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A major cause of increasing obesity is certainly the campaign against it -- as dieting usually makes people FATTER. If there were any sincerity to the obesity warriors, they would ban all diet advertising and otherwise shut up about it. Re-authorizing now-banned school playground activities and school outings would help too. But it is so much easier to blame obesity on the evil "multinationals" than it is to blame it on your own restrictions on the natural activities of kids

NOTE: "No trial has ever demonstrated benefits from reducing dietary saturated fat".

A brief summary of the last 50 years' of research into diet: Everything you can possibly eat or drink is both bad and good for you

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8 November, 2009

Pesky! Children who drink full fat milk weigh less than those who do not

Children as young as eight who drink milk every day have a lower body mass index than those who drink the low fat variety, according to the study from Gothenburg University in Sweden. The new study found that children who drink full fat milk weigh on average almost nine pounds less than other children.

Diet experts believe that children who do not drink full fat milk may be fatter themselves because they drink fizzy drinks instead. Dietician and author of the study Susanne Eriksson, said: "It may be the case that children who drink full-fat milk tend also to eat other things that affect their weight. "Another possible explanation is that children who do not drink full fat milk drink more soft drinks instead."

The researchers also discovered a difference between overweight children who drink full fat milk everyday and those who do not. Children who often drink milk with a fat content of three per cent are "less overweight" but eat more saturated fat than recommended. However, those children with a high intake of fat have a lower BMI than the children with a lower intake of fat.

Miss Eriksson examined the nutrition, body composition and bone mineralisation of 120 healthy eight-year-olds after the children told her team what they had eaten the day before, how often they ate certain foods and after taking blood samples. Many of these children had been examined when they were four-years-old, and we discovered that their eating habits were pretty much unchanged four years later. "It appears to be the case that eating habits are established early."

The study found that nearly two-thirds of the children had low levels of Vitamin D in their blood.

SOURCE




Technology doesn't cause social isolation: Pew study

I wonder is the slimy "Baroness" Greenfield listening?

CONTRARY to popular belief, technology is not leading to social isolation and people who use the internet and mobile phones have larger and more diverse social networks, a new study claims. "All the evidence points in one direction," said Keith Hampton, lead author of the report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project released this week.

"People's social worlds are enhanced by new communication technologies. "It is a mistake to believe that internet use and mobile phones plunge people into a spiral of isolation," said Mr Hampton, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

The authors said key findings of the study "challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology." "There is a tendency by critics to blame technology first when social change occurs," Mr Hampton said. "This is the first research that actually explores the connection between technology use and social isolation and we find the opposite. "It turns out that those who use the internet and mobile phones have notable social advantages," Mr Hampton said. "People use the technology to stay in touch and share information in ways that keep them socially active and connected to their communities."

The study found that six per cent of Americans can be described as socially isolated - lacking anyone to discuss important matters with or who they consider to be "especially significant" in their life. That figure has hardly changed since 1985, it said.

The study examined people's discussion networks - those with whom they discuss important matters - and their closest and most significant confidants, or core networks. On average, the size of people's discussion networks is 12 per cent larger among mobile phone users, nine percent larger for those who share photos online, and nine percent bigger for those who use instant messaging.

The diversity of people's core networks tends to be 25 per cent larger for mobile phone users, 15 per cent larger for basic internet users, and even larger for frequent internet users, those who use instant messaging, and those who share digital photos online. At the same time, the study found that Americans' discussion networks have shrunk by about one-third since 1985 and have become less diverse because they contain fewer non-family members.

The study found that on average in a typical year, people have in-person contact with their core network ties on about 210 days. They have mobile-phone contact on 195 days of the year, landline phone contact on 125 days and text-messaging contact on the mobile phone 125 days. They have email contact on 72 days, instant messaging contact on 55 days, contact via social networking websites on 39 days and contact via letters or cards on eight days.

The US study involved telephone interviews with 2512 adults between July 9, 2008 and August 10, 2008 and has a sampling error of 2.1 per cent.

SOURCE





7 November, 2009

Can a daily dose of chocolate keep the wrinkles away?

“Nibbling dark chocolate can seriously improve your health - and even help you look younger,” according to the Daily Mirror. The newspaper says a new study suggests that chemicals in dark chocolate (called flavonols) could help prevent wrinkles and skin cancer caused by the sunlight.

There are several major limitations to the way this study was conducted, as well as to the way it was reported by newspapers. As attractive as these claims are, they are unlikely to be true. The assumption that the results of this study can be applied to the ageing of skin or skin cancer is wrong. Some newspapers have correctly pointed out that the dark chocolate studied in this research is not the type found in shops.

While dark chocolate may be tasty, there must be more rigorous research into the substances it contains if today’s headlines are to be supported by science.

The research was carried out by Dr Stefanie Williams and colleagues from London University of the Arts and European Dermatology London, a private dermatology clinic which provides both medical and cosmetic services. The study was funded by the London University of the Arts and was published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, the official journal of the International Academy of Cosmetic Dermatology.

The Daily Telegraph interpreted this study as showing that dark chocolate protects against ageing, whereas the Daily Mail has questioned whether it might protect against wrinkles.

This study was designed to be a double-blind, randomised controlled trial which tested whether chocolate consumption had a protective affect against skin damage from light exposure. The researchers recruited 30 healthy subjects and split them into two groups of 15. Each group was given chocolate that was either high in flavanols (HF) or low in flavanols (LF). Flavanols are a class of flavonoids, which are plant-derived substances that are believed by some to have antioxidant properties. Flavanols are also found in foods such as green tea, pomegranates, goji berries and blueberries. The volunteers were asked to eat 20g of the chocolate every day for three months.

