Drug for Bladder Problems May Help Control Weight, Too:
A drug already used to treat overactive bladder may also someday help control weight by boosting the metabolic powers of brown fat, a small study suggests.While white fat stores energy, brown fat burns energy to generate body heat. In the process, it can help maintain body weight and prevent obesity, at least in animals, previous studies have shown.
In the new study, researchers gave 12 healthy, lean young men a high dose of the drug mirabegron (Myrbetriq), and found that it boosted their metabolic rate.
The drug "activates the brown fat cells to burn calories and generate heat," said study researcher Dr. Aaron Cypess. He is section head of translational physiology at the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
When the activity of the drug peaked, "the metabolic rate went up by 13 percent on average," Cypess said. That translates to
about 203 calories, he said.
However, Cypess said that doesn't necessarily mean the men would burn an extra 203 calories a day over the long-term. The researchers don't yet know how long the calorie-burning effect might last, as they didn't follow the men over time.
The researchers projected the three-year weight loss would be about 22 pounds.
The study was published Jan. 6 in Cell Metabolism.Cypess conducted the research while working at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School. The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, with no drug company
involvement.The men, whose average age was 22, took a single dose of the drug in one session and took a single dose of a placebo in another, serving as their own comparisons. The researchers measured metabolic rate by scans, including positron
emission tomography (PET) and CT scans.
The effects of the drug on fat-burning, Cypess said, would be "mild to moderate if sustained."
The drug works by activating what is known as a beta 3,adrenergic receptor, found on the surface of brown fat cells. It is also found on the urinary bladder cells, and the drug works to calm an overactive bladder by relaxing muscle cells there, he said.
Much more research is needed, Cypess said. The study was small, including young men who on average had healthy body weights. Much less is known about the role of brown fat in people than in animals, he said.
In future research, he said he hopes to study larger groups, including women.
The dose given to the men was 200 milligrams (mg) a day, versus 50 mg for overactive bladder. Cypess cautioned that people should not take the drug expecting to lose weight. While the 200-mg dose was generally well tolerated, it did raise the heart rate to abnormally high levels, increasing it by 14 beats a minute on average, which Cypess said was too high. He hopes to investigate lower doses in the future to see if they are also effective, he said.
Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, reviewed the findings. "I would put this study into the category of interesting research that needs much more study before there is any consideration of this drug therapy as an aid to weight loss," she said.
The study is small, and "leaves many questions related to real impact on weight loss," she said.
"The subjects were all lean, so how this drug might impact an overweight subject is not clear," Diekman added. The amount of projected weight loss is small if an individual is overweight, she said. And, as noted by the researchers, the dose used could lead to an abnormally high heart rate, which is not healthy, she said.
Cypess agreed that much more research is crucial. If more research bears out the findings on the drug, "a realistic hope is that it will be incorporated into a general plan of saying, 'Eat responsibly, exercise regularly and keep your brown fat active,'" he said.
Currently, he said, there is no practical way for people to find out how much brown fat they have, "but it is an active area of
research."
Study: HPV Vaccine Doesn't Increase Risk for Multiple Sclerosis:
The HPV vaccine for cervical cancer and other diseases doesn't increase the risk for multiple sclerosis or other central nervous system disorders, according to a new study.
More than 175 million doses of HPV vaccines have been distributed worldwide to girls and young women -- and more recently males -- since 2006. Unconfirmed reports in social and news media suggested the possibility of some safety concerns about the vaccine, including increased risk for multiple sclerosis and similar diseases, according to background information with the study.
To investigate this possible risk, researchers led by Nikolai Madrid Scheller, of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, examined data on nearly 4 million Danish and Swedish girls and women from 2006 to 2013. The participants ranged in age from 10 to 44 years.
Using national registers, the researchers analyzed information on HPV vaccination, diagnoses of multiple sclerosis and similar central nervous system disorders.
Of all the girls and women included in the study, approximately 789,000 received an HPV vaccine over the course of the review period, for a total of slightly more than 1.9 million doses.
Between 2006 and 2013, just over 4,300 of the participants were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Of these cases, 73 occurred within the two-year risk period for side effects after vaccination. The researchers also identified 3,300 cases of similar diseases, with 90 occurring within the two-year risk period.
The researchers concluded the HPV vaccine does not increase the risk for multiple sclerosis or similar diseases that cause damage to the protective covering -- called myelin -- that surrounds nerve cells.
The findings appear in the Jan. 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Our study adds to the body of data that support a favorable overall safety profile of the [HPV] vaccine and expands on this knowledge by providing comprehensive analyses of multiple sclerosis and other demyelinating diseases," the study authors wrote.
