Mbeki is a coward and his Aids denialism was catastrophic - TAC

The Treatment Action Campaign has launched a blistering attack against former president Thabo Mbeki over his contentious stance on Aids, which has killed hundreds of thousands of South Africans.

Description

• Aids (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) is caused by HIV (the Human Immunodeficiency Virus).
• HIV is mainly transmitted through sexual intercourse.
• Once a person is infected, the virus remains in the body for life.
• One can be HIV positive and feel completely well for many years.
• When a pregnant woman is infected, there is a one in three chance of her baby becoming infected if no steps are taken to prevent this.
• Most people infected with HIV will eventually get Aids.
• Aids is a fatal illness.
• There is no drug that can cure HIV infection, but there are drugs that can control the virus and delay the onset of Aids.
• There is no preventative HIV vaccine available at the moment, however research is ongoing to find one.

The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) is caused by infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). HIV attacks and gradually destroys the immune system, which protects the body against infections.

Aids develops during the last stages of HIV infection. Aids is not a single illness, but the whole clinical picture (a syndrome) that occurs when the immune system fails entirely. A person with a failing immune system is susceptible to a variety of infections that are very unlikely to occur in people with healthy immune systems. These are called opportunistic infections because they take advantage of the body's weakened immune system. Certain types of cancers also occur when the immune system fails.

It may take years for a person's immune system to deteriorate to such an extent that the person becomes ill and a diagnosis of Aids is made. During this time (which can last as long as 15 years or possibly even longer), a person may look and feel perfectly well. This explains why so many people are unaware that they are infected with HIV. However, even though they feel healthy, they can still transmit the virus to others.

More than 90% of people living with HIV are in developing countries, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for two thirds of all the HIV-infected people in the world. Unlike Western countries, where HIV has initially affected predominantly homosexual men, in Africa and developing countries HIV is usually spread by sex between men and women (heterosexual sex).

New findings could boost type 1 diabetes treatment

For six weeks seven-year-old Bethan Westcott-Storer was feeling listless and losing weight, worrying parents Lizzie and Dean. Now aged nine, she's the picture of health, having been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in November 2014, since when she's been treating herself via an omnipod pump that delivers insulin via a cannula under her skin.

"I felt very weak and tired all the time, and if my friends in the playground said 'do you want to play It?' or something, I'd just feel like 'ohh, not really," Bethan told Reuters during a check-up at the University of Exeter Medical School.

According to her mother, "we noticed that she'd become quite thin, she'd lost a lot of weight, but she didn't have all of the signs that other children normally have with type 1 - she didn't have the excess thirst and urinating. Just lost a lot of weight, so she's been diagnosed for 15 months now."

Exeter scientists have revealed that children diagnosed before the age of seven develop a more aggressive form of the disease than that seen in teenagers. Their research could open up new, differing, treatments for both teenagers and young children. It could even help scientists develop a vaccine that prevents children developing diabetes.

Working alongside scientists from the University of Oslo, the team, led by Professor Noel Morgan and Dr Sarah Richardson, analyzed 100 pancreas samples from people diagnosed with type 1 diabetes shortly before their death. The samples are housed at the Exeter Archival Diabetes Biobank, the world's largest pancreas collection.

According to Richardson, a JDRF career development fellow, "those samples are extremely important because we do not understand the underlying disease process that goes on in these individuals and it's that recent diagnosis that's critical for us to actually look inside the pancreas and see what is going wrong, and the pancreas itself is an extremely inaccessible organ."

The study shows that children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before the age of seven suffer from insulitis, an inflammatory process which kills off almost all the insulin-producing beta cells in their pancreas. By contrast, those diagnosed as teenagers or older retain unexpectedly large numbers of beta cells, albeit malfunctioning.

"The significance of these findings is that we find that the individuals who are diagnosed young have a very different disease profile to those that are diagnosed older, and that has important implications for potential treatments in that those individuals that are diagnosed young might benefit more from immunotherapeutic therapies, whereas those that are diagnosed older we might need to look at different therapies that reactivate their sleeping beta cells at the same time as applying immunotherapeutic drugs to prevent any reactivation of an immune response," said Richardson.

