Indigenous children living in central Australia suffer the highest rate of potentially fatal severe pneumonia in the world, according to research released Sunday.

The study, which used the strict World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of the disease, found that each year there were on average 72.3 cases for every 1,000 indigenous babies under one year old, researcher Kerry-Ann O’Grady said.

“The incidence of WHO-defined radiologically confirmed pneumonia among children in the Central Australian region of Northern Territory is the highest incidence reported in published studies using the WHO protocol,” she said.

For children aged one to two there were about 54 incidents of the disease per 1,000 and for those aged two to five it was 20.1 per 1,000 — higher than Gambia, the west African country with the second-worst incidence.

“It’s a disease of poverty,” O’Grady said.

The figures were slightly lower for the rest of the Northern Territory, which includes the desert centre of Australia up to the tropical city of Darwin, but researchers had been unable to pinpoint why, she said.

O’Grady, who completed the study while working at the Darwin-based Menzies School of Health Research, said the problem was much worse in the arid areas of the Outback than the tropical northern regions.

She said the high rate of respiratory disease in the first year of life was alarming because it was known to contribute to chronic lung disease in adulthood.

“This is unacceptable in a wealthy country like Australia, and reducing this disease burden should be a national health priority,” she said.

The research, which looked at hospital admissions for indigenous children between 1997 and 2005 and has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia, should prompt further work in the area, O’Grady said.

“Research must continue and policies that change the living environment and facilitate hygiene, improve educational outcomes for parents of the future and enhance parenting skills must be a priority,” she said.

Aborigines make up about 2.5 percent of the population but are significantly more disadvantaged in terms of health and life expectancy than other Australians.

About 1.8 million children under five die every year around the world from pneumonia and O’Grady said it was the leading cause of preventable death for Australian indigenous infants after their first 28 days of life.

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ROME – The Vatican is pushing for research of adult stem cells as an alternative to the use of embryonic stem cells, which the Catholic Church opposes because it maintains that the destruction of the embryo amounts to the killing of human life.

On Friday, the Catholic Church threw its support and resources behind the study of intestinal adult stem cells by a group of experts led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The group wants to explore the potential use of those cells in the treatment of intestinal and possibly other diseases, and is seeking an initial euro2 million ($2.7 million) to get the project going, officials said.

“This research protects life,” Cardinal Renato Martino said during a meeting with Italian and American scientists and health officials to outline the project. “I want to stress that it doesn’t involve embryonic stem cells, where one helps oneself and then throws the embryo away and kills a human life.”

The church is opposed to embryonic stem cell research because it involves the destruction of embryos, but it supports the use of adult stem cells, which are found in the bodies of all humans. Human embryonic stem cells are produced from surplus embryos of in vitro fertilization procedures used to help infertile women get pregnant.

Both are prized for their ability to morph into other kinds of cells, offering the possibility of replacing tissue damaged by ailments such as Parkinson’s disease.

But adult cells are thought to be less versatile than embryonic ones, and scientists have had more trouble growing adult stem cells in the laboratory than embryonic cells.

Still, adult stem cells could be easier to use if they are taken from patients themselves, because the replacement tissue would have less chance of being rejected.

Martino, a powerful cardinal and retired head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told The Associated Press after the meeting that he had “no doubt” that the Vatican would help finance the project through its Rome hospital, Bambin Gesu, and other funding. The exact amount and modalities will be worked out in future meetings with the University of Maryland and other scientists involved in the project.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI said the Catholic Church can encourage somatic stem cell research — also known as adult stem cell research — “because of the favorable results obtained through these alternative methods,” and more importantly because it respects “the life of the human being at every stage of his or her existence.”

During a meeting with President Barack Obama last year at the Vatican, Benedict underscored his beliefs about stem cells by giving the U.S. leader a copy of a Vatican document on bioethics that hardened the church’s opposition to using embryos for stem cell research, cloning and in-vitro fertilization.

Obama has lifted restrictions, imposed by his predecessor President George W. Bush, on federal funding of research using human embryonic stem cells.

The Vatican has drawn criticism for its opposition to embryonic stem cell research. But it insists there are scientifically viable alternatives and that the efforts of the scientific community should go in that direction.

Supporting this university project is part of those efforts.

“Ethically, the rules the Catholic Church promotes are really very simple: That all research be respectful of human life,” said Father Bob Gahl, an American professor of Moral Philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. “Nobody should be killed in the process of doing medical research. So this new project falls exactly within the Catholic Church’s ethical guidelines.”

Dr. George Daley, a stem cell expert at Children’s Hospital in Boston and past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, said both adult and embryonic stem cells may prove useful for treating different diseases.

