Science to maximise demographic dividend in India

According to an estimate India has nearly 2 lacs researchers, of 14% are women. In terms of per thousand researchers, India has only 4 scholars, which is far behind even from Kenya (6) and Chile (7). America and Britain have 79 scholar per thousand people.

As compared to 2001, India published four times more research papers, yet it was still far behind from Brazil and China.

These figures are grim indication of our status in scientific endeavour related investments and expenditure.

If india is to take lead in the 21 century, which is also touted as the 'Century of india' by our leadership, the fraction of GDP that goes into science education and research needs to increase consistently over a couple of decade.

The modern research infrastructure needs to be installed in the educational and training institutions. Training of the young population of the country, starting from high school to post gratuates levels, is mandatory in order to exploit the demographic dividend that the country has today.

We lost the opportunity during industrial revolution and still facing the stigma of backwardness. We are facing the danger of lost opportunity yet again lest we did enough to utilise energy of our young population for building a scintific momentum by educating and training our youths. This needs to be done sooner than later as we are already lagging far behind as evident by the information shared above.

(Information source: Patrika)

Are we an innovation society yet?

Innovation is a buzzword these days. Everywhere I go to attend any scientific meet or even in political messages which are aired to masses, this word echo on the air waves. But, I wonder that those on whose shoulders the weight of this word is put on, are they aware of the task being imposed upon them. They in fact remain largely oblivious of its meaning and significance. The youngs of this country are even today largely untrained and thus unskilled to undertake any such task which leads to innovation. Innovation requires a scientific orientation, teaching of basic concepts how natural principles operate and how that knowledge and techniques can be applied to create or construct something worthwhile to solve some of the problems humans are facing. Unfortunately, our teaching and pedagogy methods at schools are bereft any such mechanism that may motivate or open up the layers of inquisitiveness in the minds of our youngs. At present teachings are largely based on how one can garner maximum marks and be the topper in the class and school. Mugging up of the facts has been the way most students get trained, without asking questions why, what, when, and how.
Further, schools are largely devoid of basic laboratories and equipments where the ideas can be tested and constructs or models could be developed. I have seen in most of the places, if we leave some of the private schools/centres, in most of the government schools/colleges/universities, which should be the cradle of creation, they lack basic infrastructure and skilled trainers/teachers to undertake any creative task that may lead to innovation.
In government primary schools the focus is on mid-day meal and school staff remains engaged in catering task and to feed children than teaching. Students after graduating from these schools like even basic reading and writing skills, leave alone articulations and ideation skills. Our focus is clearly misplaced. Food should be provided by the family, and education and skill training by the schools! Are we doing that? So, from the school to the colleges the very minimum requirement to create an innovation- oriented environment is severely lacking. These places must be the hub of trainings for teeming youngs of this country, who we are told make major chunk of our populace at this moment. We are indeed westing this resource by not employing their energies into right direction, and this pains a lot.
A revolutionary plan needs to be created and it's implementation at every school needs to be executed with precision and focus. This should  begin with immediately improving the school infrastructure and palcement of trained teachers and skilled school staff. In placing them qualification and training should be the only criteria/eligibility.  Once we begin teaching and training at the initial ranks in our schools and colleges, we know that an environment for innovation has been created. In this manner if we channel the energy of creativity in our youngs early we can be sure that this energy will create something meaningful and something innovative. The universities and technical institutes would then start getting these skilled, energetic and productive human power and a revolution would churn in those places leading to flood of innovation.
Are we prepared for this movement. This cannot be done alone by the government or alone by the private investment, it will require participation of all the stakeholders, the whole citizenry, indeed.
We have had enough of talks, the question is 'Are we restless enough to embark on this path to revolutionise innovation in this country?'

(Image courtesy globiztec.com)

National Science Day

To appreciate scientific inventions, develop rational approach and use science for nation building

Today we are celebrating National Science Day all over India with great in order to commemorate the invention of the Raman Effect by the Indian physicist and Nobel laureate, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman on this very same day in the year 1928.

Sir Raman was awarded and honoured with the Nobel Prize in the Physics in the year 1930.

National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) in the year 1986 requested the Indian Government to designate 28^th of February to be commemorated as National Science Day in India. Since then it is being celebrated as National Science day.

To increase the awareness and appreciation of scientific and rational outlook, what can we do? Although we have nearly 75% literate population now, but does that mean that all those who are literate will have appreciation of scientific approach and rationality in life.

Day to day activities and events are affected by the principals which are scientifically proven. But do we appreciate the science behind those events and activities.

We know sun rises and sets every day but do we all really appreciate and know the science behind this event. It can be considered a divine phenomenon. Indeed, it is considered even today.

Did we till recently not believed that sun revolved around earth and that is why day and nights occurred, but that is now changed. We now relate it with earth’s rotation. Copernicus heliocentric proposition in 1500s described that planets revolved around sun and earth roatetd at its axis. His famous book “On the revolution of planets:”changed how we view our Universe but it took lot of time to accept that fact. Europe at that time was marred with debates and unacceptance of newer fact anti to church beliefs. The period was labelled as “great debate”  Geocentrism was hard to be given up as earth was considered to be centre of universe and heaven was supposed to be up and above. But we now know and appreciate that science has given us a better understanding how our world came to be and how does it operates today!

