Paracetamol kills mother who took a 'few extra’ pills a day
I have been warning of the dangers of paracetamol for years so it is very sad to read this. She should have been encouraged to take a combination medicine like Di-Gesic -- as its smaller paracetamol content and greater efficacy make it much safer. So guess which one of those two is at present being banned around the world? It is Di-Gesic!
Desiree Phillips, a young mother who took “a few extra” paracetamol tablets to relieve the pain of a minor operation died after suffering irreversible liver damage.
The death of Desiree Phillips, 20, follows studies showing that “staggered overdoses” of paracetamol over the course of a few days can be more dangerous than a single, massive overdose.
Miss Phillips, of Llanelli, South Wales, had a routine procedure to remove several benign lumps on her breast earlier this year.
Doctors prescribed antibiotics and over-the-counter paracetamol to help her cope with the discomfort.
Nine days after the operation, she was taken to hospital in excruciating pain and diagnosed with liver failure. She underwent a liver transplant but died a week later at Birmingham Queen Elizabeth hospital.
Her father, Des, said he believed his daughter had been taking only “a few extra tablets” than the recommended dose of eight every 24 hours.
“She seemed fine to us, then out of the blue her boyfriend found her stretched out on the sofa and he rang an ambulance. The whole thing came as a terrible shock. When we heard she was in hospital we never expected that she might die.
“People don’t realise – they think an extra two won’t harm, that extra two over a period of time can harm your liver if you keep taking that over two to three weeks,” said Mr Phillips.
Last month research published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology found that taking just a few extra paracetamol tablets a day can be fatal. The study of 663 patients with paracetamol-induced liver injury found that those who took “staggered overdoses” over the course of several days were a third more likely to die than those who took a single overdose of pills.
Dr Kenneth Simpson, of the University of Edinburgh, who led the research, said: “Those who’ve taken a staggered overdose do worse, paradoxically, than the people who’ve tried to kill themselves.”
Although an inquest is yet to be held into Miss Phillips’s death, her family has spoken out in the hope of preventing similar tragedies.
Mr Phillips , a chef, said: “If a painkiller is that dangerous, it should be prescribed. You should not be able to buy them over the counter. Cigarettes have a label saying 'smoking kills’. Paracetamol can be fatal, but when you look at the packets, they don’t look dangerous.”
Miss Phillips’s one-year-old son, Jayden, is now being cared for by his father, Simon Dewi-Jones. Mr Phillips added: “It was awful, in the end she couldn’t even give him a cuddle goodbye. He’s too young to know what happened now, but I’m sure it will be something that affects him in the future.”
Miss Phillips’s mother, Ayshea, 38, said: “Desiree was taking painkillers because she had three lumps removed from her breast and she was in pain. She didn’t know what was going to happen. Jayden doesn’t deserve to be growing up without a mum because of this.”
A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said: “Paracetamol is a safe and effective painkiller for a range of conditions when used correctly and when the dosage recommendations are followed.”
SOURCE
Simple blood test could spot Alzheimer's five years before it kicks in
This is still very speculative
A simple blood test could spot Alzheimer’s at least five years before symptoms start to show. The test’s creator hopes it will be in widespread use within three years.
Quicker detection of the disease would allow earlier treatment and, with the help of new drugs, those who test positive may never fully develop it.
Those given early warnings could also take preventative measures, such as changing their diet and taking more exercise.
Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia affect more than 800,000 Britons. The figure is set to double in a generation. Currently, sufferers are only diagnosed after the disease has already caused significant damage to the brain.
But the new test aims to detect signs of Alzheimer’s years earlier by distinguishing between mere forgetfulness and the more dangerous memory lapses that signal dementia in its earliest stages. Spotting Alzheimer’s early on would have ‘immense’ benefits for the elderly, the test’s inventor said last night.
Professor Matej Oresic made the breakthrough after analysing the blood of 226 men and women in their late sixties and seventies and then tracking their health for an average of five years.
At the start of the study, 37 had already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; of the others, 46 did not have any memory problems but 143 were suffering from forgetfulness. By the end of the study, 52 of that 143 had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Comparing their blood samples with samples from those who were still merely forgetful revealed clear differences in the concentration of three metabolites – chemicals produced by reactions in the body.
Working out how these chemicals relate to the progression of Alzheimer’s could help develop new treatments for the disease. Testing for them in elderly people suffering from forgetfulness could lead to valuable early warnings of the onset of dementia, the journal Translational Psychiatry reports.
Those found to have memory problems related to Alzheimer’s could do mental and physical exercises and change their diet in an attempt to keep their brain healthy for as long as possible.
Professor Oresic, of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, said delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s in older people ‘is almost as good as preventing it’, adding: ‘A delay of even a couple of years would immensely improve quality of life.’
He said that more work is needed to show just how accurate his test is – but he hopes the kit will be in small-scale use within a year, and widely used in two or three.
Dr Simon Ridley, head of re- search for the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK, said Professor Oresic’s work had seen ‘promising early results’.
He added that the chemicals produced by the billions of reactions that occur in the body present a ‘gold-mine’ of potentially useful information for scientists.
If research on such chemicals leads to the development of drugs that can stop the progression of Alzheimer’s, those who receive an early positive on Professor Oresic’s test may never go on to fully develop the disease after all.
SOURCE
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Statisticians can prove almost anything, a new study finds
The research flaws described below are well known in academe and I have made multiple references to some of them -- but it is good to see attention being drawn to them
Catchy headlines about the latest counter-intuitive discovery in human psychology have a special place in journalism, offering a quirky distraction from the horrors of war and crime, the tedium of politics and the drudgery of economics.
But even as readers smirk over the latest gee whizzery about human nature, it is generally assumed that behind the headlines, in the peer-reviewed pages of academia, most scientists are engaged in sober analysis of rigorously gathered data, and that this leads them reliably to the truth.
Not so, says a new report in the journal Psychological Science, which claims to show “how unacceptably easy it is to accumulate (and report) statistically significant evidence for a false hypothesis.”
In “False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant,” two scientists from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a colleague from Berkeley, argue that modern academic psychologists have so much flexibility with numbers that they can literally prove anything.
In effect turning the weapons of statistical analysis against their own side, the trio managed to to prove something demonstrably false, and thereby cast a wide shadow of doubt on any researcher who claims his findings are “statistically significant.”
In “many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not,” they write.
Defined as “the incorrect rejection of a null hypothesis,” a false positive is “perhaps the most costly error” a scientist can make, they write, in part because they are “particularly persistent” in the literature.”
False positives also waste resources, and “inspire investment in fruitless research programs and can lead to ineffective policy changes.” Finally, they argue, a field known for publishing false positives risks losing its credibility.
Psychology, especially the branch of social psychology that merges with economics, is particularly sensitive to this criticism. It is a field in which reputations can be made with a single mention on the Freakonomics blog, and book deals signed based on single headlines.
One example of this trend is described in the December issue of The Atlantic magazine, in which David B. Klein, a libertarian economist at George Mason University in Virginia, retracts the claim he made last year in the Wall Street Journal, that left-wingers do not understand economics.
As quirky headlines go, it is hard to imagine a better one for the conservative Wall Street Journal than “Study Shows Left Wing Wrong About Economy” (In fact, the headline was “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” which Klein acknowledges carried the implication that left-wingers are not.)
Citing his own “myside bias,” otherwise known as confirmation bias, or the tendency to favour ideas that fit with one’s settled positions, Prof. Klein now admits that, according to the data he used, the ignorance he attributed to the left is also true of the right, and so the headline should have been less dramatic, something closer to “Nobody Understands Economics: Study.”
The problem, as Prof. Klein puts it, was the hidden bias in his own use of the data, and in the decisions he made about how to analyze it.
These decisions about data use are not usually made in advance of the research, based on rigid principles, according to the authors of the Psychological Science paper. Rather, they are dealt with as they arise, and it is common and accepted practice “to explore various analytical alternatives, to search for a combination that yields ‘statistical significance,’ and then to report only what ‘worked.’ ”
The authors — Joseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson and Uri Simonsohn — describe this flexibility as “researcher degrees of freedom,” and suggest that too much of it leads to bias at best, and nonsense at worst.
As a remedy, they offer a series of proposed guidelines for researchers and reviewers, but it was their somewhat cheeky experiment that brought the problem into the starkest relief.
As ever in social psychology, the experiment began with a room full of undergraduate guinea pigs, in this case paid for their attendance at a lab at the University of Pennsylvania. In the first of two separate trials, 30 students listened on headphones to one of two songs: either Kalimba, “an instrumental song by Mr. Scruff that comes free with the Windows 7 operating system,” or Hot Potato, performed by the children’s band The Wiggles.
Afterwards, they were asked to fill out a survey including the question, “How old do you feel right now: very young, young, neither young nor old, old, or very old.” They were also asked their father’s age, which allowed the researchers to control for variation in baseline age across participants.
Using a common statistical tool known as analysis of covariance, or ANCOVA, which measures one set of numbers against another, the authors were able to show that, on average, listening to the children’s song made people feel older than listening to the control song.
A second experiment aimed to extend these results with a song about getting old, When I’m Sixty-Four, by the Beatles, with Kalimba again as the control song. But this time, instead of being asked how old they felt, they were asked for their actual birthdate, which allowed precise calculation of their age.
An ANCOVA analysis, controlling for their father’s age, showed a statistically significant but logically impossible effect: listening to When I’m Sixty-Four made people 16 months younger than listening to Kalimba.
Listening to a song obviously has no bearing on how old you actually are. This nonsensical result, they argue, was merely an artifact of flawed analysis within a scientific culture that permits all kinds of relevant details to be excluded from the final publication.
Under their proposed guidelines, though not under current accepted scientific practices, the authors would have been required to disclose that they in fact asked participants many other questions, and did not decide in advance when to stop collecting data, which can skew results. They also would have been obliged to disclose that, without controlling for father’s age, there was no significant effect, and the experiment was more or less a bust.
“Our goal as scientists is not to publish as many articles as we can, but to discover and disseminate truth,” they write. “We should embrace these [proposed rules about disclosing research methods] as if the credibility of our profession depended on them. Because it does.”
SOURCE
Report: Studies overstated cellphone crash risk. Maybe no added risk at all
Another battle in the war on cellphones. Everything popular must be BAD!
So-called "distracted driving" has become a big public health issue in recent years. The majority of U.S. states now ban texting behind the wheel, while a handful prohibit drivers from using handheld cellphones at all (though many more ban "novice" drivers from doing so).
But studies have reached different conclusions about how much of an added crash risk there is with cellphone use.
In the new report, Richard A. Young of Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit finds that two influential studies on the subject might have overestimated the risk.
The problem has to do with the studies' methods, according to Young. Both studies a 1997 study from Canada, and one done in Australia in 2005 were "case-crossover" studies.
The researchers recruited people who had been in a crash, and then used their billing records to compare their cellphone use around the time of the crash with their cell use during the same time period the week before (called a "control window").
But the issue with that, Young writes in the journal Epidemiology, is that people may not have been driving during that entire control window.
Such "part-time" driving, he says, would necessarily cut the odds of having a crash (and possibly reduce people's cell use) during the control window and make it seem like cellphone use is a bigger crash risk than it is.
The two studies in question asked people whether they had been driving during the control windows, but they did not account for part-time driving, Young says.
So for his study, Young used GPS data to track day-to-day driving consistency for 439 drivers over 100 days. He grouped the days into pairs: day one was akin to the "control" days used in the earlier studies, and day two was akin to the "crash" day.
Overall, Young found, there was little consistency between the two days when it came to driving time.
When he looked at all control windows where a person did some driving, the total amount of time on the road was about one-fourth of what it was during the person's "crash" day.
If that information were applied to the two earlier studies, Young estimates, the crash risk tied to cellphone use would have been statistically insignificant.
That's far lower than the studies' original conclusions: that cellphone use while driving raises the risk of crashing four-fold.
And, Young says, the results might help explain why some other studies have not linked cell use to an increased crash risk.
A researcher not involved in the work said that the two earlier studies may well have overstated the crash risk from using a cellphone.
But that doesn't mean you should feel free to chat and text away at the wheel, according to Fernando Wilson, an assistant professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.
A number of other studies, using designs other than case-crossover, have suggested that cellphone use, and particularly texting, is hazardous on the road, Wilson told Reuters Health.
"In wider policy, I don't think this study is going to change the conversation about distracted driving," Wilson said. "Most of the conventional thinking is that we need to do something to reduce it."
In his own study published last year, Wilson looked at information from a government database that tracks deaths on U.S. public roads. He found that after declining between 1999 and 2005, deaths blamed on distracted driving rose 28 percent between 2005 and 2008.
And the increase seemed to be related to a sharp rise in texting. ("Distracted driving" refers to anything that takes the driver's attention off the road, from fiddling with the radio to talking to other people in the car.)
Other studies, Wilson noted, have used mounted cameras to show that drivers' behavior becomes more risky when they are using cellphones.
All of those studies have limitations, and cannot pinpoint just how big a risk driving-while-texting (or talking) might be. Wilson said the current study highlights a limitation in case-crossover studies.
But the new study, itself, has shortcomings. Applying the GPS findings from this study to the two earlier ones, done with different drivers, in different countries, is tricky, both Young and Wilson point out. "It's possible that the (earlier) study findings were overstated," Wilson said, "but it's difficult to know by how much."
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 450,000 Americans were injured in crashes linked to distracted driving in 2009. Another 5,500 were killed.
SOURCE
The research flaws described below are well known in academe and I have made multiple references to some of them -- but it is good to see attention being drawn to them
Catchy headlines about the latest counter-intuitive discovery in human psychology have a special place in journalism, offering a quirky distraction from the horrors of war and crime, the tedium of politics and the drudgery of economics.
But even as readers smirk over the latest gee whizzery about human nature, it is generally assumed that behind the headlines, in the peer-reviewed pages of academia, most scientists are engaged in sober analysis of rigorously gathered data, and that this leads them reliably to the truth.
Not so, says a new report in the journal Psychological Science, which claims to show “how unacceptably easy it is to accumulate (and report) statistically significant evidence for a false hypothesis.”
In “False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant,” two scientists from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a colleague from Berkeley, argue that modern academic psychologists have so much flexibility with numbers that they can literally prove anything.
In effect turning the weapons of statistical analysis against their own side, the trio managed to to prove something demonstrably false, and thereby cast a wide shadow of doubt on any researcher who claims his findings are “statistically significant.”
In “many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not,” they write.
Defined as “the incorrect rejection of a null hypothesis,” a false positive is “perhaps the most costly error” a scientist can make, they write, in part because they are “particularly persistent” in the literature.”
False positives also waste resources, and “inspire investment in fruitless research programs and can lead to ineffective policy changes.” Finally, they argue, a field known for publishing false positives risks losing its credibility.
Psychology, especially the branch of social psychology that merges with economics, is particularly sensitive to this criticism. It is a field in which reputations can be made with a single mention on the Freakonomics blog, and book deals signed based on single headlines.
One example of this trend is described in the December issue of The Atlantic magazine, in which David B. Klein, a libertarian economist at George Mason University in Virginia, retracts the claim he made last year in the Wall Street Journal, that left-wingers do not understand economics.
As quirky headlines go, it is hard to imagine a better one for the conservative Wall Street Journal than “Study Shows Left Wing Wrong About Economy” (In fact, the headline was “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” which Klein acknowledges carried the implication that left-wingers are not.)
Citing his own “myside bias,” otherwise known as confirmation bias, or the tendency to favour ideas that fit with one’s settled positions, Prof. Klein now admits that, according to the data he used, the ignorance he attributed to the left is also true of the right, and so the headline should have been less dramatic, something closer to “Nobody Understands Economics: Study.”
The problem, as Prof. Klein puts it, was the hidden bias in his own use of the data, and in the decisions he made about how to analyze it.
These decisions about data use are not usually made in advance of the research, based on rigid principles, according to the authors of the Psychological Science paper. Rather, they are dealt with as they arise, and it is common and accepted practice “to explore various analytical alternatives, to search for a combination that yields ‘statistical significance,’ and then to report only what ‘worked.’ ”
The authors — Joseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson and Uri Simonsohn — describe this flexibility as “researcher degrees of freedom,” and suggest that too much of it leads to bias at best, and nonsense at worst.
As a remedy, they offer a series of proposed guidelines for researchers and reviewers, but it was their somewhat cheeky experiment that brought the problem into the starkest relief.
As ever in social psychology, the experiment began with a room full of undergraduate guinea pigs, in this case paid for their attendance at a lab at the University of Pennsylvania. In the first of two separate trials, 30 students listened on headphones to one of two songs: either Kalimba, “an instrumental song by Mr. Scruff that comes free with the Windows 7 operating system,” or Hot Potato, performed by the children’s band The Wiggles.
