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Just seeing a sick person may give your immune system a boost, a new study claims.

Canadian researchers showed participants two sets of slides on two different days. The first set was neutral, displaying pictures of furniture. The second set was either a slideshow that showed photos of people with pox, blowing their noses, sneezing and other obvious signs of illness, or a slideshow of people with guns.

Before and after each slideshow, blood samples were taken from the volunteers. The researchers added bacteria to the blood samples to test for immune response. The participants who saw the slide show of sick people had a stronger immune response than those who viewed the pictures of men aiming guns at them.

A strong immune response to the sight of people who are sick may have been an evolutionary adaptation, according to the University of British Columbia researchers.

“It seems like it’s probably good for the immune system to be responding especially aggressively at times when it looks like you are likely to be coming into contact with something that might make you sick,” study author Mark Schaller said in a news release.

The findings appear online in the journal Psychological Science.

AIDS, smoking and obesity are reversing progress made in helping people live longer around the world, with mortality rates worsening over the past 20 years in 37 countries, researchers reported on Thursday.

They found Icelandic men have the lowest risk of premature death, while Cypriot women do. Some rich countries such as the United States and Britain scored relatively poorly, the survey found.

In most places, men have twice the relative mortality rate of women, Dr. Christopher Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues reported in the Lancet medical journal.

“Worldwide, the 1990s reversal in the trend in adult mortality is probably a result of the HIV pandemic and the sharp rise in adult mortality in countries of the former Soviet Union,” the researchers wrote.

“One of the most striking patterns is the rapid decline in adult female mortality in south Asia; in 1970 this was the region with the highest risk of female mortality and by 2010, (the risk of dying before age 60) had fallen by 56 percent.”

Murray and colleagues used a complex formula to calculate the probability that someone aged 15 will die before they reach 60. They believe their method paints a more accurate picture than methods used by the United Nations, and can be used to compare countries with populations of different ages.

In the 40 years since 1970, they found, adult mortality risk fell by 34 percent among women and 19 percent in men globally.

REVERSING PROGRESS

But some places had notable reversals in rank, including the former Soviet Union. Russia has fallen from 43rd place for female mortality in 1970 to 121st.

“Research shows that across countries, inequality in adult mortality has grown to the point where adult men in Swaziland — the country with the worst mortality rate — now have a probability of premature death that is nine times the mortality rate of the best country, Cyprus,” Murray’s team wrote.

The United States, where 60 percent of adults are overweight or obese, fell in overall rankings, from 34th in the world in female mortality and 41st in male mortality in 1990 to 49th for women and 45th for men in 2010 — behind Chile, Tunisia, and Albania.

But mortality rates fell 50 percent over the same time in South Korea.

Murray said he wanted to study adult mortality globally because so much emphasis goes into helping very young children survive.

“Every year, more than 7.7 million children die before their fifth birthday; however, over three times that number of adults — nearly 24 million — die under the age of 60 years,” his team wrote.

“The prevention of premature adult death is just as important for global health policy as the improvement of child survival.”

Among men with erectile dysfunction, those who also have low testosterone levels face a higher than normal risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, a new study has found.

In a second study, the same team of researchers also found a link between obesity and impairment of blood flow to the penis, which, in turn, is linked to cardiovascular disease in erectile dysfunction patients.

In the first study, researchers led by Dr. Giovanni Corona, of the University of Florence, examined the testosterone levels of 1,687 men seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction. After an average follow-up period of 4.3 years, 137 of the men had had a heart attack or other major heart problem, and 15 had died.

Those who had lower levels of testosterone were the most likely to die of heart problems, the study authors found.

“Our work shows that screening for testosterone deficiency in men with erectile dysfunction may help clinicians identify those at higher risk from cardiovascular events,” Corona said in a news release from the European Society of Endocrinology. “However, at the moment we can’t say whether low testosterone levels are the cause or the consequence of this higher risk.”

A second study looked at the same group of men and found a link between clinical obesity, which means a body-mass index of greater than 30, and reduced blood flow to the penis. This reduced blood flow was significantly related to an increased incidence of major cardiac events, such as heart attacks, in obese men but not in leaner men.

The findings were scheduled to be presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology, held in Prague, the Czech Republic.

Shoveling snow may be a necessity if you live in a cold climate — and it’s good exercise. But you can also hurt yourself if you don’t do it properly.

