Exercise + Classwork May = Better Math Scores

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 24, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Schoolchildren may have an easier time learning if exercise is part of their math and spelling lessons, a new study suggests.

Dutch researchers found that second- and third-graders given “physically active” lessons did better on math and spelling tests, compared with their peers who learned the old-fashioned way.

Experts not involved with the study called the findings “encouraging.” But they also said it’s too soon to push for physically active classrooms everywhere.

Weaving exercise into traditional lessons could offer the “amazing possibility” of helping kids learn, while also helping them stay healthy, said Sara Benjamin Neelon, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore.

“The take-home message is that physically active lessons may be a novel way to increase physical activity and improve academic performance at the same time,” said Benjamin Neelon, who cowrote an editorial published with the study.

But, she added, there are still big unknowns: For one, the study was done in the Netherlands, and it’s not clear that the results would extend to the diverse school systems in the United States.

And even if they do, Benjamin Neelon said, there are real-world practical barriers to bringing exercise into classrooms — including training teachers, winning parents over and simply finding the space and time.

For the study, researchers recruited 24 classes at 12 elementary schools in the northern Netherlands. Teachers in half of the classes stuck with traditional lessons, while the rest started incorporating exercise into some math, spelling and reading lessons.

For instance, instead of just saying “2 times 4 equals 8,” kids would jump in place eight times. Or they would hop for each letter of a word they spelled, explained lead researcher Marijke Mullender-Wijnsma, of the University Medical Center Groningen, in the Netherlands.

Overall, the children had 20 to 30 minutes of physically active learning three times a week. And that seemed to make a difference, the study found.

After two years, kids in active classrooms scored higher on standard math and spelling tests — the equivalent of about four months of extra learning, Mullender-Wijnsma said.

There was no benefit, however, when it came to reading scores.

The study findings were published Feb. 24 in the journal Pediatrics.

Why would jumping in place help kids’ math and spelling scores? It’s not clear, according to Mullender-Wijnsma, but one possibility is that “information obtained by the body” may help children with mental tasks.

“We know young children use both sensory and motor activity to learn,” she noted.

Exercise also boosts blood flow in the brain, Mullender-Wijnsma said, and that, too, might help kids absorb the task at hand.

On the other hand, it might not be a specific effect of exercise at all, according to Benjamin Neelon.

“It might be the novelty,” she said. “The children are learning in a new way. They’re intrigued.”

She pointed out that the Dutch researchers just published a separate report on the same study — this one looking at the children’s “cognitive” abilities, such as making plans, focusing and remembering. And kids in the physically active classes did no better than their peers.

“So the physically active lessons may not have improved underlying cognition or brain function in these children — even though they did better on school tests,” Benjamin Neelon said.

Still, she added, regular exercise is critical for kids. And with so many U.S. schools cutting back on traditional gym classes and recess, physically active lessons could be one way to get kids moving, Benjamin Neelon said.

A large U.S. study has looked at the impact of physically active lessons. It was primarily aimed at boosting kids’ activity levels and countering obesity — but it also found that children’s scores on standardized tests rose, Benjamin Neelon said.

Again, she noted, children in that study were mostly white and from middle- to high-income families. But there are studies of more diverse groups of kids underway, she said.

“Children from low-income families face more challenges in school,” Benjamin Neelon said. “If they don’t get enough sleep, or don’t have a good breakfast, or have stressors in their home life, they may have trouble concentrating in school.”

So, she said, the “big question” is, will physically active lessons help those children learn, or cause them to fall behind even more?

“We want to first make sure that physical activity doesn’t detract from children’s learning,” Benjamin Neelon said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has guidelines on children’s physical activity.

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Nerve Block Technique Might Help Ease Chronic Back Pain

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A procedure that uses radio waves to treat chronic low back pain provided long-lasting relief to a small group of patients, researchers report.

Called intradiscal biacuplasty (IDB), the procedure uses two water-cooled needles to blast radiofrequency energy at the nerve fibers within and around a spinal disc that’s begun to degenerate but has not ruptured, explained lead researcher Dr. Michael Gofeld.

