Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Drinking three to four cups of coffee per day has been associated with an approximately 25 percent reduction in a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) claims in the latest edition of its Coffee and Health Diabetes Report.
The study, released to coincide with World Diabetes Day on Friday, highlights some of the most recent research in coffee consumption and its impact on the risk of contracting type 2 diabetes. Over 380 million people worldwide suffer from the condition, which according to ISIC carries with it an economic burden of more than $500 billion.
The first Coffee and Health Diabetes Report was produced following the World Congress on Prevention of Diabetes in 2012. Since then, it has been updated to include recently published studies that add to the body of research in the field – including the aforementioned study, which used epidemiological evidence that three to four cups of the caffeinated beverage per day reduced a person’s risk of the disease more than drinking two or less.
In addition, the report touts research suggesting that there was an inverse or favorable association in which each additional cup of coffee consumed reduced a person’s relative risk of type 2 diabetes by seven to eight percent, although researchers note that it is unlikely this effect is due to the caffeine contained in the beverage.
Rather, a recent meta-analysis suggested that even drinking decaffeinated coffee was associated with the effect, and another paper suggested that the type of coffee could also impact the strength of this association. Filtered coffee, the ISIC noted, appears to exhibit a greater protective effect than boiled coffee, and decaffeinated coffee was found to exhibit a greater protective effect than caffeinated coffee, the new report claims.
The report’s release comes just a few days after Yongjie Ma, a postdoctoral research associate from the University of Georgia’s College of Pharmacy, and his colleagues announced that they had located a chemical compound commonly found in coffee which could help prevent some of the harmful effects of obesity in laboratory tests conducted on mice.
In their study, published recently in the journal Pharmaceutical Research, the study authors found that injecting rodents a chemical compound commonly found in coffee, chlorogenic acid (CGA), helped prevent weight gain and maintain normal blood sugar levels and healthy liver composition – even when those mice were fed a high-fat diet for a period of 15 weeks.
“Previous studies have shown that coffee consumption may lower the risk for chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” said Ma, who was the study’s lead author and who works in the laboratory of UGA professor Dexi Liu in the department of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences. “Our study expands on this research by looking at the benefits associated with this specific compound, which is found in great abundance in coffee, but also in other fruits and vegetables like apples, pears, tomatoes and blueberries.”
“CGA is a powerful antioxidant that reduces inflammation. A lot of evidence suggests that obesity-related diseases are caused by chronic inflammation, so if we can control that, we can hopefully offset some of the negative effects of excessive weight gain,” Ma added. However, the researchers are quick to emphasize that the substance is not a miracle cure-all, and that a proper diet and exercise are still the best way to reduce obesity-related health risks.
The rodents involved in the study received extremely high doses of CGA – far higher than what a person would be able to absorb through regular coffee consumption, or even by eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Nonetheless, the authors believe that the substance could help treat those who need extra assistance, and plan to conduct additional research to develop an improved form of CGA designed especially for human consumption.
“We’re not suggesting that people start drinking a lot of coffee to protect themselves from an unhealthy lifestyle,” said Ma, who is also involved in the university’s Obesity Initiative. “But we do think that we might be able to create a useful therapeutic using CGA that will help those at risk for obesity-related disease as they make positive lifestyle changes.”
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Fewer high school students in the US are smoking traditional cigarettes, but the number of those using e-cigarettes has tripled over the past two years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday.
According to Reuters reporter David Beasley, newly released CDC data indicates that 22.9 percent of high school students reported using a tobacco product in the previous 30 days in 2013, a 1.4 percent decrease from 2011.
Over that same period of time, the CDC reported that the number of high school students who reported smoking a traditional cigarette over the past month dropped from 15.8 percent in 2011 to 12.7 percent in 2013. However, the use of e-cigarettes had increased from 1.5 percent in 2011 to 4.5 percent in 2013, Beasley added.
The rate among middle-school students remained constant at 1.1 percent, said Tripp Mickle of The Wall Street Journal, but the rate of high-schoolers trying e-cigs for the first time increased from 10 percent to nearly 12 percent, according to the CDC National Youth Tobacco Survey, a questionnaire given each year to approximately 20,000 students.
E-cigarettes are battery powered devices that turn liquid nicotine into vapor instead of the smoke given off by traditional cigarettes, Beasley said. They are currently unregulated by the federal government, although the US Food and Drug Administration proposed new rules in April that would prohibit their sale to anyone under the age of 18.
“Though e-cigarettes deliver nicotine, which is addictive, most researchers say they are less harmful than traditional cigarettes because they don’t release toxins through combustion like traditional cigarettes,” Mickle said. “E-cigarette advocates say vapor devices… help smokers quit traditional cigarettes. But public-health officials remain concerned about the effect e-cigarettes could have on youth.”
“A CDC study released in August found that more than a quarter million adolescents and teens who had never smoked traditional cigarettes used an electronic cigarette in 2013, a threefold increase from 2011,” added Beasley, who noted that David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria Group (which owns three tobacco companies) said that the firm is also in favor of rules that would prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.
In September, researchers from the University of Southern California analyzed secondhand e-cigarette smoke, and found that while it exposes people to fewer carcinogenic particles, it is still not without its own harm. In short, while the devices are safer than traditional cigarettes, they still have their own unique set of health risks.
Their research found that e-cigarettes had a 10-fold decrease in harmful carcinogens versus traditional cigarettes, and that the devices had an exposure of close to zero for organic carcinogens. However, they were also found to contain toxic elements such as chromium, nickel, lead and zinc – metals that are inhaled by the smoker and also exhaled in the vapor making them dangerous to others, though in lower concentration than traditional cigarettes.
The CDC tobacco study also found that cigarettes were the most prevalent tobacco product used by white (14 percent) and Hispanic high school students (13.4 percent), followed closely by cigars (11.4 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively). Among African-American high-school students, cigar use was nearly 50 percent higher than cigarette use (14.7 percent vs. 9.0 percent), the US health agency said in a statement.
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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Many people embrace commercial programs or ‘fad’ diets in order to lose weight, and while these methods may help you shed pounds – an abnormal eating regimen could potentially have serious effects on heart health.

