Sex exists to avoid disease, study shows

From an evolutionary perspective, sexual reproduction could be seen as a non-starter.

Compared to cloning, which also exists in Nature, it's a major waste of time and energy.

Think of the ungainly, preening peacock -- an easy snack for tigers and wild dogs -- strutting his stuff to impress the ladies.

Even without predators, sex and its attendant rituals can be dangerous: when stags butt heads or alpha-male lions fight for mating rights, it does not always end well.

Some animals and plants -- starfish, bananas, to name two -- reproduce asexually. Even a few birds and bees do it solo, Cole Porter be damned.

Others, like the Komodo dragon, can work it either way, though asexually produced Komodo babies -- produced by their mothers -- are not clones.

In short, without males in the picture the business of reproducing is faster and less fraught.

And yet, sex remains by far the dominant means by which the world's fauna and flora pass on genes to future generations, ensuring the survival of the species.

"One of the oldest questions in evolutionary biology is, why does sex exist?" said Stuart Auld, a biologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

Darwin's laws of natural selection dictate that doing it the hard way -- sex rather than cloning, in this case -- must confer some major, if hidden, advantages.

Granted, sexual reproduction fuels genetic variation, which boosts the likelihood that offspring in the wild will have the genetic makeup to thrive in an ever-changing environment.

By contrast, clones do not vary, and so if the environment deteriorates, a clonal mother will produce offspring that lack the genes they need to succeed.

'Twofold cost of sex'

"But sex needs to be over twice as efficient as cloning to outweigh its costs," Auld told AFP.

"If sex is to be favored by natural selection, a sexual mother needs to either produce twice as many offspring as an asexual mother, or produce offspring that are twice as good."

Biologists have long agreed that the enhanced ability to fight off disease was a major advantage of the genetic changes that come with sexual reproduction.

But constructing an experiment to confirm this has always proved difficult: how do you compare the costs and benefits of sexual strategies in different species?

To get around that "apples and oranges" problem, Auld and two colleagues used an organism -- the humble waterflea -- that can reproduce both ways.

"By comparing clonal and sexual daughters from the same mothers, we found sexually produced offspring get less sick," Auld said.

The ever-present need to evade disease, it turned out, explains why sex persists in the natural world in spite of the high "costs" that come with it, he explained.

Parasites and their hosts are in a constant tug-of-war, each evolving and adapting to the other, one attacking immune defenses and the other rebuilding them.

Cloning offers fewer chances for genetic changes in the host that can rise to that challenge.

But sexual reproduction -- with a new genetic variations coming into the mix with each generation -- offers more opportunities to fight back against pathogens.

The findings were published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

How to prevent diabetes

Diabetes is one of the diseases that cause complications which may even lead to death. There are a lot of factors why people have diabetes so it is important to know how to prevent diabetes.

1. Check your risk of diabetes

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2. Weight management

Excess body fat can increase the body’s resistance to the hormone insulin which may lead to type 2 diabetes. If you are overweight or obese, start shedding those pounds in order to avoid type 2 diabetes.

3. Exercise regularly

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source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Fewer antibiotics prescribed for children

The number of antibiotic prescriptions for kids declined 14% from 2002 to 2010, but antibiotics remain the most frequently prescribed drugs for pediatric patients, a federal analysis finds.

Antibiotics accounted for about a quarter of all pediatric prescriptions; amoxicillin leads the list.

Overall, 263.6 million prescriptions were written for patients 17 and under in 2010, down 7% from 2002, finds the analysis of prescription claims databases by Food and Drug Administration researchers, published today in the journal Pediatrics. By comparison, 3.3 billion were dispensed for ages 18 and up, 22% more than in 2002.

The medical community has made "an enormous effort to decrease antibiotic use" for kids in the past decade "by educating parents about the futility of treating viral infections with antibiotics" and about antibiotic resistance, the FDA study says.

Those efforts "are succeeding to some extent," but this study and others show antibiotic overuse "is still a big problem," says Adam Hersh, assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah. He says overuse of azithromycin and other broad-spectrum antibiotics "is contributing to the epidemic of antibiotic-resistant infections."

Other drug categories down from 2002-2010 were allergy medications (61%); pain (14%); and cough/cold without expectorant (42%). But prescriptions increasing include corticosteroids for asthma (14%); contraceptives (up 93%, possibly because of secondary uses, such as acne) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (46%).

"It's good news that cough and cold prescriptions are down, given that they don't work and can have serious side effects," says Danny Benjamin, a professor of pediatric medicine at Duke University. In 2008, the FDA advised against them for the youngest children. But he says the rise in prescriptions for ADHD and off-label use of proton pump inhibitors for certain gastrointestinal disorders is worrisome. Safety of long-term ADHD drugs is unknown, he says. The study cites 358,000 outpatient prescriptions for lansoprazole (Prevacid) for infants, despite labeling that it is not effective in babies under 1 year.

source: USA TODAY

Call center agents' health in near crisis - DOH

MANILA, Philippines -- Call center agents working graveyard shifts face serious health problems that are nearing crisis levels, a representative from the Department of Health (DOH) said.

Dr. Anthony Leachon, a consultant of the DOH on non-communicable diseases (NCD), said the lifestyle-related illnesses such as stroke, heart disease and cancer have risen at an alarming rate among call center workers.

