The Telangana Science Journal

Editorial : Botox
Misleading Botox
Healthy Human Sperm
Fitness and Stress
Fitness at Work
Hot chili peppers
Teenage Sex
Teenage Exercise
Hypoglycemia Prevention
Varsity Athletes
Living Together
Waist Circumference
New Diet Guidelines
Atkins Diet
Human Mad Cow Disease
Smoking, HPV and Cervical Cancer
Fetal Antibiotic Exposure and Asthma
Out of Body Exerience
Custard Apples Cloning  
Dense Breasts and Cancer  
Yoga and Pilates
Soy-based foods
Kidney Cancer and Obesity
High Cholesterol in Young Girls  
Blame it on McDonald's , Not Genes

Recepies
           Black Bean, Corn and Tomato Salsad
           Lemon Potatoes
           Spinach Stuffed Tomatoes

Misleading Botox
The FDA ordered Allergan Inc., the maker of Botox, the wrinkle-smoothing botulism toxin, to "immediately cease distribution" of misleading advertisements and brochures.   The FDA said the company's multi-million dollar ad campaign does not specify the particular wrinkles Botox is approved to treat, in violation of federal law.  The agency also said the Botox brochure misleads patients about the duration of a wrinkle-reducing injection, which is usually about four months. The Allergen Web site for physicians also led to confusion on dilution of the Botox solution, said Mary Malarkey, director of case management for the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.  Allergan strongly disagreed on all points and said it will not pull the advertisements or the brochure.  Botulinum toxin type A, or Botox, was approved by the FDA this year for use on a specific wrinkle that develops between the eyebrows and the forehead. AP

Healthy Human Sperm
Researchers have determined the genetic fingerprint of healthy human sperm - an advance that could be a major step forward in understanding male infertility. The discovery could also lead to new types of male contraceptives. The research, outlined in the Lancet medical journal, was conducted by scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Wayne State University in Detroit and Leeds University in England. Experts say a test that compares the genetic pattern of the sperm of infertile men with the "benchmark" profile of fertile sperm would show mismatches that explain the problem. Infertility in men now remains inexplicable in two-thirds of cases.

Fitness and Stress
A woman's physical fitness level may mitigate the effect of stress on her risk of developing high blood pressure, according to a new study in September issue of the journal Psychophysiology. Women who were more fit had less of an increase in systolic blood pressure during the tests.

Fitness at Work
Introvert people have a higher risk of becoming tired than their extravert colleagues.  This was revealed in the first large-scale and systematic study into the influence of personality on tiredness, which was carried out by researchers from Tilburg University. The study also found that physical and mental tiredness are inextricably linked to each other. One cannot be physically tired without being mentally tired and vice versa. This study is part of the Priority programme 'Fatigue at Work', financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

Hot chili peppers
New research provides  insight into how a natural compound found in hot chili peppers makes tumor cells commit suicide. The work is described in the September 4 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute .  Capsaicin, and a related compound called resiniferatoxin, cause tumor cells to self-destruct by starving them of oxygen. Capsaicin and resiniferatoxin are natural compounds known as vanilloids. The researchers exposed human skin cancer cells to capsaicin and resiniferatoxin and found that a majority of the cells died.  The process was associated with an increase in permeability of the inner mitochondrial membrane and a decrease in oxygen consumption.  These findings suggest that vanilloids may be useful for preventing or treating skin cancers.

Teenage Sex
Teenage girls who have close relationships with their mothers wait longer to have sex for the first time, researchers reported on September 4th. Their findings also indicate girls are less likely to have sex when their moms strongly disapprove, suggesting that mothers matter more than they might sometimes believe. The study is based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a massive federal investigation of teen behavior. This research examined interviews with 2,006 teens ages 14-15 who said they were virgins. The same teens were interviewed a year later, and 10.8 percent of the boys and 15.8 percent of the girls had had sex by the second interview. Researchers at the University of Minnesota examined extensive interviews with their mothers (fathers were not interviewed) to try to determine what made the difference between those who became sexually active and those who stayed virgins. They found little to explain why some boys began having sex and others didn't. But they said several factors made a difference for girls.  Specifically, the study released Wednesday found that mothers whose daughters were still virgins shared several qualities:  -They strongly disapproved of their daughters having sex, they were satisfied with their relationship with their daughters, they frequently talked with the parents of their daughters' friends, these mothers also more likely to have a college degree. AP

