Diabetes and connected devices.

The world marks January 11 as the 95th anniversary of the date that insulin was first used in humans to treat diabetes. Since then it would seem that barely a week passes without another device or treatment in the works. According to the Centre for Disease Control, more than 29 million Americans are living with diabetes, and 86 million are living with prediabetes, a serious health condition that increases a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases. Health monitoring is a critical part of daily diabetes management. A range of apps, connected devices, more recently wearables can assist people to monitor, treat and manage their health. As tech companies compete, let’s take a look at what on the market and what’s in the future: One of the most notable diabetes devices of recent years is the MyDario all in one glucose meter. It enables people living with diabetes to test their blood glucose levels in seconds, directly onto their smartphone. A corresponding app can share this information with medical professionals and family members and also helps track carbohydrate intake and exercise. continue

Rare Light Pillars In Canada Captured In Photos.

Photographer and Youtuber Timothy Joseph Elzinga from Ontario Canada was woken by his 2 year old son last Friday at 1.30AM. When he went to comfort him, he saw from the window an extremely rare meteorological phenomenon: something resembling the Northen Lights, finding out later that they were in fact light pillars. This phenomenon occurs when there are very low temperatures. The artificial light that we emit from earth, such as street lights reflect in a vertical formation against the ice particles suspended in the cold air. The movement of these lights is always towards the sky, like solid pillars. The white pillars are in fact photometeors like rainbows and can be caused either naturally by the sun, or artificially like here. Although baring some similarities, this phenomenon is not like the Northern Lights. source

Dog bites Gambia’s President-elect, Barrow’s son to death.

Dog bites Gambia’s President-elect, Barrow’s son to death.The eight-year-old son of Gambian President-elect, Adama Barrow is dead. Adama died after being bitten by a dog. According to reports, the boy died on the way to the hospital on Sunday in Manjai near the Gambian capital, Banjul. Meanwhile, Barrow has fled to neighbouring Senegal ahead of his inauguration. He is expected to remain there at the request of West African leaders until his planned inauguration, Gambia national newspaper said Sunday. Barrow is currently in Dakar following consultations with the leaders of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) at a Bamako summit.source

The role of cattle in malaria elimination in India.

The goal of eliminating malaria in countries like India could be more achievable if mosquito-control efforts take into account the relationship between mosquitoes and cattle, according to an international team of researchers. In many parts of the world, the mosquitoes responsible for transmitting malaria are specialist feeders on humans and often rest within human houses," said Matthew Thomas, professor of entomology, Penn State. "We found that in an area of India that has a high burden of malaria, most of the mosquitoes that are known to transmit malaria rest in cattle sheds and feed on both cows and humans." According to Jessica Waite, postdoctoral scholar in entomology, Penn State, cattle sheds are often next to, and sometimes even connected by, a shared wall to human houses, yet current control efforts are restricted to domestic dwellings only. "Given this cattle-shed 'refuge' for mosquitoes, focusing only on humans with regard to malaria control is a bit like treating the tip of an iceberg," said Waite. The researchers determined the importance of cows in the malaria-control problem by capturing adult mosquitoes in different habitats within six villages in Odisha state—which has the highest number of malaria cases in the country—and noting where the mosquitoes had been resting. The team then used molecular techniques to determine which species they were and which hosts they had been feeding on. The scientists collected a total of 1,774 Anopheles culicifacies and 169 Anopheles fluviatilis mosquitoes across all study sites. They found that both species were denser in cattle sheds than in human dwellings, and both were feeding on humans and cattle. Next, the researchers used their field-collected data to help build a computer model that simulated the life of an adult mosquito. They used the model to explore how best to control the mosquitoes to have maximum impact on malaria transmission in these villages. The model analysis suggests that conventional control tools—such as insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor insecticide sprays—are less effective when mosquitoes exhibit 'zoophilic' behaviors (having an attraction to nonhuman animals)," said Thomas. "However, extending controls to better target the zoophilic mosquitoes—for example, by broadening coverage of non-repellant insecticide sprays to include cattle sheds—could help reduce transmission dramatically." Understanding the relationship between humans, cattle and mosquitoes could have major implications for malaria control policy and practice, not only in India, but in other areas where transmission is sustained by zoophilic vectors .source

Wearable sensors and disease diagnosis.

