Obesity in Young Adulthood May Raise Pancreatic Cancer Risk

Obesity is known to increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, a particularly aggressive type of cancer. But a new study suggests the risk is greatest among people who were already overweight during their teenage years or obese during their 20s and 30s.

Adults who were overweight as teens were twice as likely as similar adults who had never been overweight to develop pancreatic cancer later in life, and people who were obese as young adults were at more than twice the risk of adults who had never been obese, the study found.

“That’s an important finding, because it tells us that weight control at a younger age is really important if we want to reduce the risk of this disease,” said Donghui Li, a professor of cancer medicine at the University of Texas and an author of the new study.

The paper, to be published on Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, compared 841 pancreatic cancer patients with 754 healthy people matched by age, race and sex. Personal interviews were done to obtain detailed histories of the participants’ height and weight at each age period, as well as information about alcohol use, smoking and family and personal medical backgrounds.

Smoking and diabetes also increased the risk of pancreatic cancer, with obesity accounting for 27 percent of cases and smoking for one-quarter of all cases. “Diabetes is a risk factor, but even without diabetes, obesity increases the risk,” Dr. Li said.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Health officials in Los Angeles said Friday that 22 actors in adult sex movies had contracted H.I.V. since 2004, when a previous outbreak led to efforts to protect pornography industry employees.

The officials accused an industry-supported health clinic of failing to cooperate with state investigations and of failing to protect not only industry workers but their sexual partners as well.

“We have an industry that is exposing workers to life-threatening diseases as part of their employment,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles County. “That is outrageous and anachronistic. These infections are virtually entirely preventable.”

The latest controversy began Thursday, when The Los Angeles Times reported that a pornography actress had tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. The infection was confirmed by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a clinic founded by a former pornography actress that offers health testing to sex-film performers.

A timeline on the foundation’s Web site states that the actress, whose name was not disclosed, tested negative for H.I.V. on April 29, but that a positive test result was confirmed on June 4. The woman performed in a film on June 5 for reasons that the clinic told the newspaper were still under investigation. A second test came back positive on June 6.

The actor who performed with the infected woman on June 5 has so far tested negative for the virus, the foundation’s chronology states, although H.I.V. infections can be undetectable for a week or more. A second male partner also tested negative.

Clinic officials refused to comment Friday.

Dean Fryer, a spokesman for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, said the clinic “is not cooperative with us.”

“We don’t even know who the employer is in the most recent case; we don’t know who the talent is,” Mr. Fryer said. “They don’t provide that to us.”

Occupational health officials have long argued that failing to require that performers wear condoms during intercourse and other acts is a violation of safe-workplace regulations.

But Deborah Gold, a senior safety engineer with the California occupational health department, said violations in the pornography industry were so widespread that the state had a difficult time cracking down.

“Many of these companies have two sound stages where they do two to four scenes a day with actors hired from talent agencies,” Ms. Gold said. “In that case, it’s clearly a violation” to have performers have sexual intercourse without condoms.

“We continue to try to find ways to identify those places where employees are at risk,” she said.

The pornographic film industry is centered in the San Fernando Valley, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. An estimated 200 production companies in the region employ as many as 1,500 performers, making up to 11,000 films and earning as much as $13 billion a year.

Some health advocates have pressed for legislation requiring condom use in sex scenes.

“This industry has been putting actors at risk for a very long time,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles. “And they’re sending a terrible message to young people that the only kind of sex that’s hot is unsafe sex.”

Steven Hirsch, chief executive of the sex-movie company Vivid Entertainment, said condoms were optional among its actors.

“Performers have the right to choose to use or not use condoms,” Mr. Hirsch said. “They’re adults; they know what industry they’re in.”

Popularity: 23% [?]

Illinois Firm Recalls Ground Beef Products Due To Possible E. coli O157:H7 Contamination

Memorial Day Weekend, 2009 – Valley Meats LLC, a Coal Valley, Ill., establishment is recalling approximately 95,898 pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

The products subject to recall include:

3S Brand Products:

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN 3/S 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each package bears the identifying case code “95554.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 60 (6-1) “KEEP FROZEN 3/S 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each package bears the identifying case code “95556.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN 3/S CHOPPED BEEF SIRLOIN STEAK BURGER.” Each package bears the identifying case code “95573.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN 3/S CHOPPED BEEF SIRLOIN STEAK BURGER.” Each package bears the identifying case code “95574.”

Grillmaster Brand Products:

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 100 (10-1) “KEEP FROZEN GRILL MASTER 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95588.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 20 (2-1) “KEEP FROZEN GRILL MASTER 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95500.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN GRILL MASTER 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95502.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN GRILL MASTER 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” The cases can be identified by the case codes “95504″ and “95505.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 50 (5-1) “KEEP FROZEN GRILL MASTER 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95508.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 60 (6-1) “KEEP FROZEN GRILL MASTER 100% GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95509.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN GRILL MASTER BEEF PATTIE.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95512.”

J & B Brand Products:

• 10.5 pound cases containing a total of 28, 6-ounce “KEEP FROZEN BEEF HOAGIE PATTIE.” Each package bears the identifying case code “51706.”

• 10.5 pound cases containing a total of 14, 12-ounce “KEEP FROZEN BEEF DINNER PATTIE.” Each package bears the identifying case code “51312.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN TENDERKNIT BEEF STEAK CHOPPED AND FORMED.” Each package bears the identifying case code “11028.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “TENDERKNIT BEEF STEAK CHOPPED AND FORMED.” Each package bears the identifying case code “11024.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 10 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN TENDERKNIT VEAL LUNCHEON CHOPPED AND FORMED.” Each package bears the identifying case code “13014.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN SEASONED GROUND BEEF PATTIE.” Each package bears the identifying case code “11384BR.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 packages (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN BEEF STEAK BURGER.” Each package bears the identifying case code “J1004.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN FLAVOR BURST BEEF PATTIE.” Each package bears the identifying case code “51803.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN FLAVOR BURST BEEF PATTIE.” Each package bears the identifying case code “51804.”

Klub Brand Products:

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 20 (2-1) “KEEP FROZEN KLUB GROUND BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95565.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN KLUB GROUND BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95567.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN KLUB GROUND BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95568.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 20 (2-1) “KEEP FROZEN KLUB HOMESTYLE GROUND BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95583.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN KLUB HOMESTYLE GROUND BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95584.”

Thick ‘N Savory Brand Products:

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 20 (2-1) “KEEP FROZEN THICK ‘N SAVORY SEASONED BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95579.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN THICK ‘N SAVORY SEASONED BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95580.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN THICK ‘N SAVORY SEASONED BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “95581.”

Ultimate Brand Products:

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 20 (2-1) “KEEP FROZEN ULTIMATE BURGER CHOPPED BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “1012CL.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN ULTIMATE BURGER CHOPPED BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “1013CL.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN ULTIMATE BURGER CHOPPED BEEF STEAK.” Each case can be identified by the case code “1014CL.”

Products with No Specified Name Brand:

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 20 (2-1) “KEEP FROZEN ULTIMATE BURGER CHOPPED BEEF STEAK.” Each case bears the case code “50123.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN ULTIMATE BURGER CHOPPED BEEF STEAK.” Each case bears the case code “50125.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN ULTIMATE BURGER CHOPPED BEEF STEAK.” Each case bears the case code “50127.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 30 (3-1) “KEEP FROZEN PURE BEEF PATTIE HEARTY HOMESTYLE.” Each case bears the case code “3253.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 40 (4-1) “KEEP FROZEN PURE BEEF PATTIE HEARTY HOMESTYLE.” Each case bears the case code “3254.”

• 10-pound cases containing a total of 50 (5-1) “KEEP FROZEN PURE BEEF PATTIE HEARTY HOMESTYLE.” Each case bears the case code “3255.”

• 24.75-pound cases containing a total of 144 “KEEP RERIGERATED GROUND BEEF PATTY.” Each case can be identified by the case code “8218.”

• 20-pound cases containing a total of 4 (4 X 5) “KEEP REFRIGERATED GROUND BEEF.” Each package bears the identifying case code “8020EC.”

• 40-pound cases containing a total of 8 (8 X 5) “KEEP REFRIGERATED GROUND BEEF.” Each package bears the identifying case code “8020VP.”

• 20-pound cases containing a total of 4 (4 X 5) “KEEP REFRIGERATED GROUND BEEF.” Each package bears the identifying case code “8515.”

• 20-pound cases containing a total of 4 (4 X 5) “KEEP FROZEN GROUND BEEF.” Each package bears the identifying case code “8020ECF.”

• 20-pound cases containing a total of 4 (4 X 5) “KEEP FROZEN GROUND BEEF.” Each package bears the identifying case code “10201.”

• 20-pound cases containing a total of 4 (4 X 5) “KEEP FROZEN GROUND MEAT.” Each package bears the identifying case code “10301.”

Additionally, each product bears the establishment number “EST. 5712″ inside the USDA mark of inspection. The (2-1), (3-1), (4-1), (5-1) and (6-1) markings refer to the number of portions per one-pound.

These ground beef products were produced on March 10, 2009, and were distributed to various consignees nationwide.

The problem was discovered through an epidemiological investigation of illnesses. On May 13, 2009, FSIS was informed by the Ohio Department of Health of a cluster of E. coli O157:H7 infections. Illnesses have been reported in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Individuals concerned about an illness should contact a physician.

E. coli O157:H7 is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration, and in the most severe cases, kidney failure. The very young, seniors and persons with weak immune systems are the most susceptible to foodborne illness.

Popularity: 21% [?]

MONDAY, May 18 — The current swine flu outbreak is raising critical questions about the timing of bringing a new vaccine to market and the logistics of getting it to the people who need it.

If vaccine manufacturers shift gears immediately, it could cut into this fall’s production of seasonal influenza vaccine, experts say. If they wait too long, the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) virus could become more virulent.

Global vaccine experts, as part of a series of meetings convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), met Thursday to weigh the evidence that will lead to a recommendation to manufacturers.

“These are enormously complicated questions, and they’re not something that anyone can make [decisions about] in a single meeting,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s interim assistant director-general for health
security and environment, said during a Thursday press briefing.

The WHO is expected to issue advice to vaccine manufacturers and the World Health Assembly this week, the Associated Press reported.

Six manufacturers currently supply vaccine to the U.S. market, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those same facilities would be the ones to produce swine flu vaccine, experts say.

At present, most U.S. flu vaccine is produced in Europe, noted Dr. Holger Rovini, lead analyst for infectious diseases at Datamonitor, a London-based market research firm.

However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently licensed vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur’s new influenza vaccine manufacturing facility in Swiftwater, Pa., expanding the company’s capacity to produce seasonal flu vaccine in the United States from 50 million doses to 150 million doses annually.

“That is enough to supply the whole of the U.S. market at current demand,” Rovini pointed out. Of course, if H1N1 became more of a threat, demand would exceed that of a typical flu season.

Ravi S. Harapanhalli, principal consultant at PAREXEL Consulting, which serves clients in the biopharmaceutical industry, agreed that the United States should be able to produce enough H1N1 vaccine for the whole country.

“The U.S. government regulates vaccines on a routine basis as well as in the event of a pandemic, such as with the H1N1 flu strain,” he said. “FDA has a variety of regulatory tools it can use in the case of a pandemic to help step up production and stockpiling.”

In a pandemic, though, getting vaccine to those who need it around the world may be the real challenge, according to a new Datamonitor analysis.

Vaccine distribution requires a “continuous cold chain,” Rovini explained. “That means we need lots of cooler trucks and refrigerator trucks,” he said. “And then if we really want to immunize the whole population of countries such as the U.S. within a short period of time, say just a couple of weeks, it throws up a whole range of different issues,” he added, from who can give the shots to whether there is sufficient cooler transportation and storage capacity.

“Then,” he added, “if there is a shortage of vaccine, will it create a black market? Do we have to guard vaccine stores from robberies? There may have to be tough choices as to where and to whom vaccines will be distributed.”

In a statement, the Healthcare Distribution Management Association, whose member companies deliver seasonal flu vaccine to hospitals, clinics, physician offices and other health-care facilities, said that the United States has a very efficient supply chain. As evidence, the association cited distributors’ response to the recent spike in demand for antiviral drugs.

“In any pandemic outbreak in the U.S., the primary pharmaceutical distribution supply chain, working closely with the manufacturers of antiviral drugs and vaccines and the CDC, will be the quickest and most effective way to deliver product wherever it is needed,” the group added.

Christine M. Layton, a public health scientist with RTI International, a Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based research institute, said the response to the 1976 swine flu outbreak illustrates that the United States is capable of immunizing a large number of people in a short period of time.

And while she believes the United States is better prepared today than it was 33 years ago, a new vaccination program doesn’t turn on a dime.

“If everybody starts lining up tomorrow, they’re going to be waiting a really long time,” Layton said.

More information:

Get more facts about swine flu from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Popularity: 21% [?]

This is an outbreak you should be concerned with.  Although the WHO has yet to officially declare  a global emergency, we know there is a real problem here.

People have been advised to avoid travelling to Mexico, but it’s a little late for that considering Spring Break has recently passed.  We all know that thousands of college students visit Mexico each year for Spring Break.  How many came back infected?

Imagine one infected person on an international flight infecting all who are aboard the flight.  Then they transfer to another flight…and infect all of those people and so on.  You get the picture here.

With a virus such as this, one person could easily infect several hundred in the course of a few hours, then those few hundred could easily infect a few more hundred and so on.

This isn’t like the salmonella outbreak.  It’s not about finding the source.  It’s about finding the cure and being treated.

Because we are who we are and live in a world that thrives around social interaction, we cannot simply avoid all human contact, like we did peanut containing products during the salmonella outbreak.

It’s too late to stop this from spreading.  It cannot be contained.

In order for this to stop, governments need to take a hit and supply free treatment to all who are infected with the virus.

What is swine flu?

Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.

Are there human infections with swine flu in the U.S.?

In late March and early April 2009, cases of human infection with swine influenza A (H1N1) viruses were first reported in Southern California and near San Antonio, Texas. Other U.S. states have reported cases of swine flu infection in humans and cases have been reported internationally as well. An updated case count of confirmed swine flu infections in the United States is kept at http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/investigation.htm CDC and local and state health agencies are working together to investigate this situation.

Is this swine flu virus contagious?

CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.

What are the signs and symptoms of swine flu in people?

The symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people have reported diarrhea and vomiting associated with swine flu. In the past, severe illness (pneumonia and respiratory failure) and deaths have been reported with swine flu infection in people. Like seasonal flu, swine flu may cause a worsening of underlying chronic medical conditions.

How does swine flu spread?

Spread of this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is thought to be happening in the same way that seasonal flu spreads. Flu viruses are spread mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing of people with influenza. Sometimes people may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.

How can someone with the flu infect someone else?

Infected people may be able to infect others beginning 1 day before symptoms develop and up to 7 or more days after becoming sick. That means that you may be able to pass on the flu to someone else before you know you are sick, as well as while you are sick.

What should I do to keep from getting the flu?

First and most important: wash your hands. Try to stay in good general health. Get plenty of sleep, be physically active, manage your stress, drink plenty of fluids, and eat nutritious food. Try not touch surfaces that may be contaminated with the flu virus. Avoid close contact with people who are sick.

Are there medicines to treat swine flu?

Yes. CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with these swine influenza viruses. Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaler) that fight against the flu by keeping flu viruses from reproducing in your body. If you get sick, antiviral drugs can make your illness milder and make you feel better faster. They may also prevent serious flu complications. For treatment, antiviral drugs work best if started soon after getting sick (within 2 days of symptoms).

How long can an infected person spread swine flu to others?

People with swine influenza virus infection should be considered potentially contagious as long as they are symptomatic and possible for up to 7 days following illness onset. Children, especially younger children, might potentially be contagious for longer periods.

What surfaces are most likely to be sources of contamination?

Germs can be spread when a person touches something that is contaminated with germs and then touches his or her eyes, nose, or mouth. Droplets from a cough or sneeze of an infected person move through the air. Germs can be spread when a person touches respiratory droplets from another person on a surface like a desk and then touches their own eyes, mouth or nose before washing their hands.

How long can viruses live outside the body?

We know that some viruses and bacteria can live 2 hours or longer on surfaces like cafeteria tables, doorknobs, and desks. Frequent handwashing will help you reduce the chance of getting contamination from these common surfaces.

What can I do to protect myself from getting sick?

There is no vaccine available right now to protect against swine flu. There are everyday actions that can help prevent the spread of germs that cause respiratory illnesses like influenza. Take these everyday steps to protect your health:

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
• If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

What is the best way to keep from spreading the virus through coughing or sneezing?

If you are sick, limit your contact with other people as much as possible. Do not go to work or school if ill. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or sneezing. It may prevent those around you from getting sick. Put your used tissue in the waste basket. Cover your cough or sneeze if you do not have a tissue. Then, clean your hands, and do so every time you cough or sneeze.

What is the best technique for washing my hands to avoid getting the flu?

Washing your hands often will help protect you from germs. Wash with soap and water. or clean with alcohol-based hand cleaner. we recommend that when you wash your hands — with soap and warm water — that you wash for 15 to 20 seconds. When soap and water are not available, alcohol-based disposable hand wipes or gel sanitizers may be used. You can find them in most supermarkets and drugstores. If using gel, rub your hands until the gel is dry. The gel doesn’t need water to work; the alcohol in it kills the germs on your hands.

What should I do if I get sick?

If you live in areas where swine influenza cases have been identified and become ill with influenza-like symptoms, including fever, body aches, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, or vomiting or diarrhea, you may want to contact their health care provider, particularly if you are worried about your symptoms. Your health care provider will determine whether influenza testing or treatment is needed.

If you are sick, you should stay home and avoid contact with other people as much as possible to keep from spreading your illness to others.

If you become ill and experience any of the following warning signs, seek emergency medical care.

In children emergency warning signs that need urgent medical attention include:

• Fast breathing or trouble breathing
• Bluish skin color
• Not drinking enough fluids
• Not waking up or not interacting
• Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held
• Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough
• Fever with a rash

In adults, emergency warning signs that need urgent medical attention include:

• Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
• Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
• Sudden dizziness
• Confusion
• Severe or persistent vomiting

How serious is swine flu infection?

Like seasonal flu, swine flu in humans can vary in severity from mild to severe. Between 2005 until January 2009, 12 human cases of swine flu were detected in the U.S. with no deaths occurring. However, swine flu infection can be serious. In September 1988, a previously healthy 32-year-old pregnant woman in Wisconsin was hospitalized for pneumonia after being infected with swine flu and died 8 days later. A swine flu outbreak in Fort Dix, New Jersey occurred in 1976 that caused more than 200 cases with serious illness in several people and one death.

Can I get swine influenza from eating or preparing pork?

No. Swine influenza viruses are not spread by food. You cannot get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork products is safe.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Mantle Cell Lymphoma.

What is it?

Where does it come from?

What are the signs?

What are the treatments?

Is there a cure?

Iwill be spending the next few months getting the paperwork together.  No, not research.  Paperwork, (medical records, testing, etc) I will be posting them online so those of you who have questions will be able to get some results.

My father, who spent the last seven (7) years fighting MCL, according to doctors, was the longest fighter of this aggressive form of cancer.

I know, from the research I’ve done online, people have a lot of questions, but nobody can seem to find any answers.

When you or a loved one is suffering from something that nobody seems to know anything about, it makes it more difficult to get through it.

When my father finally passed last weekend at the age of 64, it was hard to watch.  He was still so young and if it weren’t for the cancer, he would have had another 30+ years to spend with his family and friends.

In his last week he went from a fairly normal state (walking, talking, eating,etc) to bedridden under 24 hour care, unable to eat, drink and in the end breath.  The lymphoma had grown that aggressive.

The road was long and in no way easy.  My father new one thing from the start.  Mantle cell lymphoma is terminal.

He decided that if there was anything he could do to help the medical world find a cure or at least some form of treatment to get a hold on this violent cancer, he would do it.

He went through many experimental treatments.  He pushed the limits on radiation.  He did whatever it took until he could not take any more.

As I said, I will be posting the records soon.  It will take some time to sort through.  Seven years of medical history is quite a bit to sort through.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Researchers say that stimulation of the spinal cord is less invasive than deep brain stimulation.

Rodents with Parkinson’s-like symptoms walked and moved normally again after their spinal cords were stimulated with high frequency electrical currents, a new study shows.

Researchers said the technique, called dorsal column stimulation, has the potential to be an important new weapon in the arsenal against Parkinson’s disease.

Spinal cord stimulation could one day replace deep brain stimulation, an effective but highly invasive treatment of last resort for Parkinson’s patients.

Researchers plan to begin testing the new technique on primates in a few months and, if successful, begin human testing in about a year.

“If this technology could work in humans, it would provide a completely new option for treating Parkinson’s disease,” said senior study investigator Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neuroscience at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C.

The study appears in the March 20 issue of Science.

About 1.5 million Americans have Parkinson’s disease, and another 60,000 are diagnosed each year, according to the National Parkinson Foundation. Parkinson’s, which causes tremors, rigidity, slowed movements and a shuffling gait, is marked by a dying off of brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Because Parkinson’s is degenerative, symptoms can eventually include difficulty swallowing, smiling and speaking, as well as dementia.

During early stages of the disease, symptoms can usually be controlled using the medication levodopa, When combined with another drug, levodopa is converted into dopamine in the brain.

But as the disease progresses, the benefits from levodopa can diminish.

Patients with Parkinson’s who are no longer responding well to medications sometimes turn to deep brain stimulation, in which electrodes are placed deep into areas of the brain and programmed to disrupt neurons that are firing incorrectly.

In many patients, blocking the abnormal nerve signals helps alleviate some of the movement problems.

Stimulating the spinal cord could be an improvement over deep brain stimulation because it’s considered semi-invasive and the electrodes are easier to implant, Nicolelis said.

In the study, researchers implanted a device to stimulate the dorsal column of the rodents’ spinal cords, which carry tactile signals to the brain. While the spinal cord stimulation did not rid the animals of all symptoms, the rodents were able to take 80 percent less medicine.

“We see an almost immediate and dramatic change in the animal’s ability to function,” Nicolelis said.

Dr. Michael Okun, national medical director of the National Parkinson Foundation, said the results were “interesting.”

“Although the observations are preliminary, they are intriguing given our current difficulty in treating dopamine-resistant gait disorders in human sufferers of the disease,” Okun said. “More research will be required to confirm these effects before moving into human trials.”

For now, deep brain stimulation remains one of the last options for Parkinson’s patients. About 71 percent of patients who underwent the procedure experienced an improvement in symptoms, according to a study published in January in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Doctors don’t know precisely why the electrical stimulation works, though a study in the March 19 online issue of Science Express provides some clues.

Researchers from Stanford used a technique called “optogenetics” to study neural circuits in the brain. They found that in rodents with dopamine deficiencies, stimulating the neural wires called axons that converge in the subthalmic nucleas region of the brain had a greater effect on improving Parkinson’s symptoms than stimulating the cells in that region of the brain itself.

Because the axons lie closer to the surface of the brain, it’s possible the discovery will lead to new, less invasive techniques, researchers said.

“Because these axons are coming from areas closer to the brain’s surface, new treatments could perhaps be less invasive than deep brain stimulation,” said Dr. Karl Deisseroth, senior study author and an associate professor of bioengineering, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Headaches, big and small, are among the most common health complaints. Almost 90 percent of women and about 70 percent of men get tension headaches, the Mayo Clinic says. Yet doctors still don’t know much about what causes them.

In a new large-scale study published in the journal Neurology this week, researchers found that higher temperatures and, to a lesser extent, low air pressure, influence severe headaches.

But researchers aren’t sure how temperature influences headaches, and others say that a slew of other factors could be involved in the connection.

“I think it’s more complicated than that,” said Dr. Joel Saper, director of the Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who was not involved in the study. Temperature and pressure may be indirect evidence of other causal factors.

The study looked at more than 7,000 patients who had come to the emergency room of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, between May 2000 and December 2007, all of whom were discharged with a primary diagnosis of some kind of headache. About 75 percent of these patients were women.

Researchers compared environmental factors such as temperature, air pollution and barometric pressure on the day of the patient’s visit with a day the week before and a day the week after. They found that the risk of severe headache increases about 7.5 percent for each temperature increment of 5 degrees Celsius (about 9 degrees Fahrenheit).

“Fairly consistently, it was warmer on the days that individuals came in than on control days before and afterwards,” said Dr. Kenneth Mukamal, lead author and physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

But as to why temperature is connected to headaches, Mukamal said researchers aren’t sure. The physiological connection is not well understood, he said.

But Saper said a lot of things happen on hot days that may influence headaches — for instance, leaving an air-conditioned car to walk outside on a warm day, or being physically active and sweating a lot. It’s not clear that temperature itself is the direct link, he said.

“There’s no evidence that there’s more headaches in hot climates than in cold climates,” Saper said. “There are no more headaches in Miami Beach than they are in Boston.”

On the other hand, the idea that high temperatures and low pressure are linked to headaches is well known. On a hot day, a person may become dehydrated, which leads to a headache, said Dr. Stephen Silberstein, professor of neurology at Thomas Jefferson Medical Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study.

About 18 percent of women and 6 percent of men in the United States report having migraines, the authors said. Experts estimate that the cost of migraines in America is about $17 billion.

While the study found a weaker link between air pressure and headaches, Silberstein said a person going up to a mountain — where the pressure is lower — will have a greater chance of getting a headache.

Curiously, the study did not find any association between pollution and headaches, which is surprising given that pollution causes sinus problems, which lead to headaches, Silberstein said.

Researchers in the new study still do not rule out pollution as a factor, Mukamal said.

Migraines, unlike other headaches, are a specific type of chronic headache syndrome. The condition runs in families and is more common among women, Mukamal said. Menstrual cycles and other hormonal factors can influence migraines.

Doctors will sometimes ask migraine patients to keep diaries to see what might influence the headaches and determine how often they occur. They help both doctors and patients track progress, monitoring whether the migraines become less frequent over time, Silberstein said.

Diet can also influence migraines, Silberstein said. Starvation, alcohol and caffeine withdrawal are all important triggers.

Going to sleep at the same time every night and having time to relax are helpful for migraine patients, Silberstein said. He also noted the importance of the environment in physical health and the implications that global warming could have on headaches.

The next step in headache research is to figure out if there are medications that could block the triggering effect of environmental factors on headaches, Mukamal said.

“This highlights the fact that there are very clear clinical consequences to the environment and they don’t just affect the old, and the sick, or kids,” Mukamal said. “Even garden variety common problems, like migraines and headaches, which affect the whole range of the population, can clearly measurably be influenced by the environment.”

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A Positive Attitude Might  Improve  Your Health, Longevity, but most importantly YOU.

Women who are optimistic about life live longer and are healthier than those who are pessimistic, according to a new study presented last week at the American Psychosomatic Society’s annual meeting.  Women who tend to be more trusting of others live longer than those who are more cynical, according to the Boston Globe’s report on the study.

These new findings come from the Women’s Health Initiative, a clinical trial of more than 97,000 healthy women ages 50 to 74 that is widely known for its research into hormone therapy. Optimistic women had a 14 percent lower risk of death from any cause after eight years than those who were more pessimistic. More cynical women had a 16 percent higher risk of dying than more trusting women. The study does not prove that attitudes affect health or cause illness, but the association is worth further research, according to the Globe .

This isn’t the first time that research has linked having a positive attitude to longer life span. Happier people are less likely to suffer heart attacks, strokes, and pain from conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. If the recession has you feeling down, consider these 5 ways to be happy during bad economic times.

Popularity: 21% [?]

The FDA has now advised patients undergoing MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans to tell their doctor if they’re wearing any medicated skin patches, in order to avoid burns at the patch site.

Some skin patches contain aluminum or other metals in their non-adhesive backing, which is the part of the patch that doesn’t touch the skin. That little bit of metal can conduct electricity and cause a skin burn at the patch site during an MRI scan.