“Basically you’re destroying the nerve fibers, which will lead to the elimination of pain,” he said. Gofeld is a chronic pain management specialist at St. Michael’s Hospital and Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.

A year out from treatment, half of the patients who received IDB in the study said they still were experiencing significant pain reduction, Gofeld and his colleagues reported.

The treatment is specifically to help people with discogenic back pain, Gofeld said — pain related to discs that are deteriorating but have not ruptured.

Prior studies have found that discogenic back pain accounts for 39 percent of cases of chronic lower back pain, he said.

The idea of using radio waves to treat back pain has been around for a quarter-century, Gofeld said. But recent breakthroughs using water-cooled needles have made the technology potentially more effective.

“If the needle gets too hot, the energy will not spread efficiently enough,” Gofeld said.

The procedure takes about a half hour, followed by six weeks of physical therapy, he said. Ideal patients have lower back pain that doesn’t shoot down the legs and limited disc degeneration, with no significant tears or ruptures.

Dr. John Mafi, an internist and assistant professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, in Los Angeles, pointed out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved IDB for use in 2007. But the technology has not been widely adopted in the United States, he said.

“It’s not widely used,” Mafi said. “Insurance doesn’t seem to cover it yet, and that may be because they want to see more evidence.”

For example, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ruled in September 2008 that the government insurance plans would not cover any radiofrequency treatments for low back pain. The CMS decision memo concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that the procedures would improve health outcomes.

Gofeld’s study, which was funded by device manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Corp., focused on 22 patients who received IDB treatment alongside typical medical care for back pain.

These patients originally showed less pain at six months following treatment, and now a one-year follow-up found that their pain reduction and improved function had continued, Gofeld said.

The one-year report also included 25 members of the initial control group for the study, who at first only received typical medical care that included physical therapy and exercises.

These patients were allowed to “cross over” after six months and receive IDB. They also experienced some pain relief and improved function, the Canadian researchers reported.

However, their pain reduction was not as strong as that experienced by the original treatment group, Gofeld said.

“We can infer from this result that the sooner we do the procedure and get the patient into rehabilitation treatment, the better will be the result,” he said.

Researchers also found no significant side effects associated with IDB.

The findings were presented Feb. 19 at the American Academy of Pain Medicine’s annual meeting in Palm Springs, Calif. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Mafi said the small number of patients involved makes this more of a “pilot study.”

“I wouldn’t jump to any changes in policy based on this study,” Mafi said. “This is a promising start, but now it’s time to do a rigorous clinical trial from this pilot data.”

Dr. Nathaniel Tindel, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, also sounded a cautious note, based on both the small number of participants and the fact that numerous prior radiofrequency treatments have failed to help people with low back pain.

“Whenever there are a plethora of procedures offered to treat a condition which is known to heal best when left alone, those procedures are either all very effective or equally ineffective,” Tindel said. “Unfortunately, medical research has already shown us that intradiscal therapy falls into the latter category, and to date has not been shown to have long-term effect on back pain and disc disease.”

More information

For more on thermal intradiscal procedures for back pain, visit the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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Texas Hospitals Develop Rapid Test for Zika Virus Detection

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The first rapid detection test for the Zika virus has been developed by teams at two Texas hospitals.

The mosquito-borne disease has been linked to — but not proven to cause — a severe birth defect in newborns. The birth defect, called microcephaly, results in infants having small heads and often involves brain damage.

It’s believed there have been more than 4,100 suspected or confirmed cases of microcephaly in Brazil, the country where the Zika epidemic began.

Since it first surfaced last spring, the virus has spread to over 32 countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Health Organization now estimates there could be up to 4 million cases of Zika in the Americas in the next year.

The new test — developed by researchers at Texas Children’s Hospital and Houston Methodist Hospital — is customized to each hospital’s diagnostic laboratory and can provide results within several hours. It can be performed on blood, amniotic fluid, urine or spinal fluid, the researchers said.

