Study shows marriage partly governed by fat levels

SOME fall for beautiful eyes while others are smitten with a smile. But when it comes to deciding on true love, you might be better off looking at your intended's waistline. Scientists have shown that we tend to marry partners with a similar level of body fat to our own. Flab, or the lack of it, is just as important as background, class or age in determining who we choose to spend our lives with.

It is thought the phenomenon - known as assortative mating - could be a key factor in the obesity epidemic. Children of overweight couples are likely to inherit genes that make them prone to putting on weight too, and so be more likely to have a weight problem themselves. "If someone who is overweight or obese marries someone who is overweight or obese, their children could have a genetic disposition to obesity," researcher Diane Jackson said.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found body scans of 42 couples showed they shared similar levels of body fat. The finding held true even when factors which can influence weight, such as age and class, were taken into account.

The study also showed that rather than couples simply growing fat together, they actually started off that way. "In the 1940s and 1950s, people mostly got married in their early 20s before they were overweight or obese," researcher Professor John Speakman said. "So it would have been difficult for them to assortatively mate for body fatness because it would have been impossible to distinguish somebody who was thin from somebody who was thin but going to become fat.

"Nowadays, we choose partners and have children much later, but if we are going to become obese, on average we do so much younger. "This makes it possible for potential partners to select each other on the basis of body fatness. "What is currently unclear is how these associations come about. "Perhaps the social activities of the overweight and obese people coincide, making them more likely to meet partners who are also overweight or obese."

Source





Contraceptive pill could thwart cancer for 20 years

THE contraceptive pill can protect a woman against ovarian cancer for at least 20 years after she stops taking it, scientists have revealed. The largest study of its kind has found that the longer a woman uses the contraceptive, the less likely she is to develop the disease. Taking the pill for five to 10 years gave her the best protection when she stopped using it, the scientists said. Even after a 20-year gap, women's chances of developing ovarian cancer were cut by almost half when compared to those who had never used oral contraceptives.

Previous research has recognised that the pill gives protection against ovarian cancer. However, experts say this 28-year study, which involved more than 100,000 women, examines the long-term effects of different contraceptive methods. The findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggested the protecting effect might come about because women on the pill did not produce eggs. The normal process of egg release triggers cell damage and repair that raises the risk of tumour development.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

We need our fat

In this country, the most popular cosmetic surgery procedure is liposuction: doctors vacuum out something like two million pounds of fat from the thighs, bellies, buttocks, jowls and man-breasts of 325,000 people a year. What happens to all that extracted adipose tissue? It's bagged and disposed of as medical waste; or maybe, given the recent news about socially contagious fat, it's sent by FedEx to the patients' old college chums. But one thing the fat surely is not, and that is given due thanks for serving as scapegoat, and for a job well done.

We are now in what feels like the 347th year of the fastidiously vilified "obesity epidemic." Health officials repeatedly warn that everywhere in the world people are gaining too much weight and putting themselves at risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and other obesity-linked illnesses, not to mention taking up more than their fair share of molded plastic subway seat.

It's easy to fear and despise our body fat and to see it as an unnatural, inert, pointless counterpoint to all things phat and fabulous. Yet fat tissue is not the problem here, and to castigate fat for getting too big and to blame it for high blood pressure or a wheezing heart is like a heavy drinker blaming the liver for turning cirrhotic. Just as the lush's liver was merely doing its hepatic best to detoxify the large quantities of liquor in which it was doused, and just as the alcoholic would have been far worse off had the liver not been playing Hepa-filter in the first place, so our fat tissue, by efficiently absorbing the excess packets of energy we put in our mouths, has our best interests at heart.

"Obesity is not due to any defect in adipose tissue per se; it's an issue of energy balance," said Bruce M. Spiegelman of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. If you are consuming too many calories relative to what you burn off, the body must cope with that energy surplus, he said, "and adipose tissue is the proper place for it." "If you had no fat cells, no adipose tissue, you'd still be out of energy balance, and you'd put the excess energy somewhere else," he said, at which point really bad things can happen. Consider the lipodystrophy diseases, rare metabolic disorders in which the body lacks fat tissue and instead dumps its energy overruns in that jack-of-all-organs, the liver, causing extreme liver swelling, liver failure and sometimes liver-bearer death.

"Some adipose tissue is a good thing," said Barbara Kahn, chief of the endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, at Harvard. Indeed, evolutionary biologists have proposed that our relative plumpness compared with our closest nonhuman kin, the chimpanzee, may help explain our relative braininess. Even a lean male athlete with a body fat content of 8 percent to 10 percent of total body mass (half the fat found on the average nonobese, non-Olympic American man) is still a few percentage points more marbled than a wild male chimpanzee, and scientists have suggested that our distinctive adipose stores help ensure that our big brains will be fed even when our cupboards go bare.

