Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

A key to your baby’s asthma risk may be as close as your laundry room. Canadian research shows that an infant’s exposure to household cleaning products in the first few months of life is tied to heightened odds for asthma by age 3. Babies may be especially vulnerable because they “typically spend 80% to 90% of their time indoors, and are especially vulnerable to chemical exposures through the lungs and skin due to their higher respiration rates and regular contact with household surfaces,” according to study lead researcher Tim Takaro. He’s a physician-scientist in the faculty of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. In their research, Takaro’s group examined questionnaires completed by parents of more than 2,000 children who were exposed to household cleaning products from birth up to 4 months of age. The children were assessed at 3 years of age for asthma, recurrent wheeze and “allergic sensitization.” The study couldn’t prove cause and effect, but the researchers reported that babies with the highest levels of exposure to cleaning products had a 37% rise in their risk of being diagnosed with asthma by 3 years of age. These babies also had a 35% higher risk of developing recurrent wheezing by the same age. The most common household cleaning products parents reported using were hand dishwashing soap, dishwasher detergent, multisurface cleaners,… read on >

Could hot chocolate deliver relief to those suffering from the painful condition known as peripheral artery disease (PAD)? A small, new study says it’s entirely possible. Though you may be picturing a steaming cup of hot milk chocolate with tiny marshmallows bobbing on the top, the concoction the study volunteers drank was made from dark chocolate, and had a less sweet taste. “A food-derived, nutritional therapy that is accessible, inexpensive and safe may meaningfully improve walking ability in people with peripheral artery disease,” said study author Dr. Mary McDermott. She’s a professor in the departments of medicine and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago. “Peripheral artery disease is common and underdiagnosed,” she said, adding that it’s a major cause of disability in people over 55. PAD causes narrowing in the blood vessels that supply blood to the legs from the heart. Common symptoms include pain, particularly when walking, cramping and weakness in the leg muscles. McDermott noted that “these findings are particularly important because currently few therapies have been identified to help patients with PAD.” However, the study was a preliminary effort and only 44 people were enrolled, so further research is needed to confirm these findings, she said. The study was published Feb. 14 in the journal Circulation Research. Funding for the research was provided by the U.S. National… read on >

A clinical trial of the weight-loss drug Belviq (lorcaserin) shows an association with an increased risk of cancer, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is requesting that its maker withdraw the drug from the U.S. market. Eisai Inc. has already “submitted a request to voluntarily withdraw the drug,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, who directs the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, noted in a statement issued Thursday. Now, “we’re taking steps to notify the public,” she said, adding that “our review of the full clinical trial results shows that the potential risk of cancer associated with the drug outweighs the benefit of treatment.” Woodcock said the FDA is advising that “patients should stop using the medication Belviq and Belviq XR [lorcaserin] and talk to their health care professionals about other treatment options for weight loss. Health care professionals should stop prescribing and dispensing Belviq and Belviq XR.” The agency first announced that Belviq might have links to cancer in a communication issued Jan 15. At the time, the FDA said “we cannot conclude that lorcaserin contributes to the cancer risk,” but “wanted to make the public aware of this potential risk. We are continuing to evaluate the clinical trial results and will communicate our final conclusions and recommendations when we have completed our review.” That review appears to have led to calls for the… read on >

Drugs that many men with prostate cancer might already be taking — cholesterol-lowering statins — may help extend their survival if they have a “high-risk” form of the disease, new research suggests. High-risk patients include men with high blood levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA) and a “Gleason score” of 8 or more. Gleason scores are a calculation used to gauge prognosis in prostate cancer. Men with a high Gleason score may develop difficult-to-treat cancers. Prior research had suggested that statins and the diabetes drug metformin (often prescribed together) have anticancer properties. However, it hasn’t been clear which of the two drugs is the bigger cancer-fighter, or whether either might help against high-risk prostate cancer. To help answer those questions, a team led by Grace Lu-Yao of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health, in Philadelphia, tracked data on nearly 13,000 high-risk prostate cancer patients. All were diagnosed between 2007 and 2011. The study couldn’t prove cause and effect, but it found that statins, taken alone or with metformin, did seem associated with an increase in survival. Men who took both statins and metformin had higher median survival (3.9 years) than those who took statins alone (3.6 years), metformin alone (3.1 years), or those who did not take either drug (3.1 years). The study was published Feb. 8 in the journal Cancer Medicine. “Both metformin and… read on >

Bedtime without your partner on Valentine’s Day could make sleep elusive. But a new study suggests one remedy: Cuddling up with a piece of his or her clothing. Researchers say having a loved one’s natural scent nearby could be as effective a sleep aid as melatonin. “One of the most surprising findings is how a romantic partner’s scent can improve sleep quality even outside of our conscious awareness,” said study senior author Frances Chen. She’s an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. For the study, 155 people were given two T-shirts to use as pillowcases. One had been worn by their lover; the other was clean or had been worn by a stranger. While the participants’ partners were wearing the shirts, they were told not to use deodorant or scents or do anything that might affect their body odor, such as smoking, exercising and eating certain foods. The T-shirts were frozen to preserve their scent. Participants spent two nights in a row sleeping with each shirt. They weren’t told which shirt was which, but they reported feeling more well-rested after using the T-shirt with their lover’s scent. Data from sleep monitors confirmed it. “Our findings provide new evidence that merely sleeping with a partner’s scent improves sleep efficiency. Our participants had an average sleep efficiency improvement of more… read on >

Suicidal behavior is declining among U.S. teenagers who identify as LGBT, but the problem remains pervasive. That’s the conclusion of two new studies that tracked trends among U.S. teenagers over the past couple of decades. Over the years, more kids have been identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) — and their likelihood of reporting suicidal thoughts and behavior has gone down. The bad news is they remain at much higher risk of suicide than their heterosexual peers, the researchers said. In one study, LGBT teenagers were over three times more likely than heterosexual teens to report a suicide attempt. The other study charted a similar pattern, with LGBT kids still reporting a high prevalence of suicidal thoughts in 2017 — and roughly a quarter saying they’d attempted suicide in the past year. The studies, published online Feb. 10 in Pediatrics, could not dig into the reasons. But past research has suggested that bullying plays a role, according to Brian Mustanski, director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern University in Chicago. LGBT students are more likely to be targeted by bullies than their heterosexual peers are. But in school districts with strong anti-bullying policies, Mustanski said, LGBT students typically report less suicidal behavior. So efforts to combat bullying could be part of the solution, according to Mustanski.… read on >

A deadly virus that’s surging through a foreign country makes its way into the United States, carried into this country by an unwitting traveler. In response, Americans panic, convinced the pathogen will soon sweep through the nation — even though only a handful of people in the United States have fallen ill. That may sound like the current state of affairs with the new coronavirus. While it has killed 1,113 and infected over 44,653 in mainland China, only 13 people have fallen ill with it in the United States and there have been no deaths. But this is actually a recurring pattern in the United States, where media coverage of a new global health threat causes distress and fear among Americans even though the risk here is fairly limited, experts say. “While an outbreak is small and simmering it doesn’t get much coverage, but then some event happens that creates an onslaught of coverage, some of which is very sensationalistic, and drops the context of what’s going on and ends up really panicking people,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in Baltimore. The most recent example before the coronavirus was the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, said Roxane Cohen Silver, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine. Coronavirus panic mirrors reaction to… read on >