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Giving young women educational materials about the risks of indoor tanning helps them find healthier alternatives for changing appearances, a study says.

Six months after 430 college-age women received a booklet focused on the damaging effects of tanning and ultraviolet radiation, specifically related to indoor tanning, on the skin’s appearance, about 35 percent of the women reduced their time in tanning booths from the previous year. Similar changes in attitude toward future intentions to tan were also noted.

However, the researchers found the participants’ perceptions of susceptibility to skin damage or skin cancer from indoor tanning did not change.

The booklet also emphasized tanning abstinence and recommended other appearance improving alternatives, such as exercise, sunless tanning products and choosing fashions that do not require a complimentary tan.

The study, conducted by a team from the School of Public Health at East Tennessee State University, was expected to be published in the Dec. 1 issue of Cancer.

The authors concluded that their effort “supports the use of intervention messages to change young people’s ultraviolet risky behaviors and ultimately reduce skin cancer morbidity and mortality.”

More than 1.3 million skin cancer diagnoses, resulting in more than 10,000 deaths, are made annually in the United States.
By HealthDay

Tobacco use and smoke from coal and wood are likely to claim tens of millions of lives in China over the next quarter-century, according to a study published online on Saturday by the British journal The Lancet.

Smoke from tobacco, biomass and coal will kill 53.3 million Chinese from chronic respiratory illnesses and 13.5 million from lung cancer during the period from 2003 to 2033, its authors calculate, using the current rate of exposure as a benchmark.

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Elementary schools can have a significant impact on low-income students’ consumption of fruits and vegetables by providing a lunch salad bar, according to a recent UCLA study. The findings, published in the December issue of the international journal Public Health Nutrition, show that the frequency of students’ fruit and vegetable consumption increased significantly—from 2.97 to 4.09 times daily—after a salad bar was introduced. In addition, students’ mean daily intake of energy, cholesterol, saturated fat and total fat declined considerably.

“One of the major contributing factors to the high rate of overweight children in the United States is that they do not consume the daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables,” said lead author Dr. Wendy Slusser, assistant professor of pediatrics at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA and the UCLA School of Public Health. “Increasing the availability and accessibility to healthy foods is one way to improve children’s diets. In turn, this sets up opportunities for kids to have repeated exposure to healthy food and positively impact their choices.”

The UCLA pilot study was conducted at three Los Angeles Unified School District elementary schools participating in the salad bar program and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s reimbursable lunch program. Study participants included 337 children in grades 2 through 5. Children were interviewed using a 24-hour food-recall questionnaire, both before and after the salad bar intervention—in 1998 and 2000, respectively.

The study was offered in conjunction with a nutritional education component, including a school assembly to teach children about the proper etiquette of serving themselves salad and picking a well-balanced lunch, as well as an artwork project and visits to farmers markets or a farm. The salad bar program was developed together by LAUSD Food Services and Occidental College in Los Angeles.

“The results are clear—if we provide fresh fruits and vegetables in kid-friendly ways, we will increase consumption,” said school board member Marlene Canter. “I am excited to see that our efforts to find new and creative ways to improve our students’ nutrition and help reduce obesity are working.”

Since the study, the LAUSD school board voted positively on a 2003 obesity-prevention motion that includes recommending fruit and vegetable bars as a modification of the hot lunch program.

An important source of nutrition, fruits and vegetables help with weight management and can also be beneficial in reducing the risk of certain cancers, heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes. Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables can improve health by increasing amounts of vitamin C, phytonutrients, potassium and fiber in the body and displacing energy-dense fatty foods.

The U.S.D.A. has reported that only 36.4 percent of U.S. children between the ages of 2 and 19 eat the recommended three to five servings of vegetables per day, and only 26 percent eat the two to four recommended daily servings of fruit.

“The salad bar program showed us that children will indeed eat more fruits and vegetables if offered in an appetizing and accessible manner,” Slusser said. “Future studies should evaluate parent education with school lunch menu changes, as well as why boys are less likely to eat from the salad bar at lunch than girls.”

The study was funded by the Joseph Drown Foundation and the Center for Advanced Studies in Nutrition and Social Marketing at the University of California, Davis.

Source: University of California

A recent study has linked asthma with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adults. The study of male twins who were veterans of the Vietnam era suggests that the association between asthma and PTSD is not primarily explained by common genetic influences.

The study included 3,065 male twin pairs, who had lived together in childhood, and who had both served on active military duty during the Vietnam War. According to the findings, among all twins, those who suffered from the most PTSD symptoms were 2.3 times as likely to have asthma compared with those who suffered from the least PTSD symptoms.

The study included both identical twins, who share all the same genetic material, and fraternal twins, who share only half of the same genetic material. “If there had been a strong genetic component to the link between asthma and PTSD, the results between these two types of twins would have been different, but we didn’t find substantial differences between the two,” said lead researcher Renee D. Goodwin, PhD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health.

