Early cell changes linked to cervical cancer may not need treatment in more than 50% of cases, study finds.
Some smear test abnormalities ‘self-heal’
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Monthly Archives: February 2018
Most UK cannabis ‘super strength skunk’
High-potency cannabis now makes up 94% of the UK market, samples seized by the police suggest.
Satisfaction with GP services at record low
And overall public happiness with the NHS falls to its lowest level since 2011, a survey finds.
A marriage of light-manipulation technologies
Researchers have, for the first time, integrated two technologies widely used in applications such as optical communications, bio-imaging and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems that scan the surroundings of self-driving cars and trucks.
In the collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Harvard University, researchers successfully crafted a metasurface-based lens atop a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) platform. The result is a new infrared light-focusing system that combines the best features of both technologies while reducing the size of the optical system.
Metasurfaces can be structured at the nanoscale to work like lenses. These metalenses were pioneered by Federico Capasso, Harvard’s Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics, and his group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The lenses are rapidly finding applications because they are much thinner and less bulky than existing lenses, and can be made with the same technology used to fabricate computer chips. The MEMSs, meanwhile, are small mechanical devices that consist of tiny, movable mirrors.
“These devices are key today for many technologies. They have become technologically pervasive and have been adopted for everything from activating automobile air bags to the global positioning systems of smart phones,” said Daniel Lopez, Nanofabrication and Devices Group Leader at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
Lopez, Capasso and four co-authors describe how they fabricated and tested their new device in an article in APL Photonics, titled “Dynamic metasurface lens based on MEMS technology.” The device measures 900 microns in diameter and 10 microns in thickness (a human hair is approximately 50 microns thick).
The collaboration’s ongoing work to further develop novel applications for the two technologies is conducted at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, SEAS and the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems, which is part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure.
In the technologically merged optical system, MEMS mirrors reflect scanned light, which the metalens then focuses without the need for an additional optical component such as a focusing lens. The challenge that the Argonne/Harvard team overcame was to integrate the two technologies without hurting their performance.
The eventual goal would be to fabricate all components of an optical system — the MEMS, the light source and the metasurface-based optics — with the same technology used to manufacture electronics today.
“Then, in principle, optical systems could be made as thin as credit cards,” Lopez said.
These lens-on-MEMS devices could advance the LIDAR systems used to guide self-driving cars. Current LIDAR systems, which scan for obstacles in their immediate proximity, are, by contrast, several feet in diameter.
“You need specific, big, bulky lenses, and you need mechanical objects to move them around, which is slow and expensive,” said Lopez.
“This first successful integration of metalenses and MEMS, made possible by their highly compatible technologies, will bring high speed and agility to optical systems, as well unprecedented functionalities,” said Capasso.
How do teachers integrate STEM into K-12 classrooms?
A team led by Michigan Technological University set out to find what makes STEM integration tick. Their research — published in the International Journal of STEM Education — followed several case studies to observe the impacts of low, medium and high degrees of integration within a classroom. They found that across the board the greatest challenge that teachers face is making explicit connections between STEM fields while balancing the need for context and student engagement.
Emily Dare, assistant professor of STEM education at Michigan Tech, is the lead author on the study. She says different teachers have different approaches to STEM integration.
“This alone is not terribly surprising as we know that teachers conceptualize integrated STEM in multiple ways,” Dare says. “What is new about this current study is that this degree of integration may be related to a teacher’s understanding in making explicit and meaningful connections between the disciplines, as opposed to assuming that students will make those connections on their own.”
Dare and her co-authors-Joshua Ellis of Michigan Tech and Gillian Roehrig of the University of Minnesota-worked with nine middle school science teachers to assess STEM integration in their classrooms. The researchers relied on both reflective interviews with the teachers and classroom implementation data like the number of instructional days dedicated to two or more disciplines and the amount of time given each discipline.
“The teachers who integrated more often in their class appeared to be more critical of their instruction,” Dare says, “And after their first time implementing integrated STEM instruction, they were already considering ways in which to improve their practice.”
She explains that this speaks volumes about teachers’ motivation and dedication to incorporating these approaches in their classrooms: If they find the integrated approach valuable, they may be more willing to spend time helping students make those content connections.
STEM education calls for connecting science, technology, engineering, and math. Within that framework, three themes arose from the results of Dare and her collaborators’ work that distinguished low, medium and high STEM integration.
