THE rapid uptake of genotyping as described in last weeks genetics review raises new opportunities for breeders to determine the potential of their entire herd.

Traditionally, performance recording has focused largely on male progeny. This trend has continued with the introduction of genomic testing, with most records collected from effectively only half of the progeny born in a program.

With the increased uptake of genomic testing in Australian herds, there is an accompanying uptake of breeders testing both bull and heifer calves, and developing a much more comprehensive profile of the genetic potential within their herd.

Some breeds such as Angus already have a fairly equal proportion of male and female calves tested annually. Angus Australias Andrew Byrne suggested that the collection of data at calving using Tissue Sample Collection has significantly helped ensure profiling occurs across an entire calf drop.

However in other breeds, the decision to test females as well as males has been slower.

One of the impediments has been the cost associated with testing. While many some societies offer testing packages to include tests on genetic conditions or parentage verification, at around $60 for a 50k panel test, seedstock breeders are closely considering what the returns are on this investment.

The decision to test an entire herd probably should be taken in the context of what will that information mean to a programs overall objectives.

Genomic testing offers breeders information that can be useful in three key areas:

These three areas are key considerations for many seedstock breeders. Parentage verification is perhaps one of the most important issues, particularly when it comes to listing and offering sires for sale. While breeders attempt to be vigilant in their recording of matings, errors can and do occur.

There are numerous ways in which errors can happen when recording parentage. Herds that use multi-sire matings and uncertainty between AI and back-up bulls are two of the more common reasons for errors. However other incidents that can range from a visiting bull through to mis-mothering calves or just straight out human error.

Minimising the risk of incorrectly describing a bulls pedigree at sale is a significant driver behind many breeders decisions to undertake sire verification.

Angus Australia recommends all sale animals be DNA sire-verified as a minimum standard. The society has gone further within its regulations, requiring the display of parentage verification status of sale lots using the following suffix to an animals name:

Outside of the Angus breed, sire identification remains one of the primary drivers for seedstock breeders genotyping decisions. However in several breeds the management and early identification of genetic conditions is also a high priority.

Genetic conditions can be prevalent in some herds and may not be recognised until significant production losses occur. Genetic conditions can impact a range of production areas, from growth and fertility and structural soundness. Other issues may result in early mortality of calves.

Often, and in extensively-managed herds, the symptoms of genetic conditions can be non-specific and difficult to recognise. Often calf losses are attributed to other factors such as environmental impacts or predation. However, when these issues continue over several seasons, breeders have started to look more closely at their herds, to see if genetics is playing a role in these losses.

While many purchased sires have information regarding their genetic status, the cow herd remains the unknown. Its in these situations that genetic testing is required to manage and reduce on-going losses. At a practical level, the information provided from genetic testing allows breeders to avoid joining carrier dams to a carrier sire.

Without knowing the status of cows, the options for breeders are restricted to using only those sires which are tested free of the conditions that are of concern. Potentially this reduces the choice some breeders have for sires. The additional benefit in testing females allows breeders more flexibility in managing their herd to eradicate that trait within the herd.

The additional benefit of genetic testing, particularly within the breeds undertaking Single Step Breedplan (so far, Angus, Hereford, Brahman and Wagyu) is the improvements in data and accuracy of the EBVs offered by each breed.

From a practical perspective, commencing herd testing can be done in several ways depending on each breeders overall breeding objectives.

Catriona Millen of SBTS describes the approach as one which should line up against those objectives. She said If its full parentage verification a producers wants, all dams of the calves they wish to do parent verification on will need to be genotyped. This could be for all calves in a calving year, or a select subset (e.g. full parent verification on sale bulls only).

For producers who are managing genetic conditions, she said it may be that they only genotype cows from certain lines that contain known carriers.

One option to genotype a herd can be to commence testing with yearling heifers prior to selection. This information can aid in both identifying carriers of any genetic conditions as well as using it for sire ID purposes or to group into lines based on other production traits. This approach allows a decision to be made about animals that are genetically unsuitable prior to joining.

While this process does take longer than testing an entire herd in one year, it is a more practical approach and allows producers the opportunity to make more balanced selection decisions based on the best information for the entire herd.

Alastair Rayner

Alastair Rayner is the Principal of RaynerAg, an agricultural advisory service based in NSW. He regularly attends bull sales to support client purchases and undertakes pre-sale selections and classifications. He can be contacted here or through his website http://www.raynerag.com.au

View original post here:
Weekly genetics review: Is it worth genotyping the female herd? - Beef Central

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Equilibria

Authors note: Coco Meers and Marcy Capron Vermillion are the co-founders of Equilibria.

Warren Bobrow=WB: Why cannabis? What brought you to the plant?

Coco: I was extremely under-educated about cannabis when Marcy (co-founder) and I reconnected to ideate in summer of 2018 after selling our respective tech companies. A francophile from Alabama, white burgundy and bourbon pretty much had me covered on the recreational side of things. Marcy was the first data-driven, engineering mind to emphatically share her personal CBD success story with me, opening up my mind to the idea of cannabis as medicine, versus recreation. Upon hearing Marcys authentic stories of nerve pain management and mental health relief, as well as the countless (anonymized) stories of the women she had counseled on dosage and delivery techniques, I began taking a high quality, full-spectrum CBD daily. After a few days, I felt more rested and generally more balanced. After a few weeks, I described my overall temperament as decidedly more even. I had a longer fuse with my young children and was less fixated on elements beyond my control at work. After a month or so, I realized I could take my biologic injectable drug for an autoimmune disease less and less, eventually leveling off at the frequency. CBD has brought me balance, and I knew women everywhere deserved similar access.

Throughout my professional career, Ive always been inspired to create beauty and wellness innovations that benefit women. I am an active angel investor in female-founded, consumer companies, and got my entrepreneurial start as founder & CEO of PrettyQuick (acquired by Groupon in 2015), a booking marketplace offering seamless reservations at salons and spas nationwide. PrettyQuick is where I met Marcy, collaborating on our very first public launch. Before PrettyQuick, I was a Brand Manager at LOreal in New York & Paris. When Marcy inspired me to take a look at CBDs balancing properties, I knew this was an extraordinary opportunity to take best-in-class science and wrap it in a consumer brand that women would love.

Marcy: For me, Ive always been a problem solver first and foremost. Prior to Equilibria, I founded Polymathic, which was acquired by DevMynd/Tandem in 2017. As Coco mentioned, it was my own personal experience with CBD that led me down a path of learning everything possible about this powerful and complex plant, eventually to the point of leading workshops and gatherings on the medicinal and regulatory power of cannabis for women. Coco and I had worked together previously and, when we got together years later, I shared more about my personal journey. It was that one conversation that served as the inspiration for Equilibria.

Coco: As two professional women with full plates and our share of chronic pain, inflammation and everyday anxieties, were truly living proof of the power of CBD.

EQ Brilliance Box: Photo: Equilibria

WB: I see you went the hemp route, why? Why not THC? You talk about the quality and consistency of your products? Where is your hemp sourced from?

Marcy: While we havent ruled out launching a marijuana brand, the 2018 Farm Bill cleared the way for us to serve maximum numbers of women nationwide with high-quality industrial hemp-based therapies. As owners in our own farm, we are laser-focused on cannabinoid and terpene expression to provide as much of the therapeutic benefit of marijuana as possible, but without the high (by using medical hemp!)

In terms of sourcing, we made the conscious decision at the beginning to do things differently. Unlike other CBD brands out there, we didnt feel right whitelabeling existing products. We have an exclusive partnership with our Farm & Bioscience partner CFH, LTD, an expert genetics and industrial hemp producer in Longmont, Colorado.

Coco: Our CFH business partners are valuable assets in our long term differentiation strategy, and we partner closely at every step of the supply chain. Their team is myopically obsessed with traceability, consistency, and results, which makes our cultures a great collaborative fit. By partnering strategically at the farm level, we can use our clinical data and member insights to inform the genetics program and help influence strain development. Bottom line: as a part of this unique, vertically integrated strategy, Equilibria is positioned to influence earlier parts of the value chain to help inform the future of cannabis and womens wellness.

WB: Please tell me about your company? What is your six and twelve month goals? How do you anticipate removing obstacles? What are they?

Coco: Our mission at Equilibria is to restore balance to the lives of women. For us, that means offering medical-grade, consistent CBD month after month, and working with our members one on one to personalize the dosage and delivery routines that maximize their results. Throughout 2019, we sustained 50% month over month growth, and we are committed to similar growth rates in 2020. On our quest to help as many women as possible, we are excited about a range of new products - with new delivery systems launching every quarter - as well as continuing our commitment to education and community. We dont aspire to sell CBD products. We aspire to change lives through cannabis science, and that requires a different mindset as a unique tech-forward community.

Marcy: I echo Cocos sentiment here: we want to continue to develop and grow internally and provide products designed to meet consumer needs based on a thoughtful examination of bioavailability, modality onset, and female use cases. On that note, were very excited about the new releases scheduled for 2020 while we cant talk about them publicly yet, were so excited to use this platform to help women across the globe achieve balance - or equilibria - and live their fullest lives 🙂

Coco: In terms of obstacles, I think being in a highly unregulated industry presents its own challenges. CBD is an interesting sector its not a supplement and its not a drug, so there is a lot of grey area in terms of FDA regulations. The industry is constantly evolving and restrictions are changing daily, so were constantly reviewing our systems to ensure we remain compliant and ahead of the curve. We actually want to see proper legislation put into place to protect consumers, which will make us doubly glad we always went above and beyond to insist on best-in-class practices, when the other shoe inevitably drops.

WB: What kind of food do you like? Restaurants? Where?

Coco: Anything and everything! I love exploring the world through food. Ramen in the 2nd in Paris, falafel in Tel Aviv, street tacos in Mexico City. I love fresh food as an expression of culture.

Marcy: I grew up with Jordanian and Central/South American neighbors so I crave anything from fresh lamb to maduros on any given day. Chicago is a fantastic city for food (well, anything that doesnt involve oceanic seafood!) and theres always something new to try.

WB: What is your passion?

Coco: I think Marcy would agree in that were both extremely passionate about supporting women. Whatever youre managing in your daily life, we all have a lot on our plates and the idea of creating a platform to help women live their best lives is extremely fulfilling to us.

Marcy: Ill piggyback with this: quality of life is a fantastic framework for solving problems. Neverending! Never boring! Coco has a knowing smile when I say, Ooh, what if. and that keeps us rolling through the fantastic job weve created for ourselves! Always ask what if.

*******

See the original post:
Equilibria: Restoring Balance To The Lives Of Women In Five Questions - Forbes

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Text Size:A- A+

Bengaluru: The names of 11 Indian women scientists have come into prominence after the Narendra Modi government decided to establish chairs in their name in institutes across the country.

Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani made the announcement last week to not only honour & recognize Indian women scientists contribution to the field of Science but also inspire women & encourage greater participation of young girls in STEM.

Only women researchers can take up these chairs, and receive research funding up to Rs 1 crore.

In view of the government move, ThePrint explores the scientists lives to understand who they were and the significance of their contributions to their fields in which their chairs are instituted.

Also read: What is Raman Effect? The discovery that India celebrates with National Science Day

Archana Sharma was a botanist and specialised in plant genetics. She did pioneering work in speciation in asexual plants, or understanding how these plants evolved to become distinct species. She also specialised in studying cells their biology, toxicology, and genetics. Some of her other biggest contributions include research into the underlying mechanism behind the induction of cell division in an adult nucleus, genetic polymorphism in human population, and effect of arsenic in water. She was, perhaps, most known for her work in chromosomes and chromosome-related classification of flowering plants.

Janaki Ammal was one of Indias earliest botanists, who specialised in cytogenetics. She was also an expert in phytogeography, or the study of geographical spread of plant species and how they affect the earth. Her subjects of genetic experimentation were sugarcane and brinjal. She had an illustrious career abroad and in India. She was once forced to stay back in the UK due to the onset of World War II and co-wrote the cytology bible Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants while she set about crafting hybrid flowers.

Darshan Ranganathan was particularly famous for her work in protein folding and her research in bioorganic chemistry. She also specialised in recreating naturally-occurring biological reactions in a laboratory setting. This enabled her to synthetically create several ingredients that are key to drugs and chemicals of pharmaceutical significance. She was an expert in designing proteins and other nanostructures of structural importance in chemistry.

Also read: Earth has a second moon car-sized, dark and temporary

Asima Chatterjee was an organic chemist whose biggest claim to fame is her development of anti-malaria, chemotherapy, and anti-epilepsy drugs. She performed extensive research on medicinal plants found on the Indian subcontinent. The aforementioned drug discoveries were a part of her work on the chemistry of concentrated natural products. She worked for nearly half-a-century on alkaloids, which are used in chemotherapy to prevent cells from multiplying.

Kadambini Ganguly was among Indias first two female physicians as well as South Asias and the British Empires to have been trained in modern medicine. As the first woman in most places she stepped into, Ganguly fought off many prejudices and much discrimination. Apart from practicing independent medicine, she was also politically very active. She aided in the freedom struggle against the British Raj, organised Satyagraha meetings in 1906 after the partition of Bengal, and worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of female coal workers in eastern India.

Iravati Karve was Indias first female anthropologist at a time when the field went hand-in-hand with sociology. Her fields of expertise encompassed Indology (the study of Indian history and culture as a subset of Asian culture), palaeontology, anthropometry (physiological dimensions of human bodies across cultures), and serology (the study of bodily fluids). She was a pioneer in womens education. Karves work, considered pioneering for her time, has since been critiqued for its outmoded and heavy influence of governing tactics by the British Raj, her conflation of ancient-Sanskrit inspired ideas with modern anthropology, and her German-tenure inspired ideas of eugenics.

Also read: Researchers flag over 400 dubious papers published in China in last 3 years

Anna Mani performed research at the Indian Meteorological Department in Pune and authored numerous research papers on meteorological instrumentation. A physicist by training, she specialised in weather and meteorology, and went on to perform groundbreaking changes in Indian weather monitoring systems. She established a network of stations to measure solar radiation, standardised drawings of nearly 100 weather instruments, set up workshops to manufacture instruments that measured wind speed and solar energy, and developed an instrument to measure ozone.

Rajeshwari Chatterjee was a mathematician and an electrical engineer, specialising in electromagnetic theory, microwave technology, and radio engineering. She was the first woman engineer from the state of Karnataka and pursued her PhD in the US just after World War II. She has contributed immensely to the field of antennas for special purposes used in aircraft and spacecraft. After her return to India, she served as faculty in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. She then worked with Indian Association for Womens Studies.

Raman Parimala, the only living person on the list, is a mathematician well-known for her contributions to algebra. She demonstrated the first example of a non trivial quadratic space over an affine plane, in a move that surprised experts in the field. She specialises in using number theory, algebraic geometry, and topology. She is also well-recognised for her solution to the second Serre conjecture.

Also read: Marsquakes and strange magnetic pulses what NASAs Mars mission has unveiled so far

Bibha Chowdhuri is well-known for her work in particle physics and cosmic rays, and discovery of a new subatomic particle, the pi-meson, from experiments in Darjeeling. She worked under physicist Debendra Mohan Bose, who was often credited for her work. She later also worked with Nobel winner Patrick Blackett on cosmic rays. Upon moving to India, she worked in the field of nuclear physics. She was involved in the Kolar Gold Field experiments to detect neutrinos. Recently, through a public competition by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which names planetary bodies, the yellow-white dwarf star HD 86081 was renamed Bibha in her honour.

Kamal Ranadive was a biomedical researcher known for her research in the link between cancers and viruses. She worked on the development of tissue culture techniques at Johns Hopkins University the US. She returned to India to set up the Experimental Biology Laboratory and Tissue Culture Laboratory in Mumbai, and became the director of the Indian Cancer Research Centre. She also conducted research into the links between cancer and genetics, as well as cancer in infants. Her work led to developments in the causes of diseases like leukaemia, breast cancer, and oesophageal cancer.

Also read: Venus, Io, Triton: What we know about destinations of NASAs Discovery finalists

ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.

Go here to read the rest:
These are the 11 Indian women scientists the new STEM chairs are named after - ThePrint

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JDPast PresidentAssociation of American Physicians and Surgeons

In todays brave new world, imagine receiving a letter from the school principal about your only child: "Your son will not be home tonight but your daughter will be home in a few days."

