Category: Health

ST. LOUIS – A lifesaving therapy for premature babies and people with injuries that prevent them from eating can cause severe liver failure and gut atrophy. A Saint Louis University researcher is studying how to prevent the damage from parenteral nutrition (PN), which is more commonly known as intravenous feeding.

Ajay Jain, M.D., a SLUCare pediatric hepatologist and gastroenterologist and the medical director of the pediatric liver transplant program at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, received a $703,620 grant from the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to continue studying strategies for PN-associated injury.

The funds will further his work into the role of bile acid activated receptors FXR and TGR5 in PN-associated hepatic and gut disease. The grant also provides support for research into gut microbes.

The NIH grant builds on previous research. Jain, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Saint Louis University, received a $150,000 grant from the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition (NASPGHAN) in 2015 and a $50,000 grant from the American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN) Rhoads Research Foundation in 2014.

People receive PN when part, or all, of their digestive system doesn’t function normally. A solution containing carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients essential for normal nutrition is given intravenously.

It is a common and critical therapy for sick babies, children and adults all around the world. Despite being a life saver, PN causes several complications, Jain said, including a life threatening and potentially fatal liver and bowel disease – especially in fragile NICU babies.

The cause of the liver and bowel disease is unknown, Jain said, but is likely caused by several factors. No established therapies exist to treat or prevent the onset of the liver and bowel disease.

Jain’s research focuses on understanding the interplay of bile acid regulated pathways that modulate the gut-liver axis during PN infusion. He says the way the gut and liver communicate to maintain normal health is disrupted while a patient receives intravenous nutrition.

In a clinical setting, Jain has found mitigation of PN-associated side effects if at least some nutrition can be provided via the gut.

“It almost appears as if some food delivery to the gut is of paramount importance to generate critical signals to maintain normal health and prevent such injury,” Jain said. Jain’s research also will assess the role of the gut microbiome during parenteral nutrition.

“There are about a 100 trillion bacteria in the gut. In fact, microbial genome exceeds the human genome by almost a 100 fold, making us genetically 99 percent bacteria and 1 percent human,” Jain said. “PN may change the finely regulated gut microbiome. Our measures are aimed at restoring the normal gut-liver cross talk and the gut microbiome to as close to normal again as possible.”

Jain said his work on PN, funded through competitive SLU grants (Presidents Research Fund, Fleur-de-Lis grant, Liver Center grant) and foundation grants including the American Liver Foundation award, has yielded encouraging new data. With the NIH funding, Jain aims to: Critically evaluate gut and hepatic injury during PN therapy; Explore the mechanisms that regulate PN pathology; and Address alteration in gut microbiota.

Jain’s previous work has identified unique molecules and pathways that are altered during PN. In this project, he will assess these molecules and devise strategies and pharmacological therapies to correct the defect and mitigate complications.

Such research could help bring a paradigm change to current preventative strategies. “It would be the biggest reward if we can ultimately devise interventions to help PN-associated injuries, which unfortunately maximally affects our most vulnerable and most precious population segment – the babies,” Jain said.

The Saint Louis University Liver Center enjoys worldwide recognition as a center of excellence for research and treatment of liver diseases and liver cancer.

Established in 1836, Saint Louis University School of Medicine has the distinction of awarding the first medical degree west of the Mississippi River. The school educates physicians and biomedical scientists, conducts medical research, and provides health care on a local, national and international level. Research at the school seeks new cures and treatments in five key areas: infectious disease, liver disease, cancer, heart/lung disease, and aging and brain disorders.

“Majority of pandemic experts of all kinds, felt that a pandemic that would sicken a billion people, kill 165 million people and cost the global economy about $3 trillion would occur sometime in the next two generations,” Indian American journalist and writer Sonia Shah writes.

According to her, epidemiologists are bracing themselves for what has been called the next “Big One” — a disease that could kill tens of millions of people in the coming years. In an interview to Fresh Air’s Dave Davies on NPR, Shah talked about her new book, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, Shah discusses the history and science of contagious diseases. She notes that humans put themselves at risk by encroaching on wildlife habitats. “About 60 percent of our new pathogens come from the bodies of animals,” she says.

Shah adds that international travel is also a factor in the spread of disease. “Air travel shapes our epidemics in such a powerful way that scientists can actually predict where and when an epidemic will strike next just by measuring the number of direct flights between infected and uninfected cities,” she says.

Looking toward the future, Shah says that epidemiologists can do more to identify potential outbreaks before they happen. But eliminating them altogether is another matter. “Our relationship to disease and pandemics is really … part of our relationship to the natural world,” she says. “It’s a risk we have to live with.”

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

On our first response to new pathogens

A lot of times when we talk about being more prepared in preventing pathogens from spreading or preventing pandemics, what we’re really talking about is first response, stepping up our first response, so that when we have outbreaks of disease that our hospitals are prepared and we have vaccines stockpiled and we are able to fly our experts around really quickly to get to the scene of the outbreak, and things like that. But that’s not actually preventing these pathogens from emerging and from causing outbreaks. That’s kind of after the fire has started, then we rush in with our fire extinguishers.

But to really prevent them would mean stepping it way farther back, and that is possible now, because … we know there’s certain places that have higher risk of pathogens emerging, and we can do kind of active surveillance in those places by mapping the microbes that are there, by surveilling people or animals who are more likely to spread or to have spill-overs of microbes into their bodies. … We have more advanced detection capacity now with genetic analysis and other kinds of ways that we can see where these invisible microbes are spreading and changing.

On how most of our pathogens come from animals

From bats, we got Ebola; from monkeys we got HIV, malaria, most likely Zika, as well; from birds we got avian influenzas, all other influenzas as well, West Nile virus, etc. So it’s when we invade wildlife habitat or when we disrupt it in ways that brings people and animals into close contact, that their microbes start to spill over and adapt to our bodies.

On how Zika emerged

I think Zika is a great example of how new pathogens are emerging today. It came out of the bodies of animals; for many years, we had Zika virus in the equatorial forests of Africa and Asia. It mostly infected monkeys and possibly other creatures, too, but it very rarely came into humans. …

We don’t know what the triggering event was that allowed Zika virus to start spreading into humans, but we do know what it exploited — and it exploited two things that a lot of other pathogens have exploited, too, which is urbanization and flight travel. So in the 1940s and ’50s and ’60s when we had Zika virus in the forests of Africa, it was carried by a forest mosquito and that mosquito very rarely bit humans, it mostly bit animals, which is why we didn’t have a lot of Zika virus in people, at least it’s one reason why.

What we’re seeing now is Zika virus has crossed over into a mosquito called Aedes aegypti, and this is a mosquito that has expanded its range over recent years as we have urbanized. It specializes in living in human cities. It loves garbage, it can breed in a drop of water in a bottle cap … and it only bites humans.

So once we had Zika virus coming into Aedes aegypti, this highly urbanized mosquito, that’s when we started having this explosive spread. Of course, it traveled from Asia. It came out of Africa. It came into Malaysia, and then probably into the Philippines, Micronesia and French Polynesia. And that was the sort of slow spread, but then the rapid expansion happened when it came from French Polynesia into Brazil, and that was almost certainly through a flight, either people from French Polynesia coming to Brazil for the World Cup or possibly an international canoe race. But whatever it was, it was on a flight that it came over, and from there it’s able to access these huge, highly urbanized populations and have no immunity, and that’s what created the epidemic.

On the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria

We’ve known since antibiotics were first developed that if we use them in ways that were not medically necessary that it would lead to the evolution of resistant bacteria. And yet, in this country, 80 percent of our antibiotic consumption is not medically necessary, it’s done for commercial reasons.

When we have livestock farmers giving antibiotics in low doses to their animals because it fattens them, it helps them gain weight faster and that gets them to market faster, so this is a commercial use. And that’s the vast majority of the antibiotics that are consumed in this country are for that reason. …

We’ve known this for years and we do have an increasing problem with antibiotic-resistant pathogens, which is a very serious problem where we’re running out of these drugs to treat these runaway infections, and we’re on the cusp of entering an era when we have no more antibiotics that work for some of these bugs. …

We need to use antibiotics more rationally. We don’t do that now. That’s sort of the hardest part of it that we need to do. But the other part of it is we also need to develop new antibiotics to keep up — these pathogens are always going to evolve resistance eventually, so we always need to come up with new weapons to fight them.

On why incidents of Lyme disease are increasing

Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria that lives in rodents and is spread by ticks. Now in the intact northeastern forest where Lyme disease first emerged, there used to be a diversity of different woodland animals there, like chipmunks and opossums as well as deer and mice and other things, but as we spread our suburbs into the northeastern forest and we kind of broke up that forest into little patchworks, we got rid of a lot of that diversity. We lost chipmunks, we lost opossums, and it turns out that those animals actually control tick populations. The typical opossum destroys about 6,000 ticks a week through grooming, but the typical white-footed mouse, which is what we do have left in those patchwork forests, a typical mouse destroys maybe 50 ticks a week. So the fewer opossums you have and the more mice you have, the more ticks you have and the more likely it becomes that this tick-borne pathogen will spill over into humans. And that’s exactly what happened with Lyme disease and now with many other tick-borne illnesses as well.

On what scares virologists most

Novel forms of influenza are what really keeps most virologists up at night, because we are so good at spreading those around quickly, and it happens every year. We have a flu pandemic every year, and now we’re hatching all kinds of new kinds of flu viruses, mostly in Asia, and then they’re spreading across the globe, and we don’t have immunity to some of those. …

Right now, a typical flu virus, the seasonal flu, will still kill a lot of people every year and it’s a real drain on our global economy. But we kind of put up with that, so if you had a new flu virus that even had a slightly higher mortality rate, you could see a lot more death and destruction because so many people get the flu. Think about the 1918 flu, which killed maybe 100 million people, maybe more, estimates vary, but certainly huge numbers of people died from that flu. The mortality rate was like 1 percent, which isn’t huge. It sounds like a small number, but when you think about how many people get the flu, that adds up to a huge number of deaths. So these new kinds of influenza, I think, are what virologists are most fearful of.

New Brunswick, NJ – Significantly more individuals who smoke and have a serious mental illness made a sincere attempt to quit after receiving a single, 45-minute counseling session, compared to those who received an interactive educational intervention. According to a study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research by investigators at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the brief counseling session is more effective because it utilizes an adaptation of motivational interviewing, a goal-oriented, client-centered style facilitating change.

“Our research found that a brief motivational interviewing intervention is a reasonable approach for increasing quit attempts, even in smokers with serious mental illness who were not initially interested in quitting,” said Marc L. Steinberg, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of the study. “The findings suggest that motivational interviewing may be a more productive approach than traditional educational interventions.

“Many healthcare providers assume that individuals with serious mental illness will only respond to very intensive interventions, and therefore, do nothing due to time constraints.” Dr. Steinberg continued. “On the contrary, our data indicates that smokers with serious mental illness will respond to even a very brief intervention.”

While motivational interviewing provided a benefit with regard to quit attempts, Dr. Steinberg and his colleagues found that many of the quit attempts did not translate into lasting abstinence.

“Individuals with serious mental illness are less likely to quit as compared to those without mental illness, and while we were able to use a brief intervention to encourage quit attempts, it is likely to require more intensive treatments, including counseling and pharmacotherapy, to produce longer-term abstinence,” said Dr. Steinberg. Nicotine & Tobacco Research named Dr. Steinberg’s study as the Editor’s Choice in the March issue.

“The results of the Steinberg study suggests the usefulness of motivational interviewing with adults with SMI [serious mental illness] as well. Future studies can build on these results to determine the best ways to motivate the greatest number of adults with SMI to make a quit attempt,” according to the journal’s editorial. The study and editorial were published in advance online at http://ntr.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/3/243.

The study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (5K23DA018203 and 1R34DA030652) awarded to Dr. Steinberg. Jill Williams, MD; Patricia Dooley Budsock, MA; and Nina Cooperman, PsyD, of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Naomi Stahl of American University, contributed to the study.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is one of the most frequently encountered neurodevelopmental disorders of childhood, and a new study from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham recently published in Optometry and Vision Science shows a relationship between ADHD and vision problems in children.

Results from a large survey of 75,000 children suggest an increased risk of ADHD among children with vision problems that are not correctable with glasses or contacts relative to other children with 15.6 percent of children with vision impairment also having an ADHD diagnosis, compared with 8.3 percent of children with normal vision. These types of vision problems could range from color vision deficiency to a lazy eye but would also include children with vision impairment. The study included children ages 4 to 17 enrolled in the National Survey of Children’s Health.

