News and Articles on Health. Medical research topics.

The impact of influenza can only be reduced through a vaccine. Today, the U.S. has only approved the use of inactivated influenza virus vaccines, and to be effective, these have to contain an H1N1, and H3N2, and a B virus component. In the past, at least one of these components had to be modified due to antigenic drift of the strain circulating the human population.

Vaccines are prepared by growing viral strains in embryonated eggs, and then the virus is purified and turned noninfectious through chemical inactivation. The influenza vaccines available today are effective depending on the antigenic ‘match’ of the circulating viruses with the strains used for vaccination, the person’s age, and his or her immune status.

Here’s what is expected in the future; ask your pharmaceutical consultant for further details:

• Cold-adapted influenza virus vaccine

This type of live vaccine has been used successfully in Russia to protect millions of children. The U.S. has been trying to develop such a vaccine for over 20 years, but the license has not been approved yet.

There are several important advantages here:

1. Live-virus vaccines can be administered through nasal spray, which is easier and less costly than the intramuscular option.

2. These can induce local neutralizing immunity and cell mediated immune responses, which could result in a longer-lasting and better cross-protective immunity.

3. Overall protection may improve for certain age groups, for example, kids 6 months to 9 years of age, with evidence of a massive reduction in secondary bacterial infections causing otitis media.

The more live influenza virus vaccines are used, the more benefits, risks, and economic consequences of this approach will be known.

• Genetically engineered live influenza virus vaccines

The introduction of techniques to engineer site-specific changes in the genomes of negative-strand RNA viruses has allowed the consideration of new vaccine approaches. It is possible now to create strains with unique properties that lead to reduction.

• Live influenza virus vaccine candidates expressing altered NS1 genes

Now it is possible to rescue influenza virus vaccine candidates from cells transfected with plasmids. This allows for the engineering of deletions in genomes of influenza viruses for better stability.

• Use of replication-defective influenza viruses as vaccine candidates

This is a promising approach, the construction of virus particles that undergo only a single cycle of replication. These induce a protective antibody response and stimulate a strong cell-mediated immune response without allowing the replication of infectious virus.

• DNA vaccination

This involves the administration of plasmid DNA encoding one or more of the influenza virus proteins. Studies have been limited to animal samples with very promising results; however, this type of vaccine may be better for diseases like AIDS. Further studies may present a universal approach to generating protective humoral and cell-mediated responses to different foreign antigens, resulting in the development of effective vaccines.

• New adjuvant approaches

Current influenza virus vaccines are administered by intramuscular injection. To improve their immunogenicity, liposome-like preparations have been developed, which contain cholesterol and viral particles that are very effective in mice when delivered subcutaneously or in intranasal form. More tests are needed to confirm how it will work in humans.

• Universal vaccine

This has been the focus of increased attention due to the current necessity to develop a new vaccine every year given the influenza virus’ continuous antigenic change. Even though some virus components are more conserved than others, a good approach to a universal vaccine based on these conserved elements is still pending, because these are minor antigens, and thus, are less immunogenic and less likely to create a protective response.

Using supplements (for example St Johns Wort) is one way of alleviating the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (“SAD”). It is not the whole story and some people are unhappy about taking supplements. St Johns Wort in particular can cause problems if taken in conjunction with some prescription medications (particularly for heart conditions), and medical practitoners advise against it in such circumstances.

There are numerous ways to avoid supplements in addressing the symptoms of SAD:

Specific Foods

Several foods are especially helpful in stimulating directly or indirectly, the levels of seratonin, norepinephrine, GABA, acetylcholine and other neurotransmitters in the brain. These foods include carbohydrates, brown rice, cottage cheese, peanuts, pumpkin and sesame seeds, fish and algae, wheatgerm and wheat bran, eggs, turkey, ham, milk, cheese, and green vegetables (especially leafy greens).

These are all part of a normal balanced diet anyway, but you may consider how balanced your diet actually is, and adjust it to help with the winter blues.

Therapy Ideas

Light

Light therapy – natural and artificial – is often suggested as a cure for SAD. Obtaining extra sunlight on those relatively sunny winter days is not always easy (unless you live in high mountains with lots of snow refelction). A daylight box can help with that. The light need to be close to that of the sun in ‘colour temperature’. You should look for one with a colour temperature of about 5500 to 6500 degrees K – it should be quoted in sales literature.

