Month: September 2013

Suicide can be prevented on timely intervention

observed on September 10, CIMBS launched a yearlong public campaign “Let`s Talk to Prevent Suicide

Majority of suicides can be prevented on timely intervention, any person with suicidal tendency can be easily convinced through dialogue and timely counselling, experts said.

“Suicidal tendency is a mental illness – it can be prevented through timely intervention. Any person with the tendency can be easily identified.

Nowadays many communicate it through social networking site or share it with friends and relatives that they are in emotional turmoil.

“At these situation the kith and kin friends should intervene and convince them,” said Sunil Mittal, director, Cosmos Institute of Mental Health and Behaviourial Sciences (CIMBS).

“Only when we talk about suicide and its causes that we can build an atmosphere of hope and resilience at home and the community to help prevent suicide,” he added.

On the eve of World Suicide Prevention Day, observed on September 10, CIMBS launched a yearlong public campaign “Let`s Talk to Prevent Suicide”.

Giving an example, psychiatrists informed that had actress Jiah Khan, who committed suicide recently, hinted about her suicidal tendency on a social networking site, timely help could have saved her.

“Individuals with poor problem solving skills, impulsivity, interpersonal relationships have a high risk of deliberate self harm and suicide,” said clinical psychologist Mitalli Srivastava.

“Identifying and helping those attempting suicide can bring down suicidal rates, motives can vary early identification and counselling will help to reduce the suicide rates,” said CIMBS co-ordinator Sameer Kalani.

According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the majority of people committing suicide are in the age of 15 to 49 years.

As per NCRB statistics, the last year alone a total of 135,445 people committed suicide, which ranges to 371 suicides per day or one suicide every four minutes.

 Source: Zee News

Microbe Transplants Treat Diseases That Drugs Can’t Fix

Billie Iverson may be getting up there, but for an 86-year-old, she’s still plenty active.

“I take trips, and I go do my own shopping, and I take myself to the doctor,” Iverson says. “I do everything. I don’t let anything stop me.”

But one day, she got hit with something she’d never experienced — the worst case of the runs ever.

For days at a time, off and on for weeks, the problem kept coming back. Iverson eventually got so weak, she ended up in for days at a time, off and on for weeks, the problem kept coming back. Iverson eventually got so weak; she ended up in a nursing home.

“I just thought maybe I wasn’t going to make it,” she says. “I thought I was going to die.”

Finally, Iverson’s daughter took her to see Colleen Kelly, a doctor at Brown University. Kelly knew right away what was going on.

“It’s very classic, this pattern,” Kelly says. “We’ve seen hundreds of cases over the last couple of years at our program.”

Kelly’s program specializes in the microbes that live in our digestive systems — trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other mostly helpful microbes whose genes scientists collectively call the human microbiome .

The problem, she told Iverson, started when antibiotics prescribed for another health problem disrupted the community of benign organisms in her intestines, leaving her vulnerable to a really bad bug — a bacterium called Clostridium Difficile

“You can almost look at C. diff as … the prototypical example,” Kelly says, of how a disruption in the human microbiome can result in disease.

Kelly is among a growing number of doctors who are starting to use what scientists are learning about our microbiomes to help prevent, diagnose, and treat many illnesses. For Iverson, she proposed something that may sound pretty radical — what doctors call a fecal transplant

“It’s really almost like an organ transplant,” Kelly says. “You’re taking this whole community of microorganisms from one person, [and] transplanting them into another person. Then these things … take root, colonize and kind of restore that balance.”

Iverson says she initially found the idea repulsive. But she felt so desperate that she agreed to try it.

“I was scared to death, honey,” Iverson says. “I’m an old lady. I’ve got one foot in the grave and the other on the banana peel.”

The procedure turned out to be really easy. And it worked — virtually overnight. “It stopped,” Iverson says. “Right away. I’m feeling good now. I’m feeling great.”

