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200 Child Deaths From Flu Already: Don’t Make This Vaccine Mistake

Flu season peaks in February and experts recommend getting vaccinated by mid-November for optimal protection. High-risk groups include young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and those with underlying health conditions.

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200 Child Deaths From Flu Already: Don't Make This Vaccine Mistake


United States: Flu season marks the onset of December and reaches its peak activity in February; therefore, the “optimal time” to get vaccinated is heading into the season, as Dr. Céline Gounder, who is the CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News said.

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According to Gounder, “Before Thanksgiving, say mid-November, you want to get your flu shot, your COVID shot. But that said, whenever you can get it done, you should get it done, even if it’s a bit earlier than that,” CBS News reported.

However, as the expert noted, holding off before the beginning of the holiday would be beneficial as it generally takes almost two weeks to generate immunity after vaccination.

Who is at greater risk?

The reports suggest that those who are at the maximum risk for flu include:

  • Children who “In particular, kids under the age of 5 are at risk,” Gounder said.
  • Adults 65 and above
  • Pregnant women, which is “a group that’s often forgotten about,” Gounder said.
  • People with existing medical conditions
  • Immunocompromised people

Rising deaths in the flu season

As the CDC reported, this flu season brought almost 200 children deaths, where most of them were eligible for vaccines but did not get one.

Moreover, despite federal officers’ persistent warnings, there has been a drop in the overall vaccination rate, leading to a rise in pediatric flu deaths.

According to Gounder, “Unfortunately, coming out of the COVID pandemic, we have seen a rise in vaccine skepticism, people less willing to get vaccinated, and as we’ve seen with the pediatric flu vaccines, that has led to increased hospitalizations as well as, unfortunately, some deaths,” CBS News reported.

Difference between vaccine shot and spray

With the recent approval of FluMist nasal spray, it has become the first “self-administered” influenza vaccine in the US.

However, the vaccine will not be available at home until the beginning of the next flu season.

As Gounder said, the difference between shot and spray is that FluMist is “not as effective as the shots that you can get.”

According to her, “The shots historically range from 20 to 60% effective, depending on how good the match is — that’s still pretty good,” CBS News reported.

“The FluMist is maybe around 25% effective in preventing severe disease, but for people who just can’t be bothered to go in and get a flu shot, who really hate needles, it does give you an option to at least reduce your risk a little,” she added.

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Bakery Defies FDA: Sesame Labels Cause Controversial Allergy Chaos!

Bimbo Bakeries USA is openly defying FDA regulations by continuing to label certain products as containing sesame, even when they don’t, asserting that this practice protects consumers with allergies.

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Bakery Defies FDA: Sesame Labels Cause Controversial Allergy Chaos!


United States: In a recent challenge to the FDA, the large US bakery has been asked to stop mislabeling its products with sesame, a known allergy trigger, when it is absent.

Details of the Situation

Bimbo Bakeries USA, known for brands like Sara Lee, Entenmann’s, and Ball Park, is disregarding an FDA warning from June that flagged several of its products as ‘misbranded’ due to the misleading sesame and tree nut labels.

In their response, Bimbo officials stated they would not change their sesame labeling practices. They explained that their production plants create both sesame-containing and non-sesame products, leading to their decision to label all items consistently to prevent potential allergic reactions.

In a July 1 letter shared with the Center for Science, the company claimed, “We believe our approach is the most protective of sesame-allergic consumers,” according to AP News.

Further Statements from Officials

Bimbo representatives reiterated this stance in an email, describing their labeling strategy as a “conservative approach” for consistent branding across nationally distributed products.

The FDA has yet to comment publicly, indicating they will handle the matter directly with the company. The agency retains the authority to initiate legal actions, including product recalls and penalties against companies that ignore their warnings.

Food safety advocates, including CSPI, express concerns over the ongoing standoff, highlighting confusion for over 33 million consumers with food allergies and limited options for more than 1.6 million individuals with sesame allergies.

Sung Poblete, CEO of the nonprofit group FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education), emphasized the necessity of precise food labeling for consumer safety, stating, “We depend on accurate labeling to make informed food choices.”

This conflict arises from a 2023 federal law mandating that any food sold in the US must be labeled if it contains sesame.

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Are Self-Electrifying Sutures Key to Faster Recovery? Know the Truth

Researchers have developed a groundbreaking biodegradable suture that generates electrical stimulation during tension, enhancing wound healing by promoting cell migration and reducing bacterial growth.

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Are Self-Electrifying Sutures Key to Faster Recovery?


United States: Researchers have developed a suture that when subjected to tension – like in a moving patient – causes electrical stimulation of the wound.

