SCOPH
TIMES For the times we live in.
Gold can treat cancer , it`s possible..
The Egyptian Prof. Mostafa El-Sayed 2016 Priestley Medal winner
IN YOUR COMPLETE SPRING NEWSPAPER
Why Are More Young People Having Heart Attacks?
Depression You are not alone! College is an exciting time, but it can also be very challenging.
Multiple Sclerosis When your nerves also don’t work as they should to help you move and feel.
Are you getting enough sleep ? 35% of Adults are not getting enough sleep...
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In A study, researchers looked at data from about 2,100 heart attack patients age 50 and younger who were admitted to one of two large hospitals between 2000 and 2016. Overall, about 1 in 5 patients, or 20 percent, were 40 or younger. But for the last 10 years of the study, the proportion of patients 40 and younger increased by about 2 percent each year, the researchers said. In addition, patients 40 and younger were just as likely to die after their heart attack as those ages 41 to 50, meaning that a younger age isn't necessarily protective after a heart attack. The heart muscle requires a constant supply of oxygen-rich blood to nourish it. The coronary arteries provide the heart with this
critical blood supply. If you have coronary artery disease, those arteries become narrow and blood cannot flow as well as they should. Fatty matter, calcium, proteins, and inflammatory cells build up within the arteries to form plaques of different sizes. The plaque deposits are hard on the outside and soft and mushy on the inside. When the plaque is hard, the outer shell cracks (plaque rupture), platelets (disc-shaped particles in the blood that aid clotting) come to the area, and blood clots form around the plaque. If a blood clot totally blocks the artery, the heart muscle becomes "starved" for oxygen. Within a short time, death of heart muscle cells occurs, causing permanent damage. This is a heart attack. Read more page 7
M.U.S.T. Medical Students’ Association “MMSA”,The recognized translation in Arabic is اﻟﺠﻤﻌﯿﺔ اﻟﻌﻠﻤﯿﺔ ﻟﻄﻼب اﻟﻄﺐ ﻓﻲ ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﻣﺼﺮ ﻟﻠﻌﻠﻮم واﻟﺘﻜﻨﻮﻟﻮﺟﯿﺎ MMSA was Founded 2011. MMSA is officially recognized as a scientific association by the administration of the Faculty of Medicine – Misr University for Science and Technology. MMSA does not belong to a Students’ Union or follow its activities by any means. MMSA is a member of the International Federation for Medical Students’ Associations – Egypt (IFMSA-Egypt), which is a member of the International Federation for Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA).
Our Mission MMSA plays an active role in the community via awareness campaigns and properly informing people about the health services and their rights to ensure that future physicians treat all their patients with equality, improving Doctor-Patient Relationships.
Our Vision MMSA aims to increasing the knowledge of medical students to help them become better physicians, to improve the quality of medical education via workshops, clinical trainings, conferences and peer to peer education.
SCOPH NEWSPAPER TEAM 2018-2019
Hamdy Shaheen Local Public Health Officer
Esraa Alaa LPO Assistant
Esraa Malek Designer and Editor Ahmed Dorrah Newspaper Coordinator
Ahmed Hamdy writing and Research
Merna Awaad Writing and Research
Nirmeen Sha'arawy Proofreading
Mohamed Nabhan Writing and Research
Winter Edition
March 2019
SCOPH Times
You aren`t alone !
DEPRESSION
Feeling moody, sad, or grouchy? Who doesn’t once in a while? College is an exciting time, but it can also be very challenging. As a college student, you might be leaving home for the first time, learning to live independently, taking tough classes, meeting new people, and getting a lot less sleep.
“When you don`t have any interest in thinking about the future, because you don`t feel that there is going to be any future” what are different types of depression?
Major depression—having symptoms of depression for at least 2 weeks that interfere with your ability to work, sleep, study and enjoy life.
Persistent depressive disorder —having symptoms of depression But if you have been feeling sad, hopeless, or irritable for at that last for at least 2 years. A person least 2 weeks, you might have diagnosed with this form of depression. You’re not alone. depression may have episodes of major depression along with periods Depression is the most common health problem for col- of less severe symptoms. lege students. "I can remember it started with a loss of interest in basically everything that I like doing. I just didn't feel like doing anything. I just felt like giving up. Sometimes I didn't even want to get out of bed. Rene R., medical student
Perinatal Depression —during pregnancy or after delivery (postpartum depression). Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): SAD is a type of depression that comes and goes with the seasons, typically starting in the late fall and early winter and going away during the spring and summer.
