Josie Bissett Holly Combs

Tunisia to auction Ben Ali’s treasures is a post from What's going on around the world?

The latest “breakthrough” in depression treatment is a drug that’s supposedly able to relieve symptoms in a little over an hour. It works in patients who were previously resistant to treatment that, in any case, could take weeks to start working. 

Related Story

‘The Biggest Breakthrough in Depression Research’ in 50 Years Is … Ketamine?

The strongest effects of the new drug, which is being tested by the National Institutes of Health, only lasted for about a half-hour, sometimes lingering for two more days. But the researchers are encouraged because so far, the drug seems to be just as promising as ketamine.

Yep, that ketamine. The club drug, as a positive side effect of its other, dissociative side effects, is able to rapidly relieve symptoms of depression in the most hopeless of cases. The news from this past October was that its ability to do so was helping scientists to rethink the way they conceptualize the depressed brain. As I reported then, the focus was shifting away from the “low levels of serotonin” model of depression:

Instead, the studies reviewed here support a different theory, one which suggests that depression is the result of damage to the brain cells responsible for controlling mood. In mice, at least, this atrophy of neurons occurred in response to stress. Although the reasons stress causes this to happen are unclear, the weakening of synaptic connections appears to be at the root of depression and other stress-related disorders.

SSRIs are intended to increase brain levels of serotonin, but they do also, eventually, restore neurons. Ketamine is able to repair these synaptic connections in mice with near-miraculous speed. Indirect evidence from brain imaging supports the theory that this “synaptogensis” is the mechanism allowing for ketamine’s rapid effects in humans as well.

Reporting on these findings, Yale researchers writing in Science expressed the hope that they’d be able to develop faster-acting, longer-lasting antidepressants that work through the same mechanism, but that they’d feel more comfortable prescribing than a drug that variably causes “pleasant dream-like states, vivid imagery, hallucinations, and emergence delirium.” The promise this holds for people with depression, especially those for whom SSRIs and electroconvulsive therapy have proven ineffective, can’t be overstated.

The results from the NIH’s clinical trial are a first step in this direction. The new drug isn’t as headline-grabbing as ketamine — it’s definitely going to need a better name than its current “AZD6765″ — but when tested on 22 patients, it had a 32 percent success rate, which is approaching the 52 percent seen with ketamine. Strengthening its case, AZD6765 worked significantly better than a placebo, and had fewer ketamine-like side effects.

The trial established “proof of concept,” meaning that although there’s still much more testing and refinement to do before it can begin to be offered to the wider public, researchers are at least heading in the right direction.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/a-new-antidepressant-inspired-by-ketamine/266427/

Lara Bingle Sophia Bush

A New Antidepressant Inspired by Ketamine is a post from What's going on around the world?

Carrie Fisher Joan Jett

Don’t Miss Ulta’s Biggest Cyber Monday Ever! is a post from What's going on around the world?

The latest “breakthrough” in depression treatment is a drug that’s supposedly able to relieve symptoms in a little over an hour. It works in patients who were previously resistant to treatment that, in any case, could take weeks to start working. 

Related Story

‘The Biggest Breakthrough in Depression Research’ in 50 Years Is … Ketamine?

The strongest effects of the new drug, which is being tested by the National Institutes of Health, only lasted for about a half-hour, sometimes lingering for two more days. But the researchers are encouraged because so far, the drug seems to be just as promising as ketamine.

Yep, that ketamine. The club drug, as a positive side effect of its other, dissociative side effects, is able to rapidly relieve symptoms of depression in the most hopeless of cases. The news from this past October was that its ability to do so was helping scientists to rethink the way they conceptualize the depressed brain. As I reported then, the focus was shifting away from the “low levels of serotonin” model of depression:

Instead, the studies reviewed here support a different theory, one which suggests that depression is the result of damage to the brain cells responsible for controlling mood. In mice, at least, this atrophy of neurons occurred in response to stress. Although the reasons stress causes this to happen are unclear, the weakening of synaptic connections appears to be at the root of depression and other stress-related disorders.

SSRIs are intended to increase brain levels of serotonin, but they do also, eventually, restore neurons. Ketamine is able to repair these synaptic connections in mice with near-miraculous speed. Indirect evidence from brain imaging supports the theory that this “synaptogensis” is the mechanism allowing for ketamine’s rapid effects in humans as well.

Reporting on these findings, Yale researchers writing in Science expressed the hope that they’d be able to develop faster-acting, longer-lasting antidepressants that work through the same mechanism, but that they’d feel more comfortable prescribing than a drug that variably causes “pleasant dream-like states, vivid imagery, hallucinations, and emergence delirium.” The promise this holds for people with depression, especially those for whom SSRIs and electroconvulsive therapy have proven ineffective, can’t be overstated.

The results from the NIH’s clinical trial are a first step in this direction. The new drug isn’t as headline-grabbing as ketamine — it’s definitely going to need a better name than its current “AZD6765″ — but when tested on 22 patients, it had a 32 percent success rate, which is approaching the 52 percent seen with ketamine. Strengthening its case, AZD6765 worked significantly better than a placebo, and had fewer ketamine-like side effects.

The trial established “proof of concept,” meaning that although there’s still much more testing and refinement to do before it can begin to be offered to the wider public, researchers are at least heading in the right direction.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/a-new-antidepressant-inspired-by-ketamine/266427/

Catherine Bosley Nigel Hawthorne

A New Antidepressant Inspired by Ketamine is a post from What's going on around the world?

Alex Kingston Helena Christensen

Sudan, South Sudan broker fragile truce is a post from What's going on around the world?

Instead of taking your fingerprint, maybe police should swab our belly buttons with Q-tips. No, that’s ridiculous, actually. But the idea illustrates a point made by a group of North Carolina-based researchers in their new Belly Button Biodiversity (BBB) project. Last month, the group published results of their first of many experiments, in which they swabbed 60 belly buttons and identified a total of 2,368 species of bacteria. People’s individual profiles were snowflake-ily, bacterially unique. 

As the BBB understands it, like exploring the depths of our majestic oceans, there’s much to be learned from our belly button hangers-on. National Geographic reported that 1,458 of the species “may be new to science,” and some of the bacteria were entirely out of their known context. One person’s belly button “harbored a bacterium that had previously been found only in soil from Japan,” where he had never been. Another had two types of “extremophile bacteria that typically thrive in ice caps and thermal vents.” 

Anonymous samples from a belly button sampling event. Which one are you? F/M/K?

---

“The belly button has captured the imagination for centuries,” BBB notes on their impeccably-URL-ed site, WildLifeOfYourBody.org. Prior to those centuries, belly buttons captured no one’s imagination. To be fair, in those days, imaginations were much less amenable to capture. They wandered, wily and free, with a discerning taste, the likes of which our indolent, Internet-weary imaginations of today know nothing.

When you return from this journey into the belly button of your mind, you can participate in one of the BBB’s very real “sampling events,” where you volunteer to be navally swabbed with a Q-tip. They then assign you an anonymous number, and in a few days you can then go online and look photos of what grows — your belly button bacterial profile — and learn about the little beings with whom you share your body.

If you’re just starting to date someone, or more seriously vetting them as a marriage candidate, you might suggest going to one of these sampling sessions as a fun date. But then, like so many dates, it’s actually a test to see how dirty they are. It’s anonymous, yes, but if you stand next to each other in line, you’ll know what their number is, and you can look it up later.

It’s up to you how you interpret the results. Dirtier is not necessarily worse, and that’s one important point BBB wants their work to make. The vast majority of bacteria in the world live in harmony with us, and don’t want to kill us. No, they want us to live and thrive, so we can keep being their warm homes. So they may actually be helping us.

As the BBB puts it, most bacteria are, like people, “either good or simply present.”

So should you be making extra effort to clean out the many bacteria in your belly button? I say no. Unless it’s visibly grimy, or you have a history of belly button infections, or just reading about this research no longer allows you to live comfortably with the knowledge that you are an infestation. Others will disagree — like Dr. Claire Cronin of the Massachusetts Medical Society. She notes that in the era of laparoscopic surgery, where the belly button is commonly used as a port of surgical access, there is virtue in keeping tidy down there:

There is a surprising lack of awareness on the public’s part as to what can accumulate in a belly button … the volume of material increases as the patient ages and, just like their arteries, can harden. I like to think of it as a cache of a lifetime of little treasures. … Most patients have not received adequate instruction on proper umbilical hygiene. It has not received the same level of attention that the area behind the ears has. … There is a technique to cleaning the belly button. It involves soap and water and gentle probing. … Alcohol should not be used, in order to not disturb the delicate pH balance of the area.

Beyond worrying about the embarrassment of doctors discovering “blackened wax casts,” in your belly button, though, the BBB project could make important progress in understanding how the bacteria that colonize us actually affect our health. Analogous to the parasite Toxoplasmosis gondii – which we only recently found out is present in 20-50 percent of our brains, subtly shaping our personalities and maybe even making us try to hurt ourselves — some of these little bacteria that go unnoticed are probably affecting us in ways unknown, good and bad. Ways that we’re currently just chalking up to chance or genetics or God or gluten. 

Meanwhile, BBB is now in the pilot phase of testing armpits, which is less fascinating, but doesn’t lose sight of their thesis that “in all likelihood your body hosts species that no scientist has ever studied.” That’s not meant to be used as a pick-up line.

Thora Birch Veronika Zemanova

1,458 Bacteria Species ‘New to Science’ Found in Our Belly Buttons is a post from What's going on around the world?

By Deni Kirkova

PUBLISHED: 11:12 EST, 18 December 2012 | UPDATED: 13:25 EST, 18 December 2012

Bessie Cameron literally ‘fell’ for her husband of seventy years – she fainted into his arms when the first bombs fell in 1940 – and they are now celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary.

She says the spark between them hasn’t changed from that moment outside the Coliseum cinema in Barrow, Cumbria.

She and John Roland ‘Roly’ Fry wed two years later.

She said: ‘It was the day after the first bomb on Prospect Road, where I worked. I was still shaken about it.’

Bessie Cameron ‘fell’ for her a stranger – she fainted into his arms when the first bombs fell in 1940 – and they’re now celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary

Outside the cinema in a doorway Mrs Fry fainted.

When she became conscious again she found Mr Fry had come to her rescue. Mrs Fry, 92, said: ‘We are still in love today definitely.’

Mr Fry joked: ‘She fell for me right away.’

Mrs Fry said: ‘It was love at first sight. As soon as I saw him I liked him.’

The couple, who still live in Barrow, married shortly after they met and had two sons together.

They say they’re just as in love as the moment they met.

‘We were together about 18 months before we got married’

Mrs Fry said: ‘We were together about 18 months before we got married.’

They were wed in the Barrow register office on December 19, 1942. Mrs Fry, who was 22 when they married, said on the wedding day she wore a ‘little coat and a dress’.

However, as it was during the war, she didn’t have a ‘fancy’ dress.

After they were married, Mr Fry went to college to learn to cook for Mrs Fry. Tomorrow, Mr Fry, 90, will be cooking his wife her favourite meal, chicken with all the trimmings, and they will spend some quality time with just the two of them together.

Mrs Fry said she was looking forward to the big day, although the pair won’t be throwing a party. She said: ‘We just want to be together.’

The pair have spent many happy times together in their 70 years of marriage. Mrs Fry said: ‘He has made me very happy.’

She said among her favourite memories of their time together are the times they went on holiday.

She said: ‘We used to go camping in the Lake District. We have had some lovely holidays.’

Now celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary, the spark between them ‘hasn’t changed’

Mrs Fry said she was looking forward to the big day. She said: ‘We just want to be together’

Jessica Drake Alex Kingston

Bessie Cameron John Roland Couple celebrate 70 years of marriage after she fainted in to the arms of a stranger as the first bombs of World War II began to fall is a post from What's going on around the world?

Ashley Greene Holly Sampson

Don’t Miss Ulta’s Biggest Cyber Monday Ever! is a post from What's going on around the world?

(Reuters) – U.S. health regulators have approved a new four-strain seasonal influenza vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the company said on Monday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Fluarix Quadrivalent to immunize children age 3 and older and adults against flu virus subtypes A and B contained in the vaccine.

It is the first intramuscular vaccine to protect against four influenza strains. Three-strain flu vaccines currently administered help protect against the two most common A virus strains and the B strain expected to be predominant in a given year, the company said.

Since 2000, however, two B virus strains have circulated to varying degrees each season, meaning patients infected with the B virus not contained in the vaccine were not immunized.

Fluarix Quadrivalent helps protect against the two A strains and adds coverage against a second B strain, the company said.

Three-strain vaccines “have helped protect millions of people against flu, but in six of the last 11 flu seasons, the predominant circulating influenza B strain was not the strain that public health authorities selected,” said Dr. Leonard Friedland, head of clinical development and medical affairs for Glaxo’s North American vaccines program.

“Fluarix Quadrivalent will help protect individuals against both B strains and from a public-health standpoint, can help decrease the burden of disease.”

Glaxo said it will make the vaccine available in time for the 2013-14 flu season and plans to fulfill orders for its trivalent, or three-strain, vaccines. Healthcare providers traditionally order flu vaccines about a year in advance of each flu season.

Fluarix Quadrivalent is not currently approved or licensed in any country outside of the United States.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

Veronika Zemanova Barbara Schoeneberger

GlaxoSmithKline wins U.S. approval for new flu vaccine is a post from What's going on around the world?

A study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology is questioning the perceived wisdom of the annual pelvic exam, not just as an important means of screening for ovarian cancer (which, according to the authors, it isn’t) but as being necessary at all.

The researchers, from UCSF, are referring not to the visual examination of external genitalia or to the use of the speculum, but specifically to the part of the exam where the physician inserts two fingers into the vagina to feel the ovaries, cervix, and uterus. While annual Pap smears to test for cervical cancer are no longer officially recommended for most women, the possible case against pelvic exams has remained less clear. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists this August changed its recommendations for the pelvic exam, restricting it to women 21 and over, but its reasoning for even this was far from sound:

An annual pelvic examination seems logical, but also lacks data to support a specific time frame or frequency of such examinations. The decision whether or not to perform a complete pelvic examination at the time of the periodic health examination for the asymptomatic patient should be a shared decision after a discussion between the patient and her health care provider.

Pelvic exams are still recommended as a means of screening for ovarian cancer: the Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and the New York Times all list it as a first-step measure in preventing the disease. Half of the over 500 physicians surveyed for this study thought it was very important for this purpose, and nearly all endorsed conducting the exam on low-risk women. Beyond that, they were also all for performing the exam on a hypothetical 55-year-old woman whose ovaries, uterus, and cervix had been removed.

If the authors are right, this could come down to the insidious nature of common “knowledge” — women go in for the exam because they’ve been lead to believe it’s necessary, and doctors perform it, according to the study, because women expect them to. Indeed, the physicians indicated things like “it reassures the patients of their health” and “it ensures adequate compensation for routine gynecologic care” as rationale. The problem is, if it’s not actually “medically necessary,” we might, at best, be wasting time and money, suffering uncomfortable exams for the sake of trite reassurance. At worst, we’re causing need for costly and unnecessary follow-ups or being falsely reassured.

If the exam turns out to provide some degree of good, there’s no reason not to be all for it. But if we’re all just doing it for no other reason than “it seems logical” and we think we’re supposed to, it’s past time to abandon it.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/why-annual-pelvic-exams-might-be-bad/266359/

Rebecca Gibney Lillian Muller

Why Annual Pelvic Exams Might Be Bad is a post from What's going on around the world?

His first comments on the issue come weeks after Washington state and Colorado voters supported legalizing pot, or cannabis, last month in ballot measures that stand in direct opposition of federal law.

“It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that’s legal,” he told ABC News in part of an interview released on Friday.

“At this point (in) Washington and Colorado, you’ve seen the voters speak on this issue. And, as it is, the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions,” Obama said.

The Department of Justice has said pot remains a federally controlled substance and states have been looking for guidance from Washington on how it will handle the conflict with state laws.

Medical use of the substance is legal in 18 U.S. states. But federal officials have still continued to crack down on some providers in those states.

Pot remains an illegal narcotic under U.S. law, but Washington and Colorado became the first states in the nation to legalize recreational marijuana use on November 6. A similar effort in Oregon failed.

Obama called the situation “a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law.” He told ABC that “what we’re going to need to have is a conversation about” how to reconcile federal and state laws, and that he has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to examine the issue.

In his 1995 memoir, “Dreams of My Father,” Obama admitted to regularly smoking pot in high school. The father of two told ABC that he would not go so far as to say pot should be legalized altogether. There are also concerns about drug use in children and violence, he told ABC, according to its website.

“I want to discourage drug use,” he added.

The new measures in Washington and Colorado, which already permit medical marijuana use, allow possession of up to an ounce of the substance for private use. They also will regulate and tax sales at special stores for those aged 21 and older.

Nancy Allen Sophie Lee

Recreational marijuana should not be top federal priority: Obama is a post from What's going on around the world?

His first comments on the issue come weeks after Washington state and Colorado voters supported legalizing pot, or cannabis, last month in ballot measures that stand in direct opposition of federal law.

“It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that’s legal,” he told ABC News in part of an interview released on Friday.

“At this point (in) Washington and Colorado, you’ve seen the voters speak on this issue. And, as it is, the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions,” Obama said.

The Department of Justice has said pot remains a federally controlled substance and states have been looking for guidance from Washington on how it will handle the conflict with state laws.

Medical use of the substance is legal in 18 U.S. states. But federal officials have still continued to crack down on some providers in those states.

Pot remains an illegal narcotic under U.S. law, but Washington and Colorado became the first states in the nation to legalize recreational marijuana use on November 6. A similar effort in Oregon failed.

Obama called the situation “a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law.” He told ABC that “what we’re going to need to have is a conversation about” how to reconcile federal and state laws, and that he has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to examine the issue.

In his 1995 memoir, “Dreams of My Father,” Obama admitted to regularly smoking pot in high school. The father of two told ABC that he would not go so far as to say pot should be legalized altogether. There are also concerns about drug use in children and violence, he told ABC, according to its website.

“I want to discourage drug use,” he added.

The new measures in Washington and Colorado, which already permit medical marijuana use, allow possession of up to an ounce of the substance for private use. They also will regulate and tax sales at special stores for those aged 21 and older.

Emily Symons Melissa Gilbert

Recreational marijuana should not be top federal priority: Obama is a post from What's going on around the world?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Older adults with colon cancer who were prescribed a daily aspirin were less likely to die than those who weren’t, according to a new study.

While the results need to be confirmed with more rigorous studies, they add to the evidence linking aspirin use to longer survival for cancer patients. Studies have also suggested the inexpensive drug can prevent some types of the disease from occurring in the first place.

Medical guidelines currently endorse the use of low-dose aspirin to prevent heart disease, but not to fight or prevent cancer.

The new study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, included more than 500 colon-cancer patients in the Netherlands aged 70 and older. More than 100 were prescribed daily low-dose “baby” aspirin for heart protection after their cancer diagnosis.

