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5-year-old recorded in UK: weighs 143 pounds

Child on Scale

Britain’s fattest five-year-old has been taken into care after weighing in at more than 143 pounds, or at least three times the weight of what is expected of a healthy child.

Child protection experts told the Sunday Times the case was “a tragedy”, expressing disbelief that action was not taken sooner by the local council.

The newspaper says the girl was seized in Newport, south Wales, in August last year weighing approximately 145 pounds – heavier than any 5-year-old of either sex recorded in an English school since 2008. Typically, girls that age weigh about 42 pounds.

Newport city council said the decision was made purely because of the girl’s obesity.

Source: Fox news

9,400 Kids Injured in High Chairs Every Year

Every year, about 9,400 young children in the U.S. are injured falling off high chairs, a new study finds. Doctors warn that despite the chairs’ perceived safety, children in high chairs can be harmed if a chair is not used properly. The study also showed that the rate of such injuries increased by 22 percent over the study period, from 2003 through 2010. Head injuries were the most common type of injury associated with high chairs, followed by bumps or bruises and cuts, according to the study. The researchers looked at children ages 3 and younger who were treated in U.S. emergency departments, and the results are published today (Dec. 9) in the journal Clinical Pediatrics. “Maybe even more concerning, the rate of head injuries has increased by almost 90 percent between 2003 and 2010, and I think it begs the question, what’s going on?” said study researcher Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Nearly all injuries associated with high chairs or booster seats involved falls. Most children fell as they were climbing or standing on the chair, suggesting that the chair’s safety restraint system was either not being used, or faulty, the researchers said. “We know that over the recent years, millions of chairs have been recalled in the U.S. because of not meeting safety standards. But usually, a very low percentage of recalled products are actually returned,” Smith told LiveScience. Parents should check the website of the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission for product recalls, he said Another reason for the increase seen in the study could be that more parents are taking their children to the hospital if a head injury occurs, Smith said. “There has been an increased awareness about the importance of minor head injury and concussion in the news. It is primarily related to sports, but it has also become on the radar for clinicians and parents,” Smith said. The researchers also compared injuries related to high chairs and booster seats with injuries associated with other types of chairs, including traditional chairs, and kids’ chairs. More than 40,000 injuries associated with chairs were reported each year during the study period, which translates to four children every hour. Children injured while using traditional chairs were more likely to sustain broken bones, cuts and bruises, compared with children who got hurt using high chairs, which have restraining systems. “I believe high chairs are safe, if they haven’t been recalled and if they are used properly,” Smith said. “Parents need to check the high chair they are using hasn’t been recalled. They also need be careful to use the restraining system, and use it every time.” Source: live science

Dengue cases in New Delhi reach 5,462

The number of dengue cases in the capital has reached 5,462, a municipal health officer said Monday.

Though the number reported every week has reduced, the cases are still being witnessed in different parts of the city.

Most cases have been reported from the north zone (2,167), followed by south (1,642) and east (1,508) zones.

An additional 69 cases have been reported from the National Capital Region, including parts of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

Having surpassed the 2012 figure, the number of cases this year is nearing the 2010 figure (6,229).

Source: New Indian Express

Camp Lejeune water contamination linked to birth defects

Water pollution at the Camp Lejeune military base in North Carolina has been linked to increased risk of birth defects and childhood cancers, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A study released by the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substance & Disease Registry on Thursday confirmed a long-suspected link between chemical contaminants in tap water at the Marine Corps base and serious birth defects such as spina bifida

It also showed a slightly elevated risk of childhood cancers including leukemia.

Dr. Vikas Kapil, a medical officer and acting deputy director of the CDC agency that produced the study, said it surveyed the parents of 12,598 children born at Lejeune between 1968 and 1985, the year most contaminated drinking water wells at Camp Lejeune were closed.

From that same group of participants, 106 cases of birth defects and childhood cancers were reported. But Kapil said researchers could only confirm the diagnoses in 52 cases.

Computerized birth certificates first became available in 1968. The study’s authors said they could not prove exposure to the chemicals caused specific individuals to become ill.

The CDC has linked the contamination to a number of sources including leaking underground storage tanks, industrial spills, and an off-base dry cleaning firm.

Lejeune spokeswoman Captain Maureen Krebs said the Marine Corps has supported scientific and public health organizations studying the health impacts of the contamination.

“These results provide additional information in support of ongoing efforts to provide comprehensive science-based answers to the health questions that have been raised,” Krebs said in a statement.

“The Marine Corps continues to support these initiatives and we are working diligently to identify and notify individuals who, in the past, may have been exposed to the chemicals in drinking water.”