Randomised double-blind studies are the ideal study type for this sort of research, but they need to be conducted and reported correctly. The way that participants are randomly allocated to the two groups (randomisation) and the way that the allocation was kept secret from the study investigators (blinding) need to be described in detail. This was not done in this publication.

In this study, the researchers recruited 22 healthy women and eight men with an average age of 43. They selected people who were considered pale and fair skinned according to the Fitzpatrick skin classification scale, an accepted scale used to class people’s complexion and tolerance of sunlight. This means that all patients in this study either burn easily (phototype II) or tan after an initial burn (phototype III). It is important to know how many of each phototype were allocated to the HF and LF groups and also how many in each group were men. This information is not stated in the publication, so it is not possible to tell how successful the researchers’ randomisation process was.

The HF chocolate was manufactured in Belgium using a method that the researchers say preserves the naturally high level of flavonols found in cocoa beans. The LF chocolate was made by a more common method using higher temperatures. It is not clear if the chocolates tasted different. As this was not tested, the participants and researchers may have been aware of which type of chocolate was being eaten.

Researchers tested the skin of all participants at the start of the study and after the 12-week course of chocolate. They used a testing method called minimal UVB erythema dose (MED), in which an automated device delivers increasingly strong doses of ultra-violet light to the front of the forearms. MED is measured according to the power of the light, the area of the light beam and how long it is applied to the skin, and is expressed as units of J/cm2 (joules per square centimetre). The researchers adjusted the strength of the MED doses for the individual skin types and recorded the level of UV light at which the skin became burned.

Of the 30 subjects recruited, 28 completed the study. After the 12 weeks, the average MED in the LF chocolate group did not change, while in the HF group it increased by more than double. For the people eating LF chocolate, the MED at the start was 0.124 J/cm2 and increased to 0.132 at week 12 (not statistically significant). For the people eating HF chocolate, the MED at the start was 0.109 J/cm2 and increased to 0.223 at week 12 (statistically significant).

The researchers say that “our controlled, double-blind, randomized in vivo study demonstrated, for the first time to our knowledge, that regular consumption of a chocolate rich in flavonols confers substantial photoprotection and can thus be effective at protecting human skin from harmful UV effects.” They say that conventional chocolate had no such effect, and that the main underlying mechanism of action is likely to be the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activity of cocoa flavonols.

This small study has several problems that mean care should be taken when interpreting its results. In particular, this study did not look at long-term damage to the skin, ageing of skin or people’s risk of skin cancer, which were all discussed in the press coverage. The actual measure assessed was skin burning in volunteers with an average age of 43.

In the researchers’ reporting of their results, there was a lack of detailed description of the blinding and randomisation procedures used to allocate people to groups. This means it is unclear whether the large difference in the way that skin burned or tanned between the groups was due to differences in the participants’ skin types rather than chocolate consumption. It is not possible to verify this from the report.

Although the administration of UV light to cause the “erythema dose” may have been done objectively, it is not clear how the researchers assessing skin reaction were blinded and whether a sound method was used to prevent them knowing which chocolate group a participant was in.

While the idea that eating chocolate every day can protect the skin is appealing, this research has a number of limitations. It is sensible to reduce the risks of skin ageing and skin cancer by following current sun safety guidelines.

SOURCE




No joke: new hope for painful "four-hour erection"

Erections lasting four hours or more may seem like a rich source of jests, but to men suffering this painful condition -- called priapism -- they're no laughing matter. However, new research offers hope that victims at least won't end up unable to have sex. Scientists from the United States and China have found in mouse studies that a compound called adenosine deaminase prevents priapism from leading to penile fibrosis, a condition associated with buildup of scar tissue and eventual impotence.

Priapism itself is, in turn, a complication of sickle cell disease. The new findings are published online in the FASEB (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) Journal. "Coping with priapism is hard enough, but knowing that it can ultimately lead to fibrosis within the penis adds insult to injury," said Gerald Weissmann, editorinchief of the Journal. "Hopefully this discovery can yield new drugs that relieve the excitatory signals sent by adenosine so that these men to get some relief."

Adenosine deaminasean enzyme which breaks down adenosine, a natural cellular-signaling molecule, is already used in humans as a treatment for a rare immune disorder. For the new study, researchers used two priapism animal models to determine the role of increased adenosine in penile fibrosis. One model was that of adenosine deaminase-deficient mice and the other was mice engineered to have sickle cell disease. Both sets of mutant mice were treated with adenosine deaminase.

After eight weeks, the investigators found the enzyme lowered adenosine levels in the penises of both groups of rodents, preventing or correcting penile fibrosis. "We have revealed that increased adenosine signaling contributes to. the progression of priapism to penile fibrosis," said Yang Xia, a scientist involved in the study from the University of TexasHouston Medical School. "This finding led to a novel therapeutic possibility to treat and prevent this dangerous complication."

SOURCE





6 November, 2009

Being overweight blamed on food, as usual

The fact that obsessive "safety" rules now ban many traditional childhood activities and thus reduce exercise is rarely mentioned. And politically correct bans on anybody "winning" are very bad for sport. So it is in fact government meddling that has created much of the problem and abolishing the meddling would be the surest path to solving it

It's the weighty issue that can no longer be ignored and one that is being blamed for an alarming rise in obesity among young girls. New research released yesterday shows that tweens are wearing their food choices on their waistlines, setting themselves up to be overweight as adults and suffer major health problems such as infertility.

