No Benefit to Heart from Low Blood Sugar

Aggressively lowering blood sugar levels in diabetics is of no benefit to the heart, two new studies have found. Thus doctors who lower their patients' blood sugar to normal values can expect no reduction in their chances of having a heart attack or stroke.
The research, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and scheduled to be presented at the scientific meeting of the American Diabetes Association, was initiated because it is already known that high blood sugar levels indeed are linked to many cardiovascular problems. However, it doesn't go both ways: low sugar levels have no cardiovascular benefits. The intensive treatment consists of a mix of diabetes drugs and insulin.
However, even though cardiovascular health is not influenced by the aggressive treatment, kidney health is. The scientists found a 21 percent decrease in kidney problems in patients whose blood sugar was aggressively lowered to normal values.
Diabetes mellitus, usually referred to as diabetes, is a syndrome characterized by disordered metabolism which leads to inappropriately high blood sugar. Specifically, Type 2 Diabetes, which is the most common form, is primarily characterized by insulin resistance, relative insulin deficiency and hyperglycemia. The disease is chronic and progressive and has no clearly established cure.
Treatment focuses only on preservation of quality of life and reduction of mortality and concomitant morbidity from complications.

Wearing Flip-Flops May Have Bad Repercussions on Your Feet

As the summer set in, most people want to feel as free as they can be when it comes to clothes and footwear. And what can be more comfortable during summer walks than flip-flops. However, according to a new study, flip-flops can be very bad for your feet and legs.
Researchers from Auburn University in Alabama recruited 39 college-age men and women and asked them to wear flip-flops or athletic shoes while walking on a special platform. The study found that when participants wore flip-flops, they took shorter strides and their heels hit the ground with less vertical forces than when they wore athletic shoes.
Therefore, wearing flip-flops can result in altering people’s gait, “which may explain why we see some lower leg and foot problems in people who wear these shoes a lot,” study author Justin Shroyer, a graduate student in Auburn’s department of kinesiology said, according to the New York Times.
The results of the study should not discourage people from wearing flip-flops, Shroyer said. However, he added that people should wear them for short periods of time, (especially people with pain in their legs and feet), as this kind of footwear is not designed to properly support the foot and ankle during all-day wear.
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Boy Dies From Secondary Drowning In South Carolina

June 6 2008 - A 10 year old boy named Johnny Jackson has died just hours after leaving a swimming pool in his apartment complex in Goose Creek, and it is believed he died from secondary drowning.
He died several hours after exiting the pool, thus the theory is that he died from secondary drowning from taking in too much water while he was in the pool swimming.
According to the county coroner, Jackson died with water in his lungs resulting in his death via "asphyxiation by drowning."
Speaking with ABC news, his mother Cassandra Jackson said that her son seemed to be fine: "He seemed to be fine," she said. "I noticed nothing out of the ordinary, other than him taking a little bit of water in and coughing and then calming down."
"I rolled him over and his body was very limp and I realized he'd soiled himself again and was very purplish-blue looking," Jackson tells the network. "His
tongue was really swollen, too."
Jonny was reportedly autistic, but this in no shape or form contributed to his death.
His mother says that all mothers should check their children when they come out of the water after swimming: "Please check them when they get out of the pool. Just watch them like a hawk," she told a newspaper. "It tears me up inside. It's a heck of a sacrifice, but if this will help someone else, then it's all worth it."

Indian boffin uncovers vitamin B3’s role in maintaining good cholesterol

Washington, June 6 : A team led by an Indian researcher claim to have uncovered how niacin (vitamin B3) helps in maintaining good cholesterol levels, thus reducing the risk of developing heart disease.
Niacin can increase plasma HDL levels, however, the mechanism of how it works has been mysterious. Some researchers also believed that niacin does not actually increase HDL production.
The work also identifies a new drug target, as no other drug in currently known to raise HDL by inhibiting the surface expression of the beta chain of ATP synthase.
The new study has found that a component of ATP synthase (the protein that makes ATP) is present on the surface of liver cells, and this subunit known as the 'beta chain' can take up HDL.
The team led by researcher Moti Kashyap found that this beta chain is the basis of niacin's effect.
They added niacin to samples of human liver cells and found that treatment reduced the presence of Beta chain on the cell surface by ~27pct, and as a result HDL uptake was reduced by ~35pct.
This shows that niacin hinders the liver from removing HDL from the blood, thus maintaining high plasma HDL levels.
However, it does not affect another major pathway known as "Reverse Cholesterol Transport."
Therefore, it maintains HDL levels while still allowing the removal of other cholesterol types, explaining why niacin is especially beneficial.

