Pre-Season Fitness Not a Factor in Collegiate Sports Injury Risk

HealthDay – 1 hr 40 mins ago MONDAY, July 23 (HealthDay News) -- Levels of pre-season fitness do not predict how quickly college athletes may be injured during the season, but their gender and the type of sport they play do, a new study indicates.

Canadian researchers assessed pre-season fitness among athletes on six varsity teams and found that women had a shorter time to injury than men. Certain sports, such as volleyball, also had a much shorter time to injury than other sports, including hockey and basketball.

The pre-participation fitness tests given to the athletes in the study included a vertical jump test to assess anaerobic power, and measurements of lower body strength, lower back and hip flexibility, agility, upper body strength, core strength and flexibility, and shoulder flexibility.

More than two-thirds of the athletes suffered an injury during their seasons, with muscle or tendon strains in the legs or feet being most common. While 55 percent of the athletes missed at least one practice due to injury, most did not miss any games. About 40 percent of the injuries occurred during pre-season practice, the study found.

On average, female athletes suffered their first injury about 40 percent of the way through the season, compared with 66 percent of the way through the season for male athletes, the University of Alberta researchers reported.

Injuries occurred sooner in volleyball than in any other sport -- less than 20 percent of the way through the season for women and 35 percent of the way through the season for men.

The safest sport was men's hockey, according to the findings, with first injuries occurring an average of three-quarters of the way through the season.

Pre-season fitness had no overall effect on athletes' time to injury during their season, concluded the study published online in the journal Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology.

"The only association we found between pre-season fitness and injury was that

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Serious Mental Illness Tied to Higher Cancer, Injury Risk: Studies

HealthDay – Fri, Jul 20, 2012 FRIDAY, July 20 (HealthDay News) -- People with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have a 2.6 times increased risk of developing cancer, a new study contends.

The findings raise questions about whether people with serious mental illness receive appropriate cancer screenings and preventive care to help them avoid cancer risk factors such as smoking, the researchers said.

"The increased risk is definitely there, but we're not entirely sure why," study leader Dr. Gail Daumit, an associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a Hopkins news release. "Are these people getting screened? Are they being treated? Something's going on."

The researchers analyzed data from more than 3,300 Maryland Medicaid beneficiaries with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to determine how many of them were diagnosed with cancer between 1994 and 2004.

Compared to people in the general population, schizophrenia patients were more than 4.5 times more likely to develop lung cancer, 3.5 times more likely to develop colorectal cancer, and nearly three times more likely to develop breast cancer, the researchers found.

Patients with bipolar disorder had similarly increased risk for the three types of cancer, according to the study published in the July issue of the journal Psychiatric Services.

People with serious mental illness are more likely to smoke, which could explain their elevated risk for lung cancer, Daumit said.

She also noted that women with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are less likely to have children and that childbearing is believed to reduce breast cancer risk. In addition, some drugs used to treat mental illness can increase levels of the hormone prolactin, a factor that has been linked to breast cancer.

The increased risk of colorectal cancer could be due to lifestyle issues such as smoking, lack of exercise and a diet lacking fruits and vegetables, Daumit said.

While the study uncovered a link between mental illness and cancer risk, it did not prove that one causes the other.

In a separate study released last month, Daumit found that people with serious mental illness were nearly twice as likely to require emergency or inpatient department treatment for an injury than people in the general population, and were about 4.5 times more likely to die from their injuries.

The study was published online in the journal Injury Prevention.

About 5 percent of Americans have a serious mental illness and these people are known to have a two to three times increased risk of dying prematurely, Daumit noted.

More information

The National Alliance on Mental Illness has more about mental illness.

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Chronic Pain May Depend on Emotional Reaction to Injury

HealthDay – 7 mins ago MONDAY, July 2 (HealthDay News) -- Whether a person's injury will lead to chronic pain may depend on the level of communication between two parts of their brain, a new study finds.

According to the report, published in the current issue of Nature Neuroscience, brain regions related to emotional and motivational behavior seem to communicate more in those who develop chronic pain.

"For the first time, we can explain why people who may have the exact same initial pain either go on to recover or develop chronic pain," senior study author A. Vania Apkarian, a professor of physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a university news release.

"The injury by itself is not enough to explain the ongoing pain," Apkarian added. "It has to do with the injury combined with the state of the brain."

For the study, the researchers used brain scans to examine interaction between two parts of the brain -- the frontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens -- in 40 patients who had back pain develop recently for the first time. The patients were followed for one year.

By analyzing the scans, the investigators were able to predict whether the patients would develop chronic pain with an 85 percent level of accuracy.

The findings suggest that the brain's emotional reaction to the injury is crucial.

"It may be that these sections of the brain are more excited to begin with in certain individuals, or there may be genetic and environmental influences that predispose these brain regions to interact at an excitable level," Apkarian said. "Now we hope to develop new therapies for treatment based on this finding."

An estimated 30 million to 40 million U.S. adults suffer from chronic pain. Back pain is especially common.

"Chronic pain is one of the most expensive health care conditions in the U.S., yet there still is not a scientifically validated therapy for this condition," Apkarian said.