Scientists who study fat emphasize that its bland and amorphous appearance notwithstanding, our adipose depots represent highly specialized organs, as finely honed to the task of energy storage as muscle is built for flexing. Our body fat is made of some 40 billion fat cells, or adipocytes, and their supportive matrix, with most of the bulk stashed under the skin but also threaded viscerally, around and between other organs. Each fat cell is essentially a bouncing balloon filled with those greasy lipids we call triglycerides, three fatty acid chains of mostly carbons and hydrogens arrayed in high-energy configurations that explain why, gram for gram, dietary fat has more than twice the calories of meat or starch; and every fatty acid trio is tacked to a sugar-sweet glycerol frame.

In most body cells, the watery cytoplasm where the labor of proteins takes place accounts for maybe 70 percent of the cell's volume, with another 10 percent given over to the nucleus, seat of the cell's DNA. In a fat cell, by contrast, lipids are king, queen and bishop, and the checkerboard, too. They fill more than 95 percent of the adipocyte volume, crowding the cytoplasm with its proteins and the nucleus with its genes up against the cell wall in what Dr. Kahn calls "a crescent moon space."

Yet for all its lipid density, the average fat cell is ever primed to hoard more, to take in more fatty acids and sugars from the blood and stitch them into triglyceride stores, and to swell to several times its cellular waistline of yore. Most weight that we gain and lose in life is the result of our existing fat cells growing and shrinking, absorbing and releasing energy-rich lipids as needed, depending on our diet and exercise regimens of the moment. But when exposed to chronic caloric overload, fat cells will initiate cell division to augment the supply; and because fat cells, like muscle cells, rarely turn over and die, those new lipidinous recruits will be your helpmeets for life.

Fat is no rutabaga. It is dynamic and mercantile, exchanging chemical signals with the brain, bones, gonads and immune system, and with every energy manager on the body's long alimentary train. "We used to think of an adipose cell as an inert storage depot," Dr. Kahn said. "Now we appreciate that it is an endocrine organ," in other words, an organ that like the thyroid or pancreas, secretes hormones to shape the behavior of other tissues far and wide. Squashed to the side a fat cell's cytoplasm may be, but it nevertheless spins out a steady supply of at least 20 different hormones. Key among them is leptin, an essential player in reproduction. Scientists suspect that a girl enters puberty when her fat stores become sufficiently dense to begin releasing leptin, which signals the brain to set the pulsing axis of gonadal hormones in motion.

Fat also seems to know when it is getting out of hand, and it may resist new personal growth. Dr. Spiegelman and others have shown that with the onset of obesity - defined as 25 or more pounds above one's ideal weight - the fat tissue starts releasing potent inflammatory hormones. That response is complex and harmful in the long run. But in the short term, said Dr. Spiegelman, "inflammation clearly has an anti-obesity effect, and it may be the body's attempt to restrain further accumulation of adipose tissue." The fat sizes up the risks and benefits, and it takes its fat chance.

Source





More than three coffees a day could protect memory -- in old women

The effect sounds slight in absolute terms and could tell us more about women of leisure than anything else

DRINKING more than three cups of coffee a day helped protect older women against some age-related memory decline, French researchers said today, giving women more reason to love the world's most popular stimulant. Men did not enjoy the same benefit, they said. "The more coffee one drank, the better the effects seemed to be on (women's) memory functioning in particular," said Karen Ritchie at the French National Institute of Medical Research, whose work appears in the journal, Neurology.

The researchers followed more than 7000 men and women in three French cities, checking their health and mental function and asking them about their current and past eating and drinking habits, their friends, and their daily activities. They used this information to sort out the specific role caffeine played in these women's lives.

They found women who drank more than three cups of coffee per day, or its caffeine equivalent in tea, retained more of their verbal and - to a lesser extent - visual memories over four years. The odds of these women having verbal memory declines was 33 per cent less, and visual and spatial memory declines 18 per cent less, than women who drank one cup or fewer per day. The effect also depended on age, with women over 80 reaping more benefits from these beverages than those who were 10 to 15 years younger, Ritchie's team wrote. It was unclear whether current or former coffee consumption made the difference.

Some studies in mice have suggested that caffeine might block the buildup of proteins that lead to mental decline. Ms Ritchie is not sure why only women benefited in her study. "Our best guess is that women don't metabolise coffee in the same way (as men)," she said. Ms Ritchie plans to follow the women longer to see if caffeine delays the onset of dementia - the mental confusion that signals Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders. She said people should weigh any brain gains derived from caffeine against other effects of the stimulant, including raised blood pressure.

The average American drinks one to two cups of coffee a day, according to the National Coffee Association.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Maccas has good associations for little kids



The reference given for this report is faulty as no such article appears in the current issue of JAMA. I wonder however if the kids who were studied had ever been to McDonalds or not. I would be surprised if they had not. So attributing the effect to TV advertising is tendentious. The kids may simply have learnt from experience that Maccas has tasty food

Junk-food advertising's influence on young children has been confirmed by research revealing vegetables taste better to preschoolers if served in McDonald's wrappers. In a study prompting renewed calls for restrictions on fast-food marketing, four out of five children preferred hamburgers, chicken nuggets, fries, milk and even baby carrots served in McDonald's packaging, over identical food in plain wrappers.

Childhood obesity experts said the results of 300 individual tasting comparisons, with 63 children aged three to five, were alarming. Seventy-seven per cent preferred fries served on a wrapper with the golden arches logo, compared with 13 per cent who liked them better in plain packaging. Chicken nuggets in a bag branded with the logo were favoured by 59 per cent while more than half (54 per cent) thought baby carrots in a branded french fries bag tasted better than in a plain bag. Forty-eight per cent liked the hamburger with the fast food company's logo compared with 37 per cent who preferred it in a plain wrapper. Even milk tasted better, with 61 per cent preferring it in a McDonald's cup.

The study found that the more televisions there were in a preschooler's home, the more likely they were to prefer foods and drinks from McDonald's. The results from the Stanford University (California) research, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, come a week after federal Labor's health spokeswoman, Nicola Roxon, revealed a Kevin Rudd government would ban the use of licensed characters such as Shrek to market junk food to children.

McDonald's spokeswoman Christine Mullen said they used Shrek to advertise their Pasta Zoo Happy Meal, which has less fat and more calcium and protein than other options.

Source






COKE ROTS YOUR KIDNEYS

Or does it? It depends in part on how well the matching between the diseased and normal population was done. Strictly, the matching should have been with other ill people

Carbonated Beverages and Chronic Kidney Disease

By Saldana, Tina M. et al.

Abstract:

Background: Carbonated beverage consumption has been linked with diabetes, hypertension, and kidney stones, all risk factors for chronic kidney disease. Cola beverages, in particular, contain phosphoric acid and have been associated with urinary changes that promote kidney stones.

Methods: We examined the relationship between carbonated beverages (including cola) and chronic kidney disease, using data from 465 patients with newly diagnosed chronic kidney disease and 467 community controls recruited in North Carolina between 1980 and 1982.

Results: Drinking 2 or more colas per day was associated with increased risk of chronic kidney disease (adjusted odds ratio = 2.3; 95% confidence interval = 1.4-3.7). Results were the same for regular colas (2.1; 1.3-3.4) and artificially sweetened colas (2.1; 0.7-2.5). Noncola carbonated beverages were not associated with chronic kidney disease (0.94; 0.4-2.2).

Conclusions: These preliminary results suggest that cola consumption may increase the risk of chronic kidney disease.

Epidemiology. 18(4):501-506, July 2007

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

PEDOPHILES ARE BORN THAT WAY

Or they are at least developmentally arrested. Either way, pedophilia does seem to be a physical disorder: Sex-related areas of their brains are notably shrunken by normal standards. It would seem to be an argument for some sort of permanent restraint on them. They can't help themselves

Brain pathology in pedophilic offenders: evidence of volume reduction in the right amygdala and related diencephalic structures

By Kolja Schiltz et al.

Abstract:

CONTEXT: Pedophilic crime causes considerable public concern, but no causative factor of pedophilia has yet been pinpointed. In the past, etiological theories postulated a major impact of the environment, but recent studies increasingly emphasize the role of neurobiological factors, as well. However, the role of alterations in brain structures that are crucial in the development of sexual behavior has not yet been systematically studied in pedophilic subjects. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether pedophilic perpetrators show structural neuronal deficits in brain regions that are critical for sexual behavior and how these deficits relate to criminological characteristics.

DESIGN: Amygdalar volume and gray matter of related structures that are critical for sexual development were compared in 15 nonviolent male pedophilic perpetrators (forensic inpatients) and 15 controls using complementary morphometric analyses (voxel-based morphometry and volumetry). Psychosocial adjustment and sexual offenses were also assessed.

RESULTS: Pedophilic perpetrators showed a significant decrease of right amygdalar volume, compared with healthy controls (P = .001). We observed reduced gray matter in the right amygdala, hypothalamus (bilaterally), septal regions, substantia innominata, and bed nucleus of the striae terminalis. In 8 of the 15 perpetrators, enlargement of the anterior temporal horn of the right lateral ventricle that adjoins the amygdala could be recognized by routine qualitative clinical assessment. Smaller right amygdalar volumes were correlated with the propensity to commit uniform pedophilic sexual offenses exclusively (P = .006) but not with age (P = .89).

CONCLUSIONS: Pedophilic perpetrators show structural impairments of brain regions critical for sexual development. These impairments are not related to age, and their extent predicts how focused the scope of sexual offenses is on uniform pedophilic activity. Subtle defects of the right amygdala and closely related structures might be implicated in the pathogenesis of pedophilia and might possibly reflect developmental disturbances or environmental insults at critical periods

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007;64:737-746




Mahjong game 'can cause epilepsy'

So watch out!



A study by doctors in Hong Kong has concluded that epilepsy can be induced by the Chinese tile game of mahjong. The findings, published in the Hong Kong Medical Journal, were based on 23 cases of people who had suffered mahjong-induced seizures. The report's four authors, from Hong Kong's Queen Mary Hospital, said the best prevention - and cure - was to avoid playing mahjong.

