Hot 4 Health

No one can live a long and healthy life without the will to go on; sometimes mood swings can make us feel that life is too much for us.

A bad mood not only gives you a gloomy outlook, it also lowers your immune function, leading the way to illness. Here are some suggestions to lift your mood, your spirit, and your health.

1. A Laughing Matter
"Laugh Therapy," pioneered by Norman Cousins, has turned out to have real substance. Research has discovered that laughter and joy boost immune functions, especially the production of the natural killer cells that help defend the body from illness and cancer.

Laughter also increases the release of endorphins - compounds that give you a sense of well-being - in your brain. Without a doubt, joyful people liver longer and healthier lives. So read your favorite comics, watch your favorite comedies, and laugh it up!

2. Amino Acid for Restored Mindset
When an imbalance or deficiency is creating a bad mood, the Europeans use supplements of a natural compound found in human cells to regulate mood and restore a healthy mindset. SAMe (S-adenosyl-L-methionine) is produced from methionine, an amino acid that plays a role in the production of uplifting neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.

One study indicated that SAMe worked on patients who had unsuccessful results with conventional antidepressants. To get a boost from SAMe, take a supplement combining it with vitamins B6 and B12.

3. Hands-On Healing
Human touch increases the production of endorphins, growth hormone, and DHEA, all of which lengthen your life span and lower the negative impact of stress. Studies have found that patients who are regularly touched recover faster than those who are not touched. So give someone a hug and feel both of your moods improve.

4. Boost Your "Youth Hormones"
You don't need pills to flood your body with a rejuvenating flood of growth hormones. Research has found that doing squats and leg presses will greatly increase your natural production of the "youth hormone". Increased growth hormone translates to an elevated mood, among other physical benefits. Keep it up with weight training, knee bends, push-ups, and rowing.

5. Take a Bracing Breath
Breathing correctly is important for dispelling the toxins and wastes from your body; in fact, it is estimated that we expel only about 30 percent of toxins in our bodies through the bowels and bladder-the rest is all respiratory. Breathing is also a great way to clear your mind, boost your energy, and improve your mood. Practice deep, slow, rhythmic, breathing daily with mind-body disciplines such as tai chi, yoga, qigong, and meditation.

6. Smell the Joy
Research has shown that smell has a definite impact on our bodies and minds. When you stimulate the olfactory nerves inside your nose, you activate the limbic system of your brain, which is associated with moods and memory. This concept is instrumental to aromatherapy, a natural health tradition that makes use of the healing powers of plants with strong scents.

Influenza

Influenza (flu) is a viral infection. People often use the term "flu" to describe any kind of mild illness, such as a cold or a stomach virus, that has symptoms like the flu. But the real flu is different. Flu symptoms are usually worse than a cold and last longer. The flu usually does not cause vomiting or diarrhea.

Most flu outbreaks happen in late fall and winter.

Causes the flu

The flu is caused by influenza viruses A and B. There are different strains, or types, of the flu virus every year.

Symptoms

The flu causes a fever, body aches, a headache, a dry cough, and a sore or dry throat. You will probably feel tired and less hungry than usual. The symptoms usually are the worst for the first 3 or 4 days. But it can take 1 to 2 weeks to get completely better.

It usually takes 1 to 4 days to get symptoms of the flu after you have been around someone who has the virus.

Most people get better without problems. But sometimes the flu can lead to a bacterial infection, such as an ear infection, a sinus infection, or bronchitis. In rare cases, the flu may cause a more serious problem, such as pneumonia.

Certain people are at higher risk of problems from the flu. They include young children, pregnant women, older adults, and people with long-term illnesses or with impaired immune systems that make it hard to fight infection.

The flu diagnosed

Your doctor will ask you about your symptoms and examine you. This usually gives the doctor enough information to find out if you have the flu, especially if many cases of a similar illness have occurred in the area and the local health department reports a flu outbreak.

In some cases, the doctor may do a blood test or take a sample of fluid from your nose or throat to find out what type of flu virus you have.

