Wednesday, June 24, 2009
TruTags Drug and Food Authentication System to Help Ensure You Get What You Pay For
Pharmaceutical counterfeiting has been growing into a serious problem over the years, and RFID (radio frequency identification) based techniques have been implemented into pill bottle caps to guarantee authenticity. The problem, of course, is that this approach doesn't identify the genuine nature of the pills themselves. Now Cellular Bioengineering, a company out of Honolulu, Hawaii, has developed a method to manufacture tiny silicon dioxide (SiO2) particles, called TruTags™, each of which can have a unique light signature when observed with a special device. Being cheaper to manufacture and safe for consumption, the company believes that TruTags may become regular practice to tag not only drugs, but also foods, and maybe even things like toothpaste and diaper creams.
From the product page:
TruTags™ are manufactured starting with high-purity silicon and completely oxidized by a high-temperature bake to form silica, also known as silicon dioxide (SiO2). Silica is generally regarded as safe (GRAS) by the FDA, and has been in wide use for many years in a range of food products and pharmaceuticals. For example, it is added in small amounts to aid with the thickening of coatings or the free-flow of powders and granulations.The TruTag™ difference is that a unique optical signature is manufactured into the tags without the use of additional additives or markers. This allows the tags to be added to coatings and applied to the exterior of edible goods, or added to ingredients such as powders and used as a forensic marker, to be read and verified as part of an investigation or inspection process by authorized security or quality assurance personnel.
Video of the TruTag particles swimming in water:
Info page: TruTags™...
Press release: BREAKTHROUGH TECHNOLOGY ENABLES EDIBLE TRUTAG™ TO PREVENT COUNTERFEIT MEDICINE
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Monday, June 22, 2009
New Emergency Preparedness Simulator Points Out Areas That Need Improvement
Preparing a regional public health system for emergency situations is difficult because one has to find vulnerable points without prior experience of similar situations. By creating a fairly realistic simulator, NYU researchers modeled New York City's public health response to a sarin gas attack and identified a few cracks in the system. The computer program, called Plan C, may serve as a tool for other cities to stress test their own hospital systems for various potential disasters.
The article, “A Novel Approach to Multihazard Modeling and Simulation,” is based on the authors’ test of the NYU computerized disaster simulation framework known as “Plan C” with a hypothetical malicious sarin release in several Manhattan locations. With the input of city demographic information, hospital resource and public transit data, the results showed that under certain circumstances, up to 22,000 individuals might become exposed, leading to 178 intensive care unit admissions.Plan C is an innovative tool for emergency managers, urban planners, and public health officials to prepare and evaluate optimal plans for response to an array of hypothetical urban catastrophic situations. It was developed as part of the Large Scale Emergency Readiness (LaSER) Project at NYU’s Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response (CCPR).
Plan C uses a powerful, large-scale computational, multi-agent based disaster simulation framework involving as many as thousands of variables or agents – from existing hospital beds and emergency department services to hospital surge capacity and behavioral and psychosocial characteristics to anticipate public response to an attack. It has been able to simulate the complex dynamics of emergency responses in such scenarios as a chemical release, food poisoning, and smallpox.
According to the article, implementing disaster plans within 30 minutes compared to two hours of an incident diminished mortality and waiting times and reduced the number of patients who were severely affected. GIS portability to other urban locations was demonstrated.
Abstract in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness: A Novel Approach to Multihazard Modeling and Simulation
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions"
Population monitoring has great potential benefits for disease tracking, especially during epidemics, and with a bit of technology it's possible to do this in a comprehensive manner. Welcome to preparations for a 1984 Japan, where a pilot program will track the movement of 2,000 volunteers via GPS and identify when any of them crossed paths with others that later became ill with a contagious disease. No doubt the medical benefit of such a system on a large scale can save lives by the thousand. But once completed, it's hard to ignore the possibilities of what the tracking system could otherwise be used for in the future.
From the Pink Tentacle:
The proposed system relies on mobile phone providers to constantly track the subjects’ geographical locations and keep chronological records of their movements in a database. When a person is labeled as “infected,” all the past location data in the database is analyzed to determine whether or not anyone came within close proximity to the infected individual.The system will know, for example, whether or not you once boarded the same train or sat in the same movie theater as the infected individual, and it will send you a text message containing the details of the close encounter. The text messages will also provide instructions on specific measures to take in response.
