Month: November 2013

Go nuts! Healthy facts about nuts!

Good things come in small packages and nuts are no exceptions. These nuggets are packed with healthy fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals. Studies have suggested that people who include nuts, including peanuts, in their diet have fewer common health problems such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. Here are some facts you should know before including nuts in your diet:

Nut varieties

A nut usually have a hard shell and a seed and most fruits we called nuts are not technically nuts nonetheless they provide similar health benefits. They include hazelnuts, chestnuts, and acorns, almonds, Brazil nut, candlenut, cashew, Chilean hazelnut or Gevuina, macadamia,   Malabar chestnut, pecan, mongongo, peanut, pine nut, pistachio and walnut.

How much to eat

According to the American Heart Association, include 4 servings of nuts a week in your diet. A serving is a small handful or 1.5 ounces of whole nuts or 2 tablespoons of nut butter. Avoid salted or oiled ones; instead, eat them raw or dry roasted

Calorie count

Almonds, cashews and pistachios have the lowest calorie count at 160 per ounce while macadamia nuts and pecans have the highest at 200 per ounce.

How to eat

You can have them as snacks whenever you feel hungry or sprinkle them over desserts and salads

Source: Zee News

Cadila launches Mycidac-C : World’s first drug for lung cancer

Cadila Pharmaceuticals has announced the launch of Mycidac-C, an affordable, unique and innovative drug for the treatment of lung cancer.

Mycidac-C is an innovative research product for the patients suffering from Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC). The drug has been approved for launch in India by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). It targets Desmocolin-3, a novel target, said the company in a statement.

According to the statement, Mycidac-C is a first in the class active immunotherapy as well as drug targeting Desmocollin-3. It is a breakthrough in the management of squamous cell NSCLC. There has been no significant innovation in management of squamous NSCLC since the introduction of platinum containing doublet in 1983. Besides affordability and other advantages, Mycidac-C has no systemic side effects during the treatment. Mycidac-C is to be used with platinum containing doublet therapy.

As per the World Health Organisation (WHO) report, approximately 1.25 million people are diagnosed with lung cancer every year worldwide. Around 30 per cent of them suffer from squamous NSCLC. Lung cancer kills more people than the three next commonest cancers combined.

Mycidac-C can be administered easily by trained paramedics, thus further reducing the cost of hospitalisation associated with other cancer therapy, according to the statement.

Rajiv I Modi, chairman and managing director, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, said, “It has taken us over a decade, a huge investment and a dedicated research and development team to develop this unique drug. We expect it to be available in the Indian market by December 2013. Thereafter, we will introduce it in other regions like SAARC countries and European markets over the next five years.”

Source: India Medical Times

Baby with swollen head to undergo more surgeries

????????????????????Baby Roona, who had undergone a series of surgeries at a hospital here in few months ago for an oversized head, will undergo follow-up surgeries, doctors at a city hospital said on Saturday.

The child of a daily wage labourer from Tripura, two-year-old Roona Begum is suffering from hydrocephalus, a rare disorder that has caused her head to swell to an unprecedented 94 cm.

She was admitted to Gurgaon’s Fortis Memorial Research Institute here in April this year at the age of 18 months, where she underwent multiple complex procedures to get her head circumference reduced to 58 cm.

“The five surgeries we performed earlier have not only helped the child survive a potentially fatal condition, but also enabled her to attain improved nutritional status and vitals. She has gained weight, is showing better neck control and is even making noises,” surgeon and director of neurosurgery in the hospital, Sandeep Vaishya, said.

Elaborating on the likely follow-up surgery next week, Vaishya said: “This will be the first step in the next round of treatment for the child. We are monitoring her condition and will proceed with the surgery once we get a go-ahead from her attending paediatrician.”

Fortis Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Fortis Healthcare Limited, continues to oversee the treatment of the child.

Source: Times of India

Steroid injections for premature babies could raise ADHD risk

Injections are vital to baby’s survival but could increase likelihood of behavioral and emotional problems

Steroid injections commonly given to pregnant women due to give birth prematurely may raise the risk of the child developing behavioral problems such as ADHD, researchers have found.

The injections, which mimic the hormone cortisol, are essential in helping the baby’s lungs develop and lower the risk of life-threatening breathing problems caused by early birth.

But the steroids, known as glucocorticoids, may also increase the likelihood of the child developing emotional and behavioral disorders, researchers said.

They said the study should not scare women into avoiding the crucial steroid injections, but claimed their findings support a theory that cortisol released naturally due to stress during pregnancy can raise the risk of ADHD.

The scientists, from Imperial College London and the University of Oulu, Finland, compared 37 children whose mothers were given glucocorticoids before going into labor, and compared them against 185 children who were born at the same gestational age but whose mothers did not have steroid treatment.

Their findings, published in the PLOS ONE journal, showed that those whose mothers had been treated performed worse on average in general mental health tests at ages eight and 16, and were more likely to have ADHD symptoms.

The researchers said the benefits of the steroids far outweigh the potential harms, and that only a small proportion of children with treated mothers had been affected.

But they said their study could shed light on previous research showing that stress during pregnancy can harm mental development in the child.

The findings support the idea that cortisol, a hormone produced naturally in response to stress, causes this link because it is extremely similar to glucocorticoids, they explained.

Prof Alina Rodriguez, senior author of the study, said: “There are a lot of studies that have found links between stress in pregnancy and effects on children’s mental health, especially ADHD, and this might be related to cortisol.

“Synthetic glucocorticoids mimic the biological reaction when the mother is stressed, so we wanted to see if babies who were exposed to this treatment are affected similarly in terms of mental health outcomes.”

Source: Telegraph

New procedure allows jewelry to be implanted in the eye

A new procedure is allowing one New York woman to have a piece of platinum jewelry implanted in her eye, according to My Fox New York.

“It’s going to be a conversation maker,” Lucy Luckayanko, who received her eye implantation at Park Avenue Laser Vision in New York City, told My Fox New York. “I will be able to tell people. It will be unique. It will be sort of my unique factor.”

Dr. Emil Chynn, the medical director of Park Avenue Laser Vision, claims that the procedure is relatively safe.

“It’s a very thin piece of platinum that’s designed for insertion on the top of the eye. It’s not in the eye, so there’s no risk of blindness or anything at all,” Chynn told My Fox New York. “She could have a little bit of local bleeding. That could go away in a couple days or couple weeks. She could have an infection, but we’ll prevent that with antibiotics.”

Eye jewelry is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) is warning consumers about the dangers of the procedure.

In a statement to My Fox New York, the AAO said there isn’t “sufficient evidence to support the safety or therapeutic value of this procedure.” They urged consumers to “avoid placing in the eye any foreign body or material that is not approved by the FDA.”

Luckayanko said the reactions to her new eye jewelry have been mixed – with some of her friends saying she is crazy and others claiming it looks “super cool.”

Source: Fox News

Confusing Laws Lead to Unsafe Abortions in Uganda

Confusing abortion laws and reproductive health policies in Uganda have forced women to turn to unsafe abortions and increased the number of unplanned pregnancies in the country, according to a new report, The Stakes Are High: The Tragic Impact of Unsafe Abortion and Inadequate Access to Contraception in Uganda, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law.

The report, released today, documents personal stories of women impacted by the widespread and false impression that abortion is illegal in all circumstances in Uganda. In fact the country’s laws permit abortion for women not only to save a woman’s life but also on mental and physical health grounds.

“The perceived illegality of abortion services in Uganda has led to stigma, fear and secrecy—driving far too many women to desperate measures to end a pregnancy,” said Evelyne Opondo, regional director for Africa at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“Leaders in Uganda must not only clarify the abortion laws, but also broaden access to information among health care professionals and the public at large about reproductive health care, including access to family planning and safe abortion services.”

