Archive for August, 2008
Newly Discovered Air Pollutants May Cause Lung Problems
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HealthDay
Monday, August 18, 2008
MONDAY, Aug. 18 (HealthDay News) — Recently discovered so-called free radicals that are attached to base particles of air pollution could cause lung damage and perhaps even lung cancer, researchers report.
If confirmed through further research, the finding could help to explain why nonsmokers develop tobacco-related diseases likely lung cancer, said lead researcher H. Barry Dellinger, the Patrick F. Taylor Chair of environmental chemistry at Louisiana State University.
It has been known for years that free radicals exist in the atmosphere, and these atoms, molecules and fragments of molecules can damage cells. It had been thought that these particles, which can be produced by combustion, exist for less than a second and then disappear.
“What I found out is that combustion-generated particles contain environmentally persistent free radicals,” said Dellinger. “When the radicals are associated with particles, they have power to clearly exist indefinitely.”
These rid radicals are remarkably similar to the free radicals found in cigarette sailor, Dellinger aforesaid. “The implication is you can have the same environmentally related diseases by exposure to airborne fine particles that you can get from cigarettes,” he said.
Dellinger celebrated, however, that one would have to smoke about 300 cigarettes a day to be exposed to the same level of environmental free radicals found in moderately polluted air.
The findings were to be presented Monday at the American Chemical Society annual meeting, in Philadelphia.
The persisting disinthrall radicals (PFRs) discovered by Dellinger’s team attach themselves to small particles of air contamination as they leave smokestacks, car exhaust pipes and household chimneys, and continue to exist as free radicals. Particles of air pollution containing metals, such as copper and iron, are more likely to remain in the atmosphere and can carry these PFRs excellent distances, Dellinger said.
As PFRs are inhaled, they’re absorbed by the lungs and other tissues and cause cell damage that can lead to problems such as asthma, emphysema and lung cancer. However, there’s still no direct evidence linking PFRs to any of these diseases, he said.
Dr. Neil Schachter, a professor of pulmonary medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, thinks it’s premature to blame persistent free radicals for the adverse effects of air pollution.
“These airborne unreserved radicals are of selfishness, but I am not sure we are at a point where our scalpel is sharp plenty to dissect the individual components of air pollution that cause problems for people,” he said.
It’s possible that persistent lavish radicals are responsible for the respiratory damage caused by pollution, Schachter acknowledged. “There are studies that show that modifying free radicals can alter the course of disease,” he said. “But the implications of this — what it means to clinics, what it means to doctors, the kind of it means to regulators — I think we are a long way from pulling that together.”
read comments (0)Survivors Of 1918 Flu Pandemic Immune 90 Years Later
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HealthDay
Monday, August 18, 2008
SUNDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) — People who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million worldwide are still producing antibodies to the virus 90 years later, researchers report.
“Most people have a notion that elderly populate have very weak immunity or they have missed immunity,” said lead researcher Dr. James E. Crowe Jr., a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University.
“This study shows that extremely elderly people have retained memory of being infected with the 1918 flu, even 90 years later,” Crowe said.
This is the first evidence that shows that people developed betokening immunity to the 1918 flu virus, Crowe said. “It’s important to know that you can develop immunity to such a pandemic venom. That has implications for new pandemic viruses,” he said.
The report is published in the Aug. 17 issue of Nature.
For the research, Crowe’s team studied antibodies in the blood of 32 people in their 90s and 100s, born during or ahead of 1915. They found that all 32 people had antibodies to the 1918 strain of flu virus. In fact, several of these family were still producing the antibodies to the virus.
In experiments with mice, the researchers found that these antibodies persist to protect the mice from virus with the 1918 flu strain.
The study also shows that people have a “surprising ability” to maintain immunity to things they saw a long time ago, Crowe said.
Whether this long-term immunity is peculiar to the 1918 flu virus isn’t known, Crowe said. He believes more work needs to have existence terminated comprehend the full extent of this immune response. “The elderly might be a very good bestower; donator source for finding antibodies against viruses,” he said.
“This study shows that humans can develop very potent immune responses against dangerous influenza that cause pandemics,” Crowe reported. “It gives us hope that we can develop vaccines and antibody treatments for any one other pandemic viruses that come along,” he aforesaid.
Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine in New York City, thinks that people who developed this strong immune response may have been infected with a less deadly strain of flu before 1918.
