A cold as dangerous as a drink when it comes to driving

London : Having a bad cold or the flu can be as bad for driving as a couple of whiskies, a new reports has revealed.
According to the study, symptoms such as a stuffed-up head, grogginess and sneezing have the same impact on people's abilities as a level of alcohol close to or at the drink-drive limit.
In the research, for Lloyds TSB Insurance, one hundred drivers with a range of conditions including colds, stress and headaches and 50 who were healthy were put through a hazard simulator test, reports the BBC.
From the analysis, the study revealed that drivers with colds scored, on average, 11 percent worse - equivalent to the effect of a double whisky.
The study, carried out by PCP research agency, looked at 60 people with colds and flu as well as 40 with other conditions including premenstrual syndrome.
They said that applying the 11percent effect to reaction times would add 1m (3.3ft) to stopping distance if travelling at 30mph (48km/h) - on top of a normal distance of 12m (40ft).
It would add 2.3m (7.5ft) onto the normal stopping distance of 96m (315ft) if travelling at 70mph (113km/h).

Watching TV every day can damage health

London: Regular television watching could harm your health, a British report has suggested.
According to the British Social Attitudes report, only 43 per cent of those who said they were regular viewers claimed their health was excellent or very good.
In stark contrast, 59 per cent of 4,000 respondents who said they rarely watched TV rated themselves as healthy.
Also, only 54 per cent of daily TV viewers said they had joined a social or cultural group in the past year, compared with 66 per cent of those who watch less frequently.
In total, 91 per cent of the total adults questioned for comprehensive study admitted to switching their TV set on several times a week, with 74 per cent watching it every day, reports the Telegraph.
Alison Park, co-author of the study, said: "These findings don't prove that a particular leisure activity causes ill-health or promotes civic engagement. But it is clear that our leisure choices are linked to our physical and mental wellbeing, as well as to the extent to which we are connected to others through things like voluntary groups.
"And it is notable that one leisure activity - watching TV - is negatively linked to many of these things. Efforts to promote different ways of spending our free time could well be beneficial."

Alcohol gives men's sexual performance a boost

Melbourne: Australian scientists have given men the perfect reason to drink: alcohol improves performance in the bedroom.
According to News.com.au, the boffins believe that the latest finding will reassure blokes who worry about the affects of drinking on their sex lives.
Until now, it has been widely believed that boozing could cause erectile dysfunction, commonly called "brewer's droop''.
However, the latest study of 1580 Australian men has shown the reverse may be true - since drinkers reporting as many as 30 per cent fewer problems than teetotalers.
Infact, binge drinkers had lower rates of erectile dysfunction than those who never drank, although this type of drinking can cause other health problems.
According to lead researcher Dr Kew-Kim Chew, of Western Australia's Keogh Institute for Medical Research, who told The Sunday Telegraph, men who drank within safe guidelines appeared to have the best erectile function.
"We found that, compared to those who have never touched alcohol, many people do benefit from some alcohol, including some people who drink outside the guidelines,'' Dr Chew said.

Coming soon, a Contraceptive Pill to "Ease Women's Pain"

Melbourne: A new contraceptive pill is on its way, which will bring relief to women who suffer from a loss of libido and other symptoms when taking the Pill.
The Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick will trial the oral contraceptive, which uses a natural form of the female hormone oestrogen, called estradil, reports News.com.au
It comes with international research finding that hormones used in traditional contraceptives have a wide range of side-effects on women, including the loss of libido, aches and pains and mood swings, The Daily Telegraph reports.
"There is no reason why women have to have a seven-day pill-free interval," sexual health physician Terri Foran said.
"A lot of women suffer these symptoms and believe they are normal or its PMT, but they don't have to (suffer).
"We believe it will work but before we put our hand on our heart and declare that, we have to test its effectiveness," the expert added.
The pill shortens the hormone-free interval from seven to two days and aims to end the withdrawals.
Dr Foran said that by reducing the pill-free interval to two days, the body would not have enough time to experience the "withdrawals".
"The difference with this pill to others on the market is that it alters the amount of hormone given and alters when it is given in the cycle," she said.
"There is a suggestion that if you can manipulate that pill-free week, you might be able to lessen the symptoms. The shortened break might well mean they don't get the symptoms," she added.

