Alcoholism among women in Sweden rose by 50 percent between 2003 and 2007 as beer, wine and spirits have become more accessible in the country long known for its restrictive alcohol policy, a report on Saturday said.

“The number of female alcoholics has risen from 65,000 to about 100,000 and the number of male alcoholics has risen from about 135,000 to about 165,000. One important reason is that it has become easier and cheaper to buy alcohol,” a report written by the head of the Swedish National Institute of Public Health’s alcohol and drug division showed.

Sweden, a country of nine million inhabitants, has an alcohol distribution monopoly, meaning that Swedes can only buy beer, wine and liquor at state-run outlets called Systembolaget. Only Systembolaget and wholesalers authorised by the state may import such drinks.

Sweden maintains that the monopoly, and high taxes on alcohol, are needed to protect public health.

But alcohol has nonetheless become more accessible in recent years.

“Reduced alcohol taxes, private imports from abroad and across the internet, longer opening hours at Systembolaget and an increase in the number of restaurants granted liquor licenses” have all contributed to the rise in alcoholism, said Sven Andreasson, the author of the report published in Sweden’s newspaper of reference Dagens Nyheter.

Andreasson noted that while overall alcohol consumption in Sweden had remained stable in recent years, the number of alcohol poisonings, alcohol-related violence and drink driving cases were on the rise.

The numbers he presented in the report were “in line with” reports from the health sector which indicated an increase in the number of people seeking care for alcohol-related problems, he said.

Source-AFP

SRM

The surviving Nepalese conjoined twin who underwent a marathon operation in Singapore seven years ago is to return to the city-state in September for reconstructive skull surgery, a report said Sunday.

Surgeon Keith Goh, who led the operation to separate the girls who were born with fused skulls, intends to bring eight-year-old Jamuna Shrestha back to assess her condition and see how he can begin work on a cranioplasty, or rebuilding of the skull, the Sunday Times said.

“Jamuna’s health and recovery are of paramount importance. We will figure out a solution, no matter what,” Goh was quoted as saying about the efforts made to bring the surviving twin back to Singapore for the surgery.

Her sister Ganga Shrestha died in July from respiratory problems at a hospital in Kathmandu where she was being treated for pneumonia and meningitis.

Her death triggered comments from a Nepalese doctor that the Singapore surgeons who operated on the sisters failed to provide adequate post-operative care for them.

The operation to separate the twins left Ganga with brain damage and Jamuna unable to walk. They returned to Singapore in 2005 for additional treatment before going home to Nepal.

Goh had said previously the girls were not fit enough for reconstructive skull surgery when he saw them in 2005.

Ganga and Jamuna were separated by a team of neurosurgeons at Singapore General Hospital in a 97-hour operation performed free of charge in 2001.

Singaporeans raised more than 660,000 dollars (now 484,000 US) to help the girls.

Source-AFP

SRM

A new UN study has said that practices like polygamy and promiscuity are driving rampant HIV-AIDS in Swaziland where nearly 40 percent of adults are infected.

The research found that polygamy, widow inheritance, multiple female partners, and extramarital relationships — in the past viewed as important for keeping society together — increased vulnerability to HIV-AIDS.

“If one sexual partner in such sexual networks is HIV positive and sex is unprotected, the practice becomes an important driver of the pandemic,” said the UN Development Programme (UNDP)’s Swaziland Human Development Report for 2008.

Several studies had identified polygamy as a negative influence on the spread of HIV but “a defensive attitude has been maintained by the cultural gate-keepers” to preserve the practice, the study said.

Swaziland’s absolute monarch King Mwasti III has thirteen wives and polygamy is widely practised in the tiny kingdom, but the UN study hints it might be on the decline.

The impoverished mountainous kingdom has been particularly badly hit by southern Africa’s AIDS pandemic, with close to 40 percent of the adult population affected by the virus.

The UNDP’s report found that multiple sexual partners, the loss of virginity at a young age, high levels of inter-generational sex and inconsistent condom use were the pandemic’s main drivers.

Also contributing were gender inequality, sexual violence, a high prevalence of STIs, low levels of male circumcision and the cultural norms.

Source-AFP

RAS/L

In a ground-breaking advance, French neurosurgeons on Friday said they had successfully treated brain tumours through ultra-keyhole surgery, using a tiny fibre-optic laser to destroy cancerous cells.

Alexandre Carpentier of the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris said the exploit was “a world-first” in its use of multiple advanced techniques and of local anaesthesia rather than general sedation.

So far, eight volunteers have been treated in the pilot programme, launched December 2006, Carpentier told AFP.

“They were suffering from metastasing brain tumours caused by various cancers, mainly lung and breast cancer that failed to respond to conventional treatment and were otherwise inoperable,” he said.

Doctors had given the volunteers only three months left to live, on average.

Under the pioneering technique, a minute hole three millimetres (0.12 of an inch) wide was drilled into the skull, allowing the surgeon to introduce a water-cooled fibre-optic laser into the brain.

The device was gently guided towards the tumour area with the help of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner.

Every three seconds, a computer workstation calculated the temperature at the area being burned by the laser to ensure that there was no dangerous overheating and to confirm that only tumorous cells were being destroyed.

The patient received only a local anaesthetic, remaining conscious in order to be able to speak to the medical team to help verify that cerebral functions were not being harmed.

However, “the patients feels nothing during the operation and generally can leave hospital 14 hours later, the evening or the morning after the operation,” the surgeon said.

The results are “conclusive,” said Carpentier.

Treating the patients completely requires two or more bouts of surgery, and there had been no cases of cerebral bruising or epilepsy.

So far, six of the eight have completed the full programme. Of the six, five have not had a relapse — a return of cancerous cells to the brain — at a nine-month monitoring point.

“This is the first time that laser technology has been used intracranially, meaning inside an enclosed skull, using MRI in real time to avoid collateral damage,” said Carpentier.

“This is the forerunner of future techniques in which MRI will play a core intervention role in neurosurgery.”

The pilot trial, reported in the latest issue of the US journal Neurosurgery, was carried out under the supervision of the French Health Products Safety Agency (Afssaps).