25% of South Africans have mental problems

Johannesburg, June 8 : Nearly 25 pct of South Africans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), says a leading psychiatrist.
Dr Eugene Allers, psychiatrist and former-president of the South African Society of Psychiatry (Sasop) revealed that up to six million South Africans suffer from PTSD and the country has become a "breeding ground" for psychiatric problems, reports News24.
Out of the 25 pct, nearly a third of these people are between the 30 and 40 years of age.
It was apparently said that up to 70 pct of people with psychiatric problems had major (serious) depressions.
Allers said that previous research had shown that up to half of people with major depression also had PTSD.
PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more terrifying events in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma.
Experts believed that about a quarter to a third of people who were raped, for example, or who witnessed a traumatic incident developed PTSD. The rest process the experience.
Allers said abuse and neglect during a person's childhood could make him more susceptible to developing psychiatric problems.
He said that if for, instance, the South African population was at 50 million people now, a quarter of them would have psychiatric problems, of which 70 pct would be major depression.
Of the people with depression 50pct would fulfil the criteria for PTSD.
He further said that local studies showed that in some communities 58pct to 94pct of children had witnessed incidents of violence. About one out of 5 of these children fulfilled the criteria for PTSD.
There were 350 psychiatrists in the country. Allers said 177 worked full-time, 56 part-time and the rest worked for the state.
The country only had about 2 000 psychotherapists in the private sector but needed many more to be able to help everyone. (ANI)

Brain’s prediction of instant happenings allows timely limb movements

Washington, June 7 : Scientists suggest that it is the ability of the brain to predict what will happen in a very near future that enables people to make timely movements of their limbs.
Richard A. Andersen of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) says that the neurons and neural connections that make up the sensory systems are far too slow to react to a happening in real time.
"Everything we sense is a little bit in the past," he said.
"The brain is generating its own version of the world, a 'forward model', which allows you to know where you actually are in real time. It takes the delays out of the system," he added.
While working with Grant Mulliken of MIT and Sam Musallam of McGill University on a study, he focused on understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of brain process—such as the senses of sight, hearing, balance, and touch, and the neural mechanisms of action.
His lab is working toward the development of implanted neural prosthetic devices that would serve as an interface between severely paralysed individuals' brain signals and their artificial limbs, allowing thoughts to control movement.
Andersen's group focuses on a more high-level area of cortex called the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), which is where sensory stimuli are actually transformed into movement plans.
For their study, the researchers trained two monkeys to use a joystick to move a cursor on a computer screen from a small red circle into a green circle, while keeping their gaze fixed on the red circle.
The monkeys typically generated curved trajectories, but to increase the curvature one monkey was trained to move the cursor around an obstacle, a large blue circle which was placed between the initial location of the cursor and the target circle.
The monkey had to guide the cursor around the obstacle, without touching it, and over to the green circle.
The researchers used electrodes to measure the activity of neurons in the monkey’s PPC as they conducted the tasks, which allowed them to monitor signals—commands for movement—in real time.
According to the research group, it was found that neurons in the PPC produce signals that represent the brain's estimation of the current and upcoming movement of the cursor.
"An internal estimate of the current state of the cursor can be used immediately by the brain to rapidly correct a movement, avoiding having to rely entirely on late-arriving sensory information, which can result in slow and unstable control," said Mulliken.
Andersen said: "The idea is that you feed back the command you make for movement into those areas of the brain that plan the movement (i. e., the PPC). The signal about the movement taking place is adjusted to be perfectly aligned in time with the actual movement--what you're moving in your head matches with what you're moving in the real world."
In their study report, the researchers said that the effect was akin to an athlete visualizing his performance in his mind.
A study recently showed that monkeys could feed themselves using a robotic limb that they controlled only with their thoughts, which were picked up via an array of electrodes sitting on top of the primary motor cortex.
The neural signal driving the robotic limb was what is known as a "trajectory signal", which represents the path that must be taken to move from one point to another, like using a computer mouse to drag an object across a screen.
Andersen says that a different signal in the posterior parietal cortex, called the "goal signal", can also be used to directly jump an object from one point to another.
"This goal signal is much faster for reaching a goal than a trajectory signal. Fast goal decoding is very advantageous for rapid sequences such as typing. Our new study shows that the posterior parietal cortex codes the trajectory as well as the goal, which makes this brain area an attractive target for neural prosthesis. Not only does this increase the versatility and the number of prosthetic applications, but it also makes the decoding easier since the trajectories can be better estimated if the goal is known," he says.
A research article on this work is currently available online, and will be published in a future print issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

Widening Salmonella Outbreak Prompts Another FDA Tomato Warning

June 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. restaurants, retailers and food service operators were warned not to use some raw tomatoes in a widening outbreak of salmonella that increased the number of people who had to be hospitalized, according to the government.
Consumers and retailers across the country should avoid raw red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes, which have been tied to the 145 infections reported since mid-April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a statement on its Web site.
The cases, including 23 people who required hospital treatment, were reported in states including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, the FDA said yesterday in the statement. On June 3, the agency reported 57 cases including 17 requiring hospitalization.
Salmonella infections can cause fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain, according to the statement. Young children, frail and elderly people and those with weakened immune systems are particularly at risk.
Consumers may continue to eat cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold with the vine still attached and tomatoes grown at home, the statement said.
The agency is working with state health regulators, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food industry groups and others to determine the source of the outbreak, which ``may be limited to a single grower or packer or tomatoes from a specific geographic area,'' the FDA statement said

Doctor who treated pro wrestler faces more charges

ATLANTA (AP) — The personal doctor to a pro wrestler who killed himself, his wife and their 7-year-old son last year was charged Thursday in a new 175-count federal indictment with conspiracy and improperly dispensing drugs.

The new indictment against Dr. Phil Astin replaces a seven-count indictment last July and involves 17 additional patients. Astin was a doctor for wrestler Chris Benoit. Authorities have said Astin prescribed a 10-month supply of anabolic steroids to Benoit every three to four weeks for a year leading up to the killings.

