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Context High chronic exposure to inorganic arsenic in drinking water has been related to diabetes development, but the effect of exposure to low to moderate levels of inorganic arsenic on diabetes risk is unknown. In contrast, arsenobetaine, an organic arsenic compound derived from seafood intake, is considered nontoxic. Objective To investigate the association of arsenic exposure, as measured in urine, with the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in a representative sample of US adults. Design, Setting, and Participants Cross-sectional study in 788 adults aged 20 years or older who participated in the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and had urine arsenic determinations. Main Outcome Measure Prevalence of type 2 diabetes across intake of arsenic. Results The median urine levels of total arsenic, dimethylarsinate, and arsenobetaine were 7.1, 3.0, and 0.9 µg/L, respectively. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes was 7.7%. After adjustment for diabetes risk factors and markers of seafood intake, participants with type 2 diabetes had a 26% higher level of total arsenic (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.0%-56.0%) and a nonsignificant 10% higher level of dimethylarsinate (95% CI, –8.0% to 33.0%) than participants without type 2 diabetes, and levels of arsenobetaine were similar to those of participants without type 2 diabetes. After similar adjustment, the odds ratios for type 2 diabetes comparing participants at the 80th vs the 20th percentiles were 3.58 for the level of total arsenic (95% CI, 1.18-10.83), 1.57 for dimethylarsinate (95% CI, 0.89-2.76), and 0.69 for arsenobetaine (95% CI, 0.33-1.48). Conclusions After adjustment for biomarkers of seafood intake, total urine arsenic was associated with increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes. This finding supports the hypothesis that low levels of exposure to inorganic arsenic in drinking water, a widespread exposure worldwide, may play a role in diabetes prevalence. Prospective studies in populations exposed to a range of inorganic arsenic levels are needed to establish whether this association is causal.
Author Affiliations: Department of Environmental Health Sciences (Drs Navas-Acien and Silbergeld), and Department of Epidemiology, and Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research (Drs Navas-Acien and Guallar), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland; National Center for Epidemiology, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain, and CIBER en Epidemiología y Salud Pública, Madrid, Spain (Dr Pastor-Barriuso); Department of Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Population Genetics, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares, Madrid, Spain, and Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore (Dr Guallar).


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ocean-dwelling bacterium found in oysters and other shellfish kills its host’s cells by causing them to burst, providing the invader with a nutrient-rich meal, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.The bacterium, a relative of the one that causes cholera, co-opts and makes fatal a normal cell process that starving or stressed organisms use to disassemble and recycle expendable proteins into more vital metabolites.Called Vibrio parahaemolyticus, or V para for short, the bacterium is already a major cause of human illness and economic loss in Asia. It is dangerous primarily to people with liver disease or suppressed immune systems, although it can be killed by fully cooking shellfish, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.It caused major disease outbreaks in the northwest and northeast U.S. in the late 1990s and killed two people after Hurricane Katrina when tainted seawater entered open wounds, according to the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.“This pathogen has spread to all the oceans of the world, and is resistant to many antibiotics,” said Dr. Kim Orth, associate professor of molecular biology and senior author of a study appearing online this week and in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Dr. Orth said she became interested in V para after its DNA was sequenced by Japanese researchers. She saw similarities between some of V para’s genes and those encoded by an unrelated bacterium that causes plague, which she also studies.V para was already known to kill host cells but the molecular mechanisms were unclear, Dr. Orth said. However, the new study shows that V para physically contacts host cells and then injects molecules to trigger the protein breakdown process.Normally, this protein breakdown mechanism, called autophagy (pronounced “aw-TAH-fah-gee”) or “self-eating,” is tightly controlled by the cells.In the study, the researchers infected cultured human cells with V para and found that the cells very quickly showed signs of autophagy, such as forming distinctive small compartments that collect and transport proteins for disassembly.The cells also became rounded, probably from a collapse of their internal framework, and their outer membranes began leaking, the researchers found. The cells died within three hours.The researchers hypothesized that the invading V para scavenged nutrients from the dying cells to support their own proliferation.“No one has seen such a rapid triggering of autophagy before,” said Dr. Orth.“Treating the human cells with an autophagy inhibitor halted the protein breakdown process but did not save the cells, because V para uses other pathways by which to kill cells,” she said. “However, because it can kill by several routes, it’s important to understand all of them.”


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Researchers at Australia’s Monash University have come up with a nanoparticle coating that could make self-cleaning clothes a reality. The particles, made of anatase titanium dioxide, will coat fibers in wool and silk. Once the fabric is coated, you need to expose it to sunlight for a few hours for the particles start munching on errant spills as well as any harmful and smell-causing microorganisms and other dirt. The coating — still “quite a while” from being commercially available, the researchers say — is nontoxic and can be permanently bonded to the fiber, resisting laundering while keeping the cloth’s prized texture the same.
Not only will this new nanotechnology save you cash on unwearable clothes and laundry bills, it'll make you greener just by saving all those dry-cleaning chemicals that go who knows where. Other benefits include never losing a wool sock in the dryer again.

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