research

Cleaner Plate Club: More Fruits, Veggies Eaten at School

Empty plates and half-eaten scraps on thousands of cafeteria trays offer the first tangible evidence that new federal standards on school meals are sprouting healthier eating habits, a new study claims.

Based on before-and-after inspections of more than 1,000 trays at four schools in an “urban, low-income” district, students chose 23 percent more fruits and consumed 16 percent more vegetables after the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its rules in 2012, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported Tuesday.

And if a nutritional reset is occurring among American students, baby carrots may be the gateway food, the researchers say.

“We were surprised by the vegetable findings,” said Juliana Cohen, lead author and a research fellow at Harvard. “We thought perhaps it was because students were eating more potato-based products like French fries, which count as a vegetable (in federal standards). We were very surprised to see that potato-based products weren’t being served on study days. Kids loved fresh vegetables, especially baby carrots.”

The federal guidelines are meant to reduce sodium and fat on school menus. Researchers will not name the city in which the schools were monitored, revealing only they are in Massachusetts.

Researchers weighed serving samples then recorded what foods sat atop test trays as students paid for meals. Later, those trays were collected and remaining foods were re-weighed.

At the same time, however, the Government Accountability Office reported Thursday that participation in the National School Lunch Program dropped by 1.2 million students, or 3.7 percent, in 2012-13 when compared to 2010-2011. Analysts cited the veggie-heavy guidelines.

According to the GAO, “state and local officials reported that the changes to lunch content and nutrition requirements … influenced student participation” and that almost all states reported “that obtaining student acceptance of lunches that complied with the new requirements was challenging.”

“Implementing change to a national program is complex and no one should expect every district or school across the country to instantly make it work,” said Dr. Howell Wechsler, CEO of Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a nonprofit that combats childhood obesity. The group works with 22,000 schools that meet or exceed the USDA rules. “There seems to be no reason why all school districts can’t meet federal nutritional guidelines.”

Source: NBC news

Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk

Devices that produce soothing sounds in order to lull infants to sleep can be loud enough at maximum volume to damage their hearing, researchers reported Monday.

Infant sleep machines emit white noise or nature sounds to drown out everyday disturbances to a baby’s sleep. The machines, sometimes embedded in cuddly stuffed animals, are popular gifts at baby showers and routinely recommended by parenting books and websites.

Some sleep experts advise parents to use these noisemakers all night, every night, to ensure the best rest for a newborn. Many parents say their babies become so used to the sounds of rainfall or birds that they will not nap without them.

Researchers at the University of Toronto evaluated 14 popular sleep machines at maximum volume and found they produced between 68.8 to 92.9 decibels at 30 centimeters, about the distance one might be placed from an infant’s head. Three exceeded 85 decibels, the workplace safety limit for adults on an eight-hour shift for accumulated exposure as determined by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. One machine was so loud that two hours of use would exceed workplace noise limits.

At 100 centimeters, all the machines tested were louder than the 50-decibel limit averaged over an hour set for hospital nurseries in 1999 by an expert panel concerned with improving newborn sleep and their speech intelligibility.

“These machines are capable of delivering noise that we think is unsafe for full-grown adults in mines,” said Dr. Blake Papsin, the senior author of the paper and the chief otolaryngologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The study was published in the journal Pediatrics. Dr. Papsin got the idea for this study after a parent brought a portable white noise machine to the hospital that sounded as roaring as a carwash.

“Unless parents are adequately warned of the danger, or the design of the machines by manufacturers is changed to be safer, then the potential for harm exists, and parents need to know about it,” said Dr. Gordon B. Hughes, the program director of clinical trials for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, who was not involved in the study.

Safe use is possible, the study’s authors suggest. “Farther away is less dangerous, a lower volume is better and shorter durations of time, all things that deliver less sound pressure to the baby,” Dr. Papsin said.

Yet some models are designed to be affixed to the crib, like Homedics’ SoundSpa Glow Giraffe and Baby Einstein’s Sea Dreams Soother.

The findings are bound to surprise many parents.