The indictment alleges that the prescription drugs dispensed by Astin resulted in death or serious bodily injury to one patient. That patient was not named.
Patients in the indictment are referred to in court papers by their initials. Prosecutors would not discuss the initials. However, two entries were initials similar to those of Benoit and his slain wife.

Astin, 52, of Carrollton, is accused of giving the patients hundreds of illegal prescriptions for drugs including methadone, Percocet, Oxycontin, Demerol and Xanax. None of the drugs mentioned were steroids.
U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said the investigation is ongoing.

Astin's lawyer, Natasha Silas, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that she wasn't surprised by the new indictment, since prosecutors had said they planned to file it.
"Moreover, the addition of the new charges does not in any way alter our commitment to vigorously defend Dr. Astin when the allegations are tested in court," Silas said. "Until he was charged in this case, Dr. Astin was a compassionate country doctor, who provided low cost, and sometimes free, medical care to thousands of people in and around the Carrolton community."
The new indictment alleges that Astin illegally distributed prescription drugs by providing multiple, undated prescriptions, writing prescriptions for inappropriate combinations of drugs, or feeding the methadone addictions of patients for months or even years.
Astin was initially charged with illegal distribution of prescription drugs to two patients other than Benoit. Those charges came after the June 2007 killings at Benoit's suburban Atlanta home.

Authorities said Benoit, 40, strangled his wife with a cord, used a choke hold to strangle his son, placed Bibles next to the bodies and hanged himself on a piece of exercise equipment in their Fayetteville home.

Suspicions linking steroid use to the killings have lingered, since anabolic steroids were found in Benoit's home and tests showed Benoit had roughly 10 times the normal level of testosterone in his system.

Some experts believe using testosterone can contribute to paranoia, depression and violent outbursts known as "roid rage." But authorities have never publicly linked the Benoit killings to steroid use, and Benoit's father believes years of head trauma his son suffered while in the ring contributed to the killings.

Poniard says promising data emphasize drug partner need

CHICAGO, June 1 (Reuters) - Drug development company Poniard Pharmaceuticals Inc (PARD.O: Quote, Profile, Research) reported promising preliminary trial results for a new type of chemotherapy on Sunday, findings it hopes will be strong enough to land a development partner to help finance future studies.

"The ideal partner for us would be a single business with a global reach," Jerry McMahon, the company's chief executive, told Reuters.

Poniard unveiled mid-stage data at a meeting here of the American Society of Clinical Oncology showing that the drug -- a new type of platinum-based chemotherapy -- given in combination with standard chemo drugs 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin, appears to be as effective as the two drugs combined with oxaliplatin for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.
That is important because oxaliplatin causes some type of nerve pain in 80 percent to 90 percent of patients, leading them to either reduce or abandon treatment, McMahon said.
Early results from the ongoing 100-patient Phase II trial showed that out of 11 evaluated patients on the experimental regimen, 10 achieved disease control. Of 13 evaluated patients on the standard regimen, 10 achieved disease control, including one partial response.

"The data looks very good. It is consistent with our thesis," the CEO said, noting that Poniard has not yet seen a single case of severe neuropathy in colon cancer patients treated with picoplatin.

The company is currently conducting a pivotal trial of the drug in small-cell lung cancer and expects to have picoplatin on the market for that indication in 2010. Poniard also presented at ASCO this weekend data from trials of the drug in prostate and ovarian cancer patients.
"The data at this meeting says there are other trials we need to do ... It makes a lot of sense now that we seek a partner for registrational trials," McMahon said.
He said Poniard would consider a partnership deal prior to receipt of the pivotal lung cancer data if the terms respect the fact that the company will soon have data across a number of oncology indications.

Oxaliplatin, sold by Sanofi Aventis (SASY.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) under the brand name Eloxatin for colorectal cancer, has annual sales of more than $2 billion.
"If the ongoing Phase I/II data show comparable efficacy as oxaliplatin-based regimen, we believe that picoplatin may have a big opportunity in colorectal cancer," Leerink Swann analyst Howard Liang said in a recent research note.

Baby teeth used for radiation studies

St. Louis -- U.S. researchers say thousands of baby teeth collected around St. Louis in the 1950s and '60s will be used to study radiation exposure.

Scientists said the teeth were collected as part of a study on the radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The newspaper said the findings played a roll a 1963 ban on atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons.

The New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project said researchers will identify 200 healthy tooth donors and 100 tooth donors who later developed cancer. The baby teeth will be tested for the radioactive chemical strontium 90, which is found in bomb fallout and nuclear reactors, the Post-Dispatch said.

Children Healthcare Varies Greatly by State

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that seeks to promote better health care for all Americans, has reported that in the United States both quality and access to health care for children varies greatly by state.

At the top of the list are Iowa, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. The bottom states are Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada and Texas, which provide poor health care to children.One of the conclusions of the in-depth report is that the State Children's health Insurance program, better known as SCHIP, should be immediately reauthorized.

The Bush administration and Democrats in Congress are at odds about changes in the federal program, which eventually led to it being temporarily extended as it was until next year.Also, the importance of the "medical home" was underlined, which is a family's primary health care provider.The Commonwealth Fund also provided some numbers which show the near-criminal negligence in caring for children in the bottom states.

