University of North Carolina Health Care
A study led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers represents an important step forward in the accurate diagnosis of people who are experiencing the earliest stages of psychosis.
Psychosis includes hallucinations or delusions that define the development of severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Schizophrenia emerges in late adolescence and early adulthood and affects about 1 in every 100 people. In severe cases, the impact on a young person can be a life compromised, and the burden on family members can be almost as severe.
The study published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin reports preliminary results showing that a blood test, when used in psychiatric patients experiencing symptoms that are considered to be indicators of a high risk for psychosis, identifies those who later went on to develop psychosis.
“The blood test included a selection of 15 measures of immune and hormonal system imbalances as well as evidence of oxidative stress,” said Diana O. Perkins, MD, MPH, professor of psychiatry in the UNC School of Medicine and corresponding author of the study. She is also medical director of UNC’s Outreach and Support Intervention Services (OASIS) program for schizophrenia.
“While further research is required before this blood test could be clinically available, these results provide evidence regarding the fundamental nature of schizophrenia, and point towards novel pathways that could be targets for preventative interventions,” Perkins said.
Clark D. Jeffries, PhD, bioinformatics scientist at the UNC-based Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), is a co-author of the study, which was conducted as part of the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study (NAPLS), an international effort to understand risk factors and mechanisms for development of psychotic disorders.
“Modern, computer-based methods can readily discover seemingly clear patterns from nonsensical data,” said Jeffries. “Added to that, scientific results from studies of complex disorders like schizophrenia can be confounded by many hidden dependencies. Thus, stringent testing is necessary to build a useful classifier. We did that.”
The study concludes that the multiplex blood assay, if independently replicated and if integrated with studies of other classes of biomarkers, has the potential to be of high value in the clinical setting.

New York University

A program that helps teachers modify their interactions with students based on an individual’s temperament helps shy children to become more engaged in their class work, and in turn, improves their math and critical thinking skills.

Led by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, the study offers an evidence-based intervention to help shy children, who are often at risk for poor academic achievement. The findings appear in the School Psychology Review.

Shy children are described as anxious, fearful, socially withdrawn, and isolated. In the classroom, they are less likely to seek attention from teachers and to be engaged with their peers. As a result, research shows that they may have difficulty in school, and teachers may perceive them as being lower in academic skills and intelligence than their more outgoing classmates.

“The needs of shy kids are important but often overlooked because they’re sitting quietly, while children with behavioral problems get more attention from teachers,” says Sandee McClowry, a professor in NYU Steinhardt’s Department of Applied Psychology and the study’s senior author. “It is important to get shy children engaged without overwhelming them.”

Shyness is one of four temperaments identified in INSIGHTS into Children’s Temperament, an intervention designed to help teachers and parents match environmental demands with an individual’s personality. The program provides a framework for appreciating and supporting differences in the personalities of children, rather that trying to change them. Participants in the program learn to recognize four temperaments: shy, social and eager to try, industrious, and high maintenance.

In the current study, the researchers evaluated whether INSIGHTS supports the academic development – specifically critical thinking, math and language skills – of children in urban, low-income schools. Nearly 350 children and their parents across 22 elementary schools were followed during kindergarten and across the transition into first grade. Half of the schools participating were randomized to INSIGHTS, while the other half, which served as the control group, participated in a supplemental after-school reading program.

“Kindergarten and first grade are big shifts for children, regardless of temperament. For example, teacher-student ratios are higher and classes are more structured. For shy kids, this transition is a particular challenge,” McClowry says.

The researchers were especially interested in what happens after summer break, as studies have shown that high-risk children’s skills decline over the summer while they are out of school. By providing children with extra support in the last part of kindergarten, the researchers hoped to sustain the students’ skills over the summer.

Over 10 weeks, teachers and parents in the INSIGHTS program learned how to recognize differences in children and support them in ways that are specific to their individual temperaments. During the same time period, children participated in INSIGHTS classroom activities, using puppets, flashcards, workbooks, and videotapes to help them solve daily dilemmas – for instance, having a substitute teacher or a play date at an unfamiliar house – and understand how individuals differ.

While all children enrolled in INSIGHTS showed improvements in academic skills, the effects were substantially greater for shy children. Shy children who participated in INSIGHTS had significant growth in critical thinking skills and stability in math skills over the transition from kindergarten to first grade, compared to their shy peers in the control group who declined in both areas.

The researchers observed no gains in language arts skills among shy kids from the INSIGHTS intervention compared to the control group, perhaps due to the benefits the children in the control group gained from the supplemental reading program.

“Our study supports creating an environment that makes shy children feel safe and respected in order to support their development,” said Erin O’Connor, an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU Steinhardt and the study’s lead author. “We need to reframe our understanding of these children, because for the most part, shy children are not just going to ‘come out of their shell.'”

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Researchers from the Harvard School of Medicine and the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences have discovered a region of the brain responsible for causing people to fall into a deep sleep.
This slumber-promoting circuit, which is located deep in the primitive brainstem, is only the second such “sleep node” ever discovered in the brains of mammals, the study authors said. In research published online last month in Nature Neuroscience, they explain how this region is not only capable of but also necessary for producing what is known as slow wave sleep (SWS) in humans.
By using genetically targeted activation and optogenetically based mapping to examine the brain’s circuitry, the researchers found that half of all sleep-promoting activity originates from a region of the brainstem known as the parafacial zone (PZ). The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain and is responsible for regulating the basic functions necessary for survival, including breathing, body temperature, blood pressure and heart rate.
“The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain,” said Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the recently-published paper.
She and her colleagues found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ which produces the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for producing SWS. Furthermore, using a set of innovative tools, they were able to precisely control those neurons remotely, essentially allowing them to turn the neurons on and off at will.
“These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level,” said Christelle Ancelet of the Harvard School of Medicine. “Before these tools were developed, we often used ‘electrical stimulation’ to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn’t. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel.”
“To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a ‘designer’ receptor on GABA neurons only but didn’t otherwise alter brain function,” added Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the Nature Neuroscience paper. “When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids.”
The research team, whose work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said that the exact interactions between these neurons and other sleep and wake-promoting regions of the brain still need to be analyzed. However, they believe their findings could ultimately lead to the invention of new medications to treat insomnia and other sleep disorders, as well as the development of safer and more effective anesthetics.
“We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience, where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain,” said Bass. “We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the ‘why’ of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences.”