The FDA has received “fewer than half a dozen” reports of skin burns in patch wearers undergoing MRI, Sandra Kweder, MD, deputy director of the the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, said today at a news conference. Those burns, which were all reported in nicotine patch wearers, weren’t serious; they were likened to a severe sunburn at the patch site, Kweder notes.

Kweder estimates that less than a quarter of all medicated skin patches contain metal. The FDA is creating a list of those patches, as well as a note that would go on the patch itself, which might read “Remove before MRI.”

In the meantime, Kweder says patients should tell their doctor about their skin patch when referred for an MRI and get advice about removing the patch before MRI and replacing it afterward. Patients should also mention it to the staff at the MRI facility when scheduling their MRI appointment and again when they report for their MRI.

Although some patch products already note MRI warnings, others don’t have that label yet, and not all of them will need it. Kweder points out that patients can’t tell by looking at a patch whether it has trace amounts of metal — a clear-looking patch could contain tiny amounts of metal. So when in doubt, take the patch off during the MRI and put it back on afterward; that’s “the smart thing to do,” Kweder says.

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Labeling doesn’t always reflect content, which is crucial to fetal neurological development, researchers note

Most prenatal vitamins marketed in the United States don’t contain as much iodine as is stated on the label, researchers report.

The variance is troubling, they say, since iodine is critically important to the health of a developing fetus.

In a letter appearing in the Feb. 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the team also noted that the actual levels of iodine found in the supplements were typically below those recommended by the American Thyroid Association (ATA).

“Iodine nutrition is critically important in pregnancy,” explained Dr. Elizabeth Pearce, co-author of the letter and an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University Medical Center. “Women who are deficient in pregnancy have children often with lower IQs or neurocognitive delays. Iodine deficiency is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation in the world.”

But, based on the new findings, “it seems that an ideal prenatal vitamin, in terms of iodine, does not exist,” she said. “About half of them have iodine that’s derived from kelp and that’s very variable.”

Through an Internet search, the authors found 127 nonprescription and 96 prescription prenatal vitamins currently available in the United States.

Product labeling on 114 products (87 nonprescription and 27 prescription) claimed that the vitamins contained iodine. According to the labeling, 101 (89 percent) of these products contained at least 150 micrograms of iodine in a daily dose.

Sixty-seven vitamins contained iodine from potassium iodide, 42 from kelp, and five from some other source.

“Products containing iodine from potassium iodide tended to be more consistent, [but] 150 micrograms of potassium iodide is not the same as 150 micrograms of iodine,” Pearce stressed. “If you really want people to get what the American Thyroid Association [ATA] has recommended — which is 150 micrograms [of iodine] a day in a supplement — there isn’t one, but we would prefer products made from potassium iodide.”

After measuring actual iodine contained in 60 randomly selected products, the authors determined that the mean dose overall was 119 micrograms of iodine. But this level varied widely, depending on where the iodine came from. For example, potassium iodide contained about 76 percent iodine, while the level of iodine from vitamins with kelp ranged anywhere from 33 to 610 micrograms per daily dose.

In 13 of the vitamin brands sampled, the actual iodine content differed from what was stated on the labeling by 50 percent or more, the researchers reported.

“The values of iodine are all over the map,” Pearce concluded.

Beyond being essential for the developing fetus, iodine is also critical for women who are breast-feeding. And adults who don’t have enough of the element can develop goiter.

According to background information in the article, 2.2 billion people worldwide suffer from iodine deficiency.

The ATA recommends that women who are pregnant or breast-feeding take prenatal vitamins with 150 micrograms of iodine a day. Both the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend higher amounts. The IOM suggests 220 micrograms daily during pregnancy and 290 micrograms while breast-feeding; the WHO recommends 250 micrograms daily during both pregnancy and breast-feeding.

According to the researchers, manufacturers should only use potassium iodide and should make sure supplements contain at least 197 micrograms of potassium iodide to ensure the recommended dose of iodine.

A representative of the supplements industry welcomed the findings.

“We compliment the article for identifying a significant potential problem and recommending to some degree that something be done about it,” said John Hathcock, senior vice president for scientific and international affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, in Washington, D.C. “If iodine levels keep declining [iodine levels in U.S. adults have decreased by about 50 percent since the 1970s, most dramatically among women of childbearing age] and maybe even at present levels, there could be pockets of individuals with certain dietary habits who could [develop problems].”

Differences in labeling requirements for drug or food products on the part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may also account for some of the discrepancies, Hathcock added.

The good news, Pearce said, is that mild iodine deficiency in the United States is not likely to result in major or even detectable neurodevelopmental delays.

“But because we know the potential is there and it’s such an easy thing to prevent, it makes sense to make sure that women get adequate iodine nutrition,” she said.

Consumers should be able to read on the label whether the iodine comes from kelp or potassium iodide, she said.

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Pregnant women and new mothers with diabetes had nearly double the risk of developing postpartum depression as women without diabetes, a new study reports, revealing a potential risk factor for a serious psychological disorder that affects more than 1 in 10 new mothers.

Researchers, led by Katy Backes Kozhimannil of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, analyzed health records of more than 11,000 low-income women enrolled in New Jersey’s Medicaid program. They found that 15.2 percent of the women who had diabetes were depressed during pregnancy or in the first year after childbirth, compared with 8.5 percent of women who did not have diabetes. Those differences remained after adjusting the data for factors such as the age and race of the mothers.

“The good news from this study is that both diabetes and depression are treatable illnesses,” Kozhimannil said in an interview. “Postpartum depression in particular is underdiagnosed and underdetected a lot of the time.”

Diabetes and depression have been linked before, but this is the first study to examine diabetes and depression in new mothers. How one disorder might cause the other has not been untangled. Scientists have speculated on biological possibilities, such as how abnormal blood sugar and insulin levels might affect stress hormones. Psychosocial factors, such as the stress of managing a chronic illness like diabetes, also have been implicated in worsening depressive symptoms.

Women are routinely screened for diabetes between the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy, but screening for depression is not a standard part of care, Kozhimannil said.

Depression can be hard to identify because many of its symptoms are common experiences for new mothers, Kozhimannil said. Up to 80 percent of women go through the “baby blues,” a milder mood disorder as they adjust to fluctuating hormones and life changes.

But postpartum depression is more severe and more persistent, marked by intense worry or panic about the baby’s health.

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Large Study Shows Drinking a Few Times a Week Can Increase Your Risk for Some Cancers

Even moderate alcohol consumption of more than two drinks a week may raise the risk of cancer, according to a new study, despite past research suggesting that light drinking can benefit your health. So what’s the truth?

The latest piece of evidence on the risks of drinking alcohol comes from researchers at Oxford University who studied more than 1.2 million women in the United Kingdom. They found that drinking alcohol may account for about 13 percent of all breast , liver, rectal and upper digestive tract cancers in women.

More shocking, even small amounts of alcohol seemed to increase the cancer risk. When compared with women who drank two or fewer alcoholic beverages per week, those drinking up to six alcoholic beverages had a 2 percent greater risk for cancer in general; those consuming between seven and 14 drinks per week had a 5 percent increased risk for cancer; and those consuming 15 or more per week had a 15 percent increased risk for cancer.

Using these findings, Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the Division of Prevention and Population Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., wrote in the study’s editorial that “there is no level of alcohol consumption that can be considered safe.”

But with all we’ve heard in the past about the supposed health benefits of alcohol, can this really be the case?

Most experts say no.

“The editorialists … seem to be rather extreme in their views,” said Dr. Charles Poole, associate professor of epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina. “I have seldom seen such a one-sided dismissal of the hypothesis that moderate alcohol use may have cardiovascular benefits.”

Alcohol for a Healthy Heart?

A study published in the British Medical Journal in May 2006 found that women who drank alcohol at least one day a week had about a 35 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease than women who drank alcohol less than once a week. For men, however, those who drank daily saw the largest reduction in risk when compared with nondrinkers — about 41 percent.

But it seems that the quantity of alcohol consumption plays a big role in whether you will see the risks or the benefits of a good buzz.

A meta-analysis (or overview of old studies) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2003 found that light to moderate alcohol consumption could lower the risk for stroke, while heavy alcohol consumption raised the stroke risk.

Researchers found that those who consumed more than about 60 grams of alcohol per day, or about five drinks, had a 64 percent increase in overall stroke risk. But those who drank 12 grams of alcohol per day, or about one drink, experienced an 83 percent decrease in overall stroke risk.

Based on the body of available evidence on the benefits and risks of alcohol consumption, the American Cancer Society recommends that drinkers limit intake to one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men.

Drink for Your Heart, or Stop Drinking for the Cancer Risk?

For some, this decision to start drinking for the heart benefits or stop drinking because of the increased cancer risk should be based on personal medical history.

“In light of the findings from [this study], women who are concerned about their cancer risk versus their risk of cardiovascular disease might want to discuss the potential risks and benefits of even low alcohol intake with their health care providers,” said Susan Gapstur, associate director of Cancer Prevention and Control within the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University in Chicago.

And for those with a history of certain diseases such as breast cancer, experts said the heart-protective benefits of alcohol might not outweigh the overall increase in cancer risk caused by drinking.

“I think women at high breast cancer risk due to strong family history, or due to their own personal history, might be better off if they were to restrict alcohol intake to under one drink per day on average,” said Dr. Tim Byers, associate dean of the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado at Denver.

The End Result: Alcohol’s Effect on Life Expectancy

But for those whose personal history offers no added risk for alcohol consumption, taking a look at the overall life expectancy of alcohol drinkers might help to sway one’s decision on whether the buzz is really worth it.

A study published in the journal Epidemiology in November 1998 found that light to moderate drinkers had the lowest risk of death compared with nondrinkers. Those who drank between one and seven alcoholic beverages a week experienced a 20 percent reduction in overall mortality.

When the researchers looked more closely at why light to moderate alcohol drinkers had less risk of death, they found that this group experienced a reduction in death from heart disease, thereby suggesting that the moderate alcohol consumption could have some protective benefits for the heart.

The Final Word on Alcohol

Based on the many studies finding that moderate alcohol consumption can have a heart-protective benefit, many experts said that moderate drinkers should not worry about this latest research finding an increased risk in cancer.

“A small decrease in [cardiovascular] risk more than compensates for an increased risk of rare cancers,” said Dr. Alan Kristal, member and associate head of the Cancer Prevention Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “You have to die of something, and no doubt how you live affects what you die [from], but not ‘if’ and maybe not ‘when.’”

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The government is warning that taking the psoriasis drug Raptiva could result in serious brain infection and even death.

The Food and Drug Administration cited three confirmed cases, and a possible fourth, of people diagnosed with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) after being treated with Raptiva.

“Three of those patients have died,” the FDA said in a public health advisory. “All four patients were treated with the drug for more than three years.”

None was receiving other treatments that suppress the immune system.

Raptiva’s product labeling was revised in October to highlight a boxed warning about the risks of life-threatening infections, including PML.

“At that time, the FDA directed Genentech, the manufacturer, to develop a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) to include a medication guide to educate patients about the drug’s risks,” the FDA’s advisory says.

In the advisory, issued Thursday, the FDA highlighted the confirmed cases and promised to “take appropriate steps” to ensure that Raptiva’s risks do not outweigh its benefits.

The FDA also said it will ensure that patients “are clearly informed of the signs and symptoms of PML” and that health care professionals “carefully monitor patients for the possible development of PML.”

Overseas, the European Medicines Agency has gone further, recommending that no new prescriptions for Raptiva be issued and that patients taking the drug talk to their doctors about an alternative.

On Thursday it asked the European Commission to make that recommendation legally binding.

The group’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use determined “that the benefits of Raptiva no longer outweigh its risks, because of safety concerns, including the occurrence of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy in patients taking the medicine.”

It said patients who have been treated with the drug should be “closely monitored for neurological symptoms and symptoms of infection.”

“Patients who are currently taking Raptiva should not stop treatment abruptly, but should make an appointment with their doctor to discuss the most appropriate replacement treatment,” the agency said.

Raptiva, a once-weekly injection for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, works by suppressing T-cells — cells that help fight infection — in the immune system. Those cells cause the skin inflammation associated with psoriasis.

By suppressing T-cells, Raptiva “decreases the function of the immune system, which increases a patient’s susceptibility to infections,” the FDA said.

The National Institutes of Health says the prognosis for PML “remains grim; the disease usually lasts for months and 80 percent die within the first six months, although spontaneous improvement has been reported. Those who survive PML can be left with severe neurological disabilities.”

Around 6 million to 7 million Americans have psoriasis, which is incurable, the NIH says.

Popularity: 21% [?]

A cup of Joe a day may keep the stroke away.

Are you one of the many women who drink a pot of liquid gold, also known as coffee, daily? Coffee at one time was thought to possibly be detrimental to your health and potentially lead to strokes, but there is new evidence that women who drink coffee regularly may actually be arming themselves, to fight off the potential of a stroke. However, smokers’ benefits seem to be almost nullified by their smoking habits, even if they drink coffee regularly.

In the past, many people have expressed concerns as to whether regular coffee drinkers were causing problems to their health. A newly released study, evaluated the potential link between women’s stroke risk and coffee drinking, by evaluating data from the Nurses’ Health Study that was conducted from 1980 to 2004, and involved over 83,000 women, averaging around 55 years old. The women who participated in the study reported no history of stroke, heart disease, diabetes or cancer, prior to the study. The women completed food frequency questionnaires regarding their diets, every two to four years. Based on the food surveys, 84 percent of the women drank at least some caffeinated coffee and half of them said, they also drank decaffeinated coffee, with 78 percent drinking tea and 54 percent drinking soft drinks with caffeine. Over the 24-year span of the study, their were 2,280 strokes documented, with more than half of the strokes being the type that follow blood vessel blockage called ischemic strokes.

The new study released Monday for the March 3rd issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, shows women who regularly drank at least four cups of coffee a day, reduced their risk of stroke by 20 percent, compared to those women who drank less than a cup monthly. If women drank from five to seven cups of coffee weekly, they reduced their risk of stroke by 19 percent. Those women who drank from two to three cups of coffee daily reduced their risk of stroke by 10 percent. “Many people have been very concerned that coffee might actually be a risk factor for stroke, that it might, in fact, increase the risk of stroke,” according to Rob M. van Dam, the study’s co-author, and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston. “But here we saw that it might end up being beneficial rather than detrimental.”

During the new study, researchers found that drinking coffee actually seemed to help fight against strokes in healthy women, but the same benefits for those women who smoked didn’t exist. Smokers seemed to almost wipe out any benefit they may reap from drinking coffee regularly, with their smoking habits. Smokers who had similar coffee habits as those women who had never smoked or had quit, risks only dropped by 3 percent, while those women who had never smoked but drank four or more cups of coffee daily, risks of strokes fell by 43 percent. Though the researchers did not determine the exact aspect of coffee that lead to stroke reduction, they did note that caffeinated tea and soft drinks didn’t seem to award the same benefit, which lead researchers to believe something other than caffeine in the coffee is the protective shield.

Even though the researchers in the newly released study did show good results at preventing strokes in healthy women, with regular coffee consumption, the researchers caution that more research is needed. The study authors also noted certain conditions, such as insomnia, anxiety, high blood pressure and cardiac complications, which can be negatively affected by coffee consumption. According to Rob M. van Dam, the studies co-author the finding are early, “And previous studies have been quite small. But the data we do have is very convincing in the sense that we feel comfortable that we definitely found no association between high coffee consumption and a higher stroke risk. So women can continue to enjoy their coffee and focus on other things to reduce stroke risk, such as engaging in more physical activity, reducing salt intake and stopping smoking.”

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Eating plan seems to reduce the risk of cognitive impairment, dementia.

Mediterranean Food

Chalk up another endorsement for the so-called Mediterranean diet: The eating regimen, which is rich in fruits, vegetables, fish and olive oil, may help the brain stay sharp into old age, a new study suggests.

Following the healthful diet reduced the risk of getting mild cognitive impairment — marked by forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating. And it also cut the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease if cognitive impairment was already present, said study lead author Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, an assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

“We did two different types of analysis,” Scarmeas said of the study, published in the February issue of Archives of Neurology.

Previous research has found that people who follow the Mediterranean are at less risk of developing a variety of diseases besides Alzheimer’s, including heart disease, cancer and Parkinson’s.

The Columbia researchers began the study by evaluating almost 1,400 people without cognitive impairment and 482 people with mild cognitive impairment, and then followed them for an average of 4.5 years. The participants — average age 77 — also completed a food frequency questionnaire, detailing what they had eaten during the past year.

The researchers divided the participants into three groups — those who adhered somewhat or not at all to the Mediterranean diet, those who adhered moderately to it, and those who adhered regularly. Then they evaluated the participants’ cognitive functioning.

They found that the diet helped in both cases — preventing mild cognitive impairment and also the risk of further decline, even if people weren’t entirely strict in their adherence to the diet.

“As compared to the group that ate very little or not at all of the Mediterranean diet, those who ate it to a moderate degree had 17 percent less risk of developing mild cognitive impairment,” Scarmeas said. “Those who adhered a lot had a 28 percent less risk of developing mild cognitive impairment.”

The diet also helped those who already had mild impairment. “Compared to those who adhered not at all or very little, those who ate the Mediterranean diet to a moderate degree had a 45 percent reduction in risk going from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease. Those who adhered a lot had a 48 percent reduction in risk of going from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s,” he said.

Scarmeas said previous research he’s carried out found that a greater adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

It’s not known exactly how the diet may help keep the brain healthy, Scarmeas said. One possibility is that it might reduce inflammation, which plays a role in brain disease. Or it might work by improving cardiovascular risk factors such as high cholesterol, he said.

Two experts who reviewed the study put their perspective on the findings.

“You see what is called a dose response. The more stringently you follow the Mediterranean diet, the better the outcome,” noted Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

Alice Lichtenstein, Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston, said: “It’s encouraging to see the results — those reporting the healthier dietary pattern seem to do better.” What remains to be seen, she added, is whether it was the specific diet that helped people avoid cognitive decline or if those people who ate properly had other healthy habits that decreased their risk.

All three experts agreed: Until more evidence is in that the Mediterranean diet keeps brains sharp, there are plenty of other reasons to follow it, including heart health.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Study finds they don’t reduce risk of cardiovascular disease,
cancer.

In yet another blow to the dietary supplement industry, researchers find no evidence that multivitamin use helps older women ward off heart disease and cancer, the top two killers of women, respectively.

“Women can be encouraged by the fact that these vitamins seem to do no harm, but they also seem to confer no benefit,” said study co-author Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, a professor of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. “The kind of vitamins you get from diet is quite different, because foods are very complex and have a lot of chemicals we don’t know about that interact with each other. [Eating a varied diet] is not the same as distilling it into a pill. The message is to eat a well-balanced diet, exercise and maintain weight.”

Other recent studies have suggested that supplement forms of vitamins B, C, D and E, along with folic acid and beta carotene, don’t seem to have cancer-fighting abilities, especially in women.

And just last week, other researchers reported that many healthy U.S. children and teenagers may be popping vitamins and mineral supplements they don’t need, even while children who may actually need the supplements aren’t getting them.

However, all these findings, including the latest one, come with a caveat from another expert.

“There are a lot of variables associated with this study, and unless there is an actual randomized, controlled trial, we can’t say anything,” said Rajat Sethi, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Texas A&M Health Science Center Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy in Kingsville. “There have been a mixture of studies where vitamins indeed have indirectly shown benefit.”

And Andrew Shao, vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, stated, “Multivitamins, like all other dietary supplements, are meant to be used as part of an overall healthy lifestyle; they are not intended to be magic bullets that will assure the prevention of chronic diseases, like cancer… From a practical standpoint, this study does not change the fact that the majority of consumers could benefit from taking an affordable multivitamin, particularly as the majority of Americans fail to consume the recommended amounts of a variety of essential nutrients established by the Institute of Medicine.”

According to background information in the study, which was published in the Feb. 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, half of Americans regularly use dietary supplements, to the tune of $20 billion a year.

Many people believe multivitamins will prevent chronic conditions such as cancer and heart disease. Yet “convincing scientific data . . . are lacking,” the researchers stated.

Two exceptions are folic acid use in women of childbearing age to prevent neural tube defects in babies, and avoiding beta carotene supplements if you’re a smoker.

These researchers looked at 161,808 postmenopausal women participating in the government-sponsored Women’s Health Initiative who were followed for about eight years. Some 41.5 percent of participants reported using multivitamins.

There appeared to be no association between multivitamin use and risk of breast, colorectal, endometrial, lung or ovarian cancers; cardiovascular disease; or overall death.

“There was some hint that stress vitamins, which are mostly high doses of B vitamins, may have been protective for some forms of cardiovascular disease,” Wassertheil-Smoller said.

And the study does come with other caveats, Wassertheil-Smoller said.

“Most of the women in the study probably did eat a fairly decent diet, meaning we don’t yet necessarily know how vitamins affect women eating poorly,” she said. “The other thing is we didn’t measure other things about diet such as sense of energy and well-being.”

Popularity: 21% [?]

A small survey of young black men from the South who tested positive for H.I.V. in their teens and early 20s found that most had engaged in risky sexual behaviors but thought it unlikely they would be infected, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than half of the 29 gay or bisexual men surveyed said they had engaged in unprotected anal sex in the year before they were infected and had had sex with slightly older men, the survey found. Both are risky behaviors, yet the vast majority of the young men said they had not thought that they would ever be infected.

Young black gay and bisexual men are becoming infected with H.I.V. at alarming rates, particularly in the South, and health officials are trying to analyze their risk factors in order to refine education and intervention strategies.

“We need to make sure that H.I.V. infection does not become a rite of passage for young black men who have sex with men,” said Dr. Alexandra Oster, one of the authors of the survey published last week in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

After the Mississippi State Department of Health notified the C.D.C. in late 2007 that the number of new H.I.V. diagnoses had spiked at a sexually transmitted disease clinic serving Jackson, Miss., , the agencies teamed up to do the survey. The number of newly diagnosed H.I.V. cases among all black men in the Jackson area had increased 20 percent between 2004-2005 and 2006-2007, but infections among those ages 17 to 25 had jumped 45 percent.

The agencies surveyed 29 black men ages 17 to 25 who had tested positive for H.I.V. between 2006 and 2008 and who reported having sex with other men. Twenty reported having unprotected anal intercourse with a man during the year before their positive H.I.V. tests, and 16 reported having male sex partners who were 26 or older.

Having older sex partners increases the risk of infection because older men are more likely than younger men to be infected.

Only three of the 29 men thought it likely they would acquire H.I.V. during their lifetime. More than half thought it unlikely or very unlikely, the survey found.

Health officials were particularly concerned about the lack of routine H.I.V. testing in this group of young men. Six of the men had not had a single H.I.V. test in the two years prior to testing positive, and five had had only one test in the two years before the positive result, the survey found.

“These men may have taken what they believed were reasonable steps to reduce their risk, but unfortunately the rates of H.I.V. infection are so high in this population that sometimes people have partners who are H.I.V. positive and do not know it,” said Richard Wolitski, director of the C.D.C.’s division of H.I.V./AIDS Prevention.

Sexually active men who have sex with men should be tested at least once a year, C.D.C. officials say.

If you wish to be responsible, please get tested every six months.  Remember, it’s not just your life at risk, but the life another you may be putting at risk.

Popularity: 21% [?]

The National Institutes of Health has finished a study that found that women who received a vaginal microbial gel called PRO 200, made by Indevus, were 30 percent less likely to contract HIV than women who did not receive the gel. This is the first trial to suggest that any microbicide may prevent male-to-female transmission of HIV, according to Lexington-based Indevus. The study included 3,100 women and was conducted at seven clinical centers in Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia and the U.S.. The women in the study were also given access to free condoms and safer-sex information. A second study, involving 10,000 women, is expected to be completed later this year.

“We are extremely excited with the results of this trial”, Indevus CEO Glenn Cooper said in a statement. “Though not conclusive, these results provide encouragement that PRO 2000 may offer a female-controlled method that can be used to protect against the sexual transmission of HIV.”

Indevus is a pharmaceutical company specializing in products to treat conditions in urology and endocrinology. The company currently has five products on the market, including drugs for overactive bladder and prostate cancer.

Indevus stock was trading at $5.32 in late morning trading on Monday, one penny lower than the company’s close on the previous day. Indevus’ stock has traded between $1.19 and $6.56 over the past year.

The company recently released earnings for the 1st quarter of their fiscal year, ending Dec. 31. Indevus reported a net loss of $7.6 million on revenue of $26.4 million compared with a loss of $14.7 million on revenue of $16.4 million for the same period the previous year.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Who is to blame and why are they to blame for hundreds of Americans becoming ill and a handful of deaths do to the Salmonella outbreak?

Sanitation problems at the South Georgia peanut butter plant linked to the national salmonella outbreak were no secret to upper management, according to one sanitation worker.

“I used to tell them all of the time, ‘We need to shut down and really clean this place,’ ” said Anne Bristow, who had been at the plant nearly three years at the time it closed. “I did see roaches and rodents, but was it bad enough that I’d pick up my coat and leave? No.”

She said the plant was never shut down for cleaning, as far as she knew.

Bristow, 58, said she began working at the plant, owned by Peanut Corp. of America, as a peanut picker in 2006. After a while, she became so concerned about sanitary conditions, she kept a journal.

“But it was locked up when they shut down the plant,” she said. “I would have taken it with me if I’d known I wouldn’t be able to go back and get it.”

Inspection reports from the Georgia Agriculture Department, from 2006 to 2008, show repeated problems with cleanliness at the Blakely plant, which federal officials have targeted as the sole source of the national outbreak.

The salmonella outbreak has sickened 575 people in 43 states, including six people in Georgia, and may be linked to eight deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Peanut Corp. of America, headquartered in Lynchburg, Va., said in a statement this week that the plant had been inspected by federal and state regulators in 2008. The company said it has recalled affected products.

The company has expressed empathy with those sickened and said it is cooperating with investigations.

“Our top priority has been — and will continue to be — to ensure the public safety and to work promptly to remove all potentially contaminated products out of the marketplace,” the company said in a statement.

Manuel Brubaker, 63, who worked as a purchasing agent, said the situation breaks his heart.

“Had I known about the problems they say we had, could I have done something, I don’t know,” he said. “But would I have tried? Yes, absolutely.”

Brubaker said he had no firsthand knowledge of any roach or rodent problems in the plant. He said he made sure the part of production he was responsible for was clean and in order.

“If anything was suspicious or wrong, QC [quality control] had the authority to shut it [the plant] down until the problem was fixed,” he said.

“And that never happened to my knowledge.”

The purchasing agent, who was responsible for doling out supplies and ingredients to each department, said he’s also aggravated that the blame seems to be landing on the shoulders of the workers.

“When you have a job, you either do what the bosses tell you or you leave,” he said. “I did what they told me to, and they never asked me to do anything I thought was wrong.”

Henry Mills, a 24-year veteran of the plant, declined to talk about specific working conditions, but did say federal investigators have questioned him.

“I’ve had more company in the last few days than ever,” he said. “I didn’t know anybody knew I was up here on this hill.”

Mills, 70, said FBI and Food and Drug Administration agents were at his home Thursday morning.

“They wanted to know who gave me permission to ship certain products,” he said. “They really dwelled on that.”

Mills, who was one of the last people to leave the plant on Jan. 16, the day it was shuttered, said he has no regrets about the work he did there.

“I hung my keys on the wall and locked the door,” he said. “And I looked back and knew I gave them a good 24 years.”

In Washington, federal officials said Thursday that they did not know until last month that peanut products from the Blakely plant tested positive for salmonella on 12 occasions going back to 2007.

In most cases, “the company is not required” to report to government inspectors about lab findings, Michael Chappell, the FDA’s acting commissioner of regulation, told a Senate hearing.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said the lack of a requirement to report lab findings was “one gaping loophole” in government oversight of the food supply.

Harkin and fellow Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the committee, grilled federal officials on why it took the Atlanta-based CDC months to identify the source of the salmonella outbreak as the Georgia plant and inform the public.

