The study was led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC — James). The researchers found that when microRNA-155 (miR-155) is present at abnormally high levels in CN-AML cells, patients are less likely to have a complete remission, and they experience a shorter disease-free period and shorter overall survival…
Two paralyzed British men who want to die but cannot kill themselves went to court on Monday seeking protection from prosecution for those who could help them end their lives. The case is one of the most high-profile attempts to change the law on the right to die in Britain, where assisted suicide is illegal. “I'm constantly thinking, 'how on Earth can I do it without getting someone into trouble?'” said Paul Lamb, who was left paralyzed by a car accident in 1990. “I just want my wishes to be respected, that's all I want,” Lamb, 57, told reporters outside the courtroom. He is immobile except for limited movement in his right hand, requires 24-hour care and is constantly on morphine to relieve pain. Judge Igor Judge, speaking at the start of the hearing in the Court of Appeal, said he was aware of the men's “desperate situation” and he was sympathetic. “But they must surely know that we cannot decide this case as a matter of personal sympathy. We have to decide it as a point of law.” Lamb was in court in his wheelchair as the judge spoke. The other man, named only as Martin, is a 48-year-old who was left unable to speak or move after a stroke four years ago. He can communicate only through movements of the head and eyes. “It is their experience that their life has become unbearable,” said Paul Bowen, a lawyer representing Lamb. Law “inadequate” The details of the two men's cases are different, but in essence both are seeking help from the courts in ensuring that anyone who helps them to die will not be prosecuted. Bowen cited a report to parliament last year that concluded that British law in the area of assisted dying was “inadequate, incoherent and should not continue”. The issue of whether or not to decriminalize assisted suicide for people whose lives are unbearable to them is a matter of debate in many countries. Right-to-die advocates say people capable of making that decision should be allowed to die with dignity. Opponents say liberalizing the law could leave vulnerable people at risk. Switzerland and the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington and Montana are among places where some forms of euthanasia or assisted suicide are legal under certain circumstances. By coincidence, Monday's court hearing started two days before a bill is due to be presented to the British parliament that would legalize assisted suicide in certain circumstances. But Bowen said that even if that bill were to become law at some point, it would not be enough for Lamb. Lamb's case was originally brought by a man with locked-in syndrome, Tony Nicklinson. A court dismissed both Nicklinson's and Martin's cases last August on the grounds that it was for parliament and not for a court to change the law in this area. After being told the court's decision on August 14, Nicklinson refused food and medication and died on August 22. Lamb, who was not involved at that stage, has since been allowed to take up the legal battle where Nicklinson left off.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/paralyzed-british-men-fight-right-to-die-case-in-court/
The herbicide Agent Orange was heavily used during the Vietnam War era and was often contaminated with dioxin, a dangerous toxin and potential carcinogen. Prior research suggests that exposure to Agent Orange may increase men’s risk of developing prostate cancer, but it is unclear whether it specifically increases their risk of developing lethal forms of the disease…
World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Sunday it seemed likely a new coronavirus that has killed at least 18 people in the Middle East and Europe could be passed between humans, but only after prolonged contact. A virus from the same family triggered the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that swept the world after emerging in Asia and killed 775 people in 2003. On Sunday French authorities announced that a second man had been diagnosed with the disease after sharing a hospital room with France's only other sufferer. WHO Assistant Director-General Keiji Fukuda told reporters in Saudi Arabia, the site of the largest cluster of infections, there was no evidence so far the virus was able to sustain “generalized transmission in communities” - a scenario that would raise the specter of a pandemic. But he added: “Of most concern ... is the fact that the different clusters seen in multiple countries ... increasingly support the hypothesis that when there is close contact, this novel coronavirus can transmit from person to person. “There is a need for countries to ... increase levels of awareness,” he said. A public health expert who declined to be identified, said “close contact” meant being in the same small, enclosed space with an infected person for a prolonged period. The virus first emerged in the Gulf last year, but cases have also been recorded in Britain and France among people who had recently been in the Middle East. A total of 34 cases worldwide have been confirmed by blood tests so far. NEW DEATHS Saudi Deputy Health Minister for Public Health Ziad Memish told reporters that, of 15 confirmed cases in the most recent outbreak, in al-Ahsa district of Eastern Province, nine had died, two more than previously reported. Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said in a statement the country had had 24 confirmed cases since last summer, of whom 15 had died. Fukuda said he was not sure if the two newly reported Saudi deaths were included in the numbers confirmed by the WHO. Memish added that three suspected cases in Saudi Arabia were still under investigation, including previous negative results that were being re-examined. The first French patient was confirmed as suffering from the disease on Wednesday after travelling in the Gulf. The second patient was transferred to intensive care on Sunday after the two men shared a room in a hospital in Lille. Professor Benoit Guery, head of the Lille hospital's infectious diseases unit, said the first patient had not been immediately isolated because he presented “quite atypical” symptoms. He added in comments broadcast by BFMTV channel the case suggested that airborne transmission of the virus was possible, though still unusual, and that the public “should not be concerned” as there had been only 34 cases globally in a year. Fukuda, part of a WHO team visiting Saudi Arabia to investigate the spread of the disease, said although no specific vaccine or medication was yet available for novel coronavirus, patients were responding to treatment. “The care that is taken in the hospitals, in terms of using respirators well, in terms of treating pneumonia, in terms of treating complications, in terms of providing support, these steps can get patients through this very severe illness,” he said. Fukuda said that as far as he knew all cases in the latest outbreak in al-Ahsa district were directly or indirectly linked to one hospital. He added that Saudi Arabian authorities had taken novel coronavirus very seriously and had initiated necessary health measures such as increased surveillance systems.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/new-sars-like-virus-can-probably-pass-person-to-person-who-says/
The owner of a Las Vegas eatery at the center of a Salmonella outbreak said Friday he does not plan to reopen the restaurant at its current location. Firefly restaurant owner John Simmons said in a statement that he will move forward with plans to move the eatery from 3900 Paradise Road to 3824 Paradise by the end of the month. “We are optimistic that the combination of moving to this new location that has a kitchen as large as the entire original Firefly restaurant and the recommended retraining on operations and procedures will help us regain the confidence of the community,” Simmons said in a statement released Friday. Simmons' announcement came shortly after health officials updated the number of people affected in the Salmonella outbreak to 200. The Southern Nevada Health District released the updated number as part of a second interim report in the health inspection of Firefly restaurant on Paradise Road. An initial report put the number of people affected by the outbreak to 89. The new number comprises 196 patrons and four employees. SNHD said the people stricken with foodborne illness dined at the restaurant during a period of time including April 21-26. Health inspectors cited the restaurant for 44 demerits connected to improperly stored food in inadequate temperatures, according to the report. Click for more from Fox 5 Las Vegas. source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/200-reported-sick-in-vegas-salmonella-outbreak/
Men who were exposed to Agent Orange chemicals used during the Vietnam War are at higher risk for life-threatening prostate cancer than unexposed veterans, researchers have found. What's more, those who served where the herbicide was used were diagnosed with cancer about five years earlier than other men, on average, in the new study. “This is a very, very strong predictor of lethal cancer,” said urologist Dr. Mark Garzotto, who worked on the study at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Oregon. “If you're a person who's otherwise healthy and you've been exposed to Agent Orange, that has important implications for whether you should be screened or not screened,” he told Reuters Health. But one researcher not involved in the new study said it's hard to take much away from it, given the imprecise way it measured exposure. Agent Orange - named after the giant orange drums in which the chemicals were stored - was used by the U.S. military to destroy foliage, mainly in southern Vietnam. The herbicide was often contaminated with a type of dioxin, a potently carcinogenic chemical. The Vietnam Red Cross Society has estimated that up to one million Vietnamese suffered disabilities or health problems as a result of Agent Orange, including children born with birth defects years after their parents were exposed. Past research has also suggested that U.S. veterans who served where Agent Orange was used are at an increased risk of lymphoma and certain other cancers, including prostate cancer. For the new study, researchers wanted to see whether exposure was more closely linked to slow-growing prostate cancers or aggressive tumors. They analyzed medical records belonging to 2,720 veterans who were referred to the Portland VA for a prostate biopsy. About one in 13 of those men had been exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, according to their VA intake interviews. One third of all men in the study were diagnosed with prostate cancer, about half of which were high-grade cancers - the more aggressive and fast-growing type. When the researchers took men's age, race, weight and family history of cancer into account, they found those with Agent Orange exposure were 52 percent more likely than