Science deniers are teaching and molding our children. Regardless of scientific data about genetics and biology, some folks including some of our august politicians contend that people can change genders. Science lesson: there are two genders. The X chromosomes and Y chromosomes determine sex. With rare exceptions of random abnormalities, female is XX and male is XY. People who undergo sex reassignment procedures do not become the opposite sex; they merely change their outward appearance.

For several years, California law has allowed students to participate in sex-segregated school programs, activities and facilities, including bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams, consistent with their gender identity, regardless of the gender listed on the students records.

Privacy alert: when in gym class locker rooms, most high school girls dont want to undress in front of boys who identify as girls. With regard to safety and competitive fairness, biological males retain their natural advantages over female athletes despite testosterone hormone suppression. Ignoring reality, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act which requires schools to allow biological males who identify as girls to compete in female sports, ironically disadvantaging women.

Parents are left out of the equation, as the government usurps their right and duty to raise their children. In Wisconsin, the Guidance and Policies to Support Transgender, Non-binary & Gender-Expansive Students mandates that children of any age can transition to a different gender identity at school, by changing their name and pronouns, without parental notice or consent.

Going three steps farther, California permits children to receive contraceptive hormones and abortions without parental consent based on the students right to privacy. Now the California Teachers Association wants to extend student privacy to the provision of hormones to students who want to change their gender. Such a decision should not be within the purview of teachers, particularly when trading heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and infertility for what could be a phase or manifestation of an unrelated emotional problem in a developing brain is at stake.

A number of studies found that 85 percent of children experiencing gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria before the age of 10 years did not assume that gender role in adolescence. Because of our limited ability to predict whether gender nonconformity in a child will persist in the future, pursuing medical intervention in children was not recommended.

In adolescence, there is some question whether there is social contagion involved with gender issues. Some 87 percent of parents reported that along with the sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria, the child either had an increase in their social media/internet use, belonged to a friend group in which one or multiple friends became transgender-identified during a similar timeframe or both. The study concluded that rapid onset gender dysphoria was a maladaptive coping mechanism, similar to anorexia. Gender dysphoria may be used as a catch-all explanation for any kind of distress, psychological pain, and discomfort that an [adolescent] is feeling while transition is being promoted as a cure-all solution.

Would ethical physicians even consider acquiescing to the demands of patients with body integrity disorder? This condition also begins in early adolescence when the patient feels the need to have a healthy limb amputated.

Nonetheless, the age at which children are medicalized is getting younger. Puberty-blocking drugs are routinely given to prepubescent children. Girls as young as 12 are injected with testosterone, while teen boys are treated with feminizing hormones. The rate of "gender-confirming" surgeries are increasing each year and are being performed on minor children. Girls as young as 16 have had their breasts, uterus, and ovaries removed. Given the uncertainties and fluidity of childhood gender issues, invasive medical intervention crosses the line into child abuse.

How far will the educators go to expose children to alternative gender and life choices?

Some public libraries are hosting Drag Queen Story Hours for children aged 3 to 11. Some schools bring the drag queens into the classrooms where students are a captive audience.

Home schooling never looked so good.

Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is the immediate past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School. Dr. Singleton completed two years of surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvards Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School.

Here is the original post:
highlandcountypress.com - The Highland County Press

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

HARPURSVILLE (WBNG) -- Animal Adventure park welcomed a new addition to their Scimitar Horned Oryx enclosure on February 26.

A new baby Oryx named Oakley, its the first Oryx the park was able to breed.

Whats significant about this baby? In 2000 their species were declared extinct in the wild.

However through determination and conservation efforts the species was given a second chance, in 2016 they were reintroduced back into the wild.

Native to Northern Africa there are now 1,000 Scimitar Horned Oryx in the wild and a total of 6,000 - 7,000 in captivity.

"This baby is very important for conservation efforts, our female and male we have here have never had a calf before together, and with this being her first calf." said Erin Lien the curator at Animal Adventure Park.

"So he is very unrepresented in the genetic pool right now, so he will probably move on from our facility as soon as he is of age and go somewhere where he can be used and his genetics can be represented with other females of the population."

Oakley will move on to another park when he comes of age to take part in a survival species programs and continue the gene pool of his species.

Read the original:
A Second Chance: How conservation saved a species - WBNG-TV

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

As interest in the keto diet grows, researchers have found another population that could benefit from the high-fat, low-carb diet: women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

One of the most common hormone disorders in women, PCOS is associated with irregular menstrual periods, infertility, and in many cases, increased facial and body hair growth. PCOS has also been linked to insulin resistance, and is worsened by obesity.

A keto diet holds promise as a way to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce visceral body fat, potentially helping to manage symptoms of PCOS, according to a small study published February 27th in the Journal of Translational Medicine.

Researchers from several Italian universities looked at 14 women before and after a 12-weekMediterranean keto diet, focusing on fat sources like fish and olive oil and including plenty of leafy greens and other veggies. The diet limited red meat, processed foods, and sugar.

They found that the diet improved numerous markers of health, including hormone imbalances, body composition, and cholesterol levels.

The study was very small and more research is needed, particularly to understand how diet affects PCOS in the long term.

PCOS is the most common cause of female infertility and affects between 6% to 15% of women of reproductive age, according to research. It occurs when excessive follicles in the ovaries prevent ovulation, or the release of eggs, creating a hormonal imbalance. It's not entirely clear what causes PCOS, although genetics and environmental risks (like certain toxins) are believed to play a role.

Obesity is thought to worsen PCOS, and both are linked to metabolic issues like insulin resistance. However, not all people with PCOS are obsese, and those with a normal BMI can still have the same metabolic issues as obese patients.

In healthy people, insulin is used to help manage blood glucose, the body's preferred source of energy. But metabolic disorders can cause the body to stop responding to insulin. Over time, this causes the pancreas to produce more insulin, and raises blood sugar levels, leading to symptoms like fatigue, infections, persistence hunger, and eventually type 2 diabetes.

Researchers found that participants on the Mediterranean keto diet improved their sensitivity to insulin. Previous research has shown that carbohydrates in particular can spike insulin levels, so restricting them using a keto diet can help balance blood sugar and insulin levels.

Participants on the diet also lost weight and body fat, and had more balanced hormone levels than before the diet research has found that too much adipose tissue, or body fat, can worsen hormone problems.

However, the study didn't look at how the keto diet affected other aspects of PCOS, such as infertility and irregular periods.

Prior to this study, research on the keto diet for PCOS was extremely limited. One other small study found similar effects of keto on 11 women with PCOS after six months.Other research has found that a low carbohydrate diet could be a promising way to help manage PCOS, but didn't specific a ketogenic diet.

So far, there's not enough evidence to conclusively recommend any dietary approach for PCOS, but with more research, a balanced keto diet could offer an option beyond medication, researchers said in the recent study.

Read more:

The keto diet may help people with diabetes control their blood-sugar levels

A flight attendant says his keto diet caused a false positive on the breathalyzer test that cost him his job

Keto may increase the risk of injury by weakening bones, study finds

See the original post:
A Mediterranean keto diet may help treat PCOS, the most common cause of infertility in women - Insider - INSIDER

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem, said he will not run a bill this legislative session banning transgender hormone therapy and surgery for minors. He has opted instead to run legislation to study puberty blocking drugs.

The replacement bill directs the Health Department to commission a review of scientific research on the effects of puberty blocking drugs. Some lawmakers had told Daw they needed more clarity on the effects of the drugs before they would support a bill banning them, according to Daw.

He said he also heard concerns from parents who told him their kids needed the drugs to treat their gender dysphoria and avoid serious mental health issues.

If they look at what the potential side effects are, and what theyre potentially buying in to, they may decide, you know what, I can wait, Daw said. It's giving them information to make a better decision.

The drugs dont cause a permanent change to someones body, but instead pauses puberty, providing time to determine if a child's gender identity is long lasting, according to the Mayo Clinic. Side effects may include weight gain, headaches and fertility issues.

Daw said right now he has no plans to introduce a bill to banhormone therapy or surgery, as he had originally intended, and wants to gather more information before he makes a decision.

If we need to take the next step, we will, Daw said.

While Equality Utah executive director Troy Williams is glad that Daw has abandoned his original bill, hes worried that the results of the review would be skewed.

We need more than one doctor reviewing the literature, Williams said, adding that the people reviewing the scientific literature should have experience in transgender-related health care. We also need to look at not just the side effects of medication, but also benefits of medication.

And though hes advocating for those changes to the bill, Williams hopes it never sees a committee hearing.

No transgender youth who's struggling with their care and navigating school needs to hear a bunch of bunk and transphobic rhetoric spewed at the Utah state Capitol, Williams said. That's not good for their mental health This is really about trying to intimidate and create fear in within the transgender community.

Sonja Hutson covers politics for KUER. Follow her on Twitter @SonjaHutson

The rest is here:
Utah Lawmaker Won't Introduce Legislation To Ban Transgender Hormone Therapy For Minors This Session - KUER 90.1

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Aesthetic treatments have become increasingly popular among Irish women; not because they make you look radically different, but for their ability to make you look like the best version of yourself.

Here we shine the spotlight on one of Ireland's leading clinics The New You Clinic, who offer the most innovative and leading treatments on the market today from lasers to dermal fillers delivering instant and long-lasting results.

Internationally renowned Claudia McGloin, a registered nurse with dual nursing registration in both the UK and Ireland, is the clinical director and owner of The New You Clinic, a multi-award-winning business in Sligo.

The clinic has gone from strength to strength over the past eight years to become one of Irelands most recognised and trusted medical aesthetic clinics. Due to growth and demand, the clinic has recently rebranded to include Womens Health to address hormone health and the menopause. The New You Clinic also owns the franchise for Motivation Weight Management.

The clinic offers a variety of medical aesthetic procedures including: Claudia Rejuvula Vagina Rejuvenation - a procedure that Claudia co-created to help women suffering with menopause, stress incontinence and sexual dysfunction. Currently, this is only available at The New You Clinic.

In addition, Claudia also has her own skincare brand called New You which currently has 13 products in the range, as well as four Bespoke Medical Facials.

Being a featured writer for the Journal of Aesthetic Nursing, Claudia is also regularly featured in the media. She is passionate about Patient safety and is highly involved in educating the public and highlighting issues regarding the lack of regulation within the Aesthetic Medicine sector.

The New You Clinic was recently awarded Commended Best Clinic Ireland and a full list of medical procedures and information can be found on the clinic website.

The New You Clinic, First Floor Millennium House, Stephen Street, Sligo

Ph: 0719140728

E: claudia@claudiamcgloinclinic.com

W: http://www.claudiamcgloinclinic.com

More:
Irelands Leading Aesthetic & Skincare Clinics: The New You Clinic - RSVP Live

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

In the mid-2000s, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris opened a children's medical clinic in the Bayview section of San Francisco, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. She quickly began to suspect something was making many of her young patients sick.

She noticed the first clues in the unusually large population of kids referred to her clinic for symptoms associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorderan inability to focus, impulsivity, extreme restlessness. Burke Harris was struck not just by the sheer number of ADHD referrals, but also by how many of the patients had additional health problems. One child arrived in her clinic with eczema and asthma and was in the 50th percentile of height for a 4-year-old. He was 7. There were kindergarteners with hair falling out, two children with extremely rare cases of autoimmune hepatitis, middle-school kids stricken with depression and an epidemic number of kids with behavioral problems and asthma.

Burke Harris noticed something else unusual about these children. Whenever she asked their parents or caregivers to tell her about conditions at home, she almost invariably uncovered a major life disruption or trauma. One child had been sexually abused by a tenant, she recalls. Another had witnessed an attempted murder. Many children came from homes struggling with the incarceration or death of a parent, or reported acrimonious divorces. Some caregivers denied there were any problems at all, but had arrived at the appointment high on drugs.

Although none of her mentors at medical school back in the early 2000s had suggested that stress could cause seemingly unrelated physical illnesses, what she was seeing in the clinic was so consistentand would eventually so alarm herit sent her scrambling for answers.

"If I were a doctor, and I was seeing incredibly high rates of autism, I'd be doing research on autism," she says. "Or if I saw incredibly high rates of certain types of cancer, I'd be doing that research. What I was seeing was incredibly, incredibly high rates of kids who were experiencing adversity and then having really significant health outcomes, whether it was difficulty learning, or asthma, or weird autoimmune diseases. I was seeing that the rates were highest in my kids who were experiencing adversity. And that drove me to the latest scientific literature."

What Burke Harris found there would eventually thrust her to the forefront of a growing movement that aims to transform the way the medical profession handles childhood adversity. Childhood stress can be as toxic and detrimental to the development of the brain and body as eating lead paint chips off the wall or drinking it in the waterand should be screened for and dealt with in similar ways, in Burke Harris' view. As California's first Surgeon General, a newly created position, she is focusing on getting lawmakers and the public to act.

Earlier this year, thanks in part to her advocacy, California allocated more than $105 million to promote screening for "Adverse Childhood Experiences" (ACEs)10 family stressors, first identified in the late 1990s, that can elicit a "toxic stress response," a biological cascade driven by the stress hormone cortisol that is linked to a wide range of health problems later in life.

In recent years, epidemiologists, neuroscientists and molecular biologists have produced evidence that early childhood experiences, if sufficiently traumatic, can flip biological switches that can profoundly affect the architecture of the developing brain and long-term physical and emotional health. These "epigenetic" changesmolecular-level processes that turn genes on and offnot only make some people more likely to self-medicate using nicotine, drugs or alcohol and render them more susceptible to suicide and mental illness later in life. They can impair immune system function and predispose us to deadly diseases including heart diseases, cancer, dementia and many others, decades later. Not only does childhood stress harm the children themselves, but the effects may also be passed down to future generations.

A groundswell of support has arisen in the world of public health in favor of treating childhood adversity as a public health crisis that requires interventiona crisis that seems to run in families and repeat itself in trans-generational cycles. At last count, at least 25 states and the District of Columbia had passed statutes or resolutions that refer to Adverse Childhood Experiences. Since 2011, more than 60 state statutes aimed at ACEs or intervening to mitigate their effects have been enacted into law, according ACEs Connection, a website devoted to tracking the phenomenon and providing resources. California's effort is among the most aggressive. The state has set aside $50 million for next year to train doctors to provide screening, and $45 million to begin reimbursing doctors in the state's MediCal program for doing so ($29 for each screening). If it proves effective, other states may soon follow.

"The social determinants of health are to the 21st century, what infectious disease was to the 20th century," says Burke Harris. She rose to national prominence after writing a 2018 book on the subject, embarking on a national book tour and recording a TED Talk that has been viewed more than 6 million times. She was tapped for her new post by Governor Gavin Newsom in January 2019.

The research is so fresh that many clinicians are still debating the best way to tackle the problem, most significantly whether the science is mature and the interventions effective enough to implement universal screening. And the details of California's approach to screening are controversial in the world of public health. (The epidemiologist who developed a key questionnaire being used as a screening tool says it was never intended to be used to evaluate individuals.) But there is broad consensus, at least, about one thing. For all the buzz in public health and policy circles about "ACEs," few people have heard the term before. The first task, many people on the front lines of health education agree, will be to change that so that caregivers themselves can learn about the vicious cycle of childhood adversity, and get the help they need to break it.

The Science of Toxic StressThe research on ACE stems from a seminal 17,000-person epidemiological study published in 1998. The first clue came years earlier, however, with the plight of an obese, 29-year-old woman from San Diego named Patty.

Over the course of a 52-week trial of a weight-loss diet, Patty dropped from 408 lbs. all the way down to 132. Then, over a single three-week period, she abruptly gained 37 pounds of it backa feat that her doctors didn't even know was scientifically possible.

Patty's dramatic weight swings got the attention of Vincent Felitti, the head of the preventative medicine program at the massive managed care consortium Kaiser Permanente, and the man who had designed the obesity study. Felitti had been astounded at the rapid pace with which the study subjects lost weight. "In the early days of the obesity study, I remember thinking 'wow, we've got this problem licked,'" Felitti recalls. "This is going to be a world-famous department!"

Then, for reasons nobody could explain, patients began dropping out of the program in droves. Felitti found it particularly alarming because the ones leaving the fastest seemed to be the ones losing the most weight. When Felitti heard about Patty, he arranged a chat. Patty claimed she was just as mystified by her massive weight gain as he was; she assured him she was still vigilantly sticking to the diet. But then she offered up a suggestive clue: Every night when she went to bed, she told Felitti, the kitchen was clean. Yet when she woke up, there were boxes and cans open and dirty dishes in the sink. Patty lived alone and had a history of sleepwalking. Was it possible, she wondered, that she was "sleep eating?"

