Eating fish reduces risk of Alzheimer’s disease

People who eat baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis may be improving their brain health and reducing their risk of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

“This is the first study to establish a direct relationship between fish consumption, brain structure and Alzheimer’s risk,” said Cyrus Raji, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “The results showed that people who consumed baked or broiled fish at least one time per week had better preservation of gray matter volume on MRI in brain areas at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.”

Alzheimer’s disease is an incurable, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and cognitive skills. According to the National Institute on Aging, as many as 5.1 million Americans may have Alzheimer’s disease. In MCI, memory loss is present but to a lesser extent than in Alzheimer’s disease. People with MCI often go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

For the study, 260 cognitively normal individuals were selected from the Cardiovascular Health Study. Information on fish consumption was gathered using the National Cancer Institute Food Frequency Questionnaire. There were 163 patients who consumed fish on a weekly basis, and the majority ate fish one to four times per week. Each patient underwent 3-D volumetric MRI of the brain. Voxel-based morphometry, a brain mapping technique that measures gray matter volume, was used to model the relationship between weekly fish consumption at baseline and brain structure 10 years later. The data were then analyzed to determine if gray matter volume preservation associated with fish consumption reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The study controlled for age, gender, education, race, obesity, physical activity, and the presence or absence of apolipoprotein E4 (ApoE4), a gene that increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

Gray matter volume is crucial to brain health. When it remains higher, brain health is being maintained. Decreases in gray matter volume indicate that brain cells are shrinking.
The findings showed that consumption of baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis was positively associated with gray matter volumes in several areas of the brain. Greater hippocampal, posterior cingulate and orbital frontal cortex volumes in relation to fish consumption reduced the risk for five-year decline to MCI or Alzheimer’s by almost five-fold.

“Consuming baked or broiled fish promotes stronger neurons in the brain’s gray matter by making them larger and healthier,” Dr. Raji said. “This simple lifestyle choice increases the brain’s resistance to Alzheimer’s disease and lowers risk for the disorder.”
The results also demonstrated increased levels of cognition in people who ate baked or broiled fish.
“Working memory, which allows people to focus on tasks and commit information to short-term memory, is one of the most important cognitive domains,” Dr. Raji said. “Working memory is destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease. We found higher levels of working memory in people who ate baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis, even when accounting for other factors, such as education, age, gender and physical activity.”
Eating fried fish, on the other hand, was not shown to increase brain volume or protect against cognitive decline.

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Scientists question if wi-fi laptops can damage sperm/BBC News

Scientists are questioning if using wi-fi on a laptop to roam the internet could harm a man's fertility, after lab work suggested ejaculated sperm were significantly damaged after only four hours of exposure.
The benchside tests showed sperm were less able to swim and had changes in the genetic code that they carry.

Experts stress this does not mean the same would occur in a real-life setting and say men should not worry unduly.
But they are recommending more studies.
The preliminary research, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, looked at semen samples from 29 healthy donors.
Each donor sample was separated out into two pots. One of these pots was then stored for four hours next to a laptop that was wirelessly connected to the internet. The other was stored under identical conditions, minus the laptop.
The scientists, from Argentina and the US, suspect that the effect seen is unrelated to the heat kicked out by a laptop, although heat can damage sperm.
Under investigation

The UK's Health Protection Agency has been closely monitoring the safety of wi-fi.
It says people using wi-fi, or those in the proximity of wi-fi equipment, are exposed to the radio signals it emits - and some of the transmitted energy in the signals is absorbed in their bodies.
However, the signals are very low power.
The HPA says there is no consistent evidence to date that exposure to radio signals from wi-fi adversely affects the health of the general population.

UK fertility expert Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "The study is very well conducted, but we should be cautious about what it may infer about the fertility of men who regularly use laptops with wi-fi on their laps.
"Ejaculated sperm are particularly sensitive to many factors because outside the body they don't have the protection of the other cells, tissues and fluids of the body in which they are stored before ejaculation. Therefore, we cannot infer from this study that because a man might use a laptop with wi-fi on his lap for more than four hours then his sperm will necessarily be damaged and he will be less fertile.
"We need large epidemiological studies to determine this, and to my knowledge these have not yet been performed."

He said men should still be cautious about balancing a laptop on their thighs for hours on end.
"We know from other studies that the bottom of laptops can become incredibly hot and inadvertent testicular heating is a risk factor for poor sperm quality.
"There is a case report of a man who burnt his penis after using a laptop resting on his lap for a long time. Therefore, there are many reasons to try and use a laptop on a table where possible, and this may in itself ameliorate any theoretical concerns about wi-fi."

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An Egg a Day Raises Risk of Diabetes -Researchers

People who eat eggs every day may substantially increase their risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers here said.

Men with the highest level of egg consumption -- at seven or more per week -- were 58% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not eat eggs, and women were 77% more likely to become diabetic if they ate at least an egg a day, Luc Djoussé, M.D., D.Sc., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard, and colleagues reported online in Diabetes Care.

Levels of egg intake above one a week also incrementally increased diabetes risk in both men and women (both P<0.0001 for trend), the researchers said.

Eggs are a major source of dietary cholesterol (about 200 mg per egg) and add about 1.5 g of saturated fat each to the diet, both of which would be expected to increase diabetes risk, they said.
Action Points

    Explain to interested patients that the average one-egg-a-week consumption was not associated with increased diabetes risk.

    Note that eggs may influence glucose metabolism primarily through their effect on cholesterol, although the researchers noted that the observational study could not determine the mechanism.

But each egg also contributes about 0.7 g of polyunsaturated fat, which may confer a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, the researchers noted.

The limited, primarily animal model, evidence for an effect of eggs or dietary cholesterol on glucose metabolism has been inconsistent, they added.

To sort out the effects, the researchers analyzed two large prospective trials that included food frequency questionnaires.

Their analysis included 20,703 male physicians without baseline diabetes from the Physicians' Health Study I (1982-2007) and 36,295 similarly diabetes-free female health professionals from the Women's Health Study (1992-2007).

Both studies were originally designed as randomized trials of vitamin supplementation and aspirin for prevention of heart disease.

Over a mean follow-up of 20.0 years in men and 11.7 years in women, 1,921 men and 2,112 women developed type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes was more common in men and women who reported eating more than the average one egg a week.

After adjustment for traditional diabetes risk factors and compared with no egg consumption at the 95% confidence interval, the hazard ratios for type 2 diabetes in men were:

    9% for less than one egg a week (hazard ratio 1.09, 0.87 to 1.37)
    9% for one egg a week (HR 1.09, 0.88 to 1.34)
    18% for two to four eggs a week (HR 1.18, 0.95 to 1.45)
    46% for five to six eggs per week (HR 1.46, 1.14 to 1.86)
    58% for seven or more eggs each week (HR 1.58, 1.25 to 2.01)

Updating egg consumption with longer follow-up among men strengthened the associations to an almost twofold risk for those in the near daily or higher intake groups (HR 1.77, 95% CI 1.39 to 2.26, and HR 1.99, 95% CI 1.23 to 3.23, respectively).

