1 in 10 US Parents Don't Follow Vaccination Schedule

About 13% of parents are skipping or delaying their children's immunizations and following an "alternative" vaccination schedule that puts kids at serious risk.

A recent internet survey which included 748 parents of kids between six months and six years old. Of those, 13 percent said they used some type of vaccination schedule that differed from the CDC recommendations. That included refusing some vaccines or delaying vaccines until kids were older -- mostly because parents thought that "seemed safer." In addition, two percent of parents refused any vaccination altogether, according to findings published in Pediatrics.

The survey,  conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, evaluated 748 responses. The parents ranged from 18 to 59 years old, but most were ages 30 to 44. The results were comparable to an earlier, larger study by the CDC.

Parents were most likely to skip vaccination against H1N1 (swine flu) and seasonal flu, the study says. Parents were least likely to skip the polio vaccine. Researchers also noted that white parents were more likely to follow an alternate vaccine schedule, as were families who didn't have a regular doctor.

Skipping or spacing out vaccines dramatically increases the risk of illness, the study says. Children whose parents opt out of one or more vaccines are 22 times more likely to contract measles and nearly six times more likely to contract whooping cough, according to background research cited in the study. Unvaccinated babies are particulary vulnerable, because newborns are at greater risk of complications from many infections. Health officials are concerned about the trend: unvaccinated people have fueled an outbreak of measles, which sickened nearly 200 people in the first eight months of this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The USA also has battled outbreaks of whooping cough and mumps in the past two years.

The patterns among those not following the recommended schedule varied. Among them:

• 17% said their child did not get any vaccines.
• 53% said they didn't get some vaccines.
• 55% said they delay some vaccines until older than the recommended age.
• 36% said they wait longer between multiple-dose vaccines than is recommended.
• 22% said they got each part of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine separately.

The vaccines most likely to be refused:

• H1N1 influenza, refused by 86% of those on the alternative schedule
• Seasonal influenza, 76%
• Chickenpox (varicella), 46%

Another expert sees reason for concern about the 13%. "People who refuse vaccines tend to be clustered geographically," says Saad Omer, PhD, MPH, MBBS, assistant professor of global health, epidemiology and pediatrics at the Emory University Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Emory Vaccine Center.
That, in turn, can create what he calls a ''critical mass" of people to trigger a disease outbreak.
"There is a reason why there is a schedule," says Omer. "The risk of preventable disease is not constant. One of the reasons we give vaccines at a certain age is the children are vulnerable at a certain age."
Another problem, he says, is that as parents spread out the vaccinations, the risk of not completing the recommended ones increases.

The CDC maintains a schedule of recommended vaccines on its web site, www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/child-schedule.htm

Electronic tattoo 'could revolutionise patient monitoring'

11 August 2011,  BBC News

Researchers have developed ultrathin electronics that can be placed on the skin as easily as a temporary tattoo, and hope the new devices will pave the way for sensors that monitor heart and brain activity without bulky equipment, or perhaps computers that operate via the subtlest voice commands or body movement.
Flexible electronics have been around for a few years; one approach is to write circuits onto materials that are already flexible, another is to make the circuits themselves flexible. In 2008, for example, engineers at the University of Tokyo created a conductive material that looked a bit like a fishnet stocking. Made of carbon nanotubes and rubber, it could stretch by more than a third of its natural length, possibly enough to make robots become more agile.
The problem with these past attempts, says materials scientist John Rogers of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is that none of them has been as stretchy and as bendy as human skin.
Now, Rogers and his colleagues at Urbana-Champaign and other institutions in the United States, Singapore, and China have come up with a form of electronics that almost precisely matches skin's mechanical properties. Known as epidermal electronics, they can be applied in a similar way to a temporary tattoo: you simply place it on your skin and rub it on with water (see video). The devices can even be hidden under actual temporary tattoos to keep the electronics concealed.

