Doughnut makers seek healthier recipesMon, 15 Jan 2007 23:45:44 GMTBy CURT WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer When he first started frying up all-natural doughnuts a dozen years ago, Mark Isreal had a tough time getting consumers to bite. After all, who counts calories before grabbing a jelly-filled with their morning cup of joe? "It doesn't matter how delicious it is. Some people are so narrow-minded," said Isreal, owner of the Doughnut Plant in New York. These days, Isreal supplies everyone from upscale grocery stores to "dive coffee shops" around the city. He's also got a licensing deal for nine Doughnut Plant stores in Tokyo, where he sells to Starbucks. And doughnut lovers across the country could soon join him in reaching for a less unhealthy treat — even if they're not trying — as regulators and retailers pressure food companies to drop artery-clogging trans fats. Rather than worrying the shift will gobble up their market niche, some natural doughnut makers say they're happy to see the food industry abandoning ingredients that gave the industrialized doughnut a bad rap. "It's nice to have been ahead of the curve," said Ryan Kellner, owner of the all-organic Mighty-O Donuts in Seattle. "But I think it's great for society in general that we're moving towards an alternative." "Doughnuts have kind of gone through a renaissance," Isreal said. Artificial trans fats, also listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, are under attack from health advocates. Evidence suggests they boost "bad" cholesterol and lower "good" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. Health regulators have taken notice. Last month, New York became the first city in the country to ban all restaurants from using artificial trans fats by mid-2008; similar measures are being discussed from Little Rock, Ark., to Los Angeles. In Franklin County, Ohio, officials even suspended an annual contract to supply the county jail with doughnuts, citing concerns about trans fats. Some food sellers stopped using trans fats voluntarily after the http://www.mightyo.com Krispy Kreme: http://www.krispykreme.com Dunkin' Donuts: http://www.dunkindonuts.com FDA on trans fats: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/dms/qatrans2.html Tests may help end bubble boy diseaseMon, 15 Jan 2007 23:45:44 GMTBy LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON - Doctors were stumped. Tests for meningitis, cancer, a list of other diseases all were negative — yet just days after a sudden high fever sent 8-week-old Anthony James Mingione to the hospital, he died. An autopsy uncovered the lethal secret: Anthony was born without a working immune system. A rare genetic disorder known as the "bubble boy disease" rendered him vulnerable to the most minor of germs. Now Wisconsin is about to begin the nation's first experiment at testing newborns for this killer, officially named SCID, in hopes of giving babies like Anthony a chance at lifesaving treatment — even as scientists ask how many infant deaths attributed to infections really might be due to the immune destroyer. "These people look like the Gerber baby until they get sick," says Dr. Rebecca Buckley, a SCID specialist at Duke University and longtime advocate for newborn screening. "I am more concerned than ever that a lot of these babies never make it to the pediatrician, much less an immunologist." Between 40 and 100 U.S. babies are estimated to be diagnosed each year with SCID, or "severe combined immunodeficiency disease." The best-known victim was Houston's famous "bubble boy" who lived in a germ-proof enclosure until his death at age 12 in 1984. But no one knows how often SCID is missed. In a few dozen more cases? Another 100? "We think there's a lot more out there and that the infants just die," says Dr. Jack Routes, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He is heading the newborn-screening experiment, with funding from a parents' advocacy group, the Jeffrey Modell Foundation, that may help answer that question. Catching the disease before a baby gets sick means a far better chance that treatment is successful, explains Dr. Jennifer Puck of the University of California, San Francisco. Puck developed the first screening test that promises early diagnosis. This winter, Wisconsin's state laboratory begins the first phase of its pilot project, practicing with Puck's test on anonymous newborn blood samples. If no problems crop up, later this year Routes and colleagues will begin a study that attempts to screen all Wisconsin newborns for SCID — to see how accurate it really is, and track what happens to those diagnosed. "I know this will change the course of SCID," says Anthony's mother, Tara Mingione of Long Island, N.Y., who has pushed for screening since his death two years ago. "Anthony had absolutely no chance to live unless he was tested at birth." Today, all U.S. newborns are tested for a variety of rare but devastating genetic diseases — using a single spot of blood from the baby's heel a day after birth — to catch the few thousand who need fast treatment to avoid serious problems. Not yet on that list: SCID and other "primary immunodeficiency" diseases, meaning children are born with faulty immune-system genes. There are different SCID subtypes, but the end result is that babies can't produce important disease-fighting cells called T cells. Without treatment, they usually die before their first birthday. Bone marrow transplants can provide them with stem cells that take root and begin producing T cells after all, curing some children and greatly extending the lives of others. But Duke's Buckley calls age key: She reports 95 percent survival in SCID babies transplanted before they're 3 months old — almost always those born to women who know SCID has struck a relative, and thus seek at-birth testing. After that age, survival plummets because the babies are so sick going into surgery. Moreover, total costs for transplanting a baby shortly after birth are about $100,000, Buckley says, compared with bills that can reach $1 million after they get sick. When doctors suspect a baby has SCID, they can check a vial of his or her blood to see if T cells are present. But routine screening — checking those dried blood spots — requires a whole different approach. Puck had to create a kind of DNA test to detect bits of genetic material that signal T cells' maturation, and thus should be visible only in healthy babies. It's not perfect, cautions Robert Vogt, a research chemist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it seems accurate enough to study in thousands of babies, scientists concluded at a November meeting sponsored by http://www.jmfworld.com NIH: http://www.genome.gov/13014325 Cause of amnesia halts future thinkingMon, 15 Jan 2007 23:45:44 GMTBy RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer WASHINGTON - "The future is now," football coach George Allen once proclaimed. He didn't know it, but that seems to be quite literally true for people with amnesia. It turns out that a common cause of amnesia also prevents its victims from imagining the future, forcing them to live only in the present, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the http://www.pnas.org Worlds 1st testtube baby gives birthMon, 15 Jan 2007 23:45:16 GMTLONDON - Louise Brown, who was the world's first "test-tube" baby, has given birth to her first child. Cameron John Mullinder was born Dec. 21 in the western English city of Bristol, reports said. "He's tiny, just under 6 pounds, but he's perfect," the Mail on Sunday newspaper quoted her as saying. The baby was naturally conceived. The 28-year-old married Wesley Mullinder, 37, three years ago. Her sister, Natalie, who also was conceived through in-vitro fertilization, in 1999 became the first "test-tube" baby to give birth. |
