Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
Moderate kidney disease linked to hearing loss
Reuters Health) – Older adults with moderate kidney disease may require screening for hearing loss, according to the authors of a new study.
In the study, of adults aged 50 years and older, 54 percent of people with moderate kidney disease had some extent of hearing loss, while 30 percent of those with the disease suffered severe hearing loss.
That’s higher than in the general population: According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, hearing loss affects 18 percent of U.S. adults aged 45 to 64.
U.S. researchers make stem cells quickly from skin
(Reuters) – Researchers have found a surprisingly quick and apparently safe way to transform ordinary skin cells into both stem cells — the body’s master cells — and muscle cells.
They said on Thursday their method may provide a way to generate tissue in a new science called regenerative medicine, which doctors hope will eventually lead to ways to repair injuries and eventually perhaps even replace whole organs.
Reporting in the journal Cell Stem Cell, Dr. Derrick Rossi of Harvard Medical School and colleagues said they were working on new ways to make induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells.
Twin study may quiet doubts over PTSD-trauma link
(Reuters Health) – Trauma really is the trigger of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, suggests a new study that could help settle an ongoing debate.
“It’s been argued by some that PTSD is not a bona fide disorder, that these people are just maladjusted and the trauma doesn’t have anything to with it,” senior researcher Dr. Roger Pitman of Boston’s Harvard University told Reuters Health.
Less costly home dialysis just as effective
(Reuters Health) – Patients with failing kidneys who need to undergo dialysis will do equally well if they perform dialysis at home or if they go to a dialysis center, according to the largest study to date comparing the two approaches.
Based on the findings, patients who require dialysis to clean their blood should choose a method based on their own lifestyle and preferences, Dr. Rajnish Mehrotra of Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, told Reuters Health.
Blood test for colon cancer promising: study
(Reuters) – A simple blood test correctly identified most colorectal cancers in an early trial of the technology, offering the possibility of a convenient screening test that could be done during routine checkups, the company which developed it said on Wednesday.
The test, being developed by Danish biotech company Exiqon, worked well at both identifying colon cancers and at ruling them out, the company said at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Denver.
Acupuncture not helpful for stroke recovery
(Reuters Health) – Acupuncture does not help speed recovery after stroke, according to an analysis of 10 trials using fake or “sham” acupuncture as a control.
“Our meta-analysis of data from rigorous randomized sham-controlled trials did not show a positive effect of acupuncture as a treatment for functional recovery after stroke,” Dr. Jae Cheol Kong of Wonkwang University in Iksan, South Korea, and colleagues conclude in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).
Mattel’s Fisher-Price to recall 10 million products
The products, including Little People Wheelies Stand ‘n Play Rampway; Fisher-Price tricycle models; Healthy Care, Easy Clean and Close to Me high chairs; and various infant toys with inflatable balls, were recalled after some injuries, including lacerations and choking hazards, were reported.
J&J admits misleading U.S. Motrin recall
(Reuters) – Already battered by a wave of product recalls, Johnson & Johnson acknowledged on Thursday it had misled consumers and U.S. regulators as it quietly removed its Motrin painkiller from the market.
Company officials underwent another grilling in Congress with the consumer giant facing a widening criminal probe and struggling to move beyond a damaging series of recalls that has pulled nearly 200 million bottles of its medicine from U.S. shelves this year, including top-selling children’s medicines.
FDA to ban unapproved oral colchicine products
(Reuters) – U.S. regulator the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) intends to ban unapproved oral colchicine products to treat gout, according to a document posted online by the U.S. Office of the Federal Register.
Shares in Hikma Pharmaceutical, a company that will be impacted by the move, closed down 4.2 percent at 688.5 pence, after earlier falling as much as 7.5 percent, after analysts cited the document.
Oral colchicine has been available since the nineteenth century, but was only approved by the FDA last year when it cleared Mutual Pharmaceutical’s Colcrys product, which is based on the drug.
Tests may detect mesothelioma, pancreatic cancer
(Reuters) – U.S. researchers have discovered specific changes in the blood of patients with two deadly cancers that may allow doctors to diagnose them at an earlier stage.
Using new screening technology developed by privately held Somalogic Inc, company researchers said on Tuesday they could detect early signs of pancreatic cancer and a type of lung cancer called mesothelioma in people who had been diagnosed but not treated for the diseases.
“Currently these cancers are detected at an advanced stage, where the possibility of cure is minimal,” said Rachel Ostroff, clinical research director of Somalogic Inc, who presented the findings on Tuesday at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Denver.
Angola polio outbreak threatens neighbors: WHO
(Reuters) – A persistent outbreak of polio in Angola is now a matter of international concern and health authorities there must step up their efforts to stamp it out, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday.
The WHO’s spokeswoman on polio eradication, Sona Bari, said an outbreak of the crippling virus, which started in 2007 after Angola had been polio-free for six years, now has “international consequences” if it is not stopped.
