Family Halloween Safety Can Be Fiendishly Simple

(HealthDay News) -- With Halloween right around the corner, many parents are wondering how they can help keep their kids safe.

According to Meridith Sonnett, director of pediatric emergency services at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, taking a few precautions can help make Halloween a happy and safe occasion for everyone.

She particularly recommends limiting trick-or-treating to familiar neighborhoods and neighbors.

Here are more tips parents should keep in mind for Halloween:

• Accompany your children when they go trick-or-treating.
• Examine all candy before letting your children eat it
• Have your children discard any unwrapped foods.
• Make sure your children's costumes are non-flammable and short enough so that they don't trip.
• Make sure the eye holes in masks are the right size and in the right place for clear vision.
• If your children are old enough to trick-or-treat without a parent, have them go in groups.
• At night, make sure your children wear costumes that are bright in color, or have them wear reflectors.
• If the streets are dark, have your children take a flashlight.
• Accompany your children in apartment buildings.
• Have your children use proper street-crossing safety.
• Do not allow your children to enter a stranger's home; have them ask for treats and wait outside the door.

More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more about Halloween safety.

3 Nice Things I’m Going to Do for My Boobs Today

By Anne Krueger

1. I’m going to join the army. The Army of Women, that is. It’s a partnership between Avon and the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, designed to help women and scientists unite to find ways to prevent and cure breast cancer.

“Over and over I’ve heard scientists lament how difficult it is for them to find the volunteers they need for research studies. By responding to this need, the Army of Women will change the face of breast cancer research,” says founder Susan Love, MD.

I love this idea because it gives me a chance to help beyond just sending in a tax-deductible donation. I’ll fill out a questionnaire, and if the Army needs me to be part of a study on healthy women, they’ll let me know. I may be called upon to contribute a blood or urine sample, or fill out a survey. My volunteering will help researchers learn more about how cancer starts and how to prevent it. Read More

Purple Tomato Extended Lives of Cancer-Prone Mice

(HealthDay News) -- Tomatoes genetically modified to be rich in antioxidants called anthocyanins appeared to extend the life spans of cancer-prone mice, a European study finds.

The modified tomatoes were created by adding two genes (Delila and Rosea1) from the snapdragon flower. The anthocyanins, which belong to the flavonoid class of antioxidants, gave the tomatoes a peculiar purple color.

"The two genes we have isolated are responsible for flower pigmentation and, when introduced in other plants, turned out to be the perfect combination to produce anthocyanins, the same phytochemical found in blueberries," study author Eugenio Butelli, of the FLORA project, said in a news release.

Chemical tests revealed that the "purple tomato has a very high antioxidant activity, almost tripled in comparison to the natural fruit," making it very useful to study the effect of anthocyanins, Butelli said.

The researchers fed a powder obtained from the purple tomatoes to mice that lacked the p53 gene, which helps protect against cancer. These mice had an average life span of 182 days compared to 142 days for p53-deficient mice fed a standard diet.

The findings were published in the Oct. 26 issue of Nature Biotechnology.

The study authors emphasized this is a preliminary study, and much more research needs to be done before there's any possibility of human trials.

More information
The American Dietetic Association has more about antioxidants.

Depression During Pregnancy May Cause Premature Birth

(HealthDay News) -- Women who are depressed early in their pregnancy run a higher risk of preterm delivery, the leading cause of infant mortality, a new study suggests.

For the study, researchers interviewed 791 San Francisco-area women near their 10th week of pregnancy. Forty-one percent reported "significant" symptoms of depression, and 22 percent reported "severe" symptoms.

Those women with severe symptoms had almost twice the risk of an early birth, defined as before 37 weeks' gestation. Those with significant symptoms had a 60 percent risk of early birth, the study found.

Women who were likelier to report depressive symptoms tended to be younger than 25, unmarried, less educated, poorer, black, and have a history of preterm delivery.

Discovering a possible cause of preterm birth, about which little is known, makes the findings significant, said study lead author Dr. De-Kun Li, a perinatal epidemiologist and senior research scientist at Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.

