• Our obvious evolution of bigger bodies and longer lifespans in the past 150 yearscannot be put down to genes, or even just to better lifestyles and environment. It seems likely to be the result of better care in the womb and early life.
• Bacteriophages– viruses that attack bacteria – have been approved for use in ready-to-eat foods.
• A new approach to preventing infection by anthraxhas worked in animals, and has the potential to protect against SARS, AIDS, and the flu.
• Even as massive efforts to contain the spread of bird flu appear to have had considerable success, work on a vaccine has gone ahead and we may see one on the market in 2007.

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One hundred and fifty years ago, people expected to develop chronic diseases by their 40s or 50s and to die by their 50’s or 60’s. Things are very different for today’s baby boomers, writes Gina Kolata in the New York Times. The change from “small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable . . . may prove to be one of the most striking shifts in human existence,” she suggests. Over the past 100 years, one researcher told her, humans in the industrialized world have undergone “a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.”

The evolution can be seen not just in the obvious greater heights and longer lives, but in the more recently documented fact that heart disease, lung disease, arthritis, and other chronic ailments are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to, and in the lower incidence of disability among older people today. A recent US study suggests that this is not just because medical treatments such as cataract surgery forestall disability, but also because “human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before” and “even the human mind seems improved,” judging by increases in average I.Q. over the decades.

Improved medical care is only part of the explanation; studies suggest that the effects seem to have been set in motion by events early in life, even in the womb, that show up in middle and old age. “It’s very clear,” a researcher told Kolata, “that current ideas about adult lifestyles go only a small way toward explaining this. You can say that it’s genes if you want to cease thinking about it. Or you can say, When do people become vulnerable during development? Once you have that thought, it opens up a whole new world.”

Bacteriopahages Approved for Meat Products

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The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the first bacteriophage product for use on ready-to-eat food. “Phages” (for short) are viruses that attack and kill bacteria. The product, called LMP 102, is effective against Listeria monocytogenes, described in a press release by its manufacturer as “the deadliest foodborne pathogen found in ready to eat foods.“ The company intends to seek approval within a year for products effective against E. coli and Salmonella.

Anthrax Blocker

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Six rats injected with a “polyvalent inhibitor” appeared to be protected from anthrax, with no signs of adverse side effects. The inhibitor binds to cell receptors where anthrax would otherwise attach and wreak their toxic havoc. The same approach might also work against SARS, flu, and AIDS.

A consultant in infectious diseases at Imperial College London told the BBC: “There have been many other approaches to blocking the anthrax toxin; what is important about this work is that the investigators have come up with a new technique for screening chemicals for activity that might block other types of toxin as well.” However, “The inhibitor represents a step forwards in treatment but does not obviate the need for development of better and more effective vaccines to prevent anthrax.”

Bird Flu Vaccine

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BBC business editor Robert Peston reports that GlaxoSmithKline “believes it has developed a vaccine for the H5N1 deadly strain of bird flu that may be capable of being mass produced by 2007. Glaxo considers the tiny (3.8 microgram) size of the effective dose to be “highly significant,” because the smallest effective dose yields the maximum number of shots out of a quantity of vaccine.

The vaccine is on a fast track for approval with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA). Glaxo said that governments could order the vaccine for delivery and stockpiling in early 2007. The UK and US have both indicated a desire to “prime” their respective populations with an initial inoculation, and Glaxo said it was also talking to the Gates Foundation about how to provide the vaccine to poorer, developing countries.

It is not clear how effective the vaccination would be if H5N1 were to mutate significantly. Glaxo says its vaccine is more akin to shotgun treatment than a “precision-rifle cure”, which means that it appears to be effective against small mutations in the virus strain. Its side effects have been limited to a fever in a number of patients.