Researchers hope it could replace bulky equipment currently used in hospitals:
A mass of cables, wires, gel-coated sticky pads and monitors are currently needed to keep track of a patient's vital signs. Scientists say this can be "distressing", such as when a patient with heart problems has to wear a bulky monitor for a month "in order to capture abnormal but rare cardiac events".
In one study the tattoo was used to measure electrical activity in the leg, heart and brain. It found that the "measurements agree remarkably well" with those taken by traditional methods.
Smaller, less invasive, sensors could be especially useful for monitoring premature babies or for studying patients with sleep apnoea without them wearing wires through the night, researchers say.

Afraid of Flying? WHO says Hospitals are More Dangerous.

Your chances of dying in a hospital because of a medical mistake are much higher than going down in an airplane, according to the World Health Organization.
In a July 21, 2011 news briefing , WHO’s newly appointed envoy for patient safety Liam Donaldson pointed out that the chance of dying in a plane crash is about 1 in 10 million, but 1 in 10 patients encounter medical errors at the hospital. The chances of dying from an error are about 1 in 300, Reuters reports.

Donaldson cited a common comparison of the aviation and health-care industries in an effort to promote the WHO's surgical safety checklist for hospitals, but there are also several ways patients can protect themselves from errors, and in particular, from infection.

Here are a few tips from the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths:

- Ask hospital workers if they’ve washed their hands, or used an alcohol-based cleaner, before they touch you.

- If the doctor uses a stethoscope, ask him or her to wipe it with alcohol.

- Avoid putting your hands near your mouth.

- If you’re going for surgery, stop smoking in advance — smokers are more likely to get infections and take longer to recover.

-Don’t shave the area where you’ll be having the surgery (bacteria could enter through nicks). And remind the surgeon that you may need an antibiotic before surgery.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has a list of 20 tips for avoiding errors.
And of course, avoiding hospitals cuts down the risk of contracting a hospital infection. Eating healthily and exercising regularly helps to avoid chronic illnesses that might bring you to the hospital in the first place.

Copper surfaces reduce risk of hospital infections

A new study presented at the 1st International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control (ICPIC) in Geneva suggests that almost all of the bacteria that cause hospital-acquired infections in ICUs can be killed by utilizing antimicrobial copper surfaces.
Copper, like silver, kills bacteria mechanically. Because of this the microbes cannot develop a resistance to it. The exact mechanism by which copper kills bacteria is still being researched, however, several theories exist and are being studied. They include:

• a leakage of potassium or glutamate through the outer membrane of bacteria
• a disturbance in osmotic balance
• the ability of copper to bind to proteins that do not require copper
• the oxidative stress caused by generating hydrogen peroxide

The most recent trial, conducted at three US facilities - has shown that the use of antimicrobial copper surfaces in intensive care units cuts down risks of hospital infection by 40.4 per cent.

non-disposable metal or plastic surfaces on door knobs, railings and tray tables are often touched by people in hospitals and clinics, becoming sources of infection.

Researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, New York, the Medical University of South Carolina and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Centre, replaced bed rails, overbed tray tables, nurse call buttons and IV poles with antimicrobial copper versions according to a Sloan Kettering statement. Data presented by trial leader Michael Schmidt, professor of microbiology and immunology at Sloan Kettering, demonstrated a 97 per cent reduction in surface pathogens in rooms with copper surfaces.

Schmidt said: " Bacteria present on ICU room surfaces are probably responsible for 35-80 per cent of patient infections, demonstrating how critical it is to keep hospitals clean."

"The copper objects used in the clinical trial supplemented cleaning protocols, lowered microbial levels, and resulted in a statistically significant reduction in the number of infections contracted by patients treated in those rooms," he said. 

Laboratory testing shows that, when cleaned regularly, Antimicrobial Copper kills greater than 99.9% of the VRE, MRSA, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterobacter aerogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and E. coli O157:H7. Antimicrobial Copper surfaces are a supplement to and not a substitute for standard infection control practices and have been shown to reduce microbial contamination, but do not necessarily prevent cross contamination; users must continue to follow all current infection control practices.

Michels et al, Lett Appl Microbiol, 49 (2009) 191-195 demonstrated that Antimicrobial CopperTM outperforms two commercially available silver-containing coatings under typical indoor conditions.