Although the study showed an association between levels of communication in the brain and chronic pain, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

More information

For more about chronic pain, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Curry spice, omega-3 fatty acid preserve walking ability following spinal-cord injury

ScienceDaily (June 26, 2012) — UCLA researchers discovered that a diet enriched with a popular omega-3 fatty acid and an ingredient in curry spice preserved walking ability in rats with spinal-cord injury. Published June 26 in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine, the findings suggest that these dietary supplements help repair nerve cells and maintain neurological function after degenerative damage to the neck.

See Also:Health & MedicineBone and SpineNutritionMind & BrainDieting and Weight ControlBrain InjuryPlants & AnimalsCell BiologyBiologyReferenceSpinal cordPeripheral nervous systemPhantom limbOily fish

"Normal aging often narrows the spinal canal, putting pressure on the spinal cord and injuring tissue," explained principal investigator Dr. Langston Holly, associate professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "While surgery can relieve the pressure and prevent further injury, it can't repair damage to the cells and nerve fibers. We wanted to explore whether dietary supplementation could help the spinal cord heal itself."

The UCLA team studied two groups of rats with a condition that simulated cervical myelopathy -- a progressive disorder that often occurs in people with spine-weakening conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis. Cervical myelopathy can lead to disabling neurological symptoms, such as difficulty walking, neck and arm pain, hand numbness and weakness of the limbs. It's the most common cause of spine-related walking problems in people over 55.

The first group of animals was fed rat chow that replicated a Western diet high in saturated fats and sugar. The second group consumed a standard diet supplemented with docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, and curcumin, a compound in turmeric, an Indian curry spice. A third set of rats received a standard rat diet and served as a control group.

Why these supplements? DHA is an omega-3 fatty acid shown to repair damage to cell membranes. Curcumin is a strong antioxidant that previous studies have linked to tissue repair. Both reduce inflammation.

"The brain and spinal cord work together, and years of research demonstrate that supplements like DHA and curcumin can positively influence the brain," said coauthor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, professor of neurosurgery. "We suspected that what works in the brain may also work in the spinal cord. When we were unable to find good data to support our hypothesis, we decided to study it ourselves."

The researchers recorded a baseline of the rats walking and re-examined the animals' gait on a weekly basis. As early as three weeks, the rats eating the Western diet demonstrated measurable walking problems that worsened as the study progressed. Rats fed a diet enriched with DHA and curcumin walked significantly better than the first group even six weeks after the study's start.

Next, the scientists examined the rats' spinal cords to evaluate how diet affected their injury on a molecular level. The researchers measured levels of three markers respectively linked to cell-membrane damage, neural repair and cellular communication.

The rats that ate the Western diet showed higher levels of the marker linked to cell-membrane damage. In contrast, the DHA and curcumin appeared to offset the injury's effect in the second group, which displayed equivalent marker levels to the control group.

Levels of the markers linked to neural repair and cellular communication were significantly lower in the rats raised on the Western diet. Again, levels in the animals fed the supplemented diet appeared similar to those of the control group.

"DHA and curcumin appear to invoke several molecular mechanisms that preserved neurological function in the rats," said Gomez-Pinilla. "This is an exciting first step toward understanding the role that diet plays in protecting the body from degenerative disease."

"Our findings suggest that diet can help minimize disease-related changes and repair damage to the spinal cord," said Holly. "We next want to look at other mechanisms involved in the cascade of events leading up to chronic spinal-cord injury. Our goal is to identify which stages will respond best to medical intervention and identify effective steps for slowing the disease process."

Holly's and Gomez-Pinilla's coauthors included Dr. Donald Blaskiewicz, Aiguo Wu, Cameron Feng and Zhe Ying, all of UCLA. Their research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (RO1 NS056413) and the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation.

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Injury deaths drop among US kids: study

Injury deaths drop among US kids: …

Childhood deaths from injury have dropped almost 30 percent over the past decade, but suffocation deaths by infants and fatal poisonings among teens have risen, said a US study out Monday.

Despite the 29 percent decline, unintentional injuries are still the number one killer for US minors between the ages of one and 19, taking more than 9,000 lives in 2009, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The US rate of unintentional injury deaths among youths in 2004 was about twice that in other high-income countries in the the World Health Organization's European and Western Pacific Regions, it added.

Car crashes dropped by 41 percent from 2000-2009, but remained the leading accidental killer among this group. The CDC attributed the decline to improvements in child safety seats and better training for teen drivers.

"Despite this success, traffic crashes remain the leading cause of death for persons in age groups 5-19 years, accounting for 67 percent of unintentional injury deaths and 28 percent of deaths from all causes among those aged 15-19 years in 2009."

Poisoning deaths among those age 15 to 19 have been rising -- up 91 percent in 2009 compared to 2000 -- along with the rest of the US population, mainly due to overdoses of prescription drugs.

The higher infant suffocation rate -- up 54 percent from 2000 to 2009 -- "could be curbed" if more parents followed pediatricians' recommendations to have infants "sleep in safe cribs, alone, on their backs, with no loose bedding or soft toys," the study added.

However, the CDC pointed out that the apparent higher rate of infant suffocation could be a result of the change of death certificate classification over time.

Such deaths were often previously attributed to mysterious "sudden infant death syndrome," but recently, more of these deaths have been classed as "suffocation" as understanding of the syndrome has improved.

"Kids are safer from injuries today than ever before. In fact, the decrease in injury death rates in the past decade has resulted in more than 11,000 children's lives being saved," said CDC Director Thomas Frieden.

"But we can do more. It's tragic and unacceptable when we lose even one child to an avoidable injury."

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