William Raillant-Clark, University of Montreal

While public health authorities focus on the physical activity benefits of active play, a new study from the University of Montreal reveals that for children, playing has no goal – it is an end in itself, an activity that is fun, done alone or with friends, and it represents “an opportunity to experience excitement or pleasure, but also to combat boredom, sadness, fear, or loneliness.”

“By focusing on the physical activity aspect of play, authorities put aside several aspects of play that are beneficial to young people’s emotional and social health,” explains Professor Katherine Frohlich of the university’s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, who supervised the study. “Play is a way to achieve various objectives, including the improvement of physical health and the development of cognitive and social aptitudes. Obviously, we must ensure children’s development and combat obesity. But to get there, must we distort play?”

The study involved a photography and interview project with 25 Montreal area children, aged 7 to 11 years, as they photographed and talked about their favorite ways to play. One 10 year old girl loved climbing on a modern art sculpture near her home, for example. “Play is an activity that brings pleasure and is purposeless,” explained the study’s first author Dr. Stephanie Alexander, also of the university’s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine. Children’s photographs of their leisure activities show that sports are well represented – balls, bicycles, hockey, and baseball – but so are many sedentary activities, such as puzzles, knitting, reading, movies, and video games. Animals and pets were also photographed by many.

The semi-structured interviews allowed Alexander to better understand the meaning of play for the children. “Play reframed as a way for improving physical health removes the spontaneity, fun, and freedom in children’s play, which is also important for their well-being,” Alexander said. “Active play alone does not make up many children’s preferences.” It is also clear that risk-taking is an integral part of children’s play preferences. “Allowing children to take acceptable risks while remaining vigilant is indeed beneficial to their development,” Alexander added. “An overemphasis on safety may contribute to the emergence of a generation of young people that is less and less able to cope with the unpredictable.”

In summary, the researchers identified four dimensions of play particularly important to children: play as an end in itself (children play for fun, not for exercise or for developing their mental and social skills); play isn’t necessarily active (many children also enjoy more sedentary games); children feel ambiguous about scheduled play activities (children have little time for free play); and risk is considered a pleasurable component of their play. “Despite the abundance of messages targeting children and play and health, children’s perspectives are rarely taken into account within public health, although they have social and scientific value,” Frohlich said. “We hope that our findings will inform and improve the way authorities and indeed parents approach playtime.”

About this study: Stephanie A. Alexander, Katherine L. Frohlich and Caroline Fusco published “Problematizing “Play-for-Health” Discourses Through Children’s Photo-Elicited Narratives” in Qualitative Health Research on August 21, 2014. The researchers received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC.)

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a double mastectomy after being told she would likely develop breast cancer had a tremendous impact on testing for the disease in the UK, the authors of a new Breast Cancer Journal study reported on Friday.
According to BBC News online health editor Helen Briggs, referrals to breast cancer clinics more than doubled after Jolie announced last May that she had undergone the surgery after doctors informed her that she had an 87 percent chance of contracting breast cancer due to a high-risk gene.
University of Manchester professor Gareth Evans and his colleagues examined referrals to over 20 genetic centers and clinics in the UK following the press coverage of her admission, and found that those reports “encouraged women with genuine concerns about their family history to get advice,” said Briggs.
“The Angelina Jolie effect has been long-lasting and global, and appears to have increased referrals to centers appropriately,” Evans told BBC News, adding that her decision to undergo a double mastectomy likely had “a bigger impact than other celebrity announcements, possibly due to her image as a glamorous and strong woman.”
“This may have lessened patients’ fears about a loss of sexual identity post-preventative surgery and encouraged those who had not previously engaged with health services to consider genetic testing,” he added, telling the Huffington Post that high-profile cases such as Jolie’s “often mean that more women are inclined to… take the necessary steps to prevent themselves from developing the disease.”
Jolie was found to have the BRCA1 mutation, which is inherited from a parent and is responsible for at least 10 percent of all instances of breast cancer, the study authors explained. Women that have the BRCA1 gene mutation have between 45 percent and 90 percent risk of developing breast cancer in their lifetime, but those who have a strong family history of breast cancer and/or a living relative with the disease can be tested for the mutation.
Following Jolie’s announcement last year, new clinical guidance was published in the UK recommending that only women who faced an increased risk of developing breast cancer should be referred for genetic testing at a family history clinic or a regional genetics center. While news stories like this often have a short-term effect on health-related behaviors, Evans and his fellow investigators wanted to see if Jolie’s announcement had a lasting impact.
They reviewed data from 12 family history clinics and nine regional genetic centers throughout the UK, and found that there was a two and a half-fold increase in referrals by general practitioners during the two months immediately following Jolie’s announcement (versus June and July 2012).
That increase continued from August to October, with referrals doubling over that same period the previous year, and they also found no increase in inappropriate or unnecessary referrals during this time. Evans said he expected to find that the increase in visits would be the result of concerned but healthy women returning for early repeat screenings, the opposite was actually true – most of the women were actually late for their screenings.
“Defective versions of BRCA1 and its sister gene BRCA2 are together responsible for about a fifth of breast cancers. Women who inherit BRCA1 have a 60 percent to 90 percent risk of developing breast cancer. BRCA2 increases the risk by 45 percent to 85 percent. Both gene mutations also raise the risk of ovarian cancer,” The Guardian explained.

Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

If you were to search for the definition of polyethylene in the Oxford Dictionary, this is what would come up: “A tough, light, flexible synthetic resin made by polymerizing ethylene, chiefly used for plastic bags, food containers, and other packaging.” In other words, polyethylene is plastic.

Most people are comfortable with plastic in their food containers, their trashcans or even in their hair brushes, but not many would like to have plastic in their toothpaste, right? Well, Crest, a product of Proctor & Gamble, puts polyethylene in its popular toothpastes including such pastes like Crest MultiCare Whitening. However, Proctor & Gamble recently announced that within six months all tubes of its toothpaste with the plastic beads in it will be off the shelf as reported by UPI.

Now, if these plastic microbeads served a purpose, many users would probably not be quite as concerned, but UPI explains that the polyethylene is in the toothpaste purely for decorative purposes only. On top of that, DentalBuzz points out that the box does not list the ingredients of the toothpaste. That’s pretty curious, right? Trish Walraven, the author of the DentalBuzz article agreed, so she, a dental hygienist, tested the plastic microbeads and found that the little blue specks of plastic that are overwhelmingly present in the toothpaste do not dissolve in acetone, alcohol, or in the mouth. Why is this a problem?

According to Walraven, “Around our teeth we have these little channels in our gums, sort of like the cuticles around our fingernails. The gum channel is called a sulcus, and it’s where diseases like gingivitis get their start. A healthy sulcus is no deeper than about 3 millimeters, so when you have hundreds of pieces of plastic being scrubbed into your gums each day that are even smaller than a millimeter, many of them are getting trapped.” This means that the sulcus is more vulnerable to disease, bacteria, and other dental health issues.

All this just for decorative purposes?

On top of the health concerns that come with polyethylene in our toothpaste, the plastic is a major environmental concern because the plastic is not biodegradable and never breaks down. It just gets smaller and smaller and lasts practically forever according to WCPO Cincinnati. So the plastic microbeads included just for decorative purposes could, and likely do, damage gums and teeth as well as the environment. Clearly, these reasons explain why dental hygienists and consumers alike are concerned about the plastic in their toothpaste.

DentalBuzz and WCPO Cincinnati listed some of the Crest brands that definitely have polyethylene in them:

• Crest 3D White Radiant Mint
• Crest Pro-Health For Me
• Crest 3D White Arctic Fresh
• Crest 3D White Enamel Renewal
• Crest 3D White Luxe Glamorous White
• Crest Sensitivity Treatment and Protection
• Crest Complete Multi-Benefit Whitening Plus Deep Clean
• Crest 3D White Luxe Lustrous Shine
• Crest Extra White Plus Scope Outlast
• Crest SensiRelief Maximum Strength Whitening Plus Scope
• Crest Pro-Health Sensitive + Enamel Shield
• Crest Pro-Health Clinical Gum Protection
• Crest Pro-Health For Life for ages 50+
• Crest Complete Multi-Benefit Extra White+ Crystal Clean Anti-Bac
• Crest Be Adventurous Mint Chocolate Trek
• Crest Be Dynamic Lime Spearmint Zest
• Crest Be Inspired Vanilla Mint Spark
• Crest Pro-Health Healthy Fresh
• Crest Pro-Health Smooth Mint

That totals 19 different Crest toothpaste brands containing the decorative plastic microbeads. On top of that, some smaller companies and brands of toothpaste also use polyethylene in their pastes. UPI acknowledges that the FDA has approved the use of polyethylene in foods and healthcare products, but dentists and dental hygienists are definitely concerned about their presence. Just because the FDA approves their use does not mean that their use is a good idea. Currently, the American Dental Association (ADA) has no plans to rescind its seal of approval from Crest products, although it does acknowledge that it will “continue to monitor and evaluate new scientific information on this issue as it becomes available.”

WCPO Cincinnati reporter Maxim Alter was provided a statement from the spokesperson at Proctor & Gamble saying that Crest currently has toothpastes without the plastic microbeads. “The majority of our product volume will be microbead-free within six months,” the spokesperson said. “We will complete our removal process by March of 2016.”

As of now, the ADA recommends that consumers follow the FDA’s recommendations on the use of dental health care products. Many people will likely go a step further and avoid the plastic decorations in their toothpastes.

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David Olejarz, Henry Ford Health System

A treatment regimen is safe and effective for restoring skin pigmentation in vitiligo patients, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study.

“Our findings offer patients with vitiligo worldwide a renewed hope for a bright future in the treatment of this disfiguring disease,” says Henry Lim, M.D., chair of Dermatology at Henry Ford and the study’s lead author. “Patients with lesions on their face and arms could have a more rapid response to the combination treatment.”

Patients were randomly divided into two study groups: Group A received the combination therapy; Group B received only NB UVB treatment.

Henry Ford dermatologists described the repigmentation results as “superior,” and said the treatment combination holds promise as a future therapy for the more than 50 million people worldwide living with vitiligo. It affects about one in every 100 people in the United States.

The study was published online Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association-Dermatology.

In a multi-center study led by Henry Ford, dermatologists sought to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a treatment combination of afamelanotide, a drug that induces skin pigmentation, and phototherapy using narrowband ultraviolet-B rays (NB UVB). Phototherapy, or ultraviolet light therapy, is the treatment of choice for many patients with widespread vitiligo. It has been shown to be effective, though the degree of repigmentation varies.

Dr. Lim, an international vitiligo expert, says afamelanotide “enhances the ability of the UVB to induce repigmentation of the skin.”

Key findings:

– Repigmentation occurred faster in patients who received the combination treatment compared to patients who received NB UVB.

– Patients who received the combination treatment achieved appearance of pigment on their face and arms after 40 days compared to 60 days for patients who received NB UVB.

– In dark-skinned patients, repigmentation occurred faster in the combination group compared to the NB UVB group.

Afamelanotide is in the process of being submitted for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in treating vitiligo.

