The research from the University of California – Davis was published online today in the February issue of the journal Autism Research. The study is important since it’s one of the largest to quantify how each parent’s age (separately and together) impacts the risk of autism in children.

The risk of having a child with autism increased by 18% for each five-year increase in maternal age. This means that a mom aged 40 is 50% more likely to give birth to a child later diagnosed with autism than a mom aged 25 to 29 years.

Janie Shelton, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at UC Davis, said:

“This study challenges a current theory in autism epidemiology that identifies the father’s age as a key factor in increasing the risk of having a child with autism. It shows that while maternal age consistently increases the risk of autism, the father’s age only contributes an increased risk when the father is older and the mother is under 30 years old. Among mothers over 30, increases in the father’s age do not appear to further increase the risk of autism.”

Among the births to moms younger than 25, children fathered by a male more than 40 years old were twice as likely to develop autism compared to children whose father was between 25 and 29. However, for moms more than 30 years old, the increased risk of older dads went away.

For the study, researchers used e-records detailing all live births in California between January 1990 and December 1999. The records included both the maternal and paternal ages of parents. To find out which kids developed autism, researchers used records from the state Department of Developmental Services.

All said, the research included approximately 4.9 million births and 12,159 cases of autism.

Researchers aren’t yet sure why advanced age affects autism risk. Some theories include maternal antibodies to fetal brain protein or an accumulation of environmental chemicals in the body.

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Maternal Age Linked with Autism Risk

There was hope that medicinal marijuana would provide help for people with Alzheimers because earlier animal studies had shown that marijuana could reduce the plaques in the brain that are the hallmark of Alzheimers.

Although this new study, from the University of British Columbia, is also an animal study, it was done with mice, which are considered to be a better match for human studies, while the previous ones were done on rats.

The researcher used the same methods (giving doses of HU210, a synthetic form of the compounds found in marijuana) on the mice but the mice did not respond the same way, in fact, there was no improvement over the mice that did not receive HU210, and the mice who received even higher levels, lost brain cells.

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Marijuana Likely No Help in Alzheimer’s

Your pancreas is a small organ that provides your body with insulin that helps you regulate the amount of sugar enters your blood stream. The more sugar you consume, the harder the pancreas has to work to release enough insulin. Of course, as with many things in life, if something is worked harder than it should be, something will go wrong, and body organs are no different.

Researchers who followed 60,524 men and women in the Singapore Chinese Health Study for 14 years found that people in the group who consumed an average of five drinks per week had an 87% higher risk compared with those who either didn’t drink that many soft drinks or didn’t drink them at all.

There are a few comments made by other researchers about this study, however. Although they could compare those in Singapore with consumers in the United States in terms of health care and disposable income, some scientists wonder if there were other factors in the Singapore subjects that may have increased their risk for pancreatic overall.

Whatever the final outcome, it is likely a good warning – our bodies are not meant to process such high amounts of sugar from soft drinks. Maybe cutting back isn’t a bad idea.

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Post from: Blisstree

Soft Drinks Up Pancreatic Risk

The finding came from a new, large-scale study published in the journal Thorax. Participants included 57,664 women taking part in a French study. Every two years between 1990 and 2002, the women, born between 1925 and 1950, were asked about their use of HRT and development of asthma symptoms.

None of the women in the study had asthma when their menopausal symptoms started. Almost 9.4% of women in the study with natural menopause and 28% of women with surgical menopause took HRT containing estrogen alone.

Study findings on Estrogen-only HRT and Asthma Connection:

• Women who used HRT were 21% more likely to develop asthma than women who had never used any form of HRT.
• Asthma risk was significant only among women using oestrogen alone. Their overall risk of asthma was 54% higher than among women who had never used any form of HRT.
• Women taking estrogen-only who were at the greatest risk of developing asthma included those who had some form of allergy before their asthma diagnosis, as well as women who had never smoked.

The researchers concluded that while their findings show an increased risk of asthma, that should be judged in “the light of all the other health effects of HRT use, including its beneficial effect on the quality of life of menopausal women.”