For women, the multivariate-adjusted risks, also at the 95% confidence interval, compared with no egg intake were:

    6% for less than one egg per week (HR 1.06, 0.92 to 1.22)
    -3% for one egg a week (HR 0.97, 0.83 to 1.12)
    19% for two to four eggs per week (HR 1.19, 1.03 to 1.38)
    18% for five to six eggs a week (HR 1.18, 0.88 to 1.58)
    77% for seven or more per week (HR 1.77, 1.28 to 2.43)

Data on dietary cholesterol available in the female health professional study showed higher diabetes risk with rising dietary cholesterol with hazard ratios increasing to 1.28 (95% CI 1.10 to 1.50) in the highest quintile (P<0.0001 for trend).

Adjustment for dietary cholesterol attenuated the association between diabetes and egg consumption, whereas saturated fat was not associated with type 2 diabetes and did not alter the diabetes-egg link.

The effects did not appear to be limited to those with high carbohydrate diets, hypercholesterolemia, or high body mass index.

However, the researchers acknowledged that the data did not include repeat fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and other biomarkers of glucose metabolism to "comprehensively examine possible physiologic mechanisms."

The observational studies may also have been limited by self-reporting and residual confounding, they noted.

The generalizablity may have been limited as well by the homogeneous, primarily Caucasian health professional population, which may have different behaviors than the general population, Dr. Djoussé's group said.

"Given the societal burden of type 2 diabetes," they concluded, "confirmation of these findings in other populations and exploration of possible underlying biological mechanisms are warranted."

The study was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.    

(MedPage Today)

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6 Doctor-Recommended Sleep Aids

Tired of counting sheep? Try one of these remedies and get a good night’s sleep.

1. Aromatherapy
Try it: When you’re drowsy but slightly tense.
How to use it: Massage a dab of aromatherapeutic balm or oil into the back of your neck and shoulders (and inhale deeply) before you hit the sack. Certain fragrances, including lavender and lemon balm, promote snooze-inducing relaxation, says Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., a sleep specialist at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, in Tucson.
Good to know: You don’t have to stick to traditional aromatherapeutic scents—any fragrance that makes you feel good can be calming, says Phyllis Zee, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of neurology and the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Northwestern University, in Chicago.

2. Valerian Tea
Try it: If you are getting a full night’s sleep but still feel tired in the a.m.
How to use it: Sip a brew made from the flowering plant an hour or so before bedtime. Some studies have shown that valerian can help increase sleep quality (it’s packed with antioxidants, too). You may have to drink it for several nights in a row before it works, says Naiman.
Good to know: Valerian shouldn’t be taken for more than two weeks at a time, since prolonged use can lead to dependency. And it can interfere with some prescription medications, including cholesterol drugs, so check with your doctor before steeping.

3. GABA-Enhanced Drink
Try it: When your head is racing with worries.
How to use it: Down a shot of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) right before bed.
“GABA, an amino acid found in your body, has been shown to quiet the mind when taken orally,” says Naiman.
Good to know: Certain foods, including brown rice, bananas, and mackerel, contain GABA. Consuming them during the day may help you sleep better at night.

4. Melatonin Supplement
Try it: If you don’t feel tired until way past bedtime.
How to use it: Take a three-milligram tablet 15 to 20 minutes before bed. Your brain makes this neurohormone naturally to “tell the body that it’s time for sleep,” says Naiman. “But many people have suppressed melatonin production because they’re overexposed to light in the evening.” Naiman has been using it nightly for 20 years.
Good to know: Consult with your doctor before taking melatonin. It is not recommended for pregnant women, women trying to conceive, children, and adolescent boys (it can affect testosterone levels in maturing males).

5. Over-the-Counter Sleeping Pill
Try it: When you’re going through a short period of sleeplessness, like during a stressful time at work.
How to use it: At bedtime, take two tablets that contain diphenhydramine, an antihistamine that makes you feel sleepy (research shows that an excess of histamine in the body may cause insomnia). “The less often you take these pills, the better,” says Dr. Lisa Shives, a sleep specialist in Evanston, Ill. “You can build up a tolerance, and then they won’t work as well.” (Try Unisom SleepGels; $10 for 32 gel tabs, at drugstores.)
Note: Never mix alcohol and sleeping pills.
Good to know: “The older you are, the slower you metabolize this type of drug,” says Shives. That means you may experience lingering sleepiness in the morning.

6. Prescription Medication
Try it: When insomnia becomes a chronic problem.
How to use it: Work with your doctor to figure out which medication is best for you. Shives’s favorite is Rozerem (rozerem.com). It acts on the melatonin receptors in the brain that help you fall and stay asleep (other aids act only as a sedative). Take a tablet about 30 minutes before bed.
Good to know: Finding the right medication may require trial and error: Some can make you more wired and awake. Side effects are common, says Shives, and range from the annoying (headaches, grogginess) to the serious, like unconscious nighttime binge eating and driving. Pregnant women may want to avoid these aids, even though they have not been proven to be dangerous.

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Acupuncture Safe in Kids, Study Finds

Treating kids with acupuncture is a common practice and generally safe, according to a new study.

“Like adults, acupuncture is very safe when applied to the children’s population,” said Jamie Starkey, an acupuncturist from the Cleveland Clinic, who did not take part in the study. “And so it basically mimics exactly what is seen in the adult population.”

Researchers at the University of Alberta studied data from different countries spanning 60 years. They looked at the association between needle acupuncture and the different adverse events in children.

Out of 279 adverse effects, 253 were mild, according to the researchers.

The other 25 adverse effects were likely related to sub-standard techniques.

Adverse effects included bruising, bleeding and worsening of symptoms after treatment.

“Any of the serious side effects that they found were definitely due in part to the clinician’s malpractice,” Starkey said. “So, it was certainly somebody who was not necessarily the most trained. The take-home message is that it is absolutely safe in both the adult and pediatric world, but you have to go to somebody who is trained.”

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New evidence links virus to brain cancer

Tilting the scales in an ongoing debate, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found new evidence that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is associated with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the brain cancer that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Tilting the scales in an ongoing debate, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found new evidence that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is associated with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the brain cancer that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The findings confirm what only a handful of scientists have found, but in a manner that University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health researchers believe enhances the scientific rigor of earlier studies.

The study, published in the advanced online edition (Nov. 16, 2011) of the Journal of Virology, hints for the first time that HCMV may work differently than other cancer-related viruses - possibly by affecting only tumor stem cells, self-renewing cells that keep the tumor growing.

The new research may place HCMV in an expanding group of viruses associated with cancer.

"As many as 15 to 20 percent of all human cancers are caused by viruses, and the number is growing," says HCMV expert Dr. Robert Kalejta, associate professor of oncology at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). "The viruses may not cause cancer on their own, but they play a critical role in the process."

Among others, human papilloma virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) causes lymphoma and hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes liver cancer.

