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Posts from the ‘Nutrition’ Category

Grand Rounds 4.22: The Future of Medicine

It’s a great pleasure for me to host Grand Rounds again after almost a year. The idea of Nick Genes shines more than ever so I hope I can show you plenty of useful and valuable submissions from the medical blogosphere. So this time, the topic is the future of medicine which means I’ll feature some blogposts about genetics and web 2.0 as medicine might be centered around these two terms in the future. Enjoy it!

Editor’s Choice (Genetics or Web 2.0):

Karina S. Descartin at The story of healing talked about Jay Parkinson, the web-savvy doctor and use of media in medicine.

At Scienceroll, I had an interview with Jay Parkinson, or if you would like to know more about web 2.0 and medicine, check out my recently published slideshow.

Joshua Schwimmer at Tech Medicine featured the impact of Google Book Search on medical education. At Efficient, MD (one of his 4 blogs), you can also send him your productivity tips for being on call.

Y. S. at My MD Journey gave all medical students the opportunity to promote their blogs by taking an interview.

Hsien-Hsien Lei at Eye on DNA examined the genetic differences between identical twins.

Paul Levy at Running a Hospital thinks the future of medicine in the UK should utilize the opportunities Second Life provides.

Steven F. Palter at Docinthemachine weighs in with How Smartdust, Souveillance, Web 3.0, and Personalized Genetics Will Transform the Future of Medical Diagnostics.

Steve Murphy at The Gene Sherpa talked about the fear of genetic discrimination.

John Sharp at eHealth found a new way to promote patient safety – talk to your doctor.

Imre Kissík and András Székely at Tomography Blog promoted 10 great Web 2.0 tools for Diagnostic Imaging Professionals.

Hamza Emadeen M. at GooMedic introduced web 2.0 as a research tool for collaborative softwares.

Bob Coffield at Health Care Law Blog mentioned the Google Health project as Google Partnered with Cleveland Clinic.

The Digital Pathology Blog says computer programs may help physicians avoid diagnostic mistakes — so why aren’t more doctors using them?

Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata blogged live about a vasectomy from his Palm Treo 700. More than interesting!

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Health and Healthcare:

David C. Harlow at HealthBlawg focused on preventing, reporting and not paying for hospital-acquired infections.

Sam Solomon at Canadian Medicine asked the question why the media mucks up health coverage? and presented “Canada’s Terry Schiavo” case.

David E. Williams at Health Business Blog is curious about how much we should expect from patients.

Louise at Colorado Health Insurance Insider wrote: “A list of eight preventable medical errors that result in extra medical charges will no longer be reimbursed by Medicare”.

According to Clinical Cases and Images, if you keep residents happy, it is better for patients.

Laurie Edwards at A Chronic Dose had a recent issue with her health insurance to explore preventative health and offer resources to think critically about the future of healthcare.

Michael C Hébert at Dr. Hébert’s Medical Gumbo pointed out the problem with Economics Stimulus Package is that, like taking antibiotics for a cold, it fails to properly address the problem.

Jan Gurley at Black Future Month stated that it’s a call for investing in a long-term, detailed cohort study of African Americans, like the Framingham study.

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Medical Stories and Cases:

ER nurse tells us what it is like to start the day two nurses short.

Bongi at Other things amanzi shared a monstrous story with us; two experiences he had, both of which he found disturbin.

Keith at Digital Doorway helps us how to talk to a patient who is scared to die.

Doctor Anonymous described his own flu and the Flu Epidemic as well.

Thomas Robey at Medscape told us his first experience losing a patient after an attempt at resuscitation. He had another post mentioning some personal experiences with drug reps he has had as a medical student.

Paul S. Auerbach at Medicine for the Outdoors posted the second story about his recent volunteer work in Guatemala.

MC at Neurophilosophy introduced the man who never forgets. Check out the trailer of a forthcoming documentary focusing on him called Unforgettable:

Medical Research and Information:

Amy Tenderich at Diabetes Mine had a great list about 10 little-known facts about your immune system.

How to Cope With Pain reviewed what we know about chronic itch, an interesting symptom.

David Rothman shared the Human Brain Atlas, a useful educational resource with us.

Walter Jessen at Highlight Health presented ScienceCures, a new website dedicated to today’s science, tomorrow’s cures.

Kerri Morrone at SixUntilMe had plenty to say about the MiniLink trial. That’s how an honest opinion can be valuable to the community.

Matthew Mintz at Dr. Mintz’ Blog had a comment on an article that appeared in the Washington Post about studies of treatments.

Henry Stern at InsureBlog informed us about Swedish scientists who discovered fast food and the lack of exercise are not healthy.

Clinical Cases and Images presents all the 3 “organ”-renal syndromes.

Exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) could be a marker of bronchial inflammation? Check it out at Allergy Notes.

JC Jones at Healthline Connects says there is something we can all agree on – New Stem Cell Source.

The editors of LymeHealth.com talked about the Rife frequencies for treatment of Bartonella infection. Rife treatment is used by some Lyme disease patients who are coinfected with a species of Bartonella.

Medical research in a different way:

Other posts from the blogosphere: interesting surveys, interviews, speeches:

Vitum Medicinus, a Canadian medical student, shares a speech he gave to the families of his anatomy lab cadavers at a memorial service for body donors.

The bloggers at SharpBrains have come up with three interesting articles: Minding the Aging Brain and Maximize the Cognitive Value of Your Mental Workout and Self-Regulation and Barkley’s Theory of ADHD.

Barbara Kivowitz at In Sickness and In Health examines a strange question: Are Certain Illnesses More Likely to Lead to Divorce?

Kenneth F Trofatter at Fruit of the Womb addresses a query from a reader who wonders if abnormal sperm morphology, in the absence of other maternal or paternal indicators, might be associated with recurrent early pregnancy loss.

At Dailyinterview.net you can read more about Dr. Silly Reba (AKA Reba Strong) – Hospital Clown and Magician.

The Samurai Radiologist at Not Totally Rad gave us some tips on how to surprise your loved one: with a skull.

David Bradley at ScienceBase is curious whether our doctor inhales or not. “A survey of medical students in Brazil found that more than 80% use alcohol, while cannabis use is limited to about one in four, a quarter use solvents and just over 25% use tobacco.”

Christine at ButYouDontLookSick.com interviewed Nick Genes about Grand rounds and his medical career.

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That’s all for now. I always enjoy hosting Grand Rounds because I come across new blogs and make contact with great medical bloggers. Thank you, Nick Genes, for giving me the opportunity again. I hope to host a third one in 2009. The next edition will be hosted by ChronicBabe on the 4th of March.

Top 20 Facebook Applications in Science and Medicine

logo_facebook.jpgFacebook is a social networking site with several thousands of applications that you can add to your profile. While some of the biggest stories in the news are about the future of this community site, I thought I should create a collection of useful applications from the field of medicine, science and web 2.0. Enjoy!

Health and Medicine:

  • Medline Publications: List your Medline-listed academic publications on your Facebook profile, and view your friends’ publications as well!

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  • Med Tracker: Use Med Tracker to share your ratings of prescription and over the counter drugs.

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  • Healia Health Challenge Quiz Game: You can test your health knowledge with this interactive health quiz game. Challenge your friends to see who knows more about health and medicine. You start with being Pre-Med, then you can become Medical Student and maybe, the “Chief of Medicine.”

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  • Support the Red Cross: Every day that you click on the Donate button on the Red Cross toolbar, will donate money to the Red Cross. They’ll donate 1$ for every 200 points people submit each day.

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  • Mobile Health Coach: It’s a health coach that gives you tips throughout the day on how to live a fuller, happier life.

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  • Awareness Ribbons: Now you can wear your ribbons on your Facebook profile! You can choose from 300+ causes and concerns. Ribbons automatically link to Wikipedia so people can learn more about your causes.

