Haiti cholera mutations could lead to more severe disease

Apr. 16, 2013 ? The cholera strain that transferred to Haiti in 2010 has multiple toxin gene mutations that may account for the severity of disease and is evolving to be more like an 1800s version of cholera, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

The strain, "altered El Tor," which emerged around 2000, is known to be more virulent and to cause more severe diarrhea and dehydration than earlier strains that had been circulating since the 1960s. This study reports the altered El Tor strain has acquired two additional signature mutations during the past decade that may further increase virulence.

In addition, these newly discovered signature mutations documented in the study further link the Haitian cholera epidemic to the strain from Nepal.

The paper will be published April 16 in the journal mBio.

The new Northwestern study suggests the strain with multi-signature toxin gene mutations may trigger a unique pattern of infection accounting for the severity of disease noted during the Haiti cholera outbreak.

"The cholera strain from the 1800s epidemic did the same thing," said Karla Satchell, the senior author of the paper and an associate professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "That strain also modified its toxin genes and the cholera got worse."

Satchell has spent her career studying a single toxin of the bacterium that causes cholera, MARTX, which helps the bacteria block the body's immune defense so cholera can colonize the gut. She closely followed genomics research conducted to track the Haiti epidemic, curious to see how her toxin was affected. She was shocked to see it had completely mutated out of existence.

"Oh, my!" she recalls thinking. "My toxin has been booted out of this key strain." She postulates that this may have affected the behavior of the mutated strain in disease.

Satchell and colleagues analyzed publicly available genomic sequencing data and found this new cholera strain had accumulated some curious genetic changes during its global spread. First, the main cholera toxin that causes the diarrhea acquired genetic changes that converted the toxin to a form similar to that produced by strains prevalent during the historic cholera epidemics of the 1800s.

Surprisingly, this new strain next acquired a genetic lesion that inactivated the MARTX toxin, previously recognized to be important for evading the immune system. A third as yet uncharacterized genetic mutation in the cholera toxin followed, suggesting a mutation emerged in the cholera toxin to compensate for the loss of MARTX.

These mutations occurring in the same strain indicate that the bacterium interacts differently with the immune system than previous strains.

"Perhaps this results in the bacterium more successfully evading early detection after a person accidentally drinks cholera infected fluids," Satchell said. "Interestingly, these multiple mutations in important proteins that specifically contribute to disease could explain why this strain is causing more severe disease, although the contribution of each mutation to human infection remains to be studied."

Previously published research on the Haiti cholera strain noted the change in the bacterium's DNA and tracked its origin to Nepal, but scientists didn't ask how the changes affected the bacterium's function. In addition, scientists had believed the bacterial strains responsible for the "new wave" of cholera that engulfed Haiti and first began spreading in 2000 were functionally identical to most other strains prevalent in the environment.

Satchell's finding further confirms the strain infecting Haiti likely originated in Nepal, consistent with the conclusion from the whole genome analysis and public health studies. Strains with this unique signature of a cholera toxin with three genetic changes coupled with loss of MARTX has spread only in a very defined geographical area including India where it was first detected in 2007. It has spread through Bangladesh, Cameroon, Nepal and then into Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 2010. Even though other strains are nearly identical and barely distinguishable at the genetic level, only this very small group of isolates share this unique signature, verifying from a functional viewpoint that the strain that moved to Haiti likely originated in Nepal.

"What we discovered is that the bacterial strains responsible for the 'new wave' of cholera are not all functionally identical with minor modification as previously thought, nor are they similar to most other strains prevalent in the environment, but, in fact, the strain with multi-signature toxin gene mutations may instigate a unique pattern of infection accounting for the severity of disease noted during the Haiti cholera outbreak," Satchell said.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jazel Dolores and Karla J. F. Satchell. Analysis of Vibrio cholerae Genome Sequences Reveals Unique rtxA Variants in Environmental Strains and an rtxA-Null Mutation in Recent Altered El Tor Isolates 4:2. mBio, April 2013 DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00624-12

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/-d1EBiBU5Lo/130416085429.htm

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Increased Carbon Dioxide Levels Damage Coral Reefs

Scientists have been worried about coral reefs for years, since realizing that rising temperatures and rising ocean acidity are hard on organisms that build their skeletons from calcium carbonate. Researchers on Australia's Great Barrier Reef are conducting an experiment that demonstrates just how much corals could suffer in the coming decades.

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

As we burn fossil fuels - we're talking about oil, gas and coal - carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere. Now, there are debates about how quickly that is changing the global climate, but there is no question that billions of tons of carbon dioxide have soaked into the ocean. That's making waters more acidic, which puts some ocean ecosystems at risk, particularly coral reefs. We sent NPR science correspondent Richard Harris to Australia's Great Barrier Reef to look into these consequences. His first stop was a research station on Heron Island.