After finding a recommendation for white noise in “Happiest Baby on the Block,” Naomi Tucker, 39, bought a machine so that her daughter, Chiara, 15 months, could fall asleep nightly to ocean waves. The device masks sirens and household noise in the family’s two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.

A fan outside her door is “an extra barrier of sound, so we don’t have to tiptoe,” said Ms. Tucker, a family therapist. For naps in the stroller or the car, she and her husband use a white noise app on an old cellphone.

“It’s surprising because I hadn’t thought of it, but I can see why that would be the case,” Ms. Tucker said of the study finding. Her daughter’s Graco device is set to maximum volume, but it is still not all that loud, she said. It is also five feet from the crib.

Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a pediatrician and author of “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,” said parents could still use the machines, with new precautions.

“If it’s too close or it’s too loud, this might not be healthy for your baby,” he said. But “a quiet machine that’s far away may cause no harm whatsoever.”

The study authors recommended that manufacturers limit the maximum noise level of infant sleep machines.

Source: New York Times

South African scientists map HIV antibodies in vaccine hunt

Scientists in South Africa have mapped the evolution of an antibody that kills different strains of the HIV virus, which might yield a vaccine for the incurable disease, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases said on Monday.

The scientists have been studying one woman’s response to HIV infection from stored samples of her blood and isolated the antibodies that she developed, said Lynn Morris, head of the virology unit at the NICD.

The study, by a consortium of scientists from the NICD, local universities and the U.S. Vaccine Research Centre of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was published in the journal Nature.

Humans respond to HIV by producing antibodies to fight the virus. In most cases, the antibodies do not neutralize, or kill, different strains of the virus. But a few known as “broadly neutralizing antibodies” are able to break through a protective layer around the HIV virus and kill it.

“The outer covering of HIV has a coating of sugars that prevents antibodies from reaching the surface to neutralize the virus. In this patient, we found that her antibodies had ‘long arms’, which enabled them to reach through the sugar coat that protects HIV,” Penny Moore, one of the lead scientists, said in a statement.

The researchers had been able to clone the antibodies and would test if they were able to give immunity to a person without the virus, Morris said.

Human tests were at least two years away, she said.

“We are going to test them first on monkeys and if it works on monkeys we will go on to humans,” she said.

South Africa carries the world’s heaviest HIV/AIDS case load with 6 million people infected with the virus, more than 10 percent of the population.

Source: Reuters

30,000-year-old virus comes to life

Scientsts have successfully revived a 30,000 year old giant virus frozen in ice. They say the virus is a type never before seen – and warn that global warming could lead to more being uncovered.

The researchers say the find could reveal viruses are far more diverse than previously thought – and warn the ancient viruses could affect humans.

The authors of the new paper, a mix of French and Russian researchers, identified the virus by taking a culture of amoebas found in the permafrost, and adding some of the permafrost.

Dubbed Pithovirus sibericum, the virus was found i

 

n a 30-metre (98-foot) -deep sample of permanently frozen soil taken from coastal tundra in Chukotka, near the East Siberia Sea, where the average annual temperature is minus 13.4 degrees Celsius (7.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

The team thawed the virus and watched it replicate in a culture in a petri dish, where it infected a simple single-cell organism called an amoeba.
Radiocarbon dating of the soil sample found that vegetation grew there more than 30,000 years ago, a time when mammoths and Neanderthals walked the Earth, according to a paper published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

They found the cells exploded, and when examined under a microscope, showed the presence of a giant virus particle known as a pandovirus.

‘While initiating a survey of the Siberian permafrost, we isolated a third type of giant virus combining the Pandoravirus morphology with a gene content more similar to that of icosahedral DNA viruses,’ the team wrote.

P. sibericum is, on the scale of viruses, a giant — it has 500 genes, whereas the influenza virus has only eight.
It is the first in a new category of viral whoppers, a family known as Megaviridae, for which two other categories already exist.
The virus gets its name from “pithos,” the ancient Greek word for a jar, as it comes in an amphora shape.

