World Heart Day is being observed on September 29 and this year's focus is on cardiovascular disease prevention among women and children. Although poverty, malaria, AIDS and chronic diseases account for more than 53 per cent of all deaths, with people moving up the socio-economic ladder, lifestyle diseases have also emerged as a major killer, and heart disease is one of the main lifestyle diseases.

Each year CVDs kill over 8.6 million women globally. This figure is more than the total number of women who die from all cancers, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. This alarming figure has made WHO focus on CVDs among women by running the Go Red for Women Campaign to improve women's knowledge of heart disease and stroke. Improved knowledge will help them take action and achieve longer, better heart-healthy lives. 

Remember that heart disease and stroke do not affect only men or older and rich populations. CVDs affect as many women as men. Unfortunately , women's risk is grossly underestimated. You will be surprised to know that heart disease is actually the number one killer of women. It accounts for 1 in 3 female deaths. Shocking, but true it is. In this scenario it is vital that women learn the truth about their CVD risk and take action to protect themselves and their family.

Even children are vulnerable . The risk for CVDs can begin during foetal development, and increase further during childhood with exposure to unhealthy diet, lack of exercise and smoking. Modern materialistic society is exposing children to risk factors such as diets high in "bad" fats and sugar. 

Today's children are comfortable with activities such as playing computer games and watching TV programmes. They avoid physical activity. In some countries they also take up tobacco consumption at very early age or are exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke. All these are making them vulnerable to CVDs.

You must know that the heart is a muscular pump in the chest. It must beat continuously to send blood to the lungs and the rest of the body. Simply put, when the arteries get clogged with bad cholesterol, plaque, scar tissue, or calcium, the heart slows down and finds it difficult to circulate blood. This slowing down leads to problems from chest pain to heart failure to a heart attack.

Chest pain is the first symptom of a heart attack. This is brought on by exertion. And you can relieve it by taking rest. The major symptoms of a heart attack are intense chest pain, sudden cold, sweating, weakness and nausea. This is confirmed by electrocardiography, angiography and also x-ray .  

One invites CVDs through tobacco use, alcohol use, high blood pressure which is also called hypertension, high cholesterol , obesity, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets. The factors like high blood pressure and cholesterol, family history, cigarette smoking, diabetes are well known. In addition there are congenital risks. In this category people are born with these problems like imperfect heart valves and genetic problems that promote hardening of the arteries.  
 Once the problem is identified you must go in for intensive follow up which may lead to lifestyle modification, appropriate medication, exercise therapies and diet control. These can be accomplished with a combination of individual as well as group therapies.

Swiss scientists have discovered that a natural product secreted by a soil bacterium may offer a new cure for drug-resistant tuberculosis.


Researchers from Switzerland found that pyridomycin, a natural antibiotic produced by the bacterium Dactylosporangium fulvum is active against many of the drug-resistant types of the tuberculosis bacterium that no longer respond to treatment with the front-line drug isoniazid.

“Nature and evolution have equipped some bacteria with potent defense mechanisms to protect them against other bugs that share their habitat. Screening natural products generated by these organisms is therefore a powerful way to find possible new drugs to fight infectious diseases,” Stewart Cole, lead author of the study, said.

“Using this approach we have shown that nature's antibiotic pyridomycin is a very selective killer of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis in humans. It is also active against mycobacteria that have developed resistance to front-line drug treatments such as isoniazid,” Cole said.
The researchers also identified a protein, the enzyme NADH-dependent enoyl(acyl carrier protein) reductase or InhA, which is the principal target for the antibiotic.

“By selecting and isolating M tuberculosis mutants resistant to pyridomycin and sequencing their genome we have found that a single gene named inhA is responsible for resistance to this natural product,” added Cole.
The gene inhA is needed to produce the InhA protein, which is already known as a target for tuberculosis drug isoniazid.

It turns out that pyridomycin can bind to the same pocket on the InhA enzyme as isoniazid but at a different site and in a way that involves a different sequence of molecular events.