Teen Drinking, Smoking Higher Among Facebook Users
August 26, 2011

U.S. teens who use social networking sites and watch "suggestive" TV shows are more likely to use drugs and alcohol than teens with little exposure to such media, a new survey found.
The survey included more than 1,000 youths from around the nation aged 12 to 17 and about half of their parents. On a typical day, about 70 percent of teens said they used social networking sites.
Social network users were five times more likely to report using tobacco (10 percent versus 2 percent), three times more likely to say they used alcohol (26 percent versus 9 percent) and twice as likely to admit using marijuana (13 percent versus 7 percent).
Researchers said the association held even when accounting for the age of the teens. For example, about 20 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds who regularly used social networking sites reported trying marijuana compared to 11 percent of kids who did not use social networking sites regularly.
About one-third of teens also said they regularly watch teen TV shows such as "Jersey Shore," "16 and Pregnant," "Skins" and "Gossip Girl."
Regular viewers of any of those programs were about twice as likely to use tobacco or alcohol, according to the survey, commissioned by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York City.
"The results are profoundly troubling," the authors wrote in the report, released Aug. 24. "This year's survey reveals how the anything goes, free-for-all world of Internet expression [and] suggestive television programming ... put teens at sharply increased risk of substance abuse."

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Weight gain hits women after marriage, men after divorce
August 24, 2011

Tying or untying the knot seems to affect men's and women's waistlines differently: A new study shows that women are more apt to pile on excess pounds after marriage, while men add the weight after a divorce.
"Clearly, the effect of marital transitions on weight changes differs by gender," lead author Dmitry Tumin, a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University, said in a university news release.
His team looked at weight gain in the two years following a marriage or divorce among more than 10,000 people in the United States surveyed from 1986 to 2008.
Both men and women who divorced or married were more likely than never-married people to have a small weight gain in the two years following their marital transition, the team found.
In most cases, the weight gain was minor and not a serious health threat. But the risk of incurring a large weight gain was higher among men after a divorce and among women after getting married.
"Divorces for men and, to some extent, marriages for women promote weight gains that may be large enough to pose a health risk," Tumin concluded.

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Trying to Be 'Supermom' Can Raise Risk for Depression
August 23, 2011

Working moms are less likely to show symptoms of depression than stay-at-home moms, a new study finds.
However, working moms who don't cut themselves any slack and have unrealistic expectations about how easy it will be to balance work and family have higher levels of depression than their more laid-back counterparts.
Researchers analyzed survey results from 1,600 married U.S. women who had children at home and were participating in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
When the women were between the ages of 22 and 30, they were asked their opinion of such statements as: "A wife who carries out her full family responsibilities doesn't have time for a job outside the home"; "The employment of wives lead to more juvenile delinquency"; "Women are much happier if they stay at home and take care of their children"; and "It is much better for everyone concerned if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of home and family."
The responses to the outdated statements were actually intended to ferret out women's attitudes toward work-life balance by seeing how seamless they thought it would be to juggle work and family.
Then, at age 40, researchers measured their levels of depression.
Overall, women who were employed either full or part time were less likely to be depressed than those who stayed at home. Signs of depression included difficult concentrating, feeling lonely, sad or restless, having trouble sleeping or getting going in the morning and feeling unable to shake the blues.
But working women surveyed who were less sure about the ability of women to balance careers and family were also less apt to show symptoms of depression than women who thought it was going to be easy to do both, according to the study.

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Potassium-rich diet tied to lower stroke risk
August 22, 2011

People who eat plenty of high-potassium fruits, vegetables and dairy products may be less likely to suffer a stroke than those who get little of the mineral, a new study suggests.
The findings, reported in the journal Stroke, come from an analysis of 10 international studies involving more than 200,000 middle-aged and older adults.
Researchers found that across those studies, stroke risk dipped as people's reported potassium intake went up. For each 1,000-milligram (mg) increase in daily potassium, the odds of suffering a stroke in the next five to 14 years declined by 11 percent.
That would translate into a modest benefit for any one person, the researchers say. And the findings do not prove that potassium, itself, is what produces the positive effect.
But they strengthen existing evidence that it might, said lead researcher Susanna C. Larsson, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Since high-potassium foods are generally healthy ones -- including beans, a variety of fruits and vegetables, and low-fat dairy -- the findings offer one more reason for people to eat more of them, Larsson told Reuters Health in an email.
Potassium is an electrolyte needed for maintaining the body's fluid balance. It's also involved in nerve and muscle control and blood pressure regulation. A number of studies have suggested that diets high in potassium help maintain a healthy blood pressure and possibly protect against heart disease and stroke.

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Study reveals dogs can sniff out lung cancer, a disease that's notoriously hard to detect
August 19, 2011

Dog is man's best friend - and maybe man's best oncologist too.
Researchers at a German hospital have discovered that canines have the ability to sniff out lung cancer, the disease that claims more lives than any other form of cancer, CBS News reports.
Schillerhoehe Hospital collected breath samples from 220 volunteers and presented them to a group of specially trained dogs, according to the news channel.
The dogs didn't disappoint.
They detected nearly 75 percent of the lung cancer cases, and were correct in indicating the absence of the cancer in 372 out of 400 cases, according to the study, which was published in the European Respiratory Journal.
What the dogs detected were slight changes in the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that humans give off when they exhale.
Lung cancer-a disease that is more often than not diagnosed by chance- is usually not detected until it has reached an advanced stage.

