Health News

Tea Contribution to Health

2007-05-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

Tea has become main beverage in various countries in the world. Besides delicious, result of research also shows approximately there are 450 organ compounds consists in tea. Counted 30-40% is polyphenols, which is active compound containing a matter so-called catechin.

From various types that are usually consumed, tea is differentiated to three types, namely black tea, green tea, and olong tea. The difference is based on the tea raw material and production process. Black tea processed with fermentation, than occur incisive catechin degradation. Green tea far more usefully because doesn't pass fermentation process.

Green tea contains catechin more times compared to black tea. Inside of green tea, the catechin content can be reach till 42%, 10% higher than black tea.

A number of researches show that tea has a number of positive benefits for health. Not just green tea, black tea also gives positive contribution to healthy life style.

"Fruit, vegetable, and all tea types contains important antioxidant. Research indicates that phytonutrient give substantial contribution health and prevents from chronics disease," said Head of Antioxidant Research Laboratory in Tufts University, Jeffrey Blumberg PhD FACN, like published by www.teausa.org.

Tea has many benefits from the catechin content for body. Catechin tightly related with body immune system, red blood cell will become more effective.

Then, has ability to block bacterium and consists with cell wall and reacts with poison yielded by bacterium and catches the toxin or poison. Catch’s weight metals, mercury, chrome, and other.

"Prevention potency to fight against cancer is contribution from flavonoids active compound so-called catechin," said Ray Sahelian MD.

Catechin also repairs the condition of bacterium in intestine. Lessens ugly bacterium and increases good bacterium. Not strange, people formerly if get diarrhea is ordered to drinks tea because it’s having function catching the ugly bacterium.

But besides the positive benefit, for some people tea exactly is avoided. Afraid of tea negative effect of course is reasonable. Tea contains tannin that banding a number of minerals, especially ferrum which is benefit for body.

If just because the content of tannin and caffeine, not necessarily to avoid tea. Though, not all people is lacking of mineral susceptible. Only some of groups, like child and pregnancy mother is lacking of mineral, because requires high nutrition. Even, for both the groups also not forbidden to drinks tea, but the intensity only lessened in order not to bother required nutrition absorption.

Pizza Can Become Health food

2007-05-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

It is many ways to be healthy. One of them is by eating junk food. That is like been told by number of food chemists which coming from University of Maryland.

They find way to make healthy of junk food by increase antioxidant capacity in the food content. First food being tested is Pizza. The reason, Pizza is very popular. Not just in US, but also in the whole world.

Antioxidant value at all pizza wheat dough is boosted up by grilling the Pizza longer in high air temperature so that can give dough time to swell to and boosts up the antioxidant rate. Antioxidant is an essence that giving cell the protection from various damages. Especially caused by unstable molecule, that named free radical. Some experts believe that antioxidant can reduce cancer risk, heart attack and gives protection from a number of not serious diseases.

In a slice of Pizza which spicing with assorted of fatty topping, like extra chess, pepperoni, sauce, and grind flesh, of course gives weight risk. Nonchalant how high the antioxidant capacity contents found on pizza. "If you add essences with negative potency to health, of course you give negative value to your health," said Moore. So, besides high antioxidant rate, of course healthy content also required in the slice of pizza so the food becomes healthy.

To create appropriate cooked, required hotter oven. Therefore, antioxidant level increase to 60 % by the way grilling it is longer than ordinary, and will go up again until 82 % with higher bake out air temperature. Grills this pizza dough also must be in carefully. Grills pizza in longer time with high air temperature concurrently has risk to cause scorched.

The experts use oven with about 204-287 degree (Celsius) air temperature. They grill the dough during 7-14 minutes. Then, they do fermentation during full two-day. The result, high antioxidant level successfully reached. The experts also believe, if fermentation is done in longer time the antioxidant content in pizza also increased. It happened because yeast in dough had more time to discharge antioxidant component.

"Generally the fermentation is required about 18 hours," said Moore. All people can self practice. Healthy life also becomes easier. “You neither are unnecessary to spend extra money, and you nor need to do addition effort," said Dr Liangli Lucy Yu, other researcher from University of Maryland.

Asia's Cancer Rise Spectacularly by 2020

2007-04-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

SINGAPORE - The number of cancer cases in Asia is set to increase spectacularly by 2020 due largely to longer life lengths and changing daily life’s, threatening a health crisis as poorer countries in the region fight to afford care.

A fast-growing populace coupled with public living longer and undergoing extreme transforms to diet and lifestyle will place a main burden on developing countries that cannot afford screening, vaccines and expensive treatment, experts said at the start of a two-day conference in Singapore.

"Many believe that cancer is somehow only a problem of affluent and aging societies. That's not true, of course," said Richard Horton editor and publisher of The Lancet medical journal, which is supporting the conference.

Others believe "cancer is somehow inevitable, that one is predisposed to it genetically. Again, that's not true. Forty percent of cancers can be stopped by simple changes in lifestyle."

Cancer of the lungs, stomach and liver are the greatest troubles in Asia followed by breast and colon cancers. The total number of new cancer cases in the area is projected to balloon from 4.5 million in 2002 to 7.1 million in 2020 if nothing changes.

Worldwide, there are 11 million new cancer cases accounted annually and 7 million citizens die from the disease every year, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Mad Cow in Netherlands

2007-04-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

THE HAGUE - The Dutch ministry of Agriculture publicized on Friday that it has revealed mad cow disease in a seven-year-old cow.

It is the 83rd case of mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the Netherlands since 1997 but the first since March 2006.

Netherlands authorities do schedule checks on all slaughtered bovines for BSE.

One cow from the same farm and another six from other farms assumed to be at risk for mad cow disease, because they get the same feed or were offspring’s of the sick cow, were also selected.

The Netherlands has so far traced two cases of the human form of the disease, variant Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease, since it first appeared in 1996.

“Mermaid Baby” is Walking and Happy

2007-04-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

LIMA, Peru - Peru's "mermaid baby" walked around her nursery school yard Friday, ducking in and out of a plastic playhouse seven months after undergoing an operation to fully divide her merged legs.

Milagros Cerron, whose first name connotes "miracles" in Spanish, was born with a rare congenital defect recognized as sirenomelia, or "mermaid syndrome," which left her legs linked from her heels to her groin.

Dr. Luis Rubio, head of the medical team that divided Milagros' legs, called reporters to see her steps forward on Friday. He said doctors have successfully reconstructed the child's hips, knees and ankles and that she is "doing well physically."

But Rubio said Milagros — who is called "the little mermaid" by Peruvians — will need an extra operation in about two years to restructure and fix her urinary and sexual organs.

"We've gotten past the first phase, but it's not the end," Rubio said. "There's a long way to go."

Milagros, who turns 3 years old next week, at this time takes ballet classes and runs around the playground with her classmates.

In June 2005 doctors successfully executed risky surgery to separate her legs to above her knees. The operation seven months ago was to separate the remaining four inches of fused tissue just underneath the groin.

Bill Gates to Apply Vietnam Immunization Program

2007-04-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

HANOI - Microsoft chairman Bill Gates hopes techniques from Vietnam's childhood immunization program can assist fight killer illness in Africa, state media reported Tuesday.

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda came to hospitals, spoke with health care representatives and held a personal meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung during a three-day stay to the communist country ending Tuesday.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with a war chest that contain almost 30 billion dollars contributed by the high-tech tycoon, funds HIV/ AIDS study and vaccinations against malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases.

Bill and Melinda said they was amaze with Vietnam's immunization record and promised more support in stopping childhood diseases and handle HIV/AIDS, said the state-run Vietnam News Agency.

The World Health Organization says Vietnam has one of the highest rates of immunized children in the planet, with more than 90 percent of under-ones vaccinated against foremost diseases.

In June previous year the non-profit health group PATH proclaimed a five-year study, funded with a 27.8 million dollar donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on cervical cancer vaccinations.

Seattle-based PATH said it would perform pilot studies in India, Vietnam, Uganda and Peru with the aim of introducing vaccines in opposition to the illness that kills more than 270,000 women worldwide every year.

Milk Fermentation, High Nutrient Value

2007-04-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

A small part of story of Kaiun Mishima, Japanese that first time developing the product of milk fermentation commercially in his country. Up to now, beverage of milk fermentation lot consumed by the resident of the Sakura Country.

Supported by good pattern eat, it's not amazed if the mean age of Japanese is high enough, that is 80-85 year. Mishima die at 1974 in 96 year age! But, not meaning by drink milk fermentation somebody can be long lived. Logically, one who has longer live owns the healthy body. To get it, foods have to be digestible better in digestion channel.

With consuming milk fermentation , proven can improve the digest power and absorption of digestion channel so can optimize the growth of body. How it's mechanism? Milk fermentation is a producer factory of nutrient essence with the milk raw material and the main "worker" is bacterium. Differ from most milk which generally sweets, milk fermentation rather sour.

This taste is got naturally and represents intervention result of sour lactate bacterium like Lactobacillus sp, which used in fermentation process. This bacterium said can release the typical aroma that like citrus or orange. Lactate sour representing especial product of lactate sour bacterium fermentation can stimulate the intestine peristaltic movement so can assist the ingestion, absorption, fesses dismissal, and dismissal of pathogen bacterium (disease cause bacterium) from digestion channel.

Generally, milk fermentation also can stimulate the good bacterium growth in intestine, for example bifid bacterium that representing pro biotic bacterium. Supplementation of pro biotic bacterium got from milk fermentation proven give the positive effect to human being and animal by repairing the balance of intestine micro flora. In the beginning, fermentation process intended as one of effort to lengthen keeping time of fresh milk. This beverage represent the food substance which almost perfect nutrient but easy to hackneyed.

Later known, that in fact the job result of lactate sour bacterium in process of fermentation can improve the nutrient value of base substance. Up to now, fermentation process is the only one method of food substance pickling which at one increase the nutrient quality.

The nutrient content in milk fermentation basically is equal to its raw material nutrient content that is milk. The nutrient content is equivalent with milk, but the nutrient value is higher. Because protein at milk before permeated have to be digested first, while at milk fermentation it's just by omit permeated it so the absorbent protein value is higher.

Firefighter at Risk to Coroner Disease

2007-04-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - Newly study mention that extinguishing the raging of fire can increase the death risk because heart attack effect. Firefighter represents the most endangering heart health profession.

Study of The Harvard School of Public Health lay open, beside common assumption like full of condensed smoke and burned, other root cause of Firefighter death in United States is heart coroner disease.

As a whole in last one decade, 45% of Firefighter death relate to the cardiovascular problem. This number is much higher compared to a same case percentage in police (22%), medical worker (11%), and other profession (15%).

Study that publicized in The New England Journal of Medicine analysis all data of Firefighter whose death in duty during 1994 till 2004. Outside hundreds of Firefighter whose death at attack of The World Trade Center New York in September 11/2001.

"We find the conclusive evidence that the death risk because of heart coroner disease is very high in burned fire condition, response the warning, and during experiencing physical activity training," said the Chief of Stefanos Kales Study Writer Team.

From 1.144 Firefighter whose passing away in duty during that period, as much 39% happened because Heart Coroner Disease. Even the Firefighter in fact only spend 1-5% of their time to extinguish the fire, according to record, as much 32% of death on duty happened because coroner problem.

Writer hypothesis mention, factor which partake to the increase of death value , for example effect of conscription of energy and emotion in fire extinguishing activity triggering appearance of heart coroner disease.

Smoke Influence to Skin

2007-04-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO - Smoking not only cause wrinkled of face till change into yellow, it's also changing to the entire body. Research publicized in the Archives of Dermatology show that smoking will influence to the entire body skin although it's protected against from the sunshine.

"We check the skin and find the relation between smokings with the skin damage. Subject of the Research start checked from the cigarette amount per day and also smoking duration," said researcher chief from the University of Michigan, Dr Yolanda Helfrich, like reported on Reuters.

More explain from her, all participles have age more than 65 years old. The result, smoker having more wrinkle amount compared to a nonsmoker. Same result by using participle which have age 45 until 65 years old.

Researcher test 82 people, smoker and nonsmoker taken its picture at inside of right arm. The research object age is between 22 until 99, some of them is smoker.

Some previously research find that smoke of cigarette can cause early aging as the indication of wrinkle. But the researches do not control the sunshine amount that hitting the skin.

This research do not discuss the mechanism that happened. It is the previously research that finding that cigarette and also cigarette smoke can cause the blood line under skin is wrinkle, lessening blood supply for the skin. Cigarette also can cause the damage of skin network and also part of inner body.

Want to Pregnant, Kate Moss do Diet

2007-04-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

London - Kate Moss wish to have baby again. This time she is settled to step its relationship with Pete Doherty more seriously by having a baby. He even also had tight diet to realize it.

Not just Kate, Pete also doing the same thing. To take care fertility, both doing vitamin diet to maximize their possibility get the baby.

“Kate have been informed that if she wish pregnant quickly, he need food which lot of vitamin D," like reported by Lse, Tuesday (3/4/2007).

Since now Kate have been prepare herself to immediately have the child again while the wedding with the Babyshambles personel will take place in next summer. Whilst there is no schedule for the show, Kate consumes more food than usually.

As a supermodel it’s natural, the moment before the show Kate can't eat promiscuously. Kate nowadays had a 4 years old daughter called Lila Grace from the relationship with publisher, Jefferson Hack.

Pete is also had a son from the relationship with the singer, Lisa Moorish, which previously have affinity by Liam Gallagher, Oasis vocalist.

Doctor use Ipod to Recognize Heart Problem

2007-03-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

IPod not only good as entertainment media to play high quality digital music. All doctor nowadays also can use it to train its ability recognize patient heart problem. Its way by listening the record of heart beat sound in the peripheral by repeatedly.

Research which have been done previously show the mean mount accuracy of a doctor to recognize the heart beat that showing problem in heart only about 40 gratuity. But, the ability proven to twofold mount after exercising with iPod. In that research, 149 internist doctor listening five variation of heart beat during 400 times in 90 minute.

" Efficiency of using the stethoscope and ability to recognize abnormal heart beat are the important skill to identify heart disease and minimize the depending of costly equipments," said the chief research Dr. Michael Barrett, doctor and cardiology professor from Temple Doctor and Hospital University . Detection appliance like echocardiogram, he said, unnecessary often weared and use only at attack moment of acute condition.

Barrett so sure by the way to improving the ability is true depended by exercising continuously. Not from the study in class or demonstration in laboratory. With other digital music player, besides iPod, this ability perhaps also can decrease even not yet been proved.

Two last year, radiologist from California University Los Angeles Dr. Osman Ratib and Dr. Antoine Rosset also use the iPod with big capacity to save the scan result image. By Osirix open source software which been developed by him, all radiologist can share the video and image in iPod which incircuit with the desktop computer base on Mac through the teleconfrent. Nowaday all doctor can so easily share the medical information.

Play Video Games Can Improve the Eyesight

2007-03-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

New York - Play Video Games like “ Gear Of War,” “ Lost Planet,” “ Halo,” and other game type using fire arm exactly can improve the eyesight. Not kidding?

Based on research result, like the news by Livescience.Com, Friday ( 16/3/2007), type of video games which is not ‘show action’ like “ Tetris” do not show that matter.

According to Daphne Bevelier from University of Rochester, based to the compare between one who play and do not play at video game in 30 hour spanning time, the result show one who play the video game had ability to recognize the object more accurate.

According to the research that publicized in Psychological Science journal, the video game player is able to recognize very small object. Because, the game of video game train the brain speed to catch the object which look in eyesight.

Even believed, by playing the video game will assist to heal the people who have an eyesight problem. The study also show by playing video game, people would protected from stroke attack.

Depression Mostly in Woman

2007-03-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Depression represent the psychological trouble influencing the feeling, mind, physical, and also behavior. Recognizing the symptom in early time and give the precise treatment can overcome the trouble. What symptom is necessary to recognize ?

Somebody is referred depression if experience at least two type from the main symptom, that is depression feeling like sorrowful and gloomy, loss of enthusiasm or desire, and also feel weak languidly. Beside the main symptom, there is also additional symptom like concentration decrease, abundant feel guilty , eat and sleep pattern trouble , and also feel hopelessly. The condition will happen more than two week.

Is depression influenced by the gender? Although diagnostic criterion is equal for all gender, woman in the reality more easy experience by depression. Woman more risk to experience by depression caused by hormonal change and also characteristic difference among woman and man.

Subhash C Bhatia MD, psychiatrist from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine explain, depression criteria is equal for all gender. But ,women more easier to feel guilty feeling, worry, improvement or even degradation of eat desire, sleep trouble , and also eat trouble.

When somebody experience depression, total of chemical liquid in brain is decrease. Its possible to cause the brain cell work slower. Neurotransmitter liquid is called serotonin. If occur imbalance, will cause the depression. Besides serotonin, there is another dissimilar nerve conductor liquid is sharing the cause of depression, like norepineprin, dopamine, histamine, and estrogen.

Estrogen is the woman hormone that responsible as the cause of depression. When total of estrogen is decrease it will cause the symptoms of depression. Despitefully, estrogen also will give the direct influence the incidence of depression itself.

Subhash explain, in woman body there are exist two hormone, there is called estrogen and progesterone. Both work in rotation, for example in a menstruate condition, total of estrogen is decrease while progesterone increase. At menstruate time or pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS), in this condition, woman easier to be sorrowful, sensitive, angry, and also easy to weep.

Cannabis Still Prohibited for Medical Purpose

2007-03-27T02:47:00.000-07:00

California - Angel Raich who suffering various disease complication, seems, have to be patient. The struggle to get the cannabis use legalization for her disease medication spragged by 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Thereby, Angel Raich threatened to be under arrest when use the cannabis.

According to doctor, Raich suffer assorted of disease, like scoliosis (a kind backbone trouble), brain tumor, and other complication. The doctor even cannot handle it. The only way which can be done to lessen the pain feel is by asking her to consume the cannabis. Whether by eating it directly or smoke it like cigarette.

Because the condition is too bad, woman which live in the Oakland, part of California State, US, have to consume the cannabis every two our. Because wishing to avoid the arrest, Raich raise the cannabis rights legalization to use as drug. , unhappily its step always fail. In 2005, Court of Appeals refuse its request. Raich also appellate and the justice court return to refuse it.

Three judge who lead the justice court have time to different opinion. But, they decide to hold on to the 1970 Federal Regulation which prohibit the cannabis use for the medication. Federal government of US give the statement, cannabis no advantage for the medical purpose. In consequence, those who use or supply the Cannabis have to be punished. But, in 11 US state , include California, deciding that cannabis may be use for the medical purpose with doctor observation.

Because its legal effort have failed, the only one Raich expectation is to lobbying the parliamentarian to alter the 1970 Federal Regulation.

Keep Main Cell for the Future

2007-03-27T02:27:00.000-07:00

Bangkok - The parent in Thailand have new way to mark they baby birth, they keep the main cell which is taken from newborn placenta. The the main cell can be use for all kinds of disease medication .

But the facility its only useful for a rich parent. Because the cost reach THB 130.000 (about $4000). While for the stock holding cost, every year the baby parent have to pay for THB 20.ooo- 30.000 ($500- $900).

According to Kostas Papadopoulus, head operational of Thai Stem Life ( TSL), medical bank that referred as biggest main cell bank in South-East Asia own by Thailand & Malaysia merger company, keep the main cell is equal with invesment of future health. " If the child suffer by leukemia or cancer, the parent unnecessary to wait for main cell donor . Enough to use themselves main cell. with that way, there will be no deduction risk from body," he said.

Latter, the scientist find that main cell could developed to change the part body damage . Research of main cell often trigger the controversy of because the main cell is taken from embryo (foetus). But, the main cell also can be obtained from baby placenta. Its condition, placenta have to be processed as tardy as five minute after exit from mother womb.

To get the mains cell, doctor use the special needle to take the blood from placenta. Afterwards, the blood processed and taken from the mains cell, then freezed and kept in liquid nitrogen tube.

TSL founded di 2005 by about 30 doctor in several Bangkok hospital. They adopt the similar system which applied by Malaysia since five year ago. Up to now there is 12 thousand family are keep the main cell in the bank. One-Third are the family of Europe or America which live in Thailand.

Radiotherapy Lengthen the Life Hope

2007-03-25T04:26:00.000-07:00

Cancer Patient from year to year progressively mount. Various effort also conducted to heal this disease, one of them is with the radiotherapy. Especial action which conducted to Continue Level of patient.

Data from International Agency for Research on Cancer ( IARC) estimate that at 2030, cancer number will mount from 11 million becoming 27 million patient. 17 million people among them will end in death. While in this time, about seven million people suffer because of cancer.

This number its true enough to concerned about. Growth population of patient in some country caused by the lack of comprehensive handling. Start from prevention till patient handling. Can be guessed, amount of cancer patient that dying because the effect of action delay are still big enough.

" Although we are all agreing about the cancer prevention become the effective solution, comprehensive handling like diagnosed and treatment become the important requirement, especially radiotherapy," said head of IAEA ( International Atomic Energy Agency) Programme Of Action for of Cancer Therapy (PACT), Massaoud Samiei.

A research confirm that radiotherapy use at patient of breast cancer will make the patient living on can be longer. Patient who getting radition treatment will experience the risk degradation until 50% after observation in ten years become.

" Result of this research suggest clinic and patient to chose the adjuvant radiotherapy to overcome the disease," said Samiei.

Radiotherapy use radiation to kill the cancer cell or hurt the cells so its cannot split or self multiply. Radiotherapy applicable to primary cancer or symptom which is resulted from a extended or metafisis cancer.

If curative is not possible, radiotherapy can be given to control the patient of continue level cancer during some times. The Main target is to make the cancer progressively minimize and discontinue from spreading.

If cannot control the growth of cancer cell, radiation target is to lessen the symptom of cancer cell like painfulness. " Than Expected the quality of patient life can mount after experiencing radiotherapy process. The target of radiation named paliatif," he said.

Others, radiotherapy is conducted after especial treatment to discontinue the growth of cancer cell which possible remained.

He enhance , radiation is avalaible in two source, that is nature and generator. Source from nature ordinary weared by Cobalt 60. As for generator awakened by strong electron. Radiotherapy only effected in area network of radiation treatment.

Radiation do not make painfulness, do not generate smell, or feel the radiation. After experiencing the overall of radiotherapy process, patient will take counsel with the doctor and possibly will be asked to do some test or inspection.

Succeeding Mount from radiotherapy use depended from goals which wish to reached. Radiation target will minimize or eliminate the tumor itself.

Vietnam Will Produce Bird Flu Vaccine

2007-03-25T04:18:00.000-07:00

Hanoi - " Vietnam hope to immediately start the production of Bird Flu vaccine in this year," said Le Minh Sat, vice director of Science and Technology Department which is under the Science and Technology Ministry (MoST).

At the meeting in Preventive executor committee of Bird Flu, on Wednesday, Sat say that at this month, MoST hope have earned to finish the evaluation of result project research to Bird Flu vaccine which conducted by Science and Technology Academy and Veterinary Institute.

