Washington: Needles too tiny to be seen with naked eyes can soon deliver drugs to specific areas relevant to two of the world's leading eye diseases - glaucoma and corneal neovascularisation, researchers report.

By targeting the drugs only to specific parts of the eye instead of the entire eye, researchers hope to increase effectiveness, limit side effects and reduce the amount of drug needed.

"We are developing different microneedle-based systems that can put the drug precisely into the part of the eye where it is needed. In many cases, we hope to couple that delivery with a controlled-release formulation that would allow one application to treat a condition for weeks or months," explained Mark Prausnitz, a Regents' professor in school of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

The micro-needles range in length from 400 to 700 microns.

The research was done using animal models and could become the first treatment technique to use micro-needles for delivering drugs to treat diseases in the front of the eye.

"The ultimate goal for us would be for glaucoma patients visiting the doctor to get an injection that would last for the next six months, until the next time the patient needed to see the doctor," added Prausnitz.

In corneal neovascularisation, corneal injury results in the growth of unwanted blood vessels that impair vision.

To treat it, researchers have developed solid micro-needles for delivering a dry antibody-based drug compound that stops the vessel growth.

Both potential treatments would require additional animal testing before human trials could begin.

The research was reported in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.

US researchers have said they have developed a potential gene test for identifying acute rejection in kidney transplant patients, a finding that could eventually replace the need for biopsies.

Acute rejection after kidney transplantation occurs in about 15 percent to 20 percent of patients, even when they are treated with immunosuppressive medications, Xinhhua reported citing the researchers Tuesday.

Rejection is usually heralded by an increase in the patient's serum creatinine, a marker of kidney function, and a kidney biopsy is then performed to confirm whether rejection is taking place.

However, elevated creatinine is not sufficiently sensitive to identify all early rejection or specific enough to prevent some unnecessary kidney biopsies, so a non-invasive means of identifying acute rejection is needed, according to researchers from the University of California San Francisco.

For the new study, the researchers used an assay called quantitative polymerase chain reaction to measure the expression of 43 genes whose expression levels change during acute kidney rejection in blood samples collected from patients who had had a kidney transplant.

The researchers also found that the gene set was able to predict acute rejection up to three months before detection by biopsy, independent of age, time after transplant and sample source.

"The kSORT assay has the potential to become a simple, robust, and clinically applicable blood test," the researchers said.

The study was published in the US journal PLOS Medicine.

Everybody is aware of the fact that exercise is good for your health, but very few know that it can help in preventing breast cancer too, says an expert.

Middle aged women, who regularly partake in some form of exercise each day, are significantly reducing their chances of getting cancer.

And it is said that just 30 minutes of exercise a day, such as a game of squash or a spinning class reduces the risk of cancer by a fifth, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Scientists have found that obese women are 50 percent more likely to get cancer than those who have a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI). Also those women who did three hours of exercise per week were 21 percent less likely to get breast cancer.

Currently 1 in 8 women get breast cancer, which equates to 50,500 a year, however this new evidence is positive in showing that a healthy lifestyle can reduce the probability of a woman being affected.

Researchers at Oxford University have spent three years monitoring 126,000 women going through menopause and noted if they got the disease or not. They filled in questionnaires about their exercise levels, weight, diet, drinking and smoking.

Scientists believe that being obese increases the risk of cancer, most likely due to the fat cells containing oestrogen which encourage the growth of tumours.

"What's really interesting about this study is that (reduction in breast cancer risk) does not appear to be solely due to the most active women being slimmer, suggesting that there may be some more direct benefits of exercise for women of all sizes," said Tim Key, a Cancer Research UK scientist from the cancer epidemiology unit at Oxford University.

"We don't yet know exactly how physical activity reduces risk ... but some small studies suggest that it could be linked to the impact on hormone levels in the body," he added.

Tim Key also says that more research is still required to find the link between women's hormone levels and the prevention of cancer.

A new research has revealed that earlier poor eating habits may impact health even after diet is improved.

The scientists used mice to show that even after successful treatment of atherosclerosis, including lowering of blood cholesterol and a change in dietary habits, the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle still affect the way the immune system functions.

This change in function occurs largely because poor eating habits alter the way genes express themselves, including genes related to immunity and this change in gene expression (epigenetics) ultimately keeps the risk of cardiovascular disorders higher than it would be had there been no exposure to unhealthy foods in the first place.

Researcher Erik van Kampen said that this study demonstrates the importance of diet-induced changes in the epigenome and encourages further research into the interaction between dietary patterns, DNA methylation and disease.

John Wherry, Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology said that the ability of nutritional history to have durable affects on immune cells demonstrated in this new report could have profound implications for treatment of diseases with immune underpinnings.

Wherry added that the length of such effects will be critical to determine and it will be interesting to examine the effects of drugs that can modify epigenetics.

The study is published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.

A new study has revealed that exposure to cigarette smoke can actually cause weight gain, secondhand smoke being the biggest reason.

Study author Benjamin Bikman, professor of physiology and developmental biology at Brigham Young University, said that for people who are in a home with a smoker, particularly children, the increased risk of cardiovascular or metabolic problems is massive.

The researchers wanted to pinpoint the mechanism behind why smokers become insulin resistant and to find out the implications of smoke on metabolic function, they exposed lab mice to side-stream (or second-hand) smoke and followed their metabolic progression.

It was found that those mice that were exposed to smoke put on weight and when the researchers drilled down to the cellular level, they found the smoke triggered a tiny lipid called ceramide to alter mitochondria in the cells, causing disruption to normal cell function and inhibiting the cells' ability to respond to insulin.

The scientists said that the lungs provide a vast interface with our environment and this research shows that a response to involuntary smoking includes altering systemic sensitivity to insulin. Once someone becomes insulin resistant, their body needs more insulin. And any time you have insulin go up, you have fat being made in the body.

The study was published in the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism.