C-section 'may double risk of childhood obesity'

Babies who are delivered through Caesarean section are twice as likely to become obese than those born traditionally, US research suggests.

Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts found a doubling in the odds of obesity by the time the child was three years old.
The team said birth by C-section might affect bacteria in the gut, which in turn affects the way food is digested.
The study looked at 1,255 pairs of mothers and children from 1999 to 2002.

The mothers joined the study - published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood - before 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Their babies were measured and weighed at birth and this was repeated at the age of three.
Obesity risk About one in four of the deliveries were C-section births and the remainder were vaginal deliveries.
The team found a link between body mass, skin thickness and how a child was born.
They also found that mothers who delivered by C-section tended to weigh more than those delivering traditionally - something which is known to influence obesity.
But the researchers said another possible explanation was the difference in the composition of gut bacteria acquired at birth between the two delivery methods.
They suggested expectant mothers who choose a C-section should be made aware of the obesity risk to their babies.
In the UK just over 23% of births are Caesarean.
Patrick O'Brien, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: "This is an interesting study, but small. It needs to be replicated in a bigger sample."

Calcium pills pose 'heart risk'

People who take calcium supplements could be increasing their risk of having a heart attack, according to researchers in Germany.
       
Calcium is often taken by older people to strengthen bones and prevent fractures.
But the study, published in the journal Heart, said the supplements "should be taken with caution".
Experts say promoting a balanced diet including calcium would be a better strategy.
The researchers at the German Cancer Research Centre, in Heidelberg, followed 23,980 people for more than a decade.
They compared the number of heart attacks in people who were taking calcium supplements with those who did not.
  'Taken with caution'

There were 851 heart attacks among the 15,959 people who did not take any supplements at all. However, people taking calcium supplements were 86% more likely to have had a heart attack during the study.

The researchers said that heart attacks "might be substantially increased by taking calcium supplements" and that they "should be taken with caution".
Dr Carrie Ruxton, from The Health Supplements Information Service, said: "Osteoporosis is a real issue for women and it is irresponsible for scientists to advise that women cut out calcium supplements on the basis of one flawed survey, particularly when the link between calcium, vitamin D and bone health is endorsed by the European Food Safety Authority."
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said patients prescribed the supplements should keep taking their medication, but should also speak to their doctor if they were concerned.
'Not safe' Natasha Stewart, a senior cardiac nurse with the BHF, said: "This research indicates that there may be an increased risk of having a heart attack for people who take calcium supplements.

"However, this does not mean that these supplements cause heart attacks.
"Further research is needed to shed light on the relationship between calcium supplements and heart health. We need to determine whether the potential risks of the supplements outweigh the benefits calcium can give sufferers of conditions such as osteoporosis."
Ian Reid and Mark Bolland, researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, said: "The evidence is also becoming steadily stronger that it is not safe, nor is it particularly effective.
"Therefore, the administration of this micro nutrient should not be encouraged; rather people should be advised to obtain their calcium intake from an appropriately balanced diet.
"We should return to seeing calcium as an important component of a balanced diet and not as a low cost panacea to the universal problem of postmenopausal bone loss."
A spokeswoman for the UK's Department of Health said it would consider the study carefully once the complete article had been published.
"The majority of people do not need to take a calcium supplement," she said.
"A healthy balanced diet will provide all the nutrients, including calcium, that they need. Good sources of calcium include milk and dairy foods, fortified dairy food alternatives, e.g. soya drink, and green leafy vegetables."
 

WHO expected to launch 'emergency plan' to eradicate polio

The World Health Organization is expected to declare polio a global emergency after outbreaks in countries previously free of the disease.
  
The WHO wants to boost programmes in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only countries where the disease is still endemic.
It says tackling polio is "at a tipping point between success and failure".
India, once regarded as one of the most challenging countries, was declared free of the disease in February.
There have been large outbreaks of the virus in Africa, Tajikistan and China has had its first cases for more than a decade.

Members of the WHO, meeting in Geneva, will vote this week on whether to declare polio eradication an "emergency for public health".
The WHO estimates that failure to act could lead to as many as 200,000 paralyzed children a year worldwide within a decade.
     

Bruce Aylward, head of the WHO's polio eradication campaign, said: "Over the last 24 months on three continents - in Europe, in Africa and in Asia - we have seen horrific explosive outbreaks of the disease that affected adults, and in some cases 50% of them died.

