Food and Health

Friday, January 25, 2008

Transplant teenage girl changes blood types

A major rethink of what we know about blood types coming up, I suspect

FIFTEEN-year old Demi-Lee Brennan defies belief. Dubbed the "one-in-six-billion miracle girl", the NSW South Coast teenager is the first transplant patient ever to change blood types and take on the immune system of her organ donor. Her body's ability to accept a new liver - and then produce new blood cells on its own - has left doctors mystified. The rare phenomenon now means Demi no longer has to take a cocktail of anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life. It also gives hope to the 1800 gravely ill Australians awaiting a transplant.

Demi, of Kiama, resembles a healthy teenager who displays no signs of her ordeal - other than the scar on her body. And, in an unexpected medical first, she has experienced a change in blood type from Onegative to Opositive, as a result of her body seeming to perform its own bone marrow transplant.

"It's kind of hard to believe," Demi said. "When I look back, it doesn't feel like it happened." When Demi was nine she became seriously ill and needed a life-saving liver transplant. Doctors at the Children's Hospital at Westmead believe a yet-to-be-identified virus caused her liver to fail. A donor was found but after nine months Demi fell ill again - with doctors unable to identify the problem. During that first nine months, Demi was put on routine anti-rejection drugs after her liver transplant surgery.

Then doctors found that Demi's body had begun to destroy its own blood cells and, at the same time, the donor's blood stem cells took over her immune system. Doctors then halted the anti-rejection drugs, realising her blood type - and immune system - had taken on the characteristics of her organ donor.

Their discovery is now the subject of medical research being pursued around the world. Former head of Westmead's liver transplant unit, Dr Stuart Dorney, said there is no explanation for what occurred. "We now need to go back over everything that happened to Demi and see why, and if, it can be replicated," he said. "It may not be (replicated). We think because we used a young person's liver and Demi had low white blood cells that could have been a reason."

It has been almost four years since Demi received her liver and is hoping to permanently stay off anti-rejection drugs. "I am really thankful (to the donor's family) and I hope that so many people can do this too," she said. "I would say to other transplant patients, 'stay strong and determined'.

In Australia, about 100 liver transplant procedures are carried out each year. Of those, paediatric liver transplantations account for 20 per cent. Recipients have an 85 per cent survival rate one year after successful surgery but the rate reduces to 70 per cent after five years due to possible organ rejection complications.

Source

D'Oh! Correcting nutritional deficiencies is helpful

Perhaps I am being a bit cynical but this sounds a bit like a proof that grass is green to me. It DOES confirm the importance of vitamin D but did anybody doubt that? I suppose we should at least be glad that it was one of the rare double-blind studies and not the usual epidemiological crap. Note that it does NOT show that ALL older women should take vitamin D. Popular summary followed by abstract below

VITAMIN D supplements may help to prevent falls among older women, and should be given to those with a history of falling and low vitamin D levels, concludes an Australian study in the Archives of Internal Medicine this week. Richard Prince and colleagues from the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth recruited 302 women aged 70 to 90 years with low blood vitamin D levels and a history of falling in the previous year. They were randomly assigned to take either 1000 international units of vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) or an inactive placebo, and all received 1000mg of calcium citrate per day. Information about falls was collected from participants every six weeks. During the year-long study, 53 per cent of those in the vitamin D group and 63 per cent in the control group fell at least once. After adjusting for height, which affected the risk of falling, vitamin D therapy reduced the risk of having at least one fall by 19 per cent.

Source

Effects of Ergocalciferol Added to Calcium on the Risk of Falls in Elderly High-Risk Women

By Richard L. Prince et al.

Background: Ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) supplementation plays a role in fall prevention, but the effect in patients living in the community in sunny climates remains uncertain. We evaluated the effect of ergocalciferol and calcium citrate supplementation compared with calcium alone on the risk of falls in older women at high risk of falling.

Methods: A 1-year population-based, double-blind, randomized controlled trial of 302 community-dwelling ambulant older women aged 70 to 90 years living in Perth, Australia (latitude, 32øS), with a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration of less than 24.0 ng/mL and a history of falling in the previous year. Participants were randomized to receive ergocalciferol, 1000 IU/d, or identical placebo (hereinafter, ergocalciferol and control groups, respectively). Both groups received calcium citrate, 1000 mg/d. Fall data were collected every 6 weeks.

Results: Ergocalciferol therapy reduced the risk of having at least 1 fall over 1 year after adjustment for baseline height, which was significantly different between the 2 groups (ergocalciferol group, 53.0%; control group, 62.9%; odds ratio [OR], 0.61; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.37-0.99). When those who fell were grouped by the season of first fall or the number of falls they had, ergocalciferol treatment reduced the risk of having the first fall in winter and spring (ergocalciferol group, 25.2%; control group, 35.8%; OR, 0.55; 95% CI, 0.32-0.96) but not in summer and autumn, and reduced the risk of having 1 fall (ergocalciferol group, 21.2%; control group, 33.8%; OR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.28-0.88) but not multiple falls.

Conclusion: Patients with a history of falling and vitamin D insufficiency living in sunny climates benefit from ergocalciferol supplementation in addition to calcium, which is associated with a 19% reduction in the relative risk of falling, mostly in winter.

Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(1):103-108.

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

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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

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

Thursday, January 24, 2008

"Cheating" in medical research

I must say that I am not surprised at all. Most of what I see in the field is deeply unserious and irresponsible

Cheating is on the rise in academic circles, as scientists increasingly claim fradulent glory by plagiarising the work of others - and even themselves. In medical research alone, the number of such "duplicate" scientific reports has roughly trebled since 1975, as scientists face increasing pressure to publish or perish and the likelihood of escaping detection is high.

The disturbing claim comes from Mounir Errami and Harold Garner at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center in Dallas. They developed and used an automated text-matching tool, eTBLAST, to trawl through more than 7 million related scientific abstracts held in the online database Medline, which indexes more than 5000 international journals. "We estimate there are potentially more than 200,000 duplicates in Medline (now)," they reported last night in the journal Nature.

They claimed that not only can eTBLAST detect suspect publications, it could be used to discourage "unscrupulous scientists" from behaving badly. "The fear of having some transgression exposed in a public and embarrassing manner could be a very effective deterrent," they suggested.

Ken Baldwin, head of the umbrella group Federation of Scientific and Technological Societies, agreed that tools such as eTBLAST could be wielded against cheats once checks were built into the system to prevent false identification. "There is the potential for even stronger deterrence of this sort of practice which is already at a very low level (in Australia)," he said.

That's why Dr Errami and Dr Garner will not reveal names and insitutions flagged by eTBLAST until they have manually checked each duplicate and contacted the individuals and journals affected. They have, though, broken their data down by country of origin and posted results in an online database called Deja Vu.

More than 600 duplications originated in Australia. Most duplicates came from countries that submitted the most papers for publication: the US, Japan, Germany, China, Britain, Italy, France and Canada. But the duplication rate for China and Japan was twice that expected.

Source

Marijuana deadlier than cigarettes

HEAVY pot smokers will suffer serious lung disease two decades earlier than their cigarette-smoking counterparts, researchers have found. The deep, slow inhalation and long breath hold is predisposing cannabis smokers to a condition of rapid lung destruction much younger in life, a study by Melbourne scientists has found.

A team from the Department of Allergy, Immunology and Respiratory Medicine at Monash University reviewed the lung condition of middle-aged chronic cannabis smokers. They found high rates of bullous lung disease, a debilitating condition where air trapped in the lungs causes obstruction to breathing and eventual destruction of the organ. It is often caused by exposure to toxic chemicals or long-term exposure to tobacco smoke.

Studies have shown the disease will most likely strike tobacco smokers around the age of 65, but the new review, published in the journal Respirology, shows dope smokers are being hit 20 years earlier, while in their early 40s. Lead author Dr Matthew Naughton said the disease could easily go undetected as patients suffering lung breakdown may show normal chest X-rays and lung functions.

"What is outstanding about this study is the relatively young ages of the lung disease patients, as well as the lack of abnormality on chest X-rays and lung functions in nearly half of the patients we tested," Dr Naughton said.

Marijuana smokers inhale more and hold their breath four times longer than cigarette smokers. Dr Naughton said the breathing style increased the concentration and pulmonary deposition of inhaled particulate matter, causing greater and faster rapid lung destruction. "Marijuana is inhaled as extremely hot fumes to the peak inspiration and held for as long as possible before slow exhalation," he said. "This predisposes to greater damage to the lungs and makes marijuana smokers more prone to bullous disease as compared to cigarette smokers."

The researchers said the effects of marijuana smokers on the lung were rarely reported and poorly understood considering the popularity of the habit. A recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report suggested 11 per cent of Australians smoke marijuana. Rates are must higher among teenagers, with almost one in five trying the substance.

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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

DO SHORTER BABIES GROW UP SUICIDAL?

The short answer: Some do but not many. This is nonetheless a matter of some concern as older mothers are now very common and older mothers are more likely to have difficulties resulting in premature birth. And premature birth is a major cause of smaller babies being delivered.

As usual, however, the social class connection appears to have been ignored. Do lower class mothers have more premature deliveries and shorter babies generally? I am pretty sure they do. The workers are in general less healthy and adult height is class-correlated. So are we seeing just a class effect here? Is it just working class people who are more suicidal? I suspect it is. Popular summary below followed by journal abstract:

Pregnant women may wish for a smaller baby to ease the pain of labour, but babies born small could have serious mental health problems in later life. New research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health has found that male babies born less than 47cm [18"] in length are more than twice as likely to attempt violent suicide as adults compared to normal-length babies, regardless of the height they reach as adults. The findings are based on 318,953 Swedish men who were followed from birth (between 1973 and 1980) to the date of attempted suicide, date of death, emigration or to the end of 1999, whichever came first. Those born prematurely, both short and underweight, were more than four times more likely to attempt violent suicide, including hanging, drowning and use of a knife or gun, as those born after 38 weeks of pregnancy. The brain chemical serotonin, which can decrease aggression and suicidal behaviour, may be lower in men who were born small, say the authors, and these men may need to be monitored more closely for psychiatric disorders.

Source. Another summary here

Fetal and childhood growth and the risk of violent and non-violent suicide attempts: a cohort study of 318,953 men

By E Mittendorfer-Rutz et al.