“With travel-associated cases of the Zika virus becoming more prevalent in the United States, coupled with the looming increase in mosquito exposure during spring and summer months, we must be prepared for a surge of Zika testing demand,” Dr. James Versalovic said in a Texas Medical Center news release.

“We must provide answers for anxious moms-to-be, and families who may experience signs and symptoms or may simply have travel history to endemic areas,” he added. Versalovic is pathologist-in-chief at Texas Children’s and co-leader of the Texas Children’s Zika test development team.

Until now, doctors faced the risk of long waits for tests conducted in local and state public health laboratories, and by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Texas team said.

For now, only registered patients at Texas Children’s or Houston Methodist can receive the rapid Zika test. But the two labs may conduct referral testing from other hospitals and clinics in the future, the researchers said.

“Hospital-based testing that is state-of-the-art enables our physicians and patients to get very rapid diagnostic answers,” Dr. James Musser, co-leader of the Houston Methodist test development team, said in the news release. Musser is chair of the department of pathology and genomic medicine at Houston Methodist Hospital.

The test detects the genetic material of the Zika virus and can distinguish it from dengue, West Nile or chikungunya viruses, according to the news release.

“This is a significant development as health authorities are recommending all pregnant women who have traveled to a place with a Zika virus outbreak get tested,” Musser said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on the Zika virus.

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Younger Female Heart Patients More Likely to Need Follow-Up Care

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Women under 50 who’ve been treated once for heart disease seem to fare worse than similarly treated men, a new report shows.

Younger women who’d already had a procedure known as angioplasty to open their heart arteries were significantly more likely to need additional procedures to keep those arteries open and functioning well than men were, the study said. Angioplasty is a procedure in which a tiny balloon is inflated inside an artery to widen the vessel and clear partial blockages.

The researchers pointed out that even though young women’s arteries appeared to be healthier and less blocked than those of their male counterparts, they were still more likely to need more treatment.

“Although women tended to have less heart disease than men, they had generally worse outcomes over one year and five years compared to men,” said lead researcher Dr. Robert Wilensky, a professor and cardiologist with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, in Philadelphia.

The study involved more than 10,000 patients who received angioplasty to treat heart disease. They were treated at 27 different North American medical centers between June 1997 and May 2006.

Overall, women under age 50 were less likely to have ever needed treatment for heart disease, the study showed. Just 394 women and 1,141 men from the larger group were under age 50 and had undergone angioplasty, the study data revealed.

But within the first year following angioplasty, more than twice as many young women received bypass surgery, 9 percent compared to 4 percent of young men. About 19 percent of women required a repeat angioplasty, compared with 13 percent of men, the study reported.

These differences were not found when older women were compared with older men. In fact, younger women were more likely to need bypass surgery or angioplasty than older women.

Also, the young women remained at increased risk for repeat procedures even five years out, the researchers reported.

Dr. Roxana Mehran is director of Interventional Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, in New York City. “The young women, those are the real troubled women,” she said. “They have other things that are going on that are contributing to their continued illness.”

Young women who develop heart disease appear to have many dangerous risk factors that can cause heart and blood vessel complications, the researchers noted.

For example, nearly 53 percent of the younger women with heart disease were smokers. “That’s much higher than older women or older men, and slightly higher than younger men,” Wilensky said.

They also appeared prone to suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity. “These factors may be working against them, and requiring more repeat procedures,” he said.

Gender and age differences might play a role as well. For example, younger women appear to feel the symptoms of heart disease more strongly, Wilensky said.

About 30 percent of young women reported chest pain within a year of their first angioplasty, compared with 18 percent of young men and 21 percent of older women, he said.

“That may push cardiologists do to another procedure and maybe discover a blockage that wouldn’t have been discovered any other way,” Wilensky said.

The high levels of estrogen that premenopausal women naturally have might also play some as-yet-unknown role in their heart health, the researchers added.

“There may be some hormonal issues that don’t exist in older women,” Wilensky said.

