11/25/14 Health News: Drink will reduce your cancer risk ♦ Untapped source of antibiotic drugs ♦ Personalized vaccines ♦ Longer work hours for moms means obesity for preschoolers

This drink will substantially reduce your cancer risk

Attention, ladies: Science says it’s time to put the kettle on. A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that women who consumed the most flavonoids, a type of antioxidant abundant in tea, were significantly less likely to develop endothelial ovarian cancer—the fifth leading cause of cancer death among women.  Continue Reading

Life's extremists may be an untapped source of antibacterial drugs

Life's extremists, a family of microbes called Archaea, may be an untapped source of new antibacterial drugs. That conclusion arises from the discovery of the first antibacterial gene in this ancient lineage  Continue Reading

Possibilities for personalized vaccines

Medical researchers are considering the possibilities for personalized vaccines in all types of cancer. The first vaccine will be prepared from a warehouse of 72 targets previously identified by the researchers as relevant for treatment in glioblastoma Continue Reading

Longer work hours for moms mean less sleep, higher BMIs for preschoolers

A link between moms' employment and overweight/obesity in preschoolers has been found by researchers. The study investigated links between mothers' employment status and their children's weight over time, exploring the impact of potential mediators, such as children's sleep and dietary habits, the amount of time they spent watching TV and family mealtime routines  Continue Reading

1/2/14 Health News: Is Antibacterial Dangerous, Will Obamacare Cause Doctor Shortage

'Antibacterial' Products are Finally Getting Scrutiny

FDA says claims that popular products fight infection are unproven. A high-profile move this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should have come as a shock to consumers who have long used “antibacterial” soaps, lotions and other products to ward off illness. Despite widespread use since the late 1970s, a top FDA official said bluntly on Monday that their added value in fighting infection is unproven as questions mount about potential risks. Continue reading

ObamaCare, Doctor Shortage to Spur $2 Billion Telehealth Market

The business of treating patients via telehealth in the U.S. will dramatically increase to nearly $2 billion in revenue within five years due to a confluence of events in the health care industry from doctor shortages to provider payment changes under the Affordable Care Act. The trend toward telehealth will be driven by employers, private insurers and the Affordable Care Act, which makes doctors and hospitals more accountable by moving medical care providers away from fee-for-service medicine where they are paid based on volume of services to reimbursement based on the value of care they provide. Continue Reading

Is Antibacterial Soap Safe ?

When you're buying soaps and body washes, do you reach for the bar or bottle labeled "antibacterial"? Are you thinking that these products, in addition to keeping you clean, will reduce your risk of getting sick or passing on germs to others?

Not necessarily, according to experts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Every day, consumers use antibacterial soaps and body washes at home, work, school and in other public settings. Especially because so many consumers use them, FDA believes that there should be clearly demonstrated benefits to balance any potential risks.

In fact, there currently is no evidence that over-the-counter (OTC) antibacterial soap products are any more effective at preventing illness than washing with plain soap and water, says Colleen Rogers, Ph.D., a lead microbiologist at FDA.

Moreover, antibacterial soap products contain chemical ingredients, such as triclosan and triclocarban, which may carry unnecessary risks given that their benefits are unproven.

"New data suggest that the risks associated with long-term, daily use of antibacterial soaps may outweigh the benefits," Rogers says. There are indications that certain ingredients in these soaps may contribute to bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and may have unanticipated hormonal effects that are of concern to FDA.

In light of these data, the agency issued a proposed rule on Dec. 16, 2013 that would require manufacturers to provide more substantial data to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of antibacterial soaps. The proposed rule covers only those consumer antibacterial soaps and body washes that are used with water. It does not apply to hand sanitizers, hand wipes or antibacterial soaps that are used in health care settings such as hospitals.

According to Rogers, the laboratory tests that have historically been used to evaluate the effectiveness of antibacterial soaps do not directly test the effect of a product on infection rates. That would change with FDA's current proposal, which would require studies that directly test the ability of an antibacterial soap to provide a clinical benefit over washing with non-antibacterial soap, Rogers says.

What Makes a Soap "Antibacterial?"

Antibacterial soaps (sometimes called antimicrobial or antiseptic soaps) contain certain chemical ingredients that plain soaps do not. These ingredients are added to many consumer products in an effort to reduce or prevent bacterial contamination.

