Pesticides May Cause Asthma Among Farm Women

(HealthDay News) -- Farm women who come in contact with some widely used pesticides may have an increased risk of developing allergic asthma, a new study suggests.

However, the risk of developing non-allergic asthma does not increase for women exposed to pesticides, according to the study authors.

"Women who apply pesticides on farms were 50 percent more likely to have allergic asthma, although this was not true for non-allergic asthma," said study author Jane Hoppin, a staff scientist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "Also, women who grew up on farms were protected against allergic asthma and that protection was evident whether or not you applied pesticides."

The findings are published in the January issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, non-allergic asthma is caused by factors not related to allergies. But allergic asthma -- the most common form of asthma, affecting more than 50 percent of the 20 million asthma sufferers in the United States -- is characterized by symptoms that are triggered by an allergic reaction. Some typical triggers for allergic asthma include dust mites, pet dander, pollen and mold.

Experts already knew that growing up on a farm minimizes the risk of allergic disease, that pesticides have been associated with respiratory symptoms in farmers, and that farmers are at increased risk for respiratory diseases -- including asthma -- due to exposure to grains, animals, dust and other factors.

Little research, however, has delved into respiratory risk factors for farm women.

Hoppin and her colleagues examined data on 25,814 such women in North Carolina and in Iowa who are participating in the Agricultural Health Study, a large government-funded look at the effects of environmental, occupational and other factors on the health of the agricultural population.

"This is the largest study of farmers and their families in the world, so it gives us an opportunity to look at diseases that haven't been well characterized," Hoppin said.

The women reported whether or not they had been diagnosed with asthma and were then divided into two groups: those with atopic (allergic) asthma and those with nonatopic (non-allergic) asthma.

More than half the women in the study had used or been exposed to pesticides. Sixty-one percent of the women were raised on a farm, which protected against allergic asthma and, to a lesser extent, non-allergic asthma. Using pesticides was associated almost solely with allergic asthma, increasing the risk almost 50 percent, the study found.

The association between pesticide use and allergic asthma was strongest among women who had grown up on a farm. But because of the protective effect of having grown up in an agricultural setting, these women still had a lower overall risk of allergic asthma than women who did not grow up on a farm.

Women who were raised on farms but did not use pesticides had the lowest overall risk of allergic asthma, compared with women who neither grew up on farms nor applied pesticides.
Some less commonly used pesticides such as parathion were associated with triple the risk of allergic asthma. Some more commonly used pesticides such as malathion were also associated with a higher risk, the researchers said.

Other experts said the study findings were far from clear-cut.

"It's a little bit confusing," said Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "I would expect that there would be more allergic asthma in anybody who grew up on a farm, but that's not exactly what they're saying. Also, it's difficult to separate farm work from pesticide use. I would need to see more data before coming to the same conclusions as the authors of the article did."

Because Hoppin's analysis was "cross-sectional," it can't show a cause and effect. "But given what we see in animals, it suggests that we should do a prospective analysis where we can then say pesticide use preceded asthma or asthmatic symptoms. That's really the next step," she said.

Hoppin said she and her colleagues are in the process of planning that next study.

More information
To learn more about asthma, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Cabin Fever Has an Online Cure This Year

(HealthDay News) -- Is your only connection to nature's beauty that Christmas evergreen in your living room this season?

If so, The National Wildlife Federation has developed a Web-based tool to help you find live evergreens - and other of natural wonders - thriving in the great outdoors in green places close to your zip code.

The federation teamed up with NatureFind to develop a quick and easy way to find many of the green places in your community including regional, state and national parks. Some private parks and nature centers are available on this system as well.

The database, called the National Wildlife Federations Green Hour, also provides suggestions of activities you can do when you get outdoors, including tracking animals, catching snowflakes, filling birdfeeders and organizing a winter scavenger hunt.

The federation recommends giving children a Green Hour every day to help reduce stress, build immunity, lose weight and increase imaginative play.

