diseases

WEIGHT loss injections and weight loss surgery are both effective ways to slim down.

But one may lead to longer life and fewer serious health problems, say scientists.

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A large Cleveland Clinic study found people with obesity and type 2 diabetes who undergo weight loss surgery (known as bariatric or metabolic surgery) live longer and face fewer health risks compared with those treated with GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) receptor agonist weight loss jabs.

Patients who underwent weight loss surgery lost more weight, achieved better blood sugar control, and relied less on diabetes and heart medications over 10 years.

“Even with today’s best medicines, metabolic surgery offers unique and lasting benefits for people with obesity and diabetes,” said Ali Aminian, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Bariatric & Metabolic Institute and primary investigator of the study.

“The benefits we observed went beyond weight loss. Surgery was linked to fewer heart problems, less kidney disease, and even lower rates of diabetes-related eye damage.”

GLP-1 receptor agonists are a class of medications used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity.

There’s been a sharp rise of their use in the UK, driven primarily by use for weight loss through private prescribing.

Both surgery and jabs improve cardiovascular health and metabolism.

But at the end of the study that followed 3,932 adults with diabetes and obesity who received care at Cleveland Clinic for up to 10 years, patients who underwent surgery had a:

• 32 per cent lower risk of death
• 25 per cent lower risk of major health problems (such as heart attack, heart failure, or stroke)
• 47 per cent lower risk of serious kidney disease
• 54 per cent lower risk of diabetes-related eye damage (retinopathy)

On average, people who had weight loss surgery lost 21.6 per cent of their body weight over 10 years, while those on weight loss jabs lost 6.8 per cent.

Hemoglobin A1c, a marker of average blood sugar, improved more with surgery than with GLP-1 medicines.

And patients who had surgery required fewer prescriptions for diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol.

“Even in the era of these powerful new drugs to treat obesity and diabetes, metabolic surgery may provide additional benefits, including a survival advantage,” said Steven Nissen, Chief Academic Officer of the Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic and senior author of the study.

“Our findings indicate that surgery should remain an important treatment option for obesity and diabetes,” said Dr Aminian.

“These long-term benefits are harder to achieve with GLP-1 medicines alone, as many patients stop using the medications over time.”

There were some limitations to the study – it was observational rather than a randomised comparison of drugs and surgery.

It also didn’t focus exclusively on the newest and most effective GLP-1 medicines.

The researchers said future studies should directly compare surgery with newer GLP-1 medicines, such as semaglutide and tirzepatide to guide treatment decisions.

HUMAN remains potentially containing contagious diseases are slowly being revealed on a creepy UK island.

While there are some spooky islands in the UK, this haunting isle was a former burial site and is off-limits to the public.

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Deadman’s Island is a small island in the River Medway estuary of Kent and has long been the subject of gruesome tales.

More than 200 years ago, the island was used as a burial ground for convicts who died aboard prison ships, known as hulks, anchored nearby in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Many succumbed to horrendous conditions with regular outbreaks of disease sweeping through the ships.

Hundreds were buried in unmarked wooden coffins, six feet under the mud.

Trevor Mason, who runs Deadman’s Island social media page, told the BBC: “Unfortunately in many cases sailors were sick, and in some cases they died, so while the boats were moored here those who succumbed to those contagious diseases were buried.”

“The sailors who would have been living on board those ships must have been in horrendous conditions – not being able to come off the ship to go [on] land and see their families etc, and the risk of catching a disease from their fellow sailor.”

He added that an archaeologist revealed some of the remains may still contain contagious diseases.

For many years the grim finds remained invisible to the human eye.

But now, changing sea levels and erosion are bringing the human remains to the surface.

It’s not uncommon for them to be washed out into the Thames Estuary or discovered on the Kent coastline.

In 2016 the remains of more than 200 humans were found on the island, believed to belong to men and boys who had died on board the floating jails.

The uninhabited mudbank is owned by Natural England, who lease it to two people.

