WEDNESDAY, Sept. 9 (HealthCare Tips) A plant with a mainly malodorous sap has components that show great efficiency in killing off the H1N1 swine flu virus, Chinese scientists report.


The plant, Ferula assa-foetida, grows throughout Iran, Afghanistan and mainland China, and is generally dubbed "Dung of the Devil" due to its ill-smelling sap. But the researchers note that the plant was used in China against the influenza virus during the great 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, which is thought to have killed tens of millions worldwide. But until now no one has definite that Ferula assa-foetida has natural antiviral properties, according to a news release from the American Chemical Society.

The report appears in the Sept. 25 issue of the Journal of Natural goods.

In their laboratory experiments, researchers Fang-Rong Chang, Yang-Chang Wu and colleagues identified a group of chemicals in the plant's extracts that appear to have a stronger potency against H1N1 flu than a instruction antiviral medication already in use against the flu. They write that these compounds "may harsh as promising lead components for new drug development against influenza A (H1N1) viral infection."

TUESDAY, Sept. 8 (HealthCare Tips) Despite highly publicized education campaigns and widespread agreement about the importance of colorectal cancer screening, only 61 percent of Americans who should be screened do so, new research finds.


Rates for minorities, the uninsured and other weak groups are lower still, with only 22 percent of lower-income people served by a "safety net" health system in Texas being screened.

Using data from a health system in Tarant County, Tex., researchers identified 20,416 men and women ages 54 to 75 who were qualified for colorectal cancer screening.

The Tarrant County Hospital District, which includes Forth Worth, Texas, is a safety net health system that serves 155,000 individuals a year, many of them uninsured or Medicaid recipient.

About 15 percent of the patients lived below the poverty line. The median household income was $35,419. Most patients were either black or Hispanic; nearly 20 percent reported a primary language other than English.

Patients most likely to get screened included those who saw a doctor frequently or who had health insurance, said Dr. Samir Gupta, assistant professor in the section of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

"Once you controlled for those variables, the screening rate was essentially zero," Gupta said.

About 40 percent of those in the study had health insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid, while another 40 percent had medical coverage through their connection to the safety net system. Twenty percent were uninsured.

Those with insurance were almost three times as likely to be screened, and those who saw the doctor frequently were nearly four times as likely to be screened.

Women were somewhat more likely than men to be screened. Hispanics were slightly more likely to be screened than whites.

The study appears in the September issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

Karen Glanz, a professor of medicine and nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and an editorial board member of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, said the study documents some of the barrier to colorectal cancer screening.

"The idea that colorectal cancer screening rates are too low is not a new idea, but this is one of the first to document it in a specific population," Glanz said. "Access to care clearly has consequences, and any talk of health care reform needs to address proven prevention measures like screening."

Low-income, uninsured women have access to other screenings through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.

While good for breast and cervical cancer screening efforts, many other types of cancers don't benefit from such a complete screening approach.

"Theoretically, the same model could be applied to colorectal cancer, but do we want to keep passing legislation for programs that target specific types of cancer, or could we provide more broad access to health care so we can make a serious and coordinated effort at prevention?" Gupta said. "That's the question that needs answering."

Colorectal cancer, which kills nearly 50,000 Americans a year, is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States after lung cancer. There are several types of screening tests available.

THURSDAY, Sept. 3 (HealthCare Tips) Late-night forays to the fridge might have you packing on the pounds even faster than munching during the day does, a new mouse study suggests.

That's because the body's internal clock, or circadian rhythm, may play a role in metabolism, researchers say.

"We have found causal proof that eating during the 'wrong' circadian time leads to weight gain in mice," said lead researcher Deanna Arble, a doctoral candidate in Northwestern University's Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology.

"While I do not believe the field is highly developed enough to prescribe appropriate eating times for each individual, I believe we can at least say that humans should avoid eating during their usual sleeping phase because this could lead to increased weight gain," she said.

The report is published in the Sept. 3 online edition of Obesity.

Over six weeks, Arble's team fed two groups of mice a high-fat diet. The animals were allowed to eat as much as they required. Some mice were fed during the day , normal sleeping time for mice - while others were fed at night, when they are characteristically most active.

The researchers found that varying the feeding time, by itself, affected the rodents' body weight. Mice fed during their normal sleeping hours gained more weight than mice that ate during their typical wakeful hours.

In fact, mice that ate during normal sleeping hours gained 48 percent more weight over their weight at the start of the study, while the animals fed during normal wakeful hours gained only 20 percent more weight.

The mice fed during their normal sleep-time also had an almost 8 percent higher level of fat as a percentage of overall weight, the team said.