Boys whose fathers are present at key times of the day -- when the boys leave for and return from school and at bedtime -- are less likely than other boys to be sexually active. So are girls whose moms are present at those times.  These are among the findings of a study conducted by Esther I. Wilder of New York's Lehman College and Toni Terling Watt of Southwest Texas State University, which showed that high levels of supervision by parents resulted in a reduced likelihood of sexual activity in some children. WP

Teenage Exercise
The amount of regular exercise girls get falls off dramatically as they move through their teenage years, dropping to practically zero in many cases, especially among blacks, according to a study reported in New England Journal of Medicine, September 5.  By the time they were 16 or 17, more than half of the black girls in the study and nearly a third of the white girls reported they got no regular exercise at all outside school.  Preliminary data from the group shows that obesity doubled even though no significant increase in calorie consumption was reported. The girls' decline in physical activity was affected by lower levels of parental education, heavier weight, smoking and pregnancy. Girls with better-educated parents may be better informed and more encouraged to exercise, the researchers suggested.  In another study in the journal, researchers found that women who sit for less than four hours a day have a lower risk of heart disease than those who sit for prolonged periods.
A large study of 73,734 postmenopausal women also confirmed earlier research that showed brisk walking is just as effective as more vigorous exercise such as aerobics, jogging or tennis in reducing the risk of heart disease.  Women in the study who spent at least 2.5 hours a week walking or exercising vigorously cut their risk by about 30 percent.  The take-home message for physicians or any health professional dealing with patients is to encourage them to do at least brisk walking.

U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 2, 1957 reported:"There is deep concern in high places over the fitness of American youth....Parents are being warned that their children - taken to school in buses, chauffeured to activities, freed from muscle-building chores, and entertained in front of TV sets - are getting soft and flabby."  Nearly 50 years later, public health experts say they do not know why their exercise exhortations have gone unheeded for so long, but they are gathering more evidence of the extent of Americans' inactivity and the health benefits that could accrue from even moderate exercise. (See above, New England Journal of Medicine, September 5).

Varsity Athletes
According to the Centers for Disease Control, only 14 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 years participate in physical activities, even fewer qualify for varsity sports.  Thousands and thousands of slim athletes never develop ALS, but a tiny few of them do.  Very slim varsity athletes were significantly more likely to have motor neuron disease, including ALS, according to a new study published in the latest issue of Neurology .  Researchers have hypothesized that vigorous physical activity might increase exposure to environmental toxins, facilitate the transport of toxins to the brain, increase the absorption of toxins in very slim athletes, or increase the athlete's susceptibility to motor neuron disease through added physical stress.

Living Together
A new study finds a strong association between the health of spouses, in the October issue of Social Science & Medicine.  The study said a man in his early 50's in excellent health had about 93% chance of being married to someone whose health is also excellent, a 5 percent chance of being married to someone whose health was only fair. He has a 2 percent chance of being married to a woman in poor health.  But a man in poor health, the researchers found, has a 24 percent chance of being married to a woman in fair health and a 13 percent chance of being married to a woman in poor health.  Factors that may play a role: poor and less educated people tend to be in worse health. Married people are also more likely to follow the same kinds of diets, for better or worse, or to smoke if their spouse does. And if one spouse is ill, the stress this creates may affect the health of the other.  Couples also share environmental risks, breathing the same air and being exposed to the same germs.  The study was based on data collected from more than 4,700 couples in their 50's who took part in a 1992 nationwide survey.

