LOWERING HIV RISK FOR SEX WORKERS, ANYONE?

LOWERING HIV RISK FOR SEX WORKERS, ANYONE?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Is there any enthused soul out there who may have some bright ideas about strategies to lower HIV risk for sex workers?

A grim ripper of a research shows the very high levels of HIV risks on sex workers. This research was done across the continents, involving 100,000 female sex workers across 50 developing countries, cross-analyzing 102 previous studies for that matter. The results show a truly grim situation for the HIV/AIDS front, with the sex workers serving as a focused vector of the ailment.

Let’s all face the fact: AIDS/HIV will be with us for some time yet, so no matter what heroic efforts are being done to stave off the pandemic it will wreak havoc on all societies and populations for some time. Unless, of course, that the context will radically change into a global situation where HIV will die out naturally such as the Earth’s sustained immersion in the photonic belt of the galaxy.

Below is a discussion of the said cross-analytic studies.

[Philippines, 12 April 2012]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/hiv-aids/news/study-notes-strategies-to-lower-hiv-risk-for-sex-workers-.html

Study notes strategies to lower HIV risk for sex workers

Helen Mendes

4 April 2012 | EN

Female sex workers in low- and middle-income countries are nearly 14 times more likely to become infected with HIV than other women in these countries, according to a literature review by US scientists.

The review was carried out by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal (15 March).

The authors analysed 102 previous studies representing almost 100,000 female sex workers in 50 developing countries. They found that in Asia, sex workers were 29 per cent more likely to be infected than other women in the region. In Africa and Latin America, sex workers were 12 times more likely to be infected than other women – and India, the female sex worker community was at a massive 50-fold higher risk of HIV infection than the rest of the country's female population.

India, along with Kenya and Brazil have, however, made some inroads into reducing infection levels among sex workers.

"We believe that these examples represent countries adopting necessary approaches," said Stefan Baral, the study's lead author.

Brazil's National STD/AIDS Programme works closely with sex workers to prevent new HIV infections. As well as running campaigns to promote prevention, Brazil offers free antiretroviral treatment.

"Because of their vulnerability, sex workers are a priority group, and we have projects specifically for them," Juny Kraiczyk of the Brazilian Ministry of Health told SciDev.Net.

"We act to strengthen sex workers' networks" and this involves "programmes of peer education and prevention in prostitution areas," he said, adding that such strategies had also helped reduce the stigma associated with the disease that would otherwise discourage women from coming forward for testing and treatment.

This need to destigmatise HIV infection led to Brazil turning down a US$40-million grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2005 because it included a clause condemning prostitution.

"We work under the principle of not criminalising prostitution. We see these people as vulnerable, and not to be blamed for their increased risk. There are [other] factors, such as discrimination and poverty, which result in higher vulnerability for them," explained Kraiczyk.

The Lancet Infectious Diseases study found that in India, the country's Avahan and Sonagachi programmes have successfully tackled a range of structural challenges, through community empowerment, campaigns to address stigma, and the targeting of high-risk sexual practices with prevention messages.

"The disproportionate burden of HIV among sex workers … emphasises the need to increase coverage by increasing scale of prevention programmes and decreasing barriers to access," the study stated.

India is making the Avahan programme, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a national initiative.

"Avahan has shared its approaches, tools, methods and strategies with the government, and many aspects have been incorporated into the national programme," Shelley Thakral, communications officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in India, told SciDev.Net.

Link to abstract

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BIRDS’ FLU RETHOUGHT WITH SCIENTIFIC OPENNESS

BIRDS’ FLU RETHOUGHT WITH SCIENTIFIC OPENNESS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Birds flu struck the world as a pandemic just a few years back, creating fright night panic in some key cities over incoming overseas visitors that are afflicted with the ailment. Indonesia is among those countries hit hard in terms of transmission of the birds flu, and so the Indonesian case could be examined to rethink the health problem at hand.

What makes the birds flu hazard truly alarming is that over 80% of those afflicted die of the disease. It now seems that, on hindsight, the lack of scientific openness had inflated the destructive reach and impact of the bird flu pandemic.

There is over-consciousness about intellectual property piracy of course, which accounts for the behavior of self-constraint among research scientists. How far can that wall of secrecy be loosened up to effect a cross-border clamp down of the bird flu virus?

Below is an interesting reportage about the subject.

