The omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in fish oil supplements might help protect people from cancer, a new study claims. Study participants with higher levels of omega-3s had lower rates of colon, stomach, lung and other digestive tract cancers, researchers found. Likewise, high omega-6 levels led to lower rates of 14 different cancers, including brain, melanoma, bladder and more, result showed. “These findings suggest that the average person should focus on getting more of these fatty acids in their diets,” said lead researcher Yuchen Zhang, a doctoral student with the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health. The study relied on data from more than 253,000 participants in the UK Biobank research project. As part of that project, participants filled out dietary questionnaires and had their health tracked for decades. Of those people, nearly 30,000 developed some form of cancer, researchers said. Importantly, the benefits of high levels of fatty acids were independent of other cancer risk factors like BMI, alcohol use or physical activity. These fatty acids are present in fatty fish, nuts and plant-based cooking oils, but many people turn to fish oil supplements to make sure they’re getting enough. However, the benefits of these fatty acids aren’t universal. The researchers noted that high omega-3 levels could be associated with a slightly higher risk of prostate cancer. “For women, it’s an easy decision:…  read on >  read on >

Text messages and other online feedback can help prevent obesity in very young children, a new study demonstrates. Kids had a healthier weight-for-height growth curve during their first two years if parents were offered electronic feedback on feeding habits, playtime and exercise, researchers found. “What is kind of exciting from our study is we prevented those children who would have had an unhealthy weight in the first place and helped them have a healthier weight, which sets them up better for health throughout their lives,” said co-lead researcher Dr. Eliana Perrin, a professor of primary care at the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health in Baltimore. About 1 in 5 school-aged kids were obese in 2017-2018, and these rates are expected to have increased since the pandemic, researchers said. In a prior study, Perrin and her colleagues found that in-clinic counseling improved healthy growth in newborns up to 18 months of age, but not through the age of 2. That might be because pediatric office visits become less frequent past a child’s first year of life, the researchers reasoned. Given that, they created a follow-up study focusing on using digital technology to continue providing health and diet counseling for new parents, even if they’re no longer dropping by a doctor’s office. “We found that parents are eager for more information to…  read on >  read on >

Sugar overload is a real danger on Halloween, as piles of candy prove a powerful temptation to both Trick-or-Treaters and the folks handing out the goodies. Too many sweet treats can instigate a blood sugar spike followed by a hard crash, causing folks to become irritable and experience symptoms like dizziness, upset stomach, tiredness and headache, said Luis Rustveld, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Sugar gets broken down into glucose by your body and travels through your bloodstream, signaling the pancreas to make insulin, which helps your cells convert glucose into energy,” Rustveld explained in a Baylor news release. “Too much sugar overwhelms the system, resulting in spikes in blood glucose levels.” The best way to prevent both kids and adults from overloading on sugar is to start the night with a normal, balanced meal, Rustveld advised. Slow-digesting protein from the meal will help blunt blood sugar spikes, and a fuller stomach will lower the desire to munch on too much candy, he said. It’s also good to get in some physical activity — either lots of steps Trick-or-Treating around the neighborhood, or working out earlier in the day — to help maintain a balance between exercise and the added sugar in a Halloween diet, Rustveld said. He advised parents to stick with the American…  read on >  read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it has appointed Dr. Michelle Tarver to head its division that oversees medical devices. The appointment of a new director for the Center for Devices and Radiological Health comes at a time of great innovation and change in the medical device field, with AI playing an increasing role in medical technologies. Tarver replaces outgoing director Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, who faced criticism over ethical lapses during his 15 years of running an agency with close ties to the medical device industry. Shuren announced his retirement in July. “Dr. Tarver demonstrates a true passion about data, science, medicine and the evidence, all of which are critical to supporting and driving the FDA’s decisions,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in an announcement to agency staff, the New York Times reported. “She works to build collaboration and transparency in achieving the strategic priorities for the center and the agency.” Tarver said in a statement that she was honored to lead the division and planned to “remain committed in our service to public health and ensuring all patients in the U.S. have access to high-quality, safe and effective medical devices.” According to the Times, the FDA’s medical device division has a budget of $790 million and a staff of over 2,500 people. It oversees the development of thousands of devices used…  read on >  read on >

Type 2 diabetes is caused in part by the failure of pancreatic beta cells to respond as they should to blood sugar. Now, new research suggests that switching to a low-carbohydrate diet might correct that beta cell dysfunction, boosting patients’ health. “People with type 2 diabetes on a low-carbohydrate diet can recover their beta cells, an outcome that cannot be achieved with medication,” noted lead study author Barbara Gower, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The findings suggest that “people with mild type 2 diabetes who reduce their carbohydrate intake may be able to discontinue medication and enjoy eating meals and snacks that are higher in protein and meet their energy needs,” Gower added in a news release from the Endocrine Society. As the research team explained, type 2 diabetes — by far the most common form of the disease — is caused in part by an impairment in beta-cell function and loss of beta cells. Beta cells are made in the pancreas and produce insulin, the hormone humans need to control blood sugar levels. Her team theorized that damage to beta cells may be due, at least in part, to excessive intake of carbohydrate-rich foods such as bread and pasta. In the new study, the Birmingham team placed 57 white and Black adults with type 2 diabetes on one of two dietary regimens.…  read on >  read on >

