Healthy Me - At Home and Away: February 2010

Friday, February 26, 2010

CALL FOR CHOKING WARNING LABELS FOR FOOD

About time... we are more aware now of what we should be seeing in the labels...

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CHICAGO - When four-year-old Eric Stavros Adler choked to death on a piece of hot dog, his anguished mother never dreamed that the popular kids' food could be so dangerous.

Some food makers have warning labels about choking but not nearly enough, says Ms Joan Stavros Adler, Eric's mum.

The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees. The United States' largest paediatricians group is calling for sweeping changes in the way food is designed and labelled to minimise children's chances for choking.

Federal law requires choking warning labels on certain toys including small balls, balloons and games with small parts. There should be a similar mandate for food, the paediatrics academy says.

Choking kills more than 100 American children 14 years or younger each year and thousands more - 15,000 in 2001 - are treated in emergency rooms. Food, including candy and gum, is among the leading culprits, along with items like coins and balloons. Of the 141 choking deaths in kids in 2006, 61 were food-related.

Doctors say high-risk foods, including hot dogs, raw carrots, grapes and apples - should be cut into pea-sized pieces for small children to reduce the chances of choking. AP

From TODAY, Tuesday, 23-Feb-2010

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CURE WITHIN 3 YEARS

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SAN DIEGO - A cure for peanut allergies could be available within three years, a British doctor has claimed as he launches the world's biggest study into the potentially fatal disorder.

Dr Andrew Clark, at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, believes the 1 million ($2.2 million) National Health Service sponsored research project will help rid thousands of children of their allergic reaction to peanuts.

It could also be the beginning of the end for all food allergies, he claimed.

The new study follows a successful former trial in which 23 children were given tiny doses of peanut flour every day, gradually increasing the dose until now they can eat five or more nuts a day.

Previously the children would have risked anaphylactic shock or even death if they accidentally ate even a trace amount of peanut. The team said this was the first time that so-called "desensitisation treatment" had been successful.

Earlier attempts at exposing children with peanut allergies to the nuts caused serious reactions.

The news was presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Cambridge group will begin the new study next month with 104 children who have already been recruited, said Dr Clark.

"This is going to be the largest trial of its kind in the world and it should give us a definitive idea of whether it works and whether it's safe," he said.

He said the families involved in the earlier study had had their lives transformed.

"It's dramatic. Before they were checking every food label every time they ate food. They would worry it would cause a reaction or even kill them but now they can go out and eat curries and Chinese food and they can eat everyday snacks and treats."

He said the previous trial had been running for two years and two of the children, aged 15, had dramatically reduced treatments to just five peanuts a week - yet retained their tolerance.

From TODAY, Tuesday, 23-Feb-2010

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MOST 'TEST TUBE' KIDS ARE HEALTHY

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SAN DIEGO - More than 30 years after the world greeted its first "test-tube" baby with a mixture of awe and concern, researchers say they are finding only a few medical differences between these children and kids conceived in the traditional way.

More than 3 million children have been born worldwide as a result of what is called assisted reproductive technology, and injecting sperm into the egg outside the human body now accounts for about 4 per cent of live births, researchers reported on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The majority of assisted reproduction children are healthy and normal, according to researchers who have studied them.

Some of these children do face an increased risk of birth defects, such as neural tube defects, and of low birth weight, which is associated with obesity, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes later in life, the researchers said.

Ms Carmen Sapienza, a geneticist at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, noted that few of these test tube children are older than 30, so it's not known if they will be obese or have hypertension or other health problems at age 50 or older. AP

From TODAY, Tuesday, 23-Feb-2010

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'AIDS COULD DIE OUT IN 40 YEARS'

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SAN DIEGO (California) - Health officials are considering a radical shift in the war against HIV and Aids that would see everyone tested for the virus and put on a lifetime course of drugs if they are found to be positive.

The strategy, which would involve testing most of the world's population for HIV, aims to reduce the transmission of the virus that causes Aids to a level at which it dies out completely over the next 40 years.

Dr Brian Williams, professor of epidemiology at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis, said transmission of HIV could effectively be halted within five years with the use of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).

"The epidemic of HIV is really one of the worst plagues of human history," he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego.

"I hope we can get to the starting line in one to two years and get complete coverage of patients in five years. Maybe that's being optimistic, but we're facing Armageddon."

Major trials of the strategy are planned in Africa and the United States and will feed into a final decision on whether to adopt the measure as public health policy in the next two years. In the trials, people will be offered HIV tests once a year, either as routine when they visit their GP, or through mobile clinics in more remote regions.

The move follows research that shows blanket prescribing of ARVs could stop HIV transmission and halve cases of Aids-related tuberculosis within 10 years.