When Felitti asked her if anything unusual had happened in her life around the time the dirty pots and pans began to appear, one event came to mind. An older, married man at work had told her she looked great and suggested they have an affair. After further questioning, Felitti learned Patty had first started gaining weight at age 10, around the time her grandfather began sexually molesting her.

Felitti came to believe that for Patty, obesity was an adaptive mechanism: she overate as a defense against predatory men. Felitti began asking other relapsing study participants if they had a history of sexual abuse. He was shocked by their answers. Eventually, more than 50 percent of his 300 patients would admit to such a history.

"Initially I thought, 'Oh, no, I must be doing something wrong. With numbers like this, people would know if this were true. Somebody would have told me in medical school,'" he recalls.

Felitti started bringing patients together in groups to talk about their secrets, their fears and the challenges they facedand their weight loss began to stick. Within a couple years, the program was so successful that Felitti was receiving regular invitations to speak about his program to medical audiences. Whenever he brought up sexual abuse and its apparent link to obesity, however, audience members would "storm explosively" out of the room or stand up to argue with him, he says. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to hear what he had to say.

At least one person was intrigued by his findings. Robert Anda, a researcher at U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), had been studying chronic diseases and the counterintuitive links between depression, hope and heart attacks. He knew firsthand what it was like to deal with colleagues who considered his work flaky. Anda and Felitti got to talking. They realized there was only one way that both of them would be able to overcome the skepticism they were encountering: they needed to do a rigorous study. At Anda's urging, Felitti agreed not just to recruit a larger sample but to expand its scope to examine the link between a wide array of common childhood stressors and health later in life.

This became the ground-breaking "ACE Study," a 17,000-person retrospective project aimed at examining the relationship between childhood exposure to emotional, physical and sexual abuse and household dysfunction, and risky behaviors and disease in adulthood. Starting in 1998, and continuing with follow-ups well into the 2000s, Felitti and Anda's team published a series of counterintuitive papers that upended much of what we thought we knew about the mind-body connection.

To gather the data, Felitti persuaded Kaiser Permanente-affiliated doctors to recruit patients in Southern California undergoing routine physical exams. The patients were asked to complete confidential surveys detailing both their current health status and behaviors, and the types of adversity they've endured: physical, emotional and sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, parental incarceration, separation or divorce, family mental illness, the early death of a parent, alcoholism and drug abuse. To analyze the data, the researchers added up the number of ACEs, calculated an "ACE score," then correlated those scores with high-risk behaviors and diseases to see if they could find any patterns.

The first shocker was just how common these ACEs were. More than half of those participating had at least one, a quarter had two or more and roughly 6 percent reported four or more. This was not just a problem of the poor. Childhood emotional adversity cut across all racial, ethnic and economic lines. Even more surprising was the impact of these stressors later in life. When the researchers ran their analysis, they discovered a direct, dose-dependent link between the number of ACEs and behavioral issues like alcoholism, smoking and promiscuitythose who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure had a four- to 12-fold increased risk of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression and suicide attempts.

The results went beyond these common trauma-related health risks. The study also linked childhood trauma to a host of seemingly unrelated physical problems, including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures and liver disease.

What made the study so shocking was that the data suggested that even those who didn't drink, use drugs or act out in risky ways still had a far higher rate of developing ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures and liver disease. Unexpectedly, the researchers had discovered that childhood adversity seemed to be an independent risk factor for some of the leading causes of death decades later.

"We found a strong graded relationship between the breadth of exposure to abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults," the authors wrote.

The study dropped like a bomb in the world of public health. But the scientific work was just beginning. In the years since, scores of researchers have begun to dig into the biological mechanisms in play. And with emerging brain scanning technologies and advances in molecular biology, an explanation for the ACE study has begun to emerge. Some clinicians and scientists have begun to turn these findings into concrete interventions and treatments they hope can be used to reverse or at least attenuate the impact.

Much of the research has focused on how ACEs affect the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a biological system that plays a key role in the mind-body connection. The HPA axis controls our reactions to stress and is crucial in regulating an array of important body processes including immune function, energy storage and expenditureeven our experience of emotions and mood. It does so by adjusting the release of key hormones, most notably cortisol, the release of which is increased by stress or low blood sugar levels.

Cortisol has many functions. On a daily basis, it regulates the level of energy we have as the day progresses: we generally experience our highest levels of cortisol, and energy, upon waking up. These levels gradually diminish throughout the day, reaching very low levels just prior to bedtime.

Cortisol also serves a role in the body's energy allocation during times of crisis. When all is calm, the body builds muscle or bone and socks away excess calories for future consumption as fat, performs cellular regeneration and keeps its immune system strong to fight infection. In the case of a child, the body fuels normal mental and physical development.

In an emergency, however, all these processes get put on hold. The HPA axis floods the bloodstream with adrenaline and cortisol, which signals the body to kick into overdrive immediately. Blood sugar levels spike and the heart pumps harder to provide a fast boost in fuel. If an 11-foot-tall grizzly bear is lumbering in your direction and licking his chops, the additional burst of energy helps you run screaming through the woods or wrestle the critter to the ground and plunge a Bowie knife into its heart.

However, when the emergency goes on for a long timeperhaps over an entire childhood of abusethe resulting high levels of cortisol take a big and lasting toll.

Almost as soon as the ACE study was published, dysregulated cortisol levels seemed a likely culprit to explain the study's startling implications. Was it possible that the chronic stressors identified by Felitti and Anda led to elevated cortisol levels in children? And could those elevated levels account for seemingly unrelated diseases and the range of additional problems that researchers were beginning to link to ACEs?

In the decade after the 1998 ACE study, researchers began seeking out children in Romanian orphanages and measuring cortisol levels, in the hopes of verifying this hypothesis. When researchers began to compare their levels to that of children who had not faced adversity, they found substantial differences. But the results were difficult to interpret.

"There was growing evidence that there was an impact, but the studies were contradictory," says Jackie Bruce, a research scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center, an NIH-funded research center in Eugene that studies child development. "Sometimes people were finding kids with early adversity had low cortisol and sometimes they were finding they had high cortisol."

In 2009, Bruce and her colleagues demonstrated a possible explanation for the discrepancies. Since morning cortisol levels play such an important role in getting well-functioning individuals ready for the day, they sought out a group of 117 maltreated 3- to 6-year-old children transitioning into new foster care placements in the United States. The researchers then trained the children's caregivers to collect saliva samples before breakfast. For comparison, they recruited a control group of 60 low-income children living with their biological parents who had no previous record of abuse or maltreatment.

Children who had experienced more severe emotional, physical and sexual maltreatment did indeed have abnormally high morning cortisol levels. But scientists also found that children who experienced more severe neglect had abnormally low morning cortisol levels. Different types of adversity, in other words, had different impacts on the HPA system. But whether the adversity took the form of an absence of stimulation or the presence of negative, threatening stimulation, the effect was bad for normal development.

"Low cortisol levels, particularly in the morning, had been linked to externalizing disordersthings like delinquency and alcohol usewhereas high cortisol levels have been linked to more anxiety and depression," and post-traumatic stress disorder, Bruce says.

Even so, Bruce and her colleagues noted that within both groups, "some kids are doing really well, some kids are not doing well." This suggested other factors were also involved. And in recent years, much of the research has focused on understanding the complex interaction between external stressors, genetics and interpersonal interventions.

One of the most important findings to emerge recently is that the experience of childhood adversity, by itself, does not appear to be enough to lead to toxic stress. Genetic predispositions play a role. But even among those predisposed, the effects can be blunted by what researchers call emotional "buffering"a response from a loving, supportive caregiver that comforts the child, restores a sense of safety and allows cortisol levels to fall back down to normal. Some research suggests that this buffering works in part because a good hugor even soft reassuring words from a caregivercan cause the body to release the hormone oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the "cuddle" or "love" hormone.

One of the reasons the ACE study was so effective at highlighting the potential long-term health effects that early childhood adversity can have on health, says Burke Harris, was the nature of the stressors measured. The stressors took place within the context of a family situation that often reflected the failure of a caregiver to intervene as a needed protector.

"The items that are on the ACE screening have this amazing combination of being high stress and also simultaneously taking out the buffering protected mechanisms," Burke Harris says. "If you're being regularly abused, often it's partially because your parents are not intervening."

This hypothesis is supported by experiments in rodents. Back in the 1950s, the psychiatrist Seymour Levine demonstrated that baby rats taken away from their mothers for 15 minutes each day grew up to be less nervous and produce less cortisol than their counterparts. The reason, he suggested, was due to affection from their distressed parent in the form of extra licking and grooming. Studies in the 1990s confirmed that the extra affection and comfort offered by the affectionate parents seemed to have flipped biological "epigenetic" switches that caused their offspring to internalize the sense of safety that had been provided and replicate it biochemically as adults.

Scientists have since documented many biochemical mechanisms by which emotional buffering can help inoculate children exposed to adversity to long-term consequences, and how chronic overactivation of the HPA axis can interfere with developmentor, as one widely cited scientific paper put it, can have an impact akin to "changing the course of a rocket at the moment of takeoff." Neglected and abused Romanian orphans were shown to have smaller brains as a population than those placed in loving foster homes, suggesting a lack of stimulation interfered with normal neuronal growth. Adversity and stress without adequate buffering can turn on genes that flood the system with enzymes that prime the body to respond to further stress by making it easier to produce adrenaline and reactivate the fight-or-flight response quickly, which can make it harder for children with toxic stress to control their emotions.

Toxic stress can also have powerful influences on the developing immune system. Too much cortisol suppresses immunity and increases the chance of infection, while too little cortisol can cause an inflammatory immune response to persist long after it is needed. That can act directly on the brain to produce "sickness behavior," characterized by a lack of appetite, fatigue, social withdrawal, depressed mood, irritability and poor cognitive functioning, according to a 2013 review paper aimed at bringing pediatricians up to speed on the emerging science. As adults, children maltreated during childhood are more likely to have elevated inflammatory markers and a greater inflammatory response to stress, the researchers reported. Chronic elevations in cortisol have also been linked to hypertension, insulin resistance, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

In recent years, Fellitti and Anda's original 1998 paper has been cited more than 10,000 times in further studies. And as awareness in the public health community has risen, so too has the amount of data available to work with, and the vast body of research documenting the far-reaching consequences of ACEs. Last fall, the CDC analyzed data from 25 states collected between 2015 and 2017, and more than 144,000 adults (a sample 8.5 times larger than the original 1998 study). The authors noted that ACEs are associated with at least five of the top 10 leading causes of death; that preventing ACEs could potentially reduce chronic diseases, risky health behaviors and socioeconomic challenges later in life and have a positive impact on education and employment levels. Reducing ACEs could prevent 21 million cases of depression; 1.9 million cases of heart disease; and 2.5 million cases of obesity, the authors said.

Hundreds of new studies are published every year. In just the last month, studies have come out analyzing the "mediating role of ACEs in attempted suicides among adolescents in military families," the impact of ACEs on aging and on "deviant and altruistic behavior during emerging adulthood."

How to Save the KidsWhile these findings help explain the link to chronic diseases, Harris Burke and other public health officials believe they also provide the basis for some of the most promising interventions in the clinic today. Not surprisingly given her background, Burke Harris looks to pediatric caregivers and other doctors to lead the effort to detect and treat patients suffering from toxic stress. To help them do it, late last year, California released a clinical "algorithm": basically a chart spelling out how doctors should proceed once they compiled a patient's ACE score.

Patients are found to be high-risk for negative health outcomes if the doctor, using a questionnaire, can identify four or more of the adverse childhood experiences or some combination of psychological, social or physical conditions found in studies to be associated with toxic stress. For children, that's obesity, failure-to-thrive syndrome and asthma, but also other indicators such as drug or alcohol use prior to the age of 14, high-school absenteeism and other social problems. For adults, the list includes suicide attempts, memory impairment, hepatitis, cancer and other conditions found to be higher in populations with high ACE scores.

Doctors are encouraged to educate all patients about ACEs and toxic stress regardless of their ACE scores. For patients found to be at intermediate or high risk, additional steps are recommended. The first step in the case of children is to make sure parents or caregivers understand the links ACEs can have to adverse health outcomes. That way, they can be on the lookout for new conditions and take action to prevent them.

Key to this educational process is making sure caregivers understand the protective role buffering can play in countering the corrosive effects of stress. Buffering includes nurturing caregiving, but it can include simple steps like focusing on maintaining proper sleep, exercise and nutrition. Mindfulness training, mental health services and an emphasis on developing healthy relationships are other interventions that Burke Harris says can help combat the stress response.

The specifics will vary on a case-by-case basis, and will rely on the judgment and creativity of the doctor to help adult caregivers design a plan to protect the childand to help both those caregivers and high-risk adults receive social support services and interventions when necessary. In the months ahead, the protocols and interventions will be further refined and expanded. "Most of our interventions are essentially reducing stress hormones, and ultimately changing our environment," says Burke Harris. "But some of the things that I think are really exciting are on the horizon."

In recent years researchers have begun to explore whether the "love drug," oxytocina hormone released when a parent hugs a child might form the basis for potent pharmaceutical interventions. For now, however, "we're on the scientific frontier," she says.

The relatively young state of the science and the fuzziness and subjective nature of the tools California plans to use to evaluate the threat have alarmed some public-health experts. They worry that the state is moving too fast, before more is known about the science of toxic stress. Robert Anda, for one, is uncomfortable with the use of screening tools that rely on an ACE score. He worries it might be misused in the doctor's office because it doesn't measure caregiver buffering or genetic predispositions that might prove protective. The questionnaire he and Felitti developed for the original study was always meant to be a blunt instrumentsuited for a survey of a huge population of patients. The problem with applying it to individual patients, he says, is that it doesn't take into account the severity of the stressor. Who's to say, for instance, that someone with an ACE score of one who was beaten by a caregiver every day of their life is less prone to disease than someone with an ACE score of four who experienced these stressors only intermittently? On a population level, surveying thousands, the outliers would cancel each other out. But on the individual level they could be misleading.

It's a concern echoed by others. "I think the concept behind ACE screening, if it's about sensitizing all of us to the importance of looking for that part of the population that's experiencing adversity, I'd say that's good," says Jack Shonkoff, a professor of child health and development who directs the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. "But if it's used as an individual diagnostic test or indicator child by child, I would say that's potentially dangerous in terms of inappropriate labeling or inappropriate alarm. We need to make sure that people don't misuse this information so that parents don't feel like they've just been given some kind of deterministic diagnosis. Because it's not that. It's also dangerous to totally give a clean bill of health for a kid who may be showing symptoms of stress."

Burke Harris notes that she has been using ACE scores as part of her clinical care for more than a decade. When used correctly, it is only one part of a larger screening process. And she points out that despite the early phase of the field, the stakes are too high to wait any longer. "This is extremely urgent," she says. "It's a public health crisis. We have enough research now to act. And once we have enough research to act, not acting becomes an unconscionable path."

In the years ahead, more precise methods of detection will likely be available. Harvard's Shonkoff recently completed a large, nationwide feasibility study aimed at developing and rolling out a saliva test which could be used to screen for biomarkers that indicate a toxic stress response in both children and adults. The test, developed as part of a six-year, $13 million grant, measures the level of inflammatory cytokines present in the spit sample. Shonkoff and his colleagues are in the process of taking the next step, which involves gathering enough data to develop benchmarks that indicate normal and abnormal levels for stress markers by age, sex, race and ethnicity.

Even the cautious agree a little education will go a long way. "The most important fundamental prevention idea is that people who are caring for children, who are parenting children, need to understand that childhood adversities are likely leading to issues in their own lives," Shonkoff says. "And if they don't find a way to do things differently with support, they will be embedding that same biology back in their children."

Originally posted here:
Yes, Stress Really Is Making You Sick - Newsweek

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

News'Missing out on hormone blockers has made me feel self-conscious and uncomfortable in my testosterone-filled body'

Tuesday, 3rd March 2020, 11:50 am

Sonja is a 17-year-old college student in the West Midlands. She is a transgender teenager, and has been on the NHS Gender and Identity Development Service (GIDS) patient waiting list since November 2017. Here, she shares how she feels after discovering she will not be given puberty blockers, also known as hormone blockers, by the clinic for transgender children and young adults.

