Obese people with sleep apnea may triple the chances of eliminating their sleep problems by losing weight, claims a new study.

More than just loud snoring, sleep apnea can lead to high blood pressure, stroke, cardiovascular disease and a poor quality of life.

“Existing research has been limited by a number of factors, so there are very few studies that show whether the recommended amount of weight loss – about 10 percent – is enough to sufficiently improve sleep apnea,” said Gary Foster, director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education.

Foster and colleagues from six other universities recently completed the largest randomized study on the effects of weight loss on sleep apnea in patients with type 2 diabetes.

They found that among patients with severe sleep apnea, those who lost the recommended weight were three times more likely to nearly eliminate the number of sleep apnea episodes compared to those who did not lose weight.

The study has been published in the Sept. 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The new study, called Sleep AHEAD, looked at 264 obese patients with type 2 diabetes already enrolled in the Look AHEAD trial, an ongoing 16-site study investigating the long-term health impact of an intensive lifestyle intervention in 5,145 overweight or obese adults with type 2 diabetes. Participants were between 45 and 75 years old.

The 264 participants were broken into two randomized groups: the first received a group behavioral weight loss program developed especially for obese patients with type 2 diabetes, portion-controlled diets, and a prescribed exercise regimen of 175 minutes per week. The second attended three group informational sessions over a one-year period that focused on diabetes management through diet, physical activity and social support.

After one year, members of the first group lost an average of 24 pounds. More than three times as many participants in this group had complete remission of their sleep apnea (13.6 percent compared to 3.5 percent), and also had about half the instances of severe sleep apnea as the second group. Further, participants in the second group only lost about a pound, and saw significant worsening of their sleep apnea, which suggested to Foster and his team that without treatment, the disorder can progress rapidly.

“These results show that doctors as well as patients can expect a significant improvement in their sleep apnea with weight loss,” said Foster, the study’s lead author.

“And a reduction in sleep apnea has a number of benefits for overall health and well-being,” the expert added.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday warned consumers to stop using three Zicam intranasal cold remedy products containing zinc after continuing reports that some users have lost their sense of smell.

The over-the-counter products are: Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs, Kids Size (a discontinued product)

The FDA also issued a warning letter to Scottsdale, Ariz.-based drug maker Matrixx Initiatives Inc. to stop marketing the products and seek FDA approval if it wants to keep them on the market.

“The loss of sense of smell is serious,” Dr. Charles Lee, medical officer at the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said at a press briefing.

He said the loss of sense of smell, known medically as anosmia, “is potentially life-threatening and it may be permanent.”

“People without the sense of smell may not be able to detect dangers, such as gas leaks or something burning in the house and may not be able to tell if food is spoiled before eating,” said Deborah Autor, director of the US office of compliance at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

“People who cannot smell are also not able to appreciate flavors and could lose much of the pleasure of eating, adversely impacting their quality of life.”

The FDA has received more than 130 reports of anosmia from patients who used zinc-containing nasal products, Lee said. “While the number of adverse events may not seem high, we believe they are significant,” Lee said, explaining that the agency hasn’t seen a corresponding number of anosmia reports with other common cold products.

Until 2007, there were no requirements for over-the-counter product manufacturers to provide adverse event reports to the agency.

In the warning letter, the FDA asked Matrixx to hand over more than 800 reports “that we know they have relating to loss of sense of smell associated with these products,” Autor said. Dr. Robert Henkin, a neurologist who directs the Taste and Smell Clinic in Washington, D.C., said, “I am surprised the FDA has done this.

I think it’s great. I hope it sticks.” Henkin also said it’s not simply a matter of patients losing their taste and smell, it also results in a distortion of those senses. “This is devastating,” he said.

“It colors their whole lifetime. When they eat something or smell something it smells distorted or awful, sometimes rotten or chemical. It inhibits them from being able to eat or socialize.”

The US FDA first started receiving adverse event reports about the drug in 1999, but the majority came after 2004, Lee said.

In 2006, the company paid $12 million to settle 340 lawsuits brought by consumers who claimed the zinc nasal gel adversely affected their sense of smell.(agencies)

In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a “vaccine” of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.

The study was only a small proof-of-principle test, and its approach is not practical on a large scale. However, it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind’s top killers. A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing.

“Malaria vaccines are moving from the laboratory into the real world,” Dr. Carlos Campbell wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. He works for PATH, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based global health foundation.

The new study “reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing” agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach, he wrote.

Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa. Infected mosquitoes inject immature malaria parasites into the skin when they bite; these travel to the liver where they mature and multiply. From there, they enter the bloodstream and attack red blood cells — the phase that makes people sick.

People can develop immunity to malaria if exposed to it many times. The drug chloroquine can kill parasites in the final bloodstream phase, when they are most dangerous.

Scientists tried to take advantage of these two factors, by using chloroquine to protect people while gradually exposing them to malaria parasites and letting immunity develop.

They assigned 10 volunteers to a “vaccine” group and five others to a comparison group. All were given chloroquine for three months, and exposed once a month to about a dozen mosquitoes — malaria-infected ones in the vaccine group and non-infected mosquitoes in the comparison group.

That was to allow the “vaccine” effect to develop. Next came a test to see if it was working.

All 15 stopped taking chloroquine. Two months later, all were bitten by malaria-infected mosquitoes. None of the 10 in the vaccine group developed parasites in their bloodstreams; all five in the comparison group did.

