Jul
9
CHICAGO - Pressured by desperate parents, government researchers are pushing to test an unproven treatment on autistic children, a move some scientists see as an unethical experiment in voodoo medicine.
The treatment removes heavy metals from the body and is based on the fringe theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism - a theory never proved and rejected by mainstream science. Mercury hasn’t been in childhood vaccines since 2001, except for certain flu shots.
But many parents of autistic children are believers, and the head of the National Institute of Mental Health supports testing it on children provided the tests are safe.
“So many moms have said, `It’s saved my kids,’” institute director Dr. Thomas Insel said.
For now, the proposed study, not widely known outside the community of autism research and advocacy groups, has been put on hold because of safety concerns, Insel told The Associated Press.
The process, called chelation, is used to treat lead poisoning. Studies of adults have shown it to be ineffective unless there are high levels of metals in the blood. Any study in children would have to exclude those with high levels of lead or mercury, which would require treatment and preclude using a placebo.
One of the drugs used for chelation, DMSA, can cause side effects including rashes and low white blood cell count. And there is evidence chelation may redistribute metals in the body, perhaps even into the central nervous system.
“I don’t really know why we have to do this in helpless children,” said Ellen Silbergeld of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was invited to comment on the study to a review board of the national institute.
Despite lawsuits and at least one child’s death, several thousand autistic children are already believed to be using chelation (pronounced kee-LAY’-shun), their parents not content to wait for a study.
Among those parents is Christina Blakey of suburban Chicago, who uses chelation and a variety of other alternative therapies, including sessions in a hyperbaric chamber, on her 8-year-old son, Charlie.
Before he started chelation at age 5, Charlie suffered tantrums. When she took him to school, she had to peel him off her body and walk away. But three weeks after he began chelation, his behavior changed, she said.
“He lined up with his friends at school. He looked at me and waved and gave me a thumbs-up sign and walked into school,” Blakey said. “All the moms who had been watching burst into tears. All of us did.”
There is no way to prove whether chelation made a difference or whether Charlie simply adjusted to the school routine.
Autism is a spectrum of disorders that hamper a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others. Most doctors believe there is no cure.
Conventional treatments are limited to behavioral therapy and a few medications, such as the schizophrenia drug Risperdal, approved to treat irritability.
Frustrated parents use more than 300 alternative treatments, most with little or no scientific evidence backing them up, according to the Interactive Autism Network at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Md.
“With a lot of mothers, if they hear about a treatment, they feel like they need to try it,” said project director Dr. Paul Law. “Anything that has a chance of benefiting their child, they’re willing to give it a shot.”
More than 2 percent of the children tracked by the project use chelation. If that figure holds for the general population, it would mean more than 3,000 autistic children are on the treatment at any time in the United States.
Chelation drugs can be taken in pill form, by rectal suppository and intravenously.
Dr. Susan Swedo, who heads the federal institute’s in-house autism research and wants to study chelation, gained notoriety by theorizing that strep throat had caused some cases of obsessive compulsive disorder. The theory was never proved.
She proposed recruiting 120 autistic children ages 4 to 10 and giving half DMSA and the other half a dummy pill. The 12-week test would measure before-and-after blood mercury levels and autism symptoms.
The study outline says that failing to find a difference between the two groups would counteract “anecdotal reports and widespread belief” that chelation works.
But the study was put on hold for safety concerns after an animal study, published last year, linked DMSA to lasting brain problems in rats. It remains under review, Insel told the AP.
Insel said he has come to believe after listening to parents that traditional scientific research, building incrementally on animal studies and published papers, wasn’t answering questions fast enough.
“This is an urgent set of questions,” Insel said. “Let’s make innovation the centerpiece of this effort as we study autism, its causes and treatments, and think of what we may be missing.”
Last year, the National Institutes of Health spent less than 5 percent of its $127 million autism research budget on alternative therapies, Insel said. He said he is hopeful the chelation study will be approved.
