Cancer Drug Might Be Able To "Melt Away Fat" In Your Arteries

Scientists from the University of Aberdeen say that a drug used to treat breast cancer and diabetes can also “melt away” fat inside arteries.

In studies on mice, the scientists found that a single dose of the drug Trodusquemine could reverse the effects of atherosclerosis, a disease that can cause numerous heart problems. The research is published in the journal Clinical Science.

“Trodusquemine has already been trialed for treatment of diabetes and breast cancer but this is the first time it has been used in models of atherosclerosis,” said Professor Mirela Delibegovic, lead author of the study, in a statement.

“These have only been tested at pre-clinical level, in mice, so far but the results were quite impressive and showed that just a single dose of this drug seemed to completely reverse the effects of atherosclerosis.”

Everyone has some level of atherosclerosis, which can cause heart attacks and strokes. It can be a big problem for people who are overweight or who have underlying cardiovascular conditions.

It causes the build-up of fatty material inside arteries. Over time this material can grow bigger, until the arteries become narrow and prevent enough blood passing through.

In these tests, the mice treated with just a single dose of Trodusquemine had less fatty plaques over time, leading to the claims that it had melted away fat. The drug stops an enzyme called PTP1B, which is something that’s more prevalent in people with obesity or diabetes.

The drug was also found to stimulate a protein called AMPK, which mimics exercise and reduces chronic inflammation. This is the first time the drug has been shown to help prevent cardiovascular disease.

The research has only been conducted in mice so far, but the scientists hope to test it in human patients in future.

“Trodusquemine is in early clinical trials for the treatment of diabetes,” said Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, in the statement.

“This study shows it can also limit the build-up of fatty atherosclerotic plaques in mice. If we see the same effect in patients, the drug may prove even more useful than currently hoped for.”

Malaria-Detecting Breathalyzer Could Be An Early Diagnosis Breakthrough

While the world is slowly but surely giving malaria the boot, there’s still much more work to be done before we can relegate it to the likes of smallpox. Early, easy, and accurate diagnosis is a key part of that.

Scientists have recently revealed their progress making a new breath test that could detect malaria and so far it's looking good. Researchers from Washington University in St Louis presented their findings at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting this week, as reported by News Medical.

The “malaria breathalyzer” picks up on a previous breakthrough that found people with malaria have distinctive chemical compounds in their breath. Remarkably, some studies have speculated that mosquitoes might actively alter the molecular content of their victim’s breath as a chemical cue to alert other mosquitos and help the malaria parasite spread further.

Even in 2015, these chemical were only detectable using very expensive, laboratory-based instruments. At the conference this week, the scientists reported how they have been testing out a simple hand-held prototype breathalyzer in Lilongwe, Malawi.

So far, the work has only used very small sample sizes, but the results have been promising. They tested the breathalyzer out on 35 feverish children, some with and some without malaria. The children simply provided a sample by blowing into a balloon-like bag. It was able to accurately diagnosis the child with an 83 percent success rate (29 out of 35 children). Much more work is needed, however, so far, so good.

“Possibly, breath tests could become a low-skill, low-cost alternative for rural and under-resourced communities,” Chad Schaber, a PhD student working on the project, told Infectious Disease News. “The largest advantage of a breath test is that it would not require a blood sample. This makes it especially attractive for use in screening populations, for example at border crossings, to maintain gains in malaria elimination.”

The latest statistics from the World Health Organization says there were 212 million new cases of malaria worldwide and approximately 429 000 malaria deaths in 2015, both overwhelmingly occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Nevertheless, progress has been outstanding. Between 2010 and 2015, there was a 21 percent decrease in new malaria cases and 29 percent decreases in deaths from malaria. Bill Gates, of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the cause, recently said we could see the last case of malaria “in our lifetimes.”

“The malaria parasite has been outwitting human interventions for thousands of years,” said Patricia Walker, president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, which is hosting the conference. “We need innovative collaborations between biologists and ­engineers to develop new tools that give us the upper hand.”

Wounds That Occur During The Day Heal 60 Percent Faster Than Those That Happen At Night

What time of day you get hurt has a dramatic influence on how quickly that wound will heal. Researchers in the UK have discovered that wounds that occur in the daytime heal up to 11 days quicker than those that have occurred at night, and could pave the way for the development of drugs that would help speed up the recovery of patients.

It turns out that the body clock ticking away inside each and every one of us, known as the circadian rhythm, has a profound impact on how the skin cells that are first to respond damage react. Publishing their results in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers showed how these cells, called fibroblasts, were changing their activity over a 24 hour period.

“This is the first time that the circadian clock within individual skin cells has been shown to determine how effectively they respond to injuries,” said Dr John O’Neill of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and senior author of the paper. “For people who had burns, we found quite a big difference in wound healing speed, which agreed perfectly with the predictions.”

The team first tested their theory on mice, showing that wounds that occur during the "active" phase of the circadian rhythm (which for mice is confusingly during the night) were far quicker in healing. They then turned to the records of burns patients who had passed through the NHS, and looked to see if there was any connection between when they were injured, and how long it took them to get better.

Astonishingly, those who were burned at night took an average of 60 percent longer to heal than those who were injured during the day. Nighttime injuries took around 28 days to heal, compared to just 17 for daytime mishaps.  

Looking into the reasons behind this stark difference, the researchers found that the skin cells move into the site of injury much faster during the day than at night, a behavior that was driven by an increase in activity of a protein called actin, known for its role in cell movement and repair.

The discovery could have some pretty incredible applications in medicine by dramatically cutting recovery times.

“It may be that healing time could be improved by resetting the cells' clocks prior to surgery, perhaps by applying drugs that can reset the biological clock to the time of best healing in the operation site,” Dr O’Neill explained.

Interestingly this follows another recent paper that found open heart surgery is more successful if it is carried out in the afternoon than in the morning. It seems then that perhaps we should be tailoring our medicines to the time of day.