Sexual trauma afflicts 15 percent of U.S. veterans
28 October 2008
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.
The study, presented at a meeting of the American Public Health Association in San Diego, raises many questions.
Kimerling said in a telephone interview the term "military sexual trauma" covers a range of events from coerced sex to outright rape or threatening and
unwelcome sexual advances.
Kimerling said for her purposes it is not necessary to find out what kind of sexual trauma occurred. Her study also did not determine when it happened.
"If you think about military service where you are living and working so closely with the same people, that even if it is not sexual assault ... it is
possible that severe sexual harassment is just as traumatic," she said.
The study does not cover active-duty servicemen and women, as VA services are only available to discharged veterans.
A spokeswoman for the VA said about 40 percent of all discharged veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have sought medical care of some sort from the
VA, which has a universal screening program for military sexual trauma.
Kimerling said that may mean many veterans are unaware they can be helped and she said she hoped more would come forward to seek treatment.
"There are dedicated health care services for military sexual trauma at every VA facility across the nation," she said.
Sexual trauma can lead to depression, anxiety, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, Kimerling said.
"We know there are effective, evidence-based treatments for them that are used in VA," she added.
Most veterans who were affected were women, with more than one in seven women seeking health care services of some sort also reporting sexual trauma. Just
under 1 percent of male veterans also reported military sexual trauma.
Early infections may increase arthritis risk
28 October 2008
Babies with serious infections during their first year of life appear more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis at an early age, Swedish researchers said
on Tuesday.
Previous studies have suggested infections somehow trigger the autoimmune condition later in life but the Swedish findings raise the possibility infections
may somehow change the way an immature immune system develops, the researchers said.
"Nobody had thought of this relationship with early-in-life infections and how they can affect the immune system," said Cecilia Carlens of the Karolinska
University Hospital and Institute in Stockholm, who led the study, published in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease and often strikes young people, resulting in pain, stiffness and swelling. It affects about 20 million people
worldwide and is the most common chronic rheumatic disorder in children. Using data from national registers, the Swedish team tracked the health of more than
3,500 men and women born between 1973 and 2002.
The researchers looked at information on maternal health, pregnancy and birth details and whether the children had any infections during the first 12 months
of life.
Compared to people without the conditions, children who had serious infections early on were more than twice as likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis as a
young adult, the study found.
Babies born premature, small or with a low birth weight had a reduced risk for rheumatoid arthritis, but the researchers do not know why, Carlens added.
Newer rheumatoid arthritis drugs, known as TNF blockers, suppress the immune system by blocking the activity of an inflammatory protein called tumor necrosis
factor (TNF). Anti-TNF drugs include Johnson & Johnson's Remicade or infliximab, Abbott Laboratories Inc's Humira or adalimumab, Amgen Inc and Wyeth's Enbrel
or etanercept and UCB's Cimzia or certolizumab pegol.
Rina Dhaka to represent India at London Fashion We
11 September 2008
Popular designer Rina Dhaka is all set to represent India and showcase her collection at the prestigious London Fashion Week (LFW) exhibition scheduled Sep
14-19.
The exhibition hosts 210 top British and international ready-to-wear and accessory designers from all over the globe, the Fashion Design Council of India
(FDCI) said in a statement Wednesday.
"I am delighted to represent Indian fashion at LFW. This season I am participating at the Exhibition and in the coming season, I will showcase my collection
on the runway of LFW," said Dhaka.
The LFW is a bi-annual event and takes place in February and September. It displays the new trends for the upcoming season and the Exhibition at the LFW runs
alongside this event.
It serves as a creative hub for international designers and helps them unveil their collections to an audience comprising media and buyers from across the
globe.
FDCI's president Sunil Sethi congratulated Rina and said: "She is one of the eminent designers in the Indian fashion industry and I am glad that she is
taking Indian fashion to global platforms from strength to strength.
"She is conquering both American and European markets. I congratulate her and wish her the very best as she gears up to participate at the London Fashion
Week."
A Yuva Ratna award winner, Rina shot into the fashion limelight in late 1980's and is considered to be one of the innovative designers of the country. She
has in the past held shows in cities like London, Paris, New York, Singapore and Dubai.
Good fat may be new weapon in obesity fight
21 August 2008
A new understanding of the origins of brown fat cells -- the "good" kind of fat that burns energy and keeps us warm -- may lead to new treatments for
obesity, two research teams reported on Wednesday.
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston said they used a single molecular switch to turn immature muscle cells into brown fat cells in the
lab, suggesting that brown fat may be more akin to muscle cells than conventional white fat cells.
A second team from the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, found a protein important for bone growth helped promote the development of brown fat tissue in
mice.
Both teams, reporting in the journal Nature, said their new findings lend understanding about the origins of brown fat, which releases energy, in contrast to
conventional white fat, which stores energy.
A person who is obese has large stores of white fat, and researchers think if they can coax the body into making more calorie-burning brown fat, this might
help people obese people lose weight.
Dana-Farber's Bruce Spiegelman, who worked on the research, said in a telephone interview that researchers have been trying to find the genes that turn brown
fat cells on.
Spiegelman said his team previously found that PRDM16, a kind of genetic switch called a gene transcription factor, appears to regulate the development of
brown fat cells.
"What we show in this paper is kind of a big shock. We show that brown fat is derived from a muscle-like cell, and that brown fat and white fat are
completely different," he said.
When Spiegelman's team removed PRDM16 from immature brown fat cells in the lab, something strange happened.
"The dish filled up with muscle," Spiegelman said. "What it means is that muscle cells are precursor cells to brown fat cells."
Previously, his team also showed that PRDM16 could turn conventional white fat cells into brown fat cells, but Spiegelman thinks in living creatures, the
muscle cell is a natural cell type that gives rise to brown fat cells.
His team is now looking for a drug that could chemically stimulate PRDM16 to make more brown fat cells, which would shift the metabolism into more of a fat-
burning mode.
In a separate finding, a team led by Yu-Hua Tseng of the Joslin Diabetes Center found the protein BMP-7, known for inducing bone growth, can also promote the
development of brown fat cells.
When Tseng's team delivered this protein into mice through a virus, the mice made more brown fat tissue.
And they found mice that developed extra brown fat tissue gained less weight than other mice, suggesting a potential use in weight loss.
The researchers were also able to get mice to develop extra brown fat cells by pre-treating immature brown fat cells with BMP-7 and transplanting them into
the mice.
"We hope this study can be translated into applications to help treat or prevent obesity," Tseng said in a statement.
Elite HIV wife may hold secret to AIDS vaccine
13 August 2008
A woman who has never shown symptoms of infection with the AIDS virus may hold the secret to defeating the virus, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
Infected at least 10 years ago by her husband, the woman is able somehow to naturally control the deadly and incurable virus -- even though her husband must
take cocktails of strong HIV drugs to control his.
She is a so-called "elite suppressor," and studies of her immune cells have begun to offer clues to how her body does it, the team at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore said.
"This is the best evidence to date that elite suppressors can have fully pathogenic virus," said Dr. Joel Blankson, who led the study.
"The feeling was initially that they had defective virus," Blankson added in a telephone interview.
But the couple has been monogamous for at least 17 years, Blankson said, and tests show they are infected with the same strain of virus. What is different is
the immune system of the wife, who cannot be named for privacy reasons.
"That's a good sign in terms of developing a therapeutic vaccine," Blankson said. Such a vaccine would not prevent infection but might be used to treat
patients.
The AIDS virus infects at least 33 million people globally and more than a million in the United States. It has killed 25 million people since it was
identified in the early 1980s.
New figures show 56,000 people are infected every year in the United states, mostly gay and bisexual men but also injecting drug users and their sexual
partners, both male and female, as well as newborns and recipients of contaminated blood transfusions.
STALLING REPLICATION
Both the man and the woman, who are from Baltimore, were diagnosed 10 years ago, Blankson said. The husband is a former injecting drug user.
Tests showed that immune cells known as CD8 T-cells from the wife stalled HIV replication by as much as 90 percent, while the husband's T-cells stopped it by
only 30 percent, Blankson's team reported in the Journal of Virology.
Her virus has also mutated in apparent response to this immune attack, becoming weaker, while her husband's virus has remained strong.
"Elite suppression offers clues to vaccine researchers on many fronts: how CD8 killer T-cells can attack HIV and how a stronger immune response can force HIV
into a permanent defensive state," Blankson said.
