Everyone At Risk From Mad Cow Disease

By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News

No one is immune to the human form of mad cow disease, variant CJD, new research suggests today.

Some people whose genetic make-up normally acts as a barrier against infection may ultimately develop a different and so-far unrecognised type of disease, it is claimed.

Scientists have shown that individuals with a pair of genes known as MM about a third of the population acquire vCJD relatively easily.

No one with a different paring, VV, has been known to suffer the disease.

Then in August it emerged that a patient from a mixed MV genetic group had been infected with vCJD from contaminated blood, without showing any symptoms. Just over half the population has the MV pairing.

The news sparked fears of a mad cow disease timebomb in the population, with thousands of people unwittingly carrying the brain disease on a long incubation fuse. Read more…

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Needle-Sharing by Sex Workers Tied to Spread of Syphilis

(HealthDay News) -- Needle-sharing among drug abusers may play as big a role as risky sexual behavior in the transmission of syphilis, a new study suggests.

American and Mexican researchers interviewed more than 900 female sex workers in the Mexican border towns of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, which are adjacent to San Diego and El Paso, Texas, respectively. The sex workers, who were also tested for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), operate legally in the two Mexican towns, which are located on major drug trafficking routes.

The researchers found that female sex workers who didn't have HIV, but tested positive for active syphilis infection, were more likely than those without active syphilis infection to inject drugs, to use illegal drugs before or during sex in the past month, and to have U.S. clients who had higher rates of drug use, including the use of injection drugs. Read more…

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Enriched Skim Milk Good for Gout, Study Suggests

(HealthDay News) -- If you have gout, drinking enriched skim milk may help reduce the frequency of painful flare-ups, new research suggests.

The new study included 120 patients who had experienced at least two flare-ups in the previous four months. They were divided into three treatment groups that consumed either lactose powder, skim milk powder or skim milk powder enriched with glycomacropeptide (GMP) and G600 milk fat extract (G600).

Gout, a common form of arthritis, is caused by uric acid buildup in blood. Often, the big toe is the first place where gout strikes. Previous research has shown a higher risk for gout among people who consume fewer dairy products, and earlier work suggested that GMP and G600 tone down the inflammatory response to gout crystals.

The powders were mixed in roughly 8 ounces of water as a vanilla-flavored shake and consumed once a day. The patients recorded their flare-ups and went to a rheumatology clinic once a month. Read more…

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Obesity Causes Increased Risk of Kidney Cancer, Kidney Stones, and Stroke

by: Steve G. Jones, Ed.S

Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30.0 or greater. BMI is a ratio determined by weight and height. With a large percentage of Americans classified as being obese, research is showing the effects extra weight and obesity have on a person's overall health. Recent studies show that obese people have an increased risk of developing common kidney cancer, kidney stones, and an increased risk of having a stroke.

A study involving 1,640 participants studied the effects of weight on kidney cancer. The average age of patients was 62 and all participants had kidney tumors. The study showed that patients with a BMI of 30 or higher were 48% more likely to develop clear-cell renal cell cancer (RCC). With every 1 point increase in BMI, obese patients increased their odds of getting kidney cancer by 4%.

Out of all the participants, 67% of the obese patients had kidney cancer compared to 57% of non-obese patients. Researchers do not know why there is a link between obesity and kidney cancer. Researchers are looking into a secondary link involving diabetes, hypertension, hormonal changes, and decreased immune function. Read more…

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Fatty liver disease - Choline provides a nutritional solution for a silent epidemic

by: Helmut Beierbeck

Fatty liver disease used to be associated with alcoholism, but it is no longer restricted to heavy drinkers. Our calorie-rich but nutrient-poor diet has led to an epidemic of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) that tracks our rising obesity and diabetes rates (1). Autopsies and ultrasound studies have shown that up to 75% of the obese and 70-85% of type 2 diabetics have fatty livers. And the low-profile but essential nutrient choline appears to provide the solution to the problem (1, 2).

What is NAFLD?

NAFLD develops in two stages (1). In the first stage fat accumulates in the liver. This fat can come from several sources: free fatty acids released into the blood by fat tissue, lipogenesis in the liver from carbohydrates (especially fructose from HFCS or table sugar), and dietary fats carried to the liver by chylomicron remnants. Fatty liver disease is a silent epidemic because its first stage, fat accumulation, generally doesn't produce overt symptoms. Readmore…

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Heart Disease, Diabetes, Depression a Deadly Mix

(HealthDay News) -- Heart disease, diabetes and depression can be a lethal triple-play -- boosting a patient's death risk by 20 percent to 30 percent, new research shows.

"We do not know what this increased risk is due to, but it could either be that depression influences crucial aspects of self-care behaviors needed to manage diabetes or that a more severe disease process is reflected in more depressive symptoms," said lead researcher Anastasia Georgiades, a research associate in the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Georgiades was expected to present the findings Friday at the American Psychosomatic Society annual meeting in Budapest, Hungary.

In their study, the Duke team followed 933 heart patients for more than four years. During that time, there were 135 deaths among patients with type 2 diabetes and/or depression, the researchers found.

Among patients with moderate-to-severe symptoms of depression who were also diabetics, the researchers observed a significant 30 percent greater risk of dying over the four-year period compared with patients with either depression alone or diabetes alone. Read more…

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Bipolar Kids May Focus on Different Facial Features

(HealthDay News) -- Children with bipolar disorder and a similar condition called severe mood dysregulation spend less time looking at the eyes when trying to identify facial features, compared to children without the psychiatric disorders, researchers say.

This new study finding may help explain why children with bipolar disorder and severe mood dysregulation have difficulty determining other people's emotional expressions, said the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health investigators.

The researchers tracked the eye movements of children with and without psychiatric disorders as they viewed faces with different emotional expressions, such as happy, sad, fearful and angry. In general, the children spent more time looking at the eyes, the facial feature that conveys the most information about emotion. Read more…

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New Heart Valve Repair System Tested for Safety

(HealthDay News) -- A new method of repairing leaking mitral heart valves appears safe, a small study shows.

In the new study, researchers tested a reversible implant called the Percutaneous Transvenous Mitral Annuloplasty (PTMA) system, which is installed via a catheter.

In the heart, the mitral valve controls the flow of blood from the left atrium into the left ventricle (from the upper left chamber into the lower left chamber). A leaking mitral valve causes blood to flow back into the left atrium. This condition can worsen existing heart failure or cause congestive heart failure, according to a news release from the American Heart Association.

Currently, mitral valve repair requires opening the chest and putting the patient on a heart-lung machine. This method increases the risk of heart attack and stroke during surgery, as well as post-surgery risks such as lung problems, irregular heartbeat and infection, the news release noted. Read more…

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Complex cancer industry trial literature is too confusing for patients to understand

By J. D. Heyes

Have you ever read something so complex and confusing that it frustrated you to the point of distraction? Well, a new study has found that cancer trial literature causes that kind of frustration - and may be misleading to patients as well.

According to Prof. Mary Dixon-Woods, professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Leicester Department of Health Sciences in Great Britain, a number of cancer patients found information leaflets describing cancer trials too long, too incomprehensible and too intimidating.

"These information sheets are poorly aligned with patients' information needs and how they really make decisions about whether to join a cancer trial," said Dixon-Woods, lead author of the research http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-03/uol-cti032612.php, which was published in the international journal Sociology of Health and Illness.

"Some patients did find them very useful, but many others paid them little attention. They preferred to rely on discussions they had with their doctor to make up their minds," she said. Read more…

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Two Drugs Safe for Rare Forms of Kidney Cancer

(HealthDay News) -- Using a combination of the drugs temsirolimus (Torisel) and Bryostatin appears to be safe in patients with metastatic kidney cancer, according to early data from 25 patients in a phase 1 trial.

The researchers said a pathway known as mTOR signaling promotes tumor cell proliferation and tumor blood vessel development. The temsirolimus-bryostatin combination blocks two portions of the mTOR signaling pathway, and the early data suggests the drugs may be active in patients with rare forms of renal cell cancer that are less likely to respond to other therapies.

"We have certainly seen sustained responses with this combination, which are encouraging," Dr. Elizabeth Plimack, a medical oncologist and attending physician at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said in a news release from the center.