The study was done in a lab at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and was funded by two foundations and a French government grant.

 This is not a vaccine” as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein.

“It’s more of an in-depth study of the immune factors that might be able to generate a very protective type of response,” said Dr. John Treanor, a vaccine specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., who had no role in the study.

The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. — Sanaria Inc. — is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness.

Two other reports in the New England Journal show that resistance is growing to artemisinin, the main drug used against malaria in the many areas where chloroquine is no longer effective. Studies in Thailand and Cambodia found the malaria parasite is less susceptible to artemisinin, underscoring the urgent need to develop a vaccine.

Researchers in the United States have found another good reason to go to the local espresso bar: several cups of coffee a day could halt the progression of liver disease, a study showed Wednesday.

Sufferers of chronic hepatitis C and advanced liver disease who drank three or more cups of coffee per day slashed their risk of the disease progressing by 53 percent compared to patients who drank no coffee, the study led by Neal Freedman of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) showed.

For the study, 766 participants enrolled in the Hepatitis C Antiviral Long-Term Treatment against Cirrhosis (HALT-C) trial — all of whom had hepatitis C which had not responded to treatment with anti-viral drugs — were asked to report how many cups of coffee they drank every day.

The patients were seen every three months during the 3.8-year study and liver biopsies were taken at 1.5 and 3.5 five years to determine the progression of liver disease.

“We observed an inverse association between coffee intake and liver disease progression,” meaning patients who drank three or more cups of java were less likely to see their liver disease worsen than non-drinkers, wrote the authors of the study, which will be published in the November issue of Hepatology.

The researchers put forward several ways in which coffee intake might protect against liver disease, including by reducing the risk of type two diabetes, which has been associated with liver illness; or by reducing inflammation, which is thought to cause fibrosis and cirrhosis of the liver.

Even caffeine, the chemical that gives a cup of coffee its oomph, came under the spotlight, having been found in previous studies to inhibit liver cancer in rats.

But drinking black or green tea, which also contain caffeine, had little impact on the progression of liver disease, although there were few tea drinkers in the study.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) three to four million people contract hepatitis C each year. Seventy percent of cases become chronic and can cause cirrhosis or liver cancer.

Tucking into more spinach and other green leafy vegetables can reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes, a study published on Friday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said.

The research wades into a controversial area, and its authors caution more investigation is needed to confirm the findings.

A team led by Patrice Carter at the University of Leicester, central England, reviewed six studies involving 220,000 people that explored the link between fruit and vegetable consumption and Type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes.

Eating one and a half extra servings of green leafy vegetables cut the risk of diabetes by 14 percent, but eating more fruit and vegetables combined had negligible impact, they found.

Type 2, the commonest form of diabetes, has spread fast from rich countries to fast-developing economies as fatty, sugary diets and sedentary lifestyles take hold.

More than 220 million people worldwide are afflicted with the disease, which kills more than one million people every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). As obesity rates increase, the number of deaths could double between 2005 and 2020, the WHO has said.

Nutrition and exercise are known factors in prevention, but which foods work best and why remain disputed because so few good-quality studies have been carried out.

Carter’s team suggests that green leafy vegetables are useful because they are high in antioxidants and magnesium, but more work is needed to bear this out.

In a separate study published on Wednesday in the British Journal of Pharmacology, Chinese scientists said a compound extracted from various Chinese herbs helped reduce the impact of Type 2 diabetes in mice.

The product, known as emodin, inhibits an enzyme called 11-Beta-HSD1, which plays a role in resistance to insulin, the hormone that helps clear excess sugar from the blood.

Emodin can be extracted from Chinese rhubarb (Rheum palmatum) and Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) among others, the paper said.

“Researchers would need to develop chemicals that have similar effects as emodin, and see which if any of these could be used as a therapeutic drug,” said Ying Leng of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica. Diabetes is controlled by injections of insulin and blood-sugar levels. If unchecked, the disease can lead to heart disease, vision loss, limb amputation and kidney failure.

The oldest among us seem to have chosen their parents well. Researchers closing in on the impact of family versus lifestyle find most people who live to 100 or older share some helpful genes.

But don’t give up on diet and exercise just yet.

In an early step to understanding the pathways that lead to surviving into old age, researchers report in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science that a study of centenarians found most had a number of genetic variations in common.

That doesn’t mean there’s a quick test to determine who will live long and who won’t – a healthy lifestyle and other factors are also significant, noted the team led by Paola Sebastiani and Thomas T. Perls of Boston University.

Nevertheless, Perls said the research might point the way to determining who will be vulnerable to specific diseases sooner, and there may be a possibility, down the road, to help guide therapy for them.

The team looked at the genomes of 1,055 Caucasians born between 1890 and 1910 and compared them with 1,267 people born later.

By studying genetic markers the researchers were able to predict with 77 percent accuracy which gene groups came from people over 100.

“Seventy-seven percent is very high accuracy for a genetic model,” said Sebastiani. “But 23 percent error rate also shows there is a lot that remains to be discovered.”

The centenarians could be fitted into 19 groups with different genetic signatures, they found.

Some genes correlate with longer survival, others delayed the onset of various age-related diseases such as dementia.

“The signatures show different paths of longevity,” Sebastiani said.

