AP - The mother of a 15-year-old French-Swiss boy who was allegedly sexually assaulted by two Emirati men accused authorities Thursday of lying about a defendant’s HIV status to cover up the fact that AIDS exists in this booming Arab city-state.

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AFP - Americans spoke out strongly against bosses who fire workers who are obese or smoke, a poll showed Thursday.

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Warnings that alcohol and driving don’t mix are generally targeted at adults or high school students, but a new University of Georgia study finds that some middle schoolers in rural areas are drinking and driving as well.

Researchers, whose results appear in the November issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, surveyed 290 middle school students in the Mississippi Delta and found that 17 percent had driven an automobile after drinking. The study was limited to one school so lead author Jessica Muilenburg, assistant professor in the UGA College of Public Health, cautions against drawing too broad a conclusion. Still, she said she hopes her findings will spur more research and awareness into a dangerous behavior that until now has been overlooked.

“No one thought to look at risky driving behaviors in kids who weren’t old enough to drive,” Muilenburg said. “We assume that because it’s illegal for them to have a license that they don’t drive - even though we know they’re doing other illegal things such as drinking.”

Muilenburg said that early alcohol use and other risky behaviors, such as smoking, tend to be more prevalent in rural areas where there’s simply not as much to do outside of school. She adds that rural youth tend to be more familiar with motorized vehicles such as ATVs and farm equipment and have the opportunity to drive cars or trucks on family farms or back roads where they’re not likely to be noticed.

The school Muilenburg studied had a high poverty rate and a low high school graduation rate typical of many poor rural communities. The 290 students in her study were seventh and eighth graders (mostly 13 or 14 years old) who had received parental permission to fill out an anonymous survey on risky behaviors.

In addition to finding that 17 percent of students drove after drinking alcohol, the study also found that just under half - 45 percent - said that in the past 30 days they had ridden with a driver who had been drinking.

In Muilenburg’s sample, 61 percent of the students had drank “more than a few sips” of alcohol. That figure is similar to a 2006 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that found that 65 percent of eighth graders have consumed alcohol more than once. A 2005 study found that eight percent of seventh graders and 17 percent of eighth graders reported binge drinking (more than five drinks in one sitting) at least once in the past 12 months.

There are no national statistics on unlicensed driving, but a recent study found that there were nearly 400 fatal crashes involving 7 to 14 year-old drivers between 1996 and 2000. A 2003 CDC study found that 10 percent of high school students drove after drinking alcohol, but Muilenburg’s study is among the first to look at drinking and driving in middle schoolers.

Muilenburg said that there’s currently not enough data on the prevalence of drinking and driving among middle schoolers to recommend specific prevention efforts. She said she wants her study to lay the foundation for larger studies that can give public health officials a sense of how widespread the problem is.

“This is definitely a topic that needs to be looked into further,” Muilenburg said. “Motor vehicle accidents are the number one killer of kids.”

http://www.uga.edu/

(original article)

The clinical threshold for undertaking elective surgery to remove part or all of the colon (colectomy) for people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) may be too high, warn researchers in a study published on bmj.com.

IBD is a general term for chronic inflammation of the intestine and includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Around a quarter of a million people in the UK are affected and many people will require colectomy at some stage. Currently there are about 2,000 total or partial colectomies performed each year in England for IBD.

Death rates following elective colectomy are typically quite low, at least in the short term, while delaying surgery carries increased risks. It is thought, increasingly, that the thresholds for elective colectomy may be too high. However, there is a lack of strong evidence about this.

So researchers from Swansea and Oxford used routinely collected hospital data throughout England to investigate mortality after colectomy for IBD, comparing those who underwent elective colectomy, emergency colectomy, or who were hospitalised for IBD but had no colectomy. The study included 23, 464 people who were hospitalised for more than three days for IBD, 5,480 of whom underwent colectomy, and traced all deaths up to three years after hospital admission.

