Sleeping for long hours can cut risk of diabetes in teens

Extending sleep duration may help to reduce diabetes risk in youth, a new study has claimed.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have found that increasing the amount of sleep that teenagers get could improve their insulin resistance and prevent the future onset of diabetes.

"High levels of insulin resistance can lead to the development of diabetes. We found that if teens that normally get six hours of sleep per night get one extra hour of sleep, they would improve insulin resistance by 9 per cent," said lead author Karen Matthews.


The study tracked the sleep duration and insulin resistance levels of 245 healthy high school students.

Participants provided a fasting blood draw, and they kept a sleep log and wore a wrist actigraph for one week during the school year.

Sleep duration based on actigraphy averaged 6.4 hours over the week, with school days significantly lower than weekends.

Results showed that higher insulin resistance is associated with shorter sleep duration independent of race, age, gender, waist circumference, and body mass index.

Interventions to promote metabolic health in adolescence should include efforts to extend nightly sleep duration, authors said in a statement.

The study will be published in the journal SLEEP

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Snake venom may be 'drug source'

Venom has already been used to create drugs, but the chemicals in it are often too deadly for human consumption.

However, a study, published in the journal Nature Communications, has shown snakes and lizards have "reclaimed" some toxins and used them, safely, elsewhere in their own bodies.

Scientists think these reclaimed toxins could make safe and effective drugs.

Researchers compared the genomes of venomous snakes and lizards to see how the animals' venoms had evolved.


They said it was an "unexpectedly dynamic" process, with chemicals in venom being formed through evolution and then later being adopted by parts of the body for other uses.

Dr Nicholas Casewell, from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said: "Our results demonstrate that the evolution of venoms is a really complex process."

He said venom seemed to evolve a lot of new functions, possibly to overcome resistance in prey.

"The venom gland of snakes appears to be a melting pot for evolving new functions for molecules, some of which are retained in venom for killing prey, while others go on to serve new functions in other tissues in the body," he said.
Medicine

Dr Wolfgang Wuster, from Bangor University, said: "Many snake venom toxins target the same physiological pathways that doctors would like to target to treat a variety of medical conditions."

The cardiovascular system, heart and blood vessels, is one of the main targets of snake venom when attacking prey and it has played a role in the origins of some blood pressure drugs such as ACE inhibitors.

The nervous system is another similar area. The challenge has been to overcome the toxic effect of the toxins.

"This means that drug developers have had to modify toxins to retain their potency and make them safe for drug use," said Dr Casewell.

However, the scientists involved in the study believe nature may have already done the hard work, with reptiles making the toxins safe for their own use.

Dr Casewell said it would be a "whole new source" for drug discovery

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'Just one alcoholic drink a day may up the risk of cancer'

 Binge drinkers are not the only ones who need to worry about the health implications of alcohol, even light drinking increases the cancer risk significantly, a new study has claimed.

According to the study led by researchers from the University of Milan, just one alcoholic drink a day may increase the risk of cancer, adding light drinking is estimated to be responsible for 34,000 deaths a year worldwide.

Until now, almost all the evidence has come from studies that focused on people drinking moderate or large amounts of alcohol, or binge drinkers, and not those who drink less.


The research based on more than 150,000 men and women shows that light drinking increases the likelihood of cancer of the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus and breast.

One drink a day increased the risk of cancer of the oesophagus by almost a third, according to the study being reported in the Annals of Oncology, which analysed data from more than 200 research projects, the 'Independent' reported.

Low alcohol intake increased the risk of oral cavity and pharynx cancer by 17 per cent, and breast cancer in women by 5 per cent.

"Alcohol increases the risk of cancer even at low doses," say the researchers.

"Given the high proportion of light drinkers in the population, and the high prevalence of these tumours, especially of breast cancer, even small increases in cancer risk are of great public health relevance," they said.

Evidence suggests that drinking in moderation may decrease the risk of heart disease, type-2 diabetes and dementia, leading many to believe a glass of wine a day is good for you.

But the damaging effects of drinking are well known. An estimated 2.2 million deaths a year worldwide are linked to alcohol, according to the report, and 3.6 per cent of all cancers are attributable to drinking alcohol.

