Head Injuries May Raise Chances of Risky Behavior by Teens

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Teenagers who have experienced a traumatic brain injury are much more likely to engage in a wide range of risky behaviors, Canadian researchers report.

Both boys and girls were more likely to smoke, use drugs, drink alcohol and get poor grades after they endured a blow to the head that knocked them out for longer than five minutes or landed them in the hospital for a day or more, the study found.

“This is a wake-up call. Concussions are brain injuries, and we need parents and physicians to become more vigilant,” said lead author Gabriela Ilie, a postdoctoral fellow at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “Our brains define who we are, and a lot of our behaviors and thoughts and emotions depend on our brain circuitry operating properly.”

However, the study only showed an association between traumatic brain injury and risky behaviors, not a cause-and-effect relationship, noted Dr. Anthony Alessi, a neurologist and concussion expert in Norwich, Conn.

Alessi said he is concerned that studies like these provide an easy excuse for bad personal choices.

“There are plenty of people who get hit in the head who have done very well for themselves,” Alessi said. “I would hate for people to think once you’ve had a traumatic brain injury, you automatically will have all these other problems.”

For their study, the Canadian researchers used data gathered during the 2011 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey developed by the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

The survey, one of the longest ongoing school surveys in the world, contains responses from more than 9,000 students between grades 7 and 12 in public schools across Ontario.

The survey screened for traumatic brain injury by asking teens if they ever had a head injury that resulted in a loss of consciousness for at least five minutes or required them to spend at least one night in the hospital, Ilie said.

Girls and boys appear to react differently to brain injury, Ilie and her colleagues found.

Boys were three and a half times more likely to have bad grades, three times more likely to need medical treatment for a physical injury and twice as likely to use pot, compared with other boys who hadn’t had a brain injury.

Meanwhile, girls were nearly four times more likely to have bad grades and three times more likely to smoke, compared to girls without a brain injury.

Female teens were more likely to engage in a wider range of risky behaviors following a brain injury than males, Ilie said.

For example, they were more likely to smoke cigarettes, endure bullying, think about suicide or suffer from anxiety or depression following their injury — risks that were not associated with boys who had a brain injury.

“Both boys and girls were more likely to engage in a variety of harmful behaviors if they reported a history of TBI, but girls engaged in all 13 harmful behaviors we looked for, whereas boys were at higher risk of engaging in only nine,” Ilie said. “Sex matters when it comes to traumatic brain injuries.”

Researchers found that risks for some behaviors grew worse with age. For example, boys with a traumatic brain injury were twice as likely to smoke daily as they entered late adolescence. The number of girls using alcohol increased 20 percent as they left middle adolescence, reaching 89 percent between ages 17 and 20.

Dr. Sam Gandy, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, noted that one part of the brain is particularly vulnerable to injury.

“The frontal lobes are especially prone to damage in head trauma,” Gandy said. “This is the brain region that exerts inhibitory influences so that we maintain proper decorum. Frontal lobe damage, by removing this inhibitory influence, can lead to inappropriate sexual behavior, mood swings [both mania and depression], and violence [including suicide or homicide]. The effect of head injury on behavior is indirect, but the link is very well described.”

Ilie recommended that parents consult with a head injury clinic if their child has suffered a traumatic brain injury, to learn how to monitor their condition and respond to difficulties involving problem solving, memory or emotion.

“Let’s be aware. Somebody gets a brain injury, monitor it. Don’t say, ‘It was just a concussion,'” Ilie said.

The findings are published Sept. 30 in the online journal PLOS ONE.

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on concussions.

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Spacing Between Sibling Births Tied to Autism Risk in Study

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Children conceived either less than one year or more than five years after the birth of a sibling could be at increased risk for autism, a new study suggests.

However, both the study’s lead author and an outside expert agree that the research can’t prove that birth spacing has any causative role in autism.

“Most importantly, it is important that parents understand that the odds for autism are still extremely low, even when pregnancies are close together or far apart,” said outside expert Dr. Andrew Adesman. He is chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, in New Hyde Park, N.Y.

