Health Tip: Watch For Frostbite

(HealthDay News) - Frostbite occurs when body tissue essentially freezes after exposure to extreme cold.

Children are at greater risk because their body heat escapes more easily, and because they may be less prone to coming inside when it's downright freezing, the Nemours Foundation says.
The foundation offers these suggestions aimed at warding off frostbite among kids:

• Get your child inside immediately if you notice fingers, cheeks, ears, lips, nose or toes that are turning white. If these areas take on a waxy appearance, seek emergency treatment at once.
• Take off all wet clothes.
• Get your child into a warm bath until there's feeling again in the affected areas. Be sure to use warm water, not hot.
• Don't let your child control the water temperature, as she can be burned because she can't feel if water is too hot.

Health Tip: Don't Get Burned by Hot Water

(HealthDay News) -- Almost 2 million people in the United States are treated for burns every year, and about 112,000 of these burns are involve scalding water.

According to the Safe Kids Coalition, about 37,000 of burn victims are 14 or younger, and about 18,000 are age 5 or younger.

About half of hot water burns occur because parents put children in water that is too hot.

The National Ag Safety Database says parents can protect their children by turning the home water heater down to 120 degrees. And always test bath water before putting a child in it. If the water feels hot to you, it could easily burn a child.

You can also safeguard your child by putting him in the bath with his back to the faucet, so he can't turn the water on. Also try knob covers for the bathroom tub.

Health Tip: Grinding Your Teeth?

(HealthDay News) - Frequent grinding of the teeth is a condition known as bruxism. Depending on severity, it could cause anything from pain and discomfort to fractures of the teeth.

Here's more information about bruxism, courtesy of the American Dental Association:

• Bruxism may involve clenching of the jaw as well as tooth grinding.
• Triggers may include stress, sleep problems, crooked or missing teeth, or anxiety.
• Symptoms can include headache, painful teeth and a sore jaw.
• Preventives may include a mouth guard to wear during sleep, muscle reaxants, and counseling to deal with stress.

Daily Stress May Raise Women's Risk of Cervical Cancer

(HealthDay News) -- High levels of daily stress could explain why some women infected with malignancy-linked types of human papillomavirus (HPV) develop cervical cancer, a new study suggests.

Scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia tested 74 women, all diagnosed with cervical dysplasia (precancerous cervical lesions), for an immune response to HPV 16, one of the strains of human papillomavirus thought to be a major cause of cervical cancer. The women also completed a questionnaire that assessed stressful life events experienced during the previous six months -- including deaths of family members, loss of a job or divorce -- as well as their perceived daily stress level over the previous month.

The research, published in the February issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine, found that slightly more than 55 percent of the women tested positive for one or more types of HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that can cause genital warts as well as cancer.

"We observed that stress was associated with deficits in immune response to HPV 16," said Carolyn Y. Fang, the study's lead investigator.

Most HPV infections in healthy women disappear over time without progressing to precancerous cervical lesions or cancer. "That means HPV infection alone is not sufficient to cause cervical cancer," Fang said. "Our study suggests a potential mechanism by which stress may influence cervical disease progression.

"We were surprised to discover no significant association between the occurrence of major stressful life events and immune response to HPV 16, possibly because of the amount of time that had passed since the event and how the women coped," she added. "However, women with higher perceived levels of daily stress were more likely to have an impaired immune response."

HPV expert Dr. Kevin Ault, associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said, "It is unusual to see psychology and immunology in the same study, and this is very interesting. It is clear that almost all sexually active men and women get infected by HPV but very few have cancer. We already knew that nutrition may play a role. It seems likely that immune responses to HPV are influenced by stress, too."

Dr. Charles Raison, clinical director of Emory University's Mind-Body Program, said the new study adds to the growing evidence that stress can negatively influence health.

"There is data that stress can put the immune system at a disadvantage in dealing with viral infections. Even daily hassles like commuting in bad traffic can impact how the body functions," he said. "If a person with HPV is feeling stressed, it is important to do something positive to reduce the stress load. Exercise is known to help, and psychiatric therapy for any depression is important, too."