HCMV's role in GBM has been debated, with many scientists and clinicians remaining skeptical. Oncologist Dr. Charles Cobbs of California Pacific Medical Center has been the main proponent of the theory that HCMV contributes to GBM.

Dr. John Kuo, assistant professor of neurological surgery and human oncology and a cancer stem cell scientist at the School of Medicine and Public Health, was one of the skeptical ones, but he says he's now convinced that HCMV is associated with human GBM specimens.

Still, the association does not prove a causal relationship between HCMV and the development of GBM, he says.

HCMV-infected cell.

"This study may open up a new unexplored area of research for this incurable disease," says Kuo, who is director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program at UW Hospital and Clinics. He also coordinates clinical trials as chair of the brain tumor group at the Carbone Cancer Center.

Kuo and colleagues on the UW brain tumor team currently treat GBM patients with the standard regimen of surgery, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. More research is needed before anti-viral drugs against HCMV could be considered for clinical trials, says Kuo, whose group contributed to the Journal of Virology paper.

Two years ago, Kalejta's team added support to Cobb's position when it showed that two HCMV proteins shut down a key protein that restricts tumor growth in general.

"HCMV can also do every one of the things that are generally considered the 10 hallmarks of cancer," says Kalejta, a member of the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, Carbone Cancer Center, Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center and Institute for Molecular Virology at UW-Madison.

The problem with studying HCMV is that the virus is present in a harmless way in almost everyone, so scientists can't ask if HCMV-positive people are more likely to get cancer than people without HCMV.

Kalejta's postdoctoral fellow Dr. Padhma Ranganatan used a standard laboratory test, rather than the ultra-sensitive test Cobb has used, to see if HCMV was present in 75 GBM samples. The UW-Madison researchers also looked to see if the entire virus genome - all of its DNA - rather than just a portion of it was present in the tissues. Finally, they wanted to learn if all cells within the tumor or just some of them were infected.

The analysis showed that HCMV is statistically more likely to be present in GBM sample tissues than in other brain tumor and epileptic brain tissues. The whole virus genome, not a portion of it, was present in GBM samples. And the data suggested that a minority of GBM cells were infected with HCMV.

"We hypothesize that HCMV may be infecting only tumor stem cells, unlike other viruses, which infect every single tumor cell," says Kalejta. "This leads us to predict that HCMV functions by a unique mechanism that no other virus uses."

Kalejta hopes to begin looking for the new mechanism soon. If there is such a mechanism, it could open a new door in cancer biology. It would also convert many more people to the idea that HCMV plays a key role in GBM.

"But I think the tide is now turning on the debate," Kalejta says.

(via Medical Xpress)

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Underweight people at higher post-surgery risk: study

(Reuters) - People who are underweight have a 40 percent higher risk of dying in the first month after surgery than patients who are overweight, according to new research released on Monday.
The findings suggest that body mass index, or BMI, may be useful in predicting which patients are at the greatest risk while recovering from surgery, U.S. researchers reported in the Archives of Surgery.
Prior studies looking at the role of BMI in surgery have been mixed, said George Stukenborg of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who worked on the study.
"Patients with low BMI are at higher risk of death 30 days after surgery," Stukenborg said in a telephone interview.
The researchers used data on nearly 190,000 patients who underwent a variety of surgeries at 183 hospitals between 2005 and 2006.
BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 are normal weight, those with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are overweight, and those with a BMI of 30 and above are obese.
To look for a link between body weight and the risk of death, they classified patients into five groups or quintiles: people with a BMI of less than 23.1; people with a BMI of 23.1 to less than 26.3; people with a BMI of 26.3 to less than 29.7; people with a BMI of 29.7 to less than 35.3; and people with a BMI of 35.3 or higher.
Overall, 2,245 or 1.7 percent of people in the study died within 30 days of surgery.
"We found patients in the lowest quintile had a 40 percent higher odds of death compared to the mid-range," said Stukenborg, referring to people in the overweight category with BMIs of 26.3 to 29.7.
Even when the researchers adjusted for type of surgery and other risk factors, those with a low BMI still had a greater risk of dying in the first month after surgery compared with plumper surgery patients.
Stukenborg said it is not clear why. The study did not track recent weight loss, so it could be that people who weighed less were sicker to begin with.
"That is a possibility," he said.
Either way, Stukenborg said doctors should consider BMI when they plan surgeries for their patients.
Being overweight or obese carries many other risk, raising chances of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, arthritis and other conditions. Obesity-related diseases account for nearly 10 percent of medical spending in the United States or an estimated $147 billion a year.

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Understanding Diseases/Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that causes excessive sleepiness and frequent daytime sleep attacks.

Symptoms
*Periods of extreme drowsiness every 3 to 4 hours during the day. You may feel a strong urge to sleep, often followed by a short nap (sleep attack).
*These periods last for about 15 minutes each, although they can be longer.
*They often happen after eating, but may occur while driving, talking to someone, or during other situations.
*You wake up feeling refreshed.
*Dream-like hallucinations may occur during the stage between sleep and wakefulness. They involve seeing or hearing, and possibly other senses.
*Sleep paralysis is when you are unable to move when you first wake up. It may also happen when you first become drowsy.
*Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle tone while awake, resulting in the inability to move. Strong emotions, such as laughter or anger, will often bring on cataplexy.
 *Most attacks last for less than 30 seconds and can be missed.
 *Your head will suddenly fall forward, your jaw will become slack, and your knees will buckle.
 *In severe cases, a person may fall and stay paralyzed for as long as several minutes.

Causes & Risk Factors
Narcolepsy is a nervous system disorder, not a mental illness. Anxiety does not cause narcolepsy.
Experts believe that narcolepsy is caused by reduced amounts of a protein called hypocretin, which is made in the brain. What causes the brain to produce less of this protein is unclear.
Narcolepsy tends to run in families.
Conditions that cause insomnia, such as disrupted work schedules, can make narcolepsy worse.
Tests & Diagnostics
The doctor will perform a physical exam and order blood work to rule out conditions that can cause similar symptoms.
Conditions that can cause excessive sleepiness include:
    *  Insomnia and other sleep disorders
    *  Restless leg syndrome
    * Seizures
    * Sleep apnea
    * Other medical, psychiatric, or nervous system diseases
Other tests may include:
    * ECG (measures the heart's electrical activity)
    * EEG (brain activity measurements)
    * Monitoring of breathing
    * Genetic testing to look for narcolepsy gene
Tests will also include a sleep study (polysomnogram). The Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) may be used to help diagnose narcolepsy. This test measures how long it takes you to fall asleep during a daytime nap. Patients with narcolepsy fall asleep much faster than people without the condition.
Treatments
There is no known cure for narcolepsy. The goal of treatment is to control symptoms.
Lifestyle adjustments and learning to cope with the emotional and other effects of the disorder may help you function better in work and social activities.
This involves:
* Eating light or vegetarian meals during the day and avoiding heavy meals before important
   activities
* Scheduling a brief nap (10 to 15 minutes) after meals, if possible
* Planning naps to control daytime sleep and reduce the number of unplanned, sudden sleep
   attacks
* Informing teachers and supervisors about the condition so you are not punished for being
   "lazy" at school or work

You may need to take prescription medications. The stimulant drug modafinil (Provigil) is the first choice of treatment for narcolepsy. It is much less likely to be abused than other stimulants. The medicine also helps you stay awake. Other stimulants include dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine, DextroStat) and methylphenidate (Ritalin). Antidepressant medications can help reduce episodes of cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hallucinations.
Antidepressants include:
*Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as fluoxetine, paroxetine, sertraline, and venlafaxine
*Tricyclic antidepressants such as protriptyline clomipramine, imipramine, and desipramine
*Sodium oxybate (Xyrem) is prescribed to certain patients for use at night.