But, Here in our country, even today Millions of our elderly worship sun god at the emergence in the wee hours of morning. People have been doing it routinely and worshiping rising sun. Sun rays have been found to have healing effect. In case of Vitamin deficiency, sun rays have been found to promote Vit D Synthesis. If we are late we miss a very natural source of Vit D, for which we do not need to eat anything costly say fruits, vegetable etc.

Take another example of jaundice in new born babies, there could be many reasons why jaundice occurs, but in new born it mostly due to partly developed liver, especially in preemies, that they are not able to degrade the bilirubin pigment from dead RBC and thus it deposits in the skin under fat layer… gives yellowish hue to skin and eye. In western world such new born are treated with what is called phototherapy, process of using light to eliminate bilirubin in the blood.

Advancements in technology have led to a new phototherapy system, Bili blanket, provides the highest level of therapeutic light available to treat your baby. The biliblanket can be used 24 hours a day to provide continuous treatment if prescribed by your doctor. Blood may be drawn and tested during treatment to check bilirubin levels and determine when normal levels are reached.

But neither we have that technique nor we can afford it here in India… so what’s the alternative?

This form of light is also found in sunlight. The strength of light from the bili blanket is about the same, as you would get in the shade on a sunny day. The sun light waves change bilirubin into harmless substances and cures the jaundice in new born.

Should we not appreciate it that science has given us understanding that how rays of morning sun helps us in many ways! …. So get up in the morning and get going…

The sun is science: do we agree and appreciate?

Sun is astrophysics (astrology), sun is geography, sun is chemistry, sun is physics (Gravitational force among stars), and you saw how sun affects biology, for Sun sustains life on earth.

We should appreciate the knowledge our forefathers have generated and gathered over the millennia and use that knowledge to create and upgrade more new information for the betterment of humanity and development of our nation. For no invention, howsoever ingenious, is delinked to what has come before. We, in fact are standing on the shoulders of giants who have given so much insight into these events.

Creating a domain of new knowledge helps develop the nation by helping improve people’s life, how we do our work, increase efficiency.  Say for example we used to learn as children, if one former plough the land in 2 days, how many farmer will plough the same land in 1 day? Now as you know this question has become redundant in many countries, it’s being done by tractors, machines are being used for farming, of course people run those machines but one man can easily run a tractor or other machines used in farming. Other people may do more important other things, or just enjoy life by following their passion, actually thanks to science they can afford to explore those things.

See, actually the development of tools has helped us human to become human. We have branched off from the evolutionary trunk that had chimpanzees as our nearest cousins. You can see many roaming around this campus.

We have today many inventions to count as one of the great, WWW, camera, planes, pacemakers, antibiotics and many other, we may recall many indeed, thank to science! But do you recall the invention of the wheel, which is called one of the greatest invention ever by humans. You now know what role that wheel has played for humanity! Then many other tools, techniques and weapons for hunting and gathering food items. Imagine if our ancestors did not make those early tools, which helped them increase food gathering efficiency so that they could get some free time to paint on the walls, make beautiful drawings, increase the living by making abodes. You today know the importance of those paintings, drawings, abodes, tools in helping us understand how our ancestors lived.  You see how tools have helped us become human that we are today and see our evolutionary cousins, they still are running to collect the food for whole day.  We should and we must appreciate how science has helped us to become the best creation of the evolutionary forces or say nature.

Do you think evolution has stopped?

Look around. You will hear quite often that kids these days are borne with digital gadgets in their hands. Some years from now you will read that some gene has been discovered which dispose some kinds to be more proficient in handing the digital devices! It could impact the hand and eye articulation, how fast you transfer your thoughts into action on a device. We already have examples. The Mark Zuckerberg says coding is although a learned behaviour, some kids have it in them from birth.

So, science is shaping our future. My worry is that are we, as a country and as people, moving with the same pace as the rest of the world is moving. Are we still trapped with our past, is that good or bad? How we decide? Should we not discuss more of these thing in our discourse than other things which not only divides us on various grounds but also pushes us back in time. You see scientifically and technologically, we are far behind than many of the other developed countries. I reason and vision that if we need to alleviate our people from destitution, from diseases, from backwardness, and many other anomalies, we should begin to adopt the scientific temper in our day to day lives, we should appreciate what we have received from the great scientists people like that of Sir, CV Raman, Dr Khurana (deciphererd the genetic code),  Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (born 1952), who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath (2009), "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome; Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar "For his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars…and so on… whether they won Nobel or not, their contribution has changed how we think today about those things they discovered then.

So let’s resolve that we see reason and rationality and develop scientific outlook towards things in our own life and in the life of our nation and contribute to it as much as possible.

