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March 9, 2010 — Sleep problems and sleep habits vary among different ethnic
groups, according to a new national survey. But among all ethnicities, there
remains a common denominator. Many of us simply don’t get enough sleep.

“We found that all groups are sleep deprived,” says Meir Kryger, MD, past
chair of the board for directors for the National Sleep Foundation, which
conducted the survey. Kryger is director of research and education at the
Gaylord Sleep Disorders Center in Wallingford, Conn., and clinical professor of
medicine at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine
in Farmington.
According to the survey, about one-third of respondents in all groups say
they get less sleep on workdays and weekends than they need to feel their
best.
The foundation issues a sleep survey annually, but the 2010 survey is its
first to focus on sleep habits and different ethnicities. “We didn’t know if
our [previous] survey did justice to the fact there may be different cultural
effects,” Kryger says.
To reflect these tough economic times, this year’s survey also includes
questions about stress caused by finances and jobs and the potential effects on
sleep.

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March 9, 2010 - A virus that destroys cancer cells but leaves normal cells
unharmed works against prostate cancer, a human study shows.

The virus also blasts lymphoid, colon, ovarian, breast, pancreatic, brain,
lung, head and neck, and other cancer cells.
The virus is called reovirus, and nearly everyone has been infected with it.
But almost nobody notices, because at worst, the virus causes mild flu-like
symptoms. But when it infects cancer cells, reovirus is a tiger.
For nearly a decade, researchers have been looking for ways to exploit
reovirus as a nontoxic cancer treatment. Now a new study takes that search one
step closer to reality.
Six prostate cancer patients at Canada’s Tom Baker Cancer Center had the
virus injected directly into their prostate tumors by Don G. Morris, MD, PhD,
and colleagues. The patients then had their prostate glands removed by
previously scheduled surgery.
“The beauty of the prostate study is that we gave one injection, and by
three weeks later we had the entire prostate gland to look at. So we could
inject the virus into a nest of tumor cells and see what it did,” Morris tells
WebMD.
What it did was trigger the cancer cells’ self-destruct program. All around
the injection site, the reovirus — a product from Oncolytics Biotech Inc.
called Reolysin — made cancer cells go away. Normal cells were not harmed.
The downside was that the virus did not spread throughout the prostate.
Cancer cells not in the immediate area of the injection were spared.
“I don’t think it is a dead end. What these studies have done is give us
enough ammunition to go to regulators and say, ‘Here is data that prostate
cancer is an attractive target for reovirus,’” Morris says. “And we have a lot
of safety data showing it is safe to give intravenously.”
Putting reovirus into the bloodstream would allow it to reach cancers
throughout the body, not just at the site of injection. But there’s a big
hurdle to overcome: After the first injection, the body mounts immune responses
that eliminate the virus.
One way of overcoming this problem is by using reovirus together with
chemotherapy. Chemo kills cancer cells, but also dampens antiviral immune
responses. A recent human study shows this strategy can benefit patients with
advanced head and neck cancer.
Another way to overcome the problem is to harness anti-reovirus immune
responses to attack cancer cells.
“The virus only sticks to tumor cells, so it sort of directs the immune
response to the tumor area,” Morris says. “We have actually taken reovirus and
injected it in combination with tumor antigens, so the immune system kills
tumors pasted with the virus.”
There’s still a lot of work to do before reovirus in general, or Reolysin in
particular, becomes an approved cancer treatment, says cancer expert Rameen
Beroukhim, MD, PhD. Beroukhim was not involved in the Morris study.

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March 9, 2010 (Miami Beach, Fla.) — A moisturizing cream whose active
ingredient is the extract that gives Indian curry its distinctive flavor,
scent, and deep orange color may help fade fine facial lines, wrinkles, and
aging spots, studies suggest.

The ingredient is turmeric, which has a long history of use in Indian
Ayurvedic medicine to treat conditions ranging from indigestion to cancer
because of its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, says Cheri
Swanson, PhD. She’s a senior scientist at Procter and Gamble Beauty and
Grooming, which makes the cream and funded the research.
Those same properties may help to fight some of the signs of aging, she
tells WebMD.
Aging is accompanied by the formation of particles known as free radicals,
which can damage cell membranes, tamper with DNA, and cause cells to die
off.
Antioxidants can neutralize these free radicals, reducing some of their
collateral damage, which includes fine lines, wrinkles, and dark age spots on
the skin, Swanson says.
As for its anti-inflammatory properties, turmeric may calm down swelling in
the skin, such as from pimples, says Joshua Zeichner, MD, director of cosmetic
and clinical research at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City. He was not
involved with the research.

