Doctors Ordering Transfusions to Get Patients into Drug Trials

Canadian researchers say they've noticed a disturbing trend: Cancer doctors ordering unnecessary blood transfusions so that seriously ill patients can qualify for drug trials. In a letter published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers report on three cases during the last year in Toronto hospitals in which physicians ordered blood transfusions that could make the patients appear healthier for the sole purpose of getting them into clinical trials for chemotherapy drugs. The practice raises both medical and ethical concerns, the authors say.

"On the physician side, you want to do the best for your patients," said co-author Dr. Jeannie Callum, director of transfusion medicine and tissue banks at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. "If these patients have no other options left to them, you want to do everything you can to get them into a clinical trial," she said. "But the patient is put in a horrible position, which is, 'If you want in to the trial, you have to have the transfusion.' But the transfusion only carries risks to them," she added.

A particularly serious complication of blood transfusions is transfusion-related acute lung injury, which occurs in about one in 5,000 transfusions and usually requires the patient to go on life support, said Callum. But besides the potential for physical harm, enrolling very sick people in a clinical trial can also skew the study's results making the drug perform worse than it might in patients whose disease was not as far along. The unnecessary transfusions were discovered by the Toronto Transfusion Collaboration, a consortium of six city hospitals formed to carefully review all transfusions as a means of improving patient safety, Callum said.

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More Older Americans Living With HIV

Better treatments are extending the lives of people with HIV, but aging with the AIDS-causing virus takes a toll that will challenge the health care system, a new report says. A survey of about 1,000 HIV-positive men and women ages 50 and older living in New York City found more than half had symptoms of depression, a much higher rate than others their age without HIV. And 91 percent also had other chronic medical conditions, such as arthritis (31 percent), hepatitis (31 percent), neuropathy (30 percent) and high blood pressure (27 percent). About 77 percent had two or more other conditions. About half had progressed to AIDS before they got the HIV diagnosis, the report found.

"The good news is antiretroviral therapies are working and people are living. If all goes well, they will have life expectancies similar to those without HIV," said Daniel Tietz, executive director of the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America. "But a 55-year-old with HIV tends to look like a 70-year-old without HIV in terms of the other conditions they need treatment for," he said Wednesday at a meeting of the Office of National AIDS Policy at the White House in Washington, D.C. The research included interviews with 640 men, 264 women and 10 transgender people. Dozens of experts on HIV and aging attended the meeting, which was intended to identify the needs of older adults with HIV and to explore ways to improve services to them.

Currently, about 27 percent of those with HIV are over 50. By 2015, more than half will be, said the report. Because of their special needs, this poses challenges for public health systems and organizations that serve seniors and people with HIV, Tietz said. HIV can be isolating, Tietz said. Seventy percent of older Americans with HIV live alone, more than twice the rate of others their age, while about 15 percent live with a partner, according to the report. The survey found that loneliness was higher among HIV-positive adults than for other older Americans. One reason is that many men and women conceal the condition from friends and family for fear of stigma or rejection, both real and imagined, Tietz said.

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Mental Health Issues Differ for U.S. Male, Female Vets

Mental health issues confronted by U.S. veterans returning from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan differ by gender, new research suggests. Female veterans are more likely to have a diagnosis of depression than are their male counterparts, according to a study of nearly 330,000 veterans who received health care from the Veterans Administration from 2002 to 2008. They are also generally younger than their male counterparts and more likely to be black. In contrast, male veterans were found to be more prone than their female peers to post-traumatic stress disorder and/or alcohol abuse.

The analysis was led by study author Shira Maguen of the San Francisco VA Medical Center. She and her colleagues reviewed data on more than 329,000 veterans of "Operation Enduring Freedom" and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" obtained from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. "In an era in which a greater proportion of women have served in the U.S. military in a much wider variety of military occupational specialties than ever before, our results contribute to a better understanding of the characteristics of women seeking VA health care," the study team noted in a news release.

