Quick, Paper-Based Ebola Test May Help in Remote Areas

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A paper-based testing device can quickly diagnose Ebola among people who live in remote areas, according to a new study.

A blood sample from a person with a fever is taken and placed on a paper strip in the device. The paper changes a specific color to indicate if a person has Ebola, yellow fever or dengue fever.

The need for a simple, rapid Ebola test is urgently needed. In 2014, the largest Ebola outbreak in history began in West Africa.

One of the keys to containing an epidemic is to quickly identify and isolate Ebola patients. But because early signs of Ebola, such as fever and headache, are similar to dengue and yellow fever symptoms, these diseases are initially hard to tell apart without a blood test.

The new paper-based test takes minutes and the device does not require electricity. The test works in a similar manner to over-the-counter pregnancy tests. While lab tests are more accurate, they require technical expertise and expensive equipment. With this paper test device, people with Ebola in remote areas can be quickly identified and placed in quarantine, the researchers explained.

“These are not meant to replace [standard lab tests] because we can’t match their accuracy. But this is a complementary technique for places with no running water or electricity,” explained researcher Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., in a news release from the American Chemical Society.

Details about the device — developed by researchers at MIT, Harvard Medical School and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — are scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in Boston. Findings presented at meetings are generally considered preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The researchers plan to produce free kits for distribution.

“We’re giving people the components so they can build the devices themselves,” Hamad-Schifferli said. “We are trying to move this into the field and put it in the hands of the people who need it.”

The Ebola outbreak has slowed in the three most-affected West African countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so far, an estimated 27,900 people have been infected and more than 11,000 people have died in the epidemic.

More information

The World Health Organization has more about Ebola.

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Vocabulary at 2 May Help Predict Kindergarten Success

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Children with a larger speaking vocabulary at age 2 are better prepared for kindergarten, a new study shows.

And prior research has shown that kids who function better in kindergarten have greater social and educational opportunities as they grow up, according to background notes in the study.

The analysis of data from more than 8,600 children in the United States showed that 2-year-olds with larger speaking vocabularies did better academically and had fewer behavioral problems when they later entered kindergarten.

Children with larger vocabularies at age 2 tended to be from higher-income families, girls, and those who had higher-quality parenting, the study found. Children who had a very low birth weight or whose mothers had health problems had smaller speaking vocabularies.

The study was published Aug. 18 in the journal Child Development.

“Our findings provide compelling evidence for oral vocabulary’s theorized importance as a multifaceted contributor to children’s early development,” study leader Paul Morgan, an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University, said in a journal news release.

“Our findings are also consistent with prior work suggesting that parents who are stressed, overburdened, less engaged, and who experience less social support may talk, read, or otherwise interact with their children less frequently, resulting in their children acquiring smaller oral vocabularies,” he added.

These vocabulary gaps emerge as early as 2, the researchers say. But early efforts to increase vocabulary may help at-risk toddlers subsequently enter kindergarten better prepared academically and behaviorally, they point out.

“Interventions may need to be targeted to 2-year-olds being raised in disadvantaged home environments,” study co-author George Farkas, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine, said in the news release.

One step might involve having nurses make regular visits to disadvantaged first-time mothers during and after their pregnancies to offer parenting help and connect them with social services and other support systems, the researchers said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders has more about speech and language development.

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25 Million U.S. Adults Struggle With Daily Pain

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Pain is widespread in much of America, with more than 25 million adults — 11 percent — suffering on a daily basis, a new national survey reveals.

And approximately 14 million adults — roughly 6.4 percent — experience severe pain, which can be associated with poorer health and disability, researchers found.

Other national studies of chronic pain have yielded similar results, said study author Richard Nahin, an epidemiologist with the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“What makes this study unique is that I also looked at how often adults have mild pain,” he said.

Nahin found that about 54 million adults — nearly one-quarter — reported “mild,” but not incapacitating, pain.

Whether pain is increasing nationally is difficult to say, Nahin said. But the good news is that roughly half of those living with severe pain indicated in the survey that they were nevertheless in good or excellent physical health overall.

And even better news: The poll found that 44 percent of American adults say their lives are pain-free.

