A dressing that dissolves

Being in the difficult age bracket where diabetes – leading to poor healing of cuts and wounds – is a major problem, a recent discovery from a group of German researchers comes as a boon.

Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg have discovered a new type of wound dressing made of silica gel fibers that helps heal difficult wounds caused by burns or diabetes. The scientists explain that the dressing forms a supporting matrix for newly growing skin cells and is fully absorbed by the body during the healing process, leading to faster healing. According to a media release, in Germany alone, about three million patients suffer from poorly healing large-area wounds caused by complaints such as diabetes, burns or bedsores.

The standard procedure of applying ordinary bandages to the wounded areas is largely unsuccessful in diabetics. That is where this new silica dressing scores. The biggest advantage of this novel dressing is that it is bio-resorbable – once applied it remains in the body, where it gradually degrades without leaving any residues. Apart from this, it also is shape-stable and pH-neutral

Since this is the inner bandage and doesn’t need to be changed (since it dissolves automatically), in large wounds, only the outer bandage needs to be changed, thereby leading to lower risks of infection. The scientists also plan to integrate active substances such as antibiotics or painkillers in the dressing to improve and accelerate the healing process.

However, the dressing is not yet commercially available. According to a media release, Bayer has already agreed to support them in development and marketing of the dressing and expects hospitals to start using the silica gel wound dressing in 2011.

Walk away from cancer!

According to a study report published in the British Journal of Cancer, men who exercise for 30 minutes every day cut their risks of dying from cancer by more than 33 per cent.
The study, conducted by the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet looked at the effect of physical activity and cancer risk in 40,708 men aged between 45 and 79 before reaching at the conclusion. They surveyed two representative counties in Sweden and studied men having almost similar lifestyles.
An interesting result of the study is the nature of exercising that led to a reduced cancer related death risk – nothing very heavy or sophisticated, but simple walking and cycling.
As Professor Alicja Wolk, the lead researcher says in a media release, “These results show for the first time, the effect that daily exercise has in reducing cancer death risk in men aged between 45 and 79. We looked at more moderate exercise such as housework, undertaken over a longer period of time and found that this also reduced men’s chances of dying from the disease.”

Saliva test to diagnose heart attack

Identifying a heart attack in time is one of the biggest challenges we (in the age bracket of 30 to 50) face today. Junk food, crazy work hours, insufficient sleep and high stress – all of these factors associated with our lifestyle can lead to a heart attack or symptoms that are a precursor to an attack.
For example, junk food can lead to stomach ache, stress can lead to palpitation, insufficient sleep can lead to fatigue – so how does one know whether it is a heart attack or an innocuous bout of indigestion or breathlessness?
If researchers from the University of Texas at Austin are to be believed, very soon all you will need to do to identify a heart attack in time is to spit into a tube and take a simple saliva test using a chip. The research, if successful, will benefit millions across the world in preventing fatal conditions. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in developed countries. This year, in the US alone, an estimated 770,000 Americans will have a new coronary attack, and about 430,000 will have a recurrent attack.
According to a media release from the university, the credit-card sized nano-bio-chip could be used to analyse a patient's saliva on board an ambulance, at the dentist’s office or at a neighborhood drugstore, and produce results in as little as 15 minutes. Sounds like science fiction? Read on to know more.
Recent research has indicated that there are a number of proteins in human blood that are significant contributors to heart attacks. As a result presence or absence of these proteins can be treated as indicators of cardiac disease. The team of researchers used this fact to develop a device that analyses these proteins and tells the patient whether a cardiac disorder is going to happen.
The method of detection is also simple – the patient spits into a tube which is transferred to the credit card sized device holding the nano-chip. This card is then inserted into an analyzer (just like one inserts a card into the ATM machine) and within 15 minutes the results are out! This is much better than the traditional blood tests, the results for which take more than hour. More often than not, it is this critical hour that leads to a life and death question.
However, we need to wait for some more time before the device is commercially available. Currently trials are on for making the device absolutely safe.

