Extract may help treat bladder infection
Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:25:52 GMT
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - An herbal extract that is sold in health food stores and promoted as an allergy and fat loss aid may improve treatment of bladder infections when it is taken with antibiotics, research suggests.
Some 90 percent of bladder infections are caused by
http://www.nature.com/naturemedicine
Study Tai chi may help prevent shingles
Sun, 08 Apr 2007 17:34:15 GMT
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
LOS ANGELES - Tai chi is already known as a good low-impact exercise for older people. Now a recent study suggests it offers benefits beyond improving fitness and balance: It may help prevent shingles, a painful skin condition.
Researchers found older people who performed the slow, graceful movements of tai chi had a better immune response against the virus that causes shingles than those who only got health education, according to the most rigorous test to date.
It's unclear how tai chi, an ancient Chinese martial art that has become increasingly popular in the West, affects the immune system. But health experts were encouraged by the positive results.
"The message is that older people need to maintain healthy behavior," said Andrew Monjan of the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the research. "It's nothing that our mothers haven't told us, but we're seeing it certainly holds up to scientific inquiry."
The study appears in the April issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and was led by Dr. Michael Irwin of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Shingles is a painful skin rash that can pop up in people who have had chickenpox. The chickenpox virus can remain dormant in the body and resurface as shingles years later. It usually starts with pain and itching on the skin that later turns into an irritating rash.
An estimated 1 million Americans are afflicted with shingles every year and it commonly occurs in people 50 years old and older.
The UCLA study involved 112 healthy adults, ages 59 to 86, who have had previous cases of chickenpox.
Half of them took tai chi classes three times a week for three months and the rest attended health education classes where they were taught good diet habits and stress management. Then both groups were vaccinated with a chickenpox vaccine. Researchers took periodic blood tests before and after vaccination to determine their level of immunity against shingles.
After six months, the tai chi group had nearly twice the level of immunity against shingles than the education group.
Those who performed tai chi before vaccination had an immune response that was similar to what a vaccine would produce in a younger population. Tai chi combined with the vaccine showed a 40 percent increase in immunity than the vaccine alone, researchers found.
The results weren't surprising to tai chi instructor Howard Chuck, who owns a tai chi academy in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Although none of his students are trying to ward off shingles, Chuck said the exercise is popular among his older people who prefer tai chi's meditation aspects.
"Tai chi requires a lot of mind power not just muscle power," he said.
___
On the Net:
Shingles page: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/list_varicl.htm
UCLA: http://www.ucla.edu
Haiti faces high cost of dying
Mon, 09 Apr 2007 01:10:26 GMT
By STEVENSON JACOBS, Associated Press Writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Life has always been a struggle for Haiti's poor. These days, death isn't much easier.
The city morgue is under-refrigerated, jammed to capacity with unclaimed corpses and so short of funds that workers don't have paper masks to ward off the stench.
Deforestation has inflated the price of coffin wood, and hundreds — possibly thousands — of deaths in street violence are pushing up the price of funerals. Robbers plunder graves for coffins to resell, and families try to thwart them by smashing the coffin before it is covered with earth.
Some bereaved families are taking out high-interest "funeral loans," falling deep into debt to send off relatives with the dignity many were deprived of in life. Others have to abandon their dead on a dusty field known as Titanyen, a Creole word meaning "less than nothing," on the edge of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
A funeral now costs around $540 — more than most Haitians earn in a year. Cremation is only for the wealthy.
Haiti's largest public morgue, built to hold 390 cadavers, often has nearly 500, many strewn on the cement floor for lack of space. The dead include shooting victims,
http://www.friendsoftheorphans.org
Child recovering from vaccine infection
Sun, 08 Apr 2007 07:33:47 GMT
CHICAGO - A 2-year-old Indiana boy who contracted a rare and life-threatening infection from his soldier father's smallpox vaccination is recovering, a hospital spokesman said.
Doctors have relied on some untested measures to save the boy's life, including skin grafts and an experimental drug that has never been used to treat a human patient, officials said. The boy's pox lesions left him with the equivalent of second-degree burns, requiring grafts to let the underlying skin heal.
"Everyone has been a little bit astonished that he has recovered as well as he has," hospital spokesman John Easton said Saturday. The boy should be should be upgraded to serious from critical condition soon, he added.
The boy has been in pediatric intensive care at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital for the past month with a virulent rash over 80 percent of his body. He developed the rash after coming in contact with his father, who had recently been vaccinated for smallpox before he was to be deployed overseas by the Army.
The boy is not suffering from smallpox, but from the related virus which is used to convey immunity to the much deadlier disease.
Health officials say there is no infection risk for the general population because the virus can be spread only through close physical contact.
The child suffered from eczema, which is a known risk factor for such an infection, doctors said.
The military resumed smallpox vaccinations in 2002 because of bioterrorism fears.
