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CHICAGO - The largest-ever study of the long-term consequences of premature birth finds that children born early have higher death rates in childhood and are more likely to be childless in adulthood.
Experts called the research significant because it followed 1.2 million Norwegian births over decades. It also raises questions about future risks for even tinier babies saved today by modern medicine.

New drugs and therapies first used widely in the 1990s now save smaller and sicker babies. So the babies in the study may have been healthier, on average, than children born premature in recent years, experts said.

“Are we improving their survival but at the expense of significant problems down the road?” asked study leader Dr. Geeta Swamy of Duke University Medical Center.

Most preemies grow up to have good health and normal reproduction, but the researchers found heightened risks compared with babies born at full term from 1967 to 1988. The findings add to known consequences of prematurity such as lung problems, disabilities, mental retardation and school delays.

U.S. rates of premature births climbed steadily during the past two decades reaching an estimated 12.8 percent of births in 2006, government figures show. More than 540,000 babies were born premature that year. Fertility treatments that result in multiple births and older mothers contributed to the rise. (The rate of premature births in Norway that year was 7 percent.)

“In the United States, there is an epidemic of preterm birth, and prevention is absolutely critical,” said Dr. Alan Fleischman of the March of Dimes. He was not involved in the study.

Fleischman said prevention efforts include hormone treatment for women with a history of giving premature birth, avoiding inducing labor unless medically necessary and reducing the number of embryos implanted at one time during fertility treatments.

In the study, appearing in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 60,000 Norwegian children were born premature, about 5 percent overall. Only single births were included.

As expected, babies born early were more likely to die during the first year of life compared with babies born at term.

Surprisingly, their increased risk of death persisted as they aged.

The children who were born five to nine weeks early (28 to 32 weeks into the pregnancy) showed a doubled risk of death from ages 1 to 5 compared with children born at normal term. (The overall risk of death was low: 33 of the 5,880 children in the premature group died.)

When the researchers looked at boys and girls separately, they found a stronger link in boys between premature birth and higher death rates in childhood.

The causes of childhood deaths are still being analyzed, but birth defects and childhood cancers played a role, Swamy said.

In adulthood, other differences showed up. Prematurity was linked to lower levels of education and more childlessness in both men and women in a subset of more than 580,000 births from 1967 through 1976.

Women who were preemies had a higher risk of giving birth to premature babies themselves. The risk of next-generation premature births increased with the severity of prematurity in the mothers.

The study didn’t examine reasons for these greater risks. Possible culprits include genetic differences, birth defects, economic factors and social obstacles, Swamy said.

As in other studies, there were more premature births among single mothers and those with less education.

The research was based on data from Norwegian birth, death and other records.

Norway’s homogenous population and its universal access to medical care make the findings a “best case scenario,” said Dr. Wanda Barfield of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She co-authored an accompanying editorial in the journal.

In the United States, premature birth rates among black mothers are higher than among white mothers, she said.

The findings suggest people may want to tell their doctors if they were born early.

“That may help doctors to manage adult health and reproductive conditions for future generations,” Barfield said.

The desire to look beautiful has made plastic surgery very common amongst the rich.It is, in fact, rarely used for a valid medical requirement while cosmetic reasons are making the most out of this surgery. In the past few years, plastic surgery has become popular worldwide regardless of the involved dangers. Similar to any other type of treatment, plastic surgery too, has some benefits as well as risks. If done by qualified and experienced surgeons, the results have been positive most of the times, however, there are chances of intrinsic risks and complications to occur in any type of surgery. Here are described some common risks of plastic surgery.
 
Allergic Reactions - Probably you’re over with the surgery but the medications could prove allergic to you. So, it’s always better to consult the doctor if you’re allergic to any salt. Sometimes, anesthesia can also be dangerous. 
 
Hematoma - Hematoma, or blood clotting, is a frequent problem which develops underneath the skin. If not treated in early phases, such clotting of blood could be fatal.
 
Scarring - However, incisions are made very small, there is a possibility of scars in cases. If incisions don’t get healed properly, they leave ungainly marks, or scars behind.
 
Numbness - In some cases, the patients have experienced temporary or permanent numbness. It happens because some nerves get damaged during the surgery, at times.
 
Bleeding & Infection - In severe cases, bleeding and infectionhas been found as the consequence of surgery. Consumption of painkillers to curb the pain can also be hazardous in the long run.
 
Death - Excessive and repeated plastic surgery also leads to permanent damage to the body structure. Some surgeries have caused death of the patient because of severe complications.
 
Conclusion
Severe complications are infrequent with the improvement of techniques and technologies in plastic surgery. Nevertheless, it is suggested that the patients must have a thorough discussion with the surgeon about the risks and other surgery issues, including the dangers of operation procedures.

Men are in danger of inheriting high blood pressure if their parents suffer from the condition, researchers warned yesterday.

Their study suggests that those with one or two parents with raised blood pressure are at a “significantly” increased risk.

If both parents were sufferers at a young age, the risk could be 20-fold higher of becoming a sufferer by the age of 35.

