April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study from Ipsos Public Affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) reveals that dietary supplement use by US adults is more prevalent than previous studies from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) have indicated. Ipsos conducted five years of online market research to gather the data described in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

According to Annette Dickinson, Ph.D., a consultant for CRN, “This new review adds to the literature about usage patterns of dietary supplement users. The NHANES data is of course invaluable, but it only asks respondents about their dietary supplement usage over a 30-day period. The CRN/Ipsos data included regular, occasional and seasonal use throughout the year, which more realistically captures the full scope of dietary supplement utilization.”

Overall, the results revealed that supplement use, as reported by participants responding to CRN surveys in 2007-2011, ranged from 64 to 69 percent. The number of participants who reported “regular” use ranged from 48 to 53 percent, which was equivalent to the overall prevalence reported in NHANES. In the CRN surveys, regular users were asked whether they used a variety of products or only a multivitamin. Over the study period, the number of regular users who reported using a variety of supplements increased, while the number using only a multivitamin decreased. By the final year of the study, 2011, twice as many participants who identified themselves as regular supplement users said they used a variety of products than those who used only a multivitamin. The most common reasons given for using a variety of products were “overall health and wellness” and “to fill nutrient gaps in the diet.”

According to the findings of the CRN surveys, users of dietary supplements are more likely to adopt a variety of healthy habits than nonusers. This corresponds to previous research recently published in Nutrition Journal.

“What the data tells us,” said Judy Blatman, senior vice president of communications at CRN, “is that dietary supplement usage is a mainstream practice, and, contrary to some assertions, supplement users do not use these products as a license to slack off on eating right or exercising, but instead are health conscious individuals trying to do all the right things to be healthy. They are more likely than nonusers to try to eat a balanced diet, visit their doctor regularly, get a good night’s sleep, exercise regularly, and maintain a healthy weight.”

Dr. Dickinson observed, “The CRN data and NHANES data both indicate that half to two-thirds of American adults use dietary supplements and that their motivation comes from a desire to stay healthy. The evidence suggests that supplement use is viewed as one component of an overall wellness strategy.”

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
New research from Northwestern University has found that young fathers are especially at risk from depression, with those who are at around 25 years of age when they become dads and whom live in the same home as the child at greatest risk.
The new study, published Sunday in the journal Pediatrics, found that depressive symptoms increased on average by 68 percent over the first five years of fatherhood. It is the first study of its kind to identify when young fathers are at increased risk of depression.
The results of this longitudinal study are significant and could lead to more effective interventions and treatments for young men during their early fatherhood years, according to lead author of the study, Craig Garfield, MD, an associate professor in pediatrics and medical sciences at the university’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
“It’s not just new moms who need to be screened for depression, dads are at risk, too,” Garfield said in a statement. “Parental depression has a detrimental effect on kids, especially during those first key years of parent-infant attachment. We need to do a better job of helping young dads transition through that time period.”
Previous research had shown that depressed fathers used stricter punishments, read less and interacted less with their kids, and were more likely to neglect their children in the process. Children of depressed dads are also more likely to be at risk of poor language skills and have reading difficulties, as well as a rise in behavioral problems.
“We knew paternal depression existed and the detrimental effects it has on children, but we did not know where to focus our energy and our attention until this study,” Garfield said. “This is a wakeup call for anyone who knows a young man who has recently become a new father. Be aware of how he is doing during his transition into fatherhood. If he is feeling extreme anxiety or blues, or not able to enjoy things in life as he previously did, encourage him to get help.”
For the study, Garfield and colleagues collected data from 10,623 young men who were enrolled in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. It includes a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the US and follows them for more than 20 years into adulthood. The participants were followed through a series of waves over the course of the study, with depression scores taken during each wave using a survey – in the most recent wave, men were between ages 24 and 32 and 33 percent had become fathers.
The majority of these fathers lived in the same home as the child. However, in those fathers who did not live in the same home as the child, no dramatic increase in depressive symptom scores were picked up during early fatherhood years. In this subset, any depression symptoms scores were elevated before fatherhood and actually decreased during early fatherhood. Residential fathers had depressive symptom scores that were lower before fatherhood and then dramatically increasing after the birth of a child and into early fatherhood.
This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Columbia University Medical Center

Four-year study of VA hospitals also finds experienced nurses are most cost-effective

When it comes to the cost and quality of hospital care, nurse tenure and teamwork matters. Patients get the best care when they are treated in units that are staffed by nurses who have extensive experience in their current job, according to a study from researchers at Columbia University School of Nursing and Columbia Business School. The study was published in the current issue of the American Economics Journal: Applied Economics.

The review of more than 900,000 patient admissions over four years at hospitals in the Veterans Administration Healthcare System is the largest study of its kind to link nurse staffing to patient outcomes. The researchers analyzed payroll records for each nurse and medical records for each patient to see how changes in nurse staffing impacted the length of stay for patients. Because length of stay is increased by delays in delivery of appropriate care and errors in care delivery, a shorter length of stay indicates that the hospital provided better treatment. At the same time, a shorter length of stay also makes care more cost-effective. The study found that a one-year increase in the average tenure of RNs on a hospital unit was associated with a 1.3 percent decrease in length of stay.

“Reducing length of stay is the holy grail of hospital management because it means patients are getting higher quality, more cost-effective care,” says senior study author Patricia Stone, PhD, RN, FAAN, Centennial Professor of Health Policy at Columbia Nursing. “When the same team of nurses works together over the years, the nurses develop a rhythm and routines that lead to more efficient care. Hospitals need to keep this in mind when making staffing decisions – disrupting the balance of a team can make quality go down and costs go up.”

While many hospitals rely on temporary staffing agencies at least some of the time to fill RN vacancies, the study found that it’s more cost-effective for hospitals to pay staff RNs overtime to work more hours on their unit. RNs working overtime resulted in shorter lengths of stay than hours worked by nurses hired from staffing agencies, the study found.

Nursing skill also mattered, the study found. Length of stay decreased more in response to staffing by RNs than by unlicensed assistive personnel. Furthermore, the study showed that length of stay increased when a team of RNs was disrupted by the absence of an experienced member or the addition of a new member.

“This rigorous econometric analysis of nurse staffing shows that hospital chief executives should be considering policies to retain the most experienced nurses and create a work environment that encourages nurses to remain on their current units,” says the senior economist on the study team, Ann Bartel, PhD, Merrill Lynch Professor of Workforce Transformation at Columbia Business School.

