| Top : 2007 : 2007_02_27 |
Study Garlic wont lower cholesterolTue, 27 Feb 2007 01:25:10 GMTBy LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer CHICAGO - Garlic doesn't do much for the breath and it stinks for lowering cholesterol. That's the conclusion of the most rigorous, head-to-head study of raw garlic and popular garlic supplements, despite promoters' claims to the contrary. Whether it was eaten raw in heart-healthy sandwiches, or in pills made of powdered or aged garlic, the strong-smelling herb had no effect on cholesterol in people whose levels were already elevated, the government-funded study found. "If garlic was going to have a chance to work, it would have worked in this study," said researcher Christopher Gardner. But it didn't. Garlic is a longtime folk remedy for a variety of ills, including heart disease, cancer, infections and even mosquito bites. Scientific research on its purported benefits has had conflicting results. Some previous studies suggested garlic might help lower risks for digestive and prostate cancers, or might reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels; others found no benefit. Health benefits have been thought to come from a sulfur-containing substance called allicin that is released when raw garlic is chopped or crushed. In lab tests, it can be applied directly to cells and has been shown to prevent cholesterol production. But any direct benefits to the body from allicin may be diluted when garlic is eaten, said Gardner, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University. Still, Gardner, a garlic lover, was optimistic when he and colleagues began their study. He called the results disappointing but said it's still possible garlic might improve cholesterol when eaten in bigger doses or by people with more severe cholesterol problems. Also, garlic could have characteristics other than influencing cholesterol that might benefit the heart, he said. The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine. An Archives editorial agreed and said "the jury is still out" on whether garlic might prevent cardiovascular disease. The study involved 192 adults aged about 50 on average with moderately elevated levels of LDL cholesterol, the bad kind that contributes to heart disease. The average LDL level was 140 milligrams per deciliter of blood, or in the borderline-high range. Below 100 is considered ideal. Participants were randomly assigned to eat the equivalent of an average clove of garlic in either raw form or garlic pills, or dummy pills, six days weekly for six months. Raw garlic was mixed into salsa, fat-free mayonnaise or other condiments spread on portobello mushroom sandwiches, chicken quesadillas and other specialty sandwiches. Participants in the garlic pill and dummy pill groups also got sandwiches, but without garlic. Bad breath and body odor were reported by more than half the raw garlic eaters, and a handful of people in the supplement groups reported flatulence, but there were no major side effects. There also was virtually no effect on cholesterol levels in any of the groups. Blood samples were taken monthly to detect any changes in cholesterol readings but found none that were statistically significant. Diet and exercise levels also were monitored to detect any changes that could affect cholesterol levels. Robert Borris, a scientist with the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for nutritional supplement makers, said the study doesn't answer whether garlic might help regulate cholesterol levels in healthy people. The results also don't refute scientific evidence suggesting that garlic can reduce the tendency of blood platelets to build up and form clots that could block arteries, Borris said. "I certainly would not give up on garlic," he said. ___ On the Net: Archives: http://www.archinternmed.com Britain may take custody of obese boyTue, 27 Feb 2007 00:33:00 GMTBy COURTNEY FRENCH, Associated Press Writer LONDON - Authorities are considering taking an 8-year-old boy who weighs 218 pounds into protective custody unless his mother improves his diet, officials said Monday. Social service officials will meet with family members Tuesday to discuss the health of Connor McCreaddie, who weighs more than three times the average for his age. "The worst case would be Connor getting taken into care. He is well cared for," the boy's mother, Nicola McKeown, told ITV television. A spokeswoman for health officials in Wallsend, North Tyneside, 300 miles north of London, said the hearing was part of a process that could eventually lead to Connor being taken into protective care. She declined to comment further. The health agencies organizing the meeting said they "have been working with the family over a prolonged period of time and will continue to do so." Officials would not say whether Connor suffered from a medical condition that led to his obesity, citing privacy issues. An unidentified health official was ed as telling The Sunday Times that taking custody of Connor would be a last resort, but said the family had repeatedly failed to attend appointments with nurses, nutritionists and social workers. "Child abuse is not just about hitting your children or sexually abusing them, it is also about neglect," the official was ed as saying. Dr. Colin Waine, the director of the National Obesity Forum in Nottingham, England, called Connor's lifestyle "extremely dangerous," adding he is at risk of developing diabetes in his early teens, and cardiovascular and nervous system problems in his 20s. "He's really at risk of dying by the time he's 30," Waine said. Dr. Michael Markiewicz, a pediatrician, agreed. "I'm not saying they can't care for him, but what they are doing is through the way they are treating him and feeding him, they are slowly killing him," he said. Connor's case attracted national attention after his mother allowed an ITV News crew to film his day-to-day life over the course of a month. Connor's mother said he steals and hides food, frustrating her efforts to help him. He eats