I spend a significant amount of time seeing healthy young children whose parents are convinced that their child has an eating disorder

Any parent of a toddler knows that mealtimes can be a minefield.

But in this week's Scrubbing Up health column, child health specialist Su Laurent says some are attributing their offspring's dietary foibles to an eating disorder, rather than bad behaviour.

Some parents think that their baby has an inability to swallow solids, others think that their child will fade away unless they are offered the few foods which they like and some parents say that their child eats nothing at all, despite the fact that they are consuming a packet of "Wotsits" in front of me!

All three situations are examples of how powerful a weapon food is and how quickly children can gain the upper hand over their parents.

All three scenarios can be helped by a good health visitor, but sadly there are no longer enough health visitors to spend the time needed with first-time parents.

The difficulty I face is that parents often have a fixed idea that their child has a disorder and it can be very hard to convince them that, on the contrary, their child is very powerful and is getting away with eating exactly what they want!

It's often easier for a doting parent to believe that a child has a medical problem than a behavioural one.

My heart sinks when I hear stories of mealtimes taking hours, of children being force-fed and parents sneaking food into their child while they're watching TV so that they won't notice they are being fed.

Some parents surprise their toddlers by popping out from behind the sofa in an attempt to stuff a spoon full of food into their mouths.

Others accept that their child will only eat chips, chicken nuggets and chocolate cereal.

One mother told me with pride that since the last time I saw her seven-year-old in clinic he'd tried a new food: he was now happy to eat KFC chips in addition to McDonald's chips.

You can imagine the expression on my face!

These children are often overweight, and yet their parents live in fear of starving their child unless they are given exactly what they want to eat.

In these families food dominates, the parents have got themselves into a rut and can't see a way out.

'Don't give in?'

So how should these issues be tackled?

The basic principles are:

* Make eating fun
* Eat with your child whenever possible
* Stop any force-feeding
* Let him follow your example and feed himself, however messy he becomes
* Remember that a normal child will not allow himself to starve

Babies can eat finger foods from a very young age but parents are often fearful of the resultant mess and prefer to feed them off a spoon.

A baby who feels he's being force-fed has an amazing ability to clamp his jaw shut, turn his head away and even gag on food and refuse to swallow.

Offer your child a small amount of healthy food and clear the plate away after 15 minutes even if he's eaten nothing.

Don't make a big thing about it and resist all temptations to give him a snack before the next meal even if he's grumpy.

Limit milk to a pint a day, many poor eaters get most of their calories from milk. Encourage your child to drink water or very dilute fruit juice.

Reward your child for trying something new and don't punish him for refusing to try.

A very stubborn child may refuse to eat for two or three meals but eventually will have to give in unless he's being offered snacks between meals.

Of course, as a mother of three I confess that all of this can be easier said than done.

Remember the basic principles that food is a powerful weapon and your child won't fade away if he eats nothing for a day or two.

Another fifteen cases of swine flu were confirmed yesterday by the Health Protection Agency, bringing the UK total to 244. One of the cases was in Wal

One of the UK's leading flu experts has predicted that a pandemic of swine flu is likely to strike Britain in the autumn. Professor John Oxford, an expert on virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine, University of London, says that children going back to school, universities reopening and people going back to work after the summer break would give swine flu the "opportunity" that it needs to spread.

But Professor Oxford thinks that many cases are going undetected:

"Already, sporadic cases in the UK have been shown that are not linked with cases that have travelled. That does suggest that the virus is silently spreading around."

However, he said that people should behave as usual, as far as possible, if a pandemic strikes. "What we don't want is people stopping at home and not going to work, because then you have an economic problem on top of a pandemic," he said. "The best advice is to carry on as normal but to be sensible about it. "This includes a bit of social distancing and shielding people from coughs by coughing into the crux of your arm."

Professor Oxford said that in the next few months, global health officials will be keeping a close eye on what happens to the H1N1 swine flu virus in countries like Australia and South Africa. The southern hemisphere is entering its winter and the peak period for flu. On Friday, the World Health Organization reported that Australia has had 147 confirmed cases; Argentina has had 37; and none so far in South Africa.

What happens in the southern hemisphere in the coming months will be a good indicator of how the virus will behave in Europe and North America later this year. There would be particular concern if H1N1 mutated substantially to become a more virulent illness. Thankfully, there are no signs of that yet.

