Month: December 2013

Hong Kong confirms first death from H7N9 bird flu

 

An 80-year-old man infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus has died in Hong Kong, the government said on Thursday, in the first such death in the city after the virus surfaced in early December.

The man, the second person in Hong Kong to be diagnosed with the virus strain, lived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and had eaten poultry there, media reported.

The H7N9 strain was first reported in humans in February in mainland China, and has infected at least 139 people in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, killing more than 40.

Experts say there is no evidence of any easy or sustained human-to-human transmission of H7N9, and so far all people who came into contact with the man had tested negative for the strain, authorities said.

Source: Reuters

walking more is better for your health

People who walk enough to meet or exceed physical activity recommendations may be less likely to die early than those who only walk a little, new research shows.

The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends adults be physically active for at least two and a half hours per week. Previous research has shown exercising more than that may bring extra benefits.

“An important question left to be answered is how much walking is beneficial,” study author Paul Williams, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, said.

He analyzed data from 42,000 mostly middle-aged people who enrolled in the National Walkers’ Health Study between 1998 and 2001. They had all subscribed to a walking magazine or attended walking events before the study.

Walkers filled out questionnaires about their health and lifestyle, including exercise and eating habits. Williams then used death records to track who in the study was still alive at the end of 2008.

Based on their questionnaire responses, 23 percent of participants didn’t walk enough to meet physical activity guidelines. Another 16 percent met the guidelines, and the rest exceeded them.

Over an average of nine and a half years, 2,448 people died – almost 6 percent.

Compared to people who didn’t meet the guidelines, those who walked more than the basic recommendation had a one-third lower chance of dying during the study period. Those who met but didn’t exceed the recommendation had an 11 percent lower chance.

That was after taking into account other differences between people who walked various amounts, like diet and education levels.

Participants who walked more had a reduced risk of dying from a stroke, diabetes and heart disease, in particular.

Walking provides plenty of health benefits. But it’s important to note that people who walk more may do so because they are healthier and therefore more able to be active, Williams said. So the new study doesn’t prove walking will extend a person’s life.

“There is always the question of the chicken and the egg – whether people who are healthier are able to walk farther or, conversely, whether the longer distance they walk may translate into better health benefits,” Williams told Reuters Health.

Based on the results, he suggested changing current guidelines by bumping up the minimum amount of physical activity to five hours per week and developing a two-tiered recommendation system that encourages people to exercise more than they do currently.

One tier would aim to get people active, and the other to add to the activity people are already doing, Williams said. That would underscore the point that for couch potatoes, starting to exercise is a healthy move – but the benefits don’t stop there.

“Achieving the weekly exercise guidelines is good,” Williams said, “but exceeding them is even better.”

“When it comes to walking, more is obviously better,” María Simón agreed. She is a fitness trainer and national spokesperson for the AHA and was not involved in the new research.

But, Simón said, the current physical activity guidelines are appropriate.

“The AHA has been very clear in specifying that the recommended guidelines are ‘minimum’ requirements to reduce the risk of heart-related diseases and death and has even provided guidelines for increased activity,” she wrote in an emailed comment.

“Nevertheless, I believe the take-home of this and similar studies is a positive one: ‘Move . . . Just get up and move,'” Simón said.

Source:  Zee news

National Cancer Institute to be set up in Haryana

National-Cancer-Institute222The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved setting up of a Rs 2000-crore National Cancer Institute (NCI), which will be housed in an upcoming campus of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Jhajjar, Haryana.

To be completed by 2018, the NCI seeks to plug the gap in offering cancer treatment facilities in the public sector including specialised tertiary care.

Cancer has emerged as a major public health concern in India, where every year 11 lakhs new cases are diagnosed with a mortality of 5.5 lakhs per year.

In 2013, an estimated 10,86,783 new cancer cases were reported and the numbers are slated to rise to 1148692 in 2015 — a jump of over 5.5 per cent in two years. Tobacco remains the most prominent disease causing factor.

The data, collated by the Indian Council of Medical Research, however, is not exhaustive as it does not have inputs from 25 regional cancer centres and populous states like Bihar and Utttar Pradesh.