If you have narcolepsy, you may have driving restrictions. Restrictions vary from state to state.
Complications
    * Injuries and accidents, if attacks occur during activities
    * Impairment of functioning at work
    * Impairment of social activities
    * Side effects of medications used to treat the disorder
Prevention
There is no known way to prevent narcolepsy. Treatment may reduce the number of attacks. Avoid situations that aggravate the condition if you are prone to attacks of narcolepsy.
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Women more likely to have 'broken heart syndrome'

A woman's heart breaks more easily than a man's

Females are seven to nine times more likely to suffer "broken heart syndrome," when sudden or prolonged stress like an emotional breakup or death causes overwhelming heart failure or heart attack-like symptoms, the first nationwide study of this finds. Usually patients recover with no lasting damage.
The classic case is "a woman who has just lost her husband," said Dr. Mariell Jessup, a University of Pennsylvania heart failure specialist who has treated many such cases.
Cyndy Bizon feared that was happening when her husband, Joel, suffered a massive heart attack in 2005. "May God work through your hands," the Maine woman told the surgeon as her husband was wheeled past her into the operating room. She later collapsed at a nurse's station from "broken heart syndrome" and wound up in coronary care with him. Both survived.

Japanese doctors first recognized this syndrome around 1990 and named it Takotsubo cardiomyopathy; tako tsubo are octopus traps that resemble the unusual pot-like shape of the stricken heart.
It happens when a big shock, even a good one like winning the lottery, triggers a rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones that cause the heart's main pumping chamber to balloon suddenly and not work right. Tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances typical of a heart attack, but no artery blockages that typically cause one. Most victims recover within weeks, but in rare cases it proves fatal.

Dr. Abhishek Deshmukh of the University of Arkansas had treated some of these cases.
"I was very curious why only women were having this," he said, so he did the first large study of the problem and reported results Wednesday at an American Heart Association conference in Florida.
Using a federal database with about 1,000 hospitals, Deshmukh found 6,229 cases in 2007. Only 671 involved men. After adjusting for high blood pressure, smoking and other factors that can affect heart problems, women seemed 7.5 times more likely to suffer the syndrome than men.

It was three times more common in women over 55 than in younger women. And women younger than 55 were 9.5 times more likely to suffer it than men of that age.
No one knows why, said Dr. Abhiram Prasad, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist who presented other research on this syndrome at the conference.
"It's the only cardiac condition where there's such a female preponderance," he said.
One theory is that hormones play a role. Another is that men have more adrenaline receptors on cells in their hearts than women do, "so maybe men are able to handle stress better" and the chemical surge it releases, Deshmukh said.

Bizon was 57 when her attack occurred; she's now 63. She and her husband are pharmacists and live in Scarborough, Maine.
"I remember grabbing the counter and a black curtain coming down before my eyes," she said in a telephone interview. Her attack was so severe that she went into full cardiac arrest and had to have her heart shocked back into a normal rhythm. Although most such attacks resolve without permanent damage, she later needed to have a defibrillator implanted.
About 1 percent of such cases prove fatal, the new study shows.
"In the old days, we'd say someone was scared to death," said Prasad.
About 10 percent of victims will have a second episode sometime in their lives. And although heart attacks happen more in winter, broken heart syndrome is more common in summer.
Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org

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Smokeout Day: The Best Ways to Quit

As thousands of smokers across the United States try to kick their bad habit as part of the Great American Smokeout on Thursday, experts agree that a two-pronged strategy is the best bet for success.

"The U.S. Public Health Service has twice done very extensive reviews of all the evidence, and [best] is a combination of counseling/advice, by pharmacists, physicians or quitlines, plus medicine," said Thomas Glynn, director of cancer science and trends and of international cancer control for the American Cancer Society.
A lot has changed since 1976, when the first smokeout took place, Glynn noted. "People could smoke on airplanes and in restaurants; the person sitting next to you in the movie theater could be smoking. Two of every five people smoked; now it's one of five."

Another difference: "Now, there are a number of ways that people can succeed, [including] seven medications approved by the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]," he said.
Still, many Americans resist medications or counseling, and rely on personal willpower to get them through nicotine withdrawal.
"Cold turkey, sheer willpower; the best data is that about 5 percent of people succeed," said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association.
"People who smoke 10 cigarettes a day, light smokers, if they want to try quitting on their own, that's fine," said Gary Giovino, chair of the department of community health and health behavior at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. For heavy smokers, he recommends starting with nicotine replacement therapy.

Smoking-cessation medications come "in three buckets: nicotine replacement, Wellbutrin/Zyban (bupropion) and Chantix (varenicline)," said Dr. Nancy Rigotti, director of the tobacco research and treatment unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "They all work. It's better to take one than none."
Nicotine patches give users a steady dose of nicotine through the skin and come in 16- or 24-hour varieties, by prescription or over-the-counter. Fast-acting forms of nicotine replacement therapy are lozenges and gum, available over-the-counter, and prescription inhalers and nasal sprays.
"You use the patch to get constant coverage and use the other forms to get over cravings, as supplements," Rigotti said.

In its 2008 recommendations, the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality advised clinicians to consider nicotine patches in combination with Wellbutrin or Zyban for smokers unable to quit with a single type of medication. Wellbutrin, Zyban and Chantix all carry black box warnings about the increased possibility of suicidal thoughts, although Chantix has come under the most scrutiny for this potential side effect.
"The fear is of big changes in behavior," Giovino said. "The question is, does it happen more often with Chantix or if you stop smoking with a nicotine replacement drug?"

"If people want something based on a prescription, they should discuss it with their doctor," Giovino said.
Telephone quitlines can be effective, convenient and free, but are underused because smokers have misconceptions about them, Rigotti and Giovino said.
"It's like getting a phone appointment with your doctor," Rigotti said. "They'll schedule calls around your quit day. It's so you can talk to somebody who can help you if you've slipped, you can get back on the wagon. It's practical information, not psychotherapy, not voodoo."

Internet quit sites provide another option. For instance, the American Lung Association offers the "Freedom From Smoking" online program, Edelman noted.
Even with outside help, willpower still comes into play in breaking long-held habits and battling sharp cravings.
Giovino suggested the "'six Ds': delay, drink water, distract yourself, discuss with someone, deep breath and, finally, don't debate. People who do best are those who decide smoking is no longer an option."
(HealthDay News)

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Scientists Use Tears to Measure Blood Sugar

Photo: iStockPhoto

For most people living with diabete, numerous -- and painful -- finger pricks are needed to draw blood and monitor blood sugar levels throughout the day.