In the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 7,300 children born in Finland between 1987 and 2005. About one-third of the youngsters had been diagnosed with autism.

Compared to children conceived two to five years after the birth of a sibling, the risk of autism was 50 percent higher among those conceived less than a year after, nearly 30 percent higher among those conceived five to 10 years after, and 40 percent higher among those conceived more than 10 years after.

The study was published recently in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“It was intriguing to see that the risk of ASD [autism spectrum disorder] diagnosis was higher in both closely and distantly spaced pregnancies,” study leader Keely Cheslack-Postava, of Columbia University in New York City, said in a journal news release.

However, she stressed, “it is important to realize that we can’t say from this study that spacing of pregnancies per se is a cause of ASD — this is most likely a proxy of other factors that are more directly related to the chance of the child’s developing ASD.”

Adesman agreed. “Although having a very short or very long interval between consecutive pregnancies may put the second child at some increased risk for an autism spectrum disorder, it is unclear why this is the case,” he said.

“As researchers examine obstetric and environmental factors among children with an autism spectrum disorder, more and more apparent risk factors are identified,” Adesman said.

“Although studies like this will likely lead to a greater understanding of the many factors that seem to be associated with ASDs, I can imagine women becoming more and more anxious or overwhelmed when it comes to minimizing their risk for a child with ASD,” he added.

According to Cheslack-Postava, the real value of the finding lies in its potential relevance to autism research, not in any guideline as to when couples should have children.

“The importance of this finding lies in the clues that it can provide in terms of understanding how the prenatal environment is related to outcomes after birth,” she explained.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about autism.

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Could a ‘Fat Tongue’ Be a Factor in Sleep Apnea?

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Sleep apnea is a potential health risk for millions of Americans, and a new study points to a possible culprit behind the disorder: a “fat” tongue.

“This is the first study to show that fat deposits are increased in the tongue of obese patients with obstructive sleep apnea,” study senior author Dr. Richard Schwab, co-director of the Sleep Center at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, said in a news release from Sleep, which will publish the findings Oct. 1.

Sleep apnea is a common disorder in which the airways constrict during sleep, leading to repeated stops and starts in breathing. The telltale signs include chronic loud snoring, with periodic gasps or choking — and, for many people, daytime drowsiness because of poor sleep.

But the effects go beyond fatigue. Studies suggest those pauses in breathing stress the nervous system, boosting blood pressure and inflammation in the arteries.

Obese people tend to be at higher risk for sleep apnea, and Schwab’s team say the new findings may help explain the link between obesity and the breathing disorder.

The study included 90 obese adults with sleep apnea and 90 obese adults without the disorder.

The participants with sleep apnea had significantly larger tongues, tongue fat and percentage of tongue fat than those without sleep apnea, the researchers found. The tongue fat in the people with sleep apnea was concentrated at the base of the tongue.

In addition to increasing the size of the tongue, higher levels of tongue fat may prevent muscles that attach the tongue to bone from positioning the tongue away from the airway during sleep, Schwab’s group explained.

While the study found an association between tongue fat content and sleep apnea, it could not prove cause and effect.

However, the researchers believe future studies should assess whether removing tongue fat through weight loss, upper airway exercises or surgery could help treat sleep apnea.

“Tongue size is one of the physical features that should be evaluated by a physician when screening obese patients to determine their risk for obstructive sleep apnea,” American Academy of Sleep Medicine President Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler added in the news release.

“Effective identification and treatment of sleep apnea is essential to optimally manage other conditions associated with this chronic disease, including high blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and depression,” he said.

Nearly 35 percent of U.S. adults — 78.6 million people — are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about sleep apnea.

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Acupuncture May Not Help Chronic Knee Pain, Study Finds

By Tara Haelle

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Acupuncture doesn’t improve knee pain any more than “sham” acupuncture, according to a new study.

“Among patients older than 50 years with moderate to severe chronic knee pain, neither laser nor needle acupuncture conferred benefit over sham for pain or function,” the study authors wrote. “Our findings do not support acupuncture for these patients.”

Sham acupuncture is any form of fake acupuncture, used so that researchers can test whether benefits from the traditional acupuncture may be due to a placebo effect. A placebo effect means a person believes his symptoms have improved despite receiving a fake medication or treatment.

“Subjective measurements such as pain are particularly subject to placebo responses,” said study co-author Kim Bennell, a professor of physiotherapy at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “This can be attributed to factors such as the treatment setting, patient expectations and optimism, the physician’s confidence in the treatment, and how the physician and patient interact.”

In this study, almost 300 adults with chronic knee pain received either needle acupuncture, laser acupuncture (hitting acupuncture spots with a low-intensity laser beam), sham laser acupuncture, or no treatment at all (the “control” group). With the sham treatment, a machine was pre-programmed not to deliver the laser, so neither the patient nor the acupuncturist knew it was a fake treatment.

Participants received 20-minute sessions up to twice a week for three months. They filled out questionnaires about their knee pain at the start of the study, three months later and one year later.

After three months, participants receiving needle, laser and sham acupuncture all experienced similar reductions in knee pain while walking, compared to the control group. The pain improvement was gone at a year, however, and the short-term improvements were too small to make a significant difference in practice, the authors wrote.

And, neither needle acupuncture nor laser acupuncture provided significantly greater relief than sham laser acupuncture, according to the study.

The patients who received needle acupuncture also experienced slightly improved physical function in their knees after three months compared to the control group, but it did not last a year, and a similar improvement was also seen in the sham group.

The findings were published in the Oct. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This study was small, but its findings are similar to those of other acupuncture studies, according to Dr. Steven Novella, an assistant professor of neurology at Yale University School of Medicine. He said he was a little surprised that the difference between the treatment and control groups was not larger due to placebo effects.

“There are individual studies with weakly positive effects, but systematic reviews generally either show no effect at all or a slight effect that is not clinically significant,” Novella said.

The lack of long-lasting pain relief from acupuncture in this study could be due to other reasons though, said Jean-Paul Thuot, an acupuncturist and owner of Stillpoint Community Acupuncture in Victoria, British Columbia in Canada.

“Osteoarthritis can often cause changes to the bone or joint structure,” Thuot said. “If there are longstanding chronic changes to the structure, acupuncture will have a limited effect over such a short duration.” Most of the people included in this trial had symptoms that could have been caused by osteoarthritis, according to the study.

He added that the acupuncture was also not provided often or long enough to see an effect.

“Once or twice a week for eight to 12 weeks would, in my experience, hardly scratch the surface of such a condition, so I am not surprised that there was little change,” Thuot said. “With acupuncture there are so many variables from patient to patient that with the relatively small sample sizes often used in studies such as these, it would be difficult to come to any real conclusion as to the efficacy of the treatment.”

No serious side effects occurred in this study. Because acupuncture is invasive, Novella said side effects such as bleeding and infection can occur with needle acupuncture.

“There is also indirect harm of wasted resources and perhaps delaying more effective treatment,” Novella said. “Also, if a patient is convinced by placebo effects that acupuncture works, they may seek it out for a non-self-limiting illness, and there are ‘medical acupuncturists’ who will use acupuncture to treat anything, even cancer.”

The study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia.

More information

Find out more about knee pain at the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Social Support May Be Key to Heart Attack Recovery

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Young and middle-aged heart attack survivors are more likely to have poor health and low quality of life if they have fewer family and friends to support them in their recovery, a new study suggests.

The study included more than 3,400 survivors, aged 18 to 55, who were assessed immediately after their heart attack and again one month and 12 months later.

The first assessment found that patients with low social support were more likely to be single, unemployed, live alone, smoke, abuse alcohol and to have heart risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes and depression.

One and 12 months after a heart attack, patients with low social support tended to have poorer mental health, more symptoms of depression and lower quality of life, according to the study published Sept. 30 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The findings are consistent with previous studies of older heart attack patients, and suggest the need for new ways of helping heart attack survivors.

“Studies like this are opening up a wide list of different types of risk factors than the ones we conventionally think about,” senior study author Dr. Harlan Krumholz, director of the Center of Outcomes Research and Evaluation at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, said in a journal news release.