They found improved long term survival for elective colectomy compared with emergency colectomy or no colectomy. The findings also confirmed a substantially increased risk of dying shortly after emergency colectomy.

At three years, the increased of risk of death in people who did not undergo colectomy was almost as high as that in people who underwent emergency colectomy. In contrast, survival among people who underwent elective colectomy was very similar to that in the general population.

Our study findings suggest that the threshold for elective colectomy for IBD in England is too high, say the authors.

It also illustrates that, whenever indicated and possible, it is preferable for colectomy to be undertaken electively, rather than risk the need for emergency surgery when it has a much poorer prognosis.

They believe that further research is now required to establish the threshold criteria and optimal timing for colectomy in people with poorly controlled IBD.

The idea that surgery for IBD should be the last resort is flawed, adds an accompanying editorial. These findings, even allowing for interpretation, should be a word of caution to those who promote it.

http://www.bmj.com

(original article)

Women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors, according to a paper published in the November 1, 2007, issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The study was led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and did not examine risk associated with other kinds of infertility, such as low sperm count in men.

“The key message of this paper is that making the right dietary choices and including the right amount of physical activity in your daily life may make a large difference in your probability of becoming fertile if you are experiencing problems with ovulation,” said Walter Willett, senior author and chair of the HSPH Department of Nutrition. The lead author is Jorge Chavarro, Research Fellow in the HSPH Department of Nutrition. Both scientists have earned MDs and have appointments at Harvard Medical School.

Click http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/multimedia/video/2007/Fertility/media.html to watch a short video of Drs. Willett and Chavarro explain the paper’s key findings.

Infertility affects one in six couples, according to studies in the U.S. and Europe. Ovulatory problems have been identified in 18 to 30 percent of those cases.

The researchers followed a group of 17,544 married women who were participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II based at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The team devised a scoring system on dietary and lifestyle factors that previous studies have found to predict ovulatory disorder infertility. Among those factors were:

• The ratio of mono-unsaturated to trans fats in diet
  
• Protein consumption (derived from animals or vegetables)
  
• Carbohydrates consumption (including fiber intake and dietary glycemic index)
  
• Dairy consumption (low- and high-fat dairy)
  
• Iron consumption
  
• Multivitamin use
  
• Body mass index (BMI, weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters)
  
• Physical activity

The researchers assigned a “fertility diet” score of one to five points. The higher the score, the lower the risk of infertility associated with ovulatory disorders.

The women with the highest fertility diet scores ate less trans fat and sugar from carbohydrates, consumed more protein from vegetables than from animals, ate more fiber and iron, took more multivitamins, had a lower BMI, exercised for longer periods of time each day, and, surprisingly, consumed more high-fat dairy products and less low-fat dairy products. The relationship between a higher “fertility diet” score and lesser risk for infertility was similar for different subgroups of women regardless of age and whether or not they had been pregnant in the past.

Said Chavarro, “We analyzed what happens if you follow one, two, three, four, or more different factors. What we found was that, as women started following more of these recommendations, their risk of infertility dropped substantially for every one of the dietary and lifestyle strategies undertaken. In fact, we found a sixfold difference in ovulatory infertility risk between women following five or more low-risk dietary and lifestyle habits and those following none.”

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/

(original article)

The Health Protection Agency has published a consultation document on its website about the protection of patients and volunteers undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examinations.

The document will form the basis for the Agency’s advice to the Department of Health, scheduled for completion in March 2008. The new advice will replace that provided in 1991 by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB).

MRI is a non-invasive technique which has gained widespread use in medicine and research to provide internal images of the body. The technique is also being used in operations to guide, monitor and control interventional procedures. At the end of 2006 it has been estimated that there were approximately 500 fixed magnetic resonance scanners involved in human imaging, installed at 360 sites across the UK . Unlike computerised tomography (CT) x-ray scans, MRI does not involve the use of ionising radiation. However MRI equipment does produce large static magnetic fields, low frequency (switched gradient) magnetic fields, radio frequency fields and acoustic noise, all of which have the potential to cause harm if not controlled.