Babies who breathe in polluted air tend to have higher rates of peanut allergy as they grow up, but the same wasn’t true for immune-based conditions like egg allergy or eczema, Australian researchers report. Why the connection to peanut allergy in particular? That’s not yet clear, said study lead author Dr. Diego Lopez, of the University of Melbourne. “Air pollutants have an irritant and inflammatory effect that may boost the immune systems pro-allergic response, potentially triggering the development of food allergies,” said Lopez, a researcher at the university’s School of Population and Global Health. “However, the underlying mechanisms of how air pollution increases the risk of a peanut allergy, and why eczema and egg allergy aren’t impacted in the same way, need to be explored further,” he said in a news release from the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute (MCRI). The new research involved nearly 5,300 children living in Melbourne who’d been enrolled at the age of 1 and then followed up at ages 4, 6 and 10. Lopez’ team was able to track local data on air pollution for whatever neighborhood the child lived in. They looked specifically at two types of pollution: fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). As rates of air pollution rose, so did a child’s odds of developing a peanut allergy, the team found. Food allergies were diagnosed using…  read on >  read on >

Experiments in sheep are hinting that doses of caffeine given to women in pregnancy, as well as their newborns after birth, could prevent cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a disabling condition often caused by asphyxia — reductions in oxygen supply — around the time of birth. Asphyxia can cause other neurodevelopmental disorders, as well. Researcher Dr. Emin Maltepe, a neonatologist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital, explained how caffeine might prevent asphyxia damage. “Caffeine has previously proven to be safe in stimulating the respiratory centers of preterm babies and helping them remember to breathe,” said Maltepe, who is senior author of the new study. Caffeine “easily crosses the blood-brain barrier and is a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory molecule,” added first study author Dr. Jana Mike, a pediatric intensivist at the same hospital. Maltepe and Mike published their findings Oct. 21 in the journal Stroke. In the new study, 30 pregnant sheep received either a single intravenous dose of one gram of caffeine, which is equal to about 10 cups of coffee, or a placebo IV shot. Then, after their lambs were born and asphyxia was induced, some lambs got a large dose of caffeine followed by lesser doses each day for two days. The other lambs received the placebo.   Measures of systemic inflammation, called cytokines, were significantly less among lambs…  read on >  read on >

A healthy diet can help keep prostate cancer in check, a new study finds. The better a man eats, the less likely his low-grade prostate cancer will progress to a more dangerous state, researchers reported Oct. 17 in the journal JAMA Oncology. For every increase of 12.5 points in a zero-to-100 healthy eating scale, men were 15% less likely to have their grade 1 prostate cancer progress to at least grade 2, and 30% less likely to have it progress to grade 3 or greater, results show. “While there have been previous research studies looking at diet and its relationship to prostate cancer, we believe that ours is the first to provide statistically significant evidence that a healthy diet is associated with a reduction in risk of prostate cancer progressing to a higher grade group, as shown by a reduction in the percentage of men on active surveillance experiencing grade reclassifications over time,” said co-senior researcher Dr. Christian Pavlovich. He’s a professor in urologic oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. For the study, researchers tracked the data on 886 men diagnosed with grade 1 prostate cancer between January 2005 and February 2017. Grade 1 prostate cancers are indolent, don’t look very different than normal tissue, and haven’t spread to other parts of the body. All of the men completed a…  read on >  read on >

Studies in mice have shown that the fungal toxin zearalenone can mimic estrogen, and it might hamper reproduction. It’s not yet clear if the “mycoestrogen” compound can do the same in women. However, a new study finds that nearly all pregnant women ingest zearalenone as part of their daily diets. Researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Rochester say they detected traces of zearalenone in 97% of urine samples they received from pregnant women. The toxin appears to be more common among folks who eat lots of “ultraprocessed” foods, they added. “For every 1 percent higher ultra-processed food consumption, there was a higher exposure to mycoestrogen,” noted study lead author Carolyn Kinkade, who studied zearalenone for her PhD thesis at Rutgers. Kinkade’s team published its findings recently in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environment Epidemiology. As the researchers explained, mycoestrogens are produced by various fungi that commonly contaminate grains, meats and processed foods. Zearalenone, in particular, can be found on corn, wheat and barley. Animal studies suggest that zearalenone can disrupt reproduction because it acts similarly to estrogen. In fact, it’s so similar to the estrogenic hormone17β-estradiol “that it binds with estrogen receptors” on cells, according to a Rutgers news release. High concentrations of zearalenone have already been linked to smaller numbers of offspring for mammals such as cattle, pigs, mice and rats. On…  read on >  read on >