Although it has been around for a long time, diagnosis of haemophilia still defeats doctors at times, with the result that some die with the condition undetected. It's not without reason that the medical fraternity is now beginning to feel that more awareness needs to be created about the rare disease, which strangely affects only men, while women remain carriers.

A bleeding disorder that doesn't allow the blood to clot normally, it means trouble for haemophiliacs, who need to extremely careful if they are injured as they may bleed for a longer time than others.

They could also suffer internal bleeding especially in the knees, ankles, and elbows , which may damage the organs, tissues and become life threatening.

Blood transfusion is usually a solution, but the cost is proving a deterrent. And so now the Haemophilia Society is requesting the state government to make blood factors 8 and 9 freely available to haemophiliacs as is being being done in Tamil Nadu and Delhi.

Its general secretary, Ranjana Ramachander says transfusion of blood clod factors costs anywhere between Rs.20,000 to Rs.1 lakh a month, and as of now only BPL card-holders are given the treatment free of cost in Karnataka.

The high cost of treatment clearly adds to the stress that patients and their families undergo, which by itself is quite distressing. "Once the father of a haemophilic child carried him straight out of the hospital with all the tubes attached to his body, to bring him to us and demand that we poison him using the same tubes as he couldn't see his son suffering," recalls Ms Ramachander.

The society is also concerned about the problems with diagnosis of the disease. "We still see cases of people dying of bleeding because doctors were not able to recognise that they were haemophilic and did not give them the right kind of treatment," says Dr Cecil Ross, haematologist, St. John's Hospital, admitting that there is still low awareness about the disorder even in the medical fraternity.

The Haemophilia Society ,which currently has around 700 registered members in the city and around 2,000 in the state, feels there could be many more out there who are not using its services to receive financial assistance and psycho social counselling, so essential in dealing with the disease. It would like to reach out to such people and tell them they are not alone.

A toddler from the U.K. is believed to be the only person in the world to be diagnosed with an extra strand of DNA - a condition so rare, doctors don't even have a name for it.

Alfie Clamp, from Warwickshire in northern England, has an "extra arm on his seventh chromosome.

Doctor discovered the extremely rare condition when Alfie, who was born blind and with severe disabilities, was just 6 weeks old.

A series of tests revealed the extra strand of DNA, which has left the medical world baffled. Doctors have no idea what his life expectancy will be or whether his condition will even improve.

The 2-year-old has digestive problems, needs drugs to help his body absorb nutrients and suffers spasms brought on by high temperatures and metabolic problems.

But his parents said despite his ordeal, their son means the world to them, and they are now concentrating on the simple things, the Daily Mail reported.

"When the doctors told us I was absolutely devastated," Alfie's mom, Gemma, said. "As a pregnant woman, you spend nine months thinking about what it will be like when your baby takes their first step or claps their hands. Having a boy like Alfie makes you appreciate the little things. He did't roll over until he was 18 months old, but we were so excited when he did."

Parkinson which is most often known as agerelated disorder wherein the cells in the brain start degenerating is being noticed in younger people as well.

On the World Parkinson Day on Monday, the city based neurologists working in this field reported that those between the age group of 40 to 45 years are also affected with this disease and there is a need to create awareness about it among the people.

"NIMHANS receives 200250 patients every year seeking treatment for Parkinson's disease. Among these cases, 25 per cent of them are between the age group of 40 to 45 with the onset of the disease and those who have the family history of the disease," Dr Pramod Kumar Paul, additional professor of Neurology, NIMHANS, said.

He added that the lack of awareness about the disease is one of the biggest problems because of which it is ignored most of the time.

Dr Paul said shaking of hands, progressive difficulty in writing as the alphabets becoming smaller, difficulty in walking, reduction in facial expressions, slow movement, sleep disturbance are some of the symptoms of this disease.

Besides, he also emphasised on the need to carry out study to know the statistics of the Parkinson's disease prevalence among the people in the country. Emphasising on the need of Parkinson groups, Dr Ravi Kumar Verma, head of Neurology, M S Ramaiah Medical College, said that there should be formation of more and more Parkinson groups working to help the affected people.

These groups should comprise all the people affected by the disease.

Such groups can discuss the new procedures, new developments in the filed, he felt.

"The disease only affects the physically mobility but the brain remains sharp and bright. Such groups help the patients to discuss the ways to deal with it and measure to stop further progressions," he added.

Middle-aged adults with diabetes die an estimated six years before those without diabetes, says a new study in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

The reason I'm so concerned about this finding is that diabetes almost inevitably follows on from obesity, and as numbers of obese people rocket, it means we're going to be seeing people living shorter lives and dying from an array of illnesses.

