Month: September 2013

Skipping Whooping Cough Vaccine Boosts Disease Risk

Little_girl_face

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

Fatty liver disease: More prevalent in children

A type of liver disease once thought to afflict primarily adult alcoholics appears to be rampant in children.

Some one in 10 children in the U.S., or more than 7 million, are thought to have the disease, according to recent studies.

The condition, in which the normally rust-colored organ becomes bloated and discolored by yellowish fat cells, has become so common in non-drinkers that it has been dubbed nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

The disease’s prevalence is alarming doctors who worry about its progression to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, when the fatty liver becomes inflamed and cells are damaged. That leads to the end stage of cirrhosis, when the liver forms scar tissue and ultimately stops working.

The condition’s rise is tied to the obesity epidemic—about 40 percent of obese children have it—but isn’t caused solely by being overweight. The disease appears to be growing among normal-weight children too, experts say.

And even though obesity rates are starting to level off, the prevalence of fatty liver disease continues to rise, they say.

It also has no symptoms, which means a person could have it for decades without knowing.

The Cleveland Clinic’s Pediatric Preventive Cardiology and Metabolic Clinic treats and studies nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

“The disease is very silent,” said Naim Alkhouri, director of the Pediatric Preventive Cardiology and Metabolic Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic.

Because fatty liver disease has been recognized only fairly recently in children, it’s unclear how the disease progresses into adulthood. Roughly 10 percent of people with fatty liver disease will develop NASH; another 15 percent to 20 percent of those will get cirrhosis. While the early stages of fatty liver disease and NASH are reversible, cirrhosis is not.

“This is just really worrisome to have this number of children who have a disease this severe,” said Miriam Vos, a pediatrics professor at Emory University School of Medicine who studies and treats kids with fatty liver disease.

In a study published this year, Dr. Vos and her colleagues looked at data from a national health study for elevated liver enzymes, a sign of fatty liver disease. The percentage of children in the sample suspected of having the disease grew to 10.7 percent between 2007 and 2010, from about 4 percent between 1988 and 1994.
Read more: Fox News

 

To help kids shed weight, change up home routines

To help kids fight the battle of the bulge, a new study suggests changing up household routines with a few simple strategies.

In a new study published online September 9 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, US and Canadian researchers implemented a home-based intervention to help young kids lose weight, by curbing TV time, increasing sleep time, and encouraging families to dine together, LiveScience reports.

While childhood obesity is looming large around the globe, the US is especially struggling: some 17 percent of US children are obese, with the problem particularly acute among minority groups and low-income families, the report added.

One solution: a holistic lifestyle change, Aaron Carroll, a pediatric obesity expert who penned an editorial to the study, suggested to LiveScience.

“Rather than drill down to a specific eating or exercise change, creating a healthier household may be a better way not only to improve weight, but overall physical and mental health as well,” he wrote in the editorial.

In the study, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Ontario’s University of Guelph enlisted 121 families with overweight kids in a six-month study, with 59 families assigned to a control group. Prior to the study, all of the children slept in a room with a television.

In the intervention group, families received in-home counseling about healthy habits, and children increased their sleep by a half hour per day, cut down their television time by one hour per day, and in turn reduced their body mass index (BMI) by 20 percent.

Children in the control group increased their BMI by 20 percent.

In a separate 2012 study from Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, researchers found that televisions in bedrooms can put kids at greater risk of obesity. A separate 2011 study in the journal Pediatric Obesity also found that electronic devices — TVs, computers, and mobile phones — in kids’ bedrooms are linked with both poor sleep and obesity.

Get the most nutrition from your apple

Next time you grab an apple be sure to eat it skin and all. Along with the tangy sweet fruit you definitely want the nutrients you’ll get in the peel.

Vitamins

An apple’s skin is loaded with vitamin A, which promotes healthy vision and cell growth, and vitamin C, which supports a strong immune system and boosts collagen production for healthy skin. The peel also contains Vitamin K, which helps the blood coagulate, and folate, which the body uses in the formation of new cells.

Minerals

According to the University of Illinois, apple peels are an excellent source of important minerals, including calcium, potassium, and phosphorus. Calcium and phosphorus promote strong bones and teeth, while potassium supports healthy cell, heart and digestive function.

Fiber

Apple peels contain both soluble and insoluble fiber, and about two-thirds of the fiber in an apple is in the skin. Fiber has many health benefits, from lowering cholesterol and aiding digestion to promoting satiety that helps with weight control.  An average-size apple with its skin contains 4.4 g of fiber and you’ll lose half if you peel it.

Antioxidants

The skin of an apple is packed with powerful phytochemicals like flavonoids and phenolic acids that help the body fight free radicals that damage cells and contribute to disease.  Eat your apple with the skin and you benefit from compounds called triterpenoids that help fight cancers, such as liver, colon and breast cancer.

Did you know? 

Biting and chewing an apple is good for your smile?  The fiber in apple skin stimulates the production of saliva, which helps fight tooth decay by lowering bacteria levels in your mouth.  Another plus: the malic acid in apples helps dissolve stains
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/10/get-most-nutrition-from-your-apple/#ixzz2eYxZUoYo

 

FDA receives 89 reports of illness from Chobani yogurt

 The Food and Drug Administration reports at least 89 people have reported getting sick after eating Chobani Greek yogurt manufactured in Twin Falls, Idaho.

FDA spokeswoman Tamara Ward told The Times-News on Monday that some have described nausea and cramps.

No link has been confirmed between the illnesses and the yogurt. However, Ward says the FDA is working with Chobani to hasten its voluntary recall.