Several other studies have found a relationship between asthma and other anxiety disorders, Dr. Goodwin noted, yet this study is the first to investigate the link between asthma and PTSD. This new research also confirmed previous findings that linked asthma with a higher risk of depression. “The reason (s) for the association between asthma and mental disorders is not known,” she said. “Asthma could increase the risk of anxiety disorders, or anxiety disorders might cause asthma, or there could be common risk factors for both asthma and anxiety disorders. Our study found the association between asthma and PTSD does not appear to be primarily due to a common genetic predisposition.”

The researchers found the association between asthma and PTSD existed even after they took into account factors such as cigarette smoking, obesity and socioeconomic status, all of which are associated with both anxiety disorders and asthma.

“It is conceivable that traumatic stress, which has been associated with compromised immune functioning, leads to increased vulnerability to immune-system-related diseases, including asthma,” Dr. Goodwin and colleagues wrote. “Alternatively, it may be that having asthma places adults at increased risk for PTSD as it increases the likelihood that they will be exposed to a traumatic situation because they have a life-threatening chronic medical condition.”

The findings suggest that a person with asthma who experiences a traumatic event may benefit from seeking professional help, because they could be more vulnerable to developing post-traumatic stress disorder, Dr. Goodwin said.

The study was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and published in the first issue for November 2007 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

TWO tablespoonfuls of dark chocolate a day is good for your health, a new study has found.
The sweet treat has a similar biochemical effect to aspirin and can reduce the likelihood of blood clotting.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health made the discovery when 139 people were disqualified from a larger study looking at the effects of aspirin on blood platelets.

Workers at computer factories are at increased risk of dying of cancer. The largest study of its kind published today in the open access journal Environmental Health looks at over 30,000 deaths of workers who had been employed at IBM factories in the USA. The study reveals that IBM factory workers were more likely to have died of cancer, including brain, kidney or breast cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, than the rest of the population.

Richard Clapp, from the Boston University School of Public Health, USA, studied the causes of death among all IBM factory workers who had worked for the company for at least five years between 1969 and 2001. Clapp analysed the causes of death for 31,941 workers and compared them with causes of death among the American population during this period. The data were obtained from the IBM corporation as part of a California lawsuit against IBM, and the plaintiffs’ attorneys contracted with Clapp to carry out the analysis.

The results of Clapp’s analysis indicate that there was increased mortality due to several types of cancer, especially in manufacturing workers and workers at particular plants in California, Minnesota, New York, and Vermont. Most notably, there was an excess of deaths due to cancer of the brain and central nervous system. Kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and breast cancer were also found in excess in some groups of workers. It was not possible to link these deaths to specific chemicals or other exposures in the workplace because the information necessary to do this was not available.

The study confirms a small mortality study of just three IBM plants published a year ago by company consultants, which also showed increased deaths due to brain and central nervous system cancer.

So-called “DES daughters,” born to mothers who used the anti-miscarriage drug diethylstilbestrol during pregnancy, are at a substantially greater risk of developing breast cancer compared to women who were not exposed to the drug in utero.

Reporting in the recent issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a nationwide team of researchers found that DES daughters over age 40 had 1.9 times the risk of developing breast cancer, compared to unexposed women of the same age. They also found that the relative risk of developing the cancer was even greater in DES daughters over age 50, but say the number of older women in their study group is, as yet, too small for a firm statistical comparison.

“This is really unwelcome news because so many women worldwide were prenatally exposed to DES, and these women are just now approaching the age at which breast cancer becomes more common,” said the study’s lead author, Julie Palmer, Sc.D., professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health.

She said an estimated one to two million women in the U.S. were exposed to DES, which was frequently prescribed to women from the 1940s through 1960s to prevent miscarriages.

The ongoing study suggests that DES-exposed women are developing the typical range of breast cancers after age 40 at a faster rate than non-exposed women of the same ages. The researchers also found that the highest relative risk of developing breast cancer was observed in study participants from the cohorts with the highest cumulative doses of DES exposure.

Women Should Not Neglect Screening
Women whose mothers took the drug DES during pregnancy may have a higher risk for breast cancer than women not exposed to the drug in utero. The new finding suggests these women should be especially vigilant about breast cancer screening, researchers at Boston University School of Public Health say. Their work appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention.

Why it’s important: DES, or diethylstilbestrol, was commonly given to pregnant women in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s to prevent miscarriage. As many as 2 million women may have been exposed to the drug while still in the womb. Those women are now at the age where breast cancer becomes more common, and thus may be at even higher risk than previously believed.

What’s already known: Use of DES was stopped in 1971 after research found that the drug could interfere with the development of the reproductive system of a fetus. Since then, other negative health effects have been identified. Women who took DES while pregnant are known to have a slightly higher risk of breast cancer than women who never used the drug. But it’s not clear if daughters exposed to DES in the womb also have an increased risk. However, exposed daughters do have a higher risk of developing a very rare cancer called clear cell adenocarcinoma in the vagina or cervix. They may also have problems getting pregnant and maintaining a healthy pregnancy.