The study defined light drinking as up to one drink a day or 12.5 grams or less of ethanol.

Data on 92,000 light drinkers and 60,000 non-drinkers was used to calculate the overall cancer risk.

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Exercise could boost your sex life!

Men who hit the gym to shed their middle aged spread would be pleased to find that it provides a boost to their sex lives, according to a medical study.

The research found that the effect of losing spare tyres and beer bellies, among men in their fifties, is a boost to their sex drive, a
higher sperm count and stronger erections.


Losing weight reduces the chances of low testosterone levels by up to 50 percent in more mature males.The findings come from a study by Dublin doctors of 900 men with an average age of 54 taking part in a US diabetes prevention programme.

Weight loss can delay or avoid the onset of diabetes among those men who are most susceptible to the disease.But scientists insisted that the boost to their sex lives could be the added incentive men need to exercise and diet.

The 900 midlife volunteers were split into three groups to receive a year of treatments designed to help ward off diabetes.A third were told to modify their lifestyles by dieting and 150 minutes a week of exercise, a third were given the diabetes drug metformin and the rest were given a placebo.

The number of men with low testosterone levels remained almost identical among those taking metformin or the placebo.But in the group making lifestyle changes, the proportion with low testosterone fell significantly from 20 percent at the beginning of the study to just 11 percent a year later.

Researcher Dr Frances Hayes of St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin said that low testosterone levels were common among overweight men before they got diabetes.

“Doctors should first encourage overweight men with low testosterone levels to try to lose weight through diet and exercise before resorting to testosterone therapy to raise their hormone levels,” the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

The study found that levels of testosterone went up in direct proportion to the number of pounds lost and the decrease in waist size.“Losing weight not only reduces the risk of prediabetic men progressing to diabetes but also appears to increase their body’s production of testosterone,” Dr Hayes added.

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Coca-Cola and Pepsi contain alcohol`

London: Coca-Cola and Pepsi contain minute traces of alcohol, a study has revealed.

According to tests carried out by the Paris-based National Institute of Consumption, more than half of leading colas contain traces of alcohol, Daily Mail reported Wednesday.


These include the brand leaders Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, while it is mainly only cheap supermarket versions of the drink which are alcohol-free.
"60 Million Consumers", the French magazine, published the results of the tests in its latest issue.

The tests suggest that the alcohol levels are as low as 10 mg in every litre, and this works out at around 0.001 per cent alcohol.

But the figures will still be enough to upset the thousands of Muslims who regularly drink Cola because their religion forbids them from drinking alcohol, the daily said.

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Indian scientist gets U.S. patent for cancer treatment

Nano-particle carries anti-cancer drug and releases it only in the cancerous cell

In what is being considered a path-breaking innovation, a scientist hailing from Hyderabad and his colleagues have invented a system in which a nano-particle carries the payload of anti-cancer drug and releases it only in the cancerous cell, thus protecting healthy cells around.

The cutting-edge research done in the United States has been patented recently.


The nanotechnology scientist, Rao Papineni, told this correspondent on the phone from the U.S. that the patent application received approval (patent no. US 8,202,544 B2) on June 19.

Dr. Papineni, chief scientist and senior principal investigator in medical applications of nanotechnology at Carestream Health, Inc USA, along with his fellow researchers, filed for the patent in 2009.

“This patent will potentially change the way radiation is administered. It will improve localisation and monitoring of tumour and will help in highly targeted delivery of drugs to kill cancer cells,” he said.

Together with Alan Pollack, chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Miami, Dr. Papineni has been exploring the ability of nano-particles as a targeted drug carrier. “In rough terms, nano-particles are like payload delivery vehicles that can enhance… damage to cancer tissues and simultaneously reduce the toxicity of normal and healthy tissues during radiation treatment.”

“The title of the patent is ‘High Capacity Non-Viral Vectors.’ The non-viral vectors are nano-particles. The nano-particles will allow the drug particle to target the diseased site with pinpoint precision. The nano-particles will allow the drug to be released inside the diseased cell. They will enhance the function of the drug… Our nano-particles will carry the… drug precisely with minimal collateral damage to healthy tissue,” Dr. Papineni said.

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