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E. Coli – What is This?

Escherichia coli (known as E. coli) is a group of bacteria that typically lives in the intestines of humans and animals and helps keep our guts healthy. Certain types of the bacteria, however, can occasionally cause severe illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The types of E. coli that cause the majority of harmful infections in the U.S. produce a toxin called Shiga, and are appropriately called Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli (STEC). In North America, the most common strain of STEC is E. coli O157:H7 (often shortened to E. coli O145, or simply O145). The CDC estimates that 265,000 Americans are infected with STEC per year, resulting in about 3,600 hospitalizations and 30 deaths.

Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) is one of the leading causes of “traveler’s diarrhea,” which is often contracted when travelers from developed regions visit less-developed regions, according to Emory University. The CDC estimates that anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of travelers may be affected depending on the time of year and destination, with areas such as Latin America, Africa and Asia having the highest risk of travelers developing ETEC.

Worldwide, ETEC is estimated to infect at least 280 million to 400 million children under age 5 per year, primarily in developing countries. Children under age 5 typically lack a natural immunity that develops with exposure, according to Emory.

While E. coli can spread and enter the body in a variety of ways, about 85 percent of infections are from food, according to the University of California San Francisco. Meat becomes contaminated when the bacteria is spread from the intestinal tract of the animal during butchering or processing. Fresh produce may also be contaminated with the bacteria if it enters the water source, such as with the 2018 outbreak of E. coli on romaine lettuce.

Causes

Pathogenic strains of E. coli can be ingested with contaminated food, such as undercooked ground beef, soft cheeses made from raw milk, fresh produce, grains or even contaminated beverages, including water, unpasteurized milk and fruit juices, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Infection can also occur after not carefully washing hands that have come in contact with animals (especially livestock), or people or surfaces that have been exposed to the harmful bacteria. Swimming in contaminated water may also lead to an E. coli infection, especially if any water was swallowed.

Although E. coli can infect anyone, certain groups of people are more at risk for developing symptoms than others, including young children and older adults, and those with weakened immune systems or decreased stomach acid levels, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Symptoms

E.coli symptoms typically appear about one to eight days after consuming contaminated food or beverages, according to UCSF. Most infected people will experience diarrhea and stomach cramps, with some experiencing nausea, vomiting and fever.

Some infections can lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a potentially life-threatening disease. HUS causes red blood cells to be destroyed and leads to kidney failure. An estimated 5 to 10 percent of people with STEC infection may develop HUS, according to the CDC. Symptoms include decreased frequency of urination, lethargy and losing pink color in cheeks and inside eyelids. Experts strongly advise seeking immediate medical treatment if any of those symptoms appear.

E. coli is also responsible for about 90 percent of urinary tract infections (UTI), according to UCSF. Symptoms of a UTI include a strong urge to urinate, a burning sensation when urinating and cloudy or strong-smelling urine, according to the Mayo Clinic. Women, especially those who are sexually active, are at a higher risk of developing a UTI because of the shorter length of the urethra and the close proximity of the urethra to the anus.

Diagnosis and treatment

Doctors diagnose E. coli infections by testing stool samples for the bacteria and specific toxins, according to the Mayo Clinic.

E. coli infections aren’t typically treated with antibiotics unless the infection is outside the intestinal tract, such as with a UTI. Within the intestinal tract, though, “antibiotics may kill other beneficial bacteria in the gut, allowing more space and nutrients for the E. coli to grow,” said Sarah Fankhauser, a microbiologist at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia.

Doctors also recommended against taking anti-diarrheal medication to treat the symptoms of the infection, as the medication can slow down the digestive system and prevent the body from removing the toxins produced by the E. coli. Instead, most adults who are otherwise healthy typically recover from the infection in about a week with rest and proper hydration.

Prevention

There are several ways that harmful E. coli infections can be prevented, according to UCSF:

Regularly and thoroughly wash hands with soap and hot water after using the bathroom, changing diapers, coming in contact with infected persons, before handling or eating food and after coming into contact with farm animals. Properly washing fresh produce, cooking meats to safe internal temperatures, safely storing food in the refrigerator or freezer and thawing food in the refrigerator or microwave. Keep food preparation areas clean by using hot, soapy water or disinfectant to wash hands, counters, cutting boards, utensils and anything else that may have come into contact with raw meat. Always keep raw meat separate from cooked meat and other foods. Drink and eat pasteurized products, including milk, juice and cheese. Avoid swallowing water when swimming in a pool, lake or other body of water. Those with diarrhea should avoid swimming in public areas, sharing a bathroom or preparing food for others to avoid spreading the infection.

Diarrheal diseases, including those caused by E. coli, are a major health issue around the world. The development of vaccines aims to reduce the number of infections, and, ultimately, the number of deaths, especially among young children, caused by complications associated with the diseases.

