21, April 2014

Pregnant women with high BP at risk

Researchers have said that pregnant women with chronic hypertension (high blood pressure) are highly likely to suffer from adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm delivery, low birth weight and neonatal death.

Chronic hypertension complicates between 1-5 per cent of pregnancies, and the problem may be increasing because of changes in the antenatal population.

Researchers from King's College London carried out a study to assess the strength of evidence linking chronic hypertension with poor pregnancy outcomes. They combined data from studies from 55 studies done in 25 countries.

The researchers looked at the following outcomes: preterm delivery (delivery before 37 weeks' gestation); low birth weight (below 2500g); perinatal death (fetal death after 20 weeks' gestation including stillbirth and neonatal death up to one month) and admission to neonatal intensive care or special care baby units.

The relative risk of pre-eclampsia (a condition in pregnancy characterised by high blood pressure) in women with chronic hypertension was on average nearly eight times higher than pre-eclampsia in non-hypertensive women. All adverse neonatal outcomes were at least twice as likely to occur, compared with the general population.

The researchers conclude that "chronic hypertension is associated with a high incidence of adverse pregnancy outcomes compared with a general population".

The study has been published in the British Medical journal.

Source: www.timesofindia.com

21.04.2014

Antibiotics improve growth in kids

Researchers have suggested that antibiotics are able to improve growth in children at risk of undernourishment in low and middle income countries.

Their results suggest that the youngest children from the most vulnerable populations benefit most and show significant improvements toward expected growth for their age and sex, particularly for weight.

A team of researchers from McGill, the University of British Columbia and others, set out to determine whether antibiotics lead to improvements in growth in pre-pubertal children living in low and middle income countries.

Paper's first author Ethan Gough, McGill PhD candidate in the Faculty of Medicine (Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health), said they looked at changes in both height and weight.

He said that they searched the research literature for studies that treated children aged 1 month to 12 years with an antibiotic, and analyzed the results of 10 trials involving 4,316 children in seven low and middle income countries. Children were generally smaller in height and weight than adequately nourished children of the same age. This group of studies reflects the spectrum of stunting and wasting malnutrition seen in these countries.

Amee Manges, a professor in the School of Population and Public Health, at the University of British Columbia, said that overall they we found that antibiotic treatment had a positive effect on both height and weight with increases of 0.04 cm/month for height and by 23.8 g/month for weight, asserting that after accounting for differences in the age of the study participants, effects on height were larger in the youngest children and effects on weight were larger in the trials that were conducted in Africa.

The results have been published in the British Medical Journal.

Source: www.timesofindia.com

21.04.2014

Once you choose HOPE, anything is POSSIBLE

Christopher Reeve