Weight and blood pressure:
There is good evidence that weight loss reduces blood pressure in people who are overweight and hypertensive. An American study has shown a blood pressure reduction of 1.4 millimetres of mercury for every 2lbs/ 4.4kg of weight loss. The bad news, however, is that only 13 per cent of those studied maintained their weight loss at the end of a three-year follow up. (Annals of Internal Medicine)
Latex allergies:
A former staff nurse at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary in Wales has been awarded £100,000 sterling compensation for having to give up her job as a result of developing severe eczema from using latex gloves. Latex in rubber gloves is a well-known cause of dermatitis in health workers, who must be offered the option of using non-latex gloves by employers.
Medical errors:
A report from the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow has found that parents are not informed of mistakes made in the treatment of children. About 50 per cent of those studied had been given the wrong medicine or the wrong dosage and about 10 per cent needed extra treatment or tests to deal with the effects of medical errors. The study found that most errors were not caused by negligence but by organisational failures. (Archives of Diseases in Children)
Infertility test:
A new test for male infertility can detect sperm defects which previously were not identifiable. The test measures levels of the antibody, ubiquitin, which bonds to damaged proteins, labelling them for destruction. High levels of ubiquitin in a sperm cell indicate that it is defective. Conventional sperm screening looked at semen samples using a light microscope. In a recent trial for this new test, five men out of 17 were found to have sperm defects which conventional analysis hadn't picked up. (New Scientist)
Perception:
Our ability to perceive what others are thinking can be mapped to a specific region of the brain, researchers have found. Dr Donald T. Stuss and colleagues at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, Canada found that people with damage to the frontal lobes of the brain had a difficult time completing two tasks that required them to guess what was on another person's mind. (Reuters Health)
Sex during pregnancy:
Sexual intercourse and orgasm are not linked to giving birth prematurely (before 37 weeks' gestation), according to new research. A study of 187 women who delivered prematurely and 409 women who carried their baby to term found that intercourse and orgasm did not appear to induce labour, regardless of a woman's age, race and education. However, the researchers in Chapel Hill, North Carolina added that sex during the final trimester may be risky for women carrying more than one baby. (Obstetrics and Gynaecology).
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