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A slow-release peppermint oil (IBgard) appeared to significantly reduce severe abdominal symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), researchers said here.

At 28 days, the number of severe and unbearable symptoms was reduced by 66% among patients taking peppermint oil compared with a reduction of 42% among patients on placebo, reported Brooks Cash, MD, of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, and colleagues.

When patients with severe or unbearable abdominal pain took peppermint oil, they reported a 79.4% reduction in symptoms while placebo patients reported a 40.2% reduction in symptoms after 4 weeks of therapy, they stated in a poster presentation at the Digestive Disease Week annual meeting.

“I have begun to prescribe this peppermint oil formula for my patients with irritable bowel syndrome,” Cash told MedPage Today. “We had no discontinuations in either the placebo or the active ingredient arm of the trial due to problems with the agents. In fact, we had some patients who, after completion of the trial, told me they wanted to continue the treatment. We had a lot of positive feedback from the patients.”

Cash said that, even after 24 hours treatment, treatment with peppermint oil began to show an impact in symptoms. There was a 21% reduction in symptoms with placebo and a 30% reduction in symptoms with peppermint oil, he and colleagues reported.

Source: Medpage Today

Higher fat mass and increased body mass index (BMI) adversely affected hip cartilage in women, while increases in fat-free mass were associated with beneficial cartilage changes at the hip for women and men, according to an Australian community-based study.

After adjusting for age and femoral head bone area, for every 1-unit increase in BMI, there was an associated 26 mm³ reduction in femoral head cartilage volume in women, although no such link was seen in men for BMI and femoral head cartilage volume, reported Flavia M. Cicuttini, MD, of Monash University in Melbourne, in colleagues.

The results “likely represent very early structural joint damage” given that the study population had no clinical hip disease, the investigators wrote in Arthritis Research and Therapy.  However, they added that “the mechanisms by which an increased BMI and fat mass adversely affects hip cartilage is unknown. It is possible that deleterious structural changes may in part be due to excessive loading of the hip joint caused by increased body mass. For instance, through altered joint biomechanics, obesity may remodel hip bone. In turn, abnormal bone geometry could act as an intermediary between obesity and cartilage damage.”

Source: Medpage Today

Mechanically tenderized beef will need to be so labeled by May 2016, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

The new labeling requirements cover raw or partially cooked beef products, the FSIS said in a statement.

“This commonsense change will lead to safer meals and fewer foodborne illnesses,” said USDA Deputy Undersecretary Al Almanza.

Some cuts of beef are tenderized mechanically by piercing them with needles or small blades in order to break up tissue. But the process can introduce pathogens from the surface of the cut to the interior, making proper cooking very important.

The potential presence of pathogens in the interior of these products means they should be cooked differently than intact cuts, the statements said. “FSIS is finalizing these new labeling requirements because mechanically tenderized products look no different than intact product, but it is important for consumers to know that they need to handle them differently,” the agency said.

Labels must include not only that the meat was mechanically tenderized, but validated cooking instructions as well, including minimum internal temperature, the FSIS said. Since 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has received reports of six outbreaks attributable to needle- or blade-tenderized beef products, the statement said.

Source: Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

In 2008, Rachael French, a then-healthy 22-year-old, vacationed with friends in a cabin in the woods near Gaylord, Mich.

On the last day of the trip, while at a local water park, French said she felt the sting of chlorine on an open wound, looked down and noticed a small scab on her thigh. She figured it was a spider bite.

Within hours, she remembers feeling nauseated, sore and exhausted, but chalked it up to having a busy vacation. Things became a bit foggy from there, she said.

When she was admitted to urgent care, French had a 103-degree temperature, was lethargic and in pain all over her body, and had trouble forming sentences.

“The doctor asked if he could look at the bite, and when I showed him I noticed there was a ‘bulls-eye’ ring around the bite, which I hadn’t noticed before,” French said in an email. “It was so large it covered about half of my thigh.”

The doctor removed the scab and showed French where a tick had buried itself into her skin.

“Everything happened so fast,” she said. “One minute I’m in a cabin with a few friends having a great time, the next I’m being diagnosed with Lyme disease—an incurable disease.”

Most people will make a full recovery after a course of antibiotics, but between 10 to 20 percent of patients—including French—report lingering symptoms in a condition often called “chronic Lyme disease.”

Source: Scientific American

For 2013, screening for these types of cancers either fell behind previous rates or showed no improvement.

Among adults in the age groups recommended for screening, about 1 in 5 women reported not being up-to-date with cervical cancer screening, about 1 in 4 women reported not being up-to-date with breast cancer screening, and about 2 in 5 adults reported not being up-to-date with colorectal cancer screening.

The report found that colorectal cancer testing was essentially unchanged in 2013 compared with 2010. Pap test use in women age 21-65 years was lower than 2000, and the number of mammography screenings was stagnant, showing very little change from previous years.

Researchers reviewed data from the National Health Interview Survey 2013, which is used to monitor progress toward Healthy People 2020 goals for cancer screening based on the most recent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines.

