Postpartum psychosis: research reveals full recovery possible within weeks

Sarah West says in the days after the birth of her son in 2012, she felt the emotions many new mothers describe – a mixture of joy combined with anxiety about breastfeeding and whether she was doing everything right.

But around one week after the birth, West’s new-mum anxiety went into overdrive. Despite the exhaustion that comes with being a new parent, she was unable to sleep when her baby slept. Her thoughts raced.

Her doctor diagnosed her with postpartum depression and prescribed West antidepressants. But her symptoms worsened and she began experiencing delusions and hallucinations.

She was experiencing postpartum psychosis, a severe, rare and little-understood condition that can place both mothers and their children in serious danger. It is markedly different to postpartum depression, because mothers experience symptoms such as loss of reality, delusions and hallucinations. This can be accompanied by either mania or depression.

The temporary condition is debilitating, yet research into it is scarce, especially in Australia.

But new research being presented at the annual congress of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists on Thursday found that if properly recognised and treated, women experiencing postpartum psychosis could make a full recovery within weeks and successfully bond with and care for their babies at home.

This is critical because left untreated or misdiagnosed, the consequences of postpartum psychosis can be fatal. In a small number of cases mothers may harm or kill themselves or their baby due the condition, which is beyond their control. The condition nearly always requires hospitalisation to protect the mother and her baby.

The study examined women admitted with postpartum psychosis to a mother-baby unit, Helen Mayo House, in South Australia, over a five-year period from 2012 to 2016.

It found the women often required one-on-one nursing care, and all patients received antipsychotic medication. A few also required lithium, a mood stabiliser.

This treatment saw almost all of the women make a complete recovery and able to return home to care for their babies after an average stay of four weeks, similar to the average stay for other mental health conditions. A key finding was the treatment saw 77% of the women still breastfeeding at the time of their discharge.

West received treatment after a friend told her she was not behaving like her usual self and called the National Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Helpline [Panda]. They advised that West should be taken to hospital immediately for psychiatric care, and West is now a strong advocate for the helpline.

After a four-week hospital stay which included being taken off antidepressants and prescribed antipsychotics, and visits from her baby for bonding, West was able to return home and care for her baby.

Her time in hospital and her period of postpartum psychosis remains a blur, and West says she is still not ready for her family to fill in the gaps for her.

“People can mistakenly describe what women like me go through as ‘baby blues’ or ‘depression’, but I was definitely not depressed,” West says.

“My anxiety went into overdrive, I was experiencing delusions and hallucinations, and really irrational thinking. But so few people know about the condition, and my obstetrician said I was only the second case of postpartum psychosis he had ever seen.

“I think all of the gaps in my memory is my body’s way of protecting me.”

As well as taking medication, West made changes to her lifestyle and learned to recognise when she needed time to de-stress. She has fully recovered and she and her son are now doing well. But West is still fearful of reactions when she shares her story, given the lack of understanding and empathy from some towards mothers who experience the condition.

Postpartum psychosis occurs in about one to two of every 1,000 births, and there is a 50% chance of recurrence in subsequent pregnancies. West wants other women who have experienced it to know there is support and treatment available. She also wants people around new mothers, including healthcare professionals, to be more aware of the symptoms so they can make an accurate diagnosis.

“I know women who are so traumatised from experiencing this that they won’t have another child because they’re terrified,” West says.

“I have to speak up because I don’t like the thought of other families going through what we did. This has to change and to do that we need better recognition of the condition.”

Dr Rebecca Hill from the Women’s and Children’s Health Network in Adelaide led the Helen Mayo House study, and says she believes a key part of the treatment of her patients’ was that the unit accommodated both mothers and their babies.

“While we didn’t specifically study this, my intuition is that it’s better for the mother and the baby to avoid separation because the attachment relationship is vulnerable to trauma when separation occurs,” Hill says.

“It’s distressing to think some mothers may be separated from their babies longer than necessary because they could not access proper treatment. Even a few days’ delay in treatment can expose them to substantial risk.”

But not all states have mother-baby units. In New South Wales for example, there is only one mother-baby unit, and it is only available to private hospital patients who are admitted to hospital voluntarily. Most patients Hill sees with postpartum psychosis are involuntarily admitted, and even Helen Mayo House only has six mother-baby beds.

West, who lives in NSW, agrees more mother-baby units are needed. She believes they may be able to help mothers with bonding and would see women receive more specialised treatment from clinicians familiar with the condition. She says general mental health wards cannot always provide the specialised care postpartum psychosis patients require.

The president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Professor Malcolm Hopwood, says the study shows the importance of identification and early intervention for women with postpartum psychosis.

“The good news for these women is that with the right care they can bond with their babies and care for them like any other new mother,” he says.

Hill says the causes of postpartum psychosis are unknown, with most of those experiencing it having never shown psychiatric symptoms before. It usually presents within the first six weeks after birth. Some research is under way into genetic causes, but this is in its early stages. An accurate diagnosis also means early intervention and monitoring measures can be put in place for any subsequent pregnancies, Hill says.

“For the vast majority of women they will only have susceptibility to this at the postpartum period,” Hill says. “Something at this time makes them exquisitely vulnerable. But the key is that once postpartum psychosis is identified, it is so, so treatable.”

• PANDA National Helpline, Mon to Fri, 10am-5pm AEDT, 1300 726 306


• Lifeline, 24 hours, 13 11 14

Contact the author at melissa.davey@theguardian.com

Postpartum psychosis: research reveals full recovery possible within weeks

Yet more research shows chronic fatigue syndrome is real. When will health services catch up? | Naomi Chainey

When the New York Times publishes a piece on the glaring flaws in a large study conducted on the effectiveness of recommended treatments for chronically ill people, saying claims of recovery are “overstated” and “not justified by the data”, I can’t imagine that’s a good thing. However, as someone who has been ill with chronic fatigue syndrome (also called myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS) for over a decade, the article represents hope.

The authors, Julie Rehmeyer and public heath expert David Tuller, refer to the Pace trial, a publicly funded study conducted in the UK comparing the effectiveness and safety of four treatments for ME/CFS. The authors of the study were recommending two of the treatments, cognitive behavioural therapy and a program of gradually increased exercise, long before the trial commenced, on the assumption that patients with the debilitating condition were plagued with “unhelpful beliefs” about the organic nature of their illness. If we can overcome those beliefs, the theory goes, we should be able to reverse our physical deconditioning and exercise our way back to health.

In the published results, the authors claimed a modest recovery rate of 22% with the favoured therapies (other therapies were found to be comparatively ineffective). However, when patient groups gained access to the data from the trial through freedom of information requests, it was eventually revealed that the definition of “recovered” had been altered partway through the trial to include people who were still relatively ill (some with physical function on par with class II congestive heart failure patients), and had this not been done, none of the recovery rates would have been statistically significant.

As it turns out, exercise and positive thinking are not a panacea. In fact, when surveyed, 74% of people with ME/CFS who have attempted the recommended exercise program report that their condition worsens, some losing significant function in the fallout.

There is now a wealth of research on the biology of ME/CFS, discrediting the idea that we are merely “deconditioned”, but the theory that our beliefs hold us back remains persistent, both within the health care system and the media.

For example, Queensland’s Griffith University recently released a groundbreaking study confirming that people with ME/CFS have faulty calcium receptors in their immune cells, and various media outlets claimed this meant that the debate over whether or not the illness was “all in our heads” was finally over.

Never mind that the same claim was made back when studies on our metabolisms, our gut bacteria, excess molecules regulating inflammation, reduced white matter, unusual gene expression and lowered oxygen uptake were published, now our illness was real.

One wonders how many times an illness must be shown to exist before up to 250,000 chronically ill Australians (one in four of whom are too ill to leave their homes) will no longer be accused of maintaining a collective delusion.

While the research is very promising, realistically we are years, possibly decades, from the development of effective treatments for people with ME/CFS, and, in the interim, little has been done to alleviate the scepticism of the health professionals tasked with our welfare. The Pace trial remains the official touchstone for treatment recommendations and no specialist field has officially adopted the condition. Finding a doctor who is willing to take the illness seriously, and make appropriate recommendations to disability service providers, remains extremely difficult, and continues to cause great distress and financial hardship for Australians with the condition and their carers.

