Health and fitness news - The Punch Newspapers

October 1, 2013 by Agency Reporter 

Pill can prevent fatal tb in hiv patients

An inexpensive daily pill can often fend off a lethal bout of tuberculosis in people with HIV, according to a large new study.

The drug is isoniazid, a generic antibiotic, and the World Health Organisation has recommended a daily dose since 1998 for HIV patients who harbor tuberculosis but have no symptoms; full-blown TB is a leading killer of AIDS victims. But doctors in poor countries rarely bother to offer it.

The study, published last week by Lancet Infectious Disease, found that a daily isoniazid pill reduced deaths and active TB cases by 31 percent among 12,816 patients at 29 Brazilian clinics.

In patients whose urine samples proved that they took their pills regularly, the reduction was far greater: about 80 percent.

Side effects were minor, and of the patients who developed TB despite taking the pill, none got an isoniazid-resistant form of the disease.

An accompanying editorial said isoniazid works, but only when clinics test patients correctly, provide pills steadily and make sure they are taken.

US circumcision rates drop

The percentage of newborn boys who are circumcised in the United States declined to 58.3 per cent in 2010 from 64.5 per cent in 1979, according to a new analysis from the National Centre for Health Statistics.

The report is based on annual surveys of about 450 hospitals nationwide.

But rates varied over the period. They went down during the 1980s after a task force of the American Academy of Pediatrics found that there were no medical benefits to the procedure, then rose during the ‘90s after the medical group revised its position, claiming there were potential benefits.

In 1999, the academy changed its view again, stating that despite potential benefits, there was insufficient evidence to recommend routine circumcision.

That announcement was followed by another slight decrease.

There are regional variations as well. In 2010, about 71 per cent of babies in the Midwest were circumcised, 66.3 per cent in the Northeast, 58.4 per cent in the South, and 40.2 per cent in the West.

The lead author of the report, Maria Owings, a health statistician with the center, emphasised that the report includes no explanation for the numbers.

“We didn’t factor in any other contextual information that would shed light on the reasons for the regional variations or the variations over time,” she said.

And, she added, “The NCHS doesn’t take an advocacy position.”

 New York Times Service