Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 25 June 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 25 June 2015

::Science & Technology::

Multi Drug Resistant -TB less dangerous

Unlike people with drug-susceptible TB, those with multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) are less likely to transmit disease to others living in the same household (also known as household contacts), a study published on June 23 in the journal PLOS Medicine found.
Although it may not be right to extrapolate the findings to the community level, within households, MDR-TB surely has “relatively low fitness [be less capable of spreading] compared with drug-susceptible TB.”
The study results agree with those of previous animal and laboratory studies, as well as molecular epidemiology studies that had estimated that the fitness level of drug-susceptible TB bacteria to spread within populations was higher than MDR-TB bacteria.
But animal and lab studies do not take into account the clinical, environmental and socio-economic factors that influence infection. Hence, the latest study has great significance.
The study carried out in South Lima and Callao, Peru followed up people living in the same household as the index patient for three long years (2010-2013).
The study tracked 213 MDR-TB index patients and 1,055 of their household contacts. In the case of drug-susceptible TB patients, the study followed 487 index patients and their 2,362 household contacts.
While only 35 of 213 of MDR-TB contacts developed MDR-TB disease, 114 of 2,362 drug-susceptible TB contacts developed disease.
The hazard ratio for TB disease for household contacts of MDR-TB index cases was “half” that of the household contacts of those with drug-susceptible TB.
This is reason why the WHO and the Indian TB control programme (RNTCP) insist that all household contacts of a TB index patient should be screened for TB disease when the index patient is diagnosed.
Such active case finding greatly reduces the time lag between developing TB disease and testing. The time lag between developing disease and being correctly diagnosed is anywhere between three and four months in India.

New invention for treating leucoderma

In a first, a medication for treating rheumatoid arthritis has restored skin colour in a patient suffering from vitiligo.
The results of the study were published on June 24 in the journal JAMA Dermatology .
Leucoderma is a condition that causes skin to lose its pigmentation or colour.
As a result, people with vitiligo have white patches on the skin. In an advanced stage, most of the body skin can lose its pigmentation.
Current treatments, such as steroid creams and light therapy, fall short as they are “not reliably effective in reversing the disease.
” Researchers from Yale University used an existing FDA-approved medication for rheumatoid arthritis called tofacitinib citrate to successfully treat a patient suffering from vitiligo.

Quick result

According to a Yale School of Medicine press release, within two months of treatment, the patient experienced partial repigmentation on her face, arms, and hands. And after five months of treatment, the white spots on her face and hands had completely disappeared. The drug caused no adverse side effects in the patient.

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::India & world::

Bobby Jindal enters race for White House

The U.S. appeared to move one step closer towards the possibility, however remote, of having its first ever Indian-American president when Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal (44) made his 2016 campaign announcement on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
On the micro-blogging site he said, “I’m running for President of the U.S. Join me,” and “There were three people I think you would agree my wife Supriya and I had to tell first…” with a link to his campaign website showing video clips of the Jindal family talking about his entry in their back garden.
Mr. Jindal, who is the son of immigrants from Punjab state in India, is considered a strong social conservative whose hopes for the Republican presidential nomination will rest upon his appeal amongst evangelical voters and his reputation as a “man of ideas.”
He will have to squeeze every last drop of faith in his leadership from these groups because even as the two-term Governor embarks on his campaign without the national renown of rivals such as Mr. Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a favourite of the Latino community, he is likely to face stiff competition from a dozen contenders already in the race, and more who may join.
Mr. Jindal, who was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University and rose rapidly through Louisiana’s state government to become the state’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals at age 24, has also been elected twice to Congress before he entered the Governor’s office in 2008.