Penelope McMillan, president of ME/CFS Australia, believes more accredited training for GPs is in order. McMillan, who has been ill herself for 19 years, says training has already been developed by Bridges and Pathways, an organisation dedicated to building collaborations between researchers and medical professionals for the benefit of people with ME/CFS. “PHNs [primary health networks] are funded to manage and support primary healthcare services in their region,” she says. “Our task now is to get those organisations to agree to offer the training.”

But support organisations such as Penelope’s are currently bidding farewell to their own funding as government grants are redirected toward the NDIS, which is expected to take up the resulting slack in service provision. For people with ME/CFS, who are already being found ineligible for the scheme, this is hardly reassuring.

“We have members who are bed-bound and they can’t access the NDIS,” says McMillan. “It’s just heartbreaking … We have people in distressing circumstances and there’s just no help. The legislation was quite clear that the NDIS should be based on need, but the NDIA [National Disability Insurance Agency] has created a procedure that discriminates.”

McMillan refers to a list of conditions produced by the NDIA, intended as a guide for assessors. If your condition is not on the list (as ME/CFS is not) you have almost no chance of being approved for the scheme, regardless of need. In effect, the NDIA has granted privileges to those lucky enough to be represented by well-funded lobby groups at the time the list was created.

Kristel Wood struggles to work eight hours a week (though she tells me four hours is more realistically sustainable) and requires support from her family and a home care service for basic housekeeping and meal preparation. She has been rejected for the NDIS three times. “I could focus more on work,” she says, when I ask her how the NDIS would change her life. “I could get regular specialist home visits from a physio. I wouldn’t have the constant stress of playing catch-up with basic medical expenses. I’d be able to try treatment options that are currently inaccessible to me. Right now I’m barely coping.”

Wood’s third application was rejected on the basis that ME/CFS is not a “permanent illness” and “exercise and cognitive behavioural therapy are effective treatments”, a clear reference to the Pace claims, and incongruent with the established recovery rate of 5% in adults.

“Despite the study being well and truly debunked, traces of it will stay in the health system for a very long time. To weed it out is going to be quite a challenge,” says McMillan.

Perhaps that challenge should start with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners(RACGP) who still advise GPs to recommend exercise therapy, leaving already exhausted patients to deal with their doctors’ insistence that recovery is not only possible but likely. It’s a rare GP who will trust a patient’s knowledge over the recommendations of the RACGP, and there’s an unfortunate power dynamic between doctor and patient that tends to make attempts at education uncomfortable.

So while the new research is very exciting and validates our experiences, what we very desperately need right now is services, and updates to the resources health professionals use to decide our fates, because we don’t have the energy to be battling healthcare providers for our dignity.

Yet more research shows chronic fatigue syndrome is real. When will health services catch up? | Naomi Chainey

Parenthood can help you live longer in older age, research suggests

Parenthood could boost your chances of living longer in your later years, according researchers who believe the effect could be down to children helping with care and support.

While previous research has shown that adults with children live longer than those without, the new study unpicks how the effect plays out in older age.

“We started first at the age of 60 and we looked all the way up to the age of 100,” said Karin Modig, a co-author of the research from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

Modig and colleagues used national registry data to follow almost 1.5 million Swedes born between 1911 and 1925 as they aged. The team found that while the risk of death increased with age for all adults, having children was linked to greater longevity. The results are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

At the age of 60, men who had children had almost two years more on their remaining life expectancy than those without, at 20.2 and 18.4 years respectively. A similar trend was seen for women aged 60, with life expectancies of 23.1 years for those without children and 24.6 years for mothers.

By contrast at the age of 80, parents had a life expectancy of 7.7 years for men and 9.5 years for women, compared to 7 years for men without children and 8.9 years for women without children.

The team also looked at the risk of dying within a year for each age, taking into account factors such as education and marital status.

The findings reveal that the benefits of having children became more pronounced with age – an effect that was greater for men than women. Furthermore, the team found that having children had a stronger impact on the longevity of men who were not married than those with a spouse.

The researchers suggest that could be because unmarried men are more dependant on their children for support than men who are married, adding that previous research has suggested that men benefit more from marriage when it comes to survival than women do, possibly explaining why the effect is not seen for women.

Unlike some previous research, the authors found that the sex of the child had no influence on their parent’s longevity – however the finding was based only on families with one child. “Perhaps being the only child is related to a greater responsibility of parents, reducing the difference in the amount of help given by sons and daughters,” they write.

While it is not clear why having children is linked to a longer life, the researchers suggest it might be down to children helping to look after their ageing parents, be it through physical care, emotional support or even arguing for better treatment.

However there are other explanations, including that adults with children might have healthier lifestyles, or that there are other factors that could decrease an individual’s chances of having children and raise their risk of death.

But while having children might boost the years left on your clock, Modig says it is far from the only factor influencing longevity.

“In terms of all other causes that would affect your death risk in these old ages, having a child is not among the greatest ones,” she said. “But it is still a 1.5% difference [for 90-year-old men] which is still substantial.”

Parenthood can help you live longer in older age, research suggests

Britons "bumped off" EU medical research grant applications, MPs told

British medical researchers are being removed from applications for EU research grants by European colleagues because of Brexit, MPs have been told.

Prof David Lomas, representing UK university hospitals, told MPs that Britain’s position at the forefront of medial advancement was threatened were it no longer able to access the European Research Council, one of the world’s leading funders of scientific research.

“One big issue for most of hospital academics is applying for grant applications, and we’ve seen people bumped off grant applications to the EU,” he told the health select committee.

Applications to the ERC are usually made by consortiums of researchers from a variety of EU countries. Britain has a strong track record of taking the lead in these groupings.

“Previously having a British member would help you in your application to get funding … Nowyou are less than an asset, so we have had academics removed from grant applications,” Lomas said.

He said it was vital for patients that Britain continued to be part of leading edge research and was pressing the government to argue the case for continuing to contribute to the ERC on a pay-as-you-go system.

“If we don’t get the very best people we don’t drive the research and innovation where we punch above our weight. If we can’t attract the very best, we can’t lead in the innovations that will lead to patient benefits.”

Lomas said his own university, University College London, where he is vice-provost of health, and the University of Cambridge were huge beneficiaries of the ERC, as was the UK.

“We raised €760m [£642m] between 2007 and 2013 from the ERC. My own university and Cambridge are neck and neck for bringing more in to any university [than any other] in the EU,” he told the committee.

Brexit was also affecting recruitment of high-calibre staff in medical schools, with teaching hospitals in Leeds and Glasgow reporting people pulling out of job offers, he continued. “So we have lost stellar people who would have come otherwise.”

Concern over the right to live and work in the UK after Brexit was already affecting recruitment across the board, said Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers.

Giving evidence before the select committee, he said the controversial application process for permanent residency cards involving an 85-page application form had proved counterproductive, and was deterring valuable healthworkers from planning to stay in the UK after Brexit.

Both men were speaking just weeks after the Nursing and Midwifery Council reported a sharp decline in registrations from Europe.

Just 101 nurses and midwives from the EU27 registered to work in the UK in December, down from 1,300 in July, the committee heard. About 5% of nurses and 10% of doctors in the NHS are EU nationals.

Mortimer said EU staff were critical to the smooth running of the the health service. “We cannot believe that the NHS can do without our EU national colleagues,” he said.

One area that could be more heavily impacted than hospitals is social care, with EU nationals plugging the gaps, particularly in rural areas where it was difficult to recruit British staff, MPs heard.

“Some areas it has been very difficult to recruit, rural areas are very difficult to recruit people in social care, so EU [nationals] have come into this area,” said Martin Green, chief executive of Care England.

Britons "bumped off" EU medical research grant applications, MPs told

Very premature babies at risk of mental health problems – research

Children who are born very prematurely are at greater risk of developing mental health and social problems that can persist well into adulthood, according to one of the largest reviews of evidence.

