Wallpaper could make you sick
A wallpaper might give a new lease of life to a dull room, but did you know that there might be toxins lurking behind itIJ In fact, wallpapers may contribute to “sick building syndrome”, a new study suggests. It is the phenomenon when people who regularly occupy a building (like office workers) experience different symptoms whenever they spend time in the building. Toxins from fungus growing on wallpaper can easily become airborne and pose an indoor health risk, the researchers said. In laboratory tests, “we demonstrated that mycotoxins could be transferred from a mouldy material to air, under conditions that may be encountered in buildings,” said study corresponding author Dr Jean-Denis Bailly. “Thus, mycotoxins can be inhaled and should be investigated as parameters of indoor air quality,” added Bailly.
Body’s noise to detect cancer early
An emerging technology that uses the body’s own “seismic noise” allows more effective imaging deep inside body to assist in tumour, scientists say. Elastography, sometimes referred as seismology of the human body, measures the elasticity of biological tissue to diagnose cancer or liver and thyroid disease more accurately and at the earliest stages. In passive elastography, the elasticity of tissue is measured using the body’s own propagation of shear waves, which enables more effective imaging deeper inside the body in an even more non-invasive way than the traditional elastography. “Passive elastography is foreseen as a viable technique for cancer detection in organs deep in the body, such as the prostate or liver, for well-protected organs such as the brain, and for fragile organs such as the eye,” said Stefan Catheline, a French research director.
Boozing can make you age faster
Next time you reach for that glass of whiskey, you may want to rethink as a recent research has revealed that the more alcohol you drink, the more your cells appear to age. In the study, researchers found that alcoholic patients had shortened telomere lengths, placing them at greater risk for age-related illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia. “Telomeres, the protein caps on the ends of human chromosomes, are markers of aging and overall health,” said Naruhisa Yamaki of the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine. Yamaki explained that every time a cell replicates, a tiny bit of telomere is lost, so they get shorter with age. But some groups may have shorter telomeres for reasons other than ageing. “Our study showed that alcoholic patients have a shortened telomere length,” he said.