Health A-Z

Woman Gets Pregnant Thanks to Yolk from a Hen’s Egg

A British couple who spent £40,000 and went through 12 IVF cycles trying to get pregnant have found success with an unusual treatment involving egg yolks.

Mark and Suzanne Harper agreed to the procedure after doctors revealed Suzanne had high levels of natural “killer cells” in her body that were attacking her embryos and preventing her from getting pregnant. The rare technique involved treatment with intralipid infusion – a special drip mixture that includes yolk from a hen’s egg and soy oil. The fatty acids of this combination were thought to control the aggressive cells – and it worked.

The Harpers were surprised by the main ingredient. Suzanne reveals:We were very surprised when we were told what the treatment consisted of. You don’t expect to be treated using yolk from a hen’s egg. But we were willing to try anything to try to have a baby.

Suzanne was one of the first women in Britain to undergo the pioneering treatment. When the couple decided to conceive again, they used the yolk combination along with IVF and had their second daughter. She said:

We are so happy to be parents at last — and it’s all thanks to egg yolk. It has given us both our daughters and we can’t be grateful enough.

Source: celeb baby

Heavy drinking may ‘increase skin cancer risk by more than half

Heavy drinking can increase the risk of developing the deadliest form of skin cancer by more than half, researchers have warned.

Downing three or four drinks a day does more than make us careless about getting sunburnt, it causes biological changes which make the body more sensitive to sun, they say.

Even one drink a day can raise the chance of getting melanoma by 20 per cent; for heavier drinkers the risk is raised by 55 per cent.

Researcher Dr Eva Negri said the mix of UV rays and alcohol damaged the body’s immune responses.

She added: ‘This can lead to far greater cellular damage and subsequently cause skin cancers to form.

‘This study aimed to quantify the extent to which the melanoma risk is increased with alcohol intake and we hope that, armed with this knowledge, people can better protect themselves.’

The warnings, published in the British Journal of Dermatology, are based on a review of 16 other studies and 6,251 cases of melanoma.

The researchers admit they do not know exactly how drinking increases the cancer risk. But they found alcohol is turned into a chemical called acetaldehyde soon after it is consumed and that makes the skin more sensitive to sunlight.

Leading dermatologist Prof Chris Bunker said: ‘Brits haven’t always been known for their moderation when it comes to either alcohol or the sun but this research provides people with further information to make informed choices about their health.’

Source: Metro news

 

Unique brain area that makes us human identified

Oxford University researchers have identified an area of the human brain that is known to be intimately involved in some of the most advanced planning and decision-making processes that we think of as being especially human.

“We tend to think that being able to plan into the future, be flexible in our approach and learn from others are things that are particularly impressive about humans. We’ve identified an area of the brain that appears to be uniquely human and is likely to have something to do with these cognitive powers,” senior researcher Professor Matthew Rushworth of Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology said.

MRI imaging of 25 adult volunteers was used to identify key components in the ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the human brain, and how these components were connected up with other brain areas. The results were then compared to equivalent MRI data from 25 macaque monkeys.

This ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the brain is involved in many of the highest aspects of cognition and language, and is only present in humans and other primates.

Some parts are implicated in psychiatric conditions like ADHD, drug addiction or compulsive behaviour disorders.

Language is affected when other parts are damaged after stroke or neurodegenerative disease.

A better understanding of the neural connections and networks involved should help the understanding of changes in the brain that go along with these conditions.

The findings are published in the science journal Neuron.

Source: Business standard

 

Spanking linked to behaviour problems in kids

Decades of research studies have found that spanking can negatively affect kids, researchers said.

Child psychologist George Holden and three colleagues at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, wanted to see if parents’ positive views toward spanking could be reversed if they were made aware of the research.

Researchers used a simple, fast, inexpensive method to briefly expose subjects to short research summaries that detailed spanking’s negative impact.

Carrying out two studies, one with non-parents and one with parents, Holden and his co-authors on the research found that attitudes were significantly altered.

“Parents spank with good intentions – they believe it will promote good behaviour, and they don’t intend to harm the child. But research increasingly indicates that spanking is actually a harmful practice,” said Holden, lead author on the study.

“These studies demonstrate that a brief exposure to research findings can reduce positive corporal punishment attitudes in parents and non-parents,” Holden said.

The researchers believe the study is the first of its kind to find that brief exposure to spanking research can alter people’s views toward spanking.

“If we can educate people about this issue of corporal punishment, these studies show that we can in a very quick way begin changing attitudes,” said Holden.

In the first study, the subjects were 118 non-parent college students divided into two groups: one that actively processed web-based information about spanking research; and one that passively read web summaries.

The summary consisted of several sentences describing the link between spanking and short- and long-term child behaviour problems, including aggressive and delinquent acts, poor quality of parent-child relationships and an increased risk of child physical abuse.

