Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- New View Of Asthma’s Cause: Previously Unrecognized Immune Cell…
- Professor Norbet Bachl Joins GTG Scientific Advisory Committee.
- Naturopathic promotes benefits of natural healing techniques
- New Evidence Suggests Statins Could Prove Useful In Treating Multiple…
- Revolution in how Lourdes miracles are recognised
- Experts debate weight gain during pregnancy

New View Of Asthma’s Cause: Previously Unrecognized Immune Cell…
Science Daily - Science Daily (press release) - Mar 17, 2006
Previously, scientists believed that conventional CD4+ T lymphocytes — specifically, type 2 helper cells (Th2 cells) — were causing the inflammatory process that is central in the disease. Corticosteroids, the current mainstay of asthma therapy, target Th2 cells, along with other inflammatory cells. But in 2003, Umetsu and co-investigator Omid Akbari, PhD, both then at Stanford University, showed in Nature Medicine that activation of NKT cells is required for the development of asthma in mice: Mice that lacked NKT cells did not develop airway hyperreactivity, a cardinal feature of asthma. And this year, in the February 21 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Umetsu and Stanford graduate student Everett Meyer went on to show that NKT-cell activation alone is sufficient to cause asthma in mice, even when Th2 cells are completely absent. "These findings were intriguing," Umetsu says. "But to apply them to humans, we needed to examine patients with asthma. "
In the New England Journal of Medicine study, Umetsu and Akbari, both now in Children’s Hospital Boston’s Division of Immunology, did just that.

Professor Norbet Bachl Joins GTG Scientific Advisory Committee.
Free with registration - Business Wire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Mar 17, 2006
, is Dean of the Faculty of Sports Science and University Sports, and Head of the Department of Sport and Exercise Physiology, at the University of Vienna, Austria. Professor Bachl also serves on multiple high-level sports committees. He is a member of the Scientific and Education Group of the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission; General Secretary of the European Olympic Committee Medical and Scientific Committee; President of the European.

Naturopathic promotes benefits of natural healing techniques
SUN Weekend - Mar 18, 2006
I’m a vegan since 1978,” he added. Ras Olivacce issued an advice to what persons can do to live healthier lives and listed several herbs that can be used to help maintain the various parts of the body. “We simply want to tell the people that they are getting sick because they have strayed away from nature and, we shall be healed only if we return to nature and the tools for such healing has much to do with our environment which includes the herbs around us, good organic nutrition, deep breathing, physical exercising, rest and service to humanity. “I think at the point we’re at, we should make both medicines available to the people and I encourage the pharmacies to have both available to the people. We cannot forget our senna and aloes for cleaning the bowels. Our neem and vervine for the pancreas, our maiden apple and mauby for the liver, cayenne pepper, hawthorn and motherwort for the heart, sea moss, kelp and spirulina for the thyroid glands, gotakola and lemon balm for the pineal gland, the St. John’s Wort and lotus for the pituitary gland,” Ras Olivacce said… Ras Olivacce also disclosed that he has treated many incurable diseases. “I have treated many incurable diseases, including cancers, fibroids and AIDS. They don’t want people to know about us because allopathic medicine is an integral part of the unconscionable capitalist system which uses a lot of synthetic, inorganic petroleum by-products under the guise of medicine, even if the use of penicillin, which has proven very effective within the practice of medical science,” he said.

