TB infection rates set to 'turn clock back to 1930s'

Special edition to mark World TB day maps new issues and approaches to curbing spread of infection

2013-02-12

(Press-News.org) During the 1930s, dedicated sanitaria and invasive surgery were commonly prescribed for those with the infection - usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which the editors describe as "the most successful human pathogen of all time."

TB often lies dormant with no symptoms, but in a proportion of cases, becomes active, predominantly attacking the lungs. But it can also affect the bones and nervous system, and if left untreated can be fatal.

The infection is developing increasing resistance around the world to the powerful drugs currently used to treat it.

"Whatever we may have once optimistically thought, TB remains with death, taxes and political chicanery as being inevitable, unavoidable and deeply unpleasant," write the joint editors, Andy Bush and Ian Pavord.

"It shows every sign of weathering the storm and superb randomised controlled trials, to emerge in ever-increasingly drug-resistant forms, potentially turning the clock back to the 1930s," they say.

"This edition of Thorax, coinciding with world TB day, is themed to recognise the ongoing sinister successes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, unarguably the most successful human pathogen of all time," they conclude.

The issue contains international research papers, looking at a broad range of issues, from the risk of TB after seroconversion to HIV infection, to the impact of ethnicity on the pattern of disease.

### END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Computerized 'Rosetta Stone' reconstructs ancient languages

2013-02-12

University of British Columbia and Berkeley researchers have used a sophisticated new computer system to quickly reconstruct protolanguages – the rudimentary ancient tongues from which modern languages evolved. The results, which are 85 per cent accurate when compared to the painstaking manual reconstructions performed by linguists, will be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We're hopeful our tool will revolutionize historical linguistics much the same way that statistical analysis and computer power revolutionized the study ...

Unchecked antibiotic use in animals may affect global human health

2013-02-12

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The increasing production and use of antibiotics, about half of which is used in animal production, is mirrored by the growing number of antibiotic resistance genes, or ARGs, effectively reducing antibiotics' ability to fend off diseases – in animals and humans. A study in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that China – the world's largest producer and consumer of antibiotics – and many other countries don't monitor the powerful medicine's usage or impact on the environment. On Chinese commercial pig ...

Potential treatment prevents damage from prolonged seizures

2013-02-12

A new type of prophylactic treatment for brain injury following prolonged epileptic seizures has been developed by Emory University School of Medicine investigators. Status epilepticus, a persistent seizure lasting longer than 30 minutes [check this, some people say FIVE], is potentially life-threatening and leads to around 55,000 deaths each year in the United States. It can be caused by stroke, brain tumor or infection as well as inadequate control of epilepsy. Physicians or paramedics now treat status epilepticus by administering an anticonvulsant or general anesthesia, ...

Isotopic data show farming arrived in Europe with migrants

2013-02-12

MADISON – For decades, archaeologists have debated how farming spread to Stone Age Europe, setting the stage for the rise of Western civilization. Now, new data gleaned from the teeth of prehistoric farmers and the hunter-gatherers with whom they briefly overlapped shows that agriculture was introduced to Central Europe from the Near East by colonizers who brought farming technology with them. "One of the big questions in European archaeology has been whether farming was brought or borrowed from the Near East," says T. Douglas Price, a University of Wisconsin-Madison ...

Sunlight stimulates release of climate-warming gas from melting Arctic permafrost

2013-02-12

ANN ARBOR — Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought. University of Michigan ecologist and aquatic biogeochemist George Kling and his colleagues studied places in Arctic Alaska where permafrost is melting and is causing the overlying land surface to collapse, forming erosional holes and landslides and exposing long-buried soils to sunlight. They found that ...

Chemistry trick kills climate controversy

2013-02-12

Volcanoes are well known for cooling the climate. But just how much and when has been a bone of contention among historians, glaciologists and archeologists. Now a team of atmosphere chemists, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen, has come up with a way to say for sure which historic episodes of global cooling were caused by volcanic eruptions. The answer lies in patterns of isotopes found in ancient volcanic sulfur trapped in ice core, patterns due to stratospheric photochemistry. Their mechanism is published in the highly recognized ...

Vascular brain injury greater risk factor than amyloid plaques in cognitive aging

2013-02-12

Vascular brain injury from conditions such as high blood pressure and stroke are greater risk factors for cognitive impairment among non-demented older people than is the deposition of the amyloid plaques in the brain that long have been implicated in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, a study by researchers at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at UC Davis has found. Published online early today in JAMA Neurology (formerly Archives of Neurology), the study found that vascular brain injury had by far the greatest influence across a range of cognitive domains, ...

CSHL scientists identify a new strategy for interfering with a potent cancer-causing gene

2013-02-12

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive blood cancer that is currently incurable in 70% of patients. In a bold effort, CSHL scientists are among those identifying and characterizing the molecular mechanisms responsible for this cancer in order to generate potential new therapeutics. CSHL Assistant Professor Christopher Vakoc, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues, including the group of Professor Robert Roeder Ph.D. at The Rockefeller University, report the characterization of a protein required for AML in a paper published today in the Proceedings ...

Stem cell discovery gives insight into motor neurone disease

2013-02-12

A discovery using stem cells from a patient with motor neurone disease could help research into treatments for the condition. The study used a patient's skin cells to create motor neurons - nerve cells that control muscle activity - and the cells that support them called astrocytes. Researchers studied these two types of cells in the laboratory. They found that a protein expressed by abnormalities in a gene linked to motor neurone disease, which is called TDP-43, caused the astrocytes to die. The study, led by the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Motor Neurone ...

High prevalence of drug-resistant MRSA found in nursing homes

2013-02-12

While most infection control measures are focused on hospitals, a new study points to the need for more targeted interventions to prevent the spread of drug-resistant bugs in nursing homes as community-associated strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are on the rise in these facilities. The study is published in the March issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. CA-MRSA is a growing cause of invasive disease, including bloodstream infections, abscesses, and pneumonia. ...

Bioactive polyphenolic compounds and in vitro anti-degenerative property-based pharmacological propensities of some promising germplasms of Amaranthus hypochondriacus L.

AI-powered companionship: PolyU interfaculty scholar harnesses music and empathetic speech in robots to combat loneliness

One strategy to block both drug-resistant bacteria and influenza: new broad-spectrum infection prevention approach validated

Survey: 3 in 4 skip physical therapy homework, stunting progress

[Press-News.org] TB infection rates set to 'turn clock back to 1930s'
Special edition to mark World TB day maps new issues and approaches to curbing spread of infection

TB infection rates set to 'turn clock back to 1930s'

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: