Girls say thanks to off-duty coastguard who saved their lives in beach rescue

Blood test to predict vulnerability to MS

AN OFF-DUTY coastguard has been reunited with the two young girls he saved from being swept out to sea on boogie boards.

Eve Watson, eight, and Fearn Hayley, 10, were playing on their boards near a beach when the weather worsened.

Fearn’s mother, Rhona, was watching them from Farr Beach, Sutherland, and tried to wade into the sea but failed to reach the two girls.

Onlookers heard their screams and called 999 but before paramedics arrived, off-duty coastguard Jamie Magee jumped on to his 13ft Pioneer dinghy and caught up with the girls within 15 minutes.

Mr Magee said: “I could hear them screaming and see their heads sticking out of the water.

“Fearn, who was wearing a wetsuit, was still screaming but Eve, who

Jamie Magee with Eve, left, and Fearn.

was dressed in a swimming costume was quiet and when I pulled her aboard, it was clear that she was very, very cold.

“She was starting to suffer from the onset of hypothermia and I needed to get her to the paramedics on shore.”

Mr Magee had been out delivering crabs to a nearby house when he heard the shouts on August 25.

HM Coastguard deputy head of coastal operations Richard Hackwell said: “Jamie’s quick thinking that afternoon saved the lives of two children.” A SIMPLE blood test for vitamin D could soon predict a woman’s risk of multiple sclerosis.

Examining levels of the “sunshine vitamin” in the blood may help predict whether a person is at risk of developing the crippling condition which effects the central nervous system, according to a new study.

About 100,000 people in Britain have MS which normally is diagnosed between 20 and 40.

Study author Dr Kassandra Munger, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School in the US, said: “There have only been a few small studies suggesting that levels of vitamin D in the blood can predict risk.

“Our study, involving a large number of women, suggests that correcting vitamin D deficiency in young and middle-age women may reduce their future risk of MS.”

For the study, researchers used a repository of blood samples from more than 800,000 women in Finland, taken as part of prenatal testing.

The researchers then identified 1,092 women who were diagnosed with MS an average of nine years after giving the blood samples. They were compared to 2,123 women who did not develop the disease.

Of the women who developed MS, 58 per cent had deficient levels of vitamin D, compared to 52 per cent of the women who did not.

Women who had deficient levels of vitamin D had a 43 per cent higher risk of developing MS than women who had adequate levels as well as a 27 per cent higher risk than women with insufficient levels.