THURSDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) — Popular
cholesterol-lowering statins may also lower risk for liver cancer among
people with hepatitis B, a new study shows. Hepatitis B, an inflammation
of the liver due to the hepatitis B virus, is one of the main causes of
liver cancer.

This is not the first time that statins have shown promise in reducing
risk for cancer. Other studies have hinted that these drugs may play a
role in preventing certain types of cancer, including breast cancer.

In the new study of more than 33,000 individuals with hepatitis B
followed from 1997 to 2008, those who took a statin were less likely to
develop liver cancer, when compared to participants who were not
prescribed statins. What’s more, the longer a person took statins, the
greater the liver-cancer risk reduction. Study participants were
prescribed the statins to treat high cholesterol levels. Overall, 1,021
people developed liver cancer during the study period.

More research is needed to see how statins may lower liver cancer risk
among people with hepatitis B, the researchers said.

“Statins have potential protective effects against cancers [and]
carriers of hepatitis B virus infection have a substantial risk of [liver]
carcinoma,” said Dr. Pau-Chung Chen, a professor of environmental medicine
and epidemiology at National Taiwan University, in Taipei. “Statin use is
not only a benefit to preventing cardiovascular diseases, but also an
additional, convenient and acceptable strategy for preventing
hepatocellular carcinoma,” or liver cancer, Chen said.

However, statins can cause a potentially dangerous rise in liver
enzymes and liver damage. Regular liver function tests are required for
all people who take statins.

The study appeared online Jan. 23 in the Journal of Clinical
Oncology.

“This is exciting and unequivocally solid research,” said Dr. Eugene
Schiff, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Liver
Diseases at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

“One of the issues is that statins are relatively contraindicated in
people with liver disease,” Schiff said. But “the take-home message for
people with hepatitis B or anybody with liver disease is that statins are
safe. This re-emphasizes the point that if someone has chronic hepatitis B
and there is an indication for statins, they should get them and they may
be beneficial far beyond lowering cholesterol: They may also reduce their
risk for liver cancer.”

Dr. David Bernstein, chief of hepatology at North Shore University
Hospital and Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Manhasset, N.Y., is more
cautious. “In almost all other liver conditions, cirrhosis must be present
before [liver cancer] develops,” he said. During cirrhosis, scar tissue
replaces healthy liver tissue. “Statins must be used with caution in
patients with cirrhosis, which can limit their use in patients with liver
disease at risk of developing liver cancer,” he said. “Further studies are
needed in this patient population to confirm these findings.”

More information

For information on

hepatitis B , visit the U.S. National Digestive Diseases
Information Clearinghouse.

Copyright © 2012HealthDay. All rights reserved.

SUNDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) — People who live 110 years or
longer have as many disease-associated genes as those in the general
population, but they may also be blessed with protective genes that help
them live so long, researchers report.

The team of U.S. scientists noted that supercentenarians, as they are
called, are extremely rare, with only one per 5 million people in
developed nations. There is growing evidence that genetics play a major
role in living to such an old age.

In what they describe as a first-of-a-kind study, the researchers
analyzed the whole genome sequences of a man and a woman who lived past
the age of 114 and found that they had as many disease-associated genes as
other people.

For example, the man had 37 genetic mutations associated with increased
risk for colon cancer.

“In fact, he had presented with an obstructing colon cancer earlier in
his life that had not metastasized and was cured with surgery. He was in
phenomenal cognitive and physical shape near the time of his death,” study
senior author Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian
Study, said in a Boston University Medical Center news release.

The woman had numerous genetic variations associated with age-related
disease, such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. She did
develop congestive heart failure and mild cognitive impairment, but these
conditions didn’t become evident until she was more than 108 years
old.

“The presence of these disease-associated variants is consistent with
our and other researchers’ findings that centenarians carry as many
disease-associated genes as the general population,” Perls said. “The
difference may be that the centenarians likely have longevity-associated
variants that cancel out the disease genes. That effect may extend to the
point that the diseases don’t occur — or, if they do, are much less
pathogenic or markedly delayed towards the end of life, in these
individuals who are practically living to the limit of the human
lifespan.”