The estimates are based on the responses of nearly 9,000 adults who took part in the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The poll is conducted annually by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The NIH says more Americans are affected by pain overall than are touched by diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. Also, chronic pain is the leading cause for long-term disability.

Nahin said joint pain and back pain are the most common sources of discomfort.

“About one-third of all adults have joint pain in a given year, and a bit more than a quarter of all adults have back pain,” he said.

For the study, published in the August issue of the Journal of Pain, Nahin asked survey participants about the frequency and intensity of pain experienced in the preceding three months. He coded reported pain into five categories of severity, based on persistence and the degree to which it was “bothersome.”

About one in 10 adults experiences “a lot” of pain, researchers found, and nearly 56 percent reported some pain in the preceding three months.

Overall, the researchers found that whites, women, and the elderly were more likely than others to report relatively severe pain.

The survey also found that adults experiencing the most severe levels of pain are likely to be more disabled, in worse overall health, and in need of more health care, compared with people dealing with relatively mild pain.

For those looking to mitigate chronic pain, Nahin said various health approaches can be tried with — or in place of — prescription painkillers. Many people turn to yoga, massage and meditation to relieve pain, for example.

“Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines from the American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society found good evidence that cognitive behavioral therapy, exercise, spinal manipulation and interdisciplinary rehabilitation are all moderately effective for chronic or subacute [lasting more than four weeks] low back pain,” Nahin noted.

In addition, American College of Rheumatology guidelines advocate tai chi, acupuncture and/or walking aids for knee arthritis, he said.

People in search of a pain plan will often need to mix it up, said Dr. Edward Michna, director of the Pain Trials Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and a board member of the American Pain Society.

“Certainly not all pain requires opioids,” Michna said, referring to narcotic medications such as hydrocodone (Vicodin) and oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet).

“They have a role to play, of course,” he added. “But what is needed is an individualization of care and a multidisciplinary approach that might include physical therapy, mind-body therapy, alternative medicines of various kinds, and other types of nonnarcotic medications.”

The best treatment “will usually be a combination of these things. There is no one right answer,” said Michna, who was not involved in the study.

More information

There’s more on pain management at the American Chronic Pain Association.

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Does a Low-Carb Diet Really Beat Low-Fat?

Photo: Getty Images

Which diet is better for weight loss: low-fat or low-carb? Ask anyone hip to the headlines, and they’ll likely say the latter. A low-carb diet decreases a hormone called insulin, which helps regulate fat tissue—it’s thought that lowering insulin levels gives you a metabolic, fat-burning edge.

“We wanted to test this theory,” says Kevin Hall, PhD, a metabolism researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. His small but rigorous new trial with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), published in the journal Cell Metabolism, concludes that the theory is flawed—and that a low-fat diet may have more merits than a low-carb diet.

Any study trying to accurately answer a nutrition question has to get a little obsessive; nutrition research is notoriously difficult to do well. So Hall and his colleagues wanted to design the most rigorous study they could. They recruited 19 obese people who volunteered to stay at the NIH clinical center in a center where every shred of food and every second of exercise was prescribed and monitored by the scientists. Hall wanted to answer a basic question: How does an obese body adapt to cutting carbohydrates from the diet, versus cutting fat from the diet?

“Unless we do the kind of study that we have done here, where we basically lock people up for an extended period of time, control everything, and make sure we know exactly what they eat…then we don’t have the kind of control that’s required to answer these really basic questions,” says Hall.

So for a pair of two-week stays, the volunteers lived in a metabolic ward where they ate the same thing every day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Each person tried two different diets identical in calories: one diet cut 30% of their total calories, all coming from reductions in dietary fat while keeping carbohydrates and protein the same, while the other cut calories from carbohydrates, keeping fat and protein the same. “This is the first time a study has ever just selectively reduced these individual nutrients as opposed to changing multiple nutrients at once,” says Hall. Using special equipment, the researchers were able to see exactly how their bodies were burning both calories and body fat.

People ended up losing weight on both diets, but they lost slightly more on the reduced-carb diet. That didn’t surprise Hall at all. “We’ve known for quite some time that reduction of dietary carbohydrates causes an excess of water loss,” he says, so the weight loss may be due to water loss. As expected—and in keeping with the theory about carb-cutting—insulin levels went down and fat burning went up.

