Health Headlines - June 26

1st Cases of Bird Flu From Wild Fowl Documented

Four people from Azerbaijan are the first confirmed cases of bird flu being passed from wild fowl, Britain's The Guardian newspaper reported Monday.

The four victims died after they plucked the feathers from dead swans to sell for pillows, the newspaper said. Three other people were infected the same way but survived.

Most of the 220 other documented cases of bird flu have been transmitted to people via infected domestic birds, the newspaper said. A few are believed to have acquired the deadly H5N1 strain from other people.

The Azerbaijani cases were first reported in March, but were only recently confirmed. Six of the seven victims, all between ages 10 and 20, were from the same family. Hunting and harvesting wild birds is illegal in Azerbaijan, and surviving family members finally conceded to plucking the feathers from the dead birds, The Guardian said.

1 Million Chocolate Bars Recalled for Salmonella

British candymaker Cadbury Schweppes says despite the recall of 1 million chocolate bars for possible salmonella contamination, the rest of its candy remains safe, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The company said a batch of chocolate used to make the bars had been contaminated with waste water from a leaky pipe at a factory in Marlbrook, England, in January. The products were recalled as a precaution, the company said, despite tests that found only "minute traces" of bacteria, the AP reported.

The British government said it was investigating why Cadbury didn't alert authorities earlier, the wire service said.

A spokesman for Cadbury, the world's largest confectionary company, said, "Our products are perfectly safe. We'd gone through our rigorous testing process."

Britain's Health Protection Agency told the wire service it was too early to determine whether the contamination might be linked to 45 cases of a rare strain of salmonella reported in Britain over the past four months.

Digital Handheld Device Helps Blind People 'Read'

A new electronic device that combines a personal digital assistant and a digital camera promises to help blind people to understand everything from menus to cooking instructions, the Associated Press reported Monday.

"It's not quite like having a pair of eyes that work, but it's headed in that direction," James Gashel, executive director at the National Federation of the Blind, told the wire service.

Users position the reader over a document, taking a snapshot of the text. The image is then read by the handheld's synthetic voice.

The device, developed by inventor Ray Kurzweil, has been dubbed the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader. It's set to go on sale Saturday for about $3,500, the AP said.

Gashel labeled the technology the biggest breakthrough for the 10 million blind and visually impaired people in the United States in three decades. He calls it "the camera that talks."

New Test May Offer Alzheimer's Insights

U.S. researchers hope to answer an important and long-vexing question about the origins of Alzheimer's disease: Do patients with the condition have high levels of a brain protein because they make too much of it or because they can't clear it from their brains fast enough?

Scientists at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say they have developed the first safe and sensitive way to monitor the production and clearance rates of amyloid beta peptide (Abeta) in the human central nervous system. The new testing process could open an important window into the origin of Alzheimer's disease that, in addition to helping scientists better understand the source of the condition, will likely help them improve its diagnosis and treatment, the researchers said.

High levels of Abeta in the brain are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and are believed to be a key cause of the condition. Tests that measure Abeta levels in the cerebrospinal fluid have been available for some time. However, those tests gave no hint as to whether Abeta in patients' brains came from an increase in the mechanisms that make the protein or a reduction in the processes that regularly clear it from the brain, the researchers said.

Because Alzheimer's symptoms take many years to develop, some researchers had assumed the creation and clearance rates for Abeta were very slow. But the initial test of the new technique, applied to six healthy volunteers, suggests the opposite.

"Abeta has the second-fastest production rate of any protein whose production rate has been measured so far," says lead author Dr. Randall Bateman, assistant professor of neurology at the school. "In a time span of about six or seven hours, you make half the amyloid beta found in your central nervous system."

Ideally, the production and clearance rates stay balanced, causing the overall amount of Abeta in the central nervous system to remain constant. In the healthy volunteers who were the first test subjects, Bateman found the production and clearance rates were the same. He is now applying the technique to individuals with Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers are developing Alzheimer's drugs that either decrease Abeta production or increase its clearance, Bateman said, and the new test could be important in determining which approach is most effective.

The test also may be useful in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's prior to the onset of symptoms, which appear after the disease has inflicted widespread and largely irreversible damage to the brain.

The study appears online June 25 in the journal Nature Medicine.

HIV Drug Approved for Those Not Responding to Existing Drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Prezista (darunavir), a new drug for adults whose HIV infection hasn't responded to treatment with other antiretroviral drugs.

Prezista, a new protease inhibitor, is approved to be used with a low-dose of ritonavir and other active anti-HIV agents. Ritonavir, a protease inhibitor approved in 1996, slows the breakdown of Prezista in the body, increasing the concentration of Prezista in the patient's system, the FDA said.

HIV causes AIDS, which results in more than 15,000 premature deaths each year in the United States and more than 2.8 million deaths each year worldwide.

"This approval offers new hope to HIV patients who too often urgently need new therapies in order to maintain their health," said Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, acting FDA commissioner. "This drug is not a cure, but when combined with other standard therapies, it presents one more major step in our effort to help patients combat the effects of the disease."