Vaccine which made in two project will be tested during four till five month become in big scale. If result is positive, the ministry will announce the starting of Bird Flu vaccine production in Vietnam, report of thePress Agency of Vietnam VNA.

During last 15 day there is no case of Bird Flu of its totality Vietnam region, said Bui Ra, a functionary of Agriculture and Rural Regional Development Department.

Sport Reduce Cancer Risk

2007-03-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO - Sport with the high movement intensity like swimming, aerobik, and run in the reality can reduce the risk of woman breast cancer. Even not sure how often or heavy sport must be done, study of health body growth conducted to a number of participle prove that heavy motion activity can degrade that risk.

Team from University of Southern California in Los Angeles say, practice or sport possible lessen the cancer risk through change in metabolism and system of antibody by reduce body fat increase.

The study contained in Archives of Internal Medicine entangle 110.599 woman as participle in California which its health history is traced since 1995.

Woman which join in heavy motion activity during more than five our in one week experience 20% risk reduce for the patient of invasive breast cancer and 31% at first level breast cancer, compared to a woman which only do less than 30 minute in one week
Until 2002, there are 2.649 woman diagnosed by invasive breast cancer, and 593 woman with first level breast cancer.

The study is conducted especially to see the cumulative influence from heavy sport or practice compare to risk incured by a breast cancer. Before diagnosed by a breast cancer, the girls who become participle in this study only do a little practice or sport.

"Result of the study accompanied by evidence addition that supporting prevention through heavy physical activity, but fun on a long term, to invasive cancer risk and also first level breast cancer. Influence profit from standart activity still unclear," conclude that research.

Too Vulgar, Youtube Claimed to Delete The Medical Video

2007-03-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Youtube, most popular video site are in problem again. This time, relate to the medical world and famous doctor in English.

Dr.Christ Steele, one of famous doctor in English reported have claimed Youtube to delete some video that displayed method of breast cancer and testicle prevention. Its reason, the video too expose stimulus parts. The Observer report, the video clip present kind of interesting tips around of breast and testicle cancer and also its prevention. Others, the video destined for 18 years old member.

" It's so ridiculous," said Steele in Softpedia.Com, Tuesday ( 20/3/2007). In Steele confession, he have seen the breast and testicle cancercous medication process in television before 9 PM. And now Youtube have to conduct the demarcation whom which may access the the cancer video.

" In this time a lot of young girl are interest in breast cancer because famous artist Kylie Minogue have experienced it, and also testicle cancer is attacking lot of young man. But posed at Youtube do not be sensible because continuous show the stimulate parts," say the Steele

Recently, Google which own the Youtube express to free its member to use the Youtube based on member purpose.

To known, pandemic video and medication non just this time available in Youtube. Times before, a woman which is struggling againts cancer decide to spread the life story video in Youtube with an purpose to advise people about the cancer disease. The video get reat feedback, visitor supporting the woman to struggle againts cancer. Visitor also ask she to tell the story around its disease healing.

Zodiac Related to Disease

2007-03-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

Ontario. Newest Research find the surprise fact. People with Taurus zodiac mostly risk by broken neck, while Virgo women is the most queasy when pregnan. Other Zodiac?

This Finding is reported by famous statistical expert in Canada, Peter Austin . In ABC, Friday ( 23/2/2007) Peter release the statement from check result of 10 million hospital patient in Ontario, Canada.

Peter analyse the patient data which only contain the date of birth and incoming hospital cause. From 10 million data, Peter divide it become two group. Its result, some zodiac have tendency in certain disease.

Its result, Libra zodiac have risk experience of broken pelvis, Scorpio zodiac frequent suffer the Leukemia, and Taurus more risk to have broken neck bone. Others, also found by frequent that Pisces is often heart attack experience , Virgo often vomit when pregnancy and Gemini tend to alcohol addict experience.

But don't worry be happy, when first group data compared to second group, its result do not similar. From the 12 zodiac, its just only two of its data that still equal. Two zodiac which its conclusion still equal is Leo which tend to experience of intestine bleeding and Sagitarius are have big risk of broken arm.

After return to learning finding, Peter not sure to conclude the existence of relation between disease and zodiac. According to him, than making to worry, this research better shall not to be continued it.

Want to Pregnant? Avoid Snack

2007-03-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

Woman usually cannot miss from snack. In movie time, fiddle faddle or other activity, snack is most devoted friend. But something must consider from snack. You are difficult to be pregnant ? Maybe snack is the cause.

Dr.Jorge E. Chavarro therewith its student from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston find that snack food have the close relation with the fertility. Woman which hobbies to eat snack usually is not fertile because in snack there is contained by fat acid that surely influencing fertility.

The fat acid is come from snack, light cake and other meals. Besides make woman unfertile, fat acid also can improve the risk of heart sickness and diabetes.

"Although not everybody immediately want to be pregnan, it's good idea to avoid snack," said Jorge (reuters, Monday 19/2/2007).

The Fat acid can bother the activity of receiver cell in concerned in inflammantation, metabolism of glucose and insulin sensitivity. To check more detail about this problem, all expert analyse the data from 18.555 woman which thirst for the pregnancy.

To every 2% increase of calorie from fat acid , include of carbohydrate, have a risk to bother the fertility till 73%. And this number will be collapsible duplicate when in the food founded other substance of fat.

"It is easy to get 4 gram of fat acid every day. This is a few amount of fat acid but from the research we can say that the fat acid have the significant effect in unfertility," said Jorge.

So, seemingly just a few fat acid can cause bad for your health especially pursue you to immediately have the baby. Better, from now pay attention to snack which you like. Much better, just avoid snack.

Warm Water Can Damage the Sperm

2007-03-20T20:01:00.000-07:00

Tired Free by warm water bathing surely very pleasant. But who knows that the trivial activity would making trouble to sex life. Man which often bathe in warm water, proven to have the low quality sperma.

This matter is proved with a study. Five from eleven man have been checked and its result is very surprising. They experience the fertility degradation after often bathe in warm water.

All responder test by warm water bathing in jacuzzi and bath tub with the water temperature above its own body temperature during 30 minute or deeper one week. After about 3 month, degradation of sperm quality will start felt decline.

After 3 till 6 month desist to bathe with the warm water, mean of sperm activity even also mount drasticly. Just imagine, that improvement note the number till 491% from usually.
With the remarkable growth, believed 34% from that sperm able to live longger.

"Have been believed during the decade that warm temperature of water proven bad for the fertility. But unhappily the myth do not have time to be documented. Now we have the strong evidence that this activity have a big risk possibility for the fertility of man," say the study chief, Dr Paul Turek from University of California [n San Francisco (News Sky, Tuesday,6/3/2007)

The Sperm will be more effectively expand when encircled by chill temperature. That explain why testicle reside in the exterior of human being body and equipedly by scrotum. Although this research only entangle by little people, Paul assure that bathing with the warm water it is true have a big effect to the sperm quality.

Mineral Water from Armenia banned in Hongkong

2007-03-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

HongKong – The Ban on the sale of the Jermuk bottle drink in the United States by Food and Drug Administration (FDA), blew to Hong Kong.

Yesterday, the government of HongKong published the similar ban to all shop that became the distributor of this product.
Because, the arsenic content in the drink which come from Armenia was high enough.
The USA Health Department said, the poisonous metalloid content in the Jermuk bottle drink was very high.
“Arsenic that was found in the drink bottle 60 fold times exceeded that international standart permitted,” said one of the officials of the USA Health Department. Remembered the number of Jermuk products that circulated in his country, the HongKong government then banned the sale of the mineral water and the carbonated drink with that lable.
The scientists FDA reported, in every 500 ml of the Jermuk mineral water, was found around 250ml-300ml microgram arsenic.
“In our standard, the maximal number of arsenic that was permitted in every litre mineral water it’s only 10 microgram,” said one of the scientists who was involved in this research.

Judd Campaign stop AIDS in India

2007-03-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

Mumbai - Campaign AIDS non-stoped to be emboldened. This time, Hollywood artist Ashley Judd also join the campaign in India.

Judd seen to motivated when have interaction with all of prostitute women in Kamathipura, India, in Saturday local time. The Beautiful actress is soverigned to become global ambassador for youth AIDS representing one part of from a nonprofit institute, Population Services International ( PSI).

Before campaigning, Judd invaded by a fans to come near her. As a result, such as those which told by a the organizational press secretary, K.Balaji, some event must be delayed for several hours. Security staff of Judd assist her to go out from large crowd and usher it to car.Then, she come again and come in contact with all prostitute women.

Judd will experience played in documenter film with the former miss Universe of India origin which now become the Bollywood actress, Sushimita Sen. Its Plan, the documenter film will displayed in National Geographic channel at 1 December according with the Day of world AIDS.

US War (Iraq-Afghanistan) Veteran Incured Mental Disorder

2007-03-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

For a soldier, mental burden felt by a encounter moment daze do not lose along end it fight. Worse more than the war, burden mental faced to be non-stoped to haunt for a lifetime.

More, a soldier can incured more than one type of mental disorder because too heavy burden.
One of four American Soldier which come home from war in Iraq and Afghanistan is adjudged incured mental disorder. At least, that number is found among of all war veteran which during the time experience the medical treatment from government. "If pchycosocial deviation , like domestic violence, input one of the type of mental disorder , natural war veteran amount it go up to become 31 percents," write the health expert of San Fransisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center in report result of survey publicized yesterday.

According to Karen Seal, chief of research team of San Fransisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, total amount of war veteran which incured by mental disorder is much more big than which still be active in job. " When we had a survey last year, all of responder is still active undertake in battlefield, either in Iraq and also Afghanistan. In that time, what is incured by mental disorder not yet as much now," said Seal ike cited by press agency of Prancis- AFP.

Result of research in "Journal of the American Medical Association'S Archives of Internal Medicine" entangle the veteran which just now return from battlefield and member of National Garda . According to she, burden of all new war veteran lighter relative than those who have been long enough returned from battlefield. " Among one of third new war veteran return to country land and experience the adjacent mental program , only 12 percent expressed incured of mental disorder or pchycosocial deviation ," said Seal.

Concerning, continue the Seal, about 56 percent veteran that expressed experience of the mental disorder incured more than one type of pchycosocial deviation."When we discover a veteran incuredp more than one type of mental disorder, we more challenging to check the them. more important, we assure the treatment to they also more challenging," said woman doctor who also sciencetist in San Fransisco. In its research, Seal entangle 103.788 Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran as the responder.

Press secretary the Veterans of Foreign Wars Joe Davis said, pchycosocial deviation that suffered by all war veteran represent the impact of war which is old estimated. According to she, burden which is the responsibility of all soldier in battlefield are very heavy. " Fight to alter everybody. Nowadays everybody should be able to face that fact by themself ways," said Davis.

any

Princess Michiko Sickness Because of Stress

2007-03-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

Become the family member of Japan empire is not easy duty. Not merely putri Masako, wife of Prince Naruhito, natural it.

Princess Michiko, wife of Emperor Akihito, is also informed pain because do not hold up with all pressure and workdload which must be experienced.

Last week, press secretary of Japan empire said, Michiko which nowadays have 72 years age have to cancel all its agenda because pain. Mother of three child, namely Naruhito, Akishino, and Sayako experience of the nosebleed, intestine haemorrahage, and sprue. Its condition is non-stoped downhill since she is incured by flu last month.

" Likely she had experience of the psychological pressure symptom," say the Kanazawa, staff of empire doctor.

Some people assure that Michiko depressed by an effect of foreign news media that telling the condition of family of Japan empire. One of the book is writed by Ben Hills from Australian, entitling " Princess Masako : Prisoner Of the Chrysanthemum Throne". Japan Empire mention that book have affronted to them and they also prohibit the publisher translate that book to Japan languange.

The Book narrate the Japan empire is force the Masako to adapt to the palace life which is the full of order. Even, woman that grad of that Harvard and Oxford is prohibited to travel out country till she can bear a son . Japan Empire as that defensive eldest empire till modern life is true embrace the patriarchal system . Its meaning, only man is rightful claimant continue the empire crown.

Even Japan empire mention the article of Hills manipulated the fact, the public of Japan know that four years ago, Masako, former diplomat with the very bright career, have to withdraw from public fore part because experiencing of mental stress. Even, its husband, Naruhito, saying that Masako do not hold up tightly the protocol which she must experience as member of Japan empire.

Pressure progressively increase because Masako still not give the son for its husband family. Since marriage which is passed off by year 1993, them only bestowed by a daugther, Aiko, that born at 5 December 2001. Latter, stress in palace decreace because princess Kiko, wife of prince Akishino, bearing son called Hisahito at 6 September 2006.

Pain that befalling Michiko cause effect of pressure from outside is not the first time. In the Early 90', woman who's coming from ordinary people before marrying Akihito have also to withdraw from public fore part. The cause, a Japan magazine say that Michiko is a fussy person and rough on housemaid. But, along with the gossip alleviating , condition Michiko gradually get better.

any

Health Tip: Taking Your Child's Temperature

2007-03-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

(HealthDay News) -- If your child appears sick and might be running a fever, it's important to take his temperature properly.

There are different kinds of thermometers, but certain types may be better suited to your child's age range, the American Academy of Family Physicians says. Here are the group's recommendations:

* For children younger than 3 months, a digital thermometer should be used rectally. Electronic ear thermometers are not recommended, as ear canals are typically too small at this age to get an accurate reading.
* For children between 3 and 4 months, a digital thermometer used rectally or an electronic ear thermometer both should provide accurate readings.
* For children aged 4 and older, digital thermometers used orally will suffice. If the child has a cough, stuffy nose or has difficulty with an oral thermometer, an electronic ear thermometer or digital thermometer placed under the arm should work.

www.healthday.com

Woman awakens after 6 years, slips back

2007-03-07T21:18:00.000-08:00

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A woman who went into a vegetative state in November of 2000 awoke this week for three days, spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back on Wednesday.

"I'm fine," Christa Lilly told her mother on Sunday — her first words in eight months. She has awakened four other times for briefer periods.

"I think it's wonderful. It makes me so happy," Lilly told television station KKTV-TV. She also got to see youngest daughter, Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.

Before her relapse, Lilly told the station her biggest frustration was learning how to talk again.

After years of being fed from a tube, eating was no problem. "I've been eating cake," she said.

Her neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said he couldn't explain how or why she awoke.

"I'm just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states," he said.

A vegetative state is much like a coma except Lilly's eyes remain open. Bjork said that he's never seen a similar quality of awakening.

Bjork said that unlike the much publicized case of Terry Schiavo, Lilly is minimally conscious. He said she could awake again.

After Lilly relapsed her mother and caregiver Minnie Smith said: "The good Lord let me know she's alright, he brings her back to visit every so often and I'm thankful for that."

www.ap.org

French doctors in call for legal euthanasia

2007-03-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

PARIS (AFP) - Some 2,000 French doctors and nurses issued a joint call for euthanasia to be legalised in the country, arguing that mercy killings are already widely practiced by the French medical profession, in a text to be printed Thursday.

In the manifesto, to appear in the Nouvel Observateur weekly, all claim to have helped patients to "die with dignity" in the past, using drugs to alleviate their suffering and precipitate death.

"Because, without a doubt, illness was defeating therapy, because despite suitable care, physical and psychological suffering were making the patient's life unbearable, because the patient wanted to end his life, we carers, in full conscience, have medically helped patients to die with dignity," they write.

"The majority of those who care regularly for patients up until death, use -- in the circumstances cited above -- chemical substances to precipitate an end that has become too cruel, in full knowledge they are breaking the law."

The manifesto comes days ahead of the trial of a French doctor and nurse, accused of deliberately causing the death of a woman suffering from terminal cancer in 2003.

It calls for charges against the pair to be immediately dropped and for the law criminalising euthanasia to be revised as soon as possible.

French legislation adopted in 2005 made it possible not to artificially prolong the life of a terminally-ill patient who asks to stop treatment, as well as administer pain relief drugs that may accelerate the patient's death.

The text was adopted in response to the high-profile trial of a Frenchwoman who helped her quadriplegic son -- left blind, mute and paralysed by a car crash -- to die in 2003. Both she and her doctor were acquitted in the case.

www.afp.com

Orange tomatoes better for you?

2007-03-07T20:13:00.000-08:00

Food scientists at Ohio State University in Columbus have grown a special variety of orange tomatoes that may be healthier than garden-variety red tomatoes.

The orange tomatoes contain a type of lycopene that is more readily used by the body than the type found in red tomatoes, they report.

Lycopene — an antioxidant thought to have a number of health benefits such as reducing the risk of cancer, heart disease and age-related eye problems — is what gives red tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables their rich color.

Dr. Steven Schwartz and colleagues had 12 adult volunteers eat two spaghetti test meals on separate occasions. One meal was made with sauce from the orange tomatoes and the other with sauce from red tomatoes. For 13 days before the test meals, the volunteers avoided eating tomatoes or food made with them.

Blood samples taken from each subject right before the spaghetti meals and every hour or two up to 10 hours after the meals were analyzed for lycopene content.

Results showed that lycopene absorption from the orange tomato sauce was 2.5 times higher than that absorbed from the red tomato sauce. Blood lycopene levels spiked about 5 hours after the orange tomato sauce meal and at this time the levels were some 200 times higher than those seen after the red tomato sauce meal.

“While red tomatoes contain far more lycopene than orange tomatoes, most of it is in a form that the body doesn’t absorb well,” Schwartz, a professor of food science and technology at Ohio State, explained in a university-issued statement.

“The people in the study actually consumed less lycopene when they ate sauce made from the orange tomatoes, but they absorbed far more lycopene than they would have if it had come from red tomatoes,” he noted.

The orange tomatoes are not readily available at grocery stores; they were grown at an Ohio State-affiliated agricultural research center. Schwartz and colleagues suggest that interested consumers could seek out orange or gold-colored heirloom tomatoes as an alternative — although they haven’t tested how much or what kind of lycopene these varieties contain.

www.reuters.com

Obese British boy will stay with mom

2007-03-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

LONDON - A mother who feared she might lose custody of her obese 8-year-old son unless he lost weight was allowed to keep the boy after striking a deal Tuesday with social workers to safeguard his welfare.

The case has set off a debate over child obesity and raised questions about whether genetics, junk food or bad parenting is to blame.

Connor McCreaddie, of Wallsend in northeastern England, weighs 218 pounds, four times the weight of a healthy child his age.

Connor and his mother, Nicola McKeown, 35, both attended a child protection meeting Tuesday with North Tyneside Council officials.

Before it began, McKeown, a single mother of two, said she hoped she would not lose custody of her son.

“I’m not too good, and I’m very nervous about the meeting. I’m hoping for the best,” she said.

Afterward, the Local Safeguarding Children Board issued a statement saying it “was able to confirm that its hope and ambition is to enable this child to remain with his family. In order to move this matter forward, we have made a formal agreement with the family to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare.”

The agency provided no details about what Connor or his mother would have to do to fight his obesity.

The hearing was held under the Children Act, which places a duty on the local authority to conduct an inquiry if it has “reasonable cause to suspect that a child ... in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm.”

‘Born hungry’

The boy’s case attracted national attention after his mother allowed an ITV News crew to film his day-to-day life for a month.

When he was 2½, Connor was too heavy for his mother to pick him up, and at 5, he weighed more than 126 pounds, said The Journal, a regional newspaper. Now the boy, who is tall for his age at 5 feet, wears adult clothes and size eight shoes, the newspaper said.

Sky TV showed footage of Connor’s mother serving him meals of french fries, meat and buttered bread.

“He’ll hover around the kitchen for food. He’ll continually go in the fridge,” McKeown said of her son. “I just keep telling him to get out of the fridge, wait until meal times and stuff. But at the end of the day, he was born hungry. He has always been hungry.”

“Bacon. Mmmm... That’s my favorite. Um ... chicken , steak, sausage,” the boy told the camera.

Obesity has tripled in England

Obesity is essentially caused by eating more calories than you burn. Obese people are sometimes thought to have lower metabolic rates than normal, meaning they need less food to maintain their weight.

Childhood obesity is of particular concern because it greatly increases the risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, skeletal disorders and strokes. Certain cancers are also associated with obesity, and obese children have a higher chance of premature death.

Several genetic conditions also contribute to obesity, such as Prader-Willis syndrome, a rare disease characterized by excessive appetite, problems in the central nervous system and a low IQ. Another rare genetic disease, Bradet-Biedl syndrome, can lead to problems such as vision loss, obesity and being born with extra fingers and toes.

Levels of obesity have tripled in England since 1980, according to the Food Standards Agency. More than half of women and about two-thirds of men are either overweight or obese, it said. Obesity causes about 18 million sick days and 30,000 deaths a year in England alone, the National Audit Office said.

Assumption of guilt

It remained unclear whether doctors had determined whether diet and lifestyle were the only cause of Connor’s obesity.

Neville Rigby, a director at the International Association for the Study of Obesity in London, declined to discuss Connor’s case. But he said the public often stigmatizes overweight people without knowing their situation and assumes they are guilty of self neglect.

“Obesity and diabetes used to be seen as middle-age problems, but now we’re seeing more and more children with both problems,” Rigby said.

“But remember, in this era of nonstop advertising about low-nutrient, high-calorie foods, many parents find it difficult to tear their children from sweets and persuade them to eat fruit and vegetables.”

He said he hoped social workers would find out what has caused Connor’s obesity.

www.ap.org

Ice cream good for fertility, study suggests

2007-03-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

A diet rich in ice cream and other high-fat dairy foods may lower the risk of one type of infertility, a study suggests.

It sounds too good to be true and probably is, some doctors say.

But the findings are bound to get attention because they are from the well-known Nurses Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health and were published Wednesday in the European journal Human Reproduction.

Researchers found that women who ate two or more low-fat dairy products a day were nearly twice as likely to have trouble conceiving because of lack of ovulation than women who ate less than one serving of such foods a week.

Conversely, women who ate at least one fatty dairy food a day were 27 percent less likely to have this problem.

Even the researchers say women should not make too much of these results, which are based on reports of what women said they ate over many years — not a rigorous, scientific experiment where specific dietary factors could be studied in isolation.

“The idea is not to go crazy and start to have ice cream three times a day,” said the lead author, Dr. Jorge Chavarro, a research fellow at Harvard. “But it is certainly possible to have a healthy diet with low saturated fat intake by having one serving of high-fat dairy a day.”

Others urged caution.

Scoop of skepticism

“A good healthy dose of skepticism is good for people,” especially when the results are so hard to swallow, said Dr. Patrick Remington, a University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist.

After all, the Nurses Health Study also found that menopause hormones could ward off heart disease — something doctors believed until a more scientific study disproved it several years ago, he noted.

The new research doesn’t even apply to most cases of female infertility — not ovulating is to blame only one-third of the time.