double or triple what a normal seven-year-old would have, she said. "If I didn't give him enough at teatime then he would just go on at us all night for snacks and stuff," she told ITV. Connor, who lives with his mother and sister, has difficulty dressing and washing himself, misses school regularly because of poor health, and is targeted by bullies. "People pick on us because of my weight. They call us fat. It makes us feel sick of the nutters always shouting at us," Connor told ITV. Scientists tout new prostate cancer testTue, 27 Feb 2007 00:39:58 GMTPORTLAND, Ore. - Oregon scientists say a simple test can identify men at high risk of life-threatening prostate cancer even after a biopsy finds no signs of it. The key, researchers say, is "PSA density," which compares the size of a man's prostate with his levels of a cancer-related protein called prostate-specific antigen. Men with the highest PSA densities were much more likely to later be diagnosed with aggressive cancers than men with lower scores in an Oregon study, even though both groups had clean prostate biopsies. If it survives scientific review, it could help save the lives of men with serious cancers and avoid repeated biopsies in others. "It's that 1-in-10 men that do have a life-threatening cancer that we wanted to identify," said Dr. Mark Garzotto, an Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researcher, who recently presented the study at a cancer conference in Florida. Prostate cancer will kill about 27,000 U.S. men this year. Doctors usually check for tumors with a prostate biopsy, which uses needles to gather cells from the gland. More than a million U.S. men get prostate biopsies each year. The tests find more than 200,000 tumors, meaning many cancer-free men get unneeded biopsies. Studies estimate that the test fails to find the tumor in 20 percent to 33 percent of men who have one, usually because the needles sample only bits of the gland. "With less than 1 percent of the prostate sampled, we're trying to get the pathologist to tell us if the guy has cancer or not, which is an impossible task," said Garzotto. So doctors recommend second biopsies a few months after a clean test. To narrow the need for repeat tests, Garzotto and co-workers studied 511 patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he works. All the men had clear initial prostate biopsies. But 112 were later found to have cancer, 52 of them aggressive tumors that can be deadly. The scientists found that "PSA density, by itself, was the best discriminator between guys in the high-risk group and the guys in the low-risk group," Garzotto said. By 2 years after their clean biopsy, 23 percent of the men in the high-risk group had aggressive cancer compared with 4 percent of low-risk men, Garzotto said. At four years, the rate was 36 percent in the high-risk group and 9 percent in the other. "I feel more comfortable now about recommending repeat biopsies to this group," he said. Another simple test may identify which men with advanced prostate cancer have the worst outlook, according to a different OHSU study presented at the Florida conference. Dr. Tomasz Beer found that among men with advanced cancer, those with the highest level of C-reactive protein died significantly sooner than men with lower levels. C-reactive protein is a sign of inflammation, which doctors increasingly think is "associated with cancer progression and cancer resistance to treatment," Beer said. He urged more studies. T.J. Koerner, director of research information management for the http://www.oregonlive.com Obese British boy eight could be taken into careMon, 26 Feb 2007 19:52:19 GMTLONDON - A British eight-year-old who weighs some 14 stone could be taken into care by social services Tuesday because of his weight. Connor McCreaddie has an appetite up to three times larger than most children his age and regularly steals chips and curry to satisfy his cravings for junk food. Although he has lost one and a half stone in two months, his local council in Tyneside, northeast England, has called Connor and his mother Nicola McKeown, 35, to a meeting Tuesday. He could be taken into care in a last-ditch bid to overcome his problem eating. His mother says she has consulted a dietician, but to no avail. &;I don't see how they can say we are not doing enough when everyone is rallying around trying to do something for Connor,&; she told ITV television. &;He is well looked after, he always has been. It is just that he has totally demented me wanting fed constantly. It is so hard.&; The boy's grandmother, Barbara Bake, added that her daughter had become depressed because of the situation. &;He takes food out of the fridge the minute you turn your back... we have the moods and the tantrums and the slamming the doors and 'I'm going upstairs and I don't want to speak to anybody',&; she said. &;There are days where she will say in response to Connor's demands: 'Just take another bag of crisps'.&; Doctors have warned that the boy faces an early death unless he loses significant amounts of weight. Tourists indulge in aphrodisiac at Chile song festTue, 27 Feb 2007 05:57:58 GMTSANTIAGO - Tourists visiting Chile's picturesque port town of Valparaiso have cleaned the town out of a herbal aphrodisiac called palwen, an indigenous remedy also known as "Mapuche viagra," according to local media. The Internet news service Alfa Chile said tourists and performers visiting the world famous Vina del Mar song festival at the Pacific beach resort have exhausted supplies of the sexual energizer produced by the ethnic Mapuches. The Mapuches from Chile's south are famous for the fierce resistance they put up against Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. "The Mapuche Viagra increases the desire, the libido and the sexual appetites of men and women," Italo Diaz, a pharmacist at the Mapuche pharmacy Makelawen, told Reuters. "The compound is a Mapuche secret." Enthusiastic tourists have found the price for palwen at 2000 pesos per bottle irresistible and Diaz is trying