Male baldness, long considered the bane of men all over the world, may become a thing of the past after researchers found a biological clue that could raise the prospect of stopping and perhaps even reversing hair loss.

The researchers, from University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, have identified an abnormal amount of protein called Prostaglandin D2 (PGD2) in the bald scalp of men with male pattern baldness. Lab studies were conducted using mice and cultured human hair follicles.

In both human and animal models, the team found that PGD2 and its derivative, 15-dPGJ2, inhibit hair growth. The inhibition occurred through a receptor called GPR44, which could be a promising therapeutic treatment for androgenetic alopecia in both men and women with thinning hair.

Among men with androgenetic alopecia (AGA), bald scalp tissue had elevated levels of PGD2 compared with hair-covered tissue from the same individual, said George Cotsarelis, MD and colleagues.

The researchers reported yesterday (March 21) in the journal Science Translational Medicine that drugs are already being developed that target the pathways associated with hair loss. The hope is that the findings lead to a cure for baldness.

Most men begin to go bald in middle age, with nearly 80 percent of men experiencing at least some hair loss by age 70. In men, testosterone plays a major role in hair loss, as do genetic factors, causing hair follicles to shrink and eventually becoming so small they are invisible, leading to the appearance of baldness.

“Our findings should lead directly to new treatments for the most common cause of hair loss in men, androgenetic alopecia,” the team wrote.

However, it remains unclear if blocking the GPR44 receptor would allow hair to regrow after balding, or if it would just prevent further balding. It also remains unclear whether inhibiting the receptor would have any effect in humans at all.

To explore that possibility, Cotsarelis and his colleagues examined scalp tissue in 22 white men between 40 and 65 who underwent hair transplantation for male pattern baldness. None of the men were taking either of two approved medications for baldness — minoxidil and finasteride.

The researchers found through genetic analysis that levels of PGD2 were three times higher in bald scalp tissue than in hair-covered scalp.

To further test the possibilities and better understand the significance of their finding, they turned to experimental studies involving mice. In normal mice, they found an association between the increase in PGD2 and the regression of hair follicles during normal hair cycling.

In mice engineered to have elevated of PGD2 in the skin, they developed alopecia, miniaturization of follicles, and sebaceous gland hyperplasia — all characteristics associated in human baldness.

“The next step would be to screen for compounds that affect this receptor and to also find out whether blocking that receptor would reverse balding or just prevent balding – a question that would take a while to figure out,” Cotsarelis told Helen Briggs of BBC News.

“Although a different prostaglandin was known to increase hair growth, our findings were unexpected, as prostaglandins haven´t been thought about in relation to hair loss, yet it made sense that there was an inhibitor of hair growth, based on our earlier work looking at hair follicle stem cells,” he added.

Prostaglandins are well characterized for their role in many bodily functions, including controlling cell growth and dilating smooth muscle tissue. It was shocking to find that PGD2 inhibited hair growth while prostaglandin F2alpha is known to increase hair growth.

“The question of whether similar changes in PGD2 levels are found in the affected scalp of women with androgenetic alopecia also needs to be addressed,” the team wrote. Future studies, potentially testing topical treatments that may target GPR44, can determine whether targeting prostaglandins will benefit woman with AGA as well.

Cotsarelis´ study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Skin Disease Research Center, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Edwin and Fannie Gray Hall Center for Human Appearance at University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, the American Skin Association, the Dermatology Foundation, and L´Oreal.

Cotsarelis is also a co-inventor of a patent owned by UPenn describing the PGD2 pathway as a target for inhibiting hair loss, among other claims.