It appears that if they would be up to the standards set by the top performers, 4.6 million more children would have health insurance and 11.8 million more children would get their recommended yearly medical and dental check-ups. Also, 800,000 more children would be up-to-date on their vaccines.

Protecting from harmful rays

Are sunscreens safe? Which ones do you recommend that will protect my skin from the sun and not cause other issues?
— Bettina E., New York, N.Y.Getting a little sunshine is important for helping our bodies generate Vitamin D, an important supplement for strong bones, and for regulating our levels of serotonin and tryptamine, neurotransmitters that keep our moods and sleep/wake cycles in order.

Like anything, though, too much sun can cause health issues, from sunburns to skin cancer. For those of us who spend more time in the sun than doctors recommend — they say to stay indoors between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on sunny days to be safe — sunscreens can be lifesavers.

Getting too much sun is bad because of ultraviolet radiation, 90 percent of which comes in the form ofUltraviolet A (UVA) rays that are not absorbed by the ozone layer and penetrate deep into our skin.Ultraviolet B (UVB) rays make up the rest. These rays are partially absorbed by the ozone layer (which makes preserving the ozone layer crucial for our health), and because they don’t penetrate our skin as deeply, can cause those lobster-red sunburns.
Both types of UV rays are thought to cause skin cancer.

Yet, while most sunscreens block out at least some UVB radiation, many don’t screen UVA rays at all, making their use risky. According to the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG), by far most of the commercially available sunscreens do not provide adequate protection against the sun’s harmful UV radiation and may also contain chemicals with questionable safety records.

In all, 84 percent of the 831 sunscreens EWG tested did not pass health and environmental muster. Many contained potentially harmful chemicals like Benzophenone, homosalate and octyl methoxycinnamate (also called octinoxate), which are known to mimic naturally occurring bodily hormones and can thus throw the body’s systems out of whack.
Some also contained Padimate-0 and parsol 1789 (also known as avobenzone), which are suspected of causing DNA damage when exposed to sunlight. Furthermore, EWG found that more than half the sunscreens on the market make questionable product claims about longevity, water resistance and UV protection.

As a result, EWG has called on the Food and Drug Administration to establish standards for labeling so consumers have a better idea of what they may be buying. In the meantime, consumers looking to find out how their preferred brand stacks up can check out EWG’s online Skin Deep database, which compares thousands of health and beauty products against environmental and human health standards.

The good news is that many companies are now introducing safer sunscreens crafted from plant- and mineral-based ingredients and without chemical additives. Some of the best, according to Skin Deep, are Alba Botanica Sun’s Fragrance-Free Mineral Sunscreen, Avalon Baby’s Sunscreen SPF 18, Badger’s SPF 30 Sunscreen, Burt’s Bees’ Chemical-Free Sunscreen SPF 15, California Baby’s SPF 30, Juice Beauty’s Green Apple SPF 15 Moisturizer, and Kabana’s Green Screen SPF 15.

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Lead Exposure in Childhood Linked to Criminal Behavior Later

WEDNESDAY, May 28 (HealthDay News) -- Children who are exposed to lead at a young age are more likely to be arrested later in life.
A study in the May 27 issue ofPLoS Medicineis the first empirical evidence that elevated blood lead levels, both in the pregnant mother and in the child, are associated with criminal behavior in young adulthood.

"I never would have thought that we would be seeing these effects into the later 20s," said study co-author Kim Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati. "I'm actually quite astounded and quite worried about this. Although lead levels have been going down in this country, a large proportion of the population now in their 20s and 30s had blood levels in this neurotoxic range."

Childhood lead exposure has been linked with anti-social behavior, lower IQ, attention deficits, hyperactivity and weak executive control functions, all of which are risk factors for future delinquent behavior (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, in particular, is a risk factor for adult criminal behavior). Studies have also related sales of leaded gasoline or high atmospheric lead levels with criminal behavior.

Although use has been curtailed recently, in the past lead was widely used in paint, solder for water pipes and gasoline. The U.S. government banned lead paint and solder in 1978 and 1986, respectively. By 1996, leaded gasoline had been phased out. These efforts resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of U.S. children with blood lead levels considered "of concern" (from 13.5 million in 1978 to 310,000 in 2002).
But many older buildings, especially those in poor, inner-city neighborhoods, still have lead paint on the walls and windowsills. Earlier this year, the U.S. government issued new rules designed to protect children from exposure to lead-based paint during repairs and renovations to homes and buildings. The new rules will take effect in 2010.
Dietrich's paper is part of a larger study initiated in 1979 to study the effects of both prenatal and early childhood lead exposure on the growth and development of children. Pregnant women recruited into the study lived in areas of Cincinnati with a high concentration of older, lead-contaminated housing.

For the current report, researchers looked at maternal blood lead concentrations during pregnancy as well as concentrations in 250 children at regular intervals until they were almost 7. Arrest and incarceration information taken from county records years later was correlated with those blood lead levels.
Arrest rates were higher as blood lead concentrations went up. The association between high blood lead levels and violent crimes was even stronger. Any 5 micrograms per deciliter elevation in blood lead levels increased the rate of arrest for violent offenses by more than 25 percent, Dietrich said.
This was true even after adjusting for a multitude of other factors.
"In essence, we stripped away the variants that could be accounted for by early home environment -- their health at birth, mother's ingestion of drug and alcohol during pregnancy, their own ingestion of drugs postnatally and as adolescents and as young adults," Dietrich explained.