Treated

Most people can treat flu symptoms at home. Home treatment includes resting, drinking plenty of fluids, and taking medicine to lower your fever.

If you think you have the flu, your doctor may be able to give you medicine that can make the symptoms milder. But you need to start taking it within 2 days of your first symptoms.

You can help prevent the flu by getting the flu vaccine every year. The best time to get the vaccine is in October or November, just before the start of flu season. You can get the vaccine as a shot or in a spray that you breathe in through your nose.

Almost anyone over 6 months old can have the flu vaccine. The vaccine is especially important for people who are at higher risk of problems from the flu, including:

• Children 6 months through 4 years of age.
• Adults ages 50 and older.
• Adults and children who have long-term health problems or an impaired immune system.
• Women who will be pregnant during the flu season.

The flu vaccine is also recommended for health care workers and anyone who lives or works with a person who is at higher risk of problems from the flu. Your doctor can help you decide if the flu vaccine is a good choice for you.

The vaccine usually prevents most cases of the flu. But even if you do get the flu after you've had the vaccine, your symptoms will be milder and you'll have less chance of problems from the flu. You cannot get the flu from the flu vaccine.

By Maria G. Essig, MS, ELS

• Dandelion cleanses the liver and helps release built-up anger.
• Milk thistle protects and restores the liver.
• Schisandra berry protects the liver and soothes emotional anxiety.
• Chrysanthemum flower is used to cleanse the liver and neutralize toxins.
• White peony root is a Chinese herb often used to soothe the liver and balance the mood.

Everyone loses some hair every day. Losing up to 100 hairs a day is normal.

But if hair loss runs in your family, you could lose a lot more hair. Over time, you may end up with bald spots or hair that slowly gets thinner. About half of all people have this type of hair loss by around age 50.

Other factors, such as diseases and medicines, also can cause you to lose more hair than normal.

Although hair loss is fairly common, it can be a tough thing to live with, especially when it changes how you look. But there are ways you can treat your hair loss.

Causes Hair Loss

Common causes of hair loss include:

• Heredity. In most cases, hair loss is inherited, which means it’s passed down from one or both of your parents. This is called male-pattern or female-pattern hair loss.
• Stress, including physical stress from surgery, illness, or high fever.
• Chemotherapy, which is powerful medicine that destroys cancer cells.
• Damage to your hair from pulling it back too tightly, wearing tight braids or ponytails, or using curling irons or dyes.
• Age, since you grow less hair as you get older. Hair also gets thinner and tends to break more easily as you age.
• Poor diet, especially not getting enough protein or iron.
• Thyroid diseases, like hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism.
• Ringworm of the scalp, which is common in children.

Your symptoms will depend on what kind of hair loss you have.

If your hair is thinning, it happens slowly over time, so you may not notice the hairs falling out. If your hair is shedding, then clumps of hair fall out. You may lose hair all over your scalp, which is called general hair loss. Or you may lose hair only in one area, which is called focal hair loss.

With inherited hair loss, men usually get bald spots around the forehead or on the top of the head, while women have thinning all over the scalp.

See a picture of typical inherited hair loss.

Since your hair has a lot to do with your appearance, losing it may cause you to have lower self-esteem if you don't like how you look. This is especially true in women and teens.

Your doctor will ask you some questions, like how much hair you're losing, when it started, and whether your parents have hair loss. He or she will look closely at your scalp and hair-loss pattern and may gently pull out a few hairs for tests.

If it’s not clear what’s causing you to lose your hair, your doctor may do a blood test or look at a sample of your hair or scalp with a microscope.

Treated

How you choose to treat your hair loss depends on the cause. It also depends on your feelings. You may decide that you need treatment, or you may not be worried about thinning hair or baldness. The choice is up to you.

Hair loss that runs in the family can be treated with medicines or with surgery, such as a hair transplant. Some people choose to wear hairpieces, like wigs or toupees (say "too-PAYZ"). Finding different ways of styling your hair, like dyeing or combing, also can help. If hair loss is caused by something you can control, like stress or medicines, you can treat it by getting rid of the cause.

