Year: 2014

LONDON (AP) — A saliva test for teenage boys with mild symptoms of depression could help identify those who will later develop major depression, a new study says.

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By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – British brain scientists have identified the first biomarker, or biological signpost, for clinical depression and say it could help find boys in particular who are at risk of developing the debilitating mental illness. In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) journal, the team found that teenage boys who have a combination of depressive symptoms and raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol are up to 14 times more likely to develop major depression than those who show neither trait. “We’re very bad about looking after our mental health, and yet the problems of mental health are extremely common,” said Barbara Sahakian, a Cambridge University professor of Clinical neuropsychology who worked on the study. “(And) we now have a very real way of identifying those teenage boys most likely to develop clinical depression.” He said armed with such knowledge, doctors and other carers could target prevention strategies at depression-vulnerable boys and “hopefully help reduce their risk of serious episodes of depression and their consequences in adult life”.

By Gul Yousafzai QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – A couple were stoned to death for adultery in a remote area of Pakistan’s western Baluchistan province, an official said Monday, leading to six men being held on suspicion of murder. The couple, both married to other people, were believed to be in their 30s, said Sarfaraz Bugti, the home minister for Baluchistan.

By Shereen Jegtvig NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Norwegians who started using snus before age 16 were more likely to become cigarette smokers than those who started using snus later in life, according to a new study. Snus is moist smokeless tobacco developed in Sweden. It’s contained in a small pouch, and unlike regular chewing tobacco, it doesn’t make the user spit. Research suggests snus has lower levels of chemicals called nitrosamines than cigarettes and may be less harmful.

Sleep masks can be great if you want to improve the quality of your Zs, but a new nighttime accessory claims to go one step further by reducing the number of hours' sleep you need per day. NeuroOn is being billed as the world's first brain wave-monitoring sleep mask that helps wearers switch to polyphasic sleep patterns. According to its designers, polyphasic sleepers need as little as two-to-six hours of sleep per day, which could create an extra 28 hours of free time each week.

British American Tobacco will become the biggest tobacco company to show a television advert for e-cigarettes in Britain on Monday but will leave out any reference to ‘smokers’ to comply with laws which ban the promotion of tobacco products. Soaring sales of e-cigarettes, metal tubes with batteries which heat nicotine-laced liquids into a vapor, have caught the eye of some of the world’s biggest tobacco companies including BAT, Altria Group and Imperial Tobacco. A consultation into the rules governing e-cigarette advertising is due to be launched shortly by UK regulators governing print, online and broadcast advertising but BAT said the current rules left e-cigarette advertising unclear. E-cigarettes are seen as less harmful than regular cigarettes and a useful way to wean smokers off their habits but critics say they can act as a gateway to nicotine addiction and that more research is needed on the health implications.

By Kathleen Raven NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who have had a knee or hip replacement reap the benefits of intense rehab months after they've returned home, according to a new analysis. "If you can get patients to a certain threshold level, they can do the rest of the rehabilitation on their own," coauthor Kenneth Ottenbacher told Reuters Health. Ottenbacher directs the Center for Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He and his team analyzed data from 12,199 U.S. patients who underwent knee or hip replacement between 2008 and 2010.

Medicine is one industry that has seemingly remained unaffected by the evolution of creative design techniques. Each shipment is delivered in a two-week roll of packs, organized by date.