It drew on advanced technology supplied by the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and a Texan company, BioTex Inc., which specialises in the use of lasers for medical therapy.

Source-AFP

SRM

Swaziland’s King Mswati III is all set to choose his 14th bride and has sent out more than 50,000 virgin girls into the fields to cut reed for an annual ritual.

The ceremony on Monday comes ahead of controversial double celebrations to mark the impoverished kingdom’s 40 years of independence from Britain and Mswati’s 40th birthday on September 6.

“Since you know that the country is faced with these major activities, I urge you to behave yourselves and make sure that you display respect so that tourists would return to the country,” the Queen mother, Ntombi Twala, told the girls.

The girls were sent to two locations to cut reeds to be used in the annual Reed Dance ceremony at Ludzidzini royal palace near the capital Mbabane.

The age-old reed dance is aimed at encouraging young women to preserve their purity and abstain from sexual activity before marriage.

But the ceremony has seemingly failed to make an impression on the scourge of HIV-AIDS in a country where close to 40 percent of the adult population of one million are infected with the virus, according to a UN report.

The dance spectacle is characterised by bare-breasted maidens, clad in colourful short skirts or sarongs. The king, who has 13 wives, may choose a new bride among the young girls.

The king and eight of his wives returned last week from a controversial Middle East shopping trip in preparation for the so called 40-40 celebrations.

The trip attracted unprecedented condemnation from women’s groups, political parties and civil society groups.

Source-AFP

RAS/L

Industry insiders are proclaiming that the dawn of a “visual computing era” is all but here as lifelike graphics are breaking free of elite computer games and spreading throughout society.

Astronauts, film makers and celebrities joined software savants, engineers and gamers in the heart of Silicon Valley this week for a first-ever NVision conference devoted to computer imagery advances changing the way people and machines interact.

“Visual computing is transforming the videogame industry; transforming the film industry, and has all kinds of potential for how we view real-time television,” NVIDIA co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang told those gathered at the event.

“We solve some of the most challenging problems for more and more companies around the world. Let the era of visual computing begin.”

Gamers dueled for three days in a cavernous room in the San Jose Convention Center while entrepreneurs showed how graphics breakthroughs are shining in other fields.

Car makers are exploring letting potential buyers not only customize automobiles with graphics software but go on virtual test drives.

Graphics processing underpins financial modeling and weather forecasting.

Israel-based Optitex demonstrated software that replicates fabrics so realistically that clothing designers can see what fashions will look and act like on people before garments are made.

Optitex’s animation software is being eyed by Hollywood film makers.

Dassault Systemes puts 3D computer-assisted design to work virtually constructing passenger jets, buildings and more.

“Three-D should be a new way for us to dream and design the future of our world,” The French company’s chief executive Bernard Charles said at NVision.

“It will impact everything we do: education, science, talking to each other … of course games.”

He predicts that lifelike graphics combined with feedback from online communities will let people influence how products are designed, sold and even how “green” they are.

Charles maintains computer simulations will be so realistic that virtual activities will mirror physical experiences.

Simulators already play an important part in training for space shuttle missions, according to former US astronaut Eileen Colleens, the first woman shuttle commander.

“When you fly the actual mission you feel like you are in a simulator,” Collins said. “We really can’t do our job without the good visual graphics that we get.”

The world of visual computing is “inescapable,” said Chris Malachowsky, a co-founder of NVIDIA, a California firm renowned for high-end graphics processing cards for computers.

“We are being presented with displays everywhere,” Malachowsky told AFP. “It used to be about the computing part, but the emphasis is shifting. It is not so much about the computation but how it is presented and seen by people.”

The rising tide of digital videos, photos, films and television shows on the Internet is lifting the status of graphics chips, cards, and software and strengthening a trend to “unflatten” displays with 3D imagery.

Malachowsky spoke of using visual computing power to develop new medicines or provide doctors with real-time 3D images of patients’ organs.

“They will be able to recreate scan data so fast you could see your own heart beating,” Malachowsky said.

“This is being subsidized by all these kids out there playing games.”

Perceptive Pixel founder Jeff Han, referred to by some as “the father of touch screen” computing, maintains graphics opens up user interface control possibilities that could render a “mouse” obsolete.

Han demonstrated touch-screen technology that lets several people simultaneously manipulate applications and files on a single large monitor.

“It’s not personal computing anymore,” Han said. “It’s visual computing.”

Battlestar Galactica bombshell Tricia Helfer praised computer animation innovations that enable the science fiction television series to rivet viewers.

Helfer plays a part-machine, part-organic Cylon character called “Number Six” that has turned on its creators.

“It’s a bit threatening,” Helfer said of technology promising to one day make animated characters indistinguishable from real actors.

“But the advantages and uses of it are amazing, but it is something we are going to have to get used to.”

Source-AFP

RAS/L

Europe’s top consumer electronics show generally showcases gadgets that make life more entertaining with the latest flat screen televisions, stereo equipment and the like.

But this year the Internationale Funkausstellung, opening in Berlin on Friday, will for the first time see usually more down-to-earth appliances like fridges and washing machines fighting for attention.

According to organisers of the six-day show, which hopes to attract more than 200,000 visitors, the inclusion of white goods reflects what they call a “worldwide trend for more comfort in the home and for healthier eating.”

And in these days of soaring energy bills and growing environmental consciousness about global warming and water resources, they also offer greater efficiency.

In an effort to boost flagging sales, makers of these normally commonplace home appliances have given them an image revamp, with even the humble vacuum cleaner made to look futuristic and exciting at the Ifa.

But it is not all superficial. There have also been changes under the hoods of many of these products, with mechanical controls ripped out to be replaced by high-tech electronics.

There are “intelligent” washing machines on display from Bosch for example that adapt the amount of water used to the weight of what is being washed, while dishwashers make more efficient use of every last drop.

Fridges just keep things cool, you might think. But no, fridges at the Ifa have in-built LCD televisions and send you a shopping list of what you need — by email.

Reinhard Zinkann, head of the family-owned household appliance maker Miele, says the industry is banking on the message of improved efficiency to get Germans to replace their energy-guzzling older machines.

