Ethical concerns over kidney donation websites
Washington: Thirty-eight percent of all kidney transplants in the US are performed using living donors, but some patients who don’t have access to such donors approach websites for the organ. Now ethical questions about this practice are being raised.
Although these websites, known as ‘Good Samaritan’ donors accounted only for 71 and 68 kidney donations in 2005 and 2006 in US, respectively, they represent a source of hope for patients who cannot count on their family members or social networks.
A new study focuses on the ethical issues raised by this system of recipient / donor matching by ‘Good Samaritans’. Specifically, the pursuit of living kidney donation may be based less on relevant information and more on the persuasiveness of the appeal.
Little is known about the patients who choose to solicit living donors online. The authors examined the 224 profiles of potential kidney transplant recipients who registered on the largest donor matching website.
“If one accepts that, as the waiting list grows, more and more patients will consider the public solicitation of living donors via websites like the one we reviewed, it is imperative that the transplant community begin to ask – and answer – some key questions,” said James R. Rodrigue, co-author of the study.
There are more than 75,000 individuals awaiting kidney transplantation in the US. While recent efforts to increase deceased organ donation rates and to expand deceased donation criteria are promising, many patients continue to experience long waiting times and high morbidity and mortality while waiting, according to a release on Eurekalert.
There are concerns about this practice impairing public trust in the organ allocation system, and thus indirectly reducing the total number of living and deceased kidneys donated. However, donor-recipient matching services do not currently violate existing organ allocation policies.
“It is not surprising that patients will present themselves in the most favourable light while omitting characteristics that they perceive as undesirable, as to do otherwise might reduce their success in attracting a suitable living donor,” added Rodrigue.
These findings were published in Clinical Transplantation.
C-Section Affects Moms’ Response to Baby
Study Shows Women Who Have C-Sections May Be Less Responsive to Baby’s CriesSept. 4, 2008 — Moms who deliver naturally may be more responsive to their newborn’s cries than women who deliver via cesarean section, a study shows.
But experts caution that women who have C-sections should not feel like failures as mothers because they did not deliver vaginally. In recent years, the rate of C-section delivery in the U.S. has increased from about 4.5% of all deliveries in 1965 to 29.1% in 2006, according to information cited in the study.
The study is published in the October issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
“Just because moms who deliver vaginally respond better to their infant’s cries does not mean they are better parents,” says researcher James E. Swain, MD, PhD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. “Other factors play a role, including the whole lifetime experience of the mother, the presence of a supportive father, as well as other socioeconomic and cultural factors.”
The researchers used brain scans called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 12 new moms two to four weeks following delivery to determine if the type of delivery affected how responsive they were to their newborn’s cries.
The Role of Oxytocin
The six women who delivered vaginally showed more activity in certain areas of the brain linked to emotions and parenting behaviors compared to the six moms who had elective C-sections. The researchers suggest that vaginal birth stimulates the more rapid release of the “love hormone” oxytocin.
Oxytocin is released during active labor and delivery. It’s been shown to be a factor in mother-child bonding.
Some research has linked C-section delivery with higher rates of postpartum depression, and this may be due to the discrepancies in oxytocin release. None of the women in the new study developed postpartum depression. The initial study was three weeks in duration, but unpublished, follow-up data spanning three to four months showed that the differences between the moms on MRI is less marked.
“Don’t panic or think you did the wrong thing by having a C-section because it may be that these differences are just in the initial phases and it may take the oxytocin awhile to build up after a C-section delivery. Or maybe C-section moms may make up for it later with normal cuddling and hugging and nursing,” Swain says. Breastfeeding is known to stimulate the release of oxytocin.
Going forward, the new findings may help doctors develop a screening test for risk of postpartum depression. “We can monitor the mother and father to see if certain brain areas are not as responsive to baby stimuli and then they can be a little more closely monitored and offered more support due to increased risk of depression,” Swain says.
Scientists having success in predicting premature births
In Australia 70 per cent of deaths of newborn babies are related to them being premature, but until recently there has been no accurate way of picking which women will go into early labour.
Now Australian scientists have developed a world-first computer program to predict the risk.
A decade ago Professor Roger Smith was researching the surge of hormones as childbirth starts and called on an engineer, David Smith, to help him map some of the patterns.
Now with the help of a private pathology company, they’ve developed a program with a 92 per cent success rate of picking women likely to go into early labour.
Roger Smith, who leads the Mothers and Babies Research Centre at the University of Newcastle, says that knowledge could help doctors cut the number of early births by 50 per cent.
“One of the treatments that is being trialled is giving extra progesterone, one of the hormones of pregnancy,” he said.