“The implication of this study is the 1918 virus was so powerful that the freedom you had to have in order to survive was so prominent that it lasted for the rest of your life,” Siegel said.
However, Siegel noted that some people may have had experience with a uniform less deadly flu virus that prepared their immune system to take hold of the 1918 strain.
“So, those in certain age groups who had seen a related virus had the strongest responses,” Siegel said. “Either they died, or they developed a profound immune response,” he said.
Siegel expects if there is another flu pandemic, some people will develop a lifelong immunity as they did in 1918.
Pack Safety Should Be on Back-To-School Lists
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HealthDay
By Robert Preidt
Sunday, August 17, 2008
SUNDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) — The start of a new indoctrinate year means it’s time to remind students and parents about proper selection and use of backpacks.
“When used correctly, backpacks are the principally prime mover way to carry a load and distribute the weight among some of the body’s strongest muscles,” Eric Wall, director of the orthopedic surgery division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said in a center news absolution.
However, improper use of backpacks can mainspring injuries that require medical treatment. For example, backpack-related injuries send almost 6,000 students to emergency departments each year, according to a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report released in 2002.
Wall and his colleagues in the division of orthopedic surgery overture guidelines to prevent school backpack-related injuries:
- When shopping for a backpack, select one that’s lightweight, has two wide and padded shoulder straps, a cushioned back, and waist straps. A pack with wheels may be a good option if your child has to lug a very heavy load.
- Children should always use both shoulder straps, and the straps should be cinched tight.
- Limit backpack loads to no more than 15 percent to 20 percent of a child’s body load.
- The heaviest items should be packed closest to the center of a bantling’s back.
- Children shouldn’t carry all of their books throughout the sect day. They should keep their books in their locker and get them when they need them.
- When wearing or lifting a heavy backpack, children should bend using both knees.
- Don’t leave backpacks adhering the floor where people can trip on them, and don’t depend a packs around where it can hit other people.
- If your child uses a backpack and complains of persistent back pain, consult with a pediatrician.
Freshman Weight Gain Has Many Culprits
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HealthDay
By Robert Preidt
Saturday, August 16, 2008
SATURDAY, Aug. 16 (HealthDay News) — Irresponsible eating, scarcity of exercise and alcohol waste are among the factors that contribute to the Freshman 15, that refers to the extra pounds packed on by many new college students, according to a Duke University expert.
Many freshmen don’t know how to select or make healthy meals, and stress from heavy class loads and the struggle to achieve good grades can build them eat food at the wrong time, said Elisabetta Politi, nutrition director at the Duke diet and Fitness Center. Processed convenience foods are an easy option when students are up late cramming on the side of tests or finishing papers.
Campus gatherings often include alcohol, which has a lot of calories. But it affects weight in other ways, too.
“When you drink alcohol, your resistance to everything goes down, including your resistance to temptation of fatty foods. You tend to eat else when you drink,” Politi said in a Duke news absolution.
She also noted that many students who are physically active in high school become couch potatoes when they start college.
Politi offered a number of tips to help new college students keep their weight when exposed to control:
- Make a plan. Know at the time your classes are and plan how to eat healthy between classes and where to get appropriate foods.
- Eat breakfast. If you’re in a despatch, keep it simple by choosing whole dye cereal with milk and a piece of fruit.
- Have a good supply of fruits and vegetables so you have something healthy to eat when you need a snack.
- When it comes to beverages, drink lots of take in water, choose sugar-free drinks, and have a few glasses of low-fat or fat-free milk cropped land day. The protein in milk be able to help you be perceived full longer.
- Use the “plate your portion” military science to maintain portion control. Fill half your plate with vegetables and fruit, one-quarter with grains (possibly whole grains), and one-quarter by lean protein. Avoid mayonnaise-heavy side dishes such as coleslaw, potato salad and macaroni salad.
- donjon a food diary, which enjoin help you assess and vary your eating habits.
- Get at least 30 minutes of physical activity a sunlight.
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Antidepressant Use Tied to Poorer Driving
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HealthDay
Monday, August 18, 2008
SUNDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) — Taking prescription antidepressants space of time still in a great degree depressed could impair driving cleverness, a new study suggests.
“We already know that depression causes concentration problems,” said study author Holly J. Dannewitz. “And now it appears that people taking antidepressants who also have relatively higher depression scores fare significantly worse when attempting to perform a computerized simulation of driving.”
