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Starting university may be hazardous to your health: study

Moving away from home and adapting to a new social environment are just two of the many challenges that new students face as they enter university. An innovative new study conducted at the University of Alberta has found that these challenges can actually have a negative effect on a student's health.

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1. Study Recommends Strategies For Distributing Flu Vaccine During Shortage
   10-07-2006 · ScienceDaily
   When faced with potential vaccine shortages during a flu outbreak, public health officials can turn to a new study by mathematical biologists at the University of Texas at Austin to learn how to best distribute the vaccine.
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2. Doctors neglect insomnia in older patients
   01-03-2007 · EurekAlert!
   The sleep problems of older people are often not addressed by their doctors, even though treatment of those sleep disorders could improve their physical and mental health and enhance their quality of life. A new study from Northwestern University found when patients 60 years and older visited their doctors, physicians did not note sleep problems in the patients' charts. This was significant because many of those patients suffered from insomnia and were not being treated.
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3. Esophageal cancer rates climb with obesity; U-M study finds esophagectomy safe in obese patients
   01-30-2007 · EurekAlert!
   The rapidly climbing obesity rates in the United States have created a higher risk of esophageal cancer linked to reflux disease. According to a new study at the University of Michigan Health System, obese patients who underwent a procedure called transhiatal esophagectomy primarily for esophageal cancer had outcomes similar to their lean counterparts.
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4. Advance in understanding of blood pressure gene could lead to new treatments
   02-04-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Research by scientists at UCL (University College London) has clearly demonstrated for the first time the structure and function of a gene crucial to the regulation of blood pressure. The discovery could be important in the search for new treatments for illnesses such as heart disease, the UK's biggest killer. In a paper published online today in Nature Medicine, the team, led by Professor Patrick Vallance and Dr James Leiper, UCL Department of Medicine, reveal the role of the human gene dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), showing that loss of DDAH activity disrupts nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is critical in the regulation of blood pressure, nervous system functions and the immune system. The role of DDAH is to break down modified amino acids (Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and monomethyl arginine (L-NMMA)) that are produced by the body and have been shown to inhibit NO synthase. These molecules accumulate in various disease states including diabetes, renal failure and pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and their concentration in plasma (the fluid component of blood) is strongly predicative of cardiovascular disease and death. In a healthy human body, the majority of ADMA is eliminated through active metabolism by DDAH. Scientists have hypothesised that if DDAH function is impaired, NO production is reduced, and that this could be an important feature of increased cardiovascular risk. To examine this pathway in more detail, the researchers deleted the DDAH gene in mice. These mice went on to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure. They also designed specific inhibitors (small molecules) which bind to the active site of human DDAH. These small molecule inhibitors also induced hypertension in mice, confirming the importance of DDAH in the regulation of blood pressure. Dr Leiper, UCL Medicine, said: “These genetic and chemical approaches to disrupt DDAH showed remarkably consistent results, and provide compelling evidence that loss of DDAH function increases the concentration of ADMA and thereby disrupts vascular NO signalling. “There has been considerable scientific interest in this pathway and the role of ADMA as a novel risk factor, but so far there's been little evidence to support the idea that it's a cause of disease, rather than just a marker. Genes and their pathways are crucial to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and a better understanding of DDAH-1 could lead to important new treatments. “It could help us to establish if genetic variation predisposes certain people to these diseases, or whether environmental factors exert some of their effects through modulation of DDAH activity. “Our research also shows that this pathway could be harnessed therapeutically to limit production of NO in certain situations where too much nitric oxide is a bad thing; for example, hypotension and septic shock. These are some of the biggest problems in intensive care medicine and there is a huge unmet need for drug treatments.” The study, which was carried out at UCL's Rayne Institute, was funded by grants from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The unexpected finding in the 1980s that a simple gas, nitric oxide (NO), is made by cells in the blood vessel wall and is a powerful control of blood vessel relaxation led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1998 to its discoverers. "More recently, there has been increasing evidence that impairment of NO production is likely to be an important factor in the development of heart and circulatory disease, but the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. "This study suggests for the first time that the loss of the activity of the enzyme DDAH-1 leads to reduced NO production and may cause heart and circulatory disease. These findings are likely to be important in the search for new ways to optimise the health of our blood vessels." ### Notes for Editors 1. For more information, please contact Ruth Metcalfe in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: +44 (0)7990 675 947, out of hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: r.metcalfe@ucl.ac.uk2. 'Disruption of methylarginine metabolism impairs vascular homeostasis' is published in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Advance online publication is embargoed to 18.00 GMT (13.00 US Eastern) Sunday 4 February 2007. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting the UCL Media Relations Office.3. The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. About UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2006 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone), and members of the band Coldplay.
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5. Case Western Reserve University study looks at mental and physical health of caregivers
   02-20-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Having positive cultural beliefs about caring for elders and strong religious beliefs can ward off depression and other mental health difficulties for female caregivers of spouses and parents with dementia, but sustained elevated levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, puts these women at risk for physical health problems.
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6. Calcium is spark of life, kiss of death for nerve cells
   02-28-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Oregon Health & Science University research shows how calcium regulates the recharging of high-frequency auditory nerve cells after they've fired a signal burst. The study indicates calcium ions play a greater role in keeping in check the brain's most powerful circuits, such as those used for processing sound signals, than previously thought. A better understanding of that role could someday help prevent the death of neurons behind such neurological disorders as stroke and multiple sclerosis.
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7. Study confirms the risk of exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke outdoors
   05-02-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Tens of thousands of Americans die each year from secondhand tobacco smoke. While the health risks associated with indoor secondhand smoke are well documented, little research has been done on exposure to toxic tobacco fumes outdoors. Now, Stanford University researchers have conducted the first in-depth study on how outdoor smoking affects air quality. The results show that a non-smoker a few feet downwind from a smoldering cigarette is likely to be exposed to substantial levels of contaminated air.
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8. Baby aspirin better for your health, University of Kentucky study says
   05-08-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Nearly a quarter of a million Americans each year may be hospitalized with bleeding complications caused by needlessly taking a daily dose of an adult-sized aspirin rather than a baby aspirin to prevent a heart attack or stroke.
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9. New study suggests potential for a broadly-protective HIV vaccine
   05-29-2007 · EurekAlert!
   New research conducted at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) suggests that it may be possible to develop a vaccine that protects against the myriad strains of the HIV virus. HIV is extremely variable, so an effective vaccine may need to stimulate the body to produce cross-reactive antibodies that will neutralize multiple viral strains. These results demonstrate that induction of truly broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies may be an achievable goal.
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10. Study tests oral insulin to prevent type 1 diabetes
    06-01-2007 · EurekAlert!
    The University of Florida Health Science Center and Shands at UF are among 14 centers in the United States testing oral insulin to prevent or delay type 1 diabetes in people at risk for the disease. The center will work alongside affiliate sites and participating physicians in Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet, a research group dedicated to the understanding, prevention and early treatment of type 1 diabetes.
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