Health Blog

Lethargic childhood may lead to heart disease later

2010-02-02T08:00:00.001-08:00

Lack of exercise or physical activity in childhood spells increased risk of heart attacks in adulthood, according to a new study.

A child's level of fitness and physical activity might cause diabetes, high Blood pressure and cholesterol levels, besides obesity, collective known as the "metabolic syndrome" - and that could lead to cardiac problems later in life.

Four hundred participants between the ages of seven and 10 and between the ages of 14 and 17 took part in the study to gauge the likelihood of metabolic syndrome.

After seven years almost half of them developed at least a single characteristic of metabolic syndrome, while five percent had developed its full-blown version.

Those with metabolic syndrome were six times more likely to have had low levels of physical activity as children.

The findings - published in the open access journal Dynamic Medicine - reveal that lack of fitness during childhood is a strong indication of the development of heart disease later in life.

"Children today live a very sedentary life and are prone to obesity," said Robert McMurray of University of North Carolina, who conducted the research.

Does a gene cause smoking addiction?

2010-02-02T07:59:00.000-08:00

A genetic variation could prompt craving for smoking and increasing chances of lung cancer and arterial disease, according to an international study.

The study covered 3,700 people from seven countries either with lung cancer or arterial disease and a further 30,000 disease free control subjects.

Greg Jones of the University of Otago said receptors in the brain activated by nicotine appear to be more active in the people with this genetic variation.

Consequently, they have a greater tendency to become addicted to smoking.

Findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

"Inheriting this one factor means they face a double whammy. Not only are they more likely to be heavier smokers but their risk of lung cancer increases by 18 percent and their risk of arterial disease goes up by 10 percent," he added.

"The bottom line is that regardless of whether you have the genetic variation or not, you should not smoke," says Jones.

"Either way, smoking remains a huge risk factor for cardiovascular and lung disease."

Oral contraceptives are better at easing pain, bleeding

2010-02-02T07:58:00.000-08:00

Oral contraceptives are not only better at easing pain and bleeding, but may also be more effective in preventing pregnancy than regulation 28-day birth control pills, according to a study.

The study has found that both the ovary and the lining of the uterus are suppressed better and quicker with the continuous pill rather than with the cyclic pill.

The study, by Penn State College of Medicine researchers, also did not find any harmful effect on the lining of the uterus with oral contraceptives.

Researchers monitored 62 healthy women, randomly assigned to receive either cyclical or continuous birth control pills, for six months with both researchers and participants blinded to the study group.

"We monitored vaginal bleeding, quality of life, and ovarian and endometrial suppression," said Richard Legro, co-author of the study.

Findings of the study have appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

The researchers found a significant decrease in moderate to heavy bleeding days among women who received the continuous birth control regimen.

Women in the continuous group also had a significant decline in circulating and urinary estrogen levels, total ovarian volume and lead follicle size - all biomarkers that indicate the ovary is less active - and reported less pain and behavioural changes compared to women in the cyclic group.

Standard 28-day birth control pills mimic a woman's natural menstrual cycle, while preventing pregnancy. However, results from the study also indicate greater breakthrough bleeding, or spotting, among women in the continuous group.

Legro said the quality of life did not necessarily decrease as it was counterbalanced by improvements in other areas such as pain and mood swings.

Lose Weight, Feel Great With a Good Breakfast

2010-02-02T07:57:00.002-08:00

A healthy breakfast that includes high-fiber cereal, fruit and milk can help you lose weight and fend off diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

The article noted that research suggests that people who eat breakfast are leaner than those who skip breakfast. One study found that people who did without breakfast were at four times greater risk of obesity compared to those who started the day off right, says an article in the Harvard Men's Health Watch.

High-fiber cereals are essential to breakfast's health benefits. Cereals should have at least six grams of fiber per serving but should have less than 10 grams of sugar per serving. Eat high-fiber cereal with nonfat milk and bananas, berries or apple slices, the article suggested.

Other healthy breakfast choices include whole-grain or pumpernickel breads and trans-fat free soft margarine or cholesterol-lowering spreads containing plant stanols. While you don't need to eliminate eggs altogether, it's best to limit them to the occasional brunch, the article said.

Other breakfast foods, such as bacon, hash browns and croissants have far too much fat or salt and should be avoided, the researchers said in the February story.

Of course, taste has a lot to do with how well an individual sticks to a particular breakfast, so the experts suggest trying out different foods to find out which offers you the most enjoyable -- and healthy -- morning meal.

Many stomach cancer cases caused by tobacco use

2010-02-02T07:57:00.001-08:00

Cigarette smoking and use of other tobacco products significantly increases the risk of death from stomach cancer in men and women, a large study of US adults indicates.

Stomach cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide and is known to be linked to chronic infection with the ulcer-causing bacteria Helicobacter pylori.

In its Review of Tobacco conducted in June of this year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that there is "sufficient evidence in humans" to infer a causal relationship between stomach cancer and tobacco use, says Dr. Ann Chao of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chao's group examined stomach cancer mortality in relation to cigarette smoking in women and cigarette, cigar, pipe and smokeless tobacco use in men enrolled in the Cancer Prevention II Study. They identified 996 and 509 stomach cancer deaths among 467,788 men and 588,053 women, respectively.

The researchers found that compared to non-smokers, male cigarette smokers had slightly more than double the risk of dying from stomach cancer, while the risk for female smokers was 49% higher than for non-smokers. Among men, current cigar smoking increased the risk of death from stomach cancer 2.3 times compared to non-smokers.

Men with chronic indigestion or stomach ulcers who smoked cigarettes were more than 3 times more likely to die from stomach cancer, and nearly 9 times more likely to die from the disease if they smoked cigars, compared with non-smokers, the authors report.

If causal, the authors estimate that the proportion of stomach cancer deaths attributable to tobacco use would be 28% in US men and 14% in women.

"These results were very consistent in our study population that has overall lower rates of stomach cancer compared to other countries, and have major implications for countries with much higher stomach cancer rates and increasing smoking prevalence," says Chao.

Loud Music No Threat to Ears

2010-02-02T07:56:00.001-08:00

Most teenagers and young adults don't think hearing loss from listening to loud music is a big problem, even though three out of five have had ringing in their ears after concerts, according to a study released on Monday.

But when told loud music could result in lifelong hearing loss, two-thirds in the study said they might consider ear plugs or other protective measures in the future.

The findings came from a 28-question survey posted on cable television's MTV Web site for three days in March 2002 answered by 6,148 females and 3,310 males, with an average age of 19.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, part of Harvard Medical School, said only 8 percent of those questioned thought hearing loss was a big problem. By comparison, half thought sexually transmitted diseases were a big issue and nearly that many thought the same about alcohol and drug use, smoking and depression.

Sixty-one percent of those questioned had ringing in their ears or other signs of hearing impairment after attending concerts and 43 percent reported the same from socializing at clubs, but only 14 percent had ever used earplugs.

But 66 percent said they could be motivated to try ear protection if they were aware of the potential for permanent hearing loss, said the report published in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics.

"The good news is that many young people indicated that they would consider wearing hearing protection, for an entirely preventable and lifelong hearing loss condition, if they were counseled by a medical professional," said Roland Eavey, a physician who was one of the study's authors.

The report said several studies across the world have reported an increasing trend toward noise-induced hearing loss, particularly among younger people. While short periods of exposure to amplified sound may not cause permanent problems, it said, the damage from chronic exposure can be cumulative, so that a slight hearing loss in childhood can become a substantial one in adulthood.

The authors said they did not do an error margin calculation for this type of opinion sample.

No threat to pacemakers from iPods: Study

2010-02-02T07:55:00.000-08:00

Here is relief for gizmo-lovers with a heart condition - no, "electronic noise" from iPods does not cause cardiac pacemakers to trip, a new study says.

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston were intrigued by a widely reported study last May that concluded errant electronic noise from iPods could cause implantable cardiac pacemakers to malfunction.

This just did not sound right to the hospital's cardiac electro-physiologists who have seen hundreds of children, teens and young adults with heart conditions requiring pacemakers, ScienceDaily reported.

"Many of our pacemaker patients have iPods and other digital music players, and we've never seen any problem," said Charles Berul.

"But kids and parents bring up this concern all the time, prompting us to do our own study."

While last year's study was done in patients averaging 77 years, the average age in the new study was 22. All patients had active pacemakers or implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), which were tested against four digital music players - two kinds of iPods (Apple Nano and Apple Video), SanDisk Sansa and Microsoft Zune.

All patients were lying down during the tests, and each digital player was placed directly over the pacemaker or ICD.

The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Heart Rhythm, found there was no interference with intrinsic device functioning - patients' EKG (electrocardiographic) recordings showed no change in any of 255 separate tests, and no patients had symptoms.

"This provides reassuring evidence that should allay the fears of people using iPods and other digital music players," said Berul, the study's senior investigator.

However, in 41 percent of patients, the music players interfered with telemetry, or communications between the programmer and the pacemaker or ICD itself. The programmer is a computerised device used by physicians to check and recalibrate the pacemaker/ICD - patients do not carry it.

This interference, picked up in 29 of 204 tests, however, went away when the digital player was moved six inches or more from the device, and did not compromise device function.

Patients should not use digital music players while the doctor is trying to reprogram their device, the researchers concluded.

Berul and colleagues are reassured by their own findings, but acknowledge that their testing was only short-term.

"We can't conclude that it's completely safe to have an iPod right on top of the device for hours at a time," Berul said. "That's why we suggest the precaution of keeping it at least six inches away."

Grief can lead to mental illness

2010-02-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

The idea that grief can lead to mental illness is controversial in medical and counselling circles. But a new study says that while strong feelings of grief are normal and healthy after the death of someone you love, some people grieve for so long that it becomes a significant mental illness.

The study, by researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), says between 10 and 15 per cent of bereaved people experience an intense, prolonged sadness arising from longing or yearning for the deceased - so much so that their overall health is impaired.

They withdraw socially, become depressed and even suicidal and traditional grief counselling may not be of a great help, according to a UNSW press release.

Fortunately, other recent findings suggest that such people can recover with treatment using cognitive behaviour therapy, an approach already shown to be more effective than medication for a range of psychological problems, including anxiety and traumatic stress.

A team of Sydney researchers and counsellors is now conducting further studies to evaluate the treatment more fully.

"Many grief counsellors resist the idea that we can 'medicalise' grief reactions in this way," said Richard Bryant, lead author.

"The debate has been intensified by increasing evidence that grief counselling is often not effective. In contrast, the introduction of strictly defined disorder opens new opportunities to treat people suffering the effects of prolonged grief."

Green tea helps beat super bugs

2010-02-02T07:53:00.000-08:00

Drinking green tea helps important antibiotics fight resistant super bugs, making the antibiotics up to three times more effective, according to a new study.

In Egypt, where green tea is popular and where a lot of patients have it while taking antibiotics, researchers wanted to find out if it interferes with the action of the antibiotics.

"We tested green tea in combination with antibiotics against 28 disease-causing micro-organisms belonging to two different classes," said Mervat Kassem of Alexandria University in Egypt.

"In every single case green tea enhanced the bacteria-killing activity of the antibiotics. For example the killing effect of chloramphenicol was 99.99 percent better when taken with green tea than when taken on its own in some circumstances."

Kassem presented these findings Monday at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting in Edinburgh.

Green tea also made 20 percent of drug-resistant bacteria susceptible to one of the cephalosporin antibiotics. These are important antibiotics that new drug resistant strains of bacteria have evolved to resist.

The results surprised the researchers, showing that in almost every case and for all types of antibiotics tested, drinking green tea at the same time as taking the medicines seemed to reduce the bacteria's drug resistance, even in super-bug strains, and increase the action of the antibiotics.

In some cases, even a low concentration of green tea was effective.

Blood test to detect schizophrenia by year-end

2010-01-23T06:43:00.001-08:00

A simple blood test for diagnosing schizophrenia, the most serious form of mental illness, could be available by the year-end, according to a new study.

The disorder, with symptoms that can include hallucinations and delusional thoughts, affects millions of people worldwide.

Celia Henry Arnaud, senior editor, Chemical and Engineering News, which published the report, mentions the test as a part of a broader discussion of how scientists are using non-brain cells to study schizophrenia in a bid to develop new diagnostic tests.

She notes that schizophrenia does not just involve the brain, but also abnormal levels of certain proteins that appear in other parts of the body.

The article highlights groundbreaking research by a group of scientists in Britain, indicating that 40 percent of the chemical changes in the brains of schizophrenia patients also occur in other body parts.

The scientists are studying these biomarkers in the skin, immune cells, and blood of patients to provide a real-time picture of the disease.

Most previous studies, in contrast, were done with brain tissue taken from patients after death, the article notes.

The scientists have already identified several schizophrenia biomarkers in the blood and are working with a company that plans to launch a blood test for diagnosing schizophrenia in 2010, said a release of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The test could help confirm diagnoses made on the basis of psychiatric evaluations and allow earlier diagnosis so that patients can be treated earlier.

The report appeared in Chemical & Engineering News, ACS' weekly journal.

Obesity also ups liver cancer risk

2010-01-23T06:42:00.000-08:00

Obesity comes with plenty of health risks but there's one that's perhaps not so well known -- increased risk of developing liver cancer.

Now, a team of researchers have confirmed in mice that obesity does act as a "bonafide tumour promoter", and they have backed it up with real evidence.

"Doctors always worry about our weight, but the focus is often on cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, both of which can be managed pretty well with existing drugs," said Michael Karin of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

"However, we should also worry about elevated cancer risk. If we can reduce cancer deaths by as many as 90,000 per year, that's a lot of people - a lot of lives."

Karin's team shows that liver cancer is fostered by the chronic inflammatory state that goes with obesity, and two well-known inflammatory factors in particular.

The findings suggest that anti-inflammatory drugs that have been taken by millions for rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease might also reduce the risk of cancer in those at high risk due to obesity, Karin said.

The studies reported earlier showed that obese people have about a 1.5-fold increase in their risk of cancer overall, said an UCSD release.

These findings appeared in the Friday issue of Cell.

Vitamin D may help fight Tuberculosis

2010-01-20T06:21:00.000-08:00

A dose of vitamin D may help ward off tuberculosis, researchers say.

A study of 131 people found the vitamin helped to boost the ability of the body to inhibit the growth of the bacteria causing the disease, reported online edition of BBC News.

Until now no study has evaluated the effect of Vitamin D on the body's immunity to mycobacteria - that causes TB.

During the study researchers took blood from all the participants and infected with mycobacteria.

The group was then split into two with 64 given a dummy pill and the rest a 2.5mg dose of the Vitamin D.

After six weeks, the blood was taken again and infected with mycobacteria.

The blood analysis showed the growth of the bacteria in the people who were given vitamin D was 20 percent less than the placebo group.

The researchers said clinical trials were now needed to fully prove the findings, but they added the vitamin had the potential to help in warding off the disease.

The researchers from Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Imperial College said it could be given to those deemed at risk - the bacteria can lay dormant waiting for the immune system to be weakened before striking - or added to drinks such as milk and orange juice.

The study appeared in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Few minutes of exercise could help inactive overweight women

2010-01-20T06:20:00.000-08:00

Just a few minutes of exercise every day could help improve fitness and health of women who are inactive and overweight, US scientists say.

Conducting tests on overweight and obese women, many of whom had high blood pressure, researchers at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge found that even ten minutes of exercise a day improved their fitness and toned them up enough to lower their overall risk of early death.

The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association is the first to reinforce with concrete medical data that exercise does not have to be an all-or-nothing venture, and lead researcher Timothy Church says the information should be used to encourage sedentary adults to find the time for some activity each week.

While everyone knows that exercise is good for you, 20 percent of US adults admit they do no exercise at all and most do not get as much as is recommended, reported health portal News Medical.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health recommend at least half an hour of moderate exercise to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

The Institute of Medicine, which advises the US government, says people need to get themselves slightly out of breath for close to an hour every day.

Depression tied to risk of becoming diabetic

2010-01-20T06:19:00.000-08:00

Young adults with a history of depression have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a Canadian team.

"Our results are very important because the typical onset of depression occurs between 20 and 30 years of age," Dr. Jeffrey A. Johnson told. "These are the people who are at highest risk of developing depression and, based on our study results, they seem to have the highest risk of developing type 2 diabetes."

Diabetes and depression often co-exist, and "depression is associated with worse outcomes in people with diabetes," Dr. Johnson and colleagues from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, write in the journal Diabetes Care.

It is not been entirely clear, however, whether people with a history of depression are somehow predisposed to developing diabetes, they explain.

The researchers used databases of Saskatchewan Health to identify 33,257 cases of type 2 diabetes among people at least 20 years of age, and each was matched to two nondiabetic "controls." The records were also used to any ascertain history of depression.

Patients with newly diagnosed diabetes were more likely to have a history of depression than were those without diabetes (4.9 percent vs. 3.8 percent, respectively).

This increased risk remained after taking into account various factors, "but was limited to subjects 20 to 50 years of age," the researchers report.

They note that there are several mechanisms that may be involved with this association. Depressed individuals are more likely to experience weight changes and less likely to partake in healthy behaviors such as exercise, both of which may increase the risk of diabetes.

Another possible explanation, according to the team, is that many of the medications used to treat depression cause weight gain and sedation, and may contribute to the development of diabetes.

Moms pregnant with boys may be less forgetful

2010-01-20T06:18:00.000-08:00

Mothers pregnant with boys may be less forgetful than those carrying girls, Canadian researchers said on Tuesday.

The researchers said they found evidence that women who gave birth to boys consistently outperformed moms of girls in tests that specifically taxed memory in areas of listening, computational and visualization skills.

"When we set out to look at the effects of pregnancy on cognition, we weren't thinking of the sex of the fetus, so we were shocked by our results," said study leader Neil Watson, a Simon Fraser University psychology professor.

The 18-month study tracked 39 Vancouver-area women from early pregnancy to several months after birth. The women were given eight tests that were administered repeatedly during pregnancy and after.

In three cognitively-challenging tests, the women pregnant with boys performed significantly better, the researchers said.

Watson said the results suggest that an "unknown fetal-derived factor" that differs between male and female fetuses may have an influence on the mother's cognition.

"The small amount of research that has been done on maternal cognition has generated contradictory results, but our data suggest that some of this discrepancy may be due to the sex of the fetus," said researcher Claire Vanston.

The researchers' findings will be published in the May 12 findings of the journal NeuroReport.

New Type of Leukaemia Identified

2010-01-20T04:44:00.000-08:00

Some infants with a type of leukaemia called acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) respond poorly to therapy. Now researchers have found that these patients actually have a type of leukaemia that is distinct from ALL, paving the way, they say, for targeted treatments.

ALL is a cancer of cells that develop into white blood cells. It is more common among children than adults and accounts for more than half of all childhood leukaemia's.

Researchers already knew that many ALL patients who respond poorly to treatment have a defect in the ``mixed lineage'' gene, which is located on chromosome 11.

Now with the help of gene chip technology, Dr. Scott A. Armstrong of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues have identified more than 1,000 genes that are expressed differently between ALL patients and patients with the mixed-lineage defect, suggesting it should be considered a distinct type of leukaemia.

Reporting in the advance online edition of Nature Genetics for December, Armstrong's team suggests that these patients should be classified as having ``mixed-lineage leukaemia'' (MLL) rather than ALL.

To determine whether MLL was a distinct form of leukemia, the researchers compared the expression of over 30,000 genes in 10 ALL samples and 17 MLL samples.

The investigators also compared genes expressed in ALL and MLL with those in another type of blood cancer called acute myelogenous leukaemia (AML); MLL cells have features similar to both ALL and AML cells. But they concluded that the diseases were ``three distinct entities.''

``We expected to find that a few genes would be different between MLL and ALL, but the number we found immediately suggested to us that we were dealing with a different type of leukaemia,'' Armstrong says.

``This is exciting,'' Armstrong continued. ``It's not your standard ALL, and this is probably why these leukaemia's don't respond well to ALL therapy.''

According to Armstrong, a physician cannot tell an MLL patient from an ALL patient without sophisticated genetic tests, since the symptoms are the same, but ``now that we know that MLL is distinct, we can start directing treatment with that in mind.''

He added, ``It won't immediately change the way we do things, but our ultimate goal is to develop new therapies based on the genes expressed in different types of leukaemia--ones that are less toxic and more specific.''

Study Finds Morning Dialysis Patients Live Longer

2010-01-20T04:42:00.000-08:00

Elderly patients undergoing regular dialysis for kidney failure live longer if they get their treatment in the morning, a new study has found.

Patients with kidney failure must undergo dialysis to clear waste products from the blood. No previous research has been done into whether the time of day at which dialysis is performed has any effect on patient survival, according to Dr. Donald L. Bliwise of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and colleagues.

To investigate, Bliwise's team followed 242 patients aged 60 and older for 11 years. The study participants included 167 patients who had dialysis in the morning, and 75 who had the procedure in the afternoon.

Morning dialysis patients lived, on average, about 1 year and 3 months longer than the patients treated in the afternoon, Bliwise and colleagues report.

When other factors that could affect survival, such as whether or not a patient had diabetes or heart disease, were taken into account, the researchers found morning dialysis cut the risk of death by about 30%.

The authors note that timing has been shown to influence the effectiveness of certain medical treatments. For example, in certain cancers, chemotherapy is much more effective when given in the early morning.

While the reason for the survival advantage to morning dialysis remains unclear, the fact that morning patients are more likely to sleep during the procedure may play a role, co-author Dr. Nancy Kutner explained.

``Previous studies have shown that dialysis during sleep may be more effective,'' she says. Another possibility, the researchers suggest, is that dialysis may be less effective when performed during the afternoon.

``More research needs to be conducted to identify if morning hemodialysis is more beneficial,'' she added.

Every year in the US, more than 300,000 patients receive treatment for kidney failure and roughly 20% of these patients die annually, the report notes.

Pregnancy Ups Risk of Restless Leg Syndrome

2009-12-03T07:17:00.001-08:00

Pregnancy increases the risk for the occurrence, or worsening, of restless legs syndrome, says an Italian study in the Sept. 28 issue of Neurology.

The study of 606 women found that at least one in four pregnant women experience the syndrome, a movement disorder characterized by an urge to move the legs, generally accompanied by numbness, tingling or burning sensations.

The women were assessed during pregnancy and six months after the birth of their babies. Of the 606 women in the study, 161 (26.6 percent) reported experiencing the problem during pregnancy. For 101 of the women, it was the first time they had experienced RLS. About 25 percent of the women experienced symptoms at least once a week, and 15 percent at least three times a week.

In general, symptoms appeared or worsened around the sixth month of pregnancy and reached a peak during the seventh and eighth months of pregnancy. Rates of restless leg syndrome among the women dropped dramatically around the time of delivery and affected 5 percent to 6 percent of the women six months after delivery.

"The pregnant women most affected by the [restless leg syndrome] were older, had lower values of iron storage indicators, a higher prevalence of insomnia, and snored more than the unaffected group," researcher Dr. Mauro Manconi said in a prepared statement.

This is the first study to show a significant correlation between low iron indicator values and restless leg syndrome risk.

Stress Tests Can Predict Heart Ills in Healthy Men

2009-12-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

A treadmill stress test can predict heart attacks or other serious heart disease even in men without symptoms, U.S. researchers reported.

The findings, published in the journal Circulation, suggest that exercise tests may be able to help predict which men who already appear to have a moderate to high risk of heart disease really need to take care.

One of the two studies showed exercise tests may be used to judge who would receive an implanted pacemaker-like device called a defibrillator, researchers said.

In one study two measurements -- a change in electrocardiogram or ECG tracing called ST-segment depression and an inability to reach target heart rate -- more than doubled the 10-year risk of coronary events such as heart attacks.
Men who did well on the stress test had a lower-than-expected rate of heart attack and serious heart disease in the 10 years following.

"Our results suggest that exercise testing may be of benefit in asymptomatic men with intermediate to high risk," said Dr. Gary Balady, a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.
His team tested women, too, but so few women developed heart attacks or serious heart disease that they could not decide if the test was a good predictor for women.
The 1,431 men and 1,612 women were taking part in a bigger study called the Framingham Heart Study. They were 45 years old at the start on average and had been followed for more than 18 years.

The volunteers got a battery of tests when they began the study that included the stress test. In the 10 years following 224 men, or 15.7 percent, had chest pain, a heart attack or died from coronary heart disease.
Overall, there was a 9.6 percent risk of heart attack, chest pain or other serious heart disease for the 3,000 people in the study over 10 years.

The men who had the highest predicted risk anyway, based on cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, family history and other factors, were the most likely to have serious heart disease if they also did poorly on the stress tests, the researchers found.
They said such patients should get aggressive care, including drugs to lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

A second study in Circulation, done at Columbia University Medical Center, found that an exercise test looking for a certain heartbeat pattern, called a Microvolt T-Wave Alternanscan or MTWA, also shows who may benefit from an implantable defibrillator device.

"It's an exercise test with a smart computer," said Dr. Thomas Bigger, who led the study.
Every year 300,000 to 400,000 people in the United States die suddenly when the heart's rhythm is suddenly disrupted.
But there is controversy over how to decide who needs defibrillators implanted to prevent this, and debate over whether Medicare and other insurers should use certain tests to qualify patients for payment.

Medicare only pays if patients have an abnormal QRS test, but the Columbia team say the MTWA test is more accurate.

They tested 177 patients and followed them for an average of 20 months.
Three percent of patients identified as high-risk by the MTWA died during that time, compared with 12 percent identified as low-risk by the QRS test.
The researchers noted that the test could also show who would not be helped by a defibrillator, potentially saving money and trouble.

Arteries Already Stiff in Obese 7-Year-Olds

2009-12-03T07:15:00.000-08:00

Obese children as young as 7 already have the beginnings of artery disease, Italian and U.S. researchers reported.

They found signs that the carotid arteries of 100 obese children were already becoming thick and stiff, as well as indications that the children may have a higher risk of diabetes.

"You can see vascular changes already this early in really obese children," said Dr. Maurizio Trevisan of the University at Buffalo in New York, who led the study.
"We know that obesity in childhood increases the risk of atherosclerosis and death in adulthood," he added. "It is important for parents of obese children to help their children control their weight and get early treatment for these obesity-associated risk factors."

Trevisan, Dr. Archangelo Iannuzzi of Cava de' Tirreni Hospital in Salerno, Italy, and colleagues report their findings in the October issue of Diabetes Care.
For their study they screened 100 children aged 6 to 14 brought to a clinic in Naples because they were overweight. They compared those children to 47 of normal weight.
On average the obese children had higher insulin resistance -- a measure of tendency to diabetes -- than children of normal weight.

They also had higher blood pressure and cholesterol. For instance, the obese children had an average blood pressure of 120/76 while the normal weight children had an average pressure of 98/65.

Importantly, ultrasound scans showed the obese children had thicker and stiffer carotid arteries, the researchers said. The carotid arteries carry blood to the head.
"In adults, arterial thickening has been shown to be a precursor of arterial narrowing and to predict clinical coronary artery disease," said Trevisan.
An estimated 15 percent of U.S. children are overweight or obese and children in many European countries are catching up.

The study shows that obesity acts quickly to damage the arteries of children and that parents and doctors need to act quickly to protect them, the researchers said.

Strength Training May Aid in Type 2 Diabetes

2009-11-21T05:33:00.001-08:00

Strength training might help women with type 2 diabetes improve their body's use of insulin, new research suggests.

In a small study of obese, postmenopausal women, investigators found that a regimen of aerobic exercise and strength training was better than aerobic activity alone when it came to improving insulin sensitivity.

Type 2 diabetes arises when the body loses sensitivity to insulin, a hormone that shuttles the sugars from food into body cells to be used for energy. Obesity is a major risk factor for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, and diet and exercise modification is one strategy for controlling the condition.

It's been unclear, though, whether there are added benefits from bulking up an exercise regimen with resistance training, which aims to build muscle. Such training could improve insulin sensitivity by boosting muscle mass and cutting fat stores in the body, according to the authors of the new study.

To test this idea, they randomly assigned 28 obese women to one of three groups: one that followed 16 weeks of supervised aerobic exercise and strength training; one that followed an aerobic regimen only; and one that continued with their usual diabetes care.

At the end of the study, women in both exercise groups had less abdominal fat and greater muscle mass. But only the strength-training group, which had a bigger increase in muscle density, showed improved insulin sensitivity in tests.
Darcye J. Cuff, of St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada, and her colleagues report the findings in the November issue of Diabetes Care.

According to the researchers, the findings suggest that the changes resistance exercise produced in abdominal fat and muscle mass were behind the improvements in insulin sensitivity. Adding strength training to aerobic workouts, they conclude, might be the best exercise regimen for improving insulin resistance.

Cluster Headache Linked to Heart Defect

2009-11-19T12:11:00.001-08:00

New research suggests that cluster headache, a severe type of headache that usually begins around one eye, often occurs together with a heart defect called patent foramen ovale (PFO), in which blood can pass through a small hole from the right to the left side of the heart without going through the lungs first.

In the fetus, the hole (foramen ovale) is open, since blood does not need pass through the lungs to pick up oxygen while the baby is in the womb. After birth, the hole normally closes, but quite often this closure is incomplete. Since it is a small defect, people are often unaware that they have an open (patent) foramen ovale.

As reported in the medical journal Neurology, Dr. Cinzia Finocchi and colleagues, from the University of Genoa in Italy, used ultrasound to look for PFO in 40 people with cluster headache and 40 similar subjects without such headaches.
There was evidence of PFO in 17 patients with cluster headache compared with just 7 headache-free subjects. Having a cluster headache more than tripled the odds of having a PFO.

So, why do the two conditions often occur together? The reason is unclear, but it may relate to lower oxygen levels in the blood. With PFO, blood that bypasses lungs carries less oxygen than normal, and previous reports have suggested that poorly oxygenated blood may help induce cluster headaches.

Further studies are needed to better understand the association between cluster headache and PFO, the investigators conclude.

Sleep Loss linked to Teens' Suicide Behaviors

2009-11-19T12:09:00.000-08:00

Teenagers who usually fall into bed at 2 a.m. each night and get up a few hours later to make their 8 a.m. classes are putting themselves at risk for more than chronic tiredness.

New findings show that adolescents who do not get enough sleep may be more likely to have suicidal thoughts and to attempt suicide than their more well-rested peers. Such suicidal behavior is also evident among those who experience frequent nightmares, according to the study of young Chinese people.

"These findings ... highlight the potential role of sleep intervention in the prevention of adolescent suicide," writes study author Dr. Xianchen Liu of Arizona State University's Prevention Research Center and Shandong University School of Public Health in the People's Republic of China.

While adults need eight hours of sleep on average, experts recommend that adolescents -- whose bodies undergo big growth spurts and hormonal changes -- sleep at least nine hours every night, Liu explained.

Yet many teenagers get far less sleep than they should, which, studies show, affects their thinking, concentration, school performance and behavior. It is also known that suicide risk increases during adolescence.

Two long-term studies of adults have found that completed suicide can be predicted by poor sleep quality and nightmares, but less information is known about the sleep-suicide association among adolescents.

To investigate, Liu analyzed survey responses from 1,362 students from three junior and two senior high schools in a rural area of a province in eastern China. The students were asked about their sleep patterns and problems and their suicidal behavior.

Nearly 20 percent of the students said they had thought about killing themselves, and 10.5 percent admitted attempting suicide at some point during the previous six months, Liu reports in the October issue of the journal Sleep.
About 17 percent reported having insomnia, and a small proportion (2.3 percent) said they had even taken pills to help them go to sleep.

The students generally reported getting about 7.6 hours of sleep each night. And, study findings show, the less sleep the adolescents had, the more likely they were to report having attempted suicide.

Those who slept less than eight hours each night were about three times more likely to attempt suicide than those who slept a minimum of nine hours.
This finding remained true even when Liu took into consideration the teenagers' depressive symptoms and other factors that could potentially skew the results, the report indicates.

In addition, adolescents who said they had experienced frequent nightmares during the past month were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as those who rarely experienced nightmares.
Further, those who reported having frequent or occasional nightmares - as did almost half of the students - were up to 75 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts than those who rarely had such frightening dreams.
Various researchers have reported that sleep loss may lead to anxiety, depression, aggressive behavior, decreased brain function and hormonal or immunological changes, Liu told.

"All of these impairments due to sleep loss may directly or indirectly lead to elevated risk for adolescent suicidal behavior," he said.

Parents who know their teen is getting only a few hours of sleep each night need not be alarmed about any potential suicidal behavior, according to the researcher, unless they notice warning signs such as their child giving away prized possessions or making out a will.

If those signs are present, Liu advises that parents "consult a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, to assess the potential risk... and see a sleep specialist to look for the reasons of sleep loss if short sleep has impacted the child's daytime functioning."

Dr. Rosalind Cartwright, chair of the psychology department at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois said that Liu's study shows that sleep deprivation among teens is a "worldwide problem."

Adolescents "need more and get less (sleep) than any other age group," said Cartwright, who was not involved with the study, but has conducted sleep-related research. She added that adolescents, and their parents, should "make sleep a priority."

Arthritis sufferers 'misusing painkillers'

2009-11-17T09:48:00.001-08:00

Thousands of patients with severe arthritis are adding over-the-counter medication to prescrib drugs because GPs are limiting their doses amid safety fears.

The effectiveness of conventional painkillers is being hamstrung by concerns about their side effects, such as bleeding and other severe intestinal problems which can be fatal, according to researchers including Martin Green, chief executive of the charity Counsel and Care for the Elderly.

They report that GPs are not always prescribing to appropriate levels, meaning the drugs are not controlling pain as they should, and that doctors seem reluctant to use a new generation of drugs which have fewer side effects. Patients, therefore, are often turning to other pain-relieving drugs and creams instead.

Work by Mr Green and Brian Crichton, a GP and GP trainer in the West Midlands, suggests that a quarter of patients take over-the-counter medications as well as their prescriptions, and a quarter of doctors order low doses for drugs they prescribe, hoping they can control pain without side effects.

The pair report the findings from an electronic poll of 2,000 doctors and questionnaires returned by more than 3,100 patients with osteoarthritis in the journal Current Medical Research and Opinions. The research was funded by the drug company Merck Sharpe and Dohme.

It is thought that 2,000 people a year might die from complications linked to conventional treatments, still small compared with the millions suffering from osteoarthritis - many of whom are not on prescription drugs at all.

The research suggests patients are four times more likely to be dissatisfied with the poor pain relief caused by the drugs than by side effects such as stomach upsets.

The government's national institute for clinical excellence, which monitors the cost-effectiveness of treatments, last year endorsed the new generation of drugs only in those patients who might be at high risk of developing stomach side effects.

These included people over 65, those with gastrointestinal problems, and those already taking other medicines that could cause ulcers. The drugs themselves cost more money, but their supporters argue they more than make up for that by preventing return visits to GPs, hospital treatment and the need for other drugs to counter side effects.

Dr Crichton said: "If you are on a prescription painkiller and it is not working for you don't add another painkiller you have bought yourself. Always ask the advice of your doctor or local pharmacist."

The Better You Sleep, the Better You Work

2009-11-17T09:47:00.001-08:00

Practice alone isn't quite enough to make you perfect. You need to get enough sleep, too.