The authors also said it was important to understand how differences between men and women might affect mental health outcomes. "Gender differences are important to consider as the Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense continue to expand and strengthen programs to evaluate and provide care for a new generation of returning veterans," they added. Maguen and her colleagues report their observations in the Oct. 21 online issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

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Fish Oil Might Help Fight Gum Disease

Eating even moderate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, typically found in foods such as salmon and other fatty fish, may help ward off gum disease, new research suggests. Researchers divided nearly 9,200 adults aged 20 and up participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2004 into three groups based on their consumption of omega-3 fatty acids. Consumption was assessed by asking participants to recall exactly what they'd eaten during the prior 24 hours. Dental exams showed participants in the middle and upper third for omega-3 fatty acid consumption were between 23 percent and 30 percent less likely to have gum disease than those who consumed the least amount of omega-3 fatty acids.

Specifically, the researchers found that the omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) were associated with less gum disease. The association with linolenic acid (LNA) was not statistically significant. "Eating a very feasible amount of fatty fish seems to have a lot of benefit," said senior study author Dr. Kenneth Mukamal, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "But we found no benefits to eating tons of this stuff." Since the study was a snapshot of a single day's diet, Mukamal said researchers could not determine exactly how much fish oil people should consume regularly.

The following guidelines from major organizations such as the American Heart Association, which recommends eating fatty fish at least twice a week, is probably a good idea, not just for gum disease but for overall health, they noted. "There are a lot of benefits of omega-3 fatty acids. We have good evidence they prevent sudden death caused by heart rhythm disturbances. We have some evidence omega-3 fatty acids can reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke," Mukamal said. "This is a great example of another potential benefit." In the study, researchers took into account other factors that could affect the likelihood of having gum disease, such as age, income, education and other health and socioeconomic factors.

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Teens, Parents Often Lie About Illicit Drug Use

Don't expect teens or their parents to be honest about their drug use, a new study shows. Researchers often survey teens to determine the extent of drug use, but this new research finds that respondents frequently lie even if they know they'll be tested for drugs or they're told the results will be confidential.The findings are important for pediatricians to understand, said study lead author Dr. Virginia Delaney-Black. "If you think it's important to know whether a kid is doing drugs specifically heroin, prescription pain killers or cocaine then don't rely on what the teens report," she said.

Perhaps some folks don't trust the confidentiality agreement; others may think their behavior is no one else's business or they may fear reprisal. "Many of us feel that this kind of personal information is personal, and that we don't have to tell other people what the truth is," said Delaney-Black, a professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Michigan. For this study, researchers surveyed more than 200 teens and 200 caregivers 80 percent were mothers about their drug use and then analyzed their hair for at least one drug. The participants were black, poor and from an inner-city urban area.

The study findings, reported in the November print issue of the journal Pediatrics, were published online Oct. 25. No teens said they'd recently used opiates such as heroin or prescription painkillers, but the hair tests showed that nearly 7 percent had. Among parents, 3 percent admitted using opiates while testing revealed use by 7 percent. About 1 percent of teens reported recent cocaine use, while testing revealed the actual number was about one-third. Hair analysis showed 28 percent of parents had used cocaine but only about 6 percent admitted it.

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One-Third of U.S. Adults Could Have Diabetes by 2050: CDC

The number of American adults with diabetes could double or triple by 2050 if current trends continue, warns a federal government study released Friday. The number of new diabetes cases a year will increase from 8 per 1,000 in 2008 to 15 per 1,000 in 2050, predicts the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2050, between one-fifth and one-third of all adults could have diabetes with virtually all the increase attributed to type 2 diabetes, which is largely preventable.

An aging population, an increase in minority groups at higher risk for diabetes, and the fact that diabetes patients are living longer are among the reasons for the steep projected rise. "These are alarming numbers that show how critical it is to change the course of type 2 diabetes," Ann Albright, director of CDC's Division of Diabetes Translation, said in an agency news release. "Successful programs to improve lifestyle choices on healthy eating and physical activity must be made more widely available, because the stakes are too high and the personal toll too devastating to fail."

