📰 Saora paintings travel from tribal homes to living rooms overseas
Traditional art of an indigenous community now offers livelihood to its talented artists
•Saora paintings, lately sought by art lovers for living rooms around the world, have their origin in the mud walls of aboriginal Lanjia Saora tribal homes in Odisha. Selling fast at tribal art fairs and handicraft outlets, painting lots are also exported regularly to Germany, France and the U.S. The paintings, which are pleasing to the eye and widely admired for their artistic excellence, now offer a sustainable source of livelihood.
•It is a remarkable transformation for the sacred art of a little-known community. Also called the hill Saoras, the community inhabits the remote ranges flanking the great Bansadhara river in southern Odisha.
•Talented artists from the community have clearly benefited from training and design interventions. “People waste no time in buying our paintings as soon as they are completed. Foreigners are showing special interest in our paintings,” says Sanjay Gamang, a 22-year-old Saora artist.
Idital and iditalmar s
•A Saora painting is called Idital and the person who creates it is known as theiditalmar . Interesting anecdotes are associated with their art practice. Iditals are sketched to appease Saora ancestors and deities that may have caused diseases faced by the iditalmar s or the villagers at large. In Saora society, a shaman is believed to be an intermediary between the worlds of the living and the dead. The iditalmar draws to instructions from the shaman .
•“An Iditalmar follows stringent sacred rituals by eating one meal a day for 10-15 days till the painting is completed. Before the painting is made, the wall is cleaned and smeared with locally available red soil, then rice paste is prepared as white colour for painting with bamboo sticks [instead of brushes],” says Purusottam Patnaik, researcher with the State-run Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Research and Training Institute (SCSTRTI), Bhubaneswar.
•Each painting has a rectangular frame, and features icons of deities, or those drawn from nature. It’s said that there are 64 artistic motifs that are drawn by the iditalmar s in a painting. Some frequently featured motifs include Labasum(the earth god), Jodisum (the village deity), Manduasum (the sun god) andJananglosum (the wind deity). Distinct paintings are drawn with different occasions between birth and death in mind.
•SCSRTI director A. B. Ota believes tribal cultures can be preserved if they are seen as livelihood options. He encouraged some changes that made Saora paintings easy to market.
Skills honed
•“We sent Saora youth to professional institutes like the B. K. School of Arts, where they honed their skill further, and the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) where they received inputs for modernising. Little changes were introduced, such as painting in different sizes and using acrylic colours for longevity,” said Dr. Ota. Saora paintings have also been embossed on tea cups and document folders.
•“While some changes were made to the paintings, we kept their essence intact and never interfered with their sacred beliefs,” he added.
•The agrarian Saoras have lived a quiet life in the lap of nature for centuries. The tribe finds mention in the Hindu epic Ramayana with Savari, Lord Ram’s devotee.
•Hardly any iditalmar remains unemployed. The artists are also hired by civic authorities to paint and beautify city walls. It takes a day to complete a 20x8 inch painting priced upwards of Rs. 700; the materials required to make it cost Rs. 100. Larger paintings are more expensive.
•Buoyed by their success in linking Saora paintings to the market, Odisha’s ST and SC Development, Minorities and Backward Classes Welfare Department is preparing other training modules. It wants to bring similar value to the Dongria Kondh shawl, Dokra relics, bamboo and paddy handicrafts, the tribal jewellery of Nilagiri, Koraput’s workmanship in iron, and the beed jewellery of the Bonda tribals.
📰 We don’t need no thought control
Today, in India, models of educational excellence that were adapted from the best universities in the world are under serious threat from the government
•There is a slightly lunatic argument that says that humanity reached the peak of civilisation at some point between the 1950s and today. This peak, the argument goes, was enjoyed by the more privileged countries (read: Western Europe, North America and Australasia) where wide sections of the population managed some semblance of equality, and a good quality of life to some degree in all its aspects — ample nutrition; good health care; human rights; freedom from war; scientific and artistic achievement; spiritual, but not necessarily religious, sustenance; and happiness.
Worse off or better off?
•Facts undercutting this notion jump like filings to a magnet. These were the same decades when there was widespread poverty in the rest of the world. Inequality continued from the colonial era and increased during this period. There were massive famines, supposedly ‘natural’ in Africa and man-made or Mao-made in China. There were endless wars and genocides — so what if they avoided touching a few pockets? This was when our hacking away at the fragile branch we sit on, the environment, reached critical proportions. Ergo, the seeming ‘happiness’ of the ‘North by Northwest’ was poisoned by the means by which they had achieved it.
•From another direction, the idea is shredded by the following contentions: apparently, as statistics tell us, never before has there been a lower percentage of humanity suffering starvation, malnutrition, or general poverty than today. Modern technology, especially computing and communication technology, has made it possible for more humans than ever before to access knowledge and information. Despite the dark manipulations exposed recently, never have the powerful controlling the world been forced to be more transparent. Even as humanity is hit by new diseases that are resistant to modern medication, we have defeated more diseases than ever before. Humans have a higher average of literacy and general education than ever before. Ergo, we are in a much better place now than at any time in the last 70 years, and that too because of several important ruptures from the 50 years that immediately followed the Second World War.
Revolution in education
•Whatever the merits of the argument, one phenomenon stands out when we look at the second half of the 20th century. Post the upheaval of the Second World War, there was, in North America and Western Europe, a huge revolution in education, especially in higher education. Through different routes, those from poorer economic backgrounds were able to access learning and knowledge for the first time. This wave had a seismic effect on the class structures in these societies. Part of the revolution, for it was exactly that, meant that not only was there a democratisation of knowledge but also an opening of debates on how and for what purposes these different kinds of knowledge should be used. The modern technologies (including modern medicine) from which we benefit today are a direct result of this phenomenon, but so are contemporary ideas of equality, of human rights, of racial equality, of the equality of women and men, of the need to protect the environment. The other direct beneficiaries of this education revolution were generations of young Indians who were welcomed with minimum obstacles into western universities. Whereas, earlier, studying abroad was an option available only to wealthy Indians, increasingly from the mid-1960s, young ‘middle-class’ English-speaking youngsters were able to make their way out of India and into the wider world.
Freedom and threats
•The college campuses these Indian youngsters landed in followed different models, whether it was a certain capitalist Ivy League model at MIT and Harvard, or one of the top medical schools, or a more public-funded template at an American liberal arts college, a British university, or a European one. Whatever the institution, the main thing required from all students was that they look their subject straight in the eye and study intelligently, mindfully, and hard. Their deans, departments and professors didn’t care about what they ate or about their religious or political views. There might have been some tacit need to ‘fit in’ in terms of clothes, food, etc., but no authority cared about the students’ personal lives or lifestyle choices. At higher levels of study it was entirely up to the student when they studied, whether they slacked off during the day or pulled all-nighters at the lab, week after week. What ultimately mattered was that the students could provide evidence that they had absorbed the required knowledge and the methods and techniques of processing further information in their chosen discipline. This was the even playing field (or, at least, far more even than before) on which every student played. The degrees students gained from these famous colleges were recognised and respected the world over because there was no corruption, nomilavat, in the education being delivered. In the best institutions there was no question of interference by a government, or of a political party being able to influence the syllabus or the ideology of a university.
•Today, in India, the models of educational excellence we’ve developed along the same principles are under serious threat from this government. It’s useful then to remember that the NRIs, home-based oligarchs, and many in the ruling party, who are now standing by and watching our best universities being hollowed out, have all benefited from the kind of education they are eager to deny today’s college students.
📰 India-China ties see a ‘Xiamen reboot’
Modi’s phone call to congratulate Chinese President Xi sets the tone for their June meeting
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s telephone call to Chinese President Xi Jinping after his election for a second term was part of the ‘Xiamen process’ — a calibrated effort to rebuild ties that had been jolted last year by the Doklam military stand-off.
•“It would be correct to call the energetic efforts to re-rail ties between India and China as the ‘Xiamen process’. After all it was at the sidelines of the Xiamen BRICS summit that Prime Minister Modi and President Xi decided to give a firm direction on re-building post-Doklam ties,” a highly placed source told The Hindu.
•The source said a decision had been taken to congratulate Mr. Xi after he was elected for a second presidential term.
•“Ultimately, it was the Prime Minister who decided to call President Xi on the phone to congratulate him personally.”
•Sources said the call by Mr. Modi has set the tone for his meeting with Mr. Xi at Qingdao — the venue of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in June. No other “informal” meeting between the two leaders is planned so far ahead of the SCO conclave.
•It is anticipated that the Qingdao meeting would further “change the narrative for the better”, and set the stage for a bilateral summit, possibly later in the year.
More high-level visits
•The step-by-step rebuilding of the post-Doklam ties began soon after the Xiamen summit, with the back-to-back visits to India in December by the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and of State Councillor and politburo member Yang Jiechi.