They added that, given the size of the study population and the random use of nationwideregistry data from Denmark and Sweden, it's likely that the findings are applicable to women in other countries.
There are two vaccines available to help protect against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) in the United States: Cervarix and Gardasil. Both vaccines are available for girls, but only Gardasil is available for boys, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC recommends all boys and girls aged 11 and 12 get the three-dose vaccine so that protection is in place before they become sexually active.
Weight-Loss Surgery May Extend Lives, Study Finds
TUESDAY Jan. 6, 2015, 2015 -- Weight-loss surgery appears to prolong life for severely obese adults, a new study of U.S. veterans finds.
Among 2,500 obese adults who underwent so-called bariatric surgery, the death rate was about 14 percent after 10 years compared with almost 24 percent for obese patients who didn't have weight-loss surgery, researchersfound.
"Patients with severe obesity can have greater confidence that bariatric surgical procedures are associated with better long-term survival than not having surgery," said lead researcher Dr. David Arterburn, an associate investigator with the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle.
Earlier studies have shown better survival among younger obese women who had weight-loss surgery, but this study confirms this finding in older men and women who suffer from other health problems, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, he said.
The findings were published Jan. 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"We were not able to determine in our study the reasons why veterans lived longer after surgery than they did without surgery," Arterburn said. "However, other research suggests that bariatric surgery reduces the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, which may be the main ways that surgery prolongs life."
Dr. John Lipham, chief of upper gastrointestinal and general surgery at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, said that patients who have weight-loss surgery usually see their diabetes disappear.
"This by itself is going to provide a survival benefit," he said. Shedding excess weight also lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels and reduces the odds of developing heart disease, he said.
"If you are obese and unable to lose weight on your own, bariatric surgery should be considered," Lipham said.
Arterburn said most insurance plans including Medicare cover bariatric surgery.
As with any surgery, however, weight-loss surgery carries some risks. "The main risk from surgery is the risk of dying from a major complication such as bleeding or infection, which typically occurs in less than 0.3 percent of patients," Arterburn said.
Other possible complications include blood clots in the legs or lungs or the need for another operation because of a surgical problem, bleeding or infection, he said.
For the study, Arterburn and his colleagues tracked 2,500 patients who had weight-loss surgery at Veterans Affairs bariatric centers from 2000 to 2011. Their average age was 52 and their body mass index (BMI) was 47, which is considered extremely obese.
Three-quarters of the patients had gastric bypass surgery, which alters the way the stomach and intestines handle food. Fifteen percent underwent sleeve gastrectomy, which reduces the size of the stomach, and 10 percent had adjustable gastric banding, which reduces food intake.
The researchers compared these patients with about 7,500 patients of similar age and size who did not have a weight-loss procedure.
Over 14 years of follow-up, 263 patients who had weight-loss surgery died from any cause, compared with almost 1,300 obese patients who didn't have surgery, the study found.
Arterburn's team estimated the death rates for the surgical patients was about 6 percent after five years and 13.8 percent at 10 years. The estimated death rates for patients who didn't have weight-loss surgery were about 10 percent at five years, and about 24 percent at 10 years.
Recent surgical improvements should ensure even better results today, one expert said.
"The results of the study could be better if it were done now," said Dr. John Morton, chief of bariatric and minimally invasive surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif.
Since more than 90 percent of weight-loss surgery now is done with minimally invasive procedures that use smaller incisions and involve fewer complications, survival should be even greater, he contends.
Someone having a heart attack may experience any or all of the following:
What to do if you or someone else may be having a heart attack
Automated external defibrillator:
An automated external defibrillator (AED) is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the life-threatening cardiacarrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia in a patient,[1] and is able to treat them through defibrillation, the application of electrical therapy which stops the arrhythmia, allowing the heart to reestablish an effective rhythm.
With simple audio and visual commands, AEDs are designed to be simple to use for the layperson, and the use of AEDs is taught in manyfirst aid, certified first responder, and basic life support (BLS) level cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) classes.
A drug already used to treat overactive bladder may also someday help control weight by boosting the metabolic powers of brown fat, a small study suggests.While white fat stores energy, brown fat burns energy to generate body heat. In the process, it can help maintain body weight and prevent obesity, at least in animals, previous studies have shown.
In the new study, researchers gave 12 healthy, lean young men a high dose of the drug mirabegron (Myrbetriq), and found that it boosted their metabolic rate.
The drug "activates the brown fat cells to burn calories and generate heat," said study researcher Dr. Aaron Cypess. He is section head of translational physiology at the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
When the activity of the drug peaked, "the metabolic rate went up by 13 percent on average," Cypess said. That translates to
about 203 calories, he said.
