Vitamin C Is Beneficial Against the Common Cold in Men

According to an updated Cochrane Review on vitamin C and the common cold, vitamin C seems to be particularly beneficial for people under heavy physical stress.

In five randomised trials of participants with heavy short-term physical stress, vitamin C halved the incidence of the common cold.

Three of the trials studied marathon runners, one studied Swiss school children in a skiing camp and one studied Canadian soldiers during a winter exercise.

Furthermore, in a recent randomised trial carried out with adolescent competitive swimmers, vitamin C halved the duration of colds in males, although the vitamin had no effect on females.

Regular doses of vitamin C of one gram per day or higher have reduced the average duration of colds in adults by 8% and in children by 18%.

Although these findings unambiguously show that vitamin C has a biological effect on colds, taking vitamin C every day to shorten infrequent colds does not seem reasonable.

On average, adults have only a few common cold episodes per year and children have some half a dozen colds per year.

Few therapeutic trials, meaning trials in which vitamin C was given only after the first symptoms of a cold appeared, have been carried out and their results are not consistent.

Nevertheless, given the consistent effect of vitamin C on the duration and severity of colds in the regular supplementation studies, and the safety and low cost of vitamin C, the authors consider that it may be worthwhile for individual common cold patients to test whether therapeutic vitamin C is beneficial for them.

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Helsingin yliopisto (University of Helsinki), via AlphaGalileo.

Harri Hemilä1, Elizabeth Chalker, Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group. Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold. Cochrane Review, 31 JAN 2013 DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000980.pub4

Stealthy Herpes virus robs years from your life

MOST of us could gain extra years of life by ridding ourselves of a virus we don't even realise we are carrying - if new efforts to tackle the stealthy parasite bear fruit.

Between 50 and 80 per cent of people living in the UK, US and Australia are infected by cytomegalovirus, or CMV - a herpes virus closely related to the one that causes chickenpox. In some African countries, the figure is thought to be even higher.

CMV can lead to brain damage and hearing loss in newborns, but was long assumed to be harmless in healthy adults, says Allison Aiello, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Then HIV came along."

When people are infected with CMV and HIV, they can develop all sorts of nasty complications, such as CMV retinitis, which causes blindness. As researchers investigated further, they realised that the damaging effects of CMV were caused by its unique effect on the immune system.

Your body responds to any infection by training a small number of immune cells to recognise and remember the pathogen in future. CMV somehow cheats the system. 

When the virus next attacks you, the immune T-cells trained to remember the virus do not work as they should. Instead, the body trains up a fresh batch of T-cells to recognise CMV, eating into your limited supply of untrained cells. 

Over time, around 40 per cent of T-cells may be trained specifically to attack CMV, leaving fewer to tackle other possible infections.

A slew of research shows that this continual using up of untrained T-cells ages the immune system. The latest study suggests that this takes its toll on life expectancy.

For 18 years, Paul Moss at the University of Birmingham, UK, and his colleagues followed the health of more than 500 people over the age of 65. Around 70 per cent of the people were infected with CMV. 

"We saw a four-year reduction in lifespan in the CMV-positive group," says Moss, who presented the findings at the American Association of Immunologists' annual meeting in Boston, last month.

To put that figure in perspective, Aiello says: "Smoking and drinking can take that much time off your life."

Those infected with CMV were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, says Moss. The virus has also been linked to accelerated cognitive decline and poorer physical health generally - and it may leave the body more susceptible to other infections, such as flu.

Now the good news: Moss's team reckons that long-term treatment with antiviral drugs could help claw back those years.

His team infected 6-week-old mice with CMV and, once the rodents were 6 months old and the virus was established, they treated some of them with a drug used to treat herpes viruses. 

While the number of untrained immune cells dwindled in the untreated mice, numbers remained high in the mice given antivirals. 