•Several high-level visits are now in the pipeline. China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan is to participate in the India-China Joint Economic Group meeting that Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu would host on Monday. It is likely that the larger fallout of the ongoing trade tensions between China and the U.S. would be part of the conversation.
•Other high-level engagements between the two governments include a visit by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj beginning April 23. A visit by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is also in the pipeline.
•The India-China strategic economic dialogue would be held in Beijing on April 13-14, between the NITI Ayog and the China’s top planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission.
📰 Cauvery panel may concede Karnataka demand
Water Resources Ministry’s note provides for more members
•A draft cabinet note detailing the structure of the Cauvery Management Board has been prepared by the Union Water Resources Ministry and is likely be circulated to other Ministries before being put up for clearance by the Union Cabinet.
•According to a person privy to the process, the Board may have “extra members” to accommodate representations from States such as Karnataka and Kerala, who have expressed concerns over the constitution of the board in the last month.
•The Cauvery Management Board, according to the 2007 order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, is to have three full-time and six part-time members, the latter including one from each of the riparian States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Union Territory of Puducherry.
•The Board to monitor the inflow of waters in the Cauvery basin and decide the quantum of water to be released to the States — will also have a Cauvery Water Regulation Committee to implement the Board’s decision. Karnataka has objected to the constitution of such a Board, saying the Supreme Court verdict only mentions a “scheme” and not a Board to take a call on matters of distribution.
📰 is euthanasia verdict tough to implement?
What does the judgment say?
•In a judgment on March 9, the Supreme Court said people suffering from a terminal illness had a right to a dignified death, as part of the right to life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. The judgment restricts itself to the withdrawal or withholding of life-support, which it refers to as “passive euthanasia.”
•But this phrase is obsolete in medical circles. A 2018 document from the Indian Council of Medical Research says ‘passive euthanasia’ is an inappropriate term because it suggests that the doctor is actively shortening the patient’s life with lethal drugs.
Why will it be hard to follow?
•Experts say the procedure laid down by the court for withdrawing life support is unduly complicated. “The procedure is frankly half-baked and confused,” says Roopkumar Gursahani, a neurologist at Mumbai’s PD Hinduja Hospital and a member of the team that framed the 2006 draft Bill on medical treatment of terminally ill patients.
•The court’s guidelines talk of an advance directive, a document in which a patient can specify conditions under which life-prolonging interventions should not be given. Such interventions could mean feeding tubes, ventilators, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or even antibiotics. The family of a terminally ill person can also refuse such treatment if an advance directive is not available.
•But the judgment makes the execution of advance directives too complicated for patients, says Dr. Gursahani. For example, the judgment requires the directive to be countersigned by a Judicial Magistrate of First Class, and copies to be given to the jurisdictional district court, the district judge and the local government. Dr. Gursahani worries that these authorities may drag their feet, leading to needless delays. “You are asking them to take on an additional responsibility, which they are not going to be willing to do,” he told The Hindu . Also, if a patient wants to execute the advance directive, two medical boards — one in the treating hospital and the other headed by the district medical officer — have to give the go-ahead.
•While safeguards are necessary to protect patients against vested interests, like illegal organ traders, a balance must be struck between the safety and usability of the law, says Dr. Gursahani. Instead of two medical boards, he suggests, it is enough if one team of medical consultants confirms the treating physician’s decision to withdraw life support. The decision must be well-documented, however, so that an ethics committee can study it later to confirm that due process was followed. “In principle, we accept the judgment,” he adds. “But the procedure they have suggested has to be fine-tuned by experts.”
•To avoid hiccups, Indian doctors will also need training to communicate end-of-life options better. Studies from the U.S. show that even patients who have made a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) request are sometimes given CPR because the emergency physician is not aware of the DNR. “This happens in a lot of cases and is painful for the patient,” says Ashish Goel, an associate professor at the University College of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Communication training is vital to avoid such misunderstandings.
Who may opt for it?
•Few estimates exist today for the number of Indians who seek withdrawal of life-support. A 2009 study in a Delhi hospital found that over half of the ICU patients who died during a period of 19 months sought withdrawal or withholding of life support.
•Dr. Gursahani says that in large tertiary hospitals like Hinduja, doctors receive 2-3 requests each week. For such patients, the judgment brings welcome legal clarity on a course of action.
•But the worry is that unless patients are counselled by palliative-care experts about how their illness will progress, they may not prepare advance directives to reject futile medical interventions. Anwar Husain, director of Kerala’s Institute of Palliative Medicine, says over 80% of palliative-care recipients die in homes or hospices, while those who do not receive palliative care end up in ICUs. As on today, India has poor palliative care systems. A 2015 Quality of Death Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which looked at palliative-care systems across 80 countries, rated India among the 15 worst.
