Health Tip: Understanding an Aneurysm

(HealthDay News) - An aneurysm occurs when a weakened portion of a blood vessel balloons or widens abnormally. There may be a throbbing or swelling sensation at the site, or no obvious symptoms.

The expanded portion of the vessel could be at risk of bursting, making immediate evaluation and treatment essential.

Here is additional information about aneurysms, courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine:

• Aneurysms most frequently occur in or near the heart, brain, legs and intestines.
• It's unclear exactly what causes most aneurysms, but cholesterol buildup in the arteries is thought to play a role.
• High blood pressure also may contribute to aneurysms.
• If the blood vessel ruptures, low blood pressure, high heart rate and lightheadedness may result. The likelihood of death after a rupture is high.

Health Tip: Coping With Urinary Incontinence

(HealthDay News) - Urinary incontinence affects millions of women, commonly after childbirth.

The National Women's Health Information Center lists these non-surgical options to help control urinary incontinence:

• Perform Kegel exercises designed to make your pelvic muscles stronger.
• Set a schedule for emptying your bladder, instead of waiting until you have to go. Slowly increase the amount of time between trips to the bathroom.
• Maintain a healthy body weight, as excess weight can strain the bladder and surrounding muscles.
• Limit or avoid beverages that contain caffeine or alcohol.
• Biofeedback may help you learn to better control the bladder and surrounding muscles.
• Prescription medication may help control some types of incontinence. Talk with your doctor about whether medication may work for you.

Lack of Vitamin E Linked to Physical Decline

(HealthDay News) -- If you don't get enough vitamin E in your diet, you may have a greater risk of declining physical function as you age, according to the findings of a new study.

Yale researchers report that people with the lowest blood levels of vitamin E have about 60 percent greater odds of a decline in physical function when compared to people with the highest levels of vitamin E.

"Low plasma levels of vitamin E are associated with subsequent decline in physical function," said the study's lead author, Benedetta Bartali, a nutritionist and a Brown-Coxe postdoctoral fellow at Yale University's School of Medicine.

"As an antioxidant, vitamin E may prevent or reduce the propagation of free radicals in our body, and this may help to reduce muscle or DNA damage and the development, for example, of atherosclerosis and other pathologic conditions," Bartali said, although she added that this study wasn't designed to identify the reasons why vitamin E might be helpful.

Results of the study are published in the Jan. 23 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In the past, it was believed that vitamin E could help prevent serious illness, such as heart disease or Alzheimer's. However, more current research found that excess levels of vitamin E, rather than being helpful, could actually be harmful. For that reason, it's recommended that people don't take more than 400 I.U.'s [International Units] of vitamin E daily. And the recommended daily dose is significantly lower than that -- 15 milligrams or 22.5 I.U.'s daily for anyone over the age of 15, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Because poor nutrition has been associated with physical decline in older people, Bartali and her colleagues randomly selected almost 700 adults over age 65 from an ongoing longitudinal study in Tuscany, Italy. They reviewed blood tests to ascertain vitamin levels and reviewed data from physical function exams completed at the start of the study and at the three-year follow-up.

After adjusting the data to account for other factors that could contribute to physical decline, such as smoking or a lack of physical activity, the researchers found two factors were significantly associated with a greater chance of experiencing physical decline -- age and low levels of vitamin E. Levels of B vitamins, vitamin D and iron didn't increase the odds of physical decline, according to the study.

Being older than 81 years increased the odds of physical decline by 84 percent, and low levels of vitamin E in people between the ages of 70 and 80 increased the odds of physical decline by 60 percent, according to the study.

"Because only one person in our study used vitamin E supplements, our results suggest that an appropriate dietary intake of vitamin E may help to reduce the decline in physical function among older persons. Whether the use of vitamin E supplements would yield similar beneficial effects is unknown," Bartali said.

Dr. Kanwardeep Singh, a geriatric specialist at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, said that while this is a very well-done study, it's difficult to "take the effect of age out of what we are trying to identify."

For now, he said, "I would not recommend vitamin E supplements. My recommendations would be based on a good nutritious diet, with adequate caloric intake and adequate exercise. These will take you far beyond vitamin E supplements" in maintaining physical function.

More information
To learn more about vitamin E, including what foods it's found in, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Mislabeled Supplement Spurred Prostate Cancer: Report

(HealthDay News) -- A mislabeled over-the-counter product described as a dietary supplement appears to have contributed to the development of aggressive prostate cancer in two men, researchers report.

