Health
UKIAH, Calif. – The Northern California Network of Adventist Health has welcomed female obstetrician and gynecologist Seema Nayak, M.D., to its team at the Women’s Health Center.
For those waiting for the addition of a new and progressive female OB/GYN, “The wait is over,” said Darcie Antle, director of clinical services for the Northern California Network of Adventist Health.
“So many women in our community have been waiting for a female obstetrician to provide for their specific needs. I feel it’s a real privilege that we have a woman of Dr. Nayak’s caliber choosing to practice in Ukiah,” said Antle.
The addition of Dr. Nayak rounds out a list of new and experienced OB/GYN’s who’ve chosen to practice at the Women’s Health Center, including Dr. Winston Eddy, Dr. Vincent Valente and Nurse Practitioner Kathy Truelsen.
“The addition of Dr. Nayak is part of an overall strategy to create a boutique style of Women’s Health Center that will have even more amenities catering specifically to the needs of women in the communities we serve,” Antle said.
Dr. Nayak shared her reason for choosing Ukiah as her home. “Both my husband and I want to be in Northern California. I wanted to be close to the San Francisco Bay Area but in a more rural community where I can use my talents to really make a difference in the lives of women.”
When asked her passions, Dr. Nayak said, “High risk pregnancy – the more complexity the better. But I also like working with all women, in every stage of their lives.”
In addition to her life’s work, Dr. Nayak also is looking forward to spending time with her family in the beauty of Mendocino County and enjoying the Mendocino Film Festival.
The Women’s Health Center is part of the Ukiah Valley Rural Health Center located at 1050 N. State Street in Ukiah.
Dr. Nayak is now accepting new patients. To schedule your next OB/GYN appointment, call 707-462-2945.
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A bacterial protein in common house dust may worsen allergic responses to indoor allergens, according to research conducted by the National Institutes of Health and Duke University.
The finding is the first to document the presence of the protein flagellin in house dust, bolstering the link between allergic asthma and the environment.
Scientists from the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and Duke University Medical Center published their findings in people and mice online Oct. 14 in the journal Nature Medicine.
“Most people with asthma have allergic asthma, resulting largely from allergic responses to inhaled substances,” said the paper’s corresponding author Donald Cook, Ph.D., an NIEHS scientist.
His research team began the study to identify environmental factors that amplify the allergic responses. “Although flagellin is not an allergen, it can boost allergic responses to true allergens.”
After inhaling house dust, mice that were able to respond to flagellin displayed all of the common symptoms of allergic asthma, including more mucous production, airway obstruction, and airway inflammation.
However, mice lacking a gene that detects the presence of flagellin had reduced levels of these symptoms.
“More work will be required to confirm our conclusions, but it’s possible that cleaning can reduce the amount of house dust in general, and flagellated bacteria in particular, to reduce the incidence of allergic asthma,” Cook said.
In addition to the mouse study, the research team also determined that people with asthma have higher levels of antibodies against flagellin in their blood than do non-asthmatic subjects, which provides more evidence of a link between environmental factors and allergic asthma in humans.
“More than 20 million Americans have asthma, with 4,000 deaths from the disease occurring each year,” added Darryl Zeldin, M.D., NIEHS scientific director and paper co-author. “All of these data suggest that flagellin in common house dust can promote allergic asthma by priming allergic responses to common indoor allergens.”
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