Folic Acid May Fight Down Syndrome

WASHINGTON (AP) - Women who have trouble metabolizing folic acid are at a higher risk of having children with Down syndrome, government researchers have discovered - raising the question of whether vitamin supplements might fight Down syndrome just as they do a different type of birth defect.

Mothers with a genetic abnormality that hinders folic acid metabolism were 2.6 times more likely to have a child with Down syndrome than mothers without that genetic defect, concludes the study published Tuesday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

But the discovery by Food and Drug Administration researchers is only one piece in the complicated puzzle of Down syndrome, cautioned FDA Commissioner Jane Henney. That's because millions of women appear to have this genetic abnormality, yet the risk of having a child with Down syndrome is small - one in 600 births.

So something else has to help trigger the devastating condition.

Still, ``this opens the door to look at other genes,'' explained S. Jill James, an FDA biochemist who led the study.

And birth defect experts were excited because the study points to a possible, albeit still unproven, way to reduce the risk: eating more folic acid.

``If you have this mutation and you happen to have a very poor diet, it magnified the problem,'' James said. ``We call it a gene-nutrient interaction.''

Folic acid is a B vitamin found naturally in leafy green vegetables, beans, tuna, eggs and other foods. Also, in 1998 the government ordered some grain products such as flour, breakfast cereal and pasta to be fortified with folic acid.

Women who eat 400 micrograms of folic acid a day cut in half their chances of having babies with birth defects of the brain and spinal cord, such as spina bifida. Whether a baby develops these defects is determined in the first days after conception - well before a woman knows she is pregnant. And even with food fortification, it can be hard to eat enough. Health experts recommend that every woman of childbearing age take a daily dietary supplement, such as a multivitamin, containing 400 micrograms of folic acid.

There have been hints that folic acid might play a role in other birth defects, too, but the FDA research is the first good evidence.

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder that combines mental retardation with such physical abnormalities as a broad, flat face and slanting eyes. Affected children are at high risk of heart defects, visual or hearing impairment and other health problems. The March of Dimes estimates there are 250,000 Americans with Down syndrome.

Normally, each egg and sperm cell contains 23 chromosomes. When either an egg or a sperm carries a certain extra chromosome, Down syndrome results. In most cases, the problem arises during ovulation, when a woman's body produces an abnormal egg.

The gene MTHFR plays a role in how chromosomes separate during ovulation, and in how much folic acid people need for various bodily reactions.

James studied whether an MTHFR abnormality also could affect Down syndrome. She compared 57 mothers of Down syndrome children with 50 mothers of healthy children and concluded the gene abnormality did indeed increase the risk of Down syndrome.

The FDA researchers did not give women folic acid supplements to see if they would prove enough - and at what dose - to counter the genetic defect. Experts said a treatment study is the necessary next step.

But if eating extra folic acid does prove protective, getting women to take it for several months before they conceive - in time to protect eggs produced during ovulation - would be crucial, said Dr. Donald Mattison, medical director of the March of Dimes.

``Folate status prior to conception is more critical than we might have thought,'' he said. ``The important message to women is this reinforces the importance of them taking folic acid on a daily basis.''

Exercise May Help Cancer Victims

WASHINGTON (AP) - Even during treatment, Lance Armstrong kept up his training.

During the fall and winter of 1996 and 1997, after surgery to remove a cancerous testicle, the world-class cyclist received chemotherapy. Between bouts of chemotherapy, even as he was losing muscle, he rode. After therapy, he rode some more.

Last July, a fully recovered Armstrong won the most prestigious event in cycling - the Tour de France.

And, although researchers can't say whether Armstrong's training during treatment helped him beat the disease, they do say studies increasingly indicate that physical activity can help cancer patients.

``Based on my expertise, what would I recommend if my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer? I would recommend exercise,'' said Kerry S. Courneya,a researcher at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. The Canadian scientist's review of 24 studies on exercise and cancer was published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

The studies have limitations, Courneya said. But, taken together, they indicate that staying active while cancer is in an early stage can help people retain quality of life and retard the loss of strength and endurance that accompanies the disease and its treatment.

``Cancer patients, even though they are on chemotherapy or during radiation, show many of the same types of fitness benefits that many of the regular population would show,'' he said.

