Keep Kids Safe This Halloween

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Don’t let kids’ Halloween fun be spoiled by real-life injury scares.

“Parents should educate kids on the true phantoms of the night while trick-or-treating,” said Dr. Steven Frick, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and spokesman for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

“They aren’t ghosts and goblins. Instead, they’ll need to watch out for aggressive neighborhood dogs, vehicles on the road, poorly lit houses, uneven terrain and be prepared for what to do during these situations,” he said in an AAOS news release.

Between 2007 and 2014, Halloween was the holiday with the fifth highest number of emergency department visits by children 18 and younger. The highest injury rates — nearly 29 percent — were among children younger than 5 and those ages 10 to 14, the AAOS said.

Head injuries accounted for nearly 18 percent of injuries suffered by children and teens on Halloween, according to the surgeons’ group.

Children should be supervised by an adult and instructed to walk on sidewalks. They should never cut across yards or driveways. They should obey all traffic signals, use designated crosswalks when crossing the street, and only go to homes that are well-lit, the AAOS said.

Costumes should fit properly and be flame-resistant, and a child’s vision shouldn’t be obstructed by masks, hats or facepaint. Bright costumes make it easier for children to be seen, and adding reflective tape to costumes and treat bags provides additional visibility.

It’s also important to wear sturdy, comfortable, slip-resistant shoes and for both parents and children to carry flashlights to see and be seen. Carry a cellphone in case of emergency.

Keep an eye out for neighborhood dogs and understand that they can pose a threat when you approach their homes, the AAOS said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers more Halloween health and safety tips.

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Ovarian Cancer Drug Shows Promise With Tough-to-Treat Prostate Tumors

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) — In a small trial, a drug designed to fight inherited ovarian cancers in women appeared to help some men with advanced prostate cancer.

Lynparza (olaparib) targets mutations that are found in about 30 percent of men with prostate cancer. But, it also seemed to benefit men whose tumors have acquired defects in DNA repair, the British researchers said.

“This is the first time a drug with potential to be used for treating advanced prostate cancer is associated with a clear genetic signature, permitting us to predict who is likely to benefit from the therapy,” said lead researcher Dr. Joaquin Mateo, a medical oncologist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

The researchers are now conducting a second trial to confirm the results, he said.

“We believe this is the most relevant step towards delivering personalized management, guided by the characteristics of each tumor for patients with advanced prostate cancer,” Mateo said.

Olaparib, a type of drug called a PARP inhibitor, was approved last year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for women with ovarian cancer that is associated with defective BRCA genes. But, it has not been approved to treat prostate cancer, Mateo said.

“We have shown the potential for olaparib to help a group of patients with advanced prostate cancer by choosing the best treatment for each patient, maximizing the chances of helping and avoiding unnecessary treatments to patients who are unlikely to benefit,” he said.

This advance has been made, in part, by the ability to test patients’ DNA to find those who will benefit most from the drug, he said.

“New DNA-sequencing techniques, which are cheaper and more accessible than they were a few years ago, can provide more precise care to advanced prostate cancer patients,” Mateo said.

The report was published Oct. 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, 49 men with advanced prostate cancer who were no longer responding to standard therapies received olaparib. Of these, 16 (33 percent) responded to the drug.

“We observed that about a third of the patients had a response in the tumor, normally lasting over six months and many times over a year,” Mateo said.

Most interesting was that almost all patients benefiting from the therapy had something in common, he said. Specifically, their tumors had genetic switches in one or more genes involved in repairing the damage to DNA, Mateo said.

Only two of the 33 patients who did not respond to the drug had these genetic changes, he said. “Therefore, we believe we have found a way to predict which patients are likely to respond to this new therapy,” Mateo said.

In the men who responded to the drug, olaparib stopped prostate cancer growth and caused lasting drops in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels. The drug also caused drops in tumor cells in the blood and led to shrinkage of tumors seen on CT and MRI scans, the researchers found.

Dr. Anthony D’Amico, chief of radiation oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, was not involved with the study, but reviewed its findings. “This is an important first step towards precision medicine, in which you can target a particular gene mutation with a drug,” he said.

