Health

The preferred and most frequently used initial therapy for the common heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation (AF) is a strategy to restore and maintain a normal heart rhythm. However, a study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health found that this “heart rhythm” strategy prevents no more deaths than the alternative, often secondary, approach to treatment which merely controls the rate at which the heart beats – and may have some disadvantages, including more hospitalizations and adverse drug effects.

A study of Northern Plains Indians found that infants were less likely to die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) if their mothers received visits from public health nurses before and after giving birth. The study also found that binge drinking (five or more drinks at a time) during the mother’s first trimester of pregnancy made it eight times more likely that her infant would die of SIDS. Any maternal alcohol use during the periconceptional period (three months before pregnancy or during the first trimester) was associated with a six-fold increased risk of SIDS. The study also found that infants were more likely to die of SIDS if they wore two or more layers of clothing while they slept.

Although screening for prostate cancer is a common part of a routine checkup for American men, a new finding issued today from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force concludes there is insufficient scientific evidence to promote routine screening for all men and inconclusive evidence that early detection improves health outcomes. The finding is published in the December 3 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Have you had a skin wound lately and did a physician tell you a brown recluse spider was the culprit? A California study, focusing on 2,055 brown recluse spiders in a Kansas home, notes that many skin lesions are misdiagnosed by doctors as “brown recluse spider bites.” The study finds that even where brown recluses can be very common, bites from these spiders are uncommon. Moreover, the study finds that in non-endemic areas, there aren’t enough brown recluses to account for skin conditions diagnosed as “brown recluse bites.”

Despite perceptions that additive-free cigarettes and the hand-rolled cigarettes from India called bidis may provide a less-toxic smoke than conventional cigarettes, new research suggests the opposite may be true. For the study, researchers asked 10 volunteers to smoke an unfiltered, additive-free American Spirit cigarette, a strawberry-flavored bidi, a non-flavored bidi and one of the participants’ own preferred brands of conventional cigarette. Results showed that two minutes after smoking the unfiltered, additive-free American Spirit cigarette or either type of bidi, participants’ plasma nicotine levels were significantly higher than when they smoked their own cigarettes. The high nicotine levels lasted longest with the American Spirit cigarette. Study results are published in the December issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

Almost nobody can stop eating at just one normal serving if there’s extra food on their plate, Penn State researchers have shown, and this tendency coupled with the spread of megaportions may be contributing to the American obesity epidemic. In the first systematic, controlled study of the response to portion size in adults, the researchers found that the bigger the portion, the more the participants ate. On average, they ate 30 percent more from a five-cup portion of macaroni and cheese than from one half its size ? without reporting feeling any fuller after eating. Dr. Barbara Rolls, who holds the Guthrie Chair of Nutrition in Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development, led the study. She says, “Men and women, normal-weight and overweight individuals, restrained and unrestrained eaters, all responded to larger portion size by eating more.”