http://news.yahoo.com/baby-born-pregnant-her-own-twins-004424350.html
A baby born in Hong Kong was pregnant with her own siblings at the time of her birth, according to a new report of the infant's case. "Weird things happen early, early in the pregnancy that we just don't understand," said Dr. Draion Burch, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Pittsburgh, who goes by Dr. Drai.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Fwd: cholesterol
'The nation's top nutrition advisory panel will drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings.
The group's finding that cholesterol in the diet need no longer be considered a ''nutrient of concern'' stands in contrast to its findings five years ago, the last time it convened. During those proceedings, as in previous years, the panel deemed ''excess dietary cholesterol'' a public health concern…
But the finding follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now say that, for a healthy adult, cholesterol intake may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease.'
... there are many caveats in the article. Seems to me that caution and a reasonably healthy diet are still wise. The article complains about trans fat and saturated fat. As far as I know, both come from animal products. Funny how a different study said that effect of saturated fat wasn't statistically significant and still yet another study said that a low fat diet is not a good idea. Confused yet? I have been eating a diet heavy in unsaturated fats and low in sugar. I have been eating more veggies too. According to my doctor, my blood test showed a low risk for heart disease.
However, blood tests aren't a perfect predictor either. I have seen articles claiming that inflammation is a risk factor for heart disease.
Fwd: Ebola
'The U.N. Ebola chief says...more than 10,000 American civilians working in West Africa are still essential to combating the deadly disease.
Dr. David Nabarro warned in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press that the battle against Ebola is far from over, pointing to a disappointing rise in new cases last week in hardest-hit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.'
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/UN-Ebola-chief-10-000-US-civilians-needed-to-6075421.php
'The number of deaths from Ebola has risen to 9,152, a sharp increase following weeks in which the outbreak appeared to be weakening.
The death toll reported Tuesday by the World Health Organization represents a jump of nearly 150 deaths since the agency's last update three days earlier.
The WHO said the number of new cases climbed by 303, with 136 new cases in Liberia, 113 in Sierra Leone, and 54 in Guinea.
Dr. David Nabarro, the U.N. special envoy on Ebola, told reporters in Geneva that the new numbers showed the outbreak was not yet under control. He said the goal is to reduce the number of new cases to zero.
"Good progress is being made, but the outbreak still represents a grave threat," Nabarro said, "and we really hope that there will be no complacency in anybody involved in the response. We have to really work hard to get zero cases, zero transmissions."
Health experts have cautioned West Africans against becoming complacent about the disease. The WHO recently said a single unsafe burial in Guinea last month caused 11 confirmed Ebola cases.
Those killed by the virus remain contagious and must be buried by workers in protective equipment.'
http://www.voanews.com/content/who-says-ebola-deaths-infections-on-the-rise/2636459.html
Fwd: Measles
'Before the introduction of a live measles vaccine in 1963, the average yearly number of measles cases was 549,000. (Nearly 500 deaths per year were attributed to measles).
Once the measles vaccine was introduced (it was a one-dose shot), there was a huge drop in measles cases.
Then, between 1989 and 1991, there was a resurgence in measles cases. There were 55,000 cases and 123 deaths reported during that period.
Those getting sick were mostly unvaccinated children. But there were also people who had the vaccine and were getting the disease anyway.
In 1989, the medical community's recommendation was updated to recommend a two-dose vaccination regimen.
The use of two doses was effective. In 2000, endemic measles was declared "eliminated" from the United States. '
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/02/health/measles-how-bad-can-it-be/
Friday, February 6, 2015
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Fwd: Vaccination
'President Barack Obama called the science behind vaccinations "indisputable" on Monday, but he once appeared to call a purported link between autism and vaccines "inconclusive."
In 2008, as a senator and presidential candidate, Obama discussed the possible link between vaccines and autism.
"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate," Obama said in April 2008 at a rally in Pennsylvania. "Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included."..
By April 2008, when Obama was claiming research was inconclusive, scientists had already overwhelmingly rejected any causal relationship between vaccinations and autism.
In 2001, thimerosal was "removed or reduced to trace amounts" in all childhood vaccines except for one type that treats the flu. In May 2004 — almost four years before Obama claimed that the science was "inconclusive" — the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, released a report rejecting any "causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism." The CDC strongly supported the results…'
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/obama-vaccines-views-suspicious-114837.html
Fwd: Cancer
'One in two people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, analysis suggests.
Cancer Research UK said this estimate, using a new calculation method, replaced a forecast of more than one in three people developing the disease.
It said longer life expectancies meant more people would be affected.
But it was not inevitable and improving lifestyle, such as losing weight and quitting smoking, could have a major impact, the charity added.
The good news is cancer survival figures are also rising.
The seemingly sudden jump in diagnosis estimates is down to researchers developing a more sophisticated and accurate method for analysing the risk of cancer.
However, both the new and old methods show the same long-term trend - a rise in the lifetime risk of developing cancer.
Nearly 54% of men will develop cancer, compared with just under 48% of women, the figures indicate.
Food pipe tumours
Fewer deaths from heart disease and infections mean more people are living long enough to develop cancer.
