A study released on Friday showed that cell phones belonging to hospital workers are covered in bacteria including the ‘superbug’, MRSA, the AFP reported.

Experts fear it could become a serious source of hospital-acquired infections.

After testing the phones and hands of 200 doctors and nurses working in hospital operating rooms and intensive care units, researchers from the Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey found that some 95 percent of cell phones were contaminated with at least one type of bacteria.

The report, published in BioMed Central’s Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials, showed that many of the hospital workers had a strong potential to cause illness ranging from minor skin irritations to deadly disease due to cross-contamination.

Researchers, led by Fatma Ulger, found that almost 35 percent of workers carried two types of bacteria, and more than 11 percent carried three or more different species of bugs.

The study noted that only a small sample (10 percent) of staff regularly cleaned their phones, even though they washed their hands.

An astounding one out of every eight cell phones showed traces of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a virulent strain that has claimed the lives of numerous hospital patients throughout the world.

The authors warned that mobile phones could act as a reservoir of infection, facilitating patient-to-patient transmission of bacteria in medical environments.

Though harmless to most healthy people, drug-resistant bacteria can often be lethal for hospital patients in weakened conditions. The bacteria can cause pneumonia or bloodstream infection by making its way into open wounds through catheters or ventilator tubes.

The study, however, was based on a small sampling and the authors acknowledge that more research was needed to confirm their findings.

The report strongly recommended frequent cleaning of phones with alcohol-based disinfectants as well as continuous use of anti-microbial materials.

It concluded that banning cell phone use in hospital settings is probably not practical because the devices are often used for work in emergencies.

Statistics show that MRSA is the cause of more than 60 percent of all hospital infections in the United States. In 2005, MRSA infected 94,000 people and killed 19,000 in the U.S. alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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On the Net:

• Ondokuz Mayis University
• Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials

Some doctors are expressing outrage over consumer ratings services like Zagat’s and Angie’s List, after expanding into the sensitive realm of medical care, the Associated Press reported.

Many doctors are now fighting back by asking patients to agree to what amounts to a gag order, barring them from posting negative comments online.

Dr. Jeffrey Segal, a North Carolina neurosurgeon who has made a business of helping doctors monitor and prevent online criticism, said consumers and patients are hungry for good information about doctors, but Internet reviews seem to provide just the opposite.

Segal said some sites are little more than tabloid journalism without much interest in constructively improving practices and their sniping comments can unfairly ruin a doctor’s reputation.

He believes such postings say nothing about a doctor’s medical skills and privacy laws, but medical ethics leave doctors powerless to change it.

That’s why Segal started Medical Justice, a Greensboro, N.C.-based business that charges a fee for providing doctors with a standardized waiver agreement preventing patients from posting online comments about the doctor, including his “expertise and/or treatment.”

The company maintains that “published comments on Web pages, blogs and/or mass correspondence, however well intended, could severely damage physician’s practice.”

Medical Justice suggests physicians have all of their patients sign the agreements and should they refuse, the doctor might suggest finding another doctor.

Segal said he had not heard of any cases where longtime patients have been turned away for not signing the waivers.

The business works by notifying doctors of any negative rating that may appear on a Web site, and, if the author’s name is known, physicians can use the signed waivers to have the reviews removed.

Segal said nearly 2,000 doctors have signed up since the company began offering its service two years ago.

However, sites like RateMDs.com have refused to remove negative reviews that have been posted to their sites.

“In recent months, six doctors have asked us to remove negative online comments based on patients’ signed waivers and we’ve refused,” said John Swapceinski, co-founder of RateMDs.com.

He believes Segal’s site is basically forcing patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, a matter he finds repulsive.

Swapceinski is even planning to post a “Wall of Shame” listing names of doctors who use patient waivers.

But Segal maintains that the waivers are aimed more at giving doctors ammunition against Web sites than against patients. However, Medical Justice uses suggested wording to warn users that breaching the agreement could result in legal action against patients.

Many are completely opposed to the waivers, like Lenore Janecek, who formed a Chicago-based patient-advocacy group after being wrongly diagnosed with cancer.

“Everyone has the right to speak up,” she told the Associated Press.

Janecek said that while she’s never posted comments about her doctors, she believes the sites are amongst the few resources patients have to evaluate a doctor’s care.

Dr. Nancy Nielsen, president of the American Medical Association, has stated in the past that online doctor ratings sites “have many shortcomings.” However, the association has no official position on patient wavers.

She suggests that online doctor reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, and should certainly not be a patient’s sole source of information when looking for a new physician.

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On the Net:

• Medical Justice
• RateMDs.com
• American Medical Association

Films and TV advertisements that contain a strong portrayal of alcohol consumption may drive some viewers to drink more, Dutch researchers found.

In the study, researchers in the Netherlands and Canada gathered 80 male university students, aged 18-29, to one of four groups.

Twenty of the participants watched American Pie, in which characters drank alcohol 18 times and alcoholic drinks were portrayed an additional 23 times, and a commercial break that included ads for alcohol. Another 20 participants watched American Pie and a neutral commercial break with no alcohol ads. In the third group, 20 students watched the film 40 Days and 40 Nights, which contains far less portrayals of drinking than American Pie, with a commercial break including ads for alcohol. The last group watched 40 Days and 40 Nights with a neutral commercial break that contained no alcohol ads.