Afterwards, they were asked to fill out a survey including the question, “How old do you feel right now: very young, young, neither young nor old, old, or very old.” They were also asked their father’s age, which allowed the researchers to control for variation in baseline age across participants.
Using a common statistical tool known as analysis of covariance, or ANCOVA, which measures one set of numbers against another, the authors were able to show that, on average, listening to the children’s song made people feel older than listening to the control song.
A second experiment aimed to extend these results with a song about getting old, When I’m Sixty-Four, by the Beatles, with Kalimba again as the control song. But this time, instead of being asked how old they felt, they were asked for their actual birthdate, which allowed precise calculation of their age.
An ANCOVA analysis, controlling for their father’s age, showed a statistically significant but logically impossible effect: listening to When I’m Sixty-Four made people 16 months younger than listening to Kalimba.
Listening to a song obviously has no bearing on how old you actually are. This nonsensical result, they argue, was merely an artifact of flawed analysis within a scientific culture that permits all kinds of relevant details to be excluded from the final publication.
Under their proposed guidelines, though not under current accepted scientific practices, the authors would have been required to disclose that they in fact asked participants many other questions, and did not decide in advance when to stop collecting data, which can skew results. They also would have been obliged to disclose that, without controlling for father’s age, there was no significant effect, and the experiment was more or less a bust.
“Our goal as scientists is not to publish as many articles as we can, but to discover and disseminate truth,” they write. “We should embrace these [proposed rules about disclosing research methods] as if the credibility of our profession depended on them. Because it does.”
SOURCE
Report: Studies overstated cellphone crash risk. Maybe no added risk at all
Another battle in the war on cellphones. Everything popular must be BAD!
So-called "distracted driving" has become a big public health issue in recent years. The majority of U.S. states now ban texting behind the wheel, while a handful prohibit drivers from using handheld cellphones at all (though many more ban "novice" drivers from doing so).
But studies have reached different conclusions about how much of an added crash risk there is with cellphone use.
In the new report, Richard A. Young of Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit finds that two influential studies on the subject might have overestimated the risk.
The problem has to do with the studies' methods, according to Young. Both studies a 1997 study from Canada, and one done in Australia in 2005 were "case-crossover" studies.
The researchers recruited people who had been in a crash, and then used their billing records to compare their cellphone use around the time of the crash with their cell use during the same time period the week before (called a "control window").
But the issue with that, Young writes in the journal Epidemiology, is that people may not have been driving during that entire control window.
Such "part-time" driving, he says, would necessarily cut the odds of having a crash (and possibly reduce people's cell use) during the control window and make it seem like cellphone use is a bigger crash risk than it is.
The two studies in question asked people whether they had been driving during the control windows, but they did not account for part-time driving, Young says.
So for his study, Young used GPS data to track day-to-day driving consistency for 439 drivers over 100 days. He grouped the days into pairs: day one was akin to the "control" days used in the earlier studies, and day two was akin to the "crash" day.
Overall, Young found, there was little consistency between the two days when it came to driving time.
When he looked at all control windows where a person did some driving, the total amount of time on the road was about one-fourth of what it was during the person's "crash" day.
If that information were applied to the two earlier studies, Young estimates, the crash risk tied to cellphone use would have been statistically insignificant.
That's far lower than the studies' original conclusions: that cellphone use while driving raises the risk of crashing four-fold.
And, Young says, the results might help explain why some other studies have not linked cell use to an increased crash risk.
A researcher not involved in the work said that the two earlier studies may well have overstated the crash risk from using a cellphone.
But that doesn't mean you should feel free to chat and text away at the wheel, according to Fernando Wilson, an assistant professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.
A number of other studies, using designs other than case-crossover, have suggested that cellphone use, and particularly texting, is hazardous on the road, Wilson told Reuters Health.
"In wider policy, I don't think this study is going to change the conversation about distracted driving," Wilson said. "Most of the conventional thinking is that we need to do something to reduce it."
In his own study published last year, Wilson looked at information from a government database that tracks deaths on U.S. public roads. He found that after declining between 1999 and 2005, deaths blamed on distracted driving rose 28 percent between 2005 and 2008.
And the increase seemed to be related to a sharp rise in texting. ("Distracted driving" refers to anything that takes the driver's attention off the road, from fiddling with the radio to talking to other people in the car.)
Other studies, Wilson noted, have used mounted cameras to show that drivers' behavior becomes more risky when they are using cellphones.
All of those studies have limitations, and cannot pinpoint just how big a risk driving-while-texting (or talking) might be. Wilson said the current study highlights a limitation in case-crossover studies.
But the new study, itself, has shortcomings. Applying the GPS findings from this study to the two earlier ones, done with different drivers, in different countries, is tricky, both Young and Wilson point out. "It's possible that the (earlier) study findings were overstated," Wilson said, "but it's difficult to know by how much."
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 450,000 Americans were injured in crashes linked to distracted driving in 2009. Another 5,500 were killed.
SOURCE
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
New super vaccine could tackle 70% of lethal cancers and is better than 'wonder drug' Herceptin
Bright eyed hopes like this tend not to survive the test of time but you never know. When even effective drugs that have been in common use for decades eventually end up banned, pessimism would seem in order
A vaccine that could deal a serious blow to seven in ten lethal cancers has been developed by scientists.
In tests, it shrunk breast tumours by 80 per cent, and researchers believe it could also tackle prostate, pancreatic, bowel and ovarian cancers.
Even tumours that resist treatment with the best medicines on the market, including the ‘wonder drug’ Herceptin, may be susceptible to the vaccine.
The experiments done so far have been on mice, but researchers hope to pilot the drug on people within two years. If all goes well, the vaccine – one of the first to combat cancer – could be on the market by 2020.
More than 300,000 cases of cancer are diagnosed in Britain each year and the disease kills around half this number annually.
Rather than attacking cancer cells, like many drugs, the new treatment harnesses the power of the immune system to fight tumours.
The search for cancer vaccines has until now been hampered by fears that healthy tissue would be destroyed with tumours. To get round this, researchers from the University of Georgia and the Mayo Clinic in the United States focused on a protein called MUC1 that is made in bigger amounts in cancerous cells than in healthy ones. Not only is there more of it, but a sugar that it is ‘decorated’ with has a distinctive shape.
The vaccine ‘trains’ the immune system to recognise the rogue sugar and turn its arsenal against the cancer.
Researcher Professor Sandra Gendler said: ‘Cancer cells have a special way of thwarting the immune system by putting sugars on the surface of tumour cells so they can travel around the body without being detected. ‘To enable the immune system to recognise the sugar, it took a special vaccine that had three parts to it. ‘That turned out to be a winning combination.’
Her co-author Professor Geert-Jan Boons said: ‘This vaccine elicits a very strong immune response. ‘It activates all three components of the immune system to reduce tumour size by an average of 80 per cent.’
The misshaped MUC1 sugar is found in 90 per cent of breast and pancreatic cancers and around 60 per cent of prostate cancers, as well as many other tumours. The researchers believe more than 70 per cent of all cancers that kill may be susceptible to the vaccine.
Despite their excitement, the work is still only at an early stage. After the ‘dramatic’ results of the tests on mice with breast tumours, the researchers now plan to try the drug on human cancer cells in a dish.
Years of large-scale human trials would need to follow before the drug was judged safe and effective for widespread use in hospitals. It could then be used with existing drugs to boost treatment and given to prevent tumours from coming back after surgery.
Men and women known to be at high risk of cancer because of their genes could also be vaccinated in an attempt to stop tumours from appearing.
Dr Boons, who has founded a biotech company to commercialise the vaccine, said: ‘We are beginning to have therapies that can teach our immune system to fight what is uniquely found in cancer cells. ‘When combined with early diagnosis, the hope is that one day cancer will become a manageable disease.’
The drug is one of several treatments in the pipeline that work by triggering the immune system to attack and kill cancer cells.
Dr Caitlin Palframan, of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: ‘This exciting new approach could lead to treatments for breast cancer patients who have few options. ‘It also opens up the possibility of vaccinating high-risk women against breast cancer in the future. ‘However, we need to see this approach trialled in cancer patients before we know its full potential.’
Oliver Childs, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘These researchers are not alone in trying to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer – it’s a key area of research interest around the world.
‘This study is interesting, but a long way from a vaccine for cancer patients at the moment. ‘The next step is to see if this work can be repeated in human cells in the lab and then in larger trials with patients.’
SOURCE
Steve Jobs a victim of homeopathy, says expert
ALTERNATIVE medicine is unethical, criminal and likely contributed to the death of Apple boss Steve Jobs, visiting professor Edzard Ernst says. The world's first professor of complementary medicine was in Adelaide yesterday to speak at the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association conference at UniSA.
Famous for causing an uproar when, in July, he labelled Prince Charles a "snake oil salesman" for his dandelion and detox remedy, Prof Ernst yesterday spoke of the dangers of unproven complementary medicine.
"They mislead people to the point of being quite dangerous, all of this is idiotic rubbish," he said, calling for more rigorous testing of claims. "Australia is one of the highest user groups globally. About 50 per cent of the general population use some form of complementary medicine."
While he supports evidence-based complementary medicines such as St John's wort, Prof Ernst took aim at homeopathy, aromatherapy, herbal remedies, Bach flower remedies and magnetic therapies.
He said the plethora of misinformation about homeopathy - which treats "like with like" through the dilution of elements - had contributed to deaths, likely including that of Mr Jobs, who died from pancreatic cancer in October.
In his biography of the Apple founder, Walter Isaacson details Jobs' regrets that he turned to alternative therapies when first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. “I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way,” Jobs told Isaacson.
Prof Ernst said too many people were similarly relying on "unproven treatments" for fatal diseases. "Homeopathy is totally under-investigated," he said. "Look at Steve Jobs' cancer death, which is totally tragic."
The problem, he said, was the "monstrous" amount of available misinformation and a lack of regulation and clinical testing. "They should be tested in exactly the same way which we test any other treatment," he said. "There's only one science and there is no alternative to science."
Professor Ernst said claims that these therapies worked, made without proof, were "irresponsible and criminal". He said the science did support specific therapies which were backed by evidence, such as St John's wort.
The professor was this year forced into an early retirement from Exeter University, where he set up the Complementary Medicine and Rehabilitation Department in 1993, after an earlier stoush with the Prince over a confidential report.
SOURCE
Bright eyed hopes like this tend not to survive the test of time but you never know. When even effective drugs that have been in common use for decades eventually end up banned, pessimism would seem in order
A vaccine that could deal a serious blow to seven in ten lethal cancers has been developed by scientists.
In tests, it shrunk breast tumours by 80 per cent, and researchers believe it could also tackle prostate, pancreatic, bowel and ovarian cancers.
Even tumours that resist treatment with the best medicines on the market, including the ‘wonder drug’ Herceptin, may be susceptible to the vaccine.
The experiments done so far have been on mice, but researchers hope to pilot the drug on people within two years. If all goes well, the vaccine – one of the first to combat cancer – could be on the market by 2020.
More than 300,000 cases of cancer are diagnosed in Britain each year and the disease kills around half this number annually.
Rather than attacking cancer cells, like many drugs, the new treatment harnesses the power of the immune system to fight tumours.
The search for cancer vaccines has until now been hampered by fears that healthy tissue would be destroyed with tumours. To get round this, researchers from the University of Georgia and the Mayo Clinic in the United States focused on a protein called MUC1 that is made in bigger amounts in cancerous cells than in healthy ones. Not only is there more of it, but a sugar that it is ‘decorated’ with has a distinctive shape.
The vaccine ‘trains’ the immune system to recognise the rogue sugar and turn its arsenal against the cancer.
Researcher Professor Sandra Gendler said: ‘Cancer cells have a special way of thwarting the immune system by putting sugars on the surface of tumour cells so they can travel around the body without being detected. ‘To enable the immune system to recognise the sugar, it took a special vaccine that had three parts to it. ‘That turned out to be a winning combination.’
Her co-author Professor Geert-Jan Boons said: ‘This vaccine elicits a very strong immune response. ‘It activates all three components of the immune system to reduce tumour size by an average of 80 per cent.’
The misshaped MUC1 sugar is found in 90 per cent of breast and pancreatic cancers and around 60 per cent of prostate cancers, as well as many other tumours. The researchers believe more than 70 per cent of all cancers that kill may be susceptible to the vaccine.
Despite their excitement, the work is still only at an early stage. After the ‘dramatic’ results of the tests on mice with breast tumours, the researchers now plan to try the drug on human cancer cells in a dish.
Years of large-scale human trials would need to follow before the drug was judged safe and effective for widespread use in hospitals. It could then be used with existing drugs to boost treatment and given to prevent tumours from coming back after surgery.
Men and women known to be at high risk of cancer because of their genes could also be vaccinated in an attempt to stop tumours from appearing.
Dr Boons, who has founded a biotech company to commercialise the vaccine, said: ‘We are beginning to have therapies that can teach our immune system to fight what is uniquely found in cancer cells. ‘When combined with early diagnosis, the hope is that one day cancer will become a manageable disease.’
The drug is one of several treatments in the pipeline that work by triggering the immune system to attack and kill cancer cells.
Dr Caitlin Palframan, of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: ‘This exciting new approach could lead to treatments for breast cancer patients who have few options. ‘It also opens up the possibility of vaccinating high-risk women against breast cancer in the future. ‘However, we need to see this approach trialled in cancer patients before we know its full potential.’
Oliver Childs, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘These researchers are not alone in trying to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer – it’s a key area of research interest around the world.
‘This study is interesting, but a long way from a vaccine for cancer patients at the moment. ‘The next step is to see if this work can be repeated in human cells in the lab and then in larger trials with patients.’
SOURCE
Steve Jobs a victim of homeopathy, says expert
ALTERNATIVE medicine is unethical, criminal and likely contributed to the death of Apple boss Steve Jobs, visiting professor Edzard Ernst says. The world's first professor of complementary medicine was in Adelaide yesterday to speak at the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association conference at UniSA.
Famous for causing an uproar when, in July, he labelled Prince Charles a "snake oil salesman" for his dandelion and detox remedy, Prof Ernst yesterday spoke of the dangers of unproven complementary medicine.
"They mislead people to the point of being quite dangerous, all of this is idiotic rubbish," he said, calling for more rigorous testing of claims. "Australia is one of the highest user groups globally. About 50 per cent of the general population use some form of complementary medicine."
While he supports evidence-based complementary medicines such as St John's wort, Prof Ernst took aim at homeopathy, aromatherapy, herbal remedies, Bach flower remedies and magnetic therapies.
He said the plethora of misinformation about homeopathy - which treats "like with like" through the dilution of elements - had contributed to deaths, likely including that of Mr Jobs, who died from pancreatic cancer in October.
In his biography of the Apple founder, Walter Isaacson details Jobs' regrets that he turned to alternative therapies when first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. “I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way,” Jobs told Isaacson.
Prof Ernst said too many people were similarly relying on "unproven treatments" for fatal diseases. "Homeopathy is totally under-investigated," he said. "Look at Steve Jobs' cancer death, which is totally tragic."
The problem, he said, was the "monstrous" amount of available misinformation and a lack of regulation and clinical testing. "They should be tested in exactly the same way which we test any other treatment," he said. "There's only one science and there is no alternative to science."
Professor Ernst said claims that these therapies worked, made without proof, were "irresponsible and criminal". He said the science did support specific therapies which were backed by evidence, such as St John's wort.
The professor was this year forced into an early retirement from Exeter University, where he set up the Complementary Medicine and Rehabilitation Department in 1993, after an earlier stoush with the Prince over a confidential report.
SOURCE
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The 'detox delusion': Health claims 'at best unfounded and at worst dangerous', argues professor
They promise to help you shed weight and purge your body of chemicals that are poisoning your body and mind. But the only thing that detox products will help you lose is money, a scientist said last night.
From diets based on raw fruit and vegetables, to foot spas and colonic hydrotherapy, there are dozens of treatments and products that claim to boost health by cleansing the body of chemicals.
Marketing is likely to become particularly fierce in the next few weeks, as millions who over-indulge during the Christmas period make New Year’s resolutions to be healthier.
But detox diets and other treatments are not the answer, an expert has warned. David Bender, an emeritus professor of nutritional biochemistry, said the body is perfectly capable of detoxing itself without any extra help. What is more, he says the claims made about detoxing are at best unfounded and more likely undeniably false. Some detox methods may even be dangerous, he claims.