The Veterans Administration has already been providing disability compensation claims to the affected families and personnel exposed to the contaminated water.

Source: Reuters

Bangalore hospital treats paralyzed patients with stem cell therapy

In what could signal a leap forward in the treatment of spinal cord injuries, the Bangalore Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Live 100 Hospital claims to have successfully used stem cell therapy to restore feeling to people paralysed by injuries, accidents or natural causes.

According to the hospital, its doctors have been treating paralysed below the neck patients using the concept of regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy for quite some time before making the results public. The patients who benefited by the treatment walk out of the hospital using a crutch or walker, with some showing “tremendous improvement”.

Balakrishan Baldev, 42, had been bedridden for the last ten years on account of damaged spine and wrong treatment. The first patient to be benefitted by the stem cell therapy, his eyes glistened with tears as he walked again after he underwent the surgery of spinal cord in May this year and has gained 95 per cent sensation. The development raises the possibility that spinal injury victims could walk again.

Dr H N Nagaraj, chairman and managing director, Live 100 Hospital, told India Medical Times, “The concept of regenerative medicine was started by me way back in 2002 in a laboratory environment until 2010. We started treating patients in 2010 and approximately 40-42 patients have undergone stem cell surgery since then. The results have been satisfactory and few have recovered to a great extent. While it might take less time for some, for others the healing and regeneration could take a long time.”

“As the spine injuries lead to acute loss of spinal cord vascularity and damage spinal cord, we identify and treat them using great precautions that repair the patients’ spinal cords and encourage the cords to heal,” he said.

“The hospital receives patients from different parts of the country and the world. People from Pakistan, Mexico and Yemen have been pouring in for the treatment. The conception that the treatment is expensive is not entirely true. As the treatment gives you focused therapy, a patient does not spend his money on wrong and unnecessary treatments hence every penny spent is worth the results he get. But still, at our hospital, we do take into account the income factor of the patient and do give subsidy to the needy. Our objective is to help everybody,” he added.

The therapy has also given a new lease of life to Khalid Abdullah, a 40-year-old soldier from Yemen who underwent a surgery of the spinal cord at the hospital after a bullet hit him four years ago. Before choosing India, he had visited several countries for the treatment. Paralysed waist down, he partly regained sensation in the legs after the surgery.

“Two levels of his spinal cord were crushed, a part of the spinal cord was removed in the surgery as it was damaged. He underwent stem cell treatment six months ago and has regained sensation in his lower limbs,” Dr Nagaraj said.

“My future plan is evolve the stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine in a fully functional department and involve some of the finest doctors in the field. We want to use stem cell for the treatment of other diseases too like diabetes etc. We want to make a strong team of doctors that would also include a neuro psychiatrist as the patients affected by trauma are generally disturbed and have a tendency to go into depression,” Dr Nagaraj said.

Several breakthrough researches in this area have corroborated that stem cells can develop into replacement cells for damaged organs or body parts. Unravelling the potential that stem cells hold, an answer to several diseases that are at present incurable could be discovered.

source: Twikle

Tango therapy treats mental illness in Argentina

You can hear the “All of us are crazy for tango” program before you can see it: Just follow the orchestra’s plaintive chords through the labyrinthine passageways of the Hospital BordaThere, in a dance hall deep inside the public hospital where mentally ill men have been treated for 150 years, both patients and visitors discover how much they have in common in dance classes open to all. The program’s name, playing off a common expression for mental illness, reflects the enthusiasm of both patients and visitors for Argentina’s national dance.
Psychiatrist Silvana Perl runs the classes held every other Wednesday, including their annual tango festival this week.

She says therapy happens when hospitalized men dance with visiting women: It makes them part of a powerful social and cultural current that runs through Buenos Aires, and gives both dancers the shared human contact that is essential to community.

“To dance, it’s necessary to include the other, which requires coming out of your little world,” Perl explains. “Then comes the hug … the whole world is now fascinated with hugging, which is a form of communication. And ‘communication’ comes from what we have in common. This is something that we have in common, this hug of the tango.”

Tango teacher Laura Segade says she and her friends joke that the only difference between the dancers is that some are “crazy on the inside” of the hospital and others are “crazy on the outside.”

source: Cbs news

HIV virus returns in two cured patients: US doctor

Two patients previously thought to be ‘cured’ of HIV after undergoing bone marrow transplants are now seeing the return of the virus in their blood, a US doctor has revealed.

Timothy Henrich, a physician-researcher at the Boston Brigham and Women’s Hospital, believed the re-emergence of the virus demonstrates that HIV reservoirs, latent cells carrying the virus, “is deeper and more persistent” than scientists had realised.