[Philippines, 03 April 2012]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/bird-flu/editorials/tackling-bird-flu-effectively-needs-scientific-openness-1.html

Tackling bird flu effectively needs scientific openness

David Dickson

2 March 2012

Efforts to limit publication of controversial bird flu research could end up doing more harm than good.

Last week, a 12-year-old boy in Indonesia died after becoming infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus. His death brought the global death toll to 347 since the disease was first reported among humans in 2005.

At first sight the figure does not look too alarming compared to the many millions that die from other infectious diseases. And although the virus is usually fatal — up to 80 per cent of those infected die from it — the overall incidence of human infection remains relatively low.

This is because most people only get infected through contact with infected poultry. But what if the virus could spread between humans?

This spectre has now been raised by two teams of scientists, working at a medical centre in the Netherlands and the University of Wisconsin in the United States, respectively. Each team genetically altered the virus into a form that can pass between ferrets through the air — implying that a similar strain could evolve (or be created) that could spread between humans.

The consequences could be so disastrous that last year, a US body set up in 2005 to look at the potential biosecurity risks of laboratory-created organisms recommended that papers on the work submitted to the world's two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, should not be published in full.

The argument of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) was that the information could be used by terrorist groups or individuals to produce a powerful biological weapon that could spark a deadly epidemic if released into the human population.

Risks of restriction

There is a strong logic to this argument. Withholding the technical details of the steps required to produce a deadly virus would certainly make it considerably more difficult for anyone to copy the process.

And some have advocated going even further to curtail access to such information with calls for a ban on all research that could lead to new, potentially lethal viruses. Their argument is that the threat such viruses would pose if they escaped from the laboratory is so great that nothing justifies the risk of even carrying out research for them.

But both arguments have flaws. Those seeking publication of the information in heavily edited form risk denying scientists access to data that could play an essential role in preparing defences against the virus, such as developing vaccines.

A complete ban on the research could have similar repercussions. Scientific understanding of the bird flu virus, how it spreads and how it mutates, is essential to minimise the chances of another flu pandemic. The flu virus that swept across the world in 1918 killed up to 20 per cent of those infected, causing an estimated 50 million deaths.

An alternative strategy

The scientific community has had intense discussions over what to do with the papers over the past few months.

Initially the NSABB suggested a solution could lie in publishing redacted (edited) versions of the papers with some of the key scientific and technical data omitted.

Both journals to which the research was submitted have been exploring how they might do this while making full versions of the papers available to scientists who have been vetted to ensure they would use the data responsibly.

But on close examination, this option has presented difficulties. For example, much of the technical data in one of the papers has already been presented at a scientific conference so attempts to prevent its further dissemination may be ineffective.

Another significant objection raised at a meeting organised by the WHO in Geneva two weeks ago (16 February) was the difficulty of reaching an international consensus on the criteria for vetting scientists who request the full data.

Concerns in perspective

Following the WHO meeting Nature said in an editorial that the benefits of open publication outweighed the risks identified so far, and that in principle "the papers should ultimately be published in full". [1]

Similarly the editor of Science said in a recent interview with the BBC that "our default position is that we have to publish in complete form". [2]

A final decision is awaiting further discussion at the WHO. But this position is brave, and correct.

There are substantial public health benefits in as many scientists as possible having access to the data if they are to understand potential changes to the virus.

These outweigh the advantages — likely to be short-lived — of restricting access to prevent the data from falling into the wrong hands. And at present, the biosecurity concerns are "too general and hypothetical", says Nature.

Furthermore, the political sensitivities of deciding who the 'wrong hands' are, and who should make this decision, risk heightening the international tensions that already exist over attempts to limit the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, most recently over Iran's nuclear programme.

But two things are essential if the data are to be made more widely available. First, open publication must be accompanied by an effective monitoring system. This would look out for potential misuse of the data.

Second, the issue needs as wide a public debate as possible, actively promoted by both health officials and journalists to ensure it is adequately informed.

Developing countries such as Indonesia, which has the highest bird flu transmission rates and the most fatalities, have a particular interest in the outcome of this debate. They have more to gain from new techniques to prevent virus transmission, such as effective vaccines, than from restrictions on the publication of these data.

Concerns about biosecurity must be kept in perspective. They are certainly important, but should not cloud our judgement on the urgency of developing adequate protection against an evolved form of the virus, whether natural or man-made.