The new advice is being developed by a group comprising scientific staff from the Agency’s Radiation Protection Division and external experts in the field of MRI and its applications. The group has reviewed published scientific data in the life and physical sciences about the possible adverse effects on people of exposure to MRI. The reviewers took into account the clear benefits to individual patients undergoing MRI examinations and the potential benefits from research involving volunteer exposures which can increase medical knowledge.

The Agency has already completed an expert consultation exercise. The comments and suggestions received were generally very positive and helpful in further developing the advice. We are now seeking to engage other interested parties in open consultation by inviting comments and suggestions on the document published on the website, which will be available for a period of three months, ending 31 January 2008. The feedback will be used to assist the Agency to develop the formal advice to Government.

http://www.hpa.org.uk/

(original article)

In a new study, researchers found they could detect toxic levels of acetaminophen in laboratory animals by analyzing gene expression in the blood.

This study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, could be a first step in developing accurate new tools to detect acetaminophen overdose in humans. Overdose of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in many over-the-counter pain relievers, is a leading cause of liver failure in the United States and is often difficult to diagnose. An estimated 50,000 people seek emergency room treatment for acetaminophen overdose each year.

The research published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that gene expression data from blood cells can provide valuable information about acetaminophen levels well before liver damage can be detected by other methods, including serum markers and liver biopsies.

“In time, this approach could give physicians a powerful new genomics tool to help patients who cannot estimate how much acetaminophen they consumed. Early detection of acetaminophen overdoes can be helpful in preventing or treating resulting liver damage,” said Richard S. Paules, Ph.D., principal investigator and director, Microarray Core Facility at NIEHS and senior author on the new paper.

The researchers would like to build on this body of research to develop a simple procedure that clinicians could use in the emergency room to estimate the level of acetaminophen exposure and the potential damage to the liver. This would be especially beneficial for patients such as the elderly, suicidal, semi-comatose who are unable to provide an accurate estimate.

To carry out their study, the researchers developed and then analyzed gene expression signatures - patterns of gene activity -in rats exposed to various doses of acetaminophen. Using microarrays, or tools that allow scientists to see how differences in gene expression are linked to specific diseases, the researchers were able to determine which genes were turned on or turned off in response to the different levels of acetaminophen. Once they selected the gene sets, they tested them for accuracy, and found the signature gene lists were able to predict exposure to toxic versus nontoxic doses with very high accuracy (88.9-95.8 percent), while the more traditional predictors, of clinical chemistry, hematology and pathology were approximately 65 to 80 percent accurate.

“Although it was not the main focus of our study, we wanted to see how applicable this gene expression profiling of blood cells was to humans,” said Raymond W. Tennant, Ph.D., in the NIEHS Laboratory of Molecular Toxicology, and a co-author on the study.

The NIEHS researchers compared the animal data with data from RNA from blood drawn from individuals who had been admitted to the University of North Carolina emergency room for acetaminophen overdose intoxication. When they compared the toxic blood samples to the samples from normal healthy volunteers they saw a striking difference.

“Although there are already some good tools available to emergency room physicians to detect liver injury, additional information concerning the level of exposures and/or the degree of liver injury could significantly help us in treating acetaminophen overdose patients,” said Paul Watkins, M.D., Director, General Clinical Research Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and co-author on the paper.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a component of the National Institutes of Health, supports research to understand the effects of the environment on human health. For more information on environmental health topics, please visit our website at http://www.niehs.nih.gov/.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation’s Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

Reference: Bushel PR, Heinloth AN, Li J, Huang L, Chou JW, Boorman GA, Malarkey DE, Houle CD, Ward SW, Wilson RE, Fannin RD, Russo MW, Watkins PB, Tennant RW, and Paules RS. Blood gene expression signatures predict exposure levels. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI 10.1073 PNAS.0706987104 (2007).

http://www.niehs.nih.gov

(original article)

Boston Scientific Corporation has announced that a jury in U.S. District Court in San Francisco has found that Boston Scientific infringes a patent of Cordis Corporation, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, under the doctrine of equivalents.

