New TB blood test could eliminate unnecessary
treatment
Washington: A new screening process
for tuberculosis (TB) infections in Canadian prisons could mean that more than
50 per cent of those screened won't undergo unnecessary treatment due to false
positives.
According
to research by Wendy Wobeser and medical resident Ilan Schwartz, a test for TB
using interferon-gamma release assays (IGRA) will detect a pre-existing TB
infection, or latent TB, that might not present itself for many years, or until
the body becomes weakened by another source.
The IGRA test was developed in the
last 10-15 years and diagnoses a latent TB infection. The body's immune system
is provoked with a small amount of protein from the TB virus and if the body
has previously been infected then a reaction will occur and the patient's blood
will test positive for TB.
The pre-existing tuberculosis skin
test (TST) for TB has been used for over 100 years but comes with two main
limitations.
The current test requires two visits
to determine the results: one to perform the test and then another visit a
couple of days later to read the results.
Depending
on the patient's exposure to other mycobacteria or the BCG vaccine , the
current TB test can give many false positives.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
06.06.2014
Maternal
deaths falling, but not fast enough: WHO
Geneva: Global maternal deaths have fallen sharply in recent
decades, but women in sub-Saharan Africa are still by far the most likely to
perish while pregnant, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.
Fresh WHO statistics show the number
of maternal deaths worldwide fell to 289,000 last year, down 45 per cent from
1990, when an estimated 523,000 women died during pregnancy or childbirth.
While this marks a big step forward, the UN's health agency
stressed it was far from good enough.
"There is still one woman dying every one and a half to
two minutes somewhere in the world ... Because she is trying to give
life," said Marleen Temmerman, who heads the WHO's department of
reproductive health and co-authored the report. "That is like having two
airplanes crashing every day," she told reporters in Geneva, insisting
"this should be much higher on the agenda".
The WHO report emphasises that the dangers of childbearing
are still felt far more acutely in the developing world, and in sub-Saharan
Africa especially, than in wealthy countries.
While a woman in Chad faces a one in 15 risk of dying during
pregnancy and childbirth during her lifetime, the risk is more than 1,000 times
smaller for a woman in Finland, the statistics show.
African nations are heavily represented among the 10
countries that account for around 60 per cent of all maternal deaths globally,
including Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Kenya. Several
African nations meanwhile also figure among those who had succeeded in slashing
their maternal mortality rates the most in the past 23 years, WHO said.
Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea and Eritrea were among a select
group of only 11 countries, mainly in Asia, that have reduced maternal deaths
by over 75 per cent since 1990, thus reaching the Millennium Development Goal
target ahead of the 2015 deadline.
Most countries however are unlikely to meet that target by
next year, Temmerman said, calling for far more investment in care for
expecting mothers. Expanding family planning and access to contraception is
also vital to help avoid unwanted pregnancies, especially among teens, at far
greater risk of complications.
The new WHO report provides a startling new overview of the
reasons women die during pregnancy and childbirth. It shows that 28 per cent of
the deaths are linked to pre-existing medical conditions, like diabetes,
malaria, HIV or obesity, exacerbated by pregnancy.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
06.06.2014
No one is born happy but everyone is born with
ability to create happiness
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