Healthy Discoveries

"Lean gene" ups risk of heart disease and diabetes

2011-06-30T22:06:00.000+01:00

Researchers from Britain's Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit said that while a so-called "lean gene" was linked to having less body fat

Being slim may not always lead to a lower risk of heart disease and diabetes, scientists said Sunday after they identified a gene linked both to having a lean body and to a higher risk of metabolic diseases.

Researchers from Britain's Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit said that while a so-called "lean gene" was linked to having less body fat, it was also linked to an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes -- illnesses normally associated with being overweight.

"We've uncovered a truly fascinating genetic story, and when we found the effect of this gene, we were very intrigued," said Ruth Loos, whose study was published in Nature Genetics journal.

Loos' team examined the genetic code of more than 75,000 people to look for the genes that determine body fat percentage, and found strong evidence that a gene called IRS1 is linked with having less body fat.

When they investigated further, they found IRS1 also leads to having unhealthy levels of cholesterol and glucose in blood -- key markers for so-called metabolic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

They found the gene was only linked to lower levels of fat under the skin, called subcutaneous fat, but not to the more harmful fat that surrounds the organs, called visceral fat.

Loos said the findings suggest that people with the IRS1 gene are less able to store subcutaneous fat, and may therefore store fat in other parts of the body where it might pose more risk to organ function.

She added that the study results did not change the general message for most people. "People who are lean are generally healthier than people who are overweight or obese," she said in a telephone interview.

"But we all know some people who are lean and also may have high cholesterol or have a heart attack before the age of 50 -- so maybe this gene is one factor in looking healthy but still being at risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes."

Heart disease is the world's biggest killer, claiming 17.1 million lives a year, according to the World Health Organization. Experts say a global epidemic of obesity is threatening to cause a wave of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

A study published Saturday found that the number of adults around the world with diabetes has more than doubled since 1980 to 347 million -- a far larger number than previously thought.

Loos said that while this study pointed to genes as one factor in determining the risk of developing these conditions, it was important to remember that lifestyle factors like diet, exercise, cutting out smoking and maintaining a healthy weight also play a vital role in reducing the risk.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Heart risks lower in men who get enough vitamin D

2011-06-27T22:01:00.001+01:00

Men who consume the recommended amount of vitamin D are somewhat less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke than those who get little of the vitamin in their diets, a large U.S. study suggests.

Men who consume the recommended amount of vitamin D are somewhat less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke than those who get little of the vitamin in their diets, a large U.S. study suggests.

Following nearly 119,000 adults for two decades, researchers found that men who got at least 600 international units (IU) of vitamin D each day -- the current recommended amount -- were 16 percent less likely to develop heart problems or a stroke, versus men who got less than 100 IU per day.

There was no such pattern among womn, however, the researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The authors say the findings do not prove that vitamin D, itself, deserves the credit for the lower risks seen in men. So they should not start downing supplements for the sake of their hearts.

"The evidence is not strong enough yet to make solid recommendations," said lead researcher Dr. Qi Sun, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health.

On the other hand, the apparent benefits were linked to vitamin D intakes near what's already recommended: Last year, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a scientific advisory panel to the U.S. government, bumped up the recommended dose to 600 IU for most people. Adults older than 70 were told to get 800 IU.

So these latest findings may encourage more people to meet those guidelines, Sun said.

But as far as whether vitamin D cuts heart disease and stroke risk, the jury is still out.

Sun said that more answers should come from an ongoing clinical trial that is looking at whether a high dose of vitamin D (2,000 IU per day) can cut the risk of heart disease, stroke and other chronic diseases.

Clinical trials, wherein people are randomly assigned to a treatment or a placebo, are considered the "gold standard" of medical evidence.

So far, there have been few such randomized clinical trials testing vitamin D's health effects.
A flurry of studies in recent years has linked higher vitamin D intake to lower risks of everything from diabetes, to severe asthma, heart disease, certain cancers and depression.

The problem with those studies is that were "observational" -- researchers looked at people's vitamin D intake, or their blood levels of the vitamin, and whether they developed a given health condition. Those kinds of studies cannot prove cause-and-effect.

The current study was also observational, based on data from two long-term projects that have followed two large groups of U.S. health professionals since the 1980s.

Out of 45,000 men, there were about 5,000 new cases of cardiovascular disease over the study period. These were defined by an incident of heart attack, stroke, or death attributed to cardiovascular disease.

After accounting for a range of factors -- like age, weight, exercise levels and other diet habits, such as fat intake - Sun's team found that men who got at least 600 IU of vitamin D from food and supplements had a 16 percent lower risk of heart attack and stroke compared to men who got less than 100 IU of vitamin D per day.

For women, though, there was no correlation between vitamin D intake and cardiovascular health.

It's not clear why that is, Sun said. One possibility is that women may have less active vitamin D circulating in the blood; vitamin D is stored in fat, and women typically have a higher percentage of body fat than men do.

But more research is needed, Sun said, to know whether real biological differences underlie the current findings.

In theory, vitamin D could help ward off heart disease and stroke; lab research suggests that it may help maintain healthy blood vessel function and blood pressure levels, reduce inflammation in the blood vessels, and aid blood sugar control.

But until clinical trials help show whether vitamin D works, Sun advised people to stick with the tried-and-true ways of protecting their hearts: maintaining a healthy weight, getting regular exercise, eating a well-balanced diet and not smoking.

"There are many established ways to lower your cardiovascular disease risk," Sun said. "People can focus on those measures."

As for vitamin D, the sun is the major natural source, since sunlight triggers vitamin D synthesis in the body. Food sources are relatively few and include fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, and fortified dairy products and cereals.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/irO9Xe American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online June 8, 2011.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

French E.coli patients have same strain as in Germany

2011-06-26T21:58:00.000+01:00

"The link between the symptoms and consumption of these seeds has so far not been definitively established," the ministry said in a statement issued on Friday.

Two people suffering from E.coli infections in the French city of Bordeaux have the same strain as that which caused scores of deaths in Germany, French authorities said.

The French commerce ministry said it had ordered stores to suspend the sale of fenugreek, mustard and rocket seeds which the consumer safety authority believed had been supplied by British company Thompson & Morgan in the eastern town of Ipswich while a possible link to the illnesses was investigated.

"The link between the symptoms and consumption of these seeds has so far not been definitively established," the ministry said in a statement issued on Friday.

"According to information in the possession of the DGCCRF (consumer authority), the supplier is a British firm, Thompson & Morgan, based in Ipswich," it said.

While awaiting the results of analyses, the government had instructed the DGCCRF "to ask sellers of fenugreek, mustard and rocket seeds coming from supplier Thompson & Morgan to suspend the sale of these products without delay."

The company did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment.

Ten E.coli cases have been detected in Bordeaux and seven people were still hospitalized on Friday, said Doctor Joao Simoes, who heads the regional health agency.

Regional health official Patrick Rolland told journalists that initial tests showed that two of the patients had an E.coli strain identical to that which has caused nearly 40 deaths mostly in Germany.

Health authorities in Germany have linked the epidemic to contaminated bean sprouts and shoots from a German organic farm sold to consumers and restaurants for eating in salads.