Others say it would be unethical, even if it proves chelation doesn’t work.
Federal research agencies must “bring reason to science” without “catering to a public misperception,” said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of an upcoming book on autism research. “Science has been trumped by politics in some ways.”
Offit is concerned vaccination rates may fall to dangerous levels because some parents believe they cause autism.
Dr. Martin Myers, former director of the federal National Vaccine Program Office, said he believes giving chelation to autistic children is unethical - but says the government can justify the study because so many parents are using chelation without scientific evidence.
“It’s incumbent on the scientific community to evaluate it,” he said.
Actress Jenny McCarthy, whose bestseller “Louder Than Words” details her search for treatments for her autistic son, Evan, told thousands of parents at a recent autism conference outside Chicago that she plans to try chelation on him this summer.
“A lot of people are scared to chelate … but it has triggered many recoveries,” she said.
But those claims are only anecdotal, and there are serious risks.
Of the several drugs used in chelation, the only one recommended for intravenous use in children is edetate calcium disodium. Mixups with another drug with a similar name, edetate disodium, have led to three deaths, including one autistic child.
A 5-year-old autistic boy went into cardiac arrest and died after he was given IV chelation therapy in 2005. A Pennsylvania doctor is being sued by the boy’s parents for allegedly giving the wrong drug and using a risky technique.
No deaths have been associated with DMSA, which can cause rashes, low white blood cell count and vomiting. It is also sold as a dietary supplement, which is how some parents of autistic children get it.
A Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said the agency is “is looking into how these products are marketed.”
Jul
8
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Keeping a food diary — a detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories it packs — is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The study involving 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months found those who kept such a diary just about every day lost about twice as much weight as those who did not.
The findings buttressed earlier research that endorsed the value of food diaries in helping people lose weight. Companies including Weight Watchers International Inc use food diaries in their weight-loss programs.
“For those who are working on weight loss, just writing down everything you eat is a pretty powerful technique,” Victor Stevens of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland said in a telephone interview.
“It helps the participants see where the extra calories are coming from, and then develop more specific plans to deal with those situations,” said Stevens, who helped lead the study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The technique also helps hold dieters accountable for what they are eating, Stevens said.
The study involved people from four U.S. cities: Portland, Oregon; Baltimore, Maryland; Durham, North Carolina; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their average weight loss was about 13 pounds (6 kg). But those keeping food diaries six or seven days a week lost about 18 pounds (8 kg) compared to 9 pounds (4 kg) for those not regularly keeping a food diary.
The average age of people in the study was 55.
They were asked to eat less fat, more vegetables, fruit and whole grains, exercise 180 minutes a week mostly by walking, attend group meetings, and keep a detailed food diary.
Blacks made up 44 percent of the people in the study. The researchers noted that blacks Americans have a higher risk than whites for conditions linked to obesity including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
“Keeping a food diary doesn’t have to be a formal thing. Just the act of scribbling down what you eat on a Post-It note, sending yourself e-mails tallying each meal or sending yourself a text message will suffice,” Dr. Keith Bachman, another Kaiser Permanente expert, said in a statement.
(Editing by Todd Eastham)
May
31
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Women lawyers might have more opportunities to get into a law firm but they remain less likely to be promoted to partner, according to a U.S. study.
Researchers from the University of Iowa found women who practiced in a firm for five or more years were 13 percent less likely than men to make partner — even if their qualifications were equal and regardless of whether they had children.
The study was based on data collected from two groups of Michigan Law School graduates — the classes of 1972-78 and 1979-85 — who completed surveys one year, five years and 15 years after graduation.
“Unfortunately, those who stay aren’t making it to the top at the same rate as men,” said Mary Noonan, an associate professor of sociology who led the study.
“We found no gender inequality at the first stage of their careers, but that final stage seems out of reach for a lot of women. And that hasn’t changed at all over time.”
A total of 198 women and 1,187 men were questioned in the first group and 304 women and 814 men in the second.