The study was published Jan. 3 in the journal Frontiers in
Genetics, and researchers will be able to access the information at
the U.S. National Institutes of Health data repository.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians discusses

good health habits at age 60 and older .

Copyright © 2012HealthDay. All rights reserved.

MONDAY, Nov. 28 (HealthDay News) —
Heart function improved in obese people with type 2 diabetes who ate a
very low-calorie diet, a small new study says.

Researchers measured body-mass index (BMI) and used MRI to analyze
heart function and pericardial fat in 15 obese people (seven men and eight
women) with type 2 diabetes before and four months after they started
consuming a 500-calorie-per-day diet.

Pericardial fat collects around the heart and can harm cardiac
function.

Their diabetes improved immediately after cutting calories, according
to the study.

Four months after the participants began the low-calorie diet, average
BMI fell from 35.3 to 27.5 (statistical obesity begins at a BMI of 30),
and pericardial fat decreased from 39 milliliters (ml) to 31 ml.

A key measure of diastolic heart function fell to healthier levels, as
well, the study found. Diastolic heart function involves that period of
the heart beat when the ventricles are filling up with blood. Poor
diastolic heart function can lead to congestive heart failure.

After another 14 months of follow-up when the participants ate a
regular diet, average BMI increased to 31.7, but pericardial fat only rose
slightly to 32 ml and E/A ratio was 1.06.

The study was to be presented Monday at the annual meeting of the
Radiological Society of North America.

“Our results show that 16 weeks of caloric restriction improved heart
function in these patients,” lead author Dr. Sebastiaan Hammer, of Leiden
University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said in an RSNA news
release. “More importantly, despite regain of weight, these beneficial
cardiovascular effects were persistent over the long term.”

While the results are promising and showed that lifestyle interventions
appeared to provide more significant heart benefits than medication in
these patients, obese people should not try to go on a very low-calorie
diet on their own. It has to be done under medical supervision, Hammer
noted.

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and
conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a
peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases
has more about diabetes treatments.

Copyright © 2011HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Overweight adults eat less often than people in the normal body weight range, but still take in more calories and are less active over the course of the day, according to a U.S. study.

By contrast, normal weight adults, including those who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off, ate more often, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

“Most of the research has shown that people who eat more frequently have a lower weight. But no one knows why,” said lead researcher Jessica Bachman, an assistant professor in the department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

More than 60 percent of U.S. residents are obese or overweight, but the relationship between the number of meals people eat each day and the ability to maintain weight loss has remained unclear, she said.

In particular, she wanted to understand what people who have lost significant amounts of weight do to keep it off.

Bachman and her team followed about 250 people for a year, analyzing data collected in two large studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

One looked at the eating habits of people with a body mass index — BMI, a measure of weight relative to height — between 25 to 47, which is considered overweight to obese.

The other study looked at adult men and women who were normal weight, with a BMI of 19-24.9, about half of whom had lost at least 13.6 kg (30 lbs) and maintained their lower weight for more than five years.

On average, the normal weight subjects ate three meals and a little over two snacks each day, whereas the overweight group averaged three meals and just over one snack a day.

Generally, though, weight loss “maintainers” consumed the fewest calories, at about 1,800 a day, compared with the normal weight and overweight subjects, who took in 1,900 and more than 2,000 calories a day, respectively.

Bachman said that snacking might help prevent weight gain by staving off intense hunger.

“If you eat more often, it stops you from getting too hungry. If you wait 10 hours after you’ve last eaten, you end up eating a lot more food,” she added.

She noted that weight loss maintainers were also the most physically active, burning off about 3,000 calories a week through exercise and other activities, compared to 2,000 calories a week among the normal weight subjects and 800 calories a week in the overweight group.

