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Let me extend a pleasant welcome to the new comer from Guam, Winter(like the choice of moniker). We do have occasional meets here. You are of course invited. The Michelle’s Club meets float around so keep an eye open if you are interested.

This is a notice to alert the islanders to the whooping cough rise on the island. For the past several months, the Department of Public Health has seen an increase of suspect pertussis cases, also known as whooping cough.

The respiratory tract infection is spread through the air by coughing or sneezing. A total of 118 suspect cases have been reported with 44 confirmed cases, most of which affected children less than 12 months of age.

Pertussis is vaccine preventable but can lead to serious complications, hospitalizations, and even death.

Public Health’s Immunization Program Supervisor Annette Aguon encourages parents to ensure their children are immunized on time.

She said, “We want to promote that parents, grandparents, older children, health care providers also properly ensure that you’re immunized.

We could be the ones spreading the illness without realizing it because we think it’s just a bad cough.

It’s not serious for us as adults because we have a better immune system but for younger children, especially the infants, they’re not able to protect themselves.

They’re too young or their immune system is still developing so it’s severe for them if they come down with pertussis.”

For more information call Public Health at 735-7143 or your health care provider.
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It’s past my bed time. Gotta work tomorrow.

Anna

We are also aware that huge vessels are following weather patterns to save on Cloak energy. This can cause precipitous events to occur such as thunderstorms with much heavier downpours than would have normally occurred because of upper disturbances caused by their huge presence.

If your instruments reveal the potential for such a possibility remove your presence from the equation. Of course, to do this one has to be taking that situation into possibly. Our earlier alert was to suggest that.

Obviously some of our old as well as new visitors need to be alerted to the tremendous change in severity of weather that can be caused among the normal weather patterns of this planet by their actions.

Therefore this bears repeating. Creating upper disturbances because of the size and speed of your vessels can produce abnormal downpours(rain) more frequent and powerful lightning, and much stronger winds and dust storms.

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Picture this — you’re feeling healthy, then at a routine physical your doctor finds a substance in your blood that means you have a high likelihood of dying from heart disease many years down the road.

But there’s good news, too — your doctor will be able to warn you while the condition is still at a very early stage. Good nutrition, proper medication and vigilance may keep it from developing further. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

We’re not there yet… but we’re getting close! Researchers have developed a new blood test that detects subtle damage to the heart, thus serving as an early alert to the very beginning of heart disease.

This is quite important because the sad truth is that many people who die of heart disease do not have obvious risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes or high blood pressure.

HOW DO THE RESEARCHERS KNOW?

The test detects a blood protein called cardiac troponin T (cTnT), which heart muscle cells release in response to heart damage due to a lifestyle that strains the heart muscle — or due to genetic vulnerability.

In fact, this is the same protein that emergency physicians look for to determine whether or not a patient actually has had a heart attack.

But the test used for the studies is up to 10 times more sensitive than the old version. This means that it is usually able to detect cTnT long before a person is in any real danger.

Two major medical centers — The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine — conducted studies on the new test, both coauthored by James A. de Lemos, MD, of Southwestern.

Although the test is still in the research phase, he’s quite optimistic about it, noting that it’s a more useful measure than what’s currently available for early diagnosis of heart disease.

For example, one way a doctor can screen you for heart disease today is to check your level of C-reactive protein… but this only indicates general inflammation in the body, not heart damage in particular.

The studies: In Maryland, researchers measured the cTnT levels in the 20-year-old blood samples of more than 5,000 people ages 65 and over who, at the time their blood samples were taken, had no signs of heart disease.

Researchers also examined the participants’ medical records over the two decades since the blood had been drawn, looking for the onset of heart disease and/or death.

What they found was that participants with the highest blood levels of cTnT 20 years before were four times more likely to have developed heart failure — and also four times more likely to have died from cardiovascular causes — than those in the group with the lowest cTnT.

Meanwhile, the Southwestern study measured cTnT levels in blood obtained between 2000 and 2002 from 3,500 people, ages 30 to 65, and found that over the course of seven years, those with the highest levels were almost 15 times more likely to have died, though this test included deaths by all causes.

CAN YOU GET THIS TEST?

Unfortunately, it may be a few years before this test can be put to practical use because more research must be done on how to best evaluate its results.

Meanwhile, Dr. de Lemos recommends increasing exercise, specifically aerobic activity to strengthen your heart, and also making sure that blood pressure and other risk factors are under optimal control.

Start taking care of yourself right now as Dr. de Lemos advised, and it is likely that when the test does come out, your level will have already improved!

Source(s):

James A. de Lemos, MD, professor of internal medicine and cardiology, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.