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)

RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: Heron Island is surrounded by a reef that is home to sea turtles, sharks, rays, brilliantly colored fish, and hundreds of other species. The spectacular scenery draws snorkelers from around the world. The island also hosts one of the world's major coral reef labs, run by the University of Queensland, and research there shows that the reefs are in trouble. Scientist Sophie Dove plunges her arms into a tank the size of a kettle drum.

SOPHIE DOVE: OK. We'll start with the plates. Uh-huh.

HARRIS: She and research assistant Annamieke van den Heuvel are weighing chunks of coral.

ANNAMIEKE VAN DEN HEUVEL: Two hundred and forty-six point nine.

DOVE: Do you want to just check the zero when I take this away?

HARRIS: Dove has recreated a simplified version of the coral ecosystem in a dozen large tanks.

DOVE: And so in each tank here we basically - I can lift up the lid - this is one of our - this is our present-day tank, if you like.

HARRIS: The water temperature and the carbon dioxide levels match the conditions on the present-day reef.

DOVE: We've got little mushroom corals, fungia, brain corals, stylophera pistolata there. It's a very common coral around the world. We've got these corals that look like bunches of flowers. They're called lobophelia.

HARRIS: The corals in this tank look healthy. And as she weighs them, she seems that they've been growing since she transplanted them here nearly a year ago. Then she opens the next tank.

DOVE: We'll hop from present day, and the next one along here is the worst of the future with a thing we call business as usual or do nothing tank.

HARRIS: Dove is pumping much warmer water with lots of added carbon dioxide into this tank. This is what the world's oceans are likely to look like later in this century when the schoolchildren visiting this island today reach middle age.

DOVE: And as you look into here, it looks quite different, as you will see.

HARRIS: Oh yeah.

DOVE: OK. So there's lot of this slimy, yucky mess(ph) of cynobacteria.

HARRIS: Clumps of black gunk swirl along the surface of the tank.

DOVE: We find that cynobacterial (unintelligible) tend to do really well in the future. The slippery slope to slime seems to be the way to go.

HARRIS: Not so for the coral. Most of it has either died or turned white, which means the organisms that live inside the coral have moved out.

DOVE: So as you see, the future is not a great place. Here's - the needle(ph) coral is underneath here. It's gone. And there's really not very much left alive.

HARRIS: In all there are four sets of tanks here: the healthiest coral are in a tank that simulates pre-industrial conditions. The present day tank looks almost as good, but the coral looks progressively worse in tanks with increasing carbon dioxide and temperature.

DOVE: We can make this a little bit (unintelligible)...

HARRIS: Now, plenty of small-scale experiments in the lab have shown that corals suffer in hotter waters and in more acidic conditions. This experiment puts those two threats together, since that's what the reefs of the future will face. Dove tries to be dispassionate about her findings, but the site touches the human chord.

DOVE: I feel pretty sad when I look into this. You know, I look at the others, the control tank, and I think, well, that would be nice if we could at least stay like that.

HARRIS: But doing so would mean civilization would have to stop burning fossil fuels immediately. That's not going to happen. Instead, once the carbon dioxide concentrations get high enough in the ocean, the stony structure of the reef actually starts to dissolve. That's bad news for the vibrant life that lives on the reef.

DOVE: There's no reef building going on here. It's reef dismantling that's going on here. Maybe some fish can survive in this type of environment, but I think we're going to lose a lot of the fish capabilities, you know, for fishing and everything. So people who are trying to live off what the reef offers them, this is going to be much harder. From a tourist's point of view, I don't imagine this is something that tourists would feel that attracted to come and see.

HARRIS: And as the reefs erode, they will offer less protection from the storm surges generated by the typhoons that sweep ashore here in Australia and throughout the South Pacific.

ANDREAS ANDERSON: Millions of humans are dependent on the reefs today.

HARRIS: Andreas Anderson is a reef scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. He says increasing ocean acidity is a big threat to the millions of people who depend on the fish that in turn depend on the reef. He says experiments like the one on Heron Island suggest the reefs face bad times ahead later in this century, but the weakness of studies like this is that they change conditions for the corals in one sudden shock.

ANDERSON: So what we don't really understand is, you know, how quickly will this happen, to what extent will it happen. Will organisms be able to acclimatize or adapt to this over a longer time scale?

HARRIS: The best case is that the change will be slow.

ANDERSON: If it breaks down very rapidly, we are definitely in big problems. But if it takes thousands of years, then, you know, perhaps it's not so bad.