A study conducted at the University of Notre Dame, which found that traits often considered masculine made for marriages in which the wife was dissatisfied or even depressed. Men who are focused on financial prowess and competition rather than family, who feel uncomfortable showing affection toward other men and who have difficulty expressing emotion are experiencing gender-role confusion. The greater this problem, the more unhappy the wife. WP

In another study, researchers from the University of Nottingham set out to determine whether people whose marital partners suffered with a certain condition such as depression, high blood pressure or asthma were at increased risk of suffering from the same disease. Over 8,000 married couples aged between 30 and 74 years of age took part in the study. It was found that the partners of people with asthma, depression and peptic ulcer disease were 70%  more likely to suffer from the disease themselves. People with partners suffering from other conditions such as high blood pressure and hyperlipidaemia (excess cholesterol in the blood) were also more likely to suffer from the same conditions as their spouse. The link is most likely to be caused by the environment within which the couple live, with shared environmental factors putting cohabiting partners at risk of developing the same diseases. The finding for asthma may be due to shared diet or shared exposure to allergens, whilst findings for hypertension and hyperlipidaemia suggest that diet and the pattern of physical exercise shared by couples has an important role in the disease's cause. Another possible explanation for the findings is that couples may share similar attitudes towards healthcare and seeking health advice. British Medical Journal

Waist Circumference
Body Mass Index, or BMI, has been used since the 1980s to estimate risk for a variety of obesity-related diseases. Another known measure but ignored so far in the US is Waist Circumference (WC).  WC is also strongly linked to obesity-associated risks. WC has been proposed as a simpler measurement than BMI that also more accurately reflects body fat distribution. In a study of white men and women published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , Zhu et al. correlated 4 well-known obesity risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) with both WC and BMI. The subjects' known CVD risk factors were more closely related to their WCs than their BMIs.  The authors identified WC "cutoffs" of 90 cm (35 inches) for American men and 83 cm (33 inches) for women as the point at which patients should be advised to avoid future weight gain to minimize CVD risk. For East Indians and Asians the WC cut off should be lower than white American counterparts.

A study in the September Journal of the American Geriatrics Society has found that large waist circumference and high body mass index (BMI) predispose older men to stroke.  The study, done in Sweden, took measurements of nearly 2,300 men and women age 70 and older and attempted a follow-up of all
subjects at age 85.  The researchers concluded obese male subjects were at a higher risk for stroke than those with smaller waistlines and lower BMIs.

New Diet Guidelines
Early in September, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies emphasized the importance of balance of nutrients, with carbohydrates — starches and sugars — making up 45 percent to and 65 percent of daily calories and fats, 20 percent to 35 percent.  The panel of 21 scientists also urged Americans to keep as low as possible their consumption of saturated fats.

A major report released in the first week of September by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) set new dietary recommendations for the basic nutrients: fat, protein, carbohydrates, fiber and added sugar (the kind found in soft drinks). The report also emphasized what many experts have been saying for a long time: Calories count. But it also underscored a point that's often missing from nutrition guidance: The number of calories you burn by being active is just as important as the amount you eat.  Like the 13-year-old recommendations that they replace, these new guidelines are expected to be used for everything from nutrition facts food labels to school lunch programs and the next set of U.S. Dietary Guidelines, scheduled to be issued in 2005. The NAS recommendations are officially known as the Dietary Reference Intakes .  For the first time, experts threw physical activity prominently into the mix, stressing the importance of balancing inputs (food) with outputs (exercise and other activities that burn calories). Calorie intakes are now set based on height, weight, sex and four levels of daily activity, from sedentary to very active. The recommendations say to aim for about 60 minutes of activity a day -- twice what the U.S. surgeon general called for in 1996. The recommendation is to  make that activity moderately intense.  All activity counts toward the daily goal, including the lifestyle exercises well known to LPC members, such as taking the stairs.WP

Atkins Diet
In a study by Dr. Chia-Ying Wang and colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, reported in August in The American Journal of Kidney Diseases, just six weeks of a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet (the foods Dr. Atkins recommends as his diet's main components) greatly increased the risk of developing kidney stones. NYT

Human Mad Cow Disease
According to preliminary results of an ongoing study published in the British Medical Journal, 120 people per million could be at increased risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), but have not yet developed symptoms.  Variant CJD has killed some 80 Europeans since the mid-1990s, mostly in Britain, which has diagnosed more than 100 cases. It appears to be contracted by eating meat tainted by mad cow disease. Prions cause deep lesions and sponge-like holes in brain tissue. There is no known cure and no way to diagnose the disease.  The surest way of confirming infection with variant CJD is by examining brain tissue after death. Scientists don't know how long the incubation period is and don't know how many people have been infected with the disease. In the past they have estimated that upto 100,000 people could eventually be struck.