Vitiligo is a skin disease that causes the skin to lose color and develop white patches that vary in size and location. It develops when cells called melanocytes are killed by the body’s immune system, causing the area of skin to turn white because the cells no longer make pigment. Vitiligo is more noticeable in individuals with darker skin tones, but it affects all races and ethnicities.

While vitiligo is neither contagious nor life-threatening, there is no cure. However, it causes low self-esteem and depression for those living with the disease.

The Henry Ford study represents its latest research into investigating new treatment options for vitiligo. In a 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Henry Ford dermatologists showed the benefits of skin cell transplant surgery, called melanocyte-keratinocyte transplantation or MKTP. Henry Ford has since performed more than 190 MKTP procedures on patients from Michigan, 23 other U.S. states and Canada.

For this new study, 55 patients were enrolled at four sites – Henry Ford, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and

Vitiligo and Pigmentation Institute of Southern California and University of California Davis’ Department of Dermatology.

In the two study groups, 28 patients were enrolled in Group A and 27 patients in Group B. Both groups received phototherapy two to three times a week for six months for a total of 72 treatments. In addition to phototherapy, patients in Group A received a dose of 16 mg of afamelanotide in four monthly treatments. Afamelanotide, about the size of a grain of rice, was implanted just under the skin.

Two common vitiligo assessment scoring systems – Vitiligo Area Scoring Index and Vitiligo European Task Force – were used to evaluate the repigmentation response.

While patients in both groups showed repigmentation, the response in Group A was superior to Group B by the 56th day of treatment and even better by the 168th day of treatment. The most common side effect was redness of the skin.

The study was funded by Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals.

> Continue reading…

Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Wearable lifestyle activity monitors are all the rage right now in the health community. Those who are interested and committed love to record their stats on devices like Fitbit and then share the data with their laptops or tablets to compile their data. People can see devices like the Fitbit all over the place because people are becoming more and more interested in their health and living a healthy lifestyle. While this is a natural step in the right direction for Americans, do these electronic activity monitors really work? New research suggests that, while they do provide some benefits, they may not be as great as we think. At the very least, they may need more development.

According to a statement from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), activity monitors from Fitbit, Jawbone, Nike, Basis, BodyMedia, Misfit, Fitbug, Ibitz, Polar and Withings show great promise yet still may need some development. While they do much more than pedometers, which solely count the steps one takes and calculate on average how far one walked in a day, these wearable health devices are missing some key functions and applications.

Just what do these devices do? As the UTMB article explains, the really positive applications that wearable activity monitors perform include measuring and providing feedback on several fitness and health categories including calories burned, type of exercise undertaken, sleep quality, as well as measurements of heart rate, skin sweat, and body temperature. Some of these devices – such as those from Jawbone, Fitbit and Nike – even take their data collections a bit further by including goal-setting and progress feedback, social support and a variety of charts and progress trackers which are based on the users’ goals and are easy to read. Specifically, “The researchers found that most of the interactive tools in these devices’ apps for goal setting, self monitoring and feedback were in line with what health care professionals recommend for their patients. The number of available app tools was similar to the amount of techniques used by health care professionals to increase their patients’ physical activity.”

While all of this provides a definite bump up from the pedometer, there are some downfalls, or at least still underdeveloped parts of the current wearable activity monitors. First of all, most of the 13 commercially available devices that were part of the research did not have, or barely had, tactics connected to the successful increase of physical activity monitoring. These tactics include planning action steps to engage in and instruction on how to do the behavior or exercise, commitment, and problem solving.

The authors of the study – Elizabeth Lyons, senior author from UTMB, Zakkoyya Lewis, Jennifer Rowland (each from UTMB) and Brian Mayrsohn from the University of Central Florida – concluded that while these devices provide great potential, they are not as beneficial for health and fitness as they could be. In fact, the devices with the most features seemed to be less effective than those with fewer but more effective tools. In current devices, individual success seemed to be more correlated with individual preferences and needs such as water resistance, heart rate monitor or food logs, just to name a few. The research team concluded that more research was needed into the feasibility and benefit of wearable electronic activity monitor devices. As Lyons stated, “This content analysis provides preliminary information as to what these devices are capable of, laying a foundation for clinical, public health and rehabilitation applications. Future studies are needed to further investigate new types of electronic activity monitors and to test their feasibility, acceptability and ultimately their public health impact.”

Though there are many benefits to these devices, more research could only lead to better, more beneficial health and fitness activity monitors, which can only lead to healthier, more fit individuals.

For the full study, see the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

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Brittany Behm, The JAMA Network Journals

The prevalence of abdominal obesity and average waist circumference increased among U.S. adults from 1999 to 2012, according to a study in the September 17 issue of JAMA.

Waist circumference is a simple measure of total and intra-abdominal body fat. Although the prevalence of abdominal obesity has increased in the United States through 2008, its trend in recent years has not been known, according to background information in the article.

Earl S. Ford, M.D., M.P.H., of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and colleagues used data from seven 2-year cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) starting with 1999-2000 and concluding with 2011-2012 to determine trends in average waist circumference and prevalence of abdominal obesity among adults in the United States. Abdominal obesity was defined as a waist circumference greater than 40.2 inches (102 cm) in men and greater than 34.6 inches (88 cm) in women.

Data from 32,816 men and nonpregnant women ages 20 years or older were analyzed. The overall age-adjusted average waist circumference increased progressively and significantly, from 37.6 inches in 1999-2000 to 38.8 inches in 2011-2012. Significant increases occurred in men (0.8 inch), women (1.5 inch), non-Hispanic whites (1.2 inch), non­Hispanic blacks (1.6 inch), and Mexican Americans (1.8 inch).

The overall age-adjusted prevalence of abdominal obesity increased significantly from 46.4 percent in 1999-2000 to 54.2 percent in 2011-2012. Significant increases were present in men (37.1 percent to 43.5 percent), women (55.4 percent to 64.7 percent), non-Hispanic whites (45.8 percent to 53.8 percent), non-Hispanic blacks (52.4 percent to 60.9 percent), and Mexican Americans (48.1 percent to 57.4 percent).

