Low vitamin D may raise respiratory infection risk
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There appears to be an association between low blood levels of vitamin D and the risk of acute respiratory tract infection, Finnish researchers report.
“In our study of 800 young Finnish men, we found that those with low vitamin D levels were more likely to contract respiratory infections than controls,” lead investigator Dr. Ilkka Laaksi told Reuters Health.
Bacteria in newborn airways may raise asthma risk
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Newborns who harbor certain types of bacteria in their throats, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, a common cause of pneumonia, and Haemophilus influenzae, which causes upper respiratory infections, are at increased risk for developing recurrent wheeze or asthma early in life, new research shows.
This finding “opens new perspectives for the understanding and prediction of recurrent wheeze and asthma in young children,” lead author Dr. Hans Bisgaard, from Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, and colleagues conclude in their report in The New England Journal of Medicine for October 11.
Parents enthusiastic about doctor e-mail access
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Parents and pediatricians both seem to benefit from using e-mail for routine questions, Pennsylvania-based researchers report in the October issue of Pediatrics.
“Our study,” Dr. Paul Rosen told Reuters Health, “showed that parents reported a better understanding of their child’s medical tests, an increase in access to care, and improved quality of care by being able to e-mail their doctor.”
Study shows persistent benefits of statin drug
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The heart benefits of taking statin drugs may last for years, even after the drugs are stopped, researchers reported on Wednesday.
Men who took pravastatin for five years had a lower risk of death or heart attack even 10 years after they stopped taking the drug, Ian Ford of the University of Glasgow in Scotland and colleagues found.
Switzerland increases checks for bird flu
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Switzerland is increasing its checks for bird flu around Lake Geneva, Lake Neuchatel and other waterways during the northern hemisphere winter, when the virus generally spreads fastest.
The canton of Vaud, in the French-speaking part of the small Alpine country, issued a statement saying it would boost its surveillance for the virus among wild birds in a one-km perimeter around its major lakes from next week.
High glycemic index diet boosts fatty liver risk
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People who eat lots of high glycemic index (GI) foods not only risk gaining weight, they also run a greater risk of developing a condition that can lead to liver failure and death, finds a new study in mice. The condition is known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
GI refers to how rapidly a food causes blood sugar to rise. High-GI foods, like white bread and potatoes, tend to spur a quick surge in blood sugar, while low-GI foods, such as lentils, soybeans, yogurt and many high-fiber grains, create a more gradual increase in blood sugar.
Medication shows promise as a treatment for alcohol dependence
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Alcohol-dependent patients who received the medication topiramate had fewer heavy drinking days, fewer drinks per day and more days of continuous abstinence than those who received placebo, according to a study in the October 10 issue of JAMA.
According to background information in the article, a previous, shorter trial indicated that topiramate, a medication used in the treatment of seizures, may be beneficial for the treatment of alcohol dependence.
Researchers find evidence linking stress caused by the 9/11 disaster with low birth weight
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Researchers have found evidence of an increase in low birth weights among babies born in and around New York City in the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Writing in the journal Human Reproduction [1], they suggest that stress may have contributed to the effect.
Professor Brenda Eskenazi and colleagues studied data from birth certificates of 1,660,401 babies born in New York between January 1996 and December 2002. They divided the babies into those born in New York City (NYC) – whose mothers would, therefore, have been living closest to the disaster zone – and those born in “upstate” New York, which they defined as anyone living outside NYC, including Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties.
Patients with pneumonia who received pneumococcal vaccine have lower rate of death, ICU admission
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Among patients hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia, those who had previously received the pneumococcal vaccine had a lower risk of death and admission to the intensive care unit than patients who were not vaccinated, according to a report in the Oct. 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Community-acquired pneumonia is a common condition resulting in considerable illness and death, according to background information in the article. A vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae, one of the causes of pneumonia—23-valent polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine (PPV)—has been available since 1983.
Fear of crime may erode physical, mental health
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People who are worried about crime in their neighborhood tend to have worse physical and mental health than their peers who aren’t as concerned about being crime victims, UK researchers report.
“The study highlights the importance of the neighborhood, the local environment for health,” Dr. Mai Stafford of University College London told Reuters Health. “It shows that fear of crime is not just an emotional response.”
Family, neighborhood can affect children’s asthma
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For children with asthma, problems in the family or in the neighborhood may make their condition worse, a new study suggests.
Canadian researchers found that asthma symptoms tended to be more severe among children and teens from dysfunctional families or from neighborhoods with crime problems. They say the findings suggest that improving children’s home life may also help control their asthma.
New cancer drugs could help in autoimmune disease
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A new class of drugs used to treat cancer might be effective at suppressing overactive immune systems in patients with autoimmune diseases like Crohn’s disease, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.
“What we would be proposing would be a therapy that would enhance the body’s own immune system’s ability to regulate itself,” said Wayne Hancock of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, whose study appears in the journal Nature Medicine.
Surgery offers best survival for prostate cancer
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Removal of the prostate gland, a surgical procedure also known as “prostatectomy,” offers longer survival rates than radiation therapy, careful monitoring, or hormone therapy for men with “localized” prostate cancer, a common form of the disease in which the cancer has not yet spread to other organs, new research shows.
“We observed that prostatectomy was associated with the best long term prognosis—in particular, for younger patients and patients with (aggressive) tumors,” senior author Dr. Christine Bouchardy, from Geneva University, Switzerland, told Reuters Health. “We are not very surprised that prostatectomy offers the best chance of cure at long term, but we should wait for results from (clinical) trials to confirm this.”
Control of diabetes may prevent infertility
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A Swedish study indicates that the fertility of women with type 1 diabetes was reduced prior to 1985, but since then is its begun to normalize, if diabetic complications were avoided.
“Stricter metabolic control exercised in the past 20 years may have helped prevent subfertility,” the researchers speculate in the September issue of Diabetes Care.
Living fossils have hot sex
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University of Utah scientists discovered a strange method of reproduction in primitive plants named cycads: The plants heat up and emit a toxic odor to drive pollen-covered insects out of male cycad cones, and then use a milder odor to draw the bugs into female cones so the plants are pollinated.
The unusual form of sexual reproduction used by some species of cycads – primeval plants known as “living fossils” – may represent an intermediate step in the evolution of plant pollination, the researchers report in the Friday, Oct. 5 issue of the journal Science.