Background: Inverse associations of birth length with suicide attempts have recently been reported. Whether growth during childhood alters this association is not known. The influences on patterns of growth in fetal life and childhood might be different for violent and non-violent suicide attempts.

Objective: To investigate the effect of fetal and childhood growth and possible effect modification on suicide attempts, both violent and non-violent, adjusting for potential maternal confounding factors.

Method: 318,953 Men were followed by record linkage from the date of birth in Sweden (1973-1980) to the date of attempted suicide, date of death, emigration or to the end of 1999.

Results: The risk of suicide attempt was increased for men with reduced linear growth in fetal life across all levels of adult stature. Men with appropriate birth length for gestational age but short adult height also experienced a raised risk of suicide attempts: 1.56 (95% CI 1.2 to 2.1). Tall adult stature was protective. Short birth length for gestational age was more strongly related to violent (2.39; 95% CI 1.1 to 4.9) than non-violent (1.53; 95% CI 1.1 to 2.1) suicide attempts. The risk of violent attempts was most strongly increased for men with low birth weight and adequate adult stature: 2.54 (95% CI 1.1 to 5.7).

Conclusions: The inverse association of linear growth in fetal life and suicide attempt does not seem to be modified by linear childhood growth. Short adult stature entails an additional risk. Short birth length seems particularly to increase the risk of violent suicide attempts

J Epidemiol Community Health 2008;62:168-173

NYC revives push for calorie disclosure by area fast-food restaurants

The city Board of Health is poised to reenact Tuesday a bitterly contested rule requiring restaurants to post the calorie contents of each dish on their menus. The proposed regulation - part of Mayor Bloomberg's campaign to reduce obesity and diabetes - would make eateries with 15 or more outposts around the country prominently display calorie counts before patrons order.

City health officials expect the regulation to result in 150,000 fewer New Yorkers becoming obese over the next five years and to prevent at least 30,000 cases of diabetes. "The more fast food people eat, the more likely they are to become obese," Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden told the Daily News. "Some people may choose to ignore [the calorie information], and that's totally fine. But other people will use it to choose healthier food."

The original rule applied only to restaurants that were already voluntarily offering customers calorie information. A judge threw it out in September after the New York State Restaurant Association sued, but opened the door for the city to tweak it. This version would impact 10% of the city's 23,000 eateries. Since the board is led by Frieden and appointed by Mayor Bloomberg, the provision is expected to pass. It would go into effect on March 31.

Restaurant association officials could not be reached yesterday, and it was unclear whether they would sue again.Justin Wilson of the Center for Consumer Freedom attacked the city's "nanny-state public health policies." "It doesn't take a Ph.D. in nutrition, let alone a high school diploma, to tell the difference between a 12-piece bucket of chicken and a salad," he said.

While the rule's immediate intention is to affect New Yorkers' food choices, Frieden expects it to translate into the food industry offering lower-calorie, smaller portions. "When restaurants post the information prominently, they'll make healthier options available, so I don't think we'll be seeing 2,700 calorie appetizers or 1,400 calorie breakfasts," he said.

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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Black breast cancer is different

Leftists have a religious belief that all races are the same except for hair, lips and skin. Why there are no differences other than the visible ones is never explained. And they only admit the visible differences because they cannot be denied. We repeatedly find that the truth is very different, however -- including a quite stark difference noted below:

Black British women in Hackney, East London, are diagnosed with breast cancer 21 years younger than white British women, according to a Cancer Research UK study published online in the British Journal of Cancer. In the first UK study to look at the patterns of breast cancer in black British women, the researchers studied 102 black women and 191 white women diagnosed with breast cancer at Homerton University Hospital in Hackney, East London, between 1994 and 2005. They found the black patients were diagnosed with breast cancer at an average age of 46 while the white patients were diagnosed at an average age of 67.

Researchers based at the Institute of Cancer and Cancer Research UK clinical centre at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry also found that survival was poorer among black women with smaller tumours. In addition, their initial findings suggest that tumours in the younger black patients were more likely to be aggressive, and a higher proportion of tumours were basal-like - meaning they were less likely to respond to newer types of targeted breast cancer treatments like Herceptin. If these results are confirmed in larger studies, the findings could have implications for diagnosis, screening and treatment of black British breast cancer patients in the future.

Study author Dr Rebecca Bowen, said: "Twenty five per cent of all breast cancer cases diagnosed in London during the period studied were in women aged 45 or younger - but this figure rose to 45 per cent among the black population in Hackney. We think the differences in the way tumours of black and white women behave can be put down to the biological differences between the two ethnic groups. We're now trying to find out why the tumours are so different so that we can develop new treatments to target the aggressive forms of breast cancer seen in young black women."

Until recently, UK cancer registries have not collected ethnicity data routinely, but incidence of breast cancer among black British women is thought to be lower than the white population. American research has suggested that African-American women get breast cancer at a younger age and at a more advanced stage - but this is the first UK study to draw these conclusions.

Dr Bowen added: "We've just received funding for the next stage of our research which will allow us to determine the type of cancers these women are getting at this young age. It's important that we use the information learnt from this study to raise awareness of breast cancer risk factors and the importance of early detection among the black population."