However, how effective the drug is in prolonging life over the long term isn’t yet known, he said, although it’s promising that the men who tried and failed other advanced treatments responded to the drug.

“I am encouraged by the response rate,” D’Amico said. “But response doesn’t necessarily mean living longer.”

More information

Visit the American Cancer Society for more on prostate cancer.

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Why More Painkiller Addicts Are Using Heroin, Too

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Addicts who have moved from narcotic painkillers to heroin are helping researchers understand this deadly tradeoff.

Looking for clues driving concurrent painkiller and heroin abuse, researchers conducted online interviews with 267 addiction patients. This group was culled from more than 15,000 addicts entering drug treatment centers in 49 U.S. states.

Nearly half of those interviewed said they were hooked on narcotic painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet before using heroin. All of these powerful drugs are opium derivatives.

Three-quarters of the respondents said heroin’s lower cost and greater availability led them to try it, researchers found.

But heroin is even more dangerous than prescription painkillers, also known as opioid painkillers.

“Not only is [heroin] more addictive, but one isn’t sure how pure it is, so overdoses are quite common,” said Theodore Cicero, a professor of neuropharmacology at Washington University in St. Louis and lead researcher on the new study.

According to the White House, abuse of narcotic painkillers along with heroin is “epidemic” in the United States.

Heroin use began climbing in recent years after the federal government tried to shut down “pill mills” and doctors who illegally prescribe painkillers. This made it harder to obtain the prescription drugs, Cicero explained.

At the same time, painkiller formulations were changed to deter abuse, said Dr. Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y.

As the supply of narcotic painkillers decreased and the price increased, addicts added cheaper, plentiful heroin to the mix, Krakower and Cicero said.

“Prescription narcotics have become so expensive, and the access is fairly limited, that a number of people who would have previously shunned using heroin are now willing to use it because it is more accessible and cheaper,” said Cicero.

However, he said, very few people go completely from prescription narcotics to heroin because of concerns about becoming a “stereotypical” drug addict.

The switch to heroin is most striking in the Northeast, the study found. On the West and East Coasts, Cicero said, the combined use of heroin and narcotic painkillers is greater than exclusive use of narcotic painkillers. In the Midwest and South, use of narcotic painkillers remains high and heroin use is less common, he said.

Adding to the dangers, heroin is often injected with shared needles, which can transmit diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV, Cicero said.

For the study, published Oct. 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers initially surveyed 15,000 addicts starting treatment between 2008 and 2014. All were asked about use of narcotic painkillers in the previous month.

The study found that among those interviewed, exclusive painkiller use declined from 70 percent to less than 50 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, concurrent use of heroin and painkillers increased from 24 percent in 2008 to 42 percent in 2014.

At the same time, exclusive heroin use more than doubled, climbing from 4 percent to 9 percent.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama announced a major initiative to combat prescription painkiller and heroin abuse.

Dozens of major medical groups, leading pharmacy chains, law enforcement agencies, media outlets and anti-drug groups will take part in the government-led effort, the White House said.

“Prescription drug abuse and heroin use have taken a heartbreaking toll on too many Americans and their families, while straining law enforcement and treatment programs,” the White House said in a statement. The new programs are “aimed at addressing the prescription drug abuse and heroin epidemic.”

Addressing one of the complexities of addiction, Krakower said, “Narcotic painkillers may lead to increased tolerance, which in turn may drive people to take higher quantities.”

What’s especially alarming, he added, “is the gradual switch toward heroin, especially in the younger age population.”

Cicero said that preventing drug addiction starts with finding out what makes drugs attractive to some people.

“A lot of these people have severe psychological disturbances,” he said. “They have low self-esteem, depression, anxiety and stressful lives — often self-perceived,” Cicero said. “They find that narcotics are useful in helping them escape from life.”

Cicero said there are better ways to treat depression and anxiety. “Taking narcotics is not the answer. You are going to start yourself down a path that leads to nothing good,” he said.

More information

For more on heroin abuse, visit the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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Despite Advances, Type 2 Diabetics Still Face Elevated Death Risk: Study

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Medical science has made tremendous progress in prolonging the lives of people with type 2 diabetes. But, the prognosis still remains poor for patients who don’t keep their blood sugar levels under control, according to results from a large-scale Swedish study.

