Colorful fruits and vegetables linked to lower breast cancer risk

Come to find out, pink isn't the most important color when it comes to breast cancer. According to researchers in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, women loading up on carotenoids, the  micro-nutrients found in red, yellow and deeply colored fruits and vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes spinach and kale, showed lower rates of breast cancer than those who didn’t eat as many of them.

Alexandra Sifferlin at Healthland Time magazine explains that Dr. Heather Eliassen, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, led an analysis of data collected in various studies about the carotenoids and their effect on blood and breast cancer rates. The studies included 3,000 participants and nearly 4,000 controls. Women with carotenoid levels in the the top 20 percent of measured ranges had a 15-20 percent reduced risk of breast cancer compared to those with carotenoid levels in the lowest category. “It looks like it is a linear relationship,” says Eliassen. ”The higher you go, the [lower] your risk is."

Why carotenoids work against breast cancer isn't clear. They may metabolize into retinol, which regulates cell growth. Or they may improve cell communication and enhance immune system function. Eliassen urged caution. Other research carotenoids, in the form of beta-carotene supplements, are linked to an increased risk for lung cancer. (Read more) 

The Kentucky Fruit and Vegetable Conference will be held Jan. 7-8 at the Embassy Suites in Lexington. Deadline for preregistration is Dec. 19. The block of rooms for the conference will be held until Jan. 4. Program and registration information are available here or through John Strang at (859) 257-5685 or jstrang@uky.edu, or Tim Coolong at (859) 257-3374 or timcoolong@uky.edu.

UK team gets $1.5 million NIH grant to continue success with cell-level study of Alzheimer's disease factor

University of Kentucky researchers have provided the first direct evidence that activated astrocytes could play a harmful role in Alzheimer's disease.

A UK news release explains, "The astrocyte is a very abundant non-neuronal cell type that performs absolutely critical functions for maintaining healthy nervous tissue. However, in neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s disease, many astrocytes exhibit clear physical changes often referred to as 'astrocyte activation.' The appearance of activated astrocytes at very early stages of Alzheimer's has led to the idea that astrocytes contribute to the emergence and/or maintenance of other pathological markers of the disease."

UK researchers gave mice gene therapy at a very young age and assessed them 10 months later. The astrocyte activation improved brain function and preserved cognitive function. The research, published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience, has led to a five-year, $1.5 million National Institutes of Health funding grant to the researchers and the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging to further this line of study. Chris Norris, an associate professor in the UK College of Medicine Department of Molecular and Biomedical Pharmacology, is the senior author of the study. (Read more)
 

Hey, fans! Lower your voice and protect your ears; your hearing might be at stake

Ray Hull (Wichita State Univ. photo)

December is the cruelest month, basketball fans -- in more ways than one. Witness this news out of Kansas.  Yes, Kansas: Loud basketball games can often generate deafening noise that result in real hearing loss. So says Wichita State University audiologist Ray Hull, who found that gymnasiums and arenas are built like reverberating echo chambers that can wreak havoc on ears by amplifying noise to dangerous levels.

Hull says the intensity level at some basketball games -- even at middle and high school games -- can reach 115 decibels. "We can stand that noise without permanent damage to our hearing for approximately seven and half minutes," he explained. "Those who are most susceptible to damage to their hearing are those who are sitting, for example, near the pep band or, of course for those in the pep band, because intensity levels can reach 125 to 130 decibels. At that intensity level, you are susceptible to permanent damage to your hearing after about a minute and a half of exposure."

