Discrimination May Lead to Smoking in Boys

FRIDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) — Minority teen boys smoke more when they suffer discrimination, but that’s not the case for minority teen girls, a U.S. study finds.

Perceived discrimination had no effect on smoking rates among minority girls aged 12 to 15 and was associated with lower rates of smoking among minority teen girls aged 16 to 19.

“Our findings in girls, especially in the older girls, really surprised us,” study first author Dr. Sarah Wiehe, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, said in a news release from the school. “We do not know why older girls who perceived discrimination were less likely to smoke, but there may be a possibility that they perceived discrimination because they were pregnant and also that they did not smoke due to pregnancy.”

The study included 2,561 black and Hispanic teens, aged 12 to 19, living in low-income households in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. About 25% of the teens reported discrimination within the previous six months, and 12% said they’d smoked within the previous 30 days.

Increased smoking by boys who suffer higher levels of discrimination may be caused by increased stress from male-specific targeting by police and business, the study concluded.

“Boys and girls may experience discrimination differently due to where they spend their time and that may account for the differences in whether discrimination was associated with smoking,” Wiehe said. “In other words, the context of discrimination matters. We need to be aware that discrimination is a public health problem for adolescents — one related to major health issues like smoking — and need to actively work to reduce these occurrences.”

The study appears online and in the March print issue of the American Journal of Public Health

World’s largest conference on acupuncture to convene in China

Xinhua – More than 1,500 acupuncturists from nearly 30 countries and regions will gather in Beijing this October, to discuss the future of traditional Chinese medicine.

From Oct. 20 to 22, the acupuncturists will attend an academic forum for the 20th anniversary of the World Association of Acupuncture. The forum, with the theme of “acupuncture: looking back and looking forward”, will have eight sub-forums on topics like education, the evolution of acupuncture and needle therapy practise and assessment.

An exhibition of new methods and technologies in the field will also be held.

Deng Liangyue, chairman of the World Association of Acupuncture, said the association had successfully held six forums on acupuncture in China, Japan, the United States, France and the Republic of Korea over the past 20 years. With efforts from acupuncturists worldwide, needle therapy has spread to the four corners of the earth.

So far, more than 140 countries and regions have adopted acupuncture treatment. Traditional Chinese medicine represented by needle therapy is accepted and welcomed by mainstream society in many countries.

Statistics from the World Association of Acupuncture show there are about 100,000 people engaged in acupuncture services in Japan. 29 percent of Tokyo’s residents have received acupuncture treatment at least once. More than five million European patients choose needle therapy every year.

Acupuncture, one of the oldest traditional Chinese therapies, can not only help people give up smoking, but also cure sterility and even drug addiction. For poor people, it is a low-cost and easily accessible medical resource.

Acupuncture offers long lasting relief to migraines

CM NEWS – Acupuncture has been proved to provide effective and persistent relief of migraine headaches, according to a new study in Italy.

To check the effectiveness of a true acupuncture treatment according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in migraine without aura, researchers of the Department of Medico-Surgical Specialities of University of Padua in Italy compared true acunpuncture to a standard mock acupuncture protocol, an accurate mock acupuncture healing ritual, and untreated controls.

“Migraine prevalence is high and affects a relevant rate of adults in the productive phase of their life,” says the study to be published in the journal Headache.

“Acupuncture has been increasingly advocated and used in Western countries for migraine treatment, but the evidence of its effectiveness still remains weak. A large variability of treatments is present in published studies and no acupoint selection according to TCM has been investigated so far; therefore, the low level of evidence of acupuncture effectiveness might partly depend on inappropriate treatment.”

In the study, the patients were divided into the following 4 groups:
(1) group TA, treated with true acupuncture (according to TCM) plus Rizatriptan; (N=32)
(2) group RMA, treated with ritualized mock acupuncture plus Rizatriptan; (N=30)
(3) group SMA, treated with standard mock acupuncture plus Rizatriptan; (N=31)
(4) group R, without prophylactic treatment with relief therapy only (Rizatriptan); (N=39)

What is Rizatriptan? Rizatriptan is used to treat the symptoms of migraine headaches (severe, throbbing headaches that sometimes are accompanied by nausea and sensitivity to sound and light). Rizatriptan is in a class of medications called selective serotonin receptor agonists. It works by narrowing blood vessels in the brain, stopping pain signals from being sent to the brain, and stopping the release of certain natural substances that cause pain, nausea, and other symptoms of migraine. Rizatriptan does not prevent migraine attacks.