The Company said it believes the finding of infringement is in error and that it will request the judge to overturn it.

No damages were determined because the judge found that Cordis failed to submit evidence sufficient to enable a jury to make a damage assessment. The jury also found invalid four Boston Scientific patents that were infringed by Cordis.

The patents in the case involve balloon catheter technology.

Boston Scientific is a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices whose products are used in a broad range of interventional medical specialties. For more information, please visit: www.bostonscientific.com.

http://www.bostonscientific.com/

(original article)

The findings from a study into older people’s experiences of city living will be revealed at a dissemination event at Goldsmiths, University of London on 13 November 2007.

‘Mobilizing Knowledge - Solving the Interaction Gap between Older People, Planners and General Citizens within the Thames Gateway’ is a project organised by the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR), Goldsmiths, University of London with the aim of creating a space for dialogue between older people and policy and planning professionals in order to explore older peoples’ experience of the city. It seeks to find ways of incorporating these perspectives into the planning and design processes, and of encouraging greater engagement with London’s older people.

Twenty-two residents over the age of 60 from the London Borough of Lewisham took part in the project which was conducted through a summer school programme involving artists, planners and academics from a spectrum of disciplines. The study found that many older people have an active interest in planning and design decisions that affect them, and are concerned about issues relating to urban design, changing demographics and regeneration. The older people in this study were also particularly interested in the impact that the Thames Gateway developments will have on East and South-East London and its local services.

The dissemination event will begin with a round table discussion between 3.00pm-5.00pm for policy makers and planners to assess the implications of the project’s outcomes. The event then opens to the public at 5.30-7.30 with a presentation of a film and good practice guidelines that have been developed from the study.

Admission to the ‘Mobilizing Knowledge’ event is free, but please contact Niaohm Convery if you would like to attend by e-mailing ucw-mgr@gold.ac.uk. The older people who took part in the study will also be at the event with their friends and families.

http://www.gold.ac.uk

(original article)

Researchers report a newly identified genetic variation that is linked to higher incidence of prostate cancer in African American men.

This study, which emphasizes the importance of characterizing genetic markers associated with prostate cancer in high-risk populations, is published online in Genome Research (www.genome.org).

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men and, according to the American Cancer Society, will claim the lives of more than 27,000 men in the United States this year. Among different populations, prostate cancer exhibits significant variation in incidence rates, with African American men exhibiting the highest rate worldwide.

Recent studies investigating genetic variations associated with susceptibility to prostate cancer have implicated a specific region of chromosome 8 as harboring potential markers for the disease. In the study published today, the research groups lead by Dr. Rick Kittles of the University of Chicago and Dr. John Carpten of the Translational Genomics Research Institute further analyzed the 8q24 region of chromosome 8 by comparing the genotypes of 490 African American men diagnosed with prostate cancer and 567 control subjects. “This study took advantage of differences in genetic ancestry among the African American men in order to replicate and further localize a risk locus for prostate cancer,” says Kittles.

Using this information, the researchers characterized new genetic markers which were significantly associated with prostate cancer. “Since the prevalence of prostate cancer is almost two-fold higher among African Americans compared to European Americans, the use of ancestry informative markers for association with prostate cancer is quite powerful. We identified a novel prostate cancer risk locus that maps within a gene region on 8q24,” Kittles says. “This region contains an interesting candidate gene involved in DNA repair.”

The data gathered in this study confirmed previous investigations, indicating that common genetic variants are linked to elevated prostate cancer risk, and found even stronger effects for several of the markers on 8q24 in African Americans. These results have important implications for diagnosis and therapy. “The significance may be quite broad given the multiple genetic variants along 8q24 that impact risk,” Kittles explains. “It is likely that within the 8q24 region there is inherited predisposition to genetic instability and this is leading to increased cancer risk. By studying this region, we may be able to develop molecular targets for improved screening, early detection, and possibly treatment.”

http://www.cshl.org/

(original article)

According to the most comprehensive survey of people affected by Hurricane Katrina, results of which are being presented to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery, the percentage of pre-hurricane residents of the affected areas in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi who have mental disorders has increased significantly compared to the situation five to eight months after the hurricane.