A 2018 review published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology summarized how, over the past several decades, researchers have tried a variety of approaches to develop effective vaccines for E. coli. So far, scientists have developed rudimentary vaccines for traveler’s diarrhea but they aren’t very effective and work against only a few specific strains, Fankhauser said.

A new and potentially promising area of vaccine research is the development of personalized E. coli vaccines based on an individual’s blood type. A 2018 study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation found that the severity of symptoms caused by an E. coli infection is related to a person’s blood type.

Another team of researchers in the U.S. and Europe has made progress in developing a vaccine for preventing UTIs caused by E. coli. The group’s preliminary 2017 study, published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, demonstrated that their vaccine was safe and effectively reduced the number of UTIs in more than 30 female patients.

from Sirpercy http://www.sirpercy.org/e-coli-what-is-this/

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Cancer Death Rates Lowest for 25-Years

It’s a milestone in the fight against cancer: U.S. cancer death rates have declined continuously for the last quarter of a century, according to a new report.

From 1991 to 2016, the U.S. cancer death rate dropped steadily by about 1.5 percent per year, resulting in an overall decline of 27 percent during the 25-year-period, according to the report from the American Cancer Society (ACS). That translates to an estimated 2.6 million fewer cancer deaths than would have been expected if death rates had remained at their peak level, the researchers said.

But despite this progress, there are growing disparities in cancer deaths according to socioeconomic status, with people living in poorer communities experiencing an increasingly larger burden of preventable cancers, the report said. [10 Do’s and Don’ts to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer]

Although the continued decline in overall cancer death rates is good news, the “bad news that this report highlighted [is that] inequalities are widening, particularly among those of low socioeconomic status,” said Dr. Darrell Gray II, deputy director of the Center for Cancer Health Equity at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study. “It underscores the importance of health care providers, researchers and lay community members and advocates to continue to push toward health equity,” Gray told Live Science. Declines in major cancers

The annual report from the ACS, which was published today (Jan. 8) in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, analyzes the most recent data on cancer incidence, deaths and survival rates in the U.S.

In 2016, there were 156 cancer deaths for every 100,000 people, down from a rate of 215 cancer deaths per 100,000 people in 1991.

The two-and-a-half-decade decline is mostly due to reductions in smoking (which increases the risk of a number of cancers, particularly lung cancer), as well as advances in the early detection and treatment of cancer, the report said.

For example, lung cancer death rates have dropped by 48 percent among men from 1990 to 2016; and 23 percent among women from 2002 to 2016. Breast cancer death rates dropped 40 percent among women from 1989 to 2016; prostate cancer death rates dropped by 51 percent among men from 1993 to 2016; and colorectal cancer death rates dropped by 53 percent among both men and women from 1970 to 2016, the report said.

However, rates of several other cancers have been on the rise in recent years, including endometrial cancer (cancer of the lining of the uterus), which increased 2.1 percent per year from 2012 to 2016, and pancreatic cancer, which increased 0.3 percent per year among men during this same time period. Liver cancer death rates also increased by 1.2 percent per year among men and 2.6 percent per year among women, from 2012 to 2016.

Gray noted that while cancers such as breast and colorectal cancer have evidence-based screening guidelines available, there are no such guidelines for pancreatic and uterine cancer.

“We may continue to see a rise in death rates while we are working on getting guideline-based screening available” for these cancers, Gray said. “There’s still a lot of work and a lot of research” that needs to be done in this area, he added. Socioeconomic disparities

The report also found that gaps in cancer death rates by race are narrowing, but gaps by socioeconomic status are widening. For example, the cervical cancer death rate among women in poor counties in the U.S. is twice as high as that of women in wealthier counties, the report said. And lung and liver cancer death rates are more than 40 percent higher among men living in poor counties, compared with wealthier counties.

Increased efforts are needed to address this gap. “These [poor] counties are low-hanging fruit for locally-focused cancer control efforts, including increased access to basic health care and interventions for smoking cessation, healthy living, and cancer screening programs,” the report concluded.

Gray agreed, and said that patients of low socioeconomic status face many barriers to cancer prevention — for example, they may be unable to take time off work for medical appointments, or they may not be able to afford healthy foods. “These are competing priorities. These are things we have to help people to nagaivate,” Gray said.

from Sirpercy http://www.sirpercy.org/cancer-death-rates-lowest-for-25-years/

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How Did ‘Man Come Back from Dangerous Brain Swelling?

A man in Nebraska who doctors believed had experienced a devastating stroke actually had a different condition — fortunately, one that allowed him to come back from the brink of death.

