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The Supreme Court on Friday denied a petition to hold a Special Stray Round of Counseling to allow candidates to compete for the empty seats left after the All India Quota stray vacancy round (AIQ).

According to the vacation bench of Justices MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose, the quality of medical education cannot be compromised since it impacts public health. The Court further stated that providing relief now might have an impact on medical education and health.

The court noted on Thursday that eight rounds of counselling had taken place before the seats remained unfilled. The Court also highlighted that it is a three-year course, that more than half of the term has passed, and that the majority of the seats are non-clinical. It has been stated that education cannot be compromised.

Additional Solicitor General Balbir Singh, representing the Centre and the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), stated that sessions began in February and that enrolling in these courses beyond 6 to 8 months would be deleterious.

The Supreme Court had previously voiced concern over unfilled seats.

According to ASG Singh, the majority of the open positions were non-clinical. He noted that in non-clinical positions, one might be an educator but not a doctor. ASG stated that when it comes to submitting fees, none are accepted.

According to the ASG, out of 1,456 seats, 1,100 are in private institutions and 300 are in government colleges. He also said that tuition at private universities is excessively exorbitant.

Affidavit on conducting NEET-PG Stray Round

In an affidavit filed on Wednesday, the MCC argued that the submission of 1,456 unfilled seats for NEET 2021 will disrupt the whole process for the forthcoming counselling session NEET-PG 2022.

Also Read: NEET PG 2021: Plea filed in SC seeking to conduct special stray round

The response came in the form of an affidavit submitted in response to a petition asking to hold a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow candidates to compete for the empty seats left after the All India Quota stray vacancy round (AIQ).

The MCC informed the Supreme Court that the software used to conduct online counselling 2021 has now been closed, and a reimbursement of the security deposit for participation in PG counselling 2021 has also been commenced.

The court was hearing a petition asking the court to order the Respondent MCC to hold a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow candidates to compete for empty seats left over after the All India Quota stray vacancy round (AIQ).

Advocate Milind Kumar Advocate represented the petitioners. The Petitioners appeared in NEET-PG 2021-22 and participated in Rounds 1 and 2 of All India Quota (AIQ) Counselling and State Quota Counselling, which were followed by All India Mop-Up and State Mop-Up Rounds, which were concluded on May 7 by the Medical Counselling Committee following the All India Stray Vacancy Round. The petitioners were denied a place in either of the rounds.

The petitioners claimed that they are aggrieved by the counselling process which was conducted by MCC in a manner that all the vacant seats were not a part of the stray vacancy round of the counselling.

They said that the cause of action for filing the present Writ Petition arose on May 11 when the petitioners received a reply to the RTI they had filed wherein it was stated that “at the time of online allotment process all medical/dental post-graduate seats were exhausted but due to non-joining, resignation, and non-reported some seats remained vacant.” However, official data was been provided, the petitioners said.

As a result, the petitioner asked the court to order Respondent MCC to give the precise number of vacant seats after the stray vacancy round of AIQ and to hold a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow candidates to compete for the vacant seats that remain after the stray vacancy round of AIQ.

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According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday, India recorded 7,584 new COVID cases in the last 24 hours, an increase of more than 300 cases over the previous day.

The number of active cases in the country has risen to 36,267 from 32,498 yesterday. The number of current cases represents 0.08 percent of the entire caseload in the nation. The daily positive rate was 2.26 percent, based on 3,35,050 tests performed in the previous 24 hours. The weekly positivity rate was measured at 1.50 percent.

According to the health ministry, 3,791 COVID patients recovered in the last 24 hours taking the total number of recoveries from the disease since the onset of the pandemic to 4,26,44,092. The recovery rate stands at 98.70 per cent.

With the death of 24 COVID patients during this period, the death toll climbed to 5,24,747.

Over 194.76 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far under the nationwide vaccination drive.