But lead researcher Professor Peter Sasieni, from Queen Mary University of London, said: "It isn't inevitable.
"There is quite a lot we can do to prevent cancer and hopefully in many years' time I'll have been proven completely wrong."
He is referring to lifestyle factors including obesity, red meat consumption and smoking that increase the odds of a tumour developing.
Lung cancer cases are still increasing in women
Breast cancer is likely to remain the most common cancer among women
He told the BBC that a healthy lifestyle could lower the lifetime risk from 50% to 30%.
Breast and prostate cancers are likely to remain the most common cancers in women and men respectively.
However, some cancers are rapidly becoming more common.
Tumours in the food pipe, caused by acid reflux in obesity, are being seen more often in clinics.
Head and neck cancers caused by the human papillomavirus are increasing and oral sex is thought to be behind the rise.
'Milestone'
Dr Harpal Kumar, the chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: "We have reached what many would regard as an important milestone.
"We need to plan ahead to make sure the NHS is fit to cope, if the NHS doesn't act and invest now, we will face a crisis in the future - with outcomes from cancer going backwards."'
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31096218
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Fwd: Muscle
'Researchers have grown human skeletal muscle in the laboratory that, for the first time, contracts and responds just like native tissue to external stimuli such as electrical pulses, biochemical signals and pharmaceuticals. The development should soon allow researchers to test new drugs and study diseases in functioning human muscle outside of the human body.'
Fwd: Muscle
'Scientists have discovered that ordinary fishing line and sewing thread can be cheaply converted to powerful artificial muscles. The new muscles can lift a hundred times more weight and generate a hundred times higher mechanical power than the same length and weight of human muscle. Per weight, they can generate 7.1 horsepower per kilogram, about the same mechanical power as a jet engine.'
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Fwd: longer telomeres
'A new procedure can quickly and efficiently increase the length of human telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that are linked to aging and disease, according to scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Treated cells behave as if they are much younger than untreated cells, multiplying with abandon in the laboratory dish rather than stagnating or dying.
The procedure, which involves the use of a modified type of RNA, will improve the ability of researchers to generate large numbers of cells for study or drug development, the scientists say. Skin cells with telomeres lengthened by the procedure were able to divide up to 40 more times than untreated cells. The research may point to new ways to treat diseases caused by shortened telomeres.
Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of the strands of DNA called chromosomes, which house our genomes. In young humans, telomeres are about 8,000-10,000 nucleotides long. They shorten with each cell division, however, and when they reach a critical length the cell stops dividing or dies. This internal "clock" makes it difficult to keep most cells growing in a laboratory for more than a few cell doublings.
'Turning back the internal clock'
"Now we have found a way to lengthen human telomeres by as much as 1,000 nucleotides, turning back the internal clock in these cells by the equivalent of many years of human life," said Helen Blau, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford and director of the university's Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150123102539.htm
Fwd: Measles
'Measles could once again become native in the U.S., disease experts worry, as an outbreak in California linked to Disneyland has put a spotlight on a growing failure to vaccinate that's helping the disease to spread.
While 94 percent of California kindergarteners were fully inoculated against the virus last school year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are clusters where vaccination is much lower. In some pockets of California, as much as a quarter of children are undervaccinated -- putting them at risk of both contracting the disease and becoming a nexus of future spread.
"Children die as a result of this disease," said Greg Poland, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and director of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group. "In 1990, 3 of every 1,000 children who got measles died from it. That wasn't the dark ages. We don't have an effective treatment for measles. The only thing we have is prevention."
Friday, January 23, 2015
Fwd: Autism
'Among the problems people with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle with are difficulties with social behavior and communication. That can translate to an inability to make friends, engage in routine conversations, or pick up on the social cues that are second nature to most people. Similarly, in a mouse model of ASD, the animals, like humans, show little interest in interacting or socializing with other mice.
Now researchers at UCLA have treated ASD mice with a neuropeptide--molecules used by neurons to communicate with each other--called oxytocin, and have found that it restores normal social behavior. In addition, the findings suggest that giving oxytocin as early as possible in the animal's life leads to more lasting effects in adults and adolescents. This suggests there may be critical times for treatment that are better than others.
The study appears in the January 21 online edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine.'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150122154818.htm
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Friday, January 9, 2015
Fwd: Alzheimers
'Researchers around the world keep looking for ways to limit the memory damage caused by Alzheimer's disease. The latest treatment showing some promise is a nasal spray that uses a form of the insulin hormone.
For 21 days, a team of scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center monitored the effects of manufactured insulin on 60 adults with either mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or moderate Alzheimer's dementia (AD). One group was given 40 units of the nasal insulin detemir, another was given 20 units and a third group was given a placebo.
Of the three groups, short-term ability to process verbal and visual cues increased the most in those who were given 40 units of the spray. That same dosage of the spray was also able to increase memory scores for those carrying the gene that increases a person's risk for dementia the most. Carrying that particular gene usually makes the body resistant to most treatments.'
http://www.healthcentral.com/dailydose/cf/2015/01/9/insulin_nasal_spray_boosts_memory_in_study
I already forgot what the article is about.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Fwd: Longevity
'Bowhead whales are most likely the longest-living mammals on the planet. There's evidence (some of it in the form of Victorian-era harpoons embedded in blubber) that they can live as long as 200 years. And there are humans who'd like to get a little slice of that longevity for themselves.
