Previous Medical News

2010/06/26

1.  Whooping Cough Epidemic in California Kills 5 Babies (California Department of Public Health, 6/24/10)
Whooping cough is now an epidemic in California and is on pace to break a 50-year record for infections and deaths for the year. As of June 15, California had 910 recorded cases of the highly contagious disease, and five babies — all under 3 months of age — have died from the disease this year. Children should be vaccinated against the disease and parents, caregivers and infants need a booster shot. A typical case of the disease, formally called pertussis, starts with a cough and runny nose for one to two weeks, followed by weeks to months of rapid coughing fits that sometimes end with a whooping sound. Fever is rare.

2.  New HIV Test Cuts 'Window Period' (FDA, 6/21/10)
The FDA has approved the first HIV test to detect the AIDS virus itself as well as antibodies to the virus. Most currently used HIV tests detect anti-HIV antibodies. But it takes two to eight weeks -- 25 days on average -- for a person newly infected with HIV to make detectable antibodies. Meanwhile, that person is highly infectious to others. The new test still doesn't work immediately after infection. But it cuts the crucial widow period between infection and detection by at least a week, and it could be as much as 20 days.

3.  Stem cells reverse blindness caused by burns (New England Journal of Medicine, 6/23/10)
Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells. The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. Stem cell transplants offer hope to the thousands of people worldwide every year who suffer chemical burns on their corneas from heavy-duty cleansers or other substances at work or at home. The approach would not help people with damage to the optic nerve or macular degeneration, which involves the retina. Nor would it work in people who are completely blind in both eyes, because doctors need at least some healthy tissue that they can transplant. In the study researchers took a small number of stem cells from a patient's healthy eye, multiplied them in the lab and placed them into the burned eye, where they were able to grow new corneal tissue to replace what had been damaged. Since the stem cells are from their own bodies, the patients do not need to take anti-rejection drugs. Currently, people with eye burns can get an artificial cornea, a procedure that carries such complications as infection and glaucoma, or they can receive a transplant using stem cells from a cadaver, but that requires taking drugs to prevent rejection.

4.  Inhaled Insulin May Help Treat Diabetes (The Lancet, 6/26/10)
Inhaled insulin proved to be as effective at lowering blood sugar levels as standard insulin injection treatment, and with minimal side effects, among patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes. Blood sugar levels were similar in the two groups. Patients using the inhaler gained less weight and had fewer episodes of hypoglycemia. Patients using the inhaler reported more side effects with coughing and upper respiratory infections.

5.  Nine in 10 Americans eat too much salt: 5 Foods Blamed (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 6/24/10)
No adult should eat more than a teaspoon of salt each day. 70 percent of adults - including people with high blood pressure, all African-Americans and everyone over 40 - should actually limit their salt intake to a more restrictive two-thirds of a teaspoon. Sodium increases the risk of high blood pressure, which is major cause of heart disease and stroke. Salt - or sodium chloride - is the main source of sodium for most people. Overall, only 1 in 10 adults meet the teaspoon standard. But for those who should be even stingier, only 1 in 18 manage to do it. The vast majority of dietary salt comes from processed and restaurant foods. The CDC report identifies five foods that give Americans most of their salt:

• Yeast breads
• Chicken and mixed chicken dinners
• Pizza
• Pasta dishes
• Cold cuts

6.  Coffee may cut risk of head and neck cancers (Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 6/22/10)
Those who drink a lot of coffee have a lower rate of head and neck cancers. The risk of developing head and neck cancers was 12 percent lower in people who drank coffee compared with those who didn't. For cancer of the voice box, or larynx, coffee didn't seem to play a role; nor did tea or decaffeinated coffee for any type of head and neck cancer. And the more coffee consumed, the lower the cancer risk. For cancer of the voice box, or larynx, coffee didn't seem to play a role; nor did tea or decaffeinated coffee for any type of head and neck cancer. Prior studies have shown lower rates of kidney and ovarian cancer among coffee drinkers, while there appears to be no effect for colon cancer.