For the longest time throughout my childhood, I thought there was something wrong with me. I wasn't sure what it was, but it didn't feel comfortable. I couldn't understand it, which made me feel isolated, so Id play alone and enjoy my own company. My nursery teachers were concerned.

Fast forward a couple of years towards secondary school, I became more involved with the internet and the online world, and I started to learn the vocabulary for what I was feeling. I considered the prospect that I was transgender, and I thought, maybe this is who I am.

It took a good few years before I spoke to my my student support staff at my secondary school about my feelings. From there, they listened to me, and helped me create a referral to be seen by GIDS, the NHS's specialist children and young adults gender identity clinic, to consider my next steps. They helped me with external support through youth groups and various charities.

Missing out on puberty blockers

But two years down the line, I've received confirmation I will never been seen by GIDS, nor will I be given the chance to take puberty blockers. In December 2019, the December just gone, I received a phone call from a woman at GIDS, saying they would refer me to adult services, because I wouldnt be seen before my 18th birthday. Getting seen by GIDS, in short, is a mission in itself.

Being referred to an adult clinic, where I will not be offered puberty blockers, took me aback. It sucks because by the point of me getting referred in the first place, to get puberty blockers, took so long I had gone through most of my puberty anyways. I already have the effects and it sucks.

Ive had to come to terms with the fact that part of my transition will require significant amount of surgeries, invasive and not. Because the blockers won't put a pause on my puberty, I will enter adulthood tasked with feminising my "male" characteristics.

To alter from just my neck upwards, theres probably around five facial feminisation surgeries, including the reduction of my jawline, rhinoplasty, and a tracheal shave to reduce the size of my Adams apple. Those surgeries are specifically to remove the effects that male puberty has had on my body.

From what I understand of the process, some surgery is considered to be cosmetic, with tracheal shave (reduction of the Adam's apple) and facial feminisation surgery seen as this by the NHS. As it stands, there's only one surgery, gender reassignment surgery, that is usually funded by the NHS.

Constantly painful

If someone told me I was lucky not to have gone on hormone blockers I would struggle to put into words how wrong that is. Missing out on hormone blockers has made me feel self-conscious and uncomfortable in my testosterone-filled body. Its like wearing a pair of shoes with rocks inside them. It's constantly painful, you never forget its there and you cannot take the rocks out.

There are times when Im on the verge of harming myself and I cry alone. Its like sitting in the library at college but constantly looking over my shoulder, hyper-aware of whether people are talking about me and whether someone is going to attack me. I have regular panic attacks which are getting worse. I struggle to sleep because theres so much going round in my head. Every minute of the day I struggle with negative thoughts.

I know there are people who say I should just make peace with my body. Its not like changing your hair colour or weight, its so much deeper than that. I know there are people who cant change their bodies but this isnt about trying to change the way I look for vanity its trying to live as the woman I am.

I am constantly afraid of being attacked on street. Its not a question of wanting to pass" as a woman, its about longing to feel safe. Throughout my transition, I have always been tentatively cautious. Ive always been mindful, am I doing this for me, or am I doing it to fit some societal expectation of what a woman looks like? Through every step of my transition, I have taken a step back and evaluated my situation. I want to do whats comfortable for me, and me alone.

I will never be seen by GIDS after years of waiting. The right to enjoy my life as who I am has been disregarded and taken from me. I cant feel comfortable who I am, and fully experience my young adult life because of my trans status and physically who I am. If I could have started it earlier, and reaped the benefits of puberty blockers, I would be in a much better situation than I am now.

'I regret not having access to blockers'

Throughout my entire transition, I have sought a lot of support. Its a lot to deal with. Im so thankful that there are amazing support networks and charities like Mermaids with dedicated helplines. Samaritans are great for general mental health issues. I would encourage anyone who needs support to go and seek help, and have that support in place.

I just want to specifically reiterate and reinforce that it is important for there to be a judicial review. But people need to be mindful that their situation, if it is unusual, where someone might seek a reversal, or feels uninformed, might be the rarity, and to not harm the wider community as a whole.

I know theres a lot of debate at the moment about hormone blockers and regret but nobody is listening to people like me. I cant put into words how much I regret not having access to blockers and hormones. Theyre a necessary requirement for me to comfortable live my truth and the fact that Im still not being given that opportunity has such a negative impact on my psychological well-being.

Tavistock, representing the NHS's Gender and Identity Services clinic (GIDS), has been approached by i for comment.

Read the rest here:
'I'm trans, and I've waited since 2017 to be given puberty blockers. Now, I've been told it's too late' - inews

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

February 2020

Are you looking for a health care provider who offers innovative alternatives and a customized approach to your health issues? Indiana Regenerative Medicine Institute (IRMI) believes in offering specialized alternatives to health care. Its medical team, headed by Doctor of Chiropractic Preston Peachee, utilizes the latest developments in regenerative medicine, hormone replacement and pain management.

Dr. Peachee is a native of Jasper, Indiana. He graduatedfrom Logan College of Chiropractic and has been in practice since 2003. Hisareas of specialty include patients with chronic and severe back, neck andjoint pain as well as other complex neurological conditions.

Dr. Peachee has earned a reputation as an innovative thinkeras well as a compassionate practitioner who brings his wide expertise andexperience to the Greater Indianapolis area. His ability to help those in needof regenerative medicine, neuropathy pain relief, low testosterone or otherphysical ailments, such as back pain or fibromyalgia, makes him not only uniquebut highly sought-after.

A key member of the IRMI team is Leann Emery, FNP. Emery isa family nurse practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in hormonereplacement and alternative pain management. Emery provides optimal patientcare through personal consultations and assessments to identify her patientsspecific health needs. She was rated in the top 10% of providers in the U.S.with patient satisfaction.

Regenerative medicine is making huge leaps in our understanding of the human body, and it is offering real, possible treatments that would have seemed like science fiction a few short years ago, according to IRMI. Most patients we see have tried other more traditional treatments and have either not gotten any better or have gotten even worse. Unfortunately, a lot of people we see depend on multiple medications per day to try and function but still are not happy with how they feel or how they live their lives. It is unfortunately the nature of deteriorating and degenerative joints, they will get worse with time, and generally the pain increases as well.

Depending on the injury, Dr. Peachee will often combinelaser therapy with the regenerative medicine protocols to improve the outcomesand try and speed the recovery process.

We offer mesenchymal stem cell therapy, Dr. Peachee said. With the combination of laser therapy, mesenchymal stem cell therapy is incredibly effective for rotator cuff problems and treating knee pain. Eighty percent of our stem patients are dealing with knee pain or Osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis-or O.A. of the knee- is a huge problem for a lot of people, and we get great results from these therapies. Most people can even avoidknee surgery.

Dr. Peachee recently introduced hormone treatments for low testosterone. Family Nurse Practitioner Leann Emery has been doing [hormone] treatments for 20 years, and that area of medicine became a natural fit for IRMI.

I have several patients who were seeking this type ofcaremany who are police officers and firefighterswho couldnt find thetherapy and individualized care and attention that they needed.

Dr. Peachee explained that low T treatments help patients with unique and even complicated cases of Erectile Dysfunction (E.D.). Most people seek us out for treatment because they are tired, worn out, stressed out and just simply lack the energy they used to have.

We are able to fill a niche with patients who hadcomplicated cases that were not responding well with their primary careproviders or other places, Dr. Peachee shared. We have a patient who hasstruggled for a long time with fertility issues but has done very well [withtreatments], and we just got good news that he and his wife are expecting aftertrying for a really long time. So, he is really enthused about that.

The typical candidates for low T treatments, according toDr. Peachee, are men who feel worn out, are lethargic and have lost theirzest for life.

Our patients dont have the same pep that they had 10 or20 years ago, Dr. Peachee stated. They struggle getting up in the morning andmight be struggling in the afternoon after having six cups of coffee or threeRed Bulls just to get through the day. We have a lot of people that want to getback into the gym and get the maximum benefit of their workouts. We can helpthem improve their overall health and energy so that they can enjoyrecreational activities like working out or practice with the Little Leaguewith their kids. Many times we hear from spouses, friends and family how muchbetter they feel and that they seem happier and get more out of life again.

It goes without saying that proper hormonal balance canimprove a patients personal relationships as well and improve the overallmental health of a patient by reducing stress, anxiety and depression oftencaused by symptoms related to low testosterone levels.

We focus on injectable [low T] treatments because we canmodify the dosage and give more frequent doses to keep our patients at a levelthats going to give them the maximum benefit and improvement for theirconditions, Dr. Peachee explained.

With the modern changes in medicine over the last 20 and 50years, were helping people to live a lot longer and adding 20 to 30 years totheir lives, but we have not given them an improved quality of life as theyage. By working with their hormones and getting them in balance, their qualityof life becomes way better, and were seeing a positive improvement for manypeople with these treatments.

Patients suffering from severe disc injuries, such a bulgingor herniated disc or discs, or who suffer from degenerative disc disease mayhave undergone treatment from chiropractors or have seen physical therapistsbefore coming to Indiana Regenerative Medicine Institute.

Our typical patient who comes in for this type of treatmenthas seen other therapists or chiropractors but hasnt found lasting relief,Dr. Peachee said. Many of our patients want to get off the rollercoaster ofopioids and pain medications. They are looking for a solution without narcoticsand risk of addiction or other possible negative side effects of narcoticsand/or surgery. We are generally able to alleviate the pain in 90% of patientsand are able to keep them from having surgery or from taking addictivemedications.

Laser therapy allows Dr. Peachee to work on the damaged tissue so that it can heal, and the method reduces inflammation and swelling in a way that traditional treatments cannot.

Its an innovative new therapy within the last decade thatallows us to do some amazing things, Dr. Peachee stated. We perform ourprocedures in our office and have several different devices for the specificneeds and issues of our patients. For instance, we have a unique device forpeople with knee pain that can help the majority of our patients walk betterand live more pain-free. We get a phenomenal outcome with this procedure.

One of the other major differentiators that sets IndianaRegenerative Medicine Institute apart from other offices and clinics is thatthey are advocates for their patients, especially when it comes to dealing withtheir patients insurance providers.

A lot of our low T patients are able to get their insurancecarriers to cover the services so that it doesnt cost them as much out ofpocket for the care they seek, Dr. Peachee said. Weve partnered with abilling company that has helped us to be able to navigate the craziness of ourmodern insurance companies, and by doing so, were able to keep the cost downfor a lot of patients. Not every insurance plan will cover this type of care,but a lot of them will. When its possible and ethical, we do whatever we canto benefit our patients to help keep the cost low. I have spent a lot of freetime writing letters on behalf of our patients. We go above and beyond with ourservice and care of our patients.

The Indiana Regenerative Medicine Institute team will make housecalls or come to a patients place of work when the situation calls for thatlevel of care.

We will go and draw blood for blood work, bring medications and even do exams in some situations, Dr. Peachee said. As I mentioned before, we see a lot of police officers and firemen all over the statefrom Mishawaka to South Bend and all over Indiana. We go once a month to see these patients at their departments and stations so that we see them all in one day versus making 10 to 15 guys drive hours to come in to see us. Its a service we can offer because we are a small clinic and we are focused on that one-on-one patient attention and relationship building. We have great relationships with our patients, and thats something that we work very hard at.

Building trust and transparency is crucial to the success ofhis practice, Dr. Peachee emphasized. The trust that we build with ourpatients is crucial to not only the success of the practice but to thepatients outcomes. And not just with hormone therapy but also with ournonsurgical spinal decompression patients. These are patients with significant discinjuries, and we need them to tell us everything we need to know so we can givemore accurate and complete care for a better outcome.

I would say to anybody if you have any doubts or reservations to take some of the burden and some of the anxiety out of the equation and schedule an initial consultationabsolutely free of charge, Dr. Peachee encouraged.

Dont put off living your best life any longer. Visit Indiana Regenerative Medicine Institutes website at indianaregen.com or call (317) 653-4503 for more information about its services and specialized treatments and schedule your free consultationtoday!

Follow this link:
Indiana Regenerative Medicine Institute Offers Innovative Approaches in Regenerative Medicine, Hormone Replacement and Pain Management - Carmel...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

CLAIRE Dunwell thought she was going crazy when, after turning 40, she began to suffer heart palpitations, migraines and crippling anxiety.

After going back and forth to her GP, she was given medication for anxiety, beta-blockers for her heart and even sent for an ECG heart check.

6

Claire, 42, now knows she is going through the perimenopause, a phase before menopause when hormone levels can fluctuate. She is now undergoing hormone replacement therapy to ease the effects. But it should all have been diagnosed sooner.

A Mumsnet poll found one in four women with menopausal symptoms sees a GP three times before getting the right help. One in four is told she is too young to be perimenopausal.

Here, Claire, a writer who lives in Wakefield, West Yorks, with husband Ian, 55, a chip shop owner, and sons Sam, 13, and Louie, ten shares her story.

SOAKING up the rays, I should have been living my best life.

It was last August, blazing hot, and we were halfway through a two-week family holiday in Crete.

6

While my husband Ian had his head buried in a book, planning his next trip to the all-inclusive bar, I was frantically searching Google on my phone, hoping for answers to explain the way I was feeling.

Since hitting 40 the previous February, I had been plunged into a dark, unfamiliar world.

I had become anxious, irritable and zapped of energy.

When my head wasnt thick with brain fog it throbbed with migraines, and trying to concentrate on anything for longer than half an hour had become a battle.

I felt like someone I didnt recognise not the fun, happy-go-lucky person I was in my carefree twenties and thirties.

6

Id always been fit, healthy and a cup half full kind of girl.

I exercised three times a week, ate healthily and was incredibly lucky to have a loving husband, two healthy children, great friends and a successful career.

From the outside looking in, I had it all.

But on the inside, I had suddenly lost control.

Even the most mundane jobs such as unloading the washing machine and trying to pair up socks overwhelmed me.

FACT:

1 in 4 women with symptoms have to see GP 3 times to get right help

Headaches, fatigue, anxiety and palpitations made matters worse.

It was three months after I turned 40 when the repeat trips to my GP surgery began.

I beat myself up for wasting precious NHS time.

I felt like a fledgling hypochondriac.At each visit, doctors tried hard to treat my list of ailments but nothing worked for long.

6

For the migraines, which Id never suffered before and became so unbearable I struggled to hold conversation and just wanted to sleep, a doctor prescribed Sumatriptan.

I took it when the migraines hit and although they helped with the head pain, they made me feel sick and groggy.

At another appointment, this time with a nurse, it was suggested I try a high dose of aspirin as soon as I felt a migraine coming.

If that didnt work, she would refer me to a local migraine support group.

Next came the unexplained anxiety and heart palpitations, which were at their worst during the two weeks before my period.

FACT:

A quarter are told they are too young to be premenopausal

Some days, I felt as though I was going crazy.

I could be enjoying coffee with a friend one minute and gripped by an irrational panic the next.

My heart raced, worrying something terrible was about to happen.

My husband took the brunt of my bad moods.

I felt exhausted all the time because nodding off on the sofa by 9pm most nights meant I struggled to get a good nights sleep.

I was less tolerant with the kids too.

All of this was completely out of character.

Despite the odd night every few weeks when I woke up in the night drenched in sweat, it never dawned on me that it could be down to my hormones.

6

Sobbing to my GP at yet another appointment, I was prescribed Citalopram, an anti-anxiety medication which I hoped could be a magic pill.

I was desperate to try anything.

They even gave me an ECG for the palpitations, but it showed my heart was perfectly normal.

Its only now, looking back, that I realise it was around this time my periods changed.

Some months they were lighter than normal and others they were shorter in length.

Neither me, nor my GP, made the link that I could be heading towards The Change.

It was during that family holiday to Crete last year that I finally reached the end of my tether.

I was six months into the Citalopram but because it wasnt making any difference, I stopped it.

FACT:

The average woman hits menopause at age 51

I made another appointment with my GP and was handed a prescription for beta blockers which slow the heart rate and can help with anxiety.

Instead, they left me feeling spaced out and sluggish, so I could only take them at night.

It was during my son Louies routine asthma check-up last September when everything began to fall into place.

Tearful, I begged a friendly nurse for five minutes of her time.

Youre not going crazy, she reassured me, as I blurted everything out.

Youre perimenopausal.