Turmeric Cream Reduces Fine Lines, Wrinkles

Until recently, turmeric’s intense color and strong odor prohibited its use
in skin creams and ointments, Swanson says.
“We were able to purify it into a nearly colorless, odorless product,” she
says.
One new study involved 89 white women, aged 40 to 60. They applied either
moisturizing cream containing turmeric and niacinamide or cream containing
niacinamide alone twice a day for eight weeks.
Niacinamide, a form of vitamin B, is used in many skin creams. “It’s
effective at clearing facial spots although it doesn’t do much for fine lines
and wrinkles,” Swanson says.
Before-and-after facial pictures, as judged by expert readers, showed that
the turmeric plus niacinamide cream was 15% better at reducing fine lines and
wrinkles.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of
Dermatology.
A second study involved 105 Asian women aged 25 to 55. It showed a
moisturizing cream containing turmeric alone reduced the appearance of
hyperpigmented dark aging spots by an average of 15% after eight weeks of
twice-daily use.
“A 10% change is really noticeable,” Swanson says.
In this study, before-and-after images were fed into a computer, where
software highlighted and circled pigmented, or darkened, spots. Then the images
were compared for changes in size and appearance.
“These early studies suggest creams containing turmeric may be a promising
addition to antiaging products on the market,” Zeichner tells WebMD.
The cream is part of the Doctor’s Dermatologic Formula line.

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March 9, 2010 — Kidney donors fare just as well as non-donors over the long
term, according to a new study.

Researchers compared survival rates of kidney donors to healthy adults who
were not kidney donors and found kidney donation did not affect long-term
survival rates.
“Regardless of what physiologic changes might occur in a healthy adult after
kidney donation, our findings of similar long-term survival between donors and
healthy comparison patients suggest that these physiologic changes do not
result in premature death,” write researcher Dorry L. Segev, MD, PhD, of Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine and colleagues in the Journal of the
American Medical Association.
Although kidney donors face a higher risk of death in the 90 days
immediately following surgery because of the risks inherent in major
surgery, researchers say the findings confirm that the practice of live kidney
donation should continue to be considered a reasonable and safe alternative to
using deceased donor organs.
The use of live kidney donation has increased dramatically in recent years
due to a major donor organ shortage in the US. An estimated 6,000 people
undergo the surgery to remove one of their kidneys for donation each year.
The study followed more than 80,000 people who underwent kidney donation
surgery between 1994 and 2009 and compared them to a matched group of 9,364
healthy participants in a nationwide health survey for an average of about six
years.
The results showed there were 25 deaths within 90 days of live kidney
donation surgery, with the risk of death being 3.1 per 10,000 donors compared
to a death rate in the comparison group of 0.4 per 10,000 people during the
same time period.
Researchers found men, African-Americans, and donors with high blood
pressure were more likely to die from complications of live kidney donation
surgery than others.
By one year after live kidney donation, however, researchers found the risk
of death among kidney donors was similar to the healthy comparison group and
was attributable to other pre-existing illnesses rather than the surgery.
Overall, the study showed the long-term risk of death was similar or lower
among live kidney donors than in the comparison group: 0.4% vs. 0.9% at five
years and 1.5% vs. 2.9% at 12 years, respectively.

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March 9, 2010 — New research confirms that giving flu shots to large
numbers of school-age children can protect the community at large.

The finding adds to evidence in favor of so-called “herd immunity” — the
idea that vaccinating the healthy and those most likely to spread the flu can
have a dramatic impact on overall transmission rates.
The study was conducted in rural western Canada among the Hutterites, a
branch of the Anabaptist Christian denomination. Like the Amish and Mennonites,
Hutterites live in distinct communities and have limited exposure to the
outside world.
During the fall of 2008, large numbers of children between the ages of 3 and
15 from some Hutterite colonies got flu shots, while children in other colonies
were not vaccinated against the flu.
As a result, about half as many flu cases occurred during the first six
months of 2009 in the colonies where flu shots were given.
The study appears in the March 10 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association.
“In influenza, we have traditionally vaccinated people with the highest risk
for complications, such as the elderly and those with compromised immune
systems,” study researcher Mark Loeb, MD, of McMaster University in Ontario
tells WebMD.
“This study shows that when you immunize healthy children and adolescents
who do not have a high risk for complications, you indirectly protect those at
highest risk who might not be able to mount a good response to the
vaccine.”