Males have higher occurrence of cancers of lung, mouth, oesophagus and stomach. Cancers of tongue, rectum, liver, lung, prostate, brain, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and a type of leukaemia have shown statistically significant increase. Cancers of uterine cervix and gall bladder too is fairly common.

But cancer treatment facilities in India are inadequate, compared to the World Health Organisation norms that requires one radiotherapy machine per million population. India currently has 0.41 machines per million population.

The Rs 2,035 crore institute will operate on the lines of National Cancer Institute, USA and DKFZ, Germany as a nodal center for indigenous research as well as preventive and curative aspects of cancer care.

In addition, the institute aims to conduct research on cancers that are more specific to India such as tobacco related cancers, cancer of the uterine cervix, gall bladder cancer and liver cancers.

The focus will be on understanding, analysing the cause and genesis of the above cancers.
The NCI will have 710 beds for different facilities like surgical oncology, radiation oncology, medical oncology, anaesthesia and palliative care and nuclear medicine.

It will have a tissue repository which is the first of its kind in India, according to a press statement issued at the end of the Cabinet meeting.

Besides the cancer institute, the second campus of AIIMS will also have a National Centre for Heart Diseases along with a full fledged hospital for which the Haryana government had provided 300 acres of land.

Source: Deccan herald

Stress in job linked to later health problems

More strain at work might mean more illness in old age, according to a new study from Finland. The study found both physical and mental job strain were tied to hospital stays later in life.

Mental job strain can come from tight deadlines, high demands and having little control over one’s work. Physical strain includes sweating, breathlessness and muscle strain.

“Job strain is something that is individually perceived, so persons working in similar jobs can report different amounts of job strain,” lead researcher Mikaela von Bonsdorff said. “When talking about job strain it is important to remember that occasional feelings of job strain are not necessarily a bad thing, but persistent high job strain has been identified as a health hazard.”

Recent studies have linked long-term job strain to lower functioning that lasts into old age, added von Bonsdorff. She is a gerontology researcher at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

The new findings come from a study of more than 5,000 middle-aged Finnish public sector employees who were initially surveyed about stress at work in 1981.

The researchers combined that information with data from national hospital records spanning the next 28 years.

With higher strain in midlife, days in the hospital tended to increase, especially for physical strain.

For instance, for every 1,000 men with low physical job strain, about eight days were spent in inpatient hospital care every year, on average. That compared to almost 13 days for every 1,000 men with high physical job strain, according to findings published in Age and Ageing.

“What was interesting was that these associations were clear also when we looked at hospital care that took place after the individuals had turned 65, indicating that these associations were also robust in older age and not that the association was due to hospital care that took place immediately after the baseline assessment of job strain,” von Bonsdorff said.

For both men and women, hospital days increased as physical strain increased. But for mental strain, the link was only clear among men.

“Job strain of some sort can occur in basically any type of employment,” Loretta Platts told Reuters Health.

“Although physical job strain is confined to certain sorts of occupations, such as manual occupations or low-level service occupations like being an electrician, caretaker, driver, builder, cleaner, waiter, waitress, cook or shop assistant,” she said.

Platts is a doctoral candidate at Imperial College London. She studies how various factors influence quality of life after retirement and was not involved in the new research.

“The mechanism might be the development of musculoskeletal disorders from high physical strain jobs, which are often irreversible and painful, and can lead to osteoarthritis, a leading cause of hospital admissions in older people,” Platts said. “In addition, immobility can be related to weight gain, which in turn leads to heart failure, high blood pressure and diabetes.”

Mental strain has been linked to heart disease, another cause of hospital stays.

Still, the study can’t prove that job strain causes poor health and more hospital stays, Platts pointed out.

High-strain jobs might be undesirable for many people, so it’s possible people working those kinds of jobs were unable to get less stressful jobs for an unknown, but relevant, reason. That reason could also be connected to their healthcare use.

It’s also possible that 28 years later, the people spending the most time in hospitals happened to think more negatively about their work in 1981, she said.

