High-carb diet tied to breast cancer risk for some

Reuters – 3 hrs ago (Reuters) - Older women who eat a lot of starchy and sweet carbohydrates may be at increased risk of a less common but deadlier form of breast cancer, according to a European study.

The findings from a study of nearly 335,000 European women, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not prove that sweets, French fries and white bread contribute to breast cancer - but they do hint at a potential factor in a little understood form of breast cancer.

Specifically, the study found a link between high "glycemic load" and breast cancers that lack receptors for the female sex hormone estrogen, so-called "ER-negative" breast cancers.

A high glycemic load essentially means a diet heavy in foods that cause a rapid spike in blood sugar, such as processed foods made from white flour, potatoes and sweets.

The study, conducted by Isabelle Romieu of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, looked at nearly 335,000 women who took part in a long-running European study on nutrition factors and cancer risk.

Of these, 11,576 developed breast cancer over a dozen years. Overall, there was no link between breast cancer risk and glycemic load, as estimated from diet questionnaires the women completed at the study's start.

But the picture changed when the researchers focused on postmenopausal women with ER-negative cancer. Among women in the top 20 percent for glycemic load, there were 158 cases of breast cancer, versus 11 cases in the bottom 20 percent - a 36 percent higher risk.

ER-negative tumors account for about one-quarter of breast cancers. They typically have a poorer prognosis than ER-positive cancers because they tend to grow faster and are not sensitive to hormone-based therapies.

Christina Clarke, a research scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California in Fremont, and a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University, said the results are interesting because so little is known about what cases ER-negative breast cancers. Most breast tumors have their growth fueled by estrogen.

"This study gives us a really important clue for future research," said Clarke, who was not involved in the study.

Diets with a high glycemic load are associated with a bigger secretion of insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar. High insulin levels, in turn, have been linked to certain cancers, possibly because insulin helps tumors grow.

The current findings hint at a role for "insulin pathways" in ER-negative breast cancer, Clarke said, adding that more research definitely needs to be done.

She noted that while there is no single factor in any woman's risk of breast cancer, the findings offer more incentive to eat a balanced diet that limits refined carbohydrates in favor of healthier fare - like lean protein, vegetables, "good" fats and high-fiber grains.

"Really, you want to avoid these (high glycemic load) diets anyway," she added. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/MZY2qw

(Reporting by Amy Norton; Editing by Elaine Lies and Bob Tourtellotte)

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Body Language of Triumph Will Be on Display at Olympics

HealthDay – 1 hr 12 mins ago THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- As Olympians take to the world stage in London this week, watch the body language of the gold medalists for clues to their feelings of triumph and pride.

Those athletes who throw their arms above their head, clench their fists and grimace -- a universal expression of triumph -- are not to be confused with those expressing pride by tilting their head back, holding their arms out from their body and smiling, researchers say.

"We found that displays of triumph include different behaviors to those of pride, and occur more immediately after a victory or win," David Matsumoto, a professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, said in a university news release. "Triumph has its own signature expression that is immediate, automatic and universal across cultures."

One of the differences between triumph and pride is seen in the face, Matsumoto said.

"When someone feels triumphant after a contest or challenge, their face can look quite aggressive," he said. "It's like Michael Phelps's reaction after winning the 2008 Olympics. It looks quite different to the small smile we see when someone is showing pride."

In conducting the study, the researchers showed people from the United States and South Korea pictures of judo athletes from 17 countries who had just won a medal match at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Research has shown that South Korean culture downplays individual achievement and displays of emotion.

The participants consistently labeled the pictures of grimacing or yelling athletes with their arms raised and fists clenched as triumph. Meanwhile, the photos of athletes with their arms out at their sides, hands open and head tilted back were labeled as pride. The athletes in the "pride" photos, the researchers pointed out, were also smiling.

The study also showed that expressions of triumph occurred, on average, four seconds after the athletes won a match. Displays of pride, however, occurred an average of 16 seconds after the match ended.

Expressions of triumph are an immediate reflection of a person's success, the study's authors explained. Expressions of pride, on the other hand, come later since they reflect how the athletes feel about themselves.

"Watch that immediate reaction in the first few seconds after an athlete has won their medal match -- no matter what the sport is -- and you'll see this triumph response from athletes all around the world, regardless of culture," Matsumoto said.