Morgan told Reuters "it's always been thought that when people get type 1 diabetes they've lost as many as 90 percent of their insulin producing cells from their pancreas. What we've found is that while that might be the case for the younger children it certainly doesn't appear to be true for those that are older. They have quite a considerable reserve of cells left. That's a new insight and it might mean that if we could reactivate those cells we could help them to cope better with their illness."

Chocolate may boost cognitive function

If you're looking for an excuse to chomp that bar of chocolate calling your name, then look no further; a new study suggests eating chocolate at least once weekly may boost cognitive function.

Dr. Georgie Crichton, of the Nutritional Physiology Research Centre at the University of South Australia, and colleagues publish their findings in the journal Appetite.

While chocolate is still perceived as an indulgent treat, studies have increasingly documented the potential health benefits of habitual consumption.

Earlier this month, for example, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that eating chocolate daily during pregnancy may benefit fetal growth and development, while an earlier study claims daily chocolate consumption may lower risk of stroke and heart disease.

But how does chocolate intake impact cognitive function? This is what Dr. Crichton and colleagues set out to determine, noting that there is lack of information in this area.

"Little is known about the relationship between chocolate and cognitive functioning or brain health," Dr. Crichton told MNT. "Most of the studies to date have focused on the acute effects of chocolate or cocoa consumption - i.e. consume a chocolate bar/cocoa-rich drink and assess immediate performance. We wanted to examine habitual or normal consumption with cognitive performance."

Vaginal ring reduces risk of HIV by up to 61%

Vaginal ring can safely provide some protection against HIV infection by continuously releasing an experimental antiretroviral drug, say findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
[vaginal ring]The silicone vaginal ring continuously releases the antiretroviral drug, dapivirine.
Image credit: International Partnership for Microbicides.In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 1,218,400 people aged 13 years and above are living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, an estimated 12.8% of whom are unaware of their condition.

In 2014, 25.8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa had been infected with HIV, half of whom were women.A quarter of new cases in the region occur among adolescent girls and young women.
For this reason, finding effective tools to prevent the spread of infection is considered essential.
The ASPIRE HIV protection study, also known as MTN-020, was set up to investigate the effect of vaginal rings that release drugs.

This was a large clinical trial involving 15 sites in four sub-Saharan African countries: Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.ASPIRE looked at whether a silicon vaginal ring that continuously released the drug dapivirine could protect against HIV infection. The ring was replaced every 4 weeks.Starting in 2012, the study enrolled 2,629 women aged 18-45 years who did not have HIV but who were at high risk for HIV infection. Data collection continued until September 2015.

The women were randomly assigned to two groups. One group received a ring containing 25 mg of dapivirine, and a control group received a placebo ring.

Viagra relieves life-threatening condition in swimmers and divers

Asmall dose of Viagra could save the lives of swimmers and divers who experience an abrupt and potentially life-threatening form of pulmonary edema on entering cold water, says research published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Moderate drinking could lower heart attack, heart failure risk

Good news for those who like a drink after a hard day's work: consuming three to five drinks a week could lower the risk of heart attack and heart failure. This is according to two new studies by researchers from Sweden and Norway.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), almost 87% of adults in the US have consumed alcohol at some point in their lifetime, and more than 56% have had a drink in the past month.

While there is no doubt that excessive alcohol use is detrimental to health, studies are increasingly suggesting that moderate drinking may have its benefits.

Pope suggests contraception can be condoned in Zika crisis

Pope Francis waves from his popemobile as he arrives in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 15, 2016. Francis is celebrating Mexico's Indians on Monday with a visit to Chiapas state, a center of indigenous culture, where he will preside over a Mass in three native languages thanks to a new Vatican decree approving their use in liturgy. The visit is also aimed at boosting the faith in the least Catholic state in Mexico. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Pope Francis has suggested that women threatened with the Zika virus could use artificial contraception but not abort their fetus, saying there's a clear moral difference between aborting a fetus and preventing a pregnancy.

Francis was asked Wednesday en route home from Mexico if abortion or birth control could be considered a "lesser evil," when faced with the Zika-linked cases .

