Hypertension: New Devices Promise More Accurate Readings

Experts from the University College London have urged medical doctors to scrap old methods of measuring blood pressure as thousands of hypertensive patients were being missed. They are therefore urging doctors to switch to a new technique whereby patients were sent home with portable devices which are worn for 24 hours. The portable devices or ambulatory blood pressure monitors (ABMPs) provides 50 per cent more accurate readings and could predict whether patients would die from heart disease. These are the findings of a new study, published in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine.’
The devices measure blood pressure at 20 to 30 minute intervals for a period of 24 hours when patients go about their daily routines. “For this reason they are far more accurate as many patients with high blood pressure have normal readings when sat in a chair,” reported the ‘mailonline’.
The researchers asserted that readings from the new wearable device have shown that this was far more effective than GPs taking a one-off reading with an inflatable cuff.The researchers found that almost a fifth of adults with normal blood pressure readings using the traditional method actually had high blood pressure. Such patients that were classified as having ‘masked’ high blood pressure – were ordinarily sent away without treatment. High blood pressure or hypertension is a condition in which pressure in the blood vessels is higher than it should be. Normal blood pressure is 120/80. However, new guidelines stated that blood pressure between 120/80 and 129/80 is elevated, and 130/80 is high.

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How Y Chromosome Protects The Blood Against Leukaemia

Scientists said a gene specific to the male-only Y chromosome, had been found to protect against the development of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and other cancers.
According to findings of a new study published in ‘Nature Genetics,’ the study could lead to new lines of research for new treatments for AML.

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow and and leads to life-threatening infections and bleeding.

AML is not a single disease. It is the name given to a group of leukaemias that develop in the myeloid cell line in the bone marrow. Myeloid cells are red blood cells, platelets and all white blood cells excluding lymphocytes.
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread to other parts of the body.
Mainstream treatments for the condition have remained unchanged for decades and just 20 per cent of patients survive for five years or more after diagnosis.
This development therefore raises hope the high death rate from AML may reduce as the new line of treatment that may be produced would advance health care in the treatment of the condition.
Reacting to the study findings, the researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge said the discovery of this new role changes the way the Y chromosome is viewed and improves understanding of how AML and other cancers develop.

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Why Six Hours Work A Day Leads To A Better Workplace Performance

A six-hour working day results in happier and healthier employees. It also leads to a higher quality of welfare services and a more sustainable and equal labour market. Despite what some news reports may have indicated, these are the findings from Sweden’s trial of six-hour working days.
A shorter working day is often portrayed as a utopian dream that would be too costly to realise, much as previous work reforms were portrayed in the past. But what if working less is the key to a more sustainable working life?

A shorter working day is not a utopian dream. Rather it fits nicely as a policy tool to create a more sustainable working life and labour market

For the past two years the Swedish city of Gothenburg has undertaken a trial of a six-hour working day at a care home for elderly people. The aim was to find out how it would impact on health and life quality for assistant nurses, as well as the broader socioeconomic benefits and the possibility of creating jobs.
The preliminary results show that a shorter working day lowered sick leave by 10%. Also, the perceived health of the care workers increased considerably in relation to stress and alertness. This was especially apparent in child-caring age groups. Having longer to recuperate and spend time with family is evidently an important factor in creating a sustainable work-life balance.

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Residents in the care home also felt they were getting better care and more time with the nurses. In interviews they described staff as more alert and happier. Social activities dramatically increased too, meaning that the higher level of alertness is being put to good use by the staff.
Employing more care workers amounts to approximately a 20% increase in costs; a staggering amount at first glance. But unemployment, poor working conditions, early retirement and sick leave are hugely expensive to society. But some of the cost of employing the new care workers is offset by lower payments from the social security system, and the net increase in cost drops to approximately 10%. It is worth noticing that the calculation still doesn’t take into account any long-term effects, which are sure to lower the total even further.
In wider Swedish society sick leave has increased considerably in the care sector in recent years. Caring for children and elderly people is work predominantly carried out by women. It is also an area that doesn’t benefit in the same way as many male-dominated sectors do from automation and technology. Care work is heavy-duty, face-to-face labour, tiring for both the mind and body. Little has changed over time for care workers, except one thing: the economic constraints have grown tighter. The six-hour working day project indicates that an improvement in working conditions has a clear impact on the quality of care.