“We shouldn’t just be concerning ourselves with pills and procedures. We have to pay attention to things like love and friendship and the context of people’s lives. It may be that these efforts to help people connect better with others, particularly after an illness, may have very powerful effects on their recovery and the quality of their lives afterwards,” Krumholz said.

Lead researcher Emily Bucholz, a student in the school of medicine and the department of chronic disease epidemiology in Yale’s School of Public Health, said that “this study adds to current literature by showing that there may be some utility in being able to identify patient support networks when patients are first hospitalized for heart attack.”

Although the study found an association between social support and health outcomes after a heart attack, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about heart attack recovery.

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Groups Call for Medicare Coverage of Lung Cancer Screening

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Medicare should cover low-dose computed tomography lung cancer screening for people at high risk for the disease, a coalition of more than 60 patient and medical groups says.

The coalition, which includes the Lung Cancer Alliance, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the American College of Radiology, the American Cancer Society and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, made its point in a letter sent Monday to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Such screening reduces lung cancer deaths, works well in people older than 65 and has been shown to be cost-effective, the coalition stated.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends low-dose CT screening for adults aged 55 to 80 at high risk for lung cancer.

“This vital new screening tool is required by law to be available to most individuals with commercial insurance, but not those covered by Medicare. It’s time to extend coverage to all who may benefit from screening,” Dr. Richard Wender, chief cancer control officer of the American Cancer Society, said in an American College of Radiology news release.

Laurie Fenton Ambrose, president and chief executive officer of the Lung Cancer Alliance, said, “We are pleased the larger cancer community has joined us in calls for Medicare coverage for CT lung cancer screening. This is an important day for seniors and for CMS.”

Dr. Douglas Wood, immediate past president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, added that “the infrastructure is in place to help ensure the quality, safety and consistency of these exams. Medicare just needs to provide coverage to support these efforts and help physicians save lives.”

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about lung cancer screening.

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Obesity Tied to Higher Cancer Risk for Colon Cancer Survivors

By Alan Mozes

Health Day Reporter

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Colon cancer patients who are overweight or obese when diagnosed appear to face a slightly higher risk for developing a second weight-related cancer, new research suggests.

The finding didn’t speak to the risk of colon cancer recurrence, only the potential for developing other cancers associated with obesity.

“We found that colorectal cancer survivors who reported being overweight or obese prior to diagnosis had a modestly increased risk of developing an obesity-related second cancer compared to [cancer survivors] who reported a normal weight,” said study lead author Todd Gibson, who conducted his research while a fellow with the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

A higher obesity-driven risk was identified for kidney, pancreatic, esophageal and endometrial cancers, as well as for postmenopausal breast cancer among female colorectal cancer patients.

Gibson, now an assistant faculty member at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, and his colleagues discussed the findings in the Sept. 29 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The authors noted that roughly 1.1 million Americans are living with colon cancer, and obesity has long been cited as a contributing risk factor for the disease.

However, in most cases colorectal cancer has a relatively high survival rate, with roughly 70 to 90 percent of patients living to the five-year mark following their diagnosis.

To assess how obesity might affect additional cancer risk post-survival, the research team focused on nearly 12,000 colon cancer survivors who were about age 69 on average when first diagnosed.

Patient weight had been assessed prior to their initial diagnosis by means of a body mass index calculation. BMI readings are based on height and weight.

In all, 44 percent of the patients were deemed overweight (a BMI between 25 and 29), while one-quarter were obese (a BMI of 30 or more).

When compared with colorectal cancer survivors who had been at “normal” weight at diagnosis, those who had been overweight or obese faced a greater risk for developing a second obesity-related cancer down the road.

However, the team stressed that the actual risk that an obese or overweight colon cancer survivor would develop a secondary cancer remained low, even if their relative risk was almost double that of normal-weight survivors.

Also, the risk for developing one of the obesity-related cancers was actually no higher among obese and overweight colon cancer survivors than it was for obese and overweight members of the general public who’d never had colon cancer.

In other words, the smoking gun appears to be obesity itself, rather than a prior history of cancer.