Researchers from the Stowers institute for Medical Research have traced individual odor molecules in the brain to create a new model of how our sense of smell works. While once thought to cluster related smells, researchers have know discovered that the brain reacts to smells in a broader sense.
Previous research has shown that the brain handles the senses in a very orderly way.
Things that we touch were thought to be mapped together in the somatosensory cortex, things that we heard were mapped together in the auditory system, and things that we taste were mapped together in the gustatory cortex. The olfactory cortex handles things that we smell, but new research suggests that this system may react to smells differently than previously thought.
Rather than group chemically-related smells together in the olfactory system, the smells were mapped everywhere in the system.
“When we mapped the individual chemical features of different odorants, they mapped all over the olfactory bulb, which processes incoming olfactory information,” says Associate Investigator C. Ron Yu, PhD, who led the study published in this week´s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“From the animal´s perspective that makes perfect sense. The chemical structure of an odor molecule is not what´s important to them. They really just want to learn about their environment and associate olfactory information with food or other relevant information.”
As we smell things, nasal receptors send an electrical signal up to glomeruli in the olfactory bulb. The pattern with which these glomeruli send and receive signals to the olfactory system was thought to represent specific odors.
This hypothesis on how the brain handles odor had been widely accepted, but it had never been accurately mapped. Recent research and available technologies have shown that this process breaks down at a very fine level, thus requiring a more fine-tuned and up close look at the olfactory map.
Yu and his team generated a line of super sensitive transgenic mice and equipment sophisticated enough to deliver hundreds of odor stimuli to a single mouse.
In their tests, the researchers discovered that certain odors did activate within a specific and distinct area of the olfactory bulb. Other odors, however, signaled glomeruli in various areas of the bulb. Some odors even intermingled in the olfactory bulb, suggesting that the glomeruli haven´t yet evolved to detect the specific chemical shapes of certain odors.
This finding did not surprise lead author of the study Limei Ma, PhD, as there are thousands of odors.
“Many of them could be really novel to the organism, something they never encountered before,” she says. “The system must have the capability to recognize and encode anything.”
The research suggests that the “chemotopic” hypothesis on how the brain responds to different odors may not be completely accurate. The team has now devised a “Tunotopic” hypothesis on the olfactory system. This means individual glomeruli are “tuned” to receive certain odor chemical molecules, and therefore can send them to different areas of the olfactory bulb. The team believes that this sort of hypothesis can be used to describe how the brain handles the other senses as well.
“When you have a new chemical synthesized, like new perfumes and food flavors, you don´t have to create new brain regions to react to it,” Ma said in the press release. “What you do is use the existing receptors to sense all these chemicals and then tell your brain whether this is novel, whether it´s similar, or whether it´s something really strange.”

A new study by the Stanford University Medical Center reports that ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory medication that is used often as a painkiller, may prove effective at curbing the symptoms of acute mountain sickness. Symptoms include headache, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, vomiting and poor appetite.
The researchers did a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 86 men and women, 58 men and 28 women. They traveled to the White Mountains northeast of Bishop, Ca. The participants stayed the night at 4,110 feet and were given 600 milligrams of either ibuprofen or placebo at 8 a.m. Next they headed up to 11,700 feet where they were given a second dose at 2 p.m. They then hiked 3 miles up to 12,570 feet where a third dose was administered at 8 p.m. They then spent the night on the mountain.
The researchers found, through a questionnaire, that of the 44 participants who took ibuprofen, 19 of them (43%) came down with symptoms of altitude sickness, while 29 of them (69%) receiving placebo came down with symptoms. The conclusion being that ibuprofen reduced the incidence of altitude sickness by 26 percent.
The researchers also observed that those who took the drug suffered from less severe symptoms compared to the placebo group. But, according to the press release, the reduction in severity was not statistically significant, based on the self-reporting survey.
Researchers don´t know exactly what biological mechanisms cause altitude sickness, but some think the lack of oxygen causes the brain to swell with fluids. Ibuprofen is thought to reduce the inflammation, because of its anti-inflammatory properties.
Other medications, such as acetazolamide and dexamethasone,  are available for the treatment for acute mountain sickness. But, their side effects are more severe than those of ibuprofen. Dr. Grant Lipman, author of the study, says “The safety profile of ibuprofen makes it more attractive then dexamethasone, which has been associated with hyperglycemia, adrenal suppression, delirium, depression, insomnia and mania.”
The researchers suggest a dosage of 600 milligrams. Even though more would possibly be better prevention, there are risks of gastrointestinal and kidney problems if somebody  becomes dehydrated.
The study is published online at the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

According to a Tel Aviv professor of medicine, common over-the-counter medications such as painkillers may be a hidden cause of high blood pressure and hypertension. These drugs may even conflict with current prescriptions, rendering them useless.

While it may be common knowledge by now that kidney failure and endocrine tumors cause high blood pressure, the effects of common pain medications and over-the-counter drugs remain dangerously unknown, according to new research.

Professor Ehud Grossman of Tel Aviv University´s Sackler Faculty of Medicine has recently conducted research on these common drugs and found them to be an underlying cause of hypertension.

This research was published in the American Journal of Medicine.

Hypertension is a major risk factor for strokes, heart attacks, and brain aneurisms. Even patients on anti-hypertensive medications are at risk, as the chemical makeup of these common drugs can raise blood pressure, interfering with other medications. Simple drug interference isn´t the most dangerous part of this issue, according to Prof. Grossman. What is most troubling is how dangerously unaware doctors and patients are to the kind of reactions these drugs can have.

Prof. Grossman suggests that one reason these over-the-counter medicines are not suspected to have dire effects is the relative ease with which they can be obtained.

“In diagnosing the causes of hypertension, over-the-counter drugs like ibuprofen are often overlooked,” Prof. Grossman said in the published paper. The new research studies all kinds of common medications related to high blood pressure. Examples include painkillers, birth control, anti-depressants, and antibiotics.

These common medications have been widely shown to increase blood pressure in patients taking the drugs. However, the new research conducted by Prof. Grossman found that, because these drugs are so common, many doctors fail to account for them in their prescribed medical treatments. Worse still, these doctors often failed to inform the patient about the effects of these medications and their potential interaction with the prescribed drugs. In the end, it´s the doctor´s responsibility to inform the patient as to what kind of reactions could arise.

According to Prof. Grossman, doctors would be advised to either decrease the amount of prescribed medication when common drugs are being used, or prescribe an anti-hypertensive medication for patients currently taking these common medications. “Many physicians don´t account for this, and some don´t even know about it. It´s their responsibility to be informed and make sure that their patients are aware that this is a possibility,” says Prof. Grossman.

While treatment can usually be altered to avoid the dangers of hypertension, this isn´t always the case. For example, there are new anti-vascular endothelial growth factor drugs that increase blood pressure to block the formation of new blood vessels. In doing so, anti-vascular drugs prevent new blood vessels and arteries from forming on solid tumors. Because these drugs perform so efficiently, doctors may not want to prescribe a third anti-hypertensive medication. In the end, patients should be monitored closely in their specific treatment.

Patients should also be aware of hypertension and the types of drugs that may bring about this danger. “Once a patient has won a longer life with the use of these drugs, you don´t want to expose them to problems associated with blood pressure, such as stroke,” says Prof. Grossman. By simply being aware of the drugs taken, patients and doctors can adjust regimens to prevent hypertension and its effects.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been an effective yet controversial tool to treat severe depression for more than 70 years, and now Scottish researchers for the first time say they have discovered why the procedure often works the way it does.

ECT works by altering how different parts of the brain involved in depression communicate with each other. The University of Aberdeen and University of Dundee researchers, reporting in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), said ECT involves anesthetizing patients with serious mood disorders, and then using an electric shock to induce a seizure. They said the method has been the most effective treatment available for seven decades.

ECT has the strongest supporting data among treatments for patients whose depression doesn´t respond to medication, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Between 10 and 20 percent of depressed patients received shock therapy, Paul Holtzheimer, an associate professor of psychiatry and surgery at Dartmouth Medical School, who was not involved in the new study, told Bloomberg‘s Elizabeth Lopatto.

“This gives us a much more powerful view of the brain,” he told Lopatto in a telephone interview. “If this study holds up, it tells us this is a network problem.”

In the Scottish study, nine patients scheduled for ECT had their brains scanned using functional MRI both before and after treatment. The MRI detects blood flow to specific regions of the brain. The team analyzed the brain´s connectivity using a new mathematical model.

“ECT is a controversial treatment, and one prominent criticism has been that it is not understood how it works and what it does to the brain,” said study leader Professor Ian Reid. “However we believe we´ve solved a 70-year-old therapeutic riddle because our study reveals that ECT affects the way different parts of the brain involved in depression connect with one another.”

Despite all the controversy surrounding the use of shock therapy, the procedure has probably helped 75 to 85 percent of patients recover from their symptoms, said Reid.

Reid said all nine patients in the study were diagnosed with severe clinical depression and were successfully treated with ECT — two sessions per week, an average of 8 total treatments. None of the patients in the study had responded to chemical antidepressants.

Using the new mathematical model to analyze brain connectivity, “we were able to find out to what extent more than 25,000 different brain areas ℠communicated´ with each other and how the brain´s internal communication patterns differed before and after ECT treatment in severely depressed patients,” said study co-author Professor Christian Schwarzbauer.

The researchers said their findings suggest a “hyper-connection” between the areas of the brain involved in emotional processing and mood change and the parts of the brain involved in thinking and concentrating. Our key finding is that if you compare the connections in the brain before and after ECT, ECT reduces the connection strength between these same areas – it reduces this hyperconnectivity.

And so, for the first time we can point to something that ECT does in the brain that makes sense in the context of what we think is wrong in people who are depressed.

“As far as we know no-one has extended that ℠connectivity´ idea about depression into an arena where you can show a treatment clearly treating depression, changing brain connectivity,” said Reid. “And the change that we see in the brain connections after ECT reflects the change that we see in the symptom profile of patients who generally see a big improvement.”

The team said they now hope to continue monitoring the patients to see if the depression and hyperconnectivity return.

“If we understand more about how ECT works, we will be in a better position to replace it with something less invasive and more acceptable,” said Reid. “At the moment only about 40 percent of people with depression get better with treatment from their GP.”

The findings may lead to new drug targets which match the effectiveness of ECR without an impact on memory, the researchers noted.

“These findings make a lot of sense,” Professor David Nutt, of Imperial College London, told BBC News. “Indeed, the disabling of connections between different areas of the brain is what I would have predicted from the depression literature.”

“This is why my research group is progressing psilocybin – which also disrupts this network, as we showed in PNAS recently – as a treatment for depression,” said Nutt, who was not involved in the Scottish study.

