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Spirituality can help teens cope with chronic illness

January 9, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta 2 Comments

Washington, Jan 9 (ANI): A new study has shown that spirituality can help teenagers cope with chronic illness.

Chronic illness can lead to poorer quality of life in adolescents. The research led by Michael Yi, MD, associate professor of medicine, and Sian Cotton, PhD, research assistant professor in the department of family medicine investigated how adolescents with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) may use spirituality to cope with their illness.

Adolescents with IBD are at risk for numerous psychosocial difficulties, including increased mental health problems and social stigma.

In the study involving 67 patients with IBD and 88 healthy adolescents between the ages of 11 and 19, the researchers collected data on socio-demographics, functional health status and psychosocial characteristics as well as spiritual well-being.

“Personal characteristics like self esteem, family functioning and social characteristics, like level of peer support, were similar between adolescents with IBD when compared to healthy peers, indicating that adolescents with IBD appear resilient,” said Yi.

“However, health-related quality of life was significantly poorer in general. On average, when compared to their healthy peers, patients with IBD were willing to trade more years of their life expectancy or risk a greater chance of death in order to achieve a better state of health,” he added.

The researchers also found that levels of spiritual well-being were similar between adolescents with IBD and healthy peers.

Moreover, higher levels of spiritual well-being were associated with fewer depressive symptoms and better emotional well-being.

“However, even though both healthy adolescents and those with IBD had relatively high levels of spiritual well-being, the positive association between spiritual well-being and mental health outcomes was stronger in the adolescents with IBD as compared to their healthy peers,” said Cotton,

He said this indicates spiritual well-being may play a different role for teens with a chronic illness in terms of impacting their health or helping them cope.

The results were published in online versions of the Journal of Pediatrics and the Journal of Adolescent Health. (ANI)

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Antipsychotic drugs ‘double death risk in Alzheimer’s patients’

January 9, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

London, Jan 9 (ANI): Anti-psychotic drugs prescribed to treat aggression in Alzheimer”s patients can double their risk of dying, according to a study published in the journal Lancet.

The study, funded by the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, was led by Prof Clive Ballard’s King’s College London team.

To reach the conclusion, researchers reviewed 165 Alzheimer’s patients who were being prescribed antipsychotics.

Eighty three continued treatment and the remaining 82 had it withdrawn and were instead given oral placebos.

Findings showed a significant increase in risk of death for patients who continued taking antipsychotic medication. The difference between the two groups became more pronounced over time, with 24-month survival rates for antipsychotic-treated patients falling to 46 percent versus 71 percent on the placebo and at 36 months it was 30 percent versus 59 percent.

This implies that after three years, less than a third of people on antipsychotics were alive compared to nearly two thirds using the dummy drug.

Antipsychotics are used to treat symptoms of agitation, delusions and aggressive behaviour. (ANI)

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Simple heart screening test for newborns could save thousands of lives

January 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Jan 9 (ANI): Conducting a simple blood test for congenital heart problems on newborn babies could help save thousands of lives, says a new study.

According to study’s authors, routine screening of blood oxygen levels before discharge from hospital improves the detection of life threatening congenital heart disease in newborns and save lives.

The study has been published on the online British Medical Journal.

Between one and two babies per 1,000 live births enter the world with an immediately life-threatening heart condition – due to a foetal blood vessel remaining open – and current screening techniques fail to detect the abnormality in many newborns.

But the introduction of a pulse oximetry screening procedure – lasting around five minutes – could improve the detection of critical congenital heart disease.

Pulse oximetry screening is a fast and non-invasive procedure to measure the concentration of oxygen in the blood of newborns using a sensor placed on a hand, and in this study on a foot as well, for a few minutes before the baby leaves hospital.

A low concentration of oxygen could signal a heart problem and would require further investigation.

To reach the conclusion, Professor Ostman-Smith and colleagues at the Queen Silvia Children”s Hospital and Sahlgrenska Academy of Gothenburg University in Sweden screened nearly 40,000 babies born between July 1st 2004 and March 31st 2007.

The introduction of pulse oximetry screening in the West Gotaland region improved the total detection of duct dependent heart disease to 92 per cent, a significant increase on the 72 per cent detection rate in regions not using the screening technique.