“This study was only of public sector employees and came from a country with a very developed welfare state. The consequences for people working in the private sector and in countries with less generous welfare states are likely to be worse,” Platts said. “The public sector in Finland is probably a best-case scenario.

Source: GMA News

Hand, face transplants regulated like other organs

Sure your liver or kidney could save someone’s life. But would you donate your hands, or your face? Signing up to become an organ donor may get more complicated than just checking a box on your driver’s license.

The government is preparing to regulate the new field of hand and face transplants like it does standard organ transplants, giving more Americans who are disabled or disfigured by injury, illness or combat a chance at this radical kind of reconstruction.

Among the first challenges is deciding how people should consent to donate these very visible body parts that could improve someone’s quality of life — without deterring them from traditional donation of hearts, lungs and other internal organs needed to save lives.

”Joe Blow is not going to know that now an organ is defined as also including a hand or a face,” said Dr. Suzanne McDiarmid, who chairs the committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, that will develop the new policies over the next few months.

Making that clear to potential donors and their families is critical — ”otherwise we could undermine public trust,” said McDiarmid, a transplant specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

”The consent process for the life-saving organs should not, must not, be derailed by a consent process for a different kind of organ, that the public might think of as being very different from donating a kidney or a heart or a liver,” she added.

These so-called ”reconstructive transplants” are experimental, and rare. The best estimates are that 27 hand transplants have been performed in the U.S. since 1999, and about seven partial or full face transplants since 2008, said Dr. Vijay Gorantla, of the University of Pittsburgh reconstructive transplant program.

But they’re gradually increasing as more U.S. hospitals offer the complex surgeries, the Defense Department funds research into the approach for wounded veterans — and as transplant recipients go public to say how the surgeries have improved their lives.

”These hands are blessed hands to me,” said Lindsay Aronson Ess, 30, of Richmond, Va., who received a double hand transplant in 2011. She had lost her hands and feet to a life-threatening infection in 2007.

Until now, deciding who qualifies for a hand or face transplant, and how to find a match and approach a potential donor’s family all have been done on an informal, case-by-case basis.

There has been no way to tell which hospitals’ techniques work best and how patients ultimately fare.

There have been reports of two deaths related to face transplants in other countries, and some transplanted hands have had to be amputated.

Source: Teleram news

Young girl saves her 3 brothers with bone marrow donations

At 13, Julia Jenkins doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with her three little brothers. They can be rowdy and more than a little competitive. But the Jenkins kids share a connection that runs deep.

Julia Jenkins watched one brother get sick and then another and then another. Then she learned that she was the one person who might be able to help save them.

It started in 2008 when Will, then 2, developed a swollen lymph node in his neck. The diagnosis: Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare cancer of the lymphatic system.

Will started chemotherapy, but then John, who was 6, began having severe stomach problems. “They diagnosed John with Burkitt’s lymphoma two years to the exact day later,” said (mother) Christy  Jenkins.

Doctors at the Aflac Cancer Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta started looking for answers. Burkitt’s doesn’t usually run in families, but a specialist remembered hearing about a rare, genetic immune disorder called XLP carried by boys that could cause very similar symptoms. Blood tests showed both Will and John had XLP, as did 2-year-old Matthew.

“Here I was approached with the plate of, ‘All three boys need a bone marrow transplant to possibly survive,'” said Christy Jenkins.

That’s where Julia comes in.

“I remember getting my blood tested, like sticking a needle in my arm,” Julia Jenkins said.

Julia was a perfect bone marrow donor match for both John and Matthew, but she was so young that she
didn’t even know what being a donor meant.

“But, I said yes, because they’re my brothers,” said Julia Jenkins.

Source: USA news

Newborn undergoes surgery for bilateral cleft palate in time for Christmas

Throughout Joy Frederick’s pregnancy with her daughter Bella Rose, everything seemed completely normal. The soon-to-be mom experienced very little nausea, and all of her prenatal testing indicated that everything was going smoothly.

It wasn’t until Bella was born six months ago at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City that Frederick noticed something was strange. Bella had two very large gaps in the roof of her mouth – a condition known as a bilateral cleft palate.