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  • Quit Smoking: This application helps you give up cigarettes and stop smoking. Set up your own quit smoking program in minutes, give yourself a reward target to spend the money that you’ve saved on and record your daily progress. If you follow the plan provided, you’ll be able to buy yourself that reward on the date indicated.

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  • PersonalDNA: A personality test that combines thorough scientific analysis with novel questions and response techniques. Find out which one of the 256 personality types matches you, and get details that go beyond those categories, plus suggestions on how to be different.

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  • Be an organ donor: There is always a desperate need for more organ donors. The success of transplants depends on the generosity of donors and their families. Residents of the UK and USA can become donors by filling out a form online.

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Science:

  • Science Videos: A unique video search engine for science videos where every video is screened and approved based on accuracy and quality by scientists.

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  • Family Tree: Build your Family Tree including your relatives both on and off Facebook. Add unlimited generations of all possible ancestors. Upload a photo for each relative or simply use their Facebook profile photo. Display your tree and feature your family and heritage directly on your profile page.

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  • OneFamilyTree: Build your family tree online and share it among your friends and relatives. You can upload GEDCOM files, customize the family tree or search for your ancestors.

  • NASA Astro Photo of the Day: Displays the NASA Astro Photo of the Day. A daily display of fantastic astronomical images chosen by the NASA.

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  • F@H Protein Researcher: Folding@Home is a computer program designed to aid scientists in medical research by distributing computationally-intensive tasks to home desktops all over the world. Specifically, the Stanford University developers’ goal is “to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases,” and has made progress in understanding diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

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Web 2.0:

  • Blog RSS Feed Reader: It allows you to add a personal blog or corporate blog RSS Feed to your Facebook profile for your friends to read. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your blog. It works with popular blogging platforms such as Myspace, MSN Live Spaces, WordPress, Blogspot, Typepad, Movable Type, Textpattern and more.

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  • My Wikipedia: It allows you to display sections of Wikipedia on your profile page. By default, My Wikipedia displays the daily “Featured Article” from Wikipedia’s main page, but can be customized to display any article of your choosing.

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  • Second Life Link: This application integrates Facebook with the most popular Virtual World – Second Life™! You can show your Second Life Avatar to your friends, view online status of your Second Life friends or just share your virtual home and your favourite virtual places with them.

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  • StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is the best tool to discover and share great websites. If you add StumbleUpon to your Facebook profile, you can share your favourite weblinks and you can also Stumble your friends’ Favourites by checking out your What’s New tab.

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I hope you enjoyed this selection and please let me know if you happen to know more Facebook applications in the field of medicine or science!

Personalized Genetics: Coffee, Cancer and a Pharmacogenomic Therapy

Even if I should study emergency medicine now, I would like to share interesting and useful links with you. Here are the most important articles, announcements of personalized genetics from the last few days. This edition focuses on breast cancer:

  • Pharmacogenomics Rising (The Gene Sherpa): LabCorp will study the role of polymoprhisms in cytochrome p450 2D6 and women’s response to breast cancer.

A cardinal rule in clinical cancer genetics is that you always want to do the genetic test on someone in the family who has had a cancer diagnosis that is suspicious for the risk syndrome that you are considering. If either of this woman’s aunts were alive, they would clearly be the best people to test first.

However, they both died of their disease. In the absence of other individuals with cancer to test, the patient’s healthy father would be the next best person to test.

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Almost a decade later, this vision of personalised medicine has yet to become reality. People with hard-to-treat diseases like depression are still being prescribed drugs by trial and error. Adverse drug reactions are still one of the leading causes of death in the developed world.

  • Integrative Medicine and Experimental Pharmacogenomic Therapy in a Child with Niemann-Pick Disease (NPD), Type A (Slideshare.net)

Further reading:

Web 2.0 Resources for Patients Dealing with Diabetes

Let’s see what you can do if you’re dealing with diabetes and you would like to find information, support or just comments about this condition on the web.