“It is thought to help prevent the onset of labour but it is just as important to identify the women who are not at risk of premature birth and other conditions, because then they could have, if you like, a more natural pregnancy with fewer interventions and they might be appropriate for lower cost management strategies like primarily midwife care or even home birth.”
Roger Smith says several pieces of information are used to predict if a woman is at risk of premature labour.
“It is like having had a premature birth before,” he said.
“Also cigarette smoking, which is certainly associated with premature birth but in addition, we will be building in changes in the levels of their hormones that we’ve shown are indicative of premature birth.”
Professor David Smith is a bio-medical engineer at the University of Melbourne.
“It relies on looking at a large number of women, measuring various blood hormones over time and ask where is this woman likely to go,” he said.
“It is a little bit like getting in place a whole series of tracks for hurricanes.
“What we see is that those women who give birth prematurely kind of track differently to those that give birth at term.”
Roger Smith says that with the help of an Australian Research Council grant, he and David Smith will refine the computer program over the next three years and if all goes to plan, it could be widely available across the country soon after.
“Producing a healthy baby at the right time is a very important investment really for all of Australia,” he said.
“It means that the baby is less likely to need additional health care later in life, less likely to need additional educational input.”
They might even be better at getting Olympic medals – you never know.
Adapted from an AM report by Samantha Donovan.
Even Kids With Known Allergies Can Be Safely Vaccinated
THURSDAY, Sept. 4 (HealthDay News) — Vaccine safety experts say that almost all kids who are allergic to vaccines can receive vaccinations with close monitoring and a set of standard precautions.
Reporting in the September issue of Pediatrics, a team of experts led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center put forth a step-by-step set of instructions — an algorithm — to help physicians evaluate and immunize children with known or suspected vaccine allergies.
Allergic reactions to vaccines are extremely rare — with only one or two per million vaccinations — but they can be serious and even life-threatening. Symptoms of a severe allergic reaction are usually immediate, may include hives, swelling, wheezing, coughing, low blood pressure, vomiting or diarrhea, and can lead to full-blown, life-threatening anaphylaxis.
To help pediatricians differentiate between these serious reactions to benign responses, the investigators analyzed the available evidence on vaccine safety and allergies.
“We cannot reiterate enough that the vaccines used today are extremely safe, but, in a handful of children, certain vaccine ingredients trigger serious allergic reactions,” study author Robert Wood, chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Hopkins Children’s Center, said in a hospital news release. “For the most part, even children with known allergies can be safely vaccinated.”
The new sequence of instructions developed by the research team is intended to be used for children who have already had or are at high risk for having allergic reactions to vaccines.
In these cases, the algorithm advises a workup by an allergist, who can perform skin prick testing or blood tests, to detect the presence of an allergy to a suspected allergen in the vaccine.
In many cases where a child is allergic to an allergen in a vaccine, an alternative form of the vaccine that is free of the allergen can be used. If an allergen-free vaccine is unavailable, many children can still be vaccinated under the supervision of a physician for several hours after the vaccination. Immunizations of children with known vaccine allergies should be administered at a clinic that is equipped to treat life-threatening reactions or in a hospital intensive care unit.
Physicians also have the option of checking the child for immunity to the disease that is being vaccinated against. If the child is already immune, further doses of the vaccine may not be necessary.
Trouble sleeping? Your body clock is out of sync
Sydney, Sep 5 : Biological clocks of humans, animals and even plants are intricately linked with day and night. But when they fall out of sync, they have potentially damaging consequences.
Swinburne University of Technology researcher Greg Murray, who has keenly studied the body clock or the circadian system, found its rhythms can impact human mood.
His research has linked the body clock and certain psychological responses, including the capacity to trigger relapses in patients with bipolar disorder.
Mood disorders such as bipolar disorder have long been linked with sleep problems, suggesting that the circadian system plays a role in these conditions.
“If you take seriously this idea that the body clock is part of a causal pathway to mood disorders, then a natural deduction is that monitoring clock function might provide early warning of relapse in vulnerable people,” Murray said.
Murray and his PhD student Ben Bullock have just tested the theory in a project funded by the National Depression Initiative. Twelve volunteers with bipolar disorder were fitted with wrist-worn devices designed to monitor their circadian system by measuring their physical activity throughout the day and night.
According to Murray, these actigraphs give a usable measure of circadian output under natural conditions.
The subjects were tracked for up to 12 months. During the period, one participant experienced a serious relapse that landed him in hospital. “For our purpose, it was very interesting that circadian activity data really did show a marked signal of deterioration in the days and even weeks before the relapse.”
Instead of his activity patterns operating on a 24-hour cycle, the participant shifted to a 48-hour cycle of wakefulness and broken, disturbed rest.
“With Indic Premananda, from the University of Massachusetts, we are analysing the actigraph data to find the time scale at which rhythm disruption is most apparent,” Murray said.