Visitors are banned from the island, though camera crews are sometimes permitted.

Human bones are littered among the shells, while coffins that were once six feet under have risen to the surface, threatening to expose their contents.

As well as a graveyard of bones, the protected wetland also serves as an important breeding and nesting site for birds.

The Sun paid a visit to the hidden UK island last year where you can only visit by kayak.

It was said that local fisherman spotted human ghosts calling out to them to come and save them.

Historians have often been left open-mouthed as they continue to uncover skulls, ribs and jawbones on the island.

Previous footage shows dozens of human remains scaled in barnacles and littering the sludgy banks.

What looks like it could come straight out of a horror film, the truth behind the creepy area was revealed back in 2017.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — In the time before widespread vaccination, death often came early.

Devastating infectious diseases ran rampant in America, killing millions of children and leaving others with lifelong health problems. These illnesses were the main reason why nearly 1 in 5 children in 1900 never made it to their 5th birthday.

Over the next century, vaccines virtually wiped out long-feared scourges like polio and measles and drastically reduced the toll of many others. Today, however, some preventable, contagious diseases are making a comeback as vaccine hesitancy — often fed by misinformation — pushes immunization rates down. And well-established vaccines are facing suspicion even from public officials, including the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist.

“This concern, this hesitancy, these questions about vaccines are a consequence of the great success of the vaccines — because they eliminated the diseases,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “If you’re not familiar with the disease, you don’t respect or even fear it. And therefore you don’t value the vaccine.”

Anti-vaccine activists even portray the shots as a threat, focusing on the rare risk of serious side effects while ignoring the far larger risks posed by the diseases — and years of real-world data that experts say prove the vaccines are safe.

Some Americans know the reality of these preventable diseases all too well. For them, news of measles outbreaks and rising whooping cough cases brings back terrible memories of lives forever changed — and a longing to spare others from similar pain.

Getting rubella while pregnant

With a mother’s practiced, guiding hand, 80-year-old Janith Farnham helped steer her 60-year-old daughter’s walker through a Sioux Falls art center. They stopped at a painting of a cow wearing a hat.

Janith pointed to the hat, then to her daughter Jacque’s Minnesota Twins cap. Jacque did the same.

“That’s so funny!” Janith said, leaning in close to say the words in sign language too.

Jacque was born with congenital rubella syndrome, which can cause a host of issues including hearing impairment, eye problems, heart defects and intellectual disabilities. There was no vaccine against rubella back then, and Janith contracted the viral illness very early in the pregnancy, when she had up to a 90% chance of giving birth to a baby with the syndrome.

Janith recalled knowing “things weren’t right” almost immediately. The baby wouldn’t respond to sounds or look at anything but lights. She didn’t like to be held close. Her tiny heart sounded like it purred — evidence of a problem that required surgery at 4 months old.

Janith did all she could to help Jacque thrive, sending her to the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind and using skills she honed as a special education teacher. She and other parents of children with the syndrome shared insights in a support group.

Meanwhile, the condition kept taking its toll. As a young adult, Jacque developed diabetes, glaucoma and autistic behaviors. Eventually, arthritis set in.

Today, Jacque lives in an adult residential home a short drive from Janith’s place. Above her bed is a net overflowing with stuffed animals. On a headboard shelf are photo books Janith created, filled with memories such as birthday parties and trips to Mt. Rushmore.

Jacque’s days typically begin with an insulin shot and breakfast before she heads off to a day program. She gets together with her mom four or five days a week. They often hang out at Janith’s town home, where Jacque has another bedroom decorated with her own artwork and quilts Janith sewed for her. Jacque loves playing with Janith’s dog, watching sports on television and looking up things on her iPad.

Janith marvels at Jacque’s sense of humor, gratefulness, curiosity and affectionate nature despite all she’s endured. Jacque is generous with kisses and often signs “double I love yous” to family, friends and new people she meets.