This finding suggests that children with vision impairment should be monitored for signs and symptoms of ADHD so that if present, this dual impairment of vision and attention can best be addressed.

Director of the UAB Center for Low Vision Rehabilitation, Dawn DeCarlo, O.D., was the lead investigator on the study. She says just because vision problems that are not correctable with glasses or contacts are associated with ADHD that does not mean that one causes the other.

The national study was produced in response to patients of DeCarlo exhibiting vision impairment and ADHD. A previous paper reported an increased prevalence of ADHD among the children in her vision rehabilitation clinic.

“Because we do not know if the relationship is causal, we have no recommendations for prevention,” DeCarlo said. “I think it is more important that parents realize that children with vision problems may also have attention problems and that both require professional diagnosis and treatment.”

So if your child has vision problems, should you be worried about them developing ADHD?

“I wouldn’t worry about them developing ADHD,” DeCarlo said. “But if they seemed to have symptoms of ADHD I’d make sure that all of their vision needs are addressed through proper eye care and vision rehabilitation and would have them evaluated by an expert in attention disorders.” Other co-authors from UAB included Cynthia Owsley, Ph.D., Gerald McGwin, Ph.D., Mark Swanson, O.D.,and Kristina Visscher, Ph.D.

Meditation and aerobic exercise done together helps reduce depression, according to a new Rutgers study. The study, published in Translational Psychiatry this month, found that the mind and body combination – done twice a week for only two months – reduced the symptoms for a group of students by 40 percent.

“We are excited by the findings because we saw such a meaningful improvement in both clinically depressed and non-depressed students,” says Brandon Alderman, lead author of the research study. “It is the first time that both of these two behavioral therapies have been looked at together for dealing with depression.”

Alderman, assistant professor in the Department of Exercise Science and Sports Studies, and Tracey Shors, professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, both in the School of Arts and Sciences, discovered that a combination of mental and physical training (MAP) enabled students with major depressive disorder not to let problems or negative thoughts overwhelm them.

“Scientists have known for a while that both of these activities alone can help with depression,” says Shors. “But this study suggests that when done together, there is a striking improvement in depressive symptoms along with increases in synchronized brain activity.”

The men and women in the Rutgers study who completed the eight-week program – 22 suffering with depression and 30 mentally healthy students  –  reported fewer depressive symptoms and said they did not spend as much time worrying about negative situations taking place in their lives as they did before the study began.

This group also provided MAP training to young mothers who had been homeless but were living at a residential treatment facility when they began the study. The women involved in the research exhibited severe depressive symptoms and elevated anxiety levels at the beginning. But at the end of the eight weeks, they too, reported that their depression and anxiety had eased, they felt more motivated, and they were able to focus more positively on their lives.

Depression – a debilitating disorder that affects nearly one in five Americans sometime in their life – often occurs in adolescence or young adulthood. Until recently, Rutgers scientists say, the most common treatment for depression has been psychotropic medications that influence brain chemicals and regulate emotions and thought patterns along with talk therapy that can work but takes considerable time and commitment on the part of the patient.

Rutgers researchers say those who participated in the study began with 30 minutes of focused attention meditation followed by 30 minutes of aerobic exercise. They were told that if their thoughts drifted to the past or the future they should refocus on their breathing – enabling those with depression to accept moment-to-moment changes in attention.

Shors, who studies the production of new brain cells in the hippocampus – the portion of the brain known to be necessary for some types of new learning – says even though neurogenesis cannot be monitored in humans, scientists have shown in animal models that aerobic exercise increases the number of new neurons and effortful learning keeps a significant number of those cells alive.

The idea for the human intervention came from her laboratory studies, she says, with the main goal of helping individuals acquire new skills so that they can learn to recover from stressful life events.  By learning to focus their attention and exercise, people who are fighting depression can acquire new cognitive skills that can help them process information and reduce the overwhelming recollection of memories from the past, Shors says.

“We know these therapies can be practiced over a lifetime and that they will be effective in improving mental and cognitive health,” says Alderman. “The good news is that this intervention can be practiced by anyone at any time and at no cost.”

An Indian-origin cancer research expert has received a Knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his “influential” work on prevention and treatment of cancer in the annual New Year’s Honors list published here Dec. 31.

Harpal Singh Kumar, who is the chief executive of Cancer Research UK, has been honored for services to cancer research and being “hugely influential in promoting research into the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and cancer care.”

“CRUK’s income and research spend are at an all-time high. Under his leadership, it has been instrumental in pushing the government to take further measures to reduce smoking and to ban sun-beds for under-18s,” Kumar’s citation reads.

“He also chaired the Independent Cancer Taskforce and authored the NHS Cancer Strategy ‘Achieving World Class Cancer Outcomes. A Strategy for England 2015-20’, published in July 2015,” it said.

Kumar leads this year’s honors list of Indian-origin names, covering fields of entrepreneurship, financial services and community service.

“He has been instrumental in setting up the Francis Crick Institute as a world-leading center of biomedical research and innovation,” the citation added.

Samir Desai, founder-CEO of Funding Circle, receives a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his work in the field of financial inclusion, and Raminder Singh Ranger, chairman of Sun Mark Ltd, is awarded a CBE for services to business and community cohesion (see separate story).

Among the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire list are Kala Patel, managing director of Kiddycare Ltd Nurseries, for services to childcare business, and Daljit Lally, deputy chief executive of Northumberland Country Council, for services to integrated care.

A British Empire Medal has been awarded to Aatin Ashok Anadkat, managing director of Hotel Maiyango in Leicester, for services to entrepreneurship. The largest Indian-origin representation is among the list of Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Declaring that the Zika virus is “spreading explosively,” the World Health Organization announced it will hold an emergency meeting of independent experts Monday to decide if the outbreak should be declared an international health emergency.

At a special meeting Thursday las t week in Geneva, WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan said the virus — which has been linked to birth defects and neurological problems — was becoming much more of a threat.  One WHO scientist said the Americas could see up to 4 million cases of Zika in the next year.

Chan said although there was no definitive proof that the Zika virus was responsible for a spike in the number of babies being born with abnormally small heads in Brazil, “the level of alarm is extremely high.”  She also noted a possible relationship between Zika infections and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can cause temporary paralysis.

Stamford, Conn. – Dec. 23, 2015 – AmeriCares has $1.1 million worth of medicine headed to Nepal to restock hospitals running critically low on essential supplies. The shipment, which is expected to arrive in early January, is in response to an urgent request from the World Health Organization. AmeriCares pharmaceutical partners, including AbbVie, Fresenius Kabi, and Pfizer, generously donated products for the emergency shipment.

The delivery is part of a series of aid shipments AmeriCares is sending to address a serious medicine shortage in Nepal. A political dispute is disrupting the flow of imported products from India, vastly reducing the amount of fuel, medicine and other necessities entering Nepal. This is the second shipment this month to alleviate the medicine shortages. Last week, AmeriCares shipped enough basic medicine to Nepal to support a population of 40,000 people for three months.

Many of the health facilities AmeriCares is supporting through its earthquake recovery program report suppliers have halted deliveries, and some have warned they might have to cut services if they cannot access the products they need. AmeriCares latest shipment includes antibiotics, pain relievers, thyroid medication, allergy medicine and other medical products. The WHO and the Ministry of Health and Population will manage the distribution of products to health facilities throughout the country.

“The shortage of fuel and medicines has created a second emergency only eight months after the devastating earthquake,” said AmeriCares Vice President of Emergency Response Garrett Ingoglia. “With support from our pharmaceutical partners, we are helping to ensure hospitals in Nepal can continue serving patients.”

An AmeriCares emergency response team was on the ground in Nepal within 48 hours of the April 25 earthquake, working to restore critical health services. To date, AmeriCares has deployed emergency medical teams to treat survivors, delivered more than $21 million in urgently needed medicines and relief supplies and supported health care services in affected regions. AmeriCares opened an office and warehouse in Kathmandu to oversee its earthquake recovery programs through 2018.

AmeriCares has been aiding survivors of natural disasters, political conflict and extreme poverty around the world for more than 30 years, saving lives and restoring health and hope. To donate to AmeriCares Nepal Relief Fund go to www.americares.org/nepalearthquake

Research into how alcohol consumption affects health has been going on for a long time. According to reports, a 1990 prospective cohort study included results of more than 275,000 men followed since 1959. Compared with those who never drank alcohol, those who consumed one to two drinks a day had a significantly reduced mortality rate from both coronary heart disease and “all causes.” Those who consumed three or more drinks a day still had a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease, but had a higher mortality rate over all.

A 2004 study came to similar conclusions. It followed about 6,600 men and 8,000 women for five years and found that compared with those who drank about one drink a day on average, those who didn’t drink at all and those who drank more than two drinks a day had higher rates of death. Results like these have been consistent across a number of studies in different populations. Even studies published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research agree that moderate drinking seems to be associated with a decreased risk of death over all.

However, alcohol seems to have different effects on different diseases. Almost all of the major benefits of drinking are seen in cardiovascular illnesses. In fact, with men, even consumption of a surprisingly large amount can seem protective.

When it comes to cancer, the picture isn’t as rosy. For instance, a 2007 study involving the Women’s Health Study cohort found that increased alcohol consumption was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. More broadly, a 2014 systematic review of epidemiologic and experimental studies looking at alcohol and breast cancer found that the overall consensus is that each additional drink per day increases the relative risk (comparing the risk in two groups) of breast cancer by a statistically significant, but small, 2 percent — although not the absolute risk.

A meta-analysis of colorectal cancer and alcohol found that heavy drinkers, but not light or moderate drinkers, were at increased risk of the disease. No relationship is seen with respect to bladder cancer or ovarian cancer. A study that included all cancers found that light drinking was protective; moderate drinking had no effect; and heavy drinking was detrimental.

Moderate alcohol consumption has been found to be associated with other benefits, though. A cohort of about 6,000 people followed in Britain found that those who consumed alcohol at least once a week had significantly better cognitive function in middle age than those who did not drink at all. This protective effect on cognition was seen in people who drank up to 30 drinks a week.

A 2004 systematic review found that moderate drinking was associated with up to 56 percent lower rates of diabetes compared with nondrinkers. Heavy drinkers, though, had an increased incidence of diabetes. This is where savvy readers should be asking: What about randomized controlled trials? After all, epidemiologic evidence and associations only go so far; they cannot get us to causation.

Recently, in Annals of Internal Medicine, such a trial was published. Patients with well-controlled Type 2 diabetes were randomized to drink 150 milliliters of water, white wine or red wine with dinner for two years. The beverages were provided to patients free of charge. They were all placed on a Mediterranean diet with no calorie restrictions.

Researchers found that those who drank the wine, most notably red wine, had a reduction in cardiometabolic risk factors, or those for heart disease, diabetes or stroke. This was especially true in patients who had certain genotypes. Further, no one had any significant adverse effects from being randomized to drink the alcohol.

In another analysis of that randomized control trial published this year, the most interesting finding was about blood pressure. In this study, some people saw a reduction in systolic blood pressure. Again, the alcohol was not associated with significant adverse effects. This contradicts the findings from systematic reviews of epidemiologic studies that show alcohol intake may be associated with a small but significant increase in blood pressure.

Adding further complications was a shorter-term trial looking at red wine consumption that found it had no effect, positive or negative, on blood pressure in patients with atherosclerosis. A different analysis of that study found that it did result in improved cholesterol levels, even though many patients were already being treated with statins.

A 2011 meta-analysis examined 63 controlled trials of wine, beer and spirits, and found that all of those beverages increased levels of HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol). There was even a dose-response, with more alcohol consumed having more of an effect.

Synthesizing all this, there seems to be a sizable amount of evidence that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with decreased rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and death. It also seems to be associated with increased rates, perhaps to a lesser extent, of some cancers, especially breast cancer, as well as some other diseases or conditions. The gains from improved cardiovascular disease deaths seem to outweigh all of the losses in other diseases combined. The most recent report of the U.S.D.A. Scientific Advisory Panel agrees with that assessment.

But alcohol isn’t harmless. Many people with certain diseases or disorders, and women who are pregnant, need to avoid it. Others who can’t keep their consumption to acceptable levels need to abstain. Alcohol is very harmful when abused, so much so that it’s difficult for me to tell people to start drinking for their health. That’s rarely the conclusion of any studies about alcohol, no matter how positive the results. Nor is it the advice any doctors I know give.