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)

HARRIS: Sophie Dove knows no experiment is perfect, but hers is designed to look for hints that corals can adapt to their new circumstances, and she doesn't see any sign of that. We will have more definitive answers soon enough because this experiment isn't simply confined to tanks at research stations - it's playing out on every coral reef in the world. Richard Harris, NPR News.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/17/177566615/increased-carbon-dioxide-levels-damage-coral-reefs?ft=1&f=1007

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Pakistan bears brunt of Iranian earthquake, 35 killed

By Gul Yousafzai

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake struck a border area of southeast Iran on Tuesday killing at least 35 people in neighboring Pakistan, destroying hundreds of houses and shaking buildings as far away as India and Gulf Arab states.

Communications with the sparsely-populated desert and mountain region were largely cut off, making it difficult to assess Iranian casualties. But an Iranian provincial governor later said there were no reports of deaths there so far.

"Our staff were in a meeting and we felt the ground shake," Saleh Mangi, Programme Unit Manager for Plan International in the Pakistani town of Thatta, was quoted as saying by the British office of the children's charity.

"It was horrible - we felt the movement in the chairs and even the cupboards were shaking. This is the strongest quake I have felt since the 1980s."

Pakistani officials said at least 30 people were killed and 150 injured in the town of Mashkeel in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran.

Mohammed Ashraf, head of a health center in Mashkeel, said several hundred houses in the town had caved in. Three women and two children were also killed when their mud house collapsed in the Baluchistan district of Panjgur.

"The earthquake has killed at least five people in Panjgur," said Ali Imran, an official at the government disaster-response unit in Quetta, Baluchistan's main city.

Pakistan's army said it had deployed troops and helicopters to ferry tents, medicines and medical teams to Mashkeel.

IRAN RELATIVELY UNSCATHED

Iran appeared to have emerged relatively unscathed. National media reported that 27 people were injured and that the significant depth was the likely reason for the relatively low level of damage from a 7.8 magnitude quake.

Soon after the quake, an Iranian official told Reuters he expected hundreds of dead and state media quoted unconfirmed reports of 40 fatalities in Iran.

But Hatam Narouyi, governor of Iran's Sistan and Baluchistan province, said there were "no fatalities", the student news agency (ISNA) reported.

The U.S. Geological Survey, in a revised bulletin, said the quake hit at 1044 GMT at a depth of 82 km (51 miles). The epicenter was 198 km (123 miles) southeast of the city of Zahedan and 250 km northwest of Turbat in Pakistan.

People in the Iranian city of Zahedan poured into the streets when it struck, Fars news agency reported. Officials in Saravan, the nearest city to the epicenter, said there had been no serious damage.

Iranian Red Crescent official Morteza Moradipour said emergency crews, including dog teams to sniff through the debris for any buried survivors, had reached the area.

"Because of the strength of the earthquake we had expected to see significant damage in residential areas but the quake was at a depth of 95 km and therefore the extent of the damage was on par with earthquakes measuring magnitude 4," he said.

The U.N.'s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it was in contact with authorities in Iran and "stands ready to assist upon request", a spokesman said.

NUCLEAR RISK

It was the second big quake to hit Iran in a week. On April 9, a powerful 6.3 magnitude quake struck close to the Bushehr nuclear power station, killing 37 people, injuring 850 and devastating two villages.

Most of Iran's nuclear-related facilities are located in central Iran or its west, including Bushehr, its nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast. Iran says safety standards at Bushehr are good, but some Western experts have their doubts.

"It (the quake epicenter) is far from Bushehr and other nuclear-related facilities," Iran expert Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group think-tank said.

"However, the recent tremors are ominous reminders of how earthquake prone Iran's terrain truly is and how critical it is for the Iranian government to be prepared for a nuclear emergency."

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran's nuclear authority had informed it that there was no damage to the Bushehr power plant or other facilities.

Iran sits on major geological faultlines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 that flattened the city of Bam, in Iran's far southeast, killing more than 25,000 people.

This quake also shook tall buildings in India's capital New Delhi, sending people running into the streets. People also evacuated buildings in Qatar and Dubai.

"I was working and my work station was shaking," said Viidhu Sekhri, 35, an underwriter at a New Delhi insurance company. "Then it was a bit shaky so we just rushed outside."

(Additional reporting by Marcus George, Yeganeh Torbati, Yara Baymoumy in Dubai; Kate Kelland in London; Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Jon Hemming and Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/strong-8-magnitude-quake-hits-iran-110149111.html

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Rev. David Lewicki: John 20:1-18: How Long Does Darkness Last?

There is a pall over this morning. As this story begins in John's Gospel, "it is still dark."

It is still dark where we wake up today. Beautiful, beloved children of God awake this morning in rooms where no light will break through. Morning brings no solace. It is still dark.