In an article written in Society of Biology magazine The Biologist, he argues that the term detox has gone from being applied to a chemical reaction involved in the production of urine, to ‘a meaningless marketing term’. His piece, entitled The Detox Delusion, picks apart the claims made by those promoting detox diets.
Such diets usually involve eating large amounts of fruit, vegetables and juices, while drinking large amounts of water and steering clear of caffeine, sugar and alcohol.
They purport to boost health in a variety of ways, from raising energy levels to allowing the body to focus on self-healing. Professor Bender, of University College, London, writes: ‘I am not sure what “self-healing” is and the idea of “raised energy levels” is nonsense.
‘The whole philosophy of detox is based on the unlikely premise that accumulated toxins cause a sluggish metabolism, weight gain, general malaise and so on. ‘Weight gain is due to an imbalance between food consumption and energy expenditure. There is no magic shortcut for weight loss – you have to eat less and exercise more. It’s that simple.’
SOURCE
Gene therapy on course to claim a first
Sounds promising but at a very preliminary stage
MEDICAL researchers have successfully treated six patients suffering from the blood-clotting disease known as haemophilia B by injecting them with the correct form of a defective gene.
Haemophilia B is the first well-known disease to appear treatable by gene therapy.
The general concept of gene therapy - replacing the defective gene in any genetic disease with the intact version - has long been alluring. But carrying it out in practice, usually by loading the replacement gene onto a virus that introduces it into human cells, has been a struggle.
The immune system is all too effective at killing the viruses before the genes can take effect.
The success with haemophilia B, reported online in The New England Journal of Medicine, embodies several minor improvements.
Haemophilia B is caused by a defect in the gene for factor IX and is fatal if untreated.
Patients were treated by infusing the delivery virus into their veins. The virus homes in on the cells of the liver, and the gene it carries then churns out correct copies of factor IX.
Four of the six patients could stop the usual treatment, injections of factor IX concentrate prepared from donated blood.
Treating a patient with concentrate costs $300,000 a year but the single required injection of the new delivery virus costs $30,000.
The disease occurs almost only in men because the factor IX gene lies on the X chromosome, of which men have a single copy.
Women who carry a defective gene on one X chromosome can compensate with the good copy on their other X chromosome, but they bequeath the defective copy to half their children.
SOURCE
They promise to help you shed weight and purge your body of chemicals that are poisoning your body and mind. But the only thing that detox products will help you lose is money, a scientist said last night.
From diets based on raw fruit and vegetables, to foot spas and colonic hydrotherapy, there are dozens of treatments and products that claim to boost health by cleansing the body of chemicals.
Marketing is likely to become particularly fierce in the next few weeks, as millions who over-indulge during the Christmas period make New Year’s resolutions to be healthier.
But detox diets and other treatments are not the answer, an expert has warned. David Bender, an emeritus professor of nutritional biochemistry, said the body is perfectly capable of detoxing itself without any extra help. What is more, he says the claims made about detoxing are at best unfounded and more likely undeniably false. Some detox methods may even be dangerous, he claims.
In an article written in Society of Biology magazine The Biologist, he argues that the term detox has gone from being applied to a chemical reaction involved in the production of urine, to ‘a meaningless marketing term’. His piece, entitled The Detox Delusion, picks apart the claims made by those promoting detox diets.
Such diets usually involve eating large amounts of fruit, vegetables and juices, while drinking large amounts of water and steering clear of caffeine, sugar and alcohol.
They purport to boost health in a variety of ways, from raising energy levels to allowing the body to focus on self-healing. Professor Bender, of University College, London, writes: ‘I am not sure what “self-healing” is and the idea of “raised energy levels” is nonsense.
‘The whole philosophy of detox is based on the unlikely premise that accumulated toxins cause a sluggish metabolism, weight gain, general malaise and so on. ‘Weight gain is due to an imbalance between food consumption and energy expenditure. There is no magic shortcut for weight loss – you have to eat less and exercise more. It’s that simple.’
SOURCE
Gene therapy on course to claim a first
Sounds promising but at a very preliminary stage
MEDICAL researchers have successfully treated six patients suffering from the blood-clotting disease known as haemophilia B by injecting them with the correct form of a defective gene.
Haemophilia B is the first well-known disease to appear treatable by gene therapy.
The general concept of gene therapy - replacing the defective gene in any genetic disease with the intact version - has long been alluring. But carrying it out in practice, usually by loading the replacement gene onto a virus that introduces it into human cells, has been a struggle.
The immune system is all too effective at killing the viruses before the genes can take effect.
The success with haemophilia B, reported online in The New England Journal of Medicine, embodies several minor improvements.
Haemophilia B is caused by a defect in the gene for factor IX and is fatal if untreated.
Patients were treated by infusing the delivery virus into their veins. The virus homes in on the cells of the liver, and the gene it carries then churns out correct copies of factor IX.
Four of the six patients could stop the usual treatment, injections of factor IX concentrate prepared from donated blood.
Treating a patient with concentrate costs $300,000 a year but the single required injection of the new delivery virus costs $30,000.
The disease occurs almost only in men because the factor IX gene lies on the X chromosome, of which men have a single copy.
Women who carry a defective gene on one X chromosome can compensate with the good copy on their other X chromosome, but they bequeath the defective copy to half their children.
SOURCE
Monday, December 12, 2011
Two-day diet could reduce breast cancer risk
This is pure speculation. The diet does seem to be one way to achieve weight loss but there is NO data on its effect on cancer incidence
Contrary to the usual assertions, some big studies show that fat women get LESS breast cancer. See the links in the sidebar here
Women can lower their risk of breast cancer by 40 per cent by following a two-day ‘life saver diet’ it has been claimed.
Two-day diet could reduce breast cancer risk
Researchers at the University Hospital in South Manchester are claiming that observing a strict two-day diet, rather than trying to constantly cut calories, is a more effective way to loose weight.
The study, lead by Dr Michelle Harvie, and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, found that women who followed a diet for just two days of the week lost more weight than those practising a full-time diet.
The researchers put 100 overweight female volunteers on one of three diets. The first diet consisted of consuming just 650 calories a day for several days of the week, with carbohydrates such as potatoes and bread cut out. For the remaining five days of the week the participants, whilst encouraged to eat healthily, could consumer whatever they liked.
Although volunteers on the second diet were also banned from eating carbohydrates for two days in a week, they were not set a specific calorie limit.
They were also allowed to eat as much as they wanted for the remainder of the week. The third and final group followed a more conventional diet, which included avoiding high-fat foods, alcohol and sticking to approximately 1,500 calories every day.
The results of the study showed that after three months the women on the two day diets had lost an average of nine pounds, compared to five pounds of those on the full-time diet.
Volunteers who had followed the two day diet had lost nearly twice the amount of weight of those on the more traditional full-time diet, and recorded significant improvements in three key areas linked to breast cancer. Their levels of hormone leptin dropped by 40 per cent.
Research professor Gillian Haddock, who also took part in the study herself, has said she would recommend the diet to friends and that she found it an easier diet option.
Mrs Haddock said: "I used to follow the 650-calorie diet on a Monday and Tuesday and it was great because I knew that by Wednesday I would be eating normally.
"It really suited me, I did it on my busiest work days and I would mainly have the milky drinks while I was at work so I didn't have to worry about shopping or taking in a specially prepared packed lunch."
The research, conducted at the Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention Centre at UHSM, was published in the International Journal of Obesity.
Pamela Goldberg, chief executive of the Breast Cancer Campaign said: "There are many breast cancer risk factors that can't be controlled, such as age, gender and family history - but staying at a healthy weight is one positive step that can be taken.
"This intermittent dieting approach provides an alternative to conventional dieting which could help with weight loss, but also potentially reduce the risk of developing breast cancer."
SOURCE
The scent of a man? It could be an STD, say scientists
Sounds reasonable
Women wondering whether or not to take the next step with a new man in their life should heed the advice of Russian scientists - and take a deep whiff.
Sniffing a potential partner’s scent could tell if Mr Right has a sexually transmitted disease, according to a new study.
The research found that gonorrhea-infected men smelt 'putrid' to women, reports MSNBC.com.
'Our research revealed that infection disease reduces odor attractiveness in humans' wrote Mikhail Moshkin, a professor at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Russia, and the lead author of research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
The off-putting scent may be subtle, more a chemical warning than a stench of body odor, but it does have some effect, according to the experiment conducted by Moshkin and his colleagues.
The researchers had already observed that certain animals, such as mice and rats, were not as attracted to the scents of those that were infected with disease, reports MSNBC.com.
They investigated if humans would also be turned off by the scent of an infected person, particularly one with an STD.
The researchers took samples of armpit sweat and spit from 34 Russian men aged between 17 and 25. The group included 13 young men with gonorrhea, 16 who were healthy and five who had had the disease but were successfully treated.
Then 18 female students aged 17 to 20 were asked to sniff the samples.
They obtained sweat samples by dressing the men in tight-fitting T-shirts with cotton pads sewn into the armpits. After an hour of sweating, men bagged their shirts and the pads were placed in glass vials for the women to sniff.
The women ranked the infected men less than half as high as healthy or recovered guys on a 'pleasantness score' that assessed scent. And when they were asked to describe the scent, the women said that nearly 50 percent of the infected men’s sweat smelt 'putrid'.
The researchers said the study indicates that humans, like other animals, might use scent to sniff out appropriate mates.
'We can conclude that unpleasant body odor of infected persons can reduce the probability of a dangerous partnership,' the scientists say in the MSNBC.com report.
SOURCE
This is pure speculation. The diet does seem to be one way to achieve weight loss but there is NO data on its effect on cancer incidence
Contrary to the usual assertions, some big studies show that fat women get LESS breast cancer. See the links in the sidebar here
Women can lower their risk of breast cancer by 40 per cent by following a two-day ‘life saver diet’ it has been claimed.
Two-day diet could reduce breast cancer risk
Researchers at the University Hospital in South Manchester are claiming that observing a strict two-day diet, rather than trying to constantly cut calories, is a more effective way to loose weight.
The study, lead by Dr Michelle Harvie, and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, found that women who followed a diet for just two days of the week lost more weight than those practising a full-time diet.
The researchers put 100 overweight female volunteers on one of three diets. The first diet consisted of consuming just 650 calories a day for several days of the week, with carbohydrates such as potatoes and bread cut out. For the remaining five days of the week the participants, whilst encouraged to eat healthily, could consumer whatever they liked.
Although volunteers on the second diet were also banned from eating carbohydrates for two days in a week, they were not set a specific calorie limit.
They were also allowed to eat as much as they wanted for the remainder of the week. The third and final group followed a more conventional diet, which included avoiding high-fat foods, alcohol and sticking to approximately 1,500 calories every day.
The results of the study showed that after three months the women on the two day diets had lost an average of nine pounds, compared to five pounds of those on the full-time diet.
Volunteers who had followed the two day diet had lost nearly twice the amount of weight of those on the more traditional full-time diet, and recorded significant improvements in three key areas linked to breast cancer. Their levels of hormone leptin dropped by 40 per cent.
Research professor Gillian Haddock, who also took part in the study herself, has said she would recommend the diet to friends and that she found it an easier diet option.
Mrs Haddock said: "I used to follow the 650-calorie diet on a Monday and Tuesday and it was great because I knew that by Wednesday I would be eating normally.
"It really suited me, I did it on my busiest work days and I would mainly have the milky drinks while I was at work so I didn't have to worry about shopping or taking in a specially prepared packed lunch."
The research, conducted at the Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention Centre at UHSM, was published in the International Journal of Obesity.
Pamela Goldberg, chief executive of the Breast Cancer Campaign said: "There are many breast cancer risk factors that can't be controlled, such as age, gender and family history - but staying at a healthy weight is one positive step that can be taken.
"This intermittent dieting approach provides an alternative to conventional dieting which could help with weight loss, but also potentially reduce the risk of developing breast cancer."
SOURCE
The scent of a man? It could be an STD, say scientists
Sounds reasonable
Women wondering whether or not to take the next step with a new man in their life should heed the advice of Russian scientists - and take a deep whiff.
Sniffing a potential partner’s scent could tell if Mr Right has a sexually transmitted disease, according to a new study.
The research found that gonorrhea-infected men smelt 'putrid' to women, reports MSNBC.com.
'Our research revealed that infection disease reduces odor attractiveness in humans' wrote Mikhail Moshkin, a professor at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Russia, and the lead author of research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
The off-putting scent may be subtle, more a chemical warning than a stench of body odor, but it does have some effect, according to the experiment conducted by Moshkin and his colleagues.
The researchers had already observed that certain animals, such as mice and rats, were not as attracted to the scents of those that were infected with disease, reports MSNBC.com.
They investigated if humans would also be turned off by the scent of an infected person, particularly one with an STD.
The researchers took samples of armpit sweat and spit from 34 Russian men aged between 17 and 25. The group included 13 young men with gonorrhea, 16 who were healthy and five who had had the disease but were successfully treated.
Then 18 female students aged 17 to 20 were asked to sniff the samples.
They obtained sweat samples by dressing the men in tight-fitting T-shirts with cotton pads sewn into the armpits. After an hour of sweating, men bagged their shirts and the pads were placed in glass vials for the women to sniff.
The women ranked the infected men less than half as high as healthy or recovered guys on a 'pleasantness score' that assessed scent. And when they were asked to describe the scent, the women said that nearly 50 percent of the infected men’s sweat smelt 'putrid'.
The researchers said the study indicates that humans, like other animals, might use scent to sniff out appropriate mates.
'We can conclude that unpleasant body odor of infected persons can reduce the probability of a dangerous partnership,' the scientists say in the MSNBC.com report.
SOURCE
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Diabetes risk of two takeaways in a week (and women are more in danger)
The finding below is almost certainly a social class effect. Many middle class people "wouldn't be seen dead" in McDonalds whereas working class people tend to appreciate its good value. The fact that the McDonald's munchers were also fatter also suggests that it is the characteristics of working class people that are showing up here, not the effects of diet. That poorer people have worse health is one of the most replicated findings in epidemiology
Two takeaways a week are enough to increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease, research shows. Young adults were more likely to have hidden health problems if they treated themselves to fast food on a twice-weekly basis, the study found.
Additionally, women appear to be more susceptible to the dangers. They had more warning signs, such as high blood sugar levels and increased insulin than men.
The results suggest many young professionals who are too busy to cook may be setting themselves up for serious health problems. Diabetes affects an estimated 2.5million Britons. Around 10 per cent of cases are due to type one, which is thought to be caused by a faulty immune system.
The remaining 90 per cent are type two, which is closely linked to unhealthy diet and lifestyle. The condition occurs when the body loses its ability to make use of glucose, a type of sugar that is released when we eat.
As levels rise, circulation suffers and blood vessels can be damaged. Left untreated, type two diabetes can raise the risk of heart attacks, blindness and amputation.
Researchers from the University of Tasmania and two other Australian science institutions studied the diet and lifestyles of 1,896 men and women aged 26 to 36. Almost 40 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women ate a takeaway twice a week or more.
The volunteers underwent a range of medical checks, including tests for glucose and insulin levels. High levels of both mean the body is heading for type two diabetes.
Researchers found women who had takeaways twice or more a week had significantly higher blood sugar levels than those who ate them once a week or less. They also had higher insulin and scored much higher on a test for signs of becoming resistant to the hormone – a warning sign of diabetes. Although men in the study also showed damage, the effects were much less severe.
Researchers said it was hard to tell if it was the fast food or excess weight caused by poor diet and lack of exercise that caused the problems.
They added: ‘It is unclear whether the differences [between one takeaway a week and two] are clinically significant. But they may represent an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes.’
The survey was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
In 2008, a Which? study found a single Indian takeaway contained 23.2 grammes of saturated fat – more than a woman’s entire daily allowance.
SOURCE
Cherry juice helps you to sleep?
It could bve true but it's a very tiny study for a very short time period
Two glasses of cherry juice can help you sleep nearly 40 minutes longer, research shows.
People who drank two glasses of tart cherry juice also napped less often in the day and had increased ‘sleep efficiency’ – the ratio of time spent in bed to time spent sleeping. They slept an average of 39 minutes longer.
Researchers found that Montmorency cherry juice – a variety of sour cherry – significantly increases the body’s level of melatonin, a powerful antioxidant that is critical in regulating sleep.
The 20 participants were given two 30ml servings of the juice diluted with half a pint of water, or an alternative fruit drink, for seven days – once when they woke up and another before bed.
The researchers at Northumbria University, whose findings were published in the European Journal of Nutrition, then tracked their sleep habits using actigraphs – watches that sense movement – and sleep diaries.
They found that healthy adults who had two daily glasses of the juice had longer sleep time, less daytime napping and up to a 6 per cent increase in sleep efficiency.