How this study was done: To better understand if women exposed in the womb had a higher breast cancer risk, epidemiology professor Julie Palmer, Sc.D. and her colleagues compared breast cancer risk factors and diagnoses in 4,817 women who had been exposed in the womb and 2,073 similar women whose mothers did not take DES while pregnant. The women had all taken part in previous studies of the health effects of DES. Nearly all of the participants were white. They were followed for 22-24 years.

What was found: There were 76 cases of breast cancer among DES daughters and 26 among unexposed women. After controlling for other risk factors like age, family history of breast cancer, use of oral contraceptives and hormone therapy, number of children, weight and others, the researchers saw differences between the two groups. Women age 40 or older who were exposed to DES in the womb had nearly double the risk of developing breast cancer as unexposed women. Women who were 50 or older had an even higher risk, but there were too few women in the study to determine if that difference was statistically significant. Women younger than 40 did not seem to have any higher risk of breast cancer because of DES exposure. Breast cancer risk seemed to increase more in daughters of women given higher doses of DES.

The bottom line: Although the number of breast cancer cases in the study was small, it provides important information to women whose mothers took DES during pregnancy, said Heather Spencer Feigelson, PhD, MPH, senior epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society.

“These women should continue to be studied,” she said. “Most of the women in this cohort are now in their 40s and early 50s, and we do not know whether their breast cancer risk will continue to rise.”

Palmer and her colleagues say women whose mothers took DES while pregnant should be especially careful to keep up with their mammograms and clinical breast exams. Breast cancer screening can find the disease at its earliest stages when it is easier to treat. They also say DES daughters should think twice about using postmenopausal hormone therapy.

“Because the commonly used female hormone supplements have been shown to independently increase risk of breast cancer, it might be wise for exposed women to avoid such supplements whenever possible.”

Feigelson agrees with that advice. And she says women can take steps to address certain other breast cancer risk factors.

Weight gain between a woman’s first and second pregnancies can cause complications during pregnancy and delivery — even for women not considered medically overweight, a new study found.While previous studies had noted an association between weight gain and pregnancy complications, this new research is the best evidence thus far for a cause-and-effect relationship, the researchers said.”We are contributing evidence to strengthen the argument for causality,” said Dr. Eduardo Villamor, assistant professor of international nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the study, which was published in the Sept. 30 issue of The Lancet. “As far as we could humanly show, the evidence is pretty robust,” he said.The practical implications are clear. “Being of normal weight and trying to lose weight between pregnancies would be very helpful,” added Dr. Ellen Landsberger, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and women’s health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, who also has a degree in nutrition.Paradoxically, another new study found that women who had regularly exercised for four or more hours a week in the previous nine years or less were 40 percent less likely to have a live birth after their first cycle of in-vitro fertilization, compared to women who didn’t exercise.The study also found that regular exercisers were twice as likely to have an implantation failure or pregnancy loss after undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Cardiovascular exercise, in particular, was associated with a 30 percent lower likelihood of successful live birth compared with women who didn’t exercise. It was unclear why this was the case, although hormones certainly could be involved, the authors theorized.This study, by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, was published in the October issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.Overweight and obesity have become one of the world’s greatest public-health challenges. In the United States in 1999-2000, 28 percent of women aged 20 to 39 were obese, up from only 9 percent in 1960-62.And some relationship, whether causal or not, between overweight and obesity and pregnancy complications has long been suspected.For the new study, investigators from Harvard and Sweden took advantage of Sweden’s excellent health records, studying more than 150,000 Swedish women with first and second births between 1992 and 2001.Body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) was calculated at the first prenatal visit of each pregnancy. The difference in BMI was then correlated with complications during second pregnancies, including preeclampsia (hypertension), gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension and Caesarean delivery as well as stillbirth and large-for-gestational-age birth.A gain of one to two BMI units increased the risk of gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension or large-for-gestational age birth an average of 20 percent to 40 percent. A gain of three or more BMI units resulted in a 63 percent greater chance of stillbirth compared to a gain of less than one BMI unit. It also had a greater effect on all other complications, the researchers found.Even modest amounts of weight gain in normal-sized women caused problems. If a 5-foot-5-inch woman weighting 139 pounds (a BMI of 23, considered normal) gained 6.6 pounds — or one BMI unit — between the two pregnancies, her average risk of gestational diabetes increased more than 30 percent. A gain of 12.2 pounds (two BMI units) increased the risk 100 percent.”One of the key findings of our study is that we found that weight gain between pregnancies increased the risk of these complications even in women who had never been obese or overweight,” Villamor said.”It appears it is not necessary for women to become overweight or obese, a few kilos might carry a risk,” he continued. “One message could be that women should not gain any weight. They should try to go back to their pre-pregnant weight and should not gain any weight after the first pregnancy. Obviously, overweight and obese women should try to reduce their weight and that’s likely accompanied by other health benefits.”