"Patients with non-clear cell renal cell cancer, including papillary renal cancer, don't respond as well to tyrosine kinase inhibitors, such as sunitinib [Sutent] and sorafenib [Nexavar], as patients with clear cell renal cell. So there is an unmet need for therapy for these patients. We've seen that this combination may be active to some degree for them," Plimack said.

The findings were to be presented Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, in Orlando, Fla. Read more…

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Study Compares Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair Methods

(HealthDay News) -- A less-invasive method of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair reduces the short-term risk of death, according to a new U.S. study.

The interim findings are from a nine-year multicenter trial comparing patient outcomes after endovascular and open surgical repair of AAA. The report included postoperative outcomes of up to two years (average 1.8 years of follow-up) for 881 patients, aged 49 or older, who had endovascular repair (444) or open repair (437).

Endovascular repair is performed through a catheter inserted into an artery. Open repair involves an abdominal incision. Of the 45,000 patients in the United States who undergo elective repair of an unruptured AAA each year, more than 1,400 die in the perioperative period -- the first 30 days after surgery or inpatient status. There's limited data available about whether short-term survival is better after endovascular repair compared to open repair. Read more...


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Depression drugs linked to falls in elderly

by Mike Adams Falls are the leading cause of accidental death in the elderly population of adults over 65 years of age. A recent study found that elderly people who suffer from dementia are more likely to suffer falls if they are given anti-depressants. Selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are frequently prescribed to dementia patients, who often also experience depression. The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology reported that the risk of elderly injuring themselves from falls was TRIPLED after they were given SSRIs. This class of drugs includes the popular depression drugs Prozac and Paxil, which have long been considered first-line therapy for treatment of depression in older adults. The high risk of falls following treatment with older anti-depressant medications is well established, as these drugs have long been shown to cause unpleasant and dangerous side effects in elderly such as dizziness and unsteadiness. Although the medical industry and Big Pharma made claims that the newer SSRI-type anti-depressant drugs would likely reduce these dangerous consequences, the latest research from the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam appears to show the reverse. Read more... 

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Barry Callebaut investigates Acticoa for ageing, longevity

Barry Callebaut is venturing down avenues of research that would allow it to market its Acticoa chocolate on an ant-ageing and longevity platform. Dark chocolate has been much on the news lately thanks to research on the healthy potential of its high antioxidant content. Barry Callebaut has devised a process with which it says it can preserve more of the natural polyphenols than is possible through conventional methods. So far chocolate produced using this process, called Acticoa, has been marketed mainly on the basis of its high polyphenol content and health benefits associated with polyphenols. But with positive results from a pre-clinical trial in which rats that suffered oxidative stress and were fed the chocolate were seen to live considerably longer than rats that received a placebo, the company is paving the way to market it to the burgeoning anti-ageing market. Read more...

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Understanding the science of cannabis is integral to appropriate regulation and use

by: Raw Michelle

Cannabis is a plant with demonstrable antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, both aspects that point to its potential to be used as an anti-cancer drug. Cannabinoids have been used in tentative studies, demonstrating their ability to greatly reduce tumours, and cure cancer, in mice.

A controlled substance

The medical establishment continues to reinvent their justification for the demonization of marijuana as more and more of the claims made against cannabis are disproven. The justification currently holding the most ground is that cannabis is a plant, and cannot be carefully regulated because of the great chemical variability that is found between individual plants. Read more...

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Obesity Surgery Complications on the Decline

(HealthDay News) -- Obesity surgery-related complications in the United States declined 21 percent between 2001 and 2006, and payments to hospitals for obesity surgery decreased by as much as 13 percent, partly because there were fewer patient readmissions due to complications, a new study reports.

The findings from a study by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are based on an analysis of more than 9,500 patients under age 65 who had obesity surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, at 652 hospitals between 2001 and 2002 and between 2005 and 2006.

The researchers found that the complication rate among obesity surgery patients dropped from 24 percent to about 15 percent. Contributing to that decrease were declines in post-surgical infection rates (58 percent lower), abdominal hernias, staple leakage, respiratory failure and pneumonia (29 percent to 50 percent lower).