Researcher Jason Ellis said: ‘When darkness falls, the body produces melatonin to signal it is time to sleep. The juice provides an additional service to what we already have to strengthen the internal signal of the body clock.
‘It would definitely be beneficial to people with jet lag or coming off shift work – anywhere your internal clock has been fighting the external world.’
SOURCE
The finding below is almost certainly a social class effect. Many middle class people "wouldn't be seen dead" in McDonalds whereas working class people tend to appreciate its good value. The fact that the McDonald's munchers were also fatter also suggests that it is the characteristics of working class people that are showing up here, not the effects of diet. That poorer people have worse health is one of the most replicated findings in epidemiology
Two takeaways a week are enough to increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease, research shows. Young adults were more likely to have hidden health problems if they treated themselves to fast food on a twice-weekly basis, the study found.
Additionally, women appear to be more susceptible to the dangers. They had more warning signs, such as high blood sugar levels and increased insulin than men.
The results suggest many young professionals who are too busy to cook may be setting themselves up for serious health problems. Diabetes affects an estimated 2.5million Britons. Around 10 per cent of cases are due to type one, which is thought to be caused by a faulty immune system.
The remaining 90 per cent are type two, which is closely linked to unhealthy diet and lifestyle. The condition occurs when the body loses its ability to make use of glucose, a type of sugar that is released when we eat.
As levels rise, circulation suffers and blood vessels can be damaged. Left untreated, type two diabetes can raise the risk of heart attacks, blindness and amputation.
Researchers from the University of Tasmania and two other Australian science institutions studied the diet and lifestyles of 1,896 men and women aged 26 to 36. Almost 40 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women ate a takeaway twice a week or more.
The volunteers underwent a range of medical checks, including tests for glucose and insulin levels. High levels of both mean the body is heading for type two diabetes.
Researchers found women who had takeaways twice or more a week had significantly higher blood sugar levels than those who ate them once a week or less. They also had higher insulin and scored much higher on a test for signs of becoming resistant to the hormone – a warning sign of diabetes. Although men in the study also showed damage, the effects were much less severe.
Researchers said it was hard to tell if it was the fast food or excess weight caused by poor diet and lack of exercise that caused the problems.
They added: ‘It is unclear whether the differences [between one takeaway a week and two] are clinically significant. But they may represent an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes.’
The survey was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
In 2008, a Which? study found a single Indian takeaway contained 23.2 grammes of saturated fat – more than a woman’s entire daily allowance.
SOURCE
Cherry juice helps you to sleep?
It could bve true but it's a very tiny study for a very short time period
Two glasses of cherry juice can help you sleep nearly 40 minutes longer, research shows.
People who drank two glasses of tart cherry juice also napped less often in the day and had increased ‘sleep efficiency’ – the ratio of time spent in bed to time spent sleeping. They slept an average of 39 minutes longer.
Researchers found that Montmorency cherry juice – a variety of sour cherry – significantly increases the body’s level of melatonin, a powerful antioxidant that is critical in regulating sleep.
The 20 participants were given two 30ml servings of the juice diluted with half a pint of water, or an alternative fruit drink, for seven days – once when they woke up and another before bed.
The researchers at Northumbria University, whose findings were published in the European Journal of Nutrition, then tracked their sleep habits using actigraphs – watches that sense movement – and sleep diaries.
They found that healthy adults who had two daily glasses of the juice had longer sleep time, less daytime napping and up to a 6 per cent increase in sleep efficiency.
Researcher Jason Ellis said: ‘When darkness falls, the body produces melatonin to signal it is time to sleep. The juice provides an additional service to what we already have to strengthen the internal signal of the body clock.
‘It would definitely be beneficial to people with jet lag or coming off shift work – anywhere your internal clock has been fighting the external world.’
SOURCE
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Drugs reduce stroke risk in patients with above average blood pressure (?)
This is a prime example of the medication madness that doctors blame on drug companies but which is in fact thoroughly iatrogenic -- originating from the doctors themselves. Doctors like writing prescriptions for magic bullets.
By definition, half the population is above average so if the proposal is to dose up people whose blood pressure is above average, that amounts to a call to put half the population on blood pressure drugs. The drug companies will no doubt be rubbing their hands with glee at such folly but everybody else should need a lot of convincing.
There has already been over the years a substantial lowering of the blood pressure level that is regarded as dangerous and this would appear to be the next step in that direction
The study was a meta-analysis so is hard to evaluate (I know from knowledge of my own research field that meta-analyses sometimes leave out stuff that doesn't suit the author) but for what it is worth, we read in the journal article that "To prevent 1 stroke, 169 patients had to be treated with a blood-pressure-lowering medication for an average of 4.3 years" -- so benefit from the medication was rare
Blood pressure medication could lower the risk of stroke in people whose readings are above average without being considered dangerously high, according to research.
Patients with hypertension, or chronic high blood pressure, are often given drugs to lower their risk of heart disease and stroke but the medication could also benefit a wider group of patients.
Researchers found that people with prehypertension, where blood pressure is higher than normal but not as severe as in hypertension, had a 22 per cent lower risk of stroke if they took the drugs.
An analysis of 16 studies, covering 70,664 patients, found that treating 169 prehypertensive people with blood pressure-lowering medication for 4.3 years would prevent one stroke from happening.
High blood pressure is the biggest risk factor for stroke, and an estimated 40 per cent of strokes could be prevented if people took steps to control their blood pressure levels.
US data shows that about 10 per cent of Americans have prehypertension, with a blood pressure between 120/80mm Hg and 139/89mm Hg – higher than the upper boundary of "normal" but below the lower limit of hypertension.
Ilke Sipahi of the Harrington-McLaughlin Heart and Vascular Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, who led the study, published in the Stroke journal, said patients would be better off trying to lower their blood pressure through a healthy diet and physical activity than by taking pills.
He said: "We do not think that giving blood pressure medicine instead of implementing the lifestyle changes is the way to go ... however, the clear-cut reduction in the risk of stroke with blood pressure pills is important and may be complementary to lifestyle changes."
Dr Sharlin Ahmed of The Stroke Association said: “Making a few simple lifestyle choices, such as eating a healthy diet low in salt, giving up smoking, and exercising regularly can help to keep your blood pressure under control and can reduce your risk of stroke.
"As highlighted in this study, it may also be beneficial for some people with borderline high blood pressure to take blood pressure lowering medication, however this needs to be discussed with your GP.”
SOURCE
Unhealthy lifestyle responsible for 'half of cancers' (?)
Prof. Parkin is an industrious little blighter. He has taken seventeen supposed risk factors one by one and done a meta-analysis of the effects of each one. So he has a total of seventeen journal articles in the one issue of the British Journal of Cancer.
His industry did not however seem to include any critical thought. His conclusions are simply reinforcement of the conventional wisdom and he pays no heed to the elementary truth that correlation is not causation -- preferring to rely instead on the speculations of epidemiologists. He even makes significant use of heavily criticized analyses from the sensationalist WCRF -- e.g. here. Some of his conclusions may be correct but we have no means of knowing which they are. Many of the factors he identified could well in fact be social class effects
Almost half of cancers are caused by an unhealthy lifestyle that could be avoided by quitting smoking, losing weight, exercising and drinking less alcohol, the most comprehensive study of its kind has found.
Around 134,000 cancers each year are the result of a poor lifestyle, Cancer Research UK has found.
In the most wide reaching study yet conducted into the issue, it was found that 14 different lifestyle factors ranging from smoking, to lack of exercise, eating too much salt, not having babies, drinking too much and being overweight contributed to four in every ten cancers diagnosed in the UK.
The findings expose the myth that developing cancer is 'bad luck' or down to your genes, the researchers said.
Previous studies had suggested around 80,000 cancers a year could be prevented but they did not take into account occupational exposures to things like asbestos, infections that can cause cancer and sunburn as the latest research has.
In a complex set of research studies, scientists calculated how many cancers and of what type could be attributed to each of the 14 lifestyle factors. The findings were published in the British Journal of Cancer.
Smoking was the biggest factor, causing nearly one in five of all cancers.
But Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said most people would not know that a quarter of all breast cancer cases could be prevented along with half of colorectal cancers.
He added: "Leading a healthy lifestyle doesn't guarantee that someone will not get cancer but doing so will significantly stack the odds in your favour."
Dr Kumar said tackling unhealthy lifestyle factors linked to cancer would also reduce the risk of a host of other killer diseases such as heart disease, respiratory problems, kidney disease and others.
Professor Max Parkin, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist based at Queen Mary, University of London, and study author, said: “Many people believe cancer is down to fate or ‘in the genes’ and that it is the luck of the draw whether they get it.
“Looking at all the evidence, it’s clear that around 40 per cent of all cancers are caused by things we mostly have the power to change. “We didn’t expect to find that eating fruit and vegetables would prove to be so important in protecting men against cancer. And among women we didn’t expect being overweight to have a greater effect than alcohol."
The study found that alcohol was responsible for 6.4 per cent of breast cancers and almost one in ten liver cancers.
Three quarters of stomach cancers could be avoided, mostly by not smoking, eating too much salt and consuming more fruit and vegetables.
Red meat consumption led to 2.7 per cent of cancers, almost 8,500 cases. Obesity was linked to more than five per cent of cancers or almost 18000 cases, including a third of womb cancers.
Lack of breastfeeding was linked to 3.1 per cent of breast cancers and 17 per cent of ovarian cancers.
The study did not examine how many cancer deaths would be prevented with a healthier lifestyle.
Sara Hiom, director of information at Cancer Research UK, said: “We know, especially during the Christmas party season, that it is hard to watch what you eat and limit alcohol and we don’t want people to feel guilty about having a drink or indulging a bit more than usual. But it’s very important for people to understand that long term changes to their lifestyles can really reduce their cancer risk.”
The World Cancer Research Fund did a similar exercise in 2007 coming up with recommendations to individuals on how to reduce their cancer risk by eating less red meat, taking more exercise and staying slim.
Dr Rachel Thompson, Deputy Head of Science for World Cancer Research Fund, said: "This adds to the now overwhelmingly strong evidence that our cancer risk is affected by our lifestyles.
"We hope this new study helps to raise awareness of the fact that cancer is not simply a question of fate and that people can make changes today that can reduce their risk of developing cancer in the future."
Ciarán Devane, Chief Executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "No one chooses to have cancer and it would be wrong to blame people for making wrong lifestyle choices.
"For a long time, people have been told that eating healthily, not smoking and exercising regularly can benefit them, and these figures show again the impact a healthy lifestyle can have. Yet these healthy lifestyle messages are clearly not reaching enough people. They also need to be made more relatable to people’s everyday lives.
"There needs to be a cultural change, so that people see physical activity as an integral part of their lives, not just a optional add-on.”
Public Health Minister Anne Milton said: "We all know that around 23,000 cases of lung cancer could be stopped each year in England if people didn't smoke.
"By making small changes we can cut our risk of serious health problems - give up smoking, watch what you drink, get more exercise and keep an eye on your weight."
SOURCE
This is a prime example of the medication madness that doctors blame on drug companies but which is in fact thoroughly iatrogenic -- originating from the doctors themselves. Doctors like writing prescriptions for magic bullets.
By definition, half the population is above average so if the proposal is to dose up people whose blood pressure is above average, that amounts to a call to put half the population on blood pressure drugs. The drug companies will no doubt be rubbing their hands with glee at such folly but everybody else should need a lot of convincing.
There has already been over the years a substantial lowering of the blood pressure level that is regarded as dangerous and this would appear to be the next step in that direction
The study was a meta-analysis so is hard to evaluate (I know from knowledge of my own research field that meta-analyses sometimes leave out stuff that doesn't suit the author) but for what it is worth, we read in the journal article that "To prevent 1 stroke, 169 patients had to be treated with a blood-pressure-lowering medication for an average of 4.3 years" -- so benefit from the medication was rare
Blood pressure medication could lower the risk of stroke in people whose readings are above average without being considered dangerously high, according to research.
Patients with hypertension, or chronic high blood pressure, are often given drugs to lower their risk of heart disease and stroke but the medication could also benefit a wider group of patients.
Researchers found that people with prehypertension, where blood pressure is higher than normal but not as severe as in hypertension, had a 22 per cent lower risk of stroke if they took the drugs.
An analysis of 16 studies, covering 70,664 patients, found that treating 169 prehypertensive people with blood pressure-lowering medication for 4.3 years would prevent one stroke from happening.
High blood pressure is the biggest risk factor for stroke, and an estimated 40 per cent of strokes could be prevented if people took steps to control their blood pressure levels.
US data shows that about 10 per cent of Americans have prehypertension, with a blood pressure between 120/80mm Hg and 139/89mm Hg – higher than the upper boundary of "normal" but below the lower limit of hypertension.
Ilke Sipahi of the Harrington-McLaughlin Heart and Vascular Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, who led the study, published in the Stroke journal, said patients would be better off trying to lower their blood pressure through a healthy diet and physical activity than by taking pills.
He said: "We do not think that giving blood pressure medicine instead of implementing the lifestyle changes is the way to go ... however, the clear-cut reduction in the risk of stroke with blood pressure pills is important and may be complementary to lifestyle changes."
Dr Sharlin Ahmed of The Stroke Association said: “Making a few simple lifestyle choices, such as eating a healthy diet low in salt, giving up smoking, and exercising regularly can help to keep your blood pressure under control and can reduce your risk of stroke.
"As highlighted in this study, it may also be beneficial for some people with borderline high blood pressure to take blood pressure lowering medication, however this needs to be discussed with your GP.”
SOURCE
Unhealthy lifestyle responsible for 'half of cancers' (?)
Prof. Parkin is an industrious little blighter. He has taken seventeen supposed risk factors one by one and done a meta-analysis of the effects of each one. So he has a total of seventeen journal articles in the one issue of the British Journal of Cancer.
His industry did not however seem to include any critical thought. His conclusions are simply reinforcement of the conventional wisdom and he pays no heed to the elementary truth that correlation is not causation -- preferring to rely instead on the speculations of epidemiologists. He even makes significant use of heavily criticized analyses from the sensationalist WCRF -- e.g. here. Some of his conclusions may be correct but we have no means of knowing which they are. Many of the factors he identified could well in fact be social class effects
Almost half of cancers are caused by an unhealthy lifestyle that could be avoided by quitting smoking, losing weight, exercising and drinking less alcohol, the most comprehensive study of its kind has found.
Around 134,000 cancers each year are the result of a poor lifestyle, Cancer Research UK has found.
In the most wide reaching study yet conducted into the issue, it was found that 14 different lifestyle factors ranging from smoking, to lack of exercise, eating too much salt, not having babies, drinking too much and being overweight contributed to four in every ten cancers diagnosed in the UK.
The findings expose the myth that developing cancer is 'bad luck' or down to your genes, the researchers said.
Previous studies had suggested around 80,000 cancers a year could be prevented but they did not take into account occupational exposures to things like asbestos, infections that can cause cancer and sunburn as the latest research has.
In a complex set of research studies, scientists calculated how many cancers and of what type could be attributed to each of the 14 lifestyle factors. The findings were published in the British Journal of Cancer.
Smoking was the biggest factor, causing nearly one in five of all cancers.
But Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said most people would not know that a quarter of all breast cancer cases could be prevented along with half of colorectal cancers.
He added: "Leading a healthy lifestyle doesn't guarantee that someone will not get cancer but doing so will significantly stack the odds in your favour."
Dr Kumar said tackling unhealthy lifestyle factors linked to cancer would also reduce the risk of a host of other killer diseases such as heart disease, respiratory problems, kidney disease and others.
Professor Max Parkin, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist based at Queen Mary, University of London, and study author, said: “Many people believe cancer is down to fate or ‘in the genes’ and that it is the luck of the draw whether they get it.
“Looking at all the evidence, it’s clear that around 40 per cent of all cancers are caused by things we mostly have the power to change. “We didn’t expect to find that eating fruit and vegetables would prove to be so important in protecting men against cancer. And among women we didn’t expect being overweight to have a greater effect than alcohol."
The study found that alcohol was responsible for 6.4 per cent of breast cancers and almost one in ten liver cancers.
Three quarters of stomach cancers could be avoided, mostly by not smoking, eating too much salt and consuming more fruit and vegetables.
Red meat consumption led to 2.7 per cent of cancers, almost 8,500 cases. Obesity was linked to more than five per cent of cancers or almost 18000 cases, including a third of womb cancers.
Lack of breastfeeding was linked to 3.1 per cent of breast cancers and 17 per cent of ovarian cancers.
The study did not examine how many cancer deaths would be prevented with a healthier lifestyle.
