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Skipping Whooping Cough Vaccine Boosts Disease Risk

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According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, more than 41,000 cases of whooping cough, or pertussis, were reported in the United States in 2012. Infants and children between the ages of 7 and 10 are the two age groups with the highest incidence of the disease. The majority of pertussis deaths occur among infants that are younger than 3 months of age due to barriers such as health care or parental refusal of the DTaP vaccination.

While doctors recommend children from 2 months to 6 years old to receive their five DTaP shots — a combination vaccination that protects kids against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis — a significant percentage of kids skip or receive the shots late. Nearly half of children diagnosed with pertussis are found to be under vaccinated, according to a new study.

Findings published online in the journal JAMA Pediatrics revealed that children who skip their whooping cough shots or get them late have a high risk of developing the disease. Researchers conducted a matched case-control study of 72 children (3 to 36 months of age) born between 2004 and 2008 and who were diagnosed with pertussis, and 288 healthy children of similar age who did not catch the disease.

The researchers evaluated how many children in each group received their whooping cough shots on time, and how many children were under vaccinated. Jason Glanz, Ph.D., researcher of the study and senior scientist at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, and his colleagues defined under vaccination for the DTaP vaccine as missing or delaying one or more of the first four doses by the recommended age, says Medpage Today.

Nearly half — 47 percent — of the children diagnosed with pertussis were found to be under vaccinated, compared with 22 percent of healthy children in the study. The researchers believed that 36 percent of pertussis cases among children belonging to this age group could have been prevented with a one-time pertussis vaccination. “Under vaccination is an increasing trend that potentially places children and their communities at an increased risk for serious infectious disease,” wrote the authors of the study.

Under vaccination of whooping cough was attributed to barriers such as health care and parents choosing not to have their children vaccinated. Approximately 30 percent of kids who were diagnosed with pertussis were under vaccinated due to parental refusal. Parents’ failure to get their children vaccinated on time can contribute to a widespread outbreak of whooping cough in the U.S.

Currently, whooping cough has hit Texas the hardest with nearly 2,000 reported cases and two deaths this year, reports Discovery.com. The state could possibly have more cases than what has been reported in the last 50 years.

Severe obesity’ rising in US youth

About 5 percent of U.S. children and teens are “severely obese,” and the numbers are rising, according to a new statement from the American Heart Association.

Recent data suggesting that the rate of childhood obesity has started to level off, “a worrisome trend has emerged in the form of severe pediatric obesity,” the researchers wrote in their study published today in the journal Circulation.

“Severe obesity in young people has grave health consequences,” said study author Aaron Kelly, a researcher at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. “It’s a much more serious childhood disease than obesity.”

Severely obese children have higher rates of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular issues at younger ages, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and early signs of atherosclerosis – a disease that clogs the arteries

Treating children and teens with of severe obesity is challenging, the researchers said. Many treatments that are commonly used with some success in overweight and obese children, such as lifestyle changes, are less effective in those with severe obesity.

The researchers recommended using a standard definition for severe obesity in youth; they define children over age 2 as severely obese if they have a body mass index (BMI) at least 20 percent higher than 95 percent of other children of the same age and gender. The researchers also said any child with a BMI of 35 or higher should be considered severely obese.

Based on this definition, a 7-year-old girl of average height weighing 75 pounds, or a 13-year-old boy of average height weighing 160 pounds, would be defined as severely obese.

Most experts recommend treating severely obese children first with the least intensive treatment options such as lifestyle changes, the researchers said. More intensive treatments such as medication and potentially surgery should be considered after other treatments have failed.

Increased funding will be needed for research into whether new medications and other treatments, including surgery, are safe and effective in treating children with severe obesity, the researchers said.

Robohand uses 3-D printing to replace lost digits

Twelve-year old Dylan Laas got his Robohand in March

Richard Van As, a South African carpenter, lost four fingers from his right hand to a circular saw two years ago.

He was unable to afford the tens of thousands of dollars to get a myoelectric hand, which detects a muscle’s electric impulses to activate an artificial limb.

“After my accident, I was in pain, but wouldn’t take painkillers. I barely slept, and the more pain I had the more ideas I got,” he told The Associated Press. “Sometimes you have to chop fingers off to start thinking.”

He decided to build his own hand. After seeing a video posted online of a mechanical hand made for a costume in a theater production, he reached out to its designer, Ivan Owen, in Seattle.

