Category Archives: Science

Health, Medical, Research, Science

New heart drug offers biggest breakthrough since statins

MEDICAL RESEARCH

Unlike other treatments that tend to focus on cholesterol, Canakinumab works to lower inflammation in the body.

The discovery of a new heart drug is being hailed as the biggest breakthrough since statins. Thousands of lives could be saved.

In a four-year trial, scientists found that the drug – given by injection every three months – cut the risk of heart attacks by a quarter.

The study involving 10,000 patients, and around 1,000 doctors in 39 countries, also suggested that the drug could halve the risk of dying from lung cancer and prevent arthritis and gout.

Scientists said the treatment marked “a new era of therapeutics” that could save thousands of lives.

The drug, canakinumab, works by reducing inflammation – a major new approach in heart medicine. For the past 30 years cholesterol-busting statins have been given to nearly all people deemed to be at risk of cardiovascular disease in an effort to save them from heart attacks and strokes.

Yet half of the 200,000 people who have a heart attack in Britain each year do not have high cholesterol, so there is a desperate need for a different approach to treatment.

Experts have long thought that inflammation – the body’s natural responses to infection or injury – might also play a major role in causing heart attacks and strokes, possibly because it causes swelling in the arteries, increasing the risk of a blockage.

The new trial, however, is the first definitive proof that cutting inflammation slashes heart risk.

Study leader Professor Paul Ridker of Harvard Medical School said the new drug opened up a “third front” in the war on heart disease, following the previous focus on cholesterol and lifestyle.

Presenting his findings at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Barcelona, Professor Ridker said: “These findings represent the end game of more than two decades of research, stemming from a critical observation – half of heart attacks occur in people who do not have high cholesterol.

“We’ve been able to definitively show that lowering inflammation independent of cholesterol reduces cardiovascular risk.”

Professor Ridker, whose results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine, added: “This has far-reaching implications.

“It tells us that by leveraging an entirely new way to treat patients – targeting inflammation – we may be able to improve outcomes for certain very high-risk populations.”

Canakinumab is an antibody that attacks an immune-system protein called interleukin-1, which in high levels results in increased inflammation throughout the body.

The scientific trial involved high-risk patients who had already suffered a heart attack – a group in desperate need of help because a quarter of patients suffer a second attack within five years, even with statins.

All patients in the trial took statins as well, but canakinumab cut the risk of repeat heart attacks by 24 per cent, over and above the impact of the cholesterol drug.

People who took the drug were 36 per cent less likely to be hospitalised with unstable angina, and 32 per cent less likely to require costly bypass surgery.

Researchers reported a sharp rise in infections, which killed one in every 1,000 patients. But patients had a 51 per cent reduced risk of lung cancer deaths – a finding they said was “very exciting”. Gout and arthritis, which are linked to inflammation, also fell.

Canakinumab manufacturer Novartis said it would seek a licence to use the drug for heart disease.

Canakinumab is used for inflammatory problems, including forms of arthritis, at the cost of £9,928 per jab. Experts said the price – £40,000 a year for heart patients – would have to be lowered for it to be made available on the NHS.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, of the British Heart Foundation, said: “These exciting trial results finally confirm that ongoing inflammation contributes to risk of heart disease, and could help save lives.

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Arts, History, Science

Quantum Leaps: Sir Isaac Newton

1642 – 1727

So many extensive books and articles have been written on the life and impact of Sir Isaac Newton over the last three centuries it is impossible to do his achievements justice in a short entry like this. He is quite simply one of the greatest scientists of all time.

. A Slow Beginning

His early years did not necessarily suggest, however, he would end up as such. Born and bred in the quiet village of Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire, England, and schooled in the nearby town of Grantham, he was not particularly noted for academic achievements as a child. Even on entry to Trinity College, Cambridge, he did not stand out until, ironically, the University was forced to close during the period 1665-1666 due to the high risk of plague. Newton returned to Woolsthorpe and began two years of remarkable contemplation on the laws of nature and mathematics which would transform the history of human knowledge. Although he published nothing during this period, he formulated and tested many of the scientific principles which would become the basis for his future achievements.

However, it would often be decades before he returned to his earlier discoveries. For example, his ideas on universal gravitation did not re-emerge until he began a controversial correspondence on the subject with Robert Hooke in around 1680. Furthermore, it was not until Edmond Halley challenged Newton in 1684 to find out how planets could have the elliptical orbits described by Johannes Kepler, and Newton replied he already knew, that he fully articulated his law of gravitation. Yet he had begun work on the subject back in the 1660s in Woolsthorpe after famously seeing an apple fall from a tree and wondering if the force which propelled it towards the earth could be applied elsewhere in the universe.

