Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Republic of Ireland babies at risk of having a wrong blood group

      

MOST OF THE CASES ARE AT THE ROTUNDA HOSPITAL IN DUBLIN

Hundreds of new mothers in the Republic of Ireland have been told there may be a small chance their baby was incorrectly blood grouped at birth.

The mistake is believed to be due to a mislabelling of a blood test kit for newborns.

Around 540 patients – mothers and babies – have been notified.

The Republic’s Health Service Executive (HSE) said there are no immediatesafety concerns and the risk of a blood group being incorrect is extremely low.

The five maternity hospitals affected are the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, Cavan General, Sligo General, Limerick and Galway.

Most of the cases are at the Rotunda, one of the biggest hospitals in the country.

The hospitals began contacting affected mothers on Monday and letters have been sent to anyone potentially affected by the manufacturing error.

GPs are also being notified.

The HSE said it was recently notified by Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a Johnson & Johnson company, that a small number of the ORTHO BioVue System Cassette testing kits supplied worldwide had been incorrectly labelled.

The manufacturer estimates that the potential risk of a kit being labelled incorrectly is less than one in 11 million.

According to the HSE all hospitals have completed an inspection of their remaining kits and have removed any potentially affected batches.

All patients, including babies, have a repeat blood group test when being admitted to any hospital or in pregnancy.

Hard-up Irish pensioners living on the breadline, new CSO figures reveal

      

ALMOST 10% OF OVER 65S WERE LEFT DESTITUTE IN 2011

One in 10 elderly people in Ireland have been at risk of poverty according to worrying figures now revealed.

A new report from the Central Statistics Office detailed how 9.7% of over-65s were living on the breadline in 2011 – up from 8.7% the year before.

The figures also revealed that average weekly incomes among the elderly dropped by 5% from 2009 to 2011.

Age Action spokesman Eamon Timmins said he was not surprised by the startling figures and said it highlighted the need for the elderly to be protected in the upcoming Budget.

He said: “The fact that the average income of people aged over 65 fell by 5%, combined with the rise in poverty levels over such a short period, only shows part of the difficulties which many older people are currently facing.

“On the other side of the equation there are new charges and rising prices which have to be met from these declining incomes.

“These increase taxes, charges and costs have escalated since these statistics were gathered, leaving many older people seriously struggling to make ends meet.”

The CSO’s figures show the average fell from €428.86 in 2009 to €407.28 in 2011.

The at-risk of poverty rate rose over the two-year period, the number of pensioners population experiencing two or more forms of deprivation rose from 9.5% to 11.3%.

Mr Timmins said: “Age Action is not surprised that the poverty indicators for older people are rising, with financial pressures increasing substantially on older people in the last 18 months.

“Property tax, a trebling of the prescription charge and soaring energy prices are just some of the increased costs which have been introduced since 2011, with older people having to pay them from a declining income.

“The increased costs are on unavoidable elements of their cost of living – a roof over their head, essential medication and heat.”

The news came as the Government weighed up the option of slashing the pension by €10 in October’s Budget.

The figures said more than half of the over-65s surveyed revealed they suffered from a chronic illness or health problem, but only 7% described their health as “bad or very bad”.

In 2011, 55% of Ireland’s elderly population was female, while just over a third were widowed, divorced or separated.

Around 52% of the elderly were retired and just over 7% were still at work.

Benefits accounted for the most significant source of income for the over-65s. In 2011, social transfers made up nearly two-thirds of the average person’s total income.

More than 4 cups coffee a day linked to higher death risk

 

Drinking more than 28 cups of coffee a week may be harmful for people younger than 55, according to a study.

The debate over coffee’s health risks continues to brew. A new study, out Thursday, finds that heavy coffee consumption is associated with a higher death risk in men and women younger than 55.In the study published online in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, men younger than 55 who drank more than 28 cups of coffee a week (four cups a day) were 56% more likely to have died from any cause. Women in that age range had a twofold greater risk of dying than other women.

