A Sri Lankan Father Breast-feed His Son

In a strange scene when can only see with this srilankan father feeding his son with his own breast.

The back story when the mother died having the baby and the father was in deep sorrow because of the death of his wife and his inability to feed his son, especially since the child will depend on the natural milk of his mother breast.

The father tried to replace the milk with industrial milk, but the child refused outright.

When the child cried the father held him close to his chest until he found the child coming close to his breast and starts to feed,the strange thing is that his breast produced milk which is a miracle.

The father is in a state of shock that he is able to breast-feed his son.

Doctors attributed the cause of this is excessive activity of the hormone prolactin, which triggers the breast to produce milk.

Hospital Privacy Curtains Laden With Germs

The privacy curtains that separate care spaces in hospitals and clinics are frequently contaminated with potentially dangerous bacteria, researchers said in Chicago this week.

To avoid spreading those bugs, health care providers should make sure to wash their hands after routine contact with the curtains and before interacting with patients, Dr. Michael Ohl, from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, said at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
"There is growing recognition that the hospital environment plays an important role in the transmission of infections in the health care setting and it's clear that these (privacy curtains) are potentially important sites of contamination because they are frequently touched by patients and providers," Dr. Ohl told.

Health care providers often touch these curtains after they have washed their hands and then proceed to touch the patient. Further, these curtains often hang for a long time and are difficult to disinfect.

In their study, Dr. Ohl and his team took 180 swab cultures from 43 privacy curtains twice a week for three weeks. The curtains were located in the medical and surgical intensive care units and on a medical ward of the University of Iowa Hospitals.

The researchers also marked the curtains to keep track of when they were changed.

Tests detected Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, including the especially dangerous methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), as well as various species of Enterococci -- gut bacteria -- some resistant to the newer antibiotic vancomycin.

Dr. Joseph Rahimian, an infectious disease doctor in New York City, said this finding comes as no surprise to him.

"Just about everything is going to have bacteria on it, and items such as fixtures in patient rooms will undoubtedly have bacteria including resistant bacteria," Rahimian said. "The curtains generally do get washed and changed, but the frequency varies among hospitals. I suspect that more frequent cleaning of hospital curtains would be a good idea."

The researchers used additional tests to identify specific vancomycin and methicillin-resistant strains to see whether the same strains were circulating and contaminating the curtains over and over.

The study found significant contamination that occurred very rapidly after new curtains were placed.

Of the 13 privacy curtains placed during the study, 12 showed contamination within a week.

Virtually all privacy curtains tested (41 of 43) were contaminated on at least one occasion.
MRSA was isolated from one in five curtains, and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) from four in 10. Eight curtains were contaminated with VRE more than once. Three of these were of a single type, but the other five showed contamination with different VRE strains, which suggested recontamination was happening with bacteria from new sources.

Overall, two thirds of the swab cultures were positive for either S. aureus (26 percent), Enterococcus species (44 percent) or various bacterial species from a group known as gram-negative rods (22 percent).

"The vast majority of curtains showed contamination with potentially significant bacteria within a week of first being hung, and many were hanging for longer than three or four weeks," Dr. Ohl noted.

"We need to think about strategies to reduce the potential transfer of bacteria from curtains to patients," he added. "The most intuitive, common sense strategy is (for health care workers) to wash hands after pulling the curtain and before seeing the patient. There are other strategies, such as more frequent disinfecting, but this would involve more use of disinfectant chemicals, and then there is the possibility of using microbial resistant fabrics. But handwashing is by far the most practical, and the cheapest intervention."

Study: Well-Child Visits Suffer From Time Squeeze

Longer well-child visits for babies and toddlers make for happier parents because doctors can fit in more advice and answer more questions, a new study finds.

But most well-child visits last less than 20 minutes and pediatricians are getting even more time-crunched as health care systems look to cut extra expenses any way they can, researchers write in Pediatrics.

"The disability rates for children continue to increase, and the nature of disability is changing," with more kids getting diagnosed with behavioral and developmental problems, lead author Dr. Neal Halfon, from the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, told

"You have to wonder whether the front line of interaction with children and families is adapting and adopting changes in how they're doing business so they're addressing those issues and concerns of parents," he said.

In 2000, the researchers conducted a phone survey of about 1,700 parents across the U.S. with a child between four months and three years old. They asked parents how much time they had spent with a doctor at their last well-child visit and whether the doctor had talked with them about issues such as breastfeeding, the child's sleeping position and sources of family support.

Parents also reported how satisfied they had been with the visit.

About one-third of parents said their most recent appointment lasted 10 minutes or less. Only one in five had a visit lasting more than 20 minutes.

During longer visits, doctors gave a more thorough developmental assessment and discussed more health and safety issues with parents, and more parents said they'd had enough time to ask questions. Still, parents said they didn't get any guidance about issues including child care, toilet training and emotional support at more than half of the longest visits.

The researchers cautioned that all information about visits was based on parents' recollections, so bias could have crept in. And it's not clear whether shorter appointments led to any more health problems down the road.

