Junior Digest

Jan28,2020: National Health Commission says shortage of medical supplies is compromising efforts to contain the outbreak
The virus can infect children and infants, but symptoms have been relatively mild, the commission says.
The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak
in China has soared to 106 and 1,771 new cases have been confirmed by Chinese authorities on Tuesday morning.

The total number of confirmed cases has climbed to almost 4,500 in China alone, with 26 new deaths reported in the country on Tuesday. Most of those who have died are from Hubei province, at the epicentre of the outbreak.

In addition to air transmission, the coronavirus can be spread through physical contact, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Tuesday.

The incubation period of the new virus was on average three to seven days, with the longest being no more than 14 days, the NHC stated, adding that the coronavirus strain was 85 per cent similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars).

It also said the virus could infect children and infants, but that their symptoms had been relatively mild.
Supplies shortage

Speaking at a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Jiao Yahui, head of the National Health Commission’s medical administration bureau, said shortage of medical supplies was a major constraint in China’s efforts to contain the outbreak and treat infected people.

Jiao said China was sending about 6,000 medical personnel to Hubei from around the country – with more than 4,000 already there and 1,800 more due to arrive by Tuesday evening – to work in Wuhan and seven other cities in the province. In Wuhan, more than 10,000 hospital beds had been available to accommodate the growing number of patients, she said.
But Jiao admitted that some of the extra personnel could not be deployed effectively, because of a lack of medical supplies such as protective clothing.

Hundreds of Americans and Japanese escaped the quarantined Chinese city at the centre of a viral epidemic aboard charter flights on Wednesday, as the death toll soared to 132 and confirmed infections neared 6,000.

The scale of the deepening crisis was emphasised with the new infection number on the Chinese mainland exceeding that of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002-03.

SARS, another respiratory virus transmitted between people, went on to claim nearly 800 lives around the world, with most of those fatalities in mainland China and Hong Kong.

The new virus has spread to more than 15 countries since it emerged out of Wuhan late last year, although all the confirmed fatalities have so far been in China.
Authorities last week imposed transport bans in and around Wuhan in an unprecedented quarantine effort, leaving more than 50 million people effectively trapped.

China has taken other extraordinary measures to try and stop the disease spreading, including bans on tour groups travelling overseas, suspending schools and extending the Lunar New Year holiday.

Jan 27,2020: A new study on mouse reveals that consuming high protein diet spurs unstable plaque, the kind which leads to blocked arteries. And more plaque build-up in the arteries increases the risk of a heart attack. The new study was published in the journal Nature Metabolism. The mice on the high-fat, high-protein diet developed worse atherosclerosis — about 30 percent more plaque in the arteries — than mice on the high-fat, normal-protein diet, despite the fact that the mice eating more protein did not gain weight, unlike the mice on the high-fat, normal-protein diet. The researchers found that certain amino acids, especially leucine and arginine, were more potent in activating mTOR — and derailing macrophages from their cleanup duties, leading to cell death — than other amino acids.

Washington D.C. , Jan 23,2020: The results of a study  published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry claims that they have identified a protein in foxtail millet bran can help stave off atherosclerosis  disease.

The experiment was conducted on genetically prone atherosclerosis mice. An annual grass known as foxtail millet, during the milling process loses the bran from the hard outer layer of the grain from the seed.
The crop is widely grown in parts of India, China, and Southeast Asia.

Atherosclerosis, or narrowing of the arteries because of plaque buildup, is the leading cause of heart disease and stroke. Plaques form when immune cells called monocytes take up oxidized low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (ox-LDL) in the artery wall.
These cells then secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines, causing aortic smooth muscle cells to migrate to the site. Eventually, a plaque made up of cholesterol, cells and other substances forms. Drugs called statins can treat atherosclerosis by lowering LDL levels, but some people suffer from side effects.
Zhuoyu Li and colleagues previously identified a protein in foxtail millet bran that inhibits the migration of colon cancer cells. They wondered if the protein, called foxtail millet bran peroxidase (FMBP), could also help prevent atherosclerosis.
To find out, the researchers treated human aortic smooth muscle cells and monocytes in Petri dishes with FMBP.
The millet protein reduced the uptake of lipids by both cell types and reduced the migration of smooth muscle cells. In monocytes, FMBP treatment blocked the expression of two key proteins involved in atherosclerosis.
Next, the team fed mice that were genetically predisposed to atherosclerosis a high-fat diet. Mice that were then treated with either FMBP or a statin had far fewer plaques than untreated mice.
The FMBP-treated mice also had elevated blood levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), the “good cholesterol.” Based on these results, FMBP is a natural product with great potential in the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis, the researchers say.