However, there are many forms of cancer, and the research does not cover all of them, so any conclusions must be limited to the types of cancers studied, Courneya cautioned. Most of the studies involved breast cancer.

The new research looks so promising that the American Cancer Society is revising its exercise recommendations, according to Colleen Doyle, director of nutrition and physical activity.

``It used to be there wasn't anything out there, so we would tell people, `Conserve your energy,''' Doyle said.

But, while the research indicates exercise can be helpful, there still are people who should not do it, Doyle said. These include people whose cancer has spread to the bone, or who have lost bone density as a side effect of cancer treatment, she said.

Similarly, treatment may result in nerve damage that can make a person prone to falls, and certain medications can affect major organs in ways that limit activity, she said.

``We will certainly recommend that people talk to their health care providers before they do anything,'' Doyle said.

The studies were too varied, and the numbers of people involved in each were too small, for Courneya to estimate the size of the benefits. But the scope of the benefits ranged from increased flexibility to decreased fatigue, depression and anxiety, the review found.

Those quality of life issues are very important to cancer patients. Restoring himself to health was less than 10 percent physical, Armstrong told a congressional hearing last week. ``The big part of it is the psychological factor,'' he said.

Benefits do not require intense exercise to achieve, Courneya said, adding that moderate activity such as brisk walking was sufficient.

The way in which activity can improve the lives of cancer patients is not understood, Courneya said. However, moderate activity can improve immune functions that could fight help to fight cancer.

And exercise can reduce estrogen levels, which could help breast cancer patients because estrogen is considered to promote tumor growth, he said. Breast cancer patients who are obese also have worse odds, and exercise can help people to lose weight.

The field is too new to be able to tell if people who exercise will live longer than those who do not exercise, said Dr. Anne McTeirnan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. However, the Fred Hutchinson center, the University of Southern California and the University of New Mexico are setting up a study to follow 1,200 women with breast cancer, and activity is one of the factors that will be examined, she said.

Exercise can help cancer patients get more out of life, provided the amount and type of exercise is calibrated to the patient's condition, said Pamela Massey, director of rehabilitation services at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Breast cancer patients who have had a mastectomy, for instance, might get a special focus on improving the strength and flexibility of their shoulder muscles, she said. A person with an advanced cancer might be encouraged to use a wheelchair, although not to the point of getting worn out, she said.

Protein May Fight Prostate Cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A protein that doctors test for as an indication of prostate cancer may actually be used by the body in battling the disease, a study indicates.

Millions of American men get blood tests every year to check for prostate specific antigen. Elevated levels of PSA can indicate the presence of cancer.

``God didn't put PSA as a marker of prostate cancer. There's got to be some biological function of this molecule, and in our minds eye it had not been defined adequately,'' said Dr. John W. Holaday, one of a team of researchers in Maryland that found evidence that PSA itself may slow the growth of cancer.

``There was data showing that women with advanced breast cancer, who had higher levels of PSA, had a better prognosis,'' Holaday said in a telephone interview. ``That taught us two things: that prostate specific antigen is not prostate specific and, secondly, it appears to be correlated with an improved outcome.''

Some scientists have speculated that it might be possible to slow the progression of prostate cancer by reducing PSA, and there have been attempts to develop an anti-PSA vaccine.

Holaday said his group's results would argue against that.

``Interestingly, no one had ever taken PSA ... and added it to a bunch of prostate cancer cells or other kinds of cancer cells, and made them grow more,'' he said. ``No one really ever asked the question: 'What does PSA do?'''

So his team did the tests.

``Our results suggest that, in addition to its role as an indicator of prostate cancer, PSA may also inhibit the growth of blood vessels associated with cancer progression,'' the team from EntreMed Inc. of Rockville, Md., reports in the Oct. 6 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

``As a man over 50, I know that when my prostate PSA levels are measured on an annual basis, I look to that as a measure of progressive disease or lack thereof,'' Holaday said.

``But I also realize that when it reaches the later years, often people don't even treat prostate cancer in men 75 years of age and older because it grows so slowly. We think it grows slowly because the PSA it makes keeps it in check.''

Cancer researcher Dr. Gerald Murphy of Northwest Hospital's Pacific Northwest Cancer Foundation in Seattle called the result: ``very interesting. I had no idea that PSA would have this associated effect.''

Murphy said he would need to know more about the type of PSA tested and how it operates, but said the report does help explain the increase in PSA as cancer grows.

