Scientists have found that a set of bacteria in our body, known as microbiota, can also protect us against the development of type 1 diabetes.

A research team comprising of Inserm, Paris Descartes University and the CNRS through collaboration with teams from China and Sweden, and coordinated by Julien Diana is focusing on a category of antimicrobial peptides, i.e. cathelicidins.

Apart from their protective function, these peptides have also exhibited immunoregulatory abilities against several autoimmune diseases. As such, scientists hypothesise that cathelicidins may be involved in the control of type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease where certain cells in the immune system attack beta cells in the pancreas which secrete insulin.

To combat pathogens, the immune system has developed various mechanisms to detect, defend against and even destroy micro-organisms that are harmful to the body. This includes antimicrobial peptides and natural proteins that destroy pathogenic bacteria by disrupting their cellular membrane. Not only are they produced by immune cells, they are also produced by cells whose functions are not immune-related. Injecting cathelicidins inhibit the development of pancreatic inflammation and, as such, suppressed the development of autoimmune disease in mice, states Julien Diana.

Since the production of cathelicidins is controlled by short-chain fatty acids produced by gut bacteria, scientists are studying the possibility that this may be the cause of the cathelicidin deficiency associated with diabetes.

By transferring part of the gut bacteria from healthy mice to diabetic mice, they are re-establishing a normal level of cathelicidin. Meanwhile, the transfer of micro-organisms reduces the occurrence of diabetes.

The research is published in the Immunity journal.

In a breakthrough, Chinese scientists have successfully bred a symbiotic bacteria in mosquitoes to inhibit the spread of dengue fever in south China's Guangdong Province.

The scientists from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou City inject Wolbachia into Aedes albopictus, a kind of mosquito originating in South Asia and often spread dengue viruses.

Wolbachia is a genus of bacteria that only live inside insect cells and can inhibit dengue viruses in mosquitoes.

"Dengue viruses normally need to replicate in mosquitoes. But the symbiotic bacteria can prevent the replication of the viruses. So the viruses are controlled in the mosquitoes," said Xi Zhiyong, medical professor at Sun Yat-sen University.

Earlier this year in March, the research team has launched a pilot program in the city and released mosquitoes carrying with Wolbachia into nature.

The scientists have planned to release a large number of male mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia into nature and reduce mosquito population in order to control the spread of dengue viruses.

"All mosquito eggs cannot hatch due to our control in some areas. In other areas, at least half of the eggs cannot hatch," said Xi.

According to Xi, mosquitoes with Wolbachia will not harm people because the bacteria cannot survive in human bodies.

Dengue is a viral disease of the tropics, transmitted by mosquitoes, and causing sudden fever and acute pains in the joints. Since dengue fever is caused by a virus, there is no specific medicine or antibiotic to treat it.

A combination of physical activity and diet control can help prevent gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in women who are at high risk of developing the disorder, says a new study.

Gestational diabetes and maternal obesity may increase the offsprings' predisposition to obesity and impaired glucose regulation.

"A simple and individualised lifestyle intervention reduced the incidence of gestational diabetes by 39 percent in high-risk pregnant women," said one of the researchers Saila Koivusalo from Helsinki University Hospital in Finland.

In the study, a total of 293 women with a history of GDM or a pre-pregnancy body mass index of less tha 30 kg/m2 were enrolled at less than 20 weeks of gestation.

They were randomly allocated to an intervention group or a control group.

The participants in the intervention group received individualised counselling on diet, physical activity and weight control from trained nurses and a dietician.

The control group received standard ante-natal care.

Intervention reduced the incidence of gestational diabetes by 39 percent in high-risk pregnant women, the findings showed.

Gestational weight gain was lower in the intervention group, and women in the intervention group also increased their leisure time physical activity more and improved their dietary quality compared with the women in the control group.

The findings appeared in the journal Diabetes Care.

A new technology uses Google Glass to help those with autism make eye contact, engage in conversations and more easily read social situations.

Ned Sahin, a Boston entrepreneur and scientist, has developed a new technology that aims to change the way those with autism see the world.

"The Brain Power system adds enhancements to the Google Glass or other wearable (technology) and then a suite of software," Sahin said.

The software was designed to help those with autism make eye contact, engage in conversations and more easily read social situations.

"It coaches eye contact directly, rewarding points to the child or adult with autism. Then, when they look at someone in the eye, their little computer screen shows the emotions the other person is feeling," Sahin said.

The glasses can help make someone relax by playing soft music and even has a solution to the fear of "wandering", 'wbir.Com' reported.

"Mom can speak to her child through the device and actually see what he is seeing," Sahin explained.

"We activate the camera so it becomes a remote version of her eyes," he said.

Clinical trials for the new technology will begin later this year at Harvard Medical School.

Freshwater prawns can help prevent the spread of schistosomiasis, a potentially deadly parasitic disease that can cause anaemia, stunted growth, infertility, liver failure, bladder cancer and lasting cognitive impairment, says a new study.

"Where drugs, alone, fail to control schistosomiasis due to rapid reinfection, prawns may offer a complementary strategy for controlling the disease," the study said.

The prawns prey on parasite-infected snails, while providing a source of marketable protein-rich food. Because prawns cannot support schistosomiasis' complex life cycle, they do not transmit the disease themselves, the findings showed.

"The results of our study open the pathway to a novel approach for the control of schistosomiasis," said study co-author Giulio De Leo, a biology professor at Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University in the US.

Worldwide, nearly 800 million people are at risk of getting schistosomiasis. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, tracked parasite-infected snails and people in villages in Senegal, West Africa.

In one village, the international research team and Senegalese partner Biomedical Research Center Espoir pour la Sante stocked a river access point with prawns.

Over the course of 18 months, they found 80 percent fewer infected snails and a 50 percent lower disease burden (the mean number of parasite eggs in a person's urine) in people living in the prawn-stocked village.

"They can synergize with local efforts in the developing world to fight parasitic disease and to foster new aquaculture-based industries," lead author Susanne Sokolow from Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station said.

Currently, the only treatment for the disease is the drug praziquantel. Insufficient global supplies, cost and other factors limit that drug's effectiveness.

Even if it were widely and cheaply available, praziquantel would be an incomplete solution for people who enter river water to bathe and clean clothing, among other reasons, and get reinfected frequently through contact with schistosome-contaminated waters, the study said.