Bill Gates, others pledge $630 million to beat polio

Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:36pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An infusion of more than $630 million spearheaded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is intended to help finish the job of eradicating the crippling disease polio, officials said on Wednesday.
The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rotary International charity joined with the governments of Britain and Germany to commit the money over the next five years to support child immunization.
An international effort has cut polio cases by 99 percent in 10 years -- a drop from more than 350,000 cases in 1998 to about 1,600 in 2008.
The polio virus remains endemic in only Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan, but imported cases from these four countries threaten other developing nations.
In a conference call with reporters, Gates declined to set a target date to achieve the goal of polio eradication "because nobody knows what it will take."
"We are in the end game," Gates said. "I'm optimistic that we will be successful. I'm personally very committed."
The Gates Foundation, created by the wealthy U.S. businessman and his wife, pledged $255 million and Rotary International $100 million. Britain will provide about $150 million and Germany about $130 million, the foundation said.
The money will support a global initiative led by the U.N. World Health Organization and other partners.
Global health leaders are hoping to make polio the next disease to be eliminated worldwide, much as smallpox was declared eradicated three decades ago.
Polio is a virus that attacks the nervous system and can cause paralysis, difficulty breathing and sometimes death. It affects mainly children under the age of 5.
Mass immunization campaigns in the 20th century slowed polio's spread and eventually chased it from most nations.
Gates said there already has been a global investment of $6 billion for the polio-fighting initiative but he cited some setbacks. More children were infected with polio in 2008 than in 2007, Gates noted.
Nigeria, which has struggled to contain polio since some northern states imposed a yearlong vaccine ban in mid-2003, accounts for more than 50 percent of new cases.
Also, in September, a suicide bomber in Afghanistan attacked a marked U.N. vehicle, killing two Afghan doctors working on polio vaccination for the WHO.
"We are very close to eradication," said Adolf Kloke-Lesch of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, urging other countries -- especially the rest of the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- to contribute.
"The political will and commitment of government and partners in the four countries still affected by polio will also be crucial to win the fight," Kloke-Lesch told reporters.
British International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander called the new infusion of money "a massive boost in the battle to rid the world of the scourge of polio."

Family stress may make kids fat: study
Last Updated: 2009-01-21 11:04:36 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Living in a stressful household may raise a child's risk of becoming obese, according to findings from a study of Swedish families.
Compared with 5- to 6-year-old children living in families with low stress levels, age-matched children from "high-stress" families had about twice the risk for obesity, the study team found.
"Families can probably deal with some stress or stressors, but not with several at the same time," Felix-Sebastian Koch, a doctoral student from Linköping University, told Reuters Health.
When stress becomes too much for the family to handle, Koch said, "children are at higher risk to develop childhood obesity."
Koch and colleagues evaluated stress levels in 7443 Swedish families from the time their children were born through the children's current age of 5 to 6 years. Fifty-two percent of the children were boys.
At the later assessment, 4.2 percent of the children were obese, according to a report of the study in The Journal of Pediatrics.
Over the study period, parents reported various "stressors" from serious life events such as family accident or illness, death, divorce, unemployment, or exposure to violence. They also reported stressors from parenting difficulties or spouse relationship issues; a lack of social support; and worries about children's health and development.
Koch's group defined high stress families as those reporting stress in at least two of these four areas.
As noted, results showed that children from these high stress families, compared with children from low-stress families (i.e., those reporting stressors in just one area or no stress) were at significantly greater risk for becoming obese.
"Stress probably interacts with other factors to worsen the problem of childhood obesity," Koch said. But it is definitely not the only factor associated with childhood obesity, he added.
However, since these findings suggest family stress may contribute to childhood obesity, it is important for families experiencing high stress to seek support, Koch and colleagues conclude.
SOURCE: The Journal of Pediatrics, December 2008
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/01/21/eline/links/20090121elin001.html

Access to healthy foods worse in poor areas
Last Updated: 2009-01-21 13:00:33 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who live in poorer neighborhoods in the US are less likely to have easy access to supermarkets carrying a wide variety of fresh produce and other healthy food, an analysis of 54 studies confirms.
But they probably have plenty of unhealthy fast food joints to choose from, Dr. Nicole I. Larson of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and her colleagues found.
"The research I reviewed suggests there is a need for new policies and other local actions to address the problem of poor access to healthy foods in many lower income, rural, and minority communities," Larson told Reuters Health.
Evidence is mounting, Larson and her team note, that segregation of neighborhoods by "income, race, and ethnicity" plays a major role in US health disparities, and accessibility to healthy -- and unhealthy -- food may be a factor.
To investigate, they reviewed studies published between 1985 and 2008 that looked at food access by neighborhood in the United States. While supermarkets are likely to sell the widest variety of healthy foods at the cheapest prices, convenience stores usually charge more, and tend not to sell fresh food, the researchers note in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The studies they reviewed confirmed that minority and low-income individuals who live near supermarkets have healthier diets. For example, one investigation found that the likelihood that African-Americans would meet guidelines for fruit and vegetable consumption rose by 32% with every additional supermarket located in the census tract where they lived.
Three studies found a reduced risk of obesity among people with more supermarkets in their neighborhood; two of these studies found a link between better access to convenience stores and increased obesity risk.
Research also clearly shows "stark racial and ethnic disparities" in the type of food stores available in neighborhoods, according to the researchers. One study showed that mostly-black neighborhoods had half as many chain supermarkets as predominantly white neighborhoods, while Hispanic neighborhoods had a third as many such stores as white areas.
Six studies in which investigators actually visited stores and checked out the merchandise found healthy foods like fresh produce, low fat dairy foods, high fiber breads and lean meats were more available and of higher quality in white neighborhoods than non-white neighborhoods. Rural communities also tend to have worse access to supermarkets, the researchers add.
Possible ways to encourage supermarkets to set up shop in lower income neighborhoods could include "financial incentives, helping to conduct market feasibility studies, assistance with parking/transportation plans, and assistance with site cleanup/assembly," Larson said. However, she added, there has been very little research on evaluating strategies or policies for reducing inequalities to access to healthy foods."
But the experience of other countries shows that there's no reason it can't be done; Larson pointed out that studies in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Scotland found that supermarket availability was actually greater in lower-income neighborhoods.
SOURCE: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, January 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/01/21/eline/links/20090121elin007.html

