Three Taipei hospital staff show symptoms after H7N9 bird flu contact; H7N9 outbreak in Taiwan could derail buoyant stock market

Three Taipei hospital staff show symptoms after H7N9 contact

CNA and Staff Reporter, 2013-04-25

Three hospital personnel have developed respiratory symptoms after coming into contact with Taiwan’s first confirmed case of H7N9 avian flu, the country’s Central Epidemic Command Center said Wednesday. All three had taken proper protective measures when providing medical care for the patient, a 53-year-old man who fell ill three days after returning from eastern China’s Jiangsu province, one of the H7N9-affected areas, the center said. A survey of the epidemic situation showed that 139 local people had come into contact with the man, a Taiwanese businessman based in Jiangsu’s Suzhou area, the center said. Three of them had close contact, 26 had contact more than seven days ago — putting them outside the infectious period — and 110 are hospital personnel, the center said. Four of the hospital staff have also passed the infectious period and have not developed symptoms, the center said. A further three of the hospital staff did not take proper protective measures when treating or caring for the patient, but none of them have so far shown any symptoms, the center said, adding that they will be strictly monitored until April 27. The epidemic control center said that all those who have had contact with the patient have been served notice urging them to monitor their own health. They will also be subject to close monitoring until their respective infectious periods expire, the center said, adding that public health officials will help people on the watch list get medical treatment should they develop flu-like symptoms such as fever or coughing. The quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation said Wednesday it has posted information about the imported H7N9 case in Taiwan on its website and urged the Taiwanese trade association in Suzhou to help push Taiwanese residents in the region to step up epidemic prevention measures and provide them with news updates. China reported the world’s first confirmed H7N9 human infections March 31, and as of April 23, 108 cases had been confirmed there, with 22 deaths. Two of China’s largest cities — Shanghai and Beijing — as well as five Chinese provinces — Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Henan and Shandong — have reported confirmed infections. As of 8am Wednesday, Taiwan had reported 129 suspected H7N9 cases, 128 of which have been ruled out as H7N9 infections, said Chou Jih-haw, deputy director-general of the Centers for Disease Control under the Department of Health. The center said it had informed the World Health Organization and China of Taiwan’s first H7N9 case earlier in the day, Chou said. It was also the first H7N9 case outside China.

H7N9 outbreak in Taiwan could derail buoyant stock market

Staff Reporter, 2013-04-25

News of Taiwan’s first confirmed case of H7N9 avian influenza is expected to derail the country’s surging stock market, reports our Chinese-language sister paper China Times. Read more of this post

First suspected H7N9 bird flu case reported in Jiangxi Province

First suspected bird flu case reported in Jiangxi Province

Created: 2013-4-25 9:42:58

Author:Dong Zhen

AUTHORITY of east China’s Jiangxi Province today reported the first suspected case of H7N9 infection inside the province. The patient, a 69-year-old male, has been admitted into a hospital in Nanchang City. He was confirmed as a suspected case yesterday by the local disease control authority. A team of medical experts have rushed to the hospital for his treatment and medical analysis. A total of 14 persons who had had close contacts with the patient are now under medical observation and they have so far shown no flu symptoms, the provincial government said. The country’s state disease control authority is now checking a sample to confirm whether the man is infected with the virus.

Is there another factor other than cholesterol and triglycerides causing heart attacks? The trillions of bacteria and other microbes living in the human gut

Updated: Thursday April 25, 2013 MYT 8:14:07 AM

Is there another factor other than cholesterol and triglycerides causing heart attacks?

NEW YORK: Thousands of heart attack victims every year have none of the notorious risk factors before their crisis – not high cholesterol, not unhealthy triglycerides.

Now the search for the mystery culprits has turned up some surprising suspects: the trillions of bacteria and other microbes living in the human gut.