“I applaud the Vatican for being interested in supporting biomedical research,” Daley said Friday, “but I can’t help but think there’s an agenda.”

He called intestinal stem cells “a very exciting area of basic research” but said therapeutic uses are only speculative at this point.

Researchers involved in the Vatican-backed project are convinced that intestinal stem cells — a relatively new field _hold promise and want to assess their potential for therapeutic use.

“We want to harvest them, we want to isolate them, we want to make them grow outside our body,” and transform them into cells of any kind, said Alessio Fasano, the scientist leading the project and the director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Celiac Research.

“If we reach that phase, if we are able to achieve that goal, then our next step is to eventually move to clinical application,” Fasano told the AP before Friday’s announcement.

Intestinal stem cells have certain features that make them appealing for this kind of research, Fasano said.

They are very active cells — the intestine replenishes all its cells every few days — and they are intrinsically flexible — already programmed to generate all the various kinds of cells such as mucus cells or epithelial cells present in the highly complex organ. Furthermore, harvesting them can be done through a routine medical procedure, Fasano noted.

Fasano said his team hopes to decide about the feasibility of the project within the next two to three years. He said the network of experts, expected to be around 40 people, would work at their respective facilities, sharing information and the workload to speed up the process.

yahoo news

LONDON – About 40 percent of cancers could be prevented if people stopped smoking and overeating, limited their alcohol, exercised regularly and got vaccines targeting cancer-causing infections, experts say.

To mark World Cancer day on Thursday, officials at the International Union Against Cancer released a report focused on steps that governments and the public can take to avoid the disease.

According to the World Health Organization, cancer is responsible for one out of every eight deaths worldwide — more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. WHO warned that without major changes, global cancer deaths will jump from about 7.6 million this year to 17 million by 2030.

In the report from the International Union Against Cancer, experts said about 21 percent of all cancers are due to infections like the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer, and hepatitis infections that cause stomach and liver cancer.

While the vaccines to prevent these cancers are widely available in western countries, they are almost nonexistent in the developing world. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s cervical cancer deaths are in poor countries, according to the agency.

“Policymakers around the world have the opportunity and obligation to use these vaccines to save people’s lives and educate their communities towards lifestyle choices and control measures that reduce their risk of cancer,” Cary Adams, chief executive of the International Union Against Cancer, said in a statement.

In Western nations, experts said many of the top cancers — like those in the lungs, breasts and colon — might be avoided if people changed their lifestyle habits. To reduce their risk, the agency recommended that people stop smoking, limit their alcohol consumption, avoid too much sun, and maintain a healthy weight through diet and exercise.

Source: Yahoo

CHICAGO – A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.

The findings, culled from responses to a popular psychological questionnaire used as far back as 1938, confirm what counselors on campuses nationwide have long suspected as more students struggle with the stresses of school and life in general.

“It’s another piece of the puzzle — that yes, this does seem to be a problem, that there are more young people who report anxiety and depression,” says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor and the study’s lead author. “The next question is: What do we do about it?”

Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external — from wealth to looks and status — has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.

Pulling together the data for the study was no small task. Led by Twenge, researchers at five universities analyzed the responses of 77,576 high school or college students who, from 1938 through 2007, took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI. The results will be published in a future issue of the Clinical Psychology Review.

Overall, an average of five times as many students in 2007 surpassed thresholds in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who did so in 1938. A few individual categories increased at an even greater rate — with six times as many scoring high in two areas:

• “hypomania,” a measure of anxiety and unrealistic optimism (from 5 percent of students in 1938 to 31 percent in 2007)

• and depression (from 1 percent to 6 percent).

Twenge said the most current numbers may even be low given all the students taking antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, which help alleviate symptoms the survey asks about.

The study also showed increases in “psychopathic deviation,” which is loosely related to psychopathic behavior in a much milder form and is defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don’t apply to you. The percentage of young people who scored high in that category increased from 5 percent in 1938 to 24 percent in 2007.

Twenge previously documented the influence of pop culture pressures on young people’s mental health in her 2006 book “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before.” Several studies also have captured the growing interest in being rich, with 77 percent of those questioned for UCLA’s 2008 national survey of college freshmen saying it was “essential” or “very important” to be financially well off.

Experts say such high expectations are a recipe for disappointment. Meanwhile, they also note some well-meaning but overprotective parents have left their children with few real-world coping skills, whether that means doing their own budget or confronting professors on their own.

“If you don’t have these skills, then it’s very normal to become anxious,” says Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City who hopes the new study will be a wake-up call to those parents.

Students themselves point to everything from pressure to succeed — self-imposed and otherwise — to a fast-paced world that’s only sped up by the technology they love so much.

Sarah Ann Slater, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Miami, says she feels pressure to be financially successful, even when she doesn’t want to.

