Health

New Delhi, October 02: Mugdha Yardi was shattered when she was detected with breast cancer and thought the diagnosis must be wrong. It was not, and her worst fear came true. Now she has overcome her disease and is helping others do the same. With one out of every 22 Indian women sufering from breast cancer, she has plenty to do.

“I was pretty healthy and couldn’t have thought of such a menacing disease when this thing (breast cancer) happened to me in 2001 at the age of 40 and my life was thrown upside down,” Yardi told a news service on phone from Pune.

Paris, October 02: More than half of the babies born these days in rich countries will live to 100 years if current trends of life expectancy continue, a study appearing in the medical journal The Lancet said Friday.

In the 20th century, most developed countries saw an increase of around 30 years in life expectancy, according to the paper led by Kaare Christensen, a professor at the Danish Ageing Research Centre at the University of Southern Denmark.

Chicago, October 02: Fifteen states could run out of hospital beds and 12 more could fill 75 percent of their beds with swine flu sufferers if 35 percent of Americans catch the virus in coming weeks, a report released on Thursday said.

The study, based on estimates from a computer model developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows the strain hospitals and health departments could face as a second wave of swine flu surges.

London, October 02: Two-thirds of heroin and crack addicts come off street drugs or reduce their use after six months of treatment, researchers report today.

The findings of the largest-ever study of heroin and crack cocaine treatment programmes, published in The Lancet, will come as a relief to drug agency workers who feared their efforts were having little impact. Heroin and crack addicts often lead chaotic lives, fuelled by the proceeds of crime, which are among the hardest to turn around.

Tokyo, October 02: Most babies born in Britain today will live past the age of 100, scientists say.

Life expectancy soared by more than 30 years in richer nations during the 20th century and shows no sign of slowing. It has risen steadily, by three months every year, for the past 160 years, and there is no reason to think it has hit a limit.

In Japan, female life expectancy at birth reached 86 in 2007, surpassing what was thought to to the human limit of 85, as assessed by scientists as recently as 1980.

New Delhi, October 02: Mugdha Yardi was shattered when she was detected with breast cancer and thought the diagnosis must be wrong. It was not, and her worst fear came true. Now she has overcome her disease and is helping others do the same. With one out of every 22 Indian women sufering from breast cancer, she has plenty to do.

“I was pretty healthy and couldn’t have thought of such a menacing disease when this thing (breast cancer) happened to me in 2001 at the age of 40 and my life was thrown upside down,” Yardi told IANS on phone from Pune.

London, October 01: Mothers who smoke during pregnancy put their children at greater risk of developing psychotic symptoms as teenagers, British scientists said.

Researchers from four British universities studied 6356 12-year-olds and interviewed them for psychotic-like symptoms such as hallucinations or delusions.

Around 19 per cent had mothers who smoked during pregnancy.

Just over 11 per cent, or 734 of the total group, had suspected or definite symptoms of psychosis.

New York, October 01: The teenage girl who died shortly after being immunised against cervical cancer was killed by a malignant chest tumour and not by a reaction to the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, an inquest has heard.

Natalie Morton, 14, fell ill on Monday after being vaccinated at her school under a national immunisation programme against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV).

She died a few hours later after being admitted to hospital.

England, October 01: Children who eat sweets every day are more likely to be violent as adults, possibly because they want instant gratification, a British psychological study has suggested.

The research, by researchers at Cardiff University in Wales, took about 17,000 babies born in 1970 and monitored them at age five, 10, and 34 years old to see if there was a correlation.

New Delhi, October 01: Warning of a second wave of swine flu pandemic which might be highly pathogenic and have a high fatality rate, experts have asked the Government to be prepared to face any eventuality.

“A second wave of pandemic is likely to occur. The virus may acquire higher pathogenicity and increased case fatality,” scientists at the Christian Medical College Vellore have said in a report.

They added that the strain may also become resistant to antiviral drugs.

London, October 01: Mothers who smoke during pregnancy put their kids at greater risk of developing psychotic symptoms in their teens.

Researchers observed a ‘dose-response effect’, meaning that the risk of psychotic symptoms was highest in children whose mothers smoked the most heavily during pregnancy.

Stanley Zammit, psychiatrist at Cardiff University School of Medicine and lead study author, said: “In our cohort, approximately 19 percent of adolescents who were interviewed had mothers who smoked during pregnancy.

London, October 01: Children who gorge on chocolate and sweets daily are more likely to grow into violent adults, says a new research.

A study of almost 17,500 volunteers in the British Cohort Study (BCS) found that 10-year-olds who ate confectionary daily were significantly more likely to have been convicted for violence at the age of 34 years.

The study is the first to examine the long-term effects of childhood diet on adult violence.

Washington, October 01: New moms breastfeeding their babies may require more aerobic and resistance exercise to offset temporary bone loss caused by calcium depletion, says a recent study.

