26, July 2014

Common blood thinner futile for pregnant women: Study

Toronto: A daily injection of blood thinner for pregnant women at risk of developing blood clots in their veins - a condition called thrombophilia - has been found to be ineffective, a new study showed.

For two decades. women have often been prescribed the anticoagulant low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) to prevent pregnancy complications caused by placental blood clots.

This treatment requires women to give themselves daily injections - a painful process that requires women to poke their abdomen with hundreds of needles over the course of their pregnancy.

Now, a randomised clinical trial led by Marc Rodger, a senior scientist at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, has provided conclusive evidence that the LMWH anticoagulant has no positive benefits for the mother or child.

"The LMWH treatments could actually cause pregnant women some minor harm by increasing bleeding, increasing their rates of induced labour and reducing their access to anesthesia during childbirth," Rodger and his team claimed.

Rodger's clinical trial took 12 years to complete and involved 292 women at 36 centres in five countries.

As many as one in 10 pregnant women have a tendency to develop blood clots in their veins.

"These results mean that many women around the world can save themselves a lot of unnecessary pain during pregnancy," Rodger added.

"The findings will benefit many women in many countries who will be spared from hundreds of unnecessary and painful injections. They also underscore the importance of conducting rigorous, well-designed clinical trials," said Duncan Stewart, chief executive officer of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

The study was published online in the journal The Lancet.

Source: www.zeenews.india.com

26.07.2014

Bacteria linked to obesity and diabetes found

New York: Biologists have discovered an extremely widespread virus that could be as old as humans and could play a major role in obesity and diabetes.

More than half the world's population is host to the newly described virus, named crAssphage, which infects one of the most common types of gut bacteria, Bacteroidetes, the findings showed.

This phylum of bacteria is thought to be connected with obesity, diabetes and other gut-related diseases.

"It is not unusual to go looking for a novel virus and find one. But it is very unusual to find one that so many people have in common. The fact that it has flown under the radar for so long is very strange," said Robert Edwards, a bioinformatics professor at the San Diego State University in the US.

In the DNA fecal samples from 12 different individuals, the researchers noticed a particular cluster of viral DNA, about 97,000 base pairs long, that the samples all had in common.

When Edwards and his colleagues checked this discovery against a comprehensive listing of known viruses, they came up empty.

This was a new virus that about half the sampled people had in their bodies that nobody knew about.

The fact that it is so widespread indicates that it probably is not a particularly young virus, either.

"We have basically found it in every population we have looked at," Edwards said.

"As far as we can tell, it is as old as humans are," he said.

The study appeared in the journal Nature Communications.

Source: www.zeenews.india.com

26.07.2014

Dreams are only dreams until you wake up and make them real

Ned Vizzini