From those who graduated in the ’70s, 75 percent of women and 87 percent of men practiced in a law firm for at least one year. Eighty-five percent of women who finished school in the ’80s tested the profession, compared to 90 percent of men.
But almost 29 percent of women who earned law degrees in the ’70s left private practice within four years, compared to just 11 percent of men.
Only 18 percent of women who graduated in the ’80s left within four years, compared to 14 percent of men.
“That part is good news. There’s no glass ceiling keeping women out of firms or pushing them out in the first couple of years. There’s a welcome mat,” said Noonan.
But women who graduated in the ’70s and worked in a firm five years or longer had a 54 percent probability of becoming partner, compared to 67 percent for men.
The gap was no different for those who finished law school in the ’80s with women having a 40 percent chance of making partner compared to 53 percent for men.
Virtually all — 90 percent — of female lawyers reported experiencing sexual discrimination from colleagues or clients, with discrimination as subtle as not inviting a female colleague to social events where business is discussed.
“Older men tend to feel less comfortable spending time with a young woman than with a young man. With the guys, it’s more of a father-son bond — let’s play some golf, let’s hit happy hour, and I’ll give you some advice about your career and see what I can do to help you,” said Noonan.
She said the study showed that less than half of partners in law firms were happy with their work-family balance so it’s possible some women decided to avoid that stress and left.
But Noonan suspects that women want to make partner just as badly as men because of the fact they stuck with a firm instead of trying a different legal career but they were not as easily incorporated into the office network.
(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Patricia Reaney)
May
6
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that breast-feeding can make children smarter, an international team of researchers said on Monday.
Children whose mothers breast-fed them longer and did not mix in baby formula scored higher on intelligence tests, the researchers in Canada and Belarus reported.
About half the 14,000 babies were randomly assigned to a group in which prolonged and exclusive breast-feeding by the mother was encouraged at Belarussian hospitals and clinics. The mothers of the other babies received no special encouragement.
Those in the breast-feeding encouragement group were, on average, breast-fed longer than the others and were less likely to have been given formula in a bottle.
At 3 months, 73 percent of the babies in the breast-feeding encouragement group were breast-fed, compared to 60 percent of the other group. At 6 months, it was 50 percent versus 36 percent.
In addition, the group given encouragement was far more likely to give their children only breast milk. The rate was seven times higher, for example, at 3 months.
The children were monitored for about 6 1/2 years.
The children in the group where breast-feeding was encouraged scored about 5 percent higher in IQ tests and did better academically, the researchers found.
Previous studies had indicated brain development and intelligence benefits for breast-fed children.
But researchers have sought to determine whether it was the breast-feeding that did it, or that mothers who prefer to breast-feed their babies may differ from those who do not.
The design of the study — randomly assigning babies to two groups regardless of the mothers’ characteristics — was intended to eliminate the confusion.
‘MOTHERS WHO BREAST-FEED … ARE DIFFERENT’
“Mothers who breast-feed or those who breast-feed longer or most exclusively are different from the mothers who don’t,” Dr. Michael Kramer of McGill University in Montreal and the Montreal Children’s Hospital said in a telephone interview.
“They tend to be smarter. They tend to be more invested in their babies. They tend to interact with them more closely. They may be the kind of mothers who read to their kids more, who spend more time with their kids, who play with them more,” added Kramer, who led the study published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
The researchers measured the differences between the two groups using IQ tests administered by the children’s pediatricians and by ratings by their teachers of their school performance in reading, writing, math and other subjects.
Both sets of scores were significantly higher in the children from the breast-feeding promotion group.
The study was launched in the mid-1990s. Kramer said the initial idea was to do it in the United States and Canada, but many hospitals in those countries by that time had begun strongly encouraging breast-feeding as a matter of routine.
The situation was different in Belarus at the time, he said, with less routine encouragement for the practice.
Kramer said how breast-feeding may make children more intelligent is unclear.