After his children accepted that their father was likely to die and decided to have him removed from his breathing tube, T. Scott Marr kept breathing and began to move his fingers and toes, Nebraska’s WKRN reported. Doctors soon realized that Marr had not experienced a stroke, as initially believed. Instead, he had a condition called posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, which involves swelling in the brain. [27 Oddest Medical Case Reports]

“It’s an injury that is going to get better when the swelling goes down, as opposed to a stroke, which is an injury that may not recover in the same way,” said Dr. S. Andrew Josephson, a professor and chair of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco and a member of the American Neurological Association. Josephson was not involved with Marr’s case. A difficult diagnosis

According to WKRN, Marr was found unconscious on Dec. 12. Doctors diagnosed him with a stroke and observed swelling in his brain. One of his doctors at Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, Dr. Rebecca Runge, told reporters that the medical team feared the damage was irreversible.

But after Marr’s breathing tube was removed and he began to respond to simple commands, doctors re-evaluated his diagnosis. He hadn’t experienced a stroke, they found. Instead, he had posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, or PRES.

In about 70 percent of cases, PRES is caused by an extreme increase in blood pressure. Such a spike can damage the barrier between the blood vessels and the brain tissue, causing leakage and swelling, said Dr. Joseph Miller, a clinical associate professor at Wayne State University and an emergency-medicine physician at Henry Ford Hospital, both in Detroit. Miller was also not involved with Marr’s case.

It’s not surprising that PRES was mistaken for a stroke, Miller told Live Science. The symptoms of PRES, which range from headache and vision changes all the way up to coma, are quite similar to those of strokes, and strokes are far more common than PRES. At Henry Ford Hospital’s emergency room, Miller said, there are only about eight confirmed cases of PRES each year, out of approximately 450,000 ER visits.

PRES is also easy to miss on a CT scan, Miller said. It’s best diagnosed with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). But in many hospitals, it can take hours or even a day to get a patient an MRI scan, so doctors might start treatment for a stroke first.

A typical treatment for PRES involves removing the underlying cause, Miller and Josephson said. (Marr and his medical team did not disclose the underlying cause of Marr’s PRES.) If the cause is high blood pressure, for example, the patient’s blood pressure should be brought down with medication.

Sometimes, PRES occurs in patients taking immunosuppressive drugs, perhaps because these medicines somehow interfere with the membranes within those patients’ blood vessels. In such cases, Miller and Josephson said, the treatment is for the patient to stop taking the particular medication. “Nearly brain-dead”?

Marr and his family called the recovery a “miracle.” Though news reports called Marr “nearly brain-dead,” that’s an inaccurate and confusing use of the term, Josephson told Live Science. Brain death is a very specific condition that is morally, ethically and legally identical to just plain death, he said. It involves irreversible brain damage that means the person can no longer breath on his or her own. Artificial ventilation can push air into the person’s lungs, making it appear as if they are alive and breathing, but without medical machinery, breathing stops. [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond]

Brain death “has a very, very specific [set of] criteria that have to be met,” Josephson said. There is no such thing as being nearly brain-dead, he said: You either are or you aren’t.

“This patient had a neurologic injury and was not doing well, and then [he] recovered from it,” Josephson said. “I would be very loath to even introduce the term ‘brain death.'”

Marr was, however, very fortunate. While PRES is reversible, it is far from harmless.

“If untreated, it can certainly be fatal,” Miller said of the condition. “And even with treatment, there are occasional fatalities if it’s caught too late.”

from Sirpercy http://www.sirpercy.org/how-did-man-come-back-from-dangerous-brain-swelling/

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The Size of Your Belly and the Size of Your Brain is Linked

Belly fat has long been thought to be particularly bad for your heart, but now, a new study adds more evidence to the idea that it may also be bad for your brain.

The study, from the United Kingdom, found that people who were obese and had a high waist-to-hip ratio (a measure of belly fat) had slightly lower brain volumes, on average, compared with people who were a healthy weight. Specifically, belly fat was linked with lower volumes of gray matter, the brain tissue that contains nerve cells.

“Our research looked at a large group of people and found obesity, specifically around the middle, may be linked with brain shrinkage,” lead study author Mark Hamer, a professor at Loughborough University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences in Leicestershire, England, said in a statement.

Lower brain volume, or brain shrinkage, has been linked with an increased risk of memory decline and dementia. [10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Brain]

The new findings, published today (Jan. 9) in the journal Neurology, suggest that the combination of obesity (as measured by body mass index, or BMI) and a high waist-to-hip ratio may be a risk factor for brain shrinkage, the researchers said.