Prostate cancer treated more aggressively in the city

Urban men with localized prostate cancer may be more likely to get surgery or radiation than their rural peers, a U.S. study suggests.Men had 23 percent higher odds of getting these aggressive treatments when they lived in densely populated U.S. counties than if they resided in rural counties, according to the analysis of cancer registry data for about 138,000 men.The conservative alternatives - watchful waiting or hormone therapy to shrink tumors without surgery or radiation - were more common in less populated areas, with 22 percent of rural men receiving this type of care compared with 19 percent of their urban counterparts."Men in urban areas have access to more physicians in addition to more advanced technology on both the surgical and radiation therapy front," said lead study author Dr. Clint Cary, a urology researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis."Smaller hospitals in rural areas will likely not be able to fund the expense of robotic surgical equipment, intensely modulated radiation therapy or proton beam radiation centers," Cary added by email.Many men with early-stage prostate cancer may not need treatment right away, or ever, because these tumors often don't grow fast enough to cause symptoms or prove fatal. Treatment can have side effects such as impotence and incontinence.

In the absence of symptoms or tests that suggest tumors are growing quickly, doctors may advise men to put off immediate treatment and instead get regular screenings to reassess whether the cancer is dangerous enough to warrant intervention.To see if where men lived influenced treatment, Cary and colleagues examined data on population density for U.S. counties as well as cancer registry records from 2005 to 2008.Overall, men with biopsy results suggesting a worse prognosis were more likely to receive treatment, as were married men.Black men, however, had about 30 percent lower odds of receiving aggressive treatment than white men.Even though the rural men were less likely to get aggressive treatment, lab test results showed they tended to have more advanced cancer than urban residents.Because their tumors were worse and their treatment was less likely to include surgery or radiation that doctors often use to attack more dangerous malignancies, it's possible at least some rural men were missing out on necessary care, the authors conclude in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. But it's also as possible that some city residents got treatment they didn't need and this contributed to the apparent disparities in care.

Cholesterol in eggs not associated with heart disease

Dietary cholesterol intake has a modest impact on blood cholesterol levels, and cholesterol or egg intakes have not been associated with a higher risk of heart disease in most studies.
The once-maligned egg may not be a heartbreaker after all, new research suggests.

Finnish say that even carriers of a gene – called APOE4 – that increases sensitivity to dietary cholesterol don't seem to have anything to fear when it comes to the impact of eggs, or any other dietary cholesterol, on heart health.

The findings followed the 20-year plus tracking of dietary habits among more than 1,000 middle-aged Finnish men. All were heart healthy at the study's start, and about a third carried the APOE4 gene, the researchers said.

Read: Diet and heart disease

"It is quite well known that dietary cholesterol intake has quite a modest impact on blood cholesterol levels, and cholesterol or egg intakes have not been associated with a higher risk of heart disease in most studies," said study author Jyrki Virtanen. He is an adjunct professor in nutritional epidemiology with the University of Eastern Finland Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition in Kuopio, Finland.

"However, dietary cholesterol intake has a greater impact on blood cholesterol levels among those with [APOE4]," Virtanen added. "So it was assumed that cholesterol intake might have a stronger impact on heart disease risk among those people. However, our study did not find an increased risk even among those carrying [APOE4]."

Read: Causes of high cholesterol

Although the study didn't find a link between dietary cholesterol and adverse heart health, the study authors said they weren't able to prove that dietary cholesterol doesn't have a significant impact on cardiovascular disease. For example, one limitation of the study the authors noted was that they only collected dietary information at the start of the study, and had no way of knowing if people's diets changed over time.

Virtanen and his colleagues report their findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The University of Eastern Finland provided funding for the study, and Virtanen added that there was no funding from egg industry sources.

Finland has a higher-than-average number of APOE4 carriers, with about a third of the population affected, the researchers said. But little is known about whether or not dietary cholesterol intake might affect the hearts of people with the APOE4 gene, the study authors noted.

The new research included people between the ages of 42 and 60. On average, the average dietary cholesterol consumed was 398 milligrams (mg), the study found. No one reported consuming more than one egg per day, on average. One medium-sized egg has approximately 200 mg of cholesterol, the study authors said.

Read: Eggs are not a health risk

At the end of the 21-year tracking period, 230 of the men had experienced a heart attack. But, the study authors determined that neither egg habits, nor overall cholesterol consumption, had any bearing on heart attack risk or the risk for hardening of the arterial walls.

Virtanen noted that none of the research participants had heart disease or diabetes at the study's launch. "[And] there is some study data from other study populations that egg or cholesterol intakes may increase the risk of heart disease among diabetics," he said. "So our study is not a 'license' to eat as much cholesterol or eggs as one likes."

