Mother-to-child spread of disease ' kissing bugs ' reported

MyHealthNewsDaily staff

A boy born in Virginia two years ago became the first person in the United States known to have acquired Chagas disease from his mother, according to a new report, describing the case.

The case highlights the need for increased awareness of the disease among health care providers in the United States, said the researchers. The disease occurs mainly in Latin America, but cases in the United States and elsewhere have been increasing, mainly as a result of migration, according to the World Health Organization.

Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which is typically transmitted to humans by bites from insects commonly known as kissing bugs. Though less common, the disease also transmitted congenitally, from mother to child during pregnancy, as was the case with Virginia boy.

While the boy's case was the first to be documented formally, it has been estimated that between 65 and 638 cases of congenital Chagas disease occur in the United States each year, said the Centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) report. This estimate is based on the typical birth rates of women from regions where Chagas disease is endemic, and the fact that the disease in 1 to 5 percent of pregnancies of infected mothers, are sent to the child.

In August 2010 birth mother who had recently immigrated to the United States from Bolivia, by cesarean section when his child was 29 weeks old. The boy had signs of jaundice, and excess fluid around his heart, abdomen and lungs. Child's doctors who did not know the boy had Chagas disease, administered antibiotics for what they believed to be a widespread bacterial infection called sepsis.

Two weeks after the birth, the mother revealed she had been told in Bolivia during a previous pregnancy that she had Chagas disease. After testing her baby boy, doctors found he also had the parasite in his blood. The boy was given a 60-day treatment of benznidazole, a drug for Chagas disease, and was healed.

The case "illustrates, congenital Chagas disease, even when serious, not perhaps recognized, or diagnosis could be delayed due to lack define clinical features, or because the diagnosis is not considered," said today's CDC report.

Chagas disease is estimated to affect about 300,000 people in the United States, most of whom immigrated here.

Doctors in the United States should be aware of the condition so that pregnant women from high-risk areas for Chagas disease can be subjected to screening and identification, says the report. Mothers diagnosed with Chagas disease should be treated for the condition, but only after they have finished breast-feeding, the report said.

More from MyHealthNewsDaily:

11 Big Fat pregnancy myths

5 Ways climate change will affect your health

Chagas disease vs. AIDS: 6 differences and 5 similarities

View the original article here

Spread Trading Gold Vs Platinum

Many customers have been asking spread strategy questions and last week's action in the gold and platinum markets provides us with a wonderful opportunity to have this discussion.

The chart at the end of this article will provide more detail.

The red line on the bottom is how much gold is worth relative to platinum (gold close/platinum close). This is a monthly chart and you can see that the spread, along with platinum, have broken their trends going back to '01. This means that the prices of these two metals are converging. One should be short platinum and long gold. The way I see it, the price of platinum has been beaten up far worse than gold. I think the global slow- down scenario may be impacting the manufacturing base for platinum more than inflationary/deflationary issues are effecting the speculative nature of the gold market. Gold has also held above its trend line, in spite of the U.S. Dollar's significant rally.

Profitable spread trading requires more than predicting the general directions of the two markets involved. The size of the contracts, tick size and volatility also need to be considered. In this example, there is only one platinum contract to choose from. However, there are four actively traded gold contracts in three different sizes and on two different exchanges. Even the simple assumption that one full size contract of each should be sufficient would be incorrect. Recently, platinum is moving around $67 per day in the futures market and gold is moving around $25 per day. Would it be appropriate to try to even these out by trading two gold contracts versus one platinum contract?

Here is the method I use to appropriately size my spread trades. First of all, I calculate the average range for each market relative to the time frame I expect my trade occur in. In this case, I am looking at monthly charts. Therefore, I calculate the 21 day average range for each market and come up with $21 for gold and $67 for platinum. The next step is to multiply each of these average daily ranges by the market's point value. Gold is $21 X $100 = $2100 per day average movement. Platinum gives us $67 X 50 = $3350 in average per day movement.

Clearly, one full size contract of each is not an even spread. Now, since we know that we only have one platinum contract to work with, our only opportunity for proper sizing in the futures market (there are option strategies available, as well), is to look at the list of available gold contracts. One full size gold contract gets us to $2100 per day and leaves us with a $1200 per day deficit to make up. Chicago's mini sized gold contract is 33.2 oz. (1/3 full size). That would bring our total to $2793 on the gold side of the trade. This won't square the ledger. New York's mini sized gold contract is 50 oz. (1/2 full size). That would make our total $3150. That's pretty close. Obviously, the other option is to use two Chicago mini contracts and bring our total to $3486. At this point, it comes down to personal bias. Would one rather be more or, less long gold relative to platinum.

I hope this brief description answers more questions than it creates. However, please feel free to post any ideas, comments or, issues.

For further illustration. blog.commodityandderivativeadv.com/2008/09/09/spread-trading-gold-vs-platinum.aspx

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