"We are trying to figure out exactly how the T-cells work in her to inhibit viral replication," he added. "We are just trying to see what kind of cytokines
they make."
Cytokines are immune system signaling proteins. One thing the researchers have noticed is that while the husband's T-cells make just one, called gamma
interferon, hers made both that one and another called TNF, or tumor necrosis factor.
That cannot be the whole story, though, because AIDS researchers have tried using such immune system proteins in patients and they did not work well.
And her immune cells seem to make the response only when they encounter the virus.
Another clue: the woman may have unusual activity in her human leukocyte antigen system, or HLA, Blankson said. This important component of the immune system
helps recognize antigens -- protein identifiers -- of enemies such as bacteria and viruses.
Want to live a long life? Run
12 August 2008
People who want to live a long and healthy life might want to take up running. A study published on Monday shows middle-aged members of a runner's club were
half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run.
Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, researchers at Stanford University in
California found.
"At 19 years, 15 percent of runners had died compared with 34 percent of controls," Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal
Medicine.
Any type of vigorous exercise will likely do the trick, said Stanford's Dr. James Fries, who worked on the study.
"Both common sense and background science support the idea that there is nothing magical about running per se," Fries said in a telephone interview. "It is
the regular physical vigorous activity that is important."
The team surveyed 284 members of a nationwide running club and 156 similar, healthy people as controls. They all came from the university's faculty and staff
and had similar social and economic backgrounds, and all were 50 or older.
Starting in 1984, each volunteer filled out an annual survey on exercise frequency, weight and disability for eight activities -- rising, dressing and
grooming, hygiene, eating, walking, reach, hand grip and routine physical activities.
Most of the volunteers did some exercise, but runners exercised as much as 200 minutes a week, compared to 20 minutes for the non-runners.
At the beginning, the runners were leaner and less likely to smoke compared with the controls. And they exercised more over the whole study period in
general.
"Over time, all groups decreased running activity, but the runners groups continued to accumulate more minutes per week of vigorous activity of all kinds,"
the researchers wrote.
"Members of the running groups had significantly lower mean disability levels at all time points," they added.
The team also set out to answer whether taking up running late in life would benefit, and whether people who stopped exercising began to pay a price as they
aged.
Most of the runners have stopped running as they reached their 70s, Fries said. But it was difficult to find people who totally stopped exercising. "Almost
all of them did something else. They continued their vigorous exercise," he said.
People who took up exercise when they were older also improved their health, he said.
The study also showed that people cannot use the risk of injury as an excuse not to run -- the runners had fewer injuries of all kinds, including to their
knees.
Study shows why once is enough to hook some smoker
6 August 2008
For some people, one cigarette is all it takes to become hooked on nicotine, while others are repelled by it.
Researchers in Canada have found a region in the brains of rats that may be the key to these differences.
By manipulating specific molecular doorways into brain cells called receptors, they were able to control which rats in the study enjoyed their first exposure
to nicotine and which were repelled by it.
"Our findings may explain an individual's vulnerability to nicotine addiction and may point to new pharmacological treatments for the prevention of it and
the treatment of nicotine withdrawal," said Dr. Steven Laviolette of the University of Western Ontario, who reported his findings in the Journal of
Neuroscience.
Several studies have found that certain people are especially responsive to the effects of nicotine.
One, published last October in the journal Pediatrics, found teens who felt relaxed after their first drags on a cigarette were far more likely to become
addicted to smoking.
"During the early phase of tobacco exposure, many individuals find nicotine highly unpleasant and aversive, whereas others may become rapidly dependent on
nicotine and find it highly rewarding," Laviolette said.
To explore the difference, Laviolette and colleagues did a series of experiments on rats, which have brain structures similar to humans.
They zeroed in on two areas in the reward circuit of the brain called nucleus accumbens. They found specific receptors of the message-carrying chemical
dopamine in the core and shell of the nucleus accumbens controlled whether the rats enjoyed or were repelled by nicotine.
When the researchers blocked two types of dopamine receptors -- D-1 and D-2 -- with drugs delivered to these areas of the nucleus accumbens, the rats
experienced nicotine as a positive, rewarding experience.
"We were able to switch nicotine's aversive effects to rewarding effects," Laviolette said in a telephone interview.
Laviolette said "naturally occurring differences" in these receptors may account for why some people are more susceptible to nicotine addiction.
Perhaps more importantly, the researchers also were able to reverse this process, making the nicotine unpleasant in rats that had the equivalent of a "pack-
a-day" nicotine addiction.
And they discovered that these areas of the brain played an important role in nicotine withdrawal after an addiction had developed.
By manipulating these dopamine receptors, they were able to ease some of the withdrawal symptoms, a finding that could be important in helping people quit
smoking.
Laviolette's team is now studying the molecular changes underlying these mechanisms, which will be important for drug makers, who would need to target these
specific dopamine receptors with chemicals.
"If we can develop pharmacological treatments to target those regions, we can basically affect the development of nicotine addiction by controlling the
brain's perception of nicotine's rewarding effects," Laviolette said.
Exercise in a pill? Researchers find two
1 August 2008
Researchers who genetically engineered "marathon mice" that could run for hours have found two pills that can mimic the effects -- and they have already
developed a test for the drugs in case athletes try to cheat with them.
The drugs reproduce many of the biological benefits of exercise, helping cells burn fat better and boosting endurance, said Ronald Evans, a Howard Hughes
Medical Institute researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California.
One of the pills may some day help people enhance their exercise or training, while the other might be more suited for couch potatoes who need to kick-start
themselves, Evans and colleagues reported on Thursday in the journal Cell.
"If you like exercise, you like the idea of getting more bang for your buck," Evans said in a statement. "If you don't like exercise, you love the idea of
getting the benefits from a pill."
In 2004, Evans and his colleagues genetically engineered mice by tweaking a gene called PPAR-delta, a master regulator of different genes. Gene-engineered
mice could run twice as far as normal mice and stayed lean even when fed a high-fat diet.
The next step was to find a drug that might mimic these effects.
Evans tested a compound called GW1516, one of a family of compounds that researchers are looking at as obesity and diabetes drugs. But even though it
affected the genes of the mice, it did not affect their metabolism.
"There was no change at all in running performance. Nothing -- not even a percent," Evans said in a statement.
MIMICKING LIFE
Then the researchers thought about what happens in real life.
"If you're out of shape -- and most of us are -- and you want to change, you have to do some exercise. The way we reprogram muscle in adults is by training."
So they trained the mice while some were on the drug and others were not.
All the mice became more athletic but those given GW1516 ran 68 percent longer than those that had only done the exercise training. "The dramatic effect of
the drug was stunning," Evans said.
But that does not help people who might have muscle-wasting diseases, fatigue, or who are too overweight to exercise.
They went back to see if there was a different way to affect PPAR-delta. One compound that is well understood already is AMP-activate protein kinase or AMPK,
"a master regulator of cellular and organismal metabolism", they wrote.
"We think AMPK activity is the secret to allowing PPAR-delta drugs to work," Evans said.
A drug called AICAR mimics AMP, Evans said, "so muscle thinks it's burning fat."
Mice given AICAR ran 44 percent longer than untreated animals, the researchers found.
"This is a drug that is like pharmacological exercise," Evans says. "After four weeks of receiving the drug, the mice were behaving as if they'd been
exercised."
Treated mice could outrun mice given traditional exercise training, Evans said.
"Almost no one gets the recommended 40 minutes to an hour per day of exercise," Evans said. "For this group of people, if there was a way to mimic exercise,
it would make the quality of exercise that they do much more efficient."
The pills are only available experimentally now and Evans is not working with any drug company. But GW1516 has a relatively simple chemical structure and can
be synthesized easily, Evans said.
His team created a mass spectrometry test to detect the two drugs and their metabolic by-products in the blood or urine. They are working with the World
Anti-Doping Agency to develop the test, perhaps in time to retroactively test 2008 Olympic athletes.
Broad tobacco regulation bill clears House
31 July 2008
Legislation to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration broad authority to regulate cigarettes and other forms of tobacco cleared the U.S. House of
Representatives on Wednesday.
The White House issued a statement voicing "serious concerns" about the bill and said advisers would recommend a presidential veto.
