Gujarat Minister of State for Health Shanker Chaudhari has tested positive for swine flu and is undergoing treatment at his house in Gandhinagar.
“Shanker Chaudhari’s report, which came today evening, has revealed that he is having swine flu. He is now being treated at a special isolation room created at his residence in Gandhinagar,” said state Health Commissioner J P Gupta.
Be warned if you have a strong urge to eat late at night for a new study shows that this could be bad for your brain.
Eating late at night, especially during the hours when our bodies think they should be sleeping, could disrupt learning and memory.
The results of the study may pose a possible health concern not only for those eating late at night but for the millions who are engaged in shift work.
A new study has revealed that newborn neurons in the adult brain may help animals and humans to adapt to the changing environment.
The discovery that the human brain continues to produce new neurons in adulthood challenged a major dogma in the field of neuroscience, but the role of these neurons in behavior and cognition is still not clear.
Researchers were recently able to decrease Alzheimer’s symptoms for first time ever with the help of MR imaging-guided focused ultrasound.
MR imaging-guided focused ultrasound has been shown to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which allows for more effective delivery of drugs to the brain. In order to accomplish this, researchers use a microbubble contrast agent.
A new anti-ageing chocolate has been developed by scientists that can help people look younger and smooth wrinkles.
One 7.5g piece of the Estechoc a day can help improve blood supply to the skin, the Mirror reported.
Academics from Cambridge University are launching the world’s first ever ‘beauty chocolate’ which contains high levels of two powerful anti-oxidants.
The dark chocolate, which has taken years to refine, has 70 percent cocoa and contains as many cocoa flavanols as a 100g piece of regular chocolate and as much astaxanthin as 300g of wild salmon.
Swine flu Monday claimed the fifth life in Himachal Pradesh and four new cases were detected, a health department official said.
The death of a woman due to swine flu was reported in the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in Shimla, surveillance officer Rajesh Guleri told IANS.
The 34-year-old patient belonged to Nirmand in Kullu district.
He said four new positive cases were reported in the IGMCH.
A patient died in the Rajendra Prasad Medical College and Hospital at Tanda town in Kangra district Sunday.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Monday asked all concerned to work together to take all necessary remedial measures to check the outbreak of swine flu in the country instead of getting “panicky”.
“It is time for the central government, state governments and NGOs to work together to take all necessary remedial measures,” Banerjee said in a Facebook post.
Noting that the incidents of swine flu have been increasing, she expressed concern over the situation.
The West Bengal government has slapped show cause notices on four hospitals for discharging swine flu patients without treatment, an official said Monday.
Three of the offending hospitals are situated in the city. Another one is in the suburbs.
“There are allegations that these hospitals had released patients when they came to know they have been infected by the H1N1 virus that causes swine flu. None of the patients were fit to be discharged,” said a state health department official.
The government has started a probe.
Researchers have recently developed a printable armband that monitors vital signs including temperature, heart rate and sounds an alarm in case of high body temperature.
The new device developed by research groups lead by Professor Takayasu Sakurai at the Institute of Industrial Science and Professor Takao Someya at the Graduate School of Engineering combines a flexible amorphous silicon solar panel, piezoelectric speaker, temperature sensor, and power supply circuit created with organic components in a single flexible, wearable package.
Scientists led by an Indian-origin researcher are investigating whether treatment for high blood pressure can be improved by taking a person’s ethnic heritage into account.
A wide variety of drugs are available for the treatment of blood pressure and although these are effective and safe, it is often necessary to try different types of drugs and use a combination of two or more drugs.
At least 67 people, including 10 children, fell ill after consuming food at a wedding party in Sita Mangal Bhawan here, police said today.
The incident took place last night following which all the victims were admitted to a district hospital around 2 AM for suspected food poisoning, Sanjay Bhatt, a senior doctor told PTI today.
He said that proper medical facilities are being provided to all the victims including groom Sourabh Gupta.
Many guests had complained of vomiting, loose motion, and nausea after eating dinner, Khargone Police Station Inspector Brijesh Malaviya said.
A new study has revealed that type 2 diabetes is linked with the reduction of certain cognitive abilities, known as executive functions.
The study led by University Of Waterloo explained that the executive functions inhibit habitual thinking patterns, knee-jerk emotional reactions and reflexive behaviours such as making impulse purchases or automatically following social cues.
Researchers have developed a targeted approach to override the “energy saving” mode and allow muscle to burn more energy, even during low to moderate exercise.
The new findings may provide the basis of a therapy that could help people to overcome the body’s natural resistance to weight loss.