However, Cypess said that doesn't necessarily mean the men would burn an extra 203 calories a day over the long-term. The researchers don't yet know how long the calorie-burning effect might last, as they didn't follow the men over time.
The researchers projected the three-year weight loss would be about 22 pounds.
The study was published Jan. 6 in Cell Metabolism.Cypess conducted the research while working at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School. The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, with no drug company
involvement.The men, whose average age was 22, took a single dose of the drug in one session and took a single dose of a placebo in another, serving as their own comparisons. The researchers measured metabolic rate by scans, including positron
emission tomography (PET) and CT scans.
The effects of the drug on fat-burning, Cypess said, would be "mild to moderate if sustained."
The drug works by activating what is known as a beta 3,adrenergic receptor, found on the surface of brown fat cells. It is also found on the urinary bladder cells, and the drug works to calm an overactive bladder by relaxing muscle cells there, he said.
Much more research is needed, Cypess said. The study was small, including young men who on average had healthy body weights. Much less is known about the role of brown fat in people than in animals, he said.
In future research, he said he hopes to study larger groups, including women.
The dose given to the men was 200 milligrams (mg) a day, versus 50 mg for overactive bladder. Cypess cautioned that people should not take the drug expecting to lose weight. While the 200-mg dose was generally well tolerated, it did raise the heart rate to abnormally high levels, increasing it by 14 beats a minute on average, which Cypess said was too high. He hopes to investigate lower doses in the future to see if they are also effective, he said.
Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, reviewed the findings. "I would put this study into the category of interesting research that needs much more study before there is any consideration of this drug therapy as an aid to weight loss," she said.
The study is small, and "leaves many questions related to real impact on weight loss," she said.
"The subjects were all lean, so how this drug might impact an overweight subject is not clear," Diekman added. The amount of projected weight loss is small if an individual is overweight, she said. And, as noted by the researchers, the dose used could lead to an abnormally high heart rate, which is not healthy, she said.
Cypess agreed that much more research is crucial. If more research bears out the findings on the drug, "a realistic hope is that it will be incorporated into a general plan of saying, 'Eat responsibly, exercise regularly and keep your brown fat active,'" he said.
Currently, he said, there is no practical way for people to find out how much brown fat they have, "but it is an active area of
research."
Study: HPV Vaccine Doesn't Increase Risk for Multiple Sclerosis:
The HPV vaccine for cervical cancer and other diseases doesn't increase the risk for multiple sclerosis or other central nervous system disorders, according to a new study.
More than 175 million doses of HPV vaccines have been distributed worldwide to girls and young women -- and more recently males -- since 2006. Unconfirmed reports in social and news media suggested the possibility of some safety concerns about the vaccine, including increased risk for multiple sclerosis and similar diseases, according to background information with the study.
To investigate this possible risk, researchers led by Nikolai Madrid Scheller, of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, examined data on nearly 4 million Danish and Swedish girls and women from 2006 to 2013. The participants ranged in age from 10 to 44 years.
Using national registers, the researchers analyzed information on HPV vaccination, diagnoses of multiple sclerosis and similar central nervous system disorders.
Of all the girls and women included in the study, approximately 789,000 received an HPV vaccine over the course of the review period, for a total of slightly more than 1.9 million doses.
Between 2006 and 2013, just over 4,300 of the participants were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Of these cases, 73 occurred within the two-year risk period for side effects after vaccination. The researchers also identified 3,300 cases of similar diseases, with 90 occurring within the two-year risk period.
The researchers concluded the HPV vaccine does not increase the risk for multiple sclerosis or similar diseases that cause damage to the protective covering -- called myelin -- that surrounds nerve cells.
The findings appear in the Jan. 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Our study adds to the body of data that support a favorable overall safety profile of the [HPV] vaccine and expands on this knowledge by providing comprehensive analyses of multiple sclerosis and other demyelinating diseases," the study authors wrote.
They added that, given the size of the study population and the random use of nationwideregistry data from Denmark and Sweden, it's likely that the findings are applicable to women in other countries.
There are two vaccines available to help protect against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) in the United States: Cervarix and Gardasil. Both vaccines are available for girls, but only Gardasil is available for boys, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC recommends all boys and girls aged 11 and 12 get the three-dose vaccine so that protection is in place before they become sexually active.
Weight-Loss Surgery May Extend Lives, Study Finds
TUESDAY Jan. 6, 2015, 2015 -- Weight-loss surgery appears to prolong life for severely obese adults, a new study of U.S. veterans finds.
Among 2,500 obese adults who underwent so-called bariatric surgery, the death rate was about 14 percent after 10 years compared with almost 24 percent for obese patients who didn't have weight-loss surgery, researchersfound.