Backers, including public health groups and many Democrats, said the measure would help curtail youth smoking, prevent heart disease and reduce rising
health-care costs.
"With this legislation, we will place sharp and sorely needed limits on access to tobacco products and on tobacco advertising and marketing," said Rep. John
Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The White House, however, said the legislation would "put an enormous burden on the FDA" that could detract from other public health responsibilities.
Requiring the FDA to oversee tobacco products also "could be perceived by the public as an endorsement that these products are safe, resulting in more people
smoking," the White House said.
The bill, which cleared the House in a 326-102 vote, would authorize the FDA to police cigarette labeling and recall tobacco products seen as unreasonably
harmful.
The FDA also would have to approve all new cigarettes and other tobacco products, and set standards for so-called reduced-risk products. The agency would not
be empowered to ban cigarettes or require nicotine levels of zero.
The bill would authorize millions of dollars of fees levied on the industry starting in fiscal 2009 to fund the program.
The measure's most vocal proponent from industry has been the nation's largest cigarette maker, Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group Inc. The legislation
has won support from a host of smaller tobacco companies and retailers.
Some tobacco companies have opposed FDA regulation, saying it could spur industry consolidation because bigger companies would be best able to comply with
it.
The Lorillard Tobacco Company, a unit of Lorillard Inc issued a statement saying it was "disappointed" with the House vote.
Lorillard -- which makes Newport, Kent and other brands -- supports reasonable federal regulation of the tobacco industry, but believes "the FDA is already
overburdened and is the wrong agency to carry out this enormous task," it said.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who has written a companion version of the bill, is hopeful the Senate will consider the legislation in the
fall, spokeswoman Melissa Wagoner said.
U.N. report shows world AIDS deaths edging down
b>30 July 2008
The number of people killed by AIDS worldwide edged down for a second straight year in 2007 after rising for more than two decades, amid intensified global
efforts to fight the disease, a U.N. agency said on Tuesday.
The AIDS epidemic is far from over, but appears to have leveled off with more people getting life-extending drugs and the number of new HIV infections
falling in many places, UNAIDS said in a report.
Officials with Geneva-based UNAIDS and outside activists said much more needed to be done to beat this modern scourge.
Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Washington-based activist group Global AIDS Alliance, said the report showed the big increase in spending on
prevention and treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere had produced results.
"Based on this evidence, it's time to ramp up funding from all sources -- not to slow down or go on to other things. We're on the path toward victory here.
Let's invest more," he said.
Global AIDS deaths numbered about 2 million in 2007, down from 2.1 million in 2006, UNAIDS said. AIDS deaths peaked in 2005 at 2.2 million after a steady
climb since the disease was first identified in the early 1980s, UNAIDS said.
"A six-fold increase in financing for HIV programs in low- and middle-income countries (from) 2001-2007 is beginning to bear fruit, as gains in lowering the
number of AIDS deaths and preventing new infections are apparent in many countries," according to the report issued before an international AIDS conference
in Mexico next week.
"Progress remains uneven, however, and the epidemic's future is still uncertain, underscoring the need for intensified action to move towards universal
access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support," the report read.
In 2007, about 33 million people were infected with human immunodeficiency virus, UNAIDS said. HIV is most often spread through sexual contact or injection
drug use.
The total number of people living with HIV infections continues to inch higher as more people in hard-hit regions like sub-Saharan Africa, with two-thirds of
all global cases, receive drugs that help them live longer, the report showed.
NEW INFECTIONS
New HIV infection rates were basically the same in 2007 as in 2006 -- about 2.7 million people, with a very small increase last year over the prior year, the
agency said.
The report cited a big increase in the number of people receiving AIDS drugs in low- and middle-income countries, numbering about 3 million. But many more
still lack access.
"There are still five new infections for every two people who are newly added on treatment. So clearly, we're not pushing back the epidemic enough," Dr. Paul
De Lay of UNAIDS said.
Rates of new infections are rising in many countries, including China, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Ukraine and Vietnam, and even
rich nations such as Germany, Britain and Australia.
UNAIDS said its report used data from 147 countries, but De Lay said he was disappointed the United States did not provide its 2007 AIDS figures because U.S.
officials continue to "refine" the numbers and will announce them soon.
Last week, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to triple spending on a program to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa and other parts of the world,
with President George W. Bush scheduled to sign it into law this week.
It calls for $48 billion over the next five years.
The Black AIDS Institute activist group issued a report saying the U.S. government had neglected the epidemic among black Americans even as it fights the
disease overseas.
New MRI technique could catch cancer early: study
29 May 2008
A new imaging technique that relies on naturally occurring baking soda in the body could help pinpoint cancer earlier and quickly gauge if drugs to kill tumors are working,
British researchers said on Wednesday.
The non-invasive method uses magnetic resonance imaging to measure changes in pH -- or acidity -- in tissue that is often the hallmark of cancer and other conditions such as
heart disease and strokes, said Kevin Brindle of the University of Cambridge, who led the study.
Currently there are no safe ways to measure pH levels in humans but doing so is important because tumors, for example, are far more acidic than surrounding tissue.
"You are imaging not just tissue structure but tissue function," said Brindle, whose study is published in the journal Nature. "We wanted to measure tissue pH, which is a
surrogate for disease."
The researchers injected mice with a tagged form of bicarbonate -- an alkali more commonly seen in baking soda -- that occurs naturally in the body and balances acidity, Brindle
said.
They used MRI to see how much of the tagged bicarbonate was converted into carbon dioxide within the tumor. In more acidic tumors, more bicarbonate is converted into carbon
dioxide.
The researchers measured pH levels using an emerging technique called dynamic nuclear polarization that boosts MRI sensitivity more than 10,000 times.
The method developed by GE's GE Healthcare unit involves cooling down molecules to near absolute zero and then warming them up quickly -- a process that keeps them polarized and
easier to detect as an image.
"MRI can pick up on the abnormal pH levels found in cancer and it is possible that this could be used to pinpoint where the disease is present and when it is responding to
treatment," Brindle said.
The next step is testing the technique in humans in early stage clinical trials expected to start in 2009, he added in a telephone interview.
While this makes use in clinics years away, the technique could one day help quickly determine if cancer drugs are working, he said. Normally, it takes weeks or months to do
this.
"If you could see a change in tissue function you could see if a drug is working earlier," Brindle said. "If not, you could try a different drug."
Gene therapy improves sight in near-blind patients
29 April 2008
Gene therapy for a rare type of inherited blindness has improved the vision of four patients who tried it, boosting hopes for the troubled field of gene
repair technology, scientists said on Sunday.
Two separate teams of doctors reported successes in using gene therapy to treat Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA.
LCA damages light receptors in the retina. It usually begins affecting sight in early childhood and causes total blindness by the time a patient is 30. There
is no treatment.
Both teams used a common cold virus to deliver a normal version of one damaged gene that causes the disease, called RPE65, directly into the eyes of
patients.
Although both trials were only testing for safety, patients reported they could see a little better afterwards, the researchers told a meeting of eye
specialists in Florida and also reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Katherine High of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and colleagues said all three of their volunteers had
improved vision after the treatments.
Dr. Robin Ali of University College London and colleagues said one of their three volunteers got better.
Because the patients were adults, already had severe sight loss and received only low doses of treatment, researchers had not expected to see a benefit at
all.
"This result is important for the entire field of gene therapy," said High, a former president of the American Society of Gene Therapy.
One volunteer in Ali's trial, Steven Howarth, said he had significant improvement in night vision, allowing him to navigate a simulation of a night-time
street.
"Now, my sight when it's getting dark or it's badly lit is definitely better. It's a small change -- but it makes a big difference to me," Howarth said in a
statement.
GREAT HOPE
"The fact we see any evidence of improvement under these circumstances gives great hopes for the effectiveness of the treatment," Ali said in a telephone
interview.
In High's trial, three patients aged 19, 26 and 26, all reported better vision.
"Patients' vision improved from detecting hand movements to reading lines on an eye chart," said Dr. Albert Maguire of Children's Hospital.
In each case, only one eye was treated, so the other eye could be used as a "control" to tell whether vision improved.
Ali and his team are working on the research with Targeted Genetics Corp, which made the genetically engineered virus. The Children's Hospital and University
of Pennsylvania team developed their own virus, called a vector, to carry the corrective gene.
