Health News

IUDs may provide birth control protection for longer than approved duration

Some intrauterine devices (IUDs), already a long-term birth control option, are effective for even longer than recommended, according to a new review of past studies.

The older women are when certain IUDs are inserted, the longer they can leave them in, the review found.

IUDs, small plastic or metal devices inserted into the uterus, prevent pregnancy either by killing or damaging sperm or by releasing hormones that thicken the cervical mucus which does not allow sperm to pass. They are the most effective type of reversible birth control, with lower failure rates than the Pill, implants, patches or condoms.

Although recommendations on IUD use have stayed the same for some time, the finding that the devices are effective for longer than advertised is actually old news, Dr. Justine P. Wu told Reuters Health.

She worked on the study at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

“We have had these data in our hands for years,” Wu said. “Our hope is that this review will bolster clinician and patient confidence, both in the United States and worldwide, in the safety and benefits of extending use of certain IUDs beyond the manufacturer-approved time period, among select women.” That includes women who have had one or more children and were at least 25 years old when the IUD was inserted.

Among those women, copper IUDs seem to be effective birth control for at least nine years, depending on the brand. ParaGard, a copper IUD recommended for up to 10 years, is effective for at least 12.

Mirena, a plastic IUD which releases the hormone levonorgestrel to prevent pregnancy, is advertised as effective for five years, but is effective for at least seven years, according to the review published in the journal Contraception.

For women who were at least 35 when the IUD was placed, studies indicate ParaGard remains effective until menopause.

There were not enough studies of women under age 25 to determine how long Mirena and ParaGard are effective beyond recommendations in that group, the researchers said.

Extended use of an IUD among women over 25 who have had a child ultimately reduces costs, improves convenience and extends birth control benefits, Wu said.

Source: fox news

2-headed baby born in India

The mother reportedly had no idea she was carrying twins because she could not afford an ultrasound. Doctors say they don’t believe the baby girls, who have two heads but one set of vital organs, will survive.

A woman gave birth to what seemed to be a girl with two heads in northern India on Wednesday. Urmila Sharma, 28, was too poor to afford an ultrasound and had no idea she was carrying conjoined twins, reports said.

“She is presently alive and healthy,” Dr. Ashish Sehgal said of the twins, although doctors do not expect them to survive. The twins each have a head but share one body and all their vital organs, so separation is not possible.

A very “meticulous and challenging” surgery could save the babies’ lives, but doctors cannot operate until the girls are stable, Sehgal — who’s also the CEO of the Cygnus J.K. Hindu Hospital in Sonipat, Haryana. The twins are currently in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Sehgal said keeping them alive was “a real tough challenge,” but said he is “hoping for success with crossed fingers.”

Doctors said it was too late do anything by the time Sharma delivered the twins via Caesarean section. They were born weighing 7 pounds, 7 ounces and have not been named.
The twins have two necks and two spines.

British papers report the mother’s family is “very distressed.”
Some conjoined twins can be separated — depending on shared organs and where they’re connected — but most are stillborn or die shortly after birth.

Source: daily news

TV time linked to less sleep for kids

The more television children watch, the less total sleep they’re getting, according to a small Spanish study.

Researchers found that a nine-year-old who watched five hours of television a day, for example, slept an average one hour less a night than a nine-year-old who watched television for less than an hour and a half a day, lead author Marcella Marinelli, from the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, told Reuters Health.

The study team followed some 1,700 children for up to three years and found those who increased their TV time got even less sleep as they grew up.

“This study really demonstrated that kids who watch a lot of television and continued to do so continued to have a trajectory of less sleep than they should have,” said Christina Calamaro, from the Nemours Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware, who was not involved in the research.

Marinelli and her colleagues write in JAMA Pediatrics that theirs is the first study to examine the relationship over years between the amount of time toddlers and school-age children spend watching television and the amount they spend sleeping.

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates the average child spends eight hours a day in front of a screen. AAP recommends that parents limit kids’ daily screen time to one or two hours.

Pre-school age children need a total of 11 to 12 hours of sleep a day and school-aged kids need at least 10 hours a day, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Using data from a larger health study, Marinelli’s team assessed the sleep and television habits of 1,713 children in two Spanish cities and on the Mediterranean island of Menorca.

In the cities of Sabadell and Valencia, researchers asked parents how much time their children slept and how much TV they watched when they were two years old and again when they were four years old. In Menorca, researchers questioned the parents of children when they were six years old and again at nine years old.