These findings counter a more typical pattern from previous disasters where prevalence of mental disorders decreases as time passes.

The detailed results of this report are in press in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. A list of key findings is below.

These and other survey results come from follow-up interviews with the Hurricane Community Advisory Group, a statistically representative sample of hurricane survivors assembled to provide information in a series of ongoing tracking surveys about the pace of recovery efforts and the mental health effects of these efforts on hurricane survivors.

The study is led by researchers from Harvard Medical School and is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, FEMA, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation.

“It is important for mental health policy planners to have accurate information about the size of the problem they are trying to address among survivors of Hurricane Katrina,” says Ronald Kessler, Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and director of the study. “Our tracking surveys are designed to provide that information.”

Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest United States hurricane in seven decades, and the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Over 500,000 people were evacuated, and nearly 90,000 square miles were declared a disaster area (roughly equal to the land mass of the United Kingdom). Although occurring over two years ago, infrastructure reconstruction efforts continue to lag, raising concerns about long-term mental health effects.

The Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group initiative was launched to provide an ongoing tracking survey of those effects. The data are designed to help support public health decisions.

The survey data presented in the report released today come from a follow-up survey from an original sample of 1,043 people who agreed to join the survey panel and to participate in repeated surveys over several years.

Overview of Initial Survey Published in August 2006

• Seven percent of respondents reported experiencing an event that would be considered seriously traumatic (had to be rescued, any life-threatening experience, physical or sexual assault), and 18.7 percent reported that a traumatic event of this sort (including death) occurred to someone close to them.


• The vast majority (84.6 percent) of respondents experienced a significant financial, income, or housing loss. More than one-third of respondents (36.3 percent) experienced extreme physical adversity and nearly one-fourth (22.8 percent) experienced extreme psychological adversity.
  
• The estimated prevalence of anxiety-mood disorders in the baseline survey was roughly twice as high as found three years earlier using the same measures in a survey of residents subsequently affected by Hurricane Katrina.
  
• Socio-demographic variables were largely unrelated to these trends, suggesting that the short-term adverse mental health effects of Hurricane Katrina were equally distributed across broad segments of the population.
  
• The prevalence of suicidality in the baseline survey was quite low, despite the high rates of anxiety and depression. This low prevalence of suicidality was traced to widespread feelings of optimism that the practical problems created by the hurricane would soon be resolved.
  
• This optimism turned out to be unrealistic, raising the question of whether or not the slow pace of recovery increased the prevalence of suicidality. This possibility was investigated in the follow-up survey

Overview of Follow-Up Survey Results

• The typical finding in post-disaster tracking surveys is that the prevalence of mental disorders significantly decreases with time, with up to half of post-disaster mental disorders typically resolving within a year and the vast majority within two years.
  
• The follow-up survey found quite a different pattern after Hurricane Katrina: the number of people with any anxiety or mood disorder did not change significantly between the baseline survey and the follow-up survey. (If anything, the trend was upward from 30.7% to 33.9%.)
  
• The estimated prevalence of serious mental illness, in comparison, was significantly higher in the follow-up survey than the baseline survey in the total sample (14.0% vs. 10.9%) as well as in the sub-sample of respondents who are not from the New Orleans Metropolitan Area (13.2% vs. 9.4%). This trend was not significant, in comparison, in the New Orleans Metro sub-sample (16.9% vs. 16.5%).
  
• The estimated prevalence of PTSD roughly doubled in the follow-up survey compared to the baseline survey in the sub-sample exclusive of New Orleans Metro (20.0% vs. 11.8%), but did not change in the New Orleans Metro sub-sample (24.1% vs. 25.9%).
  