What is depression? What are signs and symptoms of Depression is a medical illness depression? with many symptoms. Sadness is only a small part of depression. Some people with depression may not feel sadness at all, but be more irritable, or just lose interest in things they usually like to do. Depression interferes with your daily life and normal function.
•Feelings
mism
of hopelessness, pessi-
•Feelings
of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness •Loss
of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities •Decreased
energy, fatigue, being “slowed down” •Difficulty
sleeping, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping •Appetite
changes
and/or unwanted weight
•Thoughts
of death or suicide; suicide attempts Not everyone who is depressed experiences every symptom. Some people experience only a few symptoms. Some people have many. "Your tendency is just to wait it out, you know, let it get better. You don't want to go to the doctor. You don't want to admit to how bad you're really feeling." Paul Gottlieb, publisher
How exercise improves depressed mood?
If you have been experiencing any of the following signs and symptoms nearly every day for at least 2 weeks, The beneficial mood-elevating you may have depression: effects of exercise are probably related to short-term transient •Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” responsesin the brain immediatemood ly following exercise, as well as long-term changes . -3-
Winter Edition
March 2019
SCOPH Times
Scientists Closer to Identifying the Cause of MS
Findings suggest that both the immediate and long-term beneficial effects of exercise on mood are mediated by multiple factors that increase brain levels of endorphins, dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, promote the development of new neurons in the brain (i.e. neurogenesis), reduce oxidative stress, and enhance immune functioning. In addition, regular exercise also enhances self-sufficiency and ensures positive social interactions with other people. Finally, regular exercise has been shown to improve sleep quality in individuals who do not respond to antidepressants.
Mood enhancing benefits of regular exercise Findings of controlled trials and systematic reviews report consistent mood-enhancing effects of regular exercise. Individuals who are less sedentary have a reduced risk of depressed mood. Both aerobic exercise and strengthening exercises are believed to be equally efficacious. The optimum duration and frequency of exercise needed to improve depressed mood have not yet been determined but probably vary with age and conditioning. Regular aerobic exercise may improve cognitive functioning in chronically depressed individuals who often experience difficulties with thinking and memory.
It's looking more and more like MS strikes when infectious, genetic, and immune factors gang up to eventually impair the function of neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Researchers are hoping to better understand this network of influences to develop more effective ways to treat MS, and perhaps prevent it in the first place. In the MS-free brain, electrical impulses zip down nerve fibers called axons, causing the release of neurotransmitters. In many regions of the brain, those axons are encased in an insulating jacket of protein and fat called myelin, which increases the speed at which electrical nerve impulses travel. In MS, myelin breaks down and scars; it becomes "sclerotic" and degrades nerve function. There is certainly a genetic component at work: The risk of developing MS is 1 in 1000 in the general population; it rises to around 1 in 4 in identical twins in which one twin is affected. Research in animals and humans supports the idea that MS develops when T cells attack specific proteins in myelin, making the axons less able to conduct electrical impulses efficiently. -4-
The immune siege appears to be a result of something called "molecular mimicry." Normally, the body's immune system attacks foreign invaders like viruses and bacteria. If a molecule that's part of the body happens to closely resemble a portion of an intruding microbe, then both molecules can be targeted. "The idea of molecular mimicry is one of the most important ones in MS, We and others have shown that mimicry between myelin peptides and viral and bacterial peptides indeed exists". Dr Roland Martin Martin and his colleagues examined protein samples from the brains of 31 people who had died from suspected or confirmed MS. T cells from 12 people reacted to the enzyme guanosine diphosphate-L-fucose synthase, or GDP-L-fucose-synthase.The enzyme is normally involved in processing sugars essential to cellular function and communication, including that of neurons.
Winter Edition
March 2019
SCOPH Times
Gold can treat cancer! It’s possible...
Whoever said, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future,” probably did not have Mostafa A. El-Sayed in mind, but the half-dozen or so people credited with coining that witty aphorism might as well have been referring to El-Sayed.
The boys filled a metal barrel with water, sealed it tightly, and lit a fire underneath. “We were trying to make a lot of steam—hoping the barrel would fly away,” El-Sayed recalls with a hardy laugh.The boys did make plenty of steam, but the lid blew off and boiling water sprayed everywhere. Luckily no one was scalded.
