How to manage Chinese obese children with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease?
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Short-term lifestyle intervention is more effective than short-term vitamin E capsule therapy on NAFLD and so it should be the first step in the management of children with NAFLD.
This study, performed by a team led by Professor Li Liang, is described in a research article to be published on March 14, 2008, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.
NAFLD is likely to reach epidemic proportions in children worldwide in this decade. NAFLD is recognized as a cause of potentially progressive liver damage and may be the hepatic aspect of the metabolic syndrome.
Drinking dulls the brain’s response to threats
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Drinking alcohol dulls the brain’s ability to detect threats, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study that helps explain why people who are drunk cannot tell when the guy at the end of the bar is angling for a fight.
They said the study is the first to show how alcohol affects the human brain as it responds to threats.
“You see this all of the time. People get into confrontations when they are intoxicated that they probably wouldn’t get into when they are sober,” said Jodi Gilman of the National Institutes on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Search for an HIV Vaccine Must Go On Says Expert in Light of Recent High-profile Merck Failure
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According to a recent article published in The Independent (UK), most scientists involved in AIDS research believe that a vaccine against HIV is further away than ever with some admitting that effective immunization against the virus may never occur, according to an unprecedented poll conducted by the paper.
The article describes a mood of deep pessimism that has spread among the international community of AIDS scientists after the trial failure of a promising Merck vaccine last year. This was only the latest in a series of setbacks in the twenty-five-year struggle to develop an HIV vaccine. The article authors, Steve Connor and Chris Green, cite one of the major conclusions to emerge from the failed clinical trial of Merck’s promising prototype vaccine, is that an important animal model used for more than a decade in preclinical HIV testing on monkeys does not in fact work.
“The passion for an HIV vaccine resonates strongly among small pharma, whose often-overlooked approaches may now take center stage as the search for a viable HIV vaccine continues,” says Sylvain Fleury, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Director at Mymetics, a vaccine company focused on malaria and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV/AIDS).
Mothers and Offspring Can Share Cells Throughout Life
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Cutting the umbilical cord doesn’t necessarily sever the physical link between mother and child. Many cells pass back and forth between the mother and fetus during pregnancy and can be detected in the tissues and organs of both even decades later. This mixing of cells from two genetically distinct individuals is called microchimerism. The phenomenon is the focus of an increasing number of scientists who wonder what role these cells play in the body.
A potentially significant one, it turns out. Research implicates that maternal and fetal microchimerism plays both adverse and beneficial roles in some autoimmune diseases as well as the prevention of at least one cancer. This double-edged sword in turn has opened new avenues of study of the body’s immune system and the possibility of developing new tests and therapies.
Two of the world’s leading researchers in microchimerism are J. Lee Nelson, M.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Clinical Research Division; and V.K. Gadi, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Nelson also is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Gadi is also a research associate in the Hutchinson Center’s Clinical Research Division.
Birth size linked to weight gain and inflammation
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The results of a study published in the European Heart Journal indicate there is an association between lower birth weight and greater weight gain from childhood to adulthood and with low-grade inflammation in adulthood.
“Impaired fetal growth and growth during infancy or childhood may trigger inflammatory pathways leading to activated low-grade inflammation in adulthood,” Dr. Paul Elliott, of Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues write. They suggest that this inflammation may be an “intermediate factor” that links impaired fetal growth and cardiovascular disease, a relationship that has been previously found.
Using data from a study in northern Finland that began in 1966, the researchers examined the relationships between fetal growth, weight gain from childhood to adulthood, and low-grade inflammation measured by blood levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a “biomarker” for inflammation, meaning higher than normal levels suggest inflammation is occurring.
Study shows promising new approach to thwart HIV
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Researchers have pinpointed a protein contain within key human immune system cells that is needed for the AIDS virus to infect the cells, and found that turning it off can greatly slow down the deadly virus.
Inactivating a protein called ITK in immune system cells called T cells reduces HIV’s ability to enter these cells and replicate itself, the researchers said on Monday.
A drug based on this approach could be useful as a complement to existing drugs used to treat HIV infection, said Andrew Henderson of Boston University, one of the researchers.
British team finds two genes for osteoporosis
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British researchers have identified two common genetic mutations that increase the risk of osteoporosis and related bone fractures, according to a study released on Tuesday.
These changes were present in 20 percent of the people studied and highlight the potential role of screening for the bone-thinning disease that mainly affects women after menopause, they reported in The Lancet medical journal.
“Eventually, a panel of genetic markers could be used in addition to environmental risk factors to identify individuals who are most at risk for osteoporotic fractures,” Tim Spector and Brent Richards, researchers at King’s College London wrote.