A study by Harvard Medical School researchers that appears in the July 3 issue of the journal Neuron says your ability to learn motor skills is maximized when you get a full night's sleep.

The study involved teaching groups of people to type a sequence of keys on a computer keyboard as quickly and accurately as they could. One group was trained in the morning and then re-tested 12 hours later. They were able to improve their typing ability by about 2 percent in the re-test.

Another group was trained in the evening and then re-tested 12 hours later, after they'd had a full night's sleep. They had an average 20 percent improvement in their performance when they were re-tested.
The study also found that the amount of performance improvement was linked to the amount of Stage 2 sleep, called non-rapid eye movement (NREM), experienced by the participants, particularly late in the night.

"This is the part of a good night's sleep that many people will cut short by getting up early in the morning," says the study's senior author, Matter Walker, a clinical fellow in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

"In order for an individual to learn new things, they may require a good night's sleep before the maximum benefit of the time they spend practicing is realized," Walker adds in the Harvard press release.

Herbal medicines linked to liver inflammation

2009-11-17T09:46:00.002-08:00

Some types of herbal medicines have been linked to liver inflammation in patients, suggesting the need for these products to be regulated to reduce further risks to consumers, UK researchers report.

"The preparation and prescribing of these medications urgently needs tighter control, as evidence of their potential toxicity has been recognized for some years and is a growing problem," according to Dr. Margaret F. Bassendine of the Center for Liver Research in Newcastle Upon Tyne and her colleagues.

In the latest issue of the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the researchers present the stories of two patients who experienced extensive liver inflammation after taking a mixture of Chinese herbal roots, one of whom died following a liver transplant.

Bassendine and her co-authors also conducted a review of medical literature written in English and identified 29 more patients with liver inflammation linked to herbal treatments.

Why certain herbal medicines can cause inflammation of the liver is, at present, unknown, the authors note. "It is difficult to provide conclusive evidence of what caused (liver inflammation) since traditional Chinese herbal medicines are sold in Europe as food supplements and therefore evade the controls that apply to conventional medicines," Bassendine's team writes. Some products are mixtures that contain adulterants.

However, certain herbal products are mentioned more frequently than others by people who experienced liver complications, the authors add. One product that was taken by 11 patients, called Jin bu huan, is an extract of a plant that behaves like an opiate. Six patients also reported taking Dictamnus dasycarpus, which is sometimes used to treat eczema.

In the first case the authors present, a 31-year-old woman who was given an infusion of Chinese herbal roots to help alleviate joint pain. The woman soon became jaundiced and developed dark urine. She stopped taking the medications 5 weeks after she began. She was not on any other medications, and tests found no signs of hepatitis virus in her blood, which can cause liver damage.

Nevertheless, her condition worsened. After doctors gave her an infusion of an antibody that improved the functioning of her liver, she fully recovered.

In the second case, a 32-year-old man began taking Chinese herb roots to treat benign tumors in his fatty tissue, and finished the entire nine doses of the treatment even after he began to feel unwell. After the treatment ended, he became jaundiced and also developed dark urine, and his condition began to deteriorate rapidly. He received a liver transplant, but died from an infection 13 days after the operation.

"Physicians and the general public should remain alert to the possibility of adverse effects from all herbal remedies, which are being used widely without definite evidence in common conditions such as asthma," Bassendine and her team conclude.

Child Vaccinations Do Not Cause Diabetes

2009-11-17T09:46:00.001-08:00

Routine childhood vaccinations do not increase the risk of developing diabetes, according to a study of more than 700,000 Danish children.

The study, led by Anders Hviid of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, looked at all Danish children born from 1990 through 2000 and found that diabetes rates were not higher regardless of what types of vaccines were administered.

"The study will, one hopes, be the last one that is necessary to disprove an association between immunization and diabetes," said Dr. Lynne Levitsky of Massachusetts General Hospital.

In an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, where the study appears, Levitsky said researchers "should now move on to the most important tasks" of finding what actually causes the blood sugar disease and, perhaps, a way to prevent it.
In addition, the study found siblings of children who had diabetes -- and were therefore more likely to develop the condition themselves -- were not more likely to become diabetics if they were vaccinated.

The Hviid team also looked to see if the vaccinations increased the risk of diabetes two, three or four years later in life. They found it did not.

The fact that doctors are doing a better job of getting children immunized against a dozen often-serious diseases had prompted speculation vaccines might contribute to the growing incidence of childhood diabetes.

But there is already evidence from previous studies that a yet-to-be-discovered environmental factor makes the body stop producing the insulin it needs to process blood sugar.

Dark, leafy greens help shield eyes from cataracts

2009-11-17T09:45:00.002-08:00

New research provides further evidence that substances in kale, spinach and other green vegetables help protect aging eyes from cataract.

In an experiment, investigators found that human eye cells treated with antioxidants called lutein and zeaxanthin showed less damage after being exposed to ultraviolet rays, the sunlight ingredient considered a major contributor to cataracts.

Cataracts occur when proteins in the eye's lens begin to clump together, forming a milky cloud that obscures vision. Currently, around 20 million Americans have cataracts, and research suggests that the more sunlight you are exposed to in life, the greater your risk.

It's hard to say how much of each antioxidant people should get in their diets, given that little is known about how antioxidants in the bloodstream reach the eyes, says study author Dr. Joshua A. Bomser.
"While the specific experiments haven't been done...we know generally: eat more fruits and vegetables," he said.

Foods that contain particularly high doses of lutein and zeaxanthin include kale, collard greens, broccoli, turnip greens and spinach.
Bomser explained that there is ample evidence to suggest that people who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables seem to have a lower risk of age-related cataracts.

To investigate why, Bomser and his colleagues at Ohio State University in Columbus grew human lens cells in a laboratory, then added lutein, zeaxanthin, vitamin E, or left the cells alone.

The researchers then exposed the eye cells to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, in order to mimic the effect of sunlight.

In an interview, Bomser explained that lens cells mixed with lutein and zeaxanthin showed significantly less damage following UV-exposure than cells that had no shielding from antioxidants.

And although vitamin E appeared to offer some protection from UV rays, it was surpassed by both lutein and zeaxanthin, he and his colleagues note in the Journal of Nutrition.

However, other research shows that both vitamins E and C appear to protect body cells from damage from free radicals, which are a normal byproduct of metabolism, Bomser noted.

He added that it's always better to eat antioxidant-rich foods than supplements, in order to get the benefits of other healthy substances present in foods. However, barring that, research does suggest that people can also benefit from taking lutein and zeaxanthin supplements, Bomser said.

Milk May Be Pleasant Alternative for CT Scans

2009-11-17T09:45:00.001-08:00

Undergoing a scan of one's intestines isn't a pleasant experience for patients with conditions like Crohn's disease, especially since it means downing a concoction made with barium.

But a new study suggests there may be a more palatable alternative: milk.

Researchers found that milk coats the intestines well enough so that radiologists can properly view the organ in a CT scan.

The milk alternative "is interesting, and it's certainly cheap enough. Reading this, I might try it on regular patients," said Dr. Laurence Needleman, chief of CT at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

Still, Needleman -- who's familiar with the study findings -- said milk may not be ideal for all patients, especially since it seems to produce images that are less precise.

Specific types of CT scans are often used to examine the intestines along with the liver and spleen, Needleman explained. Patients typically ingest one chemical and are injected with another; the two combine to create contrast and allow radiologists to better view the inside of the body.

In cases of Crohn's disease and other conditions, the purpose of these scans is to detect kinks or obstructions in the intestines, Needleman said.

Patients commonly drink a "contrast agent" called VoLumen, which includes barium. "I've tried it. It's one of the things I made sure I did," Needleman said. "It's not pleasant. It's not a positive experience to drink it. Drinking four glasses of milk probably will be easier."

In the new study, researchers compared VoLumen to milk in patients who were about to undergo CT scans of the abdominal/pelvic area.

Of those, 62 drank VoLumen, while 106 drank two doses of whole milk (one 400-600 milliliter glass, then a 200-400 milliliter glass -- a total of as much as one liter).

The study findings were to be presented Wednesday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

The researchers found that VoLumen was better at allowing radiologists to view certain kinds of images. However, 42 percent of VoLumen patients reported abdominal side effects -- Needleman said it can cause diarrhea -- while only 25 percent of the milk patients did.

As to cost, VoLumen was $18 per patient compared to $1.39 for those who drank milk.

"We hope that substituting milk for other contrast agents will reduce the number of people who refuse imaging tests because they do not want to drink the oral contrast, especially children," Dr. Lisa Shah-Patel, a radiology resident at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, said in a statement. She is one of the study's authors.

But Dr. Raul N. Uppot, assistant radiologist at Harvard Medical School, is skeptical that milk will be a viable alternative. "I don't believe we should sacrifice image quality for improved tolerability," he said, adding that some patients may not be able to drink milk due to allergy, lack of ability to tolerate milk products, or existing bowel disease.

"This is only a small study, and when applied to the larger population of patients undergoing CT, I feel you will run into more complaints of discomfort and diarrhea (with milk)," he said.

In addition, Uppot said, "most patients at our institution tolerate the VoLumen with a few complaints of diarrhea."

Tea may help heal skin damage by radiation

2009-11-17T09:44:00.002-08:00

Tea extracts can help heal skin damage caused by radiation treatment in cancer patients, say researchers.

Frank Pajonk from the University of California in Los Angeles and his colleagues from the University of Freiburg, Germany, studied the effects of green and black tea extracts on patients who had been treated with radiotherapy, which can damage the skin.

The researchers then analysed the effect of the same tea extracts on human and mice white blood cells in culture, which showed that tea acts at the cellular level by inhibiting inflammatory pathways to reduce inflammation, reported science portal EurekAlert.

This might partly be due to the anti-inflammatory properties of tea, the researchers said in the latest issue of the journal BMC Medicine. They also found that tea extracts reduce the duration of skin toxicity following radiotherapy of five to 10 days.

Both black and green teas inhibit a major inflammatory pathway in a mouse's white blood cells. However, green tea extracts are more effective than black tea extracts in some patients, they added.

Green leafy vegetable could reduce skin cancer risk

2009-11-17T09:44:00.001-08:00

Green leafy vegetable may be as important as wearing a hat, sunscreen and protective clothing to reduce the risk of skin cancer, says a study that highlights the importance of eating a healthy, well-balanced diet.

Those who eat at least three serves of green leafy vegetables a week reduced their risk of skin cancer by up to 55 percent, the study by Jolieke van der Pols and other researchers involving 1,000 people in Nambour, on the Sunshine Coast found, according to ABC News online.

Green vegetables such as spinach contain a crucial cocktail of nutrients that can boost the skin's natural defence against sun damage, the 11-year study said.

"Other researches that have looked at individual nutrients haven't found very clear evidence, so it might be that actually the combination of nutrients as they occur normally in the foods that we eat, actually have the effect on the skin cancer," Pols said.

Pregnancy Ups Risk of Restless Leg Syndrome

2009-11-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

Pregnancy increases the risk for the occurrence, or worsening, of restless legs syndrome, says an Italian study in the Sept. 28 issue of Neurology.

The study of 606 women found that at least one in four pregnant women experience the syndrome, a movement disorder characterized by an urge to move the legs, generally accompanied by numbness, tingling or burning sensations.
The women were assessed during pregnancy and six months after the birth of their babies. Of the 606 women in the study, 161 (26.6 percent) reported experiencing the problem during pregnancy. For 101 of the women, it was the first time they had experienced RLS. About 25 percent of the women experienced symptoms at least once a week, and 15 percent at least three times a week.

In general, symptoms appeared or worsened around the sixth month of pregnancy and reached a peak during the seventh and eighth months of pregnancy. Rates of restless leg syndrome among the women dropped dramatically around the time of delivery and affected 5 percent to 6 percent of the women six months after delivery.

"The pregnant women most affected by the [restless leg syndrome] were older, had lower values of iron storage indicators, a higher prevalence of insomnia, and snored more than the unaffected group," researcher Dr. Mauro Manconi said in a prepared statement.
This is the first study to show a significant correlation between low iron indicator values and restless leg syndrome risk.

Stress Tests Can Predict Heart Ills in Healthy Men

2009-11-17T09:42:00.000-08:00

Arteries Already Stiff in Obese 7-Year-Olds

2009-11-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

Body Fat Reduces Ability to Control Blood Pressure

2009-11-17T09:39:00.002-08:00

In response to a stressful event, it is normal for a person's blood pressure to rise and then fall after the event. Now, new research indicates that excess body fat impairs the body's ability to control blood pressure in this situation.

One key way that blood pressure is regulated is through the release of salt, or sodium chloride, in the urine, a process called natriuresis. In the current study, the amount of salt released in the urine dropped as body fat increased.

"Fitness facilitates the ability to regulate blood pressure; fatness impedes your ability to regulate blood pressure through your ability to regulate sodium," study co-author Dr. Gregory Harshfield, from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, said in a statement.

The findings, which appear in the American Journal of Hypertension, are based on a study of body composition and natriuresis in 127 African American and white subjects with an average age of 16 years. Stress was induced by having the subjects play a competitive video game for an hour.

As expected, stress was associated with an increase in blood pressure and natriuresis, the authors note. The magnitude of these changes deceased as body fat rose. Further analysis showed that a person's race predicted how high the blood pressure increased during stress.

"The major finding of this study is that body composition is related to the pressure natriuresis response to mental stress," the authors conclude.

Green Tea Seems to Stem Spread of Prostate Cancer

2009-11-17T09:39:00.001-08:00

Green tea appears to inhibit the spread of prostate cancer in a number of ways, says a study in the Dec. 1 issue of Cancer Research.

In research with mice, scientists from the University of Wisconsin and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland found green tea polyphenols (GTP) target molecular pathways that control the proliferation and spread of prostate tumor cells. The polyphenols also inhibit the growth of blood vessels that feed prostate tumors.

"Consumption of GTP led to reduced levels of IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1)," study senior author Hasan Mukhtar, of the department of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin, said in a prepared statement.

"GTP also led to increased levels of one of the binding proteins for IGF-1, the insulin growth factor binding protein-3. These observations bear significance in light of studies that indicate increased levels of IGF-1 are associated with increased risk of several cancers, such as prostate, breast, lung and colon," Mukhtar said.

Multiple Births a Health Risk

2009-11-17T09:38:00.000-08:00

Women pregnant with twins, triplets or quadruplets are at greater risk of serious health complications than are women carrying just one fetus, according to a Canadian study published on Wednesday.

Researchers at the Universities of Ottawa and Toronto, who studied 4.4 million records for obstetric deliveries in Canada, found that women who carry two or more fetuses are almost 13 times more likely to experience heart failure and more than twice as likely to develop clotting in the legs and lungs -- both leading causes of maternal death.
The findings published in this month's British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology surprised the study's lead author, Dr. Mark Walker, a scientist with the Ottawa Health Research Institute.

"These are young healthy women in the reproductive age window of 16 to 44 where you wouldn't expect to see these health problems," says Walker.

"And the implications of this are two-fold. With women who have multiple gestations, we need to counsel them about these risks and be vigilant for them," he said. "So, if the mother has leg pain, shortness of breath or chest pain, our urgency to look into other problems should be increased."

One obvious example is to consider administering blood thinners to women carrying multiple fetuses who are prescribed bed rest, he said.

Although the study did not distinguish between natural pregnancies and in vitro fertilization, Walker said he hopes his study will send a message to fertility clinics responsible for an explosion in multiple pregnancies in recent years.

"Here's one more cogent reason to develop techniques to ensure that only one baby results from the procedure. I may lose my business as an obstetrician, but it's absolutely safer to have one baby, then wait nine months to have another," he said.
Dr. Jeff Haebe, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of Ottawa, said 60 per cent of the in vitro fertilizations at his infertility clinic result in only one baby, and he transfers a maximum of two embryos for women aged 37 and younger and no more than three for women 38 and older. "And rarely we might go to four," he said.
While there are no laws in North America limiting the number of embryo implants at one time, Haebe said Canada should follow the lead of some European countries that legislate a maximum of two embryos, regardless of age.

"And I think that's a very good way of handling the problem of multiple births," Haebe said.

Brain Scan Helps Diagnose Bipolar Disorder

2009-11-17T09:37:00.002-08:00

Bipolar disorder, a sometimes misdiagnosed mental illness characterized by wide emotional swings, may be identifiable by chemical abnormalities visible in victims' brains, researchers said on Tuesday.

Detailed brain scans performed on 42 adults, half of whom had been previously diagnosed as bipolar, showed consistently different levels of five chemicals in areas of the brain that control behavior, movement, vision, reading and sensory information, they said.

The Mayo Clinic study used a high-power magnetic resonance imaging scanner that had twice the magnetic field strength of scanners previously used to examine the brains of bipolar patients.

"Bipolar disorder is challenging to diagnose because individuals can cover up the symptoms of the illness or may recognize only their depression, not the manic phase of the disorder," Mayo Clinic radiologist John Port said in a report delivered to the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

"The psychiatric community clearly needs a tool to help diagnose bipolar disorder," he said.

The types of therapy used with bipolar disorder differ from those employed to fight depression, so a correct diagnosis is important, Port said. Most diagnoses are made based on conversations with the patient.

Roughly 2.3 million Americans suffer from bipolar disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

High Cholesterol in Diabetes May Harm Vision

2009-11-17T09:37:00.001-08:00

Aggressive treatment to lower high cholesterol in patients with type 1 diabetes, also known as "juvenile diabetes," an autoimmune disease that typically develops at a young age, could protect their vision as well as their cardiovascular health, a new study suggests.

Harvard researchers found that individuals with the highest levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the "bad" cholesterol, had twice the risk of developing a visual problem called macular edema, or fluid in the macula of the eye, compared with those with the lowest LDL levels. Subjects with the highest ratio of total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the "good" cholesterol had a fourfold increased risk of this eye disorder.