In a study released on Wednesday, scientists discovered that some of the bugs turn lecithin – a nutrient in egg yolks, liver, beef, pork and wheat germ – into an artery-clogging compound called TMAO. They also found that blood levels of TMAO predict heart attack, stroke or death, and do so “independent of other risk factors,” said Dr Stanley Hazen, chairman of cellular and molecular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, who led the study. Read more of this post

Mutant H7N9 Bird Flu Virus Evolves to Show Pandemic Characteristics

Mutant Bird Flu Virus Evolves to Show Pandemic Characteristics

A mutant version of a bird flu virus created by scientists last year to show its ability to spread between humans evolved to show characteristics of previous pandemic viruses, a study found.

A genetic component of the mutant H5N1 virus developed a 200-fold preference for binding with human over avian receptors, according to a study led by researchers at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London. Their paper was published today in the scientific journal Nature.

The study builds on work led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that showed how H5N1 could become highly transmissible if its hemagglutinin gene is mutated and mixed with those of the H1N1 virus that sparked the 2009 swine flu pandemic. As a follow-up, the MRC-led team plans to study the same binding properties of the current H7N9 virus reported in China, John Skehel, one of the study authors in London, said in a phone interview.

“The preference of the transmissible mutant for binding to human versus avian receptors, and the structural manner by which it binds them, are highly characteristic of pandemic viruses,” the researchers said in the published paper.

The hemagglutinin gene produces the protein that the virus uses to stick itself to host cells. By measuring the binding properties of the mutated gene in the H5N1 virus, the scientists found that its affinity for human receptors increased slightly, while its preference for avian receptors declined significantly, they said. Read more of this post

Seizure Drug Used in Pregnancy Boosts Baby’s Autism Risk

Seizure Drug Used in Pregnancy Boosts Baby’s Autism Risk

WHO: H7N9 “one of most lethal” influenza viruses; Bird Flu Found Outside China’s Mainland in Taiwan

Updated April 24, 2013, 9:40 a.m. ET

Bird Flu Found Outside China’s Mainland

By LAURIE BURKITT

BEIJING—Taiwan reported the first case of the H7N9 virus found outside of China’s mainland Wednesday, and said that three health-care workers who treated the patient had developed undiagnosed respiratory symptoms, raising concerns over the virus’s potential for spreading by human-to-human contact.

At a news conference earlier in the day in Beijing, global health officials stressed that there had been no confirmed cases of transmission of the virus between humans, though they said researchers were still struggling to understand how the virus was spread and hadn’t ruled out the possibility of human-to-human transmission.

Taiwan health officials reported that a 53-year-old Taiwanese male developed a fever on April 12, three days after returning from China’s coastal Jiangsu province, where the virus first emerged in China, according to Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control. The patient, in serious condition now, wasn’t believed to have had any exposure to birds or poultry and hadn’t consumed undercooked poultry or eggs while in the Jiangsu city of Suzhou, the Taiwan CDC said on its website. Read more of this post

Drugs to Lift Depression in Hours Rather Than Weeks? “People come in urgently wanting to kill themselves”; drugs might be helpful in emergency rooms with patients who are actively suicidal

April 22, 2013, 6:25 p.m. ET

Drugs to Lift Depression in Hours Rather Than Weeks

By ANDREA PETERSEN

The hunt is on for a faster-acting, more effective antidepressant.

Current treatments for depression, including drugs like Prozac and Celexa, often take a month or more to give patients relief—and they don’t work for everyone. Now, researchers and several pharmaceutical companies are testing medications that early studies are showing can lift mood in just a few days or even within a couple of hours.

“You can control seizures and control hypertension within minutes and hours,” says Carlos A. Zarate, chief of the experimental therapeutics and pathophysiology branch in the intramural research program at the National Institute of Mental Health and a leading researcher in the search for new antidepressant medications. “That is what we should aim for [with depression],” he says. Read more of this post

Blood Test May Help Diagnose Autism

April 23, 2013, 10:41 a.m. ET

Blood Test May Help Diagnose Autism

By SHIRLEY S. WANG

To cut through some of the mystery of mental disorders, which are largely defined by how people behave, universities and medical-technology companies are seeking firmer biological clues lurking in blood and saliva.

The latest initiative is a clinical trial of a blood test that may distinguish between kids with autism and those with other developmental delays.