Six of the people hospitalized in Bordeaux are known to have eaten such foods during a fair at a leisure center on June 8 in the Bordeaux suburb of Begles.
French health authorities have said there did not
appear to be any link between the cases in Bordeaux and an outbreak last week of E.coli infections near Lille, in northern France, that made eight children ill.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Want to conceal your age? Don't spit

2011-06-25T21:44:00.001+01:00

Dr. Eric Vilain said that if some saliva is found around the butt of a cigarette, scientists could use the technique to tell if the saliva is from a person in their 20's or their 70's.

American researchers said Thursday they can use saliva samples to predict a person's age, a discovery that could help CSI investigators track suspects and open the door to personalized medicine.

Using a process call methylation, a chemical modification of one of the four building blocks that compose human DNA, scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), were able to determine a person's age to within five years.

"With just a saliva sample, we can accurately predict a person's age without knowing anything else about them," said Dr. Eric Vilain, the director of the Center for Society and Genetics at UCLA.

He added that if some saliva is found around the butt of a cigarette, scientists could use the technique to tell if the saliva is from a person in their 20's or their 70's.
"It could also be used for victim identification in which you have very little and have no idea who the person is, whether it's a young or an old person," Vilain explained.

Vilain and his team, whose findings are reported in the online edition of the Public Library of Science One journal, made the discovery while studying 34 pairs of identical male twins.

They studied the men's genome and found sites on DNA that linked methylation to age.

After identifying two or three genes with the strongest age-link to methylation, they used data from the twins and 60 men and women to predict their age.

Vilain said the findings could potentially be used to determine how a person is aging biologically versus their chronological age, or how different environments age a person.

"This opens a door to truly personalize medicine based on one's physical characteristics, rather than on age alone. For example, it's recommended that everyone should get screened for colon cancer at age 50," Vilain said. "Some people could wait longer, or need it sooner because their body in general ages faster."
In the long-term, Vilain hopes the discovery could be used to determine ways to slow the aging process.

"I'm dreaming here, but if aging is at least partly influenced by the environment, then one could wonder whether you could change the environment," he explained.

"I'm really interested to see how you could slow the process down, maybe by giving supplements, changing the environment, going different places ... it's a dynamic process," he said.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Arizona death prompts probe for E.coli link

2011-06-24T21:48:00.002+01:00

There have been five confirmed cases in the United States of patients who were sickened by the same strain of the bacteria that has swept Europe, the CDC said.

U.S. health officials are investigating whether the death of an Arizona resident could be linked to the recent E.coli outbreak in Europe.

If confirmed, the Arizona patient, who recently traveled to Germany, would be the first U.S. citizen to die from the deadly bacteria that has killed 29 people in Europe, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday.

There have been five confirmed cases in the United States of patients who were sickened by the same strain of the bacteria that has swept Europe, the CDC said.

It is not yet known whether the Arizona patient was infected with E.coli, CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell told Reuters. The patient did, however, have hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) -- a type of kidney failure that has afflicted 823 people in Europe, she said.

The CDC is not saying whether the Arizona patient was a man or woman, Russell said.

"We're working with the local health authorities to investigate" the Arizona case, she said.

The Robert Koch Institute announced June 10 that raw sprouts from a farm in Germany were the likely source of the outbreak, the CDC reported.

"Over the past few weeks, the number of cases (in Europe) associated with this outbreak has markedly decreased," the agency said.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

New test may predict Alzheimer's early: Study

2011-06-23T21:36:00.001+01:00

The findings, released in the journal Neurology, are part of a push to find new ways to diagnose Alzheimer's early, before the disease causes too much harm.

A new way of testing for signs of Alzheimer's disease in spinal fluid may help more accurately identify which people with mild memory deficits will progress to full-blown dementia, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The findings, released in the journal Neurology, are part of a push to find new ways to diagnose Alzheimer's early, before the disease causes too much harm.

"Being able to identify who will develop Alzheimer's disease very early in the process will be crucial in the future," Dr. Robert Perneczky of the Technical University Munich in Germany, who led the study.

"Once we have treatments that could prevent Alzheimer's disease, we could begin to treat very early and hopefully prevent the loss of memory and thinking skills that occurs with this devastating disease."

Current spinal fluid tests for Alzheimer's look for an imbalance in two proteins: beta amyloid, which forms sticky plaques in the brain, and tau, which is seen as a marker of brain cell damage.

People with Alzheimer's tend to have lower levels of beta amyloid and higher levels of tau protein in their spinal fluid, and doctors often test for this to confirm the dementia is caused by Alzheimer's.

In the study, Perneczky and colleagues looked for remnants of a key building block of beta amyloid called amyloid precursor protein or APP.

"If you are cutting out a cookie, it's the dough around the cookie that's left behind," said Dr. Marc Gordon, an Alzheimer's researcher at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York.

"That is what they were measuring here," said Gordon, who was not involved with the study.
The researchers collected spinal fluid from 58 people with slight memory problems, or mild cognitive impairment, a condition that often progresses to Alzheimer's.

After three years, 21 people had developed Alzheimer's, 27 still had mild cognitive impairment, eight people had reverted back to their normal cognitive health, and two others developed a condition called frontotemporal dementia and were excluded from the analysis.

The study showed that people who progressed to Alzheimer's had significantly higher levels of this remnant of APP called soluble amyloid precursor protein beta in their spinal fluid than those who did not develop Alzheimer's.

When combined with other biomarkers, such as the presence of tau and a person's age, the test was roughly 80 percent accurate in predicting whether the disease would develop.

And they found that the form of beta amyloid normally used to test for Alzheimer's was not a good predictor of which patients with mild impairments might progress to dementia.

While the study is very early, Gordon said tests like this will be needed as companies try to develop treatments for Alzheimer's that can keep the disease from progressing.

Some 26 million people have Alzheimer's, a fatal disease that is the most common form of dementia. Current drugs only help symptoms, but no drug can arrest Alzheimer's, which costs $604 billion a year to treat.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

TV and soda: small habits cause weight creep: US study

2011-06-22T21:40:00.001+01:00

The researchers stressed that the quality of food choices, and not just calories, are key to maintaining a healthy weight.

Just a few bad habits, watching TV, eating potato chips, having a sugary soda at lunch or staying up too late at night, can add up to a steady creep of pounds (kg) over the years, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

While most studies on diet focus on changes needed to help obese people lose weight, the study by the Harvard team showed tiny changes in diet and lifestyle can make a big impact.

The study focuses on specific lifestyle choices ,foods, activity, sleep habits, that slowly pack on the pounds (kg). The researchers stressed that the quality of food choices, and not just calories, are key to maintaining a healthy weight.

"These small choices add up," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital, whose study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Because the weight gain is so gradual and occurs over many years, it has been difficult for scientists and for individuals themselves to understand the specific factors that may be responsible," Mozaffarian, who led the effort, said in a statement.

To get at this, the team analyzed data on 120,877 U.S. women and men from three large studies of health professionals that tracked changes in lifestyle factors and weight every four years over a 20-year period.

All study participants were normal weight and healthy when they started. Over time, they gained an average of 3.35 pounds (1.59 kg) during each 4-year period for a total average weight gain of 16.8 pounds (7.6 kg) at the end of the 20-year study.

Foods that added most to weight gain over a four-year period included daily consumption of potato chips (1.69 lbs or 0.76 kg), potatoes (1.28 lbs or 0.58 kg), sugar-sweetened beverages (1 lb or 0.45 kg), unprocessed red meats (0.95 lbs or 0.43 kg) and processed meats (0.93 lbs or 0.42 kg).

