Ransomware attacks: 29,000 infections in China as working week begins - live updates

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Businesses and NHS brace for fresh impact as minister blames Labour for UK’s cyber-security failings

• Did you pay money as a victim of ransomware?

1.32pm BST

Russia had nothing to do with a massive global cyberattack, President Vladimir Putin said Monday, criticising the US intelligence community for creating the original software, AFP reports.

“As for the source of these threats, Microsoft’s leadership stated this directly, they said the source of the virus was the special services of the United States,” Putin said.

1.15pm BST

Three hospitals in Ireland have been targeted by the cyber attack.

Health chiefs blocked external communication to servers until Wednesday to stop the spread of the “ransomware” virus as officials confirmed that up to 20 computers had been affected.

1.08pm BST

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has broken his silence on the cyber- attacks after pressure to comment.

He said there has not been a second wave of cyber attacks after the NHS was struck by ransomware attacks on Friday, PA reports.

1.06pm BST

Thousands of NHS computers were still using the old Windows XP operating system, the government has revealed, though a Number 10 spokesman insisted other Windows’ systems were also affected.

The prime minister’s spokesman said the NHS had updated the vast majority of its systems but just under 5% were still operating Windows XP.

1.06pm BST

Health trusts across England were sent details of an IT security patch that would have protected them from the crippling ransomware attack, NHS Digital said.

NHS Digital, the arms-length body of the Department of Health that provides information, data and IT systems for the NHS, said it had made health trusts aware last month of IT protection that could have prevented the attack.

12.01pm BST

The French government cyber security agency ANSII knows of “fewer than 10” French companies that have fallen victim to a global hacking attack that hit car factories, hospitals and other organisations in about 100 countries, an ANSII spokesman said on Monday.

11.39am BST

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman has defended health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s lack of public statements or appearances since the cyberattack on Friday.

“This is an international cyber crime, committed on an unprecedented scale.

11.15am BST

Theresa May has rejected claims the government ignored warnings the NHS was vulnerable to a possible cyber security attack.

The Prime Minister said warnings had been given to hospital trusts.

11.15am BST

If you paid money as a victim of ransomware we’d like to hear from you. How much were you asked to pay? Why did you decide to pay the ransom? What happened afterwards? We’d also like to hear the experiences of those who paid in other recent attacks.
You can share your stories with us – anonymously if you wish – by filling in our form here.

11.04am BST

Few major problems have been reported in India with the hea of the government response team saying “everything seems to be normal, so far”, AP reports.

Experts estimated 5% of affected computers were in India, with the Computer Emergency Response Team of India issuing a red-colored “critical alert”.

10.42am BST

Microsoft’s top lawyer has called on governments around the world to treat the international cyber attack as a “wake-up call” as he laid part of the blame at the door of the US administration, PA reports.

Brad Smith, the technology firm’s president and chief legal officer, criticised US intelligence agencies the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) for “stockpiling” software code which could be exploited by hackers.

10.29am BST

“Hundreds of thousands” of Chinese computers at nearly 30,000 institutions including government agencies have been hit by the global ransomware attack, a leading Chinese security-software provider has said.

The enterprise-security division of Qihoo 360, one of China’s leading suppliers of anti-virus software, said 29,372 institutions ranging from government offices to universities, ATMs and hospitals had been “infected” by the outbreak as of late Saturday, AFP reports.

10.16am BST

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Blackpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and NHS Fylde and Wyre CCG are still experiencing some IT problems.

They said services are open and operating “as best as possible” but asked patients only to attend A&E in life-threatening and urgent cases.

9.58am BST

The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust reported their IT system had not been attacked and was operating normally.

Likewise the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs hospitals in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale, said they had not been affected by the attack but had taken precautionary measures to protect their IT systems.

9.58am BST

The Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust said patient safety is being “maintained” but difficulties are continuing.

Patients scheduled to have operations today have been asked not to attend hospital unless they have been contacted directly.

9.53am BST

European governments and companies appeared early Monday to have avoided further fallout from a crippling global cyberattack, the police agency Europol said.

“The number of victims appears not to have gone up and so far the situation seems stable in Europe, which is a success,” senior spokesman for Europol, Jan Op Gen Oorth told AFP.

9.40am BST

No patient data has been lost in the ransomware attack on Scottish NHS computer systems, Nicola Sturgeon has said.

Eleven health boards as well as NHS National Services and the Scottish Ambulance Service were affected Friday’s attack, PA reports.

9.30am BST

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, arriving in Brussels for a meeting of EU foreign ministers, said the cyber-threat was not on the agenda.

He said: “Cyber-security is a huge issue for all of us in all our countries.

9.13am BST

Three days on from the initial outbreak, fewer than a hundred victims of the WeCry malware appear to have given in and paid the ransom, according to analysis of the two bitcoin addresses to which the software demanded payment.

In order to restore encrypted files, the malware demands a payment of $ 300 in the cryptocurrency, sent to one of two addresses hardcoded into the software. Yet the contents of the addresses, which like all bitcoin wallets are publicly viewable, shows just under 14 bitcoin has been sent to them in total. At current exchange rates, that is worth slightly under $ 25,000, suggesting just 82 victims have paid the ransom.

8.46am BST

Jeremy Hunt was warned last summer that the NHS was failing to prioritise cybersecurity and continued to use obsolete computer systems, the Times reported.

The Care Quality Commission and Dame Fiona Caldicott, the national data guardian, wrote to the health secretary to point out a worrying “lack of understanding of security issues” and that “the external cyberthreat is becoming a bigger consideration”.

8.23am BST

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which was hit by the attack on Friday, said some out-patient appointments had been cancelled on Monday – especially at Selby War Memorial Hospital – but most were not affected.

The trust said bone scan appoints had been cancelled in Scarborough and in Selby: “All outpatient appointments are cancelled except blood-taking and MSK physiotherapy.”

8.22am BST

The British cybersecurity researcher described as an “accidental hero” for halting the global spread of the ransomware attack has spoken of his fears for his safety after a number of media outlets revealed his identity.

The 22-year-old, who tweets as @malwaretechblog, told the MailOnline: “In future someone might want to retaliate – they could find my identity within seconds.

8.15am BST

Meanwhile in Japan, AP reports the ransomware attack hit computers at 600 locations but appeared to cause no major problems as Japanese started their workday Monday even as the attack caused chaos elsewhere.

Nissan Motor Co. confirmed some units had been targeted, but there was no major impact on its business.

8.12am BST

As the UK wakes up on Monday braced for fresh impact as NHS returns to work, Chinese state media say more than 29,000 institutions across China have been infected by the global “ransomware” cyberattack, AP reports.

Xinhua News Agency reports that by Saturday evening, 29,372 institutions had been infected along with hundreds of thousands of devices. It cited the Threat Intelligence Center of Qihoo 360, a Chinese internet security services company.

8.10am BST

Welcome to live coverage of the fallout from last Friday’s ransomware attack.

Ben Wallace, UK security minister has been on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme defending its record on investment in cyber-security.

Continue reading…

Ransomware attacks: 29,000 infections in China as working week begins - live updates

This Spice Stops Heart Attacks, Fights Cancer, and Restores Gut Bacteria

This Spice Stops Heart Attacks, Fights Cancer, and Restores Gut Bacteria

Drug which cuts "bad" cholesterol can help prevent heart attacks and strokes

A new drug can prevent heart attacks and strokes by cutting bad cholesterol levels, scientists have found.

An international trial of 27,000 patients found that those who took the drug evolocumab saw their bad cholesterol levels fall by around 60% on average.

The patients in the trial were already taking statins, which are used to reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Despite this, the patients who took evolocumab saw their bad cholesterol levels fall even further. They were also less likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke than those who took the placebo.

The study found that for every 74 people who took the drug for two years, one heart attack or stroke would be prevented.

However, the findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the drug had no impact on the rate of cardiovascular mortality.

Prof Peter Sever, from Imperial College London – which led the UK branch of the study, said: “This is one of the most important trials of cholesterol-lowering since the first statin trial, published 20 years ago. Our results suggest this new, extremely potent class of drug can cut cholesterol dramatically, which could provide great benefit for a lot of people at risk of heart disease and stroke.”

There are approximately 2.3 million people living with coronary heart disease in the UK, according to the NHS. It is responsible for more than 73,000 deaths a year in the UK, and occurs when fatty substances build up in the arteries, making it harder for blood to get to the heart.

Prof Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “Coronary heart disease is the single biggest killer in the UK and worldwide and ‘bad’ LDL-cholesterol is a major cause.

“While statins have had a significant impact in reducing the risk of heart disease for millions of people, they are not tolerated by everyone and only reduce cholesterol by a certain amount.

“A promising new approach is blocking the action of PCSK9, a molecule which reduces the breakdown of LDL-cholesterol in the liver. Creating new treatments which use this approach could prove life-saving for patients with high cholesterol and those who can’t tolerate statins.”

