In 409 middle-aged women going through menopause, depressive symptoms tracked with visceral fat measured by CT scan. Rush University's Lynda Powell suggests belly fat is a pathway from depression to heart disease and diabetes, but says the exact mechanism needs more research.
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Health News
Drugs, disease, healthcare, government and lifestyle: health news beyond the plate.
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Lifestyle
Craigslist killer shows risk of erotic service lifestyle
The Philip Markoff case prompts a look at how sex work moved from strip bars to phone lines to the web. Each shift changed the risks rather than removing them, the writer argues, since the same pimps, con men and opportunists followed the women online.
Healthcare
Experts back away from annual PSA test
New American Urological Association guidelines offer PSA testing to well-informed men aged 40 and older with a 10-year life expectancy, drop the fixed blood-level cutoff and weigh family history. False or inconsistent results can lead to surgery risking impotence and incontinence.
Lifestyle
Recession gardens take root
The National Gardening Association projects 45 million of 111 million US households will grow some of their own food this year, up 19 percent. It says the average garden yields 300 pounds of produce worth about $600, and organic gardeners rose from 5 million in 2004 to 12 million in 2008.
Drug
FDA Okays emergency use of flu medicines, test in response to swine flu outbreak in humans
At the CDC's request, the FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations covering certain Relenza and Tamiflu antiviral products and the rRT-PCR Swine Flu Panel test. They allow Tamiflu in children under 1 and end when the emergency declaration is terminated or the authorization revoked.
Healthcare
Thyroid cancer linked to radiation exposure, more studies confirm
Toronto researchers examined 125 thyroid surgery patients, all exposed to radiation at least three years before diagnosis, and found more aggressive disease than in unexposed patients. More than half had been exposed through other medical procedures.
Disease
Swine influenza: What you need to know
A CDC question-and-answer sheet from April 2009: swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses, 11 human cases had been reported in California, Texas and Kansas, and CDC had determined the virus was spreading from person to person.
Disease
Inflammation may raise diabetes risk
Research in Cell Metabolism reports that a chemokine called CXL5, sharply elevated in the bloodstreams of obese people, is key to insulin resistance in mice. Treating affected mice with neutralizing antibodies or receptor-blocking drugs reversed the resistance.
Healthcare
Medical procedures may expose infants to BPA
Researchers reanalysed urine from 54 premature infants in neonatal intensive care to measure BPA, triclosan, methyl and propyl paraben and benzophenone-3. In earlier work on the same samples, DEHP metabolite levels tracked the variety, invasiveness and duration of each infant's procedures.
Miscellaneous
What's behind the epidemic of family-acide?
A Chicago columnist counts recent family killings — D'Andre Howard in Hoffman Estates, Christopher Alan Wood in Middletown, Kerby Revelus in Milton, James Harrison in Orting, all in one month — and questions the press's quick attribution of them to economic stress.
Lifestyle
Laughter really is the best medicine
Dr. Lee Berk followed 20 people with diabetes who were on medication; half also watched 30 minutes of comedy a day. After two months that group had lower stress hormones, and by four months lower compounds tied to hardening arteries and higher good cholesterol.
Drug
Epilepsy drug when taken in pregnancy lowers baby's IQ
In the NEAD study of 309 children, those exposed in the womb to valproate averaged an IQ of 92 at age 3, against 101, 99 and 98 for lamotrigine, phenytoin and carbamazepine. Higher maternal doses meant lower scores.
Miscellaneous
Does your child have Schizophrenia? The pharmaceutical industry hopes so
An opinion piece arguing drug makers keep manufacturing new markets as old ones collapse — menopause, then thinning bones, then fibromyalgia and depression — after hormone replacement and bisphosphonates turned out to cause some of the harms they promised to prevent.
Miscellaneous
Is the pharmaceutical industry harming our soldiers?
The piece ties Iraq-war suicides to psychiatric drugs: 80 percent of troops with PTSD receive SSRIs or SNRIs that carry suicide warnings, and published reports count 660 suicides on those drugs since 1988. The VA still recommends SSRIs as first-line PTSD treatment.
Healthcare
Medical errors common in hospitals
A HealthGrades study of Medicare patients at 5,000 hospitals counted more than 900,000 patient safety events from 2005 to 2007 — one every 1.7 minutes — and 97,755 in-hospital deaths among affected patients, plus $6.9 billion in wasted cost. Seven of 15 indicators worsened.
Drug
Benefits of mammograms overestimated
Brothers James and John Keen report in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making that only about 5 percent of mammograms save lives, against the American Cancer Society's 15 percent, and that 2,970 women must be screened over 15 years to save one life.
Drug
Early screening for ovarian cancer appears ineffective
A University of Alabama at Birmingham study questions CA-125 blood tests paired with ultrasound for early detection: the combination caught 70 percent of cancers only in late stages, and about 1.6 percent of positive results were true positives, driving unnecessary surgery.
Environment
Challenges to Assessing Cancer Effects of Mobile Phone Use
A review of 33 peer-reviewed epidemiologic studies argues that design problems may understate brain tumor risk among mobile phone users. It weighs recall bias about which ear people use and notes the Interphone study counted cordless phone users, who get similar exposure, as unexposed.
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