There was little change in rates of other complications such as ulcers, dumping (involuntary vomiting or defecation), hemorrhage, wound re-opening, deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, heart attack and stroke, the researchers noted. Read more...

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Study Reports Progress Against Fatal Brain Cancer

(HealthDay News) -- A new method to prevent recurrence of deadly glioblastoma brain cancer shows promise, say U.S. scientists.

Radiation can temporarily shrink a glioblastoma tumor, but the cancer nearly always recurs within weeks or months. Few people with this type of brain cancer survive more than two years after diagnosis.

In a study on mice, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers found that blocking access to oxygen and nutrients prevents tumor recurrence.

The first step, they said, was discovering that tumors blasted with radiation use a secondary pathway to generate blood vessels needed for regrowth.

"Under normal circumstances, this pathway is not important for growth of most tumors," senior author Martin Brown, a professor of radiology, said in a Stanford news release. "What we hadn't realized until recently is that radiation meant to kill the cancer cells also destroys the existing blood vessels that nourish the tumor. As a result, it has to rely on a backup blood delivery pathway."

The Stanford team used a molecule called AMD3100 to block the secondary glioblastoma tumor growth process in mice.

The study was published online Feb. 22 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Read more...

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Drinking More Fluids Could Lower Men's Bladder Cancer Risk

(HealthDay News) -- Men who drink plenty of low-sugar fluids may reduce their risk for bladder cancer, new research suggests.

Although the reason for the association between fluid intake and protection against cancer remains unknown, researchers theorize the fluids may flush out potential cancer-causing agents before they have a chance to cause any damage.

In conducting the study, Jiachen Zhou, a doctoral candidate in epidemiology at Brown University, and colleagues evaluated the fluid intake of nearly 48,000 men who were part of a long-term study. The men, who were aged 40 to 75 when they enrolled in the study in 1986, answered a questionnaire about their fluid intake every four years for more than two decades. Read more...

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Coriander oil (cilantro) can be used to treat food poisoning and drug-resistant infections

By Jonathan Benson

Food-borne illness outbreaks and the growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" are two very serious societal problems for which researchers say they are actively looking for viable solutions. But one such solution found right in nature is coriander oil, which has been found to kill a number of different bacterial strains, as well as aid in digestion and treat the symptoms of food poisoning.

Dr. Fernanda Domingues and her colleagues from the University of Beira Interior in Portugal tested the effects of coriander oil, an essential oil extracted from the seeds of the coriander plant, also known as cilantro, on twelve different bacterial strains, including Escherichia coli (E. coli), Salmonella enterica, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the infamous hospital superbug. Read more...

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BPA may cause arrhythmia, heart attacks in women

by: Tara Green

Bisphenol A overrides the natural heartbeat signal causing female heart cells to misfire, according to a recent study. Given how pervasive BPA is these days, this could mean heart problems, possibly even fatal ones, for millions of women.

BPA is everywhere

BPA is ubiquitous in the industrial world: in clear plastic containers, in the epoxy lining of canned foods, in dental sealants, and even coating many store receipts. Studies in the past five years have shown that nearly everyone living in the industrial world encounters at least trace amounts of this compound.

Yet industries using plastics for packaging, as well as some mainstream medical experts, have long assured the public that small concentrations of BPA do not pose a serious health hazard. FDA efforts in reference to BPA have so far been limited to supporting industry self-limitation such as eliminating the compound from products specifically designed for infants and children. Read more...

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Regular vitamin and mineral supplementation lowers colon can

by: John Phillip

Researchers publishing in the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology (CJPP) have found that a diet enhanced with vitamin and mineral supplementation can lower the risk of developing precancerous colon cancer lesions by up to 84%. Colon cancer is the second most common form of the disease affecting men and women in the US, with nearly 150,000 new diagnoses each year.

Nutrition experts and alternative practitioners understand that cancer is largely a disease caused by poor lifestyle behaviors including a diet lacking an optimal intake of vitamins and minerals. Chronic illnesses including colon cancer are the result of many years and decades of low nutritional status, as support for a healthy immune response is suppressed. Scientists now provide compelling evidence in support of whole-food based vitamin and mineral supplementation to dramatically lower the risk of colorectal cancer. Read more...

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