Botox Injection Gives Relief To Parkinson's Patients

Muhammad Ali Parkinson Centre (MAPC) at Barrow Neurological Institute is using Botulinum Toxin, which is commonly known as Botox, to help manage warning signs linked with Parkinson's syndrome and other movement troubles.
Guillermo Moguel-Cobos, movement disorder neurologist at the Centre, said, "Botox is the most powerful nerve toxin known to man and it's dramatically improving the quality of life for people with Parkinson's. For this type of treatment, it's a miracle drug."
Parkinson's disease is characterised by muscle inflexibility, tremers, a slowing of physical movement and a loss of physical movement.
Botulinum Toxin, which has been distilled and then thinned out, can be injected directly into the patient's muscle, allaying the muscle spasms and especially, the pain.
"It's a medical treatment but it's also an art to administer. Every patient receives Botox differently in different muscles, in different locations and in different dosages, so experience with the drug and the disease is crucial," Moguel-Cobos added.
MAPC has been making use of Botulinum Toxin in order to cure Parkinson's and other movement problems like dystonia since the early 1990s.
The cure has recently gained popularity because of the increasing number of sufferers at the MAPC.
To help with the demand, MAPC runs a Botox Clinic twice a week. Hinging upon the patient and the harshness of their movement trouble, their Botox can take 30 minutes to an hour to inject and can take around a period of seven days to show results.
For the majority of patients, Botox will provide substantial but variable relief of symptoms, which can last up to a period of 3 months, says a release from the Barrow Neurological Institute. (With Inputs from Agencies)

Alternative treatment of Lung Cancer

Most of the people around the world die due to cancer, and one common cause that ties them together is lung cancer. The standard age for the diagnosis of this disease is sixty. Cancer can be broadly classified into two types, small cell (or coat cell) lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. The growth of small cell is very quick and can easily spread to the other body parts. This kind of disease is most common among the smokers. The other type is further divided into three types; squamous cell carcinoma (a very common type), adenocarcinoma, and large cell carcinoma.
Around 170,000 new cases are detected every year and about 160,000 people lose their lives due to the disease, if it is detected before spreading to the lymph nodes or other body parts, there is a 50% chance of survival. But, most of the times, cancer is not detected at the early stage making the survival chances as low as 12%, though things have improved nowadays owing to the better diagnostic procedures.
There are three kinds of alternative treatment, they are, correct nutrition, oxygenation therapy and lycopene. Though these natural cures for cancer are very useful but one also has to remember that the following alternative types of medicine and therapies do not have a solid scientific base.
To decrease the risk of this deadly disease one should include fruits and vegetables including tomatoes in their diet. Shiitake mushrooms have lentinan that also protects one from this disease.
Soybeans have an antioxidant known as Genistein and might inhibit the expansion of the cancer cells. Other antioxidants that aid in lung cancer cures are Alpha carotene, beta carotene, and other carotenoids. But, many scientists believe that beta carotene can also be connected with an elevated rate of lung cancer and death in the smokers, and people exposed to asbestos. If beta carotene, Vitamin C and E are taken together the possible consequence are thwarted. Taking glutathione, selenium, lutein and lycopene can also decrease the risk of lung cancer.
There is a relationship among the sugar and cancer too. The scientists consider that decreasing the sugar intake in the body can decrease the growth rate of this type of disease. There is a solid scientific back up for this. Just like the cell of human body, the cancer cell produced by sugar from carbohydrates in the diet for power. Some malignant and active cancer cell reproduces and spreads when one takes in the big quantities of sugar, to decrease the spread of the deadly cells the patients are advised to decrease amount of sugar in their diet.
A “one minute cure” today for this disease is the Oxygenation Therapy. Clean and adequate supply of oxygen to a patient suffering from it is a perfect cure for this disease. Certainly other aspects like proper diet, and eating good food is also taken into the thought.
Lycopene or tomatoes have been accepted as a cure for several kinds of cancer. Investigations reveal that tomatoes can lower the dangers of acquiring cancer particularly cancer in the lungs, colon and prostate. Tomatoes have a certain substance known as lycopene, an antioxidant, they might not be useful for alternative treatment but they are good for prevention for the lung cancer.
A lot of alternative cures and therapies are good for a patient suffering from lung cancer, but some of them do not have the scientific backing.

