LONDON
(AlertNet) - Scientists are developing a hand-held device called an Electronic
Nose to detect tuberculosis (TB) on a patient’s breath, similar to a roadside
alcohol breathalyser.News (Updated
November 19, 2011)
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07 Nov 2011
By Emma Batha
LONDON
(AlertNet) - Scientists are developing a hand-held device called an Electronic
Nose to detect tuberculosis (TB) on a patient’s breath, similar to a roadside
alcohol breathalyser.
The technology could
potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives in the developing world where TB
kills around 1.7 million people a year, making it the second most deadly
infectious disease after HIV/AIDS.
Scientists say the device
could in future be adapted for early detection of lung cancer, pneumonia and
other pulmonary diseases.
The battery-powered
Electronic Nose uses sensors to spot telltale changes in molecules in the
breath. It will produce a diagnosis in minutes – as opposed to weeks, as is
the case with traditional tests.
“Our goal is to make
the Electronic Nose widely available in poor, remote areas where tuberculosis
often breeds and spreads, devastating so many lives,” lead researchers
Professor Virander Chauhan and Dr Ranjan Nanda said in a statement.
The TB detector is a
collaboration between the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology in
The Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and Grand Challenges Canada announced on Monday a two-year
$950,000 grant to develop the device.
“It’s estimated that
with optimal diagnosis 400,000 lives could be saved each year,” Dr Peter
Singer, chief executive of Grand Challenges Canada, told AlertNet.
“One thing that drew us
to this particular innovation is that this is a good example of an Indian
innovator solving an Indian problem, which will also help globally.
“The other thing that
drew us is that it’s a bold idea with a potentially big impact.”
AFFORDABLE
The funding will help
determine whether the Electronic Nose could replace time-consuming testing with
sputum samples that often involves several visits to a clinic, during which time
a patient can continue to spread the disease.
“People do not think
that diagnosis is life-saving but in the case of tuberculosis it really is,
because if you have a tuberculosis patient deep in the village and they are not
diagnosed they will likely die and infect a lot of others,” Singer said.
“Diagnosis can really
be life-saving and diagnosis at the village level is a weak link in the
chain.”
Singer said the device
would be affordable and simple to use with minimal training.
“Just like the police
can take the roadside breathalyser test right to your car window, this device
could take the diagnosis of TB right to the door of the hut in your village,”
he added.
Lead researcher Nanda
said a person’s breath contained around 3,000 molecules. He and his colleagues
had found that seven molecules significantly alter in abundance in patients with
TB.
Tuberculosis is spread
through the air by coughing, talking and spitting. If not treated, each person
with active TB can infect on average 10 to 15 people a year.
Symptoms include
coughing, sometimes with sputum or blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss and
fever.
Among the 15 countries
with the highest estimated TB incidence rates, 13 are in Africa, while a third
of all new cases are in
(Editing by Rebekah
Curtis)
Thu, Nov 17 2011
By
Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO
(Reuters) - The number of Americans newly infected with syphilis has fallen for
the first time in a decade, but sexually transmitted diseases continue to take a
staggering toll on the
The
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's annual report on sexually
transmitted diseases, which tracks cases of the three reportable STDs --
chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis -- shows widespread disparities.
Overall,
blacks and Hispanics in the
"Despite
everything we know about how to prevent and treat STDs, they remain one of the
more critical challenges in the
While
people aged 15 to 24 make up just a quarter of the sexually experienced
population in the
"The
data really confirms that STDs primarily affect young people, and we know that
this is of major concern because the health consequences can and do last a
lifetime if they are untreated," Fenton said.
The
report also found a disproportionate burden of disease among African Americans
and Hispanics, Fenton said.
For
example, he said rates of chlamydia among African Americans are about 1,383 per
100,000, compared with 467 per 100,000 among Hispanics and 166 per 100,000 for
whites.
There
are similar patterns for gonorrhea and syphilis.
For
gonorrhea, rates for whites are 26 per 100,000. Among Hispanics, rates are about
three times that at 63 per 100,000, and among African Americans, the rates are
512 per 100,000.
And
while overall rates of syphilis have fallen, there are still wide disparities
across ethnic groups, with rates ranging from about 2.4 per 100,000 for whites,
5.9 per 100,000 Hispanics and 20 per 100,000 for African Americans.
"It's
not because someone is black or Hispanic or white that results in the
differences that we see in STDs. It's really what these represent in terms of
differences in health insurance coverage, employment status, in ability to
access preventive services or curative services. These are all factors which are
going to have a huge impact on communities as well as individuals who are
vulnerable to acquiring STDs or not getting them diagnosed early," Fenton
said.
Here
are some details on each disease:
*
Gonorrhea -- Overall, rates of gonorrhea rose slightly in 2010 to more than
300,000 cases, but the disease remains at historically low levels.
*
Chlamydia -- Reported cases have risen over the past 20 years, but that is due
to expanded screening efforts. In 2010, there were 1.3 million reported cases of
chlamydia. CDC says fewer than half of sexually active young women are screened
for chlamydia.
*
Syphilis -- The overall rate fell for the first time in a decade, falling 1.6
percent in 2010 compared with a year ago. Rates of syphilis fell 20 percent in
women, but rose 1.3 percent among men.
The
CDC says it is too early to tell whether this is a blip, or the start of a new
trend.
In
the past five years, syphilis rates among young black men increased 134 percent,
driven by sharp increases among young black men who have sex with men. This is
especially worrisome because rates of HIV are also rising among this population.
If
left untreated, gonorrhea and chlamydia cause infertility, and syphilis can lead
to serious long-term complications, including brain, heart and organ damage.