The Australian Science Media Centre is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to know what experts are thinking about the spread of the virus there. The Science Media Centre in London has lots of reliable specialist comments on flu and a host of other issues.

woman wearing mask at Grand Central Station, New YorkAlthough most deaths from the virus have been in Mexico, it's the United States which has been th

If you ask most people where you are most likely to catch H1N1 swine flu, my guess is they would answer, Mexico. That was the case initially, but has not been for some time.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) CDC H1N1 Flu website has reported 10,053 probable or confirmed cases of swine flu, up from nearly 9,000 on Friday and 17 deaths. Furthermore, the virus has spread to all 50 states.

The CDC has estimated that perhaps only one in 20 cases ever gets recorded. If that is the case then it would suggest there could be 200,000 people in the US who have contracted the virus.

In one sense that would be worrying, as it would indicate that H1N1 is well and truly here to stay and that a pandemic is almost certain. But it would also confirm that the virus is causing mostly very mild illness, and mean that the death toll from a pandemic might be no worse than with seasonal flu.

Remember though that scientists are still learning about the virus and are unsure how any pandemic might

The World Health Organisation says the global number of confirmed cases of H1N1 is 17,410 in 62 countries, including 115 deaths. Since then, Bulgaria and Luxembourg have confirmed their first cases of the disease.

"We are getting closer to phase six," said Dr Fukuda, which would mean that a pandemic had occurred. He divided the global outbreak into three types

Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO's Assistant Director-General, said that the virus had now reached 64 countries with 18,965 laboratory-confirmed cases and 117 deaths.

• countries in North America where virus spread is advanced - Mexico, the United States and Canada;
• the group of countries - which he described as being "in transition", some in Europe, some in Asia, also Australia - where a larger number of cases is occurring, many linked to institutions;
• countries where there is no real evidence of spread into communities and cases are largely travel-related.

Dr Fukuda said that the countries in transition are moving towards community-type spread and include the UK, Spain, Japan, Chile and Australia. "But we are still waiting for evidence of widespread community activity, so that's why we are not in phase six yet".

He went on to say that the WHO was choosing not to describe the outbreak as mild. "This infection can be fatal - in those who have underlying medical conditions, pregnant women and in some people who were otherwise healthy."

And he said that we don't know what will happen in the southern hemisphere in the coming months, or in the northern hemisphere later in the year. The severity of the outbreaks, he said, would vary from location to location, according to the vulnerability of populations and their preparedness.

I asked Dr Fukuda which age groups were most likely to catch the virus and to die from it. "The majority of people who have got infected are under 60 years of age, although some people over 60 have also got infected," he said.

"Those who have got severely ill - with complications such as severe pneumonia and those who have died - have tended to be younger to middle age adults aged 20-40 or so, but not exclusively."

That ties in with the pattern one might expect from a flu pandemic. Normal seasonal flu tends to hit the elderly most severely; in pandemics, it is often young adults who are worst affected.

Also today, two people in Scotland have been admitted to intensive care with swine flu. A 45-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman are being treated in intensive care at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. The Scottish government said that they were both in a "critical but stable" condition.

As yet, neither person has any known links to other cases, to travel or to each other. The man is believed to be the first person in Britain to be taken critically ill, suffering only from swine flu. The woman is said to have underlying health problems as does a third patient, a 38-year-old man, who was admitted to intensive care at a hospital in Glasgow last week.

Dr Tiller, who performed so-called late term abortions, had long been a focus of anti-abortion groups in the US

Scott Roeder, 51, was charged with the first-degree murder of Dr George Tiller, who was shot dead on Sunday at a church in Wichita.

Mr Roeder is also charged with aggravated assault against two people who tried to intervene in the attack.

Mr Roeder is being held in a Wichita jail and appeared in Sedgwick County District Court, also in Wichita, via video link.

The suspect has requested a lawyer and has been assigned to the public defender's office, the Kansas City Star newspaper reported.

A preliminary hearing has been tentatively set for 16 June, the report added.

Mr Roeder was arrested in a suburb of Kansas City about 170 miles (274km) from the scene, some three hours after the shooting at the Reformation Lutheran Church.

Dr Tiller's clinic - Women's Health Care Services - had often been the site of demonstrations, and he had been shot and wounded by an assailant 16 years ago.

Following the fatal shooting, US Attorney General Eric Holder promised protection to "appropriate people and facilities".

Anti-abortion groups in the US have denounced Dr Tiller's killing.

Eating a curry once or twice a week could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementia, a US researcher suggests

The key ingredient is curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric.

Curcumin appears to prevent the spread of amyloid protein plaques - thought to cause dementia - in the brain.

But the theory, presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual meeting, has been given a lukewarm reception by UK experts.

Amyloid plaques, along with tangles of nerve fibres, are thought to contribute to the degradation of the wiring in brain cells, eventually leading to symptoms of dementia.

Professor Murali Doraiswamy, of Duke University in North Carolina, said there was evidence that people who eat a curry meal two or three times a week have a lower risk of dementia.
He said researchers were testing the impact of higher doses - the equivalent of going on a curry spree for a week - to see if they could maximise the effect.

Animal studies
Professor Doraiswamy told the meeting: "There is very solid evidence that curcumin binds to plaques, and basic research on animals engineered to produce human amyloid plaques has shown benefits."
"You can modify a mouse so that at about 12 months its brain is riddled with plaques.
"If you feed this rat a curcumin-rich diet it dissolves these plaques. The same diet prevented younger mice from forming new plaques.
"The next step is to test curcumin on human amyloid plaque formation using newer brain scans and there are plans for that."

Professor Doraiswamy said a clinical trial was now underway at the University of California, Los Angeles, to test curcumin's effects in Alzheimer's patients.
He said research had also examined turmeric's therapeutic potential for treating conditions such as cancer and arthritis.

Good diet
He stressed that eating a curry could not counter-balance the increased risk of dementia associated with a poor diet.
However, he said: "If you have a good diet and take plenty of exercise, eating curry regularly could help prevent dementia."
Professor Doraiswamy predicted it might be possible to develop a curry pill which had the same therapeutic effect.

However, Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, stressed that people would need to eat a lot of curry - over 100g of turmeric curry powder - to get a clinical dose of curcumin.

She said: "Professor Doraiswamy's unpublished research applies only to animal models; his hypothesis has not been confirmed in human clinical trials.
"We look forward to the results of the human curcumin trial at UCLA."
Dr Susanne Sorensen, of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Indian communities that regularly eat curcumin have a surprisingly low incidence of Alzheimer's disease but we don't yet know why.

"Alzheimer's Society is keen to explore the potential benefits of curcumin in protecting the brain and we are conducting our own research into this area.
"A cheap, accessible and safe treatment could transform the quality of life of thousands of people with the condition."

Chinese scientists have given cells from adult pigs the ability to turn into any tissue in the body, just like embryonic stem cells.

They hope the breakthrough could aid research into human disease, and the breeding of animals for organ transplants for humans.

It may also enable the development of pigs that are resistant to diseases such as swine flu.

The study appears online in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology.


This breakthrough to produce pig stem cells potentially reinvigorates the quest to grow humanised pig organs
Professor Chris Mason
University College London

Lead researcher Dr Lei Xiao, of the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, said many other attempts had been made to transform adult cells from animals such as pigs into "pluripotent" stem cells, but they had failed.

He said: "Therefore, it is entirely new, very important and has a number of applications for both human and animal health."

Dr Xiao's team reprogrammed cells taken from a pig's ear and bone marrow, using a cocktail of chemicals introduced into the cells via a virus.

Tests showed that the reprogrammed cells were capable of becoming any of the cell types that make up the three layers in a developing embryo.

Ideal source

Dr Xiao said pigs were a potentially ideal source of organs for transplant, as their organs were similar in function and size to those found in humans.

He said reprogrammed stem cells could potentially be used to make a pig organ compatible to the human immune system, minimising the risk of rejection.

The cells could also be used to mimic human disease in pigs, allowing scientists to test new therapies without requiring human volunteers.

In addition to medical applications, Dr Xiao said his discovery could be used to improve animal farming, by making the animals healthier, and regulating the way they grow.

However, he warned it could take several years before some of the potential medical applications of his research could be used in the clinic.

Professor Chris Mason, an expert in regenerative medicine at University College London, said: "This breakthrough to produce pig stem cells potentially reinvigorates the quest to grow humanised pig organs such as pancreases for diabetics and kidneys for chronic renal failure.

"The clinical use of humanised porcine tissues and organs (xenografts) has moved a long way forward in recent months with successful small-scale clinical trials.

"Whilst the xenograft approach may not necessarily be the long-term solution, it may represent a major step change in the treatment of organ failure, which potentially could deliver real benefit to millions of patients within a decade."