The study led the doctors to define mahjong epilepsy as a unique syndrome. Epileptic seizures can be provoked by a wide variety of triggers, but one cause increasingly evident to researchers is the playing - or even watching - of mahjong. This Chinese tile game, played by four people round a table, can involve gambling and quickly becomes compulsive. The game, which is intensely social and sometimes played in crowded mahjong parlours, involves the rapid movement of tiles in marathon sessions.

The doctors conclude that the syndrome affects far more men than women; that their average age is 54; and that it can hit sufferers anywhere between one to 11 hours into a mahjong game. They say the attacks were not just caused by sleep deprivation or gambling stress. Mahjong is cognitively demanding, drawing on memory, fast calculations, concentration, reasoning and sequencing. The distinctive design of mahjong tiles, and the sound of the tiles crashing onto the table, may contribute to the syndrome.

The propensity of Chinese people to play mahjong also deserves further study, the doctors say. What is certain though, is that the only sure way to avoid mahjong epilepsy, is to avoid mahjong, which for many people is easier said than done.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Heart discovery to save millions of lives

AUSTRALIA'S top heart specialists believe they have found a treatment to stop heart disease in its tracks, potentially saving millions of lives worldwide. Experts from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital will today unveil the groundbreaking discovery which involves using adult stem cells from patients to repair their own hearts. The world-first treatment has been shown to generate new blood vessels and repair dead tissue in the heart. Importantly, the changes appear to be permanent.

Heart disease is the world's biggest killer, claiming 17 million lives a year. In Australia, there are 3.5 million sufferers and 50,000 die annually, 35 per cent of all deaths.

The new treatment involves injecting patients with a hormone to release beneficial stem cells from their bone marrow into their bloodstream. Then the patients are put on a treadmill to encourage the cells to travel to the heart, where they create new blood vessels to restore circulation and boost heart function. Evidence has also shown the hormone -- Granulocyte Colony Stimulating Factor -- can also actively rescue and protect struggling heart muscles from dying. It has passed safety tests and entered the second phase of human trials last week.

Professor David Ma, head of blood and stem-cell research at St Vincent's, said the development of the treatment was amazing. "It's amazing because a few years back when we started this study our whole hypothesis was different," he said. "It's quite exciting -- it's given us a new direction to attack the situation. "Because of the study results and more evidence coming out in the past couple of years, we have changed our emphasis." He explained how the hormone could stimulate blood vessels to grow in the heart as well as protecting and rescuing heart muscles from dying.

Prof Ma said the findings were significant because heart disease was already a huge problem in developed nations, like the US and Britain, but was also rapidly growing in developing countries, like India and China.

Professor Bob Graham, head of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, said the early findings were "very promising". Speaking from the US, where he was meeting international specialists last week, Prof Graham said: "At the moment we are restricting it to the most severe patients but if it works and is safe for those patients, hopefully we can broaden it. "The nice thing about this trial is that the drug is already on the market -- although it hasn't been used for this application." The hormone is commonly used to help cancer patients recover after chemotherapy.

Dr Sharon Chih, cardiology research fellow at St Vincent's, is co-ordinating the trial. Forty patients with severe angina -- or chest pain from a lack of blood and oxygen supply to the heart -- are being tested with the treatment against a placebo in a double-blind, crossover trial. They will be treated for three weeks and checked with MRI scans to assess the treatment's effectiveness. Poor diet and lack of exercise, as well as smoking, are major contributors to heart disease in Western countries. But the incidence is spreading to developing nations.

Source




Nerve gas antidote made by goats

Scientists have genetically modified goats to make a drug in their milk that protects against deadly nerve agents such as sarin and VX. These poisons are known collectively as organophosphates - a group of chemicals that also includes some pesticides used in farming. So far, the GM goats have made almost 15kg of a drug which binds to and neutralises organophosphate molecules. Details appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

The drug, called recombinant butyrylcholinesterase, could be used as a protective "prophylactic" drug and also to treat people after exposure to nerve gas. The US Department of Defense is funding the development effort by biotech firm PharmAthene to the tune of $213m. It regards the drug as a promising way to protect its troops against exposure to nerve agents on the battlefield. Butyrylcholinesterase could also be stockpiled for use in the event of a terrorist attack on a city with chemical weapons.

It is an enzyme that is made in small quantities by the human body. The compound can be purified from blood, but the yields are poor. However, the team at PharmAthene has been able to produce butyrylcholinesterase in large, commercial quantities and, the company says, at a reasonable cost. "It is a very difficult molecule to produce. There is a long history of people trying to produce this in everything from insects to yeast to bacteria and mammalian cells," said Dr Solomon Langermann of PharmAthene, a co-author on the PNAS paper. "None of them has been able to produce anything beyond milligram amounts. In the goat, we can make two or three grams per litre."

The researchers inserted DNA for making the human form of butyrylcholinesterase into a "vector" molecule. This vector is then introduced into a goat embryo. This allows the human gene to be incorporated into the goat's DNA sequence. The resulting female animals, all healthy, produced large quantities of butyrylcholinesterase in their milk.