Schwarzbauer said their new method could be “applied to a wide range of other brain disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, or dementia, and may lead to a better understanding of the underlying disease mechanisms and the development of new diagnostic tools.”

He said more studies may lead to therapies that don´t have the side effects of ECT. Confusion, memory loss and physical pain such as muscle spasms are among the most common side effects of shock therapy. Also, a better understanding of how the brain region is affected in depression may enable doctors to better target patients who will benefit from treatment, he added.

“This is the start of a longer process,” Schwarzbauer said. “This is a very novel finding.”

Synthetic marijuana, with nicknames such as “Mr. Smiley,” “Blaze,” and “Spice,” has been blamed on hospitalizations of at least three teens who have smoked or ingested the fake pot trying to get a legal high, according to a new report.

The substance is created through a mixture of plant and herbal materials and sprayed with chemicals. And until recently, this relatively new drug has been sold legally in convenience stores around the country as potpourri or herbal incense. Perhaps more troubling, the drug is apparently still available online.

Joanna Cohen, an emergency medicine physician at Children´s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, told USA Today that there was very little information available on this substance in medical literature when it first started making waves.

With the cases that have been reported, namely three teen ER visits, a number of visible “telltale signs” are now known, including excessive sweating, agitation, speech trouble, aggression and restlessness, and “euphoric and psychoactive effects” commonly associated with traditional marijuana use.

Given the growing popularity of this drug with teens and young adults, “it´s important to share the information we have with other doctors and help parents and schools be on the lookout” for symptoms, which require immediate medical attention, said Cohen, lead author of the report, published today in the journal Pediatrics.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse filed a report in November stating it found nearly one in nine high school seniors had tried the synthetic marijuana in the past year, second only to the number of teens who had used marijuana.

The American Association of Poison Control Centers reported that the synthetic marijuana started to become a problem in 2009 and quickly grew in popularity. It said it has handled nearly 7,000 related calls in 2011, more than double the number received in 2010.

In the latest report, Cohen and colleagues presented three case studies of teenagers who visited the ER after ingesting the fake pot. Each teen suffered similar symptoms, such as rapid heartbeat and high blood pressure. All three were treated and eventually released from the hospital.

“We became concerned about it after seeing these teenagers, and when we researched the literature, we realized there is very little out there about the effects of these compounds,” said Cohen. “We wanted to publish these case reports mostly because we wanted to share the information we had gathered to let the medical community know what we were seeing.”

She said it is difficult to say if the symptoms experienced by the three teens is typical with this drug because there is so much we don´t know about it yet. “The big danger is that kids´ brains are still developing and we don´t know about the long-term effects. It can have serious consequences such as memory loss, [mental] deficits, and psychosis with long-term, repeated use.”

Federal lawmakers have yet to pass a bill banning the sales of fake marijuana, but at least 39 states in the union have adopted their own bans, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Drug Enforcement Administration earlier this month extended its ban on five chemicals used to produce the synthetic drug. Its one-year ban, which is set to expire shortly, puts a Schedule I classification on those substances, meaning they are the most restricted under the Controlled Substances Act. Schedule I drugs are found to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical uses.

Cohen said urine drug screens are useless because the compounds don´t show up in them, “so comprehensive lab work is necessary to confirm use.” She added that if the teens hadn´t told medical staff which substances they had used, it is likely a diagnosis and cause of symptoms would go unknown.

“There is very little available to test for these substances. The tests aren´t routinely available and are costly,” Bruce Goldberger, professor and director of toxicology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, told Kim Carollo at ABC News.

“We sometimes have no idea what we´re dealing with,” added Dr. Corey Slovis, chair of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “We may see a patient who is extremely agitated with symptoms that could be due to some other kind of drug.”

Slovis said the compounds found in synthetic marijuana are much stronger than real marijuana, and the bigger problem is that it is made with different ingredients. Those ingredients make it difficult to determine specifically which agent or agents is responsible for symptoms.

David Rotenberg, vice president of treatment at Caron Treatment Centers in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, told Denise Mann of WebMD that he is concerned about the rise in use of these compounds and the number of kids who are finding themselves hospitalized as a result.

There are so many unknowns, he said. “You don´t know what you are taking, or what dose you are getting, and what the kid is predisposed to.”

These drugs are perhaps even more attractive to kids who are already abusing other drugs and alcohol. “Kids who have drug problems and are put on probation or are in an outpatient treatment program gravitate toward this stuff because it doesn´t show up in all urine screens,” he said.

“This stuff is bad news,” he added.

