Health & WellnessS


Health

Aspirin provides less heart protection for women

Gender may explain the considerable variation in the effectiveness of aspirin therapy in reducing the risk of heart attacks, researchers from Canada report. Their findings, published online in BMC Medicine, indicate that women may be much less responsive to aspirin than men.

Women with a low or average risk of having a heart attack "should probably not take aspirin as preventive therapy," Dr. Don D. Sin from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told Reuters Health.

Health

Flashback Common painkillers raise heart risk

Popular painkillers such as aspirin, ibuprofen and acetaminophen can raise blood pressure and thus the risk of heart disease among men, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Men who took such drugs for most days in a week were about one-third more likely to be diagnosed with high blood pressure than men not taking them, the researchers found.

People

US: Over 35.5 Million Found Hungry in 2006

More than 35.5 million people in this country went hungry in 2006 as they struggled to find jobs that can support them, a figure that was virtually unchanged from the previous year, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday.

Single mothers and their children were among the most likely to suffer, according to the study.

Health

Shocking! Tree man 'who grew roots' may be cured

An Indonesian fisherman who feared that he would be killed by tree-like growths covering his body has been given hope of recovery by an American doctor - and Vitamin A.

Dede, now 35, baffled medical experts when warty "roots" began growing out of his arms and feet after he cut his knee in a teenage accident.

©Discovery Channel

Watch: Dr Anthony Gaspari believes that he has diagnosed Dede's rare condition

Black Cat

Flashback Out of Order

Abnormality in two key brain structures may provide a developmental basis for psychopathology, says a USC neuroscientist. Faulty wiring in key connections may be a culprit.

©Usha Sutliff
USC researcher Adrian Raine: "There's faulty wiring going on in psychopaths. They're wired differently than other people, It's literally true in this case."

Question

Flashback Brain Scans Show Abnormalities In Psychopaths

A USC professor used MRI brain scans, a battery of cognitive function tests, and criminal histories to compare normal people with psychopaths and also to compare psychopaths who manage to avoid getting caught with psychopaths who get arrested for committing crimes.

Attention

Outbreak of lethal bird flu confirmed in Britain

Veterinary authorities confirmed an outbreak of the potentially lethal Asian strain of bird flu in eastern England on Tuesday, in a new blow to the British farming industry.

More than 6,000 poultry were ordered to be slaughtered at the site in Suffolk, where an exclusion zone was imposed on Monday after a suspected outbreak was found.

"I can now confirm that the strain of avian influenza found in the infected premises is the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 strain," said deputy chief veterinary officer Fred Landeg.

USA

U.S. sets record in sexual disease cases

More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year - the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they think better and more intensive screening accounts for much of the increase, but added that chlamydia was not the only sexually transmitted disease on the rise.

Gonorrhea rates are jumping again after hitting a record low, and an increasing number of cases are caused by a "superbug" version resistant to common antibiotics.

X

Food industry defends carbon monoxide use in meat

Two of the biggest U.S. meat processors on Tuesday defended a packaging technique designed to keep meat looking fresh at grocery stores even as U.S. lawmakers criticized it as unsafe and misleading.

Packers use carbon monoxide to stabilize the color of meat, but some Democrats said the process misleads consumers by making the products look safer than they really are, and puts the public at risk of eating spoiled meat.

Coffee

Mouse Studies Confirm the Key to Longevity

Mice lacking the insulin receptor substrate are more resistant to aging than normal mice, according to University College London researchers.

©n/a

The finding further confirms the link between insulin signaling pathways and aging, and may have implications on aging in humans.

In the study, mice were engineered to lack either insulin receptor substrate IRS-1 or IRS-2, both proteins that are activated by the hormone insulin, which regulates glucose and fat metabolism. Compared with normal mice, the mice lacking IRS-1 had:

* A 20 percent increase in their average lifespan (30 percent for female mice)

* Better health as they aged

In contrast, mice lacking IRS-2 had shorter lives than normal mice, and developed signs of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Sources:

* The FASEB Journal October 10, 2007

* UPI.com October 23, 2007