Children who are obese or who are at risk for obesity show early signs of heart disease, similar to obese adults with heart disease, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study, published in the Journal of Cardiometabolic Syndrome, gives more ammunition to physicians to use in counseling pediatric patients and their parents about the risks of obesity and the need to attain a healthy weight. The researchers found that even in teenagers, obesity leads to decreased myocardial performance and abnormal diastolic function. Childhood obesity in the United States is an epidemic—nationwide, 19 percent of children ages 6 to 11 and 17 percent of those 12 to 19 are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those who are overweight during childhood also have an increased risk of obesity in adulthood and are at greater risk for complications such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease because obesity increases total blood volume, which leads to extra stress on the heart.

 

Although many people rely on commercially available genetic tests for insights into their ancestry, the tests have significant limitations, according to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and other universities across the United States. In an article in Science, the researchers call upon the scientific community to better educate the public about the limitations of the tests, which they urge consumers to approach with caution. At least two dozen companies market genetic ancestry tests, which typically cost between $100 and $900, to help consumers determine the origins of their ancestors. More than 460,000 people have purchased the tests during the past six years, and public interest is growing. The researchers argue that the assumptions and limitations of the tests make them less informative than many realize, and commercialization has led to misleading practices that reinforce misconceptions.

 

Statins are known to be good for lowering cholesterol and maybe even fighting dementia, but now they have another reported benefit: they appear to slow decline in lung function in the elderly— even in those who smoke. It may be statins’ anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that help achieve this effect, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health report in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The link between lung function and mortality and the reduced levels of lung function in the elderly indicates the importance of reducing the rate of decline, the researchers said. The researchers suggest that the observed effect may be attributable to statins’ ability to reduce inflammation and smoking-induced injury in the lung, as well as their capacity to reduce serum levels of C-reactive protein, which relates to systemic inflammation, and to protect against oxidative damage.

 

Using acupuncture before and during surgery significantly reduces the level of pain and the amount of potent painkillers needed by patients after the surgery is over, according to Duke University Medical Center anesthesiologists who combined data from 15 small randomized acupuncture clinical trials. While the amount of opioids needed for patients who received acupuncture was much lower than those who did not have acupuncture, the most important outcome for the patient is the reduction of the side effects associated with opioids, the researchers said in a presentation to the American Society for Anesthesiology in San Francisco. Patients who received acupuncture had significantly lower risk of developing most common side effects associated with opioid drugs compared with control: 1.5 times lower rates of nausea, 1.3 times fewer incidences of severe itching, 1.6 times fewer reports of dizziness, and 3.5 times fewer cases of urinary retention. The Chinese have been using acupuncture for more than 5,000 years for the treatment of a variety of ailments, including headaches, gastrointestinal disorders, and arthritis.

 

Researchers have discovered a strain of bacteria resistant to all approved drugs used to fight ear infections in children, according to an article published in JAMA. A pair of pediatricians discovered the strain because it is their standard practice to perform an uncommon procedure called tympanocentesis (ear tap) on children when several antibiotics fail to clear up their ear infections. The procedure involves puncturing the child’s eardrum and draining fluid to relieve pressure and pain. Analyzing the drained fluid is the only way to describe the bacterial strain causing the infection. The physicians realized they may be dealing with a “superbug” and tested the children's ear tap fluid at the University of Rochester Medical Center. The tests showed that the superbug, called the 19A strain, could be killed only by the antibiotic levofloxacin, which is approved for adults and has a warning in its label against use in children. With no other choice, they treated the children with crushed, adult-approved pills, and it worked. Experts have been arguing for years that pediatricians need to determine the type of bacteria causing an ear infection before throwing an antibiotic at it. Most do not know, nor are the later generations of doctors required to learn, tympanocentesis, the technique that makes that determination possible, according to the authors.