Participants viewed the movies in a laboratory room that was dressed to look like a home theater room. Students had access to a refrigerator that contained both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

Researchers found that those who watched portrayals of alcohol on TV in both the movie and commercials, drank an average of nearly three 200 ml bottles of alcohol, while those who watched the neutral ads and the “non-alcoholic” film drank an average of 1.5 bottles of alcohol.

“This is the first experimental study to show a direct effect of exposure to alcohol portrayals on TV on viewers’ immediate drinking behavior,” said Rutger Engels, professor in developmental psychopathology at the Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen.

“The results were straightforward and substantial: those who watched both the alcoholic film and commercials drank, on average, 1.5 bottles more than those who watched the non-alcoholic film and commercials.

“Our study clearly shows that alcohol portrayals in films and advertisements not only affects people’s attitudes and norms on drinking in society, but it might work as a cue that affects craving and subsequent drinking in people who are drinkers. This might imply that, for example, while watching an ad for a particular brand of beer, you are not only more prone to buy that brand next time you are in the supermarket, but also that you might go immediately to the fridge to take a beer,” Engels said.

The most alcohol consumed by one participant during the study was four bottles and the least amount was none, the researchers said.

“Implications of these findings may be that, if moderation of alcohol consumption in certain groups is strived for, it may be sensible to cut down on the portrayal of alcohol in programs aimed at these groups and the commercials shown in between. Another implication may be that in situations in which this is possible (e.g. cinemas), availability of alcohol should be reduced when movies and commercials contain alcohol portrayal and individuals in a group at risk for problematic drinking are present,” the researchers concluded in the study published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.

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On the Net:

• Alcohol and Alcoholism

UK researchers reported on Tuesday that children who watch television for more than two hours a day have twice the risk of developing asthma, Reuters reported.

Asthma is the most common chronic illness in children and affects more than 300 million people around the world. Asthma causes wheezing, shortness of breath, coughing and chest tightness.

Experts say the new study may help link asthma to obesity and lack of exercise.

Andrea Sherriff of the University of Glasgow and colleagues wrote in the journal Thorax that there has been a recent suggestion that breathing patterns associated with sedentary behavior could lead to developmental changes in the lungs and wheezing illnesses in children.

For the study, researchers tracked the health of over 3,000 UK children from birth to age 11.

The children’s parents were questioned each year on wheezing symptoms among their children and whether a doctor had diagnosed asthma as they grew up. Parents were also asked to keep track of how much television children watched.

Data showed that children who watched TV for more than two hours a day were almost twice as likely to have been diagnosed with asthma as those who watched less. However, the odds were still small – about two in 100.

The study found that 6 percent of children at around age 12 who had no symptoms of the disease growing up soon developed asthma.

Elaine Vickers of Asthma UK, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement: “The findings add to a wealth of evidence linking a lack of exercise and being overweight with an increased risk of asthma.”

However, Vickers acknowledged that the study was the first to directly link sedentary behavior at a very young age to a higher risk of asthma later in childhood.

“We think the problem is inactivity, not watching TV. TV is simply the best proxy marker for this,” said Co-author Dr. James Paton, from the University of Glasgow.

He suggested there might be a window in early in life when activity does something to protect the lungs.

“It may be that not sitting still makes you take deep breaths and that might be important in the long run.”

Vickers said the UK has one of the highest rates of childhood asthma in the world, so it is especially important that parents try to pry their kids away from the TV and encourage them to lead an active lifestyle. This includes children with asthma, who can also greatly benefit from regular exercise,” she said.

The World Health Association said as many as 30 percent of children in some countries develop the inflammatory disease.

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On the Net:

• University of Glasgow
• Thorax
• University of Glasgow

A study released on Monday concluded that watching television neither hurts nor helps babies’ development, Reuters reported.

No correlation was noted between the amount of time children spent viewing television before they reached 2 years of age and their progress at age 3, according to a study of 872 children.

The report published in the journal Pediatrics showed that on average the children had watched nearly one hour of television per day at the age of 6 months and 1.4 hours a day by age 2.

Some 68 percent of babies fewer than 2 years of age view some sort of screen media like television or a computer on a typical day.

However, parents with children younger than 2 are advised to never let infants watch screen media, according to The American Academy of Pediatrics.

The researchers found that children living in homes with lower household income or whose mothers had less education were more likely to watch more TV. Non-white children also watched more.

Kids participating in the study were given vocabulary, drawing, object matching and pegboard tests to evaluate their verbal and motor skills at age 6 months and again at 3.

The results indicated that children who watched more television as infants performed less well on tests at age 3, but the effect disappeared after adjusting for the mother’s education, vocabulary, household income and other socioeconomic factors.

Marie Schmidt of Children’s Hospital Boston with colleagues from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care wrote: “Contrary to parents’ perceptions that TV viewing is beneficial to their children’s brain development, we found no evidence of cognitive benefit from watching TV during the first 2 years of life.”

Additional studies have also shown that television viewing had no impact on academic achievement among older children and adolescents as long as socioeconomic factors were taken into account.