“The unrealistic feelings that are ingrained in us from a young age — that we need to have massive amounts of money to be considered a success — not only lead us to a higher likelihood of feeling inadequate, anxious or depressed, but also make us think that the only value in getting an education is to make a lot of money, which is the wrong way to look at it,” says Slater, an international studies major who plans to go to graduate school overseas.

The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counseling center at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren’t necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)

Shadick says his own experience leaves little doubt more students are seeking mental health services. But he and others think that may be due in part to heightened awareness of such services. Twenge notes the MMPI isn’t given only to those who seek services.

Others, meanwhile, say the research helps advance the conversation with hard numbers.

“It actually provides some support to the observations,” says Scott Hunter, director of pediatric neuropsychology at the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital. Before his current post, Hunter was at the University of Virginia, where his work included counseling a growing number of students with mental health concerns.

While even Twenge concedes more research is needed to pinpoint a cause, Hunter says the study “also helps us understand what some of the reasons behind it might be.” He notes Twenge’s inclusion of data showing that factors such as materialism among young people have had a similar upswing. She also noted that divorce rates for their parents have gone up, which may lead to less stability.

Amid it all, Hunter says this latest generation has been raised in a “you can do anything atmosphere.” And that, he says, “sets up a lot of false expectation” that inevitably leads to distress for some.

It’s also meant heartache for parents.

“I don’t remember it being this hard,” says a mother from northern New Jersey, whose 15-year-old daughter is being treated for depression. She asked not to be identified to respect her daughter’s privacy.

“We all wanted to be popular, but there wasn’t this emphasis on being perfect and being super skinny,” she says. “In addition, it’s ‘How much do your parents make?’

“I’d like to think that’s not relevant, but I can’t imagine that doesn’t play a role.”

Source: Yahoo News

UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations praised the United States and South Korea on Monday for lifting travel bans on people with HIV and urged 57 other countries with travel restrictions to end them quickly.

President Barack Obama announced in October that the U.S. would overturn a 22-year-old travel ban against people with HIV, and the new rule eliminating the ban came into force on Monday. South Korea eliminated travel restrictions for people with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, on Jan. 1.

Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, which coordinates the U.N.’s AIDS response, called the policy changes “a victory for human rights on two sides of the globe.”

Ending the restrictions means travelers who are HIV positive can now enter both countries.

In the United States, the ban has kept out thousands of students, tourists and refugees and has complicated the adoption of children with HIV. No major international AIDS conference has been held in the U.S. since 1993, because HIV-positive activists and researchers could not enter the country.

In 1987, at a time of widespread fear and ignorance about HIV, the Department of Health and Human Services added HIV to the list of communicable diseases that disqualified a person from entering the U.S. The department tried in 1991 to reverse its decision but was opposed by Congress, which went the other way two years later and made HIV infection the only medical condition explicitly listed under immigration law as grounds for inadmissibility to the U.S.

When Obama announced in October that the ban would be overturned, he commended Congress and former President George W. Bush for starting the process to eliminate the ban in 2008 and said his administration was “finishing the job.”

“It’s a step that will encourage people to get tested and get treatment, it’s a step that will keep families together, and it’s a step that will save lives,” Obama said. “If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated Obama in October and applauded South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak on Monday “for his country’s leadership in ending restrictions towards people living with HIV that have no public health benefit.”

“I repeat my call to all other countries with such discriminatory restrictions to take steps to remove them at the earliest,” Ban said in a statement.

Among the countries that still have restrictions on entry, residence and length of stay for HIV sufferers are China, Cuba, Egypt, North Korea, Israel, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Iraq and Russia.

Sidibe, the UNAIDS chief, called for “global freedom of movement for people living with HIV in 2010, the year when countries have committed to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.”

Discrimination against people with HIV “has no place in today’s highly mobile world,” he said in a statement.

Source: Yahoo News

London: Weight loss pill ‘Reductil’ has been found to increase the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

European Medicines Agency (EMA) has claimed that the pill apparently contains an ingredient that increases blood pressure.

Also, the Sibutramine Cardiovascular Outcome Trial (SCOUT) surveyed 10,000 patients over six years to reach the conclusion.

Experts suggest the tablets with sibutramine, common among overweight or obese patients, can spark heart problems.

“This is information we need to take very seriously because we should not be prescribing it to the wrong people,” the Daily Express quoted Dr David Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum, as saying.

He added: “Anything that lapses blood pressure control could have side-effects.

“Anyone who has had a heart attack or a stroke should stop taking it but those who haven’t should be assured there are no danger signals for them.”

Also, an EMA spokesman said: “Because of the seriousness of the findings of the SCOUT study, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use is currently assessing the implications of these findings for the use of sibutramine in normal clinical practice.”