The nurse said how all my symptoms were likely to be down to a drop in my hormone levels.

At first, the idea seemed ridiculous.

I was 41, and the average age women reach menopause when regular periods stop is 51.

But the more I pieced together my sudden onset of symptoms, the more it made sense.

When I asked if there was a blood test I could have to check my hormone levels, I was told it would be difficult to get a reliable result because hormones fluctuate daily.

The nurse prescribed the mini Pill hoping the top-up of progesterone would help. She suggested trying oestrogen later.

6

I went away feeling both relieved and confident that I was finally on the right path.But while the mini Pill helped with the migraines and eased the anxiety, it caused frequent heavy bleeding.

I was determined to find another solution, so I tracked down Dr Louise Newson, a GP specialising in menopause, and author of the Haynes Menopause Manual.

At her clinic in Stratford-upon-Avon she talked through my symptoms and I was given a blood test which found I had low levels of both oestrogen and testosterone.

While Louise said my results suggested I was perimenopausal, she stressed it is better to go on a patients symptoms than blood tests alone.

Hormone levels change all the time, she told me.

We could do three tests on three consecutive days and get completely different results, so the most important part of the diagnosis is the history from the patient.

When Louise went on to explain how it is not unusual for some women to experience menopausal symptoms up to a decade before The Change, I felt a huge weight lift.

Louise explained: Without hormones, its like trying to drive a car without oil.

The menopause occurs because our ovaries run out of eggs and stop producing hormones.

Many women find that their hormone levels start reducing several years before this.

Louise said that the perimenopause could be just as mentally and physically draining as the real thing.

Your age is key to diagnosis

THE average woman experiences the menopause when regular periods stop aged 51. But hormone levels can fluctuate several years earlier and in some people this can have side-effects.

This is known as the perimenopause.

Dr Louise Newson, pictured, says: Most women get some symptoms linked to changing hormone levels during perimenopause.

Some have symptoms for a decade before the menopause. Guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says that if a woman is over 45, we dont need to test for perimenopause or menopause.

If theyre 40 to 45 tests can be useful, and if theyre under 40 its important to get a diagnosis. In these situations a woman experiencing menopausal symptoms should seek help and advice from a doctor who specialises in the menopause.

Cells in our hearts, brains, bones, muscles, bladders and blood vessels respond to oestrogen so when levels reduce, all kinds of symptoms can ensue.

My hot flushes, night sweats, low mood, anxiety, joint pains, headaches and even my reduced libido could all be attributed to this fluctuation.

Low testosterone levels can also lead to brain fog, low energy, reduced stamina and reduced libido.

In my case, Louise prescribed an oestrogen gel as well as progesterone tablets, a type of Hormone Replacement Therapy.

She told me: The only way to find out if a drop in hormones is causing the symptoms is by replacing them and then seeing what happens.

The guidelines are very clear that for the majority of women who take HRT, the benefits outweigh the risks.

The menopause needs to be seen as a long-term female hormone deficiency rather than just a natural process that causes symptoms.

By replacing these hormones, we can really improve our future health as well as our symptoms.

I never imagined Id be taking HRT at the age of 42, but I could not contemplate going on for several more years feeling like I had been.

Four weeks into the treatment, Ive found it has already made a huge difference.

SPACE RAIDERSMum shares grab-n-go method for her kids lunchboxes as her house is small

Exclusive

MUM IN A MILLIONI fostered a 15-year-old girl at just 22 - then made her my bridesmaid

DETTOL DIPMum-of-two has a DETTOL bath once a week and gives her son, 8, one

taking a shelfieMum shares her massive stockpile as coronavirus panic-buyers rush to shops

a BRit strangeBlue passport mocked after people notice something odd can you spot it?

Exclusive

See the original post here:
Mums migraines, anxiety & palpitations were driving her crazy for two years until she was diagnosed with p - The Sun

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has announced that Kyleena a long-acting, low-hormone, reversible form of contraceptive will be added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. This will allow general patients to pay just $41 (or $6.60 for concession card holders) for up to five years of birth control.

WATCH:Abbie Chatfield reveals she had an abortion before going on The Bachelor

Kyleena is the first IUD of its kind in 15 years to be subsidised under the PBS. The move is expected to save women up to $160 a year, totalling $93 million collectively for Australian consumers.

We know from the Choice Project research that long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) are highly reliable, desirable methods of "fit & forget" contraceptives and countries that have high rates of LARC use have lower unplanned pregnancy and abortion rates, Dr Karen Osborne, Clinical Director of Clinic 66 tells Womens Health.

RELATED:How To Use Your Birth Control To Prevent PMS

Getty

We want to get as many women to use the more effective LARC methods rather than the higher risk and more inconvenient contraceptive pill.We need to make allLARCS as affordable for women as possible so that they have a better range of choice.

In comparison to a global benchmark of 15 per cent, around 12.5 per cent of Aussies rely on long-acting reversible contraceptives. As well as Kyleena, other popular choices include the Mirena and ParaGard, a non-hormonal copper IUD.

The benefits of using these forms of birth control include:

RELATED:Exactly How Each Form Of Birth Control Affects Your Period

Link:
The Kyleena IUD Is Set To Be Subsidised By The Government - Women's Health

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

With a simple sample of your saliva or swab of your cheek, a DNA testing kit can be used to research familial origin or ancestry and determine paternity. Formerly a niche pursuit, home DNA testing is now an easy way to map out your family tree.

The kits have become quite affordable over the past few years, too, with a wide range of DNA testing companies -- from trailblazers such asAncestryand23andMeto upstarts such as LivingDNA-- selling testing kits.

You can learn a lot from DNA testing. In addition to deepening your understanding of ancestry, some services will introduce you to living relatives around the world, through a common ancestor, or use markers to shed light on your predisposition to specific health issues and diseases. Others will even test dog DNA and give you insight into your dog's health and breed makeup. Here we present to you our roundup of the nine best DNA test kits and services -- what they offer, how they work and how much they cost.

We'll update this story as we continue our in-depth testing of these services. In the meantime, the ones included here are the most popular DNA testing services as determined by Google keyword search rankings.

Looking for more in-depth info on DNA testing services in general? Jump to our explainer.

Named for the 23 chromosomes found in human cells, 23andMe offers a battery of tests, including some that analyze health risks like Type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. (It was these tests thatattracted attention from the FDA.)

23andMe earns points for the depth of its medical tests, as well as the size of its match database. Purchasers of this DNA kit should note that the basic DNA test is $99 but that medical results cost another $99.

The added expense may be worth the money; the additional information includes genetic health risk information, wellness reports, trait reports, and carrier status reports, which indicate whether a particular DNA profile may be a genetic carrier of a disease or disability.

Your DNA information is gathered using a saliva sample from Autosomal DNA testing, which, once analyzed, is stored forever on 23andMe's servers. The service also provides for a chromosome browser and comparison, as long as any possible matches approve your access. The service's matrilineal and patrilineal line testing can geolocate your ancestry DNA in more than 1,000 regions.

(Appropriate for a genomics company, 23andMe's executive ranks contain some interesting familial relationships: CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki is the former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and sister of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.)

Ancestry DNA has a vibrant genealogical community and offers a wide range of databases, research resources and family matching features. The Ancestry DNA test provides analysis segments of your DNA results and traces its origins to 500 geographic regions throughout Europe, Africa and Asia -- the most detailed of any of the services we've profiled. AncestryDNA also says that it can help you learn about up to 26 traits and attributes you've inherited from your ancestors -- all from a little bit of saliva.

Ancestry maintains a free family tree search tool, and you can add your specific results to that database. You can also download your full DNA profile and import that data into another tool -- but Ancestry doesn't offer a chromosome browser, so you can't do DNA segment comparisons. Ancestry DNA stores results in its DNA database forever.

FamilyTreeDNA is operated by Houston-based genetic testing lab Gene-by-Gene. Gene-by-Gene also operates the Genomics Research Center for National Geographics' Genographic Project, which has concluded its public participation phase.

FamilyTreeDNA offers a wide range of tests. The basic autosomal test costs $79 (plus shipping) and is conducted with a swab test sample of your cheek cells. You can add sequences and markers, and your father's line and mother's line tests, but that will step up the price considerably.

If you're interested in doing in-depth analysis, the FamilyTreeDNA offers a chromosome browser, allows raw data to be uploaded, provides support for setting different segment matching thresholds and allows up to five comparisons to be done at once. FamilyTreeDNA allows trial transfers from 23andMe and Ancestry DNA into its DNA match database; additional transfers of various datasets are available for a fee. FamilyTreeDNA promises to keep data for 25 years.

Offering DNA test kits and a range of online subscription services, MyHeritage says that its database includes more ethnicities -- that's 42 -- than any other major testing service. The free 14-day trial will let you poke around the company's massive online DNA database which includes 3.5 billion profiles in addition to information about over 100 million subscribers and their collective 46 million family trees.

Starting at $79, the company's DNA testing kits are competitively priced and cover the basics: A simple cheek swab will give you an analysis of your ethnic origins and the identification of relatives who share your DNA. In addition to MyHeritage's free basic subscription, which will let you assemble a family tree up to 250 people, there are other packages that accommodate larger trees, advanced DNA features, and more robust research tools. The company allows you to upload test data from other DNA testing services.

MyHeritage says that it has also sold more than one million DNA testing kits -- but its enormous database is largely powered by Geni.com, a genealogy social mediaaccording to the New York Times site, that has assembled "the world's largest, scientifically vetted family tree," according to the New York Times. (MyHeritage is Geni.com's parent company.)

HomeDNA is kind of like the Walmart of DNA testing, which is somewhat appropriate given that the company's testing kits are sold at Walmart stores in addition to CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens pharmacies.

HomeDNA offers a range of DNA ancestry testing services priced between $69 to $199. Though the jury is still out about the effectiveness of specialty tests, HomeDNA also sells test kits to determine food and pet sensitivity ($99), diet and exercise strategies based on your genetic makeup ($119), paternity ($164), and even skin care ($99).

Dog owners can buy a dog DNA test to help you determine your dog's breed history for $125. You can also buy a $125 health screening for your dog or cat that includes a series of tests for genetic diseases and traits. (If you're interested in a canine DNA test for less, Wisdom Health offers a dog DNA test kit for under $80.)

Testing is done with a mouth swab. Shipping is free. And results are kept for 25 years.

African Ancestry can't compete on price or the size of its match database, but it does offer deep regional analysis. It's a worthy specialized service for individuals looking at exploring African ancestry.

Rather than a match database of individuals, African Ancestry has the world's largest database of African lineages. The company can trace your ancestry back to a region in Africa and then pinpoint its location today. It can also dive deep into history and help find original ethnic groups that may date back as long as 500 years ago.

But the tests can get quite expensive. The company sells a maternal test kit and a paternal test kit for $299 each (shipping is free). If you want to trace both your maternal and paternal lines back through this DNA database, it'll cost you about $600. Still, for African family histories, the depth of analysis is unique among the services we profiled.

The Full Genomes service is so expensive, it offers a payment plan. But the service offers the largest library of Y-chromosome SNPs around. So if you want to explore your patrilineal background, this is the most comprehensive option on the market. You can also look into your mitochondrial DNA. There's no family match database, however.

Testing is done with a cheek swab. The company charges $25 for shipping.

Living DNA is a UK-based genomics firm that offers autosomal DNA data, as well as a breakdown of matrilineal and patrilineal lines. DNA data is gathered through a mouth swab.

Living DNA has a very limited family match database, so if you're looking for a service that can match you to relatives around the world, this isn't the one for you. But Living DNA's test is quite comprehensive, analyzing multiple types of DNA: it tests 638,000 autosomal SNPs, 22,500 Y chromosome SNPs and 17,800 X chromosome SNPs, along with 4,700 mitochondrial SNPs.

And the service tracks DNA to 80 geographic regions. Those with a UK family history will see a map of where paternal and maternal ancestors lived on the islands. Though we didn't test it first hand, Living DNA says its tools allow you to upload DNA data from other services to predict relationship matches.

Nebula Genomics offers a somewhat different take on DNA testing from the other testing services we've profiled. While you can order a full test kit from the company (and you should check to see if they're running a price promotion before ordering), you can also upload an existing DNA sequence from Ancestry or 23andMe's DNA database and get Nebula's reports at a reduced price.

The company claims a very different approach to DNA testing. Where most DNA testing firms examine a subset of the DNA sequence, Nebula says it examines the whole DNA sequence. They tell us they test, "1.3 billion positions and results in one thousand times more data than tests that use microarray-based genotyping.".

While the company does not offer a family-finding match database to connect you with relatives, they do offer a unique art print based on your DNA. We're not entirely sure we'd want to showcase our DNA up on the wall along with our prints of dogs playing poker and velvet Elvis, but Nebula's prints are quite attractive.

Of more note is the depth of the company's scientific reports based on your DNA sequence. The company also tests the microbiome in your mouth, providing a detailed overview of the bacteria contained inside your mouth and what it means for your overall health.

We wouldn't necessarily recommend Nebula's kit as your first stop on your DNA testing journey, particularly if you want to connect with your ancestors and family tree. But if you want to dive deeper even than 23andMe into the medical aspects of both your DNA and your personal mouth biome, Nebula is definitely a fascinating option to explore.

If you're using a home DNA testing service, you're likely looking for one of three things:

Ancestry and family history:The first big draw of a full DNA test is that you'll get a detailed breakdown on ancestry and ethnicity, and the migration patterns of your common ancestors. Spoiler alert: Your ethnic background may be radically different than you think it is. You'll also find out what a haplogroup is.

Relative identification:With your permission, some DNA services will let you connect with relatives you never knew you had -- other folks with matching DNA who have used the service and likewise given their permission to connect to possible relations.

Health and disease info:DNA testing can also indicate which conditions for what you may have a preponderance. It's a controversial feature, to be sure. Knowing that you have a genetic predisposition to a certain form of cancer may make you more vigilant for testing, but it may also lead to increased stress -- worrying about a potential health condition that may never develop, even if you're "genetically susceptible" to it. The possibility of false positives and false negatives abound -- any such information should be discussed with your doctor before you act upon it.

Afraid of needles and drawing blood? That's not an issue with these kits, which all involve either a swab test or a little bit of spit. All you need to do is spit into a vial or rub a swab in your mouth -- all the genetic data needed for these tests is present in your saliva -- and ship the DNA sample to the company for analysis.

The reason that a saliva sample works as well as blood (or hair follicles or skin samples) is that your DNA -- which is short for deoxyribonucleic acid -- is present in all of them. It's the basic genetic code present in all of your cells that makes up your key attributes, from the color of your eyes to the shape of your ears to how susceptible you are to cholesterol.

The key terms you need to know when comparing DNA testing services are:

SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism):Genotyping is done by measuring genetic variation. One of the more common is SNP genotyping, which measures the variations of a single nucleotide polymorphism. In our service summaries below, we discuss the number of SNPs. That's because the more a company measures, the more granular the variations analyzed.

Autosomal DNA testing:An autosomal test can be administered to both men and women and traces lineage back through both the maternal and paternal bloodlines.

Y-DNA:The Y-DNA test can only be administered to men and traces DNA back through the patrilineal ancestry (basically from father to grandfather to great grandfather).

mtDNA:The mtDNA is matrilineal and lets you trace your ancestry back through your mother, grandmother and great grandmother.

Autosomal tests can get you quality genetic information going back about four or five generations. Because the Y-DNA and mtDNA tests are more focused on one side of the line, you can get information going back farther, but with fewer data about family structure.

Before you use any of the services we've highlighted below, keep these important factors in mind.

Match database size:If you're looking for living relatives, this is important. Simply put, the bigger the pool of available data, the better the chance you'll have of finding a match.

Privacy concerns:Nothing is more private than your health data, which is why you should make sure a prospective DNA testing site follows the same best-practice online security protocols you'd expect from your bank or email provider. You'll want to look for two-factor authentication, an encrypted password database and so on.

But for DNA testing providers, you should also investigate how they're sharing your genetic data -- even if anonymously -- and how long they keep the data. It's not just academic: Authoritiesrecently identified a suspect in the Golden State Killer murdersthanks to an open-source DNA and genealogy service known as GEDmatch (not profiled here).

If you're creeped out by how much information Facebook,Googleand Amazon have on you based on your online browsing habits, just remember that these DNA testing services are getting what is effectively your medical history. Make sure of their policies before turning over that valuable data. Also, even if you don't share your DNA with a service, your familial DNA data may be available if a relative shared their genetic material. The privacy issues can get very complex.