Read on at the Pink Tentacle...
Image: Edward Barnieh Photography
(hat tip: Bill @ Technovelgy)
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Thursday, April 30, 2009
Google Flu Trends, Mexico Edition
Google, in a speedy effort to point their query crystal ball toward swine flu, just launched Google Flu trends for Mexico. The site, just like Flu Trends for the US, looks at aggregate user search queries that might indicate a higher prevalence of flu in a region. Though they don’t publish the specific methods involved, if, say, millions of users in a region started searching for something like “achy muscles and fever” or “I think I’ve got the flu,” the software might notice the trend and note it on the website. Though it’s certainly not perfect, the primary benefit to this approach is that it has the potential to pick up on flu outbreaks a bit quicker than other epidemiological data because it’s real time and avoids the lag of a patient getting to a hospital, then the data getting to an agency like the CDC, etc. Google is calling the site “experimental” for now because they’ve not yet had the chance to validate their models against good clinical data, but decided that they wanted to get it launched as quickly as possible.
Let’s just hope that the swine flu is not transmissible to computers; even my ThinkPad was in a panic today.
From the Official Google Blog:
In response to recent inquiries from public health officials, we've been attempting to use Google search activity in Mexico to help track human swine flu levels. Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico is, as you might have guessed, very experimental. But the system has detected increases in flu-related searches in Mexico City (Distrito Federal) and a few other Mexican states in recent days, beginning early in the week of April 19-25.In the United States, we were able to validate our estimates using data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We have not verified our data for Mexico in the same manner, but we've seen that Google users in Mexico (and around the world) also search for many flu-related topics when they have flu-like symptoms. Given the tremendous recent attention to swine flu, our model tries to filter out search queries that are more likely associated with topical searches rather than searches by those who may be experiencing symptoms.
While we would prefer to validate this data and improve its accuracy, we decided to release an early version today so that it might help public health officials and concerned individuals get an up-to-date picture of the ongoing swine flu outbreak. As with our existing Flu Trends system, estimates are provided across many of Mexico's states and updated every day. Our current estimates of flu activity in the U.S. are still generally low as would be expected given the relatively low confirmed swine flu case count. However, we'll be keeping an eye on the data to look for any spike in activity.
Google Blog: Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico
Flashback: Google Joins Nanny State to Monitor Flu?
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Monday, April 20, 2009
FDA Scrutinizing "New" Medical Devices
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Food and Drug Administration is requiring Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Inc., Royal Philips Electronics, and a various other medical device manufacturers to further explain and justify their products' safety and efficacy.
This is a part of the Safe Medicals Act of 1990, passed by Congress, that tightens control and testing of Class 3 devices. There is some concern that these new actions by the FDA will lead to further increases the cost of development of new medical equipment and lengthen the time to clinical use in patients.
While the bill was made into law in the 1990s, the FDA has had significant problems fully implementing all of the aspects of it, and this has allowed Class 3 devices to be put into use based on a previous statute. The FDA is reviewing all of these devices now, and calls on companies to test efficacy and safety under the "new" 1990 guidelines, or possibly seek reclassification of devices.
From the WSJ:
Mary Long, an agency spokeswoman, said it could take several years for the agency to finish the process. Manufacturers would be granted a grace period to submit enough evidence backing their devices under the more-rigorous standard. "It is a priority, but it will really depend on the kind and amount of information we get on each type," she said.
We support our patient safety above all else, but mention this FDA review because of the potential impact it may have to current and future medical device development.
WSJ : Medical Devices Face new Scrutiny from FDA
Library of Congress : Safe Medical Device Act of 1990 (H.R. 3095 and S. 3006)
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Wednesday, April 8, 2009
System Watches Live EMR Data for Signs of Epidemics
This week GE Healthcare, in partnership with Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and Johns Hopkins University, has unveiled a public disease tracking system that monitors symptoms entered into hospital EMR systems. By combining data from different regional medical facilities, the system should issue warnings when similar conditions are being reported at the same time. Although the current prototype works on GE's Healthcare's Centricity EMR system, the technology could be expandable to clinics using other EMR's.
More about the announcement from BusinessWeek...
