NewS……..

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Insufficient intake of vitamin D, long known to play a key role in bone health, may significantly increase a person’s risk of stroke, heart disease and even death, a US study said Monday.

Examining 27,686 Utah patients aged 50 or older with no history of cardiovascular disease, the study found those with very low vitamin D levels were 77 percent more likely to die early than those with normal levels.

They were also found to be 45 percent more likely to develop coronary artery disease and 78 percent were more likely to have a stroke, said the research by the Heart Institute at the Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

Those with very low levels of vitamin D were twice as likely to develop heart failure, said the study which was due to be presented later Monday at a conference organized by the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida.

“If increasing levels of vitamin D can decrease some risk associated with these cardiovascular diseases, it could have a significant public health impact,” said study co-author Heidi May, noting that vitamin D deficiency is easily treatable.

“When you consider that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in America, you understand how this research can help improve the length and quality of people’s lives.”

Studies have shown that Vitamin D also helps regulated key body functions such as blood pressure, inflammation and glucose control — all related to heart disease — and that deficiency of the vitamin is associated with musculoskeletal disorders.

Brent Muhlestein, another co-author of the study and the director of cardiovascular research at Intermountain, stressed that because the study was only observational, definitive links between vitamin D deficiency and heart disease could not be established.

He called for randomized treatment trials of patients with insufficient levels of the vitamin.

Two thirds of the Utah population does not get enough vitamin D, according to the study.

The researchers chose Utah — home to the Mormon church — in part because the population consumes low levels of tobacco and alcohol, thus allowing them to focus the study on vitamin D’s effects on the cardiovascular system, explained Muhlestein.

The patients were divided into three groups based on their vitamin D levels — normal (over 30 nanograms per milliliter), low (15-30 ng/ml) or very low (less than 15 ng/ml) — and were followed for a year to determine whether they developed some form of heart disease.

WASHINGTON – Swine flu has sickened about 22 million Americans since April and killed nearly 4,000, including 540 children, according to startling federal estimates released Thursday.

The figures — roughly a quadrupling of previous death estimates — don’t mean swine flu suddenly has worsened, and most cases still don’t require a doctor’s care. Instead, the numbers are a long-awaited better attempt to quantify the new flu’s true toll.

“I am expecting all of these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We have a long flu season ahead of us.”

And tight supplies of vaccine to combat the illness continue: Not quite 42 million doses are currently available, a few million less than CDC had predicted last week.

A new Associated Press-GfK poll shows nearly one in six parents has gotten at least some of their children vaccinated against swine flu since inoculations began last month. Another 14 percent of parents sought vaccine, but couldn’t find any.

Only about 30 percent of children routinely get flu vaccinations during a normal winter. That even this many have gotten vaccinated against the new flu that scientists call the 2009 H1N1 strain despite the shortage suggests CDC’s target-the-young message has gotten through.

But three times as many adults have tried and failed to find vaccine for themselves as have succeeded.

“I know they’re trying their hardest,” Joy McGavin of Pittston, Pa., said of the CDC’s vaccine efforts. She hasn’t yet found vaccine for her three children despite a persistent hunt — even though she and her youngest child are at extra risk because of chronic illnesses.

“But it is kind of frustrating, being as my children’s school already shut down” because of a big outbreak, McGavin said.

And interest among the young adults who also are at high risk is waning fast, found the AP-GfK poll of 1,006 adults nationwide.

Thursday, Schuchat again urged patience in seeking vaccine.

“It’s a marathon and not a sprint,” she said. “More vaccine is being ordered and delivered and used every day.”

Until now, the CDC has conservatively estimated more than 1,000 deaths and “many millions” of new H1N1 infections. The agency was devoting more time to battling the pandemic than to counting it, and earlier figures were based on laboratory-confirmed cases even as doctors largely quit using flu tests months ago — and experts knew that deaths from things like the bacterial pneumonia that often follows flu were being missed.

Thursday’s report attempts to calculate the first six months of the new H1N1 strain’s spread, from April through mid-October. The CDC said:

_Some 98,000 people have been hospitalized from this new flu or its complications, including 36,000 children, 53,000 adults younger than 65 and 9,000 older adults.

_Deaths could range from a low of 2,500 to as many as 6,100, depending on how the data’s analyzed. CDC settled on 3,900 as the best estimate.

_Some 8 million children have become ill, 12 million adults younger than 65 and 2 million older adults.

In a typical winter, seasonal flu strains cause 200,000 U.S. hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths, the vast majority in people over 65. Seasonal influenza doesn’t usually start circulating until November while swine flu began a big climb in September, leading to what CDC called unprecedented high levels of illness so early in a season — and no way to know when the flu will peak.

The estimate of child deaths may seem especially surprising, considering the CDC’s conservative count of lab-confirmed deaths a week ago was 129.

“We don’t think things have changed from last week to this week,” Schuchat stressed, explaining the importance of looking beyond those lab counts. It’s “a better estimate for the big picture of what’s out there.”

The question now is what effect those estimates will have on a public that largely views swine flu as not that big a threat.

The AP-GfK poll, conducted last weekend, found just 23 percent of responders — and 27 percent of parents — were very likely to keep seeking vaccine.

Stephanie Hannon of Douglas, Mass., decided to get a swine flu vaccine for just one of her three children, the one at extra risk because of asthma. She’s concerned that the swine flu vaccine hasn’t been studied long enough to justify for her less-at-risk youngsters.

“Only because of my other daughter’s condition, I felt like I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “You never know if you make the right decision.”

Swine flu targets young adults, too, yet just 16 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds were very likely to seek vaccine, down from 34 percent in September.

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted Nov. 5-9 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,006 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

WASHINGTON – Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries — signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It’s work that one day may allow far easier diagnosis for patients — civilian or military — who today struggle to get help for these largely invisible disorders. For now it brings a powerful message: Problems too often shrugged off as “just in your head” in fact do have physical signs, now that scientists are learning where and how to look for them.

“There’s something different in your brain,” explains Dr. Jasmeet Pannu Hayes of Boston University, who is helping to lead that research at the Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD. “Just putting a real physical marker there, saying that this is a real thing,” encourages more people to seek care.

Up to one in five U.S. veterans from the long-running combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is thought to have symptoms of PTSD. An equal number are believed to have suffered traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs — most that don’t involve open wounds but hidden damage caused by explosion’s pressure wave.

Many of those TBIs are considered similar to a concussion, but because symptoms may not be apparent immediately, many soldiers are exposed multiple times, despite evidence from the sports world that damage can add up, especially if there’s little time between assaults.

“My brain has been rattled,” is how a recently retired Marine whom Hayes identifies only as Sgt. N described the 50 to 60 explosions he estimates he felt while part of an ordnance disposal unit.

Hayes studied the man in a new way, tracking how water flows through tiny, celery stalk-like nerve fibers in his brain — and found otherwise undetectable evidence that those fibers were damaged in a brain region that explained his memory problems and confusion.

It’s a noninvasive technique called “diffusion tensor imaging” that merely adds a little time to a standard MRI scan. Water molecules constantly move, bumping into each other and then bouncing away. Measuring the direction and speed of that diffusion in nerve fibers can tell if the fibers are intact or damaged. Those fibers are sort of a highway along which the brain’s cells communicate. The bigger the gaps, the more interrupted the brain’s work becomes.

“Sgt. N’s brain is very different,” Hayes told a military medical meeting last week. “His connective tissue has been largely compromised.”

There’s a remarkable overlap of symptoms between those brain injuries and PTSD, says Dr. James Kelly, a University of Colorado neurologist tapped to lead the military’s new National Intrepid Center of Excellence. It will open next year in Bethesda, Md., to treat both conditions.

Yes, headaches are a hallmark of TBI while the classic PTSD symptoms are flashbacks and nightmares. But both tend to cause memory and attention problems, anxiety, irritability, depression and insomnia. That means the two disorders share brain regions.

And Hayes can measure how some of those regions go awry in the vicious cycle that is PTSD, where patients feel like they’re reliving a trauma instead of understanding that it’s just a memory.

What happens? A brain processing system that includes the amygdala — the fear hot spot — becomes overactive. Other regions important for attention and memory, regions that usually moderate our response to fear, are tamped down.

“The good news is this neural signal is not permanent. It can change with treatment,” Hayes says.

Her lab performed MRI scans while patients either tried to suppress their negative memories, or followed PTSD therapy and changed how they thought about their trauma. That fear-processing region quickly cooled down when people followed the PTSD therapy.

It’s work that has implications far beyond the military: About a quarter of a million Americans will develop PTSD at some point in their lives. Anyone can develop it after a terrifying experience, from a car accident or hurricane to rape or child abuse.

More research is needed for the scans to be used in diagnosing either PTSD or a TBI. But some are getting close — like another MRI-based test that can spot lingering traces of iron left over from bleeding, thus signaling a healed TBI. If the brain was hit hard enough to bleed, then more delicate nerve pathways surely were damaged, too, Kelly notes.

LONDON – Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Afghanistan’s government on Friday to take action against corruption, saying he would not risk more British lives there unless it reforms.

Brown said in a speech that success in Afghanistan is vital to Britain’s security — but declared that if the Afghan government does not mend its ways it will forfeit the world’s support.

“I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption,” he said.

The speech comes after the deaths of seven British soldiers in the past week, including five who were shot by an Afghan police officer they were training. Corruption-marred presidential elections and rising casualties have undermined British support for the war.

Brown said the government in Afghanistan had become a by-word for corruption, but that newly re-elected Afghan President Hamid Karzaihad assured him that he would take decisive action against it.

Britain has promised to send 500 more troops to Afghanistan — though Brown said it was dependent upon progress in governance.

Despite increasing doubt over the country’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan, Brown linked military action there to safety on Britain’s streets.

“We will not be deterred, dissuaded or diverted from taking whatever measures are necessary to protect our security,” Brown said.

Britain currently has about 9,000 troops in the country, the majority in the restive southern Helmand province. The force is the second-largest foreign one in the country after the United States.

Brown said Karzai “needs a contract with the Afghan people; a contract against which Afghans, as well as the international community, can judge his success.”

“International support depends on the scale of his ambition and the degree of his achievement in five key areas: security, governance, reconciliation, economic development, and engagement with Afghanistan’s neighbors,” Brown said.

“If the government fails to meet these five tests, it will have not only failed its own people, it will have forfeited its right to international support.”

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A single dose of swine flu vaccine produces a robust immune response in pregnant women, one of the groups at high risk of dying from (A)H1N1 influenza, but young children need two shots, US clinical trials have shown.

“The immune responses seen in healthy pregnant women are comparable to those seen in healthy adults at the same time point after a single vaccination, and the vaccine has been well tolerated,”Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement.

No safety issues were reported during the trials, which began on September 9 and tested 120 women, all in the second or third trimester of pregnancy.

Twenty-one days after they were given the swine flu vaccine, 92 percent of pregnant women who received a single 15-microgram dose and 96 percent of expectant mothers who were given one, 30-microgram dose showed a robust immune response, showed the initial results of the trials, which are still ongoing.

The findings of the trials back up recommendations made last week by the World Health Organization (WHO), that “adults — including pregnant women — and adolescents, beginning at 10 years old” be given a single swine flu shot.

Separate tests conducted in the United States have shown that children aged six months to 35 months and three to nine years should have two doses of the H1N1 vaccination, Fauci told reporters Monday.

“Those younger groups didn’t have a good immune response eight to 10 days after receiving the first dose, and 21 days after that first dose, their response was still suboptimal — 25 percent for the very young group and 55 percent for the intermediary group,” Fauci told reporters.

“However, there was a very sharp increase in immune response after they received the second dose, such that 100 percent of the younger group and 94 percent of three- to nine-year-olds gave a robust immune response eight to 10 days after the second dose. That’s where we want them to be,” Fauci said.

The WHO has urged national authorities that have made children a priority for early vaccination to administer “one dose of vaccine to as many children as possible” while waiting for the results of studies to determine what the optimal dosage is for young kids.

Teenagers and young adults continue to account for the majority of cases of H1N1 flu around the world, “with rates of hospitalization highest in very young children,” the WHO has said.

Up to 10 percent of swine flu patients require hospitalization, and up to a quarter of those have to be admitted to an intensive care unit, said the WHO.

“From seven-10 percent of all hospitalized patients are pregnant women in their second or third trimester of pregnancy. Pregnant women are 10 times more likely to need care in an intensive care unit when compared with the general population,” the WHO said.

Since the outbreak of the new strain of H1N1 flu began in April, at least 100 pregnant women have been hospitalized in intensive care units in the United States and at least 28 expectant mothers have died ofpandemic swine flu, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pregnant women and mothers with young children have been turned away from flu vaccination clinicsorganized by state and county health authorities as vaccine supply has been far outstripped by demand.

Expectant mothers have to have the injectable form of the swine flu vaccine, which is made with killed H1N1 virus, and not the nasal spray, which is made with live, greatly weakened virus and is not advised for pregnant women, children under the age of two and people with chronic health conditions such as asthma.

The vaccine tested on the pregnant women in the United States did not contain the preservative thimerosal, which contains mercury, or an immune-boosting substance known as an adjuvant.