One way to maintain muscle strength with age: Get enough vitamin D. Researchers in Brazil and the United Kingdom found that older folks who were deficient in the vitamin increased their risk of losing muscle strength by 78%. “Vitamin D is known to participate in various functions. …,” said study co-author Tiago da Silva Alexandre, a professor of gerontology at Federal University of São Carlos. “Its many roles include helping to repair muscles and releasing calcium for muscle contraction kinetics. It was therefore expected to cause muscle alterations of some kind,” he said in a news release from the São Paulo Research Foundation, which supported the research. And that’s exactly what this study proved, Alexandre said. For the study, researchers analyzed the data from more than 3,200 people in the U.K. aged 50 and older who did not yet have age-related muscle loss, known as dynapenia. That muscle loss, which can be partly explained by atrophy, is a major risk factor for physical incapacity later in life, leading to falls, hospitalization, premature institutionalization and death. Researchers followed study participants for four years. They evaluated grip strength, which is a considered representative of overall muscle strength. Participants with vitamin D deficiency (blood levels below 30 nanomoles per liter) had a 70% higher risk of developing this muscle loss by the study’s end than those with normal…  read on >  read on >

Extreme fatigue often tops the list of the most distressing symptoms for millions of people who live with multiple sclerosis (MS). And now, a new study suggests that light therapy may help these folks get their lives back. MS is an autoimmune disease that occurs when the body attacks the insulation around its nerves, causing fatigue, numbness, bladder problems, mood issues and mobility problems that can hamper everyday life. When patients with MS sat in front of a light box for 30 minutes a day for two weeks, they were less tired and reported more energy to get through their day than their counterparts who sat in front of a dim red light. Exactly how light helps with fatigue isn’t fully understood, but researchers have their theories. “Light therapy promotes alertness, concentration and wakefulness during the daytime and increases the availability of serotonin and noradrenaline in the brain; both neurotransmitters are responsible for the regulation of mood and motivation,” said study author Dr. Stefan Seidel. He’s a neurologist at Vienna General Hospital and associate professor at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria. The study included 26 people with MS. Half sat in front of a daylight lamp with a brightness of 10,000 lux, the level recommended for effective light therapy. The other half sat in front of an identical lamp that emitted a dim…  read on >  read on >

Kids who are the youngest in their grade may be overmedicated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a Norwegian researcher who studied prescribing data. Those who were also born preterm were at particular risk of being overmedicated, said Dr. Christine Strand Bachmann, a pediatrician at St. Olav’s University Hospital in Trondheim and PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Torgarden. The study included Norwegian children born between 1989 and 1998, about 488,000 in all. “We found major differences in the prescription of ADHD medication,” Bachmann said in an NTNU news release. “Children born in November-December had an 80% higher risk of being prescribed ADHD medication, compared to those born in January-February. This finding applies to children who were born at term.” She and her colleagues reviewed all prescriptions kids received from age 10 to 23, comparing those born in January or February with those born in November or December. Bachmann said the increased ADHD medication for the youngest kids owes to the way school systems are organized. “Put simply, it looks like we’re medicating the most immature children because we’re comparing them to their oldest classmates, who are a whole year older,” she said. “This shouldn’t be the basis for receiving an ADHD diagnosis,” Bachmann added. Adults have to expect that a child born in November is going…  read on >  read on >

An experimental gene therapy that’s applied as a skin gel appears to heal wounds caused by a rare and severe genetic skin disease. Experts called the findings “remarkable,” and said they bring hope of a better quality of life to children and young adults living with the condition, called dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (DEB). The disease affects about 3 out of every 1 million people. It’s caused by a flawed gene that renders the body unable to produce a particular collagen — a “glue” between the skin layers that is essential to its strength and integrity. Kids born with DEB are sometimes called “butterfly children” because their skin is so fragile, even an ordinary bump or friction can cause blistering that progresses to painful open wounds. In the most severe cases, infants have blisters or missing skin at birth, or soon after. Those children typically develop widespread scarring over their bodies and can have eye inflammation that impairs their vision. Blisters and scarring also arise along the lining of the mouth, throat and digestive tract — which can interfere with eating and cause malnutrition. As young adults, people with DEB face a high risk of squamous cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer that is normally highly curable, but in a person with DEB often proves deadly. There has never been any specific treatment for DEB.…  read on >  read on >

Having short, painful headaches for many days or even weeks in a row may signal that you’re more likely to have other medical woes, researchers say. These “cluster headaches” are extremely painful and can last from 15 minutes to three hours at a time. And people who have them may be more than three times more likely to have other medical conditions, such as heart disease or mental disorders, the new study found. “Around the world, headaches have an incredibly negative impact on people’s quality of life, both economically and socially,” said study author Caroline Ran, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. “Our results show that people with cluster headaches not only have an increased risk of other illnesses, those with at least one additional illness missed four times as many days of work due to sickness and disability than those with just cluster headaches. They also have a higher chance of a long-term absence from work,” Ran explained. The study involved more than 3,200 Swedes, aged 16 to 64, who had cluster headaches. Most were men, because men are more likely to have cluster headaches. The researchers compared that group to 16,200 people without the headaches who were similar in age, gender and other factors. The investigators looked at work records and disability benefits to determine how many days a year people were…  read on >  read on >

An experimental drug may one day be a cure for eczema, a new trial suggests. The drug, rocatinlimab, is a monoclonal antibody that researchers found prevented the recurrence of the symptoms of the skin condition for up to 20 weeks after treatment was stopped. “Patients ask us in the clinic all the time, ‘Can I stop the medication, or can I start doing it much less often?’ Right now we don’t have those medications available,” said lead researcher Dr. Emma Guttman, professor and system chair of dermatology and immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “Of course, it’s important in adults, but imagine, in the future, how important this is in children. This drug may cause disease modification because it works on memory T-cells,” she explained. The drug works by blocking OX40 — an immune molecule that activates inflammatory cells that play a role in the development of eczema, also called atopic dermatitis. The drug also prevents memory T-cells from storing the key to eczema. “Because it works on memory T-cell formation, the cells that remember that the patient has the disease, maybe these cells will not come back to cause the disease again,” Guttman said. Atopic dermatitis is a debilitating chronic inflammatory skin disease, which often develops at a very young age, causing the skin to become…  read on >  read on >