The MIDAS Questionnaire was administered before treatment, at 3 and 6 months from the beginning of treatment, and the MIDAS Index (MI) was calculated. Rizatriptan intake was also checked in all groups of patients at all three time intervals. All patients had moderate to severe with no significant intergroup differences before treatment.

What is MIDAS Questionnaire? MIDAS is a questionnaire that measures headache-related disability simply and easily by counting the number of days of lost and limited activity due to migraine. Activities are classed into three areas:

* Paid work and education (school / college)
* Household work (unpaid work such as housework, shopping and caring for children and others)
* Family, social and leisure activities

Migraine sufferers count the number of days on which they missed out on these activities because of their migraine in the previous 3 months. Also, they count the number of days where their productivity was at most half as normal in paid and household work. The overall MIDAS score is reached by summing the answers to these five questions, and is scored in the number of days.

Group TA and RMA were evaluated according to TCM as well; then, the former was submitted to true acupuncture and the latter to mock acupuncture treatment resembling the same as TA. The statistical analysis was conducted with factorial ANOVA and multiple tests with a Bonferroni adjustment.

Results show that the migraines improved in all patients after 3 months and 6 months of treatment. However, those treated with true acupuncture plus Rizatriptan showed a significant improvement at both 3-month and 6-month treatments than with Rizatriptan only.

The researchers thus conclude that true acupuncture was the only treatment able to provide a steady outcome improvement in comparison to the use of only Rizatriptan, while Rizatriptan plus mock acunpuncture showed a transient placebo effect after 3 months into treatment.

Nutrient ‘Cocktail’ Appears to Improve Dementia Symptoms

FRIDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) — A combination of three nutrients might help improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients by stimulating the growth of new brain connections (synapses), a new study shows.

Uridine, choline and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA (all found in breast milk) are precursors to the fatty molecules that make up brain cell membranes, which form synapses.

“If you can increase the number of synapses by enhancing their production, you might to some extent avoid that loss of cognitive ability” that occurs in Alzheimer’s patients, Richard Wurtman, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, said in a news release. He conducted the basic research that led to this investigational treatment.

In a clinical trial, 225 Alzheimer’s patients were given a cocktail of the three nutrients, along with B vitamins, phosopholipids and antioxidants. Patients with mild Alzheimer’s showed improvements in verbal memory.

The study was published Jan. 8 in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Three additional clinical trials are underway in the United States and Europe. Results are expected within a few years.

Herbal sex remedy linked to cancer

Reuters, CanWest – Two men seeking to boost sexual performance and grow bigger muscles instead ended up with advanced prostate cancer after taking “herbal” supplements, US doctors said.

They said many supplements marketed as “safe” and “natural” could contain unknown and potentially dangerous ingredients, and noted that the US Food and Drug Administration has little authority to regulate them.

“Physicians need to ask their patients not only about the prescription drugs they may be taking, but — perhaps even more importantly — about the over-the-counter drugs andsupplements, which may have a profound impact on certain health conditions,” Claus Roehrborn, chairman of urology at the University of Texas Southwestern medical school, said yesterday.

Dr Roehrborn’s team became concerned about what it calls herbal/hormonal dietary supplements, or HHDSs, after two men developed aggressive prostate cancer within months of taking the same supplement.

For legal reasons the researchers won’t name the supplement, which was removed from the market, and say they have no direct proof that the product caused the highly suspiciousprostate cancers.

The team analysed the product and found it contained two hormones — testosterone and estradiol. When the product was tested on tumour cells in the lab, it fuelled the growth ofprostate cancer cells more potently than testosterone alone, the team reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.”We filed an adverse event report with the FDA, who issued a warning letter. The manufacturer responded by removing this HHDS product from the market,” the researchers wrote.

“Individuals use HHDS for self-improvement, failure or distrust of conventional medicine, and because they believe that these natural products are safe and drug-free.”

The researchers searched websites promoting such products and found they promised maintenance of a “youthful” heart, relief of stress, and improvements in stamina, energy, strength and virility.

The patients, a 67-year-old and a 51-year-old, have both survived but cancer has spread throughout their bodies.

“Unlike prescription and over-the-counter drugs, the law does not require nutritional supplements to undergo pre-market approval for safety and efficacy,” the researchers wrote, with manufacturers allowed to assume the sole responsibility.

“Thus, the current Food and Drug Administration regulatory system provides little oversight or assurance that HHDS will have predictable pharmacological effects or even that product labels provide accurate information to consumers.”

