educational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you are experiencing symptoms or need health advice, please consult a healthcare professional. See additional information.
Health24.com | WHO follows SA’s bold example with new TB treatment
Last week the World Health Organsiation (WHO) changed its treatment recommendations for the deadliest form of TB, drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), following South Africa’s bold decision.
The WHO now recommends all DR-TB patients receive an all-oral regimen of medicines, including the new blockbuster drug bedaquiline. In June South Africa became the first country in the world to announce it would switch to the bedaquiline regimen, replacing the highly toxic injectable drugs which cause hearing loss in up to half of patients who take them.
Heated talks
The country recently made another bold move when it ‘broke the silence’ during contentious negotiations ahead of the United Nations’ High-level Meeting (UN-HLM) on TB which is set to take place in September.
For over two months countries have been in heated talks drafting a political declaration on the disease, which is the world’s top infectious disease killer.
Resisting buckling to the pressure Big Pharma and certain governments led by the United States (US) have exerted in these negotiations, on July 24 South Africa raised objections to the draft declaration that was submitted to the president of the UN.
According to international medical and advocacy organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the draft declaration failed to include public health safeguards that nations, particularly poor countries, can use under the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS).
These safeguards allow countries to use mechanisms to circumvent patent rights in the interests of making essential medicines affordable, particularly in public health emergencies.
Impact on poor people
Wealthier nations and big business who have argued that there is no need to include the TRIPS flexibilities in the declaration “are spitting in the faces” and “turning their backs on” the millions of people living with TB who cannot access newer and safer drugs, wrote Section27’s Umunyana Rugege and the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) Sibongile Tshabalala in the Daily Maverick this week.
“For the United States and other countries to attempt to roll back these rights in a TB declaration, a declaration on a disease that impacts mostly poor people of all things, is deeply cynical. Do these countries really not care whether we live or die? Or is their only real concern that we will get on planes and bring TB to their countries? Is the UN declaration nothing more than PR for them?” they wrote.
MSF’s Julia Hill told Health-e News that the new recommendations from the WHO brings hope to those advocating for this political declaration to make a strong commitment on making new anti-TB drugs affordable and accessible.
She said the WHO’s announcement has come at a “crucial time” as negotiations have reopened giving countries an opportunity “to speak up and ensure language promotes the principles of access and affordability”.
“As happened with the fight for affordable HIV treatment, countries like the U.S. are placing pressure on countries to drop access language in the declaration—pushing back against this will be essential for making sure better TB treatment reaches people with TB,” she said.
Broad access to new medicines
Bedaquiline, an example of such better treatment and the first new anti-TB drug developed in over 50 years, costs US$400 (±R5 700) per course in South Africa but as much as US$30 000 (±R432 000) in other countries. However, according to Section27 and TAC, a course can still be produced profitably for as low as US$100 (±R1 442).
The National Department of Health’s Dr Yogan Pillay told Health-e News that Japan, one of the countries facilitating the negotiations, has since proposed alternative language to what was contained in the first draft.
He said that the reason for South Africa’s intervention was specifically to make provisions for TRIPS flexibilities to be included in the interests of broad access to new medicines and other potential future innovations like vaccines and diagnostics.
“We are now in discussions internally between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation to decide if we are happy with this new language,” he said.
The UN-HLM is set to be held in New York on September 26.
Said Pillay: “My own view is that it is looking optimistic, but until it’s done it’s not done.” – Health-e News.
Image credit: iStock
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Health24.com | This is what happens to your body during a heroin overdose
Heroin has been available for more than a century. The appeal of this drug is the intensely pleasurable sensation it creates as a result of dopamine flooding the brain.
Heroin is a dangerous drug, and according to a News24 report it is currently a big problem in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Over the past few years, heroin has become the drug of choice for many South Africans.
What happens to your body immediately after heroin is taken?
As soon as heroin is smoked, ingested or injected straight into your blood stream, the drug activates certain receptors in your brain. These are called neurotransmitters and are responsible for feelings of euphoria. You experience a rush and a feeling of intense pleasure.
However, the heroin-filled blood doesn’t just affect your neurotransmitters – it starts to affect the part of the brain that is responsible for your breathing and heart rate. You will now probably experience an elevated heartbeat, a dry mouth and sometimes nausea, dizziness and vomiting.
Heroin first makes you happy – and then things go bad
Heroin is a very addictive drug and your body will quickly become dependent on the substance. Repeated use changes the physical structure of the brain and can alter the DNA of your body. Your brain’s white matter starts to decrease over time, which may severely affect your behaviour, emotions and cognitive ability.
Withdrawal can be intense and appear hours after taking the drug. Symptoms of withdrawal include:
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Cold shivers
- Muscle and joint pain
- Severe stomach cramps
What happens when you overdose on heroin?
1. You forget to breathe
When your body can no longer handle the amount of heroin, your respiratory and central nervous system takes strain. According to The Recovery Village, your body “forgets” to breathe and doesn’t “wake up” in time to start breathing normally again.
2. Your heart starts malfunctioning
Another thing that can cause death during a heroin overdose is an irregular heart beat (also called arrhythmia). During this condition, your heart is unable to pump the correct amount of blood through your body to supply your other organs with enough oxygen. This can cause your body to shut down.
Your heart can also be affected by a condition called infectious endocarditis, an infection on the heart’s surface. Studies have shown that people who administer heroin through needles (intravenously) are 300 times more likely to die because of a heart-related condition.
3. Your nervous system shuts down
Any type of opioid drug disrupts the natural production of norepinephrine, an organic compound in the brain that works as a neurotransmitter.
This causes any pain sensation to be blocked, making you increasingly drowsy. Eventually, everything shuts down – your blood pressure drops, your heart rate slows down and your breathing is affected.
As your body develops a tolerance for heroin, you start needing larger quantities to get that pleasurable rush. As you start taking more and more of the drug, your risk of an overdose increases.
4. Fluid backs up in your airways
Excess fluid in the lungs is called pulmonary oedema. This can cause you to choke to death. Many drugs, including heroin, cocaine and even aspirin, can cause pulmonary oedema.
What are the physical warning signs of a heroin overdose?
According to Harm Reduction Coalition, the following symptoms may be present when you are overdosing on heroin:
- Slow, shallow or erratic breathing
- Losing consciousness
- Choking or gurgling noise from the throat
- Blue, purple or black lips or fingernails
- Vomiting
- Limp body
- Slow or no pulse
If someone looks like they are sleeping, don’t assume that they are simply “sleeping off” the effect of the drug. Always act fast if you suspect an emergency as their airway might already be blocked, their tongue might fall back into their throat or they might be choking on vomit. Call an ambulance.
What should you do if you suspect someone close to you is addicted?
A heroin dependence can be deadly and it is important to get help. The South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), together with the Department of Social Development, launched a toll-free helpline for substance abuse. The number is 0800 11 8392 and hours are Monday to Friday from 08:00-19:00, Saturdays from 08:00-17:00 and Sundays from 09:00-13:00.
Image credit: iStock
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Rise in diabetes ‘to cause surge in heart disease and strokes’
A rise in diabetes cases linked to lifestyle will cause a surge in heart disease and strokes, a charity warns.