Those with an extremely low birth weight, at less than a kilogram, are more likely to have attention disorders and social difficulties as children, and feel more shyness, anxiety and depression as adults, than those born a healthy weight.

The review draws on findings from 41 published studies over the past 26 years and highlights the need for doctors to follow closely how children born very prematurely fare as they become teenagers and adults.

“It is important that families and doctors be aware of the potential for these early-emerging mental health problems in children born at extremely low birth weight, since at least some of them endure into adulthood,” said Karen Mathewson, a psychologist at McMaster University in Ontario.

Improvements in neonatal care in the past two decades mean that more children who are born very prematurely now survive. In a healthy pregnancy, a baby can reach 1kg (a little more than 2lbs) within 27 weeks, or the end of the second trimester.

The study, which involves data from 13,000 children in 12 different countries, follows previous research that found a greater tendency for very low birth weight children to have lower IQs and autism and more trouble with relationships and careers as they reach adulthood and venture into the world.

It is unclear how a very premature birth, known as a preterm, affects brain development, but children who survive the difficult start are consistently found to be more introverted and risk averse. These factors may drive the more positive tendency to become less prone to drink, smoke and take drugs as adults. The increased risk of mental health problems was seen in very preterm children regardless of where they were born.

Children who were delivered extremely early and weighed less than a kilogram at birth were about four times as likely as those born at term to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and significant emotional problems. Those who reached adolescence were twice at risk of these. Adult survivors reported more mental health and social problems, but Mathewson said there are far fewer studies on these individuals.

“This does not mean that, in general, infants born extremely preterm will ultimately develop mental health problems, only that the risk of developing such problems is higher in this group than in those born at full term,” she stresses in the journal, Psychological Bulletin.

Daniel Smith, professor of psychiatry at the University of Glasgow, said the findings were important because mental health issues that occur in childhood are a strong predictor of psychiatric disorders in adulthood.

“There is a strong case for assessing, on a regular basis, the mental health status of these children, so that early intervention approaches might be implemented sooner rather than later, with a view to minimising future mental health problems,” he said. “It is my understanding that children who are born with an extremely low birth weight are routinely assessed for physical health problems in childhood but not currently for mental health problems. This paper suggests that this situation should change.”

Dieter Wolke, a psychology professor at the University of Warwick, said children who weigh less than a kilogram at birth have a “distinct profile” of mental health difficulties in childhood and adolescence. But it was important to note that a third to a half of the children will grow up without any of these mental health problems, he added.

“This study further underlines that extremely low birth weight children and their families need more support to deal with, or to reduce, the adverse effects of ADHD, anxiety and social problems that affect their schooling, being part of their peer group, and being socially integrated. Our own findings indicate that these mental health problems affect wellbeing, wealth and finding a partner and friends who are supportive into adulthood,” Wolke said.

A new EU research programme, coordinated by the University of Warwick, will explore what helps very preterm children overcome the problems they face. Better support for parents and schools, where teachers can learn about the children’s special needs and how to handle their difficulties with attention and making friends, can all help, studies show. “What has been repeatedly noted is that after they leave hospital, they require better liaison of services in the community and with educational services to improve their lives,” Wolke said.

Very premature babies at risk of mental health problems – research

Cancer drug prices must come down, say leading research institutes

The high price of new cancer drugs is indefensible and unsustainable, say two of the world’s leading cancer research institutions, who propose a different way to develop them that could sideline big pharma.

“There is a clear and urgent necessity to lower cancer drug prices to keep lifesaving drugs available and affordable to patients,” say leading scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where many important new cancer drugs have been invented, in a paper in the journal Cell.

In the US, cancer bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, while in the UK, drugs that might prolong life are rejected for NHS use because of their price. Many new drugs have to be used in combination, adding to the cost. Treatment with the two new immunotherapy drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab costs $ 252,000, which is more than the median cost of a US home ($ 240,000 in 2016), they write.

Fantastic scientific work is going on – for instance, in sequencing cancer genomes – which should lead to advances in treatment, said Prof Paul Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, which is the world’s most successful academic cancer drug discovery organisation. “All this invention is meaningless if patients cannot afford these drugs,” he said.

“It is unsustainable. For those of us involved in research, it is disturbing that the amount of research that goes on and the success that is made is not translated into treatment for patients. And for patients it is a terrible situation.”

Pharmaceutical companies used to justify their prices by pointing to the high cost of clinical trials involving many thousands of patients. But that is no longer always necessary, the scientists say in their paper. The new targeted drugs require a test for a genetic biomarker to see whether patients will respond or not. That means the drug can be trialled on far fewer people. The drug crizotinib, used for advanced lung cancer, was approved following a trial involving only 347 patients, they point out. Trastuzumab (Herceptin) was first approved for advanced breast cancer and later for early breast cancer, increasing the market for the company but with no reduction in price.

“Some drugs are tested on 50 or 100 patients and yet these drugs still go to Nice [the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which decides whether the NHS can afford a new drug] at the maximum price,” said Workman.

Workman, together with colleagues from the US and the Netherlands, proposes that academic discovery centres like his should forge relationships with new commercial partners – probably not the major drug companies but smaller biotech or generic drug firms.

Academics should take greater control of the drugs they discover, they argue, and join with small companies that will agree to cap the price when the drug reaches the market. They would not have the expectation of big profit margins, as the major pharmaceutical companies do. But in an era where drugs are tested on smaller populations and genetic testing means they are more likely to be effective, they would not need to “cost in” all the failed attempts at producing blockbusters, as the big companies do.

Workman said the institute was already talking to small companies about the possibility of a new way of developing more affordable cancer drugs. He believes other scientists will support the ideas in the paper. “We’re calling for a more mature and open conversation about how this could be done and offering a solution,” he said.

Cancer drug prices must come down, say leading research institutes

The Curse Of Financially Polluted GMO Study Data – 672 Research Papers Reviewed

Even among those of us that haven’t done their research into GMO food products, there is an uncertainly about not only what they actually are, but no one seems to know about the safely of these inventions either. For that’s what they are; inventions. Not natural, but man made.

Research on genetically modified products needs to be paid for. While it’s ideal that the producers of such products should bear the cost of the research into their own products, there is a big question mark hanging over the conclusions of this type of research. For example, when a company wants to sell product, wouldn’t they want favorable results into the research of their patented money makers?

The Review Into Conflicts Of Interest In GMO Studies

In this study, the authors were looking for the extent of conflicts of interest (COI) in employment statuses only. The parameters used to assign to each piece of research were: “favorable’, ‘neutral’ or ‘unfavorable’ to the financial interests of at least one GM crop company.”

The goal of this study was to measure the extent of COIs in the field of research of GMO products and to “test the hypothesis that study outcomes for the efficacy or durability of Bt crops are more frequently favorable to the interests of GM crop companies in the presence than in the absence of COI’s.”

The authors received no funding for this research task, they were just keen to know how much shenanigans is going on inside the research field of GM products.

If every other form of COI was accounted for, the results would very likely be much higher because of the way this industry is cross linked every which way via being consultants, members of advisory boards or co-holders of patents or intrinsic or intellectual COIs.

“Like Sanchez and Diels et al. we found that COI’s were widespread in the articles considered. Only about 7% of the articles contained a declaration of COI, but about one fifth of the 672 articles had at least one author from a GM crop company.”

Let me do the maths for you; that’s 134 research papers that had a COI, merely based on their employment status!

The authors of this review study propose that the GMO companies still pay for the research into their own products, but, that there should be a pool of monies mainly funded by the companies but also contributed to by governments and NGO’s that could fund research that is independent of financial stakeholders influence.

This would add a layer of confidence to the supposed scientific research surrounding GMO’s that we could all rely on. As it stands, the whole system stinks of money, with not even a whiff of duty of care.

More Conflict Of Interest

The pharmaceutical company, Merck, bought and does deliveries of Dr Paul Offit’s book, “What Every Parent Should Know About Vaccines,” to American doctors. This is another incidence where a conclusion of conflict of interest could possibly be drawn.

