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A chemical found in green tea helps inhibit sexual transmission of the virus which causes AIDS, said a study Tuesday that recommends using the compound in vaginal creams to supplement antiretrovirals.
Medical experts at Germany’s University of Heidelberg said the compound could be a low-cost arrow in the quiver of medical weapons to fight the spread of HIV in research-poor countries.
The researchers said they determined that the green tea polyphenol, or vegetable tannin, called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) is capable of neutralizing a protein in sperm which serves as a vector for viral transmission during sex.
EGCG degrades what is known as a semen-derived enhancer of virus infection, or SEVI, described in the study as “an important infectivity factor of HIV.”
Writing in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said they “recently identified a peptide fraction in human semen that consistently enhanced HIV-1 infection.”
SEVIs capture viral elements and attach them to the surface of target cells, enhancing cell fusion and decreasing a cell’s ability to repel viral threats.
EGCG “targets SEVI for degradation” and “abrogates semen-mediated enhancement of HIV-1 infection in the absence of cellular toxicity,” said the researchers, some of whom work at the university’s Heinrich-Pette-Institute for Experimental Virology and Immunology.
Because of its effects on semen-based HIV transmission threats, the study’s authors said “EGCG appears to be a promising supplement to antiretroviral microbicides to reduce sexual transmission of HIV-1.”
With the vast majority of the world’s 33 million people with HIV infected through heterosexual sex, and as 96 percent of new infections occur in poor and developing nations, researchers said the use of green tea EGCG in topical creams would “provide a simple and affordable prevention method” to guard against HIV transmission.
Green tea, which originated in China and is widely consumed in Asia, the Middle East and growing numbers of western countries, is already popular for its antioxidant qualities.

Bacteria found in people’s spit does not vary much around the world, a surprising finding that could provide insights into how diet and cultural factors affect human health, researchers said Thursday.
Because the human body harbors 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells, scientists are trying to understand more about the bacteria we carry.
The human mouth is a major gateway for bacteria into the body and it contains a diverse array of microbial species. Yet scientists know little about this diversity and how it relates to diet, environment, health and disease, they added.
“We are interested in this because by studying the bacteria we can get more insights into human populations than we would get from just studying the human DNA,” Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
In their study published in Genome Research, the team sequenced bacteria found in saliva samples taken from 120 healthy volunteers from North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia.
Not surprisingly, they observed considerable diversity of bacterial life in the overall saliva microbiome, both within and between individuals.
But when comparing samples from different geographic areas they found not much variation, suggesting that bacteria within the mouth of a person’s neighbor is likely to be just as different as someone on the other side of the world.
The findings could help better understand human migrations and populations as well as providing background for future studies looking at the influence of diet, cultural factors and disease on differences in saliva bacteria.
“The saliva microbiome does not vary substantially around the world,” Stoneking said in a statement. “Which seems surprising given the large diversity in diet and other cultural factors that could influence the human salivary microbiome.”

Scientists have found a healthy use for tobacco after breeding genetically modified plants containing a medicine that could stop type 1 diabetes.
The move marks the latest advance in the emerging field of molecular farming, which may offer a cheaper way of making biotech drugs and vaccines than traditional factory systems.
European researchers said on Thursday they had produced tobacco plants containing a potent anti-inflammatory protein called interleukin-10 (IL-10) that could help patients with insulin-dependent type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases.
A number of agrochemical companies, including Bayer and Syngenta, have been looking at ways to make complex protein drugs in plants, although progress has been slow.
At the moment, antibody medicines and vaccines are produced in cell cultures inside stainless steel fermenters.
However, Mario Pezzotti of the University of Verona, who led the tobacco study published in the journal BMC Biotechnology, believes they could be grown more efficiently in fields, since plants are the world’s most cost-effective protein producers.
Several different plants have been studied by research groups around the world, but tobacco is a firm favorite.
“Tobacco is a fantastic plant because it is easy to transform genetically and you can easily regenerate an entire plant from a single cell,” Pezzotti said in a telephone interview.
His group’s work has attracted interest from tobacco giant Philip Morris, which is supporting a conference on plant-based medicine in Verona in June.
Pezzotti and colleagues — who received funding for their research from the European Union — now plan to feed the plants to mice with autoimmune diseases to find out how they respond.
Further down the line, they want to test whether repeated small doses could help prevent diabetes in people, when given alongside another compound called glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65), which has also been produced in tobacco plants.
Swedish biotech company Diamyd is already testing a conventionally produced GAD65 vaccine against diabetes in clinical trials.
Molecular farming has yet to yield its first commercial product, although Israel’s Protalix BioTherapeutics is conducting advanced clinical tests on an enzyme treatment for Gaucher disease that is produced in a culture of carrot cells.
Protalix plans to submit its drug for regulatory approval in the United States and Israel in the fourth quarter of 2009.