David Dickson
Editor, SciDev.Net

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RE-ENGINEERING NIPPLE DEVICE TO AVOID INFANT HIV

RE-ENGINEERING NIPPLE DEVICE TO AVOID INFANT HIV

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Breastfeeding by a healthy mother can yield enormous health and adaptability benefits for the fragile infant. However, an AIDS infected mother is a different story altogether, in that breastfeeding brings HIV harm directly to the infant.

Researchers are therefore challenged to innovate on a nipple device that can cut the infant infection by the mother’s HIV/AIDS condition. Time seems running out on the project, as 400,000 babies are infected with HIV across the planet every year.

A very interesting news about the subject is shown below.

[Philippines, 17 March 2012]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/news/nipple-device-could-deliver-drugs-to-babies.html

Nipple device could deliver drugs to babies

Karen McColl

27 February 2012

A simple nipple shield could help breastfeeding mothers cut the risk of HIV infection from breast milk, say researchers.

Nipple shields are often used by mothers who have difficulty breastfeeding, and a modified version of the shield has been developed by a team of young engineers with a view to reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission.

The tip contains a removable insert, which can be impregnated with a microbicide designed to inactivate the HIV virus. The drug would be flushed out by breast milk as the baby feeds.

More recently, the team has been exploring whether a similar device could deliver antiretroviral drugs to breastfeeding babies, in light of changing advice from the WHO. The WHO now recommends that babies born to HIV-positive mothers be breastfed and simultaneously receive antiretroviral drugs, unless conditions are safe for formula feeding.

Globally, about 400,000 children a year are infected with HIV, nearly all acquiring the virus from their mothers. The risk of transmission is significantly increased by breastfeeding.

The only way to eliminate this risk is not to breastfeed, but formula feeding is often unsafe, expensive and impractical, especially in developing countries, where formula-fed babies face a higher risk of malnutrition, diarrhoea and other infections. This is particularly the case in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 90 per cent of mothers infected with HIV live.

A project to develop the modified shield, called JustMilk, was launched at the International Development Design Summit in 2008. The researchers say it may also be possible to produce inserts containing other medications or nutritional supplements.

The project has attracted much attention, including a US$100,000 Grand Challenges Exploration research grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2009.

But Stephen Gerrard, a JustMilk researcher at the University of Cambridge in United Kingdom said more research is needed.

"We have to prove without a doubt that if this device is used by a mother, the volume of milk consumed does not change," he said.

Gerrard told SciDev.Net that trials to test this principle are expected to take place within the next year.

"I'm optimistic that we can do good with this device once we are sure that it does not impede breastfeeding and would not create any stigma," he added.

Andrew Tomkins, at the Institute of Child Health in London, said: "The potential problem with a nipple shield device will be making sure that the dose is adequate for the baby."

FUND HIV RESEARCH FIRST!

FUND HIV RESEARCH FIRST!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Smug! Arrogant! Sadistic! One may quip at the title which makes HIV funding as mandatory.

Let’s all face it, fellow global citizens: HIV is tearing down populations, and the reversal towards an HIV-free environment just isn’t around the corner yet. The contingency of the moment HIV-wise is to make HIV research as tops in terms of funding.

“Cease not the lab researches till the vaccine for the ailment be found, disseminated and effectively curb the ailment!” would be Ceasar-like directive aimed at shoring up resources for the dreaded disease. Maybe we need such directives sometimes in order to get things moving fast and get over with the pandemic.

Below is a reportage from the scidev.net regarding the subject.

[Philippines, 22 October 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/hiv-aids/news/vaccine-research-is-top-hiv-aids-funding-priority-.html

Vaccine research 'is top HIV/AIDS funding priority'

Source: Nature

6 October 2011

Vaccine research and development should be the top funding priority for HIV/AIDS, if global organisations are able to raise US$10 billion over the next five years, according to a panel that included Nobel laureate economists.

A US$100 million per year boost to vaccine research funding — relatively modest, the panel said, and about ten per cent above current levels — could speed up vaccine development, a meeting heard in Washington DC, United States, last week (28 September).

"Even though the vaccine is elusive and we do not have it yet, it's clear that this research has led to an understanding that has enormously improved our ability to fight this disease," said Nobel economist Vernon Smith, of Chapman University, California, United States.

The panel was convened by the RethinkHIV project — funded by the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) — which aims to help policymakers and donors find the most cost-effective ways to tackle the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa.

It commissioned researchers looking at the economics, epidemiology and demography of AIDS to identify a series of cost-effective interventions and then asked the panel of economists, which included three Nobel laureates, to review the researchers' findings and rank them in order of priority.