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons offers these snow shoveling tips:
Consult your doctor before you start shoveling snow, as it strains the heart.
If you have a health problem or you don’t exercise often, consider hiring someone to shovel for you.
Wear several layers of lightweight clothing that repel water. Be sure to cover your head, and wear gloves, warm socks and sturdy boots.
Warm up your muscles before you start shoveling, drink plenty of fluids while you work, and take frequent breaks.
Make sure your hat and scarf don’t block your vision. Be wary of ice patches and uneven surfaces.
Push, rather than lift, the snow. If you do have to lift, make sure you use your legs to lift instead of your back.

Count staying slim as one of the apparent benefits of light-to-moderate alcohol consumption, at least for women.

New research found that women who drank the equivalent of one to two drinks a day were least likely to gain weight — 30 percent less likely, in fact, than teetotalers.

“Our study results showed that middle-age and older women who have normal body weight initially and consume light-to-moderate amounts of alcohol could maintain their drinking habits without gaining more weight, compared with similar women who did not drink any alcohol,” said study author Dr. Lu Wang, an epidemiologist with the division of preventive medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The findings are published in the March 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Previous evidence on the health benefits of alcohol have been mixed. Some research has found that men and, to a lesser extent, women who drink moderately over the long-term have a lower risk for heart disease.

But another study found that even moderate drinking might raise the risk for breast, liver and other cancers in women.

Wang and her colleagues followed 19,220 women, 39 years or older, for an average of 13 years. All participants started the study with a normal body-mass index.

Although, on average, the women all tended to gain weight as time progressed, abstainers gained the most. The amount of weight gained decreased as alcohol consumption went up, the study found.

The researchers said they were unable to draw conclusions about heavy drinkers because there were so few in the study and because these women also tended to smoke, indicating they had very different lifestyles from the other participants.

There could be any number of reasons for the findings, including different ways that women metabolize alcohol, compared with men.

Also, the researchers pointed out, women tend to substitute alcohol for other foods, whereas men tend to simply add alcohol to everything else they’re ingesting.

“The impact of alcohol consumption on body weight needs to be considered in the context of energy balance,” Wang explained. “Among women, those who regularly consume light-to-moderate alcohol usually have a lower energy intake from non-alcohol sources. On the other hand, alcohol intake tends to induce increased energy expenditure beyond energy contents of the consumed alcohol in women. Taken together, regular alcohol consumption in light-to-moderate amount may lead to a net energy loss among women.”

Marianne Grant, a registered dietitian and health educator at the Texas A&M Health Science Center’s Coastal Bend Health Education Center in Corpus Christi, said that “it’s possible that women who are of healthy weight are not as efficient in metabolizing alcohol.”

“But, as always, the message is to enjoy alcohol in moderation,” she warned. “Don’t go with this as a weight-loss method. The keystones of healthy nutrition still hold.”

SOURCES: Lu Wang, M.D., Ph.D., associate epidemiologist, division of preventive medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and instructor, medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Marianne Grant, R.D., registered dietitian and health educator, Coastal Bend Health Education Center, Texas A&M Health Science Center, Corpus Christi, Texas; Archives of Internal Medicine.

Increasing consumption of sugary soft drinks contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes, 14,000 new cases of heart disease and 50,000 more life-years burdened with heart disease in the last decade, a new U.S. study finds.

“The finding suggests that any kind of policy that reduces consumption might have a dramatic health benefit,” said senior study author Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who was to present the finding Friday during the American Heart Association’s Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention annual conference, in San Francisco.

The study used a computer simulation of heart disease that has been applied to other cardiovascular risk factors, such as obesity and dietary salt, Bibbins-Domingo explained. “We probably underestimated the incidence, because the rise is greatest among the young, and our model focuses on adults 35 and older,” she said.

One plausible explanation is that the increased incidence of cardiovascular problems is due to a rising incidence of diabetes, Bibbins-Domingo said, while an increase in obesity might also be responsible.

“Whatever the mechanism, large population studies do suggest an effect of drinking large lots of sweetened beverages,” she said. “No one argues that these drinks are not fine in moderation, but over the past decade their consumption has been on the rise, while consumption of other beverages has declined.”

A statement by Maureen Storey, senior vice president for science policy for the American Beverage Association, noted that the study had not yet been published in a scientific journal, and therefore had not undergone review by outside, qualified scientists.