When at home, position your chair so that it faces a south facing window if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, vice versa in the Southern Hemisphere.

Winter Holidays

Try to escape for a winter sunshine holiday. This can be of major help. It gives you something to look forward to and plan. Try to avoid too much east-west travel though, as the cause of jet lag is closely linked to those of SAD. If you live in Europe, the Canaries is a good destination, or even South Africa. For those in the US you have the Caribbean, Central America and Brazil. Aim for the Tropics.

Exercise

Besides its obvious benefits to heart and lungs, exercise releases endorphins in the brain, a feel-good chemical. Cycling, walking and running get you out of doors and into the daylight. Maybe some light stretching exercises in the morning before breakfast to get the circulation going.

Music and Dancing

Build a list of music which cheers you up and play your list regularly. It’s easy with tools such as Spotify to build a happy playlist. If it makes you want to dance, so much the better – that’s exercise too. I love Brazilian music and play my list regularly.

Laughter

It’s very therapeutic to laugh, especially to enjoy a good belly laugh with other people – it is infectious. Do you have any DVDs that make you laugh? Play them whilst you are doing something else at the time you can hear the soundtrack and laugh – it will release endorphins in the brain – more ‘feelgood’. Buy a set of your favourite comedy series, and play them regularly. I keep a joke book handy, and of course, friends send me ‘funnies’ in emails which I always open and usually forward.

Cut Down on Alcohol

This is not a popular idea, but it does help. Alcohol is a depressant, and it is a good idea to reduce your intake during the SAD season. It will help improve you shape too and that will make you feel better about yourself.

Daily Life – Keep Busy

Thoughts can turn inward if you have too much time on your hands – not always a good thing if you spend a lot of time on your own. So, keep yourself busy, and try to build extra socialising into your week – maybe join a dance or exercise class, go to a comedy club and laugh.

These are a just a few of the ideas that I use in managing my own condition. It is not always easy to jump out of bed in the morning and start working out, I know. Try to plan five of these items into every day, and then feel good about yourself if you achieve three of them.

Don’t forget to check that your diet is in balance. Too much pizza? Next time, pick a Pizza Capricciosa – anchovy and eggs – that’s a real tonic!

So you have just being diagnosed with prostate cancer and you think it’s the end for you? If yes, you are absolutely wrong. It might have been the end for you several years ago, but not today when so many people are now surviving the condition all over the world. This article explains why prostate cancer is no longer a killer disease and reveals what you can do to ensure you are among the many survivors of the condition.

You see, the major reason lots of people died from this condition in the past had to do with the fact that medical science hadn’t advanced as far as it has today. Apart from the treatment, even diagnosis was not as easy in the past as it is nowadays. Today, with the many highly effective ways of testing for and treating prostate cancer, there are now lots more survivors than was the case several years ago.

Instead of thinking your world has come to an end because of this condition, you should be positive and committed to finding a solution. Talk to your doctors for the best treatment option available to you. Don’t rush into going for surgery until and unless that’s the best and most effective solution available to you. Also, it’s important for you to do your own research into the different treatments available so that you can have a firmer understanding of what is best for you or not.

In all, you should be strong willed and determined to survive the condition, despite your diagnosis. I have heard that some people who have died from the condition died not just because of the cancerous tumors but because they had lost all hopes deep within them. You see, I believe strongly that no matter how powerful any drug or treatment is for cancer, if you don’t have the confidence and commitment to survive, it won’t help.

As you have seen from this article, diagnosis of prostate cancer or even any other cancer for that matter doesn’t translate to an automatic death sentence. Lots of people have survived and continue to survive cancer. If such people can survive, you can as well.

Within the dermis are three kinds of glands: The eccrine sweat glands, the apocrine sweat glands and the sebaceous or oil glands. The sebaceous glands open into the hair follicles, and together these form the pilosebaceous apparatus. Although apocrine gland ducts sometimes open directly into the epidermis, most of them also open into the hair follicle. Eccrine sweat glands develop independently of hair follicles and their ducts lead directly into the dermis.

There are more eccrine sweat glands in man than in other animal, about three million total. They are most dense on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, and then, in decreasing order, in the forehead, cheeks, trunk, arms and legs. Their small openings are invisible.

