Silicon Simplicity

Older women who drinks in an uncontrolled pattern during pregnancy contributes greater risk to their offspring of having fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD)-said Lisa M.Chiodo of Wayne State University.
Piyadasa W.Kodituwakku of the University of New Mexico expressed the view that their clinical experience showed that children born to older alcoholic mothers display greater cognitive-behavioral deficits and more physical anomalies than those born to younger alcoholic mothers.

Chiodo and colleagues examined 462 children born to inner-city women. The researchers examined smoking, binge drinking, and the use of drugs like cocaine, marijuana and opiates. The children were tested at 7 years old.

The main finding was that children born to older women who drink during pregnancy have more alcohol-related attention problems than those born to younger women under the age of 29, even if the younger women were binge drinkers.

The children born to older drinking mothers have performance more slowly on cognitive tests and made more errors.

An internationally renowned Australian expert claims that cure will be found within next five to ten years.

Sharon Lewin, the head of the infectious diseases unit at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne told that the real challenge would be making it accessible.

Lewin, focused his research in killing the dormant or sleeping virus and she believed that a cure would be found within five to ten years.

Stuff.co.nz quoted her saying “”We will have a high-tech solution but then we will need to make it simple enough and cheap enough to be delivered to a lot of people,”

HIV is not so far treated effectively since the virus is having the hiding spot and when treated it goes to sleep and when it wakes up, we stop the drug. I think the most promising approach is using drugs that can wake up the sleeping virus and then kill it, she added.

“We are looking at how the virus gets into the cells, why it stays asleep, and how we can wake it up again,” she added.

Other promising approaches included using gene therapy to manipulate patients’ cells to make them resistant to HIV, finding more efficient ways to use the anti-retroviral drugs that treat HIV, or finding ways of boosting the immune system of patients with Aids.

Sharon was speaking before the Aids 2010 conference in Vienna.

Second hand smoke is not only bad for lungs and heart but it affects the mental health too.

To find out the link between secondhand smoke and mental health, researchers studied 5,560 non-smokers and 2,595 smoking adults from Scotland. None of the participants had any history of mental illness. The participants were tracked for six years. Exposure to secondhand smoke among non-smokers was determined using saliva levels of cotinine and is an established marker of nicotine exposure.

A total of 14.5 percent of participants reported distressed mental health. It was found that the higher a person’s secondhand smoke exposure, the greater their risk of mental health distress. While the risk was highest for people who were themselves smokers. People with high exposure to secondhand smoke who didn’t actually smoke themselves were 62 percent more likely to report mental health distress than those unexposed to secondhand smoke, while the risk for smokers was almost three times higher. (more…)

Serum Institute of India (SII) has got the approval to sell the H1N1 in the market so which means that will be available within a week time. Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has given the green signal to fight against the killer H1N1. SII senior director Rajeev Dhere said “we are planning to launch the vaccine in domestic and in international markets. It will be available in a weeks’ time”. The vaccine will be available in the name Nasovac at Rs 150.

Earlier this month India got its first ever vaccine against H1N1 Vaxiflu-S priced at Rs 350.

A recent study says infant mortality can be prevented by parents. Father’s involvement during a birth can help in preventing the infant deaths. Group of researchers from the University of South Florida has found that the involvement of father can prevent infant deaths especially if the baby is black.

The lead author Amina Alio, says “ Our study revealed that the involvement of father can help in stopping the infant deaths and there is lack of parental involvement these days which must be stopped.”

A new study has offered fresh evidence that coffee may help in reducing risk of diabetes and it exerted the beneficial effect on fatty liver. Caffeine may be the ingredient responsible for this effect.

A little evidence comes from studies on lab animals. The new research conducted by Furmihiko Horio and colleagues from Nagoya University in Japan fed water or coffee to a group of laboratory mice consumed the same amount of food and Coffee intake prevented the development of high-blood sugar and also improved insulin sensitivity in the mice and thereby reducing the risk of diabetes.

This research showed the effect of coffee gave other beneficial changes on fatty liver. The other lab studies showed the caffeine may be the effective anti-diabetic compound that it involves in reducing the risk of diabetes and may prevent Type 2 diabetes when coffee is consumed.

Many cancer patients, with or without their knowledge and informed consent, are involved in research into cancer treatment. It is important for you to understand something about this. Basically, there are three different stages of testing for new treatments.

