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Fan In Room Helps To Lower Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

October 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A new study published in  the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine has found that  baby’s risk of sudden infant death syndrome gets reduced by 72 percent when the babies sleep with fans on in their room. Sudden infant death syndrome is diagnosed when an infant’s sudden death cannot be explained by other factors.

TBy circulating air, fans lowered the risk rebreathing exhaled carbon dioxide which has been suggested as a reason for higher rate of SIDS  when children sleep on their stomach, in a soft bed or without a pacifier.

Since 1992 the rate of SIDS deaths has dropped by more than half, to about one death per 2,000 live births from 2.4 per 1,000 in US. This has been linked to a national “Back to Sleep” campaign that promotes putting babies on their back instead of their stomach.

Despite this, SIDS continues to be the leading cause of death in babies under the age of 1, and researchers are looking for more measures to lower the risk.

Sleeping environment does have a role to play in SIDS. The researchers have found that circulation of air by fan does help to lower the SIDS but standard recautions of SIDS prevention should be maintained.

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Examination of Nails For Systemic Diseses

October 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The nails should be examined for the following:

  • Pallor
  • Koilonychia: Spoon-shaped deformity of the nail which is present in iron deficiency anemia.
  • Onychia: Deformity of the nail e.g. following fungal or tuberculous infection.
  • Discoloration: This occurs in Raynaud’s disease and silver and mercury poisoning.
  • Clubbing and cyanosis: Clubbing is bulbous enlargement of soft parts of the terminal phalanges with both transverse and longitudinal curving of the nails. The swelling of the terminal phalanges in clubbing occurs due to interstitial edema and dilation of the arterioles and capillaries. Cyanosis is a bluish discoloration of the nails due to increased amount of reduced hemoglobin (more than 5 mg%)in capillary blood.
  • Hemorrhages: This may be present under the nail beds in SBE and bleeding disorders.
  • Trophic changes: Ribbing, brittleness and often falling of nails may occur in syringomyelia, leprosy and tabes dorsalis.
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Computers Aid Detection of Breast Cancer on X-rays

October 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A computer act as a qualified assistant to radiologist and help in detecting breast cancers on mammogram. It is one of the largest and most rigorous tests of computer aided detection found.

This function is similar to spelling checking functions we are familiar with. It looks for mistakes and  flags suspicious areas on X-rays for a closer look by a radiologist.

Computer-aided detection, or CAD, was developed to help radiologist pick up more cancers. It was approved a decade ago in US, these computer programs are now used for about a third of the nation’s mammograms.

Some doubt the value and accuracy of the technology.

British experts found that computer aided detection spotted nearly the same number of cancers.

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Talking With Patient of Chronic Mental Problems Helps

October 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Intensive psychoanalytic therapy, the talking cure rooted in the ideas of Freud has been pt on back burner after advent of drugs and managed care.

A new research has found that  the therapy can be effective against some chronic mental problems, including anxiety and borderline personality disorder.

The study, published in Journal of the American Medical Association reviewed 23 reports of such treatment involving 1,053 patients. They found that the therapy, given as often as three times a week relieved symptoms of those problems significantly more than did some shorter term therapies.

This was popular earlier and is known as  psychodynamic therapy.  It is based on Freud’s idea that symptoms are rooted in underlying, often longstanding psychological conflicts that can be discovered in part through close examination of the patient therapist relationship.

When it’s done well, psychodynamic therapy appears to be just as effective as any other for some patients, and this strikes me as a turning point  for such intensive therapy.

The review found no correlation between patients’ improvement and the length of treatment. The new review is encouraging, some psychoanalysts said, but also a reminder of how much more study needs to be done.

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Development of Ear

October 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

About the sixth week of embryonic life, a series of six tubercles appear around the first branchial cleft which then progressively coalesce to form the auricle.

Tubercle of the first arch  develops into Tragus while five tubercles of second arch form rest of the pinna .

Pinna achieves adult shape by the time fetal age is 20 weeks.

External auditory meatus develops from the first branchial cleft. It is fully formed by the 28th week.

Tympanic membrane develops from all the three germinal layers. Outer epithelial layer is formed by the ectoderm, inner mucosal layer by the endoderm and the middle fibrous layer by the mesoderm.

The Eustachian tube, tympanic cavity, attic, antrum and mastoid air cells develop from the endoderm of tubotympanic recess.

Malleus and incus are derived from mesoderm of the first arch while the stapes develops from the second arch.

Development of the inner ear starts in the third week of fetal life and is complete by the 16th week. An auditory placode is formed by thickening of Ectoderm in the hind brain. This then gets invaginated to form auditory vesicle which differentiates into the endolymphatic duct and sac; the utricle, the semicircular ducts; and saccule and the cochlea.

Foetus is able to  hear in the womb of the mother by 20 weeks of gestation.

