Health & WellnessS


Magic Hat

Fake Sugar Can't Fake Out the Brain

So you want to indulge in that sugar-coated doughnut because it tastes so sweet? You probably would want it just as much if it didn't taste sweet at all.

No Entry

Hand, foot and mouth outbreak kills 26 in China

Thousands of Chinese children have been infected by a form of hand, foot and mouth disease, which may have claimed 26 lives, the government has said.

Heart

Study offers novel insight into cardiac arrhythmias, sudden cardiac death

A new study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital provides much-needed insight into the molecular mechanisms that cause arrythmia, or irregular heartbeat, and how it triggers sudden cardiac death, one of the nation's leading killers. Their findings, published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could pave the way for the development of new, genetically-targeted therapies to treat and prevent fatal arrythmias.

Most cases of sudden cardiac death are related to arrhythmias, including clinical conditions such as long QT syndrome (LQTS), a disorder of the heart's electrical system that causes fast, chaotic heartbeats. LQTS - which can be inherited or brought on by certain medications - usually affects otherwise healthy children and young adults. Although LQTS seems to be relatively rare, experts believe it is also underdiagnosed, meaning variants of it may be more common than previously suspected.

Bulb

Justice in the brain: Equity and efficiency are encoded differently

Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share" A study appearing this week in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity.

The study, by researchers at the University of Illinois and the California Institute of Technology, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people making a series of tough decisions about how to allocate donations to children in a Ugandan orphanage.

The researchers hoped to shed light on the neurological underpinnings of moral decision-making, said co-principal investigator Ming Hsu, a fellow at the U. of I.'s Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

"Morality is a question of broad interest," Hsu said. "What makes us moral, and how do we make tradeoffs in difficult situations""

Bulb

Study finds link between birth order and asthma symptoms

Among four year-olds attending Head Start programs in New York City, those who had older siblings were more likely to experience respiratory symptoms including an episode of wheezing in the past year than those who were oldest or only children. Children with at least two older siblings were also 50% more likely than other children to have gone to an emergency department or been hospitalized overnight for breathing problems. These findings from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health were recently pre-published online in the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy.

"Our findings support the hypothesis that having older siblings increases a child's risk of exposure to infectious agents before age two years, and in turn increases the child's risk for wheezing," said Matthew Perzanowski, PhD, assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health and the lead author of the paper. "Some studies have found that having older siblings increases the risk of wheeze in babies and toddlers. Our findings are novel in that we found that among the four year-olds in this study, the pattern was the same as has been observed in younger children elsewhere."

Heart

Calm The Heart To Stop A Stroke?

There's an electrical storm brewing inside the hearts of more than 2.2 million Americans. And just like lightning, this kind of storm can have devastating consequences.

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©University of Michigan Health System
What happens when medicines aren't enough, and fail to control clotting and rhythm? And what about AF patients who have other problems that keep them from being able to take certain medicines? That's when procedures offered by a few specialized centers, including U-M, might be an option.

The "storm", in this case, is a condition called atrial fibrillation - the most common form of irregular heartbeat in the United States.

And the "lightning bolts" they can produce are tiny blood clots, which can form when blood pools in a heart that's not beating regularly. When these clots escape the heart, they can travel to the brain. And then, quick as lightning, those clots can cause a stroke or mini-stroke that can kill or disable a person within minutes.

Syringe

FDA under Bush rendered ineffective to protect public

It seems like only yesterday that the Bush administration was warning Americans to avoid purchasing prescription drugs from Canada lest they be slipped a funky pill from some less-than-respectable foreign supplier.

The administration warned that the Food and Drug Administration could not guarantee the safety of such re-imported drugs as it nixed proposals to allow individuals and municipalities to secure lower-priced drugs through the mail.

It seems now that the FDA can't even guarantee the safety of drugs made here at home.

Heart - Black

Recognizing those without a conscience

Monsters always get the headlines.

Whether Clifford Olson, Paul Bernardo or Josef Fritzl, the Austrian recently discovered to have locked up his own daughter as a sex slave for more than two decades, those who commit horrifying crimes often get endless, expansive coverage by the news media.

Ambulance

Vietnam warning on EV71 virus after at least 10 children die

Vietnam's prime minister has urged health authorities to fight a hand, food and mouth disease outbreak caused by the EV71 virus which officials Wednesday said had killed at least 10 children this year.

The intestinal virus, which hits children hardest, has infected around 400 children this year, mainly in southern Vietnam, said Nguyen Huy Nga, head of the Health Ministry's Preventive Medicine Department.

"The virus killed at least 10 children in Vietnam in the first four months of this year," he told AFP, adding that no precise data was available because the enterovirus is not a notifiable disease in the communist country.

Bulb

Will Democracy Make You Happy?

Politicians have long clung to the notion that free nations breed happy people. Now, a new 'science of happiness' turns that equation on its head.

To travel to Moldova is to travel to a land submerged in a deep and persistent pool of despair. Faces are sullen and drawn. Everyone moves about listlessly, doing the Moldovan Shuffle. A cloud of despondency hangs in the air, every bit as real, and toxic, as the smog in Los Angeles or the coal dust in Linfen, China.

Statistically, Moldova may be the least happy nation on the planet. On a scale of 1 (least happy) to 10, Moldovans can muster only a 4.5 in self-reported surveys. They are less happy than their morose neighbors, the Ukrainians and the Romanians, and inexplicably, they are less happy than much of sub-Saharan Africa. What is truly mysterious, though, and deeply troubling for those in the business of nation building, is that Moldovan despair persists despite the advent of democracy.