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Tinnitus cause found

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
October 10, 2009

Tinnitus is a condition where the patient reports hearing sounds in one or both ears but there is no external source.

Doctors previously thought that tinnitus was generated by ear problems. However following claims by US doctors that it is possible to pinpoint the area of the brain activated when patients suffer from tinnitus it is now widely accepted that the sounds are generated in the brain. The breakthrough was made by at team at Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit who used a special scanner to map the locations in the brain.

The scan is called magnetoencephalography (MEG) and it measures the very small magnetic fields generated by intracellular electrical currents in the neuron cells in the brain.

They played various sounds until the patients agreed that that was the sound they experienced and then scanned their brains while the sound was played.

Here are just a few interesting facts about tinnitus:

  • There are approximately 2.3 million sufferers in the UK with moderate or severe tinnitus
  • Tinnitus noise can beat in time with your pulse
  • Most people experience brief periods of tinnitus after long exposure to loud noise

The results for the MEG imaging showed that those who only experienced tinnitus in one ear the greatest amount of activity was in the auditory cortex on the opposite side of the brain. However those with tinnitus in both ears brain activity was in both sides of the brain, with greater activity appearing in the opposite side of the brain to the ear with the strongest perception of tinnitus. Another part of the brain that was showing high levels of activity on these scans was the lmbic system that governs how we react to things.

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Banks recovering?

Filed Under: Uncategorized by Kirsty — Leave a comment
October 9, 2009

It seems that financial firms could be recovering as a survey has shown that business volumes are growing for the first time in two years. In 3 months a 7% increase was reported. However some areas are still weak, which suggests that the recovery is going to be a long one.

Head of financial services consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Andrew Gray says: “For the first time since June 2007, banks are experiencing an upswing in confidence, confidence is, in part, offset by concerns of further impairments and the impact of ‘tougher’ regulation.”

The UK’s five largest banks recently accepted curbs on bonuses agreed by G20 leaders at the recent Pittsburgh summit, and stronger rules on overall banking are likely to follow. Building societies were feeling downbeat about their prospects, partly because of difficulties with funding. However the satabilisation in the housing market did cause some cautious cheer.

It would seem that the main institutions are looking positive but for the average person, there is still a long way to go. It is hoped that a valuable lesson has been learnt from this financial crisis, and that is to only borrow what you can afford and for financial providers to only lend what they can afford and not to go mad in order to line some beurocrat’s pocket.

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Child Swine Flu Jabs Trials

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
October 9, 2009

On Saturday 26th September a trial began involving 1,000 children to test two swine flu vaccines before the launch of a UK vaccination. The information is limited but the trial will allow the experts to observe immune reactions and any side effects which may occur.

The children participating in this trial are aged between six months and 12 years from Oxford, Southampton, London, Bristol and Devon. Participation in the trial is voluntary and consenting parents were be briefed on the risks. The children are given two doses of the vaccine three weeks apart, then a blood test three weeks after that.

The aim of the trial is to find out if one of the vaccines is better than the other in terms of immune reactions. They also want to ensure that the side effects are minimal before launching the UK vaccination programme.

One of the main problems the study seems to be having is recruiting enough children under the age of three, getting older children didn’t seem to be a problem just the younger ones, Doctor Saul Faust suggests that the younger children don’t usually respond to vaccines as well as adults and older children but says that they need to find out how the younger children respond before the vaccine becomes available to the UK. This could be because the younger children are deemed to be one of the high risk groups because young children, especially those that are under five, do seem to be at risk of serious illness. Also flu epidemics and pandemics are spread very efficiently by children.

The Department of Health has said that they will have enough vaccine for half of the population by the end of the year and that the high risk groups which are medical staff, the elderly and the very young will be immunised first.

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Anti-depressant pregnancy risk

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
September 28, 2009

Research has shown that in 20% of pregnant women suffer from depression of these 1% of these children have a small but important increased risk of heart defects. Although the overall risk is very low and women should speak to doctors before stopping their drugs. It is worth pointing out that if you have taken antidepressants a specialist scan is sometimes offered to check your baby’s heart and that there are other treatments that don’t require the use of drugs.

It is not all doom and gloom if your baby does have a heart defect as some spontaneously resolve without medical intervention. Speaking as a mother who took anti depressants during the first trimester I can assure you that this risk is very small so there is no need to launch into a major panic. As long as the professionals involved in your care are aware that you have/are taking the antidepressants, they will take this into consideration when deciding on the best plan of action.

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Alcohol good for brain injuries

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
September 22, 2009

There has always been suggestions that alcohol in moderation is good for your health but the latest theory is that a dose of alcohol could be a good treatment for people with head injuries.

