http://www.3-rx.com 2008-07-24T16:56:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/rhinoplasty-technique-preserves-ethnic-identity/ African Americans who underwent a nose job, also referred to as rhinoplasty, reported a high degree of satisfaction with the results. Rhinoplasty was conducted using a three-tiered approach that included an adjustment in nasal height and angle with a reshaping of the tip and a reduction in the width of the nose. Dr. Oleh Slupchynskyj and Marzena Gieniusz analyzed questionnaires completed by 75 African American patients who underwent the procedure at their private practice, the Aesthetic Facial Surgery Center of New York and New Jersey in New York City. 2008-07-24T16:56:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/internet-alcohol-and-sleep-tied-to-girls-weight/ Girls and young women who devote much time to the Internet, get too little sleep or regularly drink alcohol are more likely than their peers to put on excess weight, a new study suggests. The researchers, who followed more than 5,000 girls between 14 and 21 years old for 1 year, found that the more spare time girls spent on the Internet, the more their body mass index (BMI) increased. Similar patterns were seen when the researchers looked at alcohol consumption and sleep. In the latter case, lack of sleep was linked to greater gains in BMI—a measure of weight in relation to height. 2008-07-24T16:56:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/eu-says-safety-of-cloned-animal-products-uncertain/ The European Union’s top food safety agency said on Thursday cloned animal products may not be safe and further study was needed. “It is clear there are significant animal health and welfare issues for surrogate mothers and clones that can be more frequent and severe than for conventionally bred animals,” Vittorio Silano, chair of EFSA’s Scientific Committee, told reporters. “For cattle and pigs, food safety concerns are considered unlikely. But we must acknowledge that the evidence base is still small. We would like to have a broader data base and we need further clarification.” 2008-07-24T16:53:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/soy-based-foods-may-lower-sperm-count/ Eating a half serving a day of soy-based foods could be enough to significantly lower a man’s sperm count, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The study is the largest in humans to look at the relationship between semen quality and a plant form of the female sex hormone estrogen known as phytoestrogen, which is plentiful in soy-rich foods. “What we found was men that consume the highest amounts of soy foods in this study had a lower sperm concentration compared to those who did not consume soy foods,” said Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Human Reproduction. 2008-07-24T16:52:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/kelsey-grammer-nearly-died-after-heart-attack/ Television star Kelsey Grammer, best known from “Cheers” and his sitcom “Frasier,” nearly died after suffering a heart attack last month, he told U.S. showbiz news program “Entertainment Tonight.” Grammer, 53, felt chest pains while paddle-boarding with his wife in Hawaii, where they have a second home, and was taken to hospital, where he was found to have suffered a heart attack. At the time, about seven weeks ago, his spokesman Stan Rosenfield said it was a mild heart attack but declined to give further details of Grammer’s condition or medical treatment. 2008-07-24T16:50:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/better-understanding-of-neurodegenerative-disease/ Genetic evolution is strongly shaped by genes’ efforts to prevent or tolerate errors in the production of proteins, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University have found. Their study also suggests that the cost of errors in protein production may lie in the malformed proteins themselves, rather than in the loss of functional proteins. Misfolded proteins can build up in long-lived cells, like neurons, and cause neurodegenerative diseases. The work, by Claus Wilke at The University of Texas at Austin and D. Allan Drummond at Harvard, is described in the July 25 issue of the journal Cell. 2008-07-24T16:47:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/question-worm-pheromones-answer/ If worms could talk, they might tell potential suitors, “I like the way you wriggle,” complete with that telltale come slither look. But worms send their valentines via signals known as pheromones, a complex chemical code researchers are now cracking, according to a study published Wednesday (July 23) in the journal Nature. Scientists from the University of Florida, Cornell University, the California Institute of Technology and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have discovered the first mating pheromone in one of science’s most well-studied research subjects, the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans. But perhaps even more interesting is what the newly discovered pheromone also directs worms to do — hibernate. At lower levels, the pheromone signals the male C. elegans to mate with its partner. But when the worm population grows and the food supply dwindles, the chemical signal increases and the cue changes from mate to hibernate. This discovery could help researchers find ways to combat more harmful worms that destroy crops and provide clues for scientists studying similar parasite worms, said Arthur Edison, Ph.D., a UF associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the College of Medicine and one of the study’s senior authors.  