Joaquin Phoenix and girlfriend Heather Christie out and about in Italy

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Anne Hathaway and Adam Shulman out and about in New York

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Secrets of New SARS-Like Virus Uncovered

Finding shows how it enters cells, could lead to vaccine, researchers report

By Barbara Bronson Gray

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, March 13 (HealthDay News) -- A discovery that shows how a novel -- and often fatal -- virus infects cells may help fight a health threat that has recently emerged on the world stage, researchers report.

A unique coronavirus was identified as the cause of severe respiratory illness in 14 people from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom between April 2012 and February 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eight people have died after contracting the virus.

Coronaviruses -- named for their crown-like projections visible under a microscope -- are causes of the common cold but also are associated with more severe illness, such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed hundreds of people worldwide in 2003.

Although no deaths have been reported in the United States, the fact that there were clusters of people infected in the United Kingdom shows the new virus can be transmitted between humans, according to the CDC.

Now there's a possible clue on how to stop the virus, which was first identified last September. Dutch researchers said they've identified the receptor that is used by the coronavirus to invade cells.

Approaches to preventing the virus from binding to the receptor and gaining entry to cells may help combat infection, said study author Bart Haagmans, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center, in Rotterdam. "These findings provide further insight into how the virus causes severe pneumonia, as the receptor is present in the lower respiratory tract [trachea, airways or lungs]," he explained.

The research was published in the March 14 issue of the journal Nature.

The severity of the disease appears to vary, mirroring minor flu-like infections in some people and becoming life-threatening in others. Those with the most serious infections seem to have had other viral or bacterial infections at the same time, which may help explain the more severe cases, experts said.

The virus doesn't seem as contagious as seasonal flu, and Haagmans said this appears to confirm the role of the receptor he identified. "This may be due to the fact that the receptor is minimally expressed in cells of the upper respiratory tract," he said. "Therefore, it is also unlikely that the virus can become much more capable of spreading more universally."

The discovery of the receptor could potentially help researchers inhibit the spread of the virus, said Haagmans. One approach would be to develop a vaccine that securely locked the cell door to the coronavirus receptor, preventing the virus from being able to storm the cell.

Haagmans said he doesn't know why the virus seems to be deadly. He said it's possible that scores of people with a less harmful form of the disease have not been identified, due to limited testing in the Arabian Peninsula, where the disease seems to have originated.

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Germs Fly in Roller-Derby Games, Study Finds

Skaters swap skin bacteria during bouts

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, March 12 (HealthDay News) -- As roller-derby skaters bump and smack one another on the track, a new study finds that they're exchanging more than bruises: These combative women are also swapping countless bacteria that live on their skin.

Researchers who analyzed skin samples were able to distinguish among teams by the bacteria on the skaters' skin, and they could track how the bacteria moved between teams during a bout.

"The thing that was surprising was how different the teams' different bacteria were before they played, and how similar they became afterward," said study author James Meadow, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Germs pass from person to person, from people to things and from people to animals all day long, he said, but it's usually harmless. "We pick them up from the environment, and we give them off to the environment," he said. "This study was a way to find out how that changes when we come into contact with other people."

For the study, published in the March 12 issue of the new journal PeerJ, researchers studied three roller-derby teams competing in a tournament: the Emerald City Roller Girls from Eugene, Ore.; the DC Roller Girls from Washington, D.C.; and the Silicon Valley Roller Girls from San Jose, Calif.

To obtain microbe samples, the researchers swabbed the skaters' upper arms, which are typically exposed before, during and after a game.

Each team's members had very similar bacteria, possibly because their players came from the same geographical places. "If we picked one of the players at random, I could tell you which team she played for," Meadow said.

But the bacterial makeup of the skin on their arms changed after skin-to-skin contact with other skaters. "It was difficult to tell the teams apart. They had mixed a lot of their skin bacteria," Meadow said.

Athletes can and do transmit potentially dangerous skin infections to one another, but it's not clear if the germs transmitted between these players could have made them sick, the researcher said. When it comes to the sharing of germs, Meadow said, "we don't know what impact that has or how long it lasts."

