Vitamin D Often High in Crohn’s Disease Patients

ISLAMABAD: Contrary to expectations, people with the inflammatory bowel condition Crohn’s disease are likely to have excessive levels of the active form of vitamin D in their blood, researchers have found. This is associated with low bone mineral density, they report.

Dr. Maria T. Abreu from the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles led the study. She told Reuters Health, "Most doctors think that Crohn’s patients automatically have decreased vitamin D levels and encourage supplementation with vitamin D. We would like to urge doctors to check vitamin D levels before making that recommendation."


As Abreu’s team explains in the medical journal Gut, under certain circumstances too much active vitamin D can actually contribute to the breakdown of bone, leading to osteoporosis. The researchers found "inappropriately high" blood levels of the active form of vitamin D in 42 percent of the 138 people they studied with Crohn’s disease. This was true of only 7 percent of 29 patients with ulcerative colitis, another type of inflammatory bowel disease.

Also, the higher the blood levels of active vitamin D in Crohn’s patients, the lower was their bone density -- regardless of whether they were treated with steroids -- the investigators found.

"We believe that high vitamin D levels are most likely a manifestation of the underlying gut inflammation," Abreu said.

A high vitamin D level is "an additional risk factor predisposing to development of osteoporosis" for some Crohn’s disease patients, the team concludes. Treatment of the underlying inflammation, "may improve metabolic bone disease."(ONLINENEWS)

Brain analysis can help predict psychosis: study

LONDON: Computer analysis of brain scans could help predict how serious or long term a psychotic patient's illness may become and help doctors make more accurate decisions about how best to treat them, researchers said on Monday.

In a study in the journal Psychological Medicine, scientists from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry and University College London's computer science department found that using computer algorithms to analyze MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) brain scans can predict a patient's outcome. (Reuters)

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World needs to update its flu vaccines: study

WASHINGTON: As Americans line up for flu shots, they should consider that the vaccines may be far less effective than thought, according to a new study.

Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease specialist at theUniversity of Minnesota, and his colleagues found that the most common flu vaccine in the United States is effective for 59 percent of healthy adults, well below the 70 percent to 90 percent level previously reported.



"We're stuck with a vaccine that has been around for 60 years and not changed much," Osterholm said in recorded remarks. He stressed the need for a new generation of flu shots, particularly in the face of a future pandemic.

There is also a lack of information about how well the vaccine works in children and in adults over the age of 65, he said. These two groups are most at risk from flu-related illness or death.

US health officials recommend that all Americans over six months of age get a flu shot. Nearly 131 million people, or 43 percent of the US population, received the influenza vaccine last season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While Osterholm does not dispute the need for the current vaccines, he said the common perception that they are "good enough" hinders the development of novel therapies.

In a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, Osterholm and colleagues screened 5,707 vaccine studies published in the last 40 years.

They narrowed their analysis to 31 studies that tested for the presence of flu in laboratory tests rather than counting an increase in flu antibodies -- a faster method but one that researchers say tends to overestimate the vaccine's efficacy.

They also limited results to those that used randomized controlled trials or other observational methods that did not have "selection bias," which could lead to sicker people getting excluded from the study.

A meta-analysis of the 31 studies also showed that a newer type of vaccine that uses a live virus was 83 percent effective in protecting children between six months and seven years old.

However, this type of vaccine, which is made by MedImmune, is not currently recommended as the best treatment for children by the CDC group that decides immunization practices in the United States, the study's authors said.

The Lancet study was published ahead of a meeting of this group on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Study links kidney stones and gallstones

NEW YORK: People who have had a kidney stoneseem to have a heightened risk of gallstones -- and vice versa, according to a new study.

Researchers already know that obesity, diabetes and having a generally unhealthy diet put people at risk for both types of stones. But even when those common risks were taken into account, the link remained.

The report "raises our antenna to this shared relationship between these two disorders," said Dr. Brian Matlaga, a urologist at theJohns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

"From an anecdotal standpoint, certainly it's not an uncommon scenario that a patient would have had both," Matlaga, who wasn't involved in the new research, told Reuters Health. But, he continued, "I'm a little bit at a loss trying to define what that relationship would be."

That's because stones in the kidney and gallbladder form differently, he said, and are made of two different things -- kidney stones of calcium and gallstones of cholesterol, most of the time.

Data for the current analysis came from three different long-term studies of nurses and doctors who completed a health and lifestyle questionnaire, then reported any new medical conditions every two years afterward. In total, more than 240,000 people were followed for between 14 and 24 years.

