HEALTH BREAKTHROUGH!! Doctors Get ONE STEP CLOSER To A Cure For DIABETES!!!

Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from hereditary diabetes, a condition that destroys cells in the pancreas and leaves the body unable to regulate blood sugar levels.

Sufferers are forced to inject themselves with insulin everyday and adopt special diets to cope with the irreversible condition.

But now scientists claim a cure could be developed after cells in the liver were converted to insulin producers in research on mice.

They believe the process, described in the journal Developmental Cell, could one day lead to a permanent one-off cure for the disease.

Dr Lawrence Chan and his team at the the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, injected a gene into mice which converted stem cells in the liver to replace those damaged in the pancreas.

They discovered that the blood sugar of the mice returned to normal within a few weeks and remained that way for the rest of the animal's natural life.

Liver cells have been coverted to insulin producers before but this is the first time scientists have understood the technique and believe eventually could lead to treatment for humans.

One obstacle is that in order for the gene called neurogenin3 to bond with a cell it needs to be transported by a virus which could be deadly to humans.

Dr. Vijay Yechoor, co-author, said: "The mice responded within a week. The levels of sugar in their blood plummeted to normal and stayed that way for the rest of their normal lives."

Health: Researchers link marijuana, testicular cancer

Young men who began using marijuana as adolescents or who smoke pot at least once a week appear to be twice as likely to develop testicular cancer as those who never used the drug.

The association, as reported by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, was strongest with nonseminoma, an aggressive, fast-growing subtype of testicular cancer that typically strikes men between ages 20 and 35.

"It's not just that you develop testicular cancer, but you develop a worse type of testicular cancer," said Dr. Glen Justice, director of the cancer center at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley, Calif., who was not involved with the study.

About 40 percent of testicular cancers are nonseminomas. The rest are slower-growing seminomas, which tend to occur a decade or two later, when men are in their 30s and 40s. Since the 1950s, both kinds have increased by 3 percent to 6 percent a year in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Various studies have looked for environmental or lifestyle changes that could account for the increase. The study published online Monday in the journal Cancer was the first to look at marijuana, its authors said.

Researchers interviewed 371 men ages 18 to 44 who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. They interviewed an additional 979 men of the same age group and from the same three Washington counties who did not have cancer.

The researchers found a 70 percent higher risk of testicular cancer in those who were using pot at the time of diagnosis, with an even higher risk associated with younger age at first use and frequency of use. Hormonal changes during puberty are thought to make that a particularly vulnerable period for environmental influences.

The findings were independent of known risk factors, such as undescended testes and a family history of testicular cancer, and adjusted for cigarette smoking and alcohol use.

The senior author of the study, epidemiologist Janet R. Daling, got the idea to look at marijuana after learning that the testes, like the brain, have receptors for tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical component of the marijuana high.

The researchers did not know why the association was seen with nonseminoma but not seminoma, because both subtypes have increased.

Tameka Raymond Slipped Into A Coma!

Tameka Raymond is said to have slipped into a coma for a while a few days ago, causing the “serious family emergency” Usher pulled out of the Grammy events to tend to. Apparently her body went into cardiac and respiratory arrest following her cosmetic surgery (lipsuction) and the doctors put her into an induced coma. She was in the coma for 24 hours. She is still classified as “stable”.

okay....

1) Why do you need to do all that? You just had a baby.  L.I.P.O.  is not the answer.  Try D.I.E.T.  
2) Why did she go to Brazil??? For a discount? Can't they afford to pay the high prices of medical care out here???
3) Have they not learned from Kanye's mom's unfortunate tragedy
4) Way too many questions here...stay in the light ya'll

HEALTH: STUDY: Young Black Women ARE NOT Getting The New HPV Vaccine!!

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 4 (HealthDay News) -- The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which helps cut a sexual active female's risk of cervical cancer, is viewed positively by its target audience in the black community, even though few are actually getting the shots, a new survey says.

Only one in four eligible black adolescents has received the vaccine, according to a survey by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Health, which is behind funding to find ways to increase HPV vaccination rates among high-risk populations. The results of the survey were to be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Carefree, Ariz.