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Monday, March 23, 2009
Lead Testing System Wins F&S Award
Got Chinese toys? We've got a technology for you to check how plumbum enriched your child is. Last week, at the Frost & Sullivan Excellence in Medical Technology Awards, Magellan Biosciences of Chelmsford, Massachusetts received the 2009 North American Product Innovation Award for the company's rapid lead poisoning blood test system. The CLIA-waived LeadCare II point-of-care system provides results within three minutes from two droplets (50 μl) of blood, eliminating delays associated with sending samples to the lab.
Here are the basics of how the system works:
1. Whole blood is added to the reagent solution (Fig. 1), 2. Any lead present is released from the blood components (Fig. 2). 3. Now, any lead in the reagent solution is concentrated (plated) onto a thin-film electrode during the plating step of the analysis cycle (Fig. 3). 4. The plated lead is removed from the electrode by applying a stripping current (Fig. 4). The amount of lead is measured by integration of the electrical current released during this rapid electrochemical step.
Press release: Magellan To Receive Frost & Sullivan 2009 North American Product Innovation Award;
Product page: LeadCare® II point-of-care system
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Thursday, March 19, 2009
Europium Nanoparticles That Screen for Bacillus Anthracis
The US Food and Drug Administration has conducted a proof-of-concept study assessing the viability of using nanoparticles, made out of the element europium, to detect the anthrax bacteria. The test actually looks for the protective antigen (PA) protein that Bacillus anthracis produces, and initial findings show that the new detection method is highly effective.
From an FDA statement:
The proof-of-concept study developed by FDA researchers relies on a nanotechnology-based test platform built from tiny molecular-sized particles. This assay, the europium nanoparticle-based immunoassay (ENIA), was able to detect the presence of a protein made by the anthrax bacteria known as protective antigen (PA). PA combines with another protein called lethal factor to form anthrax lethal factor toxin, the protein that enters cells and causes toxic effects.The researchers showed that ENIA is capable of detecting PA in quantities that are 100 times lower than current tests, such as the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Both the ELISA and ENIA rely on antibodies that have an affinity for the anthrax protein of interest.
The FDA test is a modified version of ELISA, which is already commonly used to detect anthrax and other infections. The researchers call their new test 'europium nanoparticle-based immunoassay,' because atoms of europium are key to the assay's sensitivity.
The ENIA uses molecular spheres (called nanospheres) covered with thousands of light-emitting atoms of europium that emit light, which acts as a signal that PA is present. The CBER team further enhanced the signal by modifying the nanospheres so they held additional atoms of europium, making the test more sensitive.
The ENIA detected PA in 100 percent of samples of mouse plasma compared to 36.4 percent through ELISA.
Abstract in Clinical and Vaccine Immunology...
Image: Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph shows splenic tissue from a monkey with inhalational anthrax; featured are rod-shaped bacilli (yellow) and an erythrocyte (red) Credit: NIH
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Surface to Air Battle Lasers to Defend Against Mosquito Attacks
The Wall Street Journal is profiling a fairly high tech approach to killing malarial mosquitoes. Using a camera and a targeting laser straight out of Star Wars (the DARPA program, not the movie), a private team sponsored by Intellectual Ventures LLC. is killing flying mosquitoes from 100 feet (30 meters) away. Interestingly, because male and female mosquitoes have different wing flapping characteristics, the system can be tuned to only kill the females since males are not blood sucking vectors.
From WSJ:
Demonstrating the technology recently, Dr. Kare, Mr. Myhrvold and other researchers stood below a small shelf mounted on the wall about 10 feet off the ground. On the shelf were five Maglite flashlights, a zoom lens from a 35mm camera, and the laser itself -- a little black box with an assortment of small lenses and mirrors. On the floor below sat a Dell personal computer that is the laser's brain.The glass box of mosquitoes across the room is an old 10-gallon fish tank. Each time a beam strikes a bug, the computer makes a gunshot sound to signal a direct hit.
To locate individual mosquitoes, light from the flashlights hits the tank across the room, creating tiny mosquito silhouettes on reflective material behind it. The zoom lens picks up the shadows and feeds the data to the computer, which controls the laser and fires it at the bug.
Read on at The Wall Street Journal...
More about mosquito disabling technologies being developed from DailyTech...