Fang added: "We want women to understand that stress does not cause cervical cancer, and feeling stressed out does not mean that one will develop cervical cancer. In this initial study, we observed that stress was associated with deficits in immune response to HPV. Whether stress causes these deficits, however, is unknown, and much more research will need to be done."
To that end, Fang and her research team have launched a five-year randomized trial to examine whether participation in an eight-week stress reduction program can lead to enhanced HPV-specific immune responses in women diagnosed with cervical dysplasia.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics show that one in four American women between the ages of 14 and 59 years is infected with HPV. Gardasil, a vaccine that protects against several cancer-causing HPV sub-types, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, the vaccine works best when given to girls before they become sexually active and is not effective in women already infected.

That means the best protection against cervical cancer for sexually active women, whether or not diagnosed with HPV, is to have regular Pap tests and to develop good health habits, Ault said.

More information
For more on HPV and cervical cancer, visit the CDC.

Most Breast Cancer Web Pages Contain Reliable Information

(HealthDay News) -- Just 5 percent of Web pages devoted to breast cancer contain inaccurate information. But pages focused on complementary or alternative medicine are 15 times more likely to make misleading claims and contain other false information, a new study says.

Moreover, standard measures of quality developed to assess the accuracy of Web pages don't really work, said the authors of the study, published in the March 15 issue of the journal Cancer.

"There is no completely reliable Web site, but the bottom line is more information is always better. But consider the source and be cautious in interpreting what you read," said study senior author Dr. Funda Meric-Bernstam, associate professor of surgical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

"The good news is 95 percent of the information is correct," added Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. "I have recommended the Internet [to patients] for 10 years. I give them a list." The U.S. National Cancer Institute is high on that list, he said.

According to the study, 44 percent of women recently diagnosed with breast cancer search the Internet for relevant information about the disease. Many visit the Internet before seeing a physician, which means they may be forming opinions and making treatment choices without professional input, the study authors said.

"I have been surprised at how many patients come into the clinic having read something online," Meric-Bernstam said. "Many come in having read about my background, some of them have read my papers, even my lab papers."

Hundreds of quality-rating tools have been developed to help evaluate Web sites. They include such criteria as can you tell who the author is, and is it clear the last time the site was updated.
Still, it's not clear if these methods can sort accurate from inaccurate information, the study authors said.

The researchers looked at 343 breast cancer Web pages found by using five popular search engines, including Google and Yahoo. Each page was evaluated based on 15 quality criteria. The authors then cross-referenced assessments from the 15 criteria with how accurate the pages were.

Overall, there were 41 inaccurate statements on 18 Web pages (5.2 percent), although complementary or alternative medicine pages were 15.6 times more likely to contain false information.

But the quality criteria did not sift the good from the bad Web sites, the researchers said.
"Many of these quality criteria that have been proposed do not allow us to select out inaccurate from accurate Web sites," Meric-Bernstam said.

The Internet can be a useful resource, but relying exclusively on the Web for health information isn't a good idea, the experts said.

"Just because you read something doesn't mean it's right," Brooks said. "I tell my patients, 'You're going to look things up. I can't stop you, but you're paying me to sort through information and give you advice. You're paying for professional expertise.' Knowing something doesn't mean you know how to make it work."

More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has a guide to searching the Web.

Alzheimer's Plaques Can Form in One Day

(HealthDay News) -- An advanced imaging study has captured the fact that amyloid plaques, the harbingers of Alzheimer's disease, can develop in just 24 hours.

"They form more rapidly than expected," said Dr. Bradley Hyman, leader of the group reporting the finding in the Feb. 7 issue of Nature. Once the plaques develop, damage is evident in nearby nerve cells almost immediately, he added.

"The study we've done, using an animal model of Alzheimer's disease, tried to sort out the order in which things occur," said Hyman, director of the Alzheimer's Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease. "We've had snapshots of individual steps in the past. This microscopic technology gives us the ability to watch the process from beginning to end, to see the variety of things that happen as inflammatory cells get activated."

The microscopic imaging, done first weekly and then daily, found that plaque formation was a relatively rare event. But plaques could be seen in some animals in as little as 24 hours after a plaque-free image was taken.

What happens in the animals, mice bred to develop amyloid plaques, almost certainly happens in the human brain, Hyman said, and the finding could be applied to humans at risk for developing Alzheimer's.

