India facing a bird flu disaster

According to a health official in India, the country's latest outbreak of bird flu could be disastrous.

West Bengal's animal resources minister, Anisur Rahaman says unless authorities are able to cull all poultry in the affected districts within three or four days, the state will face a disaster.

Five people reportedly quarantined with symptoms of the virus after handling affected poultry have returned negative results but authorities are becoming exasperated because dead birds are being sold at markets with poor locals apparently "feasting" on cheap poultry they cannot usually afford to buy.

They now have appealed to other states to help with the cull as to date only about 300,000 birds have been culled.

So far eight districts in the eastern state of West Bengal have been hit by the virus and more than 100,000 bird deaths have been reported; health teams are struggling to cull two million chickens and ducks.

The country has suffered three outbreaks of bird flu since 2006 and had the tests on the five been positive, they would have been India's first case of human infection.

India is home to 1.1 billion people, many of them poor and chickens and other birds roam around freely in backyards and fields.

To make matters worse there have been instances of poultry being smuggled out of affected ares before culling teams arrive and chicken shops have appeared overnight along the main highways with people queuing for the cheap meat.

The problem is also exacerbated because many people are poor and illiterate and reluctant to give up their poultry.

Farmers too are sometimes ignorant regarding basic hygiene and dead birds have been dumped in village wells and ponds because people are unaware of the risks from the H5N1 virus.

This turn of events is a huge concern to the authorities as it is by handling infected poultry that the disease is transmitted to humans.

There is also the worry that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans triggering a pandemic.

Experts believe that is more likely to happen in poor countries such as India with very large populations.

To date the H5N1 bird flu virus has killed more than 200 people worldwide since 2003 and billions of birds have died or been culled because of it, with migratory birds the culprit for the global spread of the disease.

Next door neighbour Nepal, which has banned poultry imports from India since 2006, has placed all its border posts on high alert, while another neighbour Bangladesh, is also battling with its own serious outbreak and experts there are also warning that the situation is far more serious than the government admits.

Government officials say the disease now affects seven of the 19 districts in West Bengal, a combined population figure of 24 million people.

A major outbreak of bird flu in the north-eastern state of Manipur last year was contained as were outbreaks in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Pfizer Boosts Caution On Anti-Smoking Drug

If the quitting treatment makes you want to kill yourself, why not just keep on smoking?
Pfizer said on Friday that it has beefed up its warning on Chantix, a popular anti-smoking treatment, to include language cautioning users about the potential for depression and suicidal behavior. The pharmaceutical maker has recently come under pressure from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as patients have reported erratic behavior and mood disorders while taking Chantix. The FDA is currently reviewing the drug's safety.
The new label includes a warning that patients who are attempting to quit smoking by taking Chantix should be observed by a physician for serious neuropsychiatric symptoms like changes in behavior, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior. Pfizer noted that a causal relationship between Chantix and those neuropsychiatric symptoms has not been established. However, in some instances a relationship could not be ruled out.
It is especially difficult to evaluate the cause of these negative symptoms, as they could be attributed to the nicotine withdrawal rather than Chantix. Yet, some patients who had pre-existing psychiatric illnesses experienced a worsening of their condition while taking Chantix.
"By putting this information in a more prominent location we're hoping it will be included in the dialog between patients and physicians," said Pfizer Vice President Ponni Subbiah. Pfizer plans to send letters regarding the updated warning to doctors as well as adding the information to its advertisements.
Chantix was approved in May of 2006 and has since been prescribed more than 4.0 million times in the U.S. alone. Jotham Coe, the inventor of Chantix, was originally assigned to Pfizer's anti-smoking project in 1995. The goal was to create a drug that could gently hug nicotinic receptors, easing cravings without getting the smoker high. After eight years of clinical trials in 5,000 patients, Chantix hit the market with a bang before reports of serious psychological side effects began trickling in.
Perhaps the most famous cases against Chantix is the death of folk-rock musician Carter Albrecht, former member of the groups Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. Albrecht was shot to death in Dallas after a night of strange and uncharacteristically violent behavior. His father says his son was a happy-go-lucky session man, but in the week after he started taking Chantix he became combative over what used to be minor business details. In addition to having taken Chantix, Albrecht was drinking heavily the night he was shot; his blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit for driving.

Depression can double chances of heart ailments

Linking matters of the mind with matters of the heart, researchers in Canada have found that major anxiety and depression can double a coronary artery disease patient's chances of repeated heart ailments.
"We found that both major depression and generalised anxiety disorder were more common in cardiac patients than in the general community," said Nancy Frasure-Smith, the lead investigator of the study by McGill University and Universit de Montral.
"On average, cardiac patients without these disorders had about a 13 percent chance of a repeated cardiac event over two years, compared to 26 percent of those with either major depression or anxiety," said Frasure-Smith, a professor at McGill's Department of Psychiatry and a researcher at the Centre hospitalier de l'Universit de Montral (CHUM) and Montreal Heart Institute.
The study found that major anxiety and depression can double a coronary artery disease patient's chances of repeated heart ailments, the ScienceDaily online reported.
This is one of the first studies to focus on patients with stable coronary artery disease -- not those who were hospitalised for events such as a heart attack.

Mobile phone radiation disrupts sleep, causes headaches

SYDNEY: Researchers from the US and Sweden have found in a study, funded by some of the world's biggest phone makers, that radiations emitting from mobile phones cause headaches and interrupt vital sleep patterns. The researchers -- from Wayne State University in the US and Sweden's Karolinska Institute -- say that participants who were exposed to mobile radiation during the study were found to experience headaches, change of moods, confusion, and trouble in sleeping. Reporting their findings in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS), they said that the symptoms of mobile phone radiation were observed in 38 of the 71 study participants. "The study indicates that during laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals, components of sleep, believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear, are adversely affected," news.com.au quoted them as saying in the article. "Moreover, participants that otherwise have no self-reported symptoms related to mobile phone use appear to have more headaches during the actual radiofrequency exposure as compared to sham exposure," they added. The researchers said that mobile phone radiation extended the period of time it took for participants to fall asleep. "Under the (radiofrequency) exposure condition, participants exhibited a longer latency to deep sleep," they said. The study had been funded by the Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF), which is made up of industry giants like Nokia and Motorola. A spokesperson for the forum told British newspaper The Independent that the "results were inconclusive", and that "the researchers did not claim that exposure caused sleep disturbance". On the other hand, lead researcher Bengt Arnetz said that mobile phone radiation decreased participants' ability to wind down and fall asleep. "We did find an effect from mobile phones from exposure scenarios that were realistic," Professor Arnetz was quoted as telling the newspaper.