Read Blogs: You can read all the important news, announcements if you follow some blogs written of diabetes or written by patients with diabetes. Here are some examples:

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Follow Blog Carnivals:A blog carnival makes it easier to track your field of interest as you can find the best articles about diabetes in one place.

Use Community Sites:

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Watch Videos:

Try to Have Some Fun!

  • LOL Diabetes is an excellent resource of funny, diabetes-related posts, images and videos. Check out the diabetes man:

Please leave us a comment in case you know more useful resources about diabetes!

Update: Don’t forget to check out the National Diabetes Education Initiative!

Ruckus Nation: a challenge for children

hopelab.JPGI’m so amazed by Hopelab‘s projects as they always try to find creative ways to raise awareness on health and to promote prevention. Hopelab is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness. You may remember my post on their previous project: Fighting cancer with video games.

Now, Piers Sutton, the communications coordinator at HopeLab, has an important announcement for you:

HopeLab is launching an initiative to address childhood obesity that we believe may be of interest to you and your members.

This fall, HopeLab is sponsoring an online competition called “Ruckus Nation” which challenges participants to imagine innovative products that will increase physical activity among kids ages 11 to 14. The competition is open to people of all ages; but students are especially encouraged to join in, as individuals or in teams.

Up to $300,000 in cash and prizes will be awarded for the best product ideas, including $2,500 to teachers or mentors who inspire winning entries. Students may have the opportunity to see their ideas come to life; the best ideas will be prototyped, tested, and broadly distributed free to young people.

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Further reading:

10 Tips for How to Acquire a Disease

I’m an admirer of Wade Meredith’s writings at Healthbolt.net and after reading his post on How to Give Yourself Diabetes, I realized that sarcasm makes it easier to reach people with important messages.

Now, I’d like to provide a list of tips not just how to get sick, but how to get even a serious disease.

1. Forget about sport! 30 minutes of walking takes too much time, and we can’t do exercises 5-6 times a week. Physically inactive people are more likely to die early, to experience major illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and to get banal infections. So enjoy your favourite armchair and watch the TV!

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2. Get fat! If your body mass index (kg/m2) is at least equal to or more than 25, then you’re on the right way towards cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders and some cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon). 1.6 million people can’t be wrong!

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3. Drink alcohol! There are about 2 billion people worldwide who consume alcoholic beverages and 76.3 million with diagnosable alcohol use disorders. These numbers are still too low, please help improving them! Drink, drink and you can get closer to oesophageal cancer, liver cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, homicide, epileptic seizures and motor vehicle accidents.

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4. Smoke! Some cigarettes a day, and you can send the doctor away. The list of the possible effects of smoking is so exciting: cancers of the bladder, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx (voice box), esophagus, cervix, kidney, lung, pancreas, and stomach. I nearly forgot about cardiovascular diseases and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (the fourth leading cause of death in the USA).

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5. Sunbathe! Chronic exposure to UV radiation causes erythema, sunburn or even melanoma, one of the deadliest diseases of the world. Try it! An easy and cheap method to suffer.

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6. Use more salt! More than 5 g salt a day and you don’t have to worry about high blood pressure. “It has been calculated that a 3g reduction in salt intake in the adult population would lead to a 22% reduction in stroke and a 16% reduction in chronic heart disease.” It means that a daily 15 g salt intake would lead to serious results…

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7. Stay stressed! Is your work boring? Are you in a middle of a traffic jam? Try to stay tensed as the stress ulcus is the best friend of the stomach. The pain, the bleeding and the acid in your oesophagus shouldn’t make you interested. Oh, and depression, burnout syndrome are also in the packet.

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8. Don’t wash yourself! Improper hygiene can lead to problems like dental caries, fungal infections, parasites and it’s even helpful in transmitting HPV (keyplayer in the cancer of the cervix) and other sexually transmitted infections.

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9. Inherit bad genes! You obviously can’t control it. But if you would at least take a deeper look at your family history, you could try to prevent some kind of diseases (e.g.: gout or diabetes type II. with proper diet). So forget about it! Don’t let enthusiastic geneticists force you to think differently!