Noise-reducing plugs, available in most grocery or sporting goods stores, would provide the protection necessary to prevent this kind of injury. (Read more)

Rural Obesity Prevention Tool Kit created to tackle epidemic: 40 percent of rural adults in U.S. are obese

When the Journal of Rural Health recently reported that 40 percent of adults living in rural areas are obese, compared with 33 percent of adults living in urban areas, the size of the disparity was larger than expected and previously estimated. In response to the severity and urgency of the obesity epidemic, the Rural Assistance Center of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has created a Rural Obesity Prevention tool kit which contains resources to help communities develop obesity prevention programs. (Read more)

Court of Appeals panel rules 2-1 that county boards of health can pass smoking bans; appeal in Bullitt County case seems likely

By Al Cross
Kentucky Health News

In Kentucky's first appellate-court ruling on the issue, the state Court of Appeals today upheld the Bullitt County Board of Health's smoking ban, which is virtually the same as others enacted by several other county health boards. However, the panel's 2-1 vote and the strength of the dissent suggests that the ruling will be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

UPDATE, Dec. 19: The county Fiscal Court voted Dec. 18 to appeal, Tom O'Neill of The Courier-Journal reports.

Health boards in Clark, Hopkins, Madison and Woodford counties have enacted smoking bans. The Hopkins County ban was upheld by the local circuit judge, whose ruling was not appealed. (Courier-Journal video story on smoking in Bullitt County bars)


In Bullitt County, the fiscal court and eight towns sued to stop the ban four days before it was to take effect last year. Bullitt Circuit Judge Rodney Burress ruled that the board lacked authority to ban smoking in public places, but the appeals court said the General Assembly had clearly given county health boards the power to impose regulations protecting public health, that secondhand smoke is a public-health issue, and that the board's regulation is reasonable, because it is virtually the same as an ordinance upheld in Lexington.

The majority cited regulations that the Jefferson County Board of Health had enacted in the 1970s to prevent lead poisoning, and cited other court decisions saying that courts should construe public-health laws liberally. The local governments argued that the Bullitt health board has usurped legislative  power held only by them, but the 2-1 majority said the state legislature had granted the board that authority in public-health matters.

Judge Jeff Taylor of Owensboro dissented, writing that the law cited by the majority and the board was passed 58 years ago. "I harbor grave doubt that the General Assembly intended to empower health departments at that time with the authority to regulate smoking as a threat to public health," he wrote. "In 1954, second-hand smoke was not a known public health issue." He said the legislature had specifically authorized the Jefferson County lead program, and the Lexington ban was passed by the local council, not the Fayette County Board of Health.

Taylor noted that the Bullitt board had relied on "national and international studies on the effects of secondhand smoke," with no local studies showing "smoking presents a threat to the health of the citizens of Bullitt County." And even if the board had such studies, he wrote, other state laws "reserve to cities and counties the authority to regulate smoking and secondhand smoke in their respective jurisdictions." The laws he cited do not appear to do that, but he argued that allowing health boards to enact smoking bans, he said, would give them "limitless" power to regulate guns, alcohol, sales of large-size soft drinks or "the number of cheeseburgers sold by fast-food restaurants."

Taylor wrote, "To the extent the cities and county, and their elected officials have failed to address a perceived serious public health issue, the citizens of Bullitt County have an easy method to remedy the problem – the ballot box," Taylor wrote. "Or, in the alternative, the Kentucky General Assembly can expressly authorize health boards to regulate smoking in each county." To read the seven-page majority opinion and the eight-page dissent, click here.

Kentucky's pill-mill problem and law to fight it get national airing, with issues of patient privacy versus public health debated

Kentucky's "pill problem" went more public Thursday when David Hopkins, head of the state's prescription drug monitoring program, told the National Conference of State Legislatures the true extent of our prescription pain pill addiction. Maggie Clark of Stateline reports that lawmakers "shook their heads in disbelief" when Hopkins said the state's doctors issued 60 million prescriptions for the 4.4 million Kentuckians in August of this year alone. The stark admission was a way to start talking about where patient privacy ends and public health concerns begin, Clark writes.

Kentucky is among 42 states with operational prescription-monitoring laws but few others require physicians to use the database to chronicle each patient and their drug use before prescribing as Kentucky does. And while the commonwealth allows its law-enforcement officers access to the database, the database is not controlled by the attorney general's office but, as a nod to patient privacy, by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. In Vermont, legislators fought that battle earlier this year, with police there needing a warrant to access it. When Kentucky's law enforcement officers were surveyed about the law in 2010, 73 percent said they found the tool "excellent" for obtaining evidence.

