First effective dengue drug soon

The Hindu

Dabbawalas of Mumbai spreading the message of dengue prevention and control. Photo: Paul Noronha

Drugs already developed to treat bacterial infection can be re-purposed to cure the mosquito-borne viral disease

Drugs already developed to treat bacterial infection can be re-purposed to cure the mosquito-borne viral disease dengue, Australian researchers have found.

The scientists from University of Queensland identified similarities in how the body reacted to dengue virus and bacterial infections. As drugs for bacterial infections are already available, the researchers believe that clinical trials for a dengue fever treatment could start within a year.

“We have discovered that the dengue virus NS1 protein acts as a toxin in the body, in a similar manner to the way bacterial cell wall products lead to septic shock in bacterial infections,” said Paul Young, professor at University of Queensland.

“For the past 20 to 30 years, researchers and pharmaceutical companies have been developing drug candidates to inhibit the body’s damaging responses to these bacterial infections. So drugs are already available that have gone through phase three clinical trials,” Prof. Young said.

Dengue virus is estimated to infect up to 400 million people globally each year. The World Health Organisation ranks it as the most important mosquito—borne viral disease in the world. Professor Young said mosquito-borne dengue virus was an increasing problem in tropical and sub—tropical areas, with more than 2.5 billion people in more than 100 countries at risk of infection.

Dengue typically causes a debilitating fever but can progress to potentially fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. “Despite this significant global health burden, no vaccine or drug has yet been licensed,” Mr. Young pointed out.

“I hope our discoveries in the lab will translate to the patient bedside and eventually help those who suffer from dengue infection around the world,” said doctoral student Naphak Modhiran, who came from Thailand to work on the project. The findings were detailed in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Santas through the year

The Hindu

Sathish and Arun of Red Drops packing the toys for Children at Cancer Institute, Ashok Nagar. Photo: Dominic Raj

Youngsters collect toys and have them distributed to terminally ill children at government hospitals.

In an initiative that is less than a month old, a group of 20 college students has collected around 500 toys. Recently, the first lot was distributed to underprivileged children battling cancer and receiving treatment in a city hospital.

The youngsters are volunteers of Red Drops, a wing of Chennai Social Service. The team has embarked on a new initiative called Toy Collection Drive (TCD). It aims to provide toys to terminally ill children and also those who are inpatients at various government hospitals in the city.

“Most of the government hospitals don’t have a play area. And parents, bereft of hope, will not have the frame of mind to keep the child happy. TCD is an attempt to put a smile on the faces of these children,” says Jagdeesh.

The youngsters have been spending their weekends collecting toys (both old and new), cleaning them and packing them. The toys will be distributed in packs. Each pack will have two toys. “Fur toys will not be distributed to these children. Instead, they will be given to children in slums,” says Jagdeesh.

The initiative has received a good response from households, institutions and commercial establishments. Following the distribution of the first lot, there have been calls from people across the city, requesting these volunteers to collect toys.

Now, Red Drops needs more hands. It invites volunteers to work during the weekends. Those keen on joining may call Jagdeesh at 87540 45122 / 91717 18722.

Steps intensified to check vector-borne diseases

The Hindu

An open drain that lies clogged on the Sreekantewsaram Temple road in Kozhikode. This road gets flooded during monsoon season.— Photo: S. Ramesh Kurup

Preparations to curb vector-borne diseases underway as monsoon fast approaches

The Health Department in the district is engaged in steps to check mosquito-borne diseases as the monsoon is fast approaching.

District Malaria Officer K. Vimal Raj said that the vector control unit in the district had been working since January to minimise the occurrence of diseases such as malaria and filaria.

To start with, the unit distributed pamphlets among the public, urging them to observe ‘dry day’ once a week. Sunday is the dry day for households while it is Monday for public places. Chlorination was carried out in all household wells.

Public health centres have strict guidelines for fever surveillance. They have been asked to conduct blood smear tests to detect dengue or malaria and to inform the respective control rooms.

The rapid response team, which was already in place, has been revived in view of the season. Arrangements are also made for endomological surveillance, Dr. Vimal Raj said.

Meanwhile, medical camps were held among migrant labourers, who were a high-risk population. Their accommodation and sanitation facilities were often not satisfactory.

They boarded around construction sites and are highly vulnerable to vector-borne diseases. Malaria and filaria were detected in large numbers among the migrant labourer population. The department conducted a survey of the population to ensure smooth action if diseases were detected, he said.

Meanwhile, the Kozhikode Municipal Corporation had also initiated measures to curb the mosquito menace. Fogging was being carried out on a daily basis while drains were being flushed using salt water. The Corporation’s medical team was all set to act on emergencies, chairperson of the health standing committee Janamma Kunhunni said.

World’s first baby from frozen ovary

AP

Dr. Isabelle Demeestere, the gynecologist and fertility researcher at Erasmus Hospital in Brussels, who successfully transplanted back the ovary tissues frozen of a woman back to her after 15 years.

The mother, now aged 28, had got her ovary tissue frozen when she was 13-year-old.

In a medical breakthrough, a 28-year-old woman has become the first person in the world to give birth to a healthy baby using ovarian tissue that was removed and frozen in her childhood.

Previous successful transplants resulting in pregnancies have used frozen ovary tissue removed from adult women, but this is the first time ovarian tissue was taken from a girl when she was just 13 years and 11 months old.

