Public Health
FDA warns against fake online H1N1 remedy claims
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The U.S. government this week warned against the online marketing of unlicensed health remedies claiming to protect against H1N1 swine flu infection, including fake “Tamiflu” pills from India.
The Food and Drug Administration reported on Thursday that it had purchased and analyzed several products represented on the Internet as Tamiflu, Roche Holding AG’s brand name version of the antiviral drug oseltamivir.
One order, which arrived in an unmarked envelope from India, consisted of unlabeled white pills that contained talc and the common pain reliever acetaminophen, the FDA said. Others contained various amounts of oseltamivir but were not approved for use in the United States.
Swine flu vaccines delayed, US CDC says
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Delivery of some swine flu vaccines has been delayed because companies cannot make as much as they had hoped, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.
The CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat said while 40 million doses had been anticipated for the end of October, only about 28 to 30 million doses would be available.
“Yields for vaccine are lower than would be hoped,” Schuchat said in a telephone briefing.
She also said deaths from H1N1 swine flu were above the epidemic threshold in some U.S. cities and states. H1N1 flu activity was widespread in 41 states, she said.
Be overweight and live longer
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Contrary to what was previously assumed, overweight is not increasing the overall death rate in the German population. Matthias Lenz of the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Natural Sciences of the University of Hamburg and his co-authors present these and other results in the current issue of Deutsches Ärtzeblatt International (Dtsch Artzebl Int 2009; 106[40]: 641ԃ).
Most Germans are overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) between 25 and 29.9 kg/m2. About 20% are obese (BMI of 30 or over), with age- and gender-related differences. The authors systematically evaluated 42 studies of the relationships between weight, life expectancy, and disease.
The Sƃddeutsche Zeitung published an advance notice of the report (http://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/140/489526/text/), which shows that overweight does not increase death rates, although obesity does increase them by 20%. As people grow older, obesity makes less and less difference.
Is the person next to you washing with soap?
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People are more likely to wash their hands properly after using the toilet if they are shamed into it or think they are being watched, scientists said on Thursday.
Handwashing is the cheapest way of controlling disease but less than one third of men and two thirds of women wash their hands with soap after going to the toilet, a British study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showed.
But when prompted by an electronic message flashing up on a board asking—“Is the person next to you washing with soap?”—around 12 percent more men and 11 percent more women used soap.
Study charts links between mobile phones, tumors
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Studies on whether mobile phones can cause cancer, especially brain tumors, vary widely in quality and there may be some bias in those showing the least risk, researchers reported on Tuesday.
So far it is difficult to demonstrate any link, although the best studies do suggest some association between mobile phone use and cancer, the team led by Dr. Seung-Kwon Myung of South Korea’s National Cancer Center found.
Myung and colleagues at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul and the University of California, Berkeley, examined 23 published studies of more than 37,000 people in what is called a meta-analysis.
Do Mobile Phone Radiations Affect the Human Body
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Millions of Americans use the Mobile phone handsets as an integral part of their life. These Mobile Phones use the Electromagnetic Radio waves as the means of communication. There are several claims of these waves being energetic and harmful to the body. This article tries to gain further insight.
How Radio Waves Affect our Body: The Radio waves are placed on the extreme right corner of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is because they are the least energetic electromagnetic waves. Research shows that exposure to radio waves for long duration can only heat up the body tissues. The process of Thermoregulation in our body is competent enough to bring back the normalcy quickly. Apart from this aspect of mobile phone radiation, all the claims made are mostly speculations without credible research facts to substantiate. This fact is endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) too. However, it is keeping a close look on this topic of Mobile Phone Radiation and Human Health. It established the International Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) Project to gather more scientific evidence on the possible health effects of electromagnetic waves on humans.
Personalized Telephone Counselling Helps Teens Kick the Butt
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Intervention programmes dedicated to eliminating cigarette smoking among teenagers have shown promising results with the impact rate of six-month continuous quitting, say researchers.
The trial launched by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center could successfully recruit and retain a large number of adolescent smokers from the general population.
Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study involved 2,151 teenage smokers. Half of the schools were randomly assigned to the experimental intervention; teens in these schools were invited to take part in confidential, personalized telephone counseling designed to help motivate them to quit.
Why Are Most Nobel Laureates Americans? Or Are They Really?
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Cash-rich US researchers have again dominated this year’s Nobel awards, but it seems identifying the nationality of laureates is not an exact science, and change may be on the way.
On the face of things, the United States would top an Olympic-style medals table of Nobel prize wins. Eleven of this year’s 13 laureates are citizens of the United States, winning five of the six Nobel awards up for grabs.
Even President Barack Obama pocketed a medal.
White House blasts health insurance sector report
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The White House Monday blasted a report from the health insurance industry that said Senate healthcare legislation would lead to increases in annual insurance premiums of as much as $4,000 by 2019.
The report for the industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans represented a shot across the bow at Democratic plans to overhaul the $2.5 trillion healthcare system as President Barack Obama has been gaining momentum on the issue.