However, the evidence does seem to say that moderate consumption is safe, and that it may even be healthy for many people. If you’re enjoying some drinks this holiday season, it’s nice to know that they may be doing more than just bringing you cheer.

“It’s amazing to see what the synergy of like-minded people can do. This 1.3 million is not just a number, it’s 1.3 million lives who have started seeing,” said Dr. R.V. Ramani, founder of the Sankara Eye Care Institutions in India, at Sankara Eye Foundation’s annual gala Dec. 12 at the Sakoon Restaurant.

The banquet hall was brimming with Indian American community philanthropists, business and social leaders, volunteers and donors, who gathered at the event to support the organization’s flagship mission of eliminating curable blindness in India.

Vital funds to the tune of $700,000 were raised during the night to support and empower the underprivileged experiencing sight loss in India. “Mr. Ram Reddy announced 100,000 at the BATA banquet, one anonymous person donated 100,000 and another person gave 50K,” Murali Krishnamurthy, founder and SEF executive chairman, told the media.

“I would request people to close their eyes and donate, so we will open more eyes. It’s your hospital, and we are helping our people back home,” he said, adding that an anonymous donor has offered to match all donations up to $1 million until Dec. 31, 2015.

The annual charity event attended by mostly Indian Americans was part of the foundation’s fundraising efforts for its new hospitals in Hyderabad, Telangana, and Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The land for the Indore hospital has already been procured while the land for the Hyderabad hospital has been identified, said Krishnamurthy.

SEF has played a pivotal role in increasing the number of free eye surgeries provided annually for the economically disadvantaged in India — from 8,000 in 1998 to over 150,000 surgeries and counting today.

The organization has so far conducted more than 3.6 million adult vision screenings, over 5.1 million children screenings, performed 8,145 pediatric surgeries and distributed over 107,000 free eye glasses, all free of cost.

Ramani, delivering the evening’s keynote address, spoke on Sankara’s history, growth, philosophy, goals and achievements. “Eighty percent of the country’s blind are needlessly blind,” Ramani said at the gala. “When we give vision to a child, we give the next 80-85 years of productive life, and when we give vision to an adult, we make him/her the breadwinner of the family.”

Ramani was accompanied by his wife, Dr. Radha Ramani, with whom he founded the first Sankara Eye Hospital in Coimbatore in 1977. “The whole values of Sankara are the five principles… serve silently, serve with humility, serve without conditions, serve with love and conviction,” Radha Ramani said at the gala, noting the importance of acts performed with love.

“People from this part of the globe are donating, and we deliver the service at the other end, and when we see the actual benefit reaching out to them, not in hundreds or thousands but beyond a million, it is a soul-fulfilling experience,” R.V. Ramani told the media.

Emphasizing bringing the gift of light to the underprivileged, Ramani said, “Giving vision at every age has got a tremendous impact and doing that for someone who does not have access to and cannot afford it, it’s amazing.”

The evening was an entertaining one featuring vibrant musical performances and a cocktail reception and dinner. With eight fully functional hospitals, the foundation aims to build at least 20 eye hospitals across India by the year 2020 under its Vision 20/20 project, and to perform a million surgeries annually.

“It’s like having an extended family as Sankara Foundation in United States, who contributes by thought, conviction, involvement and monetary,” said Ramani. “Today we are able to replicate the model everywhere in India because of the contribution that is coming from here.”

The organization, one of the world’s biggest charities of its kind, is the recipient of many honors along with securing a coveted four-star rating from Charity Navigator for its sound fiscal management and commitment to accountability and transparency, said Krishnamurthy.

The uniqueness of Sankara’s social enterprise lies in its replicable and sustainable model of 80/20, wherein 20 percent of patients pay for the free treatment that the 80 percent poor receive.

Ramani said it takes about 18 months for a hospital to be constructed and fully operationalized, and about five years for it to become financially self-sustainable after inception. “Donors have to think in terms of supporting the cause not just one time,” he stated. “Every year they should give some support as the first five years they are all toddlers, and we have to hold their hands until they start walking by themselves.”

These super-specialty eye care hospitals equipped with Lasik facilities treat not only cataract, which is a major cause leading to blindness in India, but also offer a full range of comprehensive eye care services, including ocular oncology. A program called SANQALP or Sankara quality assurance learning program, is in place, where a quality champion is identified for each hospital, who drives quality in that hospital, along with tracking 48 quality indicators on a month to month basis.

“Our site restoration rate is at 98.3 percent,” Dr. Kaushik Murali, president, medical administration, at Sankara Eye Foundation, India, told the media. Forty meritorious girls from the disadvantaged section are trained on a curriculum-based program to serve as technicians, and to make sure that the knowledge percolates from the seniors to the fresh recruits; in effect, Sankara hospitals have set up a knowledge management system, Murali said.

Another unique feature of Sankara is the Rural Outreach Model, which brings eye care to the doorstep of rural India. Eye care and diagnostic camps are conducted in villages every week to screen poor patients for eye problems; those needing surgeries are taken to the base hospital for treatment.

Free transportation, food and lodging are provided for patients during their hospitalization. The also receive systematic follow-up ensuring effective post-operative care.\ The organization also uses technology to the maximum for a targeted intervention.

“Today, all our hospitals are linked and data transfer is real time. We have built our own app, SERVICE, which stands for Sankara Electronic Remote Vision Information System,” Bharath Balasubramaniam, president of community outreach at Sankara Eye Foundation, India. “The app enables us to reach out to the community, screen them and also tag them, so we are able to map diseases, identify where there is more prevalence of diabetes, cataract and hyper tension and then decide our camp location,” he said.

A leading U.S. robotic surgeon, Dr. Chris Holsinger from Stanford, will visit India this week to train head and neck surgeons on minimally invasive methods such as robotic surgery for treating cancer patients. India with its vast number of smoking population is home to the largest number of head and neck cancer patients in the world that go untreated. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) studies reveal that in India over 200,000 head and neck cancers are reported each year. Of these, nearly three-fourth cancers relate to oral cavity, throat and voice box.

Holsinger, who leads Stanford Cancer Centre’s Head and Neck Oncology practice will share his vast experience at the Second National Workshop in Transoral Surgery at Delhi’s Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre (RGCIRC) on Saturday. During the day-long session Holsinger, widely recognised as the global guru of head and neck surgery, will speak to over a 100 surgeons on the ‘How, When and When Not’ of robotic surgery, according to a media release.

The audience will include surgeons from All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Medanta Medicity, Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC), Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Post Graduate Institute of Medical Research (PGI). In addition, he along with workshop co-chair and consultant surgical oncologist RGCIRC Dr. Surender Dabas will also conduct robotic surgeries that will be telecast live to the attendees at the event.

The conference will debate issues like relative merits and demerits of radiotherapy versus robotic surgery as a method to treat mouth and pharynx cancer patients. Since 80 per cent of Indian patients test negative for Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), robotic surgery leads to better results compared to radio theraphy.

“While smokers have a 16 times higher risk of contracting oral cancer, the risk factor grows to 36 times among smokers who consume alcohol,” said Dabas who has conducted over 200 robotic surgeries in the last two years. “Participation of patients in preventive health checkups is key to controlling this menacing medical condition,” said Dr AK Dewan, medical director and Chief of Head and Neck surgery, RGCIRC.

Holsinger, founded and led the programme in Minimally Invasive and Endoscopic Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Centre before founding the programme in robotic surgery at Stanford. RGCIRC’s oncology practice in Head and Neck, Urology, Gynaecology, Thoracic and General area has recorded over 1500 robotic surgeries since introduction in early 2011.

“Robotic procedures in India are estimated to cross the 6000 mark in 2015 as more and more procedures across the spectrum have started using robots,” said Dr Mahendra Bhandari, CEO of the U.S. headquartered Vattikuti Foundation that is promoting prevention and treatment of cancer in USA and India.

Dr. Dinesh Vyas, an Indian-American surgeon is hoping to raise $25 million to train 1.5 million first responders – the first rescuers to arrive at an accident scene – in five years to prevent over 1,000 deaths on Indian roads every day that cost the nation $50 billion annually. Rajasthan University-educated surgeon Dr. Dinesh Vyas, an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at Michigan State University since 2011, has already trained over 4,000 first responders in India using a $200,000 simulator dummy.

He is now leading a strong international multi-disciplinary team to India from December 26 to January 4, 2016 to win support for the programme from Indian auto, IT and healthcare industries by way of corporate social responsibility (CSR). “This programme will generate $5 billion business for auto, IT and healthcare industries and will save a lot of lives,” Vyas told IANS in an interview.

“Trauma and roadside epidemic is one of the biggest health concerns for India,” he said. “Unfortunately, it has been neglected for a long time and with a three percent annual increase in deaths, we have more than 1,000 deaths everyday and 5,000 severe disabilities.”

Over the last eight years, Vyas’ team has established five centres in Rajasthan which have trained 2,000 first responders in person and another 2,000 through an online course with the help of 200 trainers under its umbrella. Training 1.5 million first responders at 50 centres in the next five years would stall a three percent increase in mortality, he said. “Our next five-year goal will be to reduce the mortality to one percent annually, at par with any developed nation.”

The idea behind taking an international delegation to India, Vyas said, was “to address the trauma problem holistically”. “We are concentrating systematically on all the aspects of trauma, to prevent a burden on the health system,” with a focus on pre-hospital care while simultaneously building a platform on prevention.

The aim is to develop and build a contextual training programme in multiple aspects of trauma in various Indian languages starting with Hindi, Bengali and Telugu. The international delegation comes with major strengths in fields ranging from surgery and trauma and critical care to mass media and communication to health legal issues and highway engineering.

The delegation includes faculty from US and Britain, with several endowed professors from Pittsburgh, Michigan State and other major universities. Dr. McSwain from Tulane University, one of Vyas’ collaborators, developed in 1980 a four-tier system in the US that goes from online education to highly sophisticated trauma programmes for surgeons.

“The technology we are using is not available even in most of the centres in the US at this time,” Vyas said. “We are designing a programme that will eventually help even developed nations in building a cost efficient programme.” To raise money for the programme, Vyas and his team are making presentations to various foundations and IT companies both in the US and India. During his visit to India, Vyas would be visiting Jodhpur, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Manipal, Bangalore, Karimnagar and New Delhi.

He will be addressing, among others, the National Police Academy in Hyderabad and the Rajasthan Police Academy and meet officials and fellow professionals to gain support for his mission.

“We are pleased to recognize UC San Diego Health for its commitment to stroke care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce length of stay and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparities in care.”

UC San Diego Health is part of a group of hospitals recognized for their commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of stroke care by ensuring that patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines and recommendations.

When someone experiences a major stroke, almost two million nerve cells in the brain die each minute, emphasizing the need for rapid treatment. Stroke patients who receive life-saving interventions more quickly have a higher chance of recovery. A recent data analysis showed the Comprehensive Stroke Center at UC San Diego Medical Center exceeded national average treatment times, and as a result, has received a “Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award” from The American Heart Association and American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA).

“Our success as a Comprehensive Stroke Center is a team product, including neurologists, radiologists and pharmacists all working together with one goal: to provide the fastest and most effective treatments using the highest level of imaging and diagnostic tools,” said Thomas Hemmen, MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and clinical services chief of neurology at UC San Diego Health. “Receiving this award validates our ongoing efforts to turn guidelines into lifelines.”

To receive a Gold Plus Award, a hospital must achieve 85 percent or higher compliance to core standard levels of care as outlined by the AHA/ASA for two or more 12-month consecutive periods and achieve 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight “Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Measures.” According to the AHA/ASA, on average, someone suffers from a stroke every 40 seconds. The neurological event is the fifth-leading cause of death in the United States.

UC San Diego Medical Center was the first to receive Comprehensive Stroke Center certification in San Diego County in 2012 and has pioneered endovascular approaches using state-of-the-art devices for procedures, such as embolectomies – the surgical removal of blood clots.

“This honor not only reflects the life-saving technologies used when every minute counts, but it also recognizes the high quality of elective care our center provides to patients diagnosed with conditions such as brain bleeds and aneurysms or who have suffered from a previous stroke,” said Alexander Khalessi, MD, vice chairman of clinical affairs for neurosurgery and director of endovascular neurosurgery at UC San Diego Health.

The center also brings instant expertise to other organizations and saves lives beyond San Diego County with the stroke telemedicine program, which transports stroke specialists virtually via computer desktop or laptop to the patient’s bedside using highly sophisticated video, audio and Internet technologies.