LONDON – Melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the most common cancer in young British women, the country’s leading cancer organization said Wednesday. Skin cancer has overtaken cervical cancer as the top cancer striking women in their 20s, according to the latest data from Cancer Research United Kingdom.
The trend is particularly worrying since younger people are not generally those most susceptible to melanoma. Rates of skin cancer are typically highest in people over age 75.
But experts worry that increasing numbers of younger people being diagnosed with skin cancer could be the start of a dangerous trend. Women in their 20s make up a small percentage of all patients diagnosed with melanoma in Britain, but nearly a third of all cases occur in people younger than 50.
Based on current numbers, Cancer Research UK predicts that melanoma will become the fourth most common cancer for men and women of all ages by 2024, and that cases will jump from about 9,000 cases a year to more than 15,500.
Cancer experts attribute the rising number of skin cancer cases largely to the surge in people using tanning salons. “Spending time on sunbeds is just as dangerous as staying out too long in the sun,” said Caroline Cerny of Cancer Research UK. The organization is starting a SunSmart campaign to warn Britons of the dangers of being too bronzed.
“The intensity of UV rays in some sunbeds can be more than 10 times stronger than the midday sun,” Cerny said.
In the United States, several states require parental approval before minors can use tanning salons. Wisconsin bans people 16 and under from using tanning beds, and others ban children under 14. At least 29 states have regulations governing minors’ use of tanning salons.
In the U.K., Scottish politicians passed legislation banning those under 18 from using tanning beds, though it hasn’t yet been implemented. There are no plans for legislation in the rest of the U.K.
The World Health Organization has previously recommended that tanning beds be regulated because of their potential to damage DNA in the skin.
Experts said most deadly skin cancers could be avoided if people took the proper precautions when in the sun and avoided tanning beds.

A new flu drug under development has been shown to be as safe and effective as Tamiflu in clinical trials, Japanese pharmaceutical maker Daiichi Sankyo Co says.
The drug, known as CS-8958 or Laninamivir, demonstrated the same level of efficacy as Tamiflu for adults and was even more effective among children, the company says.
Laninamivir, co-owned with Australia’s Biota Holdings Ltd, is expected to be effective for treating seasonal and swine flu, and has also shown efficacy against the H5N1 avian flu virus in non-clinical tests.
“Laninamivir offers a new therapeutic agent in the treatment of influenza with particular advantages for stockpiling applications,” Biota managing director Peter Cook says.
Daiichi says it would apply to regulators by March for approval to sell the drug in Japan, where it has the marketing rights. A licensing partner is being sought for all other markets.

GENEVA: A girl born in Japan today will likely live to celebrate her 86th birthday, the longest life expectancy anywhere in the world. Men fare best in the tiny European nation of San Marino, where the average boy will live to 81, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday.
The West African country of Sierra Leone has the shortest life expectancy for men - just 39 - while Afghanistan fares badly for both sexes, with men and women living on average to 41 and 42 years respectively.
The figures in WHO’s annual World Health Statistics report are from 2007, the latest year available.
They show that some countries have made remarkable progress in increasing life expectancy since 1990 - partly by ending wars, partly through successful health initiatives.
Eritrea increased its average life expectancy by 33 years to 61 for men, and by 12 years to 65 for women. In Liberia the figure for men jumped 29 years to 54, and rose 13 years to 58 for women. Angola, Bangladesh, Maldives, Niger and East Timor also increased the average life expectancy for men and women by 10 years.
Other countries showed a sharp declined over the same period.
Women’s life expectancy in Zimbabwe fell by 19 years to 44; Zimbabwean men live to 45 on average, compared to age 57 in 1990. Lesotho recorded a 16-year drop for both men and women to 43 and 47 respectively. Women in Swaziland live to 49 on average, a drop of 14 years. Men’s life expectancy in the southern African country declined by 12 years to 47.
Botswana, Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Zambia also reported significant drops in life expectancy for both sexes.

