Childhood obesity risk halved with just 15 minutes of exercise a day
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Just 15 minutes of exercise a day could be enough for children to keep their weight at healthy levels, a joint UK/US study has found.
The study, conducted by the Universities of Bristol and Bath and their colleagues in the US, found that short bursts of daily exercise seemed to be best at cutting obesity.
Dutch hope to invent foods that prevent obesity
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Scientists in the Netherlands are developing a new generation of foods that can help prevent obesity by making people eat less, a research institute said on Thursday.
The Top Institute Food and Nutrition (TIFN), funded by the Dutch government and food groups like CSM Anglo-Dutch Unilever, is also developing food ingredients which can stop an obese person from developing diabetes.
Treating low iron boosts women’s mental abilities
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Iron deficiency, even to a moderate degree, can hinder women’s memory and learning—but iron supplements can turn those problems around, a study has found.
Iron is essential for delivering oxygen to cells throughout the body, and iron deficiency is known to impair brain development and learning in babies and children. But women of childbearing age are also at elevated risk of low iron stores, and less is known about the possible cognitive effects in them.
Inhaled steroids do not alter course of COPD
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Inhaled steroid therapy can improve lung function in people with COPD, but after 6 months the decline in lung function resumes, according to a pooled analysis of trial data.
COPD—short for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—is a progressive lung illness caused by smoking that includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. It is characterized by difficulty breathing that is not completely reversible.
Roche says unsure why Japan warned against Tamiflu
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Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG said on Thursday it was unsure why the Japanese government had warned that influenza drug Tamiflu should not be given to teenagers.
No definite link had been established between Tamiflu, seen as effective against a possible pandemic triggered by bird flu, and reports of young people injured by jumping from buildings after taking the drug, Roche spokeswoman Martina Rupp said.
Many still die from “curable” testicular cancer
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The decline in deaths due to testicular cancer seen in the US and Canada over the last three decades has not reached all countries in the Americas and deaths from this relatively rare cancer remain unacceptably high in most Latin American countries, according to a report.
Testicular cancer is “one of the most curable (cancers) if adequate treatment is adopted,” Dr. Paola Bertuccio from Milan’s Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri” noted in an email to Reuters Health.
Schizophrenia may be linked to inflammation: study
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The key to schizophrenia may be found in a gene region thought to play a role in inflammation and autoimmune disorders, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
If confirmed, the finding could lead to a test and possibly new treatments for the mental disorder that affects about 1 percent of the world’s population, researchers said.
Cardiac risk persists long after Hodgkin’s therapy
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The improved prognosis of patients diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease is tempered by the increased risk of cardiovascular disease, a side effect of treatment that can persist for decades.
The risk of a variety of cardiovascular disorders remains up to 5-fold higher for more than 25 years in survivors of this childhood lymphoma, compared with the general population, investigators report in the medical journal “Blood.”
Tamiflu not linked with psychiatric symptoms:Roche
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Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG said on Tuesday new data from the United States and Japan showed there was no established causal link between neuropsychiatric symptoms and its Tamiflu influenza treatment.
Clinical studies have shown similar rates of neurologic and psychiatric events in pediatric patients being treated with Tamiflu compared to those not taking the drug.
High-fat diet may increase breast cancer risk
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A large study of middle-age women with a wide range of fat in their diet shows that eating a high-fat diet raises the risk of developing invasive breast cancer.
The findings, reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, stem from the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, in which 188,736 postmenopausal women reported detailed information on their diet in the mid-1990s.
Training program for depressed moms helps babies
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Infants of depressed mothers show “quite dramatic” increases in positive responses after their mothers complete a 5-week course designed to help them better interpret and respond to infant behavior, even though the course had no apparent effect on depression.
“It was a significant difference and gave us a pretty strong message that it was having a pretty powerful effect,” Dr. Robert Short of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, one of the study’s authors, told Reuters Health.
Male Breast Cancer: Racial Disparities in Treatment and Survival
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A new study shows that among men treated for breast cancer, African-American men are more likely to die of the disease compared with white men. Results of the study are published in the March 20, 2007 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO).
The studies by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center analyzed race and other predictors of treatment and survival among 510 men over 65 diagnosed with stage I-III breast cancer between 1991 and 2002. The researchers found five-year survival rates of approximately 90% among 456 white men and 66% among 34 African-American men.
Animal study links prediabetes and gum disease
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People with “prediabetes” may want to pay close attention to their dental health, if new animal research findings apply to humans.
In experiments with rats, Dutch researchers found that animals with a condition that mimics prediabetes were more susceptible to developing periodontitis, which causes the gums to recede and the bone supporting the teeth to erode.
Simple question gets school children to eat fruit
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Getting children to eat more fruit may be as simple as getting cafeteria workers to use a simple verbal prompt in the lunch line, a study of school lunch programs suggests.
The study found that when cafeteria workers asked elementary school children if they wanted fruit or juice with their lunch, the children usually took one or the other. More importantly, most of the children actually consumed it.
Cannabis: An apology
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Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.
More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction - and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised.