The study looked at 43,727 men and women ages 20-87 from 1971 to 2002.”From our study, it seems safe to drink one to three cups of coffee a day,” says the study’s second co-author Xuemei Sui. “Drinking more than four cups of coffee a day may endanger health,” adds Sui, assistant professor of exercise science with the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She defines a cup of coffee as 6 to 8 ounces.The study did not find a higher death risk for adults 55 and older. Sui says there may be a bias — the research may not include unhealthy older people because they might have already died.The reasons for the higher death risk among younger adults are not clear since experts through the years have found both health benefits and problems associated with coffee.

Sui says the caffeine in coffee can elevate heart rate as well as raise blood pressure and blood sugar levels. However, coffee is a major source of antioxidants, she adds.

Sui says the study didn’t find a significant association between coffee consumption and heart disease death. Further research is needed to look at any connection between coffee and cancer, she adds.

Gregg Fonarow, co-chief of clinical cardiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says, “Differences in other dietary factors, marital status, and other socioeconomic factors that were not adjusted for in this study may account for some or all of these observations.”

Fonarow, who was not involved in this research, says observational studies that survey people about their coffee intake and tie that to how many died from any cause have yielded mixed results.

Consider a 2012 study that found that coffee drinkers ages 50-71 had a lower risk of death than their peers who did not consume coffee. In that study, researchers from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP found that the more coffee consumed, the more a person’s death risk declined.

Joseph DeRupo, a spokesman for the National Coffee Association of USA, says the new study “presents findings that are out of step with prevailing science as well as with widely accepted research methods.”

Because coffee still stirs debate, Sui says more research is needed. In the meantime, people should watch their coffee intake, she adds. “Avoid excessive coffee drinking.”

NUI Galway digital freedom debate focus at international student forum

     

Ireland hosting the ten-day debating event in Galway for first time

MEP Marian Harkin has opened an international youth forum in NUI Galway which will debate digital freedom.

Students from 48 countries will debate digital freedom over the next 10 days at an international youth forum in NUI Galway.

More than 100 students, from Belarus and China to Tajikistan and Vietnam, are competing in the Global Youth Forum, held in Ireland for the first time and hosted by theInternational Debate Education Association (Idea).

Idea is a global network of organisations that believe debate “promotes mutual understanding and informed citizenship around the world”.

The event is being run with NUIG’s Literary and Debating Society and the Open Society Foundations – Youth Initiative, and was opened by Ireland North-West MEPMarian Harkin.

Now in its 19th year, the forum is aimed at novice and experienced debaters and offers students training, competition experiences and the chance to participate in cross-cultural exchange.

Idea youth forum director Steven Nolan said the event offered an “unrivalled opportunity for young people to develop their skills, meet and interact with people from a different background to their own”.

Scientists milestone study probes the origins of cancer

  

Scientists are reporting a significant milestone for cancer research after charting 21 major mutations behind the vast majority of tumours.

The disruptive changes to the genetic code, reported in Nature, accounted for 97% of the 30 most common cancers.

Finding out what causes the mutations could lead to new treatments. Some causes, such as smoking are known, but more than half are still a mystery.

Cancer Research UK said it was a fascinating and important study.

A tumour starts when one of the building blocks of bodies, a cell, goes wrong. Over the course of a lifetime cells pick up an array of mutations which can eventually transform them into deadly tumours which grow uncontrollably.

Cancer origins: The international team of researchers was looking for the causes of those mutations as part of the largest-ever analysis of cancer genomes.

Hidden within the cancer genome are these patterns, these signatures, which tell us what is actually causing cancer in the first place – that’s a major insight to have.”

Prof Sir Mike StrattonWellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The well-known ones such as UV damage and smoking mutate the DNA, increasing the odds of cancer.

But each also leaves behind a unique hallmark – a piece of “genetic graffiti” – that shows if smoking or UV radiation has mutated the DNA.

Researchers, led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK, hunted for more examples of “graffiti” in 7,042 samples taken from the 30 most common cancers.

The found that 21 separate “graffiti signatures” could account for 97% of the mutations which led to cancer.

