Health Care Tips  Health Care News livemedinfo-News: January 2010
 Children are likely to account for about forty four percent of the estimated number of Haitians injured in the devastating 12th January 2010 earthquake -- information that could be used to guide rescuers, say U.S. researchers.
The statistical study by the team at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Southern California determined that extra than 110,000 children under age 18 are among the 250,000 injured people in Haiti. The researchers have set up a blog to help straight the choice and distribution of relief supplies.
Injured children have special requirements, including thinner hypodermic needles, children's doses of drugs and doctors who specialize in pediatrics.
For their study, the researchers used a software tool called the Pediatric Emergency Decision Support System (PEDSS), intended to help medical service provider's better plan for, train for and respond to serious incidents and disasters affecting children.
PEDSS uses statistical methods to estimation how many potential victims of a disaster in a exact location will be children and what types of medications and supplies they'll need.
The system analyzes 7 age groups, ranging from 0-1 months up to 12 to 18 year-olds. It also predicts how many injuries are predictable for each of 11 diagnoses, ranging from abdominal trauma to spinal injury, in each age group.
For example, PEDSS estimates that about 1,000 children ages 6 to 8 suffered crush injuries and that 265,263 doses of calcium gluconate 1g/10mL will be required to treat these victims.
Labels: Haitian Children Required Specific Relief Efforts |
 Roche's cancer drug Xeloda enabled elderly patients being treating for colorectal cancer to be alive free of the disease for longer, the world's largest maker of cancer drugs said on Thursday.
A study showed that patients over the age of 65 or 70 years who took Xeloda, or capecitabine, with Xelox, or oxaliplatin, instantaneously after surgery lived disease-free for longer compared with those treated with regularly used chemotherapy regimen 5-fluorouracil/leucovorin.
In July, Roche said Xeloda, which is by now approved for the treatment of early-stage colon cancer as a monotherapy, increased the time patients lived when taken with oxaliplatin, meeting its prime goal in a late-stage trial.
Colorectal cancer is the 2nd most common cause of death from cancer in men and women in Europe, with nearly 1 million cases each year globally, said Roche.
Age is the biggest risk factor for the disease and above 90 % of cases are diagnosed in individuals above the age 50, Roche said.
Labels: Roche drug keeps patients cancer-free for longer time |
Dentures can cause pain and discomfort if they are not worn properly and cleaned thoroughly.
The U.S. National Library of Medicine suggests these denture-care suggestions:
. After you finish eating, give dentures a scrub using soap and warm water.
. At all times take out your dentures at bedtime. This will help prevent inflammation, infection and sores inside the mouth.
. Let dentures soak during the night in denture cleaner.
. Each day, swish a warm salt-water solution in your mouth to help clean gums.
. Avoid using toothpicks while you are wearing dentures.
Labels: Health Tip: Stop Denture Problems |
 People who quit smoking are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes after they lash out the habit, most likely because of post-quitting weight gain, a new study has found.
Experts warning, however, that the benefits of quitting smoking including a lower risk of heart attack and lung cancer far outweigh the jeopardy of developing diabetes, which can be treated with diet, exercise, and medication.
The study, which was published at present in the Annals of Internal Medicine, followed almost 11,000 middle-aged people without diabetes 45% of whom were smokers over a 9 year period. Compared to those who had never smoked, the people who quit smoking in the study had a 73 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes 3 years after quitting?
The increased risk was even more dramatic in the years instantly after quitting. "Based on our analysis, probably 80% or even 90%," says the study's lead author, Hsin-Chieh (Jessica) Yeh, PhD, an assistant professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
By contrast, the smokers who sustained to light up were only 31 percent more likely than non-smokers to have developed diabetes at the three-year mark. Earlier research has shown that smokers are at high risk of developing diabetes.
There was some good news in the study: The increased risk of diabetes doesn't appear to last over the long term. After 12 years with no cigarettes, the ex-smokers were at no greater risk for diabetes than the people who had never smoked the study show.
In total, 1,254 participants in the study developed type 2 diabetes, a chronic disease in which the body fails to sufficiently convert blood sugar (glucose) into energy.
The spike in diabetes risk that the researchers observed is most likely because of the extra pounds that many ex-smokers pack on after giving up cigarettes, Yeh and her contemporaries note. Weight gain is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, and it is also one of the most common side effects of smoking cessation.