Scientists have been researching for the causes of high rates of infant mortality in the United States, Li said, but, "we don't know what is going on. If we can find something as obvious as depression that can be treated during pregnancy, that is very, very significant."

The findings were published online Oct. 23 in the journal Human Reproduction.

Dr. Shari I. Lusskin, director of reproductive psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, said she doesn't think the study establishes a link between depression in early pregnancy and preterm delivery. She said the women in the study weren't clinically diagnosed with depression but had scored high on a screening test.

"We don't know if the depression at 10 weeks is a marker for something that happens later in pregnancy, which is the real culprit," she said.

Li hopes the study's findings will make "ante-natal depression" as widely recognized as postpartum depression has become. Until now, depression during pregnancy has been "under-estimated and under-treated," he said, "not just by women, but also by their doctors."

One reason for this lack of attention is that there hasn't been strong evidence of a connection between depression in pregnant women and harm to the fetus, Li said.

Women may not readily report depressed feelings when they are pregnant because of the societal expectation that having a baby should be a joyous occasion, said Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

"I think many patients are very stressed about pregnancy and worried about the pregnancy and not sure about its impact on their lives," Wu said.

Lusskin tries to spread the word about the dangers of depression during pregnancy.

"The more we know about postpartum depression, the more we realize that half the cases started in pregnancy," Lusskin said. Ante-natal depression also carries the risk of noncompliance with prenatal care, poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, self-medication with drugs and alcohol, and suicide, she explained.

And, Lusskin added, "Ante-natal depression interferes with bonding with the baby both during pregnancy and post-partum."

The take-home lesson from the Kaiser study, Lusskin said, "is that ante-natal depression and ante-natal depression symptoms have some effect on pregnancy, and they should be treated, even though we don't know how that mood is translated into the biochemistry of that pregnancy."

She added that she is "a proponent of maintaining a good mood throughout pregnancy and breast-feeding, and doing what you have to do to do that. If a patient requires medication, she should do that. Then, it's a matter of finding the drugs that are best studied and most effective for the patient."

More information
To learn more about pregnancy and depression, visit the American Pregnancy Association.

Colon Cancer Drug Won't Help Those With Certain Gene Mutation

(HealthDay News) -- A new study suggests that people with advanced colon cancer who have a particular gene mutation won't benefit from the medication cetuximab (Erbitux).

While the drug can add months to the lives of people without a mutation in a gene called K-ras, those who have the mutation won't see any benefit from this additional therapy, reports the study, which is published in the Oct. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"We believe that, in the context of pre-treated advanced bowel cancer, the K-ras mutation status of the cancer should be determined before using cetuximab, and cetuximab should only be given to patients with tumors that do not have the mutation," said study author Dr. Christos S. Karapetis, a senior consultant medical oncologist and director of clinical research in the department of medical oncology at Flinders Medical Centre in Australia.

Karapetis said that about four in 10 people with colon cancer have the K-ras mutation.

Erbitux works by interrupting cell growth and division. It does this by binding to a receptor known as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). A mutation in the K-ras gene is believed to interfere with cetuximab's ability to disrupt EGFR, according to the study.

For the study, 572 people with advanced colorectal cancer were randomly assigned to receive either weekly treatment with cetuximab and supportive care (287 people) or supportive care alone (285 people). All had undergone other treatment options without success.

Almost 400 tumor specimens from the study volunteers were tested for K-ras mutations (198 from the cetuximab group and 196 from the supportive care group). Just over 42 percent of the tumors evaluated were found to have mutations in the K-ras gene.

Even with cetuximab treatment, people with K-ras mutations had no significant changes in overall survival or in progression-free survival. Those without the mutations, on the other hand, appeared to benefit significantly from the therapy.

People with no K-ras mutations who were treated with cetuximab had nearly twice the overall survival rate compared to the supportive care group -- 9.5 months versus 4.8 months. And, the time of progression-free survival was also nearly doubled for those treated with cetuximab -- 3.7 months versus 1.9 months in the supportive care group.