Drug which cuts "bad" cholesterol can help prevent heart attacks and strokes

20 Foods That Naturally Unclog Arteries and Prevent Heart Attacks

20 Foods That Naturally Unclog Arteries and Prevent Heart Attacks

Test cholesterol of one-year-olds to prevent early heart attacks, study suggests

Screening one-year-olds for high cholesterol during routine vaccination visits could prevent hundreds of heart attacks in young adults each year, researchers in England said on Wednesday.

Their study in the New England Journal of Medicine aimed to uncover a silent killer in young adults known as familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a genetic disorder that often leads to early heart disease.

FH runs in families, and if left untreated can raise the risk of heart disease at a young age as much as 100 times, the report stated.

In the largest screening study to date, more than 10,000 children around a year old were tested for high cholesterol and genetic mutations known to be associated with FH at 92 facilities across England.

Forty children tested positive for FH, at a rate of about one in 270 children.

Their parents were then contacted for screening, revealing an additional FH-positive parent, the report said.

“Overall, one person at high risk of early heart attack was identified for every 125 people tested,” it said.

Such screening throughout Britain could prevent about 600 heart attacks in people under 40, according to the researchers from Queen Mary University of London’s Wolfson institute of preventive medicine.

“This is the first demonstration that child-parent screening works on a large scale,” lead researcher David Wald said.

“It’s the only screening method that stands a reasonable chance of covering the whole population and identifying those at highest risk of an early heart attack.”

Once high-risk children are identified, they can take steps to lower cholesterol, including exercise, avoiding smoking, maintaining a heathy diet, and – when older – taking statin medication.

“Now that we’ve demonstrated this as being effective across England, the next step is for public health agencies to consider offering this routinely at the time of childhood vaccination to test all children aged one to two years,” Wald said.

“No extra clinic visits are needed and uptake is high because parents are already focused on the future health of their children and the family as a whole.”

Test cholesterol of one-year-olds to prevent early heart attacks, study suggests

9/11 health crisis: death toll from illness nears number killed on day of attacks

The death toll among those sickened by the toxic dust and ash of Ground Zero will within as little as five years exceed the number of people killed on the day of the 9/11 attacks, experts say.

As those who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and on Flight 93 gather for Sunday’s 15th anniversary of the terror attacks that killed almost 3,000 people, a post-9/11 health crisis is growing.

At least 1,000 people – and probably many more – have died often lingering, painful deaths resulting from illnesses related to their exposure to debris that spread from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers in downtown Manhattan. More than 37,000 are officially recognised as sick.

Calls are growing for a new monument to be added to the World Trade Center site, to pay tribute to those who have died or become sick since 9/11 because of toxic exposure.

“Within the next five years we will be at the point where more people have died from World Trade Center-related illnesses than died from the immediate impact of the attacks,” said Dr Jim Melius, a doctor at the New York State Laborers Union who also advises the White House on worker health, chairs the steering committee overseeing the government health program for 9/11 responders, and is a member of the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch.

“There are a lot of people who are very, very ill with lung disease who will see at least 10 years taken from their normal life span,” he said, “and we are already seeing many more premature deaths occurring, and among younger people, from the cancers. There is going to be a new generation of widows and widowers.”

In 2001, government officials, most prominently the then head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Christine Todd Whitman, assured those in lower Manhattan in the days after the attacks that the air was safe.

In an interview with the Guardian this weekend, Whitman said for the first time that in hindsight she had been mistaken. She apologised to those affected by the toxic debris.

After al-Qaida terrorists flew hijacked passenger jets into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, the towers collapsed. Clouds of fumes and debris billowed out over New York City. Of 2,977 people killed in the attacks, 2,753 died at the World Trade Center.

The debris left by the twin towers, the main concentration of which became known as “the pile”, contained asbestos, lead, glass, heavy metals, concrete, poisonous gases, oil and other dangerous substances that mixed with exploding jet fuel, the contents of hundreds of offices and dead bodies to fill the air and cover the area around the site.

“It was disgusting,” said Merita Zejnuni, 52, a cleaner who was working a few blocks from Ground Zero in the offices of banking giant Goldman Sachs on the morning of 9/11. “It coated your mouth and your throat. I was covered in it – I looked like a ghost.”

Zejnuni developed a violent, chronic cough and was recently found to have breast cancer. This weekend, speaking to the Guardian, she gave her first interview. Her lawyer, Troy Rosasco, said Zejnuni only found out last month she could apply for compensation. Rosasco believes thousands of other people are sick or dying as a result of exposure around Ground Zero, away from the public eye.

“There is a general consensus that people down there got huge exposure,” he said, “but many don’t even know why they are sick.”

Last month, researchers at Stony Brook University announced that cognitive impairment, a leading risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, was being detected among first responders who went to Ground Zero on and around 9/11.

“That’s scary news,” said Rosasco. “I have probably gotten 50 calls in the last two days from people who are really frightened about that.”

In 2010, after years of political battle, Congress passed the $ 4bn Zadroga Act – named for a police captain who worked on rescue efforts at Ground Zero and died in 2006 after developing breathing problems – to cover the health costs of those poisoned by the debris and fumes of 9/11. Late last year, it agreed to extend the act’s provisions for 75 years. There is a separate, official Victim Compensation Fund.

In 2011, the federal World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP) was established. It has 75,000 registered members, 87% of whom worked on rescue, recovery and clean-up. The rest are New York residents or workers. A total of 1,140 registered members have died since the program was created in 2011, WTCHP spokeswoman Christy Spring said.

“Because of the way the legislation was written,” she said, “there is an understanding that there is a link between the exposure and the illnesses people are suffering from.”

Causes of death are not recorded by the WTCHP. There is no central record for how many people died between 2001 and 2011 from illnesses linked to 9/11 fumes and debris, Spring said, nor any way of knowing exactly how many other people have died without any record of their illnesses having been caused by exposure near Ground Zero.

Melius said: “We know a significant number of people died before the WTCHP was set up; it’s likely to be in the hundreds. There are also probably hundreds of people outside the program who are sick and may have died.”

The WTCHP has certified 37,000 people as suffering from serious respiratory or digestive illnesses, cancer, or a combination. Most of those registered are from New York City and 82% are male.

Spring said: “There are health conditions covered in the program that will take years to develop and we don’t think the cancers we are seeing now is the end of it. It’s such an unprecedented disaster. It’s mind-boggling to think not just about the day but about the ripple effect on people’s health.”

The Manhattan borough president, Gale Brewer, told the Guardian she had “heard very high numbers” of people were at risk of dying from exposure to World Trade Center-related toxins.

“Many more than 3,000 or 4,000,” she said. “It’s very sad. I believe it will eclipse the number who died on 9/11 itself, because so many people were on the pile, or came to help, and so many people worked in the area. We are going to be dealing with this for years and years.”

In 2014, Brewer wrote to New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, asking them to approve a plan to build a monument to those sickened and killed since 9/11, to be installed near where the towers stood.

The area now hosts the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and is dominated by monuments built where each tower stood and engraved with the names of those who died in the atrocity.

Brewer is lobbying for a competition to design a separate monument for those who have been sickened. It will not have names, because of lack of clarity about cause of death in all cases and because it will also be designed to offer solace to those still living but sick, she said.

“It needs to be universal,” she said.

She has had no formal response from either Christie or Cuomo. But when she collared Cuomo at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia this summer, she said, he told her: “Sounds good.”

Brewer is hopeful of adding the monument before the 16th anniversary of 9/11.

Jerrold Nadler, the US congressman whose district includes the World Trade Center site, said of the post-9/11 health crisis: “It’s ghastly, it’s horrible, the people will die early and I feel very frustrated because it was preventable.”

9/11 health crisis: death toll from illness nears number killed on day of attacks

Statins prevent 80,000 heart attacks and strokes a year in UK, study finds

Statins to lower cholesterol prevent 80,000 heart attacks and strokes every year in the UK, far outweighing the harm from rare side-effects, according to a review of the evidence which aims to put a heated controversy to rest and reassure the public that statins are safe.

The review is published by the Lancet medical journal, whose editor, Richard Horton, likened the harm done to public confidence by the critics of statins to that caused by the paper his journal published on the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine in 1998.

“Controversy over the safety and efficacy of statins has harmed the health of potentially thousands of people in the UK,” he wrote in a comment published with the review. In six months after the publication of “disputed research and tendentious opinion” on the side-effects of statins in 2013, a study estimated that over 200,000 patients stopped taking a statin. It predicted there would be 2,000 extra heart attacks and strokes over the next decade as a result.

The Lancet was taking a stand, he said, “because of our experience of MMR. We saw in a very painful way the consequences of publishing a paper which had a huge impact on confidence in a safe and effective vaccine.

“We learned lessons from that episode and those lessons need to be widely promulgated. They are lessons for all journals and all scientists.”

