Jul 10
3
Fast evolution seen in Tibet
Ethnic Tibetans’ ability to thrive in high altitudes with low oxygen is the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science.
Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley said their comparison of the genomes of ethnic Tibetan and Han Chinese could help scientists understand how the body deals with decreased oxygen and diseases associated with oxygen deprivation in the womb, according to a news release on the university’s website.
The evolutionary biologists say the results of their study, which compares the genomes of 50 Tibetans and 40 Han Chinese, shows that Tibetans rapidly developed a unique ability to survive in altitudes above 13,000 feet, where oxygen levels are about 40 percent lower than at sea level.
The study said that Tibetans evolved to adapt to high altitudes after splitting off from the Han about 2,750 years ago.
The study identified more than 30 genes with DNA mutations that have become more prevalent in Tibetans than Han Chinese, nearly half of which are related to how the body uses oxygen.
“For such a very strong change, a lot of people would have had to die simply due to the fact that they had the wrong version of a gene,” said Rasmus Nielsen, a professor of integrative biology at Berkeley who led the statistical analysis.
By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
As part of a campaign to fight AIDS, Swiss health officials are offering a new twist on safe sex: condoms delivered to your door.
Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health began a new program Thursday giving people in Geneva, Bern and Zurich the chance to order condoms by phone.
Young people should always carry condoms with them, the office said in a news release Friday, but now bike couriers will arrive — in an hour or less — to “come to the aid of those who have forgotten.”
For 8 Swiss francs (about $7.50 U.S.), messengers will deliver three condoms.
The project, which lasts throughout July, is part of the country’s “LOVE LIFE STOP AIDS” campaign.
“The couriers are simply the perfect people to remind people in a pleasant way of our message that one should always have condoms available,” campaign manager Norina Schwendener said.
The Swiss AIDS Foundation is a co-sponsor of the campaign, which stresses that people should always use condoms during sexual intercourse, she said.
If celebrating triple-digit birthdays sounds appealing, scientists may be able to determine if you’re likely to live that long.
Researchers from the Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Boston Medical Center have identified genes associated with living longer. They also predicted using genetics alone many of those among study participants would be a centenarian. Their results will be published in the journal Science.
“Could these signatures tell a physician and their patient who’s going to be at increased risk for a particular disease sooner, and can this lead perhaps to interventions that might help them? I think that’s a possibility down the road,” said co-author Dr. Thomas Perls of Boston Medical Center, in a press conference.
People who live to 100 are a model of healthy aging, the study said. Previous research shows that about 90 percent of centenarians are disability-free until around age 93, said Perls, founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world, based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Eating too much sodium can push your blood pressure into the danger zone. Now, researchers are reporting that eating too many sweets–or drinking too much soda–may have a similar effect.
People who consume a diet high in fructose, a type of sugar and a key ingredient in high-fructose corn syrup, are more likely to have high blood pressure (hypertension), according to a new study.
Drinking 2.5 cans or more of non-diet soda per day–or consuming an equivalent amount of fructose from other foods–increases your risk of hypertension by at least 30 percent, the study found. What’s more, the increased risk appears to be independent of other dietary habits, including sodium, carbohydrate and overall calorie intake.
When Jacqueline Shaw picked up her son, Aaron, from day care, he came running at her full-force, as always, with all the energy you’d expect from a loving 4-year-old thrilled to see his mother at the end of the day.
But as Aaron lunged at his mother for a hug, instead of returning his love as usual, Shaw’s body froze. She steeled herself and tried desperately not to cry out in pain.
“He jumped into my arms, and I had to hold back the tears,” says Shaw, 46, who lives in Quincy, Massachusetts.
The pain was because the day before, Shaw had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous lump from her breast. The wound was fresh and the muscles and tissue still sore. She held back the tears because she didn’t want Aaron to know she had cancer.
A brief chest pain, numbness in the arm or even fatigue is enough to worry Sandra Thornton, a heart attack survivor.
Every pain makes her wonder, “Is this coming back? Am I in trouble again? Your confidence in your body changes,” she said after suffering a heart attack five years ago.
For those like Thornton who have had repeated heart problems, it means taking daily medications, monitoring diet and fitness and dealing with uncertainties.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was back in the news recently after he checked into a Washington hospital because of problems related to his recurring heart trouble, a family friend of Cheney’s had told CNN. Cheney, 69, has survived five heart attacks and suffered his first one at 37.
Cheney was released from the hospital Monday.
Patients who survive heart attacks say that there’s always a concern they might suffer another one.
Jul 10
1
Get ready for the tanning tax
Editor’s note: Natasha Altamirano is manager of media relations for the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational organization that monitors fiscal policy at the federal, state and local levels.
Washington — Put away those plastic mini-goggles and grab your favorite tube of self-tanner. The first new tax to fund health care reform goes into effect Thursday — a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services.
The tanning industry is just the latest victim of government paternalism, putting it in the same category as cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, sodas, trans fats, junk food and other targets of so-called “sin taxes.”
Desperate for revenue and lacking the guts to curtail big special-interest tax breaks such as the employer-provided health insurance exclusion or the mortgage interest deduction, congressional leaders and the president have singled out a politically vulnerable target. Kind of like a pride of lions singling out the weakest wildebeest.
By the CNN Wire Staff
A Missouri VA hospital is under fire because it may have exposed more than 1,800 veterans to life-threatening diseases such as hepatitis and HIV.
John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis has recently mailed letters to 1,812 veterans telling them they could contract hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) after visiting the medical center for dental work, said Rep. Russ Carnahan.