More than 30 million people are infected with HIV globally and two million die of the disease each year. While ARVs have been a huge success in preventing the virus from causing full-blown Aids, scientists estimate only 12 per cent of those living with the infection receive the drugs.

The disease is overwhelmingly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for a quarter of all HIV/Aids cases globally. Half of these are in South Africa.

In general epidemics, a person with HIV infects between five to 10 others before succumbing to complications of Aids. Treating patients with ARVs within a year of becoming infected can reduce transmission tenfold, enough to cause the epidemic to die out.

Scientists estimate that the cost of implementing the strategy in South Africa alone will be US$3 billion to US$4 billion ($$4.2 billion to $5.6 billion) a year.

The world currently spends US$30 billion a year on Aids research and treatment, a figure that some experts believe will double over the next decade.

From TODAY, Tuesday, 23-Feb-2010

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Drugs to Pass Exams -- Will It Help to Pass Life's Tests, Too?

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UK UNIVERSITIES TO CURB USE WITH DOPE TESTS

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LONDON - British universities must investigate measures, including random dope testing, to tackle the increasing use of cognitive enhancement drugs by students for exams, a leading behavioural neuroscientist warns.

Student use of drugs, such as Ritalin and Modafinil, available over the Internet and used to increase the brain's alertness, had "enormous implications for universities", said Dr Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge University's psychiatry department.

Normally prescribed for neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, such drugs boost acetylcholine in the brain, improving alertness and attention.

Their use has prompted concerns that they could give students an unfair advantage. "This is something that universities really have to discuss. They should have some strategy, some kind of active policy," Dr Sahakian said.

"The coercion aspect is a strong one. Some students say they feel it is cheating, and it puts pressure on them to feel they have to use these drugs when they don't really want to."

Dr Sahakian, whose work is at the forefront of research on the effects of such drugs on healthy people, said urgent debate was now needed on the ethics of how society dealt with "smart drugs".

Though data on long-term effects on healthy users was not yet available, some scientists believe that pharmaceutical advancement and cultural acceptance could make "cosmetic neurology" as popular as beauty "enhancements".

"If a safe and effective drug is developed which enhances cognition, then I think it would be difficult not to allow access to it," Dr Sahakian said. But if such drugs were then legal, many ethical issues had to be addressed.

"The big question is, are we all going to be taking drugs in the next 10 years and boosting our cognition in that way? And if we are, will we use them to have a shorter working week ... or will we go headlong into a 24/7 society where we work all the time because we can? You have to consider there are things that could be beneficial about such drugs because we have an ageing population," she said.

Surveys in the United States indicate that 16 per cent of university students are using "smart drugs". There are global websites and chatrooms devoted to how to best use drugs to aid study.

A Nature magazine poll of 1,400 respondents - mostly scientists and researchers - indicated that one in five had used "smart drugs".

Questioned about their attitude towards the drugs, the majority frowned on their usage in competitive situations, such as university entrance exams. However, some admitted that they would be pressured to give their child a "smart" drug if other children were using them. THE GUARDIAN

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010

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On the hot spot: Avandia

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AVANDIA MAKER AWARE OF CARDIAC RISKS: US SENATE REPORT

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NEW YORK - A United States Senate report has found that drug maker GlaxoSmithKline knew of possible heart attack risks tied to Avandia, its diabetes medication, years before such evidence became public.

Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley, the committee's ranking Republican, released the report on Saturday after a two-year inquiry.

The report said the company tried to play down findings that the drug could increase cardiovascular risks, while also working to downplay findings that a rival medication might reduce such risks.

The senators asked the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) why it allowed a clinical trial of Avandia to continue even after the agency estimated that the drug caused 83,000 heart attacks between 1999 and 2007.

The agency did order a warning to be included on Avandia's label in 2007, saying that it might increase the risk of heart attacks, though the data on the risk was not conclusive. The Senate report suggests sharp disagreements remain at the FDA over how to handle Avandia's risks.

The senators said the committee's report was based on researchers' studies of Avandia, internal GlaxoSmithKline documents and FDA documents. They said committee investigators had interviewed GlaxoSmithKline and agency employees as well as what it called anonymous whistleblowers.

In a statement, GlaxoSmithKline insisted the drug is safe and said the committee report took data out of context from analyses of Avandia.

The drug is intended to control blood sugar by increasing the body's sensitivity to insulin, a protein critical to digesting sugars. AP

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010

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Aid to boosting population?

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COUNTING YOUR EGGS BEFORE THEY HATCH
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SYDNEY - Women will soon be able to know how many eggs they have in their ovaries in a simple hormone test that Australian researchers said could revolutionise family planning and fertility treatment.