At last week's meeting, the panel presented its findings to advocacy groups including the Global HIV/AIDS Program of the World Bank, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the US Department of State and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and an international economic advisor, who was not involved with the project, is skeptical of the validity of the Copenhagen Consensus process.

"This … process of evaluation has been misguided and inaccurate from the start on just about every issue. This kind of question, US$2 billion over a year over 5 years, posed in an artificial way to a group of people who may be Nobel laureates but who have no expertise on these issues, has just come up with one misleading issue after the other," said Sachs.

But Bjorn Lomborg, director of the CCC, said some of the world's top economists had showed that there were a lot of "amazing opportunities" to help people have better lives. "HIV/AIDS is not a done crisis," he said.

Link to full article in Nature News Blog

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SOMALIS IN ETHIOPIA IMPROVING HEALTH-WISE

SOMALIS IN ETHIOPIA IMPROVING HEALTH-WISE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Gracious day from the Pearl of the Orient!

Let’s continue with our own monitoring of the drought-famine-hunger triad of calamity that is now raging across the Horn of Africa, with the hope that the intervention measures are somehow working positively this early to ensure a low level of deaths due to starvation in the coming months.

UN agencies, notably the UN High Commission for Refugess and International Organization for Migration, have been monitoring the arrivals of Somalis, for instance, in neighboring Ethiopia. The FAO, World Bank, UNDP and other international organizations have their hands full on the monitoring and interventions as well.

The heart-warming news is that the health situation for Somalis in Ethiopia has been improving overall. Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the World Bank amounting to US $30 Millions had been focused on helping the said refugees, aside from those extended by other agencies.

Below is an update report about the said refugee Somalis.

[Philippines, 12 October 2011]

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/4e734da96.html

Health situation improves for Somalis in Ethiopia; World Bank grants US$30 million to help refugees

16 September 2011

© UNHCR/G. Puertas

DOLLO ADO, Ethiopia, September 16 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency said Friday that as Somali refugees continue to arrive daily in Ethiopia, the health and nutrition situation is improving in the camps they are heading for.

In a related development, the World Bank announced in Washington, DC, on Thursday that it was donating US$30 million to UNHCR to help the more than half-a-million refugees – mostly women and children – in targeted camps in Ethiopia and Kenya get access to nutrition, health and sanitation services.

The grant will be used over an 18-month period to combat malnutrition, provide basic health services (including paediatric and maternal care) and for an immunization programme. In addition, the money will be used to expand access to safe water and sanitation services, and to prevent and treat common illnesses such as diaorrhea, measles and malaria.

"The funds granted today will allow us to expand coverage of essential health, nutrition and sanitation services in the largest refugee camps in the Horn of Africa," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.

UNHCR is highly concerned about the health of the tens of thousands of Somali refugees fleeing drought, famine and fighting in their country this year, especially children. Malnutrition and measles have been blamed for many deaths in refugee camps in recent weeks.

But the refugee agency and its partners have been making progress in boosting health care and providing nutrition to vulnerable refugees in several camps, including those in the Dollo Ado region of eastern Ethiopia. Some of the World Bank funding will be used in these camps.

A UNHCR spokesman said that a measles vaccination campaign, completed two weeks ago, had resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of new cases and related fatalities in the Dollo Ado camps. "Mobile health teams are reaching many families who previously had no access to medical services," Adrian Edwards said.

In the Kobe camp, there has been a steady decline in the crude mortality rate, which is now estimated to be 2.1 per 10,000 people per day, down from a rate of four to five people per 10,000 a few weeks ago.

"When Ethiopia's newest camp, Hilaweyn, opened six weeks ago, the overall malnutrition rate among newly arrived refugee children under the age of 18 was 66 per cent. The rate has now dropped to 47 per cent," Edwards said.

Across all camps in Dollo Ado, the overall rate is around 35 per cent as the nutritional feeding programmes for refugee children have been able to reach the most vulnerable. "We are continuing these feeding programmes as the rate of malnutrition is still high, particularly among children under the age of two," Edwards added.

Meanwhile, an average of 300 Somalis continue to cross the border daily into Dollo Ado from the southern Somalia regions of Bay, Gedo and Bakool. New arrivals say conditions in Somalia are still precarious, with food hard to come by because of the drought. Some are also fleeing continuing conflict and violence.

In the capital, Mogadishu, the incidence of diaorrhea and measles among internally displaced Somalis (IDP) remains a concern and the estimated mortality rates among children under the age of five continue to be alarmingly high. Malnutrition rates have also worsened.