The furore over statins broke out after Nice, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, advised doctors in 2013 to prescribe statins for patients with a low, 10% risk of heart disease in the next 10 years, which was half the previous level of a 20% risk. It made 4.5 million more people, who were fundamentally healthy, eligible for statins, which Nice said could prevent up to 28,000 heart attacks and 16,000 strokes each year.

The guidance, which was based on evidence from the group led by Prof Rory Collins at the clinical trials service unit at Oxford University, was questioned by the British Medical Journal, which is campaigning against the over-use of medicines and medical treatment. The BMJ ran two papers claiming statins did not reduce deaths and that the risk of side-effects outweighed the benefits.

Collins severely criticised the papers and the BMJ, arguing in the Guardian that they could harm more people than Wakefield did with his MMR paper. Wakefield suggested a link between the jab and autism, deterring some parents from having their children vaccinated.

In the light of the loss of confidence in the pills, the new review of the evidence on the benefits and side-effects, led by Collins, was intended to help doctors, patients and the public make an informed decision about statin therapy, it said.

About a third of those who have already had a heart attack or stroke and would be eligible for statins are not taking them, and that rises to a half among those in the low-risk group. Many do not want to take pills because they do not consider themselves ill, while others worry about side-effects.

The authors say the benefits of taking statins have been under-estimated while the harms have been exaggerated. Treating 10,000 high-risk patients prevents 1,000 heart attacks or strokes and treating 10,000 low-risk patients prevents 500, they say. In the UK, about 2 million people at high risk – because they have suffered a heart attack or stroke – and about 4 million at low risk take statins.

About 40,000 people in each group – a total of 80,000 – avoid potentially fatal heart attacks and strokes as a result, said Collins.

He and his fellow authors stressed that their findings were from randomised controlled trials, which have compared large groups of similar people, some on statins while others were not.

The statins critics generally cite findings from observational studies, Collins said – that is data from people who have been taking statins in the real world, but without a carefully selected comparison group who have not been on the pills. That makes it hard to tell whether any problems are actually caused by the drugs.

There are side-effects, says the review. There is a real risk of myopathy, a neuromuscular disorder which causes muscle damage. One in 10,000 people per year will develop myopathy as a result of this. Another five to 10 people will have a haemorrhagic stroke, which involves bleeding into the brain and 10 to 20 people on statins are diagnosed with diabetes.

There have been claims that as many as 20% of patients have “statin intolerance”, with claims of muscle weakness and pain. At most 10 to 20 in every 10,000 have an increase in such symptoms on the drugs, says the review.

Some GPs have been among the sceptics over statins, but Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the study cut through the controversy. “It recognises the benefits that these drugs have for many patients, but also the potential side-effects that any prescribing healthcare professional should be aware of.”

GPs would never take a decision to prescribe statins lightly and should only do it after a discussion with the patient and the medication should be regularly reviewed, she said.

“We hope this research reassures patients who are on statins that in the majority of cases statins are safe and effective drugs – but in most cases where adverse side-effects are seen, these are reversible by stopping taking statins.”

Consultants spoke of struggling to persuade patients that the drugs would help them. “I often meet people who don’t want to take statins yet are happy to take other drugs with greater risks of side-effects, or take supplements with no benefit at all,” said Dr Tim Chico, a consultant cardiologist in Sheffield. “Statins have been unfairly demonised, and this prevents a sensible discussion of the risks and benefits of their use. Statins can cause side-effects, but the chance of developing these is low, while the effects of suffering the heart attack that a statin might have prevented can be fatal or life-long.”

Prof David Webb, president of the British Pharmacological Society, said: “In recent years, those of us who manage the large number of patients at excess risk of heart disease and strokes have been fighting an uphill battle to persuade them to take statins, a class of medicines that have been repeatedly shown to save lives.

“The problem has largely related to concerns about muscle aches and potentially more serious side-effects (muscle damage, diabetes and haemorrhagic stroke) that have been very well publicised on the internet.

“Many patients who have much to benefit from statins, and many of those at more modest risk, have been persuaded not to take them because of exaggerated claims of harm, and some research suggesting that the benefits have been overestimated. It is likely that many lives have been lost, based on a received view that statins are dangerous and ineffective.”

Statins prevent 80,000 heart attacks and strokes a year in UK, study finds

Vitamin D supplements could halve risk of serious asthma attacks

Vitamin D pills can halve the risk of serious asthma attacks according to a major review of research into the impact the supplements have on the condition.

People with mild or moderate asthma who took the vitamin with their normal medicine had fewer attacks that required hospital treatment than those who went without, scientists found.

The risk of severe attacks fell from 6% to 3% in patients who had a vitamin D boost for six months to a year. The supplements cut the frequency of attacks too, with cases needing steroid treatment falling from one per person every two or so years, to one every four years.

Half of all asthma patients will at some point have an attack that needs treating with oral steroids such as prednisolone, while a quarter will end up in hospital emergency departments. One in eight will have such serious attacks that they are admitted to hospital for further care.

“There were some pretty striking positive findings,” said Adrian Martineau, a professor of respiratory infection who led the review at Queen Mary, University of London. “Asthma attacks cause 185 hospital admissions and three deaths each day in the UK, so this is a major problem for society.”

More than five million people in the UK, and 334 million globally, are affected by asthma which causes wheezing, coughing, tightness in the chest, and shortness of breath.

The review for the Cochrane library drew on results from seven published trials on 435 children, and a further two trials on 658 adults. Most of the patients had mild to moderate asthma, meaning they had symptoms at least two days a week, but their daily routine was not seriously affected. Nearly all kept taking their normal asthma medicine on top of the vitamin D supplements.

While the trials found that a daily dose of 25 to 50 micrograms reduced the risk of serious attacks, the evidence was largely from adults. “We need more trials specifically focusing on children and also specifically focusing on adults with severe asthma to see if those patient groups could benefit,” Martineau said.

In July, Public Health England recommended that everybody in Britain over the age of one consider taking a 10 microgram daily supplement of vitamin D, particularly over the autumn and winter when sunlight levels are low. The body makes vitamin D when sunlight falls on the skin, but people who cover up outside, and those who are housebound can struggle to make enough.

It is not clear how vitamin D helps asthma patients, but supplements may work by boosting the immune system’s defences against respiratory infections, such as the common cold, which are the main triggers for serious asthma attacks. The vitamin also seems to keep inflammation under control.

“You can think of vitamin D almost as a designer drug because it has these two actions, the first being to boost immunity to infections and the second to dampen down inflammation,” said Martineau.

One question scientists hope to answer in the next few months is whether supplements only benefit asthma patients with low levels of vitamin D. “At the moment we just don’t have the evidence to say who are those who are going to benefit and how low their vitamin D has to be in order to benefit,” Martineau said. “We don’t want people to stop taking their asthma medication and start taking vitamin D instead,” he added.

The findings come as scientists report impressive trial results for a drug that cuts asthma attacks in patients with the most severe form of the disease. Two trials in more than 2,500 people showed that a year’s course of benralizumab injections reduced asthma attacks by a third to a half, according to The Lancet.

Samantha Walker at Asthma UK said the new drug offered “genuine hope” for people in the UK who had a type of asthma that does not respond to standard treatments. “These people struggle to breathe every day, restricting their ability to carry out everyday activities such as going to work or school and severely affecting their quality of life,” she said.

Vitamin D supplements could halve risk of serious asthma attacks

Natural “Recipes” to heal your heart and prevent heart attacks

In ancient times, the art of healing was carried out by women. The word “recipe” referred to a healing tonic, balm, tincture, syrup, etc. Ingredients were botanical and found locally in the wild or grown in gardens. These recipes were written down in books along with grandma’s healing chicken soup, rosewater tonic, candle making instructions, and perfume. The lady of the farm, or manor house, created these recipes in a room off the kitchen called the “Still Room.” Often these women were the only chance a person had to survive until a doctor could arrive by horseback or carriage—if there was a doctor. These women apprenticed with their elders, learned their craft, passed down their wisdom, and healed people naturally for millennia.

Make no mistake. This was a healing art that required intuition, apprenticeship, knowledge and skill. Without these women, none of us would be here.

As communities grew, the role of women as healers expanded. Women published and shared their recipe books and worked together to bring their knowledge of natural remedies, intuition, and healing arts to the masses. These women became the nurses, nuns, and religious groups that ran the early hospitals. The Shakers, for example, made syrups from cherries, poppies, sarsaparilla, and black cohosh. Shaker Sisters grew acres of poppy beds, cut the flowers, dried the pods and collected the dried juice to make opium. This crude opium was used extensively for pain relief during the Civil War and sold at an enormous price. The still room became the distillery, and the recipe became the receipt. This was the origin of the current Rx or prescription—meaning, “to take.”

