One more falls prey to spurious drugs in Lahore

LAHORE: One more women died on Saturday due to Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) medicines reaction in Lahore taking unofficial death toll to 142.

According to hospital sources, 60-years old Basheeran Bibi lost her life in Meo hospital of Lahore. She was admitted in the hospital a few days ago.

Around hundreds of patients, affected by the medicine, are under treatment in various hospitals of Lahore.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Spurious drugs kill two more in Lahore

LAHORE: Two more people lost their lives due to use of spurious drugs in Lahore on Thursday.

According to sources two people Shahzad and Sardar Mohammad died in the Services Hospital early this morning.

Last month, the medicine triggered an unknown disease that is said to get deposited in the bone marrow and ultimately ends the body’s resistance. The generation of white blood cells stops in the body and a severe chest infection also takes place.

The symptoms of the disease include a change in complexion, low platelet count, vomiting blood and a severe chest infection.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Green tea makes life healthier and longer: Study

TOKYO: A new Japanese study has said that green tea offers lots of health benefits including anti-cancer and anti-obesity properties and elderly people who regularly drink green tea may be more agile and independent than their peers.

It is believed that in addition to fish consumption, drinking green tea may be one of the reasons for their longevity.

The study those who drank highest amounts of green tea were at a lower risk of frailty and disability, which was defined as having problems with daily activities.

Anyway, green tea contains antioxidants such as Epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG, the major polyphenol in the healthy beverage.

Green tea has been associated with lower risk of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, thyroid cancer, lung cancer, blood cancer, prostate cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, brain cancer, stomach cancer, high cholesterol, brain diseases, dementia like Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and stroke, glaucoma, and hepatic fibrosis,

Green tea can also boost immunity, help weight loss, and genital and perianal warts among other things.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Ulcer-causing bug tied to higher diabetes risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who have been infected with the ulcer-causing bacteria Helicobacter pylori are more than twice as likely to develop diabetes later on as people who do not have signs of the infection, according to a new study of Latino adults in California.

The results don't prove that the bug causes diabetes, but "it is strongly related to predicting type 2 diabetes," said Allison Aiello, the senior researcher on the study and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Earlier studies looking at the relationship between H. pylori infection and diabetes have had inconsistent results -- some have shown a link, while others have not.

Aiello and her colleagues point out in their report in the journal Diabetes Care that previous research has only been snapshots in time of who had diabetes, who had the infection and who didn't.

To try to get a better fix on whether one condition might cause the other, the group tracked nearly 800 people for a decade.None of them had type 2 diabetes, the kind related to being overweight, at the beginning of the study.

But over time, 144 people developed the disease, and 97 percent of those had tested positive for H. pylori at the start of the study.

By contrast, 91 percent of the people who didn't develop diabetes had tested positive for H. pylori.

After the researchers took into account factors such as vascular disease, smoking and being overweight, they found that the risk of developing diabetes was 2.7 times higher among the group of people who had the infection.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about two-thirds of people worldwide have been infected with H. pylori, but most never experience any symptoms.

About eight percent of the United States population has diabetes.

Because the researchers were able to follow people over time and show that the diabetes cases developed after people were infected with H. pylori gives "more credence to a potential causal relationship," they wrote.

Dr. Alain Bertoni, a professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center who was not involved in the study, agreed that "the results are suggestive that this is a causal relationship," but offered other possibilities that could explain the findings.

"It is possible that some factor not measured (a confounder) that is associated with NOT being H. pylori positive...is actually a protective factor, rather than H. pylori is causing diabetes," Bertoni wrote in an email to Reuters Health. "For example, the authors did not consider physical activity."

He also said that perhaps people with the bacterial infection go to the doctor more often for stomach troubles, giving them a better chance of having their diabetes detected.

The researchers did find that if they accounted for people who were taking antacids or antibiotics to treat the infection it did not alter their results.

They also did not see a similar link between other infections -- namely, herpes, varicella virus, cytomegalovirus, and the bacterium Toxoplasma gondii -- and diabetes.

It's not clear why H. pylori and diabetes are related, though Aiello said there is speculation that the bacteria could alter the conditions in the gut or promote inflammation that might contribute to diabetes.

She and her colleagues found an extremely high rate of infection among the people in her study, with more than 90 percent testing positive.

"It's pretty amazing, especially given that we have treatments for H. pylori," Aiello said.