The risk of leaving hospital with an undiagnosed duct dependent circulation was therefore eight per cent in West Gotaland compared to 28 per cent in the other regions.

The authors conclude: “Such screening seems cost neutral in the short term, but the probable prevention of neurological morbidity and reduced need for preoperative neonatal intensive care suggest that such screening will be cost effective long term.” (ANI)

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Hormone replacement therapy cuts colorectal cancer risk in women

January 8, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 8 (ANI): A new study has shown that hormone replacement therapy can significantly reduce the risk of colorectal cancer in postmenopausal women.

The researchers found that women who had completed use of estrogen plus progestin five or more years previously were 45 pct less likely to develop colorectal cancer

“Compared to women who had never taken these hormones, the use of estrogen plus progestin was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer,” said Jill R. Johnson, M.P.H., a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

During the study, the research team led by Johnson extracted data from 56,733 postmenopausal women who participated in the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project follow-up study.

They identified 960 new cases of colorectal cancer in this population.

The findings revealed that any use of estrogen therapy was associated with a 17 percent reduced risk in colorectal cancer.

Among those who used estrogen, the largest reductions were seen among those who were current users (25 percent reduced risk) and users of ten or more years duration (26 percent reduced risk).

However, a 22 percent reduced risk was observed among those who had ever used estrogen plus progestin in combination.

They further found a 36 percent reduction in risk among those who had used progestin sequentially or less than 15 days per month.

Past users of estrogen plus progestin, who had stopped at least five years ago, had a 45 percent risk reduction.

The study is published in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. (ANI)

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Daniel Craig says Austin Powers ‘screwed’ Bond Franchise

January 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Jan 8 (ANI): Daniel Craig has said that the last two films in the James Bond franchise were deliberately taken in a different direction because Mike Myers” ‘Austin Powers’ trilogy ruined the spy genre.

The 40-year-old star starred in the last two Bond movies—2006”s ‘Casino Royale’ and last year”s (08) ‘Quantum of Solace’—have shifted to a darker, less light-hearted tone as compared to their predecessors.

Craig is now convinced that Bond bosses will not take future 007 films back to the catchphrases and gags that characterised previous Bond incarnations.

And the actor has blamed Myers” Austin Powers trilogy, which poked fun at all things Bond did, for the change.

“Don”t get me wrong, I”m up for (gags), as long as the gag works. But the problem is that Austin Powers screwed everything up. He exploded the genre,” The Daily Express quoted him as saying. (ANI)

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New York docs implant heart valves without open-heart surgery

January 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, January 8 (ANI): Doctors at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center are offering their patients to undergo an innovative procedure to implant a new aortic heart valve without open-heart surgery.

The new approach is being tested as part of a multi-centre study called the PARTNER (Placement of AoRTic traNscathetER valves) trial, which is in its third phase.

Principal investigators Dr. Martin Leon and Dr. Craig Smith say that their study is focused on the treatment of patients who are at high risk or not suitable for open-heart valve replacement surgery.

They have revealed that the Edwards SAPIEN transcatheter heart valve, made of bovine pericardial tissue leaflets hand-sewn onto a metal frame, is implanted through one of two catheter-based methods — either navigated to the heart from the femoral artery in the patient”s leg, or through a small incision between the ribs and into the left ventricle.

The researchers say that they position it inside the patient”s existing valve using a balloon to deploy the frame, which holds the artificial valve in place.

According to them, both procedures are performed on a beating heart, without the need for cardiopulmonary bypass and its associated risks.

“This breakthrough technology could save the lives of thousands of patients with heart valve disease who have no other therapeutic options,” says Dr. Leon, the study”s national co-principal investigator, associate director of the Cardiovascular Interventional Therapy (CIVT) Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center, and professor of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

“This study may show that transcatheter valve replacement is a safe and effective alternative to open surgery, which remains the ”gold standard” for most patients,” says Dr. Smith, study co-principal investigator, interim surgeon-in-chief and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and the Calvin F. Barber Professor of Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

It takes about 90 minutes for the transcatheter valve procedures to complete, compared with four to six hours for open-heart surgery.