New Delhi , Feb 1,2020: A special Air India flight carrying 324 Indians — who were evacuated from the coronavirus-hit Chinese city of Wuhan — landed in the national capital on Saturday morning.
The Boeing 747 Jumbo aircraft had taken off from Wuhan’s Tianhe International Airport in the early hours of Saturday and landed here at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi at 7:26 am.
The passengers, mostly students, will be kept in isolation for 14 days at the ITBP centre in Chhawla in the national capital upon their arrival.
The departure of the flight was delayed from Wuhan airport as immigration and Chinese authorities did not allow six Indians on board after they reported high temperatures during screening.
“Six passengers were offloaded as they had high temperatures,” a passenger told ANI.
A screening camp has been set up at the Delhi Airport where they will be screened before they are put under quarantine.
All the passengers will go through necessary screening and following that will be put under observation. Ministry of External Affairs, Health Ministry and the Army will make arrangements for the passengers.
The Union Health Ministry had said on Friday that the government has made adequate quarantine camps at Manesar ((managed by Armed Forces Medical Services) and at Chhawla (managed by ITBP).
The special double-decker flight — with a team of doctors, 20 crew members, and all necessary resources like masks, medical equipment, packed food, prescribed medicines — had departed from Delhi on Friday.
According to the Indian Embassy in Beijing, there will be another flight to evacuate the remaining Indian nationals.
“We look forward to operating another flight to evacuate remaining Indian nationals, who have consented to leave Hubei Province for the time being,” the EOIBeijing announced on its official Twitter handle.

Washington D.C. [USA], Jan 19,2020: Researchers have designed an unprecedented method that is capable of improving brain images obtained through magnetic resonance imaging using artificial intelligence.
This new model manages to increase image quality from low resolution to high resolution without distorting the patients’ brain structures, using a deep learning artificial neural network -a model that is based on the functioning of the human brain- that “learns” this process. The study was published in the scientific journal Neurocomputing.
“Deep learning is based on very large neural networks, and so is its capacity to learn, reaching the complexity and abstraction of a brain”, explains researcher Karl Thurnhofer, main author of this study, who adds that thanks to this technique, the activity of identification can be performed alone, without supervision; an identification effort that the human eye would not be capable of doing.
This study represents a scientific breakthrough, since the algorithm developed by the UMA yields more accurate results in less time, with clear benefits for patients. “So far, the acquisition of quality brain images has depended on the time the patient remained immobilised in the scanner; with our method, image processing is carried out later on the computer”, explains Thurnhofer.
According to the experts, the results will enable specialists to identify brain-related pathologies, like physical injuries, cancer or language disorders, among others, with increased accuracy and definition, because image details are thinner, thus avoiding the performance of additional tests when diagnoses are uncertain.
Nowadays, the ICAI Group of the UMA, led by Professor Ezequiel Lopez, co-author of this study, is a benchmark for neurocomputing, computational learning, and artificial intelligence. The Professors of the Department of Computer Science and Programming Languages Enrique Dominguez and Rafael Luque, as well as researcher Nuria Roe-Vellve, have also participated in this study.

Washington D.C., Dec 05: If you have been taking birth control pills either to treat irregular periods, cramps, acne, PCOS, endometriosis or other conditions here’s the news for you! A new study by researchers studying the brain found that women taking oral contraceptives, commonly known as birth control pills, had significantly smaller hypothalamus volume, compared to women not taking the pill.
Located at the base of the brain above the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus produces hormones and helps regulate essential bodily functions including body temperature, mood, appetite, sex drive, sleep cycles and heart rate. The study was presented at the 105th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America-RSNA 2019.
Structural effects of sex hormones, including oral contraceptive pills, on the human hypothalamus, have never been reported, according to the researchers. This may be in part because validated methods to quantitatively analyze MRI exams of the hypothalamus have not been available.
Michael L. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., FACR, professor of radiology at the Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center said, “There is a lack of research on the effects of oral contraceptives on this small but essential part of the living human brain , we validated methods for assessing the volume of the hypothalamus and confirm, for the first time, that current oral contraceptive pill usage is associated with smaller hypothalamic volume.”
In his study, Dr Lipton and colleagues recruited a group of 50 healthy women, including 21 women who were taking oral contraceptives. All 50 women underwent brain MRI, and a validated approach was used to measure hypothalamic volume.
“We found a dramatic difference in the size of the brain structures between women who were taking oral contraceptives and those who were not,” Dr Lipton said. “This initial study shows a strong association and should motivate further investigation into the effects of oral contraceptives on brain structure and their potential impact on brain function.”
Other findings from the study, which Dr Lipton described as “preliminary,” were that smaller hypothalamic volume was also associated with greater anger and showed a strong correlation with depressive symptoms. However, the study found no significant correlation between hypothalamic volume and cognitive performance.

