Secrets of long life sought in DNA of the elderly

This Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011 photo shows George Eberhardt, 107, of Chester, NJ. after …

NEW YORK (AP) — George Eberhardt turned 107 last month, and scientists would love to know how he and other older folks like him made it that far. So he's going to hand over some of his DNA.

He's one of 100 centenarians taking part in a project announced Wednesday that will examine some of the oldest citizens with one of the newest scientific tools: whole-genome sequencing, the deciphering of a person's complete collection of DNA.

Scientists think DNA from very old healthy people could offer clues to how they lived so long. And that could one day lead to medicines to help the rest of us stay disease-free longer.

By the time you reach, say, 105, "it's very hard to get there without some genetic advantages," says Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrics expert at Boston University.

Perls is helping find centenarians for the Archon Genomics X Prize competition. The X Prize Foundation, best known for a spaceflight competition, is offering $10 million in prize money to researchers who decipher the complete DNA code from 100 people older than 100. The contest will be judged on accuracy, completeness and the speed and cost of sequencing.

The contest is a relaunch of an older competition with a new focus on centenarians, and it's the second sequencing project involving the elderly to be announced this month.

Genome pioneer J. Craig Venter says the centenarian project is just a first step in revealing the genetic secrets of a long and healthy life.

"We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness," said Venter, who is co-chairing the X Prize contest.

The 107-year-old Eberhardt of Chester, N.J., played and taught tennis until he was 94. He said he's participating in the X Prize project because he's interested in science and technology. It's not clear his genes will reveal much. Nobody else in his extended family reached 100, and he thinks only a couple reached 90, he said in a telephone interview.

So why does he think he lived so long? He credits 70 years of marriage to his wife, Marie. She in turn cites his "intense interest in so many things" over a lifetime, from building radios as a child to pursuing a career in electronics research.

But scientists believe there's more to it, and they want to use genome sequencing to investigate. Dr. Richard Cawthon of the University of Utah, who is seeking longevity genes by other means, says it may turn up genetic features that protect against multiple diseases or that slow the process of aging in general.

Protective features of a centenarian's DNA can even overcome less-than-ideal lifestyles, says Dr. Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. His own study of how centenarians live found that "as a group, they haven't done the right things."

Many in the group he studied were obese or overweight. Many were smokers, and few exercised or followed a vegetarian diet. His oldest participant, who died this month just short of her 110th birthday, smoked for 95 years.

"She had genes that protected her against the environment," Barzilai said. One of her sisters died at 102, and one of her brothers is 105 and still manages a hedge fund.

Earlier this month, Scripps Health of San Diego announced a different genome project involving the elderly. The Scripps Wellderly Study will receive the complete genomes of 1,000 people age 80 and older from a sequencing company.

A complete genome reveals not only genes but also other DNA that's responsible for regulating genes. It's "the full monty," showing DNA elements that are key for illness and health, says Dr. Eric Topol, who heads the Wellderly Study.

Participants in that study have an average age of 87 and range up to 108, and they've never had diabetes, heart disease or cancer, or any neurological disease.

"Why are these people Teflon-coated?" Topol asked. "Why don't they get disease?"

The ability to turn out lots of complete genomes is "the new-new thing" in trying to find out, he said.

"There's been too much emphasis on disorders per se and not enough on the people who are exceptionally healthy," to learn from their genomes, Topol said. "Now we have the powerful tools to do that."

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/business-1316120612-slideshow/tuesday-oct-18-2011-photo-marie-eberhardt-helps-photo-140035158.html

Coffee-Drinking May Reduce Risk of Skin Cancer

Drinking copious amounts of coffee may reduce the risk of the most common type of skin cancer, a new study finds.

Women in the study who drank more than three cups of coffee a day were 20 percent less likely to develop basal cell carcinoma, a slow-growing form of skin cancer, than those who drank less than one cup a month.

Men in the study who consumed more than three cups of coffee had a 9 percent reduction in their basal cell carcinoma risk.

Drinking coffee did not reduce the risk of melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, the study found.

Basal cell carcinomas rarely spread to other parts of the body, and rarely return if they are promptly removed. However, any apparent health benefit that is found to come from our diet is a plus, the researchers say.

"Given the nearly 1 million new cases of [basal cell carcinoma] diagnosed each year in the United States, daily dietary factors with even small protective effects may have great public health impact," said researcher Fengju Song, a dermatologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

The study found an association, not a direct cause-effect link. Further research is needed to confirm the findings and investigate how coffee may act to reduce skin cancer risk.