"We were able to completely reverse this particular effect of CMV," says Moss. What's more, the treated mice appeared more resilient to being infected with flu further down the line, and lost less weight during that infection than their untreated counterparts. Moss presented this study in Boston, too.

He will soon begin trialling the antivirals in people over 65. "If we can strengthen the immune systems of older people, we will hopefully see a reduction in the incidence of flu infection, as well as reduced morbidity and mortality," he says.

Any treatment, however, might require people to take the drugs for months, if not years. What would be better, says Phil Stevenson at the University of Cambridge, would be to prevent infection in the first place by developing a vaccine.

"For CMV, the thing you want to stop is the primary infection," he says. Finding a way to block the entry of the virus will be tricky, though, partly because no one is sure exactly how CMV infects people.

The same problem applies to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) - a related virus that can cause glandular fever and cancer. 

A 30-year-long research programme to generate a vaccine for it failed, says Stevenson, because it began with an assumption that EBV first infects the body through the immune system's B-cells. This was where the virus was spotted in people presenting with symptoms.

To investigate whether the virus may be infecting other cells first, Stevenson's team turned to a mouse model. 

They were able to make the virus glow by adding a gene for a light-emitting protein found in fireflies. 

When Stevenson studied the mice a day after they had been infected, he found that the cells in their noses were the ones glowing (Journal of General Virology, DOI: 10.1099/vir.0.006569-0).

Schmallenberg Virus Spreading through UK and Northern Europe

The Schmallenberg virus, which has been named after a town in Germany, from where it originated in November, has put the UK and the rest of Europe on alert. Fear of the virus spreading to other regions has gripped livestock farmers and authorities.

The virus is believed to have infected cattle, sheep, and goats in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, causing birth defects in offspring including deformation of the head, neck and limbs.

It is thought the virus is spread by midges or flies; clinical signs include fever, reduced milk yield, loss of body condition and in some cases diarrhoea. The virus, which is thought to be carried by flies, was first found to be present in East Anglia and was previously restricted to the South East of England.

Reports on the virus confirmed its first appearance in the west of England at Cornwall. These were confirmed by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA). Additionally, a spokesman from the agency also confirmed 52 farms nationwide as being hit by the virus.

National Farmers Union Vice-President Gwyn Jones met with European Commission officials and farm leaders from across Europe to discuss the worrying spread of Schmallenberg, at an EU Animal Health Advisory Committee in Brussels on Saturday.

Addressing officials at the meet, Jones said the number of animals infected with the virus continued to rise and they have received nearly 800 confirmed cases across 5 countries, without provisions for on-farm test and absence of vaccination to protect our livestock, as quoted by a Web site.

Areas that have been identified as high risk locations include Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire therefore making South Wales a high risk area.

Russia has banned import of livestock from affected European nations fearing the spread of the virus while Germany, where the first case was reported, stands top of the list of worst affected with 434 farms testing positive for SBV; with cases in 13 cattle holdings, 402 sheep farms and 19 goat holdings.

In France 94 farms have been found affected by the virus whilst in Belgium and the Netherlands the number of Schmallenberg outbreaks has increased to 102 and 98 respectively.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control pointed out that risk to humans was minimal. The European Union's food safety watchdog EFSA is also assessing the health risks posed by the virus and is due to provide the European Commission and EU governments with likely scenarios of birth spread and life cycle as well as the extent of impact the virus could have on livestock farms.

The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in a recent statement concluded that with current information available to experts, the danger to humans from the virus is negligible.

In the meanwhile, check out the fact file from the OIE portal.

JC Polyomavirus: Deadly but with a weakness for sugar

It doesn’t strike often but when the JC polyomavirus does, it’s ruthless. The virus preys on people with weakened immune systems and almost always kills them.
Now the killer may have a target on its back. An international team has uncovered that the virus must bind to a very specific sugar molecule dangling from the side of the brain cells it attacks.

The finding, reported this week in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, could provide a basis for developing drugs to interrupt that process.

