India's continued economic growth will be at risk unless quick action is taken to improve the health of its growing population, a report says.

    It says that India is in the early stages of a chronic disease epidemic which affects the health of both rich and poor people.It calls for a comprehensive national health system to be set up by 2020.

   The report consists of a series of studies published by the British medical journal, The Lancet."Rapidly improving socio-economic status in India is associated with a reduction of physical activity and increased rates of obesity and diabetes," says the paper on chronic diseases and injuries - led by Vikram Patel from the Sangath Centre in Goa.

    It says that Indians are growing wealthier but exercising less and indulging in fatty foods.They also risk injury by driving more often and faster on the country's notoriously dangerous roads, often under the influence of alcohol."The emerging pattern in India is characterised by an initial uptake of harmful health behaviours in the early phase of socio-economic development," Mr Patel's paper says. He and other authors of the report argue that the problem can only be tackled by better education, because bad habits tend to decline once consumers become aware of risks to their health.

    The report states that overall the poor in India are the most vulnerable to diseases - and are further burdened by having to pay for healthcare in a country where health indicators lag behind its impressive economic growth figures.

    The study also says it is important that India, with its fast-growing population soon exceeding 1.2 billion, takes steps to prevent illnesses such as heart or respiratory diseases, cancer and diabetes.It says that this can be funded by gradually increasing public expenditure and implementing new taxes on tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods.

-BBC NEWS

Having multiple miscarriages increases the risk of a heart attack later in life, according to researchers.

 The German study, published in the journal Heart, found that women who had more than three miscarriages had a five-fold increase in risk.

The relatively young age of the women meant overall risk remained low, but miscarriages could alert doctors to future problems, the researchers said. UK specialists said that the reason for the link was still unclear.

The study looked at more than 11,500 women aged between their mid-30s and mid-60s. They looked at the pregnancy history of those who had suffered heart attacks, and compared this to the rate of miscarriages in the other women.

They found that one in four of the women in the study reported having a miscarriage - although this number could be higher because some women become pregnant then miscarry without realising what has happened.

When other factors linked to heart problems - such as weight, alcohol consumption and smoking - were accounted for, having three or more miscarriages increased the risk of heart attacks by more than 500%. A smaller increase in risk was recorded in women who had miscarried fewer than three times.

The researchers, from the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, said that the results suggested a "substantially higher" risk later in life. They suggested that a history of miscarriage should be recorded by doctors as an "important indicator" when trying to work out whether a woman was likely to suffer heart problems in middle-age and beyond.

The age of the women involved in the study meant that the overall risk of heart attack could not be tested. The five-fold increase refers to a much smaller risk - that a woman would have a heart attack at a younger age. This means that even a five-fold increase does not mean that a woman who suffers multiple miscarriages is very likely to have a heart attack. Indeed, among a sample of 2,876 women who reported miscarriages, there were 82 heart attacks over a ten-year period. No firm conclusions.

However, other specialists said that the link between miscarriage and heart attacks remained a concern. Professor Gordon Smith, from Cambridge University, said that other studies had pointed to an increase in heart disease risk among women who had pregnancy complications, which included pre-eclampsia, and premature birth alongside miscarriage.

However, he said that the reasons why were still not fully understood, with some evidence suggesting that it was not an effect of having miscarriages. He said: "It is possible that there is some common predisposing risk factor for both miscarriage and heart disease. During pregnancy, it is manifested by increased risk of miscarriage, and later in life, it manifests itself as an increase in heart disease risk.

"Perhaps this involves an increased propensity to blood clotting - but the honest answer is that we don't yet know." A spokeswoman for the British Heart Foundation said that it was hard to draw firm conclusions from the study. She said: "While this is certainly an interesting observation it gives no proven explanation for an increase in heart attack risk. "It's not simply a case of saying multiple miscarriages increase your risk of a heart attack - lots of other factors come into play.

"It's known in some cases of multiple miscarriages that the women have previously undiagnosed heart and circulatory disease, or significant risk factors for the disease, so they may have an increased heart attack risk which is unrelated to the pregnancy." 

- BBC News

LONDON —Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study.

   British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.
 
   Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.
 
   Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.
  
  The study was paid for by Britain’s Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online Monday in the medical journal, Lancet. Experts said alcohol scored so high because it is so widely used and has devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them.
  
  “Just think about what happens (with alcohol) at every football game,” said Wim van den Brink, a professor of psychiatry and addiction at the University of Amsterdam. He was not linked to the study and co-authored a commentary in the Lancet.
  
   When drunk in excess, alcohol damages nearly all organ systems. It is also connected to higher death rates and is involved in a greater percentage of crime than most other drugs, including heroin.
  
   But experts said it would be impractical and incorrect to outlaw alcohol. “We cannot return to the days of prohibition,” said Leslie King, an adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and one of the study’s authors. “Alcohol is too embedded in our culture and it won’t go away.”
 
    King said countries should target problem drinkers, not the vast majority of people who indulge in a drink or two. He said governments should consider more education programs and raising the price of alcohol so it isn’t as widely available.
  
   Experts said the study should prompt countries to reconsider how they classify drugs. For example, last year in Britain, the government increased its penalties for the possession of marijuana. One of its senior advisers, David Nutt—the lead author on the Lancet study—was fired after he criticized the British decision.
 
    “What governments decide is illegal is not always based on science,” said van den Brink. He said considerations about revenue and taxation, like those garnered from the alcohol and tobacco industries, may influence decisions about which substances to regulate or outlaw.
 
   “Drugs that are legal cause at least as much damage, if not more, than drugs that are illicit,” he said

-Japan Today

       Scientists say they have made a landmark discovery which could pave the way for new drugs to beat illnesses like the common cold.

       Until now experts had thought that antibodies could only tackle viral infections by blocking or attacking viruses outside cells. But work done by the Medical Research Council shows antibodies can pass into cells and fight viruses from within. PNAS journal said the finding held promise for a new antiviral drugs. The Cambridge scientists stressed that it would take years of work and testing to find new therapies, and said that the pathway they had discovered would not work on all viruses. Fighting viruses
 
       Some antiviral drugs are already available to help treat certain conditions, like HIV. 

    But viruses remain mankind's biggest killer, responsible for twice as many deaths each year as cancer, and are among the hardest of all diseases to treat.

     The new discovery by Dr Leo James and colleagues transforms the previous scientific understanding of our immunity to viral diseases like the common cold, 'winter vomiting' and gastroenteritis. It shows that antibodies can enter cells and that once inside, they then trigger a response, led by a protein called TRIM21.

 

     

      This protein pulls the virus into a disposal system used by the cell to get rid of unwanted material. The researchers found this process happens quickly, usually before most viruses have chance to harm the cell. And they discovered that increasing the amount of TRIM21 protein in cells makes this process even more effective, suggesting new ways of making better antiviral drugs.

 

      Dr James said: "Doctors have plenty of antibiotics to fight bacterial infections but few antiviral drugs. "Although these are early days, and we don't yet know whether all viruses are cleared by this mechanism, we are excited that our discoveries may open multiple avenues for developing new antiviral drugs."

 

     Sir Greg Winter, deputy director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, said: "This research is not only a leap in our understanding of how and where antibodies work, but more generally in our understanding of immunity and infection."

-Health Blog

-Health Blog