PHYSIOTHERAPISTS HELP people affected by injury, illness or disability through movement and exercise, manual therapy, education and advice. They maintain health for people of all ages, helping patients to manage pain and prevent disease. The...

View the full post SGU Partners with Grenada Lifeguards to certify EMR Lifeguards on NOW Grenada.

The PwD portal for the generation of PwD certificates by the Designated Disability NEET screening Centres is now open for all candidates who have registered themselves under the PwD quota for NEET PG and NEET MDS. The candidates who are desirous of getting a PwD seat through the MCC counselling process may get the disability certificate issued from any one of the designated NEET Disability screening centres through online mode only.

However, the candidates must visit the designated Disability NEET screening Centres for physical examination and quantification of their disability and obtain a PwD certificate generated online by the centre. No other certificate except the one generated through the MCC portal online mode will be accepted at the time of admission.

Also Read:MUHS MBBS Summer 2023 Practical Exams Scheduled For July, Timetable Released

In addition, all candidates, irrespective of the fact whether they have qualified for NEET PG/NEET MDS 2023 in terms of cut-off percentile, will be able to get the online certificate issued from the designated centres.

The following are the centres for PwD certificates –

1. Vardhman Mahavir Medical College & Safdarjang Hospital (VMMC & SJH)

2. All India Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (AIIPMR)

3. Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education & Research (IPGMER)

4. Madras Medical College (MMC)

5. Grant Government Medical College, J.J. Hospital Compound

6. Goa Medical College

7. Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram

8. SMS Medical College

9. Govt. Medical College and Hospital, Sector32

10. Govt. Medical College, Agartala, State Disability Board

11. Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University

12. Ali Yavar Jung National Institute of Speech and Hearing Disabilities, Bandra, Mumbai

13. AIIMS, Nagpur

14. Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Medical Sciences & RML Hospital, New Delhi. (ABVIMS & RMLH)

15. Lady Hardinge Medical College & Associated Hospitals (LHMC)

16. All India Institute of Speech and Hearing (AIISH), Mysuru

The details related to each centre are enclosed in the notice below.

To view the notices, click on the links below –

https://medicaldialogues.in/pdf_upload/pwd-212916.pdf

Also Read:DME Gujarat Announces List Of Documents Required For NEET Admissions

View the full post Caribbean food security improves yet challenges persist on NOW Grenada.

SEATTLE (AP) — The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine.

After decades of limited success, scientists say research has reached a turning point, with many predicting more vaccines will be out in five years.

These aren’t traditional vaccines that prevent disease, but shots to shrink tumors and stop cancer from coming back. Targets for these experimental treatments include breast and lung cancer, with gains reported this year for deadly skin cancer melanoma and pancreatic cancer.

“We’re getting something to work. Now we need to get it to work better,” said Dr. James Gulley, who helps lead a center at the National Cancer Institute that develops immune therapies, including cancer treatment vaccines.

More than ever, scientists understand how cancer hides from the body’s immune system. Cancer vaccines, like other immunotherapies, boost the immune system to find and kill cancer cells. And some new ones use mRNA, which was developed for cancer but first used for COVID-19 vaccines.

For a vaccine to work, it needs to teach the immune system’s T cells to recognize cancer as dangerous, said Dr. Nora Disis of UW Medicine’s Cancer Vaccine Institute in Seattle. Once trained, T cells can travel anywhere in the body to hunt down danger.

“If you saw an activated T cell, it almost has feet,” she said. “You can see it crawling through the blood vessel to get out into the tissues.”

Patient volunteers are crucial to the research.

Kathleen Jade, 50, learned she had breast cancer in late February, just weeks before she and her husband were to depart Seattle for an around-the-world adventure. Instead of sailing their 46-foot boat, Shadowfax, through the Great Lakes toward the St. Lawrence Seaway, she was sitting on a hospital bed awaiting her third dose of an experimental vaccine. She’s getting the vaccine to see if it will shrink her tumor before surgery.

“Even if that chance is a little bit, I felt like it’s worth it,” said Jade, who is also getting standard treatment.

Progress on treatment vaccines has been challenging. The first, Provenge, was approved in the U.S. in 2010 to treat prostate cancer that had spread. It requires processing a patient’s own immune cells in a lab and giving them back through IV. There are also treatment vaccines for early bladder cancer and advanced melanoma.

Early cancer vaccine research faltered as cancer outwitted and outlasted patients’ weak immune systems, said Olja Finn, a vaccine researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

“All of these trials that failed allowed us to learn so much,” Finn said.

As a result, she’s now focused on patients with earlier disease since the experimental vaccines didn’t help with more advanced patients. Her group is planning a vaccine study in women with a low-risk, noninvasive breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ.

More vaccines that prevent cancer may be ahead too. Decades-old hepatitis B vaccines prevent liver cancer and HPV vaccines, introduced in 2006, prevent cervical cancer.

In Philadelphia, Dr. Susan Domchek, director of the Basser Center at Penn Medicine, is recruiting 28 healthy people with BRCA mutations for a vaccine test. Those mutations increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The idea is to kill very early abnormal cells, before they cause problems. She likens it to periodically weeding a garden or erasing a whiteboard.

Others are developing vaccines to prevent cancer in people with precancerous lung nodules and other inherited conditions that raise cancer risk.

“Vaccines are probably the next big thing” in the quest to reduce cancer deaths, said Dr. Steve Lipkin, a medical geneticist at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, who is leading one effort funded by the National Cancer Institute. “We’re dedicating our lives to that.”

People with the inherited condition Lynch syndrome have a 60% to 80% lifetime risk of developing cancer. Recruiting them for cancer vaccine trials has been remarkably easy, said Dr. Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who is leading two government-funded studies on vaccines for Lynch-related cancers.

“Patients are jumping on this in a surprising and positive way,” he said.

Drugmakers Moderna and Merck are jointly developing a personalized mRNA vaccine for patients with melanoma, with a large study to begin this year. The vaccines are customized to each patient, based on the numerous mutations in their cancer tissue. A vaccine personalized in this way can train the immune system to hunt for the cancer’s mutation fingerprint and kill those cells.

But such vaccines will be expensive.

“You basically have to make every vaccine from scratch. If this wasn’t personalized, the vaccine could probably be made for pennies, just like the COVID vaccine,” said Dr. Patrick Ott of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

The vaccines under development at UW Medicine are designed to work for many patients, not just a single patient. Tests are underway in early and advanced breast cancer, lung cancer and ovarian cancer. Some results may come as soon as next year.

Todd Pieper, 56, from suburban Seattle, is participating in testing for a vaccine intended to shrink lung cancer tumors. His cancer spread to his brain, but he’s hoping to live long enough to see his daughter graduate from nursing school next year.

“I have nothing to lose and everything to gain, either for me or for other people down the road,” Pieper said of his decision to volunteer.

One of the first to receive the ovarian cancer vaccine in a safety study 11 years ago was Jamie Crase of nearby Mercer Island. Diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer when she was 34, Crase thought she would die young and had made a will that bequeathed a favorite necklace to her best friend. Now 50, she has no sign of cancer and she still wears the necklace.

She doesn’t know for sure if the vaccine helped, “But I’m still here.”

The post The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine appeared first on Barbados Today.

BBy, a medtech company based in New York, has developed a spray drying method that hospitals can use to process human breast milk into a shelf-stable powder. Human breast milk is an incredibly important source of nutrition for neonates in intensive care units (NICUs). At present, human donor milk is frozen and must be defrosted prior to use in such facilities. This is highly labor intensive for staff and is very wasteful, as excess defrosted milk must be thrown away and large freezers use a lot of electricity.

The spray drying technology developed by BBy converts human breast milk into a shelf-stable dry powder that can be dissolved in water by medical staff as needed. Moreover, staff can make exactly as much reconstituted milk as needed, helping to reduce waste. The company reports that the spray drying process preserves the bioactive components in breast milk, such an antibodies.

Medgadget had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Vansh Langer, CEO at BBy, about the technology.     