(Historical information is from a fabulous book Herbal Diplomats by Martha M. Libster, PhD, RN listed below)

Fast forward. Today, you are given a prescription for a drug that is synthetically made in a laboratory, and has only been tested on a small group of people. In order for a drug to be sold, it must be patented, and in order for a drug to be patented, it must have a unique molecular structure—one that can’t be copied, and is not found in nature, because nature can’t be patented.

This is a critical point to understand and the reason I included a brief history. Natural botanical herbs are restorative—that is, they work with your body to restore its self-regulating ability. Patented drugs made synthetically in a lab, are substitutive –that is, they substitute a pill for a function and create dependency on that pill, in order for your body to perform that function. This creates a vicious cycle of dependency.

All disease is a result of two things: too many toxins, and not enough nutrients. Nutritional deficiencies impair the contraction of heart muscle cells. If you take a pill to lower your blood pressure, that pill overrides your cellular intelligence. When your blood pressure drops, your cellular intelligence tells your kidneys to hold water—to keep fluid in the vessels so they don’t collapse and you die. When your kidneys hold water, you have edema in your legs and shortness of breath. Next comes the kidney override pill—aka diuretic—that tells your kidneys—release the water. As your kidneys flush out the water by urination—along go critical nutrients like vitamins, minerals, sodium, potassium, etc. Now you have leg cramps from the loss of nutrients and you have increased nutritional deficiency of heart muscle cells—which further weakens your heart.

And thus— you have a vicious circle of artificial control. Eventually, your intelligent, self-regulating cells stop functioning.

Our relationship with nature is restorative and should be revered.

You can break the circle of dependency by feeding your heart cells the nutrients they need to restore function. Your heart needs good mineral rich salt like pink Himalayan. Your heart needs good fats like grass fed organic butter, coconut oil, and avocado to make good artery protective cholesterol in your liver. If you are taking statin drugs you especially need CoenzymeQ10 or your liver will not make that good cholesterol. Vitamin C, proline and lysine are great for removing arterial deposits, creating a “Teflon” like coating, and keeping the blood vessels flexible.

Hawthorn Berry is an amazing herb that dilates peripheral blood vessels; lowering blood pressure with no cumulative activity. It is restorative; and assumes a position between digitalis and adrenaline—in other words—can lower or raise blood pressure.

Cayenne Pepper is my all time favorite plant. In addition to stopping chest pain and preventing a heart attack—the benefits of daily use are nothing short of miraculous. From digestion to arthritis to fibromyalgia and preventing hemorrhage from blood loss—the benefits and the nutrients restore health and add longevity naturally.

Always do your own research, find your own truth, and work with your doctor.

RESOURCES

Historical References

http://www.goldenapplehealingarts.com/Herbal_Diplomats.html

Recipe

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/06/rx-mean-come/

Hawthorn Berry

https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Validation-Herbal-Medicine-Daniel/dp/0879835346

http://www.herbwisdom.com/herb-hawthorn-berry.html

Cayenne Pepper

http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/NaturalFood/Cayenne

https://draxe.com/cayenne-pepper-benefits/

Natural “Recipes” to heal your heart and prevent heart attacks

How To Look ten Many years Younger: Google Attacks Wrinkles

What Lengths Would You Go To Look ten Years Younger?  Really feel ten Many years Younger?  Life expectancy continues to boost with the most recent average of 78.7 years in the U.S., up from in 75.four in 1990 according to the Centers for Illness Control.  But it’s not necessarily enough to walk the planet for an further 3.three years…many of us would prefer to appear very good performing it.  Correspondingly, the plastic surgery company is booming, thanks to increases in each cosmetic surgeries and non-invasive procedures like Botox and fillers.   The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported $ twelve billion spent in 2013 alone.  And the search for the fountain of youth is by far not limited to doctors’ offices.

Moisturizers and cosmetics that purportedly combat the aging approach are an fully distinct bag of income, with the hybrid “cosmeceuticals” category estimated at $ five. billion yearly, per International Sector Analysts Inc.  Guided by the adage that something that sounds also great to be accurate probably is, anti-aging goods have and continue to be met with remarkable skepticism, considerably primarily based on conflicting clinical research benefits fueling the opposing circumstances of advocates and critics.  Numerous makers in the sector skirted regulatory troubles use only pharmaceutical elements with FDA approval (e.g., retinol or minoxidil) with antioxidants and organic extracts that fuel anti-aging perceptions with out requiring FDA vetting.   Players in the globe of cosmeceuticals reads like who’s who of huge pharma (i.e., Allergan Allergan, Bayer Bayer Schering, Merck Merck, Novartis NovartisPfizer, Wyeth) blue-chip buyer items businesses (i.e., Procter &amp Gamble, Johnson &amp Johnson, Unilever) and established cosmetics companies (i.e., Avon, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Revlon, L’Oreal).

Beyond surface-level therapies are potions and tablets ingested to retard the powers of time and the pull of gravity.  The U.S. Vitamin market is estimated at $ twelve billion yearly and supplements an additional $ 30 billion, despite deep controversy about their efficacy, reported by The Week referring the Annals of Inner Medicine Study of December 2013.

Concurrent with explosion of lotions, syringes, pills and powders has come a total globe of well being and wellness technology.  Fitbit and Jabra bracelets are the height of geek chic.  Hundreds of Apps are obtainable to keep track of, suggest, coach, and cajole how to eat, physical exercise, and sleep to optimize your well being.  Want to see how it is working?  There are apps like “How Prolonged Will I Reside?” that predict your lifespan based on diet program, healthcare problems, BMI, family historical past, life style and other factors.

English: Pilates at a gymnasium (Photograph credit: Wikipedia)

Based on the huge and increasing curiosity in extending existence span and common nicely becoming, it is no shock to see massive income investing to make greater funds in that arena.  Just yesterday the website for Google’s contender, Calico, went live with a still extremely cryptic site.  When Google entered the scene final yr, Calico did not draw much attention, regardless of announcement of rock star Artwork Levenson as CEO.

In the planet of “look younger/really feel younger” charlatans, Dr. Artwork Levenson Ph.D is no carnival barker.  He is a renowned molecular biologist who ran Genentech since 1995 and continued his reign publish acquisition by Roche Pharmaceuticals in 2009 for $ 46.8 billion.  On Levenson’s watch, Genentech launched breakthrough therapies for treating cancer like Avastin and Herceptin.  He was named a single of Corporate America’s most-respected CEOs and Genentech was regularly recognized as a single of the country’s very best employers, attributed in huge degree to the company’s special culture Levenson developed and protected. He stays concerned in Genentech as chairman and is also chairman of Apple, chosen to replace Steve Jobs.  (Maybe connected to cracking the code on aging, he’s figured out how to be in more than a single location at a time.)  Levenson was also on the board of Google but resigned in Oct, 2009, a number of months following Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned, ostensibly to stay away from difficulties from a FTC inquiry about antitrust inquiries between Apple and Google.  It will be fascinating to see if concerns emerge relating to the Google-backed Calico endeavor.

A part of the mid campus of the Genentech headquarters in South San Francisco, California. (Photo credit score: Wikipedia)

However Calicolabs.com doesn’t offer you significantly of what’s to come, it’s hard to picture Google could have discovered a far better leader for the “moonshot thinking” needed to increase daily life span and quality than Artwork Levenson.  If the mark he made on healthcare and corporate America in his 1st 63 years on this planet are indicative of his following 63 years, Calico will genuinely be worth watching.

How To Look ten Many years Younger: Google Attacks Wrinkles

Guideline Critics Shift Attacks From Beta Blockers To Statins

With the release today of updated European and US guidelines the ongoing controversy regarding beta-blockers appears to be resolved. But that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be an outbreak of guideline peace and harmony. The critics who helped ignite the controversy over beta blockers now say new statin recommendations contained in the guidelines are based on deeply flawed evidence.

The previous incarnation of the European guideline on perioperative evaluation and treatment of people undergoing noncardiac surgery was the subject of intense criticism due to the scandal discrediting Don Poldermans, a Dutch researcher widely published in the field. To address the current uncertainty US and European medical societies earlier today released updated versions of these guidelines.

“Given the recent publication of several large-scale trials, including POISE-II, and new risk calculators, as well as the controversy regarding the use of beta blockers related to the DECREASE trials, the writing committee felt it was necessary to reevaluate all of the data on cardiovascular care for the patient undergoing noncardiac surgery,” said US Writing Committee Chair Lee Fleisher, in a press release.

Regarding beta-blockers the US and European guidelines now do not recommend routine use in patients who undergo non-cardiac surgery, though people who are already taking beta-blockers should continue taking them. (Previously the European guideline but not the US guideline did support routine use of beta-blockers.) Both guidelines state that beta blocker therapy may be initiated prior to surgery in carefully selected higher risk patients.

Statin Recommendation Comes Under Fire

Both the new European and US guidelines say that preoperative initiation of statin therapy may be considered in patients undergoing vascular surgery and that people already taking statins should continue taking them. Now some of the same critics who attacked the reliability of the beta blocker guideline say that this recommendation is not supported by the evidence.

