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Showing posts with label HealthDay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HealthDay. Show all posts
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Obesity Alone Raises Risk of Fatal Heart Attack, Study Finds (HealthDay)
MONDAY, Feb. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Obese men face a dramatically higher risk of dying from a heart attack, regardless of whether or not they have other known risk factors for cardiovascular disease, a new study reveals.
The finding stems from an analysis involving roughly 6,000 middle-aged men, and it suggests that there is something about carrying around excess weight that contributes to heart disease independent of risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and arterial disease.
What exactly that something is, however, remains unclear, although the researchers suggest that the chronic inflammation that typically accompanies significant weight gain might be the driving force behind the increased risk.
"Obese, middle-aged men have a 60 percent increased risk of dying from a heart attack than non-obese middle-aged men, even after we cancel out any of the effects of cholesterol, blood pressure and other cardiovascular risk factors," noted study author Jennifer Logue, a clinical lecturer of metabolic medicine with the British Heart Foundation's Cardiovascular Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland. "This means [that] obesity itself may be causing fatal heart attacks through a factor that we have not yet identified."
Logue and her colleagues report their observations in the Feb. 15 online issue of Heart.
To explore the subject, the authors spent nearly 15 years tracking 6,082 male patients who were diagnosed with high cholesterol but had no history of either heart disease or diabetes.
Over the study period, the research team noted 214 heart disease fatalities, along with another 1,027 heart attacks and/or strokes that did not result in death.
The team confirmed the well-established theory that being obese is linked to a greater chance for having all of the classic risk factors linked to heart disease.
That said, even after ruling out relevant variables such as age and smoking history, the risk of death among obese men -- those with a body mass index (BMI) between 30 and 39.9 -- was still 75 percent higher than it was for non-obese men.
What's more, even after also accounting for risk factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes (as well as medication history), the chance of experiencing a fatal heart attack was 60 percent greater among obese men, as compared with non-obese men.
The one caveat: in and of itself, being obese was not linked to a higher risk of experiencing a non-fatal heart attack or stroke.
Logue cautioned that further research is needed to confirm the findings, and to uncover the exact mechanism by which obesity itself is a risk factor for fatal heart attacks.
"Possible reasons include particular chemicals that the fat cells are releasing. Or perhaps it is related to the fact that obese people tend to have larger hearts to cope with the additional stress of their larger size, and this already stressed heart does not manage to continue to work during a heart attack," she said.
"However, it certainly makes me think that we cannot just treat cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes in obese men without also considering their weight," Logue added. "We need to find easier and more effective ways to help people lose weight and find out if losing weight can help reduce the risk of fatal heart attacks. We also need to dedicate far more resources to preventing obesity in the first place."
Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that the current study "provides further evidence as to why there needs to be global efforts to prevent and treat obesity though lifestyle modification."
"While obesity is associated with elevations in blood pressure, increased risk of diabetes and abnormal lipid levels, it has been less clear whether the increased risk of mortality associated with obesity can be entirely explained by these well-established cardiovascular risk factors or whether other factors related to obesity may also be contributing to excess mortality risk," he noted.
Dr. Murray A. Mittleman, director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston, agreed.
"It's not surprising that not all of the risk can be explained by traditional risk factors," he said. "But no one study is going to definitively answer the question as to what other mechanisms for risk might be. So the primary issue would still continue to be working towards overall weight reduction, to reduce the risk for all of the pathways that we already know go along with obesity."
More information
For more on obesity and heart disease, visit the American Heart Association .
Crib Injuries Land Thousands of Toddlers in ER Each Year (HealthDay)
THURSDAY, Feb. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Each year in the United States, nearly 10,000 children under the age of 2 arrive in emergency rooms with injuries suffered while in cribs, playpens and bassinets, a new report shows.
Most of these injuries involve cribs and are usually caused by kids climbing out and falling on the floor, said the researchers from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
"The most surprising thing to me was the number of crib-related injuries we found being treated in hospital emergency departments," said lead researcher Dr. Gary A Smith, a professor of pediatrics and director of the hospital's Center for Injury Research and Policy.
"This is an underestimate," he said. "We know that children are taken to their private physician and urgent care centers."
Smith noted that only about 1 percent of the injuries involved a parent or sibling: "It appears that most of these falls are children climbing out of the crib and falling."
In most cases, the children landed head first, Smith noted, which "really makes this an issue that we should pay attention to." Children at that age are top-heavy, so when they fall they fall head first and don't have the ability to break their fall these injuries can be serious, he explained.
Smith added that as the children became more mobile, the number of injuries increased. "So, parents need to be cautious when a child is in a crib and can start to pull himself up," Smith said.
