Pregnancy and Cell Phones

Do cell phones harm unborn babies? With more and more women using mobile phones to remain connected with other people, it's becoming a topic of concern.

There has been a great deal of debate for several years surrounding whether or not cell phones are dangerous to use during pregnancy.

Studies Into Pregnancy and Cell Phone Use

In July 2008 in the Journal of Epidemiology published a study of mothers of 13,159 children in Denmark. The researchers from the Universities of Aarhus, Denmark and California, Los Angeles asked mothers questions about their use of cell phone during pregnancy and the behavior of their children.

According to these studies, the mothers who said they used their cell phones during pregnancy reported more behavioral problems in their children. The behavioral problems included difficulty concentrating, hyperactivity, and an increased risk of impulsivity.

The study may be concerning to pregnant mothers, but it's unclear whether the study is accurate.

Gut Infections Are Growing More Lethal

VIRULENT About 20 million Americans get sick from norovirus each year, most often in winter
By DENISE GRADY

Gastrointestinal infections are killing more and more people in the United States and have become a particular threat to the elderly, according to new data released last week.

This week: Interviews with a medical power couple; a disturbing rise in gastric distress; and a filmmaker takes the plunge.

 The Science Times Podcast

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Janice Haney Carr/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

RESISTANT The bacterium C. difficile is tough to kill and has grown more virulent.

Deaths from the infections more than doubled from 1999 to 2007, to more than 17,000 a year from 7,000 a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Of those who died, 83 percent were over age 65. 

Two thirds of the deaths were caused by a bacterium, Clostridium difficile, which people often contract in hospitals and nursing homes, particularly when they have been taking antibiotics. The bacteria have grown increasingly virulent and resistant to treatment in recent years.

But researchers were surprised to discover that the second leading cause of death from this type of illness was the norovirus. It causes a highly contagious infection, sometimes called winter vomiting illness, that can spread rapidly on cruise ships and in prisons, dormitories and hospitals.

“I think there is perhaps a misperception that norovirus causes a mild illness,” said Aron Hall, an epidemiologist at the disease centers. “But this suggests a major problem that requires some attention.”

Both diseases are spread by the fecal-oral route, meaning that people swallow germs found in feces, often spread by people who did not wash their hands after using the toilet.

Problems with C. difficile are not new: Health officials first began warning in 2004 that a more virulent and drug-resistant strain had emerged. It produces high amounts of two potent toxins that can wreak havoc in cells lining the intestine.

But few people anticipated what gains the bacteria would make. Among hospitalized patients, cases rose to 336,000 in 2009 from 139,000 in 2000. Deaths from the infection seem to have leveled off in the past few years, but researchers say they are still far too high and should be dropping, as other hospital-related infections are.

Estimates of cases occurring outside hospitals run as high as three million annually. Overall, C. difficile infections cost $1 billion a year, according to the disease centers.

Two factors typically lead to the infection: taking antibiotics, which make the intestine vulnerable, followed by exposure to the bacteria or their spores in a hospital, clinic or nursing home that has not been properly disinfected. Spores can survive for weeks or maybe even months outside the body, and it takes bleach or other strong disinfectants to kill them.

Many people recover once they stop taking antibiotics, but some become severely ill and require treatment with different antibiotics to get rid of C. difficile. Even then, 20 percent relapse, and some suffer intestinal damage that can be fatal or can require surgery to remove part of the intestine.

In recent years, some people have received fecal transplants, in which stool from a healthy person is placed into the patient’s intestine. The idea is to restore the normal balance of bacteria in the gut, which may include 25,000 to 30,000 different species. There is simply no better way to replace them. Awful as they may sound, the transplants can cure cases that were otherwise intractable.

“The microbes have been at this a lot longer than us,” said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, a medical epidemiologist at the disease centers. He added, “Our bodies have learned over eons how to keep harmful bacteria out.”

Health officials expressed frustration at a news conference this month, stating that many cases are preventable or at least treatable, and yet death and infection rates have continued at “historically high and unacceptable levels.”

Because nearly all C. difficile infections — 94 percent — come from hospitals or other health care settings, experts say doctors, nurses, other health workers and hospitals should take much of the responsibility for trying to fight them.

A quarter of the infections start in the hospital, and the rest occur in nursing home patients or people recently treated in doctors’ offices or clinics. Patients often carry the germs from one institution to another.

Simple hygiene measures are highly effective, like cleaning surfaces with bleach and wearing gowns and gloves when treating infected people to avoid spreading germs to other patients. One of the disturbing and more disgusting facts about C. difficile is that it is very hard to remove from bare hands: neither soap and water nor alcohol-based hand sanitizers work very well. For health workers, it is much better to wear gloves, to avoid contaminating their hands in the first place, Dr. McDonald said.