“What we do know is that both heart disease and diabetes are complex conditions with no single cause and no single solution,” Storey said in the statement, which noted that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is not listed as a risk factor by the American Heart Association. “Rather, we need to continue to educate Americans about the importance of balancing the calories from the foods and beverages we eat and drink with regular physical activity.”

But the study does suggest that any kind of policy that reduces consumption might have a health benefit, Bibbins-Domingo noted. One such policy is a proposed tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, she noted. “The reason why there is a current debate about a tax is that scientific evidence in populations has consistently shown that more than one drink a day increases your risk,” she said.

The American Heart Association recommends limiting consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks such as soda pop, while “alternative choices are available,” said Dr. Robert H. Eckel, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and a past president of the association.

“Juice from fruit itself is nutrient-rich, and its nutritional value goes beyond the carbohydrate content,” Eckel said.

The recommended daily sugar intake amounts to just one can of sugar-sweetened soda a day for a man and slightly less for women, he said.

SOURCES: Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, M.D., associate professor, medicine, University of California, San Francisco; Robert H. Eckel, professor, medicine, University of Colorado, Denver; presentation, American Heart Association’s Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention annual conference, San Francisco.

Medications can reduce the level of the AIDS virus in the blood to zero, but HIV doesn’t disappear and often roars back when patients stop taking their pills. Now, research is giving scientists new insight into how the virus manages to hide and avoid the killing powers of medicine.

In a new study, researchers report that the virus lurks in certain bone marrow cells and “reawakens” only under certain circumstances.

The research provides a new target for scientists, but it also presents new challenges because killing off bone marrow cells is a dicey proposition.

Overall, the findings provide “a better understanding of how HIV hides in the body” and could lead to better strategies to kill or control it, said study co-author Dr. Kathleen Collins, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan.

Doctors have long known about the ability of HIV — the AIDS virus — to avoid being killed off completely by medications. Drugs may prevent the virus from infecting new cells, “but they don’t get rid of cells that contain the virus and have potential to make new viral particles,” Collins said.

This helps explain why HIV isn’t curable. The immune systems of patients may be able to control the virus for a time but later fall victim to a renewed attack and, ultimately, to AIDS.

“A patient cannot be cured of HIV until all sources of infection are eliminated,” said Jerome A. Zack, director of the UCLA Center for AIDS Research in Los Angeles.

But where does the virus hide when it’s not in the blood? Researchers have suspected that the bone marrow — which creates blood cells — could serve as the hiding place.

In the new study, published in the March 7 online edition of Nature Medicine, researchers examined bits of AIDS virus and cells from infected people in the laboratory.

The investigators found that the virus can infect certain kinds of bone marrow cells that are the parents (”progenitors”) of blood cells, Collins said.

So why not use a medication to kill all those parent cells, thereby perhaps ridding the body of HIV?

It sounds simple, but killing all of these blood-producing marrow cells would be lethal to humans, Collins said. However, “maybe we could find ways of targeting only the latently infected bone marrow cells,” she added.

Zack, the UCLA researcher, said the study findings are convincing, but “we as yet do not have easy ways to eliminate these dormant sources of virus. The challenge to the field is to find all sources of virus — this study identifies one — and identify ways to eliminate them. Only by developing strategies to eliminate all the different sources can we purge HIV from the body.”

In the long run, study co-author Collins said, the findings could help scientists develop ways to eradicate HIV or turn lifelong medication therapy “into a therapy that might last for a defined period of time.”

SOURCES: Kathleen Collins, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of internal medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Jerome A. Zack, Ph.D., director, UCLA Center for AIDS Research, Los Angeles; Nature Medicine, online

A good diet and regular exercise may help the mind function better, a new study suggests.

“It looks like exercise and diet improve the range of cognitive function,” said Patrick Smith, an intern in clinical neuropsychology and a member of a Duke University team reporting the finding online in the March 8 issue of Hypertension. “It helps executive function, learning and psychomotor speed.”

The researchers followed 124 men and women with high blood pressure who were 52 and a minimum of 15 pounds overweight, on average.

Led by James Blumenthal, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, the study was designed primarily to determine the effect of diet and exercise on blood pressure and included people with mild to moderate high blood pressure.

The mental studies were included because “some previous data linked exercise and diet to better cognitive function,” Smith said. The new results verified those findings, he noted.

A third of the participants went about eating and exercising as they usually did. Another third followed the DASH — Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension — diet, which emphasizes low-fat dairy products, fruits and vegetables, in combination with regular exercise. The final third were in a program that combined the DASH diet with a weight-management program and aerobic exercise.

