16032019 - How women stripped half naked to half rigginh

24—SATURDAY Vanguard, MARCH 16, 2019
By Sola Ogundipe/08056180112/solazed@live.com
Researchers
approve advanced
maternal age
pregnancies
Giving birth as a
grandmother at
the age of 50
years and above is just as
safe as as giving birth as a
40-year-old according to
researchers at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev
(BGU) and Soroka
University Medical Center
who have determined that
geriatric pregnancy is safe
without endangering the
mother or the baby.
This was disclosed at the
Society for Maternal and
Fetal Medicine 39th
Annual Pregnancy
Meeting in Las Vegas.
Normally, pregnancy
above age of 35 is
considered “geriatric”
and often less advisable
and the researchers
examined the
complications of
pregnancies among
women over the age of 50
and the question of
whether women who give
birth at these ages are at
increased risk for both
themselves and the fetus
compared with younger
mothers.
The researchers found
that thanks to medical and
technological
advancements - including
extracellular fertilization
and egg donation - the age
at which a woman can give birth
has gradually increased.
It turns out that 50 is the new 40
when it comes to childbirth. There
is no doubt that medical teams will
need to handle increasing
numbers of birth for women over
age 50.
The study included 242,771
deliveries at Soroka, of which
234,824 (96.7 percent) occurred in
women younger than 40. The rest
occurred in women from age 40 to
50 and older.
It focused mainly on whether
women found themselves during
pregnancy and childbirth with
complications such as
premature births,
gestational diabetes,
hypertension, and
cesarean sections.
The study also
examined if the
newborn suffered from
poor physical condition,
mortality or distress
during labor.
The researchers
concluded that all
complications were
higher among women
over 40 who gave birth
to children compared
with those who gave
birth below that age.
Remarkably, there was
no escalation of
complications in women
over the age of 50,
compared with women
who gave birth between
the ages of 40 and 50.
They still advise
treatment of the
pregnancies of women
over the age of 40 as
high-risk, and even
more so, the
pregnancies of women
over 50. Special
emphasis should be
placed on tracking
fasting glucose and
pregnant blood pressure
for early detection of
complications.
*The world’s oldest first-time
mother, Daljinder Kaur, who
gave birth in 2016 at the age of
72, with her son, Amman. She
conceived through IVF after
trying unsuccessfully for 50 years
to get pregnant naturally.
Adding olive oil to your diet
- even just once a week -
lowers your risk of
suffering clogged-up arteries
which can trigger heart attacks
and strokes, a new study found.
It’s long been known that the
Mediterranean diet - of which
olive oil is a key component - is
associated with good heart health.
But now researchers have
shown why and how.
Studying the blood of 63 obese,
non-smoking adults, they found
those olive oil seemed to protect
blood platelets from dangerous
‘activation’ which can cause a
build-up and blood clots.
‘People who are obese are at
increased risk of having a heart
attack, stroke or other
cardiovascular event, even if they
don’t have diabetes or other
obesity-associated conditions,’
lead author Dr Sean Heffron at
New York University School of
Medicine said.
‘Our study suggests that
choosing to eat olive oil may have
the potential to help modify that
risk, potentially lowering an
obese person’s threat of having a
heart attack or stroke.’
The study involved asking 63
obese, nonsmoking, non-diabetic
individuals with an average age of
32.2 and where morbidly obese
with an average BMI of 44.1.
It found those who ate olive oil
at least once a week had lower
New TB treatment saves people living with HIV
In an important moment for
tuberculosis (TB) control, a
new study finds that a
shorter regimen to prevent TB
can be safely co-administered
with dolutegravir (DTG)—the
first-line drug to treat HIV in
many high-burden TB countries.
Presented at the Conference on
Retroviruses and Opportunistic
Infections (CROI), the study
found that weekly
administration of rifapentine and
isoniazid (3HP) for three months
in adults with HIV taking DTG
was well-tolerated, with no need
for dose-adjustment.
The findings put to rest fears of
potential drug interactions with
DTG and pave the way for scaleup
of the 3HP regimen in 12
high-burden TB countries across
three continents.
