3 Detroit Marathon Deaths Likely A Fluke

From Live Science:

The deaths of three runners at Sunday's Detroit Marathon were tragic, but probably not representative of any increasing danger inherent in the sport.

In fact, the deaths are likely to be a statistical fluke, doctors say.

A 26-year-old half-marathon runner, and two other runners — a 36-year-old and 65-year-old — died during the event. Though autopsy results are pending, experts say the most likely cause of death while running such a strenuous race is one related to heart disease.

Read more ....

Has Science Found The Cause Of ME?

From The Independent:

Breakthrough offers hope to millions of sufferers around the world.

Scientists say they have made a dramatic breakthrough in understanding the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome – a debilitating condition affecting 250,000 people in Britain which for decades has defied a rational medical explanation.

The researchers have discovered a strong link between chronic fatigue syndrome, which is sometimes known as ME or myalgic encephalomyelitis, and an obscure retrovirus related to a group of viruses found to infect mice.

Read more ....

Drink From The Fountain Of Youth With A Grain Of Salt

From Live Science:

Two studies announced today could make you downright giddy with youthful optimism, but you'd be wise to take them with a grain of salt.

One says half of babies born in rich nations today could live to be 100, Reuters reports. The speculation is based on the idea that the recent historic rise in life expectancy could continue. Don't bank on it.

Read more ....

Health Claim Of Probiotics Not Accepted

From The Independent:

£220m-a-year 'dairy shots' industry in disarray following EU scientists' ruling.

Drink this yogurt for a healthier stomach. Thirty million shoppers have swallowed the claims for probiotics as enthusiastically as the sweet fermented milk in the belief that "good bacteria" will defeat "bad bacteria" in epic microscopic battles inside our bodies.

But claims that probiotic ingredients improve health can not be supported, according to an extensive review of scientific research by a team of experts from the European Union.

Read more ....

Dementia Risk Seen in Players in N.F.L. Study

New England Patriots' linebacker Ted Johnson, left, listens to coach Pepper Johnson during an afternoon training camp in 2001. Charles Krupa/Associated Press

From New York Times:

A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.

The N.F.L. has long denied the existence of reliable data about cognitive decline among its players. These numbers would become the league’s first public affirmation of any connection, though the league pointed to limitations of this study.

Read more ....

Are Recessions Good For Our Health?

Opportunity in Crisis? Although the Great Depression made have had a severe impact on the American economy, the crisis was actually good for U.S. health, according to a new study. The findings offer a silver lining for today's financial crisis. StockPhoto

From Discovery News:

Sept. 28, 2009 -- The name seems to say it all. The Great Depression was bad all around, wasn't it? Maybe not.

New findings show that the Great Depression was actually good for U.S. health. Annual death rates declined during years of downturn and increased in years of expansion.

The findings could offer a silver lining to today's financial crisis.

The results reinforce earlier research showing recessions reduce mortality, but researchers didn't know whether the effect would hold through a full blown economic meltdown like the Great Depression.

Read more ....

Popular Kids Grow Into Healthier Adults

A study over 50 years has revealed that popular school children are less likely to suffer conditions such as heart disease and diabetes than their unpopular counterparts. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

PARIS: Children who are the most popular and powerful at school also enjoy better health in adult life compared to counterparts at the bottom end of the pecking order, say Swedish scientists.

The long-term study covers 14,000 children born in 1953, who were questioned in 1966 when they were 12 or 13 years old and whose health was tracked up to 2003.

The children's place in the social hierarchy was determined by asking them who they most preferred to work with at school.

To assess their health in later life, the study delved into a national databank for hospital admissions.

Read more ....

Chemicals In Breast Milk Linked To Testicular Cancer

Photo: Pollutant chemicals found in breast milk have been linked to testicular cancer Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Pollutant chemicals found in mothers' breast milk have been linked to an increased rate of testicular cancer.

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.

Read more ....