Dr Lesley Walker, Cancer Research UK's director of cancer information, said: "This is very interesting research. The fact that black women are being diagnosed with breast cancer at a much younger age than white women is clearly worrying. If these results are confirmed in follow-up studies, it might be appropriate to alter screening services offered to black women to better reflect the age at which they are diagnosed with breast cancer - but at the moment it's too early to suggest any changes to the screening programme because the study was so small. "These findings highlight the need for all women to be breast aware, report any changes to the doctor promptly and attend screening appointments when invited, as early detection is important for successful treatment."

Source

Abstract:

Early onset of breast cancer in a group of British black women

By RL Bowen et al.

Since there are no published data on breast cancer in British black women, we sought to determine whether, like African-American women, they present at a younger age with biologically distinct disease patterns. The method involved a retrospective review of breast cancer to compare age distributions and clinicopathological features between black women and white women in the UK, while controlling for socioeconomic status. All women presented with invasive breast cancer, between 1994 and 2005, to a single East London hospital.

Black patients presented significantly younger (median age of 46 years), than white patients (median age of 67 years (P=0.001)). No significant differences between black and white population structures were identified. Black women had a higher frequency of grade 3 tumours, lymph node-positive disease, negative oestrogen receptor and progesterone receptor status and basal-like (triple negative status) tumours. There were no differences in stage at presentation; however, for tumours of ~2 cm, black patients had poorer survival than white patients (HR=2.90, 95% CI 0.98-8.60, P=0.05).

Black women presented, on average, 21 years younger than white women. Tumours in younger women were considerably more aggressive in the black population, more likely to be basal-like, and among women with smaller tumours, black women were more than twice as likely to die of their disease. There were no disparities in socioeconomic status or treatment received. Our findings could have major implications for the biology of breast cancer and the detection and treatment of the disease in black women.

British Journal of Cancer 8 January 2008

Study Suggests Nano-sized Ultrafine Particles May Be Most Damaging Component of Air Pollution for Heart Disease

Among genetically modified and badly maltreated mice, anyway. The journal abstract is here

A new study indicates that ultrafine particles-particles of less than 0.18 micrometers-from vehicle emissions may be the most damaging components of air pollution in triggering plaque buildup in the arteries, which can lead to heart attack and stroke. The findings appear in an open access article in the 17 January online edition of the journal Circulation Research.

A team from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the University of Southern California; the University of California, Irvine; and Michigan State University contributed to the research, which was led by Dr. Andre Nel, UCLA's chief of nanomedicine. The study was primarily funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA currently regulates fine particles at 2.5 micrometers, but doesn't monitor particles in the nano- or ultrafine range. These particles are too small to capture in a filter, so new technology must be developed to track their contribution to adverse health effects.

The UCLA research team previously reported that diesel exhaust particles interact with artery-clogging fats in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol to activate genes that cause the blood-vessel inflammation that can lead to heart disease. In the current study, researchers exposed mice with high cholesterol to one of two sizes of air pollutant particles from downtown Los Angeles freeway emissions and compared them with mice that received filtered air that contained very few particles. The study, conducted over a five-week period [Five whole weeks!] , required a complex exposure design that was developed by teams led by Dr. Michael Kleinman, professor of community and environmental medicine at UC Irvine, and Dr. Constantinos Sioutas, professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC. Researchers found that mice exposed to ultrafine particles exhibited 55% greater atherosclerotic-plaque development than animals breathing filtered air and 25% greater plaque development than mice exposed to fine-sized particles.

Pollutant particles are coated in chemicals sensitive to free radicals, which cause the cell and tissue oxidation. Oxidation leads to the inflammation that causes clogged arteries. Samples from polluted air revealed that ultrafine particles have a larger concentration of these chemicals and a larger surface area where these chemicals thrive, compared with larger particles, Sioutas noted.

Scientists also identified a key mechanism behind how these air pollutants are able to affect the atherosclerotic process. Using a test developed by Dr. Mohamad Navab, study co-author and a UCLA professor of medicine, researchers found that exposure to air pollutant particles significantly decreased the anti-inflammatory protective properties of HDL cholesterol.

To explore if air particle exposure caused oxidative stress throughout the body-which is an early process triggering the inflammation that causes clogged arteries-researchers checked for an increase in genes that would have been activated to combat this inflammatory progression. They found greater levels of gene activation in mice exposed to ultrafine particles, compared to the other groups. The next step will be to develop a biomarker that could enable physicians to assess the degree of cardiovascular damage caused by air pollutants or measure the level of risk encountered by an exposed person.

Previous studies assessing the cardiovascular impact of air pollution have taken place over longer periods of exposure time, such as five to six months. The current study demonstrated that ill effects can occur more quickly, in just five weeks.

The research team included investigators from the fields of nanomedicine, cardiology and genetics. Additional co-authors included Berenice Barajas, Xuping Wang, Brian J. Bennett and Ke Wei Gong of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Jack Harkema from the department of pathobiology and diagnostic investigation at Michigan State University.

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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

Monday, January 21, 2008

Just two cups of coffee per day could double risk of miscarriage (?)