More than a third of adults and nearly 17 percent of children in the United States are obese, increasing their chances of developing health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, fatty liver disease and some cancers.

Obesity-related diseases account for nearly 10 percent of U.S. medical spending, or an estimated $147 billion a year.

Food that should be called bad
Mozaffarian said understanding ways to keep people from becoming obese may be more effective than getting people to lose weight as U.S. policymakers attempt to turn the tide.

Those in the study who lost or maintained their weight over time tended to eat minimally processed foods.
"Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts -- if you increase their intake, you had relative weight loss, presumably because you are replacing other foods in the diet," Mozaffarian said.

The study contradicts the notion that all foods are good for you in moderation.

"The idea that there are no 'good' or 'bad' foods is a myth that needs to be debunked," said Frank Hu of Harvard, who worked on the research.

Mozaffarian said different foods have a different effect on the body. "You can't just say a calorie is a calorie. It doesn't address your feelings of fullness, your blood glucose levels, your blood insulin levels and the other biological responses in your body," he said.

In the study, dietary changes appeared to have the biggest impact on weight gain over time, but other lifestyle changes also were a factor.

For example, watching one hour of TV per day added 0.31 pounds (0.14 kg) over a four-year period.

Sleep also played a role. People in the study who got between six and eight hours of sleep were less likely to gain weight over the study period. But people who got less than six hours or more than eight hours tended to gain weight.

And when people increased their physical activity, they tended to gain less weight during the study period.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Don't worry, be happy and live longer: studies

2011-02-27T00:39:00.000+00:00

Today's lesson: be happy, live longer. Now science seems to back the glass half-full approach.
A review of more than 160 studies on the connection between a positive state of mind and overall health and longevity has found "clear and compelling evidence" that happier people enjoy better health and longer lives.
In fact, evidence linking an upbeat outlook and enjoyment of life to better health and longer life was stronger even than that linking obesity to reduced longevity, according to the review published on Tuesday in the journal "Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being."
"I was almost shocked, and certainly surprised, to see the consistency of the data," said Ed Diener, the University of Illinois psychology professor emeritus, who lead the review.
While Diener said a few studies he reviewed found the opposite, the "overwhelming majority ... support the conclusion that happiness is associated with health and longevity."
The review looked at eight different types of long-term studies and experimental trials of both human and animal populations.
For example, 5,000 university students studied for more than 40 years provided evidence that the most pessimistic students tended to die younger.
In the laboratory, positive moods were found to reduce stress-related hormones, increase immune function and help the heart recover following exertion.
Animals who lived in stressful conditions such as crowded cages had weaker immune systems and a higher susceptibility to heart disease, and died at a younger age than those in less crowded conditions.
Diener noted that while current health edicts focus on obesity, smoking, eating habits and exercise, "it may be time to add 'be happy and avoid chronic anger and depression' to the list."

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy discoveries: Study links sugary drinks with high blood pressure

2011-02-26T00:33:00.000+00:00

Scientists have linked drinking sugary drinks like fizzy cola and fruit drinks with high blood pressure and say their findings suggest that cutting both sugar and salt intake could help reduce the risk.
High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a major risk factor for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide.
In a study of more than 2,500 people in the United States and Britain, researchers found that for every extra can of sugary drink consumed per day, participants had higher systolic blood pressure by an average of 1.6 mmHg and a higher diastolic reading by an average of 0.8 mmHg.
This difference was significant even after adjusting for factors such as weight and height, the scientists wrote on Monday in a study in the journal Hypertension.
Blood pressure is at its highest when the heart beats, pumping the blood. This is called systolic pressure. Between beats, when the heart is resting, the blood pressure falls. This is the diastolic pressure.
Experts say someone with a blood pressure level in millimetres of mercury (mmHg) of 135 systolic over 85 diastolic is twice as likely to have a heart attack or a stroke as someone with a reading of 115 over 75.
In this study, the link between sugary drinks and higher blood pressure was especially strong in people who ate a lot of salt as well as sugar, the researchers said, supporting long-established findings that high salt intake can lead to high blood pressure.
"It's widely known that if you have too much salt in your diet, you're more likely to develop high blood pressure. The results of this study suggest that people should be careful about how much sugar they consume as well," said Paul Elliott of Imperial College London, who worked on the study.
The researchers analysed data from 2,696 volunteers aged between 40 and 59, in eight areas of the United States and two areas of Britain.
Over an average period of three weeks, the volunteers were asked four times to report what they had eaten in the preceding 24 hours, as well as giving urine samples and having their blood pressure measured.
The researchers also found that people who drink more sugary drinks tended to have more unhealthy diets in general. As well as eating more sugar, people who drank more than one sugary drink a day consumed more calories on average, as well as less fibre and minerals.
Those who didn't drink sugary drinks had a lower body mass index (BMI) on average than those who drank more than one a day.
Ian Brown, another Imperial College researcher who worked with Elliott and U.S. colleagues, said that because this was a population study, it was not able to establish causal links.
"It can't say definitively that sugary drinks raise your blood pressure, but it's one piece of the evidence in a jigsaw puzzle that needs to be completed," he said in a statement.
"In the meantime, we would advise people who want to drink sugar-sweetened beverages should do so only in moderation."

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Hot flashes, night sweats tied to heart risks

2011-02-25T00:28:00.000+00:00

Women who have hot flashes and night sweats at the start of menopause may be less likely to have a heart attack later in life, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.But women who develop these symptoms later in menopause may have higher heart disease risks, the team reported in the journal Menopause.

"Our study provides reassurance that the classic symptoms of early menopause, experienced by the majority of women at mid-life, are not a marker of an increased risk of heart attack or stroke in the future," Dr. JoAnn Manson of Brigham and Women's Hospital, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

The findings come from a new analysis of the large clinical trial called the Women's Health Initiative in 2002 that showed hormone replacement therapy raised the risk of breast and ovarian cancers and strokes in older women, and doctors now prescribe it sparingly.

Manson and colleagues found that women with hot flashes or night sweats at the start of menopause were no more likely to have a heart attack, stroke or to die during the study period than women who did not have these symptoms.

And there was some suggestion that night sweats and hot flashes reduced those risks. For example, women with early hot flashes and night sweats had a 17 percent lower risk of stroke, an 11 percent lower risk of heart disease and an 11 percent lower risk of death during the study period from any cause.

Women who developed hot flashes or night sweats later on in menopause, however, had a 32 percent higher risk of heart attack and a 29 percent higher risk of death compared with women who got these symptoms early on.

About three out of four menopausal women experience hot flashes or night sweats early in menopause, the team said.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Study seeks to dispel stress myth in IVF treatment

2011-02-24T14:06:00.000+00:00

Women trying to get pregnant via IVF or other assisted reproduction techniques do not reduce their chances of success if they are emotionally distressed, according to a large scale analysis published on Friday.
In a review of data covering more than 3,500 women undergoing in vitro fertilization or other fertility treatments, British researchers found no difference in pregnancy success rates of women who were stressed and those who were not.

"These findings should reassure women that emotional distress caused by fertility problems or other life events co-occurring with treatment will not compromise their chance of becoming pregnant," said Jacky Boivin of Cardiff University's school of psychology, who led the study.

Infertility is a worldwide problem that affects 9 to 15 percent of the childbearing population, experts say. More than half of those affected will seek medical advice in the hope of eventually being able to become a parent.