Now a person's tears might be just as useful in keeping blood sugar in safe ranges, according to a recent study in animals.

The idea of using tears to gauge blood sugar isn't new, but scientists believe they've struck the right balance with an electrochemical sensor that picks up on small chemical changes in tear fluid.

Because blood sugar in tears occurs at levels between 30 and 50 times lower than in blood, previous sensors were not sensitive enough to accurately detect changes in levels. The new test needs roughly 5 microliters of fluid to work with, and the team thinks it can refine the required sample size down to 1 or 2 microliters with time.

In the experiment, scientists tested the new sensor on 12 anesthetized rabbits, taking blood and tear samples from each animal. Then, they compared blood sugar in tears relative to levels in blood. The group learned that the sensor worked for individual rabbits, meaning blood sugar ranges were accurate based on relative readings for that individual.

But there's a catch: Patients don't need to cry to give samples. The needlelike sensor can be gently placed on the surface of the eye to draw the fluid. If used in humans, patients must avoid stimulating the eye to produce tears because doing so skews the reading.

The sensor will likely need to be tested in other animals before making its way to individuals with diabetes. At this time, it's unclear what the technology would cost. Most blood sugar monitors cost between $20 and $100, depending on the type.

Diabetes is characterized by the inability to keep blood sugar levels down naturally through producing a chemical called insulin. Normally, the sugar would be absorbed by the body's cells with the help of insulin. But without it, people with diabetes cannot correctly use these sugars, which requires their bodies to need insulin treatments to prevent the high levels from causing damage to organs and the nervous system.
Approximately 25 million people in the United States have diabetes, and 346 million have it worldwide.

The paper also mentions that using tears to monitor blood sugar might be easier for many diabetes patients who also develop eye conditions that require attention or contact lenses to counter. Perhaps measuring blood sugar with eye fluids would be easier for people who already have a daily eye care regimen.

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Weird/Graham Lord, Man Misdiagnosed With Stomach Cancer, Sues Health District After Stomach Removed

After undergoing rounds of chemotherapy and surgery that removed 80 percent of his stomach, Graham Lord found out he never had stomach cancer.

The 59-year-old is now suing Australia's Central Coast Local Health District, after he said a 2010 post-op evaluation shed light on the false diagnosis.

"I was told that the tissue taken from me during that gastrectomy was examined through the pathology department at Royal North Shore [Hospital] and the lymph nodes that were taken out showed no evidence of cancer," he told the Sunday Telegraph. A second test confirmed the results.

Lord said he has suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of the surgery and can no longer eat sitting down.
"He would be seeking an apology from the hospital in terms of an admission of liability and compensation for his injuries," Anna Walsh, Lord's lawyer, told ABC Sydney.
Walsh told the Sunday Telegraph that a pathologist at Gosford Hospital, where the initial flub occurred, already apologized to Lord.

ABC News

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Stem cells reverse heart damage

A new study says heart damage may be reversible with stem cell therapy without dangerous side effects.

On a June day in 2009, a 39-year-old man named Ken Milles lay on an exam table at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A month earlier, he'd suffered a massive heart attack that destroyed nearly a third of his heart.

"The most difficult part was the uncertainty," he recalls. "Your heart is 30% damaged, and they tell you this could affect you the rest of your life." He was about to receive an infusion of stem cells, grown from cells taken from his own heart a few weeks earlier. No one had ever tried this before.

About three weeks later, in Kentucky, a patient named Mike Jones underwent a similar procedure at the University of Louisville's Jewish Hospital. Jones suffered from advanced heart failure, the result of a heart attack years earlier. Like Milles, he received an infusion of stem cells, grown from his own heart tissue.

"Once you reach this stage of heart disease, you don't get better," says Dr. Robert Bolli, who oversaw Jones' procedure, explaining what doctors have always believed and taught. "You can go down slowly, or go down quickly, but you're going to go down."

Conventional wisdom took a hit Monday, as Bolli's group and a team from Cedars-Sinai each reported that stem cell therapies were able to reverse heart damage, without dangerous side effects, at least in a small group of patients.

In Bolli's study, published in The Lancet, 16 patients with severe heart failure received a purified batch of cardiac stem cells. Within a year, their heart function markedly improved. The heart's pumping ability can be quantified through the "Left Ventricle Ejection Fraction," a measure of how much blood the heart pumps with each contraction. A patient with an LVEF of less than 40% is considered to suffer severe heart failure. When the study began, Bolli's patients had an average LVEF of 30.3%. Four months after receiving stem cells, it was 38.5%. Among seven patients who were followed for a full year, it improved to an astounding 42.5%. A control group of seven patients, given nothing but standard maintenance medications, showed no improvement at all.

"We were surprised by the magnitude of improvement," says Bolli, who says traditional therapies, such as placing a stent to physically widen the patient's artery, typically make a smaller difference. Prior to treatment, Mike Jones couldn't walk to the restroom without stopping for breath, says Bolli. "Now he can drive a tractor on his farm, even play basketball with his grandchildren. His life was transformed."

At Cedars-Sinai, 17 patients, including Milles, were given stem cells approximately six weeks after suffering a moderate to major heart attack. All had lost enough tissue to put them "at big risk" of future heart failure, according to Dr. Eduardo Marban, the director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, who developed the stem cell procedure used there.

The results were striking. Not only did scar tissue retreat -- shrinking 40% in Ken Milles, and between 30% and 47% in other test subjects -- but the patients actually generated new heart tissue. On average, the stem cell recipients grew the equivalent of 600 million new heart cells, according to Marban, who used MRI imaging to measure changes. By way of perspective, a major heart attack might kill off a billion cells.

"This is unprecedented, the first time anyone has grown living heart muscle," says Marban. "No one else has demonstrated that. It's very gratifying, especially when the conventional teaching has been that the damage is irreversible."

Perhaps even more important, no treated patient in either study suffered a significant health setback.

The twin findings are a boost to the notion that the heart contains the seeds of its own rebirth. For years, doctors believed that heart cells, once destroyed, were gone forever. But in a series of experiments, researchers including Bolli's collaborator, Dr. Piero Anversa, found that the heart contains a type of stem cell that can develop into either heart muscle or blood vessel components -- in essence, whatever the heart requires at a particular point in time. The problem for patients like Mike Jones or Ken Milles is that there simply aren't enough of these repair cells waiting around. The experimental treatments involve removing stem cells through a biopsy, and making millions of copies in a laboratory.

The Bolli/Anversa group and Marban's team both used cardiac stem cells, but Bolli and Anversa "purified" the CSCs, so that more than 90% of the infusion was actual stem cells. Marban, on the other hand, used a mixture of stem cells and other types of cells extracted from the patient's heart. "We've found that the mixture is more potent than any subtype we've been able to isolate," he says. He says the additional cells may help by providing a supportive environment for the stem cells to multiply.