"There were things on the label that were not in the product, and components in the product that were not on the label," said study author Dr. Shahrokh Shariat, chief resident in urology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

The men developed rapidly advancing prostate cancer within months of using the dietary supplement, which was advertised as something that would increase stamina and muscle mass, and strengthen the heart, Shariat said. One of the men has died and the other "is in the final stages of the disease and probably will die within months," he said.

The findings were published in the current issue of Clinical Cancer Research.
The report did not name the product or its manufacturer, at the request of the journal editors who were fearful of "possible legal implications," Shariat said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, notified of the findings, issued a warning letter to the manufacturer, which led to removal of the product from the market, he said.

An analysis of the product found that it contained both testosterone and estradiol, a sex hormone, he said, and laboratory tests on human prostate cancer cells found it to be a more potent stimulator of cancer cell growth than testosterone alone.

"There are a lot of such products on the market in an unregulated fashion, because androgen supplements are the fastest-growing part of the supplement business," Shariat said. "There are dangerous ones out there, and people should be aware of it."

But Andrew Shao, vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, which represents the supplement industry, said the study "hasn't established any causal link here. The findings are interesting, but don't draw us any closer to any conclusion because of work done in the test tube."

Acknowledging that "any time you put something in your body you want to be cautious about it," Shao maintained that "the overwhelming majority of dietary supplements are well-made and safe, the scientific evidence supports that."

At the same time, people should be aware that "dietary supplements are not drugs and they shouldn't look forever for weight loss or performance benefit or some magic bullet when they take them," he said.

Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Association, criticized the decision not to identify the product. "The failure to identify the exact product means that consumers who still have it in their homes are at risk," he said.

It's also a mistake to call the product a dietary supplement, McGuffin said. "I'll tell you what the FDA calls these," he said. "They call them illegal drugs. The fact that someone found one of these should not implicate every herbal product and every vitamin product as somehow being adulterated with drugs or not containing what it should. That's just not true."

Andrew Vickers, a research methodologist in the epidemiology department at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, called the report "very well-written and very compelling."

Both men in the report originally had low levels of prostate-specific antigen, a signal for prostate cancer "and then suddenly presented with widespread cancer within six months, which is unusual," Vickers said. "Clearly, these are very unusual cases, and there is appropriate concern with this agent."

The substance taken by the men apparently was one of a number of products being advertised as improving male sexual health, Vickers said. "They are presumably very widely used, but we really don't know what they do," he said.

When you do self-diagnosis and self-treatment, you should be cautious in general and should be in contact with your health professional, Shao said.

More information
To learn more about prostate cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

New Proteins That Help HIV Grow Identified

(HealthDay News) -- Harvard researchers have identified almost 300 human proteins that help HIV propagate, creating hope for new treatments to combat the virus that causes AIDS.

Using a technique called RNA interference to screen thousands of genes, the team identified 273 human proteins, according to the study published online Jan. 10 in Science Express. These proteins could provide a way to help people with HIV when the virus develops resistance to current antiviral drugs.

"Antiviral drugs are currently doing a good job of keeping people alive, but these therapeutics all suffer from the same problem, which is that you can get resistance, so we decided to take a different approach centered on the human proteins exploited by the virus. The virus would not be able to mutate to overcome drugs that interact with these proteins," senior author Stephen Elledge, a professor in Harvard Medical School's department of genetics, said in a prepared statement.

The expanded list of proteins gives future researchers "a hypothesis generation machine," he said.

"Scientists can look at the list, predict why HIV needs a particular protein, and then test their hypothesis," Elledge explained.

He noted that immune cells -- which are targeted by HIV -- contain high concentrations of many of the 273 proteins.

"We're closing in on a systems level understanding of HIV, which opens new therapeutic avenues. We might be able to tweak various parts of the system to disrupt (HIV) propagation without making our own cells sick," Elledge said.

More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about HIV/AIDS.

Fungus Sheds Light on Development of Human Genders

(HealthDay News) -- One of the oldest known types of fungus seems to contain clues to gender development in humans.

Duke University researchers report on the unusual linkage in the Jan. 10 issue of Nature.

In research with Phycomyces blakesleeanus, the Duke team isolated two versions of a gene that regulates mating. They named these versions sexM (sex minus) and sexP (sex plus). Both encode for a single protein called a high mobility group (HMG)-domain protein that leads to sex differentiation through an unknown process.

This protein is similar to the one encoded by the human Y chromosome, called SRY. When SRY is turned on, a developing fetus develops male characteristics.

The similarity suggests HMG-domain proteins may mark the evolutionary beginnings of sex determination in fungi and humans, said research team leader Dr. Joseph Heitman.

He and his colleagues propose that sexM and sexP were once the same gene that went through a mutation process, which resulted in the evolution of the two separate sex genes. The same process may be responsible for the evolution of the male Y chromosome in humans, Heitman said.

