Study say’s red meat and butter
‘could raise Alzheimer’s risk’
High levels of saturated fats were linked with poorer memories in new recent studies.
Eating too much red meat, butter and other foods that contain high levels of saturated fats could increase the risk of Alzheimer’s, according to a recent study.
US researchers linked to Harvard University found older women who ate lots of food high in saturated fats had worse memories than others.
By contrast, those who ate more monounsaturated fats – found in olive oil, sunflower oil, seeds, nuts and avocados – had better memories.
Dr Oliva Okereke, from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., which is affiliated to Harvard Medical School, said: “When looking at changes in cognitive function, what we found is that the total amount of fat intake did not really matter, but the type of fat did.”
She and fellow researchers made their conclusions after looking at results from 6,000 women over 65, who carried out a series of mental tests over four years and answered questionnaires about their diet and lifestyle.
Dr Okereke added: “Substituting in the good fat in place of the bad fat is a fairly simple dietary modification that could help prevent decline in memory.”
Having a poor memory can be a harbinger of Alzheimer’s in elderly people, although the former by no means always leads to the latter.
The report is published in the journal Annals of Neurology.
It follows other research showing a link between high cholesterol and a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.
Bullying ‘costs Ireland over €100m every year’
The cost of bullying in schools could be over €100m a year, a campaign group believes.
The National Anti-Bullying Coalition, set up last year by parents, teachers, and other concerned people, said its free programme for second-level schools had a 90% success rate in resolving bullying cases.
Founder Monica Monahan said the costs to the justice system of unreformed bullying students were about €30m a year, as 60% have a criminal conviction by age 24 and almost one third have three convictions.
She said the health-sector costs of 9,600 cases of self-harm due to bullying every year are €16m, based on an average three-night hospital stay in each case.
Adding at least €40m for substitution costs to cover teachers absent because of bullying, increased demand on education and health services because of students absent from school, and the costs for parents through lost time at work or moving schools, Ms Monahan said the total cost to society exceeded €100m a year.
“Bullying is a social plague that is incubating in our schools and leaking out into society and our workplaces. We can no longer be a nation of bystanders while our children or our friends struggle to endure the unendurable,” she said.
The group’s policy is for reform rather than blame and Sean Fallon, who runs its anti-bullying campaign for schools, said it had a 90% success rate in resolving bullying cases. He said when students saw the fairness of reform instead of blame and punishment, they were more likely to reject bullying and to report it.
He said the only cost was initial training for teachers but after that it just required inclusion in school timetables for modules that taught peer meditation, conflict resolution strategies, positive parenting training by schools, and other measures.
The forum heard 140 that second-level schools have undergone a one-day support programme since 2007 for the social, personal, and health education (SPHE) curriculum which covers the problem of bullying. Pat Courtney, the anti-bullying co-ordinator in the Department of Education SPHE support service, said these and other schools which adopted a systemic approach were usually best equipped to deal with bullying.
The working group of officials from the Department of Education and Department of Children and Youth Affairs will focus initially on strategies and guidelines for schools around homophobic bullying. It is also likely to examine racist bullying, cyber bullying, and bullying of students with disabilities.
* Submissions for consideration can be made up to June 29 by the working group, along with the forum inputs yesterday.
NUI Galway Researchers battle against cancer on many fronts
In both prostate cancer and breast cancer, researchers at NUI Galway are attempting to develop treatments which will go some way to treating those patients who respond poorly to existing therapies.
Cancer research at NUI Galway: there are four reasons which are still a matter of conjecture and research, the people in the west of Ireland have significantly higher rates of breast and prostate cancer than the rest of the Irish population.
So many families in the west of Ireland have been affected by these cancers that it has proved to be a catalyst for an ambitious programme of research based at NUI Galway.
NUI Galway identified biomedical science and engineering as a major priority as far back as the 1990s with a view, not to “blue-skies” thinking, but to bringing forward practical applications which will benefit people suffering from cancer and other intractable illnesses.
The National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science (NCBES) set up at the turn of the millennium is the present hub of an endeavour to understand cancer – the most malignant of all foes.
In both prostate cancer and breast cancer, two of the commonest forms of cancer in Ireland, researchers at NUI Galway are attempting to develop treatments which will go some way to treating those patients who respond poorly to existing therapies.
The teams working on cancer at NUI Galway have access to an estimated one million people through UCHG, which is one of the eight centres of excellence for cancer in Ireland and the only one in the west. There is also a well-established bio-banking system which is a valuable source of tissue for testing new therapies.
The scale of the ambition in biomedicine is exemplified in plans for a €11.5 million Clinical Research Facility/Translational Research Facility in a four-storey building on the grounds of UCHG, construction on which is due to start this year.