UNHCR has undertaken a number of fact-finding missions to some of the more than 180 makeshift camps in the Somali capital where distributions of emergency aid items have been carried out. More missions are planned.

With colder weather and rain expected in October, UNHCR is working with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on the distribution of some 60,000 blankets to mitigate the risk of hypothermia in Mogadishu and neighbouring regions.

UNHCR is also moving to implement transitional shelter solutions before the rainy season, and procurement of shelter material and plastic sheeting is under way.

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TRADITIONAL MEDICINE’S ASCENT IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES

TRADITIONAL MEDICINE’S ASCENT IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

A humungous lot of peoples in developing countries or DCs are dependent on traditional & alternative medicine. Related updates show that as much as 80% of DC peoples rely on traditional medicine for preventive and curative purposes.

African universities, it seems, have been pretty slow on recognizing traditional medicine as part of medical paradigms and solutions. This is understandable, given the long history of Africa’s colonization to Western powers. Africa’s medical specialists and experts were trained by the West, and so there seems to be no turning back on the biomedical paradigm bias such experts have acquired from their Western mentors.

Gladly enough, the situation today is changing. Traditional medicine has observably been gaining grounds in African universities, and hopefully there would be a co-existence of diverse medical paradigms to fit diverse end-users across the continent.

Below is a report from SciDev.net about the brightening development in the medical fields in the continent.

[Philippines, 04 October 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/traditional-medicine/news/traditional-medicine-gains-ground-in-african-universities.html

Traditional medicine gains ground in African universities

Emeka Johnkingsley

15 September 2011

The number of African countries with national policies on traditional medicine increased almost fivefold between 2001 and 2010, according to a report on a decade of traditional medicine on the continent.

The report, launched at a meeting of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa two weeks ago (29 August–2 September), also found that the number of countries with strategic plans for traditional medicine increased from zero to 18 in the same period, and those with national regulatory frameworks rose from one to 28.

In 2010, 22 countries conducted research on traditional medicines for malaria, HIV/AIDS, sickle-cell anaemia, diabetes and hypertension using WHO guidelines.

According to the WHO, roughly 80 per cent of people in developing countries depend on traditional medicine for their primary healthcare.

Some African universities had incorporated traditional medicine into the curricula for medical and pharmacy students, the report found. Health ministers and the WHO African regional office agreed at the meeting to promote this integration as a way of increasing research in the field.

Karniyus Gamaniel, director-general of Nigeria's National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), said: "This is a very good development … The issue of curricula in medical and pharmacy schools is fundamental as this would provide the right orientation and sensitisation of younger people to begin to develop career lines in this direction."

The WHO regional director for Africa, Luis Gomes Sambo, who presented the report, stressed that having national policies on traditional medicine placed the conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants in the arena of public health.

He called on African institutes to compile inventories of medicinal plants and to conduct research on the safety, efficacy and quality of medicinal plants.

Tamunoibuomi Okujagu, director-general of the Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency, told SciDev.Net that the decision to introduce traditional medicine into medical schools would reduce the cynicism expressed towards the practice in Africa, counteract 'quackery' and ensure professionalism.

"A number of our health challenges require traditional medicines," he said. "Traditional medicine policies are good for Africa."

Joseph Okogun, a consultant phytochemist at the NIPRD, said the integration of traditional medicines into medical schools was overdue.

"Many people in technologically advanced countries use alternative medicine, which includes traditional medicines. The reason for the increased attention is that traditional medicines have weaker side effects compared with synthetic drugs," he said, adding that they are also cheaper and often work as combination therapies.

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GM BACTERIA’S POTENTIAL BENEFIT: MOP MERCURY!

GM BACTERIA’S POTENTIAL BENEFIT: MOP MERCURY!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Genetically modified (GM) bacteria could be the community’s savior when it comes to cleaning up sewers, drainage canals and the likes. A new GM bacteria can withstand very high concentrations of mercury, and so this could just be the salvation for public hygiene.

Stinking sewers surely suck, and I being so sinus-sensitive tend to catch allergic rhinitis so quickly just by smelling the foul odors of badly cleaned sewer pipes and toilet flash bowls. The home remedy I knew all along was to pour a spoonful of baking soda straight on the opening of the bathroom lavabo’s sewer. It works for a while, but the aweful smell is back barely after 48 hours of application.