Tamiflu may have prevented pneumonia in young adults
(Reuters) – The drug Tamiflu may have protected young adults who caught the H1N1 swine flu virus in 2009 from developing pneumonia, a study in China has found.
Although the H1N1 swine flu pandemic is over, the virus has joined the mix of seasonal influenza viruses and it is known to affect young adults and children more severely than seasonal flu, which kills more elderly people.
The Chinese study found that early treatment with Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, may have prevented young adults from developing full-blown pneumonia.
H1N1 flu virus can mutate in immunosuppressed patients: study
(Reuters) – Patients with suppressed immune systems can quickly develop H1N1 flu infections that resist all known drugs, doctors in the Netherlands reported on Wednesday.
The case of a 5-year-old leukemia patient who died from swine flu after the virus mutated in his body showed that people with weakened immune systems may be at greater risk of developing dangerous drug-resistant infections, and illustrated the risks of using current drugs to treat these patients, the researchers said.
The H1N1 virus infecting the boy mutated to resist all three drugs approved to treat it, Dr. Charles Boucher of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Malaria vaccine trial disappoints
(Reuters) – The numbers were so bad that Dr. Stephen Hoffman did not even want to say them out loud.
“It was a low number,” he said. Pressed, he added, “Only a handful.” Finally he squeezed the numbers out. “We had five.”
Out of 80 volunteers vaccinated with Sanaria’s experimental malaria vaccine, only five were protected from infection in the company’s first clinical trial.
The Maryland-based company, which opened its doors in 2007, has not given up. But its disappointing results illustrate the uphill battle to develop a vaccine against an infection that kills 800,000 people a year, most of them young African children.
Study hints multivitamins aid women’s heart health
(Reuters Health) – Taking multivitamins may help women without cardiovascular disease to ward off a heart attack, new research shows.
But vitamin pills seemed to have less of an effect in women with heart disease, Dr. Susanne Rautiainen of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and her colleagues found.
The results don’t settle the question of whether it’s actually the vitamin pills that are protective, Rautiainen told Reuters Health via e-mail.
China experts design gel to protect women from HIV
(Reuters) – Scientists in China and Hong Kong are designing a gel containing an experimental drug which they hope can reduce HIV infections in women.
The search for such a prophylaxis is gaining urgency in China with sex becoming the number one mode of HIV transmission and new HIV infections rising sharply among Chinese women.
The gel acts as an “entry inhibitor” — blocking the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from gaining entry into host cells, Chen Zhiwei, director of the AIDS Institute at the University of Hong Kong, said in an interview.
IVF won’t up birth defect risk: Chinese study
(Reuters Health) – Birth defect rates among children conceived with the help of IVF and other techniques are no higher than for the general population, according to the first large study to look at the issue among Chinese children.
Some research has raised concerns that children conceived through assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are more likely to have birth defects than children conceived naturally, Dr. Junhao Yan of Shandong University in Jinan and colleagues note in their report.
Fertility treatment may alter gender balance: study
(Reuters) – Certain types of assisted fertilization appear to result in more male than female babies being born, a large study in Australia and New Zealand has found.
The researchers have no answer why it is so, but they warn that their findings should not be exploited for sex selection.
All fertility clinics that took part in the study comply with Australia’s national guidelines that ban gender selection, the researchers wrote in their findings published on Wednesday in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Study demonstrates plunge in breast cancer deaths
(Reuters) – Sixty years ago, a woman had just a 25 percent chance of living 10 years if she got a breast cancer diagnosis. Now the survival rate is more than 75 percent, U.S. doctors reported on Wednesday.
The study of women treated at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center demonstrates how improvements in treatment and screening have transformed the disease from a virtual death sentence, experts said.
Dr. Aman Buzdar will present the study at a meeting in Washington of breast cancer specialists sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology later this week.
Caffeine may not up preterm birth risk
(Reuters Health) – A new analysis adds to evidence that pregnant women can have a morning cup of coffee without fearing they will raise their risk of preterm delivery.
Combining the results of 22 previous studies, researchers found no evidence that pregnant women who downed the most caffeine — roughly equivalent to three to four cups of coffee per day — had a higher risk of preterm birth than women who avoided caffeine throughout pregnancy.
Nor did they find any link between the amount of coffee the women drank and their odds of an early delivery.
Approximately 12 percent of births in the U.S. and 7 percent of births in Europe are pre-term — occurring before the 37th week of gestation – according to the authors, whose report appears in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Low-income men show more high-risk prostate tumors
(Reuters Health) – Low-income men treated for prostate cancer are likelier to have a more aggressive disease at diagnosis compared with their better-off counterparts, a study at one U.S. public hospital suggests.
Researchers found that compared with prostate cancer patients seen at U.S. academic medical centers and private practices, an elevated rate of higher risk prostate cancer was seen among men treated at San Francisco General Hospital — a publicly funded “safety net” hospital that primarily serves the low-income and uninsured.
