Prenatal BPA Exposure Effect on Emotional Health in Girls
BOSTON—Exposure to the industrial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) before birth may lead to behavior and emotional problems in preschoolers, particularly girls, according to a new study published in the journalPediatrics. The findings add more fire to the already hot debate about healthy hazards associated with BPA exposure.
Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health examined data from 244 mothers and their young children in the Cincinnati area who were taking part in the Health Outcomes and Measures of the Environment Study. They characterized gestational and childhood BPA exposures by using the mean BPA concentrations in maternal (16 and 26 weeks of gestation and birth) and child (1, 2, and 3 years of age) urine samples, respectively. Behavior and executive function were measured by using the Behavior Assessment System for Children 2 (BASC-2) and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool (BRIEF-P).
They found 85% of the mothers and 96% of the children had detectable levels of BPA in their urine. There was little difference between the mothers’ in-pregnancy and at-birth levels of BPA. The BPA levels in the children’s urine samples decreased from age 1 to age 3, but they were higher and varied more than their mothers’ levels.
After adjusting for other possible influencers, BPA levels in pregnancy were linked to more hyperactive, aggressive, anxious, and depressed behavior and poorer emotional control and inhibition in the girls, but not the boys.
The researchers concluded gestational BPA exposure affected behavioral and emotional regulation domains at 3 years of age, especially among girls. Clinicians may advise concerned patients to reduce their exposure to certain consumer products, but the benefits of such reductions are unclear.
Soft Drink Consumption Linked to Youth Violence
October 25, 2011 — Public health researchers and nutrition advocates have criticized consumption of carbonated soft drinks because they may fill people up with empty calories, sugar, and caffeine, but new research published online October 24 in Injury Prevention suggests that the drinks also may be linked with, or may be a strong marker for, violent behavior in teenagers.
“This is the first study to suggest such an association,” said David Hemenway, MD, professor of public health and director of the Injury Control Center at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, and the study’s lead author, in an interview with Medscape Medical News.
After controlling for sex, age, race, body mass index, typical sleep patterns, tobacco use, alcohol use, and having family dinners, the investigators found that high consumption of carbonated, nondiet soft drinks was associated with a statistically significant 9% to 15% greater likelihood of engaging in aggressive behaviors. Heavy soft drink use had about the same effect as tobacco and alcohol on violence.
“This is just one study, and it needs to be looked at in more detail.” Dr. Hemenway said. He was reluctant to call it a cause-and-effect relationship, stressing that the exact sugar or caffeine content in the soft drinks was “unknown,” and that “possibly other factors not accounted for in our analysis are related to high soft drink consumption and aggression.”
Dr. Hemenway and coauthors found that teenagers who drank more than five 12-ounce cans of carbonated soft drinks each week were more likely to carry a weapon and commit violence against friends, dates, and siblings. The study also found that the relationship appears to be a dose–response relationship, with the strongest relationships shown for teenagers drinking 14 or more cans per week. Of those adolescents, 42.7% carried a gun or knife, 58.6% were violent toward their peers, 26.9% were violent toward dates, and 45.3% perpetrated violence toward other children in their family. These percentages were significantly higher than in each of the 3 other consumption categories (?1 can, 2 – 4 cans, and 5 – 7 cans in the last 7 days), and there was a statistically significant, linear increase in consumption linked to each of the 4 violence behaviors (P ? .001). Nearly 1 in 3 students were drinking at least 5 cans of carbonated soft drinks.
The study used self-report data from the Boston Youth Survey, a biennial, paper-and-pencil survey of ninth- to twelfth-grade students in Boston public schools to evaluate the effect of soft drink use on aggressive and violent behavior.
The 2725 high school students selected for the study were not representative of adolescents across the United States: 50% were black or multiracial, 33% were Hispanic, 9% were white, and 8% were Asian. Of these groups, only Asians were found to drink much less than the others.
The study was not able to show a relationship between soft drink consumption and obesity, which has been shown in other studies. Heavy soft drink use was also associated with other dimensions; for example, getting insufficient sleep and using alcohol and tobacco within the past 30 days.
