Gut-Microbe Swap Helps with Weight Loss

A bacterial transplant in mice has been shown to provide some of the benefits of gastric bypass surgery without putting the animals under the knife

By Nicola Jones and Nature magazine

Here the taxonomy of gut bacteria in mice that have received gastric bypass (red) is compared to that of mice kept at the same weight (blue) and of others that were not kept on a diet (green). Image: Science Translational Medicine/AAAS

Obese people considering gastric bypass surgery to help trim their fat might one day have another option: swallowing a new supply of gut bacteria. A study in mice suggests that weight loss after bypass surgery is caused not by the operation itself, but at least in part by a change in the amounts of various species of microbes in the gut.

A bypass operation separates off a small part of the stomach and connects that directly to the intestines. Recipients tend to feel less hungry, fill up more quickly and burn more calories at rest, and they often lose up to 75% of their excess fat. Counter-intuitively, this is thought to be caused by a change in metabolism, rather than by the reduced size of the stomach.

Gut microbes are thought to be part of this picture. People who have had bypasses are known to experience changes in the selection of microbes in their guts. Fat people have been shown to host a different selection of gut bacteria from people who are obese, and transferring the gut bacteria of fat mice into thin ones can cause the thin mice to pack on extra weight. But no one knew whether the microbes in bypass patients changed because they got thin, or if the patients got thin because the microbes changed.

Chop and change
To investigate, Lee Kaplan, director of the Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and his colleagues gave about a dozen obese mice bypass surgery. As expected, the mice lost about 29% of their body weight, and kept it off despite a high-fat diet. New conditions in their bodies ? such as a change in bile acids ? allowed a different set of gut bacteria to thrive.

The researchers then took faecal samples from the mice that had been operated on, and put bacteria from them into the guts of mice specially bred without any gut flora. These mice, which were not obese, lost 5% of their weight without any changes to their diet. The results are reported in Science Translational Medicine.

The effect is impressively large, says Randy Seeley, an obesity researcher at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, particularly given that sterile mice almost always gain weight when given any kind of gut flora. The fact that the mice getting the second-hand bacteria did not lose as much weight as those that had surgery suggests that other factors are also at work; these could include hormonal changes.

The results are promising for obesity treatments, but there are still hurdles to overcome. ?You can?t just take a pill of the right bacteria and have them stick around,? says Seeley. If the gut?s environmental conditions don?t change, then the original microbes come back, he says. Kaplan says that the next steps are to isolate the four bacteria types that the study found to be at play and introduce them into obese mice or people. Antibiotic treatments might help the new bacteria to stick. ?I believe it?s possible,? says Kaplan.

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on March 27, 2013.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=ed05a01d15fcac8d32c819070c054427

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Health Subcommittee to Examine Pre-Existing Condition Insurance ...

WASHINGTON, DC ? The Subcommittee on Health, chaired by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA), today announced a hearing for Wednesday, April 3, 2013, at 1 p.m. in room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building entitled ?Protecting America?s Sick and Chronically Ill.? Witnesses to be announced.

As part of the debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, members of both parties identified health care coverage options for individuals with pre-existing conditions as a key priority for health care reform. The Obama administration had initially promised that vulnerable Americans would be helped through 2014 by a temporary program that ?makes health coverage available and more affordable for individuals who are uninsured and have been denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.? Unfortunately, the administration recently eliminated that option when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services abruptly announced individuals seeking assistance would be barred from enrolling in Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Program (PCIP) because of financial constraints. During the hearing, subcommittee members will examine problems with the health care law's PCIP and solutions to help Americans with chronic conditions and diseases obtain affordable coverage.?

Subcommittee Chairman Pitts stated, ?The president promised to provide affordable coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions who have been denied health insurance. However, the administration is now shutting out new enrollees from this program. Next Wednesday?s hearing will provide a chance for us to hear from experts and better understand how patients and state governments are working to address the challenge of providing health coverage to those who need it most.?

