Childhood growth affects mid-life physical ability
People who hit key developmental milestones on time in early childhood may have a lower risk of becoming disabled in later life, a new study suggests.
Dr. Diana Kuh of the Royal Free and University College London Medical School and associates had previously shown that middle-age subjects who were healthier, wealthier and more active than their peers also fared better on two tests of physical performance known to predict the risk of becoming frail and disabled. The tests, one of a person’s ability to rise from sitting to a standing position and the other of how well a person can balance while standing, are considered accurate indications of overall physical function, as well as “underlying biologic aging processes,” Kuh and her team note in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Melanoma May Be Over-Diagnosed
Exercise Instructor Back on the Job Five Days After Minimally Invasive Lung Cancer Surgery
Diagnosed with a carcinoid tumor, Barbara Wolfe underwent surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to have the upper lobe of her right lung and the lymph nodes in her chest removed. But the 54-year-old exercise instructor lost little time before going back to work, thanks to the minimally invasive procedure performed by thoracic surgeon Robert McKenna Jr., M.D.
“I went home (from the hospital) the next day, and the fifth day I was back at the gym teaching my Power Pump class with 50 people,” says the Camarillo resident, referring to an aerobic workout that employs weights, bands and a step. A fitness instructor for nearly 25 years, she did not use the weights in that first workout. Even so, her boss, who was teaching another class nearby, quickly intervened to be sure she was really OK.
Researchers isolate rare cancer stem cells that cause leukemia
Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston and their colleagues have isolated rare cancer stem cells that cause leukemia in a mouse model of the human disease.
The leukemia stem cells isolated proved to be surprisingly different from normal blood stem cells—a finding that may be good news for developing a drug that selectively targets them.
Cancer stem cells are self-renewing cells that are likely responsible for maintaining or spreading a cancer, and may be the most relevant targets for cancer therapy. The discovery provides answers to the longstanding questions of whether cancer stem cells must be similar to normal stem cells, and what type of cell first becomes abnormal in leukemia, the most common form of cancer in childhood. The journal Nature has posted the study’s findings online in advance of print publication.
It’s never too late to start exercising!
According to German researchers it’s never too late to start exercising and even long time couch potatoes can reduce their risk of heart disease, by just getting off the sofa and going for a walk.
Researchers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany say this need not entail strenuous activity such as a work out at the gym, and just walking can make a difference.
Dr. Dietrich Rothenbacher of the University of Heidelberg says people who change their physical activity patterns in late adult life reduce their risk for coronary heart disease.
Indoor pools may contribute to high asthma rates
Children who live in regions with more indoor swimming pools are more likely to have asthma, a new European study shows.
The findings support the “pool chlorine hypothesis,” which proposes that exposure to this toxic chemical and its byproducts may play at least some role in the development of the disease, Drs. Alfred Bernard and M. Nickmilder of the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels conclude.
Recent studies have linked frequent pool visits to a greater risk of asthma, especially among young children, the researchers note in their report, published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. And chlorine gas in the indoor pool environment has become “one of the most concentrated air pollutants to which children are exposed,” they add.
British American Tobacco and cigarette smuggling in China
New research based on the internal documents of one of the world’s biggest tobacco companies, British American Tobacco (BAT), suggests that it been complicit in the smuggling of tobacco into China and has benefited from this illicit trade.
Millions of BAT internal documents were made publicly available following a court case in the USA. The researchers, Dr. Kelley Lee of the London School and Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Dr. Jeff Collin of the University of Edinburgh, have analysed documents, available via the company’s Guildford Depository, and online from the BAT Document Archive. In their paper, ‘Key to the future’: British American Tobacco and cigarette smuggling in China, which is published in the journal PLoS Mecidine, they present evidence that smuggling has been strategically critical to BAT’s efforts to penetrate the Chinese market.