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Friday, February 20, 2009
When Flames Rise Above (or Inside) The Patient
The Wall Street Journal has an article about situations that cause fires in the surgical theater and what is being done to minimize the events. Considering that around 650 fires occur annually in ORs around the country, more care should be taken not to mix oxygen with fire.
Operating rooms are a special concern because high-tech electrosurgical tools and an oxygen-rich atmosphere can create a combustible mix. ECRI, a nonprofit group that conducts patient-safety research, says that in addition to surgical fires, other potential sources of burns include the magnets, coils and sensors used in MRI machines, IV solution bags that are overheated, fiber-optic lighting, and even blankets warmed in heating cabinets, whose internal folds may reach high temperatures that a nurse may not feel as the blanket is spread over an anesthetized patient. One analysis of closed malpractice claims by the American Society of Anesthesiologists shows that of 145 claims for burn injuries, more than half were from devices intended to warm the patient, while 31% were from electrical tools used for cauterization.Concern about surgical fires waned in hospitals after the use of flammable anesthetics, such as ether, was discontinued more than 25 years ago, according to Mark Bruley, vide president of accident investigation and forensics for ECRI. But new risks have emerged with the use of lasers and electrosurgical tools used to cut, cauterize or vaporize tissue in minimally invasive surgical procedures, and the practice of enriching oxygen delivered to patients under anesthesia. Heat sources and oxygen can then combine with potential fuel sources -- alcohol prep solutions, tonsil sponges and even the hair on a patient's eyebrows.
Read on at the Wall Street Journal...
Link: ECRI
Image: An endotracheal tube ignited by a surgical laser. Credit: ECRI
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Friday, February 6, 2009
Johns Hopkins Releases Software That Calculates Effects of WMD
The Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) has released a standalone Windows application to help hospitals calculate the potential casualties in their area after a WMD attack. The application takes input things like type of pathogen or chemical used, wind speed, and population density, and provides guidance as to what to expect in terms of types and numbers of casualties.
From Johns Hopkins:
Called EMCAPS (Electronic Mass Casualty Assessment & Planning Scenarios), the software program is believed to be the first that generates the anticipated outcomes of disaster planning scenarios developed by the Department of Homeland Security. The scenarios include patient estimates by injury type, estimated level of care required, and the need for decontamination facilities.Developed by CEPAR and programmed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, EMCAPS’s details are reported in the February edition of the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The program is available for download free of cost from Johns Hopkins’ CEPAR Web site, http://www.hopkins-cepar.org/
“Comprehensive disaster preparedness planning requires the ability to expand care capabilities in response to sudden or prolonged demand,” says James J. Scheulen, lead investigator for the EMCAPS project, executive director of CEPAR and chief administrative officer of the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine.
“While the planning scenarios developed by the Department of Homeland Security form a good basis for constructing disaster exercises, EMCAPS adds value by giving hospitals a platform for providing a needed level of detail and accounting for local conditions that influence health care demand and response in their regions,” says Meridith Thanner, Ph.D., a CEPAR research associate and program manager with the National Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response.
When designing the program, EMCAPS developers selected eight of 15 Department of Homeland Security scenarios that could result in large-scale health effects: inhalation anthrax; plague; food contamination; blister, nerve and toxic agents; dirty bombs and improvised explosive device (IED) attacks. The remaining scenarios, including natural disasters and cyber attacks, were excluded from the program because of either insufficient information for computer modeling or low casualty probability as a result of an attack.
Free download and info page: Electronic Mass Casualty Assessment & Planning Scenarios - EMCAPS
Press release: JOHNS HOPKINS OFFERS FREE SOFTWARE TOOL FOR LARGE-SCALE DISASTER "SURGE" PLANNING
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Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Accurate Pollen Monitoring to Help Allergy Sufferers
Having spent many mornings attempting to blog while waiting for Zyrtec to kick in can, this Medgadget editor is excited to know that someone is taking pollen prediction seriously. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) and Toxicology and Experimental Medicine (ITEM) developed mobile analyzers that can help accurately predict the pollen forecast.
From Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft:
The innovative feature is the analysis method: The stations determine the pollen composition fully automatically and transmit the data to the weather service. "To do this the stations, which are housed in a large container, ingest a controlled amount of air.The pollen grains contained in this air are cleansed of any impurities and deposited on a carrier," says Prof. Dr. Thomas Berlage, director of Life Science Informatics at FIT. The object carrier, a thin sheet of glass, is covered with a layer of gel. The pollen grains sink into this gel.
A light-optical microscope automatically takes pictures of the pollen. However, there is a difficulty: In these two-dimensional images, the primarily spherical pollen grains -- regardless whether they come from birch, hazel or alder trees -- are only displayed as circles. When viewed in three dimensions, however, the different types of pollen exhibit differences such as furrows.
"To overcome this difficulty, the microscope examines 70 different layers by automatically readjusting the focus 70 times," explains Berlage.
In some views the highest point of a pollen is in focus, in others the center. For each level, the system calculates the points that are most clearly pictured. It then combines all these points to form a two-dimensional image that contains the three-dimensional information - the image shows the "flattened" top half of the pollen. If a pollen grain has a furrow at this point, it can be seen on the image. From this information, the system calculates certain mathematical features, compares these with a database, and determines the type of pollen. The results are available within one or two hours and are transmitted to the weather service via a network connection.
Press release: Automatic measuring stations for pollen
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Thursday, January 29, 2009
Appropriate Attire for a Walk Through the Park After a Nuclear Meltdown
Radiation Shield Technologies, a Coral Gables, Florida firm, just announced that it received a US patent for the firm's Demron™ safety fabric. The company claims that the material makes better NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) suits, since the metallic fabric is more flexible and lighter than lead.
From the announcement:
Demron is a lead-free, toxin-free, and PVC-free material that allows heat dissipation and resists chemical penetration and cracks. Made of liquid metal, Demron nuclear protection fabrics feel cool and, unlike traditional nuclear suits, they're lightweight, flexible and foldable. Demron has proved to block gamma rays, X-rays and other nuclear emissions, by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, part of the National Nuclear Security Administration within the U.S. Department of Energy, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Demron is currently deployed worldwide by NATO, NASA, the National Guard, US Navy, UAE and the governments of South Korea, China, Saudi Arabia and Australia, among others. Scientists have selected it for thermo-mechanical suits for future space travel.
Link to patent at USPTO.gov
Radiation Shield Technologies company page...
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Dry Reagents Lead to Better Infectious Disease Tests for Developing World
Delivering on-site diagnostic tests for common diseases is a serious problem in the developing world. Reagents used in today's tests for diseases like malaria and typhoid are typically liquid and require refrigeration. Now researchers at the University of Washington have created a method to dry reagents in a malaria assay for easy transportation anywhere.
From University of Washington:
Results showed that malaria antibodies dried in sugar matrices retained 80 percent to 96 percent of their activity after 60 days of storage at elevated temperatures.The goal of the long-term project is to develop a system with which a clinician can spot a drop of a patient's blood onto a card and feed it into an instrument that gives a yes/no answer for a panel of infectious diseases in 20 minutes or less. Tests with the prototype malaria card reached a result in less than nine minutes using an immunoassay, or antibody-based, approach.
The malaria-test card is being developed as part of an automated diagnostic system informally called the DxBox, the Dx being medical shorthand for diagnosis. The DxBox team is led by Yager and includes UW bioengineering professor Patrick Stayton; collaborators at PATH, a Seattle-based nonprofit focused on global health; Micronics Inc. of Redmond, Wash.; and Nanogen Inc. of San Diego.
The DxBox consists of a portable, fully automatic reader being developed by Micronics that will process the card-based disposable tests. The UW prototype cards look for the presence of malarial proteins, but the team is also working on other kinds of protein tests as well as a second kind of test for each disease that looks for the pathogen's DNA or RNA.
The UW's malaria cards use features of common lab tests and take into account portability, automation and easy storage. The cards rely on microfluidics, the manipulation of liquids at very small scales. Thin channels crisscross the Mylar sheets, and syringes are used to pump different liquids for the tests through the channels. "It's like plumbing, only the pipes are less than a millimeter wide," Yager said.Microfluidics not only save space and resources, but working with liquids on such a small scale allows the researchers to do more. "It's not just about making big things small," Yager said. "It's also about doing things that are only possible at that very small scale." The diagnostic tests in the DxBox system run much faster than conventional tests in part because the liquids involved behave differently, a key factor for clinicians who have limited time to spend with their patients.
