Antioxidants make people more, not less, prone to diabetes

This is further confirmation of the harm that antioxidants can do. Nasty for the food freaks who gobble them up. Another great theory murdered by a brutal gang of facts

We've all heard about the damage that reactive oxygen species (ROS) - aka free radicals - can do to our bodies and the sales pitches for antioxidant vitamins, skin creams or "superfoods" that can stop them. In fact, there is considerable scientific evidence that chronic ROS production within cells can contribute to human diseases, including insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

But a new report in the October 7th Cell Metabolism adds to evidence that it might not be as simple as all that. The researchers show that low levels of ROS - and hydrogen peroxide in particular -- might actually protect us from diabetes, by improving our ability to respond to insulin signals. "Our studies indicate that 'physiological' low levels of ROS may promote the insulin response and attenuate insulin resistance early in the progression of type 2 diabetes, prior to overt obesity and hyperglycemia," said Tony Tiganis of Monash University in Australia. "In a way, we think there is a delicate balance and that too much of a good thing - surprise, surprise - might be bad."

Tiganis' team found that mice with a deficiency that prevented them from eliminating physiological ROS didn't become insulin resistant on a high-fat diet as they otherwise would have. They showed that those health benefits could be attributed to insulin-induced signals and the uptake of glucose into their muscles. When those animals were given an antioxidant, those benefits were lost, leaving the mice with more signs of diabetes.

Tiganis said whether antioxidants are ultimately good for people will probably depend on their state of health or disease. "In the case of early type 2 diabetes and the development of insulin resistance, our studies suggest that antioxidants would be bad for you." Under some conditions, treatments designed to selectively increase ROS in muscle - if they can be devised - might even help, he says.

It's not the first time studies have suggested that antioxidants can be a negative, Tiganis adds. Studies in worms have suggested that antioxidants can shorten lifespan, as have some epidemiological studies in humans. Other recent reports indicate that antioxidants may negate the longer-term benefits of exercise training by lowering the activity of certain genes involved in ROS defense.

Tiganis said it will ultimately be important to work out at what stage ROS go from being good to bad. He suspects it probably depends on the levels and/or the source of their generation. (ROS are generated both on the surfaces of cells and within cells by mitochondria, which convert nutrients such as glucose into energy, he explained.)

Although any health implications of the new findings would require further study, the findings lead Tiganis to suspect it is best not to take daily antioxidant vitamins, especially if you are otherwise healthy. "Do exercise," he says, as this is a natural source of ROS that may promote insulin action.

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Will this drug put an end to monthly misery for women?

Let's hope it is not a new thalidomide

For millions of women it's a misery they cannot avoid. But now they might no longer have to soldier on stoically in the face of agonising period pains. Scientists have made a breakthrough by creating a pill which could put an end to the discomfort.

The key to the drug's potential success is that it is designed to tackle the cause of stomach cramps which leave some women bedridden, rather than just the symptoms. Dr Jim Phillips, of Vantia Therapeutics, the Southampton-based company behind the discovery said: 'Dysmenorrhoea [painful menstruation] affects a large number of women and there is currently no targeted therapy to treat the condition. 'I think it would be fair to call it a breakthrough, there is certainly no other treatment like it. 'From our research there is nothing to suggest it won't work.'

The drug, known for now as VA111913, has already been proved safe and has few side effects, and if secondary trials are successful it could be available within four years. It will now be trialled on 128 women aged between 18 and 35 in Britain and the United States. Volunteers who suffer pain severe enough to interfere with normal daily life will receive doses of the drug for a maximum of six days during their menstrual cycle. The drug works by bringing the hormone vasopressin, which controls the muscles that contract in the uterus wall, down to normal levels.

The company's chief medical officer, Hilary McElwaine-John, said: 'We found that what was on the market did not meet the need of those women who can't even get to work or school because of the pain.' Dr Phillips added: 'We believe this could offer an effective alternative to the over-the-counter painkillers.'

Figures show that period pain affects 80 per cent of women at some point in their lives. Many have tried techniques such as relaxing exercises or placing a hot water bottle on the stomach to try to combat it, and the most common treatments offered to sufferers tend to be over-the-counter pills such as ibuprofen or naproxen. There is such a clamour for ways to ease the discomfort that the therapeutic market for period pains is estimated to be worth more than £600million worldwide.

Dr Phillips estimates that if the drug is successful, the revenue it could bring in could run into the multi-millions. He said: 'We won't get any revenue from it for at least five years, but if it is successful we would be looking for commercialisation partnerships that would be worth tens of millions of dollars in the U.S.'

Period pain is caused by contractions in the womb during menstruation. Each one temporarily stops the blood flow, causing the tissue to be starved of oxygen. At the same time chemicals called prostaglandins are released that induce stronger contractions and can cause more pain.

The result of the trial, which will be taking place over the next two months, will be known by the middle of next year.

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Cancer jabs programme is 'mass experiment' says researcher as health officials insist vaccine for teenagers is safe

The woman squawking below sounds exceptionally dishonest and irresponsible. She wants to postpone use of a vaccine until more evidence is in. But there is already enough evidence to convince fussy government drug regulators so I suspect some sort of ulterior motive deriving from commercial rivalries in what she is saying. Postponing use of the vaccine for four more years would sentence to death many who might have benefited from it if it had been given earlier so she is in fact murderously irresponsible

The cervical cancer vaccination programme was last night branded a 'public health experiment' by a senior researcher who helped develop the drug. Dr Diane Harper - one of the world's leading cervical cancer experts - said health officials and drug firm bosses were exaggerating the jab's benefits. And she claimed parents were not being properly warned about the 'small but potentially adverse' risks of Cervarix and other vaccines.

But health officials, cancer charities and scientific experts all insist the programme is safe and urged parents and schools not to panic.

Dr Harper's comments follow the death of 14-year-old Natalie Morton, who collapsed an hour after receiving the jab at school on Monday. Initial post mortem results have suggested that her death was caused by a rare and serious illness - rather than the cancer vaccine.

Under the Government's cervical cancer programme, Cervarix is being offered to girls between 12 and 18. It works against two strains of HPV - a sexually transmitted virus that causes 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases.

Yesterday the Department of Health said it had 'great confidence' in the safety of its cervical cancer vaccination programme. 'We have been clear all along that there is no reason to suspend HPV immunisation - the programme against cervical cancer continues today,' a spokesman said. 'We have one of the most successful immunisation programmes in the world and have great confidence in the safety of them. 'Young girls can continue to protect themselves against cervical cancer by having this vaccine.' But Dr Harper, of the University of Missouri-Kansas, who was involved in the clinical trials of Cervarix, believes it should have been tested for another four years before being introduced in Britain.

Patient trials have only been running for seven and a half years - not long enough to show whether it continues protecting women into their late 20s and 30s, she said. 'It is a public health experiment,' she said. 'Parents consenting to HPV vaccination must be told that the duration of the vaccine is unknown, and that it is entirely possible that the initial vaccination series will only postpone, not prevent, future cervical cancers in their daughter,' Dr Harper said.

Around one million girls have been given the vaccine. There have been 4,657 reports of suspected adverse reactions - including sore arms, dizziness and swelling.

Although the drug is safe for the majority of women, there are very rare 'real dangers' - including the risk of brain damage, paralysis and death, Dr Harper said. Even if the jab is only dangerous for one person in a million, women should be told the risks, she said. She also believes the benefits of the vaccine as a 'cure' are being exaggerated. The jab does not prevent 30 per cent of cervical cancers - which means women will still need to be screened for pre-cancerous lesions.

Dr Harper helped develop the HPV vaccine which is produced as Cervarix - the GlaxoSmithKline product distributed by the NHS - and Gardasil which is produced by Merck and distributed in the U.S.

A Department of Health spokesman said: 'It is wrong to suggest the benefits are exaggerated. Ninety nine per cent of cervical cancer cases are caused by HPV and the vaccine will protect against about 70 per cent of them. 'The evidence is that the vaccine is very safe. And long-term follow up studies have shown that it offers extremely high levels of protection that continue to last.'

An initial post mortem showed the vaccine was 'unlikely' to have caused the death of Natalie Morton as she had a rare and grave underlying health problem, which was unknown to her family. Stepfather Andrew Bullock said Natalie, who attended Blue Coat CofE School, in Coventry, had been 'poorly for some time'. She had been to see her GP several times and investigations into a mystery illness had been under way, he said.

Britain's decision to go against the rest of the Western world and opt for the Cervarix vaccine was made to save money, health charities claim. They said the decision condemned thousands of young women to an unpleasant sexual infection from which they would have been protected had ministers chosen the rival vaccine, Gardasil. The U.S. and every single major western European country went for Gardasil, which protects against more strains of HPV, the sexual infection which can cause cervical cancer. It is understood that Britain chose Cervarix after the Health Protection Agency advised that it would save more than £18million a year.

There is no suggestion that Gardasil is any safer than Cervarix. In fact there have been 30 deaths following reported adverse reactions to Gardasil in the U.S., plus a number in Germany and Austria. But charities pointed out the extra strains of HPV that Gardasil protects against would have prevented thousands from catching genital warts - an infection on the rise, especially among the young. They said the money saved will be outweighed by the £22million the NHS spends every year treating genital warts. 'Our concern is that we didn't pick the right vaccine in the UK,' said Lisa Power, of the Terrence Higgins Trust sexual health charity. 'We felt that Gardasil was more effective against more things. 'HPV may not be fatal, but it is very unpleasant and it is on the rise. In 2008 there were 92,525 new cases of genital warts. That's very expensive to treat, as well as leaving 92,525 very unhappy people.'

GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Cervarix, claims its vaccine lasts longer than Gardasil, meaning there is less chance of a booster being needed later in life.

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Scientists claim sitting up straight at desks can boost our confidence

I am skeptical about this one. I think the subjects were just giving the edxperimter what they thought he wanted

Most of us will remember the telling off we used to get from our parents if we didn't sit up straight as children. But it seems good posture is not the only reason we would have done well to heed their advice - scientists claim it could also make us more confident.

In an experiment, people were told to sit up straight or slump over their desks. They were then told to list three positive or negative personal traits relating to their future career.

Afterwards they took a survey in which they rated themselves on how well they would do as a future professional.

This found that the answers of those who held the upright posture were more likely to be in line with the traits they had written down earlier - a sign that sitting up straight reinforces positive thoughts.

Professor Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University, said: 'It turns out that our posture can also affect how we think about ourselves. 'Sitting up straight is something you can train yourself to do, and it has psychological benefits.'

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Beer Raped Your Daughter and Gave Her Gonorrhea. Again



The Washington Post claimed near-supernatural powers for a tiny beer tax on Monday. A booze tax, write Lloyd I. Sederer and Eric Goplerud, will pay for health care reform. But that's not all!: "Research indicates that a 10 percent increase in current alcohol excise taxes-that is a penny for a beer-would result in less drinking, especially among underage drinkers, reducing rape, robbery, domestic violence and liver disease. A tax increase of 3 cents per beer would cut youth gonorrhea by 9 percent."