“When you live through so much pain and so much difficulty and so much challenge, sometimes I think: Well, she doesn’t know any different,” Janith said.

Given what her family has been through, Janith believes younger people are being selfish if they choose not to get their children the MMR shot against measles, mumps and rubella.

“It’s more than frustrating. I mean, I get angry inside,” she said. “I know what can happen, and I just don’t want anybody else to go through this.”

Consequences of delaying vaccine

More than half a century has passed, but Patricia Tobin still vividly recalls getting home from work, opening the car door and hearing her mother scream. Inside the house, her little sister Karen lay unconscious on the bathroom floor.

It was 1970, and Karen was 6. She’d contracted measles shortly after Easter. Though an early vaccine was available, it wasn’t required for school in Miami where they lived. Karen’s doctor discussed immunizing the first-grader, but their mother didn’t share his sense of urgency.

“It’s not that she was against it,” Tobin said. “She just thought there was time.”

Then came a measles outbreak. Karen — whom Tobin described as a “very endearing, sweet child” who would walk around the house singing — quickly became very sick. The afternoon she collapsed in the bathroom, Tobin, then 19, called the ambulance. Karen never regained consciousness.

“She immediately went into a coma and she died of encephalitis,” said Tobin, who stayed at her bedside in the hospital. “We never did get to speak to her again.”

Today, all states require that children get certain vaccines to attend school. But a growing number of people are making use of exemptions allowed for medical, religious or philosophical reasons. Vanderbilt’s Schaffner said fading memories of measles outbreaks were exacerbated by a fraudulent, retracted study claiming a link between the MMR shot and autism.

The result? Most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

“I’m very upset by how cavalier people are being about the measles,” Tobin said. “I don’t think that they realize how destructive this is.”

Polio changed a life twice

One of Lora Duguay’s earliest memories is lying in a hospital isolation ward with her feverish, paralyzed body packed in ice. She was 3 years old.

“I could only see my parents through a glass window. They were crying and I was screaming my head off,” said Duguay, 68. “They told my parents I would never walk or move again.”

It was 1959, and Duguay, of Clearwater, Fla., had polio. It mostly preyed on children and was one of the most feared diseases in the U.S., experts say, causing some terrified parents to keep children inside and avoid crowds during epidemics.

Given polio’s visibility, the vaccine against it was widely and enthusiastically welcomed. But the early vaccine that Duguay got was only about 80% to 90% effective. Not enough people were vaccinated or protected yet to stop the virus from spreading.

Duguay initially defied her doctors. After intensive treatment and physical therapy, she walked and even ran — albeit with a limp. She got married, raised a son and worked as a medical transcriptionist.

But in her early 40s, she noticed she couldn’t walk as far as she used to. A doctor confirmed she was in the early stages of post-polio syndrome, a neuromuscular disorder that worsens over time.

One morning, she tried to stand up and couldn’t move her left leg.

After two weeks in a rehab facility, she started painting to stay busy. Eventually, she joined arts organizations and began showing and selling her work. Art “gives me a sense of purpose,” she said.

These days, she can’t hold up her arms long enough to create big oil paintings at an easel. So she pulls her wheelchair up to an electric desk to paint on smaller surfaces such as stones and petrified wood.

The disease that changed her life twice is no longer a widespread problem in the country.

So many children get the vaccine — which is far more effective than earlier versions — that it doesn’t just protect individuals but it prevents occasional cases that arrive in the U.S. from spreading further. “Herd immunity” keeps everyone safe by preventing outbreaks that can sicken the vulnerable.

But after three decades of eradication, the U.S. has seen isolated polio outbreaks in recent years, typically in communities with low vaccination rates.

After whooping cough, ‘she was gone’

Every night, Katie Van Tornhout rubs a plaster cast of a tiny foot, a vestige of the daughter she lost to whooping cough at just 37 days old.

Callie Grace was born on Christmas Eve 2009 after Van Tornhout and her husband tried five years for a baby. She arrived six weeks early but healthy.