The study also found no link between infertility and dairy foods in general — something that bothered another statistics expert, David Allison at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Instead, researchers only saw a link when they separated non-ovulating women who ate yogurt and other low-fat dairy products from those eating more high-fat varieties.

When they looked at specific foods — and this is where the numbers really get tricky — they found that women eating ice cream two or more times a week had a 38 percent lower risk of infertility than women consuming ice cream less than once a week.

Researchers adjusted the results to reflect differences in weight, exercise levels and other factors, but many specialists said they suspect weight is still mostly responsible for the results.

Weight extremes — being too thin or too fat — raises the risk of any sort of infertility, said Dr. William Gibbons, who runs a fertility clinic in Baton Rouge, La., and is president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

Other research shows that women eating lots of low-fat dairy also eat other low-fat foods and try to lose weight, said Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of Weill Cornell University and New York Presbyterian’s fertility services.

Diets bad for reproduction

His interpretation of the new study: “It’s not that having high fat is protective. It’s that being on a diet may be bad for reproduction.”

The Harvard study, funded by the university and a long-running federal study, involved 18,555 women, ages 24 to 42, who became pregnant or tried to from 1991-99. Among them, 3,430 reported infertility, including 2,165 who saw a doctor for it. Of those, 438 said an ovulation problem was to blame.

The women filled out questionnaires every two years on what they ate and how often. Those who ate more high-fat dairy foods were more likely to consume alcohol and to already have had a child, and less likely to exercise than those eating low-fat dairy products. Researchers said they adjusted for these factors and still saw the link to ovulation-related infertility.

If women do eat more high-fat dairy foods to try to boost their odds of conceiving, it would be important to cut calories elsewhere to avoid gaining weight, doctors said. They also should switch back to low-fat dairy foods once the baby is born, to limit saturated fats.

www.ap.org

McDonald’s not amused by royal quip

2007-03-04T09:32:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES - Memo from McDonald’s Corp. to the Prince of Wales: We are not amused. McDonald’s said Wednesday it was disappointed by Prince Charles’

statement that the hamburger chain should be banned, adding that the heir to the British throne was unfamiliar with its recent efforts to introduce healthier fare.

Earlier this week, Prince Charles suggested during a visit to the Imperial College London Diabetes Centre in Abu Dhabi that McDonald’s, often criticized over its high-fat menu choices, should be banned.

“Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s? Have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key,” the prince said to a nutritionist at the center.

“The comment made by the Prince of Wales appears to be an off-the-cuff remark that, in our opinion, does not reflect either our menu or where we are at as a business,” Nick Hindle, a spokesman for McDonald’s UK business, said in an e-mailed statement.

A spokesman for Prince Charles said “he was keen to emphasise the need for children to enjoy the widest variety of food and not to eat any particular sort of food to excess.”

Prince Charles has long been an advocate of organic food, running an organic farm on his home estate. Late last year, he published a cookbook in which he aimed to rebel against what he called the “soulless, mass-produced food that had come to dominate the modern diet.”

But McDonald’s said the future king was “clearly unaware of some of the moves we have made over time to improve choice and variety on our menu ... including the introduction of fruit, carrot sticks, salads and organic milk.”

The hamburger chain added that it has “made great progress in support of sustainable agriculture.”

msnbc.msn.com

Is it time to give up on eradicating polio?

2007-03-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

LONDON - Nearly 20 years ago, the World Health Organization and its partners launched an ambitious program to eradicate polio by the end of the millennium.

That deadline passed and another was missed in 2005 — and polio still strikes about 2,000 people a year, mostly children.

At a WHO meeting this week, some leading experts asked a grim question: Is it time to abandon the goal of eradication and focus instead on containing the disease?

The answer, for many, was no — even though many had doubts.

"Many people wonder why we are spending all this time and effort on polio when there are much bigger problems," said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who headed WHO's smallpox eradication program in the 1970s. Smallpox is the only disease ever to have been eradicated.

There is no question the polio eradication program has reaped rewards: Since it began in 1988, the incidence of the disease has dropped by more than 99 percent. But with the number of polio cases at a virtual standstill for the last five years, some experts worry that the campaign by WHO and its partners — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rotary International and UNICEF — is running aground.

"Even if things quiet down in the countries where we have problems, there will be another area that bursts into flames," said Dr. Ellie Ehrenfeld, who sits on the WHO Advisory Committee for Polio Eradication.

"We are living in a different world where I'm not sure what eradication means anymore," said Ehrenfeld, who was not invited to Wednesday's meeting.

Critics of the eradication program note smallpox was wiped out in a decade, while the polio campaign is entering its 19th year. WHO is seeking a $575 million budget for polio eradication for 2007-2008.

In a speech to participants, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan urged participants not to give up.

'Last chance to eradicate polio'

"We are facing our best and perhaps our last chance to eradicate polio," she said, adding that leaving the job unfinished would squander the more than $5 billion invested so far because it would open the way for a resurgence of the disease.

The four polio-endemic countries _ Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan — are also intent on ridding the world of the virus.

"We will spare no effort in eradicating polio," said Naresh Dayal of India's Ministry of Health and Welfare. This year, India will spend $286 million to fight the polio virus.

"While eradication is possible, we shouldn't even consider moving to a control strategy," said Dayal.

Others are not convinced.

‘There is a limit’

"We cannot continue forever," said Dr. Isao Arita, another WHO smallpox veteran. "Everyone wishes WHO to accomplish the task but there is a limit."

For WHO, giving up on eradication would a crushing blow.

"There's an almost religious conviction that they must see this through," said Dr. Samuel Katz, an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University and co-inventor of the measles vaccine.

"But there are other things we could do that would be as beneficial to child health rather than spending another billion dollars in frustration," he said.

In the countries where polio occurs, there are many competing health priorities, including respiratory and diarrheal diseases, malaria and AIDS.

Some experts say that a polio containment policy wouldn't necessarily be radically different from an eradication policy, except that it would free up money for other health problems.

Tighter regulation in countries where polio occurs could help trap the virus, and international officials might adopt measures such as requiring proof of vaccination for travelers coming from polio-endemic countries.

WHO and its partners insist it is possible to eradicate polio, and that the only challenges are logistical.

Border-hopping virus

Different problems plague the four endemic countries: In Nigeria, the weak health system coupled with a vaccine boycott in some areas gets the blame; in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the virus moves back and forth across the border where the official focus is on the war on terror; in India, children are often infected with other viruses, making the polio vaccine less effective.

Some experts think a different vaccine could help. The eradication campaign uses the oral vaccine because it protects entire communities. But while the oral vaccine is cheap and easy to administer, there is a downside: For approximately every 2.5 million doses, it causes one case of polio.

WHO is looking into the more expensive injectable polio vaccine, which uses an inactivated virus that cannot trigger polio. Results from the studies won't be available until next year.

WHO insists it is considering all options — except giving up on eradication.

"Any program would be negligent if it didn't check all the possibilities," said Dr. David Heymann, WHO's top polio official, "but our partners didn't want to hear about a control strategy."

msnbc.msn.com

Bird flu victim dies in Laos

2007-03-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

HANOI (AFP) - A 42-year-old Laos woman believed to have contracted the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus died in hospital in the capital Vientiane on Sunday, the World Health Organisation said.

"The patient passed away at approximately 14:30 today," the WHO said in statement issued jointly with the Laos health ministry.

Tests had shown the woman had H5 bird flu, but the authorities were still waiting for further results to determine whether it was the H5N1 strain.

"It is very likely it is H5N1," WHO spokeswoman Dida Connor told AFP earlier in the day.

On Tuesday, Laos confirmed its first human case of the deadly strain in a 15-year-old girl from a different suburban district of Vientiane, where an outbreak of H5N1 in poultry was confirmed on February 7.

The girl is being treated in a Thai hospital.

"There is no direct link (between the two cases)," Connor added.

The 42-year-old victim was hospitalised Wednesday with severe pneumonia and investigations are continuing into how the woman caught the disease.

Her family members and hospital staff are being monitored closely, but none has yet shown any sign of infection, authorities said.

Laos first reported bird flu on its poultry in January 2004 on farms around Vientiane and in the southern Savannakhet and Champassak provinces bordering Vietnam. The country slaughtered more than 150,000 chickens.

In July 2006, bird flu recurred in Vientiane's Xaythany district but was contained with the culling of some 20,000 poultry.

Health experts have warned that the H5N1 virus could lead to a global pandemic if it mutates into a form easily transmitted between humans.

According to WHO figures, 275 human cases of avian influenza have been confirmed worldwide, with 167 deaths.

www.afp.com

Drink a Little, Live a Little Longer?

2007-03-04T07:36:00.000-08:00

(HealthDay News) -- Having just under a glass of wine a day cuts men's risk of dying from cardiovascular problems and all other causes and may help them live years longer, Dutch researchers report.

"Consumers who already drink should do so lightly, 1 to 2 glasses per day, and preferably drink wine," advises study co-author Marga Ocke, a researcher at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, The Netherlands.

Ocke and her colleagues presented the research at the
American Heart Association's Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention in Orlando, Fla..

Many other studies have shown that light to moderate alcohol intake is linked with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease in men and women, but whether one type of alcoholic beverage is better than another has been debated.

Ocke's team evaluated 1,373 men, all part of the Zutphen Study, who were born between 1900 and 1920 and surveyed in detail about alcohol consumption seven times over 40 years. Zutphen is the industrial town in the eastern Netherlands where the men all lived.

The participants were followed until they died or until their final interview, taken in mid-2000. They were asked about their drinking habits, dietary habits, their body mass index (BMI), smoking habits, and whether they had suffered heart attack, stroke, diabetes or cancer.

Alcohol consumption statistics were adjusted to account for other risk factors.

Compared to no drinking, light alcohol intake was linked with a 36 percent lower risk of death from all causes and a 34 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease in particular. "Light" drinking was defined as less than or equal to 20 grams a day of alcohol (one glass of alcoholic beverage contains 10 grams of alcohol).

The reduced risk associated with wine drinking was greater than that associated with other alcoholic beverages. Those who drank about 1.5 ounces of wine -- about half a glass -- long term, had a 40 percent lower rate of death from all causes and a 48 percent lower incidence of death from cardiovascular disease, compared to non-wine drinkers.

Wine drinkers in the study had a life expectancy that was nearly four years longer compared to the abstainers. And wine drinkers lived, on average, more than two years longer than drinkers of either beer or hard liquor. Overall, men who drank a little alcohol of any type over the long term (less than or equal to 20 grams daily) lived 1.6 years longer than teetotalers, the Dutch team found.

It was difficult to tell whether the type of wine -- red or white -- made a difference. "In the present study, we didn't divide wine drinkers into red or white, but 70 percent of all wine consumed was red wine," Ocke said.

Ocke conceded that studies such as this have gone back and forth about which beverage is best, but she believes her study may have extra credibility. Most studies, she said, assume that drinking patterns are relatively constant. But in real life, patterns change.

In their study, Ocke's team found that the number of alcohol users nearly doubled from 45 percent in 1960 to 85 percent in the 2000 survey. Consumption patterns varied, too, which her study took into account.

Even so, Ocke said that more studies are needed to verify the results.

The researchers stressed that they only uncovered an association between light drinking and healthier, longer lives -- it does not prove that the drinking was the cause of that boost in health. Still, they speculate that the alcohol might increase so-called "good" cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or it might help reduce blood clotting linked to stroke.

The new study is "more comprehensive" than previous research, said Matt Kaeberlein, assistant professor of pathology at the University of Washington, Seattle, School of Medicine. The group studied was large, he added, which also lends credibility. "It gives you confidence in the statistics," he said.

Another study presented at the same conference had good news for nonsmoking coffee drinkers.

The study, by a team from Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, Calif., evaluated more than 127,00 people who came in for exams from 1978 to 1985. Nearly 59,000 had never smoked. Researchers then looked at the more than 8,300 people hospitalized for coronary artery disease.

They found a higher cardiovascular risk for heavy coffee drinkers who smoked or used to smoke. Former and current smokers who were heavy coffee drinkers -- six cups a day or more -- had almost a 50 percent higher risk of coronary artery disease, they noted.

Coffee drinking was not associated with a risk of coronary artery disease in nonsmokers, the researchers said.

www.healthday.com

Millions of US Women Infected with HPV

2007-03-04T07:04:00.000-08:00

Infections with human papillomavirus, or HPV, are more common among US women than previously suspected, according to new estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Nearly 25 million women ages 14-59 are likely infected with some form of HPV, the agency reports. Of those, more than 3 million are thought to have one of the 4 strains known to cause most cases of cervical cancer and genital warts. These are the same strains targeted by the recently approved vaccine Gardasil.

Gardasil was approved in June 2006. Federal vaccine officials recommended it be given routinely to girls at age 11 or 12, and said it could be given to girls as young as age 9 under certain circumstances. The American Cancer Society recently issued similar recommendations.

Vaccinating girls at this young age will help make sure they are protected against this very common sexually transmitted virus before they become sexually active, say health officials. The vaccine isn't likely to be as effective in people who have already been infected with one of the strains it targets.

The new estimates of HPV infections give researchers a baseline to measure just how effective the vaccine and the vaccination strategy are, the CDC researchers say. Infections Decline With Age

The numbers were pulled from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2004, a yearly study of US health conducted through interviews and medical exams. More than 2,000 women and girls who were taking part provided a vaginal swab, which was tested for HPV. The researchers used infections in the participants to estimate how many women in the general US population are infected.

HPV infection was most common among 20-24-year-olds; nearly 45% had some strain of the virus (the researchers tested for about 43 strains that can be found in the genital region). About 25% of girls 14-19 were infected. Those figures included some who said they were not sexually active. When the researchers looked only at women who said they were sexually active, nearly 50% of 20-24-year olds and 40% of 14-19-year-olds had some type of HPV infection.

Estimates of infection in those 2 age groups were higher than ones from previous surveys and studies, the researchers say. HPV infections became less common as women aged; fewer than 20% of women in their 50s were infected.

Most of the women had types of HPV that are not considered high-risk -- that is, they are not known to cause cervical cancer. Overall, about 2% of women were infected with HPV types 16 or 18 -- the types most strongly linked to cancer.

Not every woman who has one of these HPV types will develop cancer, however. In most cases, the body is able to clear the infection before it ever causes any problems. Screening with Pap tests is the best way to catch dangerous changes in the cervix before they become cancer.

www.cancer.org

Meningitis outbreak kills at least 110 in Uganda

2007-02-25T11:35:00.000-08:00

KAMPALA (AFP) - A meningitis outbreak in Uganda has killed at least 110 people in nearly two months, officials said Saturday, amid plans to expand vaccinations against the disease.

Health officials said many more people might have died in inaccessible rural areas in the impoverished and mostly restive northern region, since the outbreak was reported in the beginning of the year.

"Accumulatively, a least 110 people have died and up 3,000 cases reported in mainly the West Nile region and in Karamoja regions," Sam Okware, the health ministry's director of communicable diseases, told AFP by phone.

He said half of the fatalities were reported in the northern Arua district.

"Many died in the villages, but the situation is now getting much better," he added.

Officials said health authorities have vaccinated about half a million people and were planning to expand the programme to cover an additional 300,000 others in a efforts to contain the situation.

"Together with the World Health Organisation, we have worked to contain the epidemic and the treatment has been effective," said Health Minister Stephene Malinga.

Meningitis is an often fatal airborne infection transmitted through sneezing and coughing that infects the brain and spinal cord and its symptoms include fever, rash and vomiting.

Despite early diagnosis and treatment, nearly 10 percent of cases are fatal.

In Uganda like in many African nations, outbreaks can quickly turn fatal and take time to control owing to lack of resources.

www.afp.com

Drug helps fight brain tumors, study finds

2007-02-25T11:28:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON - Avastin, one of a new family of drugs that starves tumors of their blood supply, can slow the growth of the most common and deadly form of brain cancer, researchers reported on Monday.

Avastin combined with standard chemotherapy could temporarily stop the growth of brain tumors known as gliomas, the researchers reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

Made by Genentech under the chemical name bevacizumab, Avastin is currently approved to treat lung and colorectal cancers.

“These results are exciting because of the possible implications for a patient population that currently has the poorest possible prognosis going into treatment — those with malignant brain tumors that have recurred after initial treatment,” said Dr. James Vredenburgh of Duke University, who led the study.

Vredenburgh’s team tested Avastin in 32 patients with stage III or stage IV cancer.

When they added Avastin to the more standard chemotherapy drug irinotecan, the combination either shrank the tumors or restricted their growth in nearly all the patients, the researchers found.

They said 63 percent of the patients had their tumors shrink by at least 50 percent and the tumors did not start to grow again for at least six months in 38 percent.

Vredenburgh said chemotherapy usually slows the growth of gliomas for just six weeks to three months.

Life expectancy after diagnosis of a stage IV glioma — the most aggressive type — is eight to 15 months, Vredenburgh said. People with slightly less aggressive stage III glioma live between 16 months and two years on average.

An estimated 18,000 people are diagnosed with gliomas in the United States each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

They are difficult to treat because many drugs cannot reach the brain.

“When the tumor recurs after treatment, there are no standard therapies,” Vredenburgh said. “This study may lead to options where there previously were none.”

www.reuters.com

China bans imports of US peanut butter after food scare

2007-02-25T11:21:00.000-08:00

BEIJING (AFP) - China's ministry of health has warned consumers against eating two brands of US-made peanut butter and has banned imports and sales of the products, state press said Saturday.

The ministry banned the "Peter Pan" and "Great Value" brands of peanut butter after the World Health Organization warned that the products could be contaminated by the food-borne bacterium salmonella, Xinhua news agency said.

The ministry warned people not to buy the brands and suggested that those who have eaten the foods seek medical advice if they come down with fever, abdominal pain or diarrhoea, it said.

Chinese import agents of the two brands were also ordered to immediately recall their products, it added.

Food-borne illness, which affected at least 288 people across 39 US states, has been linked to the consumption of varying types of peanut butter, US officials said last week.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned Americans not to eat the contents of certain jars of Peter Pan peanut butter or Great Value peanut butter "due to risk of contamination with Salmonella Tennessee, a bacterium that causes food-borne illness."

www.afp.com

Kuwait detects cases of deadly bird flu

2007-02-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - Kuwait announced on Sunday that it had detected the deadly strain of avian influenza in poultry and birds such as falcons and had shut the nation's only zoo.

"Twenty cases of avian influenza have been detected in birds, most of them falcons," Sheikh Ahmed Abdallah Al-Sabah said in a statement.

Ministry spokesman Ahmad al-Shatti told AFP it was the deadly H5N1 form of the disease, which according to the World Health Organisation has killed 167 people worldwide since it emerged in 2003.

A nationwide emergency response programme has been enacted, including the banning of all bird imports and the temporary closure of Kuwait Zoo and bird market.

The last case of avian flu in Kuwait was discovered in November 2005.

The statement said the cases, mostly in falcons, were confirmed by local and British laboratories and that more tests were being conducted.

Shatti said the ministry has taken blood samples from all people suspected of having contact with the infected birds and were being tested.

He said about 30 teams have been deployed to various parts of the oil-rich Gulf states following the discovery of the virus.

Some of the infected birds were found in Wafra farms area on the border with Saudi Arabia, while others were found at the only zoo in the country.

Kuwait is a member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council which has drawn up a common strategy to combat the virus amid warnings by officials that the region was vulnerable because of migratory birds.

Individually, GCC states have recently adopted measures to prevent the spread of avian flu, including the ban of birds, poultry and their products mainly from countries in Asia and Europe where bird flu cases have surfaced.

Some countries, including Saudi Arabia, have also earmarked millions of dollars to buy drugs to combat the disease.

www.afp.com

More Teens Are Saying, 'Have a Cigar'

2007-02-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

Slowly but surely, American kids have gotten the message that cigarette smoking is stinky, smelly and a hazard to your health.

Now, if only they would believe the same about cigars.

While cigarette consumption declined in the United States by 10 percent from 2000 to 2004, cigar consumption jumped 28 percent, according to a recent report published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Other studies have found that teens who smoke cigars are definitely behind some of that increase. For instance, a 2004 survey conducted in Cleveland found that 23 percent of the 4,409 teens polled preferred cigars, compared to 16 percent choosing cigarettes.

And the increase may not yet have peaked, said John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, a national legal action anti-smoking organization based in Washington, D.C.

"Many of the factors that began leading to the [cigar] increase are still present," Banzhaf said. They include the perception that cigars look fashionable and the fact that high-profile politicians and others are seen smoking them regularly, he said.

"We have Arnold (Schwarzenegger, California's governor), smoking cigars and occasionally,Bill Clinton," he said. "More and more women are smoking cigars."

But it's not just politicians and women who are fueling the image that cigars are hip, said Scott Goold, director of Tobacco Freedom, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based group. "Our popular culture is filled with images of cigars," he said.

Your neighbor passes them out, for instance, when the family has a new baby. And businessmen smoke them when they cinch a business deal, he noted.

For cash-strapped teens, finances may play a role in their tobacco of choice, Banzhaf said. "Many states raise cigarette taxes but not cigar [taxes]," he said.

There's also the perception that cigars are just not as dangerous as cigarettes in terms of cancer risk, a perception Banzhaf and other experts said is incorrect.

While it's difficult to compare cigarettes and cigars head-to-head in terms of health risk,Banzhaf said, it's clear both are risky. Cigar smoking is strongly linked to a host of deadly cancers of the lip, tongue, mouth, throat, esophagus, larynx and lung. According to data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, smoking just one or two cigars a day doubles the risk for oral and esophageal cancer and increases larynx cancer risk six-fold.

Risks rise even higher once users decide to inhale cigar smoke. Compared to nonsmokers, cigar smokers who inhale deeply face 27 times the risk of oral cancer and 53 times the risk of cancer of the larynx, according to the NIH report.

So, what works and what doesn't if you're a parent trying to convince your teen to avoid cigars and other tobacco?

Dwelling on the long-term risk of cancer -- that they may come down with lung cancer at 40 -- is not usually effective, Banzhaf said, because the typical teen thinks of the 40th birthday as an eternity away.

Teens also have a hard time personalizing risk. They tend to think they are immune to life's dangers -- that something bad could happen to the next person, but not them.

Parents should instead focus on the reasons kids light up to begin with. "Kids like to start smoking not so much for the taste but because it is a sign of growing up," Banzhaf said. Peer pressure plays a role, too.

"If parents can start to convince kids that smoking makes you stinky and smelly, not sexy and sophisticated, that can have a great impact," he said.

Goold tells parents to maintain an ongoing dialogue with their children, the same as they would when talking about not taking drugs. Spending time together as a family, such as eating dinner together, can help make that conversation flow more naturally, he said.

www.healthday.com

Religious faith may help stroke victims recover

2007-02-23T18:11:00.000-08:00

DALLAS - People of faith have long contended that the power of prayer can help heal the sick. Now a study conducted in Rome suggests that religious faith may help people recover from a stroke.