It is so big (1.5 millionths of a metre) that it can be seen through an optical microscope, rather than the more powerful electron microscope.
Unlike the flu virus, though, P. sibericum is harmless to humans and animals, for it only infects a type of amoeba called Acanthamoeba, the researchers said.

The work shows that viruses can survive being locked up in the permafrost for extremely long periods, France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a press statement.

‘It has important implications for public-health risks in connection with exploiting mineral or energy resources in Arctic Circle regions that are becoming more and more accessible through global warming,’ it said.

‘The revival of viruses that are considered to have been eradicated, such as the smallpox virus, whose replication process is similar to that of Pithovirus, is no longer limited to science fiction. ‘The risk that this scenario could happen in real life has to be viewed realistically.’

They believe the finding could mean there are far more diverse types of virus than previously thought.

‘This suggests that pandoravirus-like particles may correspond to an unexplored diversity of unconventional DNA virus families.’

The virus was was found frozen in ice close to the East Siberian Sea. The team say the find was unusual because fo the size of the virus. ‘Giant DNA viruses are visible under a light microscope and their genomes encode more proteins than some bacteria or intracellular parasitic eukaryotes.’

They want that global warming could lead to potential health threats.
‘The revival of such an ancestral amoeba-infecting virus used as a safe indicator of the possible presence of pathogenic DNA viruses, suggests that the thawing of permafrost either from global warming or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health.’

Source: Daily Mail

Will you die in 5 years? New ‘death test’ predicts

Scientists were astonished to find they could predict which healthy people are at most risk of death by studying four key biomarkers in the body

A ‘Death Test’ which predicts the chance of a healthy person dying from any medical condition in the next five years has been developed by scientists.

Researchers said they were ‘astonished’ to discover that a simple blood test could predict if a person was likely to die – even if they were not ill.

They found that the levels of four ‘biomarkers’ in the body, when taken together, indicated a general level of ‘frailty’.

People whose biomarkers were out of kilter were five times more likely to die with five years of the blood test.

“What is especially interesting is that these biomarkers reflect the risk for dying from very different types of diseases such as heart disease or cancer. They seem to be signs of a general frailty in the body,” said Dr. Johannes Kettunen of the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Finland.

“We believe that in the future these measures can be used to identify people who appear healthy but in fact have serious underlying illnesses and guide them to proper treatment.”

A biomarker is a biological molecule found in blood, body fluids, or tissues that may signal an abnormal process, a condition, or a disease.

The level of a particular biomarker may indicate a patient’s risk of disease, or likely response to a treatment. For example, cholesterol levels are measured to assess the risk of heart disease.

Most current biomarkers are used to test an individual’s risk of developing a specific condition. There are none that accurately assess whether a person is at risk of ill health generally, or likely to die soon from a disease.

Blood samples from over 17,000 generally healthy people were screened for more than a hundred different biomarkers and those people monitored over five years
In that time 684 people died of a range of illnesses and diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. Scientists discovered that those people all had similar levels of four biomarkers.

Those were albumin, alpha-1-acid glycoprotein, citrate and the size of very-low-density lipoprotein particles which are linked to liver and kidney function, inflammation and infection, energy metabolism and vascular health.
One in five participants with the highest biomarker scores died within the first year of the study.

Estonian researchers made the initial link in a cohort of 9,842 people but were so sceptical about the results that they asked Finnish scientists to repeat the experiment on a further 7,503.

Research professor Markus Perola of the Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland said they were not expecting to be able to replicate the findings and were amazed when they were identical.

Prof Perola said: “It was a pretty amazing result. First of all we didn’t really believe it. It was astonishing that these biomarkers appeared to actually predict mortality independent of disease.

“These were all apparently healthy people but to our surprise it appears these biomarkers show an undetected frailty which people did not know they had.”

Researchers claim that in the future a test could flag up high-risk individuals in need of medical intervention who show no symptoms of any disease.

“If the findings are replicated then this test is surely something we will see becoming widespread,” added Prof Perola.

