Agricultural Pesticides May Affect Kids’ Breathing

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Early exposure to widely used pesticides may harm children’s lungs, a new study says.

Previous research has looked at the harmful effect of organophosphate pesticides — chemicals that target the nervous system — on adult agricultural workers. This new study looked at children living in an agricultural area where the organophosphates are used.

“This is the first evidence suggesting that children exposed to organophosphates have poorer lung function,” said study senior author Brenda Eskenazi, a professor of epidemiology and of maternal and child health at the University of California, Berkeley.

For this study, researchers measured levels of organophosphate pesticides in urine samples collected on five occasions from 279 children in California’s Salinas Valley between the ages of 6 months and 5 years.

The area is an agricultural hub, producing lettuce, grapes, orchids and more for much of the nation.

At age 7, the children were given a test to assess their ability to take deep breaths and then expel the air. Each 10-fold increase in organophosphate levels was associated with about an 8 percent decrease in the amount of air a child could exhale, the study found.

That decline is similar to that caused by exposure to secondhand smoke from mothers, according to the study published Dec. 3 in the journal Thorax.

The findings remained constant even after the researchers accounted for other factors that could affect the children’s lung health, including smoking by their mothers, air pollution, or mold or pets in the home.

“The kids in our study with higher pesticide exposure had lower breathing capacity,” study author Rachel Raanan said a university news release. “If the reduced lung function persists into adulthood, it could leave our participants at greater risk of developing respiratory problems like COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].”

Raanan said the study adds exposure to organophosphate pesticides to the growing list of environmental exposures — including air pollution, indoor cook-stove smoke and tobacco smoke — that could harm the developing lungs of children.

“Given they are still used worldwide, we believe our findings deserve further attention,” she added.

Although use of organophosphates is still widespread, it has decreased considerably in the United States since the study began in 2000, the researchers said in background notes.

While the study found an association between pesticide exposure and respiratory decline, it didn’t prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

More information

The American College of Medical Toxicology has more about pesticides.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1Tnue9T

Diabetes or Obesity During Pregnancy May Affect Fetal Heart: Study

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Being obese or having diabetes during pregnancy can affect the heart of the fetus, a new study finds.

But the impact of these changes aren’t yet clear, the researchers added.

The study included 82 pregnant women with diabetes, 26 obese pregnant women and 70 healthy pregnant women. The heart muscle of the fetuses in obese women and those with diabetes showed changes that weren’t seen in the fetuses of healthy women. The changes were only visible with a special type of ultrasound of the heart called echocardiography. The changes weren’t seen using standard echocardiography, the study found.

The findings were to be presented Thursday at a European Society of Cardiology (ESC) meeting in Spain. Findings from meetings are typically seen as preliminary until they’re published in a peer-reviewed journal.

“Diabetes and obesity are major epidemics of the present century. I see a lot of mothers with one or both conditions in my clinical practice and wanted to investigate if these maternal conditions had any effect on the fetal hearts,” study author Dr. Aparna Kulkarni, a New York City pediatric cardiologist from Montefiore Medical Center, said in an ESC news release.

But, while these findings are important, “I don’t want pregnant women with diabetes or obesity to think that something will definitely go wrong with their pregnancy. We need more answers about what impact diabetes and obesity in the mother may have on the child after birth, before coming to firm conclusions about implications for the health of the baby,” Kulkarni noted.

Further research is needed to determine when these fetal heart muscle changes occur during pregnancy, if anything can be done to prevent them, and whether they affect heart health later in life, Kulkarni said.

As a follow-up, she plans to look at the hearts of the babies in the study when the children are 1 year old. That will help determine if the heart muscle abnormalities are lasting and, if so, whether they have gotten worse, she added.

More information

The U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion offers tips for a healthy pregnancy.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1Q3anPj

Playing Contact Sports in Youth May Raise Risk for Degenerative Brain Disease

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — National Football League football players may not be the only ones who can develop a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated concussions during decades of play, a new study suggests.

Even men who only played an amateur contact sport during their youth may face an increased risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a devastating brain condition that can affect thinking, memory, behavior and mood, Mayo Clinic researchers report.