 

A five-minute eye exam might prove to be an inexpensive and effective way to gauge and track the debilitating neurological disease multiple sclerosis, potentially complementing costly magnetic resonance imaging to detect brain shrinkage. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University used a process called optical coherence tomography to scan the layers of nerve fibers of the retina in the back of the eye, which become the optic nerve. The process, which uses a desktop machine similar to a slit-lamp, is simple and painless. The retinal nerve fiber layer is the one part of the brain where nerve cells are not covered with the fat and protein sheathing called myelin, making this assessment specific for nerve damage, as opposed to brain MRI changes, which reflect an array of different types of tissue processes in the brain. The study, which appears in the journal Neurology, found the scans take roughly one-tenth as long and cost one-tenth as much as MRI.

 

Even early in adulthood, aging begins to slow the mind's growth—but it does not have to stop it altogether, according to researchers at Princeton University. A team of neuroscientists has found that soon after marmoset monkeys reach adulthood, the rate at which new neural cells form in the hippocampus region of the animals' brains begins to decline. The hippocampus is associated with both learning and memory. While other research groups have made similar observations in the brains of rodents, this is the first time the decrease in new cell growth, known as neurogenesis, has been noted in a primate, the biological order that also includes apes and humans. The researchers said the news isn’t entirely bad. The research does show neurogenesis continues long past puberty and does not stop entirely, even in older primates. What's more, they said it can be stimulated.

 

People with multiple sclerosis who smoke, risk increasing the amount of brain tissue shrinkage and the subsequent severity of their disease, researchers at the University at Buffalo report. The results are based on magnetic resonance images of smokers and nonsmokers in 368 MS patients treated in the university’s Jacobs Neurological Institute and presented at the 23rd Congress of the European Committee for the Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis in Prague, Czech Republic. Analysis and comparison of the MRIs from smokers and nonsmokers showed that the smokers had significantly higher disability scores and lower brain volume than the nonsmokers. There also was a significant relationship between a higher number of packs-per-day smoked and lower volume of the neocortex, the portion of the cerebral cortex that serves as the center of higher mental functions for humans.

 

Reducing the number of students per classroom in U.S. primary schools may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Virginia Commonwealth University. The study indicates that class-size reductions would generate more quality-adjusted life-year gains per dollar invested than the majority of medical interventions. The findings, which will be published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health, found that a student graduating from high school after attending smaller-sized classes gains an average of 1.7 quality-adjusted life-years and generates a net $168,431 in lifetime revenue. Higher earnings and better job quality enhance access to health insurance coverage, reduce exposure to hazardous work conditions, and provide individuals and families with the necessary resources to move out of unfavorable neighborhoods and to purchase goods and services, the researchers said. Regardless of class size, the net effect of graduating from high school is roughly equivalent to taking 20 years of bad health off of your life, they added.

 

A study conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital finds that bicycle-related injuries among children and adolescents in the United States may be a more significant public health concern than previously estimated. The study, published in the journal Injury Prevention, estimates that bicycle-related injuries among children and adolescents result in nearly $200 million in hospital inpatient charges annually. Children and adolescents aged 20 years and younger comprise more than half of the estimated 85 million bicycle riders in the United States. Bicycles are associated with more childhood injuries than any other consumer product except the automobile. The study found approximately 10,700 children are hospitalized annually for a bicycle-related injury in the United States with an average length of stay of three days.

 

A study led by McGill University researchers shows that the human papillomavirus (HPV) screening test is far more accurate than the traditional Pap test in detecting cervical cancer. The researchers found that the HPV test's ability to accurately detect pre-cancerous lesions without generating false negatives was nearly 95 percent, as opposed to about 55 percent for the Pap test. The study was the first randomized, controlled trial in North America of HPV testing as a stand-alone screening test for cervical cancer. The first round followed 10,154 women aged 30 to 69 in Montreal and St. John's, Newfoundland who were enrolled in the study from 2002 to 2005. The study, funded by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, concluded that the HPV test's sensitivity was nearly 40 percent greater than the Pap test’s.