This week, some of them took the first step to stealing the bowhead whale's secrets: They sequenced its genome. Their results were published Tuesday in Cell.
"I think that having the genome sequence of the bowhead whale will allow researchers to study basic molecular processes and identify maintenance mechanisms that help preserve life, avoid entropy and repair molecular damage," said corresponding author Joao Pedro de Magalhaes of the University of Liverpool.'
Fwd: Antibiotic
'The decades-long drought in antibiotic discovery could be over after a breakthrough by US scientists…
The last new class of antibiotics to make it to clinic was discovered nearly three decades ago.
The study, in the journal Nature, has been described as a "game-changer" and experts believe the antibiotic haul is just the "tip of the iceberg".
The heyday of antibiotic discovery was in the 1950s and 1960s, but nothing found since 1987 has made it into doctor's hands.
Since then microbes have become incredibly resistant. Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis ignores nearly everything medicine can throw at it.
Back to soil
The researchers, at the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, turned to the source of nearly all antibiotics - soil.
This is teeming with microbes, but only 1% can be grown in the laboratory.
The team created a "subterranean hotel" for bacteria. One bacterium was placed in each "room" and the whole device was buried in soil.
It allowed the unique chemistry of soil to permeate the room, but kept the bacteria in place for study.
'
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30657486
Fwd: Law
'Striking a blow for the freedom to eat the bloated livers of ducks and geese force-fed grain through tubes, a federal judge invalidated California's 2012 ban of foie gras.
So California cannot ban something Federal law allows….Colorado can allow something Federal law bans….and Arizona cannot pass a law identical to federal law to ban the same thing federal law does.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Fwd: memory
'New research indicates that lost memories can be restored, according to new research into a type of marine snail called Aplysia. The findings offer some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease'
Friday, December 26, 2014
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
lifespan
'A common over-the-counter drug that tackles pain and fever may also hold keys to a longer, healthier life, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist.
Regular doses of ibuprofen extended the lifespan of multiple species, according to research published in the journal Public Library of Science, Genetics.
"We first used baker's yeast, which is an established aging model, and noticed that the yeast treated with ibuprofen lived longer," said Dr. Michael Polymenis, an AgriLife Research biochemist in College Station. "Then we tried the same process with worms and flies and saw the same extended lifespan. Plus, these organisms not only lived longer, but also appeared healthy."
He said the treatment, given at doses comparable to the recommended human dose, added about 15 percent more to the species lives. In humans, that would be equivalent to another dozen or so years of healthy living.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141218141004.htm
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Fwd: Glycemic index
'Some studies have suggested that carbs with a low glycemic index—such as whole grains—led to fewer spikes in blood sugar, and therefore more efficient breakdown into energy, while higher glycemic index foods—including refined flours—led to larger peaks in glucose that the body couldn't process and therefore stored as fat.
So two of the diets in the study were high in carbs overall, but one was made up of low-glycemic-index foods while the other was composed of high-glycemic-index foods. The other two diets were low in carbs overall, with the same breakdown or low- and high-glycemic items
...
In fact, among those eating the high-carb diets, those consuming low-glycemic-index foods had worse insulin response and higher LDL cholesterol…
we did not show that the glycemic index of the carb really had any favorable effect," says Sacks.
That suggests that all the attention to knowing the glycemic index of various foods—and basing your eating habits on these numbers—may not be worth the effort.'
...
Overall, those eating the low-carb diets had lower risk factors for heart disease compared to the group eating more carbohydrates, but the type of carbs didn't seem to make much difference
http://time.com/3636690/glycemic-index-heart-health-low-carb/
Fwd: Malaria
'An international research collaborative has determined that a promising anti-malarial compound tricks the immune system to rapidly destroy red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite but leave healthy cells unharmed.
Fwd: Ebola
'Endless Ebola Endemic? That's The 'Risk We Face Now,' CDC Says
Speed. That's key to ending the Ebola epidemic, says the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Thomas Frieden is visiting West Africa this week to figure out how to reduce the time it takes to find new Ebola cases and isolate them.
Otherwise, Ebola could become a permanent disease in West Africa.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Fwd: Cancer
'Simple blood test could detect breast cancer long before symptoms appear - and spell the end of the mammogram
A metal-detecting blood test that can give vital early warning of breast cancer is being developed by Oxford University scientists.
They hope the inexpensive and simple test will spot the disease long before a woman develops a lump – and say it could be used in a national screening programme.
Picking up the cancer at the earliest stages when it is easiest to treat could save thousands of lives, as well as spare patients and their loves ones the pain and distress of prolonged illness.
Researcher Fiona Larner said: 'Prevention is better than cure.
'There is a survival rate of about 80 per cent for breast cancer but the earlier you can detect it, the more chance you have of treating it.
Friday, November 28, 2014
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