A companion paper in the same issue of the journal found that, based on MRI data, exposure to lead during childhood was associated with reductions in gray matter volume in the brain in adulthood. The reductions were related to specific regions, including those responsible for executive function, mood regulation and decision-making. The reductions were more striking in males than females.
"This is shedding new light that no dose is safe for lead," said Kim Cecil, co-author of the companion paper and an associate professor of radiology, pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
And while lead has been largely removed from the landscapes of developed countries, the same is not necessarily true in other parts of the world, Cecil pointed out.
Even in the United States, more could be done, Dietrich said.
"The Office of Management and Budget estimated that nearly 60 percent of children on Medicaid are not being screened [for lead exposure], as they should be," he said. "And a recent study in Michigan found that 40 percent of children with blood levels in the neurotoxic range were never followed up."
More information

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has more on lead.
SOURCES: Kim Cecil, Ph.D., associate professor, radiology, pediatrics and neuroscience, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center; Kim Dietrich, Ph.D., professor, environmental health, University of Cincinnati; May 27, 2008,PLoS Medicine By Amanda Gardner

Hint of Hope as Child Obesity Rate Hits Plateau

Childhood obesity, rising for more than two decades, appears to have hit a plateau, a potentially significant milestone in the battle against excessive weight gain among children

But the finding, based on survey data gathered from 1999 to 2006 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in Wednesday’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, was greeted with guarded optimism.
It is not clear if the lull in childhood weight gain is permanent or even if it is the result of public anti-obesity efforts to limit junk food and increase physical activity in schools. Doctors noted that even if the trend held up, 32 percent of American schoolchildren remained overweight or obese, representing an entire generation that will be saddled with weight-related health problems as it ages.
“After 25 years of extraordinarily bad news about childhood obesity, this study provides a glimmer of hope,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the childhood obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “But it’s much too soon to know whether this is a true plateau in prevalence or just a temporary lull.”
The data come from thousands of children who have taken part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys — compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics at the C.D.C. since the 1960s — and represent some of the most reliable statistics available on the health of American children.
The most recent data is based on two surveys — one in 2003 to 2004 and one in 2005 to 2006 — that included 8,165 children ages 2 to 19. In that group, about 16 percent of children and teenagers were obese, which is defined as having a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile on United States growth charts. For example, a 10-year-old girl who is 4-foot-7 would be considered obese if her weight reached 100 pounds. By comparison, about 5 percent of children and teenagers in the United States were obese in the 1960s and 1970s. As startling as those numbers are, the good news is that from a statistical standpoint, obesity rates have not increased since 1999. Estimates for the number of children who fall into the overweight or obese category also have remained stable at about 32 percent since 1999. Overweight is defined as at or above the 85th percentile.
In fact, the number of children who fall into the obese category decreased from 17.1 percent to 15.5 percent between the 2003 and 2006 surveys, but the decline was not statistically significant. So the researchers combined data from both surveys to enhance the statistical strength of the numbers.
The plateau follows years of excessive weight gain among American schoolchildren. For instance, in 1980, 6.5 percent of children age 6 to 11 were obese, but by 1994 that number had climbed to 11.3 percent. By 2002, the number had jumped to 16.3 percent, but it has now appeared to stabilize around 17 percent.
“It doesn’t mean we’ve solved it, but maybe there is some opportunity for some optimism here,” said Cynthia Ogden, the lead author of the journal report and an epidemiologist for the National Center for Health Statistics.
The researchers did not give reasons for the leveling off of childhood obesity rates. One concern is that the lull could represent a natural plateau that would have occurred regardless of public health efforts.
“It may be that we’ve reached some sort of saturation in terms of the proportion of the population who are genetically susceptible to obesity in this environment,” Dr. Ogden said. “A more optimistic view is that some things are working. We don’t really know.”
Data collected from a handful of obesity programs around the country suggest that the trends may be real.
In Somerville, Mass., a communitywide intervention led by nutrition researchers at Tufts University included doubling the amount of fruit served for school lunch, painting crosswalks to encourage walks to school and increasing physical activity in after-school programs.
Last year, the medical journal Obesity reported that during the 2003-2004 school year, Somerville schoolchildren gained less weight than children in nearby communities. The researchers are trying to replicate the program in rural areas in other parts of the country.
In Arkansas, a statewide obesity effort has eliminated vending machines in elementary schools, added a half-hour of daily physical activity to the school curriculum and sent home annual childhood health reports alerting parents about obesity risks. As part of the program, school officials in the past four years have tracked the weight and height of 475,000 children, and those numbers show that average body mass index rates in Arkansas have held steady.
“If the national data are now showing that as well, then probably we’re seeing the early effects of increased awareness and focus,” said Dr. Joe Thompson, a pediatrician and director of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, which collects the state’s student body mass index data. “But to achieve a long-term reversal is going to require a comprehensive and coordinated effort to make sure we’re reaching all kids across the U.S.”
One trend that has not changed in the new data are differences in obesity risk based on age and race. Children 2 to 5 were significantly less likely to be overweight compared with adolescents ages 12 to 19. While about 14.5 percent of white adolescent girls were obese, the numbers jumped to 20 percent for Mexican-American teenage girls and 28 percent for black teenage girls.
Among boys, Mexican-Americans were also more likely to have a high body mass index compared with white boys. Despite the differences, obesity rates have also appeared to stabilize among minority children.
One worry is that as obesity rates stabilize, financing for childhood health efforts will wane. In Arkansas, the program was a success but a financial crunch prompted the state legislature recently to cut physical activity programs in seventh through 12th grade.
While the latest data suggest the obesity epidemic may have been contained, researchers say the real question is whether it is possible to reverse the obesity trend among American schoolchildren.
“We still lack anything resembling a national strategy to take this problem seriously,” said Dr. Ludwig, co-author of an editorial accompanying the obesity report. “The rates of obesity in children are so hugely high that without any further increases, the impact of this epidemic will be felt with increasing severity for many years to come.”