“The implication,” said Gibson, “is that maintaining a healthy weight is important for cancer prevention in colorectal cancer survivors, just as it is in the general population. [So] our results further emphasize the importance of existing guidelines recommending healthy weight for survivors.”

Dr. Andrew Chan, an associate professor in the department of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said the study “not only supports the importance of considering obesity as a risk factor for colorectal cancer, but also suggests that it remains a predictor of survival after one has been diagnosed.”

The finding has “important implications as the average risk of developing colorectal cancer over one’s lifetime is estimated to be about 6 percent,” Chan said. “Thus, for this large number of individuals, working to maintain an ideal body weight remains a high priority.”

Dr. David Carr-Locke, chief of the division of digestive diseases at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, seconded the thought.

“The message is obviously that here we have yet another reason why it’s better not to be obese,” he said. “Of course, we certainly don’t know all the answers about how cancer risk works. What part is genetic? What part is environment? But it does look like obesity itself does have an influence on the risk for some cancers.”

More information

For more about obesity, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Recessions May Thwart a Woman’s Motherhood Plans Forever: Study

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — When unemployment rates climb, women tend to put the brakes on motherhood. And for many young women, that decision may turn out to be a permanent choice, new research suggests.

Women in their early 20s appear most likely to choose not to have a child during tough economic times. But, according to the new study, that means many of those women will remain childless into their 40s and beyond.

The findings suggest that higher unemployment “will increase the numbers of unmarried, childless women,” said study author Janet Currie, chair of Princeton University’s department of economics and director of the Center for Health and Wellbeing.

“Perhaps the women will go on to have careers that they would not have had,” said Currie, suggesting that these careers could interfere with plans to have children later in life.

“In the past, though, elderly unmarried women were more likely to be poor, and these women will not have children to depend on,” she said.

Previous research has suggested that hard economic times may be linked to falling fertility rates. “The mystery is whether women make up for this by having more children later on,” Currie said. So she and colleague Hannes Schwandt, a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton, decided to find out.

They examined the records of more than 140 million births in the United States from 1975 to 2010. Then they tried to find connections between birth rates, women of various childbearing ages and the unemployment rate.

“We find that women who were in their early 20s — 20 to 24 — during recessions reduced their fertility the most, and the effects were even greater in the long run,” Currie said. “They were less likely to ever have married or to have had any children by age 40.”

In the big picture, a recession is likely to be short and not have a huge impact on the country’s birth rate, Currie said. Still, she added, the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009 will likely lower the number of births over the long term.

“The estimates imply that of the women aged 20 to 24 at the start of the Great Recession, an additional 151,082 will remain childless at age 40,” the study authors wrote. That would represent an 8.9 percent increase in the number of women who remain childless for life, the researchers explained.

Two experts offered some theories on the study’s findings.

“People may continue their education, for example, or take jobs that are not especially compatible with family life,” said Andrew Foster, director of Brown University’s Population Studies and Training Center.

“Or they may simply alter their expectations of what it means to be a family,” Foster said. “These changes are not all good or all bad. But they do reflect a kind of response to the reduced opportunities that individuals face when they enter the labor market in a period of economic uncertainty.”

Elizabeth Ananat, an assistant professor of public policy and economics at Duke University, said, “People often assume that boom and bust times cancel each other out. But this study reinforces earlier findings that the harm from recessions doesn’t go away later, particularly for people who are in their early 20s and entering the job market for the first time when a recession hits.”

The study was published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More information

For more about infertility, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Herceptin Best for Certain Breast Cancer Patients, Study Says

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Herceptin is the best drug treatment for a type of breast cancer called HER2-positive and should remain the standard of care for that type of tumor, according to new findings from a long-term clinical trial.

HER2-positive breast cancers tend to be more aggressive than other types of breast cancer, according to the Mayo Clinic.

For the study, more than 8,300 patients in 44 countries received either Herceptin (trastuzumab) or Tykerb (lapatinib) in addition to standard chemotherapy.

After 4.5 years of follow-up, 14 percent of patients who took Herceptin and 18 percent of those who took Tykerb had at least one disease “event” — breast cancer recurrence anywhere in the body, a new cancer, or death from any cause.

Heart safety was rated good for both groups of patients. And there was no difference in the rate of cancer spreading from the breast to the brain, study co-chair Dr. Edith Perez, director of the Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, said in a Mayo news release.

The findings were scheduled for presentation in Madrid, Spain, at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology, which concludes Tuesday.

The patients in the study are still being followed.

Data and conclusions presented at meetings are typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about breast cancer treatments.

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Fish Oil Supplements Have Little Effect on Irregular Heartbeat: Study

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — High doses of fish oil supplements won’t prevent the return of a common type of irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation, Canadian researchers report.

In fact, 64.1 percent of those taking fish oil for its omega-3 fatty acids experienced new bouts of atrial fibrillation over the course of 16 months, compared to 63.2 percent of those taking a placebo. Fish oil supplements also did not reduce the twin ills of inflammation or oxidative stress, which may explain why they didn’t guard against atrial fibrillation, the study authors noted.

“Fish oil has no role to play in the treatment of atrial fibrillation,” said lead researcher Dr. Anil Nigam, an associate professor in the department of medicine at the University of Montreal.

Atrial fibrillation is a common malady in which the heartbeat is irregular and can race as fast as 150 beats a minute. A normal heart rate is around 70 beats a minute.

For the study, Nigam and his colleagues randomly assigned 337 patients with atrial fibrillation who were not being treated with medications to prevent the abnormal heart rhythm to 4 grams of fish oil a day or to a placebo. The patients were followed for up to 16 months.

The study, funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Quebec, was published online Sept. 29 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

According to the Heart Rhythm Society, 2.7 million Americans suffer from atrial fibrillation, and that number is likely to increase as the population ages. The condition increases the risk of stroke fivefold and is responsible for 88,000 deaths each year.

Certain risk factors are associated with the development of atrial fibrillation, including obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and sleep apnea, Nigam said. Some heart conditions, such as heart failure and heart valve problems, can also increase the risk of atrial fibrillation.

“For most people without heart problems, we believe a healthy weight and healthy lifestyle, and a good control of risk factors, can probably help reduce the risk of developing this condition, although this has not been studied per se,” Nigam said.

He added that recent studies have found no benefit from fish oil supplements in people with heart disease who are being optimally treated and whose heart is working normally.

“However, people with poor heart function might still benefit from taking fish oil supplements,” Nigam said. “What is better and should be recommended is a Mediterranean-type diet rich in natural omega-3 fats and other nutrients, including fresh fruits and veggies, legumes, olive oil, while lowering intake of red meat, trans fats and saturated fats,” he said.

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, “While some studies of omega-3 fatty acid supplementation have shown a modest benefit in treating patients with heart failure, there appears to be no benefit with omega-3 fatty acids in treating atrial fibrillation.”

For patients with atrial fibrillation, prescribing traditional medications to prevent this abnormal heartbeat is the most common treatment. Patients may also need to take a blood thinner to help reduce the risk of stroke, he said.

In addition, some patients can benefit from a procedure called catheter ablation, which in essence, burns tiny sections of the heart to prevent the recurrence of atrial fibrillation, Fonarow added.

Preventing atrial fibrillation in the first place is a challenge, and much more research is needed, he noted.

More information

Visit the American Heart Association for more on atrial fibrillation.

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Can Exercise Prevent Type 2 Diabetes? Your Genes May Be Key

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — For millions of overweight Americans, regular exercise remains a prime weapon against excess weight and the threat of type 2 diabetes.

However, a new study suggests that the battle may be tougher for some than for others, depending on their genes.

“While physical activity generally promotes good health, it may not be as effective for everyone when it comes to preventing or treating type 2 diabetes,” said one expert, Dr. Ruth Loos, director of the Genetics of Obesity and Related Metabolic Traits Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City.

While it’s long been known that physical activity can cut diabetes risk, the influence of genes on this protective effect hasn’t been clear, according to background information from the study.