“Oddly enough, when I had sent a friend a sonogram during pregnancy, [Bella] had covered her mouth, so we didn’t know,” Frederick, who lives in Harlem with her husband Tyrone, told FoxNews.com. “The first time I saw her, she was looking at my mom, and [my mom] said, ‘She has a growth.’ Everyone was shocked and a little emotional.”

A rare congenital birth defect, bilateral cleft palates occur in one out of every 6,500 births in the United States every year. If left untreated, babies with this abnormality can have trouble eating, swallowing, gaining weight, learning proper speech and may experience many other complications as well.

Fortunately, the condition can be fixed through reconstructive surgery, so the doctors at Mount Sinai quickly discussed options with Frederick.

“We met Bella shortly after she was born,” Dr. Peter Taub, co-director of the cleft and craniofacial surgery program at Mount Sinai Hospital, told FoxNews.com. “We immediately set her up with our pediatric dentists, so they were able to build a little appliance for her.”

Before Bella could undergo surgery, she needed to be fitted with a prosthesis known as a palatal obturator. Similar to a dental retainer, the obturator slowly brings the pieces of the palate closer together, so that they are in a more ideal position for surgery.

“We take a mold of the upper jaw and the nose and lip that’s affected and fabricate a special appliance,” Dr. Alie Baba Attaie, assistant clinical professor of dentistry at the Icahn School of Medicine, told FoxNews.com. “The baby comes back within a few days, and we deliver the appliance and make adjustments and the baby wears the appliance full time. It helps the baby feed better and exert less energy to feed in the meantime.”

Just five days after Bella was born, Frederick took her daughter to Attaie, who fitted the newborn with her own obturator. Over the next few months, Attaie saw Bella once or twice a week, adjusting the prosthesis to bring her facial tissues closer together.

Though Frederick struggled to keep up with Bella’s various medical appointments and procedures, she knew that it would all be worth it in the long term.

“It wasn’t much of a choice,” Frederick said. “She wouldn’t have had the same quality of life. We wanted to get these things done as soon as possible, so there’s a chance that her teeth will come in properly.”

Finally, after about four months of wearing the obturator, Bella was ready for surgery.

“We just wanted [the pieces of the palate] as close as possible, so there’s not a lot of tension when we put sutures in the lip,” Taub said. “Surgery involves creating little flaps of tissue and muscles and putting everything together the way it should be. We make sure the muscle that encircles the mouth is re-approximated, and it can be difficult if two sides are very far apart.”

Just a month before Christmas, Bella underwent a four hour surgery to reconnect her facial tissues – and it went off without a hitch. While Bella will need more surgery in the future, her mouth and gums are now fully attached, and there are almost no signs of her once very severe cleft palate.

Source: DNA India

Inexpensive hearing devices bring gift of sound to less fortunate

It’s said the clacking of dominoes is the music of the Dominican Republic, but it’s been years since the game sounded so good to retiree Fernando Velverde Baez, who lost his hearing because of old age.

“The difference is that you hear the sound even of the air, and the breeze,” said Baez. “I hear a little bird, that little bird, that just chirped.”

Baez can hear the birds again because of Stavros Basseas, and a remarkable device from his company Sound World Solutions.

Basseas used two technologies, common even in the poorest countries, a smartphone that works with a personal sound amplifier in the ear, connected by Bluetooth. An app lets users raise or lower the volume, and adjust treble and bass.

If you are someplace that doesn’t even have cell phone service, you don’t need it, according to Basseas.

At up to $4,000, the tiny, high-tech hearing aids Americans can buy are too expensive for most of the estimated 365 million people worldwide with severe hearing loss.

Only seven million hearing aids were sold last year, and 85 percent of them ended up in American and European ears.

Basseas said his goal has been to “give people solutions in developing countries that don’t exist.”
And give them a price low enough that people can afford it — between $100 and $300.

The company plans to introduce the device in Africa and South America in the coming months. There may be profits down the road, but the goal for the moment is about helping.

