#Early formula use helps some mothers breastfeed longerrecent public health efforts have focused extensively on reducing the amount of formula babies are given in the hospital after birth.
This study provides the first evidence that early limited formula (ELF) can provide important benefits to some newborns said lead author Valerie Flaherman MD MPH an assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics
at UCSF and a pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. Based on our findings clinicians may wish to consider recommending the temporary use of small amounts of formula to new moms whose babies are experiencing significant early weight loss.
Study findings will be published online by the journal Pediatrics and will appear in an upcoming print issue of the journal.
Formula use has the potential to be a slippery slope to breastfeeding discontinuation but ELF is a different way to envision using it said Flaherman.
Rather than giving full bottles of formula that make it hard for the baby to return to the breast ELF is a small amount of supplementation with a clear end point that alleviates some of the stress new mothers feel about producing enough milk.
Breastfeeding is known to offer wide-ranging preventive health benefits for babies reducing their risk for infections
and allergies and providing the perfect balance of nutrients to help infants grow into strong and healthy toddlers.
The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that healthy mothers and infants should breastfeed exclusively for the first six months for maximum health benefits.
Women do not immediately produce high volumes of milk after childbirth. Instead at first mothers secrete small amounts of colostrum
which contains high concentrations of nutrients and antibodies for the baby. During this period babies often lose weight
which consisted of one-third of an ounce of infant formula by syringe following each breastfeeding
The syringe was used to avoid the babies developing nipple confusion --when a baby develops a preference for a bottle nipple over the breast.
and in other populations said senior author Thomas Newman MD MPH a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF and a pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.
and challenge conventional wisdom said James Taylor MD medical director for the University of Washington Medical center's Newborn Nursery who was unaffiliated with the study.
Co-authors include Janelle Aby MD of the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford university; Anthony Burgos MD MPH of the Department of Pediatrics Kaiser permanente Medical center Downey CA;
Kathryn Lee RN Phd of the Department of Family and Community Nursing at UCSF; and Michael Cabana MD MPH of the Department of Pediatrics at UCSF.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Children Health and Human Development.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California San francisco (UCSF. Note:
Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Carnivorous plant throws out junk DNAGENES make up about 2 percent of the human genome. The rest consists of a genetic material known as noncoding DNA
The study was supported by CONACYT (Mexico) Howard Hughes Medical Institute the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences and the National Science Foundation.
#Potential flu pandemic lurks: Influenza viruses circulating in pigs, birds could pose risk to humansin the summer of 1968 a new strain of influenza appeared in Hong kong.
This strain known as H3n2 spread around the globe and eventually killed an estimated 1 million people.
A new study from MIT reveals that there are many strains of H3n2 circulating in birds
and pigs that are genetically similar to the 1968 strain and have the potential to generate a pandemic
if they leap to humans. The researchers led by Ram Sasisekharan the Alfred H. Caspary Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT also found that current flu vaccines might not offer protection against these strains.
There are indeed examples of H3n2 that we need to be concerned about says Sasisekharan who is also a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
From a pandemic-preparedness point of view we should potentially start including some of these H3 strains as part of influenza vaccines.
The study which appears in the May 10 issue of the journal Scientific Reports also offers the World health organization
and public-health agencies'insight into viral strains that should raise red flags if detected. Influenza evolutionin the past 100 years influenza viruses that emerged from pigs
or birds have caused several notable flu pandemics. When one of these avian or swine viruses gains the ability to infect humans it can often evade the immune system which is primed to recognize only strains that commonly infect humans.
Strains of H3n2 have been circulating in humans since the 1968 pandemic but they have evolved to a less dangerous form that produces a nasty seasonal flu.
However H3n2 strains are also circulating in pigs and birds. Sasisekharan and his colleagues wanted to determine the risk of H3n2 strains reemerging in humans
whose immune systems would no longer recognize the more dangerous forms of H3n2. This type of event has a recent precedent:
In 2009 a strain of H1n1 emerged that was very similar to the virus that caused a 1918 pandemic that killed 50 million to 100 million people.