However, a separate study did find that more TV viewing at age 3 correlated to less verbal ability at age 6, suggesting the detrimental effect may not show up until children are older than 3 and more verbal.

Or there may be more harm done by TV viewing between the ages of 2 and 3 years, the report suggested.

“TV exposure in infants has been associated with increased risk of obesity, attention problems, and decreased sleep quality,” said pediatrician Michael Rich.

“Parents need to understand that infants and toddlers do not learn or benefit in any way from viewing TV at an early age.”

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On the Net:

• Pediatrics

In Finland, some locals are touting the health benefits of ice bathing.

Although it may seem like the perfect activity to trigger illness, many Finns say bathing in local frozen lakes is beneficial for body and mind.

“It cleanses the mind and helps me leave work stuff behind,” Martti Salonen, 58, told AFP near the just above freezing Vuoksi river.

“It’s a hobby that really gets you hooked.”

Earlier this month Salonen alongside some 930 people took part in the Finnish winter swimming championships in Imatra. Participants swam 82 feet in water where temperatures reached 0.2 degrees Celsius (32.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Some 2,000 of Finland’s 5.3 million inhabitants take part in such competitions. Additionally, about 150,000 Finns take a frosty swim at least a couple of times a year, according to Suomen Latu, an association promoting outdoor activities.

Seventy-year-old Eila Harju took the silver medal in the event by swimming 25 meters in 28.58 seconds.

“I am very competitive. I aimed for silver in the competition and I got it,” she said.

“At first it was awful. I felt dizzy, but I got used to it. Now I can swim 100 meters in freezing cold water,” Pirkko Mattila, 60, told AFP. She said she has been winter swimming for nearly a decade.

“I will continue with this as long as I live.”

“Cold is used to treat pains and inflammations,” said Tarja Westerlund, an exercise physiologist who is currently finishing her doctorate thesis on cold treatment of medical conditions.

Westerlund recently worked with a study to show that cold temperatures can actually increase stress hormone levels temporarily, which can alleviate pain. However, there is no evidence that exposure to frigid temperatures can improve immune system function, she added.

“Test subjects were treated in a cold chamber or went winter swimming three times a week for three months. We found that their levels of stress hormone noradrenalin increased significantly, which could explain the pain relief,” she said, explaining that the hormone “helps the body adapt to different situations.

Although ice cold water is also a shock to the body it is a relatively safe hobby for people as long as they do not have a heart condition or problems with blood pressure, Westerlund told AFP.

“Winter swimmers said it felt easier to get into the cold water in the second week. They quickly adapted mentally to it,” she said.

Image Courtesy Wikipedia

New research from the University of Illinois suggests that weight-loss campaigns that promote exercise may actually cause people to eat more.

People who viewed posters suggesting that they “join a gym” or “take a walk” ate more food after looking at the posters than people who saw similarly designed posters prompting them to “make friends” or “be in a group,” the researchers found.

Subliminal words about being active had a similar effect on study participants, said psychology professor Dolores Albarracín, who led the research.

“Viewers of the exercise messages ate significantly more (than their peers, who viewed other types of messages),” she said. “They ate one-third more when exposed to the exercise ads.” Those exposed to subliminal words about activity during a computer task ate about 20 percent more than those exposed to neutral words, she said.

The study, which appears in the journal Obesity, builds on previous research by Albarracín that suggests that general messages to be active can prompt people to behave in a variety of ways, some of which may have negative consequences.

Those designing public health campaigns are in the habit of trying to change one behavior at a time, Albarracín said. They should be aware that “whatever they communicate is likely to influence not only the behavior they had in mind but other behaviors that might be somewhat remotely linked,” she said.

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On the Net:

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Obesity

Although doodling in class while listening to the teacher may be perceived as a mind-wandering activity, researchers have reported evidence that suggests the activity may actually help the human mind retain information.

Researchers from Plymouth University conducted memory tests on 40 members of the research panel of the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. The test asked participants to listen to a two and a half minute phone call and recall the eight names and eight places.

Twenty of the participants were asked to shade in shapes on a piece of paper at the same time, but paying no attention to neatness.

None of the participants were told it was a memory test.

Those who listened to the call while doodling were able to recall 29 percent more information compared to non-doodling volunteers, researchers said.

“If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream,” said study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, Ph.D., of the School of Psychology, University of Plymouth.

“Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task.”

“In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process. If that process is important for the main cognitive task then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade,” said Andrade.

“This study suggests that in everyday life doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing.”

Professor Alan Badeley, from the British Psychological Society, told BBC Health:

“Doodling is a relatively undemanding task so this makes sense. The temptation during meetings or telephone conversations that you are not particularly engaged with is to start thinking about things. You visualize things such as holidays. That then takes you away from the task at hand. Or you may even end up nodding off.”

“However, by comparison, doodling is not that taxing and keeps you more alert so you are more likely to absorb what is being said,” he added.

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On the Net:

• Plymouth University
• Applied Cognitive Psychology

The financial crisis has resulted in an increasing number of women willing to sell their eggs at U.S. fertility clinics, with potential payments of up to $10,000, Reuters reported.

One woman in New York City, who has been out of work since November, said she decided to sell her eggs because her bills were mounting up.

Nicole Hodges, a 23-year-old actress, said she has been accepted as donor and is waiting to be chosen by a couple.

