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Drug to prolong life being tested in mice

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The first drug to suc­cess­fully ex­tend the life­span of nor­mal lab mice al­so does so in a way that pro­longs their healthy ex­ist­ence, ac­cord­ing to a new stu­dy.

Re­search­ers hope the drug, ra­pa­my­cin, may al­so serve to pro­long life and ward off aging-related dis­eases in people, especially as it’s al­ready tested and ap­proved for an­other hu­man use: to pre­vent trans­plant re­jec­tion.

But obstacles remain before any hu­man use of ra­pa­my­cin as a longevity boost­er. It’s un­clear what dosages and reg­i­mens might be required for such a pur­pose. Con­cerns about side ef­fects linger. And mouse stud­ies have used a spe­cial encap­sula­tion method that’s not cur­rent­ly used in human con­sump­tion of the drug.

A biotech firm has sprung up in San An­to­nio, Tex­as in hopes of ex­ploit­ing new com­mer­cial pos­si­bil­i­ties for ra­pa­my­cin, and its of­fi­cials have said that clin­i­cal tri­als are ex­pected soon.

In the new stu­dy, mice were fed ra­pa­my­cin as part of their di­et start­ing when they were 19 months—the equiv­a­lent of about 60 hu­man years—old. The meas­ured life­span in­creases were more mod­est than in some pre­vi­ous stud­ies. Com­pared to un­treated mice, the life­span of the treated ro­dents went up by about 3 per­cent on av­er­age, al­though the dif­fer­ence rose to 7 per­cent for mice who made it to old­er ages to beg­in with.

Jiroemen Kimura: world's oldest man. AFP Photo

Jiroemen Kimura: world’s oldest man. AFP Photo

Pre­vi­ous stud­ies had yielded more dra­mat­ic re­sults.

A study in the July 2009 is­sue of Na­ture, us­ing a si­m­i­lar meth­od­ol­o­gy but dif­fer­ent mouse strains, had found in­creases as high as about 10.5 per­cent for old­er mice on ra­pa­my­cin com­pared to un­treated. An­oth­er piece of re­search found that if treat­ment was started when the mice were about half as old, then the av­er­age sur­viv­al in­crease jumped to about 14 per­cent. That study ap­peared in the Feb­ru­ary 2011 is­sue of The Jour­nals of Ger­on­tol­o­gy: Bi­o­log­i­cal Sci­ences.

The new stu­dy, in the May 16 on­line edi­tion of the same jour­nal, fo­cused on the health ef­fects in ad­di­tion to the life­span ef­fects. “Whether the life-ex­tending ef­fects of ra­pa­my­cin treat­ment are re­flected in ex­tended health has not yet been ex­ten­sively in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” wrote the au­thors, re­search­ers with the Uni­vers­ity of Tex­as Health Sci­ence Cen­ter at San An­to­nio.

The au­thors in­clud­ed scientists who have li­censed ra­pa­my­cin-related tech­nolo­gies to the biotech company, Ra­pa­my­cin Hold­ings Inc.

They al­so wrote that they in­ves­t­i­gated the health ef­fects in great­er de­tail be­cause “in­creas­ing life span with­out sim­ul­ta­ne­ously in­creas­ing health span is a fool’s er­rand.” They found that treat­ed mice enjoyed health ben­e­fits in­clud­ing in­creased stride length and bet­ter re­sults on a test of en­dur­ance.

Rapamycin’s lifespan bene­fits to mice have tended to be greater for fe­males, which received life­span boosts up to 80 per­cent greater than the males depending on the stu­dy.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors in the new study used ra­pa­my­cin that had been “mi­cro­en­cap­su­lated” by a spe­cial meth­od in or­der to re­sist de­grada­t­ion when mixed with the ro­dent chow. This is­n’t the same way ra­pa­my­cin, a pre­scrip­tion drug, is nor­mally tak­en in hu­man clin­i­cal use, al­though it is tak­en oral­ly.

Ra­pamycin is thought to ex­ert its ef­fects on life­span by sup­pressing the ac­ti­vity of a chem­i­cal path­way in the body known as mTOR, which helps to gov­ern growth and sur­viv­al re­sponses in cells.

Ra­pamycin al­so helps pre­vent trans­plant re­jec­tion by blocking cer­tain im­mune sys­tem cells, lead­ing to con­cerns of harm­ful im­mune-sup­pressing side ef­fects. But these have not proved prob­le­matic in the mouse stud­ies, ac­cord­ing to scien­tists.

Very few sub­stances have been found to re­liably pro­long life­span in lab an­i­mals. Be­fore ra­pamycin, the one con­sid­ered per­haps most prom­is­ing was res­ver­a­trol, found to ex­tend life­span in round­worms, yeast and cer­tain fish. But such ben­e­fits in lab mice, seen as an im­por­tant stepping-stone to­ward hu­man stud­ies, were re­ported only for mice that were obese.

Ra­pamycin is so named be­cause it was dis­cov­ered com­ing from soil bac­te­ria at East­er Is­land, al­so known as Rapa Nui.

.Culled from World Science

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Posted in Nigeria News. A DisNaija.Com network.

Source: PM News

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Nigeria News

Kano Transfers Over 1,000 Almajiris To Different States Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.

The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.

Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.

Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.

Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.

Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.

In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.

Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.

Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.

However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.

Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.

 

Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria

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Nigeria News

COVID-19: ‘Bakassi Boys’ Foil Attempt To Smuggle 24 Women Into Abia In Container

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By Ugochukwu Alaribe

Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.

The market women, said to be  from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.

Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.

A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.

Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that  smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.

 

Sourced From: Vanguard News

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Nigeria News

Woman Kills Her Maid Over Salary Request

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Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole

The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.

Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.

He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid  in January 2020.

‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.

She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.

He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.

The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police  Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.

Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.

He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’

He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.

Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.

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Boko Haram Attacks: Buhari Summons Urgent Meeting Of Service Chiefs

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President Buhari and the Service Chiefs in a meeting. (File photo)

Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend. 

He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart. 

Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.

The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad  problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”

The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad,  saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts.  This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”

When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose. 

Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them. 

Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter. 

“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said. 

 

Sourced From: Tribune

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