Early prostate test study gives hope for accuracy
(Reuters) – British scientists say they have developed a lab test that can accurately distinguish prostate cancer from healthy tissue and other prostate conditions — a finding that may in future help men avoid unnecessary treatment.
Researchers at a genetics and diagnostics firm Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) say the set of biological signals, or biomarkers, they have identified was able to distinguish healthy tissue and benign prostate disease from prostate cancer with 90 percent accuracy in initial laboratory sample tests.
Stop using baby sleep devices, U.S. tells parents
(Reuters) – Sleep positioners marketed with the promise of helping babies sleep safely are too dangerous to use and should not be sold, U.S. officials warned on Wednesday.
“The deaths and dangerous situations resulting from the use of infant sleep positioners are a serious concern,” Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Chairman Inez Tenenbaum said in a joint statement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Parents’ drinking may be risk factor for SIDS
(Reuters Health) – Parents and caretakers who drink alcohol may put infants at a higher risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), new research suggests.
Researchers at the University of California-San Diego found that SIDS cases occur 33 percent more often on New Year’s Day than any other day of the year, which is also when more people drink alcohol than at any other time of year.
Because the rate of SIDS has dropped since the 1990s to some 2,500 cases per year-about 7 per day-that 33 percent spike translates to only two more cases of SIDS on New Year’s than any other day. However, the researchers report finding other links between caretaker drinking and incidence of SIDS, in the journal Addiction.
Exercise has lasting benefits for older women
(Reuters Health) – Older women with thinning bones who exercise regularly have sustained improvements in their balance and walking speed that may protect them from fractures and even extend their lives, new research shows.
The researchers found that just 20 minutes of at-home exercise daily, interspersed with six months of supervised weekly training every year, over the course of five years helped increase women’s gait stability and cut their risk of fracture by 32 percent.
The improvements persisted for two years after the exercise program ended, with exercisers also being at lower risk of sustaining hip fractures or dying during follow-up, Dr. Raija Korpelainen of the department of sports and exercise medicine at Oulu Deaconess Institute in Oulu, Finland, and colleagues found.
Middle-aged suicides on rise in U.S., study finds
(Reuters) – Suicide rates for middle-aged people are edging up — particularly for white men without college degrees — and a combination of poor health and a poor economy may be driving it, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Middle-aged people usually have a relatively low risk for suicide as they seek to support their families, but baby boomers are bucking this trend, sociologists Julie Phillips of Rutgers University in New Jersey and Ellen Idler of Emory University in Atlanta found.
“If these trends continue, they are cause for concern,” Phillips and Idler wrote in the journal Public Health Reports.
Antidepressant use tied to increased diabetes risk
(Reuters Health) – People who use antidepressants for the long term may be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than non-users — including other individuals with severe depression, two new studies suggest.
The findings, reported in the journal Diabetes Care, add to evidence linking antidepressant use to a modest elevation in type 2 diabetes risk.
They do not, however, prove that the medications are the cause, researchers say.
It’s possible that antidepressant users have other characteristics that raise their odds of developing diabetes, according to Dr. Mika Kivimaki of the University College London in the UK, the lead researcher on one of the studies.
New depression guidelines favor tailored treatment
(Reuters) – New depression treatments favor a tailored approach and include recommendations for the use of shock therapy and other alternatives, including exercise when people fail to get relief from drugs.
The guidelines, issued on Friday by the American Psychiatric Association, are the first update on depression treatment in more than a decade.
“The five-year process of intense review, discussion and thoughtful revision-making has led us to today’s release of new guidelines that we believe will improve patient care,” Dr. Alan Gelenberg, an Arizona-based psychiatrist who led the group that drafted the guidelines, said in a statement.
Study finds first evidence that ADHD is genetic
(Reuters) – British scientists have found the first direct evidence attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a genetic disorder and say their research could eventually lead to better treatments for the condition.
Researchers who scanned the gene maps of more than 1,400 children found that those with ADHD were more likely than others to have small chunks of their DNA duplicated or missing.
Anita Thapar, a professor psychiatry at Cardiff University who led the study, said the findings should help dispel the myths that ADHD is caused by bad parenting or high-sugar diets.
Heightened suicide risk after weight-loss surgery
(Reuters Health) – Severely obese people who undergo weight-loss surgery may have a higher-than-average risk of suicide in the years following the procedure, a new study finds.
The report, in The American Journal of Medicine, adds to evidence that patients who have bariatric surgery to lose weight have an increased risk of suicide compared with the general population.
But the reasons for the pattern, researchers say, remain unknown.
Gym culture not working out for the French
(Reuters) – The French may love to look good but few are willing to work up a sweat over it.
Despite increasing awareness of the benefits of healthy eating and physical exercise, going to the gym in France is still a niche activity that has yet to capture the mainstream.
France’s generous healthcare system, its cultural preference for outdoor sports and its lack of affordable good-quality clubs are seen as reasons behind the country’s low rate of gymgoers, even relative to laid-back neighbors Spain or Italy.
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