Prof Sir Mike Stratton, the director of the Sanger Institute, told the BBC: “I’m very excited. Hidden within the cancer genome are these patterns, these signatures, which tell us what is actually causing cancer in the first place – that’s a major insight to have.

“It is quite a significant achievement for cancer research, this is quite profound. It’s taking us into areas of unknown that we didn’t know existed before.

“I think this is a major milestone.”

Mysteries: Other signatures were related to ageing and the body’s immune system. Cells respond to viral infection by activating a class of enzymes which mutate the viruses until they can no longer function.

“We believe that when it does that, there is collateral damage – it mutates its own genome as well and now becomes much more likely to become acancer cell as it has a huge number of mutations – it’s a double-edged sword,” said Prof Stratton.

However, 12 of the signatures defy explanation for now.

It is hoped that if some of them can be pinned down to things in the environment then new ways of preventing cancer could be developed.

It may also spur further research. One of the unknown causes of mutation happens only in neuroblastoma, a cancer of nerve cells which normally affects children, so something unique is happening there.

Prof Nic Jones, Cancer Research UK’s chief scientist, said: “We know that environmental factors like smoking and overexposure to UV rays can cause faults in DNA which can lead to cancer, but for many cancers we don’t know what triggers the faults in our DNA that can lead to cancer mutations.

“The genetic fingerprints identified in this fascinating and important study identify several new processes driving the development of cancer.

“Understanding what’s causing them could be an extremely important way to get the bottom of how cancer develops in the first place – and this will lead to new ways to prevent and treat the disease.”

Climate Scientists predict more extreme Heat Waves on the horizon

     

Cities like Shanghai and Seoul are enduring a brutal heat wave. But climate change will make this year’s summer feel like nothing in the decades to come

Northeast Asia is on fire. Yesterday temperatures in Shanghai hit an all-time high of 105.4ºF (40.8ºC), the hottest day in the coastal megacity since Chinese officials began keeping records some 140 years ago — during the Qing dynasty. On Aug. 12 the heat reached 105.8ºF (41ºC) in the southern Japanese city of Shimanto, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country.

Hundreds of people throughout South Korea have been hospitalized because of heatstroke, even as the government was forced to cut off air-conditioning in public buildings because of fears of a power shortage. As heat waves go, it’s a tsunami, similar to the brutally hot weather that singed Europe 10 years ago, which contributed to the deaths of over 30,000 people.

It’s also a glimpse of a blazingly hot future. We know that temperatures will generally rise as the globe warms thanks to increased greenhouse-gas emissions. (It’s right there in the name: global warming.) But as a new study published in Environmental Research Letters shows, the sort of scorching heat waves currently baking Northeast Asia are likely to become more frequent and more severe in the decades to come — and that’s going to happen no matter what we do about carbon emissions in the near future. There are some very uncomfortable summers on the horizon.

(MORE: Antarctica Melted in the Past, and as the Climate Warms, It’s Poised to Melt Again)

The study, by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany and the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain, used climate models to project how heat extremes would change over the next century. The scientists found that extreme heat waves like the one that baked much of the U.S. in 2012 — when the country had its warmest year on record — are projected to cover double the amount of landglobally by 2020 and quadruple the territory by 2040.

The most severe heat waves — so-called five-sigma events, because they would involve temperatures that are five standard deviations above the norm — would go from essentially nonexistent today to covering about 3% of the globe by 2040.

The researchers project that those heat waves will increase in frequency and intensity until 2040 even if the international community manages to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions — which, it should be pointed out, we’re not doing. (The carbon emissions we’ve already added to the atmosphere have baked in a certain amount of warming regardless of future climate policy.)

But under a low-emissions scenario, the frequency of those nasty heat waves would likely stabilize in the second half of the century as the climate begins to heal itself. But if emissions just keep on rising, the heat waves will intensify — the three-sigma heat waves will cover 85% of the global land area by 2100, while five-sigma events will cover 60% of the globe by the end of the century.