Researchers in Australia have linked age-related macular degeneration, a common cause of blindness among the elderly, to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

According to the University of Sydney study, the risk of dying from the cardiovascular conditions was at least doubled in people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

“Macular degeneration is a disease of survivors, so you have to live long enough to get it,” said Paul Mitchell, from the Centre for Vision Research.

Macular degeneration is a chronic condition that affects the central part of the retina, causing blurred central vision. AMD is common cause of untreatable blindness among the elderly.

The scientists, however, admitted that the reason for a link between AMD and cardiovascular disease was unclear, and suggested that more research was needed to confirm their findings. It suggested that it may be that AMD and cardiovascular disease are caused by the same problems, such as inflammation, thickening of the arteries or general tissue damage caused by unstable particles called free radicals.

Happy mothers

Pregnant women with happy memories of childhood relationship with their parents will have an easy transition to motherhood as opposed to those whose association was characterised by negative thought process, suggests a new study.

The study, conducted at the Israeli University of Haifa, also found that women who tend to deny negative experiences in early childhood associations expected to experience less warmth in their relationship with their future children.

Women who had a balanced view of their early relationship with their parents had the most positive expectations
towards their impending motherhood. They expected to feel a low level of separation anxiety from their child, thought childrearing would be easy and that their relationship would be characterised by warmth, Science Daily reported.

Nervous tissue created

Scientists have created the first engineered living human nervous tissue constructs which they claim could be used for transplants to repair damage to the nervous system.

“We have created a three-dimensional neural network, a mini-nervous system in culture, which can be transplanted en masse,” said lead researcher Douglas H Smith of the University of Pennsylvania.

The team obtained human dorsal root ganglia neurons (clusters of nerves just outside the spinal cord) to engineer into transplantable nervous tissue. The neurons were harvested from 16 patients following elective ganglionectomies and four thoracic neurons were harvested from organ donors.

Using the stretch growth technique, the axons were slowly pulled in opposite directions over a series of days until they reached a desired length.

Battle for survival

Biologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a new type of antibiotic by pitting
soil-dwelling bacteria against another strain of bacteria.

This ‘battle for survival’, the researchers say, has led to the new antibiotic that holds promise as a
treatment for Helicobacter pylori that causes stomach ulcers in humans.

As a part of the study, the researchers provoked Rhodococcus, a soil-dwelling bacteria, into producing the antibiotic by forcing them to grow in the presence of a competing bacteria, a strain of Streptomyces that produces an antibiotic that normally kills other bacteria.

They found that in one of the experimental test tubes, Rhodococcus started producing its own antibiotic, which killed off the Streptomyces.

This was then isolated and named rhodostreptomycin.

Artificial 'cells'

In a revolutionary advancement, scientists at Yale University have created artificial ‘cells’ that can boost a patient’s ability to fight cancer and infectious diseases.

The artificial cells, developed by Tarek Fahmy, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Yale and his graduate student Erin Steenblock, are made of a material commonly used for biodegradable sutures.

With the help of artificial cell-like particles, scientists have been able to devise a fast and competent way to
produce a 45-fold enhancement of T cell activation and expansion.

In the new system, the outer surface of each particle is covered in universal adaptor molecules that serve as attachment points for antigens, molecules that activate the patient’s T-cells to recognise and fight off the targeted disease.