The "egg-timer" blood test would be able to accurately predict ovum levels based on the concentration of a specific fertility hormone, said conception specialist Peter Illingworth.

"I think this is a big step forward," said Dr Illingworth, medical director of IVF Australia. "What the test will do is identify those younger women who may well be at serious risk of not having children easily when they're older," he told public broadcaster ABC.

"It will identify women who are at risk of having a premature menopause, for example, and allow women to plan how active they should be about fertility treatment."

Women who have undergone treatment for cancer or endometriosis, or have had ovarian surgery would particularly benefit from the anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test, he said, which would cost just US$58 ($81).

It could also save couples thousands in expensive but ultimately futile in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments, said Dr Illingworth of the test, which will routinely be offered at the nation's IVF clinics as soon as next month.

Women are born with about 1 million to 2 million eggs in their ovaries, which are shed monthly until menopause, with a 20-year-old woman typically having 200,000 eggs. That number halves as she enters her 30s and dwindles to as low as 2,000 after the age of 40. AFP

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
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Local update on the Stem Cell news

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WARNING IS TIMELY, SAYS STEMCORD DIRECTOR
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Regarding the warnings from the United States on unproven stem cell therapies such as banking a baby's umbilical cord blood for future use, Dr Teo Cheng Peng, medical director of StemCord in Singapore said it is "timely that this warning was sounded against unjustified claims of value of stem cells uses in certain diseases".

Said Dr Teo: "For current medical therapies, there are proven uses of cord blood stem cells such as cord blood transplants for haematological malignacies. We are aware that there are many 'clinics' which offer 'therapies for all sorts of diseases' using stem cells. We do not practise or offer such therapies."

StemCord is one of two private cord blood banks in Singapore where the cord blood stored is for the family's own use. The other is CordLife.

A third cord blood bank - Singapore Cord Blood Bank (SCBB) - is a public institution, it accepts cord blood from donors which is made available to anyone in need.

Both CordLife and SCBB could not be reached by press time.

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
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Stemming the stem cell banks?

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US SCIENTISTS WARN OF STEM CELL FRAUD
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SAN DIEGO - Clinics that offer to "bank" stem cells from the umbilical cords of newborns for use later in life when illness strikes are fraudsters, a top scientist in the United States said on Saturday.

Clinics in many countries allow parents to deposit stem cells from their newborn's umbilical cord with a view to using the cells to cure major illnesses that could occur later in life.

In Thailand, for example, parents pay in the region of US$3,600 ($5,080) to make a deposit in a stem cell bank, thinking they are taking out a sort of health insurance for their child.

But Dr Irving Weissman, director of the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University in California, said the parents were being fleeced by the stem cell bankers.

"Umbilical cords contain blood-forming stem cells at a level that would maintain the blood-forming capacity of a very young child," Dr Weissman told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"They could also have derived mesenchymal cells - fiberglass-like cells that have a very limited capacity to make scar, bone, fat - but they don't make brain, they don't make blood, they don't make heart, they don't make skeletal muscle, despite what various people claim," he said.

Dr Weissman said these "unproven stem cell therapeutic clinicians" tend to set up shop in countries with poor medical regulations.

A check by AFP, however, found websites for umbilical cord stem cell banks in European Union member states and in the United States.

"They do the therapies, then they let the patients go on their own, short of maybe US$50-US$150,000 for a therapy that has no chance - taken away from a family that needs them when they have an incurable disease," Dr Weissman said. "It is wrong."

The International Stem Cell Society is due to issue a report in April about unproven stem cell therapies such as banking a baby's umbilical cord blood for future use. AFP

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
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Words and Music, Together in the Brain

BRAIN LINKS WORDS, MUSIC ABILITY
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SAN DIEGO - Words and music are such natural partners that it seems obvious they go together. Now science is confirming that those abilities are linked in the brain, a finding that might even lead to better stroke treatments.

Studies have found overlap in the brain's processing of language and instrumental music, and new research suggests that intensive musical therapy may help improve speech in stroke patients, researchers said on Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition, researchers said, music education can help children with developmental dyslexia or autism more accurately use speech.

People who have suffered a severe stroke on the left side of the brain and cannot speak can sometimes learn to communicate through singing, Mr Gottfried Schlaug, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School told the meeting. He showed a video of a patient who could only make meaningless sounds learning to say "I am thirsty," by singing the words. Another was able to sing "happy birthday".

As long as a century ago there were reports of stroke victims who couldn't talk but who could sing, he said. Now, they are doing trials to see if music can be used as a therapy. But, he cautioned, the work is geared toward people who have had a severe stroke on the left side of the brain and the therapy can take a long time.