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10. Be creative! Travel to tropical countries (for malaria, tuberculosis and other hot diseases); don’t care about ticks (Lyme disease); do not eat vegetables and fruits (for colon cancer); work in a polluted place and especially think negative! It will definitely help.

I can write hundreds of posts here about web 2.0 and medicine (medicine 2.0, if you happen not to know about it) or genetic testing. But medicine starts at home. In many areas of medicine, we can’t control anything so at least we should take care about what we can take care about.

You can’t control the car rushing towards you without brake, but at least you can move two steps backward.

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Grand Rounds 3.25

It’s my honor to host this week’s Grand rounds, the weekly rotating carnival of the best of the medical blogosphere. Medical students think alike: in preparing for this edition I came across an earlier Monty Python theme, The Holy Grail of GR at The Rumors Were True. Now, I decided to use some medicine and health care related Monty Python videos to provide funny moments while reading all the nearly 60 submitted articles.

I hope you’re going to enjoy this edition. Let’s start with one of my favourite subjects: from prenatal care to childhood. Also don’t miss the Python’s hospital sketch about a childbirth below:

  • Hsien Hsien Lei at Genetics and Health writes about Dr. Rav Dhallan of Ravgen and shares her thoughts on prenatal testing.
  • Health Observances blog examines the economic impact of birth defects, or the folic acid awareness.
  • Tales from the Womb presents Baby Toby Saga, a collaborative mini-series created with Dream Mom. The idea was to pilot a new form of short story on the blogosphere between a physician and a patient. Don’t miss any of the chapters.
  • Healthy Children’s post, Enhance Your Kids with Drugs, Machines, and Perfect Genes asks parents: which group will they choose for their kids: the enhanced or the ordinary?
  • Dr. Wes talks about a headline story, the relationship between trans fat and milk (Milk Might Be Harmful to Children).

Let’s continue with many bloggers’ main subject, diet from several aspects:

Mr. Gumby, in the Python video below, can’t find a nurse, but we always find the best posts of our favourite nurse bloggers:

Posts on Diabetes care:

Before watching a video on a hospital in which the doctors relax and the patients do all of the work, let’s see the usual health care section:

  • Dr. David Erani at HealthcareForum.com asks the big question: is death penalty disproportionately used against the poor?
  • Kevin, M.D. (1 doctor for 18,000 patients) and Universal Health (From Zero To Infinity And Beyond) both posted on military healthcare.
  • According to the Health Business Blog, Senators still seem to be missing the point on generic biologics.
  • Doc in the Machine describes new FDA programs which try to track drug safety and share data with the public.
  • MSSP Nexus Blog examines patient safety and mentions a book on how to build a safer health system.
  • Susan Palwick at Rickety contrivances of doing good is a volunteer ED chaplain and has written a post about the frustration of dealing with inappropriate parenting in the ED.
  • Transplant Headquarters tells us how to look up a transplant center.
  • A true story from The wait and the Wonder blog on miscommunication. For over 3 months, she thought her daughter was actively listed for a liver transplant, when she was, in fact, still listed as a status 7, inactive.
  • An other transplantation issue from A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure about the organ-transplant network.
  • Then The InsureBlog takes us into the far future where everyone will have access to free health care.

Our medical bloggers provided us with many interesting and instructive cases:

  • Val Jones, M.D. presents a story about a man who was bitten by a rabid bat. Did you know why rabies can cause “hydrophobia” in its victims?
  • Or did you know what is the correct way to remove a tick if it is embedded in a person or pet? Medicine for the Outdoors answers the question.
  • Odysseys of George’s first article is about an elderly lady with intestinal obstruction (fascinating images!); in the second one, he shows the sad part of medicine: death.
  • Parcho, MD knows well how to deliver a baby in medicine style.
  • Dr. Signout tells us a drug seeker’s story in the Gut reaction post.
  • And a terrible story in other things amanzi blog on sjambok syndrome.

