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Newswise —  In the U.S., where one of five children entering elementary school is overweight, a healthy diet is critical for preschool children, who are setting their eating patterns for the future. In 2009, more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat milk were included in the food voucher package provided by USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). As a result, the diet quality improved for the roughly 4 million children who are served by WIC, according to a study by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, UC San Francisco and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Nutrition Policy Institute. “Although the findings only showed significant improvement for consumption of greens and beans, the other areas for which WIC has put in important efforts – increased consumption of whole fruits rather than fruit juice, increased whole grains – all show trends in the right direction,” said lead author June Tester, a physician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, “and there is opportunity for further study in the future when more years have passed after this landmark change in the WIC package.” For the UC study, to be published Thursday, April 7, in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics, researchers analyzed the diets of 1,197 children, ages 2 to 4 years, from low-income households before and after the 2009 change in the food package. The researchers used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to compare a nationally representative sample from 2003 to 2008 with diets in 2011 to 2012. The researchers calculated the Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010), which is a score with 100 possible points measuring adherence to dietary guidelines, from two recalls by parents of their children’s diets over the previous 24-hour period. For children in households using WIC, this score increased from 52.4 to 58.3 after the policy change. After adjusting for characteristics in the sample and trends in the comparison group, the researchers showed that there was an increase of 3.7 points that was attributable to the WIC package change. This represents important evidence of an improvement in the diets for these children in WIC households. “Vegetables are part of a healthful diet, but in general, children don’t eat enough of them,” Tester said. Using the Healthy Eating Index, the researchers calculated the Greens and Beans score, which counts dark green vegetables and includes any legumes, such as beans and peas, that were not already counted as protein foods on a different score. After the food package was changed, the Greens and Beans score increased for children in WIC but not for their counterparts. Roughly half of the children in WIC households had eaten some vegetables, whereas only one in five non-WIC children had consumed any green vegetables at all in the two days their parents were surveyed. The change in the WIC food package is an important policy change in the effort to improve the quality of diets of young children, said Tester, a pediatrician. Tester noted that the results of this study will be useful to the Institute of Medicine committee that is reviewing and assessing the nutritional status and food needs of the WIC-eligible population and the impact of the 2009 revision to WIC food packages. The committee will make recommendations for changing the food packages. “Increasing consumption of nutritious foods such as green leafy vegetables and whole grains in the low-income children served by WIC will help them establish healthier eating patterns for their future,” said co-author Patricia Crawford, UC Cooperative Extension nutrition specialist with UC ANR’s Nutrition Policy Institute. The switch from whole milk to low-fat milk was well received by the clientele and did not result in decreased milk consumption among the preschoolers, noted Tester, Crawford and co-author Cindy Leung, postdoctoral scholar at UCSF Center for Health and Community. This study is the first to report on the significant improvements in diet quality in young children associated with the WIC package change using a nationally representative sample, and the first to do so with the updated Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010). The National Institutes for Health funded this study.
Newswise —  There may be a hidden cost to the old adage of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps: Research out of the University of Georgia suggests the unintended stress spurred by upward mobility can pose an unintended health risk later down the road. Previous studies have shown the negative health effect that stress can cause, particularly on people coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. But this study specified the approach and narrowed it down to just look at the effect on “future oriented” adolescents who strive to break the cycle and earn higher levels of education and income. Researchers in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences, including professor K.A.S. Wickrama, assistant research scientist Catherine O’Neal and graduate student Tae Kyoung Lee, combed through a 13-year national study that contained clinical health data from over 11,000 participants as they aged into adulthood. They found that young adults who come from adverse backgrounds—but also show resilience to break that pattern and achieve a higher social status—are more likely to be unhealthy later in life than those not motivated to change their circumstances. Specifically, the researchers found that stress increased participants’ risk of developing cardio-metabolic diseases, like diabetes, heart disease and stroke. The study, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, relied on self-reported stress from participants to determine the cause and clinical markers including blood pressure, body mass index, glucose levels and others to determine subsequent health effects. As young adults work to break the cycle of poverty or strive toward being the first in their family to go to college, they experience a disproportionate burden of stress—and were not resilient in terms of their future health due to the combined burden of lived adversity and striving to change it. This stress is then likely to cause irreversible weathering in their body systems. “The act of striving for socioeconomic attainment is itself stressful for youth already experiencing stressful life events,” said Wickrama, the Athletic Association Professor in Human Development and Family Science. The findings suggest that although there may be long-term health benefits associated with increased socioeconomic status, there may also be consequences due to the subsequent mental and physical strain. The notion seems counterintuitive at first, but the relationship between stress and health risks has been shown before. This study shows the intensification of health effects for future-oriented youth with a stressful family background. Researchers said that the study shows the need for institutional policy that supports young people who show signs of future upward orientation and come from disadvantaged backgrounds. “In order to reduce health vulnerability and the burden that comes as a cost of succeeding,” said O’Neal, at-risk youth “need support through preventative measures.”