Jan30,2020: China reported its biggest single-day jump in novel coronavirus deaths on Thursday, as global fears deepened with more infections confirmed overseas including three Japanese evacuated from the outbreak’s epicentre.

The World Health Organization, which initially downplayed a disease that has now killed 170 in China, was readying to meet Thursday to decide whether to declare it a global emergency.

But governments, companies and people around the world were already escalating efforts to contain the illness, which is believed to have emerged from an animal market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Many governments have urged their citizens not to visit China, while some have banned entry for travellers from Wuhan.

At least 15 countries have confirmed infections, with India reporting its first case on Thursday.

Airlines began cancelling flights servicing China on Wednesday, and more followed suit on Thursday.

Russia said it was closing its far estern border with China over the outbreak.

Beijing has taken extraordinary steps to arrest the spread of the virus, including effectively quarantining more than 50 million people in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province.
The government on Thursday reported 38 new deaths in the preceding 24 hours, the highest one-day total since the virus was detected late last year.

All but one of the new deaths were in Hubei.

The number of confirmed new cases also grew steadily to 7,711, the National Health Commission said. Another 81,000 people were under observation for possible infection.

The pathogen is believed to have emerged in a market that sold wild game, and spread by a Lunar New Year holiday season in which hundreds of millions of Chinese travel domestically or abroad.
Thousands of foreigners have been trapped in Wuhan since it was sealed off last week.
Massive cities like Beijing and Shanghai were also eerily quiet as countless people followed advice to stay indoors, or at least wear masks when venturing out.

Japan and the United States on Wednesday became the first countries to organise airlifts from Wuhan for their citizens. A second US flight is planned in coming days.

Australia and New Zealand were among others organizing similar operations.
Tokyo on Thursday reported that three people who were aboard the first evacuation flight had tested positive for the virus after landing back home.

Two of the three infected passengers showed no symptoms, according to Japanese authorities, underscoring the difficulty detecting the coronavirus.

Compounding fears, Japan was allowing the arrivals — more than 400 have been repatriated after a second flight on Thursday — to “self-quarantine”.
The government said it could not legally compel testing or quarantining, and two people on the first flight refused testing.

That is despite Japanese officials already confirming two cases in which patients tested positive without having visited China.

In contrast, other countries organising evacuations said they were all planning to quarantine.

“We are in a truly new situation,” Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato told parliament as his government faced criticism.

– Take action –

The WHO also has come under fire after it last week decided not to declare a global health emergency.

A meeting Thursday will decide whether to reverse that decision, possibly leading to travel or trade barriers.
“The whole world needs to take action,” Michael Ryan, head of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, told reporters in Geneva.

The virus is similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which also began in China and eventually killed nearly 800 people worldwide in 2002-03.

Major airlines that have suspended or reduced service to China include British Airways, German flag carrier Lufthansa, American Airlines, KLM, and United.

Chinese efforts to halt the virus have seen the suspension of classes nationwide and an extension of the Lunar New Year holiday.

All football matches across the country also would be postponed, the Chinese Football Association said, including the top-tier Chinese Super League.

– Economic worries –

Asian stock markets tumbled again Thursday on fears that trouble in the “world’s factory” would upset global supply chains and dent profits.

Toyota, IKEA, Starbucks, Tesla, McDonald’s and tech giant Foxconn were among corporate giants to temporarily freeze production or close large numbers of outlets in China.

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the coronavirus posed a fresh risk to the world economy.

“There will clearly be implications at least in the near term for Chinese output and I would guess for some of their close neighbours,” he said.

Throughout China, signs of paranoia multiplied, with residents of some Beijing residential compounds erecting makeshirt barriers to their premises.

In one of many similar photos posted online, a man wearing a surgical mask and brandishing a traditional martial arts weapon squatted on a barricade outside a Chinese village, near a sign saying: “Outsiders forbidden from entering”.

The crisis has caused food prices to spike, and the central government on Thursday blamed this partly on overzealous preventive measures, issuing a directive banning any roadblocks or other hindrances to food shipments.

“E-cigarettes contain nicotine, particulate matter, metal and flavourings, not just harmless water vapour,” senior author Loren Wold of Ohio State University wrote in Thursday’s study.

“Air pollution studies show that fine particles enter the circulation and have direct effects on the heart — data for e-cigarettes are pointing in that direction.”

Nicotine, also found in tobacco, is known to increase blood pressure and the heart rate.

But other ingredients inhaled through the vaping may lead to inflammation, oxidative stress and unstable blood flow, Wold said.

Ultrafine particulate, for example, has been linked to thrombosis, coronary heart disease and hypertension, among other conditions.

