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Although stroke is popularly believed to affect only elderly adults, stroke is among the top ten causes of death among infants and children. Death rates due to stroke among elderly adults have also fallen since the 1960s.

However the causes of stroke in children are very different from those in adults. Heart disease, sickle cell disease, cancer, meningitis, chicken pox, genetic factors, and congenital abnormalities account for most of the cases.

The researchers used national data on deaths. They studied trends in death rates from stroke for infants and children in England and Wales from 1921 to 2000.

A total of 6,029 infants and children died of a stroke during this period. Almost three quarters (71 percent) of cases were of the type known as hemorrhagic stroke. This is bleeding into the brain as opposed to a stroke cause by a blockage (ischemic stroke).

The authors say that in depth analysis showed that the death rate fell sharply during the 1920s and 1930s, but rose sharply during the 1940s. This is largely as a result of changes in the coding of disease.

After the researchers specifically reviewed trends by age, they found that stroke deaths peaked during infancy (under one year of age) at 24.5 per million person years. Deaths among infants accounted for 28 percent of all childhood stroke deaths, despite this age group accounting for only 5.4 percent of the total population studied.

Rates dropped abruptly to 2.5 per million person years, between the ages of 5 and 9. They rose again to 7.5 per million person years during late adolescence (15 to 19 years).

However, boys were more likely than girls to have a fatal stroke at all time points and at all ages. Also, boys were almost 50 percent more likely to die of stroke during infancy than girls.

The authors say that the female hormone estrogen may partly explain these differences. Estrogen protects against heart disease and stroke. It surges in early infancy and then again at puberty in girls. They suggest that on the other hand, there may be genetic factors which make boys more susceptible to brain injury and damage.

The news is based on a study that assessed the walking speeds of over 3,000 elderly people and compared them to death records for several years after. Researchers, who took into account any existing heart disease or other illnesses the participants had, found that 6.9% of the slowest walkers died of heart disease compared to just 1.9% of the fastest walkers.

There are a number of possible explanations for the association between slow walking and heart disease. For example, people who already have undetected mild heart failure or early narrowing of the arteries in the legs could be slower walkers because of this.

There are a number of possible explanations for the association between slow walking and heart disease. For example, people who already have undetected mild heart failure or early narrowing of the arteries in the legs could be slower walkers because of this.

This research was conducted by Dr Julien Dumurgier and colleagues from the INSERM research foundation in Paris and other organisations in France. The study was supported by grants from INSERM, the Victor Segalen-Bordeaux II University and the Sanofi-Synthélabo Company.

which explored the relationship between slow walking speed and risk of death in older people. The researchers followed 3,208 French men and women aged 65 or older.

• Men with a maximum speed of 1.50 m/s (metres per second) or less.
• Men between 1.51 and 1.84 m/s.
• Men with a maximum speed of 1.85 m/s or more.
• Women with a maximum speed of 1.35 m/s or less.
• Women between 1.36 and 1.50 m/s.
• Women with a maximum speed of more than 1.50 m/s.

Other research has clearly shown that the heart benefits from physical activity, and this should be promoted.

Approximately 18.8 million American adults suffer from depression, the leading cause of disability in the United States. Yet only about half the patients who take common medical treatments like antidepressant drugs actually see a therapeutic effect. Moreover, they suffer a broad range of undesirable side effects including weight gain, sexual dysfunction and even suicidal behavior.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has a far higher success rate, with some 80% of patients responding positively. ECT, however, is a highly invasive treatment involving general anesthesia, with many serious side effects ranging from dizziness and headaches to temporary or even permanent memory impairment.

Now an Israeli company, Brainsway, has developed a new non-invasive deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) treatment that it claims can effectively treat depression without any of the negative side effects of drugs or ECT. The treatment, which Brainsway’s founders believe could revolutionize the whole psychiatric care market, does not require anesthetic. Instead, users describe the experience as a gentle shaking or tickling of the scalp. “A bit like a massage,” Dr. Abraham Zangen, one of the inventors of the device, told ISRAEL21c.