All of the mice took in the same number of calories and exhausted about the same amount of energy, although the mice that ate at the "wrong" time had somewhat less activity, the researchers noted.

"We have confirmed that mice eating at the 'wrong' time of day have increased weight gain compared to mice eating at the 'right' time of day," Arble said.

Similar to that of the mouse, humans' internal clock governs daily cycles of feeding, activity and sleep. Recent studies have shown that the body's internal clock also regulates energy use, which suggest that the timing of meals may make a difference in balancing caloric intake and energy expenditure, the researchers say.

But it is also important to not lose sight of the significance of total caloric intake, Arble said.

"If you are taking in surplus calories daily, the time you eat probably doesn't matter , you will still gain weight," she said. "Correspondingly, if by eating small meals for dinner you decrease your overall caloric intake, that could be more beneficial than timing. However, for the individual who is not consuming overload calories and is still gaining weight, this experiment in mice suggests a new factor to examine , the timing of feeding."

Dr. Luigi F. Meneghini, an relate professor of clinical medicine at the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, believes the level of activity of the mice may be one reason for the dissimilarity in weight gain.

Meneghini noted that the mice fed at the "wrong time" exercised less than the mice fed during the normal wakeful hours. "Maybe something happens with circadian rhythm or hormones that make it less likely that they will engage in physical activity," he said.

"Based on this small study, if one were to say is it caloric intake or physical activity that led to the difference in weight gain, one would deduce it was more likely physical activity," he said.

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 2 (HealthCare tips) -- People who drink lots of coffee but who don't follow a Mediterranean-style diet are more likely to have atrial fibrillation, a new study shows.

Italian researchers asked patients who'd been newly diagnosed with the common heart arrhythmia to supply information about their dietary habits, including caffeine consumption. Their diets were compared with those of people without atrial fibrillation.

The findings were existing this week at the European Society of Cardiology annual meeting in Barcelona.

Daily coffee intake was divided into four categories: low (one cup/day), medium (two to three cups/day), heavy (more than three cups/day) and none, the study writers noted in a society news release.

Patients were also ranked according to their adherence to the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in whole grains, olive oil, fruits and vegetables and includes little red meat.

People with atrial fibrillation were less probable to follow the Mediterranean diet than those without the heart condition, according to the study. Those with atrial fibrillation also consumed more red meat and full-fat dairy products.

It was also noted that patients with atrial fibrillation consumed more of their total dietary antioxidants from coffee compared to other food sources, such as fruits, vegetables and wine, the researchers pointed out in the news release.

The heaviest coffee drinkers were also more likely to have atrial fibrillation than those who drank less, the study found. In atrial fibrillation, the heart's two upper chambers quiver instead of beating frequently, leading to heart palpitations, shortness of breath, fatigue and an increase in the risk of stroke.

"Our study suggests that high intake of coffee increases the risk of arrhythmias in people without known cardiac disease," study author Dr. Anna Vittoria Mattioli, of the University of Modena in Italy, said in the news release.

TUESDAY, Sept.1 (Healthcare tips) Cancer patients who obtain chemotherapy are more likely to develop blood clots than other people, but now a new study says a blood-thinning medicine could cut the risk in half.

Besides posing a significant risk of problems in the heart, brain and lungs, blood clots are particularly difficult to treat in cancer patients and can lead to interruptions in chemotherapy. They can also greatly increase costs in patients who already face high expenses, the examiners noted in their study published online Aug. 31 in The Lancet Oncology.

Researchers haven't been certain that blood-thinning drugs could help ambulatory chemotherapy patents avoid increasing the clots.

In the new study, Giancarlo Agnelli from the University of Perugia in Italy and colleagues, examined nadroparin, a form of heparin, in the PROTECHT (Prophylaxis of Thromboembolism during Chemotherapy) trial.

The researchers looked at 1,150 Italian patients over the age of 18 who were getting chemotherapy for advanced lung, gastrointestinal, pancreatic, breast, ovarian, or head and neck cancer. Two percent of those who received nadroparin via a daily injection under the skin developed a blood clot during the first four months of chemotherapy, compared to 3.9 percent of the patients who were given placebos, the study found.

Patients with lung cancer had the maximum rate of blood clots , 8.8 percent among those who took placebos and 3.5 percent of those who took nadroparin.

"Further studies should focus on patients at high risk of thromboembolism, such as patients with lung cancer," the authors conclude. The study "supports the concept that thromboembolic events can be prohibited for ambulatory patients with cancer receiving chemotherapy and this has potential implications for future therapeutic scenarios."

The study was funded by Italfarmaco, which compose nadroparin.