Enter Robohand — a device that Van As and Owen invented that is made from cables, screws, 3-D printing and thermoplastic. It uses the rotation of a joint to enable five plastic digits to grasp. The device looks like a robot’s hand in a science fiction movie, costs about $500 to make and can be reproduced using plans on the Internet and a 3-D printer.

‘It looks cool. It makes me look like Darth Vader.’

– Twelve-year old Dylan Laas, who got his Robohand in March

Van As is now on a mission to spread the mechanism to people without fingers or hands all over the world. The two gadget-lovers collaborated on developing a design for the device for a wide range of ages that could be used to grab objects, unlike most existing arm prostheses. Van As has fitted Robohands on about 170 people, from toddlers to adults, thanks to donations.

At first they used a milling machine, making Van As a metal robotic forefinger digit that helps him work in carpentry to this day. That’s when they perfected the shape for the robotic fingers.

“Ivan was a gift to me,” Van As said.

Then they turned to 3-D printing which creates the device in plastic. The 3-D printer gives much greater flexibility, allowing the device to be re-sized on the computer for each user and then manufactured through the printer. A glove-like covering is fitted in thermoplastic, and then fingers are created on the 3-D printer by melting and stacking plastic to make Lego-like digits which are connected to the glove with small cables and screws.

The team got a boost when two printers were donated by the Brooklyn-based Makerbot, one for use in Johannesburg and the other for Seattle.

“What was taking us two weeks to put together took us 20 hours,” Van As said. He opened drawers full of bolts, screws and leftover hinges from the beginning phases of the project. “Now it looks easy.”

They then started working on a design to help children with Amniotic Band Syndrome, a condition where children are born without appendages because their circulation is cut off in the womb by amniotic bands.

To spread the device as widely as possible, they made the Robohand an Open Source design available online, and Van As now collects donations to make hands for people around the world.

“I don’t want to make money out of misery,” Van As said, dismissing the idea that he could make a profit on the mechanical hand.

Robohands are different from other prostheses for three simple reasons: “functionality, simplicity and cost,” Van As said.

He started with $10,000 in donations from around the world. “I said I’d do about 100 hands then disappear, but it keeps going,” said Van As. “How do you say no?”

Owen stopped working with Robohands in January to focus on education, “specifically on how to introduce the students of today to 3-D printing,” he said.

At $500, a Robohand is significantly cheaper than the typical $10,000 to $15,000 cost for a conventional below-the-elbow prosthesis, said Eric Neufeld a U.S.-based certified Prosthetist and Orthotist and the director of Range of Motion Project, known as ROMP, which provides prosthetic limbs to those who cannot afford them around the world.

“There are very few options just for digits, so that is another problem they are addressing,” Neufeld said.

“It’s a pioneering thing they are doing. It gets people thinking about what other components can be made in the same way,” he said, adding that he will watch Robohands closely for possible use by his organization.

Eventually, Van As said he’d like to see Robohands kits available for sale at stores, so that anyone could simply build one for themselves. He’s waiting for the design to be patented. Already people from Australia to Newfoundland are volunteering to print Robohands.

“We took the 3-D printing world by surprise,” Van As said. “It wasn’t the first medical breakthrough in the 3-D world, but people are eager to get a hold of it now.”

Van As grins as he holds up a tiny white and blue Robohand in his shop. “This is for a 2 1/2 year old in Australia.” Casts of other arms are strewn about the garage workshop, which is also full of spools of 3-D printing material, machines, experiments and constructions.

Twelve-year old Dylan Laas got his Robohand in March. His mother, Jacqui, said her son, who does not have a right hand because of Amniotic Band Syndrome, is approaching activities with new interest thanks to the gadget.

“It looks cool. It makes me look like Darth Vader … its fun to use,” he said, adding that he can’t wait to go swimming with it.

 

Read more: fox news

World’s only flying eye hospital calls for skills exchange

Impressed by the quality of available healthcare and the surge in advanced facilities in India, a team of international eye specialists aboard the Orbis flying eye hospital – the only of its kind in the world – Tuesday called for exchange of skills and information between countries to combat ophthalmic problems.

A team of of 23 eye specialists spanning 14 countries aboard the Orbis flying eye hospital began its operations during the day.

The flying hospital landed at the old wing of the domestic terminal of the Netaji Subhas Bose International airport here Monday. It will see around 150 patients and target a whopping 75 surgeries during a 17-day stint.

