Detecting bone erosion in arthritic wrists
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Both magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) are more sensitive than radiography – the standard imaging technique – for detecting bone erosions in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to research published in the open access journal Arthritis Research & Therapy. The early detection of bone erosions is crucial for identifying those people most at risk from RA.
Uffe Møller Døhn from the Copenhagen University Hospital at Hvidovre in Denmark and co-workers carried out CT, MRI and radiography on the wrist joints of 17 RA patients and four healthy controls.
Most Americans lacking in heart attack knowledge
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Relatively few Americans have the knowledge to recognize and properly react to a heart attack, a government study suggests.
In a survey of nearly 72,000 U.S. adults, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that only 27 percent were aware of all five major signs of heart attack and would call 911 if they thought someone was having a heart attack or stroke.
The findings point to a need for better public education, the CDC authors’ conclude in the Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report. This is especially true for men, minorities and less-educated Americans, who were particularly lacking in heart attack knowledge, the researchers write.
Persistence key to treat depressed teens
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Teenagers whose initial drug treatment fails to combat depression, which happens in 4 out of 10 cases, can be helped by switching medicine and adding psychotherapy, a U.S. study published on Tuesday said.
“The findings should be encouraging for families with a teen who has been struggling with depression for some time,” said Dr. David Brent of the University of Pittsburgh who headed the research.
“Even if a first attempt at treatment is unsuccessful, persistence will pay off. Being open to trying new evidence-based medications or treatment combinations is likely to result in improvement,” he added.
Obese kids at higher respiratory risk post-surgery
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Obese children who undergo elective surgery typically have more additional medical conditions than their normal-weight peers do and are also at greater risk of developing adverse respiratory events after the procedure, U.S. researchers report.
“Many anesthesiologists may suspect that obese children have a ‘rockier’ anesthetic course than normal-weight children,” lead investigator Dr. Alan R. Tait told Reuters Health. “We have now confirmed that these children do indeed have an increased risk of adverse events.”
The study findings also show the obese children tend to have more illnesses than other children do “which, in and of themselves, may increase their anesthetic risk,” he added.
Rise in midlife stroke in women linked to obesity
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The rapidly rising incidence of stroke among Americans is primarily due to the increasing number of middle-aged women who are having strokes. The increasing incidence is also associated with abdominal obesity, investigators told attendees here at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2008.
“The incidence of stroke is two-times higher in women than men between the ages of 35 and 54,” announced Dr. Amytis Towfighi of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Towfighi and colleagues analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Surveys (NHANES) collected between 1988 and1994 that included 5,112 participants, as well as NHANES data collected between 1999 and 2004 that included 4,594 participants.
Joslin study finds restricting insulin doses increases mortality risk
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A new study led by researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center has found that women with type 1 diabetes who reported taking less insulin than prescribed had a three-fold increased risk of death and higher rates of disease complications than those who did not skip needed insulin shots. The new research appears in the March issue of Diabetes Care.
The study highlights the dangers of insulin restriction and concludes that mortality associated with the behavior appears to occur in the context of eating disorder symptoms often exhibited in women with diabetes – sometimes referred to as “diabulimia” in the media.
This 11-year follow-up study of 234 women is one of the first to show an increased risk of mortality as well as higher rates of kidney and foot problems in those who restricted their insulin intake. In addition, the average age of death was younger for those involved in insulin restriction: 45 years of age as compared to 58 years for those who did not restrict.
Anorexics Who Commit Suicide Use Extreme Methods, Leaving Little Doubt of Intent
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A disturbing new study, notable during this Eating Disorder Awareness Week, challenges assumptions that the high suicide rate among anorexics can be explained by compromised physical health that leads to death from the slightest attempt. Research to be published in the Journal of Affective Disorders shows that anorexics who are suicidal use highly lethal methods suggesting an overwhelming wish to die.
According to lead author, University of Vermont assistant professor of psychology Jill Holm-Denoma, while psychiatrists and other doctors have long observed that people with anorexia nervosa die by suicide at surprisingly high rates, there had been no data about what methods they were using to kill themselves. The assumption was often that these are people on the verge of death anyway; they are so malnourished and underweight that the smallest suicide attempt could easily lead to death.
We are what we drink
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University of Utah scientists developed a new crime-fighting tool by showing that human hair reveals the general location where a person drank water, helping police track past movements of criminal suspects or unidentified murder victims.
“You are what you eat and drink – and that is recorded in your hair,” says geochemist Thure (pronounced Tur-ee) Cerling, who led the research effort with ecologist Jim Ehleringer.