The high yields are partly down to "control elements" - stretches of DNA added, along with the human gene, to the vector molecule. These control elements regulate how much of the enzyme the goat produces and ensure that most of it is produced in the milk, rather than in other tissues.

Once the enzyme was purified from milk, the scientists injected it into guinea pigs, and saw that it remained active in the bloodstream. The commercial name given to the butyrylcholinesterase enzyme is Protexia. Dr Langermann said that Protexia was more effective than the combination of the drugs atropine and 2-PAM currently carried by soldiers for protection against nerve agents. "Those (older) drugs get cleared from the blood very rapidly. Even if the soldier were to survive, they would have very severe neurological damage," he told BBC News. "With Protexia, you would survive and be able to go back on the battlefield."

It is also effective against a variety of different organophosphate poisons. The product is still several years from entering use; it needs to pass a safety trial and seek approvals from the US government.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Another hymn to the wonders of fruit

Sadly, these miracles normally fade to nothing when subjected to those pesky double-blind trials

A QUEENSLAND-made punch packed with anti-oxidants killed the cells of five different cancers in clinical tests, it has been claimed. Prostate, breast, bladder, colon and stomach cancer cells were all dramatically reduced after just two weeks of treatment with Dr Red's Blueberry Punch. "It was a very significant drop in cell numbers, and we found that the more concentrated the dose (of punch), the greater the reduction in cancer cells," University of Sydney research fellow Dr Jas Singh said. Dr Singh's team also injected immuno-deficient mice with prostate cancer cells, and after two weeks, found the tumours were 30 per cent smaller.

Brisbane urologists Doctor John Yaxley and Professor Robert Gardiner now plan to take the tests a step further, by undertaking human trials in partnership with the University of Queensland. Up to 150 prostate patients are expected to participate at the invitation of their doctor. "It will be up to their urologist whether they think the patient is appropriate," Professor Gardiner, who hoped to begin the trials in the next few months, said.

Dr Red's owner, biochemist Greg Jardine, said he never set out to make a medicinal product - only a wine with three times the anti-oxidants of standard drinks. "It wasn't our idea. It was the market. People would say 'I'm going to take this wine for my cancer' and I'd say 'No, it's just wine'," said Mr Jardine, from his Mount Nebo vineyard. The punch contains a range of anti-oxidant rich ingredients including ginger and turmeric juices, the pulp of oranges, lemons, mandarins and limes, grapes, grapeseed and grape skin, as well as tarragon and blueberries - lots of blueberries.

"We use a quarter of a kilo of blueberries in every (750ml) bottle. We go through about a tonne a week," Mr Jardine said. He said he was trying to keep the cost of the punch down, but the price of ingredients made that difficult. "It's not cheap. It works out at about $1.15 a glass, and there are 30 glasses in every $40 bottle. "We recommend 25ml a day, but in the trial they were using three glasses a day," he said.

Brisbane dietician Nicola Fox said it was pleasing to see a product prepared to undergo scientific tests. "There's lots of natural products that make all sorts of claims, but they're yet to be tested," Ms Fox said.

Source




An unusual Leftist politician in Australia -- a food realist

LABOR'S push to banish cartoon characters from promotions of food to children have given one of the party's candidates a mild bout of indigestion. George Colbran, who is standing for the ALP in the Queensland electorate of Herbert, operates nine McDonald's restaurants, making him one of the fast food chain's biggest Australian franchisees. He argues that childhood obesity has been over-simplified by those who blame "junk" food. "Junk food: I get upset about that," Mr Colbran told the Herald. "How can a piece of meat put into bread with lettuce and cheese, eggs and muffins and so forth, be considered junk?"

Mr Colbran says voters in the Townsville electorate are far more concerned about the parlous state of local roads and poor access to broadband. He reckons plans by the Opposition health spokeswoman, Nicola Roxon, for restrictions on advertising food to children will never become Labor policy. This week Ms Roxon expressed concern that the character of Shrek was being used to sell everything from yoghurt to chocolate eggs as a marketing tool to get children to pester their parents into buying the products.

Mr Colbran said obesity was a complex issue. "There is a propensity for kids to be bigger now than they were when I was growing up, and there are a lot more reasons for that than McDonald's. "It's to do with lifestyles, kids in front of television and computer screens, kids being driven to school and picked up rather than riding their bicycles."

Herbert is important for Kevin Rudd's chances of winning the federal election, which hinge on whether the ALP can make electoral gains in Queensland. Labor has sought to improve its chances by selecting more candidates with business backgrounds like Mr Colbran. Labor believes a crackdown on food advertising will be popular among parents. But Mr Colbran's remarks suggest the plans may alienate another demographic, owners and employees of the estimated 11,000 food retailing franchises around the country.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

NOT BEING ABLE TO READ KILLS YOU?

I don't think most people will be much surprised by the finding below but the interesting question is why. The finding actually surprised me somewhat because the content of most media health messages is a quite obsessive repetition of the mantra that fat and salt are bad for you -- messages that have NO support in well-conducted longditudial studies. So is there some other beneficial content in media health messages? Maybe. Though not being able to read warning signs and labels is more likely to have something to do with it. But I think that we should first look more closely at the study below before we draw any conclusions.

