Health Tip: Prevent Runner's Knee

(HealthDay News) - Symptoms of runner's knee typically include pain in and around the kneecap, particularly when running, squatting, kneeling or walking up or down stairs.

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons offers these suggestions to help prevent runner's knee:

• Take time to get your body in good condition before performing activities that stress the knees.
• Try to lose weight. Being overweight puts additional stress on the knees.
• Always warm up and stretch your legs before you exercise. Remember to stretch after your workout, as well.
• Increase activity gradually. Trying to do too much before your body is conditioned for it can cause injury.
• Wear supportive running shoes that absorb shock well. Try to run on somewhat softer surfaces.
• Practice good form when running, leaning slightly forward and keeping your knees bent.

Stimulating Thymus Reactivates T-Cell Production

(HealthDay News) -- It's possible to stimulate the thymus gland to produce new immune system T-cells in adults infected with HIV, U.S. researchers say.

HIV infection destroys T-cells, which leads to the collapse of the immune system and severe infection. The thymus gland produces T-cells early in life but gradually loses function and becomes mostly inactive in adulthood. That means it's difficult for HIV-infected adults to produce new T-cells to rebuild their depleted immune systems.

It has long been believed that it wasn't possible to reactivate T-cell production in the thymus. The new study, by researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), is the first to show that therapy can help boost thymus function in adults.

The two-year study of 22 HIV-infected adults found that treatment with growth hormone (GH) increased thymus mass and more than doubled the number of newly made T-cells. The results are published in the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

"These results represent new proof-of-principle findings that thymic involution can be reversed in humans," study author Dr. Laura Napolitano, an assistant investigator at Gladstone and an assistant professor of medicine at UCSF, said in a prepared statement.

"Improved T-cell production may be helpful for some medical conditions such as HIV disease or bone marrow transplantation. These findings contribute new information to our understanding of T-cell production and are also an important step to determine whether immune therapies might someday benefit patients who need more T-cells," Napolitano said.

However, much more research is needed to determine whether stimulating production of new T-cells actually provides a health benefit for HIV patients or anyone else, the researchers said.

More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about HIV/AIDS.

Portable Computer Devices Can Aid Exercise Programs

(HealthDay News) -- Specially programmed personal digital assistants (PDAs) can help encourage middle-aged and older Americans to increase their physical activity levels, a Stanford University study says.

The 37 study participants were randomly assigned to receive either traditional physical activity information handouts or a PDA loaded with a program that asked questions designed to help users set physical activity goals, track their activity, and get feedback on how well they were meeting their goals.

The device automatically beeped once in the morning and once in the evening to remind users to review the questions. If a person didn't respond to the initial beep, the device beeped three additional times at 30-minute intervals.

After eight weeks, the people with the PDAs had exercised about five hours a week, compared to two hours a week for those with the traditional handouts.

The researchers said they were surprised that PDA users weren't annoyed by the program's additional reminder beeps.

"The PDAs can really keep on you. We were surprised by that; we thought by the time (users) heard the fourth beep, they might find it annoying and not respond at all," Abby King, a professor of health research and policy and of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Center, said in a prepared statement.

In a previous study, King found that automated computer calls were almost as effective as live health educators in encouraging sedentary people to get more active. The researchers feel it's important to find ways to help people boost their physical activity while taking into account their schedules and surroundings.

"Portable computer devices are useful, because they can be carried around throughout a person's day. Such devices represent one kind of strategy for being able to provide individuals with the help and support they need, in a convenient, real-time context," King said.

She noted that cell phones are another example of devices that could help encourage physical activity. "Especially now that we have the iPhone; its big screen would be very useful for providing visual feedback."

The findings were published in the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about exercise.

U.S. Seeks to Limit Animal Testing of Toxic Chemicals

(HealthDay News) -- U.S. government scientists proposed Thursday to limit the testing of potentially toxic chemicals on animals and replace it with new high-tech testing methods.

According to an agreement involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. National Toxicology Program, toxicity tests will start being done using human cells in laboratories, robots, and computer modeling. This approach should enable researchers to analyze more data on the toxic effects of chemicals -- ranging from pesticides to household cleaners -- more quickly, greatly reducing the need for animal testing, the scientists said.

