The admission process for government medical colleges began on Monday at the Sir JJ Hospital campus. Around 1,92,685 students will be competing for 9,000 seats spread across a broad range of courses, including MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery), Dental, Ayurveda, Homeopathy and Unani medicine.

The admission process, conducted by the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), will continue for nine days till July 12.Students who have cleared the MHT-CET 2011 are eligible for admission.

On the first day, students who figured in the state merit list between 1 to 900, were invited to take admission into their preferred course and college.

Apart from the Mumbai centre, admissions are ongoing at three other centres across the state - BJ Medical College in Pune, Government Medical College in Aurangabad and Government Medical College at Nagpur. Students from Mumbai city and the suburbs, Thane, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg must come to the Mumbai centre.

Dr Pravin Shingare joint director, DMER, said, "During the process, we counselled students on how to fill up the form while checking and verifying documents. After the submission of the form, we give an acknowledgement copy to the student. We have deputed more than 100 officials to conduct the admission process in our four centres and guide students at every step."

Each student takes an average of two hours to complete the formality of filling and submitting the form.

According to a senior official from JJ hospital, the admission process on Monday was relatively lighter than what's expected in days to come, since the brightest students come on the first day and get admission into medical colleges for MBBS courses.

Each student can fill 60 choices of colleges in the preference form. The DMER official asks students to take their time to file their preferences and also suggest using a dummy form before ticking the boxes on the final form.

New research may help explain why some patients with HIV experience neurological problems. Investigators have found that HIV weakens the blood-brain barrier -- a network of blood vessels that keeps potentially harmful chemicals and toxins out of the brain.

Standard antiretroviral treatments suppress the replication of HIV and slow its progression. However, recent studies reveal that 40 to 60 percent of patients on these therapies continue to experience mild to moderate neurological deficits such as memory loss and learning challenges.

In this new study, researchers found that HIV infection in a small number of supporting brain cells -- called astrocytes -- breaks down the blood-brain barrier, despite low to undetectable viral production. Normally, astrocytes help bolster the blood vessels comprising the barrier.

"Researchers have been stymied to explain why HIV-associated neurological complications persist, despite potent combination antiviral therapies that have dramatically improved health and survival," Igor Grant, an expert who studies HIV-associated neurocognitive impairment at the University of California, San Diego, was quoted as saying.

"This study provides a possible explanation indicating that minute numbers of infected astrocytes can trigger a cascade of signals that could open the brain to various toxic influences."

The investigators say these findings open up the possibility of developing new treatment approaches that block or modify the transmission of signals from the HIV-infected astrocytes.

In a rare and complex surgery, an 11-kg tumour was removed from the abdomen of a teenage Kenyan girl at the Asian institute of Gastroenterology.

Interestingly, using the new cell-saver technology, most of the blood that was lost during the surgery, was sucked back in. The blood cells were cleansed, warmed, processed and transfused back into the girl while the AIG staff and donors donated their blood products to compensate for 13 litres of blood lost.

The 17-year-old orphan girl, Ms Vincencia Awuor, from Embakasi Garrison Secondary School, in Nairobi, Kenya, had a huge liver tumor. This had bloated her abdomen and she had been stigmatized since 2008 as her classmates thought she was pregnant. The increasing size of her abdomen even restricted her movement.

Ms Awuor was treated at various medical centres in Kenya and there was an attempt to remove the tumour surgically. However, due to massive bleeding, the surgery was abandoned.

Ms Awuor's uncle, Mr Martin Awuor, came to AIG about three weeks ago after hearing about the institute from other Kenyans. On June 16, the girl underwent the complex surgery to get rid of the tumour.

"It was a non-cancerous benign hamartoma tumour. Two large incisions had to be made for the surgery," said Dr D. Nageshwar Reddy, the chairman and chief of gastroenterology at AIG.

"I was confident of a successful surgery," said Ms Awuor, who aspires to become a doctor and serve at AIG someday.

The dreaded H1N1 virus that has claimed many lives over the past two years, has reared its ugly head once again in Mumbai

Yesterday, two Mumbaikars tested positive for the virus. After throat swabs were sent to Haffkine institute, pathological tests conducted on the samples diagnosed that the swine flu virus had infected a 37-year-old woman from Chandivli and a three-year-old girl.

The two diagnoses follow close on the heels of similar cases in Pune and Nashik. Alarmed by the re-emergence of the disease, the state health department had a closed-door meeting with experts last morning at the Mantralaya to think of measures that can safeguard the city from another pandemic.

Once may recollect at that the state health department had issued detailed precautionary guidelines to be adopted when the outbreak of the disease assumed the pandemic proportions two years back.

The state had even roped in private hospitals, which had prepared special quarantine wards for those afflicted with the disease.

Dr Abhay Chaudhary, director of Haffkine institute, said, "We have received samples from two city hospitals.