It will ensure that patients get access to the newest treatments being developed locally.
A sign of NUI Galway’s growing success in the field of cancer research is the recent award given by the Irish Cancer Society to Dr Róisín Dwyer for her work in developing stem cells which carry cancer drugs to the site of breast tumours.
Successful experiments with cancer cells in the laboratory on mice have shown that the stem cells deliver the drugs to the site of the tumour successfully. Such a breakthrough, if repeated on humans, could lead to breast cancer therapies which are less invasive and more successful than current therapies.
Dr Dwyer’s team can see the drug is successful using an imaging system developed in partnership with the University of Arizona.
The approach has been shown to reduce tumours to a fifth of their original size in mice and though a human treatment is a long way off, there have been no side-effects at all.
Galway has long had a tradition in breast-cancer research, stretching back to the foundation of the National Breast Cancer Research Institute (NBCRI) in the city more than 20 years ago.
This was set up by a group of volunteers at a time when breast cancer was a much more deadly disease than it is now, although it is still a major killer.
Like other Irish universities, NUI Galway has developed a tight-knit approach between town and gown, but it is not just the town of Galway but the whole region that is involved.
Recently, the NBCRI handed over a cheque for €1 million for the Clinical Research Facility. Money has been raised from many quarters, ranging from individuals who just want to help out to the Taoiseach, who has participated in many fundraising events.
NBCRI medical director Prof Michael Kerin says the elevated levels of breast cancer in the west of Ireland are a major focus of their studies.
One of the strategies of the research is to be able to assess the risks of breast cancer through the individual genetic profile of the women involved.
“We’ve identified a lot of genetic aberrations specific to the west of Ireland population, which are tiny changes in the chromosomes,” he explained.
He believes such an approach might mean that a “broad brush” breast screening programme could be replaced by something more targeted.
Last year NUI Galway with the support of the Galway University Foundation established a Prostate Cancer Institute directed by Prof Frank Sullivan. Prof Sullivan is at the coal-face of treatment in the field, seeing between 10 and 15 men a week who have been diagnosed with the condition.
Though outcomes are good for men who are diagnosed early, it is often forgotten that some 550 Irish men die from the disease every year. Most of those die from metastasized prostate cancer which has spread from the prostate organ to the bone.
Prof Sullivan and the director of laboratory research Dr Sharon Glynn, who previously worked at the US National Cancer Institute, are engaged in a worldwide effort to find out why cancer metastasizes (spreads) to the bone and on to other organs in the body.
Dr Glynn explains: “If you can understand that interaction, if there is a particular receptor that facilitates that reaction, you can potentially make a drug against it.”
It is, as Prof Sullivan says, “an enormous challenge”. There are already effective treatments for metastasized prostate cancers, but it can always return and there is no cure.
At present, the institute is testing two drugs from a German company called Elara and an American company called Cognosci based in North Carolina.
The researchers are also looking at potential biomarkers as to why certain men are easily cured of prostate cancer and others die from the disease.
Prof Frank Giles, the newly appointed director of the clinical research facility in Galway, says it is a tremendous time to be involved in cancer research. He is currently involved with a two-pill trial for a rare but devastating type of cancer called meleofibrosis (a form of leukemia).
NUI Galway is involved in medical research at a time when therapies are moving from a “one-size-fits-all approach” to approaches based on the genetic make-up of individuals.
“Our role is to deliver therapies that work and are seen to work. It is an exciting time from the patients’ point of view, a more productive time than we have ever seen before,” he said.
“What’s on our list of protocols are beginning to include viruses redirected against cancers, our own stem cells and vaccines which have changed the behaviour of infectious diseases. We have the same ambitions in cancer.”
Prof Kerin believes the work being carried out at NUI Galway is comparable with anywhere in the world.
“We have a process in place where we are trying to bring the whole therapeutic and research strategy around cancer to marry up the clinical services with the science,” he said. “That is really working. It is taking off here better than any place, in my view, in the British Isles.”
Utility bills may rise after a No vote, says Ibec chief Danny McCoy
Gas and electricity bills could go up in the aftermath of a No vote for the fiscal treaty, the director general of employers’ group Ibec has warned.
Danny McCoy was speaking at a business briefing on the referendum in Clery’s department store in Dublin yesterday, where the group argued for a resounding Yes vote on May 31st.
He said although the State could not currently borrow on international bond markets, utility companies such as Electric Ireland, Bord Gáis and Bord na Móna could still raise money on the bond markets.
“If there’s a No vote, there will be less confidence in Irish companies, it will be more expensive for them to raise money and we could see our domestic bills going up. It may not happen, but it could.”
He said the economy was showing “real signs of recovery”, and a Yes vote would ensure this continued.
PJ Timmins, chief executive of Clery’s, said consumer confidence remained low, however it would return.
