Health News

S. Korea says medical tourists likely to reach 1 mln in 2020

The number of foreign medical tourists in Korea by 2020 could reach 1 million and churn out revenue of 3.5 trillion won (US$3.2 billion), the Korea Tourism Organization said Tuesday.

The organization said the number of people from abroad who visit the country for medical treatment is expected to grow from about 399,000 this year to 998,000 in 2020.

Per capita health spending in Korea by a foreign patient could hit 3.56 million won in 2020, up from 2.53 million won this year, it added. Earnings from foreign patients could reach 3.5 trillion won in 2020, up from just 1 trillion won this year.

Korean medical services, noted for their high quality and cheaper than those of the West, are getting more popular abroad, especially China. China Daily last month said 62 percent of the estimated 31,000 Chinese who visited Korea on 15-day medical tourism visas last year sought cosmetic surgery.

Source: The Korea Observer

HIV/AIDS experts awarded $5 million training grants for India, Africa

John hopkinsHIV/AIDS at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine and the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health have been awarded more than $5 million by the Fogarty International Centre’s HIV Research Training Program to foster health and medical research skills in India, Uganda, Ethiopia and Malawi.

The training funds, to be spread over five years, focus on places hard hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, currently estimated to infect some 33.4 million people worldwide.

Four Johns Hopkins awards were among 22 grants announced in October 2013 by Fogarty, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The new funding will be used to train more than 50 undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral research scientists, as well as lab technologists, as part of a broader effort to develop and upgrade the health and medical research infrastructure in these countries, according to Fogarty officials.

Such added local skills, researchers say, are essential to the success of many other US government-funded HIV/AIDS initiatives aimed at preventing and treating people with the disease.

Among the Johns Hopkins faculty serving as principal investigators of the awards are Dr Robert Bollinger (HIV-TB Fogarty Research Training Program in India), Dr Ronald Gray (Male Circumcision and Use of Foreskin Tissues for HIV Prevention in Uganda), Dr Andrea Ruff (Optimizing HIV Prevention in Ethiopia through Implementation Science) and Dr Taha Taha (Training in HIV-related Non-communicable Disease Complications in Malawi).

“These training grants are desperately needed to assemble the critical mass of medical research personnel necessary to plan, organize, implement and monitor how we battle HIV disease in the countries most heavily burdened by the pandemic,” said Fogarty grant recipient Dr Robert Bollinger, a professor at Johns Hopkins and director of its Centre for Clinical Global Health Education.

Source: India Medical Times

New imaging method ‘predicts’ heart attack risk

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that around 715,000 Americans suffer a heart attack every year. Now, scientists have created a new imaging technique that could identify which patients are at high risk. This is according to a study published in the The Lancet.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in the UK say the test – carried out using positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) – is able to “light up” dangerous fatty plaques in the arteries that are in danger of rupturing. This is a process that can cause heart attacks.

To reach their findings, the researchers analyzed 80 patients. Of these, 40 patients recently had a heart attack, while the other 40 patients had angina – restricted blood supply to the heart posing a higher risk of heart attack.

‘First step’ towards heart attack prevention

Using the PET-CT scanner, the researchers found that 90% of patients who had a heart attack showed a “lit up” yellow area in one of their blood vessels. This area corresponded exactly to the location of the plaque that caused the patients’ heart attacks, the researchers say.

The scanner also showed lit up plaques in around 40% of the patients with angina. Furthermore, the researchers found “high-risk” features in these patients that suggested a heart attack may be imminent, meaning they were in need of aggressive drug treatment or surgery.

Dr. Marc Dweck, of the University of Edinburgh and lead study author, says their findings are a step toward heart attack prevention:

“We have developed what we hope is a way to ‘light up’ plaques on the brink of rupturing and causing a heart attack.

If we could know how close a person is to having a heart attack, we could step in with medication or surgery before the damage is done. This is a first step towards that goal.”

