LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have found specific genetic variants which may explain why some people age earlier than others and say their findings have important implications for understanding cancer and age-related diseases.

Dutch and British researchers analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations from human gene maps and found that people with particular variants near a gene called TERC were likely to be biologically older by 3 to 4 years.

“What our study suggests is that some people are genetically programed to age at a faster rate. The effect was quite considerable in those with the variant,” said Tim Spector from King’s College London, who co-led the study.

In a study published in the Nature Genetics journal, the scientists explained that there are two forms of aging — chronological aging, counted in years, and biological aging, in which the cells of some people are older, or younger, than their chronological age.

LONDON (Reuters) – British health authorities issued an alert to drug users on Friday after a drug injecting heroin user in London tested positive for anthrax infection.

The anthrax case was the first seen in an injecting drug user in England since nine people died in Scotland and another in Germany during December and January, and suggests contaminated heroin is circulating in Europe, the government’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) said in a statement.

European health authorities said last month they believed a batch of heroin was circulating in the region that had been contaminated with anthrax, a fairly common bacteria whose spores can be used as a biological weapon.

The HPA said 19 cases of anthrax had so far been confirmed in Scotland, and similarities between those and the London case and that the heroin, or a contaminated cutting agent mixed with the heroin, was the likely source of infection.

LONDON (Reuters) – Global attention is turning away from the AIDS epidemic at just the wrong time and means a fresh wave of the disease could infect millions of people in high-risk countries, a leading expert said Friday.

Alan Whiteside, director of the health economics & HIV/AIDS research division (HEARD) at Kwazulu Natal University said many African countries, where the disease poses the biggest threat, were failing to implement long-term prevention measures and needed help to plan for the battle ahead.

The AIDS threat is still very real in places like Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi and South Africa, he said, and a sense that the international community is ticking it off as “dealt with” is highly risky.

“(Fighting) the AIDS epidemic had a huge amount of support for many years, but there seems to be a perception now that it has been dealt with and we can turn our attention to other issues.

LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Global attention is turning away from the AIDS epidemic at just the wrong time and means a fresh wave of the disease could infect millions of people in high-risk countries, a leading expert said on Friday. Alan Whiteside, director of the health economics & HIV/AIDS research division (HEARD) at Kwazulu Natal University said many African countries, where the disease poses the biggest threat, were failing to implement long-term prevention measures and needed help to plan for the battle ahead. The AIDS threat is still very real in places like Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi and South Africa, he said, and a sense that the international community is ticking it off as "dealt with" is highly risky. "(Fighting) the AIDS epidemic had a huge amount of support for many years, but there seems to be a perception now that it has been dealt with and we can turn our attention to other issues. "This is most emphatically not the case in a number of parts of the world. It is not appropriate to turn our backs on it," Whiteside told Reuters in a telephone interview from South Africa, where the disease kills an estimated 1,000 people a day. Some 33.4 million people in the world have HIV, the sexually transmitted human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. Since AIDS emerged in the early 1980s, almost 60 million people have been infected and 25 million have died of HIV-related causes. Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst affected region, accounting for 67 percent of people infected with HIV and 91 percent of all new infections in children, according to United Nations data. HEALTH WORKERS, EDUCATION PROGRAMMES Whiteside said health ministries needed to use aid funds now to equip and train health workers and produce safe-sex education programmes to combine the importance of AIDS with a better grasp of the long-term impact of the disease on their countries. The United States and South Africa recently pledged renewed efforts in the fight against AIDS [ID:nN05115086], [ID:nGEE5B01ZX]. In December the international health funding agency UNITAID approved plans for a drug "patent pool" to help make newer HIV and AIDS medicines available at lower prices to poorer countries. [ID:nLDE5BE135] But Whiteside said a growing sense that AIDS is no longer an emergency was bound to feed politicians’ desire to be seen to be taking on new threats. Climate change and the environment are the big issues now, and politicians may abandon the battle against AIDS, he said. "At the moment, millions of Africans ore on HIV/AIDS treatment courtesy of the Americans, the Global Fund and other donors. Those treatments have to be for life, so if we see a redeployment of funding, people are simply going to die." Whiteside pointed to "hyper-endemic" African countries like Malawi and Swaziland, where AIDS is so widespread that half of all women aged 25 to 29 have HIV or AIDS. Prevention programmes are crucial in such countries, he said, but are often patchy and suffer from governments’ lack of leadership and cross-department, long-term vision. Though clearly a personal and community disease, AIDS also threatens civil institutions like the health, agriculture and education sectors, which are needed to cut poverty, spur economic growth and raise living standards. "We don’t seem to have got our head around prevention in the hyper-endemic countries," he said. "We’ve still got new cases occurring — and that’s ridiculous, it’s stupid, especially when you look ahead and see what that means in terms of the numbers of people that will need treatment. If we don’t put our effort into prevention, we’re likely to see more waves." (For a FACTBOX on AIDS in Africa, click on [ID:nGEE5AQ1B0]) (Editing by Tim Pearce)

LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Global attention is turning away from the AIDS epidemic at just the wrong time and means a fresh wave of the disease could infect millions of people in high-risk countries, a leading expert said on Friday. Alan Whiteside, director of the health economics & HIV/AIDS research division (HEARD) at Kwazulu Natal University said many African countries, where the disease poses the biggest threat, were failing to implement long-term prevention measures and needed help to plan for the battle ahead. The AIDS threat is still very real in places like Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi and South Africa, he said, and a sense that the international community is ticking it off as "dealt with" is highly risky. "(Fighting) the AIDS epidemic had a huge amount of support for many years, but there seems to be a perception now that it has been dealt with and we can turn our attention to other issues. "This is most emphatically not the case in a number of parts of the world. It is not appropriate to turn our backs on it," Whiteside told Reuters in a telephone interview from South Africa, where the disease kills an estimated 1,000 people a day. Some 33.4 million people in the world have HIV, the sexually transmitted human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. Since AIDS emerged in the early 1980s, almost 60 million people have been infected and 25 million have died of HIV-related causes. Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst affected region, accounting for 67 percent of people infected with HIV and 91 percent of all new infections in children, according to United Nations data. HEALTH WORKERS, EDUCATION PROGRAMMES Whiteside said health ministries needed to use aid funds now to equip and train health workers and produce safe-sex education programmes to combine the importance of AIDS with a better grasp of the long-term impact of the disease on their countries. The United States and South Africa recently pledged renewed efforts in the fight against AIDS [ID:nN05115086], [ID:nGEE5B01ZX]. In December the international health funding agency UNITAID approved plans for a drug "patent pool" to help make newer HIV and AIDS medicines available at lower prices to poorer countries. [ID:nLDE5BE135] But Whiteside said a growing sense that AIDS is no longer an emergency was bound to feed politicians’ desire to be seen to be taking on new threats. Climate change and the environment are the big issues now, and politicians may abandon the battle against AIDS, he said. "At the moment, millions of Africans ore on HIV/AIDS treatment courtesy of the Americans, the Global Fund and other donors. Those treatments have to be for life, so if we see a redeployment of funding, people are simply going to die." Whiteside pointed to "hyper-endemic" African countries like Malawi and Swaziland, where AIDS is so widespread that half of all women aged 25 to 29 have HIV or AIDS. Prevention programmes are crucial in such countries, he said, but are often patchy and suffer from governments’ lack of leadership and cross-department, long-term vision. Though clearly a personal and community disease, AIDS also threatens civil institutions like the health, agriculture and education sectors, which are needed to cut poverty, spur economic growth and raise living standards. "We don’t seem to have got our head around prevention in the hyper-endemic countries," he said. "We’ve still got new cases occurring — and that’s ridiculous, it’s stupid, especially when you look ahead and see what that means in terms of the numbers of people that will need treatment. If we don’t put our effort into prevention, we’re likely to see more waves." (For a FACTBOX on AIDS in Africa, click on [ID:nGEE5AQ1B0]) (Editing by Tim Pearce)

LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Scientists have used an “artificial pancreas” system of pumps and monitors to improve blood sugar control in diabetes patients in the first study to show the new device works better than conventional treatment.

Researchers from Britain’s Cambridge University tested the device on 17 children with type 1 diabetes during a series of nights in hospital and found it kept their blood sugar levels within the important “normal” range for 60 percent of the time.

The new system, which involves patients wearing a matchbox-sized monitor and a similar-sized pump with a tube to deliver insulin into the body, also halved the amount of time blood sugar dropped to worrying or dangerous levels, they said.

Medical device makers have been working for years to develop a so-called artificial pancreas to deliver insulin to patients with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the body destroys its own ability to make insulin.

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have used an “artificial pancreas” system of pumps and monitors to improve blood sugar control in diabetes patients in the first study to show the new device works better than conventional treatment.

Researchers from Britain’s Cambridge University tested the device on 17 children with type 1 diabetes during a series of nights in hospital and found it kept their blood sugar levels within the important “normal” range for 60 percent of the time.

The new system, which involves patients wearing a matchbox-sized monitor and a similar-sized pump with a tube to deliver insulin into the body, also halved the amount of time blood sugar dropped to worrying or dangerous levels, they said.

Medical device makers have been working for years to develop a so-called artificial pancreas to deliver insulin to patients with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the body destroys its own ability to make insulin.

LONDON (Reuters) – A man in a deeply unconscious state for five years has been able to communicate with doctors using just his thoughts in a study scientists say is a “game changer” for care of vegetative state patients.

British and Belgian researchers used a brain scanner called functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the man, who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in a road accident in 2003, was able to think “yes” or “no” answers to questions by wilfully changing his brain activity.

Experts say the result means all patients in coma-like states should be reassessed and it may change the way they are cared for in future.

After detecting signs of awareness, the doctors scanned the man’s brain while he was asked to say “yes” or “no” to questions such as “is your father’s name Thomas?.” The results showed that by changing his brain activity, the man communicated his answer.

LONDON (Reuters) – Dementia costs Britain 23 billion pounds ($37 billion) a year, more than cancer and heart disease combined, and the number of sufferers is expected to rise nearly 20 percent to over a million by 2025, experts said Wednesday.

A study for the Alzheimer’s Research Trust (ART) by Oxford University researchers found that the cost of caring for dementia sufferers, mainly elderly people, is far higher than previously thought, and that dementia receives only a fraction of the funds spent on other important diseases.

“The UK’s dementia crisis is worse than we feared. This report shows that dementia is the greatest medical challenge of the 21st century,” ART chief executive Rebecca Wood said in a statement with the study.

She called for more funding for research into dementia, a brain-wasting disease which robs patients of their memory and their ability to understand things and care for themselves.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Lancet medical journal formally retracted a paper on Tuesday that caused a 12-year international battle over links between the three-in-one childhood MMR vaccine and autism.

The paper, published in 1998 and written by British doctor Andrew Wakefield, suggested the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot might be linked to autism and bowel disease.

His assertion, since widely discredited, caused one of the biggest medical rows in a generation and led to a steep drop in the number of vaccinations in the United States, Britain and other parts of Europe, prompting a rise in cases of measles.

“It has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield … are incorrect,” the internationally renowned scientific journal said in a statement.