Heena Sharma Blog

Vitamin D, commonly known as the "sunshine vitamin", can combat tuberculosis (TB) bacteria found in the lungs of people with multi-drug resistant TB, according to latest research. The study showed that when added to antibiotic treatment, vitamin D was found to treat TB specifically in patients with multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. The vitamin D supplementation was also found to be safe at the doses administered, with no links to serious adverse events, findings further revealed in the European Respiratory Journal. "Multi-drug resistant TB is on the rise globally. It's notoriously difficult to treat, and it carries a much worse prognosis than standard TB," said Lead Researcher Adrian Martineau, Professor from Queen Mary University of London. "Our study raises the possibility that vitamin D -- which is very safe and inexpensive -- could benefit this hard-to-treat group of patients by taking a novel approach to their treatment," said Martine...

Weight might be the cause for one-fourth of asthma cases in kids with obesity, a recent study suggests. The research, which studied health data from more than 500,000 children in the United States, suggested that about 10 percent of all kids aged between 2 to 17 with asthma , might have avoided the illness by maintaining a healthy weight. The findings are published in the Journal of Pediatrics. " Asthma is the number one chronic disease in children and some of the causes such as genetics and viral infections during childhood are things we can't prevent. Obesity may be the only risk factor for childhood asthma that could be preventable. This is another piece of evidence that keeping kids active and at a healthy weight is important," said Jason E. Lang, lead author of the study. For the retrospective study, researchers analyzed data for 507,496 children from more than 19 million doctor's visits at six major children's health centers. Those cl...

It is well known that second hand smoke from cigarettes is a risk to anyone who suffers from asthma . But a new research showed that it's possible for both children and adults with uncontrolled asthma to find their symptoms worsening due to cannabis allergy and exposure to marijuana smoke . A new research, conducted at the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, analysed the livelihood of people smoking marijuana and how it affects the health of people around them. "A 6-year-old boy suffering from severe asthma had family members who frequently smoked marijuana in the house," said Bryce Hoffman, lead author of the study. "Even though family members didn't smoke marijuana in the same room as the child, he was exposed to traces of smoke and plant material. It was not clear why his asthma was so severe and not responding to aggressive asthma therapies until we determined he was allergic to cannabis. After the cannabis was removed from the...

Turns out, children born in the peak grass pollen season, October and December, may have a greater risk of developing respiratory diseases such as asthma . Led by La Trobe University, a team of local (The MACS study) and international (COPSAC2000 and LISAplus) researchers analysed cord blood collected from hundreds of babies born in Melbourne, Denmark, and Germany. They discovered those born during the peak grass pollen season in both hemispheres had high immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels in umbilical cord blood - a marker used to predict the development of allergic diseases. Lead researcher, Bircan Erbas from La Trobe's School of Psychology and Public Health, said the aim of the study was to determine the effect of exposure to high grass pollens during pregnancy and soon after birth. Read Complete Article 

Turns out, asthma patients with a specific genetic profile exhibit more intense symptoms of asthma following exposure to vehicular pollution. According to researchers at the National Institutes of Health, asthma patients who lack this specific genetic profile do not have the same sensitivity to vehicular pollution and do not experience worse asthma symptoms. The scientists stated that the results were based on genetic variation, the subtle differences in DNA that make each person unique. They further added that to understand the concept, one should think of human genes, which are made up of DNA base pairs A, C, G, and T, as written instructions for making proteins. "All humans have the same genes, in other words, the same basic instructions, but in some people, one DNA base pair has been changed. This common type of genetic variation is called a single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP, and it can alter the way proteins are made and make individuals more or less prone ...