The majority of the participants in the study, 74.6 per cent, thought less favourably of spanking after reading the summary. Unexpectedly, the researchers said, attitude change was significant for both active and passive participants.

A second study replicated the first study, but with 263 parent participants, predominantly white mothers.

After reading brief research statements on the web, 46.7 per cent of the parents changed their attitudes and expressed less approval of spanking, researchers said.

The findings have been published in the international journal of Child Abuse & Neglect.

Source: Post Jargan

Anti-VEGF drugs making a difference in vision, longterm care

eye

A treatment introduced less than 10 years ago has already made a difference in the number of Americans losing their vision and being admitted to nursing homes, according to a new study.

Two Duke University economists looked at Medicare beneficiaries with so-called “wet” macular degeneration and found those diagnosed after the introduction of anti-VEGF drugs were less likely to go blind and less likely to move into long-term care.

“At last we have found a way of managing this horrible and very common disease among the oldest of the old,” said Frank Sloan, who led the new study.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the number one cause of blindness in the U.S. affecting older adults, usually after age 65. Most AMD patients have the dry form of the disease, but about 10 percent have wet AMD, which progresses more quickly than the dry form.

Past treatments weren’t very effective at managing wet AMD, but retinal surgeons began using injections of vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitors, known as anti-VEGF, in the mid 2000s.

Previous clinical research has indicated that anti-VEGF treatments are effective for wet AMD, but Sloan said those types of studies don’t let you see longer-term outcomes or how well the therapy works in a real-world setting.

The researchers used Medicare claims information from 1994 to 2011 to examine the vision outcomes and long-term care facility admissions of wet AMD patients who were treated with older methods or with the new anti-VEGF drugs.

The two most commonly used drugs, ranibizumab (Lucentis) and bevacizumab (Avastin), were introduced for eye therapy in 2006.

The researchers discovered that the use of anti-VEGF therapy reduced vision loss by 41 percent and the onset of severe vision loss and blindness by 46 percent, compared to earlier forms of treatment.

They also found that patients who received anti-VEGF were 19 percent less likely to be admitted to long-term care facilities during a two-year follow-up period compared to those treated before the drugs came into use.

The findings were published in JAMA Ophthalmology.

The new treatments may be changing the way some doctors think about wet AMD.

“We used to say it was better to have the dry form because it tended to be milder and slowly progressive as opposed to the wet AMD, which has a rapid onset and much more severe vision loss,” Dr. Michael Stewart told Reuters Health.

Stewart, who chairs the ophthalmology department at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, was not involved in the new study.

Stewart said results like these actually call into question whether or not that old statement is still true because the anti-VEGF drugs are so effective.

“By and large, we are maintaining good vision in most people that we treat,” Stewart said.

Stewart also says the new drugs have revolutionized the way retinal surgeons approach these patients.

He says that early diagnosis with quick initiation of treatment is the best way of preserving vision. The typical course of treatment is to give an injection of the drug in to the eye, about one time per month, but treatment can be tapered to the patients’ needs.

“Patients and family – and most of us, actually – think of a needle in the eye as one of the worst medical procedures we can imagine,” Stewart said, “but the reality is patients tolerate them very, very well and very few patients actually forgo the treatment because of either imagined or real pain, discomfort and anxiety.”

Source: Reuters

Synthetic organ technology moving forward

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Since 2008, eight patients have successfully undergone procedures in which their badly-damaged tracheas were replaced with man made windpipes.

Now, a Boston-area company is preparing to manufacture the scaffolds used to grow these synthetic organs on a large scale, MIT Technology Review reported.

Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology (HART) makes synthetic windpipes by growing a patient’s own stem cells on a lab-made scaffold. The company is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to test the system and is currently conducting trials in Russia.

Researchers hope that in the future, this scaffolding technique could be used to grow other organs as well, such as an esophagus, heart valve or kidney. If successful, the technology could help provide a solution to the country’s organ transplant shortage.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates there are 120,000 people on waiting lists for an organ and this number underestimates the actual need, Joseph Vacanti, a surgeon-scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a leader in tissue-engineering research, told MIT Technology Review.

“The only way we are going to meet that real need is to manufacture living organs,” Vacanti, who is not affiliated with HART, said.

Source: Top news today

 

Common cold prevention and treatment

People sick with a runny nose, sore throat and cough from the common cold will try myriad remedies, but only a few have proved to get results, a Canadian doctor says.

Colds are common, affecting adults about two to three times a year and children under age two about six times a year.

Dr. Michael Allan, of the department of family medicine at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, reviewed and summarized the sometimes conflicting research on treatment and prevention of colds in Monday’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“For treatment of common cold, what you’d be looking at are things like fever and pain control, so acetaminophen or ibuprofen, again kids are a little bit better with ibuprofen for fever,” Allan said in an interview.