Currently, the researchers look for colored spots on the card that indicate the presence of malaria proteins. The hue of the color indicates the intensity of the disease. The DxBox can read these small spots automatically, reducing the chance for human error.
While the prototype developed by the UW researchers only tests for malaria, Yager and his collaborators are working towards cards that also will test for five other diseases that, like malaria, cause high-fever symptoms: dengue, influenza, Rickettsial diseases, typhoid and measles.
Press release: 'Astronaut food approach' to medical testing: Dehydrated, wallet-sized malaria tests promise better diagnoses in developing world
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Silly Face Masks Nothing to Laugh At, Study Finds
A collaboration of researchers, headed by the University of New South Wales, has shown that wearing face masks, much like the ones we laugh at when the Japanese wear them, are quite effective against the spread of flu. The researchers say that sticking with the regiment of constantly wearing the masks makes all the difference.
From Imperial College London, one of the collaborating teams in the study:
The University of New South Wales team, led by Professor Raina MacIntyre, recruited more than 280 adults in 143 families in Sydney during the winter seasons of 2006 and 2007. The adults were randomly allocated masks when exposed to a sick child in the household.Less than half of those asked to wear masks reported having done so consistently. However, adherence to preventative measures is known to vary depending on perception of risk and could be expected to increase during a respiratory disease pandemic.
The trial results are published this week in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the journal of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers say the findings have global implications and are particularly relevant to efforts to combat the spread of flu pandemics and other emerging respiratory diseases such as SARS.
But while some governments are already stockpiling masks for use in a pandemic, Professor Ferguson said the evidence to support their use in the community has been limited up until now.
“This study starts to close that evidence gap. Our work indicates masks may provide substantial protection so long as they are worn consistently and properly.”
He went on to emphasise that uncertainties remain: “This study represents a first step. More work is needed to look at the effectiveness of masks to prevent flu infections specifically, to evaluate their effectiveness in other community and healthcare settings, and to investigate the factors limiting compliance with mask use. We estimate that the reduction in risk of catching a respiratory infection for an adult caring for a sick child, when they adhere to mask use, is between sixty and eighty per cent. Whether the risk would be reduced by the same margin in another setting or where there was more than one source of potential infection requires further investigation.”
Full story: A face mask may prevent you getting flu -- but only if you wear it
Image credit: mikeleeorg @ Flickr: Cosplay in Harajuku, Tokyo ...
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Thursday, January 8, 2009
For Food Safety, A 5 Minute Melamine Test
On the heels of the Chinese melamine debacle, Bruker Daltonics Inc., a Billerica, Massachusetts company, is introducing a new 5 minute melamine and cyanuric acid detection assay for its HCTultra™ Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (pictured). The company says its assay not only detects but also quantifies the amounts of melamine and cyanurate in food.
A five minute, accurate LC-MS/MS analysis method has been developed by Bruker Daltonics' food safety development laboratory in Australia. This robust, easy-to-use and cost-effective method for the extraction, detection and quantification of melamine and CA uses the speed, sensitivity and excellent quantitative capabilities of the high-capacity ion-trap mass spectrometer HCTultra™, hyphenated with a Dionex UltiMate™ 3000 LC system and Acclaim™ Mixed-Mode WAX-1 column. The method is capable of detecting melamine in various matrixes well below the concentrations required by various food safety and other regulatory authorities around the world, such as the limits set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of 1 ppm for melamine and cyanuric acid in infant formula, and 2.5 ppm for other foods.Dr. Matthias Pelzing, Asia-Pacific Applications Manager for Bruker Daltonics, explained: "We recommend LC-MS/MS methods due to their straight-forward sample preparation, compared to GC-MS methods which often require sample derivatisation. With our new routine analysis method we have demonstrated that melamine can be detected down to trace levels of 0.05 ppb, and that it is possible to quantify melamine at concentrations relevant to various international food authorities in 5 minutes."
Mr. Clive Seymour, Executive Vice President of Bruker Daltonics, commented: "Due to its robustness, ease of use, small footprint and lower cost, our HCT ion trap-based solution offers significant practical and operational advantages over traditional triple-quad MRM approaches. In addition, the superior full scan sensitivity of our unique HCT ion trap technology offers not only outstanding detection limits for melamine and CA, but also the option of full-scan identification of other unknown, new or modified food contaminants with superior sensitivity."
