Health

Atlanta, July 25: In a disturbing new projection, health officials say up to 40 percent of Americans could get swine flu this year and next and several hundred thousand could die without a successful vaccine campaign and other measures.

The estimates by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention are roughly twice the number of those who catch flu in a normal season and add greater weight to hurried efforts to get a new vaccine ready for the fall flu season.

Sweden, July 25: Parents are being unnecessarily worried by the way the Government is presenting the figures on the unfolding swine flu pandemic, a leading academic claimed yesterday.

Washington, July 25: Medical researchers say there may be a link between exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the Vietnam War and an increased chance of developing serious heart problems and Parkinson’s disease.

A study from the Institute of Medicine released Friday contains several caveats, but suggests there is a stronger connection than previously thought about the health risks to Vietnam veterans.

New Delhi, July 25: If you think the fashion fraternity leads an unhealthy lifestyle, think again. Models believe in eating right, exercising regularly and sleeping well to achieve the high level of fitness required in their occupation.

According to model Amanpreet Wahi, the golden rule is not to sit after eating a meal and avoid carbohydrates like rice and wheat for dinner.

Geneva, July 25: H1N1 pandemic flu has spread to some 160 countries and killed about 800 people, and needs to be watched carefully in case it mutates and becomes more severe in winter, the World Health Organisation said.

“For the moment we haven’t seen any changes in the behaviour of the virus. What we are seeing still is a geographic expansion across countries,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told a news briefing in Geneva.

Wellington, July 25: A new research from the University of Otago showed influenza A/H1N1 could be far more infectious in New Zealand than originally thought.

The researchers from the university’s Department of Public Health in Wellington estimated that a person who is ill with the new strain will infect on average almost two other people.

Researchers said this means up to 80 percent of the entire population of New Zealand could become infected.

Washington, July 25: Children of stressed parents are more likely to develop asthma triggered by air pollution, says a new study.

Researchers found that stress and low parental education were also linked with larger effects of exposure to tobacco smoke during pregnancy.

The study was led by Rob McConnell, professor at the University of Southern California (USC).

McConnell said that “we found that it was children exposed to the combination of air pollution and life in a stressful environment who were at highest risk of developing asthma”.

New Delhi, July 25: Forget about the various creams available in the market that promise blemish-free and fair skin. If you really want soft, smooth and flawless skin, chemical peels are the safest bet, say experts.

“A chemical peel is a treatment technique used to improve and smoothen the texture of facial skin using a chemical solution that causes the skin to blister and eventually peel off. The regenerated skin is usually smoother and less wrinkled than the old skin,” Anup Dhir, senior cosmetic surgeon at New Delhi’s Apollo Hospital, told.

Chicago, July 24: The US obesity epidemic, which afflicts all age groups, has stabilized in the past five years among preschool-age children at about one in seven children, government researchers said on Thursday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 14.6 percent of 2- to 4-year-old children were obese in 2008, about the same as in 2003 and compared to a 12.4 percent obesity rate in 1998.

Washington, July 24: Fish oils could help prevent the development of blindness in elderly people, according to an American research.

Macular degeneration is a condition usually of older adults that results in a loss of vision in the centre of the visual field (the macula) because of damage to the retina.

It can make it difficult to read or recognize faces, although enough peripheral vision remains to allow other activities of daily life.

New York, July 24: A therapy that helps regenerate receding gum tissue seems to hold up over the long term — and may offer patients an alternative to more-extensive dental surgery, a small study finds.

One option for treating severe gum disease is surgery to replace tissue lost from around the teeth and their roots. Traditionally, that has meant taking tissue from the roof of the patients’ mouth and “grafting” it onto the receding gums.

The surgery is effective, but requires stitches in the roof of mouth and leaves patients in pain afterward.

New Delhi, July 24: With the number of confirmed swine flu cases on the rise, India plans to soon stop mass testing and create buffer zones for human clusters infected by the influenza A (H1N1) virus to curb its spread — the way it was done for poultry during the bird flu outbreak.

“You must have marked the growing number cases in India. The influenza-A situation is going to worsen in near future. The government has drawn plans for creating buffer zones soon,” a senior health ministry official told IANS here Friday.

London, July 24: A leading scientist has claimed that an artificial brain could be built within a decade.

Henry Makram, director of research group the Blue Brain Project, has already created parts of a fully functioning rat brain and hopes to build a human one in the next 10 years.

He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses, reports the BBC.

Washington, July 24: Researchers at Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing a powerful instrument for physicians to use in treating patients with Parkinson’s syndrome, brain tumours and other diseases by miniaturizing a device that monitors the delivery of healthy cells.