"The research collaboration we are announcing today really has the potential to revolutionize the way toxic chemicals are identified," Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, said during a morning teleconference.

This collaboration is still a research effort, Collins noted. "In the long term, we might be able to do a better job of predicting toxicity by using these cell-based tests, but we don't know if that's going to be as good as we would like. The purpose of this collaboration is to test this out," he said.

The report outlining the proposal is published in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Science.

Historically, toxicity has been determined by injecting chemicals into lab animals and watching to see if they got sick. "Though that approach has given us valuable information, it is expensive, it is time-consuming, it uses animals in large numbers, and it doesn't always predict which chemicals will be harmful to humans," Collins said.

New technology has made testing chemicals much faster and more accurate.

"As a society, we need to be able to test thousands of chemicals in thousands of conditions at a much faster rate than we did before," Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, said during the teleconference. "The idea here is to move the 20th century paradigm of testing one compound at a time in many animals to a 21st century paradigm to test five to 10,000 compounds against 5,000 to 20,000 conditions in cells that are specific to human toxicology."

These new methods include using high-speed, automated screening robots to test suspected toxic compounds, instead of using laboratory animals.

What the federal agencies are trying to do can be seen by comparing what has been done so far with what they hope new technology will allow them to do.

For example, the National Toxicology Program has been in existence for about 30 years. During that time, using animals, the program has tested 2,500 chemicals. However, using the new methods, the testing of 2,500 compounds in 15 different concentrations can be done in a single afternoon, the federal scientists said.

The scientists said it's not clear how long it would take before this high-tech testing is fully implemented. It's also not certain how much animal testing can be eliminated, they said.
Still, one animal-rights group thinks the new plan could be a giant step forward in limiting animal testing.

"We are very excited about this movement in the U.S. government," said Kate Willett, a senior policy adviser at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). "It really does represent a paradigm shift -- a new way of thinking about toxicity testing, which is great."

Not only do the new methods rely less on animals, they do a better job of protecting human health, she said.

"We are hopeful that this prevailing wind will provide momentum needed to overcome the historical inertia that's been prevalent in both the National Toxicology Program and EPA," Willett said. "Both of those groups relied heavily on animals and have been very resistant to moving away from animal testing. We are hoping that this new view will be able to overcome the inertia."

More information
For more on animal testing, visit the Humane Society of the United States.

Health Tip: Allergy Shots Aren't for Everyone

(HealthDay News) - Allergy shots help sensitize your body to allergens -- things to which you're allergic.
While the shots are safe and effective for most people, not everyone should have them, the American Academy of Family Physicians warns.Here's the academy's list of people who probably shouldn't have allergy shots:

• People with severe asthma.
• People who have heart problems.
• People who take a beta blocker for a heart condition.
• Children under age 5.
• Pregnant women.

Health Tip: Protect Your Child From Flu

(HealthDay News) - Children are in constant contact with germs, and can easily spread them to others. Flu is a particularly nasty nemesis, but it can be prevented.

Here are ways to help reduce your child's risk of getting the flu, courtesy of the Children's Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco:

• Flu vaccine is recommended for children aged 6 months to 23 months, and for children aged 2 and older who are at a high risk of contracting flu.
• Hand washing also is an easy way to help prevent flu. Your child should wash her hands thoroughly and frequently, with soap and warm water.
• Parents and caregivers should also should wash their hands often, and get a flu vaccine.
  Teach your child to cover her mouth when she coughs or sneezes, and to wash her hands afterward.
• Try to keep your child away from others who are sick. Keep her home from school if she has symptoms of a cold or the flu.

Health Tip: Soothing Engorged Breasts

(HealthDay News) - After giving birth, a woman's breasts can become large and swollen -- called engorged. This is caused by congestion of the blood vessels in the breast. When this happens, the nipples may not protrude to allow the baby to nurse.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine lists these suggested remedies:

• Try to feed often throughout the day -- at least eight times in a 24-hour period.
• Feed for at least 15 minutes at each sitting.
• If your breasts feel uncomfortable and you are unable to feed your baby, express your milk with a breast pump.
• Take a warm shower to soothe soreness.
• Apply a cool compress to reduce swelling and ease pain.

