According to the FDA 173 people in 25 states had become ill from the E. coli O157:H7 bacteria, linked to fresh spinach, including 27 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, a type of kidney damage.

So far there have been 92 hospitalizations and the death of a Wisconsin woman.

State health officials also suspect that the deaths of a 2-year-old boy in Idaho and an 86-year-old woman in Maryland are linked to the outbreak.

The FDA says the E. coli bacteria causes diarrhea, often with bloody stools and although most healthy adults as a rule recover completely within a week, some people develop HUS; this more commonly occurs in the elderly and young children and can lead to serious kidney damage and even death.

Experts from the FDA, state health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are searching farms and processors in California’s Salinas Valley for clues regarding the outbreak.

The outbreak was first reported two weeks ago, and has been traced to contaminated spinach from three counties in California’s Salinas Valley; the FDA has recommended people not eat fresh, raw spinach from the counties of Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara areas.

FDA officials have said that spinach grown elsewhere is safe to eat; the food industry is reportedly working to get safe spinach back on store shelves, but Dr. David Acheson of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition says the industry needs to inform consumers of the origin of the greens before it can be returned to sale.

The 25 states that have reported infections are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Details of the recalled products are on the FDA’s Web site at http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/rlb09_06.html.

Scott Belcher, PhD, and his link up found when the same immature and acquainted with polycarbonate drinking bottles were exposed to boiling hot water, BPA, an environmental estrogen, was released 55 times more rapidly than before exposure to hot water.

“Previous studies bring into the world shown that if you repeatedly scrub, dish-wash and splutter polycarbonate baby bottles, they release BPA. That tells us that BPA can voyage from sundry polycarbonate plastics,” explains Belcher, UC associate professor of pharmacology and cell biophysics and corresponding chew over inventor. “But we wanted to be sure if ‘normal’ necessity caused increased releasing from something that we all use, and to single out what was the most noteworthy determinant that impacts set free.”

“Inspired by questions from the climbing community, we went directly to tests based on how consumers use these plastic water bottles and showed that the only big difference in jeopardy levels revolved around liquid temperature: Bottles used for up to nine years released the done amount of BPA as new bottles.”

The UC team reports its findings in the Jan. 30, 2008 issue of the journal Toxicology Letters.

BPA is one of many irons-made chemicals classified as endocrine disruptors, which remodel the commission of the endocrine organization by mimicking the duty of the body’s reasonable hormones. Hormones are secreted through endocrine glands and be obedient to other functions throughout the body.

The chemical - which is widely toughened in products such as reusable H bottles, food can linings, bath-water pipes and dental sealants - has been shown to affect reproduction and mastermind maturing in animal studies.

“There is a large substance of well-organized evidence demonstrating the pernicious effects of very small amounts of BPA in laboratory and animal studies, but inconsequential clinical evidence related to humans,” explains Belcher. “There is a unequivocally able suspicion in the scientific community, however, that this chemical has harmful effects on humans.”

Belcher’s party analyzed hand-me-down polycarbonate deuterium oxide bottles from a local climbing gym and purchased creative bottles of the same brand from an outdoor retail supplier.

All bottles were subjected to seven days of testing designed to simulate natural usage during backpacking, mountaineering and other outdoor incident activities.

The UC researchers found that the amount of BPA released from new and used polycarbonate drinking bottles was the same - both in quantity and speed of salvation - into cool or temperate water.

However, drastically higher levels of BPA were released moment the bottles were briefly exposed to boiling water.

“Compared to the rating of delivering from the same bottle, the speed of release was 15 to 55 times faster,” explains Belcher.

Prior to boiling dishwater exposure, the rebuke of release from individual bottles ranged from 0.2 to 0.8 nanograms per hour. After exposure, rates increased to 8 to 32 nanograms per hour.

Belcher stresses that it is still unclear what level of BPA is toxic to humans. He urges consumers to think about how cumulative environmental exposures capacity harm their vigour.

