Scientists studying a strain of Ebola virus found in domestic pigs in the Philippines last year suggest that although the particular strain is not one linked to disease in humans its emergence in the human food chain is cause for concern.

The investigation was the work of scientists from the US Department of Agriculture at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the Department of Agriculture in the Philippines and is published as a paper in the 10 July issue of Science.

Ebola and Marburg viruses belong to the filovirus family, which cause hemorrhagic fever, characterized by bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea, and a 90 per cent death rate.

Outbreaks of infection appear to happen in humans and primates at random, making it very important to locate sources of host organisms that could be acting as potential reservoirs.

Ebola-Reston was found in pigs raised on farms near Manila, the capital of the Philippines after farmers reported high rates of sickness and deaths among their livestock in May 2008. The infected pigs were originally investigated because they were experiencing an unusually severe outbreak of porcine reproductive and respiratory disease syndrome.

Reston is deadly in monkeys but doesn't appear to infect humans: it is the only member of the filovirus family that does not, said the authors, who nevertheless expressed concern that it has emerged in the human food chain.

When they studied isolates of the virus taken from pig samples, the researchers found that they were more divergent from each other than from the original strain isolated in 1989, when Reston was first identified in crab-eating macaques imported to the US from the Philippines (Reston is the place in Virginia where the lab was based that first spotten the new strain).

When you have isolates that are more different from each other than from an original strain, it indicates they have multiple ancestral origins (they did not descend in a neat line from generation to generation). This suggests, said the authors, that the Ebola-Reston isolated from the pigs is a strain that has been around since before 1989 when Reston was first found in the crab-eating macaques.

Although Reston has not been found to cause deadly hemorrhagic fever in humans, when the researchers tested some of the pig farmers they found antibodies to Reston in their blood, suggesting pig-to-human transmission had taken place, even though the farmers showed no symptoms.

The concern is that pig herds could be convenient hosts for Reston to mutate into a form that does cause illness in humans, and also, if pigs can be hosts to Reston, as this outbreak reveals, then perhaps they could also be hosts to other Ebola strains that do cause harm to humans.

Boston University School of Medicine researchers (BUSM) have observed in a study of pregnant women that consumption of at least seven servings per day of fruits and vegetables moderately reduced the risk of developing an upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). The BUSM study appears online in the journal Public Health Nutrition.

URTIs include the common cold and sinus infections, which can lead to lower respiratory problems, such as asthma or pneumonia. Even though the majority of URTIs are uncomplicated colds, identifying ways to prevent their occurrence is important because colds are the most common reason for school and work absences. Eating nutritious foods, especially fruits and vegetables, improves immunity but hadn't previously been associated with reducing the risk of URTIs in pregnant women.

BUSM researchers studied more than 1,000 pregnant women and found those who ate the most fruits and vegetables were 26 percent less likely to have URTI relative to those who ate the least amount. Neither fruit nor vegetable intake alone was found to be associated with the five-month risk of URTI. The patterns observed for total fruit and vegetable intake and either fruit or vegetable intake alone in relation to the three-month risk of URTI were consistent with those when assessing the five-month risk of URTI. Women in the highest quartile of fruit and vegetable intake had a stronger reduced three-month risk than the five-month risk of URTI. Moreover, there was a significant decreasing linear trend for the three-month risk of URTI with consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Pregnant women have been recommended to consume at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. This study showed that intake of higher levels, 6.71 servings per day, was associated with a moderate risk reduction for URTI.

"Pregnant women may require more fruits and vegetables than usual because of the extra demands on the body," said senior author Martha M. Werler, M.P.H., Sc.D., professor at Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University.

US researchers have recently confirmed the findings of an earlier smaller study they published last year that suggested women with a history of migraine are likely to have a lower risk of developing breast cancer. They estimated that among both premenopausal and postmenopausal women with a clinical diagnosis of migraines, the risk of getting breast cancer was 26 per cent lower compared to women without a history of migraines.

The new research was led by Dr Christopher I. Li, a breast-cancer epidemiologist and associate member of the Public Health Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. As first author, Li and colleagues from other research centers in the US, have published the work as a paper in the July issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The authors noted that both migraine and breast cancer are diseases that involve hormones, and therefore it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the two could be linked. However, to date only one small study, the one they published last year, has investigated this, and it was unable to explore the link in sufficient detail, especially in terms of menopausal status and triggers for migraine that are known risk factors for breast cancer, such as alcohol and hormone therapy.

For this study, Li and colleagues used data covering nearly 10,000 women, half of whom had breast cancer and the other half were controls, who were taking part in a multicenter population-based case-control study in the United States where any history of migraine was recorded in structured interviews (as opposed to self-reports or filling in questionnaires).

This time their findings showed that the reduction in risk was much the same for pre- and postmenopausal women, and was independent of how old sthey were when migraine was diagnosed or what type of prescription drugs they used. They also found that avoiding migraine triggers such as alcohol, smoking and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) made no difference to the risk.

The main differences between this study and the earlier one that suggested the link are:

* Much bigger group: more than four times the size (the earlier one had about 2,000 participants).