What happened to Iverson is the most dramatic example of how doctors are manipulating the microbiome in lots of ways to help lots of different kinds of patients.

For one thing, Kelly says doctors are testing the use of the transplants in other illnesses, such as colitis, Crohn’s disease and diabetes. And there’s even talk of trying the treatment for obesity.

“We’re at a really interesting point in medicine where we’ve come to appreciate the microbiome and that [these organisms] have really integral roles in … energy metabolism, and immune function, and all of these other things,” Kelly says.

At the same time, researchers are looking for more subtle ways to fix our microbiomes. For starters, they’re trying to remove the “yuk” factor from microbiome transplants by figuring out exactly which microorganisms patients really need and giving them just those. And there’s tons of research involving so-called probiotics — live cultures of supposedly beneficial microbes, typically included in yogurt or other foods or supplements probiotics are meant to be swallowed, in hopes that they’ll outcompete pathogenic bacteria and restore a healthy balance.

The evidence is really mounting to the point where I think it’s undeniable that the ingestion of live bacteria — safe bacteria in high numbers — has an overall beneficial effect on human health,” says colin hill of the University College Cork in Ireland.

Scientists are testing a long list of probiotics for a variety of health problems, including vaginal infections, colic in babies and weakened immune systems in the elderly. They’re also studying so-called prebiotics— non digestible carbohydrates meant as food for the good microbes.

Now, anyone who walks into a grocery store these days knows that hundreds of prebiotic and probiotic products are already on the market. You can’t watch TV or go on the Internet without hearing the kinds of claims the manufacturers of these products make.

The companies point to studies supporting their claims. But many experts say there are still huge questions about how safe such products are, how pure they are, and whether they really do what their makers say they do.

“All of those things together open up the opportunity for … the equivalent of snake oil salesmen related to probiotics or microbial treatments, or fecal transplants or whatever,” says Jonathan Eisen of the University of California, Davis.

And Eisen is not alone in his criticism. The Food and Drug Administration has big concerns. Those concerns include whether microbiome transplants might spread infections, or are being promoted for unproven uses, or whether they might actually increase the risk for some health problems.

“The gut microbiome can affect obesity, diabetes [and] a number of other disorders,” says Jay Slater, director of the FDA’s Division of Bacterial, Parasitic and Allergenic Products. “These are the kinds of concerns that would indicate that good long-term studies really should be done.”

So the FDA requires that doctors who want to do microbiome transplants for anything other than C-diff treatment get FDA approval first. And physicians must warn patients that, even for C-diff, the treatment is still experimental. Scientists studying probiotics have to put them through the same careful testing that regular drugs go through.

All this is really frustrating for many scientists. They argue that these regulatory roadblocks are holding up research and making it too hard for patients to get microbiome transplants.

“People are dying of C. diff,” says Kelly. “And people are living in this really terrible state. I see people who’ve lost their jobs, people who’ve become depressed because of just the feeling of utter hopelessness. And I think it’s really unethical to withhold the treatment from patients who need it.”

As for Iverson, she agrees that anyone who needs such a transplant should be able to get one.

“I think it’s terrific,” she says. “I think it’s the best thing that ever happened. This is like a step to heaven having this done.”

How Expansion Will Change The Look Of Medicaid

Adults making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level () will be able to sign up for Medicaid, under an expansion paid for entirely by the federal government between 2014 and 2017.

The catch is that states, which share in the expense of regular Medicaid, will have to pay up to 10 percent of the expansion tab later. The governments in some states don’t want to do that. Only half the states were agreed to go ahead with the easier path to coverage made possible by the Affordable Care Act.

So how will the expansion change who signs up for Medicaid coverage? Some researchers at the University of Michigan Health System took a look by analyzing data from the National health and nutrition examination survey

Demographically, the new enrollee population will have a higher proportion of whites, and a higher proportion of males,” Dr. Tammy Chang, lead author of the study, tells Shots. The new enrollees are likely to be younger, too. (See the chart for a fuller breakdown.)