Breastfeeding May Prevent Breast Cancer

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2009) — Dr. Michael Lisanti and colleagues at Thomas Jefferson University found that extended lactation protects again mammary tumor development.
Women who breastfeed for greater than two years have a significantly reduced risk of developing breast cancer later in life. It has been difficult to determine the cause of this benefit, however, due to the lack of a suitable animal model of extended lactation.
In this study, Sotgia et al demonstrated that mice deficient in caveolin 3, which is expressed in some mammary cells, had a constitutive lactation phenotype. Notably, caveolin 3-deficient mice were also protected against mammary tumor formation and lung metastases. These mice, therefore, provide a model of constitutive lactation that may be used to study the prevention or treatment of human breast cancers.
Dr. Lisanti's group suggest that "a lactation-based therapeutic strategy would provide a more natural and non-toxic approach to the development of novel anti-cancer therapies. In this regard, targeted reduction of Cav-3 levels in the mammary gland may represent a new therapeutic strategy for preventing the onset of human breast cancers."
Sotgia F, Casimiro MC, Bonuccelli G, Liu M, Menezes DW, Er O, Daumer KM, Mercier I, Witkiewicz AK, Minetti C, Capozza F, Gormley M, Quong AA, Rui H, Frank PG, Milliman JN, Knudsen ES, Zhou J, Wang C, Pestell RG, Lisanti MP. Loss of Caveolin-3 Induces a Lactogenic Microenvironment that is Protective Against Mammary Tumor Formation. Am J Pathol, 2009, 174: 613-629
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122080721.htm

Americans Owe Five Months Of Their Lives To Cleaner Air

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2009) — A new study by researchers at Brigham Young University and Harvard School of Public Health shows that average life expectancy in 51 U.S. cities increased nearly three years over recent decades, and approximately five months of that increase came thanks to cleaner air.
"Such a significant increase in life expectancy attributable to reducing air pollution is remarkable," said C. Arden Pope III, a BYU epidemiologist and lead author on the study in the Jan. 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "We find that we're getting a substantial return on our investments in improving our air quality. Not only are we getting cleaner air that improves our environment, but it is improving our public health."
The research matched two sets of data from 51 cities across the nation: changes in air pollution between about 1980 and about 2000; and residents' life expectancies during those years. The scientists applied advanced statistical models to account for other factors that could affect average life spans, such as changes in population, income, education, migration, demographics and cigarette smoking.
In cities that had previously been the most polluted and cleaned up the most, the cleaner air added approximately 10 months to the average resident's life. On average, Americans were living 2.72 years longer at the end of the two-decade study period; up to five months, or 15 percent, of that increase came because of reduced air pollution. Other studies show that these gains are likely coming from reductions in the cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary disease that typically accompany air pollution.
"There is an important positive message here that the efforts to reduce particulate air pollution concentrations in the United States over the past 20 years have led to substantial and measurable improvements in life expectancy," said study co-author Douglas Dockery, chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health.
Pope and Dockery have teamed with other researchers on landmark studies published in the early 1990s that revealed the negative health effects of particulate air pollution known as "PM2.5" – tiny pollutants smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, smaller than 4/100 the width of a human hair. The Environmental Protection Agency used those and related studies as the basis for tightening air pollution standards in 1997.
The latest study evaluated the impact of resulting decreases in particulate pollution on average life spans in cities for which air pollution data were available. In fact, researchers had to build life expectancy data for the 214 counties that are part of the study's 51 metropolitan areas.
"Life expectancy is the single most comprehensive summary of how people's longevity is affected by factors like air pollution that cause early death," said co-author Majid Ezzati, associate professor of international health at Harvard School of Public Health. "We were able to use routine mortality statistics to track longevity in all cities over a long period of time and analyze how it has been influenced by changes in air pollution."
The analysis found that for every decrease of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of particulate pollution in a city, its residents' average life expectancy increased by more than seven months. During the 1980s and 1990s the average PM2.5 levels in the 51 U.S. cities studied dropped from 21 to 14 micrograms per cubic meter. In cities such as Pittsburgh and Buffalo, the decrease was closer to 14 micrograms per cubic meter.
The research also observed gains in life expectancy even in cities that initially had relatively clean air but had further improvements in air quality, suggesting the continuing benefits to ongoing efforts to reduce air pollution.
The researchers emphasized that there are other important and often overlapping factors that influence life expectancy, but this study demonstrated that improvements in air quality can contribute to significant and measurable improvements in life expectancy.
The study was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Association of Schools of Public Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Mary Lou Fulton Professorship at BYU.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090121174116.htm

