December 11, 2008, 5:27 AM CT

Overweight children at increased risk of arm and leg injuries

Children who are overweight or obese are over two and a half times more likely to suffer injuries to their upper and lower extremities following a motor vehicle crash compared with normal weight children, as per a new report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Injury Research and Policy. Overweight and obese children were overall more likely to experience injury to any body part following a crash; however this difference was not statistically significant. The results are available online at the website of the journal Injury Prevention and reported in the December print edition of the journal.

"Our findings document yet another risk linked to overweight and obesity in children," said study lead author Keshia M. Pollack, MPH, PhD, an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School's Center for Injury Research and Policy. "Prior research has shown that poor-fitting car safety seats can put overweight children at greater risk for injury. We observed that being overweight negatively impacts older kids involved in motor vehicle accidents as well." The study included a national sample of children 9 to 15 years old who were at least five feet tall; this height cutoff was chosen so scientists could look at the impact of crash on kids not using booster seats......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 11, 2008, 5:21 AM CT

Drug-resistant tuberculosis rife in China

Levels of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in China are nearly twice the global average. Nationwide research reported in the open access journal BMC Infectious Diseases has shown that almost 10% of Chinese TB cases are resistant to the most effective first-line drugs.

Susan van den Hof, from the KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation in The Netherlands is one of the authors on a Chinese study into the prevalence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). She said, "In order to obtain insight into the prevalence and distribution of resistance, China has joined the global project on anti-tuberculosis drug resistance surveillance, and investigated drug resistance in ten provinces between 1996 and 2004."

China has the second largest number of TB cases in the world, and is one of the countries with high levels of drug-resistant TB. As per the authors, "The prevalence of drug resistance varied greatly between the provinces, but on average was worryingly high, with a weighted mean for MDR-TB of 9.3% among all cases; 5.4% among new cases and 25.6% among previously treated cases. The global MDR-TB estimates are 4.8% for all cases, 3.1% for new cases and 19.3% for previously treated cases."

Treatment of MDR-TB requires use of costly, toxic and less effective second-line drugs and infected patients are less likely to survive therapy. In a well-functioning TB control program with low levels of defaulting from therapy, high resistance levels are expected among previously treated cases. This is consistent with the authors' observations in China. If a good TB control program is in place, the proportion of previously treated patients among all TB patients should also be low. In China the proportion of previously treated patients varied between the provinces but on average was about 20%, in comparison to a global average of 11%......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 9, 2008, 10:05 PM CT

Conscious vs. Unconscious Thought in Making Complicated Decisions

When faced with a difficult decision, we try to come up with the best choice by carefully considering all of the options, maybe even resorting to lists and lots of sleepless nights. So it may be surprising that recent studies have suggested that the best way to deal with complex decisions is to not think about them at all-that unconscious thought will help us make the best choices. Eventhough this may seem like an appealing strategy, new research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, cautions that there are limitations in the efficacy of unconscious thought making the best decisions.

Duke University scientists John W. Payne, Adriana Samper, James R. Bettman and Mary Frances Luce had volunteers participate in a lottery choice task, where they had to pick from four various options, each with a different, but close, payoff. The volunteers were divided into three groups for this task: one group was instructed to think about the task for a given amount of time, another group was told to think about the task for as long as they wanted and the last group was distracted before making their selection (thus, unconsciously thinking about the task). A second experiment was similarly set up, except that there were substantial differences in the payoffs of the different options......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 9, 2008, 10:03 PM CT

How Power Affects Complex Decision Making

Presidential scholars have written volumes trying to understand the presidential mind. How can anyone juggle so many complicated decisions? Do those seeking office have a unique approach to decision making? Studies have suggested that power changes not only a person's responsibilities, but also the way they think. Now, a new study in the recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that having power may lead people to automatically think in a way that makes complex decision-making easier.

Psychologists Pamela Smith, Ap Dijksterhuis and Daniël Wigboldus of Radboud University Nijmegen stimulated feelings of powerlessness or power in a group of volunteers by having some volunteers recall a situation when other people had power over them and other volunteers recall a situation when they had power over other people. Then they were given a complicated problem to solve (they had to pick among four cars, each varying on 12 different attributes). The experiment was designed so that there was a "correct" solution-that is, one of the cars had the most positive and least negative attributes, although the optimal choice was not obvious. Both the "powerful" and the "powerless" volunteers chose among the cars, but some spent time consciously thinking about the problem, while others were distracted with a word puzzle......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 8, 2008, 10:39 PM CT

Faith can silence victims or provide solace

Childhood sexual abuse victims with a strong religious upbringing often report feeling terrible guilt about their assault, which doesn't surprise Jean-Guy Nadon. A professor of theology and religious sciences at the Universit de Montral, Nadon has conducted dozens of interviews with women who were sexually abused as children and found the impact of religious beliefs can produce varying reactions.

Nadon interviewed one woman, who as a child was physically and mentally abused by her mother, yet followed the 10 Commandments to the letter. That meant she could not rebel because she'd been taught to honour her mother and father. Indeed, as a child, the woman felt she had to forgive her mother's behaviour otherwise she'd go to hell.

Another child, sodomized by her father, also felt she had to forgive him or burn in hell, which her abuser used to his advantage. Another woman, who was raped by a neighbor, was blamed by her mother who claimed the victim provoked the assault.

"A child's God can be kidnapped and exploited by an adult, often by the very adult who taught the child about God in the first place," says Nadon. "It's the victims, not the aggressors, who find themselves silenced and overwhelmed by guilt, pain and isolation".

