Public Health
Fidgeting your way to fitness
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Walking to the photocopier and fidgeting at your desk are contributing more to your cardiorespiratory fitness than you might think.
Researchers have found that both the duration and intensity of incidental physical activities (IPA) are associated with cardiorespiratory fitness. The intensity of the activity seems to be particularly important, with a cumulative 30-minute increase in moderate physical activity throughout the day offering significant benefits for fitness and long-term health.
“It’s encouraging to know that if we just increase our incidental activity slightly—a little bit more work around the house, or walking down the hall to speak with a co-worker as opposed to sending an email—we can really benefit our health in the long-term,” says Ashlee McGuire, the study’s lead researcher and a graduate student in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies. “Best of all, these activities don’t take up a lot of time, they’re not difficult to do, and you don’t have to go to a gym.”
New study: Even in flies, enriched learning drives need for sleep
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Just like human teenagers, fruit flies that spend a day buzzing around the “fly mall” with their companions need more sleep. That’s because the environment makes their brain circuits grow dense new synapses and they need sleep to dial back the energy needs of their stimulated brains, according to a new study by UW- Madison sleep researchers.
Researchers saw this increase in the number of synapses—the junctions between nerve cells where electrical or chemical signals pass to the next cell—in three neuronal circuits they studied. The richer “wake experience” resulted in both larger synaptic growth and greater sleep need.
The study, published today in the journal Science, provides structural evidence for the theory that “synaptic homeostasis” is one of the key reasons all animals need sleep. Researchers Dr. Daniel Bushey, Dr. Giulio Tononi and Dr. Chiara Cirelli of the Wisconsin Center for Sleep and Consciousness also looked at the role the gene implicated in Fragile X syndrome plays in re-normalizing the brain during sleep.
Food safety programs suffer in budget battles
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When a salmonella outbreak sickened at least 79 people and killed two this past spring in Rhode Island, the state had only seven food safety inspectors.
During the month it took health officials to track the outbreak to a small bakery in Johnston, Rhode Island, the state’s other 8,000 licensed food establishments remained virtually uninspected.
Though Rhode Island plans to hire one additional inspector soon, Health Department spokeswoman Annemarie Beardsworth said it won’t be enough to fully protect the state’s food supply.
American Cancer Society report finds continued progress in reducing cancer mortality
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A steady reduction in overall cancer death rates translates to the avoidance of about 898,000 deaths from cancer between 1990 and 2007, according to the latest statistics from the American Cancer Society. However, the report, Cancer Statistics 2011, and its companion consumer publication Cancer Facts & Figures 2011 find that progress has not benefitted all segments of the population equally. A special section of the report finds cancer death rates for individuals with the least education are more than twice those of the most educated and that closing that gap could have prevented 37%—or 60,370—of the premature cancer deaths that occurred in 2007 in people ages 25-64 years.
Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year and compiles the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival based on incidence data from the National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
A total of 1,596,670 new cancer cases and 571,950 deaths from cancer are projected to occur in the U.S. in 2011. Overall cancer incidence rates were stable in men in the most recent time period after decreasing by 1.9% per year from 2001 to 2005; in women, incidence rates have been declining by 0.6% annually since 1998. Overall cancer death rates, which have been dropping since the early 1990s, continued to decrease in all racial/ethnic groups in both men and women since 1998 with the exception of American Indian/Alaska Native women, among whom rates were stable. African American and Hispanic men showed the largest annual decreases in cancer death rates during this time period, 2.6% and 2.5%, respectively. Lung cancer death rates showed a significant decline in women after continuously increasing since the 1930s.
Sleep type predicts day and night batting averages of Major League Baseball players
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A Major League Baseball player’s natural sleep preference might affect his batting average in day and night games, according to a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS).
Results indicate that players who were “morning types” had a higher batting average (.267) than players who were “evening types” (.259) in early games that started before 2 p.m. However, evening types had a higher batting average (.261) than morning types (.252) in mid-day games that started between 2 p.m. and 7:59 p.m. This advantage for evening types persisted and was strongest in late games that began at 8 p.m. or later, when evening types had a .306 batting average and morning types maintained a .252 average.
“Our data, though not statistically significant due to low subject numbers, clearly shows a trend toward morning-type batters hitting progressively worse as the day becomes later, and the evening-types showing the opposite trend,” said principal investigator and lead author Dr. W. Christopher Winter, medical director of the Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Va.
