Residents Scared by Local Cancer Study
March 8, 2010
Chicago Tribune
By Jared S. Hopkins
Like many residents of Crestwood, Frank Caldario has been worried about the water he drank for years without knowing it was contaminated.
Caldario’s concerns, however, were heightened when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer last year. The 30-year-old office worker said surgeons removed a gumball-size tumor and about 40 percent of his right kidney.
“I can’t help but wonder if what happened to me had something to do with the water,” said Caldario, who doesn’t smoke and has lived in Crestwood since 1993.
“It’s just unreal for someone my age to get that,” he said.
After the state released a report Friday that found toxic chemicals in Crestwood’s drinking water could have contributed to elevated cancer rates in the village, residents said they were worried about their families’ health, the impact on their property values and footing the bill to defend public officials who may be responsible.
The Illinois Department of Public Health studied cancer cases in the small community of about 11,000 between 1994 and 2006 and found higher-than-expected cases of kidney cancer in men, lung cancer in men and women, and gastrointestinal cancer in men. The state’s investigation was prompted by a Tribune report last year that revealed the village’s secret use of a tainted well.
“Of course there’s a concern. If I said it wasn’t in the back of my head, I’d be lying,” said Dominic Covone, 37, a resident of about six years.”You don’t want to think something bad could happen from just drinking water.”
In the report, researchers determined it was possible that chemicals in the drinking water might have contributed to the extra cancer cases but couldn’t make a definite link.
For years, the tainted water went undetected as village officials told residents and regulators they used only treated Lake Michigan water. But they continued pumping from a polluted well for up to 20 percent of the water some months, records show.
Bill Shaughnessy, 60, a resident since 1987, said he hears concerns about a falloff in property values and the “unknown,” including what may be undiscovered in water lines.
Some residents said they were annoyed about the village’s use of taxpayer funds — more than $1 million last year — to defend Crestwood officials in lawsuits. The tainted well was used under the purview of Chester Stranczek, mayor from 1969 to 2007.
“I feel deceived,” said resident Tom Parkis.
Some longtime residents, however, said they still believe the water did not pose a health risk.
“That’s all hogwash,” said Shirley Beaver, a 44-year resident of Crestwood.
Others described the federal government’s current investigation as “Gestapo tactics” against Stranczek and praised the property tax rebates he created. Village officials scrapped the rebates last year to help pay rising legal bills.
“You think he’d poison his own kids?” said Jim Leonard, 73, who has lived in the village for 47 years with his wife, Millie.
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Vitamin D Essential For Activating Immune System
March 8, 2010
TheMoneyTimes.com
By Neka Sehgal
Adding to the multiple health benefits of vitamin D is the latest research, which indicates the nutrient is an effective tool in building up the immune system to help ward off viruses and other infections.
Lead author of the research, Professor Carsten Geisler, from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen stated, “We knew vitamin D was important for calcium absorption and fighting diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis – but we didn’t realize how crucial it was for activating the immune system.”
Role of vitamin D in immune responses
According to researchers, Vitamin D is crucial for the activation of T cells that guard the body against serious infection.
Without an adequate amount of the nutrient, the T cells remain dormant and are unable to identify, directly attack or destroy infections allowing bacteria to invade.
Explaining the role of vitamin D in helping the immune system of the body, the researchers stated, “When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signaling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D. This means that the T cell must have vitamin D or activation of the cell will cease. If the T cells cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood, they won’t even begin to mobilize. ”
In the case of flu infection, the scientists stated that vitamin D helps produce antibacterial peptides that shields against flu.
That is why a lack of sunshine in winters leads to a deficiency of vitamin D and people get infected with flu viruses.
Important breakthrough
According to researchers, recognizing the role of Vitamin D for immunity is an important breakthrough which could be vital to fight anti-immune reactions of the body.
It would also help suppress the natural defense of the body to prevent organ rejection after transplants and lead to new ways to combat infectious diseases on a global scale.