Kids sometimes deny the existence of a God that doesn't protect children, while others pray their abuse will end and some pray or get through the ordeal. The common thread is that religion is an important resilience factor in abused children. A number of kids recite the 21st Psalm, the Lord is my Shepherd: "Yeah though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 8, 2008, 10:37 PM CT

Harm-reduction cigarettes are more toxic than traditional cigarettes

Typically, tobacco companies market harm-reduction cigarettes as being safer than traditional "full-flavored" brands, leading a number of smokers to conclude that the use of harm-reduction brands lowers their exposure to toxicants.

But a UC Riverside study now shows that smoke from these "light" or "low-yield" harm-reduction cigarettes retains toxicity and that this toxicity can affect prenatal development.

"A number of chemicals found in harm-reduction cigarette smoke have not been tested, and some are listed by manufacturers as safe," said Prue Talbot, a professor of cell biology who led the study. "But our tests on mice clearly show that these chemicals adversely affect reproduction and associated development processes. The effects are likely to be the same in humans, in which case pregnant women would be especially vulnerable to the effect of smoke from these cigarettes".

Talbot's research team used mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) as a model for pre-implantation embryosembryos that have still not implanted in the wall of the uterusand compared the toxicity on these cells of cigarette smoke emanating from traditional and harm-reduction brands.

Further, they studied the effects on the mESCs of two kinds of cigarette smoke: mainstream smoke, which is smoke actively inhaled by smokers; and sidestream smoke, which is smoke that burns off the end of a cigarette......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 8, 2008, 10:22 PM CT

Brain cells that are a key to learning

More than a century after Ivan Pavlov's dog was conditioned to salivate when it heard the sound of a tone previous to receiving food, researchers have found neurons that are critical to how people and animals learn from experience.

Using a new imaging technique called Arc catFISH, scientists from the University of Washington have visualized individual neurons in the amygdalas of rat brains that are activated when the animals are given an associative learning task.

Associative, or Pavlovian, conditioning is a fundamental form of learning throughout the animal kingdom and is a widely researched model for studying plasticity, or how the circuits in the brain can change as a result of experience, said Ilene Bernstein, senior author of a new study and a UW professor of psychology.

The findings will appear online in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week (Dec. 8-12).

In experiments the scientists directly observed the convergent neurons where learning is suspected of taking place. These neurons responded to both a conditioned stimulus, in this case a novel saccharine solution, and an unconditioned stimulus, in the form of lithium chloride that made rats sick. Convergent activation is considered a key event for subsequent plasticity, as per Bernstein. Until now, however, there has been scant direct evidence of this activation during learning in the mammalian brain......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 6, 2008, 4:39 PM CT

Vitamin E shows promise in chronic inflammation

With up to half of a person's body mass consisting of skeletal muscle, chronic inflammation of those muscles - which include those found in the limbs - can result in significant physical impairment.

As per University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Kimberly Huey, past research has demonstrated that the antioxidant properties of Vitamin E may be linked to reduced expression of certain pro-inflammatory cytokines, in vitro, in various types of cells. Cytokines are regulatory proteins that function as intercellular communicators that assist the immune system in generating a response.

To consider whether the administration of Vitamin E, in vivo, might have similar effects on skeletal and cardiac muscle, Huey and a team of Illinois scientists put Vitamin E to the test in mice. The team included study designer Rodney Johnson, a U. of I. professor of animal sciences, whose prior work has suggested a possible link, in mice, between short-term Vitamin E supplementation and reduced inflammation in the brain.

The study represents the first time scientists have looked at in vivo effects of Vitamin E administration on local inflammatory responses in skeletal and cardiac muscle.

In this study, the scientists investigated the effects of previous administration of Vitamin E in mice that were then injected with a low dose of E. coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to induce acute systemic inflammation. The effects were compared with those found in placebo control groups......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 6, 2008, 4:06 PM CT

Reduced doses of meningitis vaccine may be effective in outbreak control

One fifth of the standard dose of a usually used meningitis vaccine may be as effective as using the full dose. This new finding should allow scarce vaccine resources to be stretched further, particularly during epidemics in Africa.

In a study initiated by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, together with Epicentre (the research arm of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontières), and Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda, immune responses in patients receiving smaller doses of a meningitis vaccine were found to be comparable to a full dose.

In 2004, a randomized clinical trial of 750 healthy volunteers (2-19 years old) took place in Uganda. Their immune response, assessed by serum bactericidal activity (SBA), was measured for 1/5 and 1/10 doses in comparison to a full dose. SBA response and safety/tolerability using 1/5 dose were comparable to a full dose for three serogroups (A, Y, W135), but not a fourth (C).

In view of the current shortage of meningococcal vaccines for Africa, the use of 1/5 fractional doses should be considered as an alternative in mass vaccination campaigns. The study's findings contributed to a 2007 WHO recommendation that a fractional dosing strategy be utilized in the event of severe vaccine shortages during a meningitis epidemic......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 6, 2008, 4:02 PM CT

Secondhand smoke raises odds of fertility problems

If you need another reason to quit smoking, consider that it may diminish your chances of being a parent or grandparent. Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that women exposed to second hand smoke, either as adults or children, were significantly more likely to face fertility problems and suffer miscarriages.

An epidemiologic analysis of more than 4,800 non-smoking women showed those who were exposed to second hand smoke six or more hours per day as children and adults faced a 68 percent greater chance of having difficulty getting pregnant and suffering one or more miscarriages. The study is published online in Tobacco Control and is one of the first publications to demonstrate the lasting effects of second hand smoke exposure on women during childbearing years.

"These statistics are breathtaking and certainly points to yet another danger of second hand smoke exposure," said Luke J. Peppone, Ph.D., research assistant professor at Rochester's James P. Wilmot Cancer Center.

In the study, four out of five women reported exposure to second hand smoke during their lifetime. Half of the women grew up in a home with smoking parents and nearly two-thirds of them were exposed to some second hand smoking at the time of the survey......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source