Health Highlights: July 28, 2008
Veterans' Hot Line Prevented 1,221 Suicides in One Year
Children With Gene Variant Have Difficulty Sensing They're Full
Green Potatoes May Contain Harmful Toxin
Diabetes Risk Higher in Men With Depression, Anxiety
Regulation of 'Off-Label' Drug Use Needs Improvement, Report Says
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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:
Veterans' Hot Line Prevented 1,221 Suicides in One Year
A suicide hot line launched a year ago has received calls from more than 22,000 veterans of the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars and has prevented 1,221 suicides, according to U.S. government figures being released Monday.
The hot line -- created jointly by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration -- gets up to 250 calls a day, the Associated Press reported.
In addition to calls from veterans, the hot line has received tens of thousands of calls since last July from people concerned about veterans' well-being.
About one in five U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan has had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which puts them at increased risk for suicide, according to a recent RAND Corp. study, the AP reported.
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Children With Gene Variant Have Difficulty Sensing They're Full
Children with an obesity-associated gene have a more difficult time than other children sensing that they're full and tend to overeat, says a U.K. study that included more than 3,000 children, ages 8-11.
The researchers found that those with a certain variant of the FTO gene were less likely to have their appetite "switched off" when they should have been full after a meal, BBC News reported.
The gene variant's effect on appetite was the same regardless of a child's age, sex, socioeconomic status and body mass index, said the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Previous research found that adults with two copies of the high-risk FTO variant were an average of three kilograms (6 lb. 10 oz.) heavier, and adults with one copy of the gene variant were an average of 1.5 kg. heavier, than adults without the variant, BBC News reported.
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Green Potatoes May Contain Harmful Toxin
Green-tinged potatoes may contain toxic glycoalkaloids that can cause serious illness in high concentrations, Indian researchers warn in a paper published online in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
Cutting away the green parts of a potato can reduce the risk.
The researchers said glycoalkaloids are produced naturally by potatoes as protection against pests and disease, United Press International reported.
Levels of the toxin can be controlled by adopting certain pre- and post-harvest measures, such as keeping potatoes well covered with soil during growth, allowing them to mature before harvesting, avoiding harvest at very high temperatures, and minimizing exposure to light.
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Diabetes Risk Higher in Men With Depression, Anxiety
Psychological distress -- including anxiety and depression -- increases a man's risk of developing type 2 diabetes, says a Swedish study that included 2,127 men and 3,100 women.
The researchers found that men with high levels of psychological distress were 2.2 times more likely to develop diabetes over a period of eight to 10 years than men with the lowest levels. No correlation between psychological distress and diabetes was found in women, BBC News reported.
The study appears in the journal Diabetic Medicine.
It was already known that stress and depression are risk factors for heart disease, and it was suspected that those same factors may play a role in diabetes, said study leader Professor Anders Ekbom of the Karolinska Institute, BBC News reported.
"The link could be the result of the way psychological distress affects the brain's role in regulating hormones or perhaps because depression influences a person's diet and level of physical activity in a negative way," said Ekbom, who noted that men and women have different coping strategies.
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Regulation of 'Off-Label' Drug Use Needs Improvement, Report Says
It can take up to a year for a pharmaceutical company to correct unapproved use of one of its drugs, according to a U.S. government report prepared for Congress.
According to the Associated Press, the practice of "off-label" use of drugs -- using them to treat diseases or conditions for which they were not approved -- has long been a "gray area of medical practice."
And, the wire service says, the report prepared by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that it can take an average of seven months for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue a warning to the drug company. Then, according to the GAO report, it can take another four months before any corrective action is taken.
For example, Botox was first approved in 1989 to treat nervous disorders in eyelids. Although it wasn't approved for cosmetic use until 2002, hundreds of thousands of off-label wrinkle-removing treatments using Botox had already been conducted, according to the FDA.
How dangerous is off-label drug use? Dr. Randall Stafford, an associate professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, cautioned in an editorial in the April 3, 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that "off-label prescribing has become first-line therapy even in the absence of strong evidence of benefits and safety."
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