“She loved to have her feet rubbed,” said the 40-year-old Lakeville, Ind., mother. “She was this perfect baby.”

When Callie turned a month old, she began to cough, prompting a visit to the doctor, who didn’t suspect anything serious. By the next night, Callie was doing worse. They went back.

In the waiting room, she became blue and limp in Van Tornhout’s arms. The medical team whisked her away and beat lightly on her back. She took a deep breath and giggled.

Though the giggle was reassuring, the Van Tornhouts went to the ER, where Callie’s skin turned blue again. For a while, medical treatment helped. But at one point she started squirming, and medical staff frantically tried to save her.

“Within minutes,” Van Tornhout said, “she was gone.”

Van Tornhout recalled sitting with her husband and their lifeless baby for four hours, “just talking to her, thinking about what could have been.”

Callie’s viewing was held on her original due date — the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called to confirm she had pertussis, or whooping cough. She was too young for the Tdap vaccine against it and was exposed to someone who hadn’t gotten their booster shot.

Today, next to the cast of Callie’s foot is an urn with her ashes and a glass curio cabinet filled with mementos including baby shoes.

“My kids to this day will still look up and say, ‘Hey, Callie, how are you?’” said Van Tornhout, who has four children and a stepson. “She’s part of all of us every day.”

Van Tornhout now advocates for childhood immunization through the nonprofit Vaccinate Your Family. She also shares her story with people she meets, including a pregnant customer who came into the restaurant her family ran saying she didn’t want to immunize her baby. She later returned with her vaccinated 4-month-old.

“It’s up to us as adults to protect our children — like, that’s what a parent’s job is,” Van Tornhout said. “I watched my daughter die from something that was preventable.… You don’t want to walk in my shoes.”

Ungar writes for the Associated Press.

UN humanitarian agency stresses need for fuel, medical supplies and water in Palestinian territory besieged by Israel.

The United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA) has warned that preventable diseases in Gaza are on the rise and killing civilians due to the lack of desperately needed medicine and clean water.

OCHA in a statement on Thursday said that in the past two weeks, “more than 19,000 cases of acute watery diarrhoea have been recorded, alongside over 200 cases each of acute jaundice syndrome and bloody diarrhoea “.

“These outbreaks are directly linked to the lack of clean water and sanitation in Gaza, underscoring the urgent need for fuel, medical supplies, and water, sanitation and hygiene items to prevent further collapse of the public health system,” the agency added.

Israel’s blockade on fuel entry into Gaza has paralysed the territory’s desalination plants and water system.

The Israeli military has destroyed much of Gaza, displaced nearly the entire population of the territory and placed a suffocating siege on the enclave. Besides the dire humanitarian conditions, the Israeli military continues to kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza daily.

Leading rights groups and UN experts have described the Israeli campaign as a genocide.

OCHA said on Thursday that more than 20 people were killed and about 70 others were injured after a strike on Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.

Medical sources told Al Jazeera Arabic that Israeli attacks killed at least 71 people across Gaza on Thursday.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, at least 56,259 people have been killed, and 132,458 others have been wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

After a more than two-month blockade of essential goods entering Gaza, the Israeli government announced it was allowing aid to re-enter the enclave in May.

However, due to Israeli restrictions, the amount of aid entering has been minimal, with aid agencies referring to it as a “drop in the ocean”.

Much of the aid allowed in has been through the United States and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has been condemned by aid agencies as a “weaponisation” of humanitarian goods.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a video message that the army was being asked to draft a new plan to deliver aid to Gaza after unverified footage showed masked men on top of aid trucks in northern Gaza.

While Israel has claimed the men were Hamas members, Palestinian clan leaders with no affiliation with the group said the masked men were protecting the truck from being looted.

Multiple UN officials have refuted Israel’s claims that Hamas steals humanitarian aid. Last month, Israeli officials acknowledged arming criminal gangs linked to looting the assistance in order to rival Hamas.