In the next phase of this research, he hopes to identify the sex region in another type of fungus.
"Fungi are good model systems for the evolution of human sexual differentiation because the genetic sequences responsible for sex are smaller versions of chromosomal sex-determining regions in people," Heitman said in a prepared statement.

More information
To learn more about Duke University research, visit its Medical Center and Health System News Office .

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Low Vitamin D Linked to Heart Risk

(HealthDay News) -- Low blood levels of vitamin D -- sourced through sunlight, some foods and supplements -- are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular problems such as heart attack and stroke, U.S. researchers report.

Their five years of research with participants in the Framingham Heart Study included 1,739 people, average age 59, living in that Massachusetts city.

The research team found that those with the lowest levels of vitamin D had a 62 percent greater risk of a cardiovascular event than those with the next highest levels, according to a report published in the Jan. 7 issue of Circulation.

It's still too early to recommend routine vitamin D supplementation, however, said study author Dr. Thomas J. Wang, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He believes that there is still not enough evidence to put vitamin D deficiency on the same level as high cholesterol and other known risk factors.

"It is probably premature to consider vitamin D in the same light as those risk factors because this is one of the first clinical studies," Wang said. "We don't know whether increasing vitamin D levels with some kind of supplement decreases risk. That would require some kind of trial."

Vitamin D is known to be essential for strong bones, since it facilitates the body's uptake of calcium. One major source of the vitamin is sunlight -- an hour or so of sunlight on the skin each week allows the skin to produce blood levels of about 30 nanograms of vitamin D per liter of blood, more than enough to prevent a deficiency such as rickets, for example. Blacks need longer exposures than whites, however, since their skin pigment reduces formation of the vitamin.

Food sources of vitamin D include milk (which is fortified) and oily fishes such as salmon.

Current recommendations from the U.S. Institute of Medicine call for a daily intake of vitamin D ranging from 200 International Units (IU) for young people, to 400 IU for the middle-aged, to 600 IU for older people.

But getting that amount from food and sunlight may not be easy, said Robert U. Simpson, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Michigan, whose group was the first to identify vitamin D receptors in heart cells. For example, a glass of fortified milk contains only about 100 IU of vitamin D.

Simpson believes the recommended levels are actually still too low. "People should get at least 1,000 IU, perhaps 2,000," he said. "I take 1,000 IU a day. I recommend that intake right now as part of a multivitamin supplement."

Wang is much more cautious.

"I would still emphasize that studies like ours are not enough to alter practice," he said. Wang said he does not take any vitamin supplement, but he concedes that the recommended 600 IU daily intake for older people is "very, very difficult to achieve," especially in the winter in northern parts of the country.

"Virtually all elderly people have to take supplements," Wang said.

The cardiovascular risk associated with low vitamin D levels was especially great for people who also had high blood pressure. Their incidence of cardiovascular events was double that of people with higher blood levels of vitamin D.

There have been similar studies of other vitamins indicating that they might help prevent heart disease, Wang noted. But efforts at supplementation with those vitamins failed to show a benefit in large-scale, controlled trials, Wang noted.

"The question becomes how much data such as ours is needed to justify a controlled trial," he said. "The answer is, more than we have now."

More information
There's a fact sheet on vitamin D at the U.S. Office of Dietary Supplements.

Health Tip: Prevent Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

(HealthDay News) - To prevent poisoning from carbon monoxide -- a colorless, odorless gas -- it's important to take precautions at home.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers these safety recommendations:

• Have your appliances that burn fuel checked once a year, including your chimney and furnace flues.
• Don't try to heat your home with a gas-burning oven.
• Never use a grill or barbecue inside the home, in a garage, or in any enclosed space.
• Don't use an unvented kerosene or gas heater inside the home, particularly while you sleep.
• Don't allow a lawn mower or car to run inside a garage.
• Use a carbon monoxide alarm in your home, particularly in areas where you sleep.

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Health Tip: The Dangers of Excessive Drinking

(HealthDay News) - While an occasional glass of wine has been shown to offer health benefits, drinking frequently or drinking too much can trigger serious health problems.

Here are facts about alcohol and your health, courtesy of the University of Michigan Health System:

• Alcohol can lead to production of more acid in the stomach, which may contribute to gastritis, pancreatitis or ulcers.
• Alcohol can cause the body to retain uric acid, which can lead to gout.
• Excessive alcohol consumption may increase your risk of cancers of the pancreas, liver, mouth, tongue and throat, as well as liver disease such as cirrhosis.
• Too much alcohol can make your body lose needed proteins, minerals and vitamins.
• Too much alcohol can also increase your risks of heart disease and stroke.