Osteoporosis? Look Out For Depression

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2009) — A review article which is published in the current issue of the European Journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics analyzes the relationship between depression and bone metabolism.
This study reveals that the association between psychiatric illness, in particular depression, and osteoporosis has been the subject of a growing body of research yielding various findings, although most identify some effect on bone. In addition to medication-related processes and/or modifiable lifestyle factors associated with mood disturbances, endocrine and immune alteration secondary to depression may play a pathogenetic role in bone metabolism.
There are data to suggest low bone mineral density is disproportionately prevalent among those with psychiatric disorders. This paper aims to review the current evidence on the relationship between depression and bone mineral density, and identify potential mechanisms. Relevant sources were identified from the Pubmed and Web of Science (ISI) databases from the first relevant publication in 1994 to the present, 2007, using a combination of key words and terms including depression, major depressive disorder, osteoporosis, bone mineral density, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, cortisol, cytokines, leptin, antidepressants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, smoking, alcohol, physical activity and diet. Reference lists of chosen articles were further reviewed for associated publications.
The possible association between psychiatric illness, in particular depression, and osteoporosis has been the subject of a growing body of research yielding various findings, although most identify some effect on bone. In addition to medication-related processes and/or modifiable lifestyle factors associated with mood disturbances, endocrine and immune alteration secondary to depression may play a pathogenetic role in bone metabolism.
Additional longitudinal studies, with the advantage of temporal sequencing, remain to be conducted, as well as research into potential mechanisms surrounding the association. Nevertheless, the current findings are of clinical relevance, given the health burden of both depression and osteoporosis.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090119091116.htm

Early Immune System Exposures Linked To Chronic Disease

ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2009) — Scientists and regulators have a golden opportunity to reduce the health toll from a range of diseases by focusing more attention on identification of environmental factors that can damage the prenatal immune system as well as that of infants and children, according to a new article.
In the study, Rodney R. Dietert points out that a scientific field known as developmental immunotoxicology (DIT) focuses on the effects of exposure to biological materials, drugs, medical devices, chemicals, and other environmental factors on the developing immune system in fetuses, infants and children. Research so far suggests links between those factors and an increased risk of asthma, autism, diabetes, leukemia, and other important diseases.
Dietert's perspective article examines diseases associated with DIT and calls for an increase in awareness of preadult immune dysfunction and its consequences on life-long chronic disease. A protected, well functioning immune system, the paper says, could not only extend quality of life during adulthood, it could also reduce future health care needs. Identifying hazards for developing immune systems and protection against dysfunction provide opportunities to reduce health risks for the most significant chronic diseases of children and adults, Dietert says.
Dietert et al. Developmental Immunotoxicology: Focus on Health Risks. Chemical Research in Toxicology, 2009; 22 (1): 17 DOI: 10.1021/tx800198m
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090119091814.htm

Magnesium Sulphate Protects Babies Against Cerebral Palsy, Review Shows

ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2009) — Giving pregnant mothers magnesium sulphate when they are at risk of very preterm birth can help protect their babies from cerebral palsy, according to an international review of research involving the University of Adelaide.
The findings of this review - published January 21 on the international research website The Cochrane Library - could help decrease the incidence of this disabling condition, which affects one in 500 newborn babies overall and one in 10 very premature babies (less than 28 weeks gestation).
Magnesium sulphate therapy involves giving doses of magnesium sulphate to pregnant women via injection.
The potential for magnesium sulphate to decrease the risk of cerebral palsy in babies was first proposed in the early 1990s. The new Cochrane review, which supports this suggestion, was carried out by leading researchers from Australia (University of Melbourne and University of Adelaide), France (University Hospital, Rouen) and the United States (University of Alabama).
The review involved data from 6145 babies included in five trials of antenatal magnesium sulphate therapy.
"For infants born very premature, there is a high risk of cerebral palsy," says one of the researchers, Professor Caroline Crowther, Director of the University of Adelaide's Australian Research Centre for Health of Women and Babies (ARCH), based at the Women's & Children's Hospital.
"This new Cochrane review shows there is now evidence to support giving magnesium sulphate therapy to women at risk of very preterm birth to increase their unborn baby's chance of survival, free of cerebral palsy."
The exact mechanism of magnesium sulphate in protecting the developing brain is not certain. However, magnesium is vital for normal cell function, may protect against destructive molecules that can harm cells, and in some circumstances improves blood flow.
Side effects of the treatment include flushing, sweating, nausea, vomiting, headaches and palpitations. However, the researchers found no increase in major complications in mothers due to magnesium therapy.
"Given the positive findings of the Cochrane review, further studies will need to be conducted to clarify exactly how magnesium sulphate works as a neuroprotective agent, who should receive the medication and how best the treatment should be given," Professor Crowther says.
Doyle et al. Magnesium sulphate for women at risk of preterm birth for neuroprotection of the fetus. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews Reviews, 2009, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD004661 DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004661.pub3
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090120195421.htm