Sara Hiom, director of information at Cancer Research UK, said: “We know, especially during the Christmas party season, that it is hard to watch what you eat and limit alcohol and we don’t want people to feel guilty about having a drink or indulging a bit more than usual. But it’s very important for people to understand that long term changes to their lifestyles can really reduce their cancer risk.”
The World Cancer Research Fund did a similar exercise in 2007 coming up with recommendations to individuals on how to reduce their cancer risk by eating less red meat, taking more exercise and staying slim.
Dr Rachel Thompson, Deputy Head of Science for World Cancer Research Fund, said: "This adds to the now overwhelmingly strong evidence that our cancer risk is affected by our lifestyles.
"We hope this new study helps to raise awareness of the fact that cancer is not simply a question of fate and that people can make changes today that can reduce their risk of developing cancer in the future."
Ciarán Devane, Chief Executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "No one chooses to have cancer and it would be wrong to blame people for making wrong lifestyle choices.
"For a long time, people have been told that eating healthily, not smoking and exercising regularly can benefit them, and these figures show again the impact a healthy lifestyle can have. Yet these healthy lifestyle messages are clearly not reaching enough people. They also need to be made more relatable to people’s everyday lives.
"There needs to be a cultural change, so that people see physical activity as an integral part of their lives, not just a optional add-on.”
Public Health Minister Anne Milton said: "We all know that around 23,000 cases of lung cancer could be stopped each year in England if people didn't smoke.
"By making small changes we can cut our risk of serious health problems - give up smoking, watch what you drink, get more exercise and keep an eye on your weight."
SOURCE
Friday, December 09, 2011
Atheist kids better at sports: Swiss study
One wonders what the intervening variables were. A direct effect of religion is improbable. Does changing your religion make you run faster? I don't know enough about Winterthur to know what characterizes atheists there. Maybe they play sport instead of going to church.
The finding that education and income predict better performance is expected. Higher class people are generally fitter and healthier
Results of a study of 600 children conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EHT) have shown that religion has an effect on sporting ability, with Muslim girls the least skilled.
For the study, first grade school children in Winterthur in northern Switzerland underwent regular tests to measure their strength, coordination and agility.
After four years of following their development, the ETH's Institute for Movement Sciences and Sport cross-referenced the data with information about the origin of their parents, their native language and their religion.
Results showed that children with no religious background tend to be the most skilful athletes. These are followed by Protestants and Catholics. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Muslim children, who performed well below the average, especially girls.
According to the director of the school, Stefan Fritschi, Muslim girls are often reluctant to participate in sports that involve bodily contact with other children. Similarly, swimming lessons are problematic, as Muslim families try to remove their daughters from the classes.
Language also plays a role. German-speaking students show much better results than children with other first languages, such as Bosnian and Albanian.
"The differences are considerable, but not really surprising,” the head of the study, Andreas Krebs, told newspaper Tages Anzeiger. “Parents from south-eastern Europe often have a different level of access to sports. There's also a different beauty ideal,” he added.
However, for Krebs, the most important differences relate to the social status of the family. The richer and more educated they are, the better their children do in sports tests.
SOURCE
One wonders what the intervening variables were. A direct effect of religion is improbable. Does changing your religion make you run faster? I don't know enough about Winterthur to know what characterizes atheists there. Maybe they play sport instead of going to church.
The finding that education and income predict better performance is expected. Higher class people are generally fitter and healthier
Results of a study of 600 children conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EHT) have shown that religion has an effect on sporting ability, with Muslim girls the least skilled.
For the study, first grade school children in Winterthur in northern Switzerland underwent regular tests to measure their strength, coordination and agility.
After four years of following their development, the ETH's Institute for Movement Sciences and Sport cross-referenced the data with information about the origin of their parents, their native language and their religion.
Results showed that children with no religious background tend to be the most skilful athletes. These are followed by Protestants and Catholics. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Muslim children, who performed well below the average, especially girls.
According to the director of the school, Stefan Fritschi, Muslim girls are often reluctant to participate in sports that involve bodily contact with other children. Similarly, swimming lessons are problematic, as Muslim families try to remove their daughters from the classes.
Language also plays a role. German-speaking students show much better results than children with other first languages, such as Bosnian and Albanian.
"The differences are considerable, but not really surprising,” the head of the study, Andreas Krebs, told newspaper Tages Anzeiger. “Parents from south-eastern Europe often have a different level of access to sports. There's also a different beauty ideal,” he added.
However, for Krebs, the most important differences relate to the social status of the family. The richer and more educated they are, the better their children do in sports tests.
SOURCE
Put down that Diet Coke! Low calorie substitutes might actually fool your body into GAINING weight
Rodent study only but it is an interesting warning
Low calorie fat substitutes used in snacks for dieters may actually make them pile on the pounds, scientists claim.
They discovered that when you taste them your bodies gears up to expect calories, so when it only gets a low-calorie hit it gets confused, making you eat more.
An American research team from Purdue University in Indiana carried out a series of experiments on laboratory rats.
Professor of psychological sciences Susan Swithers said: 'Substituting a part of the diet with a similar tasting item that has fewer or zero calories sounds like a common-sense approach to lose weight, but there are other physiological functions at work.
'These substitutes are meant to mimic the taste of fat in foods that are normally high in fat while providing a lower number of calories, but they may end up confusing the body.
'Tastes normally alert the body to expect calories, and when those calories aren't present we believe the systems become ineffective and one of the body's mechanisms to control food intake can become ineffective.
'When the mouth tastes something sweet or fatty it tells the body to prepare for calories, and this information is key to the digestive process.
'This is a reminder to not discount the roles that taste and experience with food play in the way the body's systems work together.'
Professor Swithers, based at the Ingestive Behaviour Research Centre, added: 'We didn't study this in people, but we found that when rats consumed a fat substitute, learned signals that could help control food intake were disrupted, and the rats gained weight as a result.'
Researchers fed laboratory rats with crushed crisps as a supplement to their diet, and they were then divided into two groups that were given either a low-fat diet or a high-fat diet.
These groups were then each split into two smaller groups. One group on each diet was fed a mixture of high-fat crisps and the fat-substitute crisps, containing olestra, which is a synthetic fat with no calories, while the other group received only high-fat crisps.
After 28 days the rats maintained on the high-fat diet gained more weight and developed more fatty tissue when they were given fat-substitute crisps compared to the animals that ate only regular high-fat crisps.
Study co-author Professor Terry Davidson said: 'We are looking at an animal model, but there are similarities for humans, and based on what we found, we believe that our findings question the effectiveness of using fat substitutes as part of a long-term weight loss strategy.'
The findings appear online in Behavioural Neuroscience, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
SOURCE
Rodent study only but it is an interesting warning
Low calorie fat substitutes used in snacks for dieters may actually make them pile on the pounds, scientists claim.
They discovered that when you taste them your bodies gears up to expect calories, so when it only gets a low-calorie hit it gets confused, making you eat more.
An American research team from Purdue University in Indiana carried out a series of experiments on laboratory rats.
Professor of psychological sciences Susan Swithers said: 'Substituting a part of the diet with a similar tasting item that has fewer or zero calories sounds like a common-sense approach to lose weight, but there are other physiological functions at work.
'These substitutes are meant to mimic the taste of fat in foods that are normally high in fat while providing a lower number of calories, but they may end up confusing the body.
'Tastes normally alert the body to expect calories, and when those calories aren't present we believe the systems become ineffective and one of the body's mechanisms to control food intake can become ineffective.
'When the mouth tastes something sweet or fatty it tells the body to prepare for calories, and this information is key to the digestive process.
'This is a reminder to not discount the roles that taste and experience with food play in the way the body's systems work together.'
Professor Swithers, based at the Ingestive Behaviour Research Centre, added: 'We didn't study this in people, but we found that when rats consumed a fat substitute, learned signals that could help control food intake were disrupted, and the rats gained weight as a result.'
Researchers fed laboratory rats with crushed crisps as a supplement to their diet, and they were then divided into two groups that were given either a low-fat diet or a high-fat diet.
These groups were then each split into two smaller groups. One group on each diet was fed a mixture of high-fat crisps and the fat-substitute crisps, containing olestra, which is a synthetic fat with no calories, while the other group received only high-fat crisps.
After 28 days the rats maintained on the high-fat diet gained more weight and developed more fatty tissue when they were given fat-substitute crisps compared to the animals that ate only regular high-fat crisps.
Study co-author Professor Terry Davidson said: 'We are looking at an animal model, but there are similarities for humans, and based on what we found, we believe that our findings question the effectiveness of using fat substitutes as part of a long-term weight loss strategy.'
The findings appear online in Behavioural Neuroscience, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
SOURCE
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Young women 'could reduce their heart disease risk by 90 per cent by eating fish once a week' (?)
Ya gotta laugh. The large effect reported in the article below immediately seemed fishy to me (pardon the pun) so I looked up the original journal article (Abstract also below). So I am now in a position to rephrase the first sentence below more accurately: "Young women who SAY THEY regularly eat oily fish are less prone to heart disease".
Unvalidated self-report data is of notoriously low quality so what the finding below most probably shows is that smart middle class people who are aware of the unremitting propaganda about the glories of fish oil SAY they eat oily fish whether they do or not. So it is simply the generally better health of middle class people that this study is again recording
Young women who regularly eat oily fish are less prone to heart disease say scientists. A groundbreaking study has found that a fish-rich diet could cut the risk of heart attack and stroke by 90 per cent.
Traditionally findings have highlighted the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, found in salmon, mackerel and sardines for men. However it is now believed because of gender differences fish oil might be even more beneficial for women of a child-bearing age, boosting blood pressure, cardiac and blood vessel function.
Lead researcher Dr Marin Strom, from the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen said: 'Our study shows that for younger women, eating fish is very important for overall health.'
The study involved 49,000 Danish women aged 15 to 49 whose health was monitored for eight years. Over the period their diet, lifestyle and family history were assessed, while 577 cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes were recorded, five of which resulted in death.
Researchers found women who rarely or never ate fish had 90 per cent more cardiovascular problems than those who ate oily fish every week. Dr Strom added: 'To our knowledge this is the first study of this size to focus exclusively on women of child-bearing age. 'Even though we found cardio-protective effects at relatively modest dietary levels, higher levels may yield additional benefits.'
The team now hope that the findings, published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, will encourage younger populations to eat more oily fish.
The NHS recommends that a healthy diet should include at least two portions of fish a week, including one of oily fish. However, pregnant women should have no more than two portions a week.
Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the UK's biggest killer, causing around 94,000 deaths every year and around one in seven women die from the disease.
Symptoms can include chest pain (angina), palpitations and heart attacks but in some cases, people may not present any symptoms before diagnosis.
SOURCE
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
Feds Allow Arsenic in Apple Juice!
This past year, I started writing a health and fitness column through Creators.com, titled "C-Force." It is no surprise that in researching for that column, I've discovered repeat offenses of food and beverage tampering by the federal government. But arsenic in apple juice?
Dr. Oz received significant flak when he reported in September that "some of the best-known brands of apple juice contain arsenic." Since then, however, Oz has been redeemed and his claims substantiated!
After Oz's initial comments, Dr. Richard Besser, a 13-year veteran of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ABC News' chief health and medical editor, publicly lambasted Oz and his warnings as "extremely irresponsible" and "fear-mongering" and equated them to yelling "'Fire!' in a movie theater." Amid the public debate, the Food and Drug Administration tried to steady the apple cart by saying that consumption of apple juice "poses little or no risk."
But just a few days ago, I watched a humbled Besser on "Good Morning America" recant his fury against Oz's conclusions, saying instead that new studies have just confirmed arsenic is indeed in many popular apple juices.
ABC News reported that Consumer Reports tested 88 samples of popular brands of grape and apple juice sold in the U.S., including Welch's, Minute Maid and Mott's. The results revealed that 10 percent of the juices "had total arsenic levels greater than the FDA's standard for drinking water of 10 parts per billion (ppb), while 25 percent of juices also had lead levels higher than the FDA's bottled water limit of 5 ppb."
Furthermore, data on arsenic in adult urine from the CDC demonstrated that men and women who drank apple or grape juice in a 24-hour period "had, on average, about 20 percent higher levels of total urinary arsenic than those subjects who did not."
Consumer Reports went on to report that the arsenic tested and detected is inorganic and a human carcinogen. CR further explained that there is "mounting scientific evidence suggesting that chronic exposure to arsenic and lead even at levels below federal standards for water can result in serious health problems, especially for those who are exposed in the womb or during early childhood. FDA data and other research reveal that arsenic has been detected at disturbing levels in other foods as well." So who wants organic or inorganic arsenic in his water, juice and food? (Oz further notes that though many say organic arsenic is safe, there is clear evidence that both forms are ultimately hazardous to our health.)
Tragically teetering on a huge U.S. health cover-up, the FDA posted eight "previously undisclosed test results" for apple juice samples from across the country that had arsenic levels that superseded even its own "level of concern" for inorganic arsenic. Two of those eight samples had an arsenic level of 27 ppb. One had a level of 42 ppb, and two others were at 45 ppb.
What's even worse is that the samples were discovered in 2008. And we're just finding out about them now? Such undisclosed elevated levels of arsenic give a whole new meaning to the saying, "Quit drinking the feds' Kool-Aid!"
Strangely, the FDA has limits for arsenic in water (including bottled) but no such regulations on fruit juices. At the very least, the FDA should not allow more arsenic in apple juice than it allows in Americans' drinking water. Until then, tides of arsenic will continue to flow from foreign produce fields into American bloodstreams. (If you want to weigh in on this issue, contact the FDA at http://www.fda.gov or call 888-463-6332.)
Dr. Urvashi Rangan, director of consumer safety and sustainability at Consumer Reports, rightly delivered this staunch warning: "We're concerned about the potential risks of exposure to these toxins, especially for children who are particularly vulnerable because of their small body size and the amount of juice they regularly consume."
With apple juice lacing children's cereals, snack bars and holiday party tables, we need to heed this countrywide health warning and blow the trumpet to our neighbors. The fact is that the U.S. is getting more and more of its fruits and vegetables from other countries, and many of them do not preclude or limit arsenic in their pesticides or even their water supplies as the U.S. does. Oz reported that apple concentrate comes from up to seven countries; 60 percent of it is imported from China alone.
I agree with Oz, Rangan and Consumer Reports; it's best for consumers to reduce their exposure to these juices. CR is recommending, until this juice fiasco is remedied, that you not give any type of juice to infants younger than 6 months. Also, no more than 6 ounces daily should be given to children up to 6 years old, and older children should have no more than 12 ounces daily.
SOURCE
Ya gotta laugh. The large effect reported in the article below immediately seemed fishy to me (pardon the pun) so I looked up the original journal article (Abstract also below). So I am now in a position to rephrase the first sentence below more accurately: "Young women who SAY THEY regularly eat oily fish are less prone to heart disease".
Unvalidated self-report data is of notoriously low quality so what the finding below most probably shows is that smart middle class people who are aware of the unremitting propaganda about the glories of fish oil SAY they eat oily fish whether they do or not. So it is simply the generally better health of middle class people that this study is again recording
Young women who regularly eat oily fish are less prone to heart disease say scientists. A groundbreaking study has found that a fish-rich diet could cut the risk of heart attack and stroke by 90 per cent.
Traditionally findings have highlighted the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, found in salmon, mackerel and sardines for men. However it is now believed because of gender differences fish oil might be even more beneficial for women of a child-bearing age, boosting blood pressure, cardiac and blood vessel function.
Lead researcher Dr Marin Strom, from the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen said: 'Our study shows that for younger women, eating fish is very important for overall health.'
The study involved 49,000 Danish women aged 15 to 49 whose health was monitored for eight years. Over the period their diet, lifestyle and family history were assessed, while 577 cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes were recorded, five of which resulted in death.
Researchers found women who rarely or never ate fish had 90 per cent more cardiovascular problems than those who ate oily fish every week. Dr Strom added: 'To our knowledge this is the first study of this size to focus exclusively on women of child-bearing age. 'Even though we found cardio-protective effects at relatively modest dietary levels, higher levels may yield additional benefits.'
The team now hope that the findings, published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, will encourage younger populations to eat more oily fish.
The NHS recommends that a healthy diet should include at least two portions of fish a week, including one of oily fish. However, pregnant women should have no more than two portions a week.
Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the UK's biggest killer, causing around 94,000 deaths every year and around one in seven women die from the disease.
Symptoms can include chest pain (angina), palpitations and heart attacks but in some cases, people may not present any symptoms before diagnosis.