The researchers categorized children who watched less than an hour and a half a day of television as “shorter” TV viewers and those who watched more than that as “longer” viewers.

TV viewing times at the beginning of the study period ranged from zero to a maximum of eight hours a day, though the median viewing time was about one hour a day. Sleep times ranged from three to 20 hours a day initially, but the median was about 12 hours for two-year-olds, 10 hours for four-year-olds and 11 hours for the six-year olds.

At all points, kids who were longer viewers got less sleep than kids who were shorter viewers.

Median sleep times dropped by about two hours during the two-to-three year follow-up period for all age groups. But kids who increased their TV viewing during that period lost even more sleep time than the others – an average of 20 percent.

Children who reduced their viewing time during follow-up tended to get more sleep, but that result could have been due to chance, the researchers note.

Marinelli’s team did not look at what kinds of shows the children watched on television, what times of day they watched or where the TVs were located. Their study cannot prove that TV viewing caused the differences seen in sleep times or explain why that might be.

One recent study found slightly older kids, aged 11 to 13, slept significantly less when they frequently watched television before hitting the sack (see Reuters Health story of January 24, 2014 here: reut.rs/1fjXJnq).

The researchers adjusted their findings for other factors that might influence the results – including the kids’ gender, weight, exercise, symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, whether children slept alone or with others, humidity in their bedrooms and the age of their mattresses. Researchers also adjusted for parents’ marital status, educational level and psychopathological symptoms.

“They controlled for all the right variables, and television popped out,” Calamaro said.

“We are not paying attention to how much technology children are using and how much television children are watching and what it’s doing to their sleep.”

Calamaro agreed with the study authors, who theorized that fast-paced television images could disrupt children’s brain development or might cut children’s motivation to play, exercise, draw and do other things that enhance neurodevelopment. She said television time could also simply displace sleep time.

Calamaro stressed the importance of playtime and sleep to children’s development.

“This paper really says, wait a minute, when television viewing starts young, it continues to be an issue for children’s sleep as they get older. It feeds into parents’ need to limit technology at an early age,” she said.

Marinelli said she only allows her three-year-old daughter to watch educational television and limits her to no more than half an hour a day.

“Parents must control the use of television especially in very young children and also the use of other devices, for example mobile phones,” she said.

Source; reuters

Rwanda: Chinese Medical Team Arrives

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A twelve -member Chinese medical team has arrived in the country as part of the medical assistance that the Peoples’ Republic has been giving to Rwanda since 1982.

The new team will be deployed at Kibungo Hospital in the Eastern Province.

During the welcome dinner hosted by the Chinese Embassy, Minister of Health Dr Richard Sezibera commended the existing bilateral relations between Rwanda and China that has ensured cooperation in health and other sectors.

“Rwanda commends the outgoing team for the high-level professional techniques and dedication in providing medical services to Rwandans,” Sezibera told the medics.

The new delegation is made up of medical specialists in different fields and they came equipped with medical supplies and other facilities that they will use while on assignment here.

The same dinner also honoured the departing Chinese medical team that has finished its two year term in the country.

Sezibera noted that the Chinese medics’ expertise would contribute to the improvement of health sector in the country.

“This cooperation has ensured cross cultural learning and knowledge-sharing that goes on to improve services offered to patients,” Sezibera said.

The head of the outgoing team, Fang Xuejun praised the government of Rwanda for the support it has rendered to his team during their stay in the country.

According to Xuejun, the team diagnosed and treated 30,000 patients and performed over 3,000 operations.

The Charge d’Affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Kigali, Li Yigang, hailed the outgoing team for its success and urged the new team to build on present achievements of the China-Rwanda health cooperation.

Yiyang stressed the need for continued efforts to improve health and assured his country’s dedication in assisting Rwanda achieve its goals.

Source: All Africa

Surprise: Doc says iPads may be OK for babies

A doctor who helped write guidelines discouraging media use by babies and toddlers says he’s had second thoughts about the iPad and other devices.

Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, a Seattle pediatrician who studies the effect of media on children, now says that kids younger than 2 may actually benefit from 30 minutes to 60 minutes a day of screen time — as long as it’s interactive, not passive.

