Brain Scans Using New Dye May Predict Alzheimer's

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Child CT scans could raise cancer risk slightly

Children who get several CT scans have a slightly higher chance of brain cancer and leukemia in later life, though the risk is still small and probably outweighed by the need to get the test, researchers reported.

The use of CT scans has risen rapidly since they were introduced 30 years ago. For children, they're used to evaluate head, neck or spine injuries or neurological disorders.

International researchers studied nearly 180,000 patients under age 22 who had a CT scan in British hospitals between 1985 and 2002. They followed those patients until 2008. They found 74 of them were diagnosed with leukemia while 135 had brain tumors.

The scientists didn't measure the number of scans, which were mostly of the head, but looked at data measuring radiation doses from the scans. That's because the amount of radiation received by body parts such as the brain and bone marrow depends on the age and size of the patient.

The children who later developed leukemia or brain tumors were compared to a group of people who got a very low dose of radiation to the same parts of their bodies.

"CT scans are very useful, but they also have relatively high doses of radiation, when compared to X-rays," said Mark Pearce of Newcastle University, the study's lead author, at a press briefing Wednesday. He said CT scans were warranted in most situations but more needed to be done to reduce the amount of radiation.

Pearce and colleagues concluded the risk of brain tumors was tripled if children had two to three scans and the risk of leukemia was tripled with five to 10 scans. But he emphasized these were rare diseases and that the higher risk was still small. The risk of leukemia in children is about 1 in 2,000, so having several CT scans would bump that up to about 1 in 600.

"This (risk) is important, but the CT scan may be even more important," said David Spiegelhalter, of the University of Cambridge. He was not connected to the research.

"A judgment has to be made," he said in a statement.

The researchers noted that modern CT scanners give off about 80 percent less radiation than the older machines used in the study. Even at low doses, the radiation can damage genes that may increase the patient's risk of developing cancer later.

The study was paid for by the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the U.K. Department of Health. It was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet.

In the U.K., laws already require radiation from medical scans be kept as low as possible. In the United States, the government is pushing manufacturers to design new scanners to minimize radiation exposure for the youngest patients. And it posted advice on the Internet urging parents to speak up when a doctor orders a scan

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CT scans in childhood increase cancer risk: study

"A youth undergoes a CT Scan at a hospital. Children exposed to multiple CT scans could be up to three times likelier to contract cancer of the blood, brain or bone marrow later in life, according to research published Thursday. (AFP Photo/)" title

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Child-sizing radiation doses from medical scans

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Low-Radiation CT Scans Effective at Spotting Appendicitis: Study

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Brain scans can predict weight gain and sexual activity, research shows

ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2012) — At a time when obesity has become epidemic in American society, Dartmouth scientists have found that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans may be able to predict weight gain. In a study published April 18, 2012, in The Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers demonstrated a connection between fMRI brain responses to appetite-driven cues and future behavior.

See Also:Health & MedicineDiet and Weight LossBrain TumorObesityMind & BrainDieting and Weight ControlPsychologyBrain InjuryLiving WellStrange ScienceReferenceFunctional neuroimagingBone scanMirror neuronSleep deprivation

"This is one of the first studies in brain imaging that uses the responses observed in the scanner to predict important, real-world outcomes over a long period of time," says Todd Heatherton, the Lincoln Filene Professor in Human Relations in the department of psychological and brain sciences and a coauthor on the study. "Using brain activity to predict a consequential behavior outside the scanner is pretty novel."

Using fMRI, the researchers targeted a region of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens, often referred to as the brain's "reward center," in a group of incoming first-year college students. While undergoing scans, the subjects viewed images of animals, environmental scenes, appetizing food items, and people. Six months later, their weight and responses to questionnaires regarding interim sexual behavior were compared with their previously recorded weight and brain scan data.

"The people whose brains responded more strongly to food cues were the people who went on to gain more weight six months later," explains Kathryn Demos, first author on the paper. Demos, who conducted the research as part of her doctoral dissertation at Dartmouth, is currently on the research faculty at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

The correlation between strong food image brain responses and weight gain was also present for sexual images and activity. "Just as cue reactivity to food images was investigated as potential predictors of weight gain, cue reactivity to sexual images was used to predict sexual desire," the authors report.

The paper stresses "material specificity," noting that the participants who responded to food images gained weight but did not engage in more sexual behavior, and vice versa. The authors go on to say that none of the non-food images predicted weight gain.

Heatherton and William Kelley, associate professor of psychological and brain science and a senior author on the paper, have a longstanding interest in psychological theories of self-regulation, also called self-control or willpower.

"We seek to understand situations in which people face temptations and try to not act on them," says Kelley.

The researchers note that the first step toward controlling cravings may be an awareness of how much you are affected by specific triggers in the environment, such as the arrival of the dessert tray in a restaurant.

"You need to actively be thinking about the behavior you want to control in order to regulate it," remarks Kelley. "Self-regulation requires a lot of conscious effort."