It will be important for future studies to show if H. pylori does indeed have an influence on diabetes, said Aiello, because the infection can be taken care of.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/zb6N5G Diabetes Care, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Smoking tied to higher psoriasis risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adding to the list of possible health consequences from smoking, a large study suggests that smokers have an increased risk of developing the chronic skin condition psoriasis.

People with psoriasis develop thick, red, scaly patches on the skin, which are often itchy or sore.

Experts believe the disease is caused by an abnormal immune system attack on the body's own cells. Some studies have suggested that smokers are more vulnerable to psoriasis, possibly because the habit can affect immune activity.

But most have studied people at only one time-point, which makes it hard to be sure the smoking came before the psoriasis.

So for the new study, researchers used data from three large, long-running studies of U.S. health professionals.

Of nearly 186,000 men and women followed for 12 to 20 years, 2,410 developed psoriasis during that time. And the risk was greater among both current smokers and former smokers.

People who were current smokers at the study's start were almost twice as likely as lifelong non-smokers to develop psoriasis. And past smokers had a 39 percent higher risk than non-smokers.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, do not prove that smoking, itself, causes psoriasis in some people.

But it is clear that the smoking came before the psoriasis, said senior researcher Dr. Abrar A. Qureshi, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Past studies have found links between psoriasis and both obesity and heavy drinking. But after accounting for those factors, the smoking-psoriasis link remained, Qureshi told Reuters Health.

"I think if there's one message, it's that for now, smoking seems to be a risk factor for new-onset psoriasis," Qureshi said.

Other studies have pointed to some reasons that smoking could contribute to psoriasis -- mainly its effects on immune system activity and inflammation. Smokers, for instance, tend to have higher levels of "autoantibodies" -- immune defenses that are mistakenly aimed at the body's own cells.

About 7.5 million Americans have psoriasis, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation.

Type 1 psoriasis arises in teenagers and young adults, and it's strongly related to family history of the disease. In contrast, type 2 psoriasis arises later in life, and it tends to be milder and less related to heredity.

The men and women in the current study were middle-aged to older. So it's likely they had type 2 psoriasis, Qureshi's team says.

As for people who already have psoriasis, the current findings don't speak directly to whether quitting will help them, according to Qureshi.

But there are already plenty of reasons for any smoker to quit, he said.

In particular, people with psoriasis have been shown to have an increased risk of heart disease. Since smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease, Qureshi said, quitting seems especially important for people with psoriasis.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/yUGYiX American Journal of Epidemiology, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

The very old may feel helpless, but not depressed

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People over 100 years old may say they feel "helpless" and "worthless" because they can't do the things they used to, but that doesn't mean they're not in good spirits suggests a new study.

The researchers say their findings indicate that people around 100 years old may see life differently than people 20 or 40 years their junior and traditional tests for depression may not be effective in the extremely old.

"We're saying look at more of the components that make up depression," said Peter Martin, a gerontology researcher at Iowa State University and one of the study's authors. "Some may be more relevant to centenarians than others."

Martin and his fellow researchers examined existing information collected from 323 people living in Georgia between 1988 and 1997 who were over 60, 80 or 100 years old. Of these, 139 participants were over 100 years old, 93 were in their 80s and 91 were in their 60s.

Each of the study's participants answered a survey known as the Geriatric Depression Scale, which asks 30 yes-or-no questions about whether the person was depressed in the past week. The more yeses, the more likely they're depressed.

Overall, the100-year-olds scored higher for depression than the people in their 80s or 60s according to the survey's summary score of all 30 questions.

The centenarians answered "yes" to about 13 questions on the survey while people in their 80s answered "yes" to about 12 and people in their 60s said "yes" to about 11 questions.

All of the 100-year-olds, however, said they were in "good spirits."

Indeed, when the researchers looked at subsets of questions, they found the participants in their 60s and 80s said yes more often to statements like, "I feel downhearted," "I am not satisfied with life," "I am afraid of something bad," and "I do not enjoy getting up in the morning."

"If you look (just) at the summary score you might come to the wrong conclusion," Martin told Reuters Health.

Even though the survey was developed for geriatric subjects, he says, some of the questions may yield misleading answers when it comes to the oldest old.

Some of the "yes" answers on the scale could be chalked up to the 100-year-olds' advanced age -- especially those relating to being less active, being unable to start new projects or saying they had lost interest or energy.

Other than physical impairments and limitations, Martin said, there are differences in other symptoms when you compare younger people to those who are over 100 years old.

"You know a centenarian is probably going to tell you, 'I'm not going to live much longer,'" said Martin. But he added, while that statement may sound disturbing coming from a younger person, it's reality for someone over 100 years old.