Other scientists, including Dr. Douglas Losordo, have produced improvements in cardiac patients using stem cells derived from bone marrow. "The body contains cells that seem to be pre-programmed for repair," explains Losordo. "The consistent thing about all these approaches is that they're leveraging what seems to be the body's own repair mechanism."
This is unprecedented, the first time anyone has grown living heart muscle.
Dr. Eduardo Marban, Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute

Losordo praised the Lancet paper, and recalls the skepticism that met Anversa's initial claims, a decade ago, that there were stem cells in the adult heart. "Some scientists are always resistant to that type of novelty. You know the saying: First they ignore you, then they attack you and finally they imitate you."

Denis Buxton, who oversees stem cell research at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, calls the new studies "a paradigm shift, harnessing the heart's own regenerative processes." But he says he would like to see more head-to-head comparisons to determine which type of cells are most beneficial.

Questions also remain about timing. Patients who suffer large heart attacks are prone to future damage, in part because the weakened heart tries to compensate by dilating -- swelling -- and by changing shape. In a vicious circle, the changes make the heart a less efficient pump, which leads to more overcompensation, and so on, until the end result is heart failure. Marban's study aimed to treat patients before they could develop heart failure in the first place.

In a third study released Monday, researchers treated patients with severe heart failure with stem cells derived from bone marrow. In a group of 60 patients, those receiving the treatment had fewer heart problems over the course of a year, as well as improved heart function.

A fourth study also used cells derived from bone marrow, but injected them into patients two to three weeks after a heart attack. Previous studies, with the cells given just days afterward, found a modest improvement in heart function. But Monday, the lead researcher, Dr. Dan Simon of UH Case Medical Center, reported that with the three-week delay, patients did not see the same benefit.

With other methods, there may be a larger window of opportunity. At least in initial studies, Losordo's bone marrow treatments helped some patients with long-standing heart problems. Bolli's Lancet paper suggests that CSCs, too, might help patients with advanced disease. "These patients had had heart failure for several years. They were a wreck!" says Bolli. "But we found their stem cells were still very competent." By that, he means the cells were still capable of multiplying and of turning into useful muscle and blood vessel walls.

Marban has an open mind on the timing issue. In fact, one patient from his control group e-mailed after the study was complete, saying he felt terrible and pleading for an infusion of stem cells. At Marban's request, the FDA granted special approval to treat him. "He had a very nice response. That was 14 months after his heart attack. Of course that's just one person, and we need bigger studies," says Marban.

For Ken Milles, the procedure itself wasn't painful, but it was unsettling. The biopsy to harvest the stem cells felt "weird," he recalls, as he felt the doctor poking around inside his heart. The infusion, a few weeks later, was harder. The procedure -- basically the same as an angioplasty -- involved stopping blood flow through the damaged artery for three minutes, while the stem cells were infused. "It felt exacfly like I was having a heart attack again," Milles remembers.

Milles had spent the first weeks after his heart attack just lying in bed re-watching his "Sopranos" DVDs, but within a week of the stem cell infusion, he says, "I was reinvigorated." Today he's back at work full time, as an accounting manager at a construction company. He's cut out fast food and shed 50 pounds. His wife and two teenage sons are thrilled.

Denis Buxton says the new papers could prove a milestone. "We don't have anything else to actually regenerate the heart. These stem cell therapies have the possibility of actually reversing damage."

Bolli says he'll have to temper his enthusiasm until he can duplicate the results in larger studies, definitive enough to get stem cell therapy approved as a standard treatment. "If a phase 3 study confirmed this, it would be the biggest advance in cardiology in my lifetime. We would possibly be curing heart failure. It would be a revolution."
(CNN) 

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Women suffer quicker brain damage from alcohol abuse

Women alcoholics suffer damage to the part of their brain that controls moods, impulses and sleep three times faster than their male counterparts, a Swedish study showed Wednesday.

Women suffer a 50-percent reduction in the so-called serotonin function in their brain after four years of excessive drinking, while men show the same amount of damage after 12 years of alcohol abuse, according to the study by researchers at Gothenburg University.
"The impairment is progressing much faster in women," explained Kristina Berglund, who conducted the study with colleagues from the university's Department of Psychology, as well as two researchers at the faculty of Health Sciences, known as the Sahlgrenska Academy.
Serotonin is a brain neurotransmitter that is, among other things, critical to the development and treatment of depression and chronic anxiety.
It also regulates impulse control and our ability to fall asleep and stay awake.
The researchers studied several brain functions of 42 people -- a third of them women -- who admitted to alcohol dependency, along with 28 control subjects.
"We saw that the alcohol dependent individuals had significantly lower serotonin functions," Berglund told AFP.
The women tested said they on average had been drinking the equivalent of about 12 bottles of wine a week for four years, while the men had been drinking the same amount, but for 12 years.
However, "we could see the damage to the serotonin function was equal between men and women," Berglund said.
The results, which are scheduled to be published in the journal of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research in January, had come as a partial surprise to the researchers, she said.
"We were not surprised to find that the serotonin function was impaired in the alcohol-dependent individuals, but we were surprised to see that women were so much more vulnerable, even in the brain," she said.
Ulf Berggren, one of the Sahlgrenska Academy contributors to the study, meanwhile stressed that while the timing was different, men ultimately suffered the same degree of harm to their serotonin function as women.
The study authors acknowledged more research was needed, especially since they had used such a small number of test subjects.
Berglund also said that while the researchers had connected significant serotonin function harm to alcohol abuse, they still needed to look at the psychological impact of the damage.
"We know this function is significantly impaired, but what does this mean? What are the consequences? That's a question that needs answering," she said.

(via AFP)

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Electronic nose aims to sniff out disease

Dr. Ranjan Nanda demonstrates the device at an experimental stage. The electronic nose aims to diagnose tuberculosis without a lab test.

A breathalyzer-like device that aims to detect tuberculosis, pneumonia and lung cancer from someone's breath could help replace time-consuming tests, researchers hope.

The electronic nose received a $950,000 grant from the federally funded Grand Challenges Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday, to try to develop the hand-held device for use in the developing world.

"It's almost like a breathalyzer test that the police might use for alcohol," Dr. Peter Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada, said in an interview from New Delhi.

"If they can bring that to the window of your car, what we're trying to do is bring the diagnosis of tuberculosis to the door of the hut in the village where it really needs to reach."

Scientists say electronic noses could also be created for early detection of lung cancer and pneumonia, also based on signature biomarkers of disease detectable in a patient's breath.

Singer called the device a "bold idea" with potentially a big payoff in preventing the 1.7 million deaths from TB each year, mainly in the developing world. Up to 400,000 of them could be saved with better diagnosis, he said.

People may not think about diagnosis as life-saving, Singer said. But if a patient in a village isn’t diagnosed, it is very likely many others will be infected and then die.