Potential Causes of Cancers and Steps for Prevention

Cancer is a diverse group of more than hundred diseases occurring in different parts of body and due to different reasons. Accordingly, their aetiology varies but one thing is common in all cancers and that is they start from a few abnormal cells that have lost the control on their growth.

Our body is made of trillions of cells which have been formed from a single cell called zygote. Usually the cells grow, divide, form the tissue to perform specific function and die in very controlled manner, and that is how a child grows up into an adult. In adults the cells divide only for maintenance and to replace the dead cells and for healing the injuries.

Image Curtsy: medications.li

The growth and division of the cells are regulated by the DNA, deoxynucleic acid, which makes our genes, situated in cell nucleus. If some undesired changes occur in the DNA, called mutation, which is not repairable by the cells, it may lead to uncontrolled division of cells forming a lump of unorganised tissue called cancer. In case of blood cancer, however, the cells do not form lump of tissues. Cancers of different tissues behave differently and respond to different medications.

After reading my last blog one of the reader suggested to cover the causes of cancers so that people can get aware and avoid the cancer by making certain life style changes.

Image curtsy: tginnovations.wordpress.com

According to American Cancer Society, a number of factors may be responsible for cancer including familial inheritance of defective genes, use of tobacco which contain many compounds that can cause DNA damage, the diet, physical inactivity, hormonal unbalance, increased body weight, and alcohol abuse, all can make the body organs prone to develop certain cancers. Further, environmental factors such as excessive sun, ultra-violet, radiation and chemical and pollutants exposure can also lead to cancer development.

One cannot do much in case of inheritance of a defective gene, but if such genes run in the family, the person can go for screening of such genes early and try to avoid the occurrence of cancer by staying away from the stimulus that may activate those genes. Alternatively, the affected organs can be regularly screened for any benign growth, and if needed may be removed surgically. Recently, Hollywood actor Anjelina Jolie’s double mastectomy was widely covered by Global media, which has been helpful in increasing the awareness about familial cancers.

In the present day scenario, westernised life style has been blamed for developing many cancers. The energy rich diet, along with little or no physical activity, obesity and tobacco and alcohol abuse has been scientifically shown to cause cancers. These factors induce a condition in the body which affects the body cells and make them vulnerable for DNA damage. In many people these changes may result in cancer development. The affected person would not know immediately because the cancer grows slowly. By the time symptoms appear and it may be diagnosed cancer may be uncontrollable and untreatable resulting in fatality.

Image Curtsy: healthyfoodhouse.com

One can avoid the life style-related cancers by consuming balanced diet, avoiding energy rich and overcooked or fried meal, stopping tobacco and alcohol abuse and by exercising regularly to stay fit and regulate the body weight.

The pollutants, pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers and other toxic chemical may also act as carcinogen. These days most of the food items are being grown using these chemicals, our cities are excessively polluted and our homes are full of toxic chemicals. These chemicals are scientifically proven to cause severe and irreversible DNA damage which can result into cancer development.

The organic farming using no fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides can be helpful in avoiding the dangers of these chemicals on our health. Governments are implicating policies to decrease the pollution in residential and work area including offices and parks in which citizens should actively and consciously make effort to minimise the pollution. These step may, slowly and certainly, become helpful in prevention of many deadly cancers in due course.

Bacteria do not Outnumber Human Cells in Body

Not Outnumbered by Bacteria

Image curtsy: pinterest.com

It’s often said that the bacteria inside us outnumber our own cells by 10 to one, but another new study claims that is wide off the mark. Ron Sender and his colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, estimate that we have roughly equal numbers of human and bacterial cells – each about 30 trillion. (Biorxiv,http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/036103)The 10:1 ratio comes from a paper written by T. D. Luckey in 1972. Luckey worked out that we each have about 1014 bacteria in our bodies, but this was a back-of-the-envelope calculation and he probably never intended for his estimate to be so widely quoted decades later.Using newer evidence, Sender and his colleagues estimate that there are 3.9 x 1013 bacteria in a human body and 3 x 1013 human cells, 84 per cent of them red blood cells. The two populations are so finely balanced that a visit to the toilet may tip the balance in favour of human cells – we shed about a third of the bacteria in our colon each time we defecate.Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28766-your-guts-trick-for-controlling-the-bacteria-that-live-in-it/?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC%7CNSNS%7C2016-GLOBAL-hoot

Cancer Dwindling the Population Dividend of India

With the billion plus population, India is one of the youngest country in the world with 65% population in the working age. However, this promising population dividend is also suffering from malignant life style related health issues which is silently hollowing the India’s pillar of strength, it young people. The diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular problems and lately cancer has started appearing in the young men and women of this country as early as in late thirties or early forties.

Surprisingly, the cancer has become a significant menace and concern of personal, social and economic life of our people and severely impacting the socio-economic scenario of India. According to a study, in 2004 total cancer patients were over eight lacs, which in 2014, just after a decade, has more than doubled to 18 lacs. Every year a million (10 lacs) people are being diagnosed with cancer and nearly 6-7 lacs die of it annually, while the number of oncologists and specialists to treat these patients has not increased as much in these years.

