Acetaminophen Linked to Asthma
March 10, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
The common painkiller acetaminophen may increase the risk of asthma and other allergies in both children and adults, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of British Columbia-Vancouver and published in the journal CHEST.
Acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol, is the active ingredient in the painkillers Tylenol, Anacin, Panadol, and others. Because it does not increase the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding the way aspirin, ibuprofen or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) do, it has become the favored analgesic and fever-reducer used in young children.
Researchers reviewed 19 prior studies on a total of 425,000 children and adults. They found that children who had been treated with the drug in the past year were 60 percent more likely to suffer from asthma than children who had not, while adults who had used the drug in the past year were 75 percent more likely to suffer from the condition. People who had taken higher doses of the drug had a higher risk of asthma than people who had taken lower doses. The data also showed a connection between acetaminophen use and wheezing, eczema, runny nose and itchy eyes.
The study was not designed to prove cause and effect, however.
Researchers have been looking for causes of the significant increase in asthma rates over the past 20 years. Suggested culprits have included air pollutants and overly sterile living environments, but the current study points to another potential contributor.
According to co-author Mark FitzGerald, it was roughly 20 years ago that doctors began to recommend acetaminophen rather than aspirin for the treatment of fevers and pain in children.
“There was a change in practice and in the succeeding 20 years or so the prevalence of asthma has increased also,” he said.
Although ibuprofen does not appear to increase the risk of asthma, it may cause liver and brain damage in some children.
“For adults, ibuprofen is probably the safer of the two in terms of asthma risk,” co-author Mahyar Etminan said. “For kids, pediatric guidelines still point to acetaminophen use — at least until we have a more definitive study.”
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Allergies May Be Meat-Related
March 1, 2010
Business Week
By Robert Priedt
A carbohydrate in meat called alpha-gal may be the unrecognized cause of recurring severe allergic reactions in some patients, a new study suggests.
The study included 60 people in Australia and the United States who experienced the recurrent severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis with no known cause. Allergy tests revealed that 25 of the 60 patients had positive responses to alpha-gal. A positive response was considered a level of greater than 1.0 international units per milliliter of immunoglobulin E (IgE).
The tests did not identify any other allergens that would explain the cause of anaphylaxis in the 25 patients who were positive for alpha-gal or in the other 35 patients, the study authors noted.
The findings were scheduled to be presented Sunday at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology annual meeting, in New Orleans.
“These studies continue to suggest not only that IgE to a carbohydrate has important clinical implications in food allergy and anaphylaxis, but that the presence of this antibody may well have been under-appreciated in terms of the number of patients affected and the geographical scope,” study author Dr. Scott P. Commins, of the University of Virginia, said in an academy news release.
A person who suffers an anaphylactic reaction to something unknown is at increased risk for recurring anaphylaxis if the trigger isn’t identified.
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Chronic Health Problems in Children Climb
February 24, 2010
Natural News
By S.L. Baker
Researchers from Mass General Hospital for Children in Boston gathered data about US children with health problems. They looked at conditions that limited activities and/or schooling, required medication and/or specialized equipment and health services, and that lasted for at least a year. The results of this study, just published in the February issue of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association), show an alarming trend. Chronic health conditions in American kids have increased dramatically in recent years — rising from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006.
Over the six year study period, Jeanne Van Cleave, M.D., and her research team estimated changes in prevalence, incidence, and rates of remission in four categories: obesity (defined as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for age), asthma, learning or behavior problems, and other physical conditions such as diabetes and heart conditions. They compiled data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Cohort, specifically looking at three groups of children who were between the ages of two through eight at the beginning of each study period. These groups were followed for three periods of six years each — from 1988 to 1994, 1994 to 2000 and 2000 to 2006.
The results showed that the prevalence of chronic conditions, including obesity, increased with each subsequent group. Male, Hispanic, and black youth were found to be at the highest risk. Bottom line: as the years pass, more and more American kids appear to have chronic health problems when compared to similar youngsters in previous years.
There seems little doubt that the increasing rate of obesity among children and teens, most likely fueled by junk food and lack of exercise, is one important explanation for the increase in children’s health problems. But in an editorial accompanying the JAMA study, Neal Halfon, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Paul W. Newacheck, Dr.P.H., of the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that other factors must be at work, too.
“The obesity epidemic seemed to develop at a time when many indicators suggested that children’s health was generally improving. The data presented by Van Cleave et al suggest that the prevalence of other chronic health conditions is also increasing among U.S. children and that obesity is not the only clinical time bomb ticking away in children. There is an urgent need to better understand why this is the case and what can be done about it,” they stated. “Addressing the increasing incidence and prevalence of chronic conditions in children will ultimately require major reforms in the child health system. The child health system needs to do a better job preventing childhood chronic illness. The possibilities for such changes are substantial, as are the implications of not acting.”