I'm going to pull out that last line one more time in case you, like me, sometime skim over blockquotes too quickly: "A tax increase of 3 cents per beer would cut youth gonorrhea by 9 percent."

Look at the lovely young lady above. If only a three cent tax on that Budweiser could have saved her from the heartbreak of VD.

Messrs. (Drs.?) Sederer and Goplerud have taken the fine art of vaguely claiming that "studies show..." to a new level. Obviously, the argument here is that lots of beer makes people more likely to rape, pillage, etc. and that pricier beer means less consumption. A quick Google reveals that they're pulling from 2000 study that looked at beer taxes and gonorrhea rates in various states. Reason, of course, tore this study a new one back when first made the rounds. Key passage: "[David Murray of the Statistical Assessment Service, a non-profit think tank in D.C.] does yeoman's work pointing out the junk reasoning at the root of so much junk science. This one was a high, hanging curve for Murray, who said the CDC's thinking was on the level of "the sun goes down because we turn on the street lights."

The really interesting thing is that the CDC, in effect, agrees with that criticism. It buries its assent, however, in an editorial note that says the findings "do not prove a causal relation between higher taxes and declining STD [sexually transmitted disease] rates."

There are parallels to the outlandish claims made for a 3 cent soda tax. It will end obesity! Pay for health care reform! Make dentists obsolete! A handy review of the bad math behind the idea that small soda taxes will take a significant dent out of obesity here.

UPDATE: A alert reader writes: "Of course, it's probably safe to say that obese teenagers are less likely to be sexually active and therefore less likely to contract STDs. So really, supporters of 'obesity' taxes are really just supporting the infliction of STDs upon America's youth (which in turn drives up health care costs). That's just common sense."

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Nanoparticles may be used to help kill tumours

Greenies and food freaks hate nanoparticles so this might help stop further attacks on them

BRITISH scientists are developing ways to use nanoparticles as tiny magnets that can heat up and kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells around them. The researchers have found that iron-oxide nanoparticles can be attached to cancer-seeking antibodies, or injected into cancer-seeking stem cells, which take them straight to the tumours they need to kill.

Heating the cells to just 5 or 6 degrees Celsius above body temperature, in a new device called a magnetic alternating current hyperthermia, or MACH, machine, can kill the cancer cells. The researchers said the MACH device was like a microwave, heating only targeted cells. "This offers a new way to treat cancer," the team from University College London said. "If we get the magnetic particles to migrate to cancer cells, we can kill only the cancer cells, leaving the healthy cells unharmed – the ultimate targeted therapy."

The scientists said the work was at an early stage and no tests had yet been done on humans. They predicted another decade of developing, refining and testing the techniques before they could be licensed to treat cancer. "We are aiming to be ready to go to clinical trials at the end of three years," said Professor of Physics Quentin Pankhurst.

The scientists said they had already seen the stem cell delivery technique work in mice. Mark Lythgoe, director of the university's centre for advanced biomedical imaging, said he and colleagues had shown in a study due to be published soon that certain cells, called mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), when loaded with magnetic nanoparticles, would take them direct to secondary lung tumours, or lung metastases. "We have now just started the trial where we put those animals into the heating system... to see whether it has killed the lung metastases," he said.

Two other methods were also showing promise, one using cancer-seeking antibodies to carry nanoparticles to head and neck tumours, and another using magnetic fields to steer the tiny magnets to specific parts of the body which need treatment. "The idea is that we could use these three guided techniques to get the cells to go to the tumour," said Mr Lythgoe. "Then when you've got them there, you put the patient into the MACH system, it heats up the iron oxide particles like a microwave."

Heat is known to kill cancer cells but scientists are seeking ways to target the heat more specifically so healthy cells are not destroyed. Research presented last month by German scientists showed that heat-treated tumours responded better to chemotherapy, meaning the technique could allow chemotherapy doses to be reduced in the future, reducing toxic side effects.

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Cheap cosmetics best

A FACE cream selling for less than $12 a bottle has been voted the most effective anti-wrinkle cream by the British consumer group Which?. Another cream selling for under $10 in discount supermarket Aldi also came out tops in a separate UK consumer test, proving price is no indicator of effectiveness when it comes to the $5 billion-a-year cosmetics business.

The sister organisation to Australian Choice, Which? put 13 moisturisers and anti-wrinkle eye creams to the test over six weeks on consumers aged 35 to 65. High-definition photos were taken over the trial period and then analysed by an expert panel. The Simple Kind To Skin Rich moisturiser beat big names like Clinique, Avon, Clarins and Garnier. They concluded the budget moisturiser out-performed a Clinique eye cream costing 64 times more per 10ml.

It even outperformed the much-hyped Boots No. 7 Protect and Perfect eye cream, hailed as a miracle wrinkle eraser in media reports earlier this year after research, part-funded by Alliance Boots, was published in the British Journal of Dermatology.

Which? also concluded that none of the eye creams came close to their claims to eliminate the appearance of wrinkles, but that the Simple product "worked just as well" as other moisturisers. Here in Australia, the Simple moisturiser sells for just $11.49 for 125ml at Big W and Priceline.

The other consumer-voted, face-saving budget buy is a generic supermarket brand sold by Aldi. When UK paper The Mirror enlisted 2000 volunteers to blind test anti-wrinkle creams, the product that came out on top surprised everyone because it was 95 per cent cheaper than all the others. Aldi's Lacura Q10 anti-wrinkle day cream, selling as Lacura Day Cream here in Australia for just $8.99, was voted the best. When the results were published, British consumers cleared Aldi's shelves of 35,000 jars in one day.

Choice put anti-ageing creams to the test back in 2007 and the cheaper Olay Regenerist performed as well as a Lancome product. It also outperformed the over-the-top expensive La Prairie product. The "supermarket moisturiser" now retails for $49.99 for 50ml.

Dr Stephen Shumack, of the Australasian College of Dermatologists, said: "There is no point in buying the expensive product because, really, it's just a nice jar to put in the bathroom." The only clinically proven product to reverse some photo ageing was Retin A, an acne preparation with high levels of vitamin A.

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Canadian oldsters immune to swine flu

Halton’s medical officer of health suspects there has been an outbreak of pandemic H1N1 flu virus among staff at a long-term care home in Burlington. Dr. Bob Nosal said “over 10” staff at the home are confirmed to have Influenza A. However, he said it’s almost guaranteed further sub-typing tests will show the flu strain to be pandemic H1N1.

The reason for Nosal’s assessment is that one of the ill staff has an “epidemiological link” – a personal connection – with one of two adults in Halton with the first confirmed cases of the pandemic H1N1 flu virus in the region this fall.

While flu outbreaks are not uncommon in long term care homes, this one is unique in that it has so far hit only staff – not elderly residents. Nosal said that might be because of the residents’ residual immunity to H1N1, or swine flu. “People born before 1957 are thought to have been exposed to the swine flu virus or a strain of it,” said Nosal.

Staff at the long term care home, which the Region is not identifying, have suffered the usual flu symptoms of fever, cough and sore throats, said Nosal. Some staff had them in early September and have presumably returned to work, he added.

There have been no hospitalizations due to the virus this fall. The Region is also reporting there has not been any increased absenteeism reported in Halton schools.

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'Video games are a social network'

Video and computer games have long been stigmatized by health knowalls as leading to social isolation. It was never true in the past and it is even farther from the truth now. Video games are fast becoming one of the most social forms of entertainment around, writes IGN Australia Games Editor Cam Shea

A quiet revolution is taking place in the world of videogames. Gaming is being transformed: what was once regarded as a solitary pursuit for nerds is becoming one of the most social forms of entertainment.

Take the Xbox 360 - its online service has grown from basic friend information and voice chat with other players during online games, to full video chat, the ability to form parties that stay grouped no matter what people are doing and avatars as well. Plus, coming soon, Facebook and Twitter integration.

The games are also changing - an online component is standard for most titles these days, while plenty of games focus almost entirely on online gameplay. Gamers, after all, like to compete - but they also like to socialise and be part of a community. Few games demonstrate this better than World of Warcraft (WoW).

The Warcraft collective

In fact, for all the press that surrounds the game – discussing its popularity and cultural impact, the sensationalist treatises on WoW addiction, and the fine-toothed examinations of every new announcement – it’s not often recognised that WoW is an intensely social phenomenon.

This is an experience that works best with friends: whether real life or people met through the game. For many players it’s the friendships they have in-game that keep them coming back - and that’s by design.

While it is possible to play WoW on your own for a while, the "end game" is built entirely for teams.

To see all that WoW has to offer, you’ll need to join a guild and work together with other players. When you’re spending hours at a time, several days a week with people, it’s no wonder bonds form. In this game, being a loner just isn’t an option.

With 11.5 million people around the world paying a monthly subscription fee to play WoW, it would seem that gamers are more social than they’re often given credit for.

A great example of this is Blizzcon – an annual event held in Los Angeles by the game’s developer, Blizzard Entertainment. It’s at this two day convention that the company makes its biggest announcements and gives the fans a chance to sit in on panels and play their upcoming games before release. The 20,000 tickets for the 2009 event sold out in less than 30 seconds, and around 50,000 other people signed up to the pay per view service to watch it online.

There are a number of reasons tickets to this event are so sought after, but for WoW players one of the chief attractions is that Blizzcon represents a great opportunity to meet up with other players – often for the first time in real life, and the result is an event that feels – at times – like a school reunion; good humoured, social and rowdy.

Real mateship

People travel from all over the world to attend, and yes, a number of Aussies made the journey this year. Tarn Smith, a Sydneysider studying to be a jewel crafter, came to Blizzcon to meet up with guys he’s known since the game launched - almost five years ago.

Why is he still enthused about WoW after all this time? “What keeps you going is the social aspect,” he said. “It’s the only thing that really keeps you there after the content’s been beaten. That’s the one key thing.”

Dean and Brett Jones, two WoW players from Perth, also found the game useful from a social perspective. “It was a way we connected with our real life friends,” Dean said. “So if they lived in another town or another city, it was a good way for us to get into contact with them… it was an easier medium to talk to them through WoW than to – say – text them, give them a call or send them an email. It would be the place to find them.”

“A lot of my mates have stopped playing,” said Nick Carman from Sydney, “so I basically started up on a different server with a different bunch of people, and it is a whole new experience.”

For WoW, the people define the experience almost as much as the content, and the result is a player base with a strong sense of ownership over the game world. WoW and Xbox Live are just two examples of a broad trend. Gaming as a whole is becoming an increasingly social space. It’s time to finally shed that nerdy loner image; to step out from the basement into the light of day as a mature and social entertainment medium.

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What a stupid way to reach conclusions: Doco stirs theory of cancer link to viruses

Consulting "experts" tells you very little. Experts can easily be wrong and often have been. A lot of expertise is mere opinion. New research would be a better use of funds than making a film

A DOCUMENTARY claiming viruses can trigger a larger number of cancers than first thought is expected to divide Australian cancer experts when it airs later this month.