Potential for identifying ‘ticking time bomb’ patients

The researchers say the next stage of this research is to confirm the findings and to determine whether the PET-CT imaging technique can improve the management and treatment of patients with coronary artery disease.

Prof. Peter Weissburg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation in the UK, which part-funded the study, notes that the technique looks promising:

“Being able to identify dangerous fatty plaques likely to cause a heart attack is something that conventional heart tests can’t do. This research suggests that PET-CT scanning may provide an answer – identifying ‘ticking time bomb’ patients at risk of a heart attack.”

“We now need to confirm these findings, and then understand how best to use new tests like this in the clinic to benefit heart patients,” he adds.

Source: Medical News Today

 

Colds and sore throats not helped by ibuprofen

If you have a cold or sore throat, you might want to opt for the acetaminophen over the ibuprofen for symptom relief, a new study suggests.

Research published in the British Medical Journal shows that taking ibuprofen (commonly known by the brand name Advil) doesn’t seem to relieve symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections as well as acetaminophen (commonly known by the brand name Tylenol).

Taking ibuprofen along with acetaminophen also didn’t provide as many symptomatic benefits as taking acetaminophen alone, the University of Southampton researchers found.

Interestingly, people who took ibuprofen or ibuprofen with acetaminophen were more likely to come back to the doctor with new or worse symptoms, than those who took acetaminophen alone.

“This may have something to do with the fact the ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory. It is possible that the drug is interfering with an important part of the immune response and leads to prolonged symptoms or the progression of symptoms in some individuals,” study researcher Paul Little, a professor at the University of Southampton, said in a statement. “Although we have to be a bit cautious since these were surprise findings, for the moment I would personally not advise most patients to use ibuprofen for symptom control for coughs colds and sore throat.”

The findings are based on data from 899 patients who had symptoms of a respiratory tract infection. They were prescribed either acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or both ibuprofen and acetaminophen, and were instructed to take it either as needed, or four times a day. Some patients were also told to try steam inhalation to relieve symptoms.

Researchers also found that steam inhalation didn’t seem to provide any symptomatic benefits — and in fact led to mild scalding among 2 percent of people observed in the study who used this method.

Source: Huffington post

 

Weekly exercise by pregnant moms boost babies’ brains

A new study has suggested when to-be-moms exercised for three 20-minute sessions a week, their babies’ brains showed more mature patterns of activity.

The findings have come from a randomised controlled trial in humans to show that a pregnant mother’s exercise routine can impact her baby’s brain.

Elise Labonte-LeMoyne at the University of Montreal, said that mother’s exercise also impacts their kid’s weight gain in life, the Guardian reported.

Women joined the research group in their first trimester and were randomly assigned to an exercise or a sedentary control group.

The 10 women in the exercise group cycled, walked, ran or swam for three short sessions a week.

The eight women in other group were instructed not to exercise.

Eight to 12 days after babies were born, the researchers measured their brain activity.

They used a hairnet of 124 electrodes, and recorded electroencephalograms (EEG) while they played sleeping babies a series of beeps that were interspersed with different sounds.

Even though they were asleep, brain activity patterns showed how efficiently they were able to discriminate between old and novel sounds.

Source: DNA India

 

 

How brain uses sleep for visual task learning

Particular frequencies to consolidate learning in specific brain regions.

 In August, Brown University scientists reported that two specific frequencies, fast-sigma and delta, that operated in the supplementary motor area of the brain were directly associated with learning a finger-tapping task akin to typing or playing the piano.

The new results show something similar with a visual task in which 15 volunteers were trained to spot a hidden texture amid an obscuring pattern of lines.Takeo Watanabe, professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown, said that perceptual learning in general has been found to improve the visual ability of patients who have some decline of function due to aging.

In this case the researchers, led by graduate student Ji Won Bang, devised an experiment to see how sleep may help such training take hold. They measured the brainwaves of the participants during sleep before and the training, and they measured the volunteers’ performance on the task before and after.