The findings are from a U.S. study involving only men and investigators said separate research was needed to determine if some women ran a similar risk.

Hypertension, the medical term, affects 16 million Britons and is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke and kidney failure.

It is associated with obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol levels.

In the study at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, 1,160 men filled out health questionnaires when students in 1947.

Then for the next 54 years, they completed annual questionnaires on their blood pressure and the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension in themselves and their parents.

At the beginning of the study, 264 (23 per cent) reported at least one parent with hypertension, including 20 with both.

In the following decades, 583 new cases of parental hypertension occurred, so that 60 per cent had at least one parent with high blood pressure and 14 per cent had two.

Men with one or two parents with hypertension had higher average blood pressure at the beginning of the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

They were also more likely to develop hypertension during adulthood than those whose parents never had the condition.

Lead researcher Nae-Yuh Wang said: “Men with one or both parents who was hypertensive before the age of 55 had a much higher risk of developing high blood pressure, especially at a younger age.

“Early-onset hypertension in both parents was associated with a six-fold higher risk of hypertension at any point in adulthood and a 20-fold higher risk of developing hypertension by age 35.”

The report advises doctors to ask patients about parental hypertension to identify those at high risk.

“The findings underscore the importance of primary prevention and blood-pressure monitoring early in life in men with parental hypertension,” it said.

A high blood pressure reading is one that exceeds 140/90 millimetres of mercury.

The first figure - for systolic pressure - corresponds to the “surge” that occurs with each heartbeat.

The second - or diastolic - reading is the pressure between beats.
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Hectic lives mean families are sitting down for dinner later than ever.Dining time is now typically 6.30pm, compared with 5.30pm in 1961.

Longer office hours, commuting and after-school activities have all made our working days longer, according to research published today by Kelloggs.

But 82 per cent of parents still make sure their evening meals are spent with their children, even if it means skipping a meeting at work or cancelling seeing friends.

Families are now sitting down to dinner at 6.30pm

In Scotland this increases to 92 per cent while in the South of England it drops slightly to 80 per cent.

The report, Food Habits and Social Change, says parents see eating a meal with their children as a “symbol of family happiness”.

It adds: “There is an informality and a warmth about this sort of eating that enhances the ritual of family taking dinners together.”

The study of 1,000 Britons also found 44 per cent of families eat breakfast together.

It found that from Monday to Thursday we tend to prefer ready meals over homemade dishes.

But come the weekend, we are becoming more keen to reach for the cookbook. The report says that cooking is seen as a pleasure and not as a necessity

Forty-three per cent said they use cookery books and go through magazines for ideas - up from 25 per cent in 2003.

And 39 per cent use recipes to make their meals, compared with 27 per cent four years ago.

Men are almost as eager to cook as women, according the report.

Fifty-eight per cent said they cooked a meal at least three times a week, compared with 68 per cent of women.

But the study also showed we are eating out more.

In 2003, only 40 per cent of Britons ate in a restaurant once a month. This has now risen to 50 per cent.

As a device to help you doze off, it looks a little uncomfortable.

But for Philip Skeates – who for 17 years has been getting only around 14 minutes of sleep a night – the oxygen mask is a godsend.

Doctors diagnosed a severe case of sleep apnoea after his wife Lisa persuaded him to visit his GP about his loud snoring.

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The oxygen mask and tube forces air into Phillip’s lungs and keeps his airways clear

Experts hooked him up to a machine to monitor his sleeping behaviour and were shocked at the results.

Sleep apnoea causes the airways to close without waking the sufferer. In Mr Skeates’s case that meant he stopped breathing 90 times an hour.

The net effect was he barely had a few seconds of proper sleep every minute.

The former lorry driver, 39, from Swindon, was finally cured after being given an oxygen machine which forces air into his lungs and keeps him breathing.

He said: “Every day I would get up feeling exhausted. I couldn’t concentrate and I was ratty.

“I couldn’t understand it because I would fall asleep in my chair by 8pm and not get out of bed for 12 hours. But in fact I was hardly getting any sleep at all.”

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Snorer Phillip was finally diagnosed after his long-suffering wife Lisa persuaded him to see a GP

His lethargy caused him to pile on weight with little inclination to try to lose it. Since getting a proper night’s sleep however, he has shed 6st in eight months – from 25st to 19.

Mrs Skeates, 40, said: “The oxygen mask has reawakened our marriage, it’s been wonderful.”

Experts believe there are as many as 300,000 sleep apnoea sufferers in the UK but only one fifth are diagnosed. The rest simply believe they are bad snorers.

The condition causes the muscles in the throat to collapse, closing the airway and causing the sufferer to stop breathing for up to ten seconds.

After the airway has closed, they “wake” and breathe deeply which produces the snoring sound. However, the sufferer does not regain consciousness in the process and is not aware of it.

Terry Gasking, of the Sleep Apnoea Trust, said: “There are thousands of people out there who have sleep apnoea and are dangerously sleep deprived.

“This is a huge problem which is unrecognised and goes undiagnosed by doctors because they have not been trained to recognise it.”

soures:dailymail.co.uk