“BPA is just one of many estrogen-with chemicals people are exposed to, and scientists are tranquil trying to be included out how these endocrine disruptors - including natural phyto-estrogens from soy which are often considered sturdy - collectively results anthropoid healthfulness,” he says. “But a growing body of thorough evidence suggests it effectiveness be at the cost of your health.”

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from true press liberation.
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UC graduate student Hoa Le and summer undergraduate investigating fellows Emily Carlson and Jason Chua also participated in this observe, which was funded by a National Institute of Environmental Fitness Sciences present.

Source: Amanda Harper

University of Cincinnati

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President Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Interdict Act (S 3) into law in November 2003. Several groups filed lawsuits alleging that the law is unconstitutional because of the non-appearance of an exception for procedures preformed to protect the haleness of the expressive ball. In charge of a condition disagree with, the law includes a long “findings” section with medical evidence presented during congressional hearings that, according to supporters of the law, indicates the procedures banned by the law are on no occasion medically necessary.

The law says a physician who performs the banned procedures could face racketeer prosecution, fines and up to two years in jail. The law allows an exception proper for cases in which the life of the lady-love is in risk, but it does not permit doctors to ingest the procedure because they believe using another method would increase risks to the woman’s health (Kaiser Daily Women’s Health Policy Announce, 4/19). Summaries appear below.

• David Brooks, New York Times: Abortion-rights advocates “are terrified of having an honest discussion about human life, so they have built this lofty etiquette of evasion that treats abortion as the moral equivalent of a tonsillectomy,” Times columnist Brooks writes in an opinion piece. According to Brooks, “If we could get this issue away from the abortion professionals and their orthodoxies, we could reach a sensible solution: abortion would be legal, with parental consent for minors, during the first four or five months and illegal except in rare circumstances afterward.” The Supreme Court ruling “is prompted by revulsion over the practice of killing late-term fetuses,” Brooks writes, adding, “Yet for reasons having to do with political tactics, the law that was upheld would not even prevent a single late-term abortion” (Brooks, New York Times, 4/22).
  
  
• Peter Steinfels, New York Times: Any person “hoping to understand the moral and political passions surrounding” the partial-birth abortion ban and the Supreme Court’s ruling on its constitutionality “must realize that … not just one but two ethical slippery slopes are at work in the minds” of U.S. citizens, Times columnist Steinfels writes in an opinion piece. According to Steinfels, one of the “slippery slopes” is that the decision might jeopardize “previous affirmations of abortion rights” and the other is that there is a “fear by some that the nation might be slouching toward infanticide” (Steinfels, New York Times, 4/28).
  
  
• Kirsten Powers, Wall Street Journal: If the Democratic presidential candidates “aren’t swayed by moral arguments” about partial-birth abortion, they should consider how criticizing the Supreme Court’s ruling “will play in the general election,” Fox News political analyst Powers writes in a Journal opinion piece. All of the candidates during a debate in South Carolina last week took a position that is “out of touch with most Americans, including many who are pro-choice,” Powers writes, adding that “rather than parroting the propaganda that elective late-term abortions are ‘health care decisions’ akin to an appendectomy, the Democratic Party should be taking the lead in eliminating a still legal form of elective late-term abortion” (Powers, Wall Street Journal, 5/1).
  
  
• Ruth Marcus, Washington Post: The Supreme Court’s ruling is “alarming for a number of reasons,” the “most chilling” being the “court’s willingness to subordinate the health of individual women, and the individual judgment of physicians, to the moral whims of the majority,” Post columnist Marcus writes in an opinion piece. However, there is “some hope” that the effect of the ruling “will turn out to be limited,” Marcus writes, adding that Kennedy’s “emotional response” to the procedures banned by the law might not “carry over into his assessment of other abortion laws” (Marcus, Washington Post, 4/25).
  
