Daily Archives : Saturday, October 1st, 2016

In another addition to the field of medicine, experts have developed novel caffeine-based chemical compounds that can be helpful in preventing Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease attacks the nervous system, causing uncontrolled shakes, muscle stiffness, and slow, imprecise movement, chiefly in middle-aged and elderly people. Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada focused on a protein called a-synuclein (AS), which is involved in dopamine regulation. In Parkinson’s sufferers, AS gets misfolded into a compact structure associated with the death of dopamine-producing neurons. AS appears to act like a prion disease.In prion diseases, one mis-folded protein triggers mis-folding in others, spreading like falling dominos.

Fifteen per cent diabetic males in India every year fail to make their partners conceive due to defect in their sperm DNA, fertility experts said on Friday. According to them, a recent survey has revealed that in 80 per cent of couples suffering infertility problem, males suffering high sperm DNA damage were responsible. “The rise in Type 2 Diabetes patients in India, not only has led to an increase in obesity and heart diseases, but results in defective sperm DNA as well,” said Sarika Aggarwal, an In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) expert associated with Indira IVF.  “Proper diet, exercise and timely dosage of insulin, keeps patients in check. Diabetic men have fragmented sperm cells which clearly affect the volume of semen and leads to deletion of DNA from the mitochondria of the cell,”  According to Aggarwal, the amount of DNA damage in a man’s sperm is closely related in having a baby after IVF. …

The United Kingdom has expressed concerns over the high number of Nigerian women who die from complications of childbirth, particularly unwanted pregnancies that could have been prevented. Speaking yesterday during a tour of family planning clinic at the 105-capacity Maitama District Hospital in Abuja, the permanent secretary of the UK’s Department for International Development, Mark Lowcock , said it’s a big challenge considering the fact that more than 100 women lose their lives daily giving birth. According to him, this signalsUK’s commitment to continued support for family planning commodities and training of health workers to provide services. …

Maiduguri and Yenagoa — The United Nations International Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) has raised an alarm that an estimated 400,000 children under five of age will suffer from acute malnutrition in North-eastern Nigeria due to the ongoing Boko Haram crisis. In other to arrest this ugly trend, UNICEF has upped its humanitarian appeal for Nigeria by US$60 million. In a statement yesterday, UNICEF said it needed to more than double its funding appeal to provide life-saving assistance for children in North-east Nigeria. …