Latest Health News
Researchers have identified a batch of genes that not only prevent cancer but slow the aging process in worms, and say they are now looking to see if the genes have the same properties in humans. Many of the genes in the worms are already known to have counterparts in humans, and the team at the University of California, San Francisco, say they hope to better understand some of the processes that cause both aging and cancer.
Drugs that mimic the effects of these genes might help people both avoid cancer and also live longer, they wrote in Sunday's issue of the journal Nature Genetics. Biologist Cynthia Kenyon is perhaps best known for discovering that a change in just one gene, called daf-2, could double the life span of small roundworms called Caenorhabditis elegans. Continue reading
More than half a million women still die every year in pregnancy or after childbirth in spite of two decades of efforts to bring down the toll, reports revealed on Friday. Little has changed, particularly in much of the developing world. Women die of avoidable complications such as high blood pressure or haemorrhage in childbirth - and often the baby dies too or does not survive the next few years without a mother. Tens of thousands die painfully in backstreet abortions in countries where contraception is not readily available and abortion is heavily restricted or banned.
Papers prepared for a major conference in London next week and published in the Lancet on Friday reveal the scale of the failure. New figures show it is highly unlikely that the Millennium Development Goal 5 - to slash death rates by 75 percent from their 1990 level by 2015 - will be achieved. In 1990 it was estimated that 576,300 women died in pregnancy, labor or after giving birth. The latest calculations, from the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, show that 15 years later, in 2005, some 535,900 died. The maternal mortality ratio dropped from 425 in 100,000 to 402 in 100,000. Continue reading
For patients with chronic skin picking, a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, that is severe enough to cause physical damage, results of a small study suggest that the anti-seizure drug lamotrigine may reduce the behavior and improve social functioning.
Writing in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, investigator Dr. Jon E. Grant and associates point out that some degree of skin picking is common and normal. However, "pathology exists in the duration and extent of the behavior, as well as in the reasons for picking, associated emotions, and resulting problems." Continue reading
Arthritis may trigger the deposit of uric acid crystals in joints, the main cause of gout, according to a report in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. Case reports and hospital-based case series have linked gout with the presence of arthritis in the same joints, the authors explain.
This led Dr. Edward Roddy and colleagues from University of Nottingham, UK to investigate whether patients with gout are more likely to have arthritis, and if the same joints are affected. The researchers sent questionnaires to patients served by two general practices in Nottingham. A total of 164 subjects with confirmed cases of gout were evaluated. Continue reading
Housework might be bad for your health, according to a study suggesting that tidying up as little as once a week with common cleaning sprays and air fresheners could raise the risk of asthma in adults. Other studies have linked these types of products with increased asthma rates among cleaning professionals but the research published on Friday indicates others are potentially at risk as well.
Exposure to such cleaning materials even just once a week could account for as many as one in seven adult asthma cases, the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. "Frequent use of household cleaning sprays may be an important risk factor for adult asthma," Jan-Paul Zock, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, who led the study, wrote. Continue reading
Most doctors rely on patients to give them an accurate account of what drugs they are taking, but a new U.S. study published on Thursday suggests many patients get it wrong. About 40 percent of 119 patients taking blood pressure medication in three community health centers could not accurately recall what drugs they were taking.
That number jumped to 60 percent for those with low health literacy, a measure of their ability to read and comprehend health-related materials, researchers at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago found. This could lead to drug interactions and the undertreatment of chronic diseases, said Dr. Stephen Persell, whose study will appear in the November issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Continue reading
Toddlers who breathe polluted air are far more likely to be diagnosed with bronchitis than children living in cleaner environments, U.S. and Czech researchers reported on Thursday. They found a component of pollution known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, was strongly linked with cases of bronchitis among children aged 2 to 4 and a half.
The study is one of the first to look at PAHs, which are produced when fuels that contain carbon such as wood, coal, diesel or tobacco are burned. Most environmental regulations in the United States and Europe focus on controlling particulate emissions -- tiny particles in the air -- as well as sulfur dioxide and ozone. Continue reading
The heart benefits of taking statin drugs may last for years, even after the drugs are stopped, researchers reported on Wednesday. Men who took pravastatin for five years had a lower risk of death or heart attack even 10 years after they stopped taking the drug, Ian Ford of the University of Glasgow in Scotland and colleagues found.
In their study of 6,595 middle-aged men, the risk of heart attack or death from any type of heart disease was 11.8 percent for the pravastatin recipients, compared with 15.5 percent for volunteers who took a placebo for the first five years of the test. Continue reading
People who eat lots of high glycemic index (GI) foods not only risk gaining weight, they also run a greater risk of developing a condition that can lead to liver failure and death, finds a new study in mice. The condition is known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
GI refers to how rapidly a food causes blood sugar to rise. High-GI foods, like white bread and potatoes, tend to spur a quick surge in blood sugar, while low-GI foods, such as lentils, soybeans, yogurt and many high-fiber grains, create a more gradual increase in blood sugar. Continue reading
Topamax, a migraine pill, can help alcoholics taper off drinking without detox treatment, according to a study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. The migraine pill, also called topiramate, works in a different way than three other medications already approved for treating alcoholism.
The study was funded by the maker of the drug, Johnson & Johnson Inc. Researchers followed 371 heavy drinkers aging from 18 to 65 in 17 U.S. cities for 14 weeks. About half were randomly assigned to take Topamax in gradually increasing doses. The others took dummy pills. Continue reading
Women who have irregular menstrual periods with unpredictable flow are more likely than other women to have abnormal lung function and asthma, according to a new report. "Physicians should be aware that women with menstrual irregularity seem to be at greater risk of asthma and impaired lung function," Dr. Francisco Gomez Real from Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway told Reuters Health.
Previous research has found links between airway abnormalities and sex hormone irregularities. For example, findings have implied relationships between asthma and abnormal levels of sex hormones Continue reading