Don't expect perfect accuracy.Testing kits can give you indications, but taking a DNA test with one of these testing services won't magically produce a history book of your family's background.

Consult a doctor on any health data:Cancer. Leukemia. Heart disease. Alzheimer's disease. There are a lot of scary afflictions out there, and your DNA testing may well indicate which ones to which you are genetically predispositioned. But the data markers from DNA testing kits exist in isolation. You should consult your doctor to explore the data from any of these tests. They'll help you determine how to implement any lifestyle changes or followup testing as a result, if it's worth doing so.

CNET's Justin Jaffe contributed to this story.

Updated periodically with new information.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Read this article:
Best DNA testing kits in 2020: 23andMe, AncestryDNA and more compared - CNET

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

DALLAS "I'm sitting there, laying on the bathroom floor, thinking I'm about to die."

Gerrit Choate recounted every detail of a cold winter day in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The worst day of his life.

"The doctor said it was similar to a heroin addict going through a complete cold turkey detox," Choate said.

Gerrit experienced withdrawals for a drug Luvox, the brand name of fluvoxamine prescribed to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

"Come to find out from the doctors that the recommended usage is no longer than 30 days, Choate said.

Gerrit's eye widened for emphasis.

"I had been on it for about nine years."

Choate is the son of Southern Methodist University football legend Putt Choate, who still holds the school record for tackles in a season and tackles in a career.

"I grew up going to SMU games," Gerrit said. "It was always a dream to play for SMU."

Dreams turned to nightmares.

In sixth grade, Gerrit broke a bone in his lower back while playing football.

"Several doctors said I was never going to play any sport again," Gerrit said.

Devastating news for a multi-sport athlete.

"You tell that kid he can't, and he's gonna do it," declared his mom Fifi Choate.

After a year in a back brace, Choate consulted with another doctor who told him there's a slight chance he could play again.

Choate adhered to a strict rehabilitation plan and was eventually cleared to play.

The best day of his life.

The Dallas native became an All-State player at Parish Episcopal High School under head coach Scott Nady.

However, the helmet and broad shoulders masked the mental struggles Choate endured for years.

As a child, he was diagnosed with severe anxiety and OCD.

"Suddenly, he became a very anxious little boy," Fifi said. "Always needing reinforcement."

"The best way to describe it is just an overwhelming feeling that if you do don't this task, whatever it is, something bad will happen," Choate said.

The definition of OCD, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, is: a common, chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and/or behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over.

"It was kind of difficult for me to understand," Choate's father Putt admitted.

As symptoms worsened, Chaote was prescribed Luvox.

With no Division 1 offers out of high school, Chaote walked on at Utah.

However, early into his college career, his mind and body started to shut down.

Doctors recommended Chaote take an expensive drug-gene test.

"Our insurance wouldn't even pay for it," Putt said.

According to the drug-gene test, Luvox was toxic for Choate's genetic makeup.

He had to wean off the drug as soon as possible, which would be no easy task since his body relied on it for nearly a decade.

"'I should've known as a parent.' That's what you beat yourself up the most about," Putt said. "You didn't check. You didn't look. You weren't aware. You didn't protect your child."

Fifi moved out to Utah for a couple of months to help Choate come off the medication. He would take gradually smaller doses until he was off of it completely.

One morning, Choate took his daily dose, but he had an upset stomach and vomited.

His body never digested that day's dose.

The worst day of his life.

"It was the most frightening thing I've been through," Fifi said. "He was so violently ill."

"It was just a nightmare," Choate said.

With his mother watching helplessly, Choate vomited 24 times in 12 hours in his Utah dorm.

"It was a complete shock how an anxiety medication could do this to somebody," Choate said. "Because one day off of this stuff has me going through hell."

Over time, Choate weaned off the drug and moved home to Dallas.

He stuck to a strict nutrition plan thanks to his nutritionist Jill Lane and walked on at SMU.

"Most people would've quit," Putt said. "And nobody would've blamed him."

"I just marvel at his determination," Fifi said proudly. "When life keeps knocking him down, there he goes. He's not going to accept it."

Now, Choate sees the benefit to sharing his experience with others.

"He doesn't want another child to go through the hell he had to go through," Fifi explained. "If your child has these symptoms, if they have anxiety, get them tested. Get their genetic testing done and see what their bodies can tolerate."

"It's not your typical comeback story," Choate said. "It took me a while to see it could help people and it would be selfish not to share it."

Gerrit is now a junior at SMU, where he plays linebacker and special teams.

Prior to his junior season, Choate was promoted from walk-on to scholarship athlete at his father's alma mater.

"He's a warrior," Fifi said, wiping tears from her eyes. "He takes a beating and gets back up."

More:
Dallas football player overcomes OCD, anxiety and drug withdrawals to earn scholarship at SMU - WFAA.com

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Task force to be set up to prevent genetic diseases: minister

LAHORE : Punjab Minister for Health Prof Yasmin Rashid has said that only two per cent of children are born healthy and 98 per cent of children fall prey to one genetic disease or the other.

Considering it a highly important and sensitive subject, Punjab government decided to establish task force for the prevention of genetic diseases among children in the province, the minister announced this in a press conference held in connection with World Rare Disease Day 2020 here on Saturday. The day is observed every year all over the world on the last day of February (this year on February 29). The ceremony was arranged jointly by the Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology Children Hospital Lahore and an international partner institute from Germany.

Children Hospital Dean Prof Masood Sadiq, paediatric department head Prof Dr Huma Arshad Cheema and three-member team from Germany including Prof Peter Bauer MD and Dr Susan Krake also attended the ceremony.

Several children who had suffered genetic diseases were also brought by their parents from all over the country where the speakers highlighted the impact of the cousin marriage and marriages in same castes.

Prof Yasmin Rashid lauded the efforts of Prof Huma and her team to bring international renowned experts to Pakistan to observe highly important day to sensitise the government functionaries and the public about the burden of the disease on children because of marriages with cousins and in same castes.

Declaring it an alarming situation, she said that the treatment of the genetic disease is highly expensive and the Punjab government was allocating massive funds for the ailing kids.

She especially thanked to the international experts for coming Pakistan in order to educate the local doctors and create awareness among masses about the genetic diseases, saying that the establishment of a dedicated unit for the same purpose in Childrens Hospital Lahore was highly commendable.

She also acknowledged the services of Prof Huma Arshad Cheema for establishing the only department in any public sector institute in Pakistan (at Childrens Hospital Lahore).

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Masood Sadiq appreciated the efforts of the health minister for providing his hospital hefty funds Rs700 million, declaring it a major step to provide treatment to the kids uninterruptedly.

He said that the Childrens Hospital has provided free test and diagnosis facility to more than 2,000 children suffering from genetic diseases during last couple of years.

Prof Huma said that the department of pediatric and gastroenterology and Hepatology of Childrens Hospital Lahore is the only one all over the country for diagnosis and treatment of patients with the lysosomal storage disorders, inborn error of metabolism and all kinds of genetic diseases.

Declaring it a blessing for the kids in Pakistan, she said that these services were made possible in collaboration with a network of world famous scientists, physicians, charitable organisations and research centres. I am sharing with pleasure that we are able to provide treatment to the kids coming from all four provinces of Pakistan with genetic diseases, Prof Huma said.

She said that it is quite unfortunate that there is no private or public sector facility for genetic testing in Pakistan. We have to send blood samples abroad for testing and per person test cost is more than Rs200,000 and for tests of an affected children and his/her parents, we have to bear cost Rs600,000, she said. Despite the fact that the number of affected children was tremendously high in Pakistan, yet the Childrens Hospital was providing test facility absolutely free of cost, she said.

See the article here:
Task force to be set up to prevent genetic diseases: minister - The News International

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

A wolf pack in Moffat County has upended one of Colorados most controversial wildlife management debates, prompting voters, legislators and wildlife officials to wonder what course to chart on wolf reintroduction and management.

In mid-February, Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed through DNA tests on scat samples taken from Moffat County that a pack of at least four wolves was present in Colorado. The four were siblings, three females and one male.

This is the first time weve documented a group of wolves, a pack of wolves in the state since they were extirpated in the early 1940s, said Eric Odell, wildlife species conservation program manager.

These wolves were confirmed by Parks and Wildlife less than a month after a Colorado petition was certified giving voters the chance to weigh in on wolf reintroduction.

The pack coming into the state was a real reset in the conversation because, of course, before that the wolf reintroduction conversation was centered around the proposed ballot initiative, which has now gained signatures, said Colorado State Sen. Kerry Donovan, who is working on the issue in the Legislature. With the pack coming into the state, and with both sexes represented within the pack, we now have a management issue as well that the state isnt perhaps entirely prepared for.

Representatives of the Colorado Stop the Wolf Coalition have said the presence of this pack and its three females that could reproduce will make reintroduction unnecessary. But wildlife biologists say the presence of Craigs newest neighbors doesnt mean a re-established wolf population in Colorado is a done deal.

Another two wolves were observed by Parks and Wildlife staff, but genetic testing on those two has not been confirmed. More scat has been tested, but the full results have not been released. The genetics of those two animals are critical in understanding whether this pack is the start of a full wolf recovery in Colorado or an anomaly.

Its built into their social system to avoid mating with relatives, so they would not form a mated pair, University of Colorado-Denver Professor Diana Tomback said of the sibling wolves. The perpetuation of this pack is going to depend on what the genetic relationship is of the other two members.

Tomback, a conservation biologist who served on the science committee of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, said there are still too many unknowns to determine the future of these wolves. However, having a breeding pack in Colorado may not be enough for the species to recover, she said, without more wolves to provide genetic diversity.

If you actually go by the guidelines used by U.S. Fish and Wildlife to determine whether a population is recovered, it has to populate enough range and be there with enough population size to be able to withstand disturbances and challenges that are natural to their environment, Tomback said. From the perspective of genetic diversity, this one pack is inadequate.

Other wolves make the trek from the northern Rocky Mountains to Colorado, Odell said. Between 2004 and 2019, six gray wolves were photographed or killed in Colorado. More would have to make that journey and find this pack for the population to expand.

One pack is a start to establishing a population, but it does not meet the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) definition of a wolf population two or more packs successfully reproducing for two or more years, Odell said. Genetic diversity is important, and only one pack does not provide that needed diversity.

Wolves have spread this way in the past. Gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho in the mid-1990s and expanded their populations in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Today, more than 2,000 wolves are estimated in those three states.

In the early 2000s wolves started to pop up in Oregon, which sits across the Snake River from Idaho, said Michelle Dennehy, communications coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. One was killed crossing a road. Another was found shot. All were lone wolves, known as dispersers, that had left packs to search for mates.

In 2008, a wolf from Idaho crossed the Snake River and gave birth, starting the first pack in the state.

In 2009, Oregon confirmed a second pack, she said. By 2010, both packs were giving birth to pups.

We didnt do any translocation, Dennehy said. Everything is here naturally or reproduced naturally and weve gone from, if you just look at the numbers, from 10 in 2009 to 137 at the end of 2019.

Oregon and Colorado are not a one-to-one comparison when it comes to wolf migration though, Tomback said. The major obstacle between Idahos estimated 1,000 wolves and northeast Oregon is the Snake River. While it is a difficult river to cross, many wolves have done it. According to the latest Oregon Wolf Management Plan, Radio-collar data shows that dispersing wolves immigrate to and emigrate from Oregon, indicating that Oregon is part of a metapopulation with Idaho and Washington.

THE HARD ROAD TO COLORADO

In Wyoming, wolves in the northwestern portion of the state are managed with some hunting allowed in areas outside Yellowstone National Park. In the rest of the state, wolves are considered a nuisance species and can be killed with no limit, Odell said.

A wolf must make a 120-mile trek from the southern edge of Wyomings Wolf Trophy Game Management Area through high desert hills, sagebrush seas, canyons and across Interstate 80 to get to the Colorado border. During that trip, by Wyoming law, they can be killed without limitation.

It is a challenge and this does seem to be the first time two individuals, a male and a female have made it down and found each other and successfully reproduced, Odell, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, said. Wolf management in Wyoming, they manage it as a game species in the northwest part of the state and, then outside of that its a varmint species, so there is quite a challenge for animals to cross that landscape.

Because of the difficulty in crossing through southern Wyoming, Odell said this pack is likely a mated pair that produced pups in or near Colorado.

Denny Behrens, Colorado Stop the Wolf Coalition co-chairman and regional director for Big Game Forever, said this natural reproduction and the known instances of wolves dispersing into Colorado in the past make further reintroduction efforts, like the initiative that will appear on the November ballot this year, moot.

Theres no need for introduction in this state, Behrens said. They are naturally dispersing out of the nonessential experimental area up in Wyoming and so its the same thing. Theyre moving into Washington and Oregon and California.

Tomback said she is skeptical that dispersing wolves will make it to Colorado frequently enough to provide the necessary genetic diversity to ensure the continued survival of the population.

If people want to reintroduce wolves into Colorado, its going to take more than waiting for this to happen, Tomback said. The last 25 years have shown that, yes, individual wolves may disperse and make it down, but theyre not able to find another wolf of the right sex and form a pack. So wolf reintroduction, scientifically, the reality is its going to take some help to get that genetic diversity and to get the numbers down where wolves can form packs with each other.

Donovan has proposed a bill to provide for the reintroduction of wolves, but only after a funding source has been identified to pay for wolf management and reimbursement to ranchers who lose livestock to wolf depredation. It also gives five years for the current wolf population to establish naturally before moving forward with reintroduction.

Donovan said she was pursuing the legislation to take a deliberative approach to the question of wolf management and reintroduction, but she said many unknowns still surround the states lone pack.

We will have to see if they settle down in a range, if they reproduce this spring, Donovan said. Right now, we dont know if we have a roaming pack of teenagers or if we have a group thats looking to settle down in Colorado.

While the first pack in Colorado is historic being the first to cross that hostile terrain, find each other and perhaps settle here for good they are only the start of what could mark the first return of a real population of wolves in the state in 80 years, Odell said. Whether through human reintroduction or from wolves dispersing from the north, the formation of more packs will be needed if wolves are going to once again range widely throughout Colorado.

With a ballot initiative coming in November, a bill proposed in the Senate and at least six wolves wandering through northwest Colorado wilderness, Donovan said looking into all the issues wolves represent is now more important than ever.

We have wolves in Colorado and we suspect that delisting could come out of D.C. sooner rather than later, Donovan said. I think it is a perfect time to look at these issues in a very thoughtful way with the folks in the room who are most excited about having wolves in the mountains again and what that means and the people in the room who are most concerned about what it means to have a federal land lease and a wolf pack as your neighbors.

Read more:
Moffat County wolves open up a new pack of issues - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

By Nigel Bowen

When John Kelly took part in a traditional rite of passage for the Irish a year-long backpacking trip around Australia he had no idea that a quarter of a century later hed be exporting innovative Australian medical technology to the world.

I visited in my early twenties and loved the quality of life. So I moved here permanently in my late twenties and continued my career in the medical device industry, explains Kelly.

In the following years, the success of his two employers ResMed and Unilife Corporation in developing easy-to-use medical devices inspired Kelly to create a game-changing medical device of his own.

The experiences of his daughter had highlighted how costly and time-consuming the process of blood test diagnosis was for both patient and medical practitioner. Typically, one trained medical professional was required to extract the blood and send it to a laboratory to be analysed by another trained medical professional. Then, the patient was required to make another appointment to learn the results regardless of the outcome.

With this in mind, Kelly resigned from his position as Unilife Corporations Chief Operating Officer in 2008 and launched a start-up called Atomo Diagnostics the following year. His goal was to create a simple and accurate blood test that was as straightforward and immediate as a home pregnancy test.

Making self-testing easy

Six years later Atomo Diagnostics has two rapid test products in market. The innovative design of the device is easy to use compared with competing products and makes it possible to test on-the-spot, allowing for self-testing in the future. With all of the various testing elements integrated within the one device rather than bits in boxes, the error margin is significantly reduced.

While it didnt take particularly long for validation via government grants, private funding, accolades and industry interest, in the early days Kelly was very aware he was taking a huge gamble.

Theres no way of knowing if these things are going to be a waste of time, effort and money until youve at least got a working prototype, notes Kelly. During that initial phase the company was funded with my money along with IDEs, a product development company I partnered with to produce the device. If the assumptions in the business plan, of which there were many, had been wrong I would have lost several hundred thousand dollars and 18 months of my life.

