Vaccine 'could cut HIV TB deaths'

A vaccine could cut tuberculosis cases among HIV-positive Africans by almost two-fifths, a US study suggests.

The lung infection is the most common cause of death among HIV patients in the continent.

Journal Aids reports that Dartmouth Medical School research involving 2,000 people found significantly fewer TB cases in vaccinated patients.

An expert said the jab could be a cheaper option for countries struggling to find money for extra anti-HIV drugs.

HIV patients are particularly vulnerable to TB because their immune systems are compromised.

The vaccine works by boosting the immune responses of patients who have already been given the BCG vaccine earlier in life.

In itself, the BCG jab may offer some protection against TB, but this is far from certain, and protection may only last a few years after immunisation.

The researchers from Dartmouth Medical School in the US tested it among 2,000 HIV positive patients in Tanzania over a seven-year period.

The number of confirmed TB cases was 39% lower in the vaccinated group.

First vaccine

Professor Ford von Reyn, who led the study, said it was a "significant milestone".

One theory now suggests that patients could be given the booster jab as soon as they are diagnosed with HIV, before antiretroviral drugs are needed.

Alvaro Bermejo, executive director at the International HIV/Aids Alliance, said that the other way of fighting TB in HIV patients might be to give them antiretrovirals earlier, an expensive option compared with a vaccination programme.

He said: "This is a very important finding - it is the first time we are going to have a vaccine which is influential in preventing opportunistic infections in HIV patients.

"TB is a massive problem - a third of people living with HIV in Africa are infected with it.

"The reduction of 39% seen in Tanzania, although not fabulous, is a good result."

Overweight elderly 'live longer'

Moderately overweight elderly people may live longer than those of normal weight, an Australian study suggests.

But being very overweight or being underweight shortened lives.

The report, which was published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, said dieting may not be beneficial in this age group.

But the study of 9,200 over-70s also found that regardless of weight, sedentary lifestyles shortened lives, particularly for women.

The study by the University of Western Australia set out to find out what level of body mass index (BMI) was associated with the lowest risk of death in the elderly.

For younger people, there is a well established health risk from being overweight or obese.

Overweight best

The team tracked the number of deaths over 10 years among volunteers who were aged 70 - 75 at the start of the study.

It found that those with a BMI which classed them as overweight not only had the lowest overall risk of dying, they also had the lowest risk of dying from specific diseases: cardiovascular disease, cancer and chronic respiratory disease.

The overall death rate among the obese group was similar to that among those of normal weight.

But those who were very obese had a greater risk of dying during the 10 year period.

Lead researcher, Professor Leon Flicker said: "Concerns have been raised about encouraging apparently overweight older people to lose weight.

"Our study suggests that those people who survive to age 70 in reasonable health have a different set of risks and benefits associated with the amount of body fat to younger people."

The conclusion of this study, that being overweight may be less harmful for elderly people, corroborates the findings of previous research.

Staying still

Sedentary lifestyles shortened lives across all weight groups, doubling the risk of mortality for women over the period studied, and increasing it by 25% for men.

Physical exercise "really matters", said Professor Flicker.

As well as helping to build muscle mass, it has broader health benefits for elderly people, he said.

The authors believe BMI may give a poor reflection of fatty mass in elderly people.

"It may be time to review the BMI classification for older adults," says Professor Flicker.

Professor Kay-Tee Khaw from Cambridge University agreed, noting that optimal weight appears to be higher in older age groups.

"This is important since under-nutrition is an important problem in older people.

"Waist circumference, which assesses abdominal obesity, appears to be a better indicator of health consequences of obesity" she said.

Obituary: JD Salinger

The son of a well-to-do Jewish businessman and Scots-Irish mother, Jerome David Salinger was born in New York in 1919 and grew up in uptown Manhattan.

The relationship with his father was cold and his conflict about his being half-Jewish affected him deeply.

He began writing stories when he was thrust into the harsh world of a military academy at Valley Forge in rural Pennsylvania.

He had been sent there after dropping out of the exclusive McBurney School on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

JD Salinger enjoyed early success in the 1940s with the publication of numerous short stories in magazines, among them the New Yorker.

But when the United States entered World War II, Salinger, whose cynicism was a talking-point among his relatives, surprised them by his eagerness to join the Services.

'Catcher'

He worked in army counter-intelligence and the bloody fighting he witnessed at close quarters during the Normandy landing and in the Battle of the Bulge was to have a great impact on his life.

According to his daughter Peggy, he witnessed the horrors of the German concentration camps. He suffered something approaching a nervous breakdown and, while convalescing in France, he met and married a French doctor, but they were divorced after eight months.

When The Catcher In The Rye first appeared in 1951, chronicling 48 hours in the life of a teenage rebel, Holden Caulfield, as he wanders the streets of New York in a state of mental collapse, it enjoyed early, but modest success.

But within a few years, it had become a bible of teenage dissent in America and a staple of high school and freshman college English courses.