The researchers used the VA’s Personnel and Accounting Integrated Data for information on each nurse’s age, education, prior experience, VA hire date, start date at the current VA facility, and start date for the current unit at that facility. To assess patient outcomes, the researchers used the VA’s Patient Treatment File for information on each patient including dates of admission and discharge for each unit and for the overall hospitalization, as well as age and diagnoses. The final sample accounts for 90 percent of all acute care stays in the VA system for the fiscal years 2003 to 2006.

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[ Watch the Video: Behind The Research To Engineer Human Vaginal Organs ]
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome is a rare genetic disorder in which a female’s vagina and uterus are underdeveloped or missing. A new technique has now allowed doctors to implant laboratory-grown vaginas into teenage girls, bringing some sense of normalcy into their lives, according to a new report in The Lancet journal.
The laboratory-grown organs were generated using the patients’ own cells – eliminating the complications associated with organ transplants. The team that conducted the procedure said their method could also be used to treat patients with vaginal cancer or injuries.
“This pilot study is the first to demonstrate that vaginal organs can be constructed in the lab and used successfully in humans,” said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “This may represent a new option for patients who require vaginal reconstructive surgeries. In addition, this study is one more example of how regenerative medicine strategies can be applied to a variety of tissues and organs.”
Operations described in the study were performed between June 2005 and October 2008 on girls who were between 13 and 18 years old at the time. Follow-up analyses revealed that the organs were functioning normally up to eight years after the surgeries.
“Tissue biopsies, MRI scans and internal exams using magnification all showed that the engineered vaginas were similar in makeup and function to native tissue,” said study author Atlantida-Raya Rivera, director of the HIMFG Tissue Engineering Laboratory at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City.
The artificial organs were made by using muscle and epithelial tissue derived from a small biopsy of each patient’s external genital area. Cells were then taken from the tissues, expanded and then put on a biomaterial that was formed into a vagina-like design. The scaffolds were customized to fit each patient individually.
Next, the specialists developed a space in the patient’s pelvis and attached the scaffold to internal structures. Once implanted in the body, cell-seeded scaffolds develop surrounding nerves and blood vessels while the cells increase in size and form tissue. Concurrently, the scaffolding material is absorbed by the body as the cells set down materials to form a lasting replacement structure.
A follow-up analysis revealed the border between native tissue and the engineered segments was impossible to differentiate and the scaffold had developed into tri-layer vaginal tissue, the researchers said.
Conventional treatments for MRKH include dilation of pre-existing tissue or reconstructive surgical treatment to produce new vaginal cells. However, these replacements often don’t have a normal muscle layer, leading to the narrowing or contracting of the vagina. The scientists claimed that with these treatments the complication rate can be as much as 75 percent in pediatric patients, with the requirement of vaginal dilation due to narrowing being the most standard issue.
The newly-described work is based on previous research by the same team surrounding lab-generated vaginas in mice and rabbits. In these studies, researchers found the significance of using cells on the scaffolds. The team used a comparable procedure for replacement bladders that were implanted in nine children starting in 1998.
The researchers said they plan to determine the overall effectiveness of their newly-developed procedure.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Some nanoparticles commonly added to thousands of consumer products can significantly damage DNA, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

These products, which include cosmetics, sunscreens, clothing and other common items, contain nanoparticles added by manufacturers to, among other things, improve texture, kill microbes, or enhance shelf life.

But the current study suggests these tiny particles can be toxic to cells.

For instance, the researchers found that zinc oxide nanoparticles, often used in sunscreen to block ultraviolet rays, significantly damages DNA. Nanoscale silver, which has been added to toys, toothpaste, clothing, and other products for its antimicrobial properties, also produces extensive DNA damage.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require manufacturers to test nanoscale additives for a given material if the bulk material has already been shown to be safe. However, there is evidence that the nanoparticle form of some of these materials may not be safe due to their extremely small size and differences in physical, chemical, and biological properties. They can also penetrate cells more easily.

“The problem is that if a nanoparticle is made out of something that’s deemed a safe material, it’s typically considered safe. There are people out there who are concerned, but it’s a tough battle because once these things go into production, it’s very hard to undo,” said Bevin Engelward, professor of biological engineering at MIT and lead researcher of the current study.

Engleward and associate professor Philip Demokritou, director of HSPH’s Center for Nanotechnology and Nanotoxicology, used a high-speed screening technology to analyze the DNA damage caused by nanoparticles, allowing them to study the potential hazards at a much faster rate and larger scale than previously possible.

The researchers focused on five types of engineered nanoparticles — silver, zinc oxide, iron oxide, cerium oxide, and silicon dioxide (also known as amorphous silica) — that are used industrially. Some of these nanomaterials can produce free radicals called reactive oxygen species, which can alter DNA. Furthermore, once these particles get into the body, they may accumulate in tissues, causing even more damage.

“It’s essential to monitor and evaluate the toxicity or the hazards that these materials may possess. There are so many variations of these materials, in different sizes and shapes, and they’re being incorporated into so many products,” said Christa Watson, a postdoc at HSPH and the lead author of a paper about the study published in the journal ACS Nano.

“This toxicological screening platform gives us a standardized method to assess the engineered nanomaterials that are being developed and used at present,” she said.

The researchers said they hope the screening technology could also be used to help design safer forms of nanoparticles, and are already working with commercial partners to create safer UV-blocking nanoparticles.

Until now, most studies of nanoparticle toxicity have focused on cell survival after exposure, while few have examined genotoxicity – the ability to damage DNA. Although genotoxicity may not necessarily kill a cell, it can lead to cancerous mutations if the DNA damage is not repaired.

A common way to study DNA damage in cells is something called a “comet assay,” named for the comet-shaped smear that damaged DNA forms during the test. The procedure is based on gel electrophoresis, a test in which an electric field is applied to DNA placed in a matrix, forcing the DNA to move across the gel. During electrophoresis, damaged DNA travels farther than undamaged DNA, producing a comet-tail shape. Measuring how far the DNA can travel reveals how much DNA damage has taken place.

However, this procedure, while highly sensitive, is very tedious. In 2010, Engelward and MIT professor Sangeeta Bhatia developed a much more rapid version of the comet assay.  Dubbed the CometChip, it uses microfabrication technology that allows single cells to be trapped in tiny microwells within the matrix, enabling as many as 1,000 samples to be processed in the time it formerly took to process just 30 samples. This allows researchers to test dozens of experimental conditions at a time, which can be analyzed using imaging software.

In the current study, the researchers used the CometChip to test the nanoparticles’ effects on two types of cells that are commonly used for toxicity studies – lymphoblastoids, a type of human blood cell, and an immortalized line of Chinese hamster ovary cells.

