Health

First cousins who marry run twice the risk of having a child with genetic abnormalities, according to the findings of a study based on the English city of Bradford.

The city, which has a high proportion of South Asian immigrants and their descendants among its population, served as a microcosm for examining the risk of blood relative couplings.

About 37 per cent of marriages among people of Pakistani origin in the study involved first cousins, compared with less than one per cent of British unions, said the researchers.

University of Leeds investigator Eamonn Sheridan led a team that pored over data from the Born in Bradford study, which tracks the health of 13,500 babies born at the city’s main hospital between 2007 and 2011.

Out of 11,396 babies for whom family details were known, 18 per cent were the offspring of first-cousin unions, mainly among people of Pakistani heritage.

A total of 386 babies — three per cent — were born with anomalies ranging from problems in the nervous, respiratory and digestive systems, to urinary and genital defects and cleft palates.

This Bradford rate was nearly twice the national average, said the study published in medical journal The Lancet — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The search for a malaria vaccine could soon be over, after an Australian-led trial has proven successful on mice.

The results, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, saw mice develop immunity to  multiple strains of the disease.

We found that if you take blood stage parasite in red blood cells and treat it with a chemical that binds the DNA and then administer that as a vaccine to mice, and you can get protection against the strain, they’ll be immunised, says Griffith University’s Jennifer Reiman, one of the authors of the study.

The vaccine is now ready for human trials, and researchers are hoping adult males in South-East Queensland might be willing volunteers.

If that turns out to be safe then we can go on and do clinical trials in areas where there’s malaria, Ms Reiman says — via redwolf.newsvine.com

It may be possible to reverse type 1 diabetes by training a patient’s own immune system to stop attacking their body, an early trial suggests.

Their immune system destroys the cells that make insulin, the hormone needed to control blood sugar levels.

A study in 80 patients, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, showed a vaccine could retrain their immune system.

Experts described the results as a significant step.

Normally a vaccine teaches the immune system to attack bacteria or viruses that cause disease, such as the polio virus.

Researchers at the Stanford University Medical Centre used a vaccine with the opposite effect – to make the immune system cease its assault.

In patients with type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys beta cells in the pancreas. This means the body is unable to produce enough insulin and regular injections of the hormone are needed throughout life.

It is a different disease to type 2 diabetes, which can be caused by an unhealthy diet.

The vaccine was targeted to the specific white blood cells which attack beta cells. After patients were given weekly injections for three months, the levels of those white blood cells fell — via redwolf.newsvine.com

US scientists say they have made progress in repairing spinal cord injuries in paralysed rats.

Rats regained some bladder control after surgery to transplant nerve cells into the spinal cord, combined with injections of a cocktail of chemicals.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, could raise hopes for one day treating paralysed patients.

But UK experts say it will take several years of research before human clinical trials can be considered — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Scientists say new research into the behaviour of superbug bacteria could help prevent life-threatening infections forming on medically implanted devices.

Drug-resistant bacteria such as golden staph can cause infections on devices like catheters, pacemakers and joint replacements that are notoriously difficult to treat.

A team of researchers from Sydney’s University of Technology say they have discovered how the bacteria behaves and why it spreads so quickly.

The research has just been published in the prestigious US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. — via redwolf.newsvine.com

An experimental treatment to stop the body attacking its own nervous system in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) appears safe in trials.

The sheath around nerves cells, made of myelin, is destroyed in MS, leaving the nerves struggling to pass on messages.

A study on nine patients, reported in Science Translational Medicine, tried to train the immune system to cease its assault on myelin.

The MS Society said the idea had exciting potential.

As nerves lose their ability to talk to each other, the disease results in problems moving and balancing and can affect vision.

There are drugs that can reduce number and severity of attacks, but there is no cure — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Five seriously disabled stroke patients have shown small signs of recovery following the injection of stem cells into their brain.

Prof Keith Muir, of Glasgow University, who is treating them, says he is surprised by the mild to moderate improvements in the five patients.

He stresses it is too soon to tell whether the effect is due to the treatment they are receiving.

The results will be presented at the European Stroke Conference in London — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Are drugs addictive? As odd as it might sound, one scientist believes that they weren’t — at least not to the degree most people insisted. He thought it had more to do with overwhelming misery and depressing environments, and to prove it he created the ideal environment… for rats.

In the late 1970s, Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander was distressed by the laws and policies pertaining to opiate drugs. He didn’t approve of the harsh penalties dealt out to people in the name of addiction prevention. Generally those penalties were applied in order to prevent drug dealers from pushing their product on new people — at which point the addictive nature of drugs caused people to be hooked.

When Alexander looked at the studies indicating the addictive properties of drugs, he found what he believed to be insufficient evidence. There were plenty of interviews with drug users who self-reported themselves as being addicted, but Alexander reasoned that they had reasons of their own to declare that their affinity for drugs was beyond their control. Meanwhile, the relatively few studies done on addiction were highly technical and all relied on one thing: they were conducted on rats that lived and died in miserable, cramped cages.

It seemed to Alexander that the reported increased rates of addiction in economically depressed areas might have something in common with the consistently high rates of addiction in studies done on rats in distressing environments. Drugs provided relief from pain, and if it was the only relief available, it was no wonder that anything — animal or human — would turn to it with the fervour of an addict. Alexander began to put forward a new hypothesis. If rats were given a beautiful living area that allowed them a relatively happy life, they would not become addicted — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Scientists have discovered a way to convert ordinary skin cells into myelinating cells, or brain cells that have been destroyed in patients with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and other myelin disorders.

The research published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, may now enable on demand production of myelinating cells, which insulate and protect neurons to facilitate the delivery of brain impulses to the rest of the body.

The latest discovery is important because myelinating cells are destroyed and cannot be replaced in patients with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and rare genetic disorders called leukodystrophies.

Scientists explain that the new technique involves directly converting fibroblasts, a very common structural cell present in the skin and most organs into oligodendrocytes, the type of cell responsible for producing myelin, the fatty insulation necessary to allow neurons to communicate with one another — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A kidney grown in the laboratory has been transplanted into animals where it started to produce urine, US scientists say.

Similar techniques to make simple body parts have already been used in patients, but the kidney is one of the most complicated organs made so far.

A study, in the journal Nature Medicine, showed the engineered kidneys were less effective than natural ones.

But regenerative medicine researchers said the field had huge promise — via redwolf.newsvine.com