"What it reminded people is that, if eradication fails, we are going to see an huge and vicious upsurge of this disease with consequences that it is very difficult even to foresee right now."
The WHO originally set the year 2000 as its target for polio eradication. Dr Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO, said the organisation was now working "in emergency mode".
The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the programme has claimed some remarkable successes, most notably India, which was declared polio-free in February.
She says the WHO hopes to shake donor countries out of their complacency and support one last effort at eradication. The WHO believes that with one last push, the disease could be eradicated globally, she says.
It is thought conflict and a lack of trust in vaccinations mean fewer children are being immunized.
Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system, and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.
One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs. Among those paralysed, 5% to 10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.

Hormone plays surprise role in fighting skin infections

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are molecules produced in the skin to fend off infection-causing microbes. Vitamin D has been credited with a role in their production and in the body's overall immune response, but scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say a hormone previously associated only with maintaining calcium homeostasis and bone health is also critical, boosting AMP expression when dietary vitamin D levels are inadequate.
       
The finding, published in the May 23, 2012 online issue of Science Translational Medicine, more fully explains how the immune system functions in different situations and presents a new avenue for treating infections, perhaps as an alternative to current antibiotic therapies.
The immunological benefits of vitamin D are controversial. In cultured cell studies, the fat-soluble vitamin provides strong immunological benefits, but in repeated studies with humans and animal models, results have been inconsistent: People with low levels of dietary vitamin D do not suffer more infections. For reasons unknown, their immune response generally remains strong, undermining the touted immunological strength of vitamin D.
Working with a mouse model and cultured human cells, Gallo and colleagues discovered why: When levels of dietary vitamin D are low (it's naturally present in very few foods), production of parathyroid hormone (PTH), which normally helps modulate calcium levels in blood, is ramped up. More PTH or a related peptide called PHTrP spurs increased expression of AMPs, such as cathelicidin, which kill a broad spectrum of harmful bacteria, fungi and viruses.

"No one suspected a role for PTH or the PTH-related peptide in immunity," said Richard L. Gallo, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and chief of UCSD's Division of Dermatology and the Dermatology section of the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. "This may help resolve some of the controversy surrounding vitamin D. It fills in the blanks."
For example, the findings relate to the on-going debate over sun exposure. Sunlight triggers the production of vitamin D. Low levels of vitamin D have been claimed in some studies to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, but other studies have failed to confirm this. On the other hand, high levels of solar exposure that could increase vitamin D have been shown to increase the risk of skin cancer.
"Since sunlight is a carcinogen, it's a bad idea to get too much of it," said Gallo. "PTH goes up when levels of vitamin D from diet and sun exposure are low. PTH may be what permits us to have low D in the diet and not kill ourselves with too much UV radiation."
Gallo said PTH's newly revealed immunological role provides a new connection between the body's endocrine system (a system of glands secreting different regulatory hormones into the bloodstream) and its ability to fight invasive, health-harming pathogens.
While much more work remains to be done, including human studies, it's possible that PTH or PTHrP might eventually become an effective antibiotic treatment without the risk of antibiotic resistance in targeted microbes. One challenge would be how to specifically limit treatment to the targeted infection. "Maybe that could be done by developing the therapy as a cream," Gallo said.

Aspirin may prevent recurrence of deep vein blood clots

After suffering a type of blood clot called a venous thromboembolism, patients usually take a blood-thinner such as warfarin (Coumadin). But aspirin may do just as well after a period of time, according to a new Italian study. 
       
Blood-thinning, or "anticoagulant," therapy is used to prevent another clot, which occurs in about 20 percent of patients. However, extended use of warfarin can increase the risk for bleeding, so researchers wanted to know whether aspirin would be a good alternative after two years of treatment with warfarin.
"Aspirin given after a standard course of anticoagulant treatment may reduce recurrence of venous thromboembolism without increasing complications," said lead researcher Dr. Cecilia Becattini, from the Internal and Cardiovascular Medicine and Stroke Unit at the University of Perugia.
So aspirin can be an alternative after an initial period of warfarin treatment, Becattini said, and "patients could be shifted to aspirin after talking it over with their doctor."
The study was published in the May 24 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
An accompanying journal editorial noted that venous thromboembolism, which includes deep vein thrombosis (blood clots in the legs) and pulmonary embolism (a clot in the lungs), occurs in two to three people per 1,000 yearly.
The danger of a venous thromboembolism is that a clot can break loose and travel to the lungs, heart or brain, resulting in a heart attack, stroke, difficulty breathing or even death.
For the study, Becattini's team randomly assigned 402 patients to receive aspirin or an inactive placebo after receiving other anticoagulant treatment for six to 18 months.