Chobani last week told grocery stores to destroy 35 varieties of yogurt reported to have been contaminated by a mold associated with dairy products. The affected yogurt cups have the code 16-012 and expiration dates between Sept. 11 and Oct. 7.

Health officials have said the yogurt is not a public health threat, but the company said last week the “mold can act as an opportunistic pathogen for those with compromised immune systems.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/10/fda-receives-8-reports-illness-from-chobani-yogurt/#ixzz2eYvVt6qM

‘Futile treatment’ common in ICUs, study finds

Nurses check a patient in the intensive care unit.

    More than one in 10 patients being treated in intensive care units (ICUs) were at some point receiving what doctors deemed to be futile care, in a new study.

In those cases, critical care doctors believed people would never survive outside an ICU or that the burdens of their care “grossly outweighed” any benefits. And, researchers found, treating each of those patients cost about $4,000 every day.

“Many physicians find that the provision of futile care is not only contradictory to their professional responsibility, but harmful to patients,” Dr. Neil Wenger, director of the UCLA Healthcare Ethics Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine, and senior author of the study, said.

“The biggest issue, more important than the cost issue, is the use of highly advanced medical care that was designed to rescue people that instead gets used to prolong the dying process,” such as ventilators and medicines that raise blood pressure, he told Reuters Health.

For their study, Wenger and his colleagues first convened a group of 13 doctors who worked in critical care to agree on a definition of futile treatment. Categories included care for patients who were permanently unconscious or for whom death was imminent, or treatment that could not achieve the patient’s goals.

Then, the researchers surveyed the attending critical care specialist in five ICUs every day for three months about each of that doctor’s patients to find out how many were receiving futile care under the focus group’s definition.

During the study period, 36 doctors assessed 1,136 patients, with an average of six assessments per patient. Of those patients, 123 – or 11 percent – were determined to be receiving futile treatment, and another 98 (8.6 percent) were perceived as receiving probably futile treatment.

Eighty-four of those receiving futile care died before discharge, and another 20 died within six months of their ICU stay, the researchers reported in JAMA Internal Medicine. The rest were left in “severely compromised” states, with many kept alive by machines.

Wenger and his team calculated hospital costs for futile care were about $4,000 per day, adding up to $2.6 million of treatment provided unnecessarily.

Dr. Michael Niederman, chair of the department of medicine at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, New York, said how often futile care is provided is likely to vary between ICUs.

“It’s very difficult to come up with a definition of futile care,” he told Reuters Health.

“I think there are many things we do where over time we realize we’re unable to help the patient.”

Niederman, who has studied futile care but wasn’t involved in the new research, said along with the costs of providing intensive care that is unlikely to help, there may be times when such treatment hurts other patients as well.

For example, many very sick patients in the ICU are on antibiotics, even if they don’t currently have an infection. One study he cited showed one quarter of them developed multi-drug resistant bacteria – which could then be spread to other patients on the unit.

Of course, the researchers said, doctors are not making treatment decisions on their own, and families may have different opinions on what constitutes futile care, or when the benefits of treatment outweigh the burdens.

“Many times family members have a sense of guilt and responsibility to their loved ones that they want everything done, and I think many times they don’t understand what it means to do everything,” Niederman said.

“The implied discussion here is, do we have the resources in this country to give people care whenever they want it regardless of whether we think the care has benefit?” he said. “That’s a very difficult discussion.”

Wenger said for him, the study highlights the importance of having conversations with patients about their end-of-life care while they are still able to participate in those talks.

“It’s a very complex process making decisions for very ill patients who are on the brink of death,” he said.

“The main message is that early discussions and advance planning are absolutely critical.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/10/futile-treatment-common-in-icus-study-finds/#ixzz2eYs9jy00

 

How your personality impacts your weight

When you gain weight, you probably blame it on the workouts you skipped or the junk food you’ve been eating. But there’s another surprising factor that might be screwing with the number on the scale. Certain personality traits are associated with obesity, according to new research recently presented at the APA Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The Tricky Traits

Across four studies and more than 8,900 people, researchers found that people high in neuroticism (those who are prone to negative emotions like anxiety, sadness, or loneliness) and people low in conscientiousness (those who are disorganized, undisciplined, and easily distracted) are more likely to have a higher BMI. Having either one of these traits appears to increase your risk of obesity, but fortunately, having both of them doesn’t amplify the effect, study author Angelina Sutin, assistant professor at Florida State University, said.

More: What Your Food Cravings Say About Your Health

What It Means for Your Waistline

Of course, this doesn’t mean that every person with either of these traits will automatically be obese, Sutin said. Instead, it means these personality traits can lead to behaviors that tend to cause weight gain. For instance, someone high in neuroticism might get stressed out more easily, which could lead to emotional eating and stress-fueled cravings. And someone low in conscientiousness might be a little disorganized and flaky, which can make it harder to plan out healthy meals or stick to a diet and fitness routine.

More: The Time You’re Most Likely to Binge

But if this sounds like you, you’re not totally doomed.

“We usually think about personality being very stable,” Sutin said. “But the expression of personality can be changed.”

So if you recognize these traits in yourself, just make an effort to avoid indulging in the unhealthy behaviors that can go along with them. That might mean hiding the chocolate ice cream when you’re super stressed or setting a reminder to hit the grocery store so you’re not grabbing fast food five nights a week. You may not be able to change your personality, but you can make tweaks to keep your health and weight in check.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/09/how-your-personality-impacts-your-weight/#ixzz2eYpetbEx

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