Military suicides linked to low Omega-3 levels
August 24, 2011
By Melissa Healy
The Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots blog
In a finding suggesting powerful psychiatric benefits for a component of fish oil, a study published Wednesday has linked military suicides to low levels of docosahexaenoic acid and found that service personnel with higher levels of DHA in their blood were less likely to take their own lives.
The study, published this week in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, looked back at the medical records of 800 U.S. servicemen and women who took their own lives between 2002 and 2008, and compared them with the records of 800 service personnel -- matched for age, gender and rank -- who had no history of suicide attempts.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Osteoporosis drugs may stave off cancer
Bone drug tied to lower colon cancer risk
By Frederik Joelving
Aug 22, 2011
Reuters
A new study adds to evidence that bone drugs may play a role in suppressing cancer development, although there is still no proof that taking the medications would stave off malignancies.
The drugs, called bisphosphonates, have generated both good and bad headlines recently. Some work has linked them to fewer cases of cancer, while other research has found an increased risk of certain thigh fractures and serious jaw problems among women who take the drugs to treat the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis.
Bone drugs on the market include Merck's Fosamax, Roche's Boniva, Novartis's Reclast and Warner Chilcott's Actonel.
In the new study, researchers found that women on Actonel were only half as likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer as those who'd gotten just one prescription for the drug or none at all.
"At this point, I think people who are already taking the drug can be reassured," Dr. Harminder Singh, who worked on the study, told Reuters Health.
But he added that it's too soon to think about taking Actonel to prevent cancer.
"For people to start taking it, there are a few other things that need to be worked out -- the cost and the side effects," said Singh, of the University of Manitoba in Canada.
According to the American Cancer Society, one in 19 men develops colorectal cancer at some point, and slightly fewer women do. The disease is the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S.
An Israeli study published earlier this year found a link between bisphosphonates and a lower risk of colon cancer among women, but it wasn't clear how to explain that result. It could be that the drugs have protective effects, or it could be that women taking them are healthier overall.
In contrast to the Israeli work, Singh's study, which is published in the journal Cancer, takes into account how often people see their doctors -- one factor that might muddy any differences found between those who take bone drugs and those who don't.
The research team tapped into data from a cancer registry in Manitoba, comparing colon cancer patients to people without the disease, but of the same age and sex.
About 1.1 percent (264) of the nearly 25,000 women in the comparison group had been given Actonel by their doctor, while only 0.6 percent (15) of 2,493 women with colon cancer had gotten the drug.
One way to interpret those findings is to chalk the difference up to a protective effect of Actonel. Indeed, women on that medication had 45 percent lower odds of having colon cancer than those who didn't take it.
But with a study design where you only observe patients, you can't ever be certain why some fare better than others, Singh cautioned.
"The ultimate proof of these agents would be a randomized controlled trial," he explained.
What's more, the researchers didn't have enough data to see if the findings would hold up for men, and they didn't find any reliable effects for the other bone drugs.
Even if Actonel did afford some protection against tumors, it's not cheap and its long-term side effects are not well known. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing evidence suggesting bone drugs might raise the risk of esophageal cancer.
A month's supply of Actonel generally costs over $100.
So far, quitting smoking is one of the only things that experts agree will lower the risk of cancer. For colon cancer in particular, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federally supported expert panel, advises screening all people between 50 and 75 using stool tests, sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy.
By Frederik Joelving
Aug 22, 2011
Reuters
A new study adds to evidence that bone drugs may play a role in suppressing cancer development, although there is still no proof that taking the medications would stave off malignancies.
The drugs, called bisphosphonates, have generated both good and bad headlines recently. Some work has linked them to fewer cases of cancer, while other research has found an increased risk of certain thigh fractures and serious jaw problems among women who take the drugs to treat the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis.
Bone drugs on the market include Merck's Fosamax, Roche's Boniva, Novartis's Reclast and Warner Chilcott's Actonel.
In the new study, researchers found that women on Actonel were only half as likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer as those who'd gotten just one prescription for the drug or none at all.
"At this point, I think people who are already taking the drug can be reassured," Dr. Harminder Singh, who worked on the study, told Reuters Health.
But he added that it's too soon to think about taking Actonel to prevent cancer.
"For people to start taking it, there are a few other things that need to be worked out -- the cost and the side effects," said Singh, of the University of Manitoba in Canada.
According to the American Cancer Society, one in 19 men develops colorectal cancer at some point, and slightly fewer women do. The disease is the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S.
An Israeli study published earlier this year found a link between bisphosphonates and a lower risk of colon cancer among women, but it wasn't clear how to explain that result. It could be that the drugs have protective effects, or it could be that women taking them are healthier overall.
In contrast to the Israeli work, Singh's study, which is published in the journal Cancer, takes into account how often people see their doctors -- one factor that might muddy any differences found between those who take bone drugs and those who don't.
The research team tapped into data from a cancer registry in Manitoba, comparing colon cancer patients to people without the disease, but of the same age and sex.
About 1.1 percent (264) of the nearly 25,000 women in the comparison group had been given Actonel by their doctor, while only 0.6 percent (15) of 2,493 women with colon cancer had gotten the drug.
One way to interpret those findings is to chalk the difference up to a protective effect of Actonel. Indeed, women on that medication had 45 percent lower odds of having colon cancer than those who didn't take it.
But with a study design where you only observe patients, you can't ever be certain why some fare better than others, Singh cautioned.
"The ultimate proof of these agents would be a randomized controlled trial," he explained.
What's more, the researchers didn't have enough data to see if the findings would hold up for men, and they didn't find any reliable effects for the other bone drugs.
Even if Actonel did afford some protection against tumors, it's not cheap and its long-term side effects are not well known. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing evidence suggesting bone drugs might raise the risk of esophageal cancer.