Mehran said the study revealed an urgent need to focus on heart problems in younger women, something that hasn’t happened because their overall risk of heart disease is lower.

“This is a real unmet need,” Mehran said. “Younger women who have heart disease, we have to figure out how to avoid and prevent heart disease that presents at an early age.

“We really do need to stop comparing men to women, and think about the women as their own entity, and start to think about how devices and drugs are working in the female population rather than comparing them to men,” she concluded.

The study was published Feb. 23 in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

More information

For more information on angioplasty, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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Do Genes Link Headaches, Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Genetic links may exist between irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and migraine and tension-type headaches, researchers report.

“Since headache and irritable bowel syndrome are such common conditions, and causes for both are unknown, discovering a possible link that could shed light on shared genetics of the conditions is encouraging,” study author Dr. Derya Uluduz said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology.

The findings might help point to new treatments for all of the disorders, suggested Uluduz, of Istanbul University in Turkey, and colleagues.

The study included 107 people with migraine, 53 with tension-type headache, 107 with IBS and 53 without any of the conditions.

People with migraine were about twice as likely as those with tension headache to also have IBS — 54 percent versus 28 percent, respectively. Of the people with IBS, 38 also had migraine and 24 also had tension headache, the investigators found.

The researchers then focused on genetics, in particular, the serotonin transporter gene and the serotonin receptor 2A gene. The study authors found that people with IBS, migraine or tension headache had at least one gene that differed from those of people without any of the disorders.

The findings were released online Feb. 23, and are scheduled for presentation in April at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting, in Vancouver, Canada. The data and conclusions should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

“Further studies are needed to explore this possible link,” Uluduz said in the news release. “Discovering shared genes may lead to more future treatment strategies for these chronic conditions.”

IBS — which causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, cramping, a bloated feeling, gas, diarrhea or constipation — is the most common gastrointestinal disorder worldwide, the researchers said. It affects as many as 45 million Americans. The exact cause of the chronic condition is unknown and many people go undiagnosed.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about IBS.

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Poor Leg Circulation Hits Women With Kidney Disease Earlier Than Men

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Compared to men, women under the age of 70 who have kidney disease are at higher odds for peripheral arterial disease (PAD), an often disabling impairment of blood flow in the legs.

That’s the finding from a new study of almost 3,200 people with chronic kidney disease. Researchers led by Dr. Grace Wang, of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, found that women under 70 with kidney disease had a 53 percent higher risk of PAD compared to their male peers.

However, after age 70 the difference between the sexes evened out, the researchers noted.

Why would PAD affect women earlier? According to the study authors, “females are known to have smaller diameter vessels compared to men.” That could mean that, given similar amounts of plaque buildup in vessels, women’s might close off earlier than men’s.

The findings show that women with kidney disease may need closer monitoring at younger ages, two experts said.

“Based on these results, it is imperative that we maintain a higher index of suspicion for diagnosing such vascular problems in women sooner,” said Dr. Reese Wain, chief of vascular surgery at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y.

Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum directs women’s heart health at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She said there is now “a greater and greater understanding of the profound differences between men and women’s arteries.”

According to Steinbaum, “women’s arteries are significantly affected by kidney disease, and this correlation emphasizes the critical importance of early screening and detection for those women at the greatest risk.”

PAD involves a narrowing of vessels that carry blood to the arms or legs. Left unchecked, PAD can cause serious disability and even limb loss or death, according to the American Heart Association. About 8 million people in the United States aged 40 and older, and up to 20 percent of Americans over 65, are affected by PAD, the heart association says.

According to Wang’s team, prior research has shown that women with PAD have even greater functional impairment and worse quality of life compared to men with the disease.

In their study, the Philadelphia team looked at rates of PAD in nearly 3,200 patients with chronic kidney disease. Average age was about 57.

They found that women had 53 percent higher odds for PAD than men, but this gap was most pronounced for patients under the age of 70.

