More than 3.8 million face hunger in Niger
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More than 3.8 million people in Niger, or nearly one in three inhabitants, risk running short of food before the next harvest comes in, the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF said on Friday.
Millions of people face seasonal food shortages every year in West Africa’s arid Sahel region, but the problem has been exacerbated by successive crop failures and a plague of locusts.
Of the 3.8 million people facing shortages this year, some 700,000 are children below the age of 5, UNICEF said in a statement.
Physically active life good for the body and brain
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Exercise keeps the body, and mind, in tiptop shape, according to a review of published studies on the topic. Taken together, the data suggest that exercise and physical activity may slow age-related declines in cognitive function, the reviewers conclude.
Moreover, fitness training may improve some mental processes even more than moderate activity.
“Although we clearly still have much to learn about the relationship between physical activity and cognition, what we currently know suggests that physical activity can help keep us both healthy and mentally fit,” Dr. Arthur F. Kramer told Reuters Health.
Heart disease patients may suffer PTSD
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Post-traumatic stress disorder is not limited to troops on the battlefield; it can also affect patients with heart disease as well as those with other medical conditions, according to this month’s issue of the Harvard Heart Letter.
“The same kinds of things we associate with soldiers can be associated with so many other things,” Patrick Skerrett, editor of the Harvard Heart Letter, told Reuters Health, including heart attacks and heart disease.
Coined during the Vietnam War, the term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often used to describe the condition affecting soldiers returning home from war, for example, or that affecting individuals who have witnessed horrors such as the attack on the World Trade Center.
Infants more heavy today than 20 years ago
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By examining more than 120,000 children under age 6 in Massachusetts over 22 years, a newly published study shows that young children - especially infants - are now more likely to be overweight.
This study was based at the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and appears in the July issue of Obesity.
“The obesity epidemic has spared no age group, even our youngest children,” says Matthew Gillman, MD, senior author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care).
Lipitor reduces stroke risk
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In people who have experienced a stroke, but who have no known history of coronary heart disease, beginning regular treatment with the cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin soon after the stroke can reduce the risk of recurrent stroke by 16 percent, according to a five-year study led by an international team that includes a researcher at Duke University Medical Center.
The results of the study, called the Stroke Prevention by Aggressive Reduction in Cholesterol Levels (SPARCL) trial, appear in the August 10, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was funded by Pfizer, the manufacturer of atorvastatin.
“This is the first study to demonstrate that treatment with a statin, a type of cholesterol-lowering drug, can reduce the risk of strokes in patients who have had a recent stroke or a transient ischemic attack and who have no known history of coronary heart disease,” said Larry B. Goldstein, M.D., director of the Duke Stroke Center and a member of the SPARCL steering committee.
Drugs don’t work for many India AIDS patients
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The drugs Shyamal Kumar Dey takes to fight AIDS don’t work anymore.
The 38-year-old father of one has been swallowing antiretroviral pills for the last five years, enough time for the HIV virus to mutate into a drug-resistant form.
Since then, the virus has found a new lease on life in his body, sapping both his immune system and his hopes for the future.
Allergies may put you more at risk of Parkinson’s disease
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According to researchers people who suffer from allergic rhinitis may be more at risk for Parkinson’s disease later in life.
Scientists at the Mayo Clinic say that risk may be as great as three times that of someone who does not have the condition.
Allergic rhinitis is an inflammation of the nasal passages which is caused by the immune system over-reacting to substances in the air and causes runny noses and streaming eyes.
Study Reveals How Cells Destroy Faulty Proteins in Cystic Fibrosis
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The cellular system that degrades faulty proteins created by the cystic fibrosis gene has been identified by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists. Turning off the degradation system allows some proteins to regain their proper shape, offering a new avenue for treatments aimed at curing the disease.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a fatal disease caused by a defective gene that produces a misshapen form of the protein cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). People with cystic fibrosis do not have enough CFTR for their cells to work normally because their bodies quickly destroy the mutant protein.
“Most cases of CF are caused by the inability of faulty CFTR to get in the correct shape, which leads cells to place it in the trash bin,” said senior author Dr. Douglas Cyr, professor of cell and developmental biology at UNC School of Medicine. “Our research helps define the basic mechanism for CF and identify targets for the development of therapeutics designed to get CFTR into shape and allow it function normally in the lung,” Cyr said.
