Lesbian health problems 'ignored'

The long-term health of some lesbian and bisexual women is at risk because the NHS is not meeting their needs, say campaigners.

A survey of more than 6,000 lesbian and bisexual women, by charity Stonewall, revealed many had never had a cervical smear, or a test for sex infections.

Some reported NHS staff had wrongly told them they were "not at risk".

A government spokesman said it took "health inequalities" seriously, and planned to work with Stonewall.

Stonewall said that the survey results showed that lesbian and bisexual women were less likely to approach the NHS, and less likely to receive appropriate advice when they did.

Two thirds of those questioned by De Montford University researchers said they had smoked at some point - a significantly higher proportion than women in the general population.

Lesbian and bisexual women were also five times more likely to have used recreational drugs.

The survey also suggested that mental health problems were far more common among lesbian and bisexual women.

One in five reported having harmed themselves during the past year, and 5% said they had tried to take their own lives - a much higher rate than in the general population.

Lesbian and bisexual women have a significant risk of sexually-transmitted infection, but fewer than half had been tested in the past five years. Half of those tested were found to have an infection.

However, 4% said that a healthcare worker had advised them they did not need a test.

Smear fear

The same was true in cervical screening, with 15% of over 25-year-olds revealing they had never had a test, compared with 7% in the general population.

One in five of those who had never received one had been told by NHS staff that it was unnecessary because they had never had sex with a man, and a few had been refused a test.

Stonewall's Ruth Hunt, one of the study authors, said: "This provides a 'wake-up call' to healthcare practitioners across the country.

"It demonstrates that hundreds of thousands of lesbian and bisexual women feel highly uncomfortable about engaging with the NHS."

Dr Catherine Mercer, from University College London, who has researched the sexual health risks facing lesbian and bisexual women, said that it was important that doctors were trained not to make assumptions about the sexual behaviour of women.

"Our research showed that women who have sex with women often have also had sex with men in the recent past, so even if a woman is saying that she is a lesbian, she can still be at higher risk of sexually transmitted diseases."

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that it took seriously any differences in health between different groups, and pledged to work with Stonewall.

"We welcome this research. It provides valuable evidence about the health needs of lesbian and bisexual women."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7459045.stm

Anorexia nervosa may not stunt growth, short term

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adolescent girls with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa may reach normal height once they recover from the disease, new research suggests.

However, growth may be permanently stunted in girls who suffer from anorexia for longer than about 2.5 years, according to the research conducted by Dr. Rajani Prabhakaran of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues.

Studies on the impact of anorexia on growth and stature have yielded mixed results. While anorexia might be expected to cause short stature, and some studies suggest that girls with the eating disorder are indeed shorter than normal, other research suggests they may reach their full height potential, or even be taller than average.

During normal puberty, levels of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) rise, triggering a growth spurt, Prabhakaran and colleagues explain in the journal Pediatrics. Growth slows and eventually stops as estrogen levels rise. It's possible, they say, that this process of growth and bone aging is delayed in girls with anorexia, giving them a chance to reach their full potential height after they recover.

To investigate, the researchers looked at 110 12- to 18-year-old girls with anorexia and 98 healthy controls of the same age. They followed a subset of both groups for a year, and also tested hormone levels over a 12-hour period in some of them. They estimated the girls' potential adult height based on the heights of their parents.

They found that girls with anorexia had lower levels of IGF-1 than the healthy girls, although most had levels of the hormone within the normal range. They had relatively high levels of GH, suggesting that they had become resistant to this hormone's effects.

Girls with the lowest IGF-1 levels and those with anorexia for the longest period of time were the shortest. And while GH levels predicted height in the healthy girls, GH levels weren't related to height in the girls with anorexia, suggesting that the hormone didn't influence bone growth in girls with the condition.

Girls who had been sick for 32 months or longer were shorter than average, while those who had the condition for at least 29.5 months had a lower-than-average predicted adult heights.

Among girls with anorexia who hadn't yet reached puberty, a greater delay in bone aging was linked to faster growth during follow-up.

"It is possible that previous reports of short stature with anorexia were from studies in children with a prolonged duration of anorexia and delayed diagnosis," the researchers say. "In such situations, a delay in bone aging may not be sufficient to protect against statural deficits that arise from very low and sustained IGF-1 levels consequent to severe and prolonged undernutrition."

They call for long-term, larger studies to further investigate whether girls with more severe anorexia and those who have had the condition for a longer time are indeed at greater risk of stunted growth.

Source: http://www.reutershealth.com/en/index.html

Guideline would boost cholesterol drug use

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of U.S. adults on cholesterol-lowering medication could rise by one-quarter to one-half if doctors were to routinely scan adults' arteries for plaque buildup, a study suggests.

In 2006, a group of prominent cardiologists, dubbed the SHAPE Task Force, drew up recommendations for a new way to assess middle-aged and older adults' heart attack risk.

Instead of looking only at standard risk factors -- like smoking and high blood pressure -- doctors, the task force said, should routinely use CT scans to look for calcium deposits in the coronary arteries.

Calcium is a component of the artery-clogging "plaques" that can eventually trigger a heart attack. Studies show that a person's calcium score, determined via CT scan, is predictive of his or her odds of suffering a heart attack.

The SHAPE group recommended that most men ages 45 to 75 and most women ages 55 to 75 have a CT scan to help predict their heart risks. The results would also help determine whether they need to start on a statin drug to better control their "bad" LDL cholesterol.