In the study, researchers led by Dr. Yann Klimentidis of the University of Arizona examined interactions between physical activity, genetics and diabetes risk in more than 8,100 white Americans, including 821 with type 2 diabetes.

They found that exercise provided less protection against diabetes in people at high genetic risk for diabetes and insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance, a precursor to full-blown diabetes, is a condition in which the body produces insulin but does not use it efficiently.

The study was published Sept. 29 in the journal Diabetologia.

While certain diabetes-linked genes seemed to blunt the benefits of exercise for both men and women, women seemed most affected, the Arizona team noted.

Loos, who is associate editor at Diabetologia and helped edit the paper, called the findings “important.”

“This study suggests that especially those who are genetically prone [to diabetes] may need additional preventive measures and more targeted treatment,” she said.

However, she also noted that the study had certain limitations.

“The scientists only studied sports participation, which is only a small component of people’s overall daily physical activity,” Loos said. “Furthermore, the role of a healthy diet, another important component in the prevention of type 2 diabetes, was not examined, either.”

Dr. Minisha Sood is director of inpatient diabetes at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She said that because the study only focused on white participants, its findings might not apply to a broader population of patients. However, Sood added that the general conclusion — that genes may play a role in how effective exercise is in preventing diabetes — makes intuitive sense.

And she stressed that the findings are no reason for people battling obesity to give up on exercise.

“Genetic predisposition to insulin resistance or not, physical activity has a multitude of health benefits –including perhaps delaying or mitigating insulin resistance,” Sood said. “Being ‘hardwired’ for insulin resistance should not serve as a reason to give physical fitness and [maintaining a healthy weight] a low priority.”

More information

The U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion explains how to prevent type 2 diabetes.

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When It Comes to Sex Partners, Men Prefer Younger Women: Study

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) — In books and movies, plots involving older men chasing much younger women abound.

Now, new research suggests that the stereotype may be grounded in fact.

In the study, psychologists looked at data on more than 12,000 people from Finland.

The researchers, led by Jan Antfolk of Abo Akademi in Turku, Finland, found that women typically preferred men who were the same age or somewhat older, and this remained consistent throughout their lives.

On the other hand, men tended to have a lifelong sexual preference for women in their mid-20s.

For example, men younger than 20 were typically attracted to older women, while men older than 30 began to prefer younger women.

According to the researchers this might be all part of Nature’s plan: Men’s heightened sexual interest in women in their mid-20s is probably because women are most fertile at this age, they said.

That kind of preference would have been an evolutionary advantage, because men who had sex with women in their mid-20s would have had more children than other men, Antfolk’s team said.

For their part, women may be more selective than men about their sexual partners, which means they’re more likely to have sex with partners who match their age preferences.

The bottom line? In the end, it may be women who most often get the upper hand in mate selection. According to the researchers, that’s because men’s actual sexual behavior is controlled more by women’s selecting a mate based on her age preferences, rather than his own “age ideals.”

The study was funded by the Academy of Finland and was published recently in the journal Evolutionary and Human Behavior.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine offers resources about sexual health.

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The Laughable Reasons Why Some People Don’t Like Stunning National Parks

Photo: Getty Images

National parks are awesome. If you’ve hiked through any, be it Yellowstone or Yosemite, Joshua Tree or Denali, you likely felt your jaw drop at the unbelievable beauty.

But not everyone is that impressed. A recent Mashable article lists a handful of people who gave one and two-star Yelp reviews to some of the most magical national parks in the country. Their criticisms will leave you baffled—and glad you’re not friends with them.

Some highlights (or lowlights):

Grand Canyon National Park

“As amazing as the views are it is really kind of boring. Every 500 feet a new vantage point of the same thing: A really big hole in the ground.”

Denali National Park and Preserve

“Two of the trails were closed because of bears.”

Sequoia National Park (above)

“Lost my car key in the restroom and nobody helped me out.”

Joshua Tree National Park

“Ugly and the hiking sucks.”

Yosemite National Park

“One time, at Yosemite, I had to go to the bathroom and it was gross.”

RELATED: 5 (Scientific!) Reasons Getting Outside is Good for You

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