Vitamin pills don’t cut lung cancer risk: study
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People who take vitamin supplements are just as likely as those who don’t to develop lung cancer, and vitamin E supplements may actually slightly raise the risk, researchers said on Friday.
Their study involved 77,721 people in Washington state ages 50 to 76, tracking their use over the prior decade of supplemental multivitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E and folate to see if this would offer protection from lung cancer.
None of the vitamins looked at in the study was tied to a reduced risk of lung cancer. In fact, people who took high doses of vitamin E, especially smokers, had a small but statistically significant elevated risk, the researchers said.
Effects of childhood abuse last a lifetime: study
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Older people who experienced sexual or physical abuse as children suffer from worse mental and physical health than their peers who weren’t abused, Australian researchers report.
“The effects of childhood abuse appear to last a lifetime,” Dr. Brian Draper of the University of New South Wales in Sydney and colleagues write. “Further research is required to improve understanding of the pathways that lead to such deleterious outcomes and ways to minimize its late-life effects.”
Studies have linked abuse in childhood to impaired physical and mental health in a person’s adult years, but there is little information on how a history of abuse might affect older people, explain Draper and colleagues in a report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Trawl of two groups’ genes shows differences
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A trawl through the genes of white people in Utah and Yoruba people in Nigeria shows a significant number of differences that can explain why some groups respond differently to drugs than others.
The findings also suggest that genes underlie some susceptibility to diseases in a general population, the researchers report in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
What the study does not show, the researchers stress, is that any of these differences are necessarily racial. But they are a first step toward a day when medical care may be tailored not only for individuals, but for entire groups.
Daily asthma meds keep lungs in play during exercise
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Taking asthma medication daily can help prevent the tightening of the airways or “bronchoconstriction” with physical exertion that affects many children with asthma, a new study from Poland confirms.
Dr. Iwona Stelmach of N. Copernicus Hospital in Lodz and colleagues found that of the four treatments they evaluated, the two including the anti-asthma drug montelukast (Singulair) were the most effective, but all were better than placebo.
“Control of childhood asthma with exercise-induced bronchoconstriction can be obtained by using regular controller treatment,” Stelmach and colleagues write in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Many can return to sport after hamstring surgery
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Surgical repair of a ruptured hamstring offers the most promise for individuals who want to return to high or full activity levels, researchers report.
Individuals who have suffered a hamstring detachment may “feel a pop in the buttock area that is followed by bruising over the posterior thigh and knee,” Dr. Christopher M. Larson told Reuters Health.
Rehabilitation alone may result in persistent weakness, poor leg control, and difficulty returning to higher levels of activity. By contrast, surgery results in improved strength and a high return to sports, said Larson, of the Minnesota Sports Medicine Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Fellowship, in Eden Prairie.
Study finds degenerative eye disease raises stroke risk
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People with age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of severe vision loss, have double the usual risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke, Australian researchers reported on Thursday.
They found that for people under the age of 75 when the study began, those who developed early age-related macular degeneration had twice the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke within the next decade.
People with the late stage of the incurable disease at the start of the study had five times the risk of dying from a heart attack, and 10 times the risk of dying from a stroke, Paul Mitchell of the Centre for Vision Research at the University of Sydney and colleagues found.
Severe anemia in African kids has multiple causes
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Severe anemia is associated with considerable illness and death in African children and the results of new study conducted in Malawi indicate that multiple causes are to blame. The information from this study could lead to new ways to prevent and treat severe anemia in African children, researchers say.
Interestingly, folate and iron deficiencies, which are widely believed to be the most common causes of severe anemia in African children, were actually not prominent causes, according to Dr. Job C. J. Calis, from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and colleagues.
They examined the causes of anemia by conducting a case-control study of 381 severely anemic preschool-age children and 757 children without anemia. The subjects were drawn from both urban and rural settings in Malawi.
Test helps diabetics detect nerve trouble
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The indicator plaster neuropad, or IPN, is a new test that can help diabetic patients identify nerve damage brought on by diabetes, clinicians report in the journal Diabetes Care.
“The IPN can be performed by the patient at home in 10 minutes, and the result can be offered to the doctor in the next visit,” Dr. Nicholas Tentolouris from Athens University Medical School in Greece told Reuters Health.
“The test offers the opportunity to the patients to participate actively in the prevention of the devastating complications related to diabetic foot problems,” he added.
