Health A-Z

Shingles dramatically increases heart disease, stroke risk

If you’ve had shingles before the age of 40, you could be at an increased risk for heart disease and stroke.

According to Counsel & Heal, researchers followed individuals for an average of 6.3 years after they had contracted shingles. The study found that participants who had shingles before age 40 were 50 percent more likely to have a heart attack than people who did not have the disease; they were also 74 percent more likely to have a stroke.

Given these findings, lead researcher Dr. Judith Breuer of University College London recommended that anyone with shingles be screened for heart and stroke risk factors.

“The shingles vaccine has been shown to reduce the number of cases of shingles by about 50 percent,” Breuer told Counsel & Heal.

Current shingles vaccination recommendations are for anyone over the age of 60. Researchers have yet to determine the role of vaccination in younger individuals, Breuer said.

Source: Fresh news US

Obesity Rates Triple In Developing World

Statistics show the problem of obesity now affects almost twice as many people in poor countries than in rich ones.

The number of overweight and obese people has reached almost one billion in the developing world – overtaking rates in industrialised countries, a report has found.

The report by the UK’s Overseas Development Institute said the number of obese people has more than tripled in the developing world since 1980.

In 2008, more than 900 million people in poor countries were classed as overweight compared with around 550 million in high-income countries – almost twice as many.

Steve Wiggins, the report’s author, said: “The statistics are quite sensational, it is a tripling of the number of people who are considered overweight and obese in the developing world since 1980.

“That takes the number to more than 900 million and that is more than the number of overweight and obese people that we have in the high-income countries, which is probably around 570 million, something like that.

“It is a very rapidly emerging problem and it is now of a very large size.”

Rates of obesity are still rising in richer countries, but not at the same rate as in the developing world.

Two countries with particularly high obesity rates are China and Mexico, where the numbers of overweight people have almost doubled since 1980.

In South Africa, obesity has risen by a third and now has a higher rate than the UK.

North Africa, the Middle East and Latin America all have similar overweight and obesity rates to Europe.

Explaining the developing world’s obesity epidemic, Mr Wiggins said: “It is associated with incomes and urbanisation and a more sedentary lifestyle, so it is those emerging countries which have done the best at raising their incomes.

“It’s the middle-income countries, it is the Chinas, it is the Mexicos, which are the countries which are seeing the highest rates of overweight and obesity at the moment.”

The report predicts that if current rates continue there will be a huge increase in people suffering certain types of cancer, diabetes, strokes and heart attacks.

It also warns that governments are not doing enough to tackle the crisis, partly due to politicians’ reluctance to interfere at the dinner table, the powerful farming and food lobbies and “a large gap” in public awareness as to what constitutes a healthy diet.

Countries singled out for praise in tackling obesity are Denmark and South Korea.

In Denmark, laws against trans-fatty acids have made Danish McDonalds among the healthiest in the world, while in South Korea the government launched a large-scale public education campaign 20 years ago which has turned around obesity rates.

Mr Wiggins said: “A few decades ago the government of Korea said we must encourage our traditional foods, which are low in fats and oils, high in vegetables, high in sea food and so on.

“And there was a lot of public education, a lot of training and a sense that Korean food is good for you.”

Source: Sky News

Special needs kid: 10 elementary solutions for healthy teeth

If your child has autism, a developmental check or a disability, we know that brushing, flossing, and dentist visits can be unequivocally challenging. Yet, verbal hygiene is crucial, generally since studies uncover special needs children are some-more expected than standard kids to have cavities and other dental problems.

Cavities, resin illness and verbal trauma

Special needs kids mostly have problem brushing effectively, since they might have deformed teeth or they don’t have a earthy or mental ability to be means to do it by themselves.

“They have an accumulation of house and germ all over a teeth and gums,” pronounced Dr. Steven G. Goldberg, contriver of a DentalVibe Injection Comfort System. So when food gets stuck, a germ feeds on it – causing cavities, resin illness and periodontal disease.

Kids who have wild movements, or children who punch their cheeks, lips, or tongues since their teeth do not accommodate properly, might also have verbal trauma.

