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You are here : 3-RX.com > Home > GeneticsPublic Health

 

Surgery can lower cancer risk in high-risk brca1/2 carriers

Cancer • • Breast Cancer • • Ovarian cancerJan 14 09

Removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes, a surgical procedure referred to as salpingo-oophorectomy, in women who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, can lower their risk of breast cancer by about 50 percent and their risk of ovarian or fallopian tube cancer by roughly 80 percent, suggest the results of a review of 10 published studies.

Prior research has shown that this procedure can help prevent breast, ovarian, and fallopian tube malignancies in these high-risk patients, but the magnitude of the risk reduction was unclear, lead author Dr. Timothy R. Rebbeck, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues explain.

To investigate, the research team searched PubMed, a large medical database, for studies that examined breast or gynecologic cancer outcomes in BRCA mutation carriers who underwent salpingo-oophorectomy. Data from 10 studies were included in the review, also referred to as a meta-analysis.

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Americans spending more on healthcare: report

Public HealthJan 14 09

Americans spent about 40 percent more out of their own pockets for healthcare over the past decade, according to a report in the latest issue of the health policy journal Health Affairs. An increase in chronic conditions, especially diabetes and high blood pressure—not just among the “oldest old” but among baby boomers and older adults—is to blame, researchers say.

“Chronic conditions are more than just a health issue for the elderly. They are a household economics issue for every American,” lead co-author Kathryn Paez said in a statement. “Taking the time and making the effort to prevent diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes will save Americans money and increase their quality of life,” Paez, a research scientist at the Silver Spring, Maryland-based Center for Health Policy and Research, Social and Scientific Systems, added.

Paez and colleagues compared 1996 and 2005 out-of-pocket healthcare costs using data from the national Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which represents 292 million Americans.

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Plan Now to Address Health Effects of Climate Change, Experts Urge

Public HealthJan 14 09

Health care providers and public health authorities should start planning to manage the current and future health risks associated with climate change, reports a special topic section in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

The four articles in the special section, authored by experts in the field, address critical issues in evaluating the likely health impact of climate change in the United States—including steps to anticipate and remediate those risks.

Kristie L. Ebi, Ph.D., M.P.H., of ESS, LLC, Alexandria, Va., discusses public health responses to climate change, including the individuals and agencies responsible for addressing specific types of risks. She highlights the need for coordinated efforts at the local, state, and federal levels to ensure maximum effectiveness, including the ability to identify and rapidly respond to new risks.

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Job Strain Associated With Stroke in Japanese Men

StrokeJan 13 09

Japanese men in high-stress jobs appear to have an increased risk of stroke compared with those in less demanding positions, according to a report in the January 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Stress is considered a risk factor for stroke, according to background information in the article. Several models of job stress have been developed and provide clues as to how occupational factors may be modified to reduce risk. “The job demand–control model is the most often used occupational stress model,” the authors write. “It posits that workers who face high psychological demands in their occupation and have little control over their work (i.e., those who have job strain) are at a greater risk of becoming ill than are workers with low psychological demands and a high degree of control in their occupation (i.e., those with low-strain occupations).”

Akizumi Tsutsumi, M.D., of the University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Fukuoka, Japan, and colleagues studied 6,553 Japanese workers (3,190 men and 3,363 women, age 65 and younger) who completed an initial questionnaire and physical examination between 1992 and 1995. The workers were followed up annually through phone calls, letters and interviews for an average of 11 years.

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Getting Less Sleep Associated With Lower Resistance to Colds

Sleep AidJan 13 09

Individuals who get less than seven hours of sleep per night appear about three times as likely to develop respiratory illness following exposure to a cold virus as those who sleep eight hours or more, according to a report in the January 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Studies have demonstrated that sleep deprivation impairs some immune function, according to background information in the article. Research indicates that those who sleep approximately seven to eight hours per night have the lowest rates of heart disease illness and death. However, there has previously been little direct evidence that poor sleep increases susceptibility to the common cold.

Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and colleagues studied 153 healthy men and women (average age 37) between 2000 and 2004. Participants were interviewed daily over a two-week period, reporting how many hours they slept per night, what percentage of their time in bed was spent asleep (sleep efficiency) and whether they felt rested. They were then quarantined and administered nasal drops containing the common-cold–causing rhinovirus. For five days afterward, the study participants reported any signs and symptoms of illness and had mucus samples collected from their nasal passages for virus cultures; about 28 days later, they submitted a blood sample that was tested for antibody responses to the virus.

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Cell ‘anchors’ required to prevent muscular dystrophy

NeurologyJan 13 09

A protein that was first identified for playing a key role in regulating normal heart rhythms also appears to be significant in helping muscle cells survive the forces of muscle contraction. The clue was a laboratory mouse that seemed to have a form of muscular dystrophy.

A group of proteins called ankyrins, or anchor proteins, were first discovered in human red blood cells by Vann Bennett, M.D. a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology, Biochemistry, and Neurobiology. Ankyrins are a family of proteins that assist in attaching other proteins to the fragile cell membrane, and in the case of red blood cells, this helps cells resist shearing forces when blood is pumped vigorously throughout the body.

Bennett’s team was exploring the function of anchor protein ankyrin-B (ankB) by knocking out gene expression of the gene that makes the protein. They found newborn mice missing ankB had splayed shoulder bones, which stuck out of the animals’ backs like wings, rather than lying flat, a symptom of a muscular problem.

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Alzheimer’s: Who’s Taking Care of the Caregiver?

