Messy nappies may be sign of severe intestinal infection
Anyone who’s ever cared for an infant or young child knows what it’s like to change the occasional smelly, messy diaper.
While mild bouts of diarrhea aren’t uncommon in young children, moderate to severe diarrhea, lasting several days, could be a sign a dangerous infection in the intestines known as rotavirus gastroenteritis.
So how can parents tell the difference between normal diarrhea and diarrhea caused by rotavirus, and know when to call their child’s health care provider?
Older Fathers More Likely to Have Autistic Children
Children of men age 40 and older have a significantly increased risk of having autism spectrum disorders compared with those whose fathers are younger than 30 years, according to an article in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Autism is characterized by social and language abnormalities and repetitive patterns of behavior, according to background information in the article. Autism and related conditions, known collectively as autism spectrum disorders, have become increasingly common, affecting 50 in every 10,000 children as compared with five in 10,000 two decades ago. This increase is partially due to higher levels of awareness and changes in diagnosis processes, but could also reflect an increase in incidence of autism, according to the authors. Older parental age has previously been linked to abnormalities in the brain development of children; however, few studies have effectively examined the effect of mothers’ and especially fathers’ ages on autism.
Cardiovascular disease prevention program for Chile
World Congress of Cardiology Report - Fifty-five percent of the Chilean adult population is at risk of a cardiovascular event with a high rate of morbidity and mortality affecting mainly a productive population, between 35 and 74 years of age. This risk is 1.4 times greater for men.
Cardiovascular disease is one of the three most common causes of incapacitation in the adult population in Chile. The average rate of invalidity is 49 years for women and 53 years for men, making it is easy to understand that this is a financial burden to the health care system.
Additionally, cardiovascular disease is the main cause of death in Chile: 29% of all people in the country die from coronary heart disease. Of those 36% are due to coronary heart disease and 36.3% from cerebrovascular disease (stroke).
Immunotherapy for heart failure
World Congress of Cardiology Report - Heart failure (HF) is a complex, progressive clinical syndrome that can result from any structural or functional cardiac disorder, such as coronary artery disease or hypertension (high blood pressure), which impairs the ability of the heart to function properly as a pump.
As a result of this pump dysfunction, a variety of body mechanisms are activated in an attempt to compensate for this defect. Multiple systems within the body, including the neurohormonal system and the immune system, respond to the HF state. Accumulating evidence indicates that inflammatory cytokines (immune response mediators) play a pathogenic role in the progression of HF by impairing the ability of the heart to contract, inducing excessive hypertrophy (enlargement), and promoting cell death or fibrosis (the formation of fibrous tissue). These mechanisms contribute to the destructive cycle of myocardial (heart muscle) remodeling that is characteristic of chronic heart failure.
The primary objective of the ACCLAIM study was to evaluate the effects of Celacade immunotherapy on the composite endpoint of mortality or cardiovascular (CV) hospitalization in patients with chronic HF. ACCLAIM stands for Advanced Chronic Heart Failure Clinical Assessment of Immune Modulation Therapy.
Vasogen heart therapy cuts risk in 70 pct of patients
A heart treatment from Canadian biotech firm Vasogen Inc., which failed a key clinical trial hurdle in June, still helped more than 70 percent of patients, researchers said on Sunday.
Vasogen Chief Executive David Elsley told Reuters he was confident the detailed analysis presented at the World Congress of Cardiology meant its Celacade device-based therapy now had a promising commercial future.
If all goes well Celacade could go on sale in Europe in mid-2007. Elseley - who previously said he expected to have to do another study to win U.S. approval - added the firm would now also discuss the results with U.S. and Canadian regulators.
Fruit and vegetable juice may ward off Alzheimer’s
Drinking fruit and vegetable juices frequently could help stave of Alzheimer’s disease in individuals at risk for developing the disease, research suggests.
There is evidence from both lab and animal studies that high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS)—harmful byproducts of normal metabolism—may be involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
While vitamins and polyphenols contained in plant foods exert antioxidant effects and thus blunt the action of ROS, certain ways of preparing these foods can deplete their nutrient content. Juicing, however, can preserve much of the antioxidant content of fruits and vegetables.
Telephone telepathy - I was just thinking about you
Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them—now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy.
Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.
Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone.
Dodgy heart? Then don’t ride the roller coaster
People with known heart problems should not take roller-coaster rides and theme parks should consider having defibrillators on hand in case riders are taken ill, German doctors said on Monday.
A study of 55 individuals taking a two-minute roller-coaster ride found they experienced a sharp rise in heart rates, comparable to severe short-term physical exercise, with women’s heart rates increasing more than men’s.
Dr Juergen Kuschyk of Mannheim’s University Hospital and colleagues told the World Congress of Cardiology that the increase in heart rates was big enough to trigger arrhythmia problems in people with heart disease.
Exploitative Internet marketing fuels child obesity
Self-regulation in food and beverage marketing is being exploited and is failing to curb childhood obesity, research by a global obesity taskforce presented on Tuesday has found.
The International Obesity Taskforce said some Internet sites that attracted children with advertising games were being used to bypass stricter advertising standards in traditional media, the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney heard.
The taskforce found that 85 percent of businesses advertising to children on television also had interactive Web sites for them. It said 12.2 million children had visited commercial Web sites promoting food and beverages over a three-month monitoring period in 2005.
Hungary child hospitals warn funds to run out
Hungary’s paediatric hospitals will run out of money from October if government spending curbs, which will cut about 20 percent of their budget, are implemented, hospital directors said on Tuesday.
Hungary is under pressure to cut spending to rein in its budget deficit, the biggest in the European Union at 10.1 percent of gross domestic product, and has announced a raft of tax rises and spending cuts for this year and next.
The measures have slashed the popularity of the Socialist government, which won re-election in April, and changes to health are disliked by voters, 70 percent of whom believe the government lied to win the election, according to a recent poll.
Developing world is new frontline in heart disease
Heart disease, usually seen as a quintessentially Western problem, is rapidly becoming a major threat to the developing world, costing millions of lives and billions of dollars, top cardiologists said on Tuesday.
Worsening diets, lack of exercise and smoking mean heart attacks and strokes are taking a mounting toll on poorer countries, experts told the World Congress of Cardiology.
“They now cause four times as many deaths in mothers in most developing countries than do childbirth and HIV/AIDS combined,” said Professor Stephen Leeder of the University of Sydney.
Medtronic heart device as effective for diabetics
Medtronic Inc’s cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) is equally effective for heart patients whether or not they have diabetes, researchers said on Sunday.
CRT, an implantable device, resynchronises the contractions of the heart’s ventricles by sending electrical impulses that help it pump blood more efficiently.
More than 200,000 patients with heart failure around the world have been fitted with a CRT device manufactured by either market leader Medtronic or one of its competitors.
Address weight issues early, experts advise
Contrary to popular believe, young children usually do not shed excess pounds as they get older. Even 2-year-olds who are overweight are more likely than their normal-weight counterparts to be overweight by age 12, results of a long-term study show.
“These findings underscore the need to maintain a healthy weight beginning in early childhood,” Dr. Duane Alexander, Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development said in a statement. The NICHD funded the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics this month.
The study authors advise that being overweight at any time during early childhood should prompt interventions by pediatricians in counseling parents about healthy eating and activity patterns for their child, since obesity in the teen years is highly predictive of obesity in adulthood.
