The sexually transmitted disease, which can lead to infertility in men and women, is treatable with antibiotics. But following recent resistance to the quinolone family of antibiotics in the US, UK and Australia, authorities in these countries now recommend cephalosporins, the only option besides quinolones.
In the latest setback, quinolone resistance seems to have spread to Canada. Kaede Ota and her colleagues at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto found that quinolone-resistant infections in Ontario soared from 4 per cent of infections in 2002 to 28 per cent in 2006 (
Canadian Medical Association Journal, DOI: [
link]). The team blames the surge on a mixture of unsafe sex and people not completing prescribed courses of antibiotics.
The pineapple is a member of the bromeliad family. It is extremely rare that bromeliads produce edible fruit. The pineapple is the only available edible bromeliad today. It is a multiple fruit. One pineapple is actually made up of dozens of individual flowerets that grow together to form the entire fruit. Each scale on a pineapple is evidence of a separate flower. Pineapples stop ripening the minute they are picked. No special way of storing them will help ripen them further. Color is relatively unimportant in determining ripeness. Choose your pineapple by smell. If it smells fresh, tropical and sweet, it will be a good fruit. The more scales on the pineapple, the sweeter and juicier the taste. After you cut off the top, you can plant it. It should grow much like a sweet potato will. This delicious fruit is not only sweet and tropical, it also offers many benefits to our health.
Pineapple is a remarkable fruit. We find it enjoyable because of its lush, sweet and exotic flavor, but it may be one of the most healthful foods available today. If we take a more detailed look at it, we will find that pineapple is valuable for easing indigestion, arthritis or sinusitis. The juice has an anthelmintic effect; it helps get rid of intestinal worms. Let's look at how pineapple affects other conditions.
Doodling while listening can help with remembering details, rather than implying that the mind is wandering as is the common perception. According to a study published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, subjects given a doodling task while listening to a dull phone message had a 29% improved recall compared to their non-doodling counterparts.
40 members of the research panel of the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge were asked to listen to a two and a half minute tape giving several names of people and places, and were told to write down only the names of people going to a party. 20 of the participants were asked to shade in shapes on a piece of paper at the same time, but paying no attention to neatness. Participants were not asked to doodle naturally so that they would not become self-conscious. None of the participants were told it was a memory test.
After the tape had finished, all participants in the study were asked to recall the eight names of the party-goers which they were asked to write down, as well as eight additional place names which were included as incidental information. The doodlers recalled on average 7.5 names of people and places compared to only 5.8 by the non-doodlers.
A former beauty queen became so obsessed staying attractive she nearly tanned herself to death after becoming addicted to sunbeds as a teenager.
Brittany Lietz spent all her time perfecting her appearance for pageants, which included two and half hours per week on tanning machines.
But after developing stage two melanoma at 19, she had to undergo 30 operations to remove cancerous moles.
Miss Lietz admitted she nearly lost her life due to her obsession with beauty pageants.
The 22-year-old, now married and expecting her first child, said: "I always had pale skin and wasn't really into sunbathing.
"But after I'd done a couple of pageants, I noticed all the girls there did indoor tanning.
"I didn't think I'd look attractive enough for the swimwear round if I was really pale."
Michael Kahn
ReutersSun, 01 Mar 2009 17:44 UTC
Bacteria found in people's spit does not vary much around the world, a surprising finding that could provide insights into how diet and cultural factors affect human health, researchers said Thursday.
Because the human body harbors 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells, scientists are trying to understand more about the bacteria we carry.
The human mouth is a major gateway for bacteria into the body and it contains a diverse array of microbial species. Yet scientists know little about this diversity and how it relates to diet, environment, health and disease, they added.
Parents will be told not to give most cough and cold remedies to their children amid safety fears and evidence that dozens of products do not work.
More than 60 popular over-the-counter medicines, some specifically labelled for children, will be marked with warnings that they must not be given to children under six and are not recommended for under-12s.
In an unprecedented move, Government safety regulators will advise that the dangers posed by the remedies outweigh any benefits.
Several children have died from overdoses of the medicines, while others have suffered hallucinations, allergic reactions and other side effects.
The alert centres on 15 ingredients found in most cough and cold medicines, many of which have been used by drug companies for years.
The deaths of at least five children under two have been linked to the remedies and more than 100 serious cases of suspected adverse reactions have been reported, with children requiring hospital treatment.
Commanders plan two-hour sessions for all their troops, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
San Diego -- Alarmed by a rising suicide rate among their troops, Marine officials announced Friday that all Marines, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, will receive a two-hour suicide-prevention presentation next month.
Commanders have been ordered to record three- to five-minute videos as part of the presentations.
The state of Georgia has agreed to a settlement in a federal lawsuit aimed at curbing widespread abuse of mental patients in state facilities.
The scandal over the treatment of mental patients in Georgia first broke with an investigative report, published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in early 2007. The article cataloged widespread problems including 136 suspicious deaths, overuse of medication as a sedative rather than a treatment, abuse of patients by hospital staff, and regular dumping of discharged patients at homeless shelters or even on street corners. In addition, the article concluded that the state agency in charge of overseeing mental facilities failed to properly investigate complaints or allegations of misconduct.
In response to the article, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a thorough investigation, which ultimately concluded that critical systemic problems did indeed lead to unnecessary illness, injury and death among Georgia mental patients.
Men who are infertile appear to run a greater risk than other males of developing testicular cancer, a new study published this week said.
Testicular germ cell cancer, the most common cancer among young men in developed countries, has risen during the last 30 to 50 years, according to the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
An experimental drug called fampridine improves walking ability in some patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease of the nervous system that inhibits mobility, a study published on Friday in The Lancet says.
Doctors recruited 301 adults with MS in the United States and Canada, and gave the drug to 229 of the recruits and a dummy lookalike pill, called a placebo, to 72 others.