In general, the centenarians remained in good health longer than average, not developing diseases associated with old age until in their 90s, according to the study.

The researchers were surprised, Sebastiani said, that they found little difference between the centenarians and the control group in genetic variations that predispose people to certain illnesses.

“We found that what predisposes to a long life is not lack of disease associated variants, but the presence of protective variants,” she said at a briefing.

In addition, 40 percent of “super-centenarians” aged 110 and over had three specific genetic variants in common.

While this study, begun in 1995, focused on Caucasians, the researchers said they plan to extend it to other groups, including studying Japan, which has large numbers of elderly.

About 40 percent of cancers could be prevented if people stopped smoking and overeating, limited their alcohol, exercised regularly and got vaccines targeting cancer-causing infections, experts say.

To mark World Cancer day on Thursday, officials at the International Union Against Cancer released a report focused on steps that governments and the public can take to avoid the disease.

According to the World Health Organization, cancer is responsible for one out of every eight deaths worldwide — more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. WHO warned that without major changes, global cancer deaths will jump from about 7.6 million this year to 17 million by 2030.

In the report from the International Union Against Cancer, experts said about 21 percent of all cancers are due to infections like the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer, and hepatitis infections that cause stomach and liver cancer.

While the vaccines to prevent these cancers are widely available in western countries, they are almost nonexistent in the developing world. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s cervical cancer deaths are in poor countries, according to the agency.

In Western nations, experts said many of the top cancers like those in the lungs, breasts and colon might be avoided if people changed their lifestyle habits.

People who take bone-strengthening drugs for several years may have a slightly higher risk of esophageal cancer, a new study suggests.

The findings are in contrast to another recent study that used the same database of 80,000 patients and concluded that there was no link between the drugs and esophageal cancer. That study was published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Authors of the new study say they tracked patients for nearly twice as long — nearly eight years. Other studies have been divided over whether the risk is real.

In the latest study, British researchers started with nearly 3,000 people with esophageal cancer and matched each one to five similar people who didn’t have the disease. Ninety of the cancer patients and 345 people in the comparison group had been prescribed bone-building pills called bisphosphonates. These drugs, sold as Fosamax, Actonel, Boniva and other brands, are widely used after menopause to prevent or treat osteoporosis.

Normally, the risk of developing cancer of the esophagus, or throat, in people aged 60 to 79 is 1 in 1,000. The researchers estimated that with about five years use of the drugs, the risk was 2 in 1,000.

They also looked at about 10,000 people with bowel cancer and about 2,000 people with stomach cancer, and found no increased risk with use of the drugs.

The study was paid for by Britain’s Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK. It was published Friday in the medical journal, BMJ.

The study was only observational and is not the kind of evidence that can show whether such drugs cause cancer.

“Esophageal cancer is an uncommon cancer,” said Jane Green, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, one of the paper’s authors. “Even a doubled risk is still a very small risk.”

The chances of developing esophageal cancer after taking bisphosphonates are much smaller than from known causes like being obese, smoking or drinking.

But the disease is often caught late, as it was in actor Michael Douglas, which lowers the survival rate.

Green said the findings shouldn’t affect patients taking osteoporosis drugs, but added the medicines should be watched closely.

“People are increasingly being prescribed bisphosphonates and we just don’t know enough about their use over the long term,” she said. The pills have other side effects including throat ulcers, abdominal pain and an irregular heartbeat.

Experts aren’t sure why the drugs might lead to throat cancer, but the pills can cause inflammation in the esophagus, which could make cancer more likely.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration has received reports of a few dozen people getting esophageal cancer after taking osteoporosis pills, but there is no proof the drugs caused the cancers.

“The possibility of adverse effects on the esophagus should prompt doctors who prescribe these drugs to consider risks versus benefits,” wrote Diane K. Wysowski, an epidemiologist at the FDA, in an accompanying commentary.

Wysowski said patients should take the medicines carefully, like with a full glass of water before eating and not reclining for at least 30 minutes afterward.

“Doctors should tell patients to report difficulty in swallowing and throat, chest or digestive discomfort so that they can be promptly evaluated and possibly advised to discontinue the drug,” she wrote.

Wearing a programmable wristwatch could help children manage their daytime bladder control problems, a new study suggests.

For children with urinary incontinence, the first approach to treatment is usually behavior modification – sometimes called bladder training or “urotherapy.” Tactics like changing drinking habits and taking scheduled trips to the bathroom can be effective, but often the challenge with children is getting them to stick with a routine.

When it comes to scheduled bathroom breaks, many children simply forget. So for the new study, Danish researchers looked at whether outfitting kids with a sports watch timed to go off at regular intervals would help.

They found that among 58 children who had not improved with standard urotherapy, adding the wristwatch allowed 35 (60 percent) to at least partly respond to therapy by the end of the 12-week treatment period. A partial response meant that the children reported a 50 percent to 89 percent reduction in their average number of “wet days” per week.

In contrast, only 18 percent of children who stuck with standard therapy alone showed a partial response, and none became completely continent.

Past studies have suggested that about half of kids with urinary incontinence can become “dry” with behavioral changes that typically include altering fluid intake, learning proper “toilet posture,” and scheduled bathroom breaks, noted Dr. Soren Hagstroem, the lead researcher on the current study.

These findings, Hagstroem told Reuters Health in an email, indicate that the timed bathroom breaks are “the crucial element” in this regimen.

