Community groups meet for AIDS control in northeast |  |
- Community groups meet for AIDS control in northeast
- India urges international community to promote generic drugs
- Sport doctors say non-alcoholic wheat beer boosts athletes' health
- Addressing the vaccine confidence gap: More research needed globally on local factors influencing public trust in vaccines
- Factors affecting vaccine production, access and uptake: Are we ready for another flu pandemic?
- New supernova remnant lights up
| Community groups meet for AIDS control in northeast Posted: 10 Jun 2011 12:46 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, June 9 - Members of the civil society and community groups from the northeast met Thursday to prepare recommendations for the fourth phase of the National AIDS Control Programme -, delegates of advocacy group Centre for Advocacy and Research said here. 'We have made interventions for the NACO - for laying down the next policy. The recommendations are from all the experience that has been gathered in the last decade with our work for the community,' said a social activist from NGO Sharan. The National AIDS Control Programme Phase IV will define the national policy for HIV/AIDS control over the next five years. The first of the consultations which began in Guwahati for the northeast region will be followed by consultations in Delhi for north India, Pune for west India, Kolkata for east India and Bangalore for south India. 'If the rich experience of community is not taken seriously and comprehensive programmes are not worked out for an array of drug users, including under-served groups like female drug users, during the next phase of the programme, it would be difficult to halt the epidemic let along reverse it,' said Raj Kumar Raju, working with a community group for the HIV positive. http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| India urges international community to promote generic drugs Posted: 09 Jun 2011 04:12 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, June 9 - India has called upon the international community to promote generic medicine, specially for diseases like HIV and AIDS, to make treatment affordable. Speaking at the high level meeting of the General Assembly on HIV and AIDS in New York Wednesday, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad urged the international community for lifting the 'barriers' of Intellectual Property Rights and patents from medicines. Generic drugs are medicines which are sold without brand name, making them cheaper. 'The international community has to dismantle barriers that obstruct universal access to treatment. A key barrier in universal access to treatment is the high cost of Anti Retro Viral medicines,' Azad said. 'Pharmaceutical companies in my country have been providing high quality and affordable drugs for use not only in India but also supplying to around 200 countries. I would also like to take this opportunity to make it abundantly clear that these generic drugs are not cheap in terms of quality,' he added. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Sport doctors say non-alcoholic wheat beer boosts athletes' health Posted: 09 Jun 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Many amateur athletes have long suspected what research scientists for the Department of Preventative and Rehabilitative Sports Medicine of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen at Klinikum rechts der Isar have now made official: Documented proof, gathered during the world's largest study of marathons, Be-MaGIC (beer, marathons, genetics, inflammation and the cardiovascular system), that the consumption of non-alcoholic weissbier, or wheat beer, has a positive effect on athletes' health. Under the direction of Dr. Johannes Scherr, physicians examined 277 test subjects three weeks before and two weeks after the 2009 Munich Marathon. The study focuses on the health risks for marathon runners and the potential positive effects of polyphenols. These aromatic compounds occur naturally in plants as pigment, flavor, or tannins, many of which have been credited with health-promoting and cancer-preventative properties. Unique to this study was the combination of different polyphenols that were tested on the large pool of participants. The research team met the scientific requirements of the study by conducting a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Non-alcoholic Erdinger wheat beer was selected as the test beverage, chosen for its rich and varied polyphenol content and its popularity with marathoners and tri-athletes. The active group drank up to 1.5 liters of the test beverage per day, while a second group consumed an equal amount of an otherwise indistinguishable placebo beverage that contained no polyphenols and was especially produced for the study. One result from the study was the discovery that, after running a marathon race, athletes experience intensified inflammatory reactions. The immune system is thrown off balance and runners are much more likely to suffer from upper respiratory infections. This heightened susceptibility to illness following strenuous sport activity has been identified as an open window.... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Posted: 09 Jun 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In the fifth and final paper in the Series, Dr Heidi J Larson (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK) and colleagues analyse the complex range of factors that are causing loss of public confidence in vaccines: the so-called vaccine confidence gap. The authors say: The vaccine community demands rigorous evidence on vaccine efficacy and safety and technical and operational feasibility when introducing a new vaccine, but has been negligent in demanding equally rigorous research to understand the psychological, social, and political factors that affect public trust in vaccines. They add: Public decision making related to vaccine acceptance is neither driven by scientific nor economic evidence alone, but is also driven by a mix of psychological, sociocultural, and political factors, all of which need to be understood and taken into account by policy and other decision makers. Public trust in vaccines is highly variable and building trust depends on understanding perceptions of vaccines and vaccine risks, historical experiences, religious or political affiliations, and socioeconomic status. Larson and colleagues highlight the powerful effect that the internet and social media has had on the debate on vaccines, enabling groups either for or against vaccination to organize themselves into highly effective international organisations capable of rapid dissemination of information (including misinformation and rumours). As with infectious diseases, where surveillance is essential for disease control, systematic monitoring of dynamic and evolving vaccine rumours, concerns, and refusals is crucial to guide prompt responses to build and sustain public confidence. Such a surveillance system is being trialed at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. A number of case studies are explored that highlight how vaccine risk concerns were prompted and sustained by individuals. During 2010 in India, Puliyel and colleagues... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Factors affecting vaccine production, access and uptake: Are we ready for another flu pandemic? Posted: 09 Jun 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In the third paper of the Series, Professor Jeffrey W Almond and Dr Jon Smith, Sanofi Pasteur, Marcy L'Etoile, France, and Professor Marc Lipsitch, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA, look at the range of factors that influencing vaccine production, access, and uptake, and focus on the H1N1 influenza pandemic to exemplify the challenges of vaccine development on a global scale. The technologies used to manufacture different types of vaccines affect vaccine cost, ease of industrial scale-up, stability, and, ultimately, worldwide availability. For example, oral polio vaccine strains grow well in culture, allowing production of hundreds of millions of doses at low cost; this has been the cornerstone of WHO's polio eradication campaign. By contrast, multivalent pneumococcus and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have more complex production methods, requiring higher investment resulting in higher costs. Different national regulations, shelf life, and cold chain requirements are among the other factors affecting vaccine cost. In most countries, a primary series of vaccinations for infants is well established and the vaccines included are readily available, although the precise schedules vary. In developing countries, vaccine uptake and access have been significantly improved in the past decade by the launch of the GAVI Alliance. The 72 countries that qualify for GAVI assistance are home to about half the world's population. The more complex vaccines are less available in developing countries. One reason is vaccine manufacturers need to recoup investment (up to US$1 billion for a new vaccine) by prioritisation of supply to markets that can sustain a high price. The authors highlight the example of influenza vaccine to illustrate the issues around vaccine production and distribution. The egg-based manufacturing system has been reliably supplying seasonal influenza vaccine for several decades. But the authors note that... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| New supernova remnant lights up Posted: 08 Jun 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Cambridge, MA - In 1987, light from an exploding star in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, reached Earth. Named Supernova 1987A, it was the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years, allowing astronomers to study it in unprecedented detail as it evolves. Today a team of astronomers announced that the supernova debris, which has faded s0vewr the years is now brightening. This shows that a different power source has begun to light the debris, and marks the transition from a supernova to a supernova remnant. Supernova 1987A has become the youngest supernova remnant visible to us, said Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Kirshner leads a long-term study of SN 1987A with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has provided a continuous record of the changes in SN 1987A. As shown in the accompanying image, SN 1987A is surrounded by a ring of material that blew off the progenitor star thousands of years before it exploded. The ring is about one light-year (6 trillion miles) across. Inside that ring, the guts of the star are rushing outward in an expanding debris cloud. Most of a supernova's light comes from radioactive decay of elements created in the explosion. As a result, it fades over time. However, the debris from SN 1987A has begun to brighten, suggesting that a new power source is lighting it. It's only possible to see this brightening because SN 1987A is so close and Hubble has such sharp vision, Kirshner said. A supernova remnant consists of material ejected from an exploding star, as well as the interstellar material it sweeps up. The debris of SN 1987A is beginning to impact the surrounding ring, creating powerful shock waves that generate X-rays observed with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Those X-rays are illuminating the supernova debris and shock heating is making it glow. The same process powers well-known supernova... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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