Want to go in for stem cell therapy for your eye ailment but wary of the risk of infection? Help may be at hand. For, a new procedure, developed and patented by Sankara Nethralaya and Nichiin Bio Sciences of Japan, offers promise to treat ailments like corneal ulcers and StevensJohnson Syndrome.

To avoid viral infection and contamination, researchers used a synthetic material to grow corneal limbal stem cells of a rabbit. Being a nonbiological material, it also prevented rejection caused in the case of the biological one.

This material is actually a gel called Mebiol Gel. It gets liquefied when cooled. The Mebiol Gel helps rapid multiplication of cells. Once enough cells are grown, the cell culture dish is put in a refrigerator. After the gel liquefies, the stem cells are separated. They are then loosely injected into the eyes of rabbits.

"The cells that are cultivated within the Mebiol Gel can be used for therapeutic purposes, instead of human tissues like the amniotic membrane," says Dr H N Madhavan, President, Vision Research Foundation, and Director and Professor of Microbiology, Sankara Nethralaya.

"We received a patent in July for the process... It was a great struggle to get the patent, with challenges posed by many countries... and the next step is to take up human trial," he informs.

The success of the therapy would be known only after one year of regular checkups and followups once the patients undergo therapy. The Nethralaya would have a registry of patients, who meet the qualifications to undergo the procedure.

"The Mebiol Gel will not be priced over Rs 5,000. But the cost of the entire operation is yet to be decided," Dr Madhavan says.

Dr S S Badrinath, Chairman Emeritus, said the new procedure would help those suffering from corneal blindness. At the Sankara Nethralaya's Ocular Surface Clinic, approximately 6,000 cases are seen a year. Also, 125 new patients with the Stevens Johnson syndrome seek services every year. Of this, 25 per cent would benefit from the cultured corneal epithelial transplant. Similarly, 75 new patients with thermal or chemical injury come to hospital every year. Almost 80 per cent of them will benefit from the corneal limbal stem cell transplantation, he said.

Dr Samuel Abraham, Director, Nichiin Bio Sciences, Japan, and Consul General of Japan Yoshiaki Kodaki were present.

Vienna: For a while now, the AIDS epidemic was believed to have stabilised but now there's concern that it may be on the rise once again. Countries in Eastern Europe and former CIS states are now reporting an exponential rise in HIV cases all because of unsafe injectible drug use.

Injecting drug users or IDUs, whose numbers are rising alarmingly across the globe are now believed to be driving the AIDS epidemic. A majority of users are young and often poor and end up sharing syringes. Eastern Europe and Russia are the hubs. Russia has reported that 75% of IDUs are HIV positive.

"There is a problem of selling syringes. There is only one drug store that is far away that sells syringes. So people are going through the city looking for used syringes," said Aleksandra Osin, Journalist & Outreach worker, Russia.

Nina Ferencic, Senior Regional Advisor, HIV/AIDS UNICEF added," Sharing of injections is a very effective way of transmission, so you can have rapid increases in the epidmeic. When HIV enters a drug using population, the chances of the virus spreading rapidly is very high.

"So you can have scenario that from one year to the next you can have a group of drug users, in whom the infection rate has gone up from non-existent to almost 60% so it is a very effective route of HIV transmission."

A new study done by UNICEF shows that illegal drug trade is fuelling HIV/AIDS. It found that all along the illegal drug routes from Afghanistan to western Europe, there are mini -outbreaks of the disease and the worst affected are children.

"What happens is that you have an active drug trade or a drug route and there are a lot of people addicted to drugs themselves. When that enters into the hospital system where there is insufficient equipment and lack of infection control measures and when children get into the hospital, they get infected so there have been outbreaks in hospital settings," Ferencic added.

In India, too, there has been an upsurge of HIV among IDUs. In states like Punjab and Delhi, both seen as transit points of the drug trade, there are a number of families who have lost their relatives to drug use and HIV but so far there are no services for IDUs who are seen as outcasts and criminalised.

At the international aids conference, countries will pledge not only to curb this organised crime but also provide essential services such as harm reduction and treatment to drug users who are also HIV positive.

Astrocytes, the brain cells named after their characteristic star-shape, play a key role in the regulation of breathing.

Scientists at the University College London and the University of Bristol demonstrated that astrocytes are able to sense the levels of carbondioxide in the blood, reports Science Express. They then activate brain neuronal (nerve cell) respiratory networks to increase our breathing in accord with prevailing metabolism and activity.

