Medicine News

No doubt diagnosis is the important first step to effective treatment of any disease and it really doesn't need any explanation why. As a result, various diagnostic procedures – from common medical tests that include blood, urine, fecal, saliva tests to electrocardiogram, medical images, hydrogen breath test and needle biopsy help to recognize the clinical cause of illness and point the ways to cope with it. The fact is there is no better way than correct and made at early stage medical diagnosis to treat practically any disease successfully.



Such modern method of early diagnosis as Diagnostic Medical Sonography (DMS), also known as ultrasound, lets to diagnose a variety of conditions and to assess internal organ damage. It is easy-to-use and less expensive than other medical imaging methods. Looking for a job in the medical field, Ultrasound Degree, learning ultrasound equipment for creating internal body images is perfect solution for getting daily job in clinics and hospitals as a diagnostic ultrasound technician and for subsequent upgrowth and development in your career. So, you can find a school right now.

By the way names of researchers who published the first paper on medical ultrasonic are Doctor Karl Theodore Dussik from Austria and we thanks them. It had happened in far 1942 then till now ultrasound investigation is one of the most important and widely spread examinations that help physicians to discover and evaluate symptoms of various diseases.

Flu is a serious contagious disease. Each year in the United States, on average, more than 200,000 people are hospitalized and 36,000 people die from seasonal flu complications.

This flu season could be worse because there is a new and very different influenza virus causing illness called 2009 H1N1. CDC expects both 2009 H1N1 flu and seasonal flu to cause illness, hospital stays and deaths this season and is preparing for an early and possibly severe flu season.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urges you to take the following actions to protect yourself and others from influenza (the flu):


Take time to get a flu vaccine.
CDC recommends a yearly seasonal flu vaccine as the first and most important step in protecting against seasonal influenza.
While there are many different flu viruses, the seasonal flu vaccine protects against the three seasonal viruses that research suggests will be most common.
Vaccination is especially important for people at high risk of serious flu complications, including young children, pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease and people 65 years and older.
Seasonal flu vaccine also is important for health care workers, and other people who live with or care for high risk people to keep from making them sick.
A seasonal vaccine will not protect you against 2009 H1N1.
A new vaccine against 2009 H1N1 is being made.
People at greatest risk for 2009 H1N1 infection include children, pregnant women, and people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease.
Ask your doctor if you should get a 2009 H1N1 vaccine.


Take everyday preventive actions.
Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.*
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs spread this way.
Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
If you are sick with flu-like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.)
While sick, limit contact with others as much as possible to keep from infecting them.
Follow public health advice regarding school closures, avoiding crowds and other measures to keep our distance from each other to lessen the spread of flu.


Take flu antiviral drugs if your doctor recommends them.
If you get seasonal or 2009 H1N1 flu, antiviral drugs can treat the flu.
Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaled powder) that fight against the flu by keeping flu viruses from reproducing in your body.
The priority use for antiviral drugs this season is to treat people who are very sick (hospitalized) or people who are sick with flu-like symptoms and who are at increased risk of serious flu complications, such as pregnant women, young children, people 65 and older and people with chronic health conditions. (Most people have been able to recover at home from 2009 H1N1 without needing medical care and the same is true of seasonal flu.)
Antiviral drugs can make illness milder and shorten the time you are sick. They may also prevent serious flu complications.
Antiviral drugs are not sold over-the-counter and are different from antibiotics.
For treatment, antiviral drugs work best if started within the first 2 days of symptoms.
Flu-like symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people may also have vomiting and diarrhea. People may be infected with the flu, including 2009 H1N1 and have respiratory symptoms without a fever.
Visit the CDC 2009 H1N1 website to find out what to do if you get sick with the flu and how to care for someone at home who is sick with the flu.

Please visit http://www.cdc.gov/ for more information

Accordint to usatoday.com vaccine for the H1N1 flu won't be widely available until November — a month later than first thought — and some states are expecting delays to last until December.
"Ten days ago or two weeks ago it was thought end of October" that lots of vaccine would be available, said Donn Moyer of the Washington State Department of Health. Now health officials are hearing "the beginning or middle of November."


The CDC's Anne Schuchat said Tuesday that states had ordered 10.8 million of the 12.8 million available doses of vaccine. The CDC had expected to receive up to 40 million doses by the end of October, but last week it announced the number would be closer to 28 million to 30 million. "By November, there will be a lot of vaccine out there," Schuchat said. The agency says it expects to eventually have vaccine for everyone who wants it.

"I wish we had more than we have right now, but I do want to let you know that we do have more coming out every day," Schuchat said.

"The vaccine's in a race against the virus, and right now the virus is winning," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "I just had three meetings canceled because people were sick."

It's not that the government hasn't done everything it could to get the vaccine made, he said. "They've just overpromised on when the vaccine is going to get here."

According to health officials child deaths from the new virus, identified in April as a global epidemic and named swine flu were 'shooting up" in the United States. The CDC doesn't have an exact count of all swine flu deaths and hospitalizations, but existing reports suggest more than 600 have died and more than 9,000 have been hospitalized. Health officials believe millions of Americans have caught the virus. The regular flu kills between 46 and 88 children a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That suggests deaths from the new H1N1 virus could dramatically outpace children's deaths from seasonal flu, if swine flu continues to spread as it has.

CDC officials say 10 more states, a total of 37, now have widespread swine flu. A week ago, reports suggested that cases might be leveling off and even falling in some areas of the country, but that did not turn out to be an enduring national trend.

"We are seeing more illness, more hospitalizations, and more deaths," the CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat said at a press conference Friday.

It's not enough to eat and warry less to avoid sickness and to prolong life but health Insurance is also important part of happy long live. According homenews report lack of health insurance kills nearly 45,000 Americans every yearA new report posted online by Harvard Medical School on Thursday shows that a lack of health insurance can be attributed to more deaths every year than kidney disease. The study, titled Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults, shows that the lack of health insurance coverage could be tied to the death of as many as 44,789 Americans per year in the United States. The report added that those without health insurance - which they identified as approximately 46 million Americans - had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance - a rate that has risen significantly after standing only at 25 percent in 1993.

The increased health risk was attributed to findings that showed those with insurance were "more likely" to follow through on recommended medical screenings and appointments to treat chronic conditions and were "less likely to suffer undiagnosed chronic conditions or to receive substandard medical care" than those without coverage.

In the report's summary it suggested that, despite the "thorny" political debate surrounding the idea, health professionals' push for a universal healthcare plan ensuring coverage could have a very positive impact.

"If you extend coverage, you can save lives,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard and one of the study's authors, according to the New York Times.

"Health insurance can only make you healthier if you have access to care," she added.

After the report's posting online, its findings will be published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, according to the Times.

The American noncommercial organization Environmental Working Group (EWG) has published a special instruction for cosmetics consumers where specified toxic components which should be avoided in cosmetics, make-up and cosmetics for children.
To avoid negative reactions to a skin and not to destroy the health, it is necessary, first of all, to be able to read labels in that part where the ingredients of cosmetics are listed. Search as a part of cosmetics the names of materials which are considered as the toxic.
LABELS' READING RULES
Components which it is necessary to avoid
1. Begin with the end of list where the preservatives usually are. Avoid to buy cosmetics with the following ingredients:
- Components in which termination there is a word "paraben": methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben etc.

- DMDM hydantoin

- Imidsazolidinyl urea

- Methylchloroisothiazolinone

- Methylisothiazolinone

- Triclosan

- Triclocarban

- Triethanolamine (or "TEA")

2. Then look in the beginning of the list. Avoid buying products which contain ingredients beginning with an abbreviation "PEG". Then search for substances which are ending with "-eth" laureth, ceteareth etc.
3. At the very end of the list find designations "FRAGRANCE/PARFUM," "FD&C", "D&C" and "CI"

COSMETICS FOR CHILDREN
1. Avoid using children's powders, especially for newborns

2. Read labels. Do not use cosmetics which structure includes following components: - 2-Bromo-2-Nitropropane-1, 3 Diol.
- BHA