For the prototype, someone breathes into the device, which has a little tub at the end to capture the sample, which is then tested.

The battery-powered technology is based on the finding that people with TB have a different biological signature in their breath.

The two-year grant will be use to validate the finding in four centres throughout India.

Dr. Ranjan Nanda of the New Delhi-based International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, one of the lead researchers on the electronic nose project, aims to have a validated prototype by December 2013.

If it works, it could be in use shortly after that, Singer said.

The existng sputum test for TB has challenges, especially for developing countries that may not have facilities or trained lab staff, says Dr. Michael Gardam, an infectious disease specialist with Toronto's University Health Network.

"It's just such a wonderful idea and it's such a simple idea," Gardam said. "The challenge is going to be, at the end of the day, can it jump through all the necessary hoops to actually be something that people can use?"

The development of the device is a collaboration between Nanda's centre and and Next Dimension Technologies in California.

CBC News

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Sitting may boost cancer risk

Sitting for long periods of time may increase cancer risk, say researchers who recommend the avoidance of prolonged sedentary periods and stress the importance of regular exercise.

The research was presented this week at the American Institute for Cancer Research annual conference in Washington.
Sitting time is emerging as a strong candidate for being a cancer risk factor, researchers say.Sitting time is emerging as a strong candidate for being a cancer risk factor, researchers say. Paul Chiasson/Canadian Press
Christine Friedenreich, an epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services, estimated that lack of physical activity is linked to nearly 100,000 cases of breast and colon cancer in the U.S. each year.
Based in part on those findings, the institute is urging people to make time for physical activity and break every hour of sitting with one to two minutes of activity.
Friedenreich's findings from the Alberta Physical Activity and Breast Cancer Prevention trial were also published in the October issue of the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
In the study, 320 women aged 50 to 74 were randomly assigned either to work up to exercising five days a week for at least 45 minutes or else to continue with their usual inactivity.
Friedenreich found differences in a marker of inflammation, known as C-reaction protein, over 12 months for exercisers compared with controls.
Inflammation markers
The study suggested that it isn't just lack of exercise that increases markers of inflammation, but that a sedentary lifestyle does, too.
Research is starting to point to how exercise may lower markers of inflammation, which in turn might lower cancer risk. But the possible links need to be investigated more thoroughly.
"Sitting time is emerging as a strong candidate for being a cancer risk factor in its own right. It seems highly likely that the longer you sit, the higher your risk," said Neville Owen, head of behavioural epidemiology at Australia's Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, who also presented findings at the conference.
"This phenomenon isn't dependent on body weight or how much exercise people do," Owen added in a release.
Owen's study measured waist circumference, insulin resistance and inflammation in adults who wore accelerometers to record their physical activity levels. Taking breaks as short as one minute was tied to lower levels of those biomarkers.
The institute offered these tips to help people fit in more activity:
Set the timer on your computer to remind you every 60 minutes that it's time to step away from your desk and take a short walk down the hall.
"Walk with me." Got a quick thing to discuss with a co-worker? Instead of sending an email, ask him or her to join you for a walk to hash it out on the go.
Keep light hand weights in your office to use while reading email or talking on the phone.
During phone calls and phone meetings, stand up and walk around.
Your office or cubicle wall is all you need for simple activities like stretches, vertical push-ups and leg lifts.
 For a more vigorous activity break, ask your employer to put a punching bag or chin-up bar in your break room.

CBC News

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Anti-Gravity yoga takes off in Australia

Yogis are hanging from ceilings in the latest twist on the time-honored exercise
yoga Suspended in midair, but are they defying gravity

There's yoga inheated rooms, naked yoga, dog yoga and now, in the same vein as Cirque du Soleil, there's Anti-Gravity yoga.
The latest yoga craze to hit Australian shores sees students contorting and inverting while suspended from the ceiling in a type of fabric hammock.
The new style was created by former gymnast and Broadway dancer Christopher Harrison; Flight Skool owner Iain Wisdom launched Australia’s first airborne yoga studio in Brisbane, with a second due to open in Sydney’s inner city suburb Redfern this month.
Already, the gravity defying classes are attracting a steady stream of yoga teachers and students bored with traditional yoga methods, as well as curious novices. During the 90-minute workout, even complete beginners will use the trapeze like hammocks to bend, twist and invert their bodies.
"Some people find it really daunting -- the prospect of being suspended that way," said Wisdom. "But when they realise they can do it, it's quite empowering for people."
As to what benefits the practice brings, Wisdom said it’s the same as traditional yoga, but allows students to reach spinal decompressions and muscular challenges they wouldn’t otherwise achieve on the mat.
“Essentially it's a suspension technique,” he explained. “It hails from the aerial arts and it's a fusion of aerial art, calisthenics, Pilates and gymnastics, all within the constructs of yoga. We look to decompress the spine through inversions, using the fabric to create very fluid movements in a very supportive way.”
Made from tough, tightly woven fabric, the hammocks are bolted to the ceiling, but there's no need for heavier yogis to worry. The fabric has been rigorously tested and can withstand the weight of a 400-kilo person.
However, the swinging sensation and upside-down moves can have a less pleasant side effect.
“About one in 20 people gets an experience akin to motion sickness,” said Wisdom. “We work with something called a drifting point -- like when you're on a boat and you feel a bit nauseated, you focus on something stationary, like the horizon.”
This means no Anti-Gravity yoga after a night out guzzling cocktails, and a perhaps a rethink if your legs wobble at the thought of heights.
“Very, very occasionally we get people who suffer from extreme form of vertigo so this technique won't be good for them,” added Wisdom. “All the same rules apply. You shouldn’t have anything to eat a couple of hours before, that's preferable. Light snacking is OK, but not a full meal.”
House of Yoga (Opening in September) www.houseofyoga.com.au 

CNNGo.com

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BPA Exposure In Pregnancy Found To Affect Behavior Issues In Girls

In recent years, scientists have linked bisphenol-A (BPA) to a large swath of health problems, including breast cancer and diabetes. Among the many materials containing BPA are plastic bottles, dental sealants, medical equipment, receipt paper, and the linings of metal food and drink cans.
A new study on potential health effects of the compound used in manufacturing, released online Monday in Pediatrics, suggests exposure to the chemical BPA before birth could affect girls’ behavior at age 3, according to researchers.
Preschool-aged girls whose mothers had relatively high urine levels of BPA during pregnancy scored worse but still within a normal range on behavior measures including depressed behavior, poorer emotional control, inhibition anxiety and hyperactivity than other young girls, reports Lindsey Tanner, AP Medical Writer.
The behavior of boys did not seem to be affected.
BPA, like lead and other toxins, causes the greatest harm before birth, when the fetal brain is developing. “Parents should be concerned about these findings,” pediatrician Philip Landrigan told USA Today Landrigan is a professor at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine and was not involved in the new study.
Dr. Amir Miodovnik, who studies children’s environmental health at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and was also not involved in the study, called the results, “Very preliminary.” He went on to tell Reuters that “Other groups are going to have to replicate these findings to be able to strengthen the implications of this particular study.”
Study author, Joe Braun, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health explains that being exposed to high BPA levels after birth didn’t appear to affect behavior.
“It might be that women who are consuming more processed and packaged foods and more canned foods are also consuming less nutrients that are important for brain development,” he tells Genevra Pittman, writing for Reuters Health.
Still, “There’s a growing body of evidence… that really seems to suggest what you’re exposed to and what happens during gestation can set you up on your life course. The brain begins developing from very, very early in pregnancy. Disruption in development could have lasting effects across childhood and the lifetime.”
Believed to be an “endocrine disruptor,” BPA mimics or interferes with naturally occurring hormones in the body. Canada and the European Union ban its use in baby bottles.
The study was limited to girls, Braun believes, because BPA may interfere with only certain hormones, and boys and girls get exposed to different levels of hormones as they’re developing in-utero.
Additional research is expected and needed to fully understand the health effects of BPA exposure. Clinicians advise those concerned to reduce their BPA exposure by avoiding canned and packaged foods, thermal paper sales receipts, and polycarbonate bottles with the number 7 recycling symbol, Bruce Lanphear of Simon Fraser University writes.