The basis of this is the discovery that people are less likely to die following brain trauma if they have alcohol in their blood. The reason for this could be that alcohol dampens the body’s inflammatory response to injury. However doctors do stress that alcohol can create medical complications and is a contributory factor to many accidents.

Experts are warning that people should not interpret these findings as an excuse to drink more alcohol. These findings raise the possibility of administering ethanol to patients with brain injuries to potentially improve their outcome. The amount of alcohol consumed appears to be important factor as too little and there is no effect, too much and the beneficial effects are lost. With the right dose, alcohol stops the cascade of swelling, inflammation and further destruction of brain cells, known as secondary brain injury.

These findings seem to suggest that although alcohol helps one problem it creates another, so the question is if the benefits outway the risks?

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Cure for colour blindness

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
September 19, 2009

Scientists claim that they are getting closer to curing colour blindness using gene therapy. In one study a US team, lead by Professor Jay Neitz were able to restore full colour vision to adult monkeys who were unable to distinguish between red and green. Experts believe that although more studies are needed, the same treatment could potentially work for humans who are colour blind. Until recently they had not thought it was possible to manipulate the adult brain in this way. Scientists believed that adding new sensory information could only be carried out in the earliest years of life; as this is when the brain is at its most malleable.

The study took place 2 years ago and the monkeys improved vision has remained stable ever since. The plan for Professor Neitz’s team is to continue to monitor the animals in order to evaluate the long term effects of the treatment and remain hopeful that a similar idea could be applied to humans who are colour blind.

There are several forms of colour blindness, the most common of which is inherited red/green colour blindness, which passed on through a faulty colour vision gene on an X chromosome. However colour blindness can occur as a result of diseases such as macular degeneration or from side effects of medicines. Statistics show that this research could benefit approximately 7% of men and 1% of women born with genetic colour deficiencies.

This research seems to be the first in primates to address the colour vision deficiencies and indicate that intact cells are modifiable in their colour perception.

Although there is still alot more research to be done before the test is carried out on humans or becomes available in clinics it seems to be a massive step towards curing genetic abnormalities.

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Scrapping GP catchment areas

Filed Under: Healthcare News, The NHS and Healthcare by Kirsty — Leave a comment
September 19, 2009

Health Secretary Andy Burnham has announced plans to scrap GP catchment areas in England within a year. It follows a claim that ministers want to introduce greater choice into the family doctor system, as they believe that it will drive up standards. The government has trying to get more from GPs ever since their pay rocketed with the introduction of a new contract in 2004. It started with GPs staying open for longer but the idea of ending catchment areas was on the cards before Gordon Brown became prime minister. Lord Darzi mentioned the idea when he revealed his review of the health service in 2008. At the moment catchment areas vary in size; in rural areas doctors see patients up to 40 miles away whilst city-based doctors often only see patients up t0 a 2 mile radius

Patient choice is already a well established right in hospital care with people entitled to choose from any hospital in the country for treatment. Mr Burnham states: “I want the best to be available to everyone, not according to where they live. Too often people’s choice of GP practice is unnecessarily limited by practice boundaries, so, with the profession, I want to open up real choice in primary care.” He also argues that people’s choice of a GP should be based on their own needs – not by lines on a map

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Reduction of PCTs under Tories

Filed Under: Healthcare News, The NHS and Healthcare by Kirsty — Leave a comment
September 19, 2009

Some think that if the Conservatives win the next election they aim to make GP practices become practice based commissioners. This would mean that the majority of their commissioning functions would be carried through federations of GP practices that operate as consortiums. This proposal would mean a reduction in the commissioning role of PCTs in some areas.
Under the Tories:

  • The merger of PCTs would be welcomed but not forced
  • All GP practices would be expected to become practice based commissioners
  • Trusts would be expected to negotiate prices for acute care at a rate under the PbR price
  • The Conservatives would welcome such mergers as part of an organic process but stress they would be voluntary. They hope to encourage more GPs to take up commissioning by turning the currently indicative budgets into real cash budgets.

Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley states that it would give practices real opportunities to save and reinvest. It would also give them control over contracts and how patients are treated. Lansley stresses that any underspends would remain for the use for patient care, not profits. Health project leader at the Social Market Foundation think tank, David Furness, said the implications of an enhanced role for practice based commissioning were “much more significant than has been [previously] discussed”.

When asked if the Conservatives wanted to see more such mergers such as those in London, the response was: “It would be perfectly reasonable to aggregate, but it will be up to them [PCTs] to decide. It would be done on an organic bottom-up way if [they] choose to do so.”