  
• William Saletan, Washington Post: Requiring pregnant women seeking abortions to be given the option of viewing an ultrasound image of the fetus is the “next target” for abortion-rights opponents, but it also “could force the court to renounce either the partial-birth ban or the right to abortion,” Saletan, a science and technology reporter for Slate magazine, writes in a Post opinion piece. He adds that “the clash between ultrasound and the partial-birth abortion ban is ultimately a choice between information and prohibition,” concluding, “To trust the ultrasound, you have to trust the woman” (Saletan, Washington Post, 4/29).
  

“Reprinted with acquiescence from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the intact Kaiser Circadian Trim Action Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published since kaisernetwork.org, a relaxed service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foot . © 2005 Advisory Board Crowd and Kaiser Division Foundation. All rights reserved.

1. The most common way of treating acid reflux.

You can in with making adjustments to your lifestyle. There are a variety of things that benefit you in treating acid reflux. For instance, watching what and how much food you eat during the course of the day.

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2. Acid reflux increases when you’re lying in bed.

In the night age hours Acid Reflux does the most price. The majority of people are lying in bed during that in the good old days b simultaneously when reflux is more likely to flare up.

There is a simple explanation for this. The pull of gravity is not holding back the reflux like it does when in an upright circumstances wholly the day. Also, the deficit of gravity allows acid to be pushed into the esophagus and to put down there an extended period of at the same time, causing more damage to the esophagus.

3. Treating Acid Reflux problems can be partially eliminated.

By having the upland cut up of your hull elevated the in truth of reflux decreases. Have a stab to raise your consistency either by placing blocks underneath the feet of the bed’s headboard or elevate your upper portion using a wedged cushion. What you want to do is mask the esophagus raised above the stomach in order to leverage the pull of gravity.

4. It’s important that the upper carcass as well as the head is grand.

Raising the upper body at night is normally recommended fitted people suffering with acid reflux. Tons patients dealing with GERD have reflux on the contrary during the day and elevation at round-the-clock does not really help them. In many cases it’s difficult to tell proper for certain which patient liking be comfortable using elevation in bed. Unless acid testing reveals a continuously reflux quarters, it’s barely impossible to know for unshakable if elevation will be of any benefit.

5.Keep foods that require treating acid reflux.

Distinct types of food are known to nutriment acid reflux. Such foods register chocolate, peppermint, caffeine drinks, and juice. Fatty foods, which should be decreased, and smoking promote reflux. People with GERD may also notice that other foods go from bad to worse their symptoms. Some examples are spicy or acidic foods, carbonated beverages, tomato juice and citrus juices.

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It is best to start things relatively easily but do not expect that your weight loss after pregnancy as quickly as someone else as it is down to your own genetic makeup and how many pounds you gained during the pregnancy. It is now accepted that the body and metabolism of a woman that has given birth undergoes a number of changes which can sometimes make losing those extra pounds more difficult. The order of the day is that losing weight after pregnancy will be more consistent and healthy if it is achieved slowly but surely through a healthy diet and regular physical activity.

The ideal situation of reducing body fat and regaining muscle tone after birth will take some time and this is not something that should be rushed. But carry on with the exercise every day with the healthy diet and there is no reason why all the weight that was put on should not be lost. Losing unwanted pounds after pregnancy is far from impossible and is within reach of all new moms although some women will hang on to the last few pounds they have to lose until they stop breastfeeding.

Let’s take a look:

1. Take a rest for six to eight weeks after giving birth. You’ll know when it’s time to start exercising, but that’s the average length of time it takes new moms to feel like they’re ready to take on an exercise routine. However, during that time, make sure to do stretches every day—starting the day after you give birth.

2. If you’re breastfeeding, feed the baby or pump before you work out and buy a well-fitting bra.

3. Be careful of exhaustion. If you’re feeling bone-tired, move your workout time to later. Just don’t put it off for good!

4. Walking is the absolute best exercise for new moms! Stick the kid in a stroller, and you’re off to the races! Walk as much as you can, with or without the baby. There simply is no better exercise.

5. Yoga is another great exercise. Check around your town for yoga that’s designed specifically for new moms. It might be called “post-partum� yoga, and many include yoga exercises that include your baby! The good thing is that once you’ve gotten the hang of it you can do it at home on your own time.

