The World Health Organization has said that there was no sign of `sustained human-to-human transmission` of the H7N9 virus in China.

The UN health organisation, however, said that it was important to check on 400 people who had been in close contact with the 14 confirmed cases.

WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told a news briefing in Geneva that they have 14 cases in a large geographical area, and have no sign of any epidemiological linkage between the confirmed cases, and we have no sign of sustained human-to-human transmission.

The 400 contacts are being followed up to see if any of them do have the virus, have had it from someone else, he added.

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities slaughtered over 20,000 birds on Friday at a poultry market in Shanghai, Fox News reports.

The move came as the death toll from the new strain of bird flu mounted to six, spreading concern overseas and sparking a sell-off on Hong Kong`s share market.

Male pattern baldness is linked to an increased risk of coronary heart disease, but only if it`s on the top/crown of the head, a new study has revealed.

A receding hairline is not linked to an increased risk, the analysis indicates.

The researchers from University of Tokyo trawled the Medline and the Cochrane Library databases for research published on male pattern baldness and coronary heart disease, and came up with 850 possible studies, published between 1950 and 2012.

But only six satisfied all the eligibility criteria and so were included in the analysis. All had been published between 1993 and 2008, and involved just under 40,000 men.

Three of the studies were cohort studies - meaning that the health of balding men was tracked for at least 11 years.

Analysis of the findings from these showed that men who had lost most of their hair were a third more likely (32 percent) to develop coronary artery disease than their peers who retained a full head of hair.

When the analysis was confined to men under the age of 55-60, a similar pattern emerged. Bald or extensively balding men were 44 percent more likely to develop coronary artery disease.

Analysis of the other three studies, which compared the heart health of those who were bald / balding with those who were not, painted a similar picture.

It showed that balding men were 70 percent more likely to have heart disease and those in younger age groups were 84 percent more likely to do so.

Three studies assessed the degree of baldness using a validated scale (Hamilton scale). Analysis of these results indicated that the risk of coronary artery disease depended on baldness severity, but only if this was on the top/crown of the head, known as the vertex.

Extensive vertex baldness boosted the risk by 48 percent, moderate vertex baldness by 36 percent, and mild vertex baldness by 18 percent. By contrast, a receding hairline made very little difference to risk, the analysis showed.

The study is published in the online journal BMJ Open.

A new study led by an Indian origin scientist suggests that eye drops designed to lower cholesterol may be able to save sight in some people with a common cause of age-related vision loss.

The study, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health, showed that large cells called macrophages appear to play a key role in clearing cholesterol from the eye, and that with aging, these cells become less efficient at this task.


Eye drops containing a type of drug known to promote cholesterol release from macrophages, called a liver X receptor (LXR) agonist, helped restore macrophage function and prevent AMD progression in a mouse model.


The study was led by Rajendra Apte, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of ophthalmology and vision sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

AMD causes damage to the macula, a region of the retina responsible for central, high-resolution vision. The macula is dense with light-sensing cells called photoreceptors, and is what humans rely on for tasks that require sharp vision, such as reading, driving, and recognizing faces.


This sharp vision deteriorates in AMD, which can take two forms. In one, sometimes referred to as dry AMD, vision loss is due to a gradual loss of photoreceptors in the macula. In the other, referred to as wet or neovascular AMD, abnormal blood vessels grow under the macula, leaking blood and causing rapid damage to the photoreceptors.


"This study points to a novel strategy for early intervention to prevent the progression of AMD to the severe neovascular form of the disease," said Grace Shen, Ph.D., a program director at NIH`s National Eye Institute, which funded the research.


Macrophages, literally "big eaters" in Greek, act like garbage collectors. They scavenge for debris, engulf it, and process it.

In previous studies, Dr. Apte found that macrophages normally help limit the growth of new blood vessels in the eye, but with age, the cells lose this ability. The new study suggests that prior to these changes, old macrophages become less efficient at processing cholesterol.

A protein called ABCA1 is needed for macrophages to release cholesterol into the bloodstream. In these experiments on mice, Dr. Apte and his team found that in old macrophages, there is a decrease in the level of ABCA1 protein. The researchers found a similar drop in ABCA1 levels in blood cells-the source of macrophages-in samples donated by older people (ages 67-87) vs. younger ones (ages 25-34). The ABCA1 gene has been identified as a risk factor for AMD.

To investigate the link between these changes and blood vessel growth, the researchers first performed tests in cell culture. When grown in a dish with blood vessel cells, young macrophages efficiently stopped the cells from multiplying, but old macrophages did not. Deleting the ABCA1 gene in young macrophages caused them to behave like old macrophages.


Next, the researchers tried treating old macrophages with an LXR agonist; these drugs are known to enhance cholesterol transport from macrophages by turning on the ABCA1 gene. Exposure to the drug rejuvenated the old macrophages and enabled them to inhibit blood vessel cell growth.


The researchers also tested the LXR agonist in mice with an eye injury that produces abnormal blood vessel growth, similar to that seen in neovascular AMD. Eye drops of the drug significantly reduced this blood vessel growth when given several days before the injury.


The study was published in Cell Metabolism.

Although best known for promoting erections, sildenafil may also serve as a weight loss aid by coaxing our bodies to store more healthy "brown fat" relative to unhealthy "white fat" than it would otherwise do on its own, a new study suggests.

According to the research, this is because sildenafil inhibits the breakdown of cyclic GMP, which has been well known as a messenger molecule used by the body to control blood pressure and flow, and has now been shown to play an important role determining which type of fat-white or brown-the body stores.

"There is a growing need for novel treatments against obesity," Alexander Pfeifer, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Bonn, Biomedical Center in Bonn, Germany said.

"Finding new positive effects of existing drugs, such as sildenafil, in adipose tissue might help to bridge the period until novel drugs against obesity have been developed," he said.

To make this discovery, Pfeifer and colleagues used mice to show that cyclic GMP reduced the secretion of pro-inflammatory hormones, which, in turn, shifted the "color code" of fat from white to brown.

Mice treated with sildenafil showed browning of the white fat after just a few days of treatment, which is believed to be the result of high cyclic GMP levels.

Then the researchers used isolated fat cells and treated the cells directly with cyclic GMP and identified a "browning" effect as well.
The study is published online in The FASEB Journal.

Eating while watching television or working at a desk could lead to excess weight gain, according to a new study, because people are not aware of how much they have eaten.

By contrast, researchers found that remembering previous meals that were delicious and filling can lead to us eating smaller portions and ultimately enjoying trimmer waistlines.

Techniques such as writing down previous meals and using visual reminders of previous meals, such as keeping food wrappers were found to help with awareness of comsumption and lead to a reduction in meal sizes.

Lead researcher Dr Eric Robinson, from the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society based at Liverpool University, said if people recalled their last meal as being filling and satisfying then they ate less during their next meal.

He added that this could be developed as a new strategy to help with weight loss and maintenance and reduce the need for calorie controlled dieting.

The findings were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.