Dannewitz conducted her research while a graduate student at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, where she is currently a psychology resident in a private practice.
She and her colleagues were scheduled to present their findings Sunday the American Psychological Association annual meeting, in Boston.
To gauge the possible impact antidepressants might have on driving performance, the research team asked 60 people to “drive” a computerized version of a car in a program that mimicked real-world conditions.
Approximately half of the participants were agitation at least one type of antidepressant, while the other half was taking in no degree medication (other than oral contraceptives in certain instances). Those put on antidepressants were screened for current levels of depression and were subsequently categorized as experiencing either low or high depression at the time of the driving test.
Participants had to perform common driving tasks such as braking, steering, and scanning sightlines in response to an unfolding video of car traffic, stop signs, speed limit signs, traffic lights, deer crossings, bicyclists, and even the appearance of helicopters.
People taking antidepressants who were highly depressed registered markedly worse scores on some driving skills than those not taking antidepressants, the team found. This appeared tied to poorer concentration and a weakened ability to react well to situations that divided their attention and relied on memory skills.
These deficits weren’t found among those who were taking antidepressants but had low depression scores. In fact, that group was found to execute their driving tasks with a precision equal to that of those not forward medication.
Dannewitz said that her future work would involve patients who are diagnosed with clinical depression but not on antidepressants. In this way, her team can determine whether it’s the depression, or medications used to treat it, that are at the root of the concentration problems.
“More research needs to be done, of succession,” she said. “And I wouldn’t want to instill fear in drivers. But I think that perhaps individuals who are seizure these medications should just be aware of the fact that they may cause concentration problems and injure reaction measure.”
Dannewitz also stressed that, “this consequence is not just a question for drivers, because the cognitive skills needed instead of driving are also needed for a lot of other skills.”
Dr. Bernard Carroll, scientific director of the Pacific Behavioral Research Foundation based in Carmel, California, agreed that it’s too early to draw specific conclusions from the study. But he said the findings weren’t surprising.
“There is already a exceedingly abyss literature about subtle impairments of higher cognitive occupation associated through clinical depression itself, apart from medications,” he noted. “I would add that, in any case, medication package inserts routinely warn patients about a whole host of issues whereas starting a course of psychotropic drugs, including warning against the handling of machinery, driving, or engaging in any occupation in which you can be injured. So, to that stretch, this concern isn’t new.”
FDA Notes 2 Byetta Deaths
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FDA Notes 2 Byetta Deaths
FDA Receives 2 Reports of Death, 4 More Hospitalizations in Patients Using Type 2 Diabetes Drug Byetta
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News
Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD
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Aug. 18, 2008 — The FDA today said it plans to strengthen warnings about life-threatening pancreas problems linked to the type 2 diabetes drug Byetta after getting two reports of deaths and four other hospitalizations in Byetta users.
Those patients had hemorrhagic pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas with bleeding) or necrotizing pancreatitis (in which the inflamed pancreas destroys itself).
All six patients were hospitalized, and their Byetta treatment was stopped. The four survivors were still recovering at the time that the FDA learned of their disease.
Byetta and other potentially suspect drugs should be promptly discontinued if pancreatitis is suspected and not restarted if pancreatitis is confirmed, notes the FDA. Byetta, given by injection, was approved by the FDA in 2005.
Last October, the FDA noted 30 reports of acute pancreatitis, which is sudden inflammation of the pancreas, in Byetta users. None of those patients had hemorrhagic or necrotizing pancreatitis.
At the time, the FDA asked Byetta’s maker, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, to include information on acute pancreatitis in the “precautions” section of Byetta’s label. Now, the FDA is working with Amylin to strengthen and draw attention to warnings about acute hemorrhagic or necrotizing pancreatitis.
Amylin and the drug company Eli Lilly and Company collaborate on Byetta. Amylin spokeswoman Anne Erickson emailed a joint statement from Amylin and Lilly to WebMD.
The companies state that pancreatitis is rare in the general public but more common among type 2 diabetes patients.
In patients using Byetta, there have been “rare” case reports of pancreatitis and “very rare” case reports of pancreatitis with complications or fatalities, and the proportion of complicated or fatal cases is “similar” to that observed in the general public with pancreatitis, according to Amylin and Lilly.
SOURCES: FDA: “Information for Health Care Professionals: Exenatide (marketed as Byetta).” WebMD Health News: “FDA OKs Lizard Spit Drug for Diabetes.” WebMD Health News: “Diabetes Drug Byetta: Pancreas Risk?” Joint statement, Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Lilly.