Judging from his days as a youngster growing up in Egypt in the 1930s and ’40s, the bright-blue-eyed young El-Sayed might not have been an obvious pick to one day become the director of Georgia Institute of Technology’s Laser Dynamics Laboratory.
El-Sayed actually failed his high school chemistry final the first time he took it.“I really liked the subject and the teacher,” El-Sayed says. “So I was sure I would do well. But enjoying a subject like chemistry isn’t enough. You also have to study.” Fortunately, students who failed the exam on the first sitting could repeat it at the end of the summer. El-Sayed did so and passed with flying colors. And he continued the trend in college, where he majored in chemistry.
It also might have been hard to guess back then that El-Sayed, now also a Regents’ Professor and the Julius Brown Chair at Georgia Tech, would go on to conduct nearly 60 years of groundbreaking chemistry research in photochemistry and nanoscience. Or that he would serve for 24 years as editor-in -chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, increasing its impact and popularity so dramatically that it evolved into two prominent journals: the Journal of Physical Chemistry A and B. Or that he would take home in 2016 the Priestley Medal, the American Chemical Society’s highest honor . It’s not that El-Sayed was naughty as a child. “I was just experimenting,” he explains with a wide grin. One of his earliest experiments was motivated by the first train rides he took with his father at about age nine. El-Sayed was captivated by the billowing clouds of steam the train produced as its powerful locomotive set the train in motion. So together with friends from his neighborhood in Zifta, a town 80 km north of Cairo, the junior scientist set about making his own steam engine.
Early on in his years at Ain Shams University, El-Sayed distinguished himself scholastically as a top performer. As a result, he was selected along with two other students to attend private lectures, mainly in physical chemistry. The students were being groomed to fill the role of “Moeed”, a lecturer or demonstrator with a permanent position equivalent to a teaching or research assistant. Students in line to become a “Moeed” were encouraged by their professors to complete a Ph.D. degree. Egyptian universities advocated that their students go abroad to attain the degree, but naturally, the schools also wanted their students to return after completing their graduate education. That was El-Sayed’s plan in 1954 when he learned of an opportunity to do sponsored graduate work at Florida State University. But after moving to the U.S. for the position, El-Sayed never returned. “It was everybody’s dream to come to America,” El-Sayed states unequivocally. “Everybody here was so friendly to me,” he says, or at least he thinks they were, acknowledging playfully that he can’t be sure because he understood very little English when he arrived. -5-
El-Sayed quickly learned to adapt to the ways of his new home. But one unexpected fact of American life that bothered him deeply was segregation. “This was Florida in the 1950s,” he explains. During that period, black and white people were required to sit separately in public venues and use race-designated restrooms and water fountains. El-Sayed learned about this “unfair way of life” early in his days in the U.S. On an outing to a local eatery, one of his grad school friends, an Egyptian young man, was singled out and told he was unwelcome because the manager assumed from the student’s facial features that he was black. “It was a very bad experience. Humiliating. We were not used to that kind of treatment in Egypt,” he says. “We all got up and left together.” Similarly, when they rode city buses together, the same student was told to sit in the back, El-Sayed recalls. “So we avoided the bus. We walked instead.” n general though, “life in the U.S. was wonderful,” El-Sayed says, and the young researcher thrived in his studies. As he relates in the Priestley Medal Address, which follows this story on page 41, a number of turns of fate and lucky breaks shaped El-Sayed’s life during this period. He met and married Janice, started a family, and conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University and California Institute of Technology. In 1961, he secured a faculty appointment at the University of California, Los Angeles, and within six years was appointed full professor.
“Like the best athletic coaches, Mostafa has a way of bringing people together and drawing the best individual talents out of them to move the whole team forward.” —John D. Simon,
Winter Edition
March 2019 The teams there have been studying the efficacy of treating Breast Cancer by using Gold Nano-Rods and Near-Infrared Radiation. The particles, which researchers synthesize at Georgia Tech, are functionalized to selectively penetrate breast cancer cells and heat up in response to near-IR light, killing cells only in the tumorous region.
In 1954, the night before leaving for the U.S. to begin graduate studies, El-Sayed (seated, center) posed with his brothers and sisters for this photo.