When you are deciding about treatment, think about these questions:

• Which treatment is most likely to work?
• How long will it take?
• Will it last?
• What are the side effects and other risks?
• How much will it cost, and will insurance cover it?

Hair grow back

When your hair loss is inherited, your hair won't grow back naturally. Treatment can help some hair grow back and prevent more from falling out, but you probably won't get all your hair back. And treatment doesn't work for everyone.

When medicines, stress, or hair damage cause you to lose your hair, it often will grow back after you take away the cause. If this doesn't help, you may need other treatment.

If you're unhappy with how hair loss makes you look, treatment may boost your self-esteem. It’s natural to want to like the way you look.

But keep in mind that treatment, especially medicines and surgery, can have some side effects and risks. Be sure to discuss your decision with your doctor.

Prevent

If you want to minimize your hair loss, the two nutrients that you have to make sure you have plenty of every day. These nutrients are Vitamin A and Vitamin B.

• Vitamin A

Vitamin A is a key for developing healthy cells, tissues in the body, and reducing hair loss. Vitamin A deficiencies commonly cause thickening of the scalp, dry hair, and dandruff. Air pollution, smoking, extremely bright light, certain cholesterol-lowering drugs, laxatives, and aspirin are some known vitamin A inhibitors. Liver, fish oil, eggs, fortified milk, and red, yellow, and orange vegetables are good sources for vitamin A, as are some dark green leafy vegetables like spinach.

Sources of vitamin A:

Carrot
Milk
Beef
Egg substitute
Cheese
Papaya
Mango

• Vitamin B

B-vitamins work interdependently and therefore all levels of B vitamins need to be sufficient in order to maintain proper health. Vitamins B-6, folic acid, biotin, and vitamin B-12 are all key components in maintaining healthy hemoglobin levels in the blood, which is the iron-containing portion of red-blood cells.
Hemoglobin’s primary function is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body, so if these vitamins were deficient in your body, then hair and skin would suffer.

Sources of vitamin B:

Mollusks
Liver
Haddock
Milk
Egg
Nuts
Green vegetables
Mushrooms
Meat
Enriched cereals
Pasta
Fish

Other problems (like bacterial vaginosis and trichomoniasis) can cause vaginal symptoms that may seem like a yeast infection. If you need help finding out which problem you have, see the Check Your Symptoms section of the topic Vaginal Problems.

Vaginal yeast infection

Yeast is a fungus that normally lives in the vagina in small numbers. A vaginal yeast infection means that too many yeast cells are growing in the vagina. These infections are very common. Although they can bother you a lot, they are not usually serious. And treatment is simple.

Causes a vaginal yeast infection

Most yeast infections are caused by a type of yeast called Candida albicans.

A healthy vagina has many bacteria and a small number of yeast cells. The most common bacteria, Lactobacillus acidophilus, help keep other organisms—like the yeast—under control.

When something happens to change the balance of these organisms, yeast can grow too much and cause symptoms. Taking antibiotics sometimes causes this imbalance. The high estrogen levels caused by pregnancy or hormone replacement therapy can also cause it. So can certain health problems, like diabetes or HIV infection.

What are the symptoms?

A yeast infection causes itching or soreness in the vagina and sometimes causes pain or burning when you urinate or have sex. Some women also have a thick, clumpy, white discharge that has no odor and looks a little like cottage cheese.

These symptoms are more likely to occur during the week before your menstrual period.

Vaginal infection

It’s easy to guess wrong about a vaginal infection. See your doctor if you aren't sure what you have or if this is the first time you have had these symptoms. Also see your doctor if you are pregnant. Your doctor may want to do a vaginal exam.

How is it treated?

If you have had a yeast infection before and can recognize the symptoms, and you aren't pregnant, you can treat yourself at home with medicines you can buy without a prescription. You can use an antifungal cream, or a suppository that you put into your vagina, or antifungal tablets that you swallow.

