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A research study carried out by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) proves that administering natural antioxidants can reduce the effects of lead poisoning in animals during the gestation and lactation periods. The study suggests that it could also be effective in humans.

In this study, published in the magazine Food and Chemical Toxicology, the researchers aimed to prove that since the principal toxicity mechanism of lead poisoning is that it creates free radicals that lead to cellular destruction; administrating natural antioxidants could reverse this process and re-establish the organism's lost balance. The results of the study are preliminary but they could be the beginning of a possible therapeutic treatment to cure the disease.

In order to prove their theory, the researchers carried out an experiment using gestating mice that were separated in to four different groups with different additives in their drinking water. The control group was only subjected to purified water, the drinking water for the second group was contaminated with lead, the drinking water for the third group was also contaminated with lead, but the mice were also treated with antioxidants (zinc, vitamins A,C, E and B6) and the fourth group was just treated with the antioxidants and uncontaminated water.

The research stemmed from the belief that the main cause of the toxicity of lead is the oxidative stress, an imbalance between the antioxidants and the free radicals present in an organism, leading to an excess of free radicals and a consequent destruction of tissues. The results have concluded that such alterations, measured by evaluating various biochemical changes in the brain of the baby mice, diminish in subjects subjected to lead and treated with antioxidants, almost reaching the levels of the control group. The symptoms of lead poisoning were also drastically reduced, reinforcing the theory that administering antioxidants could be a very effective therapy.

Lead poisoning also known as "saturnism" for its violent and demented character that is associated with the god Saturn has been identified at least before the fifth century before Christ. The most common symptoms range from anaemia to irritability, with headaches, motor impairment or weight loss in between. The damages are greater the younger the affected subject, since their organs are at the early stages of development, and they are particularly harsh in subjects below 3 years of age. During gestation, lead can penetrate through the placenta easily and accumulate in the tissues of the embryo, including the brain, which can cause permanent damage such as developmental delay, learning difficulties, hearing problems, diminished memory or aggressiveness. In Europe, the disease occurs in humans mainly as an occupational hazard, and in animals, as a direct consequence of eating hunting pellets. Nevertheless, in other countries, the disease is widely present. For example, the Dominican Republic is home to one of the cities most contaminated by this metal, or the United States, where it is estimated that up to 3% of children are chronically exposed to lead.

The study, carried out by the researchers M? Teresa Antonio Garc?and Elvira Mass?nzález from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, used low doses of lead of a similar size to what could normally be assimilated through food or by contact with the environment and has concluded that the treatment with antioxidants is effective. Hopefully these results will provide beneficial treatments for humans in the future.

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/foodchemtox

Since the UK's move to 24-hour drinking, a large city centre hospital in Birmingham has seen an increase in drink-related attendances between the hours of 3am and 6am.

A new study, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, shows no significant decrease in alcohol-related attendances after 24-hour drinking was introduced but a significant shift in the time of attendances.

Andrew Durnford and Tommy Perkins co-led a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham who investigated the effects of the Licensing Act 2003 on Emergency Department admissions to an inner city hospital. Durnford said, "Interestingly, since 24-hour drinking, significantly more alcohol-related attendances were observed in the early hours of the morning and a significantly smaller proportion in the earlier evening. This trend was seen for weekdays and weekends".

He added, "Our findings suggest that although the Act has not affected the number of alcohol-related attendances at the Emergency Department or the day of presentation; it is associated with a shift in the time of attendances into the early hours of the morning. This may reflect a change in drinking patterns".

The research suggests that 24-hour drinking has not reduced the burden of alcohol attendances to emergency departments and has simply shifted the problem later into the night. According to the authors, "For the NHS, this suggests 24-hour drinking has not lessened the workload. Furthermore, this shift to increased attendances in the early hours will have implications for night-time service provision in the NHS and the Police".

The Licensing Act 2003 allowed longer and more flexible opening hours for pubs, clubs and other licensed premises. Durnford and his colleagues investigated the alcohol-related attendances to the Emergency Department over a week in January 2005 (before the Act was implemented) and during the same week in January 2006 (after licensing hours were changed). In the period between the Act's implementation and the start of the study, 37% of licensed premises in Birmingham had successfully applied to extend their opening hours. However, the authors do point out that "Some venues may not have changed their opening hours immediately and attitudes towards alcohol may take more time to adapt to the new environment".

http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcpublichealth/

The incidence of malaria has fallen significantly in The Gambia in the last 5 years, according to a study carried out by experts there with support from scientists based in London.

The findings from the study, which was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, appear in today's Lancet, and raise the possibility of eliminating malaria as a public health problem in parts of Africa.

Malaria is a major cause of illness and death in Africa, including The Gambia. Investigations into ways of controlling malaria have been underway in The Gambia for more than 50 years and, since 2003, efforts to deliver malaria interventions to pregnant women and children under 5 - including intermittent preventive treatment, the use of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying - have been stepped up considerably.

The authors sought to investigate the changes that have occurred in The Gambia over the past nine years, their potential causes, and public health significance. They analysed original records in order to establish the numbers and proportions of malaria inpatients, deaths and blood-slide examinations at one hospital over nine years (January 1999-December 2007) and at four health facilities in three different administrative regions over seven years (January 2001-December 2007). They obtained additional data from single sites for haemoglobin concentrations in paediatric admissions and for the age distribution of malaria admissions.

At each of the four sites with complete slide examination records, they found that the proportions of malaria-positive slides had decreased by 82%, 85%, 73% and 50% respectively between 2003 and 2007. Meanwhile, during the same period at the three sites with complete admission records, the proportions of malaria admissions fell by 74%, 69% and 27%. Proportions of deaths attributed to malaria in two hospitals fell by more than 90%.