According to a new study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, fad/commercial dieters had trouble keeping any lost weight off after the first year and may have had negative heart impacts as a result of the diet.

“Despite their popularity and important contributions to the multi-million dollar weight loss industry, we still do not know if these diets are effective to help people lose weight and decrease their risk factors for heart disease,” study author Dr. Mark J. Eisenberg, a professor of medicine at in Montreal, said in a statement. “With such a small number of trials looking at each diet and their somewhat conflicting results, there is only modest evidence that using these diets is beneficial in the long-term.”

In the study, researchers analyzed clinical studies on four popular diets: Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, and Zone.

The researchers found that Weight Watchers dieters lost 7.7 to 13.2 pounds on average after 12 months as opposed to 1.8 to 11.9 pounds with a standard diet, exercise and weight-loss counseling regimen. However at 2 years, the weight lost was often negated.

While Atkins-related data was inconsistent, the South Beach diet, which also emphasizes low carbohydrate intake, did not produce a weight-loss advantage over the control group after 12 months. The researchers noted that participants in both these studies were significantly obese and had undergone gastric bypass surgery.

Clinical studies that compared Atkins, Weight Watchers, Zone and usual weight loss routines showed that all four produced a moderate weight loss at one year. Study participants on the Atkins diet dropped an average 4.6 to 10.3 pounds, Weight Watchers volunteers dropped an average 6.6 pounds, Zone dieters dropped an average 3.5 to 7 pounds and control volunteers lost approximately 4.85 pounds on average.

The researchers also found that trials involving head-to-head comparisons did not produce noticeable variances between Atkins, Weight Watchers, and Zone diets in helping with cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar or other risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

The lengthiest diet research study the scientists reviewed lasted for two years and outcomes were only available for the Atkins or Weight Watchers diets – a significant limitation on the team’s findings. Those long-term research studies included in the review discovered dieters gained back some of their lost weight over time.

To better comprehend the probable advantages of any one or all of these diets, scientists should carry out large clinical trials directly evaluating all four popular diets for both long-term weight loss and variations in other cardiovascular disease risk factors, the researchers suggested.

“A broader lifestyle intervention, which also involves doctors and other health professionals, may be more effective,” Eisenberg said. “This also tells doctors that popular diets on their own may not be the solution to help their patients lose weight.”

