The flu shot protects pregnant women and their babies

If you are pregnant and get the flu shot, it not only protects you, your baby also, at least during its first six months of life. So reveals a study published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
According to the results that flow from that article and reduce the risk of influenza in the small 41%, also decreased by 39% the odds of having respiratory illness that carries a possible hospital admission.
As explained by experts from the School of Public Health Johns Hopkins Bloomberg (in Baltimore, USA), the smaller are more likely to suffer complications from influenza virus (responsible for the flu). "What happens to the newborn is that you still have an immune system (defense) immature, which gradually growing stronger," said María Jesús Gascón, service Prevention of influenza in the general direction of Primary Care Madrid Health Service bout the flue shot..

Flu shot protects at pregnant and their babies

However, the authors of the investigation, "not vaccinated until six months, since influenza is more common in the second half after birth bout the flue shot.." Do not forget, they add that "at this time of year the rates of morbidity and mortality among infants who fail to six months of life were more frequent than those who exceed this age."

In order to assess the effect of vaccination of a pregnant woman about her baby, a group of scientists, led by Angelia Eick, worked with 1,169 females belonging to the reservation Apaches and Navajos, and that in this population, "the rate of respiratory infections in infants is particularly high. "
The mothers of 573 infants received the flu shot and the rest were not vaccinated. After conducting several surveys and analyzing blood samples (to measure the level of antibodies produced by the body against the aggressor), the researchers found that 17% (193) of small was hospitalized for influenza, 36% ( 412) went to medical consultation for respiratory problems and 48% (555) had no such episodes about the flue shot..

Flu Shot

Of these, those with lower risk of this virus and its complications were those whose mothers were vaccinated during pregnancy. As the study's lead author, "blood samples had higher antibody levels than the other ones."
"This is a new study that confirms a hypothesis that also occurs with other vaccines. Thanks to the antibodies (to 'paralyze' the virus) they receive from their mother, are protected. These maternal antibodies are lost over time. Protect until six months after which time they begin to have their own, "says Spanish specialist  about the flue shot.

U.S. gives up its patent on AIDS drug

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have announced that U.S. shared intellectual property rights of some drugs for HIV / AIDS with a patent pool that treatments designed to be accessible to the poorest.
The NIH is the first institution dedicated to research that joins this group of patents of drugs for HIV launched by UNITAID, a health financing system funded through a levy imposed on air tickets founded by Brazil, United Kingdom, Chiles , France and Norway in 2006 and the Patent on AIDS drugs..
UNITAID An official told Reuters in July that several pharmaceutical companies including Merck, Tibotec and Gilead were in advanced talks to join the pool.But others, among which is ViiV Healthcare-joint venture between GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer to develop drugs for HIV, have said they would prefer to carry out their own agreements with generic manufacturers in developing countries.
The NIH has several patents on medicines and treatments related to HIV / AIDS. The agreement announced refers to a class of drugs known as protease inhibitors, used primarily to treat resistant infections and the Patent on AIDS drugs.
"This license is evidenced by the U.S. government's commitment to the Common Fund for Drug Patents and aims to increase the availability of HIV drugs in emerging countries," said Francis Collins, director of the NIH. "We are now discussing other patents assigned to the Fund that could have a positive impact on the treatment of HIV / AIDS"

Patent on AIDS drugs

Philippe Douste-Blazy, chairman of UNITAID, has welcomed the gesture of the NIH and has urged other patent holders to follow suit. Other institutions, such as Doctors Without Borders, have also expressed their satisfaction with the U.S. decision.

"This demonstrates a serious political support patent pool to help developing countries and the fact that the NIH has announced its decision to review its entire archive of antiretroviral drugs with the intention of introducing other patents in the background is promising, "said Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of the Campaign for Access to Essential Drugs NGOs and the Patent on AIDS drugs..
"But this gesture is not sufficient to allow production of a cheaper version of the drug. We need to add more. The responsibility lies with the pharmaceutical companies that own patents on these and other key drugs for AIDS," he added and the Patent on AIDS drugs..
About 33.4 million people worldwide living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. The vast majority live in poor regions like Africa and Asia, where the drugs should be very cheap to allow those who need to acquireand the Patent on AIDS drugs..
UNITAID announced a plan to create a patent pool in December. The idea is to allow generic manufacturers to develop low-cost versions of new drugs by creating a system for holders of these rights can yield if technology in exchange for certain rights and the Patent on AIDS drugs.. Initiative is expected to save these countries U.S. $ 1,000 million annually.