The team also recorded a substantial shift in the average age of children who were admitted to one hospital with malaria after 2004, with far fewer under 5s being admitted after that year. The average age until 2004 was similar to that recorded ten years previously, so the finding of a trend towards older ages of malaria cases was new. A more substantial decrease of malaria admissions in younger children is likely to be largely due to increased use of ITNs, since this intervention is targeted at children under 5, but it may also reflect a situation in which children are taking longer to acquire immunity.

The team considered possible reasons for the decrease of malaria in The Gambia. Changes in rainfall cause some fluctuations in malaria from year to year, but could not account for the progressive reduction recorded since 2003, while socio-economic changes, improvements in communications and access to education may also have helped, although these factors tend to have a more gradual impact rather than the rapid changes reported at the different sites. A change in chemotherapy is likely to have played a substantial role - until 2004, chloroquine alone was mainly used but as parasite resistance to this drug had increased to high levels, the first-line treatment of choice became sulphadoxine plus pyrimethamine (SP) combined with chloroquine, from early 2005 onwards. SP has prophylactic as well as curative properties which may have been important.

The most substantial change in measures to prevent malaria has been the increase of coverage of ITNs, which thanks to well-publicised initiatives from the Global Fund, UNICEF and WHO increased threefold between 2000 and 2006 (49% of under 5s in The Gambia are now reported to be sleeping under ITNs - the highest reported coverage in Africa).

David Conway, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who is based at the Medical Research Council Laboratories in Banjul in The Gambia, is one of the study's authors. He comments: 'These findings support the proposal that increased investment in malaria interventions in Africa can have a major effect on reducing morbidity and mortality from the disease. We need to consider the possibility of future elimination of malaria from some areas in Africa, but we also emphasise the importance of continuous surveillance, and there is no room for complacency with this disease'.

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/

Every day 2,000 children die from malaria in Africa alone. The infection is transmitted from human to human by biting mosquitoes and remains one of the world's most devastating diseases. Despite many years of effort a vaccine is still not available but is urgently needed, if we are to make an impact on this enormous problem.

Continual exposure can generate protection against malaria and can be acquired through an exposure to a high number of infectious mosquito bites. Parasites that are injected by a mosquito first migrate to the liver where they mature and then are released into the blood circulation and it is only here that they cause disease and fatal complications.

A very promising method for vaccination is to sufficiently weaken parasites such that they invade liver cells but then are not able to develop any further. It is, however, required that these attenuated parasites are still able to stimulate a good immune response in the liver. This can be achieved by irradiating the parasites or by genetically inactivating individual parasite genes that are active during the parasites growth in the liver. Researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands and LUMC, Leiden, the Netherlands, have now characterized a large number of parasite proteins ('proteome') that are present only during liver stage development and therefore are potential targets for inactivation.

The research groups had previously shown that protection in mice can be achieved by vaccinating mice with a rodent malaria which had one of these liver stage genes removed, specifically p36p. Moreover, the protection was long lasting and virtually complete. Now, these same researchers from Nijmegen and Leiden have succeeded in making the first critical transition from the rodent system to humans by inactivating the equivalent gene (p52) in the most important human malaria parasite, P. falciparum. Similar to the results with the rodent parasite, these human parasites are unable to develop in liver cells. This is the first time that genetic modification of a human parasite results in its growth arrest in a liver cell, opening up exciting possibilities for its use as a human vaccine.

These studies form part of a collaborative project with the American company Sanaria (www.sanaria.com), whose sole purpose is develop a whole organism malaria parasite vaccine for use in humans, and is funded by TI-Pharma. These studies show how results obtained in rodent models of malaria can be pipelined to form the basis for clinical development of anti-malaria vaccines in humans.

http://www.umcn.nl

Normal-weight women who carry out lots of vigorous exercise are approximately 30% less likely to develop breast cancer than those who don't exercise vigorously.

A study of more than thirty thousand postmenopausal American women, reported in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research, has revealed that a sedentary lifestyle can be a risk factor for the disease - even in women who are not overweight.

While an Investigator at the National Cancer Institute of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Michael F. Leitzmann led a team of researchers who followed the 32,269 women for eleven years and found that vigorous activity may protect against breast cancer, independent of body weight control. Vigorous activity was judged to include things like heavy housework (scrubbing floors, washing windows, heavy yard-work, digging, chopping wood) and strenuous sports or exercise (running, fast jogging, competitive tennis; aerobics, bicycling on hills, and fast dancing).

Leitzmann said, "Notable strengths of our study include its large sample size, prospective design, high follow-up rate, and availability of relevant known or suspected breast cancer risk factors. These features enabled us to minimize any effects from other factors apart from exercise."

Interestingly, the authors found that non-vigorous activity, such as light housework (vacuuming, washing clothes, painting, general gardening) and light sports or exercise (walking, hiking, light jogging, recreational tennis, bowling) was not protective. Furthermore, vigorous activity was only protective in lean women and not those who were overweight or obese. According to Leitzmann, "Possible mechanisms through which physical activity may protect against breast cancer that are independent of body mass include reduced exposure to growth factors, enhanced immune function, and decreased chronic inflammation, variables that are related both to greater physical activity and to lower breast cancer risk".

The authors added, "An alternative explanation for the stronger apparent effect of vigorous activity among lean over heavy women is that heavier women may misreport non-vigorous activities as vigorous ones".

http://breast-cancer-research.com/