Late-pregnancy depression predicts postnatal woes
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Helping women who suffer from depression during pregnancy could reduce their risk of remaining depressed after giving birth and, in turn, reduce the level of stress they experience in early parenthood, Australian researchers report.
The strongest predictor of whether or not a woman would have postnatal depression was whether she was depressed shortly before giving birth, also known as the antenatal period, Drs. Bronwyn Leigh of Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital Austin Health in Heidelberg Heights and Jeannette Milgrom of the University of Melbourne found. And postnatal depression was, in turn, the only significant risk factor for high levels of parenting stress.
To date, research and treatment efforts have targeted postnatal depression, the researchers note, but less is known about risk factors for antenatal depression and early parenting stress.
Heart risks of obesity reduced with exercise
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Women who are overweight or obese can reduce their risk of heart disease by exercising more, results of a new study indicate.
However, “even high quantities of physical activity are unlikely to fully reverse the risk of (heart disease) in overweight and obese women without concurrent weight loss,” Dr. Amy R. Weinstein and colleagues report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Weinstein, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and her associates in Boston studied the effects of obesity and inactivity on heart disease using data from the Women’s Health Study, which included 39,000 women age 45 years or older who were free of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes when the study began.
Aspirin-like compounds increase insulin secretion in otherwise healthy obese people
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Aspirin-like compounds (salicylates) can claim another health benefit: increasing the amount of insulin produced by otherwise healthy obese people. Obesity is associated with insulin resistance, the first step toward type 2 diabetes.
Aspirin and other salicylates are known to reduce blood glucose in diabetic patients. New research accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism reveals a similar beneficial effect among obese individuals by increasing the amount of insulin secreted into the bloodstream.
“The administration of a salicylate led to the lowering of serum glucose concentrations,” said Jose-Manuel Fernandez-Real of the Institut d’Investigacio Biomedica de Girona and CIBEROBN Fisiopatologia de la Obesidad, Spain, and lead author of the study. “These findings highlight the importance of further research on the possible therapeutic benefit of aspirin in the fight against type 2 diabetes.”
Study Identifies Factors Leading to Hospital Admission for Heart Failure
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Nearly two out of three patients have one or more precipitating factors that may contribute to hospital admissions nationwide for heart failure, according to a new UCLA study. Pneumonia, irregular heart beats, and obstructed blood flow to the heart are the most frequent factors.
Published in the April 28 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers identified additional health factors present at hospital admission, which contributed to the hospitalization and impacted length of hospital stay, re-hospitalization and mortality both in the hospital and post-discharge.
“Understanding the factors that can exacerbate heart failure and lead to hospitalizations—especially the ones that are avoidable—are invaluable to clinicians to help us improve management of heart failure,” said first author Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, UCLA’s Eliot Corday Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine and Science and director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center.
Tough job: Volunteers needed for chocolate study
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Calling all chocoholics: British researchers recruiting volunteers willing to eat a bar of chocolate daily for a year, guilt-free and all in the name of science.
The trial starting in June will explore whether compounds called flavonoids found in chocolate and other foods can reduce the risk of heart disease for menopausal women with type 2 diabetes, the researchers said on Monday.
“We are looking at a high risk group first,” said Aedin Cassidy, a biochemist at the University of East Anglia, who will lead the study. “We hope there will be an additional benefit from dietary intervention in addition to the women’s drug therapy.”
Poor diet undermines health of northern Afghans
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Lunch at Gada Mohammed’s single-room mud-brick house in Afghanistan’s far north is the same as most other meals: dry bread washed down with tea.
“We make our living collecting and selling this herb,” said Mohammed, a 45-year-old father of four, pointing to a pile of roots on the floor of his smoke-blackened room.
Badakhshan, bordering Tajikistan to the north, is far from the fighting with Taliban insurgents in the south, but is still one of Afghanistan’s poorest provinces. Those that fare worst live in the mountains where they are snowed in for up to six months of the year.
More babies born to diabetic mothers: study
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More American women are entering pregnancy with diabetes, raising the odds of a problem pregnancy and the potential that their children will become diabetic in the future, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They found that rates of diabetes before motherhood more than doubled over six years among 175,000 teenage and adult women.
The researchers said the increase was likely tied to rising levels of diabetes and obesity in the United States.
Black women may overestimate cancer screening rates
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Many African-American women may overestimate the number of cancer screening tests they have had, potentially putting them at risk of late cancer detection, a small study suggests.
Researchers at the American Cancer Society found that among 116 black women they interviewed about their cancer screening history, there were generally large discrepancies between the women’s memories and their medical records.
In most of these cases, women remembered having a test that, based on the records, was not done, the researchers report in the journal Oncology Nursing Forum.