The authors write that previous analyses of data from NHANES show that the prevalence of obesity calculated from body mass index (BMI) did not change significantly from 2003-2004 to 2011-2012. “In contrast, our analyses using data from the same surveys indicate that the prevalence of abdominal obesity is still increasing. The reasons for increases in waist circumference in excess of what would be expected from changes in BMI remain speculative, but several factors, including sleep deprivation, endocrine disruptors, and certain medications, have been proposed as potential explanations.”

“Our results support the routine measurement of waist circumference in clinical care consistent with current recommendations as a key step in initiating the prevention, control, and management of obesity among patients.”

Cléa Desjardins, University of Montreal

New research from the University of Montreal and Concordia and confirms there are other factors at play

Impossible deadlines, demanding bosses, abusive colleagues, unpaid overtime — all these factors can lead to a burnout. When it comes to mental health in the workplace, we often forget to consider the influence of home life.

That’s about to change, thanks to new research from Concordia University and the University of Montreal, which proves that having an understanding partner is just as important as having a supportive boss.

The study, published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, surveys 1,954 employees from 63 different organizations and shows that a multitude of issues contribute to mental health problems in the workforce.

The research team polled participants to measure factors like parental status, household income, social network, gender, age, physical health and levels of self-esteem. They studied these elements alongside stressors typically seen in the workplace, such as emotional exhaustion, poor use of skills, high psychological demands, job insecurity and lack of authority.

Turns out mental health in the workplace doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s deeply affected by the rest of a person’s day-to-day life, and vice versa.

The study shows that fewer mental health problems are experienced by those living with a partner, in households with young children, higher household incomes, less work-family conflicts and greater access to the support of a social network outside the workplace.

Of course, factors within the workplace are still important. Fewer mental health problems are reported when employees are supported at work, when expectations of job recognition are met and when people feel secure in their jobs. A higher level of skill use is also associated with lower levels of depression, pointing to the importance of designing tasks that motivate and challenge workers.

“This is a call to action,” says senior author Steve Harvey, professor of management and dean of Concordia’s John Molson School of Business. “Researchers need to expand their perspective so that they get a full picture of the complexity of factors that determine individuals’ mental health.”

For lead author Alain Marchand, professor at the University of Montreal’s School of Industrial Relations, it’s all about adopting a holistic view. “To maintain a truly healthy workforce, we need to look outside the office or home in simple terms to combat mental health issues in the workplace.”

Partners in research: This study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé. The study was also conducted in partnership with Standard Life Canada, which continuously helped to select companies and to promote their participation.

* Note: The University of Montreal is officially known as Université de Montréal.

Eric Hopton for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

If you have ever succumbed to a craving for high-calorie snacks, and most of us surely have, you may not feel quite so bad after reading a study by the School of Public Health and Health Systems and the Department of Kinesiology at Canada’s University of Waterloo. What you may have thought was a personal weakness could have been a simple evolutionary neurological response.

The researchers discovered that such over-indulgence may be due to lapses in a small and very specific area of your brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or DLPFC. The DLPFC is known to play a big part in the brain’s “executive functions,” helping the individual exercise control or restraint over otherwise automatic or “knee-jerk” reactions.

The report, which was published in the September edition of the Psychosomatic Medicine section of the Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, describes the results of the study in detail. The aim of the research was to establish if there was any causal relationship between DLPFC function and “dietary self-control” as manifested by both visceral cravings and actual consumption.

The study used a sample of 21 young women aged between 19 and 26 years old, all students on undergraduate psychology courses who had admitted “strong and frequent cravings” for high-calorie foods like chocolate and potato chips. The students were either paid $40 or were given the chance to win a 16GB iPad in a drawing and, of course, got to try lots of their favorite foods in the interest of science.

The subjects were shown pictures of high-calorie foods in order to stimulate cravings. Then magnetic stimulation was applied to the DLPFC area of the brain using “continuous theta-burst stimulation” to suppress DLPFC activity. After the magnetic stimulation, the women exhibited increased cravings, in particular for the more appetizing choices like milk chocolate and potato chips. In subsequent taste tests they ate more of the appetizing foods than other foods like dark chocolate and soda crackers which were deemed to be less “appetitive.”

In effect, what these tests demonstrated was that suppressing DLPFC activity not only inhibits self-control but also increases “reward sensitivity.” In other words, the brain is subject to a double assault as high-calorie foods become more attractive and the pleasure response is heightened.

In what the study authors refer to as “the modern obesogenic environment,” this work may have important implications in understanding the neurological basis for “dietary self-restraint.” Human preference for calorie-dense foods is deep seated and, say the Waterloo scientists, “potentially driven by evolutionary pressures to optimize investment return per unit of energy spent foraging.” This preference would have been an evolutionary advantage when our species had unreliable food resources and needed to maximize opportunities when they arose. But in the modern developed world high-calorie choices are abundant and pushed at us relentlessly in what the authors call “ubiquitous environmental cuing of such foods through media advertising.” These changes have helped to bring about a rapid and serious increase in global levels of obesity and other chronic food-related illnesses.

“Interventions aimed at enhancing or preserving dorsolateral cortex function in healthy populations may reduce the likelihood of obesity and other chronic conditions” says Peter Hall, a senior author of the study. According to Hall, regular aerobic exercise, controlling alcohol intake, and getting plenty of sleep can all keep the brain in good shape and help us fight the demons of temptation.