According to an estimate an average cancer therapy for an individual with lung cancer comes around Rs. 6.5 lacs which is much more than average income (Rs. 5 Lacs) of middle class family. One can imagine how a poor family would remain untreated and left to die an untimely death. Thousands of the patients who receive the costly therapy are pushed deep into poverty.

What can be done?

The individual effort to stay healthy is necessary to beat the menace of cancer and live cancer free. The balanced and simple diet, active life style, daily exercise, routine check-up to catch the disease early are a few step an individual can adopt in order to lead a healthy life.

To increase the awareness of the cancer disease the government and private corporates under their social responsibility should run awareness campaign about the cancer using the social media, television and print media to have wide reach. The campaign may include awareness for early diagnosis, annual check-ups of the prone people such as 40 year plus individuals or those having the disease in close family, promoting healthy life style, especially in urban areas.

The state governments should provide for a clear policy for the patient’s treatment and cap the cost of cancer treatment so that private hospitals or care providers do not charge the patients unreasonable and catastrophic amounts for the treatments including the surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or palliative care. The cost of treatment needs to be made realistic and affordable for the average citizen. Privately funded health insurance or publicly funded health initiatives help the people in western country to meet the excessive treatments cost, while in India insurance remains limited to middle class or upper middle class families, that most of the times not realistic to meet the cost of cancer treatments. The government initiative and funding is meagre and the majority of the people remain unaware of such schemes. Efforts and policy are urgently needed to plug these gaps so that cancer care become economically accessible.  

Enhancing the infrastructure and ensuring the availability of specialist doctors is major bottleneck in the current cancer treatments. A country of 1.25 billion population has only 27 dedicated cancer hospitals and only 1000 trained cancer specialists. These numbers suggest that situation is really serious. Sample this, India has one oncologist for nearly 2000 cancer patients while the USA has one doctor for every 100 patients. Therefore, a policy should be adopted to open more speciality care centres in the area where cancer incidence is more such as in the north-eastern states, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and some areas of Punjab. 

Obesity causes lung dysfunction and breathing troubles by increased cysteinyl leukotrienes pathway

Increased body weight is a chronic health problem which has emanated from the globalized food market and dietary habit. This has led to the different types of ailments which occur in obese individual simultaneously and referred to as metabolic disorders. Metabolic syndrome includes conditions such as obesity, insulin-resistance, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular, and some forms of cancers. Lung dysfunction is also associated with increased body weight in which obese persons feel difficulty in breathing and could develop asthma like symptoms if not treated timely. Many studies have shown that such patients are difficult to treat with the regular asthma medicines, which suggests that probably breathing problem in obese people is caused by different mechanism and is different than allergic asthma. 

Elevated levels of cysteinyl leukotrienes (CysLTs) in the urine of obese asthma patients indicate elevated levels of biochemical pathway that forms this compound. CysLTs are responsible for the inflammation and swelling and can change the cell’s behavior by modifying their structure and function. In fact, LTs are known to cause lung problems in asthma and COPD in non-obese people and inhibitors of LTs receptors or of enzymes that make LTs are used as drug to treat such patients.

In the obese individual the fat deposits in the special cells called adipocytes which grows in number and size upon energy rich diet consumption. The adipocytes secret certain chemicals which attract macrophages, the policing cells in body which fight with pathogens and infectious agents and also some of the body’s own molecules and materials and removes them. In excessive accumulation of adipocytes, more macrophages get attracted to adipose tissue, get overactive and secrete molecules like cytokines, chemokines and also CysLTs which are released in blood and can cause inflammation in other body parts.

When it reaches to the lungs, CysLTs can activate the lung cells which can also secret the inflammation causing molecules and attract immune cells to the lungs. This scenario is similar to the early stage of development of asthma. Over the period of time these molecules can change the structure and function of lung cells including epithelial cells which can change into either mucous cells of fibrous cells and lung function may get severely affected. Mucous cells secret large amount of mucous which inhibit the gas exchange in the lung while fibrous cells affect the elasticity of the lung and lung cannot expand upon breathing.

How obesity causes these changes in the lungs is still not known and scientists are actively working to find answers. The mechanism once clear can help in treating such patients using the appropriate drugs.

Reference: Yadav UC, Srivastava SK. Cysteinyl Leukotrienes (CysLTs): Role in Obesity-Induced Asthma. Curr Mol Med. 2015; 15(7): 598-605.

  

Health Rhymes

Being evolved from nomads, hunter and gatherers, humans aught to remain mobile, active and runners.

Being sedentary is not healthy, that is not us. Sitting and laying make us filthy and creates pus.

Fast or slow but run, jump, squat, stretch, skip twist, bend and turn. Let the blood flow unhindered from top to toe and calories burn.

All them together or subsequently, but must you do them daily.

Call it Exercise, Yoga or Pilates. Practice them and stay away from trouble of heart and diabetes.