Mercury in Childhood Vaccines Excreted Quickly

(HealthDay News) -- The latest chapter in the debate over whether childhood vaccines can cause autism was written Wednesday with release of a study that showed the controversial mercury-containing preservative thimerosal is rapidly excreted from babies' bodies and can't reach toxic levels.

"Thimerosal has been used for decades, but the surge in vaccinations caused fear that possible accumulations of ethyl mercury, the kind in thimerosal, might exceed safe levels -- at least, when based on the stringent risk guidelines applied to its better-understood chemical cousin, methyl mercury, which is associated with eating fish," lead researcher Dr. Michael Pichichero, a professor of microbiology/immunology, pediatrics and medicine at the University of Rochester, said in a statement.

"One of the unanswered questions when this first popped up as a controversy was, when you got thimerosal as an injection, how long would it stay in your blood," study co-author Dr. John Treanor, a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said.

The new research, he added, showed that "the levels of thimerosal don't go very high, and they go down right away. By the time it's time for the next dose of vaccine, the levels are right back to where they were at the beginning."

For its study, Pichichero's team tracked 216 infants from R. Gutierrez Children's Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where thimerosal is still routinely used in vaccines. Use of thimerosal in childhood vaccines was discontinued in the United States after a joint decision in 1999 by U.S. health officials, pediatricians and vaccine manufacturers.

The infants in the study were put into three age groups and their blood-mercury levels were tested both before and after vaccinations were given to newborns, and at their 2- and 6-month checkups.

Pichichero's group found that for all three age groups, the half-life of ethyl mercury in the blood -- the time it takes for the body to get rid of half the mercury, and then another half, and so on -- was 3.7 days. That's significantly less than the half-life of methyl mercury, the kind found in fish, at 44 days.

"Until recently, that longer half-life was assumed to be the rule for both types of mercury. Now it's obvious that ethyl mercury's short half-life prevents toxic build-up from occurring. It's just gone too fast," Pichichero said.

"If you thought thimerosal was responsible for autism, you would be looking at mercury levels that were far below anything anyone's previously thought as being toxic," Treanor added.

"Though it's reassuring to affirm that these immunizations have always been safe, our findings really have greater implications for world health," Pichichero said. "Replacing the thimerosal in vaccines globally would put these vaccines beyond what the world community could afford for its children."

The findings were to be released Monday in the February issue of Pediatrics, but they were released early by the journal's publisher, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which is requesting that the ABC network cancel the premiere episode of a new show Thursday dealing with the thimerosal-autism controversy.

The findings also follow a recent report from the California Department of Health that rates of autism continue to climb there even after thimerosal has been removed from childhood vaccines.

"A much more fundamental observation has been as mercury has been eliminated from vaccines in many countries the rates at which autism are being diagnosed continue to go up at about the same rate as before the mercury was removed," Treanor noted. "There doesn't seem to be any relationship between the frequency of autism and whether children are getting vaccines with mercury or not."

And they follow a series of studies, including a large-scale U.S. Institute of Medicine review in 2004, that failed to uncover a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The first report of a possible connection appeared in British study in the late 1990s; it has since been discredited.

Current estimates by the U.S. National Institutes of Health say that one American child in 150 has been diagnosed with autism, although experts wonder if that increase is due to better diagnoses and a broader definition of the disorder.

Still, at least one vaccine critic worries that inoculations are making children prone to autism, a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, communication problems, and unusual, repetitive, or severely limited activities and interests. And if it's not thimerosal, then it must be some other vaccine-related interaction, said Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center.

"There are many biological mechanisms involved in vaccine-induced brain and immune system changes that could quite well lead to autism," she said.

"Mercury doesn't belong in any product," Fisher added. "Mercury doesn't belong in vaccines whether it's proven or not proven that mercury is a problem in vaccines."

In ABC's new TV series Eli Stone, the premiere Thursday focuses on a lawyer arguing that a vaccine caused a child's autism. While the show includes statements that science has refuted a link between autism and vaccines, the program reinforces the connection as the jury awards the mother $5.2 million, according to the AAP.

"If parents watch this program and choose to deny their children immunizations, ABC will share in the responsibility for the suffering and deaths that occur as a result. The consequences of a decline in immunization rates could be devastating to the health of our nation's children," AAP President Dr. Renee R. Jenkins said in a prepared statement.

More information
For more on thimerosal and autism, visit the The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.