A senior official of Abu Dhabi Municipality has warned that black henna contains toxic chemicals which can cause burns, allergic reactions and can be fatal if used extensively.

Khaleefa Al Romaithi, public health administration director at the Municipality told XPRESS that through their awareness campaigns, they are trying to spread the message that `traditionally there is nothing called black henna,` the Gulf News reported.

He said dangerous chemicals and even petrol, car oil and hair dye are mixed with henna to give a black tint to the natural reddish-brown colour of henna.

Al Romaithi warned that certain chemicals used in black henna can drastically reduce the oxygen levels in the body.

However, despite the ban by both Abu Dhabi Municipality and Dubai Municipality, women say black henna is still being used at private parties and desert safaris.

Scientists studying girls with the eating disorder anorexia have found they show a mild echo of the characteristics of autism-a finding which could point to new ways of helping anorexics overcome their illness.

A study by the leading autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University`s Autism Research Centre found that compared to typical girls, those with anorexia have an above-average number of autistic traits.

They were also found to have an above-average interest in systems and order, and below-average scores in empathy-a profile similar, but less pronounced, to that seen in people with autism, suggesting the two disorders may have common underlying features, Baron-Cohen said.

"Traditionally, anorexia has been viewed purely as an eating disorder. This is quite reasonable, since the girls` dangerously low weight and their risk of malnutrition or even death has to be the highest priority," he said.

"But this new research is suggesting that underlying the surface behaviour, the mind of a person with anorexia may share a lot with the mind of a person with autism. In both conditions, there is a strong interest in systems. In girls with anorexia, they have latched onto a system that concerns body weight, shape, and food intake."

People with autism have varying levels of impairment across three main areas-social interaction and empathy or understanding, repetitive behaviour and interests, and language and communication.

Cohen noted that autism and anorexia share certain features, such as rigid attitudes and behaviours, a tendency to be very self-focused, and a fascination with detail. Both disorders also share similar differences in the structure and function of brain regions involved in social perception.

Overlooked

As many as one in 50 school age children in the United States are diagnosed with autism. In Europe experts say the rate is around one in 100 children. Most cases are diagnosed in boys.

But Bonnie Auyeung, who worked with Baron-Cohen on this latest research, said its findings suggested a proportion of females with autism may be being overlooked or misdiagnosed because doctors see them first with anorexia.

The study, published in the BioMed Central journal Molecular Autism, tested how 66 girls aged 12 to 18 with anorexia but without autism scored on tests to measure autistic traits.

The researchers compared them to more than 1,600 typical teenagers in the same age range, measuring their autistic traits using a score called the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), their "systemising" using the Systemising Quotient (SQ), and their empathy using the Empathy Quotient (EQ).

They found that compared to typical girls on the AQ, five times more girls with anorexia scored in the range where people with autism score. On tests of empathy and systemising, girls with anorexia had a higher SQ, and a reduced EQ, a profile the researchers said parallels that seen in autism.

Tony Jaffa, who co-led the study, said acknowledging that some anorexic patients may also have a higher than normal number of autistic traits and a love of systems offer specialists new ideas for ways to treat people with the eating disorder.

"Shifting their interest away from body weight and dieting on to a different but equally systematic topic may be helpful," he said. "(And) recognizing that some patients with anorexia may also need help with social skills and communication, and with adapting to change, also gives us a new treatment angle."

The first scientific analysis of probable human-to-human transmission of a deadly new strain of bird flu that emerged in China this year gives the strongest evidence yet that the H7N9 virus can pass between people, scientists said on Wednesday.

Research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) analyzing a family cluster of cases of H7N9 infection in eastern China found it was very likely the virus "transmitted directly from the index patient (a 60-year-old man) to his daughter."

Experts commenting on the research said while it did not necessarily mean H7N9 is any closer to becoming the next flu pandemic, "it does provide a timely reminder of the need to remain extremely vigilant."

"The threat posed by H7N9 has by no means passed," James Rudge and Richard Coker of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said in a commentary in the same journal.

The scientists who led the study stressed, however, that the virus has not yet gained the ability to transmit from person to person efficiently - meaning the risk is very low that it could cause a human pandemic in its current form.

The new bird flu virus, which was unknown in humans until February, has so far infected at least 133 people in China and Taiwan, killing 43 of them, according to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) data.

Most cases have been in people who had visited live poultry markets or had close contact with live poultry in seven to 10 days before falling ill.

The BMJ study, lead by Chang-jun Bao at the Jiangsu Province Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, analyzed a family cluster of two H7N9 patients - a father and daughter - in Eastern China in March 2013.

The first "index" patient - a 60-year-old man - regularly went to a live poultry market and fell ill five to six days after his last exposure to poultry.

He was admitted to hospital on 11 March. When his symptoms became worse, he was transferred to an intensive care unit (ICU) on March 15 but died of multi-organ failure on May 4, the study reported.

The second patient, his healthy 32-year-old daughter, had no known exposure to live poultry but provided direct bedside care for her father in the hospital before he went to intensive care.

She developed symptoms six days after her last contact with her father and went into hospital on March 24. She was moved to the ICU on March 28 and died of multi-organ failure on April 24.

Strains of the virus isolated from samples taken from each patient were "almost genetically identical" - a strong suggestion that the virus was transmitted directly from father to daughter, the researchers said.

"To our best knowledge, this is the first report of probable transmissibility of the novel virus person-to-person with detailed epidemiological, clinical and virological data," they wrote.

Peter Horby of the Oxford University clinical research unit in Hanoi, Vietnam, who was not involved in this research, said the study raised the level of concern about H7N9 and reinforced the need for intensive surveillance.

Mothers who breastfeed run a lower risk of developing Alzheimer`s, with longer periods of breastfeeding further reducing the risk, a new study suggests.

The report suggests that the link may be to do with certain biological effects of breastfeeding.

For example, breastfeeding restores insulin tolerance which is significantly reduced during pregnancy, and Alzheimer`s is characterised by insulin resistance in the brain.

Although they used data gathered from a very small group of just 81 British women, the researchers observed a highly significant and consistent correlation between breastfeeding and Alzheimer`s risk. They argue that this was so strong that any potential sampling error was unlikely.

At the same time, however, the connection was much less pronounced in women who already had a history of dementia in their family.

The research team hope that the study - which was intended merely as a pilot - will stimulate further research looking at the relationship between female reproductive history and disease risk.
The study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer`s Disease.

Anaemia, or low levels of red blood cells, may increase the risk of dementia in elderly people, a US study has said.

"Anaemia is common in the elderly and occurs in up to 23 percent of adults aged 65 and older," Xinhua quoted study author Kristine Yaffe of the University of California San Francisco as saying.

"The condition has also been linked in studies to an increased risk of early death."

In the study, researchers examined 2,552 older adults between the ages of 70 and 79 for over 11 years.

Of those, 393 had anaemia at the start of the study. At the end of the study, 445, or about 18 percent of participants, developed dementia.

The study found that people who had anaemia at the start of the study had a nearly 41 percent higher risk of developing dementia than those who were not anaemic.

The link remained after considering other factors, such as age, race, sex and education, according to the study published in the US journal Neurology.

Of the 393 people with anaemia, 89 people (or 23 percent) developed dementia, compared to 366 of the 2,159 people (or 17 percent) who did not have anaemia, the study said.

"There are several explanations for why anaemia may be linked to dementia," Yaffe said.
"For example, anaemia may be a marker for poor health in general, or low oxygen levels resulting from anaemia may play a role in the connection. Reductions in oxygen to the brain have been shown to reduce memory and thinking abilities and may contribute to damage to neurons."