If you’re taking estrogen-only HRT, talk to your doctor about your potential risks before making any decisions about your medication.

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Estrogen-only HRT Linked with Asthma

There are several different ways that cold weather may contribute to gaining weight, and once these methods are exposed and swimming around in your thoughts, you may avoid them.

For the skinny on weight gain in the winter, read Tom Venuto’s article below. He’s the author of The Body Fat Solution, a book which takes a look at weight gain from many different angles (including emotional or psychological), not just the purely physical take.

After reading, leave a comment if you’re surprised by any of the insights on weight gain in the winter.

Does Cold Weather Make You Store Body Fat?

By Tom Venuto,
Author of The Body Fat Solution: Five Principles for Burning Fat, Building Lean Muscle, Ending Emotional Eating, and Maintaining Your Perfect Weight

Do you get fatter in the cold weather? It’s a good question right now, and the answer is yes!

First there’s the psychological explanation: in warm climates, people are wearing less clothes and enjoying the outdoors and people want to look good when they’re exposing more flesh! In the cold, you’re covered up, so there’s less self-consciousness and no public accountability. Therefore, most people tend to stay on a diet more diligently and train harder when summer rolls around.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) has been studied at length by psychologists. Often more than just the “winter blues” but an actual type of depression, SAD occurs during the short days and long nights of winter and fall, when there’s less sunlight and colder temperatures. Symptoms include depression, cravings for specific foods, loss of energy, hopelessness and oversleeping. Obviously, these types of symptoms can contribute to weight gain.

Because of their tendency for fall and winter weight gain, many people have suspected that cold temperatures influence weight gain on a metabolic level, not just eating more. Exposure to cold temperatures can cause a shivering thermogenesis which means there’s an increase in metabolism to produce more heat (heat production = calories burned).

However, if you just got the bright idea of turning off the heat in your house, or going for a swim in the cold surf every day to “burn more fat”, I wouldn’t recommend it. Deliberate exposure to the cold, either cold air or cold water doesn’t pan out into real world fat loss results, even though there are actually “fat loss gurus” who recommend it.

Here’s why:

If your body uses some energy for shivering or heat production, it can compensate later for that energy loss by increasing your appetite. Not only that, research at the hyperbaric environmental adaptation program at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland reported that, “The combination of exercise and cold exposure does NOT act to enhance metabolism of fats . . . Cold-induced vasoconstriction of peripheral adipose tissue may account, in part, for the decrease in lipid mobilization.”

It’s just not practical to freeze your butt off in an attempt to speed up your metabolism a tiny little bit, so your fat loss scheme wouldn’t last long if you tried.

A great example of how cold temperatures affect energy balance is in the case of swimming. For years, people thought swimming actually made you fat. There were all kinds of theories, like, “it makes you retain a layer of fat for insulation, like seals.” Actually, the most recent research shows that swimming is a perfectly good fat burning exercise, except for one thing: Swimming, especially in cold water, increases appetite dramatically.

The seasons affect your activity levels too. Pedometer research published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise uncovered a huge difference in the number of steps taken between the summer and winter:

• 7616 steps per day in summer
• 6293 steps per day in fall
• 5304 steps per day in winter
• 5850 steps in spring

Most people blame winter weight gain on the food, but it’s not just the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s celebration feasts, it’s less winter activity that also contributes to the holiday pounds.

You have to keep up your training and nutrition program in the winter, or else.

Although studies have found that seasonal weight gain is usually very small, it’s the type of slow weight creep that goes unnoticed. Over a period of 10, 15 or 20 years, it’s enough to accumulate into overweight or obesity.

Thus many men and women wake up one morning at age 40 or 45, look in the mirror and ask themselves, “How did I get so heavy?” Answer: just a pound or two a year, after each winter season, left unchecked.

To stay lean all year round, you have to remain alert about increases in your appetite and decreases in your activity. This is a YEAR-ROUND LIFESTYLE! Stay active, stay diligent about nutrition, stay accountable, and if you start to experience weight gain, nip it in the bud — fast!