IVF involves fertilizing an egg with sperm in a lab before implanting the embryo into a woman's womb, and can cost a patient many thousands of euros or dollars.

In research published last month, fertility specialists said that in the United States and Britain, IVF is successful in about a third of women under 35 years old, but in only five to 10 percent of women over the age of 40.

Many infertile women believe that emotional distress is a factor in not getting pregnant naturally or in lack of success with fertility treatment.

But Boivin's team, whose work was published in the British Medical Journal, said that view was largely based on anecdotal evidence and often repeated fertility myths such as "relax and you'll get pregnant."
Conducting a large-scale review known as a meta-analysis, the researchers looked at data from 14 studies involving 3,583 infertile women from the United States, Australia, Britain Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey, and other countries who were undergoing fertility treatment.

The women had been assessed for anxiety and stress before their treatment, and Boivin's team compared data for women who achieved pregnancy to those who did not.

The results showed emotional distress was not associated with whether or not a woman became pregnant, Boivin said.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy discoveries: Air pollution may hurt school kids' lungs

2011-02-23T18:56:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Children are anticipation to be decidedly afflicted to the ill furnishings of air pollutants because their airways are abate and their allowed systems beneath developed.

Allergy division is accepted to aggravate kids' asthma attacks, but added types of accomplished atom abuse in the air throughout the year additionally measurably affect children's lung function, sometimes dramatically, according to a abstraction by Taiwanese researchers.

On the day afterward a acceleration in one of the air pollutants studied, the advisers found, schoolchildren had a abate lung accommodation -- apparently due to deepening that fabricated their airways compress up.

It's able-bodied accustomed that poor air affection can aggravate affection in bodies with asthma or added lung disease, and some studies accept affiliated it to affection disease, too. But few studies accept followed the bloom furnishings over time.

In the accepted study, Bing-Yu Chen of the National Taiwan University and colleagues followed 100 school-aged accouchement -- some with asthma or hay agitation and some afterwards allergic diseases.

Children are anticipation to be decidedly afflicted to the ill furnishings of air pollutants because their airways are abate and their allowed systems beneath developed.

The advisers activated the youngsters' lungs already a ages over a academy year and calm abstracts on several air pollutants, including fungal spores, blast and accomplished particles beneath than 2.5 microns (millionths of a meter) in size, which are generally byproducts of afire deposit fuels.

A 10-years-old's lung accommodation is about amid 2 and 3 liters, but alike a bashful access in accomplished particles in the air was angry in the abstraction to a 0.16-liter abatement in the bulk of air kids could booty in. A agnate aftereffect was apparent for fungal spores, alike afterwards demography into annual levels of added air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide.

Ozone additionally afflicted the airways, but the advisers didn't acquisition any increases in the cardinal of asthma attacks.

Nonetheless, the advisers address in the account Pediatrics, the allegation advance that alike afterwards bearing appreciable changes in asthma attacks or the children's medication use, acknowledgment to pollutants and spores could abuse their lung function.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy discoveries: Mammograms fewer accurate in breast cancer survivors

2011-02-22T18:51:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Cancers detected by symptoms, and not screening, were added than alert as accepted in survivors as well.

Mammography is beneath authentic at spotting breast blight if a woman has had the ache before, according to a U.S. government-funded study.

Breast blight survivors are added acceptable to advance fresh tumors than women after a history of breast cancer, but little is accepted in detail about screening for survivors.

The study, appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association and based on advice from the better mammography anthology in the United States, showed that screening does advice ascertain breast blight in survivors -- but not generally enough.

"These allegation and added studies that are acceptable to be angry from this address should advance to bigger (radiology routines)," said Robert Smith of the American Blight Society, in a statement.

The study, led by Les Irwig of the University of Sydney in Australia, was the collective assignment of U.S. and Australian researchers, who compared about 120,000 mammograms -- bisected from breast blight survivors, bisected from those after a commensurable history of breast cancer.

Within a year of screening, 655 tumors were begin in survivors, compared to 342 in the added women.

Seven cancers were begin per 1,000 screens compared to four per 1,000 screens in women who had never had the disease.

But the action additionally absent tumors 11 percent added generally in the survivors, alike admitting these women had college numbers of added mammograms.

Survivors were additionally added acceptable to be told that the mammogram ability be assuming a cancer, back the woman absolutely didn't accept any.

Cancers detected by symptoms, and not screening, were added than alert as accepted in survivors as well.

About one in eight women will advance breast blight during their lifetime, but the adventitious of dying from the ache has been bottomward afresh and is now beneath than 3 percent, according to the ACS.

The ACS recommends mammograms already a year in women 40 and older, while the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says already every two years in women over 50.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/hdrHS9

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy discoveries: Hypo activity fatigue stress and fatigue

2011-02-21T20:59:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Treatment of fatigue, drowsiness and fatigue stress is a state of fatigue or physical fatigue occurs a reaction to real or expected problems in life. Signs of stress increased heart rate and high blood pressure, nervousness, mental, physical inactivity and frequent mistakes in matters of work due to suspension of the ability to focus, and may lead to stress not even sleep and excessive worry. Between the reactions to stress, social isolation, and powerlessness for the reform of the case .

What are the causes of stress and their motive?

What is the effect of stress on the human body?

The increase signals the secretion of adrenal cortex (adrenal) hormone release wave democratically They affect this hormone on the pituitary gland, and it secretes the hormone Democratic, in the bloodstream, and then move this hormone to the adrenal cortex, and secrete adrenal hormones called plutocratic, These hormones provide immediate energy and stops the body's immune system activity. At the same time, the adrenal glands secrete other hormones, most important of these hormones is adrenaline which increases heart rate and blood pressure.

If long-stress phase begins in the body resistance is up physical resistance to the summit during this period. However, the resistance of other pressures tend to fall below normal level, and this explains why people become who suffer from pressure at work, more susceptible to colds and flu, and if continued exposure to stress, the body loses its ability to adapt to life, enters the stage of exhaustion, and during this period low resistance to pressure to a large extent.

What are the diseases related to stress?

What are ways to resist the stress?

What is herbal medicine used against stress?

We talked about the onions frequently to prepare the past, but we repeat the talk about it because of its properties distinct in the healing of many diseases, it purifies the blood and regulates the session and generates the urine and eliminates insomnia, stress and anti-clotting and anti-Good for a large number of types of bacteria, and useful for the treatment of many lung diseases, scarlet fever and eat Medium onion with breakfast and another with lunch or dinner benefit the body greatly improves their immunity and strength to both reduce the stress significantly.

The apples from the best fruit from a health standpoint is the food and the treatment is struggling constipation and diarrhea in children and reduces the acid urea and relieve menstrual pain and activates the liver and expels phlegm, stimulates the heart and ease the pain of the nerves and keeps the blood vessels and removes tiredness and fatigue as it is very useful for the pain of rheumatism, gout, eating apple and one full day Anchorage impact not something equivalent to alleviate stress and get rid of it.

Original home of the chrysanthemum is China, is grown now in most parts of the earth, the user part of it heads flowering after you open the entire known as Chrysanthemum moratorium has Chrysanthemum alkaloids are the most important Abattoir and volatile oil and atones turbine unilateral mid-term and flavored and vitamin B, and Chrysanthemum streaky good antiseptic and diluted blood pressure and chilled and reduces fever, has shown several clinical trials that Japanese and Chinese chrysanthemum gardens is very effective in blood pressure and relieve accompanying symptoms such as headaches, insomnia and permanence, as experience has proved that the chrysanthemum gardens benefit in the treatment of angina and has the opposite effect for Microbiology.

