NEW GUIDELINES FOR STD TREATMENT
Government doctors have come up with more stringent guidelines for diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted diseases, which account for 85 percent all cases of the 10 most frequently reported disorders in the United States. The new recommendations, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, include annual screening for all women under 25 and for older women at risk for chlamydia, the most common STD in the country. Of those who test positive and are treated, additional screenings are recommended three to four months later to make certain the treatment worked. "Fighting this nation's STD epidemic requires aggressive use of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools, and the new CDC guidelines are critical for advancing the standards of clinical care," said William Parra, interim president of the American Social Health Association, a nonprofit group that sponsors educational and research programs to stop the spread of STDs.
COLIC LINKED TO APPLE JUICE
Researchers have linked infant colic to the inability to digest apple juice. Children with a history of crying, abdominal discomfort and sleeplessness were better able to tolerate white grape juice than apple juice, said the authors of the study reported in the journal Pediatrics. In the study of 30 babies four to six months old, the colicky infants fed apple juice experienced more crying and restlessness and slept less than did colicky babies given white grape juice. Colic affects an estimated 10 to 25 percent of U.S. infants. "Our study showed that babies with a history of colic are especially sensitive to what kind of juice they drink," said Dr. Fima Lifshitz, chief of nutrition sciences at Miami Children's Hospital and senior study author. Studies have shown that young babies have a more difficult time digesting apple juice than white grape juice, she said. Whatever the tolerance level and disposition, a child this age should be fed primarily breast milk or formula, Lifshitz said.
PARENTS' STRESS MAY GIVE CLUE TO CHILD'S HYPERTENSION
How parents responded to stress may give clues to a child's risk of developing hypertension, researchers say. The investigators found that offspring of parents with high blood pressure react more negatively to stressful situations, both in their behavior and physiology. That may be partly because certain behaviors, such as conflict avoidance and inadequate expression of feelings, are passed from one generation to the next, the study authors said in the journal Health Psychology. Nicole Frazer of West Virginia University and her team looked at how college students with and without hypertensive parents responded during stressful mental activities. They measured the students' heart rate and blood pressures and examined their behavior. The men and women with hypertensive parents had higher resting heart rates than those whose parents had normal blood pressure. The researchers also found that during the stress test, those with hypertensive parents had increased systolic blood pressure and reacted with negative language and behavior, such as rolling their eyes, sighing and avoiding eye contact. "It is possible that to determine the risk for cardiovascular disease among offspring of hypertensive parents may require assessing behavioral responses to stress in addition to assessing cardiovascular responses to stressors," Frazer said.
ANCIENT REMEDY LOWERS CHOLESTEROL
A natural product used for more than 2,500 years in India can lower cholesterol levels, and now researchers have found out how. The scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston say the secret they found in the ancient remedy may open the door to producing more powerful modern medicines. Dr. David Moore, professor of molecular and cell biology, and colleagues discovered that an extract of the resin of the guggul tree approved as a cholesterol fighter in India targets the Farnesoid X Receptor. FXR is involved in regulating cholesterol by monitoring levels of the bile acids produced from cholesterol and released by the liver. The steroid guggulsterone, the active agent in the extract, blocks the activity of FXR, the scientists reported in the journal Science. The study identifies FXR as a target for companies developing drugs to affect cholesterol metabolism, Moore said.
(For more information about STDS, call 919-361-8439; about COLIC, call 212-477-0472; about STRESS, call 202-336-5707; about CHOLESTEROL, call 713-798-4712.)