People with type 2 diabetes carry a 15 percent increased risk of premature death compared to healthy people, the researchers reported in the Oct. 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Those odds aren’t great, but they’re much better than they were as recently as 15 years ago, said senior author Dr. Marcus Lind, a physician at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

“Up to the year 2000, the excess risk of mortality in individuals with type 2 diabetes was generally considered to be doubled compared to the general population, implying a doubled risk to die during the following years,” Lind said.

Now, the overall death rate for diabetics has “dropped to historical low levels,” he added.

However, the risk of death is much higher in people younger than 65, those who poorly control their blood sugar levels, and those who’ve suffered kidney damage from type 2 diabetes, the researchers found.

The upshot is this — type 2 diabetics have to do their part in managing their condition if they want the benefits that medical advances have wrought, said Dr. Robert Ratner, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association.

“If you develop diabetes, there is good evidence that attention to glucose [blood sugar] control and other cardiovascular risk factors from the onset can reduce any individual’s risk of death,” Ratner said.

The new study used data from the Swedish National Diabetes Register to compare the death rate among just over 435,000 people with type 2 diabetes with that of a healthy control group of 2.1 million people.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body loses its ability to effectively use insulin, a hormone that helps process blood sugar into fuel for cells. Patients can wind up with high levels of glucose in their blood, which is damaging to many systems throughout the body.

Type 2 diabetics younger than 65 have a death risk substantially greater than that of older diabetics, according to the study findings. Excess risk of death was two to three times higher among those younger than 55, compared to between 30 percent and 40 percent higher for diabetics aged 65 to 75.

“What you begin to see is the increased risk of mortality in diabetes is highest the younger you are,” Ratner said. “The significant impact is really in those individuals under the age of 75, and it gets progressively greater as you go younger.”

The study authors speculated that the higher death rates seen among younger diabetics might owe, in part, to some gap in the care offered to these people.

Poor control of blood sugar levels can make that bad situation even worse for younger diabetics, the researchers found.

Anyone who didn’t manage their diabetes through lifestyle changes, insulin or medication faced a greatly increased risk of death, said study co-author Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod. He is a cardiologist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and a professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“If you look at the data, regardless of the age we look at, regardless of everything else, the worse the glycemic control the higher the mortality,” Kosiborod said.

But diabetics under 55 with poorly controlled blood sugar had a more than fourfold increased risk of early death, compared to healthy people. That risk was 55 percent higher for diabetics 75 and older who didn’t bother to manage their diabetes, the findings showed.

Finally, a patient’s death risk skyrockets if poorly controlled diabetes results in damage to their kidneys, the researchers said.

Diabetics younger than 55 who’ve entered end-stage kidney disease are 14 times more likely to die than a healthy person, according to the study.

End-stage kidney disease also multiplies the death risk sevenfold for diabetics 55 to 64, and sixfold for diabetics 65 to 74, the investigators found.

“Renal [kidney] disease and worsened kidney function are huge risk factors for overall mortality, regardless of age group,” Kosiborod said.

Kosiborod concluded that “the strong message from our data is that if you are a young patient, there’s a lot you can do to protect your health.”

These steps include eating right, quitting smoking, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol levels, he said.

But the best thing a person can do is try to avoid getting type 2 diabetes in the first place, Kosiborod added.

Type 2 diabetes prevention is possible, he said. “Clinical trials have shown that aggressive and intensive lifestyle interventions can prevent diabetes. You should do everything you possibly can to prevent this condition from occurring,” Kosiborod said.

More information

For more on type 2 diabetes, visit the American Diabetes Association.

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Sugar Is Definitely Toxic, a New Study Says

Photo: Getty Images

Fat was the food villain these past few decades but sugar is quickly muscling in to take its place. As rates of sugar-related disorders such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease climb, many experts believe that when Americans rid themselves of fat, they simplyreplaced it with sugar in all its forms.

But proving that the rise of the chronic diseases was actually linked to higher sugar consumption is a challenge. Dr. Robert Lustig, from the department of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, who has made a name for himself publishing books and research addressing the question of sugar’s effects on the body, wanted clearer answers. Now, in a paper published Tuesday, he and his colleagues believe they have come up with the definitive evidence that sugar, as Lustig says, “is toxic.”

In most lab studies, the doses of sugar that scientists test are quite high; they want to see what the effect is quickly and, depending on the research, they may not have time to wait to study the more gradual effects that might emerge. And in studies where people reduce the amount of sugar they eat, for instance, those people end up eating fewer calories overall, so it’s difficult to know whether any changes are due to the removal of sugar or to the drop in calories.

Lustig and his colleagues think they’ve produced the “hard and fast data that sugar is toxic irrespective of its calories and irrespective of weight.”

Lustig’s confidence comes from theunique study, described in Obesity, of 43 Hispanic or African-American children aged eight to 18 years old. He collected detailed food questionnaires from each of the adolescents to get an idea of the average amount of calories they ate per day, then designed a special menu for each of them for nine days that matched the total numbers of calories they would normally eat. The only difference in the nine-day diet was that most of the sugar the children ate was replaced by starch — the overall number of calories remained the same. The children weighed themselves daily, and if they were losing weight, they were told to eat more of the provided food in order to keep their weight the same throughout the study.

“Everything got better,” says Lustig. Some of the children went from being insulin resistant, a precursor state to developing diabetes, in which the body’s insulin levels can no longer keep up with the pace of breaking down sugar that’s coming in from the diet, to insulin sensitive.

“We took chicken teriyaki out, and put turkey hot dogs in. We took sweetened yogurt out, and put baked potato chips in. We took pastries out and put bagels in,” says Lustig. “So there was no change in [the children’s] weight and no change in calories.”

After nine days of having their total dietary sugar reduced to 10% of their daily calories, however, they showed improvements in all of these measures. Overall, their fasting blood sugar levels dropped by 53%, along with the amount of insulin their bodies produced since insulin is normally needed to break down carbohydrates and sugars. Their triglyceride and LDL levels also declined and, most importantly, they showed less fat in their liver.

Because some of the children lost weight, to convince themselves that the effects weren’t due to the small amount of weight that some of the children lost, Lustig and his team compared those who lost weight to those who didn’t during the study, and found similar improvements in both groups.

“Up until now, there have been a lot of correlation studies linking sugar and metabolic syndrome,” says Lustig. “This is causation.”

The diet he provided the children isn’t considered ideal from a health perspective — starches are still a considerable source of calories and can contribute to weight gain. But Lustig relied on the starches to prove a point in a scientific study — that the effect sugar has on the body goes beyond anything connected to its calories and to weight. “I’m not suggesting in any way, shape or form that we gave them healthy food,” he says. “We gave them crappy food, shitty food, processed food — and they still got better. Imagine how much even better they would have gotten if we didn’t substitute and took the sugar out. Then they would have gotten even better yet. That’s the point.”

Not everyone is convinced that the results definitely prove sugar, and not weight loss, is the culprit, however. Susan Roberts, professor of Nutrition, USDA Nutrition Center at Tufts University notes that because some of the children lost weight, it’s still possible that shedding the pounds helped their metabolic measures to improve. She also points out that the children self-reported their initial diet, which can often be inaccurate. “We know that a healthy diet and weight loss cause good metabolic changes, and although this study tries to attribute its effects to low fructose, in fact it is impossible to do that because of the study design.”

Some experts are concerned for other reasons. They’re worried that the findings may shift attention away from what they consider to be the more fundamental issue — that overall, we’re eating too much. “Too much calorie intake is still the biggest problem,” says Dr. Mark Corkins, professor of pediatrics at University of Tennessee Health Science Center and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on nutrition. He notes that the study involved children who were obese already and consuming too many calories. “It’s an important study, and the facts coming out of it are very important. It means we need to look at sugars, and at the type of sugars and sugar intake. But I worry that people are going to hang everything on this when we still need to reduce consumption.”