E-cigarettes also contain formaldehyde, which has been classified as a cancer-causing agent and associated with heart damage in experiments with rats.

Moreover, almost nothing is known about the potential health hazards of flavouring agents that mimic the taste of mint, candy or fruits such as mango or cherry, the study noted.

“While most are deemed safe when ingested orally, little is known of their systemic effects following inhalation,” the researchers wrote.

To assess possible impacts on the heart and vascular system, Wold and colleagues undertook a systematic review of medical literature, which remains thin due to the newness of e-cigarette use.

– Teens ‘not getting the message’ –

Wold noted that most studies to date have focused on the acute effects of e-cigarette use rather than the risk of chronic use.

Also, little is known about the secondhand effects of vaping, as well as exposure to particles lodged in walls, drapes and clothing.

Thirty-seven deaths in 24 states have been linked to e-cigarette and vaping products as of October 29, according to the CDC. There were nearly 1,900 cases of associated lung injury nationwide.

In the majority of cases, persons affected also used the devices to consume products containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, raising the possibility that unknown impurities were also present.

The CDC discourages non-smokers from starting to use e-cigarettes and suggests individuals trying to kick a tobacco habit use alternatives approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), such as patches and gums.

But the popularity of vaping has skyrocketed since the devices were introduced to the US and European markets just over a decade ago.

Vaping users increased from seven million worldwide in 2011 to 41 million in 2018, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The products are particularly appealing to young users — often by design, according to critics.

One in four high school students in the United States uses e-cigarettes, up more than 15 percent from two years ago, according to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Study.

Use by preteens doubled from 2018 to 2019, with 10 percent of middle school students admitted to vaping.

“Adults are beginning to get the message that the full health effects of vaping are unknown, and the risk is potentially very high,” said Wold.

“My fear is that has not been crystallised in adolescents.”

Of the 17 new cases in the central city of Wuhan — believed to be the epicentre of the outbreak — three were described as “severe”, of which two patients were too critical to be moved, authorities said.

Those infected range from 30 to 79 years old.

The virus has now infected 62 people in Wuhan, city authorities said, with eight in a severe condition, 19 cured and discharged from hospital, and the rest remaining in isolation receiving treatment.

Two people have died so far from the virus, including a 69-year-old man who died on Wednesday after the disease caused pulmonary tuberculosis and damaged multiple organ functions.

Authorities said they had begun “optimised” testing of pneumonia cases across the city to identify those infected, and would begin “detection work… towards suspected cases in the city” as a next step, as well as carrying out “sampling tests”.

Scientists with the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London warned in a paper published Friday that the number of cases in the city was likely to be closer to 1,700, much higher than the number officially identified.

Authorities said Sunday that some of the cases had “no history of contact” with the seafood market believed to be the centre of the outbreak.

No human-to-human transmission has been confirmed so far, but Wuhan’s health commission has previously said the possibility “cannot be excluded”.

Three cases have also been reported overseas — two in Thailand and one in Japan.

– Screening measures –

Although there has been no official announcement of screening measures on the mainland, Wuhan deputy mayor Chen Xiexin said on state broadcaster CCTV that infrared thermometers had been installed at airports, railway stations and coach stations across the city.

Chen said passengers with fevers were being registered, given masks and taken to medical institutions, with nearly 300,000 body temperature tests had been carried out, according to CCTV.

Authorities in Hong Kong have stepped up detection measures, including rigorous temperature checkpoints for inbound travellers from the Chinese mainland.

The US said from Friday it would begin screening direct flights arriving from Wuhan at San Francisco airport and New York’s JFK, as well as Los Angeles, where many flights connect.

Thailand said it was already screening passengers arriving in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket and would soon introduce similar controls in the beach resort of Krabi.

Wuhan is a city of 11 million inhabitants that serves as a major transport hub, including during the annual Lunar New Year holiday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese people travel across the country to visit family.

The new virus has caused alarm because of its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.

But after two days of talks to determine the level of global concern, the World Health Organization on Thursday stopped short of declaring a so-called a public health emergency of international concern — declaration used for the gravest epidemics.

“This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.

WHO had postponed its decision by a day, after Chinese authorities announced unprecedented measures to rein in the spread of the virus.

China has effectively quarantined nearly 20 million people across Wuhan and other cities, and announced measures to curb the disease nationwide as hundreds of millions of people began travelling across the country this week for the Lunar New Year holiday.

Beijing cancelled massive gatherings that usually attract throngs at temples during the New Year holiday, while the historic Forbidden City will close from Saturday.

The technique has largely focused on white blood cells called T-cells, which are “trained” to recognise and attack cancer cells.

