New Zealand, China sign food safety agreement
The food safety regulatory agencies of China and New Zealand Friday signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation in food safety and quality. The Food Safety Cooperation Arrangement between New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) was signed in Wellington by CFDA vice minister Liu Peizhi and MPI deputy director general Carol Barnao, reported Xinhua. The agreement will see the establishment of a Joint Food Safety Commission, which would allow MPI and the CFDA to meet annually to help build a better understanding of how each other’s food safety systems worked. New Zealand Food Safety Minister Nikki Kaye said the agreement would encourage cooperation and the sharing of knowledge in the fields of food safety, risk management, food standards and regulations. “The agreement shows commitment and a willingness between New Zealand and China to work together on food safety programs,” Kaye said in a statement. The agreement would further build on the strong relationship between the two countries, particularly in the agricultural and food sectors. (Agencies)
‘Painful’ pinpricks may soon be history for diabetics
Researchers have said that they are one step closer to developing an oral treatment for diabetes.
According to scientists at the University of Tokyo, they have developed a compound they named AdipoRon, which is capable of mimicking the effects of the hormone, News.com.au reported. According to Toshimasa Yamauchi, a member of the research team and lecturer at the Graduate School of Medicine at the University of Tokyo, AdipoRon could become “a lead compound” in a possible oral treatment for diabetes. The study finding has been published online in journal Nature. (ANI)
Cancer vaccine developed to boost lifespan of patients
Russian scientists have developed a vaccine for the treatment of cancer that can increase the patient’s lifespan more than two-fold, ITAR-TASS reported Wednesday. The vaccine, developed at the Institute of Clinical Immunology in the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Novosibirsk, has already successfully passed clinical tests, said institute’s director Vladimir Kozlov. Currently, it is being administered to patients by injection at the third and fourth stages of cancer. “We are deriving dendritic cells from the human body and loading them with tumour antigens,” Kozlov said. “Dendritic cells process them, then we inject the cells into the patient and they start working in the body evoking a strong immune response. That is, they are actively fighting the tumour.” The institute’s creation “is not a classical vaccine, which is the means to prevent the illness”, Kozlov said. “In fact, it is a cell therapy.” The vaccine is counteracting several types of cancer – colorectal (bowel) cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer – and the institute is ready to start its industrial production, Kozlov added. (IANS)
Diabetic women under 60 at higher risk of heart disease
Researchers including an Indian origin scientist has found that young and middle-aged women suffering from type 2 diabetes are at increased greater risk of developing coronary artery disease than previously believed. Lead study author Rita Rastogi Kalyani, M.D., M.H.S., endocrinologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that their findings suggest that we need to work harder to prevent heart disease in women under 60 who have diabetes. She said that this study tells us that women of any age who have diabetes are at a high risk for coronary artery disease. For the research, she and her colleagues analyzed data from more than 10,000 participants in three widely regarded studies: the GeneSTAR Research Program, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III. None of the participants had a history of heart disease. All three studies yielded similar gender differences in rates of diabetes and the risk of developing heart disease. Interestingly, in both women and men, these findings were unrelated to differences in obesity and other traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking. (ANI)
Lefties more likely to suffer from psychotic disorders
A new study has suggested that being left-handed can been linked to many mental disorders.
According to Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues, among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome. About 10 percent of the US population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11 percent of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. (ANI)