It is actually a more sophisticated study than most epidemiological studies in that it DOES control for education and social class. While education and social class are important, however, two other important social stratification variables not considered are income and IQ -- and neither of those have really close proxies in education and social class. Some well-educated people are poor and some rich people are not very bright, for instance. So, applying Occam's razor, I conclude that the study shows simply that poor people die younger. Given their lesser access to good medical care -- PARTICULARLY in socialized medicine systems such as Britain's NHS -- that is not at all surprising.

Another worthwhile possibility to consider is that illiterate or semi-literate people have to take jobs that are more dangerous in various ways

Health Literacy and Mortality Among Elderly Persons

By David W. Baker et al.

Background: Individuals with low levels of health literacy have less health knowledge, worse self-management of chronic disease, lower use of preventive services, and worse health in cross-sectional studies. We sought to determine whether low health literacy levels independently predict overall and cause-specific mortality.

Methods: We designed a prospective cohort study of 3260 Medicare managed-care enrollees in 4 US metropolitan areas who were interviewed in 1997 to determine their demographic characteristics, chronic conditions, self-reported physical and mental health, and health behaviors. Participants also completed the shortened version of the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults. Main outcome measures included all-cause and cause-specific (cardiovascular, cancer, and other) mortality using data from the National Death Index through 2003.

Results: The crude mortality rates for participants with adequate (n = 2094), marginal (n = 366), and inadequate (n = 800) health literacy were 18.9%, 28.7%, and 39.4%, respectively (P < .001). After adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic status, and baseline health, the hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were 1.52 (95% confidence interval, 1.26-1.83) and 1.13 (95% confidence interval, 0.90-1.41) for participants with inadequate and marginal health literacy, respectively, compared with participants with adequate health literacy. In contrast, years of school completed was only weakly associated with mortality in bivariate analyses and was not significant in multivariate models. Participants with inadequate health literacy had higher risk-adjusted rates of cardiovascular death but not of death due to cancer.

Conclusions: Inadequate health literacy, as measured by reading fluency, independently predicts all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death among community-dwelling elderly persons. Reading fluency is a more powerful variable than education for examining the association between socioeconomic status and health.

Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:1503-1509





Thanks be unto mice

The number of scientific experiments conducted on animals has declined considerably over the past 30 years. The trend, however, has been reversed recently. The total has risen in each of the past five years and new data released by the Home Office this week show that the 2006 figure exceeded three million for the first time since 1991.

This has angered even the more considered elements of the animal rights lobby. The RSPCA pronounced itself furious and shocked, while the Dr Hadwen Trust, which supports medical research with nonanimal methods, blamed the Government's "ethical negligence". Its message was clear: scientists might talk about replacing, reducing and refining animal experiments, but this is mere lip service. The statistics tell a tale of more animal suffering.

This view might look compelling, but it is not founded in logic. A rise in the raw number of animal procedures does not necessarily mean that medical researchers are being cavalier. As it happens, the upward trend has a perfectly reasonable explanation that has nothing to do with callous indifference to animal welfare.

A close look at the Home Office figures makes this plain. The recent rise in animal use is almost entirely explained by the growing importance to science of genetically modified mice. The number of experiments that use these has more than quadrupled since 1995, to reach 1.04 million last year. One in three animal procedures now involves a GM mouse.

This headline figure, though, is a little misleading. The birth of every GM animal must be recorded as a scientific procedure in the Home Office statistics, even if it is never used in an experiment. Two-thirds are created purely to maintain breeding colonies or to provide cells, and are never given drugs or surgery. Many suffer no ill-effects from being genetically altered. Take them out of the equation and animal experiments would have continued to fall.

That said, it is beyond dispute that the number of GM animals used actively in research is rising and will continue to do so as more genes that influence disease come to light. But that is because these mice - and 97 per cent of GM animals are mice - allow scientists to answer medical questions that could not even have been asked a decade ago.

Conditions with a genetic contribution, such as diabetes, can now be modelled effectively by manipulating the genes of laboratory mice. These animals can then be used both to understand the disease process and to test new drugs. Such work is already having important results: treatments for incurable disorders such as muscular dystrophy that have been developed using GM mice are close to beginning clinical trials.

Such insights, regrettably, cannot be obtained in any other way. Scientists are using more GM mice not because they have become hard-hearted but because they are the best available tools for a certain kind of research of exceptional medical promise. From a patient perspective, the increasing number of GM mouse experiments is something to be welcomed. It means that science is closing in on the genetic origins of disease and thus on new approaches to therapy.

The development of nonanimal methods is of course welcome, and when such techniques have been validated it is right to use them. The number of nonGM animal procedures in research, indeed, has come down from 2.27 million in 1995 to 1.65 million last year. Further investment is appropriate, but too narrow a focus on reduction would mean abandoning new animal models just as they are becoming most useful. Science must be serious about both medical progress and animal welfare, but that may mean using more animals when necessary, and fewer when it is not.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

GOOD NEWS FOR TANNERS? DOES SUNSHINE PREVENT MS?