Newswise —  A research team led by University of Arkansas chemist Jingyi Chen and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences microbiologist Mark Smeltzer has developed an alternative therapeutic approach to fighting antibiotic-resistant infections. The novel method uses a targeted, light-activated nanodrug consisting of antibiotic-loaded nanoconstructs, which are nanoscale cages made of gold and coated with polydopamine. The antibiotic is loaded into the polydopamine coating. The gold nanocages convert laser irradiation to heat, resulting in the photothermal effect and simultaneously releasing the antibiotic from the polydopamine coating. “We believe that this approach could facilitate the effective treatment of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including those associated with bacterial biofilms, which are involved in a wide variety of bacterial infections,” said Chen, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. Microbial resistance to antibiotics has become a growing public health concern in hospitals and the community at large, so much so that the Infectious Diseases Society of America has designated six bacterial species as “ESKAPE pathogens” – Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter species. This designation reflects the limited availability of antibiotics that can be used to treat infections caused by these species. “It is also estimated that 80 percent of all bacterial infections involve formation of a biofilm, and all of these infections share the common characteristic of intrinsic resistance to conventional antibiotic therapy,” said Smeltzer, professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UAMS and director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses. “Intrinsic resistance refers to the fact that bacteria within a biofilm exhibit a therapeutically relevant level of resistance to essentially all antibiotics." Researchers in Smeltzer’s laboratory study the ESKAPE pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. They focus on how the pathogen causes biofilm-associated bone infection and infections associated with orthopaedic implants. But, as Smeltzer explains, there are many other examples in infections – intravenous catheters and vascular grafts, for example – caused by Staphylococcus aureus. The team used Staphylococcus aureus as the proof-of-principle pathogen to demonstrate the potency of their nanodrug. The combination of achieving a photothermal effect and controlled release of antibiotics directly at the site of infection was achieved by laser irradiation at levels within the current safety standard for use in humans. The therapeutic effects of this approach were validated using planktonic bacterial cultures – bacterial cells that are free-floating rather than contained with a biofilm – of both methicillin-sensitive and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains. However, the method was subsequently shown to be effective even in the context of an intrinsically resistant biofilm. “The even better news is that the technology we developed would be readily adaptable to other bacterial pathogens that cause such infections, including the other ESKAPE pathogens,” Smeltzer said. The researchers’ work was recently published in ACS Infectious Diseases, a publication of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and “the first journal to highlight chemistry and its role in the multidisciplinary and collaborative field of infectious disease research.”