“Y’all have got to figure out some way to speed up this process,” Chambliss said. “We knew that 16 states were involved [as of Nov. 10]. And I see nothing that would indicate that CDC was aggressive in notifying public health systems in all 50 states to be on the lookout.”

Chambliss blamed a “huge breakdown in the system” and a lack of coordination among the CDC, the FDA and the Georgia Department of Agriculture, which inspected the Georgia peanut facility.

“It’s pretty obvious we’ve got to make some major changes,” Chambliss said.

Rear Adm. Ali S. Khan, assistant surgeon general and a senior official at the CDC in Atlanta, told the senators his agency could do better, but he said the effort needs an influx of resources and more help from states: “We need more boots on the ground,” he said.

Harkin and Chambliss both said the tainted peanut products, which were shipped to institutions, nursing homes and food processors, are a stark reminder of the need for reform.

Neither senator was ready to propose specific remedies to protect the food supply.

Chambliss said he favored a public-private partnership.

The Georgian, mindful that his state produces nearly half of all U.S. peanuts, defended the overall safety of peanut products as he held up a jar of Jif peanut butter and said that such national brands in the supermarket are safe.

The current problem comes from “one isolated facility,” he said.

Popularity: 21% [?]

National Go Red for Women Day

Wear Red Today to Promote Heart Disease Awareness

Today is National Wear Red Day—also known as Go Red for Women Day— when people are asked to wear red in order to promote awareness of heart disease and stroke in women. Efforts to improve awareness of cardiovascular disease has made some progress: In 2000, 34 percent of women knew that heart disease was their gender’s No. 1 killer, and that figure had increased to 46 percent by 2003 and 57 percent by 2006, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. African-American and Hispanic women are at higher risk of heart disease—and are less aware of its dangers—than white women. A study published in Circulation in 2006 showed that when women are aware of their heart disease risk, they’re more likely to take action to reduce risk by exercising, eating more healthfully, and losing weight.

Popularity: 21% [?]

At least 84 children have now died in Nigeria since November after being given teething syrup found to contain engine coolant, the health minister said.

The “My Pikin” syrup, which contains diethylene glycol, is still circulating in the west African nation and new cases of poisoning are still being reported, Health Minister Babatunde Osotimehin, said today in an e-mailed statement. The brand has been withdrawn, he said.

“The poison has caused many deaths in children between two months to seven years old in Nigeria,” Osotimehin said. “Some 111 cases have been reported since last November.”

More than 25 children died in the northern cities of Zaria and Kaduna and the southwest city of Ibadan after taking the syrup, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control said in November. The drug was traced to a Lagos-based pharmaceutical company that had used tainted chemicals in producing the drug, the agency said.

Nigeria’s health authorities are concerned the tainted batches are still circulating around the country and being used by parents who are not aware of the danger, said John Oladejo, a doctor who is a member of the health ministry’s task force investigating the deaths.

“The last case we had was a child who died two weeks ago,” Oladejo said today by phone from the capital, Abuja.

Popularity: 21% [?]

FDA Approves Drug for Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the injectable drug degarelix, (pronounced day–guh–RELL–ix) the first new drug in several years for prostate cancer.

This should be great news for R&B Singer/Song Writer and Performer Charlie Wilson, who was diagnosed last fall with Prostate Cancer.

Degarelix is intended to treat patients with advanced prostate cancer. It belongs to a class of agents called gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) receptor inhibitors. These agents slow the growth and progression of prostate cancer by suppressing testosterone, which plays an important role in the continued growth of prostate cancer.

Hormonal treatments for prostate cancer may cause an initial surge in testosterone production before lowering testosterone levels. This initial stimulation of the hormone receptors may temporarily prompt tumor growth rather than inhibiting it. Degarelix doesn’t do this.

“Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among men in the United States and there is an ongoing need for additional treatment options for these patients,” said Richard Pazdur, M.D., director of the Office of Oncology Drug Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA.

Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in the United States. In 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are currently available, nearly 190,000 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and 29,000 men died from the cancer.

Several treatment options exist for different stages of prostate cancer including observation, prostatectomy (surgical removal of the prostate gland), radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy with agents that affect GnRH receptors.

The efficacy of degarelix was established in a clinical trial in which patients with prostate cancer received either degarelix or leuprolide, a drug currently used for hormone therapy in treating advanced prostate cancer. Degarelix treatment did not cause the temporary increase in testosterone that is seen with some other drugs that affect GnRH receptors.

In fact, nearly all of the patients on either drug had suppression of testosterone to levels seen with surgical removal of the testes.

The most frequently reported adverse reactions in the clinical study included injection site reactions (pain, redness, and swelling), hot flashes, increased weight, fatigue, and increases in some liver enzymes.

Degarelix is manufactured for Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc., Parsippany, N.J., by Rentschler Biotechnologie Gmbh, Laupheim, Germany.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Chemicals known as perfluorinated chemicals, which are pervasive in food packaging, pesticides, clothing, upholstery, carpets and personal care products, may delay pregnancy, a new study suggests.

These chemicals are being phased out in the United States because of their toxic effects, and are expected to be completely gone by 2010. However, they remain in the environment and in the body for decades, and have been linked to developmental problems.

“These widespread chemicals apparently lower the fertility in couples trying to get pregnant,” said lead researcher Dr. Jorn Olsen, chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at UCLA’s School of Public Health.

Danish women in the study who had with high levels of perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) took longer to get pregnant, Olsen said.

“If this finding can be replicated, one would have to look for other chemicals to replace these,” he said.

The report is published in the Jan. 29 online edition of Human Reproduction. And it follows on the heels of a report linking another common plastic chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), to developmental problems in fetuses and infants.

For the study, Olsen’s team collected data on 1,240 women who participated in the Danish National Birth Cohort. The researchers took blood samples from the women and interviewed them on how long it took them to become pregnant.

The researchers found that blood levels of PFOS ranged from 6.4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) to 106.7 ng/ml. For PFOA, levels ranged from 1 ng/ml to 41.5 ng/ml.

Olsen’s group then divided the women into four groups, depending on how much of the chemicals was in their blood.

Women in the three groups with the highest levels of PFOS took from 70 percent to 134 percent longer to get pregnant than women with the lowest PFOS levels, the team report. It took women with the highest PFOA levels 60 percent to 154 percent longer to get pregnant compared with women with the lowest levels of this chemical.

Why these chemicals would delay pregnancy isn’t known, Olsen said, but they may affect hormones involved in reproduction.

Recent animal studies have found these chemicals may have a variety of toxic effects on the liver, immune system and developmental and reproductive organs, he noted.

In addition, previous studies by the same researchers found that PFOA may affect the growth of fetuses. In addition, two other studies linked PFOA and PFOS to impaired fetal growth, Olsen said.

However, Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of reproductive endocrinology at New York University Medical Center in New York City, believes the study is missing a cause-and-effect relationship.

“There are probably things in the environment that are affecting us in ways we don’t know about, but you have to get to the basic biology of what’s the mechanism of action — that’s the missing link,” Grifo said. “The problem with the study is, it creates more anxiety and fear, but it doesn’t answer the question.”

Any danger with these chemicals may soon become moot, since in 2006 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had commitments from eight manufacturers of PFOA to voluntarily reduce emissions and product content of PFOA and related chemicals in the United States and overseas by 95 percent by 2010, and to work toward eliminating emissions and product content of these chemicals by 2015. This action was brought on because the chemical was associated with “systemic and developmental toxicity.”

In addition, 3M, the only manufacturer of PFOS in the United States, had agreed to phase out its production and use of the chemical nine years ago, according to the EPA’s Web site.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Did you know that many of the snacks you and your family enjoy contain some levels of mercury – a poison that can hamper brain development and cause serious kidney problems, among other things?

A group of scientists suspected that the way big companies process high-fructose corn syrup also puts mercury in the popular foods they sweeten.

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy randomly tested 55 popular food items that use this kind of corn syrup. A third of the products contained mercury.

Nashville mother Michelle Barber went down the list and couldn’t believe how many products were in her kitchen.

“Now it makes me wonder about all the food in my pantry,” she said.

She knows the mercury levels are legal but still wonders if she can, in good conscience, give her daughters products she knows contain mercury.

The doctor who conducted the study said since mercury is toxic in any form, it’s time to get it out of corn syrup.

Dr. John Benitez is the managing director of the Tennessee Poison Center at Vanderbilt. He said that all of these items are well below the legal levels of mercury; they are just traces.

It is legal but unwanted.

Benitez said he can’t help but notice the wide range of mercury in products using the same ingredient.

The Food and Drug Administration permits one part per million of mercury in food products. These products tested range from 30 to 350 parts per trillion.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Salmonella and Peanuts. Not the combination we hoped for.

A federal probe into a deadly salmonella outbreak has exposed a dirty secret: Food producers in most states are not required to alert health regulators if internal tests show possible contamination at their plants.

The legal loophole surfaced this week when federal investigators disclosed internal Peanut Corp. of America reports that documented at least 12 positive tests for salmonella between 2007 and 2008 at their Blakely, Ga., plant, which has been identified as the source of the nationwide outbreak. In each case, the plant did not alert state or federal regulators.

The flaw has infuriated regulators and food safety experts, who are pushing legislation that would require the alerts at the first sign of contamination. They say stricter requirements could have stemmed an outbreak, which may have started months ago and has sickened at least 500 people and may have led to eight deaths.

“Nobody was looking over their shoulder,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “And if they knew state officials could have viewed that data, they might have made different decisions. And that could have saved lives.”

Peanut Corp. tests showed salmonella had been found in products made at the plant in southwest Georgia dating to 2007. Still, production lines were never cleaned, according to a Food and Drug Administration report. The products that initially tested positive were retested and shipped after a different test by a different firm came up negative.

Federal officials, food scientists, legal experts and industry groups, including the Grocery Manufacturers Association, cannot point to a state that requires food producers to alert health regulators about positive contamination tests. That includes three of the biggest agricultural states — California, Texas and Florida.

While there is nothing that requires companies to disclose to either the public or regulators internal test results, the Food and Drug Administration does have the authority under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 to obtain the records when it considers it valuable to investigating an outbreak, said agency spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek.

The FDA has only exercised that authority three times, including this latest outbreak. It was after it received Peanut Corp.’s records that the FDA discovered that 12 internal tests had pinpointed batches of peanut butter containing the salmonella bacteria.

The agency also used the Act in the 2007 melamine investigation that led to a massive recall of pet food. Unscrupulous suppliers in China had been adding the industrial chemical to pet food ingredients to artificially boost protein readings on quality tests. It caused kidney problems, even death.

Federal lawmakers are pushing for vast changes to food safety inspection policy. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who heads a congressional panel looking into the outbreak, and Rep. Henry Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said they will hold a hearing next month on the problem.

“The situation at the plant is alarming,” said Waxman, D-Calif. “It shows major gaps in our food safety system. I am extremely troubled by reports that the plant tested positive for salmonella numerous times but nothing was done to ensure that the product did not go on the market.”

Some states do have laws that give regulators more tools to access internal reports. California, an agricultural powerhouse, allows access to internal records if regulators request them as part of a survey or an inspection. But it doesn’t require the plants to submit them on their own.

But Fred Pritzker, a food safety lawyer in Minneapolis, said he doubts any states have the requirement because those requirements would be more restrictive than the federal government.

Food makers not being required to share tests that show harmful bacteria has long aggravated food safety experts and state regulators, who say these latest sicknesses are why the information is needed.

“It’s obvious in this case that the company was finding salmonella in the plant, and that is a violation of good manufacturing practices. None of that product should have come out,” said Tony Corbo of Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Peanut butter has long been considered a relatively low risk for salmonella because roasting the peanuts properly kills the bacteria, and because its low moisture content makes it a less fertile breeding ground. But during an inspection of the Blakely plant in January, federal inspectors reported finding roaches, mold, a leaking roof and other sanitary problems.

The company says it is cooperating with the government and has shut down production at the plant. Peanut Corp. said in a statement it “categorically denies any allegations that the company sought favorable results from any lab in order to ship its products.”

Major peanut manufacturers, including Jif maker J.M. Smucker Co., Skippy manufacturer Unilever and ConAgra Foods Inc., which makes Peter Pan, have said they have stringent food safety and quality control standards. But they wouldn’t say how often their plants test the finished product. None is implicated in the outbreak.

Federal lawmakers and Georgia politicians are calling for a federal probe of possible criminal violations at the plant.

And Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin said he wants his state — the nation’s leading peanut producer — to be the first to require plants to alert regulators about positive contamination tests.

“If they deem it necessary to do some in-house testing, then we want access to it,” Irvin said.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Brazilian model Mariana Brindi

Our hearts go out the the family and friends of beautiful Mariana Brindi, who only one month ago, this stunning 20-year-old beauty queen was living the dream of many young Brazilian women, trading her striking good looks for a promising career in modeling.

Then she contracted a seemingly ordinary urinary tract infection. But the bacteria spread quickly throughout her body and proved to be extremely drug resistant. Doctors were forced to amputate her hands and feet in a desperate attempt to save her life, but by Saturday, she was dead.

“God is comforting our hearts because he wanted her to be with him now,” her father Agnaldo Costa Bridi told reporters Saturday outside the hospital where his daughter died.

Brindi’s Web site says she began modeling at age 14 after taking a course. In 2007 and 2008, she was a finalist in the Brazilian stage of the Miss World pageant.

Last year, she took fourth in the Face of the Universe competition in South Africa and she had won bikini competitions across the globe.

The Miss World Brazil organization said she was an example of someone “who knew how to intensely live her life.”

But in December, she fell ill and doctors in her native Espirito Santo state initially diagnosed her as having kidney stones.

She returned to a hospital on Jan. 3 in septic shock from the infection that would force doctors to amputate first her feet, then her hands. Doctors said there was little they could do but pump drugs into her and hope for the best.

It was a nightmare scenario for anyone with an infection: Her body did not react to the latest and most potent drugs while the bacteria in her veins spread from head to toe.

In Brindi’s case, the culprit was the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is known to be drug resistant.

A short statement from the Espirito Santo State Health Secretariat announced her death on Saturday “despite all the commitment of the hospital team.”

Her aunt said hundreds of messages left on her Web site had lifted Bridi’s spirit in the past weeks.

“The words of consolation that Mariana received in the past few days were very important for her,” said Oriendina Pereira Wasen.  “I believe that the serenity on her face came from this spiritual comfort.”

What is a Urinary Tract Infection?

A urinary tract infection is an infection that begins in your urinary system. Your urinary system is composed of the kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra.

Any part of your urinary system can become infected, but most infections involve the lower urinary tract — the urethra and the bladder.

Women are at greater risk of developing a urinary tract infection than are men. A urinary tract infection limited to your bladder can be painful and annoying. However, serious consequences can occur if a urinary tract infection spreads to your kidneys.

Antibiotics are the typical treatment for a urinary tract infection. But you can take steps to reduce your chance of getting a urinary tract infection in the first place.

What are the Symptoms?

Not everyone with a urinary tract infection develops recognizable signs and symptoms, but most people have some.

In general, urinary tract infection signs and symptoms develop rapidly and can include:

• A strong, persistent urge to urinate
• A burning sensation when urinating
• Passing frequent, small amounts of urine
• Blood in the urine (hematuria) or cloudy, strong-smelling urine
• Bacteria in the urine (bacteriuria)

Types of urinary tract infection

Each type of urinary tract infection may result in more-specific signs and symptoms, depending on which part of your urinary tract is infected.

When to seek medical advice?

Immediately.

What causes urinary tract infection?

The urinary system is composed of the kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra. All play a role in removing waste from your body.

Urinary tract infections typically occur when bacteria enter the urinary tract through the urethra and begin to multiply in the bladder.

Although the urinary system is designed to keep out such microscopic invaders, the defenses sometimes fail. When that happens, bacteria may take hold and multiply into a full-blown infection in the urinary tract.

The most common urinary tract infections occur mainly in women and affect the bladder and urethra.

• Infection of the bladder (cystitis) is usually caused by Escherichia coli (E. coli), a species of bacteria commonly found in the gastrointestinal tract. Sexual intercourse may lead to cystitis, but you don’t have to be sexually active to develop it. All women are susceptible to cystitis because of their anatomy — specifically, the close proximity of the urethra to the anus and the short distance from the urethral opening to the bladder.

• Infection of the urethra (urethritis) can occur when the gastrointestinal bacteria make the short trip from the anus to the urethra. In addition, because of the female urethra’s proximity to the vagina, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), such as herpes simplex virus, gonorrhea and chlamydia, also are possible causes of urethritis.

What are the risk factors?

Some people appear to be more likely than are others to develop urinary tract infections. Risk factors include:

• Being female. Half of all women will develop a urinary tract infection at some point during their lives, and many will experience more than one. A key reason is their anatomy. Women have a shorter urethra, which cuts down on the distance bacteria must travel to reach the bladder.

• Being sexually active. Women who are sexually active tend to have more urinary tract infections. Sexual intercourse can irritate the urethra, allowing germs to more easily travel through the urethra into the bladder.

• Using certain types of birth control. Women who use diaphragms for birth control also may be at higher risk, as are women who use spermicidal agents.

• Aging. After menopause, urinary tract infections may become more common because tissues of the vagina, urethra and the base of the bladder become thinner and more fragile due to loss of estrogen.

• Kidney stones or any other urinary obstruction.

• Diabetes and other chronic illnesses that may impair the immune system.

• Prolonged use of tubes (catheters) in the bladder.

Recurrent urinary tract infections

In women, the immune system may play a role in the risk of recurrent urinary tract infections. Bacteria can attach to cells in the urinary tract more easily in women lacking protective factors that normally allow the bladder to shed bacteria.

More research is needed to determine the exact factors involved and how these factors can be manipulated to benefit women with frequent urinary tract infections.

Are there any complications?

When treated promptly and properly, urinary tract infections rarely lead to complications. But left untreated, a urinary tract infection can become something more serious than merely a set of uncomfortable symptoms.

Untreated urinary tract infections can lead to acute or chronic kidney infections (pyelonephritis), which could permanently damage your kidneys. Young children and older adults are at the greatest risk of kidney damage due to urinary tract infections because their symptoms are often overlooked or mistaken for other conditions.

Pregnant women who have urinary tract infections may have an increased risk of delivering low birth weight or premature infants.

Women who experience three or more urinary tract infections are likely to continue experiencing them.

Preparing for you Doctors visit

Most urinary tract infections are treated by your family doctor or a general practitioner. However, when recurrences are frequent or a kidney infection becomes chronic, you’ll likely be referred to a doctor who specializes in urinary disorders (urologist) or kidney disorders (nephrologist) for an evaluation to determine if urologic abnormalities may be causing the infections.

What you can do

Before your appointment, make a list of medications or supplements you’re taking or any allergies you have. Having this information helps your doctor select the best treatment.

Write down questions to ask your doctor. Some basic questions include:

• What kind of tests do I need?
• Can I do anything to prevent a urinary tract infection?
• What signs and symptoms should I watch out for?
• What do the results of my urine test mean?
• Do I need to take medicine?
• Are there any special instructions for taking the medicine?
• What can I do if I keep getting urinary tract infections?

In addition to the questions that you’ve prepared to ask your doctor, don’t hesitate to ask questions during your appointment at any time that you don’t understand something.

Diagnosis/Tests

If your doctor suspects you have a urinary tract infection, he or she may ask you to turn in a urine sample to determine if pus, red blood cells or bacteria are present in your urine. To avoid potential contamination of the sample, you may be instructed to cleanse your genital area with an antiseptic pad and to collect the urine midstream.

Laboratory analysis of the urine (urinalysis), sometimes followed by a urine culture, can reveal whether you have an infection. Although no simple test can differentiate between an upper and lower urinary tract infection, the presence of fever and flank pain indicate that the infection likely involves your kidneys.

UTI Treatment

If your symptoms are typical of a urinary tract infection and you’re generally in good health, antibiotics are the first line of treatment. Which drugs are prescribed and for how long depends on your health condition and the type of bacteria found in your urine.

Simple infection:

Drugs commonly recommended for simple urinary tract infections include:

• Amoxicillin (Amoxil, Trimox)
• Nitrofurantoin (Furadantin, Macrodantin)
• Ciprofloxacin (Cipro)
• Levofloxacin (Levaquin)
• Sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (Bactrim)

Usually, symptoms clear up within a few days of treatment. But you may need to continue antibiotics for a week or more. Take the entire course of antibiotics recommended by your doctor to ensure that the infection is completely eradicated.

For an uncomplicated urinary tract infection that occurs when you’re otherwise healthy, your doctor may recommend a shorter course of treatment, such as taking an antibiotic for three days. But whether this short course of treatment is adequate to treat your infection depends on your particular symptoms and medical history.

Your doctor may also prescribe a pain medication (analgesic) that numbs your bladder and urethra to relieve burning while urinating. One common side effect of urinary tract analgesics is discolored urine — bright blue or orange.

Recurrent infection:

If you have recurrent urinary tract infections, your doctor may recommend a longer course of antibiotic treatment or a self-treatment program with short courses of antibiotics at the outset of your urinary symptoms. Home urine tests, in which you dip a test stick into a urine sample, are now available that are highly sensitive and may be helpful if you experience recurring infections.

For infections related to sexual activity, your doctor may recommend taking a single dose of antibiotic after sexual intercourse.

If you’re postmenopausal, your doctor may recommend vaginal estrogen therapy to minimize your chance of recurrent urinary tract infections.

Severe infection:

For severe urinary tract infections, hospitalization and treatment with intravenous antibiotics may be necessary.

Home remedies

Urinary tract infections can be painful, but you can take steps to ease your discomfort until antibiotics clear the infection. Follow these tips:

• Drink plenty of water to dilute your urine and help flush out bacteria. Avoid coffee, alcohol, and soft drinks containing citrus juices and caffeine until your infection has cleared. They can irritate your bladder and tend to aggravate your frequent or urgent need to urinate.

• Use a heating pad on your abdomen to minimize bladder pressure or discomfort.

UTI Prevention

Take these steps to reduce your risk of urinary tract infections:

• Drink plenty of liquids, especially water. Cranberry juice may have infection-fighting properties. However, don’t drink cranberry juice if you’re taking the blood-thinning medication warfarin. Possible interactions between cranberry juice and warfarin may lead to bleeding.

• Wipe from front to back. Doing so after urinating and after a bowel movement helps prevent bacteria in the anal region from spreading to the vagina and urethra.

• Empty your bladder as soon as possible after intercourse. Also, drink a full glass of water to help flush bacteria.

• Avoid potentially irritating feminine products. Using deodorant sprays or other feminine products, such as douches and powders, in the genital area can irritate the urethra.

Popularity: 45% [?]

The global effort to eradicate polio, which began more than two decades ago and has suffered repeated setbacks, will receive an additional $635 million in an effort to finish the job over the next five years.

The money will be used to intensify vaccination campaigns in northern India and northern Nigeria, the two regions that account for more than 80 percent of the remaining cases of the paralyzing infection. In addition to those two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only others where “wild” polio virus still circulates.

Providing the new infusion of cash are Rotary International, the service organization that first proposed the eradication of polio and has raised $825 million toward the goal; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the governments of Germany and Britain.

About $6.17 billion has been spent so far on the eradication effort. The United States has contributed $1.4 billion over the years and is the biggest single donor.

“If we don’t do this, we will lose all the investment we have made in the past,” Gates said yesterday at a Rotary conference in San Diego.

The $255 million Gates pledged comes 14 months after a $100 million donation his foundation made in 2007 as the virus resurged in India. Since then, he and his wife have committed themselves to eradicating malaria, a task that will be much harder than ending polio.

Yesterday, Gates suggested that a failure to rid the world of polio would be a major setback to progress in global public health that his foundation is spearheading.

“The value of this eradication initiative in energizing the global health movement can’t be underestimated,” he said. “It is super-important that we succeed with polio.”

Some experts, however, have come to doubt that polio eradication is possible. The campaign has already missed two deadlines, in 2000 and 2005.

The number of cases worldwide last year was 1,625 — about 500 more than in 2007 and three times the number in 2001, the best year of the campaign. Nevertheless, the incidence of the disease has been cut by 99 percent since the campaign began in 1988, when about 350,000 cases a year were recorded.

On a teleconference with reporters yesterday, the coordinator of the campaign at the World Health Organization said that failing to finish the job would result in returning to something close to the previous level of infection.

“This is an epidemic-prone disease,” said R. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist. “The idea that it can be controlled at the level where it is now is a false premise.”

There are many reasons why eradicating polio has proved harder than eradicating smallpox, a unique achievement that was officially completed in 1980.

One is that the vast majority of polio infections are “silent,” with about 1 in 200 causing paralysis. That means the virus can spread widely before authorities realize it is present in a population. Another is that there are three types of polio virus, and eradication must eliminate all of them.

The vaccine used in the global campaign consists of versions of all three strains that have been weakened so they cannot cause illness. After the vaccine is administered, the viruses briefly grow in a person’s intestinal tract, providing immunity and, for several weeks, also being excreted in feces.

That can spread the “vaccine-derived” strains through an under-immunized population, and over time the virus can revert to a pathogenic form and cause paralysis.

That is what is happening with so-called type 2 polio virus. Its wild form was eradicated in 1999, but since then a vaccine-derived type 2 virus has caused more than 100 cases in northern Nigeria, where in some locales fewer than 60 percent of children are fully immunized.

Earlier this decade, several Nigerian states stopped mass immunization for more than a year because of internal political rivalries and suspicions about the vaccine’s safety. Polio cases rose steeply, and travelers carried the disease to 20 previously polio-free countries, necessitating expensive and laborious efforts to stamp it out again.

The Gates foundation will provide $255 million over the next five years. Rotary will match that with $100 million. The organization, which has 33,000 clubs around the world, has raised $61 million of a $100 million pledge to match the Gates’s 2007 donation.

Britain, the second-biggest governmental donor to polio eradication, pledged $150 million, and Germany, the fifth-biggest contributor, pledged $130 million.

Although no new deadline has been set, WHO has a plan for using the money over the next five years, during which it hopes eradication will be achieved.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Ignorance isn't Bliss

In a massive medical trial on three continents, doctors are testing a controversial pill that could temporarily boost immunity against HIV before a person is even exposed to the virus. If the pill works safely, doctors must then address whether such a drug, if made widely available, could actually worsen the AIDS epidemic.

The pre-exposure pill undergoing testing seems promising, since HIV drugs taken within days after exposure to the virus have been shown to reduce the risk of infection by 80 percent. But public health officials debate whether people at high risk for the virus, such as men who have sex with men, would be more likely to set aside the use of condoms to instead rely on a drug regimen that doesn’t provide full protection against the disease, which is spread by contact with the blood or semen of an infected person.

Dennis, a 47-year-old gay man from Atlanta, is one of the test subjects for the new pill. He calls himself “blessed” for escaping the HIV epidemic that hit many of his friends in the 1980s. But his HIV-negative status hasn’t stopped him from having sex with infected partners.

“If you just say that you’re not going to have sex with anyone who’s  HIV positive , here you’re eliminating a whole bunch of wonderful people,” said Dennis, who asked that his last name be withheld. “How shallow would that be?”

He was recruited for the clinical trial for PreP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention, with a drug called tenofovir.

“I was eager to take it,” said Dennis. Since he was already using condoms, he said, “It couldn’t hurt. I’ll know in June if I was taking the real McCoy, or if it was the fake pill.”

Soon after he started the trial, he noticed the doctors were trying to study his behavior as much as the drug’s side effects. Each time he went for a monthly checkup, HIV test and counseling, Dennis said the director of the study, Lynwood Miller at the AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta, kept asking him about his sex practices.

“I don’t think I was any more promiscuous just because I was taking the drug,” he said. “I didn’t put myself at risk just to test the drug. I’m not that crazy.”

Behavior Could Determine Fate of HIV Drug

But doctors worry that others who are at risk for HIV might well put aside their condoms for unprotected sex — relying on the partial protection of the drug.