Drinking Three Cups of Tea a day can cut Breast Cancer Risk by a Third

London: Consuming three cups of tea a day can reduce the risk of breast cancer by more than a third, a new research led by an Indian-origin scientist has revealed.
To reach the conclusion, a team of US researchers led by Dr Nagi Kumar at the Moffitt Cancer Centre in Tampa, Florida, studied 5,000 women aged between 20 and 74 who had been treated for breast cancer.
The boffins compared medical histories and lifestyles with a similar group of women free of breast cancer, reports the Telegraph.
From the analysis, they also found even greater benefits when it came to "lobular" breast cancer, with tea reducing the risk by 66 per cent.
Lobular cancer, where cancer affects the lobes deep inside breast tissue, accounts for one in ten cases of the disease.
The researchers said: "Regular tea consumption, particularly at moderately high levels, might reduce breast cancer risk in younger women.
"Given that tea is the most common beverage consumed in the world, it makes an attractive candidate for breast cancer prevention."

Smoking Linked to Most Male Cancer Deaths

Washington: Smoking led to 70 per cent of the cancer deaths among Massachusetts men in 2003, much higher than the previous estimate of 34 per cent in 2001, according to a recent study.
Bruce Leistikow, a UC Davis associate adjunct professor of public health sciences, says that this finding strengthens the association between tobacco smoke and cancer deaths.
In a report on his epidemiological analysis, published online in BMC Cancer, the researcher writes that the study's findings suggest that increased tobacco control efforts could save more lives than previously estimated.
"This study provides support for the growing understanding among researchers that smoking is a cause of many more cancer deaths besides lung cancer. The full impacts of tobacco smoke, including second-hand smoke, have been overlooked in the rush to examine such potential cancer factors as diet and environmental contaminants. As it turns out, much of the answer was probably smoking all along," said Leistikow.
Leistikow used National Center for Health Statistics data to compare death rates from lung cancer to death rates from all other cancers among Massachusetts males.
The assessment revealed that the two rates changed in tandem year-by-year from 1979 to 2003, with the strongest association among males aged 30-to-74 years.
Smoking is known to be behind most of the lung cancer cases, and the study authors concluded that the very close relationship over 25 years between lung and other cancer death rates suggested a single cause for both: tobacco smoke.
Leistikow, whose research is dedicated to uncovering the causes of premature mortality, said: "The fact that lung and non-lung cancer death rates are almost perfectly associated means that smokers and nonsmokers alike should do what they can to avoid tobacco smoke. It also suggests that increased attention should be paid to smoking prevention in health care reforms and health promotion campaigns."

Tiny 'robotic submarine' in blood to help operate on stroke victims

Washington: Researchers from Monash University have developed micro-motors that can drive around the body and even into the delicate structures of the brains of stroke victims to carry out potentially life-saving operations.
Lead researcher James Friend explained, motors provide the key to making robots small enough for injection into the bloodstream.
With the right sensor equipment attached to the microbot motor, the surgeon's view of, for example, a patient's troubled artery can be enhanced and the ability to work remotely also increases the surgeon's dexterity.
"If you pick up an electronics catalogue, you'll find all sorts of sensors, LEDs, memory chips, etc that represent the latest in technology and miniaturisation," said Friend.
"Take a look however at the motors and there are few changes from the motors available in the 1950s," he added.
Methods of minimally invasive surgery, such as keyhole surgery and a range of operations that utilise catheters, tubes inserted into body cavities to allow surgical manoeuvrability, are preferred by surgeons and patients because of the damage avoided when contrasted against cut and sew operations.
Serious damage during minimally invasive surgery is however not always avoidable and surgeons are often limited by, for example, the width of a catheter tube which, in serious cases, can fatally puncture narrow arteries.
The microbot motors just 250 micrometres, a quarter of a millimetre wide have so far succeeded in swimming through human blood in the laboratory, but scientists hope it could also power its way up the narrow arteries of the brain.
"Opportunities for micro-motors abound in fields as diverse as biomedicine, electronics, aeronautics and the automotive industry," said Friend.
"Responses to this need have been just as diverse, with designs developed using electromagnetic, electrostatic, thermal and osmotic driving forces," he added.
The study is published in Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering

Brain stimulation via mild electrical current may enhance motor skill learning

Washington: A new study conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggests that mild electrical current may prove very helpful in rehabilitating people with traumatic brain injury, stroke, and other conditions.
Revealing the observations made during the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said that people who had received a mild electrical current to a motor control area of the brain were significantly better able to learn and perform a complex motor task than those in control groups.
Motor skills, which are used for activities from typing and driving, to sports, require practice and learning over a prolonged period of time.
During practice, the brain encodes information about how to perform the task, but even during periods of rest, the brain is still at work strengthening the memory of doing the task. This process is known as consolidation.
Working in collaboration with scientists from Columbia University in New York City and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the research team from NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) presented the study subjects with a novel and challenging motor task, which involved squeezing a "joy stick" to play a targeting game on a computer monitor, which they practiced over five consecutive days.
One group received 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) while practising, but the other group received only a 30 second "sham" stimulation.
The stimulation process involved mild electrical stimulation applied through surface electrodes on the head, and worked by modulating the activity of cells in the brain's outermost layers.
Dr. Leonardo Cohen, of NINDS Human Cortical Physiology and Stroke Neurorehabilitation Section, revealed that his team directedt DCS to the primary motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement.
He and his colleagues observed that over the five-day training period, the skill of the tDCS group improved significantly more than those of the control group, apparently through an effect on consolidation.
During the three-month follow-up period, the two groups forgot the skill at about the same rate, but the tDCS group continued to perform better because they had learnt the skill better by the end of training.

Hope for Women who Suffer Infertility, Pelvic Pain during Sex

Washington: There is some hope for women who suffer from endometriosis, infertility and pelvic pain during sex, a chronic disease that affects five to 10 million women in the US.
Serdar Bulun, professor of gynaecology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and colleagues have discovered key epigenetic abnormalities in endometriosis and identified existing chemicals that now help treat it.
Epigenetics is the study of the processes involved in the genetic development of an organism, especially the activation and deactivation of genes.
One of the abnormalities is the presence of enzyme aromatase - which produces oestrogen - in endometriosis, the diseased tissue that exists on pelvic organs and mimics the uterine lining. Normal endometrium, located in the uterine cavity, does not contain aromatase.
Consequently, women with endometriosis have excessive oestrogen in this abnormal tissue found on surfaces of pelvic organs such as the ovaries.
Bulun found the protein SF1 that produces aromatase, which is supposed to be shut down, is active in endometriosis.
"Oestrogen is like fuel for fire in endometriosis," Bulun said. "It triggers the endometriosis and makes it grow fast."
As a result of the aromatase finding, Bulun launched clinical trials in 2004 and 2005 testing aromatase inhibitors - currently used in breast cancer treatment - for women with endometriosis.
The drug blocks oestrogen formation and secondarily improves progesterone responsiveness. "We came up with a new treatment of choice for post-menopausal women with endometriosis," Bulun said.
Moreover, treatment with an aromatase inhibitor is a very good option for premenopausal women with endometriosis not responding to existing treatments, he noted.
Bulun believes that these abnormalities result from epigenetic defects that occur very early on during embryonic development and may be the result of early exposure to environmental toxins, said a Northwestern release.
These findings were published in the January issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Why some drinkers, smokers die young and others don't

London: Two newly identified genes hold the key to why some people who indulge in smoking and boozing die young, while others continue into old age.
While smoking and drinking have been linked to many types of cancer, still some people appear to be more prone to their effects than others, and scientists have attributed this tendency to genetics.
Scientists found that the genes if present in a human being, put their carriers at an increased risk of developing five different types of cancer- skin, lung, bladder, prostate and cervical cancer.
The researchers can use the findings to identify people who are at highest risk of suffering from the potentially deadly conditions because of a combination of genetics and their unhealthy lifestyle.
According to researchers almost 25 percent around of the population have the highest risk that their unhealthy lifestyle would give them cancer.
The researchers also estimated that another quarter of the population have the lowest risk, because they do not carry these genes, reports The Telegraph.
And these people could be the ones who remain hale and hearty into old age despite smoking, drinking, using sunbeds of having a poor diet.
But, till date scientists did not know by how much these two genes could increase the overall lifetime chance of developing a form of the disease.
Tim Bishop, professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Leeds, and one of the co-authors of the paper, said that cancer was often caused by a "complex" interplay between genetic and environmental factors.
He also said that the newly identified genes might explain their relationship.
In the study, the researchers managed to isolate the genes by looking at the genetic make up of more than 33,000 cancer survivors and another 45,000 people who had never suffered from the disease.
Later, they compared the genes against their carrier's lifestyle and history of the disease.
While the genes were found to increase the chance of suffering from five types of cancer, they were not linked to an increased risk of another nine cancers for which the researchers could test, including breast cancer.
The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Six most Common Sex myths Busted