The people in the study who quit smoking get an average of 8.4 pounds, which is in the usual range (most ex-smokers gain about 4 to 10 pounds), and those who gained the most weight showed the utmost risk for developing diabetes also the waistlines of the ex-smokers in the study also grew by an average of 1.25 inches; abdominal fat is one more risk factor for diabetes. Labels: Quitting Smoking Raises Diabetes Risk: Study |
Lastly got that new pair of running shoes? Well, before you get down to taking them on the jogging track, here is a piece of information-running shoes are liable to damage knees, hips and ankles. In a study, researchers compare the effects on knee, hip and ankle joint motions of running barefoot versus running in modern running shoes. They concluded that running shoes exerted added stress on these joints compared to running barefoot or walking in high-heeled shoes.
68 healthy young adult runners (37 women), who run in typical, currently available running shoes, were selected from the general population. No one had any history of musculoskeletal injury and each ran as a minimum of 15 miles per week.
All runners were providing with a running shoe, selected for its neutral classification and design characteristics typical of most running footwear. They experiential each subject running barefoot and with shoes using a treadmill and a motion analysis system.
The researchers' experiential increased joint torques at the hip, knee and ankle with running shoes compared with running barefoot.
Disproportionately large increases were experiential in the hip internal rotation torque and in the knee flexion and knee versus torques.
An average 54 pct raise in the hip internal rotation torque, a 36 pct increase in knee flexion torque, also a 38 pct increase in knee varus torque were measured when running in shoes compare with barefoot.
The findings confirmed that as the typical construction of modern-day running shoes provides good support and protection of the foot itself, one negative effect is the increased pressure on each of the 3 lower extremity joints.
These increases are likely caused in large part by an elevated heel and increased material in the medial arch, both characteristic of today's running shoes.
"Remarkably, the effect of running shoes on knee joint torques during running (36pc to 38pc increase) that the authors observed here is even greater than the effect that was reported earlier of high-heeled shoes during walking (20pc to 26pc increase). Considering that lower extremity joint loading is of a significantly greater magnitude in running than is experienced during walking, the current findings indeed represent substantial biomechanical changes," added lead author D. Casey Kerrigan, JKM Technologies LLC, Charlottesville, VA, and co-investigators.
D. Casey Kerrigan concluded: "Reducing joint torques with footwear completely to that of barefoot running, while providing meaningful footwear functions, especially compliance, should be the goal of new footwear designs." Labels: Hips, Running Shoes Can Damage Your Knees |
NEW YORK - Taking a cocktail of powerful AIDS drugs seems to cut down the average death rate by half in a group of people tainted with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, who were followed for an average of more than 3 years. In absolute terms, the reduction in death rate translated into a 5 % increase in 5-year survival for those who started combination HIV therapy compared with those who didn't. The introduction of combination therapy for HIV infection in 1996 has very much improved immune function in patients tainted with the virus. The impact of HIV therapy on overall survival, yet, remained unclear, Dr. Miguel A. Hernan, of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues note in the most recent issue of the journal AIDS.
To check whether combined HIV therapy was actually saving lives, the team examined data from 12 European and US studies involving 62,760 HIV infected patients who are new to HIV therapy were followed for an average of 3.3 years.
During follow up, a total of 2039 patients died. After the researchers permitted for factors that may influence death rates, they found that the risk of death was 52 % lower in those who initiated combination HIV therapy relative to those who didn't.
Combined HIV therapy, the investigators note, and "halved the (death) rate of HIV-infected individuals in urbanized countries, and the absolute reduction in (death) was stronger in those with worse prognosis at the beginning of the follow-up
This finding, the team finish off, "demonstrates the benefits of being treated even at the most advanced stages of (disease)."
The current findings, Dr. Miguel A. Hernan added, "can be used to inform policy models and cost-effectiveness calculations in Western populations." Labels: AIDS Drug Cocktails Save Lives: Study |
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Children are likely to account for about forty four percent of the estimated number of Haitians injured in the devastating 12th January 2010 earthquake -- information that could be used to guide rescuers, say U.S. researchers.
Roche's cancer drug Xeloda enabled elderly patients being treating for colorectal cancer to be alive free of the disease for longer, the world's largest maker of cancer drugs said on Thursday.