Cheryl Lovelady and her team from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) measured bone mineral density in 20 women four to 20 weeks post pregnancy.

They found that those who didn’t exercise lost around seven percent of their lower-spine bone density in that period.

Durban, October 01: New HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa are growing twice as quickly as anti-retroviral drugs are rolled out, despite a 39 percent hike in treatment access.

The number of people receiving AIDS treatments in the region, where two-thirds of the world’s HIV positive people live – rose from 2.1 million in 2007 to 2.9 million last year.

Washington, September 30: New HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa are growing twice as quickly as anti-retroviral drugs are rolled out, despite a 39 percent hike in treatment access, UNAIDS.

The number of people receiving AIDS treatments in the region, where two-thirds of the world’s HIV positive people live – rose from 2.1 million in 2007 to 2.9 million last year.

Washington, September 30: The Great Depression that ruined millions of families in the US during the thirties also saw life expectancy go up by 6.2 years, according to a latest research.

Life expectancy rose from 57.1 years in 1929 to 63.3 years in 1932 for both men and women, whites and non-whites, according to an analysis by University of Michigan (U-M) researchers Jose A. Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux.

New Delhi, September 30: Breast cancer, a dreaded disease has got deadlier for the modern woman who with her late marriage, unhealthy eating and growing weight is becoming vulnerable to the illness. Experts project breast cancer to strike approximately 2.5 lakh women in India by 2015.

“Breast cancer has overtaken cervical cancer to become the leading cause of cancer-related mortality among women living in metropolitan cities,” says the Indian Council of Medical Research which places incidence of the disease at 30 to 33 per 1,00,000 women in urban India.

Toronto, September 30: In a major breakthrough for early cancer detection, Canadian researchers have developed an inexpensive microchip that is sensitive enough to detect the type and severity of the disease.

The microchip has been successfully tested on prostate cancer, and head and neck cancer models.

It can also be used to diagnose other cancers, as well as infectious diseases such as HIV and the H1N1 flu.

Researchers at the University of Toronto here used nanomaterials for the first time to build the sensitive microchip.

New Delhi, September 30: Sixty women, some of them survivors of breast cancer, will drive from Delhi to Agra spreading awareness about the disease that kills 40,000 women in India every year. The car rally, which will see doctors, health and community activists accompany the women, will begin here Oct 2.

Australia, September 29: Australia parents have been told not to panic after a teenage girl died in the UK hours after being given the controversial cervical cancer vaccine.

The 14-year-old schoolgirl who died in hospital after receiving the Cervarix injection is the first reported death from the vaccine.

The batch of the vaccine used has been quarantined to test whether it is faulty or contaminated during production or distribution.

In Australia Cervarix has been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for use in females aged 10 to 45.

New Delhi, September 28: Four persons, including a 12-year-old girl from Ambala and a 14-year-old boy in Surat, died of swine flu today even as 177 fresh cases of the viral infection were being detected across the country.

Punjab registered its first swine flu death when a 12-year-old schoolgirl from Ambala fell victim to the disease.

The girl had been brought to Chandigarh from Ambala on September 25 and admitted to a hospital here.

The swab samples of the victim’s younger sister, who studies in in the same school, had also been collected for tests.

Noida, September 28: Six children fell ill after consuming free fruit drink served by a private agency to slum dwellers here today.

The incident happened at a jhuggi in Morna area in the city. JCM Agency distributed around 150 carton of apple flavoured drink on the occasion of Dussehra to the slum dwellers, police said.

After consuming the drink, some children complained of vomiting and were immediately rushed to hospital, police said, adding that they were discharge within hours.

—Agencies

Washington, September 28: More than 3,000 people a day have a heart attack. If you’re one of them the day after your H1N1 flu shot, will you worry the vaccine was to blame and not the more likely culprit, all those burgers and fries?

The government is starting an unprecedented system to track possible side effects as mass flu vaccinations begin next month. The idea is to detect any rare but real problems quickly, and explain the inevitable coincidences that are sure to cause some false alarms.

Brussels, September 28: MP3 players could soon come with a cigarette- style health labels to warn users about risks to their hearing if the European Union’s executive has its way, officials in Brussels said Monday.

There should be “enough information that sensible people know enough to decide” how loud and how long they play music for, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva told journalists in Brussels.

Hong Kong, September 28: An experimental AIDS vaccine that appears to be the first to protect people was mired for years in deep controversy, and credit for its success must go to Thailand where the trial was conducted, experts said.

The trial was criticized by 22 prominent US scientists in 2004 because the vaccine was widely expected to have no effect.

The critics, including Dr Robert Gallo of the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore, who helped discover the AIDS virus, signed a letter accusing the US government of wasting more than USD 100 million by funding it.