But the innovative treatment only works well for around 20 percent of patients, and researchers have been trying to understand why some people respond better than others.

Three papers published on Thursday in the journal Nature point the way, identifying a key formation inside some tumours: tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS).

These structures function like “factories or schools” for immune cells that help the body fight cancer, said Wolf H. Fridman, a professor emeritus of immunology at the Cordeliers Research Centre of the Paris Descartes University medical school, who helped lead one of the studies.

“The cells need to be educated in schools, which are the tertiary lymphoid structures,” where they effectively learn to recognise and attack cancer cells, Fridman told AFP.

– No longer ‘innocent bystanders’ –

Key to the findings is that T-cells are far from the only immune cells capable of taking the fight to cancer, with researchers finding the TLS were full of B-cells, a kind of immune cell that produces antibodies.

“We have been T-cell addicts for 15 years in cancer,” Fridman said with a laugh.

“We analysed these sarcomas to see what groups they had and what’s striking is that these B-cells appeared.”

Beth Helmink, a fellow in surgical oncology at the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center who worked on a second study, said the research changed perceptions of the role of B-cells in immunotherapy.

“Through these studies, we find that B-cells are not just innocent bystanders, but are themselves contributing in a meaningful way to the anti-tumour immune response,” she said in a statement issued by the Center.

The discovery is something of a surprise, as an abundance of B-cells in cancer patients has sometimes been seen as a marker for poor prognosis.

But the studies found that patients with high levels of B-cells inside TLS in their tumours were more likely to respond well to immunotherapy.

“This series of studies are exciting because they represent real progress in the treatment of different types of cancer,” said Louisa James, a lecturer in immunology at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London.

“In the short term, these results provide a new tool to help predict which patients are likely to benefit from treatment with immunotherapy and may also pave the way for improved treatments in the future,” added James, who was not involved in the studies.

– Improving cancer treatment –

There are still many unanswered questions, including why the structures form in some tumours and not others.

And while it now seems clear that B-cells inside the structures play a key role in the success of immunotherapy, scientists are not sure precisely how.

It may be that the B-cells are on the frontlines, producing antibodies that attack cancer cells efficiently.

Or they may be bolstering T-cells, or perhaps doing both.

And not all TLS are created equal: the researchers found three categories, but only one type was “mature” enough to churn out cancer-fighting immune cells.

The research opens several promising avenues, the authors said.

Initially, it could help doctors screen patients to see which are most likely to respond well to immunotherapy.

And eventually, the research could mean more patients are successfully treated with the technique, said Goran Jonsson, a professor of oncology and pathology at Lund University in Sweden who worked on a third study.

“If we come up with a treatment that could enhance TLS formation, we could combine this with current immunotherapy regimens,” he told AFP.

“Most likely this would lead to more patients responding to immunotherapy.”

Washington D.C. , Nov 4: A new study has revealed that a person’s brain reacts amazingly while sleeping.
The neurons will go quiet and a few seconds later, blood flows out of the head. Then, a watery liquid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows in, washing through the brain in rhythmic, pulsing waves.
The study published in ‘Science’ is the first to illustrate the brain’s CSF pulses during sleep, and that these motions are closely tied with brain wave activity and blood flow.
“We’ve known for a while that there are these electrical waves of activity in the neurons,” said study co-author Laura Lewis, a BU College of Engineering assistant professor of biomedical engineering and a Center for Systems Neuroscience faculty member.
“But before now, we didn’t realise that there are actually waves in the CSF, too,” added Lewis.
This research may also be the first-ever study to take images of CSF during sleep.
Lewis hopes that it will one day lead to insights about a variety of neurological and psychological disorders that are frequently associated with disrupted sleep patterns, including autism and Alzheimer’s disease.
The coupling of brain waves with the flow of blood and CSF could provide insights about normal age-related impairments as well.
Earlier studies have suggested that CSF flow and slow-wave activity both help flush toxic, memory-impairing proteins from the brain. As people age, their brains often generate fewer slow waves.
In turn, this could affect the blood flow in the brain and reduce the pulsing of CSF during sleep, leading to a buildup of toxic proteins and a decline in memory abilities.
Although researchers have tended to evaluate these processes separately, it now appears that they are very closely linked.
To further explore how ageing might affect sleep’s flow of blood and CSF in the brain, Lewis and her team plan to recruit older adults for their next study, as the 13 subjects in the current study were all between the ages of 23 and 33.
Lewis said they also hope to come up with a more sleep-conducive method of imaging CSF.
Wearing EEG caps to measure their brain waves, these initial 13 subjects were tasked with dozing off inside an extremely noisy MRI machine, which, as anyone who has had an MRI can imagine, is no easy feat.
One of the most fascinating yields of this research, Lewis said, was that they can tell if a person is sleeping simply by examining a little bit of CSF on a brain scan.
“It’s such a dramatic effect,” she said. “CSF pulsing during sleep was something we didn’t know happened at all, and now we can just glance at one brain region and immediately have a readout of the brain state someone’s in.”