He added that "there might well be a point when cholesterol or egg intakes may become so high that they may increase the risk of heart disease. However, in our study we could not assess what might be too much, because we did not have enough people with extremely high intakes."

Read: Food myths you should stop believing

Lona Sandon is a registered dietitian and assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre at Dallas. She said that while "everything in moderation" is the way to go, "people can feel confident about adding eggs, including the yolk, into their daily diet".

"Eggs are a powerhouse of nutrition," she said, "with much of that nutrition found in the yolk. The yolk has vitamin D, essential fats, choline, lutein, zeaxanthin, and more. Good for bones, good for the brain, and good for the eyes. [And] the white is a high quality protein, as well as a source of B vitamins."

Dietary cholesterol doesn't have as much of an impact on blood cholesterol levels as was previously thought, Sandon added. She also noted that the American Heart Association dropped its daily cholesterol limit recommendations years ago. Instead, saturated fat and sugars are a more likely culprit in terms of heart disease risk, she said, alongside insufficient exercise.

"[So] an egg a day in the context of a healthy diet pattern does not appear to pose a risk for heart disease or impact dietary cholesterol according to current research," she said. "[But] an egg a day on top of buttery biscuits and gravy is not the way to go."

Read more:

Heart attack

Heart-valve disease

Atrial fibrillation

Functional human body parts built using 3D-bioprinting technique

The research team, from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC, say their novel technology - named the Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing (ITOP) system - and the resulting creations mark "an important advance" in growing replacement tissue and organs for patient transplantation.

Senior study author Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), and colleagues explain how they created the 3D-printed body parts in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

In recent years, 3D printing has emerged as a promising strategy for the growth of complex tissues and organs that can replicate those of the human body.

However, Dr. Atala and colleagues note that current 3D printers are unable to produce human tissues and organs that are strong enough to be transplanted in the body or that can survive following transplantation.

The team believes that their ITOP technology, however, could help overcome such problems.

Some exercises may be bad for your varicose veins

While exercise increases blood circulation, which is good for varicose veins, there are some forms of exercise that may exacerbate the problem.

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As a result, the company is also considered one of the most respected brands in the industry with more than 1,200 clients nationwide and an extensive network of highly talented Registered Nurses, Physical Therapists and other Allied Healthcare providers.

Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), diseases caused by smoking kill more than 440,000 people in the United States each year. Even with antismoking campaigns and medical disclaimers in place, many people continue to smoke or start smoking every year. According to the American Cancer Society, most new smokers are children and teenagers, in many cases, replacing the smokers who quit or died prematurely from smoking-related diseases.

Smokers not only have increased risk for lung disease, including lung cancer and emphysema, but also have increased risk for heart disease, stroke, and oral cancer.Facts about smoking and cardiovascular disease

One out of every five smoking-related deaths is caused by cardiovascular disease.

Cigarette smoking produces a greater risk for coronary heart disease in people younger than age 50.

Women older than age 35 who smoke and take oral contraceptives are at much greater risk of developing a cardiovascular disease or stroke than women who do not smoke while taking oral contraceptives.

Cigarette smokers are two to four times more likely to develop coronary heart disease, or CHD, than nonsmokers.

Cigarette smoking doubles a person's risk for stroke.

Cigarette smokers are more than ten times as likely as nonsmokers to develop peripheral vascular disease, or PVD.

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Since our founding, Mali Health has worked at the health systems level to improve not only access to basic healthcare, but the quality of care itself. 

Today, we partner with clinics to improve the capacity and quality of the services they provide to the residents of our partner slum communities.

We utilize participatory strategies and our years of experience to identify areas in need of improvement.  With partners that include providers, patients, and management, we set small, achievable goals for improvement, a process in which all stakeholders are involved, enabling continual progress toward a better patient experience. Achievements include:

• Reduced the cost of medical care for children enrolled in our Action for Health program
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Nobody likes to think about their own mortality and when you have decades to go before you can even think about retirement, let alone preparing for the end of you life, it can seem like a pointless worry, but taking steps to ensure the financial stability of your family now and in the future is something that is better done now than later. We never know what tomorrow may bring. If your life were to end right now, what would it mean for your family? Would they be able to continue paying bills or would they face the prospect of losing their home? Would your spouse and your children be able to continue with the lifestyle they have been accustomed to? Will there be enough cash to take care of your funeral services?

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