Kelly believes federal government grants and tax breaks played a crucial role in the success of what was to become the AtomoRapid platform. Funding at key stages of the business, from concept to commercialisation, were critical in getting the idea off the ground.

Commercialisation Australia provides funding to businesses when they really need it and if they hadnt provided it to Atomo who knows if wed have been able to develop the concept, prove it in the market and get the private investment we subsequently got, said Kelly.

Kelly took several personal measures to increases his chances of success. Despite having undergraduate qualifications in mechanical engineering and a Masters in systems engineering under his belt, Kelly embarked on an MBA at the University of Sydney in the hope of broadening his skill set and better support his company.

I had the technical background but I felt I needed to round out my executive management skills. The MBA certainly provided that, along with allowing me to expand my network, which turned out to be useful. One of my classmates now sits on the board of Atomo.

Improving the accuracy of testing

Following a huge amount of time and investment, by 2013 Atomo Diagnostics had a rapid blood test ready for testing in the field and had convinced diagnostic industry multinational BBI Solutions to help commercialise it. Seeing the opportunities to positively impact accuracy of HIV testing, the company decided to test first in the South African cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria. According to Kelly, errors with the existing tests result in tens of thousands of people being incorrectly diagnosed as negative for HIV each year. Those people then go without treatment and have a higher risk of unknowingly pass the disease on to others.

We picked Africa because it has the highest disease burdens globally for HIV and malaria. It was not hugely profitable compared with other tests and other developed markets, however HIV and malaria have the biggest impact on global health and deserved our focus, Kelly says.

Up against a number of competing rapid testing products, Kelly says healthcare professionals who used the all-in-one AtomoRapid HIV test found it far more straightforward than the bits in a box tests sold by other companies.

The feedback was fantastic one woman whod been testing people for 15 years used the AtomoRapid platform for one day then told her boss she never wanted to use anything else ever again, says Kelly.

It has made testing simpler and more accessible by combining the lancet [needle], capillary tube [storage unit] and test strip [results] into one device, said Phillip Smith, project leader for mobile services at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in South Africa

Our counsellors found it was simpler to use than traditional tests and had a much clearer test strip, making it easier to identify the outcome. The device is so straightforward were now investigating the feasibility of allowing self-testing.

Collaboration across the globe

Across the other side of the globe in New York, the Atomo products have also been turning heads. At the 2014 Medical Design Excellence Awards the AtomoRapid HIV (1&2) integrated rapid antibody test won Best in Show, with the judges declaring that the product was earth-shaking in its potential significant impact on third-world detection of infectious disease, global public health and individual healthcare.

The award is the latest in a bevy of accolades for the device ranging from the 2012 Engineers Australia Bradfield Award to taking out first place in Anthills SMART 100 Australian Innovations for 2014.

Far from worrying about losing of hundreds of thousands of dollars as he was in the early days, Kelly is now focused on building a company that could end up with a market capitalisation of hundreds of millions of dollars and make a difference for millions of people around the globe.

Weve just launched an AtomoRapid platform that tests for malaria in Africa, weve done a deal with a US company about adapting the platform for use as a home test for blood coagulation, were talking to some pharmaceutical companies about developing custom diagnostics for things such as allergies and kidney function, and weve recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a large listed Chinese healthcare company that want the rights to use our technology in their country. And thats just what weve achieved with the current platform, he says, hinting at big future plans for Atomo Diagnostics.

Once we develop it further, particularly if we can incorporate multi-sensor technology, we can start doing things such as genetic testing or testing for a range of different diseases, rather than just one.

If successful, these developments would mean a global game change for patients and the healthcare industry alike.

This post was previously published on australiaunlimited.com and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.

Photo credit: Istockphoto.com

Continued here:
Reinventing the Blood Test - The Good Men Project

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Little Finlay Duthie is one a billion or 7.8billion as he is the only known child in the world to have a condition which could end his life at any time.

Finlay, 11, has hyper-oricemia pulmonary hypertension (HUPRA) a genetic syndrome only discovered in 2010 in three children in Palestine, who have all died.

But Finlays condition is a unique mutation of the condition which means his parents cannot tell how it will progress.

He was only diagnosed a year ago after years of genetic testing.

In the cases of the Palestinian children and the handful subsequently diagnosed around the world with HUPRA, all were dead by four years old.

HUPRA is an extremely rare mitochondrial disease.

Mitochondria are structures in cells which convert food to energy but in HUPRA patients they dont charge properly causing failure in vital organs.

Finlay will be prone to heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy and faces losing his sight and hearing.

His kidneys have already failed and dad Ross, 36, gave him one of his five years ago.

But, like all kidney transplants, the organ will not last for life so mum, Jennifer, 36, has already been tested as a match and is on stand-by. She said: We had hoped to get him to his teenage years without the transplant but his kidneys failed.

He is now on anti-rejection drugs which means his immune system is low so he gets really ill and ends up in hospital with bugs most people would shake off in a couple of days.

Finlay has had 13 operations including ones for biopsies when cancer was feared on two occasions because of the increased risk with anti-rejection drugs.

Although he is 11, he has a mental age of three because one of the other effects of the condition is global developmental delay. He also has autism. Former nurse Jennifer, who runs a toddler sensory group, added: Finlay is normally a happy little guy really cheeky and always has a smile on his face. He has no awareness of how unwell he is.

The couple, from Stirling, have another son Harrison, 15 months, who is a carrier but unaffected.

Jennifer said: Finlay has some of the same symptoms as other HUPRA patients and some different ones. We think he is the only one in the world with this variation.

It is good in a way because his variation has allowed him to live longer. But it is also a double-edged sword because we are dealing with something no one knows about.

We have no idea what the future holds.

Read more:
Scots boy is one of handful diagnosed with rare condition - and the only one still alive - Daily Record

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

MONTREAL--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The venture capital fund AmorChem II is very proud to announce the financing of a new university project focusing on preclinical development of retinal gene augmentation to treat Peroxisome Biogenesis Disorders in the Zellweger spectrum (PBD-ZSD). The funds financing will bring together three major research groups from the Research Institute of the McGill University Hospital Centre (RI-MUHC), the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California.

This program is focused on developing and testing a gene therapy construct that may ultimately improve the well-being of patients with a disabling disorder by treating retinal degeneration. Retinal degeneration leading to blindness is a major, untreatable feature of PBD-ZSD. In fact, visual improvement is a critical symptomatic target that can substantially improve quality of life of patients. The collaborators propose to test the gene therapy targeting retinal photoreceptor cells in PEX1 animal models to study recovery of peroxisomal function, says Ins Holzbaur, Managing Partner at AmorChem.

It is particularly rewarding for us to finance such a promising and impactful program in an indication where the current standard of care is strictly supportive. This project allows AmorChem to address a major need in this multisystem disorder and enable the improvement of communication, learning, mobility and autonomy of patients with PBD-ZSD. In addition, the strategy of using retinal gene therapy could eventually open the door to using gene augmentation in other organ systems affected in this disorder, adds Elizabeth Douville, Managing Partner at AmorChem.

Three seasoned researchers are contributing a wide breadth of experience and knowledge to this project. The collaboration is led by Dr. Nancy Braverman from the RI-MUHC, internationally recognized for her work in peroxisomal diseases. In addition, the collaboration will benefit from the materials generated by Dr. Jean Bennett at the Center of Advanced Retinal and Ophthalmic Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania and the mammalian cell technology expertise of Dr. Joseph G Hacia from the University of Southern California.

"The innovative work by Dr. Braverman has tremendous potential to make a difference in the lives of patients with peroxisomal disorders. The partnership between the RI-MUHC, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California and Amorchem is an exemplary demonstration of the synergies required for translating this scientific discovery to tangible benefits for patients," adds Bruce Mazer, MD Executive Director and CSO (Interim), Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.

If the initial proof of concept studies are viable, AmorChem will exercise its Option to negotiate an exclusive license to the underlying technology.

About AmorChem

AmorChem (www.amorchem.com) is a leading early stage venture capital fund launched in 2011 in Montreal. The AmorChem team utilizes its deep understanding of fundamental science to uncover its therapeutic potential and focuses its core expertise in translational research to accelerate therapeutic drug discovery and development across a broad spectrum of disease areas. The fund capitalises on both its venture capital expertise and its entrepreneurial experience to spark the creation of start-up companies and help shape them into the next generation of biotech companies. With over $85M under management, AmorChem has financed over 30 university projects and started up several biotechnology companies from the fruits of this innovative research.

Follow this link:
AmorChem invests in a new gene therapy approach to help patients with a devastating orphan disease - Business Wire

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The IPO market is feeling the effects of the coronavirus outbreak with a surge in the VIX volatility index weighing on IPO activity. Since 2015, a week in which VIX volatility has surpassed 35 has been followed by a week averaging two US IPO pricings. Our observational trend continues through 2020, as one biotech entered the public market this past week.  Six IPOs and three SPACs submitted initial filings with the SEC.

Passage Bio (PASG), a preclinical biotech developing gene therapies, priced at the high end of the range to raise $216 million at an $840 million market cap. The deal raised 72% more in proceeds than Passage Bio originally filed for. The company is furthering the research from UPenn’s Gene Therapy Program, which is headed by co-founder James Wilson. Bolstered by the recent performances of other large early stage biotech IPOs, Passage Bio finished up 23%, another sign that biotechs are pushing back against the effects of the coronavirus. Chinese medical information platform Zhongchao (ZCMD) began trading on Monday after raising $12 million in an IPO on Friday 2/21. The company was flat after its first day on the Nasdaq and is currently down 2%.

Accolade NLS Pharmaceutics ORIC Pharmaceutics Procore Technologies Pulmonx ZoomInfo Social Hedosophia II Social Hedosophia III GigCaptial3

Sign up for a free trial of our premium platform, IPO Pro. Follow us on Twitter (@IPOtweet) and register for our updates on the IPO market.

IPO Weekly Recap: Yes, the IPO Market has caught the coronavirus

Investment Disclosure: Renaissance IPO ETF (symbol: IPO) Renaissance International ETF (symbol: IPOS)

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

See more here:
IPO Weekly Recap: Yes, the IPO Market has caught the coronavirus - Nasdaq

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

From a cancer vaccine to gene insertion for those with Parkinson's, local researchers are breaking through.

Research is big business at Ohio State University, with medical funding currently exceeding a quarter of a billion dollars, according to Peter Mohler, vice dean for research at OSUs College of Medicine. Ohio State gets grants from the National Institutes of Health and other sources such as other government agencies, nonprofit foundations and industry contracts.

Funding for OSUs College of Medicine, alone, now includes some $268.5 million. What follows are some of the latest breakthroughs.

An Anticancer Vaccine

A new anticancer vaccine, called B-Vaxx, is still in the early stages of being tested but initial studies are promising. The first-ever human trial at Ohio State led by researcher Pravin Kaumaya, a professor in the college of medicines department of obstetrics and gynecology, showed that patients with metastatic or recurrent solid tumors that overexpress the HER-2 protein had a stronger immune response than they did to current treatments.

This means that B-Vaxx may be more effective in killing tumor cells in many types of aggressive breast, gastroesophageal, endometrial, ovarian, colorectal and lung cancers. Although more research and clinical trials are needed, the bottom line on this first report is that scientists have concluded that the vaccine induced patient antibodies that showed potent antitumor activity.

Hope for Parkinsons

Dr. Krystof Bankiewicz, a researcher specializing in neurodegenerative disorders, and Dr. Russell Lonser, chair of OSUs department of neurological surgery, have been working with transformational gene therapy to develop cures for Parkinsons and other neurodegenerative diseases.

A one-step solution for Parkinsons could be the insertion of a non-pathogenic virus thats been modified to do only one thing: deliver the missing gene to a specific region of the brain.

The missing gene, if implemented, stops the progression of Parkinsons. Administering it, however, is a complex procedure. An MRI scanner is used to directly implant it in the brain.

Six clinical trials regarding the gene therapy and its effects on neurodegenerative diseasesincluding Parkinsons, Alzheimers, Huntingtons and moreare underway at Ohio State. In fact, the clinical trials for pediatric patients have been so successful that registration of the therapy has been fast-tracked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. There is hope that the drug will be approved this year for use in children.

Brain Stimulation

A small 2018 study at Ohio State implanted electrodes into the frontal cortex of Alzheimers patients and programmed a pacemaker to deliver deep brain stimulation. DBS has already proven to be helpful for patients with Parkinsons, epilepsy and obsessive-compulsive disorder. And, it is currently being studied for addiction, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury and more.

Two of three people showed statistical improvement, says Dr. Douglas Scharre, professor of neurology and clinical psychology at OSUs Center for Cognitive and Memory Disorders and its Center for Neuromodulation. One patient was able to plan an outing and handle money, make plans for an event and cook a simple meal. These may seem like minor improvements, but if the patient cant do it, the caregiver has to.

Atrial Fib: The Watchman

Among the 3,000 clinical trials at various stages at Ohio State in recent years has been apilot studylead by Dr. Ahmet Kilic, former OSU associate professor of cardiac surgery, on the efficacy of the Watchman, a tiny parachute-like device which is implanted into the heart to regulate the heartbeat of those who suffer from atrial fibrillation. (Kilic is now director of heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support at Johns Hopkins Medicine.)

Along with reducing stroke risk, the Watchman allows for remote monitoring of heart function. Watchman patients also forgo the risk of excessive bleeding caused by long-term use of warfarin, such as Coumadin and other blood thinners. The implantnow in more than 100,000 peoplecan eliminate regular blood tests and food-and-drink restrictions that come with warfarin.

Expecting a Daughter?

Researchers at the Wexner Medical Center have found thatthat immune cell samples of women carrying girls produced more proteins called pro-inflammatory cytokines than those carrying boys, resulting in exacerbation of conditions such as asthma, and contributing to fatigue and achiness.

Too many of these cytokinescan really be unhelpful for our bodies functioning, explains Amanda Mitchell, lead author of the study while she was a postdoctoral researcher in the universitys Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research. Women carrying girls exhibited greater inflammatory responses when faced with some sort of immune challenge compared to women carrying boys.

Exercising and doing relaxing activities, such as meditation, are recommended. Also, eating healthy foods, including leafy greens, will better support healthy immune responses. Mitchell is now an assistant professor at the University of Louisvilles department of counseling and human development.

More Sleep EqualsHappier Marriages

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35 percent of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep per night, resulting in increased risk of stress-related inflammation and ensuing chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis and others.

In arecent studyat Ohio States Institute for Behavioral Medicine, married couples were asked to supply blood samples and information regarding hours they slept the previous two nights. They were then asked to resolve a conflict, with blood samples taken after the discussion. Although people who had slept less initially had no more inflammation than usual, there was a greater inflammatory response after the conflict. Furthermore, if both partners got less than seven hours of sleep the previous two nights, they were more likely to become hostile.

Couples using unhealthy resolution tactics had an even greater inflammatory response. In a marriage, sleep patterns often track together, explains Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, the senior author of the study and director of OSUs Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research. If one person is restless, or has chronic problems, that can impact the others sleep. If these problems persist over time, you can get this nasty reverberation within the couple.

Less Stress, Better Health

Dining on a Greek salad may be great, but if youre stressed, it may be no better for you than fish and chips, according to an Ohio State study published inMolecular Psychiatry. In the study, 58 women were given two different types of meals, one high in saturated fat, which has been linked to cardiovascular disease, and another with more heart-healthy, plant-based oil. The meals were similar in terms of calories and grams of fat. While inflammatory responses were predictably lower if the women were not stressed after the healthier meal, if a woman was stressed, it looked like she was eating the saturated fat meal in terms of her [inflammatory] responses, study author Kiecolt-Glaser told National Public Radio.

Even though the stressors were for everyday issues, such as dealing with a sick parent, the stress seemed to boost inflammation, increasing chances for disease and slowing the healing process. Still, more research needs to be done and there are plenty of ways to combat stress, includingdeep-breathing.

Immune Cells and Sex

An Ohio State study done on rats and reported in theJournal of Neurosciencefound that immune mast cells,usually ignored by neuroscientists, appear to play an important role in determining the gender of an animals sexual behavior.

When researchers, led by Kathryn Lenz, assistant professor of behavioral neuroscience, silenced the mast cells in male fetal rats, they found that the adult males were far less interested in having sex with females. In fact, they acted almost like females, according the study.