Clinically significant macular edema is the leading cause of vision loss in diabetics, Dr. Debra A. Schaumberg of Brigham and Women's Hospital and colleagues note. While high blood sugar has been tied to the development and progression of disease of the retina, the relationship between blood glucose control and clinically significant macular edema is not as clear.

Schaumberg and her colleagues analyzed data from the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial, which included 1,441 patients with type 1 diabetes followed for an average of 6.5 years. Study participants' cholesterol levels were checked annually.

The study, published in the medical journal Diabetes, is the largest investigation of its kind to-date to evaluate the relationship between clinically significant macular edema and blood cholesterol levels.

Patients in the top quarter of total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio had 3.84 times the risk of clinically significant macular edema compared with those in the lowest quarter. Those with the highest LDL levels were 1.95 more times likely to develop clinically significant macular edema.

When the patients' blood sugar levels were considered, the relationship between cholesterol levels and clinically significant macular edema was weaker, although the association remained significant.

However, no relationship was seen between cholesterol levels and the progression or development of diabetic retinopathy.

The results indicate that high cholesterol, especially the total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio, are risk factors for clinically significant macular edema, Schaumberg and her colleagues conclude. The findings may also lend further support to current treatment guidelines that recommend aggressive lowering of high cholesterol in diabetic patients, they add.

Dirty Teeth Can Kill You

2009-11-17T09:33:00.002-08:00

Germs found in dental plaque can make their way into the lungs and cause potentially fatal pneumonia in elderly nursing home patients, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

Though the study was small, the researchers said they found clear evidence in eight patients who developed pneumonia while in the hospital that had originated from their own dental plaque.

"This is the first study to establish unequivocally a link between dental hygiene and respiratory infection," said Dr. Ali El-Solh of the University at Buffalo in New York, who led the study.

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Chest, El-Solh and colleagues said they tested 49 nursing home residents who were admitted to a nearby hospital with a high risk of pneumonia. They made molecular fingerprints of the bacteria found in each patient's mouth before he or she developed pneumonia.

Of the 49 patients, 28 had germs known to cause respiratory disease in their dental plaque samples and 21 did not.

The patients were watched closely for pneumonia. The researchers said 14 eventually developed pneumonia and 10 of them had started out with respiratory disease-causing germs in their teeth.

Tests of germs from the lungs showed the DNA matched the DNA of plaque germs in eight of the patients -- more than half.

"These findings indicate that dental plaque is a reservoir of respiratory pathogens that can cause pneumonia in hospitalized institutionalized elders," said El-Solh.
Nursing homes need to help patients maintain clean teeth and dentures, he added.

Migraine sufferers more at risk of heart attack

2009-11-17T09:33:00.001-08:00

Middle-aged men who suffer from migraine are more at risk of heart attacks, says a new study.

Migraine is a painful neurological condition, of which the most common symptom is an intense and disabling episodic headache.

Men with migraines were more likely to have high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol levels, compared to men who didn't have migraines, a study done on 20,084 men revealed.

Tobias Kurth, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and other researchers had earlier shown that older women with migraines - especially those accompanied by neurological visual disturbances known as aura - had a higher risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease, reported the online edition of health magazine WebMD.

In the current study, the researchers did not have information on whether the men had auras. According to Kurth, the findings in women could be applied to men as well.

An aura occurs before the onset of a migraine. Aura symptoms can include, but are not limited to, light flashes, blind spots, blurred vision, and the formation of dazzling zigzag lines during the migraine. Aura can also include changes in sensation and smell.

"Until we understand more about the association between migraines and heart disease, patients with migraines should think about how to mitigate other known heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol levels, smoking and obesity," the scientist said.

High doses of anaemia drug could be fatal

2009-11-17T09:32:00.002-08:00

High doses of an anaemia drug used by kidney patients could be fatal, causing heart diseases and stroke, say new clinical studies.

Epoetin alfa, a drug often prescribed to treat anaemia in chronic kidney disease patients, has been shown to cause higher risk of death, heart failure, heart attack and stroke when taken in high doses, reported health magazine WebMD.

People with chronic kidney disease often suffer from anaemia. Anaemia has been linked to increased risk of heart disease complications and related death in people suffering from chronic kidney disease.

Epoetin alfa helps raise red blood cell levels back to normal.

Amgen sells the drug as Epogen and Johnson & Johnson as Procrit. Amgen also makes a similar drug, darbepoetin alfa, sold as Aranesp. Another similar drug, epoetin beta, is sold in Europe as NeoRecormon by Roche.

Researchers conducted a 16-month study on 1,432 patients and found that those whose red blood cell count was normalised with high doses of epoetin alfa have a 34 percent higher risk of death, heart attack, and stroke than patients who take lower doses.

Another study showed that when epoetin is used to normalise red blood cell counts in kidney patients, it does not reduce their risk of heart disease or stroke compared with patients who take lower doses.

Both studies appear in the Nov 16 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Either way, the trials seem likely to put an end to routine, high-dose epoetin treatment in kidney patients.

Antibiotics ineffective for treating bronchitis

2009-11-17T09:32:00.001-08:00

Doctors should stop routinely prescribing antibiotics to treat acute bronchitis as most cases are viral infections, says a study that recommends patients drink lots of fluids instead.

Acute bronchitis is an inflammation of the main airways to the lungs characterised by an irritating cough. The disease occurs in about five percent of adults each year and doctors prescribe antibiotics to 70-80 percent of patients for the condition.

But two doctors from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richard Wenzel and Alpha Fowler, say that in almost all cases it is caused by viral infections and does not respond to antibiotics, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The doctors found little evidence that the cough medicine prescribed in most acute bronchitis cases had any value, reported health portal News Medical.

The doctors examined research studies and clinical trials regarding acute bronchitis and any data supporting the potential benefits of anti-bacterial agents.

They say most cases will go away on their own after a few days or a week, and recommend rest and drinking lots of fluids.

Taking unnecessary antibiotics adds to the problem of bacteria becoming resistant to them, thus rendering them less useful for treatment of infections, Wenzel said. They produce unwanted side effects such as diarrhoea, gastric upset, rash, headaches and muscle aches.

Wenzel said doctors should think twice and spend a few minutes explaining to patients why it is unnecessary to take an antibiotic in these cases.

Exercise lowers stroke risk

2009-11-16T07:38:00.001-08:00

Climbing stairs daily helps to lower the risk of suffering a stroke, according to the German Stroke Foundation. It noted that getting too little exercise and being overweight were among the risk factors for a stroke.

Regular exercise and a balanced diet could prevent half of the strokes in Germany, the foundation said, pointing out that cardiovascular events such as stroke were the third-most frequent cause of early retirement in the country.

The foundation said getting more exercise was simply a matter of making small changes in one's daily routine, for example by riding a bicycle to work instead of driving a car or taking public

transportation. In inclement weather, office workers who choose to drive rather than ride to work could park further away from the office and walk the rest of the way.

Many workers make the mistake of not leaving the office during lunch, the foundation noted. It cited a survey by the Berlin-based polling institute Forsa showing that a quarter of all workers in Germany work right through their break even though it presents a good opportunity to stretch their legs for at least 10 minutes.

Generally speaking, adults should exercise at least 30 minutes daily to keep healthy, the foundation said. It suggested that people monitor their exercise regimen with an "exercise book"

in which they jot down all of their physical activities, such as jogging or cycling.

According to the foundation, working up a sweat or exercising for 30 minutes at a time is not necessary since every physical activity lasting longer than 10 minutes is beneficial.

Low-calorie, low fat diet better for your mood

2009-11-16T07:37:00.002-08:00

A low-calorie, low-fat diet does more good to a dieters' mood than a low-carbohydrate plan with the same number of calories, says a new study.

Obese individuals who lose weight tend to have an improved psychological state, including a better mood, according to the study report.

Grant D. Brinkworth of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and colleagues conducted a randomised clinical trial involving 106 overweight and obese participants who aged 50.

Of these, 55 had been randomly assigned to follow a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet and 51 to a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet for one year.

Changes in body weight, mood and well-being, and cognitive functioning (thinking, learning and memory skills) were assessed periodically during and following the one-year intervention.

After one year, the overall average weight loss was 13.7 kg, with no difference between the two groups. Both groups initially (after the first eight weeks) experienced an improvement in mood.

However, most measurements of mood revealed a lasting improvement in only those following the low-fat diet, while those on the high-fat diet returned to their initial levels (mood turned towards more negative baseline levels).

"The obesity epidemic has led to widespread interest in alternative dietary patterns for weight management," the authors write.

"While recent clinical studies have shown that low-carbohydrate diets can be an effective alternative dietary approach for weight loss, their long-term effects on psychological function, including mood and cognition, have been poorly studied.

"This outcome suggests that some aspects of the low-carbohydrate diet may have had detrimental effects on mood that, over the term of one year, negated any positive effects of weight loss," the authors write, according to a CSIRO release.

These findings were published in the November issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Keep heart attack victim cool for better survival chance

2009-11-16T07:37:00.001-08:00

Rapid cooling of the body after a cardiac arrest seems to improve chances of survival without damaging the victim's brain, a new study has found.

"We now have a method that is safe and can be started within minutes of cardiac arrest to minimise damage during this very critical period," said study leader Maaret Castren, professor of emergency medicine at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm.

For years, people hospitalised after cardiac arrest have been cooled to reduce damage to the brain and other tissues when blood circulation normalises after being temporarily halted.

In the Prince (Pre-Resuscitation Intra-Nasal Cooling Effectiveness) investigation, Castren and colleagues at 14 other centres across Europe used a new tool, RhinoChill, that cools the brain during ongoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Researchers randomised 200 adults going into witnessed cardiac arrest to receive either standard resuscitation or resuscitation with cooling started as soon as possible during the arrest, with ongoing CPR.

All patients who survived until hospitalisation were further cooled according to standard criteria.

Eighteen patients were excluded from the analysis because a ?do-not-resuscitate' order was found or there was a non-cardiac reason for their cardiac arrest.

In the 182 patients reported, 83 (average age 66 years, 71 percent male) were randomised to receive nasal cooling (although two were not cooled because of user or device problems) and 99 (average age 64.8, 78 percent male) received standard care.

RhinoChill is a non-invasive device that introduces coolant through nasal prongs. The system is battery-powered and requires no refrigeration, making it suitable for emergency medical technicians to use while a person is receiving CPR.

In the total group, 46.7 percent of those cooled survived until hospital discharge, compared with 31 percent of those receiving standard care.

And 36.7 percent of those cooled were in good neurological condition on hospital discharge, compared with 21.4 percent of those receiving standard care, said a Karolinska Institute release.

In a time analysis, patients who received a combination of early CPR started within six minutes of collapse and cooling had the best outcomes.

These findings were presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2009.

Drug therapy record 'encouraging'

2009-11-15T10:13:00.001-08:00

One in three people addicted to heroin or crack cocaine in community drug treatment programmes in England stops using by six months, research suggests.

Results from 14,600 people in methadone or specialist counselling programmes suggested the rates were slightly lower for those dependent on both drugs.

There are about 140,000 people in such treatment programmes in England.

The study, in the Lancet, showed higher funding for treatment was effective, the Department of Health said.

The researchers said the figures were "encouraging".

Eight in every 1,000 15-64 year-olds are heroin users, statistics show.

or crack cocaine - the smokeable form of the drug - the figure is five in 1,000.

The latest analysis is the largest study done in England of 1,000 community treatment agencies - not including residential rehab schemes - and may be the largest internationally, the researchers said.

Data was collected as part of the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System, where 13,200 people had started on drug treatment such as methadone, and 1,400 people started on psychological treatments - the only current option for crack cocaine addiction.

Among those addicted to heroin, 37% said they were abstinent from the street drug for the month prior to their six-month review.

Another third were classed as "improving" because they had reduced their drug use, just under a third were unchanged and 3% had got worse.

For crack cocaine, 52% had stopped using at six months, 12% had improved, a third were unchanged and 3% had deteriorated.

Increased capacity

The number of people addicted to heroin and crack in treatment programmes in England has increased dramatically in recent years.

It has been estimated that in England around 60% of those in need of treatment are receiving it, at a cost of around £3,000 to £5,000 a year per person.

Colin Bradbury, head of delivery at the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and one of the authors of the study, said: "There's no room for complacency, but we're very pleased and encouraged by the results.

"That is despite the fact we have had very rapid expansion in the treatment system, it's retained its quality and effectiveness."

He added there would be large local variation and services could use the study to benchmark how they were doing.

Study leader Dr John Marsden, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said these were the most "severely addictive" drugs around and users could not stop even when their lives fell apart and it became completely illogical for them to use.

"These are encouraging rates but it is the beginning of a story."

He said they would be doing more work on long-term outcomes and different types of treatment.

"I think this is good evidence for a return of public investment in treatment."

He called for more attention on those who got worse during their treatment programmes and new strategies for the third of users addicted to both heroin and crack cocaine who seemed more resistant to treatment.

Resources

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "This study demonstrates that our strategy of increasing investment in treatment is effective and gives problem drug users faster access to help.

"Tackling drug misuse is a priority. High-quality drug treatment is the most effective way of reducing drug harms and every £1 spent on drug treatment saves £9.50 to the rest of society."

In an accompanying paper, Dr A Thomas McLellan, deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington DC, said short-term interventions may not produce long-lasting, positive effects.

"It may be more reasonable to expect enduring improvements through sustained outpatient clinical management with drugs and behavioural therapies - like expectations we have for the management of diabetes and hypertension."

A spokesman for Addaction said the study highlighted the problems of "polydrug use".

"Many of the people Addaction helps use a wide range of substances, and treating their addictions is a complex business."

DrugScope chief executive Martin Barnes said drug treatment made a difference to thousands of people.

But he added: "Despite the improvements that can be made it is important to recognise that getting off drugs can be a long and complex process - there is no silver bullet for treating drug dependency."

Alcoholics sleep worse months after quitting booze

2009-11-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

Recovering alcoholics sleep worse than people who have never had a drinking problem, and this difference persists after months or even years of abstinence, new research shows.

These changes probably worsen the problems with mental function that result from long-term heavy drinking, Dr. Ian M. Colrain of SRI International in Menlo Park, California and his colleagues say.

People who abuse alcohol complain of insomnia and other sleep problems, even after periods of abstinence, Colrain and his team note in the October 1 issue of SLEEP. But little is known about how alcoholism affects sleep in women, and whether the sleep changes persist long-term.

To investigate, the researchers monitored brain electrical activity during one night's sleep for 42 alcoholics and 42 people without alcohol problems. The alcoholics had been sober for 179 days, on average, with periods of abstinence ranging from 10 days to nearly two years. Fifteen of the alcoholics were women.

All had met criteria for alcohol dependence, and their average consumption was equivalent to about eight pints of whisky a week, Colrain told Reuters Health: "This is not social drinking."

The researchers looked at how long the subjects spent in two types of sleep: slow-wave and REM. Slow-wave sleep is essential for helping the brain to consolidate learning and memory, while REM sleep is when most dreaming happens.

Non-alcoholic men and women spent 12 percent of their sleeping time in slow-wave sleep, and around 20 percent in REM sleep, the researchers found.

But the time in slow wave sleep for alcoholic men was about 7 percent, and for women it was 11 percent. REM sleep represented 24 percent of total sleep time for alcoholic men and women.

Alcoholic individuals also spent a bit more time in stage 1 sleep, the lightest sleep stage, than non-alcoholics did.

While getting less slow-wave sleep is likely to be harmful, he added, getting more REM sleep "is probably a good thing, and certainly not a bad thing," Colrain said. But overall, the differences appear to reflect long-term changes in the brain that affect how sleep is regulated, and they seem to be similar in men and women.

Despite the findings, Colrain told Reuters Health, "it's likely that the sooner you stop drinking the less the impact will have been and the more likelihood you'll have to recover."

Smoking Spurs Snoring

2009-11-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

Your chances of getting a peaceful night's sleep are better if you don't smoke, or spend time around anyone who does.

That's because smoking -- both active and passive -- makes it more likely you'll snore the night away, according to a study in the October issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
"Smoking is a common cause of snoring. Even passive smoke can induce snoring," said study co-author Dr. Karl Franklin, a professor at University Hospital in Umea, Sweden, who added that the most important take-away message from this study is to stop smoking if you're a smoker.

Habitual snoring is a common problem. Between 16 percent and 33 percent of men and 8 percent and 19 percent of women are thought to be habitual snorers. Habitual snoring is defined as loud and disturbing snoring at least three times a week, the researchers said.

Along with being a well-known cause of marital strife, nighttime snoring can lead to excessive daytime sleepiness, which can put you at risk in situations that require attentiveness, such as driving. Snoring has also been linked to ailments such as diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension and increased mortality in men under 60, according to Franklin.

Snoring is caused by an obstruction in the nasal passages, said Dr. Marc Siegel, an internist at New York University Medical Center in New York City.

"Normally, air is getting pushed through a narrow tube as you breathe. If it's narrower than normal, there will be more noise," said Siegel, who pointed out that's one reason why obesity is strongly linked to an increase in snoring -- as you gain weight, your nasal passages become smaller.

Franklin said the researchers have three theories on why cigarette smoke increases the risk of snoring. The first is that smoking, whether active or passive, irritates and inflames and narrows the upper airways. Another theory is that nicotine withdrawal during sleep may cause certain physiological changes that make snoring more likely. And, finally, because nicotine is toxic to nerve cells, smoke may cause toxic lesions on the nerves in the muscles of the upper airways.

Franklin's study included more than 15,000 men and women between the ages of 25 and 54. They were from Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. All answered a questionnaire that included questions on smoking, snoring, chronic bronchitis, obesity, gender and age.

