Did You Know a Psoriasis?

Psoriasis facts

• Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease.
• Patients with psoriasis who are obese are predisposed to diabetes and heart disease.
• Psoriasis can be initiated by certain environmental triggers.
• A predisposition for psoriasis is inherited in genes.
• Psoriasis is not contagious.
• Psoriasis gets better and worse spontaneously and can have periodic remissions (clear skin).
• Psoriasis is controllable with medication.
• Psoriasis is currently not curable.
• There are many promising therapies, including newer biologic drugs.
• Future research for psoriasis is promising.

What is psoriasis?

Psoriasis is a noncontagious skin condition that produces plaques of thickened, scaling skin. The dry flakes of skin scales are thought to result from the excessively rapid proliferation of skin cells that is triggered by an immune attack by abnormal lymphocytes. Psoriasis commonly affects the skin of the elbows, knees, and scalp.

Some people have such mild psoriasis (small, faint dry skin patches) that they may not even suspect that they have a medical skin condition. Others have very severe psoriasis where virtually their entire body is fully covered with thick, red, scaly skin.

Psoriasis is considered an incurable, long-term (chronic) skin condition. It has a variable course, periodically improving and worsening. It is not unusual for psoriasis to spontaneously 

What causes psoriasis?

The exact cause remains unknown. There may be a combination of factors, including genetic predisposition and environmental factors. It is common for psoriasis to be found in members of the same family. The immune system is thought to play a major role. Despite research over the past 30 years looking at many triggers, the "master switch" that turns on psoriasis is still a mystery.

What does psoriasis look like? What are psoriasis symptoms and signs?

Psoriasis appears as red or pink areas of thickened, raised, and scaling skin. It classically affects areas over the elbows, knees, and scalp. Although any body area may be involved, it tends to be more common in areas of trauma, scratching, or abrasions.

Psoriasis may vary in appearance. It often appears as small flattened scaly bumps and larger thick plaques of raised skin.

There are several different types of psoriasis, including psoriasis vulgaris (common type), guttate psoriasis (small, drop-like spots), inverse psoriasis (in the folds like of the underarms, navel, groin, and buttocks), and pustular psoriasis (small pus-filled yellowish blisters). When the palms and the soles are involved, this is known as palmoplantar psoriasis.

What does psoriasis look like? What are psoriasis symptoms and signs? 

Sometimes pulling off one of these small dry white flakes of skin causes a tiny blood spot on the skin. This is medically referred to as a special diagnostic sign in psoriasis called the Auspitz sign.

Genital lesions, especially on the head of the penis, are common. Psoriasis in moist areas like the navel or the area between the buttocks (intergluteal folds) may look like flat red patches. This may be confused with other skin conditions like fungal infections, yeast infections, skin irritation, or bacterial infections.

Finger and toenails often exhibit small pits (pinpoint depressions) and/or larger yellowish-brown separations of the nail bed called "oil spots." Nail psoriasis may be confused with and incorrectly diagnosed as a fungal nail infection.

Scalp psoriasis may look like severe dandruff with dry flakes and red areas of skin. It may be difficult to differentiate between scalp psoriasis and seborrhea dermatitis when only the scalp is involved. However, the treatment is often very similar for both conditions.

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Putrajaya, MACC sued for ‘unlawful’ death of Customs assistant director

The family of Customs assistant director Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed, who was found dead at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) office three years ago, filed a RM8 million suit against the government, MACC, its chief commissioner and six officers today.

Claiming that MACC caused the "unlawful" death of Ahmad Sarbani, his widow, Masiah @ Maziah Manap said she wanted to know what really happened to her husband.

Lawyer N. Surendran who filed the suit at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on behalf of his widow Masiah and her son Shahril Ahmad Sarbani, said that alternatively, the defendants should also be held responsible for causing Ahmad Sarbani to fall from the window of the MACC building onto the badminton court in its office premises in Jalan Cochrane on April 6, 2011.

The family also claimed that the defendants mounted a mental attack on Ahmad Sarbani, which resulted in his death.

"I believe he is innocent, I need to know the truth," said Masiah, who was present at the Jalan Duta court complex today.

Surendran said that it was unacceptable that three years later, still no one has been held responsible for the Customs officer's death.

"He was at all times under the care and responsibility of MACC, he was taken in for questioning but came out of there a dead man," he said.

Surendran added that until today, there was no proof that Ahmad Sarbaini was involved in any graft wrongdoing.