El-Sayed devoted himself during this phase of his career to developing and implementing molecular spectroscopy techniques. As lasers became available, El-Sayed’s research group quickly specialized in using them to elucidate molecular mechanisms and dynamical processes in molecules, gas-phase clusters, organic and inorganic solids, and photobiological systems. The group’s research on triplet-state dynamics brought El-Sayed international recognition early in his career. By using spectroscopy techniques that they developed, El-Sayed and his group verified experimentally a set of rules that govern electronic relaxation mechanisms in organic molecules. This body of work has famously come to be known as the El-Sayed rules. Googling that term brings up a boatload of entries, testifying to the rules’ importance in spectroscopy circles. They account for the observed difference in relaxation and radiative properties of aromatic carbonyls and heterocyclic compounds. Testifying to the scope of these “extraordinary contributions,” Northwestern University’s George C. Schatz asserts that El-Sayed “developed many new and important experimental techniques for probing molecular processes.” Giving examples, he lists microwave-phosphorescence double-resonance spectroscopy, time-resolved laser-line-narrowing luminescence spectroscopy, picosecond and femtosecond time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, and a variety of laser mass spectrometry techniques for monitoring dynamics in ions and clusters. A résumé with that many entries would qualify any scientist as “highly accomplished.” But that list doesn’t include any of El-Sayed’s most highly cited work, which is in nanoparticle science, his area of expertise since moving to Georgia Tech in 1994. In the past 20 years, El-Sayed’s research group has pioneered methods for preparing nanoparticles and using them in several applications, most notably to
Tests in cats and dogs, such as one published just a few months ago in the Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology with Ahmed S. Abdoon, a veterinary reproduction expert at NRC, show that the method is highly effective in destroying cancer while causing minimal side effects (2015, DOI: 10.4172/2157-7439.1000324). The successes have also been reported in the Egyptian press, El-Sayed says, prompting large numbers of cat and dog owners to request treatment for their sick pets. And so goes the fast-paced research of Mostafa El-Sayed. No surprise then that since the beginning of 2016, he has already published seven papers, raising his total number of publications since the start of 2015 to more than 25. “Like the best athletic coaches, Mostafa has a way of bringing people together and drawing the best individual talents out of them to move the whole team forward,” says Lehigh University President John D. Simon, who worked with El-Sayed as a postdoc at UCLA in the early 1980s.
SCOPH Times ACS Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Thomas M. Connelly Jr. concurs. “Mostafa El-Sayed is an outstanding choice” to receive ACS’s most prestigious award, Connelly says. He adds that El-Sayed’s contributions to nanoscience are “truly groundbreaking,” and it is fitting that El-Sayed be recognized for inspiring students throughout his career and for his many years of journal editing. Connelly adds that he’s looking forward to hearing El-Sayed share reflections on his career during the Priestley award address at the March 2016 ACS national meeting in San Diego. “This is wonderful news, just fantastic,” Prof. El-Sayed said in an interview with Chemical & Engineering News. “I am lucky to have been in the right place and with the right society,” he added, referring to his many years of service to ACS. For his work in the area of applying laser spectroscopic techniques to study of properties and behavior on the nanoscale, El-Sayed was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980, and in 2002, he won the Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics. He has been the recipient of the 1990 King Faisal International Prize ("Arabian Nobel Prize") in Sciences, Georgia Tech's highest award, "The Class of 1943 Distinguished Professor", an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the Hebrew University, and several other awards including some from the different American Chemical Society local sections.
“We have stayed very close all these years,” Simon says. “Mostafa’s mentorship and ongo- Mostafa El-Sayed was awarded the 2007 US ing interest in me has really made me who I am.” National Medal of Science "for his seminal and creative contributions to our understanding of the electronic and optical properties of nanoTwenty years later, El-Sayed’s deep personal materials and to their applications in nanocainterest in his students had not waned, accord- talysis and nanomedicine. Mostafa was also ing to Rice University chemists Stephan Link announced to be the recipient of the 2009 and Christy Landes, who completed Ph.D.s with Ahmed Zewail prize in molecular sciences. El-Sayed in 2000 and 2003, respectively. During those chemists’ doctoral years, El-Sayed kept a very full schedule because of chemistry depart- In 2011, he was listed #17 in Thomson-Reuters ment commitments and administrative respon- listing of the Top Chemists of the Past Decade. sibilities as editor-in-chief of the Journal of On June 16, 2015, it was announced that Professor El-Sayed will receive the 2016 Priestley Physical Chemistry. Medal, the American Chemical Society’s highest honor, for his decades-long contributions to chemistry. Intersystem Crossing (ISC) is a photophysical process involving an isoenergetic radiationless transition between two electronic states having different multiplicities. It often results in a vibrationally excited molecular entity in the lower electronic state, which then usually decays to its lowest molecular vibrational level. ISC is forbidden by rules of conservation of angular momentum. As a consequence, ISC generally occurs on very long time scales. However the El-Sayed’s rule states that the rate of intersystem crossing, e.g. from the Custom-made gold nanoparticles prepared by El-Sayed’s lowest singlet state to the triplet manifold, is group penetrate human cancer cell nuclei, many of which relatively large if the radiationless transition are shown here, and serve as probes of cellular processes. involves a change of molecular orbital type. this rule found in most photochemistry textbooks is useful in understanding phosphorescence, vibrational relaxation, intersystem crossing, internal conversion and lifetimes of excited states in molecules.
