Health & WellnessS


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Italy says its mozzarella is now safe

All Italian dairy produce, including mozzarella, is safe for consumption, Italy's health and agriculture ministries said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

A temporary ban on buffalo mozzarella cheese, one of Italy's much-loved products and primary exports, was introduced in late March after high levels of dioxins - chemical contaminants which may cause cancer - were found in samples of buffalo milk.

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How Asthma Susceptibility Gene Causes Breathing Difficulties: New Study Explains

Researchers at the University of Southampton's School of Medicine have discovered how a gene, which is linked to susceptibility to asthma, contributes to the development or the progression of the disease. The findings of this new study may lead to novel treatments for asthma, as well as other diseases such as cancer and atherosclerosis or thickening of the arteries.

Health

Study shows promising new approach to thwart HIV

Washington - Researchers have pinpointed a protein in a key human immune system cells needed for the AIDS virus to infect them, and found that turning it off can greatly slow down the deadly virus.

Inactivating a protein called ITK in immune system cells called T cells reduces HIV's ability to enter these cells and replicate itself, the researchers said on Monday.

Eye 2

Predators

Lord of the Flies with Incense

In nature, predators are attracted by the presence of prey. Whenever there is a herd of beings, there will be predators watching with fascination, studying the prey very attentively. Predators pay special attention to anything wounded or young or vulnerable-seeming. When an animal is about to give birth and just after, they are vulnerable, and the newborn is easy pickings.

Health

China tries to calm fears over virus outbreak

The Chinese government has dispatched medical experts to eastern Anhui province in a bid to curb a rapidly spreading outbreak of an intestinal virus that has killed at least 20 children.

APNET
©Unknown
Destruction of the spinal cord due to poliomyelitis-like EV71 disease

But officials sought to calm fears amid reports that almost 1,900 children have been taken ill with enterovirus 71, or EV71, which can cause hand, foot and mouth disease.

Comment: From the Asia-Pacific Enterovirus Surveillance Network website:-

The human enterovirus type 71 (EV71) was first identified in California in 1969 and is recognised as a major cause of hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) epidemics associated with severe neurological complications in young children. Since 1997 there has been a large increase in EV71 circulation and epidemic activity throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Recent HFMD epidemics in Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan have been associated with a severe form of brainstem encephalitis associated with pulmonary oedema and high mortality rates. We do not understand why this rise in EV71 activity has occurred.

The emergence of EV71 as a cause of large-scale epidemics of encephalitis is reminiscent of the emergence of epidemic poliomyelitis in Europe and North America during the early Twentieth Century and it is possible that EV71 may become the major infectious cause of acute neurological disease in the world following the eradication of poliovirus. Therefore, it is imperative that medical and public health researchers prepare for such an eventuality in order to avoid the large-scale loss of life and human potential that resulted from the poliomyelitis epidemics of the Twentieth Century and that has already occurred as a result of the EV71 epidemics in our region.


Cow

2 beef processors are cited for humane violations

Washington - A government inspection of slaughterhouses found significant problems with the treatment of cattle and two of the nation's largest beef processors - both of which provide meat for the National School Lunch Program - were slapped with humane handling violations.

Health

Families tell lawmakers of heparin deaths

WASHINGTON - A man who said he lost his wife and a son to reactions from tainted heparin made with ingredients from China urged U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday to protect patients from other unsafe drugs.

Leroy Hubley said his wife, Bonnie, and son, Randy, had undergone kidney dialysis at an Ohio clinic and were given heparin that was later recalled by Baxter International Inc. Both had reactions to the blood thinner and died within one month of each other.

Congressman John Dingell
©REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) holds up a newspaper story on the drug heparin on Capitol Hill in Washington April 22, 2008.

"Now I am left to deal not only with the pain of losing my wife and son, but anger that an unsafe drug was permitted to be sold in this country," Hubley, who frequently choked back tears and wiped his eyes, told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing.


Info

Nepal on flu alert, tests poultry on India border

KATHMANDU - Nepal has issued a bird flu alert and is testing poultry along the border with India, where the virus rages despite the culling of tens of thousands of chickens since 2006, officials said.

Nepal, which has not reported any bird flu cases, banned the import of poultry from India in January.

But it shares an open border with the Indian state of West Bengal which has reported repeated outbreaks of bird flu.

"We are always alert, especially in the border areas which have been declared as high risk zones," Baikuntha Parajuli, chief of Nepal's animal health directorate said on Tuesday.

Info

Japan confirms H5N1 bird flu strain in swans

Japan on Tuesday confirmed four swans found last week were infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

It was the first case of bird flu in Japan since March 2007 when the highly virulent H5N1 strain was found in a wild bird in Kumamoto prefecture on Japan's southern Kyushu island.

The swans, three of which had died, were found on the shores of Lake Towada in northern Akita prefecture on April 21, the prefectural government said.

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Moral philosopher questions memory manipulation

Is medicated memory manipulation ethically sound? And perhaps more importantly, who should be charged with the decision to deliver such a treatment: patient or physician? Elisa Hurley, a philosophy professor, is seeking answers to these questions in her research currently underway at The University of Western Ontario.

In the Academy Award-winning film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a fictional, non-surgical procedure called 'targeted memory erasure' is used to delete painful memories the afflicted wish to forget - permanently.