Justice Hedley said he passed the order to protect the best interests of the 29-year-old.

He said she had to be protected from “potentially exploitative and damaging” relations in the future, as she had already been involved in risky behaviour with people.

The order prevents the woman from having sex and also means anyone trying to have sex with her can be charged with sexual assault or rape.

Justice Hedley said: “It is strange, but nevertheless true, that even the freedom to make unwise decisions is one that the court is required to guard and only to restrict if and when the best interests of (the woman) so require.”

The case was heard at the controversial Court of Protection, which was set up in 2007 to decide on medical treatment for individuals judged by psychiatrists to lack mental capacity, the Mail said.

Drinking over the recommended daily limit for alcohol increases the risk of serious health problems, according to a new government campaign.

Under the Change4Life banner the new adverts will also inform people about a new online calculator to work out how much they are drinking, the Mail said.

National Health Services (NHS) recommendations state men should not regularly drink more than three to four units a day, while women should not more than two to three.

Two million leaflets will be made available to Change4Life supporters and health professionals across England to get the message across, the newspaper said.

The campaign follows a survey of more than 2,000 people which found 85 percent do not realise drinking over recommended limits increases the risk of developing breast cancer.

Some 65 percent were unaware it increases the risk of bowel cancer, 63 percent did not know about a raised risk of pancreatitis and 59 percent had no idea excess drinking increases the risk of mouth, throat and neck cancer.

More than 30 percent did not realise that drinking just over the limits increases the risk of high blood pressure while 37 percent did not were unaware it can impact on fertility, the Mail said.

“There’s this idea, with silence, that if we don’t talk about something, it starts fading,” says Charles B. Stone of Belgium’s Universite Catholique de Louvain, the co-author of a study on the subject.

But that belief isn’t necessarily backed up by psychological research-a lot of it comes from a Freudian belief that everyone has deep-seated issues we’re repressing and ought to talk about, the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science reports.

The real relationship between silence and memory is much more complicated, Stone says, according to a university statement.

“We are trying to understand how people remember the past in a very basic way,” Stone says. He co-authored the study with Alin Coman, Adam D. Brown, Jonathan Koppel of the universities of Pittsburgh, New York and Aarhus (Denmark) and William Hirst of the New School for Social Research.

Researchers from the European Centre for Environment & Human Health, along with Australian institutions, have found that children living in areas with lower levels of sunlight are at greater risk of developing food allergies and eczema.

Researchers used data from a study of Australian children and analysed how rates of food allergy, eczema and asthma varied throughout the country, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reported.

The report builds upon existing evidence that suggests exposure to the sun may play a role in rising levels of food allergy and eczema, a university statement said.

Sunlight is important because it provides our body with the fuel to create vitamin D in the skin, and locations closer to the equator typically receive higher levels of sunshine.

Nick Osborne, who led the research, believes these findings provide us with an important insight into the prevalence of food allergies and eczema, which appear to be on the increase.

“This investigation has further underlined the association between food allergies, eczema and where you live,” said Osborne.

Osborne will present the findings at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in Orlando on Mar 6.

The bacteria responsible for most foodborne illnesses, Campylobacter and Salmonella, are found to contaminate 70 percent of tested chicken meat, especially their upper surfaces.

Plasma, known as the “fourth state of matter” (after solid, liquid and gas), is a high-energy, charged mixture of gaseous atoms, ions and electrons, the Journal of Food Protection reports.

Treating raw meat to remove pathogens before they are cooked and consumed can cut down risk of cross contamination, says senior study author Jennifer Quinlan, assistant professor of food microbiology, Drexel University College of Nursing and Health Professions.

Past studies have shown that plasma could successfully reduce pathogens on the surface of fruits and vegetables without cooking them, according to a Drexel statement.

The value of using plasma “is that it is non-thermal, so there is no heat to cook or alter the way the food looks,” said Brian Dirks, graduate student in the Drexel College of Arts and Sciences, who led the study.

Dirks and Quinlan worked with researchers from the Drexel Plasma Institute to test the use of plasma for poultry. Raw chicken samples contaminated with Salmonella enterica and Campylobacter jejuni bacteria were treated with plasma for varying periods of time.

Plasma treatment eliminated or nearly eliminated bacteria in low levels from skinless chicken breast and chicken skin, and significantly reduced the level of bacteria when contamination levels were high.

Current plasma technology is expensive relative to the narrow cost margins involved in food production, and the technology is not currently being developed for processing poultry on a large scale.

If plasma technology becomes cost-effective for use in treating poultry, it may be used in conjunction with existing methods to reduce pathogens, Dirks said.

The study, led by researcher George Bittner, professor at University of Texas, used a cellular mechanism similar to that of many invertebrates to repair damage to axons, an extension of the nerve cell that chats with other nerve cells or with muscles.

“We have developed a procedure which can repair severed nerves within minutes so that the behaviour they control can be partially restored within days and often largely restored within two to four weeks,” said Bittner, the Journal of Neuroscience Research reported.

“If further developed in clinical trials this approach would be a great advance on current procedures that usually imperfectly restore lost function within months at best,” added Bittner, according to a university statement.

This research success arises from Bittner’s discovery that nerve axons of invertebrates severed from their cell body do not degenerate within days, as happens with mammals, but can survive for months, or even years.

“Severed invertebrate nerve axons can reconnect…within seven days, allowing a rate of behavioural recovery that is far superior to mammals,” said Bittner.

Bittner’s team were able to repair severed sciatic nerves in the upper thigh, with results showing the rats were able to use their limb within a week and had much function restored within two to four weeks, in some cases to almost full function.

“Our study demonstrates for the first time that heart failure and thinning of bones go hand in hand,” said Sumit Majumdar, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who led the study.

“Understanding the mechanism between heart failure and osteoporosis might lead to new treatments for both conditions,” added Majumdar, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism reports.

“Part of screening for osteoporosis should involve looking at chest X-rays of patients with heart failure,” he said, according to a university statement.

“Heart failure patients get a lot of X-rays and they often incidentally show many fractures of the spine that would automatically provide an indication of severe osteoporosis and need for treatment.”

Researchers conducted a population cohort study comprising 45,509 adults undergoing bone mineral density testing for the first time and followed them for up to 10 years. Of them, 1,841 had recent onset of heart failure.

After adjusting for traditional osteoporosis risk factors, researchers found that heart failure was associated with a 30 percent increase in major fractures.

This deficiency has also been a risk factor for diseases like osteoporosis, or the thinning of bone tissue and loss of bone density over time.

After analysing numerous studies, the Austrian physicians Barbara Obermayer-Pietsch and Elisabeth Lerchbaum found that vitamin D level was associated with the production of male hormones. More specifically, there was a link between vitamin D and the increase in testosterone levels, subsequently the semen quality, Xinhua reported.

The finding has been published in the European Journal of Endocrinology’s latest issue.

According to Obermayer-Pietsch, as vitamin D plays an important role in hormone production also in women, low levels of vitamin D often lead to too much testosterone, which therefore could increase the risk of infertility among women.

The scientists will continue to conduct further scientific studies to find out new therapeutic approaches, including the reproduction of vitamin D.

“In a three-day conference starting Feb 3, the NABI and experts from NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority) will discuss management of burn disasters. Our main focus will be on managing chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear disasters,” said Vinay Kumar Tiwari, consultant, department of burns, plastic and maxillofacial surgery at the Safdarjung Hospital.

“We have seen loss of life in case of AMRI hospital fire. So we want to train nurses and paramedics who will specialise in burn care and management,” Tiwari, president of NABI, added.

The fire at Kolkata’s AMRI hospital broke out Dec 9, 2011. The ravaging blaze, one of the worst hospital tragedies in the country, left 94 patients and staffers dead.

The conference will see participation from international delegates and specialists from all across the country, other than live surgeries of burn patients and showcasing of new technologies in burn care.

The national conference of NABI will be organised by department of burns of Safdarjung Hospital Feb 3-5.

The department, with a bed capacity of 64, is considered to be the busiest in the country with nearly 5,000 burn cases coming to it every year.

This device, known as frontal near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), could offer hospital physicians a safe and low-cost way to monitor strokes in real time, suggests a study.

A stroke is a sudden interruption in the blood supply to the brain. Most strokes are caused by an abrupt blockage of arteries leading to the brain.

“About one-third of stroke patients in the hospital suffer another stroke, and we have few options for constantly monitoring patients for such recurrences,” says senior study investigator William Freeman, associate professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic, the journal Neurosurgical Focus reports.

Currently, nurses monitor patients for new strokes and if one is suspected, patients must be moved to a hospital’s radiology unit for a test known as a CT perfusion scan, which is the standard way to measure blood flow and oxygenation, according to a Mayo statement.

The entire procedure can sometimes cause side-effects such as excess radiation exposure if repeated scans are required. Also, potential kidney and airway damage can result from the contrast medium.

Alternately, for the sickest patients, physicians can insert an oxygen probe inside the brain to measure blood and oxygen flow, but this procedure is invasive and measures only a limited brain region, Freeman says.

“We plan to study this device more extensively and hope that this bedside tool offers significant benefit to patients by helping physicians detect strokes earlier and manage recovery better,” he says.

This NIRS device, which emits near-infrared light that penetrates the scalp and underlying brain tissue, has been used in animals to study brain blood.

Danish researchers have found that sleep deprivation causes healthy children, aged between eight and 12 years, to urinate more frequently, excrete more sodium in their urine, have altered regulation of the hormones important for excretion, and have higher blood pressure and heart rates.

The study was conducted by researchers B. Mahler, K. Kamperis, M. Schroeder, J. Frokiaer, J. C. Djurhuus, and S. Rittig, all of Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.

A group of healthy children from both the genders underwent two consecutive 24-hour stays at the hospital, the American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology reported.

The first day was used to register baseline values, including urine data, blood pressure and heart rate, and other physiological measures, a university statement said.

The second day was used to register these values during and following sleep deprivation. The information was subsequently compared with everyday life records submitted by the parents.

On both evenings the children were required to be in a supine position in bed in a dimly lit room at 8:00 p.m. Physical activity, food and fluid intake were not allowed till 7:00 a.m.

In addition, on the second night, the children were kept awake as long as possible throughout the night, if they were willing, by telling them stories, doing small tasks such as word and memory games, or making crafts. Daytime sleep was not allowed.

Sleep deprivation had a dramatic effect on night time urine excretion, with an average increase of 68 percent among the participants. The amount of sodium in the urine from the sleep-deprived night was almost a third greater than it was during the normal-sleep night.

The levels of hormones linked with water and sodium excretion had numerous differences after the sleep-deprivation, and blood pressure and heart rate were significantly higher. The findings were similar between boys and girls.

“People who die after stroke may have worse underlying disease prior to stroke, said M. Maria Glymour, senior study author and assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“This suggests early disease is accumulating and that something is happening to these people before they are diagnosed with clinical stroke,” Glymour added.

“We’re most surprised that people who died after strokes had such sharp memory declines years before stroke onset,” said Qianyi Wang, Glymor’s graduate student at Harvard, who led the study, according to a university statement.

Researchers examined 11,814 people aged 50 years and older every two years for signs of declining memory. Study participants were stroke-free at enrollment and were followed up to 10 years. They continued in the study if they survived a stroke.

The study reported 1,820 strokes, including 364 individuals who died after stroke but before the next memory assessment. People who survived had worse average memory even before the stroke compared to similar individuals who never had a stroke during follow-up.

At the time of stroke, memory function dropped an average 0.321 points. This difference is about the same as the average memory decline associated with growing 4.1 years older among those who remained stroke free.

Because of the large stroke-related declines, memory impairment was common among stroke survivors.

The deadly strain of MRSA called USA300 passes easily through skin-to-skin contact. It can survive on surfaces and so has the potential to be picked up on buses and tubes.

It was first seen in the US but cases are now being reported in the community and not just hospitals in Britain, the newspaper said Thursday.

Ruth Massey, from the department of biology and biochemistry at the University of Bath, said extra vigilance was required around this and similar MRSA bugs known as PVL-positive community acquired strains.

The USA300 is resistant to treatment by several antibiotics and can cause large boils on the skin. In severe cases, it can lead to fatal blood poisoning or a form of pneumonia that can eat away at lung tissue.

Massey said there were 1,000 cases of PVL-positive community acquired MRSA in England in the last year, of which 200 were USA300 strains.

This is one of the first examples in infectious disease of where an individual’s genetic profile can determine which drug will work best for them – the idea of personalised medicine that is gradually becoming familiar in cancer medicine.

The scientists found that people generate an immune response to tuberculosis that is ‘too much’, ‘too little’ or ‘just right’, according to what versions they have of the LTA4H gene.

The findings indicate that patients are likely to benefit from different drug treatments depending on their LTA4H gene profile.

Furthermore, the researchers show that steroids used as part of the standard treatment for the most severe form of tuberculosis, TB meningitis, only benefit some patients.

The results of the study, part-funded by the Wellcome Trust, are published in the journal Cell.

Tuberculosis is a major cause of death worldwide, with an estimated 9.4 million cases and 1.7 million deaths in 2009. The disease is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria and differs according to where the infection takes hold. Most TB affects the lungs, but around 40% of cases involve disease elsewhere. In perhaps 1-2% of cases, TB affects the brain. This form of the disease, TB meningitis, is the most serious. It is hard to diagnose and treat, and even with treatment it is often fatal.

The standard treatment for TB meningitis involves a range of antibiotics to try and kill the bacteria, and the steroid dexamethasone to dampen inflammation – the body’s response to tuberculosis infection that can be almost as much of a problem.

The new study combines work in zebrafish at the University of Washington, Seattle to identify genes and biological pathways involved in the immune response to TB, with clinical research work in collaboration with Pham Ngoc Thach Hospital, the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam.

The scientists identified a gene in zebrafish associated with susceptibility to tuberculosis, which controlled the balance of the inflammatory response. Variations in the DNA code in this gene could alter different biological pathways, leading either to too much inflammation or too little. Both too much and too little inflammation were problems, allowing the tuberculosis bacteria to thrive and multiply.

The researchers showed that blocking the appropriate biological pathway with drugs could restore just the right level of inflammatory response.

The researchers based in Vietnam then went back to samples from a previous clinical trial in over 500 patients with TB meningitis. They showed changes at a single position in the human LTA4H gene were associated with treatment response.

Only those having LTA4H genes that led to too much inflammation benefitted from the use of the steroid dexamethasone.

There is some suggestion that the steroid could have an adverse effect for those whose LTA4H genes already lead them to have a reduced inflammatory response, though the result is not statistically significant.