We asked if that could happen with H3 Sasisekharan says. You would think it's more readily possible with H3
because we observe that there seems to be a lot more mixing of H3 between humans and swine.
Genetic similaritiesin the new study the researchers compared the 1968 H3n2 strain and about 1100 H3 strains now circulating in pigs
and birds focusing on the gene that codes for the viral hemagglutinin (HA) protein. After comparing HA genetic sequences in five key locations that control the viruses'interactions with infected hosts the researchers calculated an antigenic index for each strain.
This value indicates the percentage of these genetic regions identical to those of the 1968 pandemic strain
and helps determine how well an influenza virus can evade a host's immune response. The researchers also took into account the patterns of attachment of the HA protein to sugar molecules called glycans.
The virus'ability to attach to glycan receptors found on human respiratory-tract cells is key to infecting humans.
Seeking viruses with an antigenic index of at least 49 percent and glycan-attachment patterns identical to those of the 1968 virus the research team identified 581 H3 viruses isolated
since 2000 that could potentially cause a pandemic. Of these 549 came from birds and 32 from pigs.
The researchers then exposed some of these strains to antibodies provoked by the current H3 seasonal-flu vaccines.
As they predicted these antibodies were unable to recognize or attack these H3 strains. Of the 581 HA sequences six swine strains already contain the standard HA mutations necessary for human adaptation
and are thus capable of entering the human population either directly or via genetic reassortment Sasisekharan says.
One of the amazing things about the influenza virus is its ability to grab genes from different pools he says.
Sasisekharan and colleagues are now doing a similar genetic study of H5 influenza strains. The H3 study was funded by the National institutes of health and the National Science Foundation Story Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by Massachusetts institute of technology. The original article was written by Anne Trafton.
and scavenging behaviors-cornerstone adaptations that likely facilitated brain expansion in human evolution movement of hominins out of Africa and into Eurasia as well as important shifts in our social behavior anatomy and physiology
and air quality and ameliorate infectious diseases. Lead author of the study Dr Leydimere Oliveira said:
We were interested initially in quantifying the environmental services provided by the Amazon and their replacement by agricultural output.
Beyond this limit the feedbacks that we demonstrated start to introduce significant losses in the agriculture production continued Dr Oliveira.
On surveillance in the war against cancerpredicting outcomes for cancer patients based on tumor-immune system interactions is an emerging clinical approach
and new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical center is advancing the field when it comes to the most deadly types of breast cancer.
We know that one function of our immune system is to detect and destroy pre-malignant cells before they can become cancer said lead author Lance D. Miller Ph d. associate professor of cancer biology at Wake Forest Baptist.
However sometimes the immune system becomes unresponsive to the presence of these cells and a tumor develops.
This unresponsiveness can be temporary and the immune system can remain alerted to the fact that there's a problem.
Immune cells can stand post along the borders of the tumor and even infiltrate the tumor core where they may gain a better position for eventual attack.
We now have technologies that allow us to quantify aspects of this interaction and from that information we can make predictions about cancer outcomes Miller said.
The study published online ahead of print last month in the journal Genome Biology. This approach is known as gene expression profiling
and by studying the expression profiles of 2000 human breast tumors Miller and his team identified several immune gene signatures that reflect the abundance
and anti-tumor properties of different types of tumor-infiltrating immune cells. They found that in certain aggressive types of breast cancer such as basal-like
or triple negative disease these immune signatures were highly predictive of cancer recurrence years after initial treatment.
Strikingly the patients who seemed to benefit the most were those with highly proliferative and clinically aggressive disease Miller said.
In these cases high expression levels of the immune genes predicted for recurrence-free survival
while low immune gene expression predicted for a high likelihood of cancer recurrence. An important next step Miller said will be translating this into a diagnostic test that may help doctors make more informed treatment decisions.
Knowing a tumor's immunogenic disposition could help oncologists know whether to prescribe more or less aggressive treatment regimens
or perhaps to know which drugs specifically will be most effective he said. For doctors like Bayard Powell M d. chief of hematology and oncology at Wake Forest Baptist's Comprehensive Cancer Center new drugs designed to enhance anti-tumor immune responses are beginning to play a major
role in the treatment of certain forms of cancer. At Wake Forest Baptist we are now fighting cancer with state-of-the-art therapies including immunotherapeutics Powell said.