In the next stage of research, the team wants to see if signals of rhythm disruption in patients can be used as markers of vulnerability to bipolar disorder in the general population.
High Levels Of Uric Acid May Be Associated With High Blood Pressure
Reducing levels of uric acid in blood lowered blood pressure to normal in most teens in a study designed to investigate a possible link between blood pressure and the chemical, a waste product of the body’s normal metabolism, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a recent report.
“If you reduce uric acid, at least in some patients, you may be able to reduce blood pressure,” said Dr. Daniel Feig, associate professor of pediatrics-renal at BCM and chief of the pediatric hypertension clinics at Texas Children’s Hospital. “This could be one way people develop hypertension and may allow us to develop new therapies.”
Understanding how people develop high blood pressure gives scientists new tools for understanding the disorder and developing drugs to prevent and treat it.
Uric acid builds up when the body makes too much of it or fails to excrete it. It is a waste product resulting from the metabolism of food. Too much uric acid can cause gout, which occurs when uric acid crystals accumulate in the joints. In this study, researchers used allopurinol to reduce high uric acid levels. Allopurinol is usually used to treat gout, but Feig said its potential side effects rule it out as a treatment for high blood pressure.
In the JAMA study, Feig and his colleagues treated teens with newly diagnosed high blood pressure and elevated levels of uric acid in their blood with allopurinol. In the study, half of the 30 teen-agers with newly diagnosed high blood pressure and higher than normal levels of uric acid in their blood underwent treatment with allopurinol twice a day for four weeks. The other half received a placebo (an inactive drug) on the same schedule. They then went without either drug for two weeks before receiving the opposite treatment for another four weeks.
The treatment not only reduced uric acid levels, it also reduced blood pressure in most of the teens, said Feig. In fact, he said, blood pressures decreased to normal in 20 of the 30 teens when they were on allopurinol. By contrast, only 1 of the 30 teens had normal blood pressure when receiving placebo.
“This is far from being a reasonable therapeutic intervention for high blood pressure, but these findings indicate a first step in understanding the pathway of the disease,” said Feig. “You cannot prevent a disease until you know the cause. This study is way of finding that out.”
Studies in rats had indicated previously that high levels of uric acid could be associated with the development of high blood pressure through a proven pathway, said Feig. However, he and his colleagues needed to determine if this was true for humans as well.
“The antihypertensive therapies available to patients are well proven and safe,” said Feig. “Currently available antihyperuricemic therapies (treatments that lower uric acid) are not safe enough to be used as first line therapy for most people with high blood pressure.”
Side effects could include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, liver problems and even a very rare, potentially life-threatening reaction known as Steven-Johnson syndrome. While only 1 in 3,000 people develop this problem, the risk is too great to prescribe the drug on a routine basis to people with high blood pressure, a problem that affects 30 to 35 percent of adults.
Currently available therapies are effective but are not solving the problem in everyone. Optimal blood pressures are achieved in only 40 percent of people who are treated for the problem. Understanding the cause of high blood pressure could lead to better treatments and even methods of prevention.
Animal studies indicate that early in the disease, the extra uric acid activates the renin angiotensin system of the body, shrinking key blood vessels and causing high blood pressure. Eventually, however, the small vessels in the kidney are permanently affected, making the blood pressure sensitive to salt or sodium. Too much salt causes the pressure to rise.
Others who took part in this work include Beth Soletsky, RN, also of BCM and Dr. Richard J. Johnson of the University of Florida at Gainesville.
Funding for this work came from the National Institutes of Health.
Incense smoke linked to cancer
Regularly inhaling the smoke of incense tubes could put you at risk of respiratory cancer.
Incense tubes are an integral part of daily lives of many Asians. The burning of incense tubes produces smoke that contains a multitude of carcinogens, agents directly involved in the promotion of cancer. However, no study has yet established any association between exposure to incense smoke and development of cancer.
To investigate whether or not regular inhaling of incense smoke contributes to the development of respiratory cancer, researchers from China followed 61,320 people aged between 45 and 74 years who were free of cancer at the start of the study. The participants were interviewed about their living conditions and dietary and lifestyle factors. The participants reported on their typical incense use, including how often they burned it in their homes and for how long only at night, for instance, or all day and night.
During the 12 years of follow up, 325 men and women developed cancer of the upper respiratory tract, such as nasal, oral or throat cancer and another 821 developed lung cancer. It was found that incense use was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract, with the exception of nasopharyngeal cancer. However, no overall effect on lung cancer risk was observed.
Moreover, those who used incense in their homes throughout the day and night were 80 percent more likely than non-users to develop squamous cell carcinoma (tumours that arise in the cells lining the internal and external surfaces of the body) of the entire respiratory tract.