Conn Hastings, Medgadget: Why is breast milk the best source of nutrition for young babies in neonatal intensive care units? What bioactive components are present in the milk and how do they aid neonate health?

Dr. Langer, BBy: It sounds almost cliché to say that “breast milk is best.” The truth is that for neonatal intensive care units, breast milk is critical. Its unique concoction of nutrients (water, proteins, carbs, fats, minerals and vitamins) can literally mean the difference between life and death for a child.

To give a quick example, our team recently worked with a baby who was born 16 weeks premature. This child had an underdeveloped stomach, so there was no way that it could digest infant formula. (In comparison to formula, breast milk is much easier to digest). We fed the baby our company’s powdered breast milk in diluted form through a tube that went down the baby’s nose all the way to the intestine (nasopharyngeal), bypassing the stomach. I am thrilled to say that today this child is four months old with a fully-formed stomach, and thriving!

Breast milk is not only nutrient-rich, it also provides antibodies (proteins) that help babies fight off infections. A couple of examples of these proteins include lactoferrin and secretory IgA that help protect against infections, both viral and bacterial.

Again, this sounds cliché until you experience it firsthand in the NICU. I did my medical intern year at the University of Chicago, and there was one experience in the NICU that really drove this aspect of breast milk home for me. A group of young babies who had just traveled from Vietnam came in, with their adoptive parents. All the babies were sick with infections. Obviously, adoptive parents cannot provide breast milk to their infants.

Sadly, five of the babies passed away in the NICU, but one little girl was still holding on. Heartbreakingly, her adoptive parents were told to hold her one last time because she wasn’t expected to make it through the night. I happened to see a mom that I knew at the clinic; I knew she was nursing a baby, and as a medical intern I just went up and asked her if she would be willing to give us some of her breast milk to save a dying child? Of course she said yes. We fed the baby this breast milk slowly through the night, and I am delighted to say that she not only pulled through, this child is eight or nine years old today.

Even though breast milk is best for NICU infants, a 2020 CDC report said that 13% of U.S. hospital NICUs don’t have stocks of donated breast milk. Clearly this is an equity issue as breast milk is needed to give every sick child the best chance of health and survival.

Medgadget: Please give us an overview of the current approaches used to store and deploy donor breast milk in healthcare facilities. What are the limitations of these procedures?

Dr. Langer: The way storing and deploying donated human milk works in healthcare facilities today is that first, mothers nursing infants who pump more breast milk than they need can go through a screening process that allows them to bring their extra milk to the NICU. They usually pack the milk in a cooler with ice packs, (assuming they have the time and the resources to make the trip!)

Neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) store this donated breast milk in large freezers, ideally for no more than six to 12 months according to CDC guidelines. When it’s time to feed the babies, the donated breast milk is carefully defrosted in small batches by NICU nurses, where it can be refrigerated for up to 48 hours.

In my experience in a NICU, three out of 35 NICU nurses would spend their entire shift just defrosting milk so that the other nurses could do the feeding. They always had to defrost more milk than they needed, and whatever a baby didn’t drink was thrown away. It’s a waste of nurses’ time, as well as human milk–both of which are extremely valuable.

Many people wonder, why is human milk so challenging to preserve? Obviously we’re used to seeing cow’s milk sold at the grocery store, including powdered milks and creamers. Ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk is shelf-stable and doesn’t need to be refrigerated (if unopened). The problem is that when you treat human milk in these same ways, the essential immunological proteins break down. You’re left with something that is no better than a very expensive and hard-to-obtain baby formula, which isn’t the goal.

Medgadget: Please give us an overview of the BBy condenser technology, and how it works. How does the technology provide convenience for healthcare staff?

Dr. Langer: The BBy condenser is essentially a spray dryer. The result is very similar to the cheese powder on Cheetos or cheese puffs. What happens is you take the liquid milk, put it in a vacuum, and then use heat to remove the water.

To avoid “sterilizing” the milk (and to preserve the important bioactive components that make breast milk what it is), at BBy we use a laser and an algorithm to keep the breast milk in what we call the “bio-retentive zone.” Basically, the laser maps out the flow rate and the temperature and the weight of the product until it is reduced to a shelf-stable powder.