Instead, Martin said, a 100-year-old saying they feel sad or "blue" may be a better sign of depression.

"Depression varies in both its appearance and experience across the lifespan," said Dr. Charles F. Reynolds III, the endowed professor in geriatric psychiatry at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center.

Reynolds, who was not involved with the new study, told Reuters Health that in diagnosing depression, it's typical to combine the use of self reporting, like a survey, with an interview of the person, their family or someone involved with their care.

The researchers write in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society that the study is limited because it focused on people still living in a community. So the results may not be applicable to someone living in a nursing home or other institution.

Martin told Reuters Health that treatment for depression in a very old person can include medication, but he said it could be as simple as allowing the person to contribute or be more engaged.

"Their life is not over yet. It's the last chapter of the book, but sometimes the last chapter of the book has the most interesting stuff in it," said Martin.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/AfLdBd Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Eating fish tied to lower risk of colon polyps

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who eat about three servings of fish per week have a somewhat lower chance of having polyps found during a routine colonoscopy than women who eat just one serving every two weeks, according to a new study.

The research doesn't prove that seafood protects against polyps, but it "does increase our confidence that something real is going on," said Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, who was not involved in this study.

A polyp, also called an adenoma, is a mushroom-shaped tag of tissue that grows in the colon and can develop into colorectal cancer.

The idea researchers have been pursuing is that the omega-3 fats in fish might have an anti-inflammatory effect, similar to aspirin, that could prevent the development of polyps.

Giovannucci said that earlier experiments in animals have showed that omega-3 fats can reduce the risk of this cancer, but that studies of humans have had mixed results.

In the latest study, the researchers surveyed more than 5,300 people about their eating habits. All of the participants had come in to the researchers' practices for a colonoscopy.

The team then compared more than 1,400 women without polyps to 456 who had adenomas detected during the procedure.

Among women with adenomas, 23 percent were in the bottom fifth among fish eaters, while 15 percent were in the top fifth. That means people who eat lots of seafood are somehow protected against polyps, because otherwise the percentages should have been the same.

After accounting for differences like age, smoking and aspirin use, women who ate the most fish -- three servings a week -- were 33 percent less likely to have a polyp detected than those who ate the least -- less than a serving a week.

Of course, it's never possible to rule out that other factors could explain the findings. For instance, it's possible that fish lovers have other healthy behaviors that decrease their risk of polyps.

What's more, the study didn't follow the women to see whether either group was more likely to go on to develop cancer. But Dr. Harvey Murff, the lead author of the study and a professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, said polyps are a reliable predictor for cancer risk.

"Adenomas are generally believed to be the precursor" to cancer, Murff told Reuters Health. "You would think most things that would reduce adenoma risk would subsequently reduce cancer risk."

A 33 percent lower risk is not enormous, but Giovannucci said "it is important because colorectal cancer is a common cancer." About 140,000 new cases of colon and rectal cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and more than 50,000 people will die from the cancer. The lifetime risk of developing the disease is about 20 percent, according to the American Cancer Society.

The men in Murff's study who ate a lot of fish did not see the same reductions in polyp risk as women, however.

Murff said he doesn't have a good explanation for that, but perhaps men are less sensitive to the omega-3s in fish and need to eat more to get any benefit. It could also be that men might eat more omega-6 fats, counteracting the effects of the omega-3s.

Omega-6 fatty acids are related to the production of a hormone called prostaglandin E2, which is associated with inflammation.

Murff explained that eating omega-3 fatty acids tamps down the body's levels of omega-6 fatty acids. In turn, the body then has reduced levels of prostaglandin E2.

He and his colleagues demonstrated this by showing that the women in the study who ate more fish -- and presumably, more omega-3s -- had lower levels of prostaglandin E2.

"We know people who have higher levels of this (hormone) are more likely to develop colorectal cancer. So in essence, by eating more omega-3 fatty acids, it's almost like taking an anti-inflammatory medication," Murff told Reuters Health.

There is still more work to be done to prove that the omega-3 fatty acids are actually the reason for the reduced colorectal cancer risk.

But, Giovannucci said, "I think this (association) has a pretty strong biologic rationale."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/zWMCyQ The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Diabetes drugs tied to pancreatic cancer risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study links the diabetes drug metformin to fewer cases of pancreatic cancer -- at least in women -- but finds other diabetes medications are associated with a higher risk of the disease.

The differences in medication history among people who did or didn't get pancreatic cancer were small, researchers said, and it's unclear why the drugs might affect cancer risks in men and women differently.