But Catching Cancer also suggests that because viral infections can be prevented relatively easily through vaccines and other measures, there may be a new means of defeating the disease.

Made by Australian documentary maker Sonya Pemberton, the program also investigates whether a virus was responsible for 16 women developing breast cancer while working at the ABC's Brisbane television studios, forcing the site's evacuation in 2006.

Scientists agree that about 20 per cent of cancers are triggered by viruses. These include: liver cancer, triggered by hepatitis B and C; cancers of the anus, genitals and cervix, triggered by human papillomavirus; Burkitt's lymphoma, triggered by Epstein-Barr virus; and stomach cancer, triggered by the bacterium helicobacter pylori.

But a minority of scientists argue this percentage is far higher. American biologist Paul Ewald of the University of Louisville, quoted in the program, said the figure could be as high as 95 per cent.

The documentary includes interviews with a dozen Australian and overseas cancer experts, including sceptics of cancer viral transmission such as geneticist David Vaux from La Trobe University. Professor Vaux said the list of cancers caused by viruses was well established but small. ''Viruses can cause some cancers but they don't have a role in others,'' he said. ''Really, there isn't much debate … there's not much evidence for anything else.''

Ian Oliver, chief executive of the NSW Cancer Council, said cancer was caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors. ''If it was a virus related to breast cancer, I wonder what its mode of transmission would be - sex, touch,'' Professor Oliver said. ''One of the cruellest scenarios I have come across was [of] grandkids being told 'don't cuddle up or kiss grandma, you might catch it'. We don't want any of that catching on.''

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Swine flu vaccine myths 'busted' by Australian experts

Fear and misinformation have clouded the need for widepread swine flu vaccination, experts said today, at a 'mythbusting' seminar convened by vaccine manufacturer CSL.

Though the pandemic has faded for now, it could return to Australia's shores as early as February next year and the country ideally needs more than half the population vaccinated by that time, said Professor Robert Booy of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance.

Immunisation and influenza experts including Professor Booy, Professor Alan Hampson of the WHO's Influenza Specialist Group and Professor Terry Nolan of the University of Melbourne said they wanted to dispel some of the myths that had sprouted around the vaccine, through underinformed media reports and anti-vaccination campaigners. They emphasised the risk, especially to young people and pregnant women, if the virus returns in force next year. And they speculated that it was only the expertise and new techniques in Australia's hospital intensive care wards that prevented a much higher death toll this year.

MYTH: The swine flu vaccine has been rushed through without the normal tests.

FACT: The vaccine took just as long to prepare as the usual seasonal flu vaccine, has been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and has been subjected to greater scrutiny than the usual flu vaccine.

MYTH: Swine flu is so mild that you might as well just catch it and not bother with the vaccine.

FACT: The number of deaths caused by swine flu could be up to ten times those that we know about, because it might have exacerbated other underlying diseases. It is particularly dangerous in young people and pregnant women.

MYTH: I had the flu this year, so it was probably the swine flu and I'm immune.

FACT: With a new pandemic, especially in children, the immune response may not be strong enough to prevent another infection.

MYTH: In 1976 a swine flu vaccine in the USA caused paralysis (Guillian-Barre Syndrome) and it could do again.

FACT: It was a one-off. The original effect was only an additional one case of GBS per 100,000 people vaccinated. The modern vaccine is very different, and no subsequent vaccines have been linked to GBS. In fact, research suggests vaccination may REDUCE the likelihood of getting GBS, which can be caused by an infection.

MYTH: The use of multi-dose vials poses an infection risk.

FACT: Not if GPs follow standard infection control procedures. Previous cases of MDV-related infection are decades old. The only real risk is the potential for some of the vaccine to be wasted, because the vials must be thrown away a day after opening.

MYTH: The vaccine contains dangerous amounts of mercury.

FACT: The multi-dose vials contain a small amount of thiomersal, a mercury-based preservative. It is in such small trace amounts — similar to the amount of mercury in some foods — that there is no credible evidence it poses any risk whatsoever.

MYTH: The vaccine is unsafe for pregnant women to use.

FACT: There is no reason to believe there would be unusual risks for pregnant women. In fact, because the flu is most dangerous to that group, they should be encouraged to vaccinate.

MYTH: The vaccine is not safe for children.

FACT: Tests to establish the appropriate dose for children are still under way, but there is no reason to think they will turn up any problems.

MYTH: People with egg allergies should not have the vaccine.

FACT: Most egg allergies are only mild, and the vaccine will be safe for these people.

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Cockroach inspires cheap artificial heart

A ground-breaking £1,500 artificial heart inspired by the anatomy of the cockroach could revolutionise human cardiac care, scientists in India believe.

The development of a robust, affordable and safe synthetic heart remains one of the holy grails of biomedical engineering amid a shortage of donated organs and rising levels of heart disease. In Britain, critically ill adults wait an average of 103 days and children 143 days for a donated heart, according to the NHS. In India, heart disease will end more lives per year than all infectious illnesses combined, including diarrhoea, tuberculosis and malaria, by 2015, World Health Organisation figures suggest, as Western lifestyle diseases take a grip.

The heart may appear quite a simple organ: a powerful muscle that acts as a pump to move blood around the body. But efforts to replicate it have floundered. The two artificial hearts available in the US today are expensive, costing at least $50,000 (£30,000) apiece. Both have problems, with patients vulnerable to infections and strokes, experts say.

Sujoy Guha, a biomedical engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, believes that the most critical problems are a result of artificial hearts attempting to mimic the real thing. The human heart has four chambers, but only the left ventricle is responsible for building the pressure that moves blood around the body. Depending on one chamber to do the hard work places this part of an artificial heart under enormous strain.

Dr Guha likens the process to trying to scale a four-foot rise in just one bound. “Do it too often and your knees will give way,” he said. “Much better to use a series of small steps.”

The sudden build-up of pressure inside conventional artificial hearts can also damage blood cells, Dr Guha said. This can lead to clotting and strokes, and means that patients must be given anti-coagulants, which place them at risk of severe bleeding. By contrast, his prosthetic heart builds pressure in stages, through five chambers — a model based on the anatomy of a cockroach. He has been working on his prototype heart, which is made from titanium and plastic and runs on batteries that can be recharged from outside the body, since the early 1960s.

The heart of the cockroach has 13 chambers, which build pressure in a series of steps. If one fails, the animal still continues living. “When I was learning my biology I became fascinated by the cockroach,” Dr Guha told The Times. “It is hardy [and] survives extreme conditions. It came into this world before humans and will survive beyond us.”

Dr Guha is testing his device on goats, and hopes to move on to humans in the next 18 months. He believes that his artificial heart could be available in five years. He hopes to make one available for about £1,500, a feat he says is possible because his project is government-funded and will not have to pay research costs.

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How to make a perfect cup of tea in the traditional English way

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More here.

A most instructive finding

Vaccinated British teenager killed by tumour NOT the vaccine. Temporal conjunction is not causation. Danger in a therapeutic product should be judged by the number who do NOT suffer ill effects. Drugs such as Vioxx that were taken safely by hundreds of thousands get taken off the market because of apparent adverse effects of the drug in a handful of cases. But it is just superstitious and implausible guesswork to assume that the rare ill-effects were due to the drug. The case below is instructive because the initial accusations against the vaccine could clearly be shown to be wrong

THE teenage girl who died shortly after being immunised against cervical cancer was killed by a malignant chest tumour and not by a reaction to the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, an inquest has heard. Natalie Morton, 14, fell ill on Monday after being vaccinated at her school under a national immunisation programme against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV). She died a few hours later after being admitted to hospital.

"The pathologist has confirmed today at the opening of the inquest into the death of Natalie Morton that she died from a large malignant tumour of unknown origin in the heart and lungs," said Dr Caron Grainger, joint director of public health for the Coventry area where Natalie died. "There is no indication that the HPV vaccine, which she had received shortly before her death, was a contributing factor to the death, which could have arisen at any point," Dr Grainger said.

In paying tribute to Natalie, her stepfather Andrew Bullock said she was "kind, fun-loving and had a beautiful smile". "We will miss her very much", he said.

The Department of Health said the immunisation program was continuing and that to date more than 1.4 million doses of Cervarix have been administered. Manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline had recalled the batch of vaccine used at the school pending an investigation. "GSK's deepest sympathies lie with the parents at this very sad time," said a spokeswoman, adding that she did not want to comment further.

The program to vaccinate girls aged 12 to 13 began in September 2008 to fight cervical cancer, which is the 12th most common women's cancer in Britain, killing more than 1000 each year.

News of Natalie's death came shortly before US health regulators again delayed a decision on whether to allow Glaxo to sell Cervarix in the United States where a panel of specialists has recommended its use. An advisory panel to Japan's Health Ministry backed the vaccine earlier this week.

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The elixir of life? Diabetes pill could help you live longer and stay healthier

Rather a lot of bright-eyed optimism here: The sort of optimism that can lead to iatrogenic disasters. These results derive from genetically defective mice and even findings from normal rodents do not always generalize well to humans -- and there will undoubtedly be side effects of as yet unknown severity

A cheap pill taken by millions of diabetics could hold the secret to a long and healthy life. Research suggests that metformin, which costs as little as 2p a tablet, could extend human life. It may also be able to keep us physically agile and mentally sharp in old age, it was found. There are even indications that it can help prevent people putting on weight.

Professor Dominic Withers, of University College London, said the findings suggest it would be possible to establish drugs to combat ageing. The researchers took their inspiration from studies on worms, flies and dogs that showed those on very low-calorie diets tend to live longer, healthier lives. To mimic the effect, without the need for dieting, they created designer mice unable to make a key protein called S6K1. Experiments showed that blocking S6K1 raises levels of an energy sensor called AMPK. When we eat less, levels of AMPK rise, and the body goes into a survival mode and ageing slows.

Metformin, which has been safely used for more than 50 years to control blood sugar levels in age and obesity-related diabetes, has also been found to raise levels of AMPK. The tests found that both sexes of mice were healthier, but the effects were most dramatic in the females, which also lived longer. Their lifespan increased by an average of 20 per cent. But a few saw an increase of more than 50 per cent, the journal Science reports.

In 'middle-age', the creatures were leaner than ordinary mice of the same age and had stronger bones and better balance, strength and co-ordination. They were also more inquisitive, suggesting they were mentally sharper. Even their immune systems appeared stronger and more youthful. It is hoped that metformin may mimic these other effects of blocking S6K1.

In the case of the diabetics who are already taking it, its ability to extend life may be cancelled out by the effects of the disease.

Professor Withers plans to test the drug's anti-ageing abilities in mice and hopes to start the first human trials within five years. These would be likely to be in obese people whose weight puts them at risk of diabetes and other conditions in later life. The researchers also want to test the drug's ability to ward off Alzheimer's.