“It could even be that because breast-feeding takes longer, the mother is interacting more with the baby, talking with the baby, soothing the baby,” he said. “It could be an emotional thing. It could be a physical thing. Or it could be a hormone or something else in the milk that’s absorbed by the baby.”
Previous studies have shown babies whose mothers breast-fed them enjoy many health advantages over formula-fed babies.
These include fewer ear, stomach or intestinal infections, digestive problems, skin diseases and allergies, and less risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that women who do not have health problems exclusively breast-feed their infants for at least the first six months, with it continuing at least through the first year as other foods are introduced.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Stacey Joyce)
May
5
FDA study: Insulin pumps linked to injuries, deaths in teens
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CHICAGO - Insulin pumps are used by tens of thousands of teenagers worldwide with Type 1 diabetes, but they can be risky and have been linked to injuries and even deaths, a review by federal regulators finds.
Parents should be vigilant in watching their children’s use of the pumps, researchers from the Food and Drug Administration wrote. They didn’t advise against using the devices. But they called for more study to address safety concerns in teens and even younger children who use the popular pumps.
The federal review of use by young people over a decade found 13 deaths and more than 1,500 injuries connected with the pumps. At times, the devices malfunctioned, but other times, teens were careless or took risks, the study authors wrote.
Some teens didn’t know how to use the pumps correctly, dropped them or didn’t take good care of them. There were two possible suicide attempts by teens who gave themselves too much insulin, according to the analysis.
“The FDA takes pediatric deaths seriously,” said the agency’s Dr. Judith Cope, lead author of the analysis. “Parental oversight and involvement are important. Certainly teenagers don’t always consider the consequences.”
The pumps are popular because they allow young people to live more normal lives, giving themselves insulin discreetly in public and getting pizza with friends late at night. And they’re a growing segment of diabetes care, with $1.3 billion in annual sales worldwide, said Kelly Close, a San Francisco-based editor of a patient newsletter. She said 100,000 teenagers may be using them.
The pumps are used for those with Type 1 diabetes, which accounts for about 5 to 10 percent of all diabetes cases and used to be called “juvenile diabetes.” The more common form is Type 2, which is often linked to obesity and more often affects adults.
Type 1 affects an estimated 12 million to 24 million people worldwide and occurs when the body attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Insulin regulates blood sugar levels, which when too high, can lead to heart disease, blindness and kidney damage.
Insulin pumps are the size of a cell phone and worn on a belt or pocket. They send insulin into the body through a plastic tube with a small tip that inserts under the skin and is taped in place. They cost about $6,000 and supplies run $250 a month. Most health insurers cover much of the cost.
Users must tell the device how much insulin to give before each meal, based on the estimated carbohydrates in the meal. The devices also deliver a continuous low level of insulin.
In the FDA study, appearing in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics, the reports of adverse events and deaths in adolescents using the pumps occurred from 1996-2005.
The FDA requires manufacturers to report injuries that could be linked to medical devices. The authors analyzed reports from patients 12 to 21 years old. They emphasized that the reports aren’t always clear about the cause of death or injury.
The devices provide an alternative to multiple daily injections of insulin by syringe; some come with glucose monitors that reduce the number of times the finger must be pricked to test blood sugar.
While some teenagers want to switch from insulin injections to pump therapy to gain more flexibility in their lives, doctors said device problems such as a blocked tube can lead quickly to dangerous episodes of high blood sugar.
“In a matter of a few hours, all the insulin in the body disappears. Metabolically, the child starts to spiral out of control,” said Dr. John Buse, the American Diabetes Association’s president for medicine and science. Kids need to be aware of the risk, monitor their blood sugar and be ready to give themselves an insulin injection.
Dr. Christina Luedke of Children’s Hospital Boston said she carefully screens teenagers and their families before prescribing a pump. She has refused it for some young patients.
“Without appropriate glucose monitoring, the pumps can increase the risk of getting sick more quickly compared to injections,” Luedke said. However, she said, proper use makes life more bearable and can improve glucose control.