Between 1998 and 2007, the death rate for those prescribed aspirin was about half that of the non-aspirin users. The effect was biggest in people with more advanced cancer and in those who received no chemotherapy.

Anything that might improve survival in elderly adults with colon cancer would be welcome, since there is no consensus on whether to use chemotherapy in those patients, according to the study.

Previous studies have also associated aspirin use with increased survival. Research published in October in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that aspirin therapy could extend survival for colon cancer patients whose tumors had a specific genetic mutation.

Still, more scientifically rigorous randomized controlled trials will be needed to confirm the findings of studies that are based on observation after the fact, and therefore less definitive about what actually causes the effect seen.

“We’re pretty sure this is a real effect, but we’re not sure of the magnitude,” said Dr. Gerrit Jan Liefers of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, an author of the new study. He said he didn’t expect randomized trials would show such a large survival advantage. Liefers is working to develop such a trial in the Netherlands.

One limitation of the study is that it looked at aspirin prescriptions, not actual use of the drug. (Low-dose aspirin for heart-disease protection isn’t available over the counter in the Netherlands.) It’s possible that heart benefits from aspirin might have helped the patients live longer, but the study authors said that alone couldn’t account for the big difference in death rates. Also, there might be differences between the groups unaccounted for by researchers that led to the improved survival among the aspirin users.

Liefers said it’s not completely clear how aspirin might combat colon cancer. One likely route: blocking the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2, or COX-2, which is involved in inflammation and is expressed in about 70 percent of colon tumors.

Boris Pasche, director of the hematology and oncology division at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said it would be helpful to figure out who would benefit from and who could skip daily aspirin.

“It’s a fairly benign drug, but it has side effects,” including bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract and the brain, Pasche said.

He said patients should discuss with their physicians whether it makes sense to take aspirin at this point. “This supports the concept, but we need a prospective randomized trial,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TFEnSF Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, online November 23, 2012.

Janice Renney Jacqueline McKenzie

CORRECTION: Aspirin may help older colon cancer patients live longer is a post from What's going on around the world?

By Tamara Abraham

PUBLISHED: 16:45 EST, 14 December 2012 | UPDATED: 17:56 EST, 14 December 2012

Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, better known as the design duo behind high-end label Proenza Schouler, have both listed their Manhattan apartments for sale.

According to The Real Estalker, the pair – who are the darlings of the New York fashion scene – listed the two properties with Cocoran on the same day in mid-October – though they have experienced varying degrees of success.

Mr McCollough, 33, has just sold his duplex in the West Village for $1,895,000, however Mr Hernandez, also 33 – his partner both in both business and life – has been forced to drop the price of his nearby Chelsea apartment from $985,000 to $950,000 as it lingers on the market.

Moving on: Jack McCollough, co-founder of the Proenza Schouler label, is selling his West Village apartment for $1,895,000 – as partner Lazaro Hernandez is selling his Manhattan home

Flooded with light: It comes as little surprise that Mr McCollough’s property sold so fast. The open-plan condo boasts huge south-facing windows in the main living space

Fashion darlings: Jack McCollough (left) and Lazaro Hernandez (right) are behind Proenza Schouler

It is not clear whether the pair were living together or separately, or whether they plan on buying another Manhattan property, though with a cool 2.8million between them, they could buy something very special indeed.

If they were to pool resources, it would not be their first home together – the design duo have co-owned a $1.125m late 19th-century property in the Berkshires, Western Massachusetts, since 2008.

It comes as little surprise that Mr McCollough’s property sold so fast. The open-plan condo boasts huge south-facing windows, flooding the main living space with light.

The dining area links to a small study and bathroom, with steps up to a private terrace.

The master bedroom is situated on the level below, sharing the same wide windows and bright light as the floor above.

Luxury living: The master bedroom is situated on the level below, sharing the same wide windows and bright light as the floor above – with extensive storage befitting a fashion lover

Reading room: The dining area links to a small study with steps up to a private terrace

It has a vast en-suite bathroom with separate shower and oversized tub, as elegantly appointed as one would expect from one of the world’s most popular fashion designers.

The listing says that the property ‘offers a great sense of privacy’, and ‘no details were spared in its renovation.’

Mr Hernandez’s apartment has a rather less fashion-forward decor, though perhaps the traditional look is appropriate for the parlour floor of an 1800s Chelsea townhouse.

Outside space: The listing says that the property ‘offers a great sense of privacy’

Described as a ‘convertible two-bedroom’, the living room and den/second bedroom are separated by a galley kitchen finished in dark wood.

Beyond, at the back of the property, is a narrow main bedroom and large terrace.

Mr McCollough and Mr Hernandez met at Parson’s School of Design in 1999, where they were mentored by Project Runway’s Tim Gunn.

Traditional tastes: Mr Hernandez’s apartment has a rather less fashion-forward decor, though perhaps the look is appropriate for the parlour floor of an 1800s Chelsea townhouse

Galley style: the living room and den/second bedroom are separated by a kitchen finished in dark wood

Floor-through: Beyond the kitchen is a den/second bedroom with doors onto a spacious terrace

No sale: The apartment is failing to sell, so Mr Hernandez has been forced to drop the price

Before he even graduated, Mr Hernandez earned the recognition of Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, after passing a napkin note to her while traveling on the same plane.

This small act landed him an internship at Michael Kors, while Mr McCollough went to Marc Jacobs.

On graduating in 2002, their joint senior collection was bought in its entirety by Barneys, cementing a reputation as fashion’s brightest young stars.

Ten years on, the Proenza Schouler label (named after their mothers’ maiden names) is behind countless celebrity red carpet looks, a bestselling ‘anti-It’ bag, and two coveted CFDA awards.

As The Real Estalker speculates, it is likely that the pair are trading up to a larger, even more glamorous Manhattan space, that befits their stylemaker statuses.

Thora Birch Veronika Zemanova

Fashion power couple behind Proenza Schouler label sell their two Manhattan apartments… So what will they snap up with that cool $2.8m next? is a post from What's going on around the world?

(Reuters) – A novel drug to fight alcohol dependency was given a green light by European regulators on Friday, providing a boost to Danish drugmaker Lundbeck at a time when its top product faces a big drop in sales.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Friday it recommended approval of Selincro in conjunction with counseling for the reduction of alcohol consumption in adults dependent on drink.

Recommendations from the EMA are normally endorsed by the European Commission within two or three months, implying the drug could be launched in Europe early next year.

That is good news for Lundbeck, which needs new drugs to replace lost sales from antidepressant Cipralex, sold as Lexapro in the United States and Japan, which is now coming off patent.

Alcohol abuse is theoretically a vast market, although it is unclear whether doctors will be ready to prescribe a drug as a treatment and whether Lundbeck has the marketing muscle to make a big impact.

Lundbeck Chief Executive Ulf Wiinberg told Reuters last week that Selincro was “a bit of a joker in our portfolio” because of uncertainty as to how it will be used in practice.

The drug, which blocks the action of opioid receptors in the brain, was licensed to Lundbeck from Finland’s Biotie Therapies and shares in Biotie jumped as much as 16 percent on the news, while Lundbeck rose around 1 percent.

“Clearly, the news is a much-needed boost to sentiment for the (Lundbeck) shares,” said Deutsche Bank analyst Tim Race.

“However, we suspect the market will refrain from pricing-in significant upside from the drug given uncertainties in reimbursement and Lundbeck’s ability to penetrate this market without a major partner.”

Race said current consensus forecasts suggested modest sales of 540 million Danish crowns ($95 million) in 2016.

More important for Lundbeck will be the verdict from regulators in North America and Europe late next year on a new antidepressant being developed with Japanese partner Takeda Pharmaceutical that analysts see as a potential $1-2 billion-a-year seller.

Developing new treatments for depression has proved an uphill battle for drugmakers in recent times but vortioxetine has produced encouraging clinical trial results and its unique mode of action and flexible dosing could make it a winner.

Another approval prospect for next year is Abilify Maintena, a once-monthly version of schizophrenia drug Abilify that Lundbeck is working on with Otsuka.

Further out, Lundbeck is also developing a drug for the symptoms of Alzheimer’s that will be ready to go into final-stage clinical testing next year and could be partnered with a larger drug company.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Chris Wickham and Mark Potter)

Michelle Branch Sonia Couling

Lundbeck’s alcohol dependency drug wins EU green light is a post from What's going on around the world?

• Trinny suffers from a severe form of bone disease called Fibrous dysplasia
• The tumour is benign but has grown so quickly it has blinded her in one eye and threatens to strangle her if no action is taken
• Mother has praised her daughter who has bravely dealt with condition for half her lifetime

By Claire Bates

PUBLISHED: 09:23 EST, 14 December 2012 | UPDATED: 12:37 EST, 14 December 2012

An eight-year-old girl with a football-sized facial tumour is to have pioneering surgery before it strangles her.

The rare growth first appeared when Trinny Amuhirwe was four-and-a-half, and she twice underwent surgery in her home country of Uganda to remove it.

However, each time the bone tumour has grown back more quickly and it now weighs 4.4lbs.

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Since then Trinny has lost sight in one eye due to the swelling and her teeth are being pushed out of place.

Now she will undergo a pioneering surgery at the Cromwell Hospital in London. British experts will attempt to remove all of the benign tumour using the latest technology before reconstructing her face.

The 15-hour operation was made possible by UK charity Facing the World, who flew Trinny and her mother Sarah, 30, from Uganda to the UK for treatment.

Graham Banton, director of Facing the World, said: ‘This is a massive operation undertaken by some of the best surgeons in the world.

‘We hope to be able to remove all the infected bone tissue which will save Trinny’s life and give her back her sight.