Another expert agreed. "These data are accurate and reflect reality," said Dr. Mary Ann Banerji, professor of medicine and director of the Diabetes Treatment Center at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, New York City. "Taking into consideration minorities and longer life expectancy, the real burden of diabetes is much greater than many people thought." Banerji believes that "we need to act now. Immediate changes in diet, physical activity, stress and sleep are known to decrease diabetes and obesity. We can make changes in our physical environment to promote greater physical activity and we should consider changes in national food policy."

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Mom's Suicide May Raise Child's Odds for Later Suicide Attempt

New research out of Sweden suggests that a mother's suicide may influence the risk for later suicide attempts in her children, even more so than the suicide of a father. The research doesn't prove that suicides by parents, either the mother or the father, causes offspring to face a higher risk of trying to kill themselves. And the researchers noted that the number of offspring in the study who ended up hospitalized after a suicide attempt was small.

Still, "pediatricians, surviving parents and educators should be aware of the possible risk and provide appropriate referral sources for these children as needed," said study lead author S. Janet Kuramoto, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2007, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for almost 34,600 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide is more prevalent among men, with about four times as many males as females killing themselves.

Previous studies have hinted that the children of parents who committed suicide were at higher risk of feeling suicidal themselves, but it wasn't clear if the problems were connected to the parent's suicide or to the fact that the parent died, whatever the cause, Kuramoto said. The authors of the new study sought to gain more insight. They examined Swedish databases to discover what happened to 5,600 children whose mothers committed suicide and 17,847 whose fathers committed suicide during the years 1973-2003. The researchers compared that data to rates of children whose parents died in accidents.

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Genetics May Play Role in Vitamin E Levels

Scientists have identified common genetic variations that may explain differences in peoples' ability to process vitamin E.Vitamin E is an antioxidant found in a number of oils, nuts and seeds as well as brightly-colored produce such as peppers, tomatoes and pumpkins. Previous research has found that vitamin E consumption has inconsistent effects on the amount of the vitamin in a person's body. It's been suspected that this is due to genetic variations. In this study, researchers led by Robert Parker of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, looked at two versions of cytochrome P450 4F2 (CYP4F2), the enzyme that breaks down vitamin E.

One variant, W12G, is more common in black Americans, and the V433M version is more common in Americans of European descent. Compared to the normal CYP4F2 enzyme, the W12G variant was better able to degrade several commonly occurring forms of vitamin E called tocopherols, while the V433M variant was less able to break down these forms of the vitamin. These enzyme differences may help explain normal variations in vitamin E levels within and among populations, and may also help in the interpretation of inconsistent results of clinical trials with vitamin E, said the researchers.

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Depression, Anxiety May Raise Surgery Risks

People with depression and anxiety have a slightly increased risk of death after undergoing surgery, a new study suggests. U.S. researchers analyzed data from 35,539 surgical patients admitted to intensive care units between Oct. 1, 2003 and Sept. 30, 2006. Of those patients, 8,922 had an existing psychiatric condition, including 5,500 with depression, 2,913 with post-traumatic stress disorder, 2,473 with anxiety, 793 with bipolar disorder, and 621 with psychosis. Initial analysis showed that the death rates within 30 days after surgery were similar for patients with and without psychiatric illness 3.8 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

when the researchers adjusted for other factors, the death rate was higher for patients with a psychiatric condition, according to the report in the October issue of the journal Archives of Surgery. Further analysis showed that the increased risk of death was associated with depression and anxiety, but not any other psychiatric condition. Also, death rates were higher among patients with psychiatric conditions who had respiratory or digestive system surgery, but not for those who had surgery involving the circulatory, nervous or musculoskeletal systems.

"Several potential mechanisms exist to explain these findings," Dr. Thad E. Abrams, of the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, and colleagues wrote in a news release from the journal's publisher. "First, studies indicate that patients with depression frequently do not adhere to medical recommendations for underlying medical conditions," the study authors noted. "It is therefore plausible that such undertreated conditions may affect postoperative care and outcomes. Second, patients with existing psychiatric comorbidity may be more likely to undergo surgery by a lower-quality surgeon or hospital. Third, pre-existing psychiatric comorbidity may serve as an indicator for greater severity of surgical risk."