This is another "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Sun exposure also causes skin cancer so do you get cancer by saving yourself from MS? Fortunately, there is no reason to worry. The study below is on very small numbers and the twins concerned had presumably been reared apart so many other things could explain the differences observed. Maybe the twins who got more sun were raised in richer families (or vice versa) for instance.

I also noticed that statistical significance is not mentioned in the abstract. I wondered why. Given the small numbers, I thought I knew why. And so it was. The differences FAILED the .05 criterion for statistical significance so may well have been purely random. Crap epidemiology just rolls on and on

Childhood sun exposure influences risk of multiple sclerosis in monozygotic twins

By Talat Islam et al.

Abstract:

Objective: To address the role of childhood sun exposure on the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) after controlling for genetic susceptibility, we investigated the association between sun exposure and MS comparing disease-discordant monozygotic (MZ) twins.

Method: Twins with MS were sought by yearly newspaper advertisements throughout North America from 1980 to 1992. Diagnosis was verified by updated medical documentation through 2005. This analysis was restricted to 79 disease- and exposure-discordant monozygotic twin pairs who had ranked themselves before 1993 in relation to each of nine childhood sun exposure activities. A sun exposure index (SI) was defined as the sum of those exposures for which one twin ranked higher than his or her co-twin. The SI difference within each twin pair was calculated by subtracting the SI value of the affected twin from the SI value of the unaffected twin (range -9 to +9). The results were then analyzed using conditional logistic models.

Result: Each of the nine sun exposure-related activities during childhood seemed to convey a strong protection against MS within MZ twin pairs. Depending on the activity, the odds ratio (OR) ranged from 0.25 to 0.57. For example, the risk of subsequent MS was substantially lower (OR 0.40, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.83) for the twin who spent more time suntanning in comparison with the co-twin. For each unit increase in SI, the relative risk of MS decreased by 25%.

Conclusion: Early sun avoidance seems to precede the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). This protective effect is independent of genetic susceptibility to MS.

Source. Fuller report here




Zebrafish study may point way to blindness cure



The ability of zebrafish to regenerate damaged retinas has given scientists a clue about restoring human vision and could lead to an experimental treatment for blindness within five years.

British researchers said on Wednesday they had successfully grown in the laboratory a type of adult stem cell found in the eyes of both fish and mammals that develops into neurons in the retina.

In future, these cells could be injected into the eye as a treatment for diseases such as macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetes-related blindness, according to Astrid Limb of University College London's (UCL) Institute of Ophthalmology.

Damage to the retina -- the part of the eye that sends messages to the brain -- is responsible for most cases of sight loss. "Our findings have enormous potential," Limb said. "It could help in all diseases where the neurons are damaged, which is basically nearly every disease of the eye."

Limb and her colleagues studied so-called Mueller glial cells in the eyes of people aged from 18 months to 91 years and found they were able to develop them into all types of neurons found in the retina. They were also able to grow them easily in the lab, they reported in the journal Stem Cells.

The cells have already been tested in rats with diseased retinas, where they successfully migrated into the retina and took on the characteristics of the surrounding neurons. Now the team is working on the same approach in humans. "We very much hope that we could do autologous transplants within five years," Limb told Reuters.

Autologous transplants, initially on a trial basis, will involve manipulating cells and injecting them back into an individual's own eye. Eventually, Limb hopes it will also be possible to transfer the cells between different people. "Because they are so easy to grow, we could make stem cell banks and have cell lines available to the general population, subject to typing as with blood transfusions," she said.

Just why zebrafish have an abundant supply of adult stem cells to regenerate their retinas, while they are rare in mammals, remains a mystery but Limb suspects it is because mammals have a limiting system to stop proliferation.

The new work on Mueller glial cells is the latest example of researchers exploring the potential of different kinds of stem cells in treating eye disease. Another team from UCL and Moorfield's Eye Hospital said in June they aimed to repair damaged retinas with cells derived from embryonic stem cells.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Standard anaesthetic practice harmful



Nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, is the cornerstone of anaesthesiology but a landmark Australian study has questioned its routine use in major surgery. The study of more than 2000 adult surgical patients worldwide found removing nitrous oxide from the anaesthetic cocktail significantly reduced the risk of major post-operative complications. Researchers reported a lower incidence of fever, pneumonia, wound infection, severe nausea and vomiting in patients undergoing major surgery where nitrous oxide was avoided.

The study, published in the August edition of Anaesthesiology, is expected to trigger fierce debate in the profession given nitrous oxide has been used for more than 150 years. "It would be fair to say all anaesthetists will read this Australian study with great interest across the world," said Brisbane specialist Patrick See, director of the St Andrew's Medical Institute. "It will be a landmark article that will stimulate a lot of discussion."

