Page 255 - Health Medical Pharma

Inequality worsens hunger, malnutrition in Latin America, Caribbean

Rome, Nov 8 (IANS/AKI) Hunger, malnutrition, lack of micronutrients, overweight and obesity have greater impact on people with lower income, women, indigenous people, Afro-descendants and rural families in Latin America and the Caribbean, a new UN report has said.

No question of allowing import of fish without FDA compliance:

No truck carrying fish would be allowed to enter Goa unless the consignment complies with guidelines of the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) department, the state government said Wednesday. The Association of Fish Wholesalers in the state had said they needed two months' time before they could ensure compliance with quality norms set by the state FDA. The association had also told the FDA that testing of fish in markets should be resumed so that retailers regain people's confidence about the quality of fish. The import of fish into the coastal state has stopped after the Goa government withdrew permission to wholesale fish traders to bring fish from outside, asking them to adhere to FDA guidelines to get the permission. "Representations without complying with FDA guidelines would be put in a shredder and thrown into dustbin. There is no question of I even interacting with them without these people complying with FDA guidelines," Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said ...

Poor aerobic fitness can up diabetes, heart disease risk in kids

Lack of exercise, particularly poor aerobic fitness, in children increases their risk for developing Type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, says a new study.

Say no to crackers, alcohol on Diwali: IMA

Indian Medical Association (IMA), on Diwali, has asked people to avoid bursting firecrackers and abstain from consuming alcohol in order to prevent health hazards.Joint Secretary of the IMA, Dr Anil Goyal, urged the public to have a safer Diwali by avoiding the use of firecrackers and alcohol."Being festivals, exchange of sweet would definitely take place, but I urge the diabetic and heart patients to consume lesser sweets to avoid health consequences," Dr Goyal told ANI."If you face severe chest pain, breathlessness, teary eyes or any other complications, you should immediately rush to the emergency doctors," advised the IMA Joint Secretary.The advisory from the medical body comes amidst concerns of rising air pollution in the National Capital Region.Delhi's air quality index on Wednesday showed a slight improvement due to the high-speed wind. The system of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) said, "The overall Air Quality Index of Delhi at 8:30 am was recorded ..

AI technique can boost brain scans to predict Alzheimer early

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help improve the ability of brain imaging techniques to predict Alzheimer's disease early, according to a study.

Weight management in pregnancy may affect child's bone health

There is no benefit for children's bone mass if women gain weight during pregnancy, says a new study.

Eat veggies, fish to ward away heart disease

If you are suffering from high blood pressure, consuming fish, seafood and a primarily vegetarian diet may help reduce hypertension-related heart disease symptoms, a study suggests.

New gene for rare genetic hair loss discovered

Researchers have deciphered a new gene responsible for a rare form of genetic hair loss condition.

Early rising women at lower risk of breast cancer: Study

Women who begin their day early are likely to have a lower of risk breast cancer, than late beginners, suggests a research.

Insufficient antibiotics available for cystic fibrosis patients: Study

Turns out, the majority of patients with cystic fibrosis may not achieve blood concentrations of antibiotics sufficiently high enough to effectively fight bacteria responsible for pulmonary exacerbations, thus leading to worsening pulmonary function.Cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that affects about 70,000 people worldwide, is characterised by a buildup of thick, sticky mucus in patients' lungs. There, the mucus traps bacteria, causing patients to develop frequent lung infections that progressively damage these vital organs and impair patients' ability to breathe.A recent study led by researchers at Children's National Health System shows that it's impossible to predict solely from dosing regimens which patients will achieve therapeutically meaningful antibiotic concentrations in their blood. The findings were published online in the Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics.These infections, which cause a host of symptoms collectively known as pulmonary exacerbations, ..

Toddlers with ASD face emotional vulnerabilities

Turns out, at the time when autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be first reliably diagnosed, toddlers affected by ASD already display emotional vulnerabilities potentially foreshadowing the emergence of co-morbid affective and behavioral conditions highly prevalent in older children.According to a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), toddlers with ASD display enhanced anger and frustration and decreased fear in response to naturalistic situations. They also found that the capacity to experience joy appears intact in the early stages of the disorder."ASD onsets in most cases within the first two years of life and affects approximately 1 in 59 children," said lead authors Suzanne Macari and Katarzyna Chawarska. "This study documents, for the first time, that at the earliest age when the disorder can be reliably diagnosed, toddlers with ASD already display emotional vulnerabilities signaling risk for co-morbid affective and ...

