Half-dose flu shots work in adults, study finds

Half-dose flu shots are effective in adults, especially in women and those younger than 50, and offer a viable way to stretch supplies during vaccine shortages, a government study found. The strategy also might be an option during hard economic times since lower doses likely would mean cheaper shots, said Vanderbilt University vaccine expert Dr. Kathryn Edwards, who wasn?t involved in the study. And the lower dosage could open doors to vaccinating people in poor countries where flu shots are little used, she said. Even so, Edwards said giving half-dose flu shots isn?t ready for prime time. It?s still experimental and hasn?t been approved by federal authorities. The study involved 1,114 adults aged 18 to 64. It?s the first to test half-dose flu shots in those aged 50 and older during a single flu season, 2004-05. The results among younger adults echo previous research, said lead author Dr. Renata Engler of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. More »


Woman gives birth to mutant baby in Malaysia

The news of an unusual alien-like baby born in China has received an intensive coverage in the media recently. Ms. Li Hui-Ying, a village from China?s Jiangxi Province, gave birth to a boy with frog?s eyes. The baby also had big bumps on his head and even a small tail on his bottom. The boy does not have any eating, drinking or sleeping disorders, but his parents still try to bring him to treat in the hospital. However, all the hospitals that the parents have been to so far refuse to accept the weird patient claiming that they have never had such an unusual incident in their experience. Another shocking incident took place in Malaysia not so long ago. A woman gave birth to a baby with its eyes turned inside out. The baby has no ears and no nose, has hooves instead of hands. There can be no words found to describe the sufferings of the poor baby. Such terrible abnormalities can be explained with the phenomenon known as Harlequin Ichthyosis. It is a skin disease, is the most severe form of congenital ichthyosis, characterized by a thickening of the keratin layer in fetal human skin. More »



Irkutsk-based surgeons performed a unique operation

On August 11th, a very unusual child was born. The baby-boy was named Nikita. Another body was growing on the baby?s stomach - it had little legs, hands, genitals, but no head. Nikita was urgently taken to the regional center, where doctors removed excessive body parts. Yury Kozlov, chief doctor of the hospital?s surgery department talks about the unique operation. ?Mass media outlets in Irkutsk were writing about the birth of Siamese twins, which was incorrect. There are a lot of Siamese twins in the world. The word ?Siamese? originates from ?Siam? - a territory in India, where a lot of such babies are born because of closely-related marriages. In fact, two twins simply grow together symmetrically. However, there was no symmetry with Nikita, the bifurcation was incomplete. There was a healthy child (specialists call it the ?host-child") and a ?parasite child? growing from the stomach. The parasite child did not have a head, it had no lungs and no heart, although it had a kidney, the urinary bladder, the urethra and the intestines. The parasite child was living with the host child?s help.? More »


Scientists find nutty risk reducer: Eat more nuts

Here?s a health tip in a nutshell: Eating a handful of nuts a day for a year ? along with a Mediterranean diet rich in fruit, vegetables and fish ? may help undo a collection of risk factors for heart disease. Spanish researchers found that adding nuts worked better than boosting the olive oil in a typical Mediterranean diet. Both regimens cut the heart risks known as metabolic syndrome in more people than a low-fat diet did. In the study, appearing Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the people who improved most were told to eat about three whole walnuts, seven or eight whole hazelnuts and seven or eight whole almonds. They didn?t lose weight, on average, but more of them succeeded in reducing belly fat and improving their cholesterol and blood pressure. More »



Symptom Score Helps Monitor Recovery from Ear Infections

A simple 13-point symptom score can help in tracking improvement in infants and toddlers with middle ear infection, or acute otitis media (AOM), reports a study in the January issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Nader Shaikh and colleagues of Children?s Hospital of Pittsburgh have authored two articles for the January issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. The first article discusses the development of their new AOM symptom severity scale, the ?AOM-SOS?, and the second reports on the validation of the system in children with AOM. In developing their new AOM-SOS, the researchers first created a list of 28 symptoms associated with middle ear infection, with input from pediatric experts and parents. They then narrowed the list to the seven most important AOM symptoms: ear pain, ear tugging, irritability, decreased play, decreased appetite, difficulty sleeping, and fever. These seven symptoms were incorporated into the 13-point AOM-SOS score. To calculate the AOM-SOS, the first six symptoms were rated on a 0-to-2 scale (none = 0, a little = 1, a lot = 2). The final symptom, fever, was rated either absent (0) or present (1). More »