To come to this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the brains of 66 men who had donated their organs to the Mayo Clinic Brain Bank and participated in sports such as football, rugby, wrestling, boxing and basketball while in school. Their brains were compared to the brains of 198 people, including 66 women, who never played contact sports.

CTE was found in the brains of a third of the men who played amateur contact sports. But no sign of the disease was detected in the brains of those who never played contact sports, the researchers said.

“The 32 percent of CTE we found in our brain bank is surprisingly high for the frequency of neurodegenerative pathology within the general population,” wrote study author Kevin Bieniek, a predoctoral student in Mayo Graduate School’s Neurobiology of Disease program.

The study was published in the December issue of the journal Acta Neuropathologica.

The report comes on the heels of news last week that former NFL football great Frank Gifford had CTE when he died at age 84 in August. This latest finding significantly widens the scope of who might be vulnerable to developing the brain disease, the study authors said.

“If one in three individuals who participate in a contact sport goes on to develop CTE pathology, this could present a real challenge down the road,” Bieniek said in a journal news release.

More research is needed to find out if CTE in former amateur players causes any changes in thinking and memory or behavior.

Dr. Dennis Dickson, senior study author and neuropathologist at Mayo Clinic, noted that this study is the first to use newly developed government criteria to diagnose CTE in nonprofessional athletes.

“The frequency with which he [Bieniek] found CTE pathology in former [amateur] athletes exposed to contact sports was surprising,” Dickson said. “It is pathology that had gone previously unrecognized.”

The researchers also identified two genetic markers that may affect the risk of developing CTE.

“These markers need to be further studied in a larger group of CTE cases, but they could be very important in determining whether an individual is at greater risk of developing these brain changes,” Bieniek said.

“The purpose of our study is not to discourage children and adults from participating in sports because we believe the mental and physical health benefits are great,” he noted.

“It is vital that people use caution when it comes to protecting the head. Through CTE awareness, greater emphasis will be placed on making contact sports safer, with better protective equipment and fewer head-to-head contacts,” Bieniek concluded.

More information

Boston University’s CTE Center has more about CTE.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1Q3anyS

Chill, Your Hair Tie Probably Won’t Give You an Infection

Photo: Getty Images

Turns out hair ties can do more harm than disappearing when you need them most. They can also send you to the hospital with a potentially life-threatening infection—or so the Internet would like you to believe.

Last week, news about a Kentucky woman named Audree Kopp who was hospitalized for an infection she caught from her hair-tie went viral.  Sounds crazy, right? Even Kopp admits it does.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Kopp told CBS Local. “I thought that it was a spider bite, or something else, not from wearing hair-ties.”

Doctors explained to the local news station that a “glittery” hair-tie she wore very tightly on her wrist caused bacteria to creep under her skin, eventually causing a large abscess.

RELATED: 5 Ways to Tell If You Need an Antibiotic

After a course of antibiotics didn’t stop the lesion from growing, Kopp headed to the emergency room, where doctors had no choice but to drain the abscess to prevent the infection from spreading. (If it had spread to her bloodstream, she could have developed sepsis, which is life-threatening.)

The problem probably started because of how tight the hair-tie was, New York dermatologist and author of Skin Rules Debra Jaliman, MD, explained to Health. “If the hair tie is very tight then it can abrade your skin and any time you abrade the skin, bacteria can get inside.”

Wearing the same, super-tight hair-tie for a long period of time also probably played a role.

Kopp posted on Facebook that the infection was caused by three different bacteria: “strep, staph, AND poly negative.”

RELATED: What’s That Itch Down There?

Dr. Jaliman says that it’s rare to get all three infections at once. The strep and gram-negative bacteria (what Kopp misidentified as poly-negative bacteria) are usually found in the environment, whereas staph is a common infection caused by staphylococcus bacteria, which normally lives on the skin or in the nose.

Though most of the time these infections are easily treatable with antibiotics, they can turn dangerous if they get out of hand and the bacteria enters your bloodstream, joints, bones, lungs, or heart.