Seas to rise at varying rates due to warming: expert

Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:42am EST
ROTHERA BASE, Antarctica (Reuters) - Sea levels will rise at widely varying rates around the world because of a quirk of the earth's gravity linked to global warming, a leading glaciologist said.
"Everyone thinks sea level rises the same around the world," David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters on Tuesday at the Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula. "But it doesn't".
Rises could vary by tens of centimeters (inches) from region to region if seas gained by an average of one meter by 2100 as temperatures rise, he said. Worst-affected nations would have to budget billions of dollars more than others on coastal defences.
Vaughan said big ice sheets on Antarctica and on Greenland have a gravitational pull that lifts the seas around them -- water levels around Antarctica, for instance, are higher than if the frozen continent were an open ocean.
As ice thaws, Antarctica would get smaller and its gravitational tug would diminish. In some places around the continent, the level of the Southern Ocean might even drop despite a flood of fresh water into the oceans.
The effect means that seas will paradoxically rise least where thawing ice pours into the sea and most further away from the point of melt, he said.
"Ice lost from Antarctica has a bigger impact on European sea level rise than ice lost from the European Alps, tonne for tonne," Vaughan said.
SYDNEY, BEIJING
Buenos Aires or Sydney will suffer less sea level rise if ice melts quickest from Antarctica than San Francisco or Beijing, for instance. And if Greenland melts fastest, South Pacific islands will suffer more than New York or London.
"If there's a meter of sea level rise over the next century, the difference will probably be tens of centimeters if it comes from Greenland or it comes from Antarctica," Vaughan said.
Vaughan said that governments, trying to work out a new U.N. treaty by the end of 2009 to fight global warming, needed to work out where ice was most likely to thaw.
The U.N. Climate Panel projected in 2007 that average world sea levels would rise by between 18 and 59 centimeters (7-24 inches) by 2100, mainly because of a warming spurred by human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
Vaughan, who was a co-leader of a chapter about the world's polar regions in the Panel's report, said recent studies indicated an accelerating rate of loss from both Greenland and parts of Antarctica.
"There is increasing evidence that Greenland and Antarctica are contributing more water than before," he said. The average sea level rise this century could be closer to a meter than the Panel's prediction.
Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in the past 50 years -- the fastest rate in the Southern Hemisphere. Most of Antarctica, however, is a deep freeze that shows no sign of warming.
But even a tiny melt of Antarctica would affect sea levels -- its ice is equivalent to an additional 57 meters of sea level. The far smaller Greenland ice sheet would raise sea levels by about 7 meters if it ever all thawed.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50F42X20090121

Spring Coming Earlier, Study Says

John Roach
for National Geographic News January 21, 2009  

Tired of winter? Good news: Spring arrives an average of 1.7 days earlier now than it did in the first half of the 20th century, according to a new study.

Summer, fall, and winter are also starting 1.7 days earlier. And there is less of a temperature difference between winter and summer.

The shifts, which are occurring over land (seasonal shifts are different over oceans), appear to stem from as-yet-to-be determined changes in the physics of the Earth's climate system, said Alexander Stine, a graduate student of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the study.

The shifts occur at the same time humans are known to be influencing the climate. (Read up on global warming.)

"The Earth is certainly warming," said Stine, whose findings will be published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature. "It would seem reasonable that there's some relationship."

(Related: "Warming Sign? Another Early Spring for Rocky Mountains" [April 9, 2007].)

Earth Physics

Other research has documented the earlier arrival of spring based on biological factors, such as when plants flower and animals begin to migrate, but the new results are based on physics.

In this case, the researchers examined how quickly the Earth responds to the sun.

The planet's tilt toward the sun defines its seasons. On land, there's about a 30-day lag between the sun at its maximum intensity and when the Earth is warmest. That's because it takes the Earth those extra 30 days to soak up all the sun's energy.

The study found that the Earth is responding faster, shifting all of the seasons.

Michael Mann directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and was not involved in the study. He said the findings are consistent with similar observations he reported more than a decade ago, though what's causing the earlier seasons remains poorly understood.

A partial explanation may be changes in a dominant atmospheric pattern called the northern annular mode, which governs factors such as the direction and intensity of the wind, study author Stine noted.

Other contributing factors could include drier soils, which would increase the planet's absorption of heat from the sun. Wetter soils take longer to heat up than drier soils, he explained.

Research suggests that some regions of the world are drying out due to climate change. If true, Stine said, that means that the 30-day lag between the sun's heat and the Earth's response might be reduced.

"Essentially what you are seeing is the Earth is putting up less resistance to what the sun is trying to make it do," he said.

Increasing soot and other particulate matter may also be heating up the atmosphere more quickly. "That may effectively change the timing of the energy that's coming into the surface and that could give you a shift toward early seasons," Stine said.

According to Pennsylvania State's Mann, another factor may be climate-induced changes to the ocean-atmosphere system that causes El Niño and La Niña. These phenomena are governed by surface temperature fluctuations in the Pacific Ocean and can affect weather worldwide.

Missing Physics

What troubles Stine about the observed trends is their poor representation in state-of-the art climate models, which help predict future trends.

"Something is wrong with the modeled physics," he said. "And we don't know what the implications are of having that physics missing."

For example, determining why the seasons are arriving earlier and integrating that data into existing models could make the models more accurate.

Mann said the lack of the representation does little, if anything, to alter the basic storyline of a warming planet, "but it does potentially help us think about some of the more subtle aspects of climate change."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090121-earlier-spring.html

