Health News - Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Dry eye syndrome may make vision significantly harder while reading, driving, working, watching TV, or using computers, a new study shows. Dry eye syndrome is marked by a deficiency in the quantity or quality of tears and may also include eye irritation, dryness, fatigue, and visual disturbances. Dry eye syndrome is common but it's usually not a major health threat, note the researchers.
They included Debra Schaumberg, ScD, OD, MPH, of the division of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Schaumberg and colleagues studied 450 women and 240 men, a third of whom had symptoms of dry eye syndrome. The female participants were at least 49 years old and were enrolled in the Women's Health Study, a long-term health study of female health care professionals in the U.S. Continue reading
Having salmon for dinner is not just good for your heart, it may also improve your disposition, according to a University of Pittsburgh study. It found that omega-3 fatty acids, which are plentiful in fatty fish like salmon, seem to affect areas of the brain associated with emotion. Dr. Sarah M. Conklin presented the findings in Budapest, Hungary at the American Psychosomatic Society's annual meeting.
The team previously observed that people with lower blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids were more apt to have a negative outlook and to be more impulsive, while those with higher levels typically were more agreeable and less likely to exhibit a sour mood. In their latest study, Conklin and colleagues set out to see whether the volume of gray matter in the brain, especially in areas related to mood, was proportionally related to the amount of omega-3 fatty acid consumed. Continue reading
Physically active young adults are less likely than their more sedentary peers to develop high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, a new study confirms. Exercise has been demonstrated to reduce older adults' likelihood of developing high blood pressure, but there is little information on how physical activity affects hypertension risk in younger adults, blacks, and women, Emily D. Parker of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and colleagues note in the American Journal of Public Health.
To investigate, Parker and her team analyzed data on 3,993 black and white 18- to 30-year-old men and women who were followed for 15 years. The men were the most active, followed by white women and black women. Study participants' risk of developing hypertension during follow-up dropped by 11 percent for every additional 300-exercise-unit increase in activity, equivalent to about five weekly exercise sessions burning 300 calories each. Continue reading
GlaxoSmithKline Plc won U.S. approval for a once-a-day breast cancer pill on Tuesday that the drugmaker hopes will launch a new era for its oncology business. The Food and Drug Administration cleared the drug, called Tykerb, for patients with advanced breast cancer in combination with Roche Holding AG's oral chemotherapy drug, Xeloda, or capecitabine.
It is the first of four cancer drugs that Glaxo hopes to have approved by 2010. Studies of Tykerb, or lapatinib, to treat early-stage and inflammatory breast cancers, as well as head/neck, gastric and lung cancers, are also underway. For now, the FDA approved Tykerb for patients with HER-2 positive breast cancer who no longer respond to Roche and Genentech Inc.'s rival product, Herceptin. Continue reading