NO MORE OUCH?

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Well, it’s been a while since I dipped into the medical file and I’ve found a couple of items that are very good news indeed.

I realize that I’ve posted before about new and different skin adhesives and if you’re thinking that I’ve been traumatized by tape removal, you’d be right. I also was told a story about a gentleman who’d had exploratory surgery in his torso and they had opened him up ‘from stem to stern’. He said that when they wanted to remove the giant bandage, they simply gripped it at his shoulders and ripped off the whole thing. He said it took him several minutes to stop bouncing!

And of course, in addition to bandages, they now attach all sorts of medical devices to you . . . with tape. Well, I’m happy to report that a research team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) has invented a quick-release tape that has the strong adhesion properties of commercial medical tape, but doesn’t have the ‘ouch factor’ when it’s removed.

The tape has three layers, and the middle layer has different physical properties depending on the direction of the applied stress. It’s like wood which is stronger along the grain than across it.

The researchers employed laser etching and a release liner to create a medical tape with high shear strength (for strong adhesion) and low peel force (for safe, quick removal). Once the backing is peeled off, any remaining adhesive left on the skin can safely be rolled off with a finger using a “push and roll” technique.

This is grand news, because there are more than a million injuries each year in the United States caused by medical tape removal. Such injuries can range from skin irritation to permanent scarring. So here’s to those people who are removing the ‘ouch factor’ from medical tape!

There’s also good news about a real scourge here on Guam. Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a new method to test for latent tuberculosis. They hope the test will be cheaper, faster and more reliable than current testing for the disease.

About one-third of the world’s population is infected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, a disease that kills an estimated 1.5 million people worldwide every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most infected people have latent TB, in which the bacteria are kept in check by the immune system. Patients become sick only when the immune system is compromised. This enables the bacteria to become active and people with HIV are at especially high risk.

Current TB tests work by detecting interferon-gamma, a disease-fighting chemical made by cells of the immune system. Commercially available tests require sending samples to a lab, and can be used just once.

The UC Davis researchers used a novel approach. They coated a gold wafer with short pieces of a single-stranded DNA segment known to stick specifically to interferon-gamma. They then mounted the wafer in a chip that has tiny channels for blood samples. If interferon-gamma is present in a blood sample, it sticks to the DNA, triggering an electrical signal that can be read by a clinician. If the interferon-gamma level is high, a health care professional can diagnose latent TB.

The researchers plan to refine the system so that the sensor and electronic readout are integrated on a single chip. A patent application has been filed for the technology, and the researchers hope the test can be commercialized after FDA approval.

Here’s hoping they don’t charge too much for their test. It’s important to keep the spread of tuberculosis to a minimum!

UNEXPECTED BENEFITS

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Well, the medical file is bulging and when I peered in, I discovered a couple of my favorite kinds of articles, common stuff that has recently-discovered benefits.

One of my favorite Chamorro dishes is mongo bean soup. Although eating it hasn’t been proved to have any benefits that I’m aware of, researchers at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research have discovered that an extract made from mongo beans protects against sepsis, a nasty life-threatening condition.

Your body needs inflammation, that hot sensation you get around bites and wounds. It’s necessary for good health: without inflammation, wounds and infections would never heal. Unfortunately, persistent inflammation can damage tissue and organs, and lead to diseases like sepsis. Sepsis affects approximately 750,000 Americans each year, 28 to 50 percent of whom die from the condition, and costs the nation’s healthcare system nearly $17 billion annually.

Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening complication of an infection or injury, and occurs when chemicals released into the bloodstream to fight the infection trigger inflammation throughout the body. As a result, organs like your liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain become damaged. If excessive damage occurs, it may be irreversible. It’s really important to discover ways to halt constant inflammation.

The protein HMGB1 is responsible for creating inflammation and if you can neutralize it you can short-circuit the persistent inflammation that causes sepsis. Researchers have found that an extract from mungo beans reduces the release of HMGB1. Using the extract, they’ve increased the survival rate of mice with sepsis from 29.4 percent to 70 percent.

Pardon me while I order a bowl of mongo bean soup. I don’t have sepsis, but it couldn’t hurt!

And speaking of ‘couldn’t hurt’ I’ve discovered that when medical tests require fasting that I become extremely grumpy because I can’t have my morning coffee and biscotti. The next item may be a little suspect because it was published by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), a non-profit organization devoted to the study and disclosure of science related to coffee and health but according to their research, moderate coffee drinking just may be associated with a possible reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Their report states that drinking three to four cups of coffee per day is associated with an approximate 25 per cent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, compared to consuming none or less than two cups per day.