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Dairy products have long been known to benefit bone health, but a series of recent studies suggest they could also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity and other metabolic conditions.
In one study, presented this week at the Milk and Dairy Products in Human Health session of the 2014 Euro Fed Lipid Congress in Montpellier, France and published earlier this year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis of nine different studies and found a link between increased consumption of milk and a reduced incidence of hypertension.
Specifically, Dr. Sabita S. Soedamah-Muthu of Wageningen University in the Netherlands reviewed research involving more than 57,000 people, over 15,000 of whom had been diagnosed with hypertension, and found that as total dairy, low-fat dairy and milk consumption increased, the risk of high blood pressure decreased, though no statistically significantly link was found with coronary heart disease, stroke and total mortality in this study.
In a related study, appearing in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition , Professor Mark Wahlqvist of the Monash University’s Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, and his colleagues conducted a study of 4,000 Taiwanese people. They found that increased consumption of dairy products could reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke – even in communities where those foods are not typically part of the diet.
“In a dominantly Chinese food culture, unaccustomed to dairy foods, consuming them up to seven times a week does not increase mortality and may have favorable effects on stroke,” he explained. “We observed that increased dairy consumption meant lower risks of mortality from cardiovascular disease, especially stroke, but found no significant association with the risk of cancer.”
While milk and other dairy foods have been demonstrated to provide several nutrients that are important for our overall health and wellbeing, Wahlqvist said that people only need to consume small amounts to gain the benefits. For the best results, he and his colleagues suggest consuming about five servings equal to about eight grams of protein (one cup of milk or 45 grams of cheese) spread out over the course of a week.
“A little is beneficial and a lot is unnecessary,” Professor Wahlqvist said. “Those who ate no dairy had higher blood pressure, higher body mass index and greater body fatness… than other groups. But Taiwanese who included dairy food in their diet only three to seven times a week were more likely to survive than those who ate none.”
Dairy products could also help combat type 2 diabetes, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) claiming that people consuming eight or more portions of high-fat dairy products each day were less likely of contracting the disease than those having one or fewer servings.
That study, which was written by Dr. Ulrika Ericson of the Lund University Diabetes Center in Sweden and her colleagues, looked at nearly 27,000 individuals between the ages of 45 and 74, and found that higher intake of high-fat dairy foods was linked with a 23 percent lower incident rate of type 2 diabetes (T2D). In contrast, Dr. Ericson’s team found no association between low-fat dairy product intake and the risk of developing diabetes.
“Our observations may contribute to clarifying previous findings regarding dietary fats and their food sources in relation to T2D. The decreased risk at high intakes of high- fat dairy products, but not of low-fat dairy products, indicate that dairy fat, at least partly, explains observed protective associations between dairy intake and T2D,” she said. “Our findings suggest… fats specific to dairy products may have a role in prevention of type 2 diabetes.”
Likewise, researchers from CHU de Québec Research Center’s Endocrinology and Nephrology Department and Laval University reported in the September 16 online edition of the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism that dairy consumption could reduce a person’s risk of developing diabetes and other metabolic diseases such as obesity.
The study authors recruited 233 participants with healthy metabolic profiles from the greater Quebec City metropolitan area, and found that the average individual consumed approximately 2.5 servings of dairy per day (plus or minus 1.4 portions). The goal of the study was to determine a link between dairy intake and specific metabolic risk factors, including plasma glucose, plasma lipid profile, inflammatory markers and blood pressure.
The data suggested that trans-palmitoleic acid found in plasma could be used as a biomarker to evaluate dairy consumption. Trans-palmitoleic acid is naturally present in milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, and meat fat but cannot be synthesized by the body, and the fatty acid has recently been shown to be beneficial to a person’s health.
In the study, the authors found that trans-palmitoleic acid level was related to lower blood pressure in men and women, and to lower body weight in men. Daily intake was also associated with reduced blood glucose levels and blood pressure in the population studies, though the cross-sectional design made it impossible to draw causal relationships, and the study demonstrates that higher dairy intakes are not associated with adverse health effects.

Kate Blackburn, American Society of Clinical Oncology

A new, large cohort analysis from the prospective Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial, indicates that men who had moderate baldness affecting both the front and the crown of their head at age 45 were at a 40% increased risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer (usually indicates a faster growing tumor resulting in poorer prognosis relative to non-aggressive prostate cancer) later in life, compared to men with no baldness. There was no significant link between other patterns of baldness and prostate cancer risk. The study, published September 15 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, supports earlier research suggesting that male pattern baldness and prostate cancer may be linked.

“Our study found an increased risk for aggressive prostate cancer only in men with a very specific pattern of hair loss, baldness at the front and moderate hair-thinning on the crown of the head, at the age of 45. But we saw no increased risk for any form of prostate cancer in men with other hair-loss patterns,” said senior study author Michael B. Cook, PhD, an investigator in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. “While our data show a strong possibility for a link between the development of baldness and aggressive prostate cancer, it’s too soon to apply these findings to patient care.”

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men. Emerging evidence suggests that prostate cancer and male pattern baldness—progressive scalp hair-loss in a distinct pattern—are both connected to increased levels of male sex hormones (androgens) and androgen receptors, supporting the idea of a biological link between baldness and prostate cancer development and progression.

Researchers analyzed male pattern baldness in relation to prostate cancer risk in a cohort of 39,070 men from the U.S. PLCO Cancer Screening Trial, aged 55-74 years at enrollment. The men received a questionnaire that asked them to recall what their hair-loss patterns were at age 45 using a pictorial tool.

During follow-up, 1,138 prostate cancer cases were diagnosed, 51% of which were aggressive (Gleason score equal to or greater than 7, stage III or IV, or prostate cancer as the cause of death). The mean age at the time of prostate cancer diagnosis was 72.

Men who had a specific pattern of baldness, frontal and moderate crown (vertex), were 40% more likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer, compared to men who had no baldness. There was no association between male pattern baldness and risk of non-aggressive prostate cancer.

Dr. Cook stated that if these findings are confirmed by further studies, medical assessment of baldness could possibly be used to help identify men who may be at increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer. His research team is currently conducting two additional cohort analyses exploring the relationship between male pattern baldness and risk of developing and dying from prostate cancer. One of the studies includes a baseline dermatologic assessment of male pattern baldness, which may be more reliable than the recall method, which was used in the present study.