‘Using advanced diagnostic and mapping techniques our doctors were able to pinpoint precisely the size and depth of the tumour.

‘Without treatment there would be no hope for Trinny, but thanks to the generosity of our patrons and the expertise of our surgeons, she has a chance.’

Trinny has Fibrous dysplasia – a bone disease that destroys and replaces normal bone with fibrous bone tissue.

Mrs Amuhirwe says over the years she has watched her daughter’s face become almost unrecognisible.

Trinny stands outside Buckingham Palace in London. She flew to London with her mother for surgery thanks to the charity Facing the World

Trinny Amuhirwe and Sarah

The mother-of-three said: ‘In the beginning it was like a small piece of bone sticking out of her face.

‘I thought it would eventually disappear – but it continued to grow. After the first operation the tumour grew back in just two months.

‘Since then it’s taken over her face. I can’t bear to see her like this but she’s been so brave about it.’

Following surgery the schoolgirl will be sedated and moved into intensive care – estimated to cost around £65,000.

All surgeons involved are giving their time free of charge and Facing the World are paying for all of Trinny and Sarah’s living cost – but are entirely dependent on public donations.

Each year Facing the World help up to eight children with extreme facial disfigurements from all over the world. 

The charity was founded in 2002 by two craniofacial surgeons Martin Kelly and Norman Waterhouse after Mr Kelly met a young girl in need while volunteering in Afghanistan.

To donate visit www.facingtheworld.net

VIDEO: Girl with face tumour size of football comes to UK for life-saving surgery 

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(Reuters) – Russia took a step towards clamping down on the tobacco industry on Friday as a bill to ban smoking in public spaces and to restrict tobacco sales sailed through its first reading in parliament.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said that 44 million Russians, nearly one in three, are hooked on smoking, and almost 400,000 die every year of smoking-related causes.

Under the draft legislation tobacco advertising will be outlawed and smoking in public places such as restaurants, bars and hotels will be phased out. It will also ban kiosks and outlets in stations from selling cigarettes, much to the consternation of the kiosk owners who say they could be put out of business.

Deputies in the Russian Duma, the country’s lower house of parliament, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill at its first reading, with 429 votes in favor and two abstentions.

Deputy Health Minister Sergei Velmyaikin said in the Duma that the purpose of the bill was not to reduce the number of smokers, but to prevent that number growing.

Foreign tobacco firms, including British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco, and Philip Morris, control more than 90 percent of Russian sales and have been lobbying to soften the proposed legislation.

Russia is the largest tobacco market after China. The cigarette market was estimated at be worth around $22 billion in 2011 by Euromonitor International.

Lawmakers had initially thought that the legislation might come into force early next year but following delays the second reading is not now expected until spring 2013. If passed, the restrictions will be phased in and are expected to be fully in force by 2016.

Russia’s Finance Ministry has previously announced plans to increase the excise duty on tobacco by around 40 percent for 2013 and 2014, and by 10 percent a year after 2015. The Health Ministry supports a greater increase in duty.

(Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova and Natalia Ishchenko; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

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• Senior Under Officer Sarah Hunter-Choat, 25, presented with sword during Sovereign’s Parade today
• Parade marks the completion of 44 weeks of training for 200 young people
  
• SUO Hunter-Choat is a Bristol University graduate from Hereford

By Martha De Lacey

PUBLISHED: 12:02 EST, 14 December 2012 | UPDATED: 12:04 EST, 14 December 2012

A female officer at Sandhurst has become the fourth woman in the history of the Royal Military Academy to be awarded the prestigious Sword of Honour.

Senior Under Officer (SUO) Sarah Hunter-Choat, a 25-year-old Bristol University graduate from Hereford, was presented with the sword – given to the best overall Officer Cadet on the course – in heavy rain during the Sovereign’s Parade at the academy today.

Landmark: Secretary of State for Defence Philip Hammond presents Sarah Hunter-Choat with the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, only the fourth time in history it is has been awarded to a female

The parade marks the completion of 44 weeks of training for 200 young people who will be commissioned into the British Army and the armies of 13 overseas countries.

SUO Hunter-Choat, a Bristol University graduate from Hereford, was presented with the award by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond on behalf of the Queen.

The award is given to the military academy’s best cadet each year, and SUO Hunter-Choat was selected from 200 senior cadets by the academy’s Commandant, Major General Timothy Evans.

The top three top candidates for the award are termed ‘blade runners’, and their performances are scrutinised before they are brought before the Commandant for final interview.

Attention! Senior Under Officer Sarah Hunter-Choat, winner of the Sword of Honour, takes part in the Sovereign’s Parade at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst today

SUO Hunter-Choat comes from a military family: her father Brigadier Tony Hunter-Choat began his career in the French Foreign Legion before commissioning into the British Army.

As the fourth woman to be honoured with the sword, SUO Hunter-Choat follows Angela Laycock, who attended Sandhurst with Prince William and who joined the Royal Engineers in 2007; Fiona Stewart, who was commissioned into the Royal Signals in 1998; and Kady Leather, commissioned into the Adjutant General’s Corps (Educational and Training Services) in 2003.

Passing out: Today’s Sovereign’s Parade marks the completion of 44 weeks of training for 200 young people who will be commissioned into the British Army and the armies of 13 overseas countries

Coveted honour: Senior Under Officer Sarah Hunter-Choat, left, winner of the Sword of Honour, accompanies Defence Secretary Philip Hammond during the Sovereign’s Parade at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst

SANDHURST, ENGLAND – Girl power: Female cadets take part in the Sovereign’s Parade at Sandhurst today

Making history: Senior Under Officer Sarah Hunter-Choat, centre, became the fourth woman in the Royal Military Academy’s history to receive the prestigious Sword of Honour

It’s raining, men: The cadets took part in the Sovereign’s Parade during today’s heavy rain at Sandhurst

Horsing around: An Academy Adjutant rides his horse Winston up the steps into the Old College after completion of the Sovereign’s Parade at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst on

Blade runners: The top three candidates for the Sword of Honour are termed ‘blade runners’ and their work is scrutinised before they are brought before the Commandant for final interview

Kodak moment: An overseas soldier takes a photograph during the Sovereign’s Parade at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst

Proud families: Family members watch the Sovereign’s Parade in heavy rain at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst today

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PROBLEM: The goal of a social network, we constantly try to convince our sharing-everything-on-the-Internet-averse friends, is to connect to others in a way that enhances — not replaces — the real-world communities in which we exist. But if we were to zoom out and look at everything happening on Facebook beyond the limited vantage point of our newsfeeds, would we see that this is actually the case?

---

• Domestic Violence Increases After Major Sporting Events
• People Who Exercise Have Larger Brains Later in Life
• People Living in Poverty Are Twice as Likely to Be Depressed

---

METHODOLOGY: Sampling something as large and amorphous as Facebook is no simple task. Emilio Ferrara, of both Indiana University and Italy’s University of Messina, used sophisticated data-mining to identify public profiles, developed complex algorithms to track users’ interactions with other users, and mapping the networks that emerged. Users remained anonymous — Ferrara reduced us all to numbers in order to understand our interactions from a statistical viewpoint.

RESULTS: Ferrara discovered that, without intending to do so, Facebook users are driven by the network’s very structure to group themselves into a large number of small communities, all joined together into the monolith we call Facebook by their social connections. Large groups containing a majority of users are a rarity, but that doesn’t mean that each group of friends exists in its own bubble — instead, the smaller communities are highly interconnected in a way that two people with nothing in common are often connected by short, easily traversable paths of communication.

IMPLICATIONS: The structure discovered to exist on Facebook fits nicely into a social theory called the “strength of weak ties.” Basically, it works by saying that if Sigmund Freud is connected to both Hippocrates and Dr. Oz — they’ve both accepted his friend requests — then Hippocrates and Dr. Oz almost certainly share a connection — apart from their connection to Freud — as well. They aren’t Facebook friends, and they probably don’t have much in common, but their personal social networks slightly overlap. 

Medical providers, local communities, and the public wellness movement. See full coverage

These loose connections, goes the theory, end up making communication more efficient. Because when something happens that passes by Dr. Oz’s radar, his good friend Freud isn’t likely to have heard about it either. He’s much more likely to find out what’s going on from Hippocrates, because Hippocrates knows all sorts of people who Dr. Oz and Freud do not. Weak ties like these, which cropped up everywhere in Ferrara’s model, are what connect small, disparate networks to one another.

On Twitter, one person, the Followed, spreads information to his or her followers. Those followers can in turn share with their followers, but the flow of information always follows a top-down hierarchy. Weak ties abound here, too, but not, argues Ferrara, to the same extent as they do on Facebook. The communities built through Facebook, he says, are more true-to-life.

The full study, “A large-scale community structure analysis in Facebook,” is published in the journal EJP Data Science .

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By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 17:56 EST, 13 December 2012 | UPDATED: 18:17 EST, 13 December 2012

A man has revealed how he took over 800 photos to make an adorable stop-motion video to propose to his girlfriend.

Eliu Hernandez, a chiropractor from Boulder, Colorado, spent two days making the film with a point-and-shoot camera, as a unique way to pop the question to Marissa Martinez who he has been dating for six years.

The images were then edited together to make the hand look like it was opening and closing around a dollar bill, coins, crayons, a lump of coal, diamonds and then finally an engagement ring.

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Will you marry me? Eliu Hernandez spent two days making a stop-motion video to propose to his girlfriend

Labor of love: Mr Hernandez took 800 photos to create the romantic project

Emotional: Marissa Martinez was crying so hard by the end, she couldn’t even give her answer

The hand then writes across the screen in crayon: ‘Bebe, I love you! Will you marry me? Please.’

