18 NEWS

Diabetes linked to birth defects

Health & Science What the scientists are saying

aggressive and anti-social, both at the time, and in adulthood. Part of the problem is that corporal punishment weakens the parent-child bond, say the researchers, making it harder for parents to have a positive influence on their childrens behaviour. Any population of anti-social children we look at always has a history of being hit, said Dr Joan Durrant, of the University of Manitoba, who led the research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She also found links between smacking and lower IQ level, depression and substance abuse. Were really past the point of calling this a controversy. Thats a word thats used and I dont know why, because in the research there really is no controversy. She added that spanking was by no means the only potentially damaging form of punishment belittling and humiliating children can be just as harmful and suggested that first and foremost parents should act as positive role models, as their children will learn from their behaviour. Drinking just a couple of glasses of wine a day can treble the risk of mouth cancer, says The Daily Telegraph. In a new TV campaign aimed at casual drinkers, the Government will also warn that regularly drinking six units of alcohol doubles the risk of developing high blood pressure, which can lead to stroke. It can be easy to slip into the habit of having a few extra drinks a day, especially when drinking at home, said Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. But there can be serious health risks. Dont let drinking sneak up on you.

Women with diabetes are nearly four times more likely to have babies with birth defects than other women, says BBC News online. Research indicates that pregnant women with either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes run a 7% risk of giving birth to a child with a major congenital abnormality; the figure for women without the disease is about 2%. Researchers at the University of Newcastle analysed data from more than 401,000 pregnancies of single babies, including 1,677 in women with diabetes, between 1996 and 2008. They found that among women with Type 1 diabetes, the chance of defects, such as congenital heart disease or spina bifida, occurred in 82.2 of every 1,000 pregnancies; for Type 2 diabetes, which is often linked to diet, the rate was 57.9 per 1,000. For women without the condition, it was 19 in 1,000. Overall, women with diabetes had a 3.8 times higher risk of having a baby with a defect.

Zebras: their stripes repel biting insects

The zebras own insect repellent

Why do zebras have stripes? Until now, the assumption has been that the stripes confused predators, says the Daily Mail. New research, however, suggests that their deterrent effect is also aimed at horseflies. Researchers in Hungary and Sweden have worked out that the way the stripes reflect light is off-putting to biting insects. We started off studying horses with black, brown or white coats, explained Susanne kesson from Lund University. We found that in the black and brown horses, we get horizontally polarised light. This effect which causes the light to travel flat along a horizontal plane made the horses very attractive to flies. By contrast, they were

repelled by unpolarised light from white coats, the waves of which travel along any and every plane. They then tested the effect of a striped pattern, by painting a number of wooden boards in a horseflyridden field in Hungary, and covering them with insect trapping glue. The experiment showed that the striped boards attracted the fewest flies. Last month, Labour MP David Lammy raised eyebrows by suggesting that parents were too scared of a perceived smacking ban to discipline their own children and that this had contributed to the August riots. But a review of 100 studies on smacking going back 20 years has now concluded that smacking children has no positive effect on their behaviour, and in fact in many cases makes them more

Health scare of the week

Spanking is never the answer

Americans love their reptiles: it is estimated that they keep more than 11 million of them as pets. Yet all too often, the creatures prove trickier to house than anticipated: indeed, so many Burmese pythons have been discarded into the wild in the Florida Everglades in recent years, they now dominate the food chain and have eaten many native mammals almost to extinction, says the New Scientist. Researchers from the University of California scoured 57,000km of roads A Burmese python: will eat almost anything in the south of the region between 2003 and 2011, and recorded how many animals they saw, dead or alive. They then compared the figures to those produced in a similar exercise between 1993 and 1999, a year before Burmese pythons were recognised as an established species. The analysis showed that since 2000, sightings of racoons have plummeted by 99.3%, opossums by 98.9% and bobcats by 87.5%. Significantly, there were much lower falls in areas not fully colonised by pythons, and none at all in python-free areas. In October, a 16-foot python was found resting after eating a whole deer. There arent many native mammals that pythons cant choke down, said biologist Robert N. Reed.

The pythons taking over Florida

Are you at risk from DVT?

Its known as economy class syndrome, says the Daily Mail but there is no evidence that deep vein thrombosis (DVT) affects more budget than club class flyers, doctors have said. Nor does drinking alcohol appear to increase the risk of developing the clots, which occur when the blood pools in the veins during long periods of immobility. But they did advise that passengers who choose window seats may be at increased risk because theyre less likely to move about than those in aisle seats. The new guidelines, issued by American doctors after a review of the evidence, suggests that those who need to take particular care are the over-70s, cancer patients, people who have recently had surgery, pregnant women, people with reduced mobility, and the obese. Although the overall risk of DVT after a flight is very small, they advise that anyone in these categories should wear below-the-knee compression socks. They found the risk of developing the clots was strongest on flights of eight to ten hours.

THE WEEK 18 February 2012