In general, parents reported being very satisfied with their appointments -- but were the most satisfied when doctors spent more than 20 minutes with the family.

Researchers said that regular appointments early in life can help prevent disease and injury and make sure youngsters aren't falling behind on social or learning skills.

"The well-child visit is a key in assuring healthy growth and development for children in the United States," said Dr. Eugene Dinkevich, a pediatrician from the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

But, "There is a lot pressure on physicians... not to do it as well as they could." That's because financial pressures -- including low reimbursement rates from government-run insurance programs -- mean they have less time to spend with each patient, added Dinkevich, who didn't participate in the new study.

Addressing that problem head-on will take system-wide changes, he said. But Dinkevich and Halfon agreed that in the short term, pediatricians can take steps to make sure families are getting the best possible guidance.

For example, they can figure out which families will benefit most from certain types of counseling and education to customize visits to fit their needs, Halfon suggested. All parents might not want a "Marcus Welby moment," he added.

In addition, most parts of the well-child visit besides the actual physical exam can be done with small groups of families together in one room, researchers said.

"The goal is to have better communication (and) more appropriate interaction," Halfon concluded.

ADHD Drug May Help Wake People Up After Surgery

The drug Ritalin, prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), may help patients wake up after they've been placed under general anesthesia, a new study in animals suggests.

Rats given the drug regained consciousness in about one-third of the time it took those given a placebo.

If the same effect is found in humans, the drug would be the first safe and effective way to reverse the effects of general anesthesia, the researchers said.

"This offers a new approach to waking up patients at the end of surgery," said study researcher Dr. Ken Solt, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "The current paradigm really is to just let these drugs wear off at the end of surgery," Solt said.

The drug could help rescue people who have stopped breathing because they have been given too much sedation, Solt said.

Waking people up faster after an operation might also save on health care costs. Use of an operating room can cost between $1,000 and $1,500 dollars and hour. Because about 100,000 people in the United States are put under general anesthesia every day "The incremental cost savings could be tremendous," Solt said.

However, the researchers conducted experiments with only one type of anesthesia drug, and it's not clear whether Ritalin could reverse the effects of others. In addition, the drug, generically known as methylphenidate, has side effects including an increased heart rate, and may not be suitable for certain patients.

The study is published in the October issue of the journal Anesthesiology.

Waking up rats

In one experiment, Solt and colleagues anesthetized rats by having them inhale the anesthesia drug isoflurane. After they were taken off the anesthesia, methylphenidate (administered by IV) reduced the time it took for the rats to wake up by about three minutes.

In another experiment, the rats continuously inhaled isoflurane at a dose that kept them unconscious. Then, the researches simultaneously administered methylphenidate. After giving the drug, the rats showed signs of arousal, such as moving their heads and opening their eyes, even though the isoflurane would normally have kept them unconscious.

Methylphenidate might reverse anesthesia in two ways: it could stimulate pathways in the brain that are involved in arousal, and it could increase breathing rate, which would remove isoflurane from the brain faster, Solt said.

Understanding anesthesia

"I think this is an excellent piece of work," said Anthony Hudetz, a professor of anesthesiology, physiology and biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the study. "I can imagine[methylphenidate] eventually being used," to wake people up after surgery, Hudetz said.

In addition, the study also has some basic science implications.

Despite its use for more than a century, researchers don't understand exactly how anesthesia works. One way to try to figure this out has been to study the brains of people as they receive anesthesia, Hudetz said.

But another way is to study a mechanism that reverses anesthesia-induced unconsciousness. This study helps elucidate the biochemical and neuronal pathways that are involved in anesthesia's effects, Hudetz said.

More Doubt Cast on Chronic Fatigue's Link to Virus

The idea that chronic fatigue syndrome may be caused by the virus named XMRV — a widely debated theory proposed a few years ago — received yet another blow.

A new study undermines the credibility of the original report that claimed a link between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome, by showing that the labs that performed tests for the original 2009 report do not reliably detect the virus.

So is this the nail in the coffin for the XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome link? Not quite.

The authors of the 2009 paper are admitting the new findings demonstrate that some of their results were invalid. But they say their conclusion still stands, and as such, they are retracting part but not all of their 2009 paper.

Problems detecting XMRV

Finding the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome has long eluded researchers, so when in 2009 a group reported that about two-thirds of patients with the mysterious disease had XMRV, a mouse virus, in their blood, they caused quite a stir.

That study,

led to hope that a cause of chronic fatigue syndrome had finally been found and that treatments could follow. However, further studies were unable to find the virus in patients' blood.

In May "expression of concern," was published saying that laboratory contamination with the virus may have been to blame for the 2009 findings.

In the new study, researchers at nine different laboratories tested the blood of 15 patients previously reported to have XMRV. Of this group, 14 had chronic fatigue syndrome. The labs also tested the blood of 15 healthy people who were previously reported not to have XMRV.