Another stupid epidemiological study based on self-reports. There is a common polydrug pattern among drug addicts and where better to find polydrug abusers than in SF? The effect could be due to other drugs also used by caffeine addicts there. Heavy coffee drinking is very common among addicts "coming down"

Drinking two cups of coffee a day during pregnancy can double the risk of miscarriage for expectant mothers, researchers say. A US study has confirmed that high doses of caffeine during pregnancy, from coffee, tea, caffeinated soft drinks or hot chocolate, can increase the risk of losing a baby. Women who consumed 200 mg or more of caffeine per day - equivalent to two or more cups of regular coffee or five cans of cola - had twice the miscarriage risk of women who consumed no caffeine, the study found. Even those who consumed less than 200 mg of caffeine daily had a more than 40 per cent increased risk, the study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology says.

Caffeine is known to cross through the placenta from mother to the foetus, and is thought to influence cell development and decrease blood flow, causing harm to the developing child. Current guidelines from the Food Standards Agency recommend 300 mg of caffeine a day as the safe upper limit for pregnant women. Experts said the new findings would prompt them to advise women to cut out caffeine altogether, at least for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Miscarriage occurs in about one in six confirmed pregnancies, usually within 12 weeks, when the foetus is especially vulnerable. While previous research showed a link between high caffeine consumption and increased risk of miscarriage and stillbirth, this is the first study to take fully into account morning sickness, which causes many pregnant women to avoid caffeine and cut down their intake.

It examined data on 1,063 pregnant women in San Francisco from October 1996 to October 1998 who did not change their pattern of caffeine consumption during pregnancy. Women in the study were asked about the amount and frequency of their intake of caffeinated beverages. Pregnancy outcomes up to 20 weeks of gestation were determined for all participants.

Overall, 172 of women in the study (16.18 per cent) miscarried. Whereas 264 women reported no consumption of any drinks containing caffeine during pregnancy, 635 women (60 per cent) reported consuming between 0-200 mg of caffeine a day, and 164 women drank 200 mg or more. Other risk factors for miscarriage were also accounted for in the study, which found that miscarriage was associated with consumption of caffeine overall, rather than particular drinks.

DeKun Li, who led the study for Kaiser Permanente, a US health insurance company, said: "This strengthens the association between caffeine and miscarriage risk because it removes speculation that the association was due to reduced caffeine intake by healthy pregnant women. "The main message for pregnant women is that they probably should consider stopping caffeine consumption during pregnancy."

Pat O'Brien, a consultant obstetrician at University College Hospital, London, and spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecol-ogists, said: "This is the best evidence we now have on the subject and I will advise patients to avoid caffeine completely, at least for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Good studies have shown it may be safer to drink caffeine after that, but no more than 200 mg a day is still to be recommended."

Source

GENES FOR LUPUS

One of the now boringly regular demonstrations that at the deepest level all men are NOT equal. Lupus is pretty nasty so it is good to see some slow progress with it

Polymorphism at the TNF superfamily gene TNFSF4 confers susceptibility to systemic lupus erythematosus

By Deborah S Cunninghame et al.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem complex autoimmune disease of uncertain etiology (OMIM 152700). Over recent years a genetic component to SLE susceptibility has been established. Recent successes with association studies in SLE have identified genes including IRF5 and FCGR3B. Two tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily members located within intervals showing genetic linkage with SLE are TNFSF4 (also known as OX40L; 1q25), which is expressed on activated antigen-presenting cells (APCs) and vascular endothelial cells, and also its unique receptor, TNFRSF4 (also known as OX40; 1p36), which is primarily expressed on activated CD4+ T cells. TNFSF4 produces a potent co-stimulatory signal for activated CD4+ T cells after engagement of TNFRSF4. Using both a family-based and a case-control study design, we show that the upstream region of TNFSF4 contains a single risk haplotype for SLE, which is correlated with increased expression of both cell-surface TNFSF4 and the TNFSF4 transcript. We hypothesize that increased expression of TNFSF4 predisposes to SLE either by quantitatively augmenting T cell-APC interaction or by influencing the functional consequences of T cell activation via TNFRSF4.

Nature Genetics 40, 83 - 89 (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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

Sunday, January 20, 2008

DOES EXERCISE PREVENT ALZHEIMERS?

Short answer: No. These guys were smart enough to adjust for measures of social class and that wiped the initially apparent effect. Good to see that some medical researchers don't go around with their eyes closed. It makes yet another demonstration of how apparent physical causes can in fact be sociological causes.

Dementia due to problems in the supply of blood in the brain did however seem to be slightly reduced by exercise. Popular summary followed by abstract below.

Walking and moderate exercise may help to prevent dementia, claims new research in Neurology this week. A total of 749 men and women aged 65 and older took part in the study. They were surveyed about their levels of physical activity, including time spent walking, climbing stairs, doing housework and gardening. Over the next four years, 54 of the participants developed Alzheimer's disease and 27 developed dementia. Those with the highest physical activity levels were 24 per cent less likely to develop dementia than those with the lowest levels. When the different types of exercise were considered separately, researchers found walking provided the same level of protection against dementia as more demanding activities. The authors suggest exercise may protect the brain by improving its blood flow.

Physical activity and dementia risk in the elderly. Findings from a prospective Italian study

By G. Ravaglia et al.

Objective: To examine the effect of physical activity on risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) in the elderly.