The researchers saw significant increases in sigma brainwave power after sleep compared to before in the visual cortical area in the occipital lobe of the volunteers’ brains.

To ensure they were measuring activity related to learning the task, the researchers purposely put the stimulus of the discrimination task in a particular quadrant of the subjects’ field of view.

That position corresponds to an anatomically distinct part of the visual cortical area. The team saw that the measured gain in sigma wave power was greater specifically in that trained part of the visual cortical area rather than in the untrained parts.

They also saw that the difference of power increase between trained and untrained regions of the visual cortical area was correlated with each individual’s performance improvement on the task.

The study has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Source: News Track India

 

Teenagers ‘think slim cigarettes are safer’ says report

Young teenagers rate slimline cigarettes as stylish, feminine and possibly safer than regular brands, say researchers.

Thinner cigarettes were generally seen as weaker, more palatable, and less harmful by a focus group of 15-year-olds from Glasgow.

In fact, some super-slim brands contain more dangerous tobacco chemicals than their bulkier counterparts, according to the study authors.

Teenagers were most attracted to slim and super-slim cigarettes with white filters and decorative features, describing them as “classy” and “nicer”, said Cancer Research UK.

In contrast one long brown cigarettes was viewed as particularly harmful and labelled “disgusting”, “really, really strong”, and “old fashioned”.

The researchers asked 48 teenage boys and girls about eight cigarette brands that differed in length, diameter, colour, and design.

Professor Gerard Hastings, Cancer Research UK’s social marketing expert at the University of Stirling and one of the study authors, said: “Our research confirms previous studies that both the pack and the product are powerful marketing tools in the hands of the tobacco industry which it is using to recruit a new generation of smokers. It’s time policy makers moved to standardise both.”

Co-author Allison Ford, also from the University of Stirling, said: “This important study reveals for the first time that adolescents associate slim and decorative cigarettes with glamour and coolness, rating them as a cleaner, milder and safer smoke.

“It is incredibly worrying to hear that adolescents believe that a stylishly designed cigarette gives a softer option.”

Cancer Research UK is campaigning for plain standardised packaging of cigarettes and has launched an online film accusing the tobacco industry of encouraging children to smoke.

The study found that teenagers thought white tips and longer cigarettes portrayed a cleaner, feminine image reminiscent of glamorous female stars from old movies. The image softened perceptions that smoking was harmful, said the scientists.

Cigarettes with white tips were also associated with menthol, which was perceived as weaker and less harmful.

In their paper, published in the European Journal of Public Health, the researchers wrote: “The slimmer diameters of these cigarettes communicated weaker tasting and less harmful-looking cigarettes. This was closely linked to appeal as thinness implied a more pleasant and palatable smoke for young smokers.

“This exploratory study provides some support that standardising cigarette appearance could reduce the appeal of cigarettes in adolescents and reduce the opportunity for stick design to mislead young smokers in terms of harm.”

Mumsnet chief executive and co-founder Justine Roberts, who supports the campaign, said: “Very few parenting issues are completely black and white, but nobody wants their child to start smoking. Standardised packs may not be a silver bullet, but Mumsnet users are clear that they’d be very happy to see them as part of a range of measures to discourage children from getting hooked.”

Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: “This research once again highlights how the tobacco industry exploits any opportunity to lure young smokers to secure a profitable future.

“The evidence shows children are attracted to glitzy, slickly-designed cigarettes and packs and every year more than 207,000 UK children between 11 and 15 start smoking. We are urging the Government to introduce standardised packaging to discourage these children from starting this life-threatening habit and to prioritise children’s health over tobacco company profits.”

The House of Lords will debate standardising cigarette packaging over the next few weeks.

Source: The Independent

 

How diabetic women`s pregnancy chances can be boosted

Watching what you eat, exercising properly and ensuring adequate nutrition with a vitamin supplement which has adequate amounts of folic acid may improve chances of conception in diabetic women.

