Angola embarks on massive child vaccination drive
Three-year-old Josefina Beamgh screams as the needle punctures her tiny back. A drop of blood spouts to the surface and the terrified child drops to the ground, distraught but safe from the scourge of measles.
“Do the next one,” Kisi Josefina Beamgh, the child’s mother, tells a nurse as she grabs one of Josefina’s four wide-eyed siblings. One by one, each receives the jab as well as an oral polio vaccination and Vitamin A supplement.
The scene was repeated throughout Angola’s capital Luanda on Wednesday as the southwestern African nation began one of its largest childhood vaccination and anti-malaria campaigns since winning independence from Portugal in 1975.
Diabetes and MS linked in Danish study
People with type 1 diabetes are more than three times more likely to develop multiple sclerosis (MS) than are those without diabetes, new research from Denmark shows.
In addition, the two diseases appear to be linked, albeit to a weaker extent, within families.
Both type 1 diabetes and MS are auto-immune diseases, in which the body mounts an aberrant immune response against its own tissues—attacking insulin-producing cells in the case of diabetes, and the myelin sheath surrounding neurons in MS.
Space Research Explores Bone Loss
Astronauts who travel in space are at risk for bone loss in much the same way that cancer patients who receive radiation therapy are, and both groups are more likely to develop fractures than the general population.
To better understand the causes, Clemson researchers have developed the first model to study the rate of bone loss in those two groups. Their results are published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Clemson bioengineering professor Ted Bateman said, “Recent exams of astronauts who were on the International Space Station showed signs of bone loss in the neck and vertebrae. Even five years after returning to Earth, they have not completely recovered from this loss.”
Practice builds brain connections for babies learning language, how to speak
Experience, as the old saying goes, is the best teacher. And experience seems to play an important early role in how infants learn to understand and produce language.
Using new technology that measures the magnetic field generated by the activation of neurons in the brain, researchers tracked what appears to be a link between the listening and speaking areas of the brain in newborn, 6-month-old and one-year-old infants, before infants can speak.
The study, which appears in this month’s issue of the journal NeuroReport, shows that Broca’s area, located in the front of the left hemisphere of the brain, is gradually activated during an infant’s initial year of life, according to Toshiaki Imada, lead author of the paper and a research professor at the University of Washington’s Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences.
Medical Sleep Studies Can Help Correct Common Sleep Disorders
If you have trouble falling or staying asleep, you’re not alone. The National Sleep Foundation reports that nearly seven out of 10 Americans say they frequently have problems getting a good night’s sleep. And that may be cause for concern, says Henry Raroque, Jr., M.D., a board-certified neurologist and sleep specialist on the medical staff at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Grapevine.
A long-term pattern of disrupted sleep may reflect an underlying sleep disorder that, left untreated, could become a serious health issue.
“Shortchanging our bodies of the sleep we need not only leads to extreme fatigue,” Dr. Raroque explains, “but also could contribute to high blood pressure, stroke, heart problems and even depression.”
Weight gain, particularly after menopause, is associated with increased risk of breast cancer
Weight gain, particularly after menopause, is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in women, according to an article in the July 12 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.
Background information in the article indicates that weight loss after menopause lowers circulating estrogen hormones in women, and because estrogen is directly related to breast cancer, weight loss is thought to decrease risk of the disease. Studies show that weight gain since early adulthood is associated with increased breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women, particularly those not taking postmenopausal hormones. However, weight changes in middle-aged to older women (50 years and older) has been studied less extensively.