Washington: Despite creating a lot of awareness people are still sexually misinformed, and now a sex educator and relationship expert has debunked some of the myths surrounding the clandestine aspect of an individual's life.
Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright, the founder of Sexuality Source Inc, has shed light on six common sex myths, reports Fox News
First on his list was the myth that Viagra is 100 percent effective, regarding which Fulbright wrote that men bearing this notion needed to think again because a desire component is needed for males to become sexually aroused and attain erection.
The second myth debunked in the report was that the presence of a hymen is an indicator that a female is a virgin, and it is broken she has intercourse.
The expert said that this might not happen with every girl, and since girls are born with hymens of various sizes and openings, some might appear to have no hymen at all.
Fulbright also said that some girls might have their hymen stretched from activities like bicycling or horseback riding.
The next myth to have been debunked was the notion that withdrawal is the best method of birth control, regarding which Fulbright said that pregnancy could occur any time unprotected sex was had, whether or not a male had climaxed.
Thus, according to the expert, withdrawal is not recommended as a form of birth control, especially for males who are sexually inexperienced.
Another misconception on the list was that oral sex does not put people at risk for sexually transmitted diseases.
As regards thoughts that women can't get pregnant if you aren't ovulating, the expert said that it was not true.
Lastly, Fulbright debunked the myth that contraceptive pills protects against STDs. The expert said that such pills provide protection only from pregnancy, adding that it's the condom that can protect against STDs when sexually active.
Six common sex myths are:
1. Myth: Viagra is 100 Percent Effective2. Myth: A Virgin's Hymen Always Breaks3. Myth: Withdrawal = Good Birth Control4. Myth: Oral Sex is Safe Sex5. Myth: You Can't Get Pregnant if You Aren't Ovulating6. Myth: The Pill Protects Against STDs

Healthy Vaginal Tract Lining no Barrier against HIV

Washington: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can penetrate healthy vaginal tract lining during sexual intercourse. This lining had earlier been thought to be an effective barrier against the deadly virus.
"This is an unexpected and important result," said Thomas Hope, principal investigator and professor of cell and molecular biology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "We have a new understanding of how HIV can invade the female vaginal tract."
"Until now, science has really had no idea about the details of how sexual transmission of HIV actually works," Hope added. "The mechanism was all very murky."
Hope, his Northwestern colleagues, and collaborators at Tulane University discovered that interior vaginal skin is vulnerable to HIV invasion at the level where it naturally sheds and replaces skin cells, a point where the cells are not as tightly bound together.
Women and female adolescents now account for 26 percent of all new HIV cases in the US, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC).
Based on its most recent analysis of 2005 data, the CDC estimated that there were 56,300 new HIV infections that year and traced 31 percent of the total to high-risk heterosexual contact. More than half of the new cases of HIV infection worldwide are in women.
Hope expects his findings, if confirmed by future studies, will provide information to help develop microbicides and vaccines to protect against HIV.
"We urgently need new prevention strategies or therapeutics to block the entry of HIV through a woman's genital skin," Hope said. While condoms are 100 percent effective in blocking the virus, "people don't always use them for cultural and other reasons", he noted.
By labelling the HIV viruses with photo-activated fluorescent tags, Northwestern researchers were able to view the virus as it penetrated the outermost lining of the female genital tract, called the squamous epithelium, in female human tissue obtained from a hysterectomy and in animal models.
Researchers found that HIV penetrated the genital skin barrier primarily by moving quickly - in just four hours - between skin cells to reach 50 microns beneath the skin, a depth similar to the width of a human hair.
This is the depth at which some of the immune cells targeted by HIV are located. HIV penetration was more common in the outermost superficial layers of skin and likely occurred during the normal turnover and shedding of skin cells. In the shedding process, the skin cells are no longer as tightly bound together so water - and HIV - can easily enter.
"As pieces of the skin flake off, that's the loose point in the system where the virus can get in," Hope said, according to a Northwestern release.
Previously, scientists thought that the HIV invaded a woman's immune system through the single layer of skin cells that line her cervical canal. "That was always thought to be the weak point in the system," Hope said.
However, a previous trial in Africa in which women used a diaphragm to block the cervix did not reduce transmission. Nor are women who have had hysterectomies less vulnerable to contracting HIV through sex.
Hope presented his findings at the American Society for Cell Biology's 48th annual meeting in San Francisco Friday.