“Time is brain during a stroke, so it is paramount we continue to use innovative approaches that lead the way in stroke care,” said Khalessi, who also played a critical role in working with the AHA/ASA to write new guidelines on early management of acute ischemic stroke.

Rena N D’Souza, an Indian-American doctor and professor of dental sciences has been elected vice-president of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR). Rena N D’Souza, an internationally regarded researcher and highly honored dental educator is an alumni of Government Dental College – University of Bombay, is currently serving as the professor of dental sciences, neurobiology & anatomy, and pathology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

D’Souza would later on serve as the president-elect, president and immediate past president of International Association for Dental Research, a media release said. A past president of the American Association for Dental Research (2012-2013), she has been an active IADR member since 1984 and is nationally and internationally known for her research in craniofacial development, genetics, tooth development and regenerative dental medicine.

As a leader in the field, D’Souza has led an active research program for more than 25 years on tooth development and genetics, matrix biology and tissue regeneration, the release said.

She has also directed two comprehensive National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutional research training and development programs and served on several grant review panels.

She served on the NIH’s National Advisory Dental and Craniofacial Research Council, the Physician-Scientist Workforce Working Group for NIH Director Francis Collins and as chair of its subcommittee on dentist-scientist training. D’Souza is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, director on the Friends of NIDCR Board and member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina).

On December 3rd, people across the globe took part in International Day of Persons with Disabilities. This day aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities. AIF and its partners recognized this auspicious day by holding two events, one in New Delhi and one in New York City. The event in India garnered coverage from CNN-IBN.

In New York City, AIF brought together preeminent thought leaders in the disability space for a discussion on “Skilling the Disabled for the Workforce.” The keynote speaker for the evening was Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, who is a world-renowned entrepreneur and is the Founder of the Wadhwani Foundation. Dr. Wadhwani spoke about the innovative work that his foundation is doing in India in terms of skilling those with disabilities, as well as his Foundation’s strong partnership with AIF. Ravi Kumar, the CEO of AIF, talked about AIF’s Ability Based Livelihood Empowerment (ABLE) program. ABLE trains persons with disabilities and facilitates their entry into the job market through advocacy, promoting inclusive growth in India. Kumar talked about how this year ABLE has impacted more than 3,000 persons with disabilities, 2.5 times the previous year, and that the program has now overall has impacted over 10,000 persons with disabilities.

The event also featured an enriching discussion with some of the world’s top thought-leaders in the disability space including Atul Bhatara (Co-Managing Member, Ushaholdings LLC), Sheena Iyengar (Inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division, Columbia Business School), Peter Kenny (Director in Global Compliance, Barclays), Michael Monteferrante (President and CEO, Envision), and Frances West (Chief Accessibility Officer, IBM). The panel was moderated by Shraysi Tandon, Business Reporter/Anchor, CCTV America.

When it comes to emotional health, young couples – especially women — do just as well moving in together as they do getting married, according to a new national study. Using data collected in the 2000s, researchers found that single young women experienced a similar decline in emotional distress when they moved in with a romantic partner or when they went straight to marriage for the first time.

Men experienced a drop in emotional distress only when they went directly to marriage, not when they moved in with a romantic partner for the first time.

But for young adults who moved on from that first relationship, both men and women received similar emotional boosts whether they moved in with their second partner or got married to them.

The findings suggest an evolving role of marriage among young people today, said Sara Mernitz, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in human sciences at The Ohio State University. As recently as the early 1990s, young people still received emotional health benefits when they went from living together to getting married, Mernitz said.

“Now it appears that young people, especially women, get the same emotional boost from moving in together as they do from going directly to marriage,” she said. “There’s no additional boost from getting married.”

The study appears online in the Journal of Family Psychology and will be published in a future print edition. Claire Kamp Dush, co-author of the study and associate professor of human sciences at Ohio State, said the results may reflect the fact that cohabiting today does not carry the same stigma as in previous generations. Nowadays, about two-thirds of couples live together before marriage.

“At one time marriage may have been seen as the only way for young couples to get the social support and companionship that is important for emotional health,” Kamp Dush said. “It’s not that way anymore. We’re finding that marriage isn’t necessary to reap the benefits of living together, at least when it comes to emotional health.”

Another significant finding was that the emotional benefits of cohabitation or marriage aren’t limited to first relationships. The study found that young adults experienced a drop in emotional distress when they moved from a first relationship into cohabitation or marriage with a second partner.

“The young people in our study may be selecting better partners for themselves the second time around, which is why they are seeing a drop in emotional distress,” Kamp Dush said. The researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. This study included 8,700 people who were born between 1980 and 1984 and were interviewed every other year from 2000 to 2010.

The NLSY97 is conducted by Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition to asking about their relationship status at each interview, participants were asked five questions assessing their levels of emotional distress. They reported on a scale of 1 (all of the time) to 4 (none of the time) how often in the past month they had felt “downhearted and blue” and other symptoms. This study has advantages over studies that simply compare groups of people who are single, married and cohabiting.

“We are able to look at people over a 10-year period and see what happens to them individually as they make these various transitions in their relationships,” Mernitz said.

The study did find some gender differences, at least for first unions of marriage or cohabitation. For those entering a first union, men experienced a decrease in emotional distress only if they went directly into marriage. There was no change in distress for men who cohabited with a female partner.

That may be because men are more likely than women to report cohabiting as a way to test a relationship, which has been linked in other research to subsequent relationship problems. Also, Kamp Dush noted that this study assessed only emotional distress. Other research suggests that behavioral indicators of health – such as alcohol use or violence – may be more accurate for men than emotional indicators.

In any case, the gender differences were visible for only first unions. There were no differences in emotional health changes for men and women entering their second union, whether they were marriage or cohabitation.

The study also found that individuals who gave birth (or whose partner gave birth) showed significant decreases in emotional distress compared to those who did not have a child. That may seem surprising, given the stress associated with having a child, Kamp Dush said. But she noted that this study looked only at emotional distress. There may be other ways in which the stress of raising a child is manifested in these couples.

Kamp Dush said that marriage may provide some benefits over cohabitation that were not measured in this study, such as stability. But these findings provide evidence of a changing landscape in the United States. “It’s not commonly known that couples can get emotional benefits from moving in together without being married. That’s something we should be talking about,” she said.

For humans, death in old age has always been life’s great punchline. It takes 70 or 80 years to get really good at the whole business of being alive, and no sooner does that happen than mortality begins looking your way, tapping its watch and discreetly reminding you that there’s a line waiting for your table, a report by TIME magazine has said.

It’s the job of aging—and the multiple diseases that accompany it—to make sure we eventually get out of the way, an unhappy fact humans have been battling practically as long as we’ve been around. But some experts argue that aggressively treating the age-related diseases—heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia—instead of aging itself has been a mistake.

A collection of studies just published in Science aims to explore some promising new strategies for getting down into the machinery of the cells themselves to stop or at least slow the aging process. “Age is the greatest risk factor for nearly every major cause of mortality in developed nations,” wrote Matt Kaeberlein, University of Washington professor of pathology, and his colleagues in an introduction to the studies. “Despite this, most biological research focuses on individual disease processes, without much consideration for the relationship between aging and disease.”

The effort to change this is a war being fought on multiple fronts. Here are the places science is making some of the greatest advances. Whether you like it or not, your body is home to many trillions of bacteria that are essential to digestion and other bodily processes. In the aged, however, the makeup of that population changes, with higher concentrations of a bacterial species known as bacteroides, which which are harmless and helpful as long as they remain in the gut, but can cause infections and other problems when they infiltrate other tissues. Overall, researchers have found, the changing makeup of the microbiome can have an impact on immunity, cognitive function and maintenance of muscle tissue—all of which decline in older people.

The problem is exacerbated by antibiotics, which tend to be prescribed at higher rates as people age, and generally kill good bacteria as well as bad. Studies have shown that long-term stays at assisted living facilities or nursing homes are associated with both increased frailty and further deterioration of the microbiome—though it’s not certain whether this is a matter of causation or mere association. Either way, the microbiome is one of the easier parts of the human system to manipulate. It’s too much to say that we can eat our way to immortality, but better health and, perhaps, more years are hardly out of the question.

Telomeres are cuff-like structures at the ends of chromosomes that grow shorter over the course of a lifetime, leaving the body susceptible to a range of age-related breakdowns. According to Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, who wrote one of the papers in the Science release, the rate at which any one person’s telomeres burn down is from 30% to 80% determined by genetics, with the rest most heavily influenced by external variables such as diet, environmental toxins, exercise and stress.

The low-hanging fruit here are lifestyle variables: improving diet, increasing exercise, doing what you can to reduce stress and limit exposure to environmental toxins. No matter the reason for telomere shortening, boosting the levels of the body’s own telomere-building enzyme, known as telomerase, may help. That can be done, but it’s risky. According to Blackburn, who is one of the discoverers of telomerase, “in 80 to 90% of fully malignant human tumors, cancer cell telomerase is up-regulated compared to normal tissue counterparts.” Still, the enzyme remains one of the great hopes of anti-aging scientists, provided the dangers can be controlled. That’s no easy feat, which is why a hope—but a promising one—is what telomerase will remain for now.

The body’s best little construction workers are stem cells, the versatile progenitor cells that have the power to rebuild organs and other systems by becoming whatever kind of specialty tissue they need to be. No surprise, stem cell production and performance decline as we age—and organ decline follows. Environmental factors such as toxins and poor diet can further damage stem cells, as can sun exposure, in the case of the skin. Two approaches can help reverse, or at least slow, the aging and death of stem cells. In numerous experiments, stem cells from an older organism injected into a younger one have been shown to revert to a more youthful state, and the reverse is true for young cells place in an aged body. Introducing plasma or other blood factors from younger people into older ones may work a similar rejuvenation. Simpler interventions may also help: if a person with a poor diet and little exercise or a high stress level is exhibiting stem cell decline too early in life, reducing the stressors and otherwise changing the lifestyle may reduce the problem too.

There’s a little tiny engine room deep inside your cells that is responsible for metabolizing energy and keeping the cell alive. It’s the mitochondria, and it’s so important it’s thought of as its own tiny organ. It even has its own DNA profile. But the engine starts to falter as we age, and that has an impact across the entire power grid that is the body. The good news is, researchers have definitely determined that yes, this plays a direct role in aging. The bad news is that reversing the process doesn’t seem to reverse aging—at least not by itself.

The breakdown in the mitochondria has to do with how key proteins—which are densely packed inside the organelle—unfold as they go about their work. This process is less efficient in older organisms. Investigators working with roundworms have figured out ways to intervene in this process and improve the unfolding, but that hasn’t had an impact on the apparent age of the animal. Still, the authors of the Science paper have concluded that while mitochondrial health does not, on its own, determine aging, it all but surely plays an important role. Determining that role—and making the most of it—is where anti-aging therapy might lie.

Over100 makers and marketers of dietary supplements have come under scrutiny by the United States Department of Justice, according to an announcement on November 17. As per reports, the cases came as part of a nationwide sweep that dated back to November 2014, the DOJ said in a statement. It focused on enforcement resources in an area of the dietary supplement market that has been causing increased concern among health officials, it added.

In each case filed, the Justice Department or one of its federal partners alleged the sale of supplements contained ingredients other than what was listed on the product label. It added that, if not for the mislabeled product, the sale of products that make health or disease treatment claims that are not supported by adequate scientific evidence led to the cases filed.

Among the cases announced was a criminal case charging USPlabs LLC, known for its workout and weight loss supplements, and a number of its corporate officers, the Justice Department said.

Following the sweep on USPlabs and its products such as Jack3d and OxyElite Pro, federal court cases were opened up in 18 states.

Many agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit took part in the effort. Additionally, the Department of Defense and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency are participating in the sweep to unveil new tools to increase awareness of the risks in taking unlawful dietary supplements.

In the Justice Department statement, principal deputy assistant attorney general Benjamin Mizer said, “The Justice Department and its federal partners have joined forces to bring to justice companies and individuals who profit from products that threaten consumer health. The USPlabs case and others brought as part of this sweep illustrate alarming practices the department found — practices that must be brought to the public’s attention so consumers know the serious health risks of untested products.”