The good news is this is also uncommon, and getting one of these infections from a hair-tie is even more unlikely than that. “Many people wear hair ties around their wrist and it is very rare to get an infection. It is even rarer to get a life-threatening infection,” Dr. Jaliman says.

The bottom line is there’s no reason to stop keeping them handy on your wrist, but Dr. Jaliman still suggests paying attention to your hair tie.

“Although the chances are slim, there’s no reason to risk it,” she says. “Make sure the bands aren’t too tight around your wrist. Don’t leave them there for long periods of time, and wash them if you can.”

And if you’re still worried about wearing a hair tie on your wrist check out Hairbanglez, a trendy bracelet designed to hold your elastics, and keep bad nerves at bay. They’re cute and hygienic!

RELATED: 10 Sinus Infection Symptoms

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1Nsv0Co

Transplanted Face May Age Prematurely

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Transplanted faces seem to age faster than normal, a new study suggests.

More than 30 face transplants have been performed worldwide, but there is little information about recipients’ long-term outcomes, the researchers said.

In this study, three full-face transplant patients were followed for three years. They had a significant decrease in facial volume that resembled premature aging, said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston.

This change in appearance was the result of bone and muscle loss rather than the reduced facial fat or skin thickness that occurs in normal aging of the face, said Pomahac, who in 2011 led the first full-face transplant in the United States.

The study was published online Dec. 3 in the American Journal of Transplantation.

The findings show the need to find ways to prevent, delay or reverse muscle and bone loss in face transplant patients, Pomahac said.

“The field of face transplantation is young, and we are all learning about our interventions and their outcomes,” Pomahac said. “We studied why transplanted faces seem to age fast as well as we could, but we don’t really know many other things: When does this process end? Is it possibly a sign of inadequate blood supply or ongoing rejection?”

As often occurs in science, he added, the study raises more questions than it answers.

Pomahac said this research is important in terms of patient expectations and may affect how surgeons plan face transplants.

“But first we have to understand what’s exactly going on, and we are not there yet,” he concluded.

More information

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery has more about face transplantation.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1XJUCw5

Patient’s Mood During Medical Procedure May Affect Outcomes

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A patient’s mood while undergoing a medical procedure can affect the results, a new study suggests.

“Our study shows that mood matters,” said lead researcher Dr. Elvira Lang, an interventional radiologist in Boston.

The research included 120 women and 110 men (average age 55 years). The study participants each underwent a minimally invasive procedure in which a catheter was inserted through a blood vessel and threaded to an area of the body, such as a blocked artery, for treatment.

Before their procedure, the patients completed a questionnaire to assess whether their mood was negative, neutral or positive, the study authors explained.

Adverse events — such as low or high blood pressure, postoperative bleeding or abnormally slow heart rate — occurred in 22 percent of the study patients with high levels of negative mood. These negative feelings included stress, fear and hostility.

But just 12 percent of people in a less negative or a neutral mood experienced poor outcomes, the study found. A positive mood had little impact, the researchers reported.

The findings were to be presented Thursday at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting, in Chicago. Findings presented at meetings are considered preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

“I was surprised by this result,” study author Dr. Nadja Kadom, acting associate professor of radiology at Emory University School of Medicine and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, said in a society news release. “Prior to this study, I did not believe patient mood could have an effect on outcome.”

Lang added, “You don’t need to have a chipper, cheery attitude prior to your procedure. You just have to overcome negative emotions and get to a neutral level.”

Typically, interventional radiology procedures are performed while patients are sedated but still awake and able to talk with the medical team.

“This is a real issue. The procedure room is a two-way street in which the patient can affect the health care professional and vice versa. Any time the team must manage an adverse event, it takes attention away from the procedure,” Lang said.

Lang added that it might be helpful to teach health care professionals how to help patients manage negative emotions to improve their procedure results.

More information

The Society of Interventional Radiology has more about interventional radiology procedures.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1QhhiDj

Weight Gain Between Pregnancies May Affect Infant Survival

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Weight gain after a first pregnancy might raise the risk of infant death and stillbirth in a second pregnancy, a new study suggests.