First, the nature of integration varied; that is, the role teachers perceived they should play in making explicit or implicit connections. A more active role in making connections reflected higher integration, though not without its challenges. Previously, Dare led research helping to clarify what STEM education, and therefore integration, means in practical terms for teachers.
Second, classroom integration depended on whether a teacher chose to focus primarily on science or engineering. Dare and her team argue that science versus engineering is a false choice. Teachers with higher degrees of STEM integration wove in science concepts throughout engineering design projects, like connecting lessons on heat transfer and insulators to building solar ovens. Across the board, design-based projects tended to happen in the last few days of instruction. Teachers with lower degrees of integration tended to focus on the science first, then shift completely into engineering.
Third, student engagement played a role-and an important one. Students tended to be motivated for engineering design projects; teachers explained that the work provided context, making the concepts more real and understandable. The challenge is that teachers felt pressed to balance the hands-on work with conceptual and reflective activities. Plus, maintaining a contextual example over several weeks became difficult.
The paper authors point out that while the study subjects are middle school physical science teachers doing first-time STEM instruction, many of the identified themes are not content-specific. Because of that, the successes and challenges identified may shed light on general struggles that are common to educators who are integrating across STEM disciplines under new teaching standards.
Teachers’ primary challenges focused on trying to keep the lessons real for students and struggling with better integrating math. Dare suggests this may be because science teachers are just that, not math teachers or engineers.
“For teacher educators,” Dare says, “this means continuing to support teachers in their classrooms as they embark on testing out new strategies and curriculum units in their classrooms.”
Enabling technology for emerging gene therapies
For years, researchers have attempted to harness the full potential of gene therapy, a technique that inserts genes into a patient’s cells to treat aggressive diseases such as cancer. But getting engineered DNA molecules into cells is not an easy task.
J. Mark Meacham, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science at Washington University in St. Louis, leads a team of researchers at the School of Engineering & Applied Science that has developed a method enabling effective insertion of large molecules — such as DNA, RNA and proteins — into cells and propels them into the cell nucleus.
By combining a technique known as Acoustic Shear Poration (ASP) with electrophoresis, the approach uses ultrasound waves and focused mechanical force to create nanoscale holes, or pores, in the cell membrane that are big enough for large macromolecules or nanoparticles to pass into the cell’s interior.
The researchers wrote that so far, ASP has achieved greater than 75 percent delivery efficiency of macromolecules. DNA insertion, or transfection, which is of most interest in gene therapy, is significantly more challenging. Yet the combined application of mechanical and electrical forces pioneered by Meacham and colleagues yields roughly 100 percent improvement in transfection versus pure mechanoporation. Results of the research are published in Scientific Reports.
“We have demonstrated our poration technique using cancer cell lines and patient-derived, primary monocytes, which is an important achievement, but the end goal is to use the new combined method to successfully modify T cells from a patient’s immune system,” Meacham said. “We would take cells extracted from a patient, run them through our device and modify them, then they would be reintroduced to the patient. That’s the Holy Grail of personalized medicine and emerging gene therapies.”
Meacham’s work comes on the heels of an approval in August by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of the first gene therapy using patient-derived immune cells in the U.S. A second such therapy was approved by the FDA in October. The new immunotherapies, known as CAR-T cell therapies, involve inserting a gene into patients’ own immune cells, which helps those cells home in on and attack cancer cells.
The therapies are approved to treat pediatric patients up to age 25 with a form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and adults with certain types of advanced non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Washington University oncologists provide the therapies to patients through Siteman Kids at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The extreme difficulty associated with delivery of genes into cells for use in these gene therapies has motivated pursuit of effective transfection methods, Meacham said.
“Non-chemical, non-viral approaches, which take advantage of mechanical or electrical stimuli to overcome cellular barriers to gene transfer, are compelling for many reasons, including safety, cost and the potential (or lack thereof) for large-scale manufacturing of therapeutic cells,” he said. “For such methods to be successful, pores must be created in the cell membrane that are large enough and stay open long enough to insert molecules while not damaging or killing the cell and delivering the molecule to the cell’s nucleus where it can work.”
Meacham describes his system, which evolved from a technology he first developed while a doctoral student at Georgia Institute of Technology, as an acoustically-driven droplet generator.