Teenagers also have problems keeping their diabetes under control with multiple daily insulin injections, doctors and manufacturers said.
“It is a constant struggle for a patient who is an adolescent to stay in control of any therapy,” said Steve Sabicer, a spokesman for Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc., which makes the top-selling insulin pump. The company stands behind the product’s safety and “the many years of clinical evidence that support the benefits of insulin pump therapy,” he said.
Apr
24
Mother’s diet can help determine sex of child: study
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PARIS (AFP) - Oysters may excite the libido, but there is nothing like a hearty breakfast laced with sugar to boost a woman’s chances of conceiving a son, according to a study released Wednesday.
Likewise, a low-energy diet that skimps on calories, minerals and nutrients is more likely to yield a female of the human species, says the study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Britain’s de facto academy of sciences.
Fiona Mathews of the University of Exeter in Britain and colleagues wanted to find out if a woman’s diet has an impact on the sex of her offspring.
So they asked 740 first-time mothers who did not know if their unborn foetuses were male or female to provide detailed records of eating habits before and after they became pregnant. The women were split into three groups according to the number calories they consumed per day around the time of conception.
Fifty-six percent of the women in the group with the highest energy intake had sons, compared to 45 percent in the least-well fed cohort.
Beside racking up a higher calorie count, the group who produced more males were also more likely to have eaten a wider range of nutrients, including potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12.
The odds of an XY, or male outcome to a pregnancy also went up sharply “for women who consumed at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily compared with those who ate less than or equal to one bowl of week,” the study reported.
These surprising findings are consistent with a very gradual shift in favor of girls over the last four decades in the sex ratio of newborns, according to the researchers.
Previous research has shown — despite the rising epidemic in obesity — a reduction in the average energy uptake in advanced economies. The number of adults who skip breakfast has also increased substantially.
“This research may help to explain why in developed countries, where many young women choose low calorie diets, the proportion of boys is falling,” Mathews said.
The study’s findings, she added, could point to a “natural mechanism” for gender selection.
The link between a rich diet and male children may have an evolutionary explanation.
For most species, the number of offspring a male can father exceeds the number a female can give birth to. But only if conditions are favorable — poor quality male specimens may fail to breed at all, whereas females reproduce more consistently.
“If a mother has plentiful resources, then it can make sense to invest in producing a son because he is likely to produce more grandchildren than would a daughter,” thus contributing to the survival of the species, explains Mathews.
“However, in leaner times having a daughter is a safer bet.”
While the mechanism is not yet understood, it is known from in vitro fertilisation research that higher levels of glucose, or sugar, encourage the growth and development of male embryos while inhibiting female embryos
Source:
Apr
13
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Damage to cells lining the mouth can predict similar damage in the lungs that eventually leads to lung cancer in smokers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.
They hope it may be possible to some day swab the mouths of smokers to predict who is developing lung cancer — saving painful and dangerous biopsies of the lung.
The process may also lead to tests that will predict other cancers, said Dr. Li Mao, an expert in head, neck and lung cancer at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“Our study opens the door to enhancing our ability to predict who has higher probability of getting tobacco-related cancers,” Mao said in a statement. “Not only lung cancer, but pancreatic, bladder and head and neck cancers, which also are associated with tobacco use.”
Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer, but only about 10 percent of smokers ever get it. It causes few symptoms until it is advanced, which means patients are rarely diagnosed or treated until it is too late for a cure.
Mao’s team wanted to find a way to monitor patients taking a drug — the COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib, sold by Pfizer under the brand name Celebrex — in the hopes of preventing lung cancer.
They looked at two genes known to help prevent the development of cancer — p16 and FHIT. “There is substantial damage (to the two genes) long before there is cancer,” Mao said.
Speaking to a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in San Diego, they said they looked for specific damage to these genes in both lung samples and mouth samples from 125 long-time smokers.
“We are talking about just a brushing inside of the cheek to get the same information we would from lung brushings obtained through bronchoscopy,” said Dr. Manisha Bhutani, who works with Mao.