In mothers who were previously a healthy weight, even moderate weight gain between the two pregnancies was associated with increasing the odds for infant death, researchers reported Dec. 3 in The Lancet.

“The public health implications are profound,” study author Sven Cnattingius, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in a journal news release.

“Around a fifth of women in our study gained enough weight between pregnancies to increase their risk of stillbirth by 30 to 50 percent, and their likelihood of giving birth to babies who die in infancy increased by 27 to 60 percent, if they had a healthy weight during their first pregnancy,” Cnattingius said.

But while the study detected an association between mother’s weight gain and infant death and stillbirth, it didn’t actually establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

The research team analyzed data from more than 450,000 Swedish women who gave birth to their first and second child between 1992 and 2012.

Overall, they found that women whose body mass index (BMI) rose more than four units (about 24 pounds for an average-height woman) between pregnancies had a 50 percent greater risk of their second baby dying within the first four weeks of life compared to women whose weight remained stable between pregnancies. BMI is a measurement of body fat based on height and weight.

Among mothers at a healthy weight during their first pregnancy, a BMI increase of two to four points (13 to 24 pounds in someone of average height) by their second pregnancy was linked to a 27 percent higher risk of infant death. Among those whose BMI rose four points or more, the risk was 60 percent higher, the study found.

The study authors suggested that BMI gains in healthy-weight women may reflect a greater increase of fat mass than in obese women, and therefore present a greater risk.

Causes of infant death in the study included birth defects, lack of oxygen during birth, infections and sudden infant death syndrome.

The researchers also found that the risk of infant death fell about 50 percent among overweight women who lost at least 13 pounds before their second pregnancy.

Still, “the prevalence of overweight and obesity in pregnant women has reached epidemic levels. More than half of women in the [United States] and one in three women in Sweden are either overweight or obese at the start of their pregnancy,” said study co-author Dr. Eduardo Villamor, professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

“Our findings highlight the importance of educating women about maintaining a healthy weight during pregnancy and reducing excess weight before becoming pregnant as a way to improve infant survival,” he said in the news release.

A woman 5 feet, 4 inches tall is deemed overweight (BMI of 25 to 29) if she weighs between 145 and 169 pounds. If she weighs 175 pounds (BMI of 30) or more, she is considered obese, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

More information

The U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion offers tips for a healthy pregnancy.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1QhhiD3

Could There Be a ‘Quit-Smoking’ Gene?

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Some smokers have much more difficulty kicking the habit than others. Now, a new review of prior research identifies a potential culprit: genes.

Researchers analyzed genetic differences cited in 22 studies involving nearly 9,500 white smokers. Of particular interest were variations in genes involved in processing dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps to regulate the brain’s reward and pleasure centers.

Experts believe that the nicotine found in tobacco boosts dopamine in the brain, leading to addiction.

The researchers wondered if variants in genes that regulate dopamine might be associated with the ability to put out the butts for good.

In the end, the scientists focused on a DNA sequence called Taq1A. They found that smokers who carried a variation of that sequence — called A2/A2 — appeared to have an easier time quitting smoking than those who carried other variations of the Taq1A sequence.

“This variant has been studied for years, but this study provided more convincing evidence on the role of this genetic variant in smoking cessation by analyzing a significant large number of smoke samples,” said study co-author Ming Li, a professor in the department of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia.

The findings were published Dec. 1 online in Translational Psychiatry.

Li, working with researchers from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, noted that roughly 6 million people die worldwide every year because of smoking.

The studies included in the current analysis were conducted between 1994 and 2014, and numbered from fewer than 100 participants to more than 2,000.

Quitting success varied widely, ranging from less than 10 percent to nearly 67 percent, the researchers reported.

Ultimately, the team found there was a “significant association” — but no definitive proof — between having the A2/A2 DNA variant and an increased ability to successfully quit.

The authors said the finding should encourage more research into the genetics behind efforts to quit smoking. Such research could eventually lead to the development of personalized treatments that target each smoker’s inherited predispositions, they suggested.

However, Li’s team cautioned that “research on this problem remains in its infancy.”