Coffee and skin cancer

Previous studies in animals had suggested a link between caffeine consumption and a reduced risk of skin cancer, but studies in people had not been conclusive.

Song and colleagues analyzed data from 112,897 people who were followed from 1984 to June 2008. Over this period, 25,480 cases of skin cancer were documented.

Both coffee and caffeine consumption were linked with a reduced risk of basal cell carcinoma. Decaffeinated coffee was not associated with a reduced risk of skin cancer.

Study participants were in the health care field and may have had better habits than the average person, the study said.

Coffee consumption has also been found to reduce the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer and cancer overall. "To the best of our knowledge, coffee consumption is a healthy habit," Song said.

Caffeine protection

Caffeine in coffee may act to reduce the risk of skin cancer. Studies in animals have suggested that caffeine promotes the elimination of skin cells damaged by ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

The biggest risk factor for skin cancer is exposure to UV radiation, usually from the sun. So protective measures such as applying sunscreen are more important than your daily latte, according to the study.

The study was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Boston. It has not been published in a scientific journal.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/25/coffee-drinking-may-reduce-risk-skin-cancer/#ixzz1bp8IWv79

Mammograms Don't Save as Many Lives as Women Think

Many women who have survived breast cancer often say it was a mammogram that "saved their life," a powerful testimonial that can encourage other women to get regular breast cancer screening tests.

But what are the chances that the test actually saved a woman's life? Not that great, according to a new analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday.

"The numbers suggest that at most, 13 percent of those diagnosed with breast cancer have been helped. That means the other 87 percent have not been helped," Dr. Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth College, who led the study, said in a telephone interview

"That is important when we keep hearing these stories from breast cancer survivors," he said.

Welch said women who tell their stories about surviving breast cancer can be a powerful inducement for other women to get tested for breast cancer, and as mammogram technology has improved, the chances are even greater that doctors will find something suspicious.

But early detection for some women may not be much of a benefit, especially if a cancer is slow growing, Welch and colleagues say. And many women may be diagnosed and treated for a cancer growing so slowly it might never have caused any symptoms or threatened their lives.

The findings add new fodder to the simmering debate over the benefits of screening healthy people for cancer. Earlier this month, the government-backed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that healthy men not get a common blood test for prostate cancer, causing an uproar among cancer specialists who fear more men will die from prostate cancer.

And in 2009, the same group recommended that women under 40 not get a mammogram and that women 50 and older get the test only every other year, rather than yearly, causing an outcry from breast cancer advocacy groups.

But screening tests have both benefits and risks, says Welch, who views the current debate as positive for patients who are starting to think more about the risks of screening.

An earlier study by Welch found that routine screening for prostate cancer has resulted in as many as 1 million American men being diagnosed with tumors who might otherwise have suffered no ill effects from them.

In the latest study, Welch and colleagues looked to see how much mammography reduces deaths from breast cancer.

They found that for 50-year-old women whose breast cancers were diagnosed by a mammogram, there was a 13 percent chance that the screening test saved her life.

The question, then, becomes how to preserve the benefit of mammogram without exposing so many women to the harms of overdiagnosis – which include being treated for cancers that might not cause harm, Welch said.

He said breast cancer screening technology has become better and better at spotting tiny cancers on the assumption that the earlier a cancer is detected, the better the chances of cancer survival.
But Welch said as treatments for breast cancer get better, the need for very early diagnosis is less great.

"For years we've been looking harder and harder for cancer. I think the time has come to ask the question, 'What if we looked a little less hard?'"

Dr. Timothy Wilt of the Minneapolis Veterans Administration in Minneapolis, who wrote a commentary on the findings in the same journal, said the study gives doctors science-based information to share with patients, who are often influenced by anecdotes.

"Because survivor stories are often so powerful, but inaccurate, they can result in people making healthcare decisions that are not science based and may be wrong," he said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/25/mammograms-dont-save-as-many-lives-as-women-think/#ixzz1bp4HEy20

More Trans Fat in Pregnancy Tied to Bigger Baby

Pregnant women who consume trans fats from snack foods, fast food and other less-than-ideal fare may give birth to bigger babies, according to a U.S. study.