An estimated one million Australian patients and more than 10 million in the US are administered nitrous oxide annually. But the study's chief investigator Paul Myles, head of anaesthesia at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, expects that to plummet on the basis of the findings. "I think this study is going to reduce the use of nitrous oxide by about five to tenfold right now," Professor Myles said. "Our bottom line is that we should stop using nitrous oxide routinely in major surgery involving adults. "Some anaesthetists stopped using it a number of years ago because they had concerns about it but we've now got hard data."

Professor Myles stressed the results did not apply to patients having minor surgery, women in labour, dental procedures or operations involving children. All patients in the study were at least 18 and underwent surgery lasting two hours or more. They were randomly assigned to receive a nitrous oxide-based anaesthetic or one free of laughing gas.

The study authors reported slightly more heart attacks and deaths in the nitrous oxide group but Professor Myles said follow-up research was needed to back up those findings. "The numbers are too small for us to make any firm conclusions," Professor Myles said. The research team has already launched another study of 7000 patients with a $2.8 million grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Dr See, who was not involved in the research, said he had started using nitrous oxide on fewer patients "some years ago" because of emerging concerns. Nevertheless, Dr See expects the Australian study to raise eyebrows among some anaesthetists.

Source







Hope for MS: Genetics progress

The first genetic advance in multiple sclerosis research in three decades has opened new approaches to treating the neurological disorder, scientists said yesterday. Research has identified two genetic variants that each raises a person's risk of developing MS by about 30 per cent, shedding new light on the origins of the autoimmune disease that could ultimately lead to better therapies. The two genes are the first to be linked conclusively to MS since the mid-1970s, when the only other gene that is known to contribute to the condition was found.

Their discovery is particularly promising as both are involved in managing the activity of T-cells, the "infantry" of the immune system that sometimes mistakenly attack healthy tissue to cause autoimmune conditions. In MS, the immune system starts to destroy the fatty myelin sheaths that insulate nerve cells, leading to progressive neurological damage.

Both genes, which control receptors that T-cells use to find their targets, are potential targets for new drugs to control MS. They were found in a major study of the genetics of MS published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the significance of one has been confirmed in two separate papers published in Nature Genetics.

Scientists said that the genes would have important implications for understanding the disease and ultimately for treating it. Margaret Pericak-Vance of the University of Miami, a senior member of both research groups, said: "They give us a new way of looking at the biology of the disease, and could be targets for therapeutic development." Stephen Hauser, Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, said of one of the genes, the interleukin-7 receptor (IL-7R): "I believe that this receptor and its interaction with regulatory T-cells will now become a major focus of research on MS."

While MS is not directly inherited or caused by a single gene, it is known to be partly inheritable: people with close relatives who have the condition are at higher risk. Since the 1970s, however, only one gene that contributes to a raised risk has been identfied. A variant of this gene, known as HLA-DRB1, seems to make the body worse at recognising its own tissue, and increases an individual's chances of developing MS by up to four times.

The new genetic variants affect a different part of the immune system, the control receptors on T-cells that act as receiving antennae for interleukins - proteins that summon these killer cells to attack invaders. Each has less effect on MS than HLA-DRB1, raising the risk by about 30 per cent, but both are common. Some 72 per cent of white Europeans have the most damaging version of the interleukin-2 receptor (IL-2R) gene, while 56 per cent have the most damaging variant of the IL-7R gene. This indicates that these genes are far from the only contributors to MS - the overwhelming majority of people who carry the risky variants are healthy. Many other genes, as well as environmental factors, are involved.

David Hafler, Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led one of the research teams, said: "Each gene contributes only a small amount of risk. The big question is, how do they interact with each other, and are they in common pathways? A major effort to understand the full complement of genes involved in MS will be necessary to completely understand the disease." A fuller knowledge of how the genes raise risk, however, will still be useful in designing new drugs. It may even prove possible to correct the inter-leukin signalling pathways to stop the condition from developing.

Simon Gregory, of Duke University in North Carolina, who contributed to the research, said: "Our finding is very important because the genetic factors that are already known to be associated with multiple sclerosis only explain less than half of the total genetic basis for the disease."

The discovery that IL-2R is linked to MS is also significant because previous research has suggested it also contributes to two other autoimmune conditions, type 1 diabetes and autoimmune thyroid disease. "Scientists are increasingly finding genetic links between autoimmune diseases that affect different tissues in the body, including type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis," Professor Hafler said. "This study will likely spur further research into the connection between these seemingly separate conditions."

The findings have emerged from two slightly different approaches to gene-hunting that have become possible because of advancing technology and the mapping of the human genome. The most important was a genome-wide association study, which scanned more than 500,000 genetic variations from more than 13,000 people to find associations between particular mutations and MS. "People have been looking for genes involved in MS for 30 years," Professor Hafler said. "Why weren't they found? The answer is you couldn't do it without the sequence of the human genome."

Lee Dunster, of the MS Society, said: "One of the great unknowns about MS is what causes it and this looks like a welcome breakthrough in getting to grips with the genetics behind the disease. People with MS often worry about what caused it, and particularly whether it will affect their children, so a better understanding of the role of certain genes is good news. These latest findings will be of great interest to researchers trying to develop future treatments."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************