• The prevalence of suicidality, finally, was significantly higher in the follow-up survey than the baseline survey both with regard to suicidal ideation (6.4% vs. 2.8%) and suicide plans (0.8% vs. 0.2%).
  
• The suicidality trends, unlike those for anxiety-mood disorders and PTSD, were statistically significant and relatively comparable in magnitude in both the New Orleans Metro sub-sample and in the remainder of the sample.
  
• The majority of respondents with baseline serious mental illness (SMI; 51.1%) continued to have serious mental illness at follow-up, while 30.8% improved (i.e., were classified as having less severe mental illness at follow-up) and only a relatively small minority (18.1%) recovered (i.e., no longer met criteria for an anxiety-mood disorders).
  
• In the case of PTSD, 70.4% of baseline cases continued to have PTSD at follow-up, while an additional 10.3% were classified as having some other anxiety-mood disorder but not PTSD at follow-up, and only 19.3% recovered.
  
• Persistence was somewhat lower for suicidal ideation (37.9%), but much higher for plans (69.8%). Improvement, in comparison, was comparatively high for suicidal ideation (49.9%), but not for suicide plans (16.0%). Recovery (i.e., no mental illness and no suicidality at follow-up), finally, was relatively uncommon for either suicidal ideation (12.2%) or plans (18.0%).
  
• As noted above, researchers expected to find lower proportions of the population to have mental illness and suicidality this long after a disaster. Failing to find such a decrease, and instead discovering a number of increases, is an indication of the more severe adverse emotional effects of Hurricane Katrina than more typical disasters.
  
• As in the baseline survey, socio-demographic variables were generally not significant predictors of trends in anxiety-mood disorders or suicidality in the two surveys, indicating that these adverse effects were widespread in the population.

The fact that hurricane-related stressors were still quite common in the population nearly two years after the hurricane, and that much of this could be attributed to these continuing stresses suggests that efforts to address the problem of increased mental illness and suicidality among Hurricane Katrina victims must confront continuing needs for practical and logistical assistance. This may be particularly challenging since many pre-hurricane residents of the affected areas are now living elsewhere in the country. Still, it is especially important to reach these geographically displaced people because of their comparatively high risk of serious mental illness.

http://hms.harvard.edu/

(original article)

In the November 1st issue of G&D, a team of scientists led by Dr. Anil Rustgi (UPENN) presents an innovative new model of esophageal cancer, which holds great promise as an experimental platform to investigate the etiology and possible treatment of this devastating disease.

“This model allows us to dissect the specific genetic alterations that are important in the initiation and progression of esophageal squamous cell cancer, which holds promise for sqamous cell cancers arising in other sites, such as the skin, lung, head and neck,” explains Dr. Rustgi.

There are 2 main types of esophageal cancer: squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the third most common cancer of the digestive tract and the seventh leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. It is a highly malignant cancer and generally carries a poor prognosis, owing to its predominantly late detection.

Dr. Rustigi and colleagues developed a tissue-engineered, organotypic 3D culture system of esophageal squamous cell cancer. They found that ESCC results from a combination of genetic mutations (namely, EGFR overexpression, hTERT activation and p53 mutation) as well as changes in the tumor microenvironment.

Dr. Rustgi emphasizes that “we have found that altering the stromal fibroblasts can influence the extent of tumor cell migration and invasion. Thus, previously underappreciated, it is the interplay of tumor cells and fibroblasts that has great meaning on how cancer arises and progresses.”

http://www.cshl.org/

(original article)

(original article)

Reuters - Zimbabwe's HIV prevalence rate has
continued falling and now stands at less than 16 percent from
more than 18 percent last year, government figures in the
southern African country showed on Thursday.

(full text retrieval failed) (original article)

AFP - The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe has fallen by over 10 percent in the past six years, but the health minister cautioned that the rate was still too high, state media reported Thursday.

(full text retrieval failed) (original article)