"Patients with a colorectal tumor bearing mutated K-ras did not benefit from cetuximab," the researchers concluded.

"This study suggests that if someone has this particular mutation, they won't respond to this drug," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. "The bottom line is that this study is important and really has the potential to impact how we treat patients with colorectal cancer with this very expensive drug."

He added that other researchers have noted similar results for K-ras mutations in earlier-stage colorectal cancer.

"This is one more refinement on personalized medicine, and we're moving into an age of molecular markers that eventually will guide treatment. If someone has a cancer in the future, that cancer will be analyzed for what kind of cancer it is, and then we'll know what the best treatments are for that cancer," Lichtenfeld said.

Another important molecular marker that guides treatment is already in use for breast cancer treatment, according to Lichtenfeld. Breast cancers are tested for a type of receptor called HER2. Those with this molecular marker are likely to have a more aggressive type cancer, but also a type of cancer that responds to treatment with the drug trastuzumab (Herceptin), he said.

"I'm excited about the future, and this study shows we can be more targeted with our targeted therapies," said Lichtenfeld.

More information
To learn more about colon cancer treatment options, visit the National Cancer Institute.

Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Will Wreck Your Muscles

Cholesterol-lowering “statin” drugs often come with side effects. The most frequently reported consequence is fatigue, and about 9 percent of patients report statin-related pain.

The results of a new study show that statins at higher doses may also affect the ability of the skeletal muscles -- which allow your body to move -- to repair and regenerate themselves.

The study examined the proliferative capacity of human satellite cells when exposed to the statin simvastatin. They found that higher end concentrations of the drug led to reduced proliferation, which would likely negatively affect the muscle's ability to heal and repair itself.

Sources:
Eurekalert September 25, 2008

Health Tip: Choose Meats Wisely

(HealthDay News) -- Love to eat meat? As with any food group, there are good choices and bad.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture offers these suggestions on which meats to choose, and how:

• Select for low-fat meats and chicken, and avoid eating high-fat ground beef or chicken with the skin.


• Don't forget to count the fat and calories in cooking additives. For example, if you cook chicken in shortening, add the extra calories to your count.


• Include fish in your diet, especially those high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, trout and herring.


• Avoid organ meats such as liver, which are high in cholesterol.


• Also avoid processed meats such as hot dogs, ham, sausage and lunch meats, which can be very high in sodium and other additives.

Nation's Teachers Battle Sleep Problems

(HealthDay News) -- That snoring in the classroom may be from the teacher, not the students, a new study suggests.

Nearly a fourth of U.S. teachers say they are so sleep-deprived that their teaching skills are significantly impacted, according to a survey of teachers, administrators and support staff conducted by Ball State University researchers.

"Sleepy teachers are at a higher risk of providing insufficient supervision and inferior classroom instruction," researcher Denise Amschler, a Ball State health science professor, said in a university news release. "They also report more mood swings, and are at a higher risk of serious personal health problems."

The study found that about 43 percent slept an average of six hours or less each night, and 64 percent said they felt drowsy during the school day. Only a third of all school personnel said they got a good night's sleep most of the time.

The study also found female respondents tended to have sleep disturbances, drowsiness and sleep problems more often.

Long work days caused not only by grading papers and preparing assignments may be the cause. Nearly 45 percent of respondents also worked part-time jobs.

"Many teachers are forced to coach, farm, run a family business, or work a second job just to pay the bills," Amschler said. "When you factor in the responsibilities of raising a family, it is easy to see why teachers sleep so little. There is very little time."

Amschler said the study shows that more assistance is needed to reduce teacher stress and workloads through a variety of programs, including the new federally mandated wellness policies for schools.

More information
The University of Maryland has more about getting a good night's sleep.

Autumn Sees More Women With Bunion Problems

(HealthDay News) -- With the transition from summer to fall, doctors note an increase in bunions among their female patients, according to the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons.

Experts say this may have to do with the transition from open-toed shoes and sandals to winter footwear.