This research is very relevant because it examined nearly a million people. Study leaders found a link between diabetes and an increased risk of death from a frighteningly wide range of diseases.

One of the illness groups was multiple cancers, another was digestive diseases and surprisingly, the third group showed that diabetes sufferers have more injuries and self-harm more than those without it.

The study also confirmed the well known link between diabetes and heart attacks, stokes and infections.

But most shocking of all is that the diabetics mainly had type 2 diabetes - the kind that develops when we become obese. If this isn't a wake-up call for us all to pay more attention to diet, exercise, our lifestyles and the way we feed our children, I don't know what is.

Many risk factors that we traditionally associate with early death, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and drinking, did not have nearly the same effect as diabetes.

Risk of death went up in line with blood sugar levels in people with and without diabetes.

The damage is done by persistent high levels of blood sugar, which seep into the tissues and affect the whole body's metabolism, something it can't cope with for very long.

Women are particularly vulnerable - they lost almost seven years to diabetes at the age of 40.

The message is: you can't procrastinate in correcting obesity problems. They require immediate attention because these newly discovered, devastating effects of the condition simply cannot be ignored.

If we go on at this rate our overstretched NHS will end up looking after the side effects of obesity and little else.

A new study adds to growing evidence that regular use of painkillers like aspirin or ibuprofen may reduce a person's risk of developing colon or rectal cancers - sometimes by as much as 50 percent.

This latest report also shows that people with a family history of colon cancer - who are therefore at higher risk for the disease - also benefit from the pain relievers.

"The (risk) reductions that we saw here are not inconsequential," said Dr. Elizabeth Ruder of the National Cancer Institute, the study's lead author.

"But we're not at the point that one could make a public health recommendation" based on the findings, she added.

Colon and rectal cancers are diagnosed in about 48 out of every 100,000 people in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute.

Together, these "colorectal" cancers are the third-leading cause of deaths from cancer.

Previous studies have found that aspirin is tied to a smaller risk of colon cancer (see Reuters Health story of October 22, 2010).

The current study expanded on earlier research by including larger numbers of people and assessing where in the colon cancers occurred.

Using questionnaire data from more than 300,000 adults, Ruder's group analyzed how often people took any of 19 non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) pain medications, which include aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil), naproxen sodium (Aleve), sulindil (Clinoril), and others.

The observed drop in cancer risk varied depending on how often people took the painkillers and the type of cancer in question.

Overall, taking any of the NSAID drugs was associated with a 20 percent drop in the risk of colorectal cancer over 10 years.

And the more frequently people took a drug, the less likely they were to be diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer.

Daily use of an NSAID was associated with a 28 percent drop in colon cancer risk, for instance, whereas monthly use was associated with only a 14 percent reduction in risk.

A similar pattern was seen among people with immediate family members who had been diagnosed with colon cancer: Daily users of NSAIDs saw a 28 percent drop in their risk of colon or rectal cancer, and weekly users had an 11 percent decline.

When the researchers looked at the site in the colon where cancers appeared, the drugs' effects were more pronounced, but distinctly different for aspirin versus non-aspirin NSAIDs.

Those who took aspirin daily, for example, had a 62 percent drop in rectal cancer risk, but their risk of colon cancer did not change.

In contrast, non-aspirin NSAIDs, taken daily, were linked to a 56 percent drop in risk of colon cancers farthest from the rectum (a region called the proximal colon), whereas the risk of rectal cancer was unaffected.

Ruder said it's unclear why there's a difference between the type of drug and the risk of developing a particular type of colorectal cancer.

One of the limitations of the study, the authors note, is that they didn't monitor how long people took the drugs.

The researchers also caution that they did not weigh the potential benefits of the drugs against their drawbacks.

"There's an elevated risk of gastrointestinal ulcers and bleeds" from taking aspirin, said Amanda Cross, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute and another of the study's authors.

"We're certainly not advocating that people take aspirin to reduce the risk of colon cancer," she told Reuters Health.

The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

Dr. Andrew Chan, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who was not involved in the study, said it would be premature to offer any recommendations.

"I think what remains to be addressed," Chan said, "is, 'are there specific types of colon cancer that may be most likely to benefit from aspirin use, and who are the best patients to take aspirin?'"

Fewer studies supporting the use of non-aspirin NSAIDS in reducing colon cancer risk have been done, he added.

"This is an area of a lot of controversy," Chan told Reuters Health.

But the study is useful in backing up what doctors are beginning to realize, he said. "These are compelling data, which support (the idea) that aspirin use reduces the risk of colorectal cancer."