News of health and medicine

The freezing fingers disease, Raynaud's Disease, could be treated by a skin patch containing nitric oxide, according to Scottish doctors.

Writing in The Lancet, the doctors tell how they tested a new compound,S-nitrosothio-acetyl glucose (SNAG), on six volunteers.

Whilst nitric oxide is known to improve the circulation of the blood, up to now researchers have been unable to apply it to the skin.

In the trials in Dundee and Fife, SNAG seemed to work.

The doctors conclude that it should be possible to devise a skin patch that could deliver this new substance to victims of the disease.

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As many as one in fifty heart attacks in urban areas may be triggered by pollution, a study conducted in London, England, has found.

Researchers at St George's Hospital examined hospital admissions over a seven year period and found a strong link between heart attacks and levels of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and black smoke.

The findings have been reported in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The only pollutant not linked to diseases of the circulation was ozone.

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Transplants of blood taken from the umbilical cord work much better if the patient is related to the donor, new European research shows.

The cord supplies doctors with an unadulterated source of "stem cells" which can be used to grow fresh blood. Given the difficulty of obtaining bone marrow transplants these are growing in popularity for treatment of serious blood diseases such as leukaemia.

The researchers from the Eurocord group asked 45 treatment centres across Europe to report on how many patients survived for a year after treatment.

Their results, in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, show that of those patients who received transplants from related donors 63 per cent survived. When the donor was not a relative, just 29 per cent of patients survived.

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Having a serious viral infection in childhood may increase the risks of developing schizophrenia and other mental illnesses later in life.

The study in Finland involved more than 11,000 children of which less than 130 went on to develop a serious psychiatric condition.

Reporting in the International Journal of Epidemiology, researchers say that children who suffered an infection of the brain were nearly five times more likely than others to go on to develop schizophrenia in adulthood.

However the numbers involved in reaching this conclusion were small. Just four patients with schizophrenia had suffered a childhood infection compared with a total of 140 children in the sample.

The research follows earlier findings which have linked flu in pregnancy to mental illness in the children born subsequently. And combined with new flu vaccines it could lead to tougher recommendations for the treatment of children and pregnant women.

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