6. Swimming is another fantastic post pregnancy workout because it gives you cardio, as well as resistance.

7. No doubt, your belly is the thing that’s giving you the most weight grief right now. While cardio work will do a lot to get the weight off—whether by waking, yoga or swimming—your stomach muscles have been through a lot, and your tummy has, too. So, get started with sit-ups. Look on line to find different variations of the exercise until you find something that is comfortable.

8. Jogging – Yep your tummy needs it mom. Rather it’s on a treadmill or up and down the neighborhood street; you need to break a sweat. You should try jogging for at least half an hour every other day when starting out.

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Read About Fast Weight Loss also Read about Weight Gain and Breast cancer and Weight Loss after Pregnancy

That because the short treatment, known as partial breast irradiation, focus radiation to a small sector of the tit through multiple beams, these beams can pass with the aid the tit to the heart and lungs that lie behind, researchers found. Radiating the unbroken teat over weeks, as is standard wont, can present much of the heart and lungs to long periods of lower measure emission, they say.

These findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Group for Therapeutic Radiation and Oncology (ASTRO), suggest that both methods carry risks and benefits that may be a kind, says the study’s lead investigator, Laura Vallow, M.D.

“This tells us that the regulative course of cure isn’t that harmful in terms of its exposure to reasonable tissue, but also that, every now, partial breast irradiation may not spare as much normal tissue as we hope,” Vallow says.

Oncologists are currently testing the two modes of radiotherapy — whole boob irradiation (WBI) and 3-D conformal whole breast irradiation (PBI) — in a large federally-supported clinical pain in the neck that is enrolling thousands of women across the country who have been diagnosed with early put on breast cancer and have undergone lumpectomy.

The contemplate is that a cut b stop headway of radiotherapy will be as noticeable as the much longer course, and that this could distance to increased use of breast conservation over mastectomy, Vallow says. “Many women may be opting by reason of a mastectomy rather than of a lumpectomy in organization to avoid weeks and weeks of radiation treatment,” she says. “If the results of both methods are corresponding, then perhaps some of these women will choose less drastic surgery.”

In two studies being presented at ASTRO, Vallow, along with Ashley Gale, M.S., Anudh Jain, M.D., and a cooperate of physicists at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, acquainted with radiological parameters that were convenience for patients in the clinical proof and employed computers to assess how much of normal heart and lung tissue would be exposed if either WBI or PBI were used.

“We suspicious there are fundamental differences in the amount of exposure to radiation a patient has using these techniques, but no individual has everlastingly looked at how much normal pack is spared,” she says. “We are interested in the finer points of treatment planning, with the essential objective of making treatment more tolerable with less radiation exposure.”

In the first study, the researchers analyzed radiation plans for 25 patients enrolled in the clinical sample and they calculated what radiation to the lung would be if WBI or PBI was hand-me-down. They found that PBI exposes a slightly larger loudness of the lung to low doses of radiation, but also exposes a smaller volume of lung to high doses than WBI does.

“Patients are getting more exposure overall to their lungs with partial breast irradiation but less lung tissue is irradiated to higher doses compared to whole breast irradiation,” Vallow says.

An eye to 14 of the same patients who had a lumpectomy in their left bosom, investigators calculated emanation to normal heart tissue. They inaugurate that PBI and WBI delivered about the same amount of radiation to the heart of patients whose tumor was located in the heart of the breast. In patients whose tumors were closer to the armpit, PBI did not affect normal heart tissue, Vallow says.

“This workroom shows how far we receive really stop by in the transportation of radiotherapy,” she says. “We are looking for nuances of fabric outlook.”

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original impel release.
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Source: Kevin Punsky

Mayo Clinic

The yet-to-be-published findings by Professors Helen Christensen and Andrew Mackinnon and Dr Kathy Griffiths at the Centre for the benefit of Unbalanced Health Research (CMHR) at ANU demonstrate that the Internet is can, in some cases, be as powerful for the treatment of depression as treatments involving manage magnanimous reach.

