Parents
often ignore childhood obesity
New York: Parents often fail to
recognise their children's weight gain as a health concern, says a study.
Parents of
obese children often do not recognise the potentially serious health
consequences of childhood weight gain or the importance of daily physical
activity in helping their child reach a healthy weight, the findings showed.
"Parents have a hard time
changing their child's dietary and physical activity behaviours," said
lead author Kyung Rhee, an assistant adjunct professor at University of
California, San Diego School of Medicine in the US.
The study is based on a survey of
202 parents whose children were enrolled in an obesity clinic at the Hasbro
Children's Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island in 2008 and 2009.
Although most of the children had
been referred to the obesity clinic by a primary care provider and had
metabolic markers of obesity, 31.4 percent of parents perceived their child's
health as excellent or very good and 28 percent did not perceive their child's
weight as a health concern.
The study appeared online in the
Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
23.07.2014
'Revolutionary'
antibiotics to tackle TB
London: Why mycobacteria - a family that includes the
microbe that causes tuberculosis (TB) - survive oxygen limitation has long been
a mystery but not any more. A discovery could lead to a revolutionary class of
antibiotics to tackle TB.
Researchers have found that hydrogen
is a key factor that enables mycobacteria to survive oxygen-limitation over
long periods.
"Mycobacteria grow through combusting their preferred
carbon-based fuel sources using oxygen. However, they can also somehow survive
for months or years when their oxygen supply is exhausted," said Greg
Cook, a professor from University of Otago in New Zealand.
"For example, in people with latent TB infections,
mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria are walled in by clumps of immune and other
body cells in what is thought to be an extremely low oxygen environment.
However, such patients must be monitored for rest of their lives in case the
bacteria become active again," he added.
The bacterium is able to quickly switch its cellular
metabolism from a primarily oxygen-based one over to one that uses fermentation
for energy production instead.
This metabolic mode depends on the production and recycling
of molecular hydrogen, a high-energy fuel and diffusible gas.
These cells produce hydrogen to ensure their survival until
they once again have access to sufficient oxygen for growth.
The researchers established that mycobacterium smegmatis
metabolises molecular hydrogen using three enzymes called hydrogenases.
One hydrogenase produces hydrogen, whereas the other two
consume it. These hydrogenases are activated under oxygen starvation by a
master regulator called DosR.
The researchers found that strains of mycobacterium
smegmatis in which the genes for the hydrogenases or the regulator DosR had
been 'knocked out' experienced a hundred-fold reduction in the long-term
survival compared to the normal bacterium.
The study appeared in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
23.07.2014
If the road is easy, you're likely going the wrong way
No comments:
Post a Comment