Each year an estimated 297,000 induced abortions occur in Uganda, with nearly 85,000 women receiving treatment for complications from unsafe abortion. About 65,000 women experience complications resulting from unsafe abortion but do not receive any treatment. Unsafe abortion is one of the most easily preventable causes of maternal mortality, yet more than a quarter of maternal deaths in the country occur because of unsafe abortion, according to an estimate by the Ministry of Health in Uganda.

Many of these deaths are in large part because of confusion and ignorance of reproductive health laws, as women are often discouraged from accessing legal reproductive health services.

“Studies have shown that women’s ability to exercise reproductive autonomy, including access to effective contraception and safe abortion services, leads to better health for women,” said Dr. Charles Kiggundu, Vice President, Association of Obstetrics and Gynecologists of Uganda.

“It is tragic that women in Uganda continue to lose their lives as a consequence of their ability to become pregnant.”

Personal interviews in the report highlight how women are discriminated against when seeking modern contraception or legal abortion services.

Source: Reproductive Rights

 

Rural Ethiopians Spread Good Health Habits Over Coffee

The front porch is the setting for coffee ceremonies where women of Dosha discuss new health practices for the neighborhood (VOA/Joana Mantey)

Thousands of women in Ethiopia have joined a Health Development Army to turn the time-honored cultural practice of drinking coffee together into an opportunity to spread the word about better health practices in their rural communities. The army is made up of small groups of volunteers who gather in traditional coffee ceremonies to encourage behavior change among women and their neighborhoods.

Women in villages throughout Oromia, the largest and most heavily populated of Ethiopia’s rural provinces, gather and talk over several rounds of coffee served in tiny ceramic cups. The beverage is brewed with locally-grown and unprocessed coffee beans roasted and ground by a local woman dressed in traditional Ethiopian attire. The finished product is brewed over a small lemon grass fire and served to invited guests. They take their coffee with sugar, but no milk.

Gossip gives way to talk about hygeine

This long-standing social tradition and source of daily gossip – in a country that claims to be the birthplace of coffee – has become the educational platform used by the local health volunteers of the Health Development Army. They are trained by the government’s vast network of health extension workers to bring behavior change at the community level and whip up support for government health programs.

Datu Badadha, leader of a women’s group that meets for coffee in the village of Dosha, said these educational gatherings allow married women to get together with young women or men in the community for discussions.

The leader of the Health Development Army volunteers in the village of Dosha is Datu Badadha. (VOA/Joana Mantey)Pathfinder International, an international non-profit, provides technical, financial and managerial support to the Ethiopian government’s health programs.

“The Women Development Army are women that have implemented the health extension program of government very well so that others in their communities can see what they are benefitting out of this health extension program so that they can adapt or adopt what this Women Development Army are doing,” said Tariku Nigatu, who works with Pathfinder International in Ethiopia.

Latrines, vaccines and maternity

“In some households, people would not be using latrines and this Women Development Army member would encourage households to dig latrines and use it,” Nigatu continued. “They encourage women to take their children to vaccination. When there are pregnant women they also refer them to seek maternity care from health extension workers and from health centers.”

Tariku added that members of the army are able to interact freely with people in the community because they have a defined physical structure – a mud house with a living room, bedroom and store with separate accommodations for the kitchen, latrine and livestock. A house that fulfills the new requirements is called a model household and its inhabitants can supervise the implementation of health programs in five other homes.

Mesfin Nigussie of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Integrated Family Health Program said, “To be a model household they need to have a latrine, they have to use family planning and their children under one year should be fully immunized. They should have a separate house for living, cooking as well as for cattle. They should also have clean surroundings and eat balanced diets.”

Homes that meet these requirements are awarded certificates. Mesfin said 64 percent of of those in the Oromia region now live in model households, a marked departure from the single huts which used to serve both as sleeping quarters and kitchens.