He also said that a recent study of hospitals in the United States that set up programs to fight C. difficile found that they were able to lower infection rates by 20 percent in two years. Similar efforts in Britain have cut infection rates by half.

It is also important to use antibiotics only when they are really needed, because people taking them have 7 to 10 times the usual risk of contracting C. difficile while using the drugs and for a month after, and triple the risk for the next two months, according to the disease centers.

This week: Interviews with a medical power couple; a disturbing rise in gastric distress; and a filmmaker takes the plunge.

 The Science Times Podcast

For those with serious illnesses that require antibiotics, the risk is unavoidable. But half the antibiotics prescribed in the United States are unnecessary, experts say, so people are being put at risk for no reason.

But why have the bacteria become more virulent? A likely reason, Dr. McDonald said, is that virulence can sometimes be an asset when it comes to evolution. Nice germs finish last, but nasty ones that cause a lot of diarrhea will spread around more, infect more people and beat out the competition — a trait that evolution will tend to favor.

“The strain that is more successful is selected for,” he said.

The finding on norovirus came as a surprise, said Dr. Hall, the C.D.C. epidemiologist, whose report is the first to find that the virus has become the second leading cause of death from gastroenteritis.

The virus causes about 800 deaths a year in the United States, he said, but about 50 percent more in years when new strains emerge.

About 20 million people a year in the United States get sick from norovirus, most often in the winter. It can quickly sweep through a nursing home or dormitory. Just a small dose of the virus, a few particles, is enough to cause illness.

“Someone sick is shedding billions of viruses in every gram of stool,” Dr. Hall said. “One person can expose a lot of people rapidly.”

The incubation period is short, and the virus can persist on surfaces for days or even weeks. Cold and moisture help it last.

Older people are most likely to become severely ill and die from the virus, either from dehydration or aspiration pneumonia, caused by inhaling vomit.

“The second highest death rate is in kids under 5,” Dr. Hall said.

When children die from the infection, the culprit is often dehydration, which can lead to shock and heart problems.

Dr. Hall said that he and his colleagues estimated that 27 children a year die from norovirus, similar to the number killed by another gastrointestinal infection, rotavirus, for which there is now a vaccine.

Researchers are trying to develop a norovirus vaccine, he said. But scientists say vaccines for intestinal infections are among the most difficult to create.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/health/gut-infections-are-growing-much-more-lethal.html?src=me&ref=general

Fish And Spices Top List of Imported Foods That Make Us Sick

by NANCY SHUTE

EnlargeJustin Sullivan/Getty Images

More than 75 percent of the fish consumed in the U.S. is imported.

Disease outbreaks with imported foods are on the rise, and fish and spices are the foods most likely to cause problems.

It's not that imported foods are any nastier than home-grown, according to a presentation today from researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's that we're eating a lot more of them.

"Since the late 1990s the amount of food that's imported has doubled," says Hannah Gould, an epidemiologist at the CDC who's been studying imported food and food safety. "The number of outbreaks has mirrored that."

But outbreaks caused by imported foods tend to affect a lot more people, since they're sold in multiple states. Typically just one to two percent of food outbreaks affect people in more than one state, Gould says. But with imported foods, 25 percent of the 39 outbreaks affected more than one state.

And the CDC thinks that problems with imported food are under-reported, because people often don't know the source of the food.

More than three-quarters of seafood consumed in the United States is imported. And those imported fish are the biggest food safety problem — 45 percent of the outbreaks caused by imported food from 2005 to 2010 involved seafood, according to the new data from the CDC released today.

 

Spices may be good for the heart but they can also be risky; 15 percent of the imported food outbreaks were caused by spices. Imported spices often have pathogens on them because of they way they are harvested and dried.

The Salt recently reported on Salmonella contamination inorganic celery seed. Many spices are irradiated to kill pathogens, but organic seeds often aren't.

Spice outbreaks are especially hard for disease detectives to track, Gould says, because people don't think of them as a discrete item in their diet. "They're part of other food," she tells The Salt.

She reported the results of the study today at the meeting of the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases on Atlanta.

The new Food Safety Modernization Act calls for more inspection of imported food. But those inspections are still in the works.

Knowing that imported foods are a growing source of outbreaks shouldn't change how we eat — as long as we're taking the right precautions.

"Consumers should approach safety the way they always have," says Gould. "Cook, separate, chill — follow prevention measures."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/03/14/148605158/fish-and-spices-top-list-of-imported-foods-that-make-us-sick?ft=1&f=1001 

In US, sickness from imported foods on the rise

People in the United States are getting sick more often from imported foods in recent years, and seafoods and spices from Asia are the most common culprits, US health authorities said Wednesday.

After reviewing cases of reported outbreaks from 2005 to 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 2,348 illnesses were linked to imported foods, with half of the cases occurring in 2009 and 2010.

