Doctors Recommend That Pregnant Women Have To Make A Flu Shot

Doctors Recommend That Pregnant Women Have To Make A Flu Shot.
Pregnant women were urged to get a flu launch during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, and further display supports that advice. Norwegian researchers have found that vaccination in pregnancy was safe for origin and child, and that fetal deaths were more common among unvaccinated moms-to-be. Influenza is a serious intimation to a pregnant woman and her unborn child, said Dr Camilla Stoltenberg, director vague of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, lead researcher of the new study. "Our look at indicates that influenza during pregnancy was a risk factor for stillbirth during the pandemic in 2009".

And "We judge no indication that pandemic vaccination in the second or third trimester increased the risk of stillbirth". With this year's flu pummeling many folk across the United States, experts reveal the best way a pregnant woman can protect her unborn baby from flu complications is by getting a flu shot. "In adding to protecting the mother against severe influenza, the vaccine protects the fetus and the lassie in the first months after birth, when the child is too young to be vaccinated".

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a flu spot for everyone over 6 months of age. Besides replete women, the CDC says the elderly and anyone with a chronic condition such as asthma or diabetes are especially vulnerable to infection.

For the study, published Jan 16, 2013 in the New England Journal of Medicine, Stoltenberg's crew cool data on more than 117000 women in Norway who were pregnant between 2009 and 2010 - the take of the H1N1 pandemic. The investigators found the rate of fetal deaths was almost five per 1000 women.

The Presence Of A Few Extra Pounds In Man Reduces The Risk Of Sudden Death

The Presence Of A Few Extra Pounds In Man Reduces The Risk Of Sudden Death.
A uncharted worldwide opinion reveals a surprising pattern: while obesity increases the risk of dying early, being slightly overweight reduces it. These studies included almost 3 million adults from around the world, yet the results were remarkably consistent, the authors of the scrutiny noted. "For populate with a medical condition, survival is slight better for people who are slightly heavier," said study author Katherine Flegal, a older research scientist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

Several factors may narrative for this finding. "Maybe heavier people present to the doctor earlier, or get screened more often. Heavier bourgeoisie may be more likely to be treated according to guidelines, or fat itself may be cardioprotective, or someone who is heavier might be more resilient and better able to summer-house a shock to their system". The report was published Jan. 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the study, Flegal's body collected data on more than 2,88 million kinsfolk included in 97 studies. These studies were done in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, China, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil, Israel, India and Mexico. The researchers looked at the participants' body miscellany index, or BMI, which is a extent of body fat that takes into narration a person's height and weight. Pooling the data from all the studies, the researchers found that compared with normal substance people, overweight people had a 6 percent lower risk of death.

Obese people, however, had an 18 percent higher chance of death. For those who were the least obese, the risk of eradication was 5 percent lower than for normal weight people, but for those who were the most obese the risk of death was 29 percent higher, the findings revealed. While the workroom found an association between weight and premature expiration risk, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Fibrosis Of The Heart Muscle Can Lead To Sudden Death

Fibrosis Of The Heart Muscle Can Lead To Sudden Death.
Scarring in the heart's impediment may be a indicator risk factor for death, and scans that reckon the amount of scarring might help in deciding which patients need particular treatments, a new turn over suggests. At issue is a kind of scarring, or fibrosis, known as midwall fibrosis. Reporting in the March 6 exit of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that patients with enlarged hearts who had more of this strain of damage were more than five times more likely to experience sudden cardiac extermination compared to patients without such scarring. "Both the presence of fibrosis and the extent were independently and incrementally associated with all-cause mortality passing ," concluded a team led by Dr Ankur Gulati of Royal Brompton Hospital, in London.

In the study, the researchers took high-tech MRI scans of the hearts of 472 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, a material of weakened and enlarged goodness that is often linked to consideration failure. The MRIs looked for scarring in the middle section of the heart muscle wall. Tracking the patients for an normal of more than five years, the team reported that while about 11 percent of patients without midwall fibrosis had died, nearly 27 percent of those with such scarring had died.

According to Gulati's team, assessments of midwall scarring based on MRI imaging might be valuable to doctors in pinpointing which patients with enlarged hearts are at highest gamble for death, disorderly heart rhythms and heart failure. Experts in the United States agreed that gauging the dimensions of scarring on the heart provides worthwhile information. "The severity of the dysfunction can be linked to the extent with which healthy heart muscle is replaced by nonfunctioning dent tissue," explained Dr Moshe Gunsburg, director of the cardiac arrhythmia accommodation and co-chief of the division of cardiology at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, in New York City.

People With Epilepsy Have Increased Risk Of Mortality

People With Epilepsy Have Increased Risk Of Mortality.
People with adolescence epilepsy who pick up to have seizures into adolescence and beyond face a significantly higher risk of death than relatives who've never had epilepsy, new research suggests. In a study that followed 245 children for 40 years following their epilepsy diagnosis, researchers found that 24 percent died during that ease period. That's a gauge of death that's three times as high as would be expected for people without epilepsy who were of a like age and sex.

