Facial Wounds Much Higher Among Poorest

The author describes with statistics, that how facial injuries are common in poorest in Scotland. Here in Paradip, Orissa, India; though no statistics is provided, the scenario is no different. It is mostly accidents following alcohol abuse. And We see the same person several times in a year in the same condition.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Men from Scotland’s deprived areas are almost seven times more likely to suffer serious facial wounds than those in wealthier areas, a study suggests. The researchers found that between 2001 and 2006, more than 82,000 people suffered facial scars in Scotland. The paper claims the annual cost of alcohol misuse to Scottish society is an estimated £2.25bn, with the cost to the National Health Service in Scotland put at £405m. The study also highlights a recent run of 249 patients from a Scottish trauma unit which found about 80% of their facial injuries were alcohol-related. “Brief alcohol counselling sessions have been shown to be effective in helping facial trauma patients to cut down their drinking both by ourselves and by other groups around the country.”

A Pearl Of Garlic To Protect Heart

Garlic has antioxidant and lipid lowering property which help to lower high blood pressure. Since long it is being used in India. Some ready made capsules containing garlic as an ingredient are available for hypertensive patients. Raw garlic is more beneficial.

clipped from www.cnn.com That garlic has health benefits is nothing new. Since at least 1500 BC, healers in China and India have used the odiferous bulb as a blood thinner. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, used it to treat cervical cancer. Louis Pasteur reported on garlic’s antibacterial and antifungal powers, which inspired Albert Schweitzer to use it against dysentery in Africa. But now, a team of researchers from the Cardiovascular Research Center at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine have learned how freshly crushed garlic — as opposed to dried or cooked garlic — protects the heart. The amount of garlic you need to get the heart-healthy benefits is about a clove a day. According to Herbal Therapy & Supplements, a handy guide by herbalists David Winston and Merrily A. Kuhn, RN, PhD, the best way to use garlic is to mince a clove, let it stand 10 to 15 minutes, then mix it with yogurt, applesauce, honey, or some other carrier agent.

Support For Abstinence From Smoking

Abstinence from smoking, a difficult to achieve affair has been supported variously by drug treatment. Traditionally, nicotine patch, lozenges and bupropion were being prescribed. I addition to it smokeless and electronic cigarettes were also given to lessen the damage. But, more often they do not help in quiting smoking. The adverse effects if nicotine and the risks remained unchanged. Now, a new drug varenicline is showing promise in many cases. There are also side effects of this drug. Please go through the full article in The Medpagetoday.

clipped from www.medpagetoday.com SAN DIEGO — Much as it aided the general population of smokers, varenicline (Chantix) helped patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) quit too, a randomized trial showed. From weeks nine to 12 of treatment, 42.3% of those taking varenicline remained abstinent, compared with 8.8% of those taking placebo (P<0.001), Donald Tashkin, MD, of the University of California Los Angeles, reported at the American College of Chest Physicians meeting here. Varenicline and bupropion are the two first-line pharmacologic aids for smoking cessation recommended by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Public Health Service in guidelines updated in 2008. There was one report of aggression in the varenicline group. Reports of anxiety, depression, depressed mood, and depressive symptoms were infrequent and similar in number between the two groups.

Remain supine to increase chancee of being pregnat after artificial insemination

This is common sense that the lady should remain supine some time so that the sperm do not leak out.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk ‘Lie still’ for pregnancy boost Women undergoing fertility treatment with artificial insemination may boost their chances of pregnancy if they lie still afterwards, a study shows. Researchers found 27% of women who lay down for 15 minutes after the procedure went on to have a baby compared with 17% who got up and moved around. Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers said lying down may prevent “leakage” of sperm. Study leader Dr Inge Custers from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam said the results had prompted clinics in the Netherlands to rearrange their clinics to allow women to remain laid down for quarter of an hour after their treatment.