Lustig hopes that won’t happen as more data emerges that details how sugar is altering the body in unhealthy ways outside of its caloric contribution. That wasn’t the subject of the current paper, but he promises follow up studies based on this work that will address that. This study does hint however, at what might be happening. While there has been a lot of attention on the presence of belly fat and its connection to metabolic syndrome, the fact that the children saw improvements in the amount of fat in their liver suggests that might be an important way that sugar is contributing to chronic disease. Obese children and those with diabetes often suffer from fatty liver, a condition normally associated with alcohol abuse but increasingly common among non-drinkers who gain excessive amounts of weight.

This new view of sugar could change the advice that doctors and government health officials give about eating the sweet stuff. Lustig’s hope is that the information is considered as the U.S. Department of Agriculture finalizes its latest Dietary Guidelines, expected by the end of the year, which delineate recommendations for what, and how much of different types of foods and nutrients Americans should eat.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Why You’re a Better Liar When You Have to Pee

Photo: Getty Images

Planning to fib to your boss about why you were late today? You might consider waiting until you have to pee.

According to a (weird) recent study, people with full bladders seem to be better liars than those who are more, um, relaxed.

Researchers at California State University had 22 student volunteers fill out questionnaires regarding their stances on certain moral and social issues. Then, they divided the group into two, with one half of the volunteers being asked to drink a whopping 700mL of water and the other a measly 50mL—a task that they were told was completely unrelated to the study. Forty-five minutes later, participants were asked to lie about their previously stated beliefs. In the end, the group who drank more water were judged to be more convincing by third-party observers.

RELATED: 14 Strategies to Become a Happier Person

Why? Those who drank more displayed significantly fewer “behavioral cues to deception,” things like extra fidgeting, vocalized pauses, and lots of blinking.

Th researchers think that a full tank may lead to more focus because bladder control and other forms of impulse control might be controlled by the same areas in your brain. “They’re subjectively different but in the brain they’re not,” lead study author Iris Blandón-Gitlin, PhD explained to New Scientist. In other words, at the same time your brain is focusing on holding in urine, you’re more “in control” in other ways as well.

The trick however, is making sure the urge isn’t an emergency. “If it’s just enough to keep you on edge, you might be able to focus and be a better liar,” Blandón-Gitlin added, but past that it could just make it harder to get away with your tall tale.

The lesson: While ultimately you should shoot for honesty, but if you must tell a fib be sure to load up on liquids first.

RELATED: Troll Psychology: Why People Are So Mean on the Internet

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Every Sparkly, Golden Makeup Product You Need for Fall

Photo: Courtesy of http://ift.tt/1ix1YG4 Images; Art by Elysia Berman

Whether you’re based in Miami or the Windy City, there’s something about the culmination of summer that says: out with the golden girl vibe, and in with matte formulas and deep or earth tone hues. But top makeup artists backstage had different arrangements for the season ahead. From gilded sequin cat eyes at Temperley London to metallic gold lined lids at Zac Posen, the metallic shade was reinvented in an equally scintillating aesthetic.

So before you question where summer’s glow went so fast—just know that this fall, the eyes have it. Here, 10 shadows, liners, and palettes to help you strike gold as the season changes.

1. Urban Decay Moondust Eyeshadow in Interstellar

Those with darker skin tones: now this is how you do it! Choose a shadow in the bronze or copper range like Giorgio Armani F/W Runway Eye Tint, to create a natural radiance ($21, sephora.com).

2. Clinique Skinny Stick in Olive-tini

Trace your lower lashline with a golden eyeliner like Clinique Skinny Stick for just a hint of shimmer ($16.50, sephora.com).

3. NARS Dual-Intensity Eyeshadow in Telesto

Give yourself options by copping a solid shadow that can be worn wet or dry like Nars Dual-Intensity Eyeshadow. Create a lit-from-within look by dabbing the color on the inner corners of your eyes with a damp shadow brush, or dust it across your lids for full coverage. The choice is yours ($29,narscosmetics.com).

4. Dior Addict Fluid Shadow in Phénix

Dip your lids in liquid gold with a richly pigmented formula like Dior Addict Fluid Shadow for full coverage ($31, sephora.com).

5. Tom Ford Eye and Cheek Shadow in Bronze

Give your overall look a monochromatic golden vibe by opting for a two-in-one compact like Tom Ford Eye and Cheek Shadow. Sweep the iridescent powder evenly across your lids and cheekbones for an allover sunkissed effect ($65, tomford.com).

6. Sigma Loose Shimmer & Glitter Set in Abracadabra

Add dimension to your golden gaze by playing with textures. Blend iridescent shadows with loose glitter—a curated set like Sigma Loose Shimmer & Glitter Set takes the guesswork out for you ($30 for set of three, sigmabeauty.com).

7. e.l.f. Studio Need It Nude Eyeshadow Palette

Whether you’re the type to mix and match or, just a gal who’s got to have options, get your hands on a multi-shadow palette with an array of golden hues like E.L.F. Studio Need It Nude Eyeshadow Palette ($10, eyeslipsface.com).

8. Chantecaille Le Chrome Luxe Eye Duo in Monte Carlo;

Makeup artists backstage at Mara Hoffman blended gold and gray shadows to create a gilded smoky eye. Take the same approach by using a two-tone palette like Chantecaille Le Chrome Luxe Eye Duo for an ombré effect ($58, nordstrom.com).

9. Giorgio Armani F/W Runway Eye Tint

Those with darker skin tones: now this is how you do it! Choose a shadow in the bronze or copper range like Giorgio Armani F/W Runway Eye Tint, to create a natural radiance ($42, giorgioarmanibeauty.com).

10. Butter London Wardrobe Duo in Fancy Flutter

Get the best of both worlds with this dual palette that features both a bronze-y, sheer hue with a dark smoky black ($15, ulta.com).

This article originally appeared on MIMIchatter.com.

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Research Gives Clues to Why Some Benefit More From Drug for Bipolar Disorder

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Some people with bipolar disorder do not respond as well as others to the standby drug lithium, and a new study hints at why that may be so.

The research also brings scientists closer to understanding the origins of the psychiatric illness, which causes severe mood swings that include emotional highs and lows.

Specifically, the brain cells of people with bipolar disorder seem to be more sensitive than brain cells of people without the mental illness, the small study suggests.

“Researchers hadn’t all agreed that there was a cellular cause to bipolar disorder,” study senior author Rusty Gage, a professor in the genetics lab at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., said in an institute news release. “So our study is important validation that the [brain] cells of these patients really are different.”

Gage and his colleagues took skin cells from six people with bipolar disorder, reprogrammed the cells to become stem cells, and then coaxed them to develop into brain cells (neurons), which were compared with brain cells from healthy people.

“Neurons are normally activated by a stimuli and respond,” study first author Jerome Mertens, a postdoctoral research fellow, said in the news release. “The cells we have from all six patients are much more sensitive in that you don’t need to activate them very strongly to see a response.”

The researchers also found that the brain cells from the bipolar disorder patients had more active mitochondria, which is the energy source in cells.

The findings may give insight into current treatment, as well. Lithium is used to treat bipolar disorder, but the Salk team noted that not all patients respond to the drug.

Three of the patients in the study benefited from lithium, while three others did not. The neurons from the three who responded to lithium became less sensitive when exposed to the drug, while the neurons from non-responders remained highly sensitive after exposure to lithium, the research showed.

The findings don’t explain why lithium benefits some patients but not others, but does provide a starting point to investigate differences in neurons between the two groups of patients and to test new drugs, the researchers said.

The study was published in the Oct. 28 issue of the journal Nature.

Bipolar disorder affects more than 5 million Americans, according to background information in the news release.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about bipolar disorder.

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Feeling Extra Forgetful May Signal Dementia Ahead

By Tara Haelle
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) — For some older women, feeling unusually forgetful may be a sign that dementia will develop later on, a new study suggests.

“We studied older women who noticed themselves having memory problems but who still performed normally on a standard test,” said Allison Kaup, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. “These findings raise the possibility that memory complaints in older adults may be a very early symptom of a memory disorder that is just starting to gradually develop.”

But Kaup stressed that common memory problems, such as forgetting names, do not indicate that a person will definitely develop dementia.

For the study, published online Oct. 28 in the journal Neurology, researchers tracked more than 1,100 women 65 and older who had normal brain function when the study began. Over the next 18 years, at four different times, the women answered the question, “Do you feel you have more problems with memory than most?”

“This simple question likely did not capture all the complexity that may be important in understanding an older individual’s concerns about their thinking skills,” Kaup said. “How to best measure subjective memory complaints is an important question that is still being researched.”

As the study ended, the women took several tests to determine whether they had dementia or what’s called mild cognitive impairment, the middle step between normal aging and dementia.

At the start of the study, 8 percent of the women answered yes to the question concerning memory problems. These women were almost twice as likely to have mild mental impairment or dementia 18 years later, even after investigators excluded those women with depression, the study found.

Among those who answered no at the start of the study, 38 percent developed mental impairment by the end of the study, compared with 53 percent who had answered yes, Kaup said.

Furthermore, women who answered yes to the question later on in the study also were found to have a higher risk of dementia, the findings showed.

The researchers found mental impairment in 65 percent of the women who said they were having memory problems four years before the end of the study. Among those who did not report memory difficulties four years before the study ended, only 34 percent developed cognitive (“thinking”) impairment, Kaup said.

The study findings suggest that women’s memory disorders could be identified sooner, said Dr. Luca Giliberto, an attending neurologist at Cushing Neuroscience Institute in Manhasset, N.Y.

“This could lead to further screening of these patients in order to figure out what type of cognitive impairment they bear,” said Giliberto, who was not involved in the study. “We are not necessarily talking about Alzheimer’s disease only.”

Some past studies have found similar results with men, Kaup said, but there is also some evidence that dementia may differ between men and women.

Other studies have also found similar correlations among different ethnic groups, Giliberto said, but the follow-up period for studies with men and various ethnic groups were usually much shorter.

“I cannot think of a specific reason why men should behave differently than women in this aspect, once all the other confounders are accounted for,” Giliberto said. “Only a similar study in men can answer the question.”

But the study’s results do not mean a woman is destined to develop dementia if she frequently forgets names or why she walked into the other room, Kaup said.

“It is important to remember that not all women who had memory complaints in our study went on to be diagnosed with memory or thinking impairment,” Kaup said. Almost half did not. “There may be a variety of reasons for someone to have memory complaints that do not necessarily lead to the development of a memory disorder like Alzheimer’s disease.”

Anxiety about losing one’s memory might even contribute to forgetfulness, suggested Giliberto.

“There are many reasons, in today’s busy and unforgiving times, why someone should have the feeling of not performing as well as their peers,” Giliberto said. “Over-worrying is certainly one of them. The message here is not to start worrying but just to be more vigilant.”

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about memory loss.

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Breast Milk Makeup May Influence Child’s Later Weight, Study Says

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The composition of a woman’s breast milk may help determine whether her baby will become an overweight adult, a new study suggests.

Previous research has found that children of obese mothers are more likely to be overweight, but the reasons for this link are not clearly understood.

In this study of 25 mother-infant pairs, a University of Southern California research team said it determined that variations in the mix of complex carbohydrates in breast milk were linked with differences in infant growth and obesity.

These carbohydrates — called human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) — are a natural ingredient of breast milk and play a role in helping an infant’s immune system develop, the researchers said.

“At 6 months of age, higher breast milk levels of [two particular HMOs] were each associated with approximately 1 pound of greater fat mass,” study lead author Tanya Alderete, a postdoctoral research scholar, said in a university news release.

“Other HMOs were protective at 6 months,” she added. For instance, increased amounts of another one was associated with about a 1-pound lower infant weight and fat mass, she said.

Individual breast milk composition was more important in predicting obesity than the mother’s obesity and her weight gain during pregnancy, the researchers said.

However, the researchers only found an association, not a cause-and-effect link, between breast milk composition and a child’s obesity risk.

The study was published online Oct. 28 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Larger and longer studies are needed to learn more about how HMOs may affect a child’s obesity risk, said corresponding author Michael Goran, director of the university’s Childhood Obesity Research Center.

“Ultimately, what we would like to be able to do is identify which of the HMOs are most important for obesity protection and then use that as a supplement that can be given to the breast-feeding infant and added to infant formula,” Goran said in the news release.

Currently, infant formulas do not contain any HMOs, he said.

More information

The U.S. Office on Women’s Health has more about breast-feeding.

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