And "In those people with childhood-onset epilepsy, those who do not outgrow their seizures have a substantially higher mortality censure over many years," said study senior author Dr Shlomo Shinnar, leader of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Management Center at the Children's Hospital of Montefiore in New York City. But the danger to any individual in any given year is still less than 1 percent.

And the good news from the deliberate over is that "once you have seizure remission, mortality rates are similar to people without epilepsy ". The findings are published in the Dec 23, 2010 end of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Epilepsy is a disarray of the brain caused by abnormal signaling messages from nerve cell to nerve cell, according to the US National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. Those deviating signals can cause peculiar sensations, muscle spasms, seizures and even a loss of consciousness.

The most serious complication that occurs more often in hoi polloi with epilepsy is sudden unexplained death. However, little is known about why this is so. The stream study included 245 children living in Finland who were diagnosed with epilepsy in 1964. The children were followed prospectively for 40 years, and in most cases, when a liquidation occurred, an autopsy was performed.

Mortality From Lung Cancer Is Several Times Higher Than From Cancer Of Other Organs

Mortality From Lung Cancer Is Several Times Higher Than From Cancer Of Other Organs.
Lung cancer is the most noxious acquire of cancer in the United States, destruction about 157,300 people every year - more than colon, breast and prostate cancer combined, according to the US National Institutes of Health. It is also the nation's instant greatest cause of death, second only to heart disease. And yet lung cancer attracts fewer federal examination dollars per death than the other leading forms of cancer demise. Doctors have yet to happen a reliable method for screening for lung cancer.

And new treatments for lung cancer scone out at a snail's pace compared with therapies for other cancers. So why does the top cancer killer fascinate so little attention? Largely because people are perceived to have done this to themselves, garnering little public sympathy, said Kay Cofrancesco, chief of advocacy relations for the Lung Cancer Alliance, a patriotic nonprofit group dedicated to lung cancer support and advocacy. About 90 percent of men and 80 percent of women who hanker from lung cancer are current or former smokers, according to NIH.

And "In demonizing the tobacco companies, we've then demonized the smoker. So there is that blame-the-victim inclination when it comes to lung cancer patients". Yet some advances are being made. Clinical trials are being conducted on one capability screening contrivance for lung cancer.

Targeted therapies are being developed based on the genetics of lung cancer. But understandably more can be done, experts say. Survival rates for lung cancer are woeful compared with other cancers, largely because lung cancer is most often not detected until it has metastasized.

And "Some lung cancers have a propensity to spread widely throughout the body," said Dr Len Lichtenfeld, agent chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "By the time they have symptoms, the cancer has spread". Because smoking is so closely linked to lung cancer, most specie aimed at impedance has gone into programs to promote smoking cessation.

These programs have not made a lot of headway. Between 1998 and 2008, the piece of US residents who currently smoked declined just 3,5 percent, from 24,1 to 20,6 percent, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even as some relations quit, maybe encouraged by strict smoke-free laws and public anti-smoking campaigns, others accept up the habit. Quitting smoking does provide numerous health benefits - improved lung affair and decreased blood pressure among them - but former smokers will always have an elevated endanger for developing lung cancer.

Stroke Remains A Major Cause Of Death

Stroke Remains A Major Cause Of Death.
Stroke deaths in the United States have been dropping for more than 100 years and have declined 30 percent in the old times 11 years, a revitalized article reveals. Sometimes called a brain attack, stroke is a unequalled cause of long-term disability. Stroke, however, has slipped from the third-leading cause of death in the United States to the fourth-leading cause. This, and a alike decline in heart disease, is one of the 10 great public-health achievements of the 20th century, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even so, there is still more to be done, said George Howard, a professor of biostatistics in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Howard is co-author of a systematic announcement describing the factors influencing the worsen in stroke deaths. The allegation is scheduled for publication in the journal Stroke.

And "Stroke has been declining since 1900, and this could be a denouement of changes leading to fewer people having a stroke or because people are less likely to die after they have a stroke," Howard said in a university copy release. "Nobody really knows why, but several things seem to be contributing to fewer deaths from stroke". It is admissible that the most important reason for the decline is the outcome in lowering Americans' blood pressure, which is the biggest stroke risk factor.

Obese People Are More Prone To Heart Disease Than People With Normal Weight

Obese People Are More Prone To Heart Disease Than People With Normal Weight.
The quirk that some man can be overweight or obese and still tarry healthy is a myth, according to a new Canadian study. Even without high blood pressure, diabetes or other metabolic issues, overweight and tubby people have higher rates of death, heart spasm and stroke after 10 years compared with their thinner counterparts, the researchers found. "These details suggest that increased body weight is not a benign condition, even in the absence of metabolic abnormalities, and argue against the concept of fine fettle obesity or benign obesity," said researcher Dr Ravi Retnakaran, an associate professor of nostrum at the University of Toronto.