The above findings substantiate the presence of cancer promoting carcinogens in incense tubes. Further studies are expected to find out whether different types of incense are associated with different degrees of cancer risk.
Food Allergy Labels May Become Easier to Read
WASHINGTON — It’s one of the biggest frustrations of life with food allergies: That hodgepodge of warnings that a food might accidentally contain the wrong ingredient.
The warnings are voluntary — meaning there’s no way to know if foods that don’t bear them really should. And they’re vague: Is “may contain traces of peanuts” more reliable than “made in the same factory as peanuts?”
Now health officials in the U.S. and Canada are debating setting standards, amid increasing concern that consumers are so confused they’re starting to ignore the warnings.
“Really, the safest thing you can do is make all your food at home from scratch, period,” says Margaret Sova McCabe of Sanbornton, N.H., whose son Tommie, almost 8, is allergic to peanuts, dairy, wheat and five other ingredients.
But she doesn’t find that practical — and repeatedly has spotted longtime favorite “safe” foods suddenly bearing new warnings that accidental contamination is possible after all.
“Sometimes we buy the product anyway, and sometimes we don’t,” says McCabe, who is a law professor and questions how often the warnings signal liability protection rather than true risk.
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“What does this really mean? Can I count on it, as a consumer, to really have any meaning?” she asks.
The Food and Drug Administration will ask those same questions at a public hearing on Sept. 16, a first step toward developing what it calls “a long-term strategy” to clear the confusion.
“Advisory labeling may not be protecting the health of allergic consumers,” the FDA acknowledged.
Canadian authorities have gone a step further, saying accidental-allergy warnings are “misleading consumers” and advising food makers to begin clarifying them even as Health Canada researches a formal policy.
The food industry recognizes there’s confusion. The Grocery Manufacturers of America has been working to set new guidelines on the warnings for more than a year, but declined comment before next month’s meeting.
About 12 million Americans have food allergies. Severe ones trigger 30,000 annual emergency-room visits, and 150 to 200 deaths a year.
Starting in 2006, a U.S. law required that foods disclose in plain language when they intentionally contain highly allergenic ingredients such as peanuts or dairy.
Left out of the law are accidental-allergy warnings — for foods that might become contaminated because they were made in the same factory, or on the same machines, as allergen-containing products. The FDA has said that a quarter of inspected food factories have the potential for such a mix-up.
More and more foods bear precautionary labels, but there’s a disconnect. The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, an influential consumer group, counts at least 30 different ways that the warnings are worded — and consumers too often falsely assume that one food is riskier than another because its label sounds scarier.
Three-quarters of parents of food-allergic children surveyed by the group in 2006 said they would never buy a food with an accidental-allergy warning, down from 85 percent in 2003, when such labels were novel.
The FDA’s own surveys found the allergic pay more attention to warnings that a food “may contain” an allergen than those “made in the same factory” labels.
Yet when University of Nebraska researchers tested nearly 200 products with various accidental-peanut warnings, they found that peanuts were more likely to have sneaked into products labeled “made in the same facility.”
And Health Canada researchers recently discovered that some chocolate labeled as possibly containing “traces” of peanuts or tree nuts in fact contained up to six times the amount that the government considers a trace level.
Contributing to consumer mistrust are puzzling warnings, like canned or frozen vegetables with nut precautions. Just last week, allergy network founder Anne Munoz-Furlong was stunned to receive a basket of fresh fruit with a warning that it might contain nuts or milk.
“Right now everybody’s making up their own rules,” Munoz-Furlong says — and she’s pushing FDA for clear standards to help consumers understand which foods to avoid.
In Canada, the government’s review is just beginning, but meanwhile it recommends foods bear one of two labels: “May contain X allergen” or “Not suitable for consumption by persons with an allergy to X.”
Back in New Hampshire, the McCabes show how tricky label reading is. Tommie has loved a particular nondairy soy yogurt since infancy. When it began bearing an accidental-allergy precaution, his mother toured the factory and was relieved by how the equipment was cleaned. But last week, she noticed the label had changed again, to say the yogurt might also contain live cultures based on milk.
It “maybe illustrates how difficult it can be when you have food allergies to stay on top of that information,” McCabe said.
Indonesia’s “tree man” comes home after treatment
An Indonesian man dubbed the “tree man” because of gnarled growths on his body has returned from hospital after six kilograms (13 pounds) of warts were surgically removed from his body, a doctor said on Tuesday.
