Health & Fitness
Fathers-to-be who smoke may harm their babies

Fathers-to-be, take note! Smoking may increase the baby’s risk of developing congenital heart defects – the leading cause of stillbirth, a study has found.
Congenital heart affect eight in 1,000 babies born worldwide. Prognosis and quality of life continues to improve with innovative surgeries, but the effects are still lifelong. The findings, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, suggest that fathers-to-be should quit smoking.
“Fathers are a large source of secondhand smoke for pregnant women, which appears to be even more harmful to unborn children than women smoking themselves,” said Jiabi Qin, from Central South University in China.
“Smoking is teratogenic, meaning it can cause developmental malformations. The association between prospective parents smoking and the risk of congenital heart defects has attracted more and more attention with the increasing number of smokers of childbearing age,” said Qin.
According to researchers, this was the first meta-analysis to examine the relationships between paternal smoking and maternal passive smoking and risk of congenital heart defects in offspring. Previous analyses have focused on women smokers. “In fact, smoking in fathers-to-be and exposure to passive smoking in pregnant women are more common than smoking in pregnant women,” Qin said.
The researchers compiled the best available evidence up to June 2018. This amounted to 125 studies involving 137,574 babies with congenital heart defects and 8.8 million prospective parents.
All types of parental smoking were associated with the risk of congenital heart defects, with an increase of 74% for men smoking, 124% for passive smoking in women, and 25% for women smoking, compared to no smoking exposure.
This was also the first review to examine smoking at different stages of pregnancy and risk of congenital heart defects.
Women’s exposure to secondhand smoke was risky for their offspring during all stages of pregnancy and even prior to becoming pregnant. Women who smoked during pregnancy had a raised likelihood of bearing a child with a congenital heart defect, but smoking before pregnancy did not affect risk.
“Women should stop smoking before trying to become pregnant to ensure they are smoke-free when they conceive,” said Qin.
“Staying away from people who are smoking is also important. Employers can help by ensuring that workplaces are smoke-free,” he said.
“Doctors and primary healthcare professionals need to do more to publicise and educate prospective parents about the potential hazards of smoking for their unborn child,” said Qin.
Regarding specific types of congenital heart defects, the analysis showed that maternal smoking was significantly associated with a 27% greater risk of atrial septal defect and a 43% greater risk of right ventricular outflow tract obstruction compared to no smoking. The overall risk of congenital heart defects with all types of parental smoking was greater when the analysis was restricted to Asian populations.
Entertainment
Munmun Dutta shares transformation photos, says she is ‘feeling the change’
Munmun Dutta who is most popular for portraying the part of Babita iyer in TMKOC has taken instagram to share her change pictures.
She shared a split of two photographs showing the distinction in her look prior to going through the program, and after it. She wrote in the subtitle that the interaction is as yet in progress and she is anticipating her wellness venture.
View this post on Instagram
Munmun in her caption wrote, “Great part was, at long last after not turning out for right around 4 months, I got once more into the propensity for working out routinely once more. Long approach to accomplish the god-like physique however I am on target and persuaded to do as such. It will be an excursion and I am anticipating it.”
As of late, Munmun had purchased another level in Mumbai and shared photographs of it via online media. She said that purchasing the new house was a “little glimpse of heaven” second for her.
Health & Fitness
Life expectancy in India drops by 2 years due to Covid pandemic: Report

A statistical analysis conducted by Mumbai’s International Institute for Population Studies shows that life expectancy in India has dropped by roughly two years due to Covid-19 pandemic.
According to IIPS assistant professor Surayakant Yadav, the life expectancy at birth for men and women has declined from 69.5 years and 72 years in 2019 to 67.5 years and 69.8 respectively in 2020, reports Times of India.
‘Life expectancy at birth’ is defined as the average number of years that a newborn is expected to live if the mortality pattern during their birth remains constant in the future.
The study was conducted to analyse the effect of the Covid pandemic on the mortality patterns across the country, as thousands of lives were lost due to the deadly pandemic waves.
The study also found out that the Covid toll was reported to be the highest for men in the age group of 35-69. The excess deaths in this age bracket due to Covid led to a sharp drop in life expectancy.
The IIPS based its study on the data collected by the 145-nation Global Burden of Disease study and the Covid-India Application Programme Interface (API) portal.
Yadav further added, “The Covid impact has wiped out the progress we made in the last decade to increase the life expectancy figure. India’s life expectancy at birth now is the same as it was in 2010. It will take us years to catch up.”
However, IIPS director Dr K S James added that epidemics in the past in countries, including Africa, massively impacted life expectancy, but it recouped in a few years.
Source : IndiaToday
Health & Fitness
3rd Covid Wave Unlikely To Mirror Devastating 2nd Wave: Top Medical Body

Rapid scale-up of vaccination efforts, says the study, could play an important role in mitigating the present and future waves of the disease.
New Delhi: A potential third wave of Covid infections seems unlikely to be as severe as the second wave, says a modelling study by a team of scientists from the Indian Council Of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Imperial College London, UK. Rapid scale-up of vaccination efforts, says the study, could play an important role in mitigating the present and future waves of the disease.
India’s first wave of SARSCoV-2 infection began in late January 2020 with a peak attained in mid-September. This phase was relatively mild compared to the second wave that followed, from mid-February 2021 onwards, exhibiting a more explosive spread across the country. A major factor driving this second wave is the emergence of more-infectious variants of SARS-CoV-2, principally B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant) and B.1.617.2 (Delta variant), of which the latter has played a dominant role in recent months.
Third waves have emerged in other countries – like the UK and the USA – and are driven by a range of factors, says the study.
The results suggest that a third wave, if it should occur, is unlikely to be as severe as the second wave, given the extent of spread that has already taken place in India, it adds.
“Consequently, for a virus to cause a major third wave in the face of this pre-existing immunity, extreme scenarios for the abrogation of that immunity are required, or for that matter, for the transmission fitness of any novel virus,” says the article in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
For the wave to be as devastating, at least 30 per cent of the population who had been infected earlier must entirely lose their immunity, or an emerging variant of the virus must have a reproductive rate (R) over 4.5, that is, each infected person should be spreading to at least 4-5 others and these must occur almost immediately after the second wave ends, according to the study.
The emergence of a third wave in India could be substantially mitigated by the expansion of vaccination, says the study, adding the rollout of vaccine should be in such a way as to cover 40 per cent of the population with two doses over a period of three months following the end of the second wave, which is on the decline currently.
Crowding, use of mask and physical distancing during social interactions are all key factors shaping transmission rate and therefore population-level spread, the study cautions.
“Lockdown-release mechanisms could be a plausible driver for a third wave in India, depending on how effectively lockdowns have controlled transmission during the second wave particularly when instated at an early stage of the second wave and prior to attainment of peak,” says the study.
The analysis, says scientists, is intended to be illustrative and not predictive.
“In the present approach, we considered essentially a uniform waning rate over the spectrum of severity. Second, the basic reproduction number (equivalently, the rate-of-transmission) was assumed to remain constant during each wave,” said the scientists explaining the methodology used in the study.
Source : NDTV
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