The study does not point to a “higher cause” but suggests that a strong dose of spirituality can reduce the emotional stress linked to obstacles in stroke recovery, according to a report Thursday in the journal Stroke.

Researchers at the San Raffaele Pisana Rehabilitation Center in the Italian capital of Rome interviewed 132 stroke survivors about their religious beliefs and spirituality. The median age of the study participants was 72.

The responses were compared with their scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, a self-assessment tool.

“The analysis showed higher scores on the anxiety and depression scale correlated significantly with lower scores on the religious and spirituality questionnaire,” said the American Heart Association, which publishes Stroke.

“The association remained significant after adjusting for other factors that could influence a stroke patient’s degree of emotional distress (such as mental and physical functioning, living conditions and marital status),” it said in a statement.

The reasons for this possible link between faith and post-stroke emotional distress are hard to pin down, though the researchers gave tentative explanations.

“Religious people who are active in their communities are more likely to receive external aid that can be provided by volunteers,” said Dr. Salvatore Giaquinto, chairman of the department of rehabilitation at the San Raffaele Pisana Rehabilitation Center.

“Social support lets them experience feelings of care, love and esteem. The new experience of support and the background of faith tell the patients that they are not alone.”

The research chimes to some extent with other studies that have suggested that spiritual pursuits such as reciting the rosary and yoga chanting may be beneficial for heart rate variability and stress relief.

But some researchers say the possible links uncovered in the Rome study should not be mistaken for direct causality.

“The study does not establish that religious beliefs will definitely reduce emotional distress but shows that people who are religious have better coping abilities,” Dr. Lalit Kalra, a stroke professor at King’s College London School of Medicine in Britain, wrote in an accompanying commentary.

“Hence, both these variables may define personal attributes of the patient, in other words religious beliefs do not make a person cope better but identify patients who have better abilities to cope with chronic illness,” Kalra wrote.

The researchers did note that most of Rome’s residents are Catholic. But they said their findings might extend to other religions as well.

www.reuters.com

Most U.S. women face heart, stroke risk

2007-02-23T17:59:00.000-08:00

Nearly all American women are in danger of heart disease or stroke and should be more aggressive about lowering their risk — including asking their doctors about daily aspirin use, the American Heart Association said Monday in new guidelines.

It is the first time guidelines have urged all women to consider aspirin for preventing strokes, although specialists warn that it can cause ulcers and dangerous bleeding. They said it is probably not a good idea for young women with no big health problems.

“We do not want women to go to the drugstore and just start taking this themselves. It is critical that every woman talk to her doctor,” said Dr. Lori Mosca, director of preventive cardiology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and chair of the expert panel that wrote the guidelines.

The guidelines also advise daily exercise and less fat, and declare vitamins C and E, beta carotene and folic acid supplements worthless for preventing heart disease.

The guidelines were published in the journal Circulation with related studies on women’s health, including one suggesting that hormone skin patches may be safer than pills for menopause symptoms.

In general, the guidelines aim to get women and doctors to focus on the long-term risk of high blood pressure, smoking, lack of exercise or being overweight — even if a woman’s current health seems fine. Even a single risk factor at age 50 greatly raises the chance of heart disease or stroke later, and only about 10 percent of American women are free of these problems.

“We do not want women to wait until they develop symptoms to begin to take action,” Mosca said.

The guidelines were drafted by dozens of groups worldwide, including the American Academy of Family Physicians and the U.S. government. Of the 33 people who wrote the advice, 13 have financial ties to heart drug makers, only three of them to a large degree.

“This is a really good gathering of evidence in women,” after years of studies done mostly on men, said Dr. Sidney Smith, heart disease chief at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and past heart association president.

The evidence shows that many more women than thought are at risk of heart disease and stroke — even those whose only weakness was failure to exercise every day. Heart disease is the leading killer of men and women worldwide.

The advice for women:

* Exercise. Get at least 30 minutes of moderately intense exercise on most and preferably all days, 60 to 90 minutes if you need to lose weight.
* Diet. Eat mostly fruits and vegetables, whole grain and high-fiber foods, fish at least twice a week, and little salt. Limit saturated fat to less than 10 percent of calories, 7 percent if possible, and trans fats to less than 1 percent. Limit alcohol to one drink or less a day.
* Don’t smoke. Use nicotine replacement products if needed to stop.
* Weight. Keep body-mass index under 25.
* Supplements. Consider omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil) if you already have heart disease. Do not take extra folic acid or antioxidants like vitamins E, C and beta carotene, for heart disease prevention.
* Blood pressure, cholesterol. Keep under control, with medicine if needed. Keep LDL or bad cholesterol under 100 if at high risk of heart disease and under 70 if at very high risk.
* Aspirin. Daily use is already urged for women at high risk, and the guidelines now say the dose can go up to 325 milligrams. All other women should consider 81 milligram “baby aspirin” daily or 100 milligrams every other day for stroke prevention.

The last is controversial. Aspirin is recommended now to prevent heart disease in men 45 and older; but in women, a large study found it prevented heart disease only for those 65 and older.

Warnings about aspirin

Aspirin did prevent strokes in women, but again, the benefit was substantial only among older ones, said Dr. JoAnn Manson, a Harvard University women’s health expert who helped lead that study.

Putting young women on aspirin for stroke prevention is not justified by the evidence, Manson warned. In the 10-year study, aspirin prevented only one additional cardiovascular problem among roughly 35,000 women under 65 and led to 20 cases of bleeding requiring transfusion, she said.

Aspirin also can be dangerous for people whose blood pressure is not under control — another reason women should see their doctor before starting on it, Smith said. Many people are unaware they have high blood pressure.

Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, said the benefits of low-dose aspirin must be weighed against the risk of internal bleeding, “and it is important for women to check with their doctor about this.”

Mosca conceded that in her own practice, “I would probably limit this to women 45 and above,” but would consider it for a younger woman who is overweight, doesn’t exercise and has high cholesterol and is unwilling to change her lifestyle enough to lower her risk.

The guidelines also say that estrogen and progesterone supplements, while often justified for menopause symptoms, should not be taken to prevent heart disease. Nor should so-called SERM drugs, such as tamoxifen and raloxifene, which are used to prevent breast cancer in women at high risk of that disease.

Millions of women stopped taking menopause hormones after a landmark study several years ago found the pills raised the risk of heart problems and breast cancer. A new study in Circulation gives hope that skin patches may prove safer in one key respect.

A French study found that women, aged 45 to 70, taking estrogen pills were four times more likely to suffer a blood clot than women getting it through a patch or not taking estrogen at all.

“If confirmed, these findings could really benefit women who are in need of these hormones to control their post-menopausal symptoms,” said Dr. Alice Jacobs, a Boston University cardiologist and past heart association president

www.ap.org

Meningitis shot could save your child

2007-02-23T17:25:00.000-08:00

A reporter’s life is a little like a doctor’s life. We get to meet people, step into their lives and then leave. We don’t expect to stay and rarely do we expect relationships to develop.

But I realized that rules like this are meant to be broken when I met Lynn and Alan Bozof in 1999. I was the medical correspondent for ABC News and was reporting on a series of outbreaks of meningococcal meningitis on college campuses.

Meningococcal meningitis is a serious bacterial infection that affects the bloodstream and the linings of the spinal cord and brain. Most cases occur in babies and children, although it can affect adults. Meningococcal infection is spread by close or prolonged contact, such as coughing, sneezing or sharing of eating or drinking utensils.

Although I trained as a pediatrician and knew that meningococcus was a particularly virulent type of meningitis, I was unprepared for the effect that this particular story would have on my life.

The Bozofs were like so many other middle American families. They were raising two good boys — brothers who dreamt of being doctors and one day practicing together.

Evan, the eldest, was a sophomore at the University of Georgia Southwestern, Americus. Like so many college students, he was studying hard, partying on the weekends and not getting enough sleep. On March 24, 1998, Evan called his mom. He thought he was coming down with the flu. He had a headache, sore throat, aches, fever, nausea and vomiting. But this was not the flu and, within hours, the seemingly simple infection evolved into a nightmare.

The Bozofs drove to the community hospital where Evan was hospitalized. Before their eyes, his flu-like symptoms turned to a rash and then, limb by limb, gangrene. Evan had been a star baseball player. The Bozofs were told that in a desperate move to save Evan’s life, the doctors would need his parents’ permission to amputate a limb. They said yes.

The Bozofs also worried about what Evan would think when he woke up, so they documented his hospital stay with photos. How else could you explain to your student athlete son why you compromised his athletic future in order to save his life?

The harrowing decisions did not stop there.

The decision to amputate a limb was one that they would make four times. Twenty-one days later, after multiple surgeries, Evan died without ever gaining consciousness.

It’s an understatement to say that this family has never been the same since Evan’s death.

Their grief and their outrage fueled a change in American medicine. Lynn and Alan Bozof found out that for the price of a pair of sneakers Evan could have had the meningococcal meningitis vaccine. But it was not required for college and never offered by their doctor. They are on a mission to change that.

I was so struck by the Bozoffs’ pain and kept trying to put myself in Lynn’s shoes – the maternal guilt, sorrow and pressure on the marriage. At the Bozoffs' invitation, I joined the advisory board for the National Meningitis Association.

Through the awareness campaigns of the NMA and the tireless efforts of meningitis survivors and the families that have been affected, there is a push to get teenagers vaccinated.

The military has known for years that soldiers in tight communal living have a greater chance of contracting meningitis, so it vaccinates recruits.

College dormitories have tight living quarters, too, and getting vaccinated against meningitis has not been an admissions requirement at schools. Yet, our public health-care policy has not reflected what we know.

There are 2,500 to 3,000 cases of meningoccal meningitis a year and most could be prevented with the vaccine. The death rate is 15 percent. The complication rates from organ failure and amputations are even higher.

A year-round disease

For my husband, me and our three children, this vaccine was a must. We have a college sophomore, a high-school senior, and a sixth-grader. I may not be able to protect them against everything, but this was a no-brainer.

Menactra is the newest and longest-lasting vaccine. At a cost of $70 to $100, it’s not cheap and not perfect — it’s only 85 percent effective against four of the five strains. But it’s the best we have right now. It’s safe and it saves lives.

While there have been calls to make this vaccination a requirement for admission to college, some states have been slow to mandate the shot. Not all colleges have the same immunization requirements. I think that’s a shame.

Since high demand for meningitis shots led to a vaccine shortage last year and caused the government temporarily to change its recommendations, there’s been confusion over who should get the shots and when. The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want parents and physicians to understand that the vaccine is available now. Meningitis is a year-round disease. Don’t wait for back-to-school season.

The National Meningitis Association or the CDC can provide more information about this disease and what you can do to prevent it. If you decide that your children should be vaccinated, don’t be talked out of it.

I’m quite serious when I tell you that this could save your child’s life.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman
Chief medical editor
NBC News

When pregnant mom eats fish, kids do better

2007-02-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

LONDON - Women who eat seafood while pregnant may be boosting their children’s IQ in the process, according to new research published Friday in The Lancet. The results of the study were surprising, say the authors,

and contradict American and British recommendations that pregnant women should limit seafood and fish consumption to avoid potentially high levels of mercury. The study relied on mothers’ observations of their children’s development and their reports of their food intake while pregnant.

Mercury is found in small concentrations in fish and seafood, but can accumulate in the body. High amounts of the metal can damage the human nervous system, particularly those in developing fetuses. On the other hand, seafood — including fish — is also a major source of omega-3 fatty acids, essential to brain development.

While experts believe further research is necessary to confirm these conclusions, the study’s failure to find evidence of increased harm from eating fish is significant. Because seafood contain both nutrients and toxins, it remains a dilemma for regulatory authorities what kinds of recommendations should exist for pregnant women.

The study, led by Dr. Joseph Hibbeln of the United States’ National Institutes of Health, tracked the eating habits of 11,875 pregnant women in Bristol, Britain.

Smarter kids?

At 32 weeks into their pregnancy, the women were asked to fill in a seafood consumption questionnaire. They were subsequently sent questionnaires four times during their pregnancy, and then up to eight years after the birth of their child. Researchers examined issues including the children’s social and communication skills, their hand-eye coordination, and their IQ levels. As with any study based on self-reporting methods, however, the results cannot be considered entirely definitive.

The study was primarily funded by Britain’s Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the University of Bristol, and the British government.

Hibbeln and his colleagues concluded that women who ate more than 340 grams per week of fish or seafood — the equivalent of two or three servings a week — had smarter children with better developmental skills. Children whose mothers ate no seafood were 48 percent more likely to have a low verbal IQ score, compared to children whose mothers ate high amounts of seafood.

“These results highlight the importance of including fish in the maternal diet and lend support to the popular opinion that fish is brain food,” wrote Dr. Gary Myers and Dr. Philip Davidson of the University of Rochester Medical Center, in an accompanying commentary. Myers and Davidson were not connected to the study.

Eating even more than three portions of fish or seafood a week could be beneficial, Hibbeln suggests. “Advice that limits seafood consumption might reduce the intake of nutrients necessary for optimum neurological development,” he and his colleagues wrote.

The researchers said limiting pregnant women’s weekly intake to 12 ounces (340 grams) of fish and seafood, as advised by the U.S. government, did not protect their children from developmental problems. Women who avoid seafood, they said, may actually be harming their babies by depriving them of essential nutrients needed for the developing fetal brain.

“It was very surprising,” Hibbeln said in a telephone interview. “We did not expect such clear-cut results of the harm of low seafood consumption.”

Pollution worries

The Environmental Working Group, which calls the U.S. recommendations too lenient, said the study highlighted the need for governments to take actions to keep pollutants out of seafood, like cracking down on coal-burning power plants.

“The study reinforces the importance of keeping our seafood supply clean, making sure it’s not overly contaminated with mercury and other chemicals that could actually harm brain development,” said Jane Houlihan, the group’s vice president for research.

Mercury can build up in fish living in waters contaminated with it due to industrial pollution. Mercury can be particularly bad for fetuses and children because it can cause neurological and developmental problems.

In 2004 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration advised pregnant women and young children to eat no more than 12 ounces per week of light tuna and other seafood lower in mercury.

The agencies recommended they eat none of some fish with high mercury levels — shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish — and no more than 6 ounces (170 grams) a week of albacore tuna because of mercury.

msnbc.msn.com

Circumcision May Help Protect Against HIV

2007-02-23T16:53:00.000-08:00

THURSDAY, Feb. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Getting circumcised may reduce men's risk of acquiring HIV, according to a study conducted in Africa.

"Our study shows that circumcised men had 53 percent fewer HIV infections than uncircumcised men," lead study author Robert Bailey, professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), said in a prepared statement.

For the study, which is published in the Feb. 24 issue of The Lancet, researchers followed a group of 2,784 HIV-negative, uncircumcised men aged 18-24 years for two years.

The men were living in Kisumu, Kenya, where an estimated 26 percent of uncircumcised men are infected with HIV by age 25. Most of the men were Luo, a group that does not traditionally practice circumcision.

The researchers assigned half of the men to voluntary circumcision, and the other half remained uncircumcised during the study.

All of the participants received free HIV testing and counseling, medical care, tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, condoms and behavioral risk counseling during periodic assessments throughout the study.

Forty-seven of the 1,391 uncircumcised men contracted HIV during the two-year study, compared with 22 of the 1,393 circumcised men.

The risks associated with circumcision were minimal, the researchers said. According to Bailey, 1.7 percent of the circumcision surgeries were associated with minor complications (e.g., bleeding, mild infection), and there were no severe adverse effects.

Bailey cautioned that there could be a downside to this approach: that circumcised men may feel like they are protected from HIV and may be therefore more likely to engage in risky behavior.

"Circumcision is by no means a natural condom," said Bailey.

But the researchers are hopeful that, when integrated with other prevention and reproductive health services, circumcision may be able to help prevent the spread of HIV.

"This is really the first good news we've had in quite a long time. If we can reduce the risk of infection by such a substantial amount, then we can save a lot of lives," said Bailey.

www.healthday.com

Bill Gates, Canada team up to fight AIDS

2007-02-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was blasted for shunning AIDS talks in 2006, and software mogul Bill Gates pledged funding to accelerate the development of anHIV/AIDS vaccine.

Ottawa will contribute 111 million Canadian dollars (95 million US) toward international research efforts and to build a Canadian facility to make vaccine candidates for use in clinical trials, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will provide 28 million Canadian dollars (24 million US).

The collaboration will "accelerate the pace towards the discovery of an HIV vaccine ... move vaccines to the clinical trial stage more quickly and improve access to an eventual vaccine," Harper told reporters.

The result would spare "millions of people from the horrific reality of HIV-AIDS," he said.

Bill Gates echoed Harper, saying the funding will "make a big difference."

"Most scientists think that it probably will take more than ten years (to create a vaccine). We could get lucky, it could happen sooner than that. But with all tough problems, the more energy we put into it, clearly that's going to cut down the amount of time required," he said.

Gates and his wife, in a keynote speech at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto in August vowed that the mighty cheque-wielding charity that bears his name would make AIDS its top priority.

In the run-up to the six-day AIDS meet that attracted 21,000 delegates, the Gates Foundation announced help of 500 million dollars to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, bringing their pledges to the agency to 650 million dollars.

This came only weeks after a contribution of 287 million dollars to speed the development of an HIV vaccine. The Foundation stumped up 60 million dollars for microbicide research in 2003, and 50 million dollars for Botswana in 2000.

Harper meanwhile was criticized for not attending the conference and for postponing a much-anticipated AIDS funding announcement, until now.

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American Cancer Society gets $10 million gift

2007-02-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

ATLANTA - A drug company is pledging $10 million to The American Cancer Society — one of the largest gifts in the organization’s history — to help provide one-on-one support for cancer patients in U.S. hospitals, the organization announced Wednesday.

The unusual gift is from AstraZeneca PLC, an international pharmaceutical company.

It’s earmarked for a program that stations specially-trained Cancer Society employees in 60 hospitals and cancer treatment centers. The “navigators” guide patients to social and emotional support, transportation, medical and financial assistance services.

The gift will allow the program to expand to 50 more locations in medically underserved areas, said Nancy Single, the Cancer Society’s vice president for mission strategy.

The Atlanta-based Cancer Society, founded in 1913, receives just under $1 billion in gifts and grants each year. Less than 2 percent of that comes from drug companies, she said.

The largest single gift to date was a $13 million unrestricted estate bequest in 2005, from an undisclosed donor. AstraZeneca’s is the second largest gift, and is the biggest from a corporation.

AstraZeneca, based in London, had health care sales of more than $26 billion last year. The company developed the popular breast cancer drug tamoxifen, and makes about a half-dozen other breast and prostate cancer medications.

Last year, the company gave $7 million to help the Cancer Society develop a Hope Lodge in Boston. AstraZeneca has been looking for important ways to work with the Cancer Society to help patients, said Lisa Schoenberg, the company’s vice president of specialty care.

“There’s probably few ways we could have as big of an impact across the nation with these important institutions and these important patients and their families,” she said.

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Family of dead Israeli soldier can use his sperm

2007-02-20T18:57:00.000-08:00

JERUSALEM - In a precedent-setting decision, an Israeli court has ruled that a dead soldier’s family can use his sperm to impregnate a woman he never met.

Keivan Cohen, 20, was shot dead in 2002 by a Palestinian sniper in the Gaza Strip. He was single and left no will. But at the urging of his parents, a sample of his sperm was taken two hours after his death and has been stored in a hospital since.

When the family tried to gain access to the sperm, however, the hospital refused, on the ground that only a spouse could make such a request. Arguing that their son yearned to raise a family, his parents challenged that decision in court. And on Jan. 15, after a four-year legal battle, a Tel Aviv court granted the family’s wish and ruled that the sperm could be injected into a woman selected by Cohen’s family.

The ruling also ordered the Ministry of Interior to register any children born as a result of the insemination as children of the deceased.

“On the one hand I’m terribly sad that I don’t have my boy; it’s a terrible loss,” Rachel Cohen said in an interview in Monday’s Chicago Tribune. “But I’m also happy that I succeeded in carrying out my son’s will.”

Cohen did not return phone calls from The Associated Press.

Precedent-setting decision

Irit Rosenblum, a family rights advocate who represented the Cohen family, said the ruling was significant because it set a precedent for those seeking to continue bloodlines after death.

At the trial, Rosenblum presented testimony, including video recordings, in which Cohen expressed his desire to have children.

“He always said he wanted children,” she told The Associated Press. “But there were no regulations in the law that deals with using sperm from dead people.”

Rosenblum said soldiers increasingly have been leaving sperm samples, or explicit instructions on post-mortem extraction, before heading to battle.

She said she knew of more than 100 cases of Israeli soldiers who, before last summer’s war with Lebanese guerillas, asked to have their sperm saved if they were killed. American soldiers have also begun donating sperm before heading to Iraq, she said.

“I think it is a human revolution,” Rosenblum said. “Ten years ago, who would believe that a human being can continue after he has died. I think it is great for humanity.”

Rosenblum said the woman who is to act as surrogate mother has requested to remain anonymous.

“She’s like family to us,” Rachel Cohen told the Tribune. “Cruel and good fate brought us together.”

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Retired NFL players focus of health push

2007-02-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Before the echocardiogram or the prostate exam, before blood was drawn or body fat measured, the patients had a simple task amid the nearby Super Bowl pomp: Sign the football.

The biceps drifting into this South Beach medical office recently were bigger, the attire perhaps a bit sportier and the fingers far more likely to be wearing a Super Bowl ring. The doctor was collecting autographs on more than just insurance forms; all of the patients played in the NFL.

NFL stars of the past are feeling the effects of tackle-filled, turbocharged careers — and players’ advocates and the medical community are trying to help.

“It’s a given that by the time you leave the game you have a very thick medical file,” said Dick Anderson, a 60-year-old NFL retiree who played in three Super Bowls with the Miami Dolphins. “You can’t play the game and not come away with problems.”

Anderson was among about 60 former players expected at medical screenings sponsored by the Living Heart Foundation, a Little Silver, N.J.-based organization that is studying health risks facing professional football players. The foundation has screened about 1,000 players — mostly retired — and is compiling the most in-depth study of NFL athletes’ health.

That study continues, but data from about 550 players was analyzed and presented at the International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy, which was held recently a little north in Hollywood.

Linemen at biggest risk

It found the game’s biggest players — linemen — are most at risk, with more than a third having enlarged hearts, as many as 75 percent suffering from obstructive sleep apnea and more than half with metabolic syndrome, which puts them at greater risk for heart disease. Those rates are far greater than the general population.

“There’s no question that the large body size of retired NFL players is the most significant single health problem that many of them face,” said Dr. Arthur Roberts, a former NFL quarterback who founded and heads the Living Heart Foundation. “If they’re former lineman and they’re weighing 300 pounds or more, from the doctor’s perspective I would say you’re clearly at the increased risk for a bad outcome.”

The trouble is, while weight-loss might alleviate current or future problems, players’ size is often key to their on-field success.