“I’m still paying off college. I have credit card bills and, you know, rent in New York is so expensive,” she said.

Growing interest in egg donation has been reported in fertility organizations across the country. Since the start of 2008, the Center for Egg Options in Illinois has seen a 40 percent increase in egg donor inquiries.

Inquiries have doubled at New York City’s Northeast Assisted Fertility Group and the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine said it had received 10 percent more interest from donors.

The Reproductive Science Center of New England, which does not deal directly with egg donors, said it had gone from no inquiries to now receiving several a month.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends that total payments to donors be capped at $10,000. The U.S. national average payment was $4,216, according to a 2007 study. Payments by clinics in the Northeast were found to average just over $5,000, while those in the Northwest averaged just under $3,000.

However, while some women see donation as an easy way to make money, not everyone is accepted, according to Katherine Bernardo, egg donor program manager at Northeast Assisted Fertility Group.

She said that while the current economic climate encourages women to find creative ways to make money, it doesn’t actually mean that anyone interested in egg donation goes on to donate.

“So few women are actually eligible,” she added.

A mere 5 to 7 percent of the applications Bernardo receives result in the retrieval of eggs. She said an ideal candidate should be in her twenties, healthy, attractive and well educated.

Women interested in donating eggs must go through rigorous medical, psychological and genetic testing as well as a background check. Once they are qualified, donors must undergo hormone injections until the eggs are ready to be harvested.

Bernardo said the economy also puts strain on the recipients as well.

“It’s a very expensive undertaking to use a donor egg and an IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycle.”

Women should not donate their eggs simply for the money, according to Eric Surrey, medical director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine.

Surrey, a past president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, said that while financial compensation is certainly one motivation, it should never be the sole motivation.

“These women are providing a great gift to others that should not be taken lightly,” he added.

On the other end of the fence, men looking to donate sperm do not receive nearly the same amount of compensation.

Several New York City-based sperm banks, where men are paid about $60 each time they donate, have not reported any increase in donor applicants.

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On the Net:

• Center for Egg Options
• Northeast Assisted Fertility Group
• Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine
• Reproductive Science Center of New England
• American Society for Reproductive Medicine

In a Monday press statement, US drug company Wyeth defended its baby milk powder and formula after being implicated in reports that linked the company’s products to kidney stones in infants.

Wyeth posted the statement on its China Web site in response to new reports from the China Daily newspaper of a link between baby formula, milk power and kidney stones.

“We’re aware of these reports,” Wyeth spokeswoman Natalie deVane said, adding that the company’s raw milk comes from Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Latin America “” not from China.

“Not a single positive result for melamine has been found,” she said, and Chinese health authorities have not filed any complaints with Wyeth. “The safety of our products is one of our top priorities.”

According to the AP, the reports originated with blog posts from a concerned parent whose child had become sick.

Earlier this month, Danone Dumex, of French food giant Danone fielded accusations that its milk powder was tainted. The company was later cleared of the accusations by China’s product-quality regulator, but the health ministry said last week it was investigating why children may be suffering kidney problems.

“At this point, there is no clear evidence showing that these ailments have any link to Wyeth products,” the company said in a statement.

The new reports come less than a year after a scandal struck the nation when at least six infants died and 300,000 were sickened by milk that was tainted by the industrial chemical melamine. The chemical was used to make milk products seem to have higher levels of protein.

Three people have been sentenced to death in China over the contamination, while the head of a major milk firm was jailed for life, according to AFP.

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On the Net:

• Wyeth

Australian surgeons were able to successfully use leeches to help reattach the severed hand of an Australian surfer mauled by a great white shark on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, the AFP reported.

Doctors are calling the operation a “minor miracle.”

The 33 year-old surfer, Glenn Orgias, nearly lost his hand after sustaining an attack by an 8.2-foot great white in the surf off Bondi earlier this month. It was the second shark attack in Sydney in February.

The man’s hand was hanging by a 1-inch piece of skin as he was taken to a hospital, and plastic surgeon Kevin Ho said he was worried it might not be able to be reattached.

Ho said the man’s general health and the speed of which he was rushed into the operating room made it possible for the hand to be reattached.

Doctors were able to restore blood flow to the injured hand using leeches, and Ho said he was hopeful the patient would regain some of its use.

“I thought the hopes for the hand were close to zero, but I have hope in time that Glenn will have a working hand,” he said.

Ho said for Orgias to make it to this stage was a minor miracle and a reflection of how healthy and physically well he was.

Orgias believes a tourniquet applied by a French surfer during his rescue likely helped save his life.

Experts believe this might be the first recorded attack in Sydney’s waters by a great white shark.

To find a great white in the city’s waters is considered rare, but authorities said 21 great whites had been caught in nets off Sydney, yet only two were caught off Bondi in the past three years.

The day before, a bull shark attacked a navy diver in Sydney Harbor, just off Garden Island military base. The diver lost a hand and a leg after enduring the attack.

Australia’s vast coastline has experienced its share of shark attacks, but experts said Sydney Harbor had not reported an incidence in over a decade, and that the last fatal attack was in 1963.

Australia has recorded 194 deaths through shark attacks over the past two centuries, and researchers continue to remind the public that more people die from bee stings and lightning strikes.