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A team of researchers from Israel and the UK are looking to add to the number of medical devices that can be used to treat visual impairments by developing a new prosthetic unit for use by retinal degeneration patients.
Writing in a recent edition of the journal Nano Letters, researchers from the Tel Aviv University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and the Newcastle University Institute of Neuroscience detail how their new device could help counter vision loss due to conditions such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
While scientists are using different approaches to develop implants capable of detecting light and sending visual signals to a person’s brain, Yael Hanein of the TAU School of Electrical Engineering and colleagues set out to design a unit that was more compact and less cumbersome without sacrificing resolution, the American Chemical Society (ACS) explained in a statement.
“The researchers combined semiconductor nanorods and carbon nanotubes to create a wireless, light-sensitive, flexible film that could potentially act in the place of a damaged retina,” the ACS said. They then tried their new device out using tissue from laboratory animals and the results were positive.
“When they tested it with a chick retina that normally doesn’t respond to light, they found that the film absorbed light and, in response, sparked neuronal activity,” the society added. “In comparison with other technologies, the researchers conclude theirs is more durable, flexible and efficient, as well as better able to stimulate neurons.”

Image Above: This novel, flexible film that can react to light is a promising step toward an artificial retina. Credit: American Chemical Society
Other authors include Lilach Bareket, David Rand, Gur Lubin, Moshe David-Pur, Jacob Ben-Dov, Soumyendu Roy and Ori Cheshnovsky of Tel Aviv University; Nir Waiskopf and Uri Banin of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Cyril Eleftheriou and Evelyne Sernagor of Newcastle University. The Israel Ministry of Science and Technology, the European Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council funded the study.
This isn’t the first attempt to develop an artificial retina. In August 2012, researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College revealed that they had developed a device with the capability of restoring normal vision by deciphering the retina’s neural code for brain communication. The device, which could accommodate for blindness in mice, was hailed as the first of its kind and a major breakthrough in working to restore vision for the blind.
“It’s an exciting time,” Dr. Sheila Nirenberg, a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and in the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell, said in a statement at the time. “We can make blind mouse retinas see, and we’re moving as fast as we can to do the same in humans… This has all been thrilling. I can’t wait to get started on bringing this approach to patients.”
A few months later, in February 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, a high-tech artificial retina that was the first device of its kind to treat a form of progressive blindness known as retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The device, which was developed by Second Sight Medical Products, does not restore vision entirely, but it does allow users to detect differences in light patterns and some shapes.
The Argus II unit consists of a small video camera and transmitter attached to a pair of glasses. The camera converts visual input to electronic data, and that data is then transmitted to electrodes implanted on the patient´s retina. From there, the optic nerve carries the data to the brain, where it can be interpreted. The FDA authorized its use to treat patients who are at least 25 years of age with advanced RP and some remaining retinal function.
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Provided by Sahlgrenska Academy

A new study at Sahlgrenska Academy confirms that moderate alcohol consumption can protect against coronary heart disease. But only for the 15% of the population that have a particular genotype.

The study included 618 Swedes with coronary heart disease and a control group of 3,000 healthy subjects. The subjects were assigned to various categories based on the amount of alcohol they consumed (ethanol intake). Meanwhile, they were tested in order to identify a particular genotype (CETP TaqIB) that previous studies had found to play a role in the health benefits of alcohol consumption.

Protective effect

The results, which have been published in Alcohol, confirm the findings of the earlier studies. Moderate consumption of alcohol helps protect people with the genotype against coronary heart disease.

“In other words, moderate drinking has a protective effect among only 15% of the general population,” says Professor Dag Thelle, Professor Emeritus at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg.

Sweeping advice

Thus, the researchers believe that the advice frequently given about the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption is far too sweeping.

“Moderate drinking alone does not have a strong protective effect,” says Professor Lauren Lissner, who also participated in the study. “Nor does this particular genotype. But the combination of the two appears to significantly reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.”

Unknown mechanisms

The genotype codes for the Cholesterylester transfer protein (CETP), which affects the ‘good,’ cardio-protective HDL cholesterol that helps remove excess lipids from the blood vessels. One hypothesis is that alcohol somehow affects the CETP in a way that benefits HDL cholesterol.

A second hypothesis is that alcohol contains healthy, protective antioxidants.

The researchers believe that one or both of the hypotheses may prove correct, but the mechanisms by which HDL cholesterol or antioxidants might act remain unknown.

