A round-up of other health stories in brief.
PUB CHECK-UPS: Men who go to a Cork pub this lunchtime will be able to avail of a health check along with their pint as a part of an initiative organised by the HSE Southern Area.
Community health worker with the HSE in the south, Patty O'Brien said the HSE was trying to encourage men to take a more active approach to their wellbeing by providing free health clinics in places they visit.
"It is all about creating awareness really and getting out there to people and informing them. Unfortunately men are still not going to the doctor as often as they should. We will have someone on hand checking the bone mass index, blood pressure and so on. It is about getting to the macho type who unfortunately often leave things until it is too late," she said.
Men can come along to the clinics to discuss any health concerns, to get their blood pressure and cholesterol checked and to obtain advice about diet and drinking habits. Advice will also cover diabetes, cardiovascular health and prostate cancer. For further information on the clinics, contact Patti O'Brien on (021) 4529023 or (087) 6534419.
DIET DANGERS: A medical team in New York has treated a 40-year-old woman who developed a dangerous condition called ketoacidosis after cutting out carbohydrates.
The obese woman had rigorously followed the diet and taken the recommended precautions, including using vitamins and other supplements marketed by Atkins. After arriving in a distressed state at a hospital emergency department, she was placed in an intensive care unit. Four days later she was well enough to be discharged.
Doctors writing in the Lancet medical journal said that before her admission, the woman had lost appetite and felt nauseous, vomiting four to six times a day.
Tests confirmed ketoacidosis - a serious condition that occurs when dangerous levels of acids called ketones build up in the blood. Ketones are produced in the liver when insulin levels fall due to starvation or diabetes.
In the case of this patient, doctors concluded that the Atkins diet was chiefly to blame.
APPOINTMENTS: Jimmy Joyce has been appointed as the new chairman of the Health Insurance Authority (HIA) by Minister for Health Mary Harney. He replaces Prof Alastair Wood who completed his term of appointment.
Mr Joyce has been an actuarial consultant to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority. The HIA is a regulatory body for private health insurance in Ireland.
The HIA has also announced the appointment of Liam Sloyan as chief executive/registrar. Mr Sloyan was head of compliance services at the authority since 2002.
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY: A conference entitled Emerging Areas of Practice in Occupational Therapy will take place on Wednesday, March 29th. The conference is being hosted by the third-year students of the occupational therapy degree course in NUI.
The conference will present the findings of the students' investigation of the role of occupational therapists in areas where they have not previously offered a service to patients.
The conference will be of particular interest to those involved in health service provision in the Galway and the western HSE region. For further details, contact Sinead Vine, tel: 091 495294 or sinead.vine@nuiglaway.ie
PERFORMANCE CONFERENCE: The Medical Council will hold a conference on competence, performance assessment and remediation of medical practitioners on March 31st in Croke Park, Dublin.
The conference, entitled Performance and Remediation in Practice . . . supporting doctors protecting patients, will also focus on issues relating to clinical governance and doctors in difficulty. For further information visit www.medicalcouncil.ie
LEPTIN AND ASTHMA: Women with high levels of an inflammatory protein produced by fat tissue are at significantly increased risk of asthma, according to research released yesterday.
The findings published in specialist journal Thorax are based on a study of 5,876 adults. Researchers measured the levels of leptin, an inflammatory protein produced by fatty tissue in the body. The levels were significantly higher among those who had been diagnosed with asthma than those who had never had the respiratory disease.
After taking into account various factors likely to influence the findings, the association between leptin and asthma appeared to be stronger in women than in men, and stronger in women who had not yet gone through the menopause. The authors said that, although there was a link between body mass index and asthma, leptin may have an independent role in increasing the risk for the disease.