It was not known whether tissue taken from girls before puberty could develop to produce mature eggs.

The breakthrough, described in the journal Human Reproduction, gives hope to thousands of young cancer victims who face treatments such as chemotherapy, which can damage the ovaries, leaving them infertile.

The patient, who was born in the Republic of Congo but moved to Belgium aged 11, had received a transplant of her brother’s bone marrow to treat her sickle-cell anaemia.

The procedure required chemotherapy to disable the immune system and prevent rejection of the bone marrow, The Times reported.

Doctors removed her right ovary just before she turned 14 and froze tissue fragments. Puberty and breast development had begun but she had not started her menstruation.

The treatment left her with no functioning ovary and when she was 15, and doctors began hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to induce menstruation.

Ten years later, she decided to start a family and doctors, led by Isabelle Demeestere, a gynaecologist and research associate at Erasmus Hospital, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, stopped the HRT and grafted four fragments of the frozen ovarian tissue on to the remaining left ovary and other fragments in the surrounding area.

The transplanted tissue started to respond to her hormones and grew follicles containing maturing eggs. Her periods began five months later.

After two years, she became pregnant naturally with her partner and delivered a healthy boy in November last year.

The doctors said that the woman should be able to have more children and that a second transplantation was possible if the graft stopped working.

“This is an important breakthrough because children are the patients who are most likely to benefit from this procedure in the future,” Dr. Demeestere said.

Further research is required to see whether the technique could apply in very young pre-pubescent girls.

Spurt of dengue triggers panic

No indigenous cases of malaria have been reported in June, though six cases have been identified as imported ones.

Kozhikode may be far ahead compared to other districts in the State when it comes to the control ofCOMMUNICABLE diseases, mainly owing to intense awareness campaigns organised by the Department of Health. However, the sudden spurt of dengue fever cases in certain parts of the district has caused some concern.

Just 10 days into June, 149 suspected cases of dengue have been reported in the district while it was only 132 in the entire month of May. Eleven cases have been confirmed in June, while it was 41 in May and 5 in April.

District Malaria Officer Vimal Raj has said that no indigenous cases of malaria have been reported in Kozhikode district in June, even though six cases have been identified as imported ones.

“These are people who have recently returned from other States and thus carried the disease into the district,” he said, and added that only two indigenous cases were reported in May, one in Vellayil and another in Thiruvangoor, though the total count was 11. He said the migrant labourers were a risk group as they were often silent carriers of the disease.

Britain to award medals to over 3,000 Ebola fighters

Britain has created a new medal to recognise the bravery and hard work of people who have helped to tackle Ebola in West Africa, Downing Street announced on Thursday.

The medal is set to be awarded to over 3,000 people who travelled from Britain to work in high risk areas to stop the spread of the disease. This is the first time a medal has been created specifically to recognise those who have tackled a humanitarian crisis, Xinhua quoted Downing Street as saying in a statement.

The medal has been designed by veteran engraver and artist John Bergdahl, whose design was chosen following a competition run by the Royal Mint Advisory Committee.

The medal will be awarded to military and civilian personnel, including members of the armed forces, doctors and nurses from the National Health Service (NHS), laboratory specialists, members of the civil service and so on, who have been tackling Ebola on behalf of Britain in West Africa. The first awards of the medal will be produced as early as this summer and will be sent to the recipients thereafter.

India recorded largest number of TB cases in 2014

The Hindu

File photo for representative purpose. Photo: Nissar Ahmad

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India recorded the largest number of Tuberculosis cases in the world last year, according to a report by the WHO that said 1.5 million people died in 2014 from the disease which ranks alongside HIV as a leading killer worldwide.

World Health Organisation’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2015, released yesterday, said that of the 9.6 million new TB cases in 2014, 58 per cent were in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions.

India, Indonesia and China had the largest number of cases at 23 per cent, 10 per cent and 10 per cent respectively of the global total in 2014. Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa also had high numbers of TB cases last year.

Nearly 1.5 million people died from the disease last year, including 140,000 children, according to the report.

“Most of these deaths could have been prevented. The disease ranks alongside HIV as a leading killer worldwide,” it said.

Approximately 90 per cent of total TB deaths (among HIV-negative and HIV-positive people) and 80 per cent of TB deaths among HIV-negative people occurred in the African and South-East Asia Regions in 2014.

India and Nigeria accounted for about one-third of global TB deaths (both including and excluding those among HIV-positive people), the report added.

The report noted that globally, TB prevalence in 2015 was 42 per cent lower than in 1990.

The target of halving the rate compared with 1990 was achieved in three WHO regions — the Region of the Americas, the South-East Asia Region and the Western Pacific Region — and in nine high-burden countries of Brazil, Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, the Philippines, Uganda and Vietnam.

In 2014, there was a marked increase in global TB notifications for the first time since 2007.

The annual total of new TB cases, which had been about 5.7 million until 2013, rose to slightly more than 6 million in 2014, mostly due to a 29 per cent increase in notifications in India, which followed the introduction of a policy of mandatory notification in May 2012, creation of a national web—based reporting system in June 2012 and intensified efforts to engage the private health sector.

The report said that intensified efforts, such as those already being made in India, are needed to ensure that all cases are detected, notified to national surveillance systems, and treated according to international standards.

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