They also suggest that “scheduled voiding is especially effective when the children have a timer watch to remind them to go,” said Hagstroem, of Aarhus University Hospital in Skejby, Denmark.

The study, published in the Journal of Urology, included 60 children between 5 and 14 years old with daytime urinary incontinence at least once per week, along with overactive bladder. Overactive bladder — a bladder that frequently contracts, often suddenly — is believed to affect most children with urinary incontinence, Hagstroem noted.

The children spent four weeks on standard urotherapy, during which time two became completely continent during the day. The rest of the children were then randomly assigned to continue with standard urotherapy alone or to start wearing a sports watch programed to remind them of their scheduled bathroom trips.

After 12 weeks, 60 percent of the 30 children in the wristwatch group had at least a partial improvement — including nine children who were completely “dry” based on their self-reports, one who reported at least a 90 percent reduction in wet days, and eight who were partial responders.

Moreover, the researchers found that seven months later, the nine children who were completely continent had remained so, and another seven had become continent. Six of those 16 children no longer needed to use their watches.

Kids may also grow out of urinary incontinence: according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, about 10 percent of 5-year-olds experience incontinence but only 5 percent of 10-year-olds and 1 percent of 18-year-olds do.

According to Hagstroem, most children with overactive bladder and urinary incontinence can be treated without medications or surgery, which may be offered as options when behavioral changes fail.

Hagstroem recommended that parents try the wristwatch tactic to boost the chances that behavioral changes will work — if their child is at least 5 years old and the incontinence is not caused by an anatomical abnormality or a neurological disorder (which is the case for only a small number of children, the researcher noted).

The wristwatch did not appear to help, however, with bedwetting — a problem reported by most of the children in the study. None of the children in the wristwatch group showed an improvement in bedwetting during the 12-week treatment period.

That finding is “interesting” because behavioral therapy is typically recommended for nighttime urinary incontinence as well, according to an editorial comment by Dr. Tryggve Neveus of Uppsala University Children’s Hospital in Sweden published with the report.

Still, this study suggests that timed bathroom trips are a “crucial” part of urotherapy for daytime incontinence, writes Neveus. “Maybe we should recommend that the timer watch be included from the start and not as a later add-on in resistant cases.”

Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells — a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday.

The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision.

“This is a roaring success,” said ophthalmologist Dr. Ivan Schwab of the University of California, Davis, who had no role in the study — the longest and largest of its kind.

Stem cell transplants offer hope to the thousands of people worldwide every year who suffer chemical burns on their corneas from heavy-duty cleansers or other substances at work or at home.

The approach would not help people with damage to the optic nerve or macular degeneration, which involves the retina. Nor would it work in people who are completely blind in both eyes, because doctors need at least some healthy tissue that they can transplant.

In the study, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers took a small number of stem cells from a patient’s healthy eye, multiplied them in the lab and placed them into the burned eye, where they were able to grow new corneal tissue to replace what had been damaged. Since the stem cells are from their own bodies, the patients do not need to take anti-rejection drugs.

Adult stem cells have been used for decades to cure blood cancers such as leukemia and diseases like sickle cell anemia. But fixing a problem like damaged eyes is a relatively new use. Researchers have been studying cell therapy for a host of other diseases, including diabetes and heart failure, with limited success.

Adult stem cells, which are found around the body, are different from embryonic stem cells, which come from human embryos and have stirred ethical concerns because removing the cells requires destroying the embryos.

Currently, people with eye burns can get an artificial cornea, a procedure that carries such complications as infection and glaucoma, or they can receive a transplant using stem cells from a cadaver, but that requires taking drugs to prevent rejection.

The Italian study involved 106 patients treated between 1998 and 2007. Most had extensive damage in one eye, and some had such limited vision that they could only sense light, count fingers or perceive hand motions. Many had been blind for years and had had unsuccessful operations to restore their vision.

The cells were taken from the limbus, the rim around the cornea, the clear window that covers the colored part of the eye. In a normal eye, stem cells in the limbus are like factories, churning out new cells to replace dead corneal cells. When an injury kills off the stem cells, scar tissue forms over the cornea, clouding vision and causing blindness.

In the Italian study, the doctors removed scar tissue over the cornea and glued the laboratory-grown stem cells over the injured eye. In cases where both eyes were damaged by burns, cells were taken from an unaffected part of the limbus.

Researchers followed the patients for an average of three years and some as long as a decade. More than three-quarters regained sight after the transplant. An additional 13 percent were considered a partial success. Though their vision improved, they still had some cloudiness in the cornea.

Patients with superficial damage were able to see within one to two months. Those with more extensive injuries took several months longer.

“They were incredibly happy. Some said it was a miracle,” said one of the study leaders, Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena’s Center for Regenerative Medicine in Italy. “It was not a miracle. It was simply a technique.”

The study was partly funded by the Italian government.

Researchers in the United States have been testing a different way to use self-supplied stem cells, but that work is preliminary.

One of the successful transplants in the Italian study involved a man who had severe damage in both eyes as a result of a chemical burn in 1948. Doctors grafted stem cells from a small section of his left eye to both eyes. His vision is now close to normal.

In 2008, there were 2,850 work-related chemical burns to the eyes in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Schwab of UC Davis said stem cell transplants would not help those blinded by burns in both eyes because doctors need stem cells to do the procedure.