“In my career, losing weight is not really an option,” said New York Giants center Shaun O’Hara, who carries 300 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame and has sleep apnea.

This was the third year Roberts and his team have held screenings where the Super Bowl was being played and more than a dozen others have been held in cities with NFL teams.

The number of players participating, observers say, is a sign of a new level of health consciousness in the NFL partly fueled by the proliferation of life-curtailing injuries and the early deaths of big stars such as Reggie White.

“The old-timers sat in the locker room and smoked and drank beer at halftime,” said Dr. Allan Levy, a longtime team physician for the Giants. “The players are very different now from what they were.”

Jarring adjustment

Still, doctors say there is a jarring adjustment to post-athlete life. Players often see their movement limited by injuries and must learn to adjust their eating to a more sedentary lifestyle.

“I didn’t used to have this right here,” said Frank Marion, a 55-year-old retired New York Giant, as he pointed to his ample midsection. “I became one of the worst eaters because I’m not competing anymore. Once you’re not playing you don’t have to maintain that weight.”

Football players’ health first got a formal look with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s 1994 release of a mortality study of 6,848 players. It defied conventional wisdom, showing NFL players overall had a death rate 46 percent lower than the general population of men of similar age and race. But it also found those on the offensive and defensive lines had a 52 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than the general population.

The NFL Players Association has funded health efforts and is trying to educate members through its newsletter and in meetings.

“We want to get to these guys early,” said Andre Collins, who heads outreach to retired players for the NFLPA. “We want to educate them, we want them to lose weight, we don’t want their hearts to work so hard.”

Those desires were clear as players weaved through the hallways of “The South Beach Diet” author Dr. Arthur Agatston, who loaned his exam rooms for the screenings.

The patients endured blood tests and urine analysis, sleep apnea screening and lung evaluations, not to mention measures to predict heart disease and stroke risk.

The mood was congenial. Athletes were armed with lists of the maladies for which their football careers could be blamed, but there were no regrets.

“I think if you polled everyone here today,” said Keith Sims, who played on the offensive line for the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins, “we’d all go back.”

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Gambia's president claims he has cure for AIDS

2007-02-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

BANJUL, Gambia - From the pockets of his billowing white robe, Gambia’s president pulls out a plastic container, closes his eyes in prayer and rubs a green herbal paste onto the rib cage of the patient — a concoction he claims is a cure for AIDS.

He then orders the thin man to swallow a bitter yellow drink, followed by two bananas.

“Whatever you do, there are bound to be skeptics, but I can tell you my method is foolproof,” President Yahya Jammeh told an Associated Press reporter, surrounded by bodyguards in his presidential compound. “Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof. It’s a declaration. I can cure AIDS and I will.”

In a continent suffering from the world’s worst AIDS epidemic, Jammeh’s claims of a miracle cure are alarming public health workers already struggling against faith-healers dispensing herbal remedies from inside thatched huts.

The biggest concern is that the Gambian leader requires patients to cease their anti-retroviral drugs, a move that risks weakening their immune systems and making them even more prone to infection, said Dr. Antonio Filipe Jr., head of the World Health Organization in neighboring Senegal.

WHO: ‘There is no cure for AIDS’

Since January, when he announced his cure to a gathering of foreign diplomats, Jammeh has thrown the bureaucratic machinery of this small West African country behind the claim. The last six news releases on Gambia’s official Web site are dedicated to the president’s treatment, available to Gambians free of charge. Regular radio and TV addresses publicize it and the Health Ministry has issued a declaration of support.

Although the HIV rate is relatively low in Gambia compared to other African nations — 1.3 percent of the country’s 1.6 million people are infected — the president’s claim has left international health organizations in a bind.

WHO’s Filipe was diplomatic about Jammeh’s claims, saying his organization respects the president’s point of view. But, he added: “As the World Health Organization, we would like to state quite clearly the following — No. 1: so far there is no cure for AIDS.”

Jammeh, a 41-year-old former army colonel who wrested gained control in a 1994 coup, says his treatment is entirely voluntary and argues that his medications cannot be mixed with other drugs because “I don’t want any complications.”

The claim of a cure has prompted comparisons to the South African minister of health who won international ridicule last year for suggesting that a diet of garlic, beet root and lemon juice is more effective than anti-retroviral drugs. South African President Thabo Mbeki has been accused of not addressing the epidemic: His government did not provide AIDS drugs until a lawsuit by AIDS activists forced it to in 2002.

Jammeh has gone to great lengths to prove his claim, sending blood samples of the first nine patients to a lab in Senegal for testing.

A letter on the lab’s stationery indicates that of the nine, four had undetectable viral loads, one had a moderate viral load and three had high loads, a result posted on the government’s Web site as proof of a cure.

However, the lab technician who performed the tests warned they are not conclusive since the blood samples were only taken after the treatment.

“There is no baseline ... You can’t prove that someone has been cured of AIDS from just one data point. It’s dishonest of the Gambian government to use our results in this way,” said Dr. Coumba Toure Kane, head of the molecular biology unit at Senegal’s Cheikh Anta Diop University.

Waiting in plastic chairs for treatment at the presidential compound last week, Jammeh’s patients said they don’t need lab results to tell them they feel better.

“It feels as if the president took the pain out of my body,” Ousman Sowe, 54, told the AP. Diagnosed with HIV in 1996, he is among the first nine men and women Jammeh has treated and has been under the Gambian leader’s care for nearly a month.

“My appetite has come back and I have gained weight,” said Lamin Ceesay, thin from a nine-year battle with HIV.

Jammeh has refused to disclose details of his herbal concoction, saying only that it uses seven plants, “three of which are not from Gambia.”

‘You will all be cured’

Treatment begins with the president applying the green paste, stored inside a deli-style plastic container. Next comes a gray-colored solution contained in an old Evian bottle and splashed on the patient’s skin. This is followed by a yellowish, tealike brew which patients are asked to drink. The therapy is administered many times over several weeks.

After the treatment session last week, Jammeh emerged carrying a tall wooden staff, a string of Islamic prayer beads and a leather-bound Quran. In front of him, 30 new patients waited on lawn chairs, drawn from the roughly 20,000 people currently living with HIV in Gambia.

He told them that during treatment, they must cease drinking alcohol, tea and coffee. They also cannot eat kola nuts or have sex.

Jammeh then held up the Quran, pointing it at each of the patients: “In the name of Allah, in three to 30 days you will all be cured,” he said.

The patients were then herded into a minibus and driven to an empty hospital ward on the outskirts of the capital, where they will stay in dormitory-style rooms with sheets covering the windows.

Lying on a mat on the tiled floor in the hospital ward, a 19-year-old girl struggled to say her name, spitting gray-colored phlegm into her scarf. Like everyone else in the concrete ward, she is banned from taking anti-retroviral drugs.

Nearby was 25-year-old Amadou Jallow, who recently quit his job at a tourist hotel after his mother was diagnosed with AIDS. In his savings account is $296 — enough, he said, to last him the 30 days Jammeh promises it will take to heal his mother.

“I’m just afraid that, what if my account runs low?” he said. “But by then, I think she will be cured.”

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Smoking changes brain the same way as drugs

2007-02-20T18:12:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Smoking causes long-lasting changes in the brain similar to changes seen in animals when they are given cocaine, heroin and other addictive drugs, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

A study of the brain tissue of smokers and nonsmokers who had died showed that smokers had the changes, even if they had quit years before, the team at the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported.

"The data show that there are long-lasting chemical changes in the brains of humans," said Michael Kuhar of Emory University in Atlanta, who was not involved in the study.

"The chemical changes alone suggest a physiological basis for nicotine addiction."

A team led by Bruce Hope of NIDA, one of the National Institutes of Health, analyzed levels of two enzymes found inside brain cells known as neurons.

These enzymes help the neurons use chemical signals such as those made by the message-carrying compound dopamine.

Smokers and former smokers had high levels of these enzymes, the researchers reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Hope said other studies had seen the same thing in animals given cocaine and heroin -- and it was clear that the drugs were causing the effects.

"This strongly suggests that the similar changes observed in smokers and former smokers contributed to their addiction," he added in a statement.

Experts on smoking have long said that nicotine is at least as addictive as heroin.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 20.9 percent of all adults smoke in the United States, which adds up to 45 million people. And 23 percent of high school students smoke.

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Mentally ill more likely to die from heart disease, not cancer: study

2007-02-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The severely mentally ill are more likely to die from heart and circulatory problems than is the general population, said a British study.

However, chances of developing cancer are not higher for the severely mentally ill than in the population at large, according to the study, conducted in Britain and published in the February issue of the US publication Archives of General Psychiatry.

The side effects of anti-psychotic drugs, smoking, lifestyles and poverty all take their tolls on the health of the mentally ill.

The study shows that the severely mentally ill age 18-49 are 3.22 as likely to die from heart problems and 2.53 times as likely to die from a stroke than those enjoying mental heath.

The study followed 46,136 persons suffering from mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, bi-polar and delusional disorders, as well as 300,426 mentally healthy persons.

The research compared the death rates of the two groups from circulatory illnesses and from the seven most frequent cancers in Britain: respiratory, colorectal, breast, prostate, stomach, esophageal and pancreatic.

"We chose to study death rates rather than incidence rates, because mortality is the most robust outcome since it includes diagnoses made postmortem," wrote the study's lead author David Osborn of the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London.

For the 50-75 age group, the chance for the severely mentally ill of dying from circulatory problems is 1.86 times greater for heart problems and 1.89 times greater for stroke.

Even when researchers adjusted for the effects of smoking and poverty, increased cardiovascular threat remained.

Researchers found that use of anti-psychotic medicines was a notable factor, and risk rose with the dosages prescribed.

"People with severe mental illness who were not prescribed any anti-psychotics were at increased risk of coronary heart disease and stroke than controls, whereas those prescribed such agents were at even greater risk," the authors write.

"Those receiving the higher doses were at greatest risk for death from both coronary heart disease and stroke," the study said.

Researchers said caring for the mentally ill frequently overlooks other, non-mental illnesses.

"Clinically, a holistic approach to the care of people with severe mental illness is still frequently overlooked," they wrote.

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Genital Skin Cancer More Deadly for Women

2007-02-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

(HealthDay News) -- Women are three times more likely than men to die of genital nonmelanoma skin cancer, new U.S. research shows. Genital nonmelanoma skin cancer can be caused by sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), which is also associated with cervical cancer.

In this study, researchers found that almost 30,000 people -- 22,000 women and 8,000 men -- died of genital nonmelanoma skin cancers in the United States from 1969 to 2000.

The older a person is, the greater their risk of genital nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC). The findings were scheduled for presentation Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology, in Washington, D.C.

"As dermatologists, we expect to see skin cancers induced by ultraviolet light, because sunlight is one of the primary risk factors for the disease," researcher Dr. Martin A. Weinstock, professor of dermatology and community health at Brown University in Providence, R.I., said in a prepared statement.

"But some of the most dangerous types of skin cancers are those that are not sun-induced, such as skin cancers that occur on genital skin -- a place that is not exposed to intense sun and is not routinely examined by dermatologists. That's why there needs to be an increased awareness of this issue, so patients and physicians can be better prepared to detect these cancers early before they become fatal," said Weinstock, who is also chief dermatologist at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Providence.

Because they're not always readily visible and may not cause any noticeable symptoms, genital skin cancers can be difficult to diagnose.

"The number of deaths attributed to genital NMSCs was higher than expected, and we believe HPV was a major cause of these cancers," Weinstock said.

"The availability of the new HPV vaccine offers the potential for a substantial reduction in the development of these skin cancers for future generations," he noted.

In addition, since "HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, both men and women can practice preventive measures that could lead to a decline in mortality rates from genital NMSCs and heed the warning signs of the disease, including new growths or sores that don't heal, to detect it early."

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Depression, loneliness tied to physical ills

2007-02-05T21:43:00.000-08:00

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Depression, severe mental illness and loneliness are linked to illnesses such as heart disease and dementia, according to several studies published on Monday.

The exact connections between a dysfunctional mind and a malfunctioning body remains an ongoing question, but at least one of three sets of researchers writing in the Archives of General Psychiatry said several factors may be at work.

Dr. Jesse Stewart, formerly of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, found a correlation between depression and hardening of the arteries in his three-year study of 324 men and women who averaged 60 years old.

The arteries of those who were most depressed had narrowed twice as much as those who were least depressed, the study found.

Hardening of the arteries can be a precursor to a heart attack or stroke and may occur because of a malfunctioning nervous system in depressed people, Stewart wrote.

Depression may also upset the body's regulation of glands that release chemicals governing energy level and growth, and alter the functioning of cells responsible for blood clotting.

Hardening of the arteries leads to an overreaction of the immune system and the resulting inflammation is known to release chemicals that can have effects on behavior, he added. The brain, too, can suffer from the reduced blood flow, reinforcing the depression and the resulting ailments, he wrote.

In the same journal, a British study of 46,136 severely mentally ill people found those who were younger than 50 were more than three times as likely to die from coronary heart disease and stroke than people not suffering from mental illness. Mental illness more than doubled the risk of dying from heart disease for people up to age 75.

The risk of dying from heart disease was even higher among those taking antipsychotic medication, and study author David P.J. Osborn at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, London.

Osborn urged a more "holistic" approach to caring for the mentally ill, with more frequent monitoring of such vital signs as blood pressure and cholesterol and more attention to diet and exercise that often go neglected.

A third study found that a persistent feeling of loneliness among the elderly doubled their risk of developing Alzheimer's-like symptoms compared to those who felt connected to others.

Autopsies on 90 of the study participants who died -- the only sure diagnosis -- did not turn up the tell-tale plaques, tangles and brain tissue damage of Alzheimer's, however.

That finding suggested something else to study author Robert Wilson of Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. He wrote that depression from loneliness somehow damaged the brain's ability to compensate for the age-related deterioration of the pathways that underlie social behavior and induced dementia.

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Britain facing poultry bans as turkey cull completed

2007-02-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

HOLTON, England (AFP) - Britain is facing poultry bans from Japan to Jersey after it finished slaughtering about 160,000 turkeys in the hope of containing its worst bird flu outbreak.

An agriculture ministry spokeswoman told AFP that Russia, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, South Africa and Jersey have all imposed bans on the import of British poultry, while the Ukrainian agriculture ministry has also reportedly instituted a temporary ban.

The bans came as Britain completed the mass slaughter late Monday evening, and the government continued its investigation into how the virus was transferred to domestic turkeys.

Bernard Matthews, Europe's biggest turkey producer and the firm running the farm, is now set to clean and disinfect its farm at its own cost, the agriculture ministry said.

The cull had begun on Saturday after the H5N1 strain of bird flu that has killed at least 160 people -- most of them in southeast Asia -- since late 2003, was confirmed at the farm in Holton, eastern England.

The British outbreak has prompted several European countries, including France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, to take precautionary methods to prevent the spread of the virus.

Japan, which has suffered from its own bird flu outbreaks, said it has suspended imports of British poultry in the wake of the outbreak.

Russia said from Tuesday it would suspend imports of poultry feed and raw poultry but continue to import products that have been fried, roasted or heated in any way that kills off the virus.

Ukraine on Monday also suspended all British poultry imports, the Ukrainian agriculture ministry's veterinarian services said as quoted by the Interfax news agency.

A British agriculture ministry spokeswoman said, however, that Ukraine had not informed Britain that it was banning the import of British poultry. She added that Hong Kong, South Korea, South Africa and Jersey had banned the import of British poultry.

France also said it was stepping up checks and safety measures, with government ministers set to meet on Tuesday to put together a plan of action.

Meanwhile in Britain, ministers were playing down the risk of the outbreak to humans.

"The risk to the public is judged by health experts to be negligible," David Miliband, the environment secretary, told the House of Commons, while Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said authorities were preparing "very, very seriously" for the "remote" possibility of a pandemic.

Scientists say that H5N1 could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, sparking a pandemic which could kill millions.

World Health Organisation spokesman Gregory Hartl has stressed that a European country such as Britain could just as easily be the source of a mutation triggering a human pandemic as Asia or Africa.

Questions have also been raised about whether the farm took swift enough action after the first deaths of birds.

The first deaths were reported on the farm in unexplained circumstances last Tuesday, but the matter was not reported to veterinarians until Thursday, when more than 1,000 other turkeys had perished.

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But the European Commission, which monitors animal hygiene measures throughout the 27-nation European Union, voiced confidence in Britain's handling of the latest outbreak.

"We think the measures are in place and are working well," commission spokesman Michael Mann told journalists in Brussels.

Workers at the farm, many of whom are migrants from Portugal, and those involved in the slaughter have been given anti-viral drugs as a precaution.

A three-kilometre (1.8-mile) protection zone and 10-kilometre surveillance zone have been put in place, along with a 2,090 square kilometre restriction zone, while bird shows and pigeon racing have been banned.

The gassed poultry carcasses were being taken in sealed lorries to a plant around 200 miles (320 kilometres) away in Staffordshire, northwest England, which incinerates them after removing micro-organisms from them.

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Hypertension in pregnancy linked to heart disease

2007-02-05T21:32:00.000-08:00

DALLAS (Reuters) - Women who experience high blood pressure while pregnant are more likely to develop a coronary-related heart problem later in life than other women, researchers said on Monday.

"Usually it is assumed that development of high blood pressure during pregnancy has no long-term consequences since it subsides after pregnancy," said Dr. Michiel L. Bots, the senior author of the study and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

The study found that women who had high blood pressure while they were pregnant had a 57 percent greater risk of developing coronary calcification later in life than women who had normal blood pressure levels during pregnancy.

Coronary calcification is a calcium buildup in the vessels of the heart, according to the
American Heart Association.

It is associated with atherosclerosis, the process by which fatty substances, cholesterol, calcium and other substances build up in the inner lining of an artery.

Researchers looked at 491 healthy post-menopausal women who were selected from among participants enrolled from 1993-1997 in a study called PROSPECT, one of two Dutch groups involved in a wider European health survey.

The researchers measured coronary artery calcium in the women in 2004 and 2005 and asked them about their blood pressure during pregnancy. Almost 31 percent of the women surveyed said they had had high blood pressure while pregnant.

Researchers cautioned that further work needs to be done to more firmly establish this link and the reasons behind it.

The sample size for the study was small and the participants were asked to recall blood pressure changes during pregnancy many years after the fact, so the data may not have been completely accurate.

Bots said in a statement that women who "develop high blood pressure during pregnancy may need to be referred to a program that includes cardiovascular risk factor management and be closely monitored for increases in blood pressure, cholesterol and weight."

A return of high blood pressure and the development of diabetes were seen as other possible risks for women who had elevated blood pressure levels while pregnant.

The study is published this week in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

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Drink's calorie-burning claims probed

2007-02-05T21:22:00.000-08:00

HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Monday announced an investigation into claims by Coca-Cola and Nestle that their new drink can burn calories and not "voodoo nutrition."

Blumenthal's investigation focuses on Enviga, a green-tea drink that contains caffeine, calcium and a green tea extract known as epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG. Coke says EGCG speeds up metabolism and increases energy use, especially when combined with caffeine.

An Enviga Web site claims that the drink's blend of green tea and caffeine burns more calories than it contains and can help drinkers maintain an ideal weight. According to a Nestle study, young people who drank three of the 12-ounce drinks a day burned an average of 106 calories.

Blumenthal demanded copies of all scientific studies, clinical trials, tests and papers that prove the calorie-burning claim by next week.

Unless there are credible scientific studies, claims "may be nothing more than voodoo nutrition," Blumenthal said. "Promise of wondrous weight loss must be supported by science, not magic."

Calls were placed to Coke and Nestle seeking comment.

Enviga's Web site says the drink is available in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with a national release scheduled this year.

A nonprofit watchdog group, Center for Science in the Public Interest, have threatened to sue Coke and Nestle over their Enviga claims. Coke officials called the lawsuit threat a "meritless publicity stunt."

SUSAN HAIGH, Associated Press Writer
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Sex issues may signal other health risks

2007-02-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

LONDON - Doctors shouldn't shy away from asking patients about their sex lives, a new research paper advises. Researchers say problems in the bedroom can translate into serious medical conditions, and ignoring sexual dysfunction may mean missing early indicators for heart failure, depression or other ailments, according to a paper published in Friday's issue of The Lancet.

"Sex is a legitimate part of medicine, but it has largely been kept separate from the rest of medicine," said Dr. Rosemary Basson, the paper's lead author. Basson is based at the British Columbia Centre for Sexual Medicine in Vancouver.

Basson and her co-author, Dr. Willibrord Weijmar Schultz of the University Medical Centre in Groningen, the Netherlands, examined numerous medical databases looking for sexual dysfunctions in combination with diseases such as heart failure, diabetes, depression, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's. Many sexual problems were identified as possible red flags of underlying or imminent medical conditions.

"If a man comes in with erectile dysfunction, it can be the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Andrew McCullough, a sexual health expert at New York University Medical Center who was not connected to the paper.

Doctors are being increasingly advised to take the initiative to ask patients about their sex lives, including basic questions about who they have sex with, how frequently and if they engage in potentially risky behavior.

"People aren't going to volunteer that kind of information unless they're specifically asked," said Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, chief of the infectious diseases division at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, who was not involved with the research.

What patients often fail to realize, physicians say, is that sexual dysfunctions are often a symptom of something more serious.

For instance, men with erectile dysfunction, the most common sexual disorder in older men, are often at increased risk of heart disease. In one study of 132 men who had heart surgery, nearly half had a history of erectile dysfunction. That diagnosis preceded the heart surgery in nearly 60 percent of the men.

In women, picking up on sex clues is more difficult. "Women don't have as obvious a physical signal for sexual problems as men," said Basson. But a woman's lack of sexual desire reveals an underlying depression in up to 26 percent of cases. Taken together with other symptoms, sexual abnormalities in women could point to hormone conditions, kidney failure, diabetes, or other chronic diseases.

By using sexual problems as early indicators of medical complications, doctors can capitalize on valuable lead time to treat their patients. "The first manifestation of early diabetes could be erectile dysfunction," said Zenilman. "It may not be what men want to hear, but if it's caught early enough, you can still do something about it."

In the case of depression, patients often go for years without being treated. If astute clinicians were able to make the connection between lack of sexual desire with psychiatric conditions such as depression or post-traumatic stress syndrome, patients could be offered treatment earlier, according to Zenilman.

Yet while sexual problems can be an indicator of poor health, the prospect of better sex may persuade people to lead healthier lives.

"Sex can be used as a great carrot for people," said McCullough. "People will be more willing to make lifestyle modifications to improve their health if they think they'll also get improved sex."

www.ap.org

Health Tip: Exercising During Pregnancy

2007-02-02T19:27:00.000-08:00

(HealthDay News) -- Assuming your doctor approves, exercise can help keep you healthy and feeling good during pregnancy.

While you should avoid strenuous activity, light exercise can offer many benefits during pregnancy.