The 20-site, 660-patient study, expected to be launched Wednesday, is thought to the biggest multisite effort to date to study a biological marker for autism-spectrum disorders, which affect one in every 50 children in the U.S.

The test aims to speed the diagnosis of autism, a condition characterized by poor social interaction and repetitive behaviors that can be hard to recognize when a child is very young. The average age of diagnosis in the U.S. is about 4 years, older than is optimal, according to experts, because therapies are more effective when begun early. Read more of this post

China bird flu death toll rises to 22; Infections rise to 108

China bird flu death toll rises to 22

9:31am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – An elderly man in eastern China died of bird flu on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from a strain that recently emerged in humans to 22, a provincial health agency reported. The 86-year-old man died after having been diagnosed with the H7N9 virus on April 17, the Zhejiang Health Bureau said on its website. Two others in Zhejiang have been diagnosed with the disease, including an 84-year-old man and a 62-year-old man, both of Hangzhou who fell ill on April 15, the health bureau said. In neighboring Anhui province, another case was diagnosed on Tuesday, a 91-year-old man, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. The man became sick on April 14, Xinhua said. So far 108 people have contracted the disease since the first deaths were reported in China last month. Read more of this post

Magnetic therapy may not relieve ringing in the ears; “People want a pill to make it go away, but there isn’t anything like that. There’s no cure for tinnitus.”

Magnetic therapy may not relieve ringing in the ears

Mon, Apr 22 2013

By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Using a magnet to generate an electrical current in areas of the brain that control hearing does not seem to improve ringing in the ears, a new study suggests. Researchers found people reported just as much bothersome ringing after a month of so-called repetitive transcranial magnetic simulation (rTMS) as after a series of fake, magnet-free treatments.

Although it seems natural that ringing in the ears – known as tinnitus – would be a hearing-related problem, so far medications and magnetic stimulation targeting the brain’s auditory areas haven’t made the sound go away, according to Dr. Jay Piccirillo. “People want a pill to make it go away, but there isn’t anything like that,” Piccirillo, an otolaryngologist from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told Reuters Health. “There’s no cure for tinnitus.”

Read more of this post

H7N9 bird flu may have infected twice as many people as the 105 cases reported, Hong Kong researchers say

H7N9 Cases May Be Double Known Figure, Hong Kong Researchers Say

H7N9 bird flu may have infected twice as many people as the 103 cases reported, an analysis by researchers at the University of Hong Kong showed. There may be 90 to 120 ill adults who haven’t been detected because their infections are mild, Benjamin Cowling, associate professor at the university’s public health research center, said today. The researchers’ analysis suggests risk of serious illness from the virus rises substantially with age, with more than half of reported cases age 60 or older, he said. Flu specialists including those from the World Health Organization are investigating how people are catching the H7N9 virus, with no evidence yet of sustained human-to-human transmission. Disease trackers haven’t been able to figure out why another deadly bird flu strain known as H5N1 afflicts mostly younger people in their 20s and 30s, while H7N9 mainly targets the elderly. “One thing that is very striking is the age distribution of the cases,” Cowling said at a briefing at the university’s medical school today. “They’re very different from the confirmed infections of H5N1.”

Read more of this post

Chili Peppers Seen Helping 36 Million Migraine Sufferers; “We’re all looking for the next magic pill.”

Chili Peppers Seen Helping 36 Million Migraine Sufferers

Chili peppers and migraines have traits in common, a fact scientists are exploiting to develop drugs capable of preventing the debilitating headache’s painful symptoms before they attack.

The link between how skin reacts when rubbed with chili oil and what happens in the brain during a migraine has attracted the world’s largest biotechnology company, Amgen Inc. (AMGN), and other companies seeking to create medicines for the more than 36 million Americans who suffer from migraines.

Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, dizziness and sensitivity to touch, yet treatment options are limited. Some pharmaceutical companies that have tried recently to develop migraine therapies, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) and Merck & Co. (MRK), have abandoned their efforts while the few drugs on the market are ineffective for many people and carry the danger of serious side-effects for those at risk of heat attack or stroke.