 

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, in people over the age of 40 in China is much more prevalent than previously thought, according to researchers at the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases at The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College. Their findings appear in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The investigators administered spirometric tests and questionnaires to a cross-sectional population in seven provinces and cities in China. Of the more than 20,000 who completed these materials, 8.2 percent of respondents over 40 met the criteria for having COPD. Men were more than twice as likely to have COPD as women. But while smoking was, and is, a significant risk factor for COPD in China, only 24 percent of the females with COPD were smokers, as opposed to nearly 82 percent of males, suggesting that women’s risk might be more strongly associated with the use of biomass fuels, especially for cooking in poorly ventilated areas.

 

Approximately 1 percent of Pennsylvania residents who underwent bariatric surgery between 1995 and 2004 died within one year of the surgery, and nearly 6 percent died within five years, according to a report in a theme issue on bariatric surgery in the Archives of Surgery. Death rates overall, as well as deaths from heart disease and suicide, were higher than those of the general state population. Bariatric surgery has emerged as an effective treatment for severe obesity. Obese individuals typically lose up to 80 percent of their excess body weight one to two years after the operation. Death rates increased with age, especially among patients older than 65. Heart disease was the leading cause of death (19.2 percent).

 

Children diagnosed with sleep-disordered breathing appear to sleep better and have improved behavior following removal of their tonsils and adenoids, according to a report from researchers at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in the Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. Sleep-related breathing disorders include snoring, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, and other conditions affecting air flow. As many as 11 percent of children may develop these conditions. Sleep-disordered breathing in children has been associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, hyperactive behavior, academic problems, bedwetting, learning disabilities, sleepiness during the day, headaches, and other complaints.

 

A study from researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Brigham Young University finds that CEOs with stock option-heavy compensation packages tend to lead their companies to a more extreme performance, with more big losses than big gains.

In the Academy of Management Journal, the authors note that the basic purpose of options has been to promote managerial aggressiveness in top executives, even if the options sometimes led them to undertake large-scale risky investments that tended to deliver extreme company performance. What was not envisioned, according to the researchers, was that the extreme performance delivered by option-loaded CEOs was more likely to be in the form of big losses than big gains. For example, in companies where stock-option grants constituted half or more of the CEO's pay, 10.1 percent sustained big shareholder losses, while only 6.8 percent enjoyed big gains, a significant difference. In addition, 6.9 percent suffered extreme losses in return on assets, while only 3.9 percent reaped extreme gains, again a significant difference. In contrast, no such disparity existed when stock options constituted less than 20 percent of CEO pay. In fact, they said, extreme shareholder gains outnumbered extreme losses.

 

A study led by members of the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Policy has found that institutional academic-industry relationships—financial relationships companies have with medical schools or teaching hospitals rather than with individual physicians or scientists—are as common and pervasive as individual relationships. Their report, the first nationwide look at the extent and impact of these relationships, appears in JAMA. As with personal interactions, some institutional relationships likely pose conflicts of interest with the overall missions of academic medical centers, the researchers said. Almost 460 department heads completed and returned the survey, and their responses indicated that 67 percent of departments and 60 percent of department chairs had some type of industry relationships. The chairs were most likely to act as consultants, members of a scientific advisory board, or members of speakers bureaus. Non-clinical departments were most likely to have relationships involving intellectual property. Relationships between industry and clinical departments were ubiquitous, with four out of five receiving discretionary funds for food and beverages, travel and meetings, or research equipment and supplies.

 

Democrats in Congress were planning to introduce legislation to provide health insurance for 10 million children in the face of their failure to override a presidential veto to legislation to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, The New York Times reported. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said Congressional Democrats would not alter their goal to increase the number of children provided health insurance under the program to 10 million from 6.6 million today. Republican opponents of the bill said it would allow children from middle- and upper- income families to get coverage under the program, as well as some illegal immigrants. Democrats, who deny those charges, said they will consider making prohibitions clearer.

 

Senate Democrats have dropped a plan to insert into a spending bill language that would have eased Bush administration restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Bloomberg reported. The provision, targeted for a bill for funding the Department of Health and Human Services as well as other agencies, would have expanded the number of human embryonic stem-cell lines eligible for federal funding to as many as 400. In August 2001, President Bush signed an executive order that limited federal funding to just 21 existing human embryonic stem cell lines. The Bush administration had said it would reject the bill if it included the policy change.