The next stage of testing will involve treating children, whose eyes have deteriorated less and who have a better chance of improving, Ali said.
"We are pretty convinced that once we can do this with younger children we will be able to arrest the damage," said Targeted Genetics Chief Executive Stewart
Parker.
One important thing both teams were looking for was proof the virus did not leave the eye. "It stays in there. It doesn't go anywhere else," Parker
said.
Both safety and efficacy have held back the field of gene therapy. One experiment cured two French boys with a rare immune disorder but gave them leukemia in
2002, and an Arizona teenager died in a 1999 gene therapy experiment.
Report confirms ozone pollution can kill
23 April 2008
Even breathing in a little ozone at levels found in many areas is likely to kill some people prematurely, the National Research Council reported on
Tuesday.
The report recommends that the Environmental Protection Agency consider ozone-related mortality in any future ozone standards, and said local health
authorities should keep this in mind when advising people to stay indoors on polluted days.
"What impressed me was the consistency of the findings that ozone clearly ... does have an effect," Dr. Evelyn Talbott of the University of Pittsburgh, who
worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
"It's small, but when you talk about a small effect over 300 million people, it's a lot."
The report looks at ground-level ozone, a component of smog, as opposed to the ozone found in the high atmosphere, which protects the Earth from ultraviolet
rays.
Ozone is a form of oxygen formed by the reaction of sunlight on air containing other pollutants such as hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide. It is a powerful
oxidizer, meaning it can damage cells in a process akin to rusting.
It is known to cause respiratory problems and worsen heart disease. Children and the elderly are at special risk.
The EPA asked the National Research Council, part of the advisory National Academies of Science, to analyze the link between ozone and early death.
ILL AT GREATER RISK
A committee appointed by the council found that deaths related to ozone exposure are more likely among people with pre-existing diseases and other factors
that could increase their susceptibility. But they said premature deaths are not limited to people who are already within a few days of dying.
They looked at studies that linked deaths directly with variations in ozone levels, as well as animal studies that examined whether there was a biological
explanation for ozone causing death.
"Do you see the disease on days when ozone is higher? And the answer is yes," Talbott said. "There does appear to be a dose response."
The committee looked at studies done in several cities across the United States as well as in Canada and Europe. They took into account differences in
temperature and humidity that may affect the ozone level.
The effects on deaths are clear, Talbott said -- and the findings excluded serious illnesses and visits to the emergency room if the patient did not
die.
"If you have a town that has got many old people ... then obviously this ozone thing is probably a bigger player," Talbott said. "It touches everybody but I
think it touches the infirm and elderly (more)."
The EPA toughened standards for ozone pollution in March but outside experts complained its new requirements were more lax than the EPA's own scientists
recommended.
The new standards are 75 parts per billion in ambient air in the United States. The previous standard was 80 parts per billion.
The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee recommended a standard of 60 to 70 parts per billion.
People become happier with age, survey finds
17 April 2008
Happiness increases along with age, according to findings from a three-decade-long U.S. survey released on Wednesday.
Between 15 percent and 33 percent of 18-year-old Americans were likely to say they were very happy, with women happier than men and whites happier than
blacks, based on findings from the survey conducted between 1972 and 2004.
The older people got, the more likely they were to report being happy, with slightly more than half of respondents in their 80s saying they were very
happy.
"With age comes happiness. That is, overall levels of happiness increase with age, net of other factors," wrote Yang Yang, a University of Chicago
sociologist, in a report on the survey published in the American Sociological Review.
The study drew its conclusions from interviews conducted between 1972 and 2004 by the university's National Opinion Research Center, which each year asked
between 1,500 and 3,000 people: "Taken all together, how would you say things are these days -- would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not
too happy?"
Yang said the study confirmed a hypothesis that improvements in self-esteem and other traits that contribute to well-being tend to come with age.
The differences between genders and races when it came to a subjective sense of happiness decreased as people grew older, as access to health care evened out
and people adjusted to similar losses in terms of relationships.
People tended to be happier during economic good times, Yang said. But those born into the crowded and competitive "Baby Boom" generation from 1946 to 1964
were the least happy -- probably because some did not get what they wanted out of life, he said.
Blood pressure drug reduces bone density in study
15 April 2008
Powerful diuretics used to control blood pressure can also steal calcium from the bones and cause significant bone loss in men who take them, researchers
reported on Monday.
Older men who used the drugs the most had triple the bone loss of men who never used them, the researchers reported in the Archives of Internal
Medicine.
They found a direct correlation between use of the drugs and bone loss in men -- putting them at risk of osteoporosis, which can cause broken hips and other
broken bones.
Though osteoporosis is more common in women than men, one in five Americans with the bone-weakening condition is a man -- and as many as 2 million American
men suffer from it.
Doctors should keep an eye out for this problem in men taking the drugs, said Dr. Lionel Lim of Griffin Hospital, in Derby, Connecticut, who led the
study.
One of the most common brand names is Lasix, and these so-called loop diuretics are also sold under the generic name furosemide. Diuretics work to lower
blood pressure by removing water from the blood via the kidneys.
With less blood circulating, the blood does not have to pump so hard. The kidneys also filter out more sodium, potassium and, evidently, calcium. The drugs
are especially effective in patients with heart failure, relieving the characteristic swollen ankles and breathlessness.
Lim studied nearly 3,300 men aged 65 and older, about 8 percent of whom had taken the drugs either regularly or from time to time.
Lim's team measured the men's hip bone density at the start and again roughly 4-1/2 years later.
Bone loss averaged 0.78 percent annually among the 84 men who used loop diuretics regularly, compared to 0.33 percent among non-users and 0.58 percent among
the 181 intermittent users.
Previous studies have associated diuretic use with a patient's risk of breaking a hip or fracturing another bone.
"However, there is uncertainty as to whether this increased fracture risk is attributable to negative effects on bone mineral density, fall-related
mechanisms (such as dizziness and low blood pressure when standing up), or associated (illnesses)," Lim wrote in his report.
The men taking diuretics in the study tended to be heavier, more sedentary, and more likely to suffer from other maladies including heart disease than non-
users.
Gene raises asthma risk, offers treatment
10 April 2008
Researchers studying an isolated community of farmers have identified a new gene linked with asthma and said it might be used both to diagnose the condition
and perhaps to treat it.
Variations in the gene, known as CHI3L1, can either promote or protect against asthma, they wrote in a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"There is a good deal more we need to find out about this connection, but now we know where to look," Carole Ober, a professor of human genetics at the
University of Chicago who led the study, said in a statement.
Her team studied a group of Hutterites, members of an Anabaptist group who follow an agrarian lifestyle. They intermarry and thus have a clear genetic
lineage that is easy to follow. They also suffer from high rates of asthma.
The researchers homed in on a gene called CHI3L1, which affects levels of a specific compound linked with susceptibility to asthma, overreaction of the
bronchial tubes and damaged lung function.
One version raises levels of this compound, YKL-40, while another lowers it and protects people against asthma, they found.
"This is also the most significant genetic discovery based on our years of gathering data on asthma in the Hutterites," Ober said.
"This is a group with enormous potential to advance our understanding of the genetic underpinnings of disease. We now have a remarkable collection of data,
which we expect will lead us to many more insights."
The Hutterites came to the United States in 1874 and settled in small communal farming colonies in what is now South Dakota.
The findings could help lead to new drugs to treat asthma, which affects more than 22 million people in the United States alone, the researchers
said.
For some people, if you block YKL-40 you might dramatically reduce the severity of the disease," Ober said.
One of the researchers, Dr. Jack Elias of Yale University in Connecticut, has licensed a patent for a drug regulating YKL-40 to MedImmune, a biotechnology
company owned by AstraZeneca Plc.
China toughens smoking ban in schools before Games
09 April 2008
China has further tightened smoking restrictions -- targeting schools and day care centers -- as it extends a crackdown linked to its pledge to hold a
smoke-free Olympics.
Last month, Beijing formally pledged to restrict smoking in most public venues in the city, including government offices and public transport, beginning on
May 1.
In a separate move reported on Wednesday, China ordered primary schools, secondary schools and day care centers across the country to prohibit even
designated smoking zones, an effort to promote 'non-smoking campuses' ahead of the Games.
"Smoking rooms and zones are banned within teaching regions effective immediately," the Beijing News cited an order by the Health Ministry as saying.