Under the guidelines, the only people who would not be screened would be those already at very high risk of heart attack, and those at very low risk -- because they lack all the important risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.

In the current study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers estimated how such widespread CT screening would affect cholesterol drug prescriptions.

Dr. Raphael See and colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas used data from a project called the Dallas Heart Study, which included 2,611 adults who had their coronary artery calcium measured by CT.

The researchers found that if SHAPE guidelines were applied, more people would be considered to have risky LDL levels -- though in some cases, CT scan results actually "reclassified" people as having a lower heart attack risk than their traditional risk factors indicated.

On balance, the SHAPE guidelines would increase the number of "statin- eligible" people by 27 percent, See's team found.

However, the study participants ranged in age from 30 to 65. Leaving out men younger than 45 and women younger than 55, the statin-eligible proportion of patients rose by as much as 48 percent. If there had been any participants older than 65, that increase would likely be greater, the researchers say.

However, an important question left unanswered by this study is whether putting all those extra individuals on cholesterol medication will actually prevent heart attacks and deaths, according to an editorial published with the report.

The study "is necessary and important but does not in itself provide sufficient evidence for the adoption of the SHAPE recommendations," write Dr. Mark J. Pletcher, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Dr. Philip Greenland, of Northwestern University in Chicago.

Nor does the SHAPE task force represent any official or professional organization. Pletcher and Greenland question where the task force's funding came from, and whether "conflicts of interest might bias the authors' judgment."

The SHAPE recommendations provide "food for thought," the editorialists write. "But as a guideline for clinical use, SHAPE does not shape up."

Source: http://www.reutershealth.com/en/index.html

Sunlight, Vitamin D May Cut Kids' Diabetes Risk

Adequate sun exposure and vitamin D levels may play an important role in helping to prevent type 1 diabetes in children, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, analyzed type 1 diabetes incidence rates and found that populations living at or near the equator -- where there is abundant sunshine -- have lower rates of the disease than populations at higher latitudes, where there is less sunlight.

Sunlight exposure causes the skin to produce vitamin D, which is also available through food and supplements.

"This is the first study, to our knowledge, to show that higher serum levels of vitamin D are associated with reduced incidence rates of type 1 diabetes worldwide," Cedric F. Garland, professor of family and preventive medicine, said in a prepared statement.

"The research suggests that childhood type 1 diabetes may be preventable with a modest intake of vitamin D3 (1,000 IU/day), ideally with five to 10 minutes of sunlight around noontime, when good weather allows," Garland said.

"Infants less than a year old should not be given more than 400 IU per day without consulting a doctor. Hats and dark glasses are a good idea to wear when in the sun at any age, and can be used if the child will tolerate them," he advised.

The study was published online Thursday in the journal Diabetologia.

Garland and his colleagues called for public health action to reduce widespread vitamin D inadequacy in U.S. children.

"This study presents strong epidemiological evidence to suggest that we may be able to prevent new cases of type 1 diabetes. By preventing this disease, we would prevent its many devastating consequences," Garland said.

Type 1 diabetes is the second most common chronic childhood disease, behind asthma. About 1.5 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, and about 15,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. The disease is the main cause of blindness in young and middle-aged adults and is among the leading causes of kidney failure and transplants in that age group, according to a news release about the study.

By HealthDay

Herbalism

The use of plants for healing is by far the world's oldest and most widely known therapy. Since the beginning of time, the knowledge of herbal remedies has been handed down from generation to generation. With the growth of synthetic drug manufacturing, however, the direct use of medicinal plants for a time, became a thing of the past. It's only recently that there has been an increase in interest in herbalism as a method of medicine that is safe, natural, and cheap.

The purpose of herbal remedies is to stimulate the body's own natural healing abilities by cleansing and rebalancing. Like the synthetic drugs, many herbs contain antibacterial and antiviral properties. The advantage of herbal remedies is their ability to rapidly return the body to a state of health without the damaging side effects; unlike synthetic drugs. Herbs correctly prescribed, can be combined to target, regulate, heal or tone any organ in the body, unless the tissue has been completely destroyed.

The earliest known records of medicinal herbs date back to 3,000 BC, from northern China. The herbs identified in those records; such as, myrrh and frankincense, are still being used today. At that time, however, herbalism was often explained in terms of astrology and folklore.

From the 16th century on, the division between herbalism and allopathic medicine grew further and further apart. By the 19th century, published knowledge of herbalism had increased through advances in scientific botany, and a number of North American Indian herbal remedies had been added to the pharmacopoeia, the list of medicinal drugs. However, herbal cures were out of fashion.

Pre-packaged medicines used in orthodox medical practice are in fact extracted from traditional medicinal herbs; such as digitalis and aspirin. Research establishments have confirmed the value of the traditional uses of whole herbs.

Qualified medical herbalist combines sophisticated understanding of the human body with the knowledge of herbal pharmacopoeia. They are trained to search out the root cause of ailments and symptoms. Diarrhea, for example, may have many possible causes; among them, a viral infection, nervous stress, diet, or even contaminated water. Although many herbs will correct the symptoms, it takes an experienced practitioner to identify the cause. For this reason it is wise to consult a professional, even if you have read about the effects of a remedy and matched it to an ailment.

By Edith Lingenfelter