A report released Monday investigating the use of contaminated blood that infected roughly 5,000 hemophiliacs in Britain blamed U.S. companies for the scandal, and called for increased financial aid to victims. 

Roughly one-third of the victims have died since becoming infected with HIV and hepatitis C after receiving blood transfusions through Britain’s state-run National Health Service (NHS) in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

House of Lords member Peter Archer, who led the two-year non-governmental investigation, said it was “a horrific human tragedy” and called it the worst treatment disaster in the history of Britain’s NHS.

The review panel found U.S. companies that supplied the tainted products bore “a significant burden of responsibility.”  However, the report did not specifically name any U.S. companies or doctors.  The products, which were used to treat hemophilia, an inherited disorder in which blood is prevented from clotting.  The treatments involved the use of blood collected from thousands of donors.

“Long after alarms had been founded about the risks of obtaining paid-for blood donations from communities with an increased incidence of relevant infections, such as prison inmates, this practice continued. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that commercial interests took precedence over public health concerns,” the authors wrote.  

After gathering evidence for two years, Archer’s committee argued that people who were infected should be entitled to financial and medical benefits that they are not currently receiving.

The report also highlighted other medical ethics concerns.

“We are satisfied that some patients were subjected to tests without knowledge of their purpose and without their consent, a practice described by some witnesses as being treated as experimental guinea pigs,” it stated.

Tainted blood scandals have been investigated throughout the world, but the British report is the first detailed inquiry.  However, the nonbinding investigation will not directly lead to criminal charges. 

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On the Net:

• National Health Service

Cocaine use can have toxic effects on brain cells (neurons) that produce dopamine, say experts at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in a report that appears today in the journal Psychiatry Research. 

Using brain tissue acquired after the subjects died, researchers microscopically compared the number of dopamine cells in the brains of 10 cocaine users to those in the brains of nine people matched for age who did not use the drug.

They found significantly fewer dopamine cells, 16 percent, in the brains of cocaine users.

“Although we have always known that cocaine is a dangerous drug, for the first time we can now physically see that dopamine cells are lost in the brains of cocaine users,” said Dr. Karley Little, associate professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at BCM.  Associated measures indicated that the loss of cells was recent and the subjects were not born with this loss.

“Dopamine plays a big role in the awareness of pleasurable things in the environment, including food and sex,” said Little, also a staff psychiatrist at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston.  “The lack of dopamine cells may make a person less responsive to natural rewards, whether it’s in the workplace or in a relationship.”

The lack of dopamine cells could also lead to withdrawal or depression symptoms, said Little.  Although effects of cocaine use vary among users, the study shows the potential dangers of this drug. Cocaine use may theoretically increase the risk of Parkinson’s Disease, but the mechanisms involved may be different and not occur in the same individuals.

“This is just the beginning of the story.  We can now create a model to understand the biochemistry involved, such as how cocaine is toxic and why it is more toxic in some than others,” said Little.  Previous work by Little indicated that dopamine uptake is increased by cocaine exposure in the same individuals, which might have contributed to the toxic effects.

Others who participated in the study include Eric Ramssen, Ryan Welchko, Vitaly Volberg , Courtney J. Roland, and Bader Cassin of the University of Michigan. 

Funding for this work came from the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

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On the Net:

• Baylor College of Medicine
• Psychiatry Research

A strain of laboratory mice that has “superhealing” powers has been found to resist inflammation after a knee injury, and also to avoid developing arthritis at the injury site in the long term, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center. Their findings illuminate the mechanisms of post-traumatic arthritis and could point to therapies for this condition, which commonly afflicts younger people who lose productivity during their prime working years.

“After a patient’s traumatic injury, orthopedic surgeons realign the joint surface as anatomically as possible and then hope for the best,” said Steven A. Olson, MD, FACS, principal investigator of the post-traumatic arthritis project and chief of the Duke orthopedic trauma section. “They haven’t been thinking about why patients with injuries are subsequently getting arthritis. Our research examines how we could possibly prevent arthritis development with growth factors and anti-inflammatory therapies after a fracture, either before or at the time of the surgery to fix it.”

Olson said 10 percent of all arthritis cases – about 4.6 million – are post-traumatic arthritis patients, many of whom suffer for years and are too young for joint replacement surgeries. The economic cost thus is about $12.8 billion annually for this group, according to Arthritis Foundation statistics.

The scientists examined the differences in inflammatory response between two types of mice: one type known as superhealers (or MRL/MpJ) versus a strain of control mice (C57BL/6).

Previously, scientists discovered that the superhealer mice had such regenerative powers that holes made in their ears for lab identification purposes grew over completely with no sign of scar tissue. Earlier work done at Duke showed no differences between healthy and fractured limbs when the superhealers healed from a fracture of the knee joint.

“The superhealer can almost regenerate tissue,” said Bridgette Furman, research analyst and lead scientist of this study. “We thought, ‘if they can regenerate cartilage in the ear, what about cartilage in the knee?’ This happened in our pilot study, and we now have taken these results further and learned what happens in terms of inflammation. If you can figure out why the animal is a superhealer and apply that to people, then you may help prevent the development of arthritis.”