The new recommendation is based on several observational studies and one randomized controlled trial. (Two other randomized trials were not considered because they were performed by Poldermans’ group and have been discredited.) The  critics, UK cardiologists and researchers Darrel Francis and Graham Cole, say that the one  trial by Durazzo et al has fatal flaws that make it completely unreliable. (Durazzo, it may be worth noting, had been a frequent co-author of Polderman’s and had been a co-author of several of the controversial or retracted studies.)

In an analysis published earlier this year, Cole, Francis, and co-authors wrote that the Durazzo study

…was a double-blind randomised trial of 100 patients undergoing vascular surgery, with a 45-day course of atorvastatin or placebo. It sought reduced perioperative events in the atorvastatin arm, which indeed was what was found: 8% versus 26% (p = 0.031) at 6 months [22].

This study has serious failings, which make it an unsound basis for recommending therapy. First, its sample size calculation is stated to have been based on a 22% event rate at 6 months in a previous paper [23]. In reality, the source article states that the rate was 12% at 6 months. Such a transcription error would cause a study to be approximately 4-fold undersized.

Second, the authors indicate that they designed their study to detect a relative risk reduction of 95%. This study design is not credible as no therapy has ever been so effective in preventing myocardial infarction. If the true effect size was, for example, half of this, this overestimate would have contributed a further ~ 4-fold undersizing of the study.

Third, the survival data published cannot be correct. The paper reports that of the 50 patients in each arm, none were lost to follow-up. Therefore, every patient surviving to each displayed time point should be exactly 2%. With this in mind, in the Kaplan–Meier graphs, almost all the numerical values in the survival follow-up figure contradict the graphical values shown.

Finally, for 50-patient groups with no loss to follow-up, event-free survival rates must again be multiples of 2%. They are quoted as 91.4% and 73.5%, values that are not possible.

Francis and Cole sent the following comment about the new guidelines:

We are very sad that over 100 world authorities were forced to sign the European guideline without all having had time to read the papers on which their recommendations were based, and without being able to openly voice dissent.

Their awful predicament is easiest to see for a therapeutic idea whose road has been very “bumpy” indeed: the perioperative course of statins. The outcome data of the key trial by Durazzo et al has for over 6 months been publically known to be impossible. This is buttressed by Don Poldermans’ now notorious DECREASE III and IV trials, whose own university’s investigation revealed extensive fictionalisation, and by meta-analyses whose events arose mostly or entirely amongst these extraordinary pieces of science.

There are important lessons to learn. First, guidelines must in future have the right to say that all the major trials have now been discredited, so there is no longer a recommendation. If we fail to recognise this, we have truly failed our patients.

Second, never again should we pretend that all the experts have agreed on recommendations. It was always unlikely, and in this case clearly ridiculous.

In an interview, Fleisher, the chair of the US guideline, defended the committee’s recommendation of statins. He said that the committee was aware of the limitations of the Durazzo study and that the recommendation was based on the totality of the evidence, including the observational studies. He agreed that there was a significant need for more high quality studies.

Guideline Critics Shift Attacks From Beta Blockers To Statins

The Shocking Point That Kills Far more People Than Shark Attacks Every Yr

Collectively as a society, we spend a great deal of time worrying about shark attacks. Whether it’s from viewing jaws or hearing true stories, many people knowledge a sturdy fear of sharks. And but, the United States averages just sixteen shark attacks each yr and somewhat much less than one shark-attack fatality each and every two many years.

What’s far more hazardous than a shark? Coconuts. And Cows.

Falling coconuts lead to about 150 deaths annually. You know, although you were keeping an eye on the sharks.

Cows result in the death of about 20 Americans every year, largely from blunt-force trauma. They could search innocent, but actuality proves otherwise.

Why does any of this matter for your enterprise? It is a strong metaphor.

Our brains are wired to emphasis on concern as a technique of ensuring our survival. As a caveman, this was a quite crucial daily life ability. If our ancestors didn’t more than-react to each and every rustle in the trees, they could be attacked and eaten by a lion. We, on the other hand, are not threatened by literal death on a everyday basis. As an alternative, we are threatened by our e-mail inbox, targeted traffic, our boss’s approval, our children’s safety and several other everyday occurrences that produce a strong sense of anxiety and worry.

1 of the greatest ways to shift out of this dread and into a area of calm self confidence is to practice mindfulness. And to begin naming not only your sharks, but also your coconuts and cows.

Consider a moment and consider of the greatest concern you have for your company proper now. How typically do you consider about this dread?

Up coming, can you feel of an example in your recent past of something that was a difficulty, and however you didn’t seem to be to notice it till it was also late? This is your cow.

Can you believe of a predicament in which you imagined something would be beneficial to your enterprise, and it ended up hurting you? This is your coconut.

We are usually centered on the wrong factors, worrying about severe circumstances that are unlikely to happen rather than noticing the dilemma that is appropriate beneath our nose.

The resolution to this dilemma is two fold.

Very first, we need to have to quit worrying so considerably about the sharks. Positive, take precautions, really don’t swim in blood infested waters, but if you are simply sitting on land worrying about sharks, you are wasting your vitality.

Believe about the 1 spot of your company or daily life that you be concerned about the most proper now. On a scale of one-ten, how likely is it that this catastrophe Really would happen? Compose that variety down.

If this predicament did get place, can you record at least three methods in which it might be a gift or an possibility in disguise? Write that record now.

Commence to balance these extreme “shark” fears with positive intentions and you will recognize their power diminish.

The Shocking Point That Kills Far more People Than Shark Attacks Every Yr

Fears that attacks on statins could place lives at risk

The Nationwide Institute of Overall health and Care Excellence is due to publish ultimate suggestions on prescribing of statins later in July.

Draft proposals recommend cutting the “risk threshold” in half, meaning the vast bulk of men aged over 50 and most females more than the age of 60 would be recommended to get the medication to guard against strokes and heart condition.

Cardiologists and scientists stated the weight of evidence – like 27 clinical trials – demonstrated obviously that the advantages of the tablets outweigh any side-effects, even amongst individuals with a lower possibility of heart assault.

Significantly less than one per cent of patients would suffer side-effects, they explained, although those who took the drugs would normally lessen their threat of heart attack and stroke by 40 per cent.

Prof Adam Timmis, professor of clinical cardiology, Barts and the London NHS believe in, mentioned: “Even in very low-chance groups, the benefits of statins tremendously exceed any identified hazards.”

The group expressed concern that the public had been misled by claims – now withdrawn, after their publication in the BMJ – that 1 in five sufferers on the medicines suffers ill-results.

Prof Rory Collins, head of the Nuffield Department of Population Wellness at Oxford University explained it was frequent for older folks taking statins to suffer aches and pains, but trials had proven these had been just as typical in individuals not taking the drugs.

He said he felt “anxious” that individuals at higher chance of heart assault and stroke may well cease taking the drugs since they believed side-effects have been far higher than is the situation.

Prof Peter Weissberg, healthcare director of the British Heart Basis, stated: “The most significant threat to very good medication is prejudice, belief and anecdote.

“As human beings we are all influenced by our personalized experience. That’s why in medication we need aim proof to guide our prescribing and that comes from the randomised controlled trials.”

He mentioned the principle behind mass use of the drugs was related to that of immunisation, in that numerous individuals have to take medicine for some to be spared a stroke or heart attack.

“What we are dealing with with statins is the balance between visible harms and invisible positive aspects,” he mentioned. “Patients can always inform you about an effect which is down to the drug which they really do not like but they will not be ready to inform you whether or not they are nonetheless alive due to the fact of that drug or not.”

He stated folks could lessen their chance of heart ailment by adopting a healthful life style, and not see statins as a “soft option” to counteract a lifetime of eating burgers.

Prof George Davey Smith, professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol, said 25 years of analysis had offered definitive and clear evidence to assistance the use of statins.

He said: “The jury is no longer out on the price/benefit ratio for taking these tablets. This is not forcing the tablets down people’s throats .. it is about offering them the evidence on which to make a choice.”

The twists and turns of statins:

1980s: Statins very first licensed in the Uk

2000: New NHS standards for heart illness care advocate that statins must be given to patients assed to have a 30 per cent danger of a heart assault or stroke within a decade

2005: Nationwide Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Wonderful) lowers the threshold to twenty per cent

November 2013: United States healthcare guidelines which suggest the drugs for individuals with a 15 per cent threat of heart attacks, halve their thresholds to seven.five per cent. Wonderful confirms it is thinking about the identical proof which brought about the alter in US policy.

February 2014: Wonderful publishes draft proposals which lessen the threshold to 10 per cent – which means one particular in four adults would be recommended to consider statins. The amounts mean the vast bulk of guys aged over 50 and girls aged over 60 will be advisable to get the pills.