The results showed that zinc oxide and silver produced the greatest DNA damage in both cell lines. At a concentration of 10 micrograms per milliliter — a dose not high enough to kill all of the cells — these generated a large number of single-stranded DNA breaks, the study found.

Silicon dioxide, which is commonly added during food and drug production, generated very low levels of DNA damage, while iron oxide and cerium oxide also showed low genotoxicity.

The researchers said additional studies are needed to determine how much exposure to metal oxide nanoparticles is safe for humans.

“The biggest challenge we have as people concerned with exposure biology is deciding when is something dangerous and when is it not, based on the dose level. At low levels, probably these things are fine,” Engelward said. “The question is: At what level does it become problematic, and how long will it take for us to notice?”

One of the greatest areas of concern is nanoparticle exposure among children and fetuses, who may be more vulnerable to DNA damage because their cells divide more frequently than adult cells do. Occupational exposure to nanoparticles is also an important area of concern.

The researchers said the most common routes that engineered nanoparticles follow into the body are through the skin, lungs, and stomach. They are currently investigating nanoparticle genotoxicity on those types of cells, along with studying the effects of other engineered nanoparticles.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new technique to predict the toxicity of a MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection from its DNA sequence has been developed by a team of researchers led by the Universities of Bath and Exeter.

MRSA remains a public health concern among doctors who are trying to find appropriate treatment options. It and other bacterial pathogens are able to cause disease partially because of toxicity, which is the bacterium’s ability to damage the host’s tissue. The new findings, published in Genome Research, could potentially lead to personalizing the treatment of individual MRSA infections.

Dr. Ruth Massey from the University of Bath’s Department of Biology & Biochemistry said, “the standard approach has always been to focus on a single or small number of genes and proteins.” This method has had limited success because toxicity is a complex trait encoded by many genetic loci.

The research team studied the whole genome sequences from 91 MRSA isolates. This allowed them to identify 125 genetic mutations that contributed to an individual isolate being either high-or low-toxicity. One surprising find was that isolates from the same clone varied hugely in toxicity.

All of the highly toxic strains shared a common genetic signature that, once recognized, allowed the researchers to predict which isolates were the most toxic and therefore would cause severe disease.

Massey explained, “In the future as the cost and speed of genome sequencing decreases, it will become feasible to take a swab from a patient, sequence the genome of the bacterium causing the infection, and then use this to predict the toxicity of the infection.”

“Clinicians will then be able to tailor the treatment to the specific infection – this technique can tell them which combination of antibiotics will be most effective, or tell them which drugs to administer to dampen the toxicity of the infection,” she continued. “The standard approach in studying MRSA’s toxicity has always been to focus on a single or small number of genes and proteins. However, this has not always been successful because toxicity is a complex trait encoded by many genetic loci. By looking at whole genome sequences we’ve been able to identify a number of new loci involved in toxicity.

“This work represents a step change in how genome sequencing can help us diagnose and control infections. It has also increased our understanding of how this pathogen causes severe infections by identifying novel regulators of toxicity.”

The findings could provide critical insight into the virulence of MRSA, according to Dr. Mario Recker, Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics at the University of Exeter. He said, “We know that many bacterial pathogens, such as MRSA, are so virulent in part because of their ability to damage a host’s tissue.”

“By using whole genome sequences we have been able to predict which would be most toxic, and so therefore would be more likely to cause severe disease. Having identified these novel genetic loci will also shed more light upon the complex machinery regulating bacterial virulence.”

The team is continuing their research by applying their methodology to other bacterial pathogens such as Streptococcus pneumonia, a leading cause of deaths in infants and children under the age of five.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Muscle atrophy, or wasting, is a problem caused by aging and a variety of illnesses and injuries. The surprising answer to this according to a new study from the University of Iowa might be green tomatoes.

The research team, led by Christopher Adams, M.D., Ph.D., UI associate professor of internal medicine and molecular physiology and biophysics, used a screening method that previously helped them identify a compound in apple peel as a muscle-boosting agent. The team has now discovered that tomatidine, a compound found in green tomatoes, is even more potent than apple peel for building muscle and protecting against muscle atrophy.

Muscle atrophy can be caused by such conditions as cancer, heart failure, or orthopedic injuries. People suffering from atrophy become weak and fatigued, their physical activity and quality of life become impaired, and they are predisposed to falls and fractures. More than 50 million Americans are affected annually, including 30 million over the age of 60. People with muscle atrophy are often forced into nursing homes and rehab facilities.

“Muscle atrophy causes many problems for people, their families, and the health care system in general,” said Adams. “However, we lack an effective way to prevent or treat it. Exercise certainly helps, but it’s not enough and not very possible for many people who are ill or injured.”

Adams and his team started the study trying to find a small molecule compound that might be useful in treating muscle atrophy. Using a system biology tool known as the Connectivity Map — developed at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University — the team focused in on tomatidine. The gene expression changes generated by tomatidine are essentially the opposite of the changes that happen in muscle cells when they are affected by muscle atrophy.

“That result was important because we are looking for something that can help people,” Adams said.

Next, the team began to feed a diet of tomatidine to mice, finding that healthy mice on this diet grew bigger muscles, became stronger and could exercise longer. More importantly, tomatidine was found to prevent and treat muscle atrophy.

The team was surprised to find that despite the larger muscles of mice fed tomatidine, the overall body weight of the mice did not change due to a loss of fat. This suggests that tomatidine might have applications for treating obesity, as well.

One of the most attractive qualities of tomatidine for treating muscle atrophy is that it is a natural compound, produced when alpha-tomatine, which is found in tomato plants and in green tomatoes in particular, is digested in the gut.

“Green tomatoes are safe to eat in moderation. But we don’t know how many green tomatoes a person would need to eat to get a dose of tomatidine similar to what we gave the mice. We also don’t know if such a dose of tomatidine will be safe for people, or if it will have the same effect in people as it does in mice,” Adams added. “We are working hard to answer these questions, hoping to find relatively simple ways that people can maintain muscle mass and function, or if necessary, regain it.”

This same research strategy helped the team to identify ursolic acid from apple peels as a compound that promotes muscle growth.

“Tomatidine is significantly more potent than ursolic acid and appears to have a different mechanism of action. This is a step in the right direction,” Adams said. “We are now very interested in the possibility that several food-based natural compounds such as tomatidine and ursolic acid might someday be combined into science-based supplements, or even simply incorporated into everyday foods to make them healthier.”

A biotech company called Emmyon has been formed by Adams and his colleagues to accelerate this research and translate it to people. To promote the development of strategies for preserving muscle mass and function during the aging process, Emmyon recently received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Tomatidine and ursolic acid are also being used by the company as natural leads to create new therapies targeting muscle atrophy and obesity.