People
with any of these diseases are at greater risk for infection with human
immunodeficiency virus or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
(Editing
by David Storey)
Mon, Oct 24 2011
By Frederik Joelving
NEW
YORK
Their conclusion -- that
universal HIV screening in the ER is not a practical option -- contradicts
current recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
"Unexpectedly,
nontargeted screening identified only a few new diagnoses, often already at late
stages, and most newly diagnosed patients belonged to a high-risk group and had
been tested previously," Dr. Kayigan Wilson d'Almeida and colleagues from
the Emergency Department HIV-Screening Group write in the Archives of Internal
Medicine.
They assigned 29
Only 18 new HIV cases, or
14 per 10,000 tests, surfaced over the study. And seven of those were gay men,
who are already considered high-risk.
The U.S. Preventive
Services Task Force, a federally funded expert panel, makes no recommendations
about HIV screening of the general public, but recommends testing high-risk
groups such as prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexual men.
According to an editorial
published along with the new findings, there are likely about 240,000
undiagnosed cases of HIV in the
But to Dr. Jason Haukoos
at the
In a study from last
year, he found only a quarter of more than 28,000 patients at his hospital
accepted the test, resulting in just 10 new HIV diagnoses.
"These new studies
basically say you need to test thousands to identify a handful of
patients," Haukoos told Reuters Health. "The question is, is there a
way to use scarce resources to target patients at a higher risk?"
According to Haukoos, the
test used in the new study costs about $10, and limiting it to patients at risk
would be the best idea. According to unpublished data from his group, he said,
it even appears that doing so would identify more HIV cases.
SOURCE: bit.ly/rAzSDK
Archives of Internal Medicine, October 24, 2011.
(UKPA) – Oct 26, 2011
Illegal HIV test kits
imported from
The Medicines and
Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) plans to shut down six websites
based in the
The websites also sold
non-compliant testing devices for other sexually transmitted infections,
including hepatitis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia and syphilis. Almost 500 people have
already bought the kits, which allow users to test themselves for infection in
their own homes.
People have been browsing
the internet to buy the products as an anonymous alternative to being tested in
a clinic. Some of the kits came with no instructions at all, while others were
confusing or insufficient.
The Health Protection
Agency (HPA) has written to people who have bought the kits, warning them that
they do not comply with
The purchase details were
contained in sales records uncovered during the MHRA investigation. The agency
regularly scans the internet to catch websites selling illegal devices.
In order to comply with
EU rules, kits must carry the CE kite mark and the name and address of the
manufacturer or an EU-based representative. It is illegal in the
Susanne Ludgate, the
MHRA's clinical director of services, said: "As far as self-test kits for
sexually transmitted infections are concerned, purchasers should check that any
kits purchased from internet sites are CE marked, which should denote conformity
with the relevant European legislation.
"We're concerned
that there may be a number of self-test kits being sold online that may not be
compliant with the relevant piece of legislation and we're urging people not to
consider the internet as a method of anonymous testing. These kits may be
unreliable and there is a significant risk they could be providing the user with
a false result."
Dr Fortune Ncube, a
consultant epidemiologist at the HPA, said: "The HPA has sent letters to
members of the public across the
Copyright © 2011 The
Press Association. All rights reserved.
Wed, Oct 26 2011
By Genevra Pittman
The research only
included a small number of women with heart disease, and it doesn't prove that
the sexually transmitted infection is to blame. In fact, it's still unknown
whether the women already had the virus before they suffered heart attacks and
strokes.
Previous studies have
suggested an increased risk of heart disease in people with certain infections,
including HIV, hepatitis C and one strain of Chlamydia -- but also haven't been
able to prove cause-and-effect.
"It is unclear what
is the underlying mechanism for such risk, though the infection itself, (the)
body's reaction to infection or a general milieu of inflammation may account for
a part of the risk," said Dr. Adeel Butt, from the University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine, in an email to Reuters Health. He was not involved in the
new work.
The report includes data
from a national health survey that was analyzed by Dr. Hsu-Ko Kuo and Dr. Ken
Fujise from the
Close to 2,500 women
between age 20 and 59 took vaginal swabs for HPV testing and told researchers
whether or not they had ever been diagnosed with a stroke or heart attack.
About 47 percent of the
women tested positive for HPV. The infections were evenly split between strains
that can cause cervical cancer and non-cancer strains.
Sixty women reported a
history of heart disease -- 39 who also tested positive for HPV, and 21 with no
HPV. Women with HPV were more than twice as likely to say they'd had a stroke or
heart attack, once researchers accounted for other heart risks including
smoking, drinking and high blood pressure.
Breaking down the data
further showed that it was only the cancer-causing HPV strains that were linked
to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The researchers couldn't
distinguish between chronic and short-lasting infections.
Because women were only
tested and surveyed at a single time point, Kuo and Fujise also couldn't be
certain if they got infected with HPV before or after suffering heart attacks
and strokes.
In an editorial published
with the study, Dr. Joseph Muhlestein from
He added that larger
studies that follow women over time are needed to clarify the link between HPV
and heart disease.
So far, whether chronic
infections play a role in heart disease remains "neither proven nor
disproven," Muhlestein wrote in the Journal of the
"Those who have HPV
infections do not have to panic at all," Fujise told Reuters Health in a
phone interview.
"More extensive
vaccination may potentially prevent ... the incidence of coronary heart disease,
heart attack and stroke, but this needs to be tested" in a bigger trial, he
added.
The
"Women should be
evaluated for HPV vaccination whether or not HPV association with heart disease
is proven," said Butt.
On Tuesday,
SOURCE: bit.ly/v3IS7l
Journal of the