Women & Alzheimer's

A new report by the Alzheimer's Foundation shows that women are not only the primary unpaid caregivers and advocates for those with the disease, they are also becoming victims of the disease itself in disproportionate numbers.
According to a recent poll which gathered information from 3,118 adults nationwide, including more than 500 Alzheimer caregivers:

•    60% of Alzheimer's caregivers are women.
•    Of those women, 68% report they have emotional stress from care giving.
•    Nearly half of these 68% rate their stress as a "5" on a scale of "1" to "5."
•    57% of all caregivers, including 2/3 of the women, admit they fear getting Alzheimer's.
•    4 in 10 caregivers say they had no choice about their new role.

The problem is that many of those caregivers are now being diagnosed with the disease. Women suffer disproportionately from various forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's: by some estimates sixty-five percent of those currently  suffering from Alzheimer's are women. Though women are only slightly more likely to develop Alzheimer's than men, its prevalence among women is twice as high simply because women live longer, with a life expectancy of 80 years versus 75 for men. Half of all women over 85 in the U.S. will eventually develop this disease.

New research shows that hormonal differences may increase the risk of Alzheimer's in women. One study, for instance, has found that hormone replacement therapy can increase a person's risk of developing dementia. Another study found that high or low levels of a thyroid hormone called thyrotropin may be associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease in women. Estrogen may also play a role.
Gender also seems to dictate which risk factors matter more in the development of dementia. A French study found that men who had suffered a stroke were three times more likely to develop dementia, while stroke seemed to have no effect at all in women. Yet women prone to depression were twice as likely to suffer from dementia, and women unable to live without assistance due to an inability to perform routine tasks were 3.5 times more likely to develop dementia.

Alzheimer's develops differently in men and women, and they exhibit different symptoms of dementia: men with Alzheimer's disease tend to develop more aggression than women do as the disease progresses. They also tend to wander and perform socially inappropriate actions more frequently than women diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Women on the other hand tend to become more reclusive and emotionally unstable. They hoard items more often than men do, refuse help more often, and exhibit laughter or crying at inappropriate moments. Women also seem more vulnerable to depression and to suffering from delusions.

Because baby boomers are aging and because the population of those over age 85 is reaching record levels in the U.S., the number of people with Alzheimer's is expected to more than triple by 2050. By that time approximately 8 million women will have AD in the USA.
The FDA has only approved two types of medication to improve cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer's disease such as memory loss, according to the Alzheimer's Association. But there is no treatment that stops or reverses its progression. In America about $6 billion of funding is funneled to cancer research, and $4 billion is spent on heart disease research. Only $500 million has been allocated to Alzheimer's research, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

Fortunately there are steps women -and men- can take to protect themselves.
Studies show that getting regular exercise, eating lots of fruits, vegetables and fish, and keeping the mind active can help ward off the disease. So can taking a pass on hormone replacement therapy, which can double the risk of Alzheimer's. If they start showing signs of confusion or memory loss, women can slow Alzheimer's progression by getting diagnosed and taking medication early.
For more information on Alzheimer's disease and dementia, visit alzheimersdisease-info.com .

Advances in Gene Therapy: A new generation of Antisense drugs may hold the key to treating our most debilitating diseases.

Gene therapy is the insertion of genes into cells and tissues to treat disease. The gene, which is a stretch of DNA or RNA, is injected into a vector -the delivery vehicle- such an Adenovirus: the virus (with a now modified DNA) is absorbed by a targeted cell, where the cell nucleus alters its proteins using the new gene. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it has shown great promise in treating diseases such as Cancer and HIV/AIDS, as well as deadly viruses.

Pushing modern technology even further, Antisense Therapy utilizes a synthesized strand of nucleic acid which bonds to the mRNA produced by a specific gene and inactivates it, in effect acting like a micro switch which can alter the way specific cells produce proteins or prevent them from reproducing.

Currently there are no available vaccines or therapies for Ebola. Antisense drugs are useful against viral diseases because they are designed to enter cells and eliminate viruses by preventing their replication. The drugs, which act by blocking critical viral genetic sequences, may be more potent than anti-virals such as protease inhibitors that seek to inhibit a protein needed for viral replication. In a new study using Antisense drugs containing called small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), researchers targeted the L protein which is critical for Ebola virus replication. Using a proprietary technology called SNALP, or stable nucleic acid-lipid particles, to deliver the therapeutics to disease sites in animal models infected with the most potent strain of Ebola they were able to effectively inhibit the growth of the virus in 3 out of 4 infected rhesus monkeys.