“Our study represents a step in the right direction,” Professor Thelle says, “but a lot more research is needed. Assuming that we are able to describe these mechanisms, it may be a simple matter one day to perform genetic testing and determine whether someone belongs to the lucky 15%. That would be useful to know when offering advice on healthy alcohol consumption. But the most important thing is to identify new means of using the body’s resources to prevent coronary heart disease.”

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The same healthcare professionals responsible for helping people maintain a healthy weight often struggle to visually identify if a person is overweight or obese, according to new research published earlier this month in the British Journal of General Practice.
In the study, researchers from the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Psychology, Health and Society asked participants to examine pictures of male models and then categorize them as healthy weight, overweight or obese. They found that the majority of participants were unable to do so, often underestimating the weight of the subject depicted in the photo.
Lead author Dr. Eric Robertson and his colleagues had general practitioners (GPs) and trainee GPs view 15 standardized images of healthy-weight, overweight, and obese young men. The participants were asked to estimate their body mass index (BMI) based on World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, and to report whether or not they would be likely to schedule a brief intervention for weight loss with that person.
“This sample of predominantly trainee GPs perceived overweight and obese weights as being of lower BMI and weight status than they actually are, and this was associated with a lower intention of discussing weight management with a potential patient,” the study authors wrote. “Healthcare professionals should not rely on visual judgments when identifying patients who may benefit from weight management treatment.”
The GPs and trainee GPs “correctly classified a mean of 4.0/5.0 of the healthy weight males, a mean of 2.4/5.0 of the overweight, and a mean of 1.7/5.0 of the obese males,” the study authors wrote, adding that for every kg/m2 increase in actual BMI, participants underestimated BMI by -0.21, indicating that the healthcare providers “would underestimate the BMI of a man of 30 kg/m2 by approximately 2.5 kg/m2.”
However, the doctors were more accurate when it came to lower bodyweight men, the research team discovered. The results indicate that exposure to heavier body weights could influence what people view as a normal and healthy weight, which in turn makes them more likely to underestimate a person’s weight.
“We wanted to find out if people can identify a healthy, overweight or obese person just by looking at them,” Dr. Robinson explained. “Primarily we found that people were often very inaccurate and this included trainee doctors and qualified doctors too. Moreover, we found that participants systematically underestimated when a person was overweight or obese.”
“Our study of GPs also found a tendency to underestimate weight which has important implications as it means that overweight and obese patients could end up not being offered weight management support or advice,” he added. “Over the last 30 years we have seen changes to population body weight, so examining how this has affected how we view our own and other people’s body sizes is an interesting area of research.”
Dr. Robinson noted that recent research has indicated parents typically underestimate the weight of their overweight or obese children, and those findings combined with the new study could indicate that they are obstacles to treatment of the condition. The university noted that over half of all adults in the European Union are at least overweight, and obesity rates in the UK have more than tripled over the past three decades.
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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Oregon and the District of Columbia recently voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, buoyed by advocates’ claims that the drug is no more harmful than alcohol.

While that may or may not be true, a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found a connection between long-term marijuana use and brain abnormalities.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, the study team saw that chronic pot smokers have a smaller orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a part of the brain linked to addiction. Interestingly, the study team also saw increased brain connectivity in long-term users.

“We have seen a steady increase in the incidence of marijuana use since 2007,” said Francesca Filbey, an associate professor of brain sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. “However, research on its long-term effects remains scarce despite the changes in legislation surrounding marijuana and the continuing conversation surrounding this relevant public health topic.”

In the study, scientists examined 48 adult marijuana users and 62 non-users in the same age, ethnic and gender groups, which took into consideration likely biases. The study team also considered participants’ tobacco and alcohol use.

The researchers saw that participants who used did so three times daily. Cognitive tests revealed that chronic marijuana users had reduced IQ as opposed to the control group. However, the IQ inconsistencies do not appear to be linked to the brain irregularities as no direct relationship can be drawn between IQ deficiencies and lower than normal OFC volume.

“What’s unique about this work is that it combines three different MRI techniques to evaluate different brain characteristics,” said study author Sina Aslan, an adjunct assistant professor of neuroscience at The University of Texas at Dallas. “The results suggest increases in connectivity, both structural and functional that may be compensating for gray matter losses. Eventually, however, the structural connectivity or ‘wiring’ of the brain starts degrading with prolonged marijuana use.”