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New CPR Guidelines Emphasize Compressions First

Don't fret about mouth-to-mouth. The average, untrained person can still save a life by focusing on chest compressions first, say new guidelines from the American Heart Association. The simplified form of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, focuses on giving chest compressions to keep the blood and the oxygen in the blood flowing to the heart and brain. The group's advice comes on the heels of studies in the past year trumpeting that a compression-only approach is as good or better than compression plus mouth-to-mouth. It updates guidelines from 2005.

"For a variety of reasons, when someone suddenly collapses in cardiac arrest, people often don't start any type of CPR, and one of the barriers, we believe, is that people think it's fairly complicated to do CPR," explained Dr. Michael Sayre, co-author of the new guidelines and chairman of the American Heart Association's emergency cardiovascular care committee. "But chest compressions alone are easy, and anyone can do it," he said. "Chest compressions actually act like an artificial heart, pumping blood to the heart and brain," Sayre noted. "And, that blood often will have a reserve of oxygen."

The American Heart Association recommends that if an adult is unresponsive and not breathing or is having occasional unusual breaths that sound like gasping, any bystander should first call 911 and then begin chest compressions. If someone else is nearby, send that person in search of an automatic external defibrillator, a device that can shock the heart back into normal rhythm. "To give the victim the best chance of survival, three actions must occur within the first moments of a cardiac arrest: activation of the EMS system, provision of CPR and operation of a defibrillator," the new guidelines state.

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Kids Under 6 Account for Two-Thirds of Drug-Related ER Visits

Children aged 5 years or younger accounted for 68.9 percent of the estimated 100,340 U.S. emergency department visits in 2008 that involved accidental ingestion of prescription medicines and other drugs, says a U.S. government report. About two-fifths of these children were 2 years old and 29.5 percent were 1 year old. Males accounted for 55.7 of the cases, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) report released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Pharmaceuticals were involved in 99 percent of cases involving young children, while illicit drugs or alcohol were involved in only 1 percent. "While caretakers may be alert to securing obviously dangerous substances such as cleaning products and chemicals, they may be less aware of the danger of leaving pharmaceutical products belonging to parents or other family members in accessible places," noted the agency in a press release. "This can pose a serious threat of accidental ingestion by infants and toddlers."

Drugs that act on the central nervous system such as acetaminophen products, ibuprofen products, and benzodiazepines were involved in 40.8 percent of the cases. Of these cases, most involved pain relievers and anxiety and insomnia drugs. Other types of drugs accidentally ingested by young children included cardiovascular medications, respiratory system medications, antidepressants and antipsychotics , topical medications and drugs for metabolic disorders. The report said that most of the youngsters were treated and released, while 8.7 percent were admitted to the hospital. Of those, about 20 percent were admitted to the intensive or critical care unit.

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Eye Exercises Might Boost Fine Depth Perception

A new study says a push-pull training method is a good way to correct a condition called sensory eye dominance, in which an imbalance between the vision strength of the eyes impairs fine depth perception. This method which involves making the weaker eye work while the stronger eye is suppressed could be especially important for people who depend on fine depth perception for their work, such as dentists, surgeons, machinists and athletes. It's also likely that the method can be adapted for treating children with amblyopia (also known as lazy eye), which affects 2 to 3 percent of children in the United States, said the authors of the study published in the Oct. 14 online edition of the journal Current Biology.

"After a 10-day training period, we found our participants' sensory eye dominance is significantly reduced as the two eyes become more balanced. As a consequence, their depth perception also improves significantly," Teng Leng Ooi, of Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University, said in a news release from the journal's publisher. It's not clear how the push-pull training method works to readjust the balance between the eyes, the study authors noted. "Possibly, by causing the strong eye to be suppressed at all times during the training, we reduce the inhibitory hold of the strong eye on the weak eye," Ooi said. Further studies are needed to determine exactly how this eye training technique improves depth perception, the study authors suggested.

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U.S. Hispanics Outlive General Population: CDC

Hispanics in the United States outlive whites by almost three years and blacks by almost eight years, according to a new report. The report, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, confirms the so called "Hispanic paradox" that despite reports of poverty and health issues, Hispanics live longer than others. "We have known that Hispanics have had a longer length of life," said Jane L. Delgado, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, who was not involved in the research.