Brain • • Neurology • • Public HealthJan 13 09

About 300,000 Canadians over 65 suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, and 17% of Canadians have someone with the disease in their family, according to the Alzheimer Society of Canada. People who suffer from Alzheimer’s usually receive long-term help and support from caregivers. But who is taking care of these caregivers? Researchers are finding ways to help caregivers stay mentally and physically healthy, overcome their challenges, and better understand the disease.

Several experts from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) are available to comment on different aspects related to the health issues experienced by caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients on January 13.

Experts:

Preventing distress in Alzheimer’s caregivers

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Protein That Regulates Hormones Critical to Women’s Health Found in Pituitary

Endocrinology • • Gender: FemaleJan 12 09

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have solved the mystery surrounding a “rogue protein” that plays a role in the release of neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain.

The scientists found abundant amounts of the puzzling protein — whose main location and function were unknown until now — in a specific area of the pituitary gland. Like someone at a control knob, the protein may adjust the release of the two hormones that come almost exclusively from the posterior pituitary: oxytocin, which controls many reproductive functions, and vasopressin, which controls fluid balance.

“The findings raise very interesting possibilities for women’s health, in which rising and falling hormone levels play a key role in many biological processes,” says senior author Meyer Jackson, a professor of physiology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). More studies will be needed to better understand the protein, he adds.

The study appears in the Jan. 11 Nature Neuroscience.

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Smoking ups brain-bleed risk with family history

NeurologyJan 09 09

Smokers whose family members have had a type of bleeding stroke are six times more likely to suffer the same fate than people without these risk factors, according to a new study.

The stroke type known as an “aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage”—essentially a burst blood vessel in the brain—runs in families, note Dr. Daniel Woo and others in the medical journal Neurology, and they wanted to see if smoking added to the hereditary risk.

Their study, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, compared 339 patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage with 1016 “controls” without the condition, matched by age, race and gender.

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UK’s first breast cancer gene screen baby born

Cancer • • Breast CancerJan 09 09

The first baby girl in Britain to have been screened before conception for a genetic form of breast cancer has been born, doctors said on Friday.

While a first in Britain, the strategy has been used elsewhere across the world to screen for the cancer-related BRCA1 gene variant, and the technique has also been previously applied by British doctors to avoid the transmission of other cancers and diseases.

In the current case, doctors at University College Hospital in London (UCL) had created a number of embryos through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) for the baby’s parents and screened them for the variant BRCA1 gene.

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Cancer patients’ distress often unaddressed

CancerJan 09 09

Only a minority of patients with advanced cancer are referred by their cancer doctor for specialized psychological care, even if they’re clearly distressed, results of a study from Canada indicate.

Among a group of 326 patients being treated in a comprehensive cancer center for advanced lung or gastrointestinal cancer, only one third were referred for psychosocial care to a social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist, Dr. Gary Rodin and colleagues report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“Further, more than half of those with clinically significant levels of depression were not referred for psychosocial care of any kind throughout the course of their disease,” Rodin told Reuters Health.

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Touching helps couples reduce stress

StressJan 09 09

Couples may be able to enhance one another’s health by being more physically affectionate with one another, new research in Psychosomatic Medicine shows.

Couples who underwent training in “warm touch enhancement” and practiced the technique at home had higher levels of oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone” and the “cuddle chemical,” while their levels of alpha amylase, a stress indicator, were reduced, Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, Utah, and her colleagues found.

Emotional and social support is key to both mental and physical health, Holt-Lunstad and her team note, while support between spouses may be particularly vital. One important but little-studied way that people express this support, they add, is through “non-sexual, caring physical touch, such as hand-holding, hugs, and sitting or lying ‘cuddled up.’”

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Physical activity may not be key to obesity epidemic

ObesityJan 06 09

A recent international study fails to support the common belief that the number of calories burned in physical activity is a key factor in rising rates of obesity.

Researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan Chicago with women in rural Nigeria. On average, the Chicago women weighed 184 pounds and the Nigerian women weighed 127 pounds.

Researchers had expected to find that the slimmer Nigerian women would be more physically active. To their surprise, they found no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of calories burned during physical activity.

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News from the January 2009 Journal of the American Dietetic Association

DietingJan 06 09

The January issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association features research studies focusing on everyday eating habits of consumers. Researchers look at why sack lunches may not always meet the nutritional needs of preschool children and how making time for meals directly influences diets of young adults.

Packing a Lunch for Preschoolers May Not Be a Good Idea
Approximately 13 million children in the United States eat three or more meals and snacks each day at one of the country’s 117,000 regulated child-care centers. Due to increasing cost of food preparation and storage, more and more of these centers are requiring parents to provide food for their children.

But sack lunches sent from home may not regularly provide adequate nutrients for the growth and development of young children, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Third Coast Research and Development Inc. of Galveston, Texas. The study included 74 three to five-year-olds attending full-time child-care centers that required parents to provide lunches. Lunch contents were observed and recorded for three consecutive days.

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International experts weigh-in on harmful algal blooms

Public HealthJan 06 09

An international group of scientists is linking nutrient pollution in the world’s coastal seas to an increase in the number of harmful algal blooms reported in recent years. When harmful algal blooms (HAB’s) occur, they taint seafood with toxins, cause human respiratory and skin irritations and cause fish or mammal kills in coastal waters.

In the December edition of the journal Harmful Algae, scientists present a compilation of 21 articles outlining the role of nutrient pollution in the increasing frequency of these events.

“Harmful algal blooms can have direct effects on human health and the environmental balance of our coastal waters,” said journal editor and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science researcher Dr. Patricia Glibert. “By tapping the expertise of many of the world’s leading voices on harmful algal blooms, this series of papers hopes to elevate this issue to the forefront of coastal management issues needing immediate attention.”

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