If your symptoms are mild, you may want to wait to see if they clear up on their own.

Yeast infections are common during pregnancy. If you are pregnant, don't use medicine for a yeast infection without talking to your doctor first.

If you use a cream or suppository to treat the infection, don't depend on a condom or diaphragm for birth control. The oil in some medicines weakens latex, the material often used to make these devices.

Many women have infections that come back. If you have more than four yeast infections in a year, see your doctor. He or she may do some tests to see if your yeast infections are being caused by another health problem, such as diabetes.

Prevent yeast infections

You can prevent yeast infections by making sure that your genital area stays as dry as possible and can “breathe.” For example:

• Wear cotton, not nylon, underwear, and avoid tight-fitting pants and panty hose.
• Change out of a wet swimsuit right away.
• Avoid douches and feminine sprays, scented toilet paper, and deodorant tampons.

During perimenopause or postmenopause, call your doctor about:

• Menstrual periods that are unusually heavy, irregular, or prolonged (1½ to 2 times longer than normal).
• Bleeding between menstrual periods, when periods have been regular.
• Renewed bleeding after having no periods for 6 months or more.
• Unexplained bleeding while you are taking hormones.
• Perimenopause symptoms, such as insomnia, hot flashes, or mood swings, that aren't responding to home treatment and are interfering with your sleep or daily life.
• Vaginal pain or dryness that does not improve with home treatment, or you have signs of a urinary tract infection.

For more information, see the topics Abnormal Vaginal Bleeding, Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding, and Osteoporosis.

Watchful Waiting

Menopause is a normal process of hormone change and doesn't require treatment. If your menopause symptoms are mild, try home treatment for relief. Discuss your symptoms with your doctor at your next regular exam.

The following health professionals can help you manage menopause symptoms and evaluate menstrual period changes:

• Family medicine doctor
• Gynecologist
• Internist
• Nurse practitioner
• Physician assistant

Depression is an illness that makes a person feel sad and hopeless much of the time. It's different than feeling a little sad or down. Depression can be treated with counseling or medicine, or both.

Positive thinking also can help prevent or control depression.

Guidlines

• If you have thoughts of harming yourself or others, you need to see your doctor or therapist right away. Positive thinking can help with depression. But you may also need medicine and therapy.
• Negative thoughts can make depression worse or can raise your chance of having depression.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, is a type of therapy that can help you replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
• Changing your thinking will take some time. You need to practice healthy thinking every day. After a while, positive thinking will come naturally to you.

Positive thinking, or healthy thinking

Is a way to help you stay well by changing how you think. It’s based on research that shows that you can change how you think. And how you think affects how you feel.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy, also called CBT, is a type of therapy that is often used to help people think in a healthy way. CBT can help you learn to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. These negative thoughts are sometimes called irrational or automatic thoughts.

Working on your own or with a counselor, you can practice these three steps:

• Watch. Notice your thoughts, sometimes called "self-talk." Some people don't pay much attention to what they tell themselves. If they happen to notice that they've told themselves they're a failure, they just accept that discouraging thought as fact.
• Check. Look at your thoughts, and ask if they are completely true. Ask yourself if these thoughts are untrue or exaggerated. Maybe you're ignoring something positive.
• Correct. Replace the negative thoughts with positive, helpful thoughts. This is the step where you can change the way you feel.

The goal is to have positive thoughts come naturally. It may take some time to change the way you think. So you will need to practice positive thinking every day.

Changing the way you think can help you replace negative thoughts with helpful ones. This can help you cope with depression and may help keep it from coming back.

Maybe you weren't able to close a sale or get a big project done at work. Or perhaps a relationship has ended. It's normal to feel down. But you've had trouble sleeping. You can't enjoy many of your usual activities. And you're blaming yourself. "I'm a failure at everything," you tell yourself.

The more you think about yourself in a negative way, the harder it is to feel hopeful and positive. The negative thinking makes you feel bad. And that can make you feel more depressed, which leads to more bad thoughts about yourself. It's a cycle that's hard to break.