Newborn female rats whose mast cells were activated with a stimulating chemical did the opposite, showing more traditionally males behaviors. Lenz theorizes that if human development mirrors what was seen in this study, even relatively minor influencessuch as an allergic reaction, injury or inflammation during pregnancycould possibly steer sexual behavior and development.

On the Move: Its All Good

According to Bernadette Melnyk, chief wellness officer and dean of OSUs College of Nursing, researchers at the American College of Sports Medicine have confirmed that physical activity completed in any duration is associated with health benefits and count towards your recommended 150 minutes of weekly activity.

Traditionally, physical activity recommendations have focused on accumulating moderate-to-vigorous physical activity either in a continuous manner, such as going for a 30-minute run, or in short bouts performed throughout the day, according to theACSM. However, in 2018, thanks to the advent of digital and other activity trackers, the ACSM also recognized that most daily activity is sporadic and is typically performed in bouts that are less than 10 minutes in duration. Any such activity is now associated with favorable health-related outcomes.

Take time each day to get moving, even if only for five minutes, adds Melnyk.

Reprinted fromColumbus Monthly Health 2020.

Read the rest here:
Medical Research and Innovation at Ohio State - Columbus Monthly

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & BRISBANE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Biogen Inc. (Nasdaq: BIIB) and Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: SGMO), a genomic medicine company, today announced that they have executed a global licensing collaboration agreement to develop and commercialize ST-501 for tauopathies including Alzheimers disease, ST-502 for synucleinopathies including Parkinsons disease, a third undisclosed neuromuscular disease target, and up to nine additional undisclosed neurological disease targets. The companies will leverage Sangamos proprietary zinc finger protein (ZFP) technology delivered via adeno-associated virus (AAV) to modulate the expression of key genes involved in neurological diseases.

As a pioneer in neuroscience, Biogen will collaborate with Sangamo on a new gene regulation therapy approach, working at the DNA level, with the potential to treat challenging neurological diseases of global significance. We aim to develop and advance these programs forward to investigational new drug applications, said Alfred Sandrock Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Research and Development at Biogen.

There are currently no approved disease modifying treatments for patients with many devastating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons, creating an urgency for the development of medicines that will not just address symptoms like the current standards of care, but slow or stop the progression of disease, said Sandy Macrae, CEO of Sangamo. We believe that the promise of genomic medicine in neuroscience is to provide a one-time treatment for patients to alter their disease natural history by addressing the underlying cause at the genomic level.

Sangamos genome regulation technology, zinc finger protein transcription factors (ZFP-TFs), is currently delivered with AAVs and functions at the DNA level to selectively repress or activate the expression of specific genes to achieve a desired therapeutic effect. Highly specific, potent, and tunable repression of tau and alpha synuclein has been demonstrated in preclinical studies using AAV vectors to deliver tau-targeted (ST-501) and alpha synuclein-targeted (ST-502) ZFP-TFs.

The combination of Sangamos proprietary zinc finger technology, Biogens unmatched neuroscience research, drug development, and commercialization experience and capabilities, and our shared commitment to bring innovative medicines to patients with neurological diseases establishes the foundation for a robust and compelling collaboration, said Stephane Boissel, Head of Corporate Strategy at Sangamo. This collaboration exemplifies Sangamos commitment to our ongoing strategy to partner programs that address substantial and diverse patient populations in disease areas requiring complex clinical trial designs and commercial pathways, therefore bringing treatments to patients faster and more efficiently, while deriving maximum value from our platform.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Biogen has exclusive global rights to ST-501 for tauopathies including Alzheimers disease, ST-502 for synucleinopathies including Parkinsons disease, and a third undisclosed neuromuscular disease target. In addition, Biogen has exclusive rights to nominate up to nine additional undisclosed targets over a target selection period of five years. Sangamo will perform early research activities, costs for which will be shared by the companies, aimed at the development of the combination of proprietary CNS delivery vectors and ZFP-TFs targeting therapeutically relevant genes. Biogen will then assume responsibility and costs for the investigational new drug-enabling studies, clinical development, related regulatory interactions, and global commercialization.

Sangamo will be responsible for GMP manufacturing activities for the initial clinical trials for the first three products of the collaboration and plans to leverage its in-house manufacturing capacity. Biogen will assume responsibility for GMP manufacturing activities beyond the first clinical trial for each of the first three products.

Upon closing of this transaction, Sangamo will receive $350 million comprised of $125 million in a license fee payment and $225 million from the sale of new Sangamo stock, or approximately 24 million shares at $9.21 per share. In addition, Sangamo may receive up to $2.37 billion in other development, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments, including up to $925 million in pre-approval milestone payments and up to $1,445 million in first commercial sale and other sales-based milestone payments. Sangamo will also be eligible to receive from Biogen tiered high single-digit to sub-teen double-digit royalties on potential net commercial sales of products arising from the collaboration. Closing of the transaction is contingent on completion of review under antitrust laws, including the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 in the U.S.

Conference call

Sangamo will host a conference call at 8:00 a.m. ET tomorrow, Friday, February 28, which will be open to the public via telephone and webcast. During the conference call, Sangamo will discuss the collaboration, review financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2019, and provide a business update. The conference call dial-in numbers are (877) 377-7553 for domestic callers and (678) 894-3968 for international callers. The conference ID number for the call is 4609858. Participants may access the live webcast via a link on the Sangamo website in the Investors and Media section under Events and Presentations. A conference call replay will be available for one week following the conference call on Sangamos website. The conference call replay numbers for domestic and international callers are (855) 859-2056 and (404) 537-3406, respectively. The conference ID number for the replay is 4609858.

About Biogen

At Biogen, our mission is clear: we are pioneers in neuroscience. Biogen discovers, develops, and delivers worldwide innovative therapies for people living with serious neurological and neurodegenerative diseases as well as related therapeutic adjacencies. One of the worlds first global biotechnology companies, Biogen was founded in 1978 by Charles Weissmann, Heinz Schaller, Kenneth Murray, and Nobel Prize winners Walter Gilbert and Phillip Sharp. Today Biogen has the leading portfolio of medicines to treat multiple sclerosis, has introduced the first approved treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, commercializes biosimilars of advanced biologics, and is focused on advancing research programs in multiple sclerosis and neuroimmunology, Alzheimers disease and dementia, neuromuscular disorders, movement disorders, ophthalmology, immunology, neurocognitive disorders, acute neurology, and pain.

Biogen routinely posts information that may be important to investors on its website at http://www.biogen.com. To learn more, please visit http://www.biogen.com and follow Biogen on social media Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube.

About Sangamo Therapeutics

Sangamo Therapeutics is committed to translating ground-breaking science into genomic medicines with the potential to transform patients lives using gene therapy, ex vivo gene-edited cell therapy, and in vivo genome editing and gene regulation. For more information about Sangamo, visit http://www.sangamo.com.

Biogen Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements, made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements relating to the potential benefits and results that may be achieved through Biogens proposed collaboration with Sangamo; the anticipated completion and timing of the proposed transaction; the potential benefits, safety and efficacy of ST-501 and ST-502; the potential of Biogens commercial business and pipeline programs; Biogens strategy and plans; the potential treatment of neurological diseases; and risks and uncertainties associated with drug development and commercialization. These forward-looking statements may be accompanied by words such as aim, anticipate, believe, could, estimate, expect, forecast, goal, intend, may, plan, potential, possible, will, would, and other words and terms of similar meaning. Drug development and commercialization involve a high degree of risk, and only a small number of research and development programs result in commercialization of a product. Results in early stage clinical trials may not be indicative of full results or results from later stage or larger scale clinical trials and do not ensure regulatory approval. You should not place undue reliance on these statements or the scientific data presented.

These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in such statements, including, without limitation: risks that the proposed transaction will be completed in a timely manner or at all; the possibility that certain closing conditions to the proposed transaction will not be satisfied; uncertainty as to whether the anticipated benefits of the proposed collaboration can be achieved; risks of unexpected hurdles, costs or delays; uncertainty of success in the development and potential commercialization of ST-501 and ST-502 and other undisclosed neurological targets, which may be impacted by, among other things, unexpected concerns that may arise from additional data or analysis, the occurrence of adverse safety events, failure to obtain regulatory approvals in certain jurisdictions, failure to protect and enforce Biogens data, intellectual property, and other proprietary rights and uncertainties relating to intellectual property claims and challenges; product liability claims; and third party collaboration risks. The foregoing sets forth many, but not all, of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from Biogens expectations in any forward-looking statement. Investors should consider this cautionary statement, as well as the risks factors identified in Biogens most recent annual or quarterly report and in other reports Biogen has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements are based on Biogens current beliefs and expectations and speak only as of the date of this press release. Biogen does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

Sangamo Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Sangamo's current expectations. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements relating to the potential to use ZFP technology delivered via AAV to repress specific genes involved in neurological diseases, the ability of genomic medicine to provide one-time treatments, other statements regarding investigational therapies and their therapeutic benefits, statements related the anticipated effectiveness of the collaboration and the timing and benefits thereof, Sangamo's sale of shares of its common stock, receipt of an upfront payment and potential receipt of development- and sales-based milestones, as well as royalties on potential future sales, and other statements that are not historical fact. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to: the research and development process; the ability to cause the agreements to become effective on the proposed terms and schedule, the ability to obtain clearance under the HSR and to satisfy the other closing conditions, and the potential for technological developments by Sangamo's competitors that will obviate Sangamo's technologies, the new, uncertain and time consuming gene regulation therapy development and regulatory process, including the risks that Sangamo and Biogen may not be successful in their research efforts under the collaboration and that, even if successful, Biogen may be unable to successfully develop and commercialize licensed products resulting from the collaboration; Sangamo's dependence on collaborative partners, including the risks that if Biogen were to breach or terminate the agreement or otherwise fail to successfully develop and commercialize licensed products resulting from the collaboration and in a timely manner, Sangamo would not obtain the anticipated financial and other benefits of the collaboration and the development and/or commercialization of Sangamo's gene editing technology could be delayed, perhaps substantially. There can be no assurance that the necessary milestones or approvals will be obtained for any of the product candidates in this collaboration. Actual results may differ from those projected in forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties that exist in Sangamo's operations and business environments. These risks and uncertainties are described more fully in Sangamo's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and Sangamo undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

See the original post:
Biogen and Sangamo Announce Global Collaboration to Develop Gene Regulation Therapies for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Neuromuscular, and Other...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

One in 14 Ontarians can expect to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer in their lifetime. COURTESY OF ED UTHMAN/FLICKR

University of Toronto scientists have identified a key protein as a common factor in the growth of many different types of colorectal cancer tumours, according to research published in the Journal of Cell Biology. Colorectal cancer develops in the colon or rectum. In Ontario, it is also the second most fatal cancer, and one in 14 Ontarians can expect to be diagnosed with this form of cancer in their lifetime.

In past research, scientists have linked the excessive accumulation of beta-catenin, a protein with crucial functions in cell development, to the expression of genes that drive tumour proliferation. Research has associated 80 per cent of colorectal cancers with gene mutations that greatly increase the production of beta-catenin.

The co-authors of the study have identified another protein, Importin-11, as the compound that enables beta-catenin transportation to the nucleus of the human cell. Cancer therapies that inhibit this transport could be a promising way to treat colorectal cancer.

Fundamental research provides new knowledge for cancer therapies

The Varsity spoke to Dr. Stephane Angers, a co-author of the study and an associate professor at U of Ts Department of Biochemistry. Angers lab has spent a considerable amount of time studying biological pathways the series of chemical changes during cellular development that give cells their final functions.

Angers noted that Monika Mis, the lead author of the study and a PhD student, uncovered the role of Importin-11 in colorectal cancer in Angers lab. Mis used the gene-editing CRISPR-Cas9 technology to screen genes in colorectal cancer calls to identify a novel gene, IPO11, which encodes for the protein Importin-11.

Current treatment options for colorectal cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, and other radiation therapy. Although this discovery is still in its fundamental stages, blocking the transport of beta-catenin holds great promise for developing new therapies.

As Angers put it, It provides new ammunition, new possibilities, and new knowledge that could lead in the future to new therapies, but it is very much at the discovery level at this point.

More research required to develop therapies

Further research could involve drug discovery and widen the scope of Importin-11 function in various cells. Researchers may also find it valuable to analyze existing data about colorectal cancer. The goal is to understand how the mutations affect tumour formation and develop therapies that harness this knowledge.

Angers lab is also investigating other potential applications of the Wnt pathway, a specific biological pathway associated with beta-catenin. A particularly interesting aspect is its role in regenerative medicine, which is the study of restoring human cells, tissues, and organs.

We think that with new molecules that we have developed we can now activate the pathway in order to promote the regenerative abilities of tissues, noted Angers.

Tags: biology, cancer, medicine, oncology

Read more here:
New ammunition uncovered by U of T researchers to develop colorectal cancer treatment - Varsity

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Tumors often fuel their growth by forming new blood vessels to provide oxygen and nutrients. Widely used drugs directed against VEGF or VEGFR inhibit this process. Unfortunately, though, those drugs have failed to rein in the aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma.

Nowscientists at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated that targeting a mechanism in a subset of stromal cells known as endothelial cellswhich line the inside of blood vesselsmight help overcome drug resistance in glioblastoma. They believe the finding could point to a new therapeutic strategy to make these malignant cancer cells vulnerable to chemotherapy.

The team found that a mechanism within the well-known Wnt/beta-catenin signaling pathway causes endothelial cells to act morelike stem cells, leading to an abnormal growth of blood vessels that makes brain cancer cells resistant to treatment. Blocking Wnt/beta-catenin sensitized glioblastoma (GBM) to chemotherapy in mice, according to a new study published in Science Translational Medicine.

Accelerate Clinical Operations Across Sponsors, CROs and Partners With a Best-of-Breed Partner Like Box

Learn how Box is a critical force multiplier in the Best-of-Breed application stack with partners like Nintex, DocuSign and Slack in supporting clinical operations for both regulated and non-regulated content.

GBM is difficult to treat partly because the tumors themselves often harbor different mutations, which makes treatments focused on one molecular target ineffective. So the UPenn team, led by Yi Fan, M.D., Ph.D., lookedbeyond particular genetic abnormalities in different groups of cancer cells and instead focused on overcoming resistance.

Fan's team searched GBM endothelial cells for the regulatory mechanisms that control chemoresistance, and found increased activation of multiple stem cell-associated transcriptional factors. The upregulation of these factors allowed the cells to propagate and also correlated with cell resistance to the widely used chemotherapy drug temozolomide (TMZ).

RELATED: Immuno-oncology combo targeting rogue enzyme in glioblastoma extends survival in mice

Further analysis revealed that the resistance is enabled by the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway, which regulates stem cell renewal. Its abnormal activation has perviously been linked to multiple cancer types.

In mice that had their endothelial cell-specific beta-catenin knocked out, treatment with TMZ cut tumor volume by 90%, whereas treating normal mice only slowed tumor growth. In a mouse model of GBM, the researchers combined Wnt inhibitor XAV939 with TMZ and significantly extended survival when compared to animals that got either drug alone.

Theres huge demand for better treatment options for GBM, as the diseases five-year survival rate remains low at around 5% to 10%. Researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center recently foundthat blocking the immune-suppressing enzyme CD73 could add benefits to inhibiting the immune checkpoints PD-1 and CTLA-4 in GBM. And ateam at Cedars-Sinai developed a polymer scaffold to deliver either one of these two types of checkpoint inhibitors cross the blood-brain barrier directly to brain tumor sites.

Ziopharm Oncology used its experimental drug veledimex to boost the immune response to IL-12 gene therapy. Investigators recently found signs of positive responses of the regimen among a small group of patients with recurrent glioblastoma.

Fan believes his teams approach of using Wnt inhibitors to block endothelial cells boasts several advantages over directly attacking cancer cells. For one thing, treating these stromal cells would get at the root cause of tumor survival. Secondly, because it doesnt aim for genetic markers, it should remain effective even after tumors mutate.

Because stromal cells have a more stable genome, they will not mutate the way cancer cells do, meaning secondary resistance is unlikely, Fan said in a statement. The team now hopes to test the method in a clinical trial.

Visit link:
How targeting tumor blood vessels may help overcome treatment resistance in glioblastoma - FierceBiotech

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith