Lifelong traumas sparked by natural disasters, housefires or the abuse or the death of a loved one may bring on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a painful chronic condition.

IBS is marked by abdominal discomfort, bloating, constipation or diarrhoea, caused by changes in the nerves and muscles that control bowel sensation and movement.

IBS is 1.5 times more common in women than in men, more prevalent among people under 50 years, says Yuri Saito-Loftus, from Mayo Clinic, Rochester, who led the study, according to a Mayo statement.

Besides, general life traumas were more commonly reported than physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Of the 2,623 participants, patients reported more traumas over a lifetime than controls with traumas common before age 18 as well as after age 18.

"While stress has been linked to IBS, and childhood abuse has been reported to be present in up to 50 percent of patients with IBS, at a prevalence twice that of patients without IBS. Most studies of abuse have focused on sexual abuse with sparse detail and also have not looked at other forms of psychological trauma," said Saito-Loftus.

"This is the first study that looks at multiple forms of trauma, the timing of those traumas, and traumas in a family setting," he added.

Saito-Loftus said the results of this study indicate that patients with IBS experience or report traumas at a level higher than patients without IBS.

These findings were presented at the American College of Gastroenterology's (ACG) 76th Annual Scientific meeting in Washington, DC.

Scientists have now come up with a new material that teams up with the fiber in face masks, air conditioning and air cleaning filters to capture flu viruses before they can get into people's eyes, noses and mouths and cause infection.

Xuebing Li, Peixing Wu and colleagues explain that in an average year, influenza kills almost 300,000 people and sickens millions more worldwide.

The constant emergence of new strains of virus that shrug off vaccines and anti-influenza medications has led to an urgent need for new ways of battling this modern-day scourge.

So, the scientists sought a new approach, using a substance termed chitosan made from ground shrimp shells.

The scientists combined chitosan with substances that the flu virus attaches to in order to infect cells.

They found that this new version of chitosan ideal for attaching to fibers of face masks and air filters was highly effective in capturing flu virus.

The material could become an important addition to vaccinations, anti-influenza medications, and other measures in battling flu, they suggest.

The report has been published in ACS' journal Biomacromolecules.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is worried about Indians' high out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses to buy medicines.

WHO says, 3.2% Indians will fall below the poverty line because of high medical bills. About 70% of Indians spend their entire income on healthcare and purchasing drugs, WHO suggests.

Dr Kathleen A Holloway, regional adviser of WHO, said, "About 70% Indians are spending their out-of-pocket income on medicines and healthcare services in comparison to 30%-40% in other Asian countries like Sri Lanka, and are still suffering from infected diseases due to lack of best quality drugs and healthcare facilities."

She stressed the need for effective monitoring system in India, while expressing concern about the lack of Drugs and Therapeutics Committee (DTC) and Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee (PTC) in Indian hospitals. WHO has been urging for the setting of these panels for the past 10 years.

"These committees can play an effective role to provide patients more efficient and rational use of medicines," Dr Kathleen added.

The Planning Commission accepts that OOP to pay for healthcare costs is a growing problem in India. It says 39 million Indians are pushed to poverty because of ill health every year. Around 30% in rural India didn't go for any treatment for financial constraints in 2004. In urban areas, 20% of ailments were untreated for financial problems the same year, said a recent study in the Lancet.

About 47% and 31% of hospital admissions in rural and urban India, respectively, were financed by loans and sale of assets. States have cut down on spending to purchase drugs, adding to aam aadmi's woes.

Maharashtra spent 5.2% of its health expenditure last year on purchasing drugs as against 11.3% a decade ago. Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh too followed suit during the same period.

Or, consider the case of Kerala. Even though the state spent the highest in India on drug procurement last year -12.5% on health expenditure - the figure is still far less than what it had in 2001 (17%). While, Tamil Nadu's expenses on buying medicines came down from 15.3% (2001) to 12.2% (2010).

The Planning Commission's high-power expert group on universal health coverage has recommended ensuring availability of free essential medicines by increasing public spending on drug procurement.

It says low public spending on drugs and non-availability of free medicines in government healthcare facilities are major factors discouraging people from accessing public sector health units.

"We estimate that an increase in the public procurement of medicines from around 0.1% to 0.5% of GDP would ensure universal access to essential drugs, greatly reduce the burden on private out-of-pocket expenditures and increase the financial protection for households," the report says.

It adds, "Public spending on drugs is extremely low, with huge variation between states and across districts within a state. Data from 2010-11 indicates that about 10%-12% of the health spending in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala goes towards procuring drugs as against the 2%-3% spent on drugs by states like Jharkhand, Punjab and Rajasthan. While there has been a significant improvement in drug procurement in the state of Bihar as a result of increased allocation of NRHM funds, it is still spending a very little (Rs 8 per capita) on drugs."

Are you suffering from acute back pain? Instead of relying on pain killers which can have side effects, try a daily yoga session, a best method to treat all the critical back pain, as has been found by a team of US researchers.

Main author, Karen J Sherman, senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute (GHRI) and his associates after conducting one of the largest US studies on yoga, certifies that it does ease chronic back pain and other associated symptoms.

"We found yoga classes more effective than a self-care book," the researchers said in the study published in the latest issue of journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

At least 228 adults in six cities were randomly assigned to 12 weekly 75-minute classes of either yoga or stretching exercises or a comprehensive self-care book. Researchers noted that back-related function was better and symptoms diminished with yoga in 12 weeks with benefits, including less use of painkillers. It lasted at least... six months for both yoga and stretching, with a thorough follow-up of more than nine in 10 participants, the study says.

"After some weeks, when the researchers were about to conclude their study, they were surprised to find that almost 50 per cent of the participants who attend yoga classes admitted that they felt much better and only 20 per cent of the participants from the self-care group felt better with the offered guidelines," it said.

The researchers also noted that in comparison to the generally prescribed painkillers which may have some side effects, yoga and stretching classes positively helped patients reduce their chronic back pain.

"People may have actually begun to relax more in the (yoga) stretching classes than they would in a typical exercise class," Sherman said adding that the results suggest that both yoga and stretching can be good, safe options for people who are willing to try physical activity to relieve their moderate low back pain.

Dr Ishwar V Basavaraddi, Director of Delhi-based Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, an autonomous body under Health Ministry agreed that yoga can cure many disorders with backache being just one. "Backache is due to structural disorders when an individual does not take care of body postures or due to some glandular disorders in young age. In young adults it can be because of digestive or sexual problems."

The most popular yoga for treating backache are bhujangasan, uthaan mandook aasan, shalabhasana followed by bhramari and pranayam. During our various studies at the institute we have found that such asanas have power to cure the disorder permanently unlike modern medicine which just give temporary relief to the patient, noted the director.

In what is being hailed as a major breakthrough, scientists claim to have unravelled the precise function of genes which are known to make people more at risk of developing Alzheimer`s disease.


A team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that its findings may soon pave the way for early detection of the crippling brain disease and also of potential new treatments for the most common form of dementia.

There is no cure or effective treatment for Alzheimer`s and current drugs help people manage some of their symptoms.

In their research, the scientists used yeast to unravel how the genes known to affect the risk of Alzheimer`s work on cells in the brain. They show for the first time that the risk genes affect a hallmark protein in Alzheimer`s called amyloid.

The research discovered that amyloid was disrupting a vital process in yeast called endocytosis, which transports important molecules into and around cells. It found a number of the genes, including one called Picalm, could influence amyloid`s ability to disrupt endocytosis.

It provides a previously unknown link between the genes and the amyloid protein, and sets a new direction for treatment research, say the scientists who worked on the role of the Alzheimer`s risk genes not only in yeast, but also in more complex models using worms and rat brain cells.

Prof Julie Williams of Cardiff University, chief scientific adviser to Alzheimer`s Research UK, has welcomed the findings published in the `Science` journal.

"In 2009 we discovered that the gene Picalm affected the risk of developing Alzheimer`s disease. We`ve since identified a further three genes which, together with Picalm, show for the first time that the process of endocytosis may play an important role in Alzheimer`s.

"This study now brings the pieces of the puzzle together and shows that Picalm influences the damaging effects of amyloid. Our genetic discoveries are now pinpointing new disease mechanisms which can lead to the development of new treatments. This is enormously exciting," Williams was quoted by the `Daily Express` as saying.

Dr Marie Janson from Alzheimer`s Research UK, added: "We are very excited by these promising results."