Gene Therapy In Eye Disease

This is something I call as “In the search of God”. The broad basic is replacing a defective gene that causes a disease by a healthy gene through an innocent virus. The eye being more avascular, the less is the immune response to new particle. So, there is progress in gene therapy. Please read the original article in BBC or The Lancet.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Gene therapy can be particularly effective in treating inherited sight problems in children, fresh trials show. Treatment so far has focused on Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare inherited disorder which causes gradual deterioration in vision and can lead to blindness by the time the patient is 20. There were measurable improvements, including an at least 100-fold increase in pupillary light response – when the pupils constrict in brightness. The genes are contained in a harmless virus which is unlikely to be attacked by the body as the immune system is not strong in the retina. Gene therapy has already been successfully deployed to treat children with X-SCID – a life-threatening immune deficiency also known as “boy in the bubble syndrome”. But a lot more research was needed, she added, “to maximise the benefits of gene therapy techniques and understand how they can then be turned into effective treatments for a variety of more common degenerative eye conditions.”

New biomarker tests could slash heart attack diagnosis time

Copeptin a newer test for myocardial infarction alone is more sensitivity than the conventional troponin test ,and in combination the sensitivity rises to 99%, researchers found.

clipped from www.mims.com Testing for stress marker copeptin, meanwhile, can exclude MI with 99 percent certainty, thus saving many patients from unnecessary further testing. New biomarker tests could slash heart attack diagnosis time Professor Christian Müller, reviewing the data, said that the new tests could answer an unmet clinical need in the assessment of chest pain, since current troponin tests have an undetectable “blind interval” of 3-4 hours after the onset of MI. Even if patients follow recommendations and present within 2 hours of chest pain, the test will be negative and electrocardiography monitoring will be required for 6 to 8 hours. “The current-generation troponin tests are important but have important limitations in [making an] early diagnosis. There seem to be two approaches to solve this problem: either use troponin in combination with copeptin, or perhaps the approach now favored by many is the use of sensitive troponin assays,” said Müller, of the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland.

Babies with heart Defects,Blame Mom

Yet another bad effect of obesity as reported by the researchers. It is interesting and warning for obese.

clipped from www.medpagetoday.com Mom’s Obesity Tied to Heart Defects By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: October 02, 2009 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner Heavy women may be putting their unborn children at risk of congenital heart defects, researchers say. Compared with women of normal weight at the beginning of pregnancy, overweight mothers had an 18% increased risk of giving birth to a child with certain heart defects, while the most severely obese had a 30% increased risk, according to Sonja Rasmussen, MD, of the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. Copy the code below to embed audio on your website or blog: <INPUT type="text" readonly="" value=" window.onload = function () { var q = (document.URL); document.getElementById(“mptplayer”).src += q; } ” class=”embedField” name=”embed_code” id=”embed_code” />

Diabetes and the public’s health : The Lancet

Diabetes and the public’s health : The Lancet

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Metformin Under Evaluation For Cancer Treatment

Metformin, a oral hypoglycemic agent used as first line drug in obese type 2 diabetes is showing anticancer activity as reported by “The Lancet” may be interesting to read.There has been possible association between obesity and different cancers. It may be possible in future to know more about action of metformin.

clipped from www.oncologystat.com Metformin Being Investigated as Possible Anticancer Treatment Elsevier Global Medical News. 2009 Oct 1, M Tucker VIENNA (EGMN) – The glucose-lowering drug metformin is increasingly showing an anticancer effect.  The data come from studies being conducted in both the diabetes and oncology research communities, according to experts who spoke at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.  The positive metformin story has been somewhat buried within the much broader and very complicated relationship between diabetes treatments and cancer. The subject first caught the medical community’s and the general public’s attention in June, with the publication of a series of articles on the putative association between insulin glargine and cancer in EASD’s journal Diabetologia.

Sex for What

Here the clip describes why women want sex. The answers are interesting. Please go through the link .

clipped from edition.cnn.com Love, pleasure, duty: Why women have sex Story Highlights “Why Women Have Sex” looks at the evolutionary reasons for women’s choices Study showed that physiological arousal for women does not equate with feelings Women far less likely than men to have sex before kissing their partners Study: Women able to tolerate 75 percent more pain during orgasm September 30, 2009 — Updated 1339 GMT (2139 HKT) Next Article in Health »