But with practice, you can retrain your brain. After all, you weren't born telling yourself negative things. You learned how to do it. So there’s no reason you can't teach your brain to unlearn it and replace negative thinking with more helpful thoughts.

Positive thinking also can help you manage stress. Too much stress can raise your blood pressure and make your heart work harder, which can increase your risk for a heart attack. Stress also can weaken your immune system, which can make you more open to infection and disease.

Although you can use CBT on your own, it’s important to talk to your doctor or a counselor if you feel that your mood is getting worse. You may need more help.

By Marianne Flagg

In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.

The study was only a small proof-of-principle test, and its approach is not practical on a large scale. However, it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind's top killers. A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing.

"Malaria vaccines are moving from the laboratory into the real world," Dr. Carlos Campbell wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. He works for PATH, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based global health foundation.

The new study "reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing" agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach, he wrote.

Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa. Infected mosquitoes inject immature malaria parasites into the skin when they bite; these travel to the liver where they mature and multiply. From there, they enter the bloodstream and attack red blood cells — the phase that makes people sick.

People can develop immunity to malaria if exposed to it many times. The drug chloroquine can kill parasites in the final bloodstream phase, when they are most dangerous.

Scientists tried to take advantage of these two factors, by using chloroquine to protect people while gradually exposing them to malaria parasites and letting immunity develop.

They assigned 10 volunteers to a "vaccine" group and five others to a comparison group. All were given chloroquine for three months, and exposed once a month to about a dozen mosquitoes — malaria-infected ones in the vaccine group and non-infected mosquitoes in the comparison group.

That was to allow the "vaccine" effect to develop. Next came a test to see if it was working.

All 15 stopped taking chloroquine. Two months later, all were bitten by malaria-infected mosquitoes. None of the 10 in the vaccine group developed parasites in their bloodstreams; all five in the comparison group did.

The study was done in a lab at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and was funded by two foundations and a French government grant.

"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein.

"It's more of an in-depth study of the immune factors that might be able to generate a very protective type of response," said Dr. John Treanor, a vaccine specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., who had no role in the study.

The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. — Sanaria Inc. — is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness.

Two other reports in the New England Journal show that resistance is growing to artemisinin, the main drug used against malaria in the many areas where chloroquine is no longer effective. Studies in Thailand and Cambodia found the malaria parasite is less susceptible to artemisinin, underscoring the urgent need to develop a vaccine.

Original Post: yahoo.com

International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category deeming both to be definite causes of cancer.

For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as "probable carcinogens."

A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30.

Experts also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof the radiation is carcinogenic. Previously, only one type of ultraviolet radiation was thought to be lethal.

The new classification means tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation are definite causes of cancer, alongside tobacco, the hepatitis B virus and chimney sweeping, among others.

The research was published online in the medical journal Lancet Oncology on Wednesday by experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization.

"People need to be reminded of the risks of sunbeds," said Vincent Cogliano, one of the cancer researchers. "We hope the prevailing culture will change so teens don't think they need to use sunbeds to get a tan."

Cogliano said the classification means experts are confident that tanning beds cause cancer, but he noted they may not be as potent as other carcinogens like tobacco or arsenic.

Most lights used in tanning beds give off mainly ultraviolet radiation, which cause skin and eye cancer. As use of tanning beds has increased among people under 30, doctors have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of young people with skin cancer, though most types of skin cancer are benign.

According to the studies reviewed by Cogliano and colleagues, using tanning beds caused about a 20 percent increased relative risk of developing melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer.

Cogliano said it was impossible to know how many benign skin cancers might be caused by tanning beds, because of complicating factors like exposure to regular sunlight. He and colleagues examined data from more than 7,000 melanoma cases and found a strong association between tanning bed use and the disease. He compared the link to that found between tobacco and lung cancer.

In Britain, melanoma is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Normally, skin cancer rates are highest in people over 75. According to a British study from 2003, about 100 people every year die of melanoma attributable to tanning beds.