Low-fat diet may prevent prostate cancer

According to new studies, conducted by scientists from University of California in Los Angeles, reducing the intake of dietary fat commonly found in a western meal, helps prevent prostate cancer in mice. Since a mouse model closely mimics human cancer, researchers are hopeful that these findings will help in preventing and curing prostate cancer in humans.
A group of researchers, led by William Aronson, made one group of mice have a diet with about 40 per cent of calories coming from fat (an amount typical in men eating a Western diet), while the other group had a diet which consisted of 12 per cent calories from fat (usually found in a very low fat diet). In their research, they focused on fat from corn oil, which is made up primarily of omega-6 fatty acids, commonly found in high levels in baked and fried goods.
According to a media release from the UCLA, researchers found a 27 per cent reduced incidence of prostate cancer in the low-fat diet group. Not only this, the scientists also studied cells in the prostate that would soon become cancer, and found that the cells in the mice eating the low-fat diet were growing much more slowly than those in the high-fat group.
Using these findings, the scientists are expecting significant breakthroughs in treating prostate cancer in humans and are planning animal and human trials soon.
As Aronson says in a statement for the UCLA media release, “A low-fat, high-fiber diet combined with weight loss and exercise is well known to be healthy in terms of heart disease and is known to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, so that would be a healthy choice to make. Whether or not it will prevent prostate cancer in humans remains to be seen.”
The scientists, from UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and the Department of Urology, have published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Research.

Weight cycling makes bones brittle

If you are planning to go on a jet-speed weight loss programme involving crash diets, beware. You may suffer from the ill effects of weight cycling (repeated loss and regain of body weight in some people who go on weight-loss diets. A small cycle may include loss and regain of 5 to 10 lbs, while in a large cycle, the weight can change by 50 lbs or more.)
According to a report published in the American Journal of Epidemiology by Dr Anne Johanne Sogaard of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo and colleagues, if you are between 25 and 50, and frequently lose and gain weight, chances of having a fracture increases manifold once you cross 50. This is the result of a study conducted in more than 4600 men over a period of 28 years! However, if you lose weight after crossing the half century mark, the risks of fracture are not so high.
According to researchers, an instant weight-loss programme with crash diets causes microscopic damage to the bones thereby making it more fragile and susceptible to injuries. In the study, they found that amongst men who reported no weight loss episodes before they turned 50, 17-18 per cent suffered forearm fractures, however, the rate was 35-43 per cent amongst those who had lost weight four or more times. The risk of fracture increased with the amount of weight lost.
Does that mean that you should not exercise and lose weight? Not at all, says researchers. On the contrary you must exercise. But exercise restraint when you want to shed those extra kilos. Don’t go in for an instant-coffee type solution, instead supplement regular exercise with a controlled diet regime to lose weight the normal way and retain your bone strength.

Women expect a filmy heart attack!

A research study presented at a meeting of the America Heart Association says that women aged less than 55 don't recognize the warning signs of a heart attack often because it doesn't resemble what is shown in Hollywood movies as a precursor to heart attack!
According to the study author Judith Lichtman, an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale School of Medicine, the women were expecting symptoms like tightening in the chest, shortness of breath and clutching the chest while dropping to one knee to occur before a heart attack!
As a result, more often than not, by the time women realize that they are suffering from a heart disease, it is too late. In fact, Lichtman and her team found that 88% of women in the trial reported symptoms of severe chest pain, but only 42% suspected that something was wrong. Most of them attributed the pain to acidity, fatigue and stress. When they were told that they were suffering from heart disorders, they were surprised because the symptoms varied a lot from those shown in public media (read films!).
As Lichtman says in an interview to the media, “They wish that they had known that symptoms such as neck and shoulder pain, abdominal discomfort that was easy to mistake for indigestion, or unusual fatigue could signal a heart problem. They often said that TV doesn’t show examples of the symptoms they experienced. If they knew, they would have responded to the symptoms sooner.”
Little wonder that statistics paints a grim picture of the number of patients suffering from heart diseases. Consider this: heart disease leads to almost half a million American women dying every year (approximately one death per minute), 16,000 young women with heart disease die every year and 40,000 are hospitalised. With India likely to carry the burden of close to 60% of heart patients in the world, this should ring alarm bells for us as well.
For this study, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 30 women with an average age of 48, a week after they had been discharged from the hospital following a heart attack, and presented their study at the American Heart Association’s 9th Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research (QCOR) in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke. Check out this American Health Association guide on how to identify a heart attack.
And you thought people were mature enough to differentiate reel life from real life!

