Health News - Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Aerobic exercise conducted over the long term may reduce a woman's risk of breast cancer, U.S. research suggests. Reporting in the Feb. 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, studied more than 110,000 women, aged 20 to 79, who took part in the California Teachers Study.
At the start of the study, the women were asked about their participation in moderate exercise (such as brisk walking, golf or volleyball) and strenuous exercise (such as swimming laps, aerobics, and running) from high school up until their current age and within the previous three years. The study authors also collected information about the women's breast cancer risk factors, including race, family history and use of hormone replacement therapy. Continue reading
Smoking may increase the risk of tuberculosis, say researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who analyzed data from 24 previously published studies on the subject.
The meta-analysis found that, compared to nonsmokers, people who smoked were 73 percent more likely to become infected with TB and more than twice as likely to develop active TB. Overall, smokers are 40 percent to 60 percent more likely than nonsmokers to develop TB after being infected with TB bacteria, the researchers said. The findings were published in the Feb. 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Continue reading
Garlic may be good for a lot of things -- spicing up your diet, for sure -- but it seems to be no good at all at lowering your cholesterol. After conducting one of the most elaborate studies yet on garlic's effect on cardiovascular health, scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine said Monday that they could find no benefit in terms of reduced levels of LDL cholesterol, the "bad" form linked to heart disease.
Christopher Gardner, a Stanford assistant research professor and lead author of the six-month study, said he was disappointed by the results, describing himself as a garlic lover whose office is an hour's drive from Gilroy, the generally acknowledged "garlic capital of the world." "We really thought this was going to work," he said. "I was going to get the key to the city of Gilroy. I was going to get 'Dr. Garlic' license plates." Continue reading
Smoking during pregnancy is known to raise a child's future asthma risk, but children with a particular gene variation may be especially vulnerable, a study published Tuesday suggests.
Researchers found that among children followed from birth to age 10, those with a particular variant of a gene called IL1RN seemed particularly susceptible to the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy. Compared with other children whose mothers smoked, they were four times more likely to develop asthma by the age of 10. IL1RN is the gene for a protein called the interleukin-1 receptor antagonist, which has a strong anti-inflammatory action in the body. Theoretically, a change in the gene could reduce the effectiveness of the IL1RN protein and thereby contribute to the chronic airway inflammation that marks asthma. Continue reading
Beta carotene and vitamins A and E, antioxidant supplements taken by millions to fight disease, may actually raise the risk of death, a review of 68 studies on nearly a quarter-million people said on Tuesday.
The finding drew fire from critics who said it was flawed and based largely on studies of people who were already chronically ill before they were treated with the supplements. Tuesday's report related only to synthetic supplements and not to fruits and vegetables in everyday diets which are natural and contain less concentrated levels of antioxidants, said the study from the Center for Clinical Intervention Research at Denmark's Copenhagen University Hospital. Continue reading
Inserting an artificial sphincter around the outlet of the bladder can improve the urine leakage that many elderly men experience following removal of the prostate gland for cancer and other diseases, according to a report in the journal Urology. The results suggest that age in itself is not a barrier to this treatment.
"Just because a patient is elderly doesn't mean that he won't be able to benefit from an artificial urinary sphincter for treatment of...incontinence," Dr. R. Corey O'Connor from Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin told Reuters Health. O'Connor and associates evaluated outcomes of sphincter placement in 29 men, 75 to 83 years of age, who had incontinence after prostate removal. Continue reading
The FDA has approved a new prescription drug, called Vyvanse, to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Vyvanse, a stimulant, will bear the same warnings as all other ADHD drugs. Those warnings include reports of heart-related problems - including sudden death - and new or worsening psychiatric problems.
Last week, the FDA reminded patients and doctors of those warnings and encouraged patients or their families to tell doctors about any family history or new symptoms of heart problems (such as chest pain, shortness of breath, or fainting) or mental problems (such as undue suspicion or seeing, hearing, or believing things that are not real). Vyvanse was developed by New River Pharmaceuticals, which was recently bought by the drug company Shire. Continue reading