Do you know who Paul Offit is? He is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an ‘expert on vaccines’ working for the CDC, of course! In addition, he’s also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine. Surely CDC employees are not able to sell their own products to the industry they are charged with protecting us from? Yes they are, and yes they do.

Even CDC Employees Are Fed Up

Even the order followers at the CDC have had enough and are asking questions of their employer as to unethical behavior.

The ethics complaint by a group of 12 senior CDC scientists calling themselves ‘Preserving Integrity, Diligence and Ethics in Research’ or (CDC SPIDER)

It remains to be seen what the response to the CDC ethical complaint will be, if any.

Who Can We Trust?

As you’ve just read, the there is a ton of conflict of interest surrounding GMO studies. If we can’t trust the scientific community to stand for what is right, instead of standing for money, who and what CAN we trust?

Remember Grandma? Remember her pottering around in her garden, seemingly haphazardly tending her garden, then bringing you inside for a delicious bowl of veggie soup?

Do you ever remember her talking to you about what fabulous fruits and veggies she was growing at the moment? If you don’t remember this, then I’m very sorry, you missed out. However, some of us got the jump on living a natural and healthy life with a Grandma, just like I described. THAT’S who you can trust!

Grandma’s lessons of how to live naturally ring especially true today. Eat clean, organic whole foods. Avoid toxins and toxic environments. Avoid man made food products. Grow your own food. Nature and Grandma know best!

References

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167777

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/301432-the-cdc-is-being-being-influenced-by-corporate-and-political

http://yournewswire.com/deadstream-media-ignoring-gmo-studies/

The Curse Of Financially Polluted GMO Study Data – 672 Research Papers Reviewed

Back pain medications have little benefit and may cause harm – research

Widely used anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen have little more benefit than a placebo when it comes to treating back pain, a comprehensive review has found.

Researchers analysed 35 peer-reviewed trials on the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs] such as ibuprofen for back pain, reviewing data from 6,065 patients.

They found that none of the analgesics offered anything more than a mild relief for back-pain sufferers, and the effect was too small to be considered clinically important.

The comprehensive review, published in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, found while the drugs offered little to no benefit, patients taking them were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from gastrointestinal problems such a stomach ulcers and bleeding.

Lead author of the paper, Associate Professor Manuela Ferreira from the George Institute for Global Health in Australia, said back pain was the leading cause of disability worldwide and was commonly managed by prescribing anti-inflammatories.

But guidelines should be updated to reflect the drugs had little benefit, she said.

“These drugs are effective for other conditions but for people with back pain, we believe there is a bigger role for other treatments,” she said.

“We are not arguing that no pain relief should be used, but people using these types should be aware the benefits are small and that their side effects can be harmful, and that discussing with their doctors the benefit of other treatments including exercise may be worthwhile.”

Professor Chris Del Mar, an evidence-based medicine specialist and professor of public health at Bond University in Queensland, Australia, said both doctors and patients tended to believe medicines for back pain were more effective than the evidence shows.

“It’s hard for doctors to say to people, ‘I don’t have anything that will make much of a difference to your back pain, so grit your teeth and bear it’,” he said.

“People want to hear, ‘I’ll give you some pills and we’ll make you feel better’, so it’s a cognitive bias. The traditional view has been ‘don’t just stand there, do something’,’ but what I teach medical students is that sometimes the correct response is ‘don’t just do something, stand there’.”

He said 99.9% of acute back pain resolved itself. But he sympathised that when people were in acute pain that affected their life they just wanted something to fix it.

“That’s one of the reasons we tend to use treatments, even when they’re not effective,” he said.

Back pain medications have little benefit and may cause harm – research

MRI twice as likely as biopsy to spot prostate cancer, research shows

Every man with suspected prostate cancer should have an MRI scan, which is twice as likely to identify the presence of dangerous tumours as the invasive biopsy used currently, say doctors.

A major trial, which could influence a change of practice in the NHS, will amount to “the biggest leap forward in prostate cancer diagnosis in decades, with the potential to save many lives”, Prostate Cancer UK said.

Researchers publishing in the Lancet medical journal have shown that an MRI picks up 93% of aggressive cancers, compared with 48% for a biopsy. The biopsy, which removes a sample of tissue for lab testing, often misses the tumour altogether.

The Prostate MRI Imaging Study (Promis), led by researchers at University College London (UCL), also showed that more than a quarter (27%) of all men with suspected cancer could avoid a biopsy altogether.

MRI scans were shown to be better at ruling out cancer, as well as identifying tumours that are not dangerous because they are slow growing and do not need to be treated. In the trial, the number wrongly diagnosed with a cancer that needed treatment was reduced by 5%.

“Prostate cancer has aggressive and harmless forms. Our current biopsy test can be inaccurate because the tissue samples are taken at random,” said the lead author, Dr Hashim Ahmed from UCL. “This means it cannot confirm whether a cancer is aggressive or not and can miss aggressive cancers that are actually there.

“Because of this some men with no cancer or harmless cancers are sometimes given the wrong diagnosis and are then treated even though this offers no survival benefit and can often cause side effects. On top of these errors in diagnosis, the current biopsy test can cause side effects such as bleeding, pain and serious infections.”

Some men suffer a life-threatening sepsis – a bloodstream infection – as a result of the standard transrectal ultrasound-guided (TRUS) biopsy.

This is the second breakthrough in prostate cancer treatment in two months. In December, UCL published a study showing that a laser-activated drug derived from bacteria at the bottom of the sea can kill prostate cancer cells without the sometimes devastating side-effects of surgery, which can leave men incontinent or impotent.

The introduction of the scan, called a multi-parametric MRI (mpMRI), into routine NHS practice is already on its way. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), which produces guidelines for doctors on the most appropriate treatment for patients, has already launched an early review of prostate cancer diagnosis looking at the evidence from a previous trial in men with prostate cancer that has spread, and has been awaiting the results of this one.

Some hospitals are already offering MRI before any biopsy, but it will take time before it is universal. MRI machines are now in high demand for other kinds of cancer diagnosis and there will have to be special training for the radiologists who interpret the scans, which takes a high level of expertise.

Prostate Cancer UK, which helped fund the research, is now working for the introduction of MRI scans into prostate cancer units. “The current diagnostic process for prostate cancer is notoriously imperfect, so any developments which offer improvements must be adopted as a matter of priority,” said Angela Culhane, its chief executive.

“That’s why we have already been working with a range of clinical experts and professional bodies to pinpoint the potential barriers to the widespread rollout of mpMRI before biopsy and start the work of addressing them ahead of time. Now the results are formally published, we will continue to use this insight to support health professionals and commissioners to make the necessary resource and practice changes without delay. Whilst it’s clear that the rollout of mpMRI before biopsy can’t just happen overnight, it’s critical that urgent action is taken to make it available to men.”

MRI twice as likely as biopsy to spot prostate cancer, research shows

Scientists Plan to Send First Interstellar Greetings to the Star System in the Movie Avatar: Link to the Scientific Research

An organization called METI short for Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence has announced that there is a project under way to send Greetings by way of powerful radio or laser signals to Proxima Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor. Sitting just 4.3 light years away Proxima Centauri is a Trinary star system consisting of three stars. Laser or radio signals would take 4.3 years to get there in a first attempt at contacting different worlds. These messages would be repeated for months or years in hopes of a reply. Proxima Centauri hosts the closest known exo-planet to Earth, Proxima Centauri b. This exo-planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory in August of 2016, and it appears to lay within the habitable zone of its Red Dwarf star. This is one the targets for the Greetings signals scientists from METI plan on sending. No one is claiming that it is habited, but it is the best and closest chance. Good for practice but their are many more targets in the future according to METI’s President Douglas Vakoch. He hopes to send greetings to many star systems. Another interesting side note is….

The fictional moon called Na’vi set in the Proxima Centauri system is the backdrop of James Cameron’s 2009 movie Avatar. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Scientists plan to send greetings to other worlds Phys.org December 26, 2016

Signaling to other worlds is a bold and historic move that is unprecedented in history.  Stephen Hawking has recently warned if we pick up alien signals don’t answer back. It could be a deadly move. The subject is full of controversy.