The stakes are high in terms of human lives and health costs. Statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in mid-2008 show that in 2006 some 56,000 new cases of HIV infections were reported in the United States, and 1.1 million people have HIV, 25 percent of whom don’t know they have it. Worldwide, some 33 million people are infected and 25 million have died of the disease.

Doctors in the trial say they are acutely aware of the possibility the drug may be misused.

“There have been reports that people may be using PreP out in the community even before it was in trial,” said Dr. Albert Liu, director of HIV prevention intervention studies at the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

So Liu and his colleagues decided to investigate. They did studies in San Francisco, traveled to large “circuit parties” in Palm Springs, Calif., and San Diego, where gay and bisexual men go to dance and have sex on weekends.

Liu said out of 1,800 men questioned, 16 percent had not even heard of using antiretroviral drugs to prevent HIV transmission, and 1 percent admitted to ever trying them on their own.

A similar study of more than 227 men in Boston, from the Fenway Community Health Center, found one person who had tried using PreP in place of a condom.

While those numbers seem low, doctors, HIV activists and public health officials believe that the number of people using PreP as an ill-advised condom replacement would grow with an FDA approval of a PreP regimen.

Can Drugs Do More Harm Than Good?

“The problem with it is the idea of a disinhibitor,” said Sean Strub, founder of POZ magazine (www.poz.com).

“I think of it more in terms of Gardasil and also, even birth control,” said Strub. “Virtually every woman who becomes pregnant and did not want to be knows how to avoid it. It’s applying that knowledge at the moment of sexual interaction that gets complicated.”

Just as with many drugs or treatments that protect against risk, activists and doctors must evaluate whether people will gamble with semi-effective protection and further spread more disease than if they’d never had access to the protection in the first place.

But Strub, who had heard about the possibility of PreP years ago, said the public could also encourage safe-sex advances.

“Quite frankly, it surprises me that people aren’t doing this,” he said. “Most of the major advances of HIV prevention have not come from the CDC or the doctors or the government. It comes from the community.”

HIV Protection and Epidemic

Strub said this year marks the 26th anniversary of a pamphlet “How to Have Safe Sex in an Epidemic,” first calling for the use of condoms to protect against HIV, written by community activists. Since that time, controversial additional behaviors, such as serosorting (restricting partners to your HIV status) have evolved.

But unlike the condom, a pre-exposure pill comes with many more nagging medical details.

“The important thing to realize is that it’s not just an evening-before pill that people pop,” said Liu, who is currently directing the Prepare trial of a combination drug called Truvada among 3,000 men in the United States, South America, Asia and Africa.

Liu said the current testing is for a daily pill, one that may have side effects of liver or kidney damage. Moreover, people in the study need routine HIV testing and follow-up care.

“These are men who are at risk for HIV, and since we don’t know yet whether this approach works, we want to keep them on the best prevention,” he said.

Costs of the drug may also be an issue.

“The medications that are involved are costly, and depending on whose paying for them, different payers or insurance, it could be a problem,” said Dana Van Goder, executive director of Project Inform, a community-based HIV/AIDS awareness program in San Francisco.

Van Goder estimates the drugs, as they are sold now, would cost $500 to $900 a month. That would presumably go down if the drugs were made more widely available.

Whatever the future of the pill may be, Dennis believes he helped somebody in the trial.

“Having the knowledge that there’s such a drug out there was real encouraging,” said Dennis. “It’s a very small part, but if I could do something to help this along I felt like I should.”

Popularity: 21% [?]

A recent study suggests that people who are more laid back are less likely to develop dementia in old age.

Research published in the journal Neurology asked 500 healthy elderly people to fill out questionnaires about their personalities.

Those who were calm and relaxed had a 50% lower risk of developing dementia during the six years of the study.

Experts said it offered “compelling evidence” of the need to be “socially active throughout life”.

The personality questionnaires measured neuroticism – a term meaning easily distressed, and extraversion – or openness to talking to people.

Those who were not easily distressed were calm and self-satisfied, whereas people who were easily distressed were emotionally unstable, negative and nervous.

The study of people aged 78 and over found that people who were socially inactive but calm and relaxed had a 50% lower risk of developing dementia compared with people who were socially isolated and prone to distress.

The dementia risk was also 50% lower for people who were outgoing and calm compared to those who were outgoing and prone to distress.

The lifestyle questionnaire determined how often each person regularly participated in leisure activities and the richness of their social network.

During that period they were studied, 144 people developed dementia.

There are an estimated 2 million people in the United States suffer from severe dementia and another 1 to 5 million people who experience mild to moderate dementia.

Five to eight percent of people over the age of 65 have some form of dementia and the number doubles every 5 years over age 65.

The prevalence of dementia has increased over the past few decades, either because of greater awareness and more accurate diagnosis, or because increased longevity is creating a larger population of elderly, which is the age group most commonly affected.

Good news

Dr Hui-Xin Wang of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the research, said: “In the past, studies have shown that chronic distress can affect parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, possibly leading to dementia.

“But our findings suggest that having a calm and outgoing personality in combination with a socially active lifestyle may decrease the risk of developing dementia even further.

“The good news is, lifestyle factors can be modified as opposed to genetic factors which cannot be controlled.

“But these are early results, so how exactly mental attitude influences risk for dementia is not clear.”

One theory is that stress and anxiety trigger the release of chemicals which can damage the tissues of the brain.

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Doctors have always believed that personality traits are linked to risk of dementia.

“This compelling new evidence suggests people who are easily stressed or not very outgoing should make every effort to be socially active.”

But she said: “It’s a chicken and egg scenario – do these personality traits increase risk of dementia in older people or are they an early sign of the disease?

“One in three people over 65 will die with dementia. It is vital to keep mentally and physically active throughout your life to reduce risk of this devastating condition.”

Popularity: 21% [?]

Coca-Cola Sued Over Deceptive Claims for VitaminWater

The Coca-Cola Co. has been slapped with a class-action lawsuit claiming deceptive and unsubstantiated claims for its Vitamin Water beverages.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, on behalf of James Koh and other plaintiffs.

The suit names as defendants, The Coca-Cola Co. and Energy Brands, which does business as Glaceau, a business unit of Coca-Cola North America. It claims the companies “misrepresented the nutritional content and health benefits of Vitamin Water in violation of California’s consumer protection laws, according to court documents.

Coca-Cola called the suit frivolous

“This is ridiculous,” Coca-Cola spokesperson Diana Garza Ciarlante said in a statement. “Glaceau Vitamin Water is clearly and properly labeled and shows the amount of vitamins and calories in the product. Consumers today are savvy, educated and are looking for more from their beverages than just hydration.”

Sales of Vitamin Water are estimated at more than half a billion dollars annually, the papers said

“When I bought Vitamin Water, frankly I thought I was doing myself a favor health-wise,” Koh, a resident of San Francisco, said in a release. “I was attracted by the prospect of getting extra vitamins.  But I had no idea that I was actually getting almost a Coke’s worth of sugar and calories. There’s no way I would have spent money on that, had I known.”

The suit claims that advertising and marketing campaigns and product labeling for the beverage “deceptively promote it as an alternative to soft drinks, when it is sugar water, with a few added vitamins.” It goes so far as to say that “Vitamin Water may actually harm consumer’s health,” according to court documents.

“Indeed, the amount of sugar in a bottle of VitaminWater is roughly equal to a can of soda,” the papers said. “The defendants have made millions at the expense of the public health and trust, and continue to make millions through these unfair, unlawful and fraudulent advertising and marketing practices.”

Coca-Cola thinks otherwise.

“Many people know that they are not receiving adequate nutrients from their diets so they have turned to products like Glaceau VitaminWater in order to help supplement what they are not receiving from the foods they eat,” Garza Ciarlante said. “This is not about protecting the public interest. This is about increasing the readership of CSPI’s increasingly irrelevant newsletter.”

The suit covers purchases of the beverages from Jan. 15, 2005 to present.
Koh is requesting class action status, a trial by jury and punitive and compensatory damages, which would be determined at trial.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Cereal giant Kellogg has asked stores to stop selling its popular Keebler and Austin brand peanut butter crackers, as health officials reported two more deaths in the nationwide salmonella outbreak that is linked to peanut butter.

Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Mich., said it hadn’t received any complaints or discovered any problems with the crackers, but took the action as a “precautionary measure” after one of its peanut paste suppliers, Peanut Corp. of America, announced a nationwide recall of peanut butter made in a Georgia plant.

The company is “removing product from retail store shelves and encouraging customers and consumers to hold and not eat these products until regulatory officials complete their investigation of PCA,” a news release on the Kellogg Co. Web site said late Wednesday.

“We are taking these voluntary actions out of an abundance of caution,” CEO David Mackay said in the news release.

The crackers are Toasted Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Crackers, Cheese and Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, and Peanut Butter-Chocolate Sandwich Crackers.

Meanwhile, health officials in Minnesota and Idaho said Wednesday that one death in each state had been linked to the outbreak, which has now sickened at least 430 people in 43 states. Another death in Minnesota and two in Virginia were confirmed Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.

Although their causes of death haven’t been determined, all five adults had salmonella infection when they died. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the salmonella outbreak may have contributed to their deaths, the news service said.

Peanut Corp. of America, based in Lynchburg, Va., issued a recall Tuesday of 21 lots of peanut butter for possible salmonella contamination. The product was made at a plant in Blakely, Ga., on or after July 1, 2008, and sold under the brand name Parnell’s Pride and by the King Nut Company as King Nut, the AP said.

Peanut Corp., which also has plants in Virginia and Texas, makes the product for bulk distribution to institutions, food service industries and private label food companies.

The recall follows findings that bacteria in an open container of King Nut creamy peanut butter in Minnesota was a genetic match to the strain of salmonella that has struck across the country.

Peanut Corp. issued a statement from its owner and president, Stewart Parnell, according to the AP. “We deeply regret that this has happened,” Parnell said. “Out of an abundance of caution, we are voluntarily withdrawing this produce and contacting our customers.”

On Monday, Minnesota health officials reported that lab tests on a tainted five-pound tub of peanut butter collected from a long-term care facility produced the genetic match. The Minnesota report, issued on its Department of Health Web site, was a follow-up to initial tests done last week.

Officials from the Minnesota Departments of Health and Agriculture had issued a product warning Friday after preliminary testing indicated the presence of salmonella in the peanut butter.

Late Saturday, King Nut, of Solon, Ohio, announced it had issued a recall of King Nut peanut butter and Parnell’s Pride peanut butter with the lot code “8.” Both brands are manufactured by Peanut Corp.

On Sunday, Kanan told the AP that the recall involved 1,000 cases of peanut butter.

Reports of people sickened in the outbreak have occurred between Sept. 3 and Dec. 31, 2008, with most illnesses starting after Oct. 1. About 18 percent of those who fell ill were hospitalized.

The strain of salmonella has been identified as Salmonella Typhimurium, the most common of the more than 2,500 types of salmonella bacteria in the United States. It’s often found in uncooked eggs and meats, said CDC officials.
The recall and the potential link to the multi-state outbreak come two years after ConAgra recalled its Peter Pan brand peanut butter, which had been linked to at least 625 salmonella cases in 47 states.

SOURCE: Jan. 14, 2009, news release, Kellogg Co., Battle Creek, Mich; Jan. 12, 2009, news release, Minnesota Department of Health and Minnesota Department of Agriculture; Jan. 12, 2009, news release, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jan. 10, 2009, statement, King Nut Company, Solon, Ohio; Jan 10, 2009, online statement, Peanut Corporation of America; Associated Press

Popularity: 21% [?]

Antipsychotics linked to death.

Susan Craig’s brother Roger died of a pulmonary embolism in 2007, at age 38. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in high school, he had been on anti-psychotic drugs for years. At the time of his death, he was carrying 280 pounds on his 6-foot-4-inch frame.

Craig, a public relations specialist who works at Columbia University in New York City, knew that Roger’s medications could cause weight gain. But she had never been told that the drugs he was taking might be harming his heart.

“We were never counseled by his psychiatrist or his primary care provider to watch for symptoms of heart disease or any risk of sudden death at all,” Craig says. There’s no evidence that Roger’s medications caused his death, but his family might have been able to get him help sooner if they had known about the risks, Craig explains.

New research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that anti-psychotic drugs are not risk free, and the studys authors are urging much more caution in their use. The drugs are associated with a risk of sudden cardiac death, particularly at higher doses. Health.com 10 best foods for your heart

Craig’s brother was taking haloperidol, which belongs to an older class of drugs called typical anti-psychotics, which have long been known to increase the risk of sudden death due to cardiac causes. He was also on risperidone, a member of a newer class of drugs called atypical anti-psychotics, which had been considered safer.

Doctors prescribe these newer medications, originally developed to treat schizophrenia, for a wide variety of problems — from conduct disorder in kids to aggressive behavior in Alzheimer’s patients. In fact, they’ve become so popular that three of them — olanzapine, risperidone, and quetiapine — are among the 10 top-selling drugs worldwide, with $14.5 billion in sales in 2007.

The new study suggests that among patients taking high doses of atypical anti-psychotics, there are about 3.3 cases of sudden cardiac death per 1,000 patients per year, which an editorial characterizes as a risk that’s “between ‘moderate’ and ‘low,’ but not ‘rare.’” Health.com: Heart drug may be a cancer fighter

About 325,000 people in the United States each year die of sudden cardiac death, which has an incidence of 0.1 to 0.2 percent per year in adults.

“[The drugs] have potentially very serious side effects,” says Wayne A. Ray, Ph.D., the director of the division of pharmacoepidemiology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville. “So whenever a decision is made to use one, consideration of potential side effects needs to be made.” Ray and his colleagues found that atypical anti-psychotics doubled the risk of sudden death from heart-related causes, most likely by causing disturbances in heart rhythms.

First introduced in the mid-nineties, atypical anti-psychotics were praised for having none of the troublesome side effects of their predecessors, including frequent, involuntary movements of the face and mouth that were in some cases irreversible.

But the new study shows that the increased risk of sudden cardiac death seen with the older drugs is nearly identical to that of the newer medications. There had been suspicions that the drugs were risky, especially when used in older patients, but the current study is the first to systematically investigate their association with sudden cardiac death.

Ray and his colleagues reviewed data on Tennessee Medicaid patients, comparing 44,218 people using older typical anti-psychotics and 46,089 taking the newer atypical anti-psychotics to 186,600 people who had never used the drugs. People with schizophrenia may have a higher rate of cardiac problems, due to smoking and other factors. To account for this, researchers also compared anti-psychotic drug users without schizophrenia to non-drug users who had characteristics (in most cases, mood disorders) that made them likely candidates for the drugs.

Overall, people taking typical anti-psychotics were at 1.99-times greater risk of sudden cardiac death, while the risk for those on atypical anti-psychotics was increased 2.26 times. The increased risk was greater for people on higher doses of the drugs. People who had used the drugs in the past but stopped weren’t at greater risk of sudden cardiac death.

“The drugs are still very effective for conditions that there’s proven evidence for,” says Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., a professor and chair of psychiatry at Columbia University, in New York City, and the director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, who was not involved with Ray’s research. “They clearly need to still be able to be used. I think this [study] really underscores the need to be very judicious about how these medications are used and whom they’re given to.”

While atypical anti-psychotics have been used to ease aggressive behavior for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, for example, they are not approved for this purpose by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; in fact, in 2005, the FDA issued a warning that these drugs increased the risk of death among elderly people, extending the warning to all antipsychotic drugs last year, notes Sebastian Schneeweiss, M.D., Sc.D., an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, who coauthored an editorial accompanying the current study. Health.com: How is depression in the elderly different from dementia?

Given the lack of better alternatives, these drugs are still widely used in patients with dementia despite the warnings, he adds. But while there’s anecdotal evidence that they will “cool these patients down” and reduce their aggressive behaviors, there’s no scientific evidence that they really help patients or their caregivers, Dr. Schneeweiss says.

In his editorial, Dr. Schneeweiss and coauthor Jerry Avorn, M.D., also of Harvard, call for patients to undergo an electrocardiogram before and shortly after being placed on atypical anti-psychotics, to determine if the drugs are causing any heart rhythm disturbances.

For people who must be on these medications, Ray says, it’s essential for their doctors to treat any other conditions, such as high blood pressure, that can harm the heart. “Sudden cardiac death usually occurs when multiple risk factors are present,” he explains. “When you add one, it’s kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“Absolutely the lowest dose that works should be used, because we found a strong dose response,” Ray says.

Jamaison Schuler, a spokesperson for Eli Lilly and Company, the maker of Zyprexa, says, “Although the study appears to have important limitations, it provides additional information for practicing physicians to consider as they decide how to treat very complex diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”

The FDA has approved atypical anti-psychotics for treating bipolar disorder, Ray adds. But the researcher recommends that physicians first try safer alternatives, such as the mood stabilizer lithium. “That’s a very serious illness, and it has important consequences for patients’ quality of life and relationships,” Ray notes. “If the mood stabilizer doesn’t work, I think it’s very reasonable to consider an anti-psychotic, but…other drugs should be considered first.”

Finally, he says, a patient should never stop taking any drug without consulting his or her physician. Nevertheless, anyone taking an atypical anti-psychotic for a non-FDA-approved use should consult his physician. “I think off-label use should be undertaken very cautiously, and its frequency should be much less than it is currently,” Ray says.

For Susan Craig, the new research makes it clear that treating serious mental illness must go far beyond just prescribing pills. “We need to be supporting these people in a better, more systematic way,” she says. “There’s no magic pill. It’s treating the whole person.”

Popularity: 21% [?]

Updated Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The federal government is advising consumers to avoid cookies, cakes, ice cream and crackers made with peanut butter or peanut paste while it continues to investigate an outbreak of salmonella illness that is believed to have killed six people and sickened at least 485 others across the country.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked the salmonella outbreak to products made with peanut paste and peanut butter manufactured after July 1 in a Georgia factory owned by Peanut Corp. of America. The company, which is based in Virginia, supplies peanut butter and paste to long-term-care and other institutions, food service companies and private-label manufacturers that use the products in cookies, cakes, crackers and other foods. None of the company’s peanut products are sold directly to consumers. It has paused all production in its Georgia facility.

It is unclear how the peanut products were contaminated with salmonella, which is carried by animal feces. Foods can also become contaminated by infected food handlers who do not wash their hands with soap after using the bathroom.

Several of the nation’s largest retailers and manufacturers are voluntarily recalling products that may contain the contaminated peanut butter or paste. Among the retailers are Safeway, Kroger and Meijer, and products include Famous Amos Peanut Butter Cookies, Keebler Cheese & Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers and Little Debbie Peanut Butter Toasty crackers.

The salmonella outbreak follows a string of food safety scares in recent years that has shaken consumer confidence and raised alarms about whether the federal government is adequately protecting the nation’s food supply. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents food manufacturers and retailers, has asked the Obama administration to significantly increase funding for federal food safety programs in the hope that a robust inspection program will reduce contamination outbreaks and restore consumer confidence.

“Food safety and consumer safety is absolutely paramount for us,” said Mike Gloekler, a spokesman for McKee Foods, which manufactures Little Debbie products. Gloekler said the recall affected about 7,000 cases of peanut butter crackers, a small fraction of the company’s 100-product line.

Kris Charles, a spokeswoman for Kellogg, said yesterday that the FDA confirmed that salmonella was found in a package of its Austin Quality Foods Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter. The company has recalled that and 15 other products that are made with peanut paste or butter from Peanut Corp. of America. She said about 7 million cases of Kellogg products were affected, and they represented less than 1 percent of the company’s product line.

Major-label peanut butter is not suspected to be contaminated with salmonella and is considered safe to eat, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Several major brands, including Peter Pan, Jif and Smuckers, are worried that panicky consumers will stop buying their products and have been taking pains to point out that their peanut butters are not part of the outbreak.

Salmonella bacteria can cause an infection that often produces diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness usually lasts four to seven days. While most people recover without treatment, infants, elderly people and those with compromised immune systems can develop severe illness that can result in death if not promptly treated with antibiotics.

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An Ohio distributor has recalled two brands of its peanut butter after an open container tested positive for salmonella bacteria.

Federal health officials said the company’s peanut butter had not been conclusively linked to a national salmonella outbreak.

King Nut Companies said in a statement that it asked customers to stop distributing all peanut butter under its King Nut and Parnell’s Pride brands with a lot code that begins with the numeral “8.”

The peanut butter was distributed only through food service providers in Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota, Minnesota, Arizona, Idaho, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Florida. It was not sold directly to consumers.

Preliminary laboratory testing found salmonella bacteria in a 5-pound container of King Nut brand creamy peanut butter, the Minnesota Department of Health said Friday.

The Minnesota tests had not linked it to the type of salmonella in the outbreak that has sickened nearly 400 people in 42 states, but the department said additional results are expected early next week.

The Food and Drug Administration also is analyzing samples of peanut butter from King Nut and Peanut Corporation, spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek said Sunday. The agency has not conclusively linked the peanut butter to the strain of salmonella that has sickened people in the outbreak, she said.

King Nut’s president, Martin Kanan, said Sunday that the recall involved approximately 1,000 cases of peanut butter. He also said he did not know the names of the company’s customers, but he planned to release more details Monday.

“We don’t know exactly where they sell to,” Kanan said. “They could sell cross-state, too.”

“We just want everybody to know that safety is our highest priority,” Kanan said. “We just wanted to recall it right away.”

King Nut, based in Solon, Ohio, said it canceled all orders with the manufacturer of its two peanut butter brands, Peanut Corporation of America, based in Lynchburg, Va.

Peanut Corporation said in a statement posted on its Web site that it is working with federal food and health officials to determine whether its products are connected to the national outbreak. PCA does not sell its products at grocery stores or directly to the public.

The Lynchburg company said the tainted container was found in the kitchen of a nursing facility, leaving it open to the possibility of cross-contamination from another source. The company did not say where the nursing facility was located or when the contaminated product was discovered.

Peanut Corporation’s owner and president, Stewart Parnell, declined to comment further on Sunday until the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention complete their investigation.

CDC spokeswoman Bernadette Burden said Sunday that she had no new information on the case and did not know when additional test results would be available.

The CDC said Friday that 399 cases had been confirmed nationally, with about one in five of victims hospitalized. California has reported the most cases, with 55, followed by Ohio with 53. All the illnesses began between Sept. 3 and Dec. 29, but most of the people grew sick after Oct. 1.

The CDC has not confirmed any deaths associated with the outbreak.

The report of peanut butter contamination comes almost two years after ConAgra recalled its Peter Pan brand peanut butter, which was eventually linked to at least 625 salmonella cases in 47 states.

CDC officials say the bacteria in the current outbreak has been genetically fingerprinted as the Typhimurium type, which is among the most common sources of salmonella food poisoning.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Newly unemployed Americans will have to spend about 30 percent of their jobless benefits on average to pay for health insurance through their former employer, according to a new report.

And if they want coverage for their families, the report by Families USA says it will take more than 80 percent of their unemployment check.

Unemployment hit a 16-year high last month as another 524,000 jobs were cut. For all of 2008, government says the economy lost a net total of 2.6 million jobs.

When workers lose their jobs, they are usually eligible to maintain their health insurance coverage through their old employer if they pay the premiums, plus a 2 percent administrative fee. The benefit is referred to as COBRA insurance, because of the law that established it.

As part of his economic stimulus package, President-elect Barack Obama is proposing to spend about $80 billion dollars to extend unemployment benefits and to subsidize health care for people who have lost their jobs.

Families USA, a liberal advocacy group says it’s report comparing average COBRA costs and unemployment benefits shows the need for the subsidy proposed by Obama.

At present, paying for COBRA borders on unrealistic for most people who lose their jobs. The cost cuts too deeply into their government-paid jobless benefits.

“This very important right is not meaningful in reality,” said Ron Pollack, the group’s executive director.

Continuing health coverage through former employers is particularly difficult for families. Indeed, in nine states, the average premium for family coverage equals or exceeds their unemployment benefits, the Families USA report said. Those states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia.

COBRA coverage is more affordable for individuals, but in six states, jobless workers would have to spend more than 40 percent of their unemployment insurance on COBRA premiums for individual coverage. Those states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia.

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The Food and Drug Administration is adding an additional 41 products to an alert about tainted diet pills issued late last month, bringing the total to 69, officials said Wednesday.

“I think it’s fair to say that we have a major initiative investigation ongoing into this type of product,” Michael Levy, director of the division of new drugs and labeling compliance at the FDA, said in an interview. “We are buying these products, and we are testing them, and we are considering what our options are. There is definitely the possibility that there could be criminal charges.”

The pills, using undeclared drugs that may put health at risk, include:

• Sibutramine, the active ingredient in the FDA-approved weight-loss drug Meridia. It’s a controlled substance that can cause seizures, heart attack or stroke.

• Rimonabant, the active ingredient in Acomplia, a diet pill that failed to win FDA approval and has been withdrawn in Europe.

• Phenytoin, an anti-seizure medication, and phenolphthalein, a suspected carcinogen.

Some of the new additions to the FDA alert, to be posted later this week, also contain the diuretic bumetamide, says Ann Metayer, a lawyer in Levy’s division.

New Orleans Saints offensive lineman Jamar Nesbet was suspended for four games last fall when he tested positive for bumetamide after taking a now-recalled weight-loss pill called StarCaps.

Levy wouldn’t reveal how many reports the FDA has received of problems linked to unapproved diet pills, although he did say the number likely underrepresents the actual total. A “large majority” — but not all — of the pills are made in China, Metayer says.

Consumers should beware of pills promising effortless weight loss, Levy says. “When you’re buying this type of product on the Internet or at a retail store, and it appears too good to be true, it likely is too good to be true.”

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An outbreak of salmonella food poisoning has made nearly 400 people sick across 42 states, sending 18 percent of them to the hospital, U.S. health officials said today.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention is trying to trace the source of the outbreak, which began in September.

The Department of Agriculture, state health officials, and the Food and Drug Administration are also involved.

The CDC said poultry, cheese and eggs are the most common source of this particular strain, known as Salmonella typhimurium.

“It is often difficult to identify sources of foodborne outbreaks. People may not remember the foods they recently ate and may not be aware of all of the ingredients in food. That’s what makes these types of investigations very difficult,” said CDC spokesman David Daigle.

Daigle did not specify how many people were hospitalized, but the percentage he gave puts that figure at about 70.

“Because foods of animal origin may be contaminated with Salmonella, people should not eat raw or undercooked eggs, poultry, or meat. Persons also should not consume raw or unpasteurized milk or other dairy products. Produce should be thoroughly washed,” he said.

Only Ohio state health officials have agreed to have their state named as one of those affected, with an estimated 50 cases.

Every year, approximately 40,000 people are reported ill with salmonella in the United States, the CDC says, but it said many more cases are never reported.

There have been several recent high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness in the United States, including a strain of Salmonella carried by peppers from Mexico and that sickened 1,400 people from April to August of 2007 and an E. coli epidemic in 2006, traced to California spinach, that killed three.

Salmonella-contaminated dry pet food sickened at least 79 people, including many young children, in October and November.

Advice on how to prevent salmonella poisoning:

• Cook poultry, ground beef, and eggs thoroughly. Do not eat or drink foods containing raw eggs or raw (unpasteurized) milk.

• If you are served undercooked meat, poultry, or eggs in a restaurant, don’t hesitate to send it back to the kitchen for further cooking.

• Wash hands, kitchen work surfaces, and utensils with soap and water immediately after they have been in contact with raw meat or poultry.

• Be particularly careful with foods prepared for infants, the elderly, and the immunocompromised.

• Wash hands with soap after handling reptiles, birds, or baby chicks, and after contact with pet feces.

• Avoid direct or even indirect contact between reptiles (turtles, iguanas, other lizards, snakes) and infants or immunocompromised people.

• Do not work with raw poultry or meat, and an infant (e.g., feed, change diaper) at the same time.

• Mother’s milk is the safest food for young infants. Breastfeeding prevents salmonellosis and many other health problems.

