Lifestyle

New Delhi, April 5 (IANS) Startups in agriculture are intelligently blending traditional organic farming practices with technology to drive livelihood opportunities in rural areas, said Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh on Saturday.

Addressing the "Natural and Organic Farmers Summit 2025" at Shankarpalli near Hyderabad, the Minister lauded the efforts of grassroots innovators and farmer-entrepreneurs who are embracing science to scale up agriculture, enhance productivity, and ensure sustainable incomes.

“Startups in agriculture are not just about farming anymore,” Singh said.

“They are applying science, using innovations developed by institutions like CSIR, and adopting tools like drones and soil health cards to make farming more productive and cost-effective. With this, they are cultivating more in less time while safeguarding health and the environment.

“Agri startups are fast emerging as lucrative avenues of livelihood by intelligently blending traditional organic farming practices with cutting-edge scientific technologies,” the MoS noted.

Singh emphasised that organic agriculture, once considered difficult and niche, is now poised to become mainstream-driven because of increasing health concerns and awareness about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides in increasing lifestyle-related diseases.

“Every third person today is either diabetic or has fatty liver. Cancer cases are rising. The possible role of chemically laden produce cannot be ignored. Organic farming is not just a healthier choice, but a necessary one,” the Minister said.

Further, he pointed to the broader impact of agri-startups on employment generation and rural development, citing the success of initiatives like the Purple Revolution and the Aroma Mission.

Singh also spotlighted emerging technologies like the Pheromone Application Device (PAD) being developed by IIT Hyderabad to reduce pesticide usage through eco-friendly pest control methods.

The Minister reinforced that India’s march to become a developed nation by 2047 would be incomplete without uplifting the rural economy and tapping into the vast, underexplored potential of agriculture.

“The farmer of today is an agri-entrepreneur. And the field is no longer a place of hardship but a hub of opportunity,” he said.

--IANS

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New Delhi, April 5 (IANS) Amid rising bird flu cases in the country, the Union Government has made registration of poultry farms mandatory and urged the need for increasing surveillance to curb avian influenza.

A high-level meeting in New Delhi, chaired by Alka Upadhyaya, Secretary at the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD) under the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying set up a three-pronged strategy with stricter biosecurity, surveillance and mandatory registration of poultry farms.

The strategy “encompasses stricter biosecurity measures wherein poultry farms must enhance hygiene practices, control farm access and follow stringent biosecurity protocols to minimise the risk of infection, strengthened surveillance and mandatory registration of poultry farms to enhance disease tracking and control”, stated the ministry.

"All poultry farms must register with state animal husbandry departments within a month. The government has urged poultry industry stakeholders to ensure 100 per cent compliance with this directive,” it added.

"Protecting our poultry sector is critical for food security and rural livelihoods. Strict biosecurity, scientific surveillance, and responsible industry practices are essential in our fight against bird flu," Upadhyaya said.

In addition, she stated the need for developing a predictive modelling system for early warning and environmental surveillance which would enable proactive disease detection and response, minimiing the risk of outbreaks and protecting the poultry industry.

Avian Influenza is a highly infectious viral disease affecting birds, with occasional transmission to mammals. Since its first detection in India in 2006, outbreaks have been reported annually across multiple states.

Notably, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) has since January affected eight states -- Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Bihar.

Currently, six active outbreak zones remain in Jharkhand, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh in the country.

Besides poultry, the animal and bird species affected include tiger, leopard, vulture, crow, hawk egret, pet cat, demoiselle crane, painted stork, crow, jungle cat.

Meanwhile, DAHD has permitted the use of the H9N2 (Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza) vaccine, developed by ICAR-NIHSAD, Bhopal, which is now available commercially.

A national study will evaluate the vaccine’s effectiveness of LPAI vaccination. The meeting also extensively discussed the possibility of allowing the use of a vaccine against Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in India.

The meeting recommended conducting detailed science-based assessments to determine the feasibility of HPAI vaccination in India. Research efforts have also been initiated to develop an indigenous HPAI vaccine following global best practices.

--IANS

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Seoul, April 5 (IANS) South Korean police said Saturday they have apprehended 435 suspects in a sweeping international probe on online child pornography crimes carried out jointly with five other Asian law enforcement authorities.

The National Office of Investigation (NOI) said the investigation was conducted in February and March in collaboration with police from Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, at Singapore's request, Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korea accounted for the largest number of crackdowns, with police apprehending 374 individuals. Of those, 258 were caught possessing or viewing child sexual abuse material, 74 were identified as content producers and 42 were involved in distribution. Thirteen suspects were arrested.