Nor is it clear exactly how many bacteria transferred among skaters as they collided and fought for track position in this heavy-duty contact sport.

Still, skin infections are nothing to dismiss. A "superbug" called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can be transmitted between athletes on a football field and even through shared towels. MRSA is sometimes fatal.

What about other kinds of human contact, such as handshakes, kissing and sex? The risk of body-to-body bacteria transmission from those activities is another mystery, although it's known that the skin, mouth and vagina are home to unique communities of germs, Meadow said.

"The transmission could be at this level or more," he said, referring to the study findings. "One thing we can say for certain is that we're transferring things in all types of human contact" -- derby or no derby.

Dr. Pascal James Imperato, dean of the School of Public Health at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York City, said the study demonstrates how people from the same areas have similar kinds of bacteria on their skin.

Should people worry about touching each other?

Not generally, Imperato said. "There's no reason anyone should institute any kind of preventive measures because the majority of these bacteria are not pathogenic," he said. "They're garden-variety bacteria found on the skin of ordinary people. I don't think it's anything to worry about."

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Breast Cancer Radiation Has Long-Term Heart Effects: Study

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Diane Kruger and friend out shopping in LA

Diane Kruger has to stock up on those designer goodies at some point and yesterday she took time out for a spot of retail therapy

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Breast-Feeding Won't Prevent Pre-Teen Obesity, Study Finds

Nursing exclusively has no effect on later weight, but many other benefits exist

By Serena Gordon

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, March 12 (HealthDay News) -- Breast-feeding has many benefits, but preventing overweight and obesity later in a child's life probably isn't among them, according to a new study.

The study included nearly 14,000 children from Belarus whose mothers were involved in a study to promote exclusive breast-feeding for longer periods. When the researchers checked on the children around age 11, they found that breast-feeding duration and exclusivity didn't make a difference in child's later weight.

Still, the study authors pointed out that breast-feeding has many advantages, and mothers should still be encouraged to breast-feed their infants.

"Although breast-feeding is unlikely to stem the current obesity epidemic, its other advantages are amply sufficient to justify continued public health efforts to promote, protect and support it," said the study's lead author, Richard Martin, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol in England.

Results of the study appear in the March 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The children in the study were initially recruited with their mothers for a study designed to assess a breast-feeding intervention program. The breast-feeding program was based on the World Health Organization/Unicef Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, which promotes exclusive breast-feeding and breast-feeding for longer periods of time.

Some of the practices included in the breast-feeding program included having a written breast-feeding policy, showing mothers how to initiate and maintain breast-feeding, having babies in the same room as their mothers 24 hours a day, and giving no pacifiers to the infants, Martin said.

The study included 31 hospitals in Belarus, a country in eastern Europe. Infants and their mothers were randomly selected to be in the breast-feeding-promotion group or in a group given the hospital's usual care.

The intervention substantially increased the duration of exclusive breast-feeding, according to the study. At 3 months, 43 percent of women in the intervention group were exclusively breast-feeding their babies, compared to 6 percent of those in the usual-care group. At 6 months, about 8 percent of women from the breast-feeding-program group were still breast-feeding exclusively, versus less than 1 percent of the usual-care group.

Although some previous studies suggested that breast-feeding exclusively for longer periods might curb childhood obesity, the researchers found no significant differences in body mass or in the risk of overweight or obesity when they followed up with the children about 12 years later, according to the study.

Dr. Deborah Campbell, director of the division of neonatology at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, said she doesn't think this study is the final word on whether breast-feeding might affect later weight.

Campbell noted that, unlike a U.S. population, which would be more diverse, most of the people in Belarus have the same ethnic and racial background. They also have universal health care, and a population with higher education levels than the United States. These differences make it difficult to translate these findings to a U.S. population, she said.

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Flu Infections Continue to Decline

Title: Flu Infections Continue to Decline
Category: Health News
Created: 3/8/2013 4:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/11/2013 12:00:00 AM

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