“But at moment there is ethical question. Would someone want to know their risk of dying if there is nothing we can do about it?”

Dr Kettunen added: “Next we aim to study whether some kind of connecting factor between these biomarkers can be identified.

Source: Telegraph

Gene Study Offers Clues to Why Autism Strikes More Males

why girls are less likely than boys to have an autism spectrum disorder.

It turns out that girls tend not to develop autism when only mild genetic abnormalities exist, the researchers said. But when they are diagnosed with the disorder, they are more likely to have more extreme genetic mutations than boys who show the same symptoms.

“Girls tolerate neurodevelopmental mutations more than boys do. This is really what the study shows,” said study author Sebastien Jacquemont, an assistant professor of genetic medicine at the University Hospital of Lausanne, in Switzerland.

“To push a girl over the threshold for autism or any of these neurodevelopmental disorders, it takes more of these mutations,” Jacquemont added. “It’s about resilience to genetic insult.”

The dilemma is that the researchers don’t really know why this is so. “It’s more of an observation at a molecular level,” Jacquemont noted.

In the study, the Swiss researchers collaborated with scientists from the University of Washington School of Medicine to analyze about 16,000 DNA samples and sequencing data sets from people with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders.

The investigators also analyzed genetic data from almost 800 families affected by autism for the study, which was released online Feb. 27 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The researchers analyzed copy-number variants (CNVs), which are individual variations in the number of copies of a particular gene. They also looked at single-nucleotide variants (SNVs), which are DNA sequence variations affecting a single nucleotide. Nucleotides are the basic building blocks of DNA.

The study found that females diagnosed with any neurodevelopmental disorder, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and intellectual disability, had more harmful CNVs than males who were diagnosed with the same disorder. Females with autism also had more harmful SNVs than males with the condition.

“There’s a well-known disparity when it comes to developmental disorders between boys and girls, and it’s been puzzling,” Jacquemont said. “And there have been quite a bit of papers trying to investigate this bias that we’ve seen in the clinic.”

The study authors pointed out that autism affects four boys for every one girl. The ratio increases to seven-to-one when looking at high-functioning autism cases.

It’s an interesting study, said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York.

“It’s not an easy study to read, but certainly the take-away suggests it tries to lend further support to the assumption that the ratio of males to females [who have autism] is affected by genetic vulnerabilities — that it has a genetic underpinning,” Adesman said.

What do the findings mean for parents and patients?

Adesman said there are no immediate benefits, but the knowledge can help direct future research.

“This isn’t going to lead to a breakthrough in treatment, but from a clinical standpoint it may help researchers and academics understand why it is that developmental disorders seem to be more common in boys than girls,” he noted.

The new research also reinforces that genetic differences — or vulnerabilities — aren’t limited to sex chromosomes, Adesman added.

“The presumption has been, ‘Well gee, boys have a Y chromosome and girls don’t, so are there problems with the Y chromosome that explain it?'” Adesman noted.

“The bottom line is that there are a lot of different genetic abnormalities and atypicalities that result in developmental disorders in children and adults,” Adesman explained. “Women seem to be a little more resilient in terms of being able to have minor abnormalities without having a developmental problem.”

Source: health

Body Shape Index is Better Predictor of Mortality

In 2012, Nir Krakauer, an assistant professor of civil engineering in City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering, and his father, Jesse Krakauer, developed a new method to quantify the risk specifically associated with abdominal obesity.

A follow-up study, published in PLoS ONE, supports their contention that the technique, known as A Body Shape Index (ABSI), is a more effective predictor of mortality than Body Mass Index (BMI), the most common measure used to define obesity.

The team analyzed data for 7,011 adults, 18+, who participated in the first Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS1), conducted in Great Britain in the mid-1980s, and a follow-up survey seven years later (HALS2). The sample was broadly representative of the British population in terms of region, employment status, national origin and age. They used National Health Service records through 2009 to identify deaths and cancer cases: 2,203 deaths were recorded among the sample population.