To stay fit, healthy, and athlete you must leave the bed, and your seat.

Kill the diseases whether diabetes, obesity, or heart failure. Play and laugh like a kid, do not get stressed like a mature.

Increase in Measles cases in the USA

The recent new cases of measles in some of the regions in USA has sent a panic alarm and social debate has sprung up about vaccination of children against the common contagious diseases that are known to kill many children in other parts of the world. The only way to protect the precious life is by vaccination, a proven strategy against the contagious diseases. The USA had declared in the year 2000 that country was free of measles. However, occurrence of new cases and rapid spread has shown deficiency in the vaccination program.

Measles is a viral disease, highly contagious and can spread rapidly in a human settlement. The disease mostly affects children, and cause infection of the respiratory system, skin and the immune system. The disease develops in 1-2 weeks after the exposure to the virus and some of the initial symptoms include high fever, running nose, redness in eyes, loss of appetite and accompanied with body rashes. The body generally recuperates from the infection in couple of weeks provided no other complications develop.

Image source: http://www.clinicaspace.com/

Although majority of the patients recovers, in some patients complication may lead to pneumonia, and in some rare cases, 1 in 100,000, it may result in measles encephalitis which is fatal. Those who survive may develop mental illness and retardation.

According to a report in 2011, despite an increase in overall vaccination, 6.7 million children did not receive vaccination for measles in India leading to measles outbreak and 29,339 measles cases were registered that year. According to Center for disease control (CDC) an estimated 20 million people get measles Worldwide and nearly 146,000 people die from the disease each year—that equals about 440 deaths every day. Therefore, preventing the occurrence of viral infection by vaccination is one safe way of protection from the disease.

Many scientifically unsound correlation studies have claimed that vaccination likely results in the autism which has deterred many parents from vaccinating their wards. In many state of the USA the laws related to vaccination has been relaxed and option of vaccination has been left to choice. Scientists assert that link between autism and vaccination is only correlational and no causal link between two could stand the scientific scrutiny.  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief medical correspondent of CNN argues that while the amount of vaccine used in single shot has declined over the years and the incidences of autism has increased over this duration nevertheless (see below). This suggests that there is no direct link between the vaccine and autism.  

image source: wfmz.com

CDC recommends that all the children should get two doses of MMR vaccine, starting with the first dose at 12 through 15 months of age, and the second dose at 4 through 6 years of age.

As the age-old adage goes, “prevention is better than cure”, therefore vaccination should be considered seriously for preventing the precious life of unsuspecting children that are threatened by the deadly diseases.

Common Cold and Loss of Taste and Smell

While suffering from a seasonal flu, my biggest trouble is that I cannot get the taste of food that I eat, a condition referred to as ageusia. Sense of smell has also taken a break, the condition is called anosmia, and it is giving me a kind of mixed feeling. Those same food whose aroma and flavour used to fill the nostrils and induced craving apatite, they do not appealing any more.  Have you ever wondered why our taste and smell go awry during sickness, I did!

My bout of rationality returned with a likely reason that probably nature has designed it in this way that during sickness one does not get overindulgent. With likelihood of slowed digestive fire during sickness, eating heavy meals would complicate the body’s healing capacity. This is the reason that one suffering from such sickness is advised light meal and high amount of liquid diet. Although patients prefer to consume hot and spicy soup during mealtime or otherwise.

Image source: vocalcoach.hubpage.com

But what could be the science behind this. It appears that loss of taste and smell during sickness has to do with how mucous has occupied the taste buds and smell receptors. Actually, our taste buds located on the tongue help us in sensing only four types of flavours that is salty, sweet, bitter and sour. But, nearly 75% of our sense of taste comes from our sense of smell. It has been found that the tiny molecules of ‘odour’ when interact with ‘smell receptors’ in the nasal cavity that produces the perception of taste.

As we chew the food item the aerosol generated in mouth gets filled with odour particles and it goes to the top of the nasal cavity where smell receptors interact with these odour particles and generate the taste of the food.

During common cold, flu, bacterial sinus infection, and other condition when a thick mucus layer covers the smell receptors in the nasal cavity, our sense of smell ceases and so does our taste.

Besides the mucus, virus which directly infect the nasal epithelial cells, they take over the host cell machinery and starts synthesizing their own DNAs and proteins. In this 'coup', the synthesis of nasal epithelium’s own proteins including ‘smell receptors’ suffers and also the integrity of these cells is lost leading to apoptosis and cell death. This may be seen some times as ‘bloody’ nasal discharge. Due to these factors the smell capacity and thus sense of taste become deficient for the duration till mucus thickness is decreased and the new epithelium with odour receptors replaces the dead cells.

The remedy? Steam may help loosen the mucus. Soup with herbal mix including ginger, garlic, mint and other healthy concoction with soothe the nasal passage and give some respite.

So, here comes my cup of soup, Cheers to taste buds, I know it’s not your fault.

Stem Cell Therapy: A Panacea or Perturbed Claim!