Following the incident, an inquest was held and in September 2011, the coroner ruled out murder, foul play and suicide in the death of Ahmad Sarbani (pic) who was then 56-years-old.

Coroner Aizatul Akmal Maharani had found that the admission by Ahmad Sarbani to MACC on April 4 to receiving bribes from two forwarding agents had affected his thinking.

According to Aizatul, the pressure resulted in Ahmad Sarbani wanting to retract his admission of guilt, which was why he returned to the MACC office on April 6.

As such, the coroner said that Ahmad Sarbani's death was an accident, adding that the theory that he was murdered could not be supported. The coroner then issued a verdict of misadventure.

The family, however, rejected the verdict.

Surendran told reporters today that it was absurd to believe that Ahmad Sarbani, who had a respectable job and family to look after, would climb onto a window ledge.

"And when the incident happened, the authorities immediately came up with statements that he tried to commit suicide.

"And the CCTV recording in the MACC office was erased, so all this raises many questions and it is very clear that his death was caused by MACC and its officers," Surendran added.

Ahmad Sarbani was found dead on the badminton court located at the first floor of the MACC office on April 6, 2011.

He was among 62 Customs officers detained by MACC in a graft probe, involving losses of up to RM2.2 billion in under-declared taxes. – April 4, 2014.

Seven errors in the search for flight MH370

Putrajaya’s handling of the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has earned it a slew of criticism that it has mishandled the investigation and the public response to the crisis. Here are seven defining errors raised by news portal CNN and other critics on the matter:

Malaysian military radar noticed blips of a plane believed to be flight MH370, but they were not noticed in real time

Radar data offered evidence that the flight did a turn-back and headed west after its last contact with air traffic controllers, and that contact was lost over the Strait of Malacca. Radar operators however did not see it in real time.

The New York Times reported that the plane flew past three military radars and over Penang but nothing was done to identify it, which would have helped prevent its disappearance.

According to CNN, while the radar data was the key reason for expanding the search west of Malaysia, it took officials until March 11 – three days after the disappearance – to explain why they were looking so far off the plane’s expected course. All the while, search efforts continued in places where data showed it could not have been – the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.

Early briefings seemed chaotic, leaving questions as to who was in charge

“Well, I think they didn’t have a proper plan in place for such an accident like this,” aviation analyst Alastair Rosenschein told CNN’s Isa Soares. “They were speaking off the hymn sheet, if you like, and they were making things up as they went along. And they said things, and then they withdrew them without actually saying they withdrew them.”

An official’s inaccurate description of the two men travelling on stolen passports as resembling a black Italian football player

Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director-general of Civil Aviation, told reporters at a press conference just days after the flight went missing that the two men with stolen passports on board the plane looked like the black Italian footballer Mario Balotelli.

“Do you know of a footballer by the name of Batolli? He’s an Italian. Do you know how he looks like? Battoli, Battoli, Balloteli, Balloteli.”

The men, of course, turned out to be Iranian asylum seekers, according to investigators. The two were not believed to be terror suspects.

From “none of those on board survived” to “hoping against hope”

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak on March 24 said the plane’s flight had “ended” in the southern Indian Ocean, just hours after Malaysia Airlines sent a text messages to some relatives, telling them that “beyond any reasonable doubt… none of those on board survived.”

But on Saturday – after family members had angrily said that the conclusion was premature and lacking hard evidence – acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters that he had not entirely given up hope of finding survivors.

“Even hoping against hope, no matter how remote, of course, we are praying and we will continue our search for the possible survivors,” he said at a press conference.

CNN also observed that the following Monday, Hishammuddin further seemed to go back on the account offered by Malaysia Airlines, noting Najib’s carefully worded statement that did not mention a crash or a lack of survivors.

China Daily also reported that Inmarsat, the British satellite firm which provided the data on the possible whereabouts of the plane, said it was not responsible for Putrajaya’s conclusion that flight MH370 crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, contrary to what Najib said – that the ending of flight MH370 was based on an analysis by Inmarsat.

Glaring errors as to the last words from the cockpit

First, Malaysian authorities on March 17 confirmed that the final words from the cockpit were “all right, good night”.

CNN then said that the innocuous bit of radio banter became yet another headache for investigators when, after days of prodding from reporters and family members, they released a transcript showing the final words were actually, “Good night Malaysian three seven zero”.