The muffin top, made famous by the TV show Kath and Kim, is now the norm for teen girls who are between 5-20kg overweight, with one in three girls aged between nine and 13 overweight or obese.

Health experts yesterday warned that the sensitive issue could no longer be ignored, and had been avoided in the past out of fear it could lead to eating disorders. "It is a particular age group that has been overlooked and there needs to be more focus because they are much more in control of their food choices," Associate Dean of Clinical and Molecular Medicine at Flinders University Professor Lynne Cobiac said. "If they are overweight now, most, but not all, will often go on to be overweight when they are adults and they could [COULD being the operative word. Most fat people do NOT get diabetes] develop diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. It's really important that we understand what is influencing their choices so we can help them to be healthy, and set them on the right path."

Professor Cobiac's research found that by age 12, girls are doing almost no exercise, compounding weight problems. As they grow older, girls become more body conscious, restricting meals or overeating and developing disorders. Girls fall into two dietary patterns, eating meat, fruit and vegetables - or snacks, no meat and vegetables. Those on the snack, no meat and vegetable diet eat smaller lighter meals, characterised by more cereals, chocolate, fried chips and soft drinks.

Professor Cobiac's findings, based on the 2007 National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey, reveal that at least 30 per cent of girls are overweight before they enter high school. "Part of the explanation is that they are pre-pubescent and that can sometimes increase weight," she said. "What we found is that they are having a high fat diet on weekends and in school holidays." In some cases, girls were starving themselves during the school day but then "demolishing a pack of Tim Tams" when they got home.

What is concerning experts is the drastic change in girls' attitudes towards sport in high school. Paediatric nutritionist at The Children's Hospital at Westmead Susie Burrell said this was an age group that had been neglected in the past.

SOURCE




A truly heartening story

Doctor cures 'Baby Z' of molybdenum cofactor deficiency in medical world first. Pity about the bureaucratic hurdles, though. The baby would have done better if the drug could have been given immediately

A MELBOURNE baby given no chance of survival has amazed doctors after being saved with one of the biggest long shots in medical history. "Baby Z's" brain started virtually dissolving soon after she was born 18 months ago because she had too much toxic sulphite in her system.

But her parents and doctors refused to give in to the one-in-a-million genetic condition and stumbled on a highly experimental drug. The Herald Sun can reveal treatment began a month after she was born and within days Baby Z "woke up". "It was really like awakening - it was just bang, and she was switched on," pioneering neonatologist Dr Alex Veldman said.

Baby Z's overjoyed mother said she had grown into a happy and determined little girl. "She is absolutely delightful and as stubborn as anything - I don't know where she gets that from," she said. "She has just started saying a few words and is constantly moving around. "Every day just gets better and better. We look at her every day and just think, 'Wow'."

The first person to be cured of molybdenum cofactor deficiency - a condition that poisons the brain and kills within months of birth - Baby Z has made world medical and legal history for Monash Children's at Southern Health. The child and her parents cannot be named for legal reasons and to protect their privacy. But her relieved mother told the Herald Sun she refused to accept her daughter would die, even when told she had no chance. "(The procedure) was a tiny bit of hope but, when you have nothing, that is a lot of hope. She might have one bad gene but she has a lot of other good and strong genes."

Soon after she was born in 2008, Baby Z's toxic sulphite levels were almost 30 times higher than normal and were dissolving her brain. After three weeks looking for answers, biochemist Dr Rob Gianello found a research paper by German plant biologist Prof Gunther Schwarz describing how he had developed an experimental drug that was able to save mice with the disease in 2004. The drug had hardly been used in animals and nobody had more than an educated guess at what it would do in a human.

But Monash's Dr Alex Veldman contacted Prof Schwarz in Cologne and appealed to the hospital's ethics committee to use the drug on Baby Z. The long shot was backed because the only other option was a painful death.

The Office of the Public Advocate then called on special medical procedure powers - used just twice before - to convince the Family Court to allow the unique treatment to go ahead. Within an hour of the court's approval, Baby Z was given the drug.

Within hours of receiving her first daily dose of cPMP (cyclic pyranopterin monophosphate), tests showed Baby Z's sulphite levels immediately dropped from near 300 to below 100. Within three days they fell to the normal level of about 10.

Baby Z's neurological development is delayed due to some brain damage in the weeks it took to find the cure, but she is now improving. The full details of the treatment are now being analysed for a planned human trial of the medication at Southern Health. Victorian Public Advocate Colleen Pearce said she was thrilled everything had fallen into place for Baby Z and her family.

SOURCE





5 November, 2009

BINGO! Folic acid intake increases asthma chance by 30pc

I was very critical of dosing the whole popluation with folic acid and warned of dangerous side-effects and now we see some evidence of just that. The findings are epidemiological so are not conclusive but compulsorily dosing everyone with something requires very strong evidence of safety and that is now clearly in question

Mums who took folic acid supplements throughout their pregnancy, in a well-intentioned attempt to boost baby's health, were increasing their risk of having a child with asthma, a study has found. A groundbreaking Australian study, which could explain rising rates of the chronic lung condition, found pregnant women who overuse the supplement were 30 per cent more likely to have a child with asthma. Taking a folic acid supplement is recommended for women who intend to fall pregnant, as it is known to prevent neural tube defects during a foetus' critical first weeks in the womb.