The news of GM bacteria as a solution to the hygiene problem comes as a great relief for me. The use of baking soda is good old chemistry, while that of GM is new high-tech promises of biotechnology.

Below is the gladdening news about the GM bacteria.

[Philippines, 22 September 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/news/gm-bacteria-may-mop-up-mercury-more-efficiently.html

GM bacteria may mop up mercury more efficiently

María Elena Hurtado

22 August 2011

[SANTIAGO] Using genetically modified (GM) bacteria may be a cheaper and easier way to clean up waterways contaminated with one of the most toxic heavy metals, mercury, according to a study.

Mercury emissions are rising globally, largely from coal-fired power stations, waste incinerators, and the mining of gold and silver in developing countries — where millions are affected directly through mining or contaminated food. Exposure to the most toxic form, methyl mercury, found in seafood, can result in permanent brain damage. The UN is working on setting up a legally binding instrument on mercury emissions.

Biological clean-up methods, such as bacterial leaching, are commonly used for less toxic metals such as copper, but they do not work for mercury because there are no naturally occurring bacteria that accumulate mercury.

Now, researchers from the Inter American University of Puerto Rico, United States, have developed two GM bacteria containing genes that withstand very high concentrations of mercury. Their work was published online in BMC Biotechnology this month (12 August).

"Our bacteria are not only very resistant to mercury but also accumulate mercury to high concentrations within the bacterial cell. Unlike other transgenic bacteria, ours do not release mercury into the environment," lead researcher Oscar Ruiz told SciDev.Net.

The more efficient of the two — which carries a mouse gene for a protein called metallothionein — survived in a liquid solution containing 24 times more mercury than the amount that would kill non-resistant bacteria. In five days these bacteria mopped up 80 per cent of the mercury in the solution.

The protein is a natural 'heavy-metal scavenger', helping the bacterial cells accumulate mercury and protect themselves from its effects. The bacteria form clumps that can be easily removed from the solution.

The accumulated metal can then be recovered and recycled for industrial application, said the researchers.

According to Ruiz, their method would be cheaper and easier to use than existing processes, which rely on removing and transporting large bodies of polluted water to chemical treatment facilities, which is environmentally disruptive because the water might not be returned to the site.

"The approach we envision consists of pumping the water in situ into columns containing the engineered bacteria. The clean water can then be returned to the site," he said, adding that they are looking for investors to develop a commercial product.

José Guerrero, an expert on the use of biological clean up in mining and a professor at the César Vallejo University, Peru, told SciDev.Net that the research is novel and interesting but added that the procedure needs to be assessed on site.

"Mercury-polluted bodies of water, for which the process is intended, are very scattered so they may require the construction of reservoirs of contaminated water in order to treat it," he said, adding that this may make the process expensive and difficult to implement.

Another issue is the approval required for the release of genetically engineered bacteria into the environment, as most countries — except those in the European Union and the United States — only have regulations for introducing GM plants.

Link to full paper in BMC Biotechnology

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BE GENDER SENSITIVE IN BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH!

BE GENDER SENSITIVE IN BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Gender sensitivity in research has been a long standing practice in the social sciences. This isn’t the case though for the biomedical sciences, most specially with respect to observing sex differences in pharmaceutical drugs.

The inclusion of gender factor into research protocols have been quite a current in the biomedical fields though seemingly slow in response to the challenges. The University of the Philippines - Manila and the Department of Health have been spearheading the advocacy for such new protocols since the late 80s yet, an advocacy that came simultaneously with those for traditional and alternative medicine.

The awareness for such sex-factored protocols have reached global scale to date. Let’s just hope there would be quicker resolutions about the matter, and see diagnostics and medications modified accordingly.

A summary discussion on the subject is shown below.

[Philippines, 21 September 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/biomed-analysis-target-sex-differences-in-research-1.html

Biomed Analysis: Target sex differences in research

Priya Shetty

18 August 2011

Diseases, and drugs used to treat them, behave differently in men and women. Drug development needs to account for this, says Priya Shetty.

That men and women are biologically distinct is obvious, but this is not limited to physical or hormonal differences. Sex is strongly linked both to how diseases manifest themselves — their symptoms and severity, for instance — and to how drugs interact with the body.

Sex differences clearly have implications for biomedical research, especially drug development. Over the past 10–15 years, major research funding institutions such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) have encouraged inclusion of these factors into research protocols, and more journals such as the Journal of the American Association of Cardiology are now asking authors to incorporate sex differences into their analysis.