The p16 gene was shut down via a process called methylation in the lungs of 23 percent of the volunteers, while FHIT was affected in 17 percent. In the mouth, p16 was silenced in 19 percent of the smokers and FHIT in 15 percent of them.
In 95 percent of those whose genes were affected, they were affected in both the mouth and the lung, Mao and Bhutani said.
This would make an easier test for pre-lung cancer than having to access the lung, the researchers said.
This could be useful in monitoring for lung cancer and also looking to see if prevention measures might work.
“This could have strong implications for further lung cancer prevention trials,” they wrote in a summary submitted to the conference.
At least one other group is working on a saliva test for breast cancer, one that looks for a mutated version of the HER-2 protein linked to some breast cancers.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox)
Apr
10
PARIS (AFP) - Twenty percent of scientists admit to using performance-enhancing prescription drugs for non-medical reasons, according to a survey released Wednesday by Nature, Britain’s top science journal.
The overwhelming majority of these med-taking brainiacs said they indulged in order to “improve concentration,” and 60 percent said they did so on a daily or weekly basis.
The 1,427 respondents — most of them in the United States — completed an informal, online survey posted on the “Nature Network” Web forum, a discussion site for scientists operated by the Nature Publishing Group.
More than a third said that they would feel pressure to give their children such drugs if they knew other kids at school were also taking them.
“These are academics working in scientific institutions,” Ruth Francis, who handles press relations for the group, told AFP.
The survey focused on three drugs widely available by prescription or via the Internet.
Ritalin, a trade name for methylphenidate, is a stimulant normally used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, especially in children. Modafinil — marketed at Provigil — is prescribed to treat sleep disorders, but is also effective against general fatigue and jet lag.
Both medications are common currency on college campuses, used as “study aids” to sharpen performance and wakefulness.
“It doesn’t seem to be causing too much trouble since most [students] use the drugs not to get high but to function better,” Brian Doyle, a clinical pyschiatrist at Georgetown University Medical Centre, told a US newspaper last month. “When exams are over, they go back to normal and stop abusing the drugs.”
Other experts expressed more concern about what the survey revealed.
“It alerted us to the fact that scientists, like others, are looking for short cuts,” Wilson Compton, director of epidemiology and prevention research at the US National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), told AFP.
Ritalin, he noted, can become addictive, even if it has proven safe and effective when taken as prescribed.
The third class of drugs included in the survey was beta blockers, prescribed for cardiac arrhythmia and popular among performers due to its anti-anxiety effect.
Of the 288 scientists who said that had taken one or more of these drugs outside of a medical context, three-fifths had used Ritalin, and nearly half Provigil. Only 15 percent were fans of beta blockers.
More than a third procured their meds via the Internet, with the rest buying them in pharmacy.
Other reasons cited for popping pills were focusing on a specific task, and counteracting jet lag.
Almost 70 percent of 1,258 respondents who answered the question said they would be willing to risk mild side effects in order to “boost your brain power” by taking cognitive-enhancing drugs.
Half of the drug-takers reported such effects, including headaches, jitteriness, anxiety and sleeplessness.
Wilson of the NIDA expressed surprise at the rate of substance abuse shown, but cautioned that the survey did not meet rigorous scientific standards.
“This is a volunteer poll of people responding to an Internet survey. There might be an over-representation,” he said.
But previous research has shown that, as the boundary between treating illness and enhancing wellbeing continues to blur, taking performance-boosting products continues to gain in cultural acceptance.
“Like the rise in cosmetic surgery, use of cognitive enhancers is likely to increase as bioethical and psychological concerns are overcome,” opined Nature in a commentary.
In the survey, 80 percent of all the scientists — even those who did not use these drugs — defended the right of “healthy humans” to take them as work boosters, and more than half said their use should not be restricted, even for university entrance exams.
More than 57 percent of the respondents were 35 years old or younger
Source:
Mar
31
CAIRO (Reuters) - New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found.
Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt’s old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.
Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt between 1379 and 1362 BC, built and lived in Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt for 15 years. The city was largely abandoned shortly after his death and the ascendance of the famous boy king Tutankhamun to the throne.
Studies on the remains of ordinary ancient Egyptians in a cemetery in Tell el-Amarna showed that many of them suffered from anemia, fractured bones, stunted growth and high juvenile mortality rates, according to professors Barry Kemp and Jerome Rose, who led the research.
Rose, a professor of anthropology in the University of Arkansas in the United States, said adults buried in the cemetery were probably brought there from other parts of Egypt.
“This means that we have a period of deprivation in Egypt prior to the Amarna phase,” he told an audience of archaeologists and Egyptologists in Cairo on Thursday evening.
“So maybe things were not so good for the average Egyptian and maybe Akhenaten said we have to change to make things better,” he said.
Kemp, director of the Amarna Project which seeks in part to increase public knowledge of Tell el-Amarna and surrounding region, said little attention has been given to the cemeteries of ordinary ancient Egyptians.
“A very large number of ordinary cemeteries have been excavated but just for the objects and very little attention has been paid for the human remain,” he told Reuters.
“The idea of treating the human remains … to study the overall health of the population is relatively new.”
Paintings in the tombs of the nobles show an abundance of offerings, but the remains of ordinary people tell a different story.
Rose displayed pictures showing spinal injuries among teenagers, probably because of accidents during construction work to build the city.
The study showed that anemia ran at 74 percent among children and teenagers, and at 44 percent among adults, Rose said. The average height of men was 159 cm (5 feet 2 inches) and 153 cm among women.
“Adult heights are used as a proxy for overall standard of living,” he said. “Short statures reflect a diet deficient in protein. … People were not growing to their full potential.”
Kemp said he believed further excavations in Tell el-Amarna would “firm-up” the conclusions of his team.
“We are seeing a more realistic picture of what life was like,” he told Reuters. “It has nothing to do with the intentions of Akhenaten, which may have been good and paternal toward his people.”
(Writing by Alaa Shahine, editing by Mary Gabriel)
Mar
31
Researchers find six more diabetes genes: study
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LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. and European scientists have found six more genes that make people more susceptible to developing type 2 diabetes, in a study they say may help prevent and treat the chronic condition.
The finding extends the total number of genes linked to the disease to 16 and provides clues to how the biological mechanisms that control blood sugar levels go awry when people get type 2 diabetes, the researchers said.
“None of the genes we have found was previously on the radar screen of diabetes researchers,” said Mark McCarthy, a diabetes researcher at the University of Oxford, who co-led the study.
“Each of these genes therefore provides new clues to the processes that go wrong when diabetes develops, and each provides an opportunity for the generation of new approaches for treating or preventing this condition.”
A diabetic’s blood glucose levels tend to rise too high. Too much glucose in the blood can damage the eyes, kidneys and nerves, and lead to heart disease, stroke and limb amputations.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90 percent of all diabetes cases and is closely linked to obesity and physical inactivity. The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 180 million people worldwide have diabetes — a number likely to more than double by 2030.
In the study published in Nature Genetics, researchers from over 40 centers analyzed the genetic data of more than 70,000 people. The team turned up six genetic differences that each individually slightly raise a person’s risk of diabetes.
But the risk for the few people unlucky enough to inherit all six variations is two to three times higher than the average risk, McCarthy said in a telephone interview.
“By getting a handle on the mechanisms involved in disease we can start to tackle them in a more systemic and scientific way,” he said.
One of the surprising finds was the link between type 2 diabetes and a gene called JAZF1, which researchers recently showed plays a role in prostate cancer, the researcher added.
The researchers believe the genes — which also include the CDC123-CAMK1D, TSPAN8-LGR5, THADA, ADAMTS9 and NOTCH2 genes — are involved in regulating the number of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, McCarthy said.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn; editing by Will Dunham and Andrew
Roche)