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China has issued an alert against bird flu following the recent death of a 19 year old girl from the disease.

The girl died after she came into contact with poultry in a market in central Hebei province.

Since the outbreak of bird flu in 2003, 21 people in China have died. Worldwide, fewer than 300 people have died.

This is China’s first bird flu death in nearly a year and the authorities there have reacted by declaring an alert.

Officials have shut down and disinfected poultry markets in Hebei.

The World Health Organization stated they were concerned by the death of the girl, Huang Yanqing, but said this single case does not change its risk assessment.

The Chinese health ministry has said that that it will step up its attempts to monitor the disease.

Efforts to keep an eye on bird flu in China are of the utmost importance, simply because their country has the world’s largest poultry population.

Any mass outbreak there would have serious consequences for China and neighboring countries.

What is bird flu?

Like humans and other species, birds are susceptible to flu.

There are many types of bird, or avian, flu.

The most contagious strains, which are usually fatal in birds, are H5 and H7.

There are nine different types of H5. The nine all take different forms – some are highly pathogenic, while some are pretty harmless.

The type currently causing concern is the “highly pathogenic” Asian strain of the H5N1 virus.

Scientists have discovered four different subtypes of H5N1, and there could well be more. However, all are deadly to birds, and can cause disease – and death – in humans.

However, it is important to stress that H5N1 is overwhelmingly a disease that affects birds – and not humans.

It is true that humans have been infected, but almost all have been poultry workers who have come into intimate contact with birds. H5N1 cannot pass easily from human to human.

Migratory wildfowl, notably wild ducks, are natural carriers of the viruses, but are unlikely to actually develop an infection.

The risk is that they pass it on to domestic birds, who are much more susceptible to the virus.

How do humans catch bird flu?

Bird flu was thought only to infect birds until the first human cases were seen in Hong Kong in 1997.

Humans catch the disease through close contact with live infected birds.

Birds excrete the virus in their feces, which dry and become pulverized, and are then inhaled.

Symptoms are similar to other types of flu – fever, malaise, sore throats and coughs. People can also develop conjunctivitis.

Researchers are now concerned because scientists studying a case in Vietnam found the virus can affect all parts of the body, not just the lungs.

This could mean that many illnesses, and even deaths, thought to have been caused by something else, may have been due to the bird flu virus.

Is it possible to stop bird flu coming into a country?

There is no failsafe way of preventing its spread.

Experts say proper poultry controls – such as preventing wild birds getting in to poultry houses – are vital.

In addition, they say monitoring of the migratory patterns of wild birds should provide early alerts of the arrival of infected flocks – meaning they could be targeted on arrival.

How many people have been affected?

As of January 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) had confirmed 348 cases of H5N1 in humans in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam, leading to fewer than 300 deaths.

For the latest WHO information on the numbers of humans infected and killed by avian flu, see related internet links section on right of page.

How quickly is the disease spreading?

After bird flu claimed its first human victim – a three-year-old boy in Hong Kong in May 1997 – the disease was not detected again until February 2003, when a father and son were diagnosed with H5N1, again in Hong Kong.

Since then it has spread westwards through Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Despite mass culls, exclusion zones and other measures put in place to prevent its spread, the H5N1 virus has continued to travel.

In one week in February 2006, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, France, Slovenia, India, Iran and Egypt confirmed their first cases of H5N1 in wild birds.

In April 2005, a dead swan in Scotland was found to have the strain.

Can it spread from person to person?

For the most part, humans have contracted the virus following very close contact with sick birds.

There may have been examples of human-to-human transmission, but so far not in the form which could fuel a pandemic.

A case in Thailand indicated the probable transmission of the virus from a girl who had the disease to her mother, who also died.

The girl’s aunt, who was also infected, survived the virus.

UK virology expert Professor John Oxford said these cases indicated the basic virus could be passed between humans, and predicted similar small clusters of cases would be seen again.

It is not the only instance where it has been thought bird flu has been passed between humans.

In 2004, two sisters died in Vietnam after possibly contracting bird flu from their brother who had died from an unidentified respiratory illness.

In a similar case in Hong Kong in 1997, a doctor possibly caught the disease from a patient with the H5N1 virus – but it was never conclusively proved.

What would the consequences of a mass outbreak be?

If the virus gained the ability to pass easily between humans the results could be catastrophic.

Worldwide, experts predict anything between two million and 50 million deaths.

However the mortality rate – which presently stands at around 50% of confirmed cases – could decline as it mutates, they say.

Is there a vaccine?

To date, there is no definitive vaccine, but prototypes which offer protection against the H5N1 strain are being produced.

Antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu which are already available and being stockpiled by countries such as the UK, may help limit symptoms and reduce the chances the disease will spread.

Concerns have been prompted by news that patients in Vietnam have become partially resistant to the Tamiflu, the drug that doctors plan to use to tackle a human bird flu outbreak.

Scientists say it may be helpful to have stocks of other drugs from the same family such as Relenza (zanamivir).

Can I continue to eat chicken?

Yes. Experts say avian flu is not a food-borne virus, so eating chicken is safe.

The only people thought to be at risk are those involved in the slaughter and preparation of meat that may be infected.

However, the WHO recommends, to be absolutely safe all meat should be cooked to a temperature of at least 70C. Eggs should also be thoroughly cooked.

Professor Hugh Pennington of Aberdeen University underlined the negligible risk to consumers: “The virus is carried in the chicken’s gut.

“A person would have to dry out the chicken meat and would have to sniff the carcass to be at any risk. But even then, it would be very hard to become infected.”

What is being done to contain the virus in the countries affected?

Steps have been taken to try to stop the disease spreading among birds.

Millions of farmyard birds have been culled, while millions more have been vaccinated and confined indoors.

Areas where the disease has been found have been isolated and some countries have banned imports of live birds and poultry products.

In January 2006 international donors pledged $1.9 billion in the fight against bird flu, while the World Health Organization has devised a rapid-response plan to detect and contain a global flu pandemic.

There are also measures recommended when a wild infected bird is found, including protection and surveillance zones.

However, experts do not recommend culling wild birds. Not only would this be a logistical nightmare, it is unnecessary. It is better to adopt a “wait and see” policy and cull infected farmyard birds if the disease is spreading among these poultry.

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Recent study says Parkinson’s treatment shows promise in patients.

Deep brain stimulation appears to be the key to improving motor skills, but risk of side effects are also greater.

Patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease who received deep brain stimulation showed greater improvement in movement and quality of life after six months than those treated with medication, a new study shows.

But the deep brain stimulation patients also had almost four times the risk of suffering a serious adverse event like depression, infections, falls or heart problems. Although most side effects could be treated, one patient suffered a brain hemorrhage and died.

With deep brain stimulation, doctors surgically implant electrodes that send electrical stimulation to specific parts of the brain to reduce involuntary movements and tremors. It is a widely accepted treatment for advanced Parkinson’s disease, but few randomized trials have been conducted comparing different treatments.

Previous studies also have largely excluded older patients, who account for the majority of those with the disease. About 25 percent of the more than 250 patients in the new study were 70 or older.

In the study, which appears in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, patients were randomly selected to get either medication or bilateral deep brain stimulation, with the leads implanted into the subthalamic nucleus or the globus pallidus areas of the brain.

Lead study author Frances Weaver said researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the differences in outcomes between the surgical and medical treatments. “The amount of time that patients were able to move normally increased by 4.6 hours,” said Weaver, director of the Center for Management of Complex Chronic Care at Hines VA Hospital near Maywood. “Our best medical therapy patient, on average, showed no improvement.”

Researchers studied how long patients had good motor control—referred to as “on” time—without experiencing dyskinesia—the jerky, uncontrolled movements patients develop after long-term use of medications that treat Parkinson’s disease.

The new research is the first to show that deep brain stimulation works as well in older patients as in younger ones, said Dr. Leo Verhagen, a neurologist and medical director of the movement disorders surgery program at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“It’s a major step forward,” said Verhagen, who was not involved with the study.

Weaver was optimistic about the findings, but said deep brain stimulation is not a panacea.

“It certainly helps a lot of people,” she said, “but it doesn’t address all of the issues of Parkinson’s disease.”

The study—conducted at seven VA hospitals and six affiliated academic medical centers across the country between May 2002 and October 2005—required patients to keep diaries documenting their motor and physical functioning throughout the day. The neurologists assessed patients’ motor skills without knowing which patients got which treatment.

Ken Glowienke, 43, of Oswego had the surgery last fall, though not as part of the study, and said the surgery worked well for him. “Ninety percent of the day, I feel very normal and it doesn’t even cross my mind that I have Parkinson’s disease,” he said.

He did experience a major complication—a grand mal seizure a day after surgery. He has fully recovered.

An unexpected finding of the study was the number of deep brain stimulation patients who suffered falls.

“These are probably patients who were not ambulatory, or were minimally ambulatory, and all of a sudden they are up and around,” said Dr. Roy A.E. Bakay, professor of neurological surgery at Rush and chairman of the safety monitoring committee for the study.

Other downsides of the procedure are costs and the need to replace the stimulator battery when it wears out, which requires another surgery.

In an editorial accompanying the paper, neurologist Guenther Deuschl of the Universitaetsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, Germany, said the study leaves many unanswered questions, including how soon to implant the device and into which area of the brain to implant it. He also said patients who got deep brain stimulation seemed to lose some verbal fluency, memory and information-processing speed.

Bakay said the benefits greatly outweigh the risks for many patients. “I think too many doctors decide on their own if a patient should undergo the surgery when it should be left to the patient and the patient’s family,” he said.

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If you are a smoker and have children or are thinking of having children, you may want to read this.

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air for their children, but experts now have identified a related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke.

That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second-hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.

Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term “third-hand smoke” to describe these chemicals in a new study that focused on the risks they pose to infants and children. The study was published in this month’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” said Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

“When their kids are out of the house, they might smoke. Or they smoke in the car. Or they strap the kid in the car seat in the back and crack the window and smoke, and they think it’s okay because the second-hand smoke isn’t getting to their kids,” Dr. Winickoff continued. “We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible.”

Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, he said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: Get away.”

The study reported on attitudes toward smoking in 1,500 households across the United States.

It found that the vast majority of both smokers and nonsmokers were aware that second-hand smoke is harmful to children. Some 95 percent of nonsmokers and 84 percent of smokers agreed with the statement that “inhaling smoke from a parent’s cigarette can harm the health of infants and children.”

But far fewer of those surveyed were aware of the risks of third-hand smoke. Since the term is so new, the researchers asked people if they agreed with the statement that “breathing air in a room today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of infants and children.” Only 65 percent of nonsmokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed with that statement, which researchers interpreted as acknowledgement of the risks of third-hand smoke.

The belief that second-hand smoke harms children’s health was not independently associated with strict smoking bans in homes and cars, the researchers found. On the other hand, the belief that third-hand smoke was harmful greatly increased the likelihood the respondent also would enforce a strict smoking ban at home, Dr. Winickoff said.

“That tells us we’re onto an important new health message here,” he said. “What we heard in focus group after focus group was, ‘I turn on the fan and the smoke disappears.’ It made us realize how many people think about second-hand smoke — they’re telling us they know it’s bad but they’ve figured out a way to do it.”

The data was collected in a national random-digit-dial telephone survey done between September and November 2005. The sample was weighted by race and gender, based on census information.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who heads the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the phrase third-hand smoke is a brand-new term that has implications for behavior.

“The central message here is that simply closing the kitchen door to take a smoke is not protecting the kids from the effects of that smoke,” he said. “There are carcinogens in this third-hand smoke, and they are a cancer risk for anybody of any age who comes into contact with them.”

Among the substances in third-hand smoke are hydrogen cyanide, used in chemical weapons; butane, which is used in lighter fluid; toluene, found in paint thinners; arsenic; lead; carbon monoxide; and even polonium-210, the highly radioactive carcinogen that was used to murder former Russian spy Alexander V. Litvinenko in 2006. Eleven of the compounds are highly carcinogenic.

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Gastric Bypass Surgery Stops Diabetes in Obese Teens

A new study shows that obese teens who have gastric bypass surgeries, not only lose weight, but also witness their type 2 diabetes disappear.

Also called bariatric surgery, the procedure works by limiting the size of the stomach and thereby reducing the amount of food one can eat.

In this study, researchers used the Roux-en-Y method, which involves placing an adjustable band to block off most of the stomach. The band limits how much food the body absorbs.

“Previous studies have shown frequent remission of type 2 diabetes in adults following bariatric surgery, but until now, no research had been done to provide information about outcomes of adolescent diabetics who are considering surgical weight loss,” said lead researcher Dr. Thomas H. Inge, an associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

“Our study found that, in most cases, teens can lose one-third of their weight and come off diabetes medications with remission of their diabetes one year after bypass surgery. This is certainly not the case for similar diabetic teenage patients who did not undergo surgery,” Inge noted.

The report is published in the January issue of Pediatrics.

For the study, Inge’s group looked at 78 teens with type 2 diabetes. Eleven patients underwent gastric bypass surgery, while the other 67 patients received usual care for their diabetes.

For the teens who had surgery, not only did they have an average 34 percent reduction in their weight, but their diabetes went into remission. Teens that did not have surgery saw an average weight loss of less than two pounds and still needed their diabetes medication.

“In addition to the impressive weight loss and type 2 diabetes results, patients undergoing the gastric bypass surgery also showed significant improvement in blood pressure, insulin, glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride levels,” Inge said.

Type 2 diabetes takes a huge toll on the body, and the earlier it starts, the more of an impact it can have, Inge explained.

“These early surgical research findings suggest that diabetes may not be a diagnosis kids have to live with for the rest of their lives,” Inge said. “They may not have to face diabetic retinopathy, progressive coronary heart disease and renal failure. In fact, there is good reason to be optimistic about their future cardiovascular health.”

“If you are a type 2 diabetic and morbidly obese, gastric bypass surgery should be considered in the treatment pathway,” Inge added.

Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, thinks that while surgery is effective it does not deal with the cause of the obesity epidemic among teens.

“Bariatric surgery is clearly effective in treating severe obesity, preventing and reversing type 2 diabetes, and even extending survival when applied to adults,” Katz said. “That similar benefits ensue when the procedure is applied to adolescents is important, but by no means surprising.”

Despite the success of surgery, these results should be viewed with caution, Katz said.

“A large and growing proportion of all children and adolescents are subject to obesity, and its complications,” Katz said. “Surgery can mitigate those complications, but can we really condone ushering more and more young people through the OR doors for a major surgical procedure to fix what policies and programs that foster healthful eating and regular activity could have prevented in the first place?”

Gastric bypass surgery is an effective last resort for severe obesity in adolescence, as in adulthood, Katz said. “But a last resort it should be, and we should do all we can to minimize the need for this procedure by combating the root causes of obesity in our society.”

To learn more about gastric bypass surgeries, please visit the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases website.

SOURCES: Thomas H. Inge, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor, surgery and pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; David L. Katz, M.D., M.P.H., director, Prevention Research Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; January 2009 Pediatrics

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Allergan Inc, maker of Botox, said on Friday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its eyelash-thickening drug Latisse.

Latisse is designed to treat a condition known as hypotrichosis of the eyelashes, in which a person has does not have enough eyelashes.

The active ingredient in Latisse is bimatroprost, the same ingredient that is in Allergan’s glaucoma treatment Lumigan. Patients taking Lumigan found a side effect of the drug to be eyelash growth.

Latisse is a once-daily prescription treatment that a patient applies to the base of the upper eyelash with a sterile, single-use-per-eye disposable applicator. Once treatment is stopped, eyelashes will gradually return to where they were prior to treatment.

Allergan said it estimates global peak sales of Latisse solution could top $500 million a year.

Latisse is a structural prostaglandin analog, a lipid compound derived from fatty acids designed to bind to prostaglandin receptors. These receptors are present in hair and are thought to be involved in the development and regrowth of the hair follicle.

Side effects of Latisse may include:

• Eye redness

• Itchy eyes

• Darkening of the eyelid skin.

Though not reported in clinical studies, Allergan said Latisse may also cause the colored part of the eye to become browner, something that could be permanent.

Allergan said it expects to launch the product in the first quarter of 2009.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Plastic Surgeon Goes a Little Too Far, Health Department Raids his Clinic and He Flees to South America.

A leading Beverly Hills plastic surgeon claims to have found an environmentally friendly way to combine two of America’s great obsessions – after converting his SUV to run on excess fat removed from clients during their liposuction operations.

Alan Bittner, who founded a high profile clinic on Rodeo Drive, the Bond Street of Los Angeles, claims to be able to power both his Ford Explorer and his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigator on biofuel converted from the excess human fat removed from his patients during lipo procedures. “The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel – and I have more fat than I can use,” he says. “Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly, but they get to take part in saving the Earth.”

Dr Bittner made his claim in a posting on the internet site lipodiesel.com, adding that he has performed roughly 7,000 liposuction operations, and that a gallon of human fat will produce roughly the same quantity of biofuel.

Scientists say there is no reason why human fat cannot be turned into biofuel, since it contains triglycerides which are no different from those found in waste animal fats that are already being used for the same purpose. However the discovery left medical regulators unimpressed. Using human medical waste to power vehicles (or indeed for any other commercial purpose) is largely illegal, and Dr Bittner’s clinic has been raided by California Health Department officials. The magazine Forbes says that Dr Bittner’s ability to create what he calls “lipodiesel” first came to light in lawsuits filed by several former patients, who recently accused him of allowing his girlfriend and assistant, who were both unlicensed, to carry out intricate operations.

A gallon of “lipodiesel” will give motorists roughly the same mileage as they would get from regular diesel, the magazine added. At present, most biofuel is made from a mixture of specially grown corn, and left-over beef or pork products.

Sadly, Dr Bittner is no longer around to bask in his new-found fame. His practice in Beverly Hills suddenly closed shortly after last month’s raid, and he is believed to have moved to South America.

Lawyers representing several former patients are currently attempting to track him down. One of them, Andrew Besser, claims Dr Bittner’s unlicensed girlfriend removed too much fat from his three clients, leaving them horribly disfigured. Dozens of other patients have complained to the State Medical Board, he added.

Dr Bittner’s lawyer is yet to comment. A notice on his website claims that the doctor is currently living in Colombia.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Physically “acting out” dreams when asleep could be an early warning sign of dementia or Parkinson’s disease.

Canadian researchers studied 93 people with “REM sleep behavior disorder”, which can involve punching or kicking out while dreaming.

The Neurology study found more than a quarter were diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition over the next five years.

UK experts said the research could help doctors predict the condition.

Normally, during “Rapid Eye Movement”, or “REM” sleep, our muscles relax and do not move, but people with certain sleep disorders are able to lash out, or cry out.

It is a known symptom of some kinds of brain disease, including Parkinson’s disease, and a rare form of dementia called Lewy body dementia.

The exact reason for the link is unclear, although some have suggested that subtle damage to a part of the brain which regulates sleep may be responsible.

However, in some cases, the problem happens long before the onset of the main symptoms of these diseases, and doctors at Montreal General Hospital wanted to see whether apparently otherwise healthy people with the problem were at higher risk.

Their study volunteers were all elderly – on average 65 years old – which already put them at higher risk of developing dementia or Parkinson’s compared with a younger person.

However, each was followed on average for five years, and in that period, 26 of the 93 developed a degenerative brain disease disorder.

In total, 14 were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, seven with Lewy body dementia, four with Alzheimer’s Disease, and another diagnosed with a disorder called multiple system atrophy, which involves both Parkinson’s and dementia symptoms.

High chance

Their predictions suggested that patients of this age with the same sleep disorder would have a greater than 50/50 chance of falling prey to a similar condition over the following 12 years.

The researchers said that knowing more about the risks faced by people with the sleep disorder could not only help doctors to advise their patients, but also to work in the years to come to come up with ways to protect them.

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said that the findings were particularly interesting in relation to Lewy body dementia, which accounts for only 4% of dementia cases.

The researchers had said that even the four Alzheimer’s cases might turn out to be Lewy body dementia as the disease progressed.

Dr Sorensen said: “People with Lewy body dementia often have vivid nightmares, restless sleep and hallucinations – this study suggests that people with the disease may experience sleep disorders years before their other symptoms develop.

“This important finding could boost our understanding of how Lewy body dementia develops and help us detect it early. With further research we may be able to stop this devastating disease in its tracks.”

Popularity: 21% [?]

Are you too busy to go to bed? Having trouble getting quality sleep once you do? Are you aware that your health may be at risk?

You may literally have to add it to your to-do list, but scheduling a good night’s sleep could be one of the smartest health priorities you set.

It’s not just daytime drowsiness you risk when shortchanging yourself on your seven to eight hours. Possible health consequences of getting too little or poor sleep can involve the cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, and nervous systems.

In addition to letting life get in the way of good sleep, between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from a chronic sleep disorder—insomnia or sleep apnea, say—that affects daily functioning and impinges on health.

Consider the research:

1. Less may mean more. For people who sleep under seven hours a night, the fewer zzz’s they get, the more obese they tend to be, according to a 2006 Institute of Medicine report. This may relate to the discovery that insufficient sleep appears to tip hunger hormones out of whack. Leptin, which suppresses appetite, is lowered; ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, gets a boost.

2. You’re more apt to make bad food choices. A study published this week in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that people with obstructive sleep apnea or other severely disordered breathing while asleep ate a diet higher in cholesterol, protein, total fat, and total saturated fat. Women were especially affected.

3. Diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance, its precursor, may become more likely. A 2005 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people getting five or fewer hours of sleep each night were 2.5 times more likely to be diabetic, while those with six hours or fewer were 1.7 times more likely.

4. The ticker is put at risk. A 2003 study found that heart attacks were 45 percent more likely in women who slept for five or fewer hours per night than in those who got more.

5. Blood pressure may increase. Obstructive sleep apnea, for example, has been associated with chronically elevated daytime blood pressure, and the more severe the disorder, the more significant the hypertension, suggests the 2006 IOM report. Obesity plays a role in both disorders, so losing weight can ease associated health risks.

6. Auto accidents rise. As stated in a 2007 report in the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 20 percent of serious car crash injuries involve a sleepy driver—and that’s independent of alcohol use.

7. Balance is off. Older folks who have trouble getting to sleep, who wake up at night, or are drowsy during the day could be 2 to 4.5 times more likely to sustain a fall, found a 2007 study in the Journal of Gerontology.

8. You may be more prone to depression. Adults who chronically operate on fumes report more mental distress, depression, and alcohol use. Adolescents suffer, too: One survey of high school students found similarly high rates of these issues. Middle schoolers, too, report more symptoms of depression and lower self-esteem.

9. Kids may suffer more behavior problems. Research from an April issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that children who are plagued by insomnia, short duration of sleeping, or disordered breathing with obesity, for example, are more likely to have behavioral issues like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

10. Death’s doorstep may be nearer. Those who get five hours or less per night have approximately 15 percent greater risk of dying—regardless of the cause—according to three large population-based studies published in the journals Sleep and the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Other research suggests that people who cheat their sleep are more likely to develop hardening of their arteries, a precursor to heart disease.

Calcified arteries were found in nearly a third of people who slept fewer than five hours a night.

This dropped to around one in 10 for those who slept an extra hour, the Journal of the American Medical Association study of 495 adults found.

Experts said getting enough sleep was important for good heart health.

In the study, the volunteers underwent two CT scans, designed to assess the build-up of calcium in the heart’s arteries, five years apart.

They also filled out sleep questionnaires, kept a sleep diary and wore a wrist monitor for six nights that measured movement to give an estimate of how long they were actually lying still and asleep.

At the first scan, none of the volunteers had any calcification in their arteries but five years later 61 of them did.

This calcification appeared to be linked with lack of sleep.

The risk was lowest for those who regularly had more than seven hours sleep each night.

Lead researcher Dr Diane Lauderdale, of the University of Chicago, said there were several possible explanations for the link that they found.

Stress-related

Firstly, there may be some factor not yet identified that can both reduce sleep duration and increase calcification.

Or it might be down to blood pressure – high blood pressure increases the likelihood of calcification and blood pressure goes down during sleep.

Alternatively, stress or a stress hormone like cortisol, which has been tied to decreased sleep and increased calcification, may play a role.

She said: “Although there are constant temptations to sleep less, there is a growing body of evidence that short sleep may have subtle health consequences.

“Although this single study does not prove that short sleep leads to coronary artery disease, it is safe to recommend at least six hours of sleep a night.”

Ellen Mason, of the British Heart Foundation, said: “It is not yet clear quite how sleep affects our heart disease risk, but this study adds to previous research suggesting that getting enough sleep may help to keep our heart and circulation healthy.

“Sleep is essential for our body’s ability to repair itself and with the party season in full flow, it is important to try and get enough rest.

“Drinking alcohol late at night and getting up early can mean we’re not getting enough quantity, or quality, of sleep.”

Your body needs to recharge itself, so get the sleep you need.  Who knows, you may extend your life.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Federal regulators on Tuesday warned Coca-Cola Co. ( KO) that its Diet Coke Plus product is misbranded because the beverage’s label has a nutrient claim but doesn’t meet criteria to make that claim.

The label also describes the soda as “Diet Coke with vitamins and minerals,” according to a warning letter the Food and Drug Administration sent Dec. 10 to the Atlanta beverage company. The letter was posted on the FDA’s Web site Tuesday.

The FDA said the term “plus” is supposed to be used only to describe nutrient labeling, and the agency said it doesn’t consider it appropriate to fortify carbonated beverages with nutrients.

Coca-Cola believes the label complies with the FDA’s policies and regulations, said Scott Williamson, a Coca-Cola North America spokesman. He said the company takes the FDA’s concerns seriously, while noting that the warning doesn’t involve any health or safety issues.

The agency also said the label doesn’t reference the amount or fraction of nutrients in the beverage.

The FDA wants Coke to take prompt corrective action.

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

WARNING LETTER

CERTIFIED MAIL
RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED

Mr. Muhtar Kent
President and Chief Executive Officer
The Coca-Cola Company
1 Coca Cola Place, NW
Atlanta, GA 30313-2424

Re: CFSAN-OC-09-01

Dear Mr. Kent:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed the label for your Diet Coke Plus 20 FL OZ (1.25 PT) 591ml. Based on our review, we have concluded that this product is in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act). Your Diet Coke Plus product is misbranded within the meaning of section 403(r)(1)(A) of the Act [21 USC 343(r)(1)(A)] because the product makes a nutrient content claim but does not meet the criteria to make the claim.

Your product bears the term “Plus” as part of its name, and the principal display panel of the product label also includes the language, “Diet Coke with Vitamins & Minerals.” The ingredient list includes the following added vitamins and minerals: magnesium sulfate (declared at 10% of the Daily Value (DV) for magnesium in the Nutrition Facts panel), zinc gluconate (declared at 10% of the DV for zinc), niacinamide (declared at 15% of the DV for niacin), pyridoxine hydrochloride (declared at 15% of the DV for vitamin B6), and cyanocobalamine (declared at 15% of the DV for vitamin B12).

Your product is misbranded within the meaning of section 403(r)(1)(A) of the Act because it bears the nutrient content claim “plus” but does not comply with the regulations governing the use of this claim. The term “plus” in “Diet Coke Plus,” read in conjunction with the language “Diet Coke with Vitamins & Minerals,” meets the definition of a nutrient content claim because it characterizes the product’s level of vitamins and minerals, which are nutrients of the type required to be in nutrition labeling (21 CFR 101.13(b)). The term “plus” is defined in 21 CFR 101.54(e). This term may be used on the label or in labeling of foods to describe the level of nutrients (such as vitamins and minerals) in the food, provided that (1) the food contains at least 10 percent more of the Reference Daily Intake or Daily Reference Value for the nutrient per reference amount customarily consumed than an appropriate reference food, (2) where the claim is based on nutrients that are added to the food, that the fortification is in accordance with the policy on fortification of foods in 21 CFR 104.20, and (3) the claim bears the required information for relative claims as described in 21 CFR 101.13(j)(2) and 101.54(e)(1)(iii).