TMS is still a relatively experimental area of medicine that is primarily being used for research purposes and clinical trials only. Though widely recognized as a potential treatment for a number of mental disorders including depression, the problem until now has been that existing TMS devices can only penetrate about half an inch beneath the surface of the cortex. This is deep enough to treat some disorders like migraine (a new TMS device to treat migraines is now being tested in the US,) but not deep enough to treat more difficult mental health conditions.

Brainsway’s founders, however, have invented a new TMS coil configuration that has been designed to generate sufficient magnetic field strength to stimulate neurons which are located 5 to 6 cm. inside the brain mass without posing a hazard. This, according to Zangen, means the device can potentially be used to treat a wide range of mental illnesses including depression, Alzheimers, Parkinson’s disease, addiction, stroke, drug abuse, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and schizophrenia.

The magnetic coil, which is placed on specific areas of the patient’s scalp, sends strong directed magnetic pulses through the brain to stimulate the Nucleus Accumbens (the part of the brain responsible for positive stimuli) and the neurons connected to it. “By repeated artificial stimulation of electrical activity created by the coil, we boost the sensitivity of these circuits so they will work more efficiently,” says Dr. Hilik Lewkovitch, at Brainsway.

The result is that the next time natural stimulation occurs, such as something pleasant that the brain responds to, the patient will respond more strongly, enjoy it more, and seek to repeat the experience. By intensifying sensitivity this causes the patient to respond normally to the environment.

What makes the device so unique in terms of treatment is that unlike ECT or drugs, it stimulates a specific area within the brain, rather than the whole brain or body. This is a well-known problem for drug therapies used to treat depression. Both ECT and drug treatments affect the entire body, even though the intention is to only stimulate certain locations deep within the brain which are thought to be the active agents for depression and other psychiatric illnesses.

Uzi Sofer, Brainsway’s CEO, believes the company’s device could become the first line of treatment for depression, a replacement not only for ECT, but also for anti-depressants themselves. “It may become the safe and effective treatment for a person’s first depressive episode,” he predicts.

Brainsway has undertaken successful animal trials at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where the device was tested as a treatment for depression, addiction, and PTSD. “These were a great success,” says Lewkovitch. From June to November last year, the company held its first clinical trials to test the safety of the treatment. Thirty-five people took part in the study that was held at the School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. “We found that not only was the device safe with no obvious side effects, but that even healthy patients who did not suffer from depression reported an improvement in positive feeling and some cognitive improvement,” says Lewkovitch. “This was very good and encouraging news.”

The company is now preparing to begin a multi-center clinical trial this month in three or four locations around the world. This will test the efficacy of the treatment, specifically related to emotional and cognitive improvements. The trial, which should take between seven to eight months, is for moderate to severely depressed patients who have not responded to medication.

A collaborative study has shown that high salt intake is linked to significantly greater risk of both stroke and cardiovascular disease.

The association between high salt intake and high blood pressure is well established, and it has been suggested that a population-wide reduction in dietary salt intake has the potential to substantially reduce the levels of cardiovascular disease.

The World Health Organization recommended level of salt consumption is 5 g (about one teaspoon) per day at the population level.

For the study, Professor Pasquale Strazzullo at the University of Naples, Italy and Professor Francesco Cappuccio at the University of Warwick, UK, analysed the results of 13 published studies involving over 170,000 people that directly assessed the relationship between
levels of habitual salt intake and rates of stroke and cardiovascular disease.

Differences in study design and quality were taken into account to minimise bias.

Their analysis shows unequivocally that a difference of 5 g a day in habitual salt intake is associated with a 23 per cent difference in the rate of stroke and a 17 per cent difference in the rate of total cardiovascular disease.

Based on these results, the authors estimate that reducing daily salt intake by 5 g at the population level could avert one and a quarter million deaths from stroke and almost three million deaths from cardiovascular disease each year.

Furthermore, because of imprecision in measurement of salt intake, these effect sizes are likely to be underestimated, say the authors.

These results support the role of a substantial population reduction in salt intake for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, the researchers concluded.