New Evidence Suggests Statins Could Prove Useful In Treating Multiple…
Science Daily - Science Daily (press release) - Mar 17, 2006
The drug is approved for treatment of relapsing-remitting MS, the most common form of the disease, but is effective in only a third of cases. Lipitor is also known to have immunomodulatory properties, and recent evidence in mice and initial clinical trials suggest that it, and possibly other statins, may be effective in treating T-cell-mediated, autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as other inflammatory conditions. In fact, a 2002 study of mice with EAE by the UCSF-Stanford team (Nature, Nov. 7, 2002), has led to the establishment of a fourteen-center, placebo-controlled trial, led by UCSF scientists, to determine if Lipitor prevents conversion to definite multiple sclerosis in individuals who have had a first attack, known as a "clinically isolated syndrome. In the current study, however, the researchers took a different tack. Because Lipitor and Copaxone work through different mechanisms, the team set out to investigate whether Lipitor could augment Copaxone’s efficacy in mice with EAE… Finally, in an age where the costs of medical treatments are receiving more and more scrutiny, adding a relatively inexpensive drug like a statin to an already expensive regimen is likely to make consumers and health care insurers even more enthusiastic about combination therapies. "
The finding is the latest step in elucidating the potential of Lipitor to treat MS. It follows a study of mouse EAE published by the same team last month (The Journal of Experimental Medicine, Feb. 20, 2006) that suggests a mechanism by which Lipitor may suppress the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines associated with central nervous system autoimmune disease. Study findings indicated that the drug’s effects on the immune system occur independently of its cholesterol-reducing effects. And it builds on the team’s 2002 paper that showed Lipitor significantly improved, prevented relapses or reversed paralysis in mice with two different forms of EAE, most notably preventing animals who were experiencing their first attack from progressing to the fully established disease. Multiple sclerosis is an auto, or "self," immune disease, in which one of the immune system’s key cells, the T helper (Th) cell, or CD4+ T cell, orchestrates an inflammatory attack against the central nervous system.

Revolution in how Lourdes miracles are recognised
亚州新闻 - Mar 17, 2006
This said, the health evaluation is not as fundamental as how people view the healing in their relationship to others and God. In 1993 an international congress was held in Lourdes on “Healing and Miracles”. It concluded that healing is miraculous when two conditions exist, namely that its explanation “is beyond the usual rules of medicine or the normal course of the disease and that it brings the patient and witnesses to believe that it was due to God’s special intervention. ”
In concrete terms, healings will be examined according to a three-stage process. It will start when people who believe that they were healed through the Virgin’s intercession make voluntary and spontaneous statements to the permanent Medical Bureau in Lourdes. These claims will be then evaluated by a council (which meets annually and includes non Catholics), which will examine the “progression of the disease” and the “patient’s character” in order to “judge if the healing escapes usual medical assessments and to consider the circumstances of the healing”. Its findings can be “Not for follow up”, “Wait” or “Unexpected Healing”… In this second phase, when only “unexpected healings” are considered, numerous experts and specialists look at the case in question pouring over the relevant scientific literature to see what happens before and after healing in order to determine whether the healing is “truly unusual”. Last year, there were five such cases: post-traumatic myelopathy, a very serious case of Crohn’s disease, a case of multiple sclerosis, myopathy and a cancer of the kidney. Once this third stage is crossed, “given the current state of scientific knowledge the exceptional nature of a healing case” is recognised. At this point the case file goes to the bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, currently Mg Jacques Perrier, and to the bishop of the healed person’s diocese of residence. Currently, only one case is under examination after reaching the third and final stage. It involves a French woman who was completely cured of a malignant lymphoma diagnosed in 1992 made worse by a myelogenous leukemia and various other complications. In addition, the Committee plans to reflect upon the pertinence of healing in cases involving psychological and mental diseases because, as Dr Michel put it, “many people suffering from depression or carrying heavy personal burdens find meaning and a taste for life after a pilgrimage to Lourdes”.

Experts debate weight gain during pregnancy
nwsource.com - Mar 18, 2006
Are strict weight gain restrictions once again on the horizon for pregnant women? Or is there another answer?
“The pendulum swings back and forth. I think it’s a little trendy,” said Barbara Abrams, professor of epidemiology at the University of California-Berkeley, and member of a committee assembled to review the latest research on pregnancy and weight gain. It is a project organized by the Institute of Medicine, an independent scientific advisory agency to the federal government. The committee is expected to come out with a report summarizing its findings by the end of the year. “Women can only control so much of it,” Abrams said. “I think it would be a real shame if we went back to starving women during pregnancy. ”
Healthy babies have always been the primary aim of weight gain recommendations.