By 2034, the number of Americans suffering from Diabetes will almost double and the annual cost of treating the disease will almost triple to $336 billion. Researchers at the University of Chicago have created a model of diabetes costs that uses existing data on the natural history of the disease and risk factors like obesity to predict how much the disease will cost in the future. The model, published in the Diabetes Care Journal, is designed to be used by government agencies to predict the direct cost of Diabetes treatment in the future. These figures can then be used when assessing the potential costs and benefits of alternative government policies - the kind of initiatives that could reduce obesity. The study concludes that in 25 years direct annual spending on Diabetes will climb from $113 billion to $336 billion as the number of people suffering from the disease - both diagnosed and undiagnosed - will rise from 23.7 million to 44.1 million. The researchers conclude that "Without significant changes in public or private strategies, this population and cost growth are expected to add a significant strain to an overburdened health care system." 2009-11-27T15:36:02+00:00 7 2009-11-27T15:36:42+00:00 2

Children with autism may have lower quality handwriting and trouble forming letters compared to children without autism, according to a study published by the "American Academy of Neurology.":http://www.aan.com/press/index.cfm?fuseaction=release.view&release=773 The study included 28 children between the ages of eight and 13. Half of the children had autism spectrum disorder. The other half had no developmental, psychiatric or brain disorders. All of the children scored within the normal range for perceptual reasoning on an IQ test. The children were given the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment Test, which uses a scrambled sentence to eliminate any speed advantage for more fluent readers. The sentence used on the test was "the brown jumped lazy fox quick dogs over." Participants were asked to copy the words in the sentence, making the letters the same size and shape as the sample using their best handwriting. The handwriting was scored based on five categories: legibility, form, alignment, size and spacing. The children's motor skills, including balance and timed movements, were also examined and given a rating. The research found that half of the children with autism earned less than 80 percent of the total possible points on the handwriting assessment, compared to only one child in the group without autism. In addition, nine of the 14 children with autism scored below 80 percent on the form category of the handwriting assessment, compared to only two of the 14 children without autism. "Our results suggest that therapies targeting motor skills may help improve handwriting in children with autism, which is important for success in school and building self-esteem," said study author Amy Bastian, PhD, of the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD. "Such therapies could include training of letter formation and general training of fine motor control to help improve the quality of their writing." While overall quality of handwriting was worse in children with autism spectrum disorders, they were still able to align, space and size their letters just as well as children without autism. 2009-11-27T12:14:50+00:00 6 2009-11-27T12:18:29+00:00 1882

Clinical trials have begun to determine which of two vaccines will be used in the UK's national swine flu vaccination programme. The trial is already under way and over the next few weeks 1,000 children aged between 6 months and 12 years will be given two doses of vaccine. Blood tests will hopefully reveal which vaccine provokes the greatest immune response. Trial co-ordinators will also be on the lookout for side effects although early evidence suggests that these will be mild. The European Medicines Agency recommended the two vaccines from Novartis AG and GlaxoSmithKline earlier than usual. Both products are still being tested, but the ESA wanted to ensure that a vaccine would be available for the current winter flu season. Both of the current contenders contain adjuvants, chemical compounds used to stimulate the immune system and increase the body's response to a vaccine. There is some controversy over the use of adjuvants when vaccinating pregnant women or children - two groups considered to be at risk from swine flu. There is no hard evidence that adjuvants may be harmful, but many countries including the USA and Canada are buying adjuvant free vaccines for pregnant women. 2009-10-08T11:13:37+01:00 5 swine flu 2009-10-08T11:13:37+01:00 2

It's 70 years since the Ministry of Health told us that 'Coughs and sneezes spread diseases' but we still don't know the answers to some very basic questions. A new study in Nottingham should help us know more. When you catch flu, typically your symptoms are more severe at the beginning of the illness and then you get better over a number of days, but how long do you remain infectious? Also, when you're coughing and spluttering, where does the virus go? What surfaces will it land on and how far will it travel? Prof. Jon Van-Tam and his team have the enviable task of tracking down and visiting swine flu sufferers. By taking daily swabs they will find out exactly how long sufferers continue to produce the virus. We already know that children excrete more virus than adults and for a longer period of time, this study should tell us how much more and how long. The team will also be taking samples from surfaces near infected people and also from door handles, kettles and tv remote controls - in fact anything that a sick person might handle. They will also be using special air pumps and filters to sample the air at various distances from infected individuals to see how much virus is floating around and how far it travels. It will be interesting to see how easy it is to catch the flu simply from being coughed on. 2009-09-08T09:40:44+01:00 4 2009-09-08T09:40:44+01:00 2

Brown fat burns excess glucose preventing it from being converted to white fat and stored. Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston took naive fibroblastic cells in mice and altered them so they grew into brown fat. Bruce Spiegelman and his team then used positron emission tomography to observe these cells as they burned excess energy. The hope is that this research will lead to new treatments for obesity and Type II Diabetes. "Original Article in Nature":http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08262.html 2009-08-07T14:49:40+01:00 3 fat 2009-08-07T14:51:13+01:00 2

Artemisinin is currently the first choice for treating Malaria and seemed to be totally effective even against the deadliest strain of the disease. New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that resistant strains of the parasite have emerged in western Cambodia and these strains are now spreading. Artemisinin is derived from Artemisia annua, also known as sweet wormwood which had been used in Chinese medicine for centuries under the name 'Qinghaosu'. The drug is normally prescribed in conjunction with other drugs as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) in the hope that parasites resistant to one drug will be killed by the other. 2009-07-31T10:30:42+01:00 2 disease 2009-07-31T10:38:16+01:00 2

The HPA have just published some initial research into the first months of the H1N1 outbreak. Based on the first 252 cases, the disease was most commonly spread through schools and affected young people although age is not a reliable diagnostic predictor. The findings also suggest the following points as a useful guide to diagnosis: * Fever was a sensitive clinical indicator, so its absence made swine flu an unlikely diagnosis. * Dry cough, sore throat, headache and fatigue were common concomitant symptoms. * A diagnosis of swine flu should be considered in the presence of these symptoms even if there is no known contact with infected cases (7% of cases had had no known contact with cases, even at this early stage of spread). * Diarrhoea and vomiting were of poorer diagnostic value. "NHS Choices breakdown":http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/07July/Pages/Swinefluearlyepidemiology.aspx and original "HPA Swine flu paper":http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19232 2009-07-20T14:24:30+01:00 1 swine flu 2009-07-20T14:24:51+01:00 2