Still, the new finding is in line with previous research suggesting that metformin may decrease the risk of multiple cancers, said Dr. Peter Butler, a diabetes researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, who wasn't involved in the new study.

"One theme that seems to be coming through... is that the oldest drug we have for diabetes, metformin, is undoubtedly the best drug we have for diabetes," he told Reuters Health.

Pancreatic cancer is relatively rare as far as cancers go, but progresses quickly; most people don't survive more than a couple years after diagnosis. The National Cancer Institute estimates that about 44,000 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the United States this year, and close to 38,000 will die from the disease.

Research has suggested that people with pancreatic cancer may have an increased risk of diabetes, but it's unclear how diabetes -- and the drugs used to treat it -- may affect pancreatic cancer risks in previously cancer-free people.

To help answer that question, Dr. Christoph Meier of the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland and his colleagues consulted a database of more than eight million people in the UK, including about 2,800 who were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer between 1995 and 2009.

For each of those people, they found another six of the same age and gender that didn't have pancreatic cancer to serve as a comparison group.

Using records from primary care doctors, the researchers determined how many people in the pancreatic cancer and cancer-free groups had previously been diagnosed with diabetes and were on an anti-diabetes drug, such as metformin or sulfonylureas, which include glimepiride and glyburide.

Those drugs cause the body to make or absorb less glucose (metformin) or to produce more insulin (sulfonylureas) to keep blood sugar levels in check.

One in nine people with pancreatic cancer had a prior diagnosis of diabetes, compared to about one in twelve in the cancer-free comparison group, according to findings published Tuesday in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

According to their medical records, two percent of people with pancreatic cancer had been taking metformin long-term before they were diagnosed, compared to 1.6 percent of the group without cancer -- a difference that could have been due to chance.

But when the researchers separated the records by gender, they found that significantly fewer women with a new diagnosis of pancreatic cancer had been taking metformin for at least a few years, compared to cancer-free women.

That was after the researchers had already taken into account whether women were overweight or obese and if they smoked or drank alcohol.

The association in one gender but not the other was "somewhat unexpected," according to Meier's team, and there's no clear biology-based way to explain why metformin might help protect women against pancreatic cancer, but not men.

The findings were reversed for insulin and sulfonylureas in the study population. Significantly more people with pancreatic cancer had a history of long-term use of those drugs than cancer-free people.

Craig Currie, who has studied diabetes drugs and cancer at the Cardiff University School of Medicine in the UK, said it makes sense that insulin and sulfonylureas would increase the risk of pancreatic cancer. Insulin promotes cancer growth, he said, and also acts directly on the pancreas.

The study's investigators "raise doubts about these treatments," he told Reuters Health in an email.

"There is a possibility that exogenous insulin (insulin that's not made naturally by the body) is of questionable safety in people with type 2 diabetes," added Currie, who didn't participate in the new research.

Still, absolute differences in medication use were small even in people with cancer: less than one percent of those with or without pancreatic cancer had taken insulin long-term. Sulfonylurea users accounted for just over three percent of people with a new pancreatic cancer diagnosis and two percent without cancer.

Butler said it's hard to tease out what cancer risks may be due to the drugs, and what could be a result of poor diet and lack of exercise, for example, in people with diabetes. He said that more research will be needed to tease out those specific effects.

"Honestly for patients at this point, I think this is another piece of the jigsaw puzzle," Butler said.

"This paper in itself would not cause me to recommend a change in treatment for people."

That said, Butler concluded that evidence suggests most people with type 2 diabetes who don't have any medical reasons not to take metformin should be on the drug, either alone or in combination with other anti-diabetes medications.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/kkA6Tc American Journal of Gastroenterology, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Second exam important in child sex-abuse cases

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When a child is thought to have been sexually abused, a second medical exam may be key to picking up injuries and sexually transmitted infections, a study published Monday finds.

The American Academy of Pediatrics already recommends that kids being examined for sexual assault have a follow-up exam in the weeks afterward.

But until now, no studies had looked at the benefits of doing that.

For the new report, researchers reviewed the records of 727 children and teenagers who were evaluated for sexual abuse or assault over a five-year period.

They found that almost one-quarter of the time, the patients' second exam changed the findings of the first.

In 18 percent of cases, there was a shift in the diagnosis of traumatic injuries.

Most often, the original examiner had said it was unclear whether the child had an injury suggestive of sexual assault (like tears or bruising), but the second examiner concluded that the findings were "normal."