Methods: Data are from a prospective population-based cohort of 749 Italian subjects aged 65 and older who, in 1999/2000, were cognitively normal at an extensive assessment for clinically overt and preclinical dementia and, in 2003/2004, underwent follow-up for incident dementia. Baseline physical activity was measured as energy expenditure on activities of different intensity (walking, stair climbing, moderate activities, vigorous activities, and total physical activity).

Results: Over 3.9 - 0.7 years of follow-up there were 86 incident dementia cases (54 AD, 27 VaD). After adjustment for sociodemographic and genetic confounders, VaD risk was significantly lower for the upper tertiles of walking (hazard ratio [HR] 0.27, 95% CI 0.12 to 0.63), moderate (HR 0.29, 95% CI 0.12 to 0.66), and total physical activity (HR 0.24, 95% 0.11 to 0.56) compared to the corresponding lowest tertile. The association persisted after accounting for vascular risk factors and overall health status. After adjustment for sociodemographic and genetic confounders, AD risk was not associated with measures of physical activity and results did not change after further adjustment for vascular risk factors and overall health and functional status.

Conclusions: In this cohort, physical activity is associated with a lower risk of vascular dementia but not of Alzheimer disease. Further research is needed about the biologic mechanisms operating between physical activity and cognition.

Neurology, December, 2007

NEW SLIMMING DRUG?

Side-effects are the worry. It may be worth noting that a related drub, rimonabant, was banned because it caused people to go mad! Popular summary followed by abstract below.

Marijuana is well-known to increase appetite, and it does this by stimulating receptors in the brain. Now scientists have designed a new drug that blocks these receptors and suppresses appetite, leading to significant weight loss in obese people in just 12 weeks. The drug, called taranabant, has been tested in people for the first time, and the results are reported in the current issue of Cell Metabolism. The trial involved 533 obese patients, who were randomly divided into five groups and given 0.5, 2, 4 or 6mg per day of taranabant or a placebo for 12 weeks. Compared to the placebo, taranabant caused significant weight loss at all of the doses studied. In a shorter trial involving 36 overweight or moderately obese patients, those taking a single dose of 12mg of taranabant consumed 27 per cent less calories in a 24-hour period than those taking a placebo. At higher doses, side effects of the drug included nausea, vomiting and irritability.

Taranabant Cuts the Fat: New Hope for Cannabinoid-Based Obesity Therapies?

By Tim C. Kirkham

Endocannabinoid/cannabinoid receptor signaling acts centrally and peripherally to govern appetite and energy balance. While system stimulation promotes eating and energy storage, receptor blockade can reduce food intake and facilitate weight loss. In this issue of Cell Metabolism, Addy et al., 2008 test the therapeutic antiobesity potential of taranabant, a cannabinoid 1 receptor inverse agonist.

Cell Metabolism, Vol 7, 1-2, 09 January 2008

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

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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Oatmeal good for your heart?

This is basically a bit of nonsense. There is much research to show that you cannot affect your serum cholesterol (let alone your lifespan) by what you eat (though you can extend your lifespan by not eating!). But as someone who grew up on oat porridge for breakfast, I liked the thought below anyway. The journal abstract is here. It is a literature review with all the hazards of selectivity that are so often found with reviews

A new scientific review of the most current research shows the link between eating oatmeal and cholesterol reduction to be stronger than when the FDA initially approved the health claim's appearance on food labels in 1997. Dr. James W. Anderson, professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, co-authors "The Oatmeal-Cholesterol Connection: 10 Years Later" in the January/February 2008 issue of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. Anderson presents a contemporary analysis to determine if newer studies are consistent with the original conclusion reached by the FDA. His report says studies conducted during the past 15 years have, without exception, shown:

* total cholesterol levels are lowered through oat consumption;

* low-density lipoprotein (LDL, the "bad" cholesterol) is reduced without adverse effects on high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL, the "good" cholesterol), or triglyceride concentrations.

"Whole-grain products like oatmeal are among some of the best foods one can eat to improve cholesterol levels, in addition to other lifestyle choices," Anderson said. "Lifestyle choices, such as diet, should be the first line of therapy for most patients with moderate cholesterol risk given the expense, safety concerns, and intolerance related to cholesterol lowering drugs." More recent data indicate that whole-grain oats, as part of a lifestyle management program, may confer health benefits that extend beyond total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol reduction, Anderson said. Recent studies suggest eating oatmeal may:

* Reduce the risk for elevated blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and weight gain

* Reduce LDL cholesterol during weight-loss

* Provide favorable changes in the physical characteristics of LDL cholesterol particles, making them less susceptible to oxidation (oxidation is thought to lead to hardening of the arteries.)

* Supply unique compounds that may lead to reducing early hardening of the arteries

"Since the 80's, oatmeal has been scientifically recognized for its heart health benefits, and the latest research shows this evidence endures the test of time and should be embraced as a lifestyle option for the millions of Americans at-risk for heart disease," said Anderson. Anderson co-authored the comprehensive research review with Mark Andon, a researcher and nutrition director for Quaker-Tropicana. [Who sell oats]

Source

Kids hate clowns, research shows

BAD news for Coco and Blinko – British children don't like clowns and even older kids are scared of them. The news that will no doubt have clowns shedding tears was revealed in a poll of youngsters by researchers from the University of Sheffield who examined how to improve the decor of children's wards in hospitals.

