Detecting Asthma -- Radiologists Develop Asthma Imaging Method

Radiologists developed a new method for viewing the lungs of asthma sufferers. The method uses a polarized helium-3 gas--making it visible during an MRI. The patient inhales the helium-3 and undergoes an MRI, where doctors can see how far the atoms in the gas can travel in the lungs. This gives an image of what airways are blocked and what parts of the lungs ventilate. The black areas of the image indicate portions of the lung where air does not reach--areas where the helium-3 atoms could not travel.

Science daily

Here comes a new technique to diagnose Asthma, a disease which affects more than 22 million in US and of them 3 million are children and affects 300 million worldwide.

Asthma, as most of us know is a chronic disease which impairs breathing by inflaming and narrowing of the airways in the lungs, sometimes causing acute breathing problems in patients with severe condition.

In many cases the conditions of asthma happen at irregular intervals and over a longer period of time, the reasons of asthma are still being researched but mostly it is suspected due to the inherent tendency to develop allergies commonly know as atopy beside other reasons.

Read more about Asthma information at U.S Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health website

More Reading:

1. I have asthma. Do I need to know anything special before I get pregnant?


2.A link to a Senior Researcher working with Children in this field.

China approves one dose home-grown swine flu vaccine

China on Thursday granted approval to its first home-grown swine flu vaccine, which producer Sinovac says is effective after only one dose, as the country braces for a feared winter outbreak.



European version of vaccine produced by the UK Pharmaceutical companies such as Glaxo, is a two doses based vaccine, and there are special guidelines for children below three years in some countries.

With India too gearing up in the vaccine campaign, initially the Government of India is planning to administer first vaccine shots of about 2 million doses to the doctors and health care workers, and other important service sector employees involved in battling the virus and who are at a higher risk of contracting the virus.

The main concern of the complete vaccination scenario is not enough time has been spent studying the after effects of the vaccine, but recent reports indicated that there have been no complications as of yet. But it is still hard to say about the total effectiveness of the Flu shot, as it is a battle against time with the onset of flu season in most parts of the world.

Other related stories

1. H1N1 battle: No side effects in the flu shot
2. NY times story

H1N1 battle: No side effects in the flu shot

H1N1 is mesmerizing around the world, but some reports are encouraging as there are reported to be no side effects as of yet and the immunization program in the US, clinical trials on Adults has begun on Aug 7 and on children on Wednesday. Later on the shots will be tested on pregnant women too, large swathes of population has been effected by the flu, at least 550 deaths in US is reported to be from the Virus, but the real number is definitely higher, the flu is expected to peak when the winter sets in and schools are specially advised to keep the sick children out and make the healthier ones wash their hands regularly.

Though some strains of the flu were found in two Turkey's, doctors said that is not a cause for worry as it is not lethal and there were no adverse effects in the birds, H5N1, bird flu was lethal and made the culling important.

Many countries in southern hemisphere are bracing for the winter season as it results in a normal flu season due to colder and drier temperatures, people are advised to stay clean and eat a healthy diet and there is no need to be worried. Hopefully the new shot will soon provide the desired results and could be efficient as far as the results indicate. But it is too short a period for any clinical trial of a vaccine to be commended secure with no side effects.

NY times story

Research: Vegetarians at low cancer risk !

A new UK research shows vegetarians at lower cancer risk. Watch the video to listen to the spokesperson.

Canada declares bisphenol A as hazardous, thus limiting its further use in baby bottles

Following its announcement of April 18th 2008, Canadian government has declared Bisphenol A (BPA) a hazardous chemical two days back, thus preventing its further use as a plastic bottle container of baby foods halting any further imports of the chemical.

Canada's Health Minister Mr Tony Clement, earlier this year announced Canada was considering banning the chemical BPA from use in baby bottles.

The Health Canada's report should have been published in the Canada Gazette publication.

Bisphenol A is also found in hard plastic sports bottles and in the food can linings, how the authorities are going to limit the use is still not clear yet.

Earlier the Journal of American Medical Association research reported finding
" significant relationship " that mimics estrogen with many diseases including fatal heart and liver disease and also the National Toxicology Program of the US found the chemical to carry some strain.
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Health Map: A Project website to track health alerts

By the time a major disease outbreak is reported and the news would have reached the Internet and by the time it reaches the general public it would have already affected a sizable portion of the population under its influence. Thanks to the information explosion these days, it is simply hard to find what's actually and very important like matters on health. Now in the days of financial crisis we get to see bail-outs, wall-street, recession, debts, mortgage in most of the headlines in the world today.

To overcome this problem researchers have been working on a project since 2006 on a project website called HealthMap, which extracts all the buried information from the web places like Google News, World Health Organization and all the other online discussion groups. The extracted data is then reprocessed and presented to the researchers and the public in a way to track an outbreak of a disease or virus or any other relevant info region by region.
The site also has other features like color coding to distinguish between the severity of an outbreak and other parameters including prevalent weather. This was disclosed by the researchers in the latest edition of PLoS (Public Library of Science) journals on preventive health studies.

The site is sponsored by the Google's Prevent and Predict initiative and could be of much use in the developing world, where the researchers mostly predict most of the outbreaks to the prevalent climatic conditions and other geography related factors.


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