When that happens, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, you need to lower the height of the mattress in the crib so there is at least 26 inches between the top of the mattress and the top of the rail, Smith said.
And when the child reaches about 35 inches in height he or she should be taken out of the crib and start using a toddler bed, Smith added.
The report is published in the Feb. 17 online edition of Pediatrics.
For the study, Smith's team used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System to identify the number of children injured in cribs, playpens and bassinets from 1990 to 2008.
During that period, the researchers identified almost 182,000 children under 2 who were treated in emergency rooms for injuries associated with these devices. That came to roughly 9,651 such injuries a year.
The researchers found that 83.2 percent of the injuries involved cribs, while playpens accounted for 12.6 percent of the injuries and bassinets accounted for 4.2 percent.
The most common cause of injury was falling from the crib, playpen or bassinet. These falls accounted for two-thirds of the injuries, Smith's group found.
The head and neck were the areas of the body that were most commonly injured, making up 40.3 percent of the injuries. Most injuries were soft tissue injuries (34.1 percent).
Kids with fractures were kept in the hospital 14 percent of the time and were more than five times more likely to be admitted than children with other injuries, Smith's group noted.
Smith believes the findings are a call to action to build better-designed cribs that protect children and make falls less likely.
Right now, parents should only use cribs that meet current standards. That includes cribs with no drop sides, which have been banned by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. So, parents have to be particularly careful with hand-me-down cribs, Smith said.
Smith also advises that when putting the baby in the crib be sure there is no bedding, stuffed toys or bumpers in the crib. "All these products have been associated with suffocation deaths," he said.
"Young infants need to be placed in a crib that's bare, just the child and the crib," he said. "Just dress the child warmly in a sleeper and place him into a bare crib."
"Despite these findings, cribs are still the safest sleeping environment for infants and young babies," Smith added. Having the baby sleep with the parents increases the risk of suffocation, he noted.
Amy Chezem, a spokeswomen for the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, said that "each year hundreds of deaths occur when children are placed in a sleep environment that is not specifically designed for children. The safest place for a child is in a fully functional, properly assembled crib."
In addition, the association "reminds parents of how important it is to carefully follow the manufacturer instructions, recommendations and restrictions on all sleep-related products to ensure the safest environment possible."
More information
For tips on keeping your child safe in a crib, visit the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Kids as Young as 5 Can Command a Computer Mouse (HealthDay)
FRIDAY, Feb. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Children as young as 5 can learn how to manipulate a computer mouse, according to a study that finds practice is more important than age in mastering the device.
Researchers tested the computer mouse skills of 221 children aged 5 to 10 years. The largest increases in the children's computer mouse accuracy and speed occurred between ages 6 and 7 and ages 8 and 9. Performance appears to plateau between ages 9 and 10.
While older children were faster and more accurate, younger children had smoother mouse motions. This is likely because older children are more willing to sacrifice fluidity for speed, explained study author Alison Lane, an assistant professor of occupational therapy at Ohio State University.
There were no significant differences between girls and boys in terms of speed and accuracy, but girls were slightly more skilled at smooth mouse control.
Overall, the findings suggest that children need to practice at least once a week with a computer mouse to achieve the best gains in terms of accuracy, speed and minimization of errors, Lane said.
"Since the frequency of computer mouse use is as important as age, it might be beneficial to introduce children to the computer at a young age so that they can slowly develop skills over years of practice," she said in a university news release.
The study was published in a recent issue of the journal Computers & Education.
More information
The Nemours Foundation warns parents that children can suffer computer-related repetitive stress injuries.
Many Kids Who Drink Get Liquor From Home: Report (HealthDay)
THURSDAY, Feb. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Some 709,000 youngsters aged 12 to 14 in the United States are drinking beer, liquor and other alcoholic beverages, a new federal study found.
And the surprise is that many of these underage drinkers aren't just getting a friend to buy a six pack for them or smuggling alcohol out of the family liquor cabinet. Some are getting the alcohol directly from a parent, guardian or another adult relative.
In the past month alone, more than 200,000 kids were given alcohol by a parent or other adult family member, according to a report from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
That's not counting the youngsters who are drinking on the sly.
"About 5.9 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds have used alcohol in the past month," said Peter Delany, director of SAMHSA's Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. "That's a pretty large number."
"And almost all of these kids got that alcohol for free," he said.
In fact, about 45 percent got alcohol from a parent or other family member or they took it from their home without permission, Delany added.
About 15 percent of these kids just took the liquor, but 15.7 percent got it directly from that parent or guardian and another 14 percent got it from another relative, he said.