Overall, she says the Medicaid enrollees will be healthier and fewer of them will be obese. But more of them will be smokers and drinkers, and they’re also less likely to be depressed. “We can really focus on them as physicians for prevention and improving their health behaviors,” she says.

The findings were published  in the Annals of Family Medicine.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the idea of the .quantified self

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source BBC news

Mosquito ‘invisibility cloak’ discovered

A hand in a mosquito cage was not attractive when covered with the chemical

A naturally occurring substance found in human skin could yield a viable alternative to existing mosquito repellent, scientists say.

They say the chemical could help render people “invisible” to the insects.

At the American Chemical Society meeting, they revealed a group of compounds that could block mosquitoes’ ability to smell potential targets.

When a hand with these chemicals was placed in a mosquito filled enclosure, it was completely ignored.

The team says their work could help prevent the spread of deadly diseases.

Mosquitoes are among the most deadly disease-carrying creatures. They spread malaria, which in 2010 killed an estimated 660,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Ulrich Bernier of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) who presented the work, said his team was exploring other options to Deet – a repellent which some do not favour.

Buzzing off

In fact, earlier this year a team of scientists said that the widely used repellent was losing effectiveness.

“Repellents have been the mainstay for preventing mosquito bites… [but] we are exploring a different approach, with substances that impair the mosquito’s sense of smell. If a mosquito can’t sense that dinner is ready, there will be no buzzing, no landing and no bite,” said Dr Bernier.

It has long been known that some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others, but now the team has pinpointed a group of chemical components secreted naturally, that can mask human smell from the blood-sucking insects.

Dr Bernier explained that hundreds of compounds on the skin makes up a person’s smell. In order to see what smells attracted mosquitoes, his team sprayed various substances onto one side of a cage.

It was the compounds that didn’t attract any mosquitoes that they looked at further and when sprayed on a human hand, the insects did not react or attempt to bite.

‘Invisible hand’

These chemical compounds, including 1-methylpiperzine, were found to completely block their sense of smell.

The compounds could be added into many cosmetics and lotions, Dr Bernier added.

“If you put your hand in a cage of mosquitoes where we have released some of these inhibitors, almost all just sit on the back wall and don’t even recognize that the hand is in there. We call that anosmia or hyposmia, the inability to sense smells or a reduced ability to sense smells.”

Commenting on the work, James Logan of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was exciting to find out exactly which chemicals repelled mosquitoes.

“Although we already have good repellents on the market, there is still room for new active ingredients. The challenge that scientists face is improving upon the protection provided by existing repellents.

“If a new repellent can be developed which is more effective, longer lasting and affordable, it would be of great benefit to travellers and people living in disease endemic countries,” Dr Logan told BBC News.

But he said that it would take many years before a new product would make it to market.

Source: BBC News/health

Lung cancer drug ‘could help treat ectopic pregnancy

A lung cancer drug could be given to women with ectopic pregnancies in a bid to help them avoid surgery.

A joint study by researchers in Edinburgh and Melbourne, Australia, found that combining a drug called gefitinib with existing treatment was more effective at curing the condition.

An ectopic pregnancy is when an embryo implants in the Fallopian tube.

It can be treated with drugs if identified early, but surgery is needed when it is more developed.

Each year, about 12,000 women in the UK have an ectopic pregnancy and the condition is responsible for up to 80% of pregnancy-related deaths.

The study, published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynaecology, involved a trial of 12 women.

Gefitinib, usually used to treat lung cancer, blocks a protein that is known to encourage cell growth, and which was found to be present in high levels at the site of ectopic pregnancies.

Scientists from the Edinburgh University’s medical research council centre for reproductive health, and the University of Melbourne, suggested that combining gefitinib with the conventional treatment – called methotrexate – could reduce the need to remove the Fallopian tube in a significant number of cases.