India`s “state-of-the art” facilities in eye care amazed experts from countries like Philippines, Mexico and Egypt. They were in deep admiration of the technological developments and the availability of centres to treat a gamut of eye issues including congenital and acquired problems.

“We are impressed by the quality of eye care available now and the advanced treatment options that you have. It is clear that India is one of the leaders in quality eye care. The country is known for high level of quality,” Ahmed Gomaa, medical director, Flying Eye Hospital told IANS.

A venture of US-based NGO Orbis, the hospital aboard a modified DC-10 aircraft has serviced 90 countries since its inception in 1982 and continues to bring in dedicated global volunteer training faculties in its fight against preventable blindness.

Besides India, Orbis operates in Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Ethiopia, South Africa, Zambia and Latin America and Caribbean.

Its global partner includes Omega watches and with the aid of Alcon and Fedex, the programme aims to strengthen paediatric ophthalmic services in India.

The hospital`s previous stopover in India was at Jaipur in 2009.

Experts from the US, Philippines, South Africa, Mexico, Britain and India among others comprise the team that will train not only ophthalmologists, but also offer valuable insights to support staff such as nurses, biomedical engineers, anaesthesiologists and paramedics.

The training and surgery programme will be spaced out in two weeks in liaison with four host institutes – Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, Susrut Eye foundation, Disha Eye Hospital and Sankara Nethralaya. This will augment the winged hospital`s aim to further exchange of knowledge and skills among nations.

“What we need now is more exchange of skills. The flying eye hospital is actually geared towards that. And with India receiving patients from across the world this has become a necessity,” said Gomaa, a Britain-based Egyptian ophthalmologist.

Echoing Ahmed, Rahul Ali, Orbis country director, feels standardisation of facilities and treatments across India needs to be looked at.

“We need to have standardised practices in place. Our country is doing well in terms of eye care,” said Ali.

For Orbis staff-ophthalmologist Jing Barleta from the Philippines, such ventures are essential for countries like Philippines and India that have a “lot of similar” problems in eye health.

“There are a lot of patients and problems are a lot similar in both countries. What I find here is the doctors are well trained,” Barleta told IANS.

However for Barleta, who joined the Orbis team in 2010, the difference lies in the budget that Philippines allots for healthcare. Another sector where the country needs to buck-up is infrastructure.

“In Philippines the budget for government hospitals is a lot..which brings it to par with private healthcare. Indian government could do that. Also the infrastructure needs work,” said Barleta.

While Gabriela Ruiz Gonzalez from Mexico felt the bureaucratic restrictions hinders progress in healthcare, she observed that eye surgeons in India are extremely dexterous and with India excelling in cataract and cornea-related operations, the knowledge should be disseminated.

“A lot of paperwork is needed here which makes it most difficult to progress. But the surgeons here are so good with their hands. There are excellent doctors for cataracts in India and a lot of experience for corneal operations,” said Gonzalez.

Source: Zee News

India gets WHO praise on polio front, no case in 30 months

WHO today lauded India`s efforts in eradicating polio and said the country has not reported a single case of polio in the last 30 months.

“You did it. For 30 months you have not got a single case of polio,” WHO Director General Margaret Chan said while addressing the meeting of Health Ministers of South-East Asia Region in the presence of President Pranab Mukherjee.

She said India achieved the feat even as 194 countries in the world were speculating whether it can interrupt the transmission of polio.

She also urged nations of the region to adopt universal healthcare access for all.
“I want to urge countries in this region. Please continue to champion universal access to healthcare. That is the platform to deliver healthy human capital that is important for sustainable development in the future,” she said.

The WHO DG complimented India`s health-care initiatives in improving the health of its mothers and children and said, “This country is moving in a big way to promote better health to their women and to their children.”

She also lauded the role of Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad saying, “This country is very fortunate to have a minister totally dedicated to health.”

She also expressed concern over the growing incidence of heart disease which saw 9.4 million deaths every year and said high blood pressure has contributed to it.

“The scale of the problem is a challenge,” she said, adding that more than one in three adults across the world are suffering from high blood pressure.

Chan was here to attend the 31st Health Ministers` meeting of South-East Asia region which comprises of almost 1.8 billion people.

 

Smartwatch Is Next Step In ‘Quantified Self’ Life-Logging

You could call it the phantom menace . Each year, in the midst of winter a rumor surfaces, a about a new Apple product that sets tech bloggers buzzing.