March 2014: British Health-related Journal publishes articles or blog posts which recommend that one in 5 men and women on statins will suffer side-results this kind of as liver illness and kidney problems

Might 2014: BMJ withdraws the statements and launches an investigation into whether or not the complete posts must be retracted

June 2014: 9 doctors and academics compose to Jeremy Hunt, the Well being Secretary, criticising suggestions which they say will lead to the “medicaliasation of five million healthy people.” The doctors like the head of the Royal College of Physicians say Great should not enable medical doctors with financial ties with statins to assist to draw up suggestions

1 July 2014: Panel of six top cardiologists say the attacks on statins fly in the face of proof exhibiting their rewards outweigh any dangers

18 July 2014: Great ultimate guidance is due

Fears that attacks on statins could place lives at risk

In Emerging China Heart Attacks Skyrocket But Remedy Lags

Accompanying all the other modifications in China over the past decade, admission to the hospital for heart attacks ST-elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI) has soared, according to a paper published in the Lancet. Despite the fact that the review finds that there have been some genuine improvements in treatment method, the Chinese healthcare system nevertheless has a prolonged way to go in purchase to boost the end result of these individuals.

The review, which is the first of its sort to assess heart assault treatment across China, offers information about what its authors, a group of prominent Chinese and US researchers, call China’s “period of epidemiological transition.” They analyzed data from practically 14,000 STEMI sufferers at 162 hospitals across China. From 2001 to 2011 they observed a highly considerable four-fold improve in admissions for STEMI per 100,000 people, from three.7 to 15.eight. This was accompanied by substantial increases in smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia.

There were some improvements in treatment but all round the findings suggest essential gaps. There have been substantial enhancements in some drug therapies, including aspirin and clopidogrel, but no considerable improvement in other important medication, including beta blockers and ACE inhibitors. Though there was a considerable improve in the percentage of sufferers who received main percutaneous coronary intervention, from ten% to 28%, there was no modify in the total percentage of STEMI individuals who underwent reperfusion (45%). There were no considerable enhancements in mortality rates or other measures of final result in excess of the study decade.

In a Lancet press release the study’s corresponding author, Professor Lixin Jiang, stated:

The developing needs for inpatient STEMI care will produce pressure for Chinese hospitals to enhance capability, adequately train health-care experts, develop infrastructure, and increase care. The striking increases in hospital admissions for STEMI noted in our examine display that critical improvements in capacity have been created even so, nationwide STEMI mortality suggests that further development will be required to make certain adequate entry for individuals with the disorder in China. Moreover, our research underlines that accessibility to care does not guarantee the delivery of the highest-quality care suggesting that in addition to improvements in capacity, hospitals in China should concurrently strive to enhance care.

One particular of the US authors, Harlan Krumholz, offered the following comment:

This 1st-ever nationwide report of heart assault care in china reveals a quadrupling of hospitalizations for STEMI and clear targets for quality improvement. What is truly exceptional is the Chinese government funded the study and committed to allow it to proceed independently and did not have a role in the science or the publication. There is a realization at substantial levels that for overall health care to enhance there should be an truthful and transparent evaluation of present and previous efficiency as a prelude to future initiatives. I am hopeful that this strategy will strengthen and develop. This is the initial phase.

In Emerging China Heart Attacks Skyrocket But Remedy Lags

Mutations That Stop Heart Attacks Upend The Search For New Medication

Heart attacks and strokes destroy far more human beings than any other trigger, claiming 14 million lives annually, according to the Planet Health Organization. Primarily, they are a plumbing difficulty: particles of cholesterol accumulate within blood vessels, irritating them till one bursts into a violent clot that blocks the flow of blood to the heart or brain. But it is nevertheless unclear what combine of dangerous proteins, excess fat, and cholesterol leads to these lethal explosions.

Now scientists have identified a clue: patients with mutations that break a gene the physique employs to make fat particles named triglycerides have a forty% reduction in their danger of heart attacks and strokes. The results, discovered by two independent groups and published final night in the New England Journal of Medicine, are likely to upend the pondering of several scientists when it comes to the culprits behind heart attacks and strokes, turning triglycerides from an ignored supporting character into a major villain.

Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, targeted by adjustments in diet and well-liked statin drugs, stays public enemy variety one. But triglycerides may possibly be the following-most important point. And large-density lipoprotein (HDL), the so-called “good cholesterol” that is supposed to defend you from heart attacks and strokes and has been a main target of drug businesses, might be much less important nevertheless – it may even be just an inactive bystander.

“In healthcare school we were told to ignore triglycerides and emphasis on HDL,” says Ethan J. Weiss, an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, College of Medicine. “It turns out that we almost certainly had it backwards, and that we must be paying out attention to triglycerides and ignoring HDL.”

For businesses testing new heart medication, a area in which billions of bucks are at stake, the final results are a game changer. A drug currently in development that targets the triglyceride gene, manufactured by Isis Pharmaceuticals of Carlsbad, Calif., is probably to abruptly turn out to be a hot property. The odds of success for big research of fish oil drugs produced by Amarin Pharmaceuticals and by AstraZeneca just went up. And the prospective customers for pricey heart capsules being examined by Merck and Eli Lilly could have changed, as well.

“This is a big deal,” says Steven Nissen, chair of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, who is working clinical trials for Lilly and AstraZeneca. “Nobody has been completely confident of the part of triglycerides in heart ailment. And while these types of studies do not demonstrate triglyceride-decreasing heart medication will work, they do lay the groundwork.”

A Search For Mutations

In 2009, Sekar Kathiresan, Director of Preventative Cardiology at Mass Basic Hospital and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, a leading center for DNA-based analysis, got a grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. It was portion of the stimulus package deal, intended to enhance science funding as it experimented with to pull the U.S. back from a economic downturn.

The experiment was to sequence the genes of thousands of individuals employing large-tech machines made by San Diego’s Illumina to see if they could understand about heart illness. Kathiresan’s staff looked at 3,734 folks from the undertaking for whom triglycerides and the DNA sequences of all their genes – acknowledged as an exome. Then, they looked for genetic mutations – essentially, unusual spellings in the DNA that codes for genes — that appeared in individuals with large triglycerides.

One gene stored popping up: APOC3, a protein that binds to very little cholesterol and excess fat particles and is related with large triglycerides. They found 33 people with seven various APOC3 mutations, all of which created the gene stop doing work. As a outcome, their triglyceride ranges were decreased, on common, 40%, in contrast to people with out the mutation. (The mutation broke a single copy of the gene, but people have two the 2nd picked up some of the slack.)

Then the researchers looked for mutations in APOC3 in 110,970 individuals, and found that people who a single bad copy of APOC3 had a 40% reduction in their chance of heart attacks and strokes. A second group in Denmark, seeking at APOC3 as a way to research triglycerides, found that possessing a defective copy of APOC3 resulting in a 44% lower in triglyceride ranges and a 41% reduction in the chance of heart attacks and strokes.

Since this is due to a genetic variation, the researchers can be quite sure that this reduction is due to the significance of triglycerides, and not since triglycerides are lower when people consume better or physical exercise far more. “It’s like nature’s randomized trial,” says Anne Tybaerg-Hansen of the University of Copenhagen, who led the Danish research.

The Danes maintain greater medical information than Americans, due to the fact of a effectively-created electronic well being records method utilizing these, Tybaerg-Hansen was in a position to display there is no partnership in between getting one of the triglyceride-decreasing genes cancer. The American team did CAT scans to demonstrate that the genes do not lead to fatty liver disease, yet another fret.

Influence On Drug Growth

For years, Big Pharma has been deeply invested in the notion that HDL would be the following big stage in controlling cholesterol. The assault on LDL was launched by Merck, which proved that its Zocor prevented heart attacks and strokes back in 1995, but in the finish led by Pfizer, for whom the cholesterol-lowerer Lipitor grew to become the best-promoting drug ever, with yearly income of $ 11 billion, ahead of it lost patent safety in 2011.

Research showed that individuals with high HDL have been much less very likely to have heart attacks. So Pfizer invested $ 1 billion on rushing a medication to raise HDL, named torcetrapib, by means of clinical trials. It not only failed, it proved to be damaging, with more individuals who got torcetrapib dying or acquiring heart attacks than those who received placebo.

Mutations That Stop Heart Attacks Upend The Search For New Medication

Poverty and depression can result in heart attacks

The proposition, frequently manufactured in latest many years, that these with the misfortune to suffer a heart attack have only themselves to blame for their “unhealthy” life-style, is contradicted by the observation that in a lot of there is no proof of an acute thrombus (blood clot) impeding the flow of blood by way of the coronary arteries.