The screening data for 2013 show that 58.2 percent of adults age 50-75 years reported being screened for colorectal cancer; 72.6 percent of women age 50-74 had a mammogram; and 80.7 percent of women age 21-65 had a Pap test. All of these percentages are below the Healthy People 2020 targets.

Source: CDC

The Presidential Healthcare Center’s Executive Physicals include cancer screening and tumor marker tracking.

Gout’s association with a host of vascular events was confirmed in a new study that explored the links between the inflammatory condition and coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, and cerebrovascular events.

Though both men and women with gout were at increased risk for vascular events overall, the association appeared strongest for women. Dr. Lorna Clarson of Keele (England) University and her associates drew these conclusions from a retrospective cohort study of men and women with an incident diagnosis of gout.

Gout, caused by the deposition of uric acid crystals in joints, is characterized by acute flares of intensely painful and inflamed joints. However, the state of hyperuricemia that predisposes patients to acute attacks of gout may precede the first attack by years, and may persist between flares. The proinflammatory course of the natural history of gout has increasingly been recognized as a potential contributor to vascular disease.

The precise mechanism by which gout may increase vascular risk has not been identified. Dr. Clarson and associates noted that in addition to the acute and chronic inflammation associated with gout and hyperuricemia, serum uric acid may have a more direct effect on vascular health, as urate crystal deposition on vessel walls may promote vascular damage.

Source: Family Practice News

Air pollution is known to increase the risk for stroke and other cerebrovascular disorders. But now researchers have found it is also linked to premature aging of the brain.

The study, in the May issue of Stroke, used data on 943 men and women over 60 who were participants in a larger health study. Researchers did M.R.I. examinations and gathered data on how close the people lived to major highways. They also used satellite data to measure particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, or PM 2.5, a form of pollution that easily enters the lungs and bloodstream.

After controlling for health, lifestyle and socioeconomic factors, they found that compared with people exposed to the lowest levels of PM 2.5, those with the highest exposure had a 46 percent increased risk for covert brain infarcts, the brain damage commonly called “silent strokes.”

They also found that each additional two micrograms per cubic meter increase in PM 2.5 was linked to a decrease in cerebral brain volume equivalent to about one year of natural aging.

“We’re seeing an association between air pollution and potentially harmful attacks on the brain,” said the lead author, Elissa H. Wilker, a researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “This helps us to better understand the mechanisms related to air pollution and clinically observed outcomes.”

Source: New York Times

Veterinarians have long warned that pain medications like ibuprofen are toxic to pets. And it now looks like merely using a pain relief cream can put cats at risk.

That’s what happened in two households, according to a report issued Friday by the Food and Drug Administration. Two cats in one household developed kidney failure and recovered with attention from a veterinarian. But in a second household, three cats died.

When the veterinarians performed necropsies on the three dead cats, they found physical damage in the cats’ intestines and kidneys, evidence of the toxic effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs. NSAIDs include ibuprofen, like Advil and Motrin, and naproxen, which is in Aleve.

Ibuprofen is the most common drug that pets eat, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, perhaps since many of the pills are candy-coated. In pets, the drugs can cause stomach or intestinal ulcers and kidney failure.

But these cats died by flurbiprofen, another NSAID. In the case of its most recent victims, the cat owner applied a lotion or cream containing flurbiprofen to treat muscle or arthritis pain.

Source: NPR

The risk of developing cancer is significantly higher in survivors of an acute MI compared to the general population, according to a large Danish national registry study.

“Greater focus on long-term cancer risk is warranted in MI survivors. This could potentially have implications on future patient care for MI patients, outpatient follow-up strategies, and distribution of health care resources,” Morten Winther Malmborg said at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

He presented a nationwide cohort study including 3,005,734 Danish adults with no baseline history of MI or cancer who were followed for up to 17 years in the comprehensive Danish National Patient Registry. During the study period, 125,926 of these individuals had a nonfatal MI.

The subsequent incidence of cancer in the MI survivors was 167 cases per 10,000 person-years compared with 95 per 10,000 person-years in the control group, reported Mr. Malmborg, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Copenhagen.

Source: Family Practice News

If you’re being treated for cancer, an iguana might not be the pet for you.

Ditto if you’re pregnant, elderly or have small children at home.

Pets can transmit dozens of diseases to humans, but doctors aren’t always as good as they should be in asking about pets in the home and humans’ health issues, a study finds.

And that goes for people doctors and animal doctors. “The fact that they’re equally uneducated is concerning,” says Jason Stull, an assistant professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State University and lead author of the review, which was published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “There hasn’t been a great dialogue between the veterinary community, the human health community and the public.”

The people doctors aren’t asking their patients what kind of pets they have, Stull says, and veterinarians aren’t asking owners about health issues that might increase their risk of acquiring unpleasant, even life-threatening, infections. His paper includes a long list of possibilities, including…

Source: NPR