However, the study found only an association between belly fat and lower brain volume, and cannot prove that carrying more fat around the waist actually causes brain shrinkage. It could be that people with lower volumes of gray matter in certain brain areas are at a higher risk of obesity. Future studies are needed to tease out the reasons for the link. Dangerous fat

Belly fat, also called visceral fat, is fat that’s stored deep within the abdominal cavity. It’s tied to greater health risks than subcutaneous fat, or fat that’s stored just under the skin. Previous studies have linked visceral fat with a higher risk of heart disease (including heart attack and stroke), Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and premature death, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Some previous studies have also found a link between visceral fat or a high waist-to-hip ratio and lower brain volume, but these studies tended to be small and did not look at the combined effect of BMI and waist-to-hip ratio.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed information from more than 9,600 people living in the United Kingdom, with an average age of 55. Participants had their BMI and waist-to-hip ratio measured, and underwent an MRI to determine their brain volumes.

The study found that people with both a high BMI and high waist-to-hip ratio had the lowest brain volumes, compared with people who had just a high BMI (but not a high waist-to-hip ratio) and people of a healthy weight.

Specifically, people with both a high BMI and high waist-to-hip ratio had an average gray matter volume of 786 cubic centimeters, compared with 793 cubic centimeters for people with a high BMI but not a high waist-to-hip ratio; and 798 cubic centimeters for people of a healthy weight.

The findings held even after researchers took into account other factors that can affect brain volume, including age, smoking and high blood pressure.

Though the study didn’t look at potential mechanisms linking visceral fat and brain shrinkage, one hypothesis is that this type of fat is thought to produce inflammatory substances that may play a role in brain atrophy, the researchers said.

Dr. Gayatri Devi, a neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, who was not involved with the study, agreed with the findings. “Brain gray matter shrinkage…seems to be associated with obesity and with increased visceral fat,” she said.

“All this goes to show that good general health is very important for good brain health,” Devi told Live Science.

A limitation of the study is that people who agreed to take part in the study tended to be healthier than people who did not want to take part, so the results may not apply to the general population as a whole, the researchers noted.

from Sirpercy http://www.sirpercy.org/the-size-of-your-belly-and-the-size-of-your-brain-is-linked/

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Free Digital Marketing Tools to Skyrocket Your Business

Digital Marketing is the Future of all Kind of Marketing.

No doubt, you would agree with me on that.

Earlier, few years back, the marketing was done in the very traditional way which required a lot of time and patience in order to start selling your products/services and build a brand around your offerings.

But, it’s not that difficult now a day.s. You launched your products or service yesterday and you can start selling them from even today itself. Yes, that’s the power of digital marketing.

Kinds of Marketing Included in the Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing includes following kinds of marketing:

Social Media Marketing

Content Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

PPC (Pay Per Click) Marketing

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Email Marketing

Ad Marketing

and the list continues… I have listed only the main types of digital marketing here.

Free Digital Marketing Tools

Yes, as I promised, I will be providing the list of various digital marketing online tools which can supercharge your digital marketing process.

The tools that I will list out here are completely free to use for basic personal uses.

Buffer.com

Buffer.com is a great social media managing platform where you can manage all your social media platform at one place. You don’t have to go to every social site one by one.

Just head over to Buffer.com, create an account, link all your social accounts and start posing contents from your Buffer dashboard.

Kindly note that the free version of the online tool only supports 3 Social platforms which includes Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

UberSuggest

Keyword Research is the New Market Research.

Agree with me on that? Well, you must do.

UberSuggest is a completely free keyword research tool which includes results even from the Google Keywords Planner. Earlier it wasn’t free at all but recently Neil Patel has bought this tool and made free for all.

Just head over to UberSuggest and type your keyword in the search box, and boom. You will be flooded with the hundreds of the great keywords suggestion.

Quora

You may have heard about the question and answers website Quora but you may not be aware of the keyword research potential of the Quora.

Basically, Quora is a platform where your hangout and ask some questions about your niche which you can use in order to know about your field of offerings.

KeywordTool.io

It’s another awesome tool for the keyword research which works just out of the box. I personally use this tool and I’m a great fa of this.

It’s more like UberSuggest but with better features. The free version of the software doesn’t show monthly searches of the keywords.

KeywordTool.io shows a whole bunch of keywords suggestions (around 700) where you will surely find one which you were looking for.

Pixabay

Images Speak Louder than Words.

Agreed? Well, If the images that you use on your website or on the Social media to advertise or promote your business are brilliant then it will affect users positively.

Pixabay.com has a large collection of great looking images, vectors, illustrations and stock videos which are completely royalty free and you can use them without any attribution.

Conclusion

There are a lot of such great tools for every purpose, you just need to find them correctly. Many of the tools that I have mentioned about, also offer premium service in which you can extend your usage limitations.

Which one of the mentioned tools do you use the most? Lemme know in the comments.

from Sirpercy http://www.sirpercy.org/free-digital-marketing-tools/