Fish-linked outbreaks were the most common source and nearly 45 percent of all imported foods causing sickness came from Asia, said the CDC report, presented at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, Georgia.

Fish caused 17 of the 39 outbreaks, and spices were the next most common with six outbreaks, including five linked to fresh or dried peppers.

"As our food supply becomes more global, people are eating foods from all over the world, potentially exposing them to germs from all corners of the world, too," said lead author Hannah Gould, an epidemiologist in CDC's division of foodborne, waterborne and environmental diseases.

"We saw an increased number of outbreaks due to imported foods during recent years, and more types of foods from more countries causing outbreaks."

US food imports have grown from $41 billion annually in 1998 to $78 billion in 2007, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Up to 16 percent of all food eaten -- and 85 percent of all seafood -- in the United States is imported.

However, officials suspect that there are more food-linked outbreaks than reported because often people are unaware of what has made them ill.

"We need better -- and more -- information about what foods are causing outbreaks and where those foods are coming from," Gould said in a statement.

"Knowing more about what is making people sick, will help focus prevention efforts on those foods that pose a higher risk of causing illness."

Some 48 million illnesses from food strike the United States each year, with the stomach-ailment causing norovirus being the most common followed by salmonella.

According to the latest data for 2008, there were a total of 23,152 sicknesses that year and 22 deaths.

The CDC defines a foodborne disease outbreak as two or more similar illnesses resulting from the same type of food.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-sickness-imported-foods-rise-195525616.html

'Nodding disease' confounds experts, kills children By Max Delany

Patrick Anywar, 14, lies curled up naked in the dust and midday heat of a Ugandan village, struggling to look up at his younger brother and sister playing in front of the family home.

After a minute's effort to face his siblings, Anywar's head slumps onto his chest and his emaciated body is gripped by convulsions.

Anywar is one of more than 3,000 children in northern Ugandawho are suffering from a debilitating mystery ailment known as nodding disease, which has touched almost every family in the village of Tumangu.

For several years, scientists have tried and failed to determine the cause of the illness, which locals say has killed hundreds of youngsters.

What they do know is that the disease affects only children and gradually devastates its victims through debilitating seizures, stunted growth, wasted limbs, mental disabilities and sometimes starvation.

Anywar's mother, Rugina Abwoyo, has already lost one son, named Watmon, to the disease in 2010. Now she says she can do little but watch on helplessly as another child slips away.

"Before he was walking and running like other children, but now someone always has to stay home to look after him," Abwoyo told AFP. "The disease is terrible -- it does not let him drink or eat by himself."

Walking along footpaths cut through the sorghum plantations, Joe Otto, a volunteer health worker, explains how nodding disease has ravaged Tumangu, about 450 kilometres (280 miles) north of the capital Kampala.

"There are 780 people living in this village and we have 97 cases of the disease. It has affected almost every family," Otto, 54, told AFP.

Whenever sporadic deliveries of medicine arrive at the local health centre several kilometres away, Otto pedals his bicycle to fetch the drugs. But he knows that they only offer a short-term solution.

"We are giving out drugs for epilepsy, like carbamazepine, but this disease is different from epilepsy," Otto said.

Instead, as the disease has torn through their community, local residents have moved from fear to a grim acceptance, Otto says.

"We started saying that the patient who had died was the one who had been cured, because finally they were at rest from this painful disease," Otto said.

Scientists are trying to find a cure: since 2010, researchers ranging from epidemiologists to environmental experts, neurologists, toxicologists and psychiatrists have carried out a range of tests.

Investigations have looked at possible links between the disease and everything from a parasite that causes river blindness, to malnutrition and the after-effects of a civil war that ravaged northern Uganda for decades.

"We looked at all this, but unfortunately we were not able to pinpoint any significant contributing or risk factors," said Miriam Nanyunja, disease control and prevention officer at the World Health Organisation in Kampala.

"The search for the causative agent is still ongoing," she added.

Often the results have thrown up more questions than answers. Scientists do not know if the disease is linked to similar outbreaks in neighbouring South Sudan and Tanzania.

Efforts continue to understand if the disease is still spreading or has peaked -- and why it is seems confined only to certain communities.

Last month, after pressure from lawmakers from affected areas, Uganda's health ministry produced an emergency response plan to try to identify and control the disease.

However, Nanyunja says that while the search for the cause and a possible cure goes on, for now, doctors can only focus on trying to alleviate the symptoms.

"There are many diseases that we continue to treat symptomatically, without knowing the exact cause," Nanyunja said.

But for Patrick Anywar, any attempts to curb or cure the disease may come too late.

"We are hoping that the doctors work very hard to get the cure for this disease," his mother Abwoyo says.

"There is no future for us as so many children have already been affected, but we hope that our youngest can be saved."

http://news.yahoo.com