The Health Ministry also approved an order on Tuesday requiring all schools to incorporate into their curricula programs that inform students about the
harmful effects of smoking and second-hand smoke.
"All teaching and administrative staff are vigorously encouraged to quit smoking," the order added.
In October, China banned smoking in taxis, and last month urged government employees to refrain from accepting or offering cigarettes on social occasions, in
a move to curb social smoking.
But smoking at official functions and in social settings is an entrenched part of Chinese life. Notably, its recent campaigns have so far refrained from
outright smoking bans at restaurants, bars and clubs.
China is the world's largest cigarette producer, and Chinese are the world's most enthusiastic smokers, with a growing market of about 320 million smokers
making it a magnet for multinationals and a focus of international health concern.
The newspaper added that a poll of student smokers under the age of 15 showed that 22.4 percent of young smokers were male and 3.9 percent female.
Report says 90,000 U.S. infants maltreated a year
04 April 2008
About one of every 43 U.S. infants is physically abused or neglected annually, and those babies are especially at risk in the first week of their lives, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its first report on maltreatment of babies up to age 1 that 91,278 of them were physically abused or neglected in 2006.
Other new government figures showed that 499 babies up to age 1 were killed in maltreatment cases in 2006.
About a third of the maltreated infants -- 29,881 -- were abused or neglected before they were 1 week old, mostly during their first four days, the CDC said. Many of those cases may be linked to maternal drug use, the CDC said.
Physical abuse included beating, kicking, biting, burning and shaking, and neglect included abandonment, maternal drug use or failing to meet basic needs like housing, food, clothing and access to medical care, according to the report.
The findings were particularly troubling because children who suffer such abuse tend to go on to have numerous health and other problems, officials said.
"The findings do demonstrate a clear pattern of early neglect and physical abuse that is largely preventable," Ileana Arias, who heads injury prevention efforts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters.
Based on data from child protection agencies in 45 states, the report found that more than 2.3 percent of infants up to age 1 suffered substantiated nonfatal maltreatment in fiscal 2006, which ran from October 1, 2005, to September 30, 2006.
"Unfortunately, the report didn't surprise me," Jim Hmurovich, who heads the Chicago-based advocacy group Prevent Child Abuse America, said in a telephone interview.
"When a child is born, no matter how well the parent has been prepared for the coming of the child, it's a very stressful time. We know that the younger a child is, the higher the rate of victimization," Hmurovich added.
Most cases of maltreatment in the first week were reported by medical personnel, the CDC said. Thirteen percent of those week-old babies had been subjected to physical abuse.
"One hypothesis for the concentration of maltreatment and neglect reports in the first few days of life is that the majority of reports resulted from maternal or newborn drug tests," the CDC report said.
The report said 905,000 U.S. children of all ages were victims of maltreatment in 2006. Maltreatment is the third leading cause of death of U.S. children under 3, Arias said.
CDC epidemiologist Rebecca Leeb said most similar previous research focused on children from birth to age 3. Because this is the first data looking at babies up to age 1, it is unclear whether the problem is increasing or decreasing, Leeb said.
"We looked at some rates in Canada and it looks like the rates are fairly similar to what they're seeing. But we have no idea what the trends are at this time," Leeb added.
Slightly more boys than girls were victims. The CDC report did not provide rates among racial or ethnic groups.
Scientists smoke out genes behind lung cancer
03 April 2008
Scientists have found important genetic differences between people that may help explain why some smokers get lung cancer and others do not.
Three teams from France, Iceland and the United States said on Wednesday they had pinpointed a region of the genome containing genes that can put smokers at even greater risk of contracting the killer disease.
In all three studies, nicotine appears a major culprit.
The findings could eventually lead to better ways to prevent and treat lung cancer, the biggest cause of cancer-related death globally in men and the second most common in women.
"It opens the possibility that treatments that block these genes could be very beneficial as a treatment strategy against lung cancer, as well as against addiction," Paul Brennan of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, told reporters.
Smoking causes nine out of 10 cases of lung cancer. Yet only about 15 percent of smokers actually develop the condition and doctors have long suspected that a genetic element is involved.
The new research confirms some smokers are indeed more vulnerable because of their DNA profile. Smokers with two copies of the genetic variations stand around a 23 percent risk of lung cancer, according to Brennan.
The findings mark another step in unraveling the genetic basis of diseases by analyzing common changes in the genetic code known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced "snips).
Since early 2007, variations at nearly 100 places on the genome have been linked to diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.
NICOTINE'S ROLE
Significantly, all three groups publishing results in Nature and Nature Genetics zeroed in on tell-tale variants in the same area of chromosome 15 that hosts three nicotine receptor genes.
That might suggest nicotine itself is carcinogenic as well as addictive. Alternatively, it could simply be that some people are more likely to get addicted to cigarettes and smoke more, thereby exposing their lungs to greater damage.
"We need to get a better handle on how genetic factors increase risk and what molecular pathways are involved in development of lung cancer," said Chris Amos at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Kari Stefansson, the chief executive of Iceland's Decode Genetics Inc, whose scientists conducted the third study and which sells tests to assess risks for other diseases, was cautious about the value of screening for the new DNA traits.
"This is the first step in understanding what sequence variants lie behind lung cancer and nicotine addiction," he said.
Other researchers also warned personalized testing could weaken the public health message that everyone should quit smoking. Even if some people have a degree of resistance to lung cancer, they will still likely be vulnerable to smoking-related heart disease and serious respiratory disorders.
s
Smoking is also the leading cause of heart disease, the number one killer in the developed world, and emphysema.
Researchers find six more diabetes genes: study
31 March 2008
U.S. and European scientists have found six more genes that make people more susceptible to developing type 2 diabetes, in a study they say may help prevent
and treat the chronic condition.
The finding extends the total number of genes linked to the disease to 16 and provides clues to how the biological mechanisms that control blood sugar levels
go awry when people get type 2 diabetes, the researchers said.
"None of the genes we have found was previously on the radar screen of diabetes researchers," said Mark McCarthy, a diabetes researcher at the University of
Oxford, who co-led the study.
"Each of these genes therefore provides new clues to the processes that go wrong when diabetes develops, and each provides an opportunity for the generation
of new approaches for treating or preventing this condition."
A diabetic's blood glucose levels tend to rise too high. Too much glucose in the blood can damage the eyes, kidneys and nerves, and lead to heart disease,
stroke and limb amputations.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90 percent of all diabetes cases and is closely linked to obesity and physical inactivity. The World Health Organisation
estimates that more than 180 million people worldwide have diabetes -- a number likely to more than double by 2030.
In the study published in Nature Genetics, researchers from over 40 centers analyzed the genetic data of more than 70,000 people. The team turned up six
genetic differences that each individually slightly raise a person's risk of diabetes.
But the risk for the few people unlucky enough to inherit all six variations is two to three times higher than the average risk, McCarthy said in a telephone
interview.
"By getting a handle on the mechanisms involved in disease we can start to tackle them in a more systemic and scientific way," he said.
One of the surprising finds was the link between type 2 diabetes and a gene called JAZF1, which researchers recently showed plays a role in prostate cancer,
the researcher added.
The researchers believe the genes -- which also include the CDC123-CAMK1D, TSPAN8-LGR5, THADA, ADAMTS9 and NOTCH2 genes -- are involved in regulating the
number of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, McCarthy said.
Mutant gene linked to most severe type of TB: stud
March 28 2008
People who carry a mutant gene can develop potentially fatal meningitis if they get infected with the drug resistant Beijing strain of tuberculosis, a study
in Vietnam has found.
Tuberculous meningitis is the most severe form of the disease in which the infection spreads to membranes enveloping the brain and the spinal cord. One in
three people who develop TB meningitis dies, even if he or she gets hospital treatment.
The study published in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens (http://www.plospathogens.org/doi/ppat.1000034), found people most likely to develop TB
meningitis were those who carried a variant of the TLR2 gene and who get infected with the Beijing TB strain, prevalent in Asia and the former Soviet
states.
Previous studies have linked TLR2 to the immune system and it seems to be important for recognizing and initiating a defensive response to the TB
bacteria.
The researchers took bacteria samples from 187 patients who suffered tuberculous meningitis and 236 other patients who suffered the more common pulmonary
tuberculosis.
Most of the patients then had their genes analyzed to see if they carried the TLR2 variant.
