A Top 10 List To Die For

September 13, 2013 by

Sept. 13, 2013

By Medical Discovery News

How are you going to die?

The Centers for Disease Control would answer that life expectancy depends greatly on where someone lives. Life expectancy in the United States ranks 40th in the world with 77.97 years.That addresses when someone might die but what about how? Most likely, it will be from one of these top 10 causes, based on how many Americans they kill each year.

10) Suicide – 38,285. Many factors are now known to influence suicide: mental illnesses, genetics, certain pharmaceuticals, traumatic brain injuries, drug and alcohol abuse, and chemical or hormonal imbalances. To decrease these rates, education about the signs preceding suicide and accessible treatment is necessary.

9) Kidney Disorders – 45,731. Although dialysis can help people survive a little longer without a kidney, it is no cure. Kidney damage can occur from infection, high blood pressure, or toxic reactions to drugs, leading to chronic kidney disease that affects more than 26 million Americans.

8) Influenza and Pneumonia – 53,667. Both these diseases mostly affect the very old, very young, or those with immune system problems. This figure could be lowered with vaccinations.

7) Diabetes – 73,282. The rate of diabetes is increasing, with one in 500 children being diagnosed, corresponding to trends in obesity, diet, exercise, and aging. Lifestyle changes could decrease diabetes rates.

6) Alzheimer’s – 84,691. This form of dementia affects older adults, mostly over 60, and is caused by the build-up of beta-amyloid protein plaques in the brain. There is currently no cure.

5) Accidents – 122,777. The leading cause of accidental deaths depends on age. For children and young adults it’s car accidents, adults over 35 are most likely to accidentally overdose on drugs, and for those over 65 it’s most likely to be related to a fall.

4) Stroke – 128,931. A stroke occurs when an area of the brain does not receive oxygen due to a ruptured or blocked blood vessel. Those with high blood pressure, diabetics, smokers, and alcoholics are at the highest risk. The good news is that deaths from strokes decreased by almost 45 percent in 10 years but still leads to more than 250,000 hospitalizations yearly.

3) Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases – 143,382. These diseases of the lungs and airways include bronchitis and emphysema, although the latter kills 20 times more than the former. Smoking is the leading cause of this condition.

2) Cancer – 575,313. Lung, colon, breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancers have the most victims out of more than 200 different types affecting more than 60 different organs. Another piece of good news is that five-year survival rates have increased about 15 percent since the 1970s.

1) Heart Disease – 596,339. Advances in science have improved care, reducing these deaths by 18 percent in 10 years. However, as 25 percent of adults have high blood pressure, 67 percent are overweight, and 20 percent smoke, Americans have plenty of risk factors to improve on.

The United States has maintained its leadership role in biomedical science and needs to continue this in the future. Support biomedical research – your life may depend on that next scientific advance.

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Aging But Still Protected

June 14, 2013 by

June 14, 2013

By Medical Discovery News

The people who are at the highest risk of dying from common infections like pneumonia, influenza, and colds are 50 and older. Traditionally, scientists believed that as we age, our immune systems weaken, leaving us more vulnerable than ever to infections. But new research suggests that this isn’t completely true – certain parts of the immune system remain fully functional and robust longer.

It is true that older people make fewer antibodies, proteins that attach to viruses and cells infected with viruses to mark them for elimination by the immune system. This explains why some vaccines aren’t as effective in the elderly. The flu vaccine, for example, contains a “dead” virus that stimulates the body to make more protective antibodies against the flu.

However, other vaccines are well-received in older people, like the varicella zoster virus vaccine that prevents shingles. This vaccine does not involve antibodies, but T-cells, which kill infected cells, and memory T-cells, which recognize and respond to a reinfection.

White blood cells, formally called leukocytes, represent an army ready to defend the body from bacterial or viral attacks. T-cells are one type of soldier in this army, responsible for cellular immunity – killing infected cells to protect the body. The thymus, located between the breast bone and heart, produces T-cells. But as people age, the thymus does too.

The thymus shrinks by about 3 percent a year during middle age, and there is a corresponding fall in the production of T-cells. As humans age, their T-cells increasingly become memory cells. Therefore, it’s been assumed that the T-cell response to kill cells infected with a virus is impaired in older adults, making them more susceptible to viral infections.

To test that assumption, researchers at the McMaster Immunology Research Centre in Ontario isolated blood from people with one of three types of viral infections: West Nile Virus, Epstein-Barr Virus, and Cytomegalovirus. They divided the patients into three groups: those under 40, those middle-aged (41 – 59), and those over 60. They then measured the amount, type, and activity of the T-cells in each group. The older group did indeed have a shift toward the production of memory T-cells. But surprisingly, the amount of virus-specific T-cells did not decrease with age – the older group had roughly the same amount as the middle and younger groups.

These results suggest that the thymus continues to play an important role in producing T-cells that target viral infections as we age. It also indicates that vaccines designed to stimulate cellular immunity, instead of antibodies, would be more effective in older people. So the flu vaccine might prevent more flu cases in older people if the dead virus was replaced with a live but weakened virus, but currently that’s not approved in the U.S. for people over 50.

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When An Epidemic Becomes a Pandemic

August 2, 2012 by

By Medical Discovery News

July 7, 2012

For at least thousands of years, people have suffered flu epidemics and pandemics.  In 412 B.C., Hippocrates described what was likely an influenza epidemic in Ancient Greece. The term influenza comes from 15th century Italy, when people believed stars influenced the illness because it always came in cycles. Soon after, in 1580, the first clear account of a flu pandemic was written. From that point on, records show flu pandemics have been recurring every one to three decades somewhere in the world.

So what is the difference between an epidemic and pandemic? Flu epidemics occur every year because each year the virus comes back just slightly different. In a flu pandemic, a much larger geographic area is affected, sometimes worldwide, when a new strain of the virus infects people for the first time and everyone is susceptible.

The World Health Organization has defined three phases of pandemics. The first, or earliest, is called the Inter-Pandemic period. During this time, no new influenza viruses are detected in humans, but new flu viruses could be circulating in animal populations.

The next level is the Pandemic Alert period. Here, the flu virus is infecting humans but is either incapable or has limited ability for human-to-human transmission. The last is the Pandemic period where there’s widespread and rapid transmission in human populations.

The potential for a flu virus to be capable of causing pandemics lays in its ability to infect many different species including horses, pigs, and birds. As various strains of the flu virus spread from species to species, multiple viruses can infect the same animal, allowing the viruses to exchange genetic information and create a new virus. Once it can infect and efficiently transmit between humans, a pandemic starts.

The annual flu epidemic sickens 20 percent of America’s population and kills 40,000 people, creating a $10 billion loss in productivity and medical costs. Imagine the cost of a pandemic.  The largest recorded was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed 675,000 people in America and 20 to 40 million people worldwide.

Today, health officials worry about avian flu (H5N1) and whether, or more likely when, this flu strain will start a new pandemic. The H5N1 virus was first recognized in Hong Kong in 1997.  Since then it has spread extensively throughout Asia and can now be found in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. The virus is in the Pandemic Alert period with no means yet for extensive human-to-human transmission. As of spring 2012, approximately 600 people have been diagnosed with H5N1 and the mortality rate is an alarming 60 percent.

In order to understand how this virus may attain efficient transmission between people, American and Dutch scientists created a transmissible H5N1 in the lab. The controversial study could help other scientists create a vaccine for when an avian flu pandemic occurs. But others fear this research could provide a “blueprint” for terrorists to create a potential biological weapon.

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