The majority of offenders in South Korea were teenagers, with 213 in their teens, followed by 127 in their 20s and 23 in their 30s.

In Japan, authorities reported the apprehension of 111 individuals on charges, including child prostitution and violations of child pornography laws.

"These crimes cause irreparable harm to children and require a strong international response, as digital exploitation goes beyond borders," an NOI official said. "We will continue to strengthen cross-border cooperation to tackle child sexual exploitation online."

In November last year, the global messaging service Telegram designated an officer in charge of protecting underage users from illicit content amid criticism over its passive response against sexually exploitative materials circulating on the platform in South Korea.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said Telegram made the designation and set up an email account as a hotline at its request. Telegram also vowed to sternly respond to the distribution of illicit content or copyright violations on its platform, according to the KCC.

The move came as the government announced its plan to strengthen regulations on domestic and foreign platform operators after a series of pornography targeting young women on Telegram sparked public outrage in the country.

--IANS

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New Delhi, April 5 (IANS) A team of US researchers have developed a new antiviral chewing gum that showed the potential to substantially reduce viral loads of two herpes simplex viruses and two influenza A strains in experimental models.

Seasonal influenza epidemics occur annually, causing a substantial global disease burden. The herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), spread primarily through oral contact, infects over two-thirds of the global population.

Low vaccination rates for influenza viruses and the lack of an HSV vaccine underscore the need for a new approach.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania targetted the oral cavity to fight against these viruses, which are transmitted more via the mouth than the nose.

In the study, published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the team tested the ability of chewing gum made from lablab beans. They tested Lablab purpureus -- which naturally contains an antiviral trap protein (FRIL) -- to neutralise HSV-1 and HSV-2, and two influenza A strains H1N1 and H3N2.

The chewing gum formulation allowed for effective and consistent release of FRIL at sites of viral infection.

They demonstrated that 40 milligrams of a two-gram bean gum tablet was adequate to reduce viral loads by more than 95 per cent.

Importantly, the researchers prepared the gum as a clinical-grade drug product to comply with the US FDA specifications for drug products and found the gum to be safe.

“These observations augur well for evaluating bean gum in human clinical studies to minimise virus infection/transmission,” said Henry Daniell, Professor at Penn’s School of Dental Medicine.

The team is now looking to use lablab bean powder to tackle bird flu -- currently having a significant impact in North America.

“Controlling transmission of viruses continues to be a major global challenge. A broad-spectrum antiviral protein (FRIL) present in a natural food product (bean powder) to neutralise not only human flu viruses but also avian (bird) flu is a timely innovation to prevent their infection and transmission,” Daniell said.

--IANS

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Kampala, March 31 (IANS) Uganda has received an additional 100,000 doses of the mpox vaccine from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to support the next phase of its prevention campaign, said a senior health official on Monday.

Henry Kyobe Bosa, incident commander at the Ministry of Health, told Xinhua via telephone that the vaccines will be distributed to areas with the highest transmission rates of the mpox virus, with young adults aged 25 to 35 being prioritised in the next round of vaccination.

According to the Ministry of Health, the upcoming phase of the vaccination campaign will focus on high-risk areas in the capital of Kampala, including Rubaga, Nakawa, and Central divisions. The campaign will also cover key districts in central Uganda, such as Mukono, Wakiso, Buvuma, Nakasongola, and Masaka, as well as the western districts of Mbarara and Hoima.

Uganda launched its first round of mpox vaccination campaign in February, targeting high-risk populations, including individuals engaged in commercial sex work, bar attendants, commuter taxi drivers, commercial motorcyclists, and roadside vendors in the Kawempe and Makindye divisions of Kampala.

During this initial phase, the country vaccinated 10,000 individuals in the most affected districts, according to the Ministry of Health.

Uganda confirmed the outbreak of mpox last August and has since recorded 4,810 laboratory-confirmed cases and 37 deaths. Most of the deceased had underlying health conditions, such as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and diabetes.

Last week, the World Health Organisation warned that Uganda currently has the highest number of community-transmitted mpox cases globally. "The country is experiencing community transmission, and the weekly national case count has been increasing steadily over time," it said.

In response, Ugandan health authorities have intensified surveillance, case management, and public awareness efforts to curb the spread of the virus, Xinhua news agency reported.

Mpox, also known as monkeypox, is an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus. It spreads through close contact and presents symptoms such as fever, swollen lymph nodes, sore throat, muscle aches, skin rash, and back pain.