A month's supply of Actonel generally costs over $100.
So far, quitting smoking is one of the only things that experts agree will lower the risk of cancer. For colon cancer in particular, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federally supported expert panel, advises screening all people between 50 and 75 using stool tests, sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Can vitamins help boost your memory?
Can vitamins help boost your memory?
By Genevra Pittman
Jul 28, 2011
(Reuters Health)
Adults who took vitamin and mineral supplements for almost a decade performed better on one type of memory test than those who didn't take the supplements, according to a new study from France.
The researchers say the findings suggest that getting enough nutrients could aid thinking and memory skills as people get older. But further studies are needed to confirm the results, they add.
The effect was "nothing wild that you'd say, 'Everybody should take these,'" said Geraldine McNeill, a nutritionist at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.
But McNeill, who wasn't involved in the new study, said some people -- especially those who are deficient in vitamins and minerals -- might get a memory benefit from boosting the nutrients in their diet.
Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot of the University of Paris XIII in France and colleagues write that the link between a higher intake of some nutrients and thinking and memory skills has been shown before in so-called observational studies. But those studies can't get at a cause-and-effect relationship.
"The question is, does the cognitive performance depend on the diet, or does the diet depend on the cognitive performance?" McNeill told Reuters Health. It's possible that people who have better thinking and memory skills might pay closer attention to what they're eating, she explained.
To try to get a clearer picture of the association, Kesse-Guyot and her colleagues conducted a study of close to 4,500 French men and women.
In 1994, when the study participants were 45 to 60 years old, researchers split them randomly into two groups. Half of them took a daily supplement that included vitamins C and E, selenium, zinc, and beta-carotene for eight years. The others took a nutrient-free placebo pill each day.
None of the participants knew whether they were taking the vitamin or the sham pills.
When the eight years were up, researchers stopped giving participants their assigned pills, and they could choose on their own whether or not to take vitamin supplements.
Six years after that, the investigators brought them back to the lab for a round of memory tests.
The tests included word and number problems to measure different types of memory and "mental flexibility."
While the supplement and placebo groups performed similarly on most tests, the nutrient-boosted participants beat their peers on one test of long-term memory in which participants had to recall words in different categories.
"Our results have to be considered carefully," the authors wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Because they did several tests, it's more likely that the one difference they found was due to chance.
Still, they added, the "findings support a beneficial effect of a well-balanced intake of antioxidant nutrients at nutritional doses for maintaining cognitive performance, especially verbal memory."
McNeill said that most people could probably get the vitamin and nutrient doses used in the study through tweaks in their diet -- for example, drinking fruit juice to get Vitamin C and using plant oil, which is a good source of Vitamin E.
"Taking supplements for me is a last resort," she said.
Barbara Shukitt-Hale, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University in Boston, said it's important for people to know that boosting brainpower requires more than just taking a vitamin pill every day.
"Vitamins and minerals are important for memory, but they're not the only thing that's important," she told Reuters Health. "The most important thing is eating a healthy diet, being active, and keeping your brain sharp."
By Genevra Pittman
Jul 28, 2011
(Reuters Health)
Adults who took vitamin and mineral supplements for almost a decade performed better on one type of memory test than those who didn't take the supplements, according to a new study from France.
The researchers say the findings suggest that getting enough nutrients could aid thinking and memory skills as people get older. But further studies are needed to confirm the results, they add.
The effect was "nothing wild that you'd say, 'Everybody should take these,'" said Geraldine McNeill, a nutritionist at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.
But McNeill, who wasn't involved in the new study, said some people -- especially those who are deficient in vitamins and minerals -- might get a memory benefit from boosting the nutrients in their diet.
Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot of the University of Paris XIII in France and colleagues write that the link between a higher intake of some nutrients and thinking and memory skills has been shown before in so-called observational studies. But those studies can't get at a cause-and-effect relationship.
"The question is, does the cognitive performance depend on the diet, or does the diet depend on the cognitive performance?" McNeill told Reuters Health. It's possible that people who have better thinking and memory skills might pay closer attention to what they're eating, she explained.
To try to get a clearer picture of the association, Kesse-Guyot and her colleagues conducted a study of close to 4,500 French men and women.
In 1994, when the study participants were 45 to 60 years old, researchers split them randomly into two groups. Half of them took a daily supplement that included vitamins C and E, selenium, zinc, and beta-carotene for eight years. The others took a nutrient-free placebo pill each day.
None of the participants knew whether they were taking the vitamin or the sham pills.
When the eight years were up, researchers stopped giving participants their assigned pills, and they could choose on their own whether or not to take vitamin supplements.
Six years after that, the investigators brought them back to the lab for a round of memory tests.
The tests included word and number problems to measure different types of memory and "mental flexibility."
While the supplement and placebo groups performed similarly on most tests, the nutrient-boosted participants beat their peers on one test of long-term memory in which participants had to recall words in different categories.
"Our results have to be considered carefully," the authors wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Because they did several tests, it's more likely that the one difference they found was due to chance.
Still, they added, the "findings support a beneficial effect of a well-balanced intake of antioxidant nutrients at nutritional doses for maintaining cognitive performance, especially verbal memory."
McNeill said that most people could probably get the vitamin and nutrient doses used in the study through tweaks in their diet -- for example, drinking fruit juice to get Vitamin C and using plant oil, which is a good source of Vitamin E.
"Taking supplements for me is a last resort," she said.
Barbara Shukitt-Hale, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University in Boston, said it's important for people to know that boosting brainpower requires more than just taking a vitamin pill every day.
"Vitamins and minerals are important for memory, but they're not the only thing that's important," she told Reuters Health. "The most important thing is eating a healthy diet, being active, and keeping your brain sharp."
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