All of the patients had had a first episode of venous thromboembolism and had not had any risk factors that might have predicted it, the researchers noted.
Over two years of follow-up, 28 (6.6 percent) of those taking aspirin had a venous thromboembolism recur, compared with 43 (11.2 percent) of those receiving a placebo, the study found.
One patient in each group had an episode of major bleeding, the authors noted.
"Aspirin reduced the risk of recurrence when given to patients with unprovoked venous thromboembolism who had discontinued anticoagulant treatment, with no apparent increase in the risk of major bleeding," the researchers concluded.
Dr. Richard Becker, author of the journal editorial and professor of medicine and director of the Duke Cardiovascular Thrombosis Center at Duke University Medical Center, said, "I consider these findings important, but preliminary."
He added, "Aspirin would not at this time be considered the standard of care to reduce the recurrence of deep vein thrombosis."
Becker also noted that this study is too small to change practice.
There are two larger trials under way and if the findings support those of this study, then aspirin may be an option for some patients, particularly those patients at high risk for bleeding with warfarin, he said.
"I do not want to give the impression that the standard of care has changed because of this study," Becker said.
Bayer HealthCare helped fund the study.

British oceanographers find new species in Indian Ocean hydrothermal vents

A research team sailing on the vessel James Cook has been studying the unique habitat surrounding deep sea vents in the Indian Ocean far off the south-east coast of Africa. The vents, created by under-the-sea-floor volcanic activity, spew black cloudy liquid and create a hot hostile environment. One of them, known as the Dragon Vent, was the main focus of cameras fixed to an aquatic robot that captured the existence of some of the exotic animals that are able to live in the distinctive environment. One of those creatures, a type of yeti crab, may even be a species unknown to science.
         
The expedition, sponsored by Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council and led by Dr. Jon Copley, a marine biologist, set sail from South Africa early in November and concluded its voyage this past week. During the middle part of that trip, the team sent down a robot called Kiel 6000 which has both cameras and a means for collecting samples of marine life, to the vents to see what sorts of animals might be living down there. Other such ventures to other vents in the Indian Ocean, as well as in other oceans have shown that truly unique types of creatures have evolved that are able to flourish in such a strange part of the planet. What’s not clear, however, is how such creatures manage to move the vast distances between such vents, as the vents, just like volcanoes on land, tend to go dormant between periods of activity.
Other types of sea life found around vents include sea cucumbers, which are long and skinny and are related to sea stars and unique types of snails, shrimp and mussels.
The vents in this latest study, are part of the South West Indian Ridge, and were first noted in 2007 by a team of Chinese researchers. Vents, or fissures in the sea floor, in general were first found to exist back in 1977 and have attracted attention since that time due to the unique life forms that call such areas home, and the fact that such vents tend to create tall mineral spires that look like chimneys which also quite often contain precious metals. It’s the existence of these metals though that could pose problems for the aquatic life as humans are apt to destroy the unique ecosystem in extracting them. The Dragon Vent, for example, is likely to be impacted soon as China has just recently been granted mineral exploration and extraction rights by the body of the United Nations responsible for doling out such permission.

Deep sea animals stowaway on submarines and reach new territory

Marine scientists studying life around deep-sea vents have discovered that some hardy species can survive the extreme change in pressure that occurs when a research submersible rises to the surface. The team's findings, published in Conservation Biology, reveal how a species can be inadvertently carried by submersibles to new areas, with potentially damaging effects on marine ecosystems.
    

After using the manned submersible Alvin to collect samples of species from the Juan de Fuca Ridge under the northeastern Pacific Ocean, the team discovered 38 deep-sea limpets ( Lepetodrilus gordensis) among their sample. Intriguingly this species is believed to occur only in the vents of the Gorda Ridge, which are 635 km south of the dive site.
"The big question was, how did they get over 600 kilometers from their habitat?" said Dr. Janet Voight, from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. "We discovered that the individuals must have been transported from the Gorda Ridge by our submersible. Even though we clean the submersibles after sampling we had assumed that the extreme pressure change would kill any species which are missed."
The introduction of new species to an ecosystem by humans, often inadvertently, is a big challenge to conservation. How a new species will react to new surroundings, and the effect it can have, is unpredictable. Increases in deep-sea drilling and submersible activity can increase the probability of introductions, but until now hydrothermal vents have been considered too extreme and too isolated to be a source of introduced species.
In coastal environments one of the biggest threats posed by invasive species to native species is disease, as newly introduced pathogens and parasites can cause mass mortality. Diseases that may exist in the extreme environments created by hydrothermal vents have not been well studied.
"We've discovered that it is possible to accidently introduce a species, and any potential diseases it may carry, from a deep-sea vent to a new location," concluded Voight. "This has implications for the future exploration of hydrothermal vents as it reveals the potential risk of human driven change to the ecosystem."