“For adults, you could consider some of the over-the-counter remedies, particularly the antihistamine combinations can make you feel a little bit better if you’re desperate, but remember at best one in five will feel better on those.”

For children, Allan suggests honey at bedtime for those troubled with cough. Honey should not be given to infants because of the risk of botulism.

“If you give the two to five age group a single dose at bedtime of either half a teaspoon or two teaspoons, what’s been shown is reduction or improvement in sleep scores.”

Over-the-counter cough remedies and combination products are clearly associated with bad events in children under the age of six, he cautioned.

For prevention at all ages, the review suggests that frequent washing of hands as well as alcohol disinfectants and gloves for health-care workers can be effective.

Trying chicken soup, non-traditional remedies?

Zinc may work to prevent colds in children and possibly adults, based on the findings of two randomized trials that pointed to lower rates of colds and fewer absences from school. There’s also some evidence that zinc lozenges may shorten the duration of a cold, although Allan noted many people complain about the bad taste and zinc can cause nausea.

Antihistamines combined with decongestants or pain medications like acetaminophen and ibuprofen appear to be somewhat or moderately effective in treating colds in children over the age of five and adults.

For non-traditional treatments, the role of ginseng in preventing colds is questionable, Allan and co-author Dr. Bruce Arroll of the University of Auckland in New Zealand concluded.

Results were so inconsistent or small effects for other non-traditional treatments, such as vitamin C, that Allan says it “just not worth it.” He also recommended against Chinese remedies, which were “batting one out of 17” in the studies on benefits with no information on potential side-effects.

“Desperation will lead to just about anything,” Allan said with a laugh. “When people are sick, they’ll try everything, from a spoonful of cayenne pepper, etcetera. Of course there’s very little research, or no research, on any of those kind of things.”

Warm soup falls into that category. It’s warm and gentle on the throat, but improbable that a can of soup will help you get rid of a cold any sooner, Allan said.

Some commuters in Toronto pointed to herbal teas as a soothing option.

“I swear by ginger. Freshly grated ginger tea in the morning sets me right for the whole day,” said Prati Vaidya. “The other is a warm glass of milk with tumeric and a little bit of jaggery,” [sugar].

Source: cbc news

FDA: Aleve may be safer on heart than other drugs

Federal health officials say the pain reliever in Aleve may be safer on the heart than other popular anti-inflammatory drugs taken by millions of Americans.

A Food and Drug Administration review posted online Tuesday said naproxen — the key ingredient in Aleve and dozens of other generic pain pills — may have a lower risk of heart attack and stroke than rival medications like ibuprofen, sold as Advil and Motrin. FDA staffers recommend relabeling naproxen to emphasize its safety.

The safety review was prompted by a huge analysis published last year that looked at 350,000 patients taking various pain relievers. The findings suggest naproxen does not carry the same heart risks as other medications in the class known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs.

The agency released its memo ahead of a public meeting next month where outside experts will discuss the new data and whether naproxen should be relabeled. The agency is not required to follow the group’s advice, though it often does.

If ultimately implemented, the labeling changes could reshape the multibillion-dollar market for drugs used to treat headaches, muscle pain and arthritis.

The change could make Aleve and other naproxen drugs the first choice for patients with a higher risk for heart problems, according to Ira Loss, a pharmaceutical analyst with Washington Analysis. But he added that all NSAIDs will continue to carry warnings about internal bleeding and ulceration, a serious side effect that is blamed for more than 200,000 hospital visits every year.

Source: nbc news

A man dies of prostate cancer every 17 minutes!

If you are a man and are least interested in going to the doctor for those little ailments you have, its time you took notice. According to experts areas like cancer, heart disease and other lifestyle related diseases affect men two times more than women. This disparity is also seen in the national health programmes that focus mostly on communicable diseases and on children and women. ‘Men’s Health remains neglected and is not a focus of any national programme as most of them focus on mostly on communicable diseases, child and woman health’, say doctors. ‘The average life span of man is five years shorter than that of a woman in India,’ said Dr Rajeev Sood, head of department of Urology in RML Hospital,

He said cancer, stone disease (like kidney stones etc.) as well as those of heart and life style grip men 2-4 times more than women. To address the issue and discuss health programmes that can be framed for them on a national scale, the Urological Society of India is all set to host the 47th annual conference here from tomorrow.

‘Studies have shown that the incidences of prostate cancer are growing by one per cent every year. A new case occurs every 2.5 minutes and a man dies from prostate cancer every 17 minutes. ‘It has become the second most frequently diagnosed cancer after lung cancer. Of the 7.6 million deaths due to cancer worldwide, one-sixth are caused by prostate cancer,’ said Sood who is organising secretary of USICON 2014. Could you be at risk of suffering from the disease?