Since being approved for use in mid-2006 as Gardasil, the HPV vaccine has been surrounded by controversy over whether it should be mandatory, its effectiveness, its potential side effects and whether inoculation would encourage adolescents to have sex.

Many of the 71 young people surveyed, most of whom were black, were aware of the controversies but thought the vaccine was "safe," "effective" and a "wise choice."

"The consensus among those surveyed in our study was that it would be a good, beneficial option," Dr. Ian Frank, professor of medicine in the Infectious Diseases Division of the University of Pennsylvania, said in a news release issued by the conference sponsor.

Almost 44 percent of those who were not vaccinated said they were very likely or likely to do so soon, the survey found.

In addition, 45 caregivers who were surveyed agreed that the vaccine was "safe," "effective" and a "wise choice," but most of them said they didn't remember the HPV vaccine being mentioned by their health-care provider.

"Many of these caregivers, most of whom were women, reported feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of raising an adolescent girl, but they wanted to protect their daughters from health and emotional risks," Frank said.

"This suggests they would respond positively to an increased effort to inoculate," he said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about the HPV vaccine for women.

REPORT: NATALIE COLE TO GET KIDNEY FROM HERE SISTER

Singer Natalie Cole, 58, has been battling Hepatitis C. We’ve also told to a few months ago that the legendary singer has been treated for kidney failure, and doctors have told her she needs a transplant.

Well now MediaTakeOut.com caught wind of a new report which claims that Natalie may have a donor. According to the National Enquirer, Cole asked family members not to donate, but her sister Timolin, 47, was tested in secret, and has been declared a match for her sick sibling.

Cole is currently too weak to undergo surgery, but doctors are reportedly building up her strength so they can carry out the transplant next month. A source told the Enquirer, "After (she learned of the match), Natalie kept saying, 'I can't believe this! I'm so blessed. My sister's giving me a tomorrow. She's saving my life.'"

MEDICAL REPORT: STD's ARE ON THE RISE IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY!

Blacks were disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infection rates in 2007, including chlamydia rates that reached a record high and syphilis rates that increased for the seventh consecutive year, according to a CDC report released on Tuesday, Reuters Health reports (Dunham, Reuters Health, 1/13).

The report found 1.1 million chlamydia diagnoses were reported in 2007. The chlamydia rate was 370 reported cases per 100,000 people in 2007 -- a 7.5% increase since 2006.

Reported gonorrhea diagnoses -- which peaked in the 1970s at one million and then declined until a few years ago -- totaled 355,991, or 119 reported cases per 100,000 people in 2007. The rate was similar to that reported in 2006.

The syphilis rate continued to rise in 2007, as it has since 2000, with 11,466 diagnoses reported, or 3.8 cases per 100,000 people. This marks a 15% increase from 2006 (Engel, Los Angeles Times, 1/14).

Black women ages 15 to 19 have the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea. Gonorrhea rates for blacks overall were 19 times higher than for whites, according to the report. Blacks make up 12% of the U.S. population, but account for about 70% of gonorrhea cases and nearly 50% of chlamydia and syphilis cases, the report said (Reuters Health, 1/13). Minorities have been disproportionately affected by STIs in previous year reports, with American Indians Alaska Natives and Hispanics at a lesser extent, according to the Times.

Public health officials said the disparities can be attributed to several factors, including socioeconomic and cultural issues, lack of access to health care and distrust of the health care system.

John Douglas, director of CDC's Division of STI Prevention, said that the increase in reported chlamydia cases could be attributed to better detection and an increase in testing, especially among women. In addition, providers are now using a more sensitive test to screen for the infection. However, health officials believe that the reported number of chlamydia diagnoses might not be the true number of infections -- which they predict could be closer to three million -- because so many infections go unidentified (Los Angeles Times, 1/14).

Medicine & Miracles:Premature baby 'comes back to life'

A couple from Kafr Yasif in the Galilee received the shock of their lives Monday when the wife's miscarried 610-gram fetus, which had been declared dead five hours earlier, was found to be breathing.