Previous studies found younger people who regularly use tanning beds are eight times more likely to get melanoma than people who have never used them. In the past, WHO warned people younger than 18 to stay away from tanning beds.

The American Cancer Society advises people to try bronzing or self-tanning creams instead of tanning beds.

Original Post: www.lancet.com

High blood pressure is picked up less often in people who smoke, despite them being at higher risk of heart disease, research suggests.

A study of more than 20,000 men and women in England found smokers were less likely to be aware that they had high blood pressure than non-smokers.

The University College London team said spotting the condition was particularly important in those who smoke.

Being diagnosed can also prompt people to quit, heart experts said.

Smoking and high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, are both key causes of early death, the researchers wrote in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation.

National guidelines advocate that doctors encourage those with high blood pressure to stop smoking and that greater effort should be made to look for signs of the condition in those who smoke.

The study, which took data from the Health Survey for England in 2003 and 2006, found improvements over time in the proportion of people who knew they had high blood pressure.

But it was being detected less frequently in people who smoked compared with those who did not, or those who used to smoke but had quit.

Among those smokers who had been diagnosed with the condition, they were more likely to have been told by a health professional to stop smoking than those who did not know they had hypertension, and were more likely to have quit.

Weight

One reason for the lack of diagnosis could be that smokers in the study tended to be thinner than those who did not smoke.

The researchers, who were funded by Cancer Research UK, said that GPs may be more likely to test blood pressure in people who were overweight.

Since 2004, GPs have been paid an incentive to test blood pressure and to record whether someone is a smoker.

Study author Dr Jennifer Mindell said it was disappointing to find smokers with high blood pressure were not being diagnosed.

"It's important to pick up high blood pressure in everybody but it's particularly important in somebody who already has a higher than average risk of heart disease or stroke, including those who smoke.

"And anything that gives people additional motivation to quit must be a good thing.

"It is a reminder for GPs that measuring blood pressure in smokers, even if they are thin, is important."

June Davison, a cardiac nurse from the British Heart Foundation, said: "It is crucial that smokers are aware of their blood pressure as smoking and high blood pressure are among the most common risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

"This study also highlights that if smokers are made aware of their high blood pressure, it can increase their motivation to stop smoking.

She added that smokers over the age of 40 should go for a health check where their blood pressure will be measured and advice on quitting smoking can be given.

Pregnant women, health care workers and children six months and older should be placed at the front of the line for swine flu vaccinations this fall, a government panel recommended Wednesday.

The panel also said those first vaccinated should include parents and other caregivers of infants; non-elderly adults who have high-risk medical conditions; and young adults ages 19 to 24.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to set vaccination priorities for those groups Wednesday during a meeting in Atlanta. The panel's recommendations are usually adopted by federal health officials.

The recommendations are designed to address potential limits in vaccine availability this fall if there is heavy demand and limited supplies.

The government estimates that about 120 million swine flu vaccine doses will be available to the public by late October. Roughly 160 million people are in the priority groups considered most vulnerable to infection or most at risk for severe disease.

Although the number recommended to get doses exceeds the projected supply, health officials don't think everyone will run out and get vaccinated. Traditionally, less than half of the people recommended to get seasonal flu shots get them. Only about 15 percent of pregnant women get seasonal flu vaccinations.

If there is ample vaccine, vaccinations also would be recommended for all non-elderly adults, the panel also voted. And if there's still plenty of vaccine, the swine flu shots and spray doses should be offered to people 65 and older. Fewer illnesses have been reported in the elderly, who appear to have higher levels of immunity to the virus, health experts say.

However, the elderly should be pushed to get shots against seasonal flu, which is a significant health risk to older adults.

Panel members say they hope swine flu vaccinations will be opened up quickly. "The only sin is vaccine left in the refrigerator," said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University flu expert, in a comment to the panel.

