Health & WellnessS


Beer

Drinkers' Red Face May Signal Cancer Risk

Nicholas Bakalar
New York Times
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:31 UTC
People whose faces turn red when they drink alcohol may be facing more than embarrassment. The flushing may indicate an increased risk for a deadly throat cancer, researchers report.

The flushing response, which may be accompanied by nausea and a rapid heartbeat, is caused mainly by an inherited deficiency in an enzyme called ALDH2, a trait shared by more than a third of people of East Asian ancestry - Japanese, Chinese or Koreans. As little as half a bottle of beer can trigger the reaction.

The deficiency results in problems in metabolizing alcohol, leading to an accumulation in the body of a toxin called acetaldehyde. People with two copies of the gene responsible have such unpleasant reactions that they are unable to consume large amounts of alcohol. This aversion actually protects them against the increased risk for cancer.

But those with only one copy can develop a tolerance to acetaldehyde and become heavy drinkers.

"What we're trying to do here is raise awareness of this risk factor among doctors and their ALDH2-deficient patients," said Dr. Philip J. Brooks, an investigator with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and an author of the report published on Monday in the journal PLoS Medicine. "It's a pretty serious risk."
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Red Flag

Brain differences mark those with depression risk


Reuters
Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:18 UTC
Chicago, Illinois - People who have a high family risk of developing depression had less brain matter on the right side of their brains on par with losses seen in Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Brain scans showed a 28-percent thinning in the right cortex -- the outer layer of the brain -- in people who had a family history of depression compared with people who did not.

"The difference was so great that at first we almost didn't believe it. But we checked and re-checked all of our data, and we looked for all possible alternative explanations, and still the difference was there," said Dr. Bradley Peterson of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
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Bell

Aggression Among Pre-school Children Is Primarily Among Males And Worsens With Age, Study Finds


ScienceDaily
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:44 UTC
Image
© Credit: Phineas H.Aggression among pre-school children is linked to the male gender, new research shows.
A study led by Catalan researchers has clearly shown the importance of the first developmental life stages in the development of the symptoms of psychopathological disorders. This research confirms the existence of aggression by pre-school children towards their peers, as well as differences according to age and gender. There is a widespread lack of understanding about this important stage of life, and previous data have shown that 1% of the pre-school age population in Spain already shows symptoms of major depression.

The research project, which is part of a broader study aimed at detecting risk symptoms for the development of pathologies among children between the ages of three and six, has confirmed aggression among pre-school children towards their peers.

The results have been published recently in The Spanish Journal of Psychology, and - as is the case in other European countries - show that this aggression is mostly found in males, and increases with age.
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Info

Self-harm: A British disease

Nina Lakhani
Independent UK
Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:55 UTC
Growing wealth inequalities are sparking psychological and physical stress - and now one-third more people are deliberately injuring themselves than five years ago.

The number of people harming themselves deliberately has leapt by a third in the past five years, according to new figures seen by The Independent on Sunday. The biggest rise in self-harm and attempted suicide has been among young women between the ages of 16 and 24 as they struggle to cope with the pressures of modern living in Britain.

There were 97,871 hospital admissions for deliberate self-harm in England in 2007-08 - 4,337 of them for children under the age of 14. Meanwhile, one in eight young women admitted to self-harm in 2007 - an 80 per cent increase since 2000.

According to new research published by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the growing gap between rich and poor has led to an increase in mental health problems such as depression and self-harm in countries including the UK and US. People are surrounded by stories about the rich and famous - lifestyles that are unattainable for the majority. These inequalities cause psychological and physical stress which leads to mental and physical health problems, the report concludes.
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Health

British scientists set to create synthetic human blood in world first


Mail Online
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:56 UTC
Image
© Associated PressGround-breaking: Scientists want to create blood from embryonic stem cells
British scientists are set to become the first in the world to create synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells, it emerged today.

The results of the ground-breaking project could provide an unlimited supply of blood for emergency transfusions free of the risk of infection.

Researchers said because stem cells multiply indefinitely, it means it would be possible to produce as much blood as was needed.

The cells can be made from universal donor embryos - the O-negative type - and can be guaranteed to be free of infections because they have never been inside a human.

