| Top : 2007 : 2007_01_08 |
Heart group kicks off fitness campaignMon, 08 Jan 2007 16:38:22 GMTBy JAMIE STENGLE, Associated Press Writer DALLAS - With an eye on Americans who spend too much time sitting behind computer screens and not enough time getting exercise, the http://www.americanheart.org/start Stem cells discovered in amniotic fluidMon, 08 Jan 2007 12:40:53 GMTBy PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer Stem cell researchers reacted with enthusiasm and reservations to a report that scientists have found stem cells in amniotic fluid, a discovery that would allow them to sidestep the controversy over destroying embryos for research. Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University reported Sunday that the stem cells they drew from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells. They reported they were able to extract the stem cells from the fluid, which cushions babies in the womb, without harm to mother or fetus and turn their discovery into several different tissue cell types, including brain, liver and bone. But Dr. Anthony Atala, head of Wake Forest's regenerative medicine institute and the senior researcher on the project, said the scientists still don't know exactly how many different cell types can be made from the stem cells found in amniotic fluid. The scientists said preliminary tests in patients are years away. The cells from amniotic fluid "can clearly generate a broad range of important cell types, but they may not do as many tricks as embryonic stem cells," said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientist at the stem cell company Advanced Cell Technology. "Either way, I think this work represents a giant step forward for stem cell research." Dr. George Daley, a Harvard University stem cell researcher, said the finding raises the possibility that someday expectant parents can freeze amnio stem cells for future tissue replacement in a sick child without fear of immune rejection. Nonetheless, Daley said, the discovery shouldn't be used as a replacement for human embryonic stem cell research. "While they are fascinating subjects of study in their own right, they are not a substitute for human embryonic stem cells, which allow scientists to address a host of other interesting questions in early human development," said Daley, who began work last year to clone human embryos to produce stem cells. Atala said the research reported in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology expands far beyond similar work. At a heart research conference in November, Swiss researcher Simon Hoerstrup said he managed to turn amniotic fluid stem cells into heart cells that could be grown into replacement valves. Hoerstrup has yet to publish his work in a scientific journal. "Our hope is that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for engineered organs as well," Atala said. It took Atala's team some seven years of research to determine the cells they found were truly stem cells that "can be used to produce a broad range of cells that may be valuable for therapy." Atala said the new research has found even more promising stem cells with the potential to turn into many more medically useful replacement parts. "We have other cell lines cooking," Atala said. The hallmark of human embryonic stem cells, which are created in the first days after conception, is the ability to turn into any of the more than 220 cell types that make up the human body. Researchers are hopeful they can train these primordial cells to repair damaged organs in need of healthy cells. However, many people, including http://www.wfirm.org/ Nature Biotechnology: http://www.nature.com/nbt/index.html%emph_off Study Tween girls at risk for fatnessMon, 08 Jan 2007 05:26:23 GMTBy LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON - As if being a tween is not hard enough, scientists now call the years between 9 and 12 a time when girls are especially at risk of getting fat. Girls are more likely to become overweight in those preteen years than when they are teenagers, researchers report Monday in The Journal of Pediatrics. The study did not say why that was and did not examine boys to know whether they face a similar risk. But it did highlight consequences of that adolescent weight gain. Chubby tweens already were seeing their blood pressure and cholesterol levels inch up, backing up earlier research that fat's toll on the arteries begins early. Also, being overweight in childhood brought more than a tenfold risk of a youngster's growing into a fat adult. Parents should pay attention to creeping waistlines and poor dietary habits, particularly in this age group, said Dr. Denise Simons-Morton of the http://wecan.nhlbi.nih.gov Filipino doc picks life as nurse in U.S.Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:53:14 GMTBy ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer NEW YORK - The hospital lobby is a blur of surgical scrubs as a shift-change approaches. But when Elmer Jacinto slips in early in pressed whites and sneakers, he draws barely a glance from the guard behind the security desk. It's 2:15 p.m. and soon he'll begin preparing IV drips and checking temperatures, tasks assigned to an entry-level nurse. "So much to learn," says the self-deprecating bachelor with the lilting accent. Except for the fact that he's one of only two male nurses on the floor at St. Vincent's Midtown Hospital, he's just one of the girls, co-workers say. Well, here anyway. But a world away, in his native Philippines, Jacinto remains at the center of a roiling controversy — a sellout to his critics, a paragon of hard work