In a recent letter to President Obama, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts, and subcommittee Vice Chair Michael C. Burgess, M.D., along with House GOP leadership, recommended the transfer of funds from other programs in the health care law to PCIP to allow more Americans to enroll in PCIP. The leaders wrote, ?Republicans have historically supported high-risk pools and reinsurance programs. In fact, the House Republican alternative to PPACA provided $25 billion to aid Americans suffering from pre-existing conditions through new universal access programs that reformed and expanded state based high-risk pools and reinsurance programs? while we still believe that our alternative would have provided better care and access for our most vulnerable Americans, it is time to temporarily set aside those differences and provide the resources necessary to assist those who need it most.?

Click here to read the members' letter to President Obama.

The Majority Memorandum, a witness list, and witness testimony will be available here as they are posted.

Source: http://energycommerce.house.gov/press-release/health-subcommittee-examine-pre-existing-condition-insurance-program-help-those-most

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In tiny Rwanda, staggering health gains set new standard in Africa

Rwanda has tapped its post-conflict period to transform core programs like healthcare. Major gains include precipitous drops in HIV deaths and child mortality.

By Ryan Lenora Brown,?Correspondent / March 27, 2013

When Agnes Binagwaho began her career as a doctor in the slums of Kigali, Rwanda, in 1996, she worked in one of the most precarious health environments in the world. ?

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The rickety public hospitals that had not been destroyed in the genocide two years before were filled with AIDS patients. But drugs ? and doctors ? were scarce or nonexistent. Meanwhile, Rwandans were dying in massive numbers from malnutrition, malaria, and tuberculosis.

?We could do nothing for them,? she remembers. ?We didn?t have drugs even for ordinary diseases.?

19 years later, however, Rwanda is on pace to become the only country in sub-Saharan Africa to meet all of its health-related Millennium Development Goals, and the tiny pocket of Central Africa has posted some of the world?s most staggering health gains in the past decade, outpacing nations that spend far more per capita on healthcare.

And Dr. Binagwaho, who once stuffed her suitcases full of basic medicinal supplies to take home to Kigali whenever she traveled abroad, is now leading that charge as minister of health.

In an article published earlier this year in the British Medical Journal (BMI), a team of doctors and researchers working in Rwanda laid out the country?s swift rise. ?

Between 1994 and 2012, they wrote, the country?s life expectancy climbed from 28 years to 56 and the percentage of the population living in poverty dropped from 77.8 percent to 44.9 percent.

In the past decade, deaths from HIV have fallen 78 percent ? the single largest decline in the world during that time frame ? while tuberculosis mortality has dropped 77 percent, the most significant decrease in Africa. ?

Of course, the starting point in Rwanda?s climb was a harrowing one: In 1994, between 500,000 and 1 million people ? up to 20 percent of its total population ? were killed in an ethnic genocide, and some 2 million more fled. Many doctors were among the dead and exiled, and the country, including its healthcare system, was left in tatters. ?

That year, less than a quarter of Rwandan children received immunizations and more than 1 in 4 children were dead by their fifth birthday.

But in the years that followed, Rwanda became the darling of the international development community, a case study for how a country could use a transformative post-conflict period to effectively rebuild its core institutions. ?

As aid poured in, Rwanda?s new government channeled it into a wide variety of social programs, including healthcare. It rolled out a system of universal health insurance, doled out vaccinations and mosquito nets, and put nearly every AIDS patient on antiretrovirals.

And it did all of this in a place that still faces what the BMI article called ?one of the greatest shortages of human resources for health in the world.?

Indeed, the country of 11 million has only 625 doctors in its public hospitals nationwide. But there are also now more than 45,000 ?community health workers,? trained to treat basic health issues and help ensure adherence to drug regimens in rural areas far from hospitals and clinics.

As a result of these efforts, the probability that a child will die before the age of five has fallen by 70 percent and is now half the regional average. Some 108,000 people now receive antiretroviral treatment for AIDS ? a figure approaching universal access.

But as the healthcare system has lurched forward, it has also come under attack for its heavy reliance on foreign aid: Nearly half of the government?s health budget comes from external funders.

Unlike many other countries, however, Rwanda has used these cash infusions to build institutions, not merely fund programs, says Peter Drobac, the Rwanda director for Partners in Health, a public health nonprofit, and one of the authors of the BMI paper.?

Indeed, Rwanda spends no more on health than many of its neighbors, ranking 22nd?among 49 sub-Saharan African countries in per capita health spending. That comes to about $55.50 per person each year, which Drobac says is a ?tremendous value for money.?