It has been used chrysanthemum gardens in China for thousands of years as a treatment and a refreshing drink, and is one of the herbal medicine good for the treatment of stress and the way be taken to fill a spoon to eat the flowers in a cup and then pour the boiling water and the volatility well then shown tablespoon sugar, preferably by the honey and can be dispensed for desalination in the case of Diabetes and drink this mixture once in the morning and another in the evening and continue to be the person for a period of four weeks.

Chemical content of the seeds contain a volatile oil which consists of Delta and Alpha Lineally Alain and Alterable and Flavor Oneida and Kumar and striking to Ida and phenolic acids.

Used parts of the plant flowers and essential oil.

Flowers contain the volatile oil that contains Saintlike acid and esters of this acid, also contains the acid and Angelica Almas and atones turbines unilateral mid-term and Flacon Malcolm and phenolic acids.

Used chamomile as a treatment for the digestive system which is an anti-nausea, vomiting, indigestion, loss of appetite, it is also antispasmodic and used chamomile to the whole boiled by taking a tablespoon of flowers dry and added to fill the cup of boiling water and leave covered for 5 minutes and then drink without sweeten once after breakfast and again at bedtime and should not increase the dose, should not be used chamomile aromatic oil only under the supervision of a specialist.

We've talked in previous issues of sage, but because of their importance in the treatment of stress we will have to re-talk about it from herbs important in terms of medical and English proverb says it "did not die, one in his garden grows sage" sage on an excellent treatment for infections of the throat and the disorder of menstruation and anti-stress and insomnia , and contains a volatile oil and the most important compound which is Iran and materials once and flavored and phenolic acids, tannins and acid works .. Red passion is to plant grapes like Radish height of up to 9 meters. Known scientifically as Passim Flora and the user of the plant all parts of the plant except the roots .

Plant used sedative and bring a good sleep, stress, tension and insomnia which reduces the excess of stress is also used for certain cases of asthma and high blood pressure and alleviate the effects the most important emotions and turmoil. And taken the form of boiling, where Yu fill a medium spoon and placed in a cup and add boiling water and then have to leave 5 minutes and drain and drink once in the morning and at bedtime.

Weak nerves

The case of weak nerves of physical and mental fatigue chronic no known cause, and feel the person who suffers from this disease that tired mentally and physically when performing any work in life, this disease is a neurological condition are not accompanied by any change in the organic body. The food hits the patient for a full strike. Should be treating the patient weak nerves physically and mentally. When it reads the patient notes pain in the eyes with the appearance of spots in front of the eyes.

We must consider the following to the patient with neuromuscular weakness, namely:

Herbs

Is there a herbal remedy for a patient weak nerves?

The roots of Angelica ANGELICA

Already talking about Angelica in numbers the past and the user of cannabis roots where taken 250 grams of powder and boil in 5 liters of mineral water free of carbonates, for a period of one hour and then filtered and added to the water bath warm, and then Them the patient per day and must massage the good with the bathroom and then work favorite sport of the patient after the bath.

And used this recipe to strengthen the nerves and relieve fatigue and Alive.

Lhasa already talking about the Albanians or the so-called crown of the mountain in several topics from previous terms is taken to fill a teaspoon of milk powder plant Lhasa and is added to boiling water until the cup is full, then the volatility of a good cup and drink it immediately after breakfast and another at bedtime. And use this recipe for weak nerves.

The so-called promises or promises of Balladeer Alonzo, known in English by several names such as root and cinnamon sweet mouse and pen Alert sweet and sweet root, sweet either scientifically is known as CORPUS CALMS of grassy species.

Alonzo race rhizome is perennial plant grows in wet areas of Europe and North America. Can also be used on the stump boiling water bath and by taking 100 grams of powder and add it to the stump about a liter of water and boiled for ten minutes and then filtered and poured into water bath. Them and the patient with a massage.

Already talking about the oak posts from previous and the user against the loss of nerve is a cobalt-Oak (OAK BARK) and oak is a plant tree big Mammary known scientifically as UTERUS ALBA contains bark or peel oak, a large amount of material Alls Holding and the most important acid Walkways. Plant flowers in the summer and fir forest is a large growing areas.

Contains the plant, especially the tops of branches, the part of the user on the volatile oil by between 3 to 0.33 and this oil contains a quantity of camphor and this is the source of camphor oil and contains the acetate and Gabriella Alamein and Avaunt Veining and Dali two girls and Staten. It also contains the papers to the turpentine, vitamin C and a fixed oil and seeds contain vitamin E used the pilot fuel inhalation in the treatment of sore throat either camphor is used in the treatment of schizophrenia, and soothing tonic for the heart ..

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy discoveries: Hearing problems affiliated to added dementia risk

2011-02-20T20:34:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

People who are adamantine of audition accept added allowance of developing dementia as they age, fueling hopes that added use of audition aids ability axis the acceleration of dementia, according to a U.S. study.

The abstraction of added than 600 men and women by Johns Hopkins University surgeon Frank Lin and colleagues showed that the worse the participants' hearing, the greater their dementia risk.

"Does it beggarly you will advance dementia if your audition is impaired? Absolutely not!" Lin said, acquainted that while a baby abstraction from the 1980s activate agnate after-effects this abstraction was the aboriginal to chase bodies over time.

"But is your accident increased? You betcha."

With allotment from the National Institute on Aging, Lin and his colleagues followed added than 600 men and women age-old 36 to 90 over an boilerplate of 12 years. All had a audition analysis done at the alpha of the study, but none had dementia at that point.

Overall, 9 percent of the participants developed some affectionate of dementia during the study, which was appear in the Archives of Neurology, best frequently Alzheimer's disease.

Those with balmy audition accident had about alert the adventitious of developing dementia compared to bodies with accustomed hearing, alike afterwards cardinal out the access of age and added factors.

The accident added three-fold for those with abstinent audition loss, and five-fold for astringent impairment.

Lin acclaimed that the affidavit for the articulation are unclear, adage there were three possibilities, such as audition accident and dementia administration a common, alien cause.

A altered achievability is that aged bodies who are adamantine of audition may accept added difficulties arresting with crumbling brainy function, or that the amusing abreast and bareness acquired by crumbling audition could additionally ammunition the dementia.

Should these aftermost two be the case, Lin added, there could be a cogent appulse on accessible bloom and healthcare spending.

According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, 17 percent of U.S. adults accept some amount of audition loss.

In addition, audition aids currently aren't covered by best allowance companies, and the aerial amount -- as abundant as $4,000 for a brace -- could explain in allotment why alone a boyhood of bodies with audition accident use them, Lin said.

"Treating audition accident is not activity to aching you, except conceivably your wallet," Lin said, acquainted that he is currently active a balloon to see if alleviative audition accident would adjournment the access of dementia.

"We absolutely charge to activate belief what the exact apparatus is. And we charge to activate belief whether audition aids could accept an aftereffect on the access of dementia."

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy doscoveries: B vitamins found to halve brain shrinkage in old

2011-02-19T23:52:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Daily tablets of large doses of B vitamins can halve the rate of brain shrinkage in elderly people with memory problems and may slow their progression towards dementia, data from a British trial showed on Wednesday.