How a tumor's immunogenic disposition influences the effectiveness of immunotherapeutic drugs is an important question that could lead to valuable new strategies in personalized medicine.
Co-authors include: Jeff W. Chou Ph d. Mark C. Willingham M d. Jimmy Ruiz M d. James P. Vaughn Ph d. Purnima Dubey Ph d. and Timothy L
. Lash Ph d. all of Wake Forest Baptist; Srikanth Nagalla M d. M. S. Jefferson University Hospitals; Stephen J. Hamilton-Dutoit M d. Aarhus University Hospital Institute of Pathology Denmark;
Jonas Bergh M d. Ph d. Karolinska Institute Sweden; Christos Sotiriou M d. Ph d. Jules Bordet Institute Belgium and Michael A. Black Ph d. University of Otago New zealand.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Could eating peppers prevent Parkinsons? Dietary nicotine may hold protective keynew research reveals that Solanaceae--a flowering plant family with some species producing foods that are edible sources of nicotine--may provide a protective effect against Parkinson's disease.
The study appearing today in Annals of Neurology a journal of the American Neurological Association
and Child Neurology Society suggests that eating foods that contain even a small amount of nicotine such as peppers
and tomatoes may reduce risk of developing Parkinson's. Parkinson's disease is a movement disorder caused by a loss of brain cells that produce dopamine.
Symptoms include facial hand arm and leg tremors stiffness in the limbs loss of balance and slower overall movement.
Nearly one million Americans have Parkinson's with 60000 new cases diagnosed in the U s. each year and up to ten million individuals worldwide live with this disease according to the Parkinson's disease Foundation.
Currently there is no cure for Parkinson's but symptoms are treated with medications and procedures such as deep brain stimulation.
Previous studies have found that cigarette smoking and other forms of tobacco also a Solanaceae plant reduced relative risk of Parkinson's disease.
However experts have not confirmed if nicotine or other components in tobacco provide a protective effect
or if people who develop Parkinson's disease are simply less apt to use tobacco because of differences in the brain that occur early in the disease process long before diagnosis. For the present population-based study Dr. Susan Searles Nielsen
and colleagues from the University of Washington in Seattle recruited 490 patients newly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the university's Neurology Clinic or a regional health maintenance organization Group Health Cooperative.
Another 644 unrelated individuals without neurological conditions were used as controls. Questionnaires were used to assess participants'lifetime diets
and tobacco use which researchers defined as ever smoking more than 100 cigarettes or regularly using cigars pipes or smokeless tobacco.
Vegetable consumption in general did not affect Parkinson's disease risk but as consumption of edible Solanaceae increased Parkinson's disease risk decreased with peppers displaying the strongest association.
Researchers noted that the apparent protection from Parkinson's occurred mainly in men and women with little or no prior use of tobacco
which contains much more nicotine than the foods studied. Our study is the first to investigate dietary nicotine
and risk of developing Parkinson's disease said Dr. Searles Nielsen. Similar to the many studies that indicate tobacco use might reduce risk of Parkinson's our findings also suggest a protective effect from nicotine or perhaps a similar but less toxic chemical in peppers and tobacco.
The authors recommend further studies to confirm and extend their findings which could lead to possible interventions that prevent Parkinson's disease.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wiley. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Exotic atoms hold clues to unsolved physics puzzle at the dawn of the universean international team of physicists has found the first direct evidence of pear shaped nuclei in exotic atoms.
and soy foods may be more effective in preventing prostate cancer when they are eaten together than
In our study we used mice that were engineered genetically to develop an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
and soy had no cancerous lesions in the prostate at study's End all mice in the control group--no soy no tomato--developed the disease said John Erdman a U of I professor of food science and nutrition.
Eating tomato soy and the combination all significantly reduced prostate cancer incidence. But the combination gave us the best results.
Only 45 percent of mice fed both foods developed the disease compared to 61 percent in the tomato group and 66 percent in the soy group he said.
Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men but the disease has nearly a 100 percent survival rate
if it's caught early. In older men it is often a slow-growing cancer
and these men often choose watchful waiting over radiation and surgical treatments that have said unwelcome side effects Krystle Zuniga co-author of the paper.
Soy isoflavone serum and prostate levels in the mice are similar to those found in Asian men who consume one to two servings of soy daily.
In countries where soy is eaten regularly prostate cancer occurs at significantly lower levels Erdman noted.
How much soy and tomato should a 55-year-old man concerned about prostate health eat in order to receive these benefits?
and one to two servings of soy foods daily could protect against prostate cancer Zuniga said.
When you eat whole foods you expose yourself to the entire array of cancer-fighting bioactive components in these foods Erdman said.
although low in genistein was still very effective at reducing cancer incidence. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences (ACES.
These findings published May 8 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation suggest micrornas could be targeted for the development of new medical interventions aimed at improving muscle fitness in people with chronic illness or injury.
This information is relevant to our efforts to improve muscle fitness in many health conditions such as aging cancer and heart failure.
These findings may also prove useful for our active members of the military who become'detrained'during injury
and recovery time said Daniel P. Kelly M d. director of Sanford-Burnham's Diabetes and Obesity Research center and senior author of the study.
According to Kelly muscle fitness only occurs if both are functioning properly. Increased muscle endurance cannot occur without boosting both of these muscle components.
In contrast PPARÎ/Î'marathon mice have the whole package necessary for muscle fitness. The two mouse models also differed in molecular profiling according to this study.
if their findings were relevant to human health Kelly and his team worked with Steven R. Smith M d. director of the Florida Hospital--Sanford-Burnham Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes.
From there the team obtained muscle tissue from sedentary people (those who don't exercise regularly) and active people in good shape.
Sure enough ERRÎ and one of the micrornas elevated in PPARÎ/Î'marathon mice were increased also in active people but not the sedentary group.
We're now conducting additional human studies to further investigate the ERRÎ-microrna circuit as a potential avenue for improving fitness in people with chronic illness
or injury Kelly said. For example next we want to know what happens to this circuit during exercise and
The above story is provided based on materials by Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. The original article was written by Heather Buschman.
Other lines of research focus on the field of biomedicine. Some studies have shown that trained dogs can detect cancerous tumours such as lung cancer by smelling a person's breath.
If this is true and an electronic nose can detect which substances the animals recognise then we could diagnose the disease earlier
and increase patients'survival rates. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Plataforma SINC.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference R
#U s. urban trees store carbon, provide billions in economic value, finds state-by-state analysisfrom New york city's Central park to Golden gate Park in San francisco America's urban forests store an estimated 708 million tons of carbon an environmental service with an estimated value
With expanding urbanization city trees and forests are becoming increasingly important to sustain the health
Carbon Stored (tons) Total 708100000the mission of the U s. Forest Service is to sustain the health diversity
#Biomechanical performances of old-fashioned leather and modern football helmets comparedresearchers at the Center for Injury Biomechanics at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg Virginia compared the relative safety afforded by two 1930-vintage leather football helmets
and head injury risks at the severity level of subconcussive injury. Rowson and his coauthors state that they offer biomechanical analysis based on helmet testing methodologies that compare relative helmet performance.
Dr Gagliano explained Our results show that plants are able to positively influence growth of seeds by some as yet unknown mechanism.
#Scientists alarmed by rapid spread of brown streak disease in cassavacassava experts are reporting new outbreaks
and the increased spread of Cassava Brown Streak Disease or CBSD warning that the rapidly proliferating plant virus could cause a 50 percent drop in production of a crop that provides a significant source of food and income for 300 million Africans.
The pandemic of CBSD now underway is particularly worrisome because agriculture experts have been looking to the otherwise resilient cassava plant
and eliminate this plague said Claude Fauquet a scientist at the International Center for Tropical agriculture (known by its Spanish acronym CIAT) who heads the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century (GCP21).
