Obesity, other health problems delay MS diagnosis
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People with pre-existing medical conditions, such as obesity, and vascular problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, may experience a delay in being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), or experience an increase in severity of the disease at diagnosis, according to a study published in the October 29, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“Our study suggests that doctors who treat people with chronic diseases should not attribute new neurological symptoms such as numbness and tingling to existing conditions without careful consideration,” said study author Ruth Ann Marrie, MD, PhD, of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, and member of the American Academy of Neurology.
For the study, researchers examined the records of 8,983 people who had been diagnosed with MS. Of those, 2,375 were further classified as having mild, moderate or severe disability within two years of diagnosis. This well-characterized group was asked about pre-existing health conditions, their smoking status and weight history.
Eating red meat sets up target for disease-causing bacteria
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Offering another reason why eating red meat could be bad for you, an international research team, including University of California, San Diego School of Medicine professor Ajit Varki, M.D., has uncovered the first example of a bacterium that causes food poisoning in humans when it targets a non-human molecule absorbed into the body through red meats such as lamb, pork and beef.
In findings to be published on line October 29th in advance of print in the journal Nature, the scientists discovered that a potent bacterial toxin called subtilase cytotoxin specifically targets human cells that have a non-human, cellular molecule on their surface. The molecule –N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc) – is a type of glycan, or sugar molecule, that humans don’t naturally produce.
Subtilase cytotoxin is produced by certain kinds of E. coli bacteria, causing bloody diarrhea and a potentially fatal disease called haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) in humans. Humans usually become infected after eating contaminated red meat, which is why this is also known as “hamburger” disease.
If the diabetes has a direct carcinogenetic effect?
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The association of DM2 with solid tumors, and particularly with HCC, has been long suspected and several studies have reported increased mortality rates for neoplastic diseases in patients with DM2. However, the temporal relationship between onset of diabetes and development of HCC, and the clinical and metabolic characteristics of patients with DM2 and HCC have not been well examined.
A research article to be published on October 7, 2008 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team led by Dr. Valter Donadon from Pordenone Hospital of Italy investigated the relationships between DM2 and risk of HCC in a large population based case-control study. They enrolled 465 consecutive patients with HCC compared with an age and sex matched control group of 490 subjects.
Their results confirm that patients with DM2 have a significantly increased risk of HCC, independent of cofactors such as HBV and HCV infection and alcohol intake, and demonstrate that DM2 pre-exists to the development of HCC in most cases, suggesting that DM2 is more likely a concourse rather than merely a consequence of the liver tumor. This conclusion is also supported by the finding of a similar frequency and severity of DM2 in patients with small HCC detected during follow-up of cirrhosis and in those with more advanced and diffuse cancers detected outside of a surveillance program.
US smokers increasingly hooked on nicotine
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Smokers who are seeking medical treatment to give up cigarettes are more highly addicted to nicotine than smokers who sought help two decades ago, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The researchers examined nicotine dependence levels of about 600 smokers who entered treatment programs in northern California to quit smoking during three periods starting in 1989 and ending in 2006.
Seventy-three percent of those seeking medical help to quit smoking in 2005 to 2006 were deemed highly nicotine dependent using scores from a questionnaire given to assess the severity of nicotine addiction, the researchers said.
Prostate cancer not warded off by supplements
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Selenium and vitamin E supplements do not prevent prostate cancer and may in fact be a little bit dangerous, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The study of 35,000 men showed the supplements did not work together or alone to prevent prostate cancer, the most common type of cancer in men in the United States.
“As we continue to monitor the health of these 35,000 men, this information may help us understand why two nutrients that showed strong initial evidence to be able to prevent prostate cancer did not do so,” Dr. Eric Klein of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
The woman in red drives the men crazy, study finds
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If a woman wants to drive the men wild, she might want to dress in red.
Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other color, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.
The study led by psychology professor Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, seemed to confirm red as the color of romance—as so many Valentine’s Day card makers and lipstick sellers have believed for years.
Although this “red alert” may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots, Elliot said.
Pneumonia may raise risk of sudden heart trouble
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People who are hospitalized with bacterial pneumonia are nearly eight times more likely to suffer heart attack or other “acute coronary syndrome” within 15 days of admission than are their peers hospitalized for other conditions, new research suggests.
Moreover, the results indicate that individuals with bacterial pneumonia are at much greater risk for acute heart-related “events” in the days following admission than they are 1 year before or after hospitalization.
Dr. Vicente F. Corrales-Medina from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston presented his team’s findings this week at the combined annual meeting of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) in Washington, DC.
Tai chi helps cut pain of knee arthritis: study
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The traditional Chinese form of exercise known as tai chi can help reduce pain and physical impairment in people who have knee arthritis, researchers said on Saturday.
In their study, one group of people in their 60s with severe knee osteoarthritis performed tai chi for an hour twice a week for 12 weeks while a similar group did the same amount of conventional stretching exercises over the same period.