The results were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Animals regularly make the rounds at children’s hospitals and other care facilities in an attempt to brighten the days and raise the spirits of the patients, but is there any scientific evidence that such visits are actually beneficial?

Based on a global review of studies analyzing the impact of “animal interventions” in healthcare settings for children conducted by researchers at the University of Adelaide, the answer to that question is no – there is no proof that these visits are beneficial for either the patients or the animals themselves.

Lead author Professor Anna Chur-Hansen, the head of the university’s school of psychology, and her colleagues report that there is a significant gap in scientific knowledge on the benefits of animals for sick youngsters. Their findings appear in a recent edition of the journal Anthrozoös.

“If you speak with most people they’ll say it’s a good thing for animals such as dogs and cats to be taken into hospitals, so that patients can derive some form of therapeutic effect from their association with the animals,” Chur-Hansen explained in a statement Wednesday.

She said that ever since the term “human-animal bond” was first coined during the 1980s, people have just assumed that animals could provide people in healthcare or palliative care with an enhanced sense of wellbeing. This assumption has given rise to multiple animal support organizations designed to assist patients.

“However, the scientific world has done such a poor job of researching this field that no-one can truly say what the benefits are, how they work, or whether such a situation causes problems or distress – or the exact opposite – for the animals themselves,” the professor noted.

“The assumption is that these programs are beneficial – and from the little evidence available they are likely to be – but no-one has yet fully assessed the range of issues associated with the human-animal bond in the healthcare setting,” Chur-Hansen added.

According to the study authors, there are several questions surrounding the practice of animal-hospital visits. For instance, is it better for patients to receive visits from their own pets or from someone else’s pet? Are there any risks associated with having animals visit sick kids on site? Does it raise any disease-control issues? What effect do these types of visits have on the creatures themselves, and are the visits inappropriate for some cultures?

“Given the limited information around AAI [animal-assisted interventions] for hospitalized children, including the risks and benefits and the limitations of existing studies, future research is required,” they wrote. “This should take into account the methodological considerations discussed in this review, so that our knowledge base can be enhanced and if and where appropriate, such interventions be implemented and rigorously evaluated.”

“Our hope is that by better understanding what’s really happening, we’ll be able to develop guidelines that will lead to best practice – guidelines that could be used by animal support groups and healthcare professionals alike,” added Chur-Hansen.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Discussions about eating disorders and body image usually revolve around women and a new study from the University of Oxford in England has found that young men are not receiving as much attention as they should regarding these issues.

Published in the open-access journal BMJ Open, the new study revealed that young men are underdiagnosed and undertreated for eating disorders – regardless of the fact that they only comprised about 1-in-4 cases.

In the study, researchers talked with 39 individuals between the ages of 16 and 25 about eating disorders such as binge eating, bulimia nervosa and anorexia. All 10 male participants took some time to understand that their activities and behaviors were possible indications of an eating disorder. These behaviors included going days without eating; purging; and obsessing over weight and exercise.

Male participants cited gender stigma as one of the main reasons why it took them so long to see the potential signs. One male participant said eating disorders were a condition for “fragile teenage girls,” while another said bulimia and anorexia were “something girls got.”

Also, friends and family did not see their behaviors as symptoms of an eating disorder, chalking participants unhealthy behavior up to personal choice. The male volunteers said only a medical incident or crisis convinced them that something was wrong.

After delaying treatment, then finally seeking it – the males said their treatment experiences were mixed. They said they felt like low priority patients, found little male-specific documentation and in one case, told by the doctor “to man up.”

“I did start Googling it and I came across eventually on Facebook the ‘Men have eating disorders too’, as well, and there was a couple of other websites that I looked at,” one male participant told the researchers. “But there’s still in my opinion there’s still no real information of what you do or where you go.”

“Men with eating disorders are underdiagnosed, undertreated and under researched,” the study authors wrote. “Our findings suggest that men may experience particular problems in recognizing that they may have an eating disorder as a result of the continuing cultural construction of eating disorders as uniquely or predominantly a female problem.”

The researchers added that gender bias on this issue has “also been embedded in clinical practice,” adding that “early detection is imperative” in treating these disorders.

Leanne Thorndyke, of the UK eating-disorder charity Beat, told BBC News that a larger and larger section of society is feeling pressure regarding their body image.

“The pressures on body weight and body image are affecting a much wider range of people, which obviously includes men,” she said. “There is more pressure on men from magazines with celebrities and male models to have the ‘ideal’ body image.”

“Boys and men tend to want to be bigger and more muscular and toned, which is a different ideal to women,” she continued, adding that in modern society, we are “bombarded by images every day from all angles, something that just wasn’t there only a few years ago.”

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Grandmothers can help prevent cognitive decay and reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by taking care of their grandchildren one day per week, according to new research published online Tuesday in the journal Menopause.

However, taking care of their grandchildren five days per week or more actually had some negative impact on the cognitive function of 186 Australian women between the ages of 57 and 68 involved in the study.

“We know that older women who are socially engaged have better cognitive function and a lower risk of developing dementia later, but too much of a good thing just might be bad,” North American Menopause Society (NAMS) executive director Dr. Margery Gass explained in a statement.

The women took three different tests of mental sharpness, and also told the researchers whether or not they felt as if their own children had been especially demanding of them over the past year. Of the 120 grandmothers in the study, those who cared for their grandchildren one day per week performed best on two of those three tests.

However, much to the authors’ surprise, grandmothers who cared for their grandchildren for at least five days per week did significantly worse on a test that measured those women’s mental processing speed and working memory. The investigation also revealed that the more time grandmothers spent taking care of grandkids, they more they felt that their own children had been more demanding of them, suggesting that mood could be a factor in this finding.

The women’s cognitive abilities were assessed using the Symbol-Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), California Verbal Learning Test, and Tower of London, and the authors say their findings could indicate that highly frequent grandparenting predicts lower mental performance. They are planning to follow up with additional research.

While previous studies have looked at the link between cognitive sharpness and social engagement, this is the first time that experts have looked at grandmothering. Since caring for grandchildren is “such an important and common social role for postmenopausal women,” Dr. Gass said that it was important “to know more about its effects on their future health.” She added that this new study was “a good start” towards accomplishing that goal.

Last August, researchers from Case Western Reserve University reported that grandmothers who were their household’s primary caregivers were more likely to suffer from depression. However, being a full-time caregiver had no negative impact on their resourcefulness or willingness to receive assistance.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Globally, over one million men a year have prostate tissue samples taken to check for signs of prostate cancer. This procedure can involve up to 12 large biopsy needles and has been called barbaric by Mayo Graduate School of Medicine Professor Matthew Gettman. As well, it reveals that 70 percent of the men undergoing the procedure do not have cancer. Beyond being unnecessarily painful and risky for the patient, the procedure is prohibitively costly—approximately $2,500 USD.