“Migraines are an extremely common disorder, and it effects people really in the prime of their lives,” Rob Lenz, who is leading Amgen’s migraine drug development, said in an interview. Still, no drugs have been “developed specifically for the treatment of migraines,” he said. “They were developed as anti-epileptics, or blood pressure lowering agents.”

That may soon change. Amgen, based in Thousand Oaks, California, and other biotechnology companies such as Alder Biopharmaceuticals Inc., Arteaus Therapeutics LLC, and Labrys Biologics Inc. are targeting a chemical released during a migraine that carries a “pain” signal from nerve to nerve. By blocking a receptor from receiving the message, these companies aim to create drugs that cut off developing migraines before symptoms start. Read more of this post

China says new bird flu case found in northeastern Shandong province, the first case found in the province, bringing the total number of infected victims in China to 105

China says new bird flu case found in northeastern China

7:26am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – A man in the northeastern Chinese province of Shandong has been infected by a new strain of bird flu, the first case found in the province, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday, bringing the total number of infected victims in China to 105.

The H7N9 virus has killed 20 people in China. But it is not clear how people are becoming infected and the World Health Organization (WHO) says there is no evidence of the most worrying scenario – sustained transmission between people. Read more of this post

China Bird Flu Death Roll 20, Total H7N9 Cases 102, WHO Experts Visiting Shanghai and Beijing

China Bird Flu Death Roll 20, Total H7N9 Cases 102, WHO Experts Visiting Shanghai and Beijing

Apr 21, 2013 09:14 PM EDT    | Staff Reporter

China confirmed six more cases of H7N9 human avian influenza during last 24 hour period ending at 4.p.m on Sunday April 21. Five new cases in Zhejiang and one in Jiangsu. The National Health and Family Planning Commission counted total of 102 H7N9 cases in China and 20 cases that led to death. Read more of this post

As Cancer Rates Rise in China, Trust Remains Low

April 17, 2013

As Cancer Rates Rise in China, Trust Remains Low

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

BEIJING — Living in China these days, we’re bombarded with scary accounts of rising cancer rates that are partly linked to some of the world’s worst pollution. The slogan this year for National Cancer Prevention and Care Week, which began Tuesday, spells it out: “Protect the Environment, Keep Cancer Away.” That even the Chinese state is highlighting a link between the poor environment and cancer reflects an atmosphere of deep concern, verging on panic, over public health, as more and more people ask: Is China killing itself in the pursuit of spectacularly fast, very dirty, economic growth? Of course, there are other, important reasons for rising rates, like an aging population and changing diet and lifestyles, as the Shanghai cancer specialists Guo Xiaomao and Long Jiang recently wrote in The Xinmin Evening News. And China’s cancer rate is still below that of the United States. About 3.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer yearly, the Zhejiang Science and Technology News Net reported Tuesday, citing a 2012 report by the National Cancer Registry. (Other news accounts put the figure at 3.12 million. Statistics in China often vary.) In the United States, with a population less than a quarter of China’s 1.35 billion, more than 1.6 million people are expected to receive a diagnosis of cancer in 2013, according to the American Cancer Society.

But cancer rates in the United States are falling, whereas in China they are rising, doctors and officials say. And China’s death rate from cancer is far higher — about 2.5 million people yearly, compared with the 580,350 expected to die in the United States this year. Complicating things further, some doctors are wondering: Is China facing a double health whammy as rising disease rates challenge a troubled medical system?

At the top of the list of reasons China may be facing a cancer crisis is the crucial issue of mistrust between patient and doctor. A new article in the Journal of Oncology Practice, published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, illustrates this problem. The lack of trust, reflected in regular accounts in the Chinese news media of patients and their families venting anger or even physically attacking physicians, is rooted in a perception that doctors are out for personal gain and may be incompetent or corrupt. But according to the article — written by two oncologists, Dr. David H. Garfield of the United States and Dr. Harold Brenner of Israel, and a Chinese oncology nurse, Lucy Lu (who in 2011 were in a group that set up the first of several planned outpatient cancer centers in China, the article said) — doctors are afraid of being blamed by hospital administrators for “bad outcomes,” or deaths, and may act in ways that may protect themselves but may not be in the patient’s best interests. Read more of this post