Snoring was far more prevalent in smokers than in those who had never smoked, 24 percent versus 13.7 percent. Former smokers weren't off the hook either -- 20.3 percent of them snored. Nearly 20 percent of people who had never smoked, but were exposed to cigarette smoke on a daily basis at home, were habitual snorers.
After calculating for other snoring risk factors, such as obesity, gender and age, current smoking was responsible for a 17 percent increase in snoring, and passive smoking a 2.2 percent increase. Obesity increased the risk of snoring by 4.3 percent.

"Smoking does predispose you to snoring because it inflames the nasal passages, so it also makes sense that passive smoke can because passive smoke is unfiltered smoke," Siegel said.

However, Siegel added he had one problem with the study -- the information was gathered solely by questionnaire, which is generally not considered the most reliable way to collect information, especially if you're asking about behavior that goes on while you sleep.

"Your partner is probably a better judge of whether you snore or not," Siegel said.

But, he added, it would be very difficult and expensive to do a completely objective study on snoring.
If you'd like to stop your nocturnal noisemaking, Siegel suggests quitting smoking, staying away from people who smoke, losing weight, and treating sinus infections and any allergies you may have. Also, avoid eating just before going to bed and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, he said.

Fruit, vegetable juice could help prevent Alzheimer's

2009-11-15T10:10:00.002-08:00

A specific class of antioxidants found in fruit and vegetable juice could stave off Alzheimer's disease, say scientists.

Non-vitamin antioxidants - polyphenols - are abundant in the skin and peels of fruits and vegetables. They are also present in teas and wines.

Lab trials have earlier shown that polyphenols can have a potent effect on health, with the potential to significantly delay the onset of serious cognitive impairment.

Qi Dai and colleagues at the Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, studied 1,836 dementia-free subjects based in Seattle. They looked into their intake of fruit and vegetable juice over a 10-year period while monitoring cognitive function every two years, reported science portal Science a GoGo.

The team found that people who drank over three serves of fruit or vegetable juice a week reduced the risk of Alzheimer's by 76 percent compared to those who drank less than one.

The team also found that the beneficial effects were most pronounced in subjects who carried a genetic marker associated with Alzheimer's.

The researchers said the next stage was to test blood samples to discover whether elevated levels of polyphenols are directly linked to a reduced risk of Alzheimer's, and discover which types of juice are most effective in achieving this outcome.

Low birth weight babies could face cognitive problems

2009-11-15T10:10:00.001-08:00

Low birth weight babies could face more physical, mental and cognitive difficulties as compared to those with normal weight, says a new study.

Low birth weight has been known to increase the risk of disabilities like cerebral palsy and mental retardation.

However, new research suggests that low birth weight may also contribute to minor difficulties in motor skills and cognitive abilities like thinking, learning and memory, reported the Newswise wire quoting a study published in the October issue of Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine journal.

The study also said these problems could last till adolescence but added that enhanced maternal-foetal and neonatal care may help them improve.

Agnes H. Whitaker and colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute studied 474 non-disabled adolescents who were born at or admitted to one of three New Jersey hospitals between 1984 and 1987 and weighed less than 2,000 grams at birth.

The participants, who had an average age of 16 at the time of assessment for the study, underwent intelligence and motor tests at their homes.

Compared with the standardisation sample, or the large group of teens used to provide a reference point for the assessments, the adolescents with low birth weight had more motor problems.

Their IQ scores were within the normal range, but on an average were significantly lower than the average for their age group.

Male participants, who had injuries to the white matter (nerve tissue) of the brain on neonatal ultrasound and who spent more days on a ventilator as infants, were more likely to have motor difficulties, the researchers said.

Social disadvantages, a lower foetal growth ratio (calculated by dividing birth weight by the median weight for the infant's age) and white matter injury, also predicted lower IQ scores.

But the researchers also noted that enhanced maternal-foetal and neonatal care have the potential to substantially improve cognitive and motor outcomes for non-disabled low birth weight children.

Girls Need Big Breakfast?

2009-11-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

Girls need a more filling breakfast than boys if they are to do their best in school tests, according to researchers in Northern Ireland.

Health experts at the University of Ulster said memory and attention tests found boys did better when they were a little hungry while girls were best after a satisfying morning meal.

"The link between having breakfast and performance at school or work is well established," said Dr Barbara Stewart from the Northern Ireland Center for Diet and Health at the university.

"But this research suggests girls need a more satisfying breakfast than boys to perform at their best." During the project, pupils were fed a breakfast of toast, or beans on toast, and then tested on cognitive ability. As tests became more difficult, those who had eaten beans outperformed students who had been given just toast. The researchers suggested girls benefited most because a breakfast high in carbohydrate and protein helped counteract the effect of a negative mood on their academic performance.

"Due to the interaction between cognition and mood a satisfying, high carbohydrate/protein breakfast, such as beans on toast, helps the girls perform at their best," said Stewart.

"While boys perform better when their breakfast leaves them feeling a little hungry."

Feeding Cereal Too Soon Raises Diabetes Risk in babies

2009-11-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

Babies with a family history of diabetes who were introduced to cereals before or after the recommended age of four to six months had a higher risk of developing a precursor to the disease, researchers said on Tuesday.

Two teams of researchers -- one from the University of Colorado at Denver and the other from the Diabetes Research Institute in Munich, Germany -- produced similar findings in multi-year studies of at-risk children that were both published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

They found that infants at risk of diabetes who were fed fiber or rice cereals before they reached the recommended age of four months were four to five times more likely to develop an autoimmune response that destroys islet cells in the pancreas than babies introduced to cereal between four and six months.
The destruction of islet cells, which make insulin and other hormones, is thought to lead to Type I diabetes, which often runs in families and affects two out of 1,000 Americans.

The Colorado study also indicated that infants not fed cereal until age seven months or later -- beyond the four-to-six month recommended window -- were also at higher risk for developing the disease precursor, study author Jill Norris wrote.

There are various theories about why fiber and rice cereals might trigger cell destruction in the pancreas in infants at risk of diabetes, Norris wrote.

One theory is that the immature infant's gut reacts to the gluten in cereal with an excessive immune system response. In older infants with bigger appetites, the trigger may be the body's response to the larger amounts of cereal consumed.

Another theory posed is that infants not fed cereal during the critical developmental stage between four and six months lack key nutrients such as vitamin E and zinc, which causes the immune system to overreact.
An editorial in the journal said parents should not misconstrue the findings as saying that infant cereals cause diabetes, nor should they be overly concerned about feeding their children fiber or rice cereals.
"At this stage, cautious interest might seem the appropriate response" to the studies, wrote Mark Atkinson of the University of Florida, Gainesville, and Edwin Gale of the University of Bristol, England.
Some young children who develop the precursor condition do not develop diabetes, the editorial said.

Heart Disease Still Number-One Killer

2009-11-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the world, according to a report released by the American Heart Association (AHA).

The AHA estimates that 61,800,000 Americans have cardiovascular disease, which can include high blood pressure, coronary heart disease (heart attack and chest pain), stroke, birth defects of the heart and blood vessels, and congestive heart failure.

Cardiovascular disease kills more people than the next seven causes combined--including cancer--the AHA report states.

``The most surprising finding is that heart disease and stroke numbers are not going down,'' says Dr. David Faxon, president of the AHA. ``For many years, they did, but now we are seeing a leveling off, and in fact, we are seeing an increase in some groups such as African-American women.''

According to Faxon, reasons for the leveling off in numbers include the aging of the population and the ``growing problem'' of diabetes and obesity, both of which greatly increase heart disease risk.

In 1999, the most recent year for which data is available, cardiovascular disease deaths totaled nearly 1 million--equivalent to 1 death every 33 seconds--and accounted for 40% of all deaths that year.

The new report also states that caring for people with cardiovascular disease costs billions of dollars and will get more expensive. Cardiovascular disease-related costs for 2001 were estimated at $298.2 billion and are expected to rise to $329.2 billion in 2002.

``The majority of the cost is for inpatient hospitalization so anything that prevent the disease and complications and the need for rehospitalization can reduce cost,'' Faxon said.

He pointed out that medication and lifestyle changes can have powerful benefits for people with heart disease. ``For instance, taking a beta-blocker, an ACE inhibitor or statin after a heart attack dramatically reduces the chance of another heart attack or death,'' he said.

According to Faxon, lifestyle changes have the greatest effect on preventing death and disease associated with cardiovascular disease. ``While we have made modest effects on smoking and cholesterol awareness, we are losing ground in high blood pressure awareness,'' he added.

``Both men and women need to stop smoking, eat right, exercise and know their blood pressure and cholesterol and keep them at target levels,'' he advised.

Study Finds No Link Between Diet, Colon Cancer

2009-11-15T06:43:00.002-08:00

A large new study has found no link between eating patterns and colorectal cancer risk, suggesting that keeping one's weight down with exercise may be the best way to prevent this type of cancer, the study's lead author says.

Dr. Paul Terry of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and colleagues analyzed eating patterns and the development of colorectal cancer in 61,463 Swedish women.

During the 10-year follow-up period, 460 of the women developed colorectal cancer.

The researchers found no significant association between colorectal cancer risk and three major dietary patterns. Namely, a ``healthy'' diet with high intakes of fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry, whole-grain breads and low-fat diary products; a ``Western'' diet including processed and red meats, soda, sweets, refined breads and high-fat dairy products; and a ``drinker'' diet, reflecting the intake of alcohol.

The findings suggest that eating ``low amounts'' of foods considered ``healthy'' might be associated with a higher risk of colon and rectal cancer, while a healthy diet may be protective among younger women.

Terry and colleagues acknowledge that research on this topic has yielded conflicting results. ``Perhaps it is that the association between diet and colorectal cancer risk is complex and that there are no easy answers here,'' Terry says.

``People seeking to lower their risk might hear a news report that 'a healthy diet' will lower the risk or that a 'modern diet' will increase the risk. Our data don't confirm either of these statements,'' he explained.

``The fact that colorectal cancer risk can vary up to 20-fold across geographical regions strongly suggests that environmental factors are important,'' he added, ``but which environmental factors?''

Additional studies, preferably ones structured similarly to this one, on the role of overall eating patterns in predicting colorectal cancer risk are clearly needed, Terry's team concludes.

Excess Caffeine May Make Seizure Control Tougher

2009-11-15T06:43:00.001-08:00

When a person with epilepsy adequately controlled by medication suddenly begins having more frequent seizures, excess caffeine intake could be the culprit, a report suggests.

``This case presents the point that people with epilepsy should minimally use caffeine,'' says Dr. Kenneth R. Kaufman, associate professor of psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. ``One needs to avoid tea, coffee, chocolates, cocoa and many of the caffeinated sodas.''

Kaufman and his colleague Dr. Rajesh Sachdeo, clinical professor of neurology and director of the hospital's epilepsy program, presented a case study addressing the effect of caffeine on seizure frequency.

The researchers described the 49-year-old man who had been having seizures for 36 years. His convulsions had been successfully controlled with the drugs phenytoin and primidone.

The man began experiencing a sharp rise in the frequency of his seizures, even though he was continuing to take his medication and his sleep patterns and stress levels had not changed. Lack of sleep and increased stress are both known to make seizure control more difficult.

Several newer anticonvulsive drugs, which may have fewer side effects than older medications, have been introduced recently, Kaufman and Sachdeo noted. They considered switching the man to one of these medications until they reviewed his diet and discovered he had recently begun consuming 2 quarts a day of a popular caffeinated, bottled iced tea drink. After he switched to a decaffeinated drink, his seizures subsided.

The researchers explained that chemical substances known as methylxanthines, which include caffeine, have been reported to promote convulsions in animals. When a patient begins suffering more seizures, doctors should investigate the patient's diet for any recent changes before switching his or her medication, Kaufman and Sachdeo suggest.

``Beyond the medications, one has to ask the question, 'What types of seizure threshold-lowering behaviors might be occurring?''' Kaufman added. ``Caffeine (intake) may be a seizure threshold-lowering behavior.''

Steroid shots don't help hip pain long-term

2009-11-15T06:42:00.003-08:00

Corticosteroid shots provide quick relief for people suffering from a common type of hip pain, but the benefits don't last, a new study in The American Journal of Sports Medicine shows.

Known as greater trochanter pain syndrome (the trochanter is the upper part of the femur where it joins the pelvis), this condition is typically treated with physical therapy, training error correction, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, Dr. Jan D. Rompe of the OrthoTrauma Evaluation Center in Mainz, Germany and his colleagues note.

If these measures don't work-or even if they do-"a local corticosteroid injection is regarded as the standard of care," Rompe and his team say.

But there have been no studies comparing various approaches to treating the hip pain syndrome. To investigate, the researchers randomly assigned 229 people with greater trochanter pain syndrome that hadn't improved with standard treatment to home training, a single corticosteroid injection, or several low-energy shock-wave treatments, in which a machine is used to deliver energy pulses to the painful area.

After a month, 75 percent of the injection group reported significant improvements in pain, compared to 7 percent of those doing the home exercises and 13 percent of those who received the shock-wave therapy. But at four months, 51 percent of those given corticosteroid injections reported sustained improvements in pain, while 68 percent of patients in the shock wave group and 41 percent of the home training group reported significant improvements.

Finally, at 15 months, just 48 percent of patients given steroid shots said their pain was better, compared to 74 percent of the shock wave group and 80 percent of the home training group.

"The role of corticosteroid injection for greater trochanter pain syndrome needs to be reconsidered," Rompe and his colleagues say, adding that patients need to be informed of the "advantages and disadvantages of the treatment options, including the economic burden."

Given that shock wave therapy and home exercise training produced about the same results at 15 months, they add, the choice of which to offer patients could be made based on costs, because home exercise is less expensive.

Pregnancy complications tied to kids' poor thinking

2009-11-15T06:42:00.001-08:00

Could high blood pressure-related complications during pregnancy be tied to thinking skills in children years later?

A study from Denmark hints at "a modest association" between such complications and poorer reasoning, intuition, and perception skills in young adult men, report Dr. Vera Ehrenstein, at Aarhus University Hospital, and colleagues.

The study compared intelligence tests measures for more than 17,000 men drafted into Danish military service. Of these men, tested at the age of 19, about 15 percent had poor thinking skills, measured by IQs below 85, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The mothers of about 5 percent of the men in the study had either blood pressures above 140/90, protein in the urine, or swelling of the extremities. All of those are signs or symptoms of a life-threatening condition known as pre-eclampsia.

Poorer thinking skills were slightly more common among men whose mothers had any of those signs or symptoms. About 19 percent of the adults of affected mothers had poorer thinking skills, versus 15 percent among those whose mothers were not affected.

When the researchers accounted for being born small, which places infants at risk for delayed or impaired brain development, and for other factors, poor thinking skills were still as much as a third more likely among men whose mothers suffered from pre-eclampsia symptoms.

Ehrenstein's team notes the current findings cannot determine whether high blood pressure-related complications of pregnancy cause poorer thinking skills, nor why such complications would have any effect on those skills.

Coffee may lower endometrial cancer risk

2009-11-15T06:41:00.001-08:00

Women dread a diagnosis of endometrial cancer, but those who drink at least two cups of caffeinated coffee a day may have a lower risk for this cancer of cells lining the uterus.

Coffee drinking seemed to particularly protect overweight and obese women, study co-author Dr. Emilie Friberg, at the Karolinska Intstituet in Stockholm, Sweden, told Reuters Health by email.

Friberg's team twice surveyed 60,634 Swedish women about their coffee intake - when they enrolled in the Swedish Mammography Cohort study between 1987 and 1990, and again in 1997.

During the 17 years, on average, that the researchers followed patients, 677 women - about 1 percent -- developed endometrial cancer. The average age at diagnosis was 67.

In the overall study group, those who daily drank 2 or more cups were significantly less likely to develop endometrial cancer, compared with those who drank fewer cups of coffee.

Each additional daily cup seemed tied to a 10 percent lower risk for endometrial cancer, after allowing for age and other factors potentially tied to endometrial cancer risk among all the women.

However, they observed the strongest effect among overweight and obese women, who, Friberg's team notes, have "the highest risk for endometrial cancer."

Each additional cup of coffee seemed to decrease endometrial cancer risk by 12 percent among overweight women and by 20 percent among obese women, Friberg and colleagues report in the International Journal of Cancer.

The investigators suggest that coffee may affect blood sugar, fat cells, and estrogen, all of which play a role in endometrial cancer. However, they write that the current findings should be confirmed in other populations.

In particular, "a study also including de-caffeinated coffee would make it possible to separate the effect of coffee and caffeine," Friberg said.

Pregnancy After Age 50 Poses Fetal Risks

2009-11-15T06:39:00.004-08:00

Childbearing beyond maternal age 50 is associated with significantly increased risks for the fetus, suggest results of a study published Friday in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Women in the 50+ age range who are thinking of becoming pregnant should receive "special counseling both before and after conception so that they become informed of the increased risks involved," Dr. Hamisu M. Salihu and colleagues from the University of Alabama at Birmingham write.

There is a lack of reliable information on pregnant women in their fifties, Salihu told. He and his colleagues reviewed all 12,066,854 deliveries in the U.S. between 1997 and 1999, categorizing mothers as young (age 20-29), mature (age 30-39), very mature (age 40 to 49), and older (age 50 or more). There were 539 deliveries in the older group.

In this, the "first population-based nationwide study, we found that fetal growth, fetal maturity and survival were significantly compromised among 50-year old mothers in comparison to their younger counterparts, including women in their forties," Salihu said.

Older mothers were two to three times more likely to have infants that were growth-impaired, immature or stillborn.

