Western diet ups breast cancer risk among Chinese
Post-menopausal Chinese women who eat a Western-style diet heavy in meat and sweets face a higher risk of breast cancer than their counterparts who stick to a typical Chinese diet loaded with vegetables and soy, a study found.
The researchers, writing on Tuesday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, tracked about 3,000 women in Shanghai, about half of whom were diagnosed with breast cancer.
Both types of diabetes raise stroke risk: study
New research indicates that both insulin-dependent (type 1) diabetes and non-insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes is associated with substantially increased risks of stroke overall, and most subtypes of stroke.
Strokes occur when the blood flow to the brain stops, causing brain cells to begin dying within minutes. There are two types of strokes. The most frequent kind is called ischemic stroke and is triggered by a blood clot that blocks a blood vessel in the brain. Hemorrhagic stroke is triggered when a blood vessel breaks and bleeds into the brain.
Internet blamed for Shanghai teen pregnancies
Nearly half of the pregnant teens in China’s financial hub, Shanghai, met their partners on the Internet, state media said on Tuesday.
Zhang Zhengrong, a doctor who oversees the city’s first-aid hotline for pregnant teens, said 46 percent of the more than 20,000 teenage girls who called the hotline over the past two years said they had had sex with boys they met on the Internet.
Your Spouse Can Pass on Good Health Habits
Being a good role model can truly help a spouse to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
When one spouse quits smoking or drinking, gets a cholesterol screening or rolls up a sleeve for a flu shot, the other spouse is more likely to follow suit, according to a new study published in the journal Health Services Research.
Modified Herpes Virus Keeps Arteries “Free-flowing” Following Procedures
A genetically engineered herpes simplex virus, primarily known for causing cold sores, may help keep arteries “free-flowing” in the weeks following angioplasty or stent placement for patients, according to research published early in the online edition of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
Christopher Skelly, MD, assistant professor of vascular surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and the study’s lead author says, “One of the drawbacks of balloon angioplasty to open blocked arteries and the use of stents to keep them open is that arteries sometimes experience aggravation from the procedure. The balloon angioplasty, in addition to opening the artery can lead to smooth muscle cell proliferation, similar to formation of scar tissue, known as neointimal hyperplasia. This scar tissue can restrict blood flow not long after the procedures, leading to a recurrence of symptoms. A significant number of these cases end up requiring further intervention to address this complication.”
Antibiotics for Children With Urinary Tract Infection Not Associated With Reduced Recurrence Risk
The use of prophylactic antibiotics, which involves daily administration of antibiotics to children after an initial urinary tract infection, is not associated with reduced risk of recurrent urinary tract infections, but is associated with an increased risk of resistant infections, according to a study in the July 11 issue of JAMA.
Estimates of cumulative incidence of UTI in children younger than 6 years (3 percent - 7 percent in girls, 1 percent - 2 percent in boys) suggest that 70,000 to 180,000 of the annual U.S. birth cohort will have experienced a UTI by age 6, according to background information in the article.
“America’s Best Hospitals” Not Always
Heart attack patients admitted to hospitals ranked to be among “America’s Best” by U.S. News & World Report are less likely to die within 30 days than those patients admitted to non-ranked hospitals, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the July 9 Archives of Internal Medicine.
“The rankings, which include many of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, did identify a group of hospitals that was much more likely than non-ranked hospitals to have superb performance on 30-day mortality after acute myocardial infarction,” said corresponding author Harlan M. Krumholz, M.D., The Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine. “But our study also shows that not all ranked hospitals had outstanding performance and that many non-ranked hospitals performed well.”