At the conference, a report citing a Centers for Disease Control review explained that data collected through 2005 in a limited number of studies shows that having a prescription drug monitoring program in place had no clear impact on overdose mortality, Clark reports.

CDC: Kentucky grossly underuses tobacco settlement money when it comes to tobacco prevention and cessation programs

Kentucky is not even remotely up to snuff on state tobacco-prevention programming. According to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control, the state spends only $2.2 million on such programs. That amount is only 4.5 percent of what the CDC recommends that state, which has the highest incidence of tobacco use in the nation, spend. If the state spent what the nation's most prestigious health institution recommended, state spending to improve Kentucky's collective lungs should be in the $57 million range.

Kentucky ranks 36th in state tobacco control spending nationwide. According to the RWJ Foundation report, states will collect a record $25.7 billion in revenue from the tobacco settlement and from tobacco taxes this year, but will spend just 1.8 percent of that money on programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit. That's less than two cents of every tobacco dollar sent back to the states. Only Alaska and North Dakota are funding the levels that the CDC has recommended.

Read the report here. To view an interactive national map, with each state's spending outlined at here.

Cheaper heroin showing up in Eastern Kentucky as crackdown on pain pills makes that trade less attractive

About 60 grams of heroin, worth about
$8,000. (AP photo)

It was only few months ago that Northern Kentucky law enforcement officers and substance abuse clinics began expressing grave concern that heroin was fast becoming the go-to drug in their region. Today, there are signs that the drug is already moving swiftly east, into the already drug-ravaged mountains of Eastern Kentucky. The reason for the uptick in heroin use? Because pain pills aren't as available anymore.

Federal and state law enforcement have been cracking down on the prescription pain-pill drug trade for years in these parts. They've created electronic prescription-tracking systems, staked out pain management clinics and shut down a drug pipeline that starts in Florida. Some argue that last year's passage of House Bill 1 has discouraged even legitimate doctors from prescribing pain drugs. All these things make heroin usage an unintended consequence of their success, officials fear.

 "There's always some type of drug to step up when another gets taken out," Dan Smoot, law enforcement director of Operation UNITE, which handles drug investigations in 29 Eastern Kentucky counties, told Brett Barrouquere of The Associated Press. "We didn't know it was going to be heroin. We knew something was going to replace pills."

Officials say the heroin is trafficked from Mexico into the U.S., where it first goes to Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. Northern Kentucky counties have been the epicenter of heroin abuse in the state, but law enforcement officials in Louisville, Lexington and Appalachian counties are reporting "a dramatic rise in the number of arrests and seizures related" to heroin. Kentucky State Police seized 11 doses of heroin and other opiates in 2008 in the eastern half of the state; they have seized 395 doses there so far this year.

Users are attracted to heroin's low cost compared to pain pills, Barrouquere reports. A single oxycodone pill can cost from $80 to $100, but heroin can cost as little as $15 to $20 for an amount that will produce the same level of intoxication as one pain pill for 24 hours, Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy Director Van Ingram said. (Read more)

One S.C. county serves as incubator for state's efforts to battle weight problems, with some good results

PE teacher Sharon Williams, right,
leads morning exercises before
classes start at Bells Elementary.
(The State photo by Tim Dominick)

With nearly two-thirds of South Carolina deemed overweight or worse, lucky Colleton County got picked to be a test case for doing better. That is, for improving its chances to beat the state's already overwhelming rates of diabetes, heart disease and stroke and for helping to lower the state's $1.2 billion dollar medical bill. Lucky, because in 2010, the county was awarded almost a half million Eat Smart Move More grant by the BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation to see if it could promote health eating and more physical exercise countywide. Joey Hollerman of The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., reports that "the results have been striking," though he notes that changing obesity numbers is "like turning an aircraft carrier, it's a slow process." Mostly, he's talking about attitude and perseverance.