Dr Sarah Dunstan, Head of Human Genetics of Oxford University Vietnam, explained: ‘It’s like a “Goldilocks” gene. Depending on what versions of the LTA4H gene you have inherited, you could see an inflammatory response to tuberculosis that is “too much”, “too little”, or “just right”. You are likely to benefit most from a treatment tailored to your own genes.’

Dr Guy Thwaites of King’s College London, who led the clinical study in Vietnam on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, said: ‘This is a fundamental discovery. It is now possible to think about the use of simple but rapid genetic tests to determine how people will respond to tuberculosis infection and whether they would benefit from steroids.’

‘The findings could apply much more widely than just in TB meningitis, or other forms of tuberculosis,’ adds Dr Thwaites. ‘Since the inflammation pathways governed by the LTA4H gene are central to many infections, there could be implications for many diseases.’

Professor Jeremy Farrar, who leads the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, said: ‘This study highlights the power of really good clinical research supported through Wellcome Trust Fellowships and linked with some of the very best scientists in the world in Vietnam and the USA, which can bring immediate benefits to patients and also point the way to develop better, more targeted drugs to treat people with tuberculosis in the future.’

‘The idea that a patient’s genes can determine what treatment they will benefit from is pretty novel outside of cancer. Nothing like this has been seen before in infectious disease. Now we need to see if we can use this to help patients with this devastating disease.’

Scientists found that the wall of the aorta, the largest blood vessel carrying blood from the heart, exhibits ferroelectricity, a response to an electric field known to exist in inorganic and synthetic materials.

A ferroelectric material is an electrically polar molecule with one side positively charged and the other negatively charged, whose polarity can be reversed by applying an electrical field, the journal Physical Review Letters reports.

“The result is exciting for scientific reasons. But it could also have biomedical implications,” said Jiangyu Li, University of Washington associate professor of mechanical engineering, who led the study.

“We can imagine if we could manipulate the polarity of the artery wall, if we could switch it one way or the other, then we might, for example, better understand the deposition of cholesterol which leads to the thickening and hardening of the artery wall,” Li said.

Ferroelectricity is common in synthetic materials and used for displays, memory storage, and sensors, according to a University of Washington statement.

Li collaborated with co-author Katherine Zhang at Boston University to explore the phenomenon in biological tissues. The findings show clear evidence of ferroelectricity in a sample of a pig aorta. They believe the findings would also apply to human tissue.

In subsequent yet to be published work, they divided the sample into fibrous collagen and springy elastin and studied each one on its own.

“The elastin network is what gives the artery the mechanical property of elasticity, which of course is a very important function,” Li said. Ferroelectricity may, therefore, play a role in how the body responds to sugar or fat.

Another possible application is to treat a condition in which cholesterol molecules stick to the inside of the channel, eventually closing it off.

“It’s complicated,” says Juergen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), who conducted the meta-analysis into the link between alcohol consumption and heart disease.

“While a cardioprotective association between alcohol use and ischaemic heart disease exists, it cannot be assumed for all drinkers, even at low levels of intake,” says Rehm, the journal Addiction reports.

Ischaemic heart disease (reduced blood supply to heart) is a common cause of illness and death in the Western world, according to a CAMH statement.

Symptoms include angina, heart pain, and heart failure. Based on 44 studies, the analyses used 38,627 ischaemic heart disease events (including deaths) among 957,684 people.

“We see substantial variation across studies, in particular for an average consumption of one to two drinks a day,” says Rehm. The protective association may vary by gender, drinking patterns, and the specific health effects of interest.

Even at low levels, alcohol intake can have a detrimental effect on many other disease outcomes, including on several cancers.

“Even one drink a day increases risk of breast cancer, for example,” says Rehm. “However, with as little as one drink a day, the net effect on mortality is still beneficial. After this, the net risk increases with every drink.”

“If someone binge drinks even once a month, any health benefits from light to moderate drinking disappear.”

Binge drinking is defined more than four drinks on one occasion for women, and more than five for men.

“Findings from this study support current low-risk drinking guidelines, if these recognize lower drinking limits for women.”

Research by the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, is the first to show that changes in this critical region of children’s brain anatomy are linked to a mother’s nurturing.

“This study validates something that seems to be intuitive, which is just how important nurturing parents are to creating adaptive human beings,” says study co-author Joan L. Luby, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition reports.

For the current study, researchers conducted brain scans on 92 school children who had had symptoms of depression or were mentally healthy when they were preschoolers, according to a Washington School of Medicine statement.

The imaging revealed that children without depression who had been lovingly nurtured had a hippocampus almost 10 percent larger that children whose mothers were not as nurturing.

“But most of those studies have looked at psychosocial factors or school performance. This study, to my knowledge, is the first that actually shows an anatomical change in the brain. Having a hippocampus that’s almost 10 percent larger just provides concrete evidence of nurturing’s powerful effect,” Luby concluded.

Damian Dowling of Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences and Leigh Simmons, professor at the University of Western Australia, have investigated the trade-off between sperm quality and immunity.

“Males that invested heavily in their sperm paid the price of being more likely to succumb to a bacterial infection,” said Dowling, the journal Public Library of Science ONE reports.

“This study challenges the traditional view that sex, and sperm production, come cheaply to males,” he added, according to a Monash University statement.

“Here we show that the costs are in fact large, and these costs dictate how much effort a male will devote into any given sexual encounter,” he added.

Dowling said investigations into life history trade-offs — investment in reproduction versus future reproduction and survival prospects — have historically focused on females.

Researchers used the Teleogryllus oceanicus Australian field cricket to prove that the production of quality sperm is expensive and males are strategic about investing energy in the biological process.

The crickets were housed either with sexually immature females, sexually mature females incapable of reproduction, or sexually mature females capable of reproduction. Sperm quality was measured twice and immune function once during the experiment.

Dowling said the male crickets were more likely to produce high quality sperm when housed with sexually mature females with whom they could mate, indicating a strategic investment of energy.

The researchers also found that production of quality sperm seemed to compromise the crickets’ immune systems.

Experiments conducted by James Tsuruta, from the University of North Carolina, US, have shown they lowered sperm counts in mice, potentially opening the way to reversing fertility in men.

Tsuruta, who led the study, said: “Our non-invasive ultrasound treatment reduced sperm reserves in rats far below levels normally seen in fertile men. Further studies are required to determine how long the contraceptive effect lasts and if it is safe to use multiple times.”

The perfect male contraceptive would be cheap, reliable, reversible, long-acting and have few side effects, the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinol reports.

Tsuruta’s team found that rotating a three megahertz high frequency ultrasound beam around rats’ testes wiped out the germ cells that produce sperm. Best results were seen from two sessions lasting 15 minutes with the testes warmed to 37 degrees Celsius, according to the Daily Mail.

A first attempt to use ultrasound as a male contraceptive was reported 40 years ago. Several prostate cancer patients who were due to have their testicles removed underwent the treatment, which resulted in a ‘dramatic loss of germ cells’.

“These men reported that the procedure was pain-free, only creating a gentle feeling of warmth,” said the study co-authors. However, the idea was not pursued and the equipment used is now outdated and unavailable.

“IT can provide access to healthcare facilities. Also, it can have a positive impact on affordability and effectiveness of healthcare in India,” Som Mittal, president of the IT-BPO sector apex body, said at the ‘Health 2.0′ conference here.

Experts from the healthcare sector have come together here for the first conference that emphasises on innovation and IT in health services.

In the country’s 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017), the Planning Commission is likely to increase the spending on healthcare to increase its affordability and accessibility.

“We have done a small brain surgery to remove fluids from her brain. We suspect that there could be infection in her brain. The fluids will be sent for lab test,” Deepak Agrawal, assistant professor (neurosurgery) at the J.P.N. All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Trauma Centre, said.

According to the doctor, the baby has developed respiratory problems and may have to undergo another brain surgery.

“Her condition is critical. She developed respiratory problems, so we put her back on the ventilator around 10.30 last (Sunday) night,” Agrawal told IANS. Falak was taken off the ventilator Friday.

“There is infection in her chest and pain is recurring and she has severe head injuries as well.”

The baby was admitted to AIIMS here Jan 18 with multiple injuries, including a fractured skull, human bite marks on her tiny frame and a clot on the right side of her brain. She was brought to the hospital by a teenaged girl who claimed to be her mother.

The teenager is in a juvenile home even as the police constituted several teams to locate the girls’s parents.

For the toddler, the chances of survival are slim, say doctors monitoring her condition.

“She might require another surgery in the brain. But as her condition is critical, her chances of survival are slim,” Agrawal said.

Max Planck scientists in Germany have succeeded in loading cardiac muscle cells onto a 3D scaffold (framework), created using the Tasar silk produced by a tropical silkworm.

Of all the body’s organs, the human heart is probably the one most primed for performance and efficiency. Damaged heart muscle cannot be regenerated. Scar tissue grows in place of the damaged muscle cells.

In their attempt to develop a treatment for the repair of cardiac tissue, scientists are pursuing the aim of growing replacement tissue in the lab, according to a Max Planck statement.

“Whether natural or artificial in origin, all of the tested fibres had serious disadvantages,” says Felix Engel, who led the research at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Germany.

“They were either too brittle, were attacked by the immune system or did not enable the heart muscle cells to adhere correctly to the fibres.”

Chinmoy Patra, who works in Engel’s lab, said the fibre produced by the tasar silkworm displays several advantages over the other substances tested.

“The surface (of the fibre) has protein structures that facilitate the adhesion of heart muscle cells. It’s also coarser than other silk fibres.” This is the reason why the muscle cells grow well on it and can form a 3D tissue structure.

“The communication between the cells was intact and they beat synchronously over a period of 20 days, just like real heart muscle,” says Engel.

However, clinical application of the fibre is yet far away as the findings have to be extrapolated on human cardiac cells, said Engel.

Keith Petrie of the University of Auckland and John Weinman of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, conducted a review of the existing literature on patients’ perceptions of illness.

“A doctor can make accurate diagnoses and have excellent treatment but if the therapy doesn’t fit with the patient’s view of their illness, they are unlikely to keep taking it,” said Petrie, he journal Current Directions in Psychological Science reports.

A treatment that does not consider the patient’s view is likely to fail, he argued. In fact, some research suggests that how a person views his illness may play a bigger role in determining his health condition than the actual severity of his disease, according to an Auckland statement.

The bottom line, says Petrie, is that “patients’ perceptions of their illness guide their decisions about health”. If, for example, we feel like a prescribed treatment isn’t making us feel better we might stop that treatment.

Asking patients about how they view their illness gives physicians the opportunity to identify and correct any inaccurate beliefs patients may have.

“Bihar has not reported even a single case of polio in the last 16 months and the state has virtually become polio free, now we will work hard to make it a kala azar free state,” Health Minister Ashwani Kumar Choubey told IANS over the telephone after he flagged off the three-month long special health drive Jan Sawasth Chetna Yatra.

Kala azar, medically called Visceral leishmaniasis, is also known as the poor man’s disease because it affects the poorest.

Choubey said the government had decided to observe March 15 as kala azar eradication day. He said special programmes would be organised in all affected districts from March 15 to March 21 every year.

“We have to check and control the tiny sand fly that causes kala azar and create awareness about preventable measures among people, mostly the poorest of the poor in affected districts,” Choubey said.

The state government has launched a massive anti-kala azar strategy to contain the spread of sand fly vectors in 16 seriously affected districts.

The government had constituted a task force headed by former central health minister and BJP leader C.P. Thakur to work for eradication of the disease.

According to health officials, nearly 15,000 cases were reported in different hospitals in 31 of 38 affected districts and officially over 50 people died due to it last year.

In 2010, at least 87 people died and over 20,000 people were affected by kala azar in Bihar despite efforts by government and non-government organisations to eradicate the killer disease.

The sand fly which transmits the disease multiplies in the cow dung that villagers use liberally to plaster their shanties or as cow dung cakes for fuel. The flies survive on the sap in banana and bamboo groves and on decomposed cow dung heaps. They also make their home in the straw thatch of huts.

The disease is characterised by fever, weight loss, swelling of the spleen and liver and can lead to cardiovascular complications resulting in death. Experts say poor living standards and unhygienic conditions make members of the Mushahar community of Dalits an easy prey to it.

Many of the worst kala azar-hit areas of Bihar are the northern districts of Vaishali, Muzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, Sheohar and East and West Champaran. Bihar last faced a kala azar epidemic in 1991 when 250,000 cases were reported. In 2000, the numbers were low but started rising from 2003.

The disease occurs in 62 countries, primarily in the developing world. Around 90 percent of world’s cases are found in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan.

Choubey said the state recorded the second highest number of polio cases in the country in 2009. “Now Bihar is virtually a polio free state thanks to a special immunisation drive,” Choubey said.

“There remains an unmet need for heat-stable, taste-neutral pediatric formulations that do not require cold storage, particularly in resource-limited settings, where mother-to-child transmission remains a significant challenge,” Norbert Bischofberger, executive vice president, research and development and chief scientific officer at Gilead Sciences, said in a statement.

“We are very pleased to provide an important new therapeutic option for younger HIV patients, and will work to make the pediatric formulations of Viread available as quickly as possible,” Bischofberger added.

The FDA also approved a New Drug Application (NDA) for an oral powder formulation of Viread for children ages 2-5. The active ingredient in Viread, tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, is currently the most-prescribed molecule for adults receiving HIV therapy in the United States.

In pediatric patients, the use of either the lower-strength tablets or the oral powder formulation of Viread is based on the patient’s age and weight. The safety and efficacy of Viread has not been established in children less than two years of age. For adults unable to swallow Viread tablets, the oral powder formulation equal to 300 mg may be used.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are approximately 2.5 million children under the age of 15 living with HIV worldwide, and more than 90 percent live in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Central Team that visited Mumbai to examine the reported Drug resistant cases has submitted its report to the Union Minister of Health and Family WelfareShri Ghulam Nabi Azad. The following points emerged unanimously from the consultations held at Mumbai:

–     The reported cases by Hinduja hospital fall only within the category of Extensively Drug Resistant TB (XDR TB) based on standard WHO definitions and not at all as “Totally Drug Resistant” TB (TDR TB).

–     TDR TB is a non standard term, not endorsed by WHO

–     RNTCP Guidelines for quality diagnosis and management of XDR TB are to be applied in all such cases

–     Diagnosis of XDR TB must be based on microbiological confirmation from the accredited national reference laboratories namely National Institute of Research in TB – Chennai, National TB Institute -   Bangalore and LRS Institute of TB and Respiratory Diseases- New Delhi.

–     Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) Maharashtra will adopt all these cases and offer them the entire treatment free of cost.

–     Isolation of these cases is not advocated as this is a chronic disease and the transmissibility is reduced drastically by treatment.

Out of the reported 12 patients, 9 patients were traced and found to be stable on the current treatment while 3 have since died. Seven of these 9 patients are residents of Mumbai and one each from Meera-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation and Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra.