Stem cell therapy is considered the most promising of all medicines. Many patients with degenerative diseases as well as life-threatening diseases look forward with a pinnacle of hope to stem cell therapy. Is it panacea for all these diseases or merely perturbed claims!


But what actually is stem cell therapy? What are the stem cells?


In layman’s language, stem cells are a type of cells from which potentially all other types of body cell can be derived. They keep dividing and renewing themselves without becoming a specific cell type. Even though stem cells are unspecialized type of cells, they can give rise to all types of specialized cells for example cardiac cells, neural cells, kidney cells and so on which lose the capacity to divide or proliferate. The ‘adult stem cells’ have been identified that exists in our body tissues and circulate in blood. In labs, adult stem cells generally give rise to the type of cell from where they are derived. Now-a-days stem cells are isolated and enriched from tissues and grown in culture dishes in laboratories for the research purposes.

Source: grosovsky.wikispaces.umb.edu

However, initially young embryos were considered to be the sole source of stem cells, called “embryonic stem cells”. In fact an organism’s whole body has been derived from one stem cell that is zygote. After an egg, a female gamete, gets fertilized by a male gamete, a sperm, it forms a zygote which gives rise to the complete organism after several cell divisions and differentiation. The research leading to clinical use of embryonic stem cells has been banned in many countries due to obvious ethical concerns.

Source:www.abpischools.org.uk

The embryonic stem cells derived from early embryo possess the capacity to keep renewing themselves without becoming any specialized type of cells in laboratory as opposed to the adult stem cells, which lose this potential after few division cycles. This could be the limitation of the adult stem cells and may handicap their use in the clinical application.


Before going further to see how scientists found answers to these limitations, let’s see how did scientists thought that stem cells could potentially exit in the adult tissues as well? The concept of their existence in somatic tissue, other than gonads where male and female gametes are produced, came from the fact that to keep the body healthy and repair it from time to time one would require a pool of cells with potential to renew themselves and form different types of cells and tissues in body. The scientists started looking for ‘stem cells like cells’ in the blood and other tissues. Using different stem cells markers, now such cells have been identified in many tissues. In fact, the bone marrow derived stem cells or “hematopoietic stem cells” are the major source of adult stem cells that are actually being utilized to treat some blood disorders.

Source: stemcells.nih.gov

Indeed, unabated growth of cancer and remission of cancers after treatment has been identified to be due to the presence of “cancer stem cells” which are found to be hard to kill by radiotherapy or chemotherapy and bounce back after the treatment regimen is over.


Now let’s come back to our original question about stem cell therapy.


Addressing the road block for isolating adult stem cells and maintaining their “stem-ness” and to coax them to the lineage that one wants, Dr Yamanak, a Nobal Prize Winner of 2012 for physiology or Medicine, identified that normal somatic cells can be induced to become stem cells by modulating a set of at least four transcription factors. Transcription factors are specialized proteins that are formed in cells to regulate the expression of other proteins. These stem cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells).


The iPS cells have ability to divide regularly and can be transformed into any cell type or tissue as regulated by specific set of transcription factors. This discovery removed both the limitations of adult stem cells and has obvious clinical implications. Scientists have successfully tried to coaxed iPS cells from one tissue to transform into another cell type. For example stem cells derived from skin fibroblasts were made into cardiomayocytes by regulating a set of key transcription factors.

Source: stemcells.uct.ac.za

The technological feasibility to make the iPS cells and potentially transform them into organ of choice is complete. Scientists now believe that it will be possible to use the patient’s cells to make iPS cells and transform them into specialized tissue as may be needed. This will also ensure that tissue thus formed may not be rejected by the patient’s immune system.


It appears that stem cell therapy is certainly not a perturbed dream but a potential cure for many diseases and will be a paradigm shift, if not already, in the health care sector.

Does our immunity suffer from forgetfulness?

While studying immunology in college, we had learned that our immune cells, upon infection and subsequent successful immune response create memory cells that persist in the body and through a highly selective process get mature and protect our body from future infections of same pathogen. This is also a basis of vaccination against various illnesses caused by different pathogens.

The common sense says that if there is memory it aught to suffer from forgetfulness. The forgetfulness of immune system came to my mind on several occasions. Whenever, after spending a few years at a stretch in the western countries where high levels of hygiene is practiced, we visit our natives in the India, our first worry is to not consume unfiltered water. Most of the energy, and money too, goes in amassing bottled or filtered water. If it’s not available in the local market, which is the usual scenario because no one buys them there and thus vendors do not sell them, then next best thing is to boil the hand-pump water, tap water being rarity in villages even in twenty first century India.

But if by mistake or in desperation, because water is necessary to live, we consume the normal water, most of our energy, and money too, goes in amassing medicine to combat the aftermath i.e. loose motion or diarrhoea.

What happens that the water we had grown up drinking becomes source of all trouble?

Image source: bigstock.com

The forgetfulness of immune system came to my mind again when a group of scientists recently suggested that in the young children the repeated cause of illness could be that their immune system is forgetful.