Dede, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, first noticed the warts on his body after cutting his knee as a teenager. Over time, he was sacked from his job, deserted by his wife and shunned by neighbours as the horn-like extensions covered most of his body. One of Dede’s doctors, Rachmad Dinata, said the hospital had allowed the 37-year-old man to enjoy the Islamic fasting month with his family now that 95 percent of the warts had been removed after nine operations. The fasting month begins on September 1. “He cannot be 100 percent cured, but his life quality has improved. If once he depended on others to do his activities, now he can eat by himself, use his hand to write, use the cell phone,” Dinata said. The doctor said the warts on Dede’s body, which an American doctor said were a result of severe Human Papilloma Virus infection, might re-grow. But the disease is not life-threatening anymore. Dede was operated on at the Hasan Sadikin provincial hospital in Bandung in West Java where he was admitted nine months ago with a lung infection as a result of the warts. Dede must still go through more surgery to trim more warts from his palms and the back of his hands after the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday in October. “We sent him home so he can gather with his family again, especially ahead of the fasting month. It will mentally help the healing process,” Dinata said.
Bacteria, Fungi Infections Linked to Premature Births
WASHINGTON — Infections may play a bigger role in premature birth than doctors have thought, says a new study that found almost one in seven women in preterm labor harbored bacteria or fungi in their amniotic fluid.
It’s a small study, and it doesn’t prove that the germs triggered the early labor.
But Monday’s research used specialized molecular testing to uncover microbes that ordinary methods miss, and thus uncovered more women with simmering infections than previously estimated.
The more heavily infected the amniotic fluid, the more likely the woman was to deliver a younger, sicker baby, researchers reported in PLoS One, the online journal of the Public Library of Science.
“We don’t think any organisms belong in the amniotic sac,” said Stanford University microbiologist Dr. David Relman, the study’s senior author. “You’d have to presume there’s something wrong.”
More than half a million babies a year are born premature, before completion of 37 weeks of pregnancy. It’s a toll that has steadily risen for two decades, yet doctors don’t know the cause of most preterm births or how to prevent them. Every extra week in the womb helps. Those born before 32 weeks face the greatest risk of death or devastating disabilities, but even babies born a few weeks early can face serious problems.![CDATA[*/
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Certain infections, such as vaginal or urinary tract infections, are known to raise the risk of premature birth, presumably by causing inflammation that in turn triggers labor.
But how much of a role infections play, especially those that don’t cause outward symptoms, has been a key question, said Dr. Michael Katz of the March of Dimes, who wasn’t part of the new study.
So the Stanford team tried a new approach.
They turned to samples of amniotic fluid saved from women who had gone into preterm labor at a Detroit hospital between 1998 and 2002. Doctors at the time tried standard tests to detect infection, and saved the leftover fluid for research.
This time around, Relman and research fellow Dr. Dan DiGiulio used more sophisticated testing known as PCR to find and reproduce bits of genetic material from germs. They used only fluid that had been collected through a syringe in the abdomen — like routine amniocentesis tests are done — before the women’s water broke, to ensure the tests didn’t detect post-labor germs. Ultimately included were 166 women, 113 of whom delivered prematurely.
Some 15 percent of the women harbored bacteria or fungi, and those who did all delivered prematurely. Adding the PCR tests found 56 percent more infected women than standard testing alone detected.
Even that is likely an underestimate, the researchers concluded, because they were using samples so old that the DNA in them had begun degrading.
The standard tests were especially likely to miss infections in women whose babies were born extremely premature, before 25 weeks.
And there was a surprising variety of germs: 17 bacterial species — including one never-before-seen type — and one fungus.
“It’s a very, very important first step,” the March of Dimes’ Katz said of the research. But, “there are still many hurdles.”
Next researchers will have to prove if harboring these germs really predicts who will go into preterm labor. Relman’s team, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, now is studying 2,000 women who get routine amniocentesis in their second trimester, to try to answer that.
If so, then the questions become where those germs originate, whether there’s a less invasive way to find who’s at risk, and if there’s any treatment that might help.
Bacteria, Fungi Infections Linked to Premature Births
WASHINGTON — Infections may play a bigger role in premature birth than doctors have thought, says a new study that found almost one in seven women in preterm labor harbored bacteria or fungi in their amniotic fluid.
It’s a small study, and it doesn’t prove that the germs triggered the early labor.
But Monday’s research used specialized molecular testing to uncover microbes that ordinary methods miss, and thus uncovered more women with simmering infections than previously estimated.
The more heavily infected the amniotic fluid, the more likely the woman was to deliver a younger, sicker baby, researchers reported in PLoS One, the online journal of the Public Library of Science.
“We don’t think any organisms belong in the amniotic sac,” said Stanford University microbiologist Dr. David Relman, the study’s senior author. “You’d have to presume there’s something wrong.”
More than half a million babies a year are born premature, before completion of 37 weeks of pregnancy. It’s a toll that has steadily risen for two decades, yet doctors don’t know the cause of most preterm births or how to prevent them. Every extra week in the womb helps. Those born before 32 weeks face the greatest risk of death or devastating disabilities, but even babies born a few weeks early can face serious problems.