For that reason a distinct factor could be accountable, such as psychological anxiety caused by bereavement or a traumatic knowledge. Twenty years ago, Japanese cardiologist Dr Kenji Dote discovered that the surge of adrenalin in nerve-racking scenarios could “stun” the heart muscle, compromising its potential to pump blood – a issue recognized as tension cardiomyopathy or “broken heart syndrome”. The symptoms, of serious chest pain and shortness of breath, are characteristic of a heart assault, but the coronary arteries, when X-rayed, are totally typical.

Cardiologists at the University of Atlanta have used the most recent heart-scanning methods to show that psychological stress can trigger Psychological Anxiety Induced Myocardial Ischaemia (or MSIMI). “This supplies additional proof,” observes Prof Matthew Burg of Yale University, creating in Psychosomatic Medication, that “important psychosocial aspects such as poverty and depression have adverse wellness outcomes.”

The first (the self-evident) recounted how researchers in Spain had located that those “eating at least 3 slices of white bread a day were a lot more most likely to grow to be obese than individuals who ate a single slice each and every week”.

The up coming (the improbable) extrapolated the “convincing evidence” from animal scientific studies that light publicity leads to bodyweight gain to claim that “keeping a light on when sleeping can boost the chance of weight problems in women”.

It is a most significant matter, as these prominent scientists stage out, when protracted bureaucracy for funding scientific study sanctions such trivial intellectual pursuits, at the cost of “sustained open-ended enquiries in controversial or unfashionable fields”.

Dual motion

There have been a lot of responses to the dual bowel motion featured final week – the very first entirely regular, followed quickly after by a 2nd, “loose and urgent”. For a couple of readers, the culprit proved to be their early morning correct of freshly brewed coffee, even though an additional has identified that a couple of Imodium, 1 just before and one particular right after his morning bowl of Weetabix, “has made the whole variation to my life”.

Two further suggested remedies are gluten-free golden linseed seeds crushed into a powder by the coffee grinder, and the soluble dietary fibre supplement Resource Optifibre, that is available on prescription.

Electronic mail health care inquiries confidentially to Dr James LeFanu at drjames@telegraph.co.uk. Answers will be published each Friday at telegraph.co.united kingdom/wellness

Poverty and depression can result in heart attacks

The coalition"s attacks on the NHS will return us to the age of the workhouse

A midwife with a penchant for gin delivered me into the arms of my exhausted mom on a cold, blustery day in February 1923. I slept that evening in my new crib, a dresser drawer beside her bed, unaware of the troubles that surrounded me. Simply because my dad was a coal miner, we lived rough and prepared in the hardscrabble Yorkshire town of Barnsley. Cash and happiness did not come simply for the likes of us.

Considering the hunger, the turmoil and the squalor in Britain during the early many years of the 20th century, it was miraculous that I lived to see my third birthday. That I survived colic, flu, infection, scrapes and bangs without the positive aspects of modern day sanitation, hygiene or wellness care, I have to give thanks to my sturdy peasant genes. As a infant, I was ignorant of the wonderful sorrow that enveloped England and Europe like a damp, grey fog. The nation was still in mourning for her dead from the world’s first Wonderful War. It had ended only 5 short years prior to my arrival. Practically a million British soldiers had been killed in that conflict. It had begun in farce in 1914 and ended in bloody tragedy in 1918. In four years, that war killed much more than 37 million males, women and kids around the globe.

Even when the guns across the battlefields had been created dumb by peace, the killing didn’t quit. Death refused to get a holiday and a pestilence stormed across the globe. It was named the Spanish flu. The pandemic lasted until finally 1921 and erased a hundred million individuals from the ledger guide of the living.

Like most individuals in Barnsley, my loved ones occupied a terraced residence. They were created back-to-back and in a row of ten units. There was minor area, privacy or comfort for us or any of the other occupants. It was just a place to rest your head soon after investing 10 hours hacking coal from the side of a rock encounter hundreds of feet below ground. 3 walls out of 4 had been linked to another home.

Barnsley covered in snow, 1930. Photograph: Fox Photographs

The floors were created of difficult slate rock and have been sparsely covered with previous rags that had been hand-woven into coarse mats. The interior walls have been comprised of moist limestone coated in a gruel-thin whitewash that never seemed to search clean.

In summer our house was hot, in autumn damp, and in winter bitterly cold, while spring was as moist as autumn yet again. The residence had no electricity and only the parlour and scullery possessed a gaslight fixture. Right after sunset, it sputtered and hissed a gloomy yellow light that illuminated our poverty. I shared a room with my older sister, Alberta. We slept together on a straw mattress that was host to several insects and reeked of time and other people’s piss. Its covering was created from a rough materials that was as unpleasant to me as the events when my father tickled my encounter with his moustache. Dependent on the season, I slept in my undershirt or remained totally clothed. During the cold months, Alberta and I nestled collectively and shared our entire body heat to stave off the chilling frost beating towards the windowpane. Our parlour had no furnishings except a stool and an upright piano that had come as portion of my dad’s legacy from his father. But it stood mute towards the wall due to the fact the room was occupied by my infirm and dying eldest sister, Marion.

At the age of 4 she had contracted tuberculosis, which was a frequent illness among our class. Her ailment was induced since my mothers and fathers were compelled to live in a condition-ridden mining slum at the finish of the Fantastic War. Ultimately my parents were ready to leave the slum but by then the damage had previously been carried out to my sister’s overall health, and the TB spread into her spine. It left her a paraplegic with a hunchback. For the last twelve months of her daily life, Marion was absolutely dependent on my mom to be fed, bathed and clothed. In these days, there was no national overall health support you both had the dosh to spend for your medication or you did with no. Your only hope for some health care care was the council poorhouse that accepted indigent patients.

Miners leaving a Yorkshire pit after an explosion, 1930. Photograph: Linked Newspapers/Rex

As a younger lad, I was encouraged by my mothers and fathers to invest time with my ailing sister. I believe it was since they knew that she was dying and they needed me to keep in mind her for the rest of my life. I didn’t comprehend sickness or death because I was only three, so I contented myself with enjoying close to her sick bed. On some events, I advised her nonsense stories, but my sister couldn’t respond to my kindness since the illness had destroyed her vocal cords.

Even although she was in excessive discomfort although the TB ate away at her spine and invaded her vital organs, she was silent. My sister often seemed to be hunting previous me with her big expressive eyes. Possibly she was waiting for death, or probably she discovered the gaslight casting shadows on the opposite wall an interesting distraction from the monotony of the ache that consumed her ten-year-outdated entire body.

TB was identified in the 19th century as the poet’s ailment, but I saw no lyricism in the way it killed Marion. As the autumn days grew shorter in 1926, so did the time my sister had to dwell. Her last weeks have been unbearable but she nevertheless fought death. She thrashed her arms about in defiance against the coming end to her daily life. My dad and mom tried to calm her by stroking her hair or singing to her, but she was not pacified. As an alternative, Marion wept silent tears and continued to struggle with so significantly ferocity that in the end my dad reluctantly restrained her to her bed with a rope.

My dad and mom made a decision that there was absolutely nothing far more that could be accomplished for Marion in their care, so they organized for her to be positioned in our nearby workhouse infirmary. It was the last stop for a lot of men and women who have been as well poor to pay for a medical professional or appropriate hospital care. The workhouse in our neighborhood was a forbidding creating that had been constructed during the age of Dickens. In the century just before I was born it was employed to imprison debtors, property orphans and provide primitive health care to the indigent. By the time Marion was sent there, it was no longer employed as a prison. Nonetheless, orphans, the sick and these with communicable conditions were nonetheless incarcerated behind its thick, towering black walls.

Spanish flu victims. Photograph: Everett Assortment Inc/Alamy

On a single of the last days in September my mother pawned her ideal dress and my father’s Sunday suit and hired a man with an outdated dray horse and cart to come to our residence and acquire Marion. When he arrived, my dad carried Marion outdoors and carefully positioned her into the delivery carriage exactly where my mom was waiting for her.

Alberta and I stood on the side of the street and waved goodbye to Marion. I asked my dad the place my sister was going and he mournfully replied: “She’s going to a greater location than here.” Afterwards, he place his arms about me and Alberta and we watched the horse-drawn carriage slowly plod down our street in the direction of the workhouse infirmary.

That was the last time I noticed my sister alive.

Marion died a month later on in the arms of my mom. There was no wake, no funeral support and even considerably later there was no headstone erected to mark her short passage in existence. My household, like the rest of our local community, was just as well bad to afford the accoutrements of mourning. We relied on my dad’s minuscule salary just to maintain us with a roof more than our heads and dry in the perpetual hard luck rain of Yorkshire. Even my dead sister’s landau was quickly dispatched to the pawnbroker’s shop the place it was swapped for a number of coins to help feed her hungry living siblings.