Two of the labs that participated were involved in the original 2009 paper. The labs all looked for XMRV, and didn't know which samples they were testing.

Only two laboratories found any evidence of XMRV in their samples, and these were the labs involved in the 2009 paper. These labs detected XMVR in healthy people just as often as in chronic fatigue syndrome patients. And the two labs didn't agree on which samples were positive for the virus, the new study found.

Furthermore, when a single sample was divided into two or three parts, and each part tested, the results were inconsistent. And even when some samples were "spiked" with XMRV, the labs sometimes didn't detect the virus.

The findings suggest the labs involved with the 2009 paper are not using good tests for XMRV, the new study said. Their methods may not been accurate enough to specifically detect XMRV, or some of their lab samples may be contaminated with XMRV, said Michael Busch, a researcher at the Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco, who co-authored the new findings.

"The reliable tests are showing no evidence of infection in humans," Busch said.

Future research

The new study is another piece of evidence that that "there's a serious problem with the original analysis that indicated there was a connection" between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome, said Mary Ann Fletcher, a professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, who has studied possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome.

But Fletcher said the XMRV controversy is "not going to hurt the field of chronic fatigue syndrome research."

"This is the perfect example of the scientific method," in which a hypothesis is tested, a proposal is made, and other scientists try to replicate the results, Fletcher said.

Studies looking for other agents that may cause chronic fatigue syndrome are in the pipeline, Fletcher said. These studies are large and have followed people forward in time. These studies are also expected to weigh in on the XMRV-chronic fatigue syndrome link, she said.

In explaining why they are standing by their conclusion that XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome are linked, the authors of the 2009 study claim that XMRV could be elsewhere in patients' tissues besides the blood.

The new study does not rule out this possibility, Busch acknowledged. "But original data were based on blood samples," and so any suggestion that XMRV is somewhere else would be speculating beyond the evidence shown in the 2009 paper, Busch said.

Can Blind People See Now?

An injection aimed at curing blindness is to be given to British patients, after health authorities approved plans for the first embryonic stem cell trial of its kind on Europe.

Surgeons at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London will inject cells into the eyes of 12 patients with the degenerative condition Stargardt's Macular Dystrophy.

Professor James Bainbridge, the retinal surgeon who will lead the trial to test the safety of the treatment, said, "There is real potential that people with blinding disorders of the retina, including Stargardt disease and age-related macular degeneration, might benefit in the future from transplantation of retinal cells."

If trials are successful, the treatment could be a routine clinical procedure within five years, Bainbridge predicted.

Stargardt's is a genetic condition that develops in childhood. It causes the progressive loss of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells that lie beneath the surface of the retina and are essential for maintaining the health of the light sensitive photoreceptors.

Researchers hope to reverse the effects of the disease by injecting between 50,000 and 200,000 healthy RPE cells into the retina.

The U.S. company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced the trial following the launch of a similar study in July at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lung cancer linked to risk of stroke

People recently diagnosed with lung cancer are at higher risk of having a stroke than those without lung tumors, suggests a large new study from Taiwan.

Researchers looking at data covering more than 150,000 adults found that among those with lung cancer, 26 in every 1000 experienced a stroke each year, compared with 17 in 1000 who did not have cancer.

"This is one more telling sign of the long term risk of smoking," said Dr. Andrew Russman, a stroke specialist at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, who was not part of the study.

The Taiwanese researchers didn't factor in lifestyle issues -- such as smoking, drinking or diet -- that might influence stroke risk, explained senior author, Dr. Fung-Chang Sung of the China Medical University.

Still, they report in the journal Stroke, that stroke risk was highest during the first three months after lung cancer diagnosis for men and during the first four-to-six months for women. Risk decreased in men after one year and after two years in women.

They also found that a less common type of stroke -- hemorrhagic stroke, caused by sudden bleeding into the brain -- occurred more often among the lung cancer patients than ischemic stroke, which is usually caused by a clot blocking blood flow to brain tissue.

Some evidence suggests that excessive bleeding and blood clots, both of which can be caused by tumors, as well as chemotherapy side effects, could partly explain the apparent link between cancer and stroke, researchers note.

"The most common type of lung cancer, adenocarcinoma, increases the body's propensity to form blood clots, even more so than other types of cancers," Russman said.

More than 52,000 people with lung cancer and more than 104,000 people without lung cancer were selected from a nationwide health insurance database.

Most of the study population were blue-collar workers such as farmers, fishermen and vendors, who tended to have high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

"There's a higher rate of high blood pressure and diabetes and pulmonary disease in patients with lung cancer," said Russman. "I think this reflects the heavy burden of smoking and smoking related risk factors in the population," he said.

According to the American Lung Association, smoking is directly responsible for approximately 90 percent of lung cancer deaths.

"In the U.S., smokers have twice the risk of having a stroke, regardless of lung cancer," said Russman.

Stroke accounted for one out of eighteen deaths in the U.S. in 2007, based on a report by the American Heart Association.