The Nemours Foundation offers this partial list:

* Feeling better, having more energy, and getting better sleep at night.
* Reduced back pain and improved posture from stronger back, thigh and buttock muscles.
* Reduced stress and anxiety.
* Reduced risk of constipation.
* Less weight gain during pregnancy, and a quicker return to your pre-pregnancy weight.

Your body should tell you if it's had enough. Stop exercising immediately if you have any of the following symptoms:

* Fatigue.
* Dizziness.
* Heart palpitations.
* Shortness of breath.
* Pain in your back or pelvis.

www.healthday.com

Nigeria tests another 11 human samples for bird flu

2007-02-02T19:17:00.000-08:00

ABUJA (AFP) - Health officials in Nigeria, which this week announced its first human death from bird flu, have said they were testing 11 fresh human samples gathered from the nation's economic capital Lagos.

"The new samples have links with the initial 14 which we have tested. Some of them have interaction with the deceased," the director of public health of the federal health ministry, Abdullahi Nasidi, told AFP.

Nigeria's first bird-flu fatality was a 22-year-old woman who died on January 17 in Lagos, the biggest urban metropolis in Africa, after helping pluck and disembowel a chicken her family bought.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Friday in Geneva that it hoped to have results within days from tests on samples from the woman who is believed to have died from bird flu.

Preliminary tests have shown that the woman was positive for H5 type influenza A, WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said Friday.

He said a WHO-approved laboratory in Britain was testing to see if the 'N1' component was present, which would confirm Nigeria's first human case of the most virulent strain of bird flu, H5N1.

"We're not contradicting what the Nigerian ministry of health said, but for us it's important to have the test results," the spokesman told AFP.

"It's possible we could get the results today, they could be delayed for a couple of days," he added, while also raising the possibility that the samples might be flawed and could not yield a result.

The Nigerian government has said it would reinforce surveillance measures with a particular emphasis on monitoring human contact with poultry flocks.

Information Minister Frank Nweke promised to step up controls on hospitals, including private ones, and urged the population to alert the authorities to any fowl presenting symptoms of bird flu.

Radio and television stations across the country have this week mounted sensitisation blitz as part of government measures to curb the spread of the disease, residents said.

Health officials are also telling the population to eat only well-cooked poultry meat and eggs, even though none of the 160 deaths from bird flu worldwide has been traced to the consumption of meat from an infected fowl.

Authorities in Lagos said that around 700,000 birds have been culled since the disease was found in the city last year.

A government hospital has been especially dedicated for the treatment of those infected, Lagos health ministry permanent secretary Jide Idris said in a televised interview.

Three neighbouring countries -- Benin, Niger and Cameroon -- have said they are stepping up border controls.

www.afp.com

Zimbabwe to expand free AIDS drugs roll-out programme

2007-02-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

HARARE-AIDS-ravaged Zimbabwe plans to expand its free AIDS drugs roll-out programme, reaching out to 100,000 more patients by the end of the year, the country's health minister said this week.

With only 60,000 people currently accessing life-prolonging anti-retrovial (ARV) therapy, Health and Child Welfare Minister David Parirenyatwa said "at least 300,000 people will have access to the drugs by 2010".

"The aim is to have universal access to ARVs by 2010 and we know we are going to achieve that ... with the assistance of our partners and also money we will avail as government," Friday's official Herald newspaper quoted him as saying.

Parirenyatwa, who was speaking on Wednesday evening in the southwestern mining town of Kadoma, said the fresh programme would be bankrolled by the government, by donors through the United Nations Global Fund and by non-governmental organisations working in the southern African nation.

Zimbabwe last year received a 65-million-dollar grant from the Global Fund to bolster its fight against HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

It is one of the countries hardest hit by the HIV and AIDS pandemic, with at least 3,000 people dying weekly from AIDS-related illness -- or about one person every three minutes -- according to the National AIDS Council.

Zimbabwe has also experienced an upsurge in the number of tuberculosis cases linked to HIV and AIDS.

The National Aids Council says the HIV prevalence rate dropped from 24.6 percent in 2003 to 20.1 percent in 2005 and about 18.1 percent last year.

The health ministry last year signed another 40-million-dollar deal with Britain, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the UN agencies in the country to launch new HIV/AIDS projects.

Britain, Norway, Ireland and Sweden are to provide money while UN agencies are to provide technical support for the projects, which are set to run for the next three years.

www.afp.com

Bird flu can infect people via upper airway: expert

2007-02-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Leading scientists in Hong Kong have found that the H5N1 bird flu virus can infect cells in the upper airway of humans and need not penetrate deep in the lungs to cause infection.

A study by scientists based in the United States in 2006 suggested that H5N1 could not infect people easily because it had to first lodge itself deep inside the lungs, where it binds more easily to certain receptors called the alpha 2-3.

But in an article published in the January issue of the journal Nature Medicine, scientists from the University of Hong Kong found that the virus could infect the nasopharynx, an area behind the nose and above the soft palate, and the throat.

"On the earlier hypothesis, the virus has to go deep into the lungs to infect anybody but our research suggests that is not the case. The virus can get a foothold in the upper respiratory tract, it doesn't have to get deep down into the lungs," microbiology professor Malik Peiris told Reuters late on Friday.

Using discarded human tissues, Malik found both upper and lower human respiratory tracts could be infected by the virus.

"Even in the upper respiratory tract (where) the alpha 2-3 receptor seems to be lacking, the H5N1 can still infect the cells ... so it raises the question of whether there may be other receptors the virus is using and highlights the point that further study is needed."

However, he said there was no reason to panic.

"It is still not able in most cases to establish infection and has not been able to transmit human to human (efficiently). It doesn't change that situation as such," said Peiris, who has studied the H5N1 since 1997, when it made its first known jump to humans in Hong Kong, killing six people.

The virus re-emerged in late 2003 and has become endemic in several places in Asia. It has since infected 270 people around the world, killing 164 of them, according to latest figures from the World Health Organization.

It has flared up again in recent months, spreading through poultry flocks in Japan, Vietnam and Thailand, killing six people in Indonesia and claiming its first human life in Nigeria.

Although it remains a bird disease, experts still fear it could kill millions once it learns how to pass efficiently among people.

an Ee Lyn
www.reuters.com

Woman's fertility cycle affects brain, scans show

2007-01-30T05:49:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A woman's hormones affect specific parts of the brain called the reward pathway, researchers said on Monday in a finding that could offer insight into treating drug abuse and mood disorders.

A study of women playing an imaginary slot machine game showed their brain responses changed in anticipation of a payout depending on the phases of their menstrual cycles.

This might help explain other studies that show women get a bigger kick from cocaine and amphetamines during one phase of the fertility cycle -- and perhaps why women are less vulnerable to schizophrenia than men are, the researchers said.

"This demonstrates for the first time that female ... hormones affect the reward system in very specific ways during particular parts of the cycle," said Dr. Karen Berman of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, who worked on the study published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.

"It is interesting to speculate that this may have evolutionary advantages and may affect behaviors that have been shown in other studies to also be affected by cycles."

For instance, not only are women more susceptible to drug abuse at certain points, but they may also find testosterone-type facial traits in men more appealing at certain times in their cycles, Berman said.

What this does not mean is that women are somehow more emotional or vulnerable to hormones than men are, she stressed.

"I think it is important to keep in mind that this isn't the only thing that is going on in women's brains," she said in a telephone interview.

"We have very important regulatory areas and homeostatic mechanisms that keep us in line, keep us functioning, keep us focused, keep us productive," she added.

"I would really hate for this work to be interpreted in a way to make us seem that we are at the call of our hormones because I don't think that is the case."

Berman, working with Dr. Jean-Claude Dreher of France's national scientific research center CNRS and colleagues, used functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI to get real-time images of the brain activity of 15 women.

The women played a hypothetical slot machine game, with payouts of $10 or $20.

Different areas of the brain lit up in anticipation of a payout -- a reward -- depending on the menstrual cycle phase. For instance, during the midfollicular phase, which comes four to eight days after menstrual bleeding starts, the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala of the brain were more active.

At this phase, estrogen is produced but progesterone levels are low.

Berman said it is too soon to connect any of the findings with specific behaviors.

Berman noted that estrogen has been found to protect brain cells, and the findings could also shed light on other studies of why women develop schizophrenia later in life than men and at lower rates.

She would like to study women past menopause, who produce much lower levels of hormones.

Hormones also affect the brains of men, but in different ways, Berman said. Her team did not study men for this report.

Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
www.reuters.com

Health Tip: Is Your Baby Ready for Solid Food?

2007-01-30T05:44:00.000-08:00

If your baby is about 4 months old, you may be considering feeding her some solid food. But how do you know if your baby is ready?

The Nemours Foundation offers this checklist:

* Has she lost her tongue-thrusting reflex? This reflex -- which prevents her from choking on formula -- could cause her to push solid food from her mouth with her tongue.
* Can your baby hold her head up on her own? Before eating solid food, she needs to be able to support her own head and neck.
* Is she interested in food other than a bottle? If she is watching and reaching for your food, she's probably ready to try a few bites of her own.

www.healthday.com

France moves to stub out smoking

2007-01-30T05:35:00.000-08:00

PARIS (AFP) - Part one of a French ban on smoking in public places comes into force on Thursday, covering workplaces, schools and hospitals and setting the clock ticking for smoke-filled cafes and bars which have until next January to kick the habit.

Smokers will now have to stub out on the doorstep of shops, sports clubs and entertainment venues that still allowed smoking, while "smokers' corners" in school staff rooms and hospitals will vanish entirely.

Panicked owners of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and casinos -- anticipating a loss of custom in a country where almost one in three adults is a smoker -- have been given a year to prepare for the minor earthquake.

"From February 1, no one should be forced to breathe other people's smoke," Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said last week. "I am sure that in future our children will find it inconceivable that we used to smoke in offices or schools."

Unruly smokers will face fines of 68 euros (88 dollars) for lighting up in the wrong place, while business owners will be fined 135 euros.

Companies can choose to provide hermetically-sealed smoking rooms, with powerful extractor fans, but few are expected to install the costly systems, preferring to let staff puff away on the pavement and offer them advice on how to quit.

The rare exceptions to the new rules are places considered as "substitutes for the home" -- such as hotels or retirement homes.

The government has also said it will be lenient towards hospital patients with mental illnesses, who would not understand a sudden ban, or those already struggling to give up alcohol or drug addiction.

The February 1 ban is largely seen as a test run ahead of next year's complete ban on smoking in restaurants and bars -- a cultural earthquake in a country of coffee- and cigarette-lovers.

But some restaurants have already taken the bull by the horns, as in the southern city of Marseille where a growing number are going completely smoke-free well ahead of the legal deadline.

"We felt the time was right," said Stephane Pandeli, who runs a seafood restaurant, Toinou, in the city centre. He said he had not lost any custom, and even gained some as non-smokers flocked back.

"Eventually, people won't have a choice anyway. They haven't stopped catching the train or plane since they banned smoking," he said.

Around the corner, the Shambala oriental cafe has always been smoke-free. Its owner, Eric Martin, said he has a loyal customer base of "young women who come here when they're pregnant, then with the children", to enjoy the fragrance of tea and incense without the smell of smoke.

The Cafe des Epices, a restaurant perched in Marseille's historic Panier neighbourhood, is booked up a week in advance despite its smoking ban.

"We do a lot of work with spices. Cigarettes affect the taste buds -- people wouldn't get as much out of the chef's work" if people were smoking, said owner Eddy Reignoux.

But he admits the mild climate in Marseille -- as in Italy where a ban on smoking in restaurants has been an overall success -- is a help: smokers can comfortably nip outside with a glass of wine for an open-air cigarette.

Overall, recent figures show the number of French smokers to be rising, especially among the young. Smokers now account for 32 percent of 15- to 75-year-olds, and almost one in two in the 18 to 25 age bracket.

Smoking is thought to kill 66,000 people in France each year, while passive smoking claims some 6,000 lives -- 1,000 of them non-smokers, the rest smokers who also breathe the cigarette smoke of others.

The anti-smoking decree, adopted by the government last November, goes one step further than a 1991 law that banned cigarettes in many places including train stations and airports, but still allowed designated smoking areas.

www.afp.com

Another bird flu case suspected in Japan

2007-01-30T05:20:00.000-08:00

TOKYO (AFP) - Another outbreak of bird flu is suspected in Japan in what would be the fourth case this month, the farm ministry has said.

A total of 23 birds were found dead at a poultry farm in the town of Shintomicho in southwestern Miyazaki prefecture, the ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

"Seven samples out of 13 were positive in an initial examination checking whether there is a contamination by the bird flu virus," an official of the Miyazaki prefectural government told AFP.

They will cultivate the virus and send it to an animal laboratory to determine whether it is the toxic type of avian influenza.

The poultry farm in the suspected case owns some 93,000 chickens providing eggs for human consumption.

If confirmed, it would be the fourth outbreak of bird flu across Japan this month, amid fears that avian influenza could spread further.

Two cases of the virulent H5N1 strain were detected earlier this month in Miyazaki prefecture, while a third case of bird flu whose strain has yet to be verified was confirmed Monday in western Okayama prefecture.

H5N1 has killed around 160 people across the world since late 2003 and can be transmitted through contact with infected birds' waste.

Health officials have warned that if the disease mutated into a form easily transmissible by humans, it could cause a pandemic with the potential to kill millions of people.

Japan confirmed an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in January 2004. Since then, the nation has seen several further outbreaks of the H5N1 strain as well as the less serious H5N2 virus.

www.afp.com

Revlimid May Help Against Chronic Leukemia

2007-01-27T03:13:00.000-08:00

Summary: The drug Revlimid (lenalidomide) may be effective for some people with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that has not responded to other treatments or comes back after treatment, according to a small Phase 2 study. If the results hold true in larger clinical trials, Revlimid may prove to be another option for patients who otherwise have few treatments left to try.

Why it's important: CLL is considered an incurable form of cancer. Although many people live for many years with this disease, it does eventually come back after treatment. There are not many treatments that work in this situation, especially if people have already been treated with the chemotherapy drug fludarabine. Patients need more effective ways to tackle CLL after their initial treatments.

What's already known: Revlimid was approved in 2005 to treat a type of bone marrow disorder called myelodysplastic syndrome. It has also shown promise against multiple myeloma, another type of bone marrow cancer. In lab studies, the drug appears to decrease the production of substances that help CLL cells survive, and to encourage the leukemia cells to die through a natural process called apoptosis. Those studies prompted the researchers, from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, to try Revlimid in patients with CLL. They published their findings in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

How this study was done: The study included 45 people who had not responded to their CLL treatment or who had had a relapse after successful treatment. Most had been diagnosed with stage III or IV leukemia and were therefore considered high-risk patients. Participants took a Revlimid pill once a day. Treatment continued until the patients showed a response or had unacceptable side effects. Patients whose cancer progressed during treatment were given the drug Rituxan (rituximab) in addition to Revlimid.

What was found: Of the patients in whom a response could be measured, four (9%) had a complete response (no evidence of remaining disease) and 17 (38%) had a partial response to the Revlimid treatment. One patient died, and 3 saw their disease progress.

The Revlimid caused some side effects, including fatigue, low platelet counts, and low white cell counts. Two patients developed serious blood clots in the lungs. More than half of the participants in the study also experienced a flare reaction, which is a sudden swelling of the lymph nodes or spleen accompanied by fever and rash. This side effect was treated with ibuprofen. Patients who enrolled in the study later were given prednisone to make the flare reaction less severe if it did develop.

The bottom line: Although the researchers are concerned by the high percentage of side effects with the dose used in this study, they say Revlimid warrants further study in people with CLL. Future studies should explore different doses of Revlimid, and try combining Revlimid with other drugs that are effective against CLL (like Rituxan and the chemotherapy drug fludarabine), they say.

US donates protective gear to help Indonesia fight bird flu

2007-01-27T03:04:00.000-08:00

JAKARTA (AFP) - US ambassador B. Lynn Pascoe handed over 100,000 sets of protective equipment to help Indonesia in its fight against bird flu, which has killed six people this month.

The gear is part of a 24-million-dollar programme to help Indonesia combat the spread of the deadly virus, which has claimed 63 lives here since the start of 2005, the world's highest death toll.

"The most recent cases serve to remind us that we have not yet contained bird flu here in Indonesia, and must remain vigilant in both our continued efforts to detect and contain the virus and to educate the citizens of this nation," Pascoe said in a statement issued by the US embassy.

The protective suits, respirators, goggles and gloves will be distributed to people who come in direct contact with poultry or people infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The embassy said the United States would donate a total of 200,000 sets of protective gear and 2,000 decontamination kits for use at infected farms, hospitals, clinics and homes.

Health workers have begun slaughtering thousands of birds in the capital Jakarta ahead of a February 1 ban on backyard poultry, while poultry markets and slaughter houses are to be moved away from residential areas.

The ban is to be gradually extended to cover the whole country.

www.afp.com

Health Tip: Understanding Raynaud's Disease

2007-01-27T02:38:00.000-08:00

Raynaud's disease is a rare disorder in which the blood vessels occasionally narrow and reduce blood supply to areas like the fingers, toes and lips.

If the condition occurs without any known cause, it is known as Raynaud's disease. If it occurs as a result of a known cause, it's known as Raynaud's phenomenon.

In both types of Raynaud's, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says, narrowed vessels can be triggered by events like exposure to cold temperatures, stress and other emotions. The areas to which the blood supply is reduced -- most commonly fingers and toes -- may turn white or develop a bluish tinge. Less often, the condition affects the nose, ears, nipples and lips.

Once blood flow has returned to normal, the skin on the affected area may turn red, throb or feel numb or tingly.

For most people, Raynaud's is more of a bother than a dangerous condition, the institute says. But people with severe cases can suffer tissue damage, it adds.

Athletes' heart condition linked to exercise-induced damage: study

2007-01-22T01:38:00.000-08:00

CHICAGO (AFP) - Most athletes pay a physical price for their love of the sport, but the ones who engage in endurance sports may be pushing their bodies to the brink of heart failure, according to a new study.

That's because the physical wear and tear of years of heavy-duty workouts appear to weaken the heart muscle predisposing an athlete to a rare, but potentially deadly, condition called ventricular arrhythmia in which the heart beats erratically.

"There may be a limit to how much exercise the heart can tolerate," said Professor Hein Heidbuchel, a cardiologist at University Hospital Gasthuisberg at the University of Leuven in Belgium, and the author of the paper.

Researchers have known for some time that high-level athletes, like the cyclists who compete in the Tour de France, are susceptible to ventricular arrhythmia. What they didn't know was whether the irregular heartbeats were a result of a genetic flaw, or the product of over-training.

In this study, Heidbuchel and his team examined the heart function of a group of 22 athletes with ventricular arrhythmia, and compared it to the heart function of 15 healthy endurance athletes and a control group of 10 non-athletes. Most of the athletes were cyclists, with a handful of runners, kayakers, and footballers thrown in. All were Dutch and Belgian men aged 18 to 55.

The tests showed that in 18 of the 22 sportsmen with the heart problem, the irregular heartbeat originated in the right chamber or ventricle of the heart. Moreover, the structural weakness resulted in their hearts pumping less blood out of the right chamber than was the case in the healthier athletes.

Heidbuchel said further research is needed to rule out genetics as a factor, but the findings bolster the theory that the physical stress of high-level endurance exercise can damage the right chamber of the heart disrupting normal heart rate and rhythm.

"Lifelong endurance training may lead to heart disturbances, particularly in young male athletes," he said.

Heidbuchel said that while the condition is rare, athletes should watch out for the warning signs, such as a sudden shortness of breath during exercise, or brief blackouts, and seek out the proper testing, he said.

And he cautioned that this kind of heart damage is probably irreversible, and a positive diagnosis is essentially a career-ending proposition.

"It's uncommon, but if you find that there is right ventricular damage, the conclusion should be that your competitive career should stop," he said.

All of the sportsmen in the study who were shown to have malfunctioning right ventricles gave up competing, with some of them switching careers to become trainers.

Some of the athletes were internationally known cyclists who had competed in the Tour de France, according to Heidbuchel.

The study appears in the European Heart Journal.

www.afp.com

China's anti-doping show hits the road ahead of Olympics

2007-01-22T01:29:00.000-08:00

BEIJING (AFP) - An anti-doping exhibition in China has hit the road in a bid to root out a problem that could jeopardize the success of the 2008 Olympic Games in the country.

Chinese and international sports officials say that China has made great strides in recent years in improving its own checkered record on doping but has yet to tackle the problem at its source.

"Our goal is to take this exhibition around the country this year so that everyone will have a chance to see and understand what the problem is," said Lin Wenyi, the head of the Beijing Olympic organising committee's science and technology panel, who opened the roadshow here last week.

The exhibition, titled "Olympics -- 40 years of anti-doping" showcases vials of performance-enhancing drugs and poster-size photos and wallcharts showing the history of doping in sport, including one shot of a hypodermic syringe thrust into an athlete's arm.

But there are no specific displays concerning China's own history of battling performance-enhancing drugs.

China was a latecomer to the anti-drug bandwagon and its reputation was battered by several major drug busts in the 1990s. More than 40 positive tests since 1990 made China the league leader in the field.

But China's embarrassed sports leaders have maintained a strong crackdown in recent years.

In 2004 China enacted laws specifically cracking down on coaches who administer the drugs, providing for life bans for offenders.

"They took very restrictive measures," said International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge after the 2004 Olympics. "There are no longer any compromises."

However, in the run up to the 2008 Games, cynics suggest that Chinese coaches will try to ensure that China tops the medal table by fair means or foul after coming second to the United States in 2004 in Athens.

Following the 2005 drug bust of Sun Yingjie, China's top female distance runner and an Olympic bronze medallist over 10,000m, one sports insider said it was routine for coaches to administer "medicine".

"Athletes are given this medicine in a regular way like a medical supplement is given at a hospital," the coach told state media on condition of anonymity. "The effect of the 'medicine' on the results are obvious."

Evidence that doping remains a major problem at provincial level and below emerged last August at a sports school in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

Authorities found about 450 bottles of performance enhancing drugs, some being used by athletes as young as 15 years of age.

In a comprehensive survey of young athletes in 2005 by the Beijing University of Sports Culture, five percent of student athletes said they had taken drugs and more than 11 percent said they were considering doing so.

"The problem is not what is happening at the top. It is out in the country which is more difficult to control," said Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, during a recent visit to China.

Driven by the short-cut to glory and massive financial rewards in China, there will always be coaches and athletes ready to use drugs, according to Yang Shumin, the former head of China's Olympic doping control centre and an expert on anabolic steroids.

"China has a no-tolerance doping policy," he said. "But in any country there are athletes who want to take drugs. There is not much that can be done about it except through education and very harsh sanctions."

www.afp.com

News confirms suspicions of breast cancer survivor

2007-01-21T11:44:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Diane Balma felt vindicated when she heard the news -- Canadian researchers had discovered that women with dense breasts, making their mammograms difficult to read, had a far higher risk of cancer.