White paper: Melamine and Cyanuric Acid Detection in 5 Minutes using LCMS (.pdf)...
Product page: HCTultra...
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Monday, January 5, 2009
Mosquitoes' Lives Cut Short
Scott O'Neill and colleagues at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia devised an interesting new way to control the spread of the deadly dengue fever in affected parts of the world. They think that the lifespan of Aedes aegypti (pictured), the major mosquito vector of dengue, can be cut short by infecting the pesky mosquitoes with Wolbachia pipientis bacterium.
In a paper published in the prestigious international journal Science on January 2, researchers from The University of Queensland have proven the effectiveness of a new way of limiting the lifespan of the type of mosquito that spreads dengue fever.They have done it by infecting the dengue mosquito, Aedes aegypti, with a bacterium that is harmless to humans and other animals but halves Aedes' lifespan. This has the potential to greatly reduce dengue because only old mosquitoes are effective at transmitting the virus to humans.
The scientists' success is critical to the progress of a $10 million project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and may lead to a new, safe and cheap way of curtailing dengue fever.
Carried out in the laboratory of Professor Scott O'Neill, Head of UQ's School of Biological Sciences, the experiment's focus was painstaking work with the Aedes mosquito and Wolbachia, a bacterium that occurs naturally in fruit flies.
PhD student Conor McMeniman used super-fine needles to manually inject 10,000 mosquito embryos with Wolbachia, and encouraged the surviving mosquitoes to feed on his own blood.
“We ended up having to inject thousands of embryos to achieve success, but it was well and truly worth it in the end,” Mr McMeniman said.
The hypothesis the researchers set out to prove was that the bacterium would:
- reduce the lifespan of mosquitoes, which must be approximately 12-15 days old before they can transmit the dengue virus;
- be passed by females to their offspring and spread into mosquito populations;
- not kill mosquitoes before they were old enough to breed and produce more bacterium-carrying insects.
The researchers have shown that Wolbachia halves mosquitoes' lifespan, which can be up to 30 days in the field. This dramatically curtailed their potential to spread dengue fever, without preventing the hereditary transmission of the bacterium.
Professor O'Neill said the project's next stage would be a contained field cage setting in northern Queensland.
“If that proves successful we hope to deploy this new dengue control measure in other parts of Australia, as well as Thailand and Vietnam,” Professor O'Neill said.
Abstract: Stable Introduction of a Life-Shortening Wolbachia Infection into the Mosquito Aedes aegypti Science 2 January 2009: Vol. 323. no. 5910, pp. 141 - 144
Press release: UQ scientists closing the zap on dengue fever...
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Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Computer Modeling Helping To Fight Malaria
MIT researchers have developed a computer modeling technique to assist in the fight against malaria, a disease which still accounts for 1/3rd of all deaths in children under 5 worldwide. The software analyzes numerous environment factors involved in malaria spread and can help predict what various interventions will have. Targeting environmental factors is not new, but being able to quantify the lasting effects of environmental interventions (such as leveling ground, planting trees in stagnant water, etc.) is.
MIT press office explains:
Modifying the environment by using everything from shovels and plows to plant-derived pesticides may be as important as mosquito nets and vaccinations in the fight against malaria, according to a computerized analysis by MIT researchers.The researchers have developed a new computer model for analyzing different methods of trying to control the spread of malaria, one of the world's most-devastating diseases. Among their findings using the model is that environmental measures such as leveling the land to eliminate depressions where pools can form can be an important part of the strategy for controlling the disease.
Reports on the work, carried out by Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Elfatih Eltahir and graduate students Arne Bomblies and Rebecca Gianotti, were presented this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco...
While most efforts at dealing with malaria have focused on the human side, such as attempts to develop a vaccine, Eltahir said that efforts to control environmental factors --such as working to eliminate the low spots where pools of water collect during the rainy season, or applying locally grown plant materials to limit the growth of mosquitoes -- can have a dramatic effect on controlling malaria's spread. And unlike importing expensive medicines, such an approach can rely on local efforts as simple as having people with shovels fill in the low spots in the terrain.
