N.J. to Create Umbilical Cord Blood Bank
New Jersey plans to create a storage bank for umbilical cord blood to aid stem cell research, a program that state officials said will be the first of its kind in the nation.
Two nonprofit community blood banks will accept donations from healthy newborns made with parents' permission. Under the one-year pilot program, the blood will be used for treatment of illnesses, such as leukemia, or to conduct research.
An estimated $300,000 each will be given to the Elie Katz Umbilical Cord Blood Program at Community Blood Services in Paramus and the Coriell Institute for Medical Research in Camden, said Cynthia Kirchner, senior policy adviser to the state's public health commissioner.
The executive order was signed Tuesday by acting Gov. Richard J. Codey.
Stem cells are undeveloped cells found in embryos, umbilical cord blood, placentas and certain types of adult tissue. Most clinical use for cord blood is for cancer, said Rick Cohen, director of Coriell's stem cell program.
"A number of children literally owe their lives to the generous donations of those New Jersey moms and dads who chose to donate their children's cord blood to our public bank," Dennis Todd, president and chief executive officer for Community Blood Services.
The state health department plans a campaign to educate medical professionals and mothers about the donation program and its benefits.
"Basically, it's taking something that we would have discarded and process it so research can benefit," said Ellen Harris, program director for the bank in Camden.
Doping: BALCO head Conte sentenced in steroid scandal
A federal judge sentenced the head of the BALCO nutritional lab to four months in prison on Tuesday in a global sports steroid scandal that has badly damaged some of the top names in international sports.
District Judge Susan Illston also sentenced BALCO founder Victor Conte to four months home confinement and to two years of court supervision.
Conte, his deputy James Valente, and Greg Anderson, personal trainer to baseball superstar Barry Bonds, all admitted guilt to steroid distribution in July in plea deals that knocked out almost all of the original charges against them.
News two years ago that BALCO was the source of a previously undetectable steroid prompted an effort across many sports to clamp down on performance enhancing drugs.
The scandal sullied some of the top names in global sports and raised questions about achievements such as home run records by muscular baseball players.
Study: Obesity Surgery May Be Riskier
Obesity surgery, the most drastic way to lose weight, is far more than a cosmetic procedure and involves considerably higher risks of death than previously thought, new research suggests.
Some previous studies of people in their 30s to their 50s -— the most common ages for obesity surgery -— found death rates well under 1 percent. But among 35- to 44-year-olds in a new study, more than 5 percent of men and nearly 3 percent of women were dead within a year, and slightly higher rates were seen in patients 45 to 54.
Among patients 65 to 74, nearly 13 percent of men and about 6 percent of women died. In patients 75 and older, half of the men and 40 percent of the women died.
"The risk of death is much higher than has been reported," said University of Washington surgeon Dr. David Flum, lead author of the study of 16,155 Medicare patients. "It's a reality check for those patients who are considering these operations."
The study, involving patients who underwent obesity surgery between 1997 and 2002, appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study offered no breakdown on causes of death, but obesity surgery's potentially deadly complications can include malnutrition, infection, and bowel and gallbladder problems. Also, surgery in general can be a deadly shock to the system, especially in older patients.
Dr. Neil Hutcher, president of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery, said that Medicare patients are probably sicker than the general U.S. population and that complication rates have declined as surgeons' expertise has increased.
But Flum said some previous research on the safety of obesity surgery consisted of "reports from the best surgeons reporting their best results," while the new study is more of a real-world look.
The American Society for Bariatric Surgery predicts obesity surgery will be performed more than 150,000 times this year in the United States. That is more than 10 times the number in 1998, according to a second JAMA study. The increase parallels a surge in the portion of U.S. adults who are at least 100 pounds overweight, from about 1 in 200 in 1986 to 1 in 50 in 2000, that study said.
Supporters of stomach-reduction surgery say the operation can save their lives by reducing the workload on the heart and lungs and eliminating related illnesses, such as diabetes and sleep apnea.
