Health

Researchers analysed city – and state-level data from the United States and international data from 15 countries to study the relationship between “active travel” – bicycling or walking rather than driving – and physical activity, obesity and diabetes.

The results showed that more than half of the differences in obesity rates among countries are linked to walking and cycling rates.

In addition, about 30 per cent of the difference in obesity rates among states and cities is linked to walking and cycling rates.

“Perhaps the greatest strength of our analysis was that it showed that the relationship between active travel and health was discernible at three different geographic levels: international, state and city,” authors said.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that differences in the built environment for physical activity (e.g., infrastructure for walking and cycling, availability of public transit, street connectivity, housing density and mixed land use) influence the likelihood that people will use active transport for their daily travel.

“People who live in areas that are more conducive to walking and cycling are more likely to engage in these forms of active transport,” authors said.

The researchers have also suggested that infrastructure improvements should be combined with restrictions on car use, such as car-free zones, traffic calming in residential neighbourhoods, reductions in motor vehicle speeds, and limited and more expensive car parking.

“Moreover, land-use policies should foster compact, mixed-use developments that generate shorter trip distances that are more suitable for walking and biking,” they added.

Comparing all 50 states and 47 of the 50 largest American cities, the researchers found that states with higher rates of walking and cycling had a higher percentage of adults who achieved recommended levels of physical activity, a lower percentage of adults who are obese, and a lower percentage of adults with diabetes.

The findings were published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Latest studies have indicated that stem cells from bone marrow can help treat children with killer skin disease and also repair injured lungs.

Researchers from University of Minnesota doctors John Wagner and Jakub Tolar used bone marrow stem cells to treat children with a rare genetic skin disorder called recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB).

The study was the first to show that bone marrow stem cells can be used to treat diseases affecting the skin and upper gastrointestinal tract, and alter the course of epidermolysis bullosa (EB), which causes skin to blister and scrape off with the slightest rub or bump – and for which there is no cure.

EB can also affect the lining of the mouth and esophagus, as well as the skin, and makes activities that many children take for granted, such as eating, painful.

Collagen 7, a protein that keeps layers of skin “glued” to each other and to the body, is missing in EB sufferers.

In a separate study, reported in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) used bone marrow stem cells to treat acute lung injury, one of the most common causes of respiratory failure in hospital intensive care units.

A team led by Michael Matthay and Jae Lee at the Cardiovascular Research Institute of UCSF re-created unhealthy lung conditions in the lab by culturing human alveolar cells and then chemically causing inflammation.

They then added bone marrow stem cells to the mix and observed how things changed.

“What happens in lung injury is that the membrane becomes very porous, fluid comes into the lung and pulmonary edema occurs, which leads to a worse outcome,” Lee told AFP.

“We found that if you add stem cells, there’s a restoration of the permeability, meaning stem cells were protective — they prevented permeability-increase in the epithelium,” he said.

An extensive study in Japan into possible genetic causes for prostate cancer has uncovered five new gene variants that have never been seen in previous studies in Caucasians, researchers said on Monday.

Hidewaki Nakagawa, lead researcher of the study, said these variants appear to be specific to Japanese males and can be used to screen for susceptibility to the disease in the future.

“We discovered five novel genetic variants which were associated with prostate cancer risk in Japanese men,” wrote Nakagawa at the RIKEN Center of Genomic Medicine in Tokyo.

“They (have not been) reported in other Caucasian studies, indicating these five could be specific to Japanese,” he wrote in reply to questions from Reuters.

The researchers screened the DNA of 4,584 Japanese prostate cancer patients and compared these with 8,801 other Japanese without the disease, and these five variants showed up consistently in the group with the disease.

They also found 19 other gene variants in the Japanese patients that were observed in previous studies involving Caucasians. But another 12 gene variants commonly found in Caucasian patients were missing in the Japanese.

Their findings were published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Nakagawa said the study showed the genetic diversity among prostate cancer patients in different ethnic groups.

These genetic variants found in Japanese patients can be combined and used to screen for disease susceptibility, he said.

“A gene test by combining these multiple (genetic variants) … might enable us to predict prostate cancer risk of a male more accurately in Japan, where the number of prostate cancer is rapidly growing recently,” he said.

Prostate cancer is a major cause of death among men in Western populations and shows an increasing incidence in Asian populations.

Enzyte, a popular dietary supplement marketed for “male enhancement”, has found to cause electrical abnormalities in the heart that could be potentially fatal in some people.

Doctors should advise their patients not to use the product until more safety data is available, Dr. Brian F. McBride of Loyola University Chicago in Maywood, Illinois, and his colleagues conclude.

According to Vianda (the makers of Enzyte) Web site, Enzyte promotes “firmer, stronger, fuller-feeling erections.” The company also states that “over 5 million men worldwide” use the supplement.

Because Enzyte is regulated as a dietary supplement, the company is not required to provide data to back up claims of its effectiveness.

Under U.S. law, dietary supplements are also “‘presumed safe unless proven to be otherwise,’” Dr. Paul Shekelle of RAND Health in Santa Monica, California, notes in an editorial accompanying the study, which is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

After being given the supplement, men in the study showed a prolongation of a section of the heart’s electrical cycle known as the QT interval. For people with a condition called long QT syndrome, which may occur in as many as one in 2,000 people, further prolongation like that seen in the current study could lead to severe heart arrhythmia and sudden death.

With the single-tablet dose, the researchers found, the men’s QT intervals increased by an average of about 8 percent, or 32 milliseconds, three hours after they took the drug; at five hours, it had increased by 11 percent, or 37 milliseconds. No patients developed abnormal heart rhythms or prolonged erections, but four developed skin flushing.

