Health Highlights: Sept. 10, 2007

Mar. 23 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments,compiled by editors of HealthDay:

A Suicide Occurs Every 30 Seconds: WHO

Each day around the world, almost 3,000 people commit suicide, which works out to about one suicide every 30 seconds, says a World Health Organization report released Monday to coincide with World Suicide Prevention Day.

The report also said that for every person who commits suicide, there are at least 20 more people who try to kill themselves, Agence France-Presse reported.

The global suicide rate has risen 60 percent over the last 50 years. Suicide is now among the top three causes of death among people ages 15 to 34. However, most suicide victims are 60 and older, the WHO said.

The agency said it's striving "to ensure that suicide is no longer seen as a taboo or an acceptable result of personal or social crises, but as a health condition influenced by psycho-social, cultural and environmental risk factors," AFP reported.

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Asymptomatic Patients Can Spread C. difficile

People who have Clostridium difficile spores in the gastrointestinal tract but don't show any signs of illness -- such as diarrhea -- may help spread the common infection in hospitals and long-term care facilities, a U.S. study finds.

Researchers evaluated 73 patients at the Louis Stokes Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio. They discovered that the bacteria was nearly as likely to be found on the skin or around the bedside of asymptomatic patients with C. difficile as on patients sick with C. difficile diarrhea, the Canadian Press reported.

The findings contradict previous studies that concluded that asymptomatic C. difficile carriers don't contribute to the spread of the bacteria in health care settings. The new study will be published in the Oct. 15 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

"The patients we should worry the most about are the patients who are having diarrhea," said senior author Dr. Curtis Donskey, director of infection control at Louis Stokes, and a researcher at Case Western Reserve University. "But there are a lot of patients in hospitals and nursing homes who are carrying the organism. And even though they're not having diarrhea, they're often incontinent or very sick and often have kind of reduced standards of hygiene."