The three-year project will be led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) and includes NHS Blood and Transplant and the Wellcome Trust, the world's biggest medical research charity.

SNBTS director Professor Marc Turner has been involved in studies investigating how to ensure donated blood is free of the infectious agent behind variant CJD, the human form of 'mad cow' disease, the report said.
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Health

Protein From Yellow Peas May Lower Blood Pressure

Alan Mozes
Healthday
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:41 UTC
Finding in rats holds promise against kidney disease, too, experts say
Image

Certain proteins found in the yellow garden pea appear to help lower blood pressure and delay, control or even prevent the onset of chronic kidney disease, at least in rats, a Canadian study has found.

"What we seem to have here is sort of a natural approach to treating this disease, as opposed to the normal pharmacological approach," said the study's lead author, Rotimi E. Aluko, an associate professor in the department of human nutritional sciences at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. "We're talking about an edible product, not a drug, which can help to reduce blood pressure and, at the same time, reduce the severely negative impact of kidney disease."

Aluko and his colleagues were to present their findings Sunday at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in Salt Lake City. The study was underwritten by several Canadian government entities.

Kidney disease affects an estimated 13 percent of American adults, the authors noted, and is a notoriously difficult disease to treat, with most people eventually succumbing to cardiovascular complications from high blood pressure linked to kidney malfunction.
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Light Saber

Polio Vaccine Award Opens Doors for Researchers

Elaine A Moore
EmaxHealth
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:04 UTC
The problem with treated live vaccines has always been that live viral particles can occasionally cause infection in the vaccinated person as well as people they're exposed to. A prime example is the chickenpox vaccine, which is a well known cause of shingles in older adults exposed to vaccinated children. On Friday, jurors found that active polio vaccine was the cause 30 years ago when Staten Island resident Dominic Tenuto contracted polio after changing the diaper of his recently vaccinated 5-month old daughter. Now 61, Tenuto said that his bout with polio caused partial paralysis and led to his losing his job on Wall Street.
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Pills

Eczema cases rise dramatically in Great Britain

Emma Wilkinson
BBC News
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:49 UTC
eczema
© SPLEczema causes red itchy patches on the skin
The incidence of eczema is increasing dramatically in England, data suggests.

There was a 42% rise in diagnosis of the condition between 2001 and 2005, by which time it was estimated to effect 5.7m adults and children.

One potential explanation for the rise is increased frequency of bathing and use of soap and detergents.

A paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine says eczema is thought to be a trigger for other allergic conditions.

GP records of over 9m patients were used by researchers to assess how many people have the inflammatory skin disorder.

It showed that by 2005, one in nine of the population had, at some point, been affected by eczema.

The highest rate was in boys aged between five and nine.

Prescriptions increased by 57% over the five-year study period and in 2005, GPs issued 13.7m scripts.

Study leader Professor Aziz Sheikh, chair of the allergy and respiratory research group at the University of Edinburgh, said he expected to see a rise but it was fairly marked given the short time period.
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Health

Drug data fraud may spark marketing crackdown


New Scientist
Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:37 UTC
A prominent case of scientific fraud is being seized on by critics of the pharmaceutical industry to highlight their calls for a crackdown on the use of scientific studies for marketing purposes.

Starting in 1996, Scott Reuben of the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, published a series of trials testing whether painkillers, including Pfizer's Celebrex and Merck's Vioxx, relieve post-operative pain. Now 21 of Reuben's papers have been shown to contain fabricated data, after he was investigated by Baystate officials. Many have already been retracted.

Reuben's studies were part of an array of small clinical trials funded by Pfizer and Merck after Celebrex and Vioxx were approved for market by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The trials investigated the drugs' use in a variety of different medical situations. The firms were not aware of Reuben's fraud.
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Info

Our Brains Exist 'On The Edge Of Chaos'


ScientificBlogging
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:13 UTC
A new study says that the human brain lives "on the edge of chaos", at a critical transition point between randomness and order. Theoretical speculation? Well, yeah, but that's the nature of neuroscience.

The researchers say self-organized criticality (where systems spontaneously organize themselves to operate at a critical point between order and randomness), can emerge from complex interactions in many different physical systems, including avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes, and heartbeat rhythms.
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