Another advantage of this procedure is that it requires only a few days for recovery, compared to a two- to three-month recovery period with open-heart surgery. (ANI)

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Over 50 million Chinese write online blogs

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

New Delhi, January 7 (ANI): The Internet Society of China has revealed that there were over 50 million online bloggers in the country by the end of November last year, as compared to 47 million in the same month a year ago.

Gao Lulin, deputy head of the Internet Society of China, said that the increase in the number of bloggers in the country was due to the fact that more and more Chinese wanted to express their own views about local and international events through the Internet.

The Internet Society of China, devoted to tracking development of the Internet in China, also revealed that the country had recorded its first blog in August 2002, reports the China Daily.

A Xinhua News Agency report says that there are presently more than 100 million blogs in China.

The society, however, has not revealed how it tracked the number of blogs or bloggers.

With 290 million netizens, China currently ranks first in the world in terms of its online population.

Gao said that netizens in China were not only a group interested in virtual space, but also an important force in real life.

They can even influence government policy-making, Gao added. (ANI)

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Spike Lee insists he is not rich

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

New York, Jan 7 (ANI): Even though Emmy Award winning director Spike Lee owns houses on the Upper East Side and on Martha”s Vineyard, and sends his kids to private schools, he still cribs about his wealth.

Lee, 51, says that he is not very rich, and that compared to the wealth of others he is nothing.

“It’s not rich rich,” the New York Post quoted him as telling Britain”s Observer.

“Rich is Spielberg. Lucas. Gates. Steve Jobs. Jay-Z! Bruce Springsteen. I”m not complaining. But that”s money. Will Smith. Oprah Winfrey – that”s a ton of money.

“Compared to them, I”m on welfare!” he added.

It looks like Lee does like to save up on his pennies, especially after he was spotted travelling with his wife and son in economy class on a flight from the Bahamas. (ANI)

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Goal-setting programs make for more active co-workers

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 7 (ANI): Office programs that persuade employees to set exercise goals help them become more active at the workplace, according to a new study that looked at physical activity levels of Home Depot employees who participated in the “Move to Improve” program.

Lead author Rod Dishman, Ph.D., said that the number of employees who regularly participated in either moderate or vigorous physical activity rose from about 30 percent at the start of the study to about 50 percent during the last six weeks of the study.

For the study, workers set personal and team physical activity goals weekly for three months, receiving incentives for achievement.

Throughout the intervention, researchers tracked changes in the 1,442 participants’ physical activity levels with pedometers.

At the end of sixth week of the study, 51 percent of program participants logged at least five 30-minute moderate exercise sessions or two to three 20-minute vigorous exercise sessions weekly, compared with only 25 percent of the control group.

Dishman said that the participants even sustained that level of activity through the end of the 12-week study, with few dropouts.

“The biggest pleasant surprise was the steady and sustained progress. That can probably be explained by the social incentives and support from personal goals and achievements that had direct impact on team success,” said Dishman.

Katherine Alaimo, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Michigan State University said that workplaces offer great opportunities for physical activity and wellness programs because they offer a captive audience.

She added that in the current study, success might be in part because investigators included a combination of things not usually in workplace wellness programs.

“They had individual goal setting — a common technique — but they also had group and organizational goal setting, which provided the peer encouragement that is necessary and important,” said Alaimo.

“Personal and team goals work best when they are self-set, specific about how much activity and when, realistic but attainable and easily assessed, such as by weekly logs or pedometer steps,” said Dishman.

The study will appears in the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. (ANI)

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Conventional risk assessment tools do not accurately predict coronary heart disease

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 7 (ANI): Traditional risk assessment tools, like the Framingham and National Cholesterol Education Program tools, NCEP, do not accurately predict coronary heart disease, according to a study by researchers at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT.

The study was conducted on 1,653 patients who had no history of coronary heart disease, other than 738 patients who were taking statins (cholesterol lowering drugs like Lipitor) because of increased risk of developing coronary heart disease.

All the patients underwent a coronary CT angiogram and doctors compared their risk of coronary heart disease, determined by the Framingham and NCEP risk assessment tools, to the amount of plaque actually found in their arteries as a result of the scan.

According to the results, 21 percent of the patients believed to be in need of statin drugs before the scan (because of the Framingham and NCEP assessment tools) did not require them.