‘Wrong’-time eating reduces fertility in fruit flies
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Dieticians will tell you it isn’t healthy to eat late at night: it’s a recipe for weight gain. In fruit flies, at least, there’s another consequence: reduced fertility.
That’s the conclusion of a new study this week in Cell Metabolism by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in which they manipulated circadian rhythms in fruit flies and measured the affect on egg-laying capacity.
Lead author Amita Sehgal, PhD, John Herr Musser Professor of Neuroscience, stresses, though, that what is true in flies grown in a lab does not necessarily hold for humans, and any potential link between diet and reproduction would have to be independently tested.
Cellphone study raises profile on safety lawsuits
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The Supreme Court is considering the fate of litigation against cellphone makers over safety risks, just as the industry comes under more scrutiny in the wake of a health report from the World Health Organization.
A working group of WHO cancer experts suggested on Tuesday that cellphone use should be classified as “possibly carcinogenic” after reviewing of all the available scientific evidence.
The classification puts mobile phone use in the same broad cancer risk category as lead, chloroform and coffee, and it garnered extensive media coverage. Industry groups immediately sought to play down the announcement, saying it does not mean that cellphones cause cancer.
New study looks at disconnect between medical and lay expertise
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The Internet is empowering its users more than ever, but the same technology that allows people access to limitless information has also enabled some to combat scientific or medical authority with their personal experiences.
In a recent study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, Oregon State University sociologist Kristin Barker and graduate student Tasha Galardi looked at the reactions of breast cancer survivors in the wake of the new guidelines published in 2009 by the United States Preventative Service Task Force. Departing from established recommendations, the new guidelines recommend against routine screening mammography for women in their 40s, and suggest that women ages 50 to 74 be screened every other year instead of annually. The guidelines generated media attention and elicited intense anger from breast cancer survivors.
Sampling some of the most popular online breast cancer discussion forums, the researchers found that women used the Internet not only for solidarity and sharing their personal stories, but also to collect their own experiences as a type of evidence to contradict the task force’s recommendations. The women were upset because their shared experiences with breast cancer confirmed established wisdom that mammography saves lives, especially theirs.
Cholera outbreaks closely follow temperature rise, rainfall
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Moderate increases in temperature and rainfall can herald cholera epidemics, a study in East Africa has found, and researchers urged governments to use those environmental cues to better protect vulnerable populations.
The researchers matched cholera outbreaks which occurred in Zanzibar between 1999 and 2008 against temperature and rainfall records over the same period and found that the environmental changes were closely followed by disease.
“We found that when temperature goes up by 1 degree Celsius, there is a chance of cholera cases doubling in four months’ time and if rainfall goes up by 200 millimetres, then in two months’ time, cholera cases will go up by 1.6 folds,” Mohammad Ali, a senior scientist at the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea, said by telephone.
Vaccine alliance seeks $3.7 bln from London meeting
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International health alliance GAVI is seeking $3.7 billion from a June 13 pledging conference in London to help deliver vaccines to nearly a quarter of a billion children across the world by 2015.
Launched in 2000 and including partners such as the World Bank and pharmaceutical firms, the grouping targets common but deadly diseases such as pneumonia or diarrhea and says it has already saved 5 million lives.
The alliance uses so-called “vaccine bonds” underpinned by firm market expectations that donors will ultimately honor their pledges to bridge the time lags in the funding process that are common to the aid sector.
When it comes to warm-up, less is more
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University of Calgary Faculty of Kinesiology researcher Elias Tomaras says the idea came to him while watching track and field sprinters warm-up for a race. “If you watch sprinters, short distance speed skaters or cyclists before their race, they will often warm-up for one to two hours, including several brief bouts of high intensity exercise. From an exercise physiology point of view, it seemed like it might be pretty tiring.”
Many coaches and physiologists believe that a longer warm up provides an increase in muscle temperature, acceleration of oxygen uptake kinetics, increased anaerobic metabolism and a process called postactivation potentiation of the muscles. However, very few studies have studied if warm ups has a detrimental effect on performance.