In Phase I studies, researchers test drugs or other treatments that have never before been tried on humans. They have been tested only in the laboratory and on various animals. Phase I studies are designed to find out how the treatment can be used in humans, not whether it is effective against human cancer. It is not expected that there will be any benefit to the individual patients involved in this type of research. The aim is to find out things such as whether it can be taken by mouth or injection, whether it is broken down by the liver or passed out through the kidneys, what doses are safe, how often they should be given and what side effects there are. Because these things are not known, patients who are the human ‘guinea pigs’ in these tests may experience unexpected severe and unpleasant side effects or even die as a result of the treatment. Therefore, only patients for whom there is no known effective anti-cancer treatment available are asked to take part in these studies. You might be happy to participate, knowing that by doing so you could help future patients. However, if you go into it because you hope it will help you personally, it is extremely likely that you will be disappointed

Some babies are born with a dislocation, or lack of fit, between the top of the thigh bone (which is shaped like a ball) and the socket in the hip bone. This occurs in approximately 1 in 700 births, and is more common in girls by a ratio of 4:1. Usually only one hip is affected, but both hips are involved in 25% of cases.

Cause

There is no one cause of congenital dislocation of the hip (CDH). Genetic factors seem to play a part, as it is more common in girls than in boys, and especially in daughters of mothers who themselves had CDH as babies. The posture of the baby in the womb also seems important, so that it is more common in breech presentations (where the baby is born legs first instead of the usual head first).

Clinical features

Often there are no easily detectable signs of CDH in infancy. Sometimes the skin creases in the thighs are asymmetrical. Parents may notice when changing the nappy that one thigh is restricted in its movement, and cannot be laid all the way back on the table. Later, an abnormal position of the leg on the affected side may be noticed, and the leg itself may be shorter than the other due to dislocation. There may be a delay in walking, or the child may walk with a limp or with the pelvis tilted to one side.

During the doctor’s examination of a newborn baby, both hips are carefully checked for any signs of dislocation. Several tests are performed specifically to detect CDH or an unstable hip. On examination of your baby’s hip a faint click may be heard (‘clicky hips’), which may be due only to stretched ligaments and simply requires monitoring. If this click is accompanied by an abnormal movement of the hip, the diagnosis of congenital hip dislocation is likely.

Investigation

A very careful physical examination of both hips should be done in the first few-days of life, and repeated at 6 weeks of age. In experienced hands, this should detect most cases of CDH. Sometimes an X-ray of the hip may be helpful, and ultrasound is being increasingly used

FLAT FEET

Babies often appear to have flat feet because the soles of their feet are filled with pads of thick fat. The fatter the baby, the flatter the feet look. Once babies start walking, this arches become more defined because the ligaments and muscles start more working more, and by the age of 3 years, the feet acquire their final shape. After this age, a child who has flat feet will wear down the heels of his shoes on the inner sides very quickly. The entire surface of the sole of the foot is in contact with the ground, and the arches are not visible. This occasionally causes the child pain, especially when playing sport. Children with flat feet do not need any treatment. In particular, there is no need for arches, supports or special shoes. If flat feet persist into adult life, arches may reduce the wear on shoes.

HEELS, PAINFUL

This condition is especially common in older children and young adolescents. Sometimes it is caused by a strain of the achilles tendon where it attaches to the bone of the heel. Pain is usually experienced after sport. Usually no treatment is necessary, because the condition improves with age and eventually disappears. Raising the heel of the shoe on the affected side sometimes helps. The child should be encouraged to continue playing sport.

The other cause of painful heels is a bony spur (calcaneal spur) on the back of the heel bone, which rubs against the bottom or back of the shoe. The overlying skin becomes reddened and bruised. Treatment consists of inserting a small pad in the shoe to protect the affected area. Occasionally surgery is needed to chip off the bony protrusion

“Prevention is better then cures” and in case of migraine also this is true. But the question is who should be given prophylaxis treatment for migraine?

The right candidates for prophylaxis of migraine are patients with high frequency of migraine headache or if frequency is increasing, if patient is not responding adequately to abortive treatments or if patients are not responding to abortive treatments of migraine are good candidates for prophylaxis treatment of migraine. Clinicians/doctors generally give prophylactic medication for migraine if a patient is getting 5 or more attacks of migraine headache per month. This is a rough guideline, but migraine patients may require prophylaxis with lesser number of acute attacks per month, especially if the attacks are severe.

It is important to weigh the pros and cons of prophylactic treatment of migraine, as the agents used for prophylaxis may have many side effects and some of the side effects are potentially serious. Calculation of dose for prophylaxis of migraine may also pose problem as the drugs used for prophylaxis of migraine are basically (primarily) used for other purposes (other than migraine). The basic principle that is followed in the use of the drugs for prophylaxis of migraine is to start at low dose and gradually increase the dose, till clinical benefit is achieved with acceptable side effects.

The drugs for prophylaxis of migraine need to be taken daily and it may take 2-12 weeks to achieve desired result in prevention of migraine attacks. The probability of an anti migraine drug effectively preventing attacks of migraine is approximately 50-75% and if a drug is able to prevent migraine successfully, it should be continued for approximately 6 months and gradually tapered over time. Some of the patients may be able to withdraw anti migraine drugs permanently and some may need to take again of change the drug.