Global Pulse Blog

Figure 1.

For the first time in the 15 year-long search for an HIV prevention method that women can control, a vaginal microbicide gel called Viread has been shown to decrease the risk of HIV infection by as much as 54%.  Even though the microbicide does not prevent transmission in every woman who uses it, this is the first promising tool that women are able to use without the cooperation of the male partner.  This is an important consideration most of the new HIV infections in women living in Africa were acquired through forced sex with infected men who refuse to wear condoms. Women and girls represent 60 percent of the 22 million people infected with HIV living in Africa.

Read the rest of this entry →

Researchers at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have identified three naturally occurring monoclonal antibodies that are able to kill 91% of strains of the HIV virus. One of these antibodies, named VRC01, has a high affinity for the virus and works by mimicking the HIV receptor. This discovery makes the development of an effective vaccine against the virus a real possibility.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Health Institute of Carlos Slim Foundation and the government of Spain have each contributed $50 million to fund the Salud Mesoamerica 2015 Initiative.  The Inter-American Development Bank will coordinate and commission independent evaluations as well as manage the combined contributions of the donors. The project’s primary aim is to reduce health inequities by fighting dengue fever and malaria and improving nutrition and maternal health in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama. The funding amount received by each country will be based on their poverty and health inequity status.  While each government will determine what programs to finance with the Initiative,  incentives will be placed for more equitable allocation of domestic funding and for policy that improves the health of the poor.   This project is expected to generate globally-relevant knowledge of how to scale up cost-effective health interventions in poor communities.

This is not the first time that Slim and Gates have partnered up.  They have been working together at Prodigy MSN, which has just celebrated its 10^th anniversary.

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced in Science that they created an experimental one-cell organism, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, that has the ability to reproduce.

An article written in the Wall Street Journal discusses the process used to create the cell:

To begin, they wrote out the creature’s entire genetic code as a digital computer file, documenting more than one million base pairs of DNA in a biochemical alphabet of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. They edited that file, adding new code, and then sent that electronic data to a DNA sequencing company called Blue Heron Bio in Bothell, Wash., where it was transformed into hundreds of small pieces of chemical DNA, they reported.

To assemble the strips of DNA, the researchers said they took advantage of the natural capacities of yeast and other bacteria to meld genes and chromosomes in order to stitch those short sequences into ever-longer fragments until they had assembled the complete genome, as the entire set of an organism’s genetic instructions is called.

They transplanted that master set of genes into an emptied cell, where it converted the cell into a different species”

It may be possible for this new field, called synthetic biology, to one day provide alternatives to standard practices in many different industries. For example, the industrial life forms can be used to produce renewable fuels as well as vaccines.

This development also raises questions about concerning the ethics, law and public safety of artificial life. So I ask you all, what are some specific issues do you see needing to be addressed concerning synthetic life?

Global Health Watch 3
Examining the World’s Health from an Alternative Perspective
Call for Case Studies and Testimonies
Contribute to the Alternative World Health Report

The Global Health Watch provides a platform for activists  to share experiences and inform each other with practical examples and theoretical analyses  to strengthen local, national, regional and global campaigns towards  Health for All!

This is a great way to get involved with the People’s Health Movement from a research/academic standpoint.

How you can voice your views:

The Global Health Watch is putting out a call for the submission of country or region specific case studies and testimonies. These case studies and testimonies will form part of the electronic platform of the alternative world health and selected case studies shall also be incorporated into the final document of Global Health Watch 3 – scheduled for publication in 2011.

Some suggestions: Read the rest of this entry →

Gaia by Alex Grey

Only 40 years ago, the image of our planet as a fragile blue ball in space inspired the first Earth Day.  Though people today are more aware than ever of the need to take care of the environment, challenges remain. Here at Global Pulse, we wanted to bring together stories of innovation and help increase awareness of the health aspects of environmentalism. On that note, Framing Science put together an excellent post on the inter-agency NIH report on the human health impacts of climate change, which range across a variety of health disciplines including:

• Asthma, respiratory allergies, and airway diseases
• Cancer
• Cardiovascular disease and stroke
• Foodborne diseases and nutrition
• Heat-related morbidity and mortality
• Human developmental effects
• Mental health and stress-related disorders
• Neurological diseases and disorders
• Waterborne diseases
• Weather-related morbidity and mortality
• Vectorborne and zoonotic diseases (like malaria, which can be transmitted from animals to humans)

One key aspect to addressing these challenges will be to re-invent farming to feed the future population, projected to hit 9 billion people by 2050, while at the same time preserving ecosystems. In the past decade, humanity past the point where over 50% of our population lives in urban areas, making cities vital to ensuring the future health of the planet and her people. The second great epidemiological revolution succeeded in part by controlling the health of our water,. Innovative architect Manit Rastogi plans to do the same for Delhi by transforming the polluted network of Nullahs (sewage laden stream) into a pedestrian and cycling network by using bio-remediation embankments. In San Francisco, newly launched Urban Forest Map is helping citizens take care of their city trees via the web.

As future medical professionals, many of us often cringe at the amount of waste generated by laboratories in the service of medicine and research. Oscillator gives a personal touch to this and shows a few simple ways to reduce waste in the lab while the EPA and DOE are busy designing the green lab of tomorrow.

Scientists at the APOPO Research Center in Tanzania have been training representatives of the African Giant Pouched Rat species, Cricetomys gambianus, to sniff out sputum samples from TB patients. In a study published recently in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, the researchers report that 18 out of 20 trained rats had success rates with sensitivity of 72%-100% and false negative rates of under 9% (abstract; full text here).  (For comparison, the acid-fast staining method widely used for TB detection in low-resource settings has significant problems with sensitivity, with values reported from a low of 53% to an imperfect high of 93%.) ”The use of multiple rats significantly increased sensitivity and negative predictive value.”

The rats have some intensive training requirements, but in the global fight against the disease, they can be a useful tool.  Plus, they are kind of cute.  Read this excellent blog post at Take Part (includes pictures and a video of Cricetomys gambianus in action).

Story on BBC News here.

Cricetomys weigh 1-1.5 kg and can be raised for food or as a pet.  They can also detect land mines: link and video.  Now, why hasn’t Pixar made a movie about them?

We are very proud of GP editor Jennifer Weinberg, who was the theme editor for the current issue of the AMA’s Virtual Mentor journal!   The theme for the March 2010  issue is global health ethics in practice.  Read the full issue here, or start with any of the following:

• Jennifer’s introduction: Global Health Ethics at Home and Abroad
• The WHO Staging System for HIV/AIDS by Jennifer Weinberg and Carrie Kovarik
• The Physician-Researcher’s Dilemma by Hana Akselrod
• Global Health Ethics and Professionalism Education at Medical Schools by Sujal Parikh

In January 2010 PLoS Medicine published a very interesting four-part weekly series on this subject.  I have posted a few excerpts below:

The study had three aims; (1) to advance current understanding of the interplay of actors in the system; (2) to evaluate its performance; and (3) to identify opportunities for improvement.

Read the rest of this entry →

After over 20 years of research, scientists believe that they have discovered a breakthrough that will allow for more effective treatments for HIV/AIDS. In a recent article in Nature, scientists from Imperial College London and Harvard University report success at elucidating the structure of integrase, an enzyme which the HIV virus uses insert a copy of its genetic material into host DNA. Researchers hope that this new knowledge will lead to a better understanding of how integrase inhibitors work, how they can be improved and how we can prevent HIV from developing resistance to them.

For more see http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6101AQ20100201