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GI Bleeding After Stroke Raises Death Risk
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HealthDay
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 6 (HealthDay News) — Stroke patients who develop gastrointestinal bleeding while in recovery are three times as likely to die in the hospital or be heavily disabled upon remit than those who do not, a new Canadian study suggests.
The finding is based on an analysis of patients who were observed while in recovery from an ischemic stroke. Ischemic strokes are the most common kind-hearted of stroke — resulting from a slowdown or blockage of blood to the brain.
“We found that the substantial incidence of gastrointestinal [GI] bleeding would make it an uncommon complication,” said study author Dr. Martin O’Donnell, an associate professor in the department of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “But when it does arise, it appears to be associated with increased death and disability.”
O’Donnell and his colleagues are publishing their findings in the Aug. 6 online issue of Neurology.
The authors focused on just superior 6,800 men and women admitted to 11 Ontario hospitals between 2003 and 2006 following an intense ischemic stroke.
Of these patients, 829 died during their hospital hinder, and 1,374 passed gone within six months of their stroke.
Just 1.5 percent — or 100 patients — had bleeding in their stomach or intestine during their hospitalization. These patients were evenly split among men and women, and more than half had experienced a pleasant or moderate reverse, the research team noted.
Aside from a tripling of mortality in the hospital, stroke patients with GI bleeding were also 1.5 times more likely to die within a half-year of their stroke than those with no such complication. This observation held up even after accounting for other factors that could contribute to mortality, such as pneumonia and will attacks.
O’Donnell noted that the relatively small run over of patients he and his team tracked makes it difficult to definitively identify what type of stroke patients are at highest risk for GI phlebotomy — although that is something he and his colleagues hope to explore down the road. But meanwhile, he argued that the findings even now highlight some hazardous issues concerning stroke recovery.
“One of the key points we want to raise is that the public are generally prone to developing medical complications with stroke,” he said. “And as apportionment of that larger observation, we know that in the midst of these complications are GI issues. And we feel that this is particularly important, because gastrointestinal bleeding is a complication that is potentially modifiable with various treatment strategies.”
However, both Dr. Matthew Fink, chief of the partition of stroke and critical care neurology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, and Dr. Larry B. Goldstein, director of The Stroke Center at Duke University Medical Center, expressed reservations about the findings.
“Having a poorer outcome in stroke patients with gastrointestinal bleeding is not surprising at all,” aforesaid Goldstein. “But I slip on’t know, based on this kind of a retrospective study, if we can tell how preventable this is, as there are all sorts of things that the researchers may not be measuring that might affect the results.”
Fink agreed, while suggesting that the issue itself is not distinctly constraining.
“In the U.S.,” he noted, “we come to terms all our stroke patients with preventive prophylactic therapy to prevent GI bleeding, and our experience is that GI phlebotomy is a rare event. So, it’s really not something we get too concerned about.”
“And that means that the fact that this study shows an increased risk of debt of nature associated with GI bleeding says to me that a gastrointestinal problem is simply a marker for someone who is a lot sicker, not an independent factor promptly related to the stroke itself,” he said. “So, I don’t think this finding gives us much useful new information.”
HealthDay
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 6 (HealthDay News) — Vietnam veterans exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange have a significantly greater risk of prostate cancer, especially the most aggressive form of the disease, a new study contends.
The findings are the elementary to couple the now-banned herbicide by this form of cancer, the researchers said.
“Veterans that were exposed to Agent Orange for the period of the Vietnam War have a twofold higher risk of prostate cancer,” said study precedence author Dr. Karim Chamie, a resident physician in urology at the University of California, Davis, Department of Urology and the VA Northern California Health Care System. “The cancer they come by tends to be more aggressive, a higher grade, and is more likely to propagation or have spread at the time that they present to their urologist.”
“A lot of veterans don’t get their care through the VA [Veterans Administration],” Chamie added. “This message needs to go away out to their physicians and their urologist in the peculiar common to know that this is a large risk factor.”
But some scientists not involved with the study said the research does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship between Agent Orange and prostate cancer.
For the study, Chamie’s team collected data on 13,144 Vietnam veterans, including 6,214 men exposed to Agent Orange between 1962 and 1971.