“We apply focused mechanical forces, such as a fluid shear, which are pushing and pulling on the cell using fluid motion,” Meacham said. “We take a suspension of cells and use an ultrasonic field to pump fluid through microscopic constrictions in the tips of the nozzles, or acoustic horns. This results in a kind of spray. The cells that are suspended in the flow experience intense mechanical stimulation as they travel through this confined space and are ejected from the nozzle orifices.”
Experimental results suggest that the device generates pores in the cell membrane of 100 to 150 nanometers, which allow for delivery of even large payloads into the cell. In addition, the pores remain open for up to a minute, which is enough time to deliver molecules to the cell. The technique can be used with almost any cell type and suspension medium, as well as with most biomolecules and nanomaterials, Meacham said.
The device’s unique actuation mechanism allows researchers to explore a much larger range of shear rates and electrical stimulation for cell-specific optimization of treatment parameters, he said.
“We found that the acoustic pressure field and local shear stresses acting on the cell due to the fluid flow are critical to creating pores in the cell membrane,” Meacham said. “The most efficient membrane poration was observed after the cell was exposed to the short duration, high-shear environment at the nozzle constriction as the cell is forced through the nozzles of our device.”
Health24.com | How we’re fighting antimicrobial resistance in South Africa
HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have claimed too many South African lives.
Today, defeating these diseases is a national priority, with the mission of the latest National Strategic Plan to get our country on track to eliminate them as public health threats by the year 2030. But what happens when the treatments we use to fight them no longer work?
South Africa’s biggest AMR problem
This is a reality for many people who are already living with drug-resistant strains of many common infections. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi evolve and become able to survive in the face of drugs designed to cure or prevent the infections they cause.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that an estimated 19 000 people in South Africa developed drug-resistant TB in 2016. Indeed, multi-drug resistant TB is South Africa’s biggest AMR problem – one caused by multiple factors, including inadequate diagnostic coverage, medicine stockouts and patient adherence challenges.
But it’s not only TB. Treatments for HIV and STIs, malaria, and gastro-intestinal, urinary tract, and respiratory tract infections are all under threat. Bacterial infections that are resistant to multiple drugs are commonplace in South African hospitals.
People with these infections face longer, more uncomfortable treatment regimens and have a lower likelihood of survival. Often, it is high-risk and vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women and people with HIV, that suffer the most.
Incorrect use of treatments
Vanessa Carter was infected with an extensive MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection following a car accident in Johannesburg. “I had never heard of this superbug before, but as I became more informed, I learnt that the bacteria causing infection in my face had become resistant to the antibiotics that were meant to heal me.”
One culprit in the rapid spread of AMR is the incorrect use of treatments, particularly in the case of viral infections. Every time a doctor prescribes – or a patient demands – a treatment based purely on symptoms, rather than on the results of a diagnostic test, the likelihood of perpetuating the spread of resistance increases.
Common colds are often the result of a viral infection, which will not respond to antibiotics; there’s no point in prescribing them to treat a cold. Another problem is the lack of prevention and infection control measures to limit transmission of resistant infections.
Carter, lucky to have survived her MRSA infection, is now an activist and founder of Health Care Social Media South Africa. She emphasises the need to change the way medicines are used, explaining that “we have to treat antibiotics and other antimicrobial medications as the precious resource they are. World health leaders have described antibiotic-resistant microorganisms as nightmare bacteria that pose a catastrophic threat to people in every country in the world, and South Africa is not exempt.”
Indeed, the global impact of AMR could be devastating. Estimates suggest that by 2050 it could result in 10 million deaths per year across the globe and, according to the World Bank, have an economic impact that rivals the 2008 financial crisis.
According to Miriam Schneidman, the World Bank’s Lead Health Specialist in the Africa region, low- and middle-income countries will suffer the most. “Estimates have found that low-income countries could lose more than 5% of their GDP and an added 28 million people could fall into extreme poverty by 2050 under a high impact AMR scenario. AMR can impede our ability to meet our poverty and global development goals.”
Can South Africa lead the way?
With our vast experience in HIV and TB, can South Africa lead the way out of this scenario? The government has taken steps in the right direction. In 2015, the Department of Health published the Antimicrobial Resistance National Strategy Framework for South Africa, and our healthcare leaders continue to engage local and international organisations on this crucial topic.