Expressions of triumph, the authors concluded, may have played a role in evolution by helping people in early societies demonstrate their status or dominance.

The study will be published in the September issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

More information

The University of California at Santa Cruz more information on nonverbal communication.

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Health Highlights: July 26, 2012

HealthDay – 1 hr 12 mins ago Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

CPSC Tries to Stop Sales of Buckyballs

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has filed an administrative complaint against New York-based Maxfield and Oberton in an effort to force the company to stop selling high-powered desktop magnetic toys called Buckyballs.

The product is meant for adults, but the CPSC says at least a dozen children have swallowed the magnets since 2009 and some of them have required surgery, the Associated Press reported.

Thursday's move was taken because the company refused to recall the product, according to the CPSC. The agency has persuaded about 10 retailers, including Amazon.com, to stop selling Buckyballs.

Craig Zucker, the founder of Maxfield and Oberton, said Buckyballs are marketed to people 14 and older and carry clear warning labels to keep them away from children. In a statement, the company called the CPSC's actions "unfair, unjust and un-American," the AP reported.

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New Public-Private Partnership Targets Health Care Fraud

In an effort to reduce tens of billion of dollars in losses to health care fraud, the Obama administration has announced a new large scale public-private partnership with state investigators and private insurers.

This cooperative effort "puts criminals on notice that we will find them and stop them," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

Details of the partnership remain to be finalized, but could include sharing information on new fraud schemes as they appear, using computer analysis to detect emerging patterns of fraud, and analyzing claims data to identify scams.

It's estimated that fraud costs Medicare about $60 billion a year. This is the latest in a number of Obama administration efforts to stop it, the AP reported.

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Petition Calls for New FDA Rules on Painkillers

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to introduce new measures to reduce the overuse and abuse of prescription painkillers, a group of about 35 doctors said in a citizens petition sent Wednesday.

Specifically, the doctors wants the FDA to limit the use of narcotic painkillers (opioids) to treatment of severe pain in patients other than those with cancer. They also want labeling changes that instruct doctors to limit doses of the drugs when they're used to treat noncancer pain and to limit the length of time they are used, The New York Times reported.

Currently, narcotic painkillers are FDA-approved for the treatment of moderate to severe pain.

"Overprescribing of opioids is harming many chronic pain patients," Edward Covington, director of the Neurological Center for Pain at the Cleveland Clinic, said in a statement, The Times reported.

The doctors who signed the petition include Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the commissioner of the Department of Health in New York City, and Dr. Nirav R. Shah, the commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.

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Mexico Launches Large Poultry Vaccination Effort

About 10 million poultry will be vaccinated in Mexico to protect them against an outbreak of the highly contagious H7N3 bird flu strain.

The outbreak has already resulted in the deaths of five million birds, which either became ill or were slaughtered, Agence France-Presse reported.

The crisis was first detected June 20 in the western state of Jalisco and a national animal health emergency was declared in early July.

The United Nations says the H7N3 virus has occasionally affected people in various parts of the world, but is not easily transmittable between humans, AFP reported.

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Ecstasy Linked to Memory Loss: Study

The street drug Ecstasy may cause memory loss, according to a new study.

German researchers tracked more than 100 recreational Ecstasy users for a year and found that their performance on a series of memory tests declined during that time, ABC News reported.

The greatest effect was seen in associative memory. For example, people who used Ecstasy might have trouble remembering where they left their keys.

The Ecstasy users in the study took an average of 32 pills over the year, which is slightly more than one pill every other weekend, ABC News reported.

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Teen Doing Well 2 Years After Stem Cell Windpipe Transplant

HealthDay – 1 hr 12 mins ago WEDNESDAY, July 25 (HealthDay News) -- Two years after he became the first child to receive a stem cell-supported trachea (windpipe) transplant, a 13-year-old boy is able to breathe normally, has grown about four inches taller, does not require any anti-rejection drugs and has returned to school.

Ciaran Finn-Lynch, born with a structural defect of his large airway, underwent the transplant in March 2010 at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. After his windpipe was removed, it was replaced by a windpipe from a deceased donor in Italy.

The windpipe was stripped of the donor's cells down to the inert structure of collagen. Tissue from the lining of Finn-Lynch's windpipe was implanted in the new windpipe to kick-start the growth of a lining in the new windpipe.