Over the spring and summer, hype builds. Then nothing. Last year, the tech world was left waiting for an Apple TV. This was the year of the iWatch — or at least the year of iWatch hype.

Last week, Samsung rolled out its own version f this imaginary Apple device, and early reviews have been poor. Analysts say the Galaxy Gear, priced at $299, is expensive and the battery life is short. While the watch has voice recognition a la Dick Tracy — the device fell flat with many gadget geeks.

“So the watch itself, if all it is is a glorified smartphone and has some other features to it, it’s not so interesting,” says Brad Feld, a venture capitalist in Boulder, Colo.

What really excites technologists like Feld about watches is how intimate these devices could be. A watch touches your skin, so it can take your pulse, measure your temperature and record the quality of your sleep. Feld says it could become almost like another organ.

“I think we are at version 0.1 of human instrumentation,” he says.

Feld envisions a world of wearable devices — not just watches — that record all kinds of intimate details about our lives. He thinks this data could help make all of us healthier, happier and more fulfilled human beings.

This is the idea of the .quantified self

“When you talk about quantified self, it’s important to acknowledge it’s a social movement first,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, at Forrester Research. “It’s a group of people who identify themselves as being interested in quantifying themselves — in tracking data about their lives.”

Feld is one of them. He’s trying to run a marathon in every state in the country and uses technology to track himself obsessively.

“So I use a bunch of different things,” he says.

He uses a Fitbit, which tracks daily activity and heart rate, and a Fitbit scale to weigh himself. A Garmin watch tracks his runs, and he wears a monitor to track oxidation in his blood. He runs blood tests quarterly and uses devices to track his sleep.

“I instrument myself when I run,” he says.

Most people probably won’t follow Feld to these extremes, but according to Rotman Epps, millions of Americans are already tracking themselves with an app or a device. And Forrester Research found roughly a third of online adults are interested in using a device to track things like sleep. But all this data can be incredibly revealing.

“I choose not to wear my own personal device in bed — whether I am sleeping or doing something else,” Rotman Epps says, laughing. “That’s just where I draw the line.”

In 2011, Fitbit accidentally posted information online about when some of its users were having sex. And sleep patterns can offer telltale signs of depression. By sharing this data with an app or device-maker, Rotman Epps says, you are giving up control.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled more than once that when someone shares information about themselves with a business, the person no longer has any reasonable expectation of privacy. But that hasn’t cooled the fervor of entrepreneurs in this space.

Max Levchin, one of the co-founders of PayPal, recently launched Glow, an app to help women to get pregnant.

“You are opting to put this data in the cloud,” says Rotman Epps.

After interviewing many of these companies on privacy and their plans for the future, she says she has concerns.

“The attitude of these companies is that they will be stewards of your data, but the reality is they don’t even know what their business model is,” she says.

Members of the quantified-self movement have demanded that many firms let users download and delete information, but Rotman Epps is still wary. She says if a company changes its privacy policy there is not much a user could do.

Source BBC news

Girls suffer second-degree burns from fruit

It was supposed to be a normal play day for five friends splashing in a pool in the back yard.

It ended with the group of girls in horrific pain and eventually intensive care in hospital after they all suffered second-degree burns.

The five had spent the day in the pool, splashing around and having fun, The Hanford Sentinel reports. What at first seemed to be overexposure to the sun blossomed into softball-sized blisters and second-degree burns.

Stephanie Ellwanger’s girls, Jewels, 12, and Jazmyn, 9, wound up spending several days in an intensive care unit, hooked up to morphine to manage the pain. They stayed in hospital two weeks. Now they’re not allowed out in the sun for at least six months.

But what caused the Ellwanger girls and their three friends – Reyghan, Candy and Bailey – to end up with massive blisters and peeling skin was a mystery.

Doctors were stumped.

Ellwanger, of Hanford, California, later remembered that the girls played with limes from a neighbour’s tree, squeezing the fruits and splashing in the juice.

After a Google search and some time trying to convince dubious medical staff, the girls were diagnosed with phytophotodermatitis, described as “a chemical reaction [to the lime juice] that makes bare skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet light.”

It’s caused by contact with photosensitizing compounds which occur naturally in some fruits and vegetables — like limes.
Read more: Fox news

 

Bill Gates, 5 scientists win Lasker Awards

Two scientists who illuminated how brain cells communicate, three researchers who developed implants that let deaf people hear and philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates have won prestigious Lasker Awards for medical research and contributions to public health.