The news portal added that it’s not that the new language was suspect, but that Malaysian officials got the original wording wrong, let it stand for nearly two weeks, and then – after saying they wouldn’t release the transcript because of its role in the investigation – suddenly reversed course.

“Now it’s just one thing, one day it’s the next. It’s truly kind of an amazing roller coaster ride,” said CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo. “That would be bad enough just for a civil aviation investigation and a criminal investigation, according to Malaysia. But there are 239 families involved. So high criticism is in order at this point.”

She says the shifts call the investigation’s credibility into question.

More confusion over who spoke those words

At first, officials believed that it was co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid who was speaking to controllers. But on Monday, they seemed to waver on that claim.

CNN however reported that Hishammuddin had said: “Malaysia Airlines had stated initial investigations indicated that the voice which signed off was that of the co-pilot. The police are working to confirm this belief, and forensic examination of the actual recording is ongoing.”

Delay in switching search zones

CNN observed that on Friday, the search area in the Indian Ocean suddenly shifted more than 600 miles northeast after authorities announced further refinement of radar and satellite data had showed the plane couldn’t have flown as far south as previously thought.

The Wall Street Journal, however, reported Monday night that “lapses in coordination among countries and companies” led to a three-day delay in making that move.

According to Andy Pasztor, one of the reporters who wrote the story, this boiled down to poor coordination between two parts of the investigation: One dealt with satellite data, and the other with fuel consumption and aircraft performance.

“And so what we’re left with is sort of a three-day gap where it’s clear that folks were definitely looking in the wrong place,” he said. – April 2, 2014.

Plane wreckage may never be found, says head of search operations

Chief coordinator of the JACC speaking to the media about the difficult tasks involved in finding missing MAS flight MH370. - Reuters pic, April 1, 2014.

With the hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 entering its fourth week, the head of the search operations in Australia has raised the possibility that the plane's wreckage may never be found.

This is because authorities have a very poor understanding about how fast or far the plane travelled, reported The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).

Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) Angus Houston told reporters that searching for the aircraft was comparable to the disappearance of HMAS Sydney, which took 60 years to locate.

HMAS Sydney, an Australian navy vessel, sank off the coast of Western Australia during World War II. The wreck of the ship was only found in 2008 despite eye-witnesses saying they saw the ship disappear over the horizon.

"We have a starting point and we need to pursue the search with vigour and we need to do that for some time to come,” Houston, who is the former head of Australia's Defence Forces, said of the ongoing search for MH370.

“Inevitably, if we don't find wreckage on the surface, we are probably eventually going to have to, in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this, review what we do next.”

Hopes of a breakthrough had been raised after the Australian Maritime Safety Authority revealed a new search area about 1,100 kilometres northeast of the previous zones on Friday.

This was after data analysis found that the plane had been travelling faster than previously thought, and would therefore have burnt more fuel and crashed earlier.

But Houston, head of the new Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), said this analysis – described last week as the “most credible” lead to date – was a “very inexact science”, reported SMH.

“We don't know what altitude the aircraft was travelling at. We don't really know the speed it was going,” he said.

He said the ground speed of a plane travelling at sea level was half that of a plane travelling at 40,000 feet even if both aircraft had “the same indicated airspeed”.

Houston is a former chief of Air Force and aviator who spent much of his career as a search and rescue helicopter pilot, the SMH report said.

Houston is expected to brief Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who is scheduled to arrive in Perth tomorrow.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein had said that Najib had also wanted to visit the Pearce Air Force in Perth base to thank the multinational personnel involved in the operation.

Meanwhile, Captain Allison Norris, commander of HMAS Success, told Fairfax Media that conditions were rough today with high winds and swell of up to four metres.

Nonetheless, her crew were scouring the ocean around the clock, using all available personnel on the vessel regardless of their normal jobs.

The crew, she told SMH, were also using night vision equipment when it was dark.

None of the objects found so far in the sea off Perth or Australia have been linked to MH370.

Hishammuddin had reiterated that Malaysia will not give up searching for the missing aircraft, which is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean, with all 239 people on board.

"This is a promise that Malaysia intends to keep. We will continue searching, and we will keep investigating, and we will never give up until we find out what happened to MH370," he had said. – April 1, 2014.

Overcome hair loss

Daisuke (right ) holds regularly changing shampoo does not help the problem of hair loss.

Hair loss is a major problem faced by a number of adults to lead them lose confidence in themselves when faced society.

Increasing age and hormonal changes are among the factors causing hair strands brittle and lost its hold. If seen , men experience hair loss earlier than women.