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and Government of Maharashtra have taken the following decisions for immediate implementation:

•      Strengthen the TB service delivery systems in Mumbai by immediately converting all the 24 wards of MCGM to 24 RNTCP districts, with placement of 24 ——- DTOs under one Sr. Mumbai TB Officer with infrastructure for 24 district TB drug stores and one additional State level TB Drug store at Mumbai.

•      MCGM to decentralize basic Tuberculosis Unit (TU) from the current population level of 1 TU per 5 lakhs to one TU per 2 lakhs population for enhanced outreach and services delivery. Additional 35 TUs with Medical Officer TB Control and 20 Microscopic centers with Lab technicians will be immediately created.

•      Three additional DOTS-Plus site along with additional culture & Drug Susceptibility Testing (DST) laboratories will be established at GTB Hospital under MCGM at Mumbai.

•      Immediate up-scaling of Drug Resistant TB services to universal access criteria to test patients for MDR TB in Mumbai including those from the private sector.

•      Widely publicize availability of free diagnostic and treatment services for all types of TB, through regular and repeated advertisements and publicity measures.

•      Ensure the implementation of the notification system under the BMC Public Health Act for TB with punitive measures for non compliance.

•      Introduce mandatory laboratory notification for M/XDR TB from all public and private sector laboratories of Mumbai, trace such diagnosed drug resistant TB patients, re-test them from an RNTCP accredited laboratory and treat all such confirmed drug resistant TB cases under RNTCP.

•      Centre assured full supply of DR-TB Drugs to all such patients along-with requisite technical assistance on regular basis.

It may be recalled that recently, a letter to Clinical Infectious Disease Journal in December 2011 described four patients from Mumbai, with extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB), erroneously labeled as “TDR-TB” by the authors. A careful audit of their prescriptions revealed that these three patients had received erratic, unsupervised second-line drugs, added individually and often in incorrect doses, from multiple private practitioners (on average from four physicians during a 18-month period) in an attempt to cure their multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis. The author also urged that patients with MDR tuberculosis only be treated within the confines of government sanctioned MDR TB treatment programs to prevent the emergence and spread of further drug resistance. Subsequently, eight more cases have been reported by HindujaHospital, subsequent to the publication in the journal.

The Central team steered a scientific discussion at the KEM Hospital, Mumbai with eminent experts on the subject from medical colleges in Mumbai, some premium private hospitals, civil society representatives, professional associations, chemist/pharmacist association to discuss the present situation, the magnitude of the problem of drug resistance and the way forward. The central team also met the higher authorities of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and Maharashtra state government.

Samah Mustafa, a mother of three, had been suffering from knee and back pain for two years. She consulted doctors and they advised her to lose weight, her family members told the Gulf News daily.

Mustafa’s mother said her daughter – who weighed 96 kg – was advised by doctors to reduce her weight through stomach surgery.

“My daughter submitted to the surgery and 60 percent of her stomach was cut out,” she said.

Complications set in after the surgery and there was bleeding in her stomach.

“Doctors had to again operate to control the situation. My daughter could not eat or drink anything. She weighed 40 kg when she died,” she said.

The family has accused doctors of negligence and said they will sue the hospital.

“The number of children born with genetic disorders in India is highest in the world,” I.C. Verma, director, Sir Ganga Ram hospital, said at International Symposium on Molecular Pathology here.

However, because of advancements like molecular pathology, the cases of genetic disorders are being detected at an early stage, he said.

“There has been an increase in prenatal diagnosis in such cases and its success is above 30 percent,” Verma claimed.

Molecular pathology is a discipline within pathology which focuses on the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of molecules within organs, tissues or bodily fluids.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia gave black leaf tea, such as Earl Grey or English Breakfast to volunteers with normal to high blood pressure.

They were given drinks containing 429 milligrams of the plant chemical polyphenols — or the equivalent of eight and a half cups of tea a day.

A second group were given a tea-flavoured placebo.

After six months, the blood pressure of the tea-drinking group had fallen by between two and three mmHg, the measurement of pressure used in medicine.

A blood pressure fluctuating with the heartbeat between 112 and 63 mmHg is considered healthy, while a reading fluctuating between 140 and 90 is deemed high.

If the experiment was emulated by the general population, the number of people with high blood pressure would be cut by 10 percent and the risk of heart disease would fall by between seven and 10 percent.

“Our study has demonstrated for the first time to our knowledge that long-term regular consumption of black tea can result in significantly lower blood pressures in individuals with normal to high-normal range blood pressures,” the team, led by Jonathan Hodgson, wrote in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Adding milk to tea also does not affect the body’s ability to absorb polyphenols, earlier studies have suggested.

Green tea is believed to have many health benefits as it is high in antioxidants. It is said to help in weight loss, prevent glaucoma and reduce risk of cancer.

Talking to Bill Gates in Davos, Switzerland, Gilani Friday said Pakistan would use all resources to rid the country of the crippling disease, it was reported here by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

Gilani is in Davos for the World Economic Forum.

Bill Gates, who contributes about $1 billion annually to the eradication of polio globally, stressed the need to expand the reach of the Polio Eradication Programme in Pakistan.

Gilani said he was personally supervising the polio eradication efforts and had also asked the provinces to double their efforts towards making Pakistan a polio-free country.

He said that Pakistan was taking all measures and employing innovative strategies to stop the spread of polio virus.

He added surveillance officers have been appointed in high-risk areas to strengthen the implementation process.

In neighbouring India, it has been a year since the last polio case was reported.

‘Mainpuri tambakoo’, as the product is called, contains betel nut, camphor, tobacco, cinnamon, clove, slaked lime as its major ingredients.

“Our government is not worried and hardly anything has been done to prevent its widespread use in the area,” Manoj Chaturvedi, senior journalist and activist in Mainpuri, 100 km from the Taj city, told IANS.

“The district, in view of the high incidence of oral cancer, had Uttar Pradesh’s first cancer treatment centre but for want of technical hands, it’s not functional. Experts say by the time it becomes operational, all the machines and equipment installed there will become obsolete,” he said.

“In 13 years, over 46,000 people registered for tests and treatment. A significant number was referred to Agra and Mumbai.”

Records of the Sarojini Naidu Medical College Hospital in Agra suggest that there was much higher endemicity of oral and oropharyngeal cancer (in the middle part of the throat) in Mainpuri district than there was in Agra district itself.

A Dawn report last month said the Sindh government banned the use of Mainpuri tobacco, smuggled from the Uttar Pradesh district, as physicians warned against its hazardous effects.

Qaiser Sajjad, ENT surgeon and a senior member of the Pakistan Medical Association, was quoted as saying that gutka and Mainpuri were causing cancer and most victims were men.

According to Agra doctors, the number of patients coming for consultation from Mainpuri and nearby areas is showing an upward trend.

Sughendra Pratap Singh, a young health activist from Mainpuri, told IANS: “Three major producers of Mainpuri alone manufacture five to six quintals a day.”

“Not only grown up men, but now even students and women are addicted to Mainpuri which contains mint, camphor with finely cut betel nut and tobacco treated in lime. In the past, there have been so many agitations but no results.”

Medical activist Anand Rai told IANS: “It’s a very serious matter. More than 70 percent in the age group of 30 to 45 cannot open their mouth fully in Mainpuri.”

“The local Mainpuri contains a high percentage of known hydrocarbon generating substances which have a carcinogenic effect. Many come to Agra for treatment at Kamayani Hospital and Sandeep Agarwal’s hospital. The health department should wake up now.”

Eminent homeopath Siddhartha Mishra said: “We do get a lot of cases of mouth ulcers with white patches, a precursor to cancer, but I am surprised that the state health authorities have not come out with a concerted and focused programme to attack this problem, especially when you know the cause and the endemic area.”

Multiple sclerosis (MS), a neurodegenerative disease, is characterised by symptoms such as loss of balance, muscle spasms, numbness or abnormal sensation in any area, problems of moving arms or legs, etc.

While MS patients’ walking abilities and muscle strength are examined on a regular basis, doctors have yet to determine when the lower limb muscles begin to deteriorate, the Journal of Neurologic Physiotherapy reported.

Researcher Alon Kalron and fellow researchers from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, have discovered that specific lab tests for the pattern of movement while walking or running are highly effective in identifying mobility deficits at the initial stage of MS. They are difficult to discover during standard tests.

According to Kalron, patients in the early stages of MS had 40 percent less muscle endurance compared to their healthy counterparts, said a university statement.

Reduced muscle endurance may be one of the earliest signs of MS and is a common complaint among patients, but it is hard to detect, said Kalron.

Kalron based his findings on a study that included 52 patients in the early stage of MS, and a control group of 28 healthy subjects.

“In addition to culling poultry birds, destruction of eggs and feed material also has begun at the ICAR (Indian Council of Agriculture Research) farm at Lembuchara in western Tripura so as to control further spread of the disease to the neighbouring villages,” Manoranjan Sarkar, Tripura animal resource development department director, told IANS.

“Besides the ICAR farm, over 12,000 birds and ducks in the adjoining villages and poultry farms would also be culled within the next four days,” he added.

Samples of sick poultry birds from the ICAR farm were found to contain H5 strain of avian influenza virus. The samples have been tested and found positive by the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal, he said.

The ICAR farm, 25 km north of Tripura capital city Agartala, is surrounded by several villages.

On the advice of the central government, Tripura has also decided to cull poultry birds within a radius of three km, and conduct surveillance within a radius of 10 km.

“The state government has been asked to furnish a daily report on the control and containment operations to the central government’s department of animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries in the ministry of agriculture,” a state government official said.

Tripura has also imposed a ban on the import of poultry birds, ducks and other poultry products.

Tripura Chief Secretary S.K. Panda held a high-level meeting with senior officials after the Bhopal laboratory confirmed the incidence of the flu infection among birds.

Sarkar said 14 rapid response teams have been formed to cull the ducks and birds at the ICAR farm and in adjoining villages.

“The BSF (Border Security Force) has been alerted to check entry of ducks and birds from across the border,” the official said.

Tripura, which shares an 856-km border with bird flu hit Bangladesh, was affected by avian influenza in April and May 2008, forcing authorities to cull over 250,000 poultry birds and ducks then.

India declared itself free from bird flu (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) on Dec 29 last year.

However, Caucasian women who consumed an equivalent amount of caffeine a day had slightly lower estrogen levels than women who consumed less. Estrogen is the main sex hormone in women, essential for the menstruation and reproduction.

Total caffeine intake was calculated from any of the following sources: coffee, black tea, green tea and caffeinated soda. The changes in estrogen levels among the women who took part in the study did not appear to affect ovulation.

Studies conducted in animals had suggested that caffeine might interfere with ovulation, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports.

“The results indicate that caffeine consumption among women of child-bearing age influences estrogen levels,” said Enrique Schisterman from the division of epidemiology, statistics and prevention research at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Over 250 women from 18 to 44 years old participated in the study between 2005 and 2007, according to an NICHD statement.

“Short term, these variations in estrogen levels among different groups do not appear to have any pronounced effects. We know that variations in estrogen level are tied with such disorders as endometriosis, osteoporosis, and endometrial, breast, and ovarian cancers,” said Schisterman.

Baby girl Falak, who was admitted to AIIMS Jan 18, is showing signs of recovery, but her chances of survival are only 50 percent, say the doctors.

Falak was brought to AIIMS in an unconscious state by a teenager, Mahi Gupta, who claimed to be her mother. The baby had suffered from multiple injuries on her head and body, with human bite marks all over her body. She had a fractured skull and blood clotting on the right side of her brain.

“The baby is still unconscious, but she is moving her limbs now,” a doctor treating Falak told IANS.

“Her chances of survival are 50-50, and if she survives, a question mark will remain on her mental health,” the doctor said.

Police have meanwhile registered a case against unknown persons.

Sumit Sinha, an associate professor of neurosurgery and one of the doctors treating Falak, said Thursday that the injuries seemed as if the baby’s head was smashed against a wall.

“She has a fractured skull and there is blood clotting on the right side of her brain. It appears that either her head was smashed against a wall or she suffered a blow from a heavy object. Her left hand is fractured while there is a swelling on her right hand. There are human bite marks all over her face, forehead and right leg,” Sinha said.

The teenager, Mahi, has meanwhile been sent to a juvenile home.

While admitting the baby, Mahi had said she lived along with her ‘husband’ Rajkumar Gupta in a paying guest accommodation in Mahipalpur area of south Delhi, said Nirmal Thakur, spokesperson of the AIIMS Trauma Centre.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Chhaya Sharma said the girl was stopped in the hospital Jan 18 after her story seemed suspicious.

“She has been sent to a juvenile home,” said Sharma.

A case of kidnapping, abandoning a child below the age of 12 years and causing hurt has been registered against unknown people, Sharma told IANS.

According to Sharma, the girl had gone missing from her home in Sangam Vihar area of south Delhi last year and her parents had lodged a complaint.

A police officer said the girl had eloped with someone.

The baby was with the girl for the past 20 days, but police are still investigating how she got there.

The girl told police that the child was bruised when she tried to prevent her from running around. The child also slipped in the bathroom later, she said.

Stacey Irvine, from Castle Vale, Birmingham, has eaten nothing else since the age of two, The Sun reported.

She has never touched green vegetables or fruit and was found to have anaemia and swollen veins in her tongue.

She has now been put on an urgent course of vitamins. But Irvine says it is difficult to stay off her favourite food.

“I am starting to realise this is really bad for me. My main meal is always chicken nuggets every day,” she said.

Her 39-year-old mother Evonne said: “I’m at my wit’s end. I’m praying she can be helped before it’s too late. It breaks my heart to see her eating those damned nuggets. She’s been told in no uncertain terms that she’ll die if she carries on like this. But she says she can’t eat anything else.”

Evonne, a beauty therapist, has two other children — Leo, five, and Ava, three — and both of them eat healthy food.

Officials hope to reach out to the poorest of the poor in the rural parts.
“The ‘Swasthya Chetna Yatra’ will end April 30,” Health Minister Ashwani Kumar Choubey said here.

Choubey said doctors would go to rural areas which normally lack health facilities.

“At the health camps, specialized doctors, yoga trainers and Ayurvedic and Unani experts would be involved,” he said.

“Compared to typical desktop computing scenarios, the use of media tablet computers may be more of a concern for the development of neck and shoulder discomfort,” said lead investigator Jack T. Dennerlein, from Harvard School of Public Health, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

A group of experienced tablet users completed a set of simulated tasks with two media tablets, an Apple iPad2 and a Motorola Xoom. Each tablet had a proprietary case that could be adjusted to prop up or tilt the tablet computer, reports the ‘Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, and Rehabilitation’.