‘Social norms’ programs curbs teen alcohol use
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An approach to reduce unsafe drinking and other harmful behaviors among college students may be similarly effective among high schoolers, according to research presented during the recent National Social Norms Conference, held in Denver, Colorado.
“The success social norms programs have had at reducing high-risk drinking and promoting healthy behaviors at the college level has been remarkable, and we’re seeing similar response for high-school settings,” Michael Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center in DeKalb, Illinois, said in a statement.
The social norms approach is based on the idea that much of an individual’s behavior is influenced by his or her perception of what is normal among his or her social group. If that perception is incorrect, as is often the case, and an unhealthy behavior is perceived to be normal, more individuals may participate in that behavior to conform with their peers.
Lebanon hospitals cut off, running out of supplies
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Hospitals were running out of food, fuel and other supplies in southern Lebanon on Thursday and aid groups said fighting and a ban on movement meant they could not reach an estimated 100,000 people trapped in the area.
The U.N. World Food Programme urged a cessation of hostilities to allow aid supplies to reach the needy.
“Above all, we require a cessation of hostilities by both sides to allow humanitarian aid through,” Zlatan Milisic, WFP emergency coordinator in Lebanon, said in a statement. “Our aid operation is like a patient starved of oxygen, facing paralysis, verging on death, if we can’t open up our vital supply lines.”
U.S. AIDS groups battle over federal funding
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The bill would mandate that three-fourths of the funds from the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, the nation’s largest HIV-specific federal grant program, be used for medical services.
Opponents say the mandate would force them to cut non-medical services they consider critical for overall patient care.
Designed to fill gaps in local funding, the Ryan White program has never in its 16-year history included a broad prescription for how money should be spent.
UK teens ignorant about condom use
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Even the few British teenagers who wear condoms do not use them effectively, a study published on Thursday said. The study said several of the teens admitted putting the condom on too late or taking it off too early.
The three most common reasons for condom use were to prevent pregnancy, avoid making a mess and prolonging sex—avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was barely mentioned.
Of the 1,400 teens in the study, 373 said they had used a condom in their most recent sexual experience. Six percent said they put the condom on after vaginal penetration and an equal number said they continued penetrative sex after removing it.
China denies cover-up of drug linked to 6 deaths
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China has denied covering up reports of adverse reactions linked to a banned antibiotic treatment, newspapers reported on Wednesday.
Beijing last week banned the use of Clindamycin Phosphate Glucose Injection, produced by a company in the eastern province of Anhui for treatment of bacterial infections and linked to at least six deaths and severe reactions in more than 80 patients.
The first notice of an adverse reaction to the drug was posted on the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) Web site on July 27, the Beijing News said, but an emergency report banning the drug was not released until August 3.
Common tennis elbow treatments cost-effective
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For relieving painful tennis elbow, a new study has found no difference between the clinical or cost effectiveness of wearing a brace or participating in physical therapy—or a combination of the two.
So the question of which approach is best for treating this common ailment, which strikes 1 percent to 3 percent of the general population each year, remains unanswered, Dr. P.A.A. Struijs of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and colleagues conclude.
Several studies of different methods for treating tennis elbow, including corticosteroid injections and a “wait and see” approach as well as bracing or physical therapy, have been unable to show that any one approach is more effective or cheaper than any other, Struijs and his team note in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Best to let baby control early eating of solids
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Babies whose mothers give them more control over their early attempts at eating solid food appear to do a better job of regulating their own weight, UK researchers have found.
“Feeding in the first year of life necessitates a great deal of parental control given that young infants are incapable of feeding themselves independently, yet the data are compatible with the suggestion that in normal circumstances, infants develop best when given as much autonomy as possible,” Dr. Claire Farrow from Keele University in Staffordshire and colleagues write.
Parental attitudes toward a child’s eating behavior are known to affect the child’s risk of becoming overweight or having feeding problems. For example, children who are pressured to eat or whose food intake is strictly regulated by their parents are less able to regulate their own eating in response to hunger.