The study, reported in the Nursing Standard magazine, found all of the 250 patients aged between four and 16 they quizzed disliked the use of clowns, with even the older ones finding them scary. "As adults we make assumptions about what works for children," said Penny Curtis, a senior lecturer in research at the university. "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable."

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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

Friday, January 18, 2008

"Unprecedented" results after new Alzheimer's treatment

A bit too good to be true but interesting

In findings described as "dramatic and unprecedented," researchers say they have found an injection treatment that leads to marked, sustained improvements in Alzheimer's disease symptoms. The study's lead author owns stock in a company that could profit from the findings, and the scientists acknowledged that other biases could have colored the results. Nonetheless, the improvements in patients with the notoriously intractable, memory-erasing illness were tested, widely noticed and are "worthy of further investigation," they wrote in a paper on their results.

The findings are of "significant scientific interest," added Sue Griffin, another Alzheimer's researcher. She is coeditor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuroinflammation, which published the study online Jan. 9.

More than five million Americans have the devastating, fatal brain disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association. The few effective treatments known generally do little more than delay its progression. By contrast, the new therapy, using a drug already approved to treat other illnesses, would seem to reverse key Alzheimer's symptoms within minutes -- though scientists aren't speaking of a "cure" because the treatment isn't expected to hold off the effects forever.

The study, from the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Southern California, focused on a molecule called tumor necrosis factor-alpha, or TNFalpha, a critical component of the brain's immune system. Normally, the molecule fine-tunes the transmission of electrical signals in the brain. But excesses of it seem to disrupt this regulatory process in Alzheimer's, the researchers said. They explored the effects of reducing levels of the molecule through injections of a drug called etanercept. The lead author, Edward Tobinick of UCLA, owns stock in Amgen, the company that makes the drug.

Within minutes of a spinal injection of etanercept (trade name Enbrel), molecules of the drug latch onto the TNFalpha protein, causing it to stop working, the researchers said. Etanercept is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat certain immune-related disorders.

There has already been considerable buzz around the use of anti-TNF therapeutics for various diseases; the new findings justify some of that excitement, the researchers said. Griffin discussed the results and their implications in a commentary in the journal alongside the research paper.

Although the paper itself focuses on only one patient, scientists said others with mild-to-severe Alzheimer's have also gotten the treatment. There was "sustained and marked improvement" in each case, according to an announcement of the findings from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where Griffin conducts research. The statement also called the results "dramatic and unprecedented."

The study's authors said some biases could have crept into the outcomes. "All participants, including the examining physicians, were aware of the treatment," they wrote in the paper, which focused on an 81-year-old doctor sick with Alzheimer's. This awareness could "bias the results, and a placebo effect cannot be ruled out." The placebo effect occurs when patients feel better simply thanks to knowing they've been treated.

However, family members, friends and objective tests all attested to considerable improvements in the patient's memory, they wrote. He went from not being able to state the date, day of the week, year, place, city, or state, to being able to give the day of the week, month, and state, California. The improvements lasted for at least seven weeks with weekly treatment, wrote Tobinick and his research colleague, Hyman Gross of the University of Southern California.

However, they noted, only some of Alzheimer's effects are likely to be reversible, as structural damage to brain cells eventually sets in for which there is no known cure.

Nonetheless, "it is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioral improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes" of treatment, Griffin said in the University of Arkansas annnouncement. "It is imperative that the medical and scientific communities immediately undertake to further investigate and characterize the physiological mechanisms involved. This gives all of us in Alzheimer's research a tremendous new clue about new avenues of research, which is so exciting and so needed."

Source

Leukaemia hopes

Identical twin sisters have led British scientists to a breakthrough in leukaemia research that promises more effective therapies with fewer harmful side-effects. By comparing Olivia Murphy, 4, who is in remission from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and her healthy sister, Isabella, researchers have traced the tumour stem cells that drive the most common form of childhood cancer. The discovery will enable doctors to screen young leukaemia patients to establish the severity of their illness and spare some the harrowing side effects of aggressive chemotherapy.

Olivia, from Bromley, southeast London, is a prime example of how hazardous this can be: although her treatment has been successful, it left her unable to fight off a chicken pox infection that blinded her in one eye. Chemotherapy has such harsh effects on children with leukaemia that between 1 and 2 per cent die because of the drug regime, according to Philip Ancliff, the consultant who treated Olivia at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

The stem-cell advance, from a team led by Tariq Enver, of the University of Oxford, and Mel Greaves, of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, will also open new approaches to treating the disease more effectively. It should allow the scientists to develop ways of targeting the stem cells that drive the blood cancer and cause relapses, so that patients can be cured. This form of the disease accounts for about 85 per cent of the 450 childhood leukaemias diagnosed in Britain each year.

The study, published in Science, could have further implications for the cancers that cause lung and colon tumours, as these are also thought to be propagated by rogue stem cells. Another application could be preventive treatment for children like Isabella who are known to be at high risk of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, whose “pre-leukaemic” cells could be killed before they cause any damage.

