DIABETES

Diabetes is a disease that is having a status of a likely epidemic in India. More than 62 million individuals are currently diagnosed with diabetes.  In 2000, India (31.7 million) had maximum number of individuals in the world diagnosed with diabetes mellitus, followed by China (20.8 million) and then the United States (17.7 million). According to data prevalence of diabetes is expected to double globally from 171 million in 2000 to 366 million in 2030 with a maximum number of patients in India. 

Diabetes occurs when the body does not produce any insulin or less insulin, or the body does not properly use the insulin that is produced, or it can be a combination of both. When any of these happens, the body is not able to get sugar from the blood into the cells. This leads to high levels of blood sugar.

Glucose, in our blood is a form of sugar which is one of our main energy sources. A decrease in levels of insulin or improper utilization of insulin causes glucose levels to increase in our blood. This can cause many health problems.

TYPES OF DIABETES

       There are three types of diabetes:

1                            Type 1 Diabetes

2                            Type 2 Diabetes

3                           Gestational Diabetes

Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder. It means that our immune system itself attacks and destroys the beta cells present in the pancreas which produce insulin. This damage is permanent. What initiates the attacks is not clear. The reasons may be both genetic and environmental.

Type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes starts due to resistance to insulin. It means our body is unable to use insulin efficiently. This stimulates the pancreas to produce more insulin. Pancreas keeps on producing more and more insulin until it can no longer keep up with demand of the body.  The Insulin levels decrease  gradually, which is the cause of higher levels of blood sugar. The exact cause of type 2 diabetes is not known. But contributing factors may include:

a) Genetics

b) Sedentary life style

c) Obesity

d) Other health factors and environmental reasons.

Gestational diabetes

This type of diabetes is caused due to hormones which block insulin. These insulin-blocking hormones  are produced during pregnancy. Gestational Diabetes occurs only during pregnancy.

SYMPTOMS

Symptoms of diabetes include:

1.       Excessive thirst and hunger

2.       Frequent urination

3.       Drowsiness or fatigue

4.       Dry, itchy skin

5.       Blurry vision

6.       Slow-healing wounds

Type 1 diabetes  develops more quickly and cause symptoms like weight loss or a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis. Diabetic ketoacidosis  occurs when we have very high blood sugar levels and little or no insulin in our body.

Type 2 diabetes may cause dark patches in the folds of skin like armpits and neck. Type 2 diabetes takes longer to diagnose, we may feel symptoms at the time of diagnosis, like pain or numbness in the feet.

The symptoms of both the types of diabetes (Type and Type 2) can appear at any age, but generally type 1 diabetes occurs in children and young adults. Type 2 Diabetes occurs mostly in people over the age of 45. But now a days younger people are also increasingly being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes due to sedentary lifestyles, lack of exercise and obesity.

Complications of Diabetes

Complications of diabetes develop over time. If the blood sugar levels are poorly controlled it may increase the risk of serious complications that can also become life-threatening.

 Chronic complications of Diabetes include:

1.       Vascular diseases which may lead to heart attack or stroke

2.       eye problems(retinopathy)

3.       infection of skin

4.       nerve damage( neuropathy)

5.       renal damage( nephropathy)

6.       amputations which may be due to neuropathy or vascular disease

Type 2 diabetes also may  increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s,  if your blood sugar is not well controlled.

Complications during pregnancy

During pregnancy high blood sugar levels can harm both mother and child. It increases the risk of:

1.       High blood pressure

2.       Preeclampsia

3.       Miscarriage or stillbirth

4.       Birth defects

Prevention of Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented.

The risk of type 2 diabetes can be lowered if you:

1.       Control your body weight

2.        manage your diet

3.       exercise regularly

4.       smoking should be avoided

If one had gestational diabetes, these factors can delay or prevent the start of type 2 diabetes.

GENE THERAPY FOR CANCER

India currently has approximately 2.5 Million people living with cancer and is the world’s 3rd highest cancer cases amongst women with abysmal survival rates. The usual brand of treatment involving chemotherapy and radiation therapy while with reduced side effects still includes mouth sores, acute and delayed nausea, and mild cognitive impairments. Chemotherapy might even make a patient more susceptible to certain other types of cancer. The treatment for metastatic prostate cancer might cause impotence, hot flashes, incontinence and an increase risk of fractures.

Among the various alternative treatment programs under development, there is one in particular that grabs attention- Gene Therapy.

Gene therapy is focusing on augmenting the current treatment patterns by majorly taking three broad routes: Immunotherapy, Oncolytic Agents (engineered viruses), Gene Transfer.