Image Courtesy Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

According to research published in the journal Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society, women really do suffer memory problems when going through menopause.
Millions of women going through menopause have complained about forgetfulness or described having “brain fog” in their late 40s and 50s.
In a new study, researchers gave women various cognitive tests to validate their experiences and provide some clues to what is happening in the brain as menopause hit.
“The most important thing to realize is that there really are some cognitive changes that occur during this phase in a woman´s life,” Dr. Miriam Weber, a neuropsychologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center who led the study, said in a recent statement.
“If a woman approaching menopause feels she is having memory problems, no one should brush it off or attribute it to a jam-packed schedule. She can find comfort in knowing that there are new research findings that support her experience. She can view her experience as normal.”
The researchers studied 75 women from age 40 to 60 who were approaching or beginning menopause.  The women underwent various cognitive tests that looked at several skills, including their abilities to learn and retain new information.
They were asked about menopause symptoms related to depression, anxiety, hot flashes, and sleep difficulties.
The team also checked their blood levels of the hormones estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone.
The researchers found that the women’s complaints were linked to some types of memory deficits, but not others.
According to the study, those women who had memory complaints were more likely to do poorly in tests designed to measure “working memory”, which is the ability to take in new information and manipulate it in their heads.
Tasks in working memory include things like being able to calculate the amount of a tip, adding up a series of numbers, or adjusting an itinerary on the fly.
The team also found that women’s reports of memory difficulties were associated with a lessened ability to keep focus on a challenging task like doing taxes or driving in a long road trip.
The women in the study were more highly educated and on average of higher intelligence than the general population, according to Weber.
The study said that anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of women during menopause report forgetfulness and other difficulties.
“If you speak with middle-aged women, many will say, yes, we´ve known this. We´ve experienced this,” Weber said in a press release. “But it hasn´t been investigated thoroughly in the scientific literature.
“Science is finally catching up to the reality that women don´t suddenly go from their reproductive prime to becoming infertile. There is this whole transition period that lasts years. It´s more complicated than people have realized.”

According to a new study published in the British Medical Journal, regularly eating white rice significantly increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes.
The authors from the Harvard School of Public Health looked for evidence of the association between eating white rice and Type 2 diabetes in previous studies and research. The new study focuses on finding a direct link between the risk and the amount of rice eaten. This study also seeks to determine if the risk of Type 2 diabetes is greater in Asian countries, whose diet consists of more white rice than westerners.
“What we’ve found is white rice is likely to increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, especially at high consumption levels such as in Asian populations,” Qi Sun of the Harvard School of Public Health told AFP.
“But at the same time people should pay close attention to the other things they eat.
“It’s very important to address not just a single food but the whole pattern of consumption.”
Sun´s team first discovered the link in their analysis of four previous studies conducted in China, Japan, Australia, and the United States. These studies followed 350,000 people for anywhere from 4 to 22 years. Out of these groups of people, more than 13,000 (less than 5%) developed Type 2 diabetes.
The studies carried out in Asian countries China and Japan found that those who ate white rice regularly were 55 % more likely to develop the disease. Those who lived in Australia and the United States, where white rice isn´t consumed as often is in Asian countries, were 12% more likely to develop the disease.
The previous studies also found that the Asian participants ate 3 to 4 servings of white rice a day compared to the westerners one to 2 servings of white rice a week.
Sun´s team found that, on average, the risk of type 2 diabetes is increased by 10% with each increased serving of white rice.
White rice is the most common form of rice eaten worldwide. It gets its color from being machine-processed, which removes the hull, leaving behind a white grain which consists of mostly starch.
Brown rice, on the other hand, contains its natural fiber and vitamin content, as well as its brown color. Brown rice also has a lower glycemic index , or sugar content, than starchy white rice.
Sun´s team suggests that the high risk of Type 2 diabetes from high white rice consumption may be caused by the lack of the nutrients found in brown rice.
“I don’t think I can put forward a 100-percent confirmed case, given that this is a meta-analysis of four original studies,” Sun said.
“But I see a consistency across these studies, and there is biological plausibility that supports the association between white rice consumption and diabetes.”
In light of these studies and findings, the authors of this research recommend eating more whole grains instead of refined carbohydrates such as white rice. This sort of change in diet could slow down the global trend of diabetes.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). diabetes affects nearly 350 million adults worldwide.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a new graphic anti-smoking ad campaign today featuring personal descriptions and photographs of people who have suffered effects from smoking.

The campaign, called “Tips from Former Smokers”, will include promotional materials that shows up-close, voyeuristic looks at victims of disease.

The new anti-tobacco campaign will last for 12-weeks and will feature prime-time television spots in which people describe how their lives were changed by smoking.

The CDC campaign will cost $54 million, a number in which the U.S. tobacco industry spends in an average two days of promotional efforts.

“We estimate that this campaign will help about 50,000 smokers to quit smoking,” CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden told The New York Times. “And that will translate not only into thousands who will not die from smoking, but it will pay for itself in a few years in reduced health costs.”