Protecting the Community From Flu

In the United States, flu kills an estimated 36,000 people each year and
200,000 are hospitalized because of complications from influenza
infection.
The elderly and immunocompromised are most vulnerable to flu, along with
pregnant women and babies too young to be vaccinated.
Previous research has suggested that immunizing the healthy young can reduce
influenza transmissions. But the study by Loeb and colleagues is the first in
which some people were randomly assigned to either get a flu vaccine or remain
unvaccinated.
The Hutterite colonies offered a unique opportunity for this type of study.
Each colony includes approximately 60 to 120 people, but families live in
individual homes. The children attend Hutterite schools from ages 3 to 15.
The study included close to 950 Canadian school-aged children and 2,326
other community members from 49 Hutterite colonies.
Children in some of the colonies were given the flu vaccine, while children
in other colonies were given hepatitis A vaccine instead of flu shots.
Based on computer models, the researchers hypothesized that 70% of the
children in a colony would need to be vaccinated to protect the general
community. The actual average coverage in colonies where children got the flu
shots was 83%.
During the 2008-2009 flu season, 4.5% of the population in the colonies
where children were vaccinated against the flu got influenza, compared to 10.6%
of the population in the colonies in which the hepatitis A vaccine was
given.
“The risk of getting the flu was around 60% lower for people who lived in
colonies where the kids got the flu shots,” Loeb tells WebMD.

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March 9, 2010 — Most companies lack meaningful policies to curb the
marketing of high-fat and high-sugar junk food to children, according to a
report by a consumer watchdog group.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) gives failing grades to
nearly three-quarters of the 128 food, restaurant, and media companies it
investigated. The group is concerned that food marketers continue to
aggressively promote unhealthy foods to children despite high obesity rates and
regulators’ pleas to rein in ads.
Packaged food companies performed much better than media firms or
restaurants, the group says. But the report finds that overall 68% of the
companies have no policy governing marketing to kids.
Many companies signed onto a voluntary self-regulation system after the
regulators fielded complaints about aggressive junk food advertising and the
licensing of characters and movies to make junk food more attractive to
children.
In 2008, the Federal Trade Commission found that companies spent $870
million marketing food to children under 12. An additional $1 billion went to
marketing aimed at adolescents. Two years earlier, “cross-promotions tied foods
and beverages to about 80 movies, television shows, and animated characters
that appeal primarily to children,” the commission said in a report published
in July 2008.
The agency urged food, restaurant, and media companies to come up with
comprehensive policies controlling junk food marketing to kids.
“If companies were marketing bananas and broccoli, we wouldn’t be concerned.
But instead, most of the marketing is for sugary cereals, fast food, snack
foods, and candy. And this junk food marketing is a major contributor to
childhood obesity,” says Margo G. Wootan, CSPI’s nutrition policy director.

Curbing Food Ads to Kids

The group gave its highest grade of B+ to Mars Inc. The companies with
grades of B were Procter & Gamble Company and Qubo Venture, a media company
that places Saturday morning programming on NBC, Telemundo, and other networks.
Several food companies, including Mars, Procter & Gamble, and Cadbury
Adams, have policies calling for no advertising to children under 12.
Six companies got a B-, 17 got a C+, C, or C-, seven companies got a D+ or
D, none received a D-, and 95 received an F. The complete report
card is published on CSPI’s web site.
“In 2007 shortly after the launch of the Qubo kids channel, we established
very stringent nutritional guidelines for advertising only healthy foods to
children,” Brandon Burgess, chairman and CEO of ION Media Networks, the Qubo
Channel’s parent company, says in a statement.
But many companies advertise not directly through television, but more
indirectly through product tie-ins, online games, and event sponsorships, the
report said.
It found that while two-thirds of food companies had child-targeted
marketing polices. Only one-quarter of restaurants and one-fifth of
entertainment companies had the policies. And while many of those policies lay
out nutritional standards for licensing characters for food ads, fewer impose
strict rules for what kind of foods can be advertised, the CSPI report
found.
WebMD made calls to several trade associations to get their reaction to the
CSPI report. None responded in time for publication.
 

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March 9, 2010 (Miami Beach, Fla.) — While some researchers suggest the
rising rate melanoma may simply reflect a change in how doctors diagnose
melanoma and the increased availability of skin cancer screenings, a leading
dermatologist says the increase is real.

The average American’s risk of developing melanoma in his or her lifetime
increased from one in 1,500 in 1930, to one in 250 in 1980 and one in 74 in
2000, says Darrell S. Rigel, MD, clinical professor of dermatology at New York
University Medical Center in New York City and a past president of the American
Academy of Dermatology.
By 2004, a person had a one in 65 chance of getting the deadly skin cancer
and now that risk is one in 58, Rigel says.
“If this rate continues to rise at the same pace, the risk will be one in 50
by 2015,” he tells WebMD.
A total of 68,720 Americans were diagnosed with melanoma in 2009, compared
with 47,700 in 2000, according to the CDC.
At the American Academy of Dermatology’s annual meeting here, Rigel
dispelled what he calls myths about the rise in melanoma.