New Repellents Without DEET Show Promise in Tests on Humans

Researchers have found several new mosquito repellents that appear to work more than three times as long as DEET.
DEET — or N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide — has been used for 50 years and is still the gold standard. But new repellents are always needed because the threat from mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, yellow fever, West Nile virus and Rift Valley fever is growing.
Chemists at the University of Florida and the United States Department of Agriculture screened many acylpiperidines, which are related to the active ingredient in pepper. Their study was published online Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In tests on humans, they found that some acylpiperidines could repel mosquitoes for up to 73 days, while DEET typically lasted only 17 days. However, the tests did not replicate typical exposures. Volunteers wore thick gloves with holes, over which were taped pieces of muslin soaked in repellent, and their arms were thrust into cages of mosquitoes for only one minute. “Failure to repel” was recorded on the first day that five mosquitoes bit through the cloth.
Tests of commercial repellents in 2002 done with bare skin found that the most effective were those that contained the most DEET — and they lasted only about five hours.
Further tests will be needed to see whether the acylpiperidines irritate skin, evaporate, dissolve in sweat or fail in ways that other repellents do

Incident shows Taser may have affected heart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A quick shock from a Taser may have zapped a man's fluttering heart back into a healthy rhythm, doctors reported on Tuesday.
They cited the incident as evidence that the devices, which are used by police who want to use less-than-deadly force to incapacitate people but are condemned by some civil rights groups as dangerous, may affect the heart as critics allege.
In this case, the outcome was a happy one, the doctors reported in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Several lawsuits in the United States and Canada contend the devices, which use an electric charge to subdue an attacker, can stop the heart.
The 28-year-old patient was fleeing police and jumped into a lake in April, when the water was still very cold.
"I don't know exactly what he had done but he fled capture from them and he hid in a lake," said Dr. Kyle Richards, a cardiologist at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, who treated the man when he was taken to an emergency room.
Richards said the patient was experiencing an irregular heart rhythm known as atrial fibrillation, possibly as a result of the cold and shock.
After treatment, the patient was eager to leave. "He got very combative and started yelling in my face and that's when I left the room and got security," Richards said.
Police and security used a Taser stun gun, which shoots out a lead connected to two barbs that can deliver up to 50,000 volts. They used a low-voltage charge meant to cause pain rather than a longer, higher-voltage jolt meant to incapacitate.
The patient calmed down and another electrocardiogram showed his heart rhythm was normal
"This is the first report of a patient receiving a shock of this kind and having a positive outcome," Richards said.
Amnesty International says that since 2001 more than 290 people have died in North America in incidents involving the weapon. Taser International says there is no evidence the gun directly caused the deaths.
Richards said studies done in pigs show the weapon can affect the heart muscle.
This case provided a controlled situation, with almost continuous monitoring of the patient's heart.
Richards noted that the patient was not hooked up to the electrocardiogram at the precise moment of being shocked.
"People can spontaneously go from atrial fibrillation into a normal rhythm without any intervention at all. You cannot conclusively say that the Taser did it," he said. But he said he believed it did.
"It's just one more thing that says, hey, Tasers can actually affect the heart."

Child obesity epidemic seen leveling off

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. childhood obesity epidemic leveled off this decade after surging for about 20 years, but a worrisome 16 percent of young people remain obese, risking serious health problems, researchers said on Tuesday.
Obesity rates remained essentially unchanged among boys and girls ages 2 to 19 from 1999 to 2006, researchers led by Cynthia Ogden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study found that 32 percent fit the government's definition of being overweight, 16 percent fit the definition for obesity and 11 percent were extremely obese.
Childhood obesity rates had tripled in the two decades starting in 1980, Ogden said. Changes in diet -- more fatty and sweetened foods -- and less exercise helped fuel the trend.
"The prevalence is still very high. And so it's not as if the problem is solved. But there is some reason for cautious optimism," Ogden said in a telephone interview.
The study did not show any drop in childhood obesity. And it did further illustrate ongoing racial disparities.
Dr. David Ludwig, a childhood obesity expert at Children's Hospital Boston, said it is too soon to know if the findings represent a mere temporary lull in a long-term upward trend or a true, enduring leveling off of an epidemic.
"This study is a glimmer of hope," Ludwig said in a telephone interview, saying it might show that public health efforts to increase awareness of obesity may be paying off