They found that women with the densest breasts had four to six times the risk of breast cancer compared with women with the fattiest, and easiest-to-image, breasts.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Norman Boyd of the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto and colleagues said breast density itself could be a risk factor for breast cancer.

The other risk factors include having a close relative with breast cancer, carrying one of the known BRCA breast cancer genes and never having borne a child.

Balma had none of the other risk factors, but was worried when she felt a lump in her breast 11 years ago at age 30.

"I wasn't doing self-exams at the time," said Balma, who is now director of public policy at the non-profit Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. "I just happened to come upon it. It was quite large and pretty deep."

She went immediately for a mammogram -- not a routine recommendation for women under 40, but Balma was worried.

"It did not show on the mammogram," said Balma in a telephone interview. She had dense breasts, which show up on an X-ray like a white mass of tissue. Tumors in fatty breasts usually show up more clearly.

Her radiologist, a doctor who specializes in reading X-rays such as mammograms and other scans, was not especially worried but ordered an ultrasound.

"I was relatively small-breasted. Even so, he was barely able to find it on the ultrasound," Balma said. "When he did see it, his words to me were, 'You know, you are too young. I wouldn't worry about this. I am sure it is not cancer."'

But it was.

LIFE-SAVING DECISION

"I decided to have it removed and it was a decision that saved my life," Balma said. Her surgeon discovered a very large tumor that turned out to be an aggressive type of cancer.

Balma eventually had both breasts removed and endured six rounds of chemotherapy. She has been cancer-free for 11 years.

"I have always known that dense breast tissue makes breast cancer harder to detect. But I also wondered if it brought a greater risk of breast cancer," Balma said.

The Canadian study, published on Thursday, appeared to confirm that.

Breast cancer will be found in 180,510 men and women in 2007 in the United States alone and will kill 40,900, according to the
American Cancer Society. Globally, it affects 1.2 million people a year.

The deaths are almost exclusively in people whose cancer is found too late, and young women under 40 make up about 5 percent of that number. Most cases are in women past menopause.

Mammograms are only recommended for women who know they are at high risk, and for women over the age of 40. How would a younger women such as Balma even know she had dense breasts and thus perhaps have a higher risk?

"That is a question that has not been answered yet," said Dr. Cheryl Perkins, senior clinical adviser at the Foundation.

"We need more study of breast cancer in young women. We comprise far fewer breast cancers but our tumors tend to be more aggressive and more deadly," said Balma.

Perkins agreed. Younger women have fewer treatment options, she said. "Those types of breast cancer tend to metastasize (spread) early. They tend to metastasize to the brain," Perkins said.

Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

How your baby goes from ‘Da-Da’ to Daddy

2007-01-11T20:15:00.000-08:00

SEATTLE - It is one of the great wonders of humanity: A baby hears parents and others talking and learns to speak. Now, with parents volunteering their infants, researchers at the University of Washington are learning just what happens in the babies' brain to make that miracle unfold.

A cap with electrodes on the baby's head painlessly records signals from the brain's nerve cells. It all happens in a sound-proof room, on mom's lap, with one of the researchers working to keep the child happy.

The scientists play sounds like "Ba" and "Da" — key components of language.

As the child recognizes them, the machines record the brain pattern

"This is a technological tour de force," says Dr. Patricia Kuhl, who heads the project. "If you take a newborn — a six-monther and a 12-monther — dramatic changes are happening in the brain."

First, trillions of new nerve connections form in the part of the brain called Wernicke's Area, which is responsible for speech recognition. A few months later, neurons come alive in Broca's Area, the part responsible for speech.

"It's as though Broca's Area is saying, 'Oh, I recognize that. It's something that my mouth, and tongue, and lips can produce,'" says Kuhl.

The research has revealed that there can be enormous variation in how quickly the young brains respond. Researchers hope that by discovering how babies normally acquire language, they'll learn how to intervene if something is wrong and the process is not going properly

This could lead to better interventions to prevent autism, dyslexia and other problems.

But already it has reinforced what every parent knows — that the more you talk and read to your child — the faster the brain develops language.

Robert Bazell
msnbs.msn.com

Inspiration or static? TV, iPods affect workouts

2007-01-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

Audio, video keep some exercisers pumped but distract others, experts say Jennifer Unruh can run a mile in two songs. “I’ve got it figured out,” said Unruh, who moves to the beat of Van Halen and The Fray on her iPod. “Usually, every song lasts about four minutes.

I run a mile in a little over eight. So if I can get through two songs, I know I’m a mile though my run.”

Gyms are jammed with people like Unruh — the guy on the treadmill watching ESPN, the aerobic class bouncing to “Hollaback Girl,” the spinner reading Self magazine. Words, images and especially songs can provide inspiration for exercisers, as well as a distraction from tedium and discomfort.

Unruh, director of wellness support at the YMCA of Metropolitan Atlanta, uses her songs-per-mile mind games as a way to keep engaged.

But are those distractions good or bad for exercisers? Researchers say it cuts both ways. Yes, a dose of video or audio can inspire better workouts. But distractions also can hurt performance. In a way, music can add static to the mind-body connection.

Since the dawn of the Walkman, headphones have been as important as sneakers to many exercisers. Jacqueline Wojtusik, an Albany, N.Y.-area fashion designer who wears headphones for her regular workouts, listens to disco, ’80s dance, electronic — anything as long as it has a fast beat.

“If it has a higher beat per minute,” she said, “then I tend to stay with that beat.”

Science is on her side.

In a 2005 study, British researchers put 18 undergraduates on stationary bicycles to pedal either to silence or to “popular electronic dance music” on headphones. Participants worked about 13 percent harder to the up-tempo music compared with silence. One of the researchers, Sam Carr, suggested in an e-mail interview that music competes with an exercisers’ awareness of how hard they’re breathing, or how much their legs ache.

Psychologists sometimes use the phrase “dissociation effect” to describe distractions like music and TV, and they have found it can have other benefits.

Dr. James Annesi, a health psychologist who works at the same Atlanta YMCA as Unruh, found that novice exercisers given a choice of TV or music were more apt to stick with an exercise program than those told to focus only on their exertions or people limited to one type of media. If the gyms look like media centers, that’s fine by Annesi, as long as it encourages people to exercise.

“The more dissociation the better, the more we can distance the people from their discomfort,” he said.

Still, athletes digging deep for peak performance would do well to ditch the headphones and focus on their bodies. Studies have shown that the more distracted the athlete, the slower the times, said Ohio University psychology professor Benjamin Ogles.

“If you want to maintain a high level of intensity, you pretty much have to focus on your body,” he said.

This is related to the belief that noisy gadgets interfere with the intensely focused mental state many athletes refer to as “flow.” For instance, visitors to the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Mass., are encouraged to leave the headphones behind. Jennifer Young, director of healthy living programs, said she wants to keep visitors’ mind-body connections strong.

Hikers at Kripalu are coached to “scan” their bodies by concentrating sequentially on their ankles, hips, shoulders and so on. Even during weightlifting — an activity linked more to Metallica then meditation — people are asked to visualize what their muscles are doing, or to focus on their breathing.

“Don’t turn out and turn off,” Young said, “because then there’s that underlying signal, ‘Oh, working out is something I don’t want to do. I’m escaping it by doing this.’ ”

Even Anna Fyodorova, a triathlete from New York City who calls the iPod one of the “greatest creations made” for training, sees its limits. When other runners wore their ear buds during a recent 60-kilometer race, she decided against it.

“When you’re racing, you have to concentrate,” she said. “You have to be totally in the moment.”

www.ap.org

Cartoons with faces to help autistic children

2007-01-10T03:33:00.000-08:00

LONDON (AFP) - British autism experts launched an innovative new way of helping children with the condition to recognize emotions, using youngster-friendly animated videos.

A DVD entitled 'The Transporters' features the adventures of toy vehicles which have real moving human faces digitally pasted on, with each of 15 episodes focused on a particular emotion, such as happiness, fear and surprise.

"Autistic children are drawn to and fascinated by vehicles because of their predictable and repetitive motion," said Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, which co-produced the DVD.

"We decided to combine toy vehicles and human faces to create an entertaining way of helping them learn about emotions and facial expressions," he told AFP.

Autistic children dislike the unpredictability of human behaviour, typically shying away from contact with others, and have a limited capacity to understand other people's emotions.

A study of 20 autistic children showed that, after a month of watching the series, their ability to recognise emotions had markedly improved, enough to catch up with typically-developing children in their age-group.

One parent, whose five-year-old son Tom participated in the initial research, said it also improved his relations with his siblings.

"Tom and his sister Sophia would often fight because they didn't understand each other," explained Carole, without giving her full name. "As well as helping Tom, the DVD helped her to empathise with her brother's problems and find ways to help and communicate better with him."

She praised the decision to distribute the DVD -- narrated by British actor Stephen Fry -- for free.

"Other materials designed to help autistic children are usually extremely expensive, less stimulating and require constant active engagement from the parents," she said.

Professor Baron-Cohen hopes that families receiving one of the 30,000 DVDs will volunteer to help the team conduct a more in-depth investigation of the effects of the project.

The next step, he told AFP, is to carry out research with autistic children as young as two to see if the findings can help them. He also hopes to probe the changes taking place in the brains of children using the series.

The DVD includes material to accompany the animation series, such as interactive quizzes, to help children and parents reap the full benefits of the content.

'The Transporters' was produced by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, in conjunction with the Autism Research Centre and animation production company Catalyst Pictures.

Nina Sologubenko
www.afp.com

Black men in focus in U.S. HIV drug trial

2007-01-10T03:26:00.000-08:00

ATLANTA - AIDS research in the United States has often focused on gay white men because the virus was identified early in that group and they developed an effective lobbying voice. But a clinical trial by the AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta is focusing on gay black men, who are not as well organized but who have a higher incidence of the disease.

The trial aims to determine whether an AIDS drug is safe for people who are negative for
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It has stirred debate among participants and researchers about gay sexuality within the black community and its attitude to safe sex.

"The black gay community has become complacent about HIV and STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) as a whole," said Duncan Teague, recruitment coordinator for the project.

"A lot of people in the black gay community are looking for love so they have sex because they think that means that that person loves them," Teague said.

Blacks make up around 12.8 percent of the U.S. population but comprised 50 percent of new diagnoses of HIV in 2003, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S.
Census Bureau.

In Georgia, 78 percent of people diagnosed with AIDS and 81 percent of people diagnosed with HIV in 2005 were black, as were almost all of the women who were newly diagnosed, said Melanie Thompson, the trial's lead investigator.

"African-American men are disproportionately affected by HIV and underrepresented in clinical trials. We are testing in order to know whether a drug is safe for the people who will ultimately use the drug," she said.

"While the study is open to men of any race, we are working hard to enroll as many men of color as possible," she said.

The trial involves giving daily doses of the drug tenofovir, an anti-retroviral drug made by Gilead Sciences Inc. and marketed as Viread, to men.

Participants, who could also be given a placebo, complete a computerized questionnaire about their sex lives and get risk-reduction counseling and condoms at every visit.

TUSKEGEE EXPERIMENT

As a control, half the group don't receive the drug for the first nine months to see if taking a pill that might potentially make them less likely to contract HIV might encourage men to take more risks with sexual health.

It's part of a long-term project that includes similar studies in Botswana and Thailand and elsewhere to determine if a drug that suppresses the AIDS virus could one day be used as a prophylactic to prevent people from contracting it.

Researchers said one reason for the reluctance of blacks to participate in the study is the legacy of the notorious 40-year-long Tuskegee experiment, which was exposed in 1972 and led to an apology by President
Bill Clinton on behalf of the government to the victims.

In that experiment, the U.S. Public Health Service starting in 1932 told 400 blacks with syphilis in Alabama they had "bad blood," leaving the syphilis untreated to study its long-term effects on the body.

Some 43 percent of men enrolled in the AIDS drug study are black but many others were reluctant to take part because of misunderstandings about what the study entails and fear within the black community about clinical trials, Thompson said.

"My first question was 'Wait, are you going to inject me with the HIV virus?,"' said Dorrington Poitier, who is now taking part.

Atlanta is considered by some the gay capital of black America and gays organize an annual gay black pride festival on the Labor Day weekend.

Despite the large numbers of at-risk men, researchers said lack of organization within the gay black community had made it harder to promote awareness and mobilize against AIDS, which in addition had killed some community leaders.

"AIDS has sucked so much energy out of the community. The leaders started dropping dead, started getting sick. And we have been trying to replace them but against the odds," Teague said.

Another underlying reason for the prevalence of HIV infection was the stigma still attached to homosexuality within some parts of the black community, which left some gay men vulnerable to a degree of social isolation that made poor choices on safe sex easier.

"People within the black community say: 'It's fine to be gay but ... don't wear it on your sleeve. They see black as something you can't really hide but they don't want you to be gay in public," said Anthony McWilliams, a project organizer.

Matthew Bigg
www.reuters.com

Indonesia establishes health crisis centres in disaster zones

2007-01-10T03:12:00.000-08:00

JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesia has established health crisis centres to ensure a quick response to the many disasters which afflict the country."Quick response to disasters is a priority. We set up crisis centres in nine regions so we don't have to go through Jakarta to quickly respond to disasters," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told reporters Wednesday.

The disaster-prone areas covered include Medan, covering northern Sumatra and Aceh, Riau, Jambi, Java, Kalimantan and Sulawesi.

The centres are able to respond quickly with money, food and medicine in the event of a disaster.

They have already been put through their paces.

In recent weeks the crisis centres have helped out following a deadly earthquake and landslides in northern Sumatra, massive floods in Aceh province, Riau and West Kalimantan and two ferry sinkings.

According to government estimates, Indonesia suffers an average of 2.75 natural disasters a day, whether quakes, landslides, floods or other crises.

The Indonesian archipelago sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire where continental plates meet, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

Supari also presented her department's achievements over the past two years, pointing to a "significant drop in the infant mortality rate from 35 per 1,000 births in 2004 to 30.8 per 1,000 births in 2006."

The maternal mortality rate dropped from 307 in 2004 to 262 per 100,000 births by the end of 2006.

By comparison, the corresponding reported figures for the United States are six and eight, respectively.

www.afp.com

Ready to lose weight in '07? 4 steps to success

2007-01-01T02:33:00.000-08:00

So you want to shed pounds — now what? How to get moving already

Like so many people, you have made a resolution to lose weight in the new year. Now what? Are you like the reader who sent this plea? “I can’t lose weight. I just don’t know where to start.”

So much conflicting advice is out there that it is no surprise if you are confused. Here are the basic steps to get started.

Are you ready?
Long-term weight management requires new eating and activity habits. Change takes effort. Failure is demoralizing. Before you start, first ask yourself why you want to lose weight. Your reasons need to be specific, for example, to improve your health, to increase your energy level, to look better. Are your reasons important to you? Important enough to sustain you when choosing between a cheeseburger with fries and a grilled chicken sandwich with a salad? Will your resolve keep you going against the reality of your everyday life? Ask yourself:

* Do you have a lot of stress in your life? If, for example, you are in the middle of a job change or a move, these may undermine your weight loss.
* Do you have the time to learn new eating habits and to fit physical activity into your day?
* Do you have the support of those around you?

If your motivation is high, and the support and timing are right, let’s get started. If you are not ready now, you can still strive to make some healthy changes.

What kind of loser are you?
Should you do it on your own? Many people who have successfully lost weight use books or the Internet. There are hundreds of choices, so you should be able to find advice that fits your needs.

If you don't think you can do it on your own, consider joining a commercial weight-loss program such as Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers or TOPS (Take off Pounds Sensibly). These are all balanced programs that will provide guidance and praise for your achievements.

Before you begin, talk to your doctor. This is important to ensure that you are healthy enough to change your diet and increase your activity. Most medical practices can give you advice about diet and exercise, and should be able to tell you if a book or a commercial program is sound. Keep in touch with your doctor as you lose weight. You are likely to see health improvements, and these may require changes in the medications you take for weight-related disorders such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

Barbara Rolls, Ph.D.
msnbc.msn.com

ANOREXIA

2006-12-30T16:40:00.000-08:00

What is anorexia nervosa?

Anorexia nervosa is an illness that usually occurs in teenage girls, but it can also occur in teenage boys, and adult women and men. People with anorexia are obsessed with being thin. They lose a lot of weight and are terrified of gaining weight. They believe they are fat even though they are very thin. Anorexia isn't just a problem with food or weight. It's an attempt to use food and weight to deal with emotional problems.

What is the difference between anorexia and bulimia?

People with anorexia starve themselves, avoid high-calorie foods and exercise constantly. People with bulimia eat huge amounts of food, but they throw up soon after eating, or take laxatives or diuretics (water pills) to keep from gaining weight. People with bulimia don't usually lose as much weight as people with anorexia.

Why do people get anorexia?

The reason some people get anorexia isn't known. People with anorexia may believe they would be happier and more successful if they were thin. They want everything in their lives to be perfect. People who have this disorder are usually good students. They are involved in many school and community activities. They blame themselves if they don't get perfect grades, or if other things in life are not perfect.

What are the problems caused by anorexia?

Girls with anorexia usually stop having menstrual periods. People with anorexia have dry skin and thinning hair on the head. They may have a growth of fine hair all over their body. They may feel cold all the time, and they may get sick often. People with anorexia are often in a bad mood. They have a hard time concentrating and are always thinking about food. It is not true that anorexics are never hungry. Actually, they are always hungry. Feeling hunger gives them a feeling of control over their lives and their bodies. It makes them feel like they are good at something--they are good at losing weight. People with severe anorexia may be at risk of death from starvation.

What is the treatment for anorexia?

Treatment of anorexia is difficult, because people with anorexia believe there is nothing wrong with them. Patients in the early stages of anorexia (less than 6 months or with just a small amount of weight loss) may be successfully treated without having to be admitted to the hospital. But for successful treatment, patients must want to change and must have family and friends to help them.
People with more serious anorexia need care in the hospital, usually in a special unit for people with anorexia and bulimia. Treatment involves more than changing the person's eating habits. Anorexic patients often need counseling for a year or more so they can work on changing the feelings that are causing their eating problems. These feelings may be about their weight, their family problems or their problems with self-esteem. Some anorexic patients are helped by taking medicine that makes them feel less depressed. These medicines are prescribed by a doctor and are used along with counseling.

How can family and friends help?

The most important thing that family and friends can do to help a person with anorexia is to love them. People with anorexia feel safe, secure and comfortable with their illness. Their biggest fear is gaining weight, and gaining weight is seen as loss of control. They may deny they have a problem. People with anorexia will beg and lie to avoid eating and gaining weight, which is like giving up the illness. Family and friends should not give in to the pleading of the anorexic patient.

Warning signs of anorexia

* Deliberate self-starvation with weight loss
* Fear of gaining weight
* Refusal to eat
* Denial of hunger
* Constant exercising
* Greater amounts of hair on the body or the face
* Sensitivity to cold temperatures
* Absent or irregular periods
* Loss of scalp hair
* A self-perception of being fat when the person is really too thin

source : American Academy of Family Physicians

Video Game Injuries a Holiday Hazard

2006-12-28T08:20:00.000-08:00

THURSDAY, Dec. 28 (HealthDay News) -- For those children who got new video games and systems this Christmas, parents need to make sure their youngsters don't suffer hand and thumb injuries caused by overuse of those games, the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) says.

Constant stress on tendons, nerves and ligaments in children's hands and arms can cause long-term problems such as tendonitis, bursitis and carpal tunnel syndrome, according to Cindy Miles, owner of a pediatrics physical therapy practice in Whitehall, Pa.

Symptoms of repetitive stress injuries caused by overuse of video games include fatigue and loss of strength, minor or acute aches and pains, burning and tingling.

The APTA offers the following tips on how to prevent injuries caused by overuse of video games:

* Keep wrists straight. Don't let them bend downward when holding a game controller.
* Practice good posture while playing. Sit in a chair that provides solid back support and keep your feet comfortably on the floor.
* Stretch and move. Get up and stretch about every 20 minutes to give your head, neck and shoulder muscles a break.
* Watch for warning signs such as headaches, fatigue, muscle pain or cramping. If you notice these signs, take a break or do a different activity.

healthday.com

Africa has high-tech tools to beat meningitis

2006-12-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

DAKAR (Reuters) - A young girl, unconscious by the time her mother brought her to a rural clinic in southern Burkina Faso, had the classic symptoms of meningitis: fever, stiffness, vomiting.
With treatment, doctors hoped to be able to save her life although she may be permanently disabled: deafness, epilepsy or paralysis are among the effects of the disease. This latest outbreak in the remote Leraba region bordering Ivory Coast triggered alarms far away in the capital, Ouagadougou, amid fears of another epidemic wave of the disease.
In the arid Sahel region south of the Sahara, every year from December through May thousands of people, many of them children, get meningitis. Up to one in 10 who contract the disease die. Africa's "meningitis belt," stretching from Senegal to Ethiopia through some of the world's poorest and most war-scarred places including Sudan's Darfur, accounts for more than half the cases of the disease worldwide each year.
Climate conditions such as dust wind and cold nights increase the risk of the illness along with overcrowded living and the movement of large populations. Now health workers using high-tech methods to diagnose, control and even predict the disease hope to reduce its grim toll.
They say a new low-cost vaccine, lasting longer than those currently available, could be available as soon as 2009. A new test should make diagnosis quicker. And by studying the climate, they hope to be able to tell in advance where the disease will hit, and intervene before the first patient gets sick.
Experts say the new vaccine could eradicate meningitis from a community in much the same way that sustained vaccinations have all but wiped out polio worldwide."That is going to change the face of epidemic meningitis in the region," said William Perea, a
World Health Organization (WHO) meningitis expert.

NEW EPIDEMIC

Meningitis cases in the region reached a 20-year low in 2005. But then by April 2006, more than 30,000 had been reported to the WHO -- five times as many as the previous year. The pattern is typical. Since the 1970s, there have been meningitis epidemic waves every decade or so, each lasting three to four years.
Experts say last year's surge signals the start of another major epidemic in the Sahel region. In a worst-case scenario, according to WHO estimates, there could be as many as 160,000 cases in the next two years. Meningitis is an infection of the thin lining that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. It is caused by different bacteria but when diagnosed early and treated with antibiotics many patients recover fully.
It can cause complications including brain damage, deafness and learning problems. About 5-10 percent of patients die from the illness, according to the WHO. It is an infectious illness that is spread by sneezing, coughing and living in close quarters. Early symptoms include a stiff neck, headache, fever and sensitivity to light.
Health workers across the meningitis belt report cases to a central agency, in cooperation with the WHO, every week. "In a district of fewer than 30,000 people, we try to compare the figures from two weeks," said Salam Sanne, director of emergency medicine in Burkina Faso for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF --
Doctors Without Borders), who helped treat the girl.
"If there are two cases, and next week there are four, then we consider it an epidemic."
When the alarm is raised, medical teams spring into action to supply extra antibiotics and launch a vaccination campaign. But the WHO's Perea said the current system is not enough. For one thing, it is too slow because vaccines are targeted against specific strains of the disease. Identifying each means first sending a bacteria sample from the patient's spinal fluid to a laboratory: "The whole response may be delayed," he said.
And the current vaccine is not effective enough. "The current vaccine has a short-lived immunity. In three years there is no more immunity," said Perea. A quick and simple diagnostic test, now in final trials at Niger's Center for Medical and Health Research, should help.
"You just put a few drops of the cerebral-spinal fluid in the tube and you put your dipstick inside your tube and about 10 minutes later you will have the result," said Suzanne Chanteau, director of the research team that developed the test.

