April 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. health officials confirmed a total of 91 human cases of H1N1 swine flu across the country on Tuesday.

“We’re reporting 91 confirmed cases in the United States,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing.

Besser said the current confirmed caseload included 51 cases in New York, 16 in Texas, 14 in California, and cases in Massachusetts, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Indiana, Kansas and Ohio.

He said the U.S. outbreak of swine flu — which has killed a toddler in Texas but which in almost all other cases has resulted in only mild symptoms — continues to develop. “These numbers are almost out of date by the time I say them,” Besser said.

(Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Maggie Fox)

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Latest news, analysis’ and background information on the outbreak of swine flu spreading across the world.  Full Coverage 

GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization said on Wednesday it was moving closer to declaring a pandemic alert phase 5 for swine flu, which is spreading with no sign of slowing down.

No meeting has been set for the WHO’s emergency committee, which could recommend an increase of the alert level to the second-highest level of the 1-to-6 scale.

“It appears we are moving closer to that, but we are not there yet,” Keiji Fukuda, WHO acting assistant director-general, told a news conference.

Moving to phase 5 from the current phase 4 would be a significant step, he said.

WHO experts are examining the transmission patterns of swine flu for signs the disease is spreading among people who have not been to Mexico, or had close contact with those who had.

The United Nations agency has previously said it might raise its pandemic alert level to phase 5 if it were confirmed that infected people in at least two countries were spreading the disease to other people in a sustained way.

Fukuda said the WHO has confirmed 114 swine flu cases in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Israel, Spain, Britain, and New Zealand, with seven deaths in Mexico and one in the United States — which U.S. authorities have said was a Mexican baby who traveled there for medical assistance.

“It is clear that the virus is spreading and we don’t see any evidence of this slowing down at this point,” he said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Lynn and Laura MacInnis)

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Latest news, analysis’ and background information on the outbreak of swine flu spreading across the world.  Full Coverage 

By Alistair Bell

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A new virus has killed up to 149 people in Mexico and the World Health Organization moved closer on Monday to declaring it the first flu pandemic in 40 years as more people were infected in the United States and Europe.

The WHO raised its pandemic alert level for the swine flu virus to phase 4, indicating a significantly increased risk of a pandemic, a global outbreak of a serious disease.

The last such outbreak, a “Hong Kong” flu pandemic in 1968, killed about 1 million people.

Although the new flu strain has so far killed people only in Mexico, there were more than 40 confirmed cases in the United States, including 20 at a New York City school where eight cases were already identified.

In Mexico City, fearful Christians paraded a centuries-old statue of Jesus, believed to protect against disease, through the streets for the first time in more than a century.

The swine flu is not caught from eating pig meat products, but several countries imposed import bans on pork from the United States. Stocks in companies such as airlines were also hit as investors worried about the impact on travel.

Spain became the first country in Europe to confirm a case of swine flu when a man who returned from a trip to Mexico last week was found to have the virus.

Texas health authorities confirmed a third case of swine flu at a school near the Mexican border and California said it now had 11 confirmed cases.

The U.S. State Department and the European Union urged citizens to avoid non-essential travel Mexico and other areas affected by swine flu.

Mexico relies on tourism as its third biggest source of foreign currency and millions of Americans travel there every year.

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said the outbreak was now suspected of having killed 149 people and warned the number of cases would keep rising.

Thirty-three million Mexican schoolchildren will be off school until the middle of next week as authorities seek to contain the outbreak. Schools in the sprawling capital had already been closed but the government ordered classes canceled across the country until May 6.

Most of the those who died were between 20 and 50 years of age, an ominous sign because a hallmark of past pandemics has been the high rate of fatalities among healthy young adults.

Worldwide, seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people in an average year but the new strain worries experts because it spreads rapidly between humans and there is vaccine for it.

NEW BLOW TO ECONOMY

Oil prices fell more than 2 percent to close to $50 a barrel as investors feared a new blow to an already fragile global economy if trade flows are curbed and manufacturing is hit.

The MSCI world equity index fell 0.8 percent and U.S. stocks also slipped.

Flu fears hit U.S. airline stocks hard as investors worried that the travel industry would suffer. Shares prices for UAL Corp, the parent of United Airlines, shed 14 percent, while Continental Airlines Inc lost 16 percent.

Other travel and leisure stocks such as Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways and British Airways fell sharply, whereas makers of drugs and vaccines, such as Roche, were higher.

But his condition, like that of the cases in the United States and six in Canada, was not serious. Spain had 26 suspected cases under observation, health officials said.

A New Zealand teacher and a dozen students who recently traveled to Mexico were being treated as likely mild cases.

In the first confirmed cases in Britain, Scotland’s health minister said two people tested positive for swine flu and were being treated under isolation near Glasgow.

Suspected cases were also reported in France, Norway, Germany, Sweden and Israel.

Large numbers of Mexicans made it to work in the capital despite the flu outbreak. Traffic in the city of 20 million was brisk as workers, many in surgical masks, packed buses.

“I preferred to come by car instead of public transport because I didn’t want to be in contact with so many people,” said 25-year-old graphic designer Andres Beltran.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Lynn and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Maggie Fox, Emily Kaiser and Lesley Wroughton in Washington, Helen Popper and Miguel Gutierrez in Mexico City; Editing by Kieran Murray and Chris Wilson)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency uses of the flu drugs Tamiflu and Relenza on Monday and a diagnostic test to help get a grip on a new strain of swine flu, the agency said on Monday.

The U.S. government’s declaration on Sunday that the swine flu is a public health emergency freed the FDA to take such action, the agency said in a statement.

The FDA will now have the authority to allow public health and medical personnel to prescribe Relenza, GlaxoSmithKline’s inhaled flu drug also known as zanamivir, and Roche AG’s Tamiflu, a pill also known as oseltamivir, for unapproved uses.

Tamiflu, approved for treating and preventing the flu in people over a year old, can now be used in children under 1 year. Doctors can also change the recommended dosage for children older than 1 year under the emergency use authorization.

The FDA also gave more healthcare workers authority to distribute Tamiflu and Relenza, including some public health officials and volunteers.

More than 40 people have been sickened by the new flu strain in the United States.

The rRT-PCR Swine Flu Panel diagnostic test was authorized for testing samples from flu patients to determine if they have the new strain.

A positive finding will presumptively conclude that the patient has the new, previously unseen strain of H1N1 swine flu. But a negative result will not be considered conclusive that a patient does not have the virus, the agency said.

(Reporting by Jasmin Melvin, editing by Maggie Fox and Vicki Allen)

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HONG KONG (Reuters) – Researchers in South Korea have identified genes that are linked to key indicators such as blood pressure and bone density that have a bearing on chronic diseases such as hypertension and osteoporosis.

In an article published in Nature Genetics, the scientists said they studied the DNA of nearly 9,000 people in South Korea and were able to identify genes that controlled indicators such as blood pressure, bone density, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, height and pulse rate.

“We found some genes affecting systolic blood pressure, bone density etc,” Hyung-Lae Kim of the National Institute of Health in Seoul, South Korea, told Reuters by telephone.

These bodily measurements affect key chronic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, obesity and osteoporosis that are becoming massive problems in many countries.

And knowing which genes are involved can potentially open the way for better prevention, management and control of these conditions in the future.

Such genetic studies have been carried out in Caucasian populations, but less so among Asians.

“The study also found new gene variants that either confer health risks specific to Asian ancestry or which show greater effects in combination with environmental factors prevalent in Asia,” the researchers said in a statement.

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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CHICAGO (Reuters) – The United States made little progress in 2008 at reducing the number of foodborne infections, reflecting gaps in the current food safety net and reinforcing the need for change, government health officials said on Thursday.

They said the number of foodborne infections in 2008 remained steady compared with the past three years and the country failed to reach any of its targets for reducing infections from foodborne pathogens.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, “progress toward the national health objectives has plateaued, suggesting that fundamental problems with bacterial and parasitic contamination are not being resolved.”

The findings are the first to come from the CDC’s FoodNet tracking system, which collects data from 10 U.S. states on diseases caused by pathogens transmitted commonly through food.

In its weekly report on death and disease, the CDC identified 18,499 laboratory-confirmed cases of food poisoning in 2008 using FoodNet, which looks in detail at foodborne illness in 10 states, covering about 46 million people or 15 percent of the total U.S. population in 2007.

The 2008 findings represent just a portion of Salmonella Typhimurium infections caused by tainted peanuts and peanut products processed by the now bankrupt Peanut Corporation of America, which closed two plants in Georgia and Texas after inspectors traced the salmonella outbreaks to them.

The outbreak, which began in September, has led to the recall of more than 3,200 products and sickened more than 680 people in 46 states. A series of incidents involving peanuts, pistachios, lettuce, peppers and spinach that have eroded public confidence in food safety and renewed calls for change.

According to the report, infections caused by Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora, Listeria, Shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157, Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia did not change significantly when compared with the previous three years.

Most infections occurred in children under 4, while infections severe enough to require hospitalization were most often in people over age 50.

(Editing by Jackie Frank)

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – More than 30 percent of multivitamins tested recently by ConsumerLab.com contained significantly more or less of an ingredient than claimed, or were contaminated with lead, the company reports.

ConsumerLab.com, based in White Plains, New York, is privately held and provides consumer information and independent evaluations of products that affect health and nutrition. According to the company, it is neither owned by nor has a financial interest in any companies that make, distribute or sell consumer products.

Several multivitamin products tested, including three for children, exceeded tolerable upper limits established by the Institute of Medicine for ingredients such as vitamin A, folic acid, niacin and zinc, according to the report posted on www.ConsumerLab.com.

For example, the Institute of Medicine sets a recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 1,300 international units (IU) of vitamin A for children ages 4 to 8 years and an upper tolerable limit of 3,000 IU. However, one multivitamin tested provided 5,000 IU of vitamin A.

In the short term, too much vitamin A may cause nausea and blurred vision, and, in the long-term, may lead to bone softening and liver problems.

Upper tolerable limits for niacin and zinc were also exceeded by some of the supplements for young children tested. Excess niacin may cause skin tingling and flushing and high levels of zinc may cause immune deficiency and anemia.

Tests turned up problems with some men’s multivitamin products as well. Two of three men’s multivitamins failed to pass testing. One contained too much folic acid, which may increase the risk of prostate cancer, while another was contaminated with lead.

Among four women’s multivitamins tested, one provided only 66 percent of its claimed vitamin A; one of five seniors’ multivitamins selected contained only 44 percent of its vitamin A; and among three prenatal vitamins, one was short on vitamin

A.

Two out of five general multivitamins were short on ingredients: one provided only 50 percent of its claimed folic acid and the other was missing 30 percent of its calcium.

A vitamin water tested by ConsumerLab.com had 15 times its stated amount of folic acid, so drinking one bottle would exceed the tolerable limit for adults; less than half a bottle would put children over the limit, the company warns on its website.

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By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) – A sparse form of fat that helps keep newborns warm is more common in adults than previously thought and that discovery that could lead to a new way to lose weight, researchers said on Wednesday.

Once activated by cold temperatures, so-called brown fat burns calories faster than regular fat. It is normally so dormant in adults that there has been debate over how much adults have or whether they have it at all.

In three studies in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report finding brown fat in most adults and discovering they can detect it by exposing people to cold. In some cases, adults who had more active areas of brown fat were thinner.

The hope is that if a way can be found to activate this brown fat and get the body to make more of it, people could burn off extra calories without additional exercise.

“Fifty grams of maximally activated brown fat accounts for 20 percent of your resting energy expenditure,” Dr. Aaron Cypress of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who led one of the studies, said in an interview. “If you add that up, that’s 400 or 500 calories per day.

“Practically speaking, we have a great potential to have a new treatment in our armamentarium against diabetes and obesity.”

Dr. Kirsi Virtanen of the University of Turku in Finland and colleagues used positron emission tomography, known as PET scans, to find active brown fat deposits in five volunteers and also took little plugs of both types of fat. Brown fat became more active when the volunteers were cold, they reported.

“If the brown adipose tissue in this example were fully activated, it would burn an amount of energy equivalent to approximately 4.1 kg (9 pounds) of adipose tissue over the course of a year,” researchers wrote.

OBESE PEOPLE HAVE LESS

A team at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands found obese men had less brown fat than lean men.

“Taken together, these studies point to a potential ‘natural’ intervention to stimulate energy expenditure: turn down the heat and burn calories (and reduce the carbon footprint in the process),” Dr. Francesco Celi of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease in Bethesda, Maryland wrote in a commentary.

But Celi cautioned that the vision may be oversimplified.

Cypress said scientists must first find a way to activate brown fat and, perhaps, even persuade the body to make more of it. In addition, the new studies did not directly test whether activating this fat would make people lose weight.

Celi said further research may reveal that even if brown fat is activated, the body may find a way to compensate by getting people to eat more.

“If you think about it, if you eat three donuts, you hit that calorie count right there,” Cypress said.

“Using brown fat to treat obesity has been talked about for 30 or 40 years,” he said. “But people essentially gave up on it. Many said it didn’t exist in adult human beings and many said it didn’t have any connection to obesity and weight at all. What these studies show is that virtually every adult human being has functional brown fat in them.”

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)

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By Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists using imaging scans on soldiers have identified brain patterns that signal post-traumatic stress, a finding they said on Friday could eventually help diagnose the disorder sooner.

The scans of 42 U.S. soldiers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan in the recent past showed that, compared with healthy veterans, those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had marked differences in some areas of brain activity.

The study, presented at the World Psychiatric Association Congress in Italy, suggested identifying certain brain patterns could one day help diagnose PTSD before symptoms appeared and better track treatment, the researchers said.

“It could make a huge difference because at the moment physicians rely on the patient reporting certain symptoms,” Rajendra Morey of Duke University in North Carolina, who the led the study, said in a telephone interview.

“The field is still in its infancy, but this raises the possibility that one day we may be able to see the disorder in the body as plainly as we now can see conditions such as heart disease and cancer.”

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can be caused by wartime trauma such as being wounded or seeing others hurt or killed.

Symptoms range from irritability and outbursts of anger to sleeping difficulties, extreme vigilance and difficulty concentrating. Sufferers can also persistently relive the event to such a degree that it affects their lives.

The Duke team used scans to examine differences in brain activity between soldiers with and without PTSD when performing a series of short-term memory tasks that tested their ability to stay focused.

The researchers analyzed the area of the brain involved in helping people remain focused and another associated with processing memory, two regions affected by PTSD.

They found these areas in soldiers with the disorder were much more active compared with healthy volunteers.

The scans also showed marked differences between the two groups in the area of the brain governing the sense of self.

“Collectively, these findings raise the possibility of another brain pattern being potentially useful for distinguishing PTSD,” said Florin Dolcos, a researcher at the University of Alberta in Canada, who also worked on the study.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

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