Your product Diet Coke Plus is a carbonated beverage. The policy on fortification in 21 CFR 104.20(a) states that the FDA does not consider it appropriate to fortify snack foods such as carbonated beverages. Additionally, the label of your product does not state the identity of a reference food and the percentage (or fraction) of the amount of the nutrient in the reference food by which the nutrient in the labeled food differs, as is required for relative claims such as “plus” under 101.13(j)(2). Therefore, the “plus” claim on the label of this product does not meet the requirements of 21 CFR 101.54(e)(1).

The above violations are not meant to be an all-inclusive list of deficiencies in your products or their labeling. It is your responsibility to ensure that all of your products are in compliance with the laws and regulations enforced by FDA. You should take prompt action to correct the violations. Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in regulatory actions without further notice, such as seizure and/or injunction.

You should take prompt action to correct these violations. Please respond to this letter within 15 days from receipt with the actions you plan to take in response to this letter, including an explanation of each step being taken to correct the current violations and prevent similar violations. Include any documentation necessary to show that correction has been achieved. If you cannot complete corrective action within fifteen working days, state the reason for the delay and the time within which you will complete the correction.

You should direct your written reply to Felicia B. Williams, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, 5100 Paint Branch Parkway, Office of Compliance (HFS-608), Division of Enforcement, College Park, Maryland 20740-3835.

Sincerely,

/S/

Roberta F. Wagner
Director
Office of Compliance
Center for Food Safety
And Applied Nutrition

cc: FDA Atlanta District Office

SOURCE:

FDA – Food and Drug Administration

Popularity: 77% [?]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new oral spray designed specifically for the treatment of insomnia.

NovaDel Pharma Inc. (AMEX: NVD) announced that Zolpimist (zolpidem tartrate) 5 mg and 10 mg Oral Spray has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the short-term treatment of insomnia characterized by difficulties with sleep initiation. Zolpimist is NovaDel’s second product approved by the FDA that uses NovaDel’s proprietary NovaMist oral spray technology. Zolpimist contains zolpidem tartrate, the same active ingredient as Ambien(R), the world’s leading sedative hypnotic for the treatment of insomnia.

“We believe the FDA’s approval of Zolpimist provides patients with an important treatment option for insomnia, as Zolpimist provides rapid absorption from the oral mucosa,” commented Steven B. Ratoff, Chairman of the Board and Interim CEO of NovaDel. “This achievement is another major milestone for NovaDel as it further validates our ability to develop innovative drugs based on the NovaMist technology. We are actively seeking a partner to commercialize this innovative product and believe that this approval should enhance those efforts.”

NovaDel submitted its Zolpimist application using the FDA’s 505(b)(2) process based on data from two randomized, open-label, dose-ranging studies comparing Zolpimist with Ambien tablets in young and elderly healthy volunteers. Both studies compared the pharmacokinetics and safety of comparable doses of zolpidem administered as an oral spray versus tablets. The pharmacokinetic profiles were assessed by the maximum drug concentration (Cmax) and total exposure to drug (area-under-the-curve/AUC0-inf). The speed of drug absorption and level of sedation were also assessed in these studies. The results demonstrated bioequivalence between Zolpimist and Ambien. Also included in the submission were data from process validation and registration stability batches produced at the intended commercial manufacturing facility.

Important Safety Information

Zolpimist is indicated for the short-term treatment of insomnia characterized by difficulties with sleep initiation. Due to its rapid onset of action, patients should take Zolpimist immediately before bedtime and be prepared to get a full night’s sleep (7-8 hours). Patients should use extreme care in or avoid engaging in activities requiring full alertness such as driving or operating hazardous machinery the morning after taking any sleep medication. Do not take any sleep medicine with alcohol. Complex behaviors such as somnambulism (sleepwalking), including driving or eating while not fully awake, with amnesia for the event, as well as cases of severe allergic reactions have been reported in patients who have taken a sedative hypnotic. Patients reporting such events should contact their physician immediately, discontinue use and not be rechallenged. Prolonged usage of a sedative hypnotic should be avoided without first consulting a physician. Patients experiencing unusual changes in thinking or behavior, or if sleep problems persist, should see their physician as these may be indicative of another medical condition. Sedative hypnotics are non-narcotic, however they do have some risk of dependency. The most commonly observed side effects in controlled clinical trials were headache, somnolence and dizziness. For full prescribing information, including the FDA medication guide and patient instructions for use, please visit www.novadel.com.

Ambien is a registered trademark of sanofi-aventis. Zolpimist is a pending trademark of NovaDel Pharma Inc. NovaMist is a pending trademark of NovaDel Pharma Inc.

ABOUT INSOMNIA

Insomnia is a sleep disorder whose sufferers experience inadequate or poor quality sleep and report one or more of the following: difficulty initiating sleep, difficulty maintaining sleep, and waking up too early. According to the “2005 Sleep in America Poll,” 54% of those surveyed indicated they experience at least one symptom of insomnia a few nights per week. Only approximately 14% of the respondents reported using any sort of sleep-aid therapy. Walsh and Engelhardt (1999) estimated $14 billion is spent each year on the direct costs of insomnia, including pharmaceuticals, healthcare services and hospital and nursing home care. Cowen & Company estimated the total non-benzodiazepine prescription market in the U.S. for the treatment of insomnia in 2006 was approximately $3.4 billion, growing to $3.8 billion by 2011. Ambien/Ambien CR(TM) (zolpidem tartrate) and generic zolpidem tartrate are the dominant prescription drugs totaling more than 70% of the market in 2006. The patent on Ambien has expired and generic products were introduced.

ABOUT NOVADEL PHARMA

NovaDel Pharma Inc. is a specialty pharmaceutical company developing oral spray formulations for a broad range of marketed drugs. The Company’s proprietary technology offers, in comparison to conventional oral dosage forms, the potential for faster absorption of drugs into the bloodstream leading to quicker onset of therapeutic effects and possibly reduced first pass liver metabolism, which may result in lower doses. Oral sprays eliminate the requirement for water or the need to swallow, potentially improving patient convenience and adherence.

NovaDel’s oral spray technology is focused on addressing unmet medical needs for a broad array of existing and future pharmaceutical products. The Company’s most advanced oral spray candidates target angina, nausea, insomnia, migraine headaches and disorders of the central nervous system. NovaDel plans to develop these and other products independently and through collaborative arrangements with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. To find out more about NovaDel Pharma Inc. (AMEX: NVD), visit their website at www.novadel.com.

Popularity: 21% [?]

FDA Tells Consumers Not to Use More Than 25 Weight Loss Products Due to Undeclared, Illegal Ingredients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is alerting consumers nationwide not to purchase or consume more than 25 different products marketed for weight loss because they contain undeclared, active pharmaceutical ingredients that may put consumers’ health at risk.

Those products, which may be sold online or in stores as “dietary supplements,” are:

• Fatloss Slimming
• 2 Day Diet
• 3x Slimming Power
• 5x Imelda Perfect Slimming
• 3 Day Diet Japan Lingzhi
• 24 Hours Diet
• 7 Diet Day/Night Formula
• 7 Day Herbal Slim
• 8 Factor Diet
• 999 Fitness Essence
• Extrim Plus
• GMP
• Imelda Perfect Slim
• Lida DaiDaihua
• Miaozi Slim Capsules
• Perfect Slim
• Perfect Slim 5x
• Phyto Shape
• ProSlim Plus
• Royal Slimming Formula Slim 3 in 1
• Slim Express 360
• Slimtech
• Somotrim
• Superslim
• TripleSlim
• Zhen de Shou
• Venom Hyperdrive 3.0

An FDA analysis found that the undeclared active pharmaceutical ingredients in some of these products include sibutramine (a controlled substance), rimonabant (a drug not approved for marketing in the United States), phenytoin (an anti-seizure medication), and phenolphthalein (a solution used in chemical experiments and a suspected cancer causing agent). Some of the amounts of active pharmaceutical ingredients far exceeded the FDA-recommended levels, putting consumers’ health at risk.

These weight loss products, some of which are marketed as “dietary supplements,” are promoted and sold on various Web sites and in some retail stores. Some of the products claim to be “natural” or to contain only “herbal” ingredients, but actually contain potentially harmful ingredients not listed on the product labels or in promotional advertisements. These products have not been approved by the FDA, are illegal and may be potentially harmful to unsuspecting consumers.

The FDA advises consumers who have used any of these products to stop taking them and consult their healthcare professional immediately. The FDA encourages consumers to seek guidance from a healthcare professional before purchasing weight loss products.

“These tainted weight loss products pose a great risk to public health because they contain undeclared ingredients and, in some cases, contain prescription drugs in amounts that greatly exceed their maximum recommended dosages,” said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA. “Consumers have no way of knowing that these products contain powerful drugs that could cause serious health consequences. Therefore FDA is taking this action to protect the health of the American public.”

The FDA has inspected a number of companies associated with the sale of these illegal products, and is currently seeking product recalls. Based on the FDA’s inspections and the companies’ inadequate responses to recall requests, the FDA may take additional enforcement steps, such as issuing warning letters or initiating seizures, injunctions, or criminal charges.

The health risks posed by these products can be serious; for example, sibutramine, which was found in many of the products, can cause high blood pressure, seizures, tachycardia, palpitations, heart attack or stroke. This drug can also interact with other medications that patients may be taking and increase their risk of adverse drug events. The safety of sibutramine has also not been established in pregnant and lactating women, or in children younger than 16 years of age.

Rimonabant, another ingredient found in these products, was evaluated, but not approved by the FDA for marketing in the United States. The drug, which is approved in Europe, has been associated with increased risk of depression and suicidal thoughts and has been linked to five deaths and 720 adverse reactions in Europe over the last two years.

Health care professionals and consumers should report serious adverse events (side effects) or product quality problems to the FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program either online, by regular mail, fax or phone.

• Online: www.fda.gov/MedWatch/report.htm
• Regular Mail: use postage-paid FDA form 3500 available at: www.fda.gov/MedWatch/getforms.htm and mail to MedWatch, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20852-9787
• Fax: (800) FDA-0178
• Phone: (800) FDA-1088

Information for consumers can be found at:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/consumerinfo/weight_loss_products.htm

Popularity: 61% [?]

US researchers say they can now watch genetic diseases unfolding in the laboratory after finding a way to make large numbers of affected cells.

The advance, reported in the journal Nature, used skin cells from a child with a devastating genetic condition.

These were turned first into stem cells – the body’s master cells – and then into nerve cells, which started to die as the gene fault took hold.

The team said the earliest stages of the disease could now be identified.

The child involved suffered from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a condition which kills nerve cells controlling muscles, causing paralysis and ultimately death, usually by the age of two.

While doctors know these cells are dying, they have not been able to watch the process in close-up, and look for clues as to exactly how the genetic fault carried by these children is affecting them.

The new technique could in theory provide them with as many nerve cells as they need.

All cells in the body – including skin and nerve cells – originate from the same stem cells found in the early embryo.

Scientists have already found ways to “persuade” skin cells to turn back the clock and become stem cells again.

Once in this state, they can then encourage them to become brand new cells of a different type.

In this case, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Missouri-Columbia coaxed them into becoming neurons.

As these nerve cells carried the SMA gene fault, the team observed that, after thriving for a month, they started dying.

New therapies

Professor Clive Svendsen, one of the researchers, said: “Now you can replay the human disease over and over in the dish and ask what are the very early steps that began the process – it’s an incredibly powerful tool.”

Another researcher, Dr Allison Ebert, said: “If we start to understand more of the mechanism of why the motor neurons specifically affected in the disease are dying, then potentially new therapies can be developed to intervene at particular times early in development.”

In theory, SMA is not the only genetic disease which could be studied using this method – the researchers say disorders such as Huntington’s disease could be investigated this way.

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, of the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research in London, said that the technique would undoubtedly become “an important tool” for researchers.

He said: “While I would be cautious about interpreting too much from this particular research, and would like to see it repeated using more stem cell lines, I expect this to fairly quickly become a significant aid to drug discovery.”

SOURCE:

BBC News

Popularity: 21% [?]

A study suggests the test reduces risk of death 60% to 70% instead of up to 90% and finds that it’s better at detecting cancer on the left side of the colon.

Don’t be overconfident of that recent colonoscopy’s clean bill of health.

That’s the lesson of a new study suggesting that colonoscopies reduce the risk of dying from colorectal cancer not by up to 90%, as believed, but by perhaps 60% to 70%. Further, they’re much better at finding problems in one side of the colon than the other.

“Colonoscopy seems to prevent two-thirds of deaths on the left side,” says Dr. Nancy Baxter, a colorectal surgeon and researcher at St. Michael’s Hospital in Ontario, Canada, and lead author of the study. “But there’s not much effect at all on the right.”

She led a team of researchers who reviewed public health records in Ontario to identify more than 10,000 people, or “case patients,” ages 52 to 90. All had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer between January 1996 and December 2001, and all had died of the cancer by December 2003.

For each case patient, the researchers selected five controls who matched for age, sex, socioeconomic status and residence location but differed in that they were still alive at the time of the case patient’s death.

The researchers then compared the percentage in each group that had received a colonoscopy between January 1992 and the date six months before the case patient was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Essentially, they were looking at a window of at least several years in which case patients and controls might have had colonoscopies. And they tried to maximize the chances that a case patient’s colonoscopy was done for simple screening purposes. The study, published online last week in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, confirmed that controls were more likely to have had a colonoscopy than were case patients. That is, having a colonoscopy was associated with fewer deaths. But the advantage of a colonoscopy was restricted to patients with cancer on the left side of their colon.

Experts suggest several explanations for the left- versus right-side difference. For one thing, it’s harder to examine the right side of the colon.

In a colonoscopy, the doctor inserts a scope at the lower left of the inverted-U-shaped colon, then moves it up, across and down to the lower right. The process is a bit like maneuvering a very narrow, floppy garden hose through a long tunnel, says Dr. Jacques Van Dam, professor of medicine and director of endoscopy at the Stanford University Medical Center.

The actual exam is performed as the doctor withdraws the scope and looks for polyps. A variety of tiny tools — loops, snares, jaws with teeth — can be passed through the scope and used to take out any growths the doctor finds.

On average, a colon is about a yard long, with several curves and sharp turns along the way. It takes a good deal of skill and practice not only to reach the end without bumping into the walls (which hurts the patient), but then to withdraw the scope slowly and not miss any polyps.

Physiology also complicates the right-side picture. “The stool is more liquid on the right side,” Baxter says. “So it coats the lining and makes polyps harder to see.”

But the right side of the colon isn’t just harder to examine. Cancer on the right side is actually different from cancer on the left side. “They’re like two different diseases,” says Dr. Heinz Lenz, professor of medicine and preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine and Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at USC.

Polyps on the left are generally mushroom-shaped, projecting out on a stalk, while polyps on the right side are generally flatter, with no stalk. So polyps on the left are easier to see and to remove.

Besides, while most colorectal cancers develop from polyps, some develop directly from the lining of the colon. This may happen more often on the right side, Baxter says.

In an additional complication, the most characteristic symptom of colorectal cancer — blood in the stool — doesn’t occur with cancer in the right side, where symptoms may just be abdominal discomfort or pain, Lenz says. For patients with these complaints, doctors are less likely to recommend a colonoscopy.

Right-side detection can probably be improved by improving colonoscopy technique and pre-colonoscopy preparation. But because of the differences between left- and right-side cancers, it may be very hard, even impossible, to get right-side detection up to left-side standards.

The Canadian study was limited to some extent by its design and its data. It was not a randomized, controlled trial, so it couldn’t prove that colonoscopy causes a reduction in cancer deaths. Also, the researchers didn’t have enough information to know for sure whether colonoscopies were for screening or diagnostic purposes. Because they’re performed when doctors already suspect disease, diagnostic colonoscopies are more likely to be followed by death than screening ones, which are performed on apparently healthy people.

The quality of colonoscopies keeps improving, Baxter says, so current colonoscopies may well be more accurate than the ones in the study, which were mostly done in the 1990s.

In any case, colonoscopy is a highly effective weapon against colorectal cancer — the third most common cancer in the United States, and the second most deadly, after lung cancer.

“A 60% to 70% mortality reduction . . . should not be considered disappointing,” Dr. David Ransohoff, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, wrote in an editorial with the study.

By comparison, mammograms are only associated with a 25% reduction in deaths from breast cancer, and PSA testing has not been shown to reduce deaths from prostate cancer.

“It would be dangerous if the study led doctors to recommend fewer colonoscopies,” Lenz says.

Popularity: 21% [?]

It’s that time of the year again. Turkey Time! Are you safely preparing your holiday meal?

Whether you’re a seasoned chef or a novice preparing your first holiday meal, be aware of safety issues when thawing, preparing, stuffing and cooking your turkey.

Food safety should be especially important to you as you prepare a holiday meal. Within the last couple of years, the CDC has investigated outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that were caused by bacteria in jalapeños, spinach, peanut butter, frozen pizza, frozen pot pies, and frozen beef patties. Many consumers are now more aware of the ongoing importance of food safety.

The following guidelines are directed more for the first-time chef and for those looking to ensure the safety of their food.

Turkey Basics:

Safely Thaw, Prepare, Stuff, and Cook

When preparing a turkey, be aware of the four main safety issues: thawing, preparing, stuffing, and cooking to adequate temperature.

Safe Thawing

Thawing turkeys must be kept at a safe temperature. The “danger zone” is between 40 and 140°F — the temperature range where food-borne bacteria multiply rapidly. While frozen, a turkey is safe indefinitely, but as soon as it begins to thaw, bacteria that may have been present before freezing can begin to grow again, if it is in the “danger zone.”

There are three safe ways to thaw food:

1. In the refrigerator.
2. In cold water
3. In a microwave oven.

Bacteria present on raw poultry can contaminate your hands, utensils, and work surfaces as you prepare the turkey. If these areas are not cleaned thoroughly before working with other foods, bacteria from the raw poultry can then be transferred to other foods. After working with raw poultry, always wash your hands, utensils, and work surfaces before they touch other foods.

Safe Stuffing

For optimal safety and uniform “doneness,” cook the stuffing outside the turkey in a casserole dish. However, if you place stuffing inside the turkey, do so just before cooking, and use a food thermometer. Make sure the center of the stuffing reaches a safe minimum internal temperature of 165°F. Bacteria can survive in stuffing that has not reached 165°F, possibly resulting in a food-borne illness.

Take the following steps to ensure your stuffing is prepared safely:

Prepare Stuffing Safely

If you plan to prepare stuffing using raw meat, poultry, or shellfish, you should cook the ingredients before stuffing the turkey to reduce the risk of foodborne illness from bacteria that may be found in raw ingredients. The wet ingredients for stuffing can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated. However, do not mix wet and dry ingredients until just before spooning the stuffing mixture into the turkey cavity.

Stuff Loosely

Do not cool the stuffing. Spoon it directly into the turkey cavity right after preparation. Stuff the turkey loosely — about 3/4 cup of stuffing per pound. The stuffing should be moist, not dry, because heat destroys bacteria more rapidly in a moist environment.

Do not stuff turkeys to be grilled, smoked, fried, or microwaved.

Cook Immediately

Immediately place the stuffed, raw turkey in an oven set no lower than 325 °F.

Use a Food Thermometer

For safety and doneness, check the internal temperature of the turkey and stuffing with a food thermometer.

If the temperature of the turkey and the center of the stuffing have not reached a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F, further cooking will be required. Do not remove the stuffing from the turkey before it reaches 165 °F because the undercooked stuffing could contaminate the cooked meat.

Continue to cook the turkey until the stuffing is safely cooked.

Let It Rest

Let the cooked turkey stand 20 minutes before removing the stuffing and carving.

Refrigerate Promptly

Refrigerate the cooked turkey and stuffing within 2 hours after cooking. Place leftovers in shallow containers and use within 3 to 4 days. Reheat leftovers to a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F.

Safe Cooking

Set the oven temperature no lower than 325°F and be sure the turkey is completely thawed. Place turkey breast-side up on a flat wire rack in a shallow roasting pan 2 to 2-1/2 inches deep. Check the internal temperature at the center of the stuffing and meaty portion of the breast, thigh, and wing joint using a food thermometer. Cooking times will vary. The food thermometer must reach a safe minimum internal temperature of 165°F. Let the turkey stand 20 minutes before removing all stuffing from the cavity and carving the meat.

Following these cooking guidelines can help you prepare a safe holiday dinner that everyone will enjoy.

We hope you have a safe holiday season and hope to see you back soon!

Popularity: 37% [?]

A flu strain now spreading in the U.S. is resistant to the flu drug Tamiflu, the CDC today warned in an official health advisory to doctors.

Flu is a dangerous and sometimes deadly disease. But the Tamiflu-resistant strain isn’t any more or less dangerous than other flu strains.

The Tamiflu-resistant virus is the flu bug most commonly seen so far this year. It’s been detected in 12 states so far, mostly in Hawaii and Texas.

Tamiflu resistance wasn’t unexpected. What was surprising was the rapid rise of Tamiflu resistance in this particular flu bug. Last year, about 11% of type A H1N1 flu bugs were resistant. So far this year, 49 out of 50 H1N1 viruses have been resistant.

Even so, it’s still very early in the flu season. There’s no way to know whether the Tamiflu-resistant flu bug will be this year’s predominant cause of flu.

“There is no crystal ball here,” CDC Director Julie Gerberding, MD, tells WebMD. “We can’t predict if this strain will end up being the most important one this year. It could fizzle out. … We’re giving a ‘heads-up’ to the clinicians, but we are not making drastic changes in our treatment and prevention recommendations.”

Three different flu bugs are in circulation among humans. The resistant bug is the type A H1N1 strain. There’s also the type A H3N2 strain, and one type B strain.

The current flu vaccine protects against all three of these viruses — and the current flu vaccine is an excellent match for the drug-resistant bug, Gerberding says.

Fortunately, the Tamiflu-resistant flu bug is still sensitive to Relenza, an alternative flu drug of the same basic type as Tamiflu. And the bug may also be sensitive to the older flu drugs Flumadine and Symmetrel, although resistance to these drugs has been steadily increasing among type A flu bugs.

Flu drugs can be used both to treat and to prevent the flu:

• Treatment with flu drugs must begin no later than two days after symptoms appear. The earlier that treatment begins, the shorter and less severe the illness.

• Prevention with flu drugs is used in households, hospitals, or facilities (such as nursing homes) where people have been exposed to someone who has the flu.

Tamiflu has been the most attractive treatment because it is taken in pill form and can be given to children as young as 1 year old.

Relenza comes in an inhaler. Children younger than 7 can’t use it for treatment, and those younger than 5 can’t use it for prevention. Moreover, Relenza sometimes causes lung spasms, so it can’t be used by people with lung problems.

Ironically, the CDC’s Tamiflu warning is not going to make a huge difference in how patients are treated because too few people get treated with flu drugs, says Joseph S. Bresee, MD, chief of the epidemiology and prevention branch of the CDC’s flu division.

“Even among hospital patients with the flu, more than half do not receive antiviral therapy,” Bresee tells WebMD. “[Tamiflu] and [Relenza] are relatively underused at this point.”

Bresee suggests that the current warning might actually increase use of flu drugs by making doctors more aware of how to use them.

Here’s what the CDC now recommends:

1. Doctors should keep track of the subtypes of flu virus circulating in their areas. The CDC offers weekly updates based on reports from local and state health agencies.

2. When testing patients for the flu, doctors should consider using tests that can tell type A flu from type B flu.

3. Use Tamiflu alone only if the main flu bugs in the area are type A H3N2 or type B.

4. If drug-resistant virus is circulating in the area, use Relenza. In patients unable to take Relenza, doctors may use a combination of Tamiflu and Flumadine (or Symmetrel if Flumadine isn’t available).

But here’s the best advice: It’s not too late to get a flu shot (or sniff, via the inhaled FluMist vaccine). Flu season rarely peaks before February — and lots of people come down with the flu as late as March or April. So if you’ve been putting off getting your flu shot, now is the time to act.

SOURCES:

WebMD

CDC Health Advisory, Dec. 19, 2008.

Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, director, CDC.

Timothy M. Uyeki, MD, medical epidemiologist, influenza branch, CDC.

Joseph S. Bresee, MD, chief of epidemiology and prevention, influenza branch, CDC.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Nine Tips From eHealthInsurance for Saving Money and Avoiding Insurance Mistakes Before You Ring in the New Year

Tip #1: Don’t toss the fine print: Many health insurance carriers make
updates on existing plan rates and benefits at year end. These changes are
usually communicated through mailers and people may throw these mailers
away without reading them. Read the correspondence thoroughly so that
you’re not surprised about changes in your plan.

Tip #2: Shop around: If your rates or deductibles are increasing
dramatically in the New Year, shop around. Insurance companies are often
adding new products every year, and you might find a better deal.

Tip #3: New year, new deductible: Most health insurance carriers reset
the deductible every calendar year. If you’ve exhausted your deductible in
2008, make sure any year-end claims are submitted before January 1st so
they are not applied towards your 2009 deductible.

Tip #4: Deduct medical expenses: If your family’s medical costs for
the year are approaching 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, those expenses
may be tax-deductible. Check with your tax advisor or the IRS website to
see if you are able to deduct these expenses.

Tip #5: Saving money on medicine: Ask your doctor or pharmacist if you
can switch to lower-cost medications, shop around for basic medical
supplies on your own, and take advantage of free preventive care.

Tip #6: Funding can be fun: If your plan features a Health Savings
Account, fund it to the maximum amount before the end of the year for the
best tax benefit. It also serves as a “rainy day” fund for any future
emergencies.

Tip #7: Get healthy: Check your health insurance plan to see if they
offer a discount at local or national health clubs. Some plans do and you
can save money on the monthly membership cost for the family.

Tip #8: Get physical: Make sure you get your yearly physical; it could
determine your eligibility for future health plans. Knowing your current
health status better prepares you to make a decision on whether you should
change plans or if you can scale down your existing plan in the event you
need to make a change.

Tip #9: Do a final review: Look for any other major changes in your
health or lifestyle that may require a different set of health insurance
benefits. Remember, you may not be able to change your plan until January,
2010.

About eHealth, Inc.:

eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: EHTH) is the parent company of eHealthInsurance, the nation’s leading online source of health insurance for individuals, families and small businesses. Through the company’s website, http://www.ehealthinsurance.com, consumers can get quotes from leading health insurance carriers, compare plans side by side, and apply for and purchase health insurance. eHealthInsurance offers thousands of health plans underwritten by more than 180 of the nation’s health insurance companies. eHealthInsurance is licensed to sell health insurance in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. eHealthInsurance and eHealth are registered trademarks of eHealthInsurance Services, Inc.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Adding to the long list of cancers caused by smoking, Italian researchers report that the risk of getting colorectal cancer is higher in smokers, as is the risk of dying from that disease.

Smoking increases the risk of developing colorectal cancer by about 18 percent and the risk of dying from the malignancy by about 25 percent, according to the study, which was published in the Dec. 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Smoking is significantly associated with colorectal cancer incidence and mortality,” said the study’s lead author, Edoardo Botteri, a biostatistician in the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy.

“People should be aware that smoking increases the risk of cancer not only in organs where there is direct contact with tobacco-related carcinogens, such as lung, oropharynx, larynx and upper digestive tract, but also in organs where exposure to tobacco degradation products is indirect, such as the pancreas, kidney, bladder, cervix, colon and rectum,” explained Botteri.

Tobacco is responsible for about 100 million deaths during the past century and more than 5 million deaths a year, according to background information in the study. Yet, the study pointed out, there are still more than 1 billion smokers worldwide. Eighty percent of lung cancers are directly attributable to smoking, reports the study.

However, the connection to colorectal cancer isn’t as conclusive.

To assess whether or not there is, in fact, a link, Botteri and his colleagues analyzed data from 106 observational studies that varied from small trials containing just several hundred participants to very large trials with more than 1 million participants.

When the researchers looked at the pooled risk, they found that smoking was associated with an 18 percent rise in the odds of getting colorectal cancer.