WATCHING THE DUST

Her team, known by its French acronym CERMES, is also working on improving predictions of where the next outbreak will hit. "There is a hypothesis that the low humidity in this region and also maybe the dust winds are favorable conditions for the development of infection," Chanteau said.
Researchers use satellite data to track Sahara dust storms and determine the extent of the connection between the dry, dusty air and meningitis. "We want to have atmospheric conditions categorized and be able to say if ... there are favorable conditions to have meningitis or not," says Isabelle Jeanne, head of the Geographic Information Systems-based project at CERMES. "The whole time-length will be shortened for intervention," Perea said, adding that vaccines and other new technology should help "eliminate epidemics from the belt."

Naomi Schwarz
www.reuters.com

Brazil transfixed by 4th anorexia death

2006-12-28T07:42:00.000-08:00

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The struggle for food has long been a drama for millions of impoverished Brazilians. But these days the nation is transfixed by another sort of starvation: anorexia among the successful and well off. The deaths of four young women in recent weeks from anorexia — a disorder characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, an aversion to food and severe weight loss — have been splashed across the front pages of newspapers nationwide.

The subject has become a morbid fascination for Brazilians, and is even the theme of a popular TV soap opera. It has also touched off a debate within Brazil's fashion industry that has long presented the rail-thin model as the paragon of female beauty.

The most recent victim was Beatriz Cristina Ferraz Lopes Bastos, a 23-year-old teacher whose death Sunday at a hospital in Jau, 200 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, was reported by national television news programs.

Local media reports said she was 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighed just 77 pounds.

"Another victim of anorexia," the newspaper Globo said on its Web site Tuesday, alongside a glamorous photo of the blonde Bastos, who was also a skilled pianist, amateur historian and author of a literature column for a hometown Web site.

The newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported she described herself as "thin" on an Internet discussion group and friends said they had to "fight with her to eat." A former boyfriend, Leandro Murgo, told reporters Bastos was a chubby teenager and became fixated on losing weight.

Anorexia became big news in Brazil last month with the death of 21-year-old Ana Carolina Reston, a successful model who died of generalized infection caused by anorexia nervosa. She reportedly carried just 88 pounds on her 5-foot-8 frame.

"Take care for your children because their loss is irreparable," Reston's mother, Miriam, told Globo after her death. "Nothing can make the pain go away. No money in the world is worth the life of your child."

Two days later, on Nov. 16, college student Carla Sobrado Casalle, 21, died in the southeastern city of Araraquara, also with symptoms linked to anorexia. She was just under 5-foot-9 and weighed 99 pounds. A third anorexia victim died later in the month.

Eating disorders are also a daily subject for viewers of the prime-time soap opera "The Pages of Our Lives," in which a 15-year-old ballet dancer suffers from bulimia, secretly making herself vomit after eating to keep her weight down.

Death and illness from malnourishment is not uncommon in this nation of 185 million people, where 26.5 million must survive on the minimum wage of $160 a month or less. According to the IBGE Census Institute, at least 8 percent of Brazilians are underweight.

As it has in other countries, the attention on eating disorders is renewing pressures on Brazil's fashion industry, whose officials insist they do not urge models to starve themselves to attain an "ideal" body.

They noted a fashion show in Sao Paulo already had said it would bar models under age 16 as part of a national effort to raise awareness about eating disorders.

"In Paris and Milan, models under 16 years can't participate in these types of events," said Paula Marini, a spokeswoman for the Ford Models agency. "In Brazil, this is a new procedure."

Europeans also have stepped up their attention to the sometimes unhealthy aspects of fashionable looks. Organizers of Madrid's Fashion Week, for instance, announced in September that they was banning overly thin models.

Organizers of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, held every year in late January, added the minimum-age requirement to a previous rule requiring that agencies present a signed medical certificate attesting that their models are in good health.

"Beauty and fashion is about health in the first place," the creative director of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, Paulo Borges, said in a statement in July.

PETER MUELLO, Associated Press Writer
www.ap.org

How to get healthy in 4 hours a week

2006-12-26T00:01:00.000-08:00

A Nielsen Media Research report from fall 2006 shows that the average American spends four hours and 35 minutes watching television each day. Each week, television viewing adds up to more than 30 hours — well beyond a part-time job.

Other reports show that national and local commercials now total an average of eight minutes for every half-hour show. So the average viewer is watching 40 minutes of commercials a day, or more than four and a half hours weekly.

Television is not necessarily wasted time, as people use it to relax and learn. But lack of time is one of the most commonly reported reasons that people don’t exercise or plan and prepare healthier meals. Perhaps it is worth considering the benefits that the time you spend watching television could bring.

A gold mine of time
If lack of time keeps you from adopting some healthful habits but you aren’t ready to reduce your television-watching time, you might reconsider the way you spend your commercial-watching time. There are several different approaches you could take to make use of this gold mine of time.

First, you could use commercial times to accomplish those health-supporting tasks you never seem to get done. Many people find that one of the secrets to healthier eating is to plan meals ahead. This allows you to grocery shop more efficiently and avoid the stress that comes when you haven’t given dinner a thought until a few minutes before you hope to eat. In the course of an hour of television programming, you could plan close to a week’s worth of meals and perhaps even write the grocery list for a weekly shopping trip.

People often say that they would like to save money and eat better by bringing their lunch to work, but that they have no time to make it. Others say they find no time to prepare the fruit they’d like to have with their breakfast. Commercials offer plenty of time to do these tasks. You could also assemble foods for the next day’s breakfast.

What about fitness goals that are never met? In a single commercial break you could do several sets of crunches to tone those ab muscles, other strength-training exercises or stretches to improve your flexibility. Stashing weights or exercise bands near the television allows you to readily start an activity when the commercials start.

A second approach is to use commercials to take care of small general tasks that eat up the time you’d like to spend going for a walk or attending a fitness class. By using commercials to pay bills, do laundry and sort through mail and e-mails, the average American can accumulate more than four hours of time saved in the course of a week, enough to make a substantial boost in exercise time.

Technology offers a third option. If you have a recording technology, you can record television shows and fast-forward through the commercials. You can finish four and a half hours of television shows in fewer than four hours. The trick, however, is to use the extra time to work for you, instead of to watch yet another show.

Nutrition Notes is provided by the American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C.

cancer

2006-12-25T23:06:00.000-08:00

What is cancer?

The organs and tissues of the body are made up of tiny building blocks called cells. Cells in different parts of the body may look and work differently but most reproduce themselves in the same way. Cells are constantly becoming old and dying, and new cells are produced to replace them. Normally, the division and growth of cells is orderly and controlled but if this process gets out of control for some reason, the cells will continue to divide and develop into a lump which is called a tumour. Tumours can either be benign or malignant. Cancer is the name given to a malignant tumour.
In a benign tumour the cells do not spread to other parts of the body and so are not cancerous. However, if they continue to grow at the original site, they may cause a problem by pressing on the surrounding organs.
It is important to realise that cancer is not a single disease with a single type of treatment. There are more than 200 different kinds of cancer, each with its own name and treatment.

What is a cancer cell?

And just as there are hundreds of types of cell, there are hundreds of types of cancer, few of which can be treated in the same way. Every cell's life is mapped out in advance by coded instructions, called genes, held in its nucleus. These tell it how to behave, when to reproduce by dividing - and when to die.
When the instructions relating to cell multiplication and dying are wrong, the cell may start dividing uncontrollably, and not die when it should. In addition, the cancer may not follow the usual instructions that keep cells spaced out properly.
Every time the cell divides, the "bad" instruction is reproduced, so the out-of-control multiplication carries on. As these cells can be multiplying more rapidly than healthy cells, the cancer cells can form a growing lump in the body called a tumour or a lesion. As this gets larger, it can even grow its own vessels to keep it supplied with blood. A benign, or non-cancerous tumour shares this uncontrolled growth, but will not generally invade neighbouring tissues and damage them.
Tumours which do this are "malignant", or "cancerous". The type of cell in which the cancer starts will generally determine the speed at which it grows, and its resistance to treatment, although there are many variations.
Cancers harm health in a number of ways. The very size of the tumour can interfere with nearby organs, or ducts which carry important chemicals, causing pain or other symptoms.
For example, a tumour on the pancreas can grow to block the bile duct, leading to the patient developing obstructive jaundice. And a brain tumour can push on important parts of the brain, causing blackouts, fits and other problems. Even benign tumours can cause these problems if located in the wrong place.
When a cancer invade nearby tissues, they can cause bleeding from damaged blood vessels, and stop the organ which they are invading from working properly.

What happens if it spreads?

As a tumour grows, cells can break off and start growing on adjacent tissues and organs. For example, if a bowel cancer has spread through the wall of the bowel itself, it can start growing on the bladder. Cells can also enter the bloodstream and travel to distant organs, such as the lungs or brain. The technical term for this is "metastasis".
When new tumours form on distant organs, they behave like the original tumour - so a bowel cancer cell growing in the lung will not be lung cancer. Once other organs are involved, then any symptoms of the cancer can get worse. However, it may be some time before a growing cancer in certain parts of the body produces symptoms that the patient can notice. Once a cancer has started to spread beyond its original site, then the chances of a cure often begin to fall, as it becomes more difficult to treat.

How is it treated?

There are three principal ways of treating cancer:

The first is surgery, normally an operation to remove the cancerous growth, and, depending on its type, nearby tissues and organs.

A cancer patient may first undergo a minor operation called a biopsy to take a small sample of the cancer for analysis.
The surgeon will try to remove as much of the cancer as possible, but sometimes extra treatment will be needed.
This could either take the form of radiotherapy or chemotherapy, or a combination of treatments.

Types of cancer

Carcinomas
About 85% of cancers are carcinomas. They start in the epithelium, which is the covering (or lining) of organs and of the body (the skin).
Sarcomas
These form in the connective tissues of the body such as muscle, bone and fatty tissue (6% of cancers).
Leukaemias/Lymphomas
These occur in the tissues where white blood cells (which fight infection in the body) are formed, i.e. the bone marrow, and lymphatic system (5%).
Others forms of cancer
Brain tumours and other rare forms of cancer make up the other 4% of cancers.

Who gets cancer?

1 in 3 people will develop cancer during their lifetime, but cancer is not common in children or young people - it mainly occurs in the later years of life. Cancers can occur at any age, but the risk of developing cancer increases with age. Over 70% of all newly diagnosed cancers occur in people aged 60 years or more.
Some cancers are very common and others are very rare. The most recent statistics for the UK show that for men the most common cancer is lung cancer (19%), followed by prostate cancer (17%), large bowel cancer (14%) and bladder cancer (7%). For women the figures are breast cancer (29%), large bowel cancer (12%), lung cancer (11%) and cancer of the ovary (5%).
Many people with cancer can be cured. Even if a cancer cannot be cured, it can often be controlled with treatment for months or years. Cancerbackup has information on all the main types of cancer, and on some of the rarer cancers.

Why do cancers come back?

A cancerous (malignant) tumour consists of cancer cells which have the ability to spread beyond the original site. If left untreated they may invade and destroy surrounding tissues. Sometimes cells break away from the original (primary) cancer and spread to other organs in the body by travelling in the bloodstream or lymphatic system. When these cells reach a new area of the body they may go on dividing and form a new tumour, often referred to as a "secondary" or a "metastasis".

Cancer Web Link

www.cancer.org
American Cancer Society - Information and Resources for Breast ...
Dedicated to helping persons who face cancer. Supports research, patient services, early detection, treatment and education.

www.cancer.gov
Comprehensive Cancer Information - National Cancer Institute
Official site for the National Institute of Health's principal agency for cancer research.

www.cancer.ca
Canadian Cancer Society - Société canadienne du cancer
Community-based organization aimed at the eradication of cancer and enhancement of the quality of life for people living with the condition.

www.cancerresearchuk.org
Cancer Research UK: the UK's leading cancer charity
Funding world-class research and training to improve cancer treatment and prevention, and providing authoritative cancer information and advocacy.

www.kankerindo.org
Indonesian Cancer Foundation
Situs ini telah dikunjungi oleh 5249 pengunjung Published by Yayasan Kanker Indonesia Pusat.

AIDS

2006-12-25T22:35:00.000-08:00

What is Aids?

There is still no cure for Aids, but a combination of various drugs can reduce the virus which causes Aids to virtually undetectable levels.Some people mistakenly believe the drugs cure Aids and this has led to fears that people are becoming complacent about the disease.
Aids stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. People with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) can look and feel well.
As the virus attacks the immune system, an infected person will be open to a large number of illnesses. This means there are a wide variety of symptoms.
HIV usually leads to Aids, which is diagnosed when a person has developed one of several opportunistic diseases associated with the virus as well as underlying immune problems.
The diseases include pneumonia, Kaposi's sarcoma - a form of purplish skin cancer not normally seen in young people before the advent of Aids - and dementia.

How is it transmitted?

HIV is relatively difficult to transmit as it does not live for long outside the body. It is carried in the semen, vaginal fluids, breast milk and blood. The main transmission routes are through sharing needles, sex, blood transfusions, transplants, getting infected fluid into open wounds and breast feeding.

High risk groups or behaviour

Certain groups are believed to be at higher risk of developing the virus. These include those who share needles and children who are breast fed with infected milk. As the disease began in the West in the gay community, gay men are at higher risk than heterosexuals. Sex workers and those who have multiple sexual partners are also at higher risk than average. People with other sexually transmitted diseases are also thought to be more likely to contract HIV than others.

What is the treatment?

If you want to know if you have HIV, you should contact your doctor or a sexually transmitted disease clinic about a blood test. They will usually suggest counselling before you take an HIV test to make sure you are prepared for all the implications of the result, including the impact on life insurance and mortgages. Aids organisations have reported that, in some cases, just taking the test can be enough for some companies to refuse you insurance or a mortgage.
If you test positive for the virus, there are a range of treatments you may be offered. The most popular is combination therapy, a cocktail of different anti-Aids drug, including AZT. The drugs can have powerful side effects, such as anaemia, and not everyone responds well to them.
People who take the numerous drugs have to stick to a rigid regime, but they have been shown to reduce the virus and rebuild the immune system. In some cases, the virus has been reduced to undetectable levels. However, doctors say it is too early to say yet how long they will last.

Stigma

Because of the way HIV is transmitted and the groups it has affected most - including drug users, gay men and people immigrant communities, it has attracted much media attention and prejudice. This has often made it hard for sufferers to come forward for testing. The all-parliamentary group on Aids says tackling the stigma of the disease is vital for reducing its impact.

History of the disease

The search for the origins of Aids has been dogged by political controversy.
According to the latest theory, published in Nature magazine in February and widely supported by leading experts in the field, the Aids virus first passed into people from a particular sub-species of chimp in the Central African rainforest.
Human infection occurred in the first half of the century as a result of people hunting and eating the chimps, the scientists believe. This practice continues today.
The international team, led by Dr Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama, say genetic tests show the main human virus, HIV-1, is closely related to a virus that infects chimps but does not make them sick.
They are now studying how common the virus is in chimps in the wild, but they face problems because the sub-species in which they found the virus - the Pan troglodytes troglodytes - is endangered.
Experts say there is evidence that HIV may have transferred to humans throughout history, but only became an epidemic in the 20th century, possibly because of increased sexual promiscuity, civil unrest and movement of people to cities.
Last year, researchers said they had found the first known case of Aids - in a Bantu man who died in 1959 in the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and home of the sub-species of chimps.

AIDS Link

www.aids.org
Educating - Raising HIV Awareness - Building Community
Non-profit organization for the free and open exchange of information in the fight against AIDS.

www.aidsonline.com
Official journal of the International AIDS Society.

www.aidsinfo.nih.gov
Provides information about federally approved treatment guidelines for HIV and AIDS.

www.unaids.org
UNAIDS: The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
Joint United Nations program on AIDS/HIV. A global source of information on the AIDS epidemic, includes comprehensive information on UN policies, news, ...

www.worldaidsday.org
World AIDS Day - the international day of action on HIV and AIDS which takes place every year on 1 December.

www.thewellproject.org
Get updated on HIV/AIDS & women. Facts, resources, treatments & more

www.prb.org
HIV AIDS Reports. International Data & Analysis. Get Relevant & Objective Trend Data

www.projectinform.org
HIV / AIDS Information. Choose hope over despair. Advocacy, treatment information & more.

www.GlobalGiving.com
Improve Lives Worldwide. Support Global Healthcare

www.unicef.org
AIDS Affects Our Children, Unite for Children. Unite against AIDS - Join Now

Good News ... And Lots of Questions

2006-12-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

It was big news this week when researchers from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston reported that breast-cancer rates dropped after millions of women stopped taking hormone therapy to relieve menopausal symptoms. But does that mean that these hormones (basically estrogen and sometimes a progestin) actually cause breast cancer? That’s the provocative question raised by the study. The researchers found an overall 7 percent decline in breast-cancer incidence in 2003, a year after a major study of hormonescalled the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) was halted early because of increased breast cancer and heart disease among participants. The steepest decline, 12 percent, occurred in the number of women diagnosed with a kind of breast cancer that is especially sensitive to hormones.

Another recent study, by researchers in California, echoes these findings. Christina Clarke, an epidemiologist at the Northern California Cancer Center, and her colleagues found that breast-cancer rates in California dropped even more steeply after the WHI—12 percent fewer in 2003 and 2004. Clarke attributes the difference to the fact that California women were more likely to use hormones than women in other states. “We rarely see changes this dramatic over such a short time period,” Clarke says.

But while the connection may seem clear, researchers caution that they really won’t understand the meaning of the drop until they see national numbers for 2004, which are expected next spring, and analyze these and other statistics more carefully. Scientists need to know whether there’s a difference in breast-cancer rates between women who’ve been on hormone therapy and those who haven’t and what happens to former hormone users years after they quit. It’s possible that stopping hormone therapy merely slowed the growth of tumors that will eventually emerge—which means breast-cancer rates could rise again. Without all that data, the current numbers show only an association, not causation, says Marcia Stefanick, chair of the WHI steering committee and a professor of medicine at Stanford University.

Doctors who treat menopausal women say the new numbers shouldn’t be the only basis for a decision on whether or not to use hormones. “This isn’t a cause for alarm,” says Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of the Division of Preventative Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “It has been known for a while that estrogen plus progestin increases the risk of breast cancer.” But, she adds, that shouldn’t necessarily stop women with severe symptoms from using low-dose hormones for two or three years. “I think it underscores the importance of looking at your personal risk factors for breast cancer and cardiovascular disease,” says Manson, author of “Hot Flashes, Hormones & Your Health,” “and whether the benefits are likely to outweigh the risks.”

That emphasis on balancing risks and benefits is an important legacy of the WHI, says Clarke. “I think we’re really moving into an era in science where medicine is going to become personalized. It really depends on you and how bad your symptoms are and what your personal risk is for breast cancer. Do you have a history? Have you been diagnosed with a benign breast tumor before? I think you have to put all those things together with your doctor to come up with a decision.”

Since the WHI, pharmaceutical companies have begun offering many more different forms and dosages of hormone therapy—not just pills, but also lotions, patches and local therapy for symptoms like vaginal dryness. All these give women many more choices. But researchers say that if you do take hormones, it’s important to reconsider that decision regularly with your doctor—at least once a year if not more. “We don’t know how long you can go before your risk exceeds some benefits,” says Brenda K. Edwards, associate director of the surveillance research program at the National Cancer Institute. “Women and their physicians need to keep that in mind.” When it comes to hormone therapy, about the only thing that’s certain is that we need more information.

Barbara Kantrowitz
newsweek

Behavioral therapy can help chronic back pain

2006-12-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK - Pooled results from 22 clinical trials show that psychological interventions help individuals with chronic low back pain experience less actual pain, less pain-related interference with daily living, less depression and work-related disability, and greater health-related quality of life.

Dr. Robert D. Kerns, who led the analysis, told Reuters Health, “The data across randomized, controlled studies are consistent.” Psychological interventions for chronic low back pain elicit “positive results.”

Kerns, of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven and colleagues limited their pooled analysis to studies involving adults with low back pain not related to cancer for at least three months. Most of the study subjects had suffered with low back pain for much longer — 7-1/2 years on average.

In the overall analysis, psychological treatments — namely, behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapies; self-regulatory therapies such as hypnosis, biofeedback and relaxation; and supportive counseling — either alone or as part of a multidisciplinary approach proved superior to no treatment or “treatment as usual.”

“The largest and most consistent effect was a reduction in pain intensity,” Kerns told Reuters Health. “This is good news for persons with pain and for providers who struggle to find effective and sustained approaches for reducing unnecessary pain and suffering of the lower back.”

www.reuters.com

Parents advised to limit kids' use of noisy toys

2006-12-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -Some toys emit noise at a high enough level to cause permanent hearing damage if they are held too close to the ear, new research from the UK shows. "With most toys, your child will only damage their hearing if they use them for too long a duration, or if they stick them in their ear," Dr. Brad Backus, a research fellow at University College London's Ear Institute who performed the study, said in a press release. "Our advice is pretty simple: don't let your child hold noisy toys too close to their ear, and don't let them play with them for more than an hour a day."

In a study commissioned by Deafness Research UK, Backus tested the noise levels of 15 popular toys for children aged 3 months to 15 years. The recommended top noise limit for toys is 85 decibels. Prolonged exposure to noise above this level can cause permanent hearing damage.

Eight of the toys emitted an average of 81 to 105 decibels when held 25 centimeters from the testing microphone, roughly arm's length for a child. Pixar Cars "Lightning McQueen" emitted 82.5 decibels, while Laser Command's noise level was 88.6 decibels.

But when held at 2.5 centimeters from the microphone, approximating the distance if the toy was held close to the ear, 14 of the toys, including Fireman Sam's Action Jupiter and Tomy's "Spin n' Sound" remote controlled car, had average noise levels between 84 and 115 decibels. The only toy with noise levels below the safety threshold was a VTECH cell phone for babies.

Toy guns were the worst offenders, emitting 120 to 140 decibels when held at arm's length and 130 to 143 decibels when held close to the ear. Noise of 140 decibels or above can cause immediate hearing damage.

"If I had children, I wouldn't give any of these gun-toys to them," noted Backus, who said his ears were ringing after testing the guns. "And I would recommend that people avoid them. They have the very real potential to cause permanent hearing loss."

SOURCE: http://www.deafnessresearch.org.uk