Scientists see two fronts in the battle against cancer: attacking the tumor cells themselves and battling the endothelial cells that make up blood vessels to bring the tumor oxygen and nutrients.

The EntreMed scientists have been working on endostatin, a protein that blocks blood-vessel development in tumors. It is currently in the first phase of clinical trials on humans.

Noticing that many patients with growing tumors have increased levels of natural endostatin, they began to wonder if increasing amounts of PSA, rather than just being ``a harbinger of bad news,'' might also indicate that the body is attempting to fight cancer.

After lab tests indicated that PSA added to cancer cells inhibited the formation of new blood vessels, the scientists introduced cancer cells to mice susceptible to lung cancer, and treated some of the mice with PSA.

Despite its name, and its value in diagnosing prostate cancer, PSA is not actually specific only to prostates, having also been found in patients with breast, lung and uterine cancers.

Mice that had been treated with PSA averaged 62 to 78 tumor nodules in their lungs after 14 days. In contrast, mice that did not receive PSA averaged 99 to 131 tumors. In similar tests using endostatin, treated mice averaged eight to 24 tumors.

Osteoporosis may be linked to mental decline

NEW YORK, Oct 05 (Reuters Health) -- As a woman ages, her chances of developing the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis and experiencing a decline in her mental abilities increases. Now, new research suggests that the two conditions may be related, although exactly how is unclear.

Dr. Kristine Yaffe, of the University of San Francisco, California, and colleagues studied more than 8,000 women ages 65 and older for about 6 years, according to a report in the October issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. At the beginning of the study, the researchers measured the women's bone density, which indicates the quality of the bone. They also tested the women's intellectual (or cognitive) abilities. Four to six years later, most of the women underwent the same bone and cognitive testing.

At the start of the study, the group of women who had the lowest bone density did not score as well on cognitive tests as the group of women with the densest bones, Yaffe and her colleagues report. The women in the high-bone-density group, on average, scored 8% higher on the tests of intellect.

Even when the researchers took into account factors such as age, education, and health that may have affected a woman's score, women with denser bones still outperformed the low-density group.

In addition, women who lost the most bone density over time or who had a fracture during the study scored lower on the cognitive test than women who did not lose as much bone density or who gained bone.

``The observation that osteoporosis is associated with poor cognitive function suggests a link between two of the most common diseases affecting aging women,'' Yaffe's team writes.

``No one has really shown this link before,'' Yaffe told Reuters Health in an interview.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what the connection is, but Yaffe said that declining levels of the female sex hormone estrogen after menopause may be to blame.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 1999;47:1176-1182.

High fruit and vegetable intake reduces stroke risk

Dr. Kaumudi J. Joshipura and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, studied the association between total daily fruit and vegetable intake and ischemic stroke in 75,596 women between the ages of 34 to 59 enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study and followed for 14 years.

They studied the same association in 38,683 men between the ages of 40 to 75 who were involved in the Health Professionals' Follow-Up Study, which lasted 8 years. None of the participants had cardiovascular disease, cancer, or diabetes at the beginning of either study, the investigators point out.

Looking at both men and women, the researchers found that the risk of ischemic stroke was 31% lower in women who consumed a median of 5.8 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, and in men who consumed a median of 5.1 servings per day, than it was in women or men who consumed less than three servings of fruit and vegetables per day. The lowest risk of ischemic stroke overall was found in men and women who ate the most of certain types of vegetables including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussel sprouts, as well as green leafy vegetables, citrus fruits and vitamin C-rich fruits and vegetables.

The research team also found that for each increase in the number of servings of fruits and vegetables a day, the risk of ischemic stroke in men and women dropped by a combined average of 6%. No further reduction in stroke risk was seen beyond six servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

``Our results provide further support for the recommendation to consume at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day,'' Joshipura and colleagues conclude.

About 4 out of 5 strokes in the US are ischemic strokes, which occur when arteries feeding the brain are blocked by fatty deposits or blood clots, cutting off the blood supply to areas of the brain. Symptoms of stroke, such as paralysis, muscle weakness and loss of the ability to speak, reflect the area of the brain that has been starved of blood.

SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association 1999;282:1233-1239.

About us		Hypnosis		Articles		Regressions		Spirit		More News!
	Reiki		Nutrition		Rates		Contact