New evidence on Antarctic warming

The continent of Antarctica is warming up in step with the rest of the world, according to a new analysis.
Scientists say data from satellites and weather stations indicate a warming of about 0.6C over the last 50 years.
Writing in the journal Nature, they say the trend is "difficult to explain" without the effect of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, scientists in Antarctica say a major ice shelf is about to break away from the continent.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is said to be "hanging by a thread" from the Antarctic Peninsula, the strip of land pointing from the white continent towards the southern tip of South America.
In isolation
Most of Antarctica's scientific stations are located along the peninsula, and scientists have known for many years that this portion of the continent is getting warmer.
But trends across the bulk of the continent have been much harder to discern, mainly because data from land stations is scarce.
It is somewhat insulated from the rest of the world's weather systems by winds and ocean currents that circulate around the perimeter.
In the new analysis, a team of US scientists combined data from land stations with satellite readings
"We have at least 25 years of data from satellites, and satellites have the huge advantage that they can see the whole continent," said Eric Steig from the University of Washington in Seattle.
"But the [land] stations have the advantage that they go back much further in time.
"So we combined the two; and what we found, in a nutshell, is that there is warming across the whole continent, it's stronger in winter and spring but it is there in all seasons."
They conclude that the eastern region of the continent, which is larger and colder than the western portion, is warming at 0.1C per decade, and the west at 0.17C per decade - faster than the global average.
The 2007 assessment of the global climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded: "It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic (human-induced) warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica", with the word "likely" in this context meaning "at least 66% probability".
The scientists said this study did not change that picture, with natural climatic cycles probably involved as well as elevated greenhouse gas concentrations.
"It's hard to think of any situation where increased greenhouse gases would not lead to warming in Antarctica," said Drew Shindell from Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) in New York.
"We're almost certain that greenhouse gas increases are contributing to this warming, but what's difficult is to attribute this warming and so say how much is down to natural warming and how much down to anthropogenic causes."
Last year, scientists from the UK Met Office used climate models to attribute trends at the poles, and concluded that human emissions of greenhouse gases were largely responsible for the observed warming.
Gareth Marshall from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who was not involved in the analysis, commented: "This study shows that, similar to the other six continents, Antarctica has undergone a significant warming over the past 50 years.
"The magnitude of this warming is similar to the rest of the southern hemisphere, where we believe it is likely that human activity has played some role in the temperature increase, and therefore it is also likely that this is the case regarding an Antarctic warming."
Cool analysis
Over the last 30 years, satellites have also shown that sea ice is slowly growing in extent around Antarctica, which some observers say indicates a cooling across the continent or at least in the surrounding seas.
But Walt Meier from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, which follows ice trends at the poles, said wind patterns were probably the main reason.
"Around Antarctica, the winds play a much bigger role than they do in the Arctic," he said.
"If they're blowing northwards you can grow ice quite quickly and in contrast if they blow southwards the ice can contract quickly, whereas in the Arctic it's much more constrained (by land masses).
"So this positive trend in the Antarctic is certainly not an indication of any cooling trend."
One region that has seen spectacular losses of ice in recent years is the peninsula.
A BAS team currently on site is reporting that the Wilkins shelf, about 15,000 sq km in area, is probably about to break free.
"It really could go at any minute, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the final cracks started to appear very soon," said BAS's David Vaughan.
If it does, it will follow the course of other shelves that have made breakaways in recent years, such as the Larsen B in 2002.
Although spectacular, such events are not necessarily due to man-made climate change.
A much bigger question is whether the new analysis of Antarctic warming heralds any major melting in the West Antarctic ice sheet, which could lead to big changes in sea level and global impacts.
"The vulnerability is higher than we thought, but still we face uncertainties in understanding these processes that make it very difficult to forecast when these changes would occur," said Drew Shindell.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7843186.stm

Preliminary Rebuttal to Recent Attacks Against Dietary Supplements

By William Faloon
The media recently ran headline news stories claiming that vitamins C, D and E do not prevent heart attack, stroke or breast cancer. This report represents Life Extension’s preliminary response to these media attacks that are based on egregiously flawed studies. We will submit this report for formal peer review and referencing and expect to post our official report within a few weeks.
Needless to say, when these biased attacks are launched, we are not given prior notice so that our side of the story makes it into the mass media.
In the early 1990s, several large population studies showed significant reductions in cardiovascular disease in those who consumed vitamin C or vitamin E.
The most widely reported study emanated from UCLA, where it was announced that men who took 800 mg a day of vitamin C lived six years longer than those who consumed the recommended daily allowance of 60 mg a day. The study, which evaluated 11,348 participants over a 10-year period of time, showed that higher vitamin C intake reduced cardiovascular disease mortality by 42%.
These kinds of findings did not go unnoticed by the federal government, who subsequently invested hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to ascertain if relatively modest vitamin doses could prevent common age-related diseases.
In a study that received extensive media coverage, four groups of male doctors were given various combinations of vitamin C and/or vitamin E or placebo. After eight years, there was no reported difference in heart attack or stroke incidence among the groups. This led the media to state that consumers should not buy these supplements.
As you will read, there were so many egregious flaws in this study that the findings are rendered meaningless. Regrettably, consumers who trust their lives to the mainstream media may fall victim to this latest charade to discredit validated methods to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.

Do you take your vitamins every other day?

The study subjects in the vitamin E groups were told to take one 400 IU capsule of synthetic alpha tocopherol every other day. This design flaw raises several issues that are rather obvious to serious supplement takers.
First of all, we don’t take our vitamins every other day. Free radicals are constantly being generated in our bodies, and supplement users today seek to take their antioxidants with most meals, as oxidative damage is generally the greatest after eating.
It is rather ludicrous to think that these study subjects would reduce their vascular disease risk by taking modest dose, every other day, of a form of vitamin E with inferior anti-oxidant capacity.
If one were to rely only on synthetic alpha tocopherol, the minimum daily dose needed has been shown to exceed 800 IU, far greater than the 400 IU ingested every other day by the subjects in this poorly designed study.
Serious supplement users normally take 400 IU every day of natural vitamin E along with a plethora of complimentary nutrients. We would not expect 400 IU of synthetic vitamin E taken every other day to produce much of an effect. Yet that is the dose given to these study subjects with the expectation that this would show a reduction in cardiovascular disease. This is by no means the only flaw of this study.