Professor Geisler stated, “They will be of particular use when developing new vaccines, which work precisely on the basis of both training our immune systems to react and suppressing the body’s natural defences in situations where this is important – as is the case with organ transplants and autoimmune disease.”
The findings are published in the latest edition of Nature Immunology.
A little about vitamin D
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that is naturally present in very few foods but is available as a dietary supplement.
It may be obtained in the recommended amount with a well-balanced diet, including some enriched or fortified foods. It can also be found in fish liver oil, eggs and fatty fish and supplements.
The body manufactures vitamin D when exposed to sunshine, but people are spending more time indoors and are deficient of the nutrient. Experts recommend 10 to 15 minutes of sunshine 3 times a week.
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Women Hospitalized After Bogus Butt Enhancements
March 8, 2010
FoxNews.com
A black-market butt-enhancement “practitioner” is injecting New Jersey backsides with household caulk and other hazardous materials, according to New Jersey health officials who have alerted New York authorities to the rear and present danger.
Six Newark-area women in the last two months have been hospitalized with infections caused by injections of “a variety of unknown materials,” said New Jersey Health Department epidemiologist Dr. Tina Tan.
Officials said they believe the injected mixture includes silicone, petroleum jelly and hardware-grade caulk.
After botched efforts to plump their rear ends like naturally well-endowed celebs such as Kim Kardashian, the victim’s derrieres resembled “moonscapes” filled with lumps and craters, said a hospital source.
“What we’ve been hearing from the hospitals is that these women are presented with deep tissue infections and skin infections. Abscesses form in some cases,” said Tan.
According to hospital sources, the six women were all from the Dominican Republic. The injection “treatments” occurred in hotels around the Newark area, the hospital source said.
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Research Says HIV Can Hide in Bone Marrow
March 8, 2010
Google News
By Associated Press
The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease.
Finding that hide-out is a first step, but years of research lie ahead.
Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week’s edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells.
The virus is dormant in the bone marrow cells, she said, but when those progenitor cells develop into blood cells, it can be reactivated and cause renewed infection. The virus kills the new blood cells and then moves on to infect other cells, said.
“If we’re ever going to be able to find a way to get rid of the cells, the first step is to understand” where a latent infection can continue, Collins said.
In recent years, drugs have reduced AIDS deaths sharply, but patients need to keep taking the medicines for life or the infection comes back, she said. That’s an indication that while the drugs battle the active virus, some of the disease remains hidden away to flare up once the therapy is stopped.
One hide-out was found earlier in blood cells called macrophages. Another pool was discovered in memory T-cells, and research began on attacking those.
But those couldn’t account for all the HIV virus still circulating, Collins said, showing there were more locations to check out and leading her to study the blood cell progenitors.
Finding these sources of infection is important because eliminating them would allow AIDS patients to stop taking drugs after their infection was over. That’s critical in countries where the treatment is hard to afford and deliver.
“I don’t know how many people realize that although the drugs have reduced mortality we still have a long way to go,” Collins said in a telephone interview. “That is mainly because we can’t stop the drugs, people have to take it for a lifetime.”
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, University of Michigan, Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation and a Bernard Maas Fellowship.
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Gut Bacteria & Obesity May Be Linked
March 8, 2010
Reuters
Some of the hundreds of bacteria found in the digestive systems of humans may be linked to specific diseases like cancer, diabetes and obesity, an international team of scientists said in a paper on Thursday.
Researchers, led by Chinese scientist Wang Jun, said in the latest issue of Nature they found more than 1,000 different species of bacteria in the human gut.
They said they had sequenced, or analyzed, the genes of each bacteria, creating the first genetic catalog of the organisms found in the human digestive system. Their research was based on analysis of stool samples from 124 people from Denmark and Spain.
Wang and his fellow researchers found several genes that may be linked to obesity and Crohn’s disease, but he said more validation work was needed.
