World Tuberculosis Day is an occasion to raise public awareness on a contagious disease that is treatable and preventable and yet has spread to epidemic proportions and continues to kill millions of people each year, especially in the developing world. The theme of World TB Day 2012 “Stopping TB in my lifetime” lends immediacy to the mission to halt TB and underlines the fact that everyone can make it his or her responsibility to eliminate the deadly disease from the face of the earth in the foreseeable future. The day offers an opportunity to focus on TB-related problems and solutions and to support worldwide efforts to control TB.
It was on March 24, now commemorated as World TB day that Dr. Robert Koch stunned the world in 1882 with his discovery of the TB bacillus, which causes tuberculosis. The discovery led to the subsequent diagnosis and cure of the infectious disease that was then killing an estimated one out of every seven people at very young ages in the Europe and Americas.
How Tuberculosis Spreads
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that spreads through air like the common cold. When people who are sick with TB in their lungs cough, sneeze, spit or talk, the TB germs spread in the air and infect people who breathe in the germs. People who inhale the TB germs or bacilli may not immediately fall sick. The germs can lie dormant and when the person’s immune system is weakened the disease will surface. Other than the lungs, tuberculosis can also develop in lymph nodes, genitourinary tract, bone and joint areas, meninges (membranes covering the brain and spinal cord) and the lining outside the gastrointestinal tract.
Some WHO TB Facts
• A third of the world population has TB infection
• Globally, nearly 9 million people were suffering from TB in 2010
• There were about 1.5 million TB related deaths worldwide in 2010
• TB is a leading cause of death in patients infected with HIV
Multidrug – resistant TB
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is the biggest threat to serious TB control efforts. MDR-TB is dangerous because it harbors TB bacilli resistant to standard first line drugs such as isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most powerful anti-TB drugs. MDR-TB is often the result of inconsistent or incomplete treatment, when patients fail to take their medicines regularly, usually because they begin to feel better and wrongly assume they are completely cured. Sometimes patients develop MDR-TB because they follow wrong treatment regimens prescribed by doctors and health workers.
Recent TB Trends
An extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB especially in patients with TB and HIV is seriously posing a threat to TB control. World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing global policy to fast forward coordinated public health interventions in order to reduce the fatalities resulting from this dangerous combination of TB and HIV. According to a recent WHO report 910,000 lives have been saved over the last six years by stepping up collaboration between TB and HIV services.
Results of the world’s most advanced TB vaccine trial that would be out in early 2013 could perhaps point to a more effective vaccine against tuberculosis thereby reducing the burden of infection and fatalities very soon.
A World Free of TB
In tune with this year’s theme, many organizations that join hands globally in the Stop TB partnership have outlined targets that men, women and children can dare to dream and achieve in order to free the world from the clutches of tuberculosis. People young and old, living in different countries can have these hopes to put an end to TB in their lifetimes.
• No more deaths from TB
• Faster treatment
• Quick, low cost, low tech test for TB
• An effective TB vaccine
• A TB free world
Seminars, symposiums, quiz programs, poster presentations and TB vaccination camps for children are some of the events lined up in urban and rural areas in an attempt to increase awareness and check the spread of TB.
The war on TB is all geared up to see a fight to the finish that totally eliminates TB from every corner of the globe. You can do your bit by joining hands with associations or groups working on World TB Day 2012 campaigns and ensure that you’ve made an individual call to stop TB in your lifetime.
Source-Medindia
Till date women have been discarding menstrual blood as an unwanted and unsanitary waste. However, a new research has found that menstrual blood is a rich source of stem cells that have the ability to multiply and differentiate into any kind of cells.
Earlier, blood from umbilical cord was regarded as the ultimate reserve for stem cells. Only those who have given birth at anytime of their life were able to preserve the stem cells as they were obtained from umbilical cord. But researchers have now discovered and successfully harvested stem cells from menstrual blood making it possible for all the women including those who have never given birth to preserve stem cells for themselves. The discovery of stem cells in the menstrual blood has given a new meaning to menstruation for women who earlier considered menstruation as nothing but a painful and necessary evil.
Stem cells have the unique quality of differentiating into any type of cell. As these cells are immunologically immature in nature, they are able to contribute successfully in the cell survival after a transplant. Researchers have harvested stem cells from menstrual blood under laboratory conditions and the harvested cells were successfully differentiated into nerve cells in vitro under lab culture conditions that were controlled. When the differentiated cells were infused into an animal model of stroke, these cultured stem cells reduced behavioral impairments in the stroke model.
It is now established that endometrial wall of the uterus has unique quality of regeneration. There is a thick growth of blood cells which are dispelled every month and the uterus prepares a new endometrial lining and prepares itself for pregnancy. The shed blood contains varied cells some of which have regenerative properties. Researchers tried to find out the practicality and feasibility of collecting menstrual blood in order to harvest the stem cells. They performed several types of analysis of the shed blood and found that these cells can not only be harvested but they also differentiated into specific cells like cartilage, neural tissue or adipose tissue. When menstrual stem cells were induced to the adipogenic lineage, chondrogenic or osteogenic lineage, they displayed histological characteristics such as the presence of fat vacuoles in adipocytes or calcium deposits for bone.
The Menstrual stem cells (MeSC’s) have a great importance for clinical translation of regenerative therapies. The studies demonstrate that these are a unique population of cells that can be safely isolated and can provide us with an expandable source of stem cells from women until they reach menopause. Considering their relevance and importance in treatment of rare diseases including certain neuro disorders, it becomes crucial for women to preserve their menstrual blood in the Menstrual Blood Bank.
Menstrual Blood Banking enables women to store their menstrual blood under required conditions and preserve it for future. These banks charge minimal annual fee for storage and preservation and allows you to have lifelong benefits from them. Although Menstrual Blood banking is still new and lot of research is still going on menstrual blood, if its benefits are utilized, it can prove to be very beneficial for all women who want to give themselves the gift of good health. The process for collection of menstrual blood is simple; like tampon, a silicone cup is inserted in the vagina on the day of heaviest flow. The cup needs to be placed inside the vagina for at least three hours so as to collect approximately 20 milliliters of blood. This is then poured in the collection kit and is sent back to the menstrual blood bank laboratory where it is processed, frozen and stored. What makes this method user friendly is that it is completely painless and non invasive. Also, any woman who wants to preserve stem cells for future can do so without having to wait for delivery of baby.
Menstrual Blood Banking has a wide scope as the need for regenerative therapies incorporating cells that can engraft and differentiate is vast. Though Menstrual Stem Cell technology is yet to be utilized in human treatments and therapies, the research has established the beneficial properties of these cells and their potential use in treatment of several medical conditions like atherosclerosis, diabetes, stroke, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson disease and many more. Alongside, menstrual blood can overcome the problem of immune rejection during the transplant, allowing the female patients to use their own stem cells for the treatment. Thus, it can be said that Menstrual Blood Banking has a vast scope in future and is the next big thing in the medical world.
Reference: Multipotent Menstrual Blood Stromal Stem Cells: Isolation, Characterization, and Differentiation by Amit N. Patel, Eulsoon Park, Michael Kuzman, Federico Benetti, Francisco J. Silva, and Julie G. Allickson.
Source-Medindia
Drugs are classified into different groups according to how they are used to treat specific disease,their chemical characteristics and structures.
Browse the Therapeutic Classification of Drugs alphabetically
