Health

London, March 24: Breast cancer screening makes little difference to death rates and may lead to needless treatment, a study has found.

Women given mammograms and those who had none had remarkably similar chances of survival.

And the dramatic fall in breast cancer deaths in recent years is probably due to improved treatment rather than screening, it concludes.

Findings from the ten-year study, which involved 110,000 women, have been published online in the British Medical Journal by experts questioning the benefits of organised screening programmes.

London, March 24: Turmeric, long hailed by Indian medics for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, can help delay liver damage that eventually causes cirrhosis — a chronic disease that leads to loss of liver function, European researchers have claimed.

According to the researchers from Medical University of Graz in Austria, Curcumin, one of the principal components of turmeric which gives the spice its bright yellow pigment, delays the damage caused by liver inflammation that can lead to cirrhosis.

London, March 24: Researchers from University of Hiroshima have found a novel way to cure fears.

They said that injecting a common local anaesthetic directly into the brain may cure fears. The research team conducted the experiments on goldfish that were taught to become afraid when a light was flashed.

‘The goldfish soon became afraid of the flash of light because, whether or not we actually gave them a shock, they had quickly learned to expect one,” quoted lead researcher Professor Masayuki Yoshida as saying.

London, March 24: Scientists from John Hopkins University have developed a throat implant that could stop snorers from having a restless night and give their partners some good night’s sleep.

The device gives electric shocks to activate nerves in the throat, forcing the muscles to keep the airways open.

In a small study, all the patients given the treatment for sleep apnoea showed considerable improvement in snoring and other symptoms.

Uzbekistan, March 23: Nearly 150 children were infected with HIV in hospitals in eastern Uzbekistan and 12 medical staff have been sentenced to jail terms of five to eight years for negligence, a news website said.

At least 14 children have died, out of 147 who were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in the eastern city of Namangan in 2007-8, regional prosecutor Bakhtier Shodmonov said in a documentary posted on the news portal Ferghana.ru.

New Delhi, March 23: The Government has signed an agreement with the prestigious Apollo Hospital to set up a Hemodialysis unit in the city where its employees can avail state-of-the-art dialysis facility.

Alliance Medicorp Limited (AML), a unit of of Apollo Hospitals Group, has signed a MoU with the Central Government to set up the ‘CGHS-Apollo Dialysis’ clinic.

London, March 23: A new study has revealed that young men who are infertile are at two-fold risk of developing prostate cancer in later life.

The study involving more than 20,000 men showed that cancer and flaws in sperm production have a common origin – and that infertile men might want to consider being screened for the disease.

During the study, US researchers compared the health records of 22,000 men and found that infertile were more prone to developing easy-to-treat, non-aggressive prostate tumours in later years than other men.

London, March 23: A British surgeon has developed a breast enhancement operation without the need for implants, a media report said.

Professor Laurence Kirwan takes tissue from underneath the breast and places it above the nipple to give a fuller look, reported telegraph.co.uk.

Kirwan, who has a practice in New York and another in London will discuss the operation at an American medical conference next month.

Munich, March 22: The choice of the right running shoes depends on the runner’s body weight, running style and running surface, all of which help determine the kind of cushioning that is needed, according to Klaus Boes, a sport scientist at Germany’s Karlsruhe University.

The belief that too much cushioning is harmful is not necessarily true, Boes is quoted as saying in the spring 2010 issue of the magazine Wellfit. Runners with knee problems, for example, need shoes that do a good job of absorbing the shocks of their feet striking the ground, he pointed out.

Scientists have discovered what they claim is a common gene that raises the risk of developing lung cancer in non-smokers, a breakthrough which may pave the way for new targeted therapies for patients.

Despite several attempts to identify the specific genetic mechanisms responsible, the causes of lung cancer in “never-smokers” remain poorly understood.

Now, an international team, led by Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in New York, has identified the gene known as GPC5 which predisposes non-smokers to lung cancer, leading British newspaper reported.

London, March 22: What’s the key to success in exams? Well, an extra hour in bed in the morning, apart from hard work, say scientists.

An experiment, designed by three British scientists, which allows students to stay in bed for an extra hour in the same morning has boosted exam results and slashed absenteeism, reported.

London, March 22: Forget crash diets and obsessive calorie counting. A new study shows that it takes only slight changes to your eating habits to improve your long term health.

Cut back on the number of times you shake the salt cellar or grind your salt mill. A healthy adult intake is 6 grams, so even the smallest reduction has an impact on your health.

Research shows that dropping your salt intake by as much as 3 grams a day would be enough to trigger a measurable fall in blood pressure, reducing your risk of stroke by 13 per cent and heart disease by 10 per cent, reported.

London, March 22: A new study has shown that excessive noise and lack of privacy, as well as constant distraction in open plan offices can increase the stress levels of workers.

The study involving 20,000 British professionals revealed that 56 percent of the respondents complained of lack of privacy, 55 percent about poor temperature and 60 percent about lack of quiet space.

