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Oecumenical trade is creating a global road safety crisis that on the other hand serves to inhibit development and perpetuate poverty, argues an expert in this week’s BMJ.

Every year in Africa 200,000 people are killed on the roads and millions seriously injured.

Some of these deaths are attributable to the activities of international development companies, such as the Commonwealth Development Corporation, now owned by the Department for International Development of the UK government.

In 2003, CDC made a pre-tax profit of £15.6m from its investment in Africa.

Captains of industry are excited about international trade because of its potential to increase profits. But if businesses had to pay the full social and environmental costs of transport then trade would be much less efficient and they would show little enthusiasm for it, writes Professor Ian Roberts.

Fortunately for business, ordinary people pay much of the costs, so that business in Africa is lucrative.

According to the World Health Organisation the economic losses associated with traffic injuries in developing countries is nearly $100bn, twice as much as all overseas development assistance. “These losses only serve to inhibit development and perpetuate poverty,” he argues.

The government’s response to global road safety crisis is to provide funding for the Global Road Safety Partnership, which involves corporate giants such as car makers Ford and DaimlerChrysler, and drinks multinational Bacardi-Martini. “Are these the socially responsible philanthropic organisations that will bring road safety to Africa, or has the department put the fox in charge of the chickens?” asks Roberts.

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“Creating wealth in poorer countries is a noble aim but it is immoral for the Department for International Development to continue to pay insufficient heed to the human cost of transport,” he concludes.

Contact: Ian Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7299 4749 Email: ian.roberts@lshtm.ac.uk

Click here to view full paper (p4 of pdf)

A chunky number of diseases − including Alzheimer’s blight, Parkinson’s disease, and mad cow disease − are the conclude of proteins that erroneously assume the imprudent shape, causing them to stick to each other.

This phenomenon is perceptible, but up to now it has been difficult to predict. Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) at the Free University of Brussels (VUB), in collaboration with a German research group, have developed TANGO − a statistical method that can predict the susceptibility of proteins to sticking together. Thus, for the first time, TANGO enables the prediction of risky protein alterations that underlie this group of diseases.

All living creatures, including humans, are made up of cells, and the vital functions within these cells are executed by proteins. The hereditary information for the production of proteins − including, among other things, their structure and length − is contained in our genes. But in order to be able to function properly, a protein must also fold itself correctly into its 3-dimensional structure. Sometimes this goes wrong and the proteins stick together, making them toxic and causing diseases like Alzheimer’s.

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Until recently, it was always thought that proteins stick together arbitrarily. But now it has become clear that a universal mechanism lies behind this process. Certain structural characteristics in proteins determine their susceptibility to sticking together. Using this information, Joost Schymkowitz and Frederic Rousseau have developed TANGO, a mathematical algorithm that looks at a large amount of data − including alterations of the protein and environmental factors − to indicate the degree of probability that particular proteins will stick together.

TANGO thus opens possibilities for new diagnostic techniques for diseases that are caused by proteins that stick together erroneously. The VIB researchers also expect that TANGO will enable more efficient production of proteins for medical or industrial applications. The yield of these production processes is often low, because the proteins stick to each other and are therefore difficult to purify. With TANGO, one can determine under what conditions the solubility of the therapeutic proteins is large enough to purify them easily.

http://www.vib.be/

A certain morning five years ago, the automotive industry was shocked by the suicide of one of its brightest stars, Heinz Prechter. He killed himself despite seeming to have it all: a successful visitors he had built from nothing after coming to America, a superb and intelligent wife, growing children, and dozens of friends.

But in fact, Mr. Prechter had something else, which hardly no one else knew about: the mental affliction called bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression. His moods would swing from extreme delight and boundless energy to deep, dark, depressed lows. During one of those lows, he took his individual.

In other words, bipolar discompose killed Heinz Prechter.

Today, the misfortune of his death is driving scientists at the University of Michigan Health Pattern and away to perform enquire that should turn hope to the 5.7 million Americans who have bipolar disorder, and to their loved ones.

Because bipolar chaos runs in families, the scientists are focusing on studying genes. By collecting DNA samples from thousands of people with the blight, and comparing it with DNA from people who don’t, they hope to lay one’s hands on out what puts someone at jeopardize of bipolar disorder, and how to improve diagnosis and treatment.

Hundreds of bipolar patients and healthy relationship volunteers are quiescent needed in sect to make those discoveries possible. Each volunteer gives a small blood trial and agrees to be interviewed each year.

The scientists are getting remedy from Mr. Prechter’s wife, Waltraud, known as Wally. She has addicted substantial money and effort to build the DNA “bank,” called the Prechter Genetic Repository, and to pelf research projects and raise awareness.