A team of researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) collaborated with the Academic Medical Center (AMC) Amsterdam to create a patient-friendly examination which has the potential to drastically reduce the need for biopsies. The findings will be presented later this month at the European Association of Urology Congress in Stockholm.

Every year, prostate cancer kills hundreds of thousands of men worldwide. At the beginning of any prostate cancer exam, clinicians will measure the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) value in the blood. If the PSA is high, samples of prostate tissue will be collected through the anus at six to sixteen points for pathological testing. Despite high PSA values, 70 percent of those biopsied show no signs of cancer.

This doesn’t mean a high PSA level is a false alarm, however. It is possible the biopsy was taken at the wrong site.

Among those with negative results, 30 percent are later found to have cancer. Among those patients who have cancerous results from the biopsy, the exact size of the tumor remains unknown. For many of these, subsequent surgery shows that the tumors were so small that surgery was not required. The biopsy procedure leads to inflammations in up to five percent of the patients.

Massimo Mischi, TU/e Associate Professor of Engineering, led the research team. They have developed a new technique for determining whether and where men have prostate cancer using existing ultrasound scanners. Ultrasound scanners use sound waves to create images of the body’s internal organs, but they are usually unable to show the differences between healthy and tumor tissue. Tumor tissues produces a large number of small blood vessels with a characteristic pattern in order to grow, and Mischi’s team used this pattern to make the tumor visible.

A single injection of contrast medium that contains tiny bubbles can be seen by the ultrasound scanner, right down to the smallest blood vessels. The computer uses advanced image-analysis techniques that can recognize the characteristic blood vessel pattern to generate an image showing the location of the tumor. The exam takes a total of one minute, and results are available moments later—without costly biopsy analysis.

The team compared the results of their “tumor images” with the actual prostates removed by surgery from 24 patients from three hospitals in the Netherlands. The comparison confirmed that the locations and sizes of the tumors were well indicated by the images.

TU/e has patented the new technique, which can help prevent the need for biopsies for millions of men around the world. For a large portion of the 70 percent of men who currently have biopsies performed unnecessarily, the images will eliminate the need all together. For the 30 percent who are cancerous, the need for biopsies will be lessened because the location and size of the tumor will already be clear. The researchers hope that the need for the painful and costly biopsies will be eliminated all together once sufficient clinical practice has proven the imaging method.

Next year, AMC Amsterdam and the two other participating Dutch hospitals will conduct a major comparative study between the old and new methods. Both methods will be used on at least 250 men, and if all goes well, the new technique will be made available in 2016 to more patients. The introduction of the new method will be quite simple, as most hospitals already have the ultrasound equipment necessary.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects more than 176 million women and girls worldwide, according to the Endometriosis Foundation of America. Despite being one of the most common gynecological disorders, there is no definitive consensus on the cause of endometriosis. To add insult to injury, some women who have endometriosis are also predisposed to ovarian cancer.

A new study from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) and Magee-Womens Research Institute (MWRI) reveals that genetic screening could someday help clinicians to know which women are most at risk.

The research team will present their results on the first comprehensive immune gene profile exploring endometriosis and cancer on Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2014.

“A small subset of women with endometriosis go on to develop ovarian cancer, but doctors have no clinical way to predict which women,” said Anda Vlad, MD, PhD, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at MWRI. “If further studies show that the genetic pathway we uncovered is indicative of future cancer development, then doctors will know to more closely monitor certain women and perhaps take active preventative measures, such as immune therapy.”

Endometriosis is a painful condition that is often misdiagnosed for years before some form of correct treatment is attempted. As redOrbit reported in February, it is called a disease of theories, because so little is known about how it works, or who it will strike.

“We know there is a genetic component, we know there is an environmental component, and we know there is an inflammatory component. But it’s very difficult to say for individual patients what particular sequence of events led to particular symptoms,” Michael Beste, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, said.

It is the genetic component, and its association to cancer, that Vlad and her team are focused on finding.

Vlad and her team screened tissue samples from women with benign endometriosis, women with precancerous lesions and women with endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer. This allowed the researchers to identify the complement pathway, which refers to a series of protein interactions that trigger an amplified immune response, as the most prominent immune pathway that is activated in both endometriosis and endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer.

“If, as our study indicates, a problem with the immune system facilitates cancer growth through chronic activation of the complement pathway, then perhaps we can find ways to change that and more effectively prime immune cells to fight early cancer, while controlling the complement pathway,” said Swati Maruti Suryawanshi, PhD, a post-doctoral research fellow at MWRI.

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The next time you go shopping you may want to stay out of the cereal aisle if you have your kids in tow. A new study from Cornell University has discovered that cereals marketed to children are oriented about 23 inches (on average) off the ground and have spokes-characters that draw the attention of kids with their gazes.

Researchers Aner Tal and Brian Wansink from Cornell Food and Brand Lab worked with Aviva Musicus from Yale to determine if spokes-characters on cereal make eye contact and if the eye contact influences a child’s choice.

For the study, published in the Journal of Environment and Behavior, the team first conducted an experiment to determine whether the angle of the gaze in spokes-characters on children’s cereal was such that it would create eye contact with most children. The researchers tested 65 cereal brands in 10 different grocery stores in New York and Connecticut and found that of 86 different spokes-characters evaluated, 57 were marketed to children with a downward gaze at an angle of 9.67 degrees.

In contrast, cereals geared toward adult shoppers were placed higher on the store shelves and had spokes-characters that most often looked straight forward or slightly upward at a 0.43-degree angle.

In the stores studied, most of the cereal brands geared toward children were placed on the bottom two shelves (avg. height of 20.21 inches), while the top two shelves were reserved for adult cereals (avg. height of 53.99 inches), a finding that correlates with previous studies on cereal placement.

In a second experiment, the researchers examined the extent to which eye contact influences feelings of trust and connection with the brand. The team recruited 63 individuals from a private northeastern university who were asked to view a box of Trix cereal and rate their feelings of trust and connection to that brand. The participants were randomly shown one of two versions of the spokes-character on the cereal: one with the rabbit looking straight ahead at the viewer and the other with the rabbit looking down.

In the cereal box with the rabbit that made eye contact, the team found that brand trust was 16 percent higher and connection to the brand was 28 percent higher. Also, the participants reported that they liked Trix better, compared to other cereals, when the rabbit made eye contact. This finding indicates that cereal brands with spokes-characters that make eye contact may increase positive feelings toward the product and encourage children and, as seen in this study, adults to buy that particular brand.