Skin cells to help repair broken heart muscles

LONDON: Scientists claim to have developed a new technique to mend broken hearts by turning skin stem cells into heart muscle cells, a breakthrough they say offers new hope to thousands who struggle to live with heart failure.

The new research, which was carried out on rats, opens up the prospect of reprogramming cells taken from heart failure patients that would not be rejected by their bodies, said researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel. However, it would take up to a decade before trials can be conducted on humans, the scientists cautioned.

Previously skin cells taken from young and healthy people have been transformed into heart muscle cells. But, the new study, published in the European Heart Journal , was first in which stem cells taken from the skin of elderly and diseased patients, who are most likely to need such treatment, have been transformed into heart cells.

"What is new and exciting about our research is that we have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young - the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born," Lior Gepstein, who led the study, was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.

In their study, skin cells from two male heart failure patients were reprogrammed in two ways - by delivering three genes to the cell nucleus and using a virus that delivered reprogramming information to the cell nucleus but which was capable of being removed later.

The skin cells were transformed into heart muscle cells as effectively as those from healthy and young volunteers.

Cheating on your partner can lead to heart attack

LONDON: Cheating on your partner is not just bad for your marriage but can also give you a heart attack, researchers have claimed.

The warnings come from Italian researchers who reviewed previous studies on the causes of infidelity and its effects. These showed "sudden coital death" to be much more common when a man was meeting his mistress than when he was with his wife. The researchers could not be sure why but put forward a variety of reasons, including a guilty conscience , the Daily Mail reported. The review's authors, from the University of Florence, began by scouring medical literature for research papers including the words 'unfaithfulness' , 'extramarital affairs' , 'infidelity' and 'men' .

This provided information about the type of man who is unfaithful and the potential consequences.

The analysis showed that heart attacks, including fatal ones, were relatively rare when a man was having sex with his wife at home. But when he started to play away, the dangers grew. German studies show that most men who died during sex were having an affair and meeting away from the family home.

Furred-up arteries were blamed for more than a third of the deaths the physical demands of sex are said to cause the fatty plaque that has built up inside arteries to rupture. Liaisons away from home and with younger women are particularly dangerous. The stress of satisfying a woman who is likely to be younger than the man's wife may also be to blame, as can the strain of keeping an affair secret.

A test can tell if breast cancer will recur

LONDON: Scientists have devised a new, cheap breast cancer test that can accurately predict if a tumour is likely to return after surgery, a breakthrough they say could spare women the ordeal of chemotherapy.

The test, likely to cost about £120 and expected to be available by the year end, uses a technology already available in almost all NHS labs to estimate the risk of recurrence of the most common type of the disease, called oestrogen positive (ER+) breast cancer.

At present around half of the women diagnosed with breast cancer undergo chemotherapy following their surgery to reduce the chances of the illness returning . But, scientists behind the test, called ICH4, think many don't need to have this exhausting treatment as their tumours are 'low risk' and unlikely to recur , the Daily Mail reported.

They estimate that the ICH4 test could pick out between 4,000 and 5,000 women every year in the UK alone who would not need chemotherapy, which lasts up to six months and normally causes side effects.

'Forcing men on diet makes them fatter’

LONDON: Men forced on to healthier diets by their spouses often gain weight, as they continue to eat loads of food away from home, a new research has found.

Researchers at University of Michigan School of Public Health in the US found that wives rarely consult with husbands before "putting" them on a healthier diet.

Only couples who negotiate a new "healthy" diet make progress. Otherwise, after three or four nights of a low-fat meal, men tend to slink off to an all-you-can-eat buffet , they found.

It's just easier to "pretend" to diet to maintain a happy home, said study author Derek Griffith. "The key to married men adopting a healthier diet is for couples to discuss and negotiate the new, healthier menu changes as a team," he was quoted as saying.

Griffith said physicians can help by recognising that wives play a central role in what men eat at home.

ssc results 2012

ssc results 2012