NaturalNews has previously covered a host of environmental contaminants and toxins that could well be contributing to an increase in children’s health problems. For example the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is used in many hard plastics and can leach from toys and baby bottles. Widely found in the environment, BPA has been linked to health problems in fetuses, babies and children, including attention deficit disorder and neurological symptoms.
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Drug Chemicals Turn Switches on and off at Wrong Times
February 23, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Scientists are increasingly becoming aware of a new mechanism by which pollutants can damage the health of living organisms — epigenetic changes, in which a chemical changes how a gene is expressed.
While some chemicals are toxic (attacking the body’s systems directly) and others are mutagenic (changing the actual code of an organism’s genes), others do not change the way a gene is written, but instead how it acts in the body.
Epigenetic changes “can lead to increased susceptibility to disease,” said Linda S. Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and of the National Toxicology Program. “The susceptibility persists long after the exposure is gone, even decades later. Glands, organs, and systems can be permanently altered.”
Epigenetic changes have been identified that increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, learning disabilities, Parkinson’s disease and more.
One example was recently uncovered by researchers at the University of Cincinnati, who conducted a study on children in New York City who had been exposed to high levels of air pollutants in the womb. These children had higher rates of asthma than children who had not had such exposure.
Upon performing genetic tests, the researchers found that all the exposed, asthmatic children had a methyl group molecule attached to the ACSL3 gene, causing it to be less active than normal. None of the unexposed children had this molecule attached to their ACSL3 gene.
Researchers have also found epigenetic changes in children conceived through in-vitro fertilization. They believe that the chemicals used to incubate the fertilized eggs before implantation might cause epigenetic changes that lead to the higher rates of abdominal wall defects and cancers observed in such children.
Like mutations, epigenetic effects can be passed on to a person’s offspring.
“There is a huge potential impact from these exposures, partly because the changes may be inherited across generations,” Birnbaum said. “You may be affected by what your mother and grandmother were exposed to during pregnancy.”
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Declaration of Asthma Drug as “Risky” by FDA Leads to Fall in Glaxo Shares
February 22, 2010
Reuters
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) shares fall 1 percent after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes steps to cut the use of certain asthma drugs because of serious health risks, hitting prospects for the company’s top-seller Advair.
The move also affects products from AstraZeneca (AZN.L) and Novartis (NOVN.VX), but Glaxo is most vulnerable because its two-in-one inhaler is the market leader, with global sales of $7.8 billion in 2009.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley say the tighter rules are likely to push Advair volume growth back into negative territory.
“We see a likely worst-case impact as up to around 3 percent downgrade to 2011 sales and around 7 percent impact to EBIT,” they say in a note. Glaxo also faces a key Advair patent trial in Germany on Feb. 23.
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American Children Prone to Chronic Health Problems
February 17, 2010
All Headline News
By David Goodhue
Chronic illnesses in children, including asthma, obesity and behavior problems, have increased significantly in the past three decades.
Dr. Jeanne Van Cleave, with the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy in Massachusetts, the lead researcher on the study, said there is an increase in parents reporting health conditions that limit activities or schooling, that require medicine, special equipment or specialized health services, and that lasted at least a year.
She said that the prevalence of these illnesses increased from 12.8 percent in 1994 to more than 25 percent in 2006.
Van Cleave said that while many serious illnesses that have historically affected children have decreased over the years because of scientific and medical advances, lifestyle, cultural and environmental factors may be the cause of some of the chronic illnesses in children today.
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HRT and Asthma Linked
February 12, 2010
Guardian
By BMJ Group
Taking oestrogen-only HRT might increase women’s short-term risk of developing asthma for the first time, especially for women with allergies, according to a big new study from France.
What do we know already?
Previous studies have suggested that the hormone oestrogen plays a part in making women susceptible to asthma. Although we tend to think of asthma as a disease that starts in childhood, quite a lot of people first get asthma as an adult.
Asthma is more common in girls once they’ve started their periods, and it tends to become less common after women go through the menopause.
However, asthma has become more common in all age groups in recent years. So, doctors are interested to know whether hormonal treatments – like the contraceptive pill and HRT– have an effect.
The new study looked at a group of more than 57,000 French women who were around menopausal age, none of whom had been diagnosed with asthma at the start of the study. Researchers followed the women for an average 10 years, recording what medicines they took during that time and whether they were diagnosed with asthma.
What does the new study say?