My sister’s entire body was committed to a pauper’s pit and interned in an unmarked grave along with a dozen other forgotten victims of penury. My parents didn’t even have a image to don’t forget their daughter’s lifestyle. To the outdoors world, it was as if she was never there, but for our loved ones her existence and her finish profoundly affected us. My father never ever mentioned Marion’s title once again. It was not out of callousness or disrespect, but since her death festered in his soul like a wound that by no means healed. For the rest of his existence my dad carried with him an unwarranted guilt that he was responsible for Marion’s tuberculosis, and it lower him deep. As for my mother, she frequently talked about Marion. As my family stumbled from misery to calamity, via the pitch dark of the Excellent Depression, my mother invoked my dead sister’s name as a warning that the workhouse awaited every of us, unless of course the globe and our situations modified.

It would be virtually 20 many years ahead of, in 1948, the NHS was formed, and for the 1st time in my civilian lifestyle I went to a doctor’s surgical procedure and was treated for bronchitis with antibiotics that assured me a speedy and safe recovery. The expense to me was nothing, and I was grateful simply because I was skint, obtaining just started out back in the civilian working planet.

An NHS immunization van in the 50s. Photograph: Popperfoto

As I convalesced, I was gobsmacked at the wonderful consequences of free of charge wellness care and the possible it provided to enhance our society. It was a transformational shift in how we as a country viewed our fellow citizens. The creation of the NHS manufactured us recognize that we were in reality our brother’s keeper, and that taxation rewards everybody through sustaining not just our roads and sewers but the health of our young children, staff and elderly.

To me, the introduction of totally free overall health care was the 1st brick laid on the street to the social welfare state. So it has always been challenging for me to pay attention to politicians, proud possessors of health insurance coverage and shares in private overall health care businesses, when they speak about how the wellness services that we fought so challenging to create should change. The coalition government’s Well being and Social Care Act will generate a two-tier well being care program. This act will see the NHS stripped down like a derelict home is by criminals for copper wiring.

Ukip has even proposed that A&ampE sufferers should have the proper to get their way to the front of the queue, although in Merseyside a personal for-revenue cancer clinic has set up store below the NHS umbrella. In which will all of this end? What will be given the biggest priority in a new health care technique that sends every services, from blood work to chemotherapy, out to the lowest bid tender?

It ends in which I began my life – in a Britain that believed health care depended on your social status. So if you had been rich and insured you received timely medical remedy, whilst the rest of the nation acquired the drippings. A single-fifth of the lords who voted in the controversial act – which offers a gateway to privatise our well being care program – were found to have connections to private health care firms. If that isn’t going to make you angry, nothing will.

Often I try out to think how I may possibly clarify to Marion how we constructed these beautiful structures in our society – which protected the poor, which kept them protected at operate, healthy in their lives, supported them when they had been down on their luck – only to view them be destroyed inside a couple of short generations. But I are not able to locate the phrases.

Harry’s Final Stand by Harry Leslie Smith is published by Icon Books at £12.99. To buy a copy for £9.99, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or phone 0330 333 6846.

The coalition"s attacks on the NHS will return us to the age of the workhouse

fifty five,000 strokes and heart attacks could be prevented in 2022 with far better blood strain control

Study leader Emanuela Falaschetti from Imperial College London in the Uk said: “Although the rates of diagnosis, treatment method, and management of raised blood stress remain suboptimum in England, our findings are nonetheless a result in for optimism.

“Whereas after the ‘rule of halves’ prevailed—half the general population with large blood stress have been diagnosed, half of individuals detected treated, and half of individuals taken care of controlled—now management in England is better than the rule of two-thirds.

“As a outcome of these enhancements in practice, many hundreds of 1000′s of key cardiovascular occasions may well have been prevented.”

Richard McManus from the University of Oxford in the Uk and Jonathan Mant from the University of Cambridge, wrote in the journal: “Many public wellness initiatives aim to reduce the population burden of hypertension and along with doctors in principal care—who give most hypertension management in the UK—have led to considerable advances in hypertension management and blood strain manage.

“Falaschetti and colleagues’ review offers a welcome illustration of the mixed results of personal physicians and policy makers on a simple but essential danger element. After 50 years of treatment, it appears that the medication are working.”

Around 1 in three people in England have substantial blood pressure, defined as 140mm systolic more than 90mm diasytolic or higher, and it is the single most essential risk aspect for an early death as it brings about strokes and heart attacks.

The improvement in blood stress in the common population is possibly due to a reduction in salt consumption, the researchers explained, as typical consumption has dropped from 9.5g per day in 2000/one to eight.1g per day in 2011. Nevertheless it even now stays above the suggested 6g per day limit.

The staff estimated that if the 2011 image of blood pressure treatment and manage were applied to 1994, amongst 68,000 and one hundred,000 significant fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular occasions would have been prevented in 1994.

fifty five,000 strokes and heart attacks could be prevented in 2022 with far better blood strain control

Politicians alienating GPs with "relentless" attacks, senior medical professional claims

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association’s GPs committee, is accusing MPs of alienating loved ones medical doctors in their political attacks. Photograph: RayArt Graphics/Alamy

Politicians are alienating GPs with “relentless attacks” and use of “political gimmickry” to tackle the unsustainable pressures dealing with family medical doctors, a key leader of the profession warns on Thursday.

In a critique of the coalition and Labour opposition, Dr Chaand Nagpaul will accuse them of belittling GPs by bemoaning the difficulty patients have acquiring appointments and the lack of extended opening occasions.

Politicians’ failure to grasp the extent of the increasing workloads in basic practice is contributing to the prospective “destruction” of the support, in accordance to Nagpaul, the chair of the British Health-related Association’s GPs committee.

Speaking to the BMA’s annual GPs conference in Harrogate, Nagpaul will blame politicians’ “attacks which are hefty on spite and light on evidence” for contributing to a fall in the number of young physicians who are choosing to turn out to be GPs.

“These doctors are not shunning the discipline of common practice, but the intolerable strain that GPs are topic to, with each other with relentless attacks that devalue what we do, and which has butchered the joy and ability of GPs to properly care for our individuals,” he will say.

He will castigate the coalition for providing hospital A&ampE units an extra £500m to aid them cope with final and following winter, but only discovering £50m for the prime minister’s “challenge fund” to enable much more surgeries to open from 8am to 8pm each and every day – a essential guarantee David Cameron manufactured final 12 months at the Conservatives’ yearly conference.

“So even though £500m was given to ease the pressures in A&ampE, it really is a kick in the teeth for common practice to receive £50m not to ease any crisis or stress, but actually to supply even far more over 7 days a week,” Nagpaul will tell GPs.

Whilst Nagpaul does not say how significantly basic practice needs to preserve speed with the expanding demand for appointments, the Royal University of GPs believes it needs to get at least one more £2bn of the NHS budget by 2017. GP services’ share of NHS funding has been shrinking in recent many years at the very same time as hospitals have been getting much more, and now stands at significantly less than 9%, even though 90% of patient contacts are with GPs.

Waits of at least a week to see a GP are increasingly frequent, and a poll of GPs this week found that some have been expecting patients to encounter delays of up to two weeks by this time following 12 months.

Nagpaul, a GP in north-west London, will also brand as unrealistic Ed Miliband’s large-profile pledge final week that under Labour patients would be assured a GP appointment inside 48 hrs.

“And the opposition also seems blind to recent pressures, and failing to find out from the previous, in resurrecting a discredited 48-hour access target, which will force GPs into providing perverse appointment programs that distort clinical priorities. Sufferers deserve better than this political gimmickry,” he will say in a sideswipe at the two leaders’ rival initiatives on GP care.

The Department of Wellness and Labour rejected Nagpaul’s claims. A DH spokesman explained: “We worth the function GPs do, and know they’re below stress, which is why we’re cutting GP targets by far more than a third to free of charge up far more time with patients, escalating trainees so that GP numbers carry on to develop more rapidly than the population and have committed to train ten,000 more primary and neighborhood wellness and care workers by 2020.”

A Labour spokesman explained only Labour was severe about investing in GP surgeries. “We have pledged £100m to aid individuals get appointments much more swiftly. As well numerous are waiting a week below this government,” he explained.

The BMA gathering will hold a possibly divisive debate on Thursday about the possibility of introducing charges for individuals to see a GP. The movement states that “it is no longer viable for standard practice to give all sufferers with all NHS providers totally free at the stage of delivery”, as the NHS has done given that its inception, and calls on the doctors’ union to “take into account alternative funding mechanisms for general practice [and] check out national charging for general practice solutions with the Uk governments”.

Meanwhile, new study out on Thursday demonstrates that only 15% of sufferers who turn up at A&ampE could have been witnessed and handled by a GP. That is far much less than the forty% figure frequently cited, such as by NHS England and some A&ampE doctors, as the proportion of pointless or avoidable attendances at A&ampE.

Nonetheless, that nonetheless equates to about 2.1 million people seeking A&ampE care when they could have gone elsewhere, in accordance to the School of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&ampE medical doctors and commissioned the examine.

Politicians alienating GPs with "relentless" attacks, senior medical professional claims