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March 9, 2010 — Good health may not only help you live longer, but it could
also help you enjoy a longer, more satisfying sex life.

A new study shows people who are in good health are nearly twice as likely
to be interested in sex in middle and older age and also more likely to report
having a busy and satisfying sex life.
Researchers say sexual activity has long been associated with health
benefits and longevity, but this is the first study to look at how general
health affects the quality of sex as people age and calculate what they call a
person’s “sexually active life expectancy.”
Using information gathered from more than 6,000 men and women in midlife and
later life, researchers estimate that at age 55, the average sexually active
life expectancy is 15 years for men and 10.6 years for women.
“Although the period is longer for men, they lose more years of sexually
active life as a result of poor health than women,” write researcher Stacy
Tessler Lindau, associate professor at the University of Chicago, and
colleagues in the journal BMJ.
But the gender disparities don’t stop there.
“Overall, the study found that men have a longer sexually active life
expectancy and that most sexually active men report a good quality sex life. In
contrast, only about half of sexually active women reported a good quality sex
life,” write the researchers. “This disparity, and its implication for health,
requires further exploration.”
Other findings of the study include:

• At the age of 30, men have a sexually active life expectancy of nearly 35
  years; women, almost 31 years. At 55, this average sexual life expectancy
  changes to almost 15 remaining years for men and 10 years for women.
• By age 75, 17% of women and 39% of men were sexually active. But for those
  with a partner, these gender differences were much smaller.
• About two-thirds of sexually active middle-aged men and women reported
  having a good-quality sex life. But only five out of 10 older women reported a
  good-quality sex life, compared with seven out of 10 older men.
• Older men were three times as likely to be interested in sex as older women
  (62% vs. 21%).
• People in very good health were 1.5 to 1.8 times more likely to report an
  interest in sex than those in poorer health.
• Among those who were sexually active, good health was also associated with
  more frequent sex (once or more weekly) in men and with a good-quality sex life
  in men and women.

In an editorial that accompanies the study, Patricia Goodson, a professor at
Texas University, says the news that adults in the U.S. can enjoy many years of
sexual activity beyond age 55 is promising.
“Despite the spotlight this study shines on the sexual health of older adults in
the US, less good news lies dormant in the shadows,” writes Goodson. “Take the
gender gap in sexually active life expectancy, for instance, which favours men:
for men at age 55, sexually active life expectancy was eight to nine years less
than demographic life expectancy, whereas for women this difference was 17 to
18 years.”

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March 9, 2010 — One in six Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 have genital herpes and close to one
in two black women are infected, new figures from the CDC reveal.

Rates of infection with herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) — the sexually
transmitted virus that causes most genital herpes — have remained relatively
stable over the last decade, following steep declines in infection rates in the
late 1980s and early 1990s.
About 19 million people in the U.S. are infected with HSV-2, at a cost to
the nation’s health care system of close to $16 billion a year.
Overall, 16% of Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 had genital herpes
between 2005 and 2008, compared to 17% between 1999 and 2004.
The new estimates come from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey (NHANES), which is a nationally representative survey of
U.S. households covering a wide range of health issues.
According to the latest findings:

• Women and African-Americans were the most likely to be infected. HSV-2
  prevalence was nearly twice as high among women (21%) as men (11%), and more
  than three times higher among African-Americans (39%) than whites
  (12%). 
• The infection rate among African-American women was 48% 
• The infection rate was roughly 4% among people who reported having just one
  sex partner ever, compared to almost 27% for those who reported 10 or more
  partners. 
• Nearly four out of five people who have genital herpes have not been
  diagnosed and may not know they have the infection.

Genital Herpes Raises HIV Risk

“This latest analysis emphasizes that we can’t afford to be complacent about
this infection,” John M. Douglas, Jr., MD, who directs the CDC’s Division of
STD Prevention, said in a news conference Tuesday at the 2010 National STD
Prevention Conference in Atlanta.
“It is important that we promote steps to prevent the spread of genital
herpes, not only because herpes is a lifelong and incurable infection, but also
because of the linkage between herpes and HIV infection.”
Research shows that people with genital herpes are two to three times more
likely to acquire HIV and they are also more likely to transmit HIV infection
to others.
Douglas explained that the immunologic response at the site where herpes
ulcers form act as a target for HIV infection even after the ulcers have
disappeared.
“If you come into contact with the HIV virus, even after the ulcers have
healed, you may be more likely to become infected,” he says.
People who are dually infected with HIV and HSV-2 may also be especially
likely to transmit the HIV virus to others during genital herpes flare-ups.

Need for Increased Public Awareness

The reason women have higher rates of HSV-2 infection than men is largely
explained by the fact that their genital tissue is more vulnerable to the small
tears that make transmission more likely.

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