The eccrine sweat glands, along with the dermal blood vessels, play a vital role in regulating body temperature. When the body is hot, the eccrine glands release a thin, watery solution – sweat – onto the skin surface, which evaporates and cools the skin. The coiled lower portion of an eccrine sweat gland, which lies in the dermis, is the part that secretes fluid. Making its way like a corkscrew thorough the epidermis, the upper end opens onto the skin surface.

Working at maximum exertion on a very hot day, you may produce more than two quarts of sweat in an hour. People who lack normally developed sweat glands are vulnerable to heat stroke. We perspire for other reasons besides heat, the most important of which is emotional stress – pain, anxiety, fear, anger. Sweat caused by such stress occurs mainly on the palms, soles and armpits. Eating spicy foods also makes some people’s faces sweat, a phenomenon known as “gustatory sweating.”

The apocrine glands are formed before birth and appear just above the budding sebaceous glands as outgrowths of the hair follicles. They are present over the entire surface of the body at birth. Most of them disappear later, however, remaining only in certain areas: under the arms, around the nipples and in the lower abdomen and genital regions. The glands are small until puberty, when they enlarge and begin to secrete. They shrink again as the body ages.

The apocrine glands are distributed over the entire bodies of such lower mammals as rats and mice, and function as scent glands for sexual attraction and protection. Apocrine glands apparently perform no useful function in humans; they may even serve as sites of disease and are the source of unpleasant body odor. Mexican pharmacy viagra. Fresh sweat is odorless; the odor results from the decomposition of sweat by bacteria present in apocrine glands.

Sebaceous or oil glands grow from the hair follicles. They are in plentiful supply over the entire body surface except for the soles and backs of the feet and the palms of the hands. The largest and greatest number are on the face, scalp, upper chest and back.

Sebaceous glands produce and secrete sebum, a semi liquid mixture of lipid (fat) and cellular debris. Sebum spreads over the surface of the hair and outer layer of the skin and acts as a natural lubricant that locks moisture into the skin. Sebaceous glands have the reputation of being the sites where acne develops.

Sebum production depends on the presence of male hormones called androgens. The sebaceous glands of newborns are active because of androgens they receive from the mother through the placenta. Shortly after birth, those glands stop functioning and remain at rest until puberty. During and after puberty, the testes in males and the ovaries and adrenal glands in females secrete androgens.

How your skin functions efficiently and smoothly depends on many factors of your health: diet, physical condition and emotional well – being. It’s all part of the same system

Locking up or staying in your room alone for hours? Crying for no particular reason at all? You may not realize it but these are just some signs of depression. Yes dear, you or your friend may be depressed. So how does one deal with depression? First allow me to explain depression.

Depression is extremely common. It affects 1 out of 8 people and especially teenagers. Depression affects everyone but affects a large number of females. A simple explanation of it would be: If the body gets sick because it was overworked then depression is a sickness because of the brains’ over exertion.

Yet even knowing this, people tend to think that an individual with depression is merely malingering or acting immature and that they yell at them thinking this would encourage them and stop the sulking behavior. Basically, the idea of shaking things off may help but not when it comes to people dealing with depression. Depressed individuals should get all the support that they need from their family and friends. Offering an ear or having the time to sit and talk with a depressed individual greatly helps individuals dealing with depression. If however the depressed person does not take the time to talk to family members or friends then it would be best to refer that person to a therapist or counselor.

In some cases, even the person experiencing depression denies that they are depressed and refuses to seek help. Some even think that this is some form of weakness and that they do not need help or instead have to face this problem alone which is utterly wrong. Every one needs help and that includes individuals experiencing depression.

So exactly why do people get depressed? With all the studies and research being conducted, the exact cause of depression still has not been found. A lot of factors have been linked to depression, namely: environment, genetics, medical conditions, and life events.

Depression is classified into two: severe (short lasting major depression) and less severe (dysthymia) depression. There is also a third type called adjustment disorder with depressed mood which occurs when an individual takes longer than usual to adjust to a certain event in his or her life to the point that it interferes with his or her daily activities. Another depressive condition is known as Bipolar disorder. This condition is mixed with episodes of mania characterized by extreme bursts of energy or an abnormally high level of mood.