Although the statistics suggest an association between moderate coffee consumption and reduced risk of developing diabetes, the researchers aren’t sure why the link exists. Clinical trials are being undertaken to see if certain chemicals found in coffee affect glucose and insulin responses in the body.

There’s also a link here to the last story because some researchers also theorize that coffee contains components that may improve insulin sensitivity though mechanisms that include modulating inflammatory pathways. There is also a possibility that chemicals in coffee affect the oxidative stress of cells, hormonal effects or by reducing iron stores.

One thing is for sure. You ARE what you eat and drink. Do you really want your body to be made mostly of sugared soft drinks and fast food?

Drinking three to four cups of coffee per day may help to prevent type 2 diabetes according to new research. (Credit: © Antonio Gravante / Fotolia)

GOOD DRUGS

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone. While I sometimes feature some pretty dismal stuff in this column, I do try to balance it with some good news and there’s good news from the medicine and health file. Apparently two drugs that many of us take to prevent heart attacks and diseases like diabetes may have other helpful side effects as well.

A lot of us take an aspirin a day. I was started on a regular aspirin every day, but aspirin really acts as a blood thinner for me and now I take a baby aspirin every other day. It turns out that aspirin, in addition to being good for the heart may help prevent another disease that I’m prone to: skin cancer.

Researchers in Denmark studied the effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, like aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen, as well as a variety of other nonprescription and prescription drugs, to see if they decreased the risk of developing the three major types of skin cancer: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and malignant melanoma.

The researchers analyzed medical records from northern Denmark from 1991 through 2009 and identified 1,974 diagnoses of squamous cell carcinoma, 13,316 diagnoses of basal cell carcinoma, and 3,242 diagnoses of malignant melanoma. They compared information, including prescription data, from these patients with information from 178,655 individuals without skin cancer.

Individuals who filled more than two prescriptions for NSAIDs had a 15 percent decreased risk for developing squamous cell carcinoma and a 13 percent decreased risk for developing malignant melanoma than those who filled two or fewer prescriptions for the medications, especially when the drugs were taken for seven or more years or taken at high intensity.

Individuals who took NSAIDs did not seem to benefit from a reduced risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, although they did have a 15 percent and 21 percent reduced risk of developing this type of cancer on less-exposed sites (body areas other than the head and neck) when they took them long term or at high intensity, respectively.

So that aspirin a day (or every other day) may be keeping more away that the risk of heart disease!

Another routinely prescribed drug here on Guam is Glucophage or metformin and Canadian researchers have discovered that metformin has an astounding side effect. It encourages the growth of new neurons in the brain.

The team had done earlier work on a neural pathway with an essential role in telling neural stem cells where and when to differentiate into mature neurons. Other researchers had discovered that the same pathway is enhanced by the drug metformin, not in the brain, but in liver cells.

The researchers conjectured that if metformin activates the neural pathway in the liver, it might also activate the same pathway in the neural stem cells of the brain to encourage brain repair.

Their research lends support to that promising idea in both mouse brains and human cells. Mice taking metformin not only showed an increase in the birth of new neurons, but they were also better able to learn the location of a hidden platform in a standard maze test of spatial learning.

While it remains to be seen whether the very popular diabetes drug might serve as a brain booster for those who take it, there are already some early hints that it may have cognitive benefits for people with Alzheimer’s disease. It had been thought those improvements were the result of better diabetes control, but it now appears that metformin may improve Alzheimer’s symptoms by enhancing brain repair.

New benefits from old drugs. That’s news we can live with!

GOOD NEWS FOR DIABETICS

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone! Well, I’ve been talking about mosquitoes a lot lately mainly because they’re the deadliest creatures on old mother Earth, (except for humans, of course) and we have the potential for malaria and dengue fever here.

But there’s a disease that kills a lot of people here and it isn’t caused by animals. It’s hereditary and life-style related and it’s reached epidemic proportions all over Micronesia. It’s diabetes of course and I’ve got some good news for a change!

One consequence of being a diabetic is that you don’t heal as well as you should. I was told that doctors on Guam do two things really well. One is delivering babies and the other is BTK’s. If you don’t know what a BTK is, it’s a ‘below the knee’ amputation because diabetics get sores that simply don’t heal.

A unique new medicine that starts and accelerates the healing of diabetic and other chronic wounds is being developed at Umea University in Sweden. After several years of successful experimental research, it is now ready for clinical testing. These researchers have found that the protein plasminogen initiates and accelerates wound healing by triggering the body’s inflammatory reaction.