And Li further highlighted the complexity of the science by noting that “there are many genetic factors involved in smoking addiction. The variant studied in this report is just one of those.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Norman Edelman, senior medical consultant for the American Lung Association, expressed little surprise at the idea that genetics has a role to play.

“There’s a huge variability in the ability to quit smoking,” said Edelman, a professor of medicine and preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “Quitting cold turkey, for example, is only effective 5 percent of the time. But I have patients who got up one morning and decided to stop smoking and just stopped. And then I have patients who have tried 10 times and can’t do it.”

Genetics likely explain some, but not all, of these differences, Edelman added. “The next step, in terms of advancing the science of smoking cessation, is trying to figure out exactly what the gene does, what proteins it codes for, and to see if there’s some way to modify the way it works. That’s probably going to turn out to be very hard.”

Still, Edelman called the current research “a good finding.” As he sees it, “the more you know about smoking and the predilection to smoke and smoking cessation, the more you are going to be able to develop effective strategies to help patients.”

More information

There’s more on how to quit smoking at the American Lung Association.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1XJUCft

Hawaii Facing Rise in Dengue Fever Cases

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Dec. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Do your winter travel plans include Hawaii? You may want to pack bug repellent, experts say.

That’s because the Big Island of Hawaii is facing an outbreak of dengue fever — a mosquito-borne virus that can cause terrible headache and crushing pain in the muscles and joints.

State health officials have confirmed 117 cases of dengue fever on the Big Island since mid-September, including 103 local residents and 14 visitors to the island. One other case has been reported on the island of Oahu, but health officials say it was not locally transmitted and is not tied to the new outbreak.

The jump in cases has prompted top experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to visit the island this week to try and help, CNN reported Wednesday.

“I don’t think travelers should be overly worried, but they should take care to avoid mosquitoes as much as possible,” said infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior associate at the UPMC Center for Health Security in Baltimore.

Called “breakbone fever” due to the extreme pain it causes, dengue fever can require hospitalization in moderate and extreme cases, according to Dr. Sarah Park, Hawaii’s state epidemiologist and chief of the Hawaii Disease Outbreak Control Division.

Symptoms include severe headache, often with piercing pain behind the eyes, and terrible muscle and joint aches, Park said. Sufferers also can develop a full-body rash and run fevers as high as 104 degrees.

The symptoms typically appear five to seven days after being bitten by an infected mosquito. Dengue is not transmitted person-to-person.

There is no cure for dengue fever, although a vaccine is poised for federal approval, said Adalja.

However, the disease is rarely fatal in developed nations, according to the CDC. Only about 1 percent of people die from dengue if the disease is detected early and treated properly.

Both the CDC and the Hawaii Department of Health are urging travelers to protect themselves from mosquito bites.

People particularly should steer clear of areas with lots of standing water, where mosquitoes can breed. These include jungle terrain and other overgrown areas, Park said.

“Surfing or sunning on the beach is not likely to be a risk,” she said. “Going out into heavy vegetation areas, that’s where you might consider taking precautions.”

If going out on a hike in an area with mosquitoes, people should wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, and apply effective mosquito repellents to their exposed skin and clothing, health officials said.

The mosquitoes that carry dengue tend to bite during the day, so visitors and residents can feel safe at night, Park said.

The state also is asking residents to check their property for standing water, fix leaky outdoor faucets, clean their gutters, and regularly flush tropical plants that hold water.

Resort areas tend to perform these mosquito-prevention activities already, and are generally safe from the pests, Park noted. According to CNN, the CDC team that traveled to Hawaii on Tuesday is bringing special mosquito traps that are easier to use and target the strain of mosquitoes that transmit dengue.

Dengue fever is caused by any of four closely related viruses, according to the CDC. Although it’s been around for centuries, the illness was first documented in the 1950s during epidemics in the Philippines and Thailand.

Dengue does not occur naturally in the continental United States or in Hawaii, but it can be brought in by visitors. Hawaii last suffered an outbreak of dengue in 2011, on the island of Oahu, health officials said.