Women who took oestrogen-only HRT were more likely to get asthma during the study. Women who took combined HRT, which includes oestrogen plus another hormone called progestogen, didn’t have an increased risk.
During the study, tabout one woman in 1,000 was diagnosed with asthma each year. Of these women, 56 percent had taken HRT within the past two years, and 36 percent had never taken HRT. When the researchers looked at all the factors affecting the women’s health, they found women who’d taken oestrogen-only HRT had about a 67 percent increased risk of getting asthma, compared with women who never used HRT.
Looking at other factors, the researchers said that having had an allergic disease before (for example, hay fever or eczema) increased the risk when combined with HRT. Never having smoked also increased the risk when combined with HRT, but this could be because it was hard to untangle the increased risk of asthma from smoking, from the effects of HRT.
The increased risk from HRT seemed to wear off a couple of years after women had stopped taking it.
How reliable are the findings?
This is a big, well-conducted study with interesting results. However, this type of study can never prove that one thing (HRT) caused another (asthma). It can only show that there’s an association, which might have been caused by something else. For example, women taking long-term medication like HRT need to visit their GP for prescriptions, so might be more likely to mention problems with their breathing and be diagnosed with asthma. We can’t be sure that HRT itself caused the asthma.
Where does the study come from?
The study was done by researchers from France and Mexico. It was published in Thorax, a medical journal that is part of the BMJ Group. It was funded by grants from three French research institutions.
What does this mean for me?
If you’re considering taking HRT for menopausal symptoms, there are a lot of pros and cons to take on board. HRT has previously been linked to a slightly increased risk of heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, and blood clots. This is one more factor to take account of when deciding whether to take HRT to relieve the symptoms of menopause.
What should I do now?
If you have concerns about the medicine you are taking, make an appointment to speak to your GP.
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Parasites In Your Body Can Help Your Immune System
February 11, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Humans and gastrointestinal parasites might have co-evolved in such a way that the parasites actually help regulate to human immune system to prevent against allergies, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Nottingham.
Researchers believe that over the course of millions of years, gastrointestinal parasites have evolved an ability to suppress the human immune system as a survival mechanism. Because parasitic infestation has been so common throughout human evolutionary history, the human immune system has in turn evolved to compensate for this effect.
This means that if the parasites are removed, the immune system may actually function too strongly, resulting in maladaptive immune responses such as asthma, eczema and other allergies.
To test this hypothesis, researchers used drugs to eliminate hookworm infection in a 1,500 children between the ages of six and 17 who were living in a rural village in central Vietnam. This region was selected for its very low rates of allergies and high parasitic infestation rate. Two-thirds of all children in the area are infested with hookworm or other gastrointestinal parasites.
The researchers found that once the children were no longer infected with parasites, their rates of dust mite allergies significantly increased. This supports the hypothesis that parasites help regulate immune responses.
“The next step is to understand exactly how and when gut parasites program the human immune system in a way that protects against allergies, and for such studies, follow-up from birth will be essential,” said researcher Carsten Flohr.
Researchers hope that understanding the relationship between parasites and the human immune system could lead to a better overall understanding of allergies.
“The prospects of further studies in this area are very exciting, as we could see groundbreaking treatments for asthma and other allergies developed as a result,” said Elaine Vickers of Asthma UK, which funded the study.
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Asthma Worsens With Vitamin D Deficiency
February 1, 2010
Business Week
By Steven Reinberg
People with asthma who have low levels of vitamin D fare worse than those with high levels of the “sunshine” vitamin, a new study finds.
Researchers found that asthmatics with high vitamin D levels have better lung function and respond better to treatment than asthmatics with low vitamin D levels do.
“Our findings suggest that low vitamin D levels are associated with worse asthma,” said lead researcher Dr. E. Rand Sutherland, from the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at National Jewish Health in Denver.
In addition, vitamin D levels predict how well “somebody is going to respond to steroidal asthma medications,” he said. “It may be that vitamin D is acting as a modifier of the immune system or a modifier of steroid response in ways that are relevant to people with asthma.”
The report is published in the Jan. 28 online edition of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
For the study, Sutherland’s team took the vitamin D levels of 54 asthmatics and assessed lung function, airway hyper-responsiveness, which is the prevalence of airway constriction, and response to steroid treatment.
People with low levels of vitamin D in their blood did worse on the tests that evaluated lung function and airway hyper-responsiveness, the researchers found.
In those with vitamin levels below 30 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), airway hyper-responsiveness almost doubled, compared to those with more D in their blood.
Low vitamin D levels were also associated with a worse response to steroid therapy and increased production of the pro-inflammatory cytokine, TNF-alpha. This raises the possibility that low vitamin D levels are tied to increased inflammation of the airways.