Smoking, HPV and Cervical Cancer
Current and past smoking may increase the risk of cervical cancer among women who have been infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV), according to a study in the September 18 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.  The study looked at the association between various risk factors and cervical cancer among 1,812 women who had tested positive for oncogenic HPV DNA.  Oral contraceptive use and history of live births were not associated with the risk of cervical cancer or its precursor, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 (CIN3). However, former and current smokers appeared to have an increased risk of cervical cancer and CIN3 compared with women who never smoked.

Infection with humanpapillomavirus (HPV) is linked to an increased likelihood of cervical lesions in women, finds a study in British Medical Journal (BMJ). The study, which involved over 10,000 women, found that those who were HPV positive had a significantly increased risk of developing low and high grade cervical lesions compared to women who did not have the virus.  The researchers conclude that HPV positivity precedes and predicts future cervical high grade lesions and that type specific persistence of HPV was strongly associated with the development of high grade lesions.

Fetal Antibiotic Exposure and Asthma
A report in the second issue for September 2002 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine found that exposure to antibiotics and to infection in utero are potentially important risk factors in the development of allergic diseases such as asthma in the child.  The researchers believe that the exposure to antibiotics in the mother, which modifies microbial load during pregnancy, is potentially avoidable.

Out-of-Body Exerience
An experience sometimes recounted by people who have had surgery, such as the sensation of floating above one's body or feeling being disconnected from it, is triggered by the angular gyrus, in the right cortex of the human brain, according to a report in September 18th issue of Nature .  Researchers found that when they sent a weak signal to the angular gyrus, the subject experienced "sinking into the bed" or "falling from a height" sensation.  The sensation intensified when the signal strength was increased.  Stimulations at this higher strength induced an instantaneous feeling of "lightness" and "floating" two metres (6.5 feet) above the bed, close to the ceiling.

Custard Apples Cloning
Hyderabad is famous for its custard apples (seetaphal ) and hundreds of tonnes of the fruit is transported across the State. With improvements through cloning, the
custard apples can sweeten India's market. Seetaphal is essentially a southern variety, once regarded as poor man’s fruit.  Cloning of fruit-bearing plants by the State Forest Department will soon flood fruit markets with custard apples and a variety of fruits, all rich in taste, aroma, texture and nutrition. DC
 

Dense Breasts and Cancer
Young women tend to have dense breasts.  They appear white on mammography making it harder to differentiate small tumors.  Women with very dense breasts, composed primarily of fibrous tissue and milk-producing glands, have four times the risk of developing breast cancer as women of the same age with fatty breasts. Experts suspect that dense tissue means more cells that could potentially become cancerous.   Research has shown that breast density appears to decrease with age and the number of children a woman bears, and increase with hormone replacement therapy.  Because breast size and texture are not reliable predictors of breast density, many women are unaware that they have dense breasts.
Researchers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand studying identical and fraternal twins found that variations in breast density were strongly influenced by genetic factors, a study in September 19th issue of New England Journal of Medicine found. Another study that appears in the journal Radiology, of 11,130 women at a Manhattan radiology clinic, found that ultrasound can detect a significant number of cancers that are missed by mammography in women with dense breasts. Screening by ultrasound may be useful in women with dense breasts. But the study is not considered definitive because the patients were not selected at random and it was performed by just one researcher.  Ultrasound detected 33 additional cancers in the roughly 5,000 women with dense breasts who had normal mammograms and breast exams. Seventy percent of these cancers were smaller than one centimeter and 89 percent did not involve lymph nodes, suggesting that they were at an early stage.