More information
To learn more green spaces in your area, visit the Green Hour.

Brain Center May Link Addiction, Mental Illness

(HealthDay News) -- Developmental problems involving a walnut-shaped part of the brain called the amygdala -- linked to fear, anxiety and other emotions -- may explain why mental illness and addiction often appear together, researchers say.

Many kinds of addiction -- such as those for alcohol, drugs and nicotine -- occur in people with various kinds of mental illness, including depression, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, according to background information in an American Psychological Association news release about the Indiana University study.

Two to five of every 10 anxious or depressed people, and four to eight of every 10 people with schizophrenia, biopolar disorder or antisocial personality, also have some form of addiction, according to epidemiological data.

In this study, published in the December issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, the researchers compared the behavior of adult rats whose amygdalas were surgically damaged in infancy and adult rats with intact amygdalas.

Rats with the damaged amygdalas showed less fear and caution than normal and were significantly more sensitive to cocaine after just one exposure to the drug. Rats with damaged amygdalas that received repeated cocaine injections developed "even stronger expressions of the enduring changes in behavior -- suggesting an overall hypersensitivity to the addictive process," the researchers noted.

Since both groups of rats were raised in the same controlled conditions, the damaged amygdala was the likely cause of the impaired fear behavior, as well as the heightened drug response, in the one group of rats, the study authors concluded.

In humans, disease and interactions between genetic and environmental factors can alter amygdala function or change the way it's connected to the rest of the brain during childhood and adolescence.

"Early emotional trauma, paired with a certain genetic background, may alter the early development of neural networks intrinsic to the amygdala, resulting in a cascade of brain effects and functional changes that present in adulthood as a dual-diagnosis disorder," lead author Dr. Andrew Chambers explained in a prepared statement.

More information
The (U.S.) National Alliance on Mental Illness has more about dual diagnosis of substance abuse and mental illness.

Health Tip: Living With Lactose Intolerance

(HealthDay News) - Lactose intolerance makes it difficult for someone to digest a type of sugar found in milk and other dairy products.

Here are suggestions, courtesy of the Nemours Foundation, to help a child who is lactose-intolerant:

• Try consuming dairy products in moderation.
• Try cheese and yogurt, which may be easier for lactose-intolerant children to digest than milk.
• Try lactose-free or lactose-reduced milk.
• Try a lactose enzyme supplement before eating dairy products, to help the body digest lactose.
• Try eating dairy products along with non-dairy foods, which may help ease digestion.
• Try getting extra calcium in the form of calcium-fortified juices, broccoli, beans, tofu and soy milk.

Study Finds Cholesterol Fine-Tunes Hearing

(HealthDay News) -- The amount of cholesterol in the outer hair cell membranes of the inner ear can affect hearing, a new U.S. study concludes.

"We've known for a long time that cholesterol is lower in the outer hair cell membranes than in the other cells of the body. What we didn't know was the relationship it had to hearing," senior author Dr. William Brownell, a professor of otolaryngology at Baylor College of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.

In the study, published Dec. 14 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers manipulated cholesterol levels in the outer hair cells of the inner ears of mice and then measured the rodents' hearing ability.

"Depleting the cholesterol resulted in a hearing loss. Adding cholesterol initially increased hearing but later resulted in a hearing loss. So, you can change an animal's hearing just by adding or subtracting cholesterol," Brownell said.

The fine-tuning of cholesterol in these cells happens naturally during development and doesn't change much after birth. That's different than cholesterol levels in the blood, which can vary with eating habits.

"Will our hearing be affected if we continually eat greasy meals? Right now, we don't see a connection between the two," Brownell said. "The results of the study help us understand the cellular mechanisms for regulating hearing and give us another way to potentially help those with hearing loss."

More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians explains hearing problems.

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Statins Can Boost Brain Hemorrhage Risk After Stroke

(HealthDay News) -- Some people taking statins after a stroke might face an increased risk of having a brain hemorrhage, a new study suggests.

