ThE SCiEnTiSt...

[Yamani]

Assallamu Alikum Wa Rahmato Allahi wa barakatoh,

This thread beithnillah will be related to anything and everything to do with the medical and biological sciences, from the mini viruses, to humans. Will contain the latest important discoveries, and fascinating facts that are of importance to humans..inshaAllah..

I would invited ALL the ScIenCe HEaDs.... in this forum to contribute, and enlighten us ALL with that which is benenficial and extrodinary. And for ALL of those with a passion for science, and who come across anything of great interest, please post it here, and keep us ALL updated. Those of you although who may have intreguing or puzzling questions on any aspect of medical or biological science, please forward them here, and we will inshaAllah, try and point you in the right direction, if possible.

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Bismillahi Arrahmani Arraheem...

I START this off inshaAllah with this amazing recent Horizon documentry about man's medical enemy number 1..or meybe not??!!... The topic touches upon the recent SWINE FLU pandemic and revists many viruses known to man, and why these viruses behave and interact in the way the do....

The documentry is entitled.. Why Do Viruses Kill?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00q2rdj/Horizon_20092010_Why_Do_Viruses_Kill/

[malaika]

jazakallah khair brother mashallah what a great idea, for scientists to help each other and enlighten other taken other degree pathways

[malaika]

Early signs of Alzheimer's are in the eye

Watch video on Retinal Cell death: http://brightcove.newscientist.com/services/player/bcpid1873822884?bctid=61692209001

Your eyes reveal a lot about you, and now that includes the health of your brain. A new way of counting dying eye cells could allow Alzheimer's disease to be diagnosed and treated in its early stages. Many neurological diseases – including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's – involve the death of neurons in the brain, but these events are extremely hard to detect. "It's difficult to diagnose these conditions before considerable damage has taken place, because the symptoms don't show up straight away," says Francesca Cordeiro at University College London.
However, this cell death also tends to extend to cells at the back of the eye, where it is much easier to detect abnormalities. So Cordeiro and her colleagues set about creating a way of detecting these eye neuron deaths.

Exploding cells

Cell death can occur in one of two ways – a tidy "suicide" known as apoptosis, or a messy cell "explosion" called necrosis. In neurological disorders, most neurons die by apoptosis early in the disease, whilst necrosis happens later on.

In order to distinguish between these two types, the researchers used a green dye that binds to a protein expressed by cells undergoing apoptosis, and a red one that binds to the insides of exploded cells.
The team injected the dyes into the eyes of healthy mice and mice with a form of Alzheimer's disease and waited until any unbound dye was washed away. Then the researchers peered into the back of the mice's eyes using an ophthalmoscope – the microscope that optometrists use to look at human eyes.

Adding filters to the ophthalmoscope allowed the researchers to see the dyes fluorescing as differently coloured dots, each one announcing the death of a cell.
Cell rescue

They found that there were many more dots of both colours in the mice with Alzheimer's than in healthy mice, an indication that more cells were dying in both ways in the eyes of these mice. Over time, they found that as Alzheimer's progressed, the number of green dots decreased and red dots increased.

The group hope that their technique could help doctors and opticians to diagnose Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases earlier than is currently possible.

It might also be possible to use the technique to work out how far a disease has progressed, allowing doctors to prescribe the therapy that is most appropriate to each patient.

"If most of the dying cells are undergoing apoptosis, the disease is likely to be in an early stage, and these cells could potentially be rescued," says Cordeiro.

In the mice, her team managed to reverse the process of apoptosis in eye cells that had started undergo it, by giving them the Alzheimer's drug memantine.
Safe tagging

"If this method can be translated to humans, it would be a major advance in our research tools," says Helen Danesh-Meyer, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. "I would be very positive about using this new technique in my patients if it became readily available."

However, Denise Valenti, an optometrist at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, based in Braintree, Massachusetts, is not convinced about a clinical application.