US Life Expectancy Lags Due To Cigarettes

From Future Pundit:

In political debates over health care the fact that the United States lags many other industrialized countries in average life expectancy is sometimes blamed on how health care is funded in the US. But John Tierney of the New York Times reports that once the lifestyles of Americans are adjusted for America's health care system comes out looking pretty good in terms of its effects on longevity.

But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.

Read more ....

To Explain Longevity Gap, Look Past Health System

Image: Victor Koen

From New York Times:

If you’re not rich and you get sick, in which industrialized country are you likely to get the best treatment?

The conventional answer to this question has been: anywhere but the United States. With its many uninsured citizens and its relatively low life expectancy, the United States has been relegated to the bottom of international health scorecards.

But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.

Read more ....

Scientists See Numbers Inside People's Heads

From Live Science:

By carefully analyzing brain activity, scientists can tell what number a person has just seen, research now reveals.

They can similarly tell how many dots a person was presented with.

Past investigations had uncovered brain cells in monkeys that were linked with numbers. Although scientists had found brain regions linked with numerical tasks in humans — the frontal and parietal lobes, to be exact — until now patterns of brain activity linked with specific numbers had proven elusive.

Read more ....

Big Differences Between European Countries In Heart Risks

From Future Pundit:

The big smoker countries in Europe have much higher rates of heat disease death under age 65.

While heart disease remains the leading cause of death in Europe, mortality rates are falling in most (but not all) countries, according to new findings released by the EuroHeart mapping project.(1) However, this detailed research, part of a three-year programme to analyse cardiovascular health and prevention policies in 16 European countries, also reveals huge inequalities among countries both in the rate of cardiovascular mortality and in national prevention programmes.

• Highest rates of mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD) in men under 65 were found in Hungary (105 per 100,000 population), Estonia (104), Slovakia (74), Greece (50), Finland (48) and UK (44).
• Highest rates for women under 65 were found in Hungary (28), Estonia (20), Slovakia (19), UK (11), Greece (10) and Belgium (9).
• Lowest rates for men under 65 were found in France (17), Netherlands (22), Italy (25) and Norway (27).
• Lowest rates for women under 65 were found in Iceland (3), France (3), Slovenia (5) and Italy (5).

This pattern was also reflected (though not exactly mirrored) in risk factor prevalence, where, for example, Greece (46%), Estonia (42%), Slovakia (41%), Germany (37%) and Hungary (37%) had the highest rates of cigarette smoking.

Read more ....

Risk Factors for Heart Attack Pinned Down

From Live Science:

If you smoke, are overweight or have diabetes or high blood pressure, doctors have a fresh warning for you: These four well-known risk factors for heart attack significantly increased the size of the heart's left ventricle, a key precursor of heart failure.

The finding is detailed today in the journal Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

All four risk factors were strongly correlated with greater size of the heart's left ventricle over the short term (four years) and the long term (16 years) in a study of more than 4,217 people.

Read more ....

Test Tube Babies On the Rise Worldwide

From Live Science:

More than 200,000 babies were born worldwide with the help of in vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies in 2002, with a 25 percent increase between 2000 and 2002, according to a new report.

However, the "Octomom" aside, multiple births resulting from assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have been on the decline, with Europe and Australia-New Zealand leading the way in the reduction of multiples, say the scientists responsible for the report published online today in the journal Human Reproduction.

(Multiple births, rather than being seen as a success, are considered a serious medical complication with potentially harmful effects for both babies and mom.)

Read more ....

Pre-Exercise Heart Rate Spike Predicts Heart Attack Risk

From Live Science:

Many people exercise to improve the health of their hearts. Now, researchers have found a link between your heart rate just before and during exercise and your chances of a future heart attack.

Just the thought of exercise raises your heart rate. The new study shows that how much it goes up is related to the odds of you eventually dying of a heart attack.

More than 300,000 people die each year from sudden cardiac arrest in the U.S., often with no known risk factors. Being able to find early warning signs has been the goal of researchers like Professor Xavier Jouven, of the Hopital Européen Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Read more ....

