ADHD appears to increase level of nicotine dependence in smokers

Young people with ADHD are not only at increased risk of starting to smoke cigarettes, they also tend to become more seriously addicted to tobacco and more vulnerable to environmental factors such as having friends or parents who smoke, according to a study from Massachusetts General Hospital reseachers. The report in the Journal of Pediatrics also found that individuals with more ADHD-related symptoms, even those who don?t have the full syndrome, are at greater risk of becoming dependent on nicotine than those with fewer symptoms. ?Knowing that ADHD increases the risk of more serious nicotine addiction stresses the importance of prevention efforts aimed at adolescents and their families,? says Timothy Wilens, MD, director of the Substance Abuse Program in the MGH Pediatric Psychopharmacology Department, who led the study. ?It also gives us clues about how the neurotransmitter systems involved in ADHD and tobacco use may be interacting.? Several studies have shown young people with ADHD are more like to smoke and to start smoking at an earlier age. The current investigation was designed to examine whether ADHD also increases the severity of nicotine dependence. More »


Study Shows How Breastfeeding Transfers Immunity to Babies

A BYU-Harvard-Stanford research team has identified a molecule that is key to mothers? ability to pass along immunity to intestinal infections to their babies through breast milk. The findings will be published in the Nov. 1 issue of the Journal of Immunology. The study highlights an amazing change that takes place in a mother?s body when she begins producing breast milk. For years before her pregnancy, cells that produce antibodies against intestinal infections travel around her circulatory system as if it were a highway and regularly take an ?off-ramp? to her intestine. There they stand ready to defend against infections such as cholera or rotavirus. But once she begins lactating, some of these same antibody-producing cells suddenly begin taking a different ?off-ramp,? so to speak, that leads to the mammary glands. That way, when her baby nurses, the antibodies go straight to his intestine and offer protection while he builds up his own immunity.  More »


Uninsured Kids in Middle Class Have Same Unmet Needs as Poor

Uninsured children in families earning between approximately $38,000 and $76,000 a year are about as likely to go without any health care as uninsured children in poorer families. Nearly half of uninsured children in the U.S. went without any medical care or prescriptions during the year they had no insurance, according to a University of Rochester Medical Center study released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. An even larger percentage of uninsured children went without preventive care, meaning they didn?t get a yearly physical and may not have received necessary vaccinations. JAMA is publishing this study in its themed issue, Health of the Nation, Tuesday, Oct., 21. Among the many topics the issue is addressing is that of children?s health care coverage.  More »


Tamoxifen Chemoprevention Tied To Early Detection Of Breast Cancer

The drug tamoxifen does not prevent or treat estrogen receptor (ER) negative breast cancer, but it can make the disease easier to find, researchers report in the Oct. 1 Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Women at high-risk for breast cancer who took tamoxifen as a preventive measure in a clinical trial and later developed ER-negative breast cancer had a median time to first diagnosis of 24 months, compared with 36 months for those who received placebo, according to a retrospective statistical analysis. While long-term survival has not yet been observed for the trial, that one-year advanced diagnosis is an unexpected and significant finding, said study lead author Yu Shen, Ph.D., professor in The University of Texas M. D. Anders... More »


Second Lumpectomy For Breast Cancer Reduces Survival Rates

A majority of women with breast cancer today are candidates for lumpectomy, allowing for conservation of most of their breast tissue. Results of a UC Davis study, however, show that a number of women whose cancer recurs in the same breast are treated with a second lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy, defying current treatment recommendations and cutting the number of years those women survive in half. "We were surprised to find that so many women in our study almost a quarter of them had received another lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy," said Steven Chen, a UC Davis Cancer Center surgical oncologist and lead author of the study, which appears in the October issue of the American Journal of Surgery. "It's likely that patients are as... More »


Early Breast Cancer: LHRH Agonists Show Considerable Promise

Women who have had early stage breast cancer surgically removed, and whose tumour cells are stimulated by the hormone oestrogen, can benefit from taking Luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) antagonists, a Cochrane Systematic Review has concluded. This medication may be taken alone or alongside the use of tamoxifen (see also Wiley-Blackwell). Developing effective treatment regimes is important because approximately 30% of women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer eventually die of the disease. In over half of the premenopausal women who develop breast cancer, the cells in the tumours grow faster in the presence of oestrogen. Their tumours are said to be ER+. Treatment often starts with the surgical removal of the tumour, b... More »


The Dietary Supplement Genistein Can Undermine Breast Cancer Treatment

Women taking aromatase inhibitors to treat breast cancer or prevent its recurrence should think twice before also taking a soy-based dietary supplement, researchers report. Genistein, a soy isoflavone that mimics the effects of estrogen in the body, can negate the effectiveness of aromatase inhibitors, which are designed to reduce the levels of estrogens that can promote tumor growth in some types of breast cancer. The new study, which included researchers from the University of Illinois, Virginia Polytechnic and State University and the National Center for Toxicological Research, appears in the journal Carcinogenesis. Aromatase inhibitors are a mainstay of breast cancer treatment in post-menopausal women. These drugs work by inter... More »