“Re-establishment of confidence is vital. We need people to feel confident about investing in their homes, investing in their wardrobes and to become more generous in their giving.”
6-12 month HSE operations waiting list increases by 25% since July 2011
The number of people waiting between six and 12 months for hospital treatment has increased by just over one quarter since last July, when Health Minister James Reilly set up his Special Delivery Unit to cut waiting lists.
Latest figures show that while the number of people waiting over 12 months for treatment has decreased substantially since then, there have been significant increases in the numbers in other waiting time categories.
The numbers waiting between six and 12 months for procedures has increased by 26%, from 9,529 to 12,001, between July of last year and the end of March this year.
The number of patients waiting between six and nine months for treatment has incresed by a massive 39% to 8,318 in the same period, while the total waiting between nine and 12 months has gone up 4% to 3,683.
In the three to six months waiting time category, there has been a 10% increase to 17,111, while the numbers wasiting between zero and three months for procedures has gone up by 6% to 29,969.
Overall, the numbers waiting over three months in all waiting time categories for treatment has increased by 7% since July 2011, to 29,668.
Including those waiting under three months for treatment, total waiting lists have jumped by 6% between July 2011 and March 2012, to 59,637.
However, the numbers waiting over 12 months for procedures has been reduced by 80%, and at the end of March stood at 556.
The numbers waiting over 12 months was supposed to have been reduced to zero by the end of last year, under SDU targets. Hospitals now face fines of they continue to have patients waiting over 12 months for procedures on their lists.
Minister Reilly has set a new maximum waiting time target of nine months to be achieved by hospitals by September of this year.
A spokesman for the Minister told irishhealth.com that the emphasis with the waiting list policy to date has been to reduce the number of longest waiters.
This, as anticipated, had led to more people waiting for shorter periods of time, but waiting times would be progressively reduced.
The spokesman told irishhealth.com that €40 million would be spent this year on reducing treatment waiting lists, while a further €10.5 million would be spent on reducing ED trolley waits.
A further €5.5 million is to be spent on improving outpatient performance while €6 million was being spent on reducing GI endoscopy, including colonoscopy, waiting times.
The SDU is working with the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) under Minister Reilly’s waiting list and ED initiative, and has NTPF funding at its disposalto reduce waiting times.
Under the new arrangements, the NTPF no longer, as before, routinely offers treatments to patients on waiting lists for over three months.
Under the new policy, fewer procedures to clear lists are being carried out in the private hospital sector.
According to the spokesman, current policy to reduce lists includes using any spare capacity in public hospitals, getting patients treated in other public hospitals or moving patients from one consultant list to another within hospitals.
The Minister’s SDU has had some success in reducing emergency department trolley waits, although trolley numbers remain high in a number of major hospitals.
Minister Reilly recently came in for criticism on the amount being spent by his Department on outside experts to help clear waiting lists and trolley waits.
The contracts of UK experts Martin Connor and Lis Nixon alone will cost the taxpayer €972,000 over the next three years.
BWG acquires retail and grocery rival Morris Brothers of Convoy
IRISH WHOLESALE and retail grocery group BWG has acquired Donegal-based rival Morris Brothers for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 1952, Morris Brothers is a family-run wholesale and retail grocery company based in Convoy, Co Donegal.
It has annual revenues of about €30 million, is profitable and employs 30 staff.
The company’s owners, Fintan Morris and Joseph Morris, and its employees are remaining with the business.
Morris Brothers services more than 450 retail businesses across the northwest of Ireland.
BWG said the deal would strengthen its wholesale operations, especially in the Donegal, Sligo, Cavan, Mayo and Roscommon regions.
It will also provide the enlarged group with increased buying power.
Commenting on the deal yesterday, Leo Crawford, group chief executive of BWG, said: “It’s a statement of intent that we are growing our business.”
Mr Crawford said trading “remains challenging” in the Irish grocery market as Government-imposed austerity continues to dampen consumer confidence here.
“We’re reasonably pleased with how the business is trading but the grocery sector is not a market showing growth.
“The question is, have we reached the bottom or not? I wouldn’t say with 100 per cent certainty that there will be a recovery next year.”
Mr Crawford said BWG wholesale revenues in the Republic declined by 3 per cent last year to about €1 billion.
“We were happy with that, given the tough market and given the price deflation,” he said.
BWG supplies goods to a large network of Spar and Mace convenience stores.
It also now operates 23 cash-and-carry outlets around the country following the Morris deal.
It directly employs 900 people and more than 20,000 staff through its network of shops.
In a statement, Fintan Morris, a director of Morris Brothers, said he was “delighted” to be part of BWG and that he looked forward to working with the company to “sustain continued growth in our business”
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