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Heavy drinking tied to higher stomach cancer risk

Men who down more than four alcoholic drinks in a day may have a heightened risk of stomach cancer, a large European analysis suggests.

A number of studies have looked at whether people's drinking habits are related to their risk of stomach cancer, and come to mixed conclusions.
These latest findings, from a study of more than 500,000 European adults, suggest that heavy-drinking men are more likely to develop the cancer than light drinkers are.
At the start of the study, 10,000-plus men said they averaged more than four drinks per day. And their odds of developing stomach cancer over the next decade were twice those of light drinkers (who had the equivalent of about half a drink per day or less).
When the researchers looked more closely at the type of alcohol people consumed, they found that beer, in particular -- as opposed to wine or liquor -- seemed to be connected to stomach cancer risk.
There were no similar connections seen in women, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Eric J. Duell of the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain. But there were also far fewer heavy drinkers among the female participants (just under 2,300).
The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not prove that alcohol itself leads to stomach cancer in some men.
And the absolute risk for any one heavy drinker may be small. Of nearly 13,000 men and women who were heavy drinkers when they entered the study, just 33 developed stomach cancer over the follow-up period.
Still, experts already recommend that people who drink do so only in moderation. That generally means no more than two drinks per day for men, and no more than one for women.
Heavy drinking is linked to cancers of the mouth and throat, as well as other serious conditions like scarring of the liver.
Stomach cancer is relatively uncommon in the U.S. and other Western countries, though it's much more prevalent in other parts of the world, particularly developing nations. About 21,500 Americans will be diagnosed with stomach cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Smoking is one of the risk factors for the disease. And in some past studies, it's been hard to separate the possible effects of heavy drinking on stomach cancer from those of smoking -- since the same people often have both habits.
In the current study, though, Duell's team found that heavy drinking was linked to stomach cancer in men regardless of smoking habits.
The link also held when the researchers factored in people's diet habits (red and processed meats, for example, have been tied to stomach cancer) and any infection with H. pylori -- a type of bacteria that contributes to ulcers.
While most people with H. pylori do not develop cancer, persistent infection is thought to raise the risk of stomach cancer in certain people.
If heavy drinking is a cause of stomach cancer, it may be related to one of the metabolic byproducts of alcohol -- called acetaldehyde. The substance is a known human carcinogen, Duell's team notes.
On top of that, beer contains compounds known as nitrosamines, which cause cancer in animals. So it's possible, the researchers speculate, that the combination of those substances and acetaldehyde could explain why beer, in particular, was tied to stomach cancer in this study.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/s9GAVg American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online October 12, 2011.

(Reuters Health via http://bit.ly/s9GAVg American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online October 12, 2011 )

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Pythons' big hearts hold clues for human health

You don't think of pythons as big-hearted toward their fellow creatures. They're better known for the bulge in their bodies after swallowing one of those critters whole. But the snakes' hearts balloon in size, too, as they're digesting _ and now scientists are studying them for clues about

WASHINGTON (AP) — You don't think of pythons as big-hearted toward their fellow creatures. They're better known for the bulge in their bodies after swallowing one of those critters whole.
But the snakes' hearts balloon in size, too, as they're digesting — and now scientists are studying them for clues about human heart health.
The expanded python heart appears remarkably similar to the larger-than-normal hearts of Olympic-caliber athletes. Colorado researchers report they've figured out how the snakes make it happen.
"It's this amazing biology," said Leslie Leinwand, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, whose team reports the findings in Friday's edition of the journal Science. "They're not swelling up. They're building (heart) muscle."
Reptile biologists have long studied the weird digestion of these snakes, especially the huge Burmese pythons that can go nearly a year between meals with no apparent ill effects. When they swallow that next rat or bird — or in some cases deer — something extraordinary happens. Their metabolism ratchets up more than 40-fold, and their organs immediately start growing in size to get the digesting done. The heart alone grows a startling 40 percent or more within three days.
Leinwand, who studies human heart disease, stumbled across that description and saw implications for people. An enlarged human heart usually is caused by chronic high blood pressure or other ailments that leave it flabby and unable to pump well. But months and years of vigorous exercise give some well-conditioned athletes larger, muscular hearts, similar to how python hearts are during digestion.
So Leinwand's team — led by a graduate student who initially was frightened of snakes — ordered a box of pythons and began testing what happens to their hearts.
The first surprise: A digesting python's blood gets so full of fat it looks milky. A type of fat called triglycerides increased 50-fold within a day. In people, high triglyceride levels are very dangerous. But the python heart was burning those fats so rapidly for fuel that they didn't have time to clog anything up, Leinwand said.
The second surprise: A key enzyme that protects the heart from damage increased in python blood right after it ate, while a heart-damaging compound was repressed.
Then the team found that a specific combination of three fatty acids in the blood helped promote the healthy heart growth. If they injected fasting pythons with that mixture, those snakes' hearts grew the same way that a fed python's does.
But did it only work for snakes? Lead researcher Cecilia Riquelme dropped some plasma from a fed python into a lab dish containing the heart cells of rats — and they grew bigger, too. Sure enough, injecting living mice made their hearts grow in an apparently healthy way as well.
Now the question is whether that kind of growth could be spurred in a mammal with heart disease, something Leinwand's team is starting to test in mice with human-like heart trouble. They also want to know how the python heart quickly shrinks back to its original size when digestion's done.
The experiments are "very, very cool indeed," said James Hicks, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has long studied pythons' extreme metabolism and wants to see more such comparisons.
If the same underlying heart signals work in animals as divergent as snakes and mice, "this may reveal a common universal mechanism that can be used for improving cardiac function in all vertebrates, including humans," Hicks wrote in an email. "Only further studies and time will tell, but this paper is very exciting."
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and a Boulder biotechnology company that Leinwand co-founded, Hiberna Corp., that aims to develop drugs based on extreme animal biology.

AP

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