This research was supported by the intramural program of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Schizophrenia is not a single disease, but a group of eight genetically distinct disorders – each with its own unique set of symptoms, according to new research published online Monday in The American Journal of Psychiatry.

Dr. C. Robert Cloninger, one of the senior investigators of the study as well as a professor of psychiatry and genetics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and his colleagues believe their findings could be the first step towards improving how the condition is diagnosed and treated.

According to the researchers, approximately 80 percent of schizophrenia risk is inherited, but scientists have struggled to identify the exact genes responsible for the debilitating psychiatric illness. Now, after conducting detailed analysis of genetic influences on over 4,000 people with schizophrenia, the study authors have identified distinct gene clusters which they said contribute to eight different classes of the disorder.

“Genes don’t operate by themselves. They function in concert much like an orchestra, and to understand how they’re working, you have to know not just who the members of the orchestra are but how they interact,” Dr. Cloninger, whose team matched precise DNA variations in people with and without schizophrenia to symptoms in individual patients, said in a statement.

The investigators looked at nearly 700,000 sites within the genome where a single DNA unit is changed, also known as a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), in 4,200 people with schizophrenia and 3,800 healthy controls. The goal was to discover how individual genetic variations interacted with one another in order to produce the illness.

For example, in some patients suffering from delusions or hallucinations, they matched distinct genetic features to the symptoms and demonstrated with 95 percent certainty the genetic variations that would have caused that type of schizophrenia. In a second group, they discovered a link between disorganized speech and behavior with a unique set of DNA variations that carried a 100 percent risk of schizophrenia.

“What we’ve done here, after a decade of frustration in the field of psychiatric genetics, is identify the way genes interact with each other, how the ‘orchestra’ is either harmonious and leads to health, or disorganized in ways that lead to distinct classes of schizophrenia,” explained Dr. Cloninger.

While individual genes only have weak and somewhat inconsistent associations with the disease, groups of gene clusters that interact with each other can result in a 70 percent to 100 percent risk of developing schizophrenia. The study authors said that this makes it nearly impossible for people with those specific variations to avoid the condition. In all, they identified 42 clusters of genetic variations which dramatically increase schizophrenia risk.

“In the past, scientists had been looking for associations between individual genes and schizophrenia,” explained Dr. Dragan Svrakic, a study co-author and Washington University psychiatry professor. “When one study would identify an association, no one else could replicate it. What was missing was the idea that these genes don’t act independently. They work in concert to disrupt the brain’s structure and function, and that results in the illness.”

Dr. Svrakic noted that he and his colleagues were only able to see how these specific clusters of DNA variations acted together to cause specific types of symptoms once they were able to organize genetic variations and patients symptoms into groups. They then divided patients into groups based on the type and severity of their symptoms, including hallucinations and delusions, lack of initiative, and disconnect between thoughts and emotions.

In all, they developed symptom profiles that described eight qualitatively distinct disorders based on underlying genetic conditions. They also were able to replicate their findings using two additional DNA databases of schizophrenia patients, indicating that identifying the gene variations that are working together is a valid avenue for research and a possible way to improve diagnosis and treatment in the future.

“People have been looking at genes to get a better handle on heart disease, hypertension and diabetes, and it’s been a real disappointment,” Dr. Cloninger said. “Most of the variability in the severity of disease has not been explained, but we were able to find that different sets of genetic variations were leading to distinct clinical syndromes. So I think this really could change the way people approach understanding the causes of complex diseases.”

Beata Mostafavi, University of Michigan

Physical symptoms like irritable bowel syndrome and insomnia also associated with higher risks of intimate partner violence

One in five men in the U.S. reports violence towards their spouse or significant other, says a new nationally-representative study by the University of Michigan.

The analysis also found that male aggression toward a partner is associated with warning signs that could come up during routine health care visits, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and insomnia, in addition to better known risks like substance abuse and a history of either experiencing or witnessing violence as a child.

The findings appear in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine and are based on the most recent data available from the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication from 2001-2003. The survey assesses intimate partner violence and characteristics among male perpetrators.

“When people think of men who abuse their partners, they often think of violent people who they have never come across, or people they have only heard about in the news,” says lead author Vijay Singh, M.D., MPH, MS, a clinical lecturer in the Departments of Emergency Medicine and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.

“However, our study showed one out of every five men in the U.S. reported physical violence toward an intimate partner. It’s likely that we’ve all met these men in our daily environment. This is an issue that cuts across all communities, regardless of race, income, or any other demographics.”

Domestic violence has become a growing health concern. In the U.S. each year, roughly 320,000 outpatient health visits and 1,200 deaths among women are due to intimate partner violence, and $8.3 billion is spent in related medical and mental health services alone.

The subject has also recently been in the headlines, with the case of NFL running back Ray Rice. The Baltimore Ravens released Rice after a video of him hitting his wife in a casino elevator surfaced in the news.

The U-M study found that more than half of the men who reported violence toward a partner had at least one routine health visit over the last year and nearly one third noted at least one emergency room visit over the last year.

“Most of our efforts to prevent intimate partner violence have focused on screening and improving outcomes for women who are victims, because their health and well-being is our priority. Very little work, however, has been done on how to identify male perpetrators,” says Singh, who is also a member of the University of Michigan Injury Center and Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

“Our research shows that male perpetrators of intimate partner violence seek routine medical services, and they have physical symptoms that are common reasons patients seek medical care. This suggests that we may be missing an important opportunity in the primary care setting to identify their aggressive behavior and potentially intervene.”

Singh says further work needs to be done on developing identification and intervention programs focused to on male aggression toward a partner.

The nationally-representative sample included 530 men with an average age of 42. Roughly 78 percent were non-Hispanic white, 56 percent were educated beyond high school and 84 percent were employed.

Intimate partner violence was defined as pushing, grabbing, shoving, throwing something, slapping or hitting, kicking, biting, beating up, choking, burning or scalding, or threatening a partner with a knife or gun.

