Doctors have now been able to confirm that type 2 diabetes has a direct connection to the loss of brain matter.
Doctors have known for many years that diabetes has a negative impact on the brain but the study of patients using MRIs shows that long term diabetes has a direct correlation to the greatest loss of brain tissue.
“It’d been thought that most, if not all, of the effect of diabetes on the brain was due to vascular disease that diabetics gets and, therefore, stroke,” Dr. R. Nick Bryan of the University of Pennsylvania told Fox News. “We found in addition to that, there’s sort of diffuse loss of brain tissue, atrophy, we think may have a direct effect on the diabetes on the brain.”
A study of MRIs on patients close to 62 years of age with type 2 diabetes for at least 10 years showed the greatest reductions of the brain’s gray matter, where the neurons of the brain are located.
Researchers say that for people with diabetes, proper care is a priority to help delay the impact the disease will have on the vascular system and the brain.
A virus fatal to pigs is running rampant in the U.S. pig population is causing massive deaths and driving up the prices of pork to record levels.
The PEDv virus has wiped out the entire piglet populations of farms throughout the country. Agriculture officials in Oklahoma reported that one farm lost over 30,000 piglets from a PEDv outbreak.
Scientists say they have been unable to determine the origin of the outbreak.
The USDA reports that 7 million pigs nationwide have died from the virus. The outbreak began in Ohio according to the USDA and is now reported in at least 30 states. The nation’s hog herd has fallen to 63 million nationwide.
The virus is very virulent. One researcher said that one tablespoon of virus infected manure would be enough to infect the entire U.S. pig population.
Saudi Arabia fired Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabiah in the mist of the largest outbreak of the killer MERS virus since its discovery two years ago.
The news comes as two more people were confirmed to have died from the virus. A 73-year-old Saudi man died in Riyadh and a 54-year-old man in Jeddah died on Monday.
Saudi Arabia has been dealing with a major outbreak of the virus with over 20 infections discovered in the last week. The country’s death toll climbed to 83 and the total number of cases jumped to 261. The outbreak of the last week was more than ten percent of the total cases.
The now-former Health Minister had said on Monday he didn’t know why there was a sudden rise in the virus other than noting there was a small increase the previous April.
The World Health Organization confirmed the first cases of the virus in Southeast Asia. There is no vaccine for MERS.
Virologists made a scary new discovery in the investigation of the Ebola outbreak in Guinea.
It’s a new strain of the virus.
Researchers say that the discovery means that the outbreak has no connection to any previous outbreak in Africa. Ebola has a pattern of outbreak in the western parts of the country and the surprise outbreak in east Africa caught many health officials by surprise.
The scientists say that the new virus has been confirmed to have the same unknown ancestor of the western viruses. They say the virus likely was introduced into the region in December 2013.
The virus was also found in fruit bats within the region and it’s possible that the virus had mutated within the bats.
The virologists say that the new strain could be a potential catastrophe among the region as the area has never experienced a major Ebola outbreak until now.
The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa is growing into more of a concern for world leaders.
Mali reported their first possible cases of Ebola since the beginning of an outbreak in neighboring Guinea. Government officials have isolated three people in Mali as they await confirmation testing from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Guinea reported their 90th death from the outbreak leading Doctors Without Borders to say this could become an unprecedented epidemic in a region that has extremely poor health care systems.
The outbreak has reached a point that foreign mining companies in Guinea have closed their operations and pulled their employees to their home nations. French officials say they are preparing screening at the airports for travels from the former French colonies.
In addition to Guinea, confirmed cases have been found in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia confirmed three new deaths in the last 24 hours bringing their total to four.
DWB officials are concerned with the dense living conditions in cities where the virus has been found because it will be hard to stop the virus should it break out in a crowded living area.
The outbreak of mumps in central Ohio has more than quadrupled in recent weeks.
According to health authorities, the major increase in cases is happening on the campus of Ohio State University.
The Columbus Health Department reports four people have been hospitalized during the outbreak and at least 93 students or staff connected to the school have been infected with the virus.
Three of the people infected in the outbreak have been confirmed to have never received a vaccination for the mumps.
“If even one person is unvaccinated we are all at risk,” Jose Rodriguez of the Columbus health department told FoxNews. Rodriguez added that even with vaccinations, up to 20 percent of the population is vulnerable to the mumps virus.
One of the cases reportedly is severe enough that the patient could lose their hearing. In addition, four cases of orchitis have developed from the infection.
Last year in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, only one case of mumps had been reported.
Many people have been complaining this extended winter about colds that will not go away or colds that seem to go away but come back stronger within a week or two.
However, doctors say that it’s not that colds are leaving and coming back. It’s that colds can take longer to overcome and that because of so many different viruses that cause colds, it’s possible to get two different cold viruses back-to-back.
The common cold can last up to two weeks for the initial symptoms and the coughing that goes with it could last for weeks after the virus had been cleared from the body.
In the case of someone getting consecutive colds, some doctors believe that because the body’s immune system is weakened from dealing with one cold it leaves the body open to a different strain of cold virus. There are more than 200 known viruses that can cause the common cold.
The average adult gets 2 to 5 colds per year, children can have between 7 and 10. In the U.S. every year, about one billion Americans will get a cold.
A mystery virus that is causing polio-like symptoms in children has spread to southern California.
Lucian Olivera, 2, is the latest child to be confirmed to have the illness. Lucian was 11 months old when he had an ear infection before suddenly being unable to stand or use his legs.
Stanford University confirmed on Friday it was the mysterious virus.
Now, doctors are trying to determine if the weakness in the child’s legs is permanent.
“Really, it’s unknown the severity of this for each individual. The thought is that it is permanent, but we don’t know all the things that will happen to every patient,” Dr. John Dingilian said.
Olivera is wearing a brace on his legs and his parents are preparing that he may never be able to walk on his own.
The recent outbreak of measles in New York City appears to have a very unlikely source.
Hospitals.
The Department has confirmed their investigators are looking into the possibility that virus was spreading through waiting rooms packed with people waiting for the ER to become available to see them. Because the virus can be spread easily when someone coughs, a person infected with the virus could potentially expose hundreds while waiting for a doctor.
“Sometimes the doctors are not quick to recognize that it is measles and therefore before you know it that patient has been sitting in a waiting room with 20 or 30 people around them and now they are exposed because these types of diseases are very infectious,” said Dr. Manny Alvarez of Fox News Channel.
Emails were sent to staff at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center giving instructions to help staff better recognize the signs of measles and encouraging them to act quickly and appropriately.
A rare bacterium has been discovered at fish markets in multiple New York boroughs and has been confirmed to have infected at least 30 people.
Health officials say they do not know the source of the outbreak. The bacterium, Mycobacterium marinum, is common in fish but does not normally infect humans. Markets in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan have been found to have the bacterium.
The infection causes bumps under the skin or tender lesions. Once the bumps turn into open wounds, they won’t heal on their own. If the infections are not cleared at that point, they can go deeper into the skin and require surgery.
Dr. Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control, said a part of the problem in finding the source is that the infection can take weeks to show even the most mild symptoms.
A doctor in the Chinatown section of New York said that many patients who came to him said they were infected at a site where they were cut by a fish bone. One victim said they had cut themselves on a lobster.