A study of adolescence -- at once tender and harshly honest -- it spoke for millions of young people who didn't want to be "phoney" in a commercial, materialistic world.

Caulfield became a cult figure comparable with James Dean, but it seems the novel also had an undesirable influence on Mark David Chapman, who said he killed John Lennon to promote Salinger's work, and the man who shot and wounded Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley.

Almost immediately after Catcher In The Rye was published, Salinger became disillusioned with publishing.

He hated interviews and contact with the public and in 1953, increasingly fed up with publishing and the public, he bought a house at Cornish, New Hampshire, and retreated into a seclusion that was to last for the rest of his life.

Court ruling

His subsequent books - only three more were published - were all best-sellers. Perhaps the most interesting was Franny and Zooey, but critics felt they all lacked the freshness and drive of Catcher.

No new Salinger fiction has appeared since 1965 and Salinger has done everything possible to try to thwart the efforts of biographers.

In 1987, the US Supreme Court upheld a claim by Salinger that his copyright had been violated by a critic of the The Sunday Times who drew on unpublished letters from Salinger for an unauthorised biography he published of him.

Throughout his life, Salinger befriended women younger than himself. He married Claire Douglas, aged 19, when he was 35 in 1954. They had two children and then divorced in 1967.

For nearly 30 years he lived with a woman called Colleen O'Neill (who may or may not have been his wife).

He called himself "a failed Zen Buddhist", walked about in a mechanic's blue uniform, and when he went to local restaurants, ate in the kitchen to avoid people.

Although many years have passed since the publication of any work by Salinger, friends and visitors to his home have revealed that he has a large safe containing at least 15 completed manuscripts.

It is thought they all feature the Glass family, about whom Salinger wrote in Franny and Zooey. It was thought that at Salinger's death, they could be published posthumously, or destroyed.

Some critics feel Salinger's attitude was best expressed in the opening lines of The Catcher In The Rye.

"If you really want to hear about it the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born. What my lousy childhood was like. And how my parents were occupied and all before they had me. And all that David Copperfield kind of crap. But I don't feel like going into it, if you really want to know the truth".

How to whip up the perfect frothy frog 'meringue' nest

Scientists have revealed how frogs perform the architectural feat of building floating foam nests.

These meringue-like structures, which help the amphibians protect their young, are renowned for their stability under the harshest of conditions.

Now, by filming Tungara frogs, researchers have found that they are built using a meticulously timed, three-stage construction process.

The research is published in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters.

The team says that knowing more about how the foam is created could help scientists create "bio-foams" for use in medical applications, such as treating injuries at the scenes of accidents.

Floating fortresses

Tungara frogs, like many frogs species, create foam nests to protect their young as they mature from eggs to tadpoles.

But while these floating refuges look delicate, as if they could collapse into the pond they sit upon at any moment, they are in fact remarkably sturdy.

The nests are surprisingly tough despite their delicate appearance

Malcolm Kennedy, an author of the paper, from the University of Glasgow, said: "These are exposed to full sunlight, high temperatures, all kinds of infections, including parasitic ones, and yet they survive for four days without any damage, until the tadpoles leave - or if there aren't any eggs, they'll last for two weeks.

"And unlike other foams, they do not damage the membranes of eggs and sperm. They are a remarkable biological material.

"But until now, we did not now quite how the frogs used these material and made the foams."

To find out more, the research team went to Trinidad in the West Indies to train their cameras on amorous pairs of Tungara frogs (Engystomops pustulous).

The Tungara frogs were caught on camera in Trinidad

By studying the footage, frame by frame, the researchers found that the small brown amphibians whipped up their nests in several phases.

Professor Kennedy explained: "In order to begin, the male sits on the back of the female, and puts his legs underneath her legs, to collect a foam-precursor fluid."

The male frog then begins to whip this up, mixing in air bubbles by vigorously kicking his legs. He does this in short bursts, gradually increasing this "mixing" duration each time.

"This overcomes some of the biophysical problems; if he mixes for too long in the beginning, then this would disperse the fluid and it wouldn't make a foam at all," said Professor Kennedy.

Like clockwork

In this first phase, this frothy bubble raft contains no eggs. But as the male moves on to stage two of construction, he gradually begins to blend in eggs, provided by the female, who is all the while sitting beneath him. He carefully manoeuvres the eggs into the centre of the foam.

As the male does this, the length of time that he spends mixing and resting remains exactly the same.

Professor Kennedy says: "They do this about 200 times - they are a bit like clockwork at this stage.

"Eventually they build this 'meringue'."

Finally, in the "termination stage", the frog starts to slow down; the period between each mixing session gradually increases until finally the nest is complete.

The team believes that understanding this nest building process could help us to create a similar foam in the laboratory.

Professor Kennedy said: "This material is resistant to bacterial and microbial damage - and if you could make a spray can that could produce this, it could potentially be used on burn victims, for example, because it would prevent them from infection, but it doesn't damage cells."