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Coffee's anti-cancer link explained
August 18, 2011

Coffee has been shown to reduce the risk of skin cancer by helping kill off damaged cells that could otherwise turn into tumors, according to a US study published on Monday.
The findings indicate that moderate caffeine drinking, or perhaps even applying coffee to the skin, could be useful in warding off non-melanoma cancer, the most commonly diagnosed of all skin cancers.
Using mice that had been genetically altered to suppress a protein enzyme called ATR, researchers showed that the mice were able to fend off cancer even when exposed to ultraviolet light.
Previous studies have suggested that drinking about a cup of caffeinated coffee per day has the effect of suppressing ATR and triggering the die-off of cells harmed by UV rays.
The altered mice eventually did develop cancer, but three weeks later than normal mice, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
After 19 weeks of ultraviolet light exposure, the engineered mice showed 69 percent fewer tumors and four times fewer invasive tumors than the control group.

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Moderate Drinking May Help Prevent Alzheimer's, Other Dementia
August 17, 2011

Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, especially wine, may lower the risk of dementia, according to a review of previous research.
The team at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine analyzed data from more than 365,000 people who took part in 143 studies that were conducted since 1977.
Moderate drinkers were 23 percent less likely to develop dementia, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of "cognitive impairment," a phrase used to describe a decline in thinking skills. Moderate drinking is generally defined as a maximum of two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women.
On the other hand, heavy drinking (more than three to five drinks per day) was associated with a higher risk of dementia and cognitive impairment, but the researchers said this finding was not statistically significant.
"We don't recommend that nondrinkers start drinking. But moderate drinking -- if it is truly moderate -- can be beneficial," study co-author Edward J. Neafsey, a professor in the department of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics, said in a Loyola University Medical Center news release.
Wine appeared more beneficial than beer or spirits, but that finding was based on a relatively small number of studies, the study authors noted.
The researchers said the protective effect of moderate drinking remained after they factored in age, education, sex and smoking, and that the effects of alcohol were the same in men and women.
They also noted that the association between moderate drinking and reduced risk of dementia and cognitive impairment was statistically significant in 14 of 19 countries, including the United States.

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Tainted beef leads to grocery recalls
August 16, 2011

At least three major grocery store chains are recalling certain packages of ground beef due to possible E. coli contamination.
The recalls at Winn-Dixie Stores Inc., Publix Super Markets Inc. and Kroger Co. mainly in the southeastern U.S. stem from meat from National Beef Packaging Co. of Dodge City, Kan.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday that National Beef was recalling more than 60,000 pounds of beef after the Ohio Department of Agriculture found the bacteria.
The recalls affect products sold mainly in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee, but the meat could have been distributed nationwide.
The Publix recall includes various types of meat sold between July 25 and August 12. For Winn Dixie, it's for ground chuck meat sold between July 21 and August 12.
The agriculture department says there have been no reports of illnesses. The company says it's investigating.
E. coli can be deadly and can cause bloody diarrhea and other problems.

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Music Therapy May Ease Anxiety of Cancer Patients
August 15, 2011

Listening to recorded music or working with a music therapist may reduce anxiety levels of cancer patients and have other positive effects as well, a new study shows.
Listening to recorded music, singing, playing an instrument, or otherwise participating in music making apparently also have positive effects on general mood, pain, and quality of life, according to the study.
The study is published in the August issue of Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
"The evidence suggests that music interventions may be useful as a complementary treatment to people with cancer," says Joke Bradt, PhD, an associate professor in creative arts therapies at Drexel University, in a news release. "Music interventions provided by trained music therapists as well as listening to pre-recorded music both have shown positive outcomes in this review, but at this time there is not enough evidence to determine if one intervention is more effective than the other."
Together with colleagues, Bradt, who has a master's degree in music pedagogy from the Lemmensinstituut in Belgium, analyzed evidence from 1,891 patients taking part in 30 studies.
Thirteen studies used trained music therapists, who got patients to sing or otherwise participate themselves in music creation or selection. In the other 17 studies, patients listened to pre-recorded music.

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'Amazing' therapy wipes out leukemia in study
August 12, 2011

Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a new approach for treating leukemia _ turning the patients' own blood cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells.
They've only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking: Two appear cancer-free up to a year after treatment, and the third patient is improved but still has some cancer. Scientists are already preparing to try the same gene therapy technique for other kinds of cancer.
"It worked great. We were surprised it worked as well as it did," said Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "We're just a year out now. We need to find out how long these remissions last."
He led the study, published Wednesday by two journals, New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine.
It involved three men with very advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL. The only hope for a cure now is bone marrow or stem cell transplants, which don't always work and carry a high risk of death.
Scientists have been working for years to find ways to boost the immune system's ability to fight cancer. Earlier attempts at genetically modifying bloodstream soldiers called T-cells have had limited success; the modified cells didn't reproduce well and quickly disappeared.
June and his colleagues made changes to the technique, using a novel carrier to deliver the new genes into the T-cells and a signaling mechanism telling the cells to kill and multiply.
That resulted in armies of "serial killer" cells that targeted cancer cells, destroyed them, and went on to kill new cancer as it emerged. It was known that T-cells attack viruses that way, but this is the first time it's been done against cancer, June said.

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