“I believe that the judicious use of interactive media is acceptable for children younger than the age of 2 years,” he wrote in an opinion piece this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

It’s a somewhat surprising position for the researcher who admits he’s developed a reputation as the “anti-TV guy,” especially when it comes to the youngest viewers. He co-authored the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 guidelines that frown on media use by kids younger than 2.

In the new piece, however, Christakis notes that the guidelines, updates of 1999 recommendations, were written before the 2010 debut of Apple’s iPad and the slew of tablets and devices that followed.

“The statement was drafted with no knowledge that such a device would ever exist,” wrote Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

“Now, 3 years later, we still know surprisingly little about how iPads and other interactive media technologies affect children’s cognition — research is simply unable to keep up with the pace of technological advances —and these devices are increasingly popular.”

Even without hard data, however, Christakis said he has concluded that interactive iPad and device apps that engage a baby may be as mentally stimulating as old-fashioned toys such as blocks or even a See ‘N’ Say, which allows kids to develop a sense of accomplishment by matching animal images and sounds.

They’re all very different than passive television viewing, which is known to have detrimental effects on cognition, or videos or DVDs aimed at babies, which can be overstimulating and potentially harmful, Christakis said.

That’s a view echoed by Elizabeth R. Sowell, a neuropsychologist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. She told TODAY that guidelines based on TV viewing aren’t comparable to those for interactive screen time on devices used by babies and toddlers.

“The brain is developing so rapidly during that period of time and interactive challenges, whether it’s blocks or playing games on the iPad, that’s really going to wire the brain differently than passive viewing,” said Sowell, who is also principal investigator at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Both Christakis and Sowell cautioned that parents need to closely monitor their babies’ screen time. Just as there have been problems with too much internet use in older kids and teens, there’s the danger of “compulsive use of iPads” among the youngest users.

And, iPad or other device use should never interfere with the full range of social, physical and other activities that babies need to develop, Christakis added.

“I do hope parents will take to heart that they should put some limits on it,” he said. “This is not just to allow their child to play willy-nilly for hours and hours.”

Source: Today

New drug can lower salt intake without any dietary changes

Sodium: An important dietary element that the body needs to function. But too much of the chemical can potentially be deadly.

Given current diet trends, a significant majority of Americans consume too much sodium from their food, contributing to an overall increase in cardiovascular disease and poor kidney function. But soon, a new drug may be able to solve this growing problem – by lowering an individual’s salt absorption without affecting his or her diet.

The medication could potentially help the millions of Americans who suffer from chronic kidney disease (CKD) and hypertension, but who have a hard time adhering to a low-sodium diet.

Developed by researchers at drug manufacturer Ardelyx, the drug, tenapanor, works by blocking a membrane transporter called NH3, which is responsible for most of the reuptake of sodium in the body. By inhibiting this protein, the majority of sodium is prevented from seeping into the bloodstream and instead remains in the gut.

“It’s a small molecule that’s been designed to remain within the gut, acting on this transporter that is expressed in the mucosa in the GI (gastrointestinal) tract,” lead researcher Dominique Charmot, co-founder and chief scientific officer at Ardelyx, told FoxNews.com. “And in doing so, what it does is divert sodium from going into the blood to going into the stool. So that increases sodium in the stool and avoids building up too much sodium in the body.”

According to Charmot, current medications to control sodium include diuretics and antihypertensive drugs, which either increase water excretion or control high blood pressure. However, these drugs require patients to adhere to a diet very low in sodium – a feat that can be difficult given the high prevalence of the chemical in typical American diets. But since tenapanor remains in the gut, the drug can remove the sodium while patients continue to eat their normal diet.

To test the effectiveness of tenapanor, Charmot and lead study author Andrew Spencer, senior director for research and development at Ardelyx, administered the drug to rats that had fractions of their kidneys removed, in order to emulate patients with CKD. They also continued feeding the rats a high-sodium diet to see how it interfered with the drug’s success.

“What we’ve shown in this rat model is it protects against hypertension and hypertrophy (an increase in volume) of the heart; and it protects against further damage of the kidney, which is shown by the presence of protein in the urine,” Charmot said.

Additionally, tenapanor was given to patients with CKD in a phase 1 proof of concept study. After taking the medication, patients showed an increase of sodium in their stools and no presence of the drug was detected in their bloodstreams – proving the drug adhered to its design and function.