Those who did tai chi experienced greater pain reduction, less depression and improvements in physical function and overall health, researchers led by Dr. Chenchen Wang of Tufts Medical Center in Boston reported at a meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in San Francisco.
Cost of diabetes treatment escalating in US
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More expensive medications and an increasing number of patients is driving up the cost of treating type 2 diabetes in the US, researchers reported Monday.
“Although increasing costs of therapy are partly attributable to more patients with diabetes and more medications per patient, the greatest contributor to increasing costs is the substantially greater use of newer, more costly medications,” Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, at The University of Chicago, and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
They found, based on an analysis of information from US databases, that the number of patient visits for diabetes rose from 25 million in 1994 to 36 million in 2007 and the average number of diabetes medications per patient rose from 1.14 to 1.63.
Spanking may make kids aggressive
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In a study, children who were spanked frequently at age 3 years were 50 percent more likely to be aggressive 2 years later than their counterparts who were not spanked.
Dr. Catherine A. Taylor, of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans reported her team’s findings Wednesday at the American Public Health Association’s annual convention in San Diego.
“When parents use discipline, they are usually trying to teach their children a lesson and to help their children learn to behave well in both the short and the long term,” Taylor told Reuters Health. “Although spanking may bring about immediate compliance, it may do more harm than good in the long run,” she warned.
Sexual trauma afflicts 15 percent of U.S. vets
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Nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma, from harassment to rape, researchers reported on Tuesday.
And these veterans were 1.5 times as likely as other veterans to need mental health services, the report from the VA found.
“We are, in fact, detecting men and women who seem to have a significant need for mental health services,” said Rachel Kimerling of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in California.
Psychological Study Reveals That Red Enhances Men
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A groundbreaking study by two University of Rochester psychologists to be published online Oct. 28 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds color—literally and figuratively—to the age-old question of what attracts men to women.
Through five psychological experiments, Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology, and Daniela Niesta, post-doctoral researcher, demonstrate that the color red makes men feel more amorous toward women. And men are unaware of the role the color plays in their attraction.
The research provides the first empirical support for society’s enduring love affair with red. From the red ochre used in ancient rituals to today’s red-light districts and red hearts on Valentine’s Day, the rosy hue has been tied to carnal passions and romantic love across cultures and millennia. But this study, said Elliot, is the only work to scientifically document the effects of color on behavior in the context of relationships.
Neighborhood greenness has long term positive impact on kids’ health
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In the first study to look at the effect of neighborhood greenness on inner city children’s weight over time, researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of Washington report that higher neighborhood greenness is associated with slower increases in children’s body mass over a two year period, regardless of residential density.
“Previous work, including our own, has provided snap shots in time, and shown that for children in densely populated cities, the greener the neighborhood, the lower the risk of obesity. Our new study of over 3,800 inner city children revealed that living in areas with green space has a long term positive impact on children’s weight and thus health,” said Gilbert C. Liu, M.D., senior author of the new study which appears in the December issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Liu is assistant professor of pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine and a Regenstrief Institute affiliated scientist.
The new study looked at children ages 3 to 18 years whose residence didn’t change over 24 consecutive months. Higher neighborhood greenness was associated with slower increases in body mass index over time, regardless of age, race or sex. This slowing of body mass index could correspond with reduced risk of child obesity in the long term. The inner city children in the study were predominantly African-American, poor, and publically insured.
Moderate Use Averts Failure of Type 2 Diabetes Drugs in Animal Model
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Drugs widely used to treat type 2 diabetes may be more likely to keep working if they are used in moderation, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found in a study using an animal model.
The drugs, sulfonylureas, help type 2 diabetics make more insulin, improving control of blood sugar levels. But in most patients the effects of sulfonylureas are lost after several years of use, causing insulin secretion to shut down. This typically forces patients to switch to regular insulin injections.
“Why this happens isn’t clear yet, but we’ve found what may be cause for hope,” says senior author Colin G. Nichols, Ph.D., the Carl F. Cori Professor and professor of cell biology and physiology. “We’ve shown in a mouse model that whatever causes this shutdown doesn’t kill the insulin-making beta cells of the pancreas or stop them from making insulin. Instead, it somehow stops them from secreting insulin.”
Moderate Use May Avert Failure of Type 2 Diabetes Drugs
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Drugs widely used to treat type 2 diabetes may be more likely to keep working if they are used in moderation, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found in a study using an animal model.
The drugs, sulfonylureas, help type 2 diabetics make more insulin, improving control of blood sugar levels. But in most patients the effects of sulfonylureas are lost after several years of use, causing insulin secretion to shut down. This typically forces patients to switch to regular insulin injections.
“Why this happens isn’t clear yet, but we’ve found what may be cause for hope,” says senior author Colin G. Nichols, Ph.D., Carl F. Cori Professor and professor of cell biology and physiology. “We’ve shown in a mouse model that whatever causes this shutdown doesn’t kill the insulin-making beta cells of the pancreas or stop them from making insulin. Instead, it somehow stops them from secreting insulin.”
