Empower Mind, Body, Spirit & Soul

SOURCE: Annals of Emergency Medicine, December 2009.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – If you’re planning a trek into the wild, you might want to pack jeans instead of shorts. A new study suggests that a layer of denim offers at least some protection from rattlesnake bites.

It might seem logical that any barrier between you and a rattlesnake’s fangs would be a good thing. But it has not been clear whether ordinary clothing can actually reduce the amount of venom that penetrates the skin.

In the new study, researchers at Loma Linda University in California looked at whether denim might offer some venom protection.

Drs. Shelton S. Herbert and William K. Hayes used latex gloves filled with saline to simulate a human appendage, then exposed the gloves to bites from small and large southern Pacific rattlesnakes. Some of the latex “limbs” were covered in a layer of denim.

The researchers found that compared with the jeans-less gloves, those covered in denim absorbed about two-thirds less venom from the rattlesnake bites. Instead, a high proportion of the venom “spilled harmlessly” onto the denim, the researchers report in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Worldwide, up to 2 million people are bitten by a venomous snake each year, resulting in as many as 100,000 deaths, Herbert and Hayes note in their report.

In the U.S., rattlesnakes are mostly concentrated in the southwest, but can be found in most states. Bites can cause a range of immediate symptoms including pain, bleeding, swelling and color changes around the area of the bite, breathing difficulty and blurred vision.

Untreated, rattlesnake bites are potentially fatal, so victims should get to a hospital emergency room right away.

While avoiding rattlers and their bites is always preferable, jeans may at least lessen the amount of venom that penetrates the body, according to Herbert and Hayes.

“Wearing long denim pants as an alternative to shorts,” they write, “may provide a simple, low-cost means of reducing the severity of snakebites.”

SOURCE: Annals of Emergency Medicine, December 2009.

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SOURCE: Sleep, January 2010.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Two disorders that seem completely unrelated except that each is the focus of massive drug company ad campaigns may actually have something in common: Older men who suffer from restless legs syndrome at night are almost twice as likely to have erectile dysfunction as those without restless legs, researchers report.

Dr. Xiang Gao, of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and his colleagues studied more than 23,000 male dentists, optometrists, veterinarians and other health professionals, who would complete health-related surveys at regular intervals.

In 2000 and 2004, the men were asked to rate their erections on a five point scale from very poor to very good. In 2002, the men answered questions related to restless legs syndrome symptoms. None of these men had diabetes or arthritis, which can both increase the risk of restless legs.

About four percent — 944 — of the men reported symptoms of restless legs syndrome. These men had an average age of 70, while those without restless legs were on average about two years younger, tended to exercise more, and were less likely to smoke.

Of those who reported restless legs, more than half — 53 percent – also reported trouble with their erections, compared to 40 percent of those who did not complain about restless legs.

The likelihood of erectile dysfunction also varied with the severity of restless legs symptoms, researchers found. Men who had restless legs 5 to 14 nights per month were 16 percent more likely to have erectile dysfunction compared to men without restless legs, while men with more than 15 nights of restless legs symptoms had a 78 percent higher chance of erectile dysfunction.

Neither age, ethnicity, obesity, nor tobacco use had any significant effect on the likelihood of the link between the two conditions.

The survey did not ask volunteers if a doctor had diagnosed either of the disorders, only about related symptoms, which is a weakness, said Dr. Thomas Pollm�cher, the director of mental health at Ingolstadt Hospital, Germany.

“The problem with the study is the very rough assessment for restless legs syndrome,” Pollm�cher told Reuters Health, meaning that other conditions could be confused with restless legs. Pollm�cher has studied the syndrome in pregnant women.

Dr. Clete Kushida, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which publishes the journal Sleep, told Reuters Health the study relies on sound reasoning and is generally well done. However, echoing Pollm�cher’s critique, he notes that the criteria of restless legs syndrome changed after the 2002 survey, which could affect how meaningful the results are.

“It would have been nice to have had the exact four criteria used,” Kushida said. Those criteria are an urge to move the legs, getting temporary relief with movement, worse symptoms at rest, and worse symptoms in the evening.

Gao agreed that the diagnosis of restless legs syndrome is not as straightforward as other diagnoses, and that some of the men who reported restless legs syndrome probably did not really have it.

That lack of clarity has led some to suggest that restless legs syndrome is an example of “disease mongering,” in which drug companies expand the definitions of a disease to make it seem that more people need to be treated. Boosted by a widespread ad campaign, sales of Requip, one of the two FDA-approved treatments for restless legs syndrome, reached more than $500 million before the agency approved a generic form of the drug in 2008.

It wasn’t the ads that prompted Gao to undertake this work, and no drug companies were involved in the federally-funded study. Gao told Reuters Health that his team had noticed that both conditions seem to involve dopamine, an important message-carrying chemical, or neurotransmitter.

He’d like to do a study with men who have confirmed restless legs syndrome to better test the potential link.

Still, Kushida said, “based on these findings, it would be a good idea for doctors to ask their male restless legs patients if they have erectile dysfunction.”

Kushida suggested that there may be a role for restless legs drugs in erectile dysfunction treatment, and said the question warrants further research.

SOURCE: Sleep, January 2010.

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SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, December 2009

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Studies reporting a link between sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain have garnered a lot of attention but actually research on the issue has yielded mixed results, researchers note in a new report.

“The purported link between soft drinks and other beverages and obesity risk is unclear and complicated, especially in youth,” Dr. Mark A. Pereira, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and an author on the report, told Reuters Health.

In the study Pereira and colleagues conducted, they found no link between weight gain over 5 years and teens’ drinking of sugar-sweetened beverages.

According to report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Pereira’s team assessed diet, lifestyle, and weight in 2,294 ethnically-diverse boys and girls in the Minneapolis/St. Paul school system.

Initially, when the teens were about 15 years old, 1,289 reported drinking 7 or more servings of white milk weekly, while 1,456 said they drank sugar-sweetened punch and 1,325 said they drank sugary soft drinks up to 6 times a week. Additionally, about 1,300 of these teens said they drank up to 6 servings of apple juice or orange juice weekly.

The investigators saw no overall association between consumption of sweetened beverages and the teens’ weight gain over 5 years after allowing for other behaviors tied to beverage drinking habits and weight status.

However, Pereira and colleagues found drinking little or no white milk tied to greater gains in body mass index (BMI); while drinking white milk nearly every day or more often seemed tied to lesser BMI gains. BMI — calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared — is a standard way to determine how fat or thin a person is.

Their findings also showed an association between diet soft drink intake and greater weight gain, but this finding “appeared to be explained by overall dieting practices,” rather than diet soda drinking, Pereira noted.

The link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity risk in youth may be “weaker than we have been led to believe by individual high-profile studies,” Pereira said. For clarity on this topic, his group suggests further large-scale, well-conducted investigations.

A recent study in adults found that cutting back on sugar-laden drinks was associated with weight loss and seemed to have a bigger impact on weight than cutting back on solid foods.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, December 2009

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