This entire process is incredibly convenient for hospital staff. From start to finish: every two weeks, BBy technicians pick up frozen donated breast milk from the hospital. We bring it to our regional facilities and convert it into human milk powder. We then deliver the powder in aluminum packets back to the NICUs, where the packets can stay on the shelf (with no refrigeration!) for up to six months.

Feeding the powdered milk to a baby is also very simple; all that nurses have to do is mix the powder with a corresponding amount of water.

Our own estimates would suggest hospitals in the United States spend $12 billion annually on obtaining and managing breast milk. A large portion of that is labor and electricity.

The wonderful thing about this innovation is that research shows that ultimately, babies who get fed breast milk will spend less time in the NICU. It’s a win all around.

Medgadget: How does the condensed breast milk compare with fresh or frozen breast milk in terms of its nutritional value and other bioactive components?

Dr. Langer: BBy has done extensive research to compare our self-stable powder with both fresh and frozen breast milk. Based on our testing, BBy has a near 1:1 retention of both IgA and IgG, the building blocks of cell immunity, compared to frozen or fresh breast milk. This means that BBy’s powdered breast milk is able to provide all the same benefits as breast milk in its other forms.

Medgadget: How do you screen donor milk to detect pathogens and ensure safety?

Dr. Langer: It’s true that donated breast milk obtained from the hospital is pre-screened and considered safe, however it was very important that our team also verify that no infections or contaminants were present in the milk that we condensed.

Our condensing process has been proven to denature viral infections such as hepatitis, COVID-19 and HIV among others.

In order to detect pathogens and ensure safety, we performed several tests on our milk product. For a very specific example, one of our tests was to look for hemolytic activity (or the destruction of red blood cells) signifying the presence of an infection. In a culture medium rich with erythrocytes (red blood cells), we determined that none of the lactic acid bacteria from the human milk presented hemolysis (red blood cells being destroyed).

For anyone interested in learning more about this study, you can read our published results on the NIH website, “In vivo assessment and characterization of lactic acid bacteria with probiotic profile isolated from human milk powder,” Nutr Hosp. 2021 Feb 23;38(1):152-160. doi: 10.20960/nh.03335.

Other tests we’ve conducted include lactoferrin tests, fatty acid retention tests, and in vivo studies in mice, all suggesting that the milk we provide is safe.

Medgadget: Where is the technology in use at present? Do you intend to market the condensed breast milk alone, or also the condenser technology?

Dr. Langer: Today, BBy has partnered with 17 different hospitals, including large research hospitals in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Texas. We plan to expand our services to even more regional locations in the future.

One other idea we are working on is a self-service kiosk that would enable parents to process their own breast milk to powder for easier storage. Few families have the freezer space at home to store large quantities of breast milk, and this would make feedings much easier for everyone involved.

Other projects are in the works as well, the goal being to provide access to breast milk to as many infants as we possibly can.

Link: BBy homepage…

Surgeons at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) have removed a very rare “human tail” from a 10-day old baby, the tertiaty health care institution said Sunday. The successful surgery was conducted on the boy on June 18, 2023 by a medical team led by Chief Neurosurgeon, Dr. Amarnauth Dukhi. The GPHC said the surgery included ...

There are different types of ear infections. Otitis externa (infection of the outer ear and/or ear canal), otitis media (infection of the middle ear), and otitis media with effusion (infection with fluid build-up in the middle ear) are the most common types.

Usually, when you hear the term "ear infection", we are typically referring to a middle ear infection, or otitis media, which is the most common type. That is, an infection of the part of the ear behind the eardrum. The eardrum is the part of the ear that protects the tiny, delicate structures of the middle ear from the outside environment. Children are more likely to get middle ear infections because their immune systems aren't as developed as adults, and the (Eustachian) tube inside the ear are shorter and straighter, making it easier for infections to develop.

Otitis externa is an infection of the outer ear. The pinna (which is the part of the ear we seen) and the ear canal, which is the tube leading to the eardrum. (You know, that part of the ear you use the Q-tip to clean and scratch when you know you aren't supposed to).