Dr Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, reported that new studies show that musical training enhances the brain's ability to do other things.

For example, she said, the trained brain gets better at detecting patterns in sounds, so that musicians are better at picking out the voice of a friend in a noisy restaurant.

Dr Aniruddh D Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego said new studies show that music doesn't involve just hot spots in the brain, but large swaths on both sides of the brain. AP

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
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Thursday, February 18, 2010

THESE WOMEN WILL KICK-START YOUR HEART ... LITERALLY

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Now I am finding some humor in this move...

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LONDON - Swiss prostitutes are being trained to use defibrillators to prevent clients with heart problems from dying on them.

Brothel owners near Lugano say electric shock treatment to restart customer's hearts is needed because so many elderly customers are using their services.

The most recent victim was a pensioner, thought to be having fun with the help of anti-impotence medication. His death followed a series of other incidents, some fatal, in which heart attacks have claimed brothel customers in the area.

The owner of one sex club said: "Having customers die on us isn't exactly good publicity".

There are 38 sex clubs and brothel in the Lugano area. And more are planned, according to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, to accommodate the thousands of customers who pour over the boarder from Italy, where brothels are illegal. Around 80 per cent of the men who pay for sex in the area are thought to be Italian.

Local health experts are said to have backed the plans to stock defibrillators in sex clubs and brothels. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

From TODAY, Friday, 19-Feb-2010

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FIGHTING FAT

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BUCHAREST - For post-communist Romanians, a Big Mac was a culinary signpost from the free and capitalist West - a sign they too, at last, had arrived. Now, Romania is moving to join the health conscious 21st century by proposing taxes on burgers, french fries, soda and other fast food with high fat and sugar content.

"We have to relearn how to eat," said Health Ministry official Adrian Cercel said.

The ministry says that - in marked contrast to the situation under communism - half of Romania's 22 million people are overweight, while instances of obesity have doubled among 10-year-olds.

Officials refuse to say how high the taxes would be. But the authorities expect to generate up to ?1 billion ($1.9 billion) in new revenues - compared with an estimated ?16 billion in total revenues for this year.

If the plan goes through, Romania will be aligning itself with - and even outdoing - other nations looking to crack down on fatty foods and encourage better eating.

Taiwan also recently floated a fast-food tax, while Denmark and Austria have made artery-clogging trans-fats illegal. Britain, Norway and Sweden have banned junk food commercials from TV at certain times of the day, while Norway also has long taxed sugar and chocolate.

In the United States, First Lady Michelle Obama this month unveiled a public awareness campaign called "Let's Move" to fight against childhood obesity. But Americans have generally been seen as less willing than Europeans to allow their government to dictate their diets.

Romania's Health Ministry has been analysing the nutritional content of some 40,000 fast foods and drinks over the past weeks to decide what exactly should be taxed before submitting the legislation to Parliament next month. AP

From TODAY, Friday, 19-Feb-2010

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HAPPINESS HELPS THE HEART

LONDON - You've heard it before: To avoid a heart attack don't smoke, eat right and exercise. But it may also help to be happy, a new study says. Even if you're grumpy by nature, just try to be cheerful.

Researchers at Columbia University rated the happiness levels of more than 1,700 adults in Canada with no heart problems in 1995. After a decade, they examined the 145 people who developed a heart problem and found happier people were less likely to have had one.

The study was published online yesterday in the European Heart Journal. The paper's lead author, Dr Karina Davidson of Columbia University Medical Centre, said happy people were more likely to have a healthier lifestyle. It could also be there is an unknown genetic trait that predisposes people to be happy and have less heart disease.

Other experts said happiness itself could result in a healthier heart compared to emotions such as stress or depression.

Stress often releases harmful heart hormones and can also cause blood vessels to open too wide, allowing plaque to clog the arteries. Depression has long been noted as a risk factor for heart problems. AP

From TODAY, Friday, 19-Feb-2010

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Healthy Me - At Home and Away

Amazon Holiday Deals

Friday, February 26, 2010

CALL FOR CHOKING WARNING LABELS FOR FOOD

CURE WITHIN 3 YEARS

MOST 'TEST TUBE' KIDS ARE HEALTHY

'AIDS COULD DIE OUT IN 40 YEARS'

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Drugs to Pass Exams -- Will It Help to Pass Life's Tests, Too?

On the hot spot: Avandia

Aid to boosting population?

Local update on the Stem Cell news

Stemming the stem cell banks?

Words and Music, Together in the Brain

Thursday, February 18, 2010

THESE WOMEN WILL KICK-START YOUR HEART ... LITERALLY

FIGHTING FAT

HAPPINESS HELPS THE HEART

WebMD Health News

Fish