Carnahan said Tuesday he is calling for a investigation into the issue and has sent a letter to President Obama about it.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” said Carnahan, a Democrat from Missouri. “No veteran who has served and risked their life for this great nation should have to worry about their personal safety when receiving much needed healthcare services from a Veterans Administration hospital.”
The issue stems from a failure to clean dental instruments properly, the hospital told CNN affiliate KSDK.
Nicole Carlotti already has her ticket to the midnight showing of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” but she can’t wait to get to the theater three hours ahead of time so she can talk about the movie with other fans.
“Sometimes you overhear conversations of people sitting in line next to you, so you kind of like, discuss with them as well. Everybody is just so excited,” said Carlotti, whose 23rd birthday coincides with the opening of the film.
“I just want to talk about it and make the experience last as long as possible.”
“Twilight” series fans like Carlotti are gearing up to crowd movie theaters across the U.S. just days after iPhone 4 buyers lined up by the thousands at Apple stores, some even camping out overnight to be one of the first with the new gadget. In July, some 125,000 people will attend Comic-Con, a convention that revolves around waiting in line with everyone else to glimpse celebrities and — if you’re lucky — hear them talk about upcoming movies and TV shows.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart for the termination of a Michigan employee whose doctor verified his illness qualified for medical marijuana use.
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, fired Joseph Casias in November 2009 after he failed an on-the-job injury-related drug test. Casias suffers from a rare form of cancer in his nasal cavity and brain, and he relied on his doctor’s medical marijuana prescription to alleviate the daily pain. Casias is one of about 20,000 legal medical marijuana users in Michigan.
“Medical marijuana has had a life-changing positive effect for Joseph, but Wal-Mart made him pay a stiff and unfair price for his medicine,” said Scott Michelman, staff attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project.
Editor’s note: Rahul K. Parikh is a physician and writer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/docrkp.
Walnut Creek, California – On a beautiful morning in my hometown of Walnut Creek, California, I sat watching my daughter playing in the park. There she was, along with many other kids, swinging, sliding, and running with the kind of pure joy you see only in children.
Behind us lay a green soccer field, filled with two teams of kids competing for nothing but bragging rights and team spirit. Their parents along the sidelines were enjoying the action. My daughter is just 2 years old, but I looked forward to the day I would be one of those parents, cheering her on to victory.
If it were 60 years ago, many children on this playground and soccer field might have been crippled or died from childhood diseases for which we now have vaccines. Children growing up in that era were at risk for infections like polio, measles, whooping cough, meningitis, and many other diseases that infect, maim and kill without prejudice or warning. All of this changed when some dedicated, hardworking doctors and scientists discovered a way to protect children from these scourges: vaccines.
Let’s be honest: Many of us — OK, most of us — weren’t exactly paragons of health in our youth. And we can’t help wondering: Will those margaritas, junk-food binges, forgotten condoms, or even that one bong hit eventually come back to haunt us?
“I cringe when I think of the abuse I heaped on my body when I was younger –smoking, drinking, using tanning beds,” says Stephanie Marchant, 43, a marketing consultant in Woodstock, Georgia. “I’d like to try to repair the damage, but I wonder how much I can do at this point. Is the damage already done?”
To find out just how worried Marchant and the rest of us should be, we took our fears straight to the people who should know: health experts who’ve studied the long-term effects of those youthful bad habits. What they say may surprise — and reassure –you.
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
Whooping cough, declared an epidemic in California last week, may look like just a cold or a persistent cough in adults. But in infants, it can be fatal, making adult vaccination essential, doctors say.
Peaks in cases of the highly contagious disease cycle every two to five years. California saw its last peak in 2005, with 3,182 cases, according to state health officials.
“We’re right about at the five-year peak, but we’re on track to surpass our 50-year high,” said Mike Sicilia of the California Department of Health.
In 2010 there have been 910 cases of pertussis, the technical term for whooping cough, as of June 15, state health officials said, and five infants have died of the disease. Local health departments are investigating 600 more possible cases of illness.
The only way to break that cycle is to vaccinate everyone of all ages, said Dr. James Cherry, professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Exposure to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in 162 cases of illnesses reported to the Louisiana state health department, according to a report released Monday. Of those cases, 128 involved workers on oil rigs or individuals involved in the oil spill cleanup efforts, the report said.
Among the most common reported symptoms were throat irritation, shortness of breath, cough, eye irritation, nausea and headaches, according to the department’s oil spill surveillance report.
The weekly report gathers data from a surveillance network of doctors, clinics, emergency care locations and medical facilities.
According to the most recent report, since the beginning of the oil spill, of the workers who reported illnesses, 120 were male and eight were female. Of the general public affected, nine were male and 25 were female.
Most of those who reported symptoms were between the ages of 18 and 64, the report said.
Jun 10
29
Biking may ward off weight gain
Biking for as little as five minutes a day can help women minimize weight gain as they enter middle age, especially if they’re overweight to begin with, a new study suggests.
The study followed more than 18,000 premenopausal women between the ages of 25 and 42 for 16 years. During that time, the women gained an average of about 20.5 pounds.
Women who started biking for just five minutes a day gained about 1.5 fewer pounds over the course of the study than similar women who didn’t take up biking, the researchers found. Women who increased their daily biking by 30 minutes during the study kept even more weight off, gaining about 3.5 fewer pounds than those whose biking habits stayed the same.
“Bicycling is an answer to weight control,” says the lead author of the study, Dr. Anne Lusk, Ph.D., a research fellow in nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston. “Walking is not necessarily an answer, unless the person is walking briskly.”
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