Trials with laboratory mice have produced encouraging results so far. Metformin's long record as a safe drug means it would have to go through fewer safety tests than a brand-new medicine. But it is still likely to be 15 years before it is widely used to protect against the diseases of old age. In the meantime, the professor 'strongly advises' against healthy adults taking the medicine in the hope of extending their life.

Researcher Dr David Gems said: 'We are suddenly much closer to treatments for ageing than we thought. 'We have moved from the initial findings in worm models to having "druggable" targets in mice. 'The next logical step is to see if metformin can slow the ageing process in humans.'

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Keep your self-righteous fingers off my processed food

Just in time for the worst economic downturn since the Depression, here comes a new crop of social critics to inform us that we're actually spending too little for the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the furniture we sit on, and the gasoline that runs our automobiles.

Never mind that US job losses these days range from 200,000 to 500,000 a month, that foreclosures are up 32 percent over this time last year, and that people are relearning how to clip newspaper coupons and save at the supermarket. Dire economic circumstances don't seem to faze these spending enthusiasts, who scold us for shopping at supermarkets instead of at farmers' markets, where a loaf of "artisanal" (and also "sustainable") rye bread sells for $8, a cup of ice cream for $6, and a pound of organic tomatoes goes for $4.

The latest cheerleader for higher prices is Ellen Ruppel Shell, a professor of science journalism at Boston University who has just published a book titled Cheap. It's not a guide to bargain-hunting. The theme of Shell's book, subtitled The High Cost of Discount Culture, is "America's dangerous liaison with Cheap."

Shell's argument goes like this: shopping at discount stores, factory outlets, and, of course, Wal-Mart (no work of social criticism is complete without a drive-by shooting aimed at that chain) exploits Chinese factory workers (who would much rather be back on the collective farm, wearing their Mao suits) and degrades the environment because much of the low-price junk wears out and ends up in landfills.

Even IKEA comes in for a drubbing in Shell's book. Yes, the Swedish chain's inexpensive, assemble-yourself furniture may look tasteful, but behind every Billy bookcase lies a gruesome tale (in Shell's view) of Siberian forests ravaged for all that pine veneer, and gallons of fossil fuel burned by couples motoring to IKEA's remote store locations, strategically chosen for their rock-bottom land values. Most damaging of all, says Shell, is the cost to America's soul.

"The economics of Cheap cramps innovation, contributes to the decline of once flourishing industries, and threatens our proud heritage of craftsmanship," she writes. In her view, we should all save up for "responsibly made quality goods," preferably from shops attainable by "public transit."

Maybe it's because I've got IKEA furniture in every room in my house (although my husband did finally lay down his Allen wrench and declare a permanent strike against "assemble-yourself," forcing us to move up the socio-furniture-nomic scale to Crate & Barrel), but I ask, what's wrong with low prices? If you don't care for the quality, well, as my mother always says, you get what you pay for.

In an online debate with the Atlantic's economics writer, Megan McArdle, Shell observes with disapproval that, when prices are adjusted for inflation, Americans today spend "40% less on clothes, 20% less on food, more than 50% less on appliances, about 25% less on owning and maintaining a car" than they did during the early 1970s. Over that same period, Census Bureau tables show, US median household income rose by at least 18% in constant dollars — despite the much-lamented (by Shell and others) decampment of "once-flourishing" manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere. That's why even America's poorest people nowadays can afford automobiles, cell phones, and TVs.

Yet a significant number of social critics wish they couldn't. Robert Pollin, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst — cited approvingly by Shell — has argued for higher clothing prices and steep taxes on fossil fuels in the name of various social and green causes, even though, as he conceded in a January article in the Nation, the latter measure would "impose higher energy prices on businesses and individuals." "Even America's poorest people nowadays can afford automobiles, cell phones, and TVs. Yet a significant number of social critics wish they couldn't."

The most zealous of the spend-more crowd, however, are the food intellectuals who salivated, as it were, at a steep rise in the cost of groceries earlier this year, including such basics as milk and eggs. Some people might worry about the effect on recession-hit families of a 17% increase in the price of milk. Not Alice Waters, the food-activist owner of Berkeley's Chez Panisse restaurant, who shudders at the thought of sampling so much as a strawberry that hasn't been nourished by organic compost and picked that morning at a nearby farm — and she thinks everyone else in America should shudder too. "Make a sacrifice on the cell phone or the third pair of Nike shoes," Waters airily informed the New York Times in April.

Echoing Waters was her fellow Berkeley food guru, Michael Pollan, professor of science journalism (a hot field for social critics, obviously) at UC Berkeley. Pollan (no relation to Robert Pollin) is the author of the best-selling Omnivore's Dilemma and coiner of the mantra "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" that is on the lips of every foodie from Bainbridge Island to Martha's Vineyard. Pollan, too, rejoices at the idea of skyrocketing prices for groceries, hoping they might "level the playing field for sustainable food that doesn't rely on fossil fuels."

Pollan also hopes that rising prices might constitute another weapon in his ongoing war against his agribusiness villain of choice: corn. Corn is a plant, of course, and thus should theoretically rank high on Pollan's list of permissible edibles. But it is also the basis of such dubious items as snack chips, Coca-Cola (made with high-fructose corn syrup, the godfather of obesity) and suspiciously plentiful beef (corn-fed).

Pollan is a "locavore," one of those people who believe that in order to be truly ethical, you should eat only foods grown or killed within your line of sight (for me, that would be my neighbor's cat). He once described a meal he made consisting of a wild boar shot by him in the hills near his Bay Area home and laboriously turned into pate, plus bread leavened by yeast spores foraged from his backyard.

Lately, Pollan has set his sights on Häagen-Dazs ice cream, not because it contains corn syrup (it doesn't) but because it's a commercially made product, and if there's one thing Pollan hates, it's commerce. His latest pronunciamento is "Don't buy any food you've ever seen advertised."

Demanding that other people impoverish themselves in the name of your pet cause — fostering craftsmanship, feeling "connected" to the land, "living more lightly on the planet," or whatever — goes way beyond Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake." It's more like Marie Antoinette dressing up in her shepherdess costume and holding court in a fake-rustic cottage at the Petit Trianon.

Those who think that there is something wrong with owning more than two pairs of sneakers or that exquisite fastidiousness about what you put into your mouth equals virtue need to be teleported back to, say, the Depression itself. Then, privation was in earnest and few people had telephones, much less cell phones.

Read some 1930s memoirs: Back then, people who couldn't afford "quality" furniture slept on mattresses on the floor and hammered together makeshift tables out of orange crates. They went barefoot during the summer and sewed their children's clothes out of (nonorganic) flour sacks. That was what "cheap" meant then — not today's plethora of affordable goods, which the social critics would like to take away from us.

Meanwhile, Professor Pollan, eat all the "plants" you like — but don't try to pry me from my Häagen-Dazs dark-chocolate ice cream. I bought it at Safeway, and it's sitting on my IKEA kitchen table.

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Too many lollies (candies) 'may lead to jail' (?)

I am pleased that proper caution is expressed below about this finding. There is a weak tendency for delay of gratification to be a consistent trait so that could be involved

CHILDREN who eat too many lollies are more likely to become violent criminals as adults, new research finds. The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, followed more than 17,000 children over four decades. The British researchers found of the children who consumed lollies and chocolate daily at the age of 10, 69 per cent were later arrested for a violent offence, the Associated Press reports.

But while the researchers said the results were interesting, more studies were needed to confirm the link. “It's not that the sweets themselves are bad, it's more about interpreting how kids make decisions,” said Simon Moore of the University of Cardiff, one of the paper's authors.

Mr Moore said parents who bribed their children into good behaviour with sweets could be doing them more harm than good, as the treats might prevent their offsprings from learning about deferring gratification, leading to impulsive behaviour and violence instead.

But the study stopped short of recommending parents stop giving the sugary treats. “This is an incredibly complex area,'' Mr Moore said. “It's not fair to blame it on the candy.''

While the study took into account other variables, including different parenting skills and varying social and economic backgrounds, these factors failed to alter the researchers’ findings.

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Baby cooling therapy ‘cuts risk of brain damage from oxygen deprivation’

A therapy for newborn babies based on lowering the body temperature could significantly reduce the risk of brain damage after oxygen starvation at birth.

Complications such as the umbilical cord becoming twisted cause babies to be deprived of oxygen in about 2 in 1,000 births and can frequently result in cerebral palsy or other neurological problems. In standard treatment babies are placed in an incubator, kept warm and helped to breathe using a ventilator. However, a large-scale clinical trial published today reveals that babies have better long-term outcomes if they are cooled down by a few degrees instead.

The study, involving 325 newborn infants, showed a 57 per cent reduction in the risk of brain damage when babies were given the cooling therapy compared with standard treatment. The treatment is effective because cooling slows down the metabolism and can provide a window during which neurons that have been deprived of oxygen but are not irreparably damaged can recover, according to scientists.

The “delayed cell death” effect that occurs after oxygen deprivation is comparable to what happens when you burn your skin, explained Professor Marianne Thoresen, a specialist in neonatal neuroscience at the University of Bristol and a co-author of the study. “Some cells are killed immediately and you can’t rescue, but others can be saved if you immediately put your hand under cold water,” she said. Reducing oxygen metabolism throughout the body means that, relative to demand, there is more oxygen available to cells, allowing them more quickly to re-establish a chemical equilibrium.

The study, which is published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, recruited newborn babies who were suffering from oxygen deprivation from hospitals across Britain. Outward symptoms included being blue in the face, being unable to breathe unaided, lack of a heartbeat and low blood pressure.

325 babies took part in the research carried out between 2002 and 2006, with 163 receiving intensive care with cooling and 162 receiving standard intensive care. The standard care group were kept in incubators, which maintained the babies’ body temperatures at 37C. The babies in the cooled group were wrapped up in a specially designed blanket with circulating cold fluid so that their body temperature was lowered to 34-35C. After 72 hours of cooling the babies were slowly warmed back to a normal body temperature.

In the standard care group 42 of the infants were found to have severe disabilities 18 months later, compared with only 32 of the infants who had received the cooling treatment. Mortality rates were not significantly different for the two groups, however. The Co-chief investigator, Dr Denis Azzopardi, from Imperial College London, said: “The study builds on a 20-year body of research but gives, for the first time, irrefutable proof that cooling can be effective in reducing brain damage after birth asphyxia.”

Previous studies have shown the technique to be highly effective in treating animals. NICE is considering whether to make cooling therapy a recommended NHS treatment, based on the results of the study.

Professor Thoresen began investigating the technique after discovering that it was routinely used by a Swedish obstetrician in the 1950s. She was also persuaded by anecdotal evidence that cooling the body down could help to protect neurons from long-term damage. “In Norway, we have very cold water and you hear these stories of a five-year-old falling through the ice and being picked up half an hour later without any serious adverse affects,” she said.

Carmel Bartley, Family Support Manager from the children’s charity Bliss, said: “This is very welcome research into an area which is known to save lives. Cooling of babies with birth asphyxia is an innovative technique already being used in some neonatal centres. This is a specialist treatment that we would like to see used more widely to ensure the very best outcomes for our most vulnerable babies.”