New Delhi, Oct 26: Announcing the IndiGen Genome project, Union Minister for Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday said that the ‘Whole Genome Sequencing’ will help in predictive and preventive medicine with faster and efficient diagnosis of rare genetic diseases.
He said that Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has conducted ‘Whole Genome Sequencing’ of 1,008 Indians from different populations across the country and the whole genome data will be important for building the know-how, baseline data and indigenous capacity in the emerging area of Precision Medicine.

“The outcomes of the IndiGen will have applications in a number of areas including predictive and preventive medicine with faster and efficient diagnosis of rare genetic diseases”, the Minister said.
He said the benefits of this initiative include epidemiology of genetic diseases to enable cost effective genetic tests, carrier screening applications for expectant couples, enabling efficient diagnosis of heritable cancers and pharmacogenetic tests to prevent adverse drug reactions.
Unveiling the IndiGenome card and IndiGen mobile application that enables participants and clinicians to access clinically actionable information in their genomes, he said it was a pilot project being tested in individuals across India.
The result of the IndiGen will be utilised towards understanding the genetic diversity on a population scale, make available genetic variant frequencies for clinical applications and enable genetic epidemiology of diseases. The whole genome data and know-how for the analysis of large scale genomic data is expected to enable evidence and aid in the development of technologies for clinical and biomedical applications in India.

“This will be also helpful towards understanding the genetic diversity on a population scale, make available genetic variant frequencies for clinical applications and enable genetic epidemiology of diseases”, the minister further said.
The whole genome data and know-how for the analysis of large scale genomic data is expected to enable evidence and aid in the development of technologies for clinical and biomedical applications in India, he added.
The Indi Gen-initiative was undertaken by CSIR in April 2019, which was implemented by the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad.

Jan27,2020: China said on Monday that the death toll from a deadly viral outbreak spiked to 80 as the hard-hit epicentre province of Hubei suffered 24 new fatalities, while total confirmed cases nationwide rose sharply to 2,744.

While there were no new deaths confirmed outside of Hubei, the national tally of verified infections rose by 769, around half of them in Hubei, the National Health Commission said. It said 461 of those infected were in serious condition.

China has locked down Hubei in the country’s centre, an unprecedented operation affecting tens of millions of people and intended to slow transmission of the respiratory virus.

The previously unknown contagion has caused global concern because of its similarity to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pathogen, which killed hundreds across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.

Drastic travel restrictions have been imposed outside the epicentre, with Shandong province and four cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an and Tianjin — announcing bans on long-distance buses entering or leaving.

The move will affect millions of people travelling over the Lunar New Year holiday, which authorities said would be extended while the government works to contain the virus.

The populous southern province of Guangdong, Jiangxi in central China, and three cities made it mandatory for residents to wear face masks in public.

Originating in Hubei’s capital of Wuhan, the virus has spread throughout China and across the world — with cases confirmed in around a dozen countries including as far away as the United States.

But a paper published Friday by scientists with the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London said the number of those affected in the city was likely to be well over a thousand.

The scientists at the Centre — which advises bodies including the World Health Organization — said they estimated a “total of 1,723 cases” in Wuhan would have been infected as of January 12.

The researchers took the number of cases reported outside China so far — two in Thailand and one in Japan — to infer how many were likely infected in the city, based on international flight traffic data from Wuhan’s airport.

“For Wuhan to have exported three cases to other countries would imply there would have to be many more cases than have been reported,” Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the authors of the report, told the BBC.

“I am substantially more concerned than I was a week ago,” adding, however, that it was “too early to be alarmist”.

“People should be considering the possibility of substantial human-to-human transmission more seriously than they have so far,” he added, saying it was “unlikely” that animal exposure was the main source of infection.

Two people are known to have been killed by the virus, a pathogen from the same family as the deadly SARS virus — even as health authorities around the world sought to assure the public that the overall risk of infection remained low.

Authorities in Hong Kong have stepped up detection measures, including rigorous temperature checkpoints for inbound travellers from the Chinese mainland.

The US said from Friday it would begin screening flights arriving from Wuhan at San Francisco airport and New York’s JFK — which both receive direct flights — as well as Los Angeles, where many flights connect.

Wuhan has 11 million inhabitants and serves as a major transport hub, including during the annual Lunar New Year holiday which begins later this week and sees hundreds of millions of Chinese people travel across the country to visit family.

No human-to-human transmission has been confirmed so far, but authorities have previously said the possibility “cannot be excluded”.