“26percent of the patients who were already taking statins (because of the risk factor assessment tools) had no detectable plaque at all,” said Kevin M. Johnson, MD, lead author of the study.

He added: “Risk assessment tools are used by physicians implicitly. Physicians use them as a way to separate and treat patients accordingly. Ultimately, the Framingham influences what every physician does, but I feel it is not good enough to show what is happening with each individual patient.

“The average person tends to put a lot of weight on family history, but the association between that and coronary heart disease is only modest,” said Dr. Johnson. “We are living in an era where genetic research is in the headlines, but reality is a lot more complicated than that.

“There are still 400,000 people a year who die from heart attacks and have no warning signs at all; doctors want to be able to find those people before that happens and I hope this study gets people interested in finding out better predictors for coronary heart disease.”

This study appears in the January issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology. (ANI)

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Ancient flying reptiles used four legs to take flight

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 7 (ANI): Scientists have come across evidence which suggests that pterosaurs, ancient flying reptiles, used four legs to take flight.

The evidence was found by Michael B. Habib, of the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who compared bone strength in the limbs of pterosaurs to that of birds and concluded that pterosaurs had much stronger “arms” than legs.

“We’ve all seen birds take off, so that’s what’s most familiar,” said Habib. “But with pterosaurs, extinct 65 million years and with a fossil history that goes back 250 million years, what’s familiar isn’t relevant,” he added.

From their research, the scientists concluded that to take flight, pterosaurs required the use of four limbs.

Two were ultra-strong wings, which, when folded and balanced on a knuckle, served as front “legs” that helped the creature to walk — and leap.

The wings of these hairy reptiles, most notably those of Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which spanned to an impressive 35 feet when the creatures were aloft, propelled the creatures into the air during take-offs that Habib describes as leap-frogging long-jumps.

“Pterosaurs had long, huge front limbs, so no partner was required. Then, with wings snapping out, off they’d fly,” he said.

Using computer scans to obtain cross-sectional images and geometric data for 155 bird specimens representing 20 species, Habib calculated the strengths of bones in bird limbs and compared these to three species of pterosaurs, the bones strengths of which he calculated using measurements from previously published sources.

Structural strength, taking into account length and diameter, among other things, is a measure of how much force a bone can take before it fractures.

Habib also spent time crunching the numbers using the old, bipedal launch model and simply couldn’t find a mathematical solution that would enable the largest of the pterosaurs — using hind legs alone — to launch at all.

“But using all four legs, it takes less than a second to get off of flat ground, no wind, no cliffs,” he said.

“This was a good thing to be able to do if you lived in the late Cretaceous period and there were hungry tyrannosaurs wandering around,” he added. (ANI)

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Asteroid dust in and around dead stars hints at Earth-like planets

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

London, Jan 7 (ANI): Scientists have observed asteroid dust in and around a handful of dead stars, that is made up of similar materials as the Earth, which suggests Earth-like planets may be common in the Universe.

According to a report in New Scientist, six white dwarfs, the burned-out embers of Sun-like stars, showed heavy elements, or metals, in their atmospheres.

That is unusual because white dwarfs contain about as much mass as the Sun squeezed into bodies the size of the Earth, giving them surface gravities 10,000 times stronger than the Sun’s.

That should cause heavy elements to sink towards their centres – and out of sight.

In addition, the six stars also shine more brightly than expected in infrared light, which suggests the stars are surrounded by dust, which glows at infrared wavelengths.

The dusty debris is thought to be the remains of asteroids that once orbited the white dwarfs, but were gravitationally torn apart when they wandered too close to the stars.

Michael Jura of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues measured the infrared light from these stars using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

The team found the dust contains a glassy silicate material similar to olivine, which is common on Earth and has also been seen on the Moon and Mars.

The dust also seems to have no carbon, consistent with Earth’s composition, which has little carbon compared to the Sun.

Two previously studied white dwarfs have dust of a similar composition, bringing the tally of such stellar gluttons up to eight.

“What was once kind of a freak is now a systematic pattern,” Jura said.

Since asteroids form in the same way as planets, by bulking up through collisions between smaller rocky objects, they have a similar composition to their larger brethren.