World health organization (WHO) says that worldwide one third of total infant mortality is due to infectious diseases! This happens besides the strong vaccination programs being run by the government’s public health department.

As I recalled earlier about memory immune cells created during the immune response or vaccination that get mature by a highly selective process, they also require presence of pathogenic antigen for this selection process. It turns out that in children memory rapidly vanishes in the absence of booster dose of vaccine. The non-compliance of vaccination becomes fatal for these children.

The answer to forgetfulness of adult immune system could be that when we are away in societies where the hygiene level is high, our memory immune cells do not get to see the antigens and they tend to get negatively selected out, a kind of 'out of sight out of mind' thing. Having no specific memory immune cells, these same pathogen becomes “new” and body responds to it as if it is seeing them for the ‘first time’.

Ideally, once a vaccine shot given at birth should be sufficient for long lasting or say life-long protection from disease, but no such vaccine exists. And we do need to follow-up for the vaccination shots to boost-up the child’s immune system and keep it alert and ‘mindful’.

In case of adults, it is probably because immune system is a dynamic process and is shaped by the environment we live in. It's job is to protect us from the pathogens lurking in our surrounding. If, for some reason, we fail to interact with the ‘environment’ our immune memory cells raised against pathogens in that environment get negatively selected out from our body and our immunity become forgetful of those antigens.

Google's Nanobots to diagnose fetal disease early

The search engine and internet giant Google is trying to host a search engine in our bodies by using a magnet based nanopills, which will help diagnose the various disease including cancer and heart diseases. These nanopills will send the signals to the sensors located outside the body which then translate the signals into diagnostic indicators. 

Source: bigthink.com

The pills will be able to identify discrete changes in the cellular biochemistry which will be identified as an early warning to diagnose the diseases such as cancer. This could be a path breaking tool to catch the fetal disease like cancer early.... read more.....  Here

Goodness of Fruits & Vegetables For Health

Ever since the discovery of 'FIRE' our food habit has evolved in such a way that we cook our meals, sometimes char it or overcook it. Overcooking modifies certain food constituents, especially those present in the meat and protienacious foods, and make them toxic. 

The proteins in our food contain amines and aromatic compounds which when heated excessively get converted into various toxic compounds including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heterocyclic amines, and nitrosamines. A well known polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is benzopyrene which is a potential carcinogen. These chemicals are toxic to cells and know to cause damage DNA, the genetic material in our body cells.

The damage to DNA results in various mutations and DNA breaks which may cause cells death or excessive and unregulated cell growth forming tumors. Both of these condition are deleterious to human body.

Further, these chemicals also produce excessive reactive free radicals with induce inflammation in our bodies during damage to the cells and creating a inflammatory condition in body. Inflammation is bad and a starting point to many diseases including aging-related diseases, cardiovascular diseases, various types of cancer and many more. 

Therefore, overcooking and deep frying of food items should be avoided for better benefits of the food that we consume.

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In addition including more fruits and vegetables in our diet is always a better option to minimize the risks of developing these complications and diseases. It has been found that some of the fruits and vegetables which include deep colored berries such as blueberries and blackberries, other fruits like cherries, guava, dates, resins, red grapes, apricots, cantaloupe; and vegetables such as green pepper, Olive, Mushrooms, Tomato, Radish, Chicory, cucumber, Spinach, Broccoli and sweet potato contain an potential anti-inflammatory compound salicylic acid. 

Salicylic acid is a know inhibitor of an enzyme in our body called cycloxygenase-2 or Cox-2. Cox-2 produces a pro-inflammatory compound called  prostaglandins which are known to induced and promote inflammation and excessive proliferation of our body cells. Thus, presence of salicylic acid in our diet will suppress the activation of Cox-2 and thereby prevent any onslaught of inflammation on our body.

The take home message is to avoid overcooked meal so that any exposure to toxic chemicals that may damage DNA and thus our health may be prevent; and include appropriate amount of fruits and vegetables in diet so that natural anti-inflammatory compounds present in them could protect the body from any onslaught of oxidants and inflammatory mediators and promote health.

Artificial Sweeteners Cause Metabolic Disorders

For the diabetics, obese and weight conscious individuals artificial sweeteners (AS) are considered safe choice to help regulate the blood glucose level and manage body weight. Use of AS considered good choice to sweeten the drinks and deserts as opposed to the common table sugar mostly due to low amount or lack of calorie in them.  Because of the same reason many food and beverage companies market their “calorie free” “Lite” and “diet” drinks and food items to cater the need of various “calorie conscious” customers.

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Food and drug administration (FDA) of USA identifies some of these sweeteners as “high-intensity sweeteners” and regulates them as food additive, meaning that they must undergo premarket review and approval by FDA before it can be used in food.  Accordingly nearly six artificial sweeteners have been approved by FDA as food additives in the USA. These are saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), sucralose, neotame, and advantame. The agency considers these FDA approved AS safe for the general population in certain conditions of use¹.  