Astrocytes are a subtype of a group of brain cells known as glia ('glue' in Greek), according to a Cambridge statement.

Now, astrocytes have been found to have a unique ability to 'taste' the composition of arterial blood entering the brain by sensing increases in arterial levels of carbon dioxide.

They then release a chemical messenger called ATP, which stimulates brain respiratory centres to increase our breathing in order for extra carbon dioxide to be removed from the blood and exhaled.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has warned the public against using some steroid-containing products available as 'dietary supplements.' These could find their way into the country from the United States, where the products have already been banned.

The warning follows a communication from the Food and Drug Administration of the U.S. Some of these products are Mastavol and Hyperdrol syrups and Dienedrone and D-Drol, both capsules.

The products were subject to class-I recall in the U.S. as some of these were marketed, without an approved New Drug Application or a Generic Drug Application, as dietary supplements.

The products were found to contain steroid or steroid-like substances, making them unapproved new drugs. Most of these products were distributed through the Internet rather than through a distributor network.

Poverty is perhaps the most important factor in whether inner-city heterosexuals are infected with the AIDS virus, according to the first government study of its kind.

The study, released Monday, suggests that HIV is epidemic in certain poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods. And, more significantly, poor heterosexuals in those neighborhoods were twice as likely to be infected as heterosexuals who lived in the same community but had more money.

Federal scientists found that race was not a factor - there were no significant differences between blacks, whites or Hispanics.

Health officials have long believed poverty drives HIV epidemics, but there have been few studies to back that up. Some research actually contradicts that belief: Studies in Tanzania, Kenya and some other African countries actually found that wealthy people were more likely to be infected than the poor.

"In the United States, we haven't have a history of looking in depth at the association between poverty and HIV," said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of HIV/AIDS Prevention for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mermin oversees the CDC team that did the new study.

More often, studies have focused on the race of HIV patients, their sexual orientation, or whether or not they use intravenous drugs.

The CDC report was released at the international AIDS conference in Vienna.

The study involved a survey in 2006 and 2007 of 9,000 heterosexual adults, ages 18 to 50. They answered questions on a computer about their income, condom use and other details and were given HIV tests.

The research was done in high-poverty neighborhoods in 23 U.S. cities. It focused on heterosexuals who don't use intravenous drugs; that group accounts for about 28 percent of Americans living with HIV. It did not involve gay or bisexual men, who have the highest rates of HIV in the United States.

The results: HIV was detected in 2.4 percent of the people who were living below the federal poverty line, which in 2007 was an annual income of roughly $10,000 or less for an individual. The 2.4 percent translates to roughly 1 in 42 people.

In contrast, infections were found in 1.2 percent of people in the same neighborhoods who made more money than the federal poverty guideline. That's 1 in 83 people.

Both rates were higher than the national average, which is 0.45 percent, or 1 in 222 people.

The results suggest that people in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be infected because they live among more people who are infected. Perhaps more people in such neighborhoods have used illegal drugs or had other experiences that put them at higher risk, Mermin said.

"It's epidemiological bad luck," he said. He described the situation: "I'm in a community where when I meet a new (sexual) partner, the chance that they would have HIV is much higher than if I were wealthy and living in another geographical area."

Officials need to start looking at the AIDS epidemic in a different light, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, who chairs global health studies at Emory University's school of public health.

"You talk about 'Can we decrease the HIV burden in the United States?' I would say, 'What can we do to decrease poverty in the United States?'" del Rio said.

He noted there are diseases that are more prevalent in certain racial groups, for genetic reasons. Sickle cell disease, which is most prevalent in blacks, is one example.

But there's no clear biological reason why the infection rate is eight times higher in blacks than whites, and three times higher in Hispanics than whites. But understanding that blacks are disproportionately poor probably does explain why the rates are higher, del Rio said.

He was an author of a smaller, recent study that found that 60 percent of Atlanta's HIV cases were located in a downtown area of the city with high proportions of blacks, IV drug users and people living in poverty.

An estimated 1 in 272 Americans is infected with HIV, according to 2006 estimates. In other terms, more than 1.1 million Americans are living with the AIDS virus. The number has grown since 2006, CDC officials believe.

Officials believe the annual number of new HIV infections has been hovering around 55,000 a year since the late 1990s.