Then, they compared all-cause mortality from the HALS sample with ABSI and other variables, including BMI, waist circumference, waist – hip ratio and waist – height ratio.

The analysis found ABSI to be a strong indicator of mortality hazard among the HALS population. Death rates increased by a factor of 1.13 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.09–1.16) for each standard deviation increase in ABSI. Persons with ABSI in the top 20 percent were found to have death rates 61 percent than those with ABSI in the bottom 20 percent.

The results tracked closely with the earlier study, which used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted in the U.S. between 1999 and 2004. This provides stronger evidence that ABSI is a valid indicator of the risk of premature death across different populations. Further, they showed that ABSI outperformed commonly used measures of abdominal obesity, including waist circumference, waist – hip ratio and waist – height ratio.

Also, because the data came from two surveys seven years apart, the researchers were able to assess the effect of change in ABSI on mortality. The found an increase in ABSI correlated with increased risk of death, and that the more recent ABSI measurement was a more reliable predictor. Noting this, the researchers contend that further investigation is warranted into whether lifestyle or other interventions could reduce ABSI and help people live longer.

Source: laboratory equipment

Delhi gets Asia’s first ‘Silent’ MRI system

With a vision of laying as much importance on ‘patient-comfort’ as on the actual medical services provided to them, Mahajan Imaging, north India’s leading chain of high-end medical imaging centres, on Tuesday claimed to have installed Asia’s first ‘Silent’ MRI system in a ‘unique, non-intimidating and non-medical environment’ at its new diagnostic centre in Defence Colony here.

According to Mahajan Imaging, the MR750w MRI system by GE Healthcare has the world’s most advanced imaging technology that enables radiologists to perform MRI scans “without any sound”.

According to GE Healthcare, its revolutionary Silent Scan technology is designed to reduce MR scanner noise to near ambient (background) sound levels and thus improve a patient’s MR exam experience. Conventional MR scanners can generate noise in excess of 110 dBA (decibels) levels, roughly equivalent to rock concerts.

Dr Harsh Mahajan, chief radiologist at Mahajan Imaging, said, “We have installed Asia’s first truly silent MRI system. Till now, MRI scans were associated with a lot of noise – almost as much as a jet engine or rock concert, which led to stress and discomfort for patients. Today, we are able to do most brain scans without any noise at all! This, in addition to the obvious benefit of comfort to the patient, also enables us to do higher quality scans since patients do not move and are more cooperative during scans. This eventually leads to better images and hence a better diagnosis.”

Dr Mahajan said that soon the ‘silent’ technology would be extrapolated to other parts of the body, which would lead to a paradigm shift in MRI scanning.

“The development of this revolutionary Silent Scan MRI Technology is in keeping with GE’s mission of humanizing its medical technology,” said Karthik Kuppusamy, senior director of MR Imaging at GE Healthcare South Asia.

“This machine is also testament of India’s product development capabilities since it was co-developed by our engineers in Bangalore. We used proprietary high-fidelity gradient and ultra-fast RF system electronics and eliminated the sound at the source,” he added.

“It is amazing that there is no drop in image quality,” said Dr Raju Sharma, professor of radiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. “I congratulate GE for developing a clinical system that can perform MRI scans without any sound – this is a dream come true for radiologists all over the world.”

Dr Sharma explained that having a noise-free environment makes the patients very comfortable. This improves utilisation of the MRI machine since scans do not need to be interrupted or repeated frequently.

Additionally, Mahajan Imaging has taken patient comfort a step further by giving both, their MRI room and CT room very unique and aesthetically pleasing interiors. While the MRI room bears the theme — Genesis-Hope-Healing, depicted using a 33 feet long painting of three Greek Goddesses, the CT scan room gives the impression of being underwater.

“The idea is to create an environment of healing,” said Ritu Mahajan, executive director of Mahajan Imaging and the person responsible for designing the facility. “We decided to push the boundaries of what is possible in an MRI room and used silk on the walls and ceiling to add warmth, and matching self-levelling epoxy flooring. Additionally, an artist from Albania was approached to make a 33 feet long painting which depicts Genesis, Hope and Healing, according to Greek mythology.”