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Children whose mothers work are 'less healthy'

What a colossal heap of steaming crap the report below is. They did NOT show that the kids are less healthy. All they showed is that the kids ate less fruit and veg -- and the benefit of fruit and veg is little more than an urban myth. Traditional Eskimos eat practically none but have LOW rates of cardiovascular disease etc. And THAT has been known for around a century!

But even forgetting Eskimos, the authors have certainly not demonstrated any harm from the pattern of food intake that they observed. What evidence is there to set a particular level of fruit and veg intake as being "enough"? Official propaganda about "5 serves" has no foundation in double blind studies that I have ever been able to find -- even though such studies should be relatively easy to do. We now know that official recommendations about how much alcohol one should drink were just guesswork, so I have got $100 for anyone who shows me that the "5 serves" recommendation is any different. Further, I don't like to kick a dead horse but the findings are based on self-reports -- which are notoriously unreliable.

The journal article is here. Its title is "Examining the relationship between maternal employment and health behaviours in 5-year-old British children". The leading author is Summer Sherburne Hawkins

The children of working mothers are less healthy than those who stay at home, according to an authoritative study by British researchers.

Almost two out of three mothers with children under five work in Britain with numbers expected to rise, but new research has shown this can affect children's health.

In a study which will cause renewed debate over who have to divide their time between caring for their offspring and going out to work, the researchers found children whose mothers worked were more likely to be driven to school, to watch more than two hours of TV a day, and have sweetened drinks between meals. Children of mothers who worked full time also ate less fruit and vegetables, the study suggests. [How awful!] Middle class families suffer the same problems as the findings remained similar even when household income was taken into account, the paper said.

Encouraging mothers to return to work has been a key Labour policy and Patricia Hewitt said in 2004 when she was Trade and Industry Secretary that mothers who do not return to work were 'a real problem'.

The research, on more than 12,000 British children aged five, was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The research, from a team at the Institute of Child Health in London, found although children whose mothers worked full time ate less fruit and vegetables, the link disappeared when looking at mothers who worked part-time, the research showed. However, there was no difference between working mothers and non-working mothers on the level of exercise a child took or whether they mainly snacked on crisps and sweets between meals.

Research author, Professor Catherine Law, paediatric epidemiologist at the Institute of Child Health, said: "Our results do not imply that mothers should not work. "Rather, they highlight the need for policies and programmes to help support parents to create a healthy environment for their children."

The researchers noted that around 60 per cent of women with a child aged five or younger in the UK or USA are employed, adding in the study: "Time constraints may limit parents’ capacity to provide their children with healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity. "Although we found that flexible work arrangements were not detrimental, they are unlikely to be important in helping parents support the development of positive health behaviours in their children."

They recommended nurseries and childminders should help bridge the gap, by helping ensure children got their recommended levels of fruit, vegetables and exercise: "Policies and regulations can create an environment that promotes healthy eating and physical activity. "Providing structured guidance could support parents by ensuring that the foods and physical activity offered at childcare would help their children to achieve dietary and physical activity recommendations."

A total of 30 per cent (4,030) of the mothers had not worked since the birth of their child but the rest were employed. They typically worked 21 hours per week and for 45 months. The mothers were questioned about the hours they worked and their children's diet, exercise and activity levels when the youngsters were five.

The findings showed that after factors such as mother's education, socioeconomic circumstances and ethnic origin were taken into account, children were 55 per cent more likely to be driven to school if their mother worked 21 hours or more a week. [That's bad?? Sounds safer to me] They were 33 per cent more likely to watch more than two hours of TV a day, than children whose mothers did not work at all.

Lucy Lloyd, director of communications for the Family and Parenting Institute, said the study does not say where the children are being cared for while the mothers are working, whether they are in formal childcare or being looked after by a relative. She added: "We should not use this study to blame working mothers, we do not want a stick to beat them with. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions from this paper."

Jill Kirby, director for the Centre for Policy Studies said: "The overall picture seems to confirm earlier studies where mothers are more rushed and trying to deal with the demands of working life they are less likely to be able or motivated to ensure their children have a healthy diet and lifestyle. "The answer is not more government regulation but more choice for families to enable them to choose parental care over childcare where they want to and to relieve some of the pressure mothers are put under to place their children into formal care instead of looking after them at home themselves, especially in the early years."

Sue Palmer, an education consultant and writer, said she was not surprised about the new research. She said: "The simple common sense explanation is that the parent knows the child so they know the best way to persuade it to behave and teach good habits. If you don't know your little one that's not so easy. "If parents are close to those children in those first three years, they can set up default habits of eating, activity, play, bedtime routines, mealtime rituals which can help to counter the effects of consumer messages that children are often getting, very often more towards junk food. "If you can set up default habits when the child is very small through the close relationship, it seems there is a good chance those habits can continue. If they aren't set up early, it is more difficult to set up these habits."

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Our Change4Life movement is already helping over 370,000 families eat well, move more and live longer by helping them to understand the harm that fat and added sugar can cause to children’s health, and offering them simple yet effective ways to make changes to their diet and increase their activity levels. “This is part of the Government's £372 million pound strategy to reduce childhood obesity."

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Can loneliness heighten the risk of breast cancer?

It can if you are a mouse. Comparing human social life with mice put into a highly unnatural situation must be some pinnacle of absurdity

Lonely women could be at greater risk of breast cancer, researchers claim. Scientists have shown the stress and anxiety caused by ‘social isolation’ can speed up the growth of potentially deadly tumours. Although the findings are based on a study of mice, experts say they have implications for human health and could even pave the way for new types of cancer drugs.

Researchers at Chicago University made the discovery after carrying out experiments on animals that were genetically predisposed to develop breast cancer. The stress caused by living alone altered the behaviour of genes in their breast tissue and sped up the growth of tumours.

The idea that women who have stressful lives might be at higher risk of breast cancer dates back 100 years. However, there has been conflicting evidence from studies about whether stress triggers the disease.

Dr Suzanne Conzen, who led the latest study, said: ‘I doubted there would be a difference in the growth of the tumours in such a strong model of genetically inherited cancer simply based on chronic stress in their environments, so I was surprised to see a clear, measurable difference both in mammary gland tumour growth and interestingly in accompanying behaviour and stress hormone levels.’

Her team took two groups of identical mice and raised them in two environments. One lived in social groups, the others were kept in solitary confinement. Despite having exactly the same food and access to exercise, the isolated mice grew larger tumours.

The lonely mice were also more ‘nervy’, releasing more stress hormones when they were agitated. Stress did not just increase the activity of genes in the brains, but in tissue around their bodies.

The findings, published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, could explain how their environment makes people more susceptible to other potentially dangerous diseases such as diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.

The study also revealed key genetic changes involved in cancer growth, raising the prospect of new drugs to slow down tumours. ‘Given the increased knowledge of the human genome, we can begin to identify and analyse the specific alterations that take place in cancer-prone tissues of individuals living in at-risk environments,’ Dr Conzen said. ‘That will help us to better understand and implement cancer prevention strategies.’

Past studies have shown that social support and friendship can boost a woman’s chances of recovering from breast cancer, and that the lonely and depressed are more vulnerable to a host of serious diseases.

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Margarine consumption is linked to lower IQs in children

Most amusing: A "healthy" choice turns out to be anything but. I wonder how the "health" establishment will handle that? Sadly, however, this is not as good an example of the limits of official wisdom as it looks.

The article is a much better example of how medical researchers tend to work in a sort of vacuum and ignore the big picture. It in fact reveals an extraordinary lack of insight into their own society by these eight New Zealand researchers. It was once illegal to buy margarine without a doctor's prescription in N.Z. They have a big dairy industry that they like to prop up. So, given the peculiarly strong emphasis on margarine as a therapeutic agent in New Zealand, it would seem highly likely that people who felt less healthy to start with tended most to buy it. And people with poor health have less healthy children -- and lower IQ is one correlate of poor health. The findings then tell us about who buys margarine rather than any effect that margarine has.

Trans fats indeed! What we see in the report is not the influence of trans fats but the influence of unwarranted assumptions and conventional thinking. It never ceases to amaze me that people who claim to be scientists seem to think they can just intuit the causal relationships in a dataset. They are witchdoctors, not scientists. Not one out of the eight of them said: "Hey! Wait a minute!"

The journal abstract is here. The title of the article is "Dietary patterns and intelligence in early and middle childhood" and the leading author is Reremoana F. Theodore. No corresponding author or email address is given, which is rather strange

It became popular as a healthier alternative to butter. But children who ate margarine every day had lower IQs than those who did not, a study has found. At the age of three-and-a-half, they scored three points lower on intelligence tests than other youngsters. Importantly, the link held even when parental occupation and other factors affecting wealth and class were taken into account, the study of children born in the mid-1990s showed.

By the age of seven, scores were six points lower – but only in children that had been underweight when born, suggesting that diet is particularly important for brain development in the more vulnerable. Writing in the journal Intelligence, the researchers from New Zealand’s Auckland University said it is unclear what lies behind the link.

However, trans fats may be to blame. The fats have been linked to memory problems in animal tests and may make it harder for the body to process healthier fats. In the mid-1990s, trans fats formed up to 17 per cent of the mix of some margarines. Today, however, levels are around 1 per cent – significantly lower than some butters. The discovery in recent years that the fats clog up the arteries, raising the risk of heart disease, has led to concerted efforts to cut levels in food. However, the high amounts in the past may have hampered the development of today’s adults.

The researchers, whose study showed that eating fish and cereal boosted intelligence, said: ‘We found a number of dietary factors to be significantly associated with intelligence measures. The association between margarine consumption and IQ scores was the most consistent and novel finding.’

The researchers said that more work was needed to confirm if trans fats, which are formed when vegetable oil is solidified, were at fault, or if something else was to blame. They said: ‘Children who ate margarine daily had IQ scores that were up to six points lower compared to children who did not. ‘The impact of regular margarine consumption on intelligence now warrants further investigation in order to replicate these findings and to identify possible mechanisms that may underlie this association.’

Sian Porter, of the British Dietetic Association, said that margarine is generally healthier than butter but the high fat content means that both should be used sparingly. A spokesman for the Food Standards Agency said that trans fat consumption in the UK is now below the recommended levels.

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Fatties really are happier

I am a bit bemused by this study being done in Japan, though. I didn't think there were ANY fat Japanese outside the Sumo ring. Maybe that shows how much I know but I still suspect that "fat" in Japan would not be fat in (say) America. If the study is replicable in Western countries, however (and it probably is), this does suggest that the obesity "war" is in at least some cases an attack on happiness -- and that seems morally obnoxious. Once again we see public policy sold as being "for your own good" when it is not for your own good at all. Why are people not entitled to be fat and happy?

People who are "happy and fat" tend to respond less well to slimming programmes, said psychologists. The findings indicate that a little negativity might benefit slimmers by leading them to worry more about their health and appearance.

