 |
 |
| ||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"By the year 2020, one-third of Sri Lanka's population will be above 60 years, so we need to educate our society in protecting and safeguarding their health," said newly appointed Director of the Non-Communicable Diseases unit (NCD) of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Champa Aluthweera.
One dangerous disease that is becoming ever-increasing in Sri Lankan society is the incidence of strokes. A majority of the population have been affected because modernisation and stress has contributed to many taking up to smoking and drinking as a form of escapism. "What these people don't realise is that in the long run, such bad habits lead to strokes which cause adult disability that not only make them a burden to society and their families but hard workaholics are reduced to nothingness with such conditions," said the doctor. The doctor, who has done her post graduate degree in community medicine, said that plenty of things need to be done at a ground level in overcoming simple "We can't prevent deaths but we can give medical advice to stop premature deaths and treat diseases in the best way we can" said Dr.Champa. In terms of education and awareness, Dr.Champa said that they can't always go behind the patients once they are treated and sent back home. "We hardly have time to spend with our patients since the number of patients coming to the General Hospital is massive but we can educate the public to educate themselves," she said. What she meant was there is plenty of literature and information out there so no patient can give an excuse that the doctor didn't advise them. "We have a big elderly population so while we can treat them if they have any ailments, it is also their duty and their families to educate themselves lest tragedy occur," said the doctor. "We are still strengthening our primary care sector because less than 30 percent of our resources are under-utilised. We hope to have a systematic hierarchy to disperse funds in the NCD in order people to help themselves," she said. The NCD has already recruited their respective officers in every district of the country with the assistance of the Medical Officers of Health in the areas. "We hope to integrate these NCD officers to educate and provide valuable assistance to those who need curative care in specialist fields," she said.
"We continuously advise patients not to smoke or drink but once they become really weak, they expect the doctors to save themselves at the last minute," said Dr.Champa. So not only education and awareness but a more personal connection needs to be made with the public. "We are thankful to many sponsors for funds in giving us aid to develop our NCD services but we also need the public to help themselves. We can always treat and cure but it means ultimate suffering for those undergoing treatment when they could have stopped diseases" she said. Plus, every doctor should get stroke patients to have a CT scan and often these are not available in every clinic islandwide. So the NCD is opening up Healthy Lifestyle Clinics around the island in order to give better information and advice to patients and their families as well as CT scans to check patients. "Even those affected by strokes and have disabilities can make full use of these clinics to prevent another stroke from happening," said Dr.Champa. "There are long-term treatment techniques like exercise and physiotherapy which is now used to heal stroke patients," she said. Strokes affect 11 patients per 1,000 population in Sri Lanka being the second leading cause of hospital deaths. Stroke is the world's main cause of adult disability and according to the World Health Organisation, the loss of productivity caused by the disability and the cost involved in the management of stroke could be significant enough to have an impact on the economy of a country. Soy may reduce breast cancer riskConsume a lot of soy products if you want to cut back on the risk of breast cancer, says a new study, with Indian specialists agreeing that a protein in soybean acts like a medicine that is used to cure the disease. " The rate of breast cancer has always increased or decreased with food habits. Breast cancer rates are high in western nations as compared to women living in China and Japan where people consume high soy diet since childhood," Sameer Kaul, senior consultant, oncology, at Apollo Hospital told IANS. Soy protein is a high quality protein equivalent to the protein quality of egg, milk or meat. Soybean is a functional food of this millennium with complete protein package, containing essential amino acids that are required by the body. With almost 40 percent protein, soybeans are higher in protein content than other legumes and numerous animal products and high soy intake during adolescence can reduce the risk of breast cancer in the pre-menopausal years by about 25 to 50 percent, suggests a recent study in the US. Larissa Korde, principal researcher at the Clinical Genetics Branch Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, US, in her report found that soy intake from childhood was significantly associated with reduced breast cancer risk. Korde is an assistant professor in the University of Washington (UW) division of Medical Oncology. According to the study, the isoflavone protein in soy inhibits the growth of cancer in men (prostate cancer) and women (breast cancer). "Isoflavone in soybean acts like tamoxifen, a medicine which is used to cure breast cancer. Women with a high lifetime exposure to estragon have greater risk of breast cancer. So, isoflavone exerts an anti-estragon effect at some body tissues which may explain the reduced risk of breast cancer," said Anupama Hooda, chief of medical oncology at Max Health Care Superspeciality Hospital. Hooda says that soy should be consumed from its natural sources - plant products like tofu and miso. Soya products like soy milk, soybean chunks, sou-flour, soy papad, soy cookies and soy namkeens can also be consumed instead of taking pills having high soy proteins. Talking about the ill-effects of soy pills, Hooda said: "Isoflavones in the pill thickens the blood since they are processed and can bring about clumping red blood cells which is not a good sign." "Consuming soy food consistently at an early age is always better than going for hormonal replacement therapy opted by women to remain young as it increases the period of menopause and also increases the risk of breast cancer," said Rohit V. Nayyar, senior consultant, oncology, Apollo Hospital. The study further concluded that no significant association with soy food consumption was found for post-menopausal breast cancer. Indo-Asian News ServiceObesity can affect your sexual healthIt is well-known that obesity increases one's risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and certain types of cancer, among other health problems. Now, a new study has concluded that obesity can harm an individual's sexual health too. During the study, it was found that the rate of unplanned pregnancies is four times higher among single obese women than normal weight women, despite them being less likely to have been sexually active in the past year. Obese women are less likely to seek contraceptive advice or to use oral contraceptives. Obese men have fewer sexual partners in a 12-month period, but are more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction and develop sexually transmitted infections than normal weight men. The research led by Professor Nathalie Bajos, Research Director at the Institute National de la Sant et de la Recherche Medicale in Paris, is the first major study to investigate the impact of being overweight or obese on sexual activity and sexual health outcomes such as sexual satisfaction, unintended pregnancy and abortion. The authors undertook a survey of sexual behaviours among 12,364 men and women aged between 18 and 69 years of age living in France in 2006. Of the participants, 3,651 women and 2,725 men were normal weight (BMI between 18.5 and 25), 1,010 women and 1,488 men were overweight (BMI between 25 and 30) and 411 women and 350 men were obese (BMI over 30). The results showed that obese women were 30 percent less likely to have had a sexual partner in the last 12 months. Obese men were 70 percent less likely to have had more than one sexual partner in the same period and were two and half times more likely to experience erectile dysfunction. ANI As a result of a discovery in a Cambridge laboratory: A cure for the common cold?Virus (purple) circulating in the bloodstream recognised by antibodies (yellow) of the immune system. In a dramatic breakthrough that could affect millions of lives, scientists have been able to show for the first time that the body's immune defences can destroy the common cold virus after it has actually invaded the inner sanctum of a human cell, a feat that was believed until now to be impossible.