In the summer, "like everybody else, I like to wear flip-flop sandals, open-toed shoes, a nice pedicure with good nail polish," Elaine Power, a 49-year-old South Carolina hospice nurse who has bunions, said in an ACFAS news release.

But, when fall arrives, Powers and many others begin wearing closed-in shoe styles, which can be painful.

"Even after you take your shoes off, or put your feet up, it's just a throbbing. It's almost like every time your heart beats, the bunion throbs," Powers said.

In addition to changes in footwear, Dr. Karl Collins, a foot and ankle surgeon in St. Louis, said there may be two other reasons for the annual trend of more women with bunion problems.

First, women are closer to meeting their insurance deductibles at the end of the year. Second, people are more active in the summer and may be waiting until fall to address their foot problems.

"People are very active in the summer," Collins said in the news release. "They're always outdoors, they're always at the pool or whatever, so they will decide to get their bunion fixed in the winter, because in their mind, they're not missing anything fun."

Many people with bunions do not experience any pain. But for those who do, shoe changes, foam- or gel-filled shoe padding, orthotics, anti-inflammatory medications, and injections for bursitis, nerve irritation, or joint irritation may be prescribed to address the pain.

As for shoe changes, avoiding high heels and styles that crowd the toes together can help. Also, shoes can be adjusted to better fit the foot.

"If they have a shoe that fits well everywhere else, but there's just a little bit of irritation in one spot, we may recommend that they have the shoe modified" by a shoe repair shop, Collins said.

While shoe adjustment and other techniques may be able to help relieve pain, only surgery can truly correct a bunion, according to the college news release.

More information
The American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons has more about bunions.

Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law May Overlook Depressed Patients

(HealthDay News) -- Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law may not adequately protect the one in four terminally ill patients with clinical depression , a new study says.

The Death with Dignity Act was passed by the state in 1997, and there's been intense debate about the extent to which potentially treatable psychiatric disorders may influence a patient's decision to hasten death, according to a news release about the study, published online Oct. 8 by the British Medical Journal.

The act does contain several safeguards to ensure patients are competent to make the decision to end their life, including referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist, if there's concern that a mental illness may be impairing a patient's judgment. However, depression is often overlooked in mentally ill patients.

In 2007, none of the 46 people in Oregon who used physician-assisted suicide were evaluated by a psychologist or psychiatrist, the news release said.

For the new study, researchers at Oregon Health and Sciences University checked for depression or anxiety in 58 terminally ill patients who'd requested physician-assisted suicide or had contacted an assisted death organization. Fifteen of the patients met the criteria for depression and 13 for anxiety.

By the end of the study, 42 patients had died. Of those, 18 received a prescription for a lethal medication, and nine died by lethal ingestion. Of those who received a prescription for a lethal medication, three met the criteria for depression. All three died by lethal ingestion within two months of being assessed by researchers.

While most patients who request physician-assisted suicide do not have a depressive disorder, the study authors suggested that "the current practice of Death with Dignity Act may not adequately protect all mentally ill patients." The authors called for "increased vigilance and systematic examination for depression among patients who may access legalized aid in dying."

While it's important to protect vulnerable patients, it can be difficult to determine if depression is impairing the judgment of terminally ill patients, Dr. Marije van der Lee, of the Helen Dowling Institute in the Netherlands, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

Depression doesn't necessarily impair judgment, van der Lee said. "We should focus on trying to 'protect' patients from becoming depressed in the first place, rather than focus on protecting patients from assisted suicide," she wrote.

More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has information about end-of-life issues.

Obesity, Insulin Level Impact Prostate Cancer Survival

(HealthDay News) -- Men who are overweight and who have high insulin levels when they are diagnosed with prostate cancer may be more likely to die from the disease, research shows.

This striking finding, published early online and expected to be in the November issue of The Lancet Oncology, is yet more reason to continue fighting the battle of the bulge, experts say.

