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In a welcome news for HIV patients, Canadian and American researchers have found new ways to increase effectiveness of the current drugs to fight the deadly disease.

Currently, HIV/AIDS patients are treated with highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) that involves at least three active anti-retroviral medications. The HAART ‘cocktail’ is suppresses viral replication in the blood.

Although HAART delays the progression of AIDS and prolongs life, it does not lead to cure of the disease.

But now researchers from Montreal University , McGill University , and the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of Florida (VGTI) have published a new study that may lead to an expansion of the role of the current drug arsenal used to fight HIV.

The joint study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, shows how the pivotal role of two molecules, PD-1 and IL-10, can influence the function of CD4/T-helper cells and alter their ability to fight HIV, a statement by Montreal University said Monday.

“Our findings show that the membrane protein PD-1 is up-regulated during HIV infection by the release of bacterial products from the gut and this subsequently increases the production of a cell derived factor, IL-10 that paralyses the immune system,” lead author Rafick-Pierre Sekaly has been quoted as saying.

” We are the first to show that these two molecules work together to shut down the function of CD4 T-cells in HIV patients. This in turn, may lead to paralysis of the immune system and an accelerated disease progression.

“Our results suggest that it is important to block both IL-10 and PD-1 interactions to restore the immune response during HIV infection,” said Sekaly.

“We believe that immunotherapies that target PD-1 and IL-10 should be part of the arsenal used to restore immune function in HIV-infected subjects,” he added.

Warning that India should brace for more deaths from the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic, a leading virologist has described as “shameful” the lack of scientific data on its outbreak in the country.

“Even though India has over 28,000 confirmed cases and 1,152 deaths – which would translate into manifold more – no epidemiological analysis of the Indian outbreak is found in the public domain,” says Shahid Jameel of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi.

“We do not know the risk factors for the Indian population, the reasons for a mortality rate that is about three to four times the global average, or any epidemiological details of the terrifying spread in cities like Pune,” Jameel wrote in the latest issue of the journal ‘Current Science’.

There are also no genomic sequences from India uploaded in public databases, making it difficult to analyze the virus circulating in India, he said.

“Considering that ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi) has an entire national institute dedicated to disease

epidemiology (National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai), it is shameful that no epidemiological analysis of the outbreak is available,” the scientist who heads the virology group in ICGEB noted with surprise.

He said it is imperative that such information be in the public domain for all stakeholders to analyse it and participate in the vaccination strategy.

Reacting to statements by ICMR and the health ministry that a vaccine against the H1N1 pandemic virus will soon undergo bridge trials in the country, Jameel wonders who will receive it.

“Have we identified the risk groups?”, he asks pointing out that in the absence of any epidemiological analysis of the Indian outbreak it is difficult to select the recipients.

“Even in the presence of a public health preparedness plan, an early initiative to screen for the pandemic virus, and the government’s generous spending on the testing initiatives, experts believe that a poor healthcare infrastructure has failed the country,” Jameel said. “There is a clear need to strengthen that.”

Jameel said the government’s aggressive screening of passengers at ports of entry did help delay the spread of the virus in India by two to three weeks, but it eventually followed an expected pattern of spread – first in large urban centres followed by small towns. “We do not even know the situation in rural areas,” Jameel said.

According to Jameel, daily updates being released by the health ministry since Aug 1, 2009, remains the only source of information on H1N1 spread in India. Based on the analysis of this limited data — updated till Jan 20, 2010, – Jameel has concluded that H1N1 cases did increase in what appeared to be a second wave. “Since the ‘mortality curve’ runs almost parallel to the ‘cases curve,’ and as the number of cases increase, we should be prepared for more deaths,” he warns.

According to Jameel, an over-zealous media coupled with the government’s perceived lack of transparency and an inherent mistrust of the government system created widespread panic and knee-jerk reactions. This is not good for dealing with any pandemic, he said.

Jameel predicted there will be more cases and more deaths, but calm and sustained response (and not panic) is the only way to overcome it.

At the same time, he said, there is a need for more transparency from government institutions and the media should be considered partners in disseminating the message. “And the message is that this pandemic is serious but we have the tools to manage it.”

Thankfully, the mortality is still low, said Jameel, the question remains if this virus will return in a more virulent form in the next wave.

“The 1918 pandemic started that summer as a mild disease, but in the next wave during winter, the virus came back in a highly virulent form, eventually infecting about a third of the world population and killing an estimated 40-50 million people.”

According to the ICGEB scientist, “this history of pandemic flu is reason enough to exercise caution and limit virus transmission in the human population”.

Swine flu continued to cause fatalities with 15 more deaths reported in the country, taking the toll so far to 1,294, health authorities said Thursday.