Dr. Hemenway acknowledged several study limitations, including the self-report of the data, the generalizability to other adolescents, and the lack of information on the sodas themselves. In the discussion section, the authors write that a “direct-cause-and effect relationship between soft drink consumption and aggression is one possibility,” adding that “various ingredients, including carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, sodium benzoate, phosphoric or citric acid, and often caffeine…might affect behaviour.”
The author introduces his study by reminding readers of the “Twinkie defense,” which was used successfully to reduce Dan White’s conviction from homicide to manslaughter for the 1978 killing of San Francisco City District Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
“I am totally not convinced,” noted Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, Pauline Goddard professor of nutrition, food policies, and public health at New York University School of Medicine, New York City, in an email to Medscape Medical News.” As I said, I’m no fan of sodas, but [it] defies common sense.”
Dr. Nestle also was not impressed with the study design. She noted: “This looks like a ‘tracking’ study to me. I don’t see how the study can conclude anything specific about soft drinks except guilt by association.” She added that “poor kids drink more soft drinks than rich kids, and they are marketed to more aggressively.
“If it turns out that alcohol and junk food diets can be linked to negative behaviors,” she said, “[s]oda companies will reap what they sowed when they focused so much marketing on low-income, minority communities.”
The study was supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was externally peer reviewed. The authors and Dr. Nestle have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Injury Prev. Published online October 24, 2011. Abstract
Why Vitamin K2 is So Important for Your Kids
Great new for parents who buy Kids Potential …
We added Natural Dairy & Casein-Free Vitamin K2, as MK-7, to Kids Potential for healthy bone density to help them develop healthy, strong bones beginning early in life. Here is a re-post of relevant scientific research that gives you some idea of why Vitamin K2 is an important nutrient for your growing children.
Learn more here: Kids Potential and www.mykidspotential.com.
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Findings of a new study published in British Journal of Nutrition 2009 by van Summeren and colleagues demonstrated that even modest supplementation with menaquinone-7 in children increases activation of osteocalcin, the bone-building protein; and in that way supports healthy bone growth and development. This is an important finding as the greater bone mineral established during childhood and early adult years, culminating in peak bone mineral density around 30 years of age, allows for better maintenance of bone health as we age and lose bone mass.
The present study is a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled study examining the effect of 45 mcg natural vitamin K2 as menaquinone-7 (MK-7) on the circulating levels of the vitamin K-dependent protein Osteocalcin. Active osteocalcin is required for bone-building cells (osteoblasts) to optimally utilize calcium for building and maintaining a healthy bone matrix. 8 weeks of supplementation in healthy prepubertal children increased blood levels of vitamin K2 as MK-7 and significantly increased the amount of active osteocalcin.
According to Professor Cees Vermeer at the VitaK research center, “Non-supplemented people are generally insufficient in vitamin K. It has been demonstrated that children are far more vitamin K deficient than adults. We explain this by the rapid growth of their bones and consequently the high vitamin K demand by the bones for the production of osteocalcin. The present study is the first one to demonstrate that increased vitamin K intake by supplement improves the osteocalcin activity in children. The next step must be that also an effect of MK-7 on bone strength or fracture risk is demonstrated in this age group. There is a growing awareness that maximizing bone strength at childhood is an important strategy to prevent osteoporosis at later age.”
Osteocalcin – the potent protein
Osteocalcin is a protein responsible for utilization of calcium within bone tissue – it has the ability to bind calcium to the matrix of bones, which makes them stronger and less susceptible to fractures. Without sufficient amounts of vitamin K in the diet, or in cases of Vitamin K deficiency, inactive osteocalcin is not able to bind calcium properly, and thus the bones weaken and become fragile.
Strong bones – best investment for the future
Children have the greatest requirement for active osteocalcin and thus for K vitamins because bone tissue grows and develops most intensively during childhood and adolescence. The higher peak mass young bones achieve, the lower the risk of osteoporotic changes in the elderly. Hence, the optimal pubertal status of bone is important to prevent disorders in later life.
