Violence keeps crews from MH17 crash site

An armed pro-Russian separatist is seen at the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash site near the village of Hrabove, in Ukraine's Donetsk region. 

Kiev - Fighting between Kiev forces and pro-Russian separatists on Tuesday prevented international investigators reaching the MH17 crash site in Ukraine for the third day running, the Dutch justice ministry said.

Liberian Doctor Dies of Ebola

A senior doctor working at Liberia's largest hospital has died of Ebola.

The Liberian Health Ministry says Dr. Samuel Brisbane died Saturday at an Ebola treatment center on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia.

He is the first Liberian doctor to die in an outbreak the World Health Organization says has killed 129 people in the country.

The U.S. based aid group Samaritan's Purse said Saturday an American doctor working in Liberia is also sick.

A spokeswoman for the group says Dr. Kent Brantly is undergoing intensive medical treatment.  She says patients have a better chance of survival if they receive treatment immediately after being infected, which Brantly did.

The World Health Organization says highly contagious Ebola virus has killed at least 672 people in four African countries this year.

In Sierra Leone, health officials say an Ebola patient whose family sparked a nationwide hunt when they forcefully removed her from a treatment center and took her to a traditional healer, died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital.

Health officials say fear and mistrust of health workers in Sierra Leone, where many people have more faith in traditional medicine, are hurting efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak.  

The WHO says the outbreak, the largest ever recorded, has also killed 319 people in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone.

Meanwhile, Nigeria has stepped up surveillance at its ports and borders, following the country's first confirmed death from the Ebola virus.

Health officials are monitoring airports, seaports and land borders for people arriving who may show signs of the virus.  Officials confirmed Friday that a man who died after arriving in Lagos on a flight from Liberia had tested positive for Ebola.

Investigators are trying to track down the other passengers who were on the nearly three-hour flight from Monrovia.

There is no cure or vaccine for Ebola, which causes symptoms that include fever, vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding.

Health workers are at serious risk of contracting the disease, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids.

RELATED ARTICLES

• Nigeria on Alert Following Ebola Death
• In Nigeria, Liberian Tests Positive for Ebola
• Sierra Leone's Chief Ebola Doctor Contracts Virus

Six new genetic risk factors for Parkinson’s found

 

Scientists have identified more than two dozen genetic risk factors involved in Parkinson’s disease, including six that had not been previously reported. Unravelling the genetic underpinnings of Parkinson’s is vital to understanding the multiple mechanisms involved in this complex disease, and hopefully, may one day lead to effective therapies,’ said Andrew Singleton, a scientist at the US National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) and senior author of the study. 

UK to adopt Indian-origin expert’s breast cancer treatment

  

Indian-origin cancer expert Jayant Vaidya (Source: jayantvaidya.org)

A pioneering breast cancer treatment developed by noted Indian-origin expert Jayant Vaidya is to be adopted and offered to patients by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), providing relief to thousands of patients from gruelling post-operation radiotherapy.

AIDS-Free Generation Will Not Be Achieved Without More Investment in HarmReduction

Abubakar, an injecting drug user since 1989, receives a safe injecting kit at a community center in Nairobi, in a project supported by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.

In 2010, the United Nations announced that an AIDS-free generation was achievable if we focused on the most disadvantaged communities

Lunar pits could shelter astronauts: NASA

 

Large pits on the lunar surface may hold the key to living on the Moon, according to a new NASA study. (Reuters)

 Large pits on the lunar surface may hold the key to living on the Moon, according to a new NASA study.
These pits could provide astronauts with shelter from the radiation, dust and temperature swings.

Two men 'cleared' of HIV after bone marrow transplants in an Australian first that has sparked hope for eradicating the deadly virus that causes AIDS.

• Two HIV-positive men were treated at Sydney's St Vincent Hospital
• They had bone marrow transplants and their HIV is now undetectable
• Professor David Cooper said these are the first successful cases of HIV being cleared in Australia
• Both patients remain on antiretroviral therapy to prevent HIV coming back. Two men who were HIV-positive appear to be virus-free after bone marrow transplants, marking the first successful cases of HIV being cleared in Australia.
  Both men now register undetectable levels of the virus after treatment in Sydney, according to the University of NSW's Kirby Institute director, Professor David Cooper.
  In a significant breakthrough for researchers, one of the patients cleared the virus without donor marrow containing a rare gene mutation that protects against HIV.
  The human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, became undetectable in both patients about three years after their transplants, Prof Cooper said.
  The men, who were treated at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, in partnership with the Kirby Institute, remain on antiretroviral therapy.
  'We're so pleased that both patients are doing reasonably well years after the treatment for their cancers and remain free of both the original cancer and the HIV virus,' he said.
    
  Professor David Cooper carried out the ground-breaking research at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital
  The work was presented on Saturday at the Towards an HIV Cure Symposium, which is part of the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, which opens on Sunday.
  The patients' success echoes that of American man Timothy Ray Brown, the famous Berlin patient, who has shown no signs of virus resurgence since he received a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a rare gene mutation conferring resistance to HIV.
    
  The 20th International AIDS Conference is set to begin in Melbourne on Sunday
  
  This rare gene mutation, called CCR5 delta32, makes stem cells naturally resistant to the virus.
  It is found in less than one per cent of Caucasians, mostly northern Europeans.
  In Boston, two other patients underwent similar bone marrow transplants in 2012 but the transplanted cells did not contain the rare gene mutation.
  In both cases, the virus returned after antiretroviral treatment was stopped.
  The first Sydney patient underwent a bone marrow transplant in 2010 for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. His donor had the mutation.
  However, the second man who underwent a procedure in 2011 for acute myeloid leukaemia was matched with a donor that did not have it.
  Both men no longer showed any trace of the virus after a series of tests, Prof Cooper said.
  'This is another example of where the transplant can drive the amount of virus to levels that we simply cannot detect,' he said.
    
  Timothy Ray Brown, known as the 'Berlin Patient', is currently the only person to have been cured of AIDS.
  'But if we stopped the antiretroviral therapy, there would be a very strong chance that it would come back.
  'We're trying to understand this strong anti-HIV effect and understand where the virus might be hiding.'
  The Sydney cases could lead to new approaches to treating, and ultimately eradicating HIV, he said.
  'Cure research is looking for a way to move forward and my view is that this is a very important clue, that an immune response produced by bone marrow transplantation has such a strong anti-HIV effect,' Prof Cooper said.
  'We're going to use this as a model for cure research and see if we can develop some therapies that mimic what were doing with bone marrow transplantation.'
  The stem cell transplant procedure, however, is not a practical strategy for the majority of HIV patients, and the risk of mortality is up to 10 per cent, Prof Cooper says.
  'For someone with HIV, you certainly would not transplant them when they've got an almost normal lifespan with antiretroviral therapy.'
    
  The men, who were treated at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, in partnership with the Kirby Institute, remain on antiretroviral therapy.
  Between two and five HIV positive patients required bone marrow transplants for cancer each year in Australia, he said.
  'It is very difficult to find a match for bone marrow donors.'
  And when a donor and recipient match was found, the chances of then having the one per cent of donors who had the protective gene was going to be very small, he said.
  Prof Cooper said there was a movement in the HIV cure community to try to identify these donors with the mutation and ask them to volunteer for bone marrow transplants for HIV-positive people.