Following a surge in COVID cases across the country, the Union Health Ministry is closely monitoring the situation in the states like Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi and Karnataka and has asked them to follow the five-fold strategy and amp-up testing, said official sources on Thursday.

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According to McMaster University researcher Timothy Whelan and his team, older women with early-stage breast cancer may not require radiation following surgery.

Whelan stated that people aged 55 and over with stage one breast cancer who have a particular biomarker pattern distinguishing the luminal Only surgery and endocrine treatment can adequately treat a subtype. On June 7, he presented data at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

His study team, in collaboration with the Ontario Clinical Oncology Group at Hamilton Health Sciences, followed 501 patients with luminal A breast cancer for five years after surgery and discovered that the risk of cancer recurrence in the breast was just 2.3% without radiation. This was essentially equal to the patient sample’s 1.9 percent probability of acquiring new breast cancer in their other untreated breast.

Whelan said at this time patients with early-stage breast cancer typically undergo radiotherapy courses of three to five weeks to reduce the risk of their cancer recurring.

“These findings are exciting because we have identified a certain group of patients who can avoid radiotherapy and its associated side effects and potentially change for the better medical practice around the treatment of breast cancer,” said Whelan, a professor in the Department of Oncology at McMaster, a Canada Research Chair in Breast Cancer Research and a radiation oncologist for Hamilton Health Sciences.

Also Read: Possible breast cancer treatment revealed in study

“Radiotherapy has significant early side effects, including fatigue and skin irritation that can last for several weeks after the course is completed, and late side effects such as breast shrinkage and distortion that can affect the quality of life and very rarely more serious complications such as heart disease and second cancers,” he said.

“If we can avoid radiotherapy, so much the better. Not all cancers require the same level of often-invasive treatment. There is a very low-risk group of breast cancers displaying the luminal A biomarker and they are not particularly aggressive.”

He claims that thanks to routine mammography screening, superior surgical procedures, and better systemic therapies, the overall risk of cancer recurrence following breast-conserving surgery has dropped in recent years.

Whelan’s study is currently following patients with the luminal A form of breast cancer for ten years to learn more about treatment effectiveness without radiation.

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According to a University of Warwick study, social isolation is directly related with alterations in brain areas associated with memory, making it a definite risk factor for dementia.

Researchers from the Universities of Warwick, Cambridge, and Fudan University utilised neuroimaging data from over 30,000 adults in the UK Biobank data set to study how social isolation and loneliness were associated to eventual dementia. Individuals who are socially isolated have reduced grey matter volumes in brain areas involved in memory and learning.

The results of the study are published online today (June 8, 2022) in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, in a paper entitled “Associations of social isolation and loneliness with later dementia” by Shen, Rolls, Cheng, Kang, Dong, Xie, Zhao, Sahakian and Feng.

The researchers employed modelling tools to explore the relative relationships of social isolation and loneliness with incident all-cause dementia using data from the UK Biobank, an unusually large longitudinal cohort. After controlling for other risk variables (such as socioeconomic status, chronic disease, lifestyle, depression, and APOE genotype), socially isolated people were shown to have a 26% greater chance of acquiring dementia.

Loneliness was also linked to later dementia, however the link was lost after controlling for depression, which accounted for 75% of the interaction between loneliness and dementia. As a result, objective social isolation, as opposed to subjective loneliness, is an independent risk factor for later dementia. Further subgroup analysis revealed that the impact was strongest in people over the age of 60.

Professor Edmund Rolls, neuroscientist from the University of Warwick Department of Computer Science, said: “There is a difference between social isolation, which is an objective state of low social connections, and loneliness, which is subjectively perceived social isolation.”

Also Read: A common antidepressant should not be used to treat dementia patients, according to a new study

“Both have risks to health but, using the extensive multi-modal data set from the UK Biocomputational scbank, and working in a multidisciplinary way linking iences and neuroscience, we have been able to show that it is social isolation, rather than the feeling of loneliness, which is an independent risk factor for later dementia. This means it can be used as a predictor or biomarker for dementia in the UK.”