Why parents are giving their kids alcohol isn't clear, Delany said. "Anecdotally, parents say, 'Well, at least they are drinking at home and not on the street, or at least they are not smoking marijuana' -- all kind of silly things," he said.
"If you want to have a big impact on preventing problems with youth alcohol use, it starts at home," he said. "This is a wholly preventable behavior."
Delany suggests locking up all the liquor at home and never giving any to young children.
Although some parents may not realize it, being a regular drinker as a teen can have serious consequences in adulthood, Delany said.
"If you drink alcohol before the age of 15 you are about five times more likely to experience a serious problem with alcohol or other drug use at or after the age of 21," he explained. "That's why so many prevention programs are trying to delay kids from using alcohol, because the older you are [when you start drinking], the more judgment you have, and the less likely you are to develop problems later in life."
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, approximately 5,000 youngsters and teens under the age of 21 die each year as a result of underage drinking, including deaths from falls, burns and drowning. Frequent binge drinkers who are underage are also more likely to get D's and F's in school and to engage in risky sexual and drug-taking behavior.
"We have to start talking to our kids about this issue. Talk to them all the time -- it's not a onetime discussion," Delany added.
Delany noted the data on very young drinkers came from the 2006 to 2009 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, which involved responses from more than 44,000 respondents aged 12 to 14. The sample was from across the country and included families from a variety of socioeconomic groups.
Dr. Gwen Wurm, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said, "This is something we have known: kids do get their alcohol at home."
"As parents we need to guide our children into the kind of appropriate choices they can be making," she said.
Being open and honest about what alcohol is and its dangers to the developing brain should be an important part of the discussion, Wurm said. In addition, she said, parents need to include alcohol as part of the discussion about drugs and sex.
Another expert, David Jernigan, an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, places much of the blame for making drinking "cool" to kids on the liquor industry.
"Youth exposure to alcohol advertising on television increased 71 percent between 2001 and 2009," he said. Kids are seeing about one advertisement for alcohol a day. "That's a great thing [if the ads are about] vitamins, but not so great for alcohol."
Jernigan thinks alcohol advertising should be restricted to venues where 12- to 20-year-olds make up only a small percentage of the viewing audience.
Parents need to play a lead role in preventing their kids from drinking, "but frankly, they could use a little more help from the alcohol industry," he said.
More information
For more information on underage drinking, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Health Tip: When Sinusitis Affects Children (HealthDay)
(HealthDay News) -- Sinusitis occurs when the air-filled cavities inside the skull become inflamed.
The University of Maryland Medical Center says these factors increase your child's risk of developing sinusitis:
Having hay fever or allergic rhinitis (a stuffy or runny nose often accompanied by itchy eyes and post-nasal drip).Being in daycare.Having a condition that affects the cilia (small hairs in the sinuses).Undergoing altitude changes, such as those that occur during air travel or scuba diving.Having enlarged adenoids, or rarely, an infected tooth.Having a immune system that's compromised by chemotherapy, HIV infection or other conditions.Having cystic fibrosis, an inherited disease that results in thick, sticky mucus in the lungs and digestive tract.2 Pesticides Linked to Parkinson's in Study (HealthDay)
THURSDAY, Feb. 17 (HealthDay News) -- People who use the pesticides rotenone and paraquat have a 2.5 times increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease, a new study finds.
U.S. researchers compared 110 people with Parkinson's disease and 358 people without the nervous system disorder. All of the participants were enrolled in the Farming and Movement Evaluation Study involving licensed pesticide applicators and their spouses.
"Rotenone directly inhibits the function of the mitochondria, the structure responsible for making energy in the cell," study co-author Freya Kamel, a researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in an institute news release.
"Paraquat increases production of certain oxygen derivatives that may harm cellular structures," she added. "People who used these pesticides or others with a similar mechanism of action were more likely to develop Parkinson's disease."
The study was recently published online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
"These findings help us to understand the biologic changes underlying Parkinson's disease. This may have important implications for the treatment and ultimately the prevention of Parkinson's disease," lead author Dr. Caroline Tanner, clinical research director of the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., said in the news release.
The two pesticides are not approved for home or garden use in the United States. Paraquat use is restricted to certified applicators, and rotenone's only approved use is to kill invasive fish, according to the news release.
More information
We Move has more about Parkinson's disease.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Energy Drinks May Hurt Kids: Study (HealthDay)
MONDAY, Feb. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Energy drinks such as Red Bull, AMP and Rockstar have no health value and may even harm some children and teens, a new review finds.
