Health News - Friday, January 12, 2007
Women who aren't overweight but still have a high percentage of body fat may have more inflammation in their bodies, an Italian study shows. Researchers looked at 60 healthy Italian women aged 20-35 living in Rome.
Twenty of the women were overweight or obese based on their BMI (body mass index), which relates height to weight. Another 20 had a normal BMI, but their body fat was greater than 30%, based on head-to-toe body scans using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). Continue reading
Cutting trans fats from the diet may be especially important for women of childbearing age who want to have children. Eating these unhealthy fats has been strongly linked to an increased risk for heart disease. Now, new research suggests they also increase a woman's risk of infertility.
In their study, nutrition researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that women with ovulation-related fertility problems tended to eat more trans fats than fertile women. Obtaining just 2% of total calories from trans fats instead of healthier monounsaturated fats was associated with a doubled risk for this type of infertility. In addition, each 2% increase in trans fat consumption as a replacement for carbohydrates brought a 73% greater risk of ovulation-related infertility, after adjusting for other known and suspected infertility risk factors, according to the study. Continue reading
Genes related to inflammation may be a key to high blood pressure, according to researchers. High blood pressure, or hypertension, affects almost one in three Americans. And more than half of those who are hypertensive have salt-sensitive hypertension, which means changing the amount of sodium in the diet affects blood pressure.
Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia's (MCG's) Georgia Prevention Institute are looking at how inflammation, which is an immune response, may help translate stress into high blood pressure. "There is a concept that hypertension is an inflammatory condition," Haidong Zhu, a molecular geneticist at MCG, said in a prepared statement. She believes that stress, inflammation and hypertension are connected by the kidneys' ability to release sodium. Continue reading
Smoking may increase the risk for cartilage loss and more severe pain in men with osteoarthritis of the knee, according to a new study. The study, by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the Mayo Clinic and published in the January issue of the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, followed 159 men with knee osteoarthritis for 30 months. Nineteen of the men were smokers.
After the researchers adjusted their study results for age, body mass index (a measure of weight in relation to height) and baseline cartilage scores, they found that the smokers were at increased risk of cartilage loss and experienced more pain than the men who did not smoke. Continue reading
The use of antidepressant drugs during pregnancy does not appear to have a significant effect on the behavior of the child, Canadian and Korean researchers report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Dr. Tim F. Oberlander of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and colleagues compared behaviors of 22 children who were prenatally exposed to a selective serotonin uptake inhibitor (SSRI), one of a relatively new class of antidepressant drugs including Prozac and Zoloft, along with 14 unexposed children. The researchers evaluated data for the children, all of whom were 4 years of age, using a combination of parent reports and direct observations of the child's activities. Continue reading
A new research review suggests that chiropractic spinal adjustments in children carry a risk of injury, with sometimes severe consequences. Though researchers found only a handful of serious injuries among 13 published studies, they believe that there's still too little known about the safety of spinal manipulation in children.
Until more is learned, they suggest that parents be cautious about seeking this therapy for their children. The review, which is published in the journal Pediatrics, included 13 reports published in the medical literature. Only two were based on clinical trials that tested the effects of spinal manipulation on children; the rest were reports on individual cases of injuries. Continue reading
After investigating the deaths of three infants between 1 and 6 months of age linked to cough and cold medication use, officials with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are emphasising that these drugs should be used only after talking with a physician.
Between 2004 and 2005, approximately 1,500 children younger than 2 years old were treated in US emergency departments for adverse events associated with cough and cold medications, A Srinivasan and colleagues at the CDC note in the January 12th issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Continue reading