“Apart from HIV, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Ateneo Univeristy Clinical Psychology department were surprised to see that there is a surge right now of epidemic proportions of call center agents having NCDs,” Leachon said.

The cardiologist said that he, the ILO and the Ateneo will undertake research on this subject since the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is a billion-dollar business for the country.

“If your call center workers are sick—you have an economic workforce now in a health crisis,” he said.

The industry sees a high incidence of NCDs among BPO workers at 60 percent, and Leachon said a health crisis is in the offing if this goes up to 70 or 80 percent.

Healthcare workers blame smoking for the rise of NCDs to 45 percent among BPO workers and the entire population.

According to the 2008 National Nutrition and Health Survey (NNHS), smoking does not just cause cancer and lung diseases but is also the number one cause of strokes and heart attacks. Smoking is estimated to have caused 50,000 deaths a year and caused more strokes and heart attacks than diabetes, hypertension, obesity and high cholesterol.

Graveyard shifts

Because of the shifts in their working hours, BPO workers have a propensity to smoke and ruin their diet while foregoing physical exercise.

The DOH said smoking incidence is directly proportional to the rise in the number of BPO workers, especially those who are working graveyard shifts. Leachon said these young workers have the means or the dispensable income to buy cigarettes.

“It’s dangerous, it’s a double whammy. When you are awake and on the Internet, it’s more opportunity for you to smoke and eat,” Leachon said.

He has analyzed the data on workers assigned to graveyard shifts and found that these employees have higher incidence of lifestyle diseases.

NCDs among the younger set

Leachon said he sees around 30 patients a day, with 30 to 40 percent of whom considered young.

“Before, we used to believe that the disease in males would start at 45 years old and 55 years old for females post-menopausal. I see males right now at age 30 to 35 years old sick with non-communicable diseases and females 35 to 40 years old,” the cardiologist said.

According to Dr. Tony Dans of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, NCDs are not the illnesses of the old since it is lifestyle-related.

However, there is a misconception that lifestyle is not a choice but rather is shaped by the environment.

“If healthy food is expensive, people will eat unhealthy. If there are no places to exercise, people will not exercise. If tobacco is cheap, people will smoke,” Dans said.

Because of this, doctors and the DOH are supporting the hike in so-called sin taxes pending before the House of Representatives.

DOH claimed that by making the cigarettes more expensive, the incidence of smoking among the poor—who, according to NNHS, smoke more than the rich—would be curbed.

source: interaksyon.com

1 in 5 Europeans dies from environmentally-related diseases -- WHO

GENEVA -- One out of every five Europeans dies from environmentally-related diseases, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) warned today, noting that poorer citizens are more exposed to such risks than their wealthier peers.

In a new report, WHO’s European Center for Environment and Health (ECEH) pointed out that illnesses caused by environmental factors varied significantly throughout Europe, ranging from 14 to 54 percent, indicating an unequal distribution of risks and poor living conditions across the continent and between economic strata.

In the European Union, for instance, WHO said that of the 80 million citizens living in relative poverty, many were residing in damp housing, with insufficient heating and inadequate sanitary equipment.

The lowest-income population in the new EU member countries, meanwhile, reported having no bath or shower at home 13 times more often than their more affluent compatriots. Overall, more than 16 million people living in relative poverty cannot afford heating their homes in winter.

More than 300 people were reported to have died in Ukraine, Poland, France, and Italy due to the recent cold spell which caused temperatures across the region to plummet. Many deaths occurred among the low-income population and in unheated apartments.

Since its founding in 2001, ECEH, which today also launched its expanded operations in Bonn, Germany, has compiled and analyzed scientific data on European health risks caused by a range of other environmental factors, including air pollution, traffic-related noise, and exposure to second-hand smoke.

source: interaksyon.com

Ulcer bacteria may protect against diarrhea: study

NEW YORK - People who harbor ulcer-causing bacteria in their stomachs may be protected against some diarrheal diseases, according to an Israeli study.

Some previous studies had suggested that being infected with the bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, increases the risk of diarrhea, while others have reported finding the opposite, said researchers from Tel Aviv University.

"Our findings suggest an active role of H. pylori in the protection against diarrheal diseases," wrote lead author Dani Cohen in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The bacterium is especially common throughout the developing world, but only causes symptoms in a minority of those it infects. People with chronic H. pylori infections are known to have an increased risk of stomach cancer and related diseases.

Cohen's team studied 595 male Israeli soldiers, close to one-third of whom visited a base clinic for diarrhea during their field training.

All of the soldiers had their blood taken before the start of training, which researchers used to determine which men were chronically infected with H. pylori.

It turned out that between 32 and 36 percent of soldiers who had diarrhea due to different types of bacteria than H. pylori, or from unknown causes, had been infected with H. pylori before training.

By contrast, up to 56 percent of soldiers who had been infected with H. pylori before training reported no diarrhea.

The researchers calculated that being infected with H. pylori meant solders were about 60 percent less likely to get diarrhea from Shigella bacteria.

They also had a lower chance of having diarrhea caused by Escherichia coli bacteria -- although statistically, that particular finding could be due to chance.

An H. Pylori infection may affect how acidic the gut is, and high acidity is known to keep disease-causing bacteria from settling there, Cohen said in an email.

Having an immune system in overdrive due to chronic H. pylori infection may also keep other bacteria in the digestive system at bay, the researchers wrote. - Reuters

source:gmanetwork.com