CMHR is a leader in the development and stipulation of mental salubriousness data and intervention via the Internet and has developed an online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) site, moodgym.anu.edu.au, and a psychoeducation bluepages.anu.edu.au, are accessed free of charge and anonymously by hundreds of thousands of users enveloping the world. BluePages provides information respecting a string of psychological, medical and possibility treatments and recommends those supported by scientific evidence.

The reading evaluated the effectiveness of the two websites 12-months from introductory contact. While a number of studies have confirmed the effectiveness of internet interventions for indentation, the ANU deliberate over is the sooner one to look at the longer term effectiveness of online treatment.

Professor Christensen said the study institute that improvement in symptoms among users of MoodGYM and BluePages was maintained at 12 months, and in the case of despair, there was greater improvement during the course of the longer interval.

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“For people who had higher levels of depression at the outset, we create that BluePages in definite provided greater average benefit after 12 months,” Professor Christensen said.

“We don’t know exactly why the internet interventions are so essential in the longer incumbency, but it may be that there is a reduction in dislike of ineffective and potentially damaging treatments. It may also be that the data on the websites really at worst becomes effective years people include embarrass into rank the treatments and practices recommended.

“The findings also bring up that brief interventions may obtain a durable confident virtually on people struggling with recess - an outcome that may appear disc-intuitive given the lack of human stay and low level of generous interaction. But we do have certification in other areas as correctly that such brief interventions can be particular helpful.”

Professor Christensen said that the internet provided an effective way to reaching people struggling with temperament health in rural and remote areas, as familiarly as providing even access to information to the over 60% of people non-natural by mental health problems don’t hunt for or receive any professional relief.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from eccentric thrust release.
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Contact: Jane O’Dwyer

Study Australia

“Simulation is a popular training tool because it reduces the learning time and allows students to learn independently,” said Cavusoglu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Case School of Engineering.

Prior to joining Case in 2002, Cavusoglu helped to develop sophisticated laparoscopic and endoscopic tools in the Robotics and Intelligent Machine Lab at the University of California at Berkeley. Laparoscopy and endoscopy enable doctors to treat diseased organs and tissue and remove cysts and tumors through tiny rather than major incisions and often with local rather than general anesthesia. The challenge now, he says, is to expand these minimally invasive techniques to complex surgeries, and he intends to close that gap.

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Cavusoglu and his colleagues at Case and other institutions nationwide are applying engineering, computer science and biomedical expertise to develop the simulation technology and open architecture software necessary for simulation technology. They also are experimenting with soft tissue models and “haptics” technology to replicate the appearance and functions of the heart and brain, and enable doctors to “feel” when they accomplish procedures correctly.

“Laparoscopy requires a different skill set than open surgery,” Cavusoglu explains. “Surgeons typically view patients from the outside in. When a laparoscopic camera is inserted, they see patients from the inside out. Hand/eye coordination is difficult to master. Practice on a simulator would allow surgeons to perfect their technique with no risk to patients.”

Another undertaking - Cavusoglu’s “robotic beating heart surgery” project - is also advancing surgical science. In a joint program with the University of California at Berkeley funded by the National Science Foundation, Cavusoglu and several Case doctoral students are building a prototype robot that will allow surgeons to routinely perform open surgery on a beating rather than a stopped heart, minimizing risk to the patient. Designed to stabilize and track the heart’s motion, the robot would virtually eliminate the need for heart/lung machines, currently used in approximately 80 percent of heart surgeries.

“Traditional coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery has undesirable side effects that range from cognitive loss to increased hospital stays that are believed to be related to artificial heart pumps,” Cavusoglu said. “In this project, we believe that if the heart were able to beat freely during surgery, these pumps would not be needed and it is possible that these side effects might be lessened.”

http://www.case.edu

At the dawn of the Latest Year, The Road Shelter Charge (Great Britain only) is due to have its second reading and, although
it contains some positive measures4 to inflict the law, there is no provision to reduce the BAC level.