"Techniques that involve tagging or injections can create issues of access as well as cost and safety," she says. But she says the research is "very relevant, especially for developing more effective animal studies of drugs".

Cordeiro says the group hopes to develop a safe marker that can be administered as eye drops and to test the imaging technique in people later this year.

Journal reference: Cell Death and Disease, DOI: 10.1038/cddis.2009.3
WEBSITE: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18385-early-signs-of-alzheimers-are-in-the-eye.html

[Yamani]

Baraka Allahu feeki ukhti,

I had a cellular pathology lecture just a few hours ago, and subhanAllah, we were doing Alzheimer's disease, and how Amyloid depostition plays a part in its development, until eventually patients suffer dementia.

MashaAllah interesting research, and development of eye drops, would definitley improve patient compliance towards the tests.

Jazaki Allah Khair...keep it UP...

[Yamani]

Powerful Chile Quake 'Shifted Earth's Axis'

SubhanAllah, indeed, a sign of the coming of the hour, as our Prophet predicted the shortening of time, and how we nowadays almost always seem to be short/out of time!!




The powerful earthquake that killed hundreds of people in Chile on Saturday probably shifted the Earth's axis and made days slightly shorter, a Nasa scientist has said.

Richard Gross, a research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated how much the axis may have changed in position following the the disaster.

More than 700 people died and two million are estimated to have been affected by the 8.8-magnitude tremor and subsequent tsunamis.

The quake, the most powerful to hit the nation in 50 years, sent shockwaves out from the epicentre 70 miles from Chile's second city, Concepcion.

Buildings and roads collapsed and 500,000 homes have been left severely damaged.

Six aid workers died when a plane carrying them to Concepcion crashed.
The team was on its way to help organise accommodation for those left homeless by the disaster.

Soldiers were sent to patrol Concepcion's streets after mobs set fire to shops and started looting them, hindering attempts to rescue survivors.
If the planet's axis did shift by 8cm during the quake, days would have shortened by 1.26 microseconds, Mr Gross calculated.

A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

Earth days are 24 hours long because that is the amount of time it takes the planet to make one full rotation on its axis, so shifting the axis would affect rotation.

The quake shifted the Earth's axis by even more than the 9.1-magnitude tremor off Indonesia that started the deadly tsunami in Asia in 2004, according to Mr Gross.

This was partly because the fault line responsible for the quake in Chile "dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake", he said.

The different angle made Saturday's tremor more effective at moving Earth's mass vertically and shifting the planet's axis, Mr Gross continued.

The 2004 quake in Asia, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused the Earth to move by around 7cm.

It chopped an estimated 6.8 microseconds off the length of a day, Nasa said.

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SubhanAllah raabi.. wa Assallamu Alikum wa Rahmato Allahi wa Barakatoh.

[Yamani]

FASTING - A DETOXIFYING PROCESS

"O you who believe! fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may guard (against evil)." 2:183


At one time, Paavo Airola, N.D., Ph.D. referred to fasting as the royal road to health and long life. Fasting is a popular method of detoxification because the body can begin extricating the noxious materials rather quickly, allowing the body to commence the healing process. Literally, fasting means to deprive oneself of food for a specific period, usually for therapeutic or religious purposes. Medical journals have presented articles that support fasting as a therapeutic means of ridding hazardous materials from the body (Imamura et al. 1984).

If there is a down side to fasting, apart from dietary abstinence, it would be the caution required as pollutants are released from internal caches. During a fast, the concentration of toxins in the urine can be 10 times higher than normal. After the toxic load is decreased, the body has greater latitude to concentrate upon the healing process.

A professional who understands the detoxification process best implements a fast. Many practitioners prefer juice fasting to water fasting, believing the juices expedite the process of detoxification and impose less stress upon the individual. (It is recommended that juices be diluted with distilled water.) Also, a professional will know how to deal with a Herxheimer's reaction, which alludes to symptoms initially appearing more intensified as toxins are freed. The nervous system is particularly vulnerable to the release of fat-soluble toxins.