The researchers examined height and weight measurements for 8,165 people ages 2 to 19 taken in government surveys from 2003 through 2006, allowing them to calculate body mass index, or BMI, a measure of obesity.
GROWING PROBLEM
They compared the data with numbers dating back to 1999, finding no statistically significant differences in rates.
Childhood and adult obesity has emerged as a growing problem not only in the United States but in many countries around the world.
Obese children are more likely to be saddled with risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, as well as type 2 diabetes. They also are at higher risk for asthma.
They also are much more likely to be obese in adulthood, when they may face the many health problems linked to obesity such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers.
The study illustrated ongoing ethnic and racial disparities.
It found that 17 percent of boys 2 to 19 overall were obese, but 23 percent of Mexican American boys were obese compared to 17 percent of blacks and 16 percent of whites. For girls, 16 percent were obese, including 24 percent of blacks, 19 percent of Mexican Americans and 14 percent of whites.
"Obesity is striking poor and minority children more severely than whites and wealthier populations," said Ludwig, who wrote an editorial in the journal to accompany the study and had a book on the subject published last year

The childhood obesity epidemic has been driven by significant changes in the U.S. diet dating back decades, with more fatty and sugary fast foods, snacks, processed foods and beverages and fewer fresh fruits and vegetables.
Many children also have become more sedentary, watching more TV, playing video games and getting less exercise

Cancer risk soars in HIV-infected people: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People with HIV have a much higher risk for many cancers, including anal cancer, but a lower risk for prostate cancer, researchers said on Tuesday.
Some types of cancers like Kaposi's sarcoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma have long been associated with people infected by the AIDS virus.
The study focused on trends from 1992 to 2003, finding that these two types of cancer became relatively less common among HIV-infected people in the United States. But other cancers are on the rise among these patients, who are living longer thanks to anti-HIV drugs.
Anal cancer by 2003 had become 59 times more common among HIV-infected people than the general population, according to the study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Hodgkin's disease was 18 times more common in this population, the study also found. In addition, liver cancer was seven times more common, lung cancer 3.6 times more common, the skin cancer melanoma and throat cancer both three times more common, and colorectal cancer 2.4 times more common.
The study involved 54,780 men and women infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.
It found HIV-infected people had a small reduced risk for prostate cancer. The researchers said that may be because men with HIV infections are more likely to have lower testosterone levels, which could be protective against prostate cancer.
"The study was done because we all know that now people with HIV are living longer, and HIV is looking more like a chronic disease. So we wanted to look at one of the other very large chronic killers in America, cancer," Dr. Pragna Patel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who led the study, told Reute

SCREENING IMPORTANT
Patel said doctors who care for HIV-infected people should be aware of this increased risk for a range of cancer types, and consider screening.
She called the study the largest analysis of cancer trends among HIV-infected people in the United States ever done.
The virus devastates the body's immune system, raising susceptibility to illnesses and infections. Many early AIDS patients developed Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer previously associated with older people or people receiving immunosuppressant medications following an organ transplant.
But the advent of combination drug therapy in the 1990s called highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, greatly extended the lives of many HIV-infected people, particularly in developed countries.
"Most significant was the finding of anal cancer being so elevated even in the HAART era," Patel said.
She said multiple factors may be involved, but the increased risk may be linked to the fact that anal sex by homosexual men can spread the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which is known to cause anal cancer.
"Of course, anal sex and how many times you have anal sex and how many sex partners you have -- that all matters with regard to HPV infection," Patel said.
Human papillomaviruses are common viruses that can cause warts among other things. About 30 types increase the risk for cancers, including cervical cancer. These are passed through sexual contact with an infected partner.

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Gum disease may raise cancer risk, study finds

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Gum disease may increase the risk of developing cancer, researchers said on Tuesday.
Male health professionals with a history of gum disease in a long-running study had a 14 percent higher overall risk of developing cancer, they said.
"After controlling for smoking and other risk factors, periodontal disease was significantly associated with an increased risk of lung, kidney, pancreatic and hematological (blood) cancers," Dr. Dominique Michaud of the Imperial College London and colleagues wrote in the journal Lancet Oncology.
This higher overall risk persisted even in people who had never smoked.
Gum or periodontal disease is an infection of the tissues surrounding and supporting the teeth. Prior studies have suggested people with periodontal disease are more likely to develop heart disease and diabetes.
People with gum disease have inflammation in their blood and inflammation also has been linked with cancer. But this could simply mean that whatever causes the inflammation may also cause gum disease and cancer. Michaud and colleagues wanted to see if gum disease increases the risk of cancer.
They used data from a large study of male doctors and other health professionals aged 40 to 75. The study was started in 1986 at Harvard University.
Nearly 50,000 men filled out health surveys and were followed for more than 17 years. The survey included information on gum disease and bone loss as well as number of teeth and tooth loss.
More than 5,700 of the men developed cancer, excluding cases of non-melanoma skin cancers and non-aggressive prostate cancer. The researchers found that men who had gum disease had 14 percent higher cancer risk compared to those who did नोट

The risks were higher depending on the type of cancer.
Those with history of gum disease had a 36 percent higher risk of lung cancer, a 49 percent higher risk of kidney cancer, a 54 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer and a 30 percent higher risk of having a blood cancer (such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia or multiple myeloma) compared to men who did not have a history of gum disease.
In those who never smoked, gum disease was linked with a 21 percent increase in overall cancer risk and a 35 percent higher risk of blood cancers. They found no association for lung cancer in this group.
Men who had fewer teeth (0 to 16) at the start of the study had a 70 percent higher risk of lung cancer compared with individuals with more teeth (25 to 32) at the start of the study but this may be linked with smoking.
"The increased risks noted for hematological, kidney, and pancreatic cancers need confirmation but suggest that gum disease might be a marker of a susceptible immune system or might directly affect cancer risk," Michaud said in a statement.
They said it is premature to suggest that good oral hygiene can have any effect at preventing cancer but said periodontal disease should nevertheless be treated.