and admirable ambition to his supporters. Once upon a time, Elmer Jacinto was his nation's most promising young doctor. But doctors in the Philippines are not well paid, and so he boarded a plane to America. To make more money. To become ... a nurse. It hasn't worked out exactly as he had expected. Life in New York has proved exhausting and full of unforeseen pitfalls. And back home, many of his countrymen still find his choice a difficult one to accept, because the parable of Elmer Jacinto raises grim doubts about their future. "Jacinto encapsulates perfectly the country's fundamental question today," one Filipino newspaper columnist opined. "Namely, why should anyone want to stay in it?" ___ When Elmer Jacinto graduated high school, the island of Basilan offered limited choices. On Basilan, where dusty farming towns press up against thick tropical jungle, electricity is a sometimes event. Telephone lines deposit calls at dead-ends. Both problems are blamed on the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group with an outsized reputation for violence. So when Jacinto sat down with his father, a school teacher, on a spring night eight years ago to parse his prospects in the glow of kerosene, they set aside talk of dreams to examine reality. "There is money in nursing," the older man counseled. Jacinto finished at the top of a nursing school class of 250, and found work at the local hospital before leaving for a better-paying job in the city. In hindsight, the move seemed fated. Not long after, Abu Sayyaf guerrillas stormed the hospital, taking nurses as hostages. One of Jacinto's former co-workers was killed during a shootout with Filipino soldiers. But in Manila, Jacinto pushed ahead, soon enrolling in medical school. For the second time, he rose to the top of his class, then joined 1,800 other aspiring doctors from around the country to take the national medical exam. When the scores were released, Our Lady of Fatima University proudly hung a banner over its doorway to herald the results. Its valedictorian, Elmer Jacinto, was the No. 1 young doctor in the nation. Jacinto, though, was already making other plans. His parents deserved more than even a doctor could give them. In a world where jobs and workers are shifted back and forth across borders like game pieces, he would play his hand — setting aside the goal of becoming a neurologist to work as a nurse in America for far greater pay. His choice should not have been a surprise. Nearly a million Filipinos take jobs abroad each year, making them some of the world's most mobile workers. Some of the most successful are nurses, drawn to the U.S. and other wealthy nations with a ravenous demand for health care and not enough skilled labor to meet it. But now the Philippines was bleeding doctors. "Before, we just branded it as a brain drain. But I label it now as a brain hemorrhage," says Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan, a former minister of health. He estimates that in the last five years, 9,000 Filipino doctors — out of about 56,000 — have retrained as nurses, and 5,000 have since gone abroad. The result? Some rural hospitals have few, if any, doctors and nurses. And care suffers. Doctors leave because of political unrest and economic malaise, but money is a major factor. A nurse in the Philippines makes $150 to $250 a month; doctors make $300 to $800. But the average registered nurse in the U.S. earns $4,000 a month. Is it any wonder a doctor might leave? The decision, though, remains intensely personal and sometimes embarrassing, and as an issue, it had generated limited attention — that is, until Jacinto made his choice and set out to explain himself to a nation of 84 million people. ___ In early 2004, Jacinto quietly began telling others of his plans. "Even before he announced his decision, we already felt it was coming," says Reynaldo Olazo, dean of medicine at Fatima. "It was I who brought it up because I could see his embarrassed smile." But Jacinto's decision drew little notice until a friend suggested he talk with a reporter at one of the country's largest newspapers. Jacinto, now 31, seems an unlikely candidate to stir controversy. With a toothy grin and somewhat large head, he has a boyish air. In conversation, he is reluctant to tout himself. "Mister is fine," asked how he prefers to be addressed. "Here I am not a doctor." Jacinto says the newspaper made him the face of an issue — the "doctor-topnotcher" who ignored the nation's interests for his own. But he acknowledges wanting to draw attention to the shaky economic status of health care workers as an issue policymakers had too long ignored. "Patriotism is a two-way process," he recalls thinking. "It's not only you as a citizen. It's also about the government that should also give you work, or something for yourself, to be able to live a dignified life." His decision struck a nerve — and it was raw. Jacinto's story "was like a slap in the face," Tan says. "Even ordinary people that I would meet, it was like, 'Hey, what has happened to our country?'" The front-page story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer drew a torrent of letters. On the radio — the main source of news for many rural Filipinos — talk-show hosts picked over his decision. "Deplorable ambition," one newspaper proclaimed. "Is our government partly to blame for this exodus?" the Philippine Journal of Internal Medicine asked. By the time Jacinto stepped to a podium two weeks later to take the doctor's oath, his private decision was public property. "We cannot begrudge you, but only appeal to you to stay," a leading