--IANS

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Canberra, March 31 (IANS) The proportion of Australian adults with diabetes has increased by almost one-third in the last decade, official data showed.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Monday released the first data from its National Health Measures Survey (NHMS), which was conducted between 2022 and 2024, revealing that 6.6 per cent of Australian adults have diabetes, up from 5.1 per cent in 2011-12.

It represents a 29.4 per cent increase in the prevalence of diabetes among Australian adults over the 12-year span.

The NHMS, which involved the collection of biomedical samples from participants aged 5 years and over from across Australia, found that another 2.7 per cent of Australian adults are at high risk of diabetes.

It found that males were more likely to have diabetes than females across all age groups.

"Adults living in the most disadvantaged areas are more likely to have diabetes than those in the least disadvantaged areas," James Mowles, ABS head of health statistics, said in a media release.

According to a World Health Organisation-supported study published in The Lancet in November 2024, global diabetes prevalence in adults rose from 7 per cent to 14 per cent between 1990 and 2022.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the time that the increase in diabetes is "alarming" and called for countries to urgently take action to "bring the global diabetes epidemic under control".

A separate report released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) in December estimated that 5.1 per cent of Australians, or just over 1.3 million people, were living with diagnosed diabetes in 2021, Xinhua news agency reported.

The report said that the number of people living with diabetes in Australia increased almost 2.8-fold between 2000 and 2021.

According to the WHO, about 830 million people worldwide have diabetes, the majority living in low- and middle-income countries. More than half of the people living with diabetes are not receiving treatment. Both the number of people with diabetes and the number of people with untreated diabetes have been steadily increasing over the past decades.

--IANS

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New Delhi, March 30 (IANS) A new study showed on Sunday that presence of atrial fibrillation (AF) increases the risk of future dementia by 21 per cent in patients diagnosed with AF under 70 and the risk of early-onset dementia (diagnosed before age 65 years) by 36 per cent.

The association was stronger in younger adults and was lost in older adults aged 70 years and over, according to new research presented at the ‘EHRA 2025’, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology, in Austria.

“This is the largest European population-based study evaluating the association between AF and dementia,” said the authors that included Dr Julian Rodriguez García of the Electrophysiology and Arrhythmia department of the Bellvitge University Hospital, Barcelona, Spain.

“The association between AF and dementia was stronger in patients under 70 and was maximal for early-onset dementia,” García noted.

Atrial fibrillation causes an irregular heartbeat and is relatively common, affecting 2-3 per cernt of the general population, with the prevalence rising with age.

In this new study, the researchers assessed the independent association between AF and incident dementia in Catalonia, Spain.

The study included 2,520,839 individuals with an average follow-up of 13 years. At baseline, 79,820 patients (3.25%) had a recorded diagnosis of AF. In multivariable analyses adjusting for potential confounders, AF was, overall, a statistically significant but weak predictor of dementia, linked with a 4% increased risk of dementia.

However, age was found to significantly affect the association between AF and dementia.

In pre-specified analyses stratified by age, the strength of the association progressively weakened with increasing age: in patients aged 45-50, those with AF were 3.3 times more likely to develop dementia than those without AF. But in patients aged over 70 years, no association was found.

Further analysis showed the association lost statistical significance from 70 years. By contrast, in patients diagnosed with AF before the age of 70, the condition independently increased the risk of dementia by 21 per cent, and an even stronger effect was observed for early-onset dementia, with AF increasing the risk by 36 per cent.

“The study demonstrates a significant and strong association in younger patients between two pathologies – atrial fibrillation and dementia - that are among the major health challenges of the 21st century,” said the authors.

—IANS

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New Delhi, March 30 (IANS) Researchers on Sunday showed that compared with the general population with no history of antidepressant (AD) use, individuals with a history of AD use have an increased risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD), which varies based on age and time of exposure.

The causes in people under the age of 39 are often a thickening of the heart muscle or an electrical problem with the heart. In older people, SCD is more likely to be caused by a narrowing of the blood vessels that supply the heart.

Previous research has shown that patients with psychiatric disorders have an increased all-cause mortality as well as double the risk of sudden cardiac death across all age groups.

However, the impact of antidepressant exposure on SCD risk has so far been unclear.

In new research presented at ‘EHRA 2025’, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology, researchers now show that there is a link.

“Exposure time to antidepressants was associated with a higher risk of sudden cardiac death, and linked to how long the person had been exposed to antidepressants,” said study co-author Dr Jasmin Mujkanovic, Rigshospitalet Hjertecentret, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Those exposed for 6 years or more were at even more increased risk than those exposed for 1 to 5 years, when compared with people unexposed to antidepressants in the general population, Mujkanovic added.

In individuals aged 30-39 years, compared with the unexposed general population, those with 1 to 5 years of antidepressant exposure were around three times more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death. This risk increased to five times higher for those with six or more years of AD exposure.

In individuals aged 50-59 years, compared with the unexposed general population, those exposed to antidepressants for 1 to 5 years saw their risk of sudden cardiac death doubled, while individuals exposed to antidepressants for 6 or more years had four times the risk of sudden cardiac death.

The differences in risk associated with varying periods of antidepressant exposure decreased in older groups. In individuals aged 70-79 years compared to the unexposed general population, those with 1-5 years AD exposure had a 1.83 or 83 per cent times increased risk, whereas those with 6 years or more exposure had a 2.2 times increased risk of SCD.

In individuals aged 40-79 years, the SCD incidence rate ratio was significantly higher among persons with 6 or more years of exposure to AD compared to persons with 1-5 years of exposure, the study showed.

--IANS

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New Delhi, March 30 (IANS) Zerodha Co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath on Sunday shared his health update after he suffered a mild stroke last year.

He said that 14 months after the stroke, his body is "almost" back to normal and his mind is still healing.

“So, yeah, fourteen months after the stroke, my body is almost back to normal, and my mind is at about 85 per cent,” he posted on X social media platform.

“My writing hasn’t improved at all. Maybe because I don’t practice enough. My speech is, well… about 85 per cent,” Nithin Kamath added.

On February 26 last year, he took to Instagram to announce about suffering from a stroke.

"Around 6 weeks ago, I had a mild stroke out of the blue. Dad passing away, poor sleep, exhaustion, dehydration, and overworking out — any of these could be possible reasons," he wrote.

“I've gone from having a big droop in the face and not being able to read or write to having a slight droop but being able to read and write more. From being absent-minded to more present-minded. So, 3 to 6 months for full recovery,” the Zerodha Co-founder added.

He wondered why a person who's fit and takes care of himself could be affected like this.

“The doctor said you need to know when you need to shift the gears down a bit,” said Kamath, posting an image of him in the hospital.

“Slightly broken, but still getting my treadmill count,” he added.

Several startup leaders wished him speedy recovery after they got to know from his X post that he suffered a mild stroke.

In April, Nithin Kamath made his first public appearance. In a post on X then, the entrepreneur shared a picture of him present at the ‘Zero1’ fest where he discussed health and wealth.

--IANS

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New Delhi, March 29 (IANS) India’s diagnostic imaging market is poised for substantial growth, and is set to exceed $7 billion in 2033, according to a report.

The growth at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 7 per cent will be driven by rising healthcare expenditure, increasing chronic disease burden, and a growing demand for accessible diagnostic solutions.

The report by GlobalData, a data and analytics company, revealed that in 2024, India accounted for around 20 per cent of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) diagnostic imaging devices market.

The increased adoption of portable imaging solutions is expected to be a key driver of market expansion, especially in underserved and rural regions where traditional infrastructure is limited.

“Portable imaging devices are transforming healthcare delivery in India. In emergency and trauma situations, these devices enable rapid on-site diagnostics, reducing the need for patient transfers and enhancing care delivery," said Rohit Anand, Practice Head – Medical Devices at GlobalData.

"Moreover, for smaller healthcare centres, they may offer a cost-effective alternative to full-scale imaging setups, improving access without substantial capital investment," he added.

The recent technological advancements are further propelling the clinical impact of portable imaging.

Innovations such as AI-powered image analysis, miniaturisation, and wireless connectivity are improving diagnostic accuracy and data sharing.

In addition, portable MRI and CT systems, enhanced by technologies like photon counting and compact MRI magnets, are delivering higher resolution and lower radiation exposure.

“The integration of portable imaging into point-of-care settings enhances early disease detection and supports real-time diagnostics, leading to timely interventions and improved patient outcomes," Anand said.

"This is particularly vital for extending healthcare access to remote and resource-constrained communities," he added.

However, the widespread adoption of portable imaging in India still in nascent stage. High ownership costs, complex import regulations, and limited-service infrastructure are the key barriers.

Ongoing maintenance requirements and the need for skilled personnel further add to the cost burden.

“To unlock the full potential of portable imaging, it is essential to address regulatory bottlenecks, streamline import processes, and support networks. These steps will be critical to ensure affordability and scale adoption across the country," Anand said.

--IANS

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