Associate Professor Michael Davies, from the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute, has uncovered an "additional and unexpected" consequence for women who also take the supplement throughout their pregnancy. "We see a substantial proportion of women taking these folate supplements throughout pregnancy and it may be because people think it is entirely benign," Dr Davies said. "Folate is incredibly important because of its role in preventing neural tube defects (like spina bifida) but because it is so important, and so bioactive, it needs to be treated with some respect as well."

Dr Davies reviewed the cases of more than 550 women who had given birth, assessing their diet and supplement intake before pregnancy and then rates of asthma among their children. For women who took the supplements according to advice - before conception and not more than several weeks into their pregnancy - there was no increased risk of asthma.

However, Dr Davies found women who took the supplement throughout their pregnancy, or from 16 to 30 weeks, increased their risk of having a child with asthma by about 30 per cent. "Our finding should be reassuring to women who take folate for the purpose of preventing neural tube defects, because we found no evidence of early supplementation (leading to asthma)," Dr Davies said. "It was really only use in later pregnancy, it was confined to that area alone ... and only for supplemental use."

Dr Davies said having a diet rich in green leafy vegetables, certain nuts and fruits known to be sources of folate (the natural form of folic acid) did not carry an asthma risk.

Childhood asthma rates have been increasing across developed countries and Dr Davies said his research showed how changing diet, and particularly the overuse of a supplement, could play a role. It also comes after mandatory fortification laws required Australia's bakers to add a small amount of folic acid to their bread products (organic flour excluded).

This move, from October, was designed to address a known folate deficiency across the community. "There is no evidence to suggest dietary sources of folate, or even folate fortification, increases the risk of asthma," Dr Davies said. "(But) that is a sensible question for further study".

The research is published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

SOURCE




The tiny tube that could help men beat impotence

A tiny metal tube implanted in the pelvis could transform the love lives of men who suffer erection problems. The device, not much bigger than a grain of rice, works by propping open the artery that supplies blood to the genitals. Restricted blood flow to the male sex organs is thought to be a major factor in impotence, or erectile dysfunction.

British doctors hope to carry out the first such implant within the next few months as part of a trial involving up to 30 men. A separate trial is also planned in the U.S. Surgeons will insert a tube-like device called a stent to try to solve the problem. Stents resemble miniature metal 'cages' and are already widely used in the treatment of heart disease, where blood vessels feeding the heart have narrowed because of a build-up of fatty deposits.

Their success in restoring-blood flow to and from the heart has prompted researchers to investigate whether they might also benefit men who struggle to get an erection even with drugs such as Viagra. Although Viagra and similar medications, such as Cialis and Levitra, have transformed the treatment of impotence in the past ten years, around 30 per cent of men who take them see no improvement.

For these men, the only other options are to inject drugs straight into the penis, or use a pump that manually increases blood supply to the organ. Neither is very popular. It's estimated that half of men over the age of 40 suffer impotence problems from time to time.

Potential causes range from diabetes and hormonal problems to stress and depression. But, in recent years, medical attention has focused on the link with heart disease. Just as the heart needs a constant and healthy supply of blood, a man's genitals also need to be able to call on a substantial rush of blood during arousal.

Recent evidence suggests blood vessels in the pelvic region can become diseased through poor diet, smoking and lack of exercise, in much the same way as coronary arteries. Indeed, some cardiologists believe erectile problems are a powerful early sign of hidden heart disease, giving up to three years' warning before any other symptoms emerge.

Now Medtronic Inc., one of the world's biggest medical device firms, has started a stent trial in the U.S. involving 50 men with erectile dysfunction who failed to respond to drugs. At the same time, a team at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff, is setting up a similar project. Each man will initially be scanned to check for signs of blockages in blood vessels in the pelvic region. One of the main targets is the iliac artery, which branches off in different directions to transport blood to the lower half of the body.

Once the problem area has been identified, doctors will insert a thin catheter into the artery until the tip has reached the blocked area. On the end of the catheter is the stent, which has been collapsed down to make it easier to manoeuvre. When it's in position, a tiny balloon is inflated which makes the stent expand until it is wedged into place. The balloon is then withdrawn.

But there can be problems with so-called 'bare metal' stents. These can cause the body's healing mechanism to over-react, triggering a build-up of scar tissue that simply blocks the blood supply again. To get round this, the trials will use newer generation drug-eluting stents. These release a medicine that dampens down the rapid healing process and keeps blood vessels open.

Julian Halcox, professor of cardiology at Cardiff University, and a member of the British research team, says the principles behind using stents for erection problems are exactly the same as in heart disease. 'The only difference is that the blood vessels might be a little smaller than coronary arteries,' he says.

SOURCE





4 November, 2009

Gentle exercise can cut heart disease deaths by 60 per cent (?)

Journal article here. It is a very mixed-up study with no clear control group that tries to look at stress, exercise, fitness and mortality all at once. What they ACTUALLY seem to have found was that fit people had fewer heart attacks, which is not exactly surprising. It is a hard study to disentangle but it appears that most people who exercised did NOT benefit from it

GENTLE exercise can dramatically cut the danger of an early death from heart disease, according to new research. Just 30 minutes of jogging or cycling three times a week has amazing results for people with heart problems – the UK’s biggest killer – a study has found. In just three months it slashed the risk of an early death by 60 per cent in those who followed the fitness regime.

