Health Headlines - March 14

Human Bird Flu Death Toll Climbs Above 100

Three deaths in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan have pushed the worldwide human death toll from bird flu to 101 people, Agence France Presse reported.

The World Health Organization has yet to verify the deaths, but Azerbaijani officials said the H5N1 virus was identified in the three victims from the southern Salyan region. Tests did not detect H5N1 in six other patients hospitalized with flu symptoms in the same area of Azerbaijan.

As bird flu continues to spread in various regions of the world, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Monday that Americans won't be able to count on a vaccine to protect them during the first six months of a pandemic, the Associated Press reported.

Leavitt said it would take at least six months to produce a vaccine to protect humans. That's because the virus is changing and there's no way to know in advance which strain may become capable of human-to-human transmission.

Once such a virus strain is identified, it will take time to test a vaccine to make sure it's safe and then to mass-produce it, the AP reported.

"If we have a person-to-person, transmissible virus and we enter a pandemic condition, we will be operating without a vaccine for the first six months. We will be dependent upon traditional public health measures to contain and limit it," Leavitt said at a news briefing.

Heart Defect Repair Helps Some Migraine Patients

Repairing a congenital heart defect called patent foramen ovale, a hole between the upper chambers of the heart, can reduce the severity and frequency of migraine headaches, according to preliminary findings from a British study of 147 patients.

However, the researchers said this repair, which uses an implanted device, does not prevent migraines altogether, The New York Times reported.

Forty-two percent of patients who had their heart defect repaired reported at least a 50 percent decline in the number of days they had migraines. About half as many patients in a control group that did not have the repair reported the same kind of reduction in migraines.

The findings were presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta. More details about the study results will be released in three weeks at a major neurology meeting.

The researchers said they identified a higher-than-expected correlation between patients with large holes in their hearts and severe migraines, the Times reported.

Each year, more than 30 million Americans suffer some form of migraine.

Switching to Vegetarian Diet Slowed Weight Gain: Study

People who switched from eating meat to a vegetarian diet gained slightly less weight over five years than people who didn't make major diet changes, says a study by Cancer Research UK.

The research on 22,000 meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans found that the overall weight gain was about 4.5 pounds, but people who had switched from a meat diet to a vegetarian diet gained about a pound less weight and people who switched to a vegan diet showed slightly smaller weight gains, BBC News reported.

"Contrary to the current popular views that a diet low in carbohydrates and high in proteins keeps weight down, we found that the lowest weight gain came in people with high intake of carbohydrate and low intake of protein," said research team leader Prof. Tim Key of Oxford University.

The study also found that people who did the least amount of exercise gained the most weight.

"This confirms that the best way to prevent obesity is to combine a healthy diet with exercise," Key told BBC News.

Mad Cow Case Confirmed in Alabama

An Alabama cow has tested positive for mad cow disease, the U.S. Agriculture Department confirmed Monday.

A routine test last week had indicated the presence of the disease. Results were confirmed by more detailed testing at a government laboratory in Ames, Iowa, said the department's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, according to an Associated Press report.

The cow, a beef cow that was at least 10 years old, spent the past year at one Alabama farm, he added, noting the department is investigating where the animal was born and raised.

The animal hadn't entered the food supply for people or animals, Clifford said.

Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease for humans. A majority of those deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s.

There has been only one confirmed case in the United States, although the federal government believes the person got the disease in Britain. U.S. agricultural investigators found two cases of mad cow disease: in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state and June 2005 in a cow born and raised in Texas. Since then, the government has increased its level of testing.

High Dose of Lipitor Helped Kidney Disease Patients: Study

A high dose of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor provided significant improvement to kidney disease patients, according to new research involvong almost 8,000 men and women in 14 countries.

The five-year study found that normal kidney function was restored in 50 percent of patients with kidney dysfunction who took the highest dose (80mg) of Lipitor, atorvastatin. Overall, kidney function in the patients taking the 80 mg dose improved by 8.5 percent over five years, compared with a 5.6 percent improvement in patients taking a 10 mg dose, United Press International reported.

The findings were released Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta. The patients in the study were between the ages of 35 and 75.

High cholesterol increases the risk of kidney disease.

Exercises Help Ward off Fainting

Simple muscle-tensing exercises can help prevent fainting, say researchers in the Netherlands who studied 223 frequent fainters, ages 16 to 70.

The study volunteers were divided into two groups. One group received standard counseling about avoiding stress and other fainting triggers, along with increasing their salt and water intake in order to raise their blood pressure, the Associated Press reported.

The other group were taught to do three exercises when they felt a fainting spell coming on: crossing their legs at the ankles while squeezing their thighs together and tensing their abdominal muscles; a hand gripping exercise that involves interlocking the fingers and pulling arms in opposite directions; and tensing the arms by rhythmically squeezing a soft ball while also tensing thighs and abdominal muscles.

Both groups were tracked for 14 months and about a third of the people in the exercise group suffered a fainting spell during that time, compared with about half of the people in the standard care group, the AP reported.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta.

Food Fact:
Go mango.

Nature packs a lot of vitamins A and C into these low-calorie appetizers. Half a medium-sized mango supplies 40% of the vitamin A and 50% of the vitamin C that most of us need daily. All for a mere 67 calories. And it tastes great!

Fitness Tip of the day:
"Hidden" exercise.

Raking leaves, shoveling snow, cutting grass. This is exercise! All activity helps us keep fit. Take heavy yard work, for example -- treat it just as you would a more formal workout. Make sure your body is warmed up and pace yourself accordingly. Pay careful attention to they way you lift, stay hydrated and schedule breaks during the day.

FAQ of the day:
Is it true grapefruit juice and prescription medications don't mix?

Amazingly, grapefruit juice can interfere with some prescription medications. Grapefruit and its juice contains a phytochemical that inhibits the enzyme needed to break down antihistamines, calcium-channel blockers, immunosuppressants, sedatives and protease inhibitors (treatments for AIDS), among others. As a result, blood levels of those drugs stay higher than expected, with potentially serious side effects. If you drink grapefruit juice regularly and are prescribed medication, mention it to your health care provider.