The findings in this study indicate that spokes-characters that make eye contact are part of a package design that can be used as a powerful advertising tool to influence consumer habits toward a brand.

“There are some cool things happening in grocery stores, many based on psychology, that impact how and what people purchase,” said Tal in a statement.

“If you are a parent who does not want your kids to go ‘cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,’ avoid taking them down the cereal aisle. If you are a cereal company looking to market healthy cereals to kids, use spokes-characters that make eye contact with children to create brand loyalty,” said Wansink in a statement.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

In a move that could replace allergy shots for some men and women, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Wednesday that it had approved the first tablet for the treatment of hay fever symptoms.

The product is known as Oralair, according to USA Today’s Kim Painter, it will only work against certain types of grass pollens and will take multiple months before it starts working – meaning that it will not help people with other types of allergies and will not come in time to provide relief for early symptoms this summer.

Oralair is manufactured by a French pharmaceutical company Stallergenes and is the first under-the-tongue (sublingual) allergen extract to be approved in the US, the FDA said. It contains a cocktail of freeze-dried pollen extracts from five different types of grasses (Kentucky Blue Grass, Orchard, Perennial Rye, Sweet Vernal and Timothy) and can be used to treat allergic rhinitis with or without eye inflammation.

The medication is a once-daily, rapidly-dissolving tablet that is to be started four months prior to the grass pollen season and continued throughout the entire hay fever season, the American federal health agency added. The first dose is to be administered at a healthcare provider’s office, so that medical professionals can monitor patients for a period of 30 minutes to monitor for potential side effects. Subsequent doses can be taken at home.

“While there is no cure for grass pollen allergies, they can be managed through treatment and avoiding exposure to the pollen,” said Dr. Karen Midthun, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “The approval of Oralair provides an alternative to allergy shots that must be given in a health care provider’s office. Oralair can be taken at home after the first administration.”

Studies evaluating the safety and effectiveness of Oralair were conducted both in the US and Europe and involved about 2,500 people. Some of those patients received the new allergy tablet, while others were given a placebo.

Patients then reported their symptoms and additional medications required to make it through the grass pollen season. During the course of one season, patients who took Oralair experienced a 16 to 30 percent reduction in symptoms and the need for additional medications compared to those who received placebos, the FDA reported.

Dr. James Li, chairman of the division of allergy and immunology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told Painter that the success rate was slightly lower than allergy shots in studies, though the two treatment programs have yet to be directly compared to each other.

“The pills can cause some side effects: In studies, one third of patients developed itchy mouths and some reported throat irritation,” Painter said. She also notes that experts believe the fact that the pill is only effective against one type of allergy is a drawback, as most patients suffering from these types of symptoms are also affected by other types of pollens and environmental allergens such as pet dander and dust mites.

The Associated Press (AP) reports that Oralair has been approved for patients between the ages of 10 and 65. The medication was first approved for use in Europe six years ago, and is currently available in 31 different countries, including Australia, Canada and Russia.

[ Watch the Video: Fast Food Ads For Healthier Kids Meals Don’t Send Right Message ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Fast food companies have been making a push over the past few years to include healthier options for their kids’ meals, but that message may not be getting across – especially to the kids themselves.

A new study published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that about one-half to one-third of children do not properly identify the healthier milk and apple slices options shown in freeze-framed television advertisements.

In one ad image used in the study, Burger King apple slices were depicted inside an oval container typically used for french fries – and identified as such by kids 90 percent of the time.

“And I see some…are those apples slices?” one child asked the researcher showing her the images.

“I can’t tell you…you just have to say what you think they are,” the researchers replied.

“I think they’re french fries,” the child said.

“Burger King’s depiction of apple slices as ‘Fresh Apple Fries’ was misleading to children in the target age range,” said study author Dr. James Sargent, co-director of the Cancer Control Research Program at Dartmouth College’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center. “The advertisement would be deceptive by industry standards, yet their self-regulation bodies took no action to address the misleading depiction.”

The study team said their research, which included 99 children ages 3 to 7 years old, was designed to look at the perception of McDonald’s and Burger King campaigns to advertise apples and milk in their kids’ meals. The team looked at ads from these companies targeted at children from July 2010 through June 2011. In this study, scientists used “freeze frames” of Kids Meals displayed in TV ads that were frequently shown on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and other cable channels that feature children’s programming.

Of the four healthy food depictions examined, only McDonald’s display of apple slices was acknowledged as an apple product by a large majority of the target audience, 52 percent, despite age of the child. The scientists discovered that the other three representations were simply examples of poor communication from the company.

The new study builds on an earlier analysis from the same team, which discovered that McDonald’s and Burger King children’s advertising highlighted free gifts like toys to cultivate children’s brand awareness for a particular fast food restaurant. These campaigns are developed despite self-imposed directions by the fast food industry designed to deter this practice.

While the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission have critical regulatory roles over food labels and advertising, the Better Business Bureau runs a self-regulatory program for children’s advertising. Two distinct programs offer directions to make children’s advertising centered on the food, not toys – and, more explicitly, on foods with significant nutritional value.

“The fast food industry spends somewhere between $100 to 200 million dollars a year on advertising to children, ads that aim to develop brand awareness and preferences in children who can’t even read or write, much less think critically about what is being presented.” Sargent said.

Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Antimicrobial household products are widely used, but scientists are wondering if they are doing more harm than good. A new study from Arizona State University has assembled evidence suggesting that antimicrobial use brings consumers no measurable benefit.

Even more troubling, according to recent research, the lax regulation of these products has caused toxic compounds to spread throughout wildlife and human populations contaminating the environment.

After leaving the issue unfinished for 40 years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reevaluated the safety of additives in the most common antibacterial household products. Specifically, the FDA studied triclocarban (TCC) and triclosan (TCS), which are chemicals commonly used to make soaps and toothpaste.

Rolf Halden, who has tracked the topic for years, said, “It’s a big deal that the FDA is taking this on.” Halden is the director of the Center for Environmental Security, which is a joint research hub created with support from Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, Fulton Schools of Engineering and the Security and Defense Systems Initiative.

To address safety and environmental concerns, the FDA has stipulated that manufactures demonstrate the safety of their products within one year or they must completely remove them from products. Until June, the FDA rule is open for public comment.

“The FDA’s move is a prudent and important step toward preserving the efficacy of clinically important antibiotics, preventing unnecessary exposure of the general population to endocrine disrupting and potentially harmful chemicals, and throttling back the increasing release and accumulation of antimicrobials in the environment,” said Halden.