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In many European countries, policy makers struggle to increase women’s participation in the labour market without a decrease in the birthrate. The demands of working life impose heavily on family life, and these have proved hard to reconcile in many countries. The experiences of this project show that women with children benefit most from a shorter working day. Creating a more sustainable working life where there is time to both recuperate and help your children with their homework is one way to both increase parents’ access to work and alleviate some of the discriminatory factors that still make women the main provider of unpaid work.
Increasing labour market participation is not only about creating a more equal labour market but a more sustainable one. The retirement age is a fixed point in many countries. But in physically demanding professions such as construction or care, working until you’re 65 represents a greater challenge. And working until 67 or beyond seems more like a joke than reality. Early retirement is not only an economic problem for society but a devastating blow for individuals who risk having to spend their old age in poverty. More flexible working hours can help with this.

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A shorter working day is not a utopian dream. Rather it is a policy tool in a reform agenda to create a more sustainable working life and labour market. Given the attention in international media this small pilot project in Gothenburg has received, it is clear that it’s an issue that attracts broad interest. This shouldn’t be neglected but met with a serious debate on the benefits of working less but better.

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Mothers With More Children Have Higher Heart Attack Risk

According to a recent study funded by British Health Foundation, a woman with more children has a greater risk of heart attack, stroke and heart failure.
This was part of the findings of a new study of over 8,000 white and African-American women in the United States, aged between 45 and 64.
The study was one of the issues to be presented at the British Cardiovascular Society Conference taking place in Manchester, England, from Monday, June 4 to Wednesday, June 6.

Citing a study from the University of Cambridge, London Daily Telegraph reported that having five or more kids was associated with a 40 per cent increased risk of a serious heart disease in the next 30 years, compared with having one or two children.

Cardiovascular disease includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as heart attack).
Researchers found that for mothers with more children, the risk of stroke was 25 per cent higher and the chance of heart failure was 17 per cent higher than women with fewer kids.
The lead researcher, Dr. Clare Oliver-Williams said: “We all know it is hard to take care of your health when you have children, but hopefully, this research can help show how important it is.”
The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation while the study examined data from over 8,000 white and African-American women.

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High Carbohydrate Diets Could Hasten Menopause

Scientists from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom (UK) have said that diet high in carbohydrates could bring on an earlier menopause.
According to a new research published in the ‘Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health,’ eating lots of carbohydrate foods such as pasta and rice, was associated with reaching menopause one-and-a-half years earlier than the average age of 51, when most women develop it.
On the contrary, the study also found that a diet rich in oily fish, peas and beans may delay natural menopause. However, many other factors, including genes, influence the timing of menopause, experts said.
Menopause is defined as the absence of menstrual periods for 12 months. It is the time in a woman’s life when the function of the ovaries ceases. The process of menopause does not occur overnight, but rather a gradual process. This so-called perimenopausal transition period is a different experience for each woman.
Hot flushes were the most common symptom of the menopause. Other common symptoms include night sweats, sleeplessness, vaginal dryness, irritated skin, more frequent urinary incontinence and urinary tract infections, low mood and a reduced interest in sex.
The new study found that a diet high in legumes, which includes peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas, delayed menopause by one-and-a-half years, on average.
“Eating lots of refined carbs, particularly rice and pasta, was linked to menopause coming earlier by one-and-a-half years.”
Explaining the findings of the observational study, the researchers said legumes contain antioxidants, which might preserve menstruation for longer.
Similarly, Omega-3 fatty acids, which were in oily fish, also stimulate antioxidant capacity in the body.
The researchers further stated that refined carbohydrates boost the risk of insulin resistance, which could interfere with sex hormone activity and boost oestrogen levels. “This might increase the number of menstrual cycles leading to the egg supply running out faster,” ‘Health & Wellness’ reported.
Study co-author, Janet Cade, a professor of nutritional epidemiology, affirmed that the age at which menopause begins could have serious health implications for some women.

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Why Mosquitoes Bite Children More Than Adults

The rains are here, and so are mosquitoes. Unfortunately, mosquitoes reveal fatal attraction for children, explaining why malaria still kills a child every two minutes in the world.There are hundreds of mosquito species and they all have slightly different preferences when it comes to what or who they bite. But researchers believe that children infected with malaria are more attractive to mosquitoes.
In a new study, researchers found that children infected with the malaria parasite Plasmodium produce distinctive skin smells making them more attractive to malaria mosquitoes than uninfected children.
This study, which opened up the possibility of developing a system to lure mosquitoes away from human populations, or in diagnosing malaria, was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Breath diagnostics are used for such diseases as tuberculosis because certain diseases or malignancies cause a change in odorants in the breath of the patients, and those changes can be used to detect disease.
In the study, researchers first confirmed the increased attractiveness of children with malaria by measuring the attractiveness of their skin odour, on socks of 45 Kenyan schoolchildren, some infected by malaria.
Its next stage was to understand the mechanism behind this increased attractiveness among children aged four to 12 years that participated in the study.They found the samples that interest mosquito the most, and were, therefore, most likely to draw a bite, were from the children with malaria. The malaria group was particularly high in a group of chemical compounds called aldehydes in their sweat.

