Causes of weight loss

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Exercise Controls Weight in White Girls Better Than in Black Girls: Study

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Skin Cells Turned Into Brain Cells in Lab Study

HealthDay – 54 mins ago THURSDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists who reprogrammed skin cells into brain cells say their research could lay the groundwork for new ways to treat Alzheimer's and other brain diseases.

The team at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco transferred a gene called Sox2 into both mouse and human skin cells. Within days, the skin cells transformed into early-stage brain stem cells called induced neural stem cells.

These cells began to self-renew and soon matured into neurons capable of transmitting electrical signals. Within a month, these new neurons had developed into neural networks, according to the research published online June 7 in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

These transformed cells could provide better models for testing new drugs to treat Alzheimer's and other brain diseases, the researchers said.

"Many drug candidates -- especially those developed for neurodegenerative diseases -- fail in clinical trials because current models don't accurately predict the drug's effects on the human brain," Gladstone investigator Dr. Yadong Huang, who is also an associate professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a Gladstone news release.

"Human neurons -- derived from reengineered skin cells -- could help assess the efficacy and safety of these drugs, thereby reducing risks and resources associated with human trials," Huang explained.

About 5.4 million people in the United States have Alzheimer's disease and that number is expected to triple by 2050., the release notes. Currently, there are no approved drug treatments to prevent or reverse the disease.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.

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Health Highlights: June 7, 2012

HealthDay – 54 mins ago Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Children's Vaccines Often Stored at Wrong Temperature: Report

Many providers of immunizations for low-income children store vaccines at improper temperatures, which could make them ineffective, says a U.S. government investigation.

A team from Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General checked the offices of 45 providers in five states who provided free immunizations under the federal government's Vaccines for Children program, ABC News reported.

The investigators found that 76 percent of the providers stored the vaccines at temperatures that were either too hot or too cold, and 13 percent of the providers stored expired vaccines with nonexpired vaccines.

Improper storage could reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines and put children at risk of contracting serious diseases, ABC News reported.

Nationwide, about 44,000 offices and clinics participate in the Vaccines for Children program.

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Introvale Birth Control Pills Recalled

Ten lots of Introvale birth control pills are being recalled after a consumer reported that the white placebo tablets were in the wrong row, drug maker Sandoz announced Wednesday.

The consumer found that the placebo tablets were in the ninth row (labeled "Week 9") of the 13-row blister card, rather than in the correct position in the 13th and final row.

While it is easy to distinguish the white placebo pills from the peach-colored active pills, there is the potential risk for an unintended pregnancy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

The numbers of the recalled lots are: LF00478C, LF00479C, LF00551C, LF00552C, LF00687C, LF00688C, LF00763C, LF00764C, LF00765C and LF01261C. The lots were distributed only in the U.S. between January 2011 and May 2012.

Consumers who find a white placebo pill in any position other than the 13th and final row should immediately being using a non-hormonal form of birth control and contact their doctor, the FDA said.

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Sheryl Crow Has Benign Brain Tumor

After being diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow described it as a "bump in the road" and told fans not to worry about her.

"Please don't worry about my 'brain tumor,' it's a noncancerous growth. I know some folks can have problems with this kind of thing, but I want to assure everyone I'm OK," Crow wrote on her Facebook page, CNN reported.

She was diagnosed with meningioma a few months ago. She doesn't require surgery for this common type of brain tumor but will have periodic brain scans to monitor its growth.

"It's a tumor that typically grows between the outer layer of the brain and the brain itself. So it's not actually inside the brain," explained CNN Chief Medical Correspondent and neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta.

Depending on the size, some people have this type of tumor removed immediately while others may never need surgery or treatment, Gupta said.

Crow is a breast cancer survivor.

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'Pink Slime' Rejected by Most School Districts

A beef product widely referred to as "pink slime" is off the menu in most school districts across the United States.

The vast majority of states that participate in the National School Lunch Program have decided to order ground beef that doesn't contain the filler product known as lean finely textured beef, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

The USDA said only three states -- Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota -- ordered beef that may contain the filler, the Associated Press reported.

After a public outcry early this year, the USDA said in March that it would change its policy and offer schools the choice to purchase beef without the filler for the 2012-13 school year.

Lean finely textured beef is made of fatty beef chunks that are heated and then treated with ammonia to kill bacteria. The USDA says it's a safe, affordable and nutritious product, the AP reported.

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Belly 'Membrane' May Regulate Immune System, Mouse Study Finds

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Depressed Teens Who Respond to Treatment Less Likely to Abuse Drugs

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Health Tip: Help Prevent Heart Disease

HealthDay – 54 mins ago (HealthDay News) -- You can't control all risk factors for heart disease, but living a healthy lifestyle and taking medication prescribed by your doctor can help prevent many of its dangerous risk factors.

The Womenshealth.gov website suggests these steps to help reduce your risk of heart disease:

Maintain healthy cholesterol and blood pressure.Quit or avoid smoking and drinking too much alcohol.Take steps to control diabetes.Maintain a healthy body weight.Get plenty of regular exercise and adhere to a regular sleep schedule.Control conditions such as sleep apnea and metabolic syndrome.

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Many Kids on Medicaid Don't See Dentist: Study

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Ritual in Some Jewish Circumcisions Raises Risk of Herpes Infection: Report

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Boy Scouts to Consider Lifting Gay Ban

"PHOTO: Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout from Iowa, delivers 275,000 signatures to the Boy Scouts at their National Annual Meeting in Florida, May 30, 2012." title

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Targeting the Brain's Appetite Control Switch

Scientists in search of the control switch for the brain’s dinner bell have a new clue. Researchers studying mice at Columbia University Medical Center found that when they messed with a certain protein that is found in the brains of mice – and humans – the rodents’ appetite and metabolism changed.

Dr. Domenico Accili, the leader of the study, whose findings were published today in the journal Cell, said the protein seems to be intimately involved in regulating food intake, and provides an intriguing target in the never ending search for a drug to regulate how much people eat.

The protein, called Gpr17, controls how the brain’s cells respond to insulin, one of the chief hormones involved in hunger and metabolism. When Accili and his team injected a drug to activate GPr17, the rodents’ appetites increased; injecting a chemical to turn Gpr17 off made the mice eat less.

Accili said controlling this protein in the brains of humans may be more than just a pipe dream. Many drugs currently on the market work by acting on the family of proteins to which Gpr17 belongs. The difference is those drugs, such as asthma medicines and blood thinners, don’t cross from the bloodstream into the brain.

“If we were able to tweak those medications so they cross into the brain, they could probably have positive effects against weight gain and help us control appetite,” Accili said.

Accili said his team would work next on redesigning the drugs they injected into the rodents’ brains so that they cross from the bloodstream into the brain.

Dr. Charles Clark, a professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, said knowing more about this protein would no doubt help scientists learn more about appetite control in the brain and may even lead to the development of new drugs to fine-tune feelings of hunger. But overcoming hunger’s deep-rooted spot in human evolution won’t be so easy.

”Control of weight is too integral and too important

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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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