In the latest experiment, the team got very clear results in the genetic response within injured tissue: the control mice showed a greater than 700-fold increase in the expression of one cytokine, interleukin(IL-1ÃŽ²) in the first four hours after a fracture and 37-fold difference in that cytokine level at 7 days after the fracture. Cytokines are signaling molecules produced by cells in response to injury. Interleukin generally promotes inflammation and an increase in temperature. The superhealer mice showed a similar trend, but in much lower amounts: a 70-fold peak in expression at day 0 down to a 3.5-fold increase by day 7.

A second cytokine, TNF-ÃŽ±, was also expressed at a significantly higher rate in the control mice after the fracture (from a 13-fold peak just after fracture to 5-fold at 7 days), while the superhealer mice showed no change in their levels of TNF-ÃŽ± at all over time.

“Current treatments on the market for rheumatoid arthritis include anakinra (Kineret®, an IL-1 receptor antagonist) and etanercept (Enbrel®, a tumor necrosis factor blocker),” said Farshid Guilak, Ph.D., study scientist and director of the Orthopedic Bioengineering Laboratory in the Duke Department of Surgery. “In future studies, we plan to use these rheumatoid arthritis drugs right after a fracture to inhibit inflammatory cytokines in the normal mice. If a reduced inflammatory response is what helps the superhealers, we would like to know whether controlling inflammation in fracture patients can prevent arthritis.”

The team also studied the mice’s joint fluid and blood serum to measure actual levels of the cytokines. Overall, the control mice again showed significantly higher serum levels and synovial (joint) fluid levels of cytokines compared with the superhealers.

The study was presented at the Orthopedic Research Society meeting, which began on Feb. 22.

Other contributors to this work include Janet Huebner, Daniel Seifer and Virginia Kraus, M.D., Ph.D., of Duke Rheumatology and Immunology. Funding came from a grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

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On the Net:

• Duke University Medical Center
• Orthopedic Research Society

New research highlights environmental exposure to toxin

Scientists from Leicester and Nottingham have devised a method for identifying levels of exposure to environmental arsenic ““ by testing toenail clippings.

Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment and people can be exposed to it in several ways, for example through contaminated water, food, dust or soil. The risk of exposure is greater in certain areas of the UK where the natural geology and historic mining activities have led to widespread contamination of the environment with arsenic. Long term exposure to arsenic is associated with increases in lung, liver, bladder and kidney cancers and skin growths.

Previous studies using hair have suggested high levels of arsenic in the bodies of King George III and Napoleon Bonaparte. Now doctoral research at the British Geological Survey by Mark Button of the University of Leicester has used toenail clippings to find fresh evidence of exposure to environmental arsenic within a UK population living close to a former arsenic mine. The research, published online ahead of print in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, was carried out with Dr Gawen Jenkin, Department of Geology, University of Leicester; Dr Chris Harrington, School of Science and Technology at Nottingham Trent University and Dr Michael Watts of the British Geological Survey. The research was funded by the British Geological Survey.

Mark Button said “We initially identified high levels of arsenic in earthworms living in contaminated soils surrounding the former mine. That got us thinking about potential exposure in people living close to the site.”

The researchers collected toenails and washed and acid digested the samples under microwave irradiation. They then analyzed the samples using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.

Mark Button added: “This preliminary research indicates that people living close to a former arsenic mine have elevated levels of arsenic in their toenails. However, the potential health risks in this case, if any, are not yet clear and no arsenic related health issues have been reported. A large-scale and more detailed biomonitoring study is required to confirm these initial results.”

Dr Jenkin, lecturer in Applied Geology at the University of Leicester said: “This is the first time that the chemical form of the arsenic in the toenails has been measured ““ that can tell us something about how it got in there and possible risk factors.

Dr Jenkin added: “There is definitely more research needed to look at – amongst other things – a larger sample of volunteers, to see if the values change with time (it is quite possible the high values recorded are a one-off for that person, or due to slow toenail growth concentrating harmless quantities of arsenic), and to look at the possible pathways by which the arsenic is ingested. Coupling our analyses with regular blood measurements would be very revealing.”

However the researchers are definitely NOT requiring people to send in their toenail clippings. Neither can you assess arsenic contamination simply by looking at your toenails.

Dr Jenkin said: “Even in those people with elevated amounts it is present in tiny quantities ““ less than 0.003% in the toenail. In people who have not been exposed at all it is less than 0.00003%. If a nail looks different from normal that is usually due to physical damage (you stubbed your toe or dropped something on it) or a minor fungal infection that can be easily cleared up by a visit to the doctor.”

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Image 2: Toxic arsenic can be absorbed in the human alimentary tract and evidence of exposure is recorded in toenail samples.

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On the Net:

• University of Leicester
• British Geological Survey
• Nottingham Trent University
• Journal of Environmental Monitoring

Medtronic Inc.’s implantable deep brain stimulator has been approved by U.S. health officials to help treat patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Thursday, the Reclaim DBS Therapy device’s new use was cleared under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s humanitarian device exemption policy.  The company said that the treatment is already used for Parkinson’s disease, tremors and dystonia.

The humanitarian device exemption policy enables the development of medical devices intended to treat or diagnose a disease or condition of affecting fewer than 4,000 people per year in the United States.  In order to receive an approval, a company must demonstrate the safety and probable benefit of the device.

