Both traditional acupuncture and a sham procedure performed with blunt needles that don't penetrate the skin, are equally effective in alleviating the nausea of cancer [abnormal cells that divide without control, which can invade nearby tissues or spread through the bloodstream and lymphatic system to other parts of the body. ] patients undergoing chemotherapy, claims a new study.

This evidence suggests that it may not be the acupuncture itself, whether real or fake, but something about patients' expectations and their interactions with acupuncturists, that helps the treatment work.

Acupuncture involves stimulating specific points on the body, usually by inserting thin needles through the skin.

The procedure involves regulating the flow of qi (vital energy) along pathways known as meridians. Studies have established that acupuncture can alleviate certain ailments more effectively than standard medical care.

Lead author of the new study, Anna Enblom, a physiotherapist and researcher at the Osher Centre for Integrative Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden stated, "The beneficial effects seem not to come from the traditional acupuncture method, but probably from the patients' positive expectations and the extra care that the treatment entails."

Traditional and fake acupuncture compared
In order to compare the impact of traditional acupuncture and a sham procedure in relieving nausea in cancer [abnormal cells that divide without control, which can invade nearby tissues or spread through the bloodstream and lymphatic system to other parts of the body. ] patients, the researchers conducted a study.

They enrolled 277 patients who were undergoing radiotherapy for abdomen [between the chest and the hips that contains the stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, and spleen.] and pelvic cancer at Linkoping and Lund university hospitals and Karolinska University Hospital in Solna.

The study subjects were split into three groups. For the purpose of the study, 109 patients received traditional acupuncture that involved insertion of needles into their skin to stimulate certain points.

The second group comprising 106 patients were assigned to blunt telescopic placebo needles that just pressed against the skin. The remaining patients were provided standard medications for an upset stomach.

Outcome of the study
The researchers found that the both the authentic acupuncture and sham procedures were equally effective in lessening nausea in patients compared to standard care.

The study found 37 percent of the patients receiving genuine or simulated acupuncture felt nausea after treatment and seven percent vomited, while 63 percent and 15 percent of those assigned to medicines experienced these conditions respectively.

Richard Deyo, a clinical physician and professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University stated, "I think that acupuncture and its effects may be placebo effects.

"But if this form of therapy offers patients relief--and, indeed, studies show that simulated and real acupuncture both worked better than the care patients were getting from their primary care physicians--then we shouldn't argue too much about it."

World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, which falls on March 24 every year, aims to raise public awareness about tuberculosis, a preventable disease. Tuberculosis is still an epidemic in many regions of the world, annihilating the lives of many millions of people each year. Each year, over nine million people around the world get infected with TB and almost two million TB related deaths are recorded worldwide. The actual figures must be far larger than this.

For World TB Day 2011, we enter the second year of a two-year campaign - "On the move against tuberculosis". The campaign aims to inspire innovation in TB research and care. The 2011 World TB Day campaign is focused on individuals around the world who have found new ways to stop TB and can serve as an inspiration to others. The basic idea is to recognise people who have introduced a variety of innovations in a variety of settings. The objectives of TB day are listed below:-

* Research aimed at developing new diagnostics, drugs or vaccines
* Operational research, aimed at making TB care more effective and efficient
* New approaches to helping people gain access to TB diagnosis and treatment
* Novel partnerships between actors in the fight against TB
* Advances in integrating TB care into health systems
* New approaches to providing support from members of the community to people affected by TB
* Innovative ways of raising awareness about TB.


According to World Health Organization (WHO), here are some interesting facts about tuberculosis.

Fact 1 - Tuberculosis is contagious and spreads through air. If not treated, each person with active TB can infect on average 10 to 15 people a year.

Fact 2 - More than two billion people, equal to one third of the world's total population, are infected with TB bacilli, the microbes that cause TB. One in every 10 of those people will become sick with active TB in his or her lifetime. People living with HIV are at a much higher risk.

Fact 3 - A total of 1.7 million people died from TB in 2009 (including 3, 80,000 people with HIV), equal to about 4,700 deaths a day. TB is a disease of poverty, affecting mostly young adults in their most productive years. The vast majority of TB deaths are in the developing world, with more than half occurring in Asia.

Fact 4 - TB is a leading killer among people living with HIV, who have weakened immune systems.

Fact 5 - There were 9.4 million new TB cases in 2009, of which 80% were in just 22 countries. Per capita, the global TB incidence rate is falling, but the rate of decline is very slow - less than 1%.

Fact 6 - TB is a worldwide pandemic. Among the 15 countries with the highest estimated TB incidence rates, 13 are in Africa, while a third of all new cases are in India and China.

Fact 7 - Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) is a form of TB that does not respond to the standard treatments using first-line drugs. MDR-TB is present in virtually all countries surveyed by WHO and its partners.

Fact 8 - There were an estimated 4, 40,000 new MDR-TB cases in 2008 with three countries accounting for over 50% of all cases globally - China, India and the Russian Federation. Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) occurs when resistance to second-line drugs develops. It is extremely difficult to treat and cases have been confirmed in more than 58 countries.

Fact 9 - The world is on track to achieve two TB targets set for 2015:

* Millennium Development Goal, which aims to halt and reverse global incidence (in comparison with 1990); and
* Stop TB Partnership target of halving deaths from TB (also in comparison with 1990).


Fact 10 - Forty one million TB patients have been successfully treated in DOTS programmes and up to 6 million lives saved since 1995, 5 million more lives could be saved between now and 2015 by fully funding and implementing The Global Plan to Stop TB 2011-2015.