Certain drugs with a high sugarine calm can means distended gums. Likewise, if a child uses a feeding tube, or cooking high sugarine dishes since of a disaster to thrive, he or she is some-more receptive to gingivitis, inflammation of a gums, and tartar, according to Dr. Rebecca Slayton, arch dental executive and chair of a National Children’s Oral Health Foundation’s systematic advisory board.

In addition, some kids who are orally antithetic and don’t like certain dishes and textures or a kick of brushing and a ambience of toothpaste are also some-more expected to have dental problems, Slayton said.

If your child has special needs, here are 10 ways we can keep his or her teeth healthy during home and make dentist visits stress-free.

1. Make brushing easy

For kids who need assistance brushing, put a toothbrush in a bicycle hoop so “they have something big, thick and squashy to reason onto,” Goldberg said. Brushing should always be supervised, and if floss doesn’t work, use a H2O pick. If your child bites, place compress on a behind teeth and afterwards brush.

2. Keep it fun

The progressing brushing becomes a pleasing experience, a easier it will be to make it a habit, according to Fern Ingber, boss and CEO of a National Children’s Oral Health Foundation: America’s ToothFairy. Try to brush when your child is many cooperative, and confuse him or her with song or something pleasant.

3. Start early

Your child’s initial revisit to a dentist should be a certain experience, so be certain to get there by age 1 or when a initial teeth erupt.

4. Find a good dentist

Most pediatric dentists work with special needs kids, though it’s critical to find one who is patient, will take time to explain all to your child, and work with we to make certain your child is comfortable. “If we get a merciful doctor, it will be a good experience,” Goldberg said.

5. Call ahead

When we make a dentist’s appointment, yield a staff with information about your child and his specific needs. A heads-up can concede them to set adult a bureau and make certain additional staff will be on palm to help. If your child can’t lay in a chair, a dentist can also find an alternative.

6. Do paperwork beforehand

Ask a bureau to send all of a paperwork forward of time, and move a duplicate of your word label with we so we can save time and give your child a courtesy he or she needs.

7. Bring a comfort object

Kids don’t know what to design during a initial dentist visit, so move a favorite blanket, toy, or toothbrush so they’re not afraid.

8. Prepare

Talk to your child about what to design during a dentist – from a chair that tilts behind to a collection a dentist uses. You can also ready by putting your child in your path and brushing his or her teeth. “They get used to a feeling of someone else touching their mouths and hovering over their heads. It’s a frightful feeling unless you’re used to it,” Goldberg said.

9. Use a right words

Ask a dentist previously what difference and phrases we should learn your child so if a dentist says, “open your mouth,” he or she know what to do.

10. Wipes, gels, and rinses

According to a investigate in a Journal of Dental Research, immature children who used xylitol wipes were significantly reduction expected to rise cavities. If we have to discharge your child’s remedy during night and you’ve already brushed his or her teeth, purify a mouth purify with xylitol wipes, Slayton suggests. Also, ask a dentist about an antimicrobial rinse or tradition trays with peroxide gel, dual methods that can assistance forestall cavities and resin illness too.

Source: Health medicine network

China says child deaths not linked to hepatitis vaccine

Chinese health authorities said they have found no link between a hepatitis B vaccine and the deaths of nine children who had received those shots, state media said on Friday.

China has been investigating 17 deaths following inoculation with a hepatitis B vaccine, made by Shenzhen-based BioKangtai, from Dec. 13 and 31. The news alarmed many Chinese Internet users, who called on the government to make more information public.

Many Chinese people are suspicious that the government tries to cover up bad news about health problems, despite assurances of transparency. In 2003, the government initially tried to cover-up the outbreak of the SARS virus.

Nine of the cases have nothing to do with the vaccines, state news agency Xinhua cited the director of the disease control bureau of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, Yu Jingjin, as saying at a press conference.

A preliminary analysis of the eight other cases have also found no link between the deaths and the vaccines, but the cause of the deaths will be confirmed only after autopsies, Yu said.