Real-time Imaging Device May Improve Surgery for Congenital Colon Disease
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Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are developing a spectral imaging system that could result in shorter operating times for infants undergoing surgery for Hirschsprung’s disease, according to a mouse study reported in the Journal of Biophotonics.
The study documents that in addition to its diagnostic potential, spectral imaging may provide an “optical biopsy,” allowing precise localization of a needed intervention.
Spectral imaging is based on the fact that light reflected from a target can be captured and measured by highly sensitive equipment to develop a characteristic “signature” based on wavelength. In this study, the colon tissue of six mice with the equivalent of Hirschsprung’s disease was analyzed and compared to that of controls. With repeated measurements and calculations, unique signatures for normal tissue and for diseased tissue emerged.
Screening probably caused cystic fibrosis drop
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Massachusetts researchers have seen a dramatic statewide drop in the number of newborns with cystic fibrosis, and said on Wednesday the decline may be due to a national effort to screen for the genetic disease.
Cystic fibrosis or CF, which produces a thicker-than-normal mucus that clogs the lungs and other organs, affects about 30,000 children in the United States each year, or 70,000 worldwide, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
CT scans lower risk of unnecessary appendix surgery
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The chance of having an appendix removed unnecessarily has plummeted since 1996 in the United States, possibly because more doctors are using CT scans to confirm appendicitis diagnoses, researchers said on Wednesday.
The likelihood of an unnecessary appendectomy went from 24 percent in 1996 down to 3 percent in 2006, according to a team of researchers led by Dr. Steven Raman at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Clot removal device improves stroke outcome
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A device that suctions out blood clots in the brain causing acute stroke proved safe and effective and was associated with improved neurological outcome on all measures, even when used eight hours after the onset of the stroke, according to results of a study.
The mechanical device, known as the Penumbra System and marketed by Penumbra, Inc., of San Leandro, California, helped improve blood flow to the brain in 82 percent of 125 patients studied.
A favorable neurological outcome at 30 days occurred in roughly 42 percent of patients.
U of Minn researchers discover genetic cancer link between humans and dogs
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Cancer researchers at the University of Minnesota and North Carolina State University have found that humans and dogs share more than friendship and companionship – they also share the same genetic basis for certain types of cancer. Furthermore, the researchers say that because of the way the genomes have evolved, getting cancer may be inevitable for some humans and dogs.
Jaime Modiano, V.M.D., Ph.D., University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and Cancer Center, and Matthew Breen, Ph.D., North Carolina State University’s Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research, collaborated on this research study. Their findings are published in the current issue of the journal Chromosome Research, a special edition on comparative cytogenetics and genomics research by scientists from around the world.
Does gingko biloba affect memory?
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Taking the supplement ginkgo biloba had no clear-cut benefit on the risk of developing memory problems, according to a study published in the February 27, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The three-year study involved 118 people age 85 and older with no memory problems. Half of the participants took ginkgo biloba extract three times a day and half took a placebo. During the study, 21 people developed mild memory problems, or questionable dementia: 14 of those took the placebo and seven took the ginkgo extract. Although there was a trend favoring ginkgo, the difference between those who took gingko versus the placebo was not statistically significant.
The researchers made an interesting observation when they examined the data at the end of the trial. Taking into account whether people followed directions in taking the study pills, they found that people who reliably took the supplement had a 68 percent lower risk of developing mild memory problems than those who took the placebo. Without further study, it is unclear if this difference is real or just a chance occurrence.
Comparison of antipsychotic treatments in adolescents with schizophrenia
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There is a wealth of scientific literature available on the treatment of adults diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, there is a paucity of data to guide the treatment of children and adolescents with schizophrenia. “Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved the use of aripiprazole and risperidone for adolescents with schizophrenia, few controlled data are available to help guide clinicians regarding the management of children and adolescents with schizophrenia who fail to respond to these standard ‘first-line’ antipsychotic treatments,” according to Dr. Sanjiv Kumra. Dr. Kumra is one of the authors of a new study to be published in the March 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, which was undertaken to help fill this gap in knowledge.
The authors recruited 39 children, 10-18 years of age, who had already failed to respond to at least two antipsychotic treatments, to participate in a 12-week, double-blind, randomized study – the most rigorous of clinical trial designs. After initial assessments, the patients received treatment with either clozapine or “high-dose” olanzapine (doses that exceed the package insert recommendations) and were monitored for improvement in their symptoms.