Two strategies were used in the weight-management program: One centered on reducing portion size and changing habits, such as snacking. The other used an approach called appetite awareness training, which provides guidelines on how much to eat, not just what to eat.

Smith said the exercise part of the program wasn’t drastic — “workouts of 30 minutes three to four times a week, enough to put the heart up to 75 to 80 percent of its maximum rate.”

To assess the effects on mental function, the participants were asked to do certain paper-and-pencil tests, such as crossing off specific digits on a page of numbers as quickly as possible.

The group that ate well and exercised regularly had an overall 30 percent improvement in mental function by the end of the four-month period, the researchers noted.

Physical activity does seem to have a direct effect on brain cells, Smith said. “There are neurochemical changes that happen with exercise, he said. There is increased production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which stimulates connection with other brain cells, he said, but also there is some evidence that it helps grow new brain cells.”

And the combination of good eating and exercise also produced the expected physical advances. Diet-and-exercise participants lost an average of 19 pounds and lowered systolic blood pressure (the higher of the 120/80 reading) by 16 points and diastolic pressure by 10 points by the end of the four-month program.

Some experts believe the study has shortcomings, however. It’s a well-done study, but one that has flaws, said Dr. Donald LaVan, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a spokesman for the American Heart Association.

“Its entirely too small,” LaVan said. “I would call it a keyhole study, suggestive but nothing definitive. Also, it did not have a control group to look at the effect of exercise alone. We need a bigger study with a longer duration and a control group for exercise alone.”

Nothing in the study should deter anyone from exercising for the sake of the mind as well as the body, LaVan said.

“Exercise is great,” he said. “But how much exercise itself contributes to mental function is not clear.”

SOURCES: Patrick Smith, M.A., intern, clinical neurophysiology, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Donald LaVan, M.D., clinical associate professor, medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Hypertension, online.

Variations in one gene are associated with athletic endurance and may make a difference in a runner’s performance, a new study has found.

Researchers examined 155 track and field athletes and found that 80 percent of those who excelled in endurance events, such as marathons, had variations of the NRF2 gene, compared with 46 percent of sprinters. An analysis of 240 non-elite athletes produced similar findings.

“These findings suggest that harboring this specific genotype might increase the probability of being an endurance athlete,” one of the study authors, Nir Eynon, of the Wingate Institute in Israel, said in a news release from the American Physiological Society.

“So, some of us are truly born to run,” Eynon added.

While the study shows an association between these gene variations and athletic endurance, it doesn’t establish a cause-and-effect relationship. Further research is needed to determine precisely what role the NRF2 gene plays in athletic performance.

The study findings were released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the journal Physiological Genomics.

Previous research has shown that the NRF2 gene helps produce new mitochondria (cellular structures that produce energy) and reduces the harmful effects of oxidation and inflammation, which increase during exercise.

SOURCE: American Physiological Society

Researchers report that they’ve developed an inexpensive way to keep vaccines stable without the use of refrigerators or freezers, even in the high temperatures of the tropics.

The vaccine storage technology, developed by scientists at Oxford University and Nova Bio-Pharma Technologies in England, could help eliminate the need for refrigeration, which is expensive and difficult to maintain in poor countries.

“Currently vaccines need to be stored in a fridge or freezer,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Matt Cottingham of Oxford, said in a news release from the Wellcome Trust, which co-funded the research. “That means you need a clinic with a nurse, a fridge and an electricity supply and [refrigerated trucks] for distribution.”

The ability to ship vaccines at normal temperatures, however, would cut costs and make the vaccines more accessible, he said. “You could even picture someone with a backpack taking vaccine doses on a bike into remote villages,” Cottingham said.

In their research, the scientists found that they were able to store vaccines for four months at 113 degrees Fahrenheit by placing them on sugar-stabilized membranes. The vaccines could be stored for a year or more at 98.6 degrees without much degradation, they reported.

“We’ve developed a very simple way of heat-stabilizing vaccines and shown it works for two viruses that are being used as the basis for novel vaccines in development,” the study’s lead researcher, Adrian Hill, also of Oxford University, said in the news release. “This is so exciting scientifically because these viruses are fragile. If we are able to stabilize these, other vaccines are likely to be easier.”

A report on the research was published Feb. 17 in Science Translational Medicine.