politician, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said in a speech to Jacinto and nearly 950 other new doctors. A fellow doctor, Willie Ong, got to thinking. Ong had been studying a story from the Old Testament. "To your descendants I have given this land," the passage read, recounting the promise made between God and the Israelites. Ong was inspired. He wrote a "doctor's covenant," then convinced 1,800 physicians at a national convention to sign it, pledging to remain in the country for three years. But another 2,200 turned him down. So last year, Ong started the Movement of Idealistic and Nationalistic Doctors, or MIND, campaigning at medical schools to convince doctors to stay even before they became doctors. Filipino lawmakers, too, found their way to the issue. "There are dark consequences if we do not do something to mitigate a crisis," the president of the Philippine Nurses Association told lawmakers who called a hearing on health worker migration in the fall of 2004. Lawmakers proposed requiring all new nurses to serve in the Philippines for two to three years before being allowed to work overseas. But critics say it will penalize poor families counting on money their children could earn as nurses abroad. The question now is whether changes embraced by U.S. lawmakers will speed the exodus. When the Senate approved an immigration overhaul last summer, it included a measure allowing an unlimited number of foreign nurses to enter the country. If that change becomes law, "the Philippine health care system will bleed to death," Tan says. Either way, the debate comes too late to sway Jacinto. By the time U.S. lawmakers took up the issue, he'd already arrived. ___ On a Friday night in November 2005, a China Airlines jet touched down at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after an 18-hour journey. Twenty newly minted nurses — including one Elmer Reyes Jacinto — walked down the gangway, and a recruiter from a chain of nursing homes stepped forward to meet them. Jacinto and seven others were sent to Avalon Gardens, a facility in Smithtown, N.Y., a leafy Long Island suburb about 50 miles from Manhattan. "Nursing is a Team Effort," cheers a sign hanging outside that pictures stick figures hand-in-hand atop a globe. For Jacinto, this new world was exciting, but alien. The air was sharp, the ground was brittle. He and his roommates were the only people who seemed to walk anywhere in a land where most everyone moved by car. The nurses felt drivers staring at them as they walked along Route 25 carrying groceries. But the jarring adjustment was minor compared with problems that over time became increasingly troubling, he and other nurses allege. Their account is strongly disputed by the nursing home operator and its sister recruitment agency, which have accused the nurses of abandoning patients who require constant care. The new employer, which had promised two months free housing, assigned eight nurses to a small, dingy home — a tight fit with three bedrooms and a single bathroom that did not always work. Jacinto and another man slept on pullout couches in the living room. The home — a one-story bungalow large enough for a small family — still houses newly arrived nurses and their families. On a recent visit by a reporter, it was home to eight people, including three children, after two nurses had moved out. The kitchen sink was clogged shut and was draining out the window. Lights in the kitchen did not work. A rat scurried across the driveway. After a few weeks of doing clerical work, Jacinto and the other nurses say they were assigned to nursing duties but paid less than promised. Some say they were shortchanged in other ways, including not being paid for night work or given promised insurance. By early spring, the nurses had had enough. Their employer, who contends they were always treated fairly, says many nurses walked out without giving notice, endangering patients. What's clear is that on April 7, Jacinto and 10 others together tendered resignation letters. In all, 26 nurses quit, including five trained as doctors. Not even five months had passed since Jacinto, briefly the most famous doctor in the Philippines, had arrived in the United States. Now he was anonymous — and out of a job. ___ This fall, Jacinto's face returned to front pages at home, the central character in a revised morality tale about a trap set by naive expectations. "The grass outside the Philippines is not always greener," the Inquirer reported, detailing charges and countercharges between the nurses and the nursing home recruiter. Jacinto and the other nurses are out of work and running out of money, Filipino newspaper readers were told. Worse, they are living in abandoned, leaking houses, at the end of dark city alleys, stories said. "They have found out for themselves that the honeyed words they had relied upon were laced with large doses of bitter circumstances when they disembarked on the shores of the promised land," Pimentel told fellow lawmakers in a speech on the floor of the Filipino Senate. But Jacinto, himself, is missing from the discussion. He has grown weary of explaining himself. On a recent afternoon, he leads the way through the streets of New York's Elmhurst neighborhood to a table at the Fay Dah Chinese bakery, where one counter serves bubble tea and another advertises international money transfers in Mandarin, Malay and Tagalog. "I feel I belong here," he says, gesturing to sidewalks filled with people pulling laundry carts and talking on cell phones. "Look, Asians. Lots of Asians." It took just weeks for the rebellious nurses to find work, he says, thanks