Given Mr Hernandez’s efforts, it comes as little surprise that Miss Martinez was moved by the video.

‘I guess he was watching my expression the whole time, and my jaw dropped towards the end,’ she told KUSA-TV.

Above and beyond: Given Mr Hernandez’s efforts, it comes as little surprise that Miss Martinez said yes

‘I couldn’t answer him right away because I was just crying so hard.’

But though her boyfriend had to wait for his answer, it was well worth it: she said yes.

The two-minute, 27-second video, posted on YouTube last month, was set to a fitting soundtrack of Buy You a Ring by songwriter Craig Elkins.

The video, which was just over two minutes long, sees Mr Hernandez shake coal pieces in his hand…

…He then opens his palm to reveal diamonds – he grabs one before the rest roll away, then closes his palm again. When he opens it, he is holding a ring wrapped in brown paper

The big reveal: The brown paper unravels to reveal a shiny ring. When Mr Hernandez twists it around, it is set with one of the shiny diamonds

‘I wanted something creative and I wanted something unique,’ Mr Hernandez said. ‘I wanted something that I hadn’t seen before.’

He admits that the project made for back-breaking work – he was left with ‘two sore shoulders and a crick in the neck.’

There is no doubting that his efforts have paid off though – he added: ‘I got the girl.’

Bright idea: The name of the film, Broken Crayons, comes from the Crayola colors that snap into pieces when handled by Mr Hernandez

Watch the video here…

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“We examined coffee drinking habits in nearly 1 million men and women,” says Janet Hildebrand, MPH, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society.

“Those who reported drinking at least four cups per day of caffeinated coffee incurred about half the risk of dying from mouth and throat cancers compared to people who did not drink caffeinated coffee daily or only drank it occasionally.”

That link held even when the researchers took into account smoking habits and alcohol use. 

Smoking and alcohol use are among the strongest risk factors for oral cancers.

About 35,000 new cases of oral cancers are expected in the U.S. this year, with 6,800 deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. The new study is published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Previous research by others has linked drinking more than four cups of coffee a day to about the same risk reduction in getting a diagnosis of oral cancer.

Coffee & Oral Cancers: Study Details

Hildebrand’s team evaluated more than 968,000 men and women enrolled in the Cancer Prevention Study II. It began in 1982 and is overseen by the American Cancer Society.

At the start of the study, all men and women were free of cancer. During the 26-year follow up, 868 deaths from oral or throat cancers occurred.

The researchers evaluated the coffee- and tea-drinking habits of the men and women. They found the link between coffee and a reduced risk of dying from oral cancers.

More than 97% of the men and women drank either coffee or tea. More than 60% said they drank at least a cup a day of caffeinated coffee.

Among those who drank regularly, most had three cups a day.

The risk reduction of nearly half was similar for those who drank four, five, or six cups daily. Beyond seven cups, Hildebrand says, there weren’t enough people to gauge the effect on risk accurately.

Hildebrand found only a suggestion of a link between those who drank more than two cups of decaf daily.

No benefit was found for tea drinkers.

Why Coffee May Protect

“We really don’t clearly know the mechanism,” Hildebrand says. “But we do know that coffee contains hundreds of biologically active compounds.”

Many of them, she says, are now known to have anti-cancer properties.

The researchers can’t be sure in this study whether the coffee lowered the risk of getting the cancers or improved the odds of survival once cancer occurred. The study only looked at deaths, not the diagnosis.

“We’re not recommending people start to drink coffee or that people increase their coffee [intake] for cancer prevention,” Hildebrand says. “Much more epidemiological and scientific and clinical evidence would be needed to support such a recommendation.”

Coffee & Oral Cancers: Perspective

The new findings are ”fascinating and remarkable,” says Joel Epstein, DMD. He is director of oral medicine at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, located outside Los Angeles. He reviewed the study findings.

“It seems like there is a significant theme,” he says, citing several other studies finding a lower risk of various cancers in coffee drinkers. “They are large studies,” he says, usually funded by reputable organizations such as the American Cancer Society.

By and large, the studies are coming up with the same findings, he says, even though the researchers study different populations and different cancers. That’s a good sign, he says.

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Analyzing the medical records of nearly 1,000 knee-replacement surgery patients, researchers found that 30 percent of them gained five percent or more of their body weight in the five years following surgery.

One possible explanation for the counterintuitive results, experts said, is that if people have spent years adapting to knee pain by taking it easy, they don’t automatically change their habits when the pain is reduced.

“After knee replacement we get them stronger and moving better, but they don’t seem to take advantage of the functional gains” and become more active, said Joseph Zeni, a physical therapy professor at the University of Delaware, who was not part of the study.

“I think that has to do with the fact that we don’t address the behavioral modifications that have happened during the course of arthritis before the surgery,” he added.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. undergo knee replacement surgery each year.

The goal of putting in a new knee is to alleviate pain and get people moving around more, but Daniel Riddle, lead author of the new study and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said his team had noticed that patients tended to gain weight after surgery.

To see whether this was common, Riddle’s group used a patient registry from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, which collected information on 917 knee replacement patients before and after their procedures.

The researchers found that five years after surgery, 30 percent of patients had gained at least five percent of their weight at the time of the surgery. That’s 10 pounds or more on a 200-pound person, for example.

In contrast, less than 20 percent of those in a comparison group of similar people who had not had surgery gained equivalent amounts of weight in the same period.

Riddle’s team explains in their report, published in Arthritis Care & Research, that this degree of weight gain can lead to “meaningful effects on cardiovascular and diabetes related risk as well as pain and function.”

Part of the explanation for the weight gain the researchers observed could be the age at which patients get surgery, Riddle said. People in their 50s and 60s tend to gain weight anyway.

Still, in light of the lower rates of weight gain in the comparison group, which was also middle aged and older, Riddle said something else may also be at work among knee surgery patients.

“There’s something going on in these patients that predisposes them above and beyond their peers to weight gain,” Riddle told Reuters Health.

Indeed, the team also found that patients who had lost weight before their surgery were slightly more likely to gain weight afterward.

Riddle said that could be because when people lose weight in anticipation of an event, such as knee surgery, they are more likely to put on weight after they’ve achieved that goal.

Zeni said that to help people stave off the pounds after surgery, health care providers need to address the sedentary lifestyle people often adopt to accommodate their arthritis.

“We need to encourage patients to take advantage of their ability to function better and get them to take on a more active lifestyle,” he told Reuters Health.

Riddle agreed that the habit of being sedentary before knee replacement may carry over after surgery.

He said it will be important to develop and study weight loss interventions for these patients, and to target them to those who are most at risk of getting heavier, like relatively younger patients in their 50s and 60s and those who have lost weight before knee surgery.

In the meantime, Riddle said, patients can also take some action on their own by talking with their doctors about maintaining a healthy weight and consulting with a nutritionist and physical therapist about lifestyle changes.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TJTz24 Arthritis Care & Research, online November 30, 2012.

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When Tracy Jordan, a character on the television show 30 Rock, gets diagnosed with prediabetes, he isn’t too concerned. “How bad is diabetes, really?” he asks his doctor.

Told he might lose a foot, Tracy seems more resigned than alarmed. “Could I replace it with a wheel?” he wants to know. (“I suppose,” the doctor replies; “But then you’d have to register as a motor vehicle.”)

Wheels aside, diabetes isn’t a laughing matter. The 26 million Americans who have it are at increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, and more.

Equally alarming are the 79 million Americans with prediabetes (including, at one point, 30 Rock actor Alec Baldwin). Prediabetics reliably go on to develop clinical diabetes; at the current rate, one in three Americans will have diabetes by 2050.

But what Tracy and many others may not realize is that diabetes is preventable — through modest weight loss, it’s possible to step back from the brink of disease. This suggests a unique opportunity for intervention. A solution that helps prediabetics make a few key lifestyle changes could save literally millions of lives — not to mention billions of dollars.

Fortunately, such a solution may already exist.

The Diabetes Prevention Program, a landmark clinical research study led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), demonstrated that intensive coaching in behavior modification reduces the risk of progression from prediabetes to diabetes by nearly 60 percent. Even more remarkably, 10 years after the trial ended, the benefits of the intervention persisted.

“What drives behavior change is relationships.”

Similar diabetes prevention programs (DPPs) have since been established across the country; most are based out of community centers like YMCAs. Their strategy is to use social support mechanisms — group meetings and sessions with health coaches — to help prediabetics achieve lasting changes in behavior.

Martha Funnell of the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center explains why this approach is unique: “Weight loss or exercise programs just emphasize one element or another; they don’t tell you how to fit the pieces together. It’s hard to continue with them because, as my patients say, ‘Life happens.’ DPPs help people figure out how to incorporate exercise and healthy eating into their existing lives and make changes that will stay with them for a lifetime.”

But the current DPP model is far from perfect. Access is a major issue: most states have only a few CDC-recognized facilities, and eighteen states — including Alabama and Mississippi, which carry some of the nation’s highest rates of diabetes and obesity — have no facilities at all.

***

Sean Duffy, co-founder of the Silicon Valley start-up and IDEO spinoff Omada Health, saw an opportunity to deliver the benefits of DPPs to a broader audience. If most prediabetics weren’t going to a DPP in person, why not bring a DPP to them?

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Such was the impetus for Duffy and his co-founder Adrian James to create an online DPP called Prevent. The program, which officially launched this week, is the first of its kind. Prevent matches prediabetics into small online groups based on age, body mass index, and location. Participants are mailed a wireless scale; every day, the scale transmits their weight to the online system. Participants can monitor not only their own progress, but also that of fellow group members (shown as percentage of body weight lost).