As it turns out, the warm-up is one of the more contentious issues in high-performance sport. Different coaches have different theories and not a lot of quality research has been done to identify the optimal warm-up. Tomaras’ study, published recently in the prestigious Journal of Applied Physiology suggests that at the very least, athletes may want to lower the intensity and reduce the amount of time that they warm up.
PGD can permit the birth of healthy children to women carrying mitochondrial DNA disease
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Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) can give women at risk of passing on a mitochondrial DNA disorder to their offspring a good chance of being able to give birth to an unaffected child, a researcher told the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Monday). Dr. Debby Hellebrekers, from Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands, said that the scientists’ findings could have a considerable effect on preventing the transmission of mitochondrial diseases.
Mitochondria are cellular organelles involved in the conversion of the energy of food molecules into ATP, the molecule that powers most cellular functions. Disruptions of this energy-producing process, due to a defect in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) or nuclear genes, can cause mitochondrial disorders which represent the most common group of inborn errors of metabolism. The manifestation of mtDNA disorders can be quite varied, but the diseases are almost always serious and, if they do not lead to death, they can result in life-long serious disability for children born with them. Symptoms of mtDNA disorders include loss of muscle co-ordination, visual and hearing problems, poor growth, mental retardation, heart, liver and kidney disease, neurological problems, respiratory disorders and dementia.
Prenatal diagnosis is in general not possible for mtDNA diseases, because the clinical signs cannot be reliably predicted from the mutation load (the relative amount of mutated mtDNA molecules) in chorionic villus sampling, so the team of scientists from The Netherlands, Australia, and the UK decided to look at whether PGD would be a better alternative. “If we could find a minimal level of mtDNA mutation load below which the chance for an embryo of being affected was acceptably low”, said Dr. Hellebrekers, “we could offer PGD to women who otherwise had little chance of giving birth to a healthy child.”
U.N. body to probe Fukushima radiation impact
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A U.N. scientific body said on Monday it would study the radiation impact of Japan’s nuclear disaster on people and the environment, but it did not expect to detect any major health effects.
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), which has published reports about the 1986 Chernobyl accident, said it would take at least two years to produce a full report on the issue.
“Everybody wants answers tomorrow or next week ... but this is not possible. We need time,” UNSCEAR Chairman Wolfgang Weiss told a news conference, adding that preliminary findings were expected in May 2012.
Late-Breaking Clinical Trials
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Results from C91 “Late-Breaking Clinical Trials” on Tuesday afternoon, May 17, will bring new light to clinical problems and potential treatments. While five examine possible new therapies for people with asthma (pregnant women), emphysema, lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), TB and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a sixth looks at the safety of physician- vs. nurse-led transport teams for critically ill patients,
In one, researchers from Australia identified a way for pregnant women with asthma to avoid exacerbations. This randomized, controlled trial tested a management algorithm for asthma in pregnancy based on fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) which indicates level of inflammation, and symptoms, and compared this to standard, guideline-based care.
Heather Powell, MMedSci, and colleagues enrolled 242 pregnant asthmatic women before 20 weeks’ gestation. They measured FENO, symptoms and lung function at monthly visits. For the women randomized to the algorithm-based treatment, FENO was used to increase or decrease their ICS medications. Long-acting beta agonists were used to treat symptoms when FENO was not elevated.
Economic factors associated with increase in closures of emergency departments
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Over the last 20 years, the number of hospital emergency departments in nonrural areas in the U.S. has declined by nearly 30 percent, with for-profit ownership, location in a competitive market, low profit margin and safety-net status associated with an increased risk of emergency department closure, according to a study in the May 18 issue of JAMA.
“As the only place in the U.S. health care system that serves all patients, emergency departments (EDs) are the ‘safety net of the safety net.’ Federal law requires hospital EDs to evaluate and treat all patients in need of emergency care regardless of ability to pay,” according to background information in the article. “Between 1998 and 2008, the number of hospital-based EDs in the United States declined, while the number of ED visits increased, particularly visits by patients who were publicly insured and uninsured. Little is known about the hospital, community, and market factors associated with ED closures.”
Renee Y. Hsia, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues conducted a study to examine the factors that may be associated with the closure of hospital EDs. The study included emergency department and hospital organizational information from 1990 through 2009, acquired from the American Hospital Association Annual Surveys and merged with hospital financial and payer mix information available through 2007 from Medicare hospital cost reports.
