Complete control - new guidlines for asthmatics
A Mayo Clinic allergist and his colleagues have announced that they are revising the old classification of asthma patients by disease severity to determine treatment, and moving to a new expectation for all asthma patients: excellent symptom control.
Every year, nearly 500,000 Americans with asthma are hospitalized, and more than 4,000 die from disease-related causes.
Weight loss lowers hormone levels in obese kids
A condition involving abnormally high levels of androgens (steroid hormones) known in medical circles as “hyperandrogenemia” starts early in obese children, a study shows, possibly placing them at increased risk for the metabolic syndrome—a cluster of conditions such as high blood pressure and high blood sugar levels that raise the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
The study also shows that weight loss leads to decreasing androgen levels. Weight loss is the “therapy of choice” for obese children with elevated androgen levels, said Dr. Thomas Reinehr.
Drinking during pregnancy may damage baby’s vision
Infants whose mothers regularly drank during pregnancy may show poor vision by the age of 6 months, according to a new study.
Prenatal alcohol exposure is known to put babies at risk of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), a cluster of problems such as poor growth, delayed mental development and unusual facial features. Because it’s unclear how much alcohol is needed to put the developing fetus at risk, women who are pregnant or might become pregnant are advised to avoid drinking.
Pinworms, an Easily Treated but Persistent Infection
One of the prices of having children is pinworm (Enterobius vermiculari), a small white intestinal parasite that makes the human cecum and appendix its home.
The pinworm is generally innocuous, though insidious and persistent. During the night, while an infected person sleeps, a female pinworm creeps from the anus and deposits eggs on the surrounding skin, perhaps 10,000 of them. Then she dies.
Terminating Unwanted First Pregnancy Doesn’t Add to Risk of Depression
Women who terminate an unwanted first pregnancy are no more likely to develop depression than women who carry unwanted first pregnancies to term.
This finding emerged from a survey of 1,247 American women who had unwanted first pregnancies, reported Nancy Felipe Russo, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at Arizona State, and Sarah Schmiege, Ph.D., of the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Mutant Gene Linked to Increased Risk of Breast Cancer
Close relatives of women with a faulty version of the CHEK2 gene as well as bilateral breast cancer are at increased risk for breast tumors of their own, British researchers have reported.
First-degree female relatives of women with bilateral breast cancer and a normal CHEK2 gene are already at high cumulative risk of breast cancer - 23.8% by age 80 compared with an expected cumulative risk of 7.9% for the population as a whole, according to Nicola Johnson, D.Phil., of the Institute of Cancer Research here.
Cruciferous Vegetables May Protect Some Against Lung Cancer
Eating cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage and broccoli might help protect against lung cancer—if the right genes go with them—researches here reported today.
In persons with inactive alleles of the genes for glutathione-S-transferase enzymes, those who ate cruciferous vegetables on a weekly basis decreased their risk of lung cancer by 72% compared with those who rarely ate cruciferous vegetables.