The panel also said if vaccine is scarce, the government could require that a much tighter group be at the front of the vaccination line, numbering about 40 million. That would include pregnant women and household contacts of small children, just like in the general priority recommendation. But the others would be children ages 6 months through 4 years, children with chronic medical conditions and only health care and emergency services workers who have direct contact with patients.

It's a worst-case scenario that officials aren't expecting, but they wanted to have a plan for it just in case, said officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that reviews the panel's recommendations.

The range of recommendations reflects how hard it is to plan for swine flu, officials said. Some health officials have compared the exercise to predicting a hurricane. The storm — or virus — is itself unpredictable; it could grow more dangerous or suddenly weaken. The availability of lifesaving supplies or vaccine can also affect survival.

"It's better to prepare and have the storm fizzle than to be sitting there with no way off the island when the tsunami rolls in," said Kristine Sheedy, a CDC communications specialist.

Variables with the swine flu virus can range from whether it mutates into a form that is more deadly, spreads more efficiently, or is better at fighting off current antiviral medications.

Variables with the vaccine include potential production problems. Production of the vaccine will be a prodigious feat: The government has already purchased 195 million doses for the coming fall and winter, which far eclipses the 125 million or so doses generally produced for seasonal flu vaccine.

Four vaccine manufacturers are wrapping up seasonal flu vaccine production and have begun production of swine flu vaccine. But another company, Sanofi Pasteur, has been more delayed and may not finish seasonal vaccine production until September, a company spokeswoman said. Sanofi is among the largest producers of flu vaccine, so those delays could have a significant ripple effect.

Packaging, distribution and other steps can take a month or more. For those reasons, the government's best guess at the moment is 40 million doses will be available in September and 120 million by around mid-October.

Health officials are pushing for the work to done quickly. There are also clinical trials taking place over the next few months to check the vaccine's safety and effectiveness, but it's possible the government will begin a public vaccination campaign before that work is complete, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, who oversees the CDC's flu vaccination programs.

Why the rush? Vaccines work when given to a patient before they're exposed to the vaccine-targeting virus, and cases may explode not long after kids get back in school, CDC officials said.

Another reason for not waiting for testing data: Health officials are thinking of the swine flu vaccine as a variation of seasonal flu vaccine, which comes out annually and does not undergo the kind of safety and effectiveness testing that new drugs and other new vaccines do.

First identified in April, swine flu has likely infected more than 1 million Americans, the CDCbelieves, with many of those suffering mild cases never reported. There have been 302 deaths and nearly 44,000 laboratory-identified cases, according to CDC numbers released last week.

It's not clear whether the virus in its current form is much worse than seasonal flu in terms of overall threat to the U.S. population, but it is causing more severe illness in some younger adults and children. It has a dangerous genetic characteristic that allows it to infect the lower lungs, whereas seasonal flu tends to infect the upper respiratory tract, CDC officials said.

Original Post: yahoo.com

Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over ordinary food, according to a major study published Wednesday.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said consumers were paying higher prices for organic food because of its perceived health benefits, creating a global organic market worth an estimated $48 billion in 2007.

A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference.

"A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance," said Alan Dangour, one of the report's authors.

"Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."

The results of research, which was commissioned by the British government's Food Standards Agency, were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sales of organic food have fallen in some markets, including Britain, as recession has led consumers to cut back on purchases.

The Soil Association said in April that growth in sales of organic products in Britain slowed to just 1.7 percent in 2008, well below the average annual growth rate of 26 percent over the last decade, following a plunge in demand at the end of the year.

Original Post: Yahoo.com

Liver transplantation is an attractive modality for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and also for some cholangiocarcinomas, with careful patient selection.

Liver transplantation for cancer (HCC and cholangiocarcinoma) is controversial topic that has been evolving over the last decade, a Professor of Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Co-director of the Liver Cancer Center at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, in Pittsburgh said.

Liver transplant for HCC

The rationale supporting liver transplantation for HCC is strong. Approximately 70% to 90% of tumors arise in the setting of cirrhosis, and the cirrhotic liver has poor hepatic reserve to tolerate a major resection. Additionally, HCC rumors are often multifocal and are underestimated by current computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. Recurrence rates exceed 50% even five years after resection.