The results will come as welcome news for thousands of Britons who suffer from heart-related illness. One-in-five men and one-in-seven women die of heart disease in the UK, equivalent to 250 deaths a day. Overall, 200,000 people die each year from conditions related to circulation, including strokes, heart attacks and heart disease. These figures are expected to go up as the population ages and thanks also to a rise in obesity, which leads to furring of arteries.

The study, released today, found the biggest gains were in patients who were also stressed. The authors believe it is because stress can quadruple the risk of death in people with heart problems. Exercise can offer the double benefit of reducing stress levels while also improving heart health.

The study concludes: “Exercise reduces mortality in patients with coronary artery disease…in part because of the effects on psycho social stress.” Patients with heart problems are usually put on drugs – statins to lower cholesterol and blood pressure pills – to reduce the risks....

This latest study by the Department of Cardiology in New Orleans and published in the American Journal of Medicine reveals in detail just how much these simple changes can boost lifespan. The team followed 522 cardiac patients, including 53 who had high stress levels and 27 control patients who had high stress levels but who refused cardiac rehabilitation.

Patients were offered 12 weeks of exercise classes, where they did 10 minutes of warm-up, 30 to 40 minutes of aerobic exercise such as walking, rowing or jogging, and then a 10-minute stretch to wind down. The classes were three times a week and patients were also asked to try to do a further one-to-three exercise sessions a week. They were also given advice on how to improve diet and lifestyle, and their progress was followed for up to six years.

Those who got fitter were 60 per cent less likely to die in the following six years. Exercise also helped reduce stress levels from one-in-10 patients to fewer than one-in-20 which in turn lowered the death rate for stressed patients by 20 per cent. However, the weight of patients did not change much, suggesting the benefits are from exercise alone.

Health charities welcomed the report. The British Heart Foundation, said: “This study proves once again that exercise has both psychological and physical benefits for patients with heart disease. “Health authorities must ensure that all suitable heart patients are offered cardiac rehabilitation. “Structured, well-resourced programmes have been shown to improve physical and psychological wellbeing and reduce mortality.”

SOURCE




People will die after swine flu vaccine - but it's just coincidence

Six people in Britain can be expected to die suddenly after having the swine flu vaccine but it will just be coincidence, researchers have said. With millions of people being vaccinated against the virus there is a real risk that coincidental events will be seen as reactions to the jab, a paper in The Lancet said.

Experts at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in America calculated the background rate of conditions that may be mistaken for vaccine reactions and warned that there is a risk people will shun the jab needlessly. Only if these background rates are exceeded will it point to a potential problem with the vaccine.

Medical experts have been told to watch for any cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome during the flu pandemic as some research suggested there was a link between a flu vaccine used in America in 1976 and the condition, in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system and can be fatal in rare cases. However flu itself it also linked to the condition and about one in every 100,000 people a year.

Dr Steven Black and colleagues calculated that if 10 million people in Britain were vaccinated there would be around 22 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and six cases of sudden death would be expected to occur within six weeks of vaccination as coincident background cases.

Just over nine million people in priority groups, such as pregnant women and those with long-term illnesses, and another two million front line health and social care workers will be offered the vaccine in Britain over the next two months. Decisions will be taken soon over whether to offer the vaccine more widely.

The research also suggested that 397 per one million vaccinated pregnant women would be predicted to have a spontaneous abortion within one day of vaccination. But this is the rate of spontaneous abortion that would occur on any given day out of a group of one million pregnant women during a vaccination campaign or not.

Dr Black wrote: “Misinterpretation of adverse health outcomes that are only temporally related to vaccination will not only threaten the success of the pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine programme, but also potentially hinder the development of newer vaccines. "Therefore, careful interpretation of vaccine safety signals is crucial to detect real reactions to vaccine and to ensure that temporally related events not caused by vaccination do not unjustly affect public opinion of the vaccine. "Development and availability of data banks that can provide locally relevant background rates of disease incidence are important to aid assessment of vaccine safety concerns.”

The researchers said although scientists know that events connected only by time does not prove cause and effect, the cases 'nonetheless raise public concern'.

Prof David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge and Co-Director of Straight Statistics, said: "What a fine paper. If millions of people are vaccinated then just by chance we can expect bad things to happen to some of them, whether it's a diagnosis of autism or a miscarriage. "By being ready with the expected numbers of chance cases, perhaps we can avoid overreaction to sad, but coincidental, events. And why don't we ever see a headline 'Man wins lottery after flu jab'?"

Professor Robert Dingwall, University of Nottingham, said: "The difference between cause and coincidence is difficult enough for specialists to grasp, let alone the wider public. "However, this paper is very important in spelling out the fact that just because two events happen at the same time, they are not necessarily related. There is a background rate of death, disease and accidents that happen all the time regardless of what medical interventions are going on. "Confusing cause and coincidence may lead to serious policy mistakes that put people unnecessarily at risk. "I am sure that some coincidences will emerge from a high-profile vaccination campaign and we must be careful not to be misled by them."

Meanwhile the World Health Organisation said that pregnant women could be immunised with any of the vaccines licensed for use against swine flu. Dr Marie-Paule Keiny, from the WHO, said: “ Sage (the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts) has concluded that the safety profiles are good and recommend that pregnant women can be immunised with any of the licensed vaccines.” The WHO also recommended that one dose was sufficient to immunise children.

SOURCE





3 November, 2009

Junk "science" about "junk" food

Predictable nonsense: The weakest possible evidence (self-reports) added to the "correlation is causation" fallacy

Eating junk food can make you depressed, doctors have warned. Those who regularly eat high-fat foods, processed meals, desserts and sweets are almost 60 per cent more likely to suffer depression than those who choose fruit, vegetables and fish. Researchers claim their study is the first to investigate the link between overall diet and mental health, rather than the effects of individual foods.

