Gestational Diabetes Linked to Protein in Pregnancy Diet
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It seems like just yesterday I was posting that there was little to no info about the causes of Gestational Diabetes. Today, it seems like there may be a tiny bit more. A new study shows that women with Gestational Diabetes have lower levels of the chemical Serotonin. Serotonin is made from tryptophan, an amino acid found in high protein foods.
So does this mean that women who eat more protein in the first trimester are less likely to get Gestational Diabetes?
The study shows what is described as “a clear link between the amount and type of protein consumed by the mother early in pregnancy and the generation of islet cells needed to protect her against gestational diabetes late in pregnancy”.
Study finds body’s potential universal flu defense
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The human body makes rare antibodies effective against all flu viruses and these might be boosted to design a better universal flu treatment, researchers reported on Monday.
Tests on mice suggest these immune system proteins could help most people survive a normally lethal dose of flu virus, the team at the University of Wisconsin and Seattle-based Theraclone Sciences said.
“The ability of these antibodies to protect mice from highly lethal strains of influenza is encouraging,” said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a flu expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Tokyo who worked on the study, said in a statement.
Bees help to beat MRSA bugs
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Bees could have a key role to play in urgently-needed new treatments to fight the virulent MRSA bug, according to research led at the University of Strathclyde.
The scientists found that a substance known as beeglue or propolis, originating from beehives in the Pacific region, was active against MRSA, which causes potentially fatal infections, particularly in hospital patients.
The bug was either the underlying cause or a contributory factor in more than 1,900 deaths between 1996 and 2008.
Ten years on, genomic revolution only just starting
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The 10-year-old Human Genome Project has only just begun to bring to fruition its promise to transform medicine, its founders said on Thursday.
Francis Collins, who led the U.S. component of the project and is now director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said that although it may seem that the revolution promised with the publication of the first draft in 2000 is slow in coming, many early predictions had been prematurely hyped.
Scientists have barely scratched below the surface of the possibilities opened up by having access to the whole human gene map, he said, and when they do, their results will determine the way all people are diagnosed and treated for diseases.
Could ambulance diversion affect high-risk patients more?
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The elderly, the uninsured and the critically ill are among the groups most likely to rely on an ambulance to get to the hospital, a new study finds—raising the possibility that such high-risk patients are the ones most affected when hospitals turn ambulances away due to emergency room overcrowding.
To help relieve overburdened ERs, hospitals across the U.S. rely on a practice called ambulance diversion—temporarily directing incoming ambulances to other medical centers.
The policy has come under criticism for potentially putting patients at risk by increasing their transit time to the hospital. On the other hand, the goal of the practice is to get patients the treatment they need more quickly—since ER overcrowding may delay the care of both newly arriving patients and the ones already waiting.
Coffee may protect against head and neck cancers
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Data on the effects of coffee on cancer risk have been mixed. However, results of a recent study add to the brewing evidence that drinking coffee protects against cancer, this time against head and neck cancer.
Full study results are published online first in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Using information from a pooled-analysis of nine studies collected by the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium, participants who were regular coffee drinkers, that is, those who drank an estimated four or more cups a day, compared with those who were non-drinkers, had a 39 percent decreased risk of oral cavity and pharynx cancers combined.
Slipknot bassist died of “accidental” overdose
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The bassist for the Grammy-winning metal band Slipknot died of an “accidental” overdose of morphine and fentanyl, a synthetic morphine substitute, police in Iowa said on Monday as autopsy results were released.
Paul Gray, 38, was found dead on May 25 at a hotel near Des Moines, Iowa, the hometown of the band who always appear in public in grotesque masks, beat each other up on stage and call their fans “maggots.” Gray co-founded the band in 1995.
An autopsy conducted by the Polk County Medical Examiner’s Office also found that Gray suffered from “significant heart disease,” according to a statement released by the Urbandale police department.
Software cuts CT radiation dose in half: study
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A new software program that enhances the quality of CT images allowed doctors to cut in half the radiation dose needed for a colon scan and still produce clear images, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
A series of recent studies has suggested that computed tomography or CT scans can increase a person’s lifetime risk of cancer, especially younger people who have multiple scans.
“This new technique allows us to use far less radiation than even a typical abdominal CT scan without compromising image quality,” said Dr. Daniel Johnson of the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, whose study appears in the American Journal of Roentgenology.