to an insatiable health care labor market. He and three others nurses have settled into a spare, but spotless walk-up apartment a few blocks away, a plastic American flag planted next to the bushes out front. The nurses share meals under a print of "The Last Supper" and watch Filipino news on a big-screen TV. And once a month, Jacinto walks to the bakery and wires $500 to his parents back in Basilan. Jacinto does not pretend everything has gone smoothly. He is uneasy that his hospital treats people with AIDS; in the Philippines, they would be quarantined to a few hospitals, he says. He finds it jarring that after months of taking the subway to work in Manhattan — "a jungle of buildings" — he never sees anyone but strangers. And, after the struggles of the past year, he is so tired that he now thinks he may remain a nurse rather than pursue his dream of becoming a doctor in the United States. He may soon be looking for a job again — New York's drive to cut health care costs has targeted his hospital for closing. Still, Jacinto says he is finding a place for himself — and a sense of peace. Back home, the expectation is "that you should become the model Filipino, doing it for your country. I want something for myself," Jacinto says. "I want to move on." He knows some in his homeland still judge him. Well, he says, let them talk. ___ AP Staff Writer Oliver Teves in Manila contributed to this report. Obesity weight gain tied to prostate cancer deathMon, 08 Jan 2007 18:08:49 GMTNEW YORK - Excess weight may not raise a man's risk of developing prostate cancer, but it may make him more likely to die of the disease, researchers reported Monday. In a study of nearly 288,000 U.S. men, researchers found that obese men were actually less likely than their thinner counterparts to develop prostate cancer during the 5-year study period. However, the heavier a man was, the greater his risk of dying from the disease. Dr. Margaret E. Wright and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute report the findings in the journal Cancer. Past studies have come to conflicting conclusions about the role of excess weight in prostate cancer. While some have suggested that increased weight is a risk factor for the disease, most have found no relationship. The new study followed 287,760 men between the ages of 50 and 71 starting in 1995. At the outset, the men completed a questionnaire about their overall health, diet and lifestyle habits, height and weight. Over the next five years, 9,986 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer. Severely obese men had the lowest risk of developing the disease. When it came to prostate cancer deaths, however, the risk climbed in tandem with a man's weight. Overweight men were 25 percent more likely than thin men to die, while obese men were 46 percent more likely. Similarly, the amount of weight a man gained through adulthood was unrelated to his prostate cancer risk. But greater weight gain was linked to a higher risk of death from the disease. According to the researchers, hormones might help explain why excess fat would be linked to prostate cancer death, but not development. Obesity lowers levels of testosterone, which helps fuel prostate cancer, so excess weight may help prevent the disease in the first place. On the other hand, Wright and her colleagues explain, heavy men have higher levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 and leptin -- two hormones that may aid the progression of tumors. So once an overweight man develops prostate cancer, it may be more likely to prove fatal. The findings, they conclude, suggest that prostate cancer progression could be added to list of health consequences of obesity. SOURCE: Cancer, February 15, 2007. Rare Indian turtles sold as sex stimulant rescuedMon, 08 Jan 2007 13:40:14 GMTLUCKNOW, India - About 2,000 rare freshwater turtles, whose meat is sold as an aphrodisiac on the black market, were rescued from poachers in a north Indian town on Monday after a tip-off from a resident, police said. The turtles were found packed into sacks in a house in Jaswant Nagar town in Uttar Pradesh state about 200 km (125 miles) west of the state capital, Lucknow, and are estimated to have a street value of about $23,600. Police said they had arrested five men believed to be planning to ship the turtles to the eastern state of West Bengal, and possibly other Asian countries such as Thailand and Malaysia, where eating them is believed to stimulate sexual desire. "Preliminary investigations suggest that a large chunk of the contraband finds its way to Southeast Asian countries, where turtle meat is converted into crunchy chips for convenient consumption," said Ram Kumar, police chief of Etawah district in Uttar Pradesh. Police said this was the second case of turtle poaching in the district since December when around 1,000 turtles were saved from poachers by wildlife officials. "Etawah was being used as a transit point for poachers, who picked up turtles from the Chambal river, which is rich in the species," said Kumar, adding that the turtles had been released back into the river. According to the Turtle Survival Alliance, India has 28 species and subspecies of tortoises and freshwater turtles, making it one of the most diverse chelonian faunas in the world. India ranks among the top five Asian countries in terms of its importance for turtle conservation, but nearly 40 percent of the species are listed as endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List. Bowel disease linked to pregnancy problemsSun, 07 Jan 2007 12:44:43 GMTNEW YORK - Women with inflammatory bowel disease are at increased risk for a number of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including premature birth and birth defects, according to the results of a review of previous studies. Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. To better understand the effect of IBD on pregnancy outcomes, Dr. Paris P. Tekkis, from St. Mary's Hospital in London, and colleagues analyzed data from 12 studies on the topic. All told, the studies involved 3907 women with IBD who were compared with 320,531 unaffected "controls." Compared with controls, IBD patients were approximately twice as likely to have a low birthweight baby, a premature birth, to undergo a cesarean delivery, and to have a baby with congenital abnormalities, the team reports in the medical journal Gut. They say how best to manage pregnancies in women with IBD needs to be settled with a definitive study. From this, they hope, will come "a new set of guidelines, to help both patients and their clinicians determine best practice." SOURCE: Gut Online First, December 21, 2006. Alzheimer gene kicks in only in old age studyMon, 08 Jan 2007 06:19:22 GMTHONG KONG - A gene that predisposes its carriers to Alzheimer's disease appears to kick in only in old age and has nothing to do with mental declines that are sometimes seen early in life, Australian researchers have found. Writing in the January issue of Neuropsychology, the researchers said the gene, APOE4, does not appear active at all until very late in life. They evaluated the cognitive powers of 6,560 people regularly over the last 20 years, testing their memory, mental speed, reaction time and reading vocabulary -- functions that are normally affected by Alzheimer's. Twenty-seven percent of the participants were APOE4 carriers but the researchers could find nothing differentiating them from non-carriers. The subjects, living in Canberra and neighboring Queanbeyan, were between 20 and 64 years old. "Performance on all tests declined across age groups, a sign of normal cognitive aging. However, APOE4 did not affect performance at any age," they wrote. Lead researcher Anthony Jorm at the University of Melbourne's psychiatry department said people begin to lose cognitive functions as early as in their 20s. This applied to both carriers and non-carriers of the APOE4. "The memory changes that occur from 20 to 60 do not seem to be connected to that at all. I don't know what they are associated with but other brain processes must be involved," Jorm told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Carriers show the same declines as non-carriers ... People with APOE4 are no more likely to have that early on than the people without. It is much later in their life spans that that effect begins to kick in." He stressed however that drastic declines -- which happen over a year or two and affect the quality of life -- were very rare in both carriers and non-carriers. Clear signs of Alzheimer's usually begin to show when a victim is in their 80s. While many researchers agree that APOE4 seems to be the predominant risk factor for Alzheimer's, it is not entirely clear how it causes the debilitating disease. "It may have a role in repair of nerve cells. When there is nerve damage, people with APOE4 version seem less able to repair and less resistant to a whole lot of diseases or damage to the brain," Jorm said. Fast growing melanomas have distinct traitsSat, 06 Jan 2007 20:27:56 GMTBy David Douglas NEW YORK - Melanoma skin cancers that are growing rapidly exhibit a number of identifying characteristics. According to Australian researchers, rapidly growing melanomas are thicker, symmetrical, or elevated, have regular borders, and often itch or bleed. They do not fit the ABCD rule for melanoma, which stands for asymmetry, border irregularity, color irregularity, large diameter, the team notes. "Because of their rapid growth," lead investigator Dr. Wendy Liu told Reuters Health, "there is only a small window of opportunity to capture these melanomas in their early stage of development." "Rapidly growing melanomas can occur in anyone," she added, "not necessarily those with large numbers of moles and freckles. In fact, they more often occur in those without large numbers of moles and freckles, and elderly men. Morphologically, they are more often red -- rather than brown and black -- symmetrical, elevated and symptomatic." Liu of the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and colleagues describe their observations in 404 melanoma skin cancer patients in the medical journal Archives of Dermatology. One third of the melanomas grew 0.5 mm per month or more. These fast growing tumors tended to be thicker with a faster mitotic rate . As well as being more likely to be symmetrical, symptomatic, and elevated, these lesions were also likely to have regular borders and lack the pigment melanin. "The current early detection program has done a good job promoting features of the common and less aggressive type of melanomas," continued Liu. "I think now it's time to direct our focus onto the more rapidly growing, biologically aggressive melanomas, which can kill rapidly." "So any rapidly growing skin lesion," she concluded, "regardless of its morphology and perceived host risk factors for melanoma, deserves prompt medical assessment." In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Dan Lipsker of Clinique Dermatologique, Strasbourg, France, agrees that much has been done in recognition of slow-growing melanomas, the "challenge in the coming years," he adds, "will be to do the same work for fast-growing tumors." SOURCE: Archives of Dermatology December 2006. |