Baez doesn’t care if his hearing aid is a little bulky or looks unfashionable, as long as he can now hear his wife say one thing. He said, “She would say, ‘I love you,’ and I wouldn’t be able to hear well. Now she can whisper it to me, and I’ll hear her.”

Source: one news page

17 holiday health tips

Follow this advice to enjoy a little holiday indulgence without sacrificing your health goals.

Indulging Without Overindulging
Relax. You won’t gain 10 pounds. It’s a misconception that you’ll need to go up a pant size in January. The average person gains only about a pound during the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. That’s no excuse to eat with abandon, though. (After all, gaining one pound every year can add up in the long run.)

But a study published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology notes that people who had an attitude of forgiveness and self-compassion after one high-calorie setback were less likely to give up and keep bingeing. So if you lose control with a dish of chocolate truffles, don’t think, I’ve blown it. Might as well move on to the eggnog. Just forgive yourself for the truffles.

Don’t skip meals.
It seems logical: Forgo lunch; leave more room for pigs in blankets later. But arriving starved may result in overeating, and drinking on an empty stomach will give you a quicker buzz, which is more likely to lead to mindless munching. Eat normally during the day, and be strategic at the buffet. Don’t bother with things you don’t absolutely love. Splurge on something special (hint: It’s not those cubes of Cheddar), then stop.

Count your bites.
“A lot of appetizers are about 60 calories a bite,” said Karen Diaz, a registered dietitian in Wyckoff, New Jersey. Just five bites is around 300 calories. “That’s about half of what you might eat for dinner,” said Diaz. Keep a mental tab—or fill a small plate, once—so you don’t go overboard.

Turn down Aunt Jan’s pie.
“It’s better to sit with a little guilt than to overeat just to please loved ones,” Diaz said. If you can’t say no to Jan’s face, try “Maybe later,” then hope she forgets.
Give yourself a break from the gym.
According to a Gallup poll, the percentage of people who exercise regularly is lower in December than at any other time of the year. So don’t beat yourself up—you’re not the only one who’s too busy for Spinning class.

But try to stay active in other ways. Speed-walking with shopping bags counts. So does cleaning, said Mark Macdonald, the author of Body Confidence. Add some toning by tightening your core muscles as you vacuum or reach for scattered toys (imagine trying to get your belly button to touch your spine). And most important: Get back into your regular exercise routine once the holidays end.

Weigh yourself every day.
Or try on a pair of snug-fitting jeans to gauge those subtle ups and…OK, just ups. The point isn’t to get obsessive and berate yourself over every ounce gained; it’s to prevent yourself from completely letting go of good habits.

“Breaking the rhythm of healthy behaviors that you’ve built up is the real danger. You don’t want to have to start from scratch on January 1,” Macdonald said.

Drinking Responsibly
Practice moderation (really). Drinking too much may not just mean a terrible hangover. Around this time of year, doctors report seeing a spike in erratic heartbeats—dubbed “holiday heart syndrome.” It is more common among people who usually aren’t heavy drinkers but drink in excess for a short time.

“Alcohol may be toxic to enough cardiac cells that it disrupts the coordination required to maintain a normal heart rate,” said Kenneth Mukamal, an internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston.

“Women should have no more than three drinks on any occasion and seven per week,” said Michael Weaver, an associate professor of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, in Richmond. “So a woman can have up to three drinks in a night and go out two nights, but that’s it for the week—or else the chances of problems go way up.”
Keep it on the rocks.
Melting ice dilutes a cocktail and creates more liquid. So order your drink on the rocks to try to avoid a quick buzz—and to sip longer before a refill. Use soda water as a mixer for liquor (a cocktail with liquor and club soda is only about 100 calories), and don’t be ashamed to add ice cubes to bubbly. In France, it’s called a piscine. Très chic.

Put a cork in it early.
Alcohol may help you to conk out quickly; the problem comes when it starts to wear off. The period in which your body is metabolizing the alcohol is when sleep is disrupted. You may wake up frequently in the middle of the night (even if you don’t remember doing so) and miss out on restorative rest. The best strategy is to allow time for the alcohol levels in your body to drop before going to sleep; at the very least, retire your flute several hours before bedtime.