The joint-agency sweep pursued 117 individuals and entities through criminal and civil enforcement action, with 89 subject to cases filed since November 2014. Dallas-based USPlabs was charged with an 11-count indictment, including S.K. Laboratories Inc. for the sale of their products. Several officers, including S.K. Laboratories vice president Sitesh Patel, received various counts associated with the unlawful sale of the supplements.

Thousands of people with various disabilities gathered at India Gate for the Walk to Freedom.
The passing of The Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014 in the ongoing winter session of parliament will be of huge help to the disabled, said activists who gathered here on World Disability Day on Thursday.

Thousands of people with various disabilities gathered at India Gate for the Walk to Freedom that was organised by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP).

“The new law will take us to the next level of development. If the 1995 disability act was the first phase of development, this bill will rocket us,” Javid Abidi, honorary director of NCPEDP, told media. “The final version is with the cabinet. We are really hoping that it would be passed this week in parliament.”

Abidi, who is himself disabled, said the definition of disability is limited under the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995. “The definition of disability right now is very limited and includes only seven disabilities. Whereas the new law will expand it to 19 and it will be path breaking,” he said.

However, senior Congress Party leader and spokesperson, Randeep Singh Surjewala, said: “From parliament to the common people, everyone should participate in helping to overcome disability,” he said. Abidi also said there should be “no political fight” over the passing of the bill.

He said there are no provisions for deaf people right now but “the new law guarantees development for deaf people and improvement in sign languages as well”. “When people with autism can work in good companies elsewhere, why can’t it happen in India,” he asked. Several groups, including differently-abled people, participated in song performances and presented various acts at the event.

A discovery by Rutgers scientists links a protein in sperm to the same molecule needed for reproduction in tiny roundworms and provides clues to human infertility. In a study published in Current Biology, Andrew Singson, a professor in the Department of Genetics in the School of Arts and Sciences, and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health and the College of William and Mary in Virginia, identified a protein, SPE-45, on the sperm of C. elegan worms that help bind sperm to eggs during fertilization. It is the same as the Izumo protein considered essential for humans and other mammals to reproduce that was discovered a decade ago by Japanese scientists who named it after a marriage shrine in Japan.

“Humans and worms are connected by a common ancestor that lived more than 700 million years ago and this discovery will give us insight into their shared genetics and fertility pathways,” said Singson, a principal investigator at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology.

The new research suggests that a common ancestor to both worms and humans had a SPE-45/Izumo-like gene that was required for sperm to function properly at fertilization, said Singson, who has been researching the biological process of fertility for the past two decades.

“Twenty years ago when we started this research, we predicted that we would find the genes that are required for fertility from worms to humans,” said Singson.  “Now we know that this kind of molecule functions the same way beyond the mammalian branch of the tree of life.”

In the United States, one in eight couples has fertility problems. While about 70 percent of the cases can be attributed equally to the man or woman, 30 percent of the time no explanation can be found.

In the new Rutgers study, scientists found that worms produced normal-looking sperm but could not create offspring because the sperm cell lacked the SPE-45 protein on its surface similar to sperm in humans and other mammals that lacked the Izumo protein. Blocking the protein prevents sperm from binding and fusing with the egg.

“The protein works like molecular Velcro and helps the sperm and egg bind and fuse,” said Singson. “This type of finding can play an indispensable role in understanding the biological process.”

The discovery was corroborated by a team of scientists working at Emory University in Georgia and Setsunan University in Japan. Taking a different approach and using computer analysis to look at DNA sequences, this international team came up with the same conclusion which was also published in Current Biology. Comparing the worm and mammalian DNA sequences they created a hybrid SPE-45/Izumo molecule that can cure infertility in worms.

“This makes the results much more solid because two research groups have basically validated the results of the other,” Signson said. Since studying human infertility directly is very challenging due to many ethical and experimental limitations, making a genetic connection between worms and humans will help in future treatments because scientists can do experiments in worms to learn more about the function of Izumo-like molecules that they cannot do in mammals, Singson said.

“Finding new fertility genes in the worm can help us further understand the molecular basis of human fertility,” he said.  “The end result of this knowledge could be more informed and effective treatments for human infertility and reliable contraceptives for both sexes.”

“Working with the Government of India and Indian partners, the U.S. has invested close to $100 million to prevent and control tuberculosis in India, and has helped treat over 15 million people over the last 18 years,” United States Agency for International Development, responsible for administering civilian foreign aid, said here on November 19^th, 2015.

“The progress is real. Millions of lives have been saved, and we have seen dramatic improvements in diagnosis and care. But the challenge to end TB in India remains. Despite a strong national TB control program, TB continues to be a leading cause of death in India,” the USAID said, adding that the U.S. will remain a sustained, committed partner, supporting India along the path toward ending TB.

India carries the highest burden of TB in the world, an estimated 2.2 million new cases. A staggering 220,000 deaths are reported annually. More than 110,000 people are co-infected with HIV/AIDS and TB, it said.

A $22.5-million program, Tuberculosis Health Action Learning Initiative, will be initiated by USAID to complement the Revised National TB Control Program by engaging municipal governments and private providers to prevent, test and treat TB in select cities in India, a media report said.

It will help urban slum communities by strengthening the capacity of private providers to follow global standards for TB care, diagnosis and treatment and by testing and scaling innovations that improve treatment adherence, it said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will work closely with India to develop national trainings for airborne infection control and improve infection control in HIV treatment centers.

The CDC also supports counselors to provide education and social support to MDR-TB patients to ensure treatment completion and cure. It will also work closely with India to develop national trainings for airborne infection control and improve airborne infection control in HIV treatment centers.

Further in partnership with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Office of AIDS Research/National Institute of Health, the Indian Department of Biotechnology and the Indian Council of Medical Research, the NIH has established RePORT India (Regional Prospective Observational Cohort) which is a multinational collaborative effort designed to advance TB science in India.

The consortium consists of five distinct TB cohorts in South India working in collaboration with U.S. universities to address a wide array of scientific objectives and to institute a common prospective observational research protocol that is supported by a central repository, a central data management center, utilization of harmonized data elements, and specimen collection standard operating protocols.

Dr. Anil Potti, an Indian American cancer researcher, has been cited for engaging in research misconduct after an investigation by Duke University, where he was working at the time, and the Office of Research Integrity, according to a report by Duke University’s “The Chronicle.”

Former Duke University School of Medicine associate professor Dr. Anil Potti, based on reports and investigations conducted by the school and ORI, was found to have performed the misconduct in research supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute and covered by several grants.

According to the ORI findings, Potti included false research data in a number of published papers.

In one grant, Potti claimed in his paper that six of 33 patients responded positively to a treatment when he actually only had four patients enrolled in the research. None of the four responded to the treatment. Potti additionally altered data sets to improve the accuracy of predictors for response to treatments. The altered data was submitted to Clinical Cancer Research. In 2008, he provided a file of falsified data to a colleague; and in 2010, he provided additional misleading data to the NCI, according to the Duke article.

In a number of publications which published Potti’s research, the information provided included false data. ORI reported that falsified Potti research data was published in eight journals between 2006 and 2009. As a result of the investigation, the papers have been retracted.

Potti and ORI have come to a voluntary settlement agreement, though the professor has never admitted or denied the findings of the misconduct. The settlement, while it is not an admission of guilt, is to conclude the investigation without further resources being spent to look into the matter.

The researcher, according to the Health and Human Research Department notice published Nov. 9, has not engaged in U.S. Public Health Service-supported research since 2010.

He, additionally, has stated he does not intend to engage in further PHS research, according to the research department notice.

Early life stress is a major risk factor for later episodes of depression and people who are abused or neglected as children are almost twice as likely to experience depression later in life, says a new study. There may also be diminished processing of reward in the brain and associated reductions in a person’s ability to experience positive emotions.

Researchers at Duke University and the University of Texas Health Sciences Centre at San Antonio recruited 106 adolescents, between the ages of 11-15, who underwent an initial magnetic resonance imaging scan, along with measurements of mood and neglect.

The study participants then had a second brain scan two years later.

The researchers focused on the ventral striatum — a deep brain region that is important for processing rewarding experiences as well as generating positive emotions — both of which are deficient in depression.

“Our analyses revealed that over a two-year window during early to mid-adolescence, there was an abnormal decrease in the response of the ventral striatum to reward only in adolescents who had been exposed to emotional neglect,” said first author Jamie Hanson. Emotional neglect is a form of childhood adversity where parents are persistently emotionally unresponsive and unavailable to their children, researchers said.

This study suggests that, in some people, early life stress compromises the capacity to experience enthusiasm or pleasure. “This pathway might be targeted by neural stimulation treatments. Further, it suggests that survivors of early life trauma and their families may benefit from learning about the possibility of consequences that might appear later in life,” said John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry where the study appeared.

Dr. Atul Mehta, a transplant physician, saved the life of one of his patients, whom he had selected as a match to receive a double lung transplant. As a thank you, the woman whose life he saved, Lori Buoncore, gave the facility where Mehta works, the Cleveland Clinic, a $2 million gift in the form of the Buoncore Family Endowed Chair in Lung Transplantation.

“I was humbled by Mrs. and Mr. Buoncore’s generosity,” Mehta said. “I knew that this type of recognition comes with higher responsibility. I feel obligated to the entire transplant community.” Now, a year after the surgery, Buoncore is doing well. The national survival rate post-transplant surgery is more than 80 percent. “Saving someone’s life is beyond my capabilities,” Mehta noted. “My professional career is built upon providing my patients honest opinion and helping them make right decision for their health.”

Mehta selects patients for lung transplant and takes care of them after the transplantation is done. Buoncore, 60, in 2008 was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease – a disease that damages lung tissues, inflames the air sacs, and can cause permanent scarring of the tissues between the air sacs, making it very difficult to breathe.

Needing a lung transplant, Buoncore turned to Mehta and went on the transplant list in August 2014. She was notified of a match that was available just three months later in November 2014. She checked in and received a double lung transplant. “Proper selection of the recipient as well as the donor and the lifelong care of the transplant patient is equally important for the successful outcome,” the 62-year-old physician told India-West.

Mehta was born in Gujarat and currently resides in Moreland Hills, Ohio. He earned his undergraduate degree at Saint Xaviers College in Ahmedabad and his medical degree at N.H.L. Municipal Medical College at Gujarat University. Following medical school, Mehta completed an internship and residency in Ahmedabad, then residencies in Drexel Hill and Easton, Penn., as well as in Trenton, N.J. Additionally, he completed a fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic.

With decades of experience, Mehta said receiving a life-saving transplant is often a second chance at life.

“Many patients consider their transplant date as their second birth date,” he said. Buoncore and her husband Rick took the successful transplant and subsequent treatment to another level with the $2 million gift. The endowed chair, which is in the Buoncore name, was intended to have Mehta’s name, but he declined the offer. However, the Buoncores have said once the pulmonologist retires, the chair for the Lung Transplant Program will shift into his name.

Mehta has accomplished a lot in his career, including receiving the Gustav Killian Centenary Award for contributions in the field of bronchoscopy and interventional pulmonology by the World Association for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology, and the Pasquale Ciaglia Award for contributions in the field of interventional pulmonology by the American College of Chest Physicians.

He has also previously received funding by the Brundige family for bronchoscopy work. Despite all he has achieved, Mehta truly remains humbled. “Having an endowed chair is an honor,” he said. “But my bigger honor is when a patient asks me to participate in his or her medical care.”

Dr. Bhushan Pandya, founder and president of the Danville Gastroenterology Center, has been  elected president of the Medical Society of Virginia, according to the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. “I love what I’m doing and what I’ve always done,” Pandya told local ABC affiliate WSET. “My mother said as a physician you get to take care of the patients at the end of the day, most of them feel better and you feel better about yourself.”

The Indian American gastroenterologist, who has served on the Medical Society’s board as the director and associate director for more than 10 years as a representative of the 5th district, was installed as president-elect at the organization’s annual meeting in Chatilly.

Prior to his appointment by Governor Mark Warner and Governor Tim Kaine, Pandya recently finished his term as vice chair on the State Board of Health, which he had served for eight years.

Pandya had additionally served as the president of the Danville Pittsylvania Academy of Medicine and the Danville Regional Medical Center medical staff, and is currently the regional director of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

After earning his medical degree, Pandya went on to serve as president of the alumni association of his alma mater, the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, before coming to the U.S., where he did his post-graduate training at the Jersey City Medical Center.

Currently an alternate delegate of the Virginia delegation to the American Medical Association, Pandya is also the chair-elect for the AMA-IMG Governing Council and for several years has been the chair of board of directors at Gateway Health Alliance.

