A Class IX student in Kollam was diagnosed with H1N1 (swine flu) on Wednesday. Reports find that three other students from the same class were reporting fever-like symptoms since July 13 and are now being treated for similar symptoms. Currently, their test results are pending. The health officials will now be screening more students at the school.

H1N1 And Why It Is A Cause of Concern – Signs and Symptoms

H1N1 flu, also called "swine flu," is a very catching virus. It mostly affects your nose and throat, but can sometimes get into your lungs too. If you get H1N1, you might feel sick with things like:

• A runny nose
• Shivers
• Achy muscles
• Headache
• Fever and chills
• Loss of appetite

While it's often a mild illness, it can sometimes cause serious issues in your lungs or stomach. In rare cases, it can even lead to serious breathing trouble or other infections.

Also Read: 'Three-Parent-Baby' Technique: How UK Is Making Healthy Babies With DNA From Three People To Avoid Genetic Mitochondrial Disease

This type of flu became a worldwide problem because it was a new mix of pig, bird, and human flu viruses. It spread to millions of people and even affected businesses like food and tourism.

The best way to fight H1N1 is to get antiviral medicine early, within 72 hours of your symptoms starting. This can make the illness less severe and even save lives. Vaccines and other ways to prevent the flu are also super important to stop it from spreading.

If your doctor thinks you have H1N1, they'll test samples from your nose or throat to be sure. Getting the best care, especially for people who are at higher risk, often involves a team of different healthcare professionals working together.

The Rise Of Swine Flu And How It Spreads

The Centre of Disease Control and Prevention explains that swine flu is a highly contagious breathing illness that affect pigs. While it's uncommon for humans to catch swine flu from pigs, it can happen if they are in close contact with infected pigs or places where their viruses are present. Once a person gets infected, they can then spread the virus to other people, likely through coughing or sneezing, just like regular seasonal flu.

How Swine Flu Changes

CDC explains that just like the flu virus that affects people and birds, swine flu viruses are always changing. Pigs are unique because they can catch flu viruses not just from other pigs, but also from birds (avian flu) and people (human flu).

When different types of flu viruses infect a pig at the same time, they can mix and swap their genetic material. This is like shuffling a deck of cards. When they mix, brand new flu viruses can be created that are a combination of swine, human, or avian flu.

Over time, many different kinds of swine flu have appeared. Right now, in the United States, there are three main types of influenza A viruses found in pigs: H1N1, H1N2, and H3N2.

Treating H1N1 – Managing the Disease

According to Medscape, if you have H1N1 flu, the main goal of treatment is to help you feel better. This usually means resting a lot, drinking plenty of fluids, and taking medicines to calm your cough, lower your fever, and ease muscle aches (like Tylenol or ibuprofen). If someone gets very sick, they might need fluids given through a vein and other help from doctors. Sometimes, doctors might also give special antiviral medicines to treat the flu or to keep you from getting it if you've been exposed.

When 26-year-old Shannin Pain from Kawartha Lakes, Canada, began experiencing persistent nausea after meals, along with sharp cramps and an inability to keep food down, she did what most of us would do: she went to the doctor. But instead of getting clarity, she got dismissed.

What followed was a frustrating tour of diagnoses that did not stick: IBS, coeliac disease, Crohn’s, even haemorrhoids. Everyone had a theory, except no one ordered the one test that could have saved her life: a colonoscopy.

I Knew Something Was Wrong

“I was told it was IBS or anxiety,” Shannin told the Express UK. But her gut literally was screaming that it was not normal. By October 2023, her symptoms had gone from uncomfortable to terrifying. Her bowel habits had changed drastically, her stool had become pencil-thin, and post-meal nausea was relentless.

And then came the pain. “I'd get these stabbing cramps in my lower left abdomen – so bad I couldn't breathe. I would double over, gasping, clutching my stomach. It felt like something was ripping through me.”

What makes her story especially heartbreaking is not just the physical suffering but how medical professionals repeatedly overlooked her pleas, perhaps because of her age; too young, they assumed, for something as “unlikely” as colorectal cancer.

The MRI That Changed Everything

In April 2024, after six months of worsening symptoms and no answers, doctors finally decided to order an MRI just to rule things out, according to the Express UK. Shannin never went home after that scan.

The MRI revealed a complete intestinal blockage. Emergency surgery followed, and when she woke up, she was hit with the words no one wants to hear: it was cancer.

Stage 4 colorectal cancer, to be precise. The tumour had blocked her colon, spread to her right ovary (a Krukenberg tumour), invaded 11 of 13 lymph nodes, and scattered across her peritoneum. Worse, her liver was so riddled with tumours that surgery was not an option.

Fighting for Her Life

Facing a terminal diagnosis, Shannin had to act fast. Doctors gave her a brutal choice: without chemotherapy, she had less than three months to live. With treatment, maybe three years.

But even in the face of such devastation, she fought for her future, freezing seven eggs in May 2024 before chemotherapy threatened her fertility.

She has now undergone 27 rounds of chemotherapy and is preparing for her 28th. Along the way, she has endured near-death anaphylactic reactions to the drugs and a relentless treatment schedule. And yet, amid it all, a tiny glimmer: her latest scan showed no new growths.

When Dismissal Is Deadly

Shannin’s story is not just about a rare and aggressive cancer. It is about how easy it is to miss something when symptoms are brushed off as “too common” or the patient “too young.”

Colorectal cancer is one of the most preventable and treatable cancers if it is caught early. But that requires one thing: being taken seriously. A colonoscopy is not a last resort. It is a simple test that could have changed Shannin’s trajectory, had it been done in time.

There is a quiet revolution happening in the world of heart transplants, and it is taking place in the operating rooms of Duke and Vanderbilt universities. These medical pioneers are rewriting the rulebook on how we preserve and recover hearts from donors whose hearts have already stopped beating, a scenario long deemed too tricky or controversial for transplant use.

The DCD Dilemma

Until recently, most donated hearts came from people declared brain-dead, with machines keeping their hearts beating while surgeons prepared for removal. But what about those who die because their heart stops, a situation known as donation after circulatory death (DCD)? That is where things get ethically and logistically complicated.

One method to recover DCD organs involves pumping blood and oxygen back into the chest and abdomen, minus the brain, in a controversial move known as normothermic regional perfusion (NRP). Some hospitals ban it altogether. Another option is hauling the heart in a machine that mimics the body and it works well but is pricey, complex, and just too bulky to support hearts small enough for infants. The problem is that the young children need these transplants the most.

A Beat of Hope

Dr. Joseph Turek and his team at Duke strip away the machines and the debates and go minimalist. After removing the donor heart, they hooked it up to a few tubes of oxygenated blood on a sterile table, a quick, clinical moment of resurrection. No fancy equipment. No artificial reanimation. Just a five-minute check to see if the heart could beat again and fill its arteries with life.

The approach, first tested on piglets, got its big debut when a 1-month-old donor’s family agreed to the procedure. The heart passed the quick test with flying colours: pink, pumping, and perfect. It was put on ice and flown to Duke, where a 3-month-old recipient was waiting.

Vanderbilt’s Cool Approach

Meanwhile, over at Vanderbilt, the team opted for something even simpler. Their technique involves cooling the heart and bathing it in a special preservative solution before removal, no reanimation needed. According to Vanderbilt lead author Dr. Aaron M. Williams, this "chill-and-ship" method replenishes nutrients lost during the dying process and protects the heart during transport.

“Our view is you don’t necessarily need to reanimate the heart,” Williams explained.

Why It Matters

Both of these techniques could open the door to using many more donor hearts that would otherwise be discarded, especially for infants and children whose options are tragically limited. With machines too large for tiny bodies and ethics keeping doctors from using existing methods, these new middle-ground strategies could be game-changers.

As reported by The Associated Press, these innovations challenge old assumptions about what is possible and what is not when a heart stops beating. And for those stuck waiting on transplant lists, these new methods might just mean the difference between more time... or time running out.

In Muklawa, Sri Ganganagar district in Rajasthan, nobody even had an idea of what's cooking. Two teachers from a local government school and a physics tutor from a local coaching centre, Manoj Bharghav and Indrijeet Bishnoi, respectively set up a lab to make synthetic drugs like Mephedrone.

Both were inspired by the American series 'Breaking Bad'. They have now been arrested for manufacturing Mephedrone or MD (4-Methylmethcathinone) drug worth Rs 15 crore in Rajasthan, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) said.

What Is MD?

Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone), as per Alcohol and Drug Foundation, is an ampathogen-stimulant drug, which means it speeds up the messages travelling between the brain and body. Mephedrone also increases an individual’s feeling of empathy and kindness and enhances feelings of being socially accepted and connected to others.

Mephedrone is a New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) - a drug that has been designed to produce effects similar to those of established illicit drugs. It was originally marketed online as a plant fertiliser or 'research chemical'.

What Does MD Look Like?

Mephedrone comes in different forms:

• white powder with a yellowish tinge
• crystals
• capsules
• pills

The drug is also known by other street names like Meph, meow, meow-meow, m-cat, plant food, drone, bubbles, and kitty cat.

It is usually sniffed, snorted, or swallowed. Swallowing is the most common way of taking a drug and it usually is mixed with liquid to drink or wrapped in a cigarette paper.

How Does It Impact You?

As per the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, Mephedrone affects everyone differently, based on:

• the amount taken
• a person’s size, weight and health
• whether the person is used to taking it
• whether other drugs are taken around the same time
• the strength of the drug (which varies from batch to batch)
• the environment (where the drug is taken)

The following effects may be experienced and may last for two-to-four hours:

• rush of intense pleasure
• feeling happy, energetic and wanting to talk more
• intense connection with music
• anxiety
• paranoia
• restless sleep
• muscle tension (face and jaw)
• blurred vision
• light-headedness, dizziness
• distorted sense of time
• memory loss
• nose bleeds from sniffing/snorting the drug
• enlarged (dilated) pupils, blurred vision
• dry mouth, thirst
• sweating
• reduced appetite
• stomach pains, nausea, vomiting
• skin rashes
• fast or irregular heartbeat
• high blood pressure and hot flushes
• strong urge to re-dose
• chest pain
• tremors, convulsions

How Did The Two Make The Drug?

The two were arrested on the charges of clandestinely running a manufacturing laboratory from their rented flat at Dream Homes Apartment n Riddhi-Siddhi Enclave in Sri Ganganagar. This had been going on for at last two-and-a-half-months. As per the NCB Director Ghanshyam Soni, the duo sourced their chemicals and equipment from Delhi and took leave from their jobs to manufacture it.

The two were able to produce about five kilogram of MD, which was worth 15 crore. Of that, they sold 4.22 kg of drugs, confirmed Soni.

Chemicals like acetone, benzene, sodium hydrogen carbonate, bromine, methylamine, isopropyl alcohol, 4-methyl propiophenone and n-methyl-2-pyrrolidone were seized from their property.