Health News
A New Diet
Plan? Brown Fat and Cold Temperatures
By:
Heather Hajek
Published: Thursday, 9 April 2009
 As
babies, we are all born with brown fat, a fat that actually produces heat
and consumes calories since we aren’t able to shiver and warm our bodies as
infants. Previously it had been thought that we outgrew brown fat once our
bodies were able to shiver and produce heat. There is new evidence that
suggests we actually still have brown fat as adults. Brown fat, along with
cold temperatures which put the fat to work producing heat and burning
calories, may be a new diet avenue for researchers and doctors to explore.
When you hear the words “brown fat,” it doesn’t mean the fat under the skin
that has been tanned from the sun, even though brown fat actually does look
brown. Its brown color is from its component of mitochondria, which contains
iron. Brown fat isn’t noticed by the naked eye, but rather through PET
(positron emission tomography) scans; which is one way that doctors and
researchers actually realized brown fat does still exist in adults and
doesn’t disappear as babies.
Three newly released studies were published in the April 9th issue of the
New England Journal of Medicine detailing research that has
determined that brown fat still exists in adults and can actually burn
calories when activated through cold temperatures.
Dr. Aaron Cypress, lead author of one of the studies with Joslin Diabetes
Center in Boston said, “The incredible excitement about this is that we have
an entirely new way to try to go after obesity.” Dr. Cypress and his
colleagues evaluated over 1,900 patients who had undergone PET scans for
different reasons and their study showed 7.5 percent of the women had brown
fat areas bigger than 4 millimeters and 3.1 percent of the men had brown fat
similar in size. They discovered thinner patients had more brown fat than
overweight patients. Patients who were taking beta-blockers or older were
less likely to have active brown fat. Dr. Cypress said, “The general public
and most scientists didn’t know this existed,” and he said, “We say it’s
there and could be used as a treatment for obesity and diabetes.”
One of the other studies published recently was performed by Dr. Sven
Enerbäck at the University of Göteborg in Sweden and his team. It also
illustrated the presence of brown fat in adults through research involving
five patients. His team discovered a sizable amount of brown fat on
patient’s front and back of their necks, through modern medical imaging. The
team verified the presence of brown fat through genetic analysis. Once they
had found the presence of brown fat, they attempted to determine the affects
of the brown fat when a patient was exposed to colder temperature, thought
to trigger activity in the fat. They placed a patient’s foot into an ice
bath while they were undergoing a PET scan, with the temperature in the room
between 63° F and 66° F, for five minute intervals over a two hour period.
The team noticed an increased activity in brown fat, with the amount of
glucose the patient’s brown fat consumed increasing by a factor of 15.
Another study released in the Journal was performed by Dutch
researchers from the Maastricht University Medical Center in Netherlands.
Their study evaluated the effects of temperature on brown fat in 24 healthy
men through PET scans and CT (computed tomography) scans. The volunteer’s
scans showed no presence of brown fat activity when sitting in a room at 72°
F for two hours, but when the temperature in the room was dropped to around
62°, 23 of the men showed brown fat activity. The leaner men with BMI’s less
than 25 showed more brown fat and it was more active than those men who were
overweight or obese.
With the newly released research, we may have new reason to look into the
presence of brown fat that was once thought to only exist in babies and
rodents. Brown fat seems to have the purpose of regulating body temperature,
and to do so, it burns high quantities of sugar and releases the energy as
heat. With the new evidence of brown fat, and the fact that it does seem to
burn calories once the fat is activated, scientist and researchers may have
new reasons for discovering ways to trigger brown fat activity. Hopefully,
leading to new ways of increasing weight loss and even controlling obesity
and other health problems caused from excessive weight.
HPV Test
Outperforms Pap Test in Prevention of Cervical Cancer
By:
Drucilla Dyess
Published: Thursday, 9 April 2009
 Carcinoma
of the cervix, more commonly known as cervical cancer, was a leading cause
of death in women as late as the 1950s. However, with the introduction of
the Pap test, death rates of cervical cancer have been reduced by as much as
99 percent in populations where women receive regular screenings. Due to the
widespread use of the Pap test, the number of women who lose their lives to
cervical cancer is now fewer than 4,000 per year.
The advent of the Pap test marked a major milestone in the prevention of
cervical cancer. Yet, even with its overall effectiveness, failure of the
test to prevent the disease can occur for various reasons, including the
lack of regular screenings and proper follow up of abnormal results, as well
as sampling and interpretation errors, leaving a strong need for improvement
in the screening process.
Currently, women in Western countries such as the U.S. receive Pap tests in
which cells are scraped from the cervix and sent off to a laboratory to be
stained and microscopically inspected for abnormalities by a pathologist.
This can lead to results taking several days to obtain. Although the DNA
screening also requires cervical scraping, the tissue is mixed with
re-agents and screened by a machine, which allows for faster results and a
decrease in the need for trained pathologists to read them.
In less industrialized countries, few women are able to receive a routine
screening due to the cost as well as the lack of trained pathologists. Those
who do, and are told to return for follow up, are many times unable to.
However, in some of these countries, women are now able to get a
visualization screening in which a health worker swabs the cervix with
vinegar and then uses a flashlight to screen for any spots that turn white,
which may be pre-cancerous lesions. When any spots are found, they are
immediately frozen off.
Now, a new DNA test that detects the human papillomavirus that causes
cervical cancer may fill the gaps left by the Pap test or even someday
replace it. In addition to saving more lives, scientists argue that women
older than 30 years of age may be able to skip the annual Pap test and opt
for the new DNA test once each 3, 5, or possibly even 10 years.
The evidence supporting this revelation comes from an eight year study of
130, 746 healthy women in India that has proven one simple screening with
the DNA test to be more successful at preventing advanced cancer and saving
lives that any other method currently available. The study was financed by
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was published in the New
England Journal of Medicine.
At the beginning of the study in 1999, the women ranging in age from 30 to
59 and coming from 497 villages were divided into four groups. The members
of the control group received standard rural clinic care and were advised to
go to a hospital if they wished to be screened. Another group received Pap
tests, while group three received flashlight-vinegar visualization, and
group four received the new DNA test. In eight years of follow-up, it was
found that the visualization group experienced approximately the same rates
of advanced cancer and death as the control group, with the Pap test group
having about one fourth less the rates, and the DNA test group having only
about half of those rates. It was also significant that none of the women
having a negative DNA test died of cervical cancer. This shows that the DNA
tests results are good for a number of years.
The maker of the DNA test, Qiagen, has developed a $5 version of the test
with financing from the Gates Foