tahiti news

Tahiti, April 25, 2022 – The Health Department is launching a call for projects as part of the Commune en santé scheme. Associations and local actors with projects contributing to the promotion of the health of the population are invited to present them before June 17. The winners will obtain a grant for the implementation of their project, preferably on a long-term basis.

With a prevalence of overweight and obesity within the Polynesian population with in particular 40% obese and 30% overweight among adults, the Health Department is looking for ways to act in the promotion of health among Population.
Thus, as it announced in a press release on Monday, it is launching a call for projects from local partner actors of the municipalities (associations, sports federations, fishermen, farmers, etc.) who participate in providing an environment favorable to health. It wishes to rely on their expertise and knowledge of the local context to “to propose adapted and coherent solutions”.

This approach is part of the system Healthy communityproposed to the 48 municipalities of French Polynesia, which “aims to promote health at the municipal level, through the implementation of actions that act favorably on the behavior of people, their environment and their living conditions.” The “Healthy Communes” implement actions around five main themes: local and balanced food, physical activity, life without addiction, community well-being and environmental protection.

All partner associations of municipalities involved in a health promotion approach are invited to respond to this call for projects before June 17. Projects will be considered “contributing to the development of dynamics favorable to health in the municipal territory.” The actions presented “will have to be long-term and not punctual in order to see lasting changes in the beneficiaries.” The winners will obtain a grant for the implementation of their project.

This new study confirms “the potential of caffeine (…) to treat an orphan neurological disease”, summarizes in a press release the Institut du Cerveau, an organization that participated in this work with Inserm and the hospitals of Paris ( AP-HP).

The study, published Tuesday in the neurology journal Movement Disorders, sought to confirm early isolated data on the effectiveness of coffee once morest movement disorders, known as “dyskinesia”, which are linked to a gene called ADCY5.

Extremely rare but very debilitating, this pathology results in many uncontrolled movements, with no known treatment to date.

But three years ago, French doctors, including neurologists Emmanuel Flamand-Roze and Aurélie Méneret, noticed a possible positive effect of caffeine in a young patient.

This discovery made by chance – the 11-year-old child had consumed normal coffee then, inadvertently, decaffeinated, the latter serving as a placebo – however, only concerned an isolated case and therefore had to be confirmed.

To do this, Ms. Méneret and Mr. Flamand-Roze examined data from 30 patients of all ages who had consumed caffeine.

In the end, a large majority (26) of them recorded an improvement in their symptoms following taking caffeine, although three others observed a deterioration instead.

In the majority of patients, including children, caffeine was otherwise well tolerated.

“This study supports the hypothesis (…) of a beneficial effect of caffeine on patients with ADCY5-related dyskinesia”, conclude the authors.

This work was certainly carried out on a limited sample and, above all, retrospectively, therefore without being able to establish a direct cause and effect link, in particular by comparing the effects of caffeine with a placebo.

But these limits are inherent in the rare and serious nature of the disease in question, as the researchers point out.

“Given the rarity of ADCY5-related dyskinesia and the fact that caffeine is a major part of daily life, it is extremely difficult to conduct a classic randomized study” with placebo, explain the authors.