Wang’s team believes that, based on the new findings, current recommendations to begin screening people at age 50 (if they have smoked or have diabetes) or 65 (without such risk factors) “is likely ‘too late’ for women.”

The study was published Feb. 23 in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

More information

Find out more about PAD at the Society for Interventional Radiology.

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Anxiety in Women May Mask Heart Disease Symptoms, Researchers Say

By Maureen Salamon
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Women with an anxiety disorder may have less blood going to their heart when exercising, according to a new study — and researchers suggest doctors may sometimes miss signs of heart disease in these women.

In women who had never been diagnosed with heart disease, researchers found that those with anxiety were 75 percent more likely than women without anxiety to have reduced blood flow to the heart during activity.

Study author Kim Lavoie says the findings may indicate that anxiety symptoms such as chest discomfort or palpitations — which can overlap those of heart disease — may mask heart disease in women. This could lead to misdiagnosis, she said.

“If you’re a woman and you say you’re tired, short of breath, and really anxious about it, and you have no pre-existing heart disease, it’s possible that doctors are confounding the two problems,” said Lavoie, a professor of psychology at University of Quebec at Montreal and director of the Chronic Disease Research Division at Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal in Canada.

“Doctors may be more likely to attribute those symptoms to anxiety than heart disease,” she added. “So, in other words, a diagnostic bias may occur.”

The study was published online Feb. 23 in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

In the study, the researchers said anxiety disorders appear to be more common in women than in men, and there is a link between these disorders and worse cardiac outcomes.

Heart disease kills about the same number of women as men in the United States every year and is the leading cause of death in American women, causing one in every four female deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Women can experience different symptoms from men during a heart attack. For example, women are more likely to describe chest pain that is sharp or burning and more frequently have pain in the neck, jaw, throat, abdomen or back, the CDC says.

When a mood or anxiety disorder is added into the mix, a woman’s true health status can be misinterpreted, Lavoie’s research suggested.

For the study, the researchers looked at more than 2,300 patients, including 760 women, who underwent an exercise stress test and a psychiatric interview.

The exercise stress test looked for reduced blood flow (ischemia), which can cause a shortage of oxygen to the heart, and the effects of gender and mood/anxiety on this condition.

Lavoie and her team found that women with anxiety were far more likely to show ischemia than women without anxiety. They found no similar effects in men.

Dr. Karla Kurrelmeyer, a cardiologist at Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center in Texas, said physicians have been working for years to decipher the link between anxiety and heart disease, “because we realize there’s a connection between being distraught or anxious and it affecting the nervous system.”

Kurrelmeyer agreed with Lavoie that the women with anxiety who exhibited reduced blood flow to the heart might actually have had heart disease that previously went undiagnosed.

“Women with anxiety should be treated seriously because frequently they have ischemia . . . and doctors need to do more diagnostic testing to make sure symptoms are due to anxiety instead of obstructive coronary artery disease,” said Kurrelmeyer, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

Lavoie said women with anxiety or depression who are concerned about heart disease can ask their doctor to order tests to check their heart health.

“Clinicians need to recognize that anxiety presents with the same symptoms as heart disease and can mask the symptoms of heart disease if you don’t rule that out with objective tests,” she said.

More information

The American Heart Association offers information about heart attack symptoms in women.

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Half of Gay Black Men May Become Infected With HIV, CDC Says

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — If current HIV rates continue, about half of gay and bisexual black men in the United States will be diagnosed with the AIDS-causing virus in their lifetime, a new government analysis says.

Gay and bisexual Hispanic males — another population group at serious risk of HIV — have a one in four chance of contracting HIV, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“As alarming as these lifetime risk estimates are, they are not a foregone conclusion. They are a call to action,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention. “The prevention and care strategies we have at our disposal today provide a promising outlook for future reductions of HIV infections and disparities in the U.S., but hundreds of thousands of people will be diagnosed in their lifetime if we don’t scale up efforts now.”

The study found the overall risk of HIV in the United States has dropped to one in 99 over a lifetime, the CDC reported. That’s down from one in 78 about 10 years ago. But certain minority groups continue to be hit hardest.

Using diagnoses and death rates from 2009-2013, CDC researchers projected lifetime risk of HIV diagnosis by sex, race and ethnicity, state and more.

The nation’s HIV epidemic still hits gay and bisexual men the most. CDC researchers predict that one in six will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime. For gay or bisexual black males, the rate is one in two; for gay or bisexual Hispanic men, one in four; and for gay or bisexual white males, one in 11, the CDC said.

“These estimates are a sobering reminder that gay and bisexual men face an unacceptably high risk for HIV and of the urgent need for action,” said Dr. Eugene McCray, director of CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. “If we work to ensure that every American has access to the prevention tools we know work, we can avoid the outcomes projected in this study.”

In general, black people have the greatest lifetime HIV risk — one in 20 for men and one in 48 for women, the analysis showed. The overall lifetime HIV infection rate in white men is one in 132, while for white women, it’s one in 880, the CDC said.

Others at high risk, according to the report, include injectable drug users, particularly women who inject drugs.

Southerners also have greater odds of a lifetime HIV diagnosis compared to other Americans, according to the report. Residents of the nation’s capital face the worst odds — one in 13 for those in Washington, D.C. — followed by one in 49 in Maryland, and one in 51 in Georgia.

The study was scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston. Findings presented at meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

For more on HIV/AIDS, see AIDS.gov.

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CDC Cites 14 Potential New Cases of Zika Transmitted By Sex

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Fourteen U.S. cases of possible sexual transmission of the Zika virus are now under investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency announced on Tuesday.

The cases highlight the still-evolving understanding of how the virus might transmit between couples, and the potential danger to the fetus, the CDC said.

Babies born to mothers infected with the Zika virus can develop microcephaly, a condition where infants have smaller heads and the potential for long-term developmental issues.

Transmission of Zika via a mosquito bite has been thought to be the primary mode of infection, but sexual transmission may also occur, the CDC said.

“In two of the new suspected sexual transmission events, Zika virus infection has been confirmed in women whose only known risk factor was sexual contact with an ill male partner who had recently traveled to an area with local Zika virus transmission,” the CDC noted in a news release. “Testing for the male partners is still pending,” they added.

For the other 12 suspected cases of sexual transmission, four have been supported in preliminary lab tests but depend on other tests to confirm a Zika infection, while eight more cases involve an “ongoing” investigation, the CDC said.

“In all events for which information is available, travelers were men and reported symptom onset was within 2 weeks before the non-traveling female partner’s symptoms [of Zika infection] began,” the agency said.

On Feb. 5, the CDC issued an advisory on the potential sexual transmission of Zika after laboratory confirmation of the first such case in the continental United States.

The CDC stressed that, “although sexual transmission of Zika virus infection is possible, mosquito bites remain the primary way that Zika virus is transmitted.”

However, the CDC advises that men who live in or have recently traveled from a Zika-endemic area should abstain from sex or use a condom with a pregnant or non-pregnant partner.

How long would these precautions be warranted? The CDC is not yet sure. “The science is not clear on how long the risk should be avoided,” the agency said. “Research is now underway to answer this question as soon as possible. If you are trying to get pregnant, you may consider testing in discussion with your health care provider.”

In the meantime, the quest to answer important questions about Zika continues. Teams of American and Brazilian scientists will travel on Tuesday to areas of Brazil hit hard by the Zika virus, in hopes of confirming a link between Zika and microcephaly.

Brazil has already recorded more than 4,100 cases of the birth defect, and while links to prenatal exposure to the Zika virus are strong, they have yet to be confirmed.

According to the Associated Press, the new research initiative is a partnership between Brazil’s Health Ministry and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers plan to compare infants born with microcephaly and their mothers against infants born without the birth defect.

Eight teams, comprised of one CDC expert plus three Brazilian health workers, will go door to door to randomly selected families with new babies living in Paraiba, a state on Brazil’s northeast coast. They hope to recruit at least 130 babies with microcephaly and compare them to almost triple that number of infants without the condition, the AP said. All will undergo blood tests looking for infection with Zika and another mosquito-borne virus, dengue.

“If we can provide some basic information or show a potential association [between a virus and microcephaly], that will allow us another avenue of how do we prevent this and what do we need to do next,” Erin Staples, a Colorado-based epidemiologist who heads the CDC contingent in Paraiba, told the AP.

The study’s launch comes a day after President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion to help stem the spread of the Zika virus.

Since it first surfaced last spring, the virus has spread to over 30 countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Health Organization now estimates there could be up to 4 million cases of Zika in the Americas in the next year.

Meeting Monday with the nation’s governors, Obama said he hoped to work with them in guarding against an outbreak of the disease in the United States.

Obama said the money he is requesting would be used for research into new vaccines and better diagnostic tools, the AP reported. He added that the money would also go toward more support for Puerto Rico and territories where there are confirmed cases, and to help pay for mosquito-control programs in southern states, such as Florida and Texas, at risk for the Zika virus.

Obama also asked for the flexibility to use some of $2.7 million that was approved to fight the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa but was never used. House Republicans have said that would be the best way to fund a fight against Zika, the AP said.

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared before a Congressional panel earlier this month to lobby for Zika funding.

Although first discovered in Uganda in 1947, the Zika virus was not thought to pose serious health risks until last year. In fact, approximately 80 percent of people who become infected never experience symptoms.

But the recent increase in both cases and severe brain birth defects among thousands of newborns in Brazil has prompted health officials to reassess their thinking about Zika and pregnant women.

Last Friday, the CDC advised that healthy newborns of women who traveled in an area affected by the Zika virus within two weeks of delivery, or whose mothers show signs of Zika infection, be checked for infection.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, people considered at risk for Zika infection include those who have:

• Traveled to areas during the past four weeks where there’s active transmission of Zika virus. The CDC now lists over 30 countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean as places with active Zika infection.
• Engaged in sexual contact with a person who has traveled to, or resided in, an area with active Zika virus transmission during the prior three months.
• Developed symptoms suggestive of Zika virus infection during the past four weeks.

There have been no reports to date of Zika virus entering the U.S. blood supply, the FDA has said. But, the risk of blood transmission is considered likely based on the most current scientific evidence of how Zika and similar viruses are spread.

The American Red Cross has also asked potential blood donors who have traveled to Zika-affected areas to wait 28 days before giving blood.

More information

For more on Zika virus, and where the virus is endemic, head to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To see the CDC list of sites where Zika virus is active and may pose a threat to pregnant women, click here.

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This Is Why Half The World Will Be Nearsighted by 2050

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A new paper in the journal Ophthalmology is predicting that by 2050, 49.8% of the world’s population will be nearsighted. On top of that, another 9.8% will have high myopia, a more severe form of the condition that raises the risk of glaucoma, retinal detachment, and other eye complications. Yikes.

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“It is not a small thing to make a prediction like this—when was the last time you heard a public health prediction that affects 50% of the world’s population?” Kovin Naidoo, OD, PhD, a co-author of the study told the Huffington Post Australia. “This is a true global health crisis, and is rare in that whether you live in Africa or Australia, it will have a huge consequence,” he said.

Why are experts projecting such a drastic rise? It comes down to two reasons, mainly: We’re spending less time outdoors and more time doing  “near-work activities,” such as staring at computer screens and reading on our phones. The paper’s authors noted that these trends are bound to continue as urbanization and development increase across the globe.

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Here in the U.S., nearsightedness has been on the rise for the last few decades. In 2009, a JAMA Ophthalmology study reported that between the early 1970s and early 2000s, the number of cases grew by 66%.

In light of the projections for 2050, Mark Jacquot, OD, a clinical director at LensCrafters, released a statement reminding us all to stay up to date with our eye care: “It is more important than ever to make comprehensive eye exams an indispensable component of routine healthcare,” he said.

 

 

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