A third person was confirmed to have died and 136 new cases were found over the weekend in Wuhan, the local health commission said, taking the total number of people to have been diagnosed with the virus in China to 201.

Three cases have been reported overseas — two in Thailand and one in Japan, all of whom had visited Wuhan.

Health authorities in Beijing’s Daxing district said two people who had travelled to Wuhan were treated for pneumonia linked to the virus and are in stable condition.

In southern Guangdong province, a 66-year-old Shenzhen man was quarantined on January 11 after contracting a fever and showing other symptoms following a trip to visit relatives in Wuhan, the provincial health commission said in a statement. He is also in stable condition.

Shenzhen officials said another eight people were under medical observation.

A seafood market is believed to be the centre of the outbreak in Wuhan, but health officials have reported that some patients had no history of contact with the facility.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement on Twitter Monday that “an animal source seems the most likely primary source” with “some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts”.

It said the new cases in China were the result of “increased searching and testing for (the virus) among people sick with respiratory illness”.

Scientists with the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London warned in a paper published Friday that the number of cases in the city was likely to be closer to 1,700, much higher than the number officially identified.

The man is being “hospitalized out of an abundance of precaution, and for short term monitoring, not because there was severe illness,” said Chris Spitters, a Washington state health official.

The news came as Asian countries ramped up measures to block the spread of the new virus as the death toll in China rose to six and the number of cases surpassed 300.

China is about to embark on the Lunar New Year holiday — a huge travel time for hundreds of millions of people.

The man hospitalized in Washington state had traveled to the US from Wuhan, but did not visit the seafood market thought to be at the heart of the outbreak.

He entered the US on January 15 — two days before health screenings for those traveling from Wuhan began at airports in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco — and approached health authorities himself after reading news reports about the virus.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will now be deployed to two additional international airports, in Chicago and Atlanta.

All travelers on flights from Wuhan, either direct or connecting, will now be re-routed to the five airports with screening systems in place.

Nations across the Asia-Pacific region stepped up checks of passengers at airports to detect the SARS-like coronavirus.

Fears of a bigger outbreak rose after a prominent expert from China’s National Health Commission confirmed late Monday that the virus can be passed between people.

Washington D.C [USA], Jan 11: Losing a night’s sleep can be the reason behind developing Alzheimer’s, study reveals.
The interrupted sleep schedule for even a night increases the level of tau protein in a young male’s body thus increasing the chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
According to CNN, the report was published on Wednesday in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology
“Our study focuses on the fact that even in young, healthy individuals, missing one night of sleep increases the level of tau in blood suggesting that over time, such sleep deprivation could possibly have detrimental effects,” said study author Dr Jonathan Cedernaes, a neurologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
As defined by the Alzheimer’s Association, tau is the name of a protein that helps in stabilizing the internal structure of the brain’s nerve cells. An abnormal build-up of tau protein in the body can end up in causing interior cells to fall apart and eventually developing Alzheimer’s.
“When you get more of that deep sleep and you get the REM sleep in the normal amounts, that improves clearance of abnormal proteins which we think is good,” said Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr Donn Dexter, not the study author but a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.
Earlier studies have also shown that getting deprived of sleep can allow higher tau development and accumulation. Thus that poor sleep can hasten the development of cognitive issues.
Researchers caution that the study is small and inconclusive, and acknowledged they were not able to determine what the increased levels might mean.
“This study raises more questions than answers,” agreed Dexter on a concluding note, sharing, “What this is telling us is that we have to dig more deeply. Despite something we do for a third of our lives, we know so little about sleep and we’re learning every day, particularly when it comes to sleep and dementia.”

