Parents Preventing Asthma Attacks

Asthma is the most common chronic illness children

face. It affects over five million kids in the U.S. It's
not a curable disease, but the symptoms can be
eased with a few simple routines at home.

Reported May 2010

URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Asthma is the most common chronic

illness children face. It affects over 5 million children in the U.S. It's not a curable disease, but
the symptoms can be eased with a few simple routines at home.
URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Asthma is the most common chronic illness
children face. It affects over 5 million children in the U.S. It's not a curable disease, but the
symptoms can be eased with a few simple routines at home.
After several trips to the emergency room and many sleepless nights, Nancy Carr was
determined to help her son Eamonn get over a chronic cough.
"It seemed like he was coughing all night, every night for 6 months," Carr recalled to Ivanhoe.
Eamonn was diagnosed with asthma, which can result in poor lung functions, sleep problems,
risk for obesity, and anxiety.
"Kids can experience a poorer quality of life, that is they worry a lot about their symptoms,"
Barbara Fiese, Ph.D., a behavioral scientist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign,
Ill., explained.
Behavioral scientists found that children worry less about their asthma when parents have
regular routines in the home, most importantly at the dinner table.
"Families that were able to sort of get it together around their regular mealtime, the kids had
fewer health symptoms," Dr. Fiese said. "They experienced a better quality of life."
Researchers found improvement in children's lung functioning when parents create routines
reminding kids to take medications, and limit daily stressors, like arguments and late bedtimes.
Talking to kids during mealtimes and other activities helps kids know parents care and helps
kids feel better.
"These are the times at which parents have an opportunity to sort of catch up with what's
going on in your child's daily life," Dr. Fiese explained.
Putting food and conversation on the table together helps provide a sense of security for kids,
helping to keep their asthma in check.
"No more ER visits," Carr said.
 She can now spend quality time at home instead of at the hospital.
Researchers found daily stressors, like disrupted mealtimes and late bedtimes, predict the
likelihood children will wake up in the middle of the night to the same degree as exposure to
environmental allergens, like dust mites or tobacco smoke
.

Malaria Buster!

A million people a year die from malaria, a life-

threatening disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Now, scientists have developed a new
weapon that could bring us a malaria-proof mosquito.

TUCSON, AZ (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Every year a million people die from malaria, a life-
threatening disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Better medicines are making progress toward
reducing those numbers, but about 3.3 billion people, or half the world’s population, are still at
risk. Now, scientists have developed a new weapon that could bring us a step closer to stopping
the disease.

For Kristen Kenney it was the adventure of a lifetime, shooting a documentary in east Africa,
then, she got malaria.
“The joint pain felt like my body was being hit with a hammer,” Kristen Kenney told Ivanhoe.
“My head was just throbbing and my vision was blurry, it was surreal, out of this world, a
nightmare.”
She was lucky; she got treatment in time to save her life.
“It took me two months to rebound and feel normal again," Kenney said.
The deadly cycle starts with the female mosquito. It picks up malaria parasites by biting a
person who has malaria, then spreads those parasites to the next person it bites. University of
Arizona Entomologist doctor Michael Richle, is trying to break the malaria cycle by changing
the mosquito’s DNA to make it malaria-proof.
“The way we genetically engineer the mosquitoes is to actually inject small pieces of DNA into
freshly laid eggs,” Michael Richle, Ph.D., explained.
Mosquito eggs are injected with a piece of genetic information that targets a gene called AKT,
that flips a molecular switch making the mosquito immune to malaria. Under the microscope, a
fluorescent red marker shows up in the eyes of mosquitoes that are now malaria-resistant.
“Our idea is to actually replace wild mosquito populations with the same mosquitoes that are
engineered to be resistant to the malaria parasite," Dr. Richle said.
Malaria-proof mosquitoes, now, if science could only make them itch-proof! The hope is that
the new genetically engineered mosquito can become part of the arsenal against malaria in
the near future. As for Kristen Kenney, her experience inspired her to start her own campaign
to raise awareness and raise money for the fight to stop malaria.

Beating Bone Marrow Cancer

A new, life-saving therapy is helping some cancer

patients win the war against this deadly disease
 

BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- A heavy dose of chemo takes a huge toll on cancer
patients' bodies -- making them weak and prone to infection. Now, a new, life-saving therapy is
helping some cancer patients win the war against a deadly disease.
Having bone marrow cancer hasn't slowed down Todd Ewell, but the chemotherapy to fight
the disease stopped him in his tracks. "It's kind of like if you had the worst flu in your life for
about six weeks straight," he says.
The body's immune system takes a beating from chemotherapy. Patients can't fight off
infection or disease, but Todd's body fought back, thanks to a new immune-boosting therapy.
Aaron Rapoport, M.D., a hematologist and oncologist at the University of Maryland
Greenebaum Cancer Center in Baltimore, says, "What we're seeking to do is to harness the
power of the patient's own immune system."
Before a bone marrow transplant, hematologists collect a patient's own immune cells, then
activate, or turn-on, the cells in a lab. The enhanced cells are injected back into the patient,
along with a pneumonia vaccine, jump-starting the immune system. "It will be better able to
respond to infections and also be better able to attack and eliminate cancer cells that may
remain," Dr. Rapoport tells Ivanhoe.
 The new therapy worked wonders for Todd. "It's going fantastic. It's almost like it never
happened." His cancer is in complete remission, and now he's focused on rebuilding his life
cancer free.
Doctors are hopeful the new therapy could be tested and used to treat other people with
compromised immune systems liked HIV patients and the elderly.

Brain Scans Of The Future

Remembering your past may go hand-in-hand with envisioning your future … we’ll show you
how one affects the other.
 

ST. LOUIS (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Remembering your past may go hand-in-hand with
envisioning your future! It’s an important link researchers found using high-tech brain scans. It’s
answering questions and may one day help those with memory loss.
For some, the best hope of ‘seeing’ the future leads them to seek guidance -- perhaps from an
astrologist. But it's not very scientific. Now, psychologists at Washington University are finding
that your ability to envision the future does in fact goes hand-in-hand with remembering the
past. Both processes spark similar neural activity in the brain.
“You might look at it as mental time travel…the ability to take thoughts about ourselves and
project them either into the past or into the future,” says Kathleen McDermott, Ph.D. and
Washington University psychology professor.
The team used "functional magnetic resonance imaging” -- or fMRI -- to "see" brain activity.
They asked college students to recall past events and then envision themselves experiencing
such an event in their future. The results? Similar areas of the brain ‘lit up’ in both scenarios.
“We're taking these images from our memories and projecting them into novel future
scenarios,” says psychology professor Karl Szpunar.
Most scientists believed thinking about the future was a process occurring solely in the brain’s
frontal lobe. But the fMRI data showed a variety of brain areas were activated when subjects
dreamt of the future. “All the regions that we know are important for memory are just as
important when we imagine our future,” Szpunar says.
Researchers say besides furthering their understanding of the brain -- the findings may help
research into amnesia, a curious psychiatric phenomenon. In addition to not being able to
remember the past, most people who suffer from amnesia cannot envision or visualize what
they’ll be doing in the future -- even the next day.