Transplant is an appealing modality as it removes the cancer and the precancerous conditions, i.e., cirrhosis that leads to HCC so why not transplant all patients. For one reason, there is a critical shortage of organ donors. The number of patients on the UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) wait list for liver transplantation is now over 16,500.

Liver transplantation can cure HCC in the appropriate setting. Data from UNOS and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network between 2000 and 2002 showed survival from deceased donor transplantation to be 88% at one year, 80% at three years and 75% at five years. However, not all patients with HCC benefit. Survival correlates with tumor stage, which means that liver transplantation works best for early-stage HCC.

Current transplantation policy maintains that the appropriate candidates are:

• Patients with cirrhosis and any Child-Pugh score (A, B or C)

• Patients with stage II HCC who have one tumor that is 5 cm or less in diameter or three tumors that are all less than 3 cm; or

• Patients who do not have gross vascular invasion or metastases.

But are we too restrictive? What about pushing the limit transplanting patients with tumors 6 to 7 cm in size without macro-vascular invasion? Should we deny a potentially curative operation to a patient based on a centimeter? This is controversial, and some centers have pushed for expanding the size criteria.

Liver transplantation for cholangiocarcinoma

Cholangiocarcinoma (adenocarcinoma of the bile ducts) can be hard to diagnose and even harder to treat. It preferentially grows along the length of the common bile duct, often involving the periductal lymphatics, and commonly metastasizes to the lymph nodes.

For hilar cholangiocarcinoma (tumor above the cystic duct), surgical resection is the treatment of choice in the absence of associated primary sclerosing cholangitis (PCS). However, approximately 10% of patients with cholangiocarcinoma have undying PSC, and the results of resection in this setting are dismal. Furthermore, cholangiocarcinoma in the setting of PSC is frequently multicentric, and is often associated with underlying liver disease with eventual cirrhosis and portal hypertension.

This scenario led transplant centers to consider liver transplantation for hilar cholangiocarcinoma; however, the results were disappointing, with three-year survival rates less than 3%. The situation improved with the inclusion of neoadjuvant chemoradiation, which was based on the concept that the growth of hilar cholangiocarcinoma is locoregional.

Neoadjuvant chemoradiation for cholang-iocarcinoma was introduced by the transplant team at the University of Nebraska in the late 1993 by the multidisciplinary team at Mayo Clinic protocol, which begins treatment with external beam radiation therapy, followed by protracted venous infusion of fluorouracil (5-FU) and brachytherapy (Iridium), and then abdominal exploration for staging with endoscopic ultrasound and finally capecitabine for two or three weeks until the final option of liver transplantation. The five-year survival rates for patients undergoing liver transplantation at Mayo Clinic after completing the neoadjuvant cholangiocarcinoma treatment protocol are excellent, at approximately 70%.

According to an associate professor of surgery at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Chief of Liver Transplantation with the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center in Rochester, Minn., of 90 patients who underwent transplantation according to the Mayo Clinic protocol between 1993 and 2007, five-year survival was 71% and disease-free survival was 65%. For 15 patients, disease recurred after the transplant, with a mean time to recurrence of 25 months. Current eligibility for the Mayo Clinic protocol based on the presence of an unresectable tumor above the cystic duct or a resectable cholangiocarcinoma arising in the PSC; radial dimension of the tumor should be 3 cm or less, intra- or extrahepatic metastases should not be present and there should be no history of prior radiation therapy or transperitioneal biopsy.

Combined chemoradiation therapy and liver transplantation achieves excellent results for highly selected patients with early-stage hilar cholangiocarcinoma; five-year patient survival after transplantation with this protocol 71%, and exceeds the results reported with resection for hilar cholangiocarcinoma. These results approach the survival after transplantation for chronic liver disease and HCC. Operative staging is essential, as positive findings preclude transplant in about 20% of patients.

Original Post: Philippine Star