Why Are Humans Always So Sick?

Super-hygiene, sedentary lifestyles, and a lack of worms in our stomachs may all contribute to modern ills, scientists theorize. Image Credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

The swine flu outbreak this spring is just the latest in the mountain of ailments that seem to beset humanity, from the incurable common cold to each potentially deadly cancer diagnosed at the rate of every 30 seconds in the United States.

So is our species sicker than it has ever been? Or is our current lot far better than it used to be?

It turns out the answer to both questions might be yes. While humans as a whole do live longer than ever before, we now suffer certain illnesses to a degree never seen in the past — including skyrocketing rates of diabetes and obesity and, surprisingly, ailments such as hay fever.

Read more ....

Epigenetics: A Revolutionary Look At How Humans Work

The epigenome is a molecular marking system that controls gene expression without altering the DNA sequence. In a sense, the epigenome is the genome's boss. Image credit: Dreamstime.

From Live Science:

Scientists are now pinpointing exactly how nurture affects nature. Life experiences — from toxin exposure to physical affection — can alter gene expression in dynamic and sometimes reversible ways.

These insights — the result of a burgeoning field called epigenetics — were aided by the sequencing of the human genome, completed in 2003. However, the genome itself turns out to have limited value for understanding disease and human characteristics.

Read more ....

Just How Fat Are We?

Big Little Kids: Obesity rates in Americans ages 12 to 19 have more than tripled since 1980.

From Popsci.com:

Headlines fret about the growing obesity epidemic, but what does it mean? How did it happen? And what are the costs?

Obesity, defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, is not equally distributed across the U.S. Check out this map to find out which state is the fattest (hint: it's the namesake of mud pie), which is the thinnest (think Coors Light), and which spends the most money on obesity-related health care (its governor pumps iron).

Read on, after the break, for more of America's (and the world's) fat facts.

Read more ....

Pimped-Up T-Cells Seek Out And Destroy HIV

Thanks to a custom-designed receptor, this killer T-cell slays HIV-infected cells far better than normal T-cells do (Image: Andrew Sewell/University of Oxford)

From New Scientist:

Researchers have harnessed evolution to create souped-up immune cells able to recognise HIV far better than the regular "killer" T-cells our body produces.

The pimped up T-cell boasts a molecular receptor evolved in the lab to give the body the edge against a virus that has so far flummoxed our immune systems.

"When the body gets infected with HIV, the immune system doesn't know what the virus is going to do - but we do," says Andrew Sewell, an immunologist at Cardiff University, UK, who led the study.

One reason HIV has been able to skirt our immune systems, drugs and vaccines is the virus's chameleon-like behaviour - thanks to a genome that mutates with ease, HIV can quickly change guise to evade an attack.

But some parts of HIV are so vital to its functioning that changes result in dead or severely compromised viruses. Sewell's team targeted a part of one such protein, which holds the virus together.

Read more ....

Blood Test Finds Coronary Disease

(Photo from NHLBI)

From The New Observer:

A simple blood test could soon replace expensive and invasive exams to detect coronary artery disease.

The test, announced Wednesday by doctors at Duke, is being developed after the discovery of genetic markers that show the presence and intensity of blockage in coronary artery disease, said a Duke cardiologist who co-authored research on the link.

Such a blood test could save millions of dollars annually by allowing some patients to avoid risky procedures in which catheters are inserted into patients' arteries.

"I think it is a big deal," Dr. William E. Kraus, a Duke cardiologist, said in an interview Wednesday. "What we want is a test that tells us the status of your disease today and if what you have is heart disease." Kraus' research was published in the medical journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics.

Current detection of the disease -- the leading cause of death in the United States and a top killer in North Carolina, with 23,610 deaths in 2006 -- can require expensive tests such as echocardiograms, stress tests and imaging techniques that use radiation.

"A blood-based test to diagnose coronary artery disease would be less invasive and risky and would prevent patients from [receiving] radiation exposure," Kraus said in a statement.

Read more ....