Dr Eric Brunner, one of the researchers from University College London, said: 'There seem to be various aspects of lifestyle such as taking exercise which also matter, but it appears that diet is playing an independent role.'

The study, in the British Journal of Psychiatry, used data on 3,486 male and female civil servants aged around 55. Each participant completed a questionnaire about their eating habits and a self-report assessment for depression five years later.

The researchers found that those with the highest consumption of processed food were 58 per cent more likely to be depressed five years later than those eating the least amount.

SOURCE




Malaria vaccine for Africa likely to be distributed from 2015

Not a magic bullet but a big step forward

The first vaccine against malaria is likely to be distributed in Africa from 2015 after the “milestone moment” of the continent’s largest final-stage drug trial, scientists have told The Times.

A meeting of 1,500 specialists in infectious disease will be told tomorrow that more than 5,500 children have been given the RTS,S vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the British pharmaceutical company, as part of the trial. Vaccine developers will tell the conference that the phase three trial is under way in seven countries around Africa, marking a major step in bringing the drug to licence.

Malaria is a parasitic disease that infects about 250 million people every year, resulting in almost a million deaths. It is caused by the Plasmodium parasite, which is passed to humans by infected mosquitoes when they bite. The disease can damage the nervous system, kidneys and liver, and severe cases can quickly lead to death. About 40 per cent of the world’s population is at risk of malaria, mainly in the poorest countries. The problem is especially serious in Africa, where one in every five childhood deaths is due to the effects of the disease. An African child has on average between 1.6 and 5.4 episodes of malarial fever each year, with one child dying every 30 seconds from the disease.

Delegates at this week’s conference in Nairobi will be told that although the vaccine will not be a “magic bullet” against the disease, the latest trials of RTS,S brings it within reach of regulatory approval.

Dr Joe Cohen, vice-president of vaccine research and development at GSK, and one of the inventors of RTS,S, said that initial data would be filed within the next 12 months, with trial results expected by 2012 and implementation by 2015. “There is enormous excitement at reaching this milestone of this pivotal phase three trial. We are really forging ahead now,” he said. “We can see implementation starting broadly in 2015. Just a few years ago the idea of a malaria vaccine entering final phase three trials would have been unthinkable. It’s a tremendous breakthrough.”RTS,S, also known as Mosquirix, is the first potential malaria vaccine to make it to large-scale efficacy and safety trials, but also the first to target a more complex human parasite rather than a bacterium or virus.

The trials, which began in May, have now reached countries including Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Gabon. The vaccine has been given to between 5,000 and 6,000 children, and will eventually involve more than double the number. Data from earlier trials of RTS,S, published last year, showed that it reduced the risk of malaria by 53 per cent in children aged between 5 months and 17 months. It was shown to be safe and tolerable and could be given alongside other vaccines.

Even a partially effective vaccine would have the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. However, since it is likely to be five years before it is in use, experts said that eradicating the disease would mean fighting on many fronts. Essential elements include insecticides to spray bednets, building houses to deter mosquitoes and finding new drugs and funding existing ones. Global estimates suggested that $4.2 billion (£2.5 billion) would be needed each year to fight malaria.

Dr Ashley Birkett, director of preclinical development at the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, the non-profit organisation, said that a rethink of funding strategies was needed, including the target of an 80 per cent effective vaccine by 2025. “With vaccine development you have to take a long-term approach,” Dr Birkett said. “RTS,S is the first step not only to preventing illness and death but ultimately to eradicating the disease.”

SOURCE





2 November, 2009

Obesity study to measure hospital visits

This sounds perilously like obesity skepticism. Fancy looking for evidence of what "everyone knows"!

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have started a long-range study on people who are overweight or obese and the number of times they need to visit hospitals. The study is following 265,000 people aged over 45 years, their weight and the number of hospital admissions.

ANU Associate Professor Emily Banks says very little is known about whether being overweight can increase your risk of going to hospital. "To look at if there are any points where we can intervene, actually to make people who are overweight or obese less at risk of hospital [visits]," she said. "So we are not only going to describe the relationship between being overweight or obese and going to hospital, we're also going to be able to look and see if there are points where we can make a difference and we can actually prevent it."

Professor Banks says the team will collect data which could be used to help develop future health policy. "The group's going to be investigating the effect of obesity and overweight on the risk of going to hospital and I think a lot of people would be quite surprised to find we don't know very much about that," she said. "We don't know what the risks are. We also don't know what the ideal weight is in terms of whether or not people are at risk of going to hospital."

SOURCE




Women going through IVF told to lie back and put their feet up to boost conception by 50%

Some IVF clinics have been advising this for years

Women who lie on their backs for 15 minutes after fertility treatment are 50 per cent more likely to get pregnant, according to a study. Researchers suspect moving around after being artificially inseminated may prevent conception. They are now calling for all would-be mothers undergoing the procedure to be offered a quarter of an hour of rest.

The study of almost 400 couples found 27 per cent of the women who rested (54) became pregnant compared with only 18 per cent (34) of those who moved around after being given intrauterine insemination, in which sperm is injected into the uterus when the woman is ovulating.

The team described their findings, published online in the British Medical Journal, as 'significant' Dr Inge Custers, of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, said: 'We found a clinically relevant and statistically significant improvement in ongoing pregnancy rates after 15 minutes of immobilisation, confirming the results of a previous study. 'We suggest incorporating immobilisation as a standard procedure in intrauterine insemination treatment.'