Women with diabetes face a special challenge-getting and then staying pregnant. Poor glucose control may create an environment where the high sugars prevent both conceiving as well as maintaining the pregnancy, Diabetic Living India reported.

Women who develop diabetes can be prone to developing other disorders such as thyroid disease or autoimmune premature ovarian failure.

Miscarriage rates among women with poorly controlled diabetes can be as high as 30 to 60 percent during that crucial first trimester of pregnancy.

The risk of birth defects is also high, and also stems from uncontrolled blood sugar levels around the time of conception.

A baby’s brain, heart, kidneys and lungs form during the first eight weeks of pregnancy, therefore high blood glucose levels are especially harmful during this early stage.

The main diabetes complication, including gestational diabetes, related to pregnancy is macrosomia – or a big baby (higher than the 90th percentile in birth weight).

Women with Type 1 diabetes will require insulin before, during and after their pregnancy.

However, if a woman has type 2 diabetes then she will require oral medications with or without insulin to achieve appropriate control of your diabetes.

In order to enhance chances of delivering a healthy baby, diabetic women should work with health care team to get their blood glucose under control before getting pregnant.

Source: Smas Hits

Healthy lifestyle changes could help combat depression

New studies have showed that healthy lifestyle choices could have positive impact in depression treatment, the effects of aging, and learning.

The experiences and choices people make throughout life actively impact the brain.

As humans live longer, these choices also affect aging and quality of life. Lifestyle changes to diet and exercise will be important to aging populations as non-drug, easy-to-follow interventions with few side effects, make ideal potential therapies.

One study shows that as few as 12 consecutive days of exercise in aging rats helps preserve and improve movement function, an effect possibly caused by changes in dopamine.

The results suggest that exercise could stave off or reverse the slowed movements that are hallmarks of age (Jennifer Arnold, abstract 334.02).

Practices like yoga or meditation that increase mind/body awareness help people learn a brain-computer interface quicker. This finding may have implications for those who need brain-computer interfaces to function, such as people with paralysis (Bin He, PhD, abstract 16.06).

Long-term exercise in aging rats improves memory function, as well as increases the number of blood vessels in the white matter of their brains – the tracts that carry information between different areas of the brain. Increased blood flow may explain why exercise can help preserve memory (Yong Tang, MD, PhD, abstract 236.09).

Regular, supervised exercise helped young adults with depression overcome their symptoms in a pilot study. The results suggest that exercise could be an important treatment for depression in adolescents (Robin Callister, PhD, abstract 13.02, see attached summary).

A low calorie diet starting in middle-age onward protected rats against the effects of aging on movement. The results suggest that dietary interventions can help preserve movement function in a manner similar to exercise

Source: ani news

How antidepressants work in brain

A new study has allowed researchers better understanding of how antidepressants work in the human brain – and may lead to the better antidepressants’ development with few or no side effects.

The article from Eric Gouaux, Ph.D., a senior scientist at OHSU ‘s Vollum Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator describes research that gives a better view of the structural biology of a protein that controls communication between nerve cells.

The article focuses on the structure of the dopamine transporter, which helps regulate dopamine levels in the brain.

Dopamine is an essential neurotransmitter for the human body’s central nervous system; abnormal levels of dopamine are present in a range of neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, drug addiction, depression and schizophrenia.

Along with dopamine, the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and serotonin are transported by related transporters, which can be studied with greater accuracy based on the dopamine transporter structure.

The Gouaux lab’s more detailed view of the dopamine transporter structure better reveals how antidepressants act on the transporters and thus do their work.

Another article published also dealt with a modified amino acid transporter that mimics the mammalian neurotransmitter transporter proteins targeted by antidepressants.

It gives new insights into the pharmacology of four different classes of widely used antidepressants that act on certain transporter proteins, including transporters for dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline.

The second paper in part was validated by findings of the first paper – in how an antidepressant bound itself to a specific transporter.

The two papers have been published in journal Nature.

Source: Deccan Chronicle