Don’t let late nights make you fat.
“People who sleep less over time tend to be heavier,” said Lawrence Epstein, the chief medical officer of the Sleep Health Centers, in Brighton, Massachusetts. But it doesn’t take long for the cycle to start. “If you pull one all-nighter or miss a few hours each night over a week, your body releases hormones that prompt eating and weight gain,” Epstein said.

Use the weekend to catch up.
Most of us have sleep debt: the difference between the number of hours we need every night (which varies per person) and how many we get. If you feel best after seven hours a night and you get five for three nights in a row during a busy week, you have a sleep debt of six hours (two missing hours for three nights). Erasing that debt requires you to get six extra hours over the course of a few days, but they don’t have to be consecutive, Epstein said.

David F. Dinges, the chief of the division of sleep and chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, conducted a study in which participants were restricted to about four hours of sleep for five consecutive nights, then allowed to sleep for 10 hours or more on the sixth night. The researchers found that after the recovery night, participants regained some of their previous levels of alertness and ability to concentrate.

So while you should focus on eliminating your sleep debt completely, just one good snooze (a few hours more than you normally need) can give you a fresher start.

Watch out for hidden caffeine.
Think hot cocoa is a soothing way to end a winter’s night? Hold on to your marshmallows. Chocolate, even the powdered kind, contains caffeine, as do many over-the-counter pain medicines that you might pop at night to get a head start on a hangover. Excedrin Extra-Strength Caplets, for example, contain 65 milligrams of caffeine; by comparison, the average cup of coffee contains 50 to 100.

Skip the sliders.
Foods that are high in fat or protein require your body to work harder at digestion. When your body is busy breaking down mini hamburgers, your sleep is more likely to be hampered. Watch the clock; an early cocktail party is the perfect time to snack on something more substantial. As the night wears on, taper off. Or, if you’re still hungry, have some complex carbohydrates, like whole-wheat crackers or a handful of crudités.

Don’t assume that this is the most depressing time of the year.
Contrary to popular belief, depression isn’t more common during the holidays. In fact, suicide rates in the United States are actually lowest in December, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This may be a result of more social interaction, which has been found to enhance happiness,” said Caroline Adams Miller, the author of Creating Your Best Life. But that doesn’t mean that you’re immune to the holiday blues, especially when you’re missing a family member or stressed-out by the in-laws. Make plans with friends if your family is far away—or, on the flip side, opt out of events if your schedule is overwhelming.

“You don’t have to be a type E personality—everything to everyone,” said Ronald Nathan, a psychologist in Albany.

Consider a supplement.
Is there a magic pill that will cure the blues? Of course not. But some research shows that omega-3 fatty acids may relieve depression; other research has found that vitamin D may improve mood. Add a daily supplement of omega-3 or vitamin D to your diet. Or increase your intake of vitamin D–fortified milk or foods rich in omega-3s, such as fish, flaxseed, and walnuts.

Take Facebook with a grain of salt.
You’ve seen the status updates: “Hope Santa can find us in ARUBA!” or “Mmm, homemade cider, kids making cookies, life is good.” And you know what? Those people have bad days, too. Remember: Most people put their best self forward on Facebook and Twitter. Don’t compare your life with those dreamy-sounding posts.

Make plans for January.
“If you have social events coming up with people you like, you’ll be upbeat about what’s to come,” said Alison Ratner, a clinical social worker in Atlanta. Plan a weekend getaway or an Oscar-nominated–movie marathon. Or, ahem, if you did gain that holiday pound, might we suggest a jogging club?

Source: fox news

New method to keep track of heart risks

A new method to calculate the risk of heart diseases has been provided by the a study conducted by the National Heart Institute.

The Framingham Heart Study was started in 1948 to learn more about heart diseases and strokes and determine the common risk factors for cardiovascular disease, Fox News reported.

The long-term study has determined key risk factors that can increase a person’s chance of experiencing heart disease or a heart attack over their lifetime, which will help people in adopting lifestyle changes and treatments.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death in both men and women and nearly 800,000 Americans experiencing a heart attack every year.

Source: DNA India