Assessments also showed that previous onset of habitual marijuana use induces higher physical and functional connectedness within the brain. Greatest rises in connectivity arose as an individual starts using marijuana. Data show seriousness of use is directly linked to greater connectivity, the researchers said.

While higher physical wiring drops off after six to eight years of extended chronic use, marijuana users continue to keep showing stronger connectivity than healthy non-users, which might clarify why chronic, long-term users “seem to be doing just fine” in spite of smaller OFC brain volumes, Filbey speculated.

“To date, existing studies on the long-term effects of marijuana on brain structures have been largely inconclusive due to limitations in methodologies,” Filbey said. “While our study does not conclusively address whether any or all of the brain changes are a direct consequence of marijuana use, these effects do suggest that these changes are related to age of onset and duration of use.”

The study authors said their evidence indicates long-term marijuana use sets off a complex process that allows neurons to evolve as gray matter decreases, but further reports are needed to figure out if these effects end if marijuana use stops, if comparable effects can be found in occasional marijuana users as opposed to chronic users and if these effects truly are a direct result of pot use or simply due to a predisposing factor.

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study, led by the Baycrest Health Sciences’ Rotman Research Institute, has found that anxiety significantly increases the risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) converting to Alzheimer’s disease.

The findings, published online in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, reveal that anxiety symptoms in patients with MCI increase the risk of a speedier decline in cognitive functions. This decline was observed independently of depression, which is another risk marker. The risk of conversion to Alzheimer’s for MCI patients with mild, moderate and severe anxiety increased by 33 percent, 78 percent and 135 percent respectively.

MCI patients who reported anxiety at any time over the follow-up period were found to have greater rates of atrophy in the medial temporal lobe regions of the brain. These areas of the brain are necessary for creating memories and have been implicated in Alzheimer’s.

Before this study, anxiety as a potentially significant risk marker for Alzheimer’s in MCI patients has not been isolated for a longitudinal study. These new findings could allow scientists a clearer picture of how damaging anxiety symptoms can be on cognition and brain structure over a period of time. Previous research has identified late-life depression as a significant risk marker for Alzheimer’s. Because anxiety is usually studied as a subset of depression by psychiatrists, it is not routinely assessed.

“Our findings suggest that clinicians should routinely screen for anxiety in people who have memory problems because anxiety signals that these people are at greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s,” said Dr. Linda Mah, clinician-scientist with Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute, and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

“While there is no published evidence to demonstrate whether drug treatments used in psychiatry for treating anxiety would be helpful in managing anxiety symptoms in people with mild cognitive impairment or in reducing their risk of conversion to Alzheimer’s, we think that at the very least behavioral stress management programs could be recommended. In particular, there has been research on the use of mindfulness-based stress reduction in treating anxiety and other psychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s and this is showing promise.”

The study used data compiled from the large population-based Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). The team analyzed three years of data on anxiety, depression, cognitive and brain structural changes in 376 adults between the ages of 55 and 91. The patients all had a clinical diagnosis of amnestic MCI and a low score on the depression rating scale, suggesting that anxiety symptoms were not part of clinical depression. The patients were monitored every six months.

Scientists already consider MCI as a risk marker for converting to Alzheimer’s disease within a few years. Currently, doctors estimate that half-a-million Canadians over 65 years of age have MCI. Many of these are undiagnosed. The team cautions that not all patients with MCI will convert to Alzheimer’s — some will stabilize and others may even improve.

The new study, however, provides important evidence that anxiety is a predictive factor for determining if an individual with MCI will convert to Alzheimer’s or not.

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While laundry detergent pods have become increasingly popular due largely to their convenience, a new study is cautioning parents that the products could also present a series poison risk for children under the age of six.
In research published Monday by the journal Pediatrics, Dr. Gary Smith from the Center for Injury Research and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio and his colleagues reported that from 2012 through 2013, poison control centers in the US received reports of over 17,230 youngsters swallowing, inhaling or otherwise being exposed to the chemicals found in these products.
According to the researchers, that’s an average of one child per hour, and while Associated Press (AP) Medical Writer Lindsay Tanner noted that most of the youngsters were not seriously harmed, more than 700 had to be hospitalized, with seizures or coma among the most serious complications. One child even died, and the study authors said the potential poisoning risk emphasizes the need for laundry pod manufacturers to make the packaging safer.
“The products contain concentrated liquid laundry soap and became widely available in the US two years ago. Some are multicolored and may look enticing to young children. Poisoning or injuries including mouth, throat and eye burns can occur when kids burst the capsules or put them in their mouths,” Tanner said. Some manufacturers have already made changes to packaging and labels, leading to a slight reduction in poison center calls, the study found.