Moreover, 20 percent drop in productivity was also blamed on poorly planned office space. One in three was concerned about lack of daylight and noise levels, reports dailymail.co.uk.

London, March 22: Munching on tangy fruits can help you stay slim, reveals a new study.

The study conducted on mice showed that the juice of the blood orange stopped them from piling on weight when fed a high-fat diet.

However, those fed with sweeter oranges gained significant amounts of fat.

The research team from University of Milan believe the fat-busting powers of the fruit, grown in Italy and the US, may be partly due to its high levels of anthocyanin.

Washington, March 22: With the clock showing 2:25 p.m. local time on Sunday and formal proceedings for a House vote on healthcare reform underway as this report goes to press, the numbers game appears to be tipping towards a historic victory for Democrats and President Obama.

Earlier, House Democrat John Larson of Connecticut said on CNN’s State of the Union telecast that his party had garnered the votes necessary to get the bill passed.

Washington, March 21: As many researches claim, the morning-after pills don’t work in case of teenagers, especially when it comes to decreasing the rate of teenage pregnancies.

It is hard to believe, but the fact is that the usage of contraception actually doubled in six years. But on the flip side, data shows that it has failed to cut down upon the rates of conception or sexually transmitted infections says a report published by Dailymail.

New Delhi, March 20: Over two million pregnant women in India consume tobacco products, a shocking figure revealed by the Indian health ministry Saturday.

“It is shocking that over 8.5 percent of the ante-natal mothers in India are tobacco users,” said Jagdish Kaur, in-charge of the tobacco control programme in the health ministry.

She said though the number of tobacco users are mostly men, yet the number is too big, especially for the pregnant women.

There are at least 25 million successful pregnancies every year in India.

New York, March 20: Women who closely adhere to a Mediterranean-style diet rich in vegetables, vegetable oils and fish may have a higher likelihood of becoming pregnant after infertility treatment, a new study suggests.

Researchers in the Netherlands found that among 161 couples undergoing fertility treatment at their center, women whose eating habits most closely matched the traditional Mediterranean diet were 40 percent more likely to become pregnant than those with the least Mediterranean-like diets.

Washington, March 20: Scientists claim to be gaining insight into how the human brain functions with the help of a little singing bird, which may lead to a better understanding of human speech production and speech disorders.

A team at Penn State University, led by Dezhe Jin, is looking at how songbirds transmit impulses through nerve cells in the brain to produce a complex behavior, such as singing.

“We are not only interested in birds. We are ultimately interested in studying how the human brain works and better understanding ourselves,” Jin said.

London, March 20: Oxford scientists have developed a gel that may soon heal the misery of cleft palates in kids.

Although they can be corrected through surgery, those most severely affected can suffer problems with their speech and appearance for years to come.

According to researcher David Bucknall, the gel is “significantly better than anything we can do now”.

The gel is similar to the one used in soft contact lenses. It slowly absorbs water, swelling to 10 times its original size, reports dailymail.co.uk.

Mumbai, March 20: While the wait for an Indian swine flu vaccine continues, a Chinese vaccine is headed here. Parenteral Drugs India Ltd, through its subsidiary Parenteral Biotech Ltd, has entered into a supply and distribution agreement with Sinovac Biotech Co.

Limited of China for purchase and supply of HIN1 influenza vaccine in the Indian market. “We have signed agreement of exclusivity with Sinovac Biotech, which ensures that Parenteral Biotech will be the sole supplier and distributor of their swine flu vaccine in India.

London, March 20: British and Italian doctors have carried out groundbreaking surgery to rebuild the windpipe of a 10-year-old British boy using stem cells developed within his own body, they said.

In an operation Monday lasting nearly nine hours, doctors at London’s Great Ormond Street children’s hospital implanted the boy with a donor trachea, or windpipe, that had been stripped of its cells and injected with his own.

Sao Paulo, March 20: Brazilian surgeons used a multi-armed robot to repair a hole in a woman’s heart in the first operation of its kind in Latin America, they told on Friday.

Robinson Poffo, one of the surgeons involved, said the procedure was performed on a 35-year-old patient this week at the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo.

“There was a hole between the right side and left side of the heart. We corrected this intracardiac defect by using the robot,” he said.

London, March 20: Lonely people are more prone to developing high blood pressure in later life, say researchers.

They found chronic feelings of loneliness push up blood pressure over time, causing a marked increase after four years in people aged over 50.

A new study is the first to show a direct link between loneliness and high blood pressure, known as hypertension, which raises the risk of heart attack and stroke.
lonely

U.S. researchers considered whether depression and stress were pushing up blood pressure but found they were only partly responsible.

London, March 20: It is often said that marriage makes you contented. Now scientists have discovered the extent to which that happiness translates into extra pounds around the waist.

Married men are three times as likely to suffer from abdominal obesity – or belly fat – as single men, their report shows.

Married women are twice as likely to have those problems as those who remain unmarried.

The Hellenic Medical Association for Obesity concluded that abdominal obesity was the worst health problem among married couples after conducting a survey of 17,341 people aged between 20 and 70.