As many as six deaths were reported Thursday from Maharashtra, which recorded the first death due to the flu in the country Aug 3 last year.

With the six deaths, the toll in the state has gone up to 337 – the highest in India.

Gujarat recorded five deaths while four people succumbed to the virus in Rajasthan Thursday. In Gujarat, the toll has touched 263, while 186 people have died in Rajasthan.

“Till date, samples from 125,794 people have been tested for Influenza A (H1N1) in government laboratories and a few private laboratories across the country and 29,231 of them have been found positive,” said an official statement issued here.

Thirty-six new cases were reported in India Thursday, with Maharashtra recording 12 and Rajasthan 10.

Researchers have isolated an independent processing channel of synapses (nerve junctions) in a brain area that deals with turning off sound when required.

Such regulation is vital for hearing and for understanding speech. The discovery overturns a long-held assumption that the signalling of a sound’s appearance and its subsequent disappearance are both handled by the same pathway.

The new finding, which supports an emerging theory that a separate set of synapses is responsible, could lead to new, distinctly targeted therapies such as improved hearing devices, said Michael Wehr, psychology professor and member of the University of Oregon (UO) Institute of Neuroscience.

“It looks like there is a whole separate channel that goes all the way from the ear up to the brain that is specialised to process sound offsets,” Wehr said.

The two channels finally come together in a brain region called the auditory cortex, situated in the temporal lobe (part of the cerebral cortex in either hemisphere of the brain lying inside the temples of the head).

Wehr and two UO undergraduate students — study co-author Ben Scholl and Xiang Gao — monitored the activity of neurons and their connecting synapses as rats were exposed to millisecond bursts of tones, looking at the responses to both the start and end of a sound.

They tested varying lengths and frequencies of sounds in a series of experiments. It became clear that one set of synapses responded “very strongly at the onset of sounds”, but a different set of synapses responded to the sudden disappearance of sounds, said an UO release.

There was no overlap of the two responding sets, the researchers noted. The end of one sound did not affect the response to a new sound, thus reinforcing the idea of separate processing channels.

These findings appeared in the Thursday edition of Neuron.

Depression does not always lead to failing memory or difficulty in concentrating and paying attention, research says.

A review of nearly 20 years of literature on depression was conducted by researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre (UTSWMC).

“The relationship between cognition – thinking, attention and memory – and depression remains poorly understood from a neuro-scientific standpoint,” said Munro Cullum, head of psychology at UTSWMC and a study co-author.

“Our study challenges some of the clinical myths about the effects of depression on cognitive functioning,” Cullum said.

The effects of depression on cognition may vary in patients, said the assistant professor of psychiatry at UTSMC, Shawn McClintock, who led the study.

“Many symptoms can be used to diagnose depression, so we tried to dissect and better understand how specific factors in depression might contribute to cognitive difficulties,” he added.

The researchers examined 35 studies, published between 1991 and 2007, investigating links between severe depression in patients and specific impairment in their cognition.

The areas of cognition included processing speed, attention, memory, language abilities and executive functioning.

“We found a lot of variability between studies that were conducted. Some suggested cognitive difficulties; others said there were none,” McClintock said.

In the research, processing speed was found to be the cognitive function most often affected by depression.

Processing speed refers to an individual’s ability to quickly take in information, process and act upon it. The capability slows when some individuals are depressed, the reviewers found.

The link wasn’t as clear for other types of cognitive abilities, including attention, concentration, memory and executive function.

The findings appeared in the January issue of Neuropsychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad Tuesday expressed fear that the proposed surrender policy for Kashmiri youth who are in Pakistan and want to return without weapons may turn out to be attempts at infiltration.

“Who will guarantee (that these youths will not engage in terrorist activities)? Should we trust Pakistan?” Azad said here when reporters asked about the plan Chief Minister Omar Abdullah proposed at a conference on internal security in Delhi.

“Could it not be another way of infiltrating armed youth inside?” the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister asked.

Abdullah had proposed that a surrender policy may be framed for the youth who had gone to Pakistan-administered Kashmir for militant training and were craving to return home and join the mainstream.

About resuming a composite dialogue with Pakistan, Azad said Islamabad needed to dismantle terror camps on its soil and take strong measures to curb infiltration.

“It is for Pakistan to make atmosphere conducive for talks. Some of their ministers are making different statements that shows they are not serious in talks with India,” he said.

“Dialogue process has been stalled with Pakistan since the Mumbai attack. How is it possible unless Pakistan takes action against the perpetrators of those involved in that attack?” Azad noted.

Bangladesh has culled about 13,000 chickens after fresh outbreak of bird flu in the country last month, officials said Monday.