Medical acupuncture gaining acceptance by the US Air Force

Medical acupuncture, which is acupuncture performed by a licensed physician trained at a conventional medical school, is being used increasingly for pain control. Richard Niemtzow, MD, PhD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief of Medical Acupuncture, a peer-reviewed journal (http://www.liebertpub.com/acu) and the official journal of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, is at the forefront of these efforts in the military. The technique developed by Dr. Niemtzow has been so successful that the Air Force will begin teaching ?Battlefield Acupuncture? to physicians deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan in early 2009. ?Battlefield Acupuncture? can relieve severe pain lasting several days. Based on modern neurophysiological concepts, Niemtzow developed a variation of acupuncture that involves inserting very tiny semi-permanent needles into very specific acupoints in the skin on the ear to block pain signals from reaching the brain. This method can lessen the need for pain medications that may cause adverse or allergic reactions or addiction. More »


Two Biomarkers Improve Prediction of Stroke Risk

Two common biomarkers have now been shown to improve the ability to predict who will suffer from a stroke. Results from new research conducted at the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center in Houston were published in today?s online version of the journal Stroke. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. and a leading cause of disability. Accurate risk assessment is imperative because stroke is preventable with medical therapy and lifestyle changes. ?If we can identify increased risk for stroke, we can recommend exercise, smoking cessation, and cholesterol and blood pressure medication to reduce a person?s risk for stroke by more than 30 percent,? said Dr. Vijay Nambi, lead author on the study and cardiologist at the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center and Baylor College of Medicine. ?Adding these two biomarkers to traditional risk assessment tools improves our ability to do that.? More »


Alzheimer?s Disease: Women Affected More Often than Men

Nearly 4.5 million people suffer from Alzheimer?s disease (AD) in our country, and more than half of them are women, according to the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md. As the general population continues to age, this number is expected to increase significantly over the next few decades. Alzheimer?s disease is the most common form of dementia, a group of brain disorders that interferes with a person?s ability to carry out daily activities. In AD, areas of the brain change and deteriorate, which causes a decline in cognition and memory functioning. In some patients, the deficits are large enough to get in the way of performing normal, everyday tasks. There is evidence that AD affects women differently than men. ?Many studies of gender differences in cognition have pointed to greater language deficits in women with Alzheimer?s disease as compared to men,? explains Michael S. Rafii, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Memory Disorders Clinic and an attending neurologist at the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego. ?Naming and word-recognition skills have been reported to be more adversely affected in female patients with AD than in male patients, and the differences have been shown to be sustained over time.? More »









Dieting May Cut Risk for Gum Disease, Mostly In Males

For men, especially older men, dieting may help reduce the risk of gum disease more than for women, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and other institutions. The study, published in the journal Nutrition, also provides the latest clue to a powerful link between chronic inflammation and poor health, according to Mark Reynolds, DDS, PhD, associate professor at the Dental School, part of UMB. ?Chronic inflammation appears to be an important factor underlying aging and many age-related disorders, and dietary restriction has been shown to reduce the risk for chronic disease and promote longevity in multiple animal models,? says Reynolds, who is chair of the Department of periodontics at the School. More »


Older Blacks Rate Own Health Less Positively Than Older Whites Do

When asked by health care professionals about their health, older African-American adults consistently report poorer health than whites of the same age do ? even if both groups are functioning extremely well, a new study finds. ?Asking how a person would rate his or her health remains one of the simplest tools that a health professional has to quickly learn about a person?s overall sense of well-being,? said lead author Mindi Spencer, Ph.D. ?The results of our study indicate that we cannot assume all people are considering the same factors when they answer this question.? Spencer is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior and the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina. The study appears in the January issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences. More »


Watching Water from Space Could Aid Disease Prevention in China

Scientists are looking to outer space for help in their attempt to prevent new outbreaks of the tropical disease schistosomiasis in southern China. Once the Three Gorges Dam is fully operational, researchers plan to use satellite data from space to determine whether changing water conditions in Poyang Lake, China?s largest freshwater lake, create favorable conditions for the snails associated with the chronic disease that can damage internal organs and impair growth and cognitive development in children. Adult and juvenile snails living in stagnant tropical freshwater lakes and ponds serve as hosts during part of the life cycle of schistosomes, the family of parasite species that cause schistosomiasis infections in warm climates around the world.  More »