The program consists of a 16-week curriculum. Each week, the curriculum introduces a new behavior change — walking more, for example — and then provides support to facilitate adoption of that change: mailing a pedometer, introducing an online step tracker. As participants advance through the program, the website evolves to complement their changing needs.

Perhaps most importantly, several layers of social support exist. A dedicated health coach works with participants through videos and phone calls, both collectively and individually, while participants interact with their fellow group members via a Facebook-like platform of wall posts and messaging.

“What drives behavior change is relationships,” says Duffy. “It’s about humans connecting with each other, supporting each other, and feeling accountable to each other.”

Whether through inspiration, competition, or a sense of mutual responsibility, Prevent seems to work. In a 230-person pilot study, participants lost on average 6.4 percent of their weight in 16 weeks — enough to significantly reduce their risk of developing diabetes.

Dr. Anne Peters, director of the Clinical Diabetes Program at the University of Southern California and an advisor to Omada Health, calls Prevent “a considered system for effective social bonding.” Unprompted, many participants in the pilot study began meeting in person with other group members. Months after “graduating” from the program, many continue to visit the website regularly. And 40 of the program’s alumni have already applied to serve as health coaches for future participants.

Duffy believes there is unique value in progressing through a structured curriculum as part of a community. “There isn’t a curriculum behind [traditional] weight loss programs,” he says. “With Prevent, there is a journey, and there is a destination.”

***

The real test of the program’s success, of course, will be the persistence of results. Omada is continuing to track weight trends among Prevent alumni. Says Peters, “They have good early data; we’ll need to see what the one-year data show. I see the program ideally lasting for a lifetime, with out-years monitoring.”

There is also the issue of cost: most DPPs are not covered by insurance. This could change if the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Act of 2012 passes; Medicare would then cover DPPs, paving the way for private insurers to follow suit. Until then, the need to pay out of pocket ($120 per month for Prevent) may deter many prediabetics from signing up.

“It’s hard to get patients to change something when they are asymptomatic,” says Peters. “Especially if they have to pay for it.”

***

Related Story

For Australian Aborigines, the Health Problems of Westernization

After receiving his diagnosis, Tracy Jordan straps a “practice” wheel to his foot and, with painstaking effort, wheels toward a bowl of candy.

The recipe for diabetes prevention could not be simpler; yet even with the right ingredients, the challenge of change looms large.

“People are ready when they’re ready,” says Peters. “Those in the pre-contemplative stage need something else to get them to a point where they want to engage in a program.” For DPPs to be most impactful, then, changes will also need to occur in primary care, in education, in policy, and elsewhere.

In the meantime, programs like Prevent offer hope that the diabetes trend, startling as it has been, can still be reversed — so long as people come together to make it happen.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/a-social-network-for-people-with-prediabetes/266139/

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“We examined coffee drinking habits in nearly 1 million men and women,” says Janet Hildebrand, MPH, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society.

“Those who reported drinking at least four cups per day of caffeinated coffee incurred about half the risk of dying from mouth and throat cancers compared to people who did not drink caffeinated coffee daily or only drank it occasionally.”

That link held even when the researchers took into account smoking habits and alcohol use. 

Smoking and alcohol use are among the strongest risk factors for oral cancers.

About 35,000 new cases of oral cancers are expected in the U.S. this year, with 6,800 deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. The new study is published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Previous research by others has linked drinking more than four cups of coffee a day to about the same risk reduction in getting a diagnosis of oral cancer.

Coffee & Oral Cancers: Study Details

Hildebrand’s team evaluated more than 968,000 men and women enrolled in the Cancer Prevention Study II. It began in 1982 and is overseen by the American Cancer Society.

At the start of the study, all men and women were free of cancer. During the 26-year follow up, 868 deaths from oral or throat cancers occurred.

The researchers evaluated the coffee- and tea-drinking habits of the men and women. They found the link between coffee and a reduced risk of dying from oral cancers.

More than 97% of the men and women drank either coffee or tea. More than 60% said they drank at least a cup a day of caffeinated coffee.

Among those who drank regularly, most had three cups a day.

The risk reduction of nearly half was similar for those who drank four, five, or six cups daily. Beyond seven cups, Hildebrand says, there weren’t enough people to gauge the effect on risk accurately.

Hildebrand found only a suggestion of a link between those who drank more than two cups of decaf daily.

No benefit was found for tea drinkers.

Why Coffee May Protect

“We really don’t clearly know the mechanism,” Hildebrand says. “But we do know that coffee contains hundreds of biologically active compounds.”

Many of them, she says, are now known to have anti-cancer properties.

The researchers can’t be sure in this study whether the coffee lowered the risk of getting the cancers or improved the odds of survival once cancer occurred. The study only looked at deaths, not the diagnosis.

“We’re not recommending people start to drink coffee or that people increase their coffee [intake] for cancer prevention,” Hildebrand says. “Much more epidemiological and scientific and clinical evidence would be needed to support such a recommendation.”

Coffee & Oral Cancers: Perspective

The new findings are ”fascinating and remarkable,” says Joel Epstein, DMD. He is director of oral medicine at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, located outside Los Angeles. He reviewed the study findings.

“It seems like there is a significant theme,” he says, citing several other studies finding a lower risk of various cancers in coffee drinkers. “They are large studies,” he says, usually funded by reputable organizations such as the American Cancer Society.

By and large, the studies are coming up with the same findings, he says, even though the researchers study different populations and different cancers. That’s a good sign, he says.

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(Reuters) – Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co is confident it will do for Alzheimer’s patients what it did almost a century ago for diabetics – find a breakthrough treatment, even though skeptics say it could take years.

“We are on the cusp here of writing medical history again as a company, this time in Alzheimer’s disease,” Jan Lundberg, Lilly’s research chief, said in an interview.

Just as the Indianapolis-based company made history in the 1920s by producing the first insulin when type 1 diabetes was a virtual death sentence, Lundberg said he is optimistic that the drugs Lilly is currently testing could significantly slow the ultimately fatal memory-robbing disease.

“It is no longer a question of ‘if’ we will get a successful medicine for this devastating disease on the market, but when,” said Lundberg, 59.

To be sure, companies often tout drugs in the pipeline that never make it to market. Lundberg’s degree of confidence is striking given that Lilly’s most closely watched experimental drug – solanezumab – failed two big late-stage studies earlier this year. Analysts said the drug still has a slight chance of approval because it delayed memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients with mild symptoms – something no other drug has ever done.

Lilly desperately needs new big-selling medicines to replace lost sales of several of its biggest products that now face competition from cheaper generics. A successful Alzheimer’s drug could bring in billions of dollars each year.

An estimated 5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s, the biggest cause of dementia. More than 35 million people worldwide are believed to have dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and those numbers are expected to rise as more countries see lifespans increase. But truly effective treatments have eluded researchers.

“Alzheimer’s is fatal, ultimately with no survivors, so we are in desperate need for an effective therapy,” said Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Mayo Clinic. “Is Lilly poised to make that contribution? I don’t know. But they are pursuing very good options.”

Petersen said Alzheimer’s may be more complex than diabetes, and thus harder to make quick strides against, as Lilly did with insulin. “There may not be a silver bullet. We’ve had so many failures of Alzheimer’s drugs, so we don’t want to be inappropriately optimistic.”

THE WAIT FOR APPROVAL

And even as Wall Street looks for an Alzheimer’s treatment that will deliver blockbuster revenues, many remain cautious.

“Lilly is one of the leaders, but this is going to take a lot longer than we all want it to,” said Cowen and Co analyst Steve Scala. “I doubt a drug will have a meaningful impact on the course of the disease for the next five years.”

Lilly also faces competition from other drugmakers like Merck & Co and Roche Holding AG that have promising Alzheimer’s compounds that could reap annual sales in the billions of dollars.

Lilly is ahead of other drugmakers in Alzheimer’s research after solanezumab, in Phase III trials, was shown in August to slow cognitive declines in patients with mild symptoms of the disease. But the drug, given by intravenous infusion, failed its overall goal of delaying cognitive and physical decline in the larger group of patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s.

Industry analysts said Lilly might ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve solanezumab only for patients with mild Alzheimer’s. But the FDA would likely require new trials for that narrower population of patients with mild disease, analysts said.

Leerink Swann analyst Seamus Fernandez said a new trial would likely take three years, but that solanezumab could generate annual sales of up to $7 billion if approved and become Lilly’s biggest source of earnings growth.

Lundberg, who joined Lilly in early 2010 after heading research for a decade at British drugmaker AstraZeneca, would not say whether Lilly would seek approval of solanezumab, based on already completed trials.

Lundberg noted that test results were mixed for solanezumab. “What we saw was a slowing of cognitive decline — the memory problem — while the activities of daily living were much less affected.”

But he said solanezumab’s results were impressive nonetheless, especially compared with a similar drug from Pfizer Inc, called bapineuzumab, that failed in large closely watched trials over the summer. Both drugs target toxic plaques in the brain made of a protein called amyloid.

“We have an agent that was safer and also showed a statistically significant benefit” against mild Alzheimer’s, he said.

A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY

Some researchers believe far earlier use of solanezumab, and other drugs that target amyloid, could prevent symptoms of the disease. One such prevention study will begin next year at Washington University in St. Louis, and includes use of solanezumab.

Lundberg was cautiously optimistic about Lilly’s mid-stage trials of a different oral class of Alzheimer’s drugs called beta secretase inhibitors — or BACE inhibitors — which work by blocking production of amyloid.