Some individuals who fast report being energized, but this usually occurs after repeated short fasts have eliminated many of the toxins and the internal milieu is cleaner.

The initial fasting experience in a toxic individual most often produces a feeling of fatigue, as the body does battle with the poisons. For this reason, working individuals may wish to plan a short fast (with the aid of their healthcare professional) over a weekend when the workload is lighter. The body is extremely engaged as noxious materials are being extracted. Conversely, the digestion of foodstuffs requires a tremendous work effort; therefore, a sabbatical from food allows the body the energy for detoxification.

Starting a fast and breaking a fast require special guidance, so that the cleansing effort is not lost by inappropriate binge eating. Fasting is not for everyone; a hypoglycemic often finds it extremely difficult to fast, even for short periods of time. A guided fast may, however, prove a valid therapy for some individuals wishing to expedite the detoxification process.

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http://www.lef.org/protocols/prtcl-143a.shtml

[el_arabiyah]

Reply back to the Alzhemiers thread,


REad something previously on this topic and recently clinical trials were focusing on the use of non steriod drug are holding a promising results in reducing Alzhemiers early signs. They did say that the use of IBurofen would reduce the production of amyploid peptides. This molecules are the ones responsible or they trigger the early signs of behavioral disorder. In one of the trails if i could remember wot i read they found that when the subjects were given ibuprofen they were less likely to develop the Alzheimers symptoms.But an interesting thing that facinated me was, yes this drugs will reduce the symptoms but its for short term ie it can not be said it would not lead to a complete cure.
At the same time if they found in that study that this subjects later on developed dementia subhanalah ...

Again we know or at least the ones who r doing pharamcology that NSAID drugs have side effects which can not are causing problems to lots of researchers...

Anwaz mashalah keep up the good posts..Btw lets have some chemistry into this thread inshalah

[malaika]

Want to get off to sleep? Ask your astrocytes nicely

IF YOU'RE feeling sleepy, it might be thanks to your astrocytes. This group of brain cells, long assumed to play a mere housekeeping role, may actually be responsible for controlling when we fall asleep, by releasing a chemical called adenosine.

"One of the leading theories of sleep generation comes from the observation that there is an accumulation of adenosine [in the brain] during waking, and that this adenosine decreases during subsequent sleep," says Tommaso Fellin at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. Adenosine is thought to suppress neurons which usually stimulate the cortex and keep it, and so us, awake. However, he says, "the cellular source of this adenosine has long been overlooked".

Astrocytes play a key role in providing neurons with nutrients and aiding cell repair. In addition, unlike neurons that control immediate brain activity, astrocytes are thought to modulate longer-term activity by regulating communication between neurons. Because sleep pressure - the physiological mechanisms that result in the need to sleep - also builds up over a prolonged period of time, Fellin and Michael Halassa, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues, decided to investigate whether astrocytes might be the source of the adenosine that may drive the urge to sleep.

They used mice which had been genetically engineered to stop releasing adenosine from their astrocytes in response to an antibiotic in their food. Suppressing levels of adenosine reduced the length of sleep the mice took after being deprived of shut-eye for 6 hours, and prevented some of the cognitive defects associated with sleep loss (Neuron, DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.11.024).

"Our research suggests that these cells are responsible for adenosine accumulation" and the regulation of sleep, says Fellin, who presented the results at the Forum of European Neuroscience in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, last week.

"This is exactly the type of function that astrocytes would be expected to perform," says Douglas Fields at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. "Astrocytes communicate slowly and on larger spatial scales than neurons. They are well suited to have a more global influence on brain function.

"These brain cells are well suited to have a large, global influence on brain function".

The finding opens up new avenues for treating sleep disorders or keeping people awake longer.

Website: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727693.900-want-to-get-off-to-sleep-ask-your-astrocytes-nicely.html