How much salt do we need?
Based on the requirements of a human body, an average adult requires an intake of 4.2g salt per day. The minimum requirement is 1.5g. The government recommends an intake of 6g salt per day for an adult and less for children. At the moment the average adult intake is 10-12g. Pro-salt campaigners argue that any healthy body will process just the right amount of salt it needs and the kidneys will dispose of any surplus.

Fredrik Sebelius, of Lund University, in Sweden, is one of those working on the project. He told CNN that the SmartHand is able to exploit the fact that many amputees experience what he terms a “phantom hand.”

When an amputee imagines moving a “phantom hand,” signals are sent down nerve fibres in the remaining part of the amputated arm to activate muscles that would have moved the fingers.

Myolelectric signals from those muscles are recorded by electrodes applied to the forearm and then transmitted to motors in the artificial hand.

It’s a technique that has been used in prosthetic limbs for decades, but Sebelius says the SmartHand gives much more control than other systems.

It also allows sensory information to be detected and transmitted from several sensors in each prosthetic finger, meaning users can actually “feel” objects they hold in the SmartHand.

difference between our system and others is the sensory feedback.

Fredrick Sebelius, Lund University, Sweden

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“Sensors in the prosthesis pick up tactile information, which is relayed to actuators on the arm that pass on the sensory feedback, and this hasn’t been done before,”

Sebelius gives the example of a pressure sensor on the artificial index finger sending a signal to forearm. By targeting the area of the forearm that activates the part of the brain associated with the index finger, the signal from the finger is “felt” by the brain.

He says the prosthesis could be commercially available within two years, but that the current technology is only suitable for amputations below the elbow. Upper arm amputees don’t have enough muscles associated with hand movement to control the SmartHand.

Medicines are potent substances, this fact however, does not stop unscrupulous traders from taking advantage of the public’s fears of flu and sending e-mails offering anti-viral medicine for sale over the internet.

Pharmacists are experts in medicines and can lawfully and safely supply them over the internet – make sure you use the internet wisely, and check it is a pharmacy site registered with RPSGB.
Should I be worried about the quality of medicines bought online?

The internet can present a real danger to people’s health. Dishonest traders are selling medicines online without any relevant professional qualifications or healthcare expertise. The products they sell can be poor quality at best and dangerous at worst.

If you choose to purchase medicines over the net make sure the site is a legitimate, registered online pharmacy, check the RPSGB website for a list of websites that are officially registered as an online trading pharmacy. This is the only way you can be sure that you are dealing with a UK registered pharmacy supplying genuine medicines.

Counterfeit medicines have been deliberately mislabelled, they can contain the wrong ingredients, have with no active ingredients, have insufficient active ingredients, or have fake packaging.

If you take counterfeit medicines you could be putting yourself at serious risk of major health problems. Don’t chance it – either buy from a UK registered pharmacy or if it’s a prescription-only medicine, don’t bypass the health system – get a prescription.

Former president Bill Clinton paid a rare visit to the US Senate on Tuesday to urge divided Democrats to unite behind President Barack Obama’s historic plan to overhaul US health care.

“This is an economic imperative,” Clinton declared after a closed-door session with Democrats at their weekly policy meeting some 15 years after his own dramatic push to remake health care collapsed after a strong start.

The two-term former president came at the invitation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a one-time Clinton aide, and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, according to a Democratic Senate leadership official.

Reid has been struggling to draw the 60 votes needed to ensure the ability to break through any Senate parliamentary delaying tactics and pass the bill, a version of which narrowly cleared the House of Representatives on Saturday.

The Senate could take up the bill next week, but Republican opposition and Democratic doubts, notably on the volatile issues of abortion and what role government should play in health care, have clouded the plan’s fate.

“I just urged them to resolve their differences and pass the bill,” Clinton told reporters after his one-hour talk, which blended politics, policy, and personal experience on behalf of Obama’s top domestic priority.

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown said Clinton had drawn on his 1993-1994 defeat on health care and on then president Lyndon Johnson’s victorious push 30 years earlier to create the Medicare health program for the elderly.

Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, a key health care overhaul advocate, said Clinton had discussed the stakes “from a policy standpoint and a political standpoint” but had not endorsed specific proposals, “and wisely not.”