But last December, a cross-disciplinary review [1] of scientific research papers showed that while some progress had been made, the pace has been sluggish, especially in translating the findings from clinical research to practice.

And the need to account for sex differences in research has growing relevance for developing countries, where an increasing number of clinical trials are taking place.

This month, geneticists discovered striking sex-linked metabolic differences between men and women [2], which could affect disease onset and progression. A person's metabolic profile informs gene expression patterns, which in turn affect chronic diseases that are rising rapidly in poor countries.

Women's woes

Women tend to be worst affected by research that doesn't distinguish between the sexes. Through incorrect dosing they have suffered serious side-effects more often than men both during clinical trials and when treated with approved drugs.

Dosing tends to be adjusted by body weight. But the percentage of fat in the body, which is naturally higher for women, also affects how it processes a drug. This is not taken into account in deciding standard doses, or in the information provided on product labels, so women can fare worse after treatment.

Understanding such differences is vital. For instance, in the 1990s, data showed that women under 55 years of age were twice as likely to die after a heart attack than men in the same age group; now, mortality is only slightly higher in women than in men.

This drop in women's mortality stemmed in part from doctors' growing awareness that they might not have the same response to drugs like statins. They realised that heart disease can manifest differently in men and women — they may have different risk profiles, symptoms, or treatment needs on admission to hospital.

The roots of this biomedical bias against women seem to start in basic research, the precursor of clinical trials. This type of research has usually used male animals, to avoid the complexities of the hormonal and reproductive systems of female animals, which would require larger sample sizes to achieve a comparable result.

Challenges in action

Research-funding agencies such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the NIH have guidelines to ensure that researchers guard against this bias, and indeed actively try and redress it with targeted research.

But this is hardly an area of focus for biomedical researchers in the developing world, and WHO guidelines tend to focus on different gender issues (such as making trials culturally appropriate for women).

And even where guidelines exist, there are challenges in implementing them. For one thing, since the terms 'sex' (which is a biological definition) and 'gender' (social) are often incorrectly used interchangeably, many journals and institutions still think of this as a social science issue, particularly since the current focus on the issue stems from women's rights movements.

Few funders devote any cash to the hard science of underlying biological mechanisms that might explain why men and women respond differently to drugs.

And accounting for sex-specific differences in research protocols, and running the subsequent data through finely-grained analyses that are stratified according to sex, will inevitably lengthen a research project. This can use up precious resources and delay the sharing of potentially useful results.

Focus on women's health

It is now well established that major diseases such as diabetes, stroke, and several cancers, as well as Alzheimer's disease, depression and other mental illness, differ in how they manifest, and how they should be treated, in women.

All these diseases are now a significant strain on the health systems of developing countries, and public health scientists expect that this will only get worse in coming years. As countries and donors allocate resources to meet the challenge, they should note that research into chronic diseases will be incomplete if it ignores sex differences.

Personalised medicine, which promises to tailor treatment to people according to their genetic risk profiles and environmental factors, will also need to incorporate biological sex differences.

But the goal is not to provide nuanced disease diagnosis and management for the sake of it — treatment can always be improved, after all. It is to ensure that women's health is taken seriously.

Researchers must not shortcut around the issues of biological sex differences. Focusing only on implementing health programmes that suit women culturally is not enough. Medical research shouldn't keep pushing forward without addressing this fundamental flaw.

Journalist Priya Shetty specialises in developing world issues including health, climate change and human rights. She writes a blog, Science Safari, on these issues. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist, The Lancet and SciDev.Net.

References

[1] Oertelt-Prigione et al. Analysis of sex and gender-specific research reveals a common increase in publications and marked differences between disciplines. BMC Medicine doi:10.1186/1741-7015-8-70 (2010)

[2] Mittelstrass K, et al. Discovery of sexual dimorphisms in metabolic and genetic biomarkers. PLoS Genetics doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002215 (2011)

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NO FIXED PATH TO HIV PREVENTION

NO FIXED PATH TO HIV PREVENTION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Could there be a single, most acceptable path to HIV prevention? This is the guide question posed upon those biomedical specialists and experts who are into HIV research & development as well as to the practitioners.

Long before the biomedical disciplines found the pharmacologic panacea to HIV, alternative health practitioners in Asia already found the cure to ailment which they tried on many patients in the 70s and 80s. Whether the biomedical fields will come to accept these non-conventional solution remains to be seen.

