A new study by scientists from Berlin, Bonn and Dundee has shown that the diabetes drug Metformin has an effect against one of the main causes of the Alzheimer's disease.

Metformin, a drug used in type 2-diabetes, might have the potential to also act against Alzheimer's disease. This has been shown in a study from scientists of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the University of Dundee and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics.

The researchers have found that the diabetes drug metformin counteracts alterations of the cell structure protein Tau in mice nerve cells. These alterations are a main cause of the Alzheimer's disease
. Moreover, they uncovered the molecular mechanism of metformin in this process.

"If we can confirm that metformin shows also an effect in humans, it is certainly a good candidate for an effective therapy on Alzheimer's diseases," says Sybille Kraua from DZNE.

Neurons in their brains die, leading to cognitive impairment. At the molecular level, the disease is characterized amongst others by the formation of Tau protein deposits in nerve cells. Tau is a molecule that usually binds to the supportive cytoskeleton and performs a function in the transport system of the cell. In Alzheimer's disease, Tau is tipped too strongly with phosphate groups. This phosphorylation causes removal of Tau from the cytoskeleton and aggregation.

To counteract this problem, researchers aimed at regulating the protein PP2A. This protein is normally responsible for removing phosphate groups from Tau protein. In Alzheimer's disease, PP2A is not active enough - leading to an increased phosphorylation and deposition of Tau. The scientists around Sybille Kraua and Susann Schweiger (University of Dundee) therefore looked for a drug that increases the activity of PP2A.

In cell culture experiments with mouse nerve cells, the researchers showed that metformin directly protects PP2A against degradation by preventing the binding to special degradation proteins. This mechanism of metformin has been unknown so far. In addition, an increase in PP2A activity leads to a reduction in Tau phosphorylation. In a next step, the scientists added metformin to drinking water of healthy mice. This also led to a reduction of Tau-phoshorylation in brain cells.

The results have been published in the scientific journal PNAS.(ANI)

Often there are moments that we wish to forget because they cause us so much pain like the death of a loved one or a childhood trauma - now it might be possible to do so just by popping a pill.

US researchers have discovered that proteins can be removed from the brain's fear centre to wipe out traumatic memories.

Their findings could be of benefit to soldiers who have experienced distressing events and victims of violence, or even help couples get over the hurt of painful break-ups.

Break upProfessor Richard Huganir and his colleagues discovered a 'window of vulnerability' when unique receptor proteins are created in the brain as painful memories are made. Because the proteins are unstable, they could be removed with drugs to eliminate the memory forever.

"When a traumatic event occurs, it creates a fearful memory that can last a lifetime and have a debilitating effect on a person's life," the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

He said his findings "raise the possibility of manipulating those mechanisms with drugs to enhance behavioural therapy for such conditions as post-traumatic stress disorder."

However, Kate Farinholt, of a mental health support group in Maryland, is not entirely convinced by the idea.

"Erasing a memory and then everything bad built on that is an amazing idea. But completely deleting a memory is a little scary. How do you remove a memory without removing a whole part of someone's life, and is it best to do that, considering that people grow and learn from their experiences?" she asked.

Paul Root Wolpe, of the Centre for Ethics, at Emory University in Atlanta, said, "Human identity is tied into memory. It creates our distinctive personalities. It's a troublesome idea to begin to be able to manipulate that, even if for the best of motives."

A group of Indian dentists have successfully created a new dental implant which could cut down the cost for dental treatment by more than 60 percent.

The titanium based implant was the product of a five year research funded by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Lead researcher Professor Mahesh Varma revealed that the new implants not only replace a lost tooth, but also allow the users to chew with as much force as it could have been possible with natural teeth.

"The implants can not only replace missing teeth, they allow the individual to bite with a force equal to, if not more than, that possible with natural teeth. Toothless people no longer need to struggle with their complete dentures. Implant supported dentures address all the common complaints of instability and looseness", he said.

Currently the price for a dental implant is anywhere between Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 but the new dental implant could cut down the cost to as low as Rs 7,000. According to latest reports, more than 12 percent of the population over 60 years of age have no teeth with many unable to afford the expense of teeth replacement.

A woman with a rare genetic disorder 'Robertsonian Translocation', resulting in infertility, has delivered a healthy baby girl at the Jaslok Hospital and Research Center.

"With this first Invitro fertilisation (IVF) using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), India joins a handful of countries that have accomplished successful management of this disorder," Dr Firuza Parikh, Director, Assisted Reproduction and Genetics at Jaslok and former Professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, USA, said.

The baby girl was delivered yesterday at city's Jaslok hospital, Parikh said adding that this case report was published as a cover article in the peer reviewed 'Journal of Prenatal Diagnosis and Therapy' (January- June 2010).

Attributing the success to her team of 40 individuals particularly Dr Prochi Madon, Dr Arundhati Athalye, Mr Nandkishor Naik and Dattatray Naik, Parikh explained, "We are born with 46 chromosomes which occur in pairs. Each chromosome of a pair is a mirror image of the other. Although this harmony ismaintained in nature, an occasional slip results in a translocation."

"As the name suggests, a segment or an arm of one chromosome transports itself onto another chromosome and one such rearrangement is called a RobertsonianTranslocation after the American geneticist Dr W Robertson," she said.

"The rearrangement can occur in males and females who do not manifest any clinical symptoms. The problem manifests when the couple tries to conceive," Parikh said.