Dr. Smith, the lead author of the study, told Reuters that the findings “caught us by surprise… I was aware of the case reports, but I haven’t seen anyone pull together the numbers.” He added that “the good news is that half of these exposures were trivial,” but that if the kids “swallow it and they swallow enough of it, that’s when we get these serious symptoms.”
“This is an age group that has newfound mobility. They’re curious and they don’t sense danger,” Dr. Smith said, noting that the children may believe the pods are candy or are filled with juice. He said that he and his colleagues saw “a very broad spectrum” of symptoms, and there were “severe symptoms that we haven’t seen in the past with traditional laundry detergent that we’re now seeing with these new pods,” suggesting the liquid they contain is more powerful and more dangerous than regular soap.
Paul Ziobro of The Wall Street Journal contacted Proctor & Gamble (P&G), the company that manufacturers Tide Pods, but the company declined to comment on the issue, referring calls to the American Cleaning Institute trade organization. The institute said that companies had been working since 2012 to reduce the number of these incidents, and Ziobro noted that P&G replaced clear Tide Pods packages with opaque ones last year.
“Sun Products, maker of All Mighty Pacs, also has made changes to its product, including adding safety language to the front of packages and changing to opaque containers. In addition, it came out with a childproof tub now available at many stores, according to a spokeswoman,” he added. Henkel AG, maker of the Purex brand, did not respond to The Wall Street Journal’s requests for comment on the issue, according to Ziobro.
Last month, research published in the Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS) issued a warning that liquid laundry and dishwasher detergent pods could burst and send detergent into the mouth, nose and eyes of children when squeezed or bitten into. The researchers cautioned that the products should be kept away from young kids due to the risk of significant corneal injury.
Dr. Marcel J. Casavant, a co-author of the new study and chief of toxicology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and medical director of the Central Ohio Poison Center echoed those sentiments, noting that “it can take just a few seconds for children to grab them, break them open, and swallow the toxic chemicals they contain, or get the chemicals in their eyes.”
Likewise, Dr. Smith added, “It is not clear that any laundry detergent pods currently available are truly child resistant; a national safety standard is needed to make sure that all pod makers adopt safer packaging and labeling. Parents of young children should use traditional detergent instead of detergent pods.”
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While the current spread of Ebola from West Africa into other parts of the world demonstrates how quickly diseases can spread in the age of high-speed jet travel, new research from the University of California, Berkeley set out to better understand how computer models can be used to predict the spread of potential epidemics.
In the study, assistant physics professor Oskar Hallatschek and his colleagues used a simple model of disease to prove that, despite commonly held assumptions, most simulations take for granted that outbreaks quickly morph into epidemics once disease carriers such as humans are able to “jump” outside of the initially-infected area.
Instead, he and co-author Daniel Fisher of Stanford University found that if the chance of long-distance dispersal is low enough, the disease spreads far more slowly, like a wave rippling outward from the initial outbreak. This type of spread was common centuries ago, when humans rarely traveled, the university explained in a statement Tuesday.