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Eel Cells Made in Lab to Help Power Implants

October 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Artificial versions of the eel’s electricity generating cells can be used as a power source for medical implants and other tiny devices, suggests a study.

The paper, according to NIST engineer David La Van, says that there are at least seven different types of electrical channels in eels, each with several possible variables to tweak, such as their density in the membrane.

La Van and partner Jian Xu developed a complex numerical model to represent the conversion of ion concentrations to electrical impulses and found that substantial improvements are possible. In one design, an artificial cell generated 40 percent more energy in a single pulse than a natural electrocyte.

In principle, stacked layers of artificial cells in a cube slightly over 4 mm on a side are capable of producing continuous power output of about 300 mimcrowatts to drive small implant devices. The individual components of such artificial cells already have been demonstrated by other researchers.

Like the natural counter part, the cell’s energy source would be adenosine triphosphate (ATP), synthesized from the body’s sugars and fats.

Source:TOI

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AIDS Pandemic Has Been Lurking for 100 Years

October 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The deadly AIDS virus first began spreading among humans at the turn of the 20th century in sub-Saharan Africa, just as modern cities were emerging in the region, a US based research concluded.

A recent publication in the journal Nature has pushed  the origin of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) back by several decades.

Researchers think the growth of cities-and high-risk behaviour associated with urban life may have helped the virus to flourish.

Prior estimates put the origin of HIV at 1930. But Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona in Tucson now believes HIV began infecting humans between 1884 and 1924.

The present research is based on 48-year-old gene fragments dug from a wax-embedded lymph node from woman in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire.

Research from chimpanzee droppings suggests the virus first spread from chimps to humans in southeastern Cameroon. Worobey thinks the disease spread slowly among the local population until one of the infected people went to Kinshasa, where it had more opportunity to spread.

Worobey thinks by the 1960s, several thousand people may have been infected with HIV. By 1981, the rest of the world began to recognize the pandemic, which has now infected 33 million people and killed 25 million.

Disease prevention is one of the most important issues in HIV and the only way we are going to control thispandemic is through prevention.

Source: TOI

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Bacteria Can Look and Prepare for Future-Study

October 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A new study has found that the bacterias are sophisticated enough to anticipate regular events, such as the arrival of day, thanks to their internal circadian clocks.

The study shows that they can also anticipate and prepare for sporadic events, as long as the events are reliably preceded by a signal.

To colonize the gut of a mammal, Escherichia coli must first enter the warm-blooded diner’s mouth, where the bacteria experience a temperature rise; a short time later, they end up in the intestine a place with low oxygen levels, as well as fierce competition from other microscopic settlers.

Bacteria would do well to anticipate low-oxygen conditions and begin to adjust metabolically from the moment they enter the mouth.

The bacteria’s native low oxygen response all but vanished within a hundred generations, confirming that their foresight is flexible and results from natural selection.

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Medicine Nobel for HIV, Cancer Finds To European Scientists

October 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment

There European scientists who discovered viruses that cause cervical cancer and AIDS share this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine.

A German virologist, Harald zur Hausen, will receive half the award for his discovery of HPV, the human papilloma virus. The discovery led to development of a vaccine against cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.

The other half of the award will be shared equally by two French virologists, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, for discovering HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Dr zur Hausen of University of Heidelberg was cited for discovering the first HPV, type 16, in 1983 from biopsies of women who had cervical cancer.

Of the more than 100 human papilloma viruses now known, about 40 infect the genital tract.t of all cancers worldwide.

Discovery of HIV by the French scientists, Dr. Barre-Sinoussi and Dr. Montagnier, led to blood tests to detect the infection and to anti-retroviral drugs that are effective in prolonging the lives of patients. The tests are now used to screen blood donations, making the blood supply safer for transfusion.

The viral discovery has also led to an understanding of the natural history of HIV infection in people, which ultimately leads to AIDS unless treated.

HIV is a member of the lentivirus family of viruses. The French scientists were cited for identify what is now known as HIV in lymph nodes from early and late stages of the infection.

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Proteins in Saliva Could Detect Oral Cancer

October 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment

It might lead to a painless new diagnostic test to detect oral cancer. Screening of proteins in human saliva can accurately detect a common type of oral cancer.

The test predicts the mouth cancer in 93 percent of cases. The study has been published in  the Journal Clinical Cancer Research by University of California.

It is among the first of a new set of spit-based a diagnostic tests expected to arise from a protein map of human saliva.

The protein map, published in March, identified all 1,116 unique proteins found in human saliva glands. The latest findings focus on oral squamous cell carcinoma, which affects more than 300,000 people worldwide.

More than 90 percent of cancers that start in the mouth are squamous cell cancers.

The team is developing devices to detect these markers that could be studied in human trials.

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