Immunotherapy works on the basic principle of making the cancer cells detectable to the immune system. This is done in two ways:

Cancer vaccines and modifying the immune system directly. Cancer vaccines train the immune system to identify cancer cells by exposing it to  highly antigenic and immune stimulatory cell debris. The latter approach directly sensitizes the immune system towards causing an immune response against cancer cells.

Initial first generation vaccines produced in the immunotherapy research have produced mixed results showing both the potential and the way left to cover. Current vaccines using engineered cells have shown a positive response to many types of cancers that do not respond to conventional treatment.
Oncolytic Agents are engineered viruses that have been specially modified to attack cancer cells and leave the normal cells unaffected. These viruses infect the cancer cells and lead to cell death via propagation of the virus.

Trails demonstrate unique prowess and obstacles in the use of this particular brand of treatment. While mammalian models have worked remarkably well showing success in even immunocompromised dogs, a major issue with using this treatment for humans is that most humans possess immunity against the common viruses used and their body filters the virus out before the treatment has even had a chance to take effect.

Gene Transfer, however, is probably the most exciting and trending area for research. It focuses on getting a foreign gene into the cancer cell or the surrounding gene. These genes vary from suicide genes to cellular stasis genes. A large variety of viral vectors have been used to introduce genes into the cells.

Currently Gene Transfer is the only gene therapy product to achieve regulatory approval as demonstrated by China’s Gendicine.

The field is growing and new avenues are being explored everyday. With scientists leaving no stone unturned, Gene therapy might soon become a part of the regular treatment for cancer.

Books to movies- disastrous altering

What does a story justice are its characters, its details and the emotion it contains for everyone linked with it. What a book does is it connects to its readers. That’s what the best part of being a reader is, you get to live more than one life. Experiences teach us something and books get us experiences that people sometimes might not be able to.

Movies do the same thing except one might say they target a broader audience and a combination of the two just sounds heavenly. Reading a story and seeing it unfold in front you are two very different things and the second one sounds a lot better to most people.

Unfortunately, that is not how things work out 95% of the time. Movies do pick up the major events of a book but they surely do not do it justice. A character isn’t just built on major events to the story or what would get the maximum ratings, a character is built on every day incidents that are portrayed in the books. These seemingly insignificant events are actually what back the major events. Why did someone do this? Another way as to how the plot is twisted is to change the nuances of the very incident.

Movies based on books have always been a major outrage from the part of the fans. From the acclaimed Harry Potter movies taking away a lot of important parts from the plate of Ron Weasely to there being entire changes in the dynamic in the movies in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. The fact never changes.

Even in the movie adaptation of Eragon there are a lot of major events that were changed. First of all the events leading to Brom’s death and then the fact that Murgath wasn’t kidnapped at the end of the movie.

Now the truth is that using movies to depict a book or a series isn’t the wrong thing to do. It’s actually the correct idea. Movies do target a better audience and can actually portray what needs to be, but the editing of the basis isn’t the way to go about it. Fan demands for a TV show based on their favorite books seems to be a better way to go about it because then each episode can simply address the nuances of each episode better and a wider audience could still be targeted.

The fact of the matter is that books are connected to a reader’s soul, and that soul being violated is quite a painful experience. The only hope that the readers possess at this point in time is that as the sands of time flow the depictions will come closer to representing the actuality of their basis.

IMMUNOTHERAPY AND CANCER

Immunotherapy is also known as biologic therapy.  It is a type of cancer treatment which boosts the body's natural defenses to fight against cancer. The human body’s immune system helps our body fight infections and other diseases. It sis made up of white blood cells and organs and tissues of lymph system. Immunotherapy uses substances produced by the body or produced in a laboratory to improve or restore immune system function. Immunotherapy works in many ways. It may:

·         Stop or slow the growth of cancer cells

·         Stop cancer from spreading to other parts of the body

·         Help the immune system work better to destroy cancer cells

Immunotherapy can be active, passive or hybrid (both active and passive). Cancer cells have molecules on their surface that can be detected by the immune system. These molecules are known as tumour-associated antigens (TAAs). The TAAs are mostly proteins or other molecules like carbohydrates. Active immunotherapy works by targeting the immune system to attack tumor cells by attacking TAAs. Passive immunotherapy on the other hand improves the already existing anti-cancerous responses of the body. It does so by the use of monoclonal antibodies, lymphocytes and cytokines.

Types of Immunotherapy
There are several types of immunotherapy methods that are being used to treat cancer. These methods of treatments either help the immune system to attack the cancer directly or it may stimulate the immune mechanism.