"Together, these results suggest that the association of the (variant gene) with tuberculous meningitis is strongest among those infected with the Beijing
lineage," the scientists wrote.
The "Beijing" family of TB strains is prevalent in Asia and former Soviet states. It has become more drug resistant in recent years and has been responsible
for outbreaks of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in the United States.
More than one-third of the world's population is infected with TB and the infection rate is one every second. However, only one in 10 infected persons will
develop symptoms and that usually happens when their immune systems are weak.
Left untreated, TB kills half its victims. The disease kills over 2 million people each year.
One of the researchers, Maxine Caws at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Vietnam, said the latest finding was a reason to develop more sophisticated and
targeted treatments and vaccines.
"This is particularly important in this era of emerging 'untreatable' bacteria infections due to antibiotic resistance," Caws wrote.
Big belly in 40s raises Alzheimer's risk in 70s
March 27 2008
Having a big belly in middle age appears to greatly increase one's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia decades later,
researchers said on Wednesday.
Their study tracked 6,583 people in northern California for an average of 36 years starting when they were ages 40 to 45. Their abdominal size was measured
at the outset of the study.
A total of 1,049 of them -- nearly 16 percent -- went on to develop Alzheimer's disease or some other form of dementia by the time they reached their 70s.
Those in the upper 20 percent in terms of belly size in middle age were almost three times more likely to develop dementia than those in the bottom 20
percent of belly size, the researchers found.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia among older people, and researchers have been working to understand the causes and risk factors for
the brain disease.
Belly size in middle age was a much better predictor of later development of dementia than looking merely at obesity as shown by a person's body mass index,
a measure of body fat based on height and weight, the researchers said.
"It's not just weight, it's where you carry your weight that is a very important risk factor," said Rachel Whitmer, a research scientist at the Kaiser
Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California, who led the study.
"If you have two people who are both 10 pounds (4.5 kg) overweight, one carries it around the middle and one carries it around the hips, that person who
carries it around the middle needs to know they are at greater risk," Whitmer said in a telephone interview.
Previous research has shown that having a large abdomen in middle age elevates one's risk for diabetes, stroke and heart disease, but the researchers said
this was the first study linking belly fat in middle age to increased risk of dementia.
Having a large belly raised one's risk of dementia regardless of whether the person was of normal weight overall, overweight or obese, and regardless of
health conditions such as diabetes, stroke and cardiovascular disease, according to the study published in the journal Neurology.
Whitmer said research is needed to reveal the underlying mechanisms linking abdominal size to eventual dementia risk.
"We're sort of at the beginning of understanding the clinical effects of these byproducts of fat," Whitmer said. "But there is evidence from the molecular
level, from animal models, and from population studies that it could have a negative effect on the brain."
Measuring abdomen size in the elderly may not be as valuable an indicator of dementia risk because people as they age naturally are apt to lose muscle and
bone mass and gain belly size, Whitmer said.
Hormone therapy ups breast cancer recurrence risk:
March 26 2008
Hormone replacement therapy, which is known to increase the risk of breast cancer, also appears to make it more likely a tumor will return in women who have
had the disease, researchers said on Tuesday.
Women who had earlier had breast cancer were 14 percent more likely to get it again if they used hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, researchers said in the
U.S. Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
"The results ... indicate a substantial risk for a new breast cancer event among breast cancer survivors using hormone-replacement therapy," wrote researcher
Lars Holmberg and colleagues at Kings College London.
They followed for four years or longer 442 mostly Scandinavian women who had had breast cancer, half of whom had received HRT.
The women were part of a trial stopped in 2003 after concerns about the increased risk of breast cancer recurring for women on hormone therapy.
Volunteers who had received HRT got breast cancer again more than twice as often as women in the other group, amounting to an overall increased risk of 14
percent, the researchers said.
"Our results further suggest that hormone therapy not only induces and promotes breast cancer but may also stimulate the growth of tumor microdeposits in
breast cancer survivors," they wrote.
HRT was popular among menopausal women until 2002, when a major study found that it could raise the risk not only of breast and ovarian cancer, but also
strokes and other serious conditions.
That study caused millions of women to abandon HRT and hit shares in makers of hormone therapies such as Wyeth.
Doctors have since stressed that younger women who need HRT drugs to relieve serious menopause symptoms such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness should still
consider taking them because lower-dose formulations are now available and doctors know to prescribe them for short periods of time.
Data on hormone-replacement therapy and breast cancer recurrence have been sparse until now, other researchers said.
"It seems that harmful side effects of HRT have finally been demonstrated," Kathy Pritchard of the Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Centre in Toronto, who was not
involved in the study, wrote in an editorial in the same journal.
Death more common in baby boys than girls
March 25 2008
Infant boys are more likely to die than infant girls in industrialized countries, although the disparity has narrowed since the 1970s, U.S. researchers said
on Monday.
Mortality data spanning 15 countries -- 11 in Europe plus Canada, the United States, Japan and Australia -- showed this gap was at its widest in 1970 when
boys had about a 30 percent higher chance than girls to die by age 1, the researchers said.
In the past three decades, the gap has closed a bit, with boys this decade having roughly a 20 percent higher chance of death by age 1 than girls, according
to Eileen Crimmins of the University of Southern California, one of the researchers.
This narrowing has occurred due to medical practices that seem to have helped more infant boys survive, including more Caesarean sections and intensive care
units for premature babies, the researchers said.
The study found that during the past century, as infant mortality dropped in these countries, its primary causes switched from infectious ailments such as
diarrheal diseases to congenital conditions and complication tied to childbirth and premature delivery.
Boys are 60 percent more likely than girls to be born prematurely and to have conditions tied to pre-term birth such as neonatal respiratory distress
syndrome, a condition that makes it difficult for a baby to breathe, the researchers said. This syndrome can occur in infants whose lungs have not yet fully
developed.
Infant boys also face a higher risk of birth injury and mortality due to their larger body and head size, they said.
Crimmins said higher mortality rates among men often are attributed to their riskier behavior such as smoking or violent acts. But behavior is replaced by
biological explanations among infants, she added.
"Males and females can have very different mortality at an age when behavior is not a factor," Crimmins said in a telephone interview. "We tend to think that
males have higher mortality at all ages because they behave worse, basically. But this (infant mortality) is a case where they don't behave any
differently."
"It was so large, so consistent across so many countries, and it couldn't be explained by behavior," Crimmins added.
The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Miami doctor breaks new ground in cancer surgery
March 25 2008
Dr. Tomoaki Kato had to remove a lot more than a cancerous tumor during an unprecedented operation on a 63-year-old Florida woman earlier this month.
To get to the tumor, which was buried deep in Brooke Zepp's abdomen and threatened to kill her within months, the organ transplant specialist said he first
had to remove her stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver and small and large intestines.
The organs were chilled and preserved outside Zepp's body during a painstaking 15-hour operation at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical
Center.
They were re-implanted in their normal position after the tumor -- which was about 2 inches in diameter and wrapped around Zepp's aorta and the base of two
other arteries -- was removed.
Kato said that never before have six organs been removed from a patient's abdomen to allow doctors to go after a malignant growth previously considered
inoperable because of its location.
"There's nothing really simple here," Kato, who trained as a surgeon at Osaka University in Japan, told Reuters on Monday. "I don't want to say acrobatic but
it's kind of, in a way. It's a very tricky operation.
"We've done pieces of this surgery many times but not the whole thing like this," said the 11-year veteran of the University of Miami Transplant Institute
who led a team of doctors that operated on Zepp.
Zepp was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. But Kato said the type of surgery he performed on March 4 ultimately could benefit people with
more common diseases.
"There might be a lot of applications," he said.
During the operation, Zepp, who was expected to be discharged from her Miami hospital this week, had many blood vessels replaced with artificial ones made of
Gore-Tex.
"She came to me out of desperation,' Kato said. "I'm really glad it worked out well."
Quarter of teen girls have sex-related disease
March 12 2008
More than one in four U.S. teen girls is infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease, and the rate is highest among blacks, the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.
An estimated 3.2 million U.S. girls ages 14 and 19 -- about 26 percent of that age group -- have a sexually transmitted infection such as the human
papillomavirus or HPV, chlamydia, genital herpes or trichomoniasis, the CDC said.