The Medical Society of Virginia, a professional association for Virginia physicians, is dedicated to supporting physicians in their practice and advocating on their behalf for health care legislation.

Locally, Pandya has served as the president of the Danville Pittsylvania Academy of Medicine and the Danville Regional Medical Center medical staff. He is also the regional director of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

Additionally, he has served as president of the alumni association of Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, where he earned his medical degree before completing post-graduate training at the Jersey City Medical Center.

The Medical Society of Virginia was founded in 1890. Its vision is to make Virginia the best place to practice Medicine and receive care. The Medical Society of Virginia is a professional association that is dedicated to supporting physicians in their practice and advocating on their behalf of them for health care legislation. The society also supports its members through educational and auxiliary activities that assist physicians in the practice of medicine.

He has served as the regional director of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin representing the South Atlantic region. He has served as president of the alumni association of Maulana Azad Medical College, where he earned his medical degree in New Delhi, India.

Dr. Pandya believes that the practice of medicine is very challenging in today’s time. To preserve the profession and to leave a healthy legacy for the next generation of physicians, each one of us should remain engaged in organized medicine. In the words of Nathan Laufer, MD, “If we don’t try to achieve some of these goals (stand together against the forces that prevent us from taking care of our patients), we are guaranteed a 100% failure rate in implementing any of them!”

India has around 65 million diabetic patients, the number being second only to China, Apollo Hospital’s senior endocrinologist S.K. Wangnoo said on Tuesday.

“The main reasons for the rise in the number of diabetic patients are lifestyle changes like lack of exercise and poor dietary habits,” Wangnoo told IANS.

Creating awareness will be the key factor in treating and preventing diabetes, he said.

He also pointed out that “India does not have enough trained doctors to deal with the disease”.

Meanwhile, 1,500 people, including doctors, participated in a marathon held for diabetes awareness on Sunday.

The campaign, organised in partnership with Hope and Helping Hands Society and Noida Running Group, was held on Sunday between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here.

It included walk for diabetes awareness and Half Marathon, 11 km and 6 km.

Sharing the experience, Dr. Rekha Khandelwal said: “Being a diabetes patient, I realise the importance of early detection and management. Regular exercise keeps me going and my diabetes under control. This run was a great event to raise awareness about diabetes.”

“A pathologist’s job is to diagnose patients suffering from the disease. Rarely do we get a chance to spread awareness. This event helped me reach out to people and educate them about diabetes,” Dr. Ila Jain, who too participated, commented.

Husbands and wives married for a long time don’t look at marital problems in the same way. When a marriage has troubles, women worry. They become sad. They get frustrated. For men, it’s sheer frustration and not much more.

In a new Rutgers and University of Michigan study, published in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, the sociologist who found that ‘A Happy Wife, Means a Happy Life’ looked at sadness, worry and frustration – among the most common negative emotions reported by older adults – and discovered that men and women in long-term marriages deal with marriage difficulties differently.

“The men don’t really want to talk about it or spend too much time thinking about it,” said Deborah Carr, a professor in the Department of Sociology, School of Arts and Sciences, who studies marital relationships. “Men often don’t want to express vulnerable emotions, while women are much more comfortable expressing sadness or worry.”

Men and women have very different emotional reactions to the strain and support they experience in marriage, Carr said. While talking about issues and offering support makes the wives – who traditionally feel responsible for sustaining the emotional climate of a marriage — feel good, this only frustrated the husbands surveyed.

“For women, getting a lot of support from their spouse is a positive experience,” said Carr. “Older men, however, may feel frustrated receiving lots of support from their wife, especially if it makes them feel helpless or less competent.”

In the study, 722 couples, married an average of 39 years, were asked how their marital experience – and the reactions of their spouse – affected them. They responded to whether they could open up to their spouse if they needed to talk about their worries, whether their spouse appreciates them, understands the way they feel about things, argues with them, makes them feel tense and gets on their nerves.

The husbands in the study  – who more often rated their marriages positively and reported significantly higher levels of emotional support and lower levels of marital strain than their wives  – felt frustrated giving as well as receiving support.

“Men who provide high levels of support to their wives may feel this frustration if they believe that they would rather be focusing their energies on another activity,” Carr said.

It may also have something to do with the age of the couples, with one spouse in the study having to be at least 60. Men of this generation may feel less competent if they need too much support from their wives, Carr said.

“We don’t know if younger generations of men would act differently in this situation,” Carr said. “But frustration is an under-researched emotion that needs to be looked at further.”

This is particularly important as couples age, become more dependent, less healthy and face the possibility of getting dementia or becoming a caregiver, Carr said.

“If older men or women with dementia have reduced impulse control, they could lash out against their spouse if they’re feeling frustrated,” she said. “It’s very important to keep in mind these dynamics even with long married couples who you may not think have any problems.”

The bottom line, said Carr, is that there has to be a middle ground between marital suffocation and togetherness.  Spouses want to feel loved and supported but not trapped.

“The general message is that support is good only if one views it as helpful and desirable,” she said. “Most people want to feel they’re capable of managing their own life.”

Children who receive antibiotics throughout the course of their childhood gain weight significantly faster than those who do not, says a new study. The findings suggest that early antibiotics use may have a compounding effect on body mass index (BMI), a measure often used to determine whether someone is at a healthy weight.

“Your BMI may be forever altered by the antibiotics you take as a child,” said study leader Brian Schwartz, professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, US. “Our data suggest that every time we give an antibiotic to kids they gain weight faster over time,” Schwartz noted.

For the study, the researchers analysed health records of 163,820 children between three and 18 years old from January 2001 to February 2012. They examined body weight and height (which are used to determine BMI) and antibiotic use in the previous year as well as any earlier years for which records were available. At age 15, children who had taken antibiotics seven or more times during childhood weighed about three pounds (1.3 kg) more than those who received no antibiotics, the findings showed.

“While the magnitude of the weight increase attributable to antibiotics may be modest by the end of childhood, our finding that the effects are cumulative raises the possibility that these effects continue and are compounded into adulthood,” Schwartz said.

Antibiotics kill off harmful bacteria but also those vital to gastrointestinal health. Repeated antibiotics use can forever change the microbiota, or the microorganisms that inhabit the body, thereby altering the way it breaks down food and increasing the calories of nutrients absorbed. This, in turn, can increase weight gain, the study explained.

As many as 293 patients of an Indian American cardiologist, Dr. Arvind Gandhi and Dr. Satyaprakash Makam, around a small town in Indiana have filed lawsuits against him and two other doctors in his practice claiming that they performed needless procedures. Indiana’s Medicaid program has started an investigation against Munster, Indiana-based Dr. Arvind Gandhi and his partners, Dr. Wail Asfour and Dr. Satyaprakash Makam, according to the New York Times.

The three doctors received nearly $5 million in combined Medicare payments in 2012, making them the three most reimbursed cardiologists in Indiana, it said. The Times quoted one doctor not named in the litigation as saying he had received a subpoena from the U.S. attorney’s office and provided the medical charts of several former patients of Gandhi and his colleagues whom he has since treated.

Lawyers for Gandhi and his practice, Cardiology Associates of Northwest Indiana, said they had not received any subpoenas, and the doctors denied any wrongdoing. The partners invested in real estate, including luxury apartments in Chicago, and a local restaurant, the Times said.

Besides the doctors, the malpractice lawsuits also name Community Hospital, where “Dr. Gandhi was a star,” through the foundation that oversees its operations, as a defendant, the daily said. Gandhi was a high-ranking member of the medical staff at the hospital, and the lawsuits charge that the superfluous procedures were done “with the authority and consent” of Community Hospital, it said. Lawyers for the hospital deny any wrongdoing.

Lawyers for Gandhi, his practice and the hospital say the lawsuits are without merit. The legal actions, they say, are being driven by envious physicians eager to take patients from Gandhi and by greedy lawyers seeking a big settlement.

A whistle-blower lawsuit brought by a physician and a hospital employee against the hospital, Gandhi and his practice in 2008 raised similar accusations that the hospital had billed for unnecessary defibrillator and pacemaker implantations that were performed by doctors without the proper credentials to implant the devices. But the suit, eventually joined by the U.S. attorney’s office in Hammond, Indiana, just north of Munster, was settled without anyone admitting wrongdoing. The hospital paid a $48,942 settlement.

The hospital and the doctors say that the settlement shows that the issues have been investigated and that they have been absolved of many of the same allegations contained in the current malpractice suits, the Times said. According to a PTI report, Gandhi retired last fall.

Dr. Khurshid Guru, an Indian American doctor has saved the life of a 2-year-old boy who suffered an asthma attack on board a transatlantic flight by creating a makeshift inhaler out of a cup and a bottle. Dr. Khurshid Guru, director of robotic surgery at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York, was aboard the Air Canada flight from Spain to the U.S. on Sept. 18 when he was notified of the toddler in trouble.

The boy was crying and short of breath, and his parents had accidentally packed his asthma medication in checked luggage, ABC News reported.  The child’s oxygen level was dipping down, and he needed oxygen, as well as asthma medication.

“The child had developed a cold,” Guru, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir, said. “We were three or four hours into the flight. I think the cold and popping of the ears and crying. … He got worse.”

After putting an oxygen meter on the child, Guru said he was disturbed to find the child’s oxygen level was dipping down to a dangerously low level — about 87 or 88 percent. Guru, who normally doesn’t treat pediatric patients, said he knew he needed to do something quickly.

Guru said he knew the child needed oxygen but also asthma medication, but the plane only had an adult inhaler on board. Guru was concerned the crying toddler was too young to understand how to use the adult inhaler that requires the patient to breathe and hold in the medication.

Instead, the doctor, who normally works with high-tech robots to treat patients, came up with a jerry-rigged device similar to a nebulizer that would deliver both oxygen and asthma medication to the crying child.

To create the nebulizer, the surgeon cut up a water bottle and added oxygen to one end and the adult inhaler through a small hole in the bottle. That way the oxygen and medication could be delivered through the bottle’s opening directly to the child.

“As the bottle went near to the child’s face, he pushed it away,” Guru said. “I got a water cup and made a hole in the bottle and focused it to his face … told [the parents] to keep it there. Within about half an hour and two treatments he was sounding much better.” After the very unusual treatment, the child’s oxygen level was around 94 or 95 percent, Guru said. “When I was landing, I checked on the child, and he was playing with the mom,” he said.

Guru said he wanted to share the story as a reminder to parents of asthmatic children to always keep their vital medication nearby. “I told the father then that the most important thing is that you never ever leave these medications away,” he told ABC News. “I wanted to make sure that everyone realized that we need to carry these things.”

In a first, Sreekanth Chalasani, an Indian American researcher from Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California has developed a new way to selectively activate brain, heart, muscle and other cells using ultrasonic sound waves. Dubbed as sonogenetics, the new technique has some similarities to the burgeoning use of light to activate cells in order to better understand the brain.

“Light-based techniques are great for some uses. But this is a new, additional tool to manipulate neurons and other cells in the body informed ,” Sreekanth Chalasani, assistant professor in Salk’s molecular neurobiology laboratory.

The new method – which uses the same type of waves used in medical sonograms – may have advantages over the light-based approach – known as optogenetics – particularly when it comes to adapting the technology to human therapeutics. In optogenetics, researchers add light-sensitive channel proteins to neurons they wish to study. By shining a focused laser on the cells, they can selectively open these channels, either activating or silencing the target neurons.

Chalasani and his group decided to see if they could develop an approach that instead relied on ultrasound waves for the activation. “In contrast to light, low-frequency ultrasound can travel through the body without any scattering,” he noted. “This could be a big advantage when you want to stimulate a region deep in the brain without affecting other regions,” adds Stuart Ibsen, post-doctoral fellow in the Chalasani lab. So far, sonogenetics has only been applied to C. elegans neurons. “The real prize will be to see whether this could work in a mammalian brain,” Chalasani pointed out.

His group has already begun testing the approach in mice. “When we make the leap into therapies for humans, I think we have a better shot with noninvasive sonogenetics approaches than with optogenetics,” he emphasised in a paper appeared in the journal Nature Communications. Chalasani obtained his PhD from University of Pennsylvania. He then did his post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr Cori Bargmann at the Rockefeller University in New York.

Are you hooked on to porn in a way that you feel you cannot control the urge to watch it? If yes, the mere idea of porn addiction can make you sick, says a new study. While some say porn is a healthy form of sexual expression, others believe it is an evil that leads to unrealistic expectations and addiction.