But on the low-fat diet, people lost more fat, “despite not changing insulin one bit,” Hall says.

How is this possible? The exact mechanism is yet to be determined, but Hall has some ideas. “When we cut fat in people’s diets, the body just doesn’t recognize that we’ve done that…in terms of metabolism, so it keeps burning the same number of calories [and fat] as it did before,” he says. This surprised him; Hall thought that the body would somehow respond to the reduction in fat, but it didn’t.

“Insulin is a hormone that is particularly reactive to changes in carbohydrate,” says Hall. “What I was sort of hoping to find was an analogous hormone that was responsive to changes in fat in the diet and altered metabolism.” But they didn’t find it. “It might not exist,” he says.

What they did find was that cutting 800 calories of fat resulted in the body burning just as much fat as before. In contrast, on a low-carb diet, metabolism changes: insulin levels went, carb-burning went down and fat-burning went up, but only by about 400 calories a day, Hall says. That means that low-carb dieters had a net deficit of about 400 calories per day—but those on the low-fat diet had a net deficit of about 800 calories per day, resulting in slightly less body fat.

Hall cautions against changing your diet based on the results of his study; the differences in fat loss were small, and so were the number of volunteers in the study, due to expense.

“What happens to 19 people on a metabolic ward may not apply to the general population out in the real world who are trying to lose weight,” says Lydia Bazzano, MD, PhD, professor in nutrition research at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. (Bazzano, who was not involved in this research, co-authored a study last year that followed people for a year and saw that low-carb dieters lost about eight more pounds than low-fat followers.) “It is also difficult to imagine the the physiology of these 19 people represents the diversity found in the U.S. general population,” she says.

More research is needed, Hall says, but “the takeaway for me is that the theory about metabolism that has previously been used to recommend low-carbohydrate diets probably doesn’t hold water.” “In fact, if anything, the reduced fat diet seemed to offer a slight metabolic advantage.”

If metabolism doesn’t necessarily tip the scale in favor of one diet over another, what else will? In his experiments, Hall is currently exploring the possibility that the brain could respond differently to one diet versus another.

Hall’s bottom line is one agreed upon by many nutrition scientists on both sides of the diet divide: the best diet, whether low-carb or low-fat, is the one you will stick to.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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No Evidence to Support Widespread Screening for COPD: Experts

MONDAY, Aug. 17, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — a serious disease that impairs breathing — is the third leading cause of death in the United States. But an influential government panel says there’s as yet no evidence to support screening for COPD in adults with no symptoms.

In a draft recommendation released Monday, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said the panel had reviewed the latest evidence and saw no reason to change its earlier recommendation on COPD screening, issued in 2008.

“The task force found that there is no evidence that screening for COPD in adults without symptoms results in improved health outcomes,” member Dr. William Phillips said in a news release from the independent panel of experts.

COPD includes emphysema, chronic bronchitis or a combination of the two. Common symptoms include difficulty breathing, chronic cough, wheezing and phlegm production. Over time, the condition can prove fatal.

Smoking is the main cause of COPD, and more than 70 percent of people with the disease are current or former smokers, the task force noted.

“The most important step you can take to prevent COPD is to avoid smoking,” Phillips said. “People who smoke should talk with their doctors about ways to quit.”

Another expert agreed.

“The risk of developing COPD in smokers could be greatly curtailed by helping them to quit smoking through behavioral modifications, practical counseling, medication, nicotine-replacement therapy, and access to community resources,” said Dr. Andrea Spatarella, of the Center for Tobacco Control at North Shore-LIJ Health System in Great Neck, N.Y.

But another expert in respiratory health said routine screening may be needed to spot more people with “hidden” COPD.

“I completely disagree with [the new recommendation],” said Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “I have many patients who deny shortness of breath upon exertion and yet have COPD, sometimes moderate. You don’t need to smoke to get COPD — plenty of symptomatic people have it, or mild asthma.”

His advice? “Screen for it,” Horovitz said.

The draft recommendation was posted on the task force’s website Aug. 17 and will remain open for public comment until Sept. 14, 2015.

The American College of Physicians, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and other organizations also recommend against COPD screening in adults with no symptoms.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COPD.