The researchers said that many other viruses responsible for a range of diseases could also be targeted by the new approach. They include the norovirus, which causes winter vomiting, and rotavirus, which results in severe diarrhoea and kills thousands of children in developing countries. However, a study by a team of researchers from the world famous Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge has shown that this textbook explanation of the limits of the human immune system is wrong because anti-viral antibodies can in fact enter the cell with the invading virus where they are able to trigger the rapid destruction of the foreign invader. "In any immunology textbook you will read that once a virus makes it into a cell, that is game over because the cell is now infected. At that point there is nothing the immune response can do other than kill that cell," said Leo James, who led the research team. But studies at the Medical Research Council's laboratory have found that the antibodies produced by the immune system, which recognise and attack invading viruses, actually ride piggyback into the inside of a cell with the invading virus. Once inside the cell, the presence of the antibody is recognised by a naturally occurring protein in the cell called TRIM21 which in turn activates a powerful virus-crushing machinery that can eliminate the virus within two hours - long before it has the chance to hijack the cell to start making its own viral proteins. "This is the last opportunity a cell gets because after that it gets infected and there is nothing else the body can do but kill the cell," Dr James said. "The antibody is attached to the virus and when the virus gets sucked inside the cell, the antibody stays attached, there is nothing in that process to make the antibody to fall off. "The great thing about it is that there shouldn't be anything attached to antibodies in the cell, so that anything that is attached to the antibody is recognised as foreign and destroyed." In the past, it was thought that the antibodies of the immune system worked entirely outside the cells, in the blood and other extra-cellular fluids of the body. Now scientists realise that there is another layer of defence inside the cells where it might be possible to enhance the natural anti-virus machinery of the body. "The beauty of it is that for every infection event, for every time a virus enters a cell, it is also an opportunity for the antibody in the cells to take the virus out," Dr James said. "That is the key concept that is different from how we think about immunity. At the moment we think of professional immune cells such as T-cells [white blood cells] that patrol the body and if they find anything they kill it. "This system is more like an ambush because the virus has to go into the cell at some point and every time they do this, this immune mechanism has a chance of taking it out," he explained. "It's certainly a very fast process. We've shown that once it enters the cell it gets degraded within an hour or two hours, that's very fast," he added. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved human cells cultured in the laboratory and will need to be replicated by further research on animals before the first clinical trials with humans. One possibility is that the protein TRIM21 could be used in a nasal spray to combat the many types of viruses that cause the common cold. "The kind of viruses that are susceptible to this are the rhinoviruses, which cause the common cold, noravirus, which causes winter vomiting, rotavirus, which causes gastroenteritis. In this country these are the kind of viruses that people are most likely to be exposed to," Dr James said. "This is a way of boosting all the antibodies you'd be naturally making against the virus. The advantage is that you can use that one drug against potentially lots of viral infections." "We can think of administering these drugs as nasal sprays and inhalers rather than taking pills... It could lead to an effective treatment for the common cold," he said. "The beauty of this system is that you give the virus no chance to make its own proteins to fight back. It is a way for the cell to get rid of the virus and stay alive itself." Sir Greg Winter, deputy director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, said: "Antibodies are formidable molecular war machines; it now appears that they can continue to attack viruses within cells. This research is not only a leap in our understanding of how and where antibodies work, but more generally in our understanding of immunity and infection." How the virus is tackled * 1 Virus (purple) circulating in the bloodstream recognised by antibodies (yellow) of the immune system * 2 Virus attaches to outer cell membrane with antibodies still attached * 3 Virus invades the cell membrane and emerges inside the cell * 4 Remains of cell membrane disappear and the virus is free to hijack the cell * 5 TRIM21 protein (blue) recognises attached antibodies as foreign material * 6 Powerful virus-destroying machines (cylinders) attracted to virus by TRIM21 * 7 Virus rapidly broken down and disabled within hours Courtesy: The Independent |
|
The doctor also highlighted that there have been significant progress
in the patient-doctor relationship and many are now started to report
benefits. It is estimated that there might be a 50% increase in the
number of stroke patients in Sri Lanka because many have not been
heeding advice given by doctors also. 
The discovery opens the door to the development of a new class of
antiviral drugs that work by enhancing this natural virus-killing
machinery of the cell. Scientists believe the first clinical trials of
new drugs based on the findings could begin within two to five years.