Flum said the new study suggests that in many cases, obesity surgery may not be right for an older person "who already has the burden of 60 years of obesity on their heart" and other organs.
Medicare covers obesity surgery if it is recommended to treat related conditions such as diabetes and heart problems. The government is considering whether to cover surgery to treat obesity alone.
Medicare is for younger Americans with disabilities and for patients 65 and older. Flum said most of the patients he studied were under 65 and probably qualified for Medicare because of obesity-related ills, including heart and joint problems.
There are several types of obesity surgery, but the most common U.S. variety, gastric bypass, involves creating an egg-size pouch in the upper stomach and attaching it to a section of intestine. That reduces the amount of food patients can eat and results in less food being absorbed. Flum's study lumped together data on the different operations.
Researchers said one reason men may have higher post-surgery death rates is that they tend to wait longer than women to seek medical help and may be sicker when the operation is performed.
A third JAMA study cast doubt on whether obesity surgery reduces health-care costs. It found that among patients followed for about three years, an average of 8 percent were hospitalized before surgery, mostly for obesity-related complications, compared with 20 percent a year afterward, mostly for surgery-related complications.
That study's lead author, Dr. David Zingmond of the University of California at Los Angeles, said some people mistakenly view obesity surgery as a cosmetic procedure and "may greatly discount the chances that they're going to have problems after surgery."
Hutcher said patients should seek experienced surgeons who meet his group's guidelines. Those include thoroughly evaluating patients before and after surgery and giving them long-term follow-up care.
Most patients "will receive a good outcome. A good outcome does not mean there's no risk for complications or mortality," Hutcher said.
World Stem Cell Foundation Announced
South Korean scientists have announced the creation of a World Stem Cell Foundation, to be headquartered at Seoul National University but with tentacles reaching to the United States, the United Kingdom and beyond.
The new venture, unveiled early Wednesday morning, is intended to accelerate international progress in the field by bypassing ethical and regulatory constraints in the United States, according to Dr. Susan Okie, who wrote a perspective article in the Oct. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that was released to coincide with the Seoul announcement.
"Korea is being very entrepreneurial, not just in creating novel stem cells but in how they're marketing and doing business," added Paul Sanberg, director of the Center for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa. "The [Korean] government is putting significant amounts of money into it. I think Korea sees that it can be a global player."
This particular group of scientists, led by Hwang Woo-suk, made headlines earlier this year when they created 11 disease-specific embryonic stem cell lines without using fertilized embryos, and when they successfully cloned human embryonic stem cell lines.
The new foundation will make disease-specific embryonic stem cell lines by somatic-cell nuclear transfer in South Korea. Those cells will then be shipped to paying scientists around the world.
Somatic-cell nuclear transfer, or "research cloning," involves taking a cell from an adult or child (usually with a disease), then using it to replace the nucleus in a donated egg and, from that, creating a new line of cells.
"This particular way of making embryonic stem cells is the one that is the most limited in the U.S.," Okie, a contributing editor to the New England Journal of Medicine, explained. "No one is doing it here." The issue of getting donated eggs is particularly problematic.
U.S. labs are prohibited from producing these stem cell lines using equipment or facilities paid for with government funds. "Not many institutions can afford to do it," Okie explained. Some larger institutions such as Harvard and Stanford are planning their own centers, but they are hobbled by ethical issues surrounding the donation of eggs.
In South Korea, however, Okie added, "they are making these cell lines fast and furious, and it has the potential for more." So U.S. scientists would be able to order the cell lines and work on them, as long as the labs or equipment are not federally funded.
"It would be potentially much less onerous than trying to start a program from scratch. And, if you just want to study cells, you sidestep the whole technical process," Okie said. "In eight states, it's illegal to make embryonic stem cells by this method, but it's legal to import them in every state but South Dakota."
Under the plan, the consortium would be headquartered in Seoul and would operate smaller laboratories in San Francisco and England, each of which would be associated with an in vitro fertilization clinic where donor eggs would be collected.