That suggests terrestrial planets might have once existed in these systems. “This strengthens suspicions that Earth-like planets are common,” Jura said. (ANI)

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Black holes came before galaxies, say scientists

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

London, Jan 7 (ANI): In a new research, a team of scientists has claimed to have solved a cosmic chicken-ad-egg problem, by concluding that black holes came before galaxies.

According to a report in the Telegraph, this question has long preoccupied scientists, but new research focusing on the first billion years of the universe’s history, indicating that the black holes come first, helping to build galaxies by pulling material towards them.

“It looks like the black holes came first,” said Dr Chris Carilli, from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, who took part in the study. “The evidence is piling up,” he added.

Earlier studies had revealed an intriguing link between the masses of black holes and the central “bulges” of stars and gas in galaxies.

Generally, the black hole’s mass was seen to be about 1,000th that of the mass of the surrounding galactic bulge.

This indicated an “interactive relationship” between the black hole and the bulge. What was not clear was whether one grew before the other, or whether they grew together.

New radio telescope observations reaching back almost to the birth of the first galaxies may now have answered that question.

Radio waves received from these galaxies and travelling at the speed of light were emitted only about a billion years after the Big Bang which started the universe.

These young distant galaxies had much larger black holes in relation to their bulge mass than older and closer galaxies.

According to Fabian Walter of the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) in Germany, “We finally have been able to measure black-hole and bulge masses in several galaxies seen as they were in the first billion years after the Big Bang, and the evidence suggests that the constant ratio seen nearby may not hold in the early Universe.”

“The black holes in these young galaxies are much more massive compared to the bulges than those seen in the nearby Universe,” he explained.

“The implication is that the black holes started growing first,” he added. (ANI)

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Nicotine gum effective for smoking reduction

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta 1 Comment

Washington, Jan 7 (ANI): Smokers who are trying to gradually kick the butt can effectively to so with the help of nicotine gum, according a new study.

Nicotine gum has been in use for over 20 years to help smokers quit abruptly however, the new study suggests that smokers wanting to quit by gradual reduction can substantially increase their success by using nicotine gum to facilitate reduction and cessation.

The researchers looked at almost 3300 smokers in a double blind, placebo-controlled study.

The participants were allowed to choose between 2-mg and 4-mg doses of nicotine gum, with the higher doses generally being selected by heavier smokers.

Within each dose group, participants were then randomized to receive either the active gum or a placebo, yielding 4 approximately equal groups.

The researchers assessed initial 24-hour abstinence and 28-day abstinence, and participants were followed up at 6 months to determine overall success rates for quitting.

They found that the odds of smokers achieving 24-hour abstinence were 40 to 90pct higher using active gum compared to placebo, and 2 to 4.7 times higher for attaining 28-day abstinence.

Moreover, at the end of 6 months, while absolute quit rates were somewhat low, the odds of quitting were about 2 to 6 times greater for active gum users as for the placebo users, with a quit rate of 6pct in the 4-mg group.

“This is the first study to demonstrate that smokers wanting to quit by gradual reduction can substantially increase their success by using nicotine gum to facilitate reduction and cessation,” said researcher Saul Shiffman.

“Nicotine gum helped smokers reduce smoking, achieve initial abstinence and maintain abstinence. The advantage of active nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) treatment is particularly evident for heavy smokers treated with the 4-mg nicotine gum, for which treatment increased the odds of quitting for 6 months sixfold.

This expands treatment options for the substantial proportion of smokers who prefer quitting gradually, who have relatively low chances of quitting and who have heretofore been implicitly excluded from the use of NRT to help them quit,” he added.

The findings appear in American Journal of Preventive Medicine. (ANI)

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Kids of pregnant smokers ‘likely to be aggressive’

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 7 (ANI): Pregnant women who smoke risk delivering aggressive kids, according to a new Canada-Netherlands study.

Aggressive offspring were characterized by their mothers as quick to hit, bite, kick, fight and bully others.

The research has been published in the journal Development and Psychopathology.

While previous studies have shown that smoking during gestation causes low birth weight, the new research shows mothers who light up during pregnancy can predispose their offspring to an additional risk: violent behaviour.

What”s more, the research team found the risk of giving birth to aggressive children increases among smoking mothers whose familial income is lower than 40,000 dollars per year.