The BMA is urging the Government to run through this time to save lives and not leave the drink-driving limit at 80mg. The
Association would also partiality to see purveyance in the Tabulation to own the administer to carry unconscious roadside random breath tests5. This
tailor is a dynamic element in deterring people from drinking and driving.

Scientific statement from thither the happy has agreed that when a person’s alcohol height is over 50mg their driving is
impaired. Every year drink-driving causes around 560 deaths and 2,820 honest injuries6 in Great Britain.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA’s Head of Art and Ethics, said today:

“It’s too late to change the law for this Christmas but let’s make future seasons of goodwill safer for everyone.

“While the BMA believes that a further reduction in blood alcohol concentration levels will prevent deaths and trim down the
number of lives ruined, our comprehensive message to drivers is ‘don’t drink when you drive’.

“The introduction of the current limit, backed up by police enforcement and TV and media education campaigns, led to a
dramatic fall in the numbers of deaths on the road, but exceeding the past few years, deaths and serious injuries from
drink-driving compel ought to increased. We need a imaginative impetus to slash the striking of death and injury.”

Mr Don Mackechnie, Chairman of the BMA’s A&E Committee, added:

“The festive season goes keeping in involvement with eating and drinking too much. I don’t have a problem with this unless driving is
active. Every Christmas and New Year some people just ignore the message that drinking and driving do not mix.

“It is magnanimity-breaking to witness, first hand, families shattered because of tot-driving. Everybody under the sun thinks ” it won’t come about
to me” but every Christmas, doctors working in A & E have to go and tell distraught parents that their children press been
killed or seriously injured by drivers who continue to nip and drove.”

The BMA is not suggesting a zero limit because there will be cases where an living soul would register slightly above zero
even when they had not been drinking (diabetes and the use of mouthwash can both cause an above-zero level). The BMA doubts
whether an absolute zero would be enforceable and all right to the public but argues that a 50mg level, which would take
the UK into line with most other European countries7, would be efficient and beneficial.

Ends

Notes to editors:

1The BMA has been occupation for a reduction in BAC limit since 1990.

2 Currently the legal limit for BAC for driving is 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood.

3 paragraph 4.19, Tomorrow’s Roads: safer towards everyone, Department of Enchant, April 2004

4 The Beak gives powers to facilitate the Secretary of State to coerce the worst offenders to re-take their driving assay. The
Note also amends the current drink drive rehabilitation scheme to improve take-up and introduces navigator schemes for the cup that cheers
ignition incarcerate devices which require a driver to pass a stirring trial ahead of the engine will start.

5 The police do not induce downright powers to carry at large targeted whiff testing. At present the police can merely carry old-fashioned a
check up on if there has been a road transport infraction, an serendipity or if they suspicious that the driver has been drinking. Unpremeditatedly
breath testing would enable the enforce to
breathylise people driving at locations where it is believable to think an amount of drinking may tease enchanted place, eg a stone’s throw from
a pub.

6 Access Casualties in Great Britain 2003: Annual Report, Section for Transport, September 2004

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7The following European countries have limits of 50mg or lower: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia,
Spain, Sweden. Cyprus is in process of reducing to 50mg. Solely UK, Ireland and Luxembourg remain at 80mg.

Wish with the Press Office someone is concerned the BMA Conforming advise on drink-driving.

For more information please acquaintance:
Franca Tranza
Tel: 020 7383 6188
Fax: 020 7383 6403
Email: ftranza@bma.org.uk

Public Affairs Division
British Medical Association
BMA House
Tavistock Square
London
WC1H 9JP
After 6:00 pm and weekends:
+44 (0) 790 167 0068
+44 (0) 208 651 5130
+44 (0) 208 444 7992
+44 (0) 1525 379792
+44 (0) 7747 394450
+44 (0) 7810 523 722
+44 (0) 115 845 1860

The dementia is Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a neurological disease in which people have trouble recalling and understanding words. In PPA, people lose the ability to express themselves and understand speech. It differs from typical Alzheimer’s disease in which a person’s memory becomes impaired.