Researchers in Japan conducted psychological profiles of 101 obese men and women undergoing a programme of counselling, nutrition and exercise therapy. Patients were asked to fill in personality questionnaires before and after the six-month course.

The study found that optimism and self-orientation characteristics improved for most patients during the programme. Those who became more self aware through counselling were more likely to lose weight than those who did not. But the research also found that people with a happy-go-lucky bright outlook at the start of the therapy were less likely to succeed. These patients were described as having ''free child'' (FC) ego states marked by assertiveness and optimism. Successful weight loss was associated with a more responsible and cautious ''adult'' or ''A'' ego state.

The scientists wrote in the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine: ''The positive aspects of the FC ego state involve controlling negative emotion and are related to the ability to look on the bright side and do things in one's own style, while the negative aspects are not caring about disease and giving in to temptation because of optimism, as well as instinctive and impulsive behaviours.

"Weight loss was observed for patients who had less of an FC ego state at the start of the programme and an increased A ego state during the six-month programme." Overall, patients lost an average of a stone [14lb] and their Body Mass Index - a measurement relating weight and height - fell by more than two points.

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Let them drink water!

The food freaks want to wage war on the poor

Not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, in the winter of 1942, physiologist A.J. Carlson made a radical suggestion: If the nation's largest citizens were charged a fee—say, $20 for each pound of overweight —we might feed the war effort overseas while working to subdue an "injurious luxury" at home.

Sixty-seven years later, the "fat tax" is back on the table. We're fighting another war—our second-most-expensive ever—and Congress seems on the verge of spending $1 trillion on health care. Once again, a bloated budget may fall on the backs of the bloated public. Some commentators, following Carlson, have lately called for a tax on fat people themselves (cf. the Huffington Post and the New York Times); others, like a team of academics writing in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, propose a hefty surcharge on soft drinks instead.

The notion hasn't generated much enthusiasm in Congress, but fat taxes are spreading through state legislatures: Four-fifths of the union now takes a cut on the sales of junk food or soda. Pleas for a federal fat tax are getting louder, too. The New York Times recently endorsed a penny-per-ounce soda tax, and Michael Pollan has made a convincing argument for why the insurance industry may soon throw its weight behind the proposal. Even President Obama said he likes the idea in a recent interview with Men's Health. (For the record, Stephen Colbert is against the measure: "I do not obey big government; I obey my thirst.")

For all this, the public still has strong reservations about the fat tax. The state-level penalties now in place have turned out to be way too small to make anyone lose weight, and efforts to pass more heavy-handed laws have so far fallen short. But proponents say it's only a matter of time before taxing junk food feels as natural as taxing cigarettes. The latter has been a tremendous success, they argue, in bringing down rates of smoking and death from lung cancer. In theory, a steep tax on sweetened beverages could do the same for overeating and diabetes.

It may take more than an analogy with tobacco to convince voters. As my colleague William Saletan points out, the first step in policing eating habits is to redefine food as something else. If you want to tax the hell out of soda, you need to make people think that it's a drug, not a beverage—that downing a Coke is just like puffing on a cigarette. But is soda as bad as tobacco? Let's ask the neuropundits.

Junk food literally "alters the biological circuitry of our brains," writes David Kessler [The Kessler quack again!] in this summer's best-seller, The End of Overeating. In a previous book, Kessler detailed his role in prosecuting the war on smoking as the head of the FDA; now he's explaining what makes us fat with all the magisterial jargon of cognitive neuroscience. Eating a chocolate-covered pretzel, he says, activates the brain's pleasure system—the dopamine reward circuit, to be exact —and changes the "functional connectivity among important brain regions." Thus, certain foods—the ones concocted by industrial scientists and laden with salt, sugar, and fat —can circumvent our natural inclinations and trigger "action schemata" for mindless eating. Got that? Junk food is engineered to enslave us. Kessler even has a catchphrase to describe these nefarious snacks: They're hyperpalatable.

Try as we might, we're nearly powerless to resist these treats. That's because evolution has us programmed to experience two forms of hunger. The first kicks in when we're low on energy. As an adaptation, its purpose is simple enough —we eat to stay alive. The second, called hedonic hunger, applies even when we're full—it's the urge to eat for pleasure. When food is scarce, hedonic hunger comes in handy, so we can stock up on calories for the hard times ahead. But in a world of cheap food, the same impulse makes us fat.

That's the problem with junk food. Manufacturers have figured out how to prey on man's voluptuous nature. Like the cigarette companies, they lace their products with addictive chemicals and cajole us into wanting things we don't really need. Soda is like a designer drug, layered with seductive elements—sweetness for a burst of dopamine, bubbles to prick the trigeminal nerve.

It's hard to draw a line, though, between foods that are drugs and foods that are merely delicious. Soda and candy aren't the only stimuli that "rewire your brain," of course. Coffee does, too, and so do video games, Twitter, meditation, and just about anything else that might give you pleasure (or pain). That's what brains do —they learn, they rewire. To construe an earthly delight as hyperpalatable —as too good for our own good— we're lashing out at sensuality itself. "Do you design food specifically to be highly hedonic?" Kessler asks an industry consultant at one point in the book. What's the guy going to say? "No, we design food to be bland and nutritious. …"

It's ironic that so many advocates for healthy eating are also outspoken gourmands. Alice Waters, the proprietor of Chez Panisse, calls for a "delicious revolution" of low-fat, low-sugar lunch programs. It's a central dogma of the organic movement that you can be a foodie and a health nut at the same time—that what's real and natural tastes better, anyway. Never mind how much fat and sugar and salt you'll get from a Wabash Cannonball and a slice of pain au levain. Forget that cuisiniers have for centuries been catering to our hedonic hunger —our pleasure-seeking, caveman selves— with a repertoire of batters and sauces. Junk foods are hyperpalatable. Whole Foods is delicious. Doughnuts are a drug; brioche is a treat. Some tastes, it seems, are more equal than others.

A fat tax, then, discriminates among the varieties of gustatory experience. And its impact would fall most directly on the poor, nonwhite people who tend to be the most avid consumers of soft drinks and the most sensitive to price. Under an apartheid of pleasure, palatable drinks are penalized while delicious —or even hyperdelicious— products come at no extra charge. What about the folks who can't afford a $5 bottle of POM Wonderful? No big deal, say the academics writing in the New England Journal of Medicine; they can always drink from the faucet. Here's how the article puts it: "Sugar-sweetened beverages are not necessary for survival, and an alternative (i.e. water) is available at little or no cost." So much for Let them eat cake.

We've known for a long time that any sin tax is likely to be a burden on the poor, since they're most prone to unhealthy behavior. (James Madison fought the snuff tax on these grounds way back in 1794.) But you might just as well say that poor people have the most to gain from a sin tax for exactly the same reason. It's also possible that revenues from a fat tax would be spent on obesity prevention —or go back to the community in other ways. There's a knotty argument here about the vexing and reciprocal interactions among health, wealth, and obesity. (I'll try to untangle some of these in my next column.) It's not clear whether, and in what direction, a soda tax might redistribute wealth. Whatever you think of the economics, though, raising the price on soda —and offering water in its place— will redistribute pleasure.

I don't mean to imply that any such regulation is unjust. We have laws against plenty of chemicals and behaviors that are as delightful as they are destructive. These are, for the most part, sensible measures to protect our health. What's disturbing is the thought that the degree of government control should vary according to who's using which drug. In April, the Obama administration called for an end to a long-standing policy that gives dealers of powdered cocaine 100 times more leeway than dealers of crack when it comes to federal prison sentences. Let's not repeat this drug-war injustice in the war on obesity. We may be ready to say that foods are addictive. Are we ready to judge the nature of a delicious high?

SOURCE






Is the definition of autism too broad? NHS claims one in 100 adults is autistic in some form

One per cent of the adult population is suffering from a form of autism, research has revealed. The study – the first of its kind – found that autism and related conditions such as Asperger’s syndrome, are as common in adults as in children. The finding is important because it had been suggested that the measles, mumps and rubella combination jab fuelled a rise in cases of the disorder after its introduction in the early Nineties.

If this were the case, rates of autism would be higher in children and young adults than in older age groups. But with the rate similar across all age groups, it seems that any rise in cases of autism in children can be attributed to better diagnosis and greater awareness of the condition.

As with children, the disorder is much more often found in males than in females. The Department of Health-funded research also found rates to be higher among single people and among men who haven’t been to university.

But the findings are likely to be seized upon as evidence that the definition of autism is now too broad. In the 1990s there was a huge surge in the number of autism cases reported in children, after a wider diagnostic definition of the condition was introduced.

The study found no evidence that rates of autism are on the rise and failed to find a link between the mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the condition. If there was a link with MMR, people aged in their early 20s or younger would expect to have higher rates of autism because they have had the jab, the report said. However, Jackie Fletcher, from vaccination awareness group Jabs, said: 'We're concerned the Department of Health is extrapolating from surveys not designed to find vaccine damage to bolster the uptake of MMR.'

Although rates of autism in children have been widely researched, the latest study is the first to attempt to set a figure for adults. Little was known about how autism affected people over the course of a lifetime.

Autism spectrum

1) Classic autism: The most severe form. Problems relating to people. They can be hypersensitive to their environment and be upset by certain colours and shapes. Often cling to rituals.

2) Asperger's syndrome: Milder form. Can be socially awkward and lack empathy.

3) Nonspecific pervasive developmental disorder (PDD-NOS): Shows some but not all the symptoms of classic autism

4) Rett syndrome: Rare condition that usually affects girls and is marked by poor head growth. May have poor verbal skills and make repetitive movements.

5) Childhood disintegrative disorder: Develops in children who previously seemed perfectly normal. Can stop talking and socialising.

Researchers asked more than 7,000 men and women 20 questions designed to pick up traits linked to autism and related conditions. Topics covered included attention to detail, ability to handle social interactions and ability to read emotions. After several hundred were put through a second, more stringent, assessment, the researchers estimated 72 people of those tested had autism or a related condition. If the results were extrapolated across the population as a whole, an estimated 1 per cent of adults would fall into the category. Three studies of children in England have come up with a similar rate, although other research has theorised the number numbers could be as high as one in 60.

Tim Straughan, of the NHS Information Centre, which carried out the study, said: ‘While the sample size was small and any conclusions need to be tempered with caution, the report suggests, despite popular perceptions, rates of autism are not increasing.’

Worryingly, the study also found men and women with the condition are no more likely to use services for those with mental or emotional problems than other adults. Mark Lever, of the National Autistic Society, said services and support for adults with autism were ‘woefully inadequate’. He added: ‘Nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of adults with autism told us they do not have enough support to meet their needs. ‘This study gives us further evidence to demand that more vital support is put in place.’

SOURCE

The myth of the smoking ban “miracle”

Restrictions on smoking around the world are claimed to have had a dramatic effect on heart attack rates. It's not true. See also some prior comments on this blog on 15th.

