The Health News US April 30 2018
- According to 2 new studies, dark chocolate with high concentrations of cacao can have positive effects on stress levels, inflammation, mood, memory and immunity. The research presented this week at the Experimental Biology 2018 annual meeting in San Diego suggests chocolate with a minimum of 70% cacao can support cognitive, endocrine and cardiovascular health.
- About 1 in 59 children in the United States live with autism spectrum disorder, according to a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracks autism in 11 communities across the country. That’s a higher number than the previous estimate, released in 2016, which found 1 in 68 children in the U.S. have autism.
- Bill Gates has announced that he would give $12 million to the jump-start search for a universal flu vaccine, warning that the world was at severe risk for “deadly global pandemic.” In a speech to the Massachusetts Medical Society in Boston, the billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would team up with Google co-founder Larry Page and his wife, Lucy, to fund a “grand challenge” encouraging “bold thinking by the world’s best scientists” to find a vaccine that would protect seasonal and pandemic strains of the virus.
According to two new studies, dark chocolate with high concentrations of cacao can have positive effects on stress levels, inflammation, mood, memory and immunity. The research presented this week at the Experimental Biology two thousand eighteen annual meeting in San Diego suggests chocolate with a minimum of seventy percent cacao can support cognitive, endocrine and cardiovascular health.
Lee Berk, main investigator on the studies and an associate dean of research affairs at Loma Linda University’s School of Allied Health Professions, said participants were given a forty eighty-gram bar of dark chocolate at the beginning of one experiment and then ate a piece of dark chocolate every two hours they were awake, for several days.
Berk said that blood tests revealed the chocolate influenced gene activity, increased anti-inflammatory agents and increased infection-fighting cells. Further research by Berk’s team examined how brain activity reacted to dark chocolate consumption. Gamma waves recorded by an EEG suggested the treat could positively impact brain function, such as cognitive function and creativity, even two hours after eating it.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/autism-higher-than-previously-thought-cdc-1-in-59-children/
About one in fifty nine children in the United States live with autism spectrum disorder, according to a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracks autism in eleven communities across the country. That’s a higher number than the previous estimate, released in two thousand sixteen, which found one in sixty eight children in the U.S. have autism.
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The data comes from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, a tracking system that provides estimates of the prevalence and characteristics of autism spectrum disorder among more than three hundred thousand eight-year-old children from eleven communities across the U.S. It is not a representative sample of the United States, but rather a detailed look at autism in these specific communities. The CDC says it is the largest population-based program to monitor autism and the only autism tracking system that examines health and education records.
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Previous research has shown girls were being diagnosed with autism at a later age than boys, likely because they exhibit different and less severe symptoms. Researchers from the CDC agree that some of the increase may be due to improved identification of autism cases in minority populations. While data shows autism is still more common in white children, the number is growing in Hispanic and black children. This is important, experts say, because diagnosing autism early means interventions can start at a younger age and kids are more likely to reach their fullest potential.
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The report also shed light on the need to identify more children with autism at a younger age and get them into early intervention programs. The researchers found that fewer than half of the children in the report received their first autism diagnosis by the time they were four years old. Additionally, while eighty five percent of the children with autism had notes in their health records expressing concern about their development by the time they were three, less than half received a developmental evaluation by that age.
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Bill Gates has announced that he would give twelve million dollars to the jump-start search for a universal flu vaccine, warning that the world was at severe risk for “deadly global pandemic.” In a speech to the Massachusetts Medical Society in Boston, the billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would team up with Google co-founder Larry Page and his wife, Lucy, to fund a “grand challenge” encouraging “bold thinking by the world’s best scientists” to find a vaccine that would protect seasonal and pandemic strains of the virus.
A hundred years ago, an outbreak of the Spanish flu was thought to have killed between fifty million and one hundred million people worldwide. Gates says an outbreak on the same scale today could take the lives of an estimated thirty three million people within six months, citing research by the Institute for Disease Modeling. Because vaccines can take some time to come to market and take effect, Gates added that it was important “to invest in other approaches, like antiviral drugs and antibody therapies that can be stockpiled or rapidly manufactured to stop the spread of pandemic diseases or treat people who have been exposed.”
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The Gates Foundation spent one point two billion dollars on global health initiatives in two thousand sixteen. A global coalition to create vaccines for emerging infectious disease called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness launched in January two thousand seventeen with a five hundred million dollar initial investment from the Gates Foundation, the governments of Japan, Norway and Germany, and Great Britain’s Wellcome Trust.
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