Newswise — A single dose of oxytocin nasal spray, known to reduce food intake, decreases impulsive behavior in overweight and obese men, according to a preliminary study to be presented Saturday at the Endocrine Society’s 98th annual meeting in Boston. Oxytocin nasal spray (made by Novartis) is a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin, which is important for controlling food intake and weight. It is approved in Europe but not in the United States other than in clinical trials. Oxytocin is available in the United States as an intravenous or injectable drug (Pitocin) to induce labor. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital reported last year that oxytocin nasal spray reduced intake of calories and fat at a test meal without affecting appetite, but they were not sure how the drug has that affect. Results of their new pilot study in 10 overweight and obese men suggest that one way oxytocin lowers food intake might be by improving self-control, said co-investigator Franziska Plessow, PhD, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a research fellow in the Neuroendocrine Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “Knowing the mechanisms of action of intranasal oxytocin is important to investigating oxytocin as a novel treatment strategy for obesity,” Plessow said. “This information may allow us to move forward to large clinical trials, identify who can benefit from the drug, and help optimize the treatment.” To demonstrate the study subjects’ ability to suppress impulsive behavior, the investigators administered a psychology research test called the stop-signal task. In this test, the subject sat in front of a computer and became trained to respond to a square symbol on the computer screen by pressing a designated left button on the keyboard and to a triangle by pressing a right button. After the subject became familiar with that task, he was told to not press a button when he saw a symbol but heard a beep (the stop signal). Because the beep occurred after the symbols appeared with a varying delay that was adjusted to each subject, the new task required the subject to control the behavioral impulse to respond, Plessow explained. Participants took the test on two occasions 15 minutes after they self-administered a dose of nasal spray in each nostril. In a randomly assigned order, one day they received oxytocin and another they received a placebo, or dummy drug. Neither participants nor the tester knew which treatment they received. The men ranged in age from 23 to 43 years and were overweight or obese (BMI ranging from 27.7-33.9 kg/m2). The study, which received pilot grants from the National Institutes of Health-funded Boston Nutrition Obesity Research Center and Nutrition Obesity Research Center at Harvard, had exciting results, according to Plessow. After receiving oxytocin, participants less frequently pressed the button when they were not supposed to. This demonstrated that they were acting less impulsively and exerting more control over their behavior after receiving oxytocin, she said. Plessow said more study is necessary to determine how oxytocin alters self-control and how important this mechanism is in regulating food intake since not all overeating relates to poor self-control. They also will need to test the drug in women. “Our preliminary results in men are promising,” she said. “Oxytocin nasal spray showed no strong side effects and is not as invasive as obesity surgery.” Endocrinologists are at the core of solving the most pressing health problems of our time, from diabetes and obesity to infertility, bone health, and hormone-related cancers. The Endocrine Society is the world’s oldest and largest organization of scientists devoted to hormone research and physicians who care for people with hormone-related conditions.
Newswise — Consumption of fructose, a fruit-derived sugar present in many sweetened beverages and processed foods, has been associated with epidemic levels of diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome and hypertension in the U.S. and around the world. New research presented today at the Experimental Biology 2016 meeting in San Diego further supports this link, finding that high levels of fructose similar to amounts consumed within the American diet may predispose individuals to fast-onset, salt-sensitive hypertension. “A majority of American adults consume 10 percent or more of total calories from added sugars with a subset taking in more than 25 percent of total calories from added sugars,” said lead author Kevin Gordish, PhD. Because beverages are the most common source of added sugars in the American diet, the research team gave rats drinking water with 20 percent fructose—to simulate excessive human soft-drink consumption—and compared them with rats who received plain water in addition to their food for two weeks. During the second week, the rats receiving 20 percent fructose were also given additional salt in their diets. “The specific combination of fructose and high salt introduced in the second week rapidly increased blood pressure, resulting in hypertension. Fructose-linked hypertension was associated with increased sodium retention, decreased sodium excretion and diminished factors that help rid the body of excess salt. This observation of fructose-linked hypertension was only seen a diet with fructose and high salt and not a normal salt diet,” Gordish said. “Fructose intake, similar to amounts consumed within the American diet, predisposed normal rats to a rapid onset of salt-sensitive hypertension. Fructose-linked hypertension was unambiguously due to fructose (and not glucose). Further, fructose had distinct deleterious effects in the kidney not seen with the same amount of glucose.” The results have implications for the U.S. in general and certain ethnic groups such as African Americans, who have a high rate of incidence of salt-sensitive hypertension, in particular. Overall, these findings raise concern about the amount of fructose and salt found in the American diet.