But Zinkann and the industry association he heads have their work cut out in attempting to persuade consumers in a slowing economy to part with their money for appliances they may feel they don’t need.

At present Germans only get new appliances every 15 years on average, and rising prices and weaker economic conditions mean that many households have an ever-dwindling amount of euros available to spend each month.

As Zinkann, who is also head of the German household appliances industry association, admits, “the environment is difficult”.

Germany’s ZVEI industry federation has forecast that growth in the second half of 2008 is likely to be “considerably slower” than the first six months of the year, when the sector was hardly booming either.

Makers of vacuum cleaners and fridges are not the only ones hoping for renewed interest in their products. Organisers of Ifa are also hoping to give a shot in the arm to their show, now more than 80 years old.

Only two years ago, Ifa organisers decided to make it an annual event — it was every two years before.

Ifa, with 1,245 exhibitors from 63 countries — up from 1,212 from 32 nations last year — runs until September 3.

Source-AFP

RAS/L

A leak of radioactive iodine last weekend was worse than had initially been thought, fresh tests carried out near a Belgian medical laboratory have revealed.

Samples of grass taken next to the National Institute for Radioactive Elements near the southern city of Charleroi had shown higher levels of radioactive iodine than the first tests, an interior ministry crisis group said here.

The Belgian federal nuclear watchdog gave the incident a three on an international scale of nuclear events that runs to seven, making it the most serious ever in Belgium.

Late Thursday it warned people living near the laboratory not to eat lettuce from their gardens and told farmers not to feed their cattle with grass from the fields there.

Production of radioisotopes was stopped on Monday after an abnormally high level of iodine was detected over the weekend in a ventilation chimney.

Hospitals in several countries could face a shortage of medical radioisotopes used for imaging and treating cancer after the laboratory halted production following the iodine leak, the institute said Wednesday.

Source-AFP

RAS/L

Research into Novartis’ Aurograb treatment designed to combat bacterial infections such as the deadly MRSA bug is being halted by the company after disappointing clinical tests.

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant said in a statement that it had decided to halt the programme “after Phase II results showed a lack of efficacy as an add-on therapy for life-threatening bacterial infections.”

Novartis will take an impairment charge of 235 million dollars (159 million euros) in the third quarter as a result.

MRSA has shot to prominence in recent years as many people catch the bug while being treated in hospitals — leading to doctors in Britain being banned from wearing their traditional white coats in favour of plastic aprons in a bid to reduce the risks of transmission.

Last June, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned that “healthcare-associated infections” such as MRSA, which are resistant to many antibiotics, are “possibly the biggest infectious disease challenge facing the EU.”

It said that around three million people in the European Union catch a healthcare-associated infection every year and approximately 50,000 die as a result.

Source-AFP

RAS/L

Chinese state media is reporting that four million Chinese youngsters are addicted to the Internet, mainly attracted by “unhealthy” online games.

“Internet-addicted teenagers” account for around 10 percent of China’s Web users under the age of 18, the Beijing Times said, quoting Li Jianguo, a vice chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, or parliament.

The committee has called for stricter monitoring of Internet games that have illegal or inappropriate content, the report said.

It has also said games should include technology that automatically logs players off once they exceed a set number of hours of continuous play.

“Unhealthy” games by Chinese government standards could refer to those featuring violence and pornography as well as “unpatriotic games” that make Chinese soldiers or agents the enemy.

The government has tried various measures to regulate the booming online gaming market and curb teenagers’ use of Internet games.

In 2006, it ordered all Chinese Internet game manufacturers to install technology in their games that demands players reveal their real name and identification number.

Source-AFP

RAS/L

A new decree has said that Ivorians with HIV/AIDS can now get free anti-retroviral treatment in public health centers with foreign funders picking up much of the tab.

“Antiretroviral treatment is free in all public health establishments,” said the decree signed by Health Minister Remi Allah Kouadio, which took effect August 20.

Most of the treatment costs will be paid for by the US government’s emergency plan for AIDS relief (PEPFAR) and the Geneva-based Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The two have earmarked 19 million dollars (13 millions euros) and seven million dollars respectively for AIDS relief over the 2008-2009 period, said Toussaint Sibailly, the doctor in charge of the PEPFAR programme here.

The Ivorian government is investing one billion CFA francs (two million dollars) into the project.

Funders hope to treat 77,000 people during the first period, rising to 104,000 by 2010, Sibailly said.

Roughly 4.7 percent of people are HIV-positive in the west African country, according to a 2005-2006 national survey, translating to about 750,000 people of which about a seventh are eligible for anti-retroviral treatment.

Source-AFP

RAS/L

Eight out of 11 judges voted to uphold the abortion law, which allows for termination of pregnancy during the first trimester in Mexico’s top court.

Bells rang out from the capital’s main cathedral and other churches in the city to signal a rejection of the verdict — which opens the possibility of similar measures elsewhere in Mexico — and a handful of youths protested outside the courtroom.

The conservative federal government had challenged the law, backed by anti-abortion groups and the Church.

After three days of debating the issue, a majority of judges rejected their claim that the law — introduced last April by the capital’s left-wing government — was unconstitutional.

“In all nations that have discussed abortion in constitutional courts there is a before and an afterwards,” said Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia, president of the court.

“In Mexico, the afterwards is (now) beginning, the legal and social impact of this decision are undeniable.”

Eight votes out of the 11 Supreme Court judges would have been necessary to abolish the law.

Since it was applied on April 27, 2007, some 12,000 women aged between 18 and 29 have had abortions in 12 clinics in the capital, rights groups say.

Between 1990 and 2005, an average of 13 women died per year due to clandestine abortions in Mexico City, according to pro-abortion groups. The ultra-conservative Provida organization said eight women had died per year.

Since last April only one woman, aged 16, has died during an abortion, due to her doctor being misinformed about the length of her pregnancy.

In the rest of Mexico, states allow abortions only under limited circumstances, such as rape and incest, but rights groups say that in practice such abortions are difficult to obtain.