Charmot and his team hope that their drug will benefit many in the United States, especially given Americans’ widespread consumption of sodium on a daily basis. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend people should limit their sodium to less than 2,300 milligrams a day, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the average American eats more than 3,300 milligrams daily. In fact, the CDC found that more than 90 percent of Americans over the age of 2 eat too much sodium.

Experts believe these dietary trends have contributed to the rising incidence of chronic diseases in the United States. The CDC states that 26 million Americans suffer from CKD and approximately 67 million people have high blood pressure – equating to 1 in 3 U.S. citizens.

And the sodium-related health problems don’t simply stop there, according to Charmot.

“A new body of science is emerging which tells us that sodium, independent of blood pressure, is bad. There’s a lot of animal data showing salt can induce scar tissue in the kidneys and in the vasculature – something that’s seen, for example, by the thickness of the arteries.”

Because of sodium’s potential to contribute to so many diseases, the researchers believe tenapanor can help many individuals stay healthy while enjoying a normal dietary routine.

“It’s fair to say that asking patients to maintain a low-sodium diet is very hard to do,” Charmot said. “…Most of the food additives contain sodium; people who eat in restaurants cannot control sodium; plus, food is bland without sodium. Also there’s a risk if you go too low in sodium, you also diminish nutrient composition which is needed for you to thrive. So we believe this drug can help patients comply with a more normal diet.”

The research on tenapanor was published online in the journal Science.

Source: health medicine

Surgery May Be Best for Young Men With Prostate Cancer

Younger men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer may do well to consider surgery over so-called “watchful waiting,” a new study shows.

The new research,in the New England Journal of Medicine, is unlikely to end the long-running debate in the medical community over if and when surgery to remove the prostate is needed — particularly since the men in the study were diagnosed before the sensitive prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test was widely implemented to detect prostate cancer in its early stages.

The findings are the latest to come out of a 23-year-long, ongoing study comparing radical prostatectomy versus watchful waiting in 695 men who had been diagnosed with localized prostate cancer.

Between 1989 and 1999, researchers randomly assigned these men to either receive prostatectomy or not. The study found that those younger than 65 who underwent surgery to remove their prostates had a 15.8 percent lower risk of dying from prostate cancer than patients who had not had surgery. They also had a 25.5 percent lower risk of dying from any cause, as well as a 15.8 percent lower risk of the disease having spreading to other organs.

“Our results suggest that surgery may be more beneficial to younger men,” said study author Jennifer Rider, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard University School of Public Health. Rider added that the men under 65 who had their prostates removed were also less likely to need radiation or chemotherapy.

The trial, funded by the Swedish Cancer Society and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is the first of its kind to entail such an extended follow-up.
Urologists not involved with the research said the findings were important, particularly at a time when many men have concerns about the side effects of going under the knife for prostate cancer.

“This study makes a world of a difference,” said Dr. David B. Samadi, chairman of urology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
Samadi added that in the years since the study began, the operations to remove the prostate have become more refined.

“Surgery has become much improved,” he said. “ We’ve come a long way.”
“The important finding is that the benefits of surgery have increased over the course of time,” said Dr. Philip Kantoff, director of genitourinary oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

But Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said that the results should be interpreted with caution, particularly since the study dealt with men who were not diagnosed using a PSA test – currently the common early detection method used in the U.S.

“That is a very different population from men in the U.S., where PSA screening means most cancers are caught at a much earlier stage,” he said in a statement to ABC News. The concern is that using prostate-removing surgery to treat these very early cancers may not be the best option, as it could mean a drastic surgery to remove a prostate that would never have presented a life-threatening problem.

And Dr. Lee Green, professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan, said more research will be needed before men facing a prostate cancer diagnosis get definite answers to the questions they have.

“It doesn’t prove that radical prostatectomy is better than less radical procedures, and it doesn’t prove that surgery is better than chemotherapy,” Green said. “It just says that surgery is better than doing nothing.”

Source; abc news

New vaginal gel could help protect women against HIV

Researchers have revealed that a new after-sex vagina gel can be used by women to protect themselves against HIV.

According to scientists at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, drugs applied three hours after exposure to the virus could protect female monkeys from a type of HIV, the BBC reported.

that this study would require large clinical trials to test any new treatment and that condoms still remain the best defense against HIV.

Scientists found that the gel protected five out of six monkeys from an animal-human laboratory strain of HIV, when it was applied before or three hours after infection.

