Blog for Youth

A new imaging research has demonstrated that the reduced brain activity associated with the onset of dyslexia appears to develop before, not after, a child starts to read.

The finding may help clinicians screen for at-risk children at an early pre-reading age.

“We already knew that children and adults with a diagnosis of dyslexia show brain alterations within the left posterior — back — part of the brain,” said study co-author Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the neuroscience program at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston. “However, it was unclear whether these alterations are a result of dyslexia [that] show up after years of reading failure or whether they predate the reading onset,” she noted.

“[Here] we could show that they predate reading onset,” Gaab said. “This suggests that children are either born with it or that it develops within the first few years of life.”

The study was published in the Jan. 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tags: diagnosis of dyslexia, dyslexia

According to Danish researchers, a process linked to natural cell aging has now also been associated with knee osteoarthritis.

The researchers used new technology for closely evaluating the telomeres (lengths of DNA on the ends of chromosomes) of cells taken from the knees of osteoarthritis patients who had joint replacement surgery.

According to the findings published in the Jan. 16 online edition of the journal Arthritis Research & Therapy, the cells had abnormally shorted telomeres and the percentage of cells with ultra-short telomeres increased with proximity to the damaged area in the knee joint.

“The telomere story shows us that there are, in theory, two processes going on in osteoarthritis. Age-related shortening of telomeres, which leads to the inability of cells to continue dividing and so to cell senescence [deterioration], and ultra-short telomeres, probably caused by compression stress during use, which lead to senescence and failure of the joint to repair itself,” study leader Maria Harbo said in a journal news release.

“We believe the second situation to be the most important in osteoarthritis. The damaged cartilage could add to the mechanical stress within the joint and so cause a feedback cycle driving the progression of the disease,” she added.

Tags: knee osteoarthritis, natural cell aging, osteoarthritis, osteoarthritis patients

According to a study published on Wednesday, an exceptionally long-running investigation has backed use of the Pill to ease menstruation pain.

The findings come from health research spanning 30 years and indicated that more than 1,400 Swedish women born in 1962, 1972 and 1982 and who took oral contraceptives reported significant drops in two acknowledged measurements of pain.

The investigation was led by gynecologist Ingela Lindh at Gothenburg University’s Institute of Clinical Sciences and is published online by the European journal Human Reproduction.

Menstrual pain, known as dysmenorrhoea, is believed to account for 600 million lost working hours and two billion dollars in lost productivity annually in the United States alone.

Tags: dysmenorrhoea, Health Research, Menstrual pain, menstruation pain, oral contraceptives

According to the American Cancer Society’s annual report on cancer statistics released on Wednesday, cancer death rates are continuing to fall and have dropped by 1.8 percent per year in men and 1.6 percent per year in women between 2004 and 2008.

The report suggested that cancer screening and treatment advances have prevented more than a million total deaths from cancer since the early 1990s.

“The big news this year is that cancer deaths are still going down,” said Dr. Raymond DuBois, provost and executive vice president at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “It’s not hitting the ball out of the park, but it had been going up several years prior to that. It’s sign now that it is on the decline,” DuBois said in a telephone interview.

Tags: cancer death rates, cancer screening, cancer statistics

According to the results of a new study from Australia, older adults who took vitamin B12 and folic acid supplements for two years had greater improvements on short- and long-term memory tests than adults who did not take the vitamins.

Janine Walker, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Australian National University, said the benefits were modest but encouraging and indicated that the vitamins “may have an important role in promoting healthy ageing and mental wellbeing, as well as sustaining good cognitive functioning for longer on a community-wide scale.” “We felt that older people with elevated depressive symptoms were an important cohort to target given evidence that late-life depression is associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment,” Walker said.

Tags: cognitive functioning, folic acid supplements, vitamin B12, vitamins

A new analysis of past studies published this week has suggested that children who get more exercise also tend to do better in school.

The finding “just helps to continue to show the importance of exposing kids to physical activity,” said Sandy Slater, who has studied recess and physical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago but wasn’t involved in the new research.

“There’s obviously the long-term links between physical activity and health, but this is another reason to try to continue to keep some dedicated amount of time for physical education or recess or some other types of physical activity in the school day,” she told Reuters Health.

“It might mean going to school by bike… Any kind of physical activity you can think of. It doesn’t mean only the physical education standard class,” said Amika Singh, who worked on the new study.

Tags: exercise, health, physical activity, physical education, school

Most young adults do not understand the importance of regular exercise just as they do not bother much about mother’s cooking.

“The transition from late adolescence to early adulthood represents the most dramatic declines in physical activity across a person’s life,” according to Dr. Matthew Kwan, a researcher at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

“Team sports, varsity activities tend to decrease or drop off entirely,” he explained. “For those who go to college, studies become more important. Then there’s the social aspect that eats up their disposable time as well.”

The research appeared in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Tags: adolescence, physical activity, regular exercise, young adults

French researchers have reported in a new study that people with certain conditions, including leukemia, other cancers and pregnancy, are at the greatest risk of getting sick from the food-borne bacterium Listeria.

The results “will help focus risk communication for the medical community,” said Ramon Guevara, an epidemiologist for the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. “If you do have an outbreak you want to say who are the high-risk people,” he added.

“I would like to target recommendations for prevention to persons with hematological malignancy (blood, bone marrow and lymph cancers), especially those undergoing immunosuppressive treatment,” Goulet said.

Tags: cancers, hematological malignancy, leukemia, pregnancy, Public Health

A European poll has shown that a third of doctors working in intensive care units (ICUs) believe one or more of their patients is getting inappropriate care, with slightly fewer nurses sharing the same sentiment.

“What this study shows is that a striking number of ICU physicians and nurses on any given day are providing care they perceive to be inappropriate,” Dr. Scott Halpern, who wrote an editorial about the findings, told Reuters Health.

“What it doesn’t tell us is why they are doing it,” he said. “We live in a society where life-support and aggressive care are provided by default,” said Halpern, who studies critical care at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Tags: critical care, health, ICU physicians, ICUs, intensive care units

Want to receive the gift of knowledge from Terry Crews, who played Hale Caesar in the action-film The Expendables? Access this YouTube video on bodybuilding and experience it by yourself. The video shows great tips by Crews that can be used by any one to gain solid muscles and make a lasting impression.

Tags: bodybuilding, solid muscles, YouTube video