The conference aims at enhancing the skills of urologists in the performance of advanced urologic endoscopic surgery. The five-day conference will be attended by over 3000 urologists across India, SAARC countries, US, Europe (UK, France, Germany, Spain) and Australia.

India has a population of over 1.3 billion, but only a handful of Urologists to cater to urological problems. It will also address numerous important issues of national concern like organ donation and urinary genital cancers among others.

The conference will begin with the pre-conference live workshop which will feature robotic and laparoscopic surgeries in 3D. The focus will be the technological advances like Fusion Biopsy and Photodynamic therapy for focal ablation of prostate cancer and pharmacological advances in terms of newer molecules that can be disease altering. Recently scientists also discovered a way to assess the risk of prostate cancer recurring.

Here are some facts about the disease:

One new case of prostate cancer occurs every 2.5 minutes, and a man dies from prostate cancer every 17 minutes.

A non-smoking man is more likely to get prostate cancer than lung, bronchus, colon, rectal, bladder, lymphoma, melanoma, oral and kidney cancers combined.
Because prostate cancer is a relatively slow-growing cancer, the 5-year survival rate for prostate cancer survivours – at all stages – is 98%. The relative 10-year survival rate is 84% and the 15-year survival rate is 56%.

In the West, where a number of celebrities and high profile people have spoken publicly about the disease, awareness has steadily risen. Hollywood stalwarts Robert De Niro andMichael Douglas have undergone treatment for prostate cancer, so have South Africa’s iconic former President Nelson Mandela and former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Age, genetic predispositions and diet all seem to have a direct correlation with the risk of prostate cancer. Some studies have also indicated that men with sexually transmitted diseases too, have a higher chance of getting afflicted with prostate cancer.

Of the 7.6 million deaths due to cancer worldwide, one-sixth are caused by prostate cancer which is also today the second most frequently diagnosed cancer type after lung cancer.

In India the awareness about the disease still remains low.
Wondering how you can prevent it? Here are some essential dos and don’ts to help you keep prostate cancer at bay:

Do’s

Exercise: Regular exercise and a constant weight go a long way in fighting diseases, especially prostate cancer. All you need is a brisk walk every day, find out how.
Eat healthy: Include cereals, fish, green leafy vegetables, and green tea into your diet. They help fight the ill effects of anti oxidants and prevent the onset of the disease.

Don’ts

Ignore the symptoms: The signs of prostate cancer are very easy to overlook. Don’t ignore the symptoms. Get then checked as soon as you notice anything amiss. An early diagnosis is the best way to successful treatment.

Eat fatty foods: Avoid red meat (as it contains a lot of fat that can lead to prostate cancer) and sugary and starch rich foods (both these components lead to inflammation and can speed up the process of formation of the cancer). Read about the top 5 ways to prevent the onset of prostate cancer.

Source: health India

Poor sleep speeds cancer growth

Poor-quality sleep marked by frequent awakenings can speed cancer growth and increase tumour aggressiveness, a new study has warned.

The study is the first to demonstrate, in an animal model, the direct effects of fragmented sleep on tumour growth and invasiveness.

“Fragmented sleep changes how the immune system deals with cancer in ways that make the disease more aggressive,” said study director David Gozal, chairman of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital.

“Fortunately, our study also points to a potential drug target,” he said.

“Toll-like receptor 4, a biological messenger, helps control activation of the innate immune system. It appears to be a lynchpin for the cancer-promoting effects of sleep loss. The effects of fragmented sleep that we focused on were not seen in mice that lacked this protein,” Gozal said.

Gozal and colleagues from the University of Chicago and the University of Louisville devised a series of experiments to measure the effects of disrupted sleep on cancer.

They used mice, housed in small groups. During the day – when mice normally sleep – a quiet, motorised brush moved through half of the cages every two minutes, forcing those mice to wake up and then go back to sleep. The rest of the mice were not disturbed.

After seven days in this setting, both groups of mice were injected with cells from one of two tumour types (TC-1 or 3LLC). All mice developed palpable tumours within 9 to 12 days. Four weeks after inoculation the researchers evaluated the tumours.

They found that tumours from mice with fragmented sleep were twice as large, for both tumour types, than those from mice that had slept normally.

A follow-up experiment found that when tumour cells were implanted in the thigh muscle, which should help contain growth, the tumours were much more aggressive and invaded surrounding tissues in mice with disrupted sleep.

The difference appeared to be driven by cells from the immune system, called tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs), which cluster at the site of tumours.

TAMs are a hallmark of the immune system’s response to cancer. Some, labelled M1, promote a strong immune response and can eliminate tumours cells. Others, known as M2, suppress the immune response and instead promote the growth of new blood vessels – which encourages tumour growth.

Well-rested mice had primarily M1-type TAMs, concentrated in the core of the tumours. Sleep-fragmented mice had primarily M2-type TAMs, researchers said.

The study was published in the journal Cancer Research.

Source: Zee news