Health | WPN World People News

WHO has issued new recommendations to establish global care standards for healthy pregnant women and reduce unnecessary medical interventions.

Snoring, older age and obesity may increase a pregnant woman’s risk for sleep apnea — or interrupted breathing during sleep — according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study, which appears in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was supported by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

A new clinical trial sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, aims to determine whether low blood levels of the protein procalcitonin can reliably indicate whether a person’s lower respiratory tract infection will improve with antibiotic treatment.

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of the ovary from a nonhuman primate infected with Ebola virus. Characteristic filamentous Ebola virus particles are present between cells (bright red). Intracytoplasmic Ebola virus inclusion bodies forming crystalline arrays can be seen within ovarian stromal cells (darker red).

Eyes yield information about strokes: MRI scans revealed that a chemical called gadolinium, used to improve images, leaked into the eyes of stroke patients.

A fresh look at the brain and breathing: NIH study in rats shows that star-shaped brain cells, called astrocytes (red) may play an active role in breathing.

Papua New Guinea is spending more on public health as a share of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) relative to comparator countries, yet health outcomes compare unfavorably, indicating the potential to improve the efficiency of the country’s health spending, according to a World Bank report presented in Port Moresby, on February 7.

The supplement nicotinamide riboside (NR) – a form of vitamin B3 – prevented neurological damage and improved cognitive and physical function in a new mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. The results of the study, conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) part of the National Institutes of Health, suggest a potential new target for treating Alzheimer’s disease.

Children with asthma in the U.S. are having fewer asthma attacks, missed school days, and visits to the hospital, according to a new Vital Signs report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A study of more than 6,000 first-graders across four U.S. communities has found that a significant number of the children have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), with conservative rates ranging from 1 to 5 percent in community samples. The new findings represent more accurate prevalence estimates of FASD among general U.S. communities than prior research. Previous FASD estimates were based on smaller study populations and did not reflect the overall U.S. population.