They said this would help a patient’s level of fertility.

The researchers also found that the drug combination was able to shorten the time it took to successfully treat ectopic pregnancies in women who did not need surgery.

Dr Andrew Horne, who led the study, said: “An ectopic pregnancy can be extremely stressful for the woman involved.

“If we can reduce the need for surgery, and thereby help fertility levels, then that would be an enormous benefit.

“Reducing the treatment time for women who do not need surgery would also have a significant impact in reducing the emotional stress of such a diagnosis.”

Researchers now plan to run a larger trial.

Source: BBC News

Girls suffer second-degree burns from fruit

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

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

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

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

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

Doctors were stumped.

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

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

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

 

Magic ‘mushroom diet’? Experts scoff at weight-loss claim

A new diet fad claims that replacing one meal a day with mushrooms will help women shed fat, but only in certain parts of the body — the waist, hips and thighs — but not the bust.

The two-week diet, called the M Plan, according to the Daily Mail, has been touted by celebrities such as Kelly Osbourne and Katy Perry.

Experts say that there’s nothing magical about mushrooms — replacing one meal a day with any vegetable would help a person lose weight, said Katherine Tallmadge, a registered dietitian, and op-ed contributor to LiveScience.

And the claim about selective weight loss doesn’t hold up to science. “There’s no evidence that any diet … will help you lose weight in a particular spot,” Tallmadge said.

How people lose, and also gain, weight is determined largely by genetics, Tallmadge said, but factors such as age and smoking habits also play a role.

Studies show older women are more likely to gain weight around their belly, likely due to changing hormone levels, Tallmadge said. Smoking has also been linked to an increased risk of gaining weight in the midsection.

However, studies suggest that certain exercises may help people lose weight selectively: there’s evidence that walking is an effective exercise for helping people lose belly fat, Tallmadge said.

 

Fetal alcohol disorders common in adopted, foster kids

Children adopted from orphanages or in foster care have a high rate of fetal alcohol syndrome and other physical, mental and behavioral problems related to alcohol exposure before birth, according to a new review of past studies.

Among those children, researchers found that rates of alcohol-related problems – which can include deformities, mental retardation and learning disabilities – were anywhere from nine to 60 times higher than in the general population.

“It’s increasingly well recognized that this is a very high-risk population and one that we should really be paying attention to,” Phil Fisher, a psychologist who studies foster and adopted children at the University of Oregon in Eugene, said.

“We know that one of the main reasons that kids end up in foster care or being made eligible for adoption is because their parents have substance abuse problems,” added Fisher, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

The findings are based on a review of 33 studies of children in the care of child welfare agencies or foster parents, as well as kids before and after their adoption from orphanages. Most of the studies were conducted in Russia or the United States.

Compiling the studies with the most accurate reporting techniques, Dr. Svetlana Popova from the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and her colleagues found six percent of children in those settings had fetal alcohol syndrome.

The condition includes a distinctive set of facial features, including a small head, jaw and eyes, and other physical developmental defects, especially of the heart. Slow growth and delayed development after birth are also typical of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Close to 17 percent of the children had a more loosely-defined fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which covers any physical, mental or behavioral issues caused by prenatal alcohol exposure.

The highest rates of fetal alcohol syndrome were seen among children in a Russian orphanage for kids with special needs and among those adopted from Eastern Europe by families in Sweden. In those studies, anywhere from 29 percent to 68 percent of children showed severe alcohol-related damage.

In other cases, such as a study of Chinese children adopted and brought to the United States, there were no reported instances of fetal alcohol syndrome, the study team reported Monday in Pediatrics.

Fisher said it’s important to know that although problems related to alcohol exposure are common among adopted and foster children, not all kids have been exposed – and some with prenatal exposure are “quite resilient” and do fine.

“I don’t think anyone wants to create the impression that every child in the foster care system … and every child who’s adopted has very severe problems,” he told Reuters Health.