However, if the chance of jumping passes a certain threshold (as is often the case with today’s air travel), then diseases can generate enough satellite outbreaks to cause a far-quicker spread of the disease. They also found that the chances of a disease spreading rapidly increases as people are able to travel internationally more easily.
“With our simple model, we clearly show that one of the key factors that controls the spread of infection is how common long-range jumps are in the dispersal of a disease,” explained Hallatschek, who is the William H. McAdams Chair in physics at UC Berkeley. “And what matters most are the rare cases of extremely long jumps, the individuals who take plane trips to distant places and potentially spread the disease.”
The study, which appeared in last week’s online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provides a new understanding of disease transmission that could ultimately help epidemiologists better predict how epidemics originate, as well as how cancer metastases, genes mutate, species invade, wildfires spread and even how rumors spread in this day and age.
Robert Sanders of UC Berkeley Media Relations said that Hallatschek usually studies mutations spread in colonies of microbes, and then mathematically models that activity to better understand how new traits evolve in a population. While reviewing simple theories of epidemic spread, he was reportedly shocked to find out that nobody could explain how the long-distance dispersal of individuals during an outbreak impacts the spread of the disease.
According to simulations, if the chance of people traveling away from the center of an outbreak is exponentially reduced with distance (i.e. the likelihood of distant travel drops by 50 percent every 10 miles) the disease spreads like a slow wave. The models also suggested that a slower reduction rate (for instance, if the chance of distant travel decreases by half every time the distance is doubled) could cause the disease to quickly spiral out of control.
Hallatschek said that he was “shocked to see that this had not been demonstrated,” and that he and Fisher “saw a chance to prove something really fundamental.” While the simple model they used did not account for the complexity of real-world conditions, it did contain the essential ingredients required to predict evolutionary spread, the university said. More importantly, it could be captured using a mathematical formula.

Image Above: When long-distance travel is rare, epidemics spread like a slow, rippling wave, as demonstrated by the simulation (left) and the actual historical spread of the black death during the Middle Ages. Credit: Oskar Hallatschek and D. Sherman and J. Salisbury
In all, Hallatschek and Fisher discovered three types of epidemic situations involving these so-called power-law distributions: one in which long-range travel is very rare, causing epidemics to spread in a slow wave (such as the Black Death); another in which long-range travel is common, causing disease to spread very rapidly (such as SARS); and third, intermediate scenario in which satellite outbreaks occur, but far more slowly than SARS-like cases.
“Hallatschek said that previous studies failed to take into account the randomness of jumps, which led people to think that any long-range jump would lead to new outbreaks and rapid spread,” the university noted. “But if long-range jumps are extremely rare, distant outbreaks tend to be overtaken by the slow, wavelike spread of the initial outbreak before they can contribute much to the overall epidemic.”
“In the future, he plans to make his model more and more realistic, first by incorporating networks to mimic the real world where people do not jump randomly, but must travel through airport hubs or train stations,” Sanders added. “Hallatschek also hopes to test his model by using data on the evolving genome sequences of pathogens as they spread, which provide one measure of where and when satellite outbreaks occur.”
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Provided by Mary Billingsley, JAACAP Editorial Office

New article in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry provides an overview of ten practical, evidence-based tips to provide holistic support to individuals with ASD

A Clinical Perspectives article published in the November 2014 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry proposes a tool to empower stakeholders, guide caregivers, and provide a rationale for advocates, when considering the systems of support offered to people with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Organizations such as the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions, and Autism Europe have long stressed the need for an effective evidence-based support approach, which not only promotes the active participation of the ASD individual, but also includes his or her family, and community.

With the hope of providing a framework for clinical practice and global advocacy, Dr. Joaquin Fuentes, of Policlínica Gipuzkoa, San Sebastián, Spain, has developed a set of brief ‘tips’ to guide such an approach and which he anticipates will be accepted in many countries.

Dr. Fuentes said of his article, “We see in our nations a radical evolution in the development of services to people with ASD. We consider them full citizens, who must receive personalized support in within their communities. We must pay attention to their hopes and dreams when planning for their futures, to empower them and their legal representatives to make decisions, and to favor their pursuit of self-determination, satisfying relationships, and full inclusion, in their search for quality of life.”

Pointing to a growing movement in Europe for making information easily understandable as an essential mechanism to protect individual human rights and foster citizen participation, Dr. Fuentes wrote the ‘tips’ in straightforward, first-person language In order to ensure representation, early drafts were reviewed by a self-support group of young persons with ASD, and the Board of Families from the Gipuzkoa Autism Society, the largest publicly supported autism community program in southern Europe, where Dr. Fuentes serves as a Research Consultant.

Those consulted discussed and strongly endorsed the document, adding a few points and valuing that the Ten Tips were to be facilitated to a multilingual community. Towards this end, the ten points outlined in the article are made available as online-only supplemental material in Basque, French, and Spanish.

Dr. Fuentes directs the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit at Policlínica Gipuzkoa, in Donostia / San Sebastián and is a member of the Steering Committee of Dr. Paramjit Joshi’s AACAP Presidential Initiative.

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