Mediaboss Marketing

At a time when West Nile virus is still a potential killer, health officials are worried that a reorganization plan by the Morris County Freeholders will cut mosquito control efforts.

The freeholders plan to eliminate the all-volunteer, Morris County Mosquito Extermination Commission and fold the paid staff into the county public works department.

The proposed reorganization is expected to go into effect after the freeholders January reorganization.

The plan comes not long after a 92-year-old county resident died earlier in the month after contracting West Nile disease.

Infected mosquitoes were first discovered on Aug. 1 at Donatoni Community Park on West Main Street in Rockaway. A week later, the park and surrounding woods, path and access road were treated by the mosquito commission.

As of earlier this month, mosquitoes carrying West Nile have been found in 22 pools, or collections of about 50 tested mosquitoes, in Morris County out of more than 250 tests performed this year.

Morris County Freeholder David Scapicchio, former mayor of Mount Olive, said the reorganization wont affect mosquito control programs but it will save money.

Nothing is changing other than were folding the office responsibilities into public works, Scapicchio said.

Scapicchio said that as part of the savings, the county will have to complete just one audit for both the mosquito control commission and the public works department.

Other potential savings are expected through centralized purchasing, vehicle inspection and licensing.

Original post:
Mount Olive Officials: Cost-saving measure could cut mosquito control

UCC study could aid treatment of inflammatory diseases

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Cells that destroy tumours and viral infections also play a major role in reducing gut inflammation, it has emerged.

Killer cells are a type of white blood cell that protect the body against the tumours or viral infection.

When a tumour or virus is identified, a vanguard of immune cells accumulates to attack the invader, causing inflammation.

Scientists at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in UCC had predicted that mice lacking killer cells would develop less inflammation.

However, they were surprised when the mice developed acute inflammation and severe signs of disease. Lead investigator, Lindsay Hall said it was an exciting discovery in natural killer cell biology.

Our findings open up the possibility of new therapeutic approaches for inflammatory bowel disease and other inflammatory diseases such as cystic fibrosis, rheumatoid arthritis and severe asthma, she said.

The study, funded by Science Foundation Ireland, made the front cover of the nature Mucosal Immunology journal.

Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

Read the original here:
UCC study could aid treatment of inflammatory diseases

Immune system seems to remember cancer in people who've never had it

By Jessica Shugart

Web edition: September 23, 2013

Echoes of past encounters with leukemia flow through the veins of people who have never suffered from the disease, a study suggests. The immune systems of cancer-free people may have gathered antileukemia forces by mounting preemptive strikes against cells that were on their way to becoming cancerous. Leukemia patients, on the other hand, carry meager signs of resistance.

Perhaps weve all had a bit of precancerous disease, says immunologist Mark Cobbold of the University of Birmingham in England, who led the study with Birmingham colleague Hugo De La Pea. Just as immune cells reflect a persons history of viral infections, the fingerprint of cancer exposures could lie there as well, Cobbold says.

After an encounter with any pathogen, a fraction of immune cells that fought in the battle stick around, lying in wait for the next attack. Cobbold, De La Pea and their colleagues found in healthy people killer immune cells that appeared to have been scent-trained on cancer cells. And the scientists identified the scent as well: a family of peptides, or small fragments of proteins, that coat the surfaces of cancer cells.

The peptides come from proteins inside the cell signposts that killer cells called T cells normally use to sniff out virus-infected cells. The cancer peptides were adorned with chemical modifications called phosphate groups. The addition of phosphate groups to proteins communicates signals that control cell growth and survival. But cancer cells switch this process into overdrive, says De La Pea. The cancer cell needs this crazy phosphorylation to become malignant, he says. And this is exactly what the immune system sees.

The team identified 95 of these phosphopeptides on the surfaces of malignant cells taken from patients with leukemia. Sixty-one of the peptides appeared only on cancer cells and not on normal ones, the researchers report in the Sept. 18 Science Translational Medicine.

Then the team extracted T cells from 26 leukemia patients: 14 with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and 12 with acute myeloid leukemia, a more aggressive form of the disease. While healthy volunteers all harbored T cells that recognized the cancer phosphopeptides, only five patients with the milder leukemia did, as did two patients with acute myeloid leukemia. The researchers found that the T cells bore proteins that marked them as memory cells, indicating that the cells had encountered the phosphopeptides perhaps on cancerous cells before.

The reasons some people lack this immunity to the phosphopeptides are unclear, but the researchers speculate that those people may have had the cancer-specific killer cells and then lost them as the immune system waned with age. Or perhaps some peoples immune cells never mounted a response in the first place.

Go here to see the original:
Killer cells trained on leukemia may protect some people

In Gorakhpur, small successes in understanding and conquering the killer disease of children are undercut by a wily virus and administrative bottlenecks

On August 18, five-year-old Vishal spent the evening playing with friends in Vanjhai village in Gorakhpur district's Bhathat block. He came home irritable, with a slight fever. His mother and grandmother gave him a little milk and sent him to bed. They were not worried, because Vishal, like most children in the village, was "protected". What's ailing the Bihar's children?

Three years ago, Vishal had been given two shots, separated by four months, of "jhatki teeka", or the Japanese Encephalitis (JE) vaccine. The first shot, given in August 2010, was part of the child's immunization schedule; the second, in December of that year, in a massive campaign across Uttar Pradesh and parts of Bihar, to ensure the vaccine reached all "left out" children. 1,600 children dead in UP, Bihar; no answers yet

Vishal's mother, who had seen children dying in their village during the monsoon deaths long attributed to the dreaded JE virus was assured that her son was protected.

So, when Vishal woke up the next morning with a jhatki convulsions with a yellowish frothing at the mouth, fists clenched and eyes shut tight, seemingly unable to hear his mother's cries the family went to the local fakir, hoping he would rid the boy of the spirits they believed had attacked him.

A day later, when Vishal was struck by another convulsion, his uncle took him on his motorcycle 15 km away to Gorakhpur town, ignoring the women's protests that he already had "jaadui" protection and needed no more medicines. The boy was admitted to the Nehru Hospital in BRD Medical College, where he died the next day.

... contd.

TERMS OF USE: The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

See the original post here:
A dissolving faith, an enduring mystery

Current vaccines only target most common strains by making the immune system produce antibodies to prevent infection Thanks to a study carried out during the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the annual flu season could be reduced and future pandemics prevented Scientists at Imperial College London used outbreak as a unique natural experiment to investigate why some people got sick while others did not

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 19:40 EST, 22 September 2013 | UPDATED: 05:10 EST, 23 September 2013

23 shares

35

View comments

A Universal flu vaccine to protect against new strains of the bird and swine flu may be a step closer thanks to British research.

For decades the key to creating a vaccine to protect against all forms of flu has eluded scientists.

Current vaccines only target the most common strains by making the immune system produce antibodies to prevent infection.

A Universal flu vaccine to protect against new strains of the bird and swine flu may be a step closer thanks to British research

More:
Breakthrough in the fight against flu: Scientists move a step closer to a universal vaccine to protect against new ...