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According to Dr. Chengyi Hou, who is a co-author of the research from Donghua University, “This electrical stimulation suture is a fully biodegradable and self-electrified material. It helps wound healing without any additional approaches, [such as] using external electric devices.” the Guardian reported.

They found that electrical stimulation enhances wound healing in various ways, such as by stimulating the migration of cells toward the affected region.

The team described in the journal Nature Communications that the new sutures have a magnesium core filament, which is then coated with biodegradable polymer.

More details of the study

This is accommodated within a casing that is also made out of another biodegradable material.

The team proceeded to experiment with the suture using artificial muscle fibers and rats with open injuries.

The conclusions derived from the study are as follows: when the sutures are stretched, and the core moves within the sheath, tightly packed elements are shoved against one another, and the process generates sparks, similar to when the balloon is rubbed on hair, for instance.

Hou said, “The suture generates electricity by creating opposite charges on the suture’s middle and outer shell when muscles relax and contract, based on the triboelectric effect,” the Guardian reported.

“This generates an electric field at the wound site to accelerate wound healing,” he added.

Whereas it might put stress and reduce how well the conventional stitches perform, it is good for the new sutures.

Using petri dish culture, the team used the percentage rate at which cells migrated into the subsequent layer around the sutures and the rate of cell divisions as electrical stimulation of nodes enhanced cell migratory rates and proliferation higher than when the field was not applied, and that it retarded bacterial growth.

The researchers also conducted some surgeries in rats and saw that muscles incised in the rats and sutured with the new sutures healed faster and had less bacterial quantity than those sutured with usual bioabsorbable sutures, something the researchers note can help reduce post-surgery infection risks.

After ten days, the wound was nearly fully recovered – although it was less than the result when no suture or any type of bioabsorbable suture was employed.

He noted that the team is also using the suture on human beings to conduct clinical trials about the suture; the new type of suture has the same cost as the commercial absorbable sutures.

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Brain and Insomnia: Scientists Discover Disturbing Patterns!

Outcomes for some kinds of insomnia could be improved with tailored treatments based on specific brain structures; understanding these variations may help researchers develop more effective therapies for the millions of people affected.

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Brain and Insomnia: Scientists Discover Disturbing Patterns!


United States: Only recently has a new light been shed on the analysis of the neurological differences between different kinds of insomnia published in Biological Psychiatry.

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The research found that structural brain connectivity — how different parts of the brain are connected – is different in all four of the five insomnia subtypes.

These findings may be the impetus for more focused treatments for people with insomnia and, eventually, for targeted therapies that can be personalized for a person’s brain anatomy.

About 10 percent of adult Europeans suffer from insomnia and comprise a large proportion of the population.

Sleep is worse if people have insomnia, which is trouble sleeping and waking up too early, which interferes with everyday life.

Insomnia and beyond

Beyond the immediate pang of discomfort, insomnia is linked to increased risk of other health conditions, including cardiovascular and heart disease, obesity, and mental health disorders like depression and anxiety.

Insomnia is commonly treated with cognitive behavioral therapy, but this doesn’t necessarily help most people, even in combination with medication.

Scientists believe that a better understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying insomnia would help improve treatment outcomes.

However, previous neuroimaging has shown some clues offering that loss of sleep is related to the disturbance of high-level brain networks like the default mode network and the salience network.

Despite that, findings have thus far been inconsistent. The reason might be that there is considerable variation among individuals with insomnia – a disorder that may not have one cause or cure for all.

In the recent past, researchers identified five different insomnia subtypes, each of which has its own profile of distress levels and personality traits.

However, unlike the sleep patterns alone, those subtypes were identified through a data-driven approach, making the classification more robust. In the current study, we sought to determine whether these subtypes also differ in brain structure.

What more are the experts suggesting?

According to Eus van Someren, the study author and a professor at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, “When we started to think about subtypes years ago, we considered that different combinations of minor deviations (towards the sides of the normal distribution) in brain circuits could have a final common path of a brain vulnerable to insomnia,” psypost.org reported.

“At that time, no big database with MRI data on people with insomnia was available. Therefore, we tried to assess proxy measures for individual differences in brain circuits,” Someren continued.

Moreover, “We selected a large number of life history, mood, and personality trait questionnaires that had been associated with individual differences in brain circuits. We implemented them on our website ‘slaapregister.nl’ for volunteers to fill out. Thousands of people completed the long list of questionnaires. We used data-driven clustering approaches to find specific profiles of scores on the questionnaires within the people that suffered from insomnia.”

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