Like much else in science, the project has turned controversial. Some ask: If aliens are hostile, do we really want them to know where we are?

We shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves, say science fiction writer David Brin and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

Stephen Hawking warns that humanity should not respond to aliens in case they kill us all

“We have almost zero idea of whether aliens are likely to be dangerous,” physicist Mark Buchanan wrote in journal Nature Physics in Looking for Trouble.

Who gave these people permission to start signaling possible alien civilizations. Anyone?

METI works closely with SETI the Search for Extraterrestrial Life scanning in the optical range to look for signs of alien civilizations. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI Institute, is all for the idea despite the possible implications.

Others endorse the effort. “I’d be happy to see this done,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI Institute. “I think there’s something to be learned, nothing to be feared, and at least the possibility of discovering something truly revolutionary: We have company nearby.”

How would this be accomplished and what are the possible future targets?

About this question, it was entirely coincidental in that this author wrote an academically linked article detailing this very answer published at Blogs.NaturalNews on December 22, 2016. Four days before the METI announcement with the original information published months before. Using research from two Canadian scientists from the University of Laval in Quebec, Canada, E.F. Borra and E. Trottier. The Blogs.NaturalNews piece points out that astronomers may have picked up the exact laser signals being described, that astronomers plan on sending, from 234 star systems quite similar to our own. Going into great detail about the power of lasers needed, what an alien signal may look like and how to structure our own signal. Pulsing the beam by nanoseconds so it would not be mistaken for anything natural in a routine sky survey by an alien civilization.

Alien Contact. Can We Answer Back?

Clearly explaining the technology has been available as early as 2004 that could transmit 1000 light years to about 1 million Sun-like stars.

For this, we shall use the analysis in Howard et al. (2004), who considered the energy requirements for an ETI trying to communicate with nanosecond optical pulses. They considered the feasibility of interstellar communications with technology available at the time the paper was written. They assumed communications within a 1000 lt-yr diameter region surrounding Earth that would contain about 1 million Sun-like stars. They assumed that a diode-pumped laser similar to the Helios laser designed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for inertial confinement fusion would be used

SEARCHING FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE SIGNALS IN ASTRONOMICAL SPECTRA, INCLUDING EXISTING DATA.

Shouldn’t the whole world have a say in this? It would seem that elected leaders from around the world would convene to make such a decision. Probably one the most important collective choices the world could ever make. Again quoting from Phys.org.

There have been plenty of other efforts to connect with aliens, but they’ve come in fits and starts. There are no regulations for sending signals into space.

Hey if a couple of astronomers say it’s OK. Everything will be just fine. Right?   Never mind what the smartest people in the world say.

Visit RaptormanReports for news, science, and history.

Sources:

http://www.meti.org/

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-scientists-worlds.html

http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v12/n8/full/nphys3852.html

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-6256/144/6/181#aj447722r4

http://blogs.naturalnews.com/

Scientists Plan to Send First Interstellar Greetings to the Star System in the Movie Avatar: Link to the Scientific Research

UK cancer death rates to fall by 15% by 2035 due to advances in research

Death rates from cancer in the UK will fall by 15% by 2035 thanks to advances in research, diagnosis and treatment, with more Britons living longer after their diagnosis, the charity Cancer Research UK predicts.

Breakthroughs will prevent more than 403,000 deaths from the disease by 2035 that would have happened otherwise, according to an analysis from the charity.

However, although the risk of death from cancer is likely to fall, the number of people dying from it will continue to rise, because the ageing and growing population will result in more people being diagnosed, the charity said. Those factors, and the rise in cancers linked to bad diet and alcohol, mean that a typical Briton’s chances of getting cancer have recently risen from one in three to one in two.

Overall 331 people per 100,000 of population died from any form of cancer in July 2014. But improvements in doctors’ ability to detect, diagnose and treat cancer will see that fall to 280 people per 100,000 of population by 2035, CRUK estimates.

“Thanks to research fewer people will die from cancer in the future. We’re resolute that, by 2035, three in four people will survive their cancer for at least 10 years”, said Sir Harpal Kumar, CRUK’s chief executive. “This will mean making more progress in breast, bowel and blood cancers, but also accelerating our effort in those cancers which are currently hard to treat.”

Even though more people will die from cancer, the diminishing risk of death shows that cancer research and treatment are still yielding benefits and heading in the right direction, the charity said. For example, CRUK believes mortality rates from bowel cancer will fall by 23% over the next 20 years – from 32 to 25 deaths per 100,000 population – thanks to advances in surgery and chemotherapy and also better screening for the disease.

Death rates from breast cancer, the most common form of the disease among women, are projected to drop by 26% to 31 per 100,000 women by 2035. Likewise, mortality rates from lung cancer will be 21% lower by then – at 58 deaths per 100,000 people – according to CRUK’s analysis.

But deaths from pancreatic cancer are estimated to fall by only 3%, to 17 deaths per 100,000; and from brain and related tumours by just 2%, to ten deaths per 100,000 people, CRUK said.

However, the risk of death will increase for some cancers. For example, the mortality rate for liver cancer is expected to rise by 58% by 2035.

Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, which has made improving cancer outcomes one of its key priorities, said: “These figures underline how the NHS is successfully translating new research and targeted investment into dramatic gains in cancer care. Thanks to improvements over just the past year, an extra 2,400 families will be able to share this Christmas with a loved one who would not have survived cancer a year ago.”

CRUK’s statistical information team arrived at their conclusions by applying the difference in the actual cancer mortality rates in 2014 and the projected age-standardised death rates for all cancers combined in the UK between 2015 and 2035 to the Office for National Statistics’ projections for the UK population over the study period.

Kumar said that while survival rates for some forms of cancer had improved in recent decades, thanks to the development of new drugs and surgical techniques, the variation in death rates for different forms of cancer was still too wide. For example, mortality rates for brain cancer are likely to remain unchanged over the next 20 years, with just one in five patients surviving for five years. Similarly, just three in 100 people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for five years or more after diagnosis.

UK cancer death rates to fall by 15% by 2035 due to advances in research

Health anxiety may increase risk of heart disease, research finds

Fit and healthy people who worry about developing an illness may be increasing their risk of heart disease by unnecessarily fretting over their health, research suggests.

A study of more than 7,000 people over 12 years found that those with health anxiety at the start of the study were about 70% more likely to develop heart disease than those without that state of mind. Additionally, the researchers found that the higher the reported anxiety, the higher the risk of heart disease.

Anxiety is a known risk factor for heart disease but the Norwegian authors of the paper believe it is the first to look specifically at health anxiety, which is characterised by a persistent preoccupation with having or acquiring a serious illness and seeking medical help, despite the absence of any physical disease.

The findings, published in BMJ Open on Thursday, suggest that far from health anxiety protecting people from heart disease through increased monitoring and frequency of checkups, it may have the opposite effect.

The lead author, Dr Line Iden Berge, from the division of psychiatry at Sandviken University hospital in Bergen, Norway, said: “We hypothesised that people with health anxiety would have reduced risk because they would take better care of themselves.

“The results suggest it’s better, instead of worrying about what’s going on with your body and running to the doctor for any physical health problem, to seek a proper diagnosis and help for the anxiety disorder.”

The study analysed 7,052 participants in the long-term collaborative research project Norwegian Hordaland health study, all of whom were born between 1953 and 1957.

They filled in questionnaires about their health, lifestyle and educational attainment and had a physical checkup between 1997 and 1999.

Levels of health anxiety were assessed using a validated scale and the top 10% of the sample – 710 people – were considered to have health anxiety.

The heart health of all the participants was tracked up to the end of 2009. Anyone who received treatment for, or whose death was linked to, coronary artery disease occurring within a year of entering the study, was excluded on the grounds that they might already have been ill.

In all, 234 (3.3%) of the entire sample had an ischaemic event – a heart attack or bout of acute angina – during the monitoring period. But the proportion of those succumbing to heart disease was twice as high (just over 6%) among those who displayed health anxiety compared with those who did not (3%).