"Knowing that plaque occurs quickly implies that something initiates it," he said. "That is the next question to be answered."

The studies showed that nerve cell changes associated with Alzheimer's disease appear within days. The results confirm suspicions that plaque formation is a primary event in the abnormal cell activity that underlies Alzheimer's disease, Hyman said.

"Watching the pathology unfold in real time dynamically, that is an extremely exciting move forward," said Dr. Sam Gandy, chairman of the Alzheimer's Association medical and scientific advisory council. Gandy recently became associate director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

The finding does have immediate relevance to the effort to develop treatments for Alzheimer's disease, Gandy said. "It reinforces the idea that anti-amyloid medication is a rational strategy," he said. "It reinforces the idea that attacking amyloid plaque helps nerve cells. You can see in nerve cells nearby changes in shape indicating that the cells are reacting to amyloid plaque, that is a link between those features of a pathology."

The study also answers a question about whether amyloid plaque can form only near blood vessels, Gandy said. "There have been reports that every amyloid plaque had a blood vessel somewhere," he explained. "That seems not to be the case."

But formation of amyloid plaque is not the only brain change associated with Alzheimer's disease, Hyman noted. Another notable feature consists of changes in the tau proteins that normally provide a scaffold for orderly function of nerve cells in the brain. Those tau proteins can become disordered, forming tangles that lead to destruction of nerve cells.

Studies of the formation of those tangles, using the same technology that led to the plaque discovery, are about to begin, Hyman said.

More information
Keep up to date on Alzheimer's disease by consulting the Alzheimer's Association.

Ear Wax Softener Can Affect Hearing, Study Reports

(HealthDay News) - An over-the-counter ear wax softener may cause inflammation and damage to the eardrum and inner ear, and harm hearing in the process, report Canadian researchers who made the discovery in an animal study.

The researchers looked at the effect of a softener called Cerumenex on hearing and the ear cells in chinchillas, a standard model for this type of research.

The product is no longer sold in the United States, according to a spokesman for its manufacturer, Purdue Pharma LP.

"Purdue discontinued U.S. distribution of this product in 2002," James Heins said. But, he added, the product is still marketed in Canada and Europe.

In the study, published recently in The Laryngoscope, a team led by Dr. Sam Daniel, director of the McGill University Auditory Sciences Lab at The Montreal Children's Hospital, inserted tympanostomy tubes in one of the ears of five chinchillas.

These tubes are often used in children with middle ear infections, to keep fluid from accumulating behind the ear drum. The chinchilla has a hearing mechanism similar to humans, Daniel explained in a prepared statement.

His team assessed hearing in both ears of all the animals and then introduced the wax softener, which is dropped into the ear canal, into the ears with the tubes.

In four of five ears with tubes, the researchers noticed swelling, crusting and fluid accumulation. One animal developed facial paralysis on the side treated with the softener.

The ears without the tubes served as the controls. When the team evaluated the animals' hearing, they found a reduction in hearing in the treated ears, as well as damage to the treated ears' nerve cells. Some of the effects occurred after just one of the four doses had been given.

Daniel and his colleague recommended caution in using the wax softener if the status of a person's eardrum is not known.

Randy Steffan, a spokesman for Purdue Pharma in Canada, said that the company is aware of the study and plans to follow up with the Montreal Children's Hospital researchers to review the full results.

Meanwhile, he said, "the package insert clearly specifies not to use Cerumenex if there is perforated eardrum, middle ear infection, atopic dermatitis or inflammation of the external ear or a previous skin reaction." Cerumenex has been available in Canada since 1958, he added.

Instead of using a wax softener, those with a wax problem who do not have a perforated drum may be advised by their doctor to flush the ears with warm water using an ear bulb. They could then use an eye dropper to apply a few drops of a solution of 50-50 alcohol and white vinegar, said Dr. Chester Griffiths, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, Santa Monica, CA.

However, people with a hole in their eardrum should not do that, he added. If someone has a perforated drum, he needs to see an ear doctor if there is excess wax or other problem, Griffiths said.

For others, routinely taking care of the wax problem is advisable, he said.

"The problem with wax is, when people feel it, it's too late. And they use wax softener and it can make it worse," Griffiths added.

More information
There's more on ear wax at the American Academy of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery.