Can Frequent Moves in Childhood Spell Trouble Later?

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Moving may increase a child’s risk for mental health and behavioral problems later in life, a new study suggests.

This was especially true for those who changed addresses frequently during early adolescence, the researchers suggested.

However, the study didn’t establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between moving and psychiatric issues, just an association.

“Childhood residential mobility is associated with multiple long-term adverse outcomes,” contended lead investigator Roger Webb. He’s with the Center for Mental Health and Safety at the University of Manchester, in England.

“Although frequent residential mobility could be a marker for familial psychosocial difficulties, the elevated risks were observed across the socioeconomic spectrum, and mobility may be intrinsically harmful,” Webb added.

The study included all 1.4 million Danes born between 1971 and 1997 whose family moves between birth and 14 years were documented. They were then followed from age 15 until their early 40s.

Thirty-seven percent of the participants moved to a different municipality at least once before age 15, and multiple moves were most common during infancy, the study found.

The researchers said childhood moves were associated with increased risk of attempted suicide, violent criminal acts, mental illness, substance misuse and premature death during the follow-up period. Risks seemed to increase with multiple moves, with the highest risks seen in people who moved several times when 12 to 14 years old.

Whether a family was poor, middle-class or wealthy did not alter the apparent risk, according to the study. It was published June 7 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Health and social services, schools and other public agencies should be vigilant of the psychological needs of relocated adolescents, including those from affluent as well as deprived families,” Webb said in a journal news release.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics explains how to help children adjust to a move.

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Electroacupuncture Helped Ease Carpal Tunnel in Study

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Preliminary research raises the possibility that an electrical form of acupuncture could become a useful treatment for the common wrist overuse condition known as carpal tunnel syndrome.

In the study, electroacupuncture helped carpal tunnel patients with long-lasting mild and moderate symptoms when it was used with splints overnight.

“For these patients, electroacupuncture produces benefits in symptoms, disability, function and dexterity,” said study author Vincent Chung. He is a registered Chinese medicine practitioner and assistant professor with The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Carpal tunnel syndrome develops when a nerve becomes pinched in the wrist, and it causes symptoms like pain, numbness and tingling. Typing and diseases like arthritis can bring on the condition.

It affects an estimated 3 percent of U.S. workers aged 18 to 64, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Older people and women appear to be most vulnerable.

“This is a chronic condition, frequently made worse by continuing job-related injury,” said Dr. John Longhurst, a professor of medicine with the University of California, Irvine.

Splinting, in which a brace is used to prevent patients from flexing their wrists, is one treatment. But there are questions about its effectiveness. Injections with cortisone are also given. But the benefits are often only temporary, said Longhurst, who studies acupuncture.

“Surgery is the final option used after conservative medical treatment is insufficient,” he said, but the condition can recur.

The new study looked at electroacupuncture, which “consists of using a small battery-driven device to stimulate acupuncture needles using either high or low frequency stimulation and typically low voltage,” Longhurst explained. “It is typically administered for about 30 minutes repetitively once or twice a week over a period of several weeks. It causes similar effects as manual acupuncture.”

Electroacupuncture sessions cost $70 to $150 or more, Longhurst said, and acupuncturists can perform them.

Ladan Eshkevari, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Nursing and Health Studies, put the cost at $75 to $120 an hour, with initial treatments often costing more.

“Side effects are usually minimal,” Eshkevari said, “maybe bruising, often a very small bruise, maybe dizziness. But patients are usually lying down, so this is minimized.”

As for pain, “the needles are very thin-gauged and, depending on the site of insertion, people usually don’t feel pain. If they do, it is minimal,” she said.

In the new study, researchers assigned 181 participants, all with mild to moderate carpal tunnel syndrome, to nighttime splinting alone or nighttime splinting plus 13 sessions of electroacupuncture over 17 weeks. A total of 174 participants finished the study.

Those who underwent electroacupuncture treatment reported less disability and less severe symptoms, plus more function and more dexterity, the researchers said. These goals are measured on various scales, making it difficult to pinpoint exactly how much the lives of the patients improved.

When asked to elaborate on the day-to-day effect, study author Chung said the benefits are highest in terms of reducing disability and improving dexterity. “Electroacupuncture also produces benefits in symptoms and strength for these patients,” he said.

The electroacupuncture treatment didn’t appear to have a significant effect on pain, the researchers added.

How might electroacupuncture work?

It “stimulates sensory nerves that provide input to the spinal cord and brain,” Eshkevari said. This prompts the release of chemicals in the brain that affect things like high blood pressure and nausea, she said.

Both Longhurst and Eshkevari said the new study was limited, in part because the researchers didn’t test it against a “sham” form of acupuncture to act as a control. This would have helped determine if the electroacupuncture itself had a role beyond the interaction between a patient and an acupuncturist, Longhurst said.

He also noted that “one does not get an idea of how much this improved the patients’ ability to work or their daily life activities.”

“This is a low-risk procedure that they might try since acupuncture helps to reduce pain and inflammation,” Longhurst said.

Eshkevari agreed, saying “this is a scenario where it is worth a shot to avoid more invasive procedures like surgery. And this study is certainly promising.”

But Longhurst cautioned that “most trials show that at most, only 70 percent of patients respond to acupuncture, including electroacupuncture. So, not everyone is a responder.”

Study author Chung also cautioned that electroacupuncture isn’t recommended for pregnant women or people with seizures, epilepsy, bleeding disorders, heart rhythm problems or pacemakers.

The findings were published June 6 in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

More information

For more about carpal tunnel syndrome, try the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

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Mentally Ill Still Gain Illegal Possession of Guns, Study Shows

By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Almost two-thirds of violent gun crime arrests among the mentally ill were people who were already legally prohibited from having a firearm, a new study from Florida reveals.

And close to one-third of the suicides carried out by the mentally ill were among people who weren’t legally allowed to possess a firearm, the study found.

“That’s a failure of the enforcement mechanism,” said study lead author Jeffrey Swanson.

That troubling finding reflects a problem with the criteria for identifying individuals at risk, added Swanson, a professor with Duke University School of Medicine’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Mental illness causes only a small fraction of gun violence in the United States, around 3 to 5 percent, said Colleen Barry, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

The Duke study “does bring new evidence to this thorny policy area,” said Barry. She is a co-director of Hopkins’ Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy Research.

“When we think about mental illness and gun policy, we should be focusing laser-like on the suicide component, because this is where we really have a much higher risk of mortality than we do in the context of homicides,” she said.

Swanson and his team pulled records on 82,000 adults with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder. All were receiving services in the public behavioral health care system in Florida’s Miami-Dade and Pinellas counties beginning in 2002.

The researchers collected information on violent gun-crime arrests, gun suicides, hospitalizations, incarcerations, court adjudications and cause of death, among other sources, to create a database covering a 10-year period. Comparison groups were created to examine key outcomes.

Although limited to a specific population in a single state, the study authors believe the findings can help inform state and federal efforts to make existing criteria for restricting gun access more precise.

For example, the study found that of the 50 people who used a firearm to take their own lives, 72 percent were legally able to buy a gun on the day they died.

Some suicides and violent gun-related crimes, for example, might be prevented if more states stopped people who’ve been involuntarily held for evaluation during a mental health crisis — but not involuntarily committed to a mental hospital — from buying guns, the findings suggested.

In the study, 26 percent of people who retained their gun rights had a history of a this type of short-term hold.

Florida closed that loophole after the study period ended. About half of the states strip gun rights from people on those temporary, short-term holds, but half do not, Swanson said.

Longer-term efforts to deter gun violence must also focus on prevention, Swanson said.

Violent behavior is caused by “a whole cocktail of factors that come together and interact in complicated ways,” Swanson said. “If you want to think about solving the violence problem, it’s way too simplistic to say let’s improve the mental health system,” he said.

“Think about violence as if it were a communicable disease,” he continued. Part of the solution is to build healthier communities with improved access to substance abuse treatment, better economic opportunities and fewer kids exposed to trauma who grow up to be perpetrators, he said.

The report was published in the June issue of Health Affairs.

More information

The National Alliance on Mental Illness has more on mental illness and gun reporting laws.

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Why Everyone on Facebook Is Taking the #22Pushups Challenge

Photo: Getty Images

On average, 22 veterans die by suicide every day. That shocking statistic is the reason the #22Pushups challenge is currently sweeping across social media.

The basic idea? You film yourself doing 22 push-ups—or however many you can—and post a video to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Youtube with the tags #22Kill (the group that started the challenge) and #22Pushups (or whatever your number was), to help spread awareness about mental health issues, like PTSD, that can lead to suicide.

The nonprofit 22Kill is tracking all the videos, with the goal of recording 22 million push-ups total. The current count: around 6 million, according to program director Jimmy Mac.

RELATED: This 50 Push-Up Challenge Will Transform Your Body in 30 Days

Much like the Ice Bucket Challenge of 2014 (which raised $115 million for ALS research at its peak), #22Pushups has exceeded its founders’ wildest expectations: It began as a way to “simply humble ourselves with a physical act, and knock out 22 to honor veterans that we came across,” Mac explained in an email to Health. “We would post [the videos] to our social media pages and before long, random onlookers would join in.” The group started receiving clips from supporters who were moved to drop down and push too. Then one advocate upped the ante, by doing 22 pushups for 22 days, and the challenge took off.

“The more awareness there is through initiatives like these, the more funding organically occurs—which leads to prevention,” Mac said. Donations made to 22Kill go toward treatment and empowerment programs for vets, from art therapy to career counseling. (Click here to donate.)

People who complete the #22Pushups challenge have been nominating their friends to take part as well, and everyone from running groups to police cadets to senior citizens have been banging out reps. Below, check out a few of our favorite clips:

A Girls on the Run team

 

The Dixon family

 

The Bloomfield Township Senior Center

 

Cadets from a police academy in California

 

Chad Browning with his kids and fiance

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Upside of Late Delivery: Possible Brain Boost?

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Babies born late-term may get a brain boost, a new study finds.

“Our hope is that this research will enrich conversations between ob-gyns and expectant parents about the ideal time to have the baby,” said study lead author David Figlio. He’s an economist and director of Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research, in Evanston, Ill.

For the study, researchers analyzed birth and education records for 1.4 million elementary and middle school children in Florida.

The group of children who were born late-term (41 weeks) had higher average test scores than kids who were born full-term (39-40 weeks). The late-term children were also 2.8 percent more likely to be gifted, and about 3 percent less likely to have poor mental abilities, the researchers found.

However, late-term children had higher rates of abnormalities at birth and a 2.1 percent higher rate of physical disabilities at school age, according to the study.

“The tradeoff between cognitive and physical outcomes associated with late-term births is something parents and physicians should discuss,” Figlio said in a university news release.

The study only found an association between late birth and higher test scores, however, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

The findings were
published June 6 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

More information

The March of Dimes has more about labor and birth.

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Pregnant or Planning to Be? How to Protect Yourself From Zika Virus

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — As the threat of the Zika virus grows in the United States, pregnant women and those trying to conceive need to take precautions, a fetal medicine doctor says.

Zika poses the greatest risk to pregnant women during the first trimester, said Dr. Joseph Biggio, director of the division of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Pregnant women and those trying to become pregnant should avoid or limit travel to areas where Zika is being transmitted. And, they should discuss travel plans to these areas with their doctor, Biggio said in a university news release.

While microcephaly (a birth defect where a baby has an abnormally small head and brain) has been the primary concern, Zika can also cause other brain abnormalities, stillbirth and damage to the eyes and hearing, according to Biggio.

To date, all Zika virus cases in the United States have been associated with travel to countries where Zika transmission is occurring. While the risk of being infected with Zika in the United States is low, Biggio said, women need to take precautions.

“If you are pregnant, I recommend protecting yourself and your baby by using insect repellents,” Biggio said.

Insect repellents that contain DEET and picaridin are thought to be safe for pregnant women. Spray repellent on clothes instead of the skin to try to reduce absorption, he said.

The Zika virus remains in the bloodstream for one to two weeks after infection, but it’s not known how long the virus can be transmitted in an infected man’s semen, Biggio said. It’s recommended that men who have traveled to Zika-affected areas use condoms regularly to avoid exposing a pregnant partner or a partner who may become pregnant, he said.

This advice should be followed for at least six months if the man has Zika symptoms, and a minimum of eight weeks if he doesn’t have symptoms, according to Biggio.

More information

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

This Q&A will tell you what you need to know about Zika.

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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Female Reproductive Tract Not a Sterile Environment, Study Finds

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Researchers have found bacteria in women’s ovaries and fallopian tubes — locations previously believed to be sterile.

The investigators also discovered that women with ovarian cancer have a different bacterial population in these locations than women without the cancer. This finding raises the question of whether bacteria in the upper reproductive tract might play a role in the development or progression of ovarian cancer.

“This is a place essential to the beginning of life — you don’t expect that it’s a place that’s teeming with bacteria,” Dr. Wendy Brewster, director of the University of North Carolina Center for Women’s Health Research, said in a university news release.

“But there are bacteria in chemical pits at the bottom of the ocean, so why not in the fallopian tubes? Our proof of principle study has determined that while the upper female reproductive tract certainly isn’t teeming with bacteria, there are bacteria present,” Brewster said.

The researchers took samples from the upper reproductive tract of 25 women. The women were already undergoing surgery to have their uterus, fallopian tubes or ovaries removed. Some of the women had cancer, while others did not.

Using genetic testing, the researchers identified the types of bacteria found in the samples. Different bacteria were found in the fallopian tubes than were found in the ovaries, the study revealed.

Women with ovarian cancer had more strains of potentially harmful bacteria, the researchers found. But it’s too soon to know if these bacteria play a role in the development of ovarian cancer.

“Now that we know that these organisms are there, and that there are different organisms in different parts of the upper female reproductive tract, we want to know: Do these organisms influence whether or not you get cancer, or do they influence the behavior of cancer? If you have different types of organisms, do you have better outcomes?” Brewster said.

More research is needed, the study authors suggested.

The study was presented Monday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago. Findings presented at meetings are typically viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The U.S. Office on Women’s Health has more about ovarian cancer.

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Anesthesia Safe for Infants, Toddlers, Study Says

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — General anesthesia doesn’t seem to harm young children’s mental development, new research concludes.

“A number of animal studies have suggested that exposure to commonly used anesthetic agents in early development could lead to deficits in learning, memory, attention and other cognitive functions,” said study author Dr. Lena Sun. She is a professor of pediatric anesthesiology and pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

“However, few clinical studies have adequately addressed whether this is also true in humans,” Sun said in a Columbia news release.

The new study findings are “good news for parents whose children need anesthesia for elective surgery or a diagnostic procedure,” she added.

Still, the study leaves some important questions unanswered, Sun said. “We need to take a closer look at the effect of anesthesia on cognitive function in girls, since most of the subjects in the group exposed to anesthesia were boys,” she said.

Also, the effects of repeated and prolonged exposure to anesthesia should be studied further, especially in kids with serious medical conditions, she added.

The researchers looked at 105 healthy children younger than 3 who had surgery to repair an inguinal hernia, a common operation of early childhood.

Between the ages of 8 and 15, researchers assessed the children’s IQ, language, behavior and mental functions, including memory, learning, attention and thinking speed.

The children were no different than siblings who were not exposed to general anesthesia at a young age, the study found.

Each year, about 2 million children in the United States undergo anesthesia, according to background notes with the study.

The study results were published June 7 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about anesthesia.

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Coming Soon: A Wearable Artificial Kidney?

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) – Someday, dialysis patients might free themselves of clunky machines, moving about with a “wearable artificial kidney” instead.

That’s the promise of a new clinical trial that suggests this type of technology is finally within reach.

“This would be a game changer,” said one kidney specialist, Dr. Maria DeVita. “The fact that clinical trials are beginning gives us all hope that we will have a significant improvement in the care of those patients requiring ongoing hemodialysis.”

DeVita is associate director of nephrology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

People with advanced kidney disease must often resort to spending hours a day at dialysis centers, with special machines cleansing their blood as their kidneys once did.

The dream has long been a small portable device that could perform dialysis as patients went about their usual day.

That dream may be getting nearer: A prototype of such a device was recently tested on seven patients at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. The study was led by the device’s inventor, Dr. Victor Gura of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and chief medical officer of Blood Purifications Technologies in California.

The trial was designed to see how well the wearable kidney might work to safely take over some of the functions of failed kidneys. Patients used the device for up to 24 hours.

It did seem to work: The device successfully cleared the blood of urea, creatinine and and phosphorus — all waste products, the resarchers said. It also helped rid the blood of excess water and salt.

Patients seemed to tolerate the therapy well, with no effect on circulation and no serious adverse effects, Gura’s team found.

And there was another bonus. During standard dialysis, patients have to adhere to a strict diet to keep blood electrolytes stable. But the participants in the trial had no such problems, even when they ate what they wanted, the researchers said.

Overall, the research team believes that a wearable artificial kidney is feasible. However, the researchers said some redesigns are needed to correct device-related technical problems that occurred during testing.

For example, there was excessive formation of carbon dioxide gas bubbles in the dialysis solution, and intermittent variations in solution and blood flow, Gura’s team explained.

The device redesigns will also focus on ease of use and reliability during use, because the objective is to enable patients to undergo dialysis at home.

Another expert was cautiously optimistic about the technology.

“The wearable artificial kidney is a concept that has been discussed for years,” said Dr. Robert Courgi, an endocrinologist at Northwell Health’s Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, N.Y.

“It is exciting to see this technological breakthrough come to reality in clinical trials,” he said.

“Unfortunately there were some shortcomings, in the form of technical problems, and traditional hemodialysis remains the standard of care for the moment,” Courgi said. However, “the wearable artificial kidney may become a reality in the very near future,” he added.

Drs. Jonathan Himmelfarb and Larry Kesslerwas, of the University of Washington, were senior authors on the study, which was published this month in the journal JCI Insights.

More information

The National Kidney Foundation has more about dialysis.

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U.S. Black Women Get Less Care to Prevent Breast Cancer Return

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Black breast cancer survivors in the United States are less likely than white or Hispanic women to get follow-up genetic screening and surgeries that can help prevent a return of cancer, new research finds.

Among more than 1,600 women diagnosed by age 50, almost twice as many whites were tested for critical BRCA gene mutations as blacks, the researchers found.

BRCA mutations raise the lifetime risk of a second breast cancer as much as 50 percent and risk of ovarian cancer by up to 44 percent, the study authors noted.

Also, black women were less likely to undergo preventive mastectomy or removal of the ovaries, even though those procedures are known to reduce the risk of a second breast cancer or ovarian cancer, the findings showed.

“I hope that our findings will raise awareness of disparities pertaining to inherited cancer predispositions, that exist across the cancer care continuum,” said study leader Dr. Tuya Pal. She is a clinical geneticist at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, Fla.

According to the American Cancer Society, racial minorities are more likely to develop cancer and to die from it than people in the general population.

In the new study, Pal and her colleagues evaluated Florida women diagnosed with breast cancer at or before age 50 from 2009 to 2012. The information came from the state cancer registry, which includes women treated in many settings.

The investigators found that 917 patients had BRCA testing after they were diagnosed, but the percentages varied racially. Sixty-five percent of white women were tested, versus 62 percent of Hispanic women and just 36 percent of black women.

Of the 92 women who tested positive for the BRCA mutation, just 32 percent of black women had preventive ovary removal, compared to 85 percent of Hispanic women and 71 percent of white women.

The researchers discovered similar discrepancies regarding preventive mastectomy within the BRCA-positive group: 94 percent of whites and 85 percent of Hispanics had both breasts removed preventively, while just 68 percent of black women did.

The differences held even after Pal took into account such factors as insurance status and family history of cancer.

Exactly why these disparities exist isn’t clear. “We need to better understand the reasons,” she said.

The study did have limitations, Pal noted. For instance, four of the black women in the study were still in active treatment, which could help explain the lower rates of ovary removal in that group.

Because the findings are based on diagnoses from 2009 through 2012, the findings might not hold entirely true today, said Dr. Patricia Ganz of the Jonsson Cancer Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ganz, a medical oncologist, said women in general are more aware of testing today, thanks partly to the openness of actress Angelina Jolie, who talked publicly in 2013 about being a BRCA carrier and undergoing preventive surgeries.

Another positive change is that BRCA testing has become more affordable, Pal said. It formerly cost $4,000, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 invalidated patents on the BRCA genes, paving the way for more than one company to offer the tests, she said.

Still, “there clearly are disparities in the rates of genetic testing and the rate of prophylactic surgery,” said Dr. Victoria Seewaldt, professor of population science at the City of Hope in Duarte, Calif. She wasn’t involved in the study.

Neither she nor Pal think awareness of testing has increased across the board.

Underlying some of the disparity may be a lack of access to qualified surgeons, Seewaldt said.

Experts also need to learn more about the biology driving breast cancers in black women, Seewaldt added. Genes found so far to be linked with breast cancer are more likely to occur in women of European ancestry, she pointed out.

Pal presented the findings Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago. Research presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

To learn more about breast cancer risk factors, visit the American Cancer Society.

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