The use of AS has become more common in general population due to reported ill effects of common sugar including sudden increase in blood sugar, tooth decay, weight gain, obesity, and an array of life style diseases such as hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and dementia among others. The increased use of AS has propelled the scientists to examine the long-term effects of AS on humans.

In a recent study scientists have observed that use of AS may lead to the development of glucose intolerance (GI). GI is a hyperglycaemic state that is linked to insulin resistance and generally occurs in pre-diabetic individuals. AS induced glucose intolerance, scientists observed, develops due to alteration in the composition and function of the microorganism or microbiota that live in our intestine.

The group of scientists led by Jotham Suez² found that when mice were fed AS, they showed altered GI and also their intestinal microbiota composition changed from that of normal mice not fed AS. Further, when the intestinal microbiota from AS consuming mice was transferred to germ- free mice they also showed altered GI and other metabolic defects. These defective metabolisms were abrogated by the use of antibiotics which is known to kill the intestinal bacteria suggesting that the effects were caused due to the changed intestinal microbiota. 

When scientists compared the bacterial population from glucose-fed verses AS-fed mice by genetic analysis, they found that not only the composition, but the functions of the bacteria also had changed in AS-fed mice. The bacteria from AS-fed mice intestine showed increased carbohydrate degrading mechanisms. This means that they can degrade even complex carbohydrates easily leading to elevated glucose levels that may contribute to GI.

The scientists also examined and compared the intestinal microbiota of AS consuming individuals with those who did not consume AS and found that AS consuming people had different bacterial population in their intestine which correlated with markers of obesity and GI. When they fed AS to the volunteers, they showed increased blood glucose levels as well as altered intestinal bacteria in just four days.

These scientific evidences clearly indicate that consumption of AS is associated with increased GI, risk of obesity related metabolic disorders and these changes are not direct but by altering the bacterial community in the intestine. Thus, a caution regarding the excessive use of AS as food additive needs reassessment and in-depth study before being approved for use by general population

References:

1. http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/FoodAdditivesIngredients/ucm397716.htm

2. Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota. Suez J, Korem T, Zeevi D, Zilberman-Schapira G, Thaiss CA, Maza O, Israeli D, Zmora N, Gilad S, Weinberger A, Kuperman Y, Harmelin A, Kolodkin-Gal I, Shapiro H, Halpern Z, Segal E, Elinav E. Nature. 2014 Sep 17. doi: 10.1038/nature13793

Diet and Disease

What we eat affects how we live - disease free or with diseases. Several of the scientific research and clinical & epidemiological studies warn us about the ill effects of artificial, over-cooked, fried and so called fast food. Yet rarely such information impact our food choices or eating habit.

The choices we make with what to fill our platter does not depend on a logical and well thought out decision making process. Most of the times immediate urge to sooth taste buds leads to bad choices. On other occasions real limitations of availability of healthy options affects our choices. In any case we end up filling our tummies with so called junk food, which we know will harm us.

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We all know that eating green vegetables, colorful, seasonal and fresh fruits, and home prepared healthy meals are good choices. But most of us opt for calorie loaded, frozen, preservative added and overcooked meals on some pretext. We spend more or less equal amount of time and money in procuring either types of food items but if only a little thinking about long-term effects of these choices is practiced, we can save ourselves from many health problems. 

Scientific studies indicate that junk food items affect and alter physiology of our body cells drastically and propel them towards a state where only disease can develop. The high calorie besides being stored in body as increased weight, also fires the mitochondria excessively which leaks many highly reactive molecules called free radicals that destroy the basic fabric of our cells, the proteins, DNA and other molecules. These damages are initially small and do not cause major problems. With time, however, they accumulate and till then it becomes too late and managing the after effect becomes difficult, costly and some times irreversible. 

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The plants from where we derive most of our food supply including cereals, vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices possess many molecules, which evolved simultaneously with our own evolution. The prehistoric day-to-day interaction and co-evolution has resulted in a perfect bio-compatibility  of these molecules with our body cells and their functions. It provide certain definite advantages compared to drastically modified artificial meals which contain many synthetic chemicals.

The plant derived bio-molecules have been shown to be effective in preventing and/or treating a number of pathological conditions. For example, studies show that Lycopene, a molecule from tomato, could prevent heart diseases, strokes and even prostrate cancer in humans.  The examples of Turmeric derived curcumin, ginger, garlic,  and some other spices have filled the scientific literature. In all societies and cultures such examples are in plenty, and we just need to take note of them and make conscious decisions regarding what we bring to our plates.

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We must realize that wrong choices and modern food habit is creating consistent problems for our own health leading to increased incidence of metabolic diseases including obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and Alzheimer disease among others. An intelligent choice made once creates opportunity for repeat of similar choices, and same is true if one makes bad choices.

Therefore, our goal must be to eat healthy, live healthy and have a long and disease free life. This indeed is a life long investment to have a graceful aging without major disease and of course bitter pills. The choice is ours and so does the outcome :)