It “may provide some relief to certain patients with severe obsessive compulsive disorder who have not responded to conventional therapy,” Daniel Schultz, head of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement.

“However, Reclaim is not a cure for OCD. Individual results will vary and patients implanted with the device are likely to continue to have some mild to moderate impairment in functioning and continue to require medications,” Schultz said.

The decision by the FDA was found after reviewing data on 26 patients with the condition who on average showed a 40 percent reduction of symptoms after a year of using the device.

The device is battery-powered and implanted either near the collar bone or the abdomen, and then connected by a wire to electrodes placed in the brain, according to the FDA.  There is a smaller generator that sends pulses of electricity to stimulate both sides of the brain.

OCD is an anxiety disorder that causes patients to have constant upsetting thoughts and then do an action repeatedly as an attempt to dispel them.

Common obsessive thoughts can include the fear of germs, or worry of being hurt.  Compulsive actions might include frequent cleaning, hand-washing, counting or checking, the FDA said.

Michael Kaplan, Medtronic spokesman, said the treatment should be available for hospitals to use on the OCD patients in mid-2009 and will cost about $60,000, including device and hospital costs.

He added that health insurers will decide whether to pay for the treatment based on a case-by-case basis.

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On The Net:

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Scotland has been ranked No. 8 in the world in terms of alcohol consumption, according to statistics analyzed for the government.

In 2007, Scots consumed nearly 50 million liters of pure alcohol, with those over 16 consuming the equivalent of 11.8 liters per person. By comparison, the figure for England and Wales was 9.9 liters.

Shona Robison, Scotland’s Health Minister, said the nation’s high rate of consumption was linked to the availability of low-cost alcohol.

“The sad knock-on of all this has been a huge rise in all types of alcohol-related illnesses and deaths, with Scotland’s liver cirrhosis rate one of the fastest-growing worldwide and double that of England and Wales,” Robinson told BBC News.

Indeed, alcohol is now one of the leading cause of hospital admissions, surpassing heart disease, according to a BBC News report.

For the Scottish Government study, analysts with the Neilsen Company analyzed alcohol sales throughout the country.  

The Scottish Government said 11.8 liters was equivalent to 125 bottles of wine, 570 pints of 4% strength beer, 500 pints of 5% lager or 42 bottles of vodka per year or for each adult –enough for every adult to exceed alcohol consumption guidelines of 21 units per week.

The analysis shows that Scotland has the eighth highest pure alcohol consumption levels anywhere in the world, the government said after comparing the study’s results with the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Nations with higher levels of alcohol consumption include Luxembourg (15.6 liters per capita), Ireland (13.7 liters), Hungary (13.6 liters),

Moldova (13.2 liters), Czech Republic (13.0 liters), Croatia (12.3 liters) and Germany (12.0 liters).

Scotland was also ranked ahead of Russia, where alcohol-related deaths have reduced the average life expectancy for men to 59.

Luxembourg, which was rated the top alcohol-consuming nation by the WHO, consumes 15.6 liters of pure alcohol per capita, while Russia consumes 10.3 liters and the U.S. 8.6 liters.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics indicate that alcohol is nearly 70% more affordable in Scotland today than it was in 1980. While the price of alcohol has increased faster than retail prices, household income has risen much more rapidly.

Ms. Robison said Scotland was disturbingly close to the top of the international league table.

“Sales data from the alcohol industry itself indicates that we’re buying and drinking much more than people in the other UK countries and most of the rest of the world,” she told BBC News.

“There can be little doubt that this is largely a consequence of the big fall in alcohol’s relative price, which has dropped 70% since 1980.”

The research coincided with a separate study by experts from Glasgow University and the Medical Research Council (MRC), which found that nearly 1,500 Scots were dying each year due to alcohol-related causes.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill told BBC News that reducing the drink driving limit would also lessen the number of accidents on Scotland’s roads.

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On The Net:

Scottish Government

NHS Scotland

Medical Research Council

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly a quarter of Americans suffer from food poisoning each year, though few of those instances are linked to high-profile outbreaks.

“Outbreaks are dramatic instances,” says Dr. Robert Tauxe of the CDC.

But according to experts, they highlight a health threat that most people misunderstand.

Researchers have found more than 250 food-related illnesses, ranging from bacteria to parasites.  Some are similar to the Norwalk virus which accounts for two-thirds of food-poisoning cases.

Salmonella and campylobacter are the next most common.  Both account for 10 to 14 percent of food-poisoning cases.

A decade ago, CDC researchers estimated how many Americans got food poisoning each year.  They estimated that there were 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths.

According to a new CDC formula the numbers appear to be closer to 87 million illnesses, 371,000 hospitalizations, and 5,700 deaths a year.

A number of recent food-poisoning outbreaks including a 2003 hepatitis A outbreak from green onions, a 2006 E. coli outbreak from bagged spinach, and the recent peanut-related salmonella outbreak are making researchers fear that things are getting worse.

The numbers issued by the CDC only track confirmed cases, meaning those tested in the lab.  Most people do not see the doctor when they suffer from food-poisoning.

Health officials believe there are three dozen unreported cases of salmonella poisoning for every reported case.

