Health & WellnessS


Sherlock

Novel Coronavirus: New SARS-Like Virus

Alexandra Sifferlin
Time
Wed, 29 May 2013 18:43 UTC
Coronavirus
© Getty Images
On Tuesday, a 65-year-old French man died from a SARS-like infection, called novel coronavirus (nCoV). He was the first man in France to die from the infection, which he contracted after visiting Dubai. Meanwhile, health officials in Saudi Arabia - where the virus was first detected in April 2013 - reported five additional cases of the infection.

Novel coronavirus is among the family of coronaviruses that cause illnesses that range from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Until last year, the new strain had never before been seen in humans. As of last week, the WHO reported that there have been a total of 49 people infected since September 2012, 27 of whom have died.
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Health

High blood pressure linked to declining brain function

Denise Chow
LiveScience
Wed, 29 May 2013 14:28 UTC
Blood Pressure Cuff
© Workmans Photos, Shutterstock
Washington - High blood pressure, particularly in the arteries that supply blood to the head and neck, may be linked with declining cognitive abilities, according to a new study from Australia.

Researchers found that people with high blood pressure in the central arteries - including the aorta, the largest artery in the human body, and the carotid arteries in the neck - performed worse on tests of visual processing, and had slower thinking and poorer recognition abilities.

Typically, blood pressure measurements are taken from the brachial artery in the arm, but looking at the health of the central arteries may be a more sensitive way to assess cognitive abilities, said study researcher Matthew Pase, of the Center for Human Psychopharmacology at Swinburne University in Melbourne. The central arteries directly control bloodflow to the brain.

"If we can estimate the blood pressure in central arteries, we might be able to better predict cognitive function and cognitive decline," Pase said.

Pase presented the findings here on May 24 at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Attention

Deadly antiviral resistant flu appears in China

Alexander Reed Kelly
Truthdig
Wed, 29 May 2013 12:51 UTC
Image
© ahisgett
Chinese researchers reported the first ever clinically documented case of resistance to the antiviral medication Tamiflu in patients infected with the H7N9 bird flu.

In the case of 14 patients admitted to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in April, treatment with antiviral medications helped in all but three. Those three developed severe illnesses that required the delivery of oxygen to the circulatory and respiratory systems with a machine, known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Two of the three died. A viral mutation associated with drug resistance was isolated in two of them.

One of the mutations appeared to arise in one of the patients with oxygen support as a result of treatment.

In a report of the cases, the researchers wrote: "The apparent ease with which antiviral resistance emerges ... is concerning; it needs to be closely monitored and considered in future pandemic response plans."

- Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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Pills

Dirty medicine

Katherine Eban
CNN
Wed, 15 May 2013 17:28 UTC
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The epic inside story of long-term criminal fraud at Ranbaxy, the Indian drug company that makes generic Lipitor for millions of Americans.

1. The assignment

On the morning of Aug. 18, 2004, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi. It was so early that he passed gardeners watering impeccable shrubs and cleaners still polishing the lobby's tile floors. As always, Thakur was punctual and organized. He had a round face and low-key demeanor, with deep-set eyes that gave him a doleful appearance.

His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy's head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development. Tall and handsome with elegant manners, Kumar, known as Raj, had a reputation for integrity. Thakur liked and respected him.

Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy. Thakur, then 35, an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) in New Jersey for 10 years. In 2002 a former mentor recruited him to Ranbaxy by appealing to his native patriotism. So he had moved his wife and baby son to Gurgaon to join India's largest drugmaker and its first multinational pharmaceutical company.

When he stepped into Kumar's office that morning, Thakur was surprised by his boss' appearance. He looked weary and uneasy, his eyes puffy and dark. He had returned the previous day from South Africa, where he had met with government regulators. It was clear that the meeting had not gone well.

Comment: Hold on just a minute! This Indian company is basically following the model set for it by U.S. Big Pharma companies! CNN should be congratulating Ranbaxy for doing things 'the American way'!

Isn't is great how we're free to criticise when 'those people over there' do it, but barely mention our own medical crimes against humanity which originate back home?

Medicine as a whole is now the leading cause of death in the U.S.thanks to companies like Monsanto, a company has destroyed more lives in India than Ranbaxy ever will in the U.S. Oh, and it is destroying lives in the U.S. too.

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Health

Junk study: Pfizer-funded study falsely claims fish oil useless

Heidi Stevenson
GreenMedInfo
Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00 UTC
A study claiming that fish oil provides no benefit in heart disease is being hyped as the final word on the issue. But is it? No, it is not. In fact, the study is absurdly blatant pseudo science, with two errors so glaring it's hard to believe they were made. Why do the researchers do it? Why do they care so little about the truth and your health?

Heat Attack
© Unknown
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine purports to show that fish oil provides no benefit whatsoever in prevention of heart disease.[1] At first glance, it would appear to be true. The study is, after all, double blind and placebo controlled, not to mention having a significant number of participants. But is it for real, or is there some sleight of hand at work?

There's one initial clue that should give pause. The study's endpoints had to be changed. That's always a bad sign. In fact, it breaks the rules of good research. But, they had to do it because they found that their study participants weren't dying as fast as they'd anticipated.