Reports of sudden death in users of cisapride (the ulcer drug Propulsid) and terfenadine (the antihistamine Seldane), which prolonged QT intervals by an average of 13 and 17 milliseconds, respectively, prompted the Food and Drug Administration to pull these products off the market, the researchers point out.

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), says it has been forced to speak out against the common advice to prevent an obesity crisis among mothers-to-be.

In a report released Wednesday, NICE advised that pregnant women should do at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise every day such as a brisk walk, swimming or cycling.

Almost half of expectant mothers are overweight or obese, putting themselves at much higher risk of fatal health conditions such as blood clots, miscarriages and stillbirths, according to the latest statistics.

They should ensure that they eat breakfast so they aren’t tempted by unhealthy snacks later in the day. New mothers should start shedding their baby weight six months after birth.

Doctors should suggest obese women to lose weight before they consider starting a family and girls should be taught at school the risks of being overweight and having children.

It also suggested women should not eat more food than normal until the last three months of pregnancy.

Even then they should only have an extra 200 calories a day – the equivalent of two bananas. NICE fears that growing numbers of obese women are becoming even fatter during pregnancy because they assume that they can ‘eat for two’.

Many never manage to lose this baby weight and will pile on even more when expecting their second or third child.

Scientists have discovered a drug that can help the brain grow new cells and said their study may lead to ways to improve experimental Alzheimer’s drugs.

The researchers’ work, done on rodents, builds on findings that all mammals, including humans, make brain cells throughout their lives. Most of these die, but this drug helps more of the baby cells survive and grow to become functioning brain cells.

“We make new neurons every day in our brain,” Andrew Pieper of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview. “What our compound does in allow more of them to survive.”
The compound is called P7C3, and the researchers have already started making changes to it to make it more effective. According to them the drug seems to be safe and appears to work even when taken as a pill.

The compound is similar to Medivation Inc and Pfizer Inc’s experimental Alzheimer’s drug, Dimebon, and may provide ways to improve its effects, Pieper and colleagues reported in the journal Cell.

“For the sake of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, it is hoped that the apparently marginal clinical utility of Dimebon might be enhanced by improvements in both its potency and ceiling of proneurogenic, neuroprotective efficacy,” the researchers wrote.

“If so, our work offers concrete assays for the development of improved versions of these neuroprotective drugs.”

Alzheimer’s gradually destroys the brain and affects 26 million people globally. Drugs, such as Pfizer’s Aricept, improve symptoms only minimally.

Medicines are compounds of chemicals that prevent or treat illness. Most illnesses occur when normal body processes get out of whack. Most medicines work by bringing those processes back into proper balance. Medicine may need to be taken for years or even over a lifetime to keep a body working properly. Imbalances occur more often as the body ages, so older adults tend to need more medicines than young people.

Some illnesses come on strong and therefore need stronger medicine. Antibiotics kill germs that cause infections. Chemotherapy wipes out cancer cells. These medicines work quickly and tend to be needed just for short periods.

Vaccines are medicines that actually prevent illness. They contain a piece of a germ–too little to cause an infection, but enough for the body’s immune system to identify the germ as an invader. Immune cells memorize the germ’s features as they clear it from the body. Then, when similar germs invade the body in the future, the immune cells recognize them and pounce.

The word alopecia refers to any type of hair loss, thinning hair or baldness in any hairy region of the body. Baldness tends to be a more specific term among lay people, as it usually refers to hair loss on the scalp – however, it can mean hair loss in any part of the body. Alopecia areata means “hair loss in areas”. In the majority of cases hair loss is a normal process of aging, and not a disease. Because it is not seen as life-threatening to doctors it is often disregarded. This is unfortunate because hair loss can cause serious distress in some people, with some far reaching psychological effects. In some cases hair loss may be a consequence of some medical treatment, especially cancer treatment drugs – when the hair loss is generally temporary.

Cancer is a class of diseases characterized by out-of-control cell growth. There are over 100 different types of cancer, and each is classified by the type of cell that is initially affected. Cancer harms the body when damaged cells divide uncontrollably to form lumps or masses of tissue called tumors (except in the case of leukemia where cancer prohibits normal blood function by abnormal cell division in the blood stream). Tumors can grow and interfere with the digestive, nervous, and circulatory systems, and they can release hormones that alter body function. Tumors that stay in one spot and demonstrate limited growth are generally considered to be benign. More dangerous, or malignant, tumors form when two things occur: A cancerous cell manages to move throughout the body using the blood or lymph systems, destroying healthy tissue in a process called invasion

That cell manages to divide and grow, making new blood vessels to feed itself in a process called angiogenesis.

When a tumor successfully spreads to other parts of the body and grows, invading and destroying other healthy tissues, it is said to have metastasized. This process itself is called metastasis, and the result is a serious condition that is very difficult to treat.

Bodybuilding is the act of putting on muscle by working out and shaping one’s diet to put on more muscle mass. Often bodybuilding is referred to as hardgaining, indicating a regimen tailored for a person without a predisposition towards acquiring muscle mass. Bodybuilding may be done for recreation, for personal betterment or as a competitive sport.

The sport of bodybuilding is judged based on the physical appearance and demonstrations of the participants. There is currently a campaign to have bodybuilding adopted as an Olympic sport, but this campaign is met with strong resistance by some sectors. It is commonly argued that bodybuilding is not an actual sport, as the contest itself is non-athletic.

When competitive bodybuilders compete, they demonstrate a number of poses intended to accentuate certain muscle groups. This posing is a large part of competitive bodybuilding, and many bodybuilders spent up to half of their training time perfecting their posing routines.