Researchers from Brown University, the University of Tübingen in Germany, and Imperial College in London painstakingly characterized the precise structure and biology of how the virus binds to host cells down to the atomic level.

By exposing a specific target, the work sets the table for drug development to begin, says Walter Atwood, professor of molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry at Brown and a senior author of the study.

“The overall goal is to get these ‘plans’ and then design small molecules—drugs that will fit in this receptor, binding and preventing infection,” Atwood says.

Atwood notes that this paper also marks the first time anyone has fully determined the structure and binding functionality of a human polyomavirus. While the JC polyomavirus causes the brain-wasting disease known as PML, others in the “family” are implicated in ailments such as skin cancers.

When the virus floats toward a cell, it encounters a metaphorical cityscape of sugary molecules on its surface, says Brown postdoctoral researcher Melissa Maginnis, one of the paper’s two lead authors. The team wanted to know which one the virus chooses.

Chronic fatigue syndrome: suspicion is back on virus

A leading scientist at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) supports the theory that a retrovirus causes chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and says that government researchers have independently confirmed the association.

The link between xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and CFS was reported last year by scientists at the Whitmore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada. But it has since come under heavy criticism after several groups failed to replicate the association with their own patients.

However, Harvey Alter, an infectious disease expert at NIH, gave a talk on protecting the blood supply from disease at a closed workshop in Zagreb, last month with a slide that called the XMRV-CFS association "extremely strong and likely true, despite the controversy", the Wall Street Journal reports.

The same slide also indicates that scientists at NIH and the Food and Drug Administration have confirmed the link between CFS and XMRV themselves. His team also estimates that XMRV and related viruses are present in 3 to 7 per cent of blood donors.

The news is generating a lot of buzz on CFS patient forums, where hopes have been high that the connection would offer a solid explanation - and potentially a treatment - for the enigmatic condition.

AIDS virus can hide in bone marrow

The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease. Finding that hide-out is a first step, but years of research lie ahead.

Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week's edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells.

The virus is dormant in the bone marrow cells, she said, but when those progenitor cells develop into blood cells, it can be reactivated and cause renewed infection. The virus kills the new blood cells and then moves on to infect other cells, said.

"If we're ever going to be able to find a way to get rid of the cells, the first step is to understand" where a latent infection can continue, Collins said.

In recent years, drugs have reduced AIDS deaths sharply, but patients need to keep taking the medicines for life or the infection comes back, she said. That's an indication that while the drugs battle the active virus, some of the disease remains hidden away to flare up once the therapy is stopped.

One hide-out was found earlier in blood cells called macrophages. Another pool was discovered in memory T-cells, and research began on attacking those.

But those couldn't account for all the HIV virus still circulating, Collins said, showing there were more locations to check out and leading her to study the blood cell progenitors.

Finding these sources of infection is important because eliminating them would allow AIDS patients to stop taking drugs after their infection was over. That's critical in countries where the treatment is hard to afford and deliver.

"I don't know how many people realize that although the drugs have reduced mortality we still have a long way to go," Collins said in a telephone interview. "That is mainly because we can't stop the drugs, people have to take it for a lifetime."

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, University of Michigan, Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation and a Bernard Maas Fellowship.

H1N1: Virus Mutation Increases Death Toll by 1,000 per week

Geneva (AFP) Nov 27, 2009 - The number of swine flu deaths showed a sharp jump compared to a week ago, but the World Health Organisation said Friday that the epidemic may have peaked in parts of the northern hemisphere. The number of deaths reported to the WHO was up 1,000 from a week ago, reaching at least 7,826 worldwide since the A(H1N1) virus was first uncovered in April, fresh data showed.

The number of deaths reported to the UN health agency showed the biggest rise in the Americas, where 5,360 deaths have now been recorded compared to 4,806 a week ago but Europe also posted a substantial increase percentage-wise with at least 650 fatalities now reported, representing a surge of 300 deaths or 85 percent from data posted a week ago.