The study, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, centered on nearly 1,400 pregnant women. It found that the higher the woman's intake of trans fats—which raise "bad" LDL cholesterol, but also lower heart-healthy HDL cholesterol—during the second trimester of pregnancy, the larger her newborn was.

The study did not prove that trans fats alone boost fetal growth, and if they did, it is unclear how harmful that could be. But there are risks to having a larger-than-normal newborn, said lead researcher Juliana Cohen, of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Big babies may have to be delivered by Ceasarean-section and studies have found that they may have increased risks of diabetes and heart disease later in life, Cohen added.

"It's prudent to limit trans fats in your diet anyway. Pregnant women may want to think about how (the fats) could affect fetal growth as well," she said.

Artificial trans fats are found in foods that contain partially hydrogenated oils, including many baked and fried packaged foods like chips, crackers and cookies, as well as fast food.

Some meat and dairy products contain natural trans fats, but people get the bulk of their trans fat in the artificial form—although food producers and some restaurants have been cutting back in response to poor publicity.

The latest study was based on about 1,400 Boston-area women who gave birth between 1999 and 2002. The women completed dietary questionnaires during their first and second trimesters.

The relationship between higher trans fat intake and birth size held even after researchers accounted for factors such as pre-pregnancy body weight, income, education and calorie intake.

They calculated that for every 1 percent increase in trans fat as a replacement for carbohydrates in a woman's daily diet, her baby's fetal growth "Z score" -- which takes into account a newborn's birth weight and the week of pregnancy during which the baby was born -- inched up slightly.

Cohen said that while the effects of this would likely be limited in later life, the foods that contain trans fats were best limited for overall health.

Unfortunately, she added, these sorts of foods are often the ones women crave during pregnancy.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/13/more-trans-fat-in-pregnancy-tied-to-bigger-baby/?test=chol#ixzz1bp2KKc67

Study Shows Link Between Heart Problems, HPV

Might infection by the human papillomavirus — now linked to cervical and throat cancers, among other ailments — also be tied to heart disease?

A new study appearing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests an association. It looked at 2,450 women between the ages of 20 and 59 and found 60 who reported being told by a physician they’d suffered a heart attack or stroke. Of those, 39 had HPV and 21 did not.

After adjusting for diabetes, smoking habits and other risk factors that influence heart-disease risk, the researchers concluded the odds of developing cardiovascular disease were 2.86 times higher in women who had the types of HPV associated with cancer compared to those who weren’t infected by the virus at all.

The study only looked at a snapshot of women’s HPV status at a certain point in time, however. It can’t distinguish between infections that persist over time and those that clear up on their own, notes Kenichi Fujise, a study author and director of the division of cardiology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Nor can it tell whether women infected at some point in their lives are likely to develop heart disease decades later, or whether the HPV infection is actually causing cardiovascular problems.

Fujise says HPV produces a protein that interferes with the action of p53, a gene that normally helps the body suppress tumors. Animal studies suggest the same gene seems to be involved with regulating atherosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries that can lead to heart attack and stroke.
HPV also deactivates another tumor-suppressing gene called retinoblastoma protein, which has also been tied to atherosclerosis in animal studies, write Fujise and his co-author, Hsu-Ko Kuo, also of UTMB.

They call for future research on this question, including going back to look at randomized trials of HPV vaccines to see if vaccination makes a difference in cardiovascular outcomes. They say we need a better understanding of the basic science between HPV and the two tumor-suppressing proteins. And it’s important to see if there’s a link between HPV and heart disease in men.

Click here to read more from The Wall Street Journal.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/25/study-shows-link-between-heart-problems-hpv/#ixzz1box6HHDt

FDA: Studies Do Not Link Chantix to Psych Problems

 

Federal health officials said Monday that Pfizer's anti-smoking drug Chantix did not increase psychiatric problems like depression and suicidal thoughts in two studies, though the findings are not definitive.

The Food and Drug Administration has been investigating reports of mood disorders and erratic behavior among Chantix patients since 2007. The agency said in a statement that two federally-funded studies involving more than 26,000 patients did not show an increased rate of psychiatric hospitalizations among Chantix patients, compared with those using nicotine patches and smoking cessation treatment

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/24/fda-studies-do-not-link-chantix-to-psych-problems/#ixzz1bksU6frn

FDA regulators stressed that the studies only recorded psychiatric problems that resulted in hospitalization, meaning many issues likely went unreported. Additionally, the studies by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense were not large enough to pick up very rare side effects.

