Computer Vision Syndrome: Fact or Fiction?

Eye experts take different views on whether it's a serious malady
Posted: March 3, 2011

THURSDAY, March 3 (HealthDay News) -- Staring into the enticing glow of your computer hour after hour may well have its benefits, but a downside to all that screen time can include dry, tired eyes, blurred vision, fatigue and headaches.

This cluster of symptoms is called "computer vision syndrome" (CVS), but eye experts don't agree on whether it's serious or even if it's a new phenomenon.

"Computer vision syndrome is a new diagnosis, and a relatively trendy one at that," said Dr. Ivan R. Schwab, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of California, Davis. "And the thought that focusing up close at technology will provoke a new set of symptoms different from that experienced during other forms of close-up work and attention has yet to be documented in any kind of scientific literature or study. So I'm relatively skeptical of it."

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Children With Hepatitis C May Benefit From Ribavirin

Last Updated: February 22, 2011.

TUESDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) -- The combination of pegylated interferon (PEG) plus ribavirin is better than PEG plus placebo for treating children infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), according to a study published in the February issue of Gastroenterology.

The investigators found a significantly improved SVR with PEG and ribavirin compared to PEG and placebo. Of the children receiving PEG and ribavirin, 53 percent achieved SVR, compared to 21 percent receiving PEG and placebo. Compliance at the two-year follow up was 82 percent with PEG plus ribavirin and 86 percent for PEG plus placebo, and virologic response was 100 percent durable in both groups.

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Group B Strep Is Still Main Cause of Bacterial Meningitis in Newborns

Released: 3/2/2011 8:00 AM EST

But Preterm Infants Are More Likely to Be Infected with E. Coli, French Study Reports in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal

Newswise — Philadelphia, Pa. (March 2, 2011) – The Group B Streptococcus is still the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in newborns, concludes a seven-year French study in the March issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

Group B strep remains predominant despite the recent introduction of GBS screening for women near delivery, according to the new report, led by Dr. Jean Gaschignard Hôpital Antoine-Béclère, Clamart, France. However, the situation is different for preterm infants—who are at higher risk of death, regardless of the cause of their meningitis.

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Behavior: Distracted Eating Adds More to Waistlines

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: January 3, 2011

Catching up with e-mail while you eat lunch? Watching television? You may end the day eating more than you think.

ColumnsResearchers had 22 volunteers eat a meal while playing computer solitaire and 22 others eat the same meal in the same amount of time while undistracted. They told the subjects it was a test of the effect of food on memory, but actually they were testing how full people felt after a meal, how much they ate at a “taste test” 30 minutes later, and how successfully they could recall exactly what they ate. Their results appear online in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Not only were distracted eaters worse at remembering what they had eaten, but they felt significantly less full just after lunch, even after the researchers controlled for height and weight. And at the taste-test session a half-hour later, they ate about twice as many cookies as those who had lunch without playing games.

Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges

February 28, 2011, 5:26 pm
By TARA PARKER-POPE

Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family?

That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising.

The research suggests that giving ourselves a break and accepting our imperfections may be the first step toward better health. People who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic. Preliminary data suggest that self-compassion can even influence how much we eat and may help some people lose weight.

ABSTRACT: Caffeine alters circadian rhythms and expression of disease and metabolic markers.

Int J Biochem Cell Biol. 2011 Feb 22.
Sherman H, Gutman R, Chapnik N, Meylan J, le Coutre J, Froy O.

The circadian clock regulates many aspects of physiology, energy metabolism, and sleep. Restricted feeding (RF), a regimen that restricts the duration of food availability entrains the circadian clock. Caffeine has been shown to affect both metabolism and sleep. However, its effect on clock gene and clock-controlled gene expression has not been studied. Here, we tested the effect of caffeine on circadian rhythms and the expression of disease and metabolic markers in the serum, liver, and jejunum of mice supplemented with caffeine under ad libitum (AL) feeding or RF for 16weeks. Caffeine significantly affected circadian oscillation and the daily levels of disease and metabolic markers. Under AL, caffeine reduced the average daily mRNA levels of certain disease and inflammatory markers, such as liver alpha fetoprotein (Afp), C-reactive protein (Crp), jejunum alanine aminotransferase (Alt), growth arrest and DNA damage 45β (Gadd45β), Interleukin 1α (Il-1α), Il-1β mRNA and serum plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1). Under RF, caffeine reduced the average daily levels of Alt, Gadd45β, Il-1α and Il-1β mRNA in the jejunum, but not in the liver. In addition, caffeine supplementation led to decreased expression of catabolic factors under RF. In conclusion, caffeine affects circadian gene expression and metabolism possibly leading to beneficial effects mainly under AL feeding.

Infant sleep positioners are dangerous

February 28, 2011

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission are warning people not to use sleep positioners for their babies because there is a chance they could suffocate. In the past 13 years, at least 12 babies between the ages of 1 month and 4 months have died when they suffocated in positioners, or when they became trapped between a sleep positioner and the side of their crib or bassinet.

People have been using positioners to keep their babies in certain positions when they sleep. Some positioners are flat pads with side bolsters. Others are inclined like a wedge, or have some other design. These products might be promoted to reduce acid reflux, minimize "flat head" syndrome or even to prevent sudden infant death syndrome, but there is no scientific evidence to support any of these claims.

Read the rest of the article here.

Babies and grandmas: Who will Texas' Medicaid cuts hurt? All of us - but the oldest and youngest most of all

.....

It comes up in meeting after meeting, e-mail after e-mail, from group after group, from outfits representing senior citizens, the middle class, children, the court system, hospitals, doctors, universities, the mentally ill and public schools. The budget-slashed, rainy-day-fund-untouched Texas that our Legislature is contemplating wouldn't be just a mean, hard place for our families to live. It would be an inefficient one, too — and one whose problems this budget will only make worse.

The proposal to cut reimbursements paid to Medicaid providers by 10 percent is pure pound-foolishness. And its horrifying long-term costs will hit us all.

Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle

Feb. 2, 2011, 11:37PM

To read the entire editorial

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/7410555.html

Bruesewitz v. Wyeth: What the Supreme Court Decision Means for Vaccines
By Meredith Melnick Thursday, February 24, 2011

Vaccine injury is a tricky thing to prove — medically and legally. So it was inevitably controversial when the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday against the parents of Hannah Bruesewitz, 18, who suffered seizures and permanent brain damage after receiving a diptheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine in 1993.
The Bruesewitz family sued Wyeth, then the parent company of the maker of the DTP vaccine that Hannah received as an infant, arguing that Wyeth was responsible for Hannah's condition and should be held accountable. The high court disagreed.

Read more at the link.

Pneumonia DNA Morphs To Dodge Vaccines

By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Published: January 28, 2011

Researchers from seven countries have collaborated to analyze how a single strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria has morphed over 30 years and spread across the world, in an attempt to overcome the development of antibiotics and vaccines.

The research is the first detailed genetic picture of the evolution of a specific strain of pneumonia, resulting in a family tree of sorts. The researchers analyzed samples from North and South America, Africa and Southeast Asia.

Over time, the bacteria mutated to better resist antibiotics and vaccines. The researchers found that it underwent both recombination, in which the DNA shuffles around, and base substitutions, in which individual nucleic acids in a DNA sequence change.

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