Over 6,000 people have been affected with dengue in the Dominican Republic, out of which 24 have died, a minister has said. But the number of cases reported in hospitals and clinics has declined over the past few days, which shows people have become aware of the danger and are seeking medical help
and taking necessary precautions, Public Health Minister Bautista Rojas Gomez said.

Authorities are also trying to stop the spread of other diseases like malaria, he said.

A new research suggests that slavishly following long-held guidelines for diagnosing the cause of arthritis-related back pain is resulting in excessive tests, delays in pain relief and wasteful spending of as much as 10,000 dollars per patient.

Arthritis is a common cause of back pain, though difficult to precisely diagnose, experts say, because of the poor correlation between a finding of arthritis on an X-ray or MRI and the degree of a patient's back pain.

"The whole way we're doing this is wrong," says study leader Steven P. Cohen, M.D., an associate professor of anaesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"If we just do the radio frequency procedure first, we're going to help more people and we're going to save a lot of money."

The study revealed that among those who had radio-frequency treatment, success rates were higher in those who had the diagnostic blocks first because they were more likely to actually have arthritis.

"When you do two blocks, you may be wrongly weeding out many people who would actually benefit from radio-frequency denervation," said Cohen.

Cohen notes that radiofrequency denervation is as safe as giving a diagnostic block and need only be done once for relief of symptoms.

The relief can last many months and sometimes years, but often must be repeated when pain returns.

Cohen and colleagues believe that making diagnostic accuracy a higher priority than pain relief may be misguided.

"If you ask patients what their main goal of treatment is, the answer is typically that they want to be able to pick up their grandkids or play golf. It's not, 'I want to know if it's my arthritic joints or my discs.'"

Cohen cautions that diagnostic nerve blocks are called for in some cases.

For example, they should be used to determine whether surgery is the right option for relieving certain kinds of back pain in people without a clear-cut anatomical problem in order to avoid an unnecessary, risky operation.

The new study is published in the August issue of the journal Anaesthesiology.

About 60 students of a municipal school at Bopodi near Pune were hospitalised on Friday with symptoms of food poisoning after having mid-day meal, police said.

The students in the 8-10 years age group took ill after eating 'Khichdi" as mid-day meal in the Dr Zakir Hussain School, Education Department officials said.

None of the students admitted to a private hospital was in a serious condition, police said.

An official said a case would be registered against the caterer which the supply the food to the school.

American scientists have successfully developed a new technology using "microneedles" to deliver painless immunisation. Experiments conducted on mice have proved that instead of a shot, people also might get immunised in future through a "stick-on" skin patch containing tiny microneedles, the lead
author of the study, Sean Sullivan, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Sullivan and other experts from Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology conducted the study.

The microneedles - less than 1 mm in length - dissolve into the skin and are small enough that they don't draw blood or cause pain. If the patches are found to work on humans, getting an immunisation may be as simple as stopping by the pharmacy, picking up your patch and slapping it on, he said.

"There are so many little annoyances with the standard vaccination process that could go away," he said.

Because the patch appeared to work using less vaccine than in a typical shot, the discovery has the potential to reduce the amount of vaccine that needs to be produced, which could alleviate shortages in case of pandemic flu, other experts said.

New Zealand researchers have established that vitamin C can help to block the growth of cancer cells - an important experimental finding they expect could be quickly adopted into cancer treatment.

The role of vitamin C in cancer treatment has been controversial for decades, with contradictory findings from various studies. In an international review of 20 human trials of vitamin C and other "anti-oxidant" supplements, the influential Cochrane Collaboration found no convincing evidence that they could prevent gastro-intestinal cancers - and said they "even seem to increase mortality".

But now a team from Otago University at Christchurch, in a paper published in leading international journal Cancer Research, have shown that vitamin C has a role in controlling tumour growth.

They say their study of tumorous and normal tissue samples from women with cancer of the uterine lining provides the first direct evidence of a link between vitamin C and a protein called HIF-1.

HIF (hypoxia inducible factor)-1 is considered a key protein in tumour survival. High activity of it promotes tumour growth and resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy and is linked with a poor prognosis for patients.

The Christchurch study, led by Associate Professor Margreet Vissers, of the university's Free Radical Research Group, found that high-grade tumours had around 40 per cent less vitamin C than matched, adjacent, normal tissue.

The researchers say their study suggests that restoring the vitamin C levels in tumours would limit factors that promote tumour growth, and recommend animal trials to test the hypothesis.

Professor Vissers said the study suggested it would be beneficial for people with cancer cells to have more vitamin C. It could help restrict the rate of tumour growth, increase responsiveness to chemotherapy and might prevent formation of solid tumours.

"There's enough information now for people to be seriously thinking about doing this, to apply this to the clinic or be setting up some clinical trials," she told the Herald yesterday.

"Anti-oxidant supplementation may not end up delivering any more vitamin C to the tumour.

"Just supplementing people may not actually have the effect that you want because you haven't done it in the right way," Professor Vissers said.

She said vitamin C levels in the body could be raised only to a certain level by oral supplementation.

Intravenous injections could achieve a higher level.

"That's the question: what's the best way to deliver vitamin C to the tumour."