7.  Botox May Affect Ability to Feel Emotions (Emotions, 6/10)
Botox injections were the No. 1 nonsurgical cosmetic procedure performed in 2009. Botox injections may do more than smooth your wrinkles and limit your facial expressions. They may also dampen your ability to feel emotions. For at least some emotions, if you take away some part of the facial expression, you take away some of the emotional experience. Botox injections smooth wrinkles by paralyzing the underlying muscles that cause the wrinkles.

8.  More children, higher stroke risk for women? (Stroke, 6/10/10)
Women who have given birth to several children may have a faster rate of plaque build-up in the neck arteries than those with fewer or no children. There may be something about pregnancy itself that contributes to progression in the intima-media thickness, or IMT, of the carotid arteries in the neck. An increase in IMT over time serves as a marker of plaque buildup in the arteries. Blood cholesterol levels go up during pregnancy, as does resistance to the hormone insulin -- which, outside of pregnancy, is a precursor to type 2 diabetes. Pregnancy also alters levels of sex hormones, including estrogen and testosterone, and creates a state of inflammation in the body.

9.  Nearly 70 Percent of Older Americans Obese (Journal of the American Medical Association, 6/23/10)
Nearly 70 percent of adults over age 60 are overweight or obese, putting them at higher risk of diabetes and other diseases.

10.  Early menopause associated with CV events (The Endocrine Society Annual Meeting, 6/21/10)
Women who experience early natural or surgical menopause face an elevated risk for cardiovascular disease events, independent of cardiovascular risk factors and hormone therapy.

11.  Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Diabetes (Endocrine Society's annual meeting in San Diego, 6/19/10)
Low levels of vitamin D could lead to poor blood sugar control among diabetics. Screening and vitamin D supplementation as part of routine primary care will improve the health of all Americans.

12.  B vitamins make no difference in heart disease, cancer (Journal of the American Medical Association, 6/23/10)
B vitamins (folic acid and B12) do not lower the risk of a second heart attack in people who've already survived one. The findings also show that the B vitamins -- folic acid and vitamin B12 do not increase your cancer risk. Early studies had shown that blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine were high in people with heart disease. That led some researchers to speculate that using B vitamins to lower homocysteine levels might in turn protect the heart and decrease the risk of strokes. The researchers randomly assigned more than 12,000 heart attack survivors to take either placebo pills or vitamin B12 (1 mg daily) and folic acid (2 mg). Then they followed the patients for almost seven years to see if the vitamins would protect them.

13.  Reusable grocery bags found to be full of bacteria (American Chemistry Council, 6/25/10)
Shoppers who use reusable grocery bags need to wash them after you've emptied them. Nearly every bag examined for bacteria found large amounts of bugs. Coliform bacteria, suggesting raw-meat or uncooked-food contamination, was in half of the bags, and E. coli was found in 12 percent of the bags. Running the bags through a washer or cleaning them by hand reduced bacteria levels to almost nothing.

14.  MP3 Players Might Harm Hearing (Archives of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery, 6/10)
People using MP3 players are leaving themselves open to temporary changes in hearing, which over time might result in permanent hearing loss. Prolonged listening at maximum volume over time can result in hearing loss. It's cumulative -- it could take 20 years to 30 years. The ear doesn’t care what the sound it is, just how loud that sound is and for what time duration. For safe listening keep the volume at a level where you can still hear conversation around you.

15.  Too much tea raises the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, 6/20/10)
Drinking tea raised the risk of RA in post-menopausal women. The study involved more than 76,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79 in the US and found significant association between tea consumption in any amount and a 40 percent rise in the risk of getting RA. Women who took more than 4 cups of tea per day upped the risk by as much as 78 percent. Effects of black tea were assessed in this study and green and herbal teas were excluded. Coffee, filtered and otherwise and caffeinated and decaffeinated has no similar effect.