Scientists from Oxford University said their two-year clinical trial was the largest to date into the effect of B vitamins on so-called "mild cognitive impairment" -- a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

Experts commenting on the findings said they were important and called for larger, longer full-scale clinical trials to see if the safety and effectiveness of B vitamins in the prevention of neurodegenerative conditions could be confirmed.

"This is a very dramatic and striking result. It's much more than we could have predicted," said David Smith of Oxford's department of pharmacology, who co-led the trial.

"It is our hope that this simple and safe treatment will delay development of Alzheimer's in many people who suffer from mild memory problems."

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) affects around 16 percent of people aged over 70 worldwide and is characterised by slight problems with memory loss, language or other mental functions.

MCI does not usually interfere with daily life, but around 50 percent of people diagnosed with it go on to develop the far more severe Alzheimer's disease within five years. Alzheimer's is a mind-wasting disease for which there are few treatments and no cure, and which affects 26 million people around the world.

Smith and colleagues conducted a two-year trial with 168 volunteers with MCI who were given either a vitamin pill containing very high doses of folic acid, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12, or a placebo dummy pill.

These B vitamins are known to control levels of an amino acid called homocysteine in the blood, and high blood levels of homocysteine are linked to an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Helga Refsum, who also worked on the trial, stressed that vitamins were given in extremely high doses.

"This is a drug, not a vitamin intervention," she said.

The pills, called "TrioBe Plus" contained around 300 times the recommended daily intake of B12, four times daily advised folate levels and 15 times the recommended amount of B6.

Brain scans were taken at the beginning and the end of the trial to monitor the rate of brain shrinkage, or atrophy.

The results, published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) One journal, showed that on average the brains of those taking the vitamin treatment shrank at a rate of 0.76 percent a year, while those taking the dummy pill had an average brain shrinkage of 1.08 percent.

People who had the highest levels of homocysteine at the start of the trial benefited the most from the treatment, with their brains shrinking at half the rate of those on the placebo.

Although the trial was not designed to measure cognitive ability, the researchers found those people who had lowest rates of shrinkage had the highest scores in mental tests.

Commenting on the study, Paul Matthews, a professor of clinical neurology at Imperial College London said that although the vitamins used are generally safe and inexpensive, the study "should not drive an immediate change in clinical practice"

"Instead, it sets out important questions for further study and gives new confidence that effective treatments modifying the course of some dementias may be in sight," he said.

Reuters

If you like this article, please feed our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Cancer drug could prevent blindness in preemies

2011-02-18T20:09:00.002+00:00


Healthy discoveries

The blight biologic Avastin could advice anticipate amaurosis in a accumulation of abortive babies who were built-in afore their eyes

developed completely, according to a fresh study.

About 50,000 bodies common are dark because of this condition, alleged "retinopathy of prematurity" for its furnishings on the retina.

The study, appear online today in The Fresh England Journal of Medicine, showed that a distinct bang of Avastin into abortive babies' eyes prevented amaurosis added finer than laser surgery, which is the accustomed adjustment doctors use back there are signs of problems.

However, added analysis is bare because the abstraction was not ample abundant to prove whether the injections were safe.

Genentech's Avastin, accustomed generically as bevacizumab, is FDA-approved for several cancers, including colon blight that has spread.

Treating the babies involves algid their eyes and again injecting the bargain biologic into anniversary one. The bang "takes a few seconds," arch columnist Dr. Helen Mintz-Hittner of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston told Reuters Health.

The acceptable laser therapy, on the added hand, requires appropriate equipment, amercement a child's eyes and requires balance and a breath tube.

"It's a above analytic setback" for a babyish whose tube may accept aloof been removed," Mintz-Hittner said.

The abstraction was a randomized trial, which usually yields added reliable after-effects than best added kinds of studies. Overall, 150 abortive breed were about assigned to accept their eyes advised with Avastin injections or with lasers.

All the babies had avant-garde retina accident in the zones of the retina abutting to the optic nerve, which carries advice from the eye to the brain.

Among the 75 breed who accustomed Avastin and whose retinopathy was in the area of the retina abutting to the optic nerve, 6 percent had a ceremony of retinopathy of prematurity compared with 42 percent advised with laser surgery.

Such cases accept commonly been hardest to treat.

For babies like these, with the injections are "a accurate breakthrough, " wrote Dr. James Reynolds of the University of Buffalo in Fresh York in an beat appear forth with the commodity about the study.

While accustomed laser analysis assuredly destroys the claret argosy acknowledging borderline vision, the injections acquiesce for connected claret barge advance into the borderline retina, the Mintz-Hittner aggregation assured in their study.

The advisers could not appraise the assurance of the injections because there were too few babies in their study.

But because so abounding adults with blight accept taken the drug, and the dosage acclimated in the babies' eyes was actual small, "it seems reasonable to assume" that the Avastin injections are safe and at atomic as safe as laser treatment, Reynolds said in the editorial.

But the actuality that the injections assume to be chargeless of ancillary furnishings in the eye does not beggarly they're consistently safe, he said, adding, "The timing of the bang is critical."

Injection too aboriginal may baffle with claret barge growth, admitting bang too backward may advance to retinal damage.

Mintz-Hittner said the allegation will be decidedly important in countries area added abortive babies are actual but monitors are not accessible to anticipate the newborns from actuality apparent too abundant oxygen, which sets the date for the disease.

"I anticipate it's activity to be accustomed appealing bound and broadly accepted," she said.

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Early day care may promote eczema development

2011-02-17T13:52:00.005+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Kids who absorb their ancient years in day affliction may be at college accident of eczema than kids cared for at home, according to a fresh abstraction from Germany.

Eczema is a aggregate appellation for altered bark altitude characterized by a scaly, itchy, brownish rash. From 10 percent to 20 percent of breed and accouchement acquaintance some affection of the disease, according to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Bark Diseases.

A cardinal of studies accept begin that eczema is added accepted amid East German than West German children, Dr. Claudia Cramer of the IUF-Institut fur Umweltmedizinische Forschung in Dusseldorf, Germany, and her colleagues write. Given that East German kids are additionally added acceptable to appear aboriginal day care, Cramer and her aggregation advised whether actuality in day affliction afore age two, forth with several added abeyant accident factors, afflicted eczema risk.

The advisers followed 3,097 accouchement from bearing to age 6. Thirteen percent of the accouchement from eastern Germany had been diagnosed with eczema by age 4, compared to 8 percent of the accouchement from western Germany. Fifty-five percent of the accouchement from East Germany abounding day affliction in their aboriginal two years of life, compared to 6 percent of the West German children.

Early day affliction appearance was the alone agency apart associated with eczema risk. Accouchement in aboriginal day affliction were 56 percent added acceptable to accept the bark action than accouchement who didn't appear day affliction afore age 2. The aftereffect seemed to abate as accouchement got older.

The aberration in aboriginal day affliction is able to explain the differences amid the two regions in eczema prevalence, Cramer and her aggregation said.

While the abstraction didn't attending at why aboriginal day affliction could up eczema risk, the advisers say that in day affliction accouchement may be apparent to added allergens and microorganisms than at home. Accouchement in day affliction could additionally be added stressed, which could advance the development of eczema.

Future analysis should attending into how altered types of day affliction and the bulk of time accouchement absorb in day affliction affects children's allowed acknowledgment and accent levels, the advisers conclude.

