Acrylamide level in food largely unknown

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:30:11 GMT
By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer
WASHINGTON - Maureen Cohen read a newspaper article about cancer-causing acrylamide in her kids' favorite snacks and wanted to know more.
"I just got curious," said Cohen, a mother of three in Vienna, Va. "If it's known that it's a cancer-causing substance, I sure would like somebody to look into it and find out."

Acrylamide turns up in all kinds of tasty foods, including french fries, potato chips, breakfast cereals, cookies and crackers. But it's difficult for consumers to figure out how much acrylamide is in a particular meal or snack.

Nobody puts acrylamide in food. The chemical is a natural byproduct of cooking starchy food at high temperature.

So while you might find acrylamide in potatoes that are fried or baked at high temperatures, you might not find it in potatoes that are boiled and mashed.

French fries and potato chips already are well up on the list of bad-for-you foods.

Acrylamide also forms in plenty of other starches, like the toasted oats in Cheerios, the flour in hard pretzels or even the sweet potatoes in Gerber Tender Harvest organic baby food.

But compared with other worrisome chemicals in food, such as mercury in fish or benzene in soda, relatively little is known about how acrylamide forms, how it affects people or what to do about it. High levels of acrylamide in food were first reported by Swedish researchers in 2002.

Cohen looked on the http://www.fda.gov
Food Products Association: http://www.fpa-food.org
Center for Science in the Public Interest: http://www.cspinet.org

Doctors back new approach on 2nd opinion

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 04:11:59 GMT
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer
WASHINGTON - Reluctant to get a second opinion? Consider this: Over half of breast cancer patients had their initial treatment changed when they sought a review at a specialty center. But the question remains whether everybody with cancer really needs to go shopping for a second opinion. And if the first two doctors disagree, do you need a tiebreaker?
Better than serial doc-shopping may be what Dr. Michael Sabel, a University of Michigan breast cancer surgeon, calls the team approach. It's where specialists in different aspects of cancer care — the radiologist and pathologist, surgeon, medical oncologist and radiation oncologist — all get together, usually with the patient, to reread all the tests and hash out the best treatment.

That, not run-of-the-mill second opinions, is what Sabel set out to study when he examined what happened to 149 breast cancer patients who, in one year alone, came to Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center after being diagnosed, biopsied and getting a treatment recommended from a doctor elsewhere.

"This was very eye-opening," he says of the results. Now he wonders, "Is there a benefit to the multidisciplinary approach upfront, rather than seeing a surgeon, then going to the next doctor, then to the next doctor?"

The study examined just recommendations for initial surgical treatment, not later chemotherapy or radiation — yet 52 percent of the women had one or more changes urged by the specialty tumor board, Sabel reported in the journal Cancer.

Sometimes it was because the original doctor didn't follow national treatment guidelines. Five patients, for example, had been told to get a mastectomy when they were good candidates for breast-conserving lumpectomy instead.

Sometimes the original advice didn't take into account newer techniques, such as using chemotherapy to shrink the tumor before operating so the breast could be saved.

Sometimes surgeons thought women were good lumpectomy candidates — only to have an oncologist determine they couldn't tolerate the radiation that's required afterward, and these surgeons ended up recommending a mastectomy instead.

And in 29 percent of the patients, the Michigan pathologists interpreted biopsy results differently than the original doctors, leading to a change in diagnosis — cancer instead of benign breast disease for one — and a change in the aggressiveness of treatment.

Doctors have long known the value of a second set of eyes examining mammograms, biopsies and other types of cancer tests. At many cancer centers, an in-house recheck is routine.

The new study provides a broader look at other areas where doctors can legitimately disagree on the best treatment, or may have missed something, says Dr. Ted Gansler of the http://www.cancer.org/asp/search/ftc/ftc_global.asp — provides a searchable database of just how many cases of, say, Stage 3 pancreatic cancer, that hospitals in different areas treat in a year.
It's "always a good idea just to say, 'Have you treated many patients in a situation similar to mine? Is my case unusual in any way? Is there any reason you think I might benefit from a second opinion?'" Gansler advises.
A good doctor won't be offended by a patient seeking a second opinion, Sabel stresses, saying they're used to it. Nor will it hurt to postpone treatment a few weeks to get that review. "A few weeks is very reasonable. Patients shouldn't feel pressured."
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

Study War trauma may raise heart risks

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 04:22:03 GMT
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO - A groundbreaking study of 1,946 male veterans of World War II and Korea suggests that vets with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are at greater risk of heart attacks as they age.
The new study is the first to document a link between PTSD symptoms and future heart disease, and joins existing evidence that vets with PTSD also have more autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and psoriasis.