One thing is clear though at this juncture: that biomedical experts are now of the consensus that there is not a single megalithic path to HIV prevention. This is a welcome departure from the extremely positivist premise of biomedical paradigm which sought to reduce disease treatment to a single active ingredient from drug-based medication.

Below is an update report on relevant developments from the International AIDS Society or IAS.

[Philippines, 09 September 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/biomed-analysis-no-single-path-to-hiv-prevention-1.html

Biomed Analysis: No single path to HIV prevention

Priya Shetty

22 July 2011

Excitement about new drug treatment for HIV prevention does not mean we should lose sight of other methods, cautions Priya Shetty.

Scientists trying to prevent people from becoming infected with HIV are on a roll. After a huge leap forward last year in AIDS vaccine research, when powerful sequencing uncovered potent anti-HIV antibodies, new research shows convincingly that treatment with antiretroviral drugs can also be used to prevent infection.

The latest results on the effectiveness of drugs for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), presented at the International AIDS Society conference (IAS 2011) in Rome this week, were released just a couple of weeks before. The finding that PrEP could reduce new HIV infections by up to 73 per cent was so compelling that the trial was halted early.

With such excitement over a preventive approach that we have available right here, right now, suddenly a vaccine might not seem like the holy grail of HIV prevention after all.

But the early days of HIV vaccine research are a cautionary tale. The assumption that a vaccine was just around the corner seemed to lead, initially, to complacency that might explain why it is only relatively recently that other approaches to prevention have been high on the agenda.

And at IAS 2011, there was a broad consensus that pursuing one approach does not render the others redundant — and indeed that it would be impossible to tackle a disease such as HIV/AIDS without several approaches.

Vaccine research gets a boost…

For years, HIV prevention has relied on non-biomedical, behavioural interventions such as condom use and safe-sex counselling. Since behaviour is difficult to change, such tactics are notoriously difficult to implement. Yet, for several years, they were the only weapons in the fight to prevent the spread of HIV.

Once scientists knew that HIV was the cause of AIDS, they were confident that a vaccine would soon be developed for the virus. But they had not bargained for its complexity — and AIDS vaccine research has been problematic from the beginning.

Most disease-causing viruses come in a few different strains; HIV has hundreds of them. Not only that, the virus is capable of changing its surface proteins to evade antibodies. Devising a vaccine against HIV is a huge challenge.

Speaking at IAS 2011, Gary Nabel, head of the US National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center, which was set up in 1999 to find an HIV vaccine, described most of the time spent hunting for it as "the dark ages".

But last year, everything changed, said Nabel. The discovery of antibodies that worked against 90 per cent of HIV strains (compared with 40 per cent for previously found antibodies) has made the prospect of an HIV vaccine real again.

…but existing tools show promise

Even before the resurgence in vaccine research, male circumcision and microbiocide (disinfecting) gels had shown great promise in preventing infection. The WHO now says "there is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60 per cent".

Early clinical trials had hinted at the promise of treatment for prevention. And in the past few months, studies have shown that combination antiretroviral treatment (tenofovir/emtricitabine) reduced the risk of HIV-negative people becoming infected by 44 per cent in men who have sex with men, and by up to 73 per cent in heterosexual couples.

A key randomised clinical trial that was also presented at IAS 2011, called HPTN 052, showed conclusively for the first time that putting infected people on antiretroviral therapy early can reduce their chance of passing on the infection by 96 per cent.

Many paths to prevention

As thrilled as HIV researchers have been with the results of preventive drug trials, the implementation of treatment programmes will be far from simple. Developing countries have too few healthcare workers, and rolling out antiretroviral treatment can be logistically difficult — so adding treatment for prevention will add to already heavy burdens.

Deciding which groups are eligible for drug treatment, which means putting otherwise healthy people on powerful drugs, also raises ethical questions that are not easily solved.

Given these complexities, it would be short sighted not to pursue aggressively a vaccine that would confer lifetime immunity in one shot. Nor should the public health community abandon non-biomedical strategies such as condom use and reducing risky behaviour.

Safe sex is not just about HIV, after all — prevalence rates of other sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in many developing countries, and rates of unwanted pregnancy remain high.

The take-home message from IAS 2011 is crystal clear. After years of struggle, we can now contemplate moving towards ending the epidemic. But we should not threaten the chances of success by playing off one approach against another.

Journalist Priya Shetty specialises in developing world issues including health, climate change and human rights. She writes a blog, Science Safari, on these issues. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist, The Lancet and SciDev.Net.

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