But the findings may surprise the average person, "because most of the time what people hear about is what problems Hispanics have," she said. These include lower income, lack of health insurance, high-risk jobs, limited access to health care and being overweight and diabetic, she said. Life expectancy for Hispanics at birth is 80.6 years; for whites, 78.1 years and for blacks, 72.9 years. In 2006, life expectancy for all Americans at birth was 77.7 years.

"Although seemingly paradoxical, these results are consistent with the findings of numerous studies, which show a Hispanic mortality advantage despite this population's lower socioeconomic status," report author Elizabeth Arias from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, said in a CDC news release. So what's the secret? Although various theories have surfaced, experts can't say for sure why Hispanics enjoy greater longevity, but Delgado said studies are under way. "It's probably not genetic," Delgado said. "The longer people are in the United States they start to lose some of these health advantages."

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Many With Terminal Cancer Still Getting Routine Screens

Many patients with incurable cancer are still being screened for common cancers, although these tests are unlikely to provide any benefit, researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City have found. Specifically, many patients diagnosed with advanced lung, colorectal, pancreatic, gastroesophageal or breast cancer are still undergoing the ordeal of routine breast, prostate and colon cancer screening, said the researchers. Not only might these patients suffer from invasive procedures like colonoscopies near the end of life, the researchers said, but they face the unnecessary risk of additional tests, biopsies and psychological distress resulting from the detection of new malignancies.

"For patients living with advanced cancer, cancer screening should not be a routine procedure," said lead researcher Dr. Camelia S. Sima, an assistant attending biostatistician. "Patients living with advanced malignancies and their doctors should engage in a realistic conversation about the risks and benefits associated with cancer screening in face of a severely limited life expectancy," she added. The report is published in the Oct. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. For the study, Sima's team collected data on 87,736 Medicare patients aged 65 years or older with advanced lung, colorectal, pancreatic, gastroesophageal or breast cancer, whose data was reported in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) tumor registries.

These patients were followed from their diagnosis, between 1998 and 2005, until they died or to the end of 2007. To compare the findings to a control group, the researchers also collected data on 87,307 similar Medicare patients without cancer, who were matched with the other individuals for age, race, sex and SEER data. In both patient groups, Sima's team looked at the rates of mammograms for breast cancer, Pap tests for cervical cancer, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests for prostate cancer and endoscopy for colon cancer. The investigators found that among women with advanced cancer, 8.9 percent had a mammogram, compared with 22 percent of those without cancer; and 5.8 percent of the cancer patients had a Pap test, compared with 12.5 percent of those without cancer.

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Cancer Patients' Secondary Symptoms Need Attention: Study

Many cancer patients with pain or depression also experience physical symptoms, such as fatigue, dry mouth and nausea, that can cause disability, a new study shows. Doctors need to recognize and treat these symptoms in order to improve quality of life for cancer patients, said Dr. Kurt Kroenke, of the Richard Roudebush VA Medical Center, Indiana University, and Regenstrief Institute Inc. in Indianapolis, and colleagues. They analyzed data from 405 cancer patients who had either pain or depression and found that all the patients had at least one of 22 physical symptoms examined in the study. More than half of patients reported 15 of the 22 symptoms.

The most common symptoms were fatigue (97.5 percent), difficulty sleeping (about 79 percent), pain in limbs or joints (78 percent), back pain (nearly 75 percent) and memory problems (72 percent). The patients also reported an average of almost 17 disability days in the previous four weeks, including 5.7 days in bed and 11.2 days where they reduced their activity by 50 percent or more. Thirty-two percent of patients reported three to five outpatient visits in the previous three months; 28 percent had six to 10 visits, and 26 percent had more than 10 visits. Thirty-eight percent were hospitalized at least once, and one-third visited the emergency department one or more times.