The surgeons laced the transplanted windpipe with Finn-Lynch's own bone marrow stem cells to prevent his body from rejecting the new organ. The teen also received compounds to promote the growth and differentiation of cells within the new windpipe.

It was the first attempt to grow stem cells within the body of a child who had this type of operation, rather than in a laboratory, according to an article published online July 25 in The Lancet.

"Since the treatment plan for Ciaran was devised in an emergency, we used a novel mix of techniques that have proved successful in treating other conditions," paper co-author Martin Birchall, a professor of laryngology at University College London's Ear Institute, said in a journal news release. "To minimize delays, we bypassed the usual process of growing cells in the laboratory over a period of weeks, and instead opted to grow the cells inside the body, in a similar manner to treatments currently being (tested) with patients who have had heart attacks."

He added that more research is needed on stem cells grown deliberately inside the body, rather than grown first in a laboratory over a long time. "This research should help to convert one-off successes such as this into more widely available clinical treatments for thousands of children with severe tracheal problems worldwide," he said.

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about stem cells.

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Health Tip: Eat a Nutritious Breakfast

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Health Tip: Keep Your Child's Eczema at Bay

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Why Johnny Can't Run

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HIV Undetectable in 2 Men After Bone Marrow Transplants: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 12 mins ago THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- Following bone marrow transplants, two men infected with HIV no longer have any traces of the AIDS-causing virus in their lymphocytes, researchers report.

Lymphocytes are a type of white blood cell and are a key part of the immune system.

The U.S. researchers suspect that bone marrow transplantation along with continuation of antiretroviral therapy resulted in the dramatic effects evident eight months post-transplant. They are scheduled to present these preliminary findings Thursday at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy often achieve "undetectable viral loads," meaning there are no virus particles in their blood. But they still have latent HIV in their lymphocytes, and if antiretroviral therapy were discontinued, the latent HIV could reactivate.

But having no traces of HIV in these white blood cells is an indication that this "reservoir" of latent HIV may have been eliminated, the researchers believe.

At this point, they are far from saying these patients are cured. But the findings are "exciting," said Dr. Savita Pahwa, director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, who was not involved with the study.

"Every hint you get that it's possible to wipe out the reservoir needs to be investigated," she said.

"Eliminating the reservoir is the key to the cure," said Pahwa. She also stressed that it would only be possible to say these patients were "functionally cured" if the virus did not rebound when the patients went off antiretroviral therapy.

The two men whose cases are described in the paper underwent chemotherapy for blood cancers before receiving stem cell transplants. One had his transplant two years ago; the other, four years ago. Both also developed graft-versus-host disease (when transplanted cells attack the host cells) and continued with their antiretroviral medications throughout and after the transplant procedures.

Any of these factors could theoretically explain their HIV-free status, but the bone marrow transplantation combined with antiretroviral therapy seems the most likely explanation, said the study authors.

"We believe the transplanted cells killed off and replaced all of the patients' own lymphocytes, including the infected cells, and the donor cells were protected from becoming infected themselves by the antiretroviral therapy they were taking throughout the transplant period," said study senior author Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Graft-versus-host disease also probably played a role, he said. "The replacement of host cells by donor cells is itself a form of graft-versus-host reaction," Kuritzkes explained.

But the only way to verify that the transplant plus antiretroviral therapy can eradicate HIV is to take the patients off their medication regimens.

That would be the "next logical step," said Kuritzkes, adding that this would require patient consent and adherence to ethics protocols.

But even if the transplant procedure were found to eliminate the reservoir of latent HIV cells, bone marrow transplantation is a very risky procedure. Kuritzkes said he does not "foresee bone marrow transplantation being performed on otherwise healthy HIV-infected patients who are doing well on

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Could Germs on Your Skin Be Good for You?

HealthDay – 1 hr 11 mins ago THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- Colonies of bacteria that call your skin home may help direct your immune system to fend off pathogens and other threats, new research in mice suggests.

In the study, researchers introduced a parasite (Leishmania major) that causes skin infections to several groups of mice. One group was bred to have none of the normally present microbe colonies on their skin. A second group had typically present microbe communities, called "commensal bacteria," on their skin.

Mice with no skin microbes couldn't mount an effective defense against the parasite. In simple terms, they had far more bugs in their ears than mice with the normal skin microbial communities.

After the researchers introduced common bacteria found on the skin -- Staphylococcus epidermidis -- to the bacteria-free mice, their immune systems became much more effective in fending off the parasite.