Vitamin D doesn't cut prostate cancer risk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vitamin D -- the so-called sunshine vitamin -- does not appear to cut a man's risk of getting prostate cancer, researchers said on Tuesday.
Previous studies have found protective effects from higher vitamin D levels for certain cancer types including colon and breast cancer, as well as other ailments.
U.S. National Cancer Institute researchers set out to see if vitamin D might protect against prostate cancer, the second most frequently diagnosed cancer in men worldwide. They tracked vitamin D concentrations in the blood of 749 men diagnosed with prostate cancer and 781 men who did not have the disease.
They found no association between higher levels of the vitamin and a reduced prostate cancer risk. The findings hinted at a possible increased risk for aggressive prostate cancer in men with higher blood concentration of vitamin D, but this link was not statistically significant, the researchers said.
"In our study, we didn't see any protective effect of vitamin D in relation to prostate cancer risk," Jiyoung Ahn of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.
Levels of vitamin D were measured in a blood sample provided by the men when they entered the study. Those with prostate cancer were diagnosed one to eight years after the blood samples were given, the researchers said.
Ahn, whose study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, said previous research had shown that high doses of vitamin D inhibited the growth of human prostate cancer cells in a laboratory dish.
The body makes vitamin D when skin is exposed to sunlight, thus earning its nickname the sunshine vitamin। It is found in fatty fish such as salmon and milk commonly is fortified with

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and is considered important for bone health. In adults, vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis, and it can lead to rickets in children.
Some studies have indicated it might provide other benefits. For example, one study published in January found that people with low vitamin D levels had an elevated risk for heart attack, heart failure and stroke, suggesting it may protect against cardiovascular disease.
National Cancer Institute researchers found in a study published last October that people with higher vitamin D levels were less likely to die of colorectal cancer but it did not appear to affect the risk of dying from other cancer types.
But Canadian researchers reported earlier this month that women with breast cancer who had lower levels of vitamin D were more likely to die and more likely to have their cancer spread than women with normal levels of the vitamin.
The American Cancer Society estimates that about 780,000 men are diagnosed annually with prostate cancer worldwide, with about 250,000 deaths a year. The group called prostate cancer the sixth leading cause of cancer death in men worldwide.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)

Mars probe sends back new pictures of landing site

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Phoenix lander has sent back new pictures from the arctic circle of Mars, showing for the first time the spot where it will dig through the Red Planet's dusty surface looking for water and assess conditions for life.
The remarkable images, displayed on Tuesday by mission managers, offered a glimpse of the Martian valley where Phoenix will scoop up samples of frozen soil for analysis by its instruments -- as well as views of the lander and its discarded parachute standing out starkly from the dark surface of the planet where they came to rest.
"This is a place we're going to get to know very well over the next three months," the mission's chief scientist, Peter Smith, said in describing the 30-mile wide valley and small hills on the horizon.
Mission managers said Phoenix, which touched gently down on Mars on Sunday after a 10-month, 420 million-mile (676 million-km) journey from Earth, had come through its landing in good shape, though they were still grappling with a pair of technical glitches.
The more serious of those involved Phoenix's inability to communicate with NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which, along with the Odyssey spacecraft, must relay commands and data back to Earth, since the lander cannot communicate directly with its home planet.
Fuk Li, manager of the Mars exploration program for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said the problem was a UHF radio on the orbiter, which he said appeared to have shut down after an unknown "transient event" in space.
CALLING ODYSSEY
Li said the Phoenix team was working to re-establish communications and did not expect the mission to be compromised because the lander was still in contact with Odyssey।

"We would just have to ask Odyssey to work harder," Li said.
Phoenix also had trouble fully retracing a covering for its robotic arm, although managers said it appeared the arm would be able to fully function.
Phoenix touched down at 4:53 p.m. PDT on Sunday, becoming the first spacecraft to reach a polar region of Mars. Problems during descent doomed NASA's first polar lander in 1999.
Over the next three months, scientists want to bore into the ground and study water and soil samples to determine if conditions were suitable to support life. In addition to determining if the water was ever liquid, scientists want to find out if it holds any organic matter.
The Viking landers in the 1970s and early 1980s conducted similar tests on surface soils. Scientists later determined solar radiation flowing through the planet's thin atmosphere creates a sterile environment as it bombards the ground.
Subsurface conditions, however, might provide habitats for microbes and bacterial life to flourish on Mars, as they do in extreme environments on Earth.
For the past decade, NASA has been searching for signs of past water on Mars with a fleet of orbiters and a pair of rovers on the ground.
The detection of subsurface frozen water in 2002 by Mars Odyssey prompted scientists to propose the Phoenix mission. (Editing by Doina Chiacu)