SOURCE
Fish, n-3 Fatty Acids, and Cardiovascular Diseases in Women of Reproductive Age: A Prospective Study in a Large National Cohort
By Marin Strom, et al
Abstract
Previous studies have indicated a protective effect of long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCn3FAs) against cardiovascular disease; however, women are underrepresented in cardiovascular research. The aim of this study was to explore the association between intake of LCn3FAs and the risk of cardiovascular disease in a large prospective cohort of young women (mean age at baseline: 29.9 years [range: 15.7-46.9]). Exposure information on 48 627 women from the Danish National Birth Cohort was linked to the Danish National Patients Registry for information on events of hypertensive, cerebrovascular, and ischemic heart disease used to define a combined measure of cardiovascular diseases.
Intake of fish and LCn3FAs was assessed by a food-frequency questionnaire and telephone interviews. During follow-up (1996-2008; median: 8 years), 577 events of cardiovascular disease were identified. Low LCn3FA intake was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (adjusted hazard ratio for women in lowest versus highest LCn3FA intake group: 1.91 [95% CI: 1.26-2.90]). Restricting the sample to women who had consistently reported similar frequencies of fish intake across 3 different dietary assessment occasions tended to strengthen the relationship (hazard ratio for lowest versus highest intake: 2.91 [95% CI: 1.45-5.85]).
Furthermore, the observed associations were consistent in supplementary analyses where LCn3FA intake was averaged across the 3 dietary assessment occasions, and the associations were persistent for all 3 of the individual outcomes. Our findings based on a large prospective cohort of relatively young and initially healthy women indicated that little or no intake of fish and LCn3FAs was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
SOURCE
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
Feds Allow Arsenic in Apple Juice!
This past year, I started writing a health and fitness column through Creators.com, titled "C-Force." It is no surprise that in researching for that column, I've discovered repeat offenses of food and beverage tampering by the federal government. But arsenic in apple juice?
Dr. Oz received significant flak when he reported in September that "some of the best-known brands of apple juice contain arsenic." Since then, however, Oz has been redeemed and his claims substantiated!
After Oz's initial comments, Dr. Richard Besser, a 13-year veteran of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ABC News' chief health and medical editor, publicly lambasted Oz and his warnings as "extremely irresponsible" and "fear-mongering" and equated them to yelling "'Fire!' in a movie theater." Amid the public debate, the Food and Drug Administration tried to steady the apple cart by saying that consumption of apple juice "poses little or no risk."
But just a few days ago, I watched a humbled Besser on "Good Morning America" recant his fury against Oz's conclusions, saying instead that new studies have just confirmed arsenic is indeed in many popular apple juices.
ABC News reported that Consumer Reports tested 88 samples of popular brands of grape and apple juice sold in the U.S., including Welch's, Minute Maid and Mott's. The results revealed that 10 percent of the juices "had total arsenic levels greater than the FDA's standard for drinking water of 10 parts per billion (ppb), while 25 percent of juices also had lead levels higher than the FDA's bottled water limit of 5 ppb."
Furthermore, data on arsenic in adult urine from the CDC demonstrated that men and women who drank apple or grape juice in a 24-hour period "had, on average, about 20 percent higher levels of total urinary arsenic than those subjects who did not."
Consumer Reports went on to report that the arsenic tested and detected is inorganic and a human carcinogen. CR further explained that there is "mounting scientific evidence suggesting that chronic exposure to arsenic and lead even at levels below federal standards for water can result in serious health problems, especially for those who are exposed in the womb or during early childhood. FDA data and other research reveal that arsenic has been detected at disturbing levels in other foods as well." So who wants organic or inorganic arsenic in his water, juice and food? (Oz further notes that though many say organic arsenic is safe, there is clear evidence that both forms are ultimately hazardous to our health.)
Tragically teetering on a huge U.S. health cover-up, the FDA posted eight "previously undisclosed test results" for apple juice samples from across the country that had arsenic levels that superseded even its own "level of concern" for inorganic arsenic. Two of those eight samples had an arsenic level of 27 ppb. One had a level of 42 ppb, and two others were at 45 ppb.
What's even worse is that the samples were discovered in 2008. And we're just finding out about them now? Such undisclosed elevated levels of arsenic give a whole new meaning to the saying, "Quit drinking the feds' Kool-Aid!"
Strangely, the FDA has limits for arsenic in water (including bottled) but no such regulations on fruit juices. At the very least, the FDA should not allow more arsenic in apple juice than it allows in Americans' drinking water. Until then, tides of arsenic will continue to flow from foreign produce fields into American bloodstreams. (If you want to weigh in on this issue, contact the FDA at http://www.fda.gov or call 888-463-6332.)
Dr. Urvashi Rangan, director of consumer safety and sustainability at Consumer Reports, rightly delivered this staunch warning: "We're concerned about the potential risks of exposure to these toxins, especially for children who are particularly vulnerable because of their small body size and the amount of juice they regularly consume."
With apple juice lacing children's cereals, snack bars and holiday party tables, we need to heed this countrywide health warning and blow the trumpet to our neighbors. The fact is that the U.S. is getting more and more of its fruits and vegetables from other countries, and many of them do not preclude or limit arsenic in their pesticides or even their water supplies as the U.S. does. Oz reported that apple concentrate comes from up to seven countries; 60 percent of it is imported from China alone.
I agree with Oz, Rangan and Consumer Reports; it's best for consumers to reduce their exposure to these juices. CR is recommending, until this juice fiasco is remedied, that you not give any type of juice to infants younger than 6 months. Also, no more than 6 ounces daily should be given to children up to 6 years old, and older children should have no more than 12 ounces daily.
SOURCE
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Crap drug research: Two thirds of published claims cannot be reproduced
Two years ago, a group of Boston researchers published a study describing how they had destroyed cancer tumors by targeting a protein called STK33. Scientists at biotechnology firm Amgen Inc. quickly pounced on the idea and assigned two dozen researchers to try to repeat the experiment with a goal of turning the findings into a drug.
It proved to be a waste of time and money. After six months of intensive lab work, Amgen found it couldn't replicate the results and scrapped the project.
"I was disappointed but not surprised," says Glenn Begley, vice president of research at Amgen of Thousand Oaks, Calif. "More often than not, we are unable to reproduce findings" published by researchers in journals.
This is one of medicine's dirty secrets: Most results, including those that appear in top-flight peer-reviewed journals, can't be reproduced.
Researchers at Bayer's labs often find their experiments fail to match claims made in the scientific literature. "It's a very serious and disturbing issue because it obviously misleads people" who implicitly trust findings published in a respected peer-reviewed journal, says Bruce Alberts, editor of Science. On Friday, the U.S. journal is devoting a large chunk of its Dec. 2 issue to the problem of scientific replication.
Reproducibility is the foundation of all modern research, the standard by which scientific claims are evaluated. In the U.S. alone, biomedical research is a $100-billion-year enterprise. So when published medical findings can't be validated by others, there are major consequences.
Drug manufacturers rely heavily on early-stage academic research and can waste millions of dollars on products if the original results are later shown to be unreliable. Patients may enroll in clinical trials based on conflicting data, and sometimes see no benefits or suffer harmful side effects.
Unlike pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers rarely conduct experiments in a "blinded" manner. This makes it easier to cherry-pick statistical findings that support a positive result. In the quest for jobs and funding, especially in an era of economic malaise, the growing army of scientists need more successful experiments to their name, not failed ones. An explosion of scientific and academic journals has added to the pressure.
When it comes to results that can't be replicated, Dr. Alberts says the increasing intricacy of experiments may be largely to blame. "It has to do with the complexity of biology and the fact that methods [used in labs] are getting more sophisticated," he says.
It is hard to assess whether the reproducibility problem has been getting worse over the years; there are some signs suggesting it could be. For example, the success rate of Phase 2 human trials—where a drug's efficacy is measured—fell to 18% in 2008-2010 from 28% in 2006-2007, according to a global analysis published in the journal Nature Reviews in May. "Lack of reproducibility is one element in the decline in Phase 2 success," says Khusru Asadullah, a Bayer AG research executive.
In September, Bayer published a study describing how it had halted nearly two-thirds of its early drug target projects because in-house experiments failed to match claims made in the literature.
The German pharmaceutical company says that none of the claims it attempted to validate were in papers that had been retracted or were suspected of being flawed. Yet, even the data in the most prestigious journals couldn't be confirmed, Bayer said.
In 2008, Pfizer Inc. made a high-profile bet, potentially worth more than $725 million, that it could turn a 25-year-old Russian cold medicine into an effective drug for Alzheimer's disease.
The idea was promising. Published by the journal Lancet, data from researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere suggested that the drug, an antihistamine called Dimebon, could improve symptoms in Alzheimer's patients. Later findings, presented by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles at a Chicago conference, showed that the drug appeared to prevent symptoms from worsening for up to 18 months.
"Statistically, the studies were very robust," says David Hung, chief executive officer of Medivation Inc., a San Francisco biotech firm that sponsored both studies.
In 2010, Medivation along with Pfizer released data from their own clinical trial for Dimebon, involving nearly 600 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease symptoms. The companies said they were unable to reproduce the Lancet results. They also indicated they had found no statistically significant difference between patients on the drug versus the inactive placebo.
Pfizer and Medivation have just completed a one-year study of Dimebon in over 1,000 patients, another effort to see if the drug could be a potential treatment for Alzheimer's. They expect to announce the results in coming months.
Scientists offer a few theories as to why duplicative results may be so elusive. Two different labs can use slightly different equipment or materials, leading to divergent results. The more variables there are in an experiment, the more likely it is that small, unintended errors will pile up and swing a lab's conclusions one way or the other. And, of course, data that have been rigged, invented or fraudulently altered won't stand up to future scrutiny.
According to a report published by the U.K.'s Royal Society, there were 7.1 million researchers working globally across all scientific fields—academic and corporate—in 2007, a 25% increase from five years earlier.
"Among the more obvious yet unquantifiable reasons, there is immense competition among laboratories and a pressure to publish," wrote Dr. Asadullah and others from Bayer, in their September paper. "There is also a bias toward publishing positive results, as it is easier to get positive results accepted in good journals."
Science publications are under pressure, too. The number of research journals has jumped 23% between 2001 and 2010, according to Elsevier, which has analyzed the data. Their proliferation has ratcheted up competitive pressure on even elite journals, which can generate buzz by publishing splashy papers, typically containing positive findings, to meet the demands of a 24-hour news cycle.
Dr. Alberts of Science acknowledges that journals increasingly have to strike a balance between publishing studies "with broad appeal," while making sure they aren't hyped.
Drugmakers also have a penchant for positive results. A 2008 study published in the journal PLoS Medicine by researchers at the University of California San Francisco looked at data from 33 new drug applications submitted between 2001 and 2002 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency requires drug companies to provide all data from clinical trials. However, the authors found that a quarter of the trial data—most of it unfavorable—never got published because the companies never submitted it to journals.
The upshot: doctors who end up prescribing the FDA-approved drugs often don't get to see the unfavorable data.
"I would say that selectively publishing data is unethical because there are human subjects involved," says Lisa Bero of UCSF and co-author of the PLoS Medicine study.
In an email statement, a spokeswoman for the FDA said the agency considers all data it is given when reviewing a drug but "does not have the authority to control what a company chooses to publish."
Venture capital firms say they, too, are increasingly encountering cases of nonrepeatable studies, and cite it as a key reason why they are less willing to finance early-stage projects. Before investing in very early-stage research, Atlas Ventures, a venture-capital firm that backs biotech companies, now asks an outside lab to validate any experimental data. In about half the cases the findings can't be reproduced, says Bruce Booth, a partner in Atlas' Life Sciences group.
There have been several prominent cases of nonreproducibility in recent months. For example, in September, the journal Science partially retracted a 2009 paper linking a virus to chronic fatigue syndrome because several labs couldn't replicate the published results. The partial retraction came after two of the 13 study authors went back to the blood samples they analyzed from chronic-fatigue patients and found they were contaminated.
Some studies can't be redone for a more prosaic reason: the authors won't make all their raw data available to rival scientists.
John Ioannidis of Stanford University recently attempted to reproduce the findings of 18 papers published in the respected journal Nature Genetics. He noted that 16 of these papers stated that the underlying "gene expression" data for the studies were publicly available.
But the supplied data apparently weren't detailed enough, and results from 16 of the 18 major papers couldn't fully be reproduced by Dr. Ioannidis and his colleagues. "We have to take it [on faith] that the findings are OK," said Dr. Ioannidis, an epidemiologist who studies the credibility of medical research.
Veronique Kiermer, an editor at Nature, says she agrees with Dr. Ioannidis' conclusions, noting that the findings have prompted the journal to be more cautious when publishing large-scale genome analyses.
When companies trying to find new drugs come up against the nonreproducibility problem, the repercussions can be significant.
A few years ago, several groups of scientists began to seek out new cancer drugs by targeting a protein called KRAS. The KRAS protein transmits signals received on the outside of a cell to its interior and is therefore crucial for regulating cell growth. But when certain mutations occur, the signaling can become continuous. That triggers excess growth such as tumors.
The mutated form of KRAS is believed to be responsible for more than 60% of pancreatic cancers and half of colorectal cancers. It has also been implicated in the growth of tumors in many other organs, such as the lung.
So scientists have been especially keen to impede KRAS and, thus, stop the constant signaling that leads to tumor growth.
In 2008, researchers at Harvard Medical School used cell-culture experiments to show that by inhibiting another protein, STK33, they could prevent the growth of tumor cell lines driven by the malfunctioning KRAS.
The finding galvanized researchers at Amgen, who first heard about the experiments at a scientific conference. "Everyone was trying to do this," recalls Dr. Begley of Amgen, which derives nearly half of its revenues from cancer drugs and related treatments. "It was a really big deal."
When the Harvard researchers published their results in the prestigious journal Cell, in May 2009, Amgen moved swiftly to capitalize on the findings.
At a meeting in the company's offices in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Dr. Begley assigned a group of Amgen researchers the task of identifying small molecules that might inhibit STK33. Another team got a more basic job: reproduce the Harvard data.
"We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in downstream investments" if the approach works," says Dr. Begley. "So we need to be sure we're standing on something firm and solid."
But over the next few months, Dr. Begley and his team got increasingly disheartened. Amgen scientists, it turned out, couldn't reproduce any of the key findings published in Cell.
For example, there was no difference in the growth of cells where STK33 was largely blocked, compared with a control group of cells where STK33 wasn't blocked.
What could account for the irreproducibility of the results? "In our opinion there were methodological issues" in Amgen's approach that could have led to the different findings, says Claudia Scholl, one of the lead authors of the original Cell paper.
Dr. Scholl points out, for example, that Amgen used a different reagent to suppress STK33 than the one reported in Cell. Yet, she acknowledges that even when slightly different reagents are used, "you should be able to reproduce the results."
Now a cancer researcher at the University Hospital of Ulm in Germany, Dr. Scholl says her team has reproduced the original Cell results multiple times, and continues to have faith in STK33 as a cancer target.
Amgen, however, killed its STK33 program. In September, two dozen of the firm's scientists published a paper in the journal Cancer Research describing their failure to reproduce the main Cell findings.
Dr. Begley suggests that academic scientists, like drug companies, should perform more experiments in a "blinded" manner to reduce any bias toward positive findings. Otherwise, he says, "there is a human desire to get the results your boss wants you to get."
Adds Atlas' Mr. Booth: "Nobody gets a promotion from publishing a negative study."
SOURCE
Call for council 'diet police' to inspect private sector employees in Britain
What evidence do they have that lectures on diet would reduce illness?
Council inspectors should start monitoring what private sector employees eat at work in order to help improve the country’s health and to reduce sickness rates, a report has concluded. Drastic action is needed to halt the cycle of ill health amid an alarming “sick note culture”, it found.
The report from 2020Health, a think tank, found that the economy is losing tens of billions of pounds in productivity because of a high number of sick days.
The report recommended the role of council “diet police” be increased to offer advice to the private sector. The authors said the proposals in the report, released today, would help reduce the “sick note culture”.
The suggestion is likely to lead to claims of more “meddling” from council inspectors.
Latest figures show that up to three per cent of the active workforce is off sick at any one time. About 175 million working days are lost each year due to ill health, costing the economy more than £100 billion.
Among the report’s recommendations is a move to allow the role of local authority health and safety inspectors to be expanded. This would mean better advice and information on private sector employee diets, the set-up of workstations, and the importance of exercise could be given, the report says.
It also recommended that the private sector be able to increase the amount of “home-based working” for those recovering from ill health, and be able to stipulate a “workplace health” clause when awarding building contracts.
The report’s authors called for services provided by the NHS to reduce illness such as increased cancer and cardiac screening in the workplace.
The report also said people should be allowed to register with health services that are close to their workplace. The authors said that their recommendations were put forward to “complement the Government’s recent announcements on getting the sick back to work”.