- Boric acid

- Sodium borate

- Dibutyl phthalate & toluene

- DMDM Hydantoin

- Oxybenzone

- Triclosan
Besides rules of reading of labels, EWG makes recommendations for choice a various kind of cosmetics, stopping on what components should be avoided.
Shampoos and conditioners:
- DMDM Hydantoin - causes an allergy and irritation can form nitrosamines, provoking cancer occurrence.
- Fragrance - cause allergic reactions, can contain the toxic substances destroying nervous and hormonal systems.
- Ceteareth - and PEG are petrochemicals which can contain the various impurity causing cancer tumors.
Shower gels, personal hygiene products:
- Triclosan - destroys endocrine system, in contact with tap water forms toxic products.
- DMDM Hydantoin - - causes an allergy and irritation can form nitrosamines, provoking cancer occurrence.
- Fragrance cause allergic reactions can contain the toxic substances destroying nervous and hormonal systems.
Toothpaste:
- Fluoride is toxic for nervous system, causes dimness of the teeth.
- Triclosan - destroys endocrine system, in contact with tap water forms toxic products.
- PEG is petrochemicals which can contain the various impurity causing cancer tumors.
Sun screeners
- Oxybenzone - under the influence of sunlight and ultra-violet beams can make substances which cause an allergy or cancer tumors.
- DMDM Hydantoin - causes an allergy and irritation can form nitrosamines, provoking cancer occurrence.
- Triethanolamine is serious allergen. Can contain carcinogenic substances.
- Avoid buying the sun screeners packed in sprays.
- Use as sun-protection creams which contain not less than 7 % zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.
Face skin cosmetics
-DMDM Hydantoin
- Fragrance
- Ceteareth and PEG
- Hydroquinone - causes irritation, contains substances harmful to an organism.
- Do not use anti-ageing cream if they contain: Lactic acid, Glycolic acid, AHA, BHA.

Via Environmental Working Group (EWG)

It is not so often possible to meet an immunology mentioned along with type 2 diabetes.
However scientists from Harvard Medical School researchers have gone on this way, applying a medicine against an allergy to adiposity and diabetes treatment. The medications Zaditor and ?romolyn stabilize a population of inflammatory immune cells called mast cells.

Other research has shown that regulatory T cell; provide communication between metabolic and immune systems, being responsible for inflammatory processes in fat tissue. The fat tissue at mice with stability to insulin differs decrease in level of these cells, in comparison with high quantity of macrophages (they develop the inflammatory substances burning hostile cells).
At type 1 diabetes immune cells attack pancreas cells, reducing insulin generation. At type 2 diabetes body cells, as a result of metabolism infringement, become deaf to the signals of insulin, stimulating consumption of glucose.
Mast cells facilitate healing of the damaged tissues, allowing improving of the blood-groove. However their surplus leads to leak molecular "garbage" into the tissue, causing inflammatory processes. Still earlier scientific have found out that the fat tissue of mice with a diabetes contains surplus of these cells.
For hypothesis check they began to give to mice allergy drugs, having divided rodents into four groups: control, group of a healthy food and group of two preparations, in one of which mice also was limited in a food. The third group has considerably dumped weight and has improved indicators of stability to insulin. In the fourth group the absolute recovery was observed. Then scientists have bred mice, whose bodies do not generate mast cells, and it has appeared that they were steady against a diabetes and adiposity.
Harvard scientists have defined that the lack regulatory T cells in fat tissue of mice with diabetes is the seed of disease. Their quantity was in inverse proportion to quantity of macrophages. Now they assume that the inflammation caused by macrophages, results of resistance to insulin. Regulatory T cells, in turn, serve as an inflammation regulator with normal weight of a body.

In a drive to inoculate people against swine flu before winter, many European governments say they will fast-track the testing of a vaccine, arousing concern among some experts about safety and proper doses.
The European Medicines Agency, the EU's top drug regulatory body, is accelerating the approval process for swine flu vaccine, and countries such as Britain, Greece, France and Sweden say they'll start using the vaccine after it's greenlighted - possibly within weeks.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization's flu chief, warned about the potential dangers of untested vaccines, although he stopped short of criticizing Europe's approach outright.
"One of the things which cannot be compromised is the safety of vaccines," he said Friday. "There are certain areas where you can make economies, perhaps, but certain areas where you simply do not try to make any economies."
The WHO's experts are assured; that the pandemic of a swine flu will touch all countries of the world is only a matter of time.
At the same time the first tests of a new vaccine against a swine flu on volunteers have begin in Australia on Wednesday, on July, 22nd. As the representative of Australian pharmaceutical company CSL Ltd informs, 240 volunteers from 18 till 64 years were recruited to testing.