“Apart from helping you digest, these bacteria may also play a very important role in … diseases like Crohn’s disease, cancer, obesity,” Wang, executive director of the Beijing Genomics Institute, said in an interview with Reuters.
“If you just tackle these bacteria, it is easier than treating the human body itself. If you find that a certain bug is responsible for a certain disease and you kill it, then you kill the disease,” Wang said.
Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory illness of the intestines which some believe may be caused by a variety of bacteria. Other possible causes include genetics and environmental factors.
Wang said creating the genetic catalog of all the bacteria in the human gut was only a beginning.
“There are a lot of unknown bacteria and pathogens that can cause different kinds of diseases,” he said.
“So this is the first step and we have to study further to find concrete associations between these bacteria and human diseases, and then you can start learning how to get diagnosis, prognosis and then treatment,” Wang said.
Wang and colleagues in China are working on a similar 120-sample study in Chinese hospitals.
“There are four groups: obese diabetics, obese non-diabetics, lean diabetics and lean non-diabetics. And we found some interesting bugs related to each type of diabetes,” Wang said.
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Salmonella Found in Food Additive Sparks Recall
March 8, 2010
Wall Street Journal
By Jared A. Favole and Alicia Mundy
The Food and Drug Administration has asked a variety of food companies to recall more than 30 products, from vegetable dips to soups, that contain a commonly used food additive that has tested positive for salmonella.
There have been no reports of people getting sick from eating foods with the ingredient, a flavor enhancer called hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP. Some batches of the ingredient that tested positive were shipped from a Las Vegas-based company.
FDA officials couldn’t determine how many products might need to be recalled but noted that HVP is used in thousands of products across the U.S. Products being recalled include some prepackaged foods made by Earth Island, tortilla soup mix made by Homemade Gourmet and chicken soup base made by Castella Imports.
Jeffrey Farrar, associate commissioner for food protection, said the risk to consumers of getting sick is “very low.” HVP generally represents just 1% of the total ingredients in a product.
Some products that received HVP from the Las Vegas company, Basic Food Flavors Inc., won’t need to be recalled. These include most foods that are cooked. Cooking generally kills salmonella. Basic Food Flavors didn’t immediately respond to comment.
The recall comes as the FDA and consumer groups are urging Congress to pass food safety legislation that would give the regulatory agency more power to police the industry.
In a conference call with reporters, FDA officials said multiple times that the recall underscores the need for lawmakers to pass a food safety bill that has stalled in the Senate.
The legislation would also allow the FDA to force companies to recall products, require better record keeping and boost inspections of food facilities, especially those handling risky foods.
Joshua Sharfstein, the deputy commissioner at the FDA, said “we would like not to have episodes like this in the future.” He said the legislation would help shift the focus “towards prevention.”
In recent weeks, the FDA has announced several initiatives related to food safety, and on Wednesday slapped more than a dozen companies with warnings for how they market their foods and beverages.
Trader Joe’s, a grocery store, posted a statement on its Web site about one recalled product, its Organic Creamy Ranch Dressing Dip. It noted that products with a use-by-date of June 13, 2010, in their stores in the southwestern U.S. may contain an ingredient contaminated with salmonella. As a precaution all of the product has been removed from store shelves and has been destroyed, the company said. Trader Joe’s hasn’t received any reports of illness related to that salad dressing and dip.
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FDA Warns Food Manufacturers Over Misleading Labels
March 4, 2010
ABC News
By Lee Ferran
The countdown is on for 17 food manufacturers to correct labels on popular food products that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says misrepresents the products’ health benefits — or else.
The FDA said Wednesday that its commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, had sent letters to each company in question Feb. 22, along with an open letter to the food manufacturing industry demanding they take action against “false or misleading” labels.
Among the complaints is that “misleading ‘healthy’ claims continue to appear on foods that do not meet the long- and well-established definition for use of that term,” Hamburg said in the letter.
If companies such as Nestle and Beech-Nut do not comply, the FDA warned, the products could be removed from the shelves.
