This new pronouncement from medical researchers is a tough one, especially if you are an individual who lives in heavy traffic cities like Dallas, Houston, Austin and other populated areas in Texas. Pollution may contribute not only to asthma, but also to higher cholesterol.
Let’s start with asthma. A recent study says that traffic pollution may boost the risk of children getting asthma, especially if their genes predispose them for that vulnerability. The University of Southern California team studied the health records and genetic profiles of 3,000 children. Those children who had a gene variation were slightly more at risk if they lived near a main road.
The researchers found that children who had high levels of EPHX1 were 1.5 times more likely to have been diagnosed with asthma, while children who also had variations in GSTP1 were four times as likely to have asthma. Living close to a main thoroughfare appeared to increase this effect.
This study is one of the first to look specifically at how genetic vulnerability to respiratory disease and environmental traffic fumes can cause childhood asthma in children with active EPHX1 variations in the gene and a home near a road a risk nine times greater than average.
The study’s conclusion stated that, while children with the identified genes and enzyme activity were more prone to having asthma, living near a road seemed to compound that risk.
A more recent US study suggests that diesel exhaust particles in air pollution, combined with artery clogging “bad” cholesterol, can increase an individual’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Together, these two substances switch on genes causing inflammation of artery walls that eventually harden. All this makes it more likely that an individual will suffer a heart attack or stroke. The study is published in the journal Genome Biology and is the work of scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
Dr. Andre Nel, chief of nanomedicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and researcher at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute said that when the diesel particles combined with blood fats, their impact was stronger than their individual effect. “When you add one plus one, it normally totals two,” he said.
“But we found that adding diesel particles to cholesterol fats equals three. Their combination creates a dangerous synergy that wreaks cardiovascular havoc far beyond what’s caused by the diesel or cholesterol alone.”
Researchers reported that the studys findings could explain why hospitals admit more heart disease cases, and why more people die from it, when air pollution in an area increases.
There have been previous studies that suggested links between an increase in airborne particles and increased deaths from heart disease. The American Cancer Society estimates that, for every 10 micrograms per cubic meter rise in air particulates, heart and lung related deaths go up by six percent.
Researchers report that they don’t know exactly how air pollutants damage the arteries. “We do know that these particles are coated with chemicals that damage tissue and cause inflammation of the nose and lungs,” Nel explains. “Vascular inflammation in turn leads to cholesterol deposits and clogged arteries, which can give rise to blood clots that trigger heart attack or stroke.”
Researchers also say that these findings emphasized controlling air pollution is another way to combat the increase in cardiovascular disease.
Pat Carpenter writes for Precedent Insurance Company. Precedent puts a new spin on health insurance. Learn more at Precedent.com
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In the recent years, there has been a tremendous development in the field of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is a field of applied science, which deals in building machines and bots at microscopic levels. Due to development in nanotechnology, there have been many developments in various fields of science, especially in the field of medicine.
With the help of nanotechnology, carrying out a complex heart surgery is very much possible. Doctors have started making use of nanobots to cure certain diseases. These nanobots also help in rectifying certain disorders in the human body.
Nanotechnology in Drug Development:
Recently, scientists are developing effective and better drug delivery systems using nanotechnology. Scientists are using nanoparticles to design a drug delivery system that may improve the pharmaceutical and therapeutic properties of a drug and help better processes such as Drug screening. Nanaoparticles have remarkable properties that drastically enhance the drug delivery. Due to their microscopic sizes, nanoparticles get an easy access in the cells.
There are numerous developments in the drug delivery owing to nanotechnology. One such development using nanotechnology is the transfer of drugs into the cytoplasm of cells through the cell membrane. This is an important development, because to hinder certain diseases from the body, the drug needs to enter the cell membrane.
To make a drug molecule effective in the body, it needs a triggered response. To do so, scientists are using nanotechnology. Scientists are developing drugs using nanotechnology that automatically activate, once they enter the human body.
Many researchers believe that it is possible to develop a drug delivery system that may prove beneficial in treating cancer and infectious diseases using nanotechnology. By far, they have identified six types of nano-enabled delivery systems that have considerable potential in treating cancer and other infectious diseases.
With the help of nanotechnology, scientists have developed injectable drugs, which are more pleasing for the patients, who receive them and at the same time are easy to administer. Better opportunities are coming up in the development of implantable delivery systems, due to the use of nanotechnology, especially in terms of injectable drugs.
With so much of development taking place in the field of drug delivery systems, researchers believe that in the near future nano-enabled medicines will have a tremendous evolution and will produce true nanomedicines.
Written by Marcia Henin on behalf on Docoop.com – Drug development Company specializes in Protein stabilization, Enzyme stabilization and Hydrophobic compounds.
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Can We Live Forever
by Carol Forsloff
Ray Kurzweil thinks we can. He’s a research scientist who has won many awards that include the 1999 Medal of Technology and 12 honorary doctorates in science, engineering, music and humane letters, written many books, and is known as the father of voice to text technology. He believes that with the use of computers a perfect replica of any object can be made and that through virtual reality you can exist in several places at once–at home, at work or on the beach in Hawaii, and feel completely real. He observes that this can happen because of technology and that we can incorporate computer-based functions into our biological processes and therefore become immortal.
The idea that we can create anything and that we can live forever certainly provokes philosophical, religious, moral and ethical concerns. If we can create anything, will it ever be valuable again? How does responsibility, discipline and human values relate to issues of immortality? If we can have anything we want, what impact would that have on ordinary human behavior? If we are able to live forever, would we plan right, treat our brothers with more love or greater disdain? How would that impact our natural world?
Scientists who deal with and plan for the future tell us that we are on the verge of such vast technological changes that human existence will eventually be dramatically altered in ways we can only imagine. They tell us that through gene research and what is called nanotechnology that we will be able to go beyond our frail and limited bodies and that illness and disability will someday be eliminated.
Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon has said that biology won’t be able to come up to what can be accomplished by the nanotechnology revolution. Kurzweil tells us that the robotic revolution will give us artificial intelligence in a number of different forms. Nanomedicine will eliminate 50% of conditions that can be prevented medically. These scientists maintain that we will eventually be able to have our bodies and our brains rebuilt by technology.
The implications of all of this are astounding. If this all becomes possible, do we look at these happenings as a gift from God or a curse for mankind? Throughout the centuries as our scientists have tested, there have been those who fought against them and declared that the world was indeed flat, that pharmaceuticals were poison, and that those who worked with the unknown were in concert with the devil and were burned at the stake. If it is true that we will eventually have the resources to cure diseases and live longer and longer lives, for centuries perhaps, we need to start examining how we will interact with each other and our planet and whether or not we can accept these changes if they come.
References: Fantastic Voyage: The Science Behind Radical Life Extension by Terry Grossmand Ray Kurzweil, Singulairity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, and Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology by J. Storrs Hall.
Professional journalist with small town newspaper with hard copy and online editions and political and social blog. Licensed also as a mental health counselor, certified as a teacher, and experience over 40 years in multiple areas. See website at www.therealviews.com and blogs at everythingsarahpalin.blogspot.com or 
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