Health Care Article

We’ve been steadily losing ground in the battle against infections as bacteria develop resistance to more and more antibiotics.

Finally, we have a new weapon. It’s the first in a new class called ketolides, and it’s a major breakthrough in the treatment of drug-resistant respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia, bronchitis and sinusitis. Most of these infections are caused by a strep bacterium that easily overpowers most antibiotics.

Ketek isn’t a perfect solution, because eventually bacteria will likely become resistant to it. Like other classes of antibiotics, ketolides block bacteria’s ability to make life sustaining proteins.

But older drugs disable protein manufacture in just one location; ketolides strike two spots, substantially reducing the chance of resistance.

Scientist in the US are developing a screening test for breast cancer that checks a woman’s saliva for evidence of the disease to help find tumors early, when they are most treatable.

In research published recently, the scientists said they identified 49 proteins in saliva that the screening test would track to distinguish healthy women from those with benign breast tumors and those with malignant breast tumors. (more…)

New research shows that job strain not only increases the risk of a first coronary heart disease (CHD) event, it increases the odds of further events as well. This study “is the first time that the effect of stressful work has been evaluated in a large number of men and women of various ages who have returned to work after a first heart attack,” said study co-author Dr Chantal Brisson, from University Laval in Quebec, Canada.

She added that “previous studies of people who had a heart attack mainly focused on the effect of medical factors or personal characteristics including lifestyle. The effect of the work environment has rarely been studied”. (more…)

Long term adherence to a low-fat diet may reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, according to the results of the Women’s Health Initiative Dietary Modification trial, which involved nearly 50,000 post-menopausal women. “While other studies have examined the association between dietary fat and the incidence of cancer, including cancer of the ovary, among post-menopausal women, this is the first study to randomly assign women to a low-fat eating pattern or their usual diet and to compare cancer incidence between the two groups,” lead author Dr Ross L. Prentice said.

Prentice, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and colleagues examined the occurrence of ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, breast cancer, and total invasive cancer in 48,835 women randomly assigned to receive the Dietary Modification intervention or a usual diet.

The subjects were followed, on average, for eight years. The goal of the Dietary Modification intervention is to increase the amount of fruits, vegetables, and grains in the diet and to decrease the total fat intake to 20% of calories, the researchers note in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute for Oct 17 .

The Dietary Modification intervention appeared to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, but only with long-term adherence. The intervention did not affect the risk of endometrial cancer, but may have slightly reduced the risk of breast cancer and total invasive cancer.

“Encouraging post-menopausal female patients to undertake a change to a low-fat diet likely will reduce ovarian cancer risk, and may also reduce the risk of breast cancer and total invasive cancer,” Prentice said. - Reuters

In a bid to sidestep the ethical debate over the use of human embryos in medical research, scientist have developed a way to derive viable stem cell lines without harming the embryo. They did so by extracting a single cell from the embryo - as in vitro fertilization clinics do when they test for genetic defects and introducing a common molecule called laminin to keep it in a stem cell, or pluripotent state.

Subsequent development of the embryo was unaffected by the biopsy, according to the study published by the journal Cell Stem Cell. The new technique holds the promise of dramatically speeding up clinical applications of stem cell therapies for a wide range of debilitating disease and illness.

Stem cells are considered a potential magic bullet because they can be transformed into any cell in the body and potentially used to help replace damaged or diseased cells, tissues or organs. However, embryonic stem cell research is highly controversial because, until now, viable embryos were destroyed in the process of extracting the stem cells.

The groups of scientists recently bypassed this problem by transforming human skin cells into stem cells. Skin cells will likely become the most common source of stem cells, said Australian researcher Alan Trounso, who heads the world’s biggest stem cell research project at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

But skin cells are still far from ready for clinical use because the transformation process introduces potentially deadly genetic alterations and viruses.

Are you getting enough magnesium to keep your body healthy?

Magnesium is an essential mineral as it is needed in more than 300 biochemical reactions in our cells. Yet most people do not consume even the minimum recommended daily intake (RDI) of 400mg. The latest US government study shows that a staggering 68% of Americans do not consume the RDI of magnesium.

Magnesium deficiency can cause a range of problems, from muscle cramps, spasms and pre-menstrual difficulties to irregular heartbeat and sudden cardiac death. Magnesium supplementation may be effective in preventing and controlling many health problems ranging from high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, strokes and high blood sugar levels to migraines, asthma and osteoporosis.

Magnesium Supplementation:
Helps Promote Good Heart Health
Magnesium appears to be critical for the integrity of heart muscles. It has been shown to be effective in preventing abnormalities in heart rhythm which are associated with heart attacks. Besides that, magnesium may prevent spasms in the heart muscles and coronary arteries - other common causes of angina and heart attacks. (more…)