The diseases suffered by the 14 people in the ad campaign include lung, head and neck cancer, Buerger’s disease, asthma, heart attack and stroke.

“I think all too often smokers think, ℠I´ll just die a few years early.´ And that´s true. But there´s often a lot of pain and disability that goes with that. The smokers who volunteered to come forward and be in these ads show that reality,” Frieden told the Washington Post.

About 8 million Americans have smoking-related illnesses, and as many as 443,000 Americans die every year from smoking-related causes.

The U.S. surgeon general warned last week that one in four high school seniors is a regular cigarette smoker.  The surgeon general also said that about 80 percent of those who smoke during high school will continue to smoke as adults.

The new campaign comes just two weeks after a federal judge struck down the Obama administration’s plan to put graphic images covering half of the front and back of each cigarette pack to warn smokers of the danger.

A study published in the journal Obesity reveals that parents of obese children can lead by example in regards to a child´s weight loss. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Minnesota conducted the research and found that when parent´s lost weight, their children were more likely to follow suit.
“We looked at things such as parenting skills and styles, or changing the home food environment, and how they impacted a child´s weight,” said Kerri N. Boutelle, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at UC San Diego and Rady Children´s Hospital-San Diego. “The number one way in which parents can help an obese child lose weight? Lose weight themselves. In this study, it was the most important predictor of child weight loss.”
The statistics are somewhat shocking. According to recent data, 31 percent of United States´ children are overweight or obese. This percentage equates to nearly 4 to 5 million children. Doctors define obesity to be 20% over normal weight. This means if a child´s normal weight is 100 pounds, then weighing 120 pounds would put them in the obese category.
Parents looking to encourage healthy eating habits are fighting an uphill battle. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention have conducted studies that show popular fast food restaurants are often located in close proximity to schools. Of the 1,292 schools and 613 fast food restaurants included in the study, 35% of the schools were within a five minute walk of a fast food restaurant. More than 80% of schools had at least one fast food restaurant within a ten minute walk.
In order to combat childhood obesity, doctors recommend treatment programs that include both the parent and the child in order to combine nutrition education with exercise and behavior therapy techniques.
“Parents are the most significant people in a child´s environment, serving as the first and most important teachers,” said Boutelle “They play a significant role in any weight-loss program for children, and this study confirms the importance of their example in establishing healthy eating and exercise behaviors for their kids.”
While conducting research for this study, the doctors looked at eighty parent-child groups with an obese child between the ages of 8 to 12. These groups participated for 5 months in either parent-only or parent-plus-child treatment programs.
The researchers then focused on evaluating the effectiveness on three types of parenting skills taught during family-based behavioral treatment for childhood obesity and the subsequent impact on the child´s weight. Parents either modeled behavior to promote their own weight loss, changed the food environment at home, or changed their parenting style and techniques, limiting when and what the child could eat and encouraging them to exercise and be active.
After looking at the data from these studies, the researchers found that the only consistent predictor of a child´s weight loss was the parent´s weight loss and drop in BMI. This new research confirms previously published research.
Clinicians, doctors, and pediatricians are encouraged to suggest parental weight loss, in addition to family-based treatments, to help obese and overweight children lose weight.

Pfizer said Europe is undermining drug innovation by cutting prices, raising barriers to new medicines and “freeloading” off others in Asia and the U.S. who are willing to pay, according to a Reuters report.

Chief executive Ian Read told Reuters on Monday that European governments are sacrificing the long-term future of science in their countries for the sake of short-term budget cuts.

The report said the chief executive of the world’s largest drugmaker claims there is a disconnect in Europe between the marketplace for pharmaceuticals and the desire of European governments to have innovation and research.

Read said governments in Europe that are becoming increasing reluctanct to pay up for innovative therapies would eventually regret it.

He said the pharmaceutical industry is a high-risk business, and European leaders are sacrificing the long term for the short term.

He used Germany as an example when speaking to Reuters, using Berlin’s recent decision to extend drug price freezes from 2010 and to use a basket of countries like Poland and Greece as a benchmark for how much it will pay for drugs.

Read said they are saying that “investment in innovation is at a level that Greek prices can support.”

“That’s not a recipe to create an innovative industry that can compete on the world stage,” he told Reuters.

He said since Germany is one of Europe’s wealthiest countries, he questioned whether referencing its prices to Greek or Polish levels would offer drug makers a fair return.

“These are the questions I’d like politicians to look at in a fundamental way,” he said. “The risk of freeloading is so great in an industry with sunk costs.”

He told Reuters he would like to see governments taking a longer-term view and engaging on the issue of who should pay for the research and development costs of these new modern medicines.

—

On the Net:

• Pfizer

The results of a new study published in the journal Diabetes Care may help diabetics who exercise control their blood sugar better.

