Vitamin pills don’t cut lung cancer risk: study
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Test helps diabetics detect nerve trouble
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.
Severe anemia in African kids has multiple causes
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.
Real-time Imaging Device May Improve Surgery for Congenital Colon Disease
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.