The symptoms of depressed individuals are as follows: sadness or a depressed mood all the time, inability to enjoy things that were used to be enjoyable, lassitude or lethargic, socially withdrawn, anxiety, inappropriate feelings of guilt, aches with no medical cause, a noticeable change in daily routine, pessimism and thoughts of suicide. Now if you notice five or more of these symptoms in yourself or someone you know then you are certainly depressed or suffering from depression.

Even if you do find out you’ve got depression do not lose hope for this condition is treatable. Therapists are there to guide and help you to recover from this condition. Treatment includes medication or talk therapy. A combination of both is done as well.

It is important that if you know someone who’s depressed or find out that you are depressed you do need to seek help immediately. Thinking that you are alone will not help you at all and would only make things worse. Everyone in times of need should ask for help and it isn’t a weakness to be feeling depressed in the first place.

Believe it or not, there is a hepatitis b treatment. It’s based on enabling your body to fight off the disease. Hepatitis b is a viral disease, which means we cannot fight it directly, and kill the viruses. But we can enable the body to do just that. Read on to learn more on the subject!

The main research on the hepatitis b treatment is done in Australia, where scientists have been working on a cure for years. What’s strange about this disease is that almost all people some time in their life, come in contact with the hepatitis b virus. But only a small percentage of those people actually develop the disease. And that’s what the research is based on – how can we enable a body of a person who is sick, to fight off the virus, by the same way, the immune system of someone else would fight it. After years of research, the scientists have been able to discover a cure, and it’s very simple, and anyone can easily apply it.

The medical industry hasn’t yet introduced the new hepatitis b treatment as an official method, and that’s for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they claim they need more time to test it. That’s understandable, although the treatment cannot possibly have any side effects, as it’s natural. But still, some drug companies have begun to manufacture herbal tablets. The truth is, probably a lot of people are currently on the hepatitis medication, which offers no cure to the disease, but instead relieves the symptoms, and also – slows down the multiplication of the hepatitis b virus.

Why would the medical industry want to introduce some kind of a hepatitis b treatment, which only would have to be taken a few days, and gets rid of the disease, when they can keep you on the other drug for months, probably even years?

The flu: Many of us don’t realise just how big an impact it has on our daily lives. Every year, 1.5 million days of work are missed in Australia alone due to the flu. Indeed, workplaces across the country feel the pinch all the time as employees become ill with influenza; more than likely, you’ve been one of them. Below, you can learn a bit more about how the flu affects the workplace – and how flu vaccinations can help.

The Flu: A Significant Cause Of Sick Days:

Calling in sick for work can have major repercussions on the entire office. Not only do you have a lot of work to make up when you return, but those who remain during your absence must ignore some of their own duties to handle yours. Ten to twelve percent of sick days are caused by the flu, so it’s not surprising that employers are becoming more and more eager to provide the flu vaccination to their employees. If sick days could be cut by a decent percentage, workplaces all around Australia would notice a definite surge in productivity.

Working Ability Suffers When The Flu Strikes:

Many people try to soldier on when they come down with the flu, coming into work even though they are ill. If the flu is mild enough, this might seem reasonable; however, you are probably still contagious and your working ability is compromised. In turn, your productivity and overall capabilities are lessened by a considerable margin. In other words, you’ll not only be spreading the flu to your co-workers, but your output will be much less than it normally would be.  All in all, coming in to work while ill is not a smart move. Since a single sneeze travels at approximately 167 kph – and travels about five metres every 1/10th of a second – it’s easy to see why the flu spreads from employee to employee at such lightning fast speeds.

Reduce Sick Leave, Absenteeism and Diminished Work Abilities With The Flu Vaccine:

Workplace flu vaccine events are becoming more and more popular; if your workplace hasn’t held one yet, it probably will soon. By encouraging employees to receive the flu vaccine, employers can dramatically reduce the number of sick days that they usually incur. In turn, fellow employees won’t be burdened with sick employees’ work as frequently and productivity will remain at an even keel. Fewer employees will show up to work while under the weather, too, which means that more things will get accomplished in a reasonable and effective manner. All around, flu vaccinations are an excellent way to improve the workplace; if you haven’t received yours this year yet, then make sure you do soon.