Doctors all set to separate conjoined twins: Doctors are all set to separate conjoined twins Sita and Gita. Sita and Gita, over a year old are conjoined twins.

Residing at Bihar, these two sisters are joined at the hip. They have common urinary tract, genital/reproductive system as well as lower intestinal opening.

Having arrived at Delhi's Batra hospital, the twin sisters had to undergo numerous tests - electrolyte, kidney and liver function, and X-ray.

Dr Bagai stated that "The lower part of the twins' spines is joined externally. Neurosurgeons will have to ensure that when separating the two; neither suffers from any neurological deficits in their lower limbs post-surgery."

"We will have to separate the gut. In such children, there is a common passage for stool and a common urinary tract causing infection."

The surgery will take around 12-15 hours. Conjoined twins are rare but they are genetically identical.

Type 2 diabetics newly diagnosed with cancer have an increased risk of dying in the month following their cancer surgery, compared to people who are battling cancer alone.

This was particularly true for diabetics with colorectal or esophageal cancers, Johns Hopkins researchers found.

"Diabetes care should be part of cancer care," said Hsin-Chieh "Jessica" Yeh, co-author of a study appearing in the April issue of Diabetes Care. "All the attention was on the cancer treatment and cancer care, and sometimes we overlook or forget about diabetes. This study suggests that diabetes is important for mortality, so it should be taken care of on top of the cancer care."

But Dr. Martin S. Karpeh Jr., chairman of surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center and director of surgical oncology at Continuum Cancer Centers of New York, both in New York City, pointed out that elevated blood sugar levels -- the prime characteristic of diabetes -- is dangerous for people undergoing any type of surgery.

"The findings are completely consistent with other postoperative studies that have been published in recent years. We've known that an elevated blood sugar and diabetes increase the risk of mortality and complications from surgery," he said. "They focused their analysis on cancer, but the same was found in non-cancer so I think the link is more with diabetes and surgery, regardless of what the reason for the surgery is."

The bottom line for people with type 2 diabetes?

"Maintaining good health going into surgery is extremely important," Karpeh said. "We need to emphasize the importance of good overall health. If you are a diabetic, maintaining a good blood sugar will help lower your risks of a bad outcome following any major surgery."

People with diabetes have a higher risk of several other health conditions, including cancer, particularly of the breast, colorectal, endometrium, liver and pancreas.

Meanwhile, certain lifestyle factors, such as being overweight and sedentary, are risk factors for both type 2 diabetes and cancer.

These authors did a meta-analysis of 15 previous trials that had looked at cancer in diabetic patients.

Individuals who had been diagnosed with diabetes before their cancer surgery had a 50 percent higher chance of dying in the month after their operation compared with non-diabetic patients. This was after accounting for other factors.

There were no studies in the mix that looked at breast or endometrial cancer, so it could not be determined if there might be a link between these two as well.

It was unclear why this might be the case, but the authors had some hypotheses.

"Diabetes increases the risk of infection from surgery. High blood sugar and diabetes [increase] infections, period, with or without cancer," said Yeh, who is an assistant professor of general internal medicine and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Also, she said, diabetes is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and surgery increases the risk of blood clots, making diabetics doubly at risk for heart problems during surgery.

Stressful working conditions and lack of exercise have been strongly associated with being overweight or obese in a study.

Researchers at University of Rochester Medical Center found that 72 to 75 percent of the employees studied were overweight or obese.

Lead author Diana Fernandez, an epidemiologist at the URMC Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, said her research like many others linked high job pressure with cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, depression, exhaustion, anxiety and weight gain.

She explained: "In a poor economy, companies should take care of the people who survive layoffs and end up staying in stressful jobs. It is important to focus on strengthening wellness programs to provide good nutrition, ways to deal with job demands, and more opportunities for physical activity that are built into the regular workday without penalty."

Surprisingly, boffins also discovered that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables had little effect in offseting the effect of chronic job stress on weight gain among the employees, who were mostly sedentary.

Exercise, on the other hand, appeared to be significant in dealing with stress and keeping a healthy weight.

Fernandez said. "Other studies have shown that adults tend to eat more fatty foods while watching TV. But this requires more investigation."

Tuberculosis is a disease of the poor as it is widely found in developing countries like India, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, revealing that India alone contributes 20 per cent of the disease burden across the globe.

"India contributes one fifth of the world TB cases. It has high morbidity and mortality rates due to tuberculosis," South-East Asia regional director of WHO, Samlee Plianbangchang, said here on World Tuberculosis Day.

Plianbangchang said, "Though TB prevalence has been halved and mortality rate reduced by a third in South East Asia by the end of 2009, a social and economic protocol is necessary to curb the disease."

"National TB programmes in the region face several challenges, like language and cultural diversities compiled with poverty, rapid urbanisation, huge population displacements and expanding the scope of services for a population of 1.74 billion'," he added.

The WHO authorities also said that among the TB patients, over four percent have HIV infection too.

The WHO also released a regional report on TB control which estimates that South-East Asia registered 2.2 million TB patients in 2009. Almost 15 million patients have been cured in ten years, the global health watchdog's report revealed.

Plianbangchang also said that due to greater participation of people other than just doctors in the TB control programmes, the detection rate has gone up in the region.

"Where such measures are in place, the number of cases notified has increased by up to 25 per cent, with treatment success rates over 90 per cent. The value of these social support programmes for TB, which is a disease of poverty, is clear." he said.

Researchers at Sydney's Centenary Institute announced they have made an exciting discovery that could lead to the first new drug for Tuberculosis (TB) in almost fifty years. The discovery comes on the World TB Day.

Dr Nick West, Associate Faculty of the Mycobacterial group at Centenary, is looking at the genetics of TB in the hope they will reveal a way to reduce the impact of one of the deadliest diseases in the world.

Dr West, explains, "When someone is infected with TB they either become sick immediately or the disease stays inactive, latent."

"Unfortunately, the antibiotics we use to fight TB aren't effective against latent TB and can only be used when the disease becomes active. This is a major problem as 1 out of 10 people who have latent TB will develop the active disease, becoming sick and contagious."

Dr West and his team have made a vital discovery in the development of a new drug that could cure TB in the latent stage. If the project succeeds, it will be the first new treatment for TB since 1962.

TB kills almost 2 million people each year. One third of the world's population, or two billion people, are infected with TB.

Dr West explains, "We have investigated a protein that is essential for TB to survive and we have had some success in developing a drug that will inhibit this protein. Our goal over the coming months is to find out the full extent of this drug's potential."

"If we can figure out a way to treat TB when it's in a latent stage, then we could save millions of lives throughout the world."