But Rwanda?s government has ambitiously called for the country to be aid-free by 2020, an undertaking that would require a massive pivot away from its current healthcare funding model. In reality, that goal may be decades off, but in the meantime, officials have built the scaffolding for a sturdy healthcare system, Drobac says.

?The lesson we have learned is that you cannot solve every [health] problem at once,? Binagwaho says. ?So you do the best with what you have, and you don?t leave anyone out.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/uF8ztgi-0qU/In-tiny-Rwanda-staggering-health-gains-set-new-standard-in-Africa

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Meet Some of the Lucky People Who Suddenly Owe Google $1500

We already knew about the lucky six who will officially have the honor of paying Google $1,500 in exchange for Glass and the adventures and (highly likely) ridicule that will soon follow. But now @projectglass is announcing the rest of the lucky winners by replying individually to their #ifihadglass tweets. Here are some of them in all their glory. There will be 8,000 in total. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/O5znVxKm5RY/meet-the-people-who-suddenly-owe-google-1500

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'Featured Android Apps for Tablets' page now on Google Play website

Developers who spend time to make apps that look great on a tablet get a shout-out from Google on a new page at the Google Play site.

Google has put up a page at Google Play that focuses on apps designed with a tablet in mind. Android doesn't require applications to be specifically written for tablets, instead opting to allow developers to use UI elements like fragments to better utilize screen real estate on any device. But the truth of the matter is, most app developers aren't doing it. Hopefully, a chance to get featured by Google will jump start a bit more development in this area.

We're not saying it's easy to make one app work across all devices, because it's not. Google provides a good toolbox for it, and they have outreach programs for developers, but it still takes time and work to make you app look great on both a phone and a tablet. While Android is the market leader for smart phones, their tablet sales fall to a distant third behind Apple and Amazon. It makes sense for developers to focus on an app designed to look great on a smaller screen before he or she starts worrying about tablet-sized screens and the new challenges they bring.

Anyhoo, it's nice to see Google give props to a handful (there's 116 apps featured) of applications that are awesome on your tablet, and we hope this list grows and grows. To check them out for yourself, just follow the link below.

Source: Google Play. Thanks, Tomas!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/idoy-EDYhdk/story01.htm

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New evidence ancient asteroid caused global firestorm on Earth

Mar. 27, 2013 ? A new look at conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into a region of Mexico in the dinosaur days indicates the event could have triggered a global firestorm that would have burned every twig, bush and tree on Earth and led to the extinction of 80 percent of all Earth's species, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

Led by Douglas Robertson of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, the team used models that show the collision would have vaporized huge amounts of rock that were then blown high above Earth's atmosphere. The re-entering ejected material would have heated the upper atmosphere enough to glow red for several hours at roughly 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit -- about the temperature of an oven broiler element -- killing every living thing not sheltered underground or underwater.

The CU-led team developed an alternate explanation for the fact that there is little charcoal found at the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, boundary some 66 million years ago when the asteroid struck Earth and the cataclysmic fires are believed to have occurred. The CU researchers found that similar studies had corrected their data for changing sedimentation rates. When the charcoal data were corrected for the same changing sedimentation rates they show an excess of charcoal, not a deficiency, Robertson said.

"Our data show the conditions back then are consistent with widespread fires across the planet," said Robertson, a research scientist at CIRES, which is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Those conditions resulted in 100 percent extinction rates for about 80 percent of all life on Earth."

A paper on the subject was published online this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Co-authors on the study include CIRES Interim Director William Lewis, CU Professor Brian Toon of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Peter Sheehan of the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin.

Geological evidence indicates the asteroid collided with Earth about 66 million years ago and carved the Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula that is more than 110 miles in diameter. In 2010, experts from 33 institutions worldwide issued a report that concluded the impact at Chicxulub triggered mass extinctions, including dinosaurs, at the K-Pg boundary.

The conditions leading to the global firestorm were set up by the vaporization of rock following the impact, which condensed into sand-grain-sized spheres as they rose above the atmosphere. As the ejected material re-entered Earth's atmosphere, it dumped enough heat in the upper atmosphere to trigger an infrared "heat pulse" so hot it caused the sky to glow red for several hours, even though part of the radiation was blocked from Earth by the falling material, he said.