After taking account of other potentially influential factors, those with health anxiety at the start of the study were found to be 73% more likely to develop heart disease than those who did not have anxiety at the outset.

As it was an observational study, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. Limitations include the frequent co-existence of health anxiety with other mental health issues, making it hard to differentiate, and the fact that the health anxiety index relies on self-reported symptoms and does not discern between imagined illness and more legitimate reasons for concern.

Emily Reeve, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: “It’s natural for people to worry if they feel they might be unwell. But anxiety and stress can trigger unhealthy habits, such as smoking or eating badly, which put you at greater risk of heart disease.

“While we don’t know if the worried well are directly putting themselves at risk of a heart attack, it’s clear that reducing unnecessary anxiety can have health benefits. If you are experiencing health anxiety, speak to your doctor.”

Health anxiety may increase risk of heart disease, research finds

Vaping could help prevent ex-smokers piling on the pounds, research suggests

E-cigarettes might help smokers who are quitting keep the pounds off, say researchers, suggesting that vaping could be harnessed in the fight against obesity.

Weight gain is a major concern among smokers looking to quit. On average individuals put on 5kg in the first year they go without cigarettes. Nicotine is known to suppress appetite and increase metabolic rate, among other effects.

While nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) can help to control weight gain and help smokers to quit, researchers have suggested that nicotine-containing e-cigarettes might be a better option.

“People can change their nicotine content, so to quit smoking they might start off on a higher strength e-liquid and then they can taper down really quite gradually in a much more sophisticated way than they can with NRT, which is probably good for weight maintenance and for weight loss,” said co-author Linda Bauld, professor of health policy at the University of Stirling and deputy director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. The huge range of e-liquids available, she adds, could also help prevent snacking, particularly given the number of sweet and fruit flavours on offer.

The authors note that a drop in the prevalence of smoking is among the factors that have been linked to increasing rates of obesity, meaning new approaches to manage weight gain could prove valuable.

Published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research by scientists from New Zealand and Stirling, the paper looked at a range of studies exploring the influence of nicotine on the body, as well as the relationships between aroma, taste and flavour and the feeling of fullness, to moot the potential for e-cigarettes in managing weight gain among smokers trying to kick the habit.

The authors suggest that e-cigarettes, with their myriad flavours, could potentially help to tackle cravings for certain foods. What’s more, the study suggests that the physical processes involved in filling an e-cigarette could reduce the urge to eat.

“You are re-filling the e-liquids, you might be mixing your own liquids, you are trying different flavours, you are doing things with your hands that take up time which means maybe you are not reaching for the bowl of M&Ms,” said Bauld.

Despite noting concerns raised by some around the safety of long-term e-cigarette use, Bauld says the research points to the benefits of using nicotine-containing products for smokers planning to quit.

“One of the things this paper says is [that] probably we shouldn’t be so worried about longer-term nicotine use, particularly if it can help people not put on weight – which we know is a bit risk factor for diabetes and a lot of other things,” she said.

But, the authors note, much more research is need. They highlight a number of avenues that should be explored, from trials into the effects of vaping on weight gain among smokers attempting to quit, to the impact of different e-liquids on feelings of fullness.

“We are not suggesting that we should promote e-cigarettes to people who haven’t smoked,” said Bauld. “But for people who are thinking about the best way to stop smoking and are concerned about weight gain, I think what we are suggesting is that e-cigarettes should certainly be considered.”

Paul Aveyard, professor of behavioural medicine at the University of Oxford, said it was “almost certain” that nicotine-containing e-cigarettes would reduce weight gain among smokers attempting to quit. But, he cautioned, the possible benefits of e-cigarettes in managing weight gain among ex-smokers did not mean that they could benefit non smokers’ attempts to lose weight.

What’s more, he added, with some evidence that nicotine could play a role in the development of diabetes, there may be down sides to the use of such devices, even if they do help smokers keep the weight off. “That balance between the two effects is not known,” he said.

Amanda Sandford, from Action on Smoking and Health said: “The risk of putting on weight when quitting smoking is a common concern and can discourage smokers from trying to stop. E-cigarettes are a safer alternative to tobacco and if they can also help people avoid piling on the pounds as well as helping them to stop smoking that is a real bonus.”

Vaping could help prevent ex-smokers piling on the pounds, research suggests

UK nurses lacking skills to treat transgender patients, says research

UK nurses are failing to meet the needs of transgender patients and feel they lack training and experience to treat the growing number of trans people seeking medical treatment in relation to their gender identity, according to research.

A survey of more than 1,200 nursing staff across the UK found 87% of those nurses who have directly cared for a trans patient felt unprepared to meet the patient’s needs.

The survey, which was conducted by the Royal College of Nursing, also found that 76% have encountered trans people during their healthcare work and 56% had cared for trans people directly.

Just one-fifth of all nurses surveyed said they thought the nursing workforce had the skills to care for trans adults and children, while 76% said more training for all healthcare staff was needed.

The survey comes after the Guardian revealed there has been a steep increase in the number of trans people referred to all 14 gender identity clinics around the country, with a number of clinics experiencing increases of several hundred per cent.

Referrals to adult clinics

The Guardian found that healthcare options for trans people at specialist gender identity clinics were inadequate, with an average waiting time of nine months for a first appointment for adults and some patients waiting up to four years for a first appointment.

Trans people also reported they often encounter medical staff who did not know how to engage with them, such as GPs having laughed at them when they said they wanted to transition, having their feelings dismissed as “just going through a phase”and being repeatedly misgendered – referred to by their birth sex, not the sex they identify with.

Kirsty Cass, a trans woman who has worked as a nurse for the last two years, says she has encountered prejudice and misunderstanding from healthcare professionals, most of which involved her being misgendered.

In one instance, several years after she had undergone gender reassignment surgery, she went to her local hospital for a biopsy on a lump on her ear. After the procedure, the porters wheeled her to a male ward and tried to make her stay there.

“To say I was upset was an understatement,” said Cass. “I was inconsolable, I was sobbing my heart out.”

Much of the problem, she added, had to do with a lack of training of medical staff, some thing was that was also identified as a point of concern by nurses in the RCN survey. Just 1% of respondents said their pre-registration training dealt with the treatment of trans patients and 78% said they had no training on the subject.

Tavistock clinic referrals

Louie Stafford, the trans programme coordinator for the LGBT Foundation, said he was unsurprised by the survey results.

“Gender identity issues are considered a speciality field, so unless you’re practising in that field, it’s unlikely you’ll have any training or any guidance. It’s great that the RCN are trying to shine a light on this from the medical perspective, there’s an urgency for academic medical institutions to consider the curriculum and the content that they’re teaching and put some awareness training in there.”

Wendy Irwin, RCN diversity and equalities coordinator, said the college was pushing for training regarding the treatment of trans people to become a mandatory part of pre-registration nursing training as well as part of continuing professional development.

“I think nurses are increasingly aware of the gap in their knowledge,” she said. “All nurses have a deep and personal desire to deliver the absolutely best care for all their patients, what they’re looking for is how to do that.”

UK nurses lacking skills to treat transgender patients, says research

US Zika funding shortfall will impede cancer research, health officials say

Senior public health officials said Congress’s months-late $ 800m-short Zika funding bill will seriously damage research budgets for heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Officials with the federal Health and Human Services Administration called on Congress to consider an emergency health fund for future emerging diseases, similar to the way natural disasters are funded.

“We had to use money we were going to spend within our own institute on malaria and tuberculosis,” said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci has headed up the development of vaccines for Zika. There are currently at least nine vaccines the National Institutes of Health is hoping to shepherd through early clinical trials.

Funds from, “cancer, heart disease, diabetes and mental health allowed us to prepare sites to do the phase two trial,” said Fauci. “None of that money is going to come back to us … We are going to be able to continue rather smoothly, but it comes at a significant cost.”

Zika is a primarily mosquito-borne disease first identified in Uganda in the 1940s. Initially, Zika was considered benign because symptoms were mild and only affected one in five infected people.