During the experiment, users completed simple computer tasks such as Internet browsing and reading, game playing, email reading and responding, and movie watching.

Head and neck postures and gaze angle and distance were measured using an infrared three-dimensional motion analysis system, according to Harvard statement.

The findings suggest that tablet users should place the tablet higher, on a table rather than the lap, to avoid low gaze angles, and use a case that provides steeper viewing angles.

“Our results will be useful for updating ergonomic computing standards and guidelines for tablet computers,” said Dennerlein.

“We believe that infants are born with expectations about the objects around them, even though that knowledge is a skill that’s never been taught,” said Kristy vanMarle, assistant professor of psychological sciences at the Missouri University’s College of Arts and Science.

“Intuitive physics include skills that adults use all the time. For example, when a glass of milk falls off the table, a person might try to catch the cup, but they are not likely to try to catch the milk that spills out, said vanMarle, who co-authored the study, the journal Cognitive Science reports.

“As the child develops, this knowledge is refined and eventually leads to the abilities we use as adults,” added vanMarle, who co-authored the study, according to a Missouri statement.

“The person doesn’t have to consciously think about what to do because the brain processes the information and the person simply reacts,” said vanMarle.

In a review study from the past 30 years, vanMarle and Susan Hespos of Northwestern University found that the evidence for intuitive physics occurs in infants as young as two months – the earliest age at which testing can occur.

At that age, infants show an understanding that unsupported objects will fall and that hidden objects do not cease to exist. Scientific testing also has shown that by five months, infants have an expectation that non-cohesive substances like sand or water are not solid.

In a previous publication, vanMarle found that children as young as 10 months consistently choose larger amounts when presented with two different amounts of food substance.

“The majority of an adult’s everyday interactions with the world are automatic, and we believe infants have the same ability to form expectations, predicting the behavior of objects and substances with which they interact.”

While the intuitive physics knowledge is believed to be present at birth, vanMarle believes parents can assist skill development through normal interaction, such as playing and talking with the child and encouraging him/her to interact with objects.

A new Harvard study is the first to document how PFCs, which can be transferred to children through the mother, prenatally and postnatally, from exposure in the environment, can adversely affect vaccine response.

“Routine childhood immunisations are a mainstay of modern disease prevention. The negative impact on childhood vaccinations from PFCs should be viewed as a potential threat to public health,” said Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at Harvard School of Public Health, who led the study.

Prior studies have shown that PFC concentrations in mice similar to those found in people suppressed immune response, but the adverse effects on people had been poorly documented, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports.

The researchers analysed data on children recruited at birth at National Hospital in Torshavn, Faroe Islands, during 1999-2001. A total of 587 participated in follow-up examinations, according to a Harvard statement.

Children were tested for immune response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccinations at ages five and seven years. PFCs were measured in maternal pregnancy serum and in the serum of children at age five to determine prenatal and postnatal exposure.

The results showed that PFC exposure was linked with lower antibody responses to immunizations and an increased risk of antibody levels in children lower than those needed to provide long-term protection.

(Antibody concentrations in serum are a good indicator of overall immune functions in children.) A two-fold greater concentration of three major PFCs was associated with a 49 percent lower level of serum antibodies in children at age zeven years.

A new study by James Burton from Northern Illinois University shows that stressed supervisors, struggling with pressures, vent their frustrations on their employees less when they get regular, moderate exercise.

Burton and his team are the first to examine how exercise can buffer the relationship between supervisor stress and employee perceptions of hostile behaviour, the Journal of Business and Psychology reports.

A total of 98 MBA students from two universities in the Midwestern US and their 98 supervisors completed questionnaires, according to a Northern Illinois statement.

They rated their perceptions of how abusive their current supervisor was, for example “my supervisor tells me my thoughts or feelings are stupid” or “my supervisor puts me down in front of others.”

Supervisors answered questions about how often they exercised and about their workplace stress, for example “working my current job leaves me little time for other activities” or “I have too much work and too little time to do it in.”

The researchers found that, as expected, when supervisors were stressed, their subordinates felt more victimised. However, analyses also showed that when supervisors experienced stress, but engaged in exercise, their subordinates reported lower levels of abusive supervision.

Interestingly, only moderate levels of exercise were necessary to minimise abusive supervision, such as one to two days of exercise per week, and the type of exercise seemed to make little difference.

The authors conclude: “It appears that the simple act of exercising minimises the negative effects of supervisor workplace stress on subordinates.”

While eating lots of fried food can increase some heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity, a link between fried food and heart disease has not been fully investigated.

So the study authors, led by Pilar Guallar-Castillon professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, surveyed the cooking methods of 40,757 adults aged 29 to 69 years over an 11-year period. None of them had heart disease when the study began, the journal bmj.com reports.

Trained interviewers asked participants about their diet and cooking methods. Fried food was defined as food for which frying was the only cooking method used. Questions were also asked about whether food was fried, battered, crumbed or sauteed, according to an Autonomous statement.

The participants’ diet was divided into ranges of fried food consumption, the first quarter related to the lowest amount of fried food consumed and the fourth indicated the highest amount. During the follow-up there were 606 events linked to heart disease and 1,134 deaths.

The authors conclude: “In a Mediterranean country where olive and sunflower oils are the most commonly used fats for frying, and where large amounts of fried foods are consumed both at and away from home, no association was observed between fried food consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or death.”

The high court, which is based at Bilaspur town, some 100 km from Raipur, issued the notice as it took up a public interest litigation (PIL) on the issue. The court has given a four week time to the government to submit its reply.

The PIL, filed by two layers, had alleged that dozens of poor elderly people had lost eyesight after they were operated upon by government doctors at a health camp in late September last year at Balod area in Durg district.

The state government had too admitted in a written statement in state assembly in Dec that 44 people were blinded at the Balod camp but it refused to admit that anyone died due to the botched eye operation.

The opposition Congress has been lobbying for resignation of Health Minister Amar Agrawal on the issue since Sep 30 when the weeklong eye camp concluded and several locals reported eyesight loss.

“There is an urgent and critical need to scale up services, by stakeholders working for TB care. TB needs to be actively identified through approved, early, accurate and high quality diagnosis,” a spokesperson from the Partnership for TB Care and Control in India said. “Proper completion of treatment needs to be ensured for all TB patients.”

India has been relying on the Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS) chemotherapy under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) (1997) for TB control, a disease that kills two people every three minutes, and accounts for over 3 million (3 lakh) deaths every year. DOTS has been effective in controlling Multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB.

However, a team of doctors from Mumbai’s Hinduja hospital recently found cases of totally-drug resistant (TDR) TB resistant to all drugs used to treat the disease.

The health ministry, after its report by experts, stated the cases to be falling within the category of Extensively Drug Resistant TB (XDR TB). The ministry shrugged off the term ‘TDR’ saying it is not recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

While XDR-TB cases are resistant to any of the three second-line drugs, the multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases do not respond to at least two of the most potent first-line anti-TB drugs.

“The reasons for drug resistance in TB are a combination of poor programme reach, inaccurate diagnosis methodologies, improper treatment as well as non adherence to it and indiscriminate drug prescription,” the spokesperson added.

Interestingly, India is not the only country that has report cases of TDR-TB, Italy reported the first TDR-TB cases in 2007, followed by Iran in 2009.

The airborne disease is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis that affects the lungs. Symptoms include severe cough which lasts for three weeks or longer, producing bloody or discoloured sputum, night sweats, fever, fatigue and weakness, pain in the chest, loss of appetite, and pain in breathing or coughing.

“Maybe there’s a physical experience that goes along with being powerful,” says Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University, who co-wrote the paper with Michelle M. Duguid of Washington University.

“For people who are less powerful, maybe other people and objects loom larger, and for the powerful everything else just seems smaller,” the journal Psychological Science reports.

Plenty of research has shown that taller people are more likely to acquire power; taller people make more money, on average, and are more likely to be promoted.

But the study is the first to show the reverse may also be true. Power also makes people feel taller, according to a Cornell and Washington statement.

In one experiment, subjects came to the lab in pairs. First they had their heights measured. Then they were given a leadership aptitude test and told that, based on their feedback, they would each be assigned to play the role of the manager or the employee.

They were given fake feedback, then randomly assigned a role. After that, each person filled out a questionnaire with personal information, including eye colour and height.

People who had been told they would be the manager, with complete control over the work process and power to evaluate the employee, said they were taller than the actual measurement.

The subject who had been told they would be the employee gave a height that was more or less the same as their real height.

“Given that height is associated with power, raising your height may make you feel powerful,” Goncalo says which helps explain the continuing popularity of high heels and offices on the top floor.

Stanford University scientists based the findings on a novel database that examined more than 160,000 pain scores reported for more than 72,000 adult patients.

“None of these data were initially collected for research, but this study shows that we can use it in that capacity,” said Atul Butte, senior study author from Stanford, the Journal of Pain reports.

The medical literature contains numerous reports indicating that women report more pain than men for one or another particular disease, noted Butte, professor of systems medicine in paediatrics, according to a Standord statement.

“We’re certainly not the first to find differences in pain among men and women. But we focused on pain intensity, whereas most previous studies have looked at prevalence: the percentage of men vs. women with a particular clinical problem who are in pain,” said Butte.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever systematic use of data from electronic medical records to examine pain on this large a scale, or across such a broad range of diseases,” he added.

“We saw higher pain scores for female patients practically across the board,” said Butte. Those reported differences were not only statistically significant, but also clinically significant.

These cancer cells, when exposed to bioactive compounds present in a cup of the yerba mate tea, self-destruct — commit suicide or apoptosis, says a University of Illinois study.

“The caffeine derivatives in mate tea not only induced death in human colon cancer cells, they also reduced important markers of inflammation,” said Elvira de Mejia, Illinois associate professor of food chemistry and food toxicology, who led the study.

That’s important because inflammation can trigger the steps of cancer progression, she said, the journal Molecular Nutrition & Food Research reports.

The brew is prepared by steeping dried leaves of yerba mate in hot water. It is popular in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, parts of Brazil and south of Chile, among others. They contain caffeine and related compounds, according to an Illinois statement.

In the lab study, de Mejia and former graduate student Sirima Puangpraphant isolated, purified, and then treated human colon cancer cells with caffeoylquinic acid (CQA) derivatives from mate tea.

As they increased the CQA concentration, cancer cells died as a result of apoptosis. “Put simply, the cancer cell self-destructs because its DNA has been damaged,” said de Mejia.

The ability to induce apoptosis, or cell death, is a promising tactic for therapeutic interventions in all types of cancer, she said.

The results strongly suggest that the caffeine derivatives in mate tea have potential as anti-cancer agents and could also be helpful in other diseases tied with inflammation, she said.

The condition is characterised by small bulging pouches forming on the inner lining of large intestine, trapping bits of stool and becoming infected.

Sympoms include abdominal cramping, constipation and diarrhoea, linked with of difficulty in passing stools. More serious complications include collection of pus in the pelvis, colon obstruction and rectal bleeding.

“It looks like we may have been wrong, for decades, about why diverticula actually form,” said Anne Peery, fellow in gastroenterology and hepatology, University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill School of Medicine, who led the study.

The findings, which involved more than 2,000 people, reveal that a fibrous diet actually raised the risk of developing diverticulosis, which affects about a third of adults over 60 years in the US alone, the journal Gastroenterology reports.

In fact, those with the lowest fibre intake were found to be 30 percent less likely to develop diverticula than those with the highest fibre intake, according to a North Carolina statement.

A high-fibre diet, comprising leafy vegetables, fresh and dry fruits, grains, beans, nuts and seeds, etc., had been recommended by doctors since the late 1960s, to keep diverticulosis at bay. But this assumption has seldom been backed by studies.

The study found no links between diverticulosis and physical inactivity, intake of fat, or intake of red meat. The disease’s causes remain unknown, but the researchers believe gut flora may play a role.

A statement from Noida police and civil society organisation Satya Foundation said anyone suffering from noise pollution due to a generator which has not been covered by a canopy can now complain to the police.

“Anyone suffering from noise pollution from canopy-less generators can approach the police and get relief in 15 working days,” Deputy Inspector General of Police (Noida) Jyoti Narayan said at a workshop organised for police officers by the foundation.

Noida will be the third place to implement this after Varanasi and Agra, a police spokesperson said.

Founder secretary of the foundation Chetan Upadhyaya said sound level from canopy-less generators is between 100 to 140 decibles, which can create health problems for people.

“Installing canopies and other sound proofing devices will reduce the noise level to 75 decibles,” he said.

According to various studies, high noise pollution effects not only hearing power, but also the brain.

Canada had proscribed fast food ads in its Quebec province between 1984 and 1992, resulting between 11-22 million fewer fast-food meals being eaten per year, according to Kathy Baylis, an economist from the University of Illinois in the US.

Advertising bans do work, but an outright ban covering the entire US media market would be the most effective policy tool for reducing fast-food consumption in children, adds Baylis, professor of agricultural and consumer economics at Illinois.

Baylis and co-author Tirtha Dhar from University of British Columbia found evidence that the ban reduced fast-food expenditures by 13 percent per week in French-speaking households in Quebec province in Canada.

It worked out to between 11-22 million fewer fast-food meals being eaten per year, or 2.2-4.4 billion fewer calories consumed by children, according to an Illinois statement.

“What we found is that advertising bans are most effective when children live in an isolated media market, and it’s only because they’re in an isolated media market that they’re getting these effects,” she said. “If any state on its own decided to do this, it would be problematic.”

“Obviously, the internet has exploded since then, and computer games have also risen in popularity. So we don’t know how well a television ban would work when children are spending an increasing amount of time online rather than watching TV,” Baylis added.

“So it would be very hard to enforce an internet ban, and the only way to tackle it would be how they’re doing it in Quebec, which is to prohibit advertising websites for junk food during cartoons, or even on product packaging in stores,” she concludes.

Putting a halt to smoking after a cancer diagnosis is important because it can negatively affect patients’ responses to treatments, their subsequent cancer risk and, potentially, their survival.

Elyse R. Park from the Massachusetts General Hospital – Harvard Medical School in Boston led a team that looked to see how many patients quit smoking around the time of a cancer diagnosis, and which smokers were most likely to quit.

The investigators determined smoking rates around the time of diagnosis and five months after diagnosis in 5,338 lung and colorectal cancer patients, the journal Cancer reports.

At diagnosis, 39 percent of lung cancer patients and 14 percent of colorectal cancer patients were smoking. Five months later, 14 percent of lung cancer patients and nine percent of colorectal cancer patients were still smoking, according to a Harvard statement.