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Are Vaginal Germs Linked to Preemie Birth?

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Aug. 17, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Researchers have come to learn how millions of germs carried in the body affect your health. Now, a new study links premature birth to a specific kind of bacterial blend in the vagina.

“Our discovery is important because it might allow us to determine which women are at elevated risk of premature birth by measuring the kinds of bacteria in their vagina early in pregnancy when there is still time to intervene and try to reduce the risk,” said study co-author Dr. David Relman, a professor of medicine at Stanford University in California.

But this isn’t going to happen soon. It’s too early to know whether germs and premature births are actually connected. And if they are, researchers aren’t sure what links them.

“Premature delivery is a hugely important problem in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world because of the increased likelihood of death or disability,” Relman said.

About 450,000 infants are born prematurely — more than three weeks early — each year in the United States, the researchers said in background notes.

It’s now known that the human body is filled with helpful germs. These microbes outnumber cells at least 10-fold and provide a variety of benefits, including protection from germs that can make people sick, said study lead author Dr. Daniel DiGiulio, a research associate and clinical instructor in medicine at Stanford.

In the new study, researchers examined germs from the guts, mouths and vaginas of 49 women. Samples were taken weekly during pregnancy and monthly for up to a year after birth. Fifteen of the women delivered prematurely.

Those who gave birth prematurely were more likely to have had greater bacterial diversity in the vagina, the study found. Women were especially likely to give birth prematurely if they had this pattern of bacteria for several weeks.

In some cases, the diverse germ community existed relatively early during pregnancy, DiGiulio said. “This is important because for over half of pregnant women who develop spontaneous preterm birth, we’re never able to predict that their baby will be born prematurely or to determine in retrospect why that happened,” he said.

One theory is that the germs set off the body’s immune system, which releases proteins related to swelling and prompts labor, DiGiulio said. “Many of these proteins, such as a group of related molecules called ‘cytokines,’ are also thought to play a role in the initiation of healthy labor at term,” he said.

Dr. Josef Neu, a professor of neonatology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, cautioned that the study findings are limited. While they’re interesting, he said, the findings don’t prove that certain bacterial patterns are related to premature birth.

“The data is preliminary, the number of subjects studied is small, and the lack of a clear mechanism of how altered vaginal microbes may cause preterm birth will require considerable additional research,” Neu said.

Vaginal bacteria testing may one day become routine, but there’s not enough evidence to support it now, he said.

Eventually, an antibiotic treatment might come along to adjust the makeup of bacteria in the vagina, he said. “It is entirely possible and even likely that some form of microbial therapy will be developed in the future that will lower the risk of premature birth,” Neu said.

Dr. Molly Stout, an assistant professor of maternal-fetal medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed that the study findings have potential to change practice. “All of this understanding and knowledge will hopefully lead us down a path to design better tests and treatments for preterm birth,” she said.

The study is published in the Aug. 17 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More information

For more about premature birth, see the March of Dimes.

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Can Coffee Lower Risk of Colon Cancer’s Return?

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Aug. 17, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Colon cancer patients who regularly drink caffeinated coffee may be lowering their risk of tumor recurrence and death from the disease, new research suggests.

But researchers added that it’s premature to tell patients to drink coffee to reduce their risk of the cancer’s return.

The study found that people with advanced (stage III) colon cancer who drank four or more cups of caffeinated coffee every day had 52 percent lower odds of disease recurrence or cancer death compared with coffee abstainers. Even people who regularly drank slightly less (two to three cups) per day appeared to reap some of the same benefits, just to a lesser degree.

“There is already an abundance of evidence that diet and lifestyle can have a great deal of positive impact in terms of reducing the risk for developing colon cancer,” explained study lead author Dr. Charles Fuchs, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “Now we have found that caffeinated coffee seems to independently improve the outcome for colon cancer patients,” he said.

It’s important to note, however, that this study was only designed to find an association between coffee consumption and a lower risk of colon cancer recurrence or death from colon cancer. It wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

The study findings were released online Aug. 17 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

To explore coffee’s impact on colon cancer, the research team focused on roughly 950 people with stage III colon cancer. They all completed nutrition questionnaires while undergoing postsurgical chemotherapy treatment at some point between 1999 and 2001.