2008-07-24T16:40:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/custom-made-insoles-may-ease-certain-foot-pain/ Custom-fit insoles may help ease foot pain caused by high arches, rheumatoid arthritis and certain other conditions, a research review suggests. Australian researchers found that in 11 clinical trials, custom-designed orthotic devices for the shoes helped ease certain forms of foot pain. One study, for instance, showed that within 3 months, the shoe inserts improved pain in adults with abnormally high arches. Another study, of 209 adults younger than 60, found that custom orthoses eased pain from bunions—though they did not appear to be as effective as surgery in the long run. 2008-07-23T20:09:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/uk-watchdog-urges-doctors-to-cut-antibiotics/ British doctors should slash the number of times they prescribe antibiotics for respiratory tract infections because the drugs rarely help, the country’s drug cost watchdog said on Wednesday. This means doctors in the state’s health system should not prescribe antibiotics for most cases of sore throats, colds, bronchitis or other types of respiratory infections, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, said. They should also delay writing such prescriptions and reassure people the drugs are not needed immediately and would make little difference because most respiratory infections are viral, the new guidelines said. 2008-07-23T20:08:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/eu-says-safe-to-eat-during-games/ Europeans travelling to the Beijing Olympics have nothing to fear from Chinese food, despite an upsurge in food safety warnings in the Asian powerhouse, the European Union’s health chief said on Wednesday. “There is no need for Europeans to take any extra or special measures, other than the ones they would normally take when travelling to a country outside the European Union,” EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou told Reuters. “There are problems, but there is no major danger from eating food during the Olympics.” 2008-07-23T20:07:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/government-to-release-revised-us-hiv-estimates/ The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday it will soon release long-awaited revised estimates of how many Americans become infected with the AIDS virus every year. Activists have been saying the numbers are sharply higher and have been urging the CDC to release the numbers. In June, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he believed the numbers had risen from 40,000 to 50,000 a year, although the CDC denied he had seen the new estimates. 2008-07-23T20:06:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/school-failure-harder-on-girls/ Academic failure appears to trouble teen-age girls more deeply than boys, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. They said adolescent girls who are expelled, suspended or drop out of high school before they graduate are more likely to have a serious bout of depression by age 21 than boys with similar experiences. “For girls there are broader implications of school failure,” said Carolyn McCarty, a University of Washington researcher whose study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health. 2008-07-23T20:06:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/depression-linked-with-first-stroke-in-elderly/ The results of a study in the current issue of the journal Stroke suggest that there is an association between depression and an increased risk of having a first stroke in elderly patients. “It has long been noted that depression is common after stroke and that depression is associated with increased mortality in patients with stroke,” Dr. Ingmar Skoog, of Sahlgrenska University Hospital/Molndal, Sweden, and colleagues write. During the last decade, they add, published reports have suggested that depression may actually contribute to stroke risk. The current study involved 401 stroke-free 85-year-olds who were participants in the Longitudinal Gerontological and Geriatric Population Studies in Goteborg. At study entry 72 were demented and 329 were dementia-free. The subjects were followed for 3 years and information was obtained from the Swedish Hospital Discharge Register, death certificates, self-reports, and key informants. 2008-07-23T20:04:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/prizes-dont-help-smokers-kick-the-habit-long-term/ Contests that offer smokers cash and other incentives to quit don’t produce better long-term results than smoking cessation efforts that don’t reward people for kicking the habit, a new analysis of existing research demonstrates. “While competitions may be an attractive and high-profile way of encouraging smokers to make a quit attempt, our evidence found that they don’t improve the long-term success rate,” Dr. Kate Cahill of the University of Oxford told Reuters Health in an email interview. “Many people relapse once the competition is over and the prizes stop coming.” In the U.S., such contests are typically offered in the workplace, while the highest-profile initiatives outside the U.S. are the international “Quit & Win” contests, run every 2 years in more than 80 countries, Cahill explained.  2008-07-23T19:59:00+00:00 http://www.3-rx.com/ab/more/day-care-babies-gain-more-weight/ Infants cared for by someone other than mom or dad are more apt to be exposed to “unfavorable” feeding practices and to gain more weight during their first year of life, a new study shows, which could contribute to childhood weight problems. “Parents may want to have enough communication with child care providers about when, what and how to feed their babies during their stay in day care, which is important to avoid potential risk of overfeeding or underfeeding at home,” Dr. Juhee Kim of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Reuters Health. Kim and co-investigator Dr. Karen E. Peterson of Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, analyzed data on child care arrangements, feeding practices, and weight gain collected for 8,150 infants who were 9 months old. More than half of these children received regular child care from someone other than a parent. 2008-07-23T19:58:01+00:00