Li Guoqing of the China Food and Drug Administration said at a press conference that no problems had been found with BioKangtai vaccines in production practices or product quality, according to Xinhua.

BioKangtai said in a statement in December that it rigorously followed safety rules but that they were testing the batches suspected of causing the deaths.

China has been beset by a series of product safety scandals over the past few years.

At least six children died in 2008 after drinking milk contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine, and there have also been reports of children dying or becoming seriously ill from faulty encephalitis, hepatitis B and rabies vaccines.

Source: Reuters

Avoid Confusing Thyroid Symptoms With Menopause

Many middle-aged women experiencing menopausal-like symptoms may be experiencing thyroid-related problems. They are often difficult to tell apart but lab tests may help with the diagnosis.

Millions of women with menopausal-like symptoms may be suffering from undiagnosed thyroid disease. These non-specific symptoms consist of fatigue, depression, mood swings, weight gain, irregular menstrual periods, and sleep disturbances.

These are frequently associated with menopause, especially when they occur in women who are in their 40s.

However, only one out of four of these women who have described these menopause-like symptoms with a physician are actually tested for thyroid disease.

Perimenopausal Symptoms

It is common for women in their late 40s to their early 50s to expect the symptoms of menopause. This perimenopausal stage is the period when the signs and symptoms of menopause have not stabilized. Menopause is defined as the complete cessation of menstrual periods and loss of fertility. Before this occurs, a woman may undergo a long transition stage, called perimenopause, which may start as early as their mid-30s, although most women experiences changes in their mid to late 40s. This transition period may last for five to ten years, during which, one may undergo these signs and symptoms:

Irregular menstrual periods
Longer or shorter periods
Heavy menstrual flow or spotting
Absent periods
Menstrual cramping
Breast tenderness
Premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, which consists of fatigue, irritability, food cravings, and depression
Sleep problems

Hot flushes alternating with intermittent coldness

Weight gain

Menopause is a natural stage in a woman’s life that begins with a gradual decline in estrogen levels and ends with cessation of menses and with the ovaries failing to release eggs.

Symptoms related to these hormonal changes may come and go, some days being better than others are, especially during the long perimenopausal stage. For some women, undergoing these changes may be very challenging and they may feel that these are unnatural or perhaps related to some other health condition. They may seek medical consultation for vague symptoms, for which they may not get satisfactory treatment.

However, the diagnosis of menopause is usually made retrospectively, since it is established only a year after menses disappear.

Source: steady health

3D brain maps on iPhone guide doctors during surgeries

Many brain surgeons in developing countries look to their smartphones for guidance, and luckily for them, phones have started fulfilling this role in part, thanks to the thousands of 3D brain images, produced by Dr. Albert Rhoton at the University of Florida, that are freely available online.

“I’ve had young surgeons from Africa, Brazil and other countries tell me they’re pulling the images into the operating room, Live Science quoted Rhoton, head of the Neuro-Microanatomy Lab at the University of Florida’s McKnight Brain Institute, as saying.

As a training tool for surgical residents, Dr. Rhoton’s image library has grown into the world’s largest collection of 3D brain images. Physicians from across the globe now use the detailed anatomical images to train residents, prepare for surgeries and even guide them while performing surgeries.

Dr Rhoton said the images are their small contribution to making what is a delicate, awesome experience for neurosurgery patients more accurate, gentler and safer.

Rhoton has collected images of brain anatomy for as long as he’s been teaching surgery 50 years ago and began moving to 3D technology 25 years ago.

However, only recently did he realize how smartphones and online downloads could expand the reach of his educational tools. Two and a half years ago, Rhoton and his colleagues began working with the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) to make the brain images and videos available on iTunes University free of cost.

Even before the iTunes U venture, Rhoton had shared his brain images with hospitals and universities as a visiting instructor.

The 3D images show the detailed structure of various sections of the brain, with blood vessels and nerves color-coded in bright red and blue. The colors make the details of neural anatomy clearer than in the normal, grayish brain matter.

Rhoton and the residents he instructs have built up the library over decades, performing careful dissections and transferring the images they obtain to 3D photography and video.