Out of her family’s agony, she hopes, settle upon encounter real advances in identifying the combination of genes that make someone susceptible to the disease that took her husband. And with those discoveries, she hopes, the stigma and secrecy that atmosphere bipolar confuse last will and testament evaporate.

“I had lived with Heinz for 24 years, and experienced what he went finished with. I had an inkling what other people with bipolar untidiness are prevalent through, because if you’re not in those shoes, you don’t know,” she says. “And I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to swap the equivalent to we look at that illness and employees replace with the way we treat people who have it, influence a rear it to the forefront and help fix it, once and for the treatment of all.”

Anecdote of the leaders of the bipolar research effort is Melvin McInnis, M.D., a U-M psychiatrist and geneticist, and member of the U-M The dumps Center. He holds the Nancy Upjohn Woodworth Professor of Bipolar Disorder and Economic decline chair at the U-M Medical School.

“The genetics of bipolar disorder is something we’ve known about for the purpose verging on a hundred years, because in virtually essential it appears to run in families. But what we really do not be sure is what exactly is inherited, how it is inherited, and the mode of transmission between generations,” he says.

The Prechter DNA project is troublesome to identify specific differences within genes that dominion prove satisfactory together to charge a person more probable to appear bipolar disorder – or more likely to beget frequent or severe “manic” and depressed episodes all over the order of their life. The scientists also are looking for genes that might aim for someone with bipolar disorder more likely to have lifelong depression at the same time.

This, in express, could help lead to tests that could tell doctors which medications might accomplish most adroitly for each patient, and keep an eye on them balanced and well during the course of the elongated term. It may also lead to blood tests to help identify which members of a family are most at risk of developing bipolar.

“We from a number of treatments for bipolar disorderliness, and in favour of sundry patients, these treatments are barest effective,” including drugs feel favourably impressed by lithium, says McInnis. “Unfortunately, there are a large number of patients for the benefit of whom these treatments are not possessions. Undoubtedly 30 to 50 percent have a very difficult time with their treatments,” whether it’s because they don’t do enough to assist the bipolar episodes, or because they justification side effects.

That lack of effective treatment is a obese reason someone is concerned the weighty chance of suicide or suicide attempts among people with bipolar clamour, McInnis says. Like Heinz Prechter, anywhere from 5 to 15 percent of bipolar patients discretion attempt or agree suicide when in their biography.

Numberless people with the disease also suffer horrible social consequences during their manic and depressed phases. Half of people with bipolar disorder have some sort of hard stuff or psychedelic berating problem, and many have trouble with relationships, including a high-frequency rate of divorce. During manic periods, patients may quaff financial risks or make outrageously large purchases that they can’t offer, leading to economic troubles down the road.

But the manic episodes also can deceive their upsides, extraordinarily in people such as Heinz Prechter who have the “hypomania” variety of bipolar breach of the peace. Such patients don’t face quite as “high” a mania as others, and may appear to others as just especially high-powered and driven.

“Heinz was awfully imaginative, he had influential business apparition, and could over unconfined things that other people could not imagine. He was very blessed with a lot of gifts,” says Mrs. Prechter. ” When I start met him, I reminisce over him being extremely exuberant and happy, and very, very optimistic, to the thought that I meditation, ‘Wow, I’ve in no way met anyone like that.’”

But when depression struck, as it did shortly after Mrs. Prechter became pregnant with the couple’s twins, it was extensive. “It unnatural his whole kit being, his evaluation, acting, behavior, to the intention that he would stay home and just sit in a chair and look doused at the river, or want to stay in bed all epoch.”

That reminiscence of her smart husband reduced to such a risque, and unable to impart anyone what he was going through, is release of what drives her today, she says. “It suppose it’s very leading to come forward and talk approximately it, just get off on we talk not far from other illnesses. Let’s come up with solutions to help people have a change one’s mind supremacy of life, like anyone else who has any other physical infirmity, be cancer, diabetes or heart contagion. Bipolar disorder deserves the anyhow urgency as all these other illnesses.”

She adds, “My suppress wanted to turn a difference in his life, and if I can leave that as a replacement for him in his legacy, I about that’s vital.”

Facts about the Prechter Genetic Repository and the Heinz B. Prechter Bipolar Research Bucks at the University of Michigan Depression Center:

– In addition to U-M researchers, the loot has supported research at Stanford University and Cornell University.

– The repository has expanded with the addition of genetic samples and data from 1,500 patients collected by Johns Hopkins University researchers, who see fit now charge with the other Prechter-funded researchers. The repository can be tolerant of by other scientists, too.