Source-AFP

RAS/M

Despite disapproval from the influential Roman Catholic church, the Philippine Health Department will promote the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“The use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS is different from their use for birth control,” Health Undersecretary Mario Villaverde told a media briefing.

“The church’s position is detrimental to public health,” he said.

Besides the use of condoms, which have 95 percent effectiveness in preventing HIV/AIDS, the government will also encourage education on the topic and promote measures to guard against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the official said.

Villaverde did not say how condoms would be promoted in a country where all forms of artificial contraception are strongly opposed by the church.

Although rates of HIV/AIDS remain low in the Philippines, the level has recently gone up with an average of 29 cases detected each month in 2007 and 2008, compared with 20 cases a month in previous years.

Source-AFP

RAS/M

Medical experts confirmed on Thursday that four people recently fell ill with tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) in western Austria after eating homemade goats’ cheese.

A shepherd in western Vorarlberg province, who had checked into hospital in July with flu-like symptoms, was found to have the illness following a blood test.

But the man said he had noticed no tick bites, the usual method of transmission, two experts from the Institute of Virology at Vienna Medical University wrote in an article published Thursday.

Doctors finally traced the cause of the illness to the cheese, which the shepherd had made from unpasteurised goat’s and cow’s milk on an isolated pasture at over 1,560-metre (5,120-feet) altitude.

Three other members of his family, who had not been on the pasture, also exhibited flu-like symptoms and headaches.

Further tests found that one of the goats, whose milk had been used to make the cheese, as well as other animals who had eaten leftovers, had developed TBE anti-bodies, meaning they had also been infected.

Ticks were believed until now to be found only below 1,350-metre altitude, but this may have changed due to global warming, the experts said.

Cases of TBE infections via dairy products were reported in recent years almost exclusively in Baltic countries.

Source-AFP

RAS/M

Local media in Cambodia is reporting that a condom lubricant designed for sex workers and gay men has become a popular acne cure among females in the country.

Number One Plus, a water-based lubricant produced by health organisation Population Services International (PSI), is an excellent cure for acne, 29-year-old vendor Tep Kemyoeurn told AFP.

“After I used it for three days, all of my acne dried up and went away,” she said. “Many people believe in it,” she added.

Khen Vanny, 29, from Phnom Penh, told AFP that women of all ages have taken to using the lubricant to get rid of spots.

“It is very effective. Some people don’t believe in it but people who do really get a good result,” she said, adding: “My youngest sister and my aunt use it too.”

Another woman told Khmer-language Kampuchea Thmey newspaper that she had used many kinds of medicine to treat acne but none had worked.

“After that my friends, who work at garment factories in Phnom Penh, advised me to apply the lubricant from Number One Plus condoms on my face every night,” she told the paper.

“And just within three to four nights, the acne on my face gradually and then totally disappeared,” she added.

A vendor near a factory in the coastal city of Sihanoukville told the newspaper that she sold packets of Number One Plus lubricant for 500 riels (12 cents) to many women every day.

The paper urged experts to conduct research about the phenomenon.

PSI were not immediately available for comment on the apparent cosmetic benefits of their product.

Source-AFP

RAS/M

A Swedish food magazine confirmed that it is recalling ten thousand copies after a mistake in one of its recipes left four people poisoned.

“There was a mistake in a recipe for apple cake. Instead of calling for two pinches of nutmeg it said 20 nutmeg nuts were needed,” Matmagasinet’s chief editor Ulla Cocke told AFP.

“We know that four adults ate one cake made from this recipe, and they didn’t feel well,” she said, adding that “this is obviously very regrettable.”

The four people had experienced symptoms of poisoning, including dizziness and headaches, but were now feeling better, she said.

When Matmagasinet first discovered the mistake it immediately sent out letters to its 50,000 subscribers and placed a leaflet inside the copies sold in the store, cautioning that “high doses of nutmeg can cause poisoning symptoms.”

“At first we thought this would be enough, because we didn’t really think anyone would bake or eat this cake, since so much nutmeg would give it a horrible, bitter taste, and because it is simply not that easy to get hold of that much nutmeg,” Cocke said.

Once it became clear that people had been poisoned by the cake, the magazine immediately decided to recall all its store copies.

“We publish 1,200 recipes each year, and of course there have been times when they’ve had a bit too much butter or too little flour, but we have never experienced anything like this before,” Cocke said.

Source-AFP

RAS/M

A Quebec publisher has pulled from stores a magazine that had too thin models amid a public outcry. The publisher also apologized on Thursday for promoting scrawny female forms in the magazine.

In an open letter posted on his company La Maison Simons’s website, Peter Simons offered his “personal apologies” for the latest issue of Twik magazine featuring emaciated models, saying he failed “to exercise proper attention, empathy, and especially, sensitivity and social responsibility.”

Part of the 36-page fashion catalogue’s 450,000 print run went out last week as an insert in several local newspapers and was also to be available at Simons department stores, but will no longer be displayed, he said.

Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc congratulated the company for responding to public complaints.

“After reflecting on these comments, we have drawn up very specific guidelines for our advertising design teams,” Simons said.

Images of bony women are “destructive to a more vulnerable portion of the population, which is exposed to anorexia,” he told the Montreal Gazette.

Earlier this year, France banned the promotion of extreme thinness or severe weight loss, amid a controversy over skinny models.

Source-AFP

RAS/M

Health officials in Canada have confirmed that sixty-five people have either died or become sick likely from contaminated deli meats in the country.

The death toll from listeria infections remained unchanged at 15. So too was the number of confirmed cases, at 29.

However, officials said they now suspected 36 cases of food poisoning in five provinces may also be linked to the outbreak, up from 31 cases the previous day.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said of the 36 suspected cases being investigated, all were positive for listeriosis, but laboratory tests had not yet linked them to the outbreak strain from a Toronto area facility.

On August 19, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a recall of Maple Leaf sliced corned beef, roast beef, pepperoni, salami, sausages, smoked ham, and turkey thought to be contaminated with the bacteria listeria monocytogenes.

The number of food products recalled has since risen to 220, including packaged sandwiches made with the tainted meat, with a total estimated value of 20 million dollars.