Natural versus synthetic vitamin E

There was a long standing debate as to whether natural or synthetic vitamin E is better. For most vitamins, there is no difference between natural and synthetic. In fact, for most vitamins, the only forms available are synthetic. With vitamin E, however, the natural form has proven far superior.
Natural vitamin E is distributed through the body much better than the synthetic form. The reason is that specific carrier proteins in the liver selectively bind to natural vitamin E and transport it through the blood to cells throughout the body. These carrier proteins only recognize a portion of synthetic vitamin E and ignore the remainder.
Japanese researchers gave natural or synthetic vitamin E to young women to measure how much vitamin E actually made it into their blood. It took only 100 mg (149 IU) of natural vitamin E to produce blood levels that required 300 mg (448 IU) of synthetic vitamin E.
Most studies show that synthetic vitamin E is only half as active in the body as the natural form. As it relates to the flawed study claiming that vitamin E does not prevent heart attack, the 400 IU of synthetic alpha tocopherol given every other day equates to only 100 IU a day of the natural form.
We would not expect 100 IU of natural vitamin E a day by itself to necessary reduce vascular disease risk. As you continue to read, however, there are many other flaws in this study that render its conclusions useless.
Note: When checking vitamin labels, natural vitamin E is usually stated as the “d” form (for example d-alpha tocopheryl acetate,d-alpha tocopherol, and d-alpha tocopheryl succinate). Synthetic vitamin E will have a “l” after the “d” (for example, dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate, dl-alpha tocopheryl succinate, dl-alpha tocopherol). Remember – “dl” signifies synthetic vitamin E, whereas “d” signifies natural vitamin E. Remember that if you are getting 400 IU of natural d-alpha tocopherol (d-alpha tocopheryl succinate or acetate) it is equal to about 800 IU of synthetic dl-tocopherol (dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate or succinate).

Vitamin C potencies too low

If all you are going to take to protect against free radical damage is vitamin E and/or vitamin C, then you will need far greater potencies than were given to the study subjects in this flawed study.
Published studies that document vascular benefits in response to vitamin C typically use doses of 1,000-6,000 mg each day. The authors of the flawed study alluded to this when they stated:
“In a pooled analysis of 9 cohorts, vitamin C supplement use exceeding 700 mg/day was significantly associated with a 25% reduction in coronary heart disease risk.”
Since the doctors who designed the flawed study knew that vitamin C intakes exceeding 700 mg a day significantly reduce heart attack rates, we can not figure out why they limited their subject’s daily dose to only 500 mg.
Two-time Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling and his associates advocated daily doses of vitamin C ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 mg to protect against heart attack. Linus Pauling’s theory was that atherosclerosis is primarily caused by insufficient vitamin C intake. Dr. Pauling compared the high amount of vitamin C naturally synthesized in the bodies of animals that don’t typically die of heart attacks. A 150 pound goat, for example will maintain an ascorbate blood concentration equivalent to ingesting 13,000 mg of vitamin C.
Unlike most animals, humans lack an internal enzyme needed to manufacture vitamin C in their body. If humans don’t obtain enough vitamin C from external sources, they die acutely from scurvy, or according to Linus Pauling…slowly suffer atherosclerotic occlusion. Dr. Pauling crusaded to educate humans about the need to take mega-doses of vitamin C.
Dr. Pauling and his associates published papers stating that when vitamin C levels are insufficient, the body uses cholesterol to repair the inner lining of arteries. Dr. Pauling believed that cholesterol’s involvement in atherosclerosis was a direct result of insufficient vitamin C.
Life Extension has long recommended that its members take at least 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C, along with potent plant extracts to enhance the biological benefits of ascorbate inside the body. The 500 mg daily dose of vitamin C given to the subjects of this flawed study was clearly inadequate. This did not stop the headline-hungry media and many conventional doctors from recommending that aging humans avoid these supplements altogether.
As we noted already, the dose of vitamin E used in this study was also too low to expect a reduction in vascular disease events. While alpha tocopherol vitamin E is a classic antioxidant, its free radical quenching efficacy pales in comparison to polyphenol extracts from green tea, pomegranate, grape-seed and blueberry.
Based on the superior antioxidant properties of plant extracts such as pomegranate, health conscious people today are able to obtain greater protection against free radicals and enhance the efficacy of the vitamin C without necessarily having to take the mega-doses recommended by Linus Pauling. On the flip-side, to attack the value of vitamin C based on a group of doctors who took only 500 mg a day does not correspond to the doses scientific studies show are needed to prevent heart attack.

Alpha tocopherol displaces gamma tocopherol

An increasing number of scientists are questioning the wisdom of administering alpha tocopherol vitamin E by itself. The reason is that alpha tocopherol displaces critically important gamma tocopherol in the body. The authors of the flawed study admitted that the failure to include gamma tocopherol may have been a reason that no effect was seen in the alpha tocopherol groups. Here is a quote directly from the flawed study:
"Moreover, PHS II and other prevention trials have used alpha-tocopherol, whereas the gamma-tocopherol isomer also may have a role in cardiovascular disease prevention because it has greater efficacy than alpha-tocopherol to inhibit lipid peroxidation and it may be suppressed in the presence of alpha-tocopherol."
The above admission understates the critical importance that gamma tocopherol plays in maintaining arterial health. While alpha tocopherol helps protect against lipid peroxidation, gamma tocopherol is required to neutralize the dangerous peroxynitrite free radical. Peroxnitrite damages arteries because:

1. Peroxnitrite promotes the oxidation of alpha tocopherol, thereby depleting the body of the vitamin E needed to protect against oxidation of the lipid moiety (part) of LDL. LDL is composed of both lipid and protein parts (moieties), and oxidation associated with both moieties has been implicated in atherosclerosis. In a fascinating paradox, when alpha tocopherol is given without gamma tocopherol, the result is that alpha tocopherol itself can be neutralized in the body by the peroxynitrite free radical. This in turn promotes oxidation of the lipid moiety of LDL , a major step on the path towards atherosclerosis.
2. Peroxnitrite promotes LDL protein oxidation. While alpha tocopherol inhibits LDL lipid peroxidation, gamma tocopherol is needed to protect against oxidation of the protein moiety (part) of LDL.