Two injections of a vaccine within three weeks will be given to participants of tests, and then patients will pass regular analyses of blood. So physicians can define whether an organism develops the suitable immune answer to a virus. According to the physicians, specific virus A/H1N1 will demand a double dose of a vaccine, that guarantee the sufficient level of the immune answer with more probability

Everyone wants to keep fit and healthy, young and beautiful. We try sports, different diets and, of course, diet pills. But with diet pills we have got a huge problem: which pills to choose. We start asking our friends and relatives, we consult our physicians. Our behavior and our motives are easily understandable – we do not want to cause any damage to our health, we want to be fit and stay healthy. Nobody wants to be slim and at the same time to suffer from kidney or digestion problems. That is why it is so important to choose and buy the right diet pills. The pills that will keep you fit and that will not bring any harm to your health. How can one find out which diet pills to choose? The right answer is: to go to Diet Research. The Diet Research specialists have already consulted various medicine and diet experts, have checked the ingredients of different diet pills, and have researched many well-known medical journals in order to help you make the right choice and find your perfect diet pill.

Healthy food is a way to a beautiful skin. The main thing here is harmony and the balanced food. No diet can return the beauty to a skin or support it. Therefore all fashionable diets built on preference of one product more than the others can deprive of you the major nutrients.

Moreover the most dangerous mistakes concerning influence of some products on a skin health have strongly taken roots in our consciousness. So for example representation about that the sweets or fat food cause occurrence of acne is absolutely erroneous. Also wrong to think that fat and fried food by all means lead to increase of level of fat content of a skin or hair. Nobody can guarantee that your skin will become faultlessly beautiful, clean and velvety, if you will eat exclusively cucumbers, grapes, carrot juice and green vegetables. It is important to remember that beauty of a skin defines, first of all, of the genetics, and your gastronomic predilections are not so important, as it is accepted to think. However, if in your diet there are no some major nutrients, you can't avoid problems with a skin.
Vitamins and minerals
Vitamin A is necessary for a skin and eyes health. The best sources of vitamin A: cod-liver oil, carrots, spinach, milk and an egg yolk. If in your diet there is deficit of vitamin A, the skin becomes dry and brakes out in pimples. But you need not also to abuse vitamin A. It causes skin roughness and dryness, a hair fall, increase of sensitivity of lips.

Sensitivity and cracking of lips also arises at deficiency of vitamin B. Vitamin B sources: meat, milk, green vegetables, bean and porridges.
Vitamin C is the major component necessary for health of a skin. Vitamin C contains in all citrus fruits.
Except vitamins, the food also should include minerals.
Iron promotes blood improvement therefore the skin gets a healthy flushes and light.
Iron source - green vegetables, fruit and meat.
Zinc is also very important for skin health .Zinc sours are wheat bran, beef liver, dry lens.

Skin beauty and drinks
Many drinks can do harm to a skin. Alcohol and coffee cause expansion of the small blood vessels located under a skin. Result is the reddening of a skin. Daily use of alcohol causes constant expansion of vessels that leads to occurrence not aesthetic reticulum under a skin. Occurrence of such reticulum can be caused by a number of other reasons: genetics, solar beams, spicy food and action of extreme temperatures.

Food allergy and skin diseases
A food plays a main role in case of two serious skin illnesses - urticaria and eczema.
More often allergic reactions cause milk, eggs and preserved food.

Paracetamol have got to the list of the preparations which release can be shortly forbidden or limited in the USA. The federal expert group has recommended to Food and Drag Administration (FDA) of USA to forbid application of the preparations containing a combination of paracetamol and narcotic analgesics in the country.