It was not until winter 2015 that the virus was considered a serious threat to human health, because of an astronomical rise in the rate of microcephaly cases in Brazil. Microcephaly is an uncommon birth defect where children are born with abnormally small heads and severe developmental problems.

The White House called for $ 1.9bn in Zika funding as early as February, but Congress was unable to pass a bill to fund efforts to combat the disease until late September. Earlier efforts were thwarted by so-called poison pills, such as riders that would have eliminated federal funding to Planned Parenthood and lifted a ban on Confederate flags in veterans’ cemeteries.

Now, local transmission is widespread in Puerto Rico, and has flared up in Miami. More than 25,000 cases have been reported nationally, including more than 2,000 cases in pregnant women. The disease has also continued to surprise scientists, who recently reported that Zika was spread through sweat or tears in Utah, and that the virus lingers in semen and saliva.

“We won’t be able to backfill for the cancer research we had to take from to keep things going,” said the health and human services secretary, Sylvia Burwell. “There was a reason we asked for the $ 1.9bn, and that was important uses of money.”

Officials said research into diagnostic tests and long-term impacts on children born to infected mothers of the disease were delayed because of congressional bickering.

Fauci called the congressional funding a “tried and true, but sometimes seriously delayed appropriations process”. He said that, “at least from our standpoint, [an emergency fund] is something that should be seriously considered.”

US Zika funding shortfall will impede cancer research, health officials say

If my team’s research on ME is rejected, the patients will suffer | Peter White

Chronic fatigue syndrome – sometimes called ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) – is a sad tale for everyone involved. It is a debilitating illness that affects about 250,000 children and adults in the UK alone, wrecking lives as people are unable to hold down a job and are sometimes left bed-bound for years on end.

Unfortunately these patients have not been treated well – their illness is often dismissed or belittled, leading to much anger, misinformation and argument. There are claims of foul play, with issues over freedom of information and sharing of trial data; this week it was claimed that sexism is part of the reason those with ME struggle to get the proper treatment. My colleagues, Professors Trudie Chalder and Michael Sharpe, and I have spent our careers trying to improve care for patients with CFS/ME. At the heart of this story is the Pace trial we have been conducting since 2005.

For many years Nice (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which oversees healthcare evidence) recommended just two treatments – graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – because it had the best evidence that these therapies worked. However, many patients were not using them, following instead a self-guided treatment called “pacing”: listening to the messages from their bodies and pacing themselves – trying not to do too much, wary of pushing themselves to a point where they might make the illness worse. The idea of doing exercise therapy was scary for some patients, worried that over-exertion would exacerbate their ill-health. The idea that CBT, a talking treatment, might help, raised fears that the illness was regarded as “merely psychological”, or even “all in the mind”.

With so much uncertainty and fear among patients, we wanted to find out which of these treatments worked best and whether they were safe. So we ran a large trial with 640 patients that would seek to replicate earlier studies, but on a much bigger scale. All those who took part were given specialist care and randomly allocated to also receive either pacing therapy, CBT, GET, or nothing extra. We had involvement from CFS/ME community, and the research was overseen by independent committees looking at data, safety and how the trial was run.

The results of our study, published in The Lancet in 2011, were clear – those patients given CBT or GET experienced significantly greater improvements in both symptoms and ability to do things, compared with either pacing therapy or specialist medical care alone. Not only were CBT and GET more effective: crucially, they were just as safe as the other treatments when done correctly.

In short, CBT and GET are safe, can definitely help some people and are more effective than other treatments

Our results confirmed the earlier smaller trials, and strengthened the evidence upon which the recommendations of Nice were based. Added to this, a recent Cochrane review (a summary of all the evidence, and considered the gold standard in medical research) also concluded that exercise is a safe and effective treatment. In short, CBT and GET are safe, can definitely help some people and are more effective than other treatments: but, as with all treatments in medicine, they cannot help everyone.

From here on this should have become a happier story. However, some of the ensuing newspaper headlines – such as “Got ME? Just get out and exercise, say scientists” – gave the misleading impression that patients just needed to pull themselves together, or even that they were making it all up. In our clinics we had seen far too much suffering to ever think this illness could be dismissed in this way.

Our research, and that of our colleagues in this field, has attracted its fair share of criticism. Some campaigners have even called for the research to be stopped, the findings retracted, and CBT and GET abandoned completely as they cause harm. One recent focus of criticism has been whether CBT and GET can actually bring about recovery or remission from the illness, not just reduce the symptoms. And by recovery we mean recovery from a patient’s present episode of illness – which is not necessarily the same as being cured, as someone might fall ill again.

To address this we did another test on the data, and found that 22% of people could be considered as recovered with either CBT or GET. Though not a large proportion it was about three times more than the recovery rates achieved by the other two treatments. Other studies showed similar proportions recovering after CBT.

In the latest step in this saga, a blog that hasn’t gone through the rigours of scientific peer-review, or being published in a journal claims that CBT and GET are not as effective as we reported. The authors got their figures by tweaks such as increasing the pass-grade for what counted as recovery, and excluding patients who had reported themselves as “much better”.

Whichever way the data is viewed, patients get better results from CBT and GET – both confirmed as safe – than they do from pacing or medical care alone.

This whole affair is perhaps saddest for the patients themselves, whose suffering has been neglected for far too long. However, there is hope. First, the important message for patients is that it is possible to get treatment that will help them improve and for some to recover. Second, we agree with campaigners that we need more research into the causes and treatments of CFS/ME. However, if their campaign puts people off trying CBT and GET, it will be the patients themselves who will suffer the most.

If my team’s research on ME is rejected, the patients will suffer | Peter White

Young people living in a "suspended adulthood", finds research

Despair, worries about the future and financial pressures are taking a toll on millions of young Britons, according to a major new poll that also found young women were suffering in particular.

Low pay and lack of work in today’s Britain are resulting in “suspended adulthood”, with many living or moving back in with their parents and putting off having children, according to the poll of thousands of 18 to 30 year-olds.

Large numbers describe themselves as worn down (42%), lacking self-confidence (47%) and feeling worried about the future (51%).

The Young Women’s Trust, the charity that commissioned the polling by Populus Data Solutions, warned that Britain was facing a “generation of young people in crisis” as it called on the government to take steps including creating a minister with responsibility for overall youth policy.

Young women are being particularly affected. The percentage of them reporting that they lack self-confidence was 54%, compared with 39% of young men.

While four in 10 young people said they feel worn down, the percentage for young women was 46% compared with 38% of young men. One in three said they were worried about their mental health, including 38% of young women and 29% of young men.

Dr Carole Easton, the chief executive of Young Women’s Trust, which supports and represents women aged 16 to 30 struggling to live on low or no pay in England and Wales, said that it was distressing that so many young people were struggling at a time of life traditionally characterised by youthful confidence.

“Make no mistake about it, we’re talking about a generation of young people in crisis. And while life is hard for many young people, our survey shows it’s likely to be considerably tougher if you are a young woman,” she said.

“It’s not in any of our interests to write off an entire generation. Much more needs to be done to improve young people’s prospects, including through creating a minister for young people, extending the National Living Wage to under 25s, delivering on government commitments to improve housing options for young people and tackling workplace discrimination.”

Of 4,000 18 to 30 year-olds, the No Country for Young Women study found that 43% of those polled still live at home and a quarter had to move back in with their parents because they couldn’t afford to live independently. As much as 56% of them said they would consider moving abroad for work.

The charity is also calling for a commitment from government to move towards extending the National Living Wage to under 25s and a greater focus, including through JobCentre Plus, on supporting young adults – especially young women.

Young people living in a "suspended adulthood", finds research

"Moonshot" cancer panel calls for US to create national research database

Top US cancer scientists have urged the Obama administration to create a national cancer database for clinicians and patients as part of a slew of recommendations presented on Wednesday by the White House-supported cancer “moonshot” panel.

Vice-president Joe Biden assembled the scientists as part of the administration’s effort to make the US the country that cures cancer “once and for all”.

The Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel report said the recommendations, if implemented, “will transform our understanding of cancer and result in new opportunities to more effectively prevent and treat the disease”.