In small earlier trials, Lilly’s experimental drug cut levels of amyloid beta in cerebrospinal fluid by 60 percent. A similar drug from Merck & Co lowered levels by about 90 percent in a separate Phase 1 trial. Each company claims to be ahead of the other in the potentially lucrative race to develop the first approved BACE inhibitor.

Excitement about the class of drugs intensified in July, when researchers in Iceland identified a mutation in a gene that slows the body’s production of beta secretase, Lundberg said. Those aged 85 and older with the beneficial mutation were 81 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than others in that age group.

Lilly and Merck are expected to complete their mid-stage trials by early 2014, and show whether their BACE inhibitors are safe.

“This category could be enormous,” said Leerink Swann’s Fernandez, estimating that a successful drug could capture as much revenue – $10 billion – annually as some of the most successful cholesterol drugs.

“We’re looking at multi-billion opportunities because of desperation and the cost of treating this disease,” he said.

(Reporting By Ransdell Pierson in New York; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Leslie Adler)

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By Associated Press

PUBLISHED: 15:21 EST, 11 December 2012 | UPDATED: 15:21 EST, 11 December 2012

A holiday tradition in the upstate New York resort town of Saratoga Springs has a peppermint twist: Pig-shaped hard candies are sold with little metal hammers to smash them at Christmas.

The peppermint pigs, which can weigh up to a pound, are considered good luck charms by some. Family members will take turns whacking the piggy tokens of holiday cheer into little candy shards.

‘We do find that some people are a little taken aback: “What’s the whole idea of the pig and the hammer? What are you doing? And is someone insulting me by giving me a pig?”‘ said Mike Fitzgerald, owner of Saratoga Sweets, which makes the pigs that can be the size of a big bar of bath soap.

Christmas confection: Peppermint pig-shaped hard candies, sold with little metal hammers to smash them, are a popular holiday tradition in the upstate New York resort town of Saratoga Springs

Fitzgerald has pigs on his brain this time of year. A small crew at his shop south of Saratoga Springs in Halfmoon makes the hard candy from dawn to dark in a shop distinguished by boiling red pots of candy and an overwhelming scent of peppermint. Fitzgerald is hurrying to fill thousands of pig orders around the country.

Why pigs?

It could be related to the marzipan pigs northern European confectioners make at holiday time as good luck symbols. Fitzgerald said it’s possible chefs at the old hotels in Saratoga Springs in the late 19th century couldn’t easily make marzipan, so they improvised with peppermint hard candy.

Traditional methods: The candy mix is hand-poured into cast aluminum molds to make the pigs

Quality sweet: The pigs have a shiny, glassy quality that hard candies with a higher corn syrup content lack

In the old days, the pig was placed on the Christmas dinner table. Father would wrap it in a napkin and crack it with the steel rod used to sharpen knives so the family could share the sweet-tasting bits, Fitzgerald said. But by the mid-20th century, the area holiday tradition went the way of lit candles on Christmas trees.

Porcine empire: Mike Fitzgerald poses with Willie the Pig, the store mascot, outside his Saratoga Sweets store in Halfmoon, NY

In 1988, Fitzgerald made a first run of 60 peppermint pigs at the request of the local historical society. He was surprised to see people lining up to buy them, many of them older people who fondly recalled smashing pigs when they were young. He sold out his run and never looked back.

‘It’s been a pig race ever since. This year we’ll make about 130,000 pigs,’ he said.

As Fitzgerald spoke, workers stirred bubbling tea pots filled with a Pepto-pink mix of sugar and corn syrup. The candy mix is hand-poured into cast aluminum molds to make one of three pigs: Holly (3 ounces and 3 1/2-inches long), Noel (a half pound and 5 1/2 inches) or the big man, Clarence (1 pound and 6 inches).

The hardened pigs have a shiny, glassy quality other hard candies with a higher corn syrup content lack. A quick strike by Fitzgerald’s hammer shattered a pig.

‘It has to break like glass,’ Fitzgerald said with satisfaction.

It’s not as though sales of candy canes – more than 1.8 billion are made a year – are being threatened. But the pigs are a popular item in gift stores in Saratoga Springs and other retailers, dressed in red velvet bags with a shiny, silver hammer. (Once you get the hammer, you can order a refill without one.)

‘Thanksgiving sort of kicks it off and from here on in, it gets crazy,’ said Marianne Barker of Impressions of Saratoga.

History: The tradition may be related to marzipan pigs northern European confectioners made as good luck symbols. It is possible that late 19th century hotels couldn’t easily make marzipan, so they improvised

And the pigs have extended beyond their upstate New York habitat through online sales and catalogs. In Georgia, Lynn Barlow bought a pig on a lark in 1997 and shared it with her family on Christmas. A good luck streak followed that included a raise for her husband, one son bagging the biggest buck of his life and another son’s team winning a basketball tournament.

The White, Ga., resident said pigs have been passed around at the holiday table ever since, now with grandchildren taking a turn with the hammer.

‘My husband hits it first,’ Barlow said, ‘and then the peppermint is hard, so we usually go around the table twice just because the kids enjoy doing it so much.’

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A new review of existing evidence suggests that using magnetic resonance imaging to “stage” a woman’s breast cancer before surgery might do more harm than good.

MRI produces a much clearer image than X-rays and ultrasound, and is recommended for detecting early tumors in women at increased risk for breast cancer. But routinely using the technology once any woman is diagnosed with a tumor may lead to more radical surgery without any benefits, says a team of Australian and U.S. researchers.

They found that about 26 percent of women who had a pre-operative MRI to help determine the extent and severity of their tumor ended up having their entire breast removed, compared to about 18 percent of those whose surgeons only used traditional methods of characterizing the cancer.

“I wasn’t surprised by the results at all. What I am surprised by was the strength of the data,” said Dr. Monica Morrow, the study’s senior author and the chief of breast service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Because MRIs are more sensitive than mammograms, some doctors think they are a good tool for identifying the precise outlines of cancerous tissue. Others, however, have begun to question whether the imaging led surgeons to remove more breast tissue than necessary.

Moreover, women who have MRIs before breast surgery seem to be no less likely to need a second surgery to remove additional cancerous tissue.

A study published in September, for instance, found that among more than 300 women who underwent breast cancer surgery, just as many of those who had an MRI before the first surgery ended up having a repeat operation. (see Reuters Health article of September 25, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/Oogm3c)

An MRI can also add more than $1,000 to a patient’s bill.

“I think more surgeons are starting to question this because they’re seeing the outcomes,” Morrow said.

For the new study, she and her colleagues pulled together data from nine previous studies to see if MRIs influenced the number of women who had their breast removed or who had a second surgery to remove additional cancer.

From the nine studies, the researchers had information on 3,112 women who had breast cancer surgery.

Overall, the team found that about 16 percent of the women who had an MRI ended up having the entire cancerous breast removed, known as a mastectomy, during their first surgery. That’s compared to about 8 percent of women who did not have an MRI.

They also found that having an MRI before surgery did not influence whether women would need additional surgery to remove more tissue. In each group, between 11 percent and 12 percent had to go back under the knife.

After taking into account the women’s initial surgery and the second operations, the researchers calculated that about 26 percent of those who had an MRI ended up having their entire breast removed, compared to 18 percent in the no-MRI group.

“It causes more mastectomies to start with, but it doesn’t decrease the number of women who started out wanting a lumpectomy and needing a mastectomy,” said Morrow of preoperative MRIs.

The study did not look at long term outcomes, including how many women survived beyond five years. Nor did it examine the use of MRI to screen the opposite breast for signs that cancer had spread, the researchers note in their report, which is published in the Annals of Surgery.

These results do not apply to certain subgroups of patients, they add, including women with genetic mutations that predispose them to cancer and those whose other diagnostic tests produced conflicting results.

But based on the short term measures of how many surgeries women got and how much tissue surgeons removed from them, Morrow told Reuters Health that MRIs do not seem to have a place in breast cancer surgery.

“There may be select circumstances where we’d use it to solve a problem, but for most women with breast cancer they don’t need an MRI for their evaluation,” she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/RdZNIw Annals of Surgery, online November 26, 2012.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) – A South Carolina psychiatrist and his wife, a nurse, have taken an uncommon, controversial approach to helping war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder by treating them with MDMA, a pure form of the party drug known as Ecstasy.

Their studies have found that the psychoactive stimulant decreases fear and defensiveness while increasing trust in those who take it as part of a therapy program, say Dr. Michael Mithoefer and Ann Mithoefer.

The MDMA-assisted therapy could eventually provide relief for thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who suffer from combat trauma, the Mithoefers say, noting that nearly 300 military personnel from around the country have contacted them seeking help.

Though concerns may arise about creating drug dependence or abuse by administering a tightly controlled substance, Dr. Mithoefer said he hasn’t seen that problem. The couple’s use of MDMA in studies has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, he said.

MDMA “does cause some euphoria. But for people with PTSD, it can be pretty intense anxiety as well,” he said. “You need to have the support there. This is not a take-home medicine.”

Not everyone is convinced the benefits outweigh the potential dangers.

Ron Acierno, director of the PTSD clinical team at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston, said the Mithoefers’ results were interesting, but he remains skeptical of the treatment.

“I don’t think any VA is going to touch this with a 10-foot pole because of the type of drug it is,” Acierno said. “It’s hard to switch conceptual gears that it might actually be very useful for a relatively common emotional disorder.”

“Because the abuse potential is high, we have to be very careful about it,” he said.

SHIFTING CONSCIOUSNESS

Dr. Mithoefer, an assistant professor in the Medical University of South Carolina’s department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, said he has long been interested in experiential techniques that help patients shift their consciousness to revisit their traumas.