Creativity and Madness "two sides of the same coin?

The power or ability to create ideas, works or new and unique situations is closely related to certain disorders or mental illnesses like schizophrenia, characterized by the deprivation of the trial or the right.
Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash, whose life inspired the movie "A Beautiful Mind", the great musician Ludwig van Beethoven, Edgar Allan Poe writer, the painter Vincent Van Gogh, the scientist Isaac Newton.
Some of the greatest geniuses of mankind have been classified as "crazy". Also, some scientific studies suggest that poets, painters, musicians, writers and general creative character, are more affected by bipolar disorder in a much higher percentage than the general population and creativity and madness.
Attest to this phenomenon where some of the most prolific artistic minds and famous writers such as Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, the composer Sergey Rachmaninoff, and the painters Paul Gauguin and Jackson Pollock, who have suffered, with certainty or high probability, also called manic-depressive.

Creativity and Madness

An investigation by the University of Toronto (Canada) has found that creative people have little or no "latent inhibition", ie the unconscious ability to reject unimportant or irrelevant stimuli creativity and madness..
Normally, an ordinary person classifies an object and then forgets it, although it might be more complex and interesting than you think. In contrast, creative individuals remain in contact with the additional information that comes to the environment constantly and are always open to new possibilities, according to Canadian experts creativity and madness.
Other studies have pointed to a possible link between certain mental disorders such as psychosis or schizophrenia, with increased activity and creative and artistic predisposition creativity and madness..

Do artistic or creative personalities are closer to the genius or alienation? According to a recent European research is probably a false dilemma, and that creativity and madness seem to go together "by the hand.
According to a group of researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who has been studying the functioning of the human mind with the help of different brain imaging, the processes of neurons in highly creative people who are saved "striking similarities" with those of individuals who suffer from some form of schizophrenia. 

Shadows of dementia and madness

According to the Swedish study, led by Professor Frederik Ullén, both groups of people, both the creative as suffering from a mental illness, lack of important receptors (brain structures that interact with some substances also brain called neurotransmitters) involved in the filtering and channeling of thought creativity and madness..
Professor Ullén believed that the presence of fewer dopamine receptors in the brain's thalamus, likely to result in a lower degree of filtering of signals and stimuli from abroad and, therefore, a greater flow of information.
Apparently, this glut of unfiltered information that could favor the occurrence of unexpected connections of different ideas that are at the base of creative and artistic processes. Although this same phenomenon also plays an important role in some mental disorders such as schizophrenia, according to Swedish researchers.
According Ullén and his group, free of inhibitions "processing" of information is what enables some people to turn the spark of creativity, discovering unexpected connections between very different elements, trying to solve problems.
People with schizophrenia share the creative, that remarkable ability to make novel associations, but in case of patients the result is strange and disturbing ideas.

19% of gay men and bisexuals in the U.S. have HIV

One in five gay men and bisexuals in the 21 major U.S. cities are infected with HIV, and half of them do not know, said the country's health officials said Thursday.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that young men, especially blacks, are the least know if they have contracted the virus."For young men who have sex with others, including blacks who are the least aware they are infected, the future is truly at stake," he said in a statement Jonathan Mermin, director of the division of HIV prevention / CDC AIDS, gays and HIV.

Mermin said that "it is important to reach this group with early prevention services and HIV testing, and continue offering these vital services as they grow older."The study was the evidence of this disease in 8,153 men who had sex with other men in 21 cities as part of National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System 2008,gays and HIV. which examined the prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus and its spread awareness among this group of men.

HIV in U.S.

The results found that 28% of black men who have sex with men were infected with HIV, compared with 18% of Hispanics and 26% of whites.The rate of HIV among this group of men is strongly affected by reason of education and income gays and HIV., which, according to the authors, the lower socio-economic status of the person most likely is that they have HIV.Age is also an important factor in whether men know they are infected with HIV. Among infected men aged 18 to 29 years, 63% did not know, compared with 37% of men over 30 years.This is particularly disturbing because the CDC estimated that STIs are transmitted mostly by people who are unaware they are infected gays and HIV..Mermin said the results show that HIV remains a serious problem in the United States and called for a commitment on the part of national efforts to protect the health of gay men.