The findings are published Oct. 11 in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. "This study strengthens the case for improving the recognition and treatment of somatic symptoms in patients with cancer," the researchers said in a news release from the journal publisher. "Given the strong association with disability and the high prevalence of many types of symptoms, recognizing and managing symptoms may be important in improving quality of life and functional status regardless of type or phase of cancer," they concluded.

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For Many Gay Youth, Bullying Exacts a Deadly Toll

A series of suicides involving bullied gay teens has shocked much of America this past month. On Sept. 9, 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Greenburg, Ind., hanged himself after enduring constant taunts from bullies at school. Two weeks later, 13-year-old Asher Brown from suburban Houston shot himself soon after revealing he was gay. And on Sept. 27, another 13-year-old, Seth Walsh of Techachapi, Calif., died after injuries sustained from hanging himself. He too, had endured "relentless" bullying from other kids, according to The New York Times.

One more death the Sept. 22 suicide of 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi catapulted these and other suicides of young gay teens into the media spotlight. Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, allegedly broadcast surreptitious video footage over the Internet of Clementi in an intimate encounter with a young man. Last week, Clementi left a message on his Facebook page: "Jumping off bridge sorry," and then did just that. Cases like these are far from rare, and "this may be the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. David Reitman, chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender and Questioning Special Interest Group, part of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

In a statement, he said "the tragic outcome in these cases underscores the profound consequences that bullying and harassment can have on a young person." Of course any child, gay or straight, can become victims of bullying, as the much-publicized suicide in January of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley, Mass., showed all too tragically. She had withstood months of bullying from schoolmates after moving from Ireland. But experts say adolescence renders young people especially vulnerable to harassment, and the difficulties of grappling with sexuality can complicate that further.

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Mother's Stress, Interference May Worsen Child's Asthma

A mother's negative emotions or behavior can worsen the severity of her child's asthma, new research suggests.In the study, Japanese researchers followed 223 mothers for a year in order to assess how their stress levels, coping skills and parenting styles influenced asthma symptoms in their children, aged 2 to 12 years old. Among children older than 7 years of age, a worsening of asthma was associated with mothers' excessive interference due to being overprotective. Among children younger than 7, more severe asthma symptoms were associated with mothers' chronic irritation and anger or a tendency to suppress expressions of emotion, the investigators found.

The study was published online Oct. 7 in the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine. "A mother's stress may be verbally or non verbally conveyed to her child, and affect the child's asthmatic status via a psycho physiological pathway, such as by immunoreactivity to allergens or a vulnerability to airway infections," Jun Nagano, of the Kyushu University Institute of Health Science in Fukuoka, Japan, explained in a news release from the journal's publisher. "Our results suggest that the mothers of younger children may be advised not to worry about falling into 'unfavorable' parenting styles, but to pay more attention to the reduction of their own stress; and that the mothers of older children may be encouraged to increase their own well-being," Jun concluded.

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Trans Fats While Breast-Feeding May Plump Up Baby

Breast-fed babies are much more likely to put on excess body fat if their mother's diet is high in trans fats, finds a new study. U.S. researchers looked at 96 women and their babies. Infants whose mothers consumed more than 4.5 grams of trans fats per day while breast-feeding were twice as likely to have a high percentage of body fat than babies whose mothers consumed lower amounts of trans fats. The study also found that mothers who consumed more than 4.5 grams a day of trans fats had a nearly six times greater risk of excessive fat accumulation. This suggests that intake of trans fats could have a more significant weight gain effect on women when they're breast-feeding than at other times in their lives, said the University of Georgia researchers.

The findings were recently published online in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Further research is needed to learn more about how a mother's consumption of trans fats may affect her child's long-term health. "It would help to be able to follow the child from when the mother was pregnant, through birth, and then adolescence, so that we can confirm what the type of infant feeding and maternal diet during breast-feeding have to do with the recent epidemic of childhood obesity," study co-author Alex Anderson, an assistant professor in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said in a university news release.

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Dental Care Linked to Heart Health in Older Women

Older women who get regular dental care are about one-third less likely to suffer from heart disease than those who don't, new findings suggest. The study doesn't prove that dental care directly improves the heart health of women by lowering the risk of conditions like heart attack and stroke, and dental care seemed to have no benefit for men at all in terms of heart disease, but even so, the study authors were still impressed by the findings. The study, which was released online Sept. 29 in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of Health Economics, analyzed the medical records of nearly 7,000 people aged 44 to 88 who had participated in another study. The data from that study had been collected between 1996 and 2004.