It is estimated that about 3.4 million working days could be saved annually in the NHS, Europe’s largest employer, alone if it improved the health of its workforce.
Julia Manning, the think tank’s chief executive, said: “Our proposals would go a long way towards repairing both the nation’s health and its economic fortunes. The importance of health to economies is well established. “Good health improves educational outcomes, enhances performance at work, increases savings rates and reduces the burden on the public purse by decreasing the demand for health services and benefits payments.”
Earlier this month, an independent review for the Government recommended that independent assessment of sickness claims be introduced.
David Cameron has warned that Britain's sicknote culture in the workplace was acting as a "conveyor belt to a life on benefits". The Prime Minister said he would act on expert advice that recommended that family doctors should be stripped of the power to sign people off work long-term.
"‘Of course some of these people genuinely can’t work, and we must support them. That’s only fair," the Prime Minister said. "But it’s also fair that those who can return to work should be supported to do so. We need to end the something for nothing culture.
"‘While 90 per cent of sickness cases are short-term – that stomach bug or flu that we all suffer from occasionally – nearly half of all days lost to sickness absence are because of cases that last four weeks or more."
Ministers believe that about one in five of those who are absent on long-term sick leave should either never have been signed off in the first place or could go back to work.
The expert report, commissioned for Downing Street, suggested more than three-quarters of GPs admitted they had signed people off sick for reasons other than their physical health.
Mr Cameron said he was alarmed by evidence of the scale of the problem from a report by Dame Carol Black, an expert on health at work, and David Frost, the former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.
SOURCE
Two years ago, a group of Boston researchers published a study describing how they had destroyed cancer tumors by targeting a protein called STK33. Scientists at biotechnology firm Amgen Inc. quickly pounced on the idea and assigned two dozen researchers to try to repeat the experiment with a goal of turning the findings into a drug.
It proved to be a waste of time and money. After six months of intensive lab work, Amgen found it couldn't replicate the results and scrapped the project.
"I was disappointed but not surprised," says Glenn Begley, vice president of research at Amgen of Thousand Oaks, Calif. "More often than not, we are unable to reproduce findings" published by researchers in journals.
This is one of medicine's dirty secrets: Most results, including those that appear in top-flight peer-reviewed journals, can't be reproduced.
Researchers at Bayer's labs often find their experiments fail to match claims made in the scientific literature. "It's a very serious and disturbing issue because it obviously misleads people" who implicitly trust findings published in a respected peer-reviewed journal, says Bruce Alberts, editor of Science. On Friday, the U.S. journal is devoting a large chunk of its Dec. 2 issue to the problem of scientific replication.
Reproducibility is the foundation of all modern research, the standard by which scientific claims are evaluated. In the U.S. alone, biomedical research is a $100-billion-year enterprise. So when published medical findings can't be validated by others, there are major consequences.
Drug manufacturers rely heavily on early-stage academic research and can waste millions of dollars on products if the original results are later shown to be unreliable. Patients may enroll in clinical trials based on conflicting data, and sometimes see no benefits or suffer harmful side effects.
Unlike pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers rarely conduct experiments in a "blinded" manner. This makes it easier to cherry-pick statistical findings that support a positive result. In the quest for jobs and funding, especially in an era of economic malaise, the growing army of scientists need more successful experiments to their name, not failed ones. An explosion of scientific and academic journals has added to the pressure.
When it comes to results that can't be replicated, Dr. Alberts says the increasing intricacy of experiments may be largely to blame. "It has to do with the complexity of biology and the fact that methods [used in labs] are getting more sophisticated," he says.
It is hard to assess whether the reproducibility problem has been getting worse over the years; there are some signs suggesting it could be. For example, the success rate of Phase 2 human trials—where a drug's efficacy is measured—fell to 18% in 2008-2010 from 28% in 2006-2007, according to a global analysis published in the journal Nature Reviews in May. "Lack of reproducibility is one element in the decline in Phase 2 success," says Khusru Asadullah, a Bayer AG research executive.
In September, Bayer published a study describing how it had halted nearly two-thirds of its early drug target projects because in-house experiments failed to match claims made in the literature.
The German pharmaceutical company says that none of the claims it attempted to validate were in papers that had been retracted or were suspected of being flawed. Yet, even the data in the most prestigious journals couldn't be confirmed, Bayer said.
In 2008, Pfizer Inc. made a high-profile bet, potentially worth more than $725 million, that it could turn a 25-year-old Russian cold medicine into an effective drug for Alzheimer's disease.
The idea was promising. Published by the journal Lancet, data from researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere suggested that the drug, an antihistamine called Dimebon, could improve symptoms in Alzheimer's patients. Later findings, presented by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles at a Chicago conference, showed that the drug appeared to prevent symptoms from worsening for up to 18 months.
"Statistically, the studies were very robust," says David Hung, chief executive officer of Medivation Inc., a San Francisco biotech firm that sponsored both studies.
In 2010, Medivation along with Pfizer released data from their own clinical trial for Dimebon, involving nearly 600 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease symptoms. The companies said they were unable to reproduce the Lancet results. They also indicated they had found no statistically significant difference between patients on the drug versus the inactive placebo.
Pfizer and Medivation have just completed a one-year study of Dimebon in over 1,000 patients, another effort to see if the drug could be a potential treatment for Alzheimer's. They expect to announce the results in coming months.
Scientists offer a few theories as to why duplicative results may be so elusive. Two different labs can use slightly different equipment or materials, leading to divergent results. The more variables there are in an experiment, the more likely it is that small, unintended errors will pile up and swing a lab's conclusions one way or the other. And, of course, data that have been rigged, invented or fraudulently altered won't stand up to future scrutiny.
According to a report published by the U.K.'s Royal Society, there were 7.1 million researchers working globally across all scientific fields—academic and corporate—in 2007, a 25% increase from five years earlier.
"Among the more obvious yet unquantifiable reasons, there is immense competition among laboratories and a pressure to publish," wrote Dr. Asadullah and others from Bayer, in their September paper. "There is also a bias toward publishing positive results, as it is easier to get positive results accepted in good journals."
Science publications are under pressure, too. The number of research journals has jumped 23% between 2001 and 2010, according to Elsevier, which has analyzed the data. Their proliferation has ratcheted up competitive pressure on even elite journals, which can generate buzz by publishing splashy papers, typically containing positive findings, to meet the demands of a 24-hour news cycle.
Dr. Alberts of Science acknowledges that journals increasingly have to strike a balance between publishing studies "with broad appeal," while making sure they aren't hyped.
Drugmakers also have a penchant for positive results. A 2008 study published in the journal PLoS Medicine by researchers at the University of California San Francisco looked at data from 33 new drug applications submitted between 2001 and 2002 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency requires drug companies to provide all data from clinical trials. However, the authors found that a quarter of the trial data—most of it unfavorable—never got published because the companies never submitted it to journals.
The upshot: doctors who end up prescribing the FDA-approved drugs often don't get to see the unfavorable data.
"I would say that selectively publishing data is unethical because there are human subjects involved," says Lisa Bero of UCSF and co-author of the PLoS Medicine study.
In an email statement, a spokeswoman for the FDA said the agency considers all data it is given when reviewing a drug but "does not have the authority to control what a company chooses to publish."
Venture capital firms say they, too, are increasingly encountering cases of nonrepeatable studies, and cite it as a key reason why they are less willing to finance early-stage projects. Before investing in very early-stage research, Atlas Ventures, a venture-capital firm that backs biotech companies, now asks an outside lab to validate any experimental data. In about half the cases the findings can't be reproduced, says Bruce Booth, a partner in Atlas' Life Sciences group.
There have been several prominent cases of nonreproducibility in recent months. For example, in September, the journal Science partially retracted a 2009 paper linking a virus to chronic fatigue syndrome because several labs couldn't replicate the published results. The partial retraction came after two of the 13 study authors went back to the blood samples they analyzed from chronic-fatigue patients and found they were contaminated.
Some studies can't be redone for a more prosaic reason: the authors won't make all their raw data available to rival scientists.
John Ioannidis of Stanford University recently attempted to reproduce the findings of 18 papers published in the respected journal Nature Genetics. He noted that 16 of these papers stated that the underlying "gene expression" data for the studies were publicly available.
But the supplied data apparently weren't detailed enough, and results from 16 of the 18 major papers couldn't fully be reproduced by Dr. Ioannidis and his colleagues. "We have to take it [on faith] that the findings are OK," said Dr. Ioannidis, an epidemiologist who studies the credibility of medical research.
Veronique Kiermer, an editor at Nature, says she agrees with Dr. Ioannidis' conclusions, noting that the findings have prompted the journal to be more cautious when publishing large-scale genome analyses.
When companies trying to find new drugs come up against the nonreproducibility problem, the repercussions can be significant.
A few years ago, several groups of scientists began to seek out new cancer drugs by targeting a protein called KRAS. The KRAS protein transmits signals received on the outside of a cell to its interior and is therefore crucial for regulating cell growth. But when certain mutations occur, the signaling can become continuous. That triggers excess growth such as tumors.
The mutated form of KRAS is believed to be responsible for more than 60% of pancreatic cancers and half of colorectal cancers. It has also been implicated in the growth of tumors in many other organs, such as the lung.
So scientists have been especially keen to impede KRAS and, thus, stop the constant signaling that leads to tumor growth.
In 2008, researchers at Harvard Medical School used cell-culture experiments to show that by inhibiting another protein, STK33, they could prevent the growth of tumor cell lines driven by the malfunctioning KRAS.
The finding galvanized researchers at Amgen, who first heard about the experiments at a scientific conference. "Everyone was trying to do this," recalls Dr. Begley of Amgen, which derives nearly half of its revenues from cancer drugs and related treatments. "It was a really big deal."
When the Harvard researchers published their results in the prestigious journal Cell, in May 2009, Amgen moved swiftly to capitalize on the findings.
At a meeting in the company's offices in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Dr. Begley assigned a group of Amgen researchers the task of identifying small molecules that might inhibit STK33. Another team got a more basic job: reproduce the Harvard data.
"We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in downstream investments" if the approach works," says Dr. Begley. "So we need to be sure we're standing on something firm and solid."
But over the next few months, Dr. Begley and his team got increasingly disheartened. Amgen scientists, it turned out, couldn't reproduce any of the key findings published in Cell.
For example, there was no difference in the growth of cells where STK33 was largely blocked, compared with a control group of cells where STK33 wasn't blocked.
What could account for the irreproducibility of the results? "In our opinion there were methodological issues" in Amgen's approach that could have led to the different findings, says Claudia Scholl, one of the lead authors of the original Cell paper.
Dr. Scholl points out, for example, that Amgen used a different reagent to suppress STK33 than the one reported in Cell. Yet, she acknowledges that even when slightly different reagents are used, "you should be able to reproduce the results."
Now a cancer researcher at the University Hospital of Ulm in Germany, Dr. Scholl says her team has reproduced the original Cell results multiple times, and continues to have faith in STK33 as a cancer target.
Amgen, however, killed its STK33 program. In September, two dozen of the firm's scientists published a paper in the journal Cancer Research describing their failure to reproduce the main Cell findings.
Dr. Begley suggests that academic scientists, like drug companies, should perform more experiments in a "blinded" manner to reduce any bias toward positive findings. Otherwise, he says, "there is a human desire to get the results your boss wants you to get."
Adds Atlas' Mr. Booth: "Nobody gets a promotion from publishing a negative study."
SOURCE
Call for council 'diet police' to inspect private sector employees in Britain
What evidence do they have that lectures on diet would reduce illness?
Council inspectors should start monitoring what private sector employees eat at work in order to help improve the country’s health and to reduce sickness rates, a report has concluded. Drastic action is needed to halt the cycle of ill health amid an alarming “sick note culture”, it found.
The report from 2020Health, a think tank, found that the economy is losing tens of billions of pounds in productivity because of a high number of sick days.
The report recommended the role of council “diet police” be increased to offer advice to the private sector. The authors said the proposals in the report, released today, would help reduce the “sick note culture”.
The suggestion is likely to lead to claims of more “meddling” from council inspectors.
Latest figures show that up to three per cent of the active workforce is off sick at any one time. About 175 million working days are lost each year due to ill health, costing the economy more than £100 billion.
Among the report’s recommendations is a move to allow the role of local authority health and safety inspectors to be expanded. This would mean better advice and information on private sector employee diets, the set-up of workstations, and the importance of exercise could be given, the report says.
It also recommended that the private sector be able to increase the amount of “home-based working” for those recovering from ill health, and be able to stipulate a “workplace health” clause when awarding building contracts.
The report’s authors called for services provided by the NHS to reduce illness such as increased cancer and cardiac screening in the workplace.
The report also said people should be allowed to register with health services that are close to their workplace. The authors said that their recommendations were put forward to “complement the Government’s recent announcements on getting the sick back to work”.
It is estimated that about 3.4 million working days could be saved annually in the NHS, Europe’s largest employer, alone if it improved the health of its workforce.
Julia Manning, the think tank’s chief executive, said: “Our proposals would go a long way towards repairing both the nation’s health and its economic fortunes. The importance of health to economies is well established. “Good health improves educational outcomes, enhances performance at work, increases savings rates and reduces the burden on the public purse by decreasing the demand for health services and benefits payments.”
Earlier this month, an independent review for the Government recommended that independent assessment of sickness claims be introduced.
David Cameron has warned that Britain's sicknote culture in the workplace was acting as a "conveyor belt to a life on benefits". The Prime Minister said he would act on expert advice that recommended that family doctors should be stripped of the power to sign people off work long-term.
"‘Of course some of these people genuinely can’t work, and we must support them. That’s only fair," the Prime Minister said. "But it’s also fair that those who can return to work should be supported to do so. We need to end the something for nothing culture.
"‘While 90 per cent of sickness cases are short-term – that stomach bug or flu that we all suffer from occasionally – nearly half of all days lost to sickness absence are because of cases that last four weeks or more."
Ministers believe that about one in five of those who are absent on long-term sick leave should either never have been signed off in the first place or could go back to work.
The expert report, commissioned for Downing Street, suggested more than three-quarters of GPs admitted they had signed people off sick for reasons other than their physical health.
Mr Cameron said he was alarmed by evidence of the scale of the problem from a report by Dame Carol Black, an expert on health at work, and David Frost, the former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.
SOURCE
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Fascist Britain
Child of five taken from parents for being obese: Social workers say they didn't do enough to control weight. "Danger to health" is given as the reason but the obese live roughly as long as slim people so that is fraudulent
A five-year-old has become one of the youngest children to be taken into care for being obese, it emerged last night. Social workers decided the parents were doing too little to bring the youngster’s weight under control.
The child, whose identity is protected by law, had a body mass index of 22.6 – clinically obese for a five-year-old. He or she is thought to have weighed around 4st 4lb – a stone and a half more than average.
The decision was taken by officials at Tameside Council in Greater Manchester. The local authority has also taken a 14-year-old into care, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The teenager had a BMI of 30.3, giving a weight of 13 stone – five stone more than average.
Another child was removed by Sunderland council, but officials refused to provide details of their age or weight, claiming it would breach data protection laws.
The Freedom of Information request sent to all local authorities asked how many children, in the past financial year, have been taken into care where obesity was cited as a contributing factor. The vast majority responded and where care proceedings were instigated, gave general neglect as the reason.
In the previous year, 2009/10, four children were taken into care for obesity reasons: three from the London borough of Lewisham aged three, ten and 15, and an 11-year-old from Northumberland.
In September this year, social workers in Dundee provoked outrage by removing four obese children from their parents. Three girls aged 11, seven and one and a boy of five were placed into care to be ‘fostered without contact’ or adopted.
The most recent NHS figures show that one in ten children starting primary school is obese. Overweight children are at far higher risk of heart disease, strokes, diabetes, asthma and cancer in later life.
Experts predict that obesity will cost the Health Service up to £6.3billion a year by 2015.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the former Chief Medical Officer, warned in 2006 that healthcare chiefs would look at removing children from their families if they became so obese their health was at risk.
The first reported case came in 2007 when an eight-year-old girl from West Cumbria was taken into care weighing ten stone.
In 2008, seven children were removed from homes in England. These included a six-year-old boy from Derby, an eight-year-old girl from Cumbria who had to wear size 16 clothes, and children from Lincolnshire, Wolverhampton and Tower Hamlets in London.
A spokesman for the National Obesity Forum said it supported placing obese children into care, but only after everything possible had been done to try to reduce their weight.
Social workers use their professional judgment about how best to keep children from harm’ ‘We sincerely hope that such occasions would be rare…but make the point that this would be the automatic response to a child at the other extreme – severe malnutrition,’ the spokesman said.