"Patients with severe obesity can have greater confidence that bariatric surgical procedures are associated with better long-term survival than not having surgery," said lead researcher Dr. David Arterburn, an associate investigator with the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle.
Earlier studies have shown better survival among younger obese women who had weight-loss surgery, but this study confirms this finding in older men and women who suffer from other health problems, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, he said.
The findings were published Jan. 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"We were not able to determine in our study the reasons why veterans lived longer after surgery than they did without surgery," Arterburn said. "However, other research suggests that bariatric surgery reduces the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, which may be the main ways that surgery prolongs life."
Dr. John Lipham, chief of upper gastrointestinal and general surgery at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, said that patients who have weight-loss surgery usually see their diabetes disappear.
"This by itself is going to provide a survival benefit," he said. Shedding excess weight also lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels and reduces the odds of developing heart disease, he said.
"If you are obese and unable to lose weight on your own, bariatric surgery should be considered," Lipham said.
Arterburn said most insurance plans including Medicare cover bariatric surgery.
As with any surgery, however, weight-loss surgery carries some risks. "The main risk from surgery is the risk of dying from a major complication such as bleeding or infection, which typically occurs in less than 0.3 percent of patients," Arterburn said.
Other possible complications include blood clots in the legs or lungs or the need for another operation because of a surgical problem, bleeding or infection, he said.
For the study, Arterburn and his colleagues tracked 2,500 patients who had weight-loss surgery at Veterans Affairs bariatric centers from 2000 to 2011. Their average age was 52 and their body mass index (BMI) was 47, which is considered extremely obese.
Three-quarters of the patients had gastric bypass surgery, which alters the way the stomach and intestines handle food. Fifteen percent underwent sleeve gastrectomy, which reduces the size of the stomach, and 10 percent had adjustable gastric banding, which reduces food intake.
The researchers compared these patients with about 7,500 patients of similar age and size who did not have a weight-loss procedure.
Over 14 years of follow-up, 263 patients who had weight-loss surgery died from any cause, compared with almost 1,300 obese patients who didn't have surgery, the study found.
Arterburn's team estimated the death rates for the surgical patients was about 6 percent after five years and 13.8 percent at 10 years. The estimated death rates for patients who didn't have weight-loss surgery were about 10 percent at five years, and about 24 percent at 10 years.
Recent surgical improvements should ensure even better results today, one expert said.
"The results of the study could be better if it were done now," said Dr. John Morton, chief of bariatric and minimally invasive surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif.
Since more than 90 percent of weight-loss surgery now is done with minimally invasive procedures that use smaller incisions and involve fewer complications, survival should be even greater, he contends.
Someone having a heart attack may experience any or all of the following:
- Uncomfortable pressure, fullness or squeezing pain in the center of the chest
- Discomfort or pain spreading beyond the chest to the shoulders, neck, jaw, teeth, or one or both arms, or occasionally upper abdomen
- Shortness of breath
- Lightheadedness, dizziness, fainting
- Sweating
- Nausea
What to do if you or someone else may be having a heart attack
- Call 911 or your local medical emergency number. Don't ignore or attempt to tough out the symptoms of a heart attack for more than five minutes. If you don't have access to emergency medical services, have a neighbor or a friend drive you to the nearest hospital. Drive yourself only as a last resort, and realize that it places you and others at risk when you drive under these circumstances.
- Chew and swallow an aspirin, unless you are allergic to aspirin or have been told by your doctor never to take aspirin. But seek emergency help first, such as calling 911.
- Take nitroglycerin, if prescribed. If you think you're having a heart attack and your doctor has previously prescribed nitroglycerin for you, take it as directed. Do not take anyone else's nitroglycerin, because that could put you in more danger.
- Begin CPR if the person is unconscious. If you're with a person who might be having a heart attack and he or she is unconscious, tell the 911 dispatcher or another emergency medical specialist. You may be advised to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). If you haven't received CPR training, doctors recommend skipping mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing and performing only chest compressions (about 100 per minute). The dispatcher can instruct you in the proper procedures until help arrives.
- If an automated external defibrillator (AED) is available and the person is unconscious, begin CPR while the device is retrieved and set up. Attach the device and follow instructions that will be provided by the AED after it has evaluated the person's condition.
Automated external defibrillator:
An automated external defibrillator (AED) is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the life-threatening cardiacarrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia in a patient,[1] and is able to treat them through defibrillation, the application of electrical therapy which stops the arrhythmia, allowing the heart to reestablish an effective rhythm.
With simple audio and visual commands, AEDs are designed to be simple to use for the layperson, and the use of AEDs is taught in manyfirst aid, certified first responder, and basic life support (BLS) level cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) classes.