📰 Dalit group seeks review of SC verdict
Seeks Ordinance to nullify the adverse ruling of the apex court
•A Dalit group here on Saturday sought a review of the Supreme Court judgment on March 20 diluting the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, while affirming that the court had not taken into account the high acquittal rate in the cases under the statute.
•The Centre for Dalit Rights (CDR) said the disposal rate of cases under the Act by the courts was low in recent years, while the atrocities against the Scheduled Caste communities had increased by 5.5% and those against tribal people by 4.7% in 2016. Only 23,408 cases among the 1.44 lakh instances of atrocities came for trial in the courts. CDR chief functionary and Supreme Court lawyer P.L. Mimroth said trial was completed only in 14,615 cases for the Scheduled Castes and 2,895 for the Scheduled Tribes during 2016. “At the end of the year, 89.6% of the cases for the Scheduled Castes and 87.1% for the Scheduled Tribes remained pending trial,” he said. The CDR demanded that the Centre take steps to file a review petition in the Supreme Court.
📰 Choosing the right surgery
Lack of awareness and training about cervical cancers is the primary reason for suboptimal surgeries
•Nearly 10% of women suffering from cervical cancers and advised hysterectomies are undergoing sub-optimal surgeries. Experts warn that simple hysterectomies (removing the uterus) not only affect disease control in the long run but also cut the overall life expectancy of these patients. They cite two main reasons: one, cervical cancers require radical surgeries that involve removing the uterus along with the surrounding tissue, ligaments that connect the pelvic bone, a part of the vagina and the lymph nodes. Two, patients who have large tumours are not the right candidates for surgery.
•“Many doctors are not diagnosing cervical tumours as cancers. They treat them as benign growths,” says Dr. Amita Maheshwari, gynaecological oncologist with India’s largest cancer hospital, the Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), Mumbai. “Due to the mis-diagnosis, they suggest a uterus removal surgery. While uterus removal may be the right approach for benign tumours, it is not adequate from the cancer point of view,” she adds, explaining that cervical cancers need radical surgery as the disease may have spread in the areas around the tumour. “In any kind of cancer surgery, the tumour is removed along with the margins. One has to have an adequate margin as there are chances of a microscopic or lymphatic spread of the disease which cannot be seen.” She says that when doctors carry out suboptimal surgeries, they leave this margin in the body, and thus the diseased cells too. The margin that cancer surgeons remove in cervical cancers consists of the tissue, ligament, 2-3 cm of the upper regions of the vagina and lymph nodes. Second, in larger cervical cancer tumours that are more than 4 cm, experts rule out the need for surgery altogether as a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy has shown an improved survival rate. When patients have their uterus removed and then turn up for cancer treatment, it is less effective.
•“For such patients, we have to offer radiation and chemotherapy. Besides the external radiation, we also offer internal radiation which is known as brachytherapy. It is most effective in cervical cancers. However, in the absence of a uterus, we have no place to put our highly-active radiation source,” says Dr. Supriya Chopra, professor of radiation oncology at TMH, adding that in such cases, patients require advanced brachytherapy. In India, there are only about 20 centres that offer this.
•Annually, the TMH gets nearly 1,300 cervical cancer patients of whom 10% have been treated suboptimally. Experts say that these patients first land up at a gynaecologist. It is most likely that some gynaecologists are not trained in cancer surgeries and therefore do not carry out a detailed pelvic examination. Cancer experts say that a trained hand may be able to suspect a cancer growth during a clinical examination. “But the best thing is to opt for a pap smear test and if something is seen in it, a biopsy should be advised to prevent inadvertent surgeries,” says Dr. Maheshwari.
•A pap smear is a screening procedure for cervical cancer that detects precancerous or cancer cells on the cervix, which is the uterus opening. Cervical cancer affects more than 1.3 lakh women every year and a majority of them seek medical help at an advanced stage. Nearly 67,000 women die due to the disease annually.
Seeking expert advice
•Dr. Suchitra Pandit, a former president of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI), says that gynaecologists should always seek expert help from the oncology department when they are presented with such cases. “Some gynaecologists may be trained in carrying out cancer surgeries but those who don’t have the expertise should not attempt it without being sure of the diagnosis,” she says.