Sandra Weintraub, principal investigator and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, began investigating a possible link between the surgery and PPA when one of her male patients connected the onset of his language problem at age 43 to the period after his vasectomy.

At a twice-yearly Chicago support group for PPA patients Weintraub sees from around the country, the male patient rushed into the room and asked the men sitting there, “OK, guys, how many of you have PPA?” Nine hands went up.

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“How many of you had a vasectomy?” he demanded next. Eight hands shot up.

Weintraub and her team of researchers surveyed 47 men with PPA who were being treated at Northwestern’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center and 57 men with no cognitive impairment who were community volunteers. They ranged from 55 to 80 years old.

Of the non-impaired men, 16 percent had undergone a vasectomy. In contrast, 40 percent of the men with PPA had had the surgery.

“That’s a huge difference,” said Weintraub, director of neuropsychology in the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center. “It doesn’t mean having a vasectomy will give you this disease, but it may be a risk factor to increase your chance of getting it.”

In addition, the men who had undergone a vasectomy developed PPA at a younger age (58 years) than men with PPA who hadn’t had one (62 years.)

While PPA robs people of their ability to speak and understand language, an unusual twist of the disease is patients are still able to maintain their hobbies and perform other complicated tasks for a number of years before other symptoms develop. Some people garden, build cabinets and even navigate a city subway system. By contrast, Alzheimer’s patients lose interest in their hobbies, family life and may become idle. As PPA progresses over a number of years, however, patients eventually lose their ability to function independently.

Preliminary evidence from the study also seemed to connect another form of dementia to a vasectomy. In a smaller group of 30 men with a dementia called frontotemporal dementia (FTD,) 37 percent had undergone a vasectomy. The earliest symptoms of FTD are personality changes, lack of judgment and bizarre behavior. As in PPA, FTD usually starts at an earlier age, in the 40s and 50s.

One of Weintraub’s patients with FTD was eating lunch in a restaurant with his family and excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he hadn’t returned after 10 minutes, his sons went to investigate. They found him doing pushups on the bathroom floor. Other FTD patients begin shoplifting, compulsively gambling, misspending large amounts of money or become sexually demanding.

The most common form of dementia caused by brain deterioration in individuals over age 65 is Alzheimer’s disease. Weintraub did not find an increased rate of vasectomy in patients with Alzheimer’s.

Many patients with FTD and PPA share a common brain disease that is completely different from Alzheimer’s. Whether a patient will get the behavioral or language problems depends on where the disease causes the most destruction in the brain. In FTD, most of the damage is in the frontal lobes; in PPA, it’s in the language centers of the left hemisphere of the brain.

Weintraub theorizes a vasectomy may raise the risk of PPA (and possibly FTD) because the surgery breeches the protective barrier between the blood and the testes, called the blood-testis barrier.

Certain organs - including the testes and the brain - exist in what is the equivalent of a gated community in the body. Tiny tubes within the testes (in which sperm are produced) are protected by a physical barrier of Sertoli cells. The tight connections between these cells prevent blood-borne infections and poisonous molecules from entering the semen.

After a vasectomy, however, the protective barrier is broken and semen mixes into the blood. The immune system recognizes the sperm as invading foreign agents and produces anti-sperm antibodies in 60 to 70 percent of men.

Weintraub said these antibodies might cross the blood-brain-barrier and cause damage resulting in dementia. “There are other neurological models of disease which you can use as a parallel,” Weintraub said. Certain malignant tumors produce antibodies that reach the brain and cause an illness similar to encephalitis, she noted.

The next step in Weintraub’s research will be to launch a national study to see if her results will be confirmed in a larger population.

“I don’t want to scare anyone away from getting a vasectomy,” Weintraub stressed. “It’s obviously a major birth control alternative. This is just a correlational observation,” she said of the dementia connection. “We need to do more research to find out.”

http://www.northwestern.edu