In cancer studies Antisense drugs have shown the ability to target the proto-oncogenes found in normal cells. These genes, when mutated or expressed at high levels, help turn a normal cell into a tumor cell. Other Antisense drugs can inhibit the protein kinase C-alpha, which signals the cell to divide in other cancers. Scientists have discovered a way to improve the effectiveness of antisense cancer drugs by attaching multiple strands of antisense DNA to the surface of a gold nanoparticle (forming an "antisense nanoparticle"). The DNA then becomes more stable and can bind to the target messenger RNA (mRNA) more effectively.

In HIV/AIDS treatment, researchers have been conducting clinical trials using a HIV lentiviral vector, which has the unique ability to integrate into the genome of non-dividing cells( other Retroviruses can infect only dividing cells). Because "short" antisense -such as ribozymes or RNAi- may be more likely to result in HIV strains that are resistant to the therapy, these new drugs contain a very long antisense that inhibits HIV replication and debilitates HIV's ability to resist the treatment. The antisense lies inactive in a patient’s white blood cells (specifically the CD4+cells), waiting for HIV to enter that cell. When HIV does enter, replication of HIV within that cell activates the vector, which then binds to and destroys the HIV.

Ongoing clinical trials are attempting to determine if patients can go off antiretroviral drugs permanently: while the data from this trial is still not complete, the results are very encouraging.

With the completion of the Human Genome Project draft in 2003, researchers have been given detailed knowledge of the human genome which will provide new avenues for advances in medicine and biotechnology. This information can provide a deeper understanding of the disease processes at the level of molecular biology, and will potentially determine many new therapeutic procedures.

Given the established importance of DNA in molecular biology and its central role in determining the fundamental operation of cellular processes, it is likely that expanded knowledge in this area will facilitate medical advances in numerous areas of clinical interest that may not have been possible without them.

Don’t Have a Seat: New study shows that we spend too much time on our butts and it’s killing us.

How much time do you spend sitting? Think about it: an average American office worker gets out of bed, and then sits in a car on the way to work where they sit down at their desk. Maybe you’ll go out for lunch and sit at a table. Back to work, a commute home, then a few hours sitting in front of the TV before bed.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association has found that every hour per day spent sitting without physical activity increases a person's risk of dying from heart disease by almost one-fifth, regardless of how physically fit or unfit they are. "Even if someone has a healthy body weight, sitting for long periods of time still has an unhealthy influence on their blood sugar and blood fats," according to Professor David Dunstan, head of the Physical Activity laboratory at Australia’s Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute.

The study measured the intensity of physical activity in 168 subjects over seven days. It found that regardless of how much moderate-to-vigorous exercise they did or their total sedentary time, those who took more breaks from sitting had lower waist circumferences, lower body mass indexes and lower levels of triglycerides and glucose in blood. Higher levels of triglycerides, or blood lipids, have been linked to a heightened risk of heart disease and stroke. High blood glucose levels are linked to the development of diabetes, which itself is a major risk factor for heart disease.

The studies found that the enzymes responsible for breaking down fat are suppressed when a person is sitting instead of standing.

"To hold a body that weighs [77 kilograms] upright takes a fair amount of energy from muscles," he said. "There is a large amount of energy associated with standing every day that can't easily be compensated for by 30 to 60 minutes in the gym."

His studies found that the enzymes responsible for breaking down fat are suppressed when a person is sitting instead of standing.

But the good news is that pottering about the house or gently walking around the office while on the phone might be enough to keep you fit: regardless of how much moderate-to-vigorous exercise they did or their total sedentary time, those who took more breaks from sitting had lower waist circumferences, lower body mass indexes and lower levels of triglycerides and glucose in blood. In fact, the sheer effort of standing up is enough to double the metabolic rate and the amount of calories burnt.

"If you stand up, you are much more likely to end up pacing or pottering around and that seems to make a crucial difference."