The study followed 12 people who averaged age 32, ten men and two women, and already exercised regularly and were diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes. The participants met the researchers at a laboratory for two exercise sessions that were held five days apart.

The participants started one session at 5pm with 45 minutes of treadmill running followed by 45 minutes of weight training. The order of the training was switched in the second session.

The time was chosen in order to simulate the approximate time they participants would normally work out, typically after-work hours.

The researchers were very careful to monitor the participants blood sugar during the exercise sessions. Samples of blood were taken before, during, and after the sessions. The exercise sessions were stopped and the participants were given a snack if the the participants blood sugar dropped below 4.5 mmol/L (millimoles per liter) of blood.

The study found when participants followed the aerobic exercise first plan then their blood sugar was more likely to fall below the 4.5 mmol/L threshold. But when they did weight training first the suffered less severe drops in blood sugar even hours after exercise and post-exercise drops were less severe than before.

Since the study was so small, the researchers were unsure if other mitigating factors, that were not monitored, could have skewed the results.

According to Reuters, for example, they did not monitor the levels of a number of hormones that could lead to changes in blood glucose during exercise. Nor was the patients diet monitored and controlled, but the researchers wanted to simulate real-life conditions faced by people with Type-1 diabetes.

Also the study followed diabetics who were in good physical fitness, would the same results occur with somebody who had less than optimum health?

Dr. Vivian Fonseca, chief of endocrinology at Tulane University Medical School, and was not involved in the study, told Reuters, “While the study findings are very intriguing, they may have limited practical value until more studies are done.”

The authors of the study still recommend that Type-1 diabetics train with weights before their cardiovascular workout in order to better control their blood sugar.

—

On the Net:

• Diabetes Care
• Tulane University Medical School

Fewer kids are getting hurt on stairs today than a decade ago, but new research shows that a US child still goes to the ER due to a stair-related injury once every six minutes, on average, and one in four children under 12 months being carried on the stairs also gets hurt.
One author of the study said it is important for parents to supervise their kids when they are on the stairs and discourage them from playing on them. But he added that changes in how staircases are designed could cut down stair-related injuries.
Dr. Gary Smith, head of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, told Reuters Health that we should build environments where we know children will live or visit so that they are safe for them.
That includes built-in gates at the top and bottom of stairs, as well as handrails that are easy for small children to reach and grip firmly, he added.
Smith said the study, published in the journal Pediatrics, is the first nationally representative study on stair injuries in young kids. He and his colleagues found that nearly 932,000 children under 5 were hurt in stair-related accidents in the US between 1999 and 2008. That´s more than 93,000 kids per year, more than 7,700 per month, or nearly 260 per day. Those numbers account for about 46.5 injuries for every 10,000 kids under the age of 5.
The most common injuries were bruises, sprains or cuts, often around the head and neck. About one in ten of the injuries involved a broken bone, and less than 3 percent of the children had to be hospitalized.
Dr. Young-Jin Sue, an ER doctor at The Children´s Hospital at Montefiore in New York, said that was consistent with her own experience in the ER.
“Fortunately the vast majority of stair injuries are very mild,” she told Reuters Health. “They´re soft tissue injuries — bumps and bruises. I can´t remember the last time we had to hospitalize a child” who was injured on the stairs.
Numbers of injuries have fallen throughout the years, the researchers said, dropping by 11.6 percent by 2008, mostly because of a sharp decline in stair injuries tied to baby walkers, which were once responsible for 25,000 child injuries per year.
Voluntary safety standards enacted in the 1990s and heightened awareness about the dangers of baby walkers helped fuel the decline of those types of injuries — about 1,300 per year, Smith said.
Despite the decline, a child being admitted to the ER once every six minutes with an injury suffered on the stairs, is a sobering statistic, and quite surprising, Smith said.
It isn´t clear how many children may have died as a result of the injuries because the data obtained from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, or NEISS, don´t track deaths, Smith said.
The data showed that nearly all of the injuries, 95 percent, occurred at home, and about 88 percent were caused by simple falls. Children jumping down the stairs or riding toys on the stairs accounted for 2.6 percent of injuries, and another 2.7 percent were hurt using baby walkers.
Also, about 33,500 injuries were a result of children under the age of 1 who were being carried on the stairs by a parent or other caretaker. Those youngsters were three times more likely to be hospitalized than kids injured in other ways.
“We do live in a multi-tasking world,” Smith said. “If you have to take your child up or down the stairs, only the child should be in your arms.”
Stair gates, handrails and softer steps are good precautions to keeping your child safe from stair-related injuries, but increased awareness is perhaps one of the best advantages, said Smith.
Sue pointed out the importance of keeping stairs clutter-free, and making sure little kids are always supervised. “I think the message for parents over and over and over again is: they´re growing human beings, and you think you´ve got them figured out, but then they’re always one step ahead of you,” she told Reuters Health.
Still, even the perfect parent can´t be watching a kid at every second, Smith said.
—
On the Net:

• Nationwide Children’s Hospital
• Pediatrics
• The Children´s Hospital at Montefiore

Lawrence LeBlond for RedOrbit.com

UPDATE: March 9, 2012 3:00 p.m Eastern.