Types of immunotherapies which help the immune system to act directly against the cancer include:

·         Checkpoint inhibitors: These are drugs which help the immune system to respond more strongly to cancer cells. These drugs work by releasing substances that act as “brakes” that keep T cells which is a type of white blood cell and form a part of the immune system, from killing cancer cells. These inhibitor drugs do not target the tumor cells directly. But they interfere with the ability of tumor cells to avoid immune system attack.

·         Adoptive cell transfer is a method of treatment in immunotherapy that attempts to boost the natural ability of T cells of the body to fight against cancer. In this method, T cells are taken from the tumor itself. Then those T cells that are most active against the cancerous cells are grown in large batches in the laboratory.

The procedure of growing body’s T cells in the laboratory can take 2 to 8 week’s time. During this time, the patient may undergo treatment such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy. After these treatments are done, the T cells that were grown in the laboratory are injected back in the body through a needle in your vein.

·         Monoclonal antibodies which are also known as therapeutic antibodies, are immune system proteins that are created in the lab. These monoclonal  antibodies are designed in a way to attach to specific targets that are found on the cancer cells. Some monoclonal antibodies work by marking cancer cells in such a manner  so that they will be recognised and destroyed by the body’s immune system. Some monoclonal antibodies directly stop tumor cells from growing or cause their self-destruction. There are some others which work by carrying toxins to cancer cells. As therapeutic monoclonal antibodies work by recognizing specific proteins present on cancer cells, they are also known as targeted therapies.

·         Another method is by use of Treatment vaccines, which work against cancerous cells by boosting the immune system response to tumor cells. These Treatment vaccines are very different from the ones those help prevent disease.

Some methods of immunotherapy which help to increase our body’s immune response to fight against the cancer cells include:

·         Cytokines are proteins which are made by our own body cells. These play important role in our body’s normal immune responses and also in the immune system’s ability to respond to cancer. The two main types of cytokines used in the treatment of cancer are known as interferons and interleukins.

·         BCG, which is also known as Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, is an immunotherapy method which is used to treat urinary bladder cancer. It is a much weakened form of the bacteria which causes tuberculosis. When it is injected directly into the bladder by using a catheter, it produces an immune response against tumor cells. It is also being studied in treatment of other types of cancer.

Immunotherapy is used as widely as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. But, immunotherapies have been proved to treat people with many other types of cancer.

Writer's Block

To make it simple- Writer's block. One of the worst things to plague mankind.I had been sitting on the laptop for thirty minutes trying to write what I usually do- a short story. Turns out, not the day for on

So instead, gear up folks for we are going to talk about writer's block.Question 1. What is writer's block?Answer. Writer's block is the same thing that prevents you from answering a question in a test. Lack of inspiration and ideas. This is the wall that makes sure that you cannot get a single meaningful word on paper. Simply, it is something that will strike you when you don't expect it.
Question 2. Why do you get writer's block?Answer. Because the mind is a muscle, it needs exercise to be built, and you have been ignoring it for quite some time, you idiot. But frankly speaking, it is random. It's basically a sign that you're distracted.
Question 3. How do you get over it?Answer. You don't. It gets over you, till it comes back to haunt you like an allergy. For the moment, drop what you are doing and do something that helps you calm down. What it depends on person to person.I don't know but a lot of people tell me that irritating your siblings works quite well. I don't have any so do find out and tell me.

I guess that's for today. Why? You guessed it- Writer's Block

The new fight

Diseases like Dengue, Malaria and Zika amongst others are very prevalent mosquito-borne diseases. Their causal organisms are carried by the mosquitos which act as vectors. Aedes aegypti is the mosquito that spreads Dengue and Zika amongst other diseases.

Research is being conducted on various methods of stopping the spread of these diseases. Various methods include stopping the mosquito larvae from growing into adulthood, making the fertilised eggs fatal and the one that we shall be discussing today, reducing the replication of the pathogen and the spread of these mosquitos.

Wolbachia is a bacteria that is crucial to the solution in question. It usually infects arthropods and some nematodes, including a few mosquitos that bite humans, but this bacteria has no natural affinity for the A. aegypti mosquito but scientists have discovered a way to condition the microbe and artificially affect the mosquito eggs.

Various effects of the wolbachia that have been observed are that first of all in the mosquitos with the bacteria strain, the replication of the dengue virus does not take place. Second with modification they can also be used to render the species sterile, that is when a mosquito with the strain breeds with a wild mosquito, the mosquitos eggs are unable to grow thus effectively reducing the populations in subsequent generations. Only male mosquitos, which do not bite will be used for this method, so as to not increase the risk of infection. The bacteria also doesn't transmit to humans after biting.

A few small time tests have been conducted in Fresno and Australia as well. Now recent news is that Verily, the life sciences arm of Alphabet will be mass producing and releasing them for a large scale field test in California.