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Tag: superbugs
This Week In Health: A Tough Strain Of Tuberculosis

This Week In Health: A Tough Strain Of Tuberculosis

“This Week In Health” offers some highlights from the world of health news and wellness tips that you may have missed this week:

  • Alzheimer’s Disease is significantly less prevalent among people who have received an organ transplant, according to findings from a University of Texas at Galveston study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s not the transplanted organs themselves fighting Alzheimer’s, but the medication that transplant patients take daily in order to prevent organ rejection.
  • The possibility that stem-cell treatment could be the cure-for-everything has been heralded for years. Much is still unknown, however, and as the first generation to be treated using stem-cell therapies on a large scale, patients should be aware of the potential risks.
  • A woman with an especially tough strain of tuberculosis — extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) — is being treated at the National Institutes of Health after traveling through the U.S. for about six weeks. XDR-TB, which does not respond to the most potent antibiotics used to fight it, is not easier to contract, but it is more lethal. The Centers for Disease Control are currently trying to ascertain who the woman may have come into contact with, and who rode in airplanes with her, during her visit. According to the CDC, tuberculosis can be spread when released into the air via coughs, sneezes, shouting, or singing.
  • A stroke takes a toll on its victims roughly equal to aging eight years all at once. According to a new study published in the journal Stroke, stroke survivors’ performance in memory and quick-thinking tests suffered as badly as if they had aged 7.9 years.

Photo: Sanofi Pasteur via Flickr

This Week In Health: Tipping Point With ‘Superbugs’

This Week In Health: Tipping Point With ‘Superbugs’

“This Week In Health” offers some highlights from the world of health and wellness that you may have missed this week:

  • Experts say we are at a tipping point with antibiotic-resistant bacteria — so-called “superbugs.” Due to the massive overuse of antibiotic drugs, pathogens are becoming increasingly immune to available treatments, posing a huge potential public health risk. The Food and Drug Administration is taking steps to curb the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock in an effort to mitigate the spread of these unkillable microbes.
  • A link between obesity and Type 2 diabetes has already been quite well established for some time. A new study published in mBio sheds new light on the precise mechanism: Type 2 diabetes is possibly caused by bacteria that become more prevalent in the bodies of people who gain weight. What this means in practice is that doctors may have a way to intercede and affect the course of Type 2 diabetes, by targeting the bacteria.
  • New research suggests that poor sleep in old age may be linked to the development of Alzheimer’s Disease. The findings imply that insufficient deep sleep contributes to “a reduced ability to cement memories in the brain over the long term, resulting in greater memory loss,” according to researchers.
  • The tragic loss of 46-year-old Beau Biden to brain cancer has brought renewed attention to brain tumors, an often lethal and not fully understood form of cancer, and to developing new and more effective treatments in the fight to cure them.

Photo: NIAID via Flickr

Quick & Healthy: Welcome To The Machine

Quick & Healthy: Welcome To The Machine

“Quick & Healthy” offers some highlights from the world of health and wellness that you may have missed this week:

  • IBM announced that it would be putting its state-of-the-art Watson supercomputer to use in the battle against cancer. The advantage and innovation of Watson, made famous when it bested two human competitors at Jeopardy, is its ability to process mountains of raw data to arrive at specific solutions to particular problems. In this case, it means Watson will analyze reams of genomic data from patients fighting cancer to find the best treatments.
  • An unprecedented outbreak of avian flu is ravaging turkey farms in the American Midwest. The virulent H5N2 virus has spread to poultry farms in 14 states, leading to mass culling and euthanasia of the affected stock.
  • We’ve got smartphones, smartcars, smartwatches — soon you could have smart dishware that can tell you when you’re consuming too many calories. (Americans clearly need someone to tell them.) The SmartPlate is a wi-fi-enabled piece of crockery that scans and weighs the food placed on it — identifying the amount and nutritional value (or lack thereof) of its contents.
  • A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) finds that only one-fourth of 133 countries surveyed have a comprehensive plan to combat antibiotic-resistant pathogens, otherwise known as “superbugs.” Among the disquieting report’s key findings is that countries are less than diligent at monitoring for these novel strains and that rampant overprescription of antibiotics has continued, despite public warnings that this contributes to emergence of bacteria that cannot be killed with available drugs. A previous WHO report stated that the “post-antibiotic era — in which common infections and minor injuries can kill — is a very real possibility for the 21st century.”

Photo: Clockready via Wikicommons

Quick & Healthy: A 1,000-Year-Old Medical Marvel

Quick & Healthy: A 1,000-Year-Old Medical Marvel

“Quick & Healthy” offers some highlights from the world of health and wellness which you may have missed this week:

  • It’s another win for java-junkies: The World Cancer Research Fund found in a recent study that each cup of coffee consumed is correlated with a 14 percent decreased risk for liver cancer.
  • Eating well can halve your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease. That’s the conclusion of a new study that tracked participants’ adherence to one of three diets; those who stuck with healthy eating regimens were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s later in life.
  • An apple a day does not diminish one’s need to seek medical attention, according to a report in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. That matter settled, researchers are currently refocusing their efforts on understanding whether or not a pot of water being surveilled can, in fact, be brought to boil.
  • A concoction of garlic, wine, and bile, taken from a 10th-century apothecary’s textbook, was found to be effective at stopping an antibiotic-resistant pathogen. These so-called “superbugs” are expected to be one of the major health hazards of the next century; the potion, derived centuries before the development of germ theory, shows promise for combating them.

Photo: Paul Morriss via Flickr