“I don’t want to give the false hope that this will answer their prayers,” he said.

Dr. Sophie Deng, a cornea expert at the UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute, said the biggest advantage was that the Italian doctors were able to expand the number of stem cells in the lab. This technique is less invasive than taking a large tissue sample from the eye and lowers the chance of an eye injury. “The key is whether you can find a good stem cell population and expand it,” she said

A collaborative study led by Johns Hopkins researchers has uncovered a genetic mutation that gives a person the ability to get rid of Hepatitis C without any treatment.

While some of the people with Hepatitis C suffer throughout the life and develop serious liver disease, including cancer, others are able to defeat the infection and get rid of the virus with no treatment.

“If we knew why some people got rid of the disease on their own, then maybe we could figure out ways to help other people who didn’t. Or maybe even help prevent infections entirely,” Nature quoted Dr. David Thomas as saying.

In a previous study, researchers had found a variation in a single chemical of DNA, known as a single-nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, near the IL28B gene, which while poorly understood, is thought to help the immune response to Hepatitis C viral infection.

People infected with Hepatitis C, who carried the C/C variation SNP near their IL28B gene, were found more likely to respond to hepatitis C treatment, which can rid some patients of the virus.

Thus, the researchers in the current study wondered if the C/C variation-as opposed to the C/T or T/T alternatives-also played a role in some peoples’ ability to get rid of the virus without the help of medication.

So, they assembled information from six different studies that had over many years collected DNA and Hepatitis C infection information from people all over the world.

Then, the team analysed DNA at the IL28B gene from a total of 1008 patients- 620 persistently infected and 388 who had been infected but no longer carried any virus.

DNA analysis revealed that of the 388 patients who no longer carried virus, 264 have the C/C variation.

“This is the strongest clue to date to understanding what would constitute a successful immune response. We don’t yet know the significance of this C variant, but we know we need to do more work to find out what it means and whether it might be helpful to halting the disease,” said Thomas.

The researchers also noticed an intriguing trend- the C/C variant does not appear equally in all populations.

“We wonder if this SNP also explains some of the genetic basis for the population difference of Hepatitis C clearance. It’s been reported that African-Americans are less

They’ve lived with the health warnings about smoking for much of their lives and doubtless seen the ill effects on friends, relatives and even themselves, yet about 4.5 million older people in the U.S. keep on lighting up. Medicare is finally catching up to most private insurers by providing counseling for anyone on the program who’s trying to kick the habit.

Dr. Barry Straube, Medicare’s chief medical officer, says it’s never too late to quit, even for lifelong smokers.

“The elderly can respond to smoking cessation counseling even if they have been smoking for 30 years or more,” says Straube. “We do know we can see a reduction in the death rate and complications from smoking-related illnesses.” Not only cancer, heart disease and lung problems, which can kill, but also gastric reflux, osteoporosis and other ailments that undermine quality of life.

Smoking-related illnesses cost Medicare tens of billions a year. Straube cites a two-decade estimate of $800 billion, from 1995 through 2015.

Medicare already covers drugs used to help smokers quit, as well as counseling for those who have developed a smoking-related illness. But starting immediately, the program will expand the benefit to cover up to eight counseling sessions a year for people who want to quit.

Next year, such counseling will be free, under a provision in President Barack Obama’s health care law that eliminates co-payments for preventive services.

Older smokers often don’t get as much attention from doctors as do younger ones. “They just figure, ‘Well, it’s too late,’” said Straube, that the damage is already done. That may start to change now.

About one in 10 seniors smoke, compared with one in five people among the U.S. population as a whole. It turns out that smokers age 65 and older present a medical paradox.

Many started when it was fashionable to light up. They are more likely than younger smokers to be seriously hooked on nicotine and less likely to attempt quitting. But research shows that their odds of success are greater if they do try to give up the habit.

Older smokers who receive counseling are significantly more likely to quit than those who only get standard medical care. One study of elderly heart attack patients found that those who got counseling to help quit smoking were more likely to be alive five years later.

It’s unclear why older people who try to quit have better luck than younger smokers.

Some experts think it’s because older smokers are more motivated, perhaps from having seen a loved one die of cancer or heart disease, or by recognizing how the cigarette habit has left its mark in their own bodies, anything from wrinklier skin to shortness of breath.

Straube has his own theory: “They’re under less stress,” he said. “They are not working anymore, and they have more time.”

Medicare’s new smoking cessation benefit will also be available to younger people who are covered by the program because of a disability. About 1 million of them are smokers.

Women who carry genetic mutations that boost their odds of breast and ovarian cancer can live longer and reduce their cancer risk by having preventive surgery, a new study suggests.

The surgery in question is drastic: removal of the breasts or ovaries before any signs of cancer have arisen.

However, “what our findings show is that women who choose to have these surgeries will reduce their risk of dying of breast or ovarian cancer by about 70 to 80 percent, which is pretty profound,” said study senior author Dr. Timothy Rebbeck, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The findings are published in the Sept. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The 22-center trial, one of the largest of its kind, studied nearly 2,500 women who were found to have inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.

Women who carry these mutations have a lifetime risk of breast cancer of anywhere between 56 percent to 84 percent, according to the researchers, whereas the risk for ovarian cancer ranges from 36 percent to 63 percent for BRCA1 mutation carriers and 10 percent to 27 percent for BRCA2 mutation carriers. By contrast, the lifetime risk of breast cancer among women generally is about 12 percent, and for ovarian cancer, it’s less than 2 percent.