Forty-eight percent of black teen-age girls were infected, compared to 20 percent of whites and 20 percent of Mexican American girls. The report did not give
data on the broader U.S. Hispanic population.
"What we found is alarming," the CDC's Dr. Sara Forhan, who led the study, told reporters. "This means that far too many young women are at risk for the
serious health effects of untreated STDs, including infertility and cervical cancer."
Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention, said a complex mix of factors is to blame for the higher rates among black girls,
including the overall higher presence of sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs, in the broader black community.
"Therefore, for any given sex act with any given partner, a person who's not infected has a greater risk of coming into contact with infection and getting
infected," Douglas said.
The CDC said the rate of STD infection among U.S. teen girls might be higher than the study indicates because it did not look at syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV
infection, but said these generally are uncommon in girls this age.
The CDC said the report, released at a meeting in Chicago, was the first to gauge combined rates of common STDs in female adolescents, giving the best data
to date.
MULTIPLE INFECTIONS
Among girls who had an STD, 15 percent had more than one. About half reported ever having had sex, and among those girls, 40 percent had at least one STD. Of
girls who had just one lifetime sexual partner, 20 percent had at least one STD.
HPV, which can cause genital warts and cervical cancer, was the most common infection, seen in 18 percent of the girls. The CDC said this indicates teen
girls, even those with few lifetime sexual partners, are at high risk for HPV infection.
CDC officials urge girls and women ages 11 to 26 who have not been vaccinated against HPV or who have not completed the full series of shots be fully
vaccinated against the virus.
The next most common infection was chlamydia, caused by a bacterium that can damage a woman's reproductive organs. It was seen in 4 percent of the girls.
Untreated infection can spread into the uterus or fallopian tubes and cause pelvic inflammatory disease. It also raises risk for infertility.
The CDC urges yearly chlamydia screening for sexually active women under age of 25.
Trichomoniasis, caused by a single-celled parasite, was seen in about 3 percent of the girls. Women with trichomoniasis have vaginal itching and
discharge.
About 2 percent of girls were infected with herpes simplex virus type 2, which causes most cases of genital herpes.
The findings were based on data from 838 girls who took part in a nationally representative health survey in 2003 and 2004. They were tested for various
STDs.
If both parents have Alzheimer's, your risk soars
March 11 2008
If both your parents have Alzheimer's disease, you probably are more much likely than other people to get it, researchers said on Monday.
Their study focused on 111 families in which both parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia among the elderly, and
assessed the risk for developing it among the offspring.
The parents had 297 children who lived into adulthood. Of the 98 men and women who were at least 70 years old, 41 of them -- about 42 percent -- developed
Alzheimer's disease, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found.
"That's greater than you would expect in the general population in that age group," Dr. Thomas Bird, one of the researchers, said in a telephone
interview.
In the general population, risk for the disease begins to rise at about age 65, with the number of people developing the disease doubling every five years
beyond that, experts say.
But about two-thirds of the adult offspring in the study still had not reached age 70. Counting all 297 of these adult offspring regardless of age, 23
percent already had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, with the disease diagnosed on average at age 66, the researchers found.
Bird said that compares to the roughly one in 10 chance that the average person will develop the disease.
"I think it confirms that there's a strong genetic component in the disease and that's not a surprise," said Bird, whose study was published in the Archives
of Neurology.
Scientists do not yet fully understand the causes of Alzheimer's disease, although genetics plays an important role. There is no cure.
Bird said there is only one gene, known as ApoE, that is generally agreed among researchers as a risk factor for the disease but there likely are many
more.
The ApoE gene is involved in making a substance in the body that helps carry cholesterol in the bloodstream and the gene seems to influence the age of onset
of Alzheimer's.
The researchers have been doing the study for about two decades and intend to continue for at least another decade.
"The numbers will be interesting to follow as they get older and older," Bird said.
Bird said the study is not examining the Alzheimer's risk for people who have one but not two parents who develop the disease.
In order to confirm that both parents actually had Alzheimer's, the researchers reviewed the medical records and in many cases the brain autopsies of those
who had died, and tried to meet in person to assess those who still living.
In people with Alzheimer's disease, healthy brain tissue degenerates, causing an inexorable decline in memory and mental abilities. The average length of
time from diagnosis to death is about eight years.
Are fat moms to blame for fat kids? Answer unclear
March 11 2008
British researchers who tried to show why overweight mothers tend to have overweight children said on Monday they had filled in one small piece of the
puzzle.
Their reassuring finding: women who are too fat when pregnant are probably not somehow driving the obesity epidemic by programming their children to be
fat.
But there is a strong link between overweight mothers and overweight children that still needs to be explained, Debbie Lawlor of Britain's University of
Bristol and colleagues said.
Lawlor's team looked at the developmental overnutrition hypothesis -- the idea that if a woman is overweight during pregnancy, the higher levels of sugar and
fatty acids in her blood would affect the developing fetus, dooming or at least predisposing the child to poor appetite control and a slower
metabolism.
"The offspring of these mothers would be expected to be programmed to become more obese themselves," Lawlor's team wrote in their report, published in the
Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.
They studied 4,091 mothers, their children born in 1991-1992 and the fathers of these children. They also studied the DNA of everyone, height, weight and
body mass index, which is a measurement of obesity, as well as smoking, education and other factors.
They did find that if a child became overweight by age 9 or 11, the mother was more likely to have been overweight or obese than was the father.
Then they looked at one gene that may explain this association -- the "fat mass and obesity associated," or FTO gene. FTO has been shown to predispose people
to type 2 diabetes if they are overweight.
They found that people with certain variants of FTO are more likely to become overweight. Inheritance from the mother appeared to have a stronger effect,
although why was not clear.
"At this stage, the exact mechanisms by which FTO results in increased BMI are not known. Consequently, we cannot discount it having an effect via dietary
and physical activity behaviors," Lawlor's team wrote in the report, available online
What they did conclude was that obese mothers are unlikely to be driving a growing obesity epidemic by having babies who are metabolically programmed to get
fat as they get older.
But mothers are somehow involved in other ways, they added.
In a commentary, Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health said the study was unable to disprove the overnutrition hypothesis.
Hu said the obesity epidemic is clearly alarming and other researchers should be doing studies like Lawlor's to make sure that a "vicious cycle" of obese
mothers, children and thus grandchildren is not somehow causing it.
Telling smokers "age" of lungs helps them quit
March 07 2008
Smokers are more likely to kick the habit if they are told how "old" their lungs are, a British study found on Friday.
The concept of lung age -- measured by comparing a smoker's lungs to the age of a healthy person whose lungs function the same -- has helped patients better
understand how smoking damages health, researchers had already found.
But that information is also effective in convincing smokers to quit, said Gary Parkes, a family physician in Hertfordshire outside London, who led the study
published in the British Medical Journal.
"Telling smokers their lung age significantly improves the likelihood of them quitting smoking," Parkes and his colleagues wrote.
Smoking kills about four million people each year, according to the World Health Organization. Tobacco is highly addictive and the leading preventable cause
of both cancer and heart disease.
The study in five general medical practices outside London involved 561 long-term smokers older than 35 and began with a simple test to record the volume and
rate at which the volunteers exhaled air from the lungs.
One group received no detailed information about their results while the other people were given their lung age, shown a diagram of how smoking ages the
lungs and told that quitting would slow the rate of damage.
Everyone was also strongly encouraged to quit and offered help to do so. One year later, saliva tests showed that 13 percent of the smokers told their lung
age had quit while only 6 percent of people in the other group had stopped.
"Anybody who had good, understandable information seemed more inclined to give up," Parkes said. "The reason may be people had dreaded the worst and realized
it was still worthwhile giving up."
The study counters research showing such health information does not prod them to quit and underscores the benefits of early screening because 16 percent of
the people in the study had undiagnosed emphysema, Parkes said.
Giving people this kind of information could represent a cheap and easy way to get people to stop smoking and reduce smoking-related health problems that are
putting pressure on health systems to treat.
"The cost, if you like, is certainly within the economic framework of a good deal," Parkes said.
Soldiers show mental strain from combat tours
March 07 2008
More than a quarter of U.S. soldiers on their third or fourth tours in Iraq suffer mental health problems partly because troops are not getting enough time
at home between deployments, the Army said on Thursday.
Overall, about 17.9 percent of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had mental health problems in 2007, according to an annual Army survey. That is slightly
below the 2006 figure of 19.1 percent but relatively consistent with previous years.