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Too little sleep raises obesity risk in children: Study

2011-02-16T22:20:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Children aged four and under who get less than 10 hours of sleep a night are nearly twice as likely to be overweight or obese five years later, according to a U.S. study.

Researchers from the University of California and University of Washington in Seattle looked at the relationship between sleep and weight in 1,930 children aged 0 to 13 years old who took part in a survey in 1997 and again five years later in 2002.

For children who were four years old or younger at the time of the first survey, sleeping for less than 10 hours a night was associated with nearly a twofold increased risk of being overweight or obese at the second survey.

For older children, sleep time at the first survey was not associated with weight status at the second survey but current short sleep time was associated with increased odds of a shift from normal weight to overweight status or from overweight or obese status at follow up. Dr. Janice F. Bell from the University of Washington said this study suggested that early childhood could be a "critical window" when nighttime sleep helps determine a child's future weight status. According to the National Sleep Foundation, toddlers aged one to three years old should sleep for 12 to 14 hours a night; preschoolers, aged 3 to 5 years old, should sleep 11 to 13 hours, and 5- to 10-year-olds should get 10 to 11 hours. Teens should get 8.5 to 9.25 hours of sleep nightly.

Several studies have linked short sleep to excess weight in children and teens, Bell and fellow reseacher Dr. Frederick Zimmerman from the University of California noted in their report.

But many of these studies have been cross-sectional, meaning they looked at a single point in time, which makes it difficult to determine whether not getting adequate sleep caused a child to become obese, or vice versa.

These findings, said the researchers, suggest there is a critical time period prior to age five when adequate nightly sleep may be important in terms of a healthy weight later on.

Bell said the study, reported in the September issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, couldn't show why short sleep in early life might be a risk factor for excess weight gain but there are a number of theories.

"It might be that kids who don't get enough sleep are a little bit too tired to engage in the amount of activity that they need," Bell said.

Being up longer could mean more opportunities to eat.

Finally, there's evidence that adults who don't get enough sleep have altered levels of the appetite- and hunger-related hormones leptin and ghrelin, and the same could be true in children, Bell said.

Reuters

If you like this article, please feed our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy doscoveries: Two gene mutations mark deadly ovarian cancer

2011-02-15T15:32:00.002+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Researchers have identified two new genetic mutations that cause a significant number of the hardest-to-treat kinds of ovarian cancer, and say they point to a new "on-off" switch for tumors.

They hope their findings may eventually help doctors better tailor cancer treatments and also lead to the development of drugs to treat these forms of cancer.

The findings, published by two separate teams of researchers in the journal Science and the New England Journal of Medicine, also suggest a previously unknown mechanism for how cancer begins.

The genes affect ovarian clear cell carcinoma, one of the most aggressive forms of ovarian cancer. It accounts for about 10 percent to 12 percent of ovarian cancer, itself one of the deadliest and most difficult to treat tumor types.

Clear cell carcinoma usually is not affected by chemotherapy. It is sometimes linked to an overgrowth of uterine tissue called endometriosis.

Writing in Science, Dr. Bert Vogelstein and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore named the two new genes as ARID1A and PPP2R1A.

"They may provide opportunities for developing new biomarkers and therapies that target those genes," Nickolas Papadopoulos of Johns Hopkins, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

Vogelstein, Papadopoulos and other members of the team own stock in Inostics, a company based in Hamburg, Germany that is developing tests to help diagnose cancer.

Dr. David Huntsman of the British Columbia Cancer Agency published a separate study in the New England Journal of Medicine focusing on ARID1A. They found it was mutated not only in ovarian clear-cell carcinoma but also in a second type of ovarian tumor linked with endometriosis.

"Overall, 46 percent of patients with ovarian clear-cell carcinoma and 30 percent of those with endometrioid carcinoma had ... mutations in ARID1A," they wrote. They did not find the mutation in other ovarian tumor types.

The ARID1A gene is also a suspect in some cases of lung and breast cancer, Huntsman's team said.

It is involved in a process called chromatin remodeling, which helps squeeze DNA into cells and control when and how it gets "read" to perform a biological function.

The mutation in ARID1A allows DNA to be improperly "read" and turned on, the Johns Hopkins team said.

"Taken together, these data suggest that ARID1A is a classic tumor-suppressor gene," Huntsman's team wrote. These genes, when not mutated, help stop tumors -- BRCA1 and p53 are two other well-known examples.

About 10 to 20 percent of breast and ovarian cancers are due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.

An estimated 230,000 women worldwide are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year. Most are not diagnosed before the cancer has spread, because it causes only vague symptoms, and nearly 70 percent of those with advanced disease die within five years.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy doscoveries: Testosterone may drive aggressive takeovers :study

2011-02-14T15:26:00.003+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Younger chief executives with high testosterone levels may be more likely to try a hostile takeover -- and to get burned in the attempt, Canadian researchers said on Wednesday.

They found age was clearly linked with aggressive takeover behavior, and did a careful but indirect analysis to see if testosterone might be involved.

It likely is, said Kai Li and colleagues at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

"Young male CEOs appear to be combative: they are 4 percent more likely to be acquisitive and, having initiated an acquisition, they are over 20 percent more likely to withdraw an offer," Li's team wrote in the September issue of Management Science.

"Furthermore, a young target male CEO is 2 percent more likely to force a bidder to resort to a tender offer. We argue that this combative nature is a result of testosterone levels that are higher in young males."

Could experience be a factor, or rational thinking? "Our main thesis is hormones in a person's body may influence corporate decisions," Li said in a telephone interview.

"Personality, gender, age all matter."

The best way to test that would be to monitor CEOs in the midst of a takeover battle, but it was not practical, Li said. "But there are studies that already demonstrate a strong relationship between male age and testosterone," she said.

The hormone starts to decline in men at around age 45.

So Li's team looked at a Thomson Reuters database of 2,458 acquisition bids made by U.S. public for U.S. public targets between 1997 and 2007.

Researchers looked at the characteristics of the CEOs involved -- including how long they had been at the helms of their respective companies, in case the differences came down to simple experience.

There was a clear pattern -- younger CEOs were 4 percent more likely to initiate a bid than CEOs over the age of 45.

"In a more marked finding, male CEOs' relative youth increases their likelihood of withdrawing a merger/acquisition bid by as much as 20 percent," Li's team wrote.

Younger men with presumably higher testosterone would reject low offers, even if the rejection meant losing any chance of an offer, the researchers said.

Testosterone appears to provide the best explanation.

"The connections we find are present even after controlling for other plausible influences on M&A outcomes," they wrote.

In controlled laboratory tests, young men with high testosterone often will make a no-win offer, research has shown.

"This opens a new chapter in corporate finance research," Li said.

Do women CEOs behave the same way?

"Unfortunately in the corporate world ... only about 1 percent of the CEOs are female, so there just aren't enough data points for us to draw any conclusions," Li said.

Last year, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago found that female MBA students with higher levels of testosterone were far more likely than those with lower levels to choose finance careers such as investment banking that can be lucrative but also risky.

Reuters

If you like this article, please join our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Elderly men more forgetful than women

2011-02-13T22:24:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Lost the car keys? Forgot someone's name? Many elderly people suffer slight cognitive problems but men are more likely than women to suffer momentary memory lapse or senior moments, according to a U.S. study.

Researchers from the Mayo Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minnesota, found 19 percent of men aged 70 to 89 years had so-called mild cognitive impairment, compared to only 14 percent of women.

