HEALTH BULLETIN

LIME '6K' to raise funds for Bustamante kidney machine

The LIME Foundation has launched its inaugural '6K' event dubbed 'Run For The Children', set to take place in the 'Sunshine City' of Portmore on January 5, 2014.

Under the patronage of Her Excellency Lady Patricia Allen, proceeds from the road race will go towards setting up a fund to purchase a fluoroscope for the Bustamante Children's Hospital. The machine is used for the investigation of signs and symptoms in internal organs, enabling doctors to make a diagnosis of disease or other conditions, including kidney (renal) disease.

There is no functioning machine of its kind presently in the public health-care system. The fluoroscope facilitates early detection and diagnosis of renal disease and helps prompt early management of the condition which can minimise the risk of chronic renal failure and the need for dialysis.

The LIME Foundation is appealing to members of corporate Jamaica, schools, athletic bodies and members of the Portmore community to support the effort.

Online registration is being offered at www.runningeventsja.com and at the LIME retail stores on Half-Way Tree Road, Knutsford Boulevard, and in the Portmore Mall. The contribution for individuals is $1,000, while teams with 50 or more persons will pay $900 per person. Students will be accommodated at $200 each.

The event will also feature a 2K bicycle race for children with the specific intention to help engender, from an early age, a culture of social responsibility while also encouraging physical activity and the development of an active, healthy lifestyle.

A number of corporate companies have also joined hands with LIME to help make the event possible.

Speaking a second language may delay dementia

People who speak more than one language and who develop dementia tend to do so up to five years later than those who are monolingual, according to a study.

Scientists examined almost 650 dementia patients and assessed when each one had been diagnosed with the condition. They found people who spoke two or more languages experienced a later onset of Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, and frontotemporal dementia.

The study - done by Edinburgh University and Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad in India - is the largest study so far to gauge the impact of bilingualism on the onset of dementia, independent of a person's education, gender, occupation, and whether they live in a city or in the country, all of which have been examined as potential factors influencing the onset of dementia.

Thomas Bak, of Edinburgh University's school of philosophy, psychology and language sciences, noted: "These findings suggest that bilingualism might have a stronger influence on dementia than any currently available drugs. This makes the study of the relationship between bilingualism and cognition one of our highest priorities."

Antifungal cream found to be effective against HIV

A study performed at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in the United States has found that the antifungal drug Ciclopirox kills HIV in cell cultures - and the virus doesn't bounce back when the drug is stopped. But the research has yet to be performed on people.

The same group of researchers had previously shown that Ciclopirox - approved by the Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency as safe for human use to treat foot fungus - inhibits the expression of HIV genes in culture. Now they have found that it also blocks the essential function of the mitochondria, which results in the reactivation of the cell's suicide pathway, all while sparing the healthy cells.

"The key thing these drugs do is, unlike antiretrovirals in the current clinical arsenal, and there are lots of them and they have controlled this disease pretty successfully, these drugs kill the HIV-infected cell," noted Michael Matthews, lead researcher and chair of the school's department of biochemistry and molecular biology. "That's what's so new and so promising about it."

It is still going to take clinical trials on humans to study the safety and efficacy of Ciclopirox as a potential topical HIV treatment, but the fact that it's already deemed safe for one type of human use could make the regulatory process faster than usual.

Unfortunately, stated Dr Robert Gallo, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland best known for co-discovering HIV in 1984, even if the topical antifungal treatment successfully kills HIV-infected cells in clinical trials, it would need to be a systemic treatment, not a topical one, to actually treat (instead of simply prevent) HIV.