The ten recommendations include existing programs that need more funding – such as research to update guidelines for patient symptom control – and brand new initiatives including a human tumor database to monitor and analyze multi-dimensional cell behavior.

The panel also called for the creation of a network of databases for patients to profile their cancers and pre-register for clinical trials; the organization of a cancer immunotherapy clinical trial network; and the study and development of therapies that prevent or overcome drug resistance.

The panel also recommended initiatives to improve the understanding of a protein tied to pediatric cancers; increase monitoring and management of symptom care and treatment; support development of new testing and treatment technologies; and improve prevention and early detection.

But the funding necessary to fulfill these recommendations has not been approved by Congress despite lobbying by the Obama administration, which said it hoped to spend $ 1bn on the program.

“Congress should seize this historic opportunity – when researchers are on the brink of so many new and potentially life-saving developments in diagnostic tests and treatments – to boost funding for the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and NCI [National Cancer Institute],” said Gary Reedy, CEO of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the not-for-profit organization’s action network, ACS CAN, in a statement.

The ACS said in January that it expects 1.6m new cancer cases to be diagnosed in 2016, the equivalent of about 4,600 new diagnoses each day.

Barack Obama announced that he had tasked Biden with leading the moonshot program in his final State of the Union address in January. The program aims to accomplish “a decade’s worth of cancer research progress in five years”.

It is a personal effort for Biden, whose son, Joseph “Beau” Biden III, died from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. Last year, Biden helped secure a $ 264m increase in federal funding to the National Cancer Institute in the spending bill.

The panel report is a major step in that direction, and will be presented to the National Cancer Advisory Board on Wednesday, where it is expected to be formally accepted.

To determine the recommendations, the country’s top cancer scientists were divided into seven working groups to focus on elements like immunology and clinical trials. More than 1,600 ideas and comments were also submitted by the public.

Along with the recommendations, the panel also listed policy issues that needed to be addressed so that the recommendations could be efficiently implemented, including laws around patient privacy, the clinical trial system and insurance coverage.

Biden and Obama have acknowledged that it is unlikely cancer will be cured in the next five years, but they have said the moonshot program could create unprecedented strides in the fight against the disease.

“The key for us now is to put a lot more money into research,” Obama said in January. “If we do, I think we’re going to see some really big breakthroughs soon.”

"Moonshot" cancer panel calls for US to create national research database

Kids" school packed lunches still full of junk food, research finds

Parents are still packing their children’s school lunchboxes with junk food, despite high-profile awareness campaigns on childhood obesity and guidance provided by consumer groups, research has found.

The Leeds University study published on Tuesday found just 1.6% of packed lunches for primary school children met tough nutritional standards set for their classmates eating in the school canteen.

About half of all primary school pupils take a packed lunch to school. Researchers found that only 1 in 5 lunchboxes contained any vegetables or salad, while 52%-60% contained too many sweet and savoury snacks, or sugary drinks (42%), leading to high levels of saturated fat, sugar and salt and not enough minerals and vitamins.

The study, described as “eye opening” by lead researcher Dr Charlotte Evans, saw only a fractional improvement from a decade ago, when 1.1% of lunches passed the standard set for school meals. The minority of children (17%) who eat vegetables and salad had not altered since 2006, it found.

The report found some progress: for instance the majority of packed lunches examined by researchers passed the standards for protein (95%) and vitamin C (75%). There was also a significant reduction in sugary drinks, 46% in 2016 compared with 61%, and a reduction in chocolate-based snacks. But there was no improvement for savoury snacks, such as crisps, found in 60% of packed lunches.

Three out of the 300-odd lunchboxes examined by researchers, in 12 different English primary schools, scored zero – a similar proportion to that found in 2006. One contained blackcurrant squash, a packet of hula hoops and a chocolate roll.

The first statutory school meal standard was introduced in 2006 due to growing evidence linking poor health in adults with obesity or poor diet in children. They limit the amount of foods high in salt, sugar and fats and stipulate that school meals should provide a third of a child’s nutritional requirements. However, although Ofsted says schools must have a policy on packed lunches, there is no law requiring them to abide by the same standards.

Evans, a nutritional epidemiologist, said that she believed the wealth of information on sugar in sweetened drinks may have had an impact on the reduction in the numbers in lunchboxes. But she added that more needed to be done by retailers, food manufacturers and schools if improvements are to be made overall.

Evans said: “I hope the results of the study are an eye-opener, highlighting that more stringent policies need to be introduced if we want to see real change in the nutritional value of children’s packed lunches. New policies for schools, food manufacturers and retailers are needed, which will require strong support from government and stakeholders if progress is to be made.”

The report recommends that primary schools introduce a policy restricting sweetened drinks and encouraging water, salad and fruit. It also suggested parents pack smaller portions of the unhealthy snacks, such as packets of crisps that are around 15g rather than 26g and chocolate cakes and biscuits of 20g. More choices of snacks low in saturated fats and sugars and higher in fibre were needed, it said.

The children’s lunches that met the standard all contained sandwiches with a protein filling and some salad.

Evans said: “Parents struggle, and there are many reasons why children don’t have better quality lunches – cost, peer pressure, convenience, time. Providing information to parents is a start.

“However, we do need to do more than provide information to parents to see a greater impact, such as improving school policies, reformulating products and reducing portions of snacks given to young children. For example, providing a small portion of crisps in a sealed container rather than the full bag.”

Few packed lunches met the standards for energy (12%), vitamin A (17 %), iron (26%) or zinc (16%), due to the lack of fresh salad and vegetables, the dearth of non-processed meat or fish as well as the lack of whole-grain bread.

Sharon Hodgson MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group for school food, said: “The research highlights the need for more action to be taken on food put in children’s packed lunches, something which the school food APPG has recently called for. Despite positive moves with regards to the food provided as part of a school meal, food brought in by children in their packed lunches is lagging behind. Therefore we need more action to be taken if we want to see positive changes.”

Flora, which commissioned the research, is calling on the government to raise awareness and to do more to ensure the national standards for school food are being met in packed lunches. It has distributed 631,000 lunchboxes containing a healthy lunch planner and made available tips online.

Kids" school packed lunches still full of junk food, research finds

Living wage has positive impact on care industry, research shows

The worst fears about the impact of the national living wage on social care businesses have been confounded by research suggesting it has had a remarkably positive effect on pay rates in the traditionally low-wage sector.

When the statutory minimum of £7.20 an hour for all workers aged 25 or over was announced – an increase of 50p on the previous floor – employers in social care warned that they would struggle to pay it on profit margins that were already low.

Care England, the umbrella body for the bigger companies in the sector, which employs 1.6 million people in England alone, forecast on the eve of the new rate taking effect in April that the added cost would be the “the final straw” for some businesses teetering on the brink of viability.

But a study published on Tuesday by the Resolution Foundation thinktank indicates that the move has had a favourable effect not only on care workers directly benefiting but also – and unexpectedly – on younger workers and on wage rates across the sector. The overall pay bill has risen by more than twice that needed to meet the new minimum alone.

Laura Gardiner, senior research and policy analyst at the foundation, said: “It is great news that the national living wage has had a large, positive impact on low pay in social care, giving hundreds of thousands of frontline care workers a pay rise, with no evidence of hours being cut to foot the bill.”

The study, based on pay data for 80,000 employees of more than 2,000 care providers, suggests that 57% of frontline workers (54% of all) have benefited directly from the £7.20 minimum with an average pay rise of 9.2%. This includes 83% of those aged under 25 who are now receiving £7.20 or more, even though it is not required by law.

Noting that the overall pay bill has risen 6.9%, the study concludes that introduction of the national living wage is “undoubtedly correlated with an immediate and profound increase in pay in the sector”.

The foundation admits that its analysis does not cover any job losses or non-compliance with the new minimum. It also expresses concern at workers’ potential to progress up the pay ladder, pointing out that 32% of the sample studied were now “bunched” at £7.20.

A previous survey of local councils that commission social care found that 82% of them raised fees paid to care providers from April – almost half by more than 3% – after ministers allowed councils to add a 2% social care precept to council tax bills.

Living wage has positive impact on care industry, research shows