Ataur Rahman, bird flu control room official, told Xinhua, a total of “12,789 chickens were culled so far this year after fresh outbreak of the avian influenza in commercial farms.”

Of the total, he said, “9,526 birds, including 8,821 in a commercial firm in Dhaka, were culled in the first week of this month.”

In January, when the outbreak of the disease was reported, 3,263 chickens were culled.

Habibur Rahman, director general of Bangladesh’s Fisheries and Live Stock Department, said the department has strengthened its surveillance to contain further spread of the infectious disease.

So far, four districts were affected by bird flu.

Officials, however, said with the rise of temperature in March and April, the risks from the disease would gradually ease.

Bird flu was first detected in Bangladesh in a poultry farm near Dhaka in March 2007.

The disease was later spread to 47 districts between December 2007 and March 2008.

Children whose mothers suffer from depression during pregnancy are more likely to show rebelliousness, including violent behaviour, in life.

Furthermore, women who are aggressive and disruptive in their own teen years are more likely to become depressed in pregnancy. Moms’ history predicts their own children’s anti-social behaviour.

That’s the conclusion of a new study conducted by researchers at Cardiff University, King’s College London, and the University of Bristol.

The study considered the role of mothers’ depression by looking at 120 British youth from inner-city areas.

“Much attention has been given to the effects of postnatal depression on young infants,” notes Dale F. Hay, professor of psychology at Cardiff University Wales, a study co-author.

“But depression during pregnancy may also affect the unborn child.” The youths’ mothers were interviewed while they were pregnant, after they gave birth, and when their children were four, 11, and 16-years-old, said a Cardiff release.

The study found that mothers who became depressed when pregnant were four times as likely to have children who were violent at 16 years.

This was true for both boys and girls. The mothers’ depression, in turn, was predicted by their own aggressive and disruptive behaviour as teens.

The link between depression in pregnancy and the children’s violence couldn’t be explained by other factors in the families’ environments, such as social class, ethnicity, or family structure; the mothers’ age, education, marital status, or IQ; or depression at other times in the children’s lives.

The research appeared in the January/February issue of Child Development.

At least two more people have died in Delhi due to swine flu, health authorities said here Thursday.

Though the details of the two are yet to be ascertained, a union health ministry official said that so far 95 people have died of the pandemic virus in the capital city. Till Wednesday, the toll in the city was 93.

Besides, the city reported one more case of infection taking the total number of people infected by the disease to 9,663, the highest among states across India.

For 54-year-old Sharda Sethi, who was detected with breast cancer last year, life couldn’t be more unfair. She had lost all hopes of survival and every passing day was a misery. The thought of undergoing painful treatment made the going all the more tough.

However, a counselling session about modern cancer treatment facilities in India changed her approach towards the disease.

“I was shocked and scared… I then went to a cancer specialist, who told me about targeted cancer therapies available in the country. My treatment got over last month and I am feeling much better,” said a relieved Sharda.

The introduction of hi-tech cancer treatment facilities in India has completely changed the approach of doctors as well as patients towards tackling the disease.

“Breast cancer in one of the most common form of cancer in women. It used to be treated with the standard therapies of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. All of these methods treat the cancer, but affect healthy tissue as well,” said Amit Bhargava, medical consultant Oncologist, B.L.K. Memorial Hospital, Delhi.

“However, targeted cancer therapies have revolutionised the treatment. Targeted therapies do their work on specific cancer cells, and are less likely to affect healthy tissues,” he said.

Targeted therapies are a group of cancer medications that treat cancer by targeting a specific weakness found in the cancer cells. They may be used instead of, or in conjunction with, other treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy.

Cyberknife is another technology that is proving a boon for cancer patients. It relies on image-guided robotic technology and has two cameras and infrared technology.

“Cyberknife allows doctors to treat tumours in hard-to-reach places like brain, lungs, liver, prostate and spine. It is a painless, non-invasive approach to radiosurgery that results in fewer complications than open surgery,” said B.S. Ajaikumar, chairman of HealthCare Global Enterprises, a network of 20 cancer treatment centers across Asia.

RapidArc is another latest technique for effective treatment of the dreaded desease.

“It is one of the most precise, non-invasive radiosurgery treatments available for cancerous and non-cancerous conditions of the entire body. It represents a new standard in radiosurgery treatment that deliver highly precise treatment while protecting surrounding healthy tissues. It offers one of the fastest treatment times available – minutes, not hours – giving new hope to patients with tumours once considered untreatable,” said A.K. Anand, chief Radiation Oncology, Max Healthcare.

According to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), an estimated 440,000 die of cancer each year and about 700,000 to 900,000 new cancer cases are detected annually in India.