Newswise — A simple blood test can rapidly and accurately detect mutations in two key genes in non-small cell lung tumors, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and other institutions report in a new study – demonstrating the test’s potential as a clinical tool for identifying patients who can benefit from drugs targeting those mutations. The test, known as a liquid biopsy, proved so reliable in the study that the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) this week became the first medical facility in the country to offer it to all patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), either at the time of first diagnosis or of relapse following previous treatment. NSCLC is the most common form of lung cancer, diagnosed in more than 200,000 people in the United States each year, according to the American Cancer Society. An estimated 30 percent of NSCLC patients have mutations in either of the genes included in the study, and can often be treated with targeted therapies. The study is being published online today by the journal JAMA Oncology. The liquid biopsy tested in the study – technically known as rapid plasma genotyping – involves taking a test tube-full of blood, which contains free-floating DNA from cancer cells, and analyzing that DNA for mutations or other abnormalities. (When tumor cells die, their DNA spills into the bloodstream, where it’s known as cell-free DNA.) The technique, which provides a “snapshot” of key genetic irregularities in a tumor, is a common tool in research for probing the molecular make-up of different kinds of cancers. “We see plasma genotyping as having enormous potential as a clinical test, or assay – a rapid, noninvasive way of screening a cancer for common genetic fingerprints, while avoiding the challenges of traditional invasive biopsies,” said the senior author of the study, Geoffrey Oxnard, MD, thoracic oncologist and lung cancer researcher at Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Our study was the first to demonstrate prospectively that a liquid biopsy technique can be a practical tool for making treatment decisions in cancer patients. The trial was such a success that we are transitioning the assay into a clinical test for lung cancer patients at DF/BWCC.” The study involved 180 patients with NSCLC, 120 of whom were newly diagnosed, and 60 of whom had become resistant to a previous treatment, allowing the disease to recur. Participants’ cell-free DNA was tested for mutations in the EGFR and KRAS genes, and for a separate mutation in EGFR that allows tumor cells to become resistant to front-line targeted drugs. The test was performed with a technique known as droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR), which counts the individual letters of the genetic code in cell-free DNA to determine if specific mutations are present. Each participant also underwent a conventional tissue biopsy to test for the same mutations. The results of the liquid biopsies were then compared to those of the tissue biopsies. The data showed that liquid biopsies returned results much more quickly. The median turnaround time for liquid biopsies was three days, compared to 12 days for tissue biopsies in newly diagnosed patients and 27 days in drug-resistant patients. Liquid biopsy was also found to be highly accurate. In newly diagnosed patients, the “predictive value” of plasma ddPCR was 100 percent for the primary EGFR mutation and the KRAS mutation – meaning that a patient who tested positive for either mutation was certain to have that mutation in his or her tumor. For patients with the EGFR resistance mutation, the predictive value of the ddPCR test was 79 percent, suggesting the blood test was able to find additional cases with the mutation that were missed using standard biopsies. “In some patients with the EGFR resistance mutation, ddPCR detected mutations missed by standard tissue biopsy,” Oxnard remarked. “A resistant tumor is inherently made up of multiple subsets of cells, some of which carry different patterns of genetic mutations. A single biopsy is only analyzing a single part of the tumor, and may miss a mutation present elsewhere in the body. A liquid biopsy, in contrast, may better reflect the distribution of mutations in the tumor as a whole.” When ddPCR failed to detect these mutations, the cause was less clear-cut, Oxnard says. It could indicate that the tumor cells don’t carry the mutations or, alternatively, that the tumor isn’t shedding its DNA into the bloodstream. This discrepancy between the test results and the presence of mutations was less common in patients whose cancer had metastasized to multiple sites in the body, researchers found. The ddPCR-based test, or assay, was piloted and optimized for patients at the Translational Resarch lab of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science at Dana-Farber. It was then validated for clinical use at Dana-Farber’s Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology. An advantage of this form of liquid biopsy is that it can help doctors quickly determine whether a patient is responding to therapy. Fifty participants in the study had repeat testing done after starting treatment for their cancer. “Those whose blood tests showed a disappearance of the mutations within two weeks were more likely to stay on the treatment than patients who didn’t see such a reduction,” said the study’s lead author, Adrian Sacher, MD, of Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. And because tumors are constantly evolving and acquiring additional mutations, repeated liquid biopsies can provide early detection of a new mutation – such as the EGFR resistance mutation – that can potentially be treated with targeted agents. “The study data are compelling,” said DF/BWCC pathologist Lynette Sholl, MD, explaining the center’s decision to begin offering