A second study, funded by the Army, found that soldiers returning from combat in http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/

Researcher studies meth exposure on kids

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 04:22:29 GMT

MISSOULA, Mont. - A University of Montana researcher is exposing laboratory mice to methamphetamine smoke to try to determine the long-term effect of the illegal drug on children who live in houses where meth is manufactured and used.
"I can say we have some very promising preliminary data that indicates acute respiratory distress, and we're moving forward based on those results," said Dr. Sandra Wells. "This will be the first information out there to address pulmonary injuries in children related to these exposures."

Wells' work with the Montana Alliance for Drug Endangered Children has led to proposed legislation seeking to expand the offense of child endangerment, making it a felony to expose children to meth.

"The fact that there is no good data out there, nothing to record any of the dangers these children are facing, that's concerning," Wells said recently. "We should be able to tell with certainty what constitutes child endangerment."

Social workers, law enforcement officers and pediatricians have reported children removed from meth houses with matted or missing hair, dental decay, dirty diapers, rashes and other signs of abuse and neglect.

But there's no data to show if a child exposed to meth will experience long-term lung problems, like asthma or pulmonary fibrosis.

"It's not like secondhand cigarette smoke where we know for a fact that exposure is harmful," Wells said. "We treat meth as though it's radioactive, but in fact it's been approved for medicinal use at lower levels. I expect there probably is a safe level of exposure to meth, we're just not sure what it is."

But without sound data, it's impossible to convey with any measure of certainty just how endangered these children have become, or how urgent their care should be.

Helena police officer Craig Campbell, who spent seven years as a narcotics officer, said seeing sick children in houses where meth busts were taking place led to a change in the way meth cases are investigated.

"We don't just look at building cases against adults suspected of manufacturing or distributing anymore," said Campbell, who has been training law enforcement and first responders through Montana's Alliance for Drug Endangered Children since its inception two years ago. "Now we're also trying to prove and gather evidence for the crime of child endangerment."

"We're terminating cases and raiding labs earlier than we normally would have," he said. "As soon as we learn that a child is present, it becomes a priority to gain access and get them out of that environment. We don't wait for the distributor to make another purchase or possibly identify a higher-up. We just get the child out of that situation."

Over the past few years, about one-third of all cases where children were removed from their families and placed into protective custody involved methamphetamine, said Dave Thorson, fiscal bureau chief for Montana's Child Protective Services.

"That's been fairly consistent over the years," he said. "About two-thirds of our total placements involve drugs or alcohol of some kind, and a full one-third involved methamphetamine."

Wells has been collaborating with her sister, Dr. Kathryn Wells, who is the medical director of the Denver Family Crisis Center.

Kathryn Wells wants to find a "medical home" for each child exposed to meth, so their health can be tracked over time.

"The only way to break this cycle is to follow these kids clinically, and that also helps translate controlled experiments into clinical research," she said.

___

Information from: Missoulian, http://www.missoulian.com

Physical abuse leads to adult depression study

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 06:27:54 GMT

CHICAGO - Physically abused and neglected children are much more likely to grow into severely depressed adults, a finding that researchers said on Monday points to an urgent need to test abused children for depression early on.
Physically abused children have a 59 percent increased risk of lifetime major depression compared with similar children who were not abused, said the study in this month's issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Earlier studies had linked childhood abuse with serious depression but researchers said this study is the first to show that depression is a consequence of the abuse.

"These results underscore the need to detect and treat the long-term psychological of childhood neglect," wrote lead researcher Cathy Spatz Widom, who was with the New Jersey Medical School in Newark when she worked on the study.

Researchers compared about 680 children who were abused and neglected before the age of 11 with 520 children of similar age, race, sex, and social status. Both groups were followed into young adulthood, up to an average age of 29.

Children who were physically abused, neglected or both had as much as a 75 percent higher risk of suffering major depression as adults.

"In addition, these findings reveal that onset of depression began in childhood for many of the children," the report said.

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