A genetic gift for sushi eaters

Seaweed-rich diet leaves its mark on gut microbes.

Genes picked up from a microbial hitch-hiker may enable some
Japanese individuals to extract otherwise intractable nutrients from
seaweed.
A study published this week in Nature1 suggests that a marine
microbe — perhaps ingested on a sliver of seaweed — probably
transferred genes that encode algae-munching enzymes to bacteria
that live in the human gut. The enzymes break down algal
carbohydrates including one found in red algae of the genus
Porphyra, best known to sushi lovers as nori.
Although gene transfer to gut microbes is suspected in other cases,
this is the first clear-cut example in which a gut microbe has gained
a new biological niche by snatching genes from an ingested
bacterium, says Mirjam Czjzek, a chemist at the Pierre and Marie
Curie University in Paris, one of the two researchers who led the
study. "Probably there are many more examples," she says. "It's
only because of this exotic niche and the very rare specificity of this
enzyme that we were able to pinpoint where it came from."
You are what you eat
Many of the microbes residing in the human gut are likely to be beneficial to their host. Some
may give their host a calorific boost by breaking down ingested plant carbohydrates that human
enzymes cannot touch. In Japan, where about 14 grams of seaweed are consumed per person
each day, some of these indigestible carbohydrates come from the algae that wrap sushi rolls and
form the basis for a variety of soups and salads.
Czjzek together with Gurvan Michel, a structural biologist also at the Pierre and Marie Curie
University, and their colleagues found a new class of algae-degrading enzymes called 8-
porphyranases while hunting for proteins that break down algal biomass.
In the genome of the marine bacterium Zobellia
galactanivorans they found enzymes that were similar
to those that degrade the algal compounds agarose and

carrageenans. But the enzymes lacked a crucial region
needed to recognize these polysaccharides.
Instead, the enzymes broke down a Porphyra
polysaccharide called porphyran. The team searched
databases for related enzymes and found that they are
all also made by marine microbes — except one found in
the genome of a human gut bacterium called
Bacteroides plebeius.
The bacterium also contained an enzyme that breaks down agarose. Bacteroides bacteria
containing these genes were only found in individuals with Japanese ancestry. And on the basis of
the similarity in DNA sequence and the finding that the two genes appear near others in the B.
plebeius genome that appear to come from marine bacteria, the researchers concluded that the
genes had been transferred from a marine bacterium to microbes living in the human gut.
Genetic riches
The results suggest that ingested bacteria may have provided a valuable genetic resource for gut
microbes throughout human history, says Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford
University in California.
But as our food becomes increasingly sterile, our exposure to this
genetic treasure chest is dwindling, he adds. "We've gone to great
lengths in the developed world to decrease the microbial burden of
food, and in doing so we have decreased food-borne illness," he
says. "This is good, but it comes at a cost. We've eradicated this
potentially beneficial microbial component."
Western sushi eaters are unlikely to harbour nori-digesting
bacteria, says Michel. Gene-transfer events are extremely rare,
and there would be little need for bacteria exposed to a Western
diet to hang on to such genes, he adds. "The biggest difference in
Japan is the quantity of seaweed that is eaten every day," he says.
"It is far higher than just eating sushi once a week. I don't think the
pressure is high enough to keep the genes in our gut."

References:-Hehemann, J.-H. et al. Nature 464, 908-912 (2010).

From Biomass to Chemicals in One Step

A startup's catalytic process converts biomass directly into components of gasoline.