Food contaminated with listeria monocytogenes may not look or smell spoiled, but eating it can cause high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea.

Pregnant women, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems are particularly at risk. Infected pregnant women may experience only a mild, flu-like illness, but infections can lead to premature delivery or stillbirth.

Source-AFP

RAS/M

The listeriosis scare is overwhelming the blood testing laboratories in Ontario, Canada. The labs are being advised to refuse tests for those who have no symptoms.

There has been a massive recall of the meat products of Maple Leaf Foods, a leading, global food processing company, following a listeria outbreak.

As of Thursday, there were 29 confirmed cases of listeriosis caused by EMListeria monocytogenes/EM bacteria. Of the 29 victims, 15 have died – 12 in Ontario, one in British Columbia, one in Saskatchewan and one in Quebec. In seven of those cases, listeriosis has not been confirmed as the actual cause of death.

There are now 36 suspected cases of listeriosis – 19 in Ontario, one in British Columbia, five in Alberta, one in Manitoba and 10 in Quebec.

On August 19, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a recall of Maple Leaf sliced corned beef, roast beef, pepperoni, salami, sausages, smoked ham, and turkey thought to be contaminated with the bacteria listeria monocytogenes.

Over the weekend, the number food products recalled rose to 220, including packaged sandwiches made with the tainted meat, with a total estimated value estimated of 20 million dollars.

It is in such a backdrop there seems a major rush for blood tests. Authorities say that it is normal for people who’ve eaten recalled meat to wonder if they’ll get sick with listeriosis – the bacteria has an incubation period of 11 to 70 days. But in Ontario, so many people are seeking blood tests that the labs are unable to cope with the demand on them.

Healthy people who have eaten recalled products will likely be fine and need not seek medical attention. If you have eaten the products and develop food poisoning or a fever, those are reasons to go to a doctor, health officials said.

“The concern is, capacity will be completely overwhelmed and we won’t be able to deliver service to people who really need to have blood cultures,” said Dr. Frank Thompson, medical director of Lifelabs in Toronto, which analyzes blood samples sent by doctors from across Ontario.

Thompson’s lab would normally run fewer than 10 blood cultures for listeria a day. Since the beginning of the week, the lab has been doing more than 150 a day.

There is no benefit in testing healthy people, agreed Dr. Vanessa Allen, a microbiologist at Ontario Public Health Labs.

“There is no test for those who are asymptomatic because it’s not clear that would give us any information that would be helpful, nor is there any therapy that would be offered,” said Allen.

Family doctors in Ontario said they were told about the meat recall, but they were given little other direction from public health officials.

“That advisory as far as I can recall didn’t mention what should we be doing if a healthy person comes in and asks to be tested,” said Dr. Dara Maker, a family physician in Toronto.

Thompson said he understands it is difficult for family doctors to persuade people they don’t need the test, but he urged physicians to do so. Provincial health officials told doctors to order tests only if patients are showing symptoms, such as malaise, fever, diarrhea and cramps.

People in high-risk groups who exhibit symptoms, such as the elderly or pregnant women, should see a doctor immediately, Maker said.

In a news conference in Ottawa Thursday afternoon, Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz said his department is working “around the clock” to be sure all recalled products are removed from institutions.

“We have checked 15,000 institutions, distributors and retailers, and can say affected products are being removed thanks to the heightened public awareness,” Ritz said.

In another development, CBC News learned of another suspected listeriosis death on Thursday. Sources told CBC that Elizabeth Schmidt, 81, of Leamington, Ont., died while being treated for listeriosis at the Windsor Regional Hospital.

The local health unit confirmed that a patient was in hospital with listeriosis, but would not release the patient’s identity.

It’s unclear whether listeriosis was the cause of death or whether the listeria strain that made Schmidt ill was the one connected to the nationwide listeria outbreak relating to Maple Leaf meats.

Since tests linked the listeriosis outbreak to a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto, the recall of meat products potentially tainted with Listeria monocytogenes has grown almost daily.

Late Wednesday, six sandwiches and two sandwich platters were added to the long list of recalled products, including cooked ham and salami sandwiches sold in Sobeys, Foodland and IGA stores in Ontario and two Kirkland Signature sandwich platters sold at Costco.

Not connected to Maple Leaf Foods, two brands of Quebec-made cheeses – Riopelle de l’Ile and Mont-Jacob – have also been pulled from store shelves after officials found contamination from a strain of listeria different from that found in meat products linked to the deadly nationwide listeriosis outbreak. At least nine cases of listeriosis have been associated with the cheeses.

Maple Leaf Foods said Wednesday that it accepts the blame in the listeriosis outbreak, and that Canada’s food inspection system is not at fault.

Company president Michael McCain said the Toronto plant at the heart of the recall won’t be reopened until an investigation is complete and he has personally signed off on it.

Symptoms of listeriosis – which include high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea – can occur up to 70 days after consuming contaminated food, though the average incubation period is 30 days, the federal food agency said.

People most at risk include newborns, the elderly, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems, public health officials said. People should wash produce and avoid unpasteurized milk and dairy products, the CFIA advised.

Public health and Maple Leaf Foods officials have said the source of the contamination may never be determined, since listeria is widespread and commonly found in the environment, including in soil and in water.

Source-Medindia

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Canadian policymakers have pointed out longevity is not just a matter of economic development of a nation one lives in. Lack of housing and clean water do kill people in a big way even in wealthy countries, a report to the World Health Organization says.

The 256-page report, Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health, shows how the conditions in which people live and work directly affects the quality of their health.

The “toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure, responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible,” the report’s authors wrote.

“Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale.”

The report defines social determinants of health are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness.

In Canada, nearly 1.5 million people, mostly single mothers and children, lack decent family income, safe and affordable housing, suffer food insecurity and are vulnerable to violence, said the group’s Canadian commissioner, Monique Begin, a former federal health minister and a professor in the school of management at the University of Ottawa.

Canadians may be proud that the United Nations voted the country “the best country in the world in which to live” for seven years in a row, but not everyone shares equally in that high quality of life, Begin said.