•Experts say that a lack of awareness and training about cervical cancers is the primary reason for suboptimal surgeries. To a certain extent, the profiteering attitude among some doctors can also be blamed for hysterectomies. A 2008 study in the European Journal of Gynaecological Oncology , titled “Tragic results of suboptimal gynaecologic cancer operations”, laid emphasis on postgraduate fellowship programmes to extend the surgical experience and expertise of general gynaecologists in developing and undeveloped countries. “If a gynaecologist does not have enough experience or expertise about gynaecological cancer operations, he or she must consider the possible harm that any surgical intervention might do, and should refer patients to a gynaecological oncology centre without performing any surgery,” the study said.
📰 A fourth of Indian TB patients are drug resistant
National survey shows Uttar Pradesh has highest number of cases
•The first-ever survey of drug-resistant (DR) tuberculosis (TB) has found that over a quarter of patients in India could be resistant to one or more drugs that can cure them. India is home to 2.8 million TB patients, the largest in the world.
•On Saturday, the Union Health Ministry released the National Anti-TB Drug Resistance Survey report where it shows that India is home to 2,666 cases of extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB, which is being infected by the deadliest strain of the airborne disease and resistant to all known medicines. Among the 4,958 patients on whom drug susceptibility testing (DST) was conducted (necessary to find out if a person has drug resistant TB), 28% had resistance to one or the other anti-TB drug, while 6.19% had multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB.
•“The bad news is that resistance to any TB drug (i.e. any first- or second-line) among all TB patients was 28%. In other words, over a quarter of Indian patients carry TB bacteria that are resistant to at least one anti-TB medication. This puts them at high risk of acquiring resistance to additional TB drugs if quality of TB treatment is not good,” says Dr. Madhukar Pai, Associate Director at the McGill International TB Centre, Montreal, Canada.
•In 2017, India re-estimated its national TB burden to reflect 2.8 million cases out of total 10 million global cases; of these 1,47,00 are MDR. According to the new data, last year alone, 1.8 million TB cases were reported in India, out of which 38,605 cases were MDR-TB and a further 2,666 were XDR. The country reported 423,000 TB deaths in 2017.
•The new data also confirm what experts have long suspected: India’s crowded mega-cities provide a perfect breeding ground for the airborne infection to spread. With 879 XDR patients, Maharashtra has the highest number of such patients. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of cases of drug-resistant TB (9,138); 619 of these are XDR. In addition, the new data show that nearly 3% of new patients and nearly 12% of previously treated patients have MDR-TB.
No private sector data
•While this is the largest study of its kind, the survey does not reveal the national burden of DR-TB as it does not include data from patients being treated in the private sector. The survey was done at designated microscopy centres (DMCs) within the laboratory network of the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), and provides a conservative estimate of India’s actual disease burden. “It is important to note that patients in the Indian survey were sampled only from RNTCP centres, and not the private sector. Since over half of all TB patients are managed in the private sector, we are still not getting a ‘national’ perspective. We know [that the] quality of TB care is quite poor in the private sector, and I suspect DR-TB rates are probably higher in the private and informal sectors. Hopefully, the next DRS can sample patients in the private sector,” Dr. Pai says.
•For better cooperation from the private sector, the government, on Thursday, announced that doctors and pharmacists could be jailed for up to two years for failing to report new cases. The report comes as the government has prioritised identification of new cases. Dr. B.D. Athani, Director General Health Services says, “Currently, TB incidence is declining by 1.2% per year and to achieve the TB elimination goal by 2025, we need to have a decline in TB incidence by 15-20% annually.”
•India has set itself the target of eliminating TB by 2025, five years ahead of the global target set under the Sustainable Development Goals. To reach the ‘elimination’ target, the country will have to restrict new infections to less than one case per 100,000 people as against the current rate of 211 new infections per 100,000 people.
📰 Reaching the unreached
•The government recently passed a gazette notification making the non-reporting of tuberculosis (TB) cases a punishable offence, with even a jail term of up to two years. The move comes against the backdrop of the Prime Minister’s call to end TB in India by 2025, ushering in a ‘mission mode’ approach to defeat the disease.
Under-reporting
•Even though the government made the notification of TB cases mandatory by all health-care providers in 2012, the TB programme continues to face the challenge of under-reporting of cases from the private sector, which caters to a majority of cases. A study in The Lancet in 2016 estimated that as many as 22 lakh cases of TB were treated in the private sector in 2014; in the public sector, the figure was 14 lakh. Despite efforts in the past decade to encourage higher case notifications, the private sector reported just over three lakh cases in 2016. Going by The Lancet ’s estimates, almost 19 lakh cases are still ‘missing’, a term used to define the gap between the estimated cases in the private sector and those reported to the government.