He said the work of the Health Development Army is also helping to sustain behavior change in communities. Mesfin said the role played by members of the army in social mobilization is as well helping health extension workers to concentrate on clinical duties at the health posts.

Source: Voice of America

 

The curious case of Pentavalent vaccine

With the number of cases related to the deaths of children, most recently in Jammu and Kashmir, because of apparent administration of Pentavalent vaccine continues to rise, the vaccine is once again mired in controversy as the issue comes up for hearing in the Supreme Court on November 26 questioning its safety and demand to impose a ban.

Earlier this year, a PIL (public-interest litigation) was filed by a doctor in the Supreme Court alleging that the vaccine, which provides protection against the five life threatening diseases — Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Hib (Haemophilus influenza type B), had serious adverse effects on children. Subsequently, the court issued a notice to the government, which in turn gave a clean chit to the vaccine.

The Pentavalent vaccine, which has claimed over 21 deaths in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, was introduced in Jammu & Kashmir in February 2013, as a part of the Universal Immunization Programme (UIP). In Srinagar eight infant deaths were reported during Sep-Oct this year following immunization with this vaccine.

Soon after the report of deaths, the union health ministry deputed a team of expert doctors, headed by Dr N K Arora, additional professor, department of paediatrics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, to investigate into these deaths.

While the final report of this team is still awaited, their preliminary report has stated that the children died from causes like septicaemia and pneumonia, and are unrelated to the vaccine. The team denied any link of Pentavalent vaccine with the death of the children.

Disappointed by the findings of the government team, a team from Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) visited the affected families in Jammu and Kashmir from November 8 to 10.

D Manjit and Asish Gupta, secretaries of PUDR, said, “This conclusion by the central team in J&K fails to explain why or how the babies were administered the vaccine in the first place if they were seriously ill at the time of immunization.”

“This vaccine is being promoted vigorously by several international agencies, specifically the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an international network of vaccine manufacturers and philanthropic organizations such as the Gates Foundation. Concerns regarding the safety and efficacy of this vaccine, as well as the very need for it, have been repeatedly pointed out by public health professionals to the health authorities, which have been brushed aside. Given these problems with this vaccine, one is left questioning the wisdom and this urgency in promoting this vaccine, especially through ill-equipped peripheral health facilities such as dispensaries and sub-centres, which cannot manage the adverse reactions in the immunized infants. A detailed report of the fact finding team will be released soon,” added Manjit and Gupta.

Dr Jacob Puliyel, head of paediatrics at St Stephen’s Hospital, New Delhi told India Medical Times, “The safety of Pentavalent vaccine is in question for a long time because of apparent adverse effects and deaths related to it. The Pentavalent vaccine has caused deaths in different countries. This is across brands as different countries using the vaccine from different manufacturers have had the same problem.

“There are at least 80 deaths now that have been investigated and which must have been due to vaccine as there is no alternate explanation for the deaths so soon after vaccination in children who seemed perfectly well before vaccination. India has had over 38 deaths. There are at least 10 deaths in Kashmir. There are some 15 deaths in Kerala. The deaths appear like allergic reactions and only a few children react to the vaccine. This type of death is seen with drugs like Penicillin. Thousands of people can receive the drug and be helped by the drug but one person who is allergic can die of the drug.

“From data now available 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000 children vaccinated die as a reaction to the vaccine. The 1 in 10,000 is a better figure as there is under reporting. This means that if the birth cohort of 25 million is vaccinated we will have 300 to 3,000 deaths. The death rate is seen in all the states where the vaccine has been introduced. In Kashmir and Kerala the people are more aware and so they are reported better.

“The fact that the vaccine has not been banned is a problem that is impossible to answer. Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Viet Nam had banned the vaccine but later were forced to resume the use of the vaccine under severe international pressure. In Sri Lanka the WHO report altered the Brighton Classification, which was earlier used by the WHO to classify adverse reactions following the vaccination. If the classification were not altered they would have had to report that the deaths were probably due to the vaccine.

