Month: March 2012

London (Reuters) – on the eve of New year of 2004, after months losing weight and suffering episodes of fever, night sweating and lack of air, student Anna Watterson was transferred to the hospital coughing blood. Then the diagnosis he received from tuberculosis ( TB) – an ancient disease associated with the poverty-especially because the young man was a student of wealthy lawyer who lived in the busy British capital was strange. Nevertheless, at that time was a relief, as she herself has, know finally what had kept her sick for so long. But when the infection of Watterson refused to respond to prolonged antibiotic treatment that doctors had indicated to combat, his relief turned into terror. After six weeks taking medication that had not succeeded, Watterson was informed that he had “Multiple drug-resistant TB”, or MDR-TB, and faced months of isolation with a regime of injectable drugs that left with nausea, bruises and unable to leave and being in the Sun. “my friends were really shocked,” said Watterson. “most of them only had heard of TB to read novels of the Victorian era”, he added. Tuberculosis is often considered a disease of past eras, evoking women and impoverished children of the 18th and 19th centuries that slowly died from a disease known as “white plague” in the wealthy West. But the speed with which grow TB cases resistant...

London (Reuters) – A scientific team discovered how electroconvulsive therapy or by electric shock, a controversial but effective, treatment acts in the brain of people with severe depression and ensures that the results could help improve the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Therapy electroconvulsive (ECT) is performed under anesthesia and is to induce a seizure with electric current. Its reputation is controversial, in part for his role in the 1975 movie “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” with Jack Nicholson, but is a powerful and effective treatment for patients with disorders of the mind, such as severe depression. But when applied with success in the world for more than 70 years, scientists didn’t know how it worked exactly or why da result. Now, a team of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, first demonstrated that the TEC affects communication between the different parts of the brain associated with depression. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team explains the TEC would control overactive connections between brain areas related to the mood and the areas associated with thinking and concentration. That, for authors, slows down the enormous impact of the depression on the ability of patients to enjoy life and daily activities. “We resolved a therapeutic conundrum of 70-year-old,” said Ian Reid, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Aberdeen, who directed...

Manaus (Brazil), 23 mar (EFE).-former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin proposed today a “realistic” reduction of the world of nuclear energy dependence, to intervene in the world sustainable development forum. “In our country, 75% of energy comes from nuclear power plants and there was an important debate after the disaster of Fukushima,” Villepin occurred last year when a Japanese nuclear plant was affected by the earthquake of March 11 in that country, stated to journalists in the Amazon City of Manaus. According to Villepin, Fukushima accident gave rise to a debate in France on the use of nuclear energy. “some believe that we should continue to use this type of energy and others believe that we must reduce our dependence, initially, from 75 per cent to 50 per cent,” he said. Villepin cautioned that this reduction should be “realistic” and cited the case of Germany, which proposes a reduction to zero, as an example of replacement of nuclear energy by green energies. “the question is how that change can be realistic in an industrialized country?” “It is not easy to achieve this objective in the short term,” questioned. Villepin felt that any process of reduction of the dependence on nuclear energy “needs a new green economy” allowing “a better balance between nuclear energy, electricity and new renewables”. “This is one of the main issues today, reconcile the different...