The iTunes U content is engineered to be usable across device platforms, from iPhones to laptops to 3D television.

Rhoton’s work earned him the 2011 Surgeon of the Year award from the journal World Neurosurgery.

Seeing how surgeons have used the images during actual surgeries, Rhoton and AANS next hope to feed the brain maps directly into endoscope screens used in surgery

Source: Ani news

 

Daily routines may influence sleep quality, quantity

Maintaining a consistent daily routine may be linked to better sleep, according to a small new study.

Young adults who went to work and ate dinner around the same time every day typically slept better and woke up fewer times during the night. They also fell asleep more quickly at bedtime.

Yet the exact time people performed daily activities—say, eating dinner at 6 p.m. versus 8 p.m. —had little bearing on how well they slept.

“For the majority of sleep outcomes, we found that completing activities at a regular time better predicted sleep outcomes than the actual time of day that activities were completed,” Natalie Dautovich, a psychologist at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, said. She led the study, which was published in the Journals of Gerontology: Series B.

“For example, people reported better sleep quality and fewer awakenings at night when they were consistent in the time they first went outside,” Dautovich told Reuters Health in an email.

On the other hand, for older adults, inconsistent daily schedules were sometimes linked with better sleep, the researchers found.

For instance, older people whose dinnertime varied tended to sleep longer at night. And those who started home activities or began work at different times each day fell asleep more quickly.

The study included 50 adults between the ages of 18 and 30 and another 50 between 60 and 95. Participants kept a diary of when they performed regular activities and how well they slept at night for two weeks.

Instead of opening the door to new recommendations or sleep treatments, the authors said the study best serves to create questions for future research.

Those questions include whether older adults who have more variation in their daily schedules are already healthier and more socially active—or whether it’s the variety in one’s everyday schedule that provides the activity and stimulation that help ensure good sleep, according to Dautovich.

“We know that good sleep at night is dependent in part on our drive to sleep, which is based on how active and alert we are during the day,” she said.

For that reason, being out and about during the day remains one of the best ways to maximize the chances of a solid night of shut-eye.

“Greater activity and levels of alertness during the day increase our need to sleep at night,” Dautovich said.

Source: GMA network

Women may skip radiation therapy over child care concerns

Child care issues may keep breast cancer patients from getting the treatments they need, a new study suggests.

Mothers with young children were more likely to skip recommended radiation treatments after breast cancer surgery because of worries about the time involved, researchers found.

In particular, women who had a breast tumor removed were less likely to undergo radiation therapy afterwards if they had kids age seven or younger at home.About 81 per cent of women surveyed in the study who had younger kids received radiation therapy. The rates of radiation therapy for women with older kids or none at all ranged between 84 and 87 per cent.

Put another way, one in five women with young kids in the study skipped potentially life-saving post-surgery treatment, said Ya-Chen Tina Shih, an economist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago in Illinois who co-led the study.

“We were surprised because women in the younger age range have the longest life expectancy, so we expected to see a higher compliance rate among them,” she told Reuters Health.

“Women may think, ‘I really need to take care of the kids at home,’ and they may act on what they believe is most important at that time,” Shih said.

“But they may not be aware of how important radiation therapy is.”

Women who have “lumpectomy” surgery to remove a breast tumor – the researchers did not include patients who had mastectomies – are usually advised to follow up with radiation therapy, which requires a serious time commitment. The radiation treatments take up to an hour, five days a week, for up to seven weeks, the researchers report.

“Many have hypothesized that young children might be a barrier for younger women, but this paper is the first to demonstrate that,” wrote Dr. Nancy Keating in an email to Reuters Health.

Keating, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy in Boston, was not involved in the new study.

“It suggests there is a modifiable barrier to improving care: providing child care,” Keating said.

For their study, Shih and her team looked at 21,008 patients who filed breast cancer surgery claims between 2004 and 2009 with employer-sponsored insurance.

From the data provided by Truven Health Analytics, researchers knew how many kids – dependents – were in a woman’s household.