However, a spokesman for Abbott Laboratories, which manufacturers Reductil, said: “Our ongoing evaluation of the SCOUT study data does not change our medical assessment of sibutramine’s risk/benefit profile when used appropriately in the approved patient population.

“Sibutramine is an important treatment for patients who are obese.”

EMA has linked 17 deaths in the UK to ‘Reductil’ use.

Source: Spicezee

President Barrack Obama Health Care overhaul bill cleared its second 60-vote test and the time was set for a final tally. Democrats now are seeing Senate Passage over it.

It has been announced for an agreement to vote on final passage at 8 a.m. Thursday, Christmas Eve. It would mark the 25th consecutive day of Senate debate on health care.

“The finish line is in sight,” Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said at a news conference with other Senate leaders and cheering supporters. “We’re not the first to attempt such reforms but we will be the first to succeed.”

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs declared: “Health care reform is not a matter of if. Health care reform is now a matter of when.”

Obama said the Senate legislation accomplishes 95 percent of what he wanted on health care. “Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill,” the president said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Senate Democrats remained behind their compromise bill over steadfast Republican opposition. A motion to shut off debate and move to a vote on a package of changes by Reid passed 60-39.

The final 60-vote hurdle, limiting debate on the bill itself, is expected to be cleared Wednesday afternoon, setting up the Thursday morning-before-Christmas vote on the legislation, which at that point will need only a simple majority to pass.

The Senate has been voting at odd hours since Monday around 1 a.m. because Republicans have insisted on using all the time allowed under Senate rules to delay the bill. Not to be thwarted, Reid has refused to postpone action until after the holidays. On Tuesday, they started voting at sunrise.

With fatigue and frustration rising, Reid appealed to his colleagues to set aside acrimony and reach for some holiday spirit.

“I would hope everybody will keep in mind that this is a time when we reflect on peace and good things,” he said. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he, too, wanted to close the debate. After conferring with McConnell, Reid announced the timing of the final vote.

Even so, partisan fires were burning.

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina denounced concessions won by conservative Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, whose support gave Democrats the 60th and final vote they need. Among other things, Nelson got an agreement that the federal government will pay to expand Medicaid services in Nebraska.

“That’s not change you can believe in. That’s sleazy,” Graham said on NBC’s “Today” show.

South Caroline Attorney General Henry McMaster, a candidate for governor, said he and his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state — all Republicans — are jointly taking a look at whether the special provisions for Nebraska and other states are constitutional.

“Whatever the legal status may be, and we hope to find out soon, these negotiations on their face appear to be a form of vote-buying paid for by taxpayers,” McMaster said, adding he hopes citizens will challenge the legislation in court.

Reid has defended the dealmaking, asserting that every senator got something they were looking for in the health bill and if they didn’t it speaks poorly of them.

Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa also defended the concessions, saying: “The one that’s being talked about for Nebraska, it also benefits other states. It’s not just Nebraska.”

He also said he would vote for the package even if it didn’t contain concessions for Iowa. “The principle of this bill overrides everything,” Harkin told CBS’ “Early Show.”

Moderate Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has also been criticized after securing a boost in Medicaid for her state, defended the concessions she got, saying they benefited low-income families small businesses.

Also Tuesday, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., announced that the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to his request to investigate whether drug companies are raising prices of brand-name prescription drugs used by Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries ahead of passage of the health care bill. AARP says prescription drug prices are on the rise, but the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said in a statement that Nelson’s request “was spurred, in large part, on misleading statistics and sensationalized media reports.”

The Senate measure would still have to be harmonized with the health care bill passed by the House in November before final legislation would go to Obama.

There are significant differences between the two bills, including stricter abortion language in the House bill, a new government-run insurance plan in the House bill that’s missing from the Senate version, and a tax on high-value insurance plans embraced by the Senate but strongly opposed by many House Democrats.

Senate moderates have served notice they won’t support a final deal if government-run insurance comes back. And Democratic abortion opponents in the House say a Senate compromise on the volatile issue is unacceptable.

But there’s considerable pressure on Democrats to avoid messy negotiations over a final bill. Public support for the legislation continues to sink in opinion polls.

The bills probably have more in common than differences. Each costs around $1 trillion over 10 years and installs new requirements for nearly all Americans to buy insurance, providing subsidies to help lower-income people do so. They’re paid for by a combination of tax and fee increases and cuts in projected Medicare spending.

Unpopular insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with existing health conditions would be banned. Uninsured or self-employed Americans would have a new way to buy health insurance, via marketplaces called exchanges where private insurers would sell health plans required to meet certain minimum standards.

SOURCE: yahoo news