‘Heart attacks plummet after smoking ban’ declared The Sunday Times earlier this month, as it reported that England’s smoking ban has ‘caused a fall in heart attack rates of about 10 per cent’ (1). A few days later, The Scotsman upped the ante, informing its readers that ‘Smoking ban slashes heart attacks by up to a third across world’ (2).

Tales of heart attacks being ‘slashed’ by smoking bans have appeared with such regularity in recent years that it is easy to forget that there is a conspicuous lack of reliable evidence to support them. It is almost as if the sheer number of column inches is a substitute for proof.

The most recent reports are a case in point. Although The Sunday Times claimed a 10 per cent drop in heart attacks, nowhere in the 500 word article was a source mentioned and no one was quoted giving this figure. The ‘study’ the newspaper referred to does not exist, and the anti-smoking pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) – not renowned for downplaying the risks of passive smoking – went to the unusual lengths of posting a notice on its website the following day to point out that ‘the figures reported in The Sunday Times yesterday (and now circulating elsewhere) are not based on any research conducted to date’ (3).

Although the story quickly went around the globe, no one seems to know where the figure came from. It’s all rather strange. Basing journalism on anonymous sources is commonplace in the world of politics, but it is surely not necessary in the realms of science.

The second story – reported by a host of news organisations, including the BBC – also had no new data to report. Instead, it took its cue from an article in the journal Circulation which examined previous smoking ban/heart attack studies. If nothing else, the Circulation paper offers an opportunity to reflect on just how feeble the collected evidence is on this issue (4).

The first study to make the claim that smoking bans ‘slash’ heart attacks was met with howls of derision when it was published in the British Medical Journal in 2004 (5). Studying the modest population of Helena, Montana – where the number of monthly heart attacks seldom strayed into double digits – the study’s authors made the astounding claim that the town’s smoking ban had led to the rate of acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) plummeting by 40 per cent.

Dubbed the ‘Helena miracle’ by a legion of sceptics, the 40 per cent finding was damned by its very enormity. Since the authors were adamant that the drop was due to secondhand smoke (rather than smokers quitting), the finding required the reader to believe that 40 per cent of heart attacks in pre-ban Helena had been solely caused by passive smoking in bars and restaurants. To understand quite how miraculous the Helena miracle was, one must bear in mind that around 10 to 15 per cent of coronary heart disease cases are attributed to active smoking. That passive smoking could be responsible for a further 40 per cent strains all credibility.

Despite the inherent implausibility of the hypothesis, further studies were swiftly commissioned. If smoking bans could be shown to immediately save lives, it would be a compelling reason to implement bans elsewhere and expand those already in place. And since all that was required to ‘prove’ the hypothesis was a rough correlation between a declining heart attack rate and the start of a smoking ban, the prospects were good. Heart attack rates had been falling for years in most countries and there were plenty of smoking bans to choose from. The law of averages dictated that another heart miracle would soon come to light.

Flawed though it may have been, the Helena research was followed by several studies that displayed such a cavalier approach to the scientific process that they bordered on the comical. Researchers in Bowling Green, Ohio, for example, saw a large rise in heart attacks during the first year of the smoking ban. Side-stepping this awkward fact, they simply redefined year two of the ban as the ‘real’ post-ban period and, since that year followed an abnormal peak, there was naturally a decline in the heart attack rate. As a consequence, the researchers could triumphantly declare that the smoking ban had led to a 47 per cent reduction in heart attacks (6).

In the Piedmont region of Italy, there was an inconvenient rise in heart attacks amongst those over the age of 60 after the ban, and so those people were simply ignored. In a study that was trailed by the BBC (‘Smoking ban reduces heart risk’), the researchers focused entirely on those under 60, thereby recording an 11 per cent drop in cases (7).

Studies such as these form the basis for the recent reports of smoking bans slashing heart attacks by ‘up to a third’. The Circulation paper gathers them together and concludes that, on average, smoking bans cause rates of acute myocardial infarction to fall by 17 per cent. It includes the studies from Ohio and Italy, as well as three studies that have never been published and have only been ‘reported at meetings’.

The paper does not, however, include a mammoth (published) study of the entire United States, which concluded: ‘In contrast with smaller regional studies, we find that workplace bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases.’ (8)

Nor does it include an (unpublished) paper which found no statistically significant fall in heart attacks amongst the entire populations of California, Florida, New York and Oregon (9).

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the ongoing heart-miracle farrago is the eagerness to focus on small studies when complete hospital data is so freely available. It is extraordinary that no BBC journalist, for example, has thought of taking a few minutes to see how many people were rushed to hospital with acute myocardial infarction before and after the smoking bans of England, Scotland and Wales. If they did so, they would see that smokefree legislation has had no tangible influence on heart attack rates at all.

The graphs below show the number of emergency admissions for acute myocardial infarction, with the arrow indicating the start of the smoking ban. What is abundantly clear in each case is that the number of heart attack admissions has been falling for some time. Far from causing further dramatic cuts in heart attack rates, the bans had no discernible effect.

Publicly accessible hospital admissions data is like kryptonite to those who are so eager to believe in miracles. In most epidemiological studies pertaining to secondhand smoke, the raw data is not published. Here, it is open to all and shows quite clearly that the long-term downward trend in heart attacks has not been affected in any way by the implementation of smoking bans. It provides such a simple and straightforward rebuttal to the heart attack ‘slashing’ hypothesis that one wonders what level of hubris drives those who still espouse it.

The three graphs above cover a population larger than the sample groups in all the studies reviewed in Circulation combined, but no matter how much empirical evidence exposes the fantasy of the Helena miracle, it may be too late for the anti-smoking lobby to back down on this issue. Too many reputations are at stake.

After five years of covering these stories so uncritically, the same may be true of the media. One can scarcely blame newspapers for covering stories that offer such dramatic conclusions as the heart miracles. The irony is that if they dug just a little deeper, they might find a more interesting, and more believable, tale of human folly.

SOURCE (See the original for graphics)





Smoking status doesn't predict cardiovascular death

This article forms an amusing footnote to the one above. It essentially explains WHY smoking bans don't reduce circulatory disease.

It is also an interesting example of how one must consider intervening variables before drawing causal inferences. Non-smokers live many years longer but that is not due to their non-smoking. Smokers have other health problems and it is the sum of those problems that lead to death. Another example of the poor having worse health, I think. The poor are much more likely to smoke

Could it be good news for smokers? Current and past-smokers with coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, or peripheral artery disease have less than half the cardiovascular mortality than never-smokers, the initial findings from a new study suggest. But don't be so quick to tell your patients to light up: After accounting for potential confounders, the association was not statistically significant.

"The relationship between smoking habit and outcome in patients with established arterial disease remains controversial," Dr. M. Monreal, of Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol, Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues write in the September issue of the European Journal of Internal Medicine. "Some studies have found that smoking may be associated with a better outcome among patients with acute coronary disease," they note. "As for patients with cerebrovascular disease or peripheral artery disease, there is little information on the influence of smoking on outcome."

The researchers used data from FRENA, an ongoing, observational registry of consecutive outpatients with symptomatic coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, or peripheral artery disease, to compare the incidence of cardiovascular death during follow-up of all enrolled patients according to their smoking status. A total of 2501 patients from 24 participating Spanish hospitals had been enrolled in FRENA as of May 2008. Of these, 439 (18%) were current smokers, 1086 (43%) were past-smokers, and 976 (39%) never smoked.

Compared to never-smokers, current and past-smokers were younger, more often male, and more likely to have chronic lung disease. Diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure were less common in current- and past-smokers. There were a total of 250 major cardiovascular events in 239 patients (9.6% of the original 2501) over a mean follow-up of 14 months. A total of 123 (4.9%) patients died (cardiovascular death, 68) during follow-up.

Significantly lower cardiovascular mortality was observed among current smokers and past-smokers compared to non-smokers (1.1 per 100 patient-years in current smokers, 1.9 in past-smokers, and 3.5 in non-smokers). Similar results were found when patients with coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, or peripheral artery disease were considered separately.

The mean age at cardiovascular death was 82 years for never-smokers, 70 years for past-smokers, and 67 years for current smokers. The mean age for non-cardiovascular death was 79, 74, and 69 years, respectively. "On univariate analysis, age >70 years, body mass index >28, chronic lung disease, heart failure, diabetes, prior history of artery disease, non-smoking status, atrial fibrillation, renal insufficiency, and the use of some drugs were significantly associated with an increased cardiovascular mortality," Dr. Monreal and colleagues write. However, on multivariate analysis, none of the variables, including smoking status, were independent predictors of cardiovascular death.

Eur J Int Med 2009;20:522-526.

SOURCE

Now breast milk is bad for you -- but only in Denmark

Since Denmark and Finland are both highly "correct" countries that are also very similar in most other ways, this is probably best seen as an artifact of poor sampling. The Finnish sample may have been more rural, for instance. And it certainly "explains" nothing. Correlation is not causation

A study in Denmark suggests hormone-disrupting environmental chemicals may explain why so many men in the country develop the disease. Danish men are up to four times more likely to have testicular cancer as men in neighbouring Finland. Denmark also suffers high rates of other male reproductive disorders, including poor semen quality and genital abnormalities. Some experts believe man-made pollutants that alter the effect of hormones in the developing foetus may be to blame.

Researchers measured levels of 121 chemicals in 68 samples of breast milk from women in Denmark and Finland. They found a dramatic difference between the two countries. Danish breast milk had significantly higher levels of some chemicals, including dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides, than Finnish breast milk. Chemicals in breast milk acted as a marker of exposure to the pollutants in the womb, said the scientists, whose findings are reported in the International Journal of Andrology. Previous research in animals and humans has suggested a connection between hormone-disrupting chemicals and testicular cancer.

Why women in Denmark should have more of the chemicals in their breast milk than their Finnish neighbours remains unclear. Study leader Professor Niels Skakkebaek, from the University Department of Growth and Reproduction in Copenhagen, said: "We were very surprised to find that some EDC (endocrine disrupting chemicals) levels, including some dioxins, PCBs and some pesticides, were significantly higher in Denmark than in Finland. "Our findings reinforce the view that environmental exposure to EDCs may explain some of the temporal and between-country differences in incidence of male reproductive disorders."

However he urged women to continue breast feeding which had "many beneficial effects for the child".

Rates of testicular cancer vary greatly around the world. In the UK, almost 2,000 men are diagnosed with the disease each year, while in the US the number is more than 8,000.

SOURCE






The FDA Rejects Another Good Cancer Drug

No wonder people are worried about bureaucrats controlling health care. They can do what they like -- and do. In this case the usual Leftist enmity to drug companies seems to have been at work. Margaret Hamburg, Obama's appointee as boss of the FDA, is of course a known Leftist. See here for one example of politics being behind bad FDA decisions.