“This study shows for the first time that this energy efficiency can be manipulated in a clinically translatable way,” said Denice Hodgson-Zingman from the University of Iowa and co-author of the study.
Swine flu claimed 38 more lives in the country taking the death toll to 812 with Rajasthan and Gujarat among the worst hit states with 212 and 207 fatalities respectively, as the total number of affected crossed 13,000.
According to Health Ministry figures released today, the total number of deaths due to the disease has now reached 812 while 13,688 people have been affected with the H1N1 virus across the country.
A new research has revealed that ranibizumab, a prescription drug, commonly used to treat age-related vision loss or macular degeneration, also reverses vision loss caused by diabetes among Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites.
Diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema are the leading causes of vision loss in working-age adults in the United States, according to the National Eye Institute.
A new study has recently revealed that there has been unacceptably slow global progress against obesity over the last decade.
According to a major new six-part Series on obesity, global progress towards tackling obesity has been “unacceptably slow,” with only one in four countries implementing a policy on healthy eating up to 2010.
The research looks at how countries around the world are dealing with an increasing obesity epidemic, focusing on a range of issues from quality of diet to how children could be encouraged to eat healthier food.
Researchers have linked a specific protein to the development of post-viral infection asthma, which is the first step in generating a novel type of asthma therapy designed to prevent its development in young children.
Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways that affects more than 300 million people worldwide. It is the number one illness leading to school absences in children, and accounts for more than 1.8 million emergency room visits annually. There is no cure; all current therapies focus on providing symptomatic relief and reducing the number and severity of attacks.
A new study has identified the association between an increase in use of opioid medicines to manage chronic pain and an increase in depression.
The Saint Louis University study found that better understanding of temporal relationship between opioids and depression and the dose of opioids that places patients at risk for depression may inform prescribing and pain management and improve outcomes for patients with chronic, non-cancer pain.
The toll due to swine flu in Madhya Pradesh has risen to 102, officials said Sunday.
The figure was revealed by state health department officials to a central government team that is on a visit to various states to access the situation following the outbreak of the contagious H1N1 viral disease.
Pravir Krishna, principal secretary, health, informed the central team that 455 screening centres for swine flu have been set up at district hospitals and community health centres.
The national capital today reported 84 fresh cases of swine flu taking the total number of cases reported so far this year to 2,241.
According to the health department of Delhi Government today, 530 tests were carried out, of which 84 were tested positive.
On Friday, three people, including a 23-year-old pregnant woman, had died of swine flu in the national capital, taking the number of deaths due to H1N1 influenza virus to nine.
However, the death of the pregnant woman has still not been included in the database due to which the official figure stands at eight.
A section of private doctors in Haryana has accused the state health department of discouraging laboratory tests for swine flu with a view to reducing the burden on government labs and downplay the number of swine flu cases in the state.
The doctors say that without a proper test, diagnosis or treatment of flu patient as H1N1 virus-affected was not only unscientific but also dangerous for the patient.
The state health department recently issued a public advisory and special guidelines to doctors in a meeting with the Indian Medical Association (IMA).
“There are no immunisation vaccines for H1N1 virus available anywhere in the Valley,” Director Health, Kashmir, Saleem-ur-Rehman told PTI.
Rehman said the department was trying to procure the vaccines but “they had dried up”.
“We had asked the suppliers for the vaccines, but it seems they have dried up. We are now trying to procure them from the open market and are hopeful to get them soon,” he said.
He said that mass immunisation was not necessary and only doctors and the staff should be given the vaccine.
In six separate studies, US researchers have revealed that breastfeeding and other factors influence a baby’s immune system development and susceptibility to allergies and asthma by what’s in their gut.
“The findings further advance the so-called ‘hygiene hypothesis’ theory that early childhood exposure to microorganisms affects the immune system’s development and onset of allergies,” said Christine Cole Johnson, chair of Henry Ford Hospital’s department of public health sciences and principal research investigator.
Diabetes or psychiatric symptoms such as depression increases risk of dementia in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a new research has found.
The findings suggest that lifestyle changes to improve diet and mood might help people with MCI to avoid dementia.
“There are strong links between mental and physical health, so keeping your body healthy can also help to keep your brain working properly,” said lead author Claudia Cooper from University College London.
The part of the brain identified as the command centre for human speech does not actually work when we speak loudly, a study reveals.
The Broca’s area — named after 19th century French physician Pierre Paul Broca — has been recognised for more than 150 years as the command centre for human speech, including vocalisation.
Now, scientists at the University of California Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University in Maryland are challenging this long-held assumption with new evidence that Broca’s area actually switches off when we talk out loud.