Groups like the Federal Aviation Administration have already banned the drug for pilots and air traffic controllers due to side effects that could interfere with their work.

The agency said it is continuing to study the problems and recommends patients consult their doctors if they experience side effects with the drug. Pfizer is conducting its own large-scale study of Chantix behavioral effects, but

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/24/fda-studies-do-not-link-chantix-to-psych-problems/#ixzz1bksAh83F

the results won't be available until 2017.

"Health care professionals should advise patients and caregivers that the patient should immediately stop taking Chantix and contact a healthcare professional if agitation, hostility, depressed mood, or changes in behavior or thinking that are not typical for the patient are observed," the FDA said in an online statement.

More than 8.9 million people in the U.S. have filled prescriptions for Chantix since it was approved in May 2006. Last year Pfizer reported $755 million in sales for the drug, a decline of 14 percent since its peak sales of $883 million in 2007.

Shares of Pfizer Inc. rose about 1 percent, or 20 cents, to $19.26 Monday, tracking with broader increases on the S&P 500.

Chantix works by binding to the same spots in the brain that nicotine does when people smoke, blocking nicotine from those spots but causing release of a "feel-good" chemical, dopamine. The drug's label already carries warnings about possible side effects including hostility, agitation, depression and suicidal thoughts and behavior.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/24/fda-studies-do-not-link-chantix-to-psych-problems/#ixzz1bkpworG5

BPA in pregnant women might affect kids' behavior

Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, …

CHICAGO (AP) — Exposure to the chemical bisphenol-A before birth could affect girls' behavior at age 3, according to the latest study on potential health effects of the compound used in the manufacturing of some plastic drink bottles and food can linings.

Preschool-aged girls whose mothers had relatively high urine levels of BPA during pregnancy scored worse but still within a normal range on behavior measures including anxiety and hyperactivity than other young girls.

The results are not conclusive and experts not involved in the study said factors other than BPA might explain the results. The researchers acknowledge that "considerable debate" remains about whether BPA is harmful, but say their findings should prompt additional research.

The researchers measured BPA in 244 Cincinnati-area mothers' urine twice during pregnancy and at childbirth. The women evaluated their children at age 3 using standard behavior questionnaires.

Nearly all women had measurable BPA levels, like most Americans. But increasingly high urine levels during pregnancy were linked with increasingly worse behavior in their daughters. Boys' behavior did not seem to be affected.

The researchers said if BPA can cause behavior changes that could pose academic and social problems for girls already at risk for those difficulties.

"These subtle shifts can actually have very dramatic implications at the population level," said Joe Braun, the lead author and a research fellow at Harvard's School of Public Health.

For every 10-fold increase in mothers' BPA levels, girls scored at least six points worse on the questionnaires.

The study was released online Monday in Pediatrics.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of 

Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, said the study contributes important new evidence to "a growing database which suggests that BPA exposure can be associated with effects on human health."

Grants from that federal agency helped pay for the study.

The Food and Drug Administration has said that low-level BPA exposure appears to be safe. But the agency also says that because of recent scientific evidence, it has some concern about potential effects of BPA on the brain and behavior in fetuses, infants and small children. The FDA is continuing to study BPA exposure and supports efforts to minimize use in food containers.

BPA has many uses, and is found in some plastic bottles and coatings in metal food cans. It was widely used in plastic baby bottles and sippy cups but industry phased out that use.

Braun said it's possible that exposure to BPA during pregnancy interferes with fetal brain development, a theory suggested in other studies, and that could explain the behavior differences in his study. Why boys' behavior wasn't affected isn't clear. But BPA is thought to mimic the effects of estrogen, a female hormone.

The researchers evaluated other possible influences on children's behavior, including family income, education level and whether mothers were married, and still found an apparent link to BPA.

But Dr. Charles McKay, a BPA researcher and toxicologist with the Connecticut Poison Control Center, said the researchers failed to adequately measure factors other than BPA that could explain the results.

For example, there's no information on mothers' eating habits. That matters because mothers' higher BPA levels could have come from eating lots of canned foods instead of healthier less processed foods, which might have affected fetal brain development.

The American Chemistry Council, a trade group whose members include companies that use BPA, said the research "has significant shortcomings ... and the conclusions are of unknown relevance to public health."

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTannerhttp://news.yahoo.com/bpa-pregnant-women-might-affect-kids-behavior-040221442.html