These results indicate that a substantial minority of cancer patients continue to smoke after being diagnosed. Also, although lung cancer patients have higher rates of smoking at diagnosis and following diagnosis, colorectal cancer patients are less likely to quit smoking following diagnosis.

Colorectal cancer patients who continued to smoke tended to be male, completed less education, uninsured, not have had surgery, and once smoked a high number of cigarettes per day.

“These findings can help cancer clinicians identify patients who are at risk for smoking and guide tobacco counselling treatment development for cancer patients,” said Park.

The project, called the Sakshanta Mission, has been started in the districts of Faridabad, Gurgaon, Mewat and Palwal. It has been initiated by the Faridabad district administration with leading private builder, RPS Infrastructure.

Faridabad Deputy Commissioner Rakesh Gupta said that the Sakshamta Mission had been launched for the welfare of physically challenged people.

“Under the mission, a mobile van equipped with automatic German machines would go to the door-steps of the physically challenged persons to provide artificial limbs so that these persons could be brought into the mainstream of the society,” he said.

He said that keeping in view the inconvenience of the physically challenged persons, this step was the need of the hour.

Non-governmental organizations spoke Friday about the possibilty that pressure had been put on the family of the girl, now three months pregnant, after the mother unexpectedly told the court in the Argentine province of Entre Rios that she wished to withdraw the petition for her daughter to be allowed an abortion.

Estela Diaz, representative of the National Campaign for Safe and Free Abortion, composed of several activist groups, told the press that “attorneys (of the NGOs) are investigating the matter in order to take action based on the pressure the family may have faced”.

The girl’s mother, who changed her mind after a hearing with the judge in the case, Raul Tomaselli, “was intimidated, pressured and manipulated to drop the petition for an interrupted pregnancy”, a communique from the Campaign said.

Attorney Maria Benitez, acting on behalf of the girl’s family and of the hospital in the city of San Salvador, had presented Jan 16 a petition before the Entre Rios court for the girl to be permitted an abortion on grounds that she had been sexually abused by a youth of 17 and that there was a risk to her health.

The teenager, under investigation for sexual abuse, was summoned by Judge Jose Tournour, but refused to make a statement, judicial officials said.

Abortion is banned by law in Argentina except when the pregnant woman’s life or health is in danger, or when the pregnancy stems from the rape of a disabled woman.

The controversy heightened with the report from a provincial hospital that the minor was “in perfect physical condition to sustain the pregnancy” and that “the fetus is also in good condition from a medical standpoint”.

Chicago’s Dante Autullo was recovering after undergoing surgery Friday at the Advocate Christ Medical Centre in Oak Lawn.

Autullo thought his doctors were joking, and that he had merely cut himself with a nail gun while building a shed. The 3.75-inch nail was lodged in the middle of his brain.

The nail had come within millimeters of the part of the brain that controls motor function.

The surgery took two hours, and the part of the skull that was removed for surgery was replaced with a titanium mesh, said Mike Maggio, a hospital spokesman.

According to Fiji’s National Advisor on Non-Communicable Disease, Isimeli Tukana, the lifestyle in this Fijian generation has changed a lot, especially for the younger population that have been influenced by technology, Xinhua reported.

Many children nowadays are obese and that is of growing concern, said Tukana, adding that is why the Ministry of Health is working with the Ministry of Education in promoting more physical education in schools and making it compulsory from the current school term.

According to the Ministry of Health, Fiji was recently ranked the fourth-most obese nation in the region.

Recent studies in Fiji showed a high incidence of anaemia in children, women and men.

Over 60 percent of the island nation’s population was overweight while a significant number were affected by deficiency in iron and micro-nutrients, said the statistics released by the ministry.

The figures show that a high rate of premature disability with Non Communicable Diseases (NCD), infection and cancer has taken its toll on the population.

Earlier this week, the country’s Women’s Minister Jiko Luveni advised mothers to stock up on healthy foods for their families, saying having green leafy vegetables was vital and buying fruits for children’s snacks instead of salted prepacked ones was the way to keep the family healthy.

India’s health indicators do not match our recent economic performance. Public expenditure on health as a proportion of GDP continues to be among the world’s lowest. The crib deaths in West Bengal, the misuse of NRHM funds in Uttar Pradesh, the poor state of maternity homes in the country’s capital, rightly raise a public outcry. The state of the public system, subjected to unprecedented neglect for decades, is truly shocking in many parts of the country. Nor does the conduct of some government health workers generate confidence that the public system will ever deliver basic health services of decent quality. The despair is so overwhelming that critics often miss out on some of the emerging positive trends in many hitherto backward states, on account of the attention given to the public system with the advent of the NRHM. Though NRHM is a Centrally-sponsored programme, health is a state subject and it is the leadership at the state level that makes all the difference.

Let us look at hard evidence. The just published Sample Registration System data from the Census office places India’s infant mortality rate (IMR) for 2010 at 47, a three-point decline for the second consecutive year. IMR declined by a bare three points, from 60 to 57 between 2003 and 2006. Between 2007 and 2010, the decline is of 10 points. More interestingly, the rate of decline in rural areas is almost double that in urban areas during this period. The IMR decline in hitherto backward states like Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, has been 3-5 points per year, a rate never achieved previously in consecutive years. States like Tamil Nadu and Gujarat have also made significant gains during this period.

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FoodSwitch, an Australian-first iPhone app, has been launched recently to help shoppers make healthier food choices and reduce high levels of fat, salt and sugar from their diets.

“FoodSwitch’s three-step approach marries the latest technology with cutting edge research,” said Bruce Neal, professor at The George Institute for Global Health, University of Sydney.

“Choosing a healthier diet has to be made easier, because good eating habits are one of the best and most cost-effective ways to prevent disease,” said Neal, who helped develop the application.

Heart disease, stroke and other diseases caused mostly by a poor diet are the biggest killers worldwide and by simply switching to a healthier alternative, shoppers could be reducing their risk of these illnesses.

The app makes recommendations based on the nutritional value of more than 20,000 packaged food products found in supermarkets and is underpinned by more than three years of research by experts from The George Institute.

Phthalates are man-made, endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can mimic the body’s natural hormones. They are commonly used in plastic flooring and wall coverings, food processing materials, medical devices, and personal-care products.

A growing body of research suggests that phthalates, found in personal care products such as perfume, lotions, and cosmetics; varnishes and medication or nutritional supplement coatings, could play a role in rising childhood obesity rates.

This study by the Mount Sinai Medical Centre, New York, conducted the first ever study to probe the link between phthalate exposure and obesity in children.

Mount Sinai researchers measured phthalate concentrations in the urine of 387 black and Hispanic children in New York City, and recorded body measurements including BMI, a height to weight ratio, height, and waist circumference one year later.

The urine tests revealed that greater than 97 percent of study participants had been exposed to phthalates typically found in personal care products such as perfume, lotions, and cosmetics; varnishes; and medication or nutritional supplement coatings.

“Research has shown that exposure to these everyday chemicals may impair childhood neuro-development, but this is the first evidence demonstrating that they may contribute to childhood obesity,” said the study’s lead author Susan Teitelbaum, associate professor in preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

A team of experts sent to Mumbai rejected the report, an official statement said.

“The reported cases by Hinduja hospital fall only within the category of Extensively Drug Resistant TB (XDR TB) based on standard WHO definitions and not at all as Totally Drug Resistant TB (TDR TB),” the statement said.

Doctors in Mumbai had said 12 patients had a “totally drug resistant” form of TB and three had died.

“Of the 12 patients, nine were traced and found to be stable on current treatment while three have died. Seven of the nine patients are residents of Mumbai,” the health ministry said.

The centre will come up at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS) with support for manpower development as well as projects on translational research from the Indian Council for Medical Research, Azad said at the 16th Convocation of NIMHANS.

Azad is president of the NIMHANS society. NIMHANS was declared an institute of National Importance in October last year.

NIMHANS is a renowned multi-specialty hospital for treatment of neurological, neurosurgical and mental illnesses.

Patients from various parts of the country come here to seek treatment and rehabilitative services. Last year more than 450,000 patients received medical services at the institute.

The chief guest at the convocation, Vice President Hamid Ansari, called for efforts to remove the stigma attached to mental illness.

“While we have made enormous strides in de-stigmatizing patients of HIV/AIDS through public education and awareness campaigns, we have not been able to replicate the same regarding mental disorders. We must reduce the stigma and discrimination through public awareness,” he said.

“Those jaws chew apart the walls of the bacteria that are trying to get into your eyes and infect them,” said molecular biologist and chemistry professor at University of California Irvine Gregory Weiss, who co-led the project with associate professor of physics and astronomy Philip Collins.

The research could prove critical to long-term work aimed at diagnosing cancers and other illnesses in their very early stages, the journal Science reports.

The researchers decoded the protein’s behaviour by building one of the world’s smallest transistors — 25 times smaller than similar circuitry in laptop computers or smartphones.

Individual lysozymes were glued to the live wire and their eating activities were monitored, according to a University of California statement.

“Our circuits are molecule-sized microphones,” Collins said. “It’s just like a stethoscope listening to your heart, except we’re listening to a single molecule of protein.”

It took years for the university scientists to assemble the transistor and attach single-molecule teardrop proteins. The scientists hope the same novel technology can be used to detect cancerous molecules. It could take a decade to figure out but would be well worth it, said Weiss, who lost his father to lung cancer.

“If we can detect single molecules associated with cancer, then that means we’d be able to detect it very, very early,” Weiss said. “That would be very exciting because we know that if we treat cancer early, it will be much more successful, patients will be cured much faster, and costs will be much less.”

Some people wear such non-corrective coloured contact lenses to change or enhance eye colour for cosmetic and fashion purposes, said Xinhua.

As these contact lenses are not for vision correction and medication purposes, they are currently off limits to the country’s medical administration and regulators, said a statement published on the website of the State Food and Drug Administration Thursday.

However, with the increasingly popular use of cosmetic contacts, safety and quality problems due to the regulation loophole are likely to harm consumers’ health, and the administration has decided to expand the current medical regulation on contact lenses to cover cosmetic ones, the statement said.

It explained that the administration will soon issue a notice to ban the manufacture and sale of these contacts without proper registration and licences.

A central team comprising senior chief medical officer, Central TB Division (CTD), consultant (Drug Resistant TB), and national programme officer (laboratory) was sent to Mumbai Tuesday following reports of P.D. Hinduja hospital detecting first cases of total drug resistant TB in India.

The team submitted its report to the health ministry Friday.

According to the report, out of the 12 reported patients, nine were traced and found to be stable on the current treatment while three have since died.

“A careful audit of their prescriptions revealed that these three patients had received erratic, unsupervised second-line drugs, added individually and often in incorrect doses from multiple private practitioners in an attempt to cure their multi-drug resistant tuberculosis,” the report highlights.

Following the cases, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and the Maharashtra government have decided to strengthen the TB service delivery systems in the city.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of calls to a poisons hotline. Symptoms include palpitations, agitation, tremor and gastrointestinal upset, besides signs of serious cardiac or neurological toxicity such as hallucinations, seizures.

These are the findings of a study by Naren Gunja, director, New South Wales Poisons Information Centre, and Jared Brown, conducted over seven years, the Medical Journal of Australia reports.

The study shows the trend of misuse and toxicity appears to be increasing among teenagers; out of the 217 callers who were classified as recreational users, the median age was 17 years.

“Consumers are likely to be unaware of the variation in chemical composition and caffeine dosage in energy drinks, and with little or no warnings on products, the potential for overdose remains ever-present,” Gunja says.

“Manufacturers pitch their product to athletes, students and people in professions that require sustained alertness,” says Gunja.

Most energy drinks contain varying amounts of caffeine, guarana extract, taurine and ginseng, with additional amino acids, vitamins and carbohydrates.

Gunja says adverse reactions and toxicity from high-energy drinks can be attributed to the caffeine content, which is typically around 300 mg per can.

“Lack of donors who pledge to donate their organs after their death is affecting the number of liver transplants in the country. Out of 25,000 who need a transplantation, only 800 are done,” Arvinder Singh Soin, chairman, Medanta Institute of Liver Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine, told IANS on the sideline of an event.

Soin said that the huge gap between the required number of liver transplants and the actual number can only be shortened by making people aware about the organ donations.

“If public have more awareness on organ donation, at least 10,000 livers can be easily transplanted every year. But last year, only 200 families voluntarily donated the liver of the family member who died due to brain death,” he said, talking to IANS shortly after announcing how a team led by him performed a complex marathon surgery, doing six simultaneous surgeries for liver transplant in three babies.

Drawing a parallel, Soin said that in India annually thousands die in fatal road accidents — most of them are due to brain death — and in such cases they become potential organ donors.

“If a small percentage of them become donors, it might save thousands of precious lives – not just liver but also the other vital organs,” he added.

The nearly painless procedure has been tried out for the first time by doctors at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (PMCC) in Canada. It involves de-activating nerves located on the outside of the artery that feeds blood to the kidney, thereby lowering BP.

BP patients have to endure an especially high risk of heart attacks and stroke, which continue to kill tens of thousands of people worldwide every year, according to a Peter Munk statement.

The first Canadian patient to undergo the procedure of renal denervation, is a 57-year-old male from Toronto, who will be discharged after overnight observation.

The procedure was performed by a team of Dheeraj Rajan, interventional radiology specialist, Douglas Ing, cardiologist, and George Oreopoulos, vascular surgeon. The team recently returned from Germany, where they trained for the procedure.

Barry Rubin, medical director of PMCC, said: “Decreasing a patient’s systolic blood pressure from 160 to 130 mm Hg (mercury) over a period of six months, which this procedure has been shown to do, could prevent many heart attacks and strokes.”

“Renal denervation could also save the healthcare system countless millions of dollars by minimizing the need for anti-hypertension drugs…, to say nothing of the millions more in savings from not having to treat heart attacks and strokes that don’t happen,” added Rubin.

The procedure was first used on patients in Australia, and its effects were reported in a clinical trial published in the Dec 4, 2010, issue of medical journal, The Lancet.

The research throws new light on the disease and reveals an important common link with other brain diseases, potentially opening the way to new therapeutic approaches for those who suffer from them.

The findings came from researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported.

The disorder, Autosomal Recessive Spastic Ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay (ARSACS), first identified in the 1970s, primarily affects the cerebellum, the brain area for coordination of movement. It also strikes at an early age, according to a university statement.

The symptoms include poor motor coordination, spastic stiffness, muscle wasting, uncoordinated eye movements and slurred speech. Most sufferes are wheelchair-bound by their early 40s and have a reduced life expectancy.

“This finding is the first important advancement in the 10 years since the identification of the mutated gene because it gives an indication of the underlying cellular mechanism of the disease, and is a vital first step towards developing therapeutic strategies for ARSACS,” said Bernard Brais, neurologist at The Neuro, McGill University.

