Indian children not aware of warning
labels on cigarette packets
Children
in India, especially those living in low-literacy populations, are not aware of
warning labels on cigarette packets as these are not shown big enough and are
graphically poor.
In the six
countries studied, researchers found that awareness about warning labels was
greatest among children in Brazil where graphics often featured extremely
gruesome pictures and covered 100 percent of either the front or back of the
cigarette packet.
Awareness
of health warning labels was lowest among children from India and Nigeria.
The Indian
warning label shows an image of a symbolic scorpion and the Nigerian warning
label uses only a vague text message.
‘Pro-smoking
messages are reaching the world’s most susceptible audiences. We need to do a
better job globally to reach children with anti-smoking messages,’ said lead
author Dina Borzekowski from University of Maryland School of Public Health
(UMD).
The study
showed that only 38 percent of children had any awareness of warning labels
currently being featured on cigarette packages.
Their
findings offer data from 2,423 five and six year-old children interviewed in
Brazil, India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and Russia about their awareness and
understanding of cigarette health warning labels.
Even after
showing warning labels to participating children, around two-thirds (62
percent) of the children were unable to explain what the health warnings were
about, noted the study.
‘Heath
warning labels on cigarette packs are an important medium for communicating
about the serious health effects caused by tobacco products,’ stressed Joanna
Cohen from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The
messages are most effective when the labels are large and include pictures that
evoke an emotional response, said the study published in Journal of
Public Health.
Source: http://health.india.com
01.03.2014
Blood test to tell you when are you
going to die!
A novel blood test may predict if you are at the risk of
dying in next five years, claims research. With Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
(NMR) spectroscopy, over 200 biomarkers predicting short-term mortality have
now been discovered. ‘If a person belongs to a risk group based on these
biomarker concentrations, he/she has a multifold risk of dying in the next five
years compared to the general population,’ claimed Professor Mika Ala-Korpela
from the University of Oulu in Finland.
The study is based on blood samples of over 17,000 Finnish
and Estonian people. In the research, mortality was related to four biomarkers
in the blood: levels of two proteins (albumin and alpha-1 acidic glycoprotein),
lipid metabolism variables (size of large lipoprotein particles responsible for
lipid metabolism in the body) and citric acid concentration. These biomarkers
relate to normal metabolism and are present in the blood of all people, but
according to the study, their relative amounts are crucial. The biomarkers were
independent of known mortality risk factors such as age, smoking, alcohol use,
cholesterol, obesity and blood pressure.
The biomarkers associated with mortality also in healthy
subjects with no diagnosed diabetes, cancer or vascular diseases. ‘This study
is the first of its kind in the world. More research is needed for possible
clinical applications in health care,’ added Pasi Soininen, head of the NMR
metabolomics laboratory in University of Eastern Finland. The new blood
analysis method gives hope that in the future, it would be possible to identify
increased risk of death at an early stage so that people could be directed to
appropriate follow-up examinations and treatment.
The new blood analysis method has been applied in recent
years extensively for the research of metabolic diseases such as type 2
diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Application of this methodology has also
provided new information on the health effects of long-term exercise, said the
study published in the journal PLoS Medicine.
Source: http://health.india.com
01.03.2014
People
with good intentions make promises, but people with good character keep them
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