Clinton’s visit underscored the political peril Democrats may face: Republicans energized by derailing his health care push went on to a landslide victory in the 1994 mid-term elections.

The United States is the world’s richest state but the only industrialized democracy that does not ensure that all of its citizens have health care coverage, with an estimated 36 million Americans uninsured.

Using imaging mass spectrometry, researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed tools that will enable scientists to visualize how different cell populations of cells communicate. Their study shows how bacteria talk to one another – an understanding that may lead to new therapeutic discoveries for diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes and allergies.

In the paper published in the November 8 issue of Nature Chemical Biology, Pieter C. Dorrestein, PhD, assistant professor at UC San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and colleagues describe an approach they developed to describe how bacteria interface with other bacteria in a laboratory setting. Dorrestein and post-doctoral students Yu-Liang Yang and Yuquan Xu, along with Paul Straight from Texas A&M University, utilized technology called natural product MALDI-TOF (Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time of Flight) imaging mass spectrometry to uniquely translate the language of bacteria.

Microbial interactions, such as signaling, have generally been considered by scientists in terms of an individual, predominant chemical activity. However, a single bacterial species is capable of producing many bioactive compounds that can alter neighboring organisms. The approach developed by the UCSD research team enabled them to observe the effects of multiple microbial signals in an interspecies interaction, revealing that chemical “conversations” between bacteria involve many signals that function simultaneously.

“Scientists tend to study the metabolic exchange of bacteria, for example penicillin, one molecule at a time,” said Dorrestein. “Actually, such exchanges by microbes are much more complex, involving 10, 20 or even 50 molecules at one time. Now scientists can capture that complexity.”

The researchers anticipate that this tool will enable development of a bacterial dictionary that translates the output signals. “Our ability to translate the metabolic output of microbes is becoming more important, as they outnumber other cells in our body by a 10 to one margin,” Dorrestein explain. “We want to begin to understand how those bacteria interact with our cells. This is a powerful tool that may ultimately aid in understanding these interactions.”

In order to communicate, bacteria secrete molecules that tell other microbes, in effect, “I am irritated, stop growing,” “I need more nutrients” or “come closer, I can supply you with nutrients.” Other molecules are secreted that may turn off the body’s defense mechanisms. The team is currently mapping hundreds of such bacterial interactions. Their hope is that this approach will also enable them to translate these bacterial-mediated mechanisms in the future.

Intravenous products:
One Sydney hospital is among the first in Australia to trial a revolutionary machine that lets clinicians see the veins mapped out on the surface of the skin, reducing the number of failed attempts at cannulation.

The VeinViewer, which will be tested in the hematology unit at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, displays infra-red images on the skin of the underlying veins.

The light shows up the hemoglobin in red blood cells and the image is captured by video camera. The images are processed by a computer and projected onto the patient’s skin using a green light.

The machine, which costs about $50,000, can detect veins six millimetres beneath the skin surface or in the scalp beneath hair and was named by Time magazine as being one of the best medical inventions of 2004.

Washington Curcumin, an ingredient commonly found in yellow curry, is being viewed as a promising disease-fighter. Scientists are working on developing nano-sized capsules containing the curry ingredient in an effort to improve its absorption and effectiveness in the body.

Curcumin is a potent antioxidant found in the Indian spice called turmeric. The research team is developing nano-size capsule that would boost the body’s uptake of curcumin and help fight several diseases. Trials are underway to test its safety and effectiveness in fighting colon cancer, psoriasis, and alzheimer’s disease.

The digestive juice in the gastrointestinal tract quickly destroys curcumin so that little actually gets into the blood. It is already known that encapsulating insulin and certain other drugs into structures called liposomes can boost absorption. The scientists prepared the liposomes encapsulating curcumin and fed them to laboratory rats.

They found that encapsulating more than quadrupled absorption of curcumin, and also boosted antioxidant levels in the blood. The researchers said that encapsulating process could be an answer to the problem of increasing curcumin’s absorption in the digestive environment of the gastrointestinal
tract. The study appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.