A new study has shown that wearable sensors could tell if a disease condition exists before the signs are obvious.Wearable sensors that monitor heart rate, activity, skin temperature and other variables can reveal a lot about what is going on inside a person, including the onset of infection, inflammation and even insulin resistance, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. An important component of the ongoing study is to establish a range of normal, or baseline, values for each person in the study and when they are ill. "We want to study people at an individual level," said Michael Snyder, PhD, professor and chair of genetics. Snyder is the senior author of the study, published online in PLOS Biology. Postdoctoral scholars Xiao Li, PhD, and Jessilyn Dunn, PhD, and software engineer Denis Salins share lead authorship. Altogether, the team collected nearly 2 billion measurements from 60 people, including continuous data from each participant's wearable biosensor devices and periodic data from laboratory tests of their blood chemistry, gene expression and other measures. Participants wore between one and eight commercially available activity monitors and other monitors that collected more than 250,000 measurements a day. The team collected data on weight; heart rate; oxygen in the blood; skin temperature; activity, including sleep, steps, walking, biking and running; calories expended; acceleration; and even exposure to gamma rays and X-rays. The study demonstrated that, given a baseline range of values for each person, it is possible to monitor deviations from normal and associate those deviations with environmental conditions, illness or other factors that affect health. Distinctive patterns of deviation from normal seem to correlate with particular health problems. Algorithms designed to pick up on these patterns of change could potentially contribute to clinical diagnostics and research. This is practical illustration of the study;On a long flight to Norway for a family vacation last year, Snyder noticed changes in his heart rate and blood oxygen levels. As one of the 60 participants in the digital health study, he was wearing seven biosensors. From previous trips, Snyder knew that his oxygen levels normally dropped during airplane flights and that his heart rate increased at the beginning of a flight—as occurred in other participants. But the values typically returned to normal over the course of a long flight and after landing. This time, his numbers didn't return to baseline. Something was up, and Snyder wasn't completely surprised when he went on to develop a fever and other signs of illness. Two weeks earlier, he'd been helping his brother build a fence in rural Massachusetts, so his biggest concern was that he might have been bitten by a tick and infected with Lyme disease. In Norway, Snyder persuaded a doctor to give him a prescription for doxycycline, an antibiotic known to combat Lyme disease. Subsequent tests confirmed that Snyder had indeed been infected with the Lyme microorganism. Snyder was impressed that the wearable biosensors picked up the infection before he even knew he was sick. "Wearables helped make the initial diagnosis," he said. Subsequent data analysis confirmed his suspicion that the deviations from normal heart rate and oxygen levels on the flight to Norway had indeed been quite abnormal.Source

Spaying and neutering your pets triggers cancer and dysplasia.

Spaying and neutering your pets triggers cancer and dysplasia according to a new study:over the last several years, a number of small, breed-focused and primarily retrospective studies have been conducted on the effects of spay/neuter in large and giant breed dogs, including the Rottweiler and Golden Retriever. The following information to illustrate what the research has uncovered about the potential benefits and adverse effects of gonadectomy: spaying or neutering large and giant breed dogs decreases or prevents most reproductive organ disease, as you would expect, since conventional desexing surgery removes some or all of those organs and the hormones they produce. The diseases for which spayed or neutered dogs are at increased risk are, as you also might expect, some of the most common disorders seen in dogs today. They include obesity, cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) ruptures, hip dysplasia, several types of cancer, urine dribbling (incontinence) and cystitis (bladder inflammation). Musculoskeletal Disorders in Desexed Large and Giant Breed Dogs,removing a dog’s ability to produce important hormones while his skeleton is still developing can result in delayed closure of the growth plates at the end of each long bone. This can cause a dog’s legs to grow longer than normal, as you can see in this example of two adult male Golden Retrievers. The big guy on the left is intact, with normal conformation for the breed. The leggier guy on the right was neutered at 5 months and has a quite noticeable longer-limbed conformation. Sadly, even though the taller Golden on the right is certainly as handsome and fit-looking as the dog on the left, his longer limbs may put him a higher risk for orthopedic disease.Labrador and Golden Retrievers neutered before 6 months of age develop one or more joint disorders at two to five times the rate of intact dogs. When it comes to problems with cranial cruciate ligaments, large breed dogs spayed or neutered at under 6 months of age have three times the risk for early life CCL injuries. Dogs desexed at any age have a two to three times higher incidence of CCL disease compared with intact dogs. A study involving several hundred Golden Retrievers, none of the intact dogs had CCL disease; however, 5 percent of neutered males and 7.7 percent of spayed females who were desexed before they were a year old developed CCL injuries. The body condition score was the same for all the dogs, which indicates that changes in the build of the desexed dogs was to blame. Male Golden Retrievers neutered at under 1 year developed hip dysplasia at double the rate of intact males, and the disease also appeared earlier in the desexed dogs. Another study of 40 years of data collected on a range of different dogs desexed at a variety of ages showed a 17 percent increased risk of hip dysplasia.continue

Study finds association between eating hot peppers and decreased mortality.

A new study has associated eating hot peppers and decreased mortality,according to researchers at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, who found that consumption of hot red chili peppers is associated with a 13 percent reduction in total mortality, primarily in deaths due to heart disease or stroke—in a large prospective study. Going back for centuries, peppers and spices have been thought to be beneficial in the treatment of diseases, but only one other study—conducted in China and published in 2015 - has previously examined chili pepper consumption and its association with mortality. This new study corroborates the earlier study's findings. Using National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) III data collected from more than 16,000 Americans who were followed for up to 23 years, medical student Mustafa Chopan '17 and Professor of Medicine Benjamin Littenberg, M.D., examined the baseline characteristics of the participants according to hot red chili pepper consumption. They found that consumers of hot red chili peppers tended to be "younger, male, white, Mexican-American, married, and to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and consume more vegetables and meats . . . had lower HDL-cholesterol, lower income, and less education," in comparison to participants who did not consume red chili peppers. They examined data from a median follow-up of 18.9 years and observed the number of deaths and then analyzed specific causes of death. There are some possible explanations for red chili peppers' health benefits, state Chopan and Littenberg in the study. Among them are the fact that capsaicin - the principal component in chili peppers - is believed to play a role in cellular and molecular mechanisms that prevent obesity and modulate coronary blood flow, and also possesses antimicrobial properties that "may indirectly affect the host by altering the gut microbiota." more