"We were surprised with our findings," Salihu commented. "We had thought that 50-year-old moms would have the same level of risk as women in their forties."
"Pregnancy beyond age 50 may represent a distinct obstetric entity with a risk pattern that differs from that observed for mature and very mature mothers," the team writes.

While the researchers did not specifically address the use of assisted reproduction technologies in the study, most of the pregnancies in the 50+ group were artificially induced.

"Because of the risks, assisted reproduction technology clients need to be adequately informed of the possible implications of achieving pregnancy beyond age 50, so that they are well-equipped to make an informed decision," Salihu advised.
"Our study also highlights the need for a broad-based national policy discourse to generate guidelines that will eventually govern the use of assisted reproduction technologies among women in their fifties," he added.

It is also noteworthy that while most women in the 50+ group were married with at least 12 years of education, "surprisingly," only about half of them received adequate prenatal services.

Fruits, Veggies Cut Breast Cancer Risk

2009-11-15T06:39:00.003-08:00

A diet rich in fruits and veggies can help protect against breast cancer.

A study by Oregon Health and Science University researchers found women who eat at least four servings of fruits and vegetables have a 50 percent lower risk of breast cancer than women who consume no more than two such servings each day.
They reached that conclusion after examining the diets of 378 women with breast cancer and the diets of 1,070 cancer-free women. All the women, living in Shanghai, China, filled out questionnaires that asked about their intake of 108 individual food items, fried and restaurant food, dietary changes, and the use of nutrient supplements and Chinese herbal medicines.

Along with its finding about the cancer benefits from eating more fruits and vegetables, the study also found that eating at least six eggs a week was also associated with reduced risk of breast cancer. But no association was found between intake of soy or soy products and breast cancer risk.

The study was presented this week at the American Association for Cancer Research conference in Phoenix.

"This study provides further evidence that low fruit and vegetable intake in the Western diet may be a major risk factor in developing breast cancer," lead author Jackilen Shannon, an assistant professor of public health and medicine, says in a prepared statement.

"Women should modify their diet to include more fruits and vegetables to help prevent breast cancer," Shannon says.

Faulty Gene Doubles Risk of Prostate Cancer

2009-11-15T06:39:00.001-08:00

Men who are missing sections of the CHEK2 kinase gene -- which programs production of a chemical that alerts the body to DNA damage -- are nearly twice as likely to develop prostate cancer as other men, a new study finds.

Researchers assessed 2,000 Polish men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1999 and 2005, and compared them to 5,500 healthy people.

The missing sections (exons 9 and 10) were noted in 15 (0.8 percent) of the prostate cancer patients and in 24 (0.4 percent) of the healthy people. In addition, the researchers noted the missing sections of the gene in four of the 249 men with a family history of prostate cancer.

The study authors calculated that the deletion of these sections of the gene nearly doubles risk of prostate cancer in general, and quadruples the risk in men with a family history of the disease.

This deletion may be fairly common among men from eastern Europe and the Balkans, the study authors added.

The research was published ahead of print in the Journal of Medical Genetics.

Fish oils supplements could cool violent children

2009-11-15T06:38:00.003-08:00

Fish oil supplements could help cool and control the anger of children with behavioural problems, says a new study.

Researchers studied behavioural problems and emotional difficulties, including autism of 28 boys (10 to 16 years old) studying at Eaton Hall Special School in Norwich and found that they had fewer violent outbursts while taking daily doses of the fatty acids, reported the online edition of Daily Mail.

In the six months prior to the trial, students had 112 angry outbursts which required teachers to physically restrain them. This dropped to 36 during the six-month study, when they were given 'Eye q' supplements alongside healthier school meals.

The capsules, made by Equazen, contain omega-3 fish oils and omega-6 evening primrose oil.

The biggest impact was on pupils who had been involved in the most violent incidents. One youngster had to be restrained 10 times prior to the trial but recorded no incidents while taking the capsules, the researchers claimed.

The study suggests students become better able to control their anger, as teachers were less likely to have to intervene to calm them.

Lianne Quantrill, project co-coordinator at Eaton Hall, said: "These statistics suggest that as a result of the new health programme and supplements the children were able to control their anger better. So while outbursts still occurred, they were less extreme, requiring minimal physical intervention from a teacher."

Madeleine Portwood, an educational psychologist involved in a study in Durham, had earlier found the supplements significantly improved short-term memory among primary pupils and enhanced achievements in reading and spelling.

New device may help heal a failing heart

2009-11-15T06:38:00.001-08:00

A new artificial pump along with the intake of certain drugs could enable a failing heart to rest and repair itself, say scientists in Britain.

The temporary pumps, known as Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs), are currently used in patients with severe heart failure while they await transplantation, reported the online edition of BBC News.

The LVAD takes on the work of one of the heart's four chambers, the left ventricle, which pumps oxygen-rich blood from the heart around the body.

Experts from Imperial College London and the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust administered the combination therapy to 15 severely ill patients and found that 11 of them recovered.

Eight of these patients were alive, free of heart failure and did not need a transplant for more than four years.

Magdi Yacoub, from the Heart Science Centre at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust, said: "We are impressed by the dramatic, sustained improvement in the condition of these severely ill patients. The improvement observed was far greater than what has been reported to date for any other therapy.

"The study also highlights the fact that 'end stage' heart failure can be reversed and that the heart has the capacity to regenerate itself."

Many patients are often unable to get a new heart due to a shortage of donor organs. The new therapy, however, has the potential to ease the pressure on the waiting list while also offering patients a better alternative to a donor heart - their own healthy heart.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF), which supported the research, stressed that the technique was only suitable for certain patients.

"It could help some who develop severe heart failure as a result of a disease that weakens their heart muscle, but not those with the more common coronary heart disease, which damages the heart as a result of a lack of blood supply," explained Peter Weissberg, medical director of the BHF.

He added: "The study raises several important questions which will need answering in future clinical studies - we need to know exactly what part of this treatment regimen is responsible for the recovery of heart function, and which patients can benefit from it."

High Cholesterol May Weaken Bones

2009-11-15T06:37:00.002-08:00

It's no secret that high cholesterol increases the risk of heart disease, but new research from Italy suggests that it may also be bad for the bones.

In a study of postmenopausal women, those with higher levels of the "bad" form of cholesterol were much more likely to show signs of bone thinning than women with normal cholesterol.

The findings do not prove that high cholesterol is to blame for bone thinning, but the results do provide a possible explanation for studies suggesting that cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins protect bones, researchers report in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Very little is known about how cholesterol levels may affect the risk of developing the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis. Studies that have examined the relationship between levels of LDL cholesterol - the "bad" type of cholesterol - and the risk of bone thinning have produced mixed results.

In the new study, a team led by Dr. Andrea Poli at the University of Milan measured bone density and cholesterol levels in 1,303 women ages 45 to 65 who had been through menopause.

The women were divided into three groups based on LDL levels: normal (129 mg/dL or below), moderately high (130 to 159 mg/dL) and high (160 mg/dL and above).
Compared to women with normal LDL levels, women with high levels were 74 percent more likely to have osteopenia, a bone-thinning condition just short of osteoporosis, Poli's team reports.

Osteopenia was more common in older women and in those with a low body mass index, or BMI, which is a measure of weight in relation to height. And the longer it had been since menopause, the greater were a woman's odds of having bone thinning, according to the report.

High LDL levels may weaken bones by promoting the breakdown of bone, according to the report.

But Poli's team cautions that the study is not the final word on the relationship between LDL and bone thinning. In fact, one study found that men with higher LDL levels tended to have stronger bones.

In other findings, levels of HDL, or "good," cholesterol were not related to bone density.

Fatigue Often Precedes Heart Attacks in Women

2009-11-15T06:37:00.001-08:00

Most women who have a heart attack have experienced telltale symptoms, such as extreme fatigue and sleep disturbance, during the weeks leading up to the attack, investigators report.

Chest pain, however, is not usually one of these symptoms.

According to their report the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, Dr. Jean C. McSweeney and her colleagues believe that doctors sometimes don't recognize that a woman is having a heart attack because the symptoms don't match those of men, who more commonly experience severe chest pain.

To further investigate, McSweeney, with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, and colleagues telephoned 515 women who had had a heart attack within the previous 4 to 6 months. The women were asked what symptoms they experienced before and during the heart attack.

Ninety-five percent of the subjects reported unusual symptoms during the weeks leading up to the heart attack.

"These are symptoms that change in intensity or frequency, or they're a brand new appearance, starting in the period prior to their heart attack," McSweeney told.
The most frequently reported were unusual fatigue (71 percent) and sleep disturbance (48 percent). Shortness of breath, indigestion and anxiety were also common. Less than a third reported chest discomfort, and when they did it was most often described as pressure, aching or tightness.

"A lot of women ignore these symptoms, thinking it's just because they're 'getting older,"' McSweeney commented. "But even when they do go to a physician, their physicians may overlook these symptoms."

These warning signs can be overwhelming, she said, and shouldn't be shrugged off. Some of the subjects said they had been so tired they couldn't finish making a bed without having to rest. Others said they had trouble climbing stairs.
"Women need to explain to their doctor how these symptoms are impacting their daily life. They should specifically say what they can't do, so that physicians can judge how severe this fatigue is."

When the heart attack occurred, the acute symptoms most commonly reported were shortness of breath, weakness, unusual fatigue, cold sweat and dizziness. If they had chest discomfort, they rarely described is as "pain."

Most women also had conventional risk factors, such as a history of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.

"I'm trying to get women and physicians to look not only at these symptoms but also at their cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension or a strong family history of heart disease," to decide what diagnostic tests should be performed, McSweeney concluded.

Steroids Help Diseased Lungs Breath Easier

2009-11-15T06:36:00.003-08:00

While inhaled steroids undoubtedly help patients with asthma, doctors have seesawed on whether these drugs are useful for a common lung problem called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Now, a new report suggests that such treatment -- particularly at high doses -- does, in fact, help patients breath better.

COPD encompasses a variety of lung diseases, the most common being emphysema and bronchitis. The condition is strongly tied to smoking and is currently the fourth leading cause of death in the US.

Dr. E. R. Sutherland, from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, and colleagues analyzed data from 8 studies to determine if inhaled steroids improved the breathing of COPD patients. Each trial lasted at least 2 years and nearly 4000 patients were included in the analysis.

The results are reported in medical journal Thorax.

Over time, COPD patients usually experience a drop in their ability to move air in and out of their lungs. The researchers found that treatment with inhaled steroids slowed the rate at which this ability fell. Moreover, the benefits were greatest when high steroid doses were used.

The researchers conclude that these findings suggest a potential role for inhaled steroids in modifying the natural course of COPD.

An accompanying editorial describes the current study as a welcome addition to the work on inhaled steroids in patients with COPD.

New studies should concentrate on the optimal steroid dose, when steroids should be started, and what other drugs work best with steroids, the editorial notes.

Toothpaste Ingredient Guards Against Skin Cancer

2009-11-15T06:36:00.001-08:00

A common antibacterial and antifungal ingredient in mouthwashes and toothpaste also can also guard against skin cancer.

The surprise finding was presented Oct. 19 at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Seattle.
Sanguinarine, an alkaloid present in the bloodroot plant, has been shown to enhance production of proteins that induce the death of cells damaged by ultraviolet-B radiation.

The substance also restricts skin cell production of proteins that promote the proliferation of cancer cells.

"This natural compound may protect skin from cells that acquire the genetic damage caused by UV radiation from advancing toward cancer," lead researcher Nihal Ahmad, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin, said in a prepared statement.
Cells pretreated with sanguinarine were 49 percent to 66 percent more likely to die off after exposure to ultraviolet-B radiation than were untreated cells, Ahmad found.

Sanguinarine is a known anti-inflammatory, and is used for the prevention of inflammatory conditions such as gingivitis.

Coffee Tied to Inflammation, Perhaps Heart Disease

2009-11-15T06:35:00.001-08:00

Consuming moderate-to-high amounts of coffee is associated with increased levels of several inflammatory markers, a finding that could help explain previous reports linking the beverage to heart disease.

Ongoing, low-level inflammation is thought to be an underlying factor in the development of heart disease.

The latest findings, which appear in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, are based on a study of about 3000 subjects with no history of cardiovascular disease. A food-frequency questionnaire was used to assess coffee intake, and blood samples were tested for levels of various compounds that are known to promote, or are a marker of, inflammation.
Compared with subjects who did not drink coffee, those who consumed more than about 1 cup of the beverage per day had significantly higher levels of all the inflammatory markers tested, Dr. Demosthenes B. Panagiotakos, from Harokopio University in Athens, and colleagues report.

The results held true even after factoring in age, gender, smoking, body weight, physical activity, and other potential confounders, the researchers point out.

Although the findings provide a mechanism by which coffee intake could promote heart disease, the authors note that not all previous studies have identified an association between the two. Hence, further studies are needed to confirm the present findings.

Top Number in Blood Pressure Tells All

2009-11-15T06:34:00.002-08:00

To the befuddlement of patients everywhere, blood pressure measurements come in two numbers -- one that's bigger and one that's smaller, such as 120 over 80.

Now, new research confirms that the first number is the more important of the two, and suggests the difference between them -- the little-known "pulse pressure" -- doesn't mean much at all.

"We believe that the number to watch more closely is the higher blood pressure," says study co-author Dr. Eliseo Guallar, a researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Why? Because it's a better indication that a seemingly heart-healthy person will die of heart disease, he explains.

Doctors and nurses routinely take the blood pressure of patients by using cuffs to monitor the "push" in the circulatory system. The top "systolic" number measures the pressure when the heart pumps blood out, and the bottom "diastolic" number measures the pressure between the pumps. The pressure doesn't reverse itself between heartbeats, but simply goes down a bit.

High blood pressure is a sign that the heart is working extra hard to push blood through the body. "Too much pressure is bad because it makes your heart overwork, making it more prone to arrhythmias and heart failure," Guallar says. "And as you're pumping blood with more force, you're damaging your arteries."
Stressed-out arteries, in turn, can lead to heart disease, stroke, vascular diseases, and kidney disease.

Doctors have now realized the importance of the systolic pressure after giving too much emphasis to the diastolic pressure, says Dr. Daniel Jones, dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and spokesman for the American Heart Association.

In recent years, however, some researchers have speculated that the pulse pressure could also be a sign of heart trouble.

Guallar and his colleagues examined the medical records of 7,830 white and black Americans -- both men and women -- who were followed for 15 years. The subjects were aged 30 to 74 and seemed to have no sign of heart disease.

The findings appear in the Nov. 4 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Those with higher systolic pressure levels were more likely to die of heart disease. Diastolic pressure appeared to possibly play a role in death rates in older patients, as did unusually low blood pressure. But pulse pressure didn't seem to be directly connected to mortality.

"From the scientific standpoint, the really important information is that pulse pressure is not going to be an easy tool for clinicians to use to make decisions about patients," Jones says.

Patients are unlikely to worry about -- or even know about -- their pulse pressures. But they should continue to get their blood pressure checked in the traditional way, Guallar says, "and keep a particular eye on the systolic blood pressure and make sure it's not high."

Doctors say any systolic pressure above 120 is cause for concern.

Hearing Loss May Have Genetic Cause

2009-11-15T06:34:00.001-08:00

A set of gene mutations that cause progressive hearing loss have been identified by Michigan State University (MSU) researchers.

The study, which may provide important clues for scientists trying to better understand acquired hearing loss, appears in the November issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The MSU team focused on a gene called DFNA 20, which is known to play an essential role in the structure of the inner ear, the cochlea. The gene is also one of almost 100 that are known to play a role in hearing loss.

"Until now, no mutations have been discovered in this gene, so this finding is expected to provide new insight that will help researchers understand more about the biology of progressive (hearing) loss," Rachel Fisher, director of the MSU Hearing Research Center, says in a prepared statement.

"One possibility is that the mutations (in the DFNA 20 gene) interfere with processes that allow ears to repair damage done by noise or aging," Fisher says.
Karen Friderici, MSU associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, adds: "Knowing what the gene is means that you can maybe move toward preventing hearing loss or, possibly curing it."

It's estimated that about 28 million Americans, including one in three over age 60, have hearing loss. But little is known about how the hearing mechanism is affected by aging.

Cut Lunchtime Calories: Eat a Better Breakfast

2009-11-15T06:33:00.002-08:00

Children who start the day with a bowl of bran cereal, muesli high in nuts and seeds, or porridge made from rolled oats feel fuller and eat less at lunchtime than kids who down corn flakes or white bread for breakfast.

That's the conclusion of a new British study that appears in the November issue of Pediatrics.

While further studies are needed, the researchers say the results add to mounting evidence that so-called low-glycemic index (GI) foods can play an important role in controlling weight.

GI is a measure of how quickly a carbohydrate raises a person's blood sugar level. High-GI foods, such as croissants and corn flakes, are the kind of breakfast fare that can cause a spike in blood sugar. Typically, these are foods that are highly processed. Low-GI foods, by contrast, break down more slowly in the body and tend to be higher in fiber, such as whole-grain cereals and nutty breads.
In the new study, children who ate a low-GI meal in the morning consumed significantly fewer calories at lunch than kids on a high-GI breakfast. The study is the first to observe such an effect in a group of normal and overweight children, the researchers say.

"Clearly the inclusion of low-GI foods is a good thing," says Janet M. Warren, a research dietician at Oxford Brookes University and one of the authors of the study.
The research was funded in part by the university and through an unconditional grant from Great Britain's Sugar Bureau.

In the United States, schools participating in the federal-state School Breakfast Program are required to meet federal nutritional requirements. Those requirements are based on dietary guidelines updated every five years, with the next release set for 2005.

