Folic acid won’t cut heart, stroke risk, study says
|
|
Taking a folic acid supplement does not cut the risk of heart disease or stroke in people with a history of cardiovascular ailments, according to a study published on Tuesday.
Folic acid, also called folate, is a B vitamin. The body uses it to make new cells. Some doctors have recommended the vitamin to ward off cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.
Alcohol in moderation may extend life
|
|
Moderate drinking may lengthen your life, while too much may shorten it, researchers from Italy report. Their conclusion is based on pooled data from 34 large studies involving more than one million people and 94,000 deaths.
According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol—up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women—reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Antibiotic ear drops favored over popular oral antibiotics for ear infections
|
|
A multicenter study on treating common ear infections in children with ear tubes adds to a growing body of evidence that favors antibiotic ear drops over antibiotics swallowed in pill or liquid form in such cases, a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher reports.
The latest study, involving 80 children, showed that antibiotic ear drops performed better and faster in treating middle ear infections in children with ear tubes than merely taking oral antibiotics such as swallowing a pill or liquid. The findings are available online in the journal Pediatrics.
Study helps explain why botulinum toxin is so deadly
|
|
A pilot without a map can locate an airport by first finding a nearby landmark, like a big river, and then searching for the airport.
New research from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) and Scripps Research Institute shows how the astonishingly powerful botulinum toxin uses a similar strategy to latch onto nerve cells, the first step in inactivating them.
Older men treated for early prostate cancer live longer than those who are not
|
|
Recent findings from an observational study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine suggest that men between 65 and 80 years of age who received treatment for early stage, localized prostate cancer lived significantly longer than men who did not receive treatment. The study will be published in the December 13th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Thanks to better cancer prevention education and the resulting wide-spread increase in using prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screenings, more men are being diagnosed with early-stage and low-or intermediate-grade prostate cancer. Studies have shown that the slow-developing nature of prostate cancer during its earliest stages makes treatment options, such as a radical prostatectomy (surgical removal of the prostate) and radiation therapy, controversial with unpredictable outcomes. Often, recently diagnosed men of this group were advised to just “watch and wait” to see how their situation progressed.
Successful Lung Cancer Surgery Not Enough to Break Nicotine Dependence in Many Smokers
|
|
A new study has found that close to half of 154 smokers who had surgery to remove early stage lung cancer picked up a cigarette again within 12 months of their potentially curative operation, and more than one-third were smoking at the one year mark. Sixty percent of patients who started smoking again did so within two months of surgery.
The study, led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and published in the December issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, is the first to look at smoking relapse among people who were “forced” to quit due to impending surgery.
Balance Training Better than Tai Chi at Improving Mobility in Older Adults
|
|
Physicians and physical therapists in recent years have explored whether tai chi, balance programs and fitness routines can help decrease the likelihood that older adults will fall and injure themselves. Many of these programs have shown promise, but their relative value is still open to debate.
Now, a study from researchers at the University of Michigan Health System and the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System suggests that a program focusing on increasing step length and speed is more effective at improving mobility and balance than tai chi. While tai chi - a Chinese martial art form consisting of slow, rotational movements and weight-shifting - offers many benefits, the researchers say, they’re not as great as those produced by a balance-training program.
Obese diabetics at high risk for kidney disease
|
|
Adults with type 1 diabetes who are obese, especially those who carry excess weight around the middle, are at increased risk for developing kidney disease, a study shows.
“These results,” Dr. Ian H. de Boer told Reuters Health, “suggest that weight control is important in type 1 diabetes…and that lifestyle interventions, such as exercise and diet, may be useful in preventing kidney and heart disease in this group of people.”
Breast cancer screening under 50 questioned
|
|
Screening women under 50 years old for breast cancer does not significantly reduce deaths from the disease, British researchers said on Friday.
They estimated giving women annual mammograms beginning at the age of 40 could save about four lives for every 1,000 women screened.
Children suffer when mother lacks input, UNICEF says
|
|
Children are likely to be undernourished in households where women are denied a voice in family decisions like doctor visits, food expenditures and trips to see friends and relatives, says a report by the U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, released on Monday.
Tracing the life cycle of women, the report said eliminating discrimination against women has a profound impact on the survival and well-being of boys and girls.
South Korea says third bird flu case confirmed
|
|
A third case of bird flu has been discovered in southwestern South Korea just as officials have completed culling hundreds of thousands of poultry from two earlier outbreaks.
Last month South Korea confirmed its first cases of the H5N1 strain in about three years, saying the virus had been found at two poultry farms close to each other in the North Cholla province.
The fresh case emerged after South Korea completed culling all 760,000 poultry near the two farms, raising concerns that quarantine measures had failed to control the outbreak.
“Erectile Dysfunction” Drugs Heighten Natural Anti-Cancer Activity
|
|
Sildenafil and other “impotence drugs” that boost the production of a gassy chemical messenger to dilate blood vessels and produce an erection now also show promise in unmasking cancer cells so that the immune system can recognize and attack them, say scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
Tests at Hopkins on mice with implanted colon and breast tumors showed that tumor size decreased two- and threefold in sildenafil-treated animals, compared to mice that did not get the drug. In mice engineered to lack an immune system, tumors were unaffected, proof of principle, the scientists say, that the drug is abetting the immune system’s own cellular response to cancer.
Physical education program boosts girls’ fitness
|
|
Taking physical education (PE) class every school day for a full year improves high school girls’ cardiovascular fitness, a new study shows.
But daily PE class has become a rarity at US schools, Dr. Deborah Rohm Young of the University of Maryland in College Park, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health. “More and more schools are getting rid of it,” she said, noting that many require just a year or a single semester of PE throughout the four years of high school.
Bird flu could force changes to African traditions
|
|
African customs such as using children to rear village poultry could expose them to deadly bird flu and must be addressed to lower the risk of human infection, delegates said at a summit this week.
Experts from around the world are meeting in Mali’s capital Bamako to discuss how to fight the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus and prevent it causing a human influenza pandemic.
Skipping statin therapy raises heart attack risk
|
|
Worldwide thousands of people taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are suffering unnecessary heart attacks because they are not complying with the recommended treatment, Dutch researchers said on Thursday.
The researchers estimate up to 9,000 European and 7,000 American statin users have heart attacks that are avoidable.