However, that "does not in any way" mean the child wasn't sexually abused, said Dr. Nancy D. Kellogg, one of the researchers on the study and a child abuse expert at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.

It's well known that sex-abuse victims often do not have telltale traumatic injuries, Kellogg told Reuters Health.

So it's what the child says that's most important.

Kellogg's team also found that the second medical exam helped pick up sexually transmitted diseases that weren't caught initially. That was true in nearly seven percent of cases.

Most often, Kellogg said, the follow-up exam caught genital warts -- which would not yet have been apparent during the first exam.

The findings, reported in the journal Pediatrics, are based on 727 children and teens who were first examined at one San Antonio ER or the regional child advocacy center. A doctor or nurse trained in child abuse cases performed the exams.

The second exam was done about a month later at the child advocacy center, by an experienced child-abuse doctor or nurse.

During the initial exam, Kellogg explained, kids are "anxious or in pain -- they're traumatized. And that can affect the examiner's ability to detect things."

But the researchers also found that the first examiner's experience mattered. If he or she had done fewer than 100 such exams, the second examiner was more likely to reach different conclusions on whether the child had a traumatic injury.

That, Kellogg said, points to the importance of having an experienced doctor or nurse do the second exam.

Some hospitals, she noted, have special "child abuse teams" who can evaluate kids for sexual assault. There may also be a nearby child advocacy center with doctors or nurses who can do the exam.

As for areas where those services aren't available, Kellogg said she hopes the current findings give less-experienced pediatricians some guidance in evaluating kids for sexual abuse.

"We were a bit surprised by the findings," she noted. "We didn't expect the follow-up exam to make such a big difference in so many kids."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/A83tBr Pediatrics, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Does acupuncture boost IVF success?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Acupuncture may help some women conceive through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a new analysis of past research concludes. But the true benefit in the real world, if any, remains unclear.

The technique has been used for millennia in traditional Chinese medicine, for a whole range of ills.

Ten years ago, a study in Germany was the first clinical trial to report that acupuncture seemed to improve pregnancy rates in women undergoing IVF. But since then research has turned up mixed results.

"I counsel women that the literature is not convincing yet that (acupuncture) helps you get pregnant," said Dr. Frederick Licciardi, who heads the New York University Fertility Center's mind/body program.

At the center, women can opt for acupuncture sessions, yoga and other "mind/body" services, but that's aimed at easing stress and promoting general "wellness" -- not at boosting IVF success, said Licciardi.

Clinical trials on the issue so far have been small, and often of questionable quality.

So for the new study, reported in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Chinese researchers conducted what's called a meta-analysis -- where researchers combine the results of past studies to try to get an idea of the overall picture.

Dr. Cui Hong Zheng and colleagues at Tongji Medical College pooled the results of 24 small clinical trials testing the effects of acupuncture in women undergoing IVF.

The trials varied widely: Many tested needle acupuncture, some electro-acupuncture and some included laser acupuncture in the mix.

The studies also differed in what they used as a "control."

In many trials, IVF patients either received acupuncture or nothing. In others, researchers used a form of "placebo" acupuncture such as applying blunt needles to the skin surface. Some researchers used real needles, but stimulated points not related to fertility, according to traditional medicine.

Zheng's team found that overall, women who had acupuncture had a slightly higher pregnancy rate than women who did not have the therapy -- but no higher birth rate.

The results looked a little different, though, when the researchers excluded five studies that used blunt needles as a control.

When those trials were dropped, women in the remaining studies who received acupuncture fared a little better: 41 percent became pregnant, versus 37 percent of those who did not have acupuncture.

Three of those trials also looked at birth rates. Of women who received acupuncture, 35 percent had a baby, compared with 25 percent of women in the control groups.

According to Zheng's team, the findings suggest that the blunt-needle acupuncture used in some trials is not a truly "inactive" placebo, and may actually have effects similar to the real thing.

And that, the researchers say, may explain why those studies failed to find benefits from real acupuncture.

But Licciardi -- who stressed that he is "not anti-acupuncture" -- was unconvinced.

One of the big problems with the analysis, according to Licciardi, is that it combined studies that were all looking at very different things: different types of acupuncture, different controls, and different timing of the acupuncture sessions.

"They're just too heterogeneous to generalize and draw conclusions," Licciardi said.

He was also skeptical of the researchers' choice to drop certain trials, which then essentially gave them "the results they wanted."

In the bigger context of acupuncture research, finding a good control has long been a problem.

The gold standard for proving that any medical treatment works is to randomly assign patients to receive the treatment or a placebo, with neither the patients nor the researchers knowing who is getting the real thing.