In 1957 TCC was introduced to the market and not long after in 1964 TCS began to be distributed.

“This multi-billion dollar market has saturated supermarkets worldwide and vastly accelerated the consumption of antimicrobial products,” wrote Halden in a paper published in Environmental Science & Technology. “Today, TCC and more so TCS can be found in soaps, detergents, clothing, carpets, paints, plastics, toys, school supplies, and even in pacifiers, with over 2,000 antimicrobial products available.”

When used properly in healthcare settings, antimicrobial soaps are an effective product. Surprisingly, these same products when used in households are ineffective because most people do not use them as they were intended. In order to be effective, public health officials recommend that a person sing a verse of “Row, row, row your boat” for about 20-30 seconds while scrubbing hands with the soap.

Halden estimated that on average consumers wash their hands for a short and ineffective 6 seconds. All this accomplishes is spreading TCC and TCS throughout the environment and exposing wildlife to its harmful effects.

Halden has designed sophisticated detection methods using modern research technology to study the consequences of antimicrobial use on human health and the environment. Halden’s research has added to the increasing amount of worldwide scientific evidence regarding the damage of TCC and TCS.

The research team discovered the following facts about antimicrobial compounds:

TCC and TCS are responsible for 60 percent of all the drugs detected in wastewater treatment plant sludge. Since the chemicals do not easily degrade, TCC and TCS have persisted in US sediments for more than 50 years. Both chemicals have endocrine and immunotoxic effects and contaminate lakes and rivers which cause a lifetime of exposure to aquatic organisms.

Approximately 310,000 lbs/yr of TCC and 125,000 lbs/yr of TCS are applied inadvertently on US agricultural land as a result of sewage sludge disposal, which presents a pathway for the contamination of food with antimicrobials and drug resistant microbes. In commercial grade TCS traces of toxic dioxin are present and additional dioxins are known to form upon disposal down the drain and during sludge incineration.

These facts are merely the environmental and wildlife consequences. Dangers to human health include increasing the development of drug-resistant infections as well as altering hormone levels in developing children which can possibly lead to the early onset of puberty.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the chemicals are found in the urine of three-quarters of Americans. Even more troubling, an industry funded study detected TCS in the breast milk of 97 percent of US women tested.

Regulating TCS and TCC in the United States has been challenging. One single umbrella guidance document from 1974 attempted to regulate all the uses and best practices. This document was known as the topical antimicrobial drug products Over-the-Counter (OTC) Drug Monograph of the FDA.

Although 2014 marks the 40th anniversary of the OTC FDA issuance, this document has still not been finalized to protect consumers from the toxic effects of TCC and TCS.

According to Halden, the solution to solve current antimicrobial issues is ultimately innovation. He envisions using ‘green’ next generation antimicrobials. These new types of antimicrobials offer broad-spectrum effectiveness against pathogens but would possess a low toxicity as well as lower the potential for developing antimicrobial drug resistance. In addition, it would be important that they rapidly degrade in wastewater treatment plants in order to limit unwanted exposure and contamination of the environment.

Development of such a product has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar and highly competitive industry.

“Sustainability considerations already are informing the design of green pharmaceuticals and adopting this approach for antimicrobials promises to yield important benefits to people and the planet,” he concludes in the ES&T paper.

In the interim, Halden will travel to Washington, D.C. to exchange information with scientists and lawmakers at the FDA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Despite concerns that they would lose customers if forced to provide dietary information to customers, chain restaurants are actually more likely to be frequented by customers if they disclose the nutritional content of their products and offer healthier menu choices, according to a recently published study.

Researchers from Penn State University and the University of Tennessee recruited 277 frequent restaurant patrons and presented them with a variety of different scenarios to determine whether or not those individuals preferred access to nutritional information and/or healthier food options. Their findings were published in last month’s edition of the International Journal of Hospitality Management.

Each participant was asked to read sample menus that presented each possible scenario. Next, they answered a series of questions related to how they perceived the restaurant’s attitude and corporate social responsibility, as well as their own willingness to eat at each establishment and how health conscious they tended to be.

The study authors discovered that when participants were provided with a scenario in which a restaurant offered nutritional information and included healthier food products on its menu, those people were significantly more likely to view that restaurant as a socially responsible entity.

“The Affordable Care Act has mandated that chain restaurants – those with more than 20 restaurants – provide nutrition information to customers,” said associate professor of hospitality management David Cranage. “Many restaurants had been fighting this legislation because they thought they would lose customers if the customers knew how unhealthy their food was.”

“In this study, we found that customers perceive restaurants to be socially responsible when they are provided with nutrition facts and healthful options and, therefore, are more likely to patronize those restaurants,” he added. “In other words, the participants developed a favorable attitude toward the restaurant and wanted to visit it more frequently.”

Furthermore, Cranage and his colleagues found that men and women who said that they were health conscious were more likely than non-health conscious people to view a restaurant that provided healthy food options as socially responsible. However, when a restaurant allowed them to see nutritional information, both health conscious and non-health conscious people were more likely to view that establishment as socially responsible.

“These results suggest that highly health-conscious people are more sensitive to being able to obtain healthful foods at restaurants than less health-conscious people, regardless of whether or not nutrition information is provided,” said Cranage. “We believe that providing healthful foods and nutrition information can improve a restaurant’s image.”

“Often, managers must choose between profitability and social responsibility when making decisions,” he added. “However, results of this study indicate that deciding to provide nutrition information and healthful food items yields benefits from both perspectives. Based on results of this study, restaurateurs may make an easy decision to increase more healthful items on their menu while simultaneously increasing the image of their business.”