Now, if they'd been interested in the truth, they'd have tried to figure out what was wrong. After all, the odds of dying when people have signs of heart disease are pretty well understood. Otherwise, how could they possibly have anticipated the rate at which deaths would occur?

Of course, they didn't sit back and wonder what they might be doing wrong. Instead, they just added new end points to their study.
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Beer

Cola, depression, and addiction

Emily Deans, MD
Primal Docs
Sun, 26 May 2013 10:42 UTC
A case study of cola dependency in a woman with recurrent depression

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Soda as a source of fructose is linked with inflammation and depression.
It's not the world's greatest paper. It's a simple case study, just an introduction that proves nothing. The most fascinating thing about the paper is what we don't know about the consumption of cola, addiction, and mood.

So let's jump in. There is a 40 year old woman who has been on antidepressants for many years, and in addition drinks up to 3 liters of soda every day. She craves soda of a particular brand and has been unable to cut down her consumption in spite of the fact that it is probably interfering with her sleep, and she's developed metabolic syndrome. She feels the soda gives her an energy and mood boost. In fact she meets official criteria for dependence (which are official and written out and require physical dependence and withdrawal syndrome among some other symptoms, but what it all boils down to is continued use despite harm). After a serious exacerbation of her depression, she is referred to an outpatient clinic for treatment.

They work on slowly reducing her soda consumption. Low and behold, she sleeps better, feels better, has better energy, and her depression gets better. She still drinks a bit of soda, but not the massive amounts. She loses weight and stops having metabolic syndrome. She was able to wean off her antidepressant medication and felt good. Success.
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Cheeseburger

McDonald's CEO called out by 9-year-old Hannah Robertson for selling junk food to kids

Nadia-Elysse Harris, JD
Medical Daily
Sun, 26 May 2013 11:59 UTC
Junk Food
© Medical Daily
"It would be nice if you stopped trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time," quipped 9-year-old Hannah Robertson in a conversation with McDonald's CEO Don Thompson at a shareholders meeting in Oak Brook, Ill.

The fourth grader, whose mom runs a business that encourages children to make healthy food choices, read from prepared remarks as she said that the fast food chain lures kids into eating junk food by using toys and cartoon characters to promote the meals.

"If parents haven't taught their kids about healthy eating, then the kids probably believe that junk food is good for them because it might taste good," said Hannah.

Thompson, in a low, calm voice, responded to Hannah by thanking her for her comments then defending the company's food.

"First off, we don't sell junk food, Hannah," said Thompson. "My kids also eat McDonald's. They cook with me at home. I love to cook. We cook a lot of fruits and veggies at home."
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Heart - Black

Lead poisoning: The hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and ADHD epidemic

Kevin Drum
Mother Jones
Tue, 01 Jan 2013 05:31 UTC
Lead poisoning
© Illustration: Gérard DuBois
When Rudy Giuliani ran for mayor of New York City in 1993, he campaigned on a platform of bringing down crime and making the city safe again. It was a comfortable position for a former federal prosecutor with a tough-guy image, but it was more than mere posturing. Since 1960, rape rates had nearly quadrupled, murder had quintupled, and robbery had grown fourteenfold. New Yorkers felt like they lived in a city under siege.

Throughout the campaign, Giuliani embraced a theory of crime fighting called "broken windows," popularized a decade earlier by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in an influential article in The Atlantic. "If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired," they observed, "all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." So too, tolerance of small crimes would create a vicious cycle ending with entire neighborhoods turning into war zones. But if you cracked down on small crimes, bigger crimes would drop as well.
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Info

'Dead' woman gives birth to baby, comes back to life

Sharnaz Shahid
Digital Spy, UK
Fri, 24 May 2013 16:47 UTC
A 'dead' woman has given birth to a healthy baby - and been brought back to life herself. Erica Nigrelli was 36 weeks pregnant when her heart stopped and she collapsed at work, reports Click2Houston.


Three co-workers at Elkins High School in Missouri City kept Erica alive by using CPR and a defibrillator until paramedics arrived to take her to hospital.
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Health

Depression linked to telomere enzyme, aging, chronic disease


ScienceDaily.com
Thu, 23 May 2013 14:41 UTC
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© diego cervo / FotoliaThe first symptoms of major depression may be behavioral, but the common mental illness is based in biology -- and not limited to the brain.
The first symptoms of major depression may be behavioral, but the common mental illness is based in biology -- and not limited to the brain. In recent years some studies have linked major, long-term depression with life-threatening chronic disease and with earlier death, even after lifestyle risk factors have been taken into account.

Now a research team led by Owen Wolkowitz, MD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, has found that within cells of the immune system, activity of an enzyme called telomerase is greater, on average, in untreated individuals with major depression. The preliminary findings from his latest, ongoing study will be reported today at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco.

Telomerase is an enzyme that lengthens protective end caps on the chromosomes' DNA, called telomeres. Shortened telomeres have been associated with earlier death and with chronic diseases in population studies.

The heightened telomerase activity in untreated major depression might represent the body's attempt to fight back against the progression of disease, in order to prevent biological damage in long-depressed individuals, Wolkowitz said.
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