Yoga and Pilates
Yoga is an ancient Brahminical regimen of physical, spiritual and mental exercises designed to promote relaxation, flexibility and wellness. Pilates is a system of precise movements, concentration and breath control, that focuses on strengthening the torso muscles, providing support for the spine and thereby improving flexibility and posture. The technique, developed by Joseph H. Pilates, a former boxer and nurse from Germany, was used as a strengthening regimen for hospital patients during World War I, and it later became popular with dancers when Mr. Pilates opened a studio in New York. The exercises are performed on the floor and on equipment (referred to as "apparatus") with names like the Reformer, the Cadillac and the Barrel.

According to a 2001 survey by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, a trade group in North Palm Beach, Fla., 9.7 million Americans practice yoga/tai chi, a jump from 5.7 million in 1998; and 2.4 million practice Pilates, up from 1.7 million in 1999. NYT

Soy-based foods
Consuming tofu and other soy-based foods significantly lowers levels of a class of estrogens normally associated with breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women, according to a new study published in the September issue of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) journal, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. The study found a link between soy-rich diets consumed by Asian women in Singapore and reduced levels of an estrogen called estrone, the predominant form of estrogen in women following menopause. High estrogen levels have been shown to increase the risk for breast cancer among postmenopausal women.  Specifically, the study found that estrone levels were about 15 percent lower among women who consumed the highest amounts of soy protein. No other easily modifiable lifestyle factors analyzed by the scientists yielded such a dramatic hormone reduction. Historically, breast cancer rates among Asians in Japan and China have been significantly lower than their female counterparts in the West. At one time, low-risk Asian women had one-sixth the breast cancer rate compared to high-risk whites in the United States and other parts of the western world. Reasons for this difference have remained largely unknown. However, Asians are clearly as "genetically susceptible," since Asian-American women have roughly the same breast cancer incidence as their white American neighbors. Moreover, from the 1970s to the 1990s, breast cancer incidence more than doubled in Singapore and Japan. While earlier age at menarche, increasing numbers of women without children and delay in childbearing may offer a partial explanation, changes in other lifestyle practices are likely to play a role.

Kidney Cancer and Obesity
Press Association reports that kidney cancer is the fastest growing type of the disease in women in the Britain and the increase could be due to rising levels of obesity, experts are warning.  New figures from Cancer Research UK show that cases of kidney cancer have increased by 22 percent over the last 10 years — a rate which overtakes the rise in female breast, skin and lung cancers during the same period. Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for kidney cancer but experts say that as there has not been a rapid rise in lung cancer, it is unlikely to be the sole explanation. They believe obesity, another key risk factor, could explain the increase in the number of cases. The figures have been released ahead of the UK's first Kidney Cancer Awareness Week — which aims to raise the profile of the disease which causes 3,000 UK deaths each year. Obesity is gradually rising in Britain and more than 20 percent of the female population is now classed as obese.  

High Cholesterol in Young Girls
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports that most scientific literature has suggested that obesity precedes the development of blood lipid disorders such as abnormally high cholesterol.  Even in very young children, overweight or obesity can set off a cascade of early risk factors for cardiovascular disease that  includes hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance.  The study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , found that normal-weight children may be hypercholesterolemic, and that this condition predisposes young girls to the development of overweight and obesity later in childhood.

Blame it on McDonald's, not you or your Genes
Two teenagers with big midsections have an even bigger beef with McDonald's.  Their parents, on behalf of the youths, have filed a lawsuit seeking class action against the fast-food giant, saying the chain's unhealthy meals made them obese, which caused them to develop severe health problems including heart disease.  John Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor who pioneered lawsuits against tobacco firms, is acting as an adviser on the case. He said children often are unable to resist the chain's playgrounds, Happy Meals and toy promotions often tied to the release of popular movies. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(See also Schools teach three Cs: Candy, Cookies and Chips: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/24/health/nutrition/24BROD.html )