“FDA is notifying a number of manufacturers that their labels are in violation of the law and subject to legal proceedings to remove misbranded products from the marketplace,” Hamburg said in the letter, which is posted on the FDA Web site.
Bruce Silverglade of the Center for Science in the Public Interest told “Good Morning America, “We hope this is the start of a battle that will lead to a war that will end deceptive food labeling.”
Hamburg, citing the desire of industry leaders to provide safe, healthy products, said in the letter that the FDA’s measure is an attempt to clarify “what is expected of them.”
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Weight Watchers Endorsement of McDonalds
March 3, 2010
guardian.co.uk
McDonald’s is hardly an ideal dining location for anyone struggling to stay slim. But the fast food chain scored a PR coup today when Weight Watchers agreed to endorse some of its products in New Zealand – a move met with outrage by nutritionists and obesity experts.
As part of the deal, which the company says is the first of its kind in the world, McDonald’s will use the Weight Watchers logo on its menu boards and Weight Watchers will promote McDonald’s to dieters.
The link-up is the fast-food chain’s latest attempt to improve its reputation by securing endorsements. In January, to the horror of gastronomes, Italy’s agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, helped launch the McItaly range of burgers. For a representative of one of the world’s greatest culinary nations to do such a thing was “a sign of the moral bankruptcy of Silvio Berlusconi’s government”, wrote Matthew Fort in the Guardian.
Several items on the fast food giant’s menu – the Filet-O-Fish, Chicken McNuggets and Sweet Chilli Seared Chicken Wrap – have been approved for the Weight Watchers diet in McDonald’s 150 New Zealand restaurants. Each meal is worth 6.5 points on the programme, which assigns points to food items and allows dieters to consume 18 to 40 points each day to achieve their goal weight.
McDonald’s New Zealand managing director, Mark Hawthorne, said: “We were able to include some of our most popular items because of the many changes we have made over the years.
“For instance, the switch to a healthier canola blend cooking oil means items such as the Filet-O-Fish and Chicken McNuggets contain 60% less saturated fat than six years ago.
Chris Stirk, Weight Watchers’ director of business in Australia and New Zealand, said the partnership between the companies reflected “part of our philosophy that you can enjoy life … while still achieving your weight loss goals”.
But nutritionists and obesity experts said the menu items were a marketing ploy to lure customers into the restaurant. “It’s all about sales,” said Jane Martin, senior adviser of Australia’s Obesity Policy Coalition. “It implies this food is healthy … when often it is high in fat and salt. Chicken McNuggets are Chicken McNuggets whether it’s got Weight Watchers on it or not.”
Sian Porter, a dietician at the British Dietetic Association, said: “This sort of initiative should be applauded, but the danger is that someone will go in, choose one of the healthier options and then think: ‘Ooh good. Now I’ll have an ice cream’, which is not the right message.”
Weight Watchers and McDonald’s in Britain said they had no plans for a similar partnership in the UK.
The fast-food chain, widely criticised for selling a high-calorie, high-fat menu that includes super-size meals, was “making every best effort to generate a change in behaviour, to create an awareness in consumers about making healthy choices”, Hawthorne said.
For the past year in the UK, the chain has run a programme linking children’s football teams with their local McDonald’s restaurant and offering them free kit and equipment.
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New Gene Test May Help Pick A Diet Plan
March 3, 2010
Reuters
By Maggie Fox
Can’t lose weight on a low-fat diet? Maybe you need to cut carbs instead, and a new genetic test may point the way, maker Interleukin Genetics Inc reported on Wednesday.
The small study of about 140 overweight or obese women showed that those on diets “appropriate” for their genetic makeup lost more weight than those on less appropriate diets, researchers told an American Heart Association meeting.
“The potential of using genetic information to achieve this magnitude of weight loss without pharmaceutical intervention would be important in helping to solve the pervasive problem of excessive weight in our society,” Christopher Gardner at Stanford University in California, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
Massachusetts-based Interleukin’s $149 test looks for mutations in three genes, known as FABP2, PPARG and ADRB2.