In 2000, scientists identified the gene associated with the disease, called SACS, which produces a massive 4,579 amino acid protein called sacsin, but until now the role or the function of the sacsin protein has been unknown.

The research led by scientists Brais and Peter McPherson Paul Chapple at Queen Mary, University of London, indicates that that the sacsin protein has a mitochondrial function, and that mutations causing ARSACS are linked to a defective mitochondria in neurons (nerve and brain cells).

Officials and veterinarians launched the culling operation in and around three km of Bahanada village in the tribal-populated Mayurbhanj district after tests confirmed that two chickens were infected with the deadly H5N1 virus.

Culling of about 5,000 birds in about 30 villages is being carried out by about 10 teams, state animal resources development department director Benudhar Dash told IANS.

Authorities last week culled over 31,000 poultry birds in and around Keranga village of Khurda district, more than 300 km from the present culling site.

Dash said the government sent samples of different fowls to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) in Bhopal, after hundreds of crows died in some parts of Odisha earlier this month.

The test confirmed that three samples of poultry and two samples of crow were infected with the H5N1 virus, he said.

But he said there was no need to panic as the influenza has not affected any humans.

“We were really surprised by that result and, in fact, we held back from publishing our study for roughly two years because we kept looking for a connection that just wasn’t there,” said Jennifer Van Hook, professor of sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University who led the study.

This despite the fact that the number of obese children in the US may have tripled between the early 1970s and the late 2000s.

The study relies on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, through the spring of eighth grade (the 1998-1999 through 2006-2007 schools years), the journal Sociology of Education reports.

Van Hook and her co-author Claire E. Altman, sociology and demography doctoral student at Pennsylvania, used a sub-sample of 19,450 children who attended school in the same county in both fifth and eighth grades (the 2003-2004 and the 2006-2007 school years), according to a Pennsylvania statement.

The authors found that 59.2 percent of fifth graders and 86.3 percent of eighth graders in their study attended schools that sold junk food.

But, while there was a significant increase in the percentage of students who attended schools that sold junk food between fifth and eighth grades, there was no rise in the percentage of students who were overweight or obese.

In fact, despite the increased availability of junk food, the percentage of students who were overweight or obese actually decreased from fifth grade to eighth grade, from 39.1 percent to 35.4 percent.

Jamuna Pai, a Mumbai-based cosmetologist, told IANS that botox “blocks the pain pathways and beautifully treats migraine. We people who have not gone through migraine don’t know what it can do”.

What are the symptoms? The typical migraine headache affects only one half of the head. It is pulsating in nature and lasts from two to 72 hours.

Pai said: “Those who get migraine attacks vomit, can’t get out of bed for three-four days, going to work is out of question. People tie a cloth tightly around their heads to control the pain.

“A few prick jabs are like god’s gift for the chronic migraine patients. For an experienced person, it takes about two minutes to inject it and in 10-14 days you will see the result. The effect lasts six months and the person will not get pain attacks.”

According to a study, WHO has ranked migraine as the 19th most disabling disease. Women are believed to be three times more likely than men to suffer from migraines. It is a chronic neurological disorder characterised by moderate to severe headaches, and nausea.

However, Pai, who has been a pioneer in bringing botox to India, says there is not enough awareness about the procedure, which has got the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“The awareness is not much, though it has got approval. Less than five percent come for treatment of migraine,” she said, adding migraine patients in the age group of 20 years to 55 years come for the treatment.

Botox has been used as a treatment for other physical disorders for a long time, says Raghu Kumar, managing director, Allergan India. He says for migraine patients, it got approval less than a year ago.

“Botox has been used for all the therapeutic indications like cerebral palsy movement disorder, spasticity and post-stroke spasticity since 1996,” said Kumar.

“Approval for chronic migraine has been received less than a year back; so it is a completely new concept. The botox is injected in as many as 32 spots in the head but it is fairly painless, less complicated. Some 100-150 patients would definitely have used it in the last six months,” he added.

The cost of the botox jab differs with the number of units used, says Pai.

“Cost differs according to the dosage. A bottle contains 100 units and when I give the treatment myself, I charge Rs.400 per unit plus taxes. When my team of doctors does it, they charge Rs.300 per unit plus taxes. I have also heard that some doctors charge Rs.200-250 per unit in other places,” she said.

“So if I use 80 units of botox for migraine, it would be Rs.32,000, but I think it is worth it. It’s better if you pay this kind of money and over the period of time you are paying less as the units required get less. The frequency of pain attacks also decreases as the pathways get used to not sending the pain,” she added.

Since the concept is new, Kumar says, they have started training doctors about dosage.

“We have trained more than 100 doctors by now on how to inject botox. We are in a phase of building confidence when it can be used as a therapeutic indication on regular basis,” he added.

Government of India has also expanded the Universal Immunization Progranme (UIP) by introducing 2nd dose of Measles, Hepatitis B and Pentavalent vaccination: India has introduced second dose of measles vaccine in UIP. The target is to vaccinate more than 12 crore children through Supplementary Immunization Activity (SIA) in 14 states of which 3.4 crore children have already been vaccinated. This will prevent an estimated 1 lakh measles related death. Hepatitis B has been expanded and universalized across the entire country. Pentavalent, a combination vaccine against five diseases (Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza B) has been introduced on pilot basis in 2 States – Tamil Nadu and Kerala – in mid December 2011. The initial response of the community has been very encouraging and more than one lakh children have been successfully vaccinated within the 1st month.

In order to track every child for assured delivery of immunization services, a web enabled name based tracking system has been put in place with a database of more than 10 million children. Parents are being sent SMS alerts before the due date of vaccination and health workers are also now receiving the list of children due for vaccination through SMS. This is expected to improve immunization coverage substantially within the next one year and facilitate real time reporting on immunization coverage.

More than 2,321 birds, including domesticated fowls, were culled and buried with lime and bleaching powder in 10 villages within the three-kilometre radius of the government-run farm at Williamnagar – the epicentre of H5N1 virus, the official said.

“The culling exercise would continue in 10 more villages within the three-kilometre radius of the farm. We are hopeful to complete this exercise in a span of another three days or so,” Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Director D. Lyngwa told IANS.

Besides, the 13-member rapid response team have destroyed total 892 eggs and 850 kilograms of feeds during the two days, he said.

The government had recently sent samples to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) in Bhopal after more than 3,000 birds died in the past few weeks at the farm in Williamnagar.

Meanwhile, there have been fresh reports of death of domesticated fowls outside the culling area in and around the district headquarters.

“It is difficult to quantify the exact number of deaths because the villages have not officially informed us but nonetheless surveillance teams have been deployed in those areas to monitor the health of the birds,” East Garo Hills District Magistrate Pravin Bakshi told IANS.

Expressing concerns on dumping of dead fowls into the Simsang river by villagers, Bakshi said a special team have launched an awareness campaign, urging villagers to bury their dead birds in a deep pit with lime to prevent the H5N1 virus from spreading to humans.

Though there has been no report of the infection spreading to humans, the district official said health workers are conducting house-to-house surveillance to confirm if any person is infected with H1N1 virus.

The state health and family welfare department rushed a micro-biologist and a pathologist to Williamnagar.

“A team of specialists is stationed at Williamnagar to monitor human health in view of the birds testing positive for H5N1. The government will provide all necessary medicines,” said state medical chief A.C. Hazarika.

The government has asked all districts to monitor the health of all poultry. The movement and sale of poultry and poultry products from the affected area has been stopped.

The study carried out by German and Swiss researchers said the colour red may encourage diners to avoid snacking because it is commonly associated with the idea of “danger, prohibition and stop”, the Daily Mail reported.

The researchers suggested the governments and food industry could use red packaging on unhealthy foods as a deterrent, and could even use red colour in pubs to prevent people from drinking too much.

In the study, 41 male students were asked to drink tea from cups marked with red or blue labels. They drank 44 percent less from cups with red labels.

Another 109 people were given 10 pretzels each on either a red, blue or white plate. Those with a red plate ate fewer pretzels.

The results were published in the journal Appetite.

Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency worldwide, causing poor cognitive achievement in school-aged children. Now it has been found to affect the brain’s physical structure as well.

Paul Thompson, professor of neurology at the University of California Los Angeles, and colleagues measured levels of transferrin, a protein that transports iron throughout the body and brain, in adolescents.

Since both a deficiency and an excess of iron can negatively impact brain function, the body’s regulation of iron transport to the brain is crucial, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports.

When iron levels are low, the liver produces more transferrin for increased iron transport. The researchers wanted to know whether brain structure in healthy adults was also dependent on transferrin levels, according to a California statement.

“We found that healthy brain wiring in adults depended on having good iron levels in your teenage years,” said Thompson, member of California’s Lab of Neuro Imaging.

“This connection was a lot stronger than we expected, especially as we were looking at people who were young and healthy – none of them would be considered iron-deficient.

“We also found a connection with a gene that explains why this is so. The gene itself seems to affect brain wiring, which was a big surprise,” he said.

Thompson’s findings are based on MRI scans on 615 healthy young-adult twins and siblings, who had an average age of 23.

By averaging the subjects’ transferrin levels, which had been assessed repeatedly – at 12, 14 and 16 years of age – the researchers estimated iron availability to the brain during adolescence, Thompson said.

According to the research, sitting at a desk all day means you are more likely to slump on the sofa at home and perform no exercise. The average office worker spends five hours 41 minutes daily at their desk, almost as long as the seven hours they spend sleeping, the Daily Express reported.

These deskbound workers are more likely to turn into couch potatoes, increasing their risk of obesity, says the researchers at the Loughborough University, a research-based campus university in Britain’s Leicestershire county.

The trend is partly blamed on technology making it simpler for lazy people at offices to email a colleague rather than walking over to see them, it adds.

Shanghai should increase punishments for smoking in tobacco-free zones and restrict smoking in restaurants and bars, according to the proposal submitted to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress.

The city should also increase tobacco taxes and increase anti-smoking advertising, the Shanghai Daily quoted a lawyer as saying.

Acknowledging the commendable effort at polio containment, the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad said “we are excited and hopeful, at the same time, vigilant and alert”. He cautioned that there is still no room for complacency and we need to ensure no case of polio infection for the next three consecutive years for India to celebrate eradication of poliomyelitis. The Minister noted that the progress is indeed remarkable considering in 2009, India with 741 cases accounted for nearly half the global cases. “This giant leap towards polio containment in a short span of two years is an endorsement of India’s tireless and persistent efforts. India has set an example with the highest level of political commitment to the programme which reflects in its resource allocation, continuous efforts to identify and reach out to the most vulnerable children with tailored strategies for maximum reach, optimum use of available vaccines under the guidance of top national and international experts, an extra-ordinary communication strategy and strong partnership”, he said.

In each National Pulse Polio Immunization round, 24 lakh vaccinators under 1.5 lakh supervisors visit over 20crore households to ensure that the nearly 17.2 crore children, less than five years of age, are immunized with Oral Polio Vaccine. Mobile and transit vaccination teams immunize children at railway stations, at bus stands, market areas, construction sites etc. Around 50 lakh children are immunized by transit and mobile teams during every round in UP, Bihar and Mumbai alone. The polio campaigns during the rest of the year cover polio endemic states and other areas at risk of importation of poliovirus.

India has as yet spent more than Rs 12000 crores on the Pulse Polio Programme. India took a lead in introducing bivalent polio vaccine (bOPV) in January 2010. Despite global shortage of both bOPV and trivalent Polio vaccine, India tapped domestic market for timely supply of vaccine to ensure pulse polio rounds without interruptions. The prorgamme has been in the forefront of adopting technological innovations. The more efficacious monovalent oral polio vaccines were introduced in the Pulse Polio campaigns in 2005 which helped curtail the most dangerous type 1 polio strains to record low levels by 2009. In 2010 the bivalent oral polio vaccine was introduced which helped curtail both Type 1 and Type 3 polioviruses simultaneously and as efficaciously as the monovalent vaccines.

The surveillance for poliovirus in India is among the most sensitive in the world. As many as 35,325 reporting sites across the county report Acute Flaccid Paralysis cases for collection of stool samples and testing in the laboratories for poliovirus. The progress also results from focused and tailored strategies to vaccinate children in the highest risk areas and helped ensure 99 per cent coverage in each vaccination round.

The strategies and program response has also become sharper in the last few years. As per the recommendation of the India expert Advisory Group on Polio Eradication, every case, anywhere in the country is being responded to as a public health emergency. The lone case of polio in 2011 in Howrah is an example of rapid response – with the first immunization round being held within seven days and three rounds in seven weeks. In contrast, a case the same time in 2010 in Murshidabad, saw the first immunization response in five weeks and three rounds spread over 17 weeks. The rapid and intense response in Howrah helped stop polio transmission and no other case was reported. The program is also a shining example of successful partnership and collaborative work – the strong technical support from WHO – National Polio Surveillance Project (NPSP), communication lead by UNICEF and advocacy by Rotary International. The entire government machinery at all levels is geared towards pulse polio immunization.

12 January 2012 | Atlanta/Evanston/Geneva/New York/Seattle - India appears to have interrupted wild poliovirus transmission, completing one year without polio since its last case, in a 2-year-old girl in the state of West Bengal, on 13 January 2011.

India was once recognized as the world’s epicentre of polio. If all pending laboratory investigations return negative, in the coming weeks India will officially be deemed to have stopped indigenous transmission of wild poliovirus. The number of polio-endemic countries, those which have never stopped indigenous wild poliovirus transmission, will then be reduced to a historical low of three: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

However, there remains no room for complacency. India must maintain sensitive surveillance and high childhood immunity against wild poliovirus to guard against any importation of polio until eradication is achieved globally. In 2011, Afghanistan and Pakistan have both seen alarming increases in polio cases, and poliovirus from Pakistan re-infected China (which had been polio-free since 1999). In Africa, active polio transmission continues in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria, with outbreaks in West and Central Africa in the past 12 months reminding the world that as long as polio exists anywhere, it remains a threat everywhere.

Global health leaders today paid tribute to the Government of India for its leadership and financial commitment to the polio eradication effort, and to the millions of vaccinators, community mobilizers, Rotarians, parents and caregivers who have supported polio eradication for more than a decade. The scale of the eradication effort in India is mind-boggling: each year, more than 170 million children under the age of 5 are vaccinated in two national immunization campaigns, with up to 70 million children in the highest-risk areas vaccinated multiple times in additional special campaigns; the whole effort requires nearly a billion doses of oral polio vaccine annually.

Hundreds of thousands of children will be saved

India’s achievement in stopping polio will save hundreds of thousands of children from lifelong paralysis or death each year. Poliovirus can travel easily to polio-free areas. Stopping polio in India will prevent a recurrence of the polio outbreaks – due to virus of Indian origin – seen in recent years in countries as diverse as Angola, Bangladesh, Nepal, Russia and Tajikistan.