The authors of the new study came to their conclusions after reviewing the data and adjusting the numbers so they wouldn't be thrown off by large or small numbers of people who were, among other things, overweight or users of alcohol and tobacco. "We think the findings reflect differences in how men and women develop cardiovascular disease," study co-author Dr. Stephen Brown, a obstetrician/ gynecologist resident at West Virginia University, said in a news release from the University of California at Berkeley. "Other studies suggest that estrogen has a protective effect against heart disease because it helps prevent the development of atherosclerosis. It's not until women hit menopause, around age 50 to 55, that they start catching up with men."

Dr. Maria Emanuel Ryan, a professor of oral biology and pathology at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y., said she has seen signs of a link between dental care and heart disease in her own practice. The study, she said, "confirms the findings of some of the studies conducted in the insurance industry, which suggest that the medical costs for cardiac care and diabetes are reduced in patients who have regular dental visits." There does appear to be a connection between gum disease, in particular, and heart disease. Research suggests that chronic inflammation causes heart disease, Ryan noted, and gum disease "is the most common chronic inflammatory condition in the world. Unfortunately, periodontitis or gum disease is often a silent disease that goes undetected and untreated."

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Heartbreak Puts Brakes on Heart

Waiting for another person's opinion of you will slow your heart, and its rate will dip even further if you get rejected, a new Dutch study has found. "Unexpected social rejection could literally feel 'heartbreaking,' as reflected by a transient slowing of heart rate," the study authors wrote in a news release from the Association for Psychological Science. In the study, volunteers were asked to submit photos of themselves and told that students at another university would look at the images and decide whether they liked the person in the photos. This was a ruse: no one was actually looking at them. But the volunteers didn't know that, and returned later to look at a series of photos of the college students who were ostensibly judging them and guess what their opinions of the volunteers had been.

Using an electrocardiogram, researchers then measured the heart rates of the volunteers as they discovered what the other students supposedly thought of them. The researchers found that the heart rates of the volunteers fell as they waited to learn about a supposed judgment. If they were rejected, their heart rates slowed even more, and they slowed the most in those who expected the other person would like them. Bregtje Gunther Moor and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands released their study online recently in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the journal Psychological Science.

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Moderate Alcohol Use Helps Prevent Sudden Cardiac Death: Study

In yet another study, a moderate intake of alcohol has been shown to be healthy for the heart. The current research found that when women consumed between one half to one drink a day, their risk of sudden cardiac death dropped by 36 percent. However, when women doubled their intake and had more than two drinks per day, they upped their risk of sudden cardiac death by about 15 percent. "Numerous studies have found a protective association between alcohol intake and coronary heart disease, stroke and congestive heart failure, but little research has been done on alcohol and sudden cardiac death," explained study author Stephanie Chiuve, an instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"In this study, we wanted to look at the association of moderate alcohol intake and the risk of sudden cardiac death in women. We found a U-shaped association between alcohol and sudden cardiac death," said Chiuve, which means that too little or too much alcohol intake was associated with a higher risk of sudden cardiac death than moderate intake of alcohol. "For women who choose to drink alcohol, they should have about one drink a day. That's where we saw the greatest benefit," she said. Results of the study are published in the October issue of the journal Heart Rhythm.

Although the study wasn't designed to figure out exactly how alcohol might help prevent sudden cardiac death, Chiuve said that alcohol has a beneficial effect on cholesterol levels and helps reduce the amount of plaque that collects in the blood vessels. She said that it doesn't appear that any one particular type of alcohol is more beneficial than others, suggesting that it's the ethanol contained in alcoholic beverages that provides the health boost. But, the news on alcohol isn't all good. Alcohol can also have what's known as pro-arrhythmic effects. That means alcohol can cause heart palpitations. The effect is so well-known that it's been dubbed "holiday heart syndrome."

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