Scientists say they have developed a safe method to administer the toxic gas carbon monoxide (CO) in a way that could help organ transplant patients.
Although too much of the gas is deadly, minute doses help widen blood vessels and cut inflammation, which could boost the survival chances of donor organs.
Sheffield University scientists have devised a way to release targeted small doses of CO using carrier molecules.
They say lab tests have been promising and hope to start human trials by 2010, BBC reported.
The team is lead by Professor Brian Mann, who is working alongside Dr Roberto Motterlini at Northwick Park Institute for Medical Research.
They claim their discovery could have other applications too, including treating inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and high blood pressure in the lungs.
Conventional CO inhalation carries the risk of patients or medical staff being accidentally exposed to high doses.
The new treatment method should remove this risk, says Professor Mann.
It comprises water-soluble molecules, known as CO-releasing molecules (CO-RMs), which, when swallowed or injected, release calculated doses of CO inside the body.
Professor Mann said: “The molecules dissolve in water, so they can be made available in an easy-to-ingest, liquid form that quickly passes into the bloodstream.
“They can be injected exactly where required without being a threat. It’s a much safer way to give CO.“
He added: “As well as making it simple to control how much CO is introduced into a patient’s body, it will be possible to refine the design of the molecules so that they target a particular place while leaving the rest of the body unaffected.
“For transplant patients, we could treat the donor organ to minimize the risk of damage and rejection.“
He said CO was great at protecting against reperfusion damage--tissue damage caused when blood supply returns after a period of no supply.
Dr Ian Fairlamb, a chemist at the University of York, said many scientists were now looking at developing CO-RMs on the back of Dr Motterlini’s pioneering work.
“At first it may seem surprising that CO can be beneficial because it is a known toxin. But low doses of CO can elicit a wide range of biological effects, which can be exploited in many therapeutic applications.
“In terms of using carbon monoxide as a therapeutic agent, it is preferable to avoid using it in its gaseous form. These carrier compounds can transport it in a safe way.“

Image of HIV virus structure

With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralize the HIV virus. The so-called combination therapy prevents the HIV virus from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population.
To date, it represents the most significant treatment for patients suffering from HIV, ScienceDaily said.
Professor Jens Lundgren from the University of Copenhagen, together with other members of the research group EuroSIDA, have conducted a study, which demonstrates that the immune system of all HIV-infected patients can be restored and normalized. The only stipulation is that patients begin and continue to follow their course of treatment.
Viruses are small organisms that have no independent metabolism. Consequently, when they enter the body they attack living cells and adopt their metabolism. The influenza virus occupies cells in the nose, throat and lungs; the mumps attaches itself to the salivary glands of the ear; while the Polio virus plays on the intestinal tract, blood and salivary glands. In all these instances, our immune system attacks and eliminates the invading virus.
HIV is so deadly because the virus attaches itself to a crucial part of the immune system itself: to the so-called CD4+T lymphocytes, which are white blood corpuscles that help the immune system to fight infections. The Hi-virus forms and invades new CD4+T-lymphocytes. Slowly but surely, the number of healthy CD4+T lymphocytes in the blood fall, while HIV relentlessly weakens the body’s ability to defend itself from infection. Finally, the immune system erodes to such an extent that the infected patient is diagnosed with AIDS. The Hi-virus mutates constantly as it forms and this is why, scientists face a constant battle to find a cure or a vaccine.
Combination therapy prevents the virus from forming and mutating in human beings. When the virus is halted in its progress, the number of healthy CD4+T cells begins to rise and patients, who would otherwise die from HIV, can now survive. The immune system is rejuvenated and is apparently able to normalize itself, providing that the combination therapy is maintained. The moment the immune system begins to improve, the HIV-infected patient can no longer be said to be suffering from an HIV infection or disease, already declining in strength.

The sunglasses show a stopwatch and an athlete's heart rate in their peripheral vision by combining a kind of bifocal lens and a prism.

Sunglasses that can show athletes’ performance and heart rate data in their peripheral vision have been co-developed by companies from Germany and Britain.
The sunglasses--dubbed Informance--display a stopwatch and heart rate at one edge. The extra components needed to do this add just 7 grams to the glasses’ overall weight--which is much less than previous head-up displays, according to NewScientist.com.
The left lens of the glasses is like that of a pair of bifocal spectacles. But instead of having two areas of different strength, a thin wedge-shaped prism is built into the left edge of the lens. The longest side of the prism faces the wearer’s eye, while the shortest side faces outwards on the left side.
A small LED display, powered by a polymer battery inside the glasses’ left arm, projects an image into the prism from the side. This image is reflected twice inside the prism before reaching the wearer’s eye.
Most head-mounted, or “head-up“ displays are made for the defense industry, says Mike Hazel, an optics engineer at Cambridge Consultants, one of the two firms responsible for the development of the technology. These are typically heavy, like those found in a fighter pilot’s helmet, and display information more obtrusively. Typically, an image is projected from the end of a component that sticks out in front of the eye.
“If wearable computing is going to be popular you need to provide some information, but not a lot,“ Hazel says, “our goal was to produce something very light that could be styled like a normal spectacle.“
The current prototype (see image, right) picks up information via a wireless link to a digital watch and heart-rate monitor.
Hazel says the display takes up just 12% of the left eye’s field of view, making it barely noticeable when looking straight ahead. The brain also compensates for the overlay by emphasising the right eye view, so it is even less obtrusive in practice. Furthermore, it can run for 12 hours without recharging, he says.
The display is 160 by 120 pixels and could display even more information, adds Dietmar Uttenweiler, head of research at German lens manufacturer Rodenstock, which also contributed to development of the sunglasses. “Showing directions and distances transmitted by a GPS unit is one possibility we are interested in,“ he says.