The team found additional barriers to radiation therapy. Patients who enrolled in HMO plans, or PPO plans with fixed reimbursement amounts, were less likely to follow through with the treatment. If a patient had to travel far for the surgery itself, then she was also less likely to get radiation.

But this study’s biggest contribution is highlighting how childcare may play a role, Keating said.

Women, like those in the study, who chose breast-conserving surgery and not a mastectomy, “may not understand that the surgery is equivalent to mastectomy in terms of outcomes if women also get the radiation,” Keating wrote.

Shih pointed out that one weakness in her team’s report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was that they did not talk to the patients themselves to record their reasons for not getting radiation therapy.

The study shows an association between the age of a woman’s children and her likelihood of opting out of radiation, but does not prove cause and effect.

Future studies could also investigate the rates of radiation therapy among women without insurance, or with less generous benefits, Shih said.

But for now, “the person in charge of a patient’s entire cancer care needs to make sure that they know if a patient has younger kids,” Shih said.

“If friends and family can make a commitment to help with the patient’s child care needs for a month or two – that could make a big difference,” she said.

The findings “suggest that providers, like hospitals, physician groups or health systems, could potentially help by providing assistance with child care,” Keating said.

Source: Khaleej times

Young adults ‘damage DNA’ with weekend alcohol consumption

College students are renowned for partying at the weekends, and this usually involves having a drink or two. But new research has found that this level of alcohol consumption may cause damage to DNA. This is according to a study published in the journal Alcohol.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism states that around four out of five college students in the US drink alcohol and 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year as a result of unintentional alcohol-related injuries.

According to the study researchers, including co-author Jesús Velázquez of the Autonomous University of Nayarit in Mexico, previous research studying the effects of alcohol consumption has mainly been carried out in individuals who have been drinking for long periods of time.

These individuals usually have illnesses as a result of their alcohol consumption, such as liver damage, cancer or depression.

But the investigators say their study is “pioneering,” as it analyzes the effects of alcohol consumption on young people who are healthy.

Oxidative damage caused by alcohol consumption

The researchers set out to determine the level of oxidative damage caused by alcohol consumption in two groups of people between the ages of 18 and 23. Oxidative stress can cause damage to proteins, membranes and genes.

One group drank an average of 1.5 liters of alcoholic beverages every weekend, while the other group did not consume any alcohol.

All participants underwent blood tests to ensure they were healthy and were free of any diseases or addictions.

The researchers also measured the activity of dehydrogenase – an enzyme responsible for metabolizing alcohol (ethanol) into acetaldehyde – as well as acetoacetate and acetone activity.

Using a thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) test, the researchers were able to assess oxidative damage. The test allowed them to see how ethanol in the blood, and the acetaldehyde produced by dehydrogenase in reaction to ethanol, affects the lipid peroxidation that impacts cell membranes.

Results of the study revealed that the alcohol-consuming group demonstrated twice as much oxidative damage to their cell membranes, compared with the group that did not drink.

Signs of DNA damage through alcohol consumption
An additional experiment, called the comet test, was conducted to see whether the participants’ DNA was also affected by alcohol consumption. This involved taking out the nucleus of lymphocytic cells in the blood and putting it through electrophoresis.

The researchers explain that if the cells are faulty and DNA is damaged, it causes a “halo” in the electrophoresis, called “the comet tail.”

The experiment revealed that the group who consumed alcohol showed significantly bigger comet tails in the electrophoresis, compared with the group that did not drink alcohol.

In detail, 8% of cells were damaged in the control group, but 44% were damaged in the drinking group. This means the drinking group had 5.3 times more damage to their cells.

However, the investigators say that they were unable to confirm there was extensive damage to the DNA, as the comet tail was less than 20 nanometers. But the investigators say their findings still raise concern.

They explain:

“The fact is, there should not have been any damage at all because they had not been consuming alcohol for very long, they had not been exposed in a chronic way.”

Overall, they conclude that oxidative damage can be found in young adults with only 4-5 years’ alcohol drinking history, and that this is the first study to provide evidence of this damage in individuals at the early stages of alcohol abuse.