But there was enough infrared radiation from the upper atmosphere that reached Earth's surface to create searing conditions that likely ignited tinder, including dead leaves and pine needles. If a person was on Earth back then, it would have been like sitting in a broiler oven for two or three hours, said Robertson.

The amount of energy created by the infrared radiation the day of the asteroid-Earth collision is mind-boggling, said Robertson. "It's likely that the total amount of infrared heat was equal to a 1 megaton bomb exploding every four miles over the entire Earth."

A 1-megaton hydrogen bomb has about the same explosive power as 80 Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs, he said. The asteroid-Earth collision is thought to have generated about 100 million megatons of energy, said Robertson.

Some researchers have suggested that a layer of soot found at the K-Pg boundary layer roughly 66 million years ago was created by the impact itself. But Robertson and his colleagues calculated that the amount of soot was too high to have been created during the massive impact event and was consistent with the amount that would be expected from global fires.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Douglas S. Robertson, William M. Lewis, Peter M. Sheehan, Owen B. Toon. K-Pg extinction: Reevaluation of the heat-fire hypothesis. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/jgrg.20018

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/k2wC9zxC0PY/130327144249.htm

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Not All States On Board With Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns

Certain groups of people would rather not associate with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bodega owners who don?t want to hide their cigarettes from view; movie-theater proprietors who like to charge an arm and a leg for enormous sodas; and, apparently, all the mayors in Alaska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

Since 2006, when Bloomberg birthed the idea for the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition out of New York's Gracie Manor, the group has actively sought out new members to help fight gun violence. It made news this past week when it?announced?a $12 million ad campaign to push gun-control efforts and to target senators who are wavering on the issue. To date, nearly 1,000 mayors from across the country have signed the coalition's?statement of principles, but those five states remain holdouts.

?There are a couple of factors,? Mark Glaze, the coalition?s director, said in an interview. ?First, it?s [that] there are just more mayors in a couple states than others. But, of course, ideology plays a role. In Western states there is a higher percentage of gun ownership and lower percentage of gun crime, so it can be a tougher sell.?

But if the coalition is trying to get membership from all 50 states, there is still hope. Glaze notes that already about 100 Republican mayors have signed on, and that plenty of rural Republican states are represented. For states like Utah, Idaho, West Virginia, and North Dakota, one is better than none.?

?I think there is a real fear of being associated with it, and that you might be thrown out of office if you sign up,? said Dana Williams, the only mayor in the entire state of Utah to join. ?Even if it?s illegal weapons, it?s such a political hot potato, plenty of people would rather not participate in the discussion.?

Williams, a guitar-playing California transplant, is the mayor of Park City, known as the home of the Sundance Film Festival and the most liberal city in the state. It?s definitely an outlier. And while many of his constituents are on board, the life of an outlier mayor does not come without harassment. He sent National Journal a number of e-mails to prove this point. Here?s one:

The fact that YOU are the only Mayor in Utah on this anti-gun list makes me sick! Are you taking money from Bloomberg? Do your finances need to be investigated? Do the people in ParkCity know you support this DICTATOR? Get OFF his list and prove you are a Patriot for the Constitution!

For Mayor Nancy Chaney, the one mayor from Idaho on board, all the nasty e-mails in the world can?t make her regret signing up last winter. And yet, the decision to sign up was not an easy one for Chaney, whose town of Moscow is home to the University of Idaho.

Her city is one of the most liberal in the state, but it is still part of northern Idaho. For geographical context, her hometown is just two hours south of the proposed site of The Citadel, a planned community for survivalists with plans for its own automatic-gun factory.

In 2007, shortly after Chaney took office, the mayors coalition approached her about joining up. She declined, telling them she felt like a more credible mayor of a north Idaho community without adding her name to the list.

But during her tenure, Chaney has witnessed enough gun violence in her sleepy little town to change her mind. In 2007, a sniper killed three victims and himself, and in 2011 a university professor shot one of his grad students (who was also a former lover) 11 times.

?Those things shouldn?t happen in communities like this,? Chaney?said. ?I decided it was important to articulate my stance on this?. And a person who has access to lethal force ought not to win every argument.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/not-states-board-bloombergs-mayors-against-illegal-guns-111025641--politics.html

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