Health News - Tuesday, March 20, 2007
The world's fight against malaria, which infects 300 million people and kills 2.5 million annually, may be boosted by a controversial new weapon — a genetically-modified mosquito that can't spread malaria.
Scientists from the Malaria Research Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, US, have successfully developed the world's first genetically engineered, malaria-resistant mosquito that is more dominant than its naturally-born wild counterparts. Researchers led by Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena created the GM mosquitoes by injecting them with a gene that made it impossible for them to be infected by the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria. Continue reading
Although viruses are the cause of most sinus infections, doctors continue to prescribe antibiotics for about 82 percent of acute sinus infections and nearly 70 percent of chronic sinus infections, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
Hadley J. Sharp and colleagues at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, used data from two national surveys to assess the medications prescribed for sinus infections at physicians offices and hospital outpatient and emergency departments between 1999 and 2002. Based on the data collected in the surveys, an estimated 14 million visits to these health care facilities nationally per year were due to chronic rhinosinusitis and 3 million were because of acute rhinosinusitis. Continue reading
A new study adds to the previously reported evidence that cigarette smoking protects against Parkinson's disease. Specifically, the new research shows a temporal relationship between smoking and reduced risk of Parkinson's disease. That is, the protective effect wanes after smokers quit.
"It is not our intent to promote smoking as a protective measure against Parkinson's disease," Evan L. Thacker from Harvard School of Public Health emphasized in comments to Reuters Health. "Obviously smoking has a multitude of negative consequences. Rather, we did this study to try to encourage other scientists...to consider the possibility that neuroprotective chemicals may be present in tobacco leaves." As reported in the March 6th issue of Neurology, Thacker and colleagues analyzed data, including detailed lifetime smoking histories, from 79,977 women and 63,348 men participating in the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. During about 9 years of follow-up, 413 subjects developed definite or probable Parkinson's disease. Continue reading
Smoking not only can wrinkle the face and turn it yellow -- it can do the same to the whole body, researchers reported on Monday. The study, published in the Archives of Dermatology, shows that smoking affects the skin all over the body -- even skin protected from the sun.
"We examined non-facial skin that was protected from the sun, and found that the total number of packs of cigarettes smoked per day and the total years a person has smoked were linked with the amount of skin damage a person experienced," Dr. Yolanda Helfrich of the University of Michigan, who led the study, said in a statement. "In participants older than 65 years, smokers had significantly more fine wrinkling than nonsmokers. Similar findings were seen in participants aged 45 to 65 years," Helfrich's team added in their report. Continue reading