© 2010 Tom Venuto, author of The Body Fat Solution: Five Principles for Burning Fat, Building Lean Muscle, Ending Emotional Eating, and Maintaining Your Perfect Weight

Author Bio
Tom Venuto is a fat-loss expert, nutrition researcher, and natural, steroid-free bodybuilder. Since 1989, Venuto has been involved in virtually every aspect of the fitness and weight-loss industry — as a personal trainer, nutrition consultant, motivation coach, fitness model, health club manager, and bestselling author of the popular e-book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, as well as other digital programs such as MP3 teleseminars and weight-loss membership websites. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Visit the author’s website at: BodyFatSolution.com.

(Image via stock.xchng; Book cover Penguin Group)

Post from: Blisstree

How Cold Weather Affects Your Weight

“It seemed to me that I was seeing more patients return with complications after a cesarean birth when staples were used instead of sutures, but I couldn’t find any studies that supported a recommendation for the use of either method,” said Suzanne Basha, M.D.

Dr. Basha and colleagues at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa. studied more than 400 patients (219 suture and 197 staples) undergoing cesarean delivery. After collecting wound complication data, researchers found that the use of staples resulted in a higher wound separation rate, higher composite wound complication rate and increased post-op doctor visits.

Use of staples to close wounds was linked with a more than four-fold increased risk of wound separation. Plus, use of staples added an average of eight minutes to operating time.

The study was presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s (SMFM) annual meeting earlier this week.

Data from the CDC indicates that more than 30% of all births in the US are by cesarean. In general, women without complications after a cesarean usually stay in the hospital around three days, and recovery takes four to six weeks.

Cesareans are undertaken for many reasons, including large fetal size, decreased blood supply to the placenta, multiple pregnancies, and avoiding risk of passing HIV or herpes to baby during delivery. In addition to potential complications from anesthesia, cesarean risks include infection, blood loss, blood clots, adhesions (scar tissue) and  potential complications with future births.

If you’re pregnant, are you going to discuss staples versus sutures with your doc in case of a cesarean delivery?

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Sutures Beat Staples for Cesareans

Scientists have found genes in both the mother and fetus responsible for premature birth, a leading cause of infant death in the US. The research was presented earlier this week at the 30th Annual Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) meeting.

Roberto Romero, MD, Chief of the Perinatology Research Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development led a team of physicians and scientists who studied a large number of genes involved in the control of labor. These genes could help explain the process that triggers preterm birth.

One out of three premature births occurs with a symptomless maternal uterine infection. The scientists found DNA variants in genes involved in fighting infection in the pregnant woman and the fetus. Dr. Romero noted that these genes have been preserved in women because they’re needed for fighting infection.

Scientists found that the fetuses who carried a SNP gene variation in IL6R had twice the risk of preterm birth. The SNP gene variation influences inflammation. They also found that DNA variants in maternal genes also increased the risk of preterm birth.

The gene variants are new evidence that genetic predisposition to preterm birth may depend on the DNA of both mother and fetus and how the two interact.

“This research gives us even more evidence as to the relationship between genetics and preterm birth and is a step toward personalized medicine,” said Alan R. Fleischman, MD, medical director of the March of Dimes.

Dr. Fleischman believes that the new findings have the potential to allow doctors to identify who is at risk for preterm birth and provide specialized, individualized care, helping to ensure that more babies have a healthy start in life.

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Premature Birth Gene Discovered

Type 1 diabetes, what used to be called insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes, cannot be cured. Insulin isn’t a cure, but rather, a way to manage it. The insulin must be given in specific doses and adjusted according to activity and food intake, something which can be quite difficult to do for an active child or teen. When blood sugar isn’t properly controlled, this can lead to severe complications later in life (blindness, kidney disease, amputation of a foot) or even death at a young age.

