Cryosurgery: This surgery uses freezingly low temperatures for destroying the tissues especially, the cancerous cells/tissues. In this case, liquid nitrogen with boiling point minus 196 degree centigrade is sprayed onto the cancerous tissues either directly or through a hollow probe. This technique has been found to be quite suitable for destroying the cancerous tissue.

1. Hormonal Therapy: Estrogen or Estrogen plus progestin replacement therapy is often used for correcting menopausal complications among women.
2. Immunotherapy: It generally takes the following two forms:

1. Immunopotentiation therapy: This therapy is generally used for supplementing the immune system either by drugs or by administering pre-formed antibodies. The cytokines including Interferons and Interleukins are being induced to act as natural immuno-modulators in this case.
2. Immunosuppressive therapy: When the immune system goes off the track in the sense that it starts acting against one own self that is against one’s own body, it then produces serious disorders what we call as auto-immune disorders. The typical examples of such auto-immune disorders may be taken as the diseases like Hashimoto disease, Rheumatoidal arthritis and Myasthenia gravis. In such cases, the body’s immune system is suppressed by some inhibitors of cell division and cytokine production or may be by some tumor necrosis factors.

1. Gene Therapy: In this therapy, the defective gene is replaced by a functional gene or altogether a new functional gene is introduced into the body specifically, into the somatic cells, in addition to the defective gene to correct the disorder. Today, this has been made possible through the advent of what we call as recombinant DNA-technology in which especially designed viral vectors (bacteriophages) or directly as naked DNA is being introduced. This therapy has been used for the first time by employing the technique of r-DNA technology to cure an immune disorder called SCID.

What is PUFA?

It is an acronym for poly unsaturated fatty acids which are generally recommended in a healthy diet since they are cholesterol lowering in nature. In other words, they decrease the cholesterol level in the blood in contrast to the saturated fatty acids. Given as such, they are essentially, anti-atherogenic in nature. Although, they are typically unsaturated fatty acids, but the number of double bonds in them are generally more than one and might go up to a maximum of four. This is the reason that they are called as PUFA. The typical examples of PUFA which have their predominant source in oils derived from the plant sources i.e. seeds are: Arachidonic acid, highly unsaturated of all having four double bonds, linoleic acid with two double bonds and Linolenic acid with three double bonds.

Note: Garlic oil is quite good and healthy for health as it is responsible for increasing the HDL and correspondingly, decreasing the LDL and hence, quite good for preventing the incidences of cardiovascular diseases.

What are Trans-fats?

(Question asked in GS-pre-2011)

`Trans fats are nothing, but simply refer to saturated fats which absolutely are not good for health due to their contribution to increasing the cholesterol level in the blood or body. The plain identity of saturated fats is their being converted into a solid form at room temperature, generally taken to be at 25 degree centigrade. The most familiar example of saturated fats before us is Vanaspati ghee. Interestingly, vanaspati ghee is industrially made from vegetable oils through a catalytic process called as Catalytic hydrogenation in the presence of a metallic catalyst called as Nickel. As the name indicates, in this process, hydrogen is added to the unsaturated oils to make them saturated and the fats thus obtained are called as Trans- fats. The conversion of unsaturated fats (oils) to saturated ones (Ghee) through hydrogenation has a commercial logic behind. As hydrogenation increases the shelf life and provides flavor stability of the food items in which these trans-fats have been used….