If a trial is testing a drug, it is easy enough to give the control group sugar pills.

But with acupuncture, it has been hard to find a widely accepted placebo version -- one that has no, or at least minimal, physiological effects but is convincing enough that patients think they're getting acupuncture.

The bottom line, according to Licciardi, is that no one yet knows if acupuncture can really make a difference in IVF success. But if a woman wants to try it simply to feel better or de-stress, there would be little harm.

Acupuncture is generally considered safe, with side effects like bruising at the needle site. The cost can vary widely -- and may or may not be covered by insurance -- but a session would typically start at around $100.

"If acupuncture helps you feel well, if it helps you get through the IVF (process), then great," Licciardi said.

As for why acupuncture would help a woman get pregnant with IVF, no one is sure of that either.

There's some evidence that needle stimulation may improve blood flow to the uterus. And researchers are looking at whether acupuncture might make the uterine wall more receptive to the embryo.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/xUSWrV Fertility and Sterility, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Big Pharma donates drugs for neglected diseases

LONDON (Reuters) - The world's major pharmaceutical companies joined forces with governments and leading global health organizations Monday to donate drugs and scientific know-how to help control or wipe out 10 neglected tropical diseases by 2020.

Drugmakers have been criticized in the past for not doing enough to fight diseases of the poor as they concentrate instead on conditions more prevalent in rich nations, such as high cholesterol.

But in the largest coordinated effort yet to fight diseases such as Guinea worm disease, leprosy and sleeping sickness, the group promised to give away 14 billion doses of medicines by the end of this decade.

They will also share expertise and drug discovery work to invent new medicines for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that as yet have no treatments.

The AIDS pandemic forced drugmakers in the past decade to pay more attention to the developing world, and a new focus on the economic potential of emerging markets has provided an incentive to promote their brands in poorer countries.

In a project expected to affect the lives of a billion people worldwide, the partnership pledged more than $785 million to support NTD research and development (R&D) and strengthen drug distribution and treatment programs.

World Health Organization (WHO) director general Margaret Chan, who announced the deal in London, said it "changes the face" of NTDs -- illnesses that needlessly disable, blind and kill millions of the world's poorest people.

"These ancient diseases are now being brought to their knees with stunning speed," she told an audience at the Royal College of Physicians in the British capital.

"With the boost to this momentum being made today, I am confident almost all of these diseases can be eliminated or controlled by the end of this decade."

NTDs disproportionally affect people in the poorest countries of the world. Experts estimate more than a billion people are affected by them, including more than 500 million children.

"Maybe as the decade goes on people will be wondering whether we should still call these diseases 'neglected'," said Microsoft chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates.

The WHO's first global report on neglected tropical diseases in 2010 said that while they cost billions of dollars in lost productivity, they are often ignored because they affect mainly poor people and do not offer a profitable market for drugmakers.

NTDs include illnesses such as sleeping sickness, which is transmitted through tsetse fly bites and threatens millions of people in Africa, and Chagas disease, a debilitating condition caused by a parasite transmitted in infected feces of blood-sucking bugs. An estimated 10 million people are infected with Chagas, mostly in Latin America where the disease is endemic.

"HORRIFIC"

Speaking for chief executives of the drug firms involved in the partnership, Andrew Witty, GlaxoSmithKline's CEO described the impact of the diseases as "horrific" and said he hoped the scale of this new cooperation would beat them.

"No one company or organization can do it alone," he said. "It's great to have this commitment, and it's even better to have a deadline."

Adding the new pledges to existing individual commitments, 13 drug companies including Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and others will donate an average of 1.4 billion treatments a year to people suffering from NTDs.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) said new R&D collaborations and deals with drugmakers and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) would also give "unprecedented" access to libraries of chemical compounds that may lead to new treatments.

Extra funding for the project came from Britain, the United States and United Arab Emirates, the Gates Foundation and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. The World Bank agreed to extend financing to help African countries build health systems better able to integrate NTD elimination and control.

Gates, whose foundation announced a five-year, $363 million commitment to support NTD product and operational research, said the collaboration would help millions of people build self-sufficiency and overcome the need for aid and serve as a model for tackling future global development challenges.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Don't blame C-sections for fat kids: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Kids born by Cesarean section are no more likely to become obese than if they are born vaginally, a new study concludes.

Past research from Brazil had found a link between excessive poundage and C-sections, leading some scientists to suggest that not being exposed to bacteria from the birth canal could make babies fatter. (See Reuters Health story of May 12, 2011.)