Another bird flu death in China as number of infected grows to 95

Another bird flu death in China as number of infected grows to 95

Saturday, Apr 20, 2013
Reuters

SHANGHAI – China reported another death and four new infections from a new strain of bird flu on Saturday, raising the death toll to 18, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The H7N9 virus has been found in 95 people, mostly in eastern China. The latest victim is a 69-year old man surnamed Xu from Zhejiang province who passed away Friday night after emergency treatment failed, Xinhua said. Zhejiang province reported three new infection cases with all three patients in critical condition. The eastern costal province of Jiangsu also reported another bird flu infection. On Friday health officials raised questions about the source of this strain of bird flu indicating that more than half of patients had no contact with poultry.

Read more of this post

Viruses move a lot faster than governments do. As new viruses emerge in China and the Middle East, the world is poorly prepared for a global pandemic

An ounce of prevention: As new viruses emerge in China and the Middle East, the world is poorly prepared for a global pandemic

Apr 20th 2013 | Bangkok and New York |From the print edition

IN FEBRUARY an 87-year-old man was admitted to hospital in Shanghai. What started as a cough progressed to a fever. One week later, unable to breathe and with his brain inflamed, he died. Shortly afterwards, a 27-year-old pork butcher was admitted to the same hospital with similar symptoms. He died too, within a week. A 35-year-old housewife who went to hospital in Anhui on March 19th lasted only slightly longer. On March 31st officials confirmed these were the first three cases of a strain of influenza, H7N9, that had never before been seen in humans. The government responded quickly—a far cry from its reaction, ten years ago, to a similar cluster of cases in Guangdong. That infection turned out to be SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). At first, officials tried to hide that disease. The deceit served to ensure its spread and it went on to kill nearly 800 people. Much has changed in the past decade. This time officials quickly posted H7N9’s genetic sequence, then published a detailed report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Even so, H7N9 has infected at least 82 people and killed 17 of them. The virus’s path of transmission is not well understood. The recent detection of H7N9 in a boy with no apparent symptoms suggests people can carry the virus unwittingly. Meanwhile a new coronavirus (the family of viruses that SARS belongs to) is circulating in the Middle East. It has killed 11 people since it was noticed in September. Though Saudi Arabia has welcomed some foreign investigators, other scientists claim the country should be more transparent. Read more of this post

Roast Peking duck restaurants have seen a sharp drop in business because of the ongoing bird flu outbreak; Quanjude, a brand with 136 years experience in making roast duck, havep lummeted 17% in 12 trading days

Duck restaurants hit by bird flu outbreak

Updated: 2013-04-20 07:47

By Wang Zhuoqiong and Ye Jun ( China Daily) Read more of this post

U.S. Hospitals Told to Be on Lookout for H7N9 Bird Flu

U.S. Hospitals Told to Be on Lookout for H7N9 Bird Flu

U.S. hospitals are being urged to head off a spread of the new H7N9 avian influenza by looking out for people exhibiting flu-like symptoms who have traveled to China or had contact with someone who has the illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a conference call with health-care professionals yesterday to review procedures for treating bird-flu patients and controlling infections, Erin Burns, an agency spokeswoman, said in an e- mail. The Atlanta-based agency today issued interim guidance on the use of antiviral agents to treat H7N9 infections. Issuing the guidance and holding the clinician calls “would be considered routine preparedness measures for an outbreak with pandemic potential,” Burns said.

China has recorded 92 human infections of the H7N9 strain of bird flu, with 17 of the cases fatal, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from national and provincial governments and the World Health Organization. The source of the infection hasn’t been identified and there is no evidence of person-to- person transmission, with many of the cases involving human contact with poultry, according to the CDC’s website. Read more of this post

The lucrative allure of the double helix; DNA is one of the most valuable discoveries in the history of science, writes Clive Cookson

April 19, 2013 7:15 pm

The lucrative allure of the double helix

By Clive Cookson

DNA is one of the most valuable discoveries in the history of science, writes Clive Cookson

When Francis Crick and James Watsonrevealed the DNA double helix to the world, in a paper published in Nature 60 years ago next week, scientific glory was on their minds. Making a fortune, for themselves or others, was not.