ddPCR-based liquid biopsy to all lung cancer patients. “We validated the authors’ findings by cross-comparing results from liquid and tissue biopsies in 34 NSCLC patients. To work as a real-world clinical test, liquid biopsy needs to provide reliable, accurate data and be logistically practical. That’s what we’ve seen with the ddPCR-based blood test. “The test has great utility both for patients newly diagnosed with NSCLC and for those with a recurrence of the disease,” she continued. “It’s fast, it’s quantitative (it indicates the amount of mutant DNA in a sample), and it can be readily employed at a cancer treatment center.” The co-authors of the study are Cloud Paweletz, PhD, Allison O’Connell, BSc, and Nora Feeney, BSc, of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science at Dana-Farber; Ryan S. Alden BSc, and Stacy L. Mach BA, of Dana-Farber; Suzanne E. Dahlberg, PhD, of Dana-Farber and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber, the Belfer Center, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Newswise — For most people, the culmination of a good life is a “good death,” though what that means exactly is a matter of considerable consternation. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine surveyed published, English-language, peer-reviewed reports of qualitative and quantitative studies defining a “good death,” ultimately identifying 11 core themes associated with dying well. The findings are published in the April 2016 issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. The research team, headed by senior author Dilip Jeste, MD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences and director of the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging at UC San Diego School of Medicine, focused on three groups of stakeholders: patients, family members (before or during bereavement) and health care providers. “This is the first time that data from all of the involved parties have been put together,” said Jeste, who is also associate dean for healthy aging and senior care at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Death is obviously a controversial topic. People don’t like to talk about it in detail, but we should. It’s important to speak honestly and transparently about what kind of death each of us would prefer.” The literature search culled through 32 qualifying studies. It identified 11 core themes of good death: preferences for a specific dying process, pain-free status, religiosity/spirituality, emotional well-being, life completion, treatment preferences, dignity, family, quality of life, relationship with the health care provider and “other.” The top three themes across all stakeholder groups were preferences for specific dying process, pain-free status and emotional well-being. For other themes, however, different stakeholders put somewhat different levels of emphasis. For example, patients more often cited religiosity/spirituality as important than did family members, who believed dignity and life completion were more critical to a good death. Health care providers tended to represent a middle ground between patients and family members. “Clinically, we often see a difference between what patients, family members and health care providers value as most important near the end of life”, said first author Emily Meier, PhD, a psychologist at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health. “Ultimately, existential and other psychosocial concerns may be prevalent among patients, and this serves as a reminder that we must ask about all facets of care that are essential at the end of life.” The bottom line, said Jeste, is “ask the patient.” “Usually, patients know what they want or need and there is relief in talking about it. It gives them a sense of control. I hope these findings spur greater conversation across the spectrum. It may be possible to develop formal rating scales and protocols that will prompt greater discussion and better outcomes. You can make it possible to have a good death by talking about it sometime before.”
Newswise — Chicago, Ill. - Elementary and middle school students who are given at least 25 minutes to eat lunch are more likely to choose fruits and consume more of their entrees, milk, and vegetables according to a new study released in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Each day, over 30 million U.S. students receive a free or discounted meal thanks to the National School Lunch Program. For children from low-income households, these meals can account for almost half of their daily caloric intake, so it is vitally important for schools to find ways to improve student selections and consumption and limit food waste. This new study examined the association between the length of the lunch period and the food choices and intake of students. Data for the study were collected on six nonconsecutive days throughout the 2011 to 2012 school year as part of the MEALS study, a large, school-based randomized controlled trial. The MEALS study was a collaboration between the nonprofit organization Project Bread and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health to improve the selection and consumption of healthier school foods. Researchers conducted a plate waste study, which is the gold standard for assessing children’s diets. Investigators found that when kids have less than 20 minutes of seated time in the cafeteria to eat lunch, they were significantly less likely to select a fruit when compared to peers who had at least 25 minutes to eat lunch (44% vs 57%, respectively). Furthermore, the study found that children with less than 20 minutes to eat lunch consumed 13% less of their entrees, 10% less of their milk, and 12% less of their veggies when compared to students who had at least 25 minutes to eat their lunch. This indicates that kids who were given less time at lunch may be