A spokesman for Tameside Council said: ‘The point at which obesity turns into a child-protection issue is a complex and difficult area, and in these two cases there were other determining factors that led to the children being placed in local authority care.
‘Parents should be supported to address their child’s obesity, and social workers should only act if parents fail to engage with the proposed plan to improve their child’s safety and wellbeing.’
David Simmonds, of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, said: ‘Social workers use their professional judgment about how best to keep children from harm.’
SOURCE
Australia: Queensland Government plan for fast-food calorie counts to beat obesity
The evidence that this has zero effect on what people eat doesn't bother anyone, of course
FAST-FOOD chains will be forced to display the calorie count of every burger, fries and soft drink in the latest attack in the war against obesity.
New rules to be announced today will give customers the chance to weigh up the nutritional value of meals before ordering their meal over the counter - and whether their waistlines can handle the super-sized option.
The legislation being drafted by the Bligh Government means fast-food outlets must display the energy content of all items on their menus. The scheme has targeted super-sized servings that can almost chew up the recommended daily energy intake in one meal.
Customers will be confronted with the daunting kilojoule content - the energy value of food - of items under new-look menu boards in a bid to drive them towards healthier meal choices.
Some meal deals contain more than half the average adult daily limit of 8700 kilojoules. Kilojoule counts would be listed beside every item of sale, including meal deals. The average daily kilojoule limit must also be displayed on menus.
The recommended average energy intake for a six-year-old is about 6700 kilojoules a day, and about 7600 kilojoules a day for a 10-year-old. A Happy Meal at McDonald's can contain up to 2800kj.
It is expected the law will apply to fast-food and snack food chains with more than 20 outlets in the state, or 50 outlets nationally.
Health Minister Geoff Wilson said it was about helping people eat healthier, with obesity rates now as high as one in five Queenslanders. "If current trends continue, it is expected that about two- thirds of Queensland adults will be overweight or obese by 2020," he said.
Heart Foundation chief executive Cameron Prout said the move would help people make more informed choices. "It is not just the usual suspects in terms of offering unhealthy meals," he said. "There are a lot of meals that people think are healthier but might be surprised when they see how many kilojoules are in them."
The laws will be introduced early next year, but the Heart Foundation hopes the plan would gain support from both main parties in the case of an early election.
More than four million Australians buy from fast food outlets each day and many already feature some nutritional information.
Australian Medical Association Queensland president Dr Richard Kidd urged lawmakers to go even further by forcing fast-food chains to list items such as fat content on menu boards. "The AMA along with a lot of other health groups is very concerned at the epidemic of obesity, particularly in our children, and we are now seeing Type 2 diabetes appearing in our children, which is just dreadful," he said.
"It doesn't matter what age you are, by the time you develop diabetes your risk of having a heart attack is the same as someone who has already had a heart attack and we are inflicting this on our children now."
Childhood obesity expert Professor Geoff Cleghorn, from the University of Queensland, said the plan was a positive step forward in the battle of the bulge.
SOURCE
Child of five taken from parents for being obese: Social workers say they didn't do enough to control weight. "Danger to health" is given as the reason but the obese live roughly as long as slim people so that is fraudulent
A five-year-old has become one of the youngest children to be taken into care for being obese, it emerged last night. Social workers decided the parents were doing too little to bring the youngster’s weight under control.
The child, whose identity is protected by law, had a body mass index of 22.6 – clinically obese for a five-year-old. He or she is thought to have weighed around 4st 4lb – a stone and a half more than average.
The decision was taken by officials at Tameside Council in Greater Manchester. The local authority has also taken a 14-year-old into care, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The teenager had a BMI of 30.3, giving a weight of 13 stone – five stone more than average.
Another child was removed by Sunderland council, but officials refused to provide details of their age or weight, claiming it would breach data protection laws.
The Freedom of Information request sent to all local authorities asked how many children, in the past financial year, have been taken into care where obesity was cited as a contributing factor. The vast majority responded and where care proceedings were instigated, gave general neglect as the reason.
In the previous year, 2009/10, four children were taken into care for obesity reasons: three from the London borough of Lewisham aged three, ten and 15, and an 11-year-old from Northumberland.
In September this year, social workers in Dundee provoked outrage by removing four obese children from their parents. Three girls aged 11, seven and one and a boy of five were placed into care to be ‘fostered without contact’ or adopted.
The most recent NHS figures show that one in ten children starting primary school is obese. Overweight children are at far higher risk of heart disease, strokes, diabetes, asthma and cancer in later life.
Experts predict that obesity will cost the Health Service up to £6.3billion a year by 2015.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the former Chief Medical Officer, warned in 2006 that healthcare chiefs would look at removing children from their families if they became so obese their health was at risk.
The first reported case came in 2007 when an eight-year-old girl from West Cumbria was taken into care weighing ten stone.
In 2008, seven children were removed from homes in England. These included a six-year-old boy from Derby, an eight-year-old girl from Cumbria who had to wear size 16 clothes, and children from Lincolnshire, Wolverhampton and Tower Hamlets in London.
A spokesman for the National Obesity Forum said it supported placing obese children into care, but only after everything possible had been done to try to reduce their weight.
Social workers use their professional judgment about how best to keep children from harm’ ‘We sincerely hope that such occasions would be rare…but make the point that this would be the automatic response to a child at the other extreme – severe malnutrition,’ the spokesman said.
A spokesman for Tameside Council said: ‘The point at which obesity turns into a child-protection issue is a complex and difficult area, and in these two cases there were other determining factors that led to the children being placed in local authority care.
‘Parents should be supported to address their child’s obesity, and social workers should only act if parents fail to engage with the proposed plan to improve their child’s safety and wellbeing.’
David Simmonds, of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, said: ‘Social workers use their professional judgment about how best to keep children from harm.’
SOURCE
Australia: Queensland Government plan for fast-food calorie counts to beat obesity
The evidence that this has zero effect on what people eat doesn't bother anyone, of course
FAST-FOOD chains will be forced to display the calorie count of every burger, fries and soft drink in the latest attack in the war against obesity.
New rules to be announced today will give customers the chance to weigh up the nutritional value of meals before ordering their meal over the counter - and whether their waistlines can handle the super-sized option.
The legislation being drafted by the Bligh Government means fast-food outlets must display the energy content of all items on their menus. The scheme has targeted super-sized servings that can almost chew up the recommended daily energy intake in one meal.
Customers will be confronted with the daunting kilojoule content - the energy value of food - of items under new-look menu boards in a bid to drive them towards healthier meal choices.
Some meal deals contain more than half the average adult daily limit of 8700 kilojoules. Kilojoule counts would be listed beside every item of sale, including meal deals. The average daily kilojoule limit must also be displayed on menus.
The recommended average energy intake for a six-year-old is about 6700 kilojoules a day, and about 7600 kilojoules a day for a 10-year-old. A Happy Meal at McDonald's can contain up to 2800kj.
It is expected the law will apply to fast-food and snack food chains with more than 20 outlets in the state, or 50 outlets nationally.
Health Minister Geoff Wilson said it was about helping people eat healthier, with obesity rates now as high as one in five Queenslanders. "If current trends continue, it is expected that about two- thirds of Queensland adults will be overweight or obese by 2020," he said.
Heart Foundation chief executive Cameron Prout said the move would help people make more informed choices. "It is not just the usual suspects in terms of offering unhealthy meals," he said. "There are a lot of meals that people think are healthier but might be surprised when they see how many kilojoules are in them."
The laws will be introduced early next year, but the Heart Foundation hopes the plan would gain support from both main parties in the case of an early election.
More than four million Australians buy from fast food outlets each day and many already feature some nutritional information.
Australian Medical Association Queensland president Dr Richard Kidd urged lawmakers to go even further by forcing fast-food chains to list items such as fat content on menu boards. "The AMA along with a lot of other health groups is very concerned at the epidemic of obesity, particularly in our children, and we are now seeing Type 2 diabetes appearing in our children, which is just dreadful," he said.
"It doesn't matter what age you are, by the time you develop diabetes your risk of having a heart attack is the same as someone who has already had a heart attack and we are inflicting this on our children now."
Childhood obesity expert Professor Geoff Cleghorn, from the University of Queensland, said the plan was a positive step forward in the battle of the bulge.
SOURCE
Monday, December 05, 2011
Federal effort to commandeer the nation’s salt shakers is based on bad science
"Put down the salt shaker and back away from the table. And don't even think about going for the chips." Those are lines you may hear on a TV police drama of the future, when the federal drive to curb salt consumption reaches cruising speed.
Last year, the government's Institute of Medicine urged the Food and Drug Administration to "gradually step down the maximum amount of salt that can be added to foods, beverages, and meals." The FDA is listening. In September, it published a notice concerning issues "associated with the development of targets for sodium reduction in foods to promote reduction of excess sodium intake."
It is currently focusing on voluntary steps to "promote gradual, achievable and sustainable reduction of sodium intake over time." But if it doesn't get its way, it may go beyond gentle encouragement. "Nothing is off the table," a spokesperson declared last year.
Salt has always been prized as a culinary marvel —perking up flavors, masking bitter elements and preventing spoilage. Soup without salt is excellent for nourishing your garden, but unfit to eat. Any number of dishes taste better with a dash or two.
But many experts and public health organizations see salt as a killer, which in excess amounts causes high blood pressure and heart disease. They think we would all be better off eating less, and they want the government to make sure we do. Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, says that "we must treat sodium reduction as a critical public health priority."
But this clear certitude keeps getting clouded by confounding evidence. "For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not," an article this year in Scientific American noted.
The Journal of the American Medical Association has reported that people who consume less salt are actually more likely to die of heart disease. Recently, a study in the American Journal of Hypertension found that reducing dietary sodium can cause a harmful response from the body. "I can't really see, if you look at the total evidence, that there is any reason to believe there is a net benefit of decreasing sodium intake in the general population," the chief researcher told Reuters.
Nor is it clear that third parties can get people to reduce their ingestion of sodium. We have been hearing for decades about the alleged hazards of a high-salt diet, and anyone looking for alternatives can easily find them. But today, Americans consume the same amount of salt as they did 50 years ago, when bacon, eggs and hash browns were regarded as a wholesome breakfast.
One survey of 33 countries found that despite vast differences in cuisine, people generally take in about 3,700 milligrams of sodium a day, well above what the FDA recommends, decade after decade.
How come? The theory is that we are all biologically predisposed to seek out that much and no more. The Salt Institute, which represents salt companies, makes the argument —self-serving but not implausible— that if it is reduced in food, people will up their calorie intake to satisfy their craving.
But even if we assume too much salt is a bad thing, federal regulators have no grounds to dictate how much our food may contain. Any consumers who want less sodium, after all, are free to spurn restaurant meals and grocery items laden with heavy doses.
Food companies don't use salt because they like it but because their customers do. If consumer preferences change—say, in response to incessant warnings from medical groups—food products will change as well.
Classifying excess sodium consumption as a "public health" danger mutilates a useful concept. Air pollution, West Nile virus, and E. coli are matters of public health because they inflict harm on broad groups of people against their will and often without their knowledge. No one, however, ingests salt without raising fork to mouth.
If I burn toxic waste in my yard, I may force you to inhale compounds that cause illness or death. If I make a meal of pretzels and Virginia ham, by contrast, I pose no hazard to anyone but myself. You can avoid this "public health" threat without the FDA barging into your kitchen. Eating foods with salt is not a public decision but a private one. That's private, as in: Keep out.
SOURCE
New IVF technique helpful in certain cases
Microarray comparative genomic hybridisation, or CGH, involves a full chromosome count of embryos and allows doctors to ensure only the healthiest embryos are implanted. Fertility clinic Genea will today release data showing almost nine out of 10 patients aged under 38 whose embryos underwent CGH achieved a pregnancy with a foetal heartbeat seen at seven weeks gestation.
The data, to be presented at the World Congress on Human Reproduction in Melbourne this week, shows a success rate of 65 per cent for women older than 38.
Fertility specialist Dr Devora Lieberman said random chromosome abnormalities were one of the main causes of failed IVF cycles and of repeated miscarriages in women who conceive naturally. By using CGH, only embryos containing the correct number and sequence of chromosomes were considered.
Dr Liberman said CGH, which adds about $3000 cost to a cycle of IVF treatment, was not recommended for all IVF patients. "It most appropriate for women who have had multiple, unexplained miscarriages," she said. "Those women often have a "quality control" problem which allows embryos with chromosome abnormalities implant, but they generally go on to miscarry."
SOURCE
"Put down the salt shaker and back away from the table. And don't even think about going for the chips." Those are lines you may hear on a TV police drama of the future, when the federal drive to curb salt consumption reaches cruising speed.
Last year, the government's Institute of Medicine urged the Food and Drug Administration to "gradually step down the maximum amount of salt that can be added to foods, beverages, and meals." The FDA is listening. In September, it published a notice concerning issues "associated with the development of targets for sodium reduction in foods to promote reduction of excess sodium intake."
It is currently focusing on voluntary steps to "promote gradual, achievable and sustainable reduction of sodium intake over time." But if it doesn't get its way, it may go beyond gentle encouragement. "Nothing is off the table," a spokesperson declared last year.
Salt has always been prized as a culinary marvel —perking up flavors, masking bitter elements and preventing spoilage. Soup without salt is excellent for nourishing your garden, but unfit to eat. Any number of dishes taste better with a dash or two.
But many experts and public health organizations see salt as a killer, which in excess amounts causes high blood pressure and heart disease. They think we would all be better off eating less, and they want the government to make sure we do. Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, says that "we must treat sodium reduction as a critical public health priority."
But this clear certitude keeps getting clouded by confounding evidence. "For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not," an article this year in Scientific American noted.
The Journal of the American Medical Association has reported that people who consume less salt are actually more likely to die of heart disease. Recently, a study in the American Journal of Hypertension found that reducing dietary sodium can cause a harmful response from the body. "I can't really see, if you look at the total evidence, that there is any reason to believe there is a net benefit of decreasing sodium intake in the general population," the chief researcher told Reuters.
Nor is it clear that third parties can get people to reduce their ingestion of sodium. We have been hearing for decades about the alleged hazards of a high-salt diet, and anyone looking for alternatives can easily find them. But today, Americans consume the same amount of salt as they did 50 years ago, when bacon, eggs and hash browns were regarded as a wholesome breakfast.
One survey of 33 countries found that despite vast differences in cuisine, people generally take in about 3,700 milligrams of sodium a day, well above what the FDA recommends, decade after decade.
How come? The theory is that we are all biologically predisposed to seek out that much and no more. The Salt Institute, which represents salt companies, makes the argument —self-serving but not implausible— that if it is reduced in food, people will up their calorie intake to satisfy their craving.
But even if we assume too much salt is a bad thing, federal regulators have no grounds to dictate how much our food may contain. Any consumers who want less sodium, after all, are free to spurn restaurant meals and grocery items laden with heavy doses.
Food companies don't use salt because they like it but because their customers do. If consumer preferences change—say, in response to incessant warnings from medical groups—food products will change as well.
Classifying excess sodium consumption as a "public health" danger mutilates a useful concept. Air pollution, West Nile virus, and E. coli are matters of public health because they inflict harm on broad groups of people against their will and often without their knowledge. No one, however, ingests salt without raising fork to mouth.
If I burn toxic waste in my yard, I may force you to inhale compounds that cause illness or death. If I make a meal of pretzels and Virginia ham, by contrast, I pose no hazard to anyone but myself. You can avoid this "public health" threat without the FDA barging into your kitchen. Eating foods with salt is not a public decision but a private one. That's private, as in: Keep out.
SOURCE
New IVF technique helpful in certain cases
Microarray comparative genomic hybridisation, or CGH, involves a full chromosome count of embryos and allows doctors to ensure only the healthiest embryos are implanted. Fertility clinic Genea will today release data showing almost nine out of 10 patients aged under 38 whose embryos underwent CGH achieved a pregnancy with a foetal heartbeat seen at seven weeks gestation.
The data, to be presented at the World Congress on Human Reproduction in Melbourne this week, shows a success rate of 65 per cent for women older than 38.
Fertility specialist Dr Devora Lieberman said random chromosome abnormalities were one of the main causes of failed IVF cycles and of repeated miscarriages in women who conceive naturally. By using CGH, only embryos containing the correct number and sequence of chromosomes were considered.
Dr Liberman said CGH, which adds about $3000 cost to a cycle of IVF treatment, was not recommended for all IVF patients. "It most appropriate for women who have had multiple, unexplained miscarriages," she said. "Those women often have a "quality control" problem which allows embryos with chromosome abnormalities implant, but they generally go on to miscarry."
SOURCE
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