People with mild cognitive impairment have problems with memory but can carry out everyday activities and generally realize that they're forgetful. The National Institutes of Health says "mild cognitive impairment" falls in between normal forgetfulness and dementia.

Researcher Dr. Ronald Petersn said the findings were surprising because Alzheimer's disease, which is preceded by this type of mental decline, affects more women than men.

Even after accounting for differences in education, age, and diseases like diabetes and hypertension, men had about 50 percent higher odds than women of having mild cognitive impairment.

"The gender differences were somewhat surprising to us because most people believe that women are at higher risk than men," Petersen told Reuters Health.

He said not everyone with mild cognitive impairment develops dementia but some people do which makes it a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.

An estimated 15 percent of people with mild cognitive impairment end up with full-blown dementia each year. In the general population, that number is between one and two percent.

The study, published in the journal Neurology (http://link.reuters.com/bar78n), involved more than 2,000 randomly sampled elderly people from Olmsted County, Minnesota.

The researchers spent hours testing each participant specifically for mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

About a quarter of the seniors had cognitive problems beyond the signs of normal aging, including Alzheimer's.

Mild impairment became more common with older age but it also turned out that the more education people had under their belt, the less likely they were to have cognitive problems.

Petersen said it was unclear how to explain the finding.

The researchers speculated that perhaps men get memory problems earlier in life, but then decline more slowly than women. In other words, the reason more men have mild cognitive impairment might be that more women are skipping that stage and going directly to dementia.

While there aren't any drugs available to treat mild cognitive impairment, Petersen said lifestyle changes could have a positive effect.

He recommended reading and going to the movies, as well as keeping up with friends and family, eating healthy foods and being physically active.

"There are more and more data coming out indicating that some of these lifestyle modifications may work," he said.

Reuters

If you like this article, please feed our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Alcohol kills more than AIDS, TB or violence-WHO

2011-02-12T23:48:00.002+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Alcohol causes nearly 4 percent of deaths worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis or violence, the World Health Organisation warned on Friday.

Rising incomes have triggered more drinking in heavily populated countries in Africa and Asia, including India and South Africa, and binge drinking is a problem in many developed countries, the United Nations agency said.
Yet alcohol control policies are weak and remain a low priority for most governments despite drinking's heavy toll on society from road accidents, violence, disease, child neglect and job absenteeism, it said.
Approximately 2.5 million people die each year from alcohol related causes, the WHO said in its "Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health."
"The harmful use of alcohol is especially fatal for younger age groups and alcohol is the world's leading risk factor for death among males aged 15-59," the report found.
In Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), every fifth death is due to harmful drinking, the highest rate.
Men outnumbers women
Binge drinking, which often leads to risky behaviour, is now prevalent in Brazil, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and Ukraine, and rising elsewhere, according to the WHO.
"Worldwide, about 11 percent of drinkers have weekly heavy episodic drinking occasions, with men outnumbering women by four to one. Men consistently engage in hazardous drinking at much higher levels than women in all regions," the report said.
Health ministers from the WHO's 193 member states agreed last May to try to curb binge drinking and other growing forms of excessive alcohol use through higher taxes on alcoholic drinks and tighter marketing restrictions.
Alcohol is a causal factor in 60 types of diseases and injuries, according to WHO's first report on alcohol since 2004.
Its consumption has been linked to cirrhosis of the liver, epilepsy, poisonings, road traffic accidents, violence, and several types of cancer, including cancers of the colorectum, breast, larynx and liver.
"Six or seven years ago we didn't have strong evidence of a causal relationship between drinking and breast cancer. Now we do," Vladimir Poznyak, head of WHO's substance abuse unit who coordinated the report, told Reuters.
Alcohol consumption rates vary greatly, from high levels in developed countries, to the lowest in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and southern Asia, whose large Muslim populations often abstain from drinking.
Homemade or illegally produced alcohol -- falling outside governmental controls and tax nets -- accounts for nearly 30 percent of total worldwide adult consumption. Some is toxic.
Some countries restrict marketing of alcoholic beverages or on the industry's sponsorship of sporting events.
"Yet not enough countries use these and other effective policy options to prevent death, disease and injury attributable to alcohol consumption," the WHO said.
Alcohol producers including Diageo and Anheuser Busch InBev have said they recognise the importance of

Reuters

If you like this article, please feed our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: Talking to death: texts and phones kill 16,000: study

2011-02-11T22:54:00.001+00:00

Healthy discoveries

Drivers distracted by talking or texting on cell phones killed an estimated 16,000 people from 2001 to 2007, U.S. researchers reported.
The estimate, one of the first scientific attempts to quantify how many people have died in accidents caused specifically by mobile telephone distractions, also suggests a growing number of these drivers are under 30.

"Our results suggested that recent and rapid increases in texting volumes have resulted in thousands of additional road fatalities in the United States," Fernando Wilson and Jim Stimpson of the University of North Texas Health Science Center wrote in the American Journal of Public Health.

Wilson and Stimpson used details on road deaths from each state, on cell phone ownership and data on text message volume from the Federal Communications Commission.

They got reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on deaths attributable to distracted driving.

"Since roughly 2001-2002, texting volumes have increased by several hundred percent," Wilson said in a telephone interview. In 2002, 1 million texts were sent every month; this rose to 110 million in 2008.

"Since 2001 our model predicts that about 16,000 people have died since then that we attribute to the increase in texting volume in the United States."

Just talking on a cell phone can distract a driver, and several studies have demonstrated that, even with a hands-free device. But Wilson said texting and using so-called smart phones that provide e-mail access and other distracting applications take the problem to a new level.

U.S. traffic deaths are down -- in 2009 the Transportation Department said they hit their lowest level since the mid-1950s in 2009 at 33,963.

But for every 1 million new cell phone subscribers, Wilson and Stimpson estimate a 19-percent rise in deaths due to distracted driving.

"Distracted deaths as a share of all road fatalities increased from 10.9 percent to 15.8 percent from 1999 to 2008, and much of the increase occurred after 2005," they wrote.

Deaths track cellphone

"In 2008, approximately 1 in 6 fatal vehicle collisions resulted from a driver being distracted while driving," the report said. It found 5,870 people died in accidents attributed to distracted driving.

Cellphone ownership and the number of text messages sent rose sharply over the same time, Wilson and Stimpson found.

Wilson said 30 states ban texting while driving, and some cities and states require hands-free devices for drivers using mobile telephones.

This week Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation would work to fight distractions, encouraging employers to find ways to prevent workers from texting while driving for work.

Wilson said better enforcement is needed but he cannot see an easy way to do it.

"I guess a perfect solution would be installing cell phone jammers in every car but that is not going to happen," said Wilson, who himself answered a telephone call to be interviewed while driving, but who pulled over to talk.

"Unlike drunk driving, where you have effective enforcement mechanisms you don't have that with texting," he said. "The cop just has to get lucky and see you texting while driving."

Reuters

If you like this article, please feed our RSS and share it now :)

Healthy Discoveries: U.S. to resume funding stem cell research

2011-02-10T22:58:00.002+00:00

Healthy discoveries

The U.S. government said it was resuming work on controversial human embryonic stem cell research on Friday after an appeals court ruled in its favor.

In the latest legal back-and-forth on the issue, a U.S. appeals court on Thursday granted an Obama administration request to temporarily lift a judge's ban on federal funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells.

If you like this article, please feed our RSS and share it now :)