“This report is a wake-up call for action towards truly living up to our reputation.”

Food banks in Canadian cities, unacceptable housing, high suicide rates among young Inuit, and the uprooting of Kashechewan Cree community from the James Bay region in 2005 and 2008 because of unsafe water and flooding are examples of areas for improvements, Begin said.

Health inequities are reflected in the differences in life expectancies between countries, and within countries, the report said.

A child born in Japan or Sweden can expect to live to 80 years, but less than 50 years in several African countries.

Within a rich country like the United Kingdom, the life expectancy at birth for men in the Calton neighbourhood of Glasgow is 54 years, 28 years less than that of men in Lenzie, a few kilometres away, the report said.

The commission’s three recommendations to close the gap in a generation are:

Improve daily living conditions, such as nourishing mothers and expanding education to early child development.

Tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money and resources, for example between men and women.

Measure and understand the problem of health inequity and evaluate the impact of changes.

Canada, Brazil, Chile, Iran, Kenya, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Sweden, and the U.K. have committed to improving social determinants of health equity, and are already developing policies across governments to tackle them, the commission said.

Begin said examples in Canada include the Healthy Cities project that supports health promotion, Saskatoon’s plan of action on poverty and the Calgary Committee to End Homelessness, CBC News reports.

Source-Medindia

GPL/M

US Hip Hop star Marion “Suge” Knight was jailed on domestic violence and drug charges Wednesday but has since been released on bail.

Knight, 43, is scheduled to appear in Las Vegas Justice Court on Sept. 26 to face the charges. He was booked into the Clark County Detention Center after police found him holding a knife and standing over a woman in the western Las Vegas Valley.

He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, battery domestic violence, possession of a controlled substance and possession of dangerous drugs without a prescription, police said.

Police said the founder of bankrupt Death Row Records was arrested about 6:40 a.m. after officers arrived at the scene of a minor traffic accident and found Knight hitting a woman in a parking lot off a busy thoroughfare.

“A citizen sees the beating in a parking lot; police get there fast; they see him beating her.

It’s a good, solid case,” Las Vegas police Lt. Chris Carroll said.

The woman was not stabbed, but she was treated at a hospital for injuries that were not life-threatening.

Police did not release the woman’s name or age but said she identified herself as Knight’s girlfriend of three years.

“This is a very large man,” Carroll said, estimating his weight at more than twice the woman’s. “He was on top of her, actually in the act of violently beating her when the officers arrived, with the knife in his hand.”

Knight allegedly punched the woman in the head as he was driving. In an effort to escape, the woman grabbed the steering wheel and the vehicle hit the curb, police said.

The woman then fled the vehicle and Knight allegedly started to chase her on foot, catching up with her as officers arrived, police said.

The woman was taken to Spring Valley Hospital.

Knight had the drugs Ecstasy and hydrocodone when he was arrested, Carroll said, but it was not clear whether he or the woman had used drugs or alcohol before the arrest.

Knight is a co-founder of Death Row Records and has had numerous run-ins with law enforcement.

On Sept. 7, 1996, Knight was driving the car and sitting next to rap artist Tupac Shakur, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting eastbound on Flamingo Road near Koval Lane.

Knight won a football scholarship to UNLV, then played professionally for the Los Angeles Rams for a short time before entering the hip-hop scene.

He became a concert promoter and a bodyguard for celebrities.

In 1987 he faced auto theft, concealed weapon and attempted murder charges, but received probation.

He received probation in 1992 for weapons and assault charges. He was found guilty of breaking that probation in 1996 after security cameras caught him at the MGM Grand. He was sentenced to nine years in prison for parole violation.

Released from prison in 2001, Knight was arrested again on Dec. 23, 2002 for a parole violation. Police said he moved to Malibu without informing his parole officer and associated with known gang members. He was released after 61 days.

Then Knight was arrested on June 21, 2003 for assaulting a parking lot attendant outside a Los Angeles nightclub. He was found guilty of assault and for violating his parole and received a 10-month prison sentence.

In Barstow, California, Knight was stopped by police for making an illegal U-turn on Feb. 5, 2005. Police found marijuana in his truck and he was arrested and held for a week in jail, but later cleared of all but the moving violation charge and driving without insurance.

He was fined (Dollor) 691 for the illegal turn.

His nickname “Suge” came from a childhood nickname of “Sugar Bear.” He was born April 19, 1965 in Compton, Calif.

His former record company was auctioned in June for (Dollor) 24 million to New York-based Global Music Group Inc.

Daniel McCarthy, a lawyer handling a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing for Knight and the record company, said Wednesday that the sale is pending.

Death Row Records was known for releasing seminal gangster rap albums by Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, and it sold tens of millions of albums in the heyday of early 1990s rap.

In 2006, a federal judge ordered a bankruptcy trustee takeover of Death Row Records, saying the label had undergone gross mismanagement.

Source-Medindia

GPL/S

As we keep busy professional lives, it is easy to throw caution to the winds and binge on the wrong kinds of food. With the plethora of choice available in the form of food courts at the work place, it is easy to be tempted.

Stress coupled with an improper diet can be disastrous for health. Stop and think before taking the wrong bite.

Get food to work for you

• There is nothing to beat a bowl of fruits and vegetables for nutrition, also keeping you light and mentally alert at work. Keep 3-4 fruits handy and nibble on a different fruit each time to bring a change in taste.

• Bowl of nuts at the work area is a good way to beat hunger. Eating more nuts instead of food laden with fat can bring down cholesterol levels by 6%.

• Reduce your caffeine intake, although you might want to bet on it for keeping you alert. Instead go for water and juice. Take a big gulp of water frequently and you would be doing your cells a great favor by keeping them hydrated.

Demystifying the causes for premature childbirth has become essential in recent times especially with the sudden surge in the number of such births. One of the major causes that researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have hit upon is the existence of previously unknown and unidentified infections of the amniotic fluid.

An analysis of amniotic fluid from women in pre-term labor indicated that 15 percent of the fluid samples harbored bacteria or fungi – an increase of 50 percent over previous estimates.