He developed the protocol for MDMA-assisted therapy in 2001 and published the first completed study of its effect on patients with trauma in 2010. He found that after two months of treatment, at least 74 percent of the patients, including rape victims and a veteran, no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis.

A follow-up review of those patients, published last month in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, showed more than 80 percent of them still had lasting benefits 3-1/2 years after treatment.

The Mithoefers currently are treating 24 veterans, firefighters, police officers or victims of military sexual trauma who have chronic PTSD that hasn’t been helped by other kinds of treatment. This three-year study will be completed in 2014.

The participants travel to Dr. Mithoefer’s private practice in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, for treatment over a period of five to eight months. After being screened to eliminate anyone with cardiovascular problems or a psychotic disorder, patients are given a series of doses of MDMA.

The Mithoefers are both present for the eight-hour drug-assisted sessions, which include therapy and support. The patients also participate in therapy before, in-between and after the medication sessions, they said.

Those who suffer from PTSD often can’t sleep, have nightmares, isolate themselves emotionally and avoid “anything that reminds them of Iraq,” including crowds, fireworks or overpasses, Ann Mithoefer said.

The use of MDMA seems to help the brain learn to process traumatic memories without becoming overwhelmed by emotion or fear, Dr. Mithoefer said.

“People have said things like, ‘It’s changed my relationship to my emotions,’” he said. “They realize, ‘I don’t have to be so afraid of the fear anymore.’”

Other studies that might include veterans are pending in Colorado and Canada and are being planned in the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia, said Brad Burge, a spokesman for the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which funds the research efforts.

The Santa Cruz, California-based organization said the pure MDMA used in treatment is different from Ecstasy, which often contains other harmful substances. Ecstasy’s recreational use has caused deaths from heat exhaustion or over-hydration, Dr. Mithoefer said.

Medical use of recreational drugs has been taboo since the 1960s, but the nonprofit is investing $10 million over 15 years in an effort to win FDA approval for MDMA as a prescription medicine in the United States.

“The taboos are lifting, and people are getting practical about science,” Dr. Mithoefer said. “If we took away everything in medicine that is being abused outside of medicine, we wouldn’t have too much left.”

Roland Griffiths, a professor in the psychiatry and neuroscience departments at Johns Hopkins University, called the Mithoefers’ research “groundbreaking.”

“It’s a potentially important, new application of use for a set of compounds that have not been available for clinical research for decades now,” Griffiths said. “PTSD is an awful, awful disease … I don’t think we should stick our heads in the sand.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/WJSlBm Journal of Psychopharmacology, online November 20, 2012.

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(Reuters) – Hundreds of marijuana enthusiasts huddled near Seattle’s famed Space Needle tower on Thursday night with pipes, bongs and hand-rolled joints to celebrate Washington’s new status as the first state in the nation to legalize pot for adult recreational use.

The public gathering at the downtown Seattle Center, like a smaller turnout at a nearby spot hours earlier, defied a key provision of the state’s landmark marijuana law, which allows possession of small amounts of cannabis but forbids users from lighting up outside the privacy of their homes.

Police kept their distance from both gatherings, underscoring mixed law enforcement messages about the new statute, known by its ballot designation as Initiative 502. The measure took effect on Thursday.

Seattle’s city attorney issued a stern warning on Wednesday that public pot puffing would not be tolerated and that violators faced citations with $100 fines.

But the Seattle Police Department said its officers had been directed to limit any enforcement actions related to Initiative 502 to verbal warnings only, at least for now.

The new law, passed by voters last month in a move that could set the state up for a showdown with the federal government, removes criminal sanctions for anyone 21 or older possessing 1 ounce (28.5 grams) or less of pot for personal use.

Colorado voters likewise chose to legalize pot for personal recreational use, but that measure is not due to take effect until next month. Both states are among 18 that have already removed criminal sanctions for medical use of marijuana.

The Washington law also legalizes possession of up to 16 ounces (0.45 kg) of solid cannabis-infused goods – such as brownies – and up to 72 ounces (2.4 kg) of weed in liquid form.

But driving under the influence of cannabis or imbibing in public places where the consumption of alcohol is already banned remain illegal.

NO SELLING OR SHARING ALLOWED

The new law ultimately will permit cannabis to be legally sold and taxed at state-licensed stores in a system to be modeled after those in many states for alcohol sales. The state Liquor Control Board, along with agriculture and public health officials, have until next December to set up such a system.

For now, it remains a crime to sell, cultivate or even share one’s own stash, even though the law allows individuals to purchase a limited amount for personal possession.

Ironically, the first known court challenge of the law came from a medical marijuana patient in Olympia, who filed suit last week seeking to block enforcement of a new standard for marijuana impairment while driving, similar to the blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving.

The plaintiff, Arthur West, says the new legal limit – 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood of THC, pot’s active ingredient – would unfairly subject him to prosecution for a THC level at which he routinely drives without impairment. A hearing on his request for an injunction was set for Friday.

Little if any of the law’s fine points seemed to matter to the mellow group of about 300 people – from college-age tokers to middle-aged Baby Boomers – who assembled at the Seattle Center fountain, a short distance from the Space Needle.

Convivial laughter, laid-back conversation and occasional coughing filled the air as the pungent smell of marijuana wafted through the crowd, many wearing sweatshirt hoodies to ward off the chill, on a cold, crisp evening.

‘SAFER THAN ALCOHOL’

Carrying a sign, “marijuana is safer than alcohol,” Jared Allaway, 30, described the night as “iconic.”

“Seattle’s always been friendly to cannabis,” Allaway said. “Hopefully this will spread to eastern Washington. You get outside of Seattle, it’s a different world.”

Seated in a wheelchair that sported a “Goddess” sticker, medical marijuana patient Penny Simons, 52, said she traveled with friends from Renton, Washington, south of Seattle, to attend the smoke-in.

“It’s history,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about the people across the country who are jailed for this. It’s nice to see things change.”

A smaller crowd of about 100 pot-smoking celebrants had assembled about 19 hours earlier nearby for a count-down to the law taking effect at the stroke of midnight, blaring the music of reggae legend Bob Marley from loudspeakers.

Both gatherings were peaceful, with no reports of arrests.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in Olympia; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Todd Eastham, Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker)

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By Annabelle Robertson
WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Kimball Johnson, MD

You’ve probably used one at the gym and may even have one sitting in your spare bedroom. The treadmill is the top-selling piece of fitness equipment in the U.S..

Therese Iknoian, author of Fitness Walking, says, “Treadmills are a fantastic alternative to outdoor workouts, particularly for people who feel a little unsure about being outside. They’re a safe, secure, controlled environment. The treadmill allows you to stop when you need to. You can control the hills; you can control the speed.”

But some people find the treadmill boring or wonder if they’re getting the most out of their exercise time.

If that’s you, relax. Treadmill workouts can be some of the most efficient, challenging, calorie-burning routines around.

The key is intervals. With intervals, instead of trudging along at a steady pace, you’ll mix up your speed and incorporate floor exercises into your routine. Intervals keep boredom at bay, keep the heart pumping, and increase your calorie burn, says Cindy Wasilewski, fitness manager at The Lodge at Wooloch, a destination spa in Hawley, Pa.

Intervals lend intensity to treadmill classes at the Blast900 gym in Atlanta where fitness director Jeff Baird says exercisers burn at least 900 calories in an hour.

Blast900′s boot-camp style workouts alternate 10 minutes of walking, jogging, or running with 10 minutes of weight training and floor exercises. While some students are on the treadmills, others are on the floor, sweating it out. Then they switch.

Wasilewski and Baird share five treadmill routines that deliver great workouts in 20, 30, or 60 minutes. 

Besides a treadmill, you’ll need hand weights and a stability ball for the floor exercises. As always, check with your doctor before you start a new exercise program.

60-Minute Treadmill Workouts

If you’ve got an hour, here are two different treadmill workouts to try. Wasilewski, who designed both workouts, calls the first one the “No Excuses” routine because it delivers maximum results for the time investment. The second workout is an interval trek, designed to boost cardiovascular endurance.

The perceived exertion rate referenced in these workouts is a scale of 0-10 used to measure the intensity of exercise. For example, 0 (nothing at all) is how you feel when at rest, while 10 (very, very heavy) is how you feel after extremely strenuous exercise.

No-Excuses Routine

Start on the treadmill:

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Smashbox Photo Finish Foundation Primer SPF 15 With Dermaxyl Complex SPF 15 With Dermaxyl Complex
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The nation’s highest court agreed to review a case over whether Myriad Genetics Inc may patent two genes linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.

In a 2-1 ruling on Aug. 16, a panel of the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., upheld the biotechnology company’s right to patent “isolated” genes that account for most inherited forms of the two cancers.

But that ruling also denied Myriad’s effort to patent methods of “comparing” or “analyzing” DNA sequences.

The Federal Circuit had ruled in Myriad’s favor in July 2011, but that ruling was set aside by the Supreme Court, which asked it to revisit the case in light of later developments.

The genes in question, BRCA1 and BRCA2, can be used to detect risk of breast and ovarian cancer and aid in treatment options. Women who test positive using Myriad’s gene test, BRACAnalysis, have an 82 percent higher risk of breast cancer and 44 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer in their lifetimes.

The appeal against Myriad and the University of Utah Research Foundation was being pursued by a variety of medical associations led by the Association for Molecular Pathology.

They contended that Myriad’s patents are illegal, prohibit standard clinical testing of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, and restrict scientific research and patients’ access to medical care, including their own genetic information.

A decision by the Supreme Court is expected by the end of June.

The case is Association for Molecular Pathology et al v. Myriad Genetics Inc et al, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-398.

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