In the absence of gamma tocopherol, which can occur when alpha tocopherol is given without gamma tocopherol, both LDL lipid and protein oxidation is increased, which reveals the egregious mistake of trying to prevent vascular disease by administering only alpha tocopherol. Health conscious individuals should be assured that other nutrients such a lipoic acid and polyphenol plant extracts also block protein and lipid LDL oxidation.
Some studies suggest that only gamma tocopherol prevents heart attacks. As it relates to atherosclerosis, gamma tocopherol blood concentrations have been reported to be significantly lower in coronary heart disease patients than in healthy control subjects. While alpha and gamma tocopherols each perform life-sustaining functions, only gamma tocopherol increases endothelial nitric oxide protein expression. As I will describe next, a deficit of nitric oxide in the endothelium is a primary cause of arterial disease.

A hidden cause of heart attack and stroke

Even when all conventional risk factors are controlled for, the progressive decline of nitric oxide involving the arterial wall (the endothelium) too often leads to coronary heart attack and stroke.
Seven years ago, Life Extension researchers identified a critical compound (tetrahydrobiopterin) that is essential for the synthesis of nitric oxide in the endothelium. We spent several hundred thousand dollars trying to develop an affordable way to manufacture this compound as it offered tremendous promise for eradicating atherosclerosis.
We failed to find an affordable way to make tetrahydrobiopterin. The good news is that nutrients that suppress peroxynitrite (like gamma tocopherol and pomegranate) increase endothelial nitric oxide by blocking the oxidation of tetrahydrobiopterin.
Indeed, clinical studies show that supplemental gamma tocopherol enhances platelet endothelial nitric oxide synthase activity. Furthermore, a diet high in gamma tocopherol rich walnuts improved endothelium-dependent vasodilation in those with high cholesterol.
By administering only alpha tocopherol as was done in the flawed study, one would expect gamma tocopherol to be suppressed, peroxynitrite levels to increase, and precious tetrahydrobiopterin to be oxidized, thus depriving the endothelium of the nitric oxide it needs to protect against heart attack and stroke. Is it any wonder that this study failed to show vascular disease reduction in those given only alpha (but not gamma) tocopherol?

Failing to account for all vascular risk factors

Numerous independent risk factors are associated with the development of atherosclerosis and subsequent heart attack and stroke risk. A major flaw in this study was expecting low-dose vitamin C and/or E to somehow overcome all of these underlying causes of artery disease.
We know it is impossible for vitamins C and E to overcome these many risk factors, but this did not stop the media from recommending that Americans discard their supplements.
The following represents a succinct list of documented vascular disease risk factors:

1. Low testosterone (in men)
2. Excess fibrinogen
3. Low HDL
4. Excess LDL and total cholesterol
5. Excess glucose
6. Excess C-reactive protein
7. Excess homocysteine
8. Hypertension
9. Low EPA/DHA
10. Low vitamin D
11. Excess insulin
12. Excess estrogen (in men)
13. Oxidized LDL
14. Excess platelet activity
15. Nitric oxide deficit (endothelial dysfunction)

The basis for doing this study, as outlined by the study’s authors, was to use vitamins C and/or E to:

1. Trap organic free radicals
2. Deactivate excited oxygen molecules
3. Prevent tissue damage
4. Inhibit LDL oxidation
5. Modify platelet activity
6. Reduce thrombotic potential
7. Modify vascular reactivity

As one can clearly see, there are 15 documented cardiovascular risk factors. Yet only 3 of these risk factors are what formed the basis for conducting this clinical trial using low-dose vitamin C and/or E. The 3 known risk factors the authors of the flawed study expected to favorably influence with vitamins C and E were:

1. LDL oxidation
2. Platelet activity and thrombotic potential
3. Vascular reactivity (another term for endothelial dysfunction)

For every one mechanism the study’s authors proposed might enable low-dose vitamin C and/or E to work, there were five additional risk factors that would not be corrected. For instance, vitamins C and E in these low doses are not going to reduce C-reactive protein, homocysteine, fibrinogen, or glucose. Vitamins C and E in any dose are not going to increase testosterone, decrease estrogen, or provide cardio-protective EPA/DHA and vitamin D.
On the contrary, as we have already shown, by giving only alpha but not gamma tocopherol, one might expect increased LDL oxidation and impaired endothelial function. That’s because alpha tocopherol displaces gamma tocopherol in the body. Gamma-tocopherol suppresses the peroxynitrite radical that oxidizes both LDL protein and the tetrahydrobiopterin that is needed to produce endothelial nitric oxide.
As far as platelet activity and thrombotic potential (abnormal clotting inside a blood vessel) are concerned, gamma tocopherol is significantly more potent than alpha tocopherol in inhibiting platelet aggregation that can lead to a heart attack or stroke. By displacing gamma tocopherol, the alpha tocopherol used alone in this study may have increased abnormal platelet aggregation risk.
From everything we know today, this study was designed to fail. Not only did it not correct for the major causes of vascular disease, but it may have exacerbated some of the more dangerous ones.