The heaviest participants had the lowest levels of vitamin D, the study noted. Asthma is associated with obesity, and this (lack of vitamin D) may be a factor linking the two conditions, Sutherland said.
“There is a potential that restoring normal vitamin D levels in people with asthma may help improve their asthma,” Sutherland said.
But whether vitamin D supplements will help asthmatics isn’t known, he added.
Current recommendations for vitamin D supplements for adults is 400 IU to 600 IU, depending on age, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
“There is likely little harm in adhering to those guidelines,” Sutherland said.
The Institute of Medicine is currently evaluating these levels and expects to announce new guidelines in May.
Sunlight, fatty fish and fish oils are also sources of vitamin D.
Dr. Michael F. Holick, director of the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine, called this “a very nice study that confirms previous observations that vitamin D enhances lung function.”
“It is also known that glucocorticoids [steroids] increase the destruction of vitamin D, thus making patients with asthma at higher risk for vitamin D deficiency, which in turn decreases lung function and makes their disease worse,” he said.
Holick thinks most people, asthmatic or not, get too little D and should take supplements.
“It’s pretty clear that you need a minimum of 1,400 and up to 2,000 IU a day, and if you are obese, you probably need at least one and a half to two times as much, because the fat sequesters the vitamin D,” Holick said. “We now recognize that you can take up to 10,000 IUs a day and not worry about any untoward toxicity.”
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BPAs in Food Packaging
January 18, 2010
The New York Times
By Denise Grady
In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008.
The agency said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.
The action is another example of the drug agency under the Obama administration becoming far more aggressive in taking hard looks at what it sees as threats to public health. In recent months, the agency has stepped up its oversight of food safety and has promised to tighten approval standards for medical devices.
Concerns about BPA are based on studies that have found harmful effects in animals, and on the recognition that the chemical seeps into food and baby formula, and that nearly everyone is exposed to it, starting in the womb.
But health officials said there was no proof that BPA was dangerous to humans.
“If we thought it was unsafe, we would be taking strong regulatory action,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the principal deputy commissioner of the drug agency, at a news briefing.
Nonetheless, health officials suggested a number of things people could do to limit their exposure to BPA, like throwing away scratched or worn bottles or cups made with BPA (it can leak from the scratches), not putting very hot liquids into cups or bottles with BPA and checking the labels on containers to make sure they are microwave safe. The drug agency also recommended that mothers breastfeed their infants for at least 12 months; liquid formula contains traces of BPA.
BPA has been used since the 1960s to make hard plastic bottles, sippy cups for toddlers and the linings of food and beverage cans, including the cans used to hold infant formula and soda. Until recently, it was used in baby bottles, but major manufacturers are now making bottles without it. Plastic items containing BPA are generally marked with a 7 on the bottom for recycling purposes.
The chemical can leach into food, and a study of more than 2,000 people found that more than 90 percent of them had BPA in their urine. Traces have also been found in breast milk, the blood of pregnant women and umbilical cord blood.
Reports of potential health effects have made BPA notorious, especially among parents, and led to widespread shunning of products thought to contain the chemical. Canada, Chicago and Suffolk County, N.Y., have banned BPA from children’s products.
The government will spend $30 million on BPA research in humans and animals, to take place over 18 to 24 months, health officials said at a news briefing on Friday.
Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said the research would involve potential effects on behavior, obesity, diabetes, reproductive disorders, cancer, asthma, heart disease and effects that could be carried from one generation to the next.
Activists on both sides of the passionately debated issue said they were disappointed in the government’s action. The American Chemical Council, which represents companies that make and use BPA, issued a statement saying BPA was safe, praising the health agencies as confirming that there was no proof of harm to people by it, but also saying, “We are disappointed that some of the recommendations are likely to worry consumers and are not well founded.”
Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, said the F.D.A. had not gone far enough, because its recommendations put the responsibility on families and not on companies making products containing BPA. In addition, Ms. Zuckerman said, the focus on safety should not be limited to children, because studies have linked the chemicals to heart and liver disease and other problems in adults.
Government evaluations of BPA have had a contentious history. The drug agency wrote a draft report calling it safe in 2008. But shortly after that, the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, said BPA was cause for “some concern,” citing the same issues that the drug agency is now agreeing to: potential effects on the brain, behavior and prostate in fetuses, infants and children.
Then the drug agency asked an independent panel of scientific advisers to review its draft report, and the panel gave it a scathing review. It accused the F.D.A. of ignoring important evidence and giving consumers a false sense of security about the chemical. The drug agency promised to reconsider BPA, and the announcement on Friday fulfilled that pledge.
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