Study Debunks Herbal Menopause Remedy Myth

Washington: Scientists have found no strong evidence proving the efficacy of commonly taken herbal remedies in relieving troublesome menopausal symptoms.
In fact, for some of these medicines there is hardly any evidence at all, according to the researchers.
A large number of women experience vasomotor symptoms around the menopause, such as hot flushes and night sweats, prompted by the sharp fall in oestrogen levels.
Commonly used herbal remedies to relieve menopausal symptoms include black cohosh, red clover, Dong quai, evening primrose oil, and ginseng. Others include wild yam extract, chaste tree, hops, sage leaf, and kava kava.
However, according to the study, only a little good quality evidence on the effectiveness of herbal medicines, or how they might react with prescription medicines is available.
Generally speaking, safety has been under researched, which is a major concern given that herbal remedies are often assumed to be "safe" just on the grounds that they are "natural," said the authors.
Usually published studies are poorly designed, include too few participants, or don't last long enough to be of real value.
Also, the chemical make-up of various preparations of the same herb may differ, which can make it difficult to compare trial results.
The drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has given a Traditional Herbal Registration to Menoherb, which contains black cohosh, under a scheme designed to boost the safety of herbal products on sale.
However, the authors said that clinical trial data on black cohosh are "equivocal," with some studies suggesting that the remedy works well, while others suggest that it does not relieve symptoms effectively.
One of the potential side effect of black cohosh is liver toxicity.
The authors said that there is "no convincing evidence" that red clover extract is effective.
Also little evidence is there one way or another for dong quai, evening primrose oil, wild yam, chaste tree, hops, or sage.
The study, titled 'Herbal medicines for menopausal symptoms' is published in the latest issue of the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB).

How our brains work as GPS devices to bring things back in perspective

Washington: Very often people forget where they are, but luckily enough, the feeling of being disoriented doesn't last for more than a few seconds-all thanks to the mind. Now, scientists have described how our brain works as a GPS device and tells us the right direction.
The researchers have indicated that animals and young children mainly rely on geometric cues (e.g. lengths, distances, angles) to help them get reoriented.
On the other hand, human adults can also make use of feature cues (e.g. color, texture, landmarks) in their surrounding area.
However, to know which method do we use more often, scientists conducted a set of experiments investigating if human adults have a preference for using geometric or feature cues to become reoriented.
The first experiment, conducted by psychologists Kristin R. Ratliff from the University of Chicago and Nora S. Newcombe from Temple University, was set in either a large or small white, rectangular room with a landmark (a big piece of colourful fabric) hanging on one wall.
Volunteers in the study saw the researcher place a set of keys in a box in one of the corners. All of them were blindfolded and spun around, and were made disoriented. After removing the blindfold, they had to point to the corner where the keys were.
After a break, the volunteers were told the experiment would be repeated, although they wouldn't watch the researcher hide the keys. Without telling the volunteers, the researchers moved the landmark to an adjacent wall during the break.
The change forced the volunteers to use either geometric cues or feature cues, but not both, to reorient themselves and locate the keys.
In the second experiment, the researchers used a similar method, except they switched room sizes (the volunteers moved from a larger room to a smaller room and vice versa) during the break.
According to the results, the brain does not have a distinct preference for certain cues during reorientation.
In the first experiment, volunteers reoriented themselves by using geometric cues in the smaller room but used feature cues in the larger room.
However, the volunteers who went from the larger room to the smaller room in the second experiment also relied on feature cues, searching for the landmark to become reoriented.
During the second experiment, the researchers concluded that the volunteers had a positive experience using feature cues in the large room, so they kept on relying on the landmark in the smaller room to become reoriented.
The results suggested that the brain takes into account a number of factors, including the environment and our past experiences, while determining the best way to reorient us to our surroundings.
The findings were reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Ugg-style boots could cripple women

London: Chic Ugg-style boots, which cost from 50 pounds to 100 pounds, increase the risk of ankle sprains and bad posture, experts have warned.
The soft structure and heel-less sole create a breeding ground for fungi that cause foot infections, according to health researchers.
The boots are often spotted on the sexy legs of Katie Price and Coleen Rooney who like their soft sheepskin interior.
And the cherry on the icing is that, their woollen or sheepskin exteriors go with anything from skinny jeans to dresses, reports The Sun.
However, podiatrist Linda Hawkins, of Lee, South London, said: "Sheepskin boots, like other footwear without heel and sole support, are only suitable for short-term wear.
"Use all day leads to the boot structure breaking down, increasing the risk of a twisted ankle."
Pharmacist Hasan Ukra, who works in the flagship Boots store in London's Oxford Street, said: "Wearing these kind of boots could increase the risk of fungal infections due to the moist environment created.
"And I've seen a marked rise in ankle sprains due to the soft and comfortable nature of the boots."