Three Korean technicians would travel regularly to the satellite labs to perform all the nuclear-transfer procedures.
Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh who will chair the foundation's board of trustees, estimated the foundation could produce 100 new disease-specific stem cell lines each year.
According to Okie, U.S. scientists have mixed feelings about the venture.
Some, such as those at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), which is setting up its own center, are unhappy about the centralization of technological expertise that the scheme entails, she said.
"They thought a lot of what you could learn grew out of making the cell lines," she said. UCSF said it would not participate in the World Stem Cell Foundation, but would work towards being able to develop its own lines.
But Okis said George Daley of Harvard Medical School told her that his institution would do both: make its own cell lines and participate in the Korean venture. "It offers opportunities to use more different kinds of embryonic stem cells and learn from them, and do different studies," Okie said.
"The positive side is it allows people to get cell lines made for specific diseases, do it quickly and to do research on it," Sanberg added.
But Okie thought that the combined strengths of the United States and South Korean strengths could create a powerhouse effect.
"The problem with the U.S. is we don't have this technology very much in hand yet, so there are going to be a lot of cell lines from eggs that will fail before we get our expertise up to where the Koreans have it," she said. "Because eggs are such a precious resource and the ethics are so difficult, you don't want a lot of eggs to go to waste."
On the other hand, many people feel the United States has a deeper understanding of biology.
"Ideally, we could cooperate," Okie said.
Health Tip: Protecting Kids Who Lift Weights
Your preteen has told you he wants to start pumping iron, but you think he's too young and could hurt himself.
Well, if your son is 12 years old or older, weight training is generally safe, provided the program is supervised and properly designed, according to St. Louis Children's Hospital. Young girls usually can lift weights from age 10.
But tell your child not to expect too much buildup of muscle mass, since this requires certain hormones that pre-adolescent kids lack. Weight training at this age will increase muscle fibers to develop strength, but not muscle mass.
It's also a good idea for your child to have a medical checkup before starting a weightlifting program.
Health Tip: Your Child Doesn't Eat Meat
Some children go through a vegetarian phase -- declaring that they'll never eat meat again.
Whether this is a lasting dietary change or a fleeting fancy, you need to make sure your child's eating regimen is sufficiently varied.
Akron Children's Hospital suggests you include the following nutrients in your child's diet:
Calories and fat: peanut butter, nuts, cheese, sunflower seeds, and soy products.
Protein: legumes, meatless chili, and dairy and soy products.
Calcium: milk and orange juice, tofu and dark green, leafy vegetables.
Iron: enriched grains, legumes, and dried fruit.
Vitamin B12: fortified soy milk, and some breakfast cereals.
Zinc: legumes, hard cheeses, whole grain products, wheat germ, nuts and tofu.
Food Fact:
Outsmart the menu.
It's possible to eat out and still keep a healthy diet -- if you master a few key strategies. Start by getting the food you want in the amounts you need. If restaurants insist on serving gigantic portions, take advantage of appetizers, soups, salads, a la carte items and side dishes. Split oversized menu items with a dining partner. When eating in a group, order one or two fewer dishes than the number of people at the table, and eat family style.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Hit that perfect beat.
Dancing raises your pulse -- a key to a healthy heart. Running and biking will do the same. Regular physical activity has many other disease-fighting benefits. It reduces your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, lowers your risk of developing cancer, and helps you prevent bone loss (osteoporosis), and maintain mobility and independence in later years.
FAQ of the day:
What causes heart attacks?
Usually, a cholesterol-laden plaque becomes unstable and bursts, causing clots that block blood flow completely, starving the heart muscle. Today, medical personnel can treat clots en route to the hospital with enzymes that chew them up, restoring blood flow in the blocked arteries. Cholesterol-lowering drugs make plaques more stable and less likely to burst. Better yet, a diet rich in whole foods and low in red meat keeps your blood cholesterol levels low, helps prevent clots, maintains healthy blood pressure, assists in weight control, and reduces the risk of diseases such as diabetes and certain cancers to boot.
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