We are concerned particularly that the disease could spread to West Africa and particularly Nigeria--the world's largest producer and consumer of cassava--because Nigeria would provide a gateway for an invasion of West Africa where about 150 million people depend on the crop.
Infections can claim 100 percent of a farmer's harvest without the farmer's knowledge.
The telltale signs of the disease are brown streaks in the root's flesh that
The spread of the disease to West Africa and particularly Nigeria is a major cause for concern experts say
and numerous small-scale processors CMD--a Scourge for Cassava on the African Continentscientists at the conference will also consider options for dealing with another devastating virus--the Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD).
The disease is caused by several viruses and the African continent witnessed several major CMD epidemics over the past decades the most recent and devastating
of which occurred in the 1990s in East and Central africa. Great success was achieved in combating the CMD pandemic through developing and disseminating varieties that were resistant to CMD.
In fact by the mid-2000s half of all cassava farmers were benefiting from these varieties in large parts of East and Central africa.
But by a cruel twist of nature both improved and local varieties all succumbed to the'new'pandemic of CBSD.
This toxic mix of circumstances affecting a tiny fly threatens to shoot down the Rambo root bringing the misery of food insecurity to vast swathes of Africa.
Farmers also help spread the disease by planting new fields with infected stem cuttings. Scientists note that
while it would take several years for the disease to spread across the continent via whiteflies alone infected stem cuttings could spark outbreaks in new areas overnight.
Experts to Develop Plan to Stop Viruses in their Tracksat the Italy meeting experts will discuss a variety of tactics for combating virus diseases such as developing more disease-resistant varieties like those recently released in Tanzania.
Efforts to breed high-yielding disease-resistant plants suitable for Africa's various growing regions will involve going to South america where cassava originated
and stop the disease from spreading. Scientists will also discuss new research into the potential threat African cassava producers face from the introduction of new diseases currently found outside the continent.
It's time for the world to recalibrate its scientific priorities Fauquet said. More than any other crop cassava has the greatest potential to reduce hunger
and other destructive viruses like the smallpox of cassava--formidable diseases but threats we can eradicate
Other precautions include treating irrigation water with chemicals toxic to fish and amphibians and setting poisoned bait for rodents.
The California Leafy Green Hander agreement is transparent flexible and science based said Gennet. Going above and beyond it just creates costs for farmers
Although scant evidence exists of risk of food-borne disease spread by wildlife the risk of rejection of produce by major buyers is too much for most growers to bear say Gennet
As a community we need to approach food health wildlife health and water health in the Salinas Valley as parts of an integrated system.
I'm not doing drugs may not always be able to use that line. New research to be presented Sunday May 5 at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in WASHINGTON DC supports the theory that cigarettes are a gateway drug to marijuana.
Contrary to what we would expect we also found that students who smoked both tobacco and marijuana were more likely to smoke more tobacco than those who smoked only tobacco said study author Megan Moreno MD MSED MPH FAAP an investigator at Seattle Children's Research Institute and associate professor
of pediatrics at the University of Washington. Dr. Moreno and her colleagues randomly selected incoming college students from two universities--one in the Northwest
and one in the Midwest--to participate in the longitudinal study. Students were interviewed prior to entering college and again at the end of their freshman year regarding their attitudes intentions and experiences with substances.
Specifically students were asked if they had used tobacco or marijuana ever in their lives and in the past 28 days.
Researchers also assessed the quantity and frequency of marijuana and tobacco use in the past 28 days.
Results showed that prior to entering college 33 percent of the 315 participants reported lifetime tobacco use
In addition tobacco users were more likely to have used marijuana than those who did not use tobacco.
Of these 53 percent reported concurrent marijuana use. Overall users of both substances averaged significantly more tobacco episodes per month than current users of tobacco only (42 vs. 24.
because in the past year we have seen legislation passed that legalizes marijuana in two states Dr. Moreno said.
While the impact of these laws on marijuana use is a critical issue our findings suggest that we should also consider
whether increased marijuana use will impact tobacco use among older adolescents. Future work should involve designing educational campaigns highlighting the increased risks of using these substances together Dr. Moreno concluded.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Academy of Pediatrics. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
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