Illinois [USA], Feb 1,2020:: While artificial sweeteners such as sucralose can sweeten up your food and beverages without adding any extra calories, consuming or simply tasting sucralose may alter blood glucose and insulin levels on glucose tolerance tests, scientists at the University of Illinois found in a new study.
The findings suggest that despite having no calories, sucralose may have metabolic effects in some users, said M Yanina Pepino, a professor of food science and human nutrition at the university who led the research.
“The most important take home message is that sweet taste in itself may have an impact on carbohydrate metabolism and glucose control,” Pepino said. “Even though the sample population in our study was small, the findings add to a body of evidence that suggests sweetness should be consumed in moderation, regardless of the calories.”
The study included 10 people of a healthy weight and 11 people with obesity; none of the participants had diabetes or were regular users of artificial sweeteners.
The participants underwent three oral glucose tolerance tests on separate days spaced about a week apart. Prior to one test, they consumed distilled water; prior to another, sucralose; and prior to a third test they tasted but did not swallow sucralose.
They performed one of these actions 10 minutes before drinking a solution containing 75 grams of glucose.
The amount of sucralose – 48 milligrams – that the study participants ingested provides a level of sweetness equivalent to that in a typical diet soda, Pepino said.
At each visit, a catheter was inserted into a radial artery to obtain blood samples at regular intervals during the hour before and five hours after the participants drank the glucose. The scientists measured participants’ blood concentrations of sucralose, insulin, glucose and other hormones.
Sucralose had differing effects depending on whether participants ingested it or only tasted it and whether they had obesity, the researchers found.
When people of healthy weight swallowed the sucralose, their blood insulin levels decreased modestly during the first hour, and their insulin sensitivity increased by about 50%, said graduate student Clara Salame, who co-wrote the study.
However, when people with obesity swallowed the sucralose, their insulin levels increased significantly more than when they drank water or when they tasted the sucralose but spit it out.
“While insulin responses to either tasting or swallowing the sucralose were similar in those of normal weight, those responses were very different in people with obesity,” Pepino said. “Therefore, we hypothesize that some post-ingestive effects of sucralose may occur only in people with obesity.
“However, our study included people who were not habitual consumers of artificial sweeteners, and further studies are needed to explore what happens with this acute effect of sucralose after long-term use.”
Pepino cautioned that since the various artificial sweeteners have very different chemical structures and the body may handle them differently – some are broken down in the stomach while others remain unabsorbed in the intestine – the findings on post-ingestive effects may be unique to sucralose.
However, since all artificial sweeteners activate the sweet taste receptors in the mouth, the metabolic effects associated with sweetness may be more generalizable, she said.
Pepino said she had expected that tasting sucralose and spitting it out would have similar effects to consuming water; thus, she was surprised to discover that participants’ insulin levels were affected by taste alone.
“Interestingly, we found that in both groups of people – those with obesity and those of normal weight – there was a reduction in insulin response to the glucose tolerance test when they just tasted sweetness before drinking the glucose solution. It was the most surprising finding, and we are following up on that in a new study,” Pepino said.
“What our data suggest is that there are mechanisms that we don’t understand clearly about how the human body regulates glucose and the potential metabolic effects of tasting something sweet beyond providing a sense of pleasure,” Pepino said.

Jan26,2020:The death toll from a virus in China has risen to 56 and the number of people infected across the country is nearing 2,000, authorities said Sunday.

Fifteen more people have died and at least 688 new cases of the coronavirus have now been confirmed, according to the National Health Commission.

Among the new deaths, 13 were in Hubei, the province at the heart of the outbreak, while Shanghai reported its first death.

At least 52 people have now died in total in Hubei, two in central Henan province, one in Heilongjiang in the northeast and one in Hebei in the north.

Hubei’s health authorities separately reported 323 new confirmed cases of the virus, which first emerged in the provincial capital, Wuhan, in late December.

Chinese authorities have so far reported 1,975 cases nationwide.

President Xi Jinping warned Saturday that China faced a “grave situation” as authorities raced to contain a respiratory illness that has caused the widespread abandonment of Lunar New Year celebrations nationwide and overwhelmed health facilities in Hubei.

The contagion remained centred on the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan, which accounted for seven of the new deaths and 46 of the new confirmed cases, said the Hubei Health Commission.

Wuhan and more than a dozen other cities in the province have been locked down in a rapidly expanding quarantine effort marked by transport shutdowns and other restrictions on movement.

The previously unknown virus has caused global concern because of its similarity to the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) pathogen, which killed hundreds across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.

It also has struck at possibly the worst time for China, when hundreds of millions of people are travelling across the country or overseas to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday, China’s most important festival.

Hundreds of military doctors have been sent to Hubei and authorities are rushing to build a pair of field hospitals to deal with the crisis as patients swamp local medical facilities.

The virus has spread nationwide in China and cases have been reported in several other countries as far away as the United States, France and Australia.

Feb1,2020: The death toll from China’s coronavirus outbreak has surpassed 250, the government said Saturday, as foreign nations tightened restrictions on travellers from China in response to the rapid spread of the illness.

At least 258 people have died and more than 11,000 people have been infected in China by the new coronavirus, according to new figures from officials in hard-hit Hubei province.

Fresh cases have been detected abroad, with more than 20 countries now affected.

The top Communist Party official in Wuhan, the central city of 11 million people where the virus first emerged in December, on Friday expressed “remorse” because local authorities acted too slowly.

Last week, China’s central government finally jumped into action, effectively sealing off Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province, and curbing travel across the nation of 1.4 billion people.

But the epidemic has spread far and wide as Chinese people travelled across the country and abroad over the Lunar New Year holiday that started last week.
The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a global health emergency, but said it was not recommending any international trade or travel restrictions.