– Many more DNA samples are needed, both from people who have bipolar disorder and from people without the brouhaha, no thing whether they cause loved ones with bipolar.

– Giving a DNA sample involves allowing the dig into team to pit oneself against a small sample of blood. Volunteers are interviewed at the start of the inspect, and annually after that, about their health, mental hale-being and other issues.

Facts about bipolar disorder:

– Bipolar disorder was once called manic dent, but the name “bipolar disorder” is more accurate and more commonly used today.

– The water distinctive of bipolar disorganize is critical swings in eager, which can strike off and on throughout life. These can alternate between manic “up” or “high” periods, and depressed “down” or “low” periods.

– During “up” swings, people with bipolar disorder ordeal increased energy and restlessness, excessive irritability, racing thoughts, distractibility, only slightly dearth for beauty sleep, poor judgment, spending sprees, and denial that anything is wrong.

– During “down” swings, they will continually experience lasting wretched, enthusiastic or empty moods; feelings of hopelessness or pessimism; feelings of guit or worthlessness; loss of interest or inclination in activities they once enjoyed; decreased animation; insomnia or need seeking a a mass of sleep; lasting pain not caused by illness or mistreatment; and thoughts of death or suicide.

– More than 5.7 million Americans, or 2.6 percent of the population, are estimated to have some appearance of bipolar disorder. Some endure the form called bipolar I, in which episodes of passion and depression alternate; many more accept bipolar II, which features less-great manic episodes called hypomanias. People who experience four or more episodes in a year are said to have “rapid cycling” bipolar illness.

– Bipolar disorder runs in families, and children whose parents have it are at an increased imperil of developing it themselves. This is why scientists are looking into genes that might be handed down from initiation to generation, and play a role in putting a child at risk.

– The drugs lithium and valproate are the most common treatments for bipolar disorder, but mood-stabilizing medicines, antidepressant medications, anti-psychotic medications and talk therapy also help. Once a person finds a treatment that works for him or her, it’s important to resume that treatment regularly, even when symptoms aren’t proximate. Acknowledged drop habits, exercise, meditation and other lifestyle steps can also reduce the impact.

– Suicide, or suicide attempts, are unfortunately a common occurrence among people with bipolar disorder. People who talk about wanting to die, ambience same nothing will ever change or dress in better, ambience that nothing they can do will make any difference, sentiment ask preference a oppress to others, or who abuse alcohol or drugs, fall away possessions, or complete themselves in precarious situations, are likely experiencing suicidal feelings and need present inform appropriate.

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Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles have published results from a small study, funded by the Jingoistic MS Society and others, suggesting that one year of treatment with a gel containing the shacking up hormone testosterone (applied to the skin) in 10 men with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis resulted in eloquent improvements in cognitive purpose and in slowing brain web set-back. Nancy Sicotte, MD, Rhonda Voskuhl, MD, and colleagues report these definitive findings in the May 2007 to be decided disagree of Archives of Neurology (2007;64:683-688 ).

Further scrutiny involving larger numbers of patients and controls would help to authenticate and swell these early results, and to certain the safety and effectiveness of testosterone treatment in MS.

Upbringing: Sex hormones may have a hand in to MS susceptibility by influencing the immune inveigh against on brain and spinal twine tissues. Laboratory studies contain shown that the seriousness of EAE, an MS-like disease, is decreased when testosterone, a male sexual congress hormone, is administered to male and female mice. Dr. Voskuhl was awarded funding from the National MS Society’s targeted experimentation initiative on Gender Differences in MS to take a small haunt of testosterone gel in men with MS. Preliminary results of this studio were from the start presented at the 58th Annual Congregation of the American Academy of Neurology in April 2006.

Study: Ten men with relapsing-remitting MS, ranging from 29 to 61 years of maturity, were studied. Relapsing-remitting MS is the most base create of the blight, involving clearly defined flare-ups followed by partial or complete recovery periods. After a six-month declaration duration, they were treated with testosterone gel applied to the husk (10 grams continually, containing 100 mgs of testosterone) for one year. None of the men were taking disease-modifying therapies. Clinical assessments including blood tests, as adequately as clinical measures of affliction function and cognitive function were completed every three months. Magnetic resonance imaging scans were taken before treatment and monthly to measure support of disease activity. The extent of brain series loss (atrophy) was assessed by determining normalized brain volumes using automated computer software.

Since all 10 of the men received treatment and none received torpid placebo, the investigators compared measures bewitched before treatment versus after treatment. Testosterone levels were in the humiliate roam of normal before treatment, and although they increased with treatment, remained in the well-adjusted range.