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Diagnostic Scans Tied to Radiation Risk for Gastro Patients

HealthDay – 1 hr 1 min ago FRIDAY, April 6 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with digestive disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease may be exposed to significant levels of radiation from diagnostic imaging tests, a new study suggests.

Irish researchers analyzed data from 2,590 patients with gastrointestinal disorders between 1999 and 2009, and found that 57 percent of them had undergone diagnostic imaging tests such as computed tomography (CT) imaging.

Higher yearly and total levels of diagnostic radiation exposure were seen in patients with such conditions as inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, fatty liver disease and benign liver cysts, as well as in younger patients with irritable bowel syndrome and unexplained abdominal pain syndrome.

The study appears in the April 1 online edition of the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

"Our results show that significant increases in radiation exposure in the last decade have paralleled the increased use of computed tomography imaging," lead author Alan Desmond, of the Cork University Hospital, said in a news release from the American Gastroenterological Association. "While cumulative exposure is highest in patients with Crohn's disease, high exposure may also occur in patients with other gastrointestinal disorders."

Crohn's disease is a major form of inflammatory bowel disease, along with ulcerative colitis.

Diagnostic imaging with CT does benefit patients with gastrointestinal tract disorders, especially those with Crohn's disease, who often require abdominal imaging to assess the extent of their disease and detect complications, the researchers noted.

However, CT uses higher levels of radiation than other imaging technologies and more widespread use of CT has led to increased patient exposure to radiation. This has raised concerns because radiation exposure may increase a person's lifetime risk of cancer, especially in younger patients.

More information

The American College of Radiology, Radiological Society of North America has more about radiation exposure in X-ray and CT examinations.

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CT Scans Can Spot Heart Trouble Fast

HealthDay – 1 hr 45 mins ago MONDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Most people who go to the emergency room with chest pain aren't having a heart attack, but it can take hours or days to make a definitive diagnosis.

However, a new study finds that a special kind of CT scan given in the emergency room seems to identify a heart attack faster than traditional methods, so patients can be sent home safely sooner.

"You can go to an emergency department with chest pain, be concerned it might be a heart attack -- get a CT scan, like we do for everything else in the emergency department -- and we can say it's not your heart and you can go home, within a couple of hours," said researcher Dr. Judd Hollander, clinical research director of the department of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

"We can now answer the questions faster, and let people go home sooner," he said.

Using the CT scan is faster, Hollander said, noting it can take 25 hours to get the results of blood tests that indicate whether a patient has had a heart attack.

"And an EKG only shows if you are having the big one," Hollander added. "So, if it's negative it doesn't tell you if you are having a smaller heart attack, and two-thirds of heart attacks will have an EKG that's not diagnostic."

For every 100 patients who go to an ER with chest pain, only 10 or 15 have cardiac disease, Hollander said. "The other 90 percent end up with nothing serious," he added.

In addition, ERs are busy and crowded, and this is a way to move patients out faster and increase the ability to see more patients sooner, he said.

The findings were to be presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Chicago. They will also be published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, Hollander's team randomly assigned more than 1,300 patients with chest pain, but no previous history of heart disease or risk factors such as high blood pressure or diabetes, to CT scans or regular care.

The scans generate three-dimensional images of the heart and the blood vessels surrounding it, the researchers noted.

Among those with a normal scan, none died or had a heart attack within a month after being seen in the ER. In addition, more of these patients were sent home than those who received usual care -- about 50 percent versus 23 percent, the researchers found.

Those who received scans spent less time in the hospital and had heart problems diagnosed faster.

Scans are also cost-effective, Hollander said. The tests, which are like a standard CT scan, cost about $1,500. Patients who have a normal scan can be sent home within a few hours. A patient who is admitted to the hospital can run up bills of more than $4,000 for stress tests and monitoring alone, the researchers noted.

Chest pain is one of the most common reasons people go to the emergency room in the United States, accounting for as many as 8 million visits each year, at a cost of several billion dollars, they noted.

Many patients with chest pain are suffering from anxiety, pneumonia or indigestion that can cause the same symptoms as a heart attack, the researchers explained. Yet, more than half of patients with chest pain are admitted to the hospital for observation or testing such as cardiac catheterization or a stress test.

Commenting on the study, Dr. Gregg Fonarow, director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center and co-director of the UCLA Preventative Cardiology Program, said that "there are 8 million men and women that present to emergency medical centers with chest pain each year."

There has been great interest in developing strategies to more efficiently evaluate these patients and identify which ones can be safely discharged, he said.

The trial demonstrated that these scans may be useful to screen low- to moderate-risk patients, Fonarow said.

"However, further studies are needed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of this strategy and how it compares to protocols using high-sensitivity troponin tests," he added.

A troponin test measures the levels of one of two proteins, troponin T or troponin I, in blood, Fonarow explained. These proteins are released when the heart has been damaged, such as during a heart attack. However, this test is usually repeated over 12 to 16 hours, so the results do not come back as quickly as a CT scan.

More information

For more on heart attacks, visit the American Heart Association.

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