While some small scale studies have investigated links between immobilisation and the success of artificial insemination, this is the first large scale trial to do so. In the study around half were asked to lie down for 15 minutes afterwards and the others were allowed to move around immediately following the procedure.

The mechanism of the effect of immobilisation after insemination is unclear but in intrauterine insemination, the most common fertility treatment in the world, sperm are inserted in a small volume of fluid directly into the womb. Dr Custers said: 'As a consequence, immediate mobilisation might cause leakage of this volume together with spermatozoa out of the uterus; alternatively, movement of processed sperm to and up the fallopian tubes may take longer than after intercourse.

In an accompanying editorial Professor William Ledger, of the University of Sheffield, said while the research showed promise, further studies were required. Prof Ledger said: 'In the United Kingdom, intrauterine insemination is the mainstay of fertility treatment carried out before couples embark on in vitro fertilisation. 'A busy assisted reproduction centre will carry out several intrauterine inseminations over the course of an hour. A 15 minute delay would affect clinic turnover, although with planning this would not be insurmountable. 'The results suggest that units should carry out their own evaluation of immobilisation versus immediate mobilisation after intrauterine insemination, to test the hypothesis in the "real world". 'If successful, more couples could be spared the rigorous and costly process of in vitro fertilisation. Future trials should assess the effect of different durations of immobilisation.'

SOURCE





1 November, 2009

Snack and soft drink sweetener putting millions at risk of high blood pressure (?)

More moronic epidemiology -- and based on self-reports at that! A LONG way from a double-blind study and of unknown implications. Probably it was poor people who drink more of the beverages concerned and poor people have poorer health anyway

A sugary ingredient in processed snacks and soft drinks is putting millions at risk of high blood pressure, new research has revealed. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is abundant in many types of foods and beverages and was originally viewed as a "healthy" method of sweetening. Its introduction 20 years ago has caused consumption of the fruit sugar fructose to rise sharply, alongside increasing levels of obesity.

Although healthy amounts of fructose exist naturally in fruit, excessive amounts of the sugar may be harmful. Large quantities of fructose cause the liver to pump fats into the bloodstream that may damage arteries.

Researchers who carried out the new study in the US looked at more than 4,500 adults with no prior history of high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Fructose intake was calculated using a dietary questionnaire which asked participants to rate their consumption of foods such as fruit juices, soft drinks, bakery products and confectionery.

The study found that people who ate or drank more than 74 grams of fructose per day - equivalent to 2.5 sugary soft drinks - increased their risk of developing high blood pressure.

Consuming more than 74 grams of fructose a day increased the chances of a reading of 135/85mmHg by 28%, the study found. It also raised the risk of higher readings of 140/90mmHg and 160/100mmHg by 36% and 87% respectively.

The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology in San Diego, California. Dr Diana Jalal, from the University of Colorado, and colleagues wrote in their paper: "These results indicate that high fructose intake in the form of added sugars is significantly and independently associated with higher blood pressure levels in the US adult population with no previous history of hypertension."

Further work was needed to see if lowering fructose consumption could normalise blood pressure, they said. Americans today consumed 30% more fructose than they did 20 years ago and up to four times more than they did 100 years ago, said the researchers.

SOURCE




Fat or mad? Take your choice

Children on widely used psychiatric drugs can quickly gain an alarming amount of weight – many pack on nearly 20 pounds and become obese within just 11 weeks, a study has found. "Sometimes this stuff just happens like an explosion," said Dr. Christopher Varley, a psychiatrist with Seattle Children's Hospital. "You can actually see them grow between appointments." He called the study "sobering."

Weight gain is a known possible side effect of antipsychotic drugs that are prescribed not only for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but also increasingly for autism, attention deficit disorders and other behaviour problems. The new study in mostly older children and teens suggests they may be more vulnerable to weight gain than adults.

The study also linked some of these drugs with worrisome increases in blood fats including cholesterol, also seen in adults. Researchers tie these changes to weight gain and worry that both may make children more prone to heart problems in adulthood.

The research is the largest in children who had just started taking these medicines. It provides strong evidence suggesting the drugs, not something else, caused the side effects, said lead author Dr. Christoph Correll, of North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Glen Oaks, N.Y. But because these drugs can reduce severe psychiatric symptoms in troubled children, "we're a little bit between a rock and a hard place," he said.

The study authors said their results show children on the drugs should be closely monitored for weight gain and other side effects, and that when possible, other medicines should be tried first.

The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. It involved 205 New York City-area children ages 4 to 19 who had recently been prescribed one of the drugs; the average age was 14. Depending on which of four study drugs children used, they gained between 10 and 20 pounds on average in almost 11 weeks; from 10 per cent to 36 per cent became obese. The drugs – none are approved by Health Canada for youths under age 18 – are Abilify, Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa.

Of the four, Seroquel and Zyprexa – with the worst effects on weight and cholesterol – are not yet approved for children in the U.S. However, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has voted in favour of their use with adolescents.

The four drugs have been considered safer than older antipsychotic drugs, which can cause sometimes permanent involuntary muscle twitches and tics. That has contributed to widespread use of the newer drugs, including for less severe behaviour problems, a JAMA editorial said. Doctors "should not stretch the boundaries" by prescribing the drugs for conditions they haven't been proven to treat, said Varley, co-author of the editorial. The number of U.S. children using these drugs has soared to more than 2 million annually, according to one estimate.