One of the projects that many researchers have been working on is an artificial pancreas, the organ that produces insulin. And, they may be closer to reality than ever before. Although the new closed-loop system is similar to a pump, it is thought that it would be much more efficient and safe because it would be providing insulin on a “real time” basis, doling out insulin according to the blood sugar readings it receives. The pumps that are used now are programmed to deliver a certain amount of insulin at certain times and this can also be manually adjusted by the user according to blood sugar testing results.

The most dangerous time for someone with diabetes is at night. While they are sleeping, their blood sugar could drop dangerously low, but because they are sleeping, they have no way of knowing that. If it drops low enough, they could go into a coma. An automatic system would be able to detect these drops in sugar, called hypoglycemia, and hold off giving insulin, which would drop the sugar levels even lower.

In a study, recently published in the medical journal The Lancet, researchers studied 17 children and adolescents who had type 1 diabetes and their blood sugar levels while using both the closed-loop system and the standard pump. What was found was that there were fewer overnight dips in blood sugar levels when the closed-loop system was used and blood glucose levels overall were in the normal range 60% of the time compared with 40% for the standard pump.

This was only a Phase 2 trial (there are three phases), so more study needs to be done, but this is a promising finding.

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Post from: Blisstree

Artificial Pancreas Promising

It’s not unusual for different races to respond in different ways to various illnesses or treatments. The best known illness where this occurs is hypertension (high blood pressure), but we don’t always know which diseases or disorders will fall into this category.

Multiple sclerosis is much more common among whites than African Americans, so not much research had been done regarding any differences in progression and treatment. Researchers from the University of Buffalo began looking into this while examining the magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of 567 patients who had MS. What they found was that African Americans who had MS showed more “damage to brain tissue and had less normal white and gray matter compared to whites with the disease.” (Blacks with MS Have More Severe Symptoms, Decline Faster than Whites, New Study Shows) As a result, they also deteriorated more quickly.

Among the 567 patients, 79 were African American and they were significantly younger than the white patients.

What is MS?

MS is a neurological disease, meaning it affects the nervous system. For some reason, it attacks the myelin, the protective covering that surrounds the nerves of the central nervous system. When the coating is broken down, the nerves short circuit, so to speak, and the message from the brain can’t reach the intended target.

Signs and symptoms often begin with difficulty with coordination and balance (gait), blurry vision, and numbness in various parts of the body. With African Americans, not only do these symptoms appear and progress more rapidly, they don’t recover as fully from attacks and the attacks happen more frequently.

More studies need to be done to begin to understand why this happens and to find ways to help those who are affected, but knowing that African Americans develop the disease earlier is helpful to physicians who may be confronted with younger patients who are complaining of symptoms that may indicate MS.

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Blacks with MS Deteriorate More Quickly

My guess is that so many Americans think H1N1 is over since it hasn’t been in the news much lately. Yet, the flu is still claiming lives. CDC estimates that between 39 million and 80 million cases of H1N1 occurred last year between April and December.

Researchers believe that if perceptions that H1N1 is over spread, people who currently say they intend to get the vaccine may decide not to get it after all.

While 44% of Americans polled believe the outbreak is over, only 18% think it’s very likely that there will be another widespread outbreak of H1N1 in the next year. Most of the adults polled (70%) say that there’s now enough H1N1 vaccine available in their communities.

More than half of parents (53%) polled had either gotten the vaccine for their kids (40%) or they intend to get it before the end of this month (13%). Of the parents who refused the vaccine for their children, 56% named vaccine safety concerns as the reason.

A large percentage of adults haven’t gotten the vaccine (61%), and they don’t intend to get it. Many of the adults who didn’t get the vaccine (37%) indicated they don’t think the flu outbreak is as serious now as public officials once thought.

“Our results show there was broad awareness of public health messages on H1N1; approximately three-fourths of the public reported seeing ads regarding the importance of getting the H1N1 vaccine since December, but many people did not respond to the message,” said Gillian K. SteelFisher, research scientist and assistant director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program.

Do you agree with the half of Americans polled who said they think the H1N1 outbreak is over?

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Is H1N1 Over?