WATCH How Women Are Breaking the Church's Glass Ceiling:

You know this. Your dear ones suffer from sickness that has no cure. Your own relationships are fragile to the point of breaking. Old hurts -- personal, cultural -- have not healed. Not far from the dark room where you slept, fellow human beings are hungry and enslaved.

Do we need to say more? It is still dark.

That is why this particular story, after all these years, still matters.

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus while it was still dark.

The broken body of her friend had been pushed hastily inside two days before. There had been no time to prepare his corpse before the Sabbath came.

Mary arrived in the dark. The Gospels don't agree on all of the details of Easter morning, but one fact is consistent across the stories: Mary was there. Mary, from the Galilean town of Migdal, was one of Jesus' disciples. In Luke 8:2, she is described as a woman who had seven demons cast out from her -- a liberation that led her to follow Jesus. We don't know how it was that Mary -- nor any of the female disciples -- came to be an independent woman, traveling with Jesus. But with this company of women and men who befriended Jesus, and sat at his feet to learn about the Realm of God, she is free. Jesus honors women and men. They are equals. They are family.

On Easter morning, Mary arrived first at Jesus' tomb. According to John, she finds the great stone covering the entrance has been moved; she assumes the worst. Shocked and troubled, she runs to tell Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple, who go to see the tomb for themselves. Both find it empty, except for Jesus' burial clothes. It is too much: their friend has been tortured and executed, and now, have they also desecrated his corpse? Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple fear for their lives. They flee to their homes.

Mary knows the danger, too: She was one of the only disciples who stayed to watch Jesus die. But she returns to the tomb again, drawn by her grief. She is weeping. She peers into the tomb for the first time. She sees angels where the men saw emptiness. "Why are you crying?" they ask. "They have taken my Lord," she says to them. Death leaves a body -- where is his body?

In that very moment, Mary turns to see the form of a man whose face she does not recognize. She assumes he is the gardener. He speaks to her: "Woman, why are you crying?" "You have taken him," Mary pleads, "Where is he?"

"Mary." Jesus calls her by her name. He knows his own -- and his own know him. "Teacher!" she replies. Death has not taken him.

"Go and tell the other disciples," Jesus says to Mary. Mary listens to Jesus. She goes immediately and declares to disciples, "I have seen the Lord." Mary Magdalene is the first one to grasp the good news and the first one to proclaim that the power of death is defeated: Christ is Risen.

This same message is spoken to us today. Christ is Risen. It is a word of life for all who hear and receive it.

Christ is Risen. Mary's proclamation has never been more important. Remember, it is still dark.

Journalist Nicholas Kristof has spent much of his life reporting from parts of the world where the dawn of morning brings neither light nor life. In 2010, Kristof and his partner Sheryl WuDunn, wrote one of our generation's most important books, "Half the Sky." It is the painful, true story of the brutality inflicted upon women and girls around the world, through slavery, sex trafficking, and legal and economic repression. Kristof and WuDann call the subjugation of women the most important moral challenge of our century. But more than a story about crimes against women, Half the Sky is, ultimately, a proclamation of hope. It represents an emerging consensus that freeing women and girls to live into their full humanity is the most important thing we can do to ensure the flourishing of humankind.

Not long ago, I participated in a church-based forum called "End Hunger Now." Each of the four experts who presented had devoted their lives to discovering the underlying causes of hunger and working to end it. To a person, they focused on the central role of empowering women. If women can work, if they can keep their earnings, and if girls can receive an education, hunger will end. John Coonrod, Vice President of The Hunger Project, declared:

"Most hungry people in our world are working women who are prevented by cultural forces from benefiting from their own labor. We can and should all be feminists!"

For the sake of the world, we should all be feminists. And given what we know about the role of independent, empowered women in the community of disciples, for the sake world, we might be "Christians."

Raymond Brown, the late, great scholar of John, writes: "In this Gospel, where light and darkness play such a role, darkness lasts until someone believes in the risen Jesus."

Therefore no darkness, no heartbreak, no grief, no injustice can long stand where the Risen Christ is proclaimed. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not -- cannot -- will not overcome the light.

This morning, we awake, and it is still dark. But carried through the darkness on the lips of a woman who has seen and believed, comes a Word.

Wake up! Morning has broken, Christ is Risen!

Editor's Note: ON Scripture - The Bible is a series of Christian scripture commentaries produced in collaboration with Odyssey Networks. Each week pastors from around the country will approach the lectionary text of the week through the lens of current events, providing a religious voice that is both pastoral and prophetic.

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Follow Rev. David Lewicki on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dlewick

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-david-lewicki/john-201-18-how-long-does-darkness-last_b_2980734.html

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The Magic Of The Thyroid Diet | Trade Finance Bank - Guthriechet's ...

The Thyroid Diet examines brands, mixes and do?

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