But how would it be if your health insurer were equally arbitrary? What if a black official didn't like the fact that you are white, for instance? It's very hard to get official decisions overturned and you could well die in the meantime

As the debate about health-care reform has heated up, there's been a lot of talk about creating expert panels that give bureaucrats control over what treatments we can receive. Truth be told, these panels already exist. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bureaucracy made a decision that will deny women a viable option for fighting ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer is a rare disease and is therefore not usually targeted by drug companies. The pharmaceutical industry tends to focus on cancers that strike a large number of people. Finding treatments for such cancers gives drug companies their best chance to earn enough profit to pay for the enormous cost of developing a new drug.

Thus it was remarkable that the Centocor Company even developed its chemotherapy agent Yondelis. The culmination of the company's efforts was an appearance July 15 before the FDA Oncology Drug Advisory Committee (ODAC), a panel of cancer experts that assists the FDA. But on the day of the meeting the FDA turned its back on 25 years of regulatory precedent and rejected a new cancer drug that by all known standards had passed muster for approval.

Centocor had all of its ducks in a row. For example, in 2006 approval standards for ovarian cancer drugs changed. So Centocor modified its process to meet the new standards. The FDA told the company that Yondelis would have to show a six-week improvement over the most effective therapy now being used to slow the progress of ovarian cancer. When its efficacy results came back, Yondelis showed a six-week improvement.

Instead of approving the drug, however, the FDA had second thoughts and decided the drug did not show enough efficacy to outweigh its toxicity levels. But those levels were not out of line with what other chemotherapies cause. Centocor recommended countering these toxicities by monitoring those who received the drug. Women who received the drug in the clinical trials reported feeling no worse on Yondelis than those who were on the less-effective control drug.

More importantly, these known lab toxicities were well characterized at a meeting in 2006 that the company had with the FDA. If the toxic effects were so important, why didn't the FDA tell Centocor it needed to show 12, 20 or whatever number of weeks that would pass muster? If the standards the FDA set up for this drug weren't enough to pass it, was it ethical to allow women to take this drug during its trials? The FDA needs to be held accountable if it failed to guide the company toward what it needed to do to gain approval.

One member of ODAC briefly challenged the FDA's role in choosing the parameters for this drug's success. But it's too much to expect the panel to be a counterweight to the FDA. The FDA's cancer director, Richard Pazdur, heavily influences the choice of ODAC members each year. This is a little like allowing a prosecutor to pick his friends for a jury. When the ODAC acts in lockstep with the FDA, it's reasonable to question the fairness of the system.

Those of us in the rare-cancer community were sickened by the fate of Yondelis. Women's gynecological cancer has always been an afterthought to drug developers. The more drugs we have to fight these diseases the better.

This episode shows that a healthy dose of reform is needed in two areas at the FDA Office of Oncology Products. The first reform is that the FDA should tell the sponsor exactly what is needed for approval. A concrete measure of efficacy should be added if doubts exist about toxicity.

The other area is reform of the manner by which the cancer panel is chosen by the FDA cancer director in the first place. Given the life and death importance of the issues, there should be a more independent process to assure that the "jury" has been selected fairly, so that, when needed, truth can be spoken to power. A truly independent and impartial ODAC, critiquing both the regulated and the regulators, is the best way to show that the FDA is secure in its science. That will help restore public trust in this important institution.

SOURCE

Does morphine cause bowel cancer?

Blocking signal molecule can prevent growth of large intestine and colon cancer. This is of relevance to heroin addicts. Don't laugh, but heroin (diamorphine) was orginally devised as a non-addictive form of morphine -- and that was achieved to some extent. It is not strongly physically addictive. The addiction is mainly psychological. But most heroin users will die of other things before they get bowel cancer

By seeing what substances and molecules affect the development of our diseases, we can develop drugs that prevent or cure diseases. In her dissertation at Kalmar University in Sweden, Ann Novotny has found that the signal molecule acetylcholine (ACh) is important for the progress of cancer of the large intestine and colon, knowledge that is important to factor in when developing drugs that block the effects of Ach on tumor cells.

Cancer of the large intestine and colon is the third most common cancer form in the Western world. Survival over a five-year period in Sweden is roughly 56 percent, but depends on how far the cancer has spread when it is discovered. It is known that the cancer has developed ways to signal in order to be able grow and spread independently of the regulatory systems of normal cells. In order to increase the number of survivors, it is important to map this signaling so that new forms of treatment for the cancer can be devised.

Ann Novotny studied the signaling used by the cancer in a portion of large intestinal and colon cancer. She found that there are receptors for opioids, such as morphine, on tumor cells. If morphine is supplied to these cells the protein urokinase is released, which the cancer cells can use to enhance their capacity to spread.

She also studied the nerve signaling molecule acetylcholine (ACh) and discovered that the cancer cells both build up and degrade the molecule. The study shows that the molecule is constantly released from the tumor cells and binds to a special receptor on the same cells, which leads to increased cell production as well as increased production of urokinase, which enhances the ability of the cancer cells to spread. These receptors can also be activated by nicotine, but also by the peptide SLURP-1 (secreted mammalian Ly-6/urokinase plasminagen activator receptor-related protein-1).

The levels of several enzymes, receptors, and the peptide SLURP-1 differ in early and late cancer of the large intestine and in healthy and diseased colons. This knowledge should help us develop drugs that block the effects of acetylcholine on tumor cells, which should be able to keep this cancer from developing further.

SOURCE




Small AIDS breakthrough: vaccine combination cuts HIV incidence a little

But useless for two thirds of the at-risk population. Full details of the research have yet to be released but the statistical significance of the difference reported looks dubious to me -- and we don't know if the study was double blind, though I assume it was

The experimental drug cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 per cent in the world's largest Aids trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers have announced. It is the first time in human trials that a vaccine has stopped the virus, which infects 7,500 worldwide every day.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned the development was "not the end of the road," but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome. "It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result" and developing a more effective Aids vaccine, he said. "This is something that we can do."

"Today marks a historic milestone," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine. "It will take time and resources to fully analyse and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energise and redirect the Aids vaccine field.

Even a partially effective vaccine could have a big impact. In 2007, two million died of Aids according to the United Nations agency UNAIDS.

Colonel Jerome Kim, who helped lead the study for the U S Army, which was also involved in the trial, said: "It is the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine."

The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study, which used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Scientists stressed it is not clear whether the vaccine would work against other strains in the United States, Africa or elsewhere. The study tested a two-vaccine combination in a "prime-boost" approach, where the first injection primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second strengthens the response.

The vaccines are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a non-profit founded by some former VaxGen employees. ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can't cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV's surface. The vaccines are not made from whole virus — dead or alive — and cannot cause HIV.

Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of scientists had called the new one futile when it began in 2003. "I really didn't have high hopes at all that we would see a positive result," Dr Fauci confessed. The study tested the combination in HIV-negative Thai men and women ages 18 to 30 at average risk of becoming infected. Half received four "priming" doses of ALVAC and two "boost" doses of AIDSVAX over six months. The others received dummy shots.

All were given condoms, counselling and treatment for any sexually transmitted infections, and were tested every six months for HIV. Any who became infected were given free treatment with antiviral medicines. Participants were followed for three years after vaccination ended.

The results were that new infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 given vaccine and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31 per cent lower risk of infection for the vaccine group. The vaccine had no effect on levels of HIV in the blood of those who did become infected, providing "one of the most important and intriguing findings" of the trial, according to Dr Fauci, giving scientists important clues in identifying whether treatment drugs are actually make a difference by giving protection to the immune system. Full details of the $105 million study will be given at a vaccine conference in Paris in October.

This is the third big vaccine trial since 1983, when HIV was identified as the cause of Aids. In 2007, Merck & Co. stopped a study of its experimental vaccine after seeing it did not prevent HIV infection. Later analysis suggested the vaccine might even raise the risk of infection in certain men. The vaccine itself did not cause infection. In 2003, AIDSVAX failed in two large trials — the first late-stage tests of any Aids vaccine at the time.

It is unclear whether vaccine makers will seek to license the two-vaccine combination in Thailand. Before the trial began, the United States Food and Drug Administration said other studies would be needed before the vaccine could be considered for public use. Also unclear is whether Thai volunteers who received dummy shots will now be offered the vaccine. Researchers had said they would do so if the vaccine showed clear benefit — defined as reducing the risk of infection by at least 50 per cent.

The study was done in Thailand because US Army scientists did pivotal research in that country when the Aids epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers. The Thai government also strongly supported the idea of doing the study.

SOURCE






Food crazies harassing businesses

Chicken, fake and real, looks to be a target of several consumer and nutrition groups. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is acting as co-counsel on a lawsuit filed Thursday by an Arizona woman accusing Quorn Foods Inc. of not disclosing on labels the fact that some people have serious allergic reactions to the main ingredient in its Quorn line of meat substitutes. Quorn is derived from a protein-rich fungus, which the company grows in large vats.

The fungus, Fusarium venenatum, was discovered growing in a field in Buckinghamshire, England, in the late 1960s and developed as a food product. "In the 1960s, people were concerned that we would run out of protein and started a search for new protein sources that could feed the world and discovered this fungus that grows naturally in soil. It makes a delicious and nutritious meat alternative. It has as much protein as eggs and as much fiber as broccoli on an ounce-per-ounce basis," said David Wilson, managing director of Quorn, which is a division of Marlow Foods, a British company.

He said the lawsuit was frivolous and unwarranted. "Quorn has been in the U.S. market since 2002 and has been enjoyed by millions of Americans. We have developed our labeling with the Food and Drug Administration, and it is accurate and fair," Wilson said.

But the center, a Washington-based nonprofit food safety and nutrition watchdog group and a vocal critic of restaurant chains that offer salt- and fat-laden foods, disagrees. It said that more than 1,000 people have reported suffering from nausea, vomiting and diarrhea after eating Quorn's products, which include Chik'n Nuggets, Chik'n Patties, Chik'n Tenders and various Chik'n cutlets.

According to the lawsuit, Kathy Cardinale, a 43-year-old advertising executive, ate Quorn's Chik'n Patties on three occasions in 2008 and became "violently ill" each time. The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, was filed in Superior Court in Stamford, Conn. The British company has its U.S. offices in Westport, Conn.

Meanwhile, the vegan-oriented Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine says it is readying a lawsuit against the giant KFC fast-food chain under California law for failing to warn consumers that the chain's new grilled chicken product contains a carcinogen. [Lots of things are carcinogenic if you consume enough of them. The toxicity is in the dose. And giving rats huge doses of stuff is a common but scientifically disreputable way of branding something as a carcinogen. The food freaks commonly use that tactic]

The anti-meat advocacy group said that it commissioned independent laboratory tests that show that KFC's grilled chicken contains PhIP, a chemical that it said can increase a person's risk of developing cancer even if consumed in small amounts.

Not disclosing the presence of the chemical violates California's public health law, known as Proposition 65, the group contends. It plans to file the lawsuit next week in San Francisco County Superior Court.

Earlier this year, the group sued hot dog makers, alleging that their products increase cancer risk and should carry a warning label similar to those on tobacco products.

SOURCE