“It appears that being extremely physically active and eating more often helps them keep the weight off,” she said, adding that more research is needed. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/rR7jcN

(Reporting from New York by Kimberly Hayes Taylor at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies and Idayu Suparto)

The International Diabetes Federation predicts that at least one in 10 adults could have diabetes by 2030, according to its latest statistics.

In a report issued on Monday, the advocacy group estimated that 552 million people could have diabetes in two decades’ time based on factors like aging and demographic changes. Currently, the group says that about one adult in 13 has diabetes.

The figure includes both types of diabetes as well as cases that are undiagnosed. The group expects the number of cases to jump by 90 percent even in Africa, where infectious diseases have previously been the top killer. Without including the impact of increasing obesity, the International Diabetes Federation said its figures were conservative.

According to the World Health Organization, there are about 346 million people worldwide with diabetes, with more than 80 percent of deaths occurring in developing countries. The agency projects diabetes deaths will double by 2030 and said the International Diabetes Federation’s prediction was possible.

“It’s a credible figure,” said Gojka Roglic, head of WHO’s diabetes unit. “But whether or not it’s correct, we can’t say.”

Roglic said the projected future rise in diabetes cases was because of aging rather than the obesity epidemic. Most cases of diabetes are Type 2, the kind that mainly hits people in middle age, and is linked to weight gain and a sedentary lifestyle.

Roglic said a substantial number of future diabetes cases were preventable. “It’s worrying because these people will have an illness which is serious, debilitating, and shortens their lives,” she said. “But it doesn’t have to happen if we take the right interventions.”

___

Online:

http://www.idf.org

http://www.who.int

(This version CORRECTS that one in 13 adults are currently estimated to have diabetes, not one in eight.)

China vaccinated 4.5 million children and young adults over the last five weeks in the western region of Xinjiang in a fight against polio after the disease paralyzed 17 people and killed one of them, the World Health Organization said.

Polio has broken out in China for the first time since 1999 and scientists say the strain originated from Pakistan. The outbreak marked the latest setback to a global campaign to eradicate polio, now endemic in only four countries — Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Nigeria.

“Even if they don’t come down with any symptoms (carriers), by giving them polio vaccine we make that person less infectious,” said Oliver Rosenbauer, WHO spokesman for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Geneva.

All 17 polio cases occurred in Hotan prefecture in the province of Xinjiang and the patients fell ill between early July and mid-September. The Geneva-based WHO assumes that for every case it finds, there would be 199 others infected with the virus without displaying symptoms, he added.

In large vaccination drives that started in early September, health workers have since vaccinated 4.5 million people with three doses each of the polio vaccine, the WHO said.

Patients and carriers of polio can shed the virus for up to eight weeks in their stools, and transmission occurs through contact with contaminated objects and sewage water. With vaccination, patients and carriers will be infectious for 1-2 weeks.

“We are sensitizing disease surveillance in large hospitals to look for any child or adult displaying polio-like symptoms. We’ll look out for new cases, we hope there won’t be,” he said in a telephone interview.

Polio has flu-like symptoms such as fever, nausea, headache and can result in paralysis within 24 to 72 hours. There is no cure for polio, and doctors only manage their symptoms.

CHALLENGE REMAINS

Rosenbauer said polio-free countries will be at risk of reinfection if they do not sustain high immunization rates and without strong political will to eradicate the disease.

“The rest of the world may be polio-free but because it is a communicable disease and people travel, polio-free countries can become reinfected … this is what we are seeing in western China,” Rosenbauer said.

There have been new 444 cases of polio globally so far this year, a quarter of that in Pakistan. There were 1,349 reported cases in 2010.

“Pakistan – it’s our biggest problem in 2011,” Rosenbauer said. “Just as China can become reinfected, so can polio-free areas in Pakistan become reinfected.”

Eradication efforts are thwarted by conflict as well as logistical and technical problems.

“Vaccinating children during these immunization campaigns more often than not is compromised because of conflict and it is too dangerous for vaccination teams. They have to negotiate with local leaders to obtain safe passage,” Rosenbauer said, referring to southern areas in Afghanistan and tribal areas in Pakistan.

(Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)