On 30 January 2018, the South African Medical Research Council and my organisation, FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics), jointly hosted an international conference in Khayelitsha, Cape Town – the first ever in the township – focusing on the role of diagnostic tests in inhibiting the spread of AMR in South Africa and beyond. This location underlined the importance of listening to and learning from front-line healthcare providers and their patients if we are to win the battle against AMR.
Clinicians and laboratory experts spoke alongside representatives from the South Africa Department of Health, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Right to Care, Médecins Sans Frontières, private sector companies and others about the role of diagnostics in optimising the use of antibiotics, protecting novel medicines and facilitating efforts to track the spread of resistance.
Affordable, accessible tests
One of the key issues is the lack of affordable, rapid diagnostics for key infections, which are optimised for use in low-resource settings. Following the meeting, we published an “agenda for action”, noting that “lack of diagnostic capacity impedes antibiotic stewardship”.
WHO agrees. “Diagnostics are at the heart of the fight against AMR. Countries need affordable, accessible tests that can guide treatment for diseases like drug resistant TB or that can determine if childhood fevers are caused by bacterial agents and therefore merit use of antibiotics,” says Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Deputy Director-General (Programmes) at WHO.
“We need more research and investment to develop these tools, and need to make sure they are linked to robust surveillance systems that cut across national borders.”
South Africa continues to lead research that will counter AMR, including the identification and implementation of new diagnostics. New partnerships, such as the freshly inked collaboration between SAMRC and FIND, play an important and urgent role in facilitating research and development, health systems strengthening and advocacy across the country, the region and beyond.
Heidi Albert is Head of FIND South Africa, an NGO that enables the development and use of diagnostic tests for communicable diseases affecting low- and middle-income countries.
Views expressed are not necessarily those of GroundUp, News24 or Health24.
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Government publishes key vaccine report
Campaigners have waited years to hear how the government decides which vaccines are cost effective.
Health24.com | Which one of these guys will have a heart attack first?
Do you have any idea what a hard worker your heart is?
Think about it: At the end of every day, you get to go home, put your feet up and watch CSI. Just imagine if your heart tried to kick back after a gruelling 9 to 5 of pumping blood. While it was relaxing, you’d be busy dying.
In fact, if there were an award for Organ of the Month, we know which framed x-ray we’d expect to see hanging on the wall.
Read more: This ‘healthy’ habit could actually triple your chances of a heart attack
Still, while nobody’s ticker takes time off, some do up and quit. Maybe the workplace conditions are horrible. Or perhaps the boss sits on his ass all day.
Whatever the cause, it’s almost always something that was building up for a while. So we asked three guys to bare their hearts for us. They revealed their daily diets, exercise habits, family history – they even guessed which guy’s heart was most likely to go haywire first. (Hint: They were all wrong.)
Then we enlisted the help of Michael Miller, MD, director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology for the University of Maryland Medical System and the author of Heal Your Heart: The Positive Emotions Prescription to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.
He evaluated each man’s current cardiac risk factors to predict who’s first in line for an infarction.
Wyatt Genser
Height/weight 1.8m/90kg
Relationship status Married
Job Banking manager and business officer
Family heart history Maternal grandfather had a heart attack; paternal grandfather had congestive heart failure.
Exercise Three to four days of running, plus weight training in between. “I still have some pudginess even after recently losing 18kg.”
Diet Protein-heavy meals, plus nuts for snacking. “Twice a week we order takeout, like Italian. But the miles I log balance it out.”
Self-assessed stress level 3/5
Which guy he thinks will lose “With both his grandfathers and his father passing due to heart attacks, I would say that Chris is genetically at the highest risk.”
His is a story of nuts versus gut.
Genser’s habit of eating a handful of nuts every day provides him with a steady stream of magnesium, a mineral with anti-inflammatory properties that has been associated with improved heart health. Just 50 to 80g of nuts a day can provide enough magnesium to lower a person’s chance of dying of coronary artery disease by 22%, according to research from Harvard School of Public Health.
But Genser’s lingering gut could be negating some of that benefit. A man’s waist size needs to go up only 5cm from what it was in his 20s for his risk of heart disease to increase, says Dr Miller.
The Rx
Pounding the pavement doesn’t give Genser license to load his plate. At 33, his fat furnace is no longer burning at its hottest. A typical man’s basal metabolic rate, or the amount of energy burned at rest, dips by about 2% per decade after his 20s. “As you age, you have to work harder or eat less to manage your weight well,” says Dr Miller.