"By using local tools and local labor, our approach relies less on high-technology equipment from outside the region, which tends to make the local people more dependent," he said.
In addition, the new comprehensive computer model will provide a tool for analyzing how different areas' vulnerability to malaria will be affected by a changing climate.
To validate the accuracy of the computer modeling of conditions, the team has been working for the last four years in a remote area of Niger, which lies in the Sahel desert region of northern Africa. "Africa is the hot spot for malaria in general," Eltahir explained, so this fieldwork provides substantial validation of the model.
In the field, Bomblies and others have monitored every aspect of malaria's lifecycle, including doing counts of mosquito larvae and adult mosquitoes, identifying the exact species of mosquitoes (since only specific varieties carry the malaria parasite), and mapping the topography and monitoring the size and duration of pools of water where the mosquitoes breed. "We gathered data that would serve as validation for the model that we were developing," Bomblies said.
Eliminating pools of standing water, or increasing drainage so that such pools last less than the seven to 10 days it takes for the mosquitoes to mature, can be an effective strategy, the analysis shows. In addition, it allows comparison of different methods. Filling in the low spots using shovels, it turns out, is as effective at controlling the disease as plowing the land so that water more rapidly percolates down into the soil.
That is not a new idea, but the new software provides a quantitative way to compare its impact with other approaches, and to develop specific strategies for a given region. Filling in low spots "is an established technique," said Bomblies, who has spent a total of 13 months leading the fieldwork in Niger. "But it hasn't been specifically applied in the region in which we've been working."
And unlike other approaches such as vaccinations or mosquito nets, it has a relatively permanent impact. "Once a breeding site is gone, it's gone" Bomblies said.
Read more here: How to fight malaria by changing the environment...
Project page @ Eltahir Research Group: Monsoons, Mosquitos & Malaria
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Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Sharklet Technology Bets on Antibacterial Topographies
Sharklet Technologies, LLC, an Alachua, Fla. firm, says that they have figured out a new way to control infections on artificial surfaces. After extensively studying shark's skin, the company says its proprietary Sharklet™ surface technology can control the growth of microorganisms and bacteria including Staph aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and E. coli. The most interesting thing about the Sharklet™ is that the antibacterial properties of the surface come not from the chemicals but rather from the shape and microscopic pattern alone. The company says that its surface is comprised of "billions of tiny raised bars arranged in a specific diamond pattern," and this technology can literally be embedded onto the surfaces of medical devices such as catheters or artificial hips, as well as medical care equipment such as hospital beds, or even door knobs.
More from the technology page at Sharklet Technologies:
Sharklet™ was discovered and developed by Dr. Anthony Brennan, Ph.D., at the University of Florida, who has long studied the factors that cause microorganisms to attach to surfaces, colonize, create biofilms, and begin their destructive or beneficial cycles. His work and the development of Sharklet™ as a surface technology are inspired by nature and the organism growth resistance properties of shark skin.Upon close examination, shark skin reveals micro-topography features which are believed to contribute to its ability to violate a general rule of the ocean. Typically, slow moving animals are host to organisms such as barnacles and algae while fast moving animals are generally clean. Certain species of sharks are slow yet stay relatively clean due in part to their unique skin pattern. Sharklet™ is the first pattern inspired by shark skin and has microscopic features arranged in a unique pattern that microorganisms find inhospitable.
Dr. Anthony Brennan’s research found that microorganisms settling on a surface respond in a controlled way to chemical and physical cues. The BERI™, or Brennan Engineered Response Index, is an index that evaluates the effects on bioadhesion of systematically altering properties of a surface. Using this approach, Dr. Brennan and his researchers developed Sharklet™ and several other engineered topographies – surfaces with unique characteristics that can be tuned to evoke a specific bioresponse from organisms.
The revolutionary Sharklet™ pattern controls microorganism growth without toxic chemicals or metals. The pattern has been tested and proven effective against plant, animal and bacteria organisms. While not discernable to the naked eye or easily felt to the touch, the Sharklet™ surface technology has demonstrated in strenuous laboratory tests to be inhospitable to bacterial growth and biofilm formation as compared to smooth surfaces.
Press release: Sharklet Technologies Wins 'Early-Stage Shootout' at Southeast Bio's Investor Forum...
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