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| Polio finding its way back, affecting adults | | Popular aspirin drug increases risk of impotence | | SUNDAY SPECIAL
B L KAK
NEW DELHI, JULY 29: Sterner sex will have to be extra-careful while consuming daily doses of the drugs. If a new study by researchers at Finland's University of Tampere were any guide, consumption of the popular aspirin every day increases the risk of impotence of men. Men--the sterner sex.
There is no denying that everywhere across the globe NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), are widely used to treat pain and inflammation. They are also prescribed by medical practitioners or doctors to patients suffering from arthritis on high daily doses to ease swollen, painful joints.
However, the new study has this piece of interesting message: drugs such as ibuprofen increase erectile problems in middle-aged and elderly men, with those taking the drugs regularly being nearly twice as likely experience a hitch in their sex lives than men who do not take the drugs.
Reports from Finland reveal that the University of Tampere's study was conducted on 1,126 men between the ages of 50 to 70. They were asked to report their use of the painkilling drugs over a five-year period, including aspirin, ibuprofen and other common medicines such as naproxen. The study noted that of the number of cases of erectile problems, 97 per 1,000 in men were found to be using NSAIDs, while just 52 per 1,000 in men not using them suffered from impotence.
And Dr Rahman Shiri, lead researcher, was reported to have pointed out that the use of the NSAIDs on a daily basis increased to risk of impotence in men. In fact, the Daily Mail quoted him as saying: "The use of these drugs increases the risk of erectile dysfunction".
Equally signifcant message from International Ibuprofen Foundation's specialist, Nick Henderson: Though the study suggested a link between impotence and Ibuprofen, it did so for men suffering from Alzheimer's. There was no indication of raised risk for men taking normal doses.
He was quoted as saying: "It demonstrates a very small link with erectile dysfunction, showing a rate of 0.5 per cent for men with arthritis taking NSAIDs compared with 0.1 per cent for those not. There is no indication of any raised risk for men taking normal doses of over the counter ibuprofen for headaches".
Heard of New Scientist? It is a well-known foreign publication. It has a sensational piece of information: Polio is finding its way back to countries where it had been eradicated, and this time the disease is affecting mainly adults. This information will have to be taken due note of, in view of doctors' warning. Their warning comes in the wake of 19 "confirmed" cases in Namibia and another 150 "unconfirmed" ones. The warning is clear: Polio is targeting adults who had probably missed childhod vaccination, and have thus not developed immunity by encountering wild forms of the virus.
Then comes the warning from the World Health Organisation (WHO): Since many adults do not have immunity to the disease in countries where it had been eradicated, there may be more susceptible people now than at any other time in history. Bruce Aylward, head of the WHO's polio eradication drive, haslet it be known that the new findings showed the need to eradicate the disease in the whole world, for individual countries free of polio were now at risk.
The New Scientist quoted him as saying: "This just shows that we have to eradicate polio everywhere, because while endemic areas persist, the virus will find susceptible people". People can become immune to polio in three ways: by being infected naturally, by vaccination or by catching the live but weakened virus in oral polio vaccine (OPV) from newly vaccinated children.
However, while natural infection is disappearing, vaccination rates are also dropping in many countries as the disease continues to be eradicated. Along with this, the third method has also been abandoned from around 35 industrialised countries that have switched from OPV to a safer killed-virus vaccine that does not spread, leaving a growing number of people at risk.
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