Study associates back pain with mortality in older women

Back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and women aged 40-80 years have the highest prevalence of back pain. Also, women report more frequent and debilitating back pain compared to men.Researchers found that frequent, persistent back pain is associated with earlier death in a study of more than 8,000 older women who were followed for an average of 14 years. After controlling for important socio-demographic and health factors, women who reported frequent, persistent back pain had a 24 per cent increased risk of death compared to women with no back pain.Published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the study found that disability measured after back pain helped explain the association."To our knowledge, our study is the first to measure disability after measurement of back pain. This allowed for a prospective analysis of back pain that persisted over time and later rates of disability, which may help explain the association between back pain and mortality," said

AI may not suffice to analyse data across multiple health systems

Researchers have observed that artificial intelligence (AI) tools trained to detect pneumonia using chest X-rays suffered significant decreases in performance when tested on data from outside health systems.According to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine and published in a special issue of PLOS Medicine, these findings suggest that AI in the medical space must be carefully tested for performance across a wide range of populations; otherwise, the deep learning models may not perform as accurately as expected.As interest in the use of computer system frameworks called convolution neural networks (CNN) to analyse medical imaging and provide a computer-aided diagnosis grows, recent studies have suggested that AI image classification may not generalise to new data as well as commonly portrayed.Researchers assessed how AI models identified pneumonia in 158,000 chest X-rays across three medical institutions: the National Institutes of Health; The Mount Sinai Hospital; and ...

Trulicity leads mixed third quarter for Lilly; shares sink

(Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co's diabetes drug Trulicity helped power higher-than-expected third-quarter profit on Tuesday, while sales of some other newer treatments fell short of Wall Street estimates.

Screen-time does not disrupt children's sleep: Oxford study

Contrary to what most parents might have feared, a new Oxford University study on Tuesday concluded that the time children spend in front of electronic screens has very little effect on their sleep pattern. In practical terms, while the correlation between screen time - be it televisions, computers or phones - and sleep in children exists, it might be too small to make a significant difference to a child's quantity and quality of sleep, according to the Oxford Internet Institute at the university. "The findings suggest that the relationship between sleep and screen use in children is extremely modest. Every hour of screen time was related to three to eight fewer minutes of sleep a night," says Professor Andrew Przybylski, author of the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics. The study was conducted using data from the US 2016 National Survey of Children's Health. Parents from across the country completed self-report surveys on themselves, their children and households. The study

Superbugs killed 33,000 Europeans in 2015: study

Drug-resistant bacteria killed more than 33,000 people in the European Union in 2015, according to new research published this week warning that superbugs were "threatening modern healthcare." In a study published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, an EU-wide team of doctors examined data on more than a dozen combinations of antibiotic resistant bacteria across the continent, and developed a model for infection and death rates of five types of bug. They found that more than 670,000 people fell ill in 2015 from these five strains, and an estimated 33,110 died as a result. These burden of these deaths in the EU "was similar to the cumulative burden of influenza, tuberculosis, and HIV" during the same timeframe, the authors noted. The majority of deaths were thought to have occurred in infants under 12 months and the over 65s. The mortality burden was highest in Italy and Greece, with Italy alone accounting for more than a third of all EU superbug deaths in the year ...

Lilly lifts earnings target after Trulicity boost

(Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co recorded higher sales of its newer drugs Trulicity and Taltz in the third quarter, helping the diabetes specialist top Wall Street profit estimates and raise its yearly earnings target on Tuesday.

Trauma may up heart disease risk in lesbians, bisexual women

Lesbian and bisexual women are more at risk of developing cardiovascular diseases possibly due to trauma caused by abuse and neglect, according to a research.

Lack of proper sleep linked to dehydration: Study

Adults who sleep just six hours per night instead of eight may have a higher chance of suffering from dehydration, according to a study.

Drinking coffee may cut Alzheimer's, Parkinson's risk

Besides boosting your energy and attention levels, drinking coffee may also protect you against developing both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, researchers have found.