MediTech

HOUSEHOLD SMOKE – A RISK OF BRONCHIOLITIS 
Bronchiolitis is a severe chest infection that affects infants and is the most common cause of admission to hospital in the first year of life in developed countries. Over winter around 25 in every 1,000 babies are admitted to hospital with bronchiolitis -- needing oxygen and help with feeding -- and of these, 10% need the support of a ventilator. A study by the University of Liverpool has found that babies admitted to hospital with bronchiolitis from a household where a parent smokes are twice as likely to need oxygen therapy and five times as likely to need mechanical ventilation as babies whose parents do not smoke.

EXPERIMENTAL DRUG IMPROVES HDL, HELPS DIABETES
A medicine designed to improve levels of "good" cholesterol may also help control blood sugar in people with diabetes who are taking cholesterol-lowering drugs.Researchers made the finding while analyzing data from a clinical trial on the drug torcetrapib that was halted five years ago. Torcetrapib is a cholesterol ester transfer protein (CETP) inhibitor, a type of drug that increases levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDLs, or "good" cholesterol). Use of the CETP inhibitor also improved glucose and insulin measurements in study participants without diabetes,. In addition, the study found that HDL levels had risen 66.8 percent after a year of taking torcetrapib and the statin,

SUBSTANCE P COMPLICATES THE INJURED MUSCLES 
Research from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows that a neuropeptide in the brain called Substance P appears to trigger the formation of the extraskeletal bone. Eliminating Substance P prevents the bone growth. It found that Substance P is dramatically increased in newly damaged tissue of patients having more common heterotopic ossification and a rare ,debilitating genetic disease in which connective tissue ossifies and turn into bone, called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). It reports, knocking out Substance P in animals prevented the development of the extraskeletal bone.

LOSING DMRT1 GENE CONVERTS A MALE INTO FEMALE 
University of Minnesota Medical School and College of Biological Sciences researchers discovered that male sex must be maintained throughout life.The research team found that by removing male development gene, called Dmrt1, causes male cells in mouse testis to become female cells.In mammals, sex chromosomes determine the future sex of the animal during embryonic development by establishing whether the gonads will become testes or ovaries.The findings provide new insight into how to turn one cell type into another, a process known as reprogramming, and also show that throughout life, cells in the testis must be actively prevented from transforming into female cells.

Student Focus | 5th Edition

By Muhammad Sheraz Alam

D.P.T, College of Physiotherapy

K.E.M.U .Lahore

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