Features

Hot & Cold for Stroke !

Bottle Feeding Risk

Telomerase Detect Cancer !

Candy for Teeth !

Kidney Test & Death Risk

Good Bacteria !

New Products of SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

EDITORIAL TEAM

OMAR AKRAMUR RAB

MBBS, FCGP, FIAGP, FRSH (UK)

P G Dip. Business Management

LATIFA NISHAT, MBBS

MAHFUZUR RAHMAN, MBBS

MAHBUBUR RAHMAN, MBBS

EDITORIAL

Dear Doctor:

Welcome to this edition of 'e-SQUARE' healthcare online !

Our current issue focused on some interesting features like "Hot & Cold for Stroke, Bottle Feeding Risk, Telomerase Detect Cancer , Candy for Teeth, Kidney Test & Death Risk, Good Bacteria".

In our regular feature, we have some new products information of SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd. as well.

Please send us your feedback !

Click on to reply mode.

Yours sincerely,

Editorial Team

Reply Mode      : e-square@squaregroup.com

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of its editor or SQUARE PHARMACEUTICALS LTD.

Hot and Cold Therapy for Stroke

Researchers from Taiwan studied 46 people treated for acute stroke. Some patients received standard rehabilitation, while others received rehabilitation in addition to thermal stimulation. Thermal stimulation is a common treatment sometimes used to treat muscle spasticity or pain in stroke patients. It's rarely used, however, for neurorehabilitation. Lead researcher says that they used heat and cold for several reasons. They induce different sensations in stroke survivors, elicit reflexive or voluntary motor responses, and finally, they can prevent the skin from adapting to a single agent. In the study, a hot/cold session consisted of two alternating cycles performed five days a week for six weeks. The sessions lasted between 20 minutes and 30 minutes. Thermal packs were wrapped in towels, and applied to the patient's hand and wrist. The hot pack was 167 degrees Fahrenheit, while the cold pack was just below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Results of the study show after six weeks people receiving the thermal stimulation had significantly better recovery rates on four of six measures studied. Author of the study says that the results indicate that thermal stimulation is a good, useful and convenient technique to speed the sensory-motor function of upper limbs following stroke. It provides therapists an alternate choice to other techniques in clinical neurorehabilitation.

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Prolonged Bottle-Feeding & Risk of Iron Deficiency

Researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin studied more than 2,100 children between ages 1 and 3. Among the children in the study, 6 percent of whites were iron-deficient, 8 percent of blacks were iron-deficient, and 17 percent of Mexican Americans were iron-deficient. When looking at what might be linked to iron deficiency, researchers found the longer children were bottle-fed, the higher their risk was of being iron-deficient. Mexican-American children were more likely to be bottle-fed for longer periods of time. They also had the highest rate of iron deficiency. Nearly 37 percent of Mexican-American kids between 2 and 3 were still being bottle-fed. That was compared to 16.9 percent of whites and 13.8 percent of blacks the same age. Nearly 500,000 children in the United States are iron-deficient. Toddlers who are bottle-fed consume large volumes of non-iron-fortified milk, according to lead researcher. This results in gastrointestinal blood loss together with a displacement of iron-rich foods from the diet. Iron-deficiency anemia in kids is linked to behavioral and cognitive delays.

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Urine Test for Bladder Cancer

The researchers from the Morgagni-Pierantoni Hospital in Italy studied a new test to detect "telomerase" activity in the urine. The study included 84 healthy men and 134 men with diagnosed bladder cancer. "Telomerase" activity in the urine of the men was detected with a highly sensitive test. Results of the study show the test had 90 percent sensitivity and 88 percent specificity. Specificity increased to 94 percent for men younger than 75. The sensitivity of the test in detecting bladder cancer was similar in patients with different stages of cancer. This was key, since current tests are not reliable at picking up early forms of the disease. Study authors say that the test they developed requires a small amount of urine; is noninvasive, inexpensive, and easy to perform. Indeed, one important advantage of this test is its proven ability to also identify low-grade tumors, which often escape detection.  Researchers say the test is not recommended for routine screening in all individuals because of the low incidence of bladder cancer. But they do say it should be used in people who are at high risk. Researchers also say that specifically, smokers have about a three-fold increased risk of developing bladder cancer compared with nonsmokers.

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"Candy" Good for Teeth

Researchers at the Stony Brook University's School of Dental Medicine have developed a new technology that can be incorporated into candy and confections and will not promote cavity formation in teeth. The researchers found that this new technology, which has been named "CaviStat", is more effective than fluoride in preventing the formation of cavities and tooth decay. This conclusion was arrived at after testing it out in a two-year toothpaste study involving 726 patients. "CaviStat" can be considered to be a super-saliva complex that picks up where fluoride has left off, said the lead researcher and Founding Chair of the Department of Oral Biology and Pathology.  "CaviStat" was created to mimic the effects of the anti-acid, buffering and re-mineralizing features normally found in the saliva.

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Kidney Test Predicts Death Risk

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, assessed a new indicator of kidney function -- called "cystatin C" -- in more than 3,000 people ages 70 to 79. Researchers evaluated "cystatin C" levels as a way to predict the risk of death over a six-year follow up period. Results of the study show the higher the "cystatin C" level, the higher the risk of death. The risk of death was 1.7 percent a year for people with the lowest "cystatin C" levels, while it was 5.4 percent per year for the people with the highest levels. Even after adjusting for the presence of other diseases and risk factors, the risk of death was more than twice as high among people with the highest "cystatin C" levels as compared to those with the lowest levels. The risk was similar between men and women and between blacks and whites. Researchers say "cystatin C" levels were a significant predictor of death from heart disease, but were not linked to the risk of death from cancer. In older people, reduced kidney function is linked to a decreased life expectancy. "Cystatin C" is a fairly new kidney function indicator that seems to be a better predictor of kidney function than the standard test used. The standard test for kidney function is the serum creatinine level. Results from a creatinine test, however, can be influenced by everything from age and weight to sex and race. The "cystatin C" level test is not affected by those factors. Researchers say it may also be more sensitive in detecting small changes in kidney function. Authors of the study conclude, "Cystatin C is a strong, independent risk factor for mortality in the elderly.

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'Good' Bacteria for Colds

During the past few years, interest in the health benefits of probiotics or so-called "good" bacteria has grown. Found in certain yogurts and in supplement form, probiotics are increasingly used to treat diarrhea and other gastrointestinal ailments. Now a new study suggests that they may also help prevent respiratory infections like the common cold. Researchers in Sweden compared workers who took the probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus reuteri every day with those who didn't. The workers who took the probiotic had less than half the sick leave of workers who didn't. There are more than 400 species of bacteria in the human digestive tract, and it is commonly believed that at least some of these help prevent illness by keeping sickness-causing bacteria from  flourishing. The newly published study from Sweden included 181 factory workers who consumed a drink containing L. reuteri or a drink without the probiotic for 80 days. Twenty-three of the 87 workers in the placebo group reported taking sick days during the study, compared with only 10 of the 94 workers who took the L. reuteri. The difference was most dramatic among 53 shift workers: none of the 26 shift workers in the L. reuteri group reported taking any sick leave, compared with nine out of 27 shift workers in the placebo group.

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Indapamide BP