“ We’ve known for some time
that preventive therapy for TB is
a critical component of any effort
to control the TB epidemic,” said
Prof. Gavin Churchyard, group
CEO of the Aurum Institute and
co-principal investigator on the
study.
“But current treatment options
are too long and potentially
more toxic. These findings will
allow us to move forward with
co-administration of 3HP and
DTG, offering the best treatment
options to those who need it the
most.”
The study, funded by Unitaid
and carried out in South Africa
by the Aurum Institute and the
Johns Hopkins University
Center for TB Research, looked
at the safety and
pharmacokinetics of giving 3HP
with DTG.
Researchers enrolled 60 adults
with HIV, who received DTG for
eight weeks, then began 3HP;
after completion of 3HP, all
participants were followed for
four more weeks. Overall, coadministration
of DTG and 3HP
was well-tolerated.
“We now know that it’s safe to
take these two game-changing
regimens together, and it also
appears that doses of
dolutegravir do not need to be
adjusted.” said Dr. Kelly Dooley,
associate professor of medicine
at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine and co-
Olive oil can save you
from heart t attac
ack,
str
trok
oke
principal investigator on the
study.
“These are the results we have
all been waiting for,” Unitaid
Executive Director Lelio
Marmora said. “The evidence
that 3HP is safe to use with
dolutegravir, today’s most
advanced HIV treatment, allows
us to scale up short-course
preventive therapy for TB, which
is the leading cause of death in
people living with HIV.”
People living with HIV are at
high risk of developing TB and
are 20 to 37 times more likely to
move from latent infection to
active TB.
“People being successfully
treated for HIV are now dying
from TB in high numbers, and
that’s unacceptable,” said Dr.
Yogan Pillay, deputy director
general of health, South African
National Department of Health.
“These new findings will allow
us to prevent many of these
deaths.”
Treatment of TB infection is
referred to as TB preventive
therapy (TPT) and is one of the
most powerful ways to prevent
TB. If left untreated, TB infection
can develop into active TB
disease, the form of TB that
makes people sick and is capable
platelet activation than
participants whose ate it less often,
and that the lowest levels of
platelet aggregation were
observed among those who ate
olive oil more frequently.
They did not see any of these
beneficial effects from red meat,
eggs, butter, or margarine.
Co-author Ruina Zhang, a
medical student, added: ‘To our
knowledge, this is the first study to
assess the effects of dietary
composition, olive oil specifically,
on platelet function in obese
patients.’
The researchers admit the
findings relied on participants
completing food survey
questionnaires on how often they
ate olive oil, but not how much
olive oil they ate.
Commenting on the findings
Professor Linda Van Horn of the
Feinberg School of Medicine,
Northwestern University, Chicago,
said: ‘The study that is being
presented at this meeting is
unique in the fact that it’s trying to
understand more carefully how
olive oil might actually benefit a
person who’s trying to improve
their risk or lower their risk for
heart disease.
‘These investigators have taken
on the opportunity to compare
individuals who were all
overweight, but were not smoking
or didn’t have diabetes or other
factors that could confound these
results and instead showed that
those who consumed olive oil
more frequently had better
outcomes related to their platelets.
*Olive oil
of being transmitted from one
person to another.
TB preventive therapy has two
major goals: preventing people
who are already infected with
the TB bacterium from falling ill
with active TB disease and
protecting people who are
uninfected but at risk of TB
exposure from getting infected
in the first place.
“Preventive therapy,
including 3HP, is one of the
best ways to keep individuals
and families safe from TB,
which in turn helps
communities become—and
remain—TB free,” said Dr. Paul
Davis, chairperson of the
Aurum Institute. “The 3HP
regimen gives us hope that by
using a Find, Treat and Prevent
TB strategy, we will finally end
the TB epidemic.”
The 3HP regimen offers a
shorter, safer alternative to the
older standard of care—
isoniazid preventive therapy
(IPT)—in which people take
isoniazid every day for between
six and 36 months. Large, multicountry
clinical trials have
established the efficacy of 3HP
in preventing TB.
*TB treatment