Another risk factor for aggressive behaviour in offspring was smoking mothers with a history of antisocial behaviour: run-ins with the law, high school drop-outs and illegal drug use.

Psychiatry professor and researcher Jean Séguin, of the Université de Montréal and Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center, co-authored the study with postdoctoral fellow Stephan C. J. Huijbregts, now a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, as well as colleagues from Université Laval and McGill University in Canada.

“Mothers-to-be whose lives have been marked by anti-social behaviour have a 67 percent chance to have a physically aggressive child if they smoke 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, compared with 16 percent for those who are non-smokers or who smoke fewer than 10 cigarettes a day,” says Dr. Séguin.

“Smoking also seems to be an aggravating factor, although less pronounced, in mothers whose anti-social behaviour is negligible or zero,” the expert added.

The research was carried out as part of a wider investigation of children, the Quebec Longitudinal Study, which examined behaviors of 1,745 children between the age of 18 months to three and a half years. (ANI)

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Exercise may not be key to weight loss

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta 7 Comments

Washington, Jan 7 (ANI): Contrary to the common belief, physical activity may not be as important for weight loss as is diet, says a new study.

For the study, researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan Chicago with women in rural Nigeria.

On average, the Chicago women weighed 184 pounds and the Nigerian women weighed 127 pounds.

Researchers had expected to find that the slimmer Nigerian women would be more physically active.

However, they found no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of calories burned during physical activity.

“Decreased physical activity may not be the primary driver of the obesity epidemic,” said Loyola nutritionist Amy Luke, Ph.D., co-author of the study.

Physical activity has many proven benefits. It strengthens bones and muscles, improves mental health and mood, lowers blood pressure, improves cholesterol levels and reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, breast cancer and colon cancer.

However, the new study suggests that weight control might not be among the main benefits.

Richard Cooper, Ph.D., co-author of the study and chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, said that people burn more calories when they exercise but that gets compensates by eating more.

“We would love to say that physical activity has a positive effect on weight control, but that does not appear to be the case,” Cooper said.

The study included 149 women from two rural Nigerian villages and 172 African American women from the west side of Chicago and suburban Maywood.

Adjusted for body size, the Chicago women burned an average of 760 calories per day in physical activity, while the Nigerian women burned 800 calories. This difference was not statistically significant.

Diet is a more likely explanation than physical activity expenditure for why Chicago women weigh more than Nigerian women, Luke said.

She noted the Nigerian diet is high in fiber and carbohydrates and low in fat and animal protein. On contrary, the Chicago diet is 40 percent to 45 percent fat and high in processed foods.

The study is published in the September 2008 issue of the journal Obesity. (ANI)

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Kids can avoid becoming shortsighted by spending time in sun

January 7, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

London, January 7 (ANI): An Australian study suggests that it is a lack of exposure to sunlight, rather than too much time spent watching TV and playing computer games, that damages children”s eyesight.

Conducted by the Australia Research Council, the study suggests that children can avoid becoming shortsighted by spending a minimum of two to three hours in direct sunlight each day.

The findings of this study contrast the widely accepted belief that watching TV, reading or playing computer games ruins vision.

The researchers behind the study—experts from the Australian National University and Sydney University—said that they even did not find any link between the flickering of TV and computer screens and damaged eyesight.

They instead said that exposure to bright light could help regulate the eyeball”s growth in childhood, dramatically reducing the risk of myopia.

During the study, the researchers compared the eyesight of young Chinese Australians and Singaporeans, and found that 30 per cent of six-year-olds in Singapore needed glasses, compared with three per cent of Chinese Australians.

The researchers revealed that both groups spent the same amount of time playing video games, reading and watching TV, but children in Singapore spent an average of 30 minutes each day outside, compared with two hours in Australia.

The figures remained similar even when the team compared children of Chinese descent from both nations, allowing researchers to eliminate ethnicity as a factor.

Professor Ian Morgan, who led the study, said that shortsightedness was traditionally a problem among the highly educated who spent a lot of time indoors.

“There”s a driver for people to become myopic and that”s education. And there”s a brake on people becoming myopic and that”s people going outside,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

Discussing the findings of his study, he said that playing video games had the same effect on vision as reading, using the computer had a “neutral” effect, and watching television had no affect at all.