The WHO said influenza activity appears to have peaked across North America, although in Canada, the number of hospitalisations and deaths is increasing. In European countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Serbia, Ukraine and Iceland, influenza activity also appears to have reached a peak, added the WHO.

White Hats versus the Black Hats: Virtual Army takes on Conficker Worm and the Evil Botnets

"So we meet again in Cyberspace! Only this time I have the evil Conficker worms to do my bidding! "

Unfortunately, it's not another dubious plot in a Bond movie, its' real life in the virtual world of Cyberspace.

More than 1 million 'super-hero' virtual computers are set to provide insight into how the evil 'super-villain' botnets, networks of infected computers wreak havoc on the internet.

The Conficker worm is currently the most infamous and notorious of these. Much has been written about the damage it has done recently and much time nd effort is going into counter-measures.

Ron Minnich and Don Rudish of Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, crammed 250 independent linux "kernels" - the core system of a computer - onto each of 4400 networked Thunderbird machines, creating a total of over 1.1 million individual virtual computers.

While this network cannot mimic the internet's estimated 600 million computers, the duo hope to use it to study how a small number of machines can attack and bring down larger networks. They can also study, for example, why some botnets prefer to be small and others large.

A good anti-Malware application will detect a high percentage of botnets but not the very smart ones. The most insidious of the botnets are the ones that use stealth to infect and remain resident and undetected on a "victim's" system. Good Luck guys!

H1N1 Swine Flu: A Serving UK Soldier dies after contracting the virus

A serving UK soldier has been revealed as the latest patient to die after contracting H1N1, swine flu virus.
Bombardier Lee Porter, from Coleraine in Northern Ireland, died last week, two weeks after contracting the bug - it is reported that he had underlying health problems.

The 30-year-old member of the Royal Artillery is thought to be the first UK serviceman to have fallen victim to the bug.

According to the announcement, Bombardier Porter died on Friday at Frimley Park hospital in Surrey, making him the 28th person known to have died after getting swine flu in England.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: "It is with great sadness that the MoD must confirm the death of Bombardier Lee Porter, who contracted Swine Flu two weeks ago, which complicated existing health problems. Our thoughts go out to his family, who were at his bedside at the time."

110,000 New Cases
The latest figures on swine flu show that cases of the virus "may have plateaued", according to the Government. Their data, released today, showed that there were 110,000 new cases in England last week.

That represents a 10 per cent rise on the 100,000 new cases estimated in the previous weeks. Twenty seven people in England have died from swine flu, while 793 patients are being treated in hospital, that figure is down on the 840 of last week.

UK Schoolgirl on Life-Support
A British schoolgirl being treated in Greece for swine flu is on a life support machine but is showing signs of improvement and is said to be 'a little better.'

Natasha Newman, 16, from Highgate, north London, is in an Athens hospital after falling ill on the island of Cephalonia. Doctors at the intensive care unit of Penteli Children's Hospital described her condition as 'serious but stable.'

Pneumonia
One doctor, who did not wish to be named, said: "She has better lung function than yesterday and the day before. She has pneumonia, which is not something easy, but she has no lasting damage to her lungs and she is not in a dangerous condition."

Chimps can Transmit SIV to Humans (HIV)

The discovery that chimpanzees can develop an AIDS-like illness after infection with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), may have implications for future AIDS research and the prevention of HIV infection.

Until now, it was thought that SIV infection in chimps did not result in disease. However, after following 94 wild chimps in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania for nine years, Beatrice Hahn, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues have shown that SIVcpz, the virus that jumped from chimps to humans as HIV-1, can and does cause an AIDS-like illness.

Over the 9 years of the study, SIVcpz infection caused an increased risk of mortality. "Up to 41 per cent in adults and 100 per cent in infants, and lower birth rates," says Hahn, "but we need longer-term follow-up to determine what proportion of infected animals develop an AIDS-like illness."

