Study: Parental Stress Increases Kids’ Risk of Asthma

Asthma is one of the most common ailments of young childhood — rates among children under age 5 have risen 160% from 1980 to 1994 in the U.S. But while the list of triggers that set off bouts of wheezing and shortness of breath are well known, it’s still not clear exactly how the various factors that cause asthma — including genes, environment and exposure to pollution — contribute to children’s chances of developing the disease.

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Bariatric Surgery: Does the Weight-Loss Procedure Work?

As popular as bariatric surgery has become — each year, more than 200,000 people undergo stomach-shrinking procedures in an effort to lose weight — the reality is that there is still little information about which patients should be getting the surgeries or how effective they really are as a treatment for obesity. That may change with BOLD, the Bariatric Outcomes Longitudinal Database, the first repository of patient information and outcomes related to bariatric surgery — procedures that include gastric bypass, in which the bulk of the stomach is tied off and food is rerouted directly to the bottom half of the intestine, and gastric banding, in which the stomach is simply squeezed into a smaller size with a rubber-band-like device

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Sudan’s president defies arrest warrant, visits Zimbabwe

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who faces charges of crimes against humanity, visited Zimbabwe on Sunday for a regional trade meeting. Al-Bashir landed Saturday in the capital, Harare, for the two-day African leaders’ summit of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on March 4, accusing him of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in his government’s campaign against rebels in Darfur in western Sudan.

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