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Enzyme key to ageing identified

July 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 11 (ANI): Scientists from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have identified an enzyme that plays a crucial role in the process of aging.

Lead researcher Dr. Abbe de Vallejo, associate professor of Paediatrics and Immunology, has found that eliminating pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPPA) enzyme increases the lifespan of study mice.

The researcher revealed that PAPPA enzyme has the ability to promote a robust immune system into old age, by maintaining the function of the thymus throughout life.

Thymus is the organ that produces T cells to fight disease and infection. It degenerates with age.

The study showed that PAPPA-knockout mice live at least 30 percent longer, and have significantly lower occurrence of spontaneous tumours than typical mice.

PAPPA controls the availability in tissues of a hormone known as insulin-like growth factor (IGF) that is a promoter of cell division. Hence, IGF is required for normal embryonic and postnatal growth.

IGF is associated with tumour growth, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease in adults.

By deleting PAPPA, the researchers were able to control the availability of IGF in tissues and dampen its many ill effects.

In the thymus, deletion of PAPPA maintained just enough IGF to sustain production of T cells without consuming precursor cells, thereby preventing the degeneration of the thymus.

“Controlling the availability of IGF in the thymus by targeted manipulation of PAPPA could be a way to maintain immune protection throughout life,” de Vallejo said.

“This study has profound implications for the future study of healthy aging and longevity,” de Vallejo added.

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Key proteins linked to ovulation identified

May 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 15 (ANI): Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have identified two proteins that play a vital role in ovulation process.

The discovery, researchers hope, would help in treating infertility resulting from a failure of ovulation. It will also aid in developing new means to prevent pregnancy by preventing the release of the egg.

The proteins, called ERK1 and ERK2, appear to bring about the maturation and release of the egg.

“Ovulation results from a complex interplay of chemical sequences,” said Dr Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

“The researchers have identified a crucial biochemical intermediary controlling the release of the egg.

“The finding advances our understanding and may one day contribute to new treatments for infertility as well as new ways to prevent pregnancy from occurring,” Alexander added.

ERK1 and ERK2 are a critical nexus between the surge in luteinizing hormone and ovulation, said Dr Louis V. De Paolo chief of the NICHD Reproductive Sciences Branch.

“This is a key chemical pathway that affects not only ovulation, but egg cell maturation and granulosa cell differentiation into luteal cells,” Dr. De Paolo added.

Luteinizing hormone is a hormone produced by the anterior pituitary gland.

Previously, researchers did not know how luteinizing hormone triggered the ovary’s release of the egg and the production of progesterone by the granulosa cells.

In the current study, the researchers discerned that luteinizing hormone appears to signal the release of the ERK 1 and ERK 2 proteins.

“We’re still at the tip of the iceberg. We need to understand it all,” said De Paolo said. (ANI)

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220 million dollar malaria drugs initiative launched in Oslo

April 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Oslo – Eleven mainly African countries are to be offered cheaper, more effective malaria drugs as part of a partnership between international agencies and governments, officials said Friday.

Benin, Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda are the first countries to take part of the programme – launched in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

Some 220 million dollars will be spent during the first two years to buy and distribute more effective anti-malaria drugs. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will manage the scheme.

Donors included UNITAID – an international mechanism to finance drugs against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, created by France and supported by Norway and 26 other nations – and Britain.

“Controlling malaria is a key component of the global effort to reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015,” UNITAID board chairman Philippe Douste-Blazy said.

Around nine in 10 malaria cases worldwide occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Transmitted via mosquito bites malaria is estimated to kill more than 2,000 children every day.

Speakers at the launch included Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, who said in addition to costing lives, malaria also costs “developing countries billions of dollars each year in lost economic output.”

“By controlling malaria, we can improve school attendance and productivity, open new areas to business and tourism and reduce health costs,” he said.

New drugs, known as artemisinin combination therapies or ACTs, were needed since the malaria parasite has developed resistance to old drugs like chloroquine, Awa-Marie Coll-Seck, head of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, said.

In addition to new drugs, there has been success in tackling malaria by distributing mosquito bed nets in malaria-affected areas, Coll-Seck said citing Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimababwe. (dpa)

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Controlling man made emissions may delay start of next ice age

February 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 11 (ANI): A new research from the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen has determined that by controlling emissions of fossil fuels, we may be able to greatly delay the start of the next ice age.

From an Earth history perspective, we are living in cold times. The greatest climate challenge mankind has faced has been surviving ice ages that have dominated climate during the past million years.

Therefore, it is not surprising that back in the relatively cold 1970′s, prominent scientists like Soviet Union climatologist Mikhail Budyko, greeted man-made global warming from CO2 emissions as a way to keep us out of future ice ages.

Similar thoughts are still shared by many scientists who feel that continued high fossil fuel emissions are good for this reason.

In the new research, professor Gary Shaffer of the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and also leader of the research team at the Danish Center for Earth System Science (DCESS), outlines a way to keep the Earth out of both Hot- and Icehouses for a half a million years into the future.

Ice ages start when conditions at high northern latitudes allow winter snowfall to persist over the summer for enough years to accumulate and build ice sheets.

Such conditions depend mainly on summer solar radiation there and atmospheric CO2 concentration.

This radiation is modulated on time scales of 20.000, 40.000 and 100.000 years by changes in the Earth’s orbit and orientation.

Critical summer solar radiation for initiating ice sheet growth can be significantly lower for higher atmospheric CO2 with its greenhouse warming effect.

Professor Shaffer made long projections over the next 500,000 years with the DCESS Earth System Model to calculate the evolution of atmospheric CO2 for different fossil fuel emission strategies.

He also used results of a coupled climate-ice sheet model for the dependency on atmospheric CO2 of critical summer solar radiation at high northern latitudes for an ice age onset.

The results show global warming of almost 5 degrees Celsius above present for a “business as usual” scenario whereby all 5000 billion tons of fossil fuel carbon in accessible reserves are burned within the next few centuries.

According to Professor Shaffer, humanity has already increased atmospheric CO2 enough to keep it out of the next ice age for at least the next 55,000 years. (ANI)

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