Key pathway to stop dangerous, out-of-control inflammation discovered

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

A potential new strategy to developing new drugs to control inflammation without serious side effects has been found by Georgia State University researchers and international colleagues.

Jian-Dong Li, director of Georgia State's Center for Inflammation, Immunity and Infection, and his team discovered that blocking a certain pathway involved in the biological process of inflammation will suppress it.

Inhibiting a molecule called phosphodiesterase 4B, or PDE4B, suppresses inflammation by affecting a key gene called CLYD, a gene that serves as a brake on inflammation.

The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Li explained the process of overactive inflammation using a "police" analogy.

When a pathogen ? such as bacteria or viruses -- infects a patient, he said, it triggers an "alarm" to which the "police" of immune system respond. In turn, it triggers neutrophil attractant called cytokines to respond, leading to inflammation that serves to help rid the body of the pathogen. But if inflammation isn't stopped, tissue damage can result.

The pathways during the response are termed "positive," like a gas pedal on a car, and "negative," like a brake, with the process in the positive pathway going down the line from the pathogen to inflammation, and negative going the other direction. PDE4B is involved in controlling the negative pathway.

Many researchers have been focusing on developing anti-inflammatory agents by stopping the positive pathway, but the discovery by Li and his colleagues gives scientists a new route to stop inflammation using safer or even existing drugs proven to be non-toxic as they have found that accelerating the negative pathway will reduce inflammation.

"This is the key negative regulator that we have been searching after for years, " Li said.

There is a need for better drugs to control inflammation, because current treatments come with serious side effects, Li said. Steroids are commonly used, but cannot be used over the long-term. Steroids suppress the immune system.

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Georgia State University: http://www.gsu.edu

Thanks to Georgia State University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127677/Key_pathway_to_stop_dangerous__out_of_control_inflammation_discovered

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Air Force begins grounding combat aircraft

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) ? The Air Force began grounding about one-third of its active-duty combat aircraft on Tuesday because of automatic federal spending cuts, including squadrons of fighters, bombers and airborne warning and control craft.

The stand down will affect units stationed in the U.S., Europe and the Pacific, though the Air Force didn't immediately provide a list of the units and bases that will be affected.

Some units that include F-16s, F-22s, A-10s and B-1s will stand down after they return home from their deployments. Other units began the stand down Tuesday.

"We must implement a tiered readiness concept where only the units preparing to deploy in support of major operations like Afghanistan are fully mission capable," Gen. Mike Hostage, commander of Air Combat Command at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, said in a statement. "Units will stand down on a rotating basis so our limited resources can be focused on fulfilling critical missions."

The Air Force says the stand-down is the result of cuts to the command's operations and maintenance account. The Air Force says it must reduce its flying by about 45,000 fewer training hours by Oct. 1 than previously scheduled.

"The current situation means we're accepting the risk that combat airpower may not be ready to respond immediately to new contingencies as they occur," Hostage said.

The Air Force says it generally takes 60 to 90 days to conduct the training needed to return aircrews to mission-ready status. For affected units, the Air Force says it will shift its focus to ground training.

That includes the use of flight simulators and academic training to maintain basic skills and aircraft knowledge, Air Combat Command spokesman Maj. Brandon Lingle said.

Lingle said aircraft maintainers would clear up as much of a backlog of scheduled inspections and maintenance that budgets allow.

___

Brock Vergakis can be reached at www.twitter.com/BrockVergakis

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-09-US-Air-Force-Groundings/id-321f24dbd15746649987cd32f01287eb

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1-2 punch could be key in treating blindness

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Researchers have discovered that using two kinds of therapy in tandem may be a knockout combo against inherited disorders that cause blindness. While their study focused on man's best friend, the treatment could help restore vision in people, too.

Published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the study builds on earlier work by Michigan State University veterinary ophthalmologist Andr?s Kom?romy and colleagues. In 2010, they restored day vision in dogs suffering from achromatopsia, an inherited form of total color blindness, by replacing the mutant gene associated with the condition.

While that treatment was effective for most younger dogs, it didn't work for canines older than 1 year. Kom?romy began to wonder if the older dogs' cones ? the photoreceptor cells in the retina that process daylight and color ? might be too worn out.

"Gene therapy only works if the nonfunctional cell that is primarily affected by the disease is not too degenerated," he said. "That's how we came up with the idea for this new study. How about if we selectively destroy the light-sensitive part of the cones and let it grow back before performing gene therapy? Then you'd have a younger, less degenerated cell that may be more responsive to therapy."

So, Kom?romy and colleagues recruited more dogs with achromatopsia between 1 and 3 years old. To test their theory, they again performed gene therapy but first gave some of the dogs a dose of a protein called CNTF, which the central nervous system produces to keep cells healthy. At a high enough dose, its effect on photoreceptors is a bit like pruning flowers: It partially destroys them, but allows for new growth.