He, however, cautioned that students in their twenties, who spend a lot of time inside reading, should be aware that their eyes needed exposure to natural light to stay healthy. (ANI)

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Diabetic men have similar long-term mortality risks as males with heart disease

January 6, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 6 (ANI): Scientists have found that men with type 2 diabetes and males with cardiovascular disease have similar long-term mortality risks.

The study revealed that men with type 2 diabetes and men with previous heart attack or stroke had a 3 to 4 fold risk of cardiovascular death, as compared to men without either disease in the years following the first acute event.

The study underscores the high risk of diabetes, as “men with type 2 diabetes and no previous cardiovascular disease had a 3-fold cardiovascular mortality risk compared with men with neither cardiovascular disease nor diabetes at the beginning of the follow-up,” write Dr. Gilles Dagenais and colleagues from Laval University and the University of Montreal.

However, the study was limited to white men and diabetes was self-reported in two-thirds of cases.

In the first five years, men with type 2 diabetes had a lower risk for cardiovascular mortality compared to men with previous heart attack or stroke and without diabetes.

But, in the long term, the researchers discovered that the 2 groups had similar mortality risks.

The findings highlight that there’s a need for prevention and optimal management of diabetes, stroke and heart disease.

The study is published in CMAJ. (ANI)

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Faulty brain circuits may underlie bulimia

January 6, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 6 (ANI): A new study from Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York has revealed that women with bulimia may binge eat due to abnormalities in the brain circuit responsible for regulating behaviour.

Bulimia nervosa often begins in the adolescent or young adult years, “primarily affecting girls and women, it is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating followed by self-induced vomiting or another compensatory behaviour to avoid weight gain.”

The research team led by Rachel Marsh showed that disruptions in certain pathways between nerve cells known as frontostriatal circuits, responsible for controlling their behaviours, lead to severe sense of loss of control, leading to binge eating.

During the study the researchers compared the performance on the task of 20 women with bulimia nervosa with that of 20 healthy women who served as controls.

In the Simon Spatial Incompatibility task, the participants were asked to indicate the direction an arrow is pointing regardless of where it appears on a screen.

The task is easier when the arrow direction matches the side of the screen, but more difficult when, for instance, an arrow that points leftward appears on the right side of the screen. Ignoring the side of the screen to focus on the arrow direction requires regulating behaviour by fighting the tendency to respond automatically and resolving conflicting messages.

“Patients with bulimia nervosa exhibited greater impulsivity than did control participants, responding faster and making more errors on conflict trials [where the arrow direction and location did not match] that required self-regulatory control to respond correctly,” wrote the authors.

“They responded faster on congruent trials following incorrect conflict trials, suggesting impulsive responding even immediately after having committed an error,” they added.

When patients with bulimia did respond correctly on trials in which the arrow side and direction did not match, their frontostriatal circuits did not activate to the same degree as did those of women in the control group.

“We speculate that this inability to engage frontostriatal systems also contributes to their inability to regulate binge-type eating and other impulsive behaviours,” the authors added.

The study appears in Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. (ANI)

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Indonesia’s inflation hits 11.06 per cent in 2008

January 5, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Jakarta – Indonesia’s consumer price index in December declined 0.04 per cent against the previous month, driven by lower costs of transportation and communication, a senior government official said Monday.

The 2008 annual inflation rate was 11.06 per cent, said Ali Rosidi, deputy chairman of the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Rosidi said the December deflation was due to a decrease in the price index in the group transport, communications and financial services.

Total export value reached 9.61 billion dollars in November 2008, down 11.09 per cent from 11.81 billion dollars in October. It brought total exports for January-November
2008 to 128.09 billion dollars, or up 24.17 per cent, compared with the same period of the previous year.

Indonesia’s January-November 2008 imports were valued at 120.97 billion dollars, down 10.57 per cent from the same period of 2007 at 135.27 billion dollars.

The number of foreign visitors in November stood at 524,200 persons, a rise of 9.94 per cent compared with the 476,800 foreign arrivals in November 2006. It brought the number of foreign visitors to Indonesia in the first 11 months of 2008 to 5.62 million, up 12.77 per cent from the same period in 2007 of 4.99 million, Rosidi said. (dpa)

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