Counting the number of cancer cells circulating in a patient's blood could help determine how aggressive a cancer is and predict the best treatment to use, say British scientists.

Researchers working with the charity Cancer Research UK report their latest findings in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy can slow the growth and spread of lung tumours, but in most patients the cancer returns and is also generally more resistant to treatment.

Dr Fiona Blackhall, of The Christie cancer hospital in Manchester, and colleagues note there are no tests available that provide early warning about resistance, but they hope their findings might change that.

The team looked at the number of circulating tumour cells, or CTCs, in blood samples of 101 patients with a type of the disease called non small-cell lung cancer before and after they had undergone one cycle of chemotherapy.

They found lung cancer patients with five or more CTCs per 7.5 millilitres of blood had significantly worse survival rates - on average they survived 4.3 months compared to 8.1 months in the case of patients with a lower level of the CTCs.

The findings suggest that counting CTCs could be a simple way to monitor how well a patient is responding to treatment within a few weeks of starting it, say the researchers.

And being able to detect when CTC numbers are rising could give doctors the option to move patients on to new potentially more effective treatments more promptly.

"We now need to test our findings in more patients but, if our results are confirmed, there is now the potential to tailor treatments to individual patients and find new ways to treat the disease," says Dr Fiona Blackhall, a doctor from The Christie cancer hospital in Manchester who worked on the study.
Broader relevance

An Australian expert in cancer control and prevention, Professor Rodney Scott, welcomes the study.

"It's certainly a step in the right direction," says Scott, Head of Medical Genetics at the University of Newcastle.

He says apart from non small-cell lung cancer, which is one of the more common forms of lung cancer, the findings have relevance to other cancers, including breast, bowel and prostate cancers, which represent the majority of diagnosed malignancies.

Scott says researchers commonly believe that the failure of cancer drugs, and the development of metastatic disease, is caused by CTCs, specifically, circulating stem cell tumour cells.

He says that Blackhall and colleagues measured CTCs in general as a surrogate for circulating stem cell tumour cells.

"These are the ones that you really want to get rid of because these are the ones that can lodge in sites and start propagating in those distant sites," says Scott.

Researchers also hope to use gene sequencing tools to study CTCs before and after treatment to learn more about the process that leads to drug resistance, and ultimately to develop new drugs.

Scott says ideally it would be possible to analyse CTCs before the first line of treatment is even given.

"Because you want to give [the patients] the right treatment first time and not put them through something that is going to be less than optimal," he says. "So that's the holy grail."

Lung cancer kills 1.2 million people a year around the world and is one of the lowest survival rates of any cancer because over two-thirds of patients are diagnosed at a late stage when curative treatment is not possible.

More than 80 per cent of lung cancers are caused by smoking, and less than 15 per cent of people diagnosed with the disease survive longer than five years, according to the World Health Organization.

Stem cell therapy seems to have great significance in the medical domain. Investigators from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine assert that stem cells injected into enlarged hearts decrease heart size, reduce scar tissue, and improve function to injured heart areas. The study findings may be extremely beneficial for millions of people with enlarged hearts due to damage sustained from heart attacks.

Patients with enlarged hearts probably suffer premature death, have major disability, and experience frequent hospitalizations. Along with limited treatment option, these patients are possibly subjected to lifelong medications and major medical interventions, including heart transplantation. During the study, scientists employed a corkscrew-shaped catheter to inject stem cells retrieved from the patient's own bone marrow. This test was undertaken on eight men who were in an average age group of 57 years. All the participants were diagnosed with chronically enlarged, low-functioning hearts.

In the initial stages of the injections improvement within the damaged area of the heart was registered. This eventually may have reduced the size of the heart. These effects supposedly lasted for a full year after the injections and throughout the study. Joshua M. Hare, the study's senior author and director of the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute and colleagues found that the heart size decreased an average of 15 to 20 percent, or about three times of what is possible with current medical therapies.

While scar tissue diminished by an average of 18.3 percent, a considerable improvement in the function of specific damaged heart areas appeared. Stem cell therapy possibly improved old cardiac injuries as well. Two different types of bone marrow stem cells, mononuclear or mesenchymal stem cells were used to determine which one is better than the other. All patients in the study reportedly benefited from the therapy with no major side effects.

The effectiveness of stem cell injections was examined by measuring contractility, scar size and structural changes of the heart. It was suggested that this therapy can boost the quality of life among patients with enlarged hearts.

Now, a single incision laparoscopic surgery could cure multiple complications like obesity, diabetes and kidney related ailments, said Dr Rajkumar Palaniappan, gastrointestinal and obesity specialist at the Apollo Hospitals on Friday, while highlighting the advantages of the surgery.

Explaining how it was done, Dr Rajkumar said single incision laparoscopic-bypass surgery is performed through a single opening through the navel, which leaves the patient without a scar and facilitates fast post-surgical recovery.

For those who had undergone these single incision bypass surgeries, losing weight had not just resulted in a healthy life, but made many of them truly happy.

Venugopal, who had undergone the surgery said that after the operation, his weight reduced by 8 kgs from 140 kgs. "I feel much better and healthier, after the weight loss," he said.

Dr Rajkumar said that of the 140 patients he operated upon, 17 who had diabetes became non-diabetic. Only two are still diabetic, and that even their condition has become better. Obesity can lead to various health complications like heart diseases, diabetes, and even some types of cancer and this kind of bariatric surgery is very helpful, he added.