•Now the question is this: what is the harm if a patient is not reported to the government and is being diagnosed and treated in the private sector? The answer may lie in the complex nature of the disease itself and the mostly unregulated nature of dealing with TB in the private sector. First, not being reported to the government means the true burden of the disease remains unknown. What cannot be measured, therefore, cannot be improved upon. Second, the absence of drug distribution controls and poor treatment practices accentuate the emergence of drug-resistant TB. Anti-TB drugs are widely available without prescription at numerous pharmacy outlets. Also, limited usage of the Standards for TB Care in India (STCI), which are the standard protocols to be adhered by providers, leads to incorrect diagnosis and improper treatment. This in turn delays the commencement of treatment and can even contribute to drug resistance. Finally, TB is five times more common among the economically weaker sections of society and the disease can have devastating financial and social consequences. In order to address these issues, the government has proposed innovative measures which include a ‘direct benefit transfer’ for nutritional support and free diagnosis and treatment, particularly to patients being treated in the private sector. However, the first step in extending these support systems to all patients would be to correctly identify them. It is here that the notification law can play a major role. (Considering how it has become quite common for people to go to chemists to seek easy over-the-counter treatment, involving chemist shops in the notification process was important, as was the inclusion of promoting self-notification.)
Using Nikshay
•While the step to encourage greater notifications is commendable, it is vital to streamline and simplify the reporting process. A web-based application called ‘Nikshay’ was launched in 2012 to help providers notify cases to the authorities. However, low awareness about this portal among private providers and technical difficulties in the software resulted in its low use. Considering that punitive action can be taken against providers for not reporting cases, it is imperative that the reporting process itself becomes more accessible.
•Moreover, it is important that private providers are actively engaged for better adherence to the STCI. While the notification law can improve case reporting, it doesn’t guarantee improved standards of care. In the past few years, several private sector engagement models that have been implemented in the country have significantly improved the quality of care. By assessing their feasibility, similar models need to be scaled up across the country. Collaboration with forums such as the Indian Medical Association should also be explored.
•Thus, the notification policy, supplemented by the comprehensive strengthening of the public health system, greater engagement with the private sector, the simplification of the reporting process and more awareness among public and health-care providers, is sure to reach the goal of a TB-free India.
📰 IIT Guwahati develops silk scaffold for bone regeneration
With trials on rabbit models showing promise, the next tests will be on larger animals
•A scaffold made of silk composite functionalised with copper-doped bioactive glass to facilitate faster bone regeneration has been developed by researchers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. The scaffold seeded with stem cells was found to differentiate into bone cells, facilitate growth of blood vessels and successfully integrate the newly formed bone cells with the native bone.
•The researchers were able to replicate the results in rabbits using functionalised non-mulberry silk composite. Rabbits with scaffolds implanted at the site of bone injury showed successful growth of bone cells and integration with the native bone at the end of three months.
•Commercially available synthetic grafts have a failure rate of about 25% and 30-60% complication rates. This is due to slower bonding with native bone and poor blood vessel growth.
•The team led by Prof. Biman Mandal from the Department of Bioscience and Bioengineering at IIT Guwahati developed the silk composite by adding chopped silk fibre to liquid silk. Unlike pure silk, the silk composite has greater strength. The addition of bioglass further enhanced the strength of the composite.
•Besides other kinds, both mulberry and non-mulberry silk composites were tested. The non-mulberry silk composite was found to be superior in all respects. The RGD sequence in non-mulberry silk is a cell binding site and helps in better cell attachment and proliferation. As a result, more stem cells get attached to the composite leading to better bone tissue formation with time.
Suitably rough
•Besides enhancing the strength of the composite, the minerals from the bioglass gets deposited on the composite making it rougher. “Bone cells prefer rough surfaces and the scaffold mimics the native bone surface architecture,” says Prof. Mandal. Bioglass also helps in stem differentiation. “We found stem cells differentiating into bone cells with the formation of extracellular matrix similar to natural bone,” he says.
Doped copper
•The doped copper plays a crucial role in stabilising the gene responsible for blood vessel formation. The gene, in turn, regulates the downstream angiogenesic factors thus helping blood vessel formation.
•Copper also plays a role in attracting endothelial cells (which forms the inner lining of blood vessels) present nearby to the bone defect site making blood vessel formation possible.