More than 100 million such medicines itimes are prescribed annually in the USA. Paracetamol overdose is the leading reason of irreversible damage of a liver. It becomes the reason of 42 thousand hospitalizations and more than 400 fatal cases in the USA annually.
Experts also have recommended FDA to lower the maximum dose of paracetamol in over the counter preparations, such as, Panadol, Theraflu and others, from 500 to 325 milligram's, and to establish the maximum daily dose within 4 000 milligram's. Thus the consultative group has voted against limiting of quantity of tablets of paracetamol in one packing.
According to law FDA is not obliged to follow recommendations of expert group, however in most cases they are carried out, so in the near future it is necessary to expect interdictions and restrictions.
Paracetamol is extremely popular in the USA - in 2005 in the country has been sold 28 billion tablets containing it, that is just about of one dose for four days on each citizen of the country.

Scientists of University of Toronto have proved for the first time that our mood changes color images of visual system literally. So, our mood is capable to change color perception of a brain.


Positive or sad emotions influence work of a visual bark in a brain: when we rejoice, the visual bark incorporates more of the color information and when are afflicted - less, neurologists speak.





Experts used a method of a functional magnetic resonance to study, how the visual bark supervises processes of the touch information in a brain at various moods. The good mood did the world visually more brightly while negative - is dimmer.
To see a life in pink color - this phrase can become now a biological reality.


Positive emotions allow a brain to process visually larger number of visible objects; however researchers notice that this potential can lead to impossibility to concentrate attention.


According to the Canadian psychotherapists, the good mood expands horizons of the visible world, allowing to perceive a reality more globally, with integration prospect.


Side effects of such ability consist in derivation from the important problems demanding a narrow orientation: for example, work with the dangerous equipment or check of luggage of passengers at the airport. However the bad mood focuses our attention more narrowly, disturbing processing of the wide information.

Already France, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Spain have reported about potential new cases in which people had been infected with swine flu and Canada confirmed several new cases. In the U.S., where 20 such infections have been confirmed, federal health officials declared a public-health emergency and are preparing to distribute to state and local agenciesa quarter of the country's 50 million-dose stockpile of antiviral drugs. Time.com reported. Meanwhile, in hard-hit Mexico, where more than 80 people have died from what is believed to be swine flu, the government closed all public schools and canceled hundreds of public events in Mexico City.



First of all is this a flu pandemic?


The influenza virus is constantly mutating. That's why we can't get full immunity to the flu, the way we can to diseases like chicken pox, because there are multiple strains of the flu virus and they change from year to year. However, even though the virus makes us sick, our immune systems can usually muster enough of a response so that the flu is rarely fatal for healthy people.


But every once in awhile, the virus shifts its genetic structure so much that our immune systems offer no protection whatsoever. (This usually happens when a flu virus found in animals - like the avian flu still circulating in Asia - swaps genes with other viruses in a process called reassortment, and jumps to human beings.) A flu pandemic occurs when a new flu virus emerges for which humans have little or no immunity and then spreads easily from person to person around the world. In the 20th century we had two mild flu pandemics, in 1968 and 1957, and the severe "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 40 to 50 million people worldwide.


The WHO has the responsibility of declaring when a new flu pandemic is underway, and to simplify the process, the U.N. body has established six pandemic phases. Thanks to H5N1 avian flu, which has killed 257 people since 2003 but doesn't spread very well from one human to another, we're currently at phase 3. If the WHO upgraded that status to phase 4, which is marked by a new virus that begins to pass easily enough from person to person that we can detect community-sized outbreaks, such a move would effectively mean that we've got a pandemic on our hands.



The truth is that every outbreak is unpredictable, and there's a lot we don't know yet about the new swine flu. There hasn't been a flu pandemic for more than a generation, and there hasn't been a truly virulent pandemic since long before the arrival of mass air transit. We're in terra incognito here. Panic would be counterproductive - especially if it results in knee-jerk reactions like closing international borders, which would only complicate the public-health response. But neither should we downplay our very real vulnerabilities. As Napolitano put it: "This will be a marathon, not a sprint." Be prepared.