missing out on key components of a healthy diet such as fiber-rich whole grains and calcium. “Policies that improve the school food environment can have important public health implications in addressing the growing socioeconomic disparities in the prevalence of obesity and in improving the overall nutrient quality of children’s diets,” explained lead investigator Juliana F. W. Cohen, ScD, ScM, Assistant Professor, Department of Health Sciences, Merrimack College, North Andover, MA, and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Nutrition, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA. “This research suggests that enabling students to have sufficient time to eat their meals can help address this important issue.” According to the study, another challenge kids face is the minutes they must use during their school lunchtime period for activities besides eating or sitting. Many students spend a considerable amount of time traveling to the cafeteria and then waiting in line to get their lunch. After taking this into account, some children in the study had as little as 10 minutes to eat their lunch. “Although not all schools will be able to accommodate longer lunch periods, several other factors have been cited as areas where schools can improve the amount of time students have to eat,” said Cohen. “Increasing the number of serving lines, more efficient cashiers, and/or an automated point of sale system can all lead to enhanced efficiency for students going through lunch lines.” With this research, investigators have shown that there is an association between the amount of time a student is given to eat and how much food they are likely to consume. A shorter lunch period means that children are in danger of missing out on important calories they rely on during the school day. In addition, studies have shown that consuming food too quickly is associated with a decrease in satiety, which can lead to overeating and contribute to obesity. Because of this, having insufficient time for lunch is especially precarious as kids are learning the eating habits they’ll take with them into adulthood. As schools search for ways to increase student consumption of entrees, fruits, and vegetables, offering kids more time to eat may be the key to better choices. “Policies that enable students to have at least 25 minutes of seated time might lead to improvements in students’ diets and decrease plate waste in school cafeterias,” concluded Cohen. “These findings provide evidence that policies at the district, state, or national level may be warranted to ensure all children have sufficient time to eat their meals in schools.” To learn more click here
Newswise — People in addiction treatment programs around the world use tobacco at two to three times the rate of people who are not being treated for addiction, according to a review of research studies from 20 countries other than the United States.  “When people come into treatment for drugs and alcohol, we are not treating another addiction that has a significant chance of eventually killing them, which is tobacco use,” said Guydish. “At a public health level, this means that our addiction treatment efforts should address smoking and tobacco use better than they do now.”  Guydish and his team reviewed 54 studies, involving a total of 37,364 participants in 20 countries on six continents, which were published in English from 1987 to 2013. They found that among people in treatment for drug and alcohol use, the overall rate of smoking was 84 percent, compared with a rate of 31 percent for members of the general population, matched for gender and year of study.  The results agree with an earlier review led by Guydish of smoking addiction treatment programs in the U.S. In that paper, the authors found that the median smoking rate among people in addiction treatment was 76.3 percent, in contrast with the smoking rate in the general U.S. population, which is now estimated at less than 18 percent. “Every person who enters substance abuse treatment ought to have their tobacco use evaluated and treated,” said Guydish. “If they don’t want to be treated and quit right away, they should have some education to help them think more about quitting.”  Guydish observed that “there are data from a number of studies which strongly suggest that you can improve substance treatment outcomes by addressing smoking among the patients in treatment. That’s what we should be doing.”  The World Health Organization (WHO) has created a policy package called MPOWER, noted Guydish, which is designed to assist countries in implementing anti-smoking initiatives. “We would recommend that WHO pay attention to this finding and use it to extend their MPOWER strategies,” said Guydish. “Anyone who is interested in smoking reduction internationally could use this information at the policy level.”  Co-authors of the study are Emma Passalacqua, Anna Pagano, PhD, Thao Le, MPH, Barbara Tajima, MEd, Lindsay Docto, Daria Garina and Kevin Delucchi, PhD, of UCSF; Cristina Martínez of the Catalan Institute of Oncology-Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain; and JongSerl Chun of Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea. The paper is titled, “An International Systematic Review of Smoking Prevalence in Addiction Treatment.” The study was supported by funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the UCSF Tobacco Related Disease Research Program. UCSF is the nation's leading university exclusively focused on health. Now celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding as a medical college, UCSF is dedicated to transforming health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with world-renowned programs in the biological sciences, a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and top-tier hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals.    