•The mulberry silk composite degrades and gets desorbed by the body at a faster rate than the non-mulberry silk. The rate of silk composite degradation should match the rate of new tissue formation else the bone that forms will tend to be weaker. “The non-mulberry silk material will be replaced completely in a few years. Since bone healing is slow, the silk material should not degrade quickly,” Prof. Mandal says.
•The researchers tested the potential of the composites in repairing bone defects in rabbits and found more than 80% bone formation at the end of 30 days. “In the rabbits, the scaffolds promoted new bone tissue formation and growth of blood vessels. The resorbable nature of the scaffolds enabled them to degrade inside the body while being replaced with viable bone tissue in the small focal sized bone defects. No remnants of the scaffold were seen,” says Joseph Christakiran Moses from the institute’s Department of Bioscience and Bioengineering and first author of a paper published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.
•“The results from rabbit models are very promising. We would like to undertake trials on larger animals such as sheep and goat,” says Prof. Mandal. “Since we use green methodology, the prospects of regulatory clearance are brighter.”
📰 Nanomotors for targeted cancer therapy
These nanomotors can be used to kill cancer cells
•Research on nanomotors for various medical applications is an emerging field in nanoscience and researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have had a measure of success.
•The researchers have developed a new type of zinc-ferrite–coated magnetic nanomotors that are highly stable and can generate localised heating to kill cancerous cells. The results were published in Nanoscale.
Just 3 microns
•Measuring just about 3 microns in size, the magnetic nanomotors can be manoeuvred in different biological environments like blood, tissue etc using rotating magnetic fields of less than hundred Gauss (safe level for human beings) and targeted to the area of interest in the body. They are popular due to their non-invasive nature and the absence of the need for chemical fuel to propel them.
•“We can inject these ferric nanomotors directly into the tumour or guide them to the area of interest using magnetic fields,” says Lekshmy Venugopalan, Research Associate at IISc’s Centre for Nano Science and Engineering and first author of the paper.
•Hyperthermia experiments were carried out using these nanomotors on human cervical cancer cells in the lab. “On applying the appropriate magnetic field and frequency for about 20 minutes the temperature rises by 7-8 degrees Celsius — the window of cell death. The generated heat was high enough to kill the cancerous cells,” adds Lekshmy. Nanomotors of 2 mg/ml caused about 50% cell death in 20 minutes. “The nanomotors are biocompatible and in vivo studies are being carried out to understand how it will be processed in the body.”
•“The current limitations of cancer therapies including inaccessible locations in the body and drug resistant tumours could be overcome with such tiny heat-generating motors irrespective of the type of cancer,” says Shilpee Jain, DST INSPIRE faculty fellow at the institute and co-author of the paper.
Shows potential
•Silicon dioxide forms the backbone of these nanomotors and magnetic material such as iron is deposited on top of it. The zinc ferrite coating is then applied to provide multifunctional properties such as enhanced physical and chemical stabilities, and magnetic hyperthermia potential.
•“These new developments have sorted out some long-standing technological issues like agglomeration of the nanomotors,” says Ambarish Ghosh, corresponding author of the paper. “Future research in this area would be directed towards in vivo experiments. More studies on combining drug release with magnetic hyperthermia need to be carried out.
•“The targeted therapy could have great implications for cancer therapeutics.”
📰 Bizarre ‘alien’ skeleton was of human foetus: study
•A six-inch skeleton discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert belongs to a human foetus, and does not have extraterrestrial origins, scientists say. After five years of deep genomic analysis, researchers from the Stanford University and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the US have pinpointed the mutations responsible for the anomalous specimen. They found mutations in not one but several genes known to govern bone development, researchers said.
•The skeleton, nicknamed Ata, was discovered more than a decade ago in an abandoned town in the Atacama Desert of Chile. After trading hands and eventually finding a permanent home in Spain, the mummified specimen started to garner public attention. Standing just six inches tall with an angular, elongated skull and sunken, slanted eye sockets, the internet began to bubble with other-worldly hullabaloo and talk of ET, said Sanchita Bhattacharya from UCSF, the lead author of the study published in the journal Genome Research.
•After sequencing Ata’s genome, researchers found mutations in seven genes that separately or in combinations contribute to various bone deformities, facial malformations or skeletal dysplasia. The analysis pointed to a decisive conclusion: This was the skeleton of a human female, likely a foetus, that had suffered severe genetic mutations.
•Nolan noted that 8% of the DNA was unmatchable with human DNA, but that was due to a degraded sample, not extraterrestrial biology. Later, a more sophisticated analysis was able to match up to 98% of the DNA, he said.