"I don't want to be sensationalist, but obesity effects and the insulin effects are so big that I think if you had to choose between being thin and having a low insulin level or having access to the best chemotherapy, you would be more likely to survive without chemotherapy," said study senior author Dr. Michael Pollak, professor of oncology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

"Tens of thousands of men are taking chemotherapy for prostate cancer -- as they should, because it is a good treatment. Doing so is actually helping," he said. "But potentially, dealing with insulin, obesity may one day be of more benefit."

The findings also have scientific import, giving researchers a clue that could lead to new prevention and treatment strategies.

Experts have long known that androgens, or male hormones, play a critical role in spurring prostate cancer.

In fact, these cancers are often treated with approaches that deprive the tumors of testosterone.

Smaller reports have suggested that obese patients with prostate cancer have a worse prognosis than patients of regular weight, though weight hasn't been related to actually developing a malignancy.

"We found in a large sample that obesity has a very important influence on prostate cancer outcome," Pollak said. "Then the question becomes, why would obesity make the outcome worse?"

Pollak and his colleagues looked at information on more than 2,500 men who had been followed for 24 years as part of the Physicians' Health Study. Information on body mass index (BMI) was available for all of these men, while information on C-peptide concentration (a marker of insulin levels in the blood) was available for 827 men.

Overweight men (those with a BMI of 25 to 29) had a 47 percent higher risk of dying from prostate cancer, while obese men (BMI of 30 or over) were more than two-and-a-half times more likely to die of the disease, compared with men of healthy weight (BMI under 25).

Men with the highest C-peptide concentrations also had more than double the risk of dying from their cancer compared with men with the lowest levels, the study found.

Finally, men who had a BMI of more than 25 and high C-peptide concentrations had quadruple the risk of dying from their cancer compared with men who had lower BMIs and lower C-peptide levels, the researchers reported.

"This suggests that there may be a whole new story to tell, whereby not just androgens have something to do with cancer behavior, but also insulin," Pollak said.

The insulin hormone may be latching onto insulin receptors located on prostate cancer cells, he speculated.

Some pharmaceutical companies are already testing drug candidates that target insulin signaling, Pollak added.

And the findings could have broader implications for other cancers, said study lead author Dr. Jing Ma, of Harvard University's Channing Laboratory.

"The simple things are still the important things. Don't drink, don't smoke, exercise, and eat well," said Dr. Ganesh Palapattu, assistant professor of urology, pathology and oncology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. "This is yet another piece of evidence suggesting that obesity is not a good thing for many reasons."

"Obesity is the second leading cause of cancer death in this country next to tobacco," emphasized Dr. Jay Brooks, chief of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. "Two years ago, I would never have told my patients that obesity is increasing their risk of death from cancer. Today, I do."

More information
There's more on prostate cancer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Fixing Fibromyalgia

Learn how in recent clinical trials, intravenous micronutrient therapy (IVMT) has provided pain relief for patients with fibromyalgia.

Don’t Get Slimed: The Slippery Web Promotion of an Anti-Aging “Breakthrough”

By Scott Mowbray

The weird case of Caracol Cream offers a glimpse into the sometimes slimy but lucrative world of anti-aging product hype, in which an $80 cream is promoted vigorously by an allegedly scam-busting association that probably doesn’t exist based on tests in a laboratory that also probably doesn’t exist.

Who knew that the goo from Helix aspersa, your garden-variety brown snail, is rich in skin-nourishing compounds? (It was a brave woman who first daubed snail on her skin.) But yes: Caracol Cream is also known as crema de baba de caracol, which translates—on some websites—as cream of snail slobber. The extract hails from Chile where, according to one account, a farmer who couldn’t sell the snails for food decided to sell their slime instead. Read More

Link Between Vaccine and MS Unproven

(HealthDay News) -- Children vaccinated against hepatitis B probably are not at an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) unless they were inoculated with a particular brand of the vaccine, according to a new study.

The French study found that children with MS were almost twice as likely to have received the vaccine called Engerix B three or more years before the disease's onset. Further studies will need to be done to determine whether the vaccine is a direct cause of the development of MS.

The study, which involved 349 children with MS and 2,941 children without the disease, is to be published in the Oct. 8 online issue of Neurology.

More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about vaccinations.