And, Botteri added, “There was an increase in risk with increasing number of cigarettes per day and pack-years — the number of packs of cigarettes smoked per day multiplied by years of consumption.”

The increased risk began after about 10 years of smoking and increased until it reached statistical significance after 30 years.

“That doesn’t mean that there is no increased risk for people who smoked less than 30 years,” noted Botteri, “It just means that there is strong evidence that exposure of 30 years or more increases the risk of colorectal cancer.”

The researchers also found that smoking increased the risk of death from colorectal cancer by 25 percent.

Dr. Michael Thun, vice president emeritus of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, said the study will be of most interest to researchers that study colon cancer, and he doesn’t believe the findings will change screening recommendations.

Another message remains the same, he added: “With or without a relationship to colorectal cancer, the message is to avoid all forms of tobacco.”

Botteri, however, believes that doctors should be “more vigilant” about making sure that smokers are compliant with current screening recommendations, and that perhaps, the initial screening age should be lowered for smokers.

SOURCES: Edoardo Botteri, M.SC., biostatistician, European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy; Michael Thun, M.D., vice president emeritus, epidemiology and surveillance research, American Cancer Society, Atlanta; Dec. 17, 2008, Journal of the American Medical Association

Popularity: 21% [?]

A new, cheaper version of the female condom has won approval from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel, setting the stage for broader distribution of the product worldwide.

If, as expected, the FDA heeds the panel’s recommendation, this altered contraceptive option—designed primarily for women who want to avoid sexually transmitted infections—could become available in the U.S. by mid-2009. The panel approved the new version late Thursday.

Costs will be about 30 percent less than the existing version, making female condoms more affordable to individuals and public health organizations, said Mary Ann Leeper, senior strategic adviser to the Female Health Co., the Chicago firm that manufactures the product.

In developing countries, female condoms sell for about 80 cents a piece. In the U.S., prices are $1.15 to $2.75 each, depending on whether they are distributed through public health organizations or retail outlets, she said.

In part because of the high price, the product never really caught on in the U.S. Users also complained it was difficult to insert, slippery, sometimes squeaky during sex and unsightly.

The second-generation female condom will be made of a cheaper synthetic rubber product instead of polyurethane, the material currently used. The product is a long, lubricated sheath, anchored at either end by a flexible ring. Upon insertion, the smaller ring surrounding the closed end of the sheath is positioned high in the vagina while the larger ring extends outside the canal and covers the labia.

The FDA approved the original product, known as FC1 (female condom 1), in May 1993. Research shows it has a 5 percent failure rate in the U.S., compared with a 3 percent failure rate for male condoms. For the year ending Sept. 30, 35 million FC1 condoms were sold worldwide—90 percent of them in developing countries.

The hope is that the second-generation product, known as FC2 (female condom 2), will expand the market and lead to sales of up to 200 million female condoms a year, Leeper said.

One hundred seventy women’s health, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS groups urged the FDA panel to endorse FC2 in a letter last week, writing, “The feminization of HIV and AIDS requires a woman-centered response and access to a range of safe, effective and affordable prevention methods for women—including female condoms.” Half of the 33.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS are women.

Catherine Christeller, executive director of the Chicago Women’s AIDS Project, one of the organizations listed, said, “For women, this isn’t just about controlling pregnancy: It’s about protecting their health and potentially saving their lives.”

Many men still simply refuse to use condoms, putting women at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, she noted.

Other Illinois organizations that endorsed FC2 in the letter were the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the Chicago Foundation for Women, the Chicago Recovery Alliance, the Open Door Clinic in Elgin, the South Side Help Center and the University of Illinois Project WISH.

The FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to approve FC2.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Eating a handful of nuts a day for a year, along with a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits, vegetables and fish, may help undo a collection of risk factors for heart disease.

Spanish researchers found that adding nuts worked better than boosting the olive oil in a typical Mediterranean diet. Both regimens cut the heart risks known as metabolic syndrome in more people than a low-fat diet did.

“What’s most surprising is they found substantial metabolic benefits in the absence of calorie reduction or weight loss,” said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

In the study, appearing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the people who improved most were told to eat about three whole walnuts, seven or eight whole hazelnuts and seven or eight whole almonds. They didn’t lose weight, on average, but more of them succeeded in reducing belly fat and improving their cholesterol and blood pressure.

Manson, who wasn’t involved in the study, cautioned that adding nuts to a Western diet, one packed with too many calories and junk food,  could lead to weight gain and more health risks. “But using nuts to replace a snack of chips or crackers is a very favorable change to make in your diet,” Manson said.

The American Heart Association says 50 million Americans have metabolic syndrome, a combination of health risks, such as high blood pressure and abdominal obesity. Finding a way to reverse it with a diet people find easy and satisfying would mean huge health improvements for many Americans, Manson said.

Nuts help people feel full while also increasing the body’s ability to burn fat, said lead author Dr. Jordi Salas-Salvado of the University of Rovira i Virgili in Reus, Spain.

“Nuts could have an effect on metabolic syndrome by multiple mechanisms,” Salas-Salvado said in an e-mail. Nuts are rich in anti-inflammatory substances, such as fiber, and antioxidants, such as vitamin E. They are high in unsaturated fat, a healthier fat known to lower blood triglycerides and increase good cholesterol.

More than 1,200 Spaniards, ranging in age from 55 to 80, were randomly assigned to follow one of three diets. They were followed for a year. The participants had no prior history of heart disease, but some had risk factors including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and abdominal obesity.

At the start, 751 people had metabolic syndrome, about 61 percent, distributed evenly among the three groups.

Metabolic syndrome was defined as having three or more of the following conditions: abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, low levels of good cholesterol (HDL), high blood sugar and high blood pressure.

The low-fat group was given basic advice about reducing all fat in their diets. Another group ate a Mediterranean diet with extra nuts. The third group ate a Mediterranean diet and was told to make sure they ate more than four tablespoons of olive oil a day.

Dietitians advised the two groups on the Mediterranean diet to use olive oil for cooking; increase fruit, vegetable and fish consumption; eat white meat instead of beef or processed meat; and prepare homemade tomato sauce with garlic, onions and herbs. Drinkers were told to stick with red wine.

After one year, all three groups had fewer people with metabolic syndrome, but the group eating nuts led the improvement, now with 52 percent having those heart risk factors. In the olive oil group, 57 percent had the syndrome. In the low-fat group, there was very little difference after a year in the percentage of people with the syndrome.

The nut-rich diet didn’t do much to improve high blood sugar, but the large number of people with Type 2 diabetes, about 46 percent of participants, could be the reason, Salas-Salvado said. It’s difficult to get diabetics’ blood sugar down with lifestyle changes alone, he said.

To verify that study volunteers ate their nuts, researchers gave some of them a blood test for alpha-linolenic acid found in walnuts.

The study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Health and the government of Valencia, Spain.

Salas-Salvado and another co-author disclosed in the publication that they are unpaid advisers to nut industry groups. Salas-Salvado said all of their research “has been conducted under standard ethical and scientific rules” and that peer-review journal editors determined the study results were not influenced by food industry ties.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Acai, a Brazilian palm berry sweeping the globe as a popular health food – though little research has been done on it – now may have its purported benefits better understood.

In the first research involving people, the acai (ah-sigh-EE) berry has proven its ability to be absorbed in the human body when consumed both as juice and pulp. That finding, by a team of Texas AgriLife Research scientists, was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Showing the berry’s absorption in humans is important because it is known to contain numerous antioxidants. The berry is heavily marketed in the U.S. as a health food.

The study involved 12 healthy volunteers who consumed a single serving of acai juice or pulp. Researchers believe the results point to the need for continued research on the berry which is commonly used in juices, beverages, smoothies, frozen treats and dietary supplements.

“Acai is naturally low in sugar, and the flavor is described as a mixture of red wine and chocolate,” said lead investigator Dr. Susanne Talcott, “so what more would you want from a fruit?”

Talcott, who also is assistant professor with the Texas A&M University’s nutrition and food science department, said that previous studies have shown the ability of the human body to absorb target antioxidants (from other produce), but “no one had really tested to see if acai antioxidants are absorbed in humans.”

Sales of acai products have increased dramatically in the U.S. where it has been touted as a metabolism booster, weight reducer and athletic enhancer. Advertisements use buzzwords such as health, wellness, energy, taste and organic.

About the only buzzword not used with acai is “local.” The berries are harvested in the Brazilian rainforest from acai palms that may reach heights in excess of 60 feet – one of the same palms used to harvest edible hearts of palm.

The fruit is about the size of a large blueberry yet only the outermost layers of the fruit, the pulp surrounding a large internal seed, are edible, Talcott noted.

Talcott and her co-researcher and husband Dr. Steve Talcott began studying the palm- berry in 2001. His first scientific report on acai, apparently the first such study in English, was published in 2004.

Initially, their studies on the berry examined antioxidant and nutritional components in pulp and juice. Later studies showed the berry’s activity against cancer cells, Talcott noted.

With that background, the researchers then decided to find out whether those elements were actually being absorbed into the human body or being eliminated unused as waste.

“Like vitamin C, the body can only absorb so much at a time,” Steve Talcott explained.

He said the researchers now “need to determine potential disease-fighting health benefits, so we can make intelligent recommendations on how much acai should be consumed.

For the clinical trial, people were given acai pulp and acai juice containing half the concentration of anthocyanins as the pulp and each compared to the control foods: applesauce and a non-antioxidant beverage.

Blood and urine samples at 12 and 24 hours after consumption showed significant increases in antioxidant activity in the blood after both the acai pulp and applesauce consumption, she said. Both acai pulp and acai juice showed significant absorption of antioxidant anthocyanins into the blood and antioxidant effects. The research couple said future studies hopefully will help determine whether the consumption of acai will result in any disease-preventing health benefit and the proper serving sizes for a beneficial dose for people.

“Our concern has been that it is sold as a super food – and it definitely has some good attributes – but it is not a solution to all diseases,” she said. “There are a great number of foods on the market, and this could just be part of a well-balanced diet.”

Popularity: 21% [?]

Vaccinations are not just for kids.  There are periodic vaccines that adults should get to stay healthy, too.

The Cleveland Clinic lists these vaccines recommended for people aged 18 and older:

Get a tetanus booster shot every 10 years.

A pneumonia vaccine is suggested at age 65.  People with a chronic illness should get it before age 65.

An annual flu shot is recommended for anyone 65 or older, health-care workers, people with chronic illness, pregnant women, and people who care for very young children.

A hepatitis B shot is suggested for health-care workers, homosexual men, people with multiple sex partners, I.V. drug users, people on hemodialysis, and anyone with a weakened immune system.

A measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is suggested for women of child-bearing age, health care workers, college students, teachers, daycare workers and people who travel internationally.  All of these people  should also have a varicella vaccine.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Pregnancy and Diabetes

Many women who develop gestational diabetes during pregnancy will go on to develop type 2 diabetes later in life.

If you’ve had gestational diabetes, certain lifestyle changes may help lower your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.  The American Diabetes Association offers these suggestions:

Maintain a healthy body weight.  Being more than 20 percent over your ideal body weight can increase your risk of type 2 diabetes. Losing even a few pounds can help reduce your risk.

Maintain a low-fat diet and keep portions small.  Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Maintain a regular exercise program, which can help your body burn more glucose without the need for extra insulin.

Popularity: 21% [?]

A diet high in carbohydrate instead of protein improves the ability of people with McArdle disease to exercise, results of a small study indicate.

McArdle disease is a metabolic muscle disorder. People born with the disease are unable to produce an enzyme called muscle phosphorylase, which is important in producing the fuel source required by the muscles for exercise.

People with McArdle disease develop severe muscle pain and fatigue in the first few minutes of exercise, followed often by severe muscle spasms if they continue to exercise.

Two small studies have suggested that a protein-rich diet may be beneficial for patients with McArdle disease.

In the current study, Drs. S. T. Andersen and J. Vissing, from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark examined the effects of a carbohydrate-rich versus a protein-rich diet on exercise “tolerance” in 7 adults with McArdle disease.

The patients were randomized to follow one diet or the other diet for 3 days. The patients exercised on a stationary bicycle after each diet.

The investigators found that exercise performance was better with the carbohydrate-rich diet than the protein-rich diet. For example, heart rate and perceived exertion were consistently lower and maximal oxygen uptake was 25 percent higher in patients on the carbohydrate versus the protein diet.

This study, Andersen and Vissing conclude, suggests that patients with McArdle disease should be kept on a diet with a high content of carbohydrates to improve their ability to tolerate exercise.

Popularity: 21% [?]

This is a story that aired over one year ago on WSVN News.

It is a story unlike many we have ever seen. It began with one South Florida woman and has now grown to involve dozens of people. People claiming to have bugs coming out of their bodies. Don’t believe it? Then sit back and watch Patrick Fraser’s special investigation, Body Bugs.

Meet Kathy Jimenez. Her life is a nightmare.

Kathy: “All my friends thought I was crazy. I lost all my friends.”

Meet Susan Hammer. Her life has been destroyed.

Susan: “It’s just drained me. It’s quite humiliating.”

Two women with one thing in common.

Jose Jimenez: “And she really has real bugs — she has flies, ticks, nymphs. All sorts of strange bugs.”

You heard him correctly. Clean, healthy people have bugs coming out of their body.

Susan: “This is horrible, and this is horrible.”

Kathy lives in Miami-Dade. When her condition started 18 months ago, Jose bought a powerful microscope to determine exactly what was coming out of his wife’s body.

Jose: “I just didn’t believe that a person could have bugs — live bugs just coming out of their body. It just didn’t make any sense to me.”

And, to be perfectly honest, at first I didn’t believe it either. We asked Kathy to scrape her skin. Then we watched as Jose put it under the microscope to see what was there.

Patrick Fraser: “There’s no doubt what that is.”

It seems clear: a bug. And, if you are amazed, look at this. Every morning, when Kathy wakes up, the bed is covered with what appears to be pepper.

Jose put the pepper-looking substance under a microscope. It’s amplified 100 times and is shocking.

Jose: “You can see it there, how it’s moving. When it’s all done, it just retracts right back into the cocoon, and again, it’s just a piece of dirt if you didn’t know any better.”

At first, doctors told Kathy she was, to put it politely, off the deep end. This one wrote she needed psychiatric help.

Jose: “We are all crazy, and these pictures are figments of our imagination, and somehow we’re able to photograph delusions.”

Other doctors examined Kathy and watched as she contstantly scratched her itching body and told her they couldn’t find anything wrong. Jose is convinced they are afraid to admit bugs are living in her body.

Jose: “Most doctors don’t want to be labeled with that diagnosis because they get blackballed from the entire medical community.”

Jose then sent slides to Harvard University and the CDC. Both had the same conclusion.

Jose: “One person said, yes, they’re parasites, they’re anthropods, but they don’t think that they’re coming from you. You’re just being bitten.”

But Kathy and Susan are not the only ones we found that have bugs in their bodies.

Trisha Springstead: “I probably have 50 people underground.”

Trisha invented a cream that treats skin disorders like psoriasis. And people infected with this bug disorder came to her after doctors couldn’t cure them. People like this beautiful young woman, who can’t understand why bugs come out of her young arms. Or this woman, who has had the disease so long she says she has learned to live with it.

Trisha has talked to many of them and says many more are too ashamed to admit they have the problem.

Trisha: “They don’t want to lose their jobs. They don’t want to lose their reputations. They’re horrified, and I’m going to advocate for them. I won’t shut up. I won’t.”

Trisha says others who have microscopic bugs coming out of their skin are misdiagnosed. Sometimes they are told they have scabies or shingles, in part because many doctors don’t recognize the problem.

Trisha: “I think they want do the right thing, but they are too used to looking in a textbook and saying, ‘Well, if this is this, and this is this, it’s delusions of parasitosis. Let’s put them on anti-psychotics.”

With no cure, Susan can’t work and can’t go out in public.

Instead, she sits at home and pulls these long things out of her body. She is left frightened, frustrated and furious.

Susan: “This needs to be cut. It’s just horrible, when you’ve tried everything in the whole world and, you know, try to maintain your dignity and your integrity.”

Susan has suffered for nine months. Kathy has struggled for 18 months and has just given up.

Kathy: “I just want to die.”

Lillian Rivera: “The Health Department is taking this very seriously.”

But now, the people who have this unique problem are getting some attention.

After we told the Miami-Dade Health Department about Kathy’s condition, they sent a team into the Jimenez house to start investigating, to try and determine what is happening to these people.

Lillian Rivera: “Right now, to us it’s a mystery. We do not know if it’s an emerging infectious disease or a parasitic disease, at this time. We don’t have enough information. We haven’t confirmed a diagnosis, so we are investigating, and, until we have the final investigation, we cannot say.”

At least someone is listening to Kathy, instead of telling her she is crazy.

Jose: “What would I like? I’d like to see all of these things gone from her body. I think that you’re going to be seeing more of these cases.”

Trisha is certain of that and is convinced these bugs that are infecting human bodies are a warning sign of things to come.

Trisha: “If we don’t do something soon, this is the next epidemic. This is the next plague.”

A frightening thought, but, clearly, this appears to be a frightening reality.

Patrick Fraser: “What did you think when you saw the legs moving?”

Jose: “You’re horrified because you keep thinking, how does something like this come out of a person’s body?”

How, why, and what can be done?

“I want somebody to help me. I want somebody to give me the right medicine to help me.”

Hopefully, Kathy, somebody will.

Popularity: 29% [?]

The past decade witnessed the massive offshoring of jobs to low-cost countries, decimating the U.S. manufacturing base. Today, Americans are being challenged by the financial crisis, which has left much of the service economy in shambles. Yet another avalanche may be on the horizon: the lure, and potential liability, of cheap food.

Almost a quarter of the average American’s food is imported. But increasingly, imports are from developing countries that do not meet U.S. standards regarding sanitation, worker safety, environmental practices, quality of ingredients and treatment of animals. China is not only providing a larger share of seafood, fruits, vegetables and ingredients for processed foods, it also has a virtual monopoly as a supplier of vitamins, food supplements and many ingredients in pharmaceuticals.

Ordinary Americans learned of the consequences of the gaping loopholes in the financial sector regulations. Yet few know that the government is also ill-equipped to manage the complex web of global food supply chains. This lack of transparency, coupled with a highly fragmented U.S. food safety infrastructure, enables unscrupulous suppliers.

There are 12 federal agencies administering 35 different food safety laws. The Food and Drug Administration inspected only 52 Chinese plants from 1998 to 2005. At U.S. ports, only 1 percent of imported food is tested for biological contaminants. Once found, contaminated food is returned to the source, but the odds are high that the tainted food will be returned to America and evade testing.

To make matters worse, the FDA does not check for nonorganic contaminants, such as heavy metal, that may be present in produce, fish and dietary supplements. Moreover, savvy suppliers sometimes reroute products, especially seafood, to an inland port such as Las Vegas – which has no FDA inspectors.

The United States allows the importation of processed chickens from China – chickens bred and killed in Mexico, and shipped to China frozen and returned for sale in the United States. Wal-Mart sells presumably U.S.-caught shrimp that was processed in China. The bottom line: A significant amount of food can cross the ocean several times before entering the United States – without ever being inspected.

The debacle of the 2007 pet food recalls shows that even the most reputable brands can be contaminated by minuscule ingredients – in this case, melamine-tainted wheat and rice gluten. Months passed before the FDA determined the root cause. The list of recalls grew day by day, creating a huge supply disruption as retailers’ shelves remained empty.

Most consumers are unaware that melamine has been found in the urine of U.S. livestock from melamine-imported feed. And more than 2,500 metric tons of imported Chinese dairy ingredients and products entered the U.S. food system in 2007.

Although the FDA contends there is “no risk” to humans, there is little research on its cumulative effects, and kidney ailments were found in thousands of Chinese babies drinking melamine-laced milk.

A 2008 federal study reports that the prevalence of chronic kidney disease in the United States has increased from 20 percent to 25 percent in the past decade – and for older Americans, it is significantly higher. Is it a coincidence that these trends parallel the imports from China?

The problem is that we just don’t know.

Traditionally, food was more regional, grown and processed closer to the point of consumption. Western food today has been transformed by consolidation and commoditization, where large conglomerates buy and sell a wide range of ingredients globally. These days, “low price is king.”

In China, rules are often broken – and quietly cutting corners is viewed as a survival strategy. Only recently have U.S. authorities implemented regulations regarding country-of-origin labeling for fresh meat, fish, fruits and vegetables. However, such labeling is not required with even the slightest processing, such as cut-up fresh fruits and stuffed fish at the grocers or imported processed chicken.

Few consumers would know that globally sourced food ingredients are in everyday items with familiar brand names like Nutri-Grain bars and Sara Lee bread. “Ingredient sourcing” is veiled in much secrecy – distributors don’t want you to know where they get your food. Marketing hype and well-crafted packaging of branded processed foods – even many of those labeled “organic” – often lead us to believe that their ingredients are from U.S. farms. But organic doesn’t always mean domestic.

One thing is clear: The current solutions to food quality are not sustainable. Quality risk in global food supply chains cannot be eliminated by fiats, inspections, auditing and testing.

For their part, consumers must take deliberate actions and vote with their pocketbooks. They can seek out information on ingredients traced back to the country of origin, and press for shorter supply chains by requesting more local sourcing at retail establishments.

Companies can make available, when asked, ingredient sourcing information. Food companies should look beyond costs to ensuring quality and consistent enforcement of U.S. standards in the supply chain, from the farm to the fork.

The government needs to play a more interventionist role. U.S. policy can move domestic farming toward more sustainable practices and maintaining a more diverse crop mix needed for food ingredients – and future leverage.

Finally, because the safety of food ingredients sourced from developing countries cannot be inspected or regulated, setting up facilities in host countries – like the FDA in China – provides an opportunity to better understand the root causes of food problems and hasten those nations’ path to global standards. The Obama administration should also consider a Cabinet-level agency with authority over all food safety, enforcement and research.

Our health may depend on it.

The food-security checklist

In this global environment, food produced close to home is no longer the norm. The United States’ problems with global food sources include:

• Only 1 percent of imported food is tested at U.S. ports.
• The FDA does not test for nonorganic contaminants such as heavy metals.
• Food can cross an ocean several times before entering U.S. ports.
• Country-of-origin labels don’t apply if the food is processed.
• Organic does not mean domestic.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MAN-tul sel lim-FOH-muh)  What is it?  How can it be treated?  Is there a cure?

Defined:

Mantle Cell Lymphoma is an aggressive (fast-growing) type of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma that usually occurs in middle-aged or older adults. It is marked by small- to medium-size cancer cells that may be in the lymph nodes, spleen, bone marrow, blood, and gastrointestinal system.

A recent study indicates that the incidence of mantle cell lymphoma, an aggressive type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, is on the rise, most frequently striking men, Caucasians and older individuals. The study also reveals that most patients are diagnosed with advanced stages of the disease.

Because mantle cell lymphoma often goes undetected until later stages, it has the poorest prognosis of all lymphomas. Despite the recent discovery of new anti-cancer therapies that have improved the survival rates of patients with various types of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, there is no clear standard approach for treating mantle cell lymphoma.

However, a  research team at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) Cancer Center believes they may have an answer to treating mantle cell lymphoma and other types of cancer.

Cancer cells are already stressed by the fast pace they require to grow and spread and scientists believe a little more stress just may kill them.

“Think about an assembly line in a factory that is working five times faster than normal,” said  Dr. Kapil Bhalla, director of the Medical College of Georgia Cancer Center. “There is a lot of stress but you need workers to keep going. Some of them fall out, some get bent out of shape.”

His research team believes they can disrupt the over-stressed assembly line of mantle cell lymphoma and possibly similar cancers such as pancreatic, liver and breast, by taking away support needed for rapid protein turnover and by clogging up the mechanism for eliminating poorly made ones.

Mantle cell lymphoma, an aggressive cancer of the lymphatic system that mostly occurs in middle age, responds initially to chemotherapy and antibiotics, but often returns, said Dr. Bhalla. Patients have a median survival of three to four years. This cancer affects b lymphocytes, immune cells which make antibodies to fight infection. Ironically, in the process of rearranging genes to make antibodies to a specific invader, mistakes happen, and a would-be protector becomes cancer.

MCG researchers found that to keep their fast pace, these now-malignant cells need increased activity of heat shock protein 90.  “Cancer cells require hsp90 for keeping their proteins in active conformation to do their job. That is what cancer is addicted to,” said Dr. Bhalla, Cecil F. Whitaker, Jr., M.D./Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cancer and Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar. Hsp90 is one of the more common molecular chaperones, which help proteins get made, moved, folded and function. Its levels and activity are upregulated in response to stress.

They also found that the usually busy endoplasmic reticulum of these cells, which is supposed to be making normal antibodies, is stressed by making hyperactive, cancer-associated proteins. Stepped-up protein production also means more misfolded proteins that the proteasome must deal with. “It’s all stressed-out machinery,” Dr. Bhalla said.

To help push cancer cells over the edge, the researchers are inhibiting hsp90, so the cells lose the molecular chaperone function required to maintain their fast pace. This also puts more stress on the endoplasmic reticulum. Independently hsp90 inhibitors are known to selectively kill cancer cells. But researchers also are clogging up the proteasome, the machinery for chopping up misfolded proteins, recycling some products and eliminating what’s left. Much like a sink won’t work with a clogged garbage disposal, mantle cell lymphoma cells will start backing up. When a cell detects excessive misfolded proteins, it first has a protective response, but if the problem persists, it commits suicide.

With support from a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, the researchers are using hsp90 and proteasome inhibitors to study protective versus lethal endoplasmic reticulum stress as a way to get rid of mantel cell lymphoma cells.  The laboratory studies are being done in human mantle cell lymphoma cells as well as an animal model the researchers developed.

The drugs they are using already are in early clinical trials for a variety of cancers but have not yet been packaged together, Dr. Bhalla said. “We kill cancer cells and a lot of them with this strategy.” Still, at least one more inhibitor may get added to the mix. After the rather brutal attack at the cancer’s molecular underpinnings, the immune system comes in to essentially mop the floor, but researchers have found cancer cells can still get a pass from an enzyme called IDO. A team of MCG researchers led by Dr. David Munn is exploring IDO’s therapeutic potential in cancer. Fetuses use IDO to avoid rejection by the mother’s immune system and tumors appear to use it as well.  Dr. Bhalla suspects an IDO inhibitor, already under study for lung cancer and other tumors, likely will get a shot at mantle cell lymphoma as well.

Popularity: 45% [?]

The following dietary supplements have been recalled:

Balanced Health Products Inc. is recalling 1,974 bottles of Starcaps Diet System dietary supplements. They contain bumetanide, a prescription diuretic drug that poses a risk of significant fluid and electrolyte loss. It could also cause low blood pressure and fainting in certain people. Bumetanide could react with digoxin and lithium and lead to an increased risk of toxicity. No incidents have been reported.

The recall includes only 30-capsule bottles from lot number 12/2011-84810. They were distributed to stores and online retailers around the country between August and October 2008. Details: by phone at 212-794-9793.

Fashion Sanctuary is recalling all lots of 10-capsule blister cards of Zhen De Shou fat loss capsules, because they contains sibutramine, an FDA-approved appetite suppressant. In certain patients it could increase blood pressure and pulse rate, posing a risk for people with histories of coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, arrhythmia or stroke. No incidents have been reported. The capsules were sold by online retailers around the country.

Popularity: 21% [?]

As the holidays arrive, a group of researchers has identified the precise mechanisms by which binge drinking contributes to clogs in arteries that lead to heart attack and stroke, according to a study published today in the journal Atherosclerosis. The works adds to a growing body of evidence that drinking patterns matter as much, if not more, to risk for cardiovascular disease than the total amount consumed.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), going on a ‘binge’ means having five or more drinks for men, and four or more drinks for women, in two hours. Many studies suggest that an irregular pattern of heavy drinking brings about a two-fold increase in risk for a fatal heart attack, even as moderate drinking has been shown to reduce risk (the red wine effect). About 65 percent of Americans drink alcohol, with 15 percent reporting binge patterns in a national survey of problem drinkers.