Individuals see health insurance costs jump-report
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U.S. health insurers are raising prices by an average of 20 percent for adults age 64 and younger who buy their own policies, according to a survey released by a nonprofit healthcare group on Monday.
Such premium cost increases affected more than three-quarters of the 14 million adults who buy their own health plans and caused some to either seek a cheaper option with fewer benefits or switch insurers altogether, the Kaiser Family Foundation study showed.
The findings come as the Obama administration works with insurers to implement some of the new rules under the recently passed healthcare law, which aims to expand consumers’ coverage while cracking down on discriminatory industry practices.
Experimental flu treatment may help related virus
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An experimental drug being developed to fight influenza may fight a common but little-known virus called parainfluenza virus, researchers and the company said on Friday.
Tests in rats showed Fludase, made by privately held NexBio, could stop parainfluenza viruses from replicating, the researchers reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Anne Moscona of Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York and colleagues tested varying doses of the drug, also known as DAS181, in lab dishes and on cotton rats, a species accepted by scientists for testing parainfluenza.
PBDE Flame Retardant Linked to Thyroid Hormone Levels in Pregnant Women
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The largest study yet to investigate exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants and pregnant women’s thyroid hormone levels correlates exposure to PBDEs with reduced levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and increased odds of subclinical hyperthyroidism.
“There is very clear evidence from animal studies that PBDEs affect thyroid hormones, but very few human studies have attempted to determine whether pregnant women’s PBDE levels can impact the developing fetus,” says the study’s lead author, Jonathan Chevrier of the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research.
“A mother’s thyroid hormones affect her developing baby throughout her pregnancy, and they are essential for fetal brain development,” says coauthor Brenda Eskenazi, director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research.
Early-Life Exposure to Polychlorinated Biphenyls Reduces Immune Response to Vaccination
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Children exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) early in life later had a diminished immune response to diphtheria and tetanus vaccinations, according to a study published online June 20 ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). This result suggests that PCB exposure during the first years of life, a critical period in immune system development, could undermine the effectiveness of childhood vaccinations and possibly impair immune system responses to infection.
PCBs are long-lived environmental contaminants that are suspected to be toxic to the immune system. The study included 587 children born between 1999 and 2001 who lived in the Faroe Islands. The residents of the Faroe Islands, which lie midway between Norway and Iceland in the North Atlantic, have widely varying PCB exposure due to differing consumption patterns of contaminated traditional foods such as pilot whale blubber. Routine childhood vaccinations, which feature standard antigen doses at set time points, provided an opportunity to examine immune responses in the Faroese children.
Mothers provided blood samples at 32 weeks of pregnancy and milk samples 4 to 5 days after birth.
Why Does Diabetes Raise Cancer Risk?
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People with diabetes are at increased risk of certain cancers—but why?
Could it be that some diabetes treatments trigger or promote cancer? Or do the underlying causes of diabetes also underlie cancer?
These are the questions put before an expert panel from the American Diabetes Association and the American Cancer Society (ACS).
Babies Born at 23 Weeks Make It Home Just in Time for Father’s Day
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This Sunday, many fathers will settle in for a nice BBQ, go fishing with the kids or play with a new electronic gadget. For one dad, who works nights and weekends and stays home with the kids during the day, having his whole family home is the best gift he could hope for.
“It’s been a long road over the last eight months of just being at the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and having to stay somewhere else,” says Nich Pollak, 29, of Albion (Mich.). “Having my whole family home is wonderful.”
Nich and his wife Jennie Pollak, 25, had tried for a year to give their daughter Hailey, 4, a sibling. But after Jennie had surgery for endometriosis, the couple had been unable to conceive. The young family was stunned, however, when one month on a low-dose fertility drug led to Jennie becoming pregnant with quadruplets.
Repairs to key Canadian isotope reactor complete
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Repairs have been completed on a Canadian nuclear reactor that supplied a third of the world’s medical isotopes, and the operator says it is ready to restart production more than a year after a heavy water leak was discovered at the aging facility.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd said on Wednesday that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has scheduled a June 28 hearing on its application to restart the reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. AECL hopes to resume isotope production in late July.
The more than 50-year-old facility was shut down in May 2009 after a small leak of heavy water, used as a moderator and coolant in the reaction process, was discovered. The difficulty of the welding job to repair the leak forced planned restart dates to be repeatedly postponed.