But the incidence of mental health problems for soldiers in war zones climbs significantly among troops returning for a third and fourth combat tour, the
survey showed.
Among noncommissioned officers, for example, 27.2 percent on their third and fourth tours suffered mental health problems in 2007. That compares with 18.5
percent for those low-ranking officers on their second tours and 11.9 percent of those on their first tours, the Army said.
"Soldiers are not resetting entirely before they get back into theater," said Lt. Col. Paul Bliese, who led the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team survey for
2007.
By "resetting" Bliese meant soldiers are not getting enough time to recover from the trauma of duty in a war zone.
"They're not having the opportunity, and we bring this up in the report, to completely recover from previous deployment and then go back into
theater."
Bliese attributed the problem to the relatively short "dwell time" -- the period a soldier has at home between deployments.
Soldiers now have only 12 months at home before their next deployment. The Army's goal is to give soldiers three years at home for every one year deployed,
but officials admit that is not realistic given current combat requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
PERSONAL PROBLEMS
Short dwell times helped the Pentagon execute President George W. Bush's troop "surge" last year that boosted troop levels in Iraq to 160,000 and keep about
28,000 troops in Afghanistan.
It also allowed the Pentagon to extend all Army deployments in the Middle East to 15 months from 12, a move needed to sustain that "surge" of forces in Iraq
last year.
While those steps helped improve security in Iraq, the survey shows they also increased stress on an already strained force and seemed to contribute to work
and personal problems.
"We see this multiple deployment effect for the mental health problems. We see a similar pattern for morale. We see some of the same reporting for job-
related problems," Bliese said.
The military has struggled to meet troops' medical needs -- both mental and physical. The Pentagon has been trying to reform the health system since a
Washington Post report last year that wounded troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan faced neglect at Walter Reed, the premier military hospital.
The 2007 Army mental health study surveyed 2,295 soldiers in Iraq and 699 in Afghanistan.
Soldiers in 2007 reported more difficulty accessing behavioral health services than in previous years despite the Army's year-long effort to hire more health
professionals.
Part of the problem is linked to higher troop numbers in the war zones, said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatrist and consultant to the Army Surgeon
General.
In 2007, there was one practitioner for every 734 soldiers compared with one per 658 soldiers in 2006, Ritchie said.
The problem is also related to the U.S. military's decision to push its soldiers farther away from bases, where many medical services are housed, so that
they can work with local security personnel and interact with the community.
The Army is trying to hire 275 additional mental health professionals from the civilian sector in the United States plus others in Europe and Korea. A tight
labor market and difficulty getting civilian practitioners into the war zones has hurt the effort, Ritchie said.
Tobacco poses threat to moms in developing world
February 29 2008
Pregnant women's exposure to tobacco in developing countries is growing at an alarming rate, U.S. government researchers said on Thursday.
Women in developing countries and their children are increasingly breathing secondhand smoke in their homes, they said, and many are beginning to experiment with smoking, raising the risk of cancer, heart disease and other ills not only for themselves but also for their children.
"Pregnant women's tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke threaten to impede or reverse ongoing efforts to improve maternal and child health in the developing world," said Dr. Michele Bloch of the National Cancer Institute's Tobacco Control Research Branch, whose study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.
The study is the first to examine pregnant women's tobacco use, exposure to secondhand smoke and attitudes about tobacco use in many developing countries.
It involved 8,000 interviews with pregnant women at 10 study sites in nine countries, including Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Brazil and Guatemala in Latin America; Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa; two sites in India and one in Pakistan.
The researchers found as many as 18 percent of pregnant women smoked cigarettes, up to one-third used smokeless tobacco and as many as half regularly breathed in secondhand smoke.
Bloch said these trends represent a major shift among women in developing countries, where historically about 9 percent of women used tobacco, due in part to strong cultural taboos.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death among women in developed countries, and Bloch said the findings offer a chance to intervene before women in the developing world match that grim statistic.
SMOKING "EPIDEMIC"
"Latin America is where the epidemic of cigarette smoking is most advanced, particularly in Uruguay, where 78 percent of all pregnant women said they had ever tried a cigarette," Bloch said in a telephone interview.
In Argentina, she said 75 percent of pregnant women interviewed said they had tried smoking.
All of the Latin American sites studied found large numbers of women who had experimented with smoking. Bloch said she thinks that as more cultural and economic barriers to women's smoking fall, more of these women will become regular smokers.
Smokeless tobacco was used by a third of the women in the Indian state of Orissa, while the highest levels of secondhand smoke exposure were found in Pakistan.
"Young children in Pakistan are frequently or always exposed to tobacco smoke indoors. The numbers were also high in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and one of the Indian states," Bloch said.
Smoking poses serious risks to fetal and maternal health and can result in pre-term delivery, low birth weight and sudden infant death. In adults, smoking can cause lung and other cancers while smokeless tobacco can cause oral and pancreatic cancers.
Secondhand smoke causes cancer in adults and lung problems such as pneumonia in young children.
Work-related stress can kill, study finds
January 23 2008
Work really can kill you, according to a study on Wednesday providing the strongest evidence yet of how on-the-job stress raises the risk of heart disease by
disrupting the body's internal systems.
The findings from a long-running study involving more than 10,000 British civil servants also suggest stress-induced biological changes may play a more
direct role than previously thought, said Tarani Chandola, an epidemiologist at University College London.
"This is the first large-scale population study looking at the effects of stress measured from everyday working life on heart disease," said Chandola, who
led the study. "One of the problems is people have been skeptical whether work stress really affects a person biologically."
Heart disease is the world's leading cause of death. It is caused by fatty deposits that harden and block arteries, high blood pressure which damages blood
vessels, and other factors.
The researchers measured stress among the civil servants by asking questions about their job demands such as how much control they had at work, how often
they took breaks, and how pressed for time they were during the day.
The team conducted seven surveys over a 12-year period and found chronically stressed workers -- people determined to be under severe pressure in the first
two of the surveys -- had a 68 percent higher risk of developing heart disease.
The link was strongest among people under 50, Chandola said.
"This study adds to the evidence that the work stress-coronary heart disease association is causal in nature," the researchers wrote in the European Heart
Journal.
Behavior and biological changes likely explain why stress at work causes heart disease, Chandola said. For one, stressed workers eat unhealthy food, smoke,
drink and skip exercise -- all behaviors linked to heart disease.
In the study, stressed workers also had lowered heart rate variability -- a sign of a poorly-functioning weak heart -- and higher-than-normal levels of
cortisol, a "stress" hormone that provides a burst of energy for a fight-or-flight response.
Too much cortisol circulating in the blood stream can damage blood vessels and the heart, Chandola said.
"If you are constantly stressed out these biological stress systems become abnormal," Chandola said.
6 August 2010 Minister Jean Oghassabian informed President Michel Suleiman on Friday about the talks he held in Damascus at the head of a Lebanese delegation the day before.
Oghassabian also told LBC TV network that he discussed with Syrian officials a new vision to improve the five official border crossings between Lebanon and Syria.
6 August 2010 The National Liberal Party of MP Dori Chamoun on Friday told Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ahead of a press conference scheduled for later Friday to "take the path of justice."
In a statement following its weekly meeting under Chamoun, the NLP hailed the Lebanese army for facing up to Israeli troops.
6 August 2010 Lebanese troops overnight went on alert again near the border village of Kfar Kila after a number of Israeli soldiers deployed in the opposite side.
Local media on Friday said no shooting incidents were reported at Fatima border crossing during the brief tension.
6 August 2010 Israel on Friday demanded the dismissal or trial of the Lebanese army officer who opened fire at Israeli soldiers in Tuesday's deadly tree-pruning operation that left dead and wounded on sides of the Lebanon-Israel border.
Among the dead were a senior Israeli officer and two Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist.
6 August 2010 Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare has reportedly said that charges facing suspects in the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri are not based on conclusive evidence.
As-Safir newspaper on Friday said Bellemare made the revelations before diplomats at the United Nations.
5 August 2010 Speaker Nabih Berri urged all Lebanese sides on Thursday to cooperate to win the media, psychological and intelligence war launched by Israel against Lebanon.
"Israel is seeking to transfer tensions and the psychological and media war not just to Lebanon and Syria but also across the region to weaken Turkey and threaten Iran."