The terms healthy obesity and benign obesity have been used to portray people who are obese but don't have the abnormalities that typically accompany obesity, such as high blood pressure, spacy blood sugar and high cholesterol. "We found that metabolically healthy obese individuals are what is more at increased risk for death and cardiovascular events over the long term as compared with metabolically trim normal-weight individuals". It's possible that obese people who appear metabolically healthy have stubby levels of some risk factors that worsen over time, the researchers suggest in the report, published online Dec 3, 2013 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Dr David Katz, guide of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, welcomed the report. "Given the latest attention to the 'obesity paradox' in the licensed literature and pop culture alike, this is a very timely and important paper". The rotundity paradox holds that certain people benefit from chronic obesity. Some obese multitude appear healthy because not all weight gain is harmful.

The Epilepsy And Risk Of Sudden Death

The Epilepsy And Risk Of Sudden Death.
Sleeping on your corporation may lift your risk of sudden death if you have epilepsy, new research suggests. Sudden, unexpected undoing in epilepsy occurs when an otherwise healthy person dies and "the autopsy shows no clearly structural or toxicological cause of death," said Dr Daniel Friedman, assistant professor of neurology at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. This is a fine occurrence, and the con doesn't establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between sleeping position and sudden death.

Still, based on the findings, kith and kin with epilepsy should not sleep in a prone (chest down) position, said lucubrate leader Dr James Tao, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Chicago. "We found that downwards sleeping is a significant risk for sudden, unexpected death in epilepsy, particularly in younger patients under grow old 40". For people with epilepsy, brief disruptions of electrical work in the brain leads to recurrent seizures, according to the Epilepsy Foundation.

It's not clear why prone sleeping attitude is linked with a higher risk of sudden death, but Tao said the finding draws parallels to impulsive infant death syndrome (SIDS). It's thought that SIDS occurs because babies are unfit to wake up if their breathing is disrupted. In adults with epilepsy people on their stomachs may have an airway impediment and be unable to rouse themselves. For the study, Tao and his colleagues reviewed 25 in days of yore published studies that detailed 253 sudden, unexplained deaths of epilepsy patients for whom gen was available on body position at time of death.

The Presence Of Drug-Resistant Staph Reduces The Survival Of Patients

The Presence Of Drug-Resistant Staph Reduces The Survival Of Patients.
Cystic fibrosis patients with methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in their respiratory region have worse survival rates than those without the drug-resistant bacteria, researchers have found. The redesigned study, published in the June 16 topic of the Journal of the American Medical Association, included 19,833 cystic fibrosis patients, old 6 to 45, who were enrolled in the writing-room from January 1996 to December 2006 and followed-up until December 2008.

During the mug up period, 2,537 of the patients died and 5,759 had MRSA detected in their respiratory tract. The expiry rate was 27,7 per 1000 patient-years middle those with MRSA and 18,3 deaths per 1000 patient-years for those without MRSA.

Most Articles About Cancer Focused On The Positive Outcome Of Treatment

Most Articles About Cancer Focused On The Positive Outcome Of Treatment.
People often gripe that media reports tilt towards bad news, but when it comes to cancer most newspaper and arsenal stories may be overly optimistic, US researchers suggest. The inquiry authors found that articles were more likely to highlight aggressive treatment and survival, with far less acclaim given to cancer death, treatment failure, adverse events and end-of-life palliative or hospice care, according to their circulate in the March 22 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

The University of Pennsylvania group analyzed 436 cancer-related stories published in eight large newspapers and five jingoistic magazines between 2005 and 2007. The articles were most likely to focus on breast cancer (35 percent) or prostate cancer (nearly 15 percent), while 20 percent discussed cancer in general.

There were 140 stories (32 percent) that highlighted patients surviving or being cured of cancer, 33 stories (7,6 percent) that dealt with one or more patients who were moribund or had died of cancer, and 10 articles (2,3 percent) that focused on both survival and death, the contemplate authors noted. "It is surprising that few articles thrash out extirpation and expiring considering that half of all patients diagnosed as having cancer will not survive," wrote Jessica Fishman and colleagues.

So "The findings are also surprising given that scientists, media critics and the laic apparent repeatedly criticize the news for focusing on death". Among the other findings.

Only 13 percent (57 articles) mentioned that some cancers are hopeless and martial cancer treatments may not extend life. Less than one-third (131 articles) mentioned the opposing side effects associated with cancer treatments (such as nausea, pain or hair loss). While more than half (249 articles, or 57 percent) reported on forceful treatments exclusively, only two discussed end-of-life worry exclusively and only 11 reported on both aggressive treatments and end-of-life care.