Roughly half of the women in the study had undergone either mastectomies (surgery to remove their breasts) or salpingo-oophorectomies (surgery to remove the ovaries and fallopian tubes) between 1974 and 2008, in order to proactively lower their risk of cancer. The women were followed for an average of about 3.5 years.

During the follow-up period, no breast cancer events occurred in the women who underwent mastectomies, while 7 percent of the women in the group who didn’t undergo surgery were diagnosed with breast cancer.

In addition, women who had their ovaries removed lowered their risk of ovarian and breast cancer, and also lived longer than women who didn’t have the surgery. For example, over 6 years of follow-up, no ovarian cancer cases were seen among BRCA2 mutation carriers who underwent salpingo-oophorectomy, compared with 3 percent of carriers who did not undergo the procedure, the researchers report.

“One of the main messages of our study is that salpingo-oophorectomy should be part of any management plan for any woman who is found to have these genetic mutations,” said Rebbeck. “There really isn’t anything else that can reduce a woman’s risk by this much.”

“These findings really emphasize how important it is for all women with a family history of early breast or ovarian cancer to undergo genetic testing,” said Dr. Virginia Kaklamani, co-author of an editorial that accompanied the study. “I see women all the time who get the genetic test only after they’re diagnosed with cancer,” said Kaklamani, who is director of translational breast cancer research at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, in Chicago.

Kaklamani added that she hoped the findings would encourage more women to ask their primary care physicians whether they are candidates for genetic counseling.

“This is a very important study because it gives us more information in order to counsel women at risk,” said Dr. Daniel Silver, assistant professor of medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Silver added that women who are found to carry one of these genetic mutations face “a very complex set of considerations, so the more hard facts you can give them, the better.”

According to Rebbeck, doctors usually recommend that women who test positive for the genes have their ovaries removed at around age 35, but are okay with putting it off until age 40 if they haven’t finished having children. He said the surgery today is often done in an outpatient setting, with the use of laparoscopes, which limits scarring and shortens a patient’s recovery time.

Exercise can reduce a person’s genetic predisposition to obesity by 40 percent, finds a new English study.

Researchers looked at 20,430 people in Norwich and focused on genetic variants known to increase the risk of obesity. Most people had inherited 10 to 13 of these variants from their parents, but some had more than 17 while others had fewer than six.

The participants also provided information about their levels of physical activity.

Overall, each additional obesity-related genetic variant was associated with an increase in body mass index (BMI) equivalent to 445 grams (0.98 pounds) for a person 1.70 meters (5 feet, 6 inches) tall. BMI is a measurement that takes into account a person’s height and weight.

However, this effect was greater in sedentary people than in active people, the researchers found. For those with a physically active lifestyle the increase was 379 grams (0.84 pounds) per genetic variant. That’s 36 percent less than the increase of 592 grams (1.3 pounds) per genetic variant for inactive people.

The researchers also found that each additional obesity susceptibility variant increased the odds of obesity by 1.1-fold. But this risk was 40 percent lower for active people compared to inactive people, the findings revealed.

The study shows that adopting a healthy lifestyle can benefit people at increased genetic risk of obesity, the authors explained.

Fibers from broccoli and plantain may help curb development of Crohn’s disease, researchers in Britain suggest.

Carol Roberts of the University of Liverpool and colleagues tested preparations of plant soluble fibers from leeks, apples, broccoli, plantains and the fat emulsifiers polysorbate 60 and 80 — commonly used in processed food manufacture.

The researchers found fiber foods inhibited invasion of the cells lining the bowel by bacteria — particularly a “sticky” type of Escherichia coli related to progression of Crohn’s disease.

The study, published in the journal Gut, finds 5 milligrams/milliliter of broccoli and plantains reduced invasion of E. coli by between 45 percent and 82 percent. Leek and apple fibers seem to have no impact but the emulsifier polysorbate 80 substantially encouraged the bacterial invasion process, the study says.

The results were confirmed in tissue samples taken from patients as they underwent surgery for other intestinal disorders.

“The findings suggest that supplementing the diet with broccoli/plantain fibers might prevent relapse of Crohn’s disease,” the authors say in a statement. “The results could have further implications for the treatment of Crohn’s disease as many enteral feeds — nutrition mixtures used for tube-feeding of patients — contain emulsifiers and could account for variable responses to this type of treatment.”

Teens may smoke to “self-medicate” against depression but researchers in Canada say smoking may increase depressive symptoms in some adolescents.

Lead author Michael Chaiton of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit of the University of Toronto and co-author Jennifer O’Loughlin of the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre say the study involved 662 high-school teenagers who completed as many as 20 questionnaires from grades 7-11 about their use of cigarettes to affect mood.

“This observational study is one of the few to examine the perceived emotional benefits of smoking among adolescents,” Chaiton says in a statement. “Although cigarettes may appear to have self-medicating effects or to improve mood, in the long-term we found teens who started to smoke reported higher depressive symptoms.”

Study participants were divided into groups of: teens who never smoked; smokers who did not use cigarettes to self-medicate, improve mood or physical state; and smokers who used cigarettes to self-medicate.