An opportunity to end polio

“India’s success is arguably its greatest public health achievement and has provided a global opportunity to push for the end of polio,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. “The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is in full emergency mode and focused on using this momentum to close this crippling disease down. Stopping polio in India required creativity, perseverance and professionalism – many of the innovations in polio eradication were sparked by the challenges in India. The lessons from India must now be adapted and implemented through emergency actions to finish polio everywhere.”

The key to India’s remarkable progress in the fight against polio according to UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, has been the strong leadership of the Government of India and state governments, which launched a comprehensive polio eradication programme that has enabled sustained high immunization coverage in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar with high rates of poverty, high population density and poor sanitation and infrastructure, conditions in which disease like polio can thrive.

Polio can be eradicated in challenging environments

“India’s achievement is proof positive that we can eradicate polio even in the most challenging environments – in fact, it is only by targeting these areas that we can defeat this evil disease,” Mr Lake said. “We have the ability to protect every last person, especially children, from this entirely preventable disease – and because we can, we must finish the job of eradicating polio globally, once and for all.”

Rotary International first launched the global polio eradication effort in 1985, and President Kalyan Banerjee said that with the intensity of transmission in India, many experts had predicted it would be the last country in the world to achieve eradication. “India is undoubtedly the biggest domino to fall in the polio eradication effort,” Mr Banerjee said. “India’s success is a great credit to the Indian government and to Indian Rotary members – as well as those from around the world – who have worked with local leaders to conduct these immunization efforts to reach every child with the polio vaccine.”

India must continue to protect its children from polio

Like all countries that have stopped indigenous wild poliovirus transmission, India must continue to protect its children through supplementary immunization activities and improved routine immunization coverage rates or risk a potentially horrific re-importation event, said the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas Frieden. “Polio’s history contains many cautionary tales,” Dr. Frieden added. “Polio anywhere in the world is a risk everywhere in the world, and to protect itself from a setback, India is appropriately planning to continue meticulous monitoring and intensive childhood vaccination against polio.”

Ensuring no child suffers polio

“Polio can be stopped when countries combine the right elements – political will, quality immunization campaigns, and an entire nation’s determination” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “World leaders must continue to raise the funds needed to run the global campaign and help to ensure that no child suffers from this crippling disease ever again.”

With India’s achievement, the global polio eradication effort now focuses on improving the implementation of emergency operations plans in Chad, Nigeria and Pakistan. Success depends on local ownership and accountability at all levels of government and international partners.

Notes to editors

India is one of the largest donors to polio eradication, being largely self-financed. By 2013, India will have contributed US$ 2 billion.

When all pending specimens are processed (stools from children with acute flaccid paralysis and samples from sewage sampling), if no wild poliovirus is detected, India will no longer be considered polio-endemic. The laboratory system is expected to clear all samples within 4–6 weeks of collection.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) is spearheaded by national governments, WHO, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF.

For more information, please contact:

Sona Bari
Telephone: +41 79 475 5511
E-mail: baris@who.int

Tarik Jasarevic
Telephone: +41 79 747 27 56
E-mail: jasarevict@who.int

Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw granted six months time to FSSAI and sought a compliance report by July 25.

The court said: “FSSAI is directed to consider the issue in six months. It may invite the All India Food Processors Association (AIFPA) and restaurant associations for consultation and development of guidelines.”

The AIFPA had earlier told the court that its members were dealing with processing of fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, milk and milk products and biscuits and confectionery products.

The association had contended that petitioner had failed to specify as to what kind of food should be included in the definition of junk food or fast food.

It further said that Prevention of Food Adulteration Act did not define anything as junk food or fast food.

The court had earlier asked the health ministry to apprise it of the steps taken to create awareness among students about the “harmful effects of increased consumption of junk foods”.

The NGO sought a ban on the sale of junk food and carbonated drinks within 1,500-foot radius of schools.

The petition by Rahul Verma and Rakesh Prabhakar of Uday Foundation said: “It is… time we change the way kids eat in schools. Such a ban will set new standards for healthy food. On the one hand, children are taught in classroom about good nutrition…, on the other, we continue to make junk food available to them.”

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine reported a strong correlation between a rise in Internet searches for flu information, compiled by Google’s Flu Trends tool, and a subsequent rise in people approaching the emergency room complaining of flu.

Hopkins researchers tracked and reviewed Google Flu Trends data for Baltimore City, along with data on people seeking care, at the emergency departments of Johns Hopkins Hospital from January 2009, to October 2010.

Richard Rothman, emergency medicine physician and researcher at the Johns Hopkins and senior study investigator, says the results show promise for eventually developing a standard regional or national early warning system for frontline health care workers.

Rothman and lead study investigator Andrea Dugas, recently hosted a national conference in Baltimore of experts from around the country to discuss the implications of their findings.

In the long term, says Rothman, the Johns Hopkins team hopes to develop a highly reliable flu surveillance model that all emergency departments could use to reasonably predict a spike in the number of flu-like cases.

D. Jayakumar, Hepatologist and senior consultant Gastroenterologist at the NIMS Medicity near here, said the endoscopy was an innovative, non-invasive diagnostic tool to access small bowels to diagnose small bowel bleeding sites, tumours and ulcers.

“Instead of lying down still on an examination table, while using wireless endoscopy people could walk, sit and even return to normal work while the capsules are recording images,” said Jayakumar.

Capsule Endoscopy is the most advanced facility in modern medicine and does not require insertion of endoscope through the mouth.

“Capsule Endoscope is a swallowable video capsule containing a tiny camera. It can take two pictures every second for up to eight hours, transmitting images to a data recorder – about the size of a portable CD player – that patients wear around the waist. Once the patient swallows the capsule, it takes pictures of the inside of the gastrointestinal tract,” said Jayakumar.

Capsule endoscopy is primarily used to examine areas of the small intestine that cannot be seen by other types of endoscopy such as colonoscopy or esophago-gastro-duodenoscopy (EGD).

In November last year, the 350-bed NIMS became just the seventh hospital in the country to install Fibro Scan, a state-of-the-art scanning machine meant to scan liver ailments.

Until this finding, it wasn’t clear which came first — whether the disruption of biological clock mechanisms was the cause or the result of neurodegeneration.

The biological clock, in humans and animals, is a complex genetic mechanism tuned to the 24-hour day and regular cycles of light, dark and sleep.

It influences a wide range of biological processes — from fertility to hormone production, feeding patterns, DNA repair, sleep, stress reactions, even the effectiveness of medications.

“In these experiments, we showed through both environmental and genetic approaches that disrupting the biological clock accelerated these health problems,” said Kuntol Rakshit, an Oregon State University graduate fellow, the journal Neurobiology of Disease reports.

“There’s a great deal of interest right now in studies on circadian rhythms, as we learn more about the range of problems that can result when they are disrupted,” Rakshit said. “Ultimately, we hope this research will be taken from the laboratory to the bedside.”

These studies were done with fruit flies, but Oregon scientists said previous research has indicated there are close parallels between them and humans, according to an Oregon statement.

Some of the genes regulating circadian rhythms in flies are so important that they have been preserved through millions of years of separate evolution and still do the same thing in humans.

In humans, researchers have found strong correlations between disrupted clock mechanisms, aging, and neurologic diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease.

Self-perception of weight gain also appears to be significantly influenced by race, ethnicity and contraceptive methods.

Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) found that a significant number of women evaluated at six months intervals did not recognize recent gains in weight, the Journal of Women’s Heath reports.

Overall, nearly one-third and one-quarter of women did not recognize gains of approximately 2 and 4 kg during a six-month interval, respectively, according to a Texas statement.

However, DMPA users (depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, commonly known as the birth control shot) were more likely to recognize weight gain than their counterparts.

Researchers surveyed a sample of 466 women with an average age of 25. Approximately 37 percent of the subjects were Hispanic, 35 percent non-Hispanic white and 29 percent non-Hispanic black women.

Roughly 39 percent of the women used DMPA, 36 percent used an oral contraceptive and 25 percent were users of non-hormonal contraceptives.

Every six months over 36 months the women completed a symptom checklist that included questions on whether they felt they had gained weight.

“We were surprised to find that race and ethnicity are determinants of accurate recognition of weight gain, predictors that have never before been reported,” said Mahbubur Rahman, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology.

The risk of heart attack remained eight times above normal even during the first week after the death of a loved one, slowly subsiding, but still remaining elevated for at least a month, according to a new research.

“Some people would say a ‘broken heart’ related to the grief response is what leads to these physiologic changes,” says study author Murray Mittleman, cardiologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre.

“So that emotional sense of the broken heart may actually lead to damage, leading to a heart attack and a physical broken heart of a sort,” adds Mittleman, also associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Researchers interviewed 2,000 patients who suffered myocardial infarctions, or heart attacks, over a five-year period.

While there is widespread anecdotal evidence, a few studies have looked at the acute effect of bereavement and grief on myocardial infarction (heart attacks). Patients were queried about potentially triggering events, including losing someone close to them in the past year.

“Bereavement and grief are associated with increased feelings of depression, anxiety and anger, and those have been shown to be associated with increases in heart rate and blood pressure. And changes in the blood that make it more likely to clot, all of which can lead to a heart attack,” says Elizabeth Mostofsky, post-doctoral fellow in cardiology at Beth Israel.

Mostofsky and Mittleman think that being aware of the heightened risk can go a long way toward “breaking the link between the loss of someone close and the heart attack.”

- 42 percent children under five are underweight and 59 percent are stunted, about half are severely stunted.

- Malnutrition is significantly higher among children from low-income families, although rates of child malnutrition are significant among middle and low income families. Children from Muslim or Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe households generally have worst nutrition indicators.

- 66 percent mothers did not attend school; rates of child underweight and stunting are significantly higher among mothers with low levels of education.

- The prevalence of underweight child among mothers who cannot read is 45 percent while among those with 10 or more years of education — 27 percent. The corresponding figures for child stunting are 63 and 43 percent respectively.

- By age 24 months, 42 percent of children are underweight and 58 percent are stunted in the 100 focus districts.

- Prevalence of child underweight has decreased from 53 percent (District Level Household Survey, 2004) to 42 percent (HUNGaMA, 2011).

- 51 percent mothers did not give colostrum (the first milk) to the newborn and 58 percent mothers fed water to their infants before six months.

- Girls seem to have nutrition advantage over boys in the first months of life. However, it seems to be reversed over time, potentially indicating feeding and care neglect.

“In the 100 focus districts, 42 percent of children under five are underweight and 59 percent are stunted,” says the report by HUNGaMA (Hunger and Malnutrition).

It says prevalence of malnutrition is significantly higher among children from low income families. “Children from Muslim or scheduled caste or scheduled tribe households generally have worst nutrition indicators.”

The report says that in the 100 focus districts, 51 percent mothers did not give colostrum to newborns soon after birth and 58 percent mothers fed water to their infants before six months.

The survey notes that girls seemed to have nutrition advantage over boys in the first months of life. “However, this advantage seems to get reversed over time as girls and boys grow older, potentially indicating feeding and care neglect vis-a-vis girls in infancy and early childhood.”

It says that in the 100 focus districts, 66 percent mothers did not attend school and the ratio of underweight children was significantly higher among mothers with low levels of education.

“The prevalence of underweight children among mothers who cannot read is 45 percent while that among mothers with 10 or more years of education is 27 percent. The corresponding figures for child stunting are 63 and 43 percent, respectively. It was also found that 92 percent mothers had never heard the word malnutrition.”

“Eleven percent mothers said they used soap to wash hands before a meal and 19 percent do so after a visit to the toilet in the 100 focus districts,” the report adds.

The report points out that with nearly 43 percent of children underweight (weight deficit for their age) proportion of underweight children in India was twice higher than the average figure in sub-Saharan Africa (22 percent).

“The consequences of this nutrition crisis are enormous. In addition to being the attributable cause of one-third to one-half of child deaths, malnutrition causes stunted physical growth. The economic losses associated with malnutrition are estimated at 3 percent of India’s gross domestic product annually.”

On the positive side, the report says there is reduction in prevalence of child malnutrition with proportion of underweight children decreasing by 20.3 percent over a seven-year period (2004-11) with an average annual rate of reduction of 2.9 percent.

The report says there is an anganwadi centre in 96 percent of the villages in the 100 focus districts, 61 percent of them in pucca buildings.

Rohini Mukherjee, team leader of the HUNGaMA survey report, said the survey was aimed at getting latest data on child nutrition in India.

She said that of the 112 districts surveyed in the report, 100 were selected from the bottom of child development district index developed for UNICEF-India in 2009. These 100 districts are spread over six states.

Mukherjee said the HUNGaMA survey was triggered as an idea by the Citizen’s Alliance against Malnutrition, a group that includes MPs across party lines and many other prominent personalities.

“I’m optimistic that we can vanquish polio forever if other countries choose to learn from India’s success. Together, we can accomplish something amazing… This is a huge milestone in the history of global health,” wrote Gates on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s website Monday.

Gates wrote about his encounter with children suffering from polio when he visited the country four years back and how the country had not reported a single case since the last one year.

“Four years ago, I visited India and saw again what polio does to children… The following year, in 2009, India had more polio cases than any other country in the world. But much has changed since then,” said Gates.

“…This Friday will mark a full year since the last case of wild poliovirus was detected in India,” he added.

Gates said that it was a “remarkable achievement” keeping in mind a huge and growing population, hard-to-reach migrant communities, and sanitation and health conditions that limit the effectiveness of polio vaccines in the country.

“Twice a year, two million volunteers prepare 800,000 vaccination booths around the country – at schools, hospitals and community centres. They immunize more than 172 million children one by one,” said Gates.

“India’s story is proof that major health problems can be solved in the toughest places in the world. But the fight against polio is not over and we are at a critical moment in time,” he added.

Addressing a gathering here at the release of a malnutrition report ‘HUNGaMA’ (Hunger and Malnutrition), the prime minister said: “The results of this survey are both worrying and encouraging.”

“As I have said earlier and I repeat that the problem of malnutrition is a matter of national shame. Despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level of under-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high. We have also not succeeded in reducing this rate fast enough,” he said.

Underlining that the health of the country’s economy and society lies in the health of its children, Manmohan Singh said: “The survey reports high levels of malnutrition, but it also indicates that one child in five has reached an acceptable healthy weight during the last seven years in 100 focus districts.”

“However, what concerns me is that 42 percent of our children are still underweight. This is an unacceptably high occurrence,” he said.

The prime minister complimented the Citizen’s Alliance against Malnutrition, Nandi Foundation, Mahindra & Mahindra and other partners and supporters for carrying out the survey.