Reports that were originally received from various media outlets stating that Coca-Cola was changing its formula to avoid adding cancer warning labels to its beverages are false.

In a statement posted on its website today, Coca-Cola said that it is in fact not changing its world-famous formula.

“The caramel color in all of our products has been, is and always will be safe, and The Coca-Cola Company is not changing the world-famous formula for our Coca-Cola beverages. Over the years, we have updated our manufacturing processes from time to time, but never altered our Secret Formula,” Coca-Cola said on its website.

The No. 1 soft drink maker said they have asked its caramel suppliers to modify their production process to reduce the amount of 4-MI in the caramel, but that it will not have any effect on the formula or the flavor of its products. “These modifications will not affect the color or taste of Coca-Cola,” it said.

The company added it is committed to the “highest quality and safety” of its products, and it will “continue to rely on sound, evidence-based science to ensure that our products are safe.”

———

A specific caramel coloring found in Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and other popular soft drinks that a consumer watchdog said contain high levels of a chemical linked to cancer in animals has now been deemed safe by US regulators.

Despite this, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola both decided to adjust the formula of their caramel coloring across the US so they do not have to label their products with a cancer warning to comply with additional regulations enforced in California.

The recipe has already been changed for drinks sold in the Golden State and the companies said the changes will be expanded nationwide to streamline their manufacturing processes.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) reported earlier this week that it found the unsafe levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole (4-MI) — used to make caramel color — in cans of Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Whole Foods´ 365 Cola.

Coca-Cola confirmed that changes were being made at its facilities to keep within the law but argued that the CSPI´s allegations on the dangers the ingredient posed on humans were false.

“The company has made the decision to ask its caramel suppliers to make the necessary manufacturing process modification, to meet the specific Californian legislation,” A spokesperson for Coca-Cola told Daily Mail Online. “Those modifications will not change our product.”

California added 4-MI to its list of carcinogens, after studies showed high levels of the chemical led to tumors in lab animals. However, the studies were inconclusive on whether the chemical was dangerous to humans or not.

“Caramel is a perfectly safe ingredient and this has been recognized by all European food safety authorities,” the spokesperson added. “The 4-MEI levels in our products pose no health or safety risks. Outside of California, no regulatory agency concerned with protecting the public´s health has stated that 4-MEI is a human carcinogen.”

“The caramel color in all of our ingredients has been, is and always will be safe. That is a fact,” the spokesperson said.

This had been the CSPI´s second go-around with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the dangers of 4-MI in soft drinks. It first petitioned the regulator last year, but the FDA has continually maintained that the claims were exaggerated.

“It is important to understand that a consumer would have to consume well over a thousand cans of soda a day to reach the doses administered in the studies that have shown links to cancer in rodents,” said FDA spokesman, Doug Karas to the Daily Mail’s Laura Pullman.

CSPI maintains that the regulator is allowing soft drink companies to needlessly expose  millions of Americans to a chemical that is known to cause cancer.

“If companies can make brown food coloring that is carcinogen-free, the industry should use it,” CSPI´s executive director Michael Jacobson told Reuters.

The FDA said it will review the watchdog´s petition, but that the soft drinks in question were still safe.

CSPI took cans from stores in the Washington DC area, where they found some had levels of 4-MI near 140 micrograms per 12-ounce can. California has a legal limit of 29 micrograms of 4-MI per 12 ounces, it noted.

The FDA´s limit for 4-MI in caramel coloring is 250 parts per million (ppm). Once the caramel is mixed in with the soda it becomes diluted. According to calculations by Reuters, the highest levels of 4-MI found in the soft drinks were about 0.4 ppm, significantly within the safe zone.

“This is nothing more than CSPI scare tactics,” the American Beverage Association (ABA) told Reuters in a statement. “In fact, findings of regulatory agencies worldwide … consider caramel coloring safe for use in foods and beverages.”

ABA said its member companies will continue to caramel coloring in certain products but that adjustments were being made to meet California requirements. “Consumers will notice no difference in our products and have no reason at all for any health concerns,” the ABA said.

Diana Garza-Ciarlante, a representative for Coca-Cola, said its suppliers would modify the manufacturing process used to reduce the levels of 4-MI, which is formed during the cooking process and as a result may be found in trace amounts in many foods.

“While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning,” she said in an email to The Telegraph.

—

On the Net:

• PepsiCo
• Coca-Cola
• Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)
• Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• American Beverage Association (ABA)