The company says 39 percent of white Americans have the low-fat genotype, 45 percent have the type that responds best to a diet low in processed carbohydrates and an unlucky 16 percent have gene mutations that mean they have to watch both fat and processed carbohydrates.
The researchers randomly assigned around 140 women to one of four diets — the low-carb Atkins diet, the ultra low-fat Ornish diet, the very low-fat LEARN diet or the more balanced Zone diet.
Interleukin went back and tested about 100 of the women for their DNA by using a cheek swab and then looked to see if the women on the “right” diets lost more weight.
MOST EFFECTIVE MATCHES
Over a year, people on diets appropriate to their genetic makeup, as determined by the test, lost 5.3 percent of body weight. People on mismatched diets lost 2.3 percent, the Stanford researchers told the meeting.
Cholesterol levels improved in line with weight loss, they said.
The company said the test looks for genes that affect metabolism.
“One of the gene variations affects absorption of fats from the intestine,” Ken Kornman, chief scientific officer at Interleukin, said in a telephone interview. He said people with that particular mutation absorb more fat from their food and thus should avoid fat if they want to lose weight.
Another of the variations affects insulin response — the body’s production of insulin to metabolize sugar, he said. Simple carbohydrates such as sugar and processed flour stimulate people with that particular gene type to store more of the energy as fat.
Ten percent to 16 percent of people have both mutations, and must watch both carbs and fat, Kornman said.
“What we don’t know is if they are on the right diet for their genotype whether it affects satiety or feeling full,” he said. He said the company planned broader studies to ask these questions.
Interleukin markets the test under the brand name Inherent Health. It also can test who might best lose weight in response to exercise.
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Parents Better than TV at Teaching Babies to Speak
March 2, 2010
dailymail.co.uk
By Fiona Macrae
Parents who buy educational DVDs to give their toddlers a head start may be doing more harm than good.
A study of almost 100 boys and girls aged between one and two found that regularly watching a DVD from the Baby Einstein range did nothing to boost their vocabulary.
In fact, the younger the children were when they began to watch the programmes, the worse their word power.
Researchers tested the children over six weeks. Half were given a Baby Wordsworth DVD, which their parents were told to play 15 times over six weeks.
The 35-minute disc, costing around £18, is part of the Baby Einstein range – popular with parents keen to boost toddlers’ IQs before starting school.
It uses puppets and people to introduce 30 words for rooms and household appliances, including ‘fridge’ and ‘phone’.
The remaining children’s parents were told to ‘go about life as normal’.
Not surprisingly, older children picked up more new words than younger ones, the California University team found.
However, those who watched the DVD did no better than the others, and in fact appeared to learn little or nothing, their parents told Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, an American journal.
Researchers also asked parents if they had used the DVDs before and found the younger a child was on starting to watch Baby Einstein, the worse their word ability was.
This may be because parents are more likely to use them as aids if children are struggling to learn to speak, said researcher Rebekah Richert.
It is also possible that watching TV means youngsters miss out on playing with their parents, other children and toys. In addition, some experts say the flashing lights and quick scene changes in the Baby Einstein programmes over-simulate the developing brain.
Dr Richert said: ‘Given that infantdirected media are nearly ubiquitous aspects of many infants’ lives, research should continue to examine whether and how parents can use the DVDs effectively.’
Last night, no one at Disney was available for comment.
The Baby Einstein DVDs avoid any suggestion they will make children brainier, and merely claim the series is a must for parents who simply want the best for their children.
‘Our products provide fun and stimulating ways for parents and carers to interact with their children,’ the blurb on the DVD says.
A previous study found children between seven and 16 months who watched the DVDs knew fewer words than their peers. Each hour they watched per day equated to six fewer words in their vocabulary.
Following threatened legal action last year, Disney offered refunds to dissatisfied parents – but only in North America.
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