Fun, musings, robotics and a strange video which proves that sometimes we can’t hear or see the patient even if it’s our fault. Consider this section as the editor’s choice:

I don’t know whether there have ever been an images’ section, but here it is:

At last, I hope I create a new section in the history of Grand rounds with medicine and web 2.0:

I hope you enjoyed this Grand rounds edition as I’ve had so much fun while doing it. Thank you, Nick Genes for the opportunity and all the help. Please prepare for the next edition at Blog, MD. Sorry for the irking medical Monty Python videos, but I must say that thank you for watching and good night a dingdingdingdingding

Genes modified by diet

The importance of epigenetics is still rising. A recent study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has shed light on a biological mechanism that could explain why some of us appear “programmed” to put on weight.

But before you blame grandma for your health, epigenetic inheritance of obesity has not been observed in humans at a molecular level, although the mechanism could explain patterns of obesity and diabetes seen in populations whose ancestors had a poor diet.

The researchers used a unique strain of mouse with a variant of a gene, called agouti viable yellow, that is not found in humans. When switched on, the agouti gene is associated with yellow fur, obesity, diabetes and cancer… Feeding pregnant mice a nutrition supplement switched off the agouti viable yellow gene.

“The novel thing is that when we bred the offspring of the supplemented mice, which had never seen the nutritional supplement, their offspring were also more likely to be brown and lean. The finding shows that diet can affect gene expression and that can be heritable.”

I asked Trevor R. Covert, a Genetics/Cell Biology student at Epigenetics News to comment on this finding.

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Photo: Getty Images

Update: Trevor sent me his opinion:

I think these findings are very important in advancing our understanding of how the epigenome may affect our health and our susceptibility to disease. I have blogged about some epigenetic transgenerational research in the past, including the research out of Dr. Michael Skinner’s lab (where I work) at Washington State University.

New Research: Epigenetic Transgenerational Adult-Onset Disease

I have also blogged about similar research with the agouti mouse model out of the lab of Dr. Robert Waterland at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Nutrition During Pregnancy and Its Transgenerational, Epigenetic Effects

In my opinion, in the next few years it will likely become apparent that other nutritional items and chemical toxicants will be found to have similar effects. It will be an interesting phenomenon to watch, and one that could
have broad implications for our understanding of how our environment is affecting human health.

Morning Baby News

Here are the best baby, pregnancy related articles, findings from the last 24 hours :

Children whose mothers were stressed out during pregnancy are vulnerable to mental and behavioural problems like ADHD, mounting evidence suggests… We should be screening women in pregnancy for stress and intervening. It has big public health implications. About a million children in the UK have neurodevelopmental problems – ADHD, cognitive delay, anxiety and so on. About 15% of this might be due to antenatal stress.

A new study finds that women who take folic acid supplements early in their pregnancy can substantially reduce their baby’s chances of being born with a facial cleft… The researchers estimated that 22 percent of isolated CLP cases in Norway could be averted if all pregnant women took 0.4 mg of folic acid per day.

In the wake of a new record for becoming the world’s oldest mother, fertility experts are encouraged by recent research showing that older moms are as capable of good parenting as younger women — but are increasingly concerned about women naively postponing pregnancy till later in life.

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Medical video games

After posting on fighting cancer with video games, I’ve decided to collect some of the best medical games on the Internet. I hope there are plenty of games for educational purpose, just contact me and I’ll add yours to this little list.

I start with my favourite, the Immune Attack game which is an educational video game funded by the National Science Foundation and other scientists. Unfortunately, it’s not yet available for download, but you can add your name to the e-mail list and they’ll contact you soon.

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Then here is a not so active Health games blog:

The Serious Games Initiative founded Games for Health to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications.

It’s never too early to start playing with medical games. Kids, take a look at the Body scavanger and the Mission Nutrition.

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Forget about Counter Strike and Quake, shoot those dirty microbes and cancer cells!

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