One Zika twin has microcephaly; the other doesn’t. A set of twins in Brazil has doctors stumped as one was born with microcephaly from the Zika virus and the other was not.
Jaqueline Silva de Oliveira, mother of 6-month-old twins, Lucas and Laura, found out about three months after giving birth that she had been infected by the Zika virus while pregnant. She only developed a rash, so she thought it was allergies.
Scientists are now studying why some babies born to Zika-infected moms develop microcephaly and hope to locate a genetic reason why one twin has microcephaly and yet another doesn’t.
Researchers have found that eating pasta can keep us lean. Pasta may have gotten a bad rap. New research suggests pasta—specifically noodles in this study—might actually help you lose weight.
Moderate pasta consumption seems linked to lower chances of general and abdominal obesity, researchers found after analyzing data on thousands of Italians.
Too much and too little sleep is ‘as damaging to your health as a bad diet and sitting all day. According to a new study, both too much and too little sleep appears to be associated with inflammation, a process that contributes to depression as well as many medical illnesses. Inflammation causes the number of substances to increase in volume in the blood stream. These include C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6).
An increase in these substances can be an indication of adverse health conditions, including cardiovascular problems, hypertension – or raised blood pressure – and type 2 diabetes.
Life expectancy drops for white women. Overall, life expectancies for both men and women didn’t change between 2013 and 2014, the most recent years available. However, differences appear when those results are broken down by race. White women saw a (slight) decline in life expectancy for the first time since 2005. Those born in 2014 were, on average, expected to die about one month earlier (at 81.1) than those born in 2013. But Hispanic women saw a slight increase, from 83.8 to 84 years, and Black women saw no changes in life expectancy (staying steady at 78.1).
The sound of your voice may diagnose disease. A growing body of evidence suggests that an array of mental and physical conditions can make you slur your words, elongate sounds, or speak in a more nasal tone. They may even make your voice creak or jitter so briefly that it’s not detectable to the human ear. It’s still not absolutely clear that analyzing speech patterns can generate accurate — or useful — diagnoses. But the race is on to try.
Many U.S. teens taking risky supplements to bulk up or slim down. These products—including protein powders, steroids, and diet pills—are often useless at best, toxic at worst, said the American Academy of Pediatrics in a new report.
Doctors think of performance-enhancing substance use as an athlete problem, but many non-athletes are using these substances for appearance enhancement. Boys go for protein supplements, caffeine, steroids and creatine, which revs up energy in cells and nonprescription weight-loss supplements are popular among girls.
Protein associated with improved survival in some breast cancer patients. A study, led by academics at The University of Nottingham, discovered that when high levels of the protein calpain were detected in large primary breast tumors from patients given chemotherapy treatment to shrink their tumor before surgery, these patients were more likely to survive.
Fresh farm air can have negative health effects, says study. City pollution has health consequences, but so does ‘fresh’ farmyard air, according to a new study.
It shows that people living near livestock farms had reduced lung function and were more likely to get pneumonia, linked to a particle and a high concentration of ammonia from manure in the air.
Surprising discovery:
Indian doctors grow a new nose on boy’s forehead. Arun Patel’s nose was badly damaged and disfigured when he suffered from pneumonia as a baby. The infection damaged the cartilage of his nose, making it difficult for doctors to fix it.
Arun’s parents took him to a doctor in their village for treatments, but it made his condition worse and he lost his nose due to extensive tissue damage.
More than a decade later, a team of doctors in Indore city decided to conduct a rare four-phased plastic surgery to give Arun a new nose, by replacing his damaged nose with a new one which was grown on his forehead. [BBC]
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