Metals blunt drugs

Usually industry is regarded as the chief purveyor of heavy metal pollution. Roadways and automobiles constitute one of the largest sources of pollution by heavy metals. Various types of fuels, tire wear, batteries and brake emissions release significant amounts of heavy metals into the environment. Leaching from soil because of acid rain is another source of heavy metals.

Malaria’s defiant act

DRUG-resistant malaria is on the prowl. The parasite that causes malaria is already resistant to previous mainstays of treatment, chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine. Now, the disease, which kills more than one person every minute, is increasingly becoming resistant to the wonder drug artemisinin.

The NATCO CL fallout

No medicine can be cheap enough when one is fighting fatal diseases, specially the emperor of maladies. So there was much to shout about when Patent Controller P H Kurian granted Natco Pharma of Hyderabad a compulsory licence (CL) last month to make a generic version of Bayer Corporation’s sorefanib tosylate.

Sneaky side-effects at a click

WHETHER it’s the common paracetamol or clioquinol used sometimes to treat skin infections, side-effects of medicines have always been a matter of concern. It is true that pharmaceuticals list the side-effects of a drug on the package, but it is not enough to know all the adverse reactions that a drug may cause.

Dr nature on call

Scientists working to develop new ayurvedic drugs are concentrating on the treatment of memory disorders. Says Sukh Dev, professor of chemistry at IIT-Delhi, “Ayurveda prescribes several remedies for improving memory and intelligence. Our experiments are validating many of these claims.”

Science and Technology - Briefs

Zoology Tweets in burbs

Science and Technology - Briefs

Technology Mr Gum gets it right too A popular rapid oral test for detecting HIV is as accurate as traditional blood tests, according to a Canadian research. Although previous studies have shown that OraQuick HIV 1/2 has great promise, this is the first study to evaluate its potential at a global level.

TB turns invincible

In December last, when doctors at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai raised the alarm over a deadly form of tuberculosis, the Union health ministry was quick to refute the claim. In its press release on January 17, the ministry said the term “totally drug resistant TB” is “misleading”; it is neither recognised by the national programme for TB control nor by WHO. But WHO has received reports of a similar strain of TB bacteria before: first from Italy in 2007 and then from Iran in 2009. With India becoming the third country to have raised the concern, it has now convened a meeting of global TB experts in March to discuss whether the strain should be called totally drug resistant (TDR), or be clubbed under the existing category of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), given that advanced drugs are in the making and that it is not possible to test TB bacteria against every possible drug and concentration.

Science and Technology - Briefs

Health Sciences Assault by medicines

Fatal resistance

Tears well up in Naseem Haider’s eyes as he watches his 25-day-old son twitch inside the incubator. Born premature after 29 weeks, this palm-sized infant, weighing no more than a kilogram has a feeding tube piercing through one nostril and an oxygen tube through the other. His vital organs are constantly monitored via wires attached to his body.