Tests were conducted in our Bio Safety level (BSL) 2 + labs, and the samples tested positive for the H1N1 virus. There is no use panicking, as the virus is here to stay.

It is an air-borne disease, and the weather is conducive to the multiplication and spread of the virus. There are bound to be more cases."

Dr Chaudhary added that the Haffkine Institute had started screening patients with severe acute respiratory illnesses in all outpatient departments (OPDs) of city hospitals in order to study the virus strains circulating in the city

Mothers who eat too much during pregnancy increase the risk of low IQ, eating disorders and psychosis in their children.

Every pregnant woman worries about eating properly to nurture her unborn child.

But between strange cravings and old-fashioned advice to start "eating for two" many find themselves tipping the scales far too heavily - with one in six women classed as obese within just three months of becoming pregnant, and many more putting on too much weight in later months - suggesting babies are being put at risk on a massive scale.

Now, a study has warned of new risks to their children, who are more likely than others to suffer from a range of problems including low IQs, eating disorders and psychosis.

The research found that the risks were increased not just in the early years - when children had a higher chance of suffering from attention deficit disorder, and a lower than average IQ - but also in adolescence, when eating disorders were more likely, and in adulthood, when the risk of disorders such as schizophrenia was increased.

Experts warned that even women who began their pregnancies at healthy weight, or slightly overweight, could put their child at risk if they used pregnancy as a time to ditch sensible eating habits.

The research, published in international journal Obesity Reviews, examined findings from across across the world on the impact of maternal weight on child development.

One study found that every increased unit in the pregnant woman's Body Mass Index (BMI) - calculated as her weight in kilograms divided by the square of her height in metres - was associated with a "significantly" reduced IQ in the child.

Overall, the average IQ of children of obese mothers was five points lower than those born to mothers of healthy weight, according to the study, one of 12 examined by researchers in psychiatry and behavioural neuroscience from McMaster University, in Ontario Canada.

Research from Sweden found children born of overweight mothers were more likely to suffer from attention deficit problems, while findings from Japan found every extra BMI point added in early pregnancy increased the offspring's chance of developing schizophrenia in adulthood by 24 per cent.

A study of Australian teenagers suggested their chance of having an eating disorder increased by 11 per cent for every extra BMI point gained by their mothers during the pregnancy.

Researchers said the reasons for the extra risks were not clear, but might be linked to changes in the hormonal, cardiovascular and immune systems during pregnancy as a result of excess weight.

While the studies attempted to "control" for some factors - such as the socio-economic background of obese parents, which could affect child development - the research could not pinpoint the extent to which risks were created in pregnancy, or might explained by genetic patterns or the way parents brought up their families.

Research has found that one in six women in this country are obese by the time they are three months into pregnancy - a proportion which has more than doubled in two decades, amid an obesity epidemic.

Earlier this year, scientists said more than 100,000 babies a year were at risk of dying or suffering serious problems because of the risks from obesity, which puts a woman's body under extra strain, when it is working to nurture new life.

Obesity in pregnancy increases the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, blood clots, miscarriages and still-births, while layers of fat can mean serious defects can be missed in scans.

The study, led by Teeside University, found massive variations in levels of obesity among expectant mothers cross the country.

In London, 13 per cent of mothers-to-be were obese, while in the West Midlands, the figure was 22 per cent.

Tam Fry from the National Obesity Forum said too many women were not getting the message that they needed to "shape up" before planning a family.

Others who were a healthy weight, or slightly overweight when they conceived could easily fall into the category of obese if they used pregnancy as an excuse to ditch sensible eating habits.

He said: "There is still a lot of folklore about pregnancy, and a lot of women who still believe that 'eating for two' is the way to nurture their child.

"Those kinds of myths are really dangerous - in fact, pregnant women only need about an extra 200 calories a day in the last trimester."

"There are a lot of serious risks from obesity that we already know about, but this study shows others are still emerging, and the picture is incredibly worrying," he added.

Earlier this year, a study found that rates of foetal and infant death are twice as high among those born to obese mothers.

The study found that 16 in 1,000 babies suffered fetal or infant death if their mothers had a BMI greater than 30 in early pregnancy, compared with 9 deaths per 1,000 babies among those with a healthy BMI.

Big babies - those weighing more than 10 lbs - are around twice as likely as other babies to end up obese as adults.

Separate studies have found increased dangers of developmental problems like spina bifida and neural tube defects in infants of obese mothers.

Jane Munro, from the Royal College of Midwives, said more research was needed to establish whether the apparent risks highlighted in the latest study were a direct result of maternal obesity.

Mrs Munro said: "There are some clear risks from obesity that we already know about- hypertension, pre-eclampsia, larger babies, an increased risk of having a baby born by Caesarean section, and that the child is more likely to become obese.

"We encourage women to get to a healthy weight before conception, and eat healthily in pregnancy, but we do not encourage dieting in pregnancy, and we don't want women getting too frightened about all this."