Yet the discovery has turned out to be one of the most valuable in the history of science, ranking alongside the transistor and laser. Cracking the mystery of how genetic information is transmitted biochemically between generations has generated more than $1tn of business activity.

The corporate value of DNA was thrown into the spotlight this week with the $13.6bn sale of Life Technologies, a US manufacturer of instruments that read the chemical “letters” encoded in the intertwined spirals of the double helix. Biotechnology companies that make DNA-based diagnostics and drugs, from Amgen to Ziopharm, are worth hundreds of billions more. Read more of this post

WHO: More than 50% of infected patients with H7N9 bird flu had no contact with poultry, further raising questions about human transmission

WHO data on bird flu raises new questions about human transmission

3:49am EDT

By Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING (Reuters) – More than 50 percent of patients infected with a new type of bird flu in China had no contact with poultry, the World Health Organization said on Friday, further raising questions about whether the virus was transmitted between humans.

The H7N9 virus has so far infected 87 people in China and killed 17, but it remains unclear how they contracted the disease. A Chinese official earlier this week said about 40 percent of patients had been in no contact with poultry. Read more of this post

Flu Experts Probe H7N9 Outbreak as Cases Double in a Week to 88 Infections

Flu Experts Probe H7N9 Outbreak as Cases Double in a Week

Influenza specialists from around the world are converging on China to help authorities identify how people are catching the new H7N9 bird flu strain after the number of reported cases there doubled in the past week.

China recorded its 88th H7N9 infection yesterday. Seventeen of the cases have been fatal and “several others” have left patients in critical condition, according to the World Health Organization.

“That’s a fairly high mortality rate,” Michael O’Leary, the WHO’s China representative, told reporters in Beijing today. Less severe cases may have escaped detection, he said. “What we don’t know is the size of the iceberg under this tip.” Read more of this post

Retina Institute Japan K.K., which is employing Nobel Prize-winning stem-cell technology to treat eye diseases, plans to sell a stake in itself to a group of Japanese companies

Japanese Firm Luring Investors With Nobel-Winning Technology

Retina Institute Japan K.K., which is employing Nobel Prize-winning stem-cell technology to treat eye diseases, plans to sell a stake in itself to a group of Japanese companies next month ahead of a possible initial public offering in five years.

The company, based in Fukuoka City, Japan, will raise 1 billion yen ($10.2 million) from the sale to fund development of a treatment for age-related macular degeneration — a leading cause of blindness in the elderly — using technology developed by Riken, Japan’s state-controlled research institute, Chief Executive Officer Hardy Kagimoto said in an interview.

After raising about 32 billion yen so far from investors, Retina is developing technology from a discovery that won Shinya Yamanaka, a professor at Kyoto University, the Nobel Prize for medicine in October. Yamanaka discovered a way to turn ordinary skin cells into what are called induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells.

“The development of retina treatment with iPS cells can lead to development of the cell-utilized therapies for a wide range of diseases,” said Akitsu Hotta, an assistant professor at Kyoto University who studies stem cells. Retina’s commercialization of the technology “will be a big milestone.”

Retina last month estimated the potential market for its treatments at $21 billion. Read more of this post

Chinese authorities suspect human-to-human transmission of H7N9 avian flu and has admitted for the first time it’s a possibility; China confirms 82 H7N9 cases, 17 deaths

Chinese authorities suspect human-to-human transmission of H7N9 avian flu

By Adam Pasick @adampasick 4 hours ago

A worrying development in China’s H7N9 outbreak: There is growing evidence that the virus may have the ability to be transmitted between humans, especially close family members, and the Chinese government has admitted for the first time it’s a possibility.

