Researchers have said that environmental factors are more important than previously believed in understanding the causes of autism, and equally as important as genes.

The study also shows that children with a brother or sister with autism are 10 times more likely to develop autism; 3 times if they have a half-brother or sister; and 2 if they have a cousin with autism, providing much needed information for parents and clinicians for assessing individual risk.

The study led by researchers at King's College London, Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Mount Sinai in the US, looked at over 2 million people.

Using Swedish national health registers, the researchers analysed anonymous data from all 2 million children born in Sweden in between 1982 and 2006, 14,516 of which had a diagnosis of ASD. The researchers analysed pairs of family members: identical and non-identical twins, siblings, maternal and paternal half-siblings and cousins.

The study involved two separate measures of autism risk - heritability, which is the proportion of risk in the population that can be attributed to genetic factors; and Relative Recurrent Risk which measures individual risk for people who have a relative with autism.

Environmental factors are split into 'shared environments' which are shared between family members (such as family socio-economic status), and 'non-shared environments' which are unique to the individual (such as birth complications or maternal infections or medication during the pre and perinatal period). In this study, factors which are unique to the individual, or 'non-shared environments' were the major source of environmental risk.

In the other part of the study, the researchers looked at individual risk. In the general population, autism affects approximately 1 in 100 children. The researchers found that children with a brother or sister with autism were 10.3 times more likely to develop autism; 3.3-2.9 times if they had a half-brother or sister with autism; and 2.0 times if they had a cousin with autism.

In a setback to poor patients, the Delhi High Court Monday exempted city's four big private hospitals from the "mandatory obligation" to provide free treatment to certain percentage of poor patients.

Saying such mandatory requirement was "not provided in their lease deed", a division bench of Justice S.Ravindra Bhat and Justice R.V.Easwar allowed the pleas of the hospitals challenging the central government's order of incorporating a condition inserted in its lease deed for free treatment to the poor.

The government had mandatory for private hospitals, built on land allocated by the government on concessional rates, to provide 10 percent treatment to poor people in the patient department (IPD) and 25 percent in the out patient department (OPD).

The bench order came on a bunch of petitions filed by four hospitals - Mool Chand Khairati Ram Trust, St.Stephen's Hospital, Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science & Research and Foundation for Applied Research in Cancer - challenging the central government's order on the ground that it was not part of the conditions of lease deeds.

The central government had contended that providing treatment to the poor was one of the clause in the lease deed due to which land was given to hospitals at a very cheap price.

In its judgment, the court said: "What the government is seeking to achieve is untenable," adding that "neither the allotment nor the lease deed contained any requirement to provide free medical facilities" and submission of the central Delhi government that they had the power to issue direction in the regard are "untenable".

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned in its new report that resistance to antibiotics poses a serious global threat to public health.

WHO's new report (its first to globally look at antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance) reveals that this grave threat is no longer a prediction for the future but is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country.

It depicted "post-antibiotic era", where people die from simple infections that have been treatable for decades.

"Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill," says Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health security.

"Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine. Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating," he added.

The report focuses on seven different bacteria responsible for common, serious diseases such as bloodstream infections (sepsis), diarrhoea, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and gonorrhoea.

The results are worrisome as the so-called "last-resort" antibiotics no longer work in more than half of people being treated in countries.

While bacteria naturally mutate to eventually become immune to antibiotics, the misuse of these drugs - such as doctors over-prescribing them and patients failing to finish courses has worsened the crisis.

Urging public to take simple precautions such as washing hands to prevent bacteria from spreading in the first place, WHO's report called for better access to clean water, infection control in healthcare facilities, and vaccination - to reduce the need for antibiotics.

WHO is also calling attention to the need to develop new diagnostics, antibiotics and other tools to allow healthcare professionals to stay ahead of emerging resistance.

This report is kick-starting a global effort led by WHO to address drug resistance.

This will involve the development of tools and standards and improved collaboration around the world to track drug resistance, measure its health and economic impacts, and design targeted solutions.

Antibiotics are medicines that either kill or inhibit the growth of a bacteria, but they cannot cure everything. Different types of antibiotics are there and each works a little differently, acting on different types of bacteria.

Researchers at the University of Louisville School of Medicine are now using breath analysis to detect the presence of lung cancer.

Preliminary data indicate that this promising noninvasive tool offers the sensitivity of PET scanning, and has almost twice the specificity of PET for distinguishing patients with benign lung disease from those with early stage cancer.

Michael Bousamra II, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, presented the results of the study at the AATS 2014 Conference on April 29, 2014.

A reliable, noninvasive diagnostic method imposes less physical and financial burden on patients who actually have no significant disease, while rapid and accurate diagnosis expedites treatment for patients who truly have lung cancer.

The team believes that while the breath test would not replace CT as a primary screening tool, it would be particularly helpful in conjunction with a positive CT scan result.

"This breath analysis method presents the potential for a cheaper and more reliable diagnostic option for patients found to have bulky disease on a CT scan . If the breath analysis is negative, the patient may, in some instances, be followed with repeated exams without necessitating a biopsy. But a positive breath analysis would indicate that the patient may proceed to definitive biopsy, thus expediting treatment," Dr. Bousamra said.