Newswise — Vampires may want your blood for the sake of their longevity, but have you ever wondered why your doctor is also interested in it? Well, unlike the vampire who draws blood for his own benefit, a doctor is interested in your blood for the good of your health. “Blood carries many secrets about your health,” says Karen Rizzo, MD, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society and a practicing physician in Lancaster. “Through your blood, physicians can have a better understanding of your health as blood tests can help find potential problems early.” One such problem that worries physicians is heart disease. And, through blood tests, physicians can look inside your body to learn if you’re at risk or not. So, it’s not unusual for a physician to order a lipid panel to measure total cholesterol and triglycerides. It’s a common test given to determine the risk of heart disease. The total cholesterol is divided into two subclasses, which are called high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Science has proven that the lower your LDL, triglycerides, and total cholesterol, the lower your risk of heart disease. People with heart disease tend to have elevated cholesterol, especially LDL and triglycerides. “Cholesterol is important piece of your health puzzle,” says Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians President Nicole Davis, MD, who practices in Wyncote. “Keeping it in check and under control can lead to longer, healthier lives, while abnormal numbers can be traced to serious issues like heart attack and stroke.” In Pennsylvania it’s no laughing matter. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, heart disease is the number one killer of Pennsylvanians. Stroke ranks up there too and is the third leading cause of death in women, and fifth for men. On an average day in 2010, there were 86 deaths due to heart disease and 18 deaths due to stroke. For that year, 31,274 Pennsylvanians died due to heart disease, representing 25.3 percent of all deaths. In that same year, 6,629 or 5.4 percent of deaths in Pennsylvania were the result of a stroke. Certain blood tests are also used to detect signs of cancer, although patients should not jump to conclusions if their physician orders a cancer blood test. Diagnosing a patient can be a process of elimination to find exactly what is wrong. But a complete blood count (CBC) is a common blood test that a doctor may recommend to help diagnose leukemia and lymphoma. It may also be used with current cancer patients to see if cancer has spread to bone marrow or to determine how a person is handling treatment. Most recently, Science Translational Medicine, a medical journal from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, published an article that reported a new blood test could help detect a relapse of breast cancer. This blood test uses a technique called mutation tracking and has been making national headlines. “It’s exciting to learn of these types of advancements, and as we’ve known for many other diseases, blood can tell us a lot about a patient,” says Margaret A. O’Grady, RN, MSN, OCN, who is currently president of the Pennsylvania Society of Oncology & Hematology. According to state statistics from the Pennsylvania Cancer Incidence and Mortality 2012 Executive Summary, there were 10,652 cases of female breast cancer in Pennsylvania. Another blood test is the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test. This test is used to look for warning signs of prostate cancer; however, this detection test can’t fully tell a physician if a man has cancer. But, if the results are at a level that may be of a concern to the physician, this test could lead to a physician to order a biopsy. According to Cancer Facts and Figures, Pennsylvania 2014, prostate cancer was the third most common cancer in the Keystone State behind lung and breast. Fortunately, the age-adjusted rates of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania as well as the country showed a decreasing trend from 2001 to 2011 while the Pennsylvania rate was lower than the national rate. “It’s very clear that early detection plays an important role in beating any type of cancer,” says O’Grady. “Blood tests can and do play a role in early detection for many patients of certain types of cancer.” For those planning to have a baby, expect your physician to also be interested in your blood during pregnancy. For pregnant women, a blood test might be used to monitor potential problems such as anemia, or diagnosis of possible infections such as toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is harmless to the pregnant woman, but it may cross the placenta and cause harm to the baby. “It’s important for a mother-to-be to pay close attention to their health during pregnancy,” says Kurt T. Barnhart, MD, FACOG, who is currently the chair of the Pennsylvania Section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Women should see their physician throughout pregnancy for the safety of both themselves and their baby,” says Dr. Barnhart, who practices in Philadelphia. “Blood tests can be expected periodically.” Finally, when it comes to blood, the Pennsylvania Medical Society says community members should consider becoming blood donors. According to the organization, there’s no substitute for human blood and one pint of donated blood could save as many as four lives. This news release is brought to you by the Pennsylvania Health News Service Project, consisting of 21 Pennsylvania-based medical and specialty associations and societies. Members of PHNS include Pennsylvania Allergy & Asthma Association, Pennsylvania Dental Association, Pennsylvania Academy of Dermatology & Dermatologic Surgery, Pennsylvania Academy of Ophthalmology, Pennsylvania Academy of Otolaryngology, Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians, Pennsylvania American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Cardiology, Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Physicians, Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Pennsylvania Medical Society Alliance, Pennsylvania Medical Society, Pennsylvania Neurosurgical Society, Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society, Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society, Pennsylvania Society of Anesthesiologists, Pennsylvania Society of Gastroenterology, Pennsylvania Society of Oncology & Hematology, Robert H. Ivy Society of Plastic Surgeons, and Urological Association of Pennsylvania. Inquiries about PHNS can be directed to Chuck Moran via the Pennsylvania Medical Society at (717) 558-7820, cmoran@pamedsoc.org, or via Twitter @ChuckMoran7.