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Certain infections, such as vaginal or urinary tract infections, are known to raise the risk of premature birth, presumably by causing inflammation that in turn triggers labor.
But how much of a role infections play, especially those that don’t cause outward symptoms, has been a key question, said Dr. Michael Katz of the March of Dimes, who wasn’t part of the new study.
So the Stanford team tried a new approach.
They turned to samples of amniotic fluid saved from women who had gone into preterm labor at a Detroit hospital between 1998 and 2002. Doctors at the time tried standard tests to detect infection, and saved the leftover fluid for research.
This time around, Relman and research fellow Dr. Dan DiGiulio used more sophisticated testing known as PCR to find and reproduce bits of genetic material from germs. They used only fluid that had been collected through a syringe in the abdomen — like routine amniocentesis tests are done — before the women’s water broke, to ensure the tests didn’t detect post-labor germs. Ultimately included were 166 women, 113 of whom delivered prematurely.
Some 15 percent of the women harbored bacteria or fungi, and those who did all delivered prematurely. Adding the PCR tests found 56 percent more infected women than standard testing alone detected.
Even that is likely an underestimate, the researchers concluded, because they were using samples so old that the DNA in them had begun degrading.
The standard tests were especially likely to miss infections in women whose babies were born extremely premature, before 25 weeks.
And there was a surprising variety of germs: 17 bacterial species — including one never-before-seen type — and one fungus.
“It’s a very, very important first step,” the March of Dimes’ Katz said of the research. But, “there are still many hurdles.”
Next researchers will have to prove if harboring these germs really predicts who will go into preterm labor. Relman’s team, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, now is studying 2,000 women who get routine amniocentesis in their second trimester, to try to answer that.
If so, then the questions become where those germs originate, whether there’s a less invasive way to find who’s at risk, and if there’s any treatment that might help.
Canada Food-Poisoning Death Toll Climbs to 12
OTTAWA — The death toll from a listeriosis outbreak in Canada linked to products from Maple Leaf Foods has climbed to 12, according to a Canada News Service report published in the Vancouver Times Tuesday.
The Public Health Agency of Canada on Monday said there are 26 confirmed cases of listeriosis across the country stemming from contaminated meat. Eleven deaths were in Ontario and one was in British Columbia, the agency said during a news conference.
In six of the Ontario deaths, the bacterium listeria monocytogenes is being called an underlying or contributing factor to the death. The other five are still under investigation, according to the report. Maple Leaf has recalled more than 220 products as a result of the outbreak.
The Canada-wide recall is expected to cost more than $19 million. In addition to the 26 confirmed cases, another 29 cases of listeriosis have been identified and are being investigated to see whether they are linked to the current outbreak, according to the outbreak.
Still, the investigation into the cause of the outbreak is far from complete, the health agency said. Maple Leaf’s Toronto plant has shut down temporarily to allow for heavy sanitizing of the facility.
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Linda Smith, a spokesperson for Maple Leaf, said all the recalled meat products had been removed from stores shelves across Canada by Thursday.
However, determining where the products ended up after they were purchased by distributors — such as in hospitals or retirement homes — has been more complex.
“There is a very active effort to work with all the food distribution customers. But it is not as direct, because there are customers, and then those customers have customers,” she said.
Hopes new drug may save Laos jungle survivor
The mother of the Australian man who survived 11 days in a Laos jungle says the family is waiting to see if a new drug saves her son’s life.
Hayden Adcock, 40, from Queensland has been in Bangkok hospital in a critical condition since he was rescued two weeks ago.
He has multiple organ failure and internal bleeding.
Doctors have given him new medication to stop the bleeding and his mother Lynne Sturrock says she hopes that her son will not have to undergo surgery.
“That would be wonderful if it worked because it would save him having this huge operation, which in his condition he may not pull through,” she said.
3D robotics helps remove diseased kidney for first time
Washington, Aug 26 : Sophisticated 3D robotics helped surgeons remove a diseased kidney through a single incision at Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan.
“We made several improvements in the technique that could allow us to perform this type of procedure routinely,” said Craig Rogers, the hospital’s director of robotic renal surgery.
Rogers inserts the robotic arms through a single incision near the belly button, and sits at a nearby machine, controlling the robot throughout the operation. “The robotic instruments are like having my hands inside the body,” he said.
Then the robot-assisted surgeon inflates the abdomen; moves the large intestine aside to reach the kidney; clips or ties off the vein and artery that takes blood to and from the kidney; detaches the rest of the kidney and removes it.
He performed the delicate operation last week using the da Vinci Surgical System, which has already been used in thousands of successful surgeries for complete and partial removal of diseased prostates.
