Herbal Health Spot

US President Barack Obama promised on Saturday that Americans will see the effects of health reform this year, saying Congress is “on the verge” of approving the overhaul the nation’s health care system. “Now, it’ll take a few years to fully implement these reforms in a responsible way,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.

“But what every American should know is that once I sign health insurance reform into law, there are dozens of protections and benefits that will take effect this year.”

The US House of Representatives and Senate both passed sweeping health reform proposals last year, but their bills differ significantly.

Both measures aim to extend health care coverage to more than 30 million out of the 36 million Americans that lack it, end abusive health insurance company practices, and curb soaring costs that take giant bites out of family and government budgets.

But the Senate stripped out a government-backed “public option” plan to compete with private insurers in order to win over the backing of a handful of centrist Democrats without whom the bill would not have secured the 60 votes needed to pass in the 100-seat body.

The two versions of the plan will now have to be reconciled before final approval.

There are still disputes over how to pay for the plan, and whether the overhaul should create a national “exchange” where Americans could buy coverage, or set up exchanges on a state-by-state basis.

But Obama expressed confidence that lawmakers were “on the verge of passing health insurance reform that will finally offer Americans the security of knowing they’ll have quality, affordable health care whether they lose their job, change jobs, move, or get sick.”

Younger hunters, those 15 to 34 years old, are most likely to suffer serious injuries while using treestands, U.S. researchers have found. The analysis of national data showed that about 46,860 treestand-related injuries occurred between 2000 and 2007. Injury rates were 55.7 per 100,000 for hunters aged 15 to 24 years, 61 per 100,000 for those aged 25 to 34 years, and 22.4 per 100,000 for those older than 65. Male hunters were twice as likely as females to be injured.

The most common types of treestand-related injuries were fractures, most likely in the hip or lower extremities, followed by injuries to the trunk, shoulder and upper extremities. While head and spinal injuries were less common, they were still significant, said the researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Injury Sciences.

“The elevated injury rate among younger hunters is significant, because debilitating injuries in younger people are far more devastating than for older individuals because of the potential long-term effects that create both physical and financial hardships for patients and their families,” study senior investigator Gerald McGwin Jr., associate director for research at the Center for Injury Sciences, said in a university news release.

Younger hunters may be more prone to injury because they’re more likely to take risks, have less exposure to safety information, and spend more time hunting than older hunters, McGwin said.

Safety education campaigns that recommend the use of safety harnesses and regular maintenance of treestands are among the ways of preventing injuries, the study authors noted.

New research suggests that quitting smoking may raise the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the short term, and as ex-smokers log more years without touching cigarettes, that risk gradually comes down to that of a never-smoker; the researchers suspect weight gain is the main reason and warn quitters to watch their weight.

These are the findings of a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both in the US, and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Cigarette smoking is already a well-established risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but when smokers quit, they typically put on extra pounds.

Lead author, Dr Hsin-Chieh “Jessica” an assistant professor of general internal medicine and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, told the media that they suspect weight gain by quitters is the main reason why the diabetes risk goes up in the short term.

Scientists from Heidelberg University Hospital have identified a mechanism through which malaria parasite move from the salivary gland of a mosquito through a person’s skin into the body. Malaria is caused by plasmodia, tiny parasites that enter the human body through the saliva of a mosquito when it bites.

They use active movements to enter into the bloodstream and from there to cells of the liver and finally into blood cells. By using microscopic technique, the research team discovered that the parasite continually alternates between phases of rapid gliding and phases of firm adhesion to the surface.

The interaction of these two processes probably enables the parasite to move rapidly over a long time, which is necessary for successful transmission of the disease. The researchers observed how the sporozoites adhere to several sites on the surface via the TRAP protein and then use the short actin filaments to push their body past these adhesion points.

“The parasite can stretch forward while still attaching with its rear end – thus building up elastic energy. At the moment when the rear adhesion is detached, energy is released and the sporozoite glides forward rapidly,” said Dr. Friedrich Frischknecht. The researchers call this mechanism the “stick-slip” method. The speed of movement is regulated by the formation and turnover of adhesion sites, the existence and dynamics of which have been described for the first time. The research is published in the prestigious journal “Cell Host and Microbe”.