China And Smoking Go Hand In Hand

China Lung Disease 'To Kill 83m' -- BBC News

A US study has suggested that more than 80 million people in China will die in the next 25 years as a result of lung disease.

The research says the vast majority of those premature deaths are preventable.

The study focused on the devastating impact of smoking and the widespread practice of burning wood or coal at home for cooking and heating.

The Harvard School of Public Health research looked at a 30-year period, spanning the last five and the next 25.

Respiratory disease is already a leading cause of deathChi in China, but this latest study suggests a startling rise.

In the 30-year period, it calculates, about 83 million Chinese people will die prematurely of lung disease.

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Second-hand Smoke May Trigger Nicotine Dependence Symptoms In Kids

Second-hand smoke may trigger symptoms of nicotine dependence in children, a new study has found. (Credit: iStockphoto/Thomas Pullicino)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2008) — Parents who smoke cigarettes around their kids in cars and homes beware – second-hand smoke may trigger symptoms of nicotine dependence in children.

The findings are published in the September edition of the journal Addictive Behaviors in a joint study from nine Canadian institutions.

"Increased exposure to second-hand smoke, both in cars and homes, was associated with an increased likelihood of children reporting nicotine dependence symptoms, even though these children had never smoked," says Dr. Jennifer O'Loughlin, senior author of the study, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and a researcher at the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal.

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Melamine 'Widespread' In China's Food Chain

From New Scientist:

Melamine, the chemical that has tainted milk formula in China and made thousands of children ill, may have been part of the food chain in China for a long time, say food experts. But the health effects of long-term exposure in adults are unclear.

So far, 53,000 infants have fallen ill after drinking formula milk deliberately adulterated with melamine. Four babies have died, 13,000 have been hospitalised and 104 are in a critical condition with kidney stones caused by the adulterant. A girl in Hong Kong has become the first case of poisoning outside China.

The makers of baby formula require their milk to have a high protein content, which they determine by measuring its nitrogen content. But farmers who produce milk that doesn't meet this standard can beat the test by mixing it with melamine powder.

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Chocolate Helps Heart Stay Healthy

From Live Science:

A small square of dark chocolate daily protects the heart from inflammation and subsequent heart disease, a new study of Italians suggests. Milk chocolate might not do the job.

However, this guilty pleasure has a limit.

Specifically, only 6.7 grams of chocolate per day (or 0.23 ounces) represents the ideal amount, according to results from the Moli-sani Project, one of the largest health studies ever conducted in Europe. For comparison, a standard-sized Hershey's Kiss is about 4.5 grams (though the classic Kiss is not made of dark chocolate) and one Hershey's dark chocolate bar is about 41 grams (so a recommendation might be one of those weekly).

Chronic inflammation of tissues in the circulatory system is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, such as myocardial infarction or stroke. So doctors strive to keep patients' inflammation under control. One marker for inflammation in the blood is called C-reactive protein.

The researchers found a relationship between dark chocolate intake and levels of this protein in the blood of 4,849 subjects in good health and free of risk factors (such as high cholesterol or blood pressure, and other parameters). The findings are detailed in the latest issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

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Skeleton May Be Early TB Victim By LiveScience Staff

A close-up of a skeleton dating to A.D. 302 that archaeologists say bears evidence of TB. Credit: Sarah Mitchell/University of York

From Live Science:

The skeleton of a man discovered in a shallow grave on what is now a college campus in England could belong to one of Britain’s earliest victims of tuberculosis.

Radiocarbon dating suggests the man died in the fourth century, around A.D. 302, when Romans ruled the region. He was interred in a shallow scoop in a flexed position, on his right side.

The man, aged 26 to 35 years old, suffered from iron deficiency anemia during childhood and at 5-foot, 4-inches, was shorter than average for Roman males.

The first known case of TB in Britain is from the Iron Age (300 B.C.), but cases in the Roman period are fairly rare, and largely confined to the southern half of England. TB is most frequent from the 12th century A.D. in England when people were living in urban environments. So the skeleton may provide crucial evidence for the origin and development of the disease in this country.

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Health Officials Fear Spread Of Lung-Destroying Pneumonia

From The L.A. Times:

Deaths from the combination of a skin infection and the common flu have increased, authorities say.


Health authorities have detected the emergence of a rare but deadly lung-destroying form of pneumonia, sparked by the combination of a skin infection and the common flu.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 22 deaths among children last year from the dual infection.

Numbers from the 2007-2008 flu season won't be released until next month, but officials say deaths have increased. The CDC has just begun tracking cases among all age groups.

The number of fatalities, though low, is a sharp increase from previous years, and infectious disease experts worry that an ongoing epidemic of skin infections could drive the numbers higher.

The double infection has appeared before: It was the leading cause of bacterial pneumonia deaths during the 1957-1958 flu pandemic, which killed 2 million people worldwide, including about 70,000 in the U.S.

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Do 68 Molecules Hold The Key To Understanding Disease?

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2008) — Why is it that the origins of many serious diseases remain a mystery? In considering that question, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has come up with a unified molecular view of the indivisible unit of life, the cell, which may provide an answer.

Reviewing findings from multiple disciplines, Jamey Marth, Ph.D., UC San Diego Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, realized that only 68 molecular building blocks are used to construct these four fundamental components of cells: the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), proteins, glycans and lipids. His work, which illustrates the primary composition of all cells, is published in the September issue of Nature Cell Biology.

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Fighting Cholera Via Satellite

The GOCE Earth-Explorer Satellite: Photo by ESA

From Popsci.com:

Though we may often think of cholera as a disease of the past, virtually eradicated when John Snow famously linked an 1854 outbreak of the epidemic in London to an infected water well on Broad Street, it still poses a threat in almost every single developing country in the world. Over 150 years after Snow essentially founded modern epidemiology, a team of American scientists are using remote satellite imaging to predict cholera outbreaks before they occur. Cholera is historically an episodic disease, so the ability to predict its next move before it strikes would hopefully spur pre-emptive, rapid public health initiatives to attempt to mitigate the fatal effects of the infection.

Without a crystal ball, how are these scientists predicting the disease's next move? It all goes back to those oceanic drifters known as plankton and -- you guessed it -- global warming. Cholera is a water-borne infection caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which has a known association with copepods, crustaceans that live on a particular type of plankton called zooplankton. Cholera outbreaks are tied to environmental factors, including sea surface temperature, ocean height, and biomass. Global warming may be creating a more favorable environment for Vibrio cholerae, increasing the susceptibility of at-risk areas. By associating cholera with climate change and then using remote satellite imaging to track this information and store data, scientist can identify where and when cholera will crop up before it actually does.

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What DID the Romans ever do for us? They gave us AIDS

From The Daily Mail:

What, as the old Monty Python question goes, have the Romans ever done for us?

Well, apart from the usual answers of roads, sanitation and a fondness for wine, it appears they have also made us more vulnerable to HIV.

According to genetic research published on Wednesday, when Julius Caesar made his first exploratory visit to our shores in 55BC he triggered a chain of events which may have lowered our resistance to the virus which leads to Aids.

The theory is that as the Roman Empire spread so did an unknown illness that killed those carrying a gene that would one day give their descendants resistance to the virus.

As a result, today's inhabitants of nations once conquered by the Romans tend to lack the gene and so are more susceptible to HIV.

For instance, only 4 per cent of Greeks carry the gene, compared with more than 15 per cent of people in parts of northern Europe untouched by the Romans.

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