Defective blood-test kits in West Bengal

defective blood-testing kits sold to West Bengal government clinics, blood banks and hospitals may have resulted in thousands of people receiving hiv or Hepatitis B- and C-infected blood. Infections through blood transfusion are being reported across the state. The government is seizing kits and has issued a warning to all health centres about possible contamination of blood.

Easy tuberculosis detection test for children

scientists at the Imperial College, London, are close to finalising a simple blood test for tuberculosis (tb), which will be useful, especially in detecting the disease in children. The test involves looking for certain proteins, or markers, in the blood that are present only if the patient has tb.

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mosquito repellent: A bird found in Alaska is believed to emit a natural mosquito repellent, according to Hector Douglas, a researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The crested auklet gives off a citrus smell that repels mosquitoes and pests such as ticks and lice.

The Double check

Simple solutions are most often the best. A double-barrelled syringe could prevent blood samples from becoming contaminated with skin bacteria, thereby giving wrong test results. To test for blood infections, the sample is drawn from the vein. Ideally, the skin-punctured site should be thoroughly sterilised. But as this takes up to two minutes, the process is often cut short, resulting in contamination of six per cent of the six million blood cultures performed every year in the us alone.

A simple device

In 1816, when a young French physician Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec fashioned a paper tube out of 24 sheets of paper and used it to hear voices from a patient's chest, a new era in medical diagnosis was inaugurated.

LIES, DAMN LIES AND ENDOSULFAN

At Down To Earth (DTE) we believe that truth withheld is truth denied. Fresh evidence suggests a web of lies and deceit was weaved to declare that the pesticide endosulfan is not responsible for the horrendous mutations and ailments that many in the villages of Kerala's Kasaragod district are suffering from. These villagers, living in the shadow of cashew plantations, have been exposed to the toxin which was sprayed aerially for more than two decades.

X factor

x-rays, the largest human-made source of radiation exposure for the general population, are adding in hundreds of more cancer cases every year across the world, indicates a study published in The Lancet (Vol 363, No 9406, January 31, 2004). In the uk -- a country with stringent regulations for x-ray diagnostics -- 0.6 per cent of the cumulative cancer risk for people up to 75-year-old can be attributed to x-rays. This means about 700 cancer cases per year.

Blood row

a group of haemophiliacs, who contracted aids and Hepatitis b through blood transfusion, recently filed a lawsuit in the federal court in San Francisco against four manufacturers of clotting agents. The two components of blood -- Factor viii and Factor ix -- are called clotting agents.

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easy rabies cure: Tobacco plants have been genetically modified to produce proteins used to combat the rabies virus. Till now, the only way to fight the virus was to use antibodies derived from either horses or humans; but they are difficult to get. Researchers from the Thomas Jefferson University, USA, have now inserted DNA coding of the human antibodies into the tobacco plants. The new antibodies are as efficient as the ones used at present.

AIDS transmitted through artificial insemination

subha (not her real name), 35, had been married for over 10 years, but was still childless. Doctors attributed this condition to her husband's low sperm count. Her craving for motherhood drove her to three infertility clinics in Kolkata, West Bengal, where she underwent several insemination sessions. Sadly what she conceived was not a new life, but the germ of death -- hiv.