The researchers found that twice as many veterans exposed to Agent Orange had developed prostate cancer, compared with veterans not exposed to the now-banned chemical.
Moreover, men exposed to Agent Orange were diagnosed with prostate cancer two-and-a-half years younger than unexposed men. And, they were four times more suitable to be diagnosed with metastatic disease, the researchers found.
The findings were published online Monday in Cancer and were expected to be published in the Sept. 15 print issue of the journal.
Agent Orange is made up of compounds known to be contaminated with the dioxin tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD) during manufacture. The chemical was named for the color of the barrel it was stored in and was one of the “broad-leaf defoliants” used in Vietnam to destroy vegetation to make enemy activity easier to see.
Between 1962 and 1971, more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed during the war, contaminating both the ground and soldiers. The International Agency for Research on Cancer reclassified TCDD a group 1 carcinogen in 1997, a arrangement that also includes arsenic, asbestos and gamma radiation, according to background information with the study.
Dr. Bruce Roth, a professor of medicine and urologic surgery at Vanderbilt University, said he found the study interesting but not persuasive.
“I’m not totally convinced,” Roth said, noting that the study relies on self-reported exposure to Agent Orange, without other objective proof of exposure or the amount of exposure.
Roth speculated that because all study participants who reported being exposed to Agent Orange were given thorough screening tests for prostate cancer, more cancers were found. “I can almost guarantee you’re going to light upon more cases of prostate cancer,” he said.
“I’m not saying that there is not possibly more relationship, but I don’t think that this paper necessarily proves it,” Roth said. “But I think you could pick almost any exposure and increase screening, and you are going to find more cases, whether or not the agent is responsible for more cases or not.”
Dr. Michael J. Thun, vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, agreed that the findings were interesting but don’t prove a connection between prostate cancer and Agent Orange.
“The finding is provocative, but it’s hard to know how to interpret it, unless it be able to be replicated in other studies,” Thun said.
Americans Drinking Less Alcohol
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HealthDay
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 6 (HealthDay News) — Americans are drinking less alcohol, with middle-aged people consuming about one-third less than 50 years ago, researchers report.
Overall, Americans are drinking less beer, but other thing wine, though consumption of hard liquor has remained fairly constant. Also, more people say they don’t drink, and those born later in the 20th century are more moderate drinkers than their parents.
“It looks like blunt drinking has been increasing, heavy drinking is down a little bit, and total alcohol consumption is down a little bit,” said lead researcher Dr. R. Curtis Ellison, a professor of medicine and public health at Boston University School of Medicine.
“It is encouraging news that more people are drinking moderately, and the average intake is coming down rather than shooting up,” he said.
For the study, Ellison’s team collected data on 8,000 family who took part in the Framingham Heart Study. People in the first letter arm of the study were born before 1900 up until 1959. Those from the initial enrollment group as well being of the kind which their children were interviewed every four years from 1948 to 2003 about their alcohol consumption.
Ellison explained that the Framingham study consists primarily of white, middle-class individuals from the Massachusetts town of the same term. “It in the main tends to reflect trends within the country among middle-class, white Americans,” he said.
The researchers found that, overall, people are drinking less. “People drank about a third more back in the ’50s and ’60s than they did in the ’70s up to 2004,” Ellison said.
There’s been a slow decrease in the average amount of alcohol people drink. For instance, pure spirit consumption among men has gone from about two-and-a-half drinks a day to one-and-a-half drinks a day, Ellison said.
“At the same time, there’s been a decrease in beer and an increase in wine consumption among people. But the average intake has decreased,” he said.
As for liquor, the average intake has remained elegant without grandeur plenteous the same, he added.
Despite the decline in alcohol consumption, the risk of alcohol dependence did not show a corresponding decrease, the study also found.
“We don’t know why alcohol consumption has gone down,” Ellison said. “The data are very clear that light to moderate tippling, without binge drinking, is generally good for health, whereas a larger amount of binge drinking is bad. It looks like, in this population, it’s going in the right direction.”
The study findings were published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.
David L. Katz, director of the Yale University School of Medicine Prevention Research Center, noted that during “recent decades, the messages about alcohol have increasingly emphasized the potential to derive both pleasure and health benefits from wine, provided the dose is prudent. The trends in this study suggest those messages are having an impact, at least in Framingham, Massachusetts. Among those not vulnerable to alcohol abuse, intake patterns appear to be shifting in accord with expert recommendations.”