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Erin Tornatore, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

Adolescents and young adults who smoke marijuana frequently may attempt to manage negative moods by using the drug, according to a study in September’s Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

“Young people who use marijuana frequently experience an increase in negative affect in the 24 hours leading up to a use event, which lends strong support to an affect-regulation model in this population,” says the study’s lead author Lydia A. Shrier, M.D., M.P.H., of the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital.

She notes that using marijuana as a coping technique for negative affect may make it harder for people to stop using the drug.

“One of the challenges is that people often may use marijuana to feel better but may feel worse afterward,” she says. “Marijuana use can be associated with anxiety and other negative states. People feel bad, they use, and they might momentarily feel better, but then they feel worse. They don’t necessarily link feeling bad after using with the use itself, so it can become a vicious circle.”

For the study, Shrier and colleagues recruited 40 people, ages 15 to 24, who used marijuana at least twice a week, although their average was 9.7 times per week. They were trained to use a handheld computer that signaled them at a random time within three-hour intervals (four to six times per day) for two weeks. At each signal, participants were asked about their mood, companionship, perceived availability of marijuana, and recent marijuana use. Participants were also asked to report just before and just after any marijuana use. They completed more than 3,600 reports.

The researchers found that negative affect was significantly increased during the 24 hours before marijuana use compared with other periods. However, positive affect did not vary in the period before marijuana use compared with other times.

Also, neither the availability of marijuana nor the presence of friends modified the likelihood that chronic users would use marijuana following a period of negative affect.

The study is unique in that it collected data in real time to assess mood and marijuana use events. The study thus was able to identify mood that was occurring in the 24 hours before marijuana use and compared it with mood at other times, Shrier reports.

“There are a host of limitations with retrospective assessments, such as asking people ‘the last time you used marijuana, why did you use it?'” according to Shrier. “We weren’t asking people to predict anything or to recall anything—we were just asking them to give us reports about how they were feeling right now. We were able to put under a microscope the association between those feelings and subsequent marijuana use.”

Shrier says it could be beneficial for clinicians and counselors to help their patients identify patterns of negative affect and to implement alternative mood-regulation strategies to replace marijuana use.

References:

Shrier, L. A., Ross, C. S., & Blood, E. A. (September 2014). Momentary positive and negative affect preceding marijuana use events in youth. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 75(5), 781.

The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs is published by the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. It is the oldest substance-related journal published in the United States.

To learn about education and training opportunities for addiction counselors and others at the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, please visit AlcoholStudiesEd.rutgers.edu.

David Stauth, Oregon State University

Amid conflicting reports about the need for vitamin E and how much is enough, a new analysis published September 15 suggests that adequate levels of this essential micronutrient are especially critical for the very young, the elderly, and women who are or may become pregnant.

A lifelong proper intake of vitamin E is also important, researchers said, but often complicated by the fact that this nutrient is one of the most difficult to obtain through diet alone. Only a tiny fraction of Americans consume enough dietary vitamin E to meet the estimated average requirement.

Meanwhile, some critics have raised unnecessary alarms about excessive vitamin E intake while in fact the diet of most people is insufficient, said Maret Traber, a professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University, principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute and national expert on vitamin E.

“Many people believe that vitamin E deficiency never happens,” Traber said. “That isn’t true. It happens with an alarming frequency both in the United States and around the world. But some of the results of inadequate intake are less obvious, such as its impact on the nervous system and brain development, or general resistance to infection.”

Some of the best dietary sources of vitamin E – nuts, seeds, spinach, wheat germ and sunflower oil – don’t generally make the highlight list of an average American diet. One study found that people who are highly motivated to eat a proper diet consume almost enough vitamin E, but broader surveys show that 90 percent of men and 96 percent of women don’t consume the amount currently recommended, 15 milligrams per day for adults.

In a review of multiple studies, published in Advances in Nutrition, Traber outlined some of the recent findings about vitamin E. Among the most important are the significance of vitamin E during fetal development and in the first years of life; the correlation between adequate intake and dementia later in life; and the difficulty of evaluating vitamin E adequacy through measurement of blood levels alone.

Findings include:

– Inadequate vitamin E is associated with increased infection, anemia, stunting of growth and poor outcomes during pregnancy for both the infant and mother.

– Overt deficiency, especially in children, can cause neurological disorders, muscle deterioration, and even cardiomyopathy.

– Studies with experimental animals indicate that vitamin E is critically important to the early development of the nervous system in embryos, in part because it protects the function of omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, which is important for brain health. The most sensitive organs include the head, eye and brain.

– One study showed that higher vitamin E concentrations at birth were associated with improved cognitive function in two-year-old children.

– Findings about diseases that are increasing in the developed world, such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and diabetes, suggest that obesity does not necessarily reflect adequate micronutrient intake.

– Measures of circulating vitamin E levels in the blood often rise with age as lipid levels also increase, but do not prove an adequate delivery of vitamin E to tissues and organs.

– Vitamin E supplements do not seem to prevent Alzheimer’s disease occurrence, but have shown benefit in slowing its progression.

– A report in elderly humans showed that a lifelong dietary pattern that resulted in higher levels of vitamins B,C, D and E were associated with a larger brain size and higher cognitive function.

– Vitamin E protects critical fatty acids such as DHA throughout life, and one study showed that people in the top quartile of DHA concentrations had a 47 percent reduction in the risk of developing all-cause dementia.

“It’s important all of your life, but the most compelling evidence about vitamin E is about a 1000-day window that begins at conception,” Traber said. “Vitamin E is critical to neurologic and brain development that can only happen during that period. It’s not something you can make up for later.”

Traber said she recommends a supplement for all people with at least the estimated average requirement of vitamin E, but that it’s particularly important for all children through about age two; for women who are pregnant, nursing or may become pregnant; and for the elderly.

This research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health.

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