Still, he said there is a need for more recognition of the challenges faced by children who have been exposed to drugs and alcohol in the womb. Rather than focusing only on their obvious current symptoms, he said fetal alcohol disorders should be treated as chronic diseases, like diabetes.

“The supports need to be available in an ongoing way,” Fisher said.

He also pointed to the importance of identifying children who have some of the effects of drug and alcohol exposure – but not ones as obvious as the distinct facial features seen with fetal alcohol syndrome – and getting them support as soon as they enter the child welfare system or are adopted.

“If we don’t do the early screening and detection … then I think we’re in a much more challenging position,” he said.

“We hope that the results of this study will attract attention to the needs of children in care affected by prenatal alcohol exposure,” Popova told Reuters Health in an email.

She agreed that spotting problems as soon as possible is important.

“Early screening may lead to early diagnosis, which can lead to early participation in developmental interventions, which can in turn, improve the quality of life for children with a (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder),” she said.

Early intervention, Popova added, may also help prevent future mental health problems and trouble in school.

Source : Fox News

Rescued kitten infected girl with rare virus

A teenager in the Netherlands who rescued a drowning kitten from a ditch developed a large, blackened open wound on her wrist, which took multiple doctors several weeks to find its rare cause, researchers say.

The kitten that the girl rescued was sick and died the following day, and the 17-year-old went on a trip to Italy and Switzerland, during which time she developed a red wound on her wrist that blistered before turning black. She also developed painful red bumps on her arm, spanning from the wound on her wrist up to her armpit.

Suspecting the wound was a bacterial infection, doctors prescribed antibiotics, but the medicine didn’t work. Once back in her home country, the feverish girl went to the hospital again.

“When I saw the wound, I expected it to be a normal wound, so I was quite surprised when I saw the big ulcer,” said Dr. Jojanneke Heidema, a specialist in pediatric infectious disease at St. Antonius Ziekenhuis Hospital in Nieuwegein, Netherlands, who reported the case.

“It did not look like a normal bacterial infection, so I went looking for other causes of a necrotic ulcer,” Heidema said. Necrotic ulcers are wounds with dead tissue. [Image: the blackened, open wound]

The doctors began to suspect that the wound was caused by the cowpox virus. The cowpox infection is so rare that physicians sometimes have never even seen one, or simply don’t think of it.

The doctors got in touch with a virologist whose lab was equipped to run tests for cowpox. A few days later, lab results proved the cowpox virus was, indeed, the culprit. “The girl had been treated by different doctors for about 13 days by then,” Heidema said.  [Image: red bumps covering the arm]

After another week, the girl got better on own, and the wound healed within two? Months, leaving a scar. Cowpox is a self-limiting disease, meaning it usually doesn’t need medical treatment.

“In cowpox disease, your own immune system will deal with the infection,” Heidema said.

The cowpox virus was involved in the invention of the first vaccine, against the related virus that causes smallpox, the deadly but now eradicated disease. At the end of the 18th century, Edward Jenner, an English physician, observed that milkmaids who had contact with the cattle-carrying cowpox virus rarely contracted smallpox — they seemed protected. Based on this observation, Jenner used the cowpox virus to produce the first smallpox vaccine, in 1796.

Other than cowpox, some possible causes of a necrotic wound like the one the girl had were drug-resistant bacteria, abscess and anthrax, the researchers said.

The doctors learned that the girl had cut herself in her wrist before rescuing the kitten. But it is possible to become sick from an infected cat, cow or small rodent even when the skin is intact, they said.

“Most patients with cowpox infections have had scratches from the infected animal, but there are also cases where no scratches were reported,” Heidema said.

It’s hard to determine how sick the kitten was because it also drowned, the researchers said, but the kitten’s mother and siblings were all ill, and taken to the vet to be put down.

The case report was published Sept. 2 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.