But according to the latest findings, that doesn't appear to be the case.

"We thought from the beginning that probably what happened with the previous study is that they didn't adjust for all of the confounders," said Fernando Barros of the Catholic University of Pelotas. "If a mother gives birth by C-section, she's different than a mother who has a vaginal birth."

For the new research, Barros and his colleagues used data on three groups of several thousand people born in Southern Brazil in 1982, 1993 or 2004.

Researchers contacted the kids at different ages until the oldest had turned 23. Those born by C-section were more likely to be heavy, with obesity rates between nine and 16 percent, compared to rates of seven to 10 percent among kids born vaginally.

However, that difference vanished once the researchers accounted for factors that could have influenced the results such as family income, birth weight, schooling and the mother's weight, height, age and smoking habits.

"When you factor in all of these other factors, the relationship between obesity and Cesarean sections disappears," said Barros, whose findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The earlier Brazilian study left out many of those factors, including maternal height and weight, Barros' team writes in its report.

"The most simple explanation would be that more obese women require more Cesarean sections than lean women... and it's really not the C-section itself," said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Clinic at Children's Hospital Boston, who wasn't involved in the study.

The new research is of particular interest in Brazil, because in 2009 more than half of the babies there were born by C-section. In the U.S., the number has been on the rise for years and is now over 30 percent.

Some believe that C-section babies are different because they are not exposed to bacteria in the birth canal like babies born vaginally. The theory is part of the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests a person's immune system develops differently when they're not exposed to beneficial bacteria early in life.

"We're not saying this hypothesis is not interesting. It is. We're just saying, right now, without data, we cannot confirm the finding," said Barros.

He cautioned that people in his study had only been followed until early adulthood, so he cannot say if there is a potential association later in life.

Ludwig told Reuters Health that things like a pregnant woman's diet and smoking habits and whether or not she has diabetes might influence a developing fetus.

Both Ludwig and Barros said women should avoid medically unnecessary C-sections, even if they don't raise the chances of having obese kids, because they carry other risks.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/zjs00B American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Carpooling parents don't always use booster seats

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Parents use booster seats inconsistently when carpooling with young kids, according to a new study.

Laws on when the seats must be used vary by state, but guidelines from groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend boosters from the time kids outgrow their car seats until they hit four feet, nine inches tall -- the height of the average 11-year-old.

The new report suggests that most parents of four- to eight-year-olds have a booster seat for their kids in their own cars, but don't always make sure boosters are used when they carpool.

"Until children reach a certain size, the seatbelt doesn't fit them properly enough to maximize the protection that seatbelts offer when you're bigger and taller," said Andrea Gielen, head of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Booster seats, she told Reuters Health, position smaller bodies to get the most benefit from the seatbelt in case of a crash.

"The study shows that parents are missing opportunities to protect their kids in the car on every ride," said Gielen, who wasn't involved in the research.

The new data come from an online survey of 681 U.S. parents conducted in early 2010.

Along with a range of questions related to kids' health and family dynamics, parents were asked about their own use of booster seats and how they felt about the seats when it came to carpooling.

Three-quarters of the parents said they used a safety seat for their own child in their car. Parents of younger kids, and those that lived in states that required the use of booster seats, were most likely to use boosters.

The majority of survey participants also said they either frequently or occasionally carpooled with another family.

Among parents who used a booster seat in their own car and said they carpooled, 79 percent reported that they would always ask another driver to put their kid in a booster seat. Just over half of them said they would make sure their kid was always in a booster when in the car with friends who didn't use the seats, according to the report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

That may have to do with practical issues of transporting and passing off the seats, or with social norms regarding interactions between parents with different safety practices, researchers said.

"I wish I could say (the finding) was surprising," said Dr. Michelle Macy, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who worked on the study.

"But it does fit my experience that it can be a little bit of an awkward topic to broach with parents and it does require a little more planning."

Still, neither of those reasons should hold parents back from making sure their child is always in a booster seat, according to Dr. Mark Zonfrillo, a child safety researcher and emergency medicine doctor at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"If you were to send your child to one of their friend's houses and they needed some kind of medication, they had a chronic illness, you'd send them with the medication," said Zonfrillo, who wasn't involved in the new study -- and there's no reason booster seats should be any different.

"We know they're highly effective," he told Reuters Health. "They also happen to be the most convenient and portable of all child restraints, and they're really cheap."

The seats start at about $20, and researchers also pointed to car seat loaner programs where families can get boosters for free.