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but what about seven? Or eight?
According to a new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, eating seven or more servings of fruit and vegetables per day reduces a person’s rate of death at any time by 42 percent.
The study team, from the University College London, discovered that eating fresh vegetables was linked with the most powerful protective impact, with an everyday portion lowering overall likelihood of death by 16 percent. Salad added to a 13 percent risk reduction per portion and each portion of fresh fruit was connected with a smaller, but still substantial, 4 percent drop.
“We all know that eating fruit and vegetables is healthy, but the size of the effect is staggering,” said Oyinlola Oyebode, an epidemiologist at UCL. “The clear message here is that the more fruit and vegetables you eat, the less likely you are to die at any age. Vegetables have a larger effect than fruit, but fruit still makes a real difference. If you’re happy to snack on carrots or other vegetables, then that is a great choice but if you fancy something sweeter, a banana or any fruit will also do you good.”
To reach their conclusion, the UK scientists used data from the Health Survey for England to examine the diets of over 65,000 people between 2001 and 2013. They discovered that the more fruit and vegetables they ate, the less likely they were to die at any age. Consuming seven or more portions was found to reduce the specific risks of death by cancer, 25 percent, and heart disease, 31 percent. The study also showed that vegetables have considerably greater health benefits than fruit.
When compared to consuming less than one portion of fruit or vegetables, the risk of death by any cause is cut by 14 percent when a person consumes one to three portions daily, 29 percent for three to five portions, 36 percent for five to seven portions and 42 percent for seven or more.
The team said their study is the first to connect fruit and vegetable intake with all-cause, cancer and heart disease deaths in a nationally-representative population, the first to measure health benefits per-portion, and the first to look at the kinds of fruit and vegetable with the most benefit. The researchers said they had considered a wide range of confounding factors, such as cigarette smoking and body mass index, in reaching their conclusion.
While the benefits of fresh fruits and vegetable were clearly evident, regular consumption of frozen or canned fruit seemed to increase the risk of death by 17 percent, a find that which public health doctors from the University of Liverpool called “intriguing” in an accompanying editorial. They said the added sugars of these processed foods could be to blame and suggested that dietary guideline should be revised to reflect this find.
“150 ml of freshly squeezed orange juice (sugar 13 g); 30 g of dried figs (sugar 14 g); 200 ml of a smoothie made with fruit and fruit juice (sugar 23 g) and 80 g of tinned fruit salad in fruit juice (sugar 10 g)…contain a total of some 60 g of refined sugar,” they wrote. “This is more than the sugar in a 500 ml bottle of cola.”
“Most canned fruit contains high sugar levels and cheaper varieties are packed in syrup rather than fruit juice,” Oyebode said. “The negative health impacts of the sugar may well outweigh any benefits. Another possibility is that there are confounding factors that we could not control for, such as poor access to fresh groceries among people who have pre-existing health conditions, hectic lifestyles or who live in deprived areas.”

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The Internet abounds with a wealth of information — true and otherwise — about healthcare. So where should you turn to find the latest information about medications or conditions? That was the focus of a recent study from the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering and Department of Political Science.

The team found, among other things, that general social networks such as Twitter or Pinterest were the best places for information on medications such as Viagra or ibuprofen. If, on the other hand, you want information on sleep disorders or depression, you should start with specialized social networks such as WebMD or Drugs.com.

The findings, which will be published in an upcoming issue of The Journal of Biomedical Informatics, have implications for a wide range of stakeholders, such as healthcare providers, and healthcare marketing professionals. Providers would have more knowledge for recommending social network sites to their patients, or for creating forums themselves for particular healthcare conditions or drugs. Marketing professionals would be able to use the information to focus their resources, while researchers of healthcare content in social networks could find the data useful when selecting sources.

The research team included Vagelis Hristidis, an associate professor in the computer science and engineering department at UC Riverside, and his graduate student Matthew T. Wiley; Kevin M. Esterling, a professor of political science at UC Riverside; and Canghong Jin, a former visiting graduate student at UC Riverside currently at Zhejiang University in China. The team studied 10 social networks, charting the following factors for each: were they health focused or general, were they moderated, did they require registration, and were they in the form of question and answer.

They selected Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest as the general social networks. Facebook was excluded because its data is not public. DailyStrength, Drugs.com, DrugLib.com, EverydayHealth.com, MediGuard.org, WebMD and Medications.com were selected as the specialized social networks.

A list of the 200 most commonly prescribed drugs was cut down to 122 by eliminating such things as variants of the same drug at different dosages. They then created data collection tools to aggregate references to those drugs from the sites. Filters were created that eliminated duplicate posts and non-English posts. Each site’s Terms of Use were followed during data collection, and messages that could be considered spam were not removed because the definition of spam is subjective.

Depending on the date of the site’s creation, data was collected from 2001 to 2012, ending in 2013. The team analyzed the posts in three different ways. The first was to determine if the post was positive, negative or objective. Secondly, they broke the posts into six drug categories: coagulation modifiers, genitourinary tract agents, nutritional products, cardiovascular agents, psychotherapeutic agents and others. Finally, the team searched for mentions of five types of medical concepts: anatomy, physiology, procedures, chemicals and drugs and disorders.

The differences in the content of discussions on the social networks, based on whether there was moderation, registration required, or a question-and-answer format, were taken into consideration.

Key findings of the study include:

• Negative sentiments were twice as likely to be found on health social networks—such as WebMD and drugs.com—than on general social networks—such as Google+ and Twitter.

• They found that the same basic group of drugs were popular across the board on the general social networks, while different drugs were popular on the health sites.

• On health network sites, posts about psychotherapeutic agents, such as Abilify and Cymbalta, are about five times more common. In contrast, posts about genitourinary tract agents, such as Viagra and Cialis, are 16 times more common in general social networks.

• On non-moderated health network sites, they observed an 87 percent increase in discussion of psychotherapeutic agents, while on moderated sites, discussions of gastrointestinal agents, hormones, anti-infectives, and respiratory agents all increased.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Millions of people around the world find help from drugs that treat anxiety and sleep disorders. A new study from the University of Warwick, however, reveals that anti-anxiety and sleeping medicines have been linked to an increased risk of death.

The large study, which tracked 34,727 people for an average of seven and a half years, demonstrates that the risk of death doubles with several anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs or hypnotic (sleeping) drugs. The research team, led by Professor Scott Weich, emphasized that the results are based on routine data and need to be interpreted cautiously, however, they believe that a better understanding of the impact of these drugs is essential.

“The key message here is that we really do have to use these drugs more carefully. This builds on a growing body of evidence suggesting that their side effects are significant and dangerous. We have to do everything possible to minimize over reliance on anxiolytics and sleeping pills,” said Weich, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Warwick.

“That’s not to say that they cannot be effective. But particularly due to their addictive potential we need to make sure that we help patients to spend as little time on them as possible and that we consider other options, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, to help them to overcome anxiety or sleep problems,” Weich continued.

Where possible, the researchers adjusted for factors such as age, smoking and alcohol use, socioeconomic status and other prescription medications. Most importantly, factors such as sleep disorders, anxiety disorders and all psychiatric illness were controlled for in all participants, who were tracked from the time they received their first prescription for either an anxiolytic or hypnotic drug.

The most commonly prescribed drug class was benzodiazepines, including diazepam and temazepam, according to the researchers. The effects of two other groups of drugs — the so-called “Z” drugs, and all other anxiolytic and hypnotic drugs — were also examined by the scientists. Over the course of the study, many participants received more than one drug, and five percent received prescriptions from all three groups.

The findings of this study were published in a recent issue of BMJ.