“The room housing the CT scan machine in the diagnostic centre has been hand-painted by a young artist to give the impression of being underwater, something that is very popular with younger patients,” she said.

“Since an MRI machine has a very strong magnetic field, and is affected even by extremely small changes in radiofrequency waves, we decided to go with several small specially manufactured LED lights to light up the MRI room,” said Dominique Taffin, senior design architect from GE Healthcare who helped execute the MRI room interiors at the centre.

“The positive effect of one’s surroundings on one’s health cannot be underplayed,” said Dr S S Kale, professor of neurosurgery at AIIMS, New Delhi. “What Dr Mahajan and his team have done is truly unique – every room has a different theme! The environment at the centre sets the patient at ease – a very important component of providing healthcare from a holistic point of view.”

Niharika Dutt, a 22-year old healthcare professional, has had several MRI scans done earlier because of some illness, but feels that this machine is different. “I have had MRI scans done many times because of repeated dizziness and migraine,” said Dutt, “but I have never seen a room this pretty! I had seen photographs of this room online and felt that they were edited – but I later realised that Mahajan Imaging has actually made their room like this. The ambience, in addition to the quietness of the machine, is definitely going to make any patient forget about their disease for some time and make the harrowing experience of the MRI better.”

In addition to the advanced MRI and CT technology, the new centre boasts of the world’s best Mammography machine, X-Ray system, ultrasounds, cardiac scanners, dental CT and DEXA machine – providing all radiology services under one roof.

Source : India Medical Times

Night Eating Disorder Signals More Dangerous Mental Issues

Do you eat a lot of food at night, even after you feel full? Then you may want to see a specialist. Researchers have discovered a fairly rare eating disorder whose signature is excessive eating may just signal other mental health issues.

“Night eating syndrome is characterized not only by eating at night–certainly many college students might have a late night study fest with eating–but it’s also characterized by other things, like feeling that you can’t eat in the morning, and feeling like you have to eat in order to go back to sleep,” said Rebecka Peebles

The new findings are important amidst National Eating Disorders Week, which began on Feb. 23. The week brings awareness to devastating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

“Eating disorders are complicated and vexing problems and we don’t exactly understand the pathophysiology of them,” said Aaron Krasner, Director of the Adolescent Transitional Living Program

The latest study reveals a new type of disorder. While it overlaps with binge eating, though, it’s not the same. It occurs in just under 3 percent of students after controlling for binge eating, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a problem that shouldn’t be examined further. In fact, those with night eating disorders were also more likely to have a history of depression and self-injuring.

“Often times these people are eating throughout the night,” said Cristin Runfola,

“They might even be waking up and feeding multiple times throughout the night, so if you’re frequently hearing that someone’s getting out of bed throughout the night and you’re noticing that food is missing there might be something going on.”

The findings help reveal a bit more about this disorder, and also about binge eating disorder. By learning as much as possible about these disorders, researches can better treat individuals who suffer from them.

Source: Food world news

Soon, more efficient vaccines for meningitis and pneumonia

Researchers have discovered the presence of a novel subtype of innate lymphoid cells in human spleen essential for the production of antibodies.

This work was done by the B cell Biology research group at IMIM (Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mediques) in Barcelona, directed by Dr. Andrea Cerutti, ICREA research professor and leader in the field of B lymphocyte biology.

Innate lymphoid cells were recently described by the scientific community and represent the first line of immunological defence on our body surfaces, which are constantly exposed to bacteria, such as the intestine or skin.

Dr. Giuliana Magri, member of the research group of B Cell Biology at IMIM and first author in the paper, said that for the first time it has been described both their presence and function in human spleen. We have discovered how these cells regulate the innate immune response of a subset of splenic B lymphocytes that are responsible to fight against encapsulated bacteria, causative agents of meningitis or pneumonia.

This new finding improves our understanding on how the immune system protects us against infections.

This research has been published in the journal Nature Immunology.

Source: sify news