Banned globally, available locally!

It’s a known fact that multinational companies (pharmaceutical, FMCG and food and beverages) make use of the somewhat lax drug safety laws in India to manufacture and sell harmful products that are banned elsewhere. Be it a tablet you are taking for a simple headache, the cola you are drinking or the readymade soup you are preparing – all of these have products or traces of chemicals that are banned for use in most of the developed countries. Alarmed? There is more in stock, if you read on. Sample these simple examples:

1. The easy-to-cook soup powder that most multinational companies sell in India contains an additive called Mono Sodium Glutamate (MSG). We also consume them and thank the companies for coming up with such a solution to our soup-making woes! Little do we know the harm we are doing to our internal organs. In most developed countries MSG is a big no-no and these same companies sell the same soup without any trace of MSG. Chinese restaurants in the US flaunt signs on their doors which claim – NO MSG. You may be wondering what will happen if one has MSG (better known as Ajinomoto). Check out this site which lists the harmful effects of having MSG and talks about the Body Systems Affected by MSG. Amongst the most significant ones are damage to the nervous system, high blood pressure, affect brain cells, digestive system and even your hearing. In short, almost everything that lets us live life normally. But when it comes to India everything is acceptable.

2. A tablet for headache has found a place in all our bags. We pop a pill for headache more often than we take a vitamin tablet these days! One of the most popular tablets till recently was Novalgin (which contained liberal doses of analgin). This has been banned across the world because it is known to cause bone marrow depression. This fact is so well known that the brand is banned even in countries like Nepal, Vietnam and Nigeria! But, unfortunately, it is still available in India and over the counter.

3. For fever or some irritating pain, how often have we taken a Nimulid. Little did we think that the drug falls in the Nimesulide category and is knows to result in liver failure. So dangerous is the drug, that it is banned in 160 countries including even Bangladesh. But we still continue to use it – no one knows why, especially when other painkillers are available without these side effects.

4. A common cold results in most of us taking Vicks Action 500 or D’Cold. Reports suggest that both of these drugs contain Phenylpropanolamine, which is known to cause stroke! In the US, this drug cannot be procured without a prescription because of its side effects. However, in India it continues to be available over the counter.

The list is endless – if I were to give you the entire list, this would be a never-ending post! Worst of all is the fact that most of these medicines treat innocuous conditions like a headache or a cold but lead to fatal conditions like a stroke or liver failure. Check this Express Pharma article to get a full list of drugs that are banned globally but available and permitted in India. The article also lists the harmful side effects of taking them.

Unfortunately, the fact that nothing much is being done about this growing menace is evident in this Times Of India report, which says that even few months back these drugs were available in the open market and the Government is pleading helplessness to enforce the law.

What is adding to the trouble is the lack of knowledge of doctors in some cases. Either they get too swayed by medical representatives’ sales pitches, or have some vested interest in prescribing the medicines. Ultimately, I feel the onus is on us to protect our health and we need to be more aware of what’s good and what’s not. Thankfully the Internet is there to help us.

For an official list of drugs banned in India, visit the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation website. However, this link will provide you only the scientific names of the drugs; finding out the brand names may be difficult. But you can match these to drugs that you buy and check whether they come under this category or not.

So before you pop a pill the next time be sure to check that it does not fall in the banned drugs category.