Worldwide, about 2.5 billion people — 40 percent of the world’s population — live in areas where there’s a risk of dengue transmission, the CDC says.

In rare cases, dengue can cause life-threatening hemorrhagic fever or shock, Adalja said. However, that most often happens when someone who previously had been infected with one strain of dengue is reinfected with another strain.

None of the cases during this outbreak has progressed to such severe symptoms — “knock on wood,” Park said.

People hospitalized with dengue are given supportive care, she said. Doctors give them fluids and acetaminophen, and monitor their electrolytes.

More information

For more information on dengue fever, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1XJUCfp

Scientists, Ethicists Debate Future of Gene Editing

By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — What if faulty genes in your DNA could be easily corrected, avoiding the ravages of diseases like cystic fibrosis or certain cancers?

That is the promise of gene editing, a new technique being heralded as an enormous advancement in genetic engineering. Scientists say its speed, efficiency and cost-effectiveness make it an excellent tool for replacing rogue genes that cause human suffering and early death.

But worries about the technology’s darker side have mounted ever since Chinese researchers in April reported results of an experiment to edit a defective gene in a human embryo. For ethical reasons, researchers say they used an abnormal embryo.

The team concluded that gene editing isn’t yet sufficiently reliable and precise enough to apply the technique in humans.

Nevertheless, some scientists and bioethicists worry that gene editing may be used one day to create “designer babies” and forever alter the human genome.

Experts from around the globe are gathered in Washington, D.C., this week to discuss the clinical potential and ethical pitfalls of human gene editing. The three-day international summit, convened by the U.S. National Academy of Science and National Academy of Medicine with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the U.K.’s Royal Society, concludes on Thursday.

The debate swirls around a gene-editing technology called CRISPR (pronounced crisper), short for clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats.

Much like film editors delete and replace scenes in a motion picture, scientists use gene editing in the lab to clip strands of DNA at the precise site of genetic defects and splice in a fix.

To most people, “CRISPR is still an unknown term,” Rep. Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat and the only Ph.D. scientist currently serving in Congress, said in opening remarks at the global summit on Tuesday. Yet, Foster said he has been fielding increasingly urgent requests for meetings to discuss the technology breakthrough and its implications for society.

John Holdren, a senior White House adviser on science and technology policy, told summit attendees that the Obama administration continues to hold the position that editing the human “germline” — meaning the genes passed on to future generations — “is a line that should not be crossed at this time.”

April Pyle, an associate professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, told HealthDay that researchers have widely adopted the gene-editing tool to better understand how genes function and how to correct faulty genes. But scientists are using it in mice and cell cultures, not humans, she said.

“No one is talking about gene editing in the context of designing, changing genomes for designer babies. That’s not what scientists are doing,” she insisted.

Pyle studies Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the loss of muscle function caused by a gene mutation. Few people with DMD live beyond their 30s, according to the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, in Bethesda, Md.

“If we can correct that mutation in these patients, then we can give them back the missing gene and give them a permanent cure,” she said. “That’s the long-term goal, but the challenges are really in understanding how safe the technology is.”

Clinical applications of the technology won’t be seen until it can be perfected, ensuring that only the targeted gene is snipped, preventing “off-target” mutations in the genome, Pyle explained. Scientists also must find ways to safely deliver the technology to patients.

If perfected, gene editing would have immediate implications for treating genetic disorders involving a single mutation in a specific gene.

Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, Calif., who spoke at the summit, agreed that the technology may hold great promise.

“Human gene editing used to treat existing patients, if it can be done safely, may turn out to be medically important,” she told HealthDay.

But Darnovsky added that human germline gene editing for reproduction, prohibited in some 40 countries, “would be extremely risky.”

To date, the Center for Genetics and Society has collected upwards of 155 signatures from scientists, ethicists and others calling for strengthened prohibitions that would prevent the technology’s use for genetically modified humans or designer babies.

Permitting germline editing “would likely be used for enhancement purposes by those who could afford it, and this could all too easily open the door to new forms of inequality and discrimination,” Darnovsky explained.

“We need not and should not risk those societal outcomes,” she said.

More information

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have more on human gene editing.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1lYsp91