unexposed men to have any form of prostate cancer. Separating out different types of tumors showed the herbicide was not linked to an increased risk of slower-growing, low-grade cancer. But it was tied to a 75 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, the study team reported Monday in the journal Cancer. “The increase in the rate of cancers was almost exclusively driven by the potentially lethal cancers,” said Garzotto, also from Oregon Health & Science University. More research is needed to figure out exactly why that is, he said. In the meantime, Garzotto said veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange should discuss that with their doctors. But Dr. Arnold Schecter, from the University of Texas School of Public Health's Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Program in Dallas, said there's a “big problem” with just asking veterans if they were exposed to Agent Orange or served in an area where it was sprayed. “Of those most heavily exposed in the military as best we know, only a relatively small percentage of them had elevated dioxin from Agent Orange in their blood when tested by (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),” he told Reuters Health. Schecter said that in Vietnam, people who have high levels of that type of dioxin in their blood live in places where the chemical has become integrated into the food supply - or were sprayed directly with Agent Orange. Another researcher who has studied the effects of Agent Orange agreed that not having blood dioxin levels is a drawback, but said the findings are consistent with past research and general thinking about the chemical. “Almost all studies have implicated that men with Agent Orange (exposure) either have higher-grade prostate cancer or a more aggressive clinical course,” said Dr. Gregory Merrick, head of Wheeling Hospital's Schiffler Cancer Center in West Virginia, who also wasn't involved in the new research. But, he added, as long as men are getting into the VA system and getting regular evaluations and treatment for cancer, Agent Orange exposure “is not a death sentence by any means.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/vietnam-war-chemical-tied-to-aggressive-prostate-cancer-risk/
A 6-year old boy was hospitalized Sunday morning after suffering extensive bee stings on a popular hiking trail, Pima County Sheriff's deputy Tom Peine told Tucson News Now. Peine said the boy is stable as of Sunday evening at 5:30 p.m. He was stung more than a hundred times. “Three of the victims were sitting on a rock... the father had the 6-year-old in his lap, trying to protect his face from the bees,” said Robert Raterink, a Pima County Sheriff's Search and Rescue spokesman. Golder Ranch Fire and Rescue spokesman Will Seeley said rescuers assisted four other victims just off the Linda Vista Trail east of Calle Concordia and Oracle Road. The other four hikers all were stung more than 100 times, Seeley said. Three of the victims were taken to the hospital by ambulance. Two others did not want medical treatment. A caller to 9-1-1 reported a prolonged attack and that the boy and another hiker were going into shock. Seeley said the bees were extremely aggressive and also strung rescue personnel. Click here for more from Tuscon News Now. source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/6-year-old-boy-suffers-extensive-bee-stings-on-hiking-trail/
Baby boomers, the generation that vowed to stay forever young, are getting older, designing senior-friendly gyms and becoming their own personal trainers. In exercise havens for the over-50 set, the cardio machines are typically low impact, the resistance training is mainly air-powered and some group fitness classes are taken sitting down. At Welcyon gyms, founded by husband-and-wife boomers Suzy and Tom Boerboom, the average age of members is 62. “The environment is really designed for those 50 and over,” said Suzy Boerboom. The couple created Welcyon, which has locations in Minnesota and South Dakota, in 2009. It has no tread-mills and no free weights and workouts are customized to members' levels of fitness. A smart card sets resistance, counts repetitions and adjusts workouts. An important attraction for many boomers: background music is a combination of '40s, '50s and '60s tunes played at a much lower volume than in traditional gyms. “It was something I could manage,” said 66-year-old Bill Zortman, one of an estimated 78 million baby boomers, defined as the group born between 1946 and 1964, who make up about 26 percent of the U.S. population, according to U.S. Census reports. His thrice-weekly workouts at a Welcyon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, consists of riding a bicycle or using air-powered resistance machines to strengthen his legs, arms and back. “They make sure I'm not overdoing it,” Zortman said of the staff, who Boerboom said are often boomers themselves. The absence of clanging free weights also cuts down on the racket, Boerboom said, noting that many people over 50 prefer a quieter gym. Group fitness classes for boomers are also modified. “We're just beginning to develop a group fitness interval training program,” Boerboom said. “It will be four to six people and low impact.” The American Council on Exercise says many of their fitness professionals are baby boomers who specialize in working with older adults. “People in their early 60's are becoming personal trainers and group fitness instructors,” said Todd Galati, ACE's director of credentialing. But they are far from the majority, as the average age of ACE's 50,000 certified