"It was a long shot," said Kom?romy, associate professor in MSU's Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences.

But it worked.

"We were just amazed at what we found," he said. "All seven dogs that got the combination treatment responded, regardless of age."

While achromatopsia is quite rare, Kom?romy said it's a good model disease for other disorders affecting the photoreceptors, conditions that constitute a major cause of incurable blindness in dogs and humans. Those disorders affect individuals of both species in much the same way, so the combination treatment's promise isn't just for Fido.

"Based on our results we are proposing a new concept of retinal therapy," he said. "One treatment option alone might not be enough to reverse vision loss, but a combination therapy can maximize therapeutic success."

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Michigan State University: http://www.newsroom.msu.edu

Thanks to Michigan State University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 42 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127657/____punch_could_be_key_in_treating_blindness

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How 'burps' help forecast volcanic eruptions

J. Kauahikaua / USGS

Volcanic gasses and ash emanate from the summit eruptive vent as a vast plume, and from surrounding fumaroles at Kilauea Volcano on 28 May 2009. The vent, which formed in March 2008, broke a 26-year-long period of no eruptive activity at Kilauea's summit.

By Becky Oskin
LiveScience

It's rarely good news when a volcano has indigestion. Volcanic gas "burping" from a fiery peak signals magma moving down below ? a warning sign of a possible eruption.

If scientists can reach hazardous volcanoes ? such as at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano ? on foot or by helicopter, they collect samples to track the volcanoes? gas emissions. Now, a new study of Kilauea's 2008 summit eruption reveals simple earthquake monitors can perform a similar task. The results appear in Tuesday's?issue of the journal Nature Communications.

"This is another tool to forecast eruptions, particularly on remote islands, where gas monitoring is not possible," said Jessica Johnson, lead author of the study and a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Hawaii Volcano Observatory.

Johnson and USGS colleague Michael Poland tested the idea at Kilauea's Halema'uma'u crater. On March 19, 2008, gas and lava punched through the crater wall, birthing a new lava lake. Before the eruption, sulfur-dioxide gas levels jumped, and so did the number of earthquakes. Thanks to these clues, scientists knew magma was churning, but the actual eruption's exact timing was still a surprise.

Johnson went back to the 2008 records from Kilauea's seismometers, instruments that record earthquakes, and examined how the seismic waves traveled through different underground rock layers. Earthquake waves can split ? similar to the way light passes through polarized sunglasses ? and they'll travel faster along layers than across layers, Johnson explained. Cracks in the rock layers can also change this "polarization" as the voids open and close in response to changing forces, such as Kilauea's growing and ebbing magma chambers. [Amazing Images from Kilauea's Lava Lake]

J. Kauahikaua / USGS

Tourists pose for photos on Sept. 26, 2009 not far from the ongoing eruptive vent inside Halema`uma`u crater that spews a dark plume of gas and ash into the atmosphere above Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii.

Before the 2008 Kilauea eruption, an increasing amount of gas forced its way through fissures and cracks in the volcano's summit lava flows, and the changing stress affected how earthquake waves traveled through the rock layers, Johnson discovered. ?Johnson looked at the changes in the earthquake waves, a technique called earthquake "shear wave splitting," and was able to link them to the rising gas levels, something that has never before been done at Kilauea.

Johnson also has tested the technique at New Zealand's Rotorua and Tongariro volcanoes, where she saw hints of Tongariro's imminent 2012 eruption. Had the earthquake-gas monitoring been used before Kilauea's 2008 eruption, it wouldn't have tipped the scales toward predicting the eruption, especially since Kilauea is already so heavily monitored, Johnson said. But the setup could come in handy at remote volcanoes, such as those on Alaska's Aleutian Islands, where regular gas monitoring is impracticable or impossible.

With four seismometers (at least one must measure in three directions: up-down, east-west and north-south), scientists could detect rising gas levels, Johnson said. Such setups are already in place at many active volcanoes worldwide, she added.

"At a volcano where you don't have gas measurements, this would give you enormous additional information," Johnson told OurAmazingPlanet.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Rick Santorum: Gay Marriage Support "Suicidal" For GOP

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/rick-santorum-gay-marriage-support-suicidal-for-gop/

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Was McConnell's Staff Dirt-Digging on Ashley Judd? (ABC News)

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Remains of the Day: The Google Play Store Gets a Redesign

The Google Play Store gets a design refresh, AT&T customers get free Wi-Fi in some international airports, Microsoft prepares to roll out two-factor authentication, and Chrome for iOS gets an update.

Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/jLN8lAynAUk/remains-of-the-day-the-google-play-store-gets-a-redesign

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