Dr. Mallika Marshall
wbztvSat, 10 Mar 2007 14:51 UTC
There's a disease out there you need to know about. It affects some two million Americans, is often misdiagnosed, and is caused by the food you eat.
Jessica Edwards George has Celiac disease and it can be rough. "For me the main thing was abdominal cramping, abdominal pain, fatigue," says Edwards George.
Celiac disease causes the body's immune system to attack its' own digestive tract. It happens when sufferers eat anything containing gluten, which is found in grains like wheat, barley and rye.
Dr. Ciaran Kelly runs the Celiac Center at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He says the disease can affect both young and old people, and they usually feel it right in the gut. "Diarrhea, weight loss, abdominal discomfort, bloating," are key symptoms according to Dr. Kelly.
Mary Brophy Marcus
USA TodaySat, 10 Mar 2007 14:44 UTC
Lucia Libreri, 16, stopped growing when she was 8. Four years later after a battery of tests and visits with medical experts, her parents, Rosalia and Luciano, finally found a doctor who pinned down her problem: celiac disease, a condition scientists say is much more widespread in the USA than previously believed.
This summer, the National Institutes of Health launched the Celiac Disease Awareness Campaign to educate physicians and the public about the prevalence of the disease, the myriad of symptoms it can cause and the tests that can detect it.
BBCSat, 10 Mar 2007 09:19 UTC
Medicines for babies and young children frequently contain additives banned from foods and drinks aimed at under-threes, research shows.
The Food Magazine examined 41 medicines aimed at the under-threes, and found only one was free of the additives.
Azo dye colourings were found in five products and multiple artificial sweeteners and preservatives in many.
No colours or sweeteners are allowed in foods and drinks for the under-threes and most preservatives are banned.
Only additives strictly necessary from a technological point of view and recognised as being without risk to the health of young children are authorised in such foods.
The survey found four azo dye colourings, eight benzoate and two sulphite preservatives, and six sweeteners contained in the products examined.
Maggie Fox
ReutersFri, 09 Mar 2007 11:30 UTC
Washington - People who want to learn things might do better by simply stopping to smell the roses, researchers reported on Thursday.
German researchers found they could use odors to re-activate new memories in the brains of people while they slept -- and the volunteers remembered better later.
Writing in the journal Science, they said their study showed that memories are indeed consolidated during sleep, and show that smells and perhaps other stimuli can reinforce brain learning pathways.
Jan Born of the University of Lubeck in Germany and colleagues had 74 volunteers learn to play games similar to the game of "Concentration" in which they must find matched pairs of objects or cards by turning only one over at a time.
The use of drugs to treat hyperactivity in children has soared worldwide, say US researchers.
Between 1993 and 2003, prescriptions of ADHD medications, such as Ritalin, almost tripled.
Global spending on ADHD drugs increased nine-fold, with 83% occurring in the US, a study in Health Affairs reported.
AFPThu, 08 Mar 2007 20:02 UTC
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| Japan's Ritsumeikan University researchers unveil a prototype model of the micro medical robot, measuring 1cm in diameter, 2cm in length and weighing only 5-grammes, which enables it to stay and move inside a human body to remove or treat the affected part of disease, especially cancer.
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A new study from Joslin Diabetes Center may shed light on why some people can eat excessive amounts of food and not gain weight or develop type 2 diabetes, while others are more likely to develop obesity and this most common form of diabetes on any diet. The study, which used two strains of mice with differing tendencies to gain weight and develop diabetes on a high-fat diet, identified genetic and cellular mechanisms that may prevent certain mice on a calorie-dense diet from gaining weight and developing metabolic syndrome.
"Although this study was done with mice, it points out new mechanisms that may underlie the ability of genetically different mice -- and perhaps genetically different people -- to not gain much weight on high caloric diets," said lead investigator C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., an internationally recognized researcher who is Head of Joslin's Section on Obesity and Hormone Action and the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Is coffee really the pick-me-up it's made out to be?
Not according to researchers from Bristol University in the UK.
They have found that having a caffeinated drink does not make you more alert than non-coffee drinkers, reported The Daily Mail.
And if you're a regular drinker, it won't make you more alert than you usually are.
It merely relieves withdrawal symptoms, they said.
Meital Yasur-Beit Or
YnetThu, 08 Mar 2007 04:15 UTC
A deadly bacterium known as Klebsiella pneumoniae is believed to have killed some 120-200 patients in hospitals across the country.
"Between 400 to 500 people have been infected by the bug, and 30 to 40 percent of them have already died. However, it is important to note that most of them were in a serious condition, and some were suffering from prior medical conditions," said Prof. Yehuda Carmeli, the head of the epidemiology unit at the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
According to Carmeli, most of those infected have been hospitalized for over 25 days, and their average age stood at 74-75.
The virulent stain of bacteria is resistant to all kinds of antibiotics, and has already spread in many hospitals across Israel.
Geoff Brumfiel
NatureThu, 08 Mar 2007 04:13 UTC
Physicists have developed a simple breath test that may be capable of detecting Type I diabetes.
The results, presented on 5 March at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver, Colorado, could lead to non-invasive ways to check for the disease, and possibly even a cheap new tool for monitoring daily glucose levels without drawing blood.
Type I diabetes, often called juvenile diabetes, is a condition in which the body fails to produce insulin, a chemical that breaks down glucose. The resulting elevated blood-sugar levels can send patients into shock, and over the long term can lead to blindness, kidney damage and heart disease. It can also cause a fruity smell on the breath.