“I understand that the surveyors have reached more than 73,000 households in 112 districts across nine states. To measure more than one lakh children and talk to 74,000 mothers is indeed an extraordinary accomplishment.”

He said there were nearly 16 crore children in the country below the age of six years and, in the years to come, these children would join the work force as scientists, farmers, teachers, data operators, artisans, service providers.

Highlighting the need for various sectors to work together to fight malnutrition, Manmohan Singh said: “Policy makers and programme implementers need to clearly understand many linkages — between education and health, sanitation and hygiene, drinking water and nutrition — and then shape their responses accordingly.”

“These sectors can no longer work in isolation of each other. Health professionals cannot solely concentrate on curative care. Drinking water and sanitation providers cannot be oblivious to the positive externality of their actions.”

“The school teacher needs to be aware of the nutritional needs of the adolescent girl. And above all, the Anganwadi workers should be aware of their contribution to nation building by focusing on the care of our young citizens,” he said.

“Though the ICDS (integrated child development services) continues to be our most important tool to fight malnutrition, we can no longer rely solely on it. We need to focus on districts where malnutrition levels are high and where conditions causing malnutrition prevail.”

According to the prime minister, it was believed that a mother’s education level, economic status of the family, sanitation and hygiene, status of women in the family, breastfeeding and other good child rearing practices affect children’s nutrition and the survey had broadly validated these hypotheses.

Experts, however, caution that the fight against the paralysing disease that affects children aged under five is far from over.

“We are extremely happy on meeting this great milestone. The progress is greatly encouraging,” Anuradha Gupta, joint secretary in the union health ministry, told IANS.

“We are aware of the risks that still persist. We cannot drop our guard. We need to work hard to make sure that in the next two years India stays polio free, stop indigenous transmission and also importation.”

The last new polio case in India was reported Jan 13, 2011, involving a two-year-old girl in West Bengal. In 2010, there were 42 cases, as compared to 741 in 2009, which accounted for nearly half of the world’s polio cases. In 1991, there were 6,028 cases and in 1985 it was 150,000.

What worked was that each state prepared itself for detecting and immediately responding to any wild poliovirus through their ‘Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans’.

The entire health ministry – at the centre and in the states – was geared to take up the challenge.

Immunisation in itself was a mammoth job, involving thousands of people. And immunisations were carried out across the country, especially in the worst affected parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Poliovirus is mostly transmitted through contact with the stool of an infected person but also through contact with infected respiratory secretions or saliva, experts say.

During each national immunization day, nearly 2.3 million vaccinators under the direction of 155,000 supervisors visited 209 million homes to administer the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) to around 172 million children under five years of age across the country.

To reach the migratory population, mobile vaccination teams immunised children at railway stations, inside running trains, at bus stands, market places and construction sites. The end result was 900 million children were given OPV doses last year.

India’s success also earned it praise from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who described it as “a major milestone in the history of the global health sector” for not reporting any case in a 12-month period.

“The Indian government provided the required financial support for polio eradication, 20 lakh volunteers set up eight lakh vaccination centres in schools, hospitals and community centres on two occasions last year,” he said in his blog.

The government is partnered in its fight by WHO’s National Polio Surveillance Project (NPSP), Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Unicef, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

What has cheered officials more is that if all testing for indigenous wild poliovirus transmission through January this year, including laboratory analysis of acute flaccid paralysis cases and environmental sewage sampling, is negative, India will officially be deemed to have stopped the indigenous virus and be removed from the list of WHO polio-endemic countries by mid-February.

But experts say there should be no let-up in vigilance.

“India should be most concerned about complacency, which can undo a lot of the strong progress that has been achieved,” said Hamid Jafari, the project manager of the WHO-National Polio Surveillance Project (NPSP).

“Maintaining high vigilance, the intensity of the programme and emergency preparedness will be crucial,” he told IANS.

Added Lieven Desomer, chief of Polio Unit in Unicef in India: “As we get closer to polio eradication, the greatest risk to the programme is any kind of complacency.”

“Now is the time to be extremely vigilant and continue to protect children against polio through campaigns and routine immunization. We need to urgently strengthen and boost routine immunization across the country to prevent any case of importation resulting in a huge outbreak,” he told IANS.

However, there is a fear of importing the virus from other countries, including Pakistan.

“India has made great strides this year, but the increasing incidence of polio from across the border means India is still at risk and faces harsh challenges to remain polio-free,” Deepak Kapur, chairman of the Rotary International PolioPlus Office, told IANS.

“Emergency response teams are being put together in each state and cross-border immunization efforts are under way, particularly across the border with Pakistan and Nepal,” Kapur said.

Earlier, the research students at the department of biotechnology of Vignan College in Guntoor, in Andhra Pradesh, had also revealed that Tulsi extracts had useful medicinal ingredients which can treat diabetics and cancerous ailments in humans.

Now as the scientists have discovered one more medicinal value in tulsi extract which can be used as an anti-radiation agent, it is evidently proved that the ancient Indian tradition of growing tulsi (Ocimum Santum) in the backyard is not without scientific backing.

With this new revelation, it can be said that tulsi plant is embedded with multiple medicinal values, as it can be used not only to treat diabetics, but also can be used for treating cancer and now as an anti-radiant substance.

Research shows that the tulsi or Indian basil contains a chemical called glutathione which mitigates the ill-effects of radiation and can protect cells in patients undergoing radiation therapy for cancer.

In fact when anybody is subjected to radiation, it affects the bone marrow first and thus the immunity level comes down. This will make the human body vulnerable for contracting diseases easily.

Initially the scientists used tulsi extract on mice and they successfully found that the bone marrow of radiation exposed rodents was not affected and their immunity levels were intact. With this new success, the DRDO is now preparing a herbal concoction from tulsi that will serve to prevent and cure the ill-effects of radiation.

Dr W Selvamurthy, chief controller (research and development) revealed that now DRDO is planning to take up human trials. “We need to conduct a few more tests and take up phase II trials before it is released for general use,” said Dr Selvamurthy.

In fact, the research on the anti-radiation effect of tulsi in animals has been going on in India since the past 40 years and it is only in the recent years that scientist have been coming out with concrete evidence of tulsi’s mythic medicinal values.

If they make such changes within a year, the loss to their life expectancy is only two days. But if they wait 10 years, it cuts down life expectancy by almost five months, according to a new study.

High BP is especially damaging for diabetics, raising their risk of stroke, coronary artery disease, kidney failure, vision loss and amputations.

“For newly diagnosed patients, this means we have time,” said study author Neda Laiteerapong, instructor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

“Most patients would prefer to control their blood pressure through diet and exercise rather than with medications, and it can take months to learn how to change old habits and master new skills.

“Our results indicate that it’s OK to spend from six months to a year, perhaps even longer, to make the difficult lifestyle changes that are necessary and will pay off in the long run.”

Both the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the National Institutes of Health recommend a lower BP target for patients with diabetes than for the general public.

Two out of three adults with diabetes, however, never reach that goal. Others are delayed by what the authors call “clinical inertia,” a disinclination by patients to implement lifestyle changes or reluctance by their doctors to push additional medications.

Among those who are prescribed blood pressure drugs, at least 20 percent of patients with diabetes do not stick to their treatments.

Researchers have identified adult stem cells of the central nervous system in a single layer of cells at the back of the eye. That layer, known as the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), underlies and supports photoreceptors in the light-sensitive retina. Without it, photoreceptors and vision are lost.

These cells are also multi-potent, which means that they can form different cell types, though the researchers admit there is more to do to fully explore the cells’ differentiation capacity, the journal Cell Stem Cell reported, citing a statement from the New York-based Rensselaer Institute’s Neural Stem Cell Institute.

The new study shows that the RPE also harbours self-renewing stem cells that can wake up to produce actively growing cultures when placed under the right conditions. They can also be coaxed into forming other cell types.

“You can get these cells from a 99-year-old,” said Sally Temple of the institute.

“These cells are laid down in the embryo and can remain dormant for 100 years. Yet you can pull them out and put them in culture and they begin dividing. It is kind of mind- boggling,” she added.

Temple’s group got the RPE-derived stem cells they describe from the eyes of donors in the hours immediately after their deaths. But the cells can also be isolated from the fluid that surrounds the retina at the back of the eye, which means they are accessible in living people as well.

“You can literally go in and poke a needle in the eye and get these cells from the sub-retinal space,” Temple says. “It sounds awful, but retinal surgeons do it every day.”

By comparison, access to most other neural stem cell populations would require major surgery.

A genetic mutation named as RyR1 has been implicated in such fatalities which could be counteracted by a new compound known as AICAR — identified by scientists from the Salk Institute and described as “exercise in a pill”.

“When we gave AICAR to the (heat-sensitive) mice, it was 100 percent effective in preventing heat-induced deaths, even when we gave it no more than 10 minutes before the activity,” said Susan Hamilton, the journal Nature Medicine reports.

Hamilton, who led the study, is professor of molecular physiology and biophysics at the Baylor College of Medicine, according to a Baylor statement.

The finding has implications for young athletes and soldiers with abnormal heat sensitivity, especially those who must wear heavy gear that does not allow them to dissipate the heat generated with exercise.

More than two dozen infectious diseases are controlled in Cuba, and of them at least 15 — including polio, malaria and neonatal tetanus — do not exist in the country, a specialist from the health ministry was quoted as saying by the Prensa Latina news agency.

Diphtheria, pertussis, rubella and congenital rubella syndrome, mumps meningitis, measles, yellow fever, cholera, severe forms of tuberculosis, human rabies, leichmaniasis and Chagas disease, have been eradicated in Cuba, the official said.

Immunization was one of the determining factors in the eradication of a large number of preventable diseases in the country, he said.

Otto Pelaez, head of the department of communicable diseases, said there were eight infectious illness that do not worry the society, because they have an insignificant impact, affecting just 0.1 per 10,000 inhabitants.

These illnesses were adult tetanus, meningitis A, Haemophilus influenzae type B, hepatitis B, meningococcal meningitis B and C, parotitis (mumps), typhoid fever, syphilis and AIDS in children.

Also very low was the incidence of leptospirosis, leprosy and brucellosis.

Immunology researchers from Walter and Eliza Hall Institute drew this conclusion after studying B cells, immune system cells that can make antibodies.

An antibody, also known as an immunoglobulin, is a large Y-shaped protein which identifies and neutralizes invasive bacteria and viruses, the journal Science reports.

B cells can have multiple fates. Some of the more common fates are to die, divide, become an antibody-secreting cell or change what antibody they make. This all happens while the cells are proliferating in the lymph nodes, according to an Eliza Hall statement.

The commonly-held view is that a cell’s fate is determined by external cues such as the presence of particular hormones or cell signalling molecules.

However, Eliza head of immunology, Phil Hodgkin and colleagues Mark Dowling, Cameron Wellard and Jie Zhou predicted that cell fates are, to a large extent, determined by internal processes.

They tested their theory by recreating the conditions required for B cells to develop into different cell types and then filmed the cells, working with John Markham from the National Information and Communications Technology, to develop new technology and image analysis methods.

Hodgkin said the cells behaved as though there were internal machines that governed the cells’ fates. “Each of these internal machines is like a little clock or timer for division, death, what type of antibody they make and whether they become antibody secreting cells,” he said.

Dowling said: “Each cell will, in some sense, set up a clock that starts ticking for each of the outcomes and whatever clock goes off first is the decision that the cell makes.”

“The cell is trying to do everything but only one fate wins,” he said.

“The government sent samples of around 300 birds, mostly crows and poultry, to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal, during last fortnight after hundreds of crows died in some parts of the state,” Satyabrata Sahu, secretary of the fishery and animal resources department, told IANS.

“The laboratory informed us on Sunday that a poultry bird was found positive for bird flu,” he said, adding the bird which was found positive for HSN1 virus belonged to Keranga area of Khordha district.

We have asked the Khordha district administration to monitor health of all the birds, he said. The movement of birds from the affected area has also been stopped, he said.

The government has also asked the collectors of all 30 districts to remain alert and draw samples from birds that have flu-like symptoms.

Besides, officials at the world famous Chilika Lake and Bhitarkanika wildlife sanctuary have been told to keep watch on the migratory birds. Both the places are home to lakhs of winter migratory birds.

The scheme, worth 300,000 pounds (over $460,000) in its first phase, will offer the ex-soldiers combat experience and who are at risk from post-traumatic stress disorder, an intensive five-week residential treatment course, the Daily Express reported.

As per the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, 67 percent of male soldiers, airmen and sailors drink to “hazardous” levels, and those returning from deployment abroad are 22 percent more likely to have drink problems than those who stayed in Britain.

In addition, those veterans who are homeless are often denied access to shelters if they have alcohol issues.

The Life Works Community centre in Surrey is known for its treatment of celebrities and the wealthy in a range of addictions from alcoholism and drugs to gambling, eating disorders and sex.

Residential courses of treatment usually cost in the region of 20,000 pounds for a five-week intensive stay.

Veterans with alcohol problems often fall into a “care gap”, with many post-traumatic stress disorder charities not having the facilities to deal with drink-related issues so they are unable to tackle underlying factors.

Researchers from University of California San Francisco (UCSF) said that they have found that hundreds of additives, including menthol, should be eliminated from cigarettes on public health grounds.

“When we conducted our own analysis by studying additives per cigarette-following Philip Morris’ original protocol-we found that 15 carcinogenic chemicals increased by 20 percent or more,” said senior author Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Centre for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the UCSF.

In the independent study, Glantz and team reassessed data from Philip Morris’ ‘Project MIX,’ which detailed chemical analyses of smoke and animal toxicology studies of 333 cigarette additives. Philip Morris is the largest tobacco company in the US.

Researchers also found after obtaining evidence that additives increased toxicity, that tobacco scientists adjusted the protocol for presenting their results in a way that obscured these increases.

Additionally, in the independent study, the researchers discovered the reason behind Philip Morris’ failure to identify many toxic effects in animal studies: its studies were too small.

Researchers used documents made public as a result of litigation against the tobacco industry. The documents are available to the public through UCSF’s Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.

“Antonio has a dimple in the right cheek. Rosio looks like a queen already. I am going to shower all happiness in the world on my kids. They complete my life,” he says.

Carlos says though he did not want to marry, he always wanted to be a father. “After thinking over it for several years, I opted for surrogacy. Thanks to the woman who agreed to make my wish come true and the doctors in India, today I am a proud father to not one but two children,” the single father said. Carlos added that the successful childbirth comes after three failed attempts.

Dr Shivani Sachdev Gour, director, Isis Hospital, where the IVF procedure was conducted successfully, said that the cost of surrogacy in India is Rs 12-14 lakh compared to 2 million dollars (approximately) in the US.

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