A leading Canadian urologist warns that men who take nutritional supplements advertised as having male hormones are “really playing with fire.”

“Many men are on androgen replacement therapy or some kind of male hormone replacement and there’s always been a concern this may stimulate the growth of prostate cancer cells,” says Dr. Laurence Klotz, chief of the division of urology at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Science Centre.

“It’s a very controversial question and the answer is still not clear.”

A separate study, this one the latest to look at the risk of hormone therapy for women, found that taking an estrogen-plus-progesterone combination for as little as three years significantly increases the risk of certain breast cancers.

It was thought only women who use these hormones for at least five years have an increase in breast cancer risk.

The study involved more 1,500 postmenopausal women, age 55 to 74, in western Washington. Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle found that women who used the combined hormone regimen had a three- to four-fold relative increased risk of lobular cancer, but only if they used the hormones for three or more years.

Lobular cancer accounts for about only 15 per cent of all invasive breast cancers. It’s hard to detect and its incidence soared 52 per cent in the U.S. between 1987 and 1999, according to the researchers.

“These findings are still of considerable public-health importance considering the estimated 57 million prescriptions for menopausal hormone therapy that continue to be filled in the United States,” lead author Dr. Christopher Li said in a release issued with the new study, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

Vitamin D helps brain to work well at later age

Vitamin D may have a key role in helping the brain to keep working well in later life, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Previous research indicates that inadequate vitamin D intake may be linked to poorer mental agility in the ageing brain, but the results have been inconsistent.
The researchers base their current findings on just over 3000 European men between the ages of 40 and 79, who were all part of the international European Male Ageing Study, drawn from eight different cities across Europe.

Their mental agility was assessed using a range of tests, designed to measure memory and speed of information processing as well as mood and physical activity levels, both of which affect mental agility.

Blood samples were then taken to measure circulating levels of vitamin D, which is obtained through dietary sources and by exposure to sunlight.

High circulating vitamin D levels were associated with high scores on the memory and information processing tests, but after adjusting for mood and physical activity, the association remained for only one of the two information processing tests.

Low vitamin D levels were associated with poor scores, with levels of 35 nmol/litre or under marking the threshold of poorer performance.

Experimental data point to the biological plausibility for an association between low circulating levels of vitamin D and poorer mental agility, but exactly how the two might be connected is not clear, say the authors.

Possible suggestions include vitamin D’s role in increasing certain hormonal activity or the protection of neurones and chemical signalling pathways.

The findings show that the magnitude of the association between vitamin D level and mental agility was comparatively small, say the authors.

But if it were possible to stave off the effects of ageing on the brain with vitamin D supplements, then the implications for population health could be quite significant, they contend, because many people, particularly in older age, arevitamin D deficient.

Herbal soup fights flu A, perhaps useful to guard off swine flu too?

CM NEWS – Swine flu outbreak has scared the world recently, with death toll reaching 100 and counting. While scientists are racing to understand the flu and in full effort to formulate a new vaccine against it, the only things ordinary folks like us can do is to keep ourselves healthy and strong to guard off infection. In traditional Asian medicine, a decoction called Ma Huang Tang (麻黃湯) in Chinese or Mao-to in Japanese.

What’re in Ma Huang Tang?

The main ingredients of Ma Huang Tang are:


In a Japanese study conducted to evaluate the effect of oral Mao-to (麻黃湯) administration in children with type A influenza, the Mao-to powder was more effective in controlling fever due to flu A than administering an antiviral drug commonly used to fight flu A, Oseltamivir, alone.

What is Oseltamivir? Oseltamivir is an antiviral drug that is used in the treatment and prophylaxis of both Influenzavirus A and Influenzavirus B infection. Like zanamivir, oseltamivir is a neuraminidase inhibitor. It acts as a transition-state analogue inhibitor of influenza neuraminidase, preventing progeny virions from emerging from infected cells.

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In the Japanese study, the scientists performed a controlled trial of 60 children, from 5 months through 13 years of age, with fever and influenza-like symptom of up to 48 h duration. Patients assigned into the following 3 groups: oral Mao-to powder 0.06 g/kg body wt. three times daily; Oseltamivir 2 mg/kg body wt. dose twice daily; or both oral Mao-to plus Oseltamivir.

The results indicated that the median duration of fever after treatment was significantly shorter in the Mao-to and Mao-to plus Oseltamivir groups, compared with the Oseltamivir only group. It was thus concluded by the scientists that oral Mao-to administration was effective in the control of fever due to type A influenza infection in children.