📰 Do Olive Ridley turtles reach the Odisha coast using magnetic power?
New research looks at what kind of global positioning system (GPS) these turtles have, to do this year after year
•One of the magnificent sights to behold in India is the arrival and nesting of tens of thousands of Olive Ridley turtles on the Gahirmatha seashore of Odisha every year as clockwork. They traverse thousands of kilometres northwards on the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka, land, nest and produce baby turtles, and after a while, return. The temperature, the season, the natural environmental resources all fit perfectly for this grand continuity of life.
Built in GPS
•What kind of global positioning system (GPS) do these turtles have, allowing them to do this year after year? The details of the answer are yet to be worked out. There are two major theories that attempt to address this issue. They both use the fact that Mother earth is a huge magnet, with well-defined North and South poles, a magnetic axis and with an intensity or strength that varies systematically across the surface. Turtles appear to use this cue to move and position themselves for this vast journey. Towards this, it is claimed that each turtle itself is a tiny magnet.
•Turtles are but one example. Other marine animals such as a variety of fish and lobsters, birds, bees, bats and even mammals such as dogs and some primates seem to have such a built-in compass. (Apparently dogs position themselves north to south as they urinate or defecate!). It appears that all but humans have such a compass, or what is technically described as geo-magneto-reception.
•What then are the two theories? One, suggested by two veterans in the field, Joseph Kirschvink of Caltech and Kenneth Lohmann of the University of North Carolina, argues that these animals have tiny magnets in their bodies. This magnet arises due to the presence of a material called magnetite (an iron-based mineral containing Fe3O4).These two groups have been systematically looking for magnetites in fish (such as the zebrafish - the favourite of experimental biologists), turtles, birds and so forth. (See, for example, the review “Geomagnetic imprinting: a unifying hypothesis of long-distance natal homing in salmon and sea turtles” by KJ Lohmann, NF Putman and MF Lohmann, PNAS (US) 105: 19096, 2008, and “Birds, bees and magnetism: a new look at the problem of magnetoreception” by J. Kirschvink, in Trends in Neurosciences, 5: 160, 1982).
Biochemical approach
•At about the same time, the group led by Prof. Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois, has been pursuing and pushing a more biochemical approach to magnetoreception. They suggest that the key molecule here is a protein called cryptochrome, which is found in the retina of the eye.
•This protein has a long evolutionary history, found not only in plants, but also in fish, turtles, amphibians, birds and animals (humans too). Schulten points out that when blue light falls on this proteins, a pair of free radicals are generated, which do not quench each other (as free radicals normally do) but form an ‘entangled pair’, which generates a tiny magnetic piece. And it is this tiny molecular compass that aligns and interact with the earth’s magnetic field, leading to the movement of the animal (see “Cryptochrome and magnetic sensing- animal magnetoreception”, in <ks.uiuc.edu>).
•Which of the two is right, or do they work in tandem? Some answer to this has come from a recent paper by the group of Dr. Gil G. Westmeyer of the Technical University of Munich, Germany, which has appeared in Nature Communicationslast month ( Nature Communications | (2018) 9:802). Using zebrafish and another fish called medaka, they shone blue light on the fish and found that they responded as predicted by Schulten. However, even when they shone not blue or visible radiation at all, but infrared,wavelengths, the fish still responded the same way. This suggested that there are alternate or additional mechanisms available (suggesting that Kirschvink too may have a point). Clearly more work needs to be done, using not zebrafish and medaka alone, but birds, and animals too.
•Given that Olive Ridley turtles are available, and a good summary about them is available from the Wild Life Institute of India, and even some aspects of their DNA have been studied, it will be well worth some researchers from India to study their magnetoreception behaviour both by examining their magnetite content on one hand and crypotchrome activities on the other. This would add to our understanding of the basis of their magnetoreception, a field that waits to be investigated at greater depth.
•There is still this question of whether we humans are magnetoreceptive, too. Do we have magnetite in our bodies? While some have claimed that we do, others have questioned whether they came to us through biological inheritance (biogenic) or we have accumulated it thanks to atmospheric pollution (which is rich not only in oxides of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and oxygen itself, but also from soot, flyash and other sources which contain iron in them; or ‘anthropogenic’. Studying human populations from tribes and areas where such pollution levels are nil, or at least the lowest would be useful. On the other hand, we do have two versions of cryptochrome in our body (Cry1 and Cry2). Their photo-magnetic properties will also be of interest. Here is another research theme that should be pursued.