Laughing gas' pain-relieving effect can be enhanced via hypnosis

Washington: Scientists from University College London have revealed that pain relieving effect of nitrous oxide, popularly known as laughing gas, can be enhanced by suggestions or hypnosis in dental patients.
The study showed that people are more suggestible under the influence of gas. This suggests that dental patients may benefit from being coached to relax while undergoing sedation.
A number of dentists have been trained in hypnosis and find that their patients respond well to being spoken to in a quiet, hypnotic manner.
For the study, the researchers recruited thirty participants, who took part in two sessions. They were given a mask from which they breathed in air or 25 per cent nitrous oxide. The mask was scented to disguise the sweet smell of the laughing gas.
During each session, participants were given a series of mental imagery tests and were asked to rate their response according to a scale of 1-7, where 1 was 'as clear and vivid as the real thing' and 7 was 'no image present at all'.
The participants were asked to close their eyes and imagine tasting oranges or smelling roast beef, feeling linen or hearing the honk of a car horn.
The volunteers were also put through a series of 'imaginative suggestibility' tests based on suggestions given to them while under the gas.
The participants were asked to experience hallucinated sensations.
For instance, they were told to imagine a sour taste in their mouth, and were told that after a while they would actually begin to experience a sour taste in their mouth, and that this would become stronger and stronger.
If the participant responded well to the suggestion, he/she would answer some of the questions that the hallucinated voice had asked.
The researchers found that the nitrous oxide boosted imaginative suggestibility by approximately 10 per cent.
"Many dentists use laughing gas to relieve discomfort in their patients, but our study suggests that combining the gas with instructions and suggestions to help them to relax and become absorbed in imagery, for example, might enhance the pain-relieving effect," said Dr Matthew Whalley, Honorary Research Fellow at UCL.
"Our findings are preliminary, however, so it would be helpful to do a larger scale study to confirm our results and explore the best ways in which to use and combine nitrous oxide and suggestion," he added.

C-sections best for baby when close to due date

Babies do better after a scheduled Caesarean section if they’re born no sooner than seven days before their due date, a new large study of U.S. births shows.
Those delivered earlier had more complications, including breathing problems, even though they were full term, the researchers reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. Even just a few days made a difference, they said.
The findings offer important guidance to the growing number of women who face planned C-sections. And the study supports recommendations that elective C-sections be scheduled after 39 weeks unless tests show the infant’s lungs are fully mature. Due dates are set at 40 weeks gestation and infants are full term at 37 weeks.
"Take your due date and subtract seven and any one of those seven days is fine," said one of the researchers, Dr. John Thorp, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
He delivered a healthy baby girl on Tuesday after persuading her mother to wait a few more days for a C-section, even though last week would have been more convenient for both mother and doctor.
"We bit the bullet and did it at the right time," said Thorp.
The rate of Caesarean sections in the United States is at an all-time high, accounting for about 31 percent of births. There are lots of reasons: older moms, multiple births, the threat of malpractice lawsuits, the preference of mothers and doctors and the risks of having a vaginal birth after a previous Caesarean. In 2006, a government panel urged women not to seek a C-section without a medical reason; surgery brings risks and babies born by Caesarean have a greater chance for respiratory problems.
In the new study, the researchers, led by Dr. Alan Tita of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, examined a C-section registry from 19 academic medical centers to see how many of the surgeries were being done before the recommended 39 weeks and if the timing made a difference in the risk of complications.
They focused on 13,258 women who had a single child at a planned Caesarean and who had previously given birth the same way. Excluded were cases where medical issues warranted an early or immediate delivery. The infants were followed until they left the hospital or for four months.
More than a third of the C-sections were performed before 39 weeks, the researchers found. Those delivered at 37 weeks were twice as likely to have health problems, including breathing troubles, infections, low blood sugar or the need for intensive care. Fifteen percent of those born at 37 weeks and 11 percent born at 38 weeks had complications, compared to 8 percent of the babies delivered at 39 weeks. The only death was an infant born at 39 weeks.
The biggest difference was in breathing problems, with a fourfold increase for those born at 37 weeks compared to 39 weeks. Babies born by C-section already have a higher risk of breathing trouble than those born vaginally; labor helps clear the lungs of fluid.
The risk of complications also increased for births after 41 weeks, but there were few births in that category, the researchers said.
Tita said the researchers didn’t know the reasons behind the chosen delivery dates. They speculated that some mothers might want to deliver as soon as the fetus reaches full term, or an earlier time may have been more convenient for the mother or doctor.
Dr. Michael Greene, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, noted the research showed that there’s even an increased risk of complications in the last few days before the 39th week. That’s something most doctors wouldn’t suspect, he said.
"I generally try to wait to 39 weeks, although I confess that I’m as guilty as anybody else with a busy practice and scheduling being what it is," said Greene, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal. "I really hadn’t thought much about it until now."
The study only looked at live births, and didn’t account for the small risk of the fetus dying while waiting to reach 39 weeks, Greene said. That risk has been estimated up to 1 in 1,000, he said.Thorp’s patient in Chapel Hill, Shannon Eubanks, said she was glad that she held off a few days to reach the 39-week threshold before having her daughter, Kathleen Conley Eubanks. Her first child, 2-year-old Charlie, was born by C-section.
"It was hard to wait," said Eubanks, business manager of the political science department at the university. "I was very over being pregnant and ready to get the show on the road."
And she had another reason for wanting to deliver last week.
As an accountant, "It just killed me not to have this kid in 2008" to get the tax deduction, Eubanks said hours after delivering.