“After the Kashmir deaths the central team went there for two days and reported in the press that the children died of septicaemia and pneumonia. A fact finding team recently visited some of these families and performed a detailed verbal autopsy. They have reported that the children were in perfect health before vaccination and the reaction in terms of fever, continuous crying and convulsions started within half an hour (of the vaccination) in some cases. They died in the hospital and some died before reaching the hospital in Srinagar. The matter is coming up for hearing. Unlike in other countries, the international organizations will not be able to pressurize the Supreme Court of India. We expect the full truth to come out here.

“It is time we stopped playing with the lives of these children. There is no way to check which child is going to react adversely to the vaccine. Unless we have a means to determine this before vaccination the vaccine must not be used. This vaccine is not used in the USA, as the FDA has not licensed it there. They use the components separately. This is safe. We can use the components separately,” added Dr Puliyel.

Dr Vinod K Paul, head of the paediatrics department at AIIMS New Delhi, who is also a member of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI), told India Medical Times, “I stand by the NTAGI recommendation for a national scale-up and that the Pentavalent vaccine is safe and effective. It is an important tool to reduce under-five mortality in India.”

The Pentavalent vaccine, which was recommended by the NTAGI in 2008 to be added to the universal immunisation programme, was introduced in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in December 2011. After an evaluation of the vaccination in the two states in August 2012, the decision to expand it in other states was taken. The Pentavalent vaccine was then introduced in phases in Haryana, Puducherry, Goa, Gujarat and Karnataka, with Jammu and Kashmir being the latest to join the list.

Dr Ashok Kumar Gupta, a paediatrician from Jammu, told India Medical Times, “The vaccine is doing more than good for children of J&K and such major cases of deaths related to it have been noticed. The vaccine is safe and helpful in controlling mortality. There are only mild side effects such as fever, pain, swelling and redness at the site of injection. Millions of doses have been administered to children since the vaccine was launched in eight Indian states. A meagre percentage of reaction and deaths due to it cannot overshadow the positive aspect of the vaccine that saves children from preventable diseases.”

Though no causative link between the vaccine and child has been established by the government but in the face of stiff resistance to the vaccine its continued use and nationwide rollout has been questioned. A clearer picture is expected to emerge after the Supreme Court gives a conclusive judgment on the future administration of the vaccine.

Source: India Medical Times

Polio-Free Countries Still Face Threat, Scientists Say

An outbreak of polio in a previously polio-free region of China shows that the crippling, potentially deadly disease will remain a global threat as long as the poliovirus circulates anywhere in the world, scientists say.

Researchers who investigated the outbreak of polio in the Chinese province of Xingjian in 2011 found the infection was caused by a poliovirus that originated in Pakistan, according to the study published today (Nov. 20) in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“Global eradication of poliomyelitis will benefit all countries, even those that are currently free of poliomyelitis,” the researchers wrote in their study.

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a highly contagious and incurable viral infection of the nervous system. While some people recover completely, the virus causes lifelong paralysis in one out of every 200 cases.

In the 1980s, the virus killed or paralyzed around 350,000 people worldwide each year. But now, due to vaccination campaigns, the disease is eradicated in most parts of the world. Polio remains endemic in only three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. In 2012, about 220 cases were reported worldwide, and almost all were in these countries.

Despite the progress, imported poliovirus has caused outbreaks in some previously polio-free countries in recent years, and scientists have found that the virus is circulating in some regions that had previously been declared polio-free, the researchers said.

In October, an outbreak of polio that affected at least 22 people was reported in Syria, and was a setback for a country that had a vaccination rate of 95 percent and was polio-free for 14 years. The outbreak is possibly being fueled by disrupted vaccinations amid the ongoing civil war in the country.