monitor cellular processes and treat cancer. Despite being well past retirement age, El-Sayed is busier than ever these days. He shuttles every few months between Atlanta and Egypt, where he manages research groups at Cairo University and the National Research Centre (NRC) of Egypt, also in Cairo.
Prof. El-Sayed has received many awards and honors including the election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980 and the appointment by President Obama to the President's National Medal of Science Committee in 2014.
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El-Sayed and his late wife, Janice, are surrounded in this 2004 photo by their children and grandchildren.
Winter Edition
March 2019
"It used to be incredibly rare to see anyone under age 40 come in with a heart attack and some of these people are now in their 20s and early 30s," senior study author Dr. Ron Blankstein, a preventive cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said in a statement. "Based on what we are seeing, it seems that we are moving in the wrong direction." "Even if you're in your 20s or 30s, once you've had a heart attack, you're at risk for more cardiovascular events, and you have just as much risk as someone who may be older than you," Blankstein said. Both young and older age groups in the study had about the same rate of traditional risk factors for heart disease, including diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking and a family history of heart attack. But compared with those ages 41 to 50, those age 40 and younger were more likely to report substance abuse, including marijuana and cocaine use. In particular, 18 percent of those in the younger group reported substance abuse, compared with 9 percent of those in the older group. This finding suggests that substance use may be contributing to the trend of heart attacks among young adults, but more research is needed to confirm this. Younger patients also tended to be less likely to take aspirin and statins after having a heart attack. This finding may suggest that doctors may be less likely to recommend these medications tot younger patients due to their age, the researchers said.
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SCOPH Times
"It all comes back to prevention," Blankstein said. "Many people think that a heart attack is destined to happen, but the vast majority could be prevented with earlier detection of the disease and aggressive lifestyle changes and management of other risk factors." The quicker someone is treated when having a heart attack, the greater the chances of success. These days, most heart attacks can be dealt with effectively. However, it is crucial to remember that a person's survival depends largely on how quickly they reach the hospital. If a person has a history of heart attacks, they should speak to a doctor about treatment plans.
Treatments during a heart attack Sometimes, a person who is having a heart attack will stop breathing. In this case, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, should be started immediately. This process involves: •manual chest compressions •a defibrillator
Treatments following a heart attack
Most people will need several kinds of medications or treatments after a heart attack. The aim of these measures is to prevent future heart attacks occurring. They may include: •aspirin and other antiplatelets •beta blockers •ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitors
Reference:
-www.webmd.com -www.myheartsisters.org
Winter Edition
March 2019
SCOPH Times
Are you Getting Enough Sleep? BY THE NUMBERS Just one more minute. Sleep is something that's vital to keep our bodies working properly. Getting enough sleep at the right times and on a regular schedule help you function better. People who don't get enough sleep are less productive at work and school. They take longer to finish tasks. Have slower reaction times, and make more mistakes. Not getting enough sleep is also inked to chronic heath problems later in life. Those Include heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure,diabetes, stroke, obesity and depression.
More than 35 percent of adults In the U.S. reported not getting enough rest or sleep every day. Driver sleepiness is a factor in about 100,000 car accidents each year. 50-70 million Americans have ongoing sleep disorders. How much sleep do we need?
Teens ages Adults over the age of18:7-8 12-18: 8-10 hours a day hours a day
Children ages 6-12: 9-12 hours a day
Reference: -National heart and lung institution -www.NIH.com
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