Study participants were asked to rate on a rating scale depressive symptoms such as: felt too tired to do things; had trouble going to sleep or staying asleep; felt unhappy, sad, or depressed; felt hopeless about the future; felt nervous or tense; and worried too much about things.

“Smokers who used cigarettes as mood enhancers had higher risks of elevated depressive symptoms than teens who had never smoked,” O’Loughlin says.

U.S. researchers say vitamin D may help treat and prevent allergic reaction to mold in cystic fibrosis patients.

Researchers led by Dr. Jay Kolls of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans suggest vitamin D might be used to treat and even prevent allergy to the common airborne mold — Aspergillus fumigatus.

A. fumigatus, tolerated by most people, can cause severe complications for patients with cystic fibrosis and asthma. As many as 15 percent of patients with cystic fibrosis will develop a severe allergic response — known as allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, finds aspergillosis patients had a heightened response by immune cells — type 2 T helper cells — that was linked to the presence of the protein OX40L.

This response was correlated with lower levels of vitamin D. Patients who did not suffer from aspergillosis had higher levels of vitamin D.

“We found that adding vitamin D substantially reduced the production of the protein driving the allergic response and also increased production of the protein that promotes tolerance,” Kolls says in a statement. “Based on our results, we have strong rationale for a clinical trial of vitamin D to determine whether it can prevent or treat allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis in patients with cystic fibrosis.”

Some U.S. schools are banning peanuts and peanut butter from school lunches but a Dallas nutrition expert says other nut butters can be used as substitutes.

Joyce Barnett, a registered clinical dietitian at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas says parents don’t necessarily need to reach for the cold cuts as a source of protein if their child’s school has banned peanut butter because it can cause an allergic reaction in some children.

“Spreads made from other nuts or seeds provide a nutritious alternative to peanut butter,” Barnett says in a statement.

Alternatives to peanut butter include:

– Almond butter is high in protein and is a great source of potassium. Research has shown that almonds, which are tree nuts, can help reduce the risk of heart disease as well as total cholesterol levels.

– Soy nut butter is made from soybeans and has as much fiber as peanut butter. It’s free of peanuts and tree nuts, but children with soy allergies should avoid it.

– Sunflower seed butter is free of peanuts and tree nuts. A two-tablespoon serving provides more than one-third of a child’s daily magnesium and vitamin E requirements.

Silicone oil applied inside the eye can block up to 55 percent of harmful radiation to prevent blindness in patients with eye cancer, a U.S. researcher says.

Dr. Scott Oliver, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, says eye cancer, a rare but devastating disease, can strike anyone — although fair skin and sun exposure can increase risk — at any time, and treatment often requires radiation that leaves half of all patients partially blind.

Oliver focused on choroidal melanoma of the eye, or uveal cancer, the most common and dangerous form of eye disease, which affects some 2,000 people annually. It can spread quickly to the liver and lungs and often can be fatal.

For treatment, physicians often use plaque brachytherapy in which surgeons attach a gold cap containing radioactive seeds to the white part of the eye.

“Radiation injures blood vessels and nerves in the back of the eye,” Oliver says in a statement. “Half of all patients are legally blind in 3 years in the treated eye.”

Oliver tried several substances to block radiation from striking critical structures while allowing it to hit the tumor.

The study, published in the Archives of Ophthalmology, finds silicone oil — already used to treat retinal detachment — could screen out a majority of harmful radiation.

The average U.S. adult eats about 1.5 teaspoons of salt a day, more than twice the recommended amount, a U.S. professor of clinical nutrition says.

Dr. Jo Ann Carson of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas says federal regulators have begun urging food manufacturers to cut back on the amount of sodium they add to everything from breakfast cereals to soups.

The aim is for manufacturers to reduce the amount so gradually consumers would barely notice the lower sodium levels, but the final limits have not yet been determined.

“Lowering our salt intake is important to control blood pressure,” Carson says in a statement. African-Americans, the elderly and those with diabetes are recommended to lower their salt intake because they are most often salt sensitive.

For the some 50 million Americans with high blood pressure, research finds the lower the sodium, the lower the blood pressure.

To lower salt intake: Eat fewer processed foods such as frozen dinners, packaged mixes and canned soups; replace salt with herbs, spices, lemon, lime, garlic and vinegar; replace salty snacks with unsalted pretzels or nuts mixed with raisins, graham crackers, low-fat or fat-free yogurt, plain popcorn and raw vegetables; and buy unsalted or low-salt varieties of foods and condiments.

The kids enthusiastically agreed that they could do everything better if they came from a mind-place of of IALAC: They laughed at images, “If I am really ‘Loving,’ I can be more patient when my dog throws up… or when my little sister grabs my stuff.  If I am really ‘Capable,’ I can master my times-tables even though they’re hard for me.”  The excitement of accessing a whole idea in a single word that could really alleviate their days’ stresses inspired even the most reticent to at least give it a go.  The best part was that IALAC didn’t need to be cleaned, brushed or packed or refolded.  Talk about Simple, Fun and Magical!

6. Think IALAC when your tendency has been to brush off courtesy and respect.  Too tired for hello, please, thank you?  Consciously create the world in which you place yourself.  Your environment will mirror your behavior.

7. Think IALAC when your tendency has been to hear selectively or not at all. Pay attention and really concentrate on hearing others.  What’s really being said?