Outside of Mexico, the swine flu hasn't looked too serious yet - unlike during the SARS outbreaks of 2003, when an entirely new virus with no obvious treatment took the world by surprise. In the U.S., the normal flu season is winding down, which should make it easier for public-health officials to pick out swine flu cases from run-of-the-mill respiratory disease. And there are simple things that people can do to protect themselves, like practicing better hygiene (wash hands frequently and cover mouth and nose when sneezing) and staying away from public places or traveling if they feel sick. "There's a role for everyone to play when an outbreak is ongoing," said Besser.

But the truth is that every outbreak is unpredictable, and there's a lot we don't know yet about the new swine flu. There hasn't been a flu pandemic for more than a generation, and there hasn't been a truly virulent pandemic since long before the arrival of mass air transit. We're in terra incognito here. Panic would be counterproductive - especially if it results in knee-jerk reactions like closing international borders, which would only complicate the public-health response. But neither should we downplay our very real vulnerabilities. As Napolitano put it: "This will be a marathon, not a sprint." Be prepared.

via Time.com

According World Health Organisation the United States Government has reported seven confirmed human cases of Swine Influenza A/H1N1 in the USA (five in California and two in Texas) and nine suspect cases. All seven confirmed cases had mild Influenza-Like Illness (ILI), with only one requiring brief hospitalization. No deaths have been reported.



A strain of flu never seen before has killed up to 60 people in Mexico and also appeared in the United States.

Mexico's government said at least 20 people have died of the flu and it may also be responsible for 40 other deaths.

It shut down schools and canceled major public events in Mexico City to try to prevent more deaths in the sprawling, overcrowded capital. Authorities said they had enough antiviral medicine to treat about 1,000 suspected cases reported so far.

The World Health Organization said tests showed the virus from 12 of the Mexican patients was the same genetically as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in eight people in California and Texas.


Wikipadia wxplanes H1N1 virus as a subtype of the species Influenza A virus. The "H" refers to the Hemagglutinin protein, and the "N" refers to the Neuraminidase protein. H1N1 has mutated into various strains including the Spanish Flu strain (now extinct in the wild), mild human flu strains, endemic pig strains, and various strains found in birds. A variant of H1N1 was responsible for the Spanish flu pandemic that killed some 50 million to 100 million people worldwide from 1918 to 1919.[1] A different variant exists in pig populations.

There are everyday actions people can take to stay healthy.

Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
Try to avoid close contact with sick people.

Influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people.
If you get sick, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

Man's brain starts to decline in late 20s, studies say. Yeas, a new study on aging indicates that reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualization begin to decline in that age, the BBC reports.
Professor Timothy Salthouse of Virginia University, who worked on the research, said: "Results converge on a conclusion that some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begin in healthy, educated adults when they are in their 20s and 30s."



In the study, the BBC says, Salthouse had his subjects solve puzzles, recall words and details of stories, and spot patterns in letters and symbols. In nine out of 12 tests, the BBC says, 22 was the average age for peak performance. Marked decline began at 27.

It means that just the findings could mean that therapies designed to slow or reverse the aging process may need to start much earlier.

A controversial Italian doctor Severino Antinori says he has successfully cloned three babies that are now alive and well in eastern Europe, Daily New reported.

"I helped give birth to three children with the human cloning technique," said gynocologist Severino Antinori in an interview with the Italian publication Oggi weekly. "It involved two boys and a girl who are nine years old today.

They were born healthy and they are in excellent health now," he said.



Italian doctor Severino Antinori known for his work allowing post-menopausal women to have children has claimed that in an interview to Oggi weekly (Roma).

He did not provide proof of his claims, but said cells from the three fathers, who were sterile, allowed the cloning to be carried out.

The women's egg cells were impregnated in a laboratory through a method called “nuclear transfer,” he said.

Antinori, who became famous after allowing a 63-year-old woman to have a child in 1994, said “respect for the families' privacy does not allow me to go further.”

He added that the method used was “an improvement” over the technique used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996.

Reminded by the journalist that such cloning is prohibited in heavily Catholic Italy, the doctor said he preferred to “speak of innovative therapies” or “genetic recoding” rather than cloning.