* The group was more geographically diverse: the data came from women living in five metropolitan areas instead of only one.

* The group's age range was wider: from 34 to 64 years old as opposed to 55 to 74 in the earlier study. This helped the researchers better estimate pre- and postmenopausal effects.

* Researchers were better able to study migraine triggers from data on the women's lifestyles.

Regarding the triggers, which the earlier study had not been able to look at properly, and left the researchers wondering if avoiding migraine triggers might also reduce a woman's chances of developing breast cancer, this study helped them to eliminate that factor.

"In this study we looked at women who never drank, never smoked and who also didn't use hormones and found the same association within each of those groups, suggesting that the association between migraine and reduced breast cancer risk may be independent of those other factors and may stand alone as a protective factor," said Li.

An article published Online First and in a future edition of The Lancet reports that the rising rates of suicide and murders in the population are directly associated to the growing unemployment rates originated by the economic downturn. Another effect is the decline in road-traffic accidents. Active labor market programs aiming to maintain and reintegrate workers in jobs could tone down some of these unfavorable effects. The article is the work of Dr David Stuckler, of the University of Oxford, UK, and Professor Martin McKee, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and their team.

It is acknowledged that economic trouble can lead to adverse effects in health because of its impact on mental health, addiction problems, increased stress and suicides. On the other hand, some people argue that recessions can lead people to be healthier, because they engage in more healthy behavior, such as for instance walking instead of driving, and less over-consumption of food and alcohol. In order to find out more about the effects of economic downturns on public health, the authors evaluated how economic changes have affected mortality rates in twenty six European Union (EU) countries in the last thirty years. They identified how governments might reduce adverse effects.

They established that for every 1 percent increase in unemployment, there was a 0.8 percent rise in suicide rates in people younger than 65 years. This translated in 60 to 550 additional suicides per year across the EU. Murder rates also rose 0.8 percent. On the other hand, road traffic accidents decreased by 1.4 percent. When there was an increase of more than 3 percent in unemployment, suicide rates for individuals under 65 years rose by 4.5 percent, and deaths from alcohol abuse by 28 percent. There was no evidence throughout the EU that all-cause mortality rates increased when unemployment rose. However different populations had diverse responses. They depended in part on the social protection mechanisms in place that could ease the damage caused by unemployment, such as active labor market programs. The authors observed in the central and eastern European countries that populations are very exposed to the potential for negative health effects when unemployment rates rise sharply. This is the result of weaker labor market protections. There is no clear effect on a particular country because the health of the population is variable. However research suggests that individuals who lose their jobs are most at risk, as well the ones with lower education levels. Moreover, the authors point out that their research only focused on mortality. The effects of recession on risk factors and disease were not considered.

The authors explain: "Some negative health effects of the Great Depression seem to have been manifested only 5-7 years after the bank crises of the late 1920s and early 1930s. A related concern is that fear and anxiety in the present crisis could be particularly long-lasting; even when the market recovers, people's worries and associated behaviours (such as health-care seeking, or alterations to health-system budgets) might not."

They point out that the consequences of the current economic crisis may be weaker than had been forecasted. There were 25 to 290 additional suicides in Britain attributable to unemployment rises. But, they carry on by saying: "Nevertheless, although the financial sector of an economy may be principally responsible for risk-taking related to the present economic crisis, the true costs of this risk-taking behaviour are to society as a whole."

They write in conclusion: "The analysis also suggests that governments might be able to protect their populations, specifically by budgeting for measures that keep people employed, helping those who lose their jobs cope with the negative effects of unemployment, and enabling unemployed people to regain work quickly. We observed that social spending on active labour market programmes greater than $190 per head purchasing power parity mitigated the effect of unemployment on death rates from suicides, creating a specific opportunity for stimulus packages to align labour market investments with health promotion."

Senior government doctors, who were supposed to go on a one-day token strike on Monday, called off their agitation after state
government set up a committee to look into the pay hike demands put forward by Tamil Nadu Government Doctors' Association. (TNGDA). Meanwhile, house surgeons and postgraduate medical students of government colleges continued their strike.

Senior doctors had given a strike call after talks with state government failed on Sunday morning.

However, the government panicked that strike by doctors will paralyse the government hospitals where services have already been hit by the ongoing students' strike.

Hence, health department held talks with representatives of TNGDA on Monday evening and promised them that a committee headed by special secretary law department Praveen Kumar will be constituted.

"Director of medical education, director of public health and director of medical service and two representatives of TNGDA will be members of the committee which will submit its report recommending the government about the demands of the doctors," said health minister M R K Paneerselvam.

However, "the government would clear all backlog in promotions of doctors," he added.

Though the government managed to thwart the doctors' attempt to go on strike, continuing strike by students are expected to further affect the hospitals.

With the working force of the government hospitals striking work, the services at most hospitals were severely hit. While some hospitals cancelled elective surgeries, others grappled with long queues of patients at the out-patient units.

An irked minister even ordered the directorate of medical education to bar all striking house surgeons from appearing for the postgraduate entrance in 2010. "We will also mention their participation in the strike in their conduct certificates," director of medical education Dr S Vinayagam said.