Health News - Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Drinking two cups of coffee before exercise may reduce post-workout muscle pain by over 50 per cent, which gives more relief than a pain reliever medicine like aspirin can provide, says a study.
Researchers studying caffeine's effect on post-workout muscle soreness in nine female college students, who were not regular caffeine users and did not regularly engage in resistance training, reported their findings on the online edition of health portal WebMD. Continue reading
A 27-year-old man with a disfiguring disease has become the second person to have a partial face transplant in France in just over a year. A team of doctors in Val-de-Marne near Paris carried out the 15-hour operation on Sunday, Le Parisien daily reported. No one was immediately available for comment at the hospital.
The man, who was not named, suffered from von Recklinghausen disease, an illness that deforms the face. He was given a new nose, face and chin. Continue reading
Rapid flu tests can help doctors decide when patients need antibiotics and when they do not, researchers reported on Monday. They said their findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, might help persuade doctors to ease off on the antibiotics they prescribe for patients in the hospital.
Experts almost universally agree that antibiotics are overused in the United States and elsewhere, and that this overuse has helped new, drug-resistant strains of bacteria to evolve. Antibiotics are useless against viruses, such as influenza, but bacterial and viral infection often cause very similar symptoms. Continue reading
British scientists have found a new way for treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Scientists at the Leeds University have adapted a bacteria in the body to make it produce a treatment for IBD by using sugar to "witch" the bacteria on and off, the science news website Alpha Galileo reported Monday.
According to the new research led by Simon Carding of Leeds' faculty of biological science, a spoonful of sugar will be all a patient needs for his/her body to make its own medicine. By eating the sugar, a patient will set the medicine to work and then can end the treatment simply by stopping consumption of the sugar. Continue reading
Looking to spend some quality time with your microwave? Zap your kitchen sponges and scrub brushes. Why? Because scientists -- with maybe too much free time on their hands -- say those innocent looking sponges and brushes can be loaded with disease-causing viruses and bacteria.
Researchers soaked sponges and scrubbers in a disgusting brew of raw wastewater containing fecal bacteria, viruses, protozoan parasites and bacterial spores, including Bacillus cereus spores -- known for being very hard to kill with heat, chemicals and even radiation. Zapping at full power for two minutes killed or inactivated 99 percent of living pathogens. It took 4 minutes to destroy the B. cereus spores. Continue reading
Giving selenium, an antioxidant mineral sold as a dietary supplement, to HIV patients modestly reduced the amount of virus in their blood, according to a study published Monday. Patients taking 200 micrograms of high selenium yeast daily saw an average 12% drop in blood virus levels, according to the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
"I liken selenium to a lion tamer in a circus," said lead author Barry Hurwitz, a professor of psychology and medicine at the University of Miami. "What it appears to do is make [the virus] more docile, less virulent and less likely to replicate." Continue reading