Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Namibia: Biodiversity Can Bring Money and Medicine
- Natural Treatments for Common Ailments
- Blue Dye in M&Ms Helps Spinal Cord Injuries?
- Why HIV Progresses Faster In Women Than In Men With Same Viral Load
- Insights Into Failed HIV-1 Vaccine Trial
- At What Height Happiness? A Medical Tale
- Immune system may help fight obesity

Namibia: Biodiversity Can Bring Money and Medicine
AllAfrica.com
Shikongo who also lectures on the subject at the University of Namibia said while biologists claim to know the subject most of the intact biodiversity is in rural areas where people know how to preserve it via “traditional environmental knowledge”. “That is why biologists are now working with rural communities looking for traditional knowledge from them on how to preserve biodiversity” he said. GA_googleFillSlot( “AllAfrica_Story_InsetB” );Shikongo said rural people traditionally used plants as medicine and it was important that researchers studied these plants so that they can be commercialised and thus generate money for the country. He said some of Namibia’s traditional foods and drinks such as mopane worms were very healthy for the human body while marula beer has a higher concentration of Vitamin C than orange juice but these indigenous health products were not being exploited because they are considered inferior. Shikongo said Namibia could prosper if the medicinal production base what he calls the “indigenous biodiversity production systems” is diversified by giving people rights to farm with wildlife and engage in tourism activities. He said to succeed in cattle farming a lot of money was needed but this might not do much for the country as only some areas were fit for cattle farming. But he said wildlife fits in much of Namibia.

Natural Treatments for Common Ailments
CBS News
She looked into Mother Nature’s medicine cabinet on “The Early Show Saturday Edition” noting the surprising healing power of herbal remedies. They could be just what the doctor ordered. PAIN RELIEF Mild headaches: Tiger balm. Chinese ointment contains menthol and can ease pain when rubbed into neck or temples. Arthritis pain: Turmeric fish oil.

Blue Dye in M&Ms Helps Spinal Cord Injuries?
WebMD
They also temporarily turned blue. Injured rats that were not given a dose of the blue dye didn?t walk at all. The results of the study build on research by Nedergaard that was published in 2004 in the journal Nature Medicine. That study showed that a substance called ATP the energy source that keeps cells alive runs out of control at the site of a spinal cord injury activating a molecule known to cause inflammation and kill spinal neuron cells. For these neurons inflammation often causes more damage than the initial trauma to the spine meaning that for treatment to work it must be administered immediately after the spinal cord  injury. Brilliant Blue G blocks ATP from flooding the spinal injury and triggering inflammation the researchers say. The authors say there is no effective way to ?treat acute spinal cord injury apart from the use of steroids which provide at best modest protection to a subset of patients.
Related from Mexview: Survey: More are paralyzed in US than previously thought

Why HIV Progresses Faster In Women Than In Men With Same Viral Load
Science Daily (press release)
"This study may help to account for reported gender differences in HIV-1 disease progression by demonstrating that women and men differ in the way their immune systems respond to the virus" says Marcus Altfeld MD PhD of the Ragon Institute and the MGH Division of Infectious Disease the study’s senior author. "Focusing on immune activation separately from viral replication might give us new therapeutic approaches to limiting HIV-1-induced pathology. "It has become apparent in recent years that HIV-1-infected patients with a high level of immune activation progress to AIDS more rapidly. Why this happens is an area of intense investigation.

Insights Into Failed HIV-1 Vaccine Trial
Science Daily (press release)
"ur findings demonstrate that there is no correlation between Ad5 neutralizing antibodies and T-cell immune responses" explains Barouch who is Chief of the Division of Vaccine Research at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Moreover subjects with baseline Ad5-specific neutralizing antibodies did not develop higher levels of Ad5-specific T-cell responses as compared with subjects without baseline Ad5-specific neutralizing antibodies. "The Ad5 virus is a weakened form of adenovirus which is responsible for the common cold and is extremely widespread in the general population. In the Merck vaccine candidate Ad5 was used as a vector to transport three HIV-1 genes a strategy that helps to overcome limitations posed by the HIV-1 virus.

At What Height Happiness? A Medical Tale
New York Times
Published: July 27 2009 Teenagers with an interest in medicine are generally hustled into menial summer jobs in a hospital or lab to familiarize them with the territory. Here’s a better idea: sit them down with a copy of “Normal at Any Cost. ” When they finish it (as they will: its overtones of both.

Immune system may help fight obesity
Toronto Star
This newly discovered immune defence against weight gain is overwhelmed by chronic overeating but can be "rebooted" by a readily available drug that could offer a less invasive alternative to bariatric or stomach-stapling surgery. In a groundbreaking paper published online yesterday in the journal Nature Medicine the researchers also suggest a reason that obesity can lead to Type 2 diabetes. "This really targets where the problem lies so this is very exciting to us" says Dr. Hans-Michael Dosch the paper’s senior author. The immune system’s critical role in obesity and diabetes and the likelihood it can be reprogrammed to reverse these epidemic conditions came as a shock to the paper’s researchers says Dosch a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children. Researchers at the University of Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital and Stanford University in California also conducted the study.