A top goal of Obama in seeking to revamp healthcare is to rein in costs that have soared in recent decades. The report, prepared by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers and posted on the industry group’s website over the weekend, said costs would increase for Americans rather than decline.
Too much of a good thing? Scientists explain cellular effects of vitamin A overdose and deficiency
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If a little vitamin A is good, more must be better, right? Wrong! New research published online in the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) shows that vitamin A plays a crucial role in energy production within cells, explaining why too much or too little has a complex negative effect on our bodies. This is particularly important as combinations of foods, drinks, creams, and nutritional supplements containing added vitamin A make an overdose more possible than ever before.
“Our work illuminates the value and potential harm of vitamin A use in cosmetic creams and nutritional supplements,” said Ulrich Hammerling, co-author of the study, from the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York. “Although vitamin A deficiency is not very common in our society, over-use of this vitamin could cause significant disregulation of energy production impacting cell growth and cell death.”
Although the importance of vitamin A to human nutrition and fetal development is well-known, it has been unclear why vitamin A deficiencies and overdoses cause such widespread and profound harm to our organs, until now. The discovery by Hammerling and colleagues explains why these effects occur, while also providing insight into vitamin A’s anti-cancer effects. The scientists used cultures from both human and mice cells containing specific genetic modifications of the chemical pathways involved in mitochondrial energy production. The cells were then grown with and without vitamin A, and scientists examined the impact on the various steps of energy production. Results showed that retinol, the key component of vitamin A, is essential for the metabolic fitness of mitochondria and acts as a nutritional sensor for the creation of energy in cells. When there is too much or too little vitamin A, mitochondria do not function properly, wreaking havoc on our organs.
Geisinger Physician to Chair Pediatric Obesity Symposium
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William Cochran, M.D., vice chairman of Geisinger Health System’s Janet Weis Children’s Hospital, will chair and speak at a symposium on pediatric obesity and prevention on Oct. 17 in Washington, D.C., during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“I am tremendously excited to represent Geisinger at this event,” Dr. Cochran said. “Childhood obesity is becoming an increasingly important topic to discuss, and this symposium will be a great opportunity for professionals to share findings and ideas on the issue.”
Port Wine Stains an Easy Fix
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After 56 years of discomfort, embarrassment, and even pain, Maureen Dillon was finally able to go out in public with only one layer of makeup on. She felt beautiful for the first time since adolescence. She jumped in a pool without worrying about her makeup washing off and revealing a strawberry-colored cheek and nose.
Dillon had lived with port wine stains since birth, and they became darker and brought more distress as the years went on.
After dealing with blood vessel clusters and papules, swelling and infections, Dillon’s family doctor sent her to see Jeffrey Orringer, M.D., director of the Cosmetic Dermatology and Laser Center at the University of Michigan Health System. Orringer used lasers that, over eight treatments, removed Dillon’s port wine stains.
Memories of the Way They Used to Be
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A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla have developed a safe strategy for reprogramming cells to a pluripotent state without use of viral vectors or genomic insertions. Their studies reveal that these induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are very similar to human embryonic stem cells, yet maintain a “transcriptional signature.” In essence, these cells retain some memory of the donor cells they once were.
The study, led by UCSD Stem Cell Program researcher Alysson R. Muotri, assistant professor in the Departments of Pediatrics at UCSD and Rady Children’s Hospital and UCSD’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, will be published online in PLoS ONE on September 17.
“Working with neural stem cells, we discovered that a single factor can be used to re-program a human cell into a pluripotent state, one with the ability to differentiate into any type of cell in the body” said Muotri. Traditionally, a combination of four factors was used to create iPSCs, in a technology using viral vectors – viruses with the potential to affect the transcriptional profile of cells, sometimes inducing cell death or tumors.
Vietnam birth trend may fuel sex work, trafficking
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The ratio of boys born in Vietnam compared with girls has grown at an unusually rapid pace in recent years and could lead to a rise in sex work and trafficking, the United Nations said.
The sex ratio at birth was 112.1 male births per 100 female births in 2008, up from an estimated 106.2 in 2000, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) said in a report.
With growth since 2006 of one percentage point per year, the ratio might cross the 115 mark within three years, it said.
Piece from childhood virus may save soldiers’ lives
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A harmless shard from the shell of a common childhood virus may halt a biological process that kills a significant percentage of battlefield casualties, heart attack victims and oxygen-deprived newborns, according to research presented Sunday, September 6, 2009, at the 12th European meeting on complement in human disease in Budapest, Hungary.
Introducing the virus’s shell in vitro shuts down what’s known as the complement response, a primordial part of the immune system that attacks and destroys the organs and vascular lining of people who have been deprived of oxygen for prolonged periods, according to researchers at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters (CHKD) and Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS), in Norfolk, Va.
The complement response kicks in after the victim has been revived, in what is known as a reperfusion injury. It does its work slowly but unrelentingly, killing soldiers, infants or heart attack victims over the course of days.