Unique opportunity
Hahn suspects that compared to HIV-infected humans, a greater proportion of SIV-infected chimps do not go on to develop fatal disease. "But this is not simple to test because chimpanzees don't just walk into clinics and give you a blood sample."

However, Hahn hopes that future research into animals which have long-term infection without developing an AIDS-like illness will yield insights that will enable us to better tackle HIV infection.

Unique Opportunity
The team believes that these findings provide a unique opportunity to compare the disease-causing mechanisms of two closely related viruses – SIVcpz and HIV-1 – in two closely related species. Such work has also already yielded information on mortality rates, prevalence and routes of spread of HIV and SIV.

H1N1 Pandemic: Sudden Spike in swine flu alerts GPs & MDs

pa.press.net

GPs have seen a leap of almost 50% in the numbers of people contacting them with fears they have swine flu in the last week, new figures reveal.

Around 40,000 people a week in England and Wales are now complaining to their doctor of "flu-like illness", with a dramatic rise in the number of young children being affected.

The Royal College

The figures, from the Royal College of GPs' monitoring system, showed 50.3 people per 100,000 were reporting flu-like illness between June 29 and July 5, but this leapt by 46% to 73.4 people per 100,000 between July 6 and 12.

Financial Times

Almost one in eight workers are likely to be kept at home with the virus in the next few weeks, according to Government figures. This could leave many businesses struggling to run as normal, the Financial Times reported.

Sir Liam Donaldson is expected to announce that 30% of the population is likely to be infected during this first wave of the pandemic, the FT newspaper said.

Young at most Risk
Wednesday's weekly report from the Royal College of GPs said: "National incidence of influenza-like illness increased for all regions and is now evident in all age groups but remains highest in five to 14 age groups."

Central England Hotspot
The study said the highest number of cases was being seen in central England but the North had seen "a marked increase compared to previous weeks".

There has been a small decrease in the number of cases being seen in London although the capital remains a major hot spot for the virus.

Statistics
The rate of influenza-like illness is highest among those aged five to 14, at 159.57 per 100,000 population. The next most affected group is youngsters and babies aged up to four, at 114.12 per 100,00 population. This is followed by people aged 15 to 44, those aged 45 to 64 and then people aged 65 and over.

Ant-viral Vaccine
The Government has insisted that the swine flu vaccine should begin arriving at the end of August, amid genuine fears of a delay in this delivery date, and further delay before people receive jabs.

The UK claims, it is in line to get around 60 million doses of the vaccine - enough to cover half the population - by the end of December, with the rest of the doses following next year.

Vaccine Production Delayed
This is a substantial turn around in their earlier claims and the first phase of the virus should have run its course by then. The mutated second phase will take over and the vaccine will be ineffective against it.

Virus Dictates Timeline
It is impossible to determine how the H1N1 virus will mutate, so scientists are unable to prepare in advance for this strain. Only when the new strain is identified will they be able to start on development of a new anti-viral vaccine.

So, the development, testing and distribution of a second antiviral vaccine will need to start after January 2010 and is therefore unlikely to be in production before the Spring 2010.

FBI Shutdown by Mysterious Virus Attack!

The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service were forced to shut down parts of their computer networks after a mystery virus struck the law-enforcement agencies.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it had disconnected from Justice Department computers as a precaution after being hit with the virus, while an FBI spokesperson would only say that it was experiencing similar issues.

"We too are evaluating a network issue on our external, unclassified network that's affecting several government agencies," reported FBI spokesman Mike Kortan.

The virus' type and origin are unknown, but spokespeople for both agencies said agencies' access to the Internet and e-mail was shut down while the issue was evaluated.

Government regulations require agencies to report any security issues to US-Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), but a call to CERT late Thursday for comment was not immediately returned.

All this following reports that a number of unfriendly governments may have penetrated the US Government sites and planted spybots, viruses, trojans, etc.