Boyd Evans III of the lab’s Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division said that while cell replacement therapies can be effective, the challenge is to deliver a sufficient quantity of healthy cells.

New Delhi, July 24: Twenty nine new cases of swine flu were reported in the country Thursday, taking the tally to 371.

‘Twenty-nine new laboratory confirmed cases have been reported today (Thursday). Seven in Delhi, six in Bangalore, four in Chennai, four in Pune, three in Hyderabad, two in Thiruvananthapuram, two in Goa and one in Coimbatore,’ said a health ministry statement.

‘Of the 371 positive cases, 237 have been discharged. Rest of them remain admitted to the identified health facilities. The situation is being monitored,’ it added.

New Delhi, July 24: Forget about the various creams available in the market that promise blemish-free and fair skin. If you really want soft, smooth and flawless skin, chemical peels are the safest bet, say experts.

‘A chemical peel is a treatment technique used to improve and smoothen the texture of facial skin using a chemical solution that causes the skin to blister and eventually peel off. The regenerated skin is usually smoother and less wrinkled than the old skin,’ Anup Dhir, senior cosmetic surgeon at New Delhi’s Apollo Hospital, told IANS.

Mumbai, July 24: The Pune-based National Institute of Virology (NIV) is concerned about the spurt
in swine flu cases during monsoon.

It “may just go out of hand” as H1N1 virus thrives in moist conditions, NIV director AC Mishra told DNA.

The saving grace is that the attack has been milder in India compared to Mexico and the United States, from where the virus spread to the rest of the world.

Los Angeles, July 24: Postmenopausal women with elevated insulin levels may face greater risk of developing breast cancer, a new study has found.

US researchers drew the conclusion after examining data on 5,450 women who took part in the Women’s Health Initiative, a large study that looked at how various factors influence women’s health, the study, published in the International Journal of Cancer, said Thursday.

The study was conducted by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City.

Washington, July 23: Exposing pregnant women to pollution can have a major affect on the IQ levels of their children, a new study found on Tuesday.

The five-year study which followed the development of 249 children living in the densely populated areas of Harlem and the Bronx in New York showed that exposure to environmental pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) had an adverse affect on intelligence quotient.

PAHs are toxic pollutants which result from burning coal, diesel or gas.

Washington, July 23: Scientists believe they have found a “missing link” in the evolution of the virus that causes Aids. It bridges the gap between the infection that does no harm to most monkeys and the one that kills millions of people.

That link is a virus that is killing chimpanzees in the wild at a disturbingly high rate, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Nature.

Chimpanzees are the first primate besides man shown to get sick in the wild in significant numbers from a virus related to HIV. Chimps are also man’s closest relative among primates.

Washington, July 23: Scientists believe they have found a “missing link” in the evolution of the virus that causes AIDS.

It bridges the gap between the infection that does no harm to most monkeys and the one that kills millions of people.

That link is a virus that is killing chimpanzees in the wild at a disturbingly high rate, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Nature.

Chimpanzees are the first primate besides man shown to get sick in the wild in significant numbers from a virus related to HIV. Chimps are also man’s closest relative among primates.

Washington, July 23: Attention is shifting to the world’s five leading flu vaccine makers: How fast are they really producing swine flu vaccine, and just how do they plan to test that it works?

A meeting Thursday of the Food and Drug Administration’s scientific advisers offers the first in-depth public progress report since U.S. scientists delivered the novel virus to manufacturers and asked them to turn it into usable vaccine.

Washington, July 23: Feeling stressed or fretful? Try savouring the scent of lemon, mango, lavender or other fragrant plants to calm yourself.

Scientists in Japan are presenting the first scientific evidence that inhaling certain fragrances alter gene activity and blood chemistry in ways that can reduce stress levels.

Akio Nakamura, of Saitama University, Japan and colleagues note that people have inhaled the scent of certain plants since ancient times to help reduce stress, fight inflammation and depression, and induce sleep.

Washington, July 23: Indian scientists have created a skin gel made of silver nanoparticles that may help improve the treatment of burns and speed up healing.

The researchers led by Kishore Paknikar have said that the new formula could be a potentially safer alternative to silver-based gels applied to the skin of burn patients to treat infections.

With names like silver sulfadiazine and silver nitrate, these germ-fighters save lives and speed healing.

Seoul, July 23: A cheap typhoid vaccine that would be affordable for the poor in developing countries has proved highly effective in protecting pre-school children, an international health body said Thursday.

A study conducted in a slum district of the Indian city of Kolkata has also shown the Vi vaccine protects the unvaccinated neighbours of those treated, the Seoul-based International Vaccine Institute (IVI) said in a statement.