Manic Monday

Swine flu 'unstoppable', all countries will need vaccine: WHO (Update)

All countries will need access to vaccines against swine flu as the pandemic is "unstoppable," a senior World Health Organisation official said Monday.

A group of vaccination experts concluded after a recent meeting that "the H1N1 pandemic is unstoppable and therefore all countries would need to have access to vaccines," said Marie-Paul Kieny, WHO director on vaccine research.

Health workers should be at the top of the queue for vaccination, since they are required to keep health systems going while people continue to fall sick, she added.

Countries would be free to decide on their national priorities, but other groups should include pregnant women and anyone over six months-old who has chronic health problems.

Children are another group that would need vaccination as they are "amplifiers" of the spread of the disease, particularly when they are gathered in schools, Kieny added.

The WHO official said a swine flu vaccine should be available as early as September.

Experts should also decide during a meeting in September whether the vaccine should be one of the strains incorporated into the next seasonal vaccine for the southern hemisphere.

Source and More
http://www.physorg.com/news166701337.html
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Support Grows For New Home Based Service For Challenging Mental Patients

A new national service which will provide comprehensive care and support for challenging mental health patients in their own homes following discharge from hospital is being welcomed by lead clinicians and patient advocates.

Vicky Wadsworth, head of the mental health department at Roebucks solicitors in Blackburn, which acts on behalf of hundreds of patients, said: "There is a huge gap in care provision that this service can help fill.

Health service outreach teams are desperately overstretched and cannot provide the sustained intensive treatment and rehabilitation support that many patients require. In some cases, this means that patients can't be moved on into the community and so remain confined in secure facilities unnecessarily."

Dr Christopher Findlay, a leading community psychiatrist working in Runcorn, said: "There are limits to what Community Mental Health Teams can provide. There are also limited in-patient beds. Any service that offers to work alongside established NHS services to provide intensive safe alternatives to in-patient care is to be welcomed, particularly those that are individually tailored and committed to improved outcomes and the safe social inclusion of patients with mental health difficulties. Working alongside and not replacing existing services is an advantage for responsible clinicians who hope to establish a long term relationship through the journey towards recovery."

Source and More
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/157290.php
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Positive Emotions Increase Resilience, Happiness

Cultivating daily positive emotions can help build resilience and increase a person’s happiness according to new research.

“This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go,” said Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences and the principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory.

“Those small moments let positive emotions blossom, and that helps us become more open. That openness then helps us build resources that can help us rebound better from adversity and stress, ward off depression and continue to grow.”

In the month long study, 86 participants were asked to submit daily report on their emotions, rather than answering general questions like, “Over the last few months, how much joy did you feel?”

Getting those daily reports helped us gather more accurate recollections of feelings and allowed us to capture emotional ups and downs.

Source and More
http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/07/13/positive-emotions-increase-resilience-happiness/7086.html
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New MRI Helps Dementia Diagnosis

A new study may help physicians differentially diagnose three common neurodegenerative disorders in the future.

In this study, Mayo Clinic researchers developed a framework for MRI-based differential diagnosis of three common neurodegenerative disorders: Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and Lewy body disease using Structural MRI.

Currently, examination of the brain at autopsy is the only way to confirm with certainty that a patient had a specific form of dementia. The framework, which is called “STructural Abnormality iNDex” or STAND-Map, shows promise in accurately diagnosing dementia patients while they are alive.

The rationale is that if each neurodegenerative disorder can be associated with a unique pattern of atrophy specific on MRI, then it may be possible to differentially diagnose new patients. The study looked at 90 patients from the Mayo Clinic database who were confirmed to have only a single dementia pathology and also underwent an MRI at the time of clinical diagnosis of dementia.

Using the STAND-Map framework, researchers predicted an accurate pathological diagnosis 75 to 80 percent of the time.

Source and More
http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/07/13/new-mri-helps-dementia-diagnosis/7064.html