Over that time, there were about 5,100 new kidney stones diagnosed and close to 18,500 new cases of gallstones.

Depending on the population -- male or female, older or younger -- people with a history of gallstones were between 26 and 32 percent more likely to get a kidney stone than people who hadn't ever had gallstones.

And the link also went in the opposite direction. A past history of kidney stones meant study participants were between 17 and 51 percent more likely to report a new gallstone.

That was after factoring in the impact of age, diabetes, high blood pressure, weight and certain aspects of diet on the risk of both kinds of stones.

Researchers led by Eric Taylor from the Maine Medical Center in Portland said it's possible that a shift in the type of bacteria in the intestines might somehow predispose people to both kidney stones and gallstones. But, Taylor said, "the fairest thing is that we just don't know" why the two would be linked.

In their report in the Journal of Urology the researchers echoed Matlaga's call for more detailed research into any explanations for a common cause -- which might help doctors prevent or treat both kidney stones and gallstones, they added.

"They are really two different kinds of stones, so the relationship is not going to be simple between the two conditions," Taylor told Reuters Health.

Matlaga said that for now, there are steps people can take to reduce their risk of both gallstones and kidney stones, even if they've already had one condition.

"You'd like to try to minimize those common risk factors and work on things like weight loss and cholesterol control," he said.

Taylor agreed that the findings "emphasize the importance of healthy diet and healthy weight." (Reuters)

New study sees little need for vitamins, cites risks

WASHINGTON: There is no need for most people to take vitamin supplements and some may even be linked to a higher risk of dying in older women, according to a study published in the United States.

Iron stood out among supplements as a particular concern, while calcium appeared to be linked to lower death risk, said the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, a journal of the American Medical Association.

With about half of Americans taking vitamin pills of some kind, the study aimed to examine whether the $20 billion supplement industry was having any effect on extending lifespan in an already well-nourished population.

The researchers confirmed their theory -- that supplements were not helping people ward off death. But the reasons for the link to higher risk of overall mortality, or the risk of dying for any reason, were less clear.

"Based on existing evidence, we see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements," wrote the study authors from the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Minnesota.

"We found that several commonly used dietary vitamin and mineral supplements, including multivitamins, vitamins B6, and folic acid, as well as
minerals iron, magnesium, zinc, and copper, were associated with a higher risk of total mortality."

The US and Finnish researchers examined data from the Iowa Women's Health Study, including surveys filled out by 38,772 women with an average age of 62.

Women self-reported their supplement use in 1986, 1997 and 2004, and data showed their use rose from 66 percent of survey-takers at the start to 85 percent by 2004.

Those who took supplements showed a range of healthy lifestyle factors, and
were more likely than non-supplement users to be non-smokers, eat low-fat diets and exercise.

But in many cases they showed a higher risk of dying than their supplement-free counterparts.

"Of particular concern, supplemental iron was strongly and dose dependently associated with increased total mortality risk," said the study.

On the other hand, "supplemental calcium was consistently inversely related to total mortality rate," meaning that calcium-takers showed a lower death risk, though the same dosage relationship was not visible.

The authors said they could not rule out the possibility that the reason for the higher death rate in iron users could have been due to underlying conditions for which they were taking supplements, and more research is needed.

In the meantime, doctors urged patients to consider the risks of taking supplements unless they are needed to stave off deficiencies.

"We think the paradigm 'the more the better' is wrong," wrote doctors Goran Bjelakovic of the University of Nis in Serbia and Christian Gluud of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark in an accompanying commentary.

These findings "add to the growing evidence demonstrating that certain antioxidant supplements, such as vitamin E, vitamin A, and beta-carotene, can be harmful," they said.

"We cannot recommend the use of vitamin and mineral supplements as a preventive measure, at least not in a well-nourished population."

Bjelakovic and Gluud said the only supplement that may be beneficial to older women, and possibly older men, is vitamin D3, if they do not already get enough through their diet or from sun exposure.

"The issue of whether to use calcium supplements may require further study," they added. (AFP)

Dengue claims life of former Punjab Assembly Deputy Speaker

LAHORE: Former Punjab Assembly Deputy Speaker Rana Shamim died due to dengue on Sunday.

Shamim was being treated at the Sheikh Zayed hospital in Lahore.

Dengue continues to spread across Punjab with at least 200 people being diagnosed with the virus during the last 24 hours, out of which 186 were from Lahore.

The death toll has now reached 197 in the province.

Overall, the total number of dengue patients in the province has reached 15,235, out of which 13,000 belonged to Lahore.

This Articel Orignaly Published at Express Tribune pk