“I’ve noticed that my kids aren’t open to anything
Abercrombie these days,” says one mother of two teenage girls.At the
New York City abercrombie and Fitch
store, whose neighbors include Prada and Gucci, a shirtless male model
greets shoppers at the front and happily snaps pictures with the
gawkers. Sales associates dance to hip-hop music in the aisles. abercrombie necklaces
a retailer with a history of never slashing prices, is starting to go
in the other direction. The company is making the move, despite the
fact that executives still sound hesitant.   
      In this recession, there are struggling apparel retailers all
across the country. Then there’s Abercrombie and Fitch. The upscale
teen retailer has suffered 10 straight months of double-digit
same-store-sales declines. In the second quarter of 2009 alone, sales
were down an eye-popping 30% across the company’s three name outlets:
the flagship abercrombie necklaces, which has 567 stores; Hollister, a
520-store teen chain; and Ruehl, a 29-store chain for young adults that
abercrombie clothing shut down in June.” Oh yeah, I was a lot of fun to be with
at this point. No wonder we’re all overpaying in here. We just sign the
bloody receipt so we can get out of the store without incident.As we
discussed in our initial review though (see FAT169 for details),
A&F is a well-managed business with a healthy balance sheet and
strong brands that will underpin future growth as the recovery gains
traction.
     What lessons can be learned from the abercrombie clothing experience? The first has to do with pricing. But even if abercrombie clothing
could justify holding firm on price, it did little else to entice
customers. “If you provide interesting incentives, you can minimize
losses while maintaining the luxury image,” says Park. “Offer milk and
cookies in the store. Anything.”
   As we discussed in our initial review though (see FAT169 for
details), A&F is a well-managed business with a healthy balance
sheet and strong brands that will underpin future growth as the
recovery gains traction.
    “The tribunal made the compensation award for injury to her
feelings, loss of earnings and harassment..A woman who was made to work
in a shop’s stockroom because her prosthetic arm did not fit with the
company’s image, has won her claim for harassment.. I blamed it on my
practical nature as she led me right over the threshold to where the
club level music volume was pulsing.After all, that’s their look for
the female.
     Either way, the brand failed to gain traction and the GFC
subsequently snuffed out any near term chance of success. Management
announced the closure of the 29 loss-making stores in June 2009.In
terms of management’s international growth strategy, the opening of the
flagship Milan stores is on track for October, and December in Tokyo.To
access more complimentary research reports from Fat Prophets click here.

Such advice hasn’t stopped cardy ugg boots lovers like Tammy Mudd of Wilmington, Ohio, from donning the boot with a suede exterior and sheepskin lining.

Mudd, 28, has seven pairs of the footwear in her closet and rarely takes them off, saying she would take any color or style of classic cardy boots because she loves them so much.

And she’s not the only one holding on to her ugg classic cardy boots. Even during tough economic times, UGG Australia said sales are up and knock-off variations are everywhere.

The Australian company said that in 30 years of doing business, it hasn’t received a single complaint about its boots lacking arch support or about their comfort.

But podiatrist Positano warned that arch support is important for helping the foot to absorb shock, and poor shoe support means trouble for your feet.

“What that leads to is overuse, meaning the muscles, the tendons, the ligaments, and the bones in the foot and the ankle overwork,” he said. “A recent study just came out that showed the correlation between a flat arch, and problems with the knee, the hip, and the back.”

And UGG boots, which can cost more than $100, aren’t the only shoes people should be wary of. The flip-flop is a potential problem, too.

Bathing Ape shoes(bape shoes) are basically sneakers that were designed based on the inspiration derived from the Nike Air Force one’s edition. But there were lots of striking differences between the Bathing ape shoes and the Nike model.

The introduction of these shoes brought a counter-revolutionary change in the footwear industry. A bathing ape is a Japanese company. The Japanese term “bathing ape” translates to “trend-following youth” that is something like “bathing in lukewarm water.” The bathing ape shoes(bape shoes) are also referred to as “Bapes“.
   Bathing Ape shoes were launched as sneakers .These were never intended to be positioned as a shoe for playing sports. The sneaker was so wonderfully designed that the people could not imagine the Bapes to be a sneaker. The final product was something beyond people’s idea of a sneaker. This shoe’s outlook is something which they had never seen before even in other famous brands. Even in Japan the Bapes turned out to be a trend setter. This was a craze among the urban youth. It is high on the style quotient.

Bathing Ape shoes(bape shoes) are so unique. It comes with patent leather and bright colors that makes Bathing Ape shoes different from the other existing shoes in the market. Bapes are so catchy that it quickly draws attention of the people who come looking for a pair of sneakers. The starting price is about $190 per pair. It is priced high compared to their counterpart models of Nike Air Force One. Bape Sta is the official name of Bathing Ape’s famous athletic shoes. The Bape Sta was produced in limited numbers to maintain the exclusivity tag. But the extremely rare Air Force One Lux was only released in 3000 pairs and went for about $190 also.

Australian UGG brand, is founded  in 1978 by a young man Brian Smith. His bold proposed to use the Australian and New Zealand journal of natural resources — wool, plus the traditional handicraft production of high practicability warmth, and put their cardy ugg boots exported to the United States and other countries. Now the wool classic cardy boots have become a kind of fashion, in Hollywood stars, has raised under the influence of a snow this season is to fire boots agitation with a pair of almost. Actually this American brand UGG AUSTRALIA is not made in China, but in AUSTRALIA, are sold around the world, this also is why many copy of the domestic UGG. American sign ugg classic cardy boots, long ago in AUSTRALIA, in order to reduce the cost of production, and now the brand all UGG boots are made in China.