Dietary information was collected again six months after completion of chemotherapy.

The study volunteers were asked about more than 130 different food and drink items. Those items included caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee and non-herbal (caffeinated) tea. In turn, cancer recurrence and patient death rates were followed for an average of a little more than seven years.

Cancer returned in 329 people, mostly within five years of initial treatment, the study found. Of these, 288 died of their disease. An additional 36 people who didn’t have a diagnosis of a cancer recurrence also died during the study follow-up.

The researchers found that drinking two cups of caffeinated coffee daily was associated with a reduced risk for cancer recurrence and colon cancer death. That protection was even greater for those consuming three or four cups of coffee daily. The findings held up even after accounting for other foods that might impact disease progression, such as sugar-sweetened beverages and carbohydrates.

However, consuming non-herbal tea, decaf coffee or just a single cup of coffee a day was not linked to any protective benefit, the investigators found.

So is caffeine the magic bullet?

“For one, we really had too few patients drinking decaf coffee or non-herbal tea to really say what their specific impact might be,” acknowledged Fuchs. “And it is also true that coffee has a lot of components in addition to caffeine that could possibly be relevant to colon cancer,” he added.

“But I do think it would be reasonable to conclude that it could be the caffeine in coffee that is affecting the colon cancer pathway,” Fuchs said. “It’s just that for now we can’t say for sure. We need to confirm these findings in other patient populations.”

But, Fuchs said he wouldn’t promote coffee to patients who aren’t already fans.

“If patients are already drinking coffee regularly I would certainly say go ahead and continue to do so,” he said. “But we need to look at this some more. And meanwhile, there are plenty of healthy lifestyle choices that can help, including avoiding obesity, avoiding a high-carb diet, and avoiding sugary beverages, to name a few.”

That advice was seconded by Dr. Andrew Chan, an associate professor in the department of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an associate professor of medicine in the department of gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“I think to some extent telling patients to go start drinking coffee would be a premature recommendation,” Chan said.

“Yes, this was a carefully done study that does suggest that coffee certainly isn’t harmful, and there’s certainly some value for patients. But I’m not sure that the apparent benefit of coffee is clear enough yet to warrant any clinical recommendations. That will require additional research to establish direct causality,” Chan added.

More information

There’s more on colon cancer at the American Cancer Society.

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Protective Eyewear in Girls’ Field Hockey Means Fewer Injuries

By Tara Haelle
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Aug. 17, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The rate of eye injuries among girls playing high school field hockey dropped dramatically after a national requirement for protective eyewear was passed, a new study reports.

But the mandate doesn’t cover all players. And, the study found that the odds of sustaining an eye injury were more than three times as high in areas where the mandate was not implemented compared with areas where it was implemented.

The findings may “help sports medicine communities adopt policy changes regarding rules and protective equipment that can potentially reduce student-athlete injuries that are largely preventable,” said study author Dr. Peter Kriz, a sports medicine orthopedist at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, R.I.

Almost 70,000 student-athletes participate in high school field hockey in the United States, the study said. And participation rates among girls have increased by 28 percent from 1990 to 2014, according to the report published online Aug. 17 in Pediatrics.

The researchers analyzed national and regional injuries for four seasons of girls’ high school field hockey. These included the two seasons before the mandate for protective eyewear was implemented (2009-2010 and 2010-2011) and the two seasons after (2011-2012 and 2012-2013).

States without a protective eyewear requirement had a higher rate of eye-related injuries among players than did states with the requirement before the national mandate. In states without the requirement, approximately eight injuries occurred per 100,000 practices and games.

In states with the eyewear requirement, approximately 2.5 injuries occurred per 100,000 games and practices after the mandate was passed, the investigators found.

Overall, severe eye-related injuries dropped by 67 percent. Severe head and face injuries dropped by 70 percent in the season after the mandate came into effect, the findings showed.

Protective eyewear is required for U.S. high school-sanctioned field hockey competitions. But eye protection is only voluntary in practices and in competitions, tournaments and other play that is not officially sanctioned by the National Federation of State High School Associations, Kriz said.