Erik Peterson, a spokesman for the American School Food Service Association, says the federal advisory panel tapped to recommend the next set of revisions would likely take into account the latest research on low-GI diets.
"We think it definitely should be taken into consideration, just as [is] all current nutrition research," he says.
Thirty-eight children, aged 9 to 13, participated in the breakfast study. Morning meals were served at the youngsters' middle school, which already ran a breakfast program.

Researchers devised three test breakfasts of varying GI levels to see what effect they would have on kids' appetite and lunch intake. Breakfasts were created to roughly match the number of calories and nutritional content each child would normally consume.

The children were divided into five groups. Each group randomly received one of the three breakfasts for a three-day period, with at least a five-week gap between test breakfasts.
Before lunchtime, children were allowed only water and a small serving of fruit provided for their mid-morning break. At lunch, they were free to choose from a range of foods on the school menu. The participants weren't told their lunch intake would be closely observed.

Children who ate a low-GI breakfast not only ate less at lunch but reported less hunger before lunch than those who consumed the high-GI breakfast. That was true even when a small amount of sugar was added to a low-GI breakfast to make it tastier.
Warren and her colleagues are now conducting further research to understand the effects of a low-GI breakfast beyond lunchtime. "We don't know what happens for the rest of the day," she says.

It would be premature to recommend eliminating high-GI foods from the breakfast plate, she says. But the study does highlight the potential of a low-GI diet amid a growing epidemic of childhood obesity.

"Low-GI foods are sustaining and potentially would mean children aren't going to get hungry and snack," Warren says.

Early Diabetes Leads to Early Heart Disease

2009-11-15T06:33:00.001-08:00

The ever-increasing waistlines of young adults in the U.S. have led to more and more cases of type 2 diabetes in young people -- and these young people are having far too many heart attacks and strokes, new research suggests.

In the study, young adults -- younger than 45 -- with type 2 diabetes were many times more likely to have a heart attack than their peers who did not have diabetes. The increased risk was most pronounced in women.

It's no secret that diabetes promotes the development of heart disease, but the increased risk associated with diabetes was much greater in younger adults than in older people, researchers report in the November issue of the journal Diabetes Care.
"Our study showed that young adults, especially women, with type 2 diabetes have a much higher risk of heart disease at an age when heart disease essentially does not exist unless you have type 2 diabetes," says study author Dr. Teresa A. Hillier of Kaiser Permanente Northwest/Hawaii in Portland, Oregon.

Hillier noted that it is well known that both obesity and type 2 diabetes are rapidly increasing in both children and young adults. "I believe that obesity may well be altering the usual course of type 2 diabetes to make it more aggressive in these younger adults," she said.
Hillier and a colleague, Kathryn L. Pedula, based their findings on a study of nearly 8,000 people who were newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Participants were enrollees in the Kaiser Permanente Northwest health maintenance organization.
The researchers divided participants into two groups based on whether they had been diagnosed before or after turning 45, and compared them with "control" groups of people matched for age who did not have diabetes.

Diabetes increased the risk of heart attack and stroke in both age groups, but the increased risk was much larger in younger people.

People who had been diagnosed before age 45 were 14 times more likely to have a heart attack and 30 times more likely to have a stroke than their non-diabetic peers. In contrast, older people with diabetes were four times more likely than their peers to have a heart attack and three times more likely to have a stroke.
In younger adults, women were most likely to have a heart attack, according to the report.

In addition, there were several signs that diabetes was more severe in younger adults. People who developed diabetes before age 45 were more likely to need insulin, and they were also more likely to develop a diabetes complication called microalbuminuria -- a sign of kidney impairment -- which also increases the risk of heart disease.

"As individuals, communities and as a nation, we have got to do more to become healthier in our eating habits, exercise and body weight," Hillier said.
The good news is that modest weight loss and physical activity can drastically reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. One study, she pointed out, found that people at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes were able to cut their risk in half by losing 7 percent of their weight and walking 30 minutes a day half an hour a week.

Type 2, or non-insulin dependent diabetes, is closely linked to obesity. This type of diabetes usually develops in adulthood, although as the nation's young people become heavier and heavier, more and more younger people are developing the disease.
In people with type 2 diabetes, blood sugar levels rise as the body becomes resistant to insulin, the hormone that processes sugar in the body. While type 2 diabetes used to be primarily a problem of middle and old age, new cases of the illness among people 30 to 39 have risen 70 percent in the last decade.

Passive work means less activity off the job, too

2009-11-15T06:32:00.003-08:00

Do you have an unchallenging job with little control over what you do? You may be more likely to be a couch potato in your leisure time, a new study shows.

"These characteristics of the job spill over into their non-working life," says Dr. David Gimeno of University College London, one of the researchers on the study.

Gimeno and his colleagues looked at how working in "passive jobs"-where the worker has little stress and little control-affected leisure time activity by looking at 4,291 male and 1,794 female British civil servants, who ranged in age from 35 to 55. Over a five-year period, the study participants were categorized at three different time points based on how passive their jobs were and their amount of leisure-time physical activity.

Job passivity didn't influence how active women were outside work. But men who were in passive jobs at all three time points were 16 percent more likely to have low levels of leisure time physical activity than men who had never worked in a passive job.

"These are very small effects," Gimeno said in an interview. Nevertheless, he added, they are likely to affect many, many people-resulting in a large health impact for society as a whole.

Given the health risks of a sedentary lifestyle, he and his colleagues note in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, "upstream interventions that reduce dull, demotivating and unchallenging jobs may be worthy of consideration."

Evidence on how the nature of a person's job affects his or her leisure-time physical activity has been mixed, Gimeno and his team note, and research has not looked at how a person's job characteristics over time might affect their lifestyle.

"We need to consider what type of jobs we are creating," the researcher added. "That doesn't mean that everyone needs to be an artist."

But, Gimeno said, it does mean that people should have opportunities to develop on the job, gain knowledge, and increase their skills. "You need people not only to be like machines and only do the work, but also to grow in the work."

Aspirin 'only for heart patients'

2009-11-15T06:32:00.001-08:00

The use of aspirin to ward off heart attacks and strokes in those who do not have obvious cardiovascular disease should be abandoned, researchers say.

The Drugs and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) study says aspirin can cause serious internal bleeding and does not prevent cardiovascular disease deaths.

It says doctors should review all patients currently taking the drug for prevention of heart disease.

The Royal College of GPs says it supports the DTB's recommendations.

Low-dose aspirin is widely used to prevent further episodes of cardiovascular disease in people who have already had problems such as a heart attack or stroke.

This approach - known as secondary prevention - is well-established and has confirmed benefits.

But many thousands of people in the UK are believed to be taking aspirin as a protective measure before they have any heart symptoms.

Controlled trials

Between 2005 and 2008, the DTB said four sets of guidelines were published recommending aspirin for the "primary prevention" of cardiovascular disease - in patients who had shown no sign of the disease.

These included people aged 50 and older with type 2 diabetes and those with high blood pressure.

But the DTB said a recent analysis of six controlled trials involving a total of 95,000 patients published in the journal the Lancet does not back up the routine use of aspirin in these patients because of the risk of serious gastrointestinal bleeds and the negligible impact it has on curbing death rates.

Dr Ike Ikeanacho, editor of the DTB, said: "Current evidence for primary prevention suggests the benefits and harms of aspirin in this setting may be more finely balanced than previously thought, even in individuals estimated to be at high risk of experiencing cardiovascular events, including those with diabetes or elevated blood pressure."

'Sensible statement'

Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said the DTB was an excellent source of independent advice for medical professionals.

He said: "Given the evidence, the DTB's statement on aspirin prescription is a sensible one.

"The Royal College of General Practitioners would support their call for existing guidelines on aspirin prescription to be amended, and for a review of patients currently taking aspirin for prevention."

June Davison, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation said: "It is well established that aspirin can help prevent heart attacks and strokes among people with heart and circulatory disease - so this group of people should continue to take aspirin as prescribed by their doctor.

"However, for those who do not have heart and circulatory disease the risk of serious bleeding outweighs the potential preventative benefits of taking aspirin.

"We advise people not to take aspirin daily, unless they check with their doctor.

"The best way to reduce your risk of developing this disease is to avoid smoking, eat a diet low in saturated fat and rich in fruit and vegetables and take regular physical activity."

Breast cancer changes with spread

2009-11-15T06:31:00.004-08:00

Nearly 40% of breast cancer tumours change form when they spread, a UK study shows.

The researchers say this could mean that patients require changes to their treatment regime.

They analysed 211 tumours which had spread to the lymph nodes in the armpit - the place where breast cancer tends to migrate first.

The study, by Breakthrough Breast Cancer scientists in Edinburgh, appears in Annals of Oncology.

Breast cancer is a complex disease with many different types which can be treated in different ways.

Breast cancer spreads to the lymph nodes in about 40% of the 46,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK each year.

Cancer cells which spread in this way are often more difficult to treat than those in the breast - so it is vital that women receive the most appropriate treatment.

Researchers were surprised to find the disease changed in such a high proportion of patients, and in so many ways, when it had spread.

For example, 20 tumours changed from oestrogen receptor (ER) negative to ER positive.

This change would mean hormone therapies such as tamoxifen, which would not have worked for the original tumour, could help treat the disease if it has spread.

Other tumours changed from ER positive to ER negative, which suggests those patients may be given treatments which will not benefit them - experiencing side-effects unnecessarily.

Surprising result

Lead researcher Dr Dana Faratian said: "We were surprised that such a high proportion of tumours change form when they spread beyond the breast.

"This suggests there is a need to test which type of disease a woman has in the lymph nodes, because it could radically alter the course of treatment she receives.

"We now need a clinical trial to see how these results could benefit patients."

Professor David Harrison, director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit, said: "This research may show why some women whose cancer has spread to the lymph nodes do not respond to treatment.

"With an additional test we may be able to treat women more effectively and also make more efficient use of NHS resources."

The researchers stress that a clinical trial needs to be carried out to fully evaluate the benefits of testing cancer cells in the lymph nodes before it can be approved for use on the NHS.

Breast cancer accounts for nearly one in three of all female cancers and one in nine women in the UK will develop breast cancer at some point in their lifetime.

Heavier breasts linked to increased cancer risk

2009-11-15T06:31:00.003-08:00

Women with heavier busts who have been treated for breast cancer are at higher risk of its recurrence, says a new study.

These findings indicate that such patients may benefit from additional therapies, such as radiation, following surgery.

Researchers suspected that high breast density (heavier breasts) may also increase the risk of cancer recurrence after lumpectomy, but this theory has not been thoroughly studied.

Lumpectomy is a surgical procedure that involves removing a suspected malignant (cancerous) tumour, or lump, and a small portion of the surrounding tissue from a woman's breast.

Researchers led by Steven A. Narod, Women's College Research Institute (WCRI) in Toronto reviewed the medical records of 335 patients who had undergone lumpectomy for breast cancer.

Researchers found that patients with the highest breast density had a much greater risk of cancer recurrence than did women with the lowest breast density.

Over 10 years, women in the highest breast density category had a 21 percent chance of cancer recurrence, compared to a five percent chance among women in the lowest category, according to a WCRI release.

"The composition of the breast tissue surrounding the breast cancer is important in predicting whether or not a breast cancer will return after surgery," Narod said.

The study authors say their findings indicate that women with low breast density, who have a low chance of recurrence after surgery, may not need radiation but that women with high breast density could significantly benefit from the additional therapy.

These findings are slated for publication in December issue of Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society.

Specializing in one sport can damage your health

2009-11-15T06:31:00.001-08:00

Gifted young athletes are increasingly under pressure to play only one sport round the year. But a new study has found that such specialization increases the risk of injury.

Researchers from the Loyola University Health System (LUHS) examined 519 junior tennis players and analysed 3,366 matches in junior competitions in the US and found that players who specialized in only tennis were more likely to withdraw from tournaments for medical reasons, typically injuries.

Also, players who had experienced an injury or tennis-related illness during the past year were 5.4 times more likely to withdraw from a tournament for medical reasons.

"Parents, coaches and players should exercise caution if there is a history of prior injury," said Neeru Jayanthi, professor of orthopaedics at Loyola University School of Medicine, who led the study.

"And parents should consider enrolling their children in multiple sports," Jayanthi said.

Volunteers in the study began playing tennis at an average age of six, began competing at age nine and began to specialise at age 10.

Players practised a median of 16 to 20 hours per week, and 93 percent said they competed at least 10 months per year.

Boys are more likely to withdraw for medical reasons than girls, and older teenagers are more likely to withdraw than younger adolescents.

Injuries in young tennis players typically include muscle strains, ankle sprains, hip injuries, knee cap instability, stress fractures in the spine and tendonitis of the wrist and rotator cuff, a LUHS release said.

"But one injury you rarely see in kids is tennis elbow. That's because they learn to hit the ball correctly," said Jayanthi who has studied tennis injuries as a player, coach, physician and researcher.

These results were presented at the international Society for Tennis Medicine and Science World Congress in Valencia, Spain.

Vitamin D helps kids improve bone density

2009-11-15T06:30:00.001-08:00

Calcium and vitamin D supplements can improve bone density during a crucial growth period for young girls.

A six-month study looked at identical twin girls aged between nine and 12, who were randomly assigned to receive either the calcium and vitamin D tablets, or a matched placebo.

David Greene, lecturer in exercise science at Australian Catholic University (ACU), said results showed that the supplements improved measures of bone mineral density, bone mineral content and bone strength in these girls.

These results are particularly important as young women accumulate bone mass most rapidly during adolescence, he said.

Therefore, ideal skeletal development can only be achieved when adequate dietary intakes of calcium and vitamin D supplement physical activity during this period, according to an ANU release.

Maximising bone strength during the growing years is also essential in order to offset the effects of osteoporosis in later life.

Want to live longer? Stay cool!

2009-11-15T06:29:00.002-08:00

For the first time new research has revealed how change in body temperature impacts the longevity of warm-blooded animals, including humans.

Bruno Conti of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and other researchers were conducting studies on how to prolong life and found that the lifespan of warm-blooded animals could be lengthened by slightly lowering their core body temperature, reported the health portal News Medical.

Lowering the body temperature of mice extended their lifespan by up to 20 percent, the researchers said.

The mice in the study published in the journal Science were allowed to eat as much food as they wanted while their core body temperature was lowered modestly. This was done by focusing on the hypothalamus, a brain structure that acts as the body's thermostat.

The median life span in females was extended by about 20 percent and in males by about 12 percent.

The researchers say the male mice weighed roughly 10 percent more than the females, which could have been down to the diminished energy needed to maintain a lower body temperature.

But the practice is unlikely to apply to humans as the technique, though "technically feasible", is essentially impractical and information on the safety of such an approach is scant, the researchers said.

Eye could reveal serious health disorder

2009-11-15T06:29:00.001-08:00

Our eyes could reveal the status of our health and help doctors predict if we have any life threatening disease.

Conventional vision tests reveal eyesight abnormalities, such as macular degeneration.

But according to professor Emanuel Rosen, of Rosen Eye Associates, Manchester, a test of retina can identify early signs of conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, thanks to its superior image, reported online edition of Daily Mail.

The new eye test by an upgraded 'ophthalmoscope' a traditional instrument used to examine the retina and vitreous takes only three minutes and can help doctors diagnose life-threatening disease, it said.

The eye is very much an early warning post since its blood vessels allow us to see a mini-version of the body's circulatory system before the patient experiences symptoms, explained professor Rosen.

For example, if there are narrow arteries in the eye's blood vessels, it is likely that person has thinning arteries elsewhere, Rosen said.

Many other potentially fatal diseases can be first detected in the eye.

Leukaemia can start with a small haemorrhage in the eye, leading to leaking blood vessels. This symptom is also linked to diabetes, which, if untreated, can lead to blindness.

A swelling of the optic nerve and splashes of blood on the retina may be an early warning of a brain tumor.

A swollen, pale optic nerve could be a symptom of multiple sclerosis. And high blood pressure will cause blood vessels to burst and haemorrhages to form in the retina.

Professor Rosen's patients have included a woman whose breast cancer was diagnosed after he had examined her eyes. The test revealed swollen areas at the back of the eye, a sign of secondary cancer tumors.

The retina is the light-sensitive part of the eye on which images are produced.

Along with the optic nerve, it is linked to the brain and is therefore part of the central nervous system. So any changes in the retina can reflect problems elsewhere in the body, the researcher said.

Children exposed to smoke prone to bladder cancer

2009-11-15T06:28:00.002-08:00

Children exposed to smoke may be prone to bladder cancer later in life, says a new study.

Naomi Allen of Oxford University and other British researchers analysed data of about 430,000 people across Britain and found that people who smoked before the age of 15 were three times more likely to get bladder cancer later in life, reported the online edition of BBC News.

Previous research has shown that there is a strong link between smoking and bladder cancer - a disease that kills over 4,800 people in Britain each year. Overall, smokers are four times more likely to develop bladder cancer.

But this study found that those exposed to second-hand smoke in childhood were also almost 40 percent more likely to develop bladder cancer.

"The body of evidence suggests that children are more sensitive to carcinogens (cancer-causing agents) than adults," said the study that appeared in the International Journal of Cancer.

"This adds to the growing body of evidence that children and adolescents may be even more vulnerable to the harmful effects of tobacco smoke than adults," it added.

Said John Toy, medical director of Cancer Research UK: "Although more research is needed to confirm the seeming effects of childhood exposure to second-hand smoke, the study's findings support the health value of the smoking ban in public places."

Kids grow taller while they are asleep

2009-11-15T06:28:00.001-08:00

A new study conducted by scientists at The University of Wisconsin suggests that 90 percent of bone growth happens at night.

According to BBC, the researchers led by Dr Norman Wilsman put sensors into the leg bones of baby lambs and confirmed that most growth spurts occurred when the animals were at rest or sleeping. Almost no growth occurs when the lambs are standing or moving around.

Bone length was continuously measured by the sensors every 167 seconds for around three weeks. "What was really interesting was that the bones were growing only when the animals were lying down, and almost no growth occurs when the lambs are standing or moving around," Wils man was quoted as saying.

The researchers believe that when the animal is at rest, pressure on the bones involved with growth - the growth plates - is eased, allowing them to elongate. "Growth plates may be like springs that, during standing and walking, experience compression and tension. When these strains are eased, as when the animal lies down or goes to sleep, they resume growing," Wilsman added.

Smoking hampers brain power in adolescents

2009-11-15T06:27:00.002-08:00

Smoking is more harmful for teenagers says a study conducted by Yale University. The cerebral power of people who start fagging at an early age receives a severe blow that reduces their speed and accuracy to grasp information and retain them in their minds.

,"Adolescent smokers were found to have impairments in accuracy of working memory performance," Leslie Jacobsen, M.D., associate professor at Yale School of Medicine, said.

The survey also revealed a surprising fact that nicotine works as a power booster amongst adults.

Jacobsen along with her research team tested working memory of more than 41 adolescent daily smokers and 32 nonsmokers of same age sex and education to come to this conclusion.

Ending Aspirin Therapy May Triple Stroke Risk

2009-11-15T06:27:00.001-08:00

When stroke survivors who are prescribed daily aspirin stop taking the drug, they may triple their risk of a having another stroke within days, research shows.

Strokes associated with stopping aspirin therapy "typically occur in eight to 10 days after stopping aspirin," says Patrik Michel, MD, a stroke researcher from the Lausanne University Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Michel presented his study at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2005.

He says patients that are undergoing surgical procedures are routinely advised to stop taking aspirin because aspirin decreases the blood's ability to clot, which increases the bleeding risk during surgery. "But the bleeding risk in minor surgeries such as skin biopsies and dental surgery is really quite small. When we compare that small risk to the benefit of aspirin, it is possible that patients should be advised to continue aspirin," he says.

In his research, 309 people hospitalized with either a stroke or a "mini" stroke called a transient ischemic attack (TIA) were on daily aspirin therapy for prevention of stroke or heart attack.

He compared them with 309 people who had had a stroke or TIA more than six months previously and who had similar risk factors and were told to take daily aspirin.

The average age of patients in both groups was 71, and 62% were men.

Among the hospitalized patients, 13 people had stopped aspirin therapy in the month before their stroke. Four patients in the comparison group had stopped taking aspirin.

The study showed that stopping aspirin therapy was associated with a more than threefold risk of stroke.

"This is the first controlled, retrospective study to investigate the potential risk of suffering ... stroke shortly after discontinuing aspirin," says Michel.

The results confirm and extend previous observations in stroke survivors who stopped taking aspirin.

Synthetic molecules may boost immunity against HIV

2009-11-15T06:26:00.003-08:00

Scientists have developed synthetic molecules that could boost our immunity against HIV and HIV-infected cells as well as prostate cancer cells.

Their findings potentially open the way to novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of these diseases.

HIV is a global pandemic that affects 33 million people worldwide, while prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death among American males.

These molecules, called "antibody-recruiting molecule targeting HIV" (ARM-H) and "antibody-recruiting molecule targeting prostate cancer" (ARM-P), bind simultaneously to an antibody present in the blood and to proteins on HIV, HIV-infected cells or cancer cells.

By coating these pathogens in antibodies, the molecules flag them as a threat and trigger the body's own immune response.

In the case of ARM-H, by binding to proteins on the outside of the virus, they also prevent healthy human cells from being infected.

"Instead of trying to kill the pathogens directly, these molecules manipulate our immune system to do something it wouldn't ordinarily do," said David Spiegel, professor of chemistry at Yale University and study co-author.

Because both HIV and cancer have methods for evading the body's immune system, treatments and vaccinations for the two diseases have proven difficult.

Current options for HIV and prostate cancer, including antiviral drugs, radiation and chemotherapy, involve severe side-effects and are often ineffective against advanced cases.

Conversely, ARM-H and ARM-P molecules, which the team has begun testing in mice, are structurally simple, inexpensive to produce, and could in theory be taken in pill form, Spiegel said.

"This is an entirely new approach to treating these two diseases, which are extraordinarily important in terms of their impact on human health," Spiegel said.

These finding were published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Faulty immune memory can trigger cold sores, cancer

2009-11-15T06:26:00.001-08:00

A faulty immune memory can trigger infections that may lead to cold sores and even cancer in some people, say researchers.

The memory circuit, identified by the research team, involves a gene and protein called DOCK8, which helps white blood cells form synapses, tiny points of cell contact, that are responsible for memory in the brain.

An increased understanding of immune memory would not only lead to enhanced vaccines but also improve the treatment of cancer, transplant rejection, auto-immunity and allergies.

"Vaccines that provoke long-lasting immunity are among the greatest advances delivered by health research, but the circuits that determine whether they work or not have been among the most difficult to decipher," said Chris Goodnow from the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Australia and co-leader of the research team.

Lapses of immunological memory also explain the reactivation of infections responsible for cold sores, shingles, yeast infections, and possibly some forms of cancer.

Katrina Randall, clinical immunologist and co-research team leader said: "Immunity normally lasts for years after we are immunised or infected because our immune system remembers the shape and 'fingerprints' of an infecting microbe..."

"When immunological memory wanes we become susceptible to infection again. For some vaccines like the tetanus vaccine this occurs after several years, and for many experimental vaccines their memory has so far proved just too short to be useful."

The findings were published in the latest issue of Nature Immunology.

Botox also helps relieve pain

2009-11-15T06:23:00.000-08:00

Botox not only fights wrinkles but is also a medication for chronic pain, a new study has said.

Between five and 26 people out of every 100,000 have their lives significantly disrupted by some form of chronic pain.

Traditionally, treatments for pain have included massage, physiotherapy, stretching and strengthening exercises, and heat/cold therapy.

Now this study has found injecting Botox into the area affected by pain provides significant relief. Patients suffering from severe pain received an average of nine injections -- one every four weeks.

All patients reported a significant improvement (31.25 percent) in their daily pain control that was maintained for up to 17 months.

More than five million Botox injections were given in 2008, according to American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) statistics. Botox injections are up eight percent since 2007 and 537 percent since 2000, said an ASPS release.

These findings were presented at the Plastic Surgery 2009 conference in Seattle.

Tea May Offer Treatment to Fight HIV

2009-11-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

Japanese researchers said they had discovered a molecule in tea that could block the spread of the AIDS virus.

The lab findings could offer a novel way to combat the HIV infection by preventing the virus from spreading throughout the body, scientists said. Current treatments that target HIV fight the infection after it has spread.

Scientists at the University of Tokyo, led by Kuzushige Kawai, found a compound called epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG, the element believed to contain most of the health benefits found in green tea, rapidly attaches to the doorways that the AIDS virus uses to invade cells.

HIV prefers to infect cells called CD4 T-cells, and uses a molecular doorway called the CD4 receptor to do so.

By bonding with the CD4 molecule first, EGCG effectively prevents the HIV virus from attaching -- at least in lab dishes.

"This potentially opens up an avenue for preventing HIV infections," said Dr. William Shearer, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who wrote an editorial that accompanied the study. "Is there something here that mother nature is trying to tell us?"

Writing in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the researchers said they are still looking to explain why EGCG is attracted to CD4 molecule, in the hope of making it work even better.

Earlier studies have showed that people who drink a lot of tea have lower rates of cancer, heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis. In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found people who drank black tea saw their cholesterol drop between 7 and 11 percent.

Simply drinking tea would probably not be enough to prevent HIV infection, Shearer said. If EGCG is shown to work in a living animal, it would have to be concentrated, perhaps in a pill.

The lab study found that EGCG attached to 80 percent of CD4 receptors after five minutes and to virtually all of them after 30 minutes.

The popularity of tea has soared during the last decade.

According to the Tea Association of the United States, total sales of tea in 2002 were $5.03 billion, up from $1.84 billion in 1990.

Stem cells give hope for diabetes cure

2009-11-15T06:20:00.002-08:00

Scientists in the US have used stem cells from human bone marrow to successfully treat diabetic mice with high blood sugar and damaged kidneys, a treatment they hope can be adapted for humans as well.

The team from New Orleans' Tulane University injected a group of mice with stem cells. After three weeks, they were shown to be producing higher levels of mouse insulin than untreated mice and had lower blood sugar levels.

The injections also appeared to halt damaging changes taking place in the glomeruli - the bulb-like structures in the kidneys that filter blood, said the study that featured in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researcher Darwin Prockop said: "We are not certain whether the kidneys improved because the blood sugar was lower or because the human cells were helping to repair the kidneys.

"But we suspect the human cells were repairing the kidneys in much the same way they were repairing the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas."

Stem cells are immature cells that have the capacity to turn into any kind of tissue in the body.

The scientists hope it can be adapted to treat diabetes in humans and are planning to carry out trials.

Late-life pregnancies risky, but births are good: study

2009-11-15T06:20:00.001-08:00

Despite the high rate of pregnancy complications in women in their 50s, the birth outcomes are generally good, says a new study.

"No severe birth defects related to premature delivery occurred among the babies born to the women in a study, even though the premature birth rate was high," said researchers.

Women who contemplate a pregnancy in their 50s need to be made aware that they face increased health risk and so do their babies.

That doesn't mean that late-life pregnancies should not be attempted, researcher Russell Kirby of the University of Alabama at Birmingham said. Kirby was a researcher on one of the few other published studies to examine birth outcomes among women 50 and older.

Researchers from Israel's Sheba Medical Center studied women who gave birth in their sixth decade and beyond and found that they had a much higher risk of pregnancy and delivery-related complications than women who gave birth in their mid- to late 40s, reported the online edition of health magazine WebMD.

The older women in the study were hospitalised during pregnancy almost three times as often as the 45- to 49-year-old women, and twice as many delivered low-birth-weight babies.

The researchers characterised the findings among women 50 and older as "disturbing".

Over half of the age 50-plus mothers-to-be (63 percent) were hospitalised during pregnancy, compared with 22 percent who were younger than 50.

And 61 percent of the age 50-plus women delivered low-birth-weight babies, compared with 32 percent of women between the ages of 45 and 49.

"I would be a strong advocate of patient choice in this matter, but women have to know the risks," Kirby said.

Exercise during pregnancy healthy for baby, mother

2009-11-15T06:19:00.002-08:00

Contrary to popular perception, exercising up to the end of pregnancy seems to be healthy for the baby and mother, says a new study.

Research by Polytechnic University-Madrid (PU-M) shows there is a positive relationship between the weight of sedentary mothers before pregnancy and the body size of their babies.

"An exercise regime carried out during the second and third trimester of pregnancy does not harm the health of the foetus," says Jonatan R. Ruiz of Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and principal study author, who has collaborated with PU-M.

As many as 160 healthy but sedentary women, aged between 25 and 35 years, participated in the study, all of whom had no risk of premature birth.

Half followed an exercise regime under the supervision of physical experts in collaboration with the gynaecology and obstetrics unit of Hospital Severo Ochoa in Madrid.

Researchers also analysed the effect of the training programme carried out during the second and third trimester of pregnancy on the weight and size of the foetus.

The authors also measured the pre-pregnancy body weight of the mother, the body size of

the foetus, and whether diabetes was developed during gestation.

In the group of women who did not partake in any exercise (control group), it was observed that the mother's weight before becoming pregnant was positively associated with the weight of the newborn, says a PU-M release.

"Sedentary mothers... gave birth to heavier newborns. This relationship, however, was not observed in the group of women who exercised during pregnancy," Ruiz concludes.

Babies with excessive weight (more than four kg) are more at risk of developing diabetes and certain types of cancer as adults, in addition to complications that may occur at birth.

The conclusions appear in the International Journal of Obesity.

Fatty deposits impair heart function

2009-11-15T06:19:00.001-08:00

Fat deposited around the heart and within the liver is likely to impair certain heart functions.

The study by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) has found that measuring a person's body mass index (BMI or weight to height ratio) does not reliably predict the amount of undesired fat in and around these vital organs.

"Our study found that fat collection around the heart, the aorta and within the liver is clearly associated with decreased heart functions and that an MRI can quickly and non-invasively measure fat volume in these areas," said James Hamilton, professor of biophysics, physiology and biomedical engineering, who led the study at BUSM.

The prevalence of obesity is rising rapidly in the US. Recent estimates suggest that nearly 30 percent of the adult population meets this criterion.

Past studies have shown that fat accumulation in the liver and around the heart was linked to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

BUSM researchers compared fat volumes in obese people, all of whom had high blood pressure and/or diabetes.

All subjects underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and proton MR spectroscopy to quantify lipid volumes, cardiac function, etc., says a BUSM release.

The researchers found fat collections within the liver and around the heart, to be linked with cardiovascular function - including a decrease in cardiac pumping function - as fat around the heart increased.

The study appeared online in Obesity.

Stay faithful if you want healthier babies

2009-11-15T06:18:00.000-08:00

A single long-term partner seems to ensure healthier babies for women, says a new study.

In other words, prolonged exposure to the father's semen protects new mothers against pre-eclampsia (pregnancy induced hypertension) and having an undersized baby.

In this study conducted by the University of Auckland (U-A), 2,507 first-time pregnant women were interviewed about the length of their relationship with the baby's biological father.

When the pregnancies came to term (37 weeks), pre-eclampsia was found to be less prevalent among women who had long-term sexual relations exclusively with the biological father, than in those who had been with their partner only for a short time (less than six months).

The study also revealed that women who had undersized babies were also more likely to have been in shorter relationships, but only when an ultrasound during the 20th week showed reduced blood flow to the foetus.

"Whether prolonged semen exposure does protect against developing pre-eclampsia is not yet resolved," says researcher Larry Chamley, "this paper seems to tip the weight of evidence back in favour of suggesting that prolonged semen exposure is protective."

These findings were published in the Journal of Reproductive Immunology.

Better ventilation may ease some asthma symptoms

2009-11-15T06:17:00.002-08:00

Improved home ventilation that dehumidifies the air may make it easier for people with asthma to breathe at night, hint findings of a small study from the United Kingdom.

In theory, lowering indoor humidity should lower concentrations of moisture-loving dust mites - a major trigger for asthma-related breathing problems.

To test this, Dr. Neil C. Thomson, at the University of Glasgow, and colleagues measured breathing patterns over 12 months in 119 men and women who were about 42 years old on average and had asthma for 9 to 30 years.

Specialists retrofitted each home with a humidity-lowering ventilation system. They also steam-cleaned carpets, and replaced mattress covers and bedding, to clear dust mites.

In half the homes the ventilation systems actively exchanged indoor and outdoor air. In the other "control group" half, the systems had operational motors but non-operational fans to help ensure the groups remained "blinded" to what was actually happening, the researchers report in the journal Allergy.

Thomson's team found no overall difference in dust mite concentrations between the homes with and without a working ventilation system.

Also, their comparison of morning breathing tests done at the start of the study and again at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, showed no difference between those living with or without operational ventilation.

However, participants living in homes with working ventilation systems showed an overall significant improvement in evening breathing tests, while those with non-working systems worsened in these tests.

This may be partially due to the slightly reduced humidity, and dust mite levels found in the bedrooms and bedding of participants with active ventilation systems. But ventilation may also have improved overall air quality, Thomson speculated in an email to Reuters Health.

Noise 'worse for dyslexic pupils'

2009-11-15T06:17:00.001-08:00

Children with dyslexia find it harder to hear in noisy classrooms than those without the condition, a US study says.

Pupils with poor reading skills were also more likely to struggle to retain information when there was background noise, researchers reported in Neuron.

They said the findings, based on tests on 30 children, might help to develop new ways to diagnose the condition.

The team from Northwestern University, in Chicago, said pupils with dyslexia might also need extra support in class.

Wireless technology

They said placing children with dyslexia in front of the teacher could make a big difference.

And they suggested other steps, such as providing such pupils with wireless technologies and noise-reducing headphones to pick up information better.

Dyslexia is a neurological disorder which affects reading and spelling skills in between 5% to 10% of children.

Recent research has suggested that children with the condition may struggle to process voices when there is competing noise.

The researchers set about testing the theory by getting children to watch a video with background noise, the journal Neuron reported.

At the same time, they were asked to repeat sentences they heard.

Lead researcher Professor Nina Kraus said the study was important in understanding the difficulties children with dyslexia face.

"The ability to sharpen or fine-tune repeating elements is crucial to hearing speech in noise because it allows for superior tagging of the voice pitch," he said.

She said further research was now needed into the issue.

Dr John Rack, of Dyslexia Action, said the findings were "interesting".

"This builds on what we already know. I think it shows that extra support is needed, especially one-to-one support.

"Busy, vibrant classrooms are a good thing and I would not want to see children with dyslexia taken out of them though."

Rethink for calorie eating levels

2009-11-15T06:09:00.000-08:00

The calorie counts used as the foundation for diet plans and healthy-eating guidance for the past 18 years may be wrong, a report suggests.

The recommended daily intake of calories could be increased by up to 16%, a draft report by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition said.

Intake levels are currently 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 for men.

But the panel stresses that people should only eat more if they exercise more, given rising levels of obesity.

The committee says its report provides a much more accurate assessment of how energy can be burnt off through physical activity.

A 16% increase would mean that adults could safely consume an extra 400 calories a day, equivalent to an average sized cheeseburger.

The proposals, seen by The Times and The Grocer magazine, are due to go out for a 14-week consultation period.

Final recommendations will then be made after that time.

Health campaigners say the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency could seek to "sweep this report under the carpet" in a bid to avoid sending out mixed messages in the middle of an obesity epidemic.

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said it was a "dangerous assumption" to say that adults could safely consume an extra 400 calories a day.

"This is not a green light to eat yourself silly," he said.