Plasminogen is a well-known plasma protein that’s produced in the liver and found in all bodily fluids. The Umea researchers have discovered the concentration of plasminogen increases dramatically in and around wounds, and it’s an important signal to start the inflammatory reaction required for healing. The level of plasminogen doesn’t increase in the wounds of diabetics, and this may be the reason these wounds don’t heal. The researchers found that when plasminogen is injected around the wounds of diabetic mice and rats the healing process starts immediately and the wound heals completely.

They developed a cell line for producing plasminogen on a large scale and the goal is to start clinical testing as soon as funding can be arranged. The need for treating chronic wounds is urgent. Wounds that don’t heal in people with diabetes affect millions of people annually. Many of the roughly 350 million diabetes patients develop foot ulcers, and in 10-15 million cases this ultimately leads to amputation.

Plasminogen also has great potential for healing other types of wounds like eardrum perforations and periodontitis. It has also been shown to be effective in combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA.

And if you’re looking for a way to help prevent diabetes by something you can do, look no farther than a study done at Texas AgriLife Research. They’ve discovered that peaches, plums and nectarines have bioactive compounds that can potentially fight-off obesity-related diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Their study shows that stone fruits like peaches, plums and nectarines have bioactive compounds that can potentially combat metabolic syndrome which causes obesity and diabetes among many other ills. The phenolic compounds present in stone fruits have anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic properties and may also reduce the oxidation of bad cholesterol LDL which is associated to cardiovascular disease.

Each of these stone fruits contain similar phenolic groups but in differing proportions so all of them are a good source of health promoting compounds and may complement each other. So . . . if you want to be healthy, eat more fruit, specifically those with seeds in the middle? Hmmm, I wonder if it applies to mangos and avocados?

Stone fruits like nectarines have many health benefits as shown in studies at Texas AgriLife Research. (Credit: Texas AgriLife Research photo by Kathleen Phillips)

GOOD GARLIC

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

The medical file is bulging and I figured since you’re still trying to work off all that Christmas dinner that we’d try to find some good medical news. One of the things that’s always fascinated me about Guam is that even though the food sets out in the endless summer heat at any party, there aren’t a whole lot of reports about food-borne illnesses. Now a lot of that may be the result of underreporting, but there may be another reason.

Researchers at Washington State University have found that a compound found in a very common ingredient in most Chamoru food is 100 times more effective than two popular antibiotics at fighting Campylobacter, a bacterium that’s one of the most common causes of intestinal illness.

And what’s the ingredient? Garlic!

Campylobacter may be the most common bacterial cause of food-borne illness in the world. Some 2.4 million Americans are affected every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with symptoms including diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever.

Most infections come from eating raw or undercooked poultry or foods that have been cross-contaminated via surfaces or utensils used to prepare poultry. A compound derived from garlic called diallyl sulfide kills the bacterium when it’s protected by a slimy biofilm that makes it 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics than the free floating bacterial cell. The researchers found the compound can easily penetrate the protective biofilm and kill bacterial cells by combining with a sulfur-containing enzyme, subsequently changing the enzyme’s function and effectively shutting down cell metabolism.

The researchers say that while eating garlic is a generally healthy practice, it is unlikely to prevent Campylobacter-related food poisoning. The benefits come when diallyl sulfide is used to clean food preparation surfaces. So chop your garlic early and often. Enjoy!

Researchers at Washington State University have found that a compound in garlic is 100 times more effective than two popular antibiotics at fighting the Campylobacter bacterium, one of the most common causes of intestinal illness. (Credit: © Schlierner / Fotolia)

I am quite taken with our other bit of medical good news. I don’t injure myself often and I learned long ago that covering minor wounds with bandages is a good way to invite secondary infection. But sometimes you really need that band-aid. The problem (at least with me) is when you try to take it off. I usually wind up with burn-like wounds where the tape was, that are worse than the original cut.

Researchers at Penn State have developed a process that spins starch into fine strands which could take the sting out of removing bandages. Once the process is scaled to industrial size, companies could make bandages and other medical dressings using starch fibers. Unlike bandages that are currently on the market that must be — often painfully — removed, starch bandages would degrade into glucose, a substance the body safely absorbs.

Starch doesn’t completely dissolve in water but becomes a gel that’s too thick to make fibers. To solve the problem, the researchers added a solvent that helps dissolve the starch, but doesn’t destroy its molecular structure. They also used an electro-spinning device that helped stretch the starch solution into fibers.

Real ouchless bandages. I can’t wait!