How does the county-wide program work on a daily basis? First, of course, you have to have buy-in, which this county did. Hollerman explains that now when children arrive at Bells Elementary School in the county seat of Walterboro, "they go straight to the gym and walk laps before heading to classrooms. Worshipers at Power of Faith Delivery Ministry harvest collards as well as souls, and fried chicken is discouraged at church dinners. The local farmers market has a sparkling new home and a system set up to accept cards from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program." The Let’s Go, Eat Smart program and exercise programs are posted in schools, workplaces, grocery stores and churches.

So how, if the numbers aren't clear yet, how to measure if it's working? Well, only one fried chicken basket showed up at a recent church supper and the member who brought it ended up apologizing for her breach. On the day the reporter visited only the elementary school only one child in the entire first grade tried to slip through without selecting a fruit or vegetable. He was sent back and grabbed a plastic container of grapes from the Go (instead of the Slow or Whoa) food options, Hollerman reports. There are also anecdotes galore, including those of children, once on insulin, who are now fine without it.

South Carolin's BlueCross BlueShield recently awarded another grant to Eat Smart Move More, in part to continue the work in Colleton County but also to for expand it to other communities. (Read more)

British researchers say a simple calculation can predict likelihood of a baby's chance of becoming obese during childhood

If only we knew from the start which babies were predisposed to becoming diabetic and hypertensive and overweight . . . News out this week suggests we can. NBC News reports that British researchers have published findings in the journal PLOS ONE saying that a simple assessment can predict at birth a baby's likelihood of becoming obese during childhood. The formula, available as an online calculator here, estimates the child's obesity risk based on its birth weight, the body mass index of the parents, the number of people in the household, the mother's professional status and whether she smoked during pregnancy.

The hope is to help families will take steps to control the weight of babies and small children before medical problems arise. Philippe Froguel of Imperial College London, who led the study, explained that teaching parents about the dangers of over-feeding and bad nutritional habits at a young age is much more effective than having to teach children how to lose weight. Froguel's team developed their formula following 4,000 Finnish children since 1986. Childhood obesity is a leading cause of early type 2 diabetes, as well as various types of cardiovascular disease. (Read more)

Study: Teenagers may buy fewer cigarettes if the product is not prominently displayed

For Kentucky which has the dubious distinction of having the nation's highest rate of teen smokers, an study published this week in Pediatrics reports that teenagers may be less likely to buy cigarettes at convenience stores if they aren't sold in plain sight. Genevra Pittman of Reuters Health explains that requiring stores to hide tobacco product displays is one option some states are considering to curb teen smoking after the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 was passed, according to Annice Kim, the study's lead author. No state has yet banned the displays. (Associated Press photo)

The study was conducted using a virtual reality game where teens, ages 13 to 17, "visited" simulated stores to purchase items. In some cases, the cigarettes were displayed behind the counter; in others, they were covered up. The researchers from RTI International found that 16 to 24 percent of teens tried to buy tobacco when the display was open, compared to 9 to 11 percent when it was closed. Thirty-two percent said they were aware cigarettes were available when the display case was closed , compared to 85 percent of those who had the open version.

Dr. Michael Siegel, of the Boston University School of Public Health, told Pittman that the study was interesting but he was skeptical of extrapolating it into real life. Real life kids, he said, will go to a store when they want to buy cigarettes. "I don't know how many situations there are when a kid is hanging out in a convenience store with nothing to do and says, 'Oh, I'll just try a cigarette as long as they're here.' "(Read more)

CDC director: Flu season is three weeks early, could be a bad one

Prepare for a bad flu season. According to the Centers for Disease Control, this flu season seems to be ahead of schedule if you use the last decade as any judge of when the season should begin, which is usually around Christmas. Suspected cases have already showed up in Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas, with two infant deaths already having been reported. (Getty Images)

Dr. Thomas Frieden, CDC director, sees good news in that fact that the nation seems well prepared this year. He told the Associated Press that more than a third of Americans have been vaccinated and that the vaccine is well matched to the strains of flu seen so far. (Read more)