The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced the recipients of the $250,000 prizes on Monday. The awards will be presented Sept. 20 in New York City.

The Gateses won the public service award “for leading a historic transformation in the way we view the globe’s most pressing health concerns and improving the lives of millions of the world’s most vulnerable,” the Lasker foundation said.

They have donated more than $26 billion to their philanthropic foundation. They often team up with agencies that can provide diverse expertise, the Lasker foundation said, noting that they supported an international partnership that has helped immunize hundreds of millions of children against killer diseases. Their current priorities include polio, agriculture and family-planning information and services.

The Lasker clinical medical research award will be shared by Graeme Clark, an emeritus professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Ingeborg Hochmair of the company MED-EL in Innsbruck, Austria, and Blake Wilson of Duke University in North Carolina, for developing the modern cochlear (KAH’-klee-er) implant. More than 320,000 people around the world use the implants for severe hearing loss, the foundation said.

The devices stimulate the auditory nerve with electric signals. Hochmair and Clark worked independently, in the face of scientific skepticism that electrical stimulation could produce meaningful hearing. The implants were approved in the U.S. in 1985.

Wilson later designed a new way for implants to process speech, which has allowed most users to understand words and sentences with no visual cues. The advance fueled a growth in implant use that began in the early 1990s, the foundation said.

The Lasker award for basic medical research will be shared by Richard Scheller of the biotech company Genentech and Dr. Thomas Sudhof of Stanford University. With research they began independently in the late 1980s, they unraveled details of how brain cells release chemical messengers to communicate with each other. Scientists are beginning to find connections between the molecular equipment they studied and serious illnesses like Parkinson’s disease, the foundation said.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/

 

Countries with more wealth have higher Alzheimer’s risk

People living in wealthier countries with better access to clean water and good hygiene may have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, Medical News Today reported.

In a study published in the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health, researchers analyzed data from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) report in 2009.

They noted that countries with better access to clean drinking water, lower rates of infectious disease and a greater percentage of the population residing in urban areas all had higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease, according to Medical News Today.

Researchers explained their findings using the ‘hygiene hypothesis,’ which suggests that people who live in places with access to better hygiene have less exposure to certain germs. With no harmful bacteria to fight, people’s immune system’s develop insufficiently, putting them at a higher risk for autoimmune diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s.

“The ‘hygiene hypothesis,’ which suggests a relationship between cleaner environments and a higher risk of certain allergies and autoimmune diseases, is well-established,” lead study author Dr. Molly Fox, from the University of Cambridge, said. “We believe we can now add Alzheimer’s to this list of diseases.”

Currently, more than 50 percent of people with Alzheimer’s live in the developing world, and by 2025, this figure is expected to rise to more than 70 percent, according to Fox.

“An awareness of this by-product of increasing wealth and development could encourage the innovation of new strategies to protect vulnerable populations from Alzheimer’s,” Fox said.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/06/countries-with-more-wealth-better-hygiene-have-higher-alzheimers-risk/#ixzz2eBSsKetK

 

America’s Headache: The invisible plague of concussion

A composite image of where concussion can occurTraumatic brain injury is a hidden epidemic in the US, reaching beyond American football to wounded military veterans and girls’ soccer players. Neurosurgeon Dr Anand Veeravagu outlines concussion’s potentially devastating side effects.

It is all too common for patients to tell me that they have been knocked out while playing sports or in an accident. But the consequences of concussion, or “getting your bell rung” as the disarmingly quaint expression goes, can prove disastrous.

As Chief Neurosurgery Resident at the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, I’ve treated many of our nation’s service members, some of whom came home with injuries that changed their lives forever.

I will always remember in particular one US Army soldier in my care. Mitch (not his real name) was nearing the end of his deployment in Afghanistan when his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb.

His vehicle’s heavy armour shielded most of his body from the blast and saved his life. But it did little to protect his brain. Despite the very latest in helmet technology, the powerful shock waves of such a blast hitting a vehicle often wreak havoc on soft brain tissue.

At a battlefield hospital in Afghanistan, Mitch underwent an emergency procedure called a de compressive craniectomy, where surgeons removed a 13-in (33-cm) piece of his skull to help make room for uncontrollable brain swelling.