The results suggest that skin bacteria, like bacteria found on other parts of the body, are important for a healthy immune system, the researchers said.

"The skin bacteria are really critical for controlling immune cells in the skin. They educate immune cells, tell them what to do," explained study author Shruti Naik, a doctoral candidate at University of Pennsylvania and research fellow at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "The pathogen is stealthy, like a burglar. It doesn't want the immune system to detect it. The commensals stimulate the immune system, acting as an alarm saying, 'There is a bug here. You need to fight and ward off this bug.'"

The study is published in the July 26 issue of Science.

A growing body of research suggests that the microbes living in various places on human bodies -- nasal passages, mouth, gastrointestinal tract, urogenital tract and skin -- play an important, though not fully understood, role in human health. So far, microbes of the gut have been the best studied, Naik said.

"It's becoming more and more clear that bacteria that live with you are really important for human health. A lot of the focus of research is in understanding the importance of bacteria in the gut," Naik noted. "But there

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Certain Tick Bites Might Spur Red Meat Allergy

HealthDay – 1 hr 11 mins ago THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- Can a tick bite turn you off red meat for good?

It can if it is the bite of a Lone Star tick, a type that's endemic in the southeastern United States. This phenomenon has been known for a while, but now new research published online July 20 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine reports on three case studies to illustrate exactly how it may occur.

The Lone Star tick injects spit into a person's body when it bites. The body then develops antibodies in response to a carbohydrate called alpha-gal that is present in the spit. This carbohydrate substance is also present in red meat. When the bitten person eats meat again, their immune system goes on the warpath, causing an allergic reaction. This reaction is typically delayed, occurring about three to six hours after eating meat.

The reaction can range in severity from mild hives and itching to full-blown anaphylactic shock, according to Dr. Susan Wolver and Dr. Diane Sun at the Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond.

This connection was first discovered somewhat serendipitously by researchers who were trying to determine why a cancer drug called cetuximab (Erbitux) was causing severe allergic reactions in people in the southern states. The sugars in Erbitux are also present in beef, pork and cows' milk.

Calling the phenomenon "the cow's revenge," Dr. Bruce Hirsch, an infectious diseases specialist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., said, "Lone Star tick bites may well be turning a portion of people in the southeast into involuntary vegetarians."

Tick bites cause a host of other diseases and infections including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The best thing to do is to avoid ticks altogether, Hirsch said. For starters, avoid wooded and bushy areas with high grass and use insect repellents that contain 20 percent or more DEET (N, N-diethyl-m-toluamide) on all exposed skin.

Dr. Bernard Feigenbaum, an allergist at the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, said that most people think about Lyme disease when they think about ticks and tick bites. "This study shows that there can be other allergic consequences," he said. "If a person discovers having reactions or unusual symptoms after eating meat, follow up with a primary care doctor or an allergist to see what is going on."

If you are allergic to red meat, you will need to avoid beef, pork, lamb, venison and other meat from mammals, said Despina Hyde, a nutritionist at the NYU Langone School of Medicine. "Poultry, fish and chicken are OK."

More information

Learn how to avoid ticks where they lurk at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The 'Five Second Rule' Is a Myth

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Experimental Drug Suppresses Appetite in Mice: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 11 mins ago THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- An experimental drug tested in mice might one day help people lose weight and keep it off long-term, according to researchers.

The drug, called JD5037, increases sensitivity to the hormone leptin, a natural appetite suppressant found in the body, according to a study in the July 26 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.

"By sensitizing the body to naturally occurring leptin, the new drug could not only promote weight loss, but also help maintain it," senior study author George Kunos, of the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said in a journal news release. "This finding bodes well for the development of a new class of compounds for the treatment of obesity and its metabolic consequences."

Leptin supplements alone are not effective at helping people lose excess weight, according to the release. It's believed that this is due to desensitization to leptin, which means that the body can no longer respond to leptin.

In this study, the researchers found that JD5037 suppressed the appetite of obese mice and led to weight loss, in part by resensitizing the mice to leptin.

Scientists note, however, that research with animals often fails to provide similar results in humans.

"Obesity is a growing public health problem, and there is a strong need for new types of medications to treat obesity and its serious metabolic complications, including diabetes and fatty liver disease," Kunos said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases offers tips on safe and effective weight-loss programs.

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