Experts warned that the disease might reach Europe as well, especially in regions where vaccination coverage is not sufficiently high; for example, Austria (83 percent) and Ukraine (74 percent). The World Health Organization recommends a target vaccination rate of 90 percent.

The outbreak in China struck in 2011, and affected about 40 people, according to the new study. A public health emergency was declared in Xinjiang, and health practitioners closely watched for any new case of sudden paralysis or “acute flaccid paralysis,” the signature symptom of polio, the researchers said.

Five rounds of vaccination with oral poliovirus vaccine were conducted among children and adults in the region, and the outbreak was stopped six weeks after the first case had been confirmed by lab results.

 

“The response most likely prevented poliomyelitis from spreading to other parts of China,” but given the fact the poliovirus still circulates in parts of the world, immunization and surveillance efforts should be boosted, the researchers said.

Source: one news page

People with Autism More Likely to Hear Colors, See Sounds

People with autism may be more likely than others to have synesthesia, a condition in which people experience a mixing of their senses, such as hearing tastes and shapes, and seeing numbers in colors, a new study from Europe suggests.

Researchers tested 164 people with autism and 97 people without autism by giving them online questionnaires designed to evaluate whether they had synesthesia. They found synesthesia occurred in about 7 percent of people who didn’t have autism, a figure within the range of previously reported rates.

In contrast, 19 percent of people with autism appeared to have synesthesia, according to the study published yesterday (Nov. 19) in the journal Molecular Autism.

The findings may provide new insights into common factors that underlie brain development in these separate conditions, said study researcher Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

“I have studied both autism and synesthesia for over 25 years, and I had assumed that one had nothing to do with the other,” Baron-Cohen said.

But now, looking back at previous studies, evidence does suggest there are underlying similarities between the two conditions, the researchers said. Brain-imaging studies have found evidence of particular patterns of brain connectivity in both synesthesia and autism.

According to one hypothesis, people with synesthesia have more neural connections between brain regions compared with people who don’t have the condition.  Similarly, studies have found that while people with autism have fewer neural connections between distant parts of the brain, they have more local or short-range connectivity in some brain areas.

It is possible that the normal process of pruning of neural connections early in life is affected in both conditions, and people with autism or synesthesia retain some of the connections that other people have lost during their brain development, Baron-Cohen said.

This idea would give researchers “an exciting new lead” to search for genes that are shared between the two conditions, and which might play a role in how the brain forms or loses neural connections, said Simon Fisher, another researcher in the study, and director of the language and genetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, in the Netherlands.

Most synesthetic experiences are visual, but synesthesia can involve any pair of senses, the researchers said. Such experiences can range from seeing the letter A as purple, to conjuring mental images of a triangle shape when suffering a toothache.

Among the 31 people with autism in the study who had synesthesia, the most common forms of the condition were “grapheme-color,” in which letters are seen as colored, and “sound-color,” in which hearing a sound triggers a visual experience of color. Another forms of synesthesia reported were either tastes, touch, or smells triggering a visual experience of color.

“People with autism report high levels of sensory hyper-sensitivity. This new study goes one step further in identifying synesthesia as a sensory issue that has been overlooked in this population,” said study author Donielle Johnson, a researcher at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University.

“These results suggest that some people with autism have synesthetic experiences that might influence their day-to-day behavior, preferences and aversions — just as synesthesia can affect the behavior of people without autism,” Johnson told LiveScience.

The questionnaire used in the study evaluated whether participants had synesthesia by asking questions about their mixing sensory experiences, when such experiences began, and whether participants had any medical condition or had ever used drugs.

To confirm the preliminary results of the questionnaire, the researchers asked the participants to find the colors they associated with letters and numbers, but only a few people completed that test that involved more than 240 choices, the researchers said. Future studies are needed to administer the test in the lab, rather than online, to confirm the self-reported synesthesia, they said.

Source: Live science