desperately to restock. Fertility monitor helps boost pregnancy rateMon, 26 Feb 2007 19:29:33 GMTBy David Douglas NEW YORK - If women are trying to conceive, they may have more success when they use the Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor , UK and US researchers report in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility. "One known cause of failure to conceive is the mistiming of intercourse," Dr. Jayne E. Ellis pointed out to Reuters Health. Many couples only poorly understand their fertility cycle, she explained. "In our studies, only one quarter of women knew when their fertile days were." Ellis, who is with the manufacturer of the Clearblue monitor, Unipath, in Bedford, UK, explained that the device utilizes a unique technology that measures two hormones in urine that increase in level in the days before ovulation. This "provides a wider window at which to target intercourse to achieve pregnancy," she and her colleagues explain in their report. To determine how useful the fertility monitor might be, they studied 653 US volunteers who wanted to become pregnant. The participants were randomly assigned to use or not use the device at home over two ovulatory cycles. The pregnancy rate was significantly higher in the monitor group at 22.7 percent than in the comparison group (14.4 percent). Significantly more women who had been trying to conceive for less than 6 months became pregnant than did women who had been trying to conceive for longer. Most users found the device easy and convenient to use. "This study proves for the first time that identifying the fertile days of the cycle with a home test can really help women become pregnant over just two cycles of use," Ellis said. The monitor, she concluded, "is a real step in improving a woman's chances of conception." SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, February 2007. Caffeine may be good for some aging heartsWed, 21 Feb 2007 19:04:55 GMTNEW YORK - Drinking caffeinated beverages on a regular basis may provide significant protection against death from heart disease in the elderly who have normal levels of blood pressure, according to data from a large U.S. health and nutrition study. Drinking caffeinated beverages may induce a "healthy" rise in blood pressure that counteracts the drop in blood pressure that occurs after a meal, a phenomenon that becomes more pronounced as people age, researchers note. Among 6,594 adults participating in the study, 426 died of heart disease during a 9-year period. For subjects 65 years of age or older, the researchers found that greater daily consumption of caffeinated beverages was associated with a lower risk of death from heart disease. This acted in a dose-response fashion - the higher the caffeine level, the lower the risk, and visa versa. People who consumed four or more servings of caffeinated beverages daily had a 53-percent lower risk of death from heart disease compared with those who consumed less than half a serving daily. Subjects who consumed two to four servings per day had a 32-percent lower risk of dying from heart disease. Caffeinated ground coffee and caffeinated instant coffee, both of which have relatively large amounts of caffeine per serving, were the only specific beverages associated with a statistically significant protective effect, the authors note. This apparent protective effect of caffeinated coffee consumption was not seen in people with severe high blood pressure or those who were younger than 65 years of age. Studies on caffeine and heart disease have yielded conflicting results, note principal investigator Dr. James A. Greenberg and colleagues from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. "It is possible that the conflict is due to differences between nonelderly and elderly persons," they point out, noting that one study found that drinking coffee increased the risk in younger subjects and that the level of risk decreased with increasing age. As mentioned, caffeine may protect against heart disease death in the elderly by preventing a decline in blood pressure after meals, a phenomenon that becomes increasing more pronounced with age. If confirmed, the current findings could have important ramifications, the authors conclude, given that coffee is widely consumed and heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the elderly. SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, February 2007. Strong exercise may cut breast cancer riskMon, 26 Feb 2007 21:18:26 GMTCHICAGO - Strenuous exercise -- such as lap swimming, aerobics and running -- appears to cut the risk of some breast cancers in women, a study said on Monday. While it is still not clear how hard or long women need to exercise, the study adds to a growing body of evidence that rigorous activity lowers breast cancer risk. The team at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles said exercise may reduce cancer risk through changes in metabolism and the immune system, and by reducing weight gain. The study, appearing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, involved 110,599 women in California whose health histories were tracked from 1995 onward. Women who said they engaged in strenuous activity for more than five hours a week had a 20 percent lower risk of invasive breast cancer and a 31 percent lower risk of early stage breast cancer, compared to women who participated in less than 30 minutes of such activity every week. Through 2002, a total of 2,649 of the women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and 593 with early-stage forms of the disease. The study is the first to look at the cumulative effect of exercise over time, as opposed to women's reports of whether they had exercised shortly before being diagnosed with breast cancer. "These results provide additional evidence supporting a protective role for long-term strenuous recreational physical activity on risk of invasive and breast cancer, whereas the beneficial effects of moderate activity are less clear," the study concluded. |