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.

Attention parents, the circumference of your child's waist can now predict if he or she is likely to suffer from metabolic diseases.

Now, a multi centre cross-sectional study carried out by the International Diabetes Federation hints that healthy cut off values of waist circumferences can be used as screening for Metabolic Syndrome (MS) in Indian children.

The study was conducted on 10,842 children in five cities - Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Raipur.

"MS in children has been defined as the presence of high triglyceride levels in blood, Low HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol), increased fasting blood glucose levels, high systolic blood pressure and waist circumference > 75th percentile," said Dr Archana Dayal Arya, Paediatric Endocrinologist of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi and co-author of the study.

Metabolic Syndrome results in increased risk for hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and atherosclerosis cardiovascular disease.

It is shocking to see children as young as 6 yrs old with diseases like hypertension, diabetes mellitus and abnormalities in the lipid profile, she said.

The study found that risk factor for Indian children for developing MS was at 70th WC percentile which is significantly lower than International proposed WC cut off of 90th percentile.

It also found that 3.3 percent or 358 children out of a total sample size of 10,842 were hypertensive.

"We found that primary or essential hypertension, commonly seen in adults, is becoming common in children, who are obese or overweight. Therefore it is very essential for them to change their lifestyle and lose weight," said Dr Anuradha Khadilkar, consultant paediatrician in Jehangir Hospital, Pune and corresponding author of the study.

The study will be published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Paediatrics.

Researchers have shown a correlation between a loss of the Y chromosome in blood cells and both a shorter life span and higher mortality from cancer in other organs.

Men have a shorter average life span than women and both the incidence and mortality in cancer is higher in men than in women. However, the mechanisms and possible risk factors behind this sex-disparity are largely unknown. Alterations in DNA of normal cells accumulate throughout our lives and have been linked to diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

In a study recently published in the journal Nature Genetics an international team of researchers have analysed the DNA in blood samples from a group of more than 1,600 elderly men. They found that the most common genetic alteration was a loss of the Y chromosome in a proportion of the white blood cells.

The group of men was studied for many years and the researchers could detect a correlation between the loss of the Y chromosome and shorter survival.

Lars Forsberg , researcher at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, who has led the study, said men who had lost the Y chromosome in a large proportion of their blood cells had a lower survival, irrespective of cause of death. We could also detect a correlation between loss of the Y chromosome and risk of cancer mortality.

The Y chromosome is only present in men and the genes contained on the Y chromosome have so far mostly been associated with sex determination and sperm production.

The study has been recently published in the journal Nature Genetics.