The new study from Case Western Reserve University suggests that the mere idea of porn addiction can have medicaldaily.com reported. The researchers found that those who believed they had an addiction to pornography also experienced psychological issues, like depression, anger, and anxiety.

However, this was not a result of watching porn itself, but rather it was a result of the feeling that watching porn was becoming an uncontrollable habit. “It does not seem to be the pornography itself that is causing folks problems, it is how they feel about it,” said lead study author Joshua Grubbs.

“Perceived addiction involves a negative interpretation of your own behaviour, thinking about yourself like, ‘I have no power over this’ We know from many studies that thinking something has control over you leads to psychological distress,” Grubbs said.

Grubbs added that psychological distress does not always come from a sense of guilt about viewing pornography. In fact, some people have no problem with the porn itself, but instead worry more about what will happen if they watch too much of it.

“Someone can be called out and publicly shamed, a marriage can become troubled, or maybe you are caught at work and get fired. Any of these causes psychological distress,” said Grubb.

Healthcare providers in India are expected to spend $1.2 billion on IT products and services in 2015 — an increase of seven percent over 2014, according to a new report released by market research firm Gartner.

The report includes spending by healthcare providers (includes hospitals, as well as ambulatory service and physicians practices) on internal services, software, IT services, data centre, devices and telecom services.

“IT services, which includes consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO), will be the largest overall spending category throughout the forecast period within the health care providers sector,” said Anurag Gupta, research vice president at Gartner.

“It is expected to reach $334 million in 2015, growing seven percent over 2014. The BPO sub-segment will record the fastest growth rate of 15 percent over 2014. ITO will be the largest sub-segment in IT services recording a 10 percent increase in 2015 to reach $103 million in 2015,” he added.

According to the report, the software market is slated to grow 6.7 percent in 2015 to reach $102 million — up from $96 million in 2014.

Vertical specific software (VSS), which includes hospital information system, electronic health/ medical records, health information management, patient financial management, and more, is expected to grow six percent in 2015 to reach $28 million, it added.

“The growth in the Indian healthcare ICT market will be driven by the private sector mainly focusing in tertiary specialised care, secondary hospital care and the government investments on core public health and primary care across several states,” Gupta said.

India plans to stop issuing a certificate that allows Indian doctors headed to the United States for higher studies to work in that country, a report said. The Ministry of Health has decided that it will no longer give the doctors the certificate that says there is no obligation for them to return to India, NDTV reported.

The certificate is key to the doctors finding jobs in the U.S. Under normal circumstances, U.S. immigration laws mandate two years of home residency for doctors holding J-1 study visas. But when doctors have the “No Obligation to Return to India” certificate, the U.S. waives the residency, allowing them to apply for work visas and accept employment.

The Indian health ministry’s move is a bid to tackle an acute shortage of doctors in India.

According to the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, a healthcare organization, India has an 81% shortage of specialist doctors, and a 12% shortage of general physicians. India has one doctor for every 1,800 people, three times higher than the WHO mandate of one doctor for every 600 people.

Dr. Naresh Trehan, a leading heart surgeon who for many years worked in the U.S., backed the Indian plan.

“All countries have this rule. India has been very lax in (implementing) it. Very few of us have come back and I think this should be an obligation that you come and serve your country,” he told NDTV.

V.V.N. Phani Babu Tiruveedhula, an Indian American student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has discovered new compounds that can reduce an alcoholic’s impulse to drink.

A new drug to help combat these urges could be ready for the market within five to six years.

Scientists found in tests using rats bred to crave alcohol that the compounds drastically diminished drinking.

In addition, the scientists observed limited side effects traditionally seen in alcoholism treatment drugs, such as depression and losing the ability to experience pleasure. The drugs also appeared to reduce anxiety in the rats who craved alcohol, but not the control rats.

“Alcoholism is a major problem. We need a better treatment right now,” said Tiruveedhula, a graduate student at U.W. Milwaukee. Studies found that alcohol triggers the brain to release dopamine, a neurochemical whose levels increase in response to eating, sex or listening to music.

Some of the drugs now available to treat alcoholism are geared toward dopamine, which prevents people from becoming happy when consuming an alcoholic beverage.

The medications, however, come from a class of compounds called opioid antagonists, which can lead to depression. They also are addictive and could lead to drug abuse. Tiruveedhula has made several new beta-carboline compounds – which may be less addictive – that could represent the future of treatment of alcoholism. Tiruveedhula and his team will present the results at the national meeting and exposition of the American Chemical Society in Boston this month.

Psychologists at the University of York have revealed new evidence showing how specific language used by parents to talk to their babies can help their child to understand the thoughts of others when they get older.

Studying the effects of maternal mind-mindedness (the ability to ‘tune in’ to their young child’s thoughts and feelings), lead author Dr. Elizabeth Kirk observed 40 mothers and their babies when they were 10, 12, 16, and 20 months old.

Keeping a record of parental language while a mother and her child played for 10 minutes, psychologists logged every time the mother made ‘mind related comments’ – inferences about their child’s thought processes through their behaviour (for example, if an infant had difficulty with opening a door on a toy car, they could be labelled as ‘frustrated’).

Revisiting 15 mother-child pairs when children reached 5 – 6 years old, the child’s Theory of Mind (ToM) or socio-cognitive ability was assessed. Using the ‘strange stories’ method, the level at which the child was able relate to others and understand another person’s thoughts was recorded.

The strange stories method involves reading a fictional vignette to the child which poses one of 12 social scenarios (contrary emotions, lies, white lies, persuasion, pretend, joke, forget, misunderstanding, double-bluff, figure of speech, appearance versus reality or sarcasm). Children are then asked a comprehension question followed by a test to prove whether they have understood the mental manipulation covered in the story.

Results showed a strong, positive correlation between mind-related comments at 10, 12 and 20 months old and a child’s score on the strange stories task. Therefore, children’s ability to understand the thoughts of other people when they were aged 5 was related to how mind-minded their mothers were when they were babies.

Dr Kirk, Lecturer in York’s Department of Psychology, said: “These findings show how a mother’s ability to tune-in to her baby’s thoughts and feelings early on helps her child to learn to empathise with the mental lives of other people. This has important consequences for the child’s social development, equipping children to understand what other people might be thinking or feeling. “These results are significant as they demonstrate the critical role of conversational interaction between mothers and their children in infancy. This also supports previous research led by psychologist Professor Liz Meins, who leads mind-mindedness research at York.”

Single mothers are far more likely to live in poverty than single fathers and their condition deteriorates with each additional child they have, new research has found. The income of single fathers, on the other hand, remains the same or increases with each added child in their family, the findings showed.

“Single mothers earn about two-thirds of what single fathers earn,” said Karen Kramer, assistant professor of family studies at University of Illinois in Chicago, US. In 2012, 28 percent of all US children lived with one parent. Of that number, 4.24 million single mothers lived below the poverty line compared to 404,000 single fathers, she noted. The single most important factor that allows single-parent families to get out of poverty is working full-time, she said.

“Single fathers are more likely to become single parents as the result of a divorce; single mothers are more likely never to have been married,” Kramer added. “Divorced single parents tend to be better off financially and are more educated than their never-married counterparts,” she explained.

The most common living arrangement for children after a divorce is for mothers to have custody. Single fathers with custody are more likely to have a cohabiting partner than single mothers, and that partner is probably at least sharing household tasks. “Single mothers are more likely to be doing everything on their own,” she said.

She also noted that society still stigmatises single mothers. “People think: How did you get in this position? It is irresponsible to be a single mother with so many kids. Now you do not have time to work,” Kramer said.

Kramer recommended that more emphasis and pressure should be placed on fathers and their ability to pay child support and spousal maintenance, raising the minimum wage to a living wage, and providing similar benefits and rewards for part-time work as the ones full-time workers get. The study appeared in the journal Gender Issues.

As more Indians surf for online pornography, despite efforts to ban it, experts caution that excessive exposure to explicit sex on the net may result in some of them turning into porn addicts and hypersexuals.

“Obsessive porn viewing can turn some into hyper-sexuals and addicts. This may later lead to porn dependence or even promiscuity, leading to relationship break-ups,” says Dr Manish Jain, senior consultant (psychiatrist) at BLK Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi.

In India, porn watching on internet, particularly among women, is on the rise. They are slowly bridging the gap with their male counterparts who have traditionally been leading consumers of sex online. Today Indian women are 30 percent of the regular visitors to porn websites, says a study undertaken by New York-based news website, The Daily Beast in collaboration with popular sex website Pornhub.

The figure has risen from last year, when 26 percent of Indian visitors were women. The data was collated from nearly 40 million Pornhub users. According to Dr. Sameer Malhotra, director (mental health and behavioural sciences) at Max Super Speciality Hospital, too much explicit porn can be associated with a need for stronger visual signals for arousal.

“It can make the act feel too mechanical. It can also cause stress in a relationship along with various other problems in one’s romantic and personal life,” he told the media. Sexual behaviour and libido, however, vary from person to person.“There is evidence to suggest that watching pornography does result in a greater objectification of both men and women,” stresses Dr Samir Parikh, director of mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi.

Can excessive porn affect the libido in women? “Results can vary as in some cases, it can increase libido leading to promiscuity and excessive masturbation. In others, however, it may lead to decreased sexual activity in which gratification is attained only by watching pornography,” explains Dr. Jain.

Despite several studies claiming that porn is bad for your brain and your relationships, there are other studies saying that porn does not cause irrecoverable harm to the brain or your sex life and, in fact, it might even be kind of good for you. “In a recent paper, two Danish researchers concluded from a survey of 688 Danish adults that porn did not yield any negative mental or health effects,” Dr. Jain said.

In fact, the researchers found a positive correlation between subject’s porn viewing and increased sexual satisfaction, as well as self-reported benefits in other areas of their lives, he said. Another recent study by Pornhub for Mic.com – a New York-based website focussed on news for millennials – revealed that while the core audience for porn is predominantly male, there has been a surge in women porn viewers among the millennial generation (those born after 1980) globally.

“Perhaps if this trend continues, we will get to a place where porn is produced with both male and female fantasies in mind,” the Mic study said. According to the data, 60 percent of porn-watching millennials watch it on their smartphones while only 33 percent watch porn on computers.

Dr. Parikh, however, tends to differ. “There is nothing to say that pornography is healthy. At the same time, depending on the nature of pornographic viewing, and that too infrequently, may not be of concern but either ways would not be a healthy thing to do,” he said. “It can also stimulate one’s fantasy and predispose one towards risky sex behaviour,” notes Dr Malhotra.

At times, multiple clippings are used and clubbed to showcase a prolonged intercourse in the porn movie. “This could generate myths and anxieties with respect to one’s own performance capabilities,” he warns. In the meantime, a healthy and mature porn watching is what experts recommend for the young women. “Do not just treat porn for carnal pleasure but for enhancing the overall experience of being together with your partner,” they advise.

Dr. Ananth Murthy, in a miraculous surgical feat, has gifted a pair of new ears to an 8-year-old boy, according to news reports. Elijah Bell, of North Canton, Ohio, is a second-grade student at Frazer Elementary in Canton. He was born with bilateral atresia microtia, a rare  birth defect  where the outer ears are undeveloped. Over the course of five surgeries in four years, Bell’s ear procedures were completed August 21 by a team led by Dr. Murthy. The surgical feat has been reported across the United States as a “miracle” because of the intricacies involved.

Besides five surgeries to create the ears – which began when Bell was just 4 – Murthy had to use a skin graft from the boy’s thigh to create a gap between his ears and his head. The final surgery was done in July when Murthy gave Bell’s ears detailed “hills and valleys.”

“The body naturally wants to smooth everything out as it heals, so we always have to go back a couple of times to help create the natural curves of an ear,” Murthy said in a statement. “It is an artistic procedure,” the Indian American doctor added.

Searching for a doctor who could help Elijah, Bell turned to Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio. It’s the same facility where Elijah was treated after being born prematurely. There, Elijah and his medical team, led by Indian American surgeon Dr. Ananth Murthy, the director of plastic surgery, started the long process of developing new ears.

Bilateral artesia microtia is a very rare birth defect which affects about 1 in 50,000 people. “By the time you are 6 to 8 years old, your ears are pretty much fully grown. Doing the surgeries at that age allows these kids to start their school careers with normal ears,” Murthy explained.