fitness professionals is 42, and more than 37 percent are 40. “Every year I talk to newly certified personal trainers, retired from their career in another field, who want to help people their age become more fit,” Galati said. A recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine showed that a sample of baby boomers had higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol than their parents' generation. “There is a big bad myth about the boomer generation being more fit,” said Dr. Sheldon S. Zinberg, founder of Nifty after Fifty fitness centers for older adults. “In fact, the boomer generation is less fit than their parents were at same age.” The chain has locations in Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas, Virginia and New York. Its programs target muscle power, muscle strength, reaction time, balance and cognitive skills, he said. “At age 40 people lose 0.8 to 1 percent muscle mass each year. By age 60 this accelerates to 1.5 percent,” Zinberg said. At Nifty after Fifty, group fitness classes range from yoga and Zumba to seated volleyball and cane fu, a self-defense class in which participants use a cane. As with Welcyon, there are no tread-mills. “We used to use tread-mills, but we had people falling off,” Zinberg said. “We use recumbent stair steppers, among other exercisers.” He advises people to get fit in their 40s and 50s, “and when you do become older, enjoy a supervised, customized program.” Boerboom said Welcyon plans to open more gyms later this year. “There are over 70 million of us boomers,” she said, “and we have to take care of ourselves.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/new-fitness-centers-cater-to-aging-baby-boomers/
Teenagers who text while driving are also more likely to engage in other risky activities, such as riding with an intoxicated driver or not wearing a seatbelt, a new study suggests. Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found four in every nine high school students had sent or received texts while driving in the past month. “Considering it's against the law for teens to be texting while driving in 45 states, it's a little concerning,” said Emily Olsen, a health statistician in the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health and the report's lead author. Past studies conducted in single states have found anywhere from one quarter to almost three quarters of teenagers text while driving, the study team wrote Monday in Pediatrics. To get a more nationally representative picture, Olsen and her colleagues analyzed responses to the CDC's annual youth risk survey. On the 2011 survey, conducted in public and private schools across the country, 8,505 high school students ages 16 and older were asked about potentially dangerous driving behaviors they had engaged in over the past month. Just under 45 percent had texted while driving at least once during that span, and close to 12 percent of teens said they texted behind the wheel every day. Although the study team didn't measure how cell phone use may have affected safety in the car, past research shows that texting while driving can slow reaction times and impair a driver's ability to stay in one lane. The more frequently students reported texting and driving, the more likely they were to also answer “yes” to other risky behaviors, the researchers found. For example, 3 percent of teens who didn't text at the wheel had recently driven after drinking alcohol. That compared to 19 percent who reported texting and driving at least once in the past month and 34 percent who said they texted in the car daily. Likewise, 19 percent of non-texters had ridden in a car with another driver who had been drinking, versus 33 percent of high school students who reported texting and driving themselves. “It's concerning that kids are participating in these multiple behaviors, either while they're driving or while they're a passenger,” Olsen said. “Each one of these things is quite dangerous (on its own).” Jessica Mirman, who has studied teen motor vehicle cell phone use at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Center for Injury Research and Prevention, agreed. “That just really highlighted that as far as prevention goes, we really need something comprehensive,” Mirman, who wasn't involved in the new research, said. “It's not just about texting. It's not just about drinking.” Olsen said parents have the best chance of being able to curb unsafe activities in the car by continuing to talk with their children about safe driving even after they have their license. Teens, she pointed out, are already more likely to get into - and have trouble getting out of - dangerous situations on the road, due to their inexperience. “Anything that takes their attention away from the task of driving, it can wait,” she said. Parents who are worried about their teens' driving behavior should reach out to their pediatrician or a school counselor, Mirman advised, as that risk-taking might reflect other underlying problems.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/teen-texting-at-wheel-tied-to-more-driving-risks/
The discovery of these genetic variations — chromosomal "typos," so to speak — could ultimately help researchers better understand which men are at high risk and allow for early detection or prevention of the disease. "As we continue to cast a wider net, we identify additional genetic risk factors, which point to new mechanisms for disease," said Katherine L. Nathanson, MD, associate professor in the division of Translational Medicine and Human Genetics within the department of Medicine. …