The mother who miscarried on Monday after five months of pregnancy.
Photo: Channel 2
The baby girl, born during the 23rd week of gestation, still has an uncertain future. Hospital spokesman Ziv Farber said that any premature infant of that weight and age had only a 10 percent chance for survival. But five years ago, he added, "we had a baby weighing only 580 grams, and she survived."

The 26-year-old mother and her husband have a five-year-old son at home. When she gave birth after going into premature labor at the hospital, the doctor on the scene pronounced it dead and it was taken to the morgue.

The father, Ali Majdub, told Channel 2 that his wife realized the child was alive after asking to see her dead daughter one last time.

"When we unwrapped the baby to see her, she realized it was moving. I began screaming and ran with it toward the doctors," he said.

She was then rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit,
where doctors are fighting for her life.


"I was in shock," the mother told Channel 2 last night. "I thought I wasn't hearing it right when they said she was still alive."

Dr. Moshe Daniel, the hospital's deputy director, said that in his 35 years as a physician, he had "never heard of such a case. It was like a medical miracle."

The hospital informed the Health Ministry, which will now decide whether to set up an internal or external investigating committee. Daniel speculated that the cooling effect of the morgue slowed the infant's metabolism, causing her oxygen consumption to be very low. There have been rare cases of people who nearly froze under snow "coming back to life," but there have been no reports of babies doing so.

Medicine: African Americans May Be 5 times More Likely To Lose Limb

April 27, 2008

BY MONIFA THOMAS Health Reporter/mjthomas@suntimes.com
Sarah Echols isn't sure what's worse: the way people stare at her, or how clumsy and off-balance she feels.
Echols' left leg was amputated 1½years ago because of poor circulation in the arteries supplying blood to her legs. Now, the 62-year-old Calumet City woman gets around on crutches or in a wheelchair because her prosthetic limb is too painful to stand on.

"It's very hard to get used to," Echols said. "You have to learn how to do everything over again."
Echols is one of thousands of African Americans in the Chicago area who have had all or part of a limb amputated because of complications from either diabetes or a condition called peripheral arterial disease.

Though amputation is considered a last-resort treatment, blacks are far more likely than whites to have at least one of these procedures.
And a new study from Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine shows that the racial gap hasn't shrunk in the last two decades, despite an overall decrease in the number of amputations performed in northern Illinois.

"It's very troubling," said Dr. William Pearce, an author of the study published Saturday in the Journal of Vascular Surgery. "Medical advances make leaps and bounds, but it doesn't always get translated to everybody."

Looking at hospital discharge data from the state health department, Pearce and his research partner, Joseph Feinglass, found that residents of predominantly black ZIP codes in the Chicago area are five times more likely than those in white areas to have a foot or leg amputated. An earlier study found that African Americans are less likely to be treated with potentially limb-saving surgeries before amputation.

The reasons for this disparity are complex, said Feinglass, a health policy researcher at Northwestern.

For one, blacks suffer disproportionately from diabetes and other conditions that lead to peripheral arterial disease, such as hypertension. African Americans are also more likely than whites and Hispanics to smoke, which can lead to poor circulation.
Echols, for example, is an ex-smoker and has a family history of atherosclerosis, or fatty buildup in the arteries.

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Scientist: It May Be Time TO GIVE UP On Finding An AIDS Vaccine

Most scientists involved in Aids research believe that a vaccine against HIV is further away than ever and some have admitted that effective immunisation against the virus may never be possible, according to an unprecedented poll conducted by The Independent.
A mood of deep pessimism has spread among the international community of Aids scientists after the failure of a trial of a promising vaccine at the end of last year. It just was the latest in a series of setbacks in the 25-year struggle to develop an HIV vaccine.
The Independent's survey of more than 35 leading Aids scientists in Britain and the United States found that just two were now more optimistic about the prospects for an HIV vaccine than they were a year ago; only four said they were more optimistic now than they were five years ago.
Nearly two thirds believed that an HIV vaccine will not be developed within the next 10 years and some of them said that it may take at least 20 more years of research before a vaccine can be used to protect people either from infection or the onset of Aids.

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