Many times, an ear infection starts off as a cold. The virus or bacteria causing the cold travels from the respiratory tract through the Eustachian tube (which connects the middle ear to the throat) and causes inflammation. The Eustachian tube may become swollen and blocked, which leads to an ear infection developing. If your doctor believes the ear infection is caused from a virus (which is more common culprit), we give medications to relieve the symptoms of the ear infection such as pain and cough/cold. If your doctor suspects a bacterial cause, your child will be prescribed antibiotics. Do not give your child antibiotics unless prescribed by a doctor.

To diagnose an ear infection, doctors will ask if your child is experiencing certain symptoms, then examine the child's ear with an otoscope.

Some of the symptoms of ear infections in infants and children include:

• Ear pain

• Fever

• Fussiness or irritability

• Rubbing or tugging at an ear

• Difficulty sleeping, poor sleeping

• Loss of appetite

• Drainage from the ear

• Not hearing well

• Vomiting

The otoscope is a fancy flashlight that allows us to view the ear canal and eardrum. We look to see if the eardrum is red or inflamed, if it is bulging, if there is fluid behind the eardrum, and if the eardrum is ruptured. Examination of the ear can be uncomfortable, and children usually squirm and try to avoid having something put in their ear. If the child does have an ear infection, the examination may even be painful, unfortunately.

So, how can you prevent ear infections? The same way you can prevent a cold. Do your best to stay healthy and keep others healthy. Wash your hands often, eat healthy foods, stay away from persons who are sick, make sure your child is up to date with immunisations, breastfeed exclusively for six months and continue for at least 1 year, don't smoke around children and avoid second hand smoke.

Factors that may increase the risk for ear infections include:

- Age. Children ages three months to three years are at greater risk of developing ear infections

- Adenoidal Hypertrophy. Adenoids are tissues inside the nose and throat area that are very close to the Eustachian tube. If they are swollen, inflamed or infected, it can affect the Eustachian tube leading to increased risk of ear infections

- Allergies. Allergies can cause irritation and inflammation of the respiratory tract which can lead to inflammation of the Eustachian tube, possibly leading to ear infections

- Colds. Having frequent colds increases the chances of developing an ear infection

- Family history. Sometimes the tendency to get ear infections run in the family.

- Chronic illnesses. Persons with long term (chronic) illnesses like respiratory diseases and weakened immune systems are more likely to develop ear infections.

It is important that ear infections are diagnosed and treated properly. Repeated ear infections, or fluid behind the eardrum, may lead to some level of hearing loss. If there is permanent damage to the structures of the middle ear, it may possibly lead to permanent hearing loss. Also, untreated ear infections can spread to the surrounding areas in and around the ear like the skull and bones of inside the head possibly leading to meningitis, abscess formation and infected bones in the head.

Piercing your child's ear will not cause a middle ear infection. But a piercing does break the skin, so there is a risk of the hole from the piercing becoming infected. To prevent this, clean the area with a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol or apply an antibiotic ointment around the ear lobe, front and back, twice a day, and gently twist the earrings at least once a day while cleaning. Don't press on your baby's ear when doing so, as that can be painful. After each bath, gently pat the area dry to remove any dampness.

Dr Tal's Tidbit

Ear infections are common and frequent throughout most children's lives. You can help to prevent ear infections by doing your best to keep yourself and your child healthy. If you suspect your child has an ear infection, have your child assessed by a doctor to ensure proper diagnosis and treatment to alleviate pain and discomfort, and to avoid possible long-term complications like recurrent ear infections and hearing loss.

Dr Taleya Girvan has over a decade's experience treating children at the Bustamante Hospital for Children, working in the Accident and Emergency Department and Paediatric Cardiology Department. Her goal is to use the knowledge she has gained to improve the lives of patients by increasing knowledge about the health-care system in Jamaica. Dr Tal's Tidbits is a series in which she speaks to patients and caregivers providing practical advice that will improve health care for the general population.
Email: dr.talstidbits@gmail.com
IG @dr.tals_tidbits