Obesity linked to ovarian cancer: Study

London: A new study by researchers in the US has confirmed that obesity is linked to ovarian cancer.
In a study of almost 95,000 women, researchers found that among women aged 50 to 71, being obese increased the risk of the disease by almost 80 per cent.
A link between obesity and ovarian cancer was already known, but the new study provides confirmation of the association.
The study also highlights the way hormones play a role in the way body fat influences cancer risk.
The link was only seen in women who had never used hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after the menopause.
No link between body weight and ovarian cancer was evident among women who had been on HRT.
The new study supports the hypothesis that obesity may up ovarian cancer risk through hormonal effects.
"The observed relations between obesity and ovarian cancer risk have relevance for public health programmes aimed at reducing obesity in the population," the Independent quoted Dr Michael Leitzmann, from the US National Cancer Institute, as saying.
Researchers found that a total of 303 women in the study group developed ovarian cancer over a period of seven years. Among women who had never taken hormones after the menopause, obesity increased the risk of the disease by almost 80 per cent.
The study appears in the journal Cancer.

Scientists develop new technique to fuse cells for stem cell research

London: Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a new, highly efficient way to pair up cells so that they can be fused together into a hybrid cell.
The technique, which resulted from collaboration between Joel Voldman, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Rudolf Jaenisch, professor of biology and a member of the Whitehead Institute, might make it a lot easier for scientists to study what happens when two cells are combined.
For instance, fusing an adult cell and an embryonic stem cell may help researchers study the genetic reprogramming that occurs in such hybrids.
The scientists have developed a simple but ingenious sorting method, which can boost the rate of successful cell fusion from around 10 percent to about 50 percent.
The technique also facilitates thousands of cell pairings at once.
Voldman said that despite the presence of cell fusion techniques in research, there were many technical limitations involved in the process.
And one of the biggest hindrances was how to get the right cells to pair up before fusing them, the researcher added.
If scientists are working with a mixture of two cell types, for example A and B, they end up with many AA and BB pairings, as well as the desired AB match. Earlier, the scientists could successfully trap cells in tiny cups as they flowed across a chip. Each cup could hold only two cells, but there was no way to control whether the cups capture an A and a B, two As or two Bs.
On the other hand, the cell-trapping cups on the new sorting device are arranged strategically to capture and pair up cells of different types.
First, type A cells are flowed across the chip in one direction and caught in traps that are large enough to hold only one cell.
After the cells are trapped, liquid is flowed across the chip in the opposite direction, pushing the cells out of the small cups and into larger cups across from the small ones. Once one A cell is in each large cup, type B cells are flowed into the large cups. As each cup can only hold two cells, thus each ends up with one A and one B.
After the cells are paired in the traps, they can be joined together by an electric pulse that fuses the cell membranes.
Besides helping with studies of stem cell reprogramming, the new method could help to study interactions between any types of cells.
"It's a very general type of device," Nature magazine quoted Voldman as saying.
The study has been published in the online edition of the journal Nature Methods.