Farm children appear to have a lower risk of asthma than their urban counterparts or even those living in a non-agricultural rural environment, according to a University of Alberta study.
Analysis of two surveys involving 13,524 asthma--free children aged less than 12 years in the ongoing Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) showed that children living in a farming environment had a lower risk of developing asthma than their counterparts who resided in either non-farming rural environments, such as residential acreages and rural towns, or an urban environment, Physorg.com said.
The two-year cumulative incidence of asthma was only 2.3 per cent in farm children, compared to 5.3 per cent for other rural and 5.7 per cent for urban children.
“Farm children of ages one to five years also showed a stronger protective effect against asthma than those aged six to 11 years, possibly due to earlier exposure to the farm environment,“ said William Midodzi, lead author on the study and a PhD candidate in the Department of Public Health Sciences in the University of Alberta School of Public Health in Edmonton, Canada.
As well, youngsters with parental history of asthma living in farming environments had a reduced risk of asthma compared to children living in rural non-farm environments, whereas children with parental history of asthma living in urban areas had a higher risk when compared with children living in rural non-farm environments.
Midodzi speculates that exposure to compounds called endotoxins from animal viruses and manure and avoidance of urban environment early in life might have reduced the risk for development of asthma.
This study shows that living in a farming environment reduces the risk of developing asthma, in contrast to previous studies reporting that existing asthma was related to exposure to farming environments. The researchers believe that exposure to endotoxins stimulates the body’s immune system and keeps it busy fighting bacteria thus reducing the risk of the body turning its immune attention to lung inflammation that causes asthma.
Clinicians who treat patients with asthma can use these findings to identify high-risk children and also educate parents, said study co-authors Carina Majaesic and Brian Rowe, University of Alberta clinician-scientists and physicians with the Capital Health region.
“This research suggests that we should discourage childhood exposure to tobacco smoke, encourage breast feeding, and not worry about keeping children’s environment too sterile,“ said Majaesic.

A new approach for treating anemia in patients with severe kidney disease could help improve patients’ quality of life, according to a US study.
Compared with conventional therapy, giving patients an anti-anemia drug as infrequently as once a month could simplify anemia management, concluded Dr. Nathan Levin, of the Renal Research Institute in New York, and colleagues, HealthDay said.
Conventional therapy with epoetin (a synthetic form of human erythropoietin that promotes red blood cell production) requires frequent administrations (at least once weekly), changes of dose, and close monitoring of hemoglobin concentrations.
In this study involving patients on dialysis, the researchers compared the use of a long-acting erythropoieses-stimulating agent variant of epoetin (methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta) given intravenously at 2-week or 4-week intervals, with epoetin treatment one to three times per week.
All 673 patients in the study received conventional epoetin treatment for the first four weeks of the study. After that, one group of patients received methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta every two weeks, another group received methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta every four weeks, and the third group continued receiving conventional epoetin treatment.
After about 42 weeks, there were no statistically significant differences in hemoglobin concentrations between the three groups. Based on their findings, the researchers recommended that methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta be introduced as an option for simplified management of anemia in patients on dialysis.

The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world’s oceans has reduced, scientists have said.
University of East Anglia researchers gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments.
Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005, BBC said.
Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.
Researchers said the findings, published in a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research, were surprising and worrying because there were grounds for believing that, in time, the ocean might become saturated with our emissions.
BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said: “The researchers don’t know if the change is due to climate change or to natural variations.
“But they say it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become ’saturated’ with our emissions--unable to soak up any more.“
He said that would “leave all our emissions to warm the atmosphere“.
Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks.
There are two major natural carbon sinks: the oceans and the land “biosphere“. They are equivalent in size, each absorbing a quarter of all CO2 emissions.

Obesity increases the risk of developing diabetes, but nobody knows the details of why this is the case. Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Sweden have now identified a protein that may play a role in increasing the risk. The discovery may in the long term lead to new methods of preventing type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes is a metabolic condition in which the body does not form sufficient quantities of insulin or in which the insulin that is formed does not have sufficient effect. The most common form of the disease is type 2 diabetes, which is the variant that adults can develop, ScienceDaily reported.
Most people who develop type 2 diabetes are overweight. Fat can accumulate in the muscles and liver of an obese person, leading to cell damage that in turn leads to a defect in the signaling from insulin. The result is an increase in the blood sugar level, and diabetes develops.
“The faulty storage of fat in the muscle cells interferes with the signal from the insulin that should stimulate increased absorption of sugar by the cells. The fat is stored in the cells in the form of fat droplets, and we have studied in detail how these are formed and how they grow. This has enabled us to show how the insulin signal is disrupted“, says Professor Sven Olof Olofsson, director of the Wallenberg Laboratory at the Sahlgrenska Academy.
The research project used several advanced microscopy techniques to study lipid droplets in cultured muscle cells. It became clear that the lipid droplets merged with each other inside the cell by a process that involved a protein known as “SNAP23“. This protein has another, independent, function - that of passing the insulin signal onwards into the cell.
“It appears that the SNAP23 is being ’stolen’ from the insulin signaling process when the cell starts to pack fat, and this causes the defect that subsequently leads to diabetes. If we can find out more about how this works in detail, we may be able to influence the process and protect patients from developing diabetes“, says Pontus Bostrom, PhD student at the Sahlgrenska Academy.