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Salads With Some Fat Are Healthier
Far from being a dieter's worst enemy, scientists are discovering that a little fat can actually do a lot of good. The scientists aren't saying fry your salad in bacon grease! But they say don't cut all fat out of your diet either. Why? It takes some fat to help your body absorb the cancer fighting nutrients in your vegetables.
Jennifer Jarvis has always tried to stick to a light, healthy diet. But when she volunteered for a food study recently, she learned something that was a little hard to swallow -- that cutting fat completely out of her diet, was actually robbing her body of nutrients.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
All Tobacco Bad For The Heart
The study by professors Salim Yusuf and Koon Teo of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences in Hamilton, is published in this week's issue of The Lancet.
In collaboration with colleagues from 52 countries, they calculated the risk of heart attack for various forms of active tobacco use (both smoking and non-smoking) and second hand smoking in all areas of the world. The INTERHEART study included data from more than 27,000 people in 52 countries. In their calculations, the scientists accounted for other lifestyle factors that could affect the heart attack risk, such as diet and age.
They found that tobacco use in any form, including sheesha smoking popular in the Middle East and beedie smoking common in South Asia, was harmful. Compared to people who had never smoked, smokers had a three-fold increased risk of a heart attack. Even those with relatively low levels of exposure of eight to 10 cigarettes a day doubled their risk of heart attack. Each cigarette smoked per day, increased the risk by 5.6 per cent.
However, the researchers did find that the risk of heart attack decreased with time after stopping smoking. Light smokers, those who consume fewer than 10 cigarettes a day, benefit the most. They have no excess risk three to five years after quitting. By contrast, moderate and heavy smokers of 20 or more cigarettes a day still had an excess risk of around 22 per cent, 20 years after quitting.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Almost Half Of Kids With ADHD Not Treated
A large number of children who could benefit from ADHD medications don't get them.
"What we found was somewhat surprising," says Richard D. Todd, M.D., Ph.D., the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of genetics. "Only about 58 percent of boys and about 45 percent of girls who had a diagnosis of full-scale ADHD got any medicine at all".
Much has been written about the increasing number of children taking drugs for ADHD. One study observed that the percentage of elementary school children taking medicine for ADHD more than tripled, rising from 0.6 percent in 1975 to 3 percent by 1987. Another study reported that the number of adolescents taking ADHD drugs increased 2.5 fold between 1990 and 1995. And a number of reports have noted a rapid increase in the U.S. manufacture of the stimulant drug methylphenidate - commonly sold under the brand names Ritalin or Concerta.
The scientists studied 1,610 twins between the ages of 7 and 17. Of those, 359 met full criteria for ADHD: 302 boys and 57 girls. The total number of boys in the sample was 1,006, and 604 girls were included.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Simplified Treatment Of HIV Infection
Susan Swindells, M.B.B.S., of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, presented the findings of the study today at a JAMA media briefing at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto.
The long-term adverse effects, expense, and difficulty of sustained adherence to multidrug antiretroviral regimens have prompted studies of simpler therapies for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection. Treatment cessation, intermittent therapy, and induction-maintenance (a few months of triple therapy followed by simplified therapy) regimens have been evaluated with mostly inferior results, according to background information in the article.
Dr. Swindells and colleagues conducted a study to determine whether a simplified maintenance therapy with the antiretroviral medicine "boosted" atazanavir alone after virologic suppression (cessation of detectable HIV virus replication) would not markedly increase the risk of virologic failure. Protease inhibitors, such as atazanavir, are often combined with a small dose of ritonavir to increase blood levels a phenomenon known as "boosting." This regimen was selected because of low pill burden, once-daily dosing, safety, and unique resistance profile. The 24-week pilot study, conducted between Sept. 2004 and April 2006, included 36 HIV-infected adults with virologic suppression for 48 weeks or longer receiving their first protease inhibitor (PI)based regimen. Participants switched PIs to atazanavir-ritonavir at entry and discontinued nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) after 6 weeks. Virologic failure was defined as two consecutive HIV-1 RNA measurements of 200 copies/mL or more. The final analysis included 34 patients.........
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Parental Time And Childhood Obesity
The study found that the amounts and quality of time parents spent with their children has a direct effect on children's rates of obesity, said Dr. Alex McIntosh, lead researcher. McIntosh is professor of sociology with a research appointment from Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture study, "Parental Time, Role Strain and Children's Fat Intake and Obesity-Related Outcomes," was published in June.
In general, researchers found the amount of time a mother spent with her child, her work stress and her income level had a larger impact in lowering the child's risk of obesity than the father's time, work stress and income, McIntosh said.
Furthermore, the more time a mother spends with the child, the less likely that child is to be obese; conversely, the more time a father spends with a child, the more likely the child will be obese, he said.
"The impacts were greater for 9- to 11-year-old children than for 13- to 15-year-old children," he added.
As a sociologist, McIntosh has long wondered how parents influence their children's nutritional habits, he said.........