Their findings are being published online Feb. 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The new hair analysis method also may prove useful to anthropologists, archaeologists and medical doctors in addition to police.
Highly Involved Patients Don’t Always See Better Health Outcomes
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Patients who prefer to be highly involved in their treatment don’t necessarily have better luck managing chronic health conditions, a new study suggests.
A research team based at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Iowa City Health Care System and the University of Iowa surveyed 189 veterans with high blood pressure to determine the patients’ preferences for involvement in their health care. They discovered those who wanted an active role in their treatment had higher blood pressure and cholesterol over a 12-month span than those who wanted a less active role.
The study, published this week in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, was led by Austin Baldwin, a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for Research in the Implementation of Innovative Strategies in Practice (CRIISP) at the VA Iowa City Health Care System and an adjunct assistant professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Mechanism of blood clot elasticity revealed in high definition
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Blood clots can save lives, staunching blood loss after injury, but they can also kill. Let loose in the bloodstream, a clot can cause a heart attack, stroke or pulmonary embolism.
A new study reveals in atomic detail how a blood protein that is a fundamental building block of blood clots gives them their life-enhancing, or life-endangering, properties.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois and the Mayo College of Medicine, appears in the journal Structure.
Study Details Link Between Obesity, Carbs and Esophageal Cancer
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Cases of esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma) in the U.S. have risen in recent decades from 300,000 cases in 1973 to 2.1 million in 2001 at age-adjusted rates. A new study published in The American Journal of Gastroenterology shows that these rates in the U.S. closely mirrored trends of increased carbohydrate intake and obesity from 1973-2001.
The study illustrates what may be a public heath concern as the composition of U.S. diets changes and total carbohydrate and refined carbohydrate intakes increase. Obesity is a risk factor for many types of cancer, and a diet that includes a high percentage of calories from refined carbohydrates is a common contributor to obesity. Carbohydrates were also unique in that no other studied nutrients were found to correlate with esophageal cancer rates.
Stroke risk factors may signal faster cognitive decline in elderly
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Older Americans with the highest risk of stroke, but those who have never suffered a stroke, also have the highest rate of cognitive decline, researchers reported at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2008.
“Everyone knows that people lose some cognitive function as they age,” said George Howard, Dr.P.H., the principal investigator of the ongoing study. “We found that people at high risk of stroke, decline twice as fast as those persons considered at low-risk.”
Howard and his colleagues correlated the stroke risks of 17,000-plus study participants with the results from a simple cognitive test and found the stroke risk scores tracked closely with the average age-, race-, and gender-adjusted annual cognitive decline.
Anesthesia Study Targets Risk Factors in Obese Children
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In the first large-scale study of its kind, investigators from the University of Michigan have discovered that obese children, when compared to normal weight children, have a significantly higher prevalence of pre-existing medical conditions and subsequently experience more problems during and after surgery.
The study, authored by Alan R. Tait, Ph.D., and colleagues, evaluated 2,025 children, ages 2 to 18 years, and offers important insight into the effects of obesity on respiratory problems in children undergoing non-cardiac surgery.
Dr. Tait and his research group found that obese children came to surgery with much higher rates of asthma, hypertension, sleep apnea and diabetes.
Atherosclerosis solution is likely many years away
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It’s the leading cause of heart disease and stroke: atherosclerosis—a disease characterized by the thickening of arterial walls, restricting blood flow like a narrow pipe. Preventing and reversing this disease is still largely a puzzle to scientists working to put all the right pieces into place and form a complete picture of health for millions of patients who suffer its devastating effects worldwide.
So notes a University of Kentucky researcher whose perspective is published in the current issue of Nature. Alan Daugherty, director of the University of Kentucky Cardiovascular Research Center, and Dr. Daniel Rader, an endocrinologist and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, co-authored the article, which offers insight into the complex process of translating scientific discoveries in the laboratory into new therapies for atherosclerosis.
Intranasal Insulin May Lower Food Intake in Men, Improve Memory Function in Women
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Insulin administered intranasally, acutely decreases food intake in men but not women and in contrast, the compound improves memory function in women but not men according to a new study accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).
“Our findings indicate that gender is a critical factor in brain insulin signaling that affects both food intake and cognitive functions,” said Dr. Christian Benedict of the University of Lubeck in Germany. “They further suggest that intranasal insulin may be helpful in the treatment of cognitive and metabolic disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and obesity that are assumed to derive at least in part from malfunctions of central nervous insulin signaling.”
Previous studies have shown that insulin plays a pivotal role in the regulation of central nervous functions such as energy metabolism and memory processing. This study set out to assess the effects of a single dose of intranasal insulin on these functions and to determine any gender differences.