But the risk of this life-threatening condition needs to be balanced against the benefit of statins in lowering the overall risk of a second stroke and heart attack, experts stress.

"There is a small but significant increased risk of brain hemorrhage among people who have had a previous stroke who take Lipitor, especially among those who have had a previous brain hemorrhage," said lead researcher Dr. Larry B. Goldstein, director of the Duke Center for Cerebrovascular Disease and the Duke Stroke Center at Duke University Medical Center. "If you don't have a history of stroke, then none of this matters."

Based on these findings, patients who have had a hemorrhagic stroke should not receive a statin to lower cholesterol, Goldstein said. "Having had a brain hemorrhage within the prior one to six months, one should be very cautious about starting a patient on a statin," he noted.

The report is published in the Dec. 12 online edition of Neurology.

In the study, Goldstein's group analyzed data from the Stroke Prevention with Aggressive Reduction in Cholesterol Levels (SPARCL) trial. In SPARCL, 4,731 people received 80 milligrams of Lipitor daily or placebo.

All those in the trial had had a stroke or a transient ischemic attack (TIA) one to six months before entering the SPARCL trial. None of the participants had a history of heart disease.

During an average of 4.5 years of follow-up, people taking Lipitor had a 16 percent reduction in second strokes and significant reductions in heart attacks. However, further analysis found an increase in the risk of brain hemorrhage.

Among those taking Lipitor, 2.3 percent had a hemorrhagic stroke compared with 1.4 percent of those taking placebo. On the plus side, there was a 21 percent reduction in ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke, among those taking Lipitor, Goldstein noted.

Other factors that increased the risk of brain hemorrhage included being older, having had a previous hemorrhagic stroke, being male and having high blood pressure. In fact, people with severe high blood pressure had more than six times the risk of hemorrhagic stroke compared with people with normal blood pressure.

For most patients, statins such as Lipitor do help prevent strokes and heart attacks, Goldstein said. "For patients who have not had a stroke or TIA within the past six months -- there is no risk of hemorrhage," he said.

One expert agreed that patients who have had a hemorrhagic stroke should probably not be given statins.

"If there is any message that neurologists' will take home from this paper it is that 'I'm going to be a little more pensive about using statins in someone who has presented with a hemorrhage to the brain,'" said Dr. Wade Smith, director of the Neurovascular Service at the University of California, San Francisco.

Smith noted that the most important factor in preventing a second stroke is controlling blood pressure. "We as doctors and as patients need to be very aggressive about making our blood pressures normal after stroke," he said. "That's the most effective way of preventing a second stroke."

Another expert said the doses of Lipitor given in the trial were much higher than most people take.

"It is important to note that most patients on statins are on a much lower dose than that in the SPARCL study," said Dr. Majaz Moonis, director of the stroke prevention clinic at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. "In our own two independent retrospective study analyses including about 2,500 patients on lower doses of statins, more in line with what patients take, there was no evident increase risk of hemorrhage," he added.

Dr. Eric Smith, associate director of the Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, thinks statins shouldn't be used in patients who have had a hemorrhagic stroke.

"In my practice, when I see a patient with hemorrhagic stroke, I don't consider that to be an indication for starting a statin, based on the results of this trial," Smith said.

However, for patients who have had a hemorrhagic stroke and are at risk of having a heart attack, Smith does use statins, but at substantially lower doses than were used in SPARCL.
"I start with a low dose and see if that will get cholesterol down to the target level," Smith said. "When I reach the target level, I stop."

More information
For more on stroke, visit the American Stroke Association.

Evidence of TB Found in 500,000-Year-Old Fossil

(HealthDay News) -- The oldest evidence of tuberculosis has been discovered in a 500,000-year-old human fossil from Turkey, a finding that contradicts the widely held belief that the disease emerged only several thousand years ago, according to a team of international researchers.