“With the growing prevalence of social isolation and loneliness over the past decades, this has been a serious yet underappreciated public health problem. Now, in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic there are implications for social relationship interventions and care — particularly in the older population.”

Professor Jianfeng Feng, from the University of Warwick Department of Computer Science, said: “We highlight the importance of an environmental method of reducing risk of dementia in older adults through ensuring that they are not socially isolated. During any future pandemic lockdowns, it is important that individuals, especially older adults, do not experience social isolation.”

Professor Barbara J Sahakian, of the University of Cambridge Department of Psychiatry, said: “Now that we know the risk to brain health and dementia of social isolation, it is important that the government and communities take action to ensure that older individuals have communication and interactions with others on a regular basis.”

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According to a major new study, having many cardiac issues is connected to a higher risk of dementia than having a high hereditary risk.

The study, led by Oxford University and the University of Exeter, is one of the largest to look at the relationship between many heart-related illnesses and dementia, and one of the few to look at the difficult problem of several health disorders. The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, examined data from more than 200,000 persons in the UK Biobank who were 60 or older and of European ancestry.

The multinational study team looked for people who had been diagnosed with diabetes, stroke, or a heart attack, or any combination of the three, and then went on to acquire dementia.

The researchers discovered that the more of these three disorders a person possessed, the greater their chance of dementia. People with all three disorders were three times more likely to acquire dementia than those with a low hereditary risk.

Dr Xin You Tai, Lead Author and Doctoral Student at University of Oxford, said: “Dementia is a major global issue, with predictions that 135 million worldwide will have the devastating condition by 2050. We found that having such heart-related conditions is linked to dementia risk to a greater extent than genetic risk. So whatever genetic risk you were born with, you can potentially make a big impact on reducing risk of dementia by looking after heart and metabolic health throughout life.”

Also Read: New study indicates that having certain blood type increases your risk of dementia

The team, which comprised researchers from the universities of Glasgow and Michigan, discovered that over 20,000 of the UK Biobank people they analysed had one of the three disorders. A little more than 2,000 people had two conditions, and 122 had all three.

Professor David Llewellyn, Senior Author, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Clinical Health at the University of Exeter, said: “Many studies look at the risk of a single condition in relation to dementia, but health is more complex than that. We know that many patients actually have a range of conditions. Our study tells us that for people who have a diagnosis of diabetes, stroke or a heart attack it is particularly important to look after their health and ensure they are on the right treatment, to prevent further problems as well as to reduce their dementia risk.”

Based on a thorough risk score that reflected several genetic risk features relevant to persons of European heritage, the researchers categorised the 200,000 participants into three genetic risk groups ranging from high to low. They also obtained brain imaging data for over 12,000 patients and discovered substantial brain damage in those who had more than one cardiometabolic disease. High genetic risk, on the other hand, was connected to degradation only in certain areas of the brain.

Dr Kenneth M. Langa, Study Co-author, Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan and Veteran Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System, said: “Our research indicates that protecting the heart throughout life likely also has significant benefits for the brain. To look after your heart, you can engage in regular exercise, eat a healthy diet and do everything possible to ensure blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels fall within guidelines.”

Dr Sara Imarisio, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “The evidence is clear that what’s good for your heart is also good for your head. A person’s risk of developing dementia is a complex mix of their age, their genes, and aspects of their lifestyle. In this study, researchers looked at data from a population of 60 years and older, including whether they had particular heart conditions, information about their genetics, and how these affected their risk of developing dementia. They found that people with multiple heart health conditions were even more likely to develop dementia than people who had an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease due to their genetics.”

“These findings reiterate the importance of treating the causes of poor heart health, not just for its own sake, but also the added benefit in terms of reducing the number of dementia cases. From the generosity of our supporters who enabled us to fund this work, to the selflessness of the volunteers that made it possible, we want to say thank you, without you research like this cannot take place.

“If anyone is worried about the health of your heart or your brain, please speak to your doctor.”

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