That estimate would increase the victims in the latest peanut-outbreak from 640 confirmed cases to roughly 20,000 unconfirmed sicknesses.

Despite the dramatic number of possible cases, the U.S. food supply is still the safest in the world according to experts.

Food poisoning affects 25 percent of Americans each year, compared to 30 percent of people in industrialized nations, according to the World Health Organization.  

The number is much higher in developing countries where diarrhea is a major cause of death among children.

Unfortunately, some American food does not come from within its borders.

“I usually say it is one of the safest in the world,” said Tauxe about the U.S. food supply. “But increasingly, our food supply is the world.”

According to Dr. Andi Shane, a pediatric infectious disease specialist, people often accredit stomach problems to food poisoning due to news of recent outbreaks.

“I think a lot of people in general say, ‘I have symptoms. I must have eaten something that’s caused this,'” said Dr. Shane.  Patients don’t often consider that the infection may have come from some other means, she added.

Many find the recent outbreak unsettling because it involved prepackaged peanut butter, said Dr. Akiko Kimura of the California Department of Public Health.

“It’s ready-to-eat, and so there wasn’t anything the consumer could do,” she said.

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On The Net:

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A more specific and faster detection of viruses has been identified in new research by Trinity College Dublin’s Professor of Physics, Martin Hegner at Trinity College’s Center of Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN) and an international team of researchers. These findings have been published online in Nature News and will be published in the international peer-reviewed journal Nature Nanotechnology in March.

Viruses can be now detected in fluids and their detection is of major importance in medical diagnostics.  However, despite these recent advances, current assays are time consuming and labor intensive.  Professor Hegner’s research shows a more efficient and practical system in detecting the viruses by using micro-sized cantilevers to directly detect viruses binding to membrane proteins.

Micro-cantilevers, which look like springboards are .5 millimeters long and 1 micrometer thick and bend in response to different forces. By measuring changes in the frequencies at which these tiny planks vibrate, researchers have turned them into super-sensitive virus-weighing scales.

Membrane proteins are the most important target for present-day drug discovery programs.  The interactions between transmembrane protein receptors and their ligands are responsible for viral detection and central to medical research.  However, measuring these interactions is challenging due to the special architecture and consistency of transmembrane proteins in liquids.

For the first time, Trinity College Dublin’s Professor Martin Hegner and his team have discovered how to perform these measurements in physiological conditions using nanotechnology devices. Their work shows that nanomechanical sensors based on resonating silicon micro-cantilevers can measure such interactions rapidly in such conditions.

The researchers used the protein receptor,  FhuA of Escherichia coli known to bind to the T5 virus.  Professor Hegner and his colleagues coated the cantilever surfaces with a molecular layer of FhuA proteins sensitized to recognize molecules from the environment.  When the array was submerged in a T5 containing fluid, the researchers detected the virus binding to FhuA by measuring shifts in the vibrational frequency of the cantilevers.

Commenting on the significance of the discovery, Professor Hegner said: “These findings could lead to more specific blood tests and also will enable portable diagnostic devices in a hospital environment for a range of testing not just viruses, but also genomic markers and marker proteins.”

Quantitative time-resolved measurement of membrane protein”“ligand interactions using microcantilever array sensors
Nature Nanotechnology

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On the Net:

• Trinity College Dublin
• Nature Nanotechnology

The gut protozoans Giardia duodenalis and various species of Cryptosporidium are extremely contagious single-celled parasites liable to cause digestive disease in both man and animals. Some species and genotypes of Cryptosporidium and Giardia are important zooneses, as they occur in both animals and man. Zooneses are diseases that may be transmitted between animals and people.

Inger Sofie Hamnes showed in her doctorate that parasites of the groups Cryptosporidium and Giardia are extremely widespread in domestic animals, wild deer species and the red fox in Norway. Genotyping of Giardia isolated from elk, wild reindeer and red foxes showed that Giardia duodenalis in these animals may potentially infect humans.

Hamnes studied the occurrence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia in calves, dogs, wild deer species (elk, wild reindeer, red deer, roe deer and Svalbard reindeer), piglets and red fox in Norway, by analysis of scats.

Her studies showed that Cryptosporidium is common among young dogs, calves and piglets and that the parasites also occur to a lesser extent in roe deer, elk, red deer and the red fox. Cryptosporidium was not found in wild reindeer or Svalbard reindeer.

Giardia was more common than Cryptosporidium in calves, and the occurrence of both parasites varied with the calves’ age, geographic occurrence, season, and the cleaning frequency of pens. Among wild deer species, Giardia was more common than Cryptosporidium, while roe deer and elk had the highest occurrences of both parasites.

The presence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia in dogs varied with age and geographic location. There was a higher occurrence of diarrhea in piglets from litters that were infected by Cryptosporidium than in litters free of infection. The occurrence of both parasites was low in the red fox, however, the geographic distribution was extensive.

The results of these studies show that parasites of the groups Cryptosporidium and Giardia are widely distributed among both domestic and wild animals in Norway. Grazing animals may represent a source of transmission to man through drinking water, although people can also become infected through direct contact with infected animals.

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Image Caption: Giardia-oocyst

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On the Net:

• Norwegian School of Veterinary Science