The heavier the burden of infection, the more likely the women were to deliver younger, sicker infants.

“If we could prevent these infections in the first place, or detect them sooner, we might one day be able to prevent some of these premature births,” said research associate Dan DiGiulio, MD, who conducted the study in the laboratory of senior author David Relman, MD.

Previous analyses of the same samples using a different, more conventional method had concluded that only about 10 percent were infected.

More and more children are being born prematurely in the United States, with 12 percent of births coming before the 37th week of gestation. Premature babies are vulnerable to breathing problems, underdeveloped organs, infections and cerebral palsy.

DiGiulio’s team looked for the DNA of germs in amniotic fluid samples collected from 166 women in pre-term labor at the Detroit Medical Center between October 1998 and December 2002.

They used this method and standard laboratory cultures to determine that 25 of the 166 samples were infected with either bacteria or fungi. They also found at least one unknown organism that could be a new species.

The researchers found that all women with infected amniotic fluid went on to deliver their babies pre-term, while women with no infections were able to stop their labor.

Now the team is working to see if infections can be detected before pre-term labor starts, which could lead to new prevention or treatment approaches.

The study is published in the Aug. 26 issue of PLoS ONE.

Source-ANI

TAN/M

It’s been a long journey, but it’s finally come to an end. The Welsh grandmother who, in an attempt to create awareness on prostate cancer had set out on a 20,000 mile journey around the world, has at long last returned home. Her trip spanned all of 5 years!

Rosie Swale-Pope, 61, had started her odyssey around the globe on her cart in 2003.

The granny of two received euphoric welcome with hundreds of well-wishers out on the road to cheer for her as her journey came to an end.

Swale-Pope described her journey as “just a fun run that’s got out of hand”.

“I can’t believe you’ve all turned out for me. I’m overwhelmed. It’s a journey that came out of sorrow and pain and heartache, but it’s a journey that has turned to joy,” Times Online quoted her as saying.

“Thank you for the most beautiful welcome anyone could have. This is a dream come true, and I hope everyone’s dreams come true,” she added.

Swale-Pope had pains in her legs caused by stress fractures that compelled a stay in a Haverfordwest hospital, and she hobbled the last stretch of her journey on crutches.

She said that she hoped that the project would help highlight the importance of early cancer screenings.

“The death of my husband, Clive, from prostate cancer taught me more than anything about how precious life is, how short it can be – that you have to grab life, do what you can while you can, and try to give something back,” she said.

“If I can spread the message to people to get checked out, all this will have been worth it,” she added.

In the 1980s Swale-Pope sailed solo in a yacht across the Atlantic. She has run across the Sahara and ridden through Chile on horseback.

Source-ANI

TAN/M

In a strange twist to fate, Big Brother star Jade Goody’s pap smear tests (used for early detection of cervical cancer) had wrongly given her the “all-clear signal” just 3 weeks before her diagnosis. Though it is constantly emphasized that such tests are fundamental for cancer detection, Jade Goody’s story comes as a rude shock that this system isn’t infallible.

The reality TV star was given the all-clear by medics, despite collapsing three weeks ago, and undergoing four tests to examine pre-cancerous cells, reports the Mirror.

Now, a large cancerous tumor in her womb has been spotted and the disease may have spread.

She faces a hysterectomy, radiotherapy and chemotherapy and fears she may not live to see her two sons grow up.

The Harley Street consultant treating mum-of-two Goody has confirmed her patient’s condition is severe.

Source-ANI

TAN/M

Sleep could be the “price” you pay to keep your brain active and alert for the following day- researchers presume this is the core function of sleep, simply because they still cannot explain the mysteries surrounding the “sleep” activity. The need for sleep remains incomprehensible.

The study has been published this week in PLoS Biology.

The study by Chiara Cirelli and Giulio Tononi rejects the hypothesis that sleep is merely a way to impose a quiet, immobile state (rest), and isn’t important by itself in mammals and birds.

The search for the core function of sleep can seem as elusive as the search for the mythological phoenix, says Cirelli, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.

“We don’t understand the purpose of sleep, but it must be important because all animals do it,” Cirelli says.

There’s no clear evidence of an animal species that doesn’t sleep, she says. Even the dolphin-which is sometimes held up as an animal that doesn’t sleep because it moves continuously-will show “unihemispheric sleep” with one eye closed and one half its brain showing the slow waves characteristic of deep sleep.

“The very fact that dolphins have developed the remarkable specialization . . ., rather than merely getting rid of sleep altogether, should count as evidence that sleep must serve some essential function and cannot be eliminated,” Cirelli says.

She also argues that sleep is strictly regulated by the brain, because sleep deprivation is followed by a rebound, in which the sleep-deprived animal either sleeps longer, or spends more time in the deeper sleep characterized by large slow brain waves.

Prolonged sleep deprivation has been shown to kill rats, flies and cockroaches. Humans who have a genetic insomnia can also die. In less extreme cases, sleep deprivation affects cognitive function in animals ranging from flies to rodents.

Rats kept awake will engage in “micro-sleep” episodes, and sleep-deprived humans tend to fall asleep even in the most dangerous circumstances.

Because it is universal, tightly regulated, and cannot be lost without serious harm, Cirelli argues that sleep must have an important core function.

“Sleep may be the price you pay so your brain can be plastic the next day,” Cirelli and Tononi say.

Their hypothesis is that sleep allows the brain to regroup after a hard day of learning by giving the synapses, which increase in strength during the day, a chance to damp down to baseline levels. This is important because the brain uses up to 80 percent of its energy to sustain synaptic activity.

Sleep may also be important for consolidating new memories, and to allow the brain to “forget” the random, unimportant impressions of the day, so there is room for more learning the next day. This could be why the brain waves are so active during certain periods of sleep.

Source-ANI

TAN/M

“Perfect Pitch” is not as elusive to non-musicians as once thought. The term refers to a person’s ability to identify and recognize a tone sans reference. A University of Rochester study has revealed that this talent is more common among people without an ear for music than previously believed.