Deaf children given implants as babies can learn to speak

London: Experiments conducted by Australian researchers have shown that brain activity in deaf cats develops normally if they are fitted with a cochlear implant shortly after birth.
Rob Shephard, of the Bionic Ear Institute in Melbourne, says that this finding may explain how deaf children given implants as babies can learn to speak almost as well as hearing children.
The researcher points out that in animals with normal hearing, sound vibrates hair cells in the inner ear and thereby trigger neurons to send impulses to the brain.
However, according to him, these hair cells are often defective in deaf animals, and cochlear implants compensate by stimulating neurons directly.
With a view to finding out how this artificial stimulation affects the brain, Shephard and his colleagues recorded electrical activity in the cortex of 17 8-month-old cats that were deaf from birth.
The researchers activated each cat's cochlear implant while monitoring their brains, reports New Scientist magazine.
They said that 10 of the cats had received the implant relatively recently, and their electrical activity was "completely scrambled", indicating that they did not perceive sound coherently: normal cortex activity is key to perceiving sound and, in humans, to developing speech.
However, in the seven cats that received implants at 8 weeks old, brain activity was similar to that in hearing cats.
A research article in the Journal of Comparative Neurology highlights the fact that some deaf people consider it to be unethical to operate on deaf babies, who would otherwise learn sign language.
But neurologist Jim Pickles, of the University of Queensland, says the latest work "increases the weight of evidence to implant children early".

Patterns of brain activity can help predict anxiety treatment success

Washington: American psychologists say that a network of emotion-regulating brain regions, implicated in the pathological worry that can grip patients with anxiety disorders, may also be used to predict whether a patient would benefit from treatment or not.
Jack Nitschke, assistant professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, says that high levels of brain activity in an emotional centre called the amygdala reflect patients' hypersensitivity to anticipation of adverse events.
At the same time, he adds, high activity in a regulatory region known as the anterior cingulate cortex is associated with a positive clinical response to a common antidepressant medication.
In a research article in the online edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, the lead author writes that for individuals with anxiety disorders, the anticipation of a bad outcome can be worse than the outcome itself.
He points out that some people spend so much time worrying about getting into a negative situation or having a panic attack that the condition becomes debilitating.
"In an extreme situation, they might not even leave their home," he says.
With a view to finding out how the brain responds to anticipation, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) as they viewed a set of negative and neutral images.
The subjects were shown pre-image cues several seconds before each picture, so that they would know what to expect: a circle before a neutral image and a minus sign before an aversive image.
The researchers observed that GAD patients, though did not show any difference compared to healthy subjects in brain activation in response to the aversive or neutral pictures themselves, displayed unusually high levels of amygdala activity in response to both anticipatory cues.
Nitschke said that the response suggested that the patients were hypersensitive to the anticipation of any stimuli, even those they were told would not be negative.
"In response to both of those anticipatory signals, the GAD subjects - the anxious folks - are showing huge amounts of amygdala activation that is much more than what healthy control subjects showed," he said.
He further said that the high levels of amygdala activity seen in GAD patients reflected an indiscriminate and disproportionately large response to the idea that something negative might happen in the future, even in a lab setting where they knew nothing bad would actually occur.
"It suggests that there are differences in anticipatory brain processing in these individuals," he says, adding that the result has important implications for other related disorders as well.
"That's the crux of what's debilitating in people with anxiety disorders, whether it's panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder," the researcher said.
Nitschke said that the patterns of brain activity also seemed to hold predictive power for how patients would respond to treatment for their anxiety.
After brain scanning, the GAD patient participating in the study were administered an eight-week course of treatment with a common antidepressant called venlafaxine (Effexor).
The researchers said that clinical improvement on the medication was associated with higher levels of pre-treatment brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in anticipation of both aversive and neutral stimuli.
They said that activity in the ACC, a regulatory brain region important for modulating emotional responses, has been shown to predict clinical outcome in patients with depression.
"When you look within the GAD patient population, that area is what predicts whether they respond to this treatment. What it suggests is that people who still have some residual functioning of that area are the people who are more likely to get better (with this drug)," says Nitschke.
Since anxiety disorders encompass a range of conditions with diverse symptoms and causes, Nitschke says, it becomes very important to select the most appropriate treatment approach for an individual patient.
Highlighting the fact that anxiety disorders are also frequently associated with depression, Nitschke's team revealed that they were planning to examine GAD patients with and without major depressive disorder.
"This is a critical new direction that the field is already moving in - using fMRI to predict treatment response. Hopefully we'll be able to use that eventually to determine what kind of treatment to provide to people," he said.