Why these drugs cause weight gain is uncertain but there's some evidence that they increase appetite and they may affect how the body metabolizes sugar, said Jeff Bishop, a psychiatric pharmacist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The drugs also can have a sedation effect, making users less active.

SOURCE







SITE MOTTO: "Epidemiology is mostly bunk"

Where it is not bunk is when it shows that some treatment or influence has no effect on lifespan or disease incidence. It is as convincing as disproof as it is unconvincing as proof. Think about it. As Einstein said: No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Epidemiological studies are useful for hypothesis-generating or for hypothesis-testing of theories already examined in experimental work but they do not enable causative inferences by themselves

The standard of reasoning that one commonly finds in epidemiological journal articles is akin to the following false syllogism:
Chairs have legs
You have legs
So therefore you are a chair


"To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact" -- Charles Darwin


"Most men die of their remedies, not of their diseases", said Moliere. That may no longer be true but there is still a lot of false medical "wisdom" around that does harm to various degrees. And showing its falsity is rarely the problem. The problem is getting people -- medical researchers in particular -- to abandon their preconceptions


Bertrand Russell could have been talking about today's conventional dietary "wisdom" when he said: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”


"Obesity" is 77% genetic. So trying to make fatties slim is punishing them for the way they were born. That sort of thing is furiously condemned in relation to homosexuals so why is it OK for fatties?


****************

Some more problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

11). A major cause of increasing obesity is certainly the campaign against it -- as dieting usually makes people FATTER. If there were any sincerity to the obesity warriors, they would ban all diet advertising and otherwise shut up about it. Re-authorizing now-banned school playground activities and school outings would help too. But it is so much easier to blame obesity on the evil "multinationals" than it is to blame it on your own restrictions on the natural activities of kids

12. Fascism: "What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

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More on salt (See point 5 above): Salt is a major source of iodine, which is why salt is normally "iodized" by official decree. Cutting back salt consumption runs the risk of iodine deficiency, with its huge adverse health impacts -- goiter, mental retardation etc. GIVE YOUR BABY PLENTY OF SALTY FOODS -- unless you want to turn it into a cretin


Trans fats: For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.


The "antioxidant" religion: The experimental evidence is that antioxidants SHORTEN your life, if anything. Studies here and here and here and here and here and here and here, for instance. That they are of benefit is a great theory but it is one that has been coshed by reality plenty of times.


The medical consensus is often wrong. The best known wrongheaded medical orthodoxy is that stomach ulcers could not be caused by bacteria because the stomach is so acidic. Disproof of that view first appeared in 1875 (Yes. 1875) but the falsity of the view was not widely recognized until 1990. Only heroic efforts finally overturned the consensus and led to a cure for stomach ulcers. See here and here and here.


NOTE: "No trial has ever demonstrated benefits from reducing dietary saturated fat".


Huge ($400 million) clinical trial shows that a low fat diet is useless . See also here and here


Dieticians are just modern-day witch-doctors. There is no undergirding for their usual recommendations in double-blind studies.


The fragility of current medical wisdom: Would you believe that even Old Testament wisdom can sometimes trump medical wisdom? Note this quote: "Spiess discussed Swedish research on cardiac patients that compared Jehovah's Witnesses who refused blood transfusions to patients with similar disease progression during open-heart surgery. The research found those who refused transfusions had noticeably better survival rates.


Relying on the popular wisdom can certainly hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."


Since many of my posts here make severe criticisms of medical research, I should perhaps point out that I am also a severe critic of much research in my own field of psychology. See here and here


This is NOT an "alternative medicine" site. Perhaps the only (weak) excuse for the poorly substantiated claims that often appear in the medical literature is the even poorer level of substantiation offered in the "alternative" literature.


I used to teach social statistics in a major Australian university and I find medical statistics pretty obfuscatory. They seem uniformly designed to make mountains out of molehills. Many times in the academic literature I have excoriated my colleagues in psychology and sociology for going ga-ga over very weak correlations but what I find in the medical literature makes the findings in the social sciences look positively muscular. In fact, medical findings are almost never reported as correlations -- because to do so would exhibit how laughably trivial they generally are. If (say) 3 individuals in a thousand in a control group had some sort of an adverse outcome versus 4 out of a thousand in a group undergoing some treatment, the difference will be published in the medical literature with great excitement and intimations of its importance. In fact, of course, such small differences are almost certainly random noise and are in any rational calculus unimportant. And statistical significance is little help in determining the importance of a finding. Statistical significance simply tells you that the result was unlikely to be an effect of small sample size. But a statistically significant difference could have been due to any number of other randomly-present factors.


Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: below:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.


The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) could have been speaking of the prevailing health "wisdom" of today when he said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."


The Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Second Edition says (p. 384): "the threshold for concluding that an agent was more likely than not the cause of an individual's disease is a relative risk greater than 2.0." Very few of the studies criticized on this blog meet that criterion.


Improbable events do happen at random -- as mathematician John Brignell notes rather tartly:
"Consider, instead, my experiences in the village pub swindle. It is based on the weekly bonus ball in the National Lottery. It so happens that my birth date is 13, so that is the number I always choose. With a few occasional absences abroad I have paid my pound every week for a year and a half, but have never won. Some of my neighbours win frequently; one in three consecutive weeks. Furthermore, I always put in a pound for my wife for her birth date, which is 11. She has never won either. The probability of neither of these numbers coming up in that period is less than 5%, which for an epidemiologist is significant enough to publish a paper.