9.  Think IALAC when your tendency has been to anticipate stress, misery, failure, traffic.  Replacing the anticipation of misery with openness and curiosity may not change the traffic, but it changes the damage to your body that negative anticipation creates.   Remember that the mind doesn’t distinguish between real and imagined.  Think anxiety and your body functions in stress.

11.  Think IALAC and decide that the choices you make today will make a positive difference.  Don’t let anyone, including you, diminish your IALAC badge (your self esteem). You are loving and capable… well, soon as you choose them.

Yes, these are the same skills shared with the children.  Aren’t we, as adults, as much in need of reinforcing the good stuff?

Of course, for those of you who have learned self-hypnosis from me, see and feel yourself in a session of relaxation, coming from IALAC in each of your tasks for quick and deep learning.  If you’d like me to make a new personal CD for you with your current goals, please email or contact me personally at my office.

E.D.  Checklist

An occasional problem achieving an erection is nothing to worry about. But failure to do so more than 50% of the time at any age may indicate a condition that needs treatment. Are you at risk for erectile dysfunction (ED)? Take the following quiz and find out.

1. Are you overweight?  Yes or No

1. Do you have any of the following conditions?
   • Diabetes
   • High cholesterol
   • Depression
   • Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries from plaque)
   • Kidney disease

1. Do you:
   • Smoke
   • Drink alcohol
   • Use recreational drugs

1. How often do you exercise?
   • Daily
   • Once or twice a week
   • A couple of times a month
   • I never seem to get around to it

1. How often do you feel stressed?
   • Much of the time
   • Sometimes
   • Rarely

Answers:

1. Overweight men are more likely to have ED
2. Common causes of ED include nerve diseases, psychological conditions and diseases that affect blood flow. A number of prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs may also cause ED by affecting a man’s hormones, nerves or blood circulation
3. Tobacco, alcohol and recreational drugs can all damage a man’s blood vessels and/or restrict blood flow to the penis, causing ED
4. Regular exercise can reduce the risk of ED
5. Stress and anxiety are leading causes of temporary ED

Questions to Ask Your Doctor

• Does my erectile dysfunction stem from an underlying illness?
• Could any of my medicines be causing this problem or making it worse?
• Could stress or a psychological problem be to blame for my erection difficulties?
• Are there medications I can take?

Did You Know?

• Misinformation about erectile dysfunction includes the notion that ED, also called impotence, is an unavoidable consequence of aging. ED is not considered normal at any age, nor is it normal for a man to lose erectile function completely as a result of being older.
• Another myth is that tight underwear causes ED. While physical and psychological conditions can lead to ED, tight underwear is not to blame. Tight underwear may be a factor in producing a low sperm count.
• ED can be treated with oral medications, sex therapy, penile injections and surgery, such as penile implants.
• Intercavernous injection therapy is a medication injected directly into the penis to treat ED.
• Intraurethral therapy is a suppository medication that is inserted into the urethra to treat ED.
• Urologist is a doctor specially trained to treat problems of the male and female urinary systems, and the male sex organs.

Know Your Numbers

• At least 20 million American men have some degree of erectile dysfunction, and about one in 10 adult males suffers from ED long-term.
• About 40% of men in their 40s report at least occasional problems getting and maintaining erections. So do more than half (52%) of men aged 40 to 70, and about 70% of men in their 70s.
• Failure to achieve an erection less than 20% of the time is not unusual; treatment is rarely needed.
• Atherosclerosis alone accounts for 50% to 60% of ED cases in men 60 and older. Between 35% and 50% of men with diabetes have ED, and ED may be a predictor for other vascular problems.

Businesses that supply alcohol-based hand disinfectants and urge employees to use them increase productivity by helping reduce illness, German researchers say.

Nils-Olaf Hubner of the Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine and a team from Germany said the study involved 129 participants divided into one group that was supplied with hand disinfectant and instructed to use it at least five times a day, while the other group was told to maintain normal hand washing behavior.

The study, published in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases, found hand disinfectant use can reduce on-the-job-productivity-losses, increase workplace health levels and improve overall productivity.

“Our study found that hand disinfection reduced the number of episodes of illness for the majority of the investigated symptoms,” Hubner said in a statement. “Hand disinfection can easily be introduced and maintained as part of the daily hand hygiene, acting as an interesting and cost-efficient method of improving workforce health and effectiveness

Rectal cancer rates are increasing in people age 40 and under across races and in both sexes, U.S. researchers said.

Study leader Dr. Joshua Meyer, a radiation oncologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center, analyzed trends in U.S. rectal cancer compared with colon cancer trends. Dr. Meyer worked on the study while at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

Using data from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results cancer registry, the researchers identified 7,661 colon and rectal cancer patients age 40 and under between 1973 and 2005.

The study, published in the journal Cancer, finds overall rates of colon cancer and rectal cancer were low during the study — 1.11 cases per 100,000 for colon cancer and 0.42 cases per 100,000 for rectal cancer.

Colon cancer rates remained essentially flat in people age 40 and under in recent decades but rectal cancer rates from 1984 to 2005, rose 3.8 percent per year.

“We suggest that in young people presenting with rectal bleeding or other common signs of rectal cancer, endoscopic evaluation should be considered in order to rule out a malignancy,” Meyer said in a statement. “This is in contrast to what is frequently done, which is to attribute these findings to hemorrhoids.”