Experts at the university’s Eastman School of Music and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences have revealed that their new test is based on a technique to discern how infants recognize words in a language they are learning.

“Tests for perfect pitch have always demanded that subjects already have some musical training or at least familiarity with a particular piece of music, which really limits the pool of candidates you can test,” said Elizabeth Marvin, professor of music theory at the world-renowned Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

“That means nobody really knew how prevalent perfect pitch is in humans in general,” she added.

While making a presentation at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition in Sapporo, Japan, recently, the researchers revealed that they began their study by looking into research on pitch perception in animals and found that perfect pitch was widespread in the animal kingdom, even though it’s very rare in humans.

Previous studies had shown that animals such as birds, for instance, can identify a series of repeated notes with ease, but when the notes are transposed up or down even a small amount, the melody becomes completely foreign to the bird.

This holds true for almost all animals, but not humans, which suggests that, ironically, common relative pitch hearing may require more brainpower than perfect pitch.

With a view to determining the cognitive basis for perfect pitch, Marvin and her colleague Elissa Newport wanted to test the basis for pitch perception and memory in people who had never been musically trained in order to get a better idea of exactly how common perfect pitch is in humans.

During the study, both musicians and non-musicians listened to groups of three notes, with the groups played in a continuous stream in random order for 20 minutes.

The researchers observed that just like the human mind quickly begins to identify new sound sequences (words) in a foreign language, the students learned to identify the groups of notes embedded in the stream, though they could not identify and remember the names of particular notes as they were constantly coming in the 20-minute stream.

Marvin and Newport then tested the students by replaying the note groups, as well as new groups that the students had not heard before. The students were then asked whether each group of notes was familiar or unfamiliar.

Some of the original note groups had been transposed to a different key without the knowledge of the students.

Students who unconsciously used perfect pitch to identify notes stumbled over the transpositions, and heard them as a new group of notes they had never heard before.

On the other hand, students who relied on relative pitch heard the transposed notes and automatically and unconsciously recognized them as familiar, the notes seemed to be of the same group heard before.

Marvin and Newport says that, surprisingly, there were a number of non-musicians who used perfect pitch to identify groups of notes, but did not know they had perfect pitch.

The team is now investigating the other cognitive abilities of this new group of listeners with perfect pitch, to determine what might distinguish them from the more numerous listeners with only relative pitch perception.

They are also planning to investigate a controversial hypothesis that native speakers of tonal languages like Chinese, which utilize pitch to distinguish different words, have their perfect pitch abilities enhanced by their language’s necessary attention to pitch.

Source-ANI

TAN/L

If your child is troubled or faces domestic violence, he may not be the only one being harmed. According to new research, troubled children also tend to affect their classmates’ scores in math and reading while also worsening their friends’ behaviors.

The study led by Scott Carrell, an assistant professor of economics at UC Davis, and co-author Mark Hoekstra, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh cross-referenced the standardized test results and school disciplinary records with court restraining order petitions filed in domestic violence cases for more than 40,000 students enrolled in public elementary schools in Florida’s Alachua County for the years 1995 through 2003.

It showed that children from households linked to domestic violence were 44 percent more likely to have been suspended from school and 28 percent more likely to have been disciplined for bad behavior and score lower in their tests.

The also found that these children not only affected their own test scores and behavioral patterns but also their classmates. Troubled boys caused the bulk of the disruption, and the largest effects were on other boys

Carrell and Hoekstra estimate that adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 children reduces the standardized reading and math scores of other boys in the room by nearly two percentile points.

And adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 students increases the likelihood that another boy in the class will commit a disciplinary infraction by 17 percent.

On the other hand troubled girls had only a small and statistically insignificant impact on the test scores or behavior of their classmates.

The study suggested that having a troubled student in a class reduced classmates’ combined test scores by nearly 1 percentile point and increased their likelihood of getting into disciplinary trouble at school by 6 percent.

“Our findings have important implications for both education and social policy,” Carrell and Hoekstra write.

“First, they suggest that policies that change a child’s exposure to classmates from troubled families will have important consequences for his or her education outcomes. In addition, the results also help provide a more complete measure of the social costs of family conflict.”

However, Carrell said that the research does not suggest that all disruptive schoolchildren come from families that experience domestic violence, nor are all children from domestic violence disruptive.

The study, “Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone’s Kids,” was published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Source-ANI

TAN/L

Men who enjoy warming their bottom on a heated car seat should beware, for they may also be frying their chances of fatherhood, New Scientist reports in its latest issue.

Sperm production is best when the temperature of the scrotum is one or two degrees Celsius (1.8-3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) below the core body temperature of 37 C (99 F).

Testicle-testing German researchers fitted sensors to the scrotums of 30 healthy men who then sat on a heated car seat for 90 minutes.

After one hour, the average scrotal temperature had risen to 37.3 C (99.5 F), and in one volunteer reached a whopping 39.7 C (103 F).

By comparison, men who sat on unheated car seats reached an average scrotal temperature of only 36.7 C (98 F).

The study, led by Andreas Jung at the University of Giessen, did not verify the volunteer’s sperm count or sperm mobility, but the researchers fear that only a slight increase in temperature is enough to damage the sperm-production process, the British weekly says.

Previous work in this field has already found that sitting in a car for more than three hours, even on an unheated seat, can impair a man’s ability to conceive.

The report appears in next Saturday’s issue of New Scientist. The study appears in full in a specialist journal, Fertility and Sterility.

Source-AFP

SRM

The AIDS virus spreads in New York City three times faster than in the rest of the United States, the city’s health department said Wednesday in a report on the deadly disease.

Some 4,800 New Yorkers became HIV infected in 2006, said what is considered the first report to distinguish between people actually infected that year with the AIDS virus and those infected in previous years.

For the same reason, however, the report said it was impossible to determine if there was an increase in HIV infection, but suggested that in New York the infection rate was three times higher than the national average.

With its estimated 100,000 HIV-positive individuals, New York City is considered the US epicenter of the AIDS epidemic.

The report put the rate of HIV contagion in the city at 72 per 100,000, while that of the United States at 23 per 100,000.

Source-AFP

SRM