Alcoholic beverages contain ethanol, which is mostly converted into acetaldehyde once in the human system at ‘binge’ levels, with the levels of acetaldehyde remaining high for many hours after the binge has ended. The current study clarified for the first time that binge levels of acetaldehyde cause an important type of immune cell, the monocyte, to become better able to stick to blood vessel walls, an important step in initiating atherosclerotic disease. Clarifying these mechanisms promises to empower the design of new treatments to counter the effects when combined with lifestyle change, researchers said.

In the past, experts believed that atherosclerosis developed when too much cholesterol clogged arteries with fatty deposits called plaques. When blood vessels became completely blocked, heart attacks occurred. Now most believe that the reaction of the body’s immune system, more than the build-up itself, creates heart attack risk. Vessel walls mistake fatty deposits for intruders, akin to bacteria, and call for help from the immune system. Among other cell types, monocytes arrive with the goal of preventing infection, but end up causing inflammation that drives blood vessel blockage.

“Factors like binge-drinking have been linked to increased risk for heart disease, and the newer inflammatory model is beginning to explain how,” said John Cullen, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “One of our experiments found that acetaldehyde, at levels found in the blood after binge drinking, increased the number of monocytes that can adhere to cells lining blood vessels by 700 percent,” said Cullen, who led the study.

Health psychologists argue that motivating people to stop binging depends upon their belief that it is harming them. Thus, the authors of the current study hope the results empower public health campaigns that discourage binge drinking.

Study Details:

In between infections and injuries, dormant monocytes ride along with the bloodstream until they “realize” they are passing by part of a blood vessel wall close to the site of an injury or infection, or in the case of atherosclerosis, the site of cholesterol buildup. At this point, adhesion molecules on the monocyte surfaces unfold and grab onto key proteins on the surface of blood vessel wall cells, resisting the surrounding blood flow.

Whey they arrive on the scene, monocytes send out tethers, like anchors that snag the vessel wall. Once the monocyte swings close to the wall on its tether, it can then roll along the wall, getting stickier and sticker until it sticks in place permanently. Without this step, a major part of the immune component of atherosclerosis could not get underway.

In the current study, the team examined the effects of acetaldehyde on the ability of monocytes to home in on, tether to and roll along cells lining blood vessel walls. Researchers made cultures of the cells lining blood vessels (e.g. human umbilical venous endothelial cells (HUVEC)), and of two types of monocytes that stick to those vessel-lining cells when activated (e.g. primary blood monocytes (PBM) and THP-1 monocytes). The team then treated all cell cultures with acetaldehyde at varying doses (0.1󈞅 µM) known to correlate with binge drinking for six hours.

Specifically, the current study found that acetaldehyde stimulated monocyte adhesion through its effect on three important proteins, CCR2, P-selectin, and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα).

Several studies provide compelling evidence for a direct role of the monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) receptor called chemokine (C-C motif) receptor 2 (CCR2) in the rush of monocytes to blood vessel walls as part of atherosclerosis. CCR2 is a receptor, a protein that occurs on the surfaces of monocytes that links up with MCP-1 as part of the signal that brings monocytes homing in on diseased blood vessel walls. The current study found that the addition of acetaldehyde to monocytes increased by more that twofold the number of cells with CCR2 expressed on their surfaces.

P-selectin is a cell adhesion molecule (CAM) that, upon receiving the right signal, quickly rises to the surface of the cells lining blood vessels (endothelial cells) to help monocytes grab them. The team found a 40 percent increase in endothelial cells showing P-selectin on their surfaces when exposed to acetaldehyde, and a 50 percent increase in the density of P-selectins expressed on the surface of each cell.

The study also found that the genetic expression of TNFα, an important driver of several aspects of inflammation in blood vessels, in endothelial cells increased by about 2.5 fold in the presence of acetaldehyde (10µM). Given the above results, it is not surprising that the addition of acetaldehyde increased the overall adhesion of primary blood monocyte to endothelial cells by approximately 250 percent for 0.1 µM acetaldehyde, and 700 percent for 25µM acetaldehyde, when compared to controls.

When endothelial cells were subjected to a technique that shut down the genes that code for both P-selectin and TNFα prior to the addition of acetaldehyde, the ability of acetaldehyde to cause increased monocyte adhesion was reduced by 90 percent. These results argue strongly that acetaldehyde has its effects on monocytes primarily through these proteins.

Along with Cullen, the work was led in Rochester by Eileen Redmond, David Morrow, Sreenath Kundimi and Carol Miller-Graziano within in the Department of Surgery at the Medical Center. The work was supported in part by grants from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health.

“Our study demonstrates for the first time that physiologically relevant concentrations of acetaldehyde can initiate several key steps involved in the monocyte recruitment cascade, specifically through P-selectin, CCR2 and TNFα,” Cullen said. “We hypothesize that, following alcohol consumption, there is a delicate equilibrium between the effects of alcohol and its metabolite, acetaldehyde, on blood vessel walls. Further studies are underway to confirm that these actions of acetaldehyde underlie, in part, the detrimental effects of binge drinking on cardiovascular disease. “

Popularity: 21% [?]

Infants are responsible for $600,000 mortgages. Teens unknowingly carrying six credit cards in five states. College students are unable to get loans because their credit histories were destroyed before they were born.

This is what happens when a child’s identity has been stolen.

Most parents don’t consider that someone – most likely someone they know – could be opening credit accounts in their child’s name. Sometimes the criminals are the parents themselves. And these crimes usually go undiscovered until the child applies for a college loan or a job when they’re 18, but by then the damage is done – their identity has been stolen and the bogus credit accounts have been sent to collections.

A 2007 study by Javelin Strategy and Research says that more than one million children last year had their information exposed in information breaches. And in many of the cases, thieves snagged the child’s Social Security number or birth date and used the numbers to create bogus credit accounts.  (See Step-by-step guide to checking your child’s credit below.)

It’s impossible to detail the specifics of each breach. But consider just this one:

Ex-Girl Scout troop leader and Floridian Holly Barnes was charged with 19 counts of filing false claims and 15 counts of identity theft last fall after creating fraudulent medical forms for members of her girl scout troop. She then used the information to file bogus tax returns and collect $87,000 in illegal tax refunds, which were then distributed into five different bank accounts, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office and documents filed in the United States District Court, North Florida District. This January she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The breach occurred when parents filled out the fraudulent medical forms.

“It’s the climate of our technology age,” says Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, an agency that helps parents – and others – dispute bogus credit charges.

Adds Diane Terry, director of fraud prevention with TransUnion: “Child ID theft isn’t anything new. It’s been going back a while, however, we do see more and more cases of it.”

A growing problem

There are no comprehensive studies tracking the number of children with stolen identities or adults whose identities were stolen as children, but the Federal Trade Commission reports that 10,835 identity theft complaints were reported on behalf of victims under the age 18 in 2006, up from 6,512 identity theft complaints filed on behalf of the same age group in 2003. A report by Debix Identity Protection Services, a credit monitoring service, also suggests child ID crimes are on the rise, with 5 percent of 500 children showing proof of tampered identity.

“It’s not a nationally representative study, but the numbers are holding true,” says Julie Fergerson, vice president of emerging technology at Debix and a board member of the Identity Theft Resource Center.  Most victims won’t learn of the problem until they are old enough to apply for their own credit cards, she says, making the security breaches hard to track.

“It’s a new crime, and the kids haven’t turned 18 yet en masse so we can’t know the total impact,” says Fergerson.

With teens potentially giving away too much personal information via popular social networking sites and blogs such as Facebook and MySpace; with unscrupulous parents, uncles and aunts “borrowing” a child’s Social Security number and birth records to open up a telephone line or perhaps a department store card; and with school systems, sports teams and mentorship groups asking for copies of sensitive information documents, the opportunity for identity theft is doubling, say these experts.

“What we see most often is someone close to the child. They tend to justify it saying, ‘we need it for the child,’” says Terry. “Then it seems to expand from there. We see that quite a bit, where one parent does victimize their own children. We see it quite often with caregivers like foster parents, unfortunately.”

Check their credit

How do you find out if your child’s identity has compromised? It’s not easy and, unfortunately, a minor’s credit report can’t be checked online. Technically, minors aren’t allowed to enter into binding contracts and aren’t supposed to have existing, online credit reports. It’s further complicated because the thief often applies for new lines of credit using only a child’s Social Security number, but not the corresponding name or birth date.

Given this scenario, it is possible for a thief to use your child’s name and Social Security number, but a different birthday to open a line of credit. Then, when you attempt to pull an online credit report, instead of being told the report is unavailable because it is affiliated with a minor, you might be told the report is unavailable to you – likely because all the other identifying characteristics belong to someone who is not your child. This explains why parents using online searches might be told that the credit report is unavailable or the minor is ineligible to receive a credit report.

To get a copy of your child’s credit report, parents need to make a request in writing from each of the three credit reporting agencies: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. It is important to ask that a search include the Social Security number – not just the child’s name and birth date. Again, this is because thieves commonly use the Social Security numbers and then create a new name and an adult birth date.

Be warned, such a request requires you to send the agencies a copy of every piece of information that someone would need to steal your own identity. For example, if you want to order your child’s report from Experian, you need to provide birth certificates for both you and your child and copies of your Social Security cards. And, because many instances of child identity theft are brokered by a parent or guardian, the credit reporting agency may still be wary.

“You go to annualcreditrereport.com and request a report and put in their age and you’ll get back instructions on how to write for the report,” says Maxine Sweet, vice president of public education for Experian, one of the three dominant credit reporting agencies.

At credit reporting bureau TransUnion, parents can send a special e-mail request to the agency. TransUnion then investigates to see if there is a credit file in the child’s name. If so, then the parent will be invited to send in more information so they can obtain a copy of the file. If there is no credit file, then the parent will receive an e-mail stating there is no credit file.

The agency is not deluged with requests for the credit reports of minors, says TransUnion spokesman Steve Katz.

“Unless you have a pretty strong suspicion, there isn’t going to be a file to check,” he says. “Once we confirm that it is a minor and what the situation is, we would go ahead and suppress that file so that it wasn’t in any way accessible for use.”

Equifax has nearly the same method. Parents should write in with all the important copies of birth documents, Social Security cards and birth certificates or proof of guardianship, plus proof of address (via a bill of some sort) and then Equifax will look up the information.

It is best to determine if there is a potential problem before asking to check your child’s credit file. For example, if your child gets credit card offers in the mail or odd phone calls, if there is theft of a school district computer, or if there are unauthorized magazine subscriptions or even a phone bill in the child’s name, be warned. At this point, experts say, order the report.

“If they’re not a victim of identity theft, they should not have credit,” Foley says. “The credit report begins when your first credit card is opened.”

Parents can also purchase credit monitoring services for their children. These agencies monitor activity related to the Social Security number, not necessarily the child’s name. If they find activity, they can then warn the parent. However, these services often have no way of monitoring if a cell phone, Sam’s Club or electricity account has been opened. And, experts warn parents to verify the legitimacy of the credit monitoring service before signing up.

How does it happen?

In July 2008, Tanya Allen, 44, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, was informed that her teen son’s identity could have been compromised due to the theft of a school district laptop. The district paid for her son’s credit monitoring service and Allen learned that her son has around $58,000 in bogus debt attached to his Social Security number.

“My husband and I do as much as we can to protect our own identities,” says Allen. “We pull our own credit reports, but never once gave a thought to pulling up my son’s.”

Allen works for a credit agency. She’s in the human resources department and is well aware of what a bad credit record can do to a young man just starting out.

“He’s about to go to college,” says Allen, who has talked with her son several times about the impact of a stolen identity. “He does not know the depth of how this could continue to affect him.  He’s going to have to get waivers from each one of those creditor stating that this indeed was not him, someone else used this information. ”

Allen has since been working with the credit monitoring service to clear her son’s name before he applies for college loans.

Even though minors can’t legally open up a credit account, the credit reporting agencies and the credit issuers have no way of verifying age, says Experian’s Sweet. They take an application – often rendered online – at face value. If you say that a certain Social Security number is yours, and they check it and they find that there is no credit history, then they assume that this is your clear credit file. No one assumes that a child’s identity may have been stolen.

There is currently no way to fix this system, but several agencies are working to close the loophole, says Identity Theft Resource Center’s Foley, who hopes to introduce legislation next year that could mitigate the unverified age situation.

It takes at least several months to clear a child’s name, and perhaps longer if the thief is a parent, says Foley. A police report must be filed and a child is typically reluctant to file one if the theft is committed by a family member.

In addition to filing a police report, the parent is advised to file a report with the FTC. The FTC recommends asking the credit bureaus to place a fraud alert on the accounts, close all tampered accounts, and place a credit freeze on the account. With a freeze, all future credit requests will be denied until the child turns 18.

How do you decrease risk?

Teens visiting social networking sites or who are blogging should be educated about what not to say online. Giving out birth dates, home addresses, parents’ names and school name is enough for someone to order your child’s birth certificate and begin the ID theft process. Crafty criminals also can casually ease this information out of a child through a series of online conversations.

Parents should question whether athletic coaches and mentorship groups like the Girl Scouts really need a physical copy of the child’s Social Security number and birth certificate. If medical information is needed, the coach should be instructed to contact the parent, says Foley.

“Ask the question,” says Foley. “Why do you need this in order for my child to play youth soccer? Why do you need their Social Security number? It doesn’t prove birth or age and no, I’m not giving you a copy of their birth certificate. We need to learn to say no a little bit more firmly and in more circumstances.”

How to protect your child’s identity from being compromised.

• Talk to your child about the importance of keeping their personal business private. No “friend” needs to know the child’s mother’s maiden name, for example. Friends don’t need to know Social Security numbers either.
• Monitor your mail. Be suspicious if offers for preapproved credit are addressed to your child.
• Consider making your children “authorized users” on one of your credit cards. This way, you have already established credit for them and you will have greater ease in checking their credit report.
• Do not disclose your child’s Social Security number unless absolutely necessary.
• Monitor your child’s personal information posted on social networking sites.
• Be sure to keep all subscriptions in a parent’s name, not the child’s name.
• Educate your child about the importance of keeping personal information – such as last name, address, etc. – private when sharing information online.
• Educate your child about unsolicited e-mail scams – “phishing” e-mails – that ask for personal information. Be certain that your child knows to ignore and delete fraudulent e-mails.
• Don’t allow children to use your credit cards – especially for online purchases – without your permission and without your presence.
• No one should keep a Social Security card in a wallet or backpack. Keep your child’s card at home.
• Lock up your child’s birth certificate, Social Security card and other private information – especially before you have visitors or caregivers come over.

Ask the following agencies about their identity protection policies:

• Hospitals and doctor’s offices
• Libraries
• Day care centers
• Sports teams
• Schools

Step-by-step guide to checking your minor child’s credit
-The credit bureaus’ requirements for obtaining a child’s credit report-

Identity theft of children is often hard to detect until they turn 18. By then, however, their credit may be ruined. Here are instructions for contacting the top three credit bureaus if you suspect your child’s a victim of identity theft.

How to get your child’s credit report

When contacting each credit reporting agency with an inquiry, you will most likely have to do so in writing. It is very important that when sending in sensitive information, such as copies of birth certificates and Social Security cards, that you mail your documentation in a registered, return-receipt envelope or package.

Experian:

• Send Experian a letter requesting a copy of your child’s credit report. The letter must be accompanied with the following materials:
• A current copy of the parent or guardian’s driver’s license.
• Proof of the parent or guardian’s address (such as a bank statement, telephone bill, credit card statement, etc.).
• A copy of the child’s birth certificate.
• A copy of the child’s Social Security card.
• A listing of previous addresses for the past two years.
• The child’s full name (including middle name and generation – Jr., Sr. I, II, etc.).
• Mail all the documents and the letter to: Experian, P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
• Upon receipt of the letter and verification of the items above, Experian will search the database for a file and respond to the parent or guardian with the results.
• The steps listed above can be heard by calling Experian at (888) 397-3742 and follow the prompts.

Experian’s mailing address is:

Experian
P.O. Box 9532
Allen, TX 75013

Equifax:

Equifax asks that the parent(s) or legal guardian(s) send their request to:

Equifax Minor Child Department
P.O. Box 105139
Atlanta, GA 30348

As part of the request, parents will need to provide a copy of the child’s birth certificate and a copy of the parent’s ID or guardianship papers as well as:

• A copy of the child’s Social Security card.
• The child’s address.
• The child’s full name.
• The child’s date of birth.

Upon receipt of the documents listed above, Equifax will attempt to locate a file for the minor child and place an alert on the child’s Social Security number. Once Equifax’s research is complete, they will send a response back to the parent(s) or legal guardian(s).

TransUnion:

Send an e-mail request to childidtheft@TransUnion.com, requesting the agency to check to see if a credit file exists under your child’s name or Social Security number. The agency then investigates and if a credit file does exists. If there is no credit file, then the parent will receive an e-mail stating there is no credit file, but if there is one, the parent will be instructed to send in more information, including:

• A copy of the child’s Social Security card.
• The child’s address.
• The child’s full name.
• The child’s date of birth and a copy of the minor child’s birth certificate.
• The parent’s government-issued proof of identity, which includes your current address.
• A copy of current utility bill that also reflects your current address..

TransUnion’s mailing address is:

TransUnion
PO Box 6790
Fullerton, CA 92834

Popularity: 29% [?]

Did you know that you’re likely to consume over 4500 calories this Thanksgiving?  Here are a few Thanksgiving diet tips to help you stay slim this holiday season and a reality check on how many calories are on that single plate!

Calories:  A 6 oz. serving of Roasted Turkey (Dark and White Meat, Untrimmed) has as much as 450 calories.  A 1/2 cup of gravy will also add flavor, but almost 178 calories.

• TIP 1: Don’t eat the Turkey skin, and stick to white meat.

• TIP 2: Use jarred gravy instead of the homemade kind.

Calories: A half cup of cranberry sauce has 209 calories.  Mashed potatoes made with whole milk and butter will add 238 calories per cup and homemade stuffing can total as many as 355 calories per cup.

• TIP 3:  Moderation is the key.  Use a smaller dinner plate and refuse to go up for seconds.
• TIP 4: Instead of heaping on piles of mashed and stuffing, put a single spoon full of each and keep moving.  For cranberry jelly, limit to about a 1-1.5 inch thick slice.

Calories: Now add the sweet potatoes for an extra 355 calories for 3/4 of a cup.  Green Bean Casserole for 3/4 cup contains 165 calories, 3/4 cup of glazed carrots for 217 calories, one dinner roll with 1/2 pat of butter scores an additional 125 calories.

Calories: Now add 2 glasses of wine, 240 calories.  A slice of Pecan Pie sadly has 456 calories.  Lastly if you like eggnog, you’ll have to add 400 calories to cap it all off. Your grand total is 3401 Calories!

• TIP 5: Stick to wine if you must have alcohol.  Have it with dinner, not before while you are snacking on appetizers.  It will make impair your judgment for the main meal, and cause you to eat more than you would’ve liked.

There is of course the other option.  You could just throw all caution to the wind and enjoy everything that comes with this special holiday.  It only comes once a year, why not enjoy it?

With that we wish you a happy Thanksgiving.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Damage to the arteries of children of smokers can be detected in the early decades of their lives, a new Dutch study finds.

“Smoking in families is harmful for children, including their cardiovascular system, as was found in many other studies,” said research leader Dr. Cuno S.P.M. Uiterwaal, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology at the University Medical Center in Utrecht. “This study adds that tobacco smoke exposure may have such effects already in very early life.”

Uiterwaal and his colleagues reported the finding in the December issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology that they used ultrasound to measure the thickness of the walls of carotid arteries, the major blood vessels to the brain, in 732 young adults, average age 28. Records showed that 29 percent of the mothers and more than 60 percent of the fathers smoked during the pregnancies.
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The inner lining of the carotid arteries was thicker for the young adults who had both parents smoking during pregnancy, a sign of potential danger in the years ahead. The thickening was strongest for maternal smoking.

“We believe that our findings with regard to fetal exposure may serve as a first signal which will have to be confirmed by other research in this area,” Uiterwaal said.

It has long been known that “exposure to tobacco smoke of pregnant women is bad for many reasons, such as low birth weight and increased risk for childhood respiratory disease,” he said. “Our study now adds that it may also already harm the cardiovascular system of the unborn child.”

The study does need confirmation, Uiterwaal said. “We are indeed trying to do a similar study in healthy young children, 5-year-olds, as that would eliminate many of the possibly confounding influences in later childhood,” he said. “We are currently measuring arterial wall linings of these children of whom we know the gestational history.”

A weakness of the current study is that it relied on the memories of participants about smoking histories, said Dr. Michael Katz, senior vice president for research and global programs at the March of Dimes Foundation.

And yet, Katz said, “the claim they make is probably valid, because it jibes with many previous studies showing the harmful effects of smoking during pregnancy, by anyone in the household.”

“Any smoke in the environment is bad,” Katz said. He cited a previous study that showed an increased risk of cleft palate among children of smokers, even if the mothers themselves did not smoke. “It’s not by any mysterious way, just by inhaling,” Katz said. “That is why smoke-free environments are desirable.”

There was one pleasant surprise in doing a study of smoking during pregnancy in the Netherlands, Uiterwaal said. “The smoking rate of mothers in pregnancy of 29 percent in the early 1970s that we found in the present study has dropped to some 4 to 5 percent to date in the Netherlands,” he said. “A very fortunate drop from a public health perspective, but it will make this issue more difficult to study at present.”

Current estimates are that about 10 percent of American women smoke during pregnancy.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Pregnant women who regularly take aquarobics classes are far less likely to need pain relief during labour, new research suggests.

A study found that only 27% of women who did aquarobics three times a week during pregnancy requested pain relief compared with 65% of women who did not do the exercises. Researchers also found that water aerobics was a safe form of exercise for mother and baby.

Experts from the University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil, divided 71 women into two groups for the study, published in the journal Reproductive Health. All the women were less than 20 weeks pregnant at the start of the study and were healthy.

The first group of 34 women undertook 50 minutes of aquarobics three times a week in an indoor pool during their pregnancy. Meanwhile, the second group, of 37 women, did not do any regular physical exercise during their pregnancy.

All the women were closely followed up until the time of delivery and were regularly tested to measure their oxygen levels, heart rate, physical fitness and skin temperature. Their babies were also monitored after birth to check if they were healthy.

The authors noted there was no difference between the groups in terms of how long their labour lasted or whether they required a Caesarean section.

Lead researcher Rosa Pereira said: “We found no statistically significant differences in the duration of labour or the type of delivery between the two groups.

“However, only 27% of women in the aquarobics group requested analgesia, compared to 65% in the control group. This represents a 58% reduction in requests.”

There has been debate about whether pregnant women should exercise, with concerns raised about the fact it may interfere with a growing baby’s needs. But Ms Pereira and colleagues found no adverse effects from water aerobics among women in the study.

She said: “We’ve shown that the regular practice of moderate water aerobics during pregnancy is not detrimental to the health of the mother or the child. In fact, the reduction in analgesia requests suggests that it can get women into better psycho-physical condition.”

Popularity: 21% [?]

Combined, they produce more potent anti-disease effect in postmenopausal women.

Scientists believe they have found out why diet and exercise affect a women’s chance of breast cancer after she’s past menopause, a new study says.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found that cutting calories and exercise affect pathways to mTOR, a molecule that integrates energy balance with cell growth and can contribute to various human diseases when it is not functioning properly.

The research team, expected to present its findings Nov. 18 at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual conference on cancer prevention research, in National Harbor, Md., said these pathways are different, though. Calorie restriction affects more upstream pathways, which may explain why cutting calories delays tumor growth better than exercise when tested on animals.

“One of the few breast cancer modifiable risk factors is obesity,” study lead author Leticia M. Nogueira, a research graduate assistant at the University of Texas, said in a news release issued by the conference organizers. “Our study may provide a good scientific basis for medical recommendations. If you’re obese, and at high risk for breast cancer, diet and exercise could help prevent tumor growth.”

Past research has suggested that consuming fewer calories or increasing exercise levels creates a “negative energy balance” where less energy is taken in than expended, and this lowers the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer associated with obesity. While scientists have thought hormones may play a part in this, it has never been proven.

For the new study, researchers studied 45 obese mice that had their ovaries surgically removed to model the post-menopausal state. After eight weeks, mice fed a calorie-restricted diet had significantly lower blood levels of leptin, a hormone that plays a role in fat metabolism, than those mice only put on an exercise program or those allowed to eat at will with no forced exercise. The calorie-restricted mice also had increased levels of adiponectin, a hormone produced in fat tissue that regulates some metabolic processes, the researchers said.

Some of the cell signaling pathways these hormones manage converge at mTOR, and the researchers found that the key proteins found downstream of mTOR were less active in both the calorie-restricted and exercised mice compared to the controls.

“These data suggest that although exercise can act on similar pathways as caloric restriction, caloric restriction possesses a more global effect on cell signaling and, therefore, may produce a more potent anti-cancer effect,” Nogueira said.

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Reports of small chunks of blue plastic in Lean Cuisine brand frozen chicken dinners have led Nestle Prepared Foods Co. to recall 900,000 pounds worth of meals.
lean cuisine
Nestlé Prepared Foods Company has recalled three brands of frozen LEAN CUISINE dinners found to have hard plastic blue chunks in the meal.

The frozen dinners were distributed nationwide, and at least one person has reported an injury, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. No other details of the reported injury have been released by the USDA.

However, Roz O’Hearn, spokeswoman for the Nestle Prepared Foods, told ABCNews.com in an e-mail that “there have been no reports of any injuries requiring medical attention.”

So far, the blue plastic has been found in three specific Lean Cuisine dinners — Cafe Classics Pesto Chicken with Bow Tie Pasta, Spa Cuisine Chicken Mediterranean and Dinnertime Selects Chicken Tuscan. O’Hearn said the company has received seven consumer complaints, “with one report that a consumer bit into it.”

The USDA considered the blue plastic a potential health threat and has ranked the recall as Class I — a “health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.”

“It could cause injury — a piece of plastic could cut your mouth, it could scratch your throat,” said Amanda Eamich, spokesperson for the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Eamich said the USDA knew the recalled dinners were distributed nationwide, but it would take time to track precisely which regions, states and cities received the contaminated shipments.

O’Hearn said Nestle traced the blue plastic to a single lot of raw ingredients shipped to a Lean Cuisine facility.

“We are requesting that you return recalled items directly to your supermarket for a full refund,” said O’Hearn.

According to the USDA, the contaminated dinners were produced between Aug. 18 and Oct. 27 of this year. To determine whether a dinner in your freezer is contaminated, O’Hearn said consumers can call 800-227-6188 to check the production codes on the side of Lean Cuisine packages.

The USDA has also provided a list of production codes so consumers can check to see if their dinners have been recalled. The following products are subject to recall:

9.5-ounce packages of Cafe Classics Pesto Chicken with Bow Tie Pasta brand frozen meals. Printed on the side of each package is a production code of 8280595912 as well as a use-by date of “Best Before May 2010.”

10.5-ounce packages of Spa Cuisine Chicken Mediterranean brand frozen meals. Printed on the side of each package is a production code of 8231595912 or 8241595912 as well as a use-by date of “Best before Sept. 2010″; a production code of 8263595912, 8269595911 or 8274595912, as well as a use-by date of “Best before Oct. 2010″; or, a production code of 8291595912 or 8301595912 ” as well as a use-by date of “Best before Nov. 2010.”

12.5-ounce packages of Dinnertime Selects Chicken Tuscan brand frozen meals. Printed on the side of each package is a production code of 8234595911 and a use-by date of Best before Sept. 2009; a production code of 8253595911 or 8269595912 as well as a use-by date of Best before Oct. 2009; or a production code of 8292595911 or 8296595911 as well as a use-by date of “Best before Nov. 2009.”

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