Following his declaration to Halley, Newton was forced to recalculate his proof having lost his original jottings, and the result was published in Newton’s most famous work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). This law of gravitation proposed that all matter attracts other matter with a force related to the combination of their masses, but this attraction is weakened with distance, indeed, in inverse proportion to the square of their distances apart. This universal principle applied just as equally to the relationship between two small particles on earth as it did between the sun and the planets, and Newton was able to use it to explain Kepler’s elliptical orbits.

. Newton’s Laws of Motion

In the same work, Newton built on earlier observations made by Galileo and expressed three laws of motion which have been at the heart of modern physics ever since. The ‘law of inertia’, states that an object at rest or in motion in a straight line at a constant speed will carry on in the same state until it meets another force. The second stated that a force could change the motion of an object according to the product of its masses and its acceleration, vital in understanding dynamics. The third declares that the force or action with which an object meets another object is met by an equal force or reaction.

Aside from the wide-ranging uses for the laws Newton outlined in the Principia, the important point is that all historical speculation of different mechanical principles for the earth from the rest of the cosmos were cast aside in favour of a single, universal system. It was clear that simple mathematical laws could explain a huge range of seemingly disconnected physical facts, providing science with the straightforward explanations it had been seeking since the time of the ancients. Newton’s insistence on the use of mathematical expression of physical occurrences also underlined the standard for modern physics to follow.

. Further Achievements

Newton achieved major breakthroughs in other areas too. His proof that white light was made up of all the colours of the spectrum was outlined in his 1672 work New Theory about Light and Colours. In Opticks (1704), he also articulated his influential (if partially inaccurate) particle or corpuscle theory of light.

Another achievement significant to mathematics was his invention of the ‘binomial theorem’.

Newton had a practical side too, inventing the reflecting telescope in the 1660s. This new instrument bypassed the focusing problems caused by chromatic aberration in the refracting telescope of the type Galileo had created.

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Government, Health, Science, Society

Pesticide use deemed ‘worse for children than passive smoking’

RESEARCH

Crop Spraying

A study has revealed that crop spraying with elemental sulphur, one of the most widely used pesticides, is a greater danger than passive smoking to children.

CROP spraying with the world’s most widely used pesticide could be a greater danger to children than passive smoking, a new scientific study has said.

Scientists have linked elemental sulphur to higher levels of asthma and breathing problems in youngsters living near sprayed fields.

Significantly, the chemical is widely used on both conventional and organic farms on the basis that it is a ‘natural’ substance.

It is typically used to prevent and eradicate fungi such as mildew from fruit crops such as strawberries and grapes. The chemical is also widely used on wheat, barley, hops, sugar beet and swedes.

However, the fine powder can drift and damage the lungs of children living nearby, according to the landmark study.

Academics at the University of California, Berkeley, say farmers may need to change how they use the spray.

This could include a ban on spraying near homes, or wetting the powder before spreading it, meaning it is less likely to blow into neighbouring communities.

The research, which is being funded by the US Government, is the first to link agricultural use of sulphur with poor respiratory health in children living nearby. Researchers looked at a group of children in Salinas, California, which is well known for growing strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes and spinach. Known as America’s ‘salad bowl’ it is also an important area for grape growing.

The study linked reduced lung function, more asthma-related symptoms and higher asthma medication use in children living less than a mile from recent elemental sulphur applications compared to unexposed children.

Researchers found an association with the spraying of the fungicide and a fall in the lung function of children aged seven who lived within 1,100 yards. This was measured as an average fall of 143 millilitres per second (ml/s) in the amount of air the children could forcefully blow out in one second.

This is worse than the 101 ml/s reduction shown in children of the same age exposed to passive smoking via their mothers for five years.

Professor Brenda Eskenazi said: ‘This study proves the first data consistent with anecdotal reports of farm workers and shows that residents – in this case, children – living near fields may be more likely to have respiratory problems from nearby agricultural sulphur applications.’

Co-author of the study Asa Bradman said: ‘Sulphur… is naturally present in our food and soil and is part of normal human biochemistry, but breathing in sulphur dust can irritate airways and cause coughing.

‘We need to better understand how people are exposed to sulphur used in agriculture and how to mitigate exposures. Formulations using wettable powders could be a solution.’

A spokesperson for the UK Pesticides Campaign, said: ‘This study provides further evidence of the significant health risks for rural residents living in the locality of pesticide sprayed crops.’

‘It also again confirms the fact that such risks and adverse impacts on residents exposed to agricultural pesticides anywhere in the world has simply not been properly assessed before such pesticides are approved.’

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