The kidney, damaged by four tumours, was extracted through an incision of about three inches near the navel of a 50-year-old patient, during a complex, yet minimally invasive robotic procedure that lasted approximately 2.5 hours.
The potential benefits of performing single incision robotic surgery (SIRS) nephrectomy (partial or full removal of kidney) are improved cosmetics, quicker recovery times, and less scarring and blood loss.
Dr. Rogers and his colleagues have also pioneered robotic surgery for smaller kidney tumours. While these procedures are considered revolutionary because they preserve the healthy portion of the kidney and shorten recovery time, they are not practical for patients with large tumours.
Henry Ford doctors have performed more than 130 robotic kidney surgeries using four or five incisions of less than one inch.
Kidney cancer is diagnosed in approximately 55,000 people a year and the most common treatment option is an open surgery with a large incision about a foot long.
Exercise, limited TV keep kids healthy
Children who spend fewer hours in the front of TV and computer and exercise regularly are less likely to be overweight than their counterparts.
To examine the combined influence of physical activity and screen time on the risks of being overweight, researchers from Australia followed 709 children, aged between 7 and 12 years. The researchers noted the time these children spent daily while watching TV and playing video games on the computer. Each child was made to wear a pedometer, or step counter, for at least four days in order to gauge his or her typical physical activity level. Boys who took at least 13,000 steps per day were considered to be in line with exercise recommendations, as were girls who logged 11,000 or more steps.
The researchers found that those children who did not get at least one hour of moderate exercise on most, if not all days of the week and devoted more than two hours per day to watching TV and playing video games were three to four times more likely to be overweight than their peers. The increased risk of being overweight among non-exercising girls was 35 percent and among boys, 40 percent.
These findings show that screen time and exercise each are independently associated with the risks of a child being overweight.
Yoga eases menopause symptoms
Yoga may help in reducing hot flashes and night sweats among women going through menopause, and it also appears to sharpen their cognitive functions.
Yoga encourages relaxation and muscle control, and helps reduce the adverse effects of psychological stress and strain. To assess the benefits yoga offers for women going through menopause, researchers from India randomly assigned 120 menopausal women, aged between 40 and 55 years, to yoga practice or simple stretching and strengthening exercises five days a week for eight weeks. Women in the yoga group also listened to lectures on using yoga to manage stress and other yoga-related topics, while those in the control group heard lectures on diet, exercise, the physiology of menopause, and stress.
After eight weeks, it was found that women in the yoga group showed a significant reduction in hot flashes, night sweats, and sleep disturbances, while the women in the control group did not. Both groups showed improvements in a test of attention and concentration, although improvement in the yoga group was significantly greater. In a test of memory and intelligence with 10 components, the yoga group improved on eight, while the control group improved on six.
The above findings establish that efficacy of yoga over physical activity in improving the cognitive functions that could be attributed to emphasis on correctness in breathing, synchronizing breathing with body movements, relaxation and mindful rest.
Govt urged to rethink school start age law
Parents in Tasmania are lobbying the State Government to allow them to hold their children back from starting school.
Under Tasmanian law children have to start school by the time they turn six, but a psychologist who has made a living telling parents that boys develop later than girls says the law should be changed.
Steve Biddulph travels the world, advising parents to hold their sons back from starting school.
“I haven’t been doing many lecture tours in Tasmania, and I was speaking on the north-west coast, and some parents came up after the lecture and said, ‘did you know your advice is against the law?’,” he said.
“They in fact were parents of little boys who were having to start school this coming year and they were really upset about that, because they were very young for their cohort and not really ready.”
Dr Biddulph says Tasmania and South Australia are the only states that do not give parents the option of delaying their child’s first day of school.
In the rest of the country, there is a window of six months to a year before a child has to go to school.
“Really, the calendar is a very poor guide to school readiness in children generally,” he said.
“Some children are ready and some are not. But on the whole, boys are about six months – and some times even 12 months – less developed in their fine motor schools, which is writing and holding a pen and doing neat work.
“So they’re really not ready for what school does, and then have a lot of problems that teachers complain all the time about, because the little girls are doing what they’re meant to be doing and paying attention and little boys are sticking the pen in their navel and crawling around on the floor.”
But it is not just boys that may need to wait longer for school.
“It would involve a percentage of boys and a smaller percentage of girls as well, and so we think that basically every child should be looked at as an individual case,” Dr Biddulph said.
His opinion is shared by Tasmanian State Schools Parents and Friends Association president Jenny Branch.
“If you look at the Finnish model, which we’ve all been talking about lately, they’re all starting school later,” she said.
“I think there’s all sorts of arguments about how we’re going to look at schooling for our children for the future, and maybe we just have to look at some different ways of doing things, just to suit the individual child rather than putting them all in one box.”