“Developmental, college and national-level field hockey coaches and programs have voiced concern that mandating protective eyewear use will jeopardize international recruitment efforts — as no other country mandates eyewear protection — and [hamper] the ability of the U.S. national teams to remain competitive internationally,” Kriz said.

One eye doctor said more needs to be done to protect players’ sight.

“As an eye surgeon working with the NHL [National Hockey League], who has been intimately involved with players suffering severe eye injuries, I find it astounding that a reasonable person could argue against protecting our children from a severe injury for the sake of recruitment of international players,” said Dr. Mark Fromer. He is director of eye surgery for the New York Rangers and an ophthalmologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

“Ask any professional athlete who has lost an eye if they wish they had the opportunity to return to the game where they lost their sight, and revisit the notion of wearing protective eyewear,” he said.

The study’s implications may not be limited to field hockey either, suggested Dr. Daniel Karr, a professor of ophthalmology and pediatrics at Oregon Health and Science University and director of Elks Children’s Eye Clinic.

“The majority of childhood ocular injuries could be prevented by appropriate adult supervision and routine use of protective eyewear during athletic activities,” Karr said. “The results from this high school field hockey study strongly suggest that protective eyewear would correspondingly reduce injury in other high-velocity small ‘ball’ sports, such as tennis, ice hockey, baseball and others.”

The study also looked for any changes in rates of concussion before and after the change in policy. Some people were concerned that the protective eyewear might obscure vision and lead to more collisions, and possibly, concussions, according to the study.

However, the researchers found no difference in concussion rates before or after the eyewear requirement policy was put in place.

More information

For more on preventing sports injuries, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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This is the Cutest Thing You’ll See All Day: The Dog Bun

 

Mankind has always had a deep, deep love for their four-legged, furry friends. And while we just recently found a place in our hearts for the man bun, it didn’t take long for humanity to skip straight to what is quite possibly the cutest pup trend we’ve seen in a while: Dogs with man buns.

The Internet has been aflutter—and rightfully so—criticizing dogs’ owners for tying their ears back. Needless to say, if your dog does not have enough fur to bun (or even tie in a ponytail), please do not opt for their ears instead. It can be seriously harmful to their ears and hearing—and nobody wants to jeopardize their dog’s health for a trendy (and adorable) #DogBun photo. Opting for a scrunchie or thin hairband would probably be the most comfortable—and cute—on your pooch, too.

Here are a few of our favorite (safe!) #DogBun photos. Thanks, Internet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post originally appeared on MIMIchatter.com.

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M·A·C’s “Haute Dog” Collection Is About to Rock Your World

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MIMI Chatter is an endless stream of beauty content. We bring together the must-knows and the how-tos from your favorite sites, beauty influencers, our editors, and YOU.

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Meet the Teen With Down Syndrome Who Will Walk the Runway at New York Fashion Week

 

Madeline Stuart, an 18-year-old model with Down syndrome, will appear in her first show at New York Fashion Week. Stuart will be only the second model with Down syndrome (after American Horror Story actress Jamie Brewer) to walk the runway during the famous fashion event.

Does she look familiar? That could be because earlier this year, Stuart posted modeling shots to her Facebook and Instagram accounts that went viral, leading to calls from agents and then professional modeling gigs. So far, she’s been featured as a face for handbag line EverMaya as well as Manifesta, a brand of fitness gear.

The Brisbane, Australia, native announced her latest job last week on her Instagram account with the caption: “Guess who is modelling in NY for New York Fashion Week xx.”

Stuart will walk in a show put on by FTL Moda, an organization that produces shows at Fashion Week, in partnership with the The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. FTL Moda was also host to Brewer’s appearance this Spring. The group shared its excitement about Stuart’s booking on Facebook: “It is with the utmost joy and pride that we announce Madeline Stuart’s participation in #FTLModa #NYFW #SS2016 presentation. Beautiful Madeline will brighten up the runway at the #VanderbiltHall on September 13th 2015. Stay tuned and RSVP!”

In her Facebook bio, Madeline writes that she hopes to change narrow definitions of what’s possible for people with disabilities. “I am a model, I hope through modelling I can change societies view of people with Disabilities, exposure is creating awareness, acceptance and inclusion.”

Cheers to you Madeline, for showing the world that beauty comes in many forms.

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