Within the NHS, sources who have been asked to advise the Conservatives on the development of their health policy, said they thought the party would ideally like to see strategic health authorities and PCTs merged to create maybe 40 strategic commissioning bodies, organised around city regions. It is thought that this would rectify the problem that PCTs are perceived as being “too small” to be able to negotiate good value from large acute hospitals.

However, a spokesman for the Conservatives denied that the party were planning to merge SHAs and PCTs, saying that it was “very clear that’s not what we are planning”. He does also add that they do foresee SHAs moving their focus away from providers as more become foundation trusts. However Tory leader David Cameron and Mr Lansley have pledged they will not subject the NHS to another round of structural reorganisation.

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A cure for young offenders?

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
August 31, 2009

In 2008 a £1,000,000 trial was launched to find out if giving young offenders nutritional supplements reduced anti-social behaviour in prison. In the study 1,000 young offenders from 3 institutions in the UK were given a mixture of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acid supplements on top of their normal prison diet. The behaviour of these offenders was compared to those on the placebo. The study was essentially a larger scale version of a study that was carried out in Aylesbury, which had shown a favourable impact on violence and ill discipline. The idea that better nutrition can change behaviour is a very attractive one, doing this is in the form of a pill is both simple and very cheap

It is important to point out that the aim of the study was not about improving prison food, which the team believe is – from a nutritional perspective at least – more than satisfactory. According to a Professor at Oxford University, Professor John Stein: “The problem is that prisoners do not make good dietary choices, and that’s what we’re trying to overcome.

The idea that what we eat can have an impact upon how we behave is not a new concept. However Frances Cook says: “A society which really believes that a young offender can be cured by a capsule which he takes back to his cell and consumes with his chips has got some serious thinking to do.”

The impact of fish oil on anti-social behaviour takes us into uncharted waters. It appears to be highly effective, and the only ‘risk’ from a better diet is better health. Omega-3 was one of the main components of the cocktail of 30 nutrients to bring the offender’s intake of vitamins and minerals up to the government’s recommended daily amount. The researchers were looking for evidence the supplements were helping the participants curb impulsive urges which are viewed as a key features of anti-social behaviour.

The results showed that the offenders taking the capsules committed approximately 26% fewer disciplinary offences than those taking a placebo and committed 37% fewer violent crimes.

The findings are encouraging but it seems to me that it is like closing the stable door after the horse has already bolted as it is impossible to identify young offenders before they offend purely because there are too many people in the UK so it would take far too long and be very expensive. It is also likely to cause unrest as it involves singling people out. Alternatively issue it to all minors, but this is not a guaranteed way to eliminate young offenders as people still have free will and other issues in there lives such as poverty, family breakdowns and various other problems.

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Can the internet help cure insomnia?

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
August 28, 2009

Statistics show than in Britain one in 10 can’t sleep at night. New online treatments for insomnia could be the cure that is only a click away? Of course there are those who are critical of this new treatment such as Jim Horne who claims that: “The more personal the approach between the person who is the sufferer and the therapist, the better.”

There is help available from the NHS for insomniacs, unfortunately places are often very limited and the waiting lists are long. This new cure is free and are currently being offered on a commercial basis from the United States. Those who are critical of this new theory claim that it sounds rather like a spam email “End sleepless nights once and for all – at home.” However over the past few years, researchers have been developing internet-based courses designed to do exactly that.

Those who support the theory claim that it can be as effective as face-to-face cognitive behavioural therapy. Everyone knows the folk remedies for sleeplessness

  • Drink warm milk,
  • Take a hot bath,
  • Sip herbal tea,
  • Count sheep.

More often than not these don’t work, therefore your only option is to hope sleep will come, or to get one of the places on the waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapist, whilst putting up with the wakeful nights and groggy days while you wait.

With insomnia being one of the most common mental health problem with less than 50% of sufferers mentioning it to their GP. It is thought that many people feel that it is too trivial to mention to their GP or they believe they can manage on their own.

The online treatments may have the potential to ease this pressure due to the shortage of therapists trained to deal with insomnia, although the NHS is trying to help the situation by traning more therapists. bringing insomnia treatment to the internet.

If you are having trouble sleeping here are a few top tips from the experts:

  • Stay positive – if you worry about not sleeping, you won’t sleep
  • Good sleepers try to stay awake – don’t dwell on falling asleep
  • One bad night isn’t the end of good sleeping patterns – there’s always tomorrow

Here are a few things not to do:

  • Don’t nap – the bed shouldn’t be for anything but sleep and sex
  • Don’t stay in bed longer than 20 minutes. If you’re not asleep, get up and do something else until you feel tired
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