• An early-stage company spun out of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, plans to commercialize a catalytic process for converting cellulosic biomass into five of the chemicals found in gasoline. These chemicals are also used to make industrial polymers and solvents. Anellotech, which is seeking venture funding, plans to build a pilot plant next year.
• Anellotech's reactors perform a process called "catalytic pyrolysis," which converts three of the structural molecules found in plants--two forms of cellulose and the woody molecule lignin--into fuels. Ground-up biomass is fed into a high-temperature reactor and blended with a catalyst. The heat causes the cellulose, lignin, and other molecules in the biomass to chemically decompose through a process called pyrolysis; a catalyst helps control the chemical reactions, turning cellulose and lignin into a mix of carbon-ring-based molecules: benzene, toluene, and xylenes.
• The global market for this group of chemicals is $80 billion a year and growing at a rate of 4 percent a year, says Anellotech CEO David Sudolsky. "We're targeting to compete with oil priced at $60 a barrel, assuming no tax credits or subsidies," he says. The company's founder, George Huber, says his catalytic pyrolysis process can create 50 gallons of the chemicals per metric ton of wood or other biomass, with a yield of 40 percent. The other products of the reaction include coke, used to fuel the reactor.
• "The advantage of pyrolysis is that it uses whole biomass," says John Regalbuto, an advisor to the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at the National Science Foundation. On average, lignin accounts for 40 percent of the energy stored in whole biomass. But because it can't be converted into sugars the way cellulose can, lignin can't be used as a feedstock for fermentation processes such as those used by some biofuels companies to convert sugarcane into fuels.
• Pyrolysis is also different from gasification, another process for using whole biomass. Gasification results in a mixture of carbon and hydrogen called syngas, which can then be used to make fuel.
• Pyrolysis, by contrast, turns biomass into liquid fuels in a single step. And while gasification can only be done economically at a very large scale, says Regalbuto, catalytic pyrolysis could be done at smaller refineries distributed near the supply of biomass.
• Pyrolysis is an efficient way to use biomass, but it's difficult to control the products of the reaction, and it's difficult to get high yields. The keys to Anellotech's process, says Huber, are a specially tailored catalyst and a reactor that allows good control over reaction conditions. 
•  So far, Huber has developed two generations of a reactor in the lab. In tests, the group starts with sawdust waste from a local mill. The ground-up biomass is fed into a fluidized bed reactor. Inside, a powdered solid catalyst swirls around in a mixture of gas heated to about 600 ºC. When wood enters the chamber, it rapidly breaks down, or pyrolyzes, into small unstable hydrocarbon molecules that diffuse into the pores of the catalyst particles. Inside the catalyst, the molecules are reformed to create a mixture of aromatic chemicals. The reaction process takes just under two minutes.
• The company would not disclose details about the catalyst, but Huber says one of its most important properties is the size of its pores. "If the pores are too big, they get clogged with coke, and if they're too small, the reactants can't fit in," says Huber. The company's catalyst is a porous silicon and aluminum structure based on ZSM-5, a zeolite catalyst developed by Mobil Oil in 1975 and widely used in the petroleum refining industry. Sudolsky says that it can be made cheaply by contractors. Anellotech's reactors are very similar to those used to refine petroleum. But the company's reactors are designed to ensure rapid heat transfer and fluid dynamics that ensure that the reactants enter a catalyst before they turn into coke.

• Stefan Czernik, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's National Bioenergy Center in Golden, CO, cautions that the process has so far only been demonstrated on a small scale, and the complexity of these reactors could mean a long road ahead for scaling them up. "It is not easy to replicate at a large scale the relationship between the chemical reaction and heat transfer as it's done in the laboratory," he says.
• After demonstrating the process at a pilot plant next year, Anellotech hopes to partner with a chemical company to build a commercial scale facility in 2014. Sudolsky says the company will either license the catalytic pyrolysis process to other companies or build plants distributed near biomass sources, since transporting biomass is not economically viable.

From Technology Review