Macy said that the findings also show the importance of pushing for state laws that meet guidelines for booster seat use, noting that most laws now only require boosters up to age eight -- when the majority of kids still won't be adequately protected by a seatbelt alone.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/jsoh2P Pediatrics, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Study finds early signs of autism in baby brains

LONDON (Reuters) - Children who develop autism already show signs of different brain responses in their first year of life, scientists said on Thursday in a study that may in the future help doctors diagnose the disorder earlier.

British researchers studied 104 babies at six to 10 months and then again at three-years-old, and found that those who went on to develop autism had unusual patterns of brain activity in response to eye contact with another person.

The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, suggest direct brain measures might help predict the future risk of autism in babies as young as six months old, said Mark Johnson director of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck College, University of London, who led the study.

Autism, which affects around one percent of people worldwide, includes a spectrum of disorders ranging from mental retardation and a profound inability to communicate to relatively milder symptoms such as seen in people with Asperger's syndrome.

Among core features of condition are poor communication skills and difficulties with social engagement, and doctors are keen to find ways to diagnose the condition earlier so that they can intervene to help autistic children develop coping skills.

Characteristic autistic behavior tends not to emerge before the age of two years and firm diagnoses are usually only made after this age.

"Because there are no good behavioral signs at this young age (under one year), we wanted to see whether, by measuring the activity of the brain in a more direct way, we might be able to pick up earlier warning signs," Johnson said in a telephone interview.

His team looked at babies at greater risk of developing autism later in life because they had an older brother or sister with the condition.

The researchers used passive sensors placed on the scalp to register brain activity while the babies viewed faces that switched from looking at them to looking away.

The babies who were later found to be typically developing children showed a clear difference in brain activity in response to a face looking towards them compared to a face looking away.

In contrast, most of the babies who later went on to develop autism symptoms showed much less of a difference in brain activity when someone made eye contact and then looked away.

The researchers cautioned however that the predictive markers were not 100 percent accurate, as the study did find cases of babies who showed no differences in brain function and were not later diagnosed, and vice versa.

Johnson said the results were a first step towards earlier autism diagnosis, but added that more research was needed to confirm and strengthen the brain activity markers.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/w8SwAA Current Biology, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH

Drinking black tea may cut blood pressure

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who enjoy drinking black tea throughout the day may get the added benefit of a slight reduction in their blood pressure, suggests a new Australian study.

Although the study cannot identify specific components of the tea that might lead to a drop in blood pressure, the researchers said past studies have shown flavonoids, compounds found in many plants such as tea, are good for heart health.

"The message really isn't for an individual to go out and drink a lot of tea," said Jonathan Hodgson, the study's lead author and a researcher from the University of Western Australia. He said, instead, the drop is like a bonus.

The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, randomly assigned 95 Australians with normal blood pressure to two groups. One group drank black tea and another drank a beverage similar in taste and caffeine content.

Before the study started, the participants' blood pressure throughout the day was about 121/72 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg).

Blood pressure readings less than 120/80 mm Hg are considered normal. High blood pressure is defined as a reading of 140/90 or above. People with a reading between the two are said to have "pre-hypertension."

Each group drank their assigned beverages three times per day for six months.

After the six months the tea drinkers' systolic blood pressure -- the top number -- fell 2 mm Hg, and their diastolic blood pressure also fell about 2 mm Hg.

While a drop in blood pressure is generally good, a 2 mm Hg drop is not significant enough to bring a person with high blood pressure out of the danger zone.

"Those are small changes and are nothing like what you would see if you took a blood pressure lowering medication," said Dr. Joseph Vita, who has studied flavonoids at the Boston University School of Medicine and was not involved with the study.

However, the placebo group's systolic blood pressure went up about 1 mm Hg and their diastolic blood pressure also increased about 0.5 mm Hg.

To account for potential influences from other foods, researchers had the people in both groups cut back on flavonoid-rich foods such as apples, grapes, dark chocolate and wine four weeks before and all throughout the study.

Hodgson said making the placebo group go from a flavonoid-rich diet before the study to a lower one could have caused blood pressure to go up.

The research was funded through government grants and by Unilever Research and Development, which is an arm of the company that owns the Lipton brand.

According to the researchers, the findings might provide a bigger benefit if they are applied to a large group.

"You've got -- in the population -- large numbers of people with blood pressure around the hypertension range. So just shifting that population down can make a big difference," said Hodgson.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/zJqgVE Archives of Internal Medicine, online.

Read more »

Posted in: HEALTH