For Bell, the surgery has helped develop a new confidence in him. “He’s just learning to love himself the way he is,” the boy’s mother Colleen Bell said. Murthy is described by his Akron-based hospital as “our very own ‘Doogie Howser’,” who completed his undergraduate degree at the age of 19 and earned his medical degree by the time he was 22 years old.

New York-based HelpMeSee, which also has offices in New Delhi, China and the Netherlands, was recognized Aug. 13 with 11 Stevie Awards at the 12th annual International Business Awards. HelpMeSee is a global campaign with a singular mission to eradicate preventable blindness caused by cataracts — the leading cause of blindness worldwide — within two decades.

The company, whose volunteer medical officer is Indian American Dr. Ajay Singh, was recognized with a silver Stevie Award for Company of the Year in the nonprofit category. Other recognition included Gold Stevie Awards for a video on the HelpMeSee Reach mobile app and the Partners in Sight eNewsletter; Silver Stevie Awards for creative use of Instagram, video and direct mail; and Bronze for its Facebook feed, Twitter feed, the Giving Tuesday Campaign and 2014 Annual Report.

The campaign uses social media as a crucial tool to raise awareness about the health issue of cataract blindness in the developing world and the cost-effective solutions that have been developed. HelpMeSee technologies featured in the winning entries include the HelpMeSee Reach app for community screening, a high-fidelity surgical simulator for training specialists and a single-use surgical kit to improve the quality of care.

Singh has worked closely with HelpMeSee chief medical officer Dr. Glenn Strauss in developing the surgical simulation technology needed to provide cataract surgical training in the developing world. Most recently he has co-authored a paper with Strauss on the need for advanced simulation for microsurgical training.

More than 3,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration. Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 200 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from May through early August.

In their comments on the entries, the judges highlighted HelpMeSee’s “incredible use of technology to solve a common problem,” according to a statement. The International Business Awards are one of the world’s premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide are eligible to submit nominations. The 2015 competition received entries from more than 60 nations and territories. Dr. Ajay Singh, was recognized with a silver Stevie Award for Company of the Year  HelpMeSee and all the Stevie Awards winners will be presented with their awards at a banquet in Toronto Oct. 23.

India’s healthcare sector is expected to be U.S. $ 280 billion in size by 2020, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 16 percent, but it is in “dire need” of right policy framework and infrastructure push, says a FICCI-KPMG report. With the healthcare industry seeing a robust growth trajectory, workforce in the sector is expected to be at 7.4 million in 2022, said the report — ‘Healthcare: The Neglected GDP Driver’.

The sector, which was at U.S. $ 73.92 billion in 2011, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16 percent to U.S. $ 280 billion in 2020, it said. The report added however that it was high time the country realised the significance of healthcare as an economic development opportunity at national and state levels.

“With the increasing disease burden, the healthcare sector in the country is in dire need to get the right policy framework and infrastructure impetus. Granting infrastructure status may not only help the sector receive investments, but also bring down the cost of healthcare delivery,” it said. The report further said healthcare is traditionally seen as a social sector in India, with less government focus and low budget allocation.

“India currently spends cumulatively 4.2 percent of its GDP on healthcare, with just 1 percent being contributed by the public sector, amongst the lowest globally,” it added. As per the report the healthcare sector impacts the country’s GDP through various routes. It is also one of the largest sectors in India in terms of employment generation. If appropriate investments are made in areas, such as healthcare delivery and education, they are expected to further increase the employment rate and positively impact the country’s GDP.

Commenting on the need to increase investment in the sector, KPMG in India Government & Healthcare Partner and Head Nilaya Varma said: “…investment in healthcare propels overall economic growth and is more than just social expenditure in India. Improvements in the health of citizens contributes to overall economic prosperity of the nation.” The Indian healthcare workforce is expected to double to 7.4 million in 2022 from 3.6 million in 2013, the report said.

The share of healthcare FDI has almost doubled since 2011, highlighting the growing interest of foreign players in the sector, it added. “Investment opportunities in the Indian healthcare sector have increased significantly and the sector is expected to be one of the most attractive investment targets for private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) companies,” the report said.

An Indian-American scientist has found a simple mechanism controlling the sleep-wake process in animals, which appears to have been conserved over several hundred million years and could be possible in humans.

Ravi Allada, circadian rhythms expert at the Northwestern University in the US state of Illinois, has discovered how an animal’s biological clock wakes it up in the morning and sends it to sleep at night.

A simple two-cycle mechanism turns key brain neurons on or off during a 24-hour day, according to the findings published in journal Cell. The clock’s mechanism is much like a switch.

In the study of brain circadian neurons that govern the daily sleep-wake cycle timing, Allada and his research team found high sodium channel activity in these neurons during the day turn the cells on and ultimately awakes an animal. Similarly high potassium channel activity at night turn them off, allowing the animal to sleep. The researchers were surprised to discover the same sleep-wake switch in flies and mice as well.

“This suggests the underlying mechanism controlling our sleep-wake cycle is ancient,” Allada was quoted as saying in a report on the website of Northwestern University. “This oscillation mechanism appears to be conserved across several hundred million years of evolution. And if it’s in the mouse, it is likely in humans, too,” said Allada, professor and chair of neurobiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Better understanding of this mechanism could lead to new drug targets to address sleep-wake trouble related to jet lag, shift work and other clock-induced problems. Eventually, it might be possible to reset a person’s internal clock to suit his or her situation.

The researchers call it a ‘bicycle’ mechanism: two pedals that go up and down across a 24-hour day, conveying important time information to the neurons. That the researchers found the two pedals — a sodium current and potassium currents — active in both the simple fruit fly and the more complex mouse was unexpected. “Our starting point for this research was mutant flies missing a sodium channel who walked in a halting manner and had poor circadian rhythms.

“It took a long time, but we were able to pull everything — genomics, genetics, behavior studies and electrical measurements of neuron activity — together in this paper, in a study of two species,” Allada said. “Now, of course, we have more questions about what’s regulating this sleep-wake pathway, so there is more work to be done,” he added.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For the first time, scientists have seen evidence of where the brain records the time and place of real-life memories. Results showed that the similarity of the brain activation patterns when memories were recalled was an indicator of the breadth of space and time between the actual events.

Participants in the Ohio State University study wore a smartphone around their neck with an app that took random photos for a month. Later, when the participants relived memories related to those photos in an fMRI scanner, researchers found that a part of the brain’s hippocampus stores information about where and when their specific memories occurred.

In fact, the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the further apart the memories occurred in space and time, the farther apart the memories’ representations appeared in the hippocampus.

“What we’re picking up here is not the whole memory, but the basic gist – the where and when of the experience,” said Per Sederberg, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State.

“This could be viewed as the memory hub, where we have these general, large-scale representations of our experiences.” Similar work has been done in rats – in fact the discovery of rat neurons that code for space won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last year. But in rats, the space they live in can be measured in feet.

There have also been studies in humans that ask them to recall lists of words or other information that they had just seen – but that recorded memories of just a few minutes that were created under experimental conditions. This study greatly expands on both of those dimensions, by looking at real-life memories in humans.

“We found that the hippocampus represents time and space for at least a month of memories spanning up to 30 kilometers (19 miles) in space,” Sederberg said. “It is the first time we’ve been able to study memories on the scale of our lives.”

Sederberg led the study with Dylan Nielson, a Ph.D. graduate of Ohio State. Other co-authors were Troy Smith and Vishnu Sreekumar of Ohio State and Simon Dennis, a former Ohio State professor now at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

The study involved nine women aged 19 to 26 who wore an Android-based smartphone on a strap around their neck for one month. The phone was equipped with a custom lifeblogging app designed by Dennis. The app would take photos at random times of the day, recording the time, location, whether the person was moving and other information. Over the course of the month, the phone took an average of about 5,400 photos for each participant.

After the month was over, the participants were placed in an fMRI scanner that measured activity in their brain while they were shown 120 of their own photos. Participants were asked to try to remember the event depicted in each picture and relive the experience in their mind while viewing the photo for eight seconds.

The researchers compared fMRI data on pairs of images for each participant. The photo pairs chosen were taken at least 100 meters and 16 hours apart. Remembering an experience “lights up” many parts of the brain, but different memories create different patterns of activity. The more different two memories are, the more different the pattern of activity will be. Results showed that patterns of activity in the left anterior hippocampus were more different for memories of events that happened further apart in time and space.

He also plans to collect months or even a year’s worth of data to see how we target memories over even longer periods of time and greater distances. “We’ve got a decade or more of work ahead of us. This is just the first step,” Sederberg said

A healthy mood spreads faster through social networks but depression does not, say researchers. Being friends with someone who is depressed does not put you at risk of becoming depressed and it is likely to help the depressed person recover, they said.

Researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Warwick looked at over 2,000 adolescents in a network of US high school students to see how their mood influenced each other by modelling the spread of mood using similar methods to those used to track the spread of infectious diseases.

The team said while depression does not “spread”, having enough friends with healthy mood can halve the probability of developing, or double the probability of recovering from, depression over a 6-12 month period.

In the context of depression, this is a very large impact. Researchers know that social factors, for example living alone or having experienced abuse in childhood, influences whether someone becomes depressed.

“We also know that social support is important for recovery from depression, for example having people to talk to,” said study co-author Thomas House from the University of Manchester.

“This was a big effect that we have seen here. It could be that having a stronger social network is an effective way to treat depression,” House said. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

(Dallas, Texas – August 11, 2015) CEO of Dallas-based home textiles company Nextt, Arun Agarwal, will be honored with the Bert Tonkin Gift of Giving Award at GIFT FOR LIFE’s 2016 gala to be held in New York City on February 1, 2016.

GIFT FOR LIFE, the gift and home industries’ charitable organization, lauded Agarwal for his generosity toward organizations in the U.S. and abroad for “more awareness raised and more education and care provided to individuals impacted by HIV/AIDS.”

“I am thrilled to be honored with this award for helping make a difference in the lives of those who are living with HIV/AIDS,” said Agarwal. “Organizations like GIFT FOR LIFE and DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) are committed to raising monies to provide direct care and resources to these individuals, and I’m proud to be a part of their movement.”

Dallas-based home textiles company Nextt is as a key supplier to big retailers such as Walmart, Target, Kohl’s and Dillard’s; the $500-million company manufactures home textiles, garments, apparel fabrics and polyester yarns, primarily from India, and sells under popular name brands such as Trina Turk, Kathy Ireland, Jessica McClintock and Raymond Waites.

Agarwal, who studied at Harvard University and University of New Hampshire before pursuing his dream to become an entrepreneur, has been building and nurturing the Indian home textiles sector in the U.S. for the past 15 years. Under his leadership, Nextt unveiled a 17,000 square feet flagship showroom on Madison Avenue in Manhattan in 2014. For more information about Nextt, please visit: www.nextt.com.

Dr. Amar Desai, an Indian American doctor based in the Greater Los Angeles area of California, was recently named to the Becker’s Hospital Review “25 Healthcare Leaders Under 40” list. The leaders are selected through an editorial review process that included peer nominations. All leaders were under 40 years old at the time of their nomination earlier this year. This is the fourth year the annual list has been released.

“I am honored. This recognition is really about the distinctive individuals and teams I have had the privilege to work with,” Desai told the media. “We are at such a dynamic moment in healthcare and medicine right now, there is so much we are doing that will improve the health and well-being of our communities.”

Desai, 39, who was born and raised in Southern California to parents who immigrated to the United States from India, resides in Manhattan Beach, Calif., with his wife Priya and their three daughters. An associate professor of medicine at Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and the CEO for the USC Care and Ambulatory Care Services, he has dedicated the better part of a decade to improving patient care.

Desai is currently responsible for the operations of all ambulatory satellites, which include hospital-based clinics, Keck School of Medicine department clinics, outpatient joint venture partnerships, community practices, the access center and billing operations.

“As I have progressed in my medical career, I have seen firsthand how patient care is influenced by public policy decisions, systems of care, and the business of medicine,” he said. “Over the past years, my roles have focused on driving health system change by building innovative care models that improve quality, make care more affordable, and transform the experience of being a patient.”

Desai spent time as an executive at Da Vita Healthcare Partners and an engagement manager at McKinsey and Company. At the latter firm, he was a member of the North American Provider/Payer Practice. He is board certified in internal medicine and nephrology, having completed his residency and fellowship at U.C. San Francisco.

Desai received his bachelor’s and medical degrees at Brown University and his master’s of public health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has held faculty appointments at the Stanford School of Medicine and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.