A large number of liquid soaps labeled "antibacterial" contain triclosan, an ingredient of concern to many environmental and industry groups. Animal studies have shown that triclosan may alter the way hormones work in the body. While data showing effects in animals don't always predict effects in humans, these studies are of concern to FDA as well, and warrant further investigation to better understand how they might affect humans.

In addition, laboratory studies have raised the possibility that triclosan contributes to making bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Such resistance can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of medical treatments.

Moreover, recent data suggest that exposure to these active ingredients is higher than previously thought, raising concerns about the potential risks associated with their use regularly and over time.

Northwestern University Makes Antibacterial coating out of Food

A simple kitchen sink experiment helped Northwestern University researchers discover that green tea leaves can make an excellent antibacterial coating.And so can red wine, dark chocolate and cacao beans, they found. It’s the powerful and healthful polyphenols at work in a new way.

Polyphenols are naturally occurring molecules found in plants whose functions include structural support and defense against bacteria and oxidative damage.Polyphenols are sticky, and the researchers exploited this useful property, while also retaining some of the compounds’ well-known biological properties. They made new multifunctional coatings based on tannic acid and pyrogallol -- inexpensive compounds resembling the more complex polyphenols found in tea, wine and chocolate.

Simply dissolving polyphenol powder in water with the proper dash of salt quickly produces colorless coatings that have antioxidant properties, are non-toxic and can kill bacteria on contact.

The coatings which can stick to virtually anything, including Teflon, could be used on a wide range of consumer, industrial and medical products, from catheters and orthopedic implants to membranes for water purification and materials used in food processing, packaging and preparation.

The study is published today (Aug. 22) in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

“We discovered a way to apply coatings onto a variety of surfaces that takes advantage of the sticky properties of the polyphenol compounds,” said Phillip B. Messersmith, who led the research. “It’s a very simple dip-coating process, and the antibacterial and antioxidant properties are preserved in the coating.”One could take a stainless-steel hip implant, he said, apply the process to it, and the coating that emerges spontaneously and with no other modifications will kill bacteria and quench reactive oxygen species, such as free radicals.

Messersmith’s team tested all kinds of materials -- medically relevant polymers, engineering polymers, metals, inorganic substrates and ceramics -- and a coating stuck to each one. The researchers also demonstrated they can easily modify the coatings to give them additional functions, such as an antifouling property to prevent cells from building up on a surface, such as a pacemaker.

“What’s interesting is that the raw materials we regularly encounter in our diets can benefit us in a way we had never envisioned -- as coatings on medical devices,” said Tadas S. Sileika, a graduate student in Messersmith’s lab and first author of the paper.

“The coatings innately have properties that are very beneficial to saving lives and keeping people healthy. Without any further modification, they can help prolong the life of a medical device, reduce inflammation in a patient and prevent bacterial infections,” he said.

For 15 years, Messersmith’s lab has been developing new biomedical materials, including another coating called polydopamine, also based on phenols, which are found in the sticky glue that marine mussels use to stick to rocks. Because of their chemical similarities, Messersmith and his colleagues wondered if the phenolic compounds found in plant-derived red wine, green tea and dark chocolate might have similar sticking power.

This curiosity led to the kitchen sink experiments in which the researchers detected a colorless residue left behind on containers exposed to green tea and red wine. Experiments using polyphenol-rich food extracts from green tea, red wine, dark chocolate and cacao beans also produced coatings.

Messersmith and his team then went one step farther: after finding this behavior also holds for low-cost polyphenols and similar compounds, they developed a simple method for producing the multifunctional coatings.

They found that immersing objects into a saline solution of tannic acid or pyrogallol results in spontaneous coating deposition, just like what happened with the extracts and beverages. Using these inexpensive precursors instead of the extracts improves the speed and lowers the cost of the process, increasing its commercial viability, the researchers said.

“The stickiness of plant polyphenols is behind the so-called astringency effect that people can experience when drinking red wine high in tannins,” Messersmith said. “The tannins stick to, or bind, saliva proteins, producing the sensation of puckering and dryness. We’ve put this stickiness to work in a novel way.”

Polydopamine has shown great promise as a biomedical coating, but the plant polyphenol-based coatings can trump it in two important ways: The plant polyphenol-based coatings are colorless, so they don’t alter a material’s optical properties, and the compounds used to produce them are roughly 100 times cheaper. And that’s in addition to their innate antibacterial and antioxidant properties.