Genser should limit his cheat meals to one day a week and give his belly a different kind of work-out-with laughter. Watching a funny movie boosts vascular function by as much as 6%, Greek researchers report.
Read more: 100 simple things you can do right now to protect your heart
Chris Campbell
Height/weight 1.7m/70kg
Relationship status Married, infant son
Job Freelance graphic designer
Family heart history Father and both grandfathers suffered heart attacks and died.
Exercise Running and pilates a few times a week, and a daily walk. “I usually hit the 10 000-step count each day without much trouble.”
Diet Meals include one protein and two vegetables; one or two alcoholic drinks at dinner. “We rarely eat out and I don’t drink soda.”
Self-assessed stress level 2/5
Which guy he thinks will lose “I feel like I’m the worst of the three! My only leg up is my zen-like approach to heart health: low-key exercise and less stress.”
Campbell’s risk may be higher due to his family history, but he’s made the right preventive moves.
His secret? Calm your mind, and your heart will follow.
“Stress and negative emotions account for a good portion of heart attacks,” says Dr Miller. “Living in a state of chronic stress really exacerbates your risk.”
Campbell has managed to sidestep one major stressor by opting to be his own boss. People who have jobs that are highly demanding and that offer little freedom to make decisions are 23% more likely to have a heart attack than those with more flexible, less demanding careers, according to researchers at University College London.
The Rx
Since being your own boss is probably not an option, you can let go of your work stress by turning up the tunes during your daily commute, says Dr Miller. His research team found that grooving to a favourite song can help dilate blood vessels, while less-liked songs tend to induce stress.
Then come home and hug your family. Touch can lower stress and blood pressure, a Japanese study found. That’s because positive physical contact can trigger a surge in the hormone oxytocin, the researchers say, which tamps down tension and improves overall heart health.
Read more: 5 simple ways to lower your heart rate and your risk of dying early
Michael Moya
Height/weight 1.85m/84kg
Relationship status Single
Job Digital marketing manager for a news site
Family heart history Both grandmothers had strokes; grandfather had a stroke and died of a heart attack.
Exercise High-intensity training four days a week. Diagnosed with hypertension at age 25. “I don’t take meds, but exercising helps.”
Diet Five small meals a day. “I try to eat well and include more vegetables than meat in my meals – except for the occasional burger.”
Self-assessed stress level 4/5
Which guy he thinks will lose “I think Wyatt’s most at risk. The banking industry can be cutthroat. And his family history doesn’t help his situation either.”
Few things set a guy up for cardiac catastrophe like hypertension, says Dr Miller. According to a 2014 JAMA study, having untreated high blood pressure in your late teens and 20s doubles your risk of plaque buildup and heart disease 25 years later, compared with the risk of people who don’t have hypertension.
And while Moya may think that hitting the gym four days a week is taking the pressure off, doing high-intensity workouts could actually worsen his condition. That’s because vigorous exercise can cause systolic blood pressure to skyrocket to levels as high as 250, says Dr Miller, especially in people who already have hypertension.
The Rx
He may need an actual prescription – and ASAP. Moya should talk to his doctor about taking medication for his high blood pressure, says Dr Miller. A study review published in Annals of Internal Medicine found that popping BP-lowering drugs can significantly reduce a person’s risk of stroke and death from heart disease, even when blood pressure is only mildly elevated.
As for exercise, Moya should switch to isometric strength training. Researchers in Australia report that doing isometric exercises (think wall squats or planks) can significantly reduce blood pressure after four or more weeks.
Read more: 5 surprising food combinations that could prevent cancer, a heart attack and other health risks
This article was originally published on www.menshealth.com
Image credit: iStock
Health24.com | 9 reasons you should eat olives
Bet you didn’t know that olives are a type of stone fruit (or drupe) or that they’re related to mangoes, cherries, peaches and pistachios?
Drupes are identified by a hard pit or stone surrounded by fleshy fruit.
Green olives are harvested early in the season, while black olives are harvested at full maturity.
Both varieties are a great low-kilojoule snack packed with “good” fat.
But no matter which type of olive you enjoy – whether in a martini, salad, sandwich or as a tapenade – olives offer many health benefits.
We’ve found nine benefits that might get you eating more of these nutrient bombs.
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