16.  Lack of Sleep Triggers 'Migraine' Proteins (American Headache Society 52nd Annual Scientific Meeting, 6/24/10)
Not getting enough sleep or having poor sleep habits can trigger migraines or cause occasional migraines to become frequent. Rats deprived of REM sleep showed changes in the expression of key proteins that suppress and trigger chronic pain. The sleep-deprived rats secreted high levels of proteins that arouse the nervous system and low levels of proteins that shut it down.

17.  Watching Too Much TV Could Kill You (International Journal of Epidemiology, 6/24/10)
Watching television may do more than just rot your brain it could kill you. The risk of dying from heart disease increased 7 percent for every hour spent watching TV.

18.  New study supports exclusive breastfeeding for first six months: Lowers Babies' Illness Risk (Pediatrics, 7/10)
When moms exclusively breastfeed their newborns and infants for the first six months of life, they can significantly reduce their baby's risk of serious lung and intestinal infections.

19.  Warm But Watchful Parents Can Keep Kids From Heavy Drinking (Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 7/10)
Although parents may not be able to stop their teen from experimenting with alcohol, they do have a lot of influence when it comes to preventing their child from developing a heavy drinking habit. Parents who are both warm with their children and rigorous about wanting to know where their teen is spending time and with whom are less likely to have teens that engage in heavy drinking (defined as more than five drinks in a row). Such parents are also more likely to have children that have non-drinking friends. By contrast, parents who are more "indulgent" -- namely, less focused on accountability, but high on warmth -- have teens who face a threefold greater risk for heaving drinking. And so-called "strict" parents who are high on accountability but less warm have double the chance that their teen will drink heavily.

20.  Anxiety in youth linked to heart attacks later on (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 6/10)
Men diagnosed with anxiety in their late teens or early 20s are more than twice as likely to have heart disease or a heart attack later in life than their more laid-back peers. People with anxiety disorders feel excessive or irrational worry and can have anxiety-related physical symptoms, such as fatigue, headaches, trembling, sweating, panic, and nausea.

21.  Recall: Over 2 million cribs recalled amid safety concerns from 7 manufacturers (Consumer Product Safety Commission, 6/24/10)
More than 2 million cribs are being recalled by Evenflo, Delta, and five other manufacturers. They are using very inferior hardware to make the side go up and down. And if the hardware breaks or loosens, it opens a dangerous gap where a child can fall out or get trapped -- and possibly suffocate against the mattress. The cribs recalled include:

• About 750,000 Jenny Lind cribs made by Evenflo
• About 747,000 Delta cribs made by Delta Enterprise
• About 306,000 Bonavita, Babi Italia, and ISSI cribs made by LaJobi Inc.
• About 156,000 Million Dollar Baby cribs made by Bexco Enterprises
• About 130,000 Jardine cribs made by Jardine Enterprise Ltd.
• About 50,000 Simmons cribs made by Simmons Juvenile Products
• 40,000 to 50,000 drop-side cribs and an unknown number of stationary-side

Child Craft brand cribs made by Child Craft Industries Inc. (now out of business; this recall does not extend to cribs made by Foundations Worldwide Inc., which purchased the "Child Craft" name). For complete information on these products, including the model numbers and specific model names, see the CSPC web site.

22.  Recall: United Pet Group Voluntarily Recalls Pro-Pet Adult Daily Vitamin Supplement for Dogs Because of Possible Salmonella Health Risk (FDA, 6/22/10)
United Pet Group, Cincinnati, Ohio is voluntarily recalling all unexpired lots of its PRO-PET ADULT DAILY VITAMIN Supplement tablets for Dogs due to possible Salmonella contamination.

23.  Recall: Kellogg's Cereal Recall Due to Odd Smell (Kellogg Co., 6/25/10)
The Kellogg Co. has issued a voluntary recall of 28 million boxes of some of its most popular cereals because of an "uncharacteristic off-flavor and smell" coming from packaging. The recall includes Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, and Honey Smacks that have been sold around the country. Kelloggs has identified a substance in the package liners that can produce an uncharacteristic waxy-like off taste and smell.