The increasingly popular, highly caffeinated drinks are especially risky for children with heart abnormalities, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or other health or emotional problems, said Dr. Steven E. Lipshultz, co-author of the study, published online Feb. 14 in the journal Pediatrics.
"It's a set of products that are totally unregulated and have no therapeutic benefit," said Lipshultz, chairman of pediatrics at the University of Miami.
Surveys suggest that 30 percent to 50 percent of U.S. teenagers and young people consume energy drinks, despite warnings about their safety. Many users mix the energy drinks with alcohol, further heightening the potential for ill effects, say the researchers.
But even without the addition of alcohol, the beverages carry some measure of risk, according to the study authors, who reviewed numerous articles for their report.
For one thing, safe levels of energy drinks, which contain stimulants such as caffeine, taurine and guarana, have not been established for children and teens, the authors said.
An 8-ounce energy drink may contain dozens or hundreds of milligrams of caffeine, compared to 100 milligrams of caffeine in a generic cup of coffee. An 8-ounce serving of Red Bull contains 77 milligrams of caffeine, compared to 28 milligrams in an equal amount of Mountain Dew, the report noted.
Energy-drink manufacturers often add other ingredients, such as sugar and herbal supplements, whose effects haven't been well-studied. And, some ingredients can interfere with medications, the authors added.
But the maker of Red Bull took issue with the findings.
"This article just draws together material from the Internet, and largely ignores in its conclusions the genuine, scientifically rigorous examination of energy drinks by reputable national authorities. For example, the European Unions food safety authorities spent 10 years thoroughly examining energy drinks and concluded that the key ingredients [taurine and glucuronolactone] are of no concern," Red Bull officials said in a statement. "The effects of caffeine are well-known, and as an 8.4-ounce can of Red Bull contains about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee [80 mg], it should be treated accordingly."
Although energy drinks contain caffeine in amounts similar to those in a few cups of coffee, Lipshultz said the drinks are consumed differently and faster.
"They're usually served chilled or iced. They might chug a couple of these after physical activity, or it's something you might take while studying," he said. "You might take a couple at a time; it's unusual to take a hot cup of coffee and rapidly ingest multiple cups. It's a little bit different."
Besides young people with ADHD and heart problems, the drinks can be hazardous to children who suffer from diabetes, seizures and psychological problems. "There needs to be awareness by pediatricians and the public of the possible effects of energy drinks, especially in the vulnerable populations," Lipshultz said.
In countries that track adverse events from energy drinks, cases of agitation, liver damage, kidney failure, psychosis and a heart attack in a 23-year-old have been reported. Nearly half of the 5,448 caffeine overdoses reported in the United States in 2007 occurred in people under the age of 19, the study noted although these were not directly tied to energy drinks.
Caffeine can affect young people more than adults, because they may not have developed tolerance for it and their bodies may be smaller, said Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, who has studied energy drinks.
Even so, "I think they're probably safe generally," said Goldberger.
Currently, the FDA limits caffeine drinks to 71 mg per 12-ounce serving, but energy drink makers get around the rule by labeling their products "natural," the authors noted.
"We need to be doing the right surveillance so we gather data and make decisions based on accurate information," Lipshultz said.
More information
For more on energy drinks, try the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Weight Guidelines May Be High for Severely Obese Moms-to-Be (HealthDay)
FRIDAY, Feb. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Current U.S. guidelines may overestimate the amount of weight that severely obese women need to gain during pregnancy, according to a new study.
Extremely obese women who gained less than the Institute of Medicine-recommended amount of weight during the second and third trimester of pregnancy suffered no ill effects, nor did their babies, said the researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y.
However, obese and non-obese women who gained less than the recommended amount of weight did experience problems, including a higher likelihood of delivering a baby that is small for gestational age.
The findings, scheduled to be presented Feb. 11 at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, suggest a need to reconsider weight-gain recommendations for the most obese moms-to-be, the researchers said in a society news release.
The study included 73,977 women who gave birth to a single child. Four percent of the women were underweight; 48 percent normal weight; 24 percent overweight; 13 percent obese; 6 percent severely obese; and 5 percent morbidly obese.
The researchers also found that women in all weight categories who gained more weight than recommended in the second and third trimesters were more likely to have a baby that is large for gestational age.
In addition, overweight women who gained more than the recommended amount during pregnancy were more likely to have cesarean delivery, induced labor and gestational diabetes.
Experts note that research presented at meetings has not been subjected to the same type of rigorous scrutiny given to research published in peer-reviewed medical journals.
More information
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists offers a pamphlet about nutrition during pregnancy.
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