The discovery, made during investigation of the new specimen of the human species Homo erectus, lends support to the theory that dark-skinned people who migrated northward from low, tropical latitudes produced less vitamin D, which can have a negative effect on the immune system and the skeleton.

People with dark skin produce less vitamin D because the skin pigment blocks ultraviolet light from the sun.

"The production of vitamin D in the skin serves as one of the body's first lines of defense against a whole host of infections and diseases. Vitamin D deficiencies are implicated in hypertension, multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular disease and cancer," John Kappelman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the international team, said in a prepared statement.

This specimen, believed to be a male, had a series of small lesions etched into the bone of the cranium. The shape and the location of the lesions are characteristic of a form of TB that attacks the lining of the brain.

The findings are published in the Dec. 7 issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Before antibiotics were available, doctors prescribed plenty of sunshine and fresh air for TB patients.
"No one knew why sunshine was integral to the treatment, but it worked. Recent research suggests the flush of ultraviolet radiation jump-started the patients' immune systems by increasing the production of vitamin D, which helped to cure the disease," Kappelman said.

More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about tuberculosis.

Diabetes Linked to Blood Vessel Inflammation

(HealthDay News) -- U.S. researchers say they've identified a new pathway that increases a dangerous inflammation of blood vessels in people with diabetes.

A team at the University of California, Davis, Health System believes that good control of diabetes may reduce this inflammation and possibly reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

They found that people with type 1 diabetes have increased expression and signaling of two key receptors within the innate immune system. These receptors (TLR2 and TLR4) are part of a family of pattern-recognition receptors called Toll-like receptors (TLRs).

Increased expression of TLR2 and TLR4 in people with type 1 diabetes contributes to inflammation of blood vessels, the study authors said. Their finding is published in the online issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

"It is not unreasonable to speculate that TLR2 and TLR4 promote (cardiovascular disease) by contributing to the pro-inflammatory state in type 1 diabetes," lead author Ishwarlal Jialal, director of the Laboratory for Atherosclerosis and Metabolic Research, and professor of internal medicine at UC Davis, said in a prepared statement.

"Inflammation is central to heart disease, playing a pivotal role in plaque formation and stroke. We may well find that a serendipitous byproduct of controlling diabetes is the simultaneous control of this new pathway, leading to less inflammation and lower risk of heart problems," Jialal said.

The researchers plan further studies to investigate the molecular mechanisms that cause increased TLR2 and TLR4 expression and how these receptors contribute to inflammation in people with diabetes.

More information
The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease has more about diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

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Female Mammals May Select Out Competing Sperm

(HealthDay News) -- Scientists may have proof that female mammals' reproductive systems detect the presence of sperm and react by changing conditions in the uterus.

An international team of researchers say this may be the molecular mechanism behind post-copulatory sexual selection, where females who've mated with several partners can actually influence which sperm fertilizes the egg.

Learning more about this post-mating "ladies choice" may have important implications for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), cloning and animal breeding, according to study author Alireza Fazeli, of the University of Sheffield in the U.K. It also provides a possible explanation for female promiscuity in certain species.

In this study, Fazeli and colleagues found chemical evidence of a sperm-recognition system in the oviducts of female pigs, who have a reproductive system that's similar to humans.

"This study clearly shows that the sperm's arrival in the female reproductive tract triggers a cascade of changes that leads to alteration of protein production in [the] oviduct and a change in oviductal environment. We speculate that this is mainly done to prepare oviduct environment for storing sperm, fertilization and early embryonic development," Fazeli said in a prepared statement.

This can also be used as a detection and selection system that alerts the female to different kinds of sperm, triggering oviduct mechanisms that control sperm transport, binding and activation for fertilization.

"We know sperm selection exists in nature, especially in promiscuous species, when females mate with several males. Baboons are a good example. During one reproductive cycle, if the female mates with several males, most of the time the offspring belong to one of the males -- not a spread between all of them. We are now seeing what can be the molecular basis for this effect," Fazeli said.

More information
Learn more about female reproduction at the American Medical Association.

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