Professor Enver said: “This research means that we can now test whether the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children can be correlated with either the disappearance or persistence of the leukaemia stem cell. Our next goal is to target both the pre-leukaemic stem cell and the cancer stem cell itself with new or existing drugs to cure leukaemia while avoiding the debilitating and often harmful side effects of current treatments.”

Professor Greaves said: “This study of a twin pair discordant for leukaemia has identified the critical stem cells that initiate the disease and maintain it in a covert state for several years. We suspect that these cells can escape conventional chemotherapy and cause relapse during or after treatment. These are the cells that dictate disease course and provide the bullseye to target with new therapies.”

The twins have been crucial to the new research, as they are genetically identical but one has developed cancer whereas the other has not. The scientists found that the girls’ blood contains genetically abnormal cells known as pre-leukaemic cells. These were formed by a mutation known as translocation, in which two genes fuse to create an abnormal new one. This random event happened in a single cell in one of the twins — it is impossible to tell which one — while they were still in the womb. As the twins shared a placenta, the original mutant’s daughter cells populated the blood of both sisters.

Analysis of Isabella’s blood suggests that about one in 1,000 of her lymphocyte blood cells is preleukaemic. About 1 per cent of these pre-leukaemic cells are also stem cells that can start and sustain the cancer. As Isabella is still healthy, it is clear that the translocation cannot trigger leukaemia by itself. About one in 100 children has the translocation, but only one in 100 develops cancer. “The crucial question is in which cells does this start,” Professor Enver said. “What is the critical hit? Isabella gave us an opportunity almost to look back in time, to see which cells the cancer begins in.”

They did this by comparing the twins’ blood. In Olivia, but not in Isabella, some pre-leukaemic stem cells had acquired a second genetic mutation that turned them cancerous. This could have begun in a single cell, possibly because of an infection.

The discovery will help doctors to monitor Isabella, and children like her, so that further genetic damage in her pre-leukaemic stem cells is caught early. Her risk of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is estimated at one in ten, compared with one in 10,000 among children with no family history. It will fall with every year that she remains healthy. By the time she is 14, her pre-leukaemic stem cells should have died naturally. “Pre-leukaemic cells are still evident, so the sword of Damocles is still hanging there,” Dr Ancliff said. “Hopefully, we will see them disappear.”

The study also identifies precisely the cancerous stem cells that propagate the cancer. This should enable doctors to adjust the strength of chemotherapy to match a child’s condition. As cancer stem cells can survive conventional chemotherapy, the research could also help scientists to design drugs that kill cancers.

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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Four healthy habits to give 14 more years?

This is probably just a class effect -- particularly as it based on self-reports. Middle class people are healthier and use more "virtuous" self-descriptions. There also seems to be a foolish assumption that the various "effects" are cumulative rather than correlated

People who adopt four healthy habits seem to live on average 14 years longer than those who adopt none of them, a new study indicates. The habits are not smoking, exercising, drinking alcohol in moderation and eating five servings of fruit and vegetables daily.

KayTee Khaw and colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council in the U.K. studied records of 20,000 older British adults who had filled out health questionnaires between 1993 and 1997.

After factoring in age, the researchers found that over an average of 11 years, people who undertook none of the four health habits were four times more likely to have died than those who adopted all four. People in this less healthy group had on average the same risk of dying as people 14 years older in the second group, the researchers said.

The participants were aged 45 to 79 when they filled out the questionnaires. Deaths among the participants were recorded until 2006. Moderate drinking was defined as between one-half and seven pints of beer, or glasses of wine, weekly.

The study formed part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, conducted across ten European countries, billed as the largest study of diet and health ever undertaken.

The findings need to be confirmed in other populations, but the results "strongly suggest that these four achievable lifestyle changes could have a marked improvement on the health of middle-aged and older people," the researchers said in an announcement of the findings. The research appeared online Jan. 8 in the research journal PLoS Biology.

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Cloned 'Frankenfoods' are given the all clear

About time!

The US food health authority has authorised the sale of meat and milk from cloned livestock, declaring the controversial products as safe to eat as those from normal animals. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will issue a long-awaited risk assessment report ruling that products from cloned animals are safe, contrary to critics' claims. The body has been deliberating for six years whether to give the green light for marketing foods from clones.

In 2006 it declared that products from cloned animals were no different from those of beasts raised normally, but told producers not to market them until it had issued food safety rules. The prospect of so-called "Frankenfoods" has caused concern among food safety and animal rights groups and the US dairy industry, which fears its image and exports will be damaged.

The European Commission vowed yesterday to consult consumers about meat and milk from clones, before giving its own ruling in May. The European Food Safety Authority on Friday had said that meat and milk from healthy cattle and pig clones was probably safe for humans to eat.

The FDA's ruling has been held up by strong resistance. A Washington-based campaign group, the Centre for Food Safety, condemned the US plan to approve food from clones. "The impacts on US agriculture, trade, and the integrity of the food supply are still largely unknown," it said in a statement last month, responding to earlier reports that the FDA was set to make its ruling. "There are still all those unanswered questions," biologist Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union said. "The samples (used by the FDA in its research) are very small."

It will still be years before meat and milk from clones appears on US supermarket shelves, reports said. The animals involved, clones of the highest quality livestock, are too valuable to slaughter or milk and better used for breeding, the Washington Post said, in a report that cited a pre-release copy of the FDA report.

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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].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

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