Other studies have detailed some positive effects of moderate alcohol consumption. Medical News Today recently reported on a study suggesting that drinking alcohol in small doses may boost the immune system.

Source: Medical news today

Relapse of ‘cured’ HIV patients spurs AIDS science on

Scientists seeking a cure for AIDS say they have been inspired, not crushed, by a major setback in which two HIV positive patients believed to have been cured found the virus re-invading their bodies once more.

True, the news hit hard last month that the so-called “Boston patients” – two men who received bone marrow transplants that appeared to rid them completely of the AIDS-causing virus – had relapsed and gone back onto antiretroviral treatment.

But experts say the disappointment could lay the basis for important leaps forward in the search for a cure.

“It’s a setback for the patients, of course, but an advance for the field because the field has now gained a lot more knowledge,” said Steven Deeks, a professor and HIV expert at the University of California, San Francisco.

He and other experts say the primary practical message is that current tests designed to detect even very low levels of HIV present in the body are simply not sensitive enough.

As well as having the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the Boston patients both also had a type of blood cancer called lymphoma, for which they were treated using bone marrow transplants – one man in 2008 and the other in 2010.

They continued taking the antiretroviral AIDS drugs, but eight months after each patient’s transplant, doctors found they could not detect any sign of HIV in their blood.

In the early part of 2013, both patients decided to stop taking their AIDS drugs and both appeared to remain HIV-free – prompting their doctors, Timothy Henrich and Daniel Kuritzkes from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to announce at a conference in July that they may have been cured.

Yet in December came news that one of the men had begun to show signs of an HIV rebound by August, while the second patient had a relapse in November.

Henrich said the virus’ comeback underlined how ingenious HIV can be in finding hiding places in the body to evade attack efforts by the immune system and by drug treatment.

“Through this research we have discovered the HIV reservoir is deeper and more persistent than previously known and that our current standards of probing for HIV may not be sufficient,” he said, adding that both patients were “currently in good health” and back on antiretroviral therapy.

INSPIRATION

Barely a decade ago, few HIV scientists would have dared put the words HIV and cure in the same sentence. Yet some intriguing and inspiring cases in recent years mean many now believe it is just a question of time before a cure is found.

First was the now famous case of Timothy Ray Brown, the so-called “Berlin patient,” whose HIV was eradicated by a complex treatment for leukemia in 2007 involving the destruction of his immune system and a stem cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection.

Such an elaborate, expensive and life-threatening procedure could never be used as a broad-spectrum approach for the world’s 34 million HIV patients. But the results in Brown focused scientific attention on a genetic mutation known as ‘CCR5 delta 32’ as a target for possible gene therapy treatment.

Then last March, French scientists who followed 14 HIV-positive people known as the “Visconti patients”, who were treated very swiftly with HIV drugs but then stopped treatment, said that even after seven years off therapy, they were still showing no signs of the virus rebounding.

That announcement came only weeks after news of the “functional cure” of an HIV-positive baby in Mississippi who received antiretroviral treatment for 18 months from the day she was born. By the time she was two this appeared to have stopped the virus replicating and spreading.

A “functional cure” is when HIV is reduced to such low levels that it is kept at bay even without treatment, though the virus can still be detected in the body.

Sharon Lewin, an HIV expert at Monash University in Australia, said all these developments, as well as the setback suffered by the Boston patients, inspired scientists to investigate many different approaches in the search for a cure.

“We’ve learnt many things here – and one of the most important is that a tiny, tiny amount of virus can get the whole thing going again,” she told Reuters. “It’s a clear message that we need better ways to pick up the virus.”

Scientists are now more convinced than ever that a two-pronged approach which aims to firmly suppress the virus while bolstering the immune system provides the best way forward.

“We need to attack in two ways – reduce the virus to very low levels and also to boost the immune response. We can’t do one without the other,” said Lewin.

“So we still have to think of other creative ways to control HIV. And it’s still early days… before we can say which approach is likely to be the winner.”

Source: orlando sentinel