According to them, if infected people smell better to mosquitoes, that could increase the likelihood that the insect sucks the parasite along with its blood meal, then spreads the infection by biting someone else.
By preying on mosquitoes’ attraction to the parasite’s aldehyde signal, the team believes they could develop a new wave of traps to lure mosquitoes away from human populations or detect infections.
Dr Chiaka Anumudu, a malaria immunologist at the Department of Zoology, University of Ibadan, said studies before now have established that mosquitoes are attracted to humans for different reasons, including smell.
According to her, “studies that have shown that people who have feet that smelled like cheese, mosquitoes are attracted to those kinds of smell.”
Dr Anumudu added that the odour of the exhaled carbon dioxide and the body odour, which is the sweat mixed with bacteria, even at distances as much as 50 yards could aid the mosquitoes in locating who it wants to bite.
Nonetheless, she added that since adults produce more carbon dioxide than children, children would certainly experience fewer mosquitoes’ bites.
“That is why people apply insecticide repellent on their skin to mask body scent, so making it difficult for the mosquitoes to be attracted to them aside that the killer action of repellents on mosquitoes,” she declared.
Dr Sam Awolola, Deputy Director & Head, Public Health Department, Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), said irrespective of the presence of Plasmodium, the germ that causes malaria, mosquitoes are well known to be attractive to human beings due to exhaled carbon dioxide and other gases such as lactic acid and ammonia from the body.
Awolola, an entomologist, however, said that amounts of emitted gases like carbon dioxide can vary from one person to the other based on the physiology of their body.
“Somebody that snores when sleeping, of course, tends to release more carbon dioxide than another person that does not snore
“So the possibility that such a snorer will attract more mosquitoes to himself is higher. Mosquitoes are always drawn to sources of carbon dioxide,” he declared.
Moreover, Dr Awolola said things like dirty, smelly socks as well as a room heavily lit with candles had been found to attract mosquitoes to it.
“If you put on socks after a while sweat is deposited on the socks. So you have a lot of ammonia, lactic acid and so on soaked into the socks.  If such smelly socks are hung somewhere, mosquitoes also get attracted to them.
“It is like houseflies. Where there are faeces, houseflies will be drawn to it. It is the faeces that draw the houseflies and not the person that passes out the faeces.
“Also, a room with lots of candles lit and giving out carbon dioxide will attract more mosquitoes to it. It is scientifically proven that you can attract mosquitoes without humans if you put carbon dioxide gas in a place.
“This is the basis of the light trap. We also trap mosquitoes by using the light trap, putting carbon dioxide into the light trap and it attracts them,” he declared.
But, the possibility that children with Plasmodium parasites, which cause malaria, are more attractive to mosquitoes, he said still needs to be further assessed.
According to him: “Mosquitoes come to humans because they want to have a blood meal. What attracts them to have a blood meal is the human odour. It has nothing to do with the Plasmodium parasites inside the human body.
“There is no linkage between the malaria parasite inside the blood and the mosquitoes that fly around. This is a basic science.”
The female mosquito is the one that bites; males feed on flower nectar. She requires blood to produce eggs. Her mouthparts are constructed so that they pierce the skin, literally sucking the blood out.
There is growing interest in the potential role odour plays in spreading the disease and how it could be used to help diagnose and reduce the spread of the illness.
Previously, some scientists suggested that certain characteristics attract mosquitoes, thereby leading some people to have more bites than others. Aside the amount of carbon dioxide in the breath, others include pregnancy, body temperature, alcohol and odorant markers based on blood type.
One study found persons with Type O blood suffered more mosquito landings because of the odourant markers they emit than any other blood type.
Pregnancy is a big winner for mosquito attraction, probably because mothers-to-be exhale 21 per cent more carbon dioxide and are on average 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit warmer around the belly than their non-pregnant counterparts, due to the temperature of the amniotic fluid.
Also, having just 12 ounces of beer increases mosquito appeal, possibly because of the increase in body temperature it causes or because skin markers change when metabolising cocktails.

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