After 12 months of testosterone treatment, measures of clinical disease activity remained enduring, blood tests were normal, and no adverse events affiliated to treatment were reported. The men showed significant improvements in exhibit on a probe of cognitive chore called the Paced Auditory Serial Annex Task (a test of processing speed and memory) compared to the pre-treatment span. The authors report that the upgrading could not be accounted for by pretentiously-known “practice effects,” which had stabilized during the pre-treatment spell.

MRI scans showed no increases in disease activity or web damage during treatment, although the authors note that the patients began the study with relatively lesser levels of disease activity on MRI.

Significantly, the rates of percipience atrophy, precise by normalized sagacity volume, slowed by 67 percent during the mould nine months of treatment. Muscle flock together increased significantly during the think over; testosterone is on used for this purpose in other hardened diseases.

This small study shows that testosterone treatment may arrange therapeutic forward in men with relapsing-remitting MS. Further study involving larger numbers of patients and suppress groups is essential to seal these anciently results, and to certain the safety and effectiveness of testosterone treatment as far as something MS.

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“We’re gratified that these early, encouraging results stemmed from the Nationalistic MS Society’s targeting of gender differences as an important area of research in MS,” said Dr. John R. Richert, the Society’s executive depravity president of research. “It also demonstrates how basic laboratory findings can despatch translate into possible unusual therapeutic strategies.”

Dr. Voskuhl and colleagues are already proceeding with a similar effort involving the copulation hormone estriol: Based on a small, early-phase trial that showed decreases in disease activity in 12 women with MS, she is in the present circumstances launching a multicenter, controlled clinical trial of oral estriol (added to the approved MS therapy glatiramer acetate) in 130 women with relapsing-remitting MS.

National Multiple Sclerosis League

People who experience poignant ambivalence — simultaneously climate positive and ‘No’ emotions — are more creative than those who feel just on top of the world or sad, or deficiency emotion at all, according to a new study.

That’s because people who discern contradictory emotions paraphrase the experience as a signal that they are in an unusual territory and thus respond to it by drawing upon their creative rational abilities, said Christina Ting Fong, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Business School. This increased sensitivity for recognizing unexpected associations, which happy or morose workers probably couldn’t spot, is what leads to creativity in the workplace, she added.

“Due to the complexity of many organizations, workplace experiences continually bring to light adulterated emotions from employees, and it’s oftentimes assumed that mixed emotions are downhearted in requital for workers and companies,” said Fong, whose library appears in the October issue of the Academy of Management Documentation. “Rather than assuming ambivalence resolve take the lead to negative results for the organism, managers should recognize that irrational ambivalence can have thetical consequences that can be leveraged looking for organizational success.”

For her research, Fong conducted two studies. In the before, she asked 102 college students to write about dependable hysterical experiences in their lives with the purpose of invoking in them feelings of happiness, sadness, neutrality or ambivalence. She then had them unbroken a commonly used dispense of creativity called the Obscure Associates Test that explored their aptitude to recognize common themes among seemingly unrelated words. The results demonstrated that while there were no differences all of a add up to happy, sad and neutral individuals, people who were feeling emotionally ambivalent performed significantly bigger on this creativity assignment.

For the secondly study, she showed the 138 students either a film clip of the comedy “Father of the Bride” or a dull hide saver. In the integument clip, a young woman, on the evening of her wedding day, discussed with her father the joy associated with her upcoming wedding and the sadness involved with growing up and entering adulthood. The screensaver and the clip were chosen to make people feel either non-partisan or ambivalent, respectively. Then the students took the Remote Associates Exam.

She found that the emotionally ambivalent people who saw the clip showed increased creativity in comparison to those who watched the screensaver, but one when they believed their emotional ambivalence was unusual. Surprisingly, she said, no relationship was establish between positive emotions and creativity or uninterested emotions and creativity.

According to Fong, one implication of this research is that when people want mixed emotions, they see this as a signal that they are in a situation that might contain lots of unusual associations, and thus will poverty to respond by using more imaginative thinking.

“Managers who craving to inflate the creative put out of their employees might emoluments from following in the footsteps of companies like intention firm IDEO or Walt Disney, which pride themselves on maintaining odd working environments. On some stage straight, the bicycles that grasp from the ceiling at IDEO and the colorful, casual locale at Disney probably facilitate their employees grind their abilities to come up with novel and innovative ideas.”

Fong said that in previous studies she found women who are in executive positions are more likely to be emotionally ambivalent than women in decrease status positions. Combining her above research with this study, Fong said, suggests that women in high-standing positions disposition be more ingenious managers.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original constrain release.
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Contact: Nancy Gardner

University of Washington