Benefits scientifically proven
Results of the new study clearly confirm outcomes of previous laboratory experiments, population-based (i.e., epidemiological) studies and clinical trials that have tightly linked better vitamin K status in children to the achievement of a healthy, strong bone-structure. Simplified, improving vitamin K status in children results in stronger and denser bones. Additional K vitamins intake might also improve bone geometry and positively influence gain in bone mass. That contributing effect has been recently reported by O’Connor et al , who, while conducting a study in a cohort of 223 healthy girls (11-12 years old), found better K vitamin status related to higher bone mineral density.
Warfarin, a commonly prescribed blood-thinning medication, inhibits vitamin K activity. A study of children with long-standing vitamin K deficiency induced by this drug were shown to have a significantly reduced bone mass, which illustrates the potential consequences of K vitamins deficiency in growing bones.
Eat Your Greens, Change Your Genes
You might not be stuck with the genes your parents gave you. New research fromMcMaster and McGill universities found that consumption of fruit and raw vegetables modified a gene called 9p21, the strongest marker for heart disease.
The study involved more than 27,000 subjects from five ethnicities—European, South Asian, Chinese, Latin American and Arab—and the affect that their diets had on the effect of the 9p21 gene. The results suggest that individuals with the high-risk genotype who consumed a prudent diet, composed mainly of raw vegetables, fruits and berries, had a similar risk of heart attack to those with the low-risk genotype.
“We know that 9p21 genetic variants increase the risk of heart disease for those that carry it,” said Jamie Engert, joint principal investigator of the study and researcher in cardiovascular diseases at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and associate member in the Department of Human Genetics at McGill University. “But it was a surprise to find that a healthy diet could significantly weaken its effect.”
“Our research suggests there may be an important interplay between genes and diet in cardiovascular disease,” said the study’s lead author Ron Do, who conducted this research as part of his PhD at McGill and is now based at the Center for Human Genetics Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Future research is necessary to understand the mechanism of this interaction, which will shed light on the underlying metabolic processes that the 9p21 gene is involved in.”
The results of the study are published in the current issue of PLoS Medicine.
How Autogenous Vaccine Can Turn Off Peanut Allergy
CHICAGO—By attaching peanut proteins to blood cells and reintroducing them into mice with peanut allergies, researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine found they were able to turn off the allergic reaction.
“We think we’ve found a way to safely and rapidly turn off the allergic response to food allergies,” said Paul Bryce, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of allergy-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Their immune system saw the peanut protein as perfectly normal because it was already presented on the white blood cells. Without the treatment, these animals would have gone into anaphylactic shock.”
Researchers also found this approach has a second benefit: It creates a more normal, balanced immune system by increasing the number of regulatory T cells, immune cells important for recognizing the peanut proteins as normal.
“T cells come in different ‘flavors’” Bryce said. “This method turns off the dangerous Th2 T cell that causes the allergy and expands the good, calming regulatory T cells. We are supposed to be able to eat peanuts. We’ve restored this tolerance to the immune system.”
Bryce thinks more than one protein can be attached to the surface of the cell and, thus, target multiple food allergies at one time.
In the second part of the study, the researchers used the same approach with an egg protein, which was to provoke an immune response –- similar to an asthma attack — in the lungs. They attached the proteins to white blood cells and infused the cells back into the mice. When the mice inhaled the asthma-provoking egg protein, their lungs didn’t become inflamed.
Cheaper Natural Smoking Cessation Assistance
Reuters (09/29/11) Emery, Gene
Cytisine, an extract from the seeds of the Golden Rain acacia that was first marketed in Bulgaria in 1964, can give smokers an inexpensive assist in kicking the habit, according to the first large modern study of the drug, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In the test on 740 volunteers, 8.4 percent of those who were given cytisine for 25 days stayed off cigarettes for one year, compared with 2.4 percent in the placebo group.
That success rate is comparable to treatment with nicotine patches and other anti-smoking drugs like varenicline (Chantix) and bupropion (Zyban), but costs much less.
A month of cytisine pills, sold in Central and Eastern Europe under the brand name Tabex, costs about $15 in Poland and $6 in Russia.
Nicotine patches and pills to stop smoking typically sell for more than $100 per treatment, depending on the country.
The drug is not approved in the United States, Japan or Western Europe.