"An embryo derives half its chromosomes from the father and half from the mother. Hence if the chromosome with extra genetic material goes into the embryo, the amount of genetic material of that chromosome triples resulting in miscarriage or mental retardation," the In-vitro fertilization (IVF) expert said.

The embryos were screened using Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).

Eleven years ago, Parikh and Madon established PGD for genetic disorders for the first time in India at the Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre.

Parikh who led this procedure, said, "PGD requires years of perfection, team work and a thorough knowledge of reproductive biology and genetics. The couple first undergoes IMSI (intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection).

In this procedure the egg and the sperm are magnified 7000 times. With the help of a sharp pipette a single sperm is injected into the egg and the resulting embryo is ready for PGD when it reaches the eight cell stage."

"A laser beam swiftly cuts open the shell of the embryo, a fine glass pipette is advanced towards one of the cells of the embryo. Using gentle suction, a single cell is aspirated. This cell is then processed by the genetics team," Parikh said.

Madon, chief geneticist added, "The cell is put through an overnight procedure called Fluorescence In Situ Hybridisation (FISH), a procedure to zip open the DNA strands and attach coloured probes, to identify the chromosomes of interest."

In this particular couple, the wife had a translocation between chromosomes 13 and 14. Two embryos underwent the procedure of PGD. This embryo was transferred into the mother's womb, resulting in the birth of a healthy baby girl.

"PGD is an effective form of treatment for couples at a risk for Down Syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities, for women approaching 40, those with repeated failed attempts at IVF/ICSI (Intracytoplasmic sperm injection), those women showing poor quality embryos and for severe male factor infertility. It is also helpful in some rare genetic diseases like haemophilia," Parikh said.

"We are now in the process of setting up a facility for PGD to detect embryos at a risk of Thalassemia. We have also started offering this procedure routinely to couples undergoing IVF/ICSI in order to select normal embryos so that less number of embryos are transferred," she said.

This will increase the chances of a normal pregnancy and decrease the chances of a miscarriage. This technique is called pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS), Parikh added.

There may be a seed of truth amidst the many health claims for pomegranate juice, researchers from Israel said Thursday, at least for kidney patients on dialysis.

They found that such patients who gulped a few cups of the tart liquid every week lowered their chances of infections, the second-leading killer of the more than 350,000 Americans on dialysis.

The findings were presented at the American Society of Nephrology's meeting in Denver -- aka Renal Week -- and have not yet been vetted by independent experts.

"It's a very intriguing study," said Dr. Frank Brosius, who heads the nephrology division at the University of Michigan Health System and was not involved in the research.

"I certainly don't know of anything else that would have such a profound effect," he told Reuters Health, cautioning at the same time that the study needed to be replicated by other centers.

The results come in the wake of a U.S. crackdown on allegedly false advertising by POM Wonderful, which claims its pomegranate products can help everything from heart disease to prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction.

The Israeli researchers, led by Dr. Batya Kristal of Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya, did not use POM juice, but a brand sold by Naturafood.

In lab tests, Kristal told Reuters Health, that brand ranked highest in polyphenol antioxidants, which can reduce cell damage caused by so-called free radicals.

Antioxidants are found in different levels in fruits and vegetables, such as blueberries or broccoli.

"Pomegranate juice was shown in the last three years to contain the highest levels of polyphenols among a variety of products," Kristal said. "Much higher than red wine, for instance."

The researchers figured an antioxidant-rich diet might help patients with kidney failure, because the level of free radicals in their blood increases as the blood circulates through the dialysis device. That, in turn, may rev up inflammation in their tissues.

In the study, funded by the Israeli Ministry of Health, 101 patients were randomly assigned to either a concoction without pomegranate juice, or the real thing.

After downing about half a cup three times a week over a year, those who drank the real thing had a reduction of inflammatory molecules in their blood.

They also made fewer trips to the hospital.

"We found significant reductions in hospitalization due to infections, with more than 40 percent reduction in the first hospitalization and 80 percent in the second," said Kristal.

However, the researchers were only able to rule out chance as the cause of the reduction in the second visit to the hospital.

According to the findings, among 50 patients drinking pomegranate juice for a year, about two would have to go to the hospital at least twice. By comparison, that number would be nearly 11 in patients not drinking the juice.

The researchers say they don't know if their results extend to other brands as well, and suggest squeezing your own juice. A 16-oz bottle of POM Wonderful sells for about $4.

She said her team had found no side effects, but added that kidney patients should be aware of the high potassium content in the juice, given the delicate balance of nutrients in their blood, and talk to their doctor if they consider drinking it.

Brosius was skeptical of the benefits, although he said the juice was unlikely to cause harm.

"I would prefer to see this validated at other centers before we come out and say this is the thing to do," he said. Even if the findings hold up, he said, it is still unclear what accounts for them. "Who the heck knows what the active ingredients are?"

Marion Nestle, a nutrition expert at New York University, said the effects might not be unique to pomegranate juice.

"This study does not demonstrate anything special about pomegranate juice," she told Reuters Health in an e-mail. "The effects of juice were compared to a placebo, not to any other kind of juice that might have exactly the same effect."

"The pomegranate people are spending millions to prove what I could have told them in the first place," she added. "Pomegranate juices -- like most if not all fruit and vegetable juices -- have antioxidant activity. Does this make pomegranates better than any other fruit? Investigators have yet to show this."