Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

People with aching knees might receive relief from a course of low-dose radiation therapy, a new study suggests. People with mild to moderate wear-and-tear knee arthritis felt less pain and had better mobility after radiation treatment, researchers reported Sunday at a meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology in San Francisco. “People with painful knee osteoarthritis often face a difficult choice between the risks of side effects from pain medications and the risks of joint replacement surgery,” said principal investigator Dr. Byoung Hyuck Kim, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea. “There’s a clinical need for moderate interventions between weak pain medications and aggressive surgery, and we think radiation may be a suitable option for those patients especially when drugs and injections are poorly tolerated,” he added in a news release. Knee osteoarthritis affects more than 32 million U.S. adults, researchers noted. It occurs when the cartilage that provides cushioning in the joint wears down over time, eventually allowing the ends of bones to rub against each other. Low-dose radiation is regularly used for joint pain in European countries like Germany and Spain, but there haven’t been enough high-quality trials to prove the approach’s effectiveness, researchers said. For the new study, researchers recruited 114 patients with mild to moderate knee arthritis at three academic hospitals… read on > read on >

More kids are being hurt in golf cart accidents, a new study says. Golf cart injuries among children have steadily increased over the past three years, researchers reported Sunday at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ annual meeting in Denver. Nine out of 10 kids injured are boys, and nearly half are younger than 12, researchers found. Golf carts have become a common sight in some suburban neighborhoods, researchers said. “The growing trend of golf cart use in residential areas, alongside the increased frequency of children driving and riding these vehicles, correlates with a concerning rise in both the number and variety of childhood golf cart injuries,” study author Dr. Theodore Ganley said in a news release. He’s director of the Sports Medicine and Performance Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. For the study, researchers analyzed federal injury data on golf-cart-related injuries among children, teenagers and young adults. The team estimated that nearly 53,900 such injuries occurred between 2010 and 2023, with an average of more than 3,800 each year. A collision followed by a cart overturn was the most common accident sequence, occurring in about 36% of all cases and 46% of cases involving teens, results showed. Falling from a golf cart was the most common way kids were hurt, occurring in about 50% of cases, researchers found. Injuries to the head, face and… read on > read on >

It sounds counterintuitive: Eat more fat and lose more weight. But it’s the underpinning of a keto diet — a controversial eating regimen designed to retrain the body to rely on something other than sugar for energy. The regimen is rich in meat, eggs, high-fat dairy and oils. “I think a lot of people look at a ketogenic diet and think, ‘I’ll lose weight, I’ll be healthier,’ ” said lead researcher Molly Gallop, an assistant professor of anatomy and physiology at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. The biology goes like this: On a keto diet, a person’s liver converts fat into molecules called ketone bodies that the body can burn for energy. Despite a high fat intake — up to 90% of daily calories — it can lead to substantial weight loss. And while it may seem OK on the surface, new research in mice suggests that staying on a keto regimen for a long time might be risky. Lab rats fed a keto diet for up to a year — decades in human time — showed signs of liver and heart disease and developed glucose intolerance, a team led by Gallop recently reported in the journal Science Advances. “It’s a cautionary tale,” said study co-author Amandine Chaix, an assistant professor of nutrition and integrative physiology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.… read on > read on >

A new gene therapy has shown promise in slowing the progression of Huntington’s disease, according to early trial results released Wednesday. In a Phase 1/2 study, patients given a high dose of UniQure’s experimental therapy AMT-130 experienced a 75% slowing of disease progression after three years, the company said. The therapy also reduced levels of a key marker of brain damage — neurofilament light protein in spinal fluid — by an average of 8.2%. “These findings reinforce our conviction that AMT-130 has the potential to fundamentally transform the treatment landscape for Huntington’s disease,” Dr. Walid Abi-Saab, chief medical officer at UniQure, told CNN. The trial, run in partnership with University College London, included 29 patients treated with either a high or low dose of AMT-130 and followed for 36 months. The treatment was delivered surgically by injecting the therapy directly into the brain’s striatum, an area most affected by Huntington’s. Most side effects were linked to the surgical procedure and resolved, the company reported. The findings have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal and should be regarded as preliminary. Huntington’s disease is a rare genetic condition most common among people of European ancestry. It damages nerve cells in the brain, leading to movement problems, cognitive decline and changes in mood and behavior. There is currently no cure, but treatments can manage… read on > read on >

If approved, this would be the first genetic therapy for Huntington’s disease read on >

The number of kids hurt or killed by a reversing car dramatically dropped after backup cameras were required in new vehicles, according to a new study. Cases of children severely injured by a car in reverse fell by half following the 2018 federal mandate requiring backup cameras, researchers will report Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Denver. There also was a 78% drop in children killed by cars backing up, researchers found. “Our study demonstrates an important association between the federal mandate in 2018 requiring all new vehicles be equipped with a backup camera, and the reduction in both rate and severity of pediatric backover trauma,” researcher Dr. Natalie Drucker, an assistant professor of pediatric surgery at UTHealth Houston, said in a news release. Backover crashes cause about 210 deaths and 15,000 injuries each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Most of these accidents involve children, who often are too small to be seen using rearview mirrors. For the study, researchers analyzed data for children younger than 5 involved in a backup accident between 2011 and 2024. They identified 71 children treated at a pediatric trauma center, as well as another 28 found in a case list maintained by the advocacy group Kids and Car Safety. Of the trauma center patients, 53 were involved in their… read on > read on >

Air pollution is known to raise the risk of heart disease, strokes and breathing problems, but new research suggests it may also harm something else: kids’ vision. In a study of nearly 30,000 schoolchildren in Tianjin, China, researchers found that kids exposed to higher levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were more likely to develop myopia. Also known as nearsightedness or shortsightedness, myopia causes distant objects to appear blurry while close ones appear clear. “We showed that air pollution contributes to myopia development in children,” study co-author Zongbo Shi, a professor of atmospheric biogeochemistry at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., told The Washington Post. “What this means,” he said, “Is that if their exposure to air pollution is high, the risk to become shortsighted is higher.” The findings were published Sept. 23 in the journal PNAS Nexus. The research combined genetic, lifestyle and environmental data using a machine-learning model. While genetics were the strongest factor in whether a child developed vision problems, air quality also played an important role. Children living in areas with cleaner air tended to have better vision, the study found. In fact, when researchers created “clean air” scenarios, primary schoolers saw almost double the vision improvement compared with older students. What’s more, lifestyle also mattered: Lack of sleep and long hours of screen time increased… read on > read on >