None of what I wrote so far may really matter

You have just learned why low-dose vitamin C and/or E supplementation would not be expected to reduce heart attack and stroke risk.
I have saved the biggest shocker for last. It turns out that a significant number of the study subjects (who were all medical doctors) who were supposed to take the vitamin C and/or E supplements did not take their pills. Yet when the calculations for heart attack or stroke incidence were made, those who took as little as 66% of their low-dose vitamin C and/or E supplements were counted as having taken the entire dose.
At the end of the study, 28% of the study subjects admitted they had not even taken 66% of their low-dose vitamin C and/or E supplements.
Even more troubling is the method used to track who was really taking their supplements. Participants were asked to remember and track supplement usage for over 8 years’ time without any verification of actual pill counts, compliance by plasma antioxidant analysis, or in vivo surrogate markers of oxidant stress. Relying upon participants’ memory & recollection over a lengthy time period of many years is a rather pathetic way of ensuring adherence, and renders the author’s so called “sensitivity analysis” meaningless.
The lack of adherence, i.e. the fact that a significant percentage of the study participants were not even taking their vitamins may be the most significant flaw to this study. No one in the mainstream media bothered to report this, or any of the other flaws that jumped out at us.
Instead, the media’s message was don’t waste your money on vitamin C or E pills. Many supplement users who are taking the right form and dose of their vitamin C and E nutrients may believe the media’s biased reporting. Even those who take low-dose vitamin supplements may discontinue, which as you will read next is regrettable from a public health standpoint (but great news for the pharmaceutical companies).

Shocking deficiencies of vitamin E

The media used this horrifically flawed study as a basis to steer Americans away from vitamin C and E supplements. It’s as if all of the previous positive published studies disappeared overnight.
What was omitted is the fact that 93% of American men and 96% of American women do not consume the recommended dietary allowance of vitamin E in their diet. The federal government says Americans need only 15 milligrams a day of vitamin E, yet even this minute amount is not found in the diets of the vast majority of people.
This means that most Americans require a vitamin E supplement to avoid a chronic deficiency, but this important fact was conveniently left out of the news stories.
Conventional medicine says that severe vitamin E deficiency results mainly in neurological symptoms such as impaired balance and coordination and muscle weakness. These neurological symptoms do not develop for 10-20 years; as it takes time for free radicals to inflict nerve damage in the absence of sufficient vitamin E. The reality is that chronic vitamin E deficiency adversely impacts virtually every cell of the body.

A media coup for pharmaceutical companies

The optimal moment of the year to get your message to the masses is the second week of November. This is a time in between holidays, when winter is setting in, and few people are on vacation. The television networks consider this their most important “sweeps week” as it provides the most accurate measurement of their ratings.
The timing of the release of this horrendously flawed vitamin C and E study could not have been more perfect for pharmaceutical interests. It came out less than one week after the November election when the media was primed to sensationalize any story that would attract viewers for their all important “sweeps week”.
On the very same day the media launched its attack on vitamins C and E, the same news sources reported that the statin drug Crestor® reduced heart attack rates by 44% in healthy people who had high C-reactive protein levels. Just think, as an uneducated consumer, you read on the same day that vitamins C and E are worthless and an expensive statin drug works miracles.
Financial analysts predict a windfall for the makers of Crestor® based on this widely distributed report. In retrospect, conducting this study only on people with high C-reactive protein (but not particularly high LDL) was a brilliant marketing strategy. It had a high probability of a successful outcome, and if the study failed, Crestror® was never approved to lower C-reactive protein or be used in this population group anyway, so the pharmaceutical company had nothing to lose.
We at Life Extension have long warned about the vascular dangers of elevated C-reactive protein and even recommended statin drugs if natural approaches fail to reduce C-reactive protein. We don’t believe most people have to purchase expensive brand name drugs like Crestor®, as generic simvistatin (name brand Zocor®) or pravastatin (name brand Pravachol®) can provide similar benefit at a fraction of the price.

Media also attacks vitamin D

Not content to bash only vitamins C and E, the media the very next day in November ran a headline story stating that “Supplements don’t reduce breast cancer risk”. This story was based on a study of women who received only 400 IU a day of supplemental vitamin D.
As has been reported for years in this and other health publications, 400 IU a day of vitamin D is clearly inadequate. To reduce breast cancer risk by around 50%, a daily dose of 1000 IU and higher is required. The major flaw in this study is that participants in the active and placebo group were allowed to take vitamin D outside the study, which rendered the findings meaningless even if the proper dose has been given.
The fact that the media made this study headline news is regrettable because only about 20% of the study population achieved a 25-hydroxy vitamin D at the minimum dose required to prevent breast cancer (greater than 30 ng/mL). In other words, most participants in the active or placebo group failed to achieve even the minimal blood concentrations of vitamin D that other studies document are needed to protect against breast cancer. So all this study did was help confirm what vitamin D experts have been saying for over five years now, i.e. a minimum of 800 IU to 1000 IU of vitamin D a day is required.

Don’t be a victim of this flawed propaganda

It is in the economic interests of drug companies to steer Americans away from healthier lifestyles and dietary supplements. As more Americans fall ill to degenerative disease, drug company profits increase exponentially.
Enormous amounts of pharmaceutical dollars are spent influencing Congress, the FDA, and other federal agencies. The result is the promulgation of policies that cause Americans to be deprived of effective, low-cost means of protecting themselves against age-related disease.
As a member of the Life Extension Foundation, you gain access to scientific information that is interpreted in the context of what health conscious people are really doing to protect themselves against common diseases. This information is too often distorted by the government, drug companies and the media.
http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/Rebuttal-to-Recent-Attacks-Against-Dietary-Supplements.htm