“The return of detectable levels of HIV in our patients is disappointing, but scientifically significant,” Henrich told Xinhua in a statement through e-mail.

“Through this research, we have discovered …that our current standards of probing for HIV may not be sufficient to inform us if long-term HIV remission is possible if anti-retroviral therapy is stopped,” he said.

The two HIV-positive patients, who do not want to be identified, received bone marrow transplants as part of treatment for Hodgkin’ s lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, one in 2008, the other in 2010.

HIV became undetectable in both patients approximately eight months after transplant. This year, during spring, they agreed to cease anti-retroviral therapy to test whether the transplant had eliminated the virus from their bodies.

In July, the researchers announced that the two have shown no signs of HIV after they were off anti-retroviral therapy for 15 weeks and seven weeks, respectively.

But in August, the researchers detected HIV in one of the patients, who then resumed taking medication. The other opted to stay off the medicine but last month, after 32 weeks with no HIV detected, signs of the virus re-emerged and the patient also resumed anti-retroviral therapy.

According to researchers, the virus is now suppressing as expected and they are both currently in good health.

Source: Business Standard

First full face transplant recipient in U.S.

A December 2010 photo shows Dallas Wiens prior to receiving a full face transplant. Wiens was injured in an electrical accident in Texas in 2008. Before his face transplant, he had surgeries to graft smooth skin over much of his face.

Dallas Wiens, first full face transplant recipient in U.S., grows comfortable in his new skin

‘My entire life is a miracle,’ said Wiens, 28, speaking at a conference of the Radiological Society of North America. Doctors are learning more from Wiens and other facial transplant patients about how the body evolves and adapts following the experimental surgeries.

The nation’s first full face transplant patient Dallas Wiens looks on during a news conference about new research into full facial transplants. Wiens was the first person in the U.S. to receive the surgery, in 2011.
The nation’s first full face transplant patients are growing into their new appearances—literally.

The nation's first full face transplant patient Dallas Wiens looks on during a news conference at McCormick Place in Chicago, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013. Despite still visible facial scars from the March 2011 surgery, Wiens looks and sounds like a recovered man. Medical imaging shows new blood vessel networks have formed, connecting transplanted skin with the patients' facial tissue, a finding that may help improve future face transplant surgeries, doctors announced Wednesday. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)

Medical imaging shows new blood vessel networks have formed, connecting transplanted skin with the patients’ facial tissue, a finding that may help improve future face transplant surgeries, doctors announced Wednesday.

Dallas Wiens, the first U.S. man to get a full face transplant, is a remarkable example of that success. The 28-year-old Fort Worth man attended Wednesday’s annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America with his new wife and golden retriever guide dog. Despite still visible facial scars from the March 2011 surgery, he looks and sounds like a recovered man.
A 2008 family photo shows Dallas Wiens with his daughter Scarlette prior to an electrical accident that disfigured his face.

“My entire life is a miracle,” Wiens said at a news conference.
His face was burned off in a 2008 painting accident at his church. He was on a cherry-picker lift when his head hit a high voltage wire.
After surgery, Wiens lived for two years with no facial features and just a two-inch slit for a mouth, until his transplant at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

A December 2010 photo shows Dallas Wiens prior to receiving a full face transplant. Wiens was injured in an electrical accident in Texas in 2008. Before his face transplant, he had surgeries to graft smooth skin over much of his face.

Dallas Wiens (r.) poses for a photo with his wife Jamie Nash and his guide dog Charlie. Despite still-visible facial scars from the March 2011 surgery, Wiens looks and sounds like a recovered man.Imaging studies on Wiens and two other full face transplants done at Brigham in 2011 show that a network of new blood vessels had formed just a year after the operations. A fourth full face transplant was performed at Brigham earlier this year.
The same thing typically happens with other transplants and it helps ensure their success by boosting blood flow to the donor tissue. But Brigham doctors say this is the first time it has happened with full face transplants.
The finding could eventually shorten the operating time for future face transplants, Brigham radiologist Dr. Frank Rybicki said. The operations can take up to 30 hours and include attaching spaghetti-thin arteries in the patients’ existing tissue to the donor face, but the findings suggest attaching only two facial or neck arteries instead of several is sufficient, he said.

Dr. Samir Mardini, a Mayo Clinic expert in reconstructive transplant surgery, said blood vessel reorganization occurs with other types of tissue transplants — doctors call it “neovascularization” and it helps ensure the tissue’s survival by improving blood flow.

“It’s interesting that they’ve shown it” with face transplants, but it’s not a surprise, Mardini said.
Face transplants, using cadaver donors, are still experimental. Fewer than 30 have been done since the first in 2005, said Dr. Branko Bojovich, a surgeon involved in a 2012 face transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

He called the Boston team’s findings “very reassuring” for surgeons and for future patients.
“We’re assuming that these patients will hopefully go on to live productive and long lives,” Bojovich said.
Wiens’ life before the accident was troubled, and he says he misses nothing about it except possibly his eyesight.

Source: Daily news

Cancer: two in three patients will survive by end of decade

The chances of a patient dying from three of the most common cancers will soon be half what they were 20 years ago, figures show.

Earlier diagnosis and advances in surgery and treatment mean that by 2020 the total death rate from breast, prostate and bowel cancer will have dropped by 44 per cent since the early 1990s.

Estimates by Macmillan Cancer Research show that by the end of the decade, 64 per cent of women will survive breast cancer, 64 per cent of men prostate cancer and 61 per cent of sufferers will beat bowel cancer.

But campaigners remain concerned that survival rates for lung cancer – the second commonest form – are not increasing at the same pace.

Figures show that by 2020 the proportion of patients expect to live beyond five years after diagnosis will stll be less than one in four.

The illness is the second biggest killer after heart disease and is usually diagnosed only when it is too late to be treated.

And despite the advances in the other three cancers, survival rates in Britain still lag well behind those in other European countries. A major study of 29 countries found that the UK was on a par with Slovenia, Czech Republic and Estonia far below France, Germany and Scandinavia.

Campaigners say GPs need to be given more training to help them spot the warning signs – especially for lung cancer – so patients can be referred for tests.

Professor Jane Maher, chief medical officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: ‘People diagnosed with three of the four most common cancers are more likely to survive but GPs need more support to help them diagnose lung cancer earlier.

‘We’ve been working with the GP community to develop the tools that can help.’

Figures by Macmillan show that by 2020 the proportion of patients surviving breast and prostate cancer will have increased by two-thirds since 1992. Over the same period, the amount surviving bowel cancer will have risen by 50 per cent.

The charity said the advances are largely due to earlier diagnosis, with patients being more aware of the warning signs and improved scans.

There have also been major advances in surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and, more recently, new drugs to target certain genes, which have drastically boosted survival chances.

n 1992, only 39 per cent of those diagnosed with breast cancer lived for at least five years – the measure of survival. For prostate cancer patients the figure was 28 per cent and for bowel cancer 33 per cent.

Katherine Woods, research information manager at Breast Cancer Campaign said: ‘These figures look really encouraging.

‘We know that deaths from breast cancer are decreasing, and are on track to continue to do so. But it is not quick enough.’

And Drew Lindon, head of policy and campaigns at Prostate Cancer UK, said: ‘While prostate cancer survival rates have improved compared to other cancers, beneath the surface we see worrying indications that Britain is lagging behind the European average on survival rates.

‘One man dies every hour from prostate cancer and yet we still have no reliable way of being able to tell the killer forms from those which might never cause harm.

‘Men in Britain dese
rve better and that’s what we’re fighting for.’

Source: Daily Mail

Spike in U.S. measles cases shows disease still a threat: officials

The number of reported cases of measles in the United States this year is nearly three times the annual average, federal health officials said on Thursday, highlighting the continued threat of the disease 50 years after development of a vaccine.

There have been 175 measles cases so far in 2013, compared with the typical national average of about 60 cases a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The federal health agency said home-grown measles were eliminated in the United States in 2000, but the disease has continued to be carried into the country from people who have traveled abroad.

The CDC said 172 of the 175 U.S. cases this year involved patients who were infected overseas or caught the disease from someone who had traveled internationally. The source of the other three infections remains unknown, the agency said.

“A measles outbreak anywhere is a risk everywhere,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said. “The steady arrival of measles in the United States is a constant reminder that deadly diseases are testing our health security every day.”

Earlier this year, the CDC linked 58 cases of measles in Brooklyn, New York, to an unvaccinated 17-year-old who had traveled to London. Twenty-three cases in North Carolina this year were tied to an unvaccinated resident who contracted the disease while on a three-month visit to India.

The CDC said 158,000 people die worldwide each year from measles.

The last measles death in the United States was in 2003, according to the agency. Before the country launched a widespread vaccination program in 1963, it had 450 to 500 measles deaths each year.

Measles is highly contagious and transmitted when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes. The disease can be spread even before an infected person has developed a rash from the virus.

The CDC recommends that children get two doses of vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, starting at 12 to 15 months of age.

Increased vaccination worldwide and improving the ability of public health agencies to rapidly respond to outbreaks are keys to reducing measles and other diseases, the CDC said.

Source: Yahoo news