Dr Charles Dobard, of the division of HIV/Aids prevention, said that the gel used is a promising after-sex vaginal gel to prevent HIV infection and studies still need to look for the window of opportunity.

Dr Andrew Freedman, reader and consultant in infectious diseases at Cardiff University School of Medicine, said that the gel contained a different class of anti- HIV drug, which attacks the virus at a later stage in infection.

The study is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Source: Zee news

Scientists discover new obesity gene

Researchers have discovered that the obesity-associated elements within the gene FTO interact with IRX3, a distant gene on the genome that appears to be the functional obesity gene.

Senior study author Marcelo Nobrega, PhD, associate professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, said that their data strongly suggest that IRX3 controls body mass and regulates body composition, asserting that any association between FTO and obesity appears due to the influence of IRX3.

Hoping to explain these observations, Nobrega and his team mapped the behavior of promoters-regions of DNA that activate gene expression-located within one million base pairs on either side of the FTO gene. In adult mice brains, where FTO was thought to affect metabolic function, they discovered that the promoter that turns on FTO did not interact with obesity-associated FTO introns.

Co-author Jose Luis Gomez-Skarmeta, PhD, a geneticist at the Andalusian Center of Developmental Biology in Sevilla, Spain, said that instead they found that the promoter for IRX3, a gene several hundred thousand base pairs away, did interact with these introns, as well as a large number of other elements across the vast genetic distance we studied. The researchers found a similar pattern of interactions in humans after analyzing data from the ENCODE project , which they confirmed with experiments on human cells.

Using data from 153 brain samples from individuals of European ancestry, they discovered that the mutations to FTO introns that affected body weight are associated with IRX3 expression, but not FTO. Obesity-related FTO introns enhanced the expression of IRX3, functioning as regulatory elements. The FTO gene itself did not appear to play a role in this interaction.

To verify the role of IRX3, the researchers engineered mice without the IRX3 gene. These mice were significantly leaner than their normal counterparts. They weighed about 30 percent less, primarily through reduced fat.

The study has been published online in journal Nature.

Source: ANI

 

High Blood Pressure Can Quietly Damage Kidneys

I thought I was a healthy 40-year-old until I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. My doctor began treating it as a stand-alone condition, without considering that high blood pressure is a major risk factor for kidney disease.

At first, I wasn’t even tested for kidney disease. But eventually, he gave me a urine test, and it was discovered that I had protein in my urine — one of the earliest signs of kidney damage. Apparently, my high blood pressure had damaged my kidneys.

Healthy kidneys filter out wastes and toxins, but my kidneys’ ability to do so began to decrease at an alarming rate. I continued to manage my blood pressure with medication and decided to make a few lifestyle changes, as well, that helped me avoid the progression of kidney disease to kidney failure.

I limited my salt intake, started eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, decreased the amount of meat I was eating and began swimming every day. I began to feel better, and when I went to the doctor, it turned out my kidney function had stabilized.

Please tell your readers that if they have high blood pressure they should be proactive and ask their doctor to check their kidneys. Early detection and lifestyle change can make a major impact on your health, as I have learned. — DUANE SUNWOLD, SPOKANE, WASH.

DEAR DUANE: It is generous of you to share your medical history in an effort to caution my readers. The National Kidney Foundation urges everyone to learn about these vital organs and whether they might be at risk.

The three major risk factors for kidney disease are: high blood pressure, diabetes and a family history of kidney failure. People who have these risk factors should ask their doctor to check their kidney function with a simple blood and urine test.

Readers, March is National Kidney Month, and March 13 is World Kidney Day. If you are at risk, schedule an appointment with your doctor. For anyone who needs more information, the National Kidney Foundation’s website is kidney.org.

DEAR ABBY: I’m a member of the clergy who enjoys studying for my ministry and doctoral work at a local coffee shop. Three men who go there every day have found out that I’m a minister, and they each want to talk with me while I’m there. Although all three are members of the same religion, none of them is affiliated with a church.

I have invited them to visit my worship services, as well as call the office and set up an appointment with me. I have also tried to diplomatically explain that I go to the coffee shop to study. One of them ignores it, another appears hurt and the third one gets offended. When they’re not around, I am productive. When they show up, they want me to be their chaplain.

Because of where I live, finding another coffee shop is not a viable option. How can I set a boundary with them and still do my studying there? Thank you. — Reverend in New York

Source:The Mercury