The Chinese National Health and Family Planning Commission said on Thursday it could not rule out human-to-human transmission in the case of a Shanghai family—two brothers, at least one of whom has the virus, and their 87-year-old father, who was the first confirmed H7N9 fatality. A husband and wife in Shanghai also both contracted H7N9.

“Further investigations are still under way to figure out whether the family cluster involved human-to-human transmission,” said Feng Zijian, director of the health emergency center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention,according to the state-run China Daily. “Human-to-human transmission, in theory, is possible, but is highly sporadic.” Some of the H7N9 patients have had no contact with poultry, making human-to-human transmission a real possibility, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. There have been 82 cases of H7N9, with 17 fatalities. Read more of this post

Diabetes in Mexico: Eating themselves to death; Mexico has the sixth most cases of diabetes in the world

Diabetes in Mexico: Eating themselves to death

Apr 10th 2013, 11:27 by H.T. | MEXICO CITY

MEXICO has long been a country that derives extraordinary pleasure from eating and drinking—and it hasn’t minded the consequences much either. Gordo or gorda, meaning “chubby”, is used by both wives and husbands as a term of endearment. Pudgy kids bear proudly the nickname gordito, as they tuck into snacks after school slathered with beans, cheese, cream and salsa.

Your correspondent, having just arrived to live in Mexico City after more than a decade away, finds the increase in waistlines even more staggering than the increase in traffic. Mexico has become one of the most overweight countries on earth, even more so than the United States; a quarter of its men and a third of its women are obese. Indecorously, the country has even come up with figures on figures: the Mexican Diabetes Federation says that among women between 20 and 49, the average waistline is 91.1cm (35.9 inches), more than 10cm above the “ideal” size. Stores are now full of large- and extra large-sized clothing.

Time was, a prominent girth may have been enviable proof of relative prosperity. Now, it is a serious health risk. At a conference here on April 9th it was estimated that more than 10m Mexicans, or almost a sixth of the adult population, suffer from diabetes, largely because of over-eating and increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Mexico has the sixth most cases of diabetes in the world.

Diabetes is one of the top two causes of death in the country, alongside (and occasionally overlapping with) heart disease. The diabetes federation says that the illness kills 70,000 people a year. However, it gets far less attention than much less deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, not to mention organised crime (which is responsible for roughly 60,000 deaths in the past six years). “It could get to the point where we are literally eating ourselves to death,” says Jesper Holland of Novo Nordisk, a Danish health-care company that is a big supplier of insulin to Mexico. Read more of this post

Treatment Woes Can Bolster Hospitals’ Profit; The study underscores the challenges of improving the safety of medicine when few hospitals have financial inducements to do so

Updated April 16, 2013, 4:10 p.m. ET

Treatment Woes Can Bolster Hospitals’ Profit

By CHRISTOPHER WEAVER

Hospitals have faced pressure for years to make visits to their wards safer. But their investments in everything from hand-washing campaigns to infection-fighting robots have done little to curb the thousands of yearly injuries and deaths caused by avoidable medical complications.

New research suggests one obstacle: Treatment complications and infections can inadvertently bolster the bottom line.

Surgical complications such as infections and procedure-related strokes were on average twice as lucrative as operations that went smoothly at one large hospital system, researchers from Harvard Medical School, Boston Consulting Group and Texas Health Resources, reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study underscores the challenges of improving the safety of medicine when few hospitals have financial inducements to do so, the researchers said. Texas Health, a Dallas-based hospital network, which made medical and financial records of more than 34,000 surgeries available for the study, said it would discuss the results with insurers in hopes of better aligning payments to reward successes. Read more of this post

An H7N9 patient in Zhejiang province was sick for weeks and died before authorities had diagnosed the virus, making effective treatment impossible

Zhejiang cook died without knowing he had H7N9

Staff Reporter, 2013-04-17

An H7N9 patient in Zhejiang province was sick for weeks and died before authorities had diagnosed the virus, making effective treatment impossible, reports the People’s Daily. The man consulted four doctors and was not diagnosed as having contracted what is now known to be the latest strain of avian flu. He was reportedly infected after preparing two chickens which were carrying the disease, even though he did not eat their meat. Read more of this post