Month: April 2017

Cheap antibiotic disrupts negative associations in the brain …

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth who later became the world’s oldest astronaut and a longtime U.S. senator, was laid to rest on Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Glenn, who author Tom Wolfe once called “the last true national hero America has ever had,” died four months ago in his home state of Ohio at the age of 95. After a private service at a chapel on the cemetery grounds, a horse-drawn carriage pulled Glenn’s flag-draped casket to his burial site. There was a short graveside ceremony broadcast online by NASA Television. Then, Gen. Robert Neller, Commandant of the Marine Corps, handed the flag that had draped the casket to Glenn’s 97-year-old widow, Annie Glenn. She kissed him. Glenn was a Marine Corps test pilot when he was chosen to be one of the seven original U.S. astronauts. He was the third American in space, the first to orbit the earth. His three laps around the world on Feb. 20, 1962, in a space capsule called Friendship 7, forged a powerful link between the former fighter pilot and the Kennedy-era quest to explore outer space as a “New Frontier.” After his mission, he received a hero’s welcome including a tickertape parade near Wall Street, in New York City’s “Canyon of Heroes.” Wolfe chronicled the experiences of the original seven U.S. astronauts in his book, “The Right Stuff,” which later became a popular movie. Glenn’s widespread popularity helped him get elected as a Democratic candidate to …

The ripple effects of the Zika virus are hitting the poor hard in Latin America and the Caribbean, and could knock back development unless states involve communities in a stronger push to tackle the disease, a U.N.-led study said Thursday. The mosquito-borne Zika virus will cost the region between $7 billion and $18 billion from 2015 to 2017, said the report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Large economies like Brazil will shoulder the biggest share of the cost, but poorer countries such as Belize and Haiti will suffer the severest impacts, it added. Jessica Faieta, UNDP director for the region, said the virus — linked to birth defects in some cases where it infects pregnant women — is not only causing direct economic losses and putting health systems under stress. “The long-term consequences of the Zika virus can undermine decades of social development, hard-earned health gains and slow progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals,” she said in a statement. Focusing on Brazil, Colombia and Suriname, the report calculated that the economic impact of the virus was five times higher for the Caribbean than South America, and could cost the Caribbean as much as $9 billion in lost revenues over the three-year period as tourists stay away. Labelling Zika a “disease of poverty,” the study said support was not reaching the region’s most vulnerable who often lack access to health and social services. Countries are struggling to …

A cancer causing strain of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, has infected 25 percent of men and 20 percent of women in the United States, new statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics. Furthermore, some 45 percent of men have a genital form of the virus. “Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually-transmitted infection in the United States,” the team at the NCHS, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote. “Some HPV types can cause genital warts and are considered low risk, with a small chance for causing cancer. Other types are considered high risk, causing cancer in different areas of the body including the cervix and vagina in women, penis in men, and anus and oropharynx [mouth and throat] in both men and women.” The virus has been linked to head and neck cancer as well as cervical cancer. According to NBC News, doctors think about 70 percent of head and neck cancers are caused by HPV spread through oral sex. They add that by 2020, head and neck cancers will be more common than the cervical cancer caused by the virus. Roughly four percent of adults are infected with an oral, cancer causing strain of HPV. Men had a higher rate than women. For people under 25, there is a vaccine that can defend against the cancer causing strains of HPV. Among older adults, the virus continues to be passed around. According to NBC, the FDA-approved vaccines are Cervarix and Gardasil. There are …

There’s another reason to eat your fruits and vegetables. It could lower your blood pressure, according to new research. Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California have found potassium-rich vegetables like sweet potatoes, avocados, spinach, beans and bananas could help lower blood pressure. “Decreasing sodium intake is a well-established way to lower blood pressure,”  said professor Alicia McDonough. “But evidence suggests that increasing dietary potassium may have an equally important effect on hypertension.” To reach her conclusions, McDonough reviewed studies that looked at the link between potassium and sodium, which has been known to cause hypertension. She found that people who had more potassium tended to have lower blood pressure regardless of sodium consumption. Her research indicated that the body does a “balancing act” using sodium to control potassium levels in the blood. Potassium is important for normal muscle and nerve function. “When dietary potassium is high, kidneys excrete more salt and water, which increases potassium excretion,” McDonough said. “Eating a high potassium diet is like taking a diuretic.” She said that as humans evolved, they ate a diet rich in potassium, but low in sodium, leading us to crave sodium, not potassium. “If you eat a typical Western diet, your sodium intake is high and your potassium intake is low. This significantly increases your chances of developing high blood pressure,” she said. According to a 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, adults should eat about 4.7 grams of potassium a day to …