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Never marrieds has highest risk of early death
The findings are based on national census and death certification data, involving almost 67,000 adults in the USA between 1989 and 1997.
In 1989, almost one in two of the sample were married, and almost one in 10 were widowed. Around 12% were divorced and 3% were separated. Of the remainder, 5% were cohabiting, and one in five had never been married.
Unsurprisingly, older age and poor health were the strongest predictors of death by 1997, but a surviving marriage was also strongly associated with a longer life.
After taking into account age, state of health, and several other factors likely to influence the findings, those who had been widowed were almost 40% more likely to die between 1989 and 1997. Those who had been divorced or separated were 27% more likely to have done so.
But those who had never been married were 58% more likely to have died during this period than their peers who were married and living with their spouse in 1989.
The never married "penalty" was larger for those in very good or excellent health, and smallest for those in poor health, and it was greater among men than women.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Genetics Of Successful Aging
"Successful aging has been defined in a number of ways, however, we focused on individuals who had reached at least 90 without significant decline in mental capacity," said lead researcher George S. Zubenko, M.D., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and biological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. "While this is a goal that a number of of us share, such a definition of 'successful aging' can be determined objectively and consistently across subjects--an important requirement of scientific studies".
While prior research has revealed that genes make important contributions to exceptional longevity, the goal of this study was to identify regions of the human genome that contributed, along with lifestyle factors, to reaching age 90 with preserved cognition.
The study involved 100 people age 90 and older who had preserved cognition as measured by clinical and psychometric assessments. Half of the subjects were male, half were female. Using a novel genome survey method, researchers compared the DNA of the study sample with that of 100 young adults, aged 18-25, who were matched for sex, race, ethnicity and geographic location. Particularly, Dr. Zubenko and his research team attempted to identify specific genetic sequences present in older individuals that may be associated with reaching older ages with preserved cognitive abilities, or on the other hand, specific genetic sequences present in younger individuals (and not present in those over age 90) that may impede successful aging. The study also looked at a variety of lifestyle factors, such as smoking and alcohol consumption, with the goal of eventually exploring the interactive effects of genes and lifestyle on successful aging.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Assessment Of Aggressive Boys' Needs
Prolonged aggressive and disruptive behaviour in childhood is a strong risk marker for criminality and mental health problems in adulthood. Early identification of boys with increased risk of problems in the future is therefore important in order to be able to provide specialised initiatives to help them and their families.
Several years ago, help appeared in the form of a checklist called EARL-20B. EARL-20B (Early Assessment Risk List for boys) consists of 20 risk- and need factors, where boys' anti-social behaviour, family, friends and environment are reviewed. Dr. Pia Enebrink, psychology expert and researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, is one of the first to investigate how well EARL-20B works for boys between the ages of six and twelve.
"The results show that EARL-20B is reliable and useful in evaluating different risk factors and that it can help us identify the boys who really need help, and focus on the risks and needs with which they require help" , says Dr. Enebrink.
The investigation followed 76 Swedish boys in outpatient child psychiatry, and EARL-20B was compared with standard clinical assessments. The boys were followed up after 6 months and again after 30 months.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
High Blood Sugar May Cause Cognitive Impairment
The study was the first to investigate the association over time between glycosylated hemoglobin - a long-term measure of blood sugar - and the risk of cognitive difficulties, and the first to investigate that association in people without diabetes. It appears in the Volume 10, Number 4 issue of the Journal of Nutrition, Health, and Aging.
"We already know there's a connection between diabetes and cognitive problems," says lead author Kristine Yaffe, MD, a staff doctor at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and a professor of psychiatry, neurology, and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. "We were interested in what this measurement would tell us about a group of women with and without diabetes who were followed for four years. Nobody has really looked at that before".
The glycosylated hemoglobin test measures the percentage of hemoglobin - the oxygen-bearing protein in red blood cells - that is bound to glucose. Unlike the standard diabetic blood sugar test, which measures blood sugar at the moment of testing, glycosylated hemoglobin is considered an accurate measure of blood sugar levels over the course of two to four months preceding the test. A result of seven percent or less indicates good long-term blood sugar control.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Antioxidants against tick-borne illness
Ixodid tick
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded the University of Rochester Medical Center $2 million for a five-year study of the antioxidant theory. The grant caps more than a decade of rickettsia research led by Sanjeev Sahni, Ph.D.
Rocky Mountain spotted fever is the most frequently reported illness in the United States caused by the rickettsia bacteria, which is transmitted by tick parasites. It usually afflicts otherwise healthy adults and children who are bitten by wood ticks or dog ticks. The illness can become life threatening if left untreated, and spotted fever can be difficult for physicians to diagnose because the earliest signs mimic less-serious viral illnesses. Limiting exposure to ticks is the best way to prevent the disease. If it does develop, in most cases doctors can treat it with antibiotics. Typhus is another rickettsial disease spread by lice or fleas. Although less common, typhus remains a threat in crowded jails and in other poor hygienic environments.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
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