One Tasmanian parent who has got special permission for her children to start school later is Jane Wells, who has twins – a boy and a girl.
“It’s difficult with twins because if they don’t go together, then there may be a stigma attached to that later on,” she said.
She says there is an obvious difference between her daughter and son.
“I think the social development, that ability to interact with peers and be confident socially, seems to come slower to boys or to our son in particular,” she said.
“I think the most important thing for children to have with they begin their school journey is confidence, and I don’t believe our son would have had that confidence.”
There is no word yet from the Tasmanian Government about how it will respond to the campaign.
Addiction drug reverses obesity in rats
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An epilepsy drug being tested for use in treating addiction can help obese rats shed weight, U.S. government researchers said on Wednesday.
Their findings point not only to an easy treatment for obesity, but show it is similar to drug addiction, they said.
Even rats bred to be obese lost up to 19 percent of their weight and normal rats lost 12 to 20 percent of their weight after 40 days of injections of the drug, called vigabatrin or GVG, the team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory found.
“When we gave GVG, they would steadily lose weight, and when we took them off GVG, they would steadily gain weight,” Amy DeMarco, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
“It was like a roller coaster. It was also dose-dependent. Rats given higher doses would lose more weight.” She added that her team saw no side effects in the rats.
Vigabatrin, sold as Sabril in Canada and Mexico by Deerfield, Illinois-based Ovation Pharmaceuticals Inc and in Britain by Sanofi Aventis, is being tested in people now for cocaine and methamphetamine addiction.
Writing in the journal Synapse, the researchers said the drug stops the brain’s dopamine reward system, which underlies addiction and overeating.
“For substance abusers, the number one cause of relapse is environmental cues, triggers,” said Brookhaven’s Dr. Stephen Dewey, who led the research.
“A fairly significant proportion of subjects who are obese suffer from something called binge eating disorders. They binge-eat based on cues. They see a cake, they smell a hamburger and they crave and they start to eat. One of the great things about this drug is it stops this,” Dewey added.
“Most drugs of abuse do the same thing to the brain. They increase dopamine. GVG can prevent that increase of dopamine,” DeMarco said.
Brookhaven has licensed its vigabatrin patents to Coral Gables, Florida-based Catalyst Pharmaceutical Partners Inc, which is testing the drug in phase II human trials for cocaine and methamphetamine addiction.
The company also plans to test the drug, which it calls CPP-109, for binge eating disorder and alcohol dependence.
Ovation is also testing the drug for use in cocaine and methamphetamine dependence.
Dewey said he has been working with vigabatrin for decades. “It was impossible to get any pharmaceutical company interested in pursuing it for an addiction application,” he said.
Britain’s Royal College of Ophthalmologists reported in March that the drug can affect sight, reducing peripheral vision and limiting the field of vision in other ways, perhaps irreversibly.
Dewey said these effects were seen with much heavier use of the drug than might be indicated for weight loss.
Cancer expert appointed Chief Health Officer
Leading cancer specialist Professor Jim Bishop has been appointed the new Chief Health Officer for New South Wales.
Professor Bishop is currently the chief cancer officer and chief executive of the NSW Cancer Institute.
Health Minister Reba Meagher says the new role will more closely align cancer research and treatment with the general health portfolio.
Alco-pop tax ‘completely fails’ in Darwin
The Distilled Spirits Industry Council says the Federal Government’s “alco-pop” tax trial has completely failed to reduce binge drinking in Darwin.
The council surveyed 15 local bottle shop owners and were told that 80 per cent of pre-mixed drink consumers have just switched to other types of alcohol.
The council’s information and research manager, Stephen Riden, says the survey is proof that higher taxes are not the solution for the nation’s binge drinking problems.
He says more effort needs to be directed towards changing drinking habits in the home.
“Children absorb parents drinking habits and we need to bring that to the fore.
“A lot of people won’t smoke in front of their kids and they won’t swear – not deliberately – in front of them.
“We need to say ‘What do you think being drunk with your mates in front of your kids is doing to your kids?’.”
But the Territory’s Labor Senator, Trish Crossin, has hit back at the alcohol industry, accusing it of mounting a dangerous campaign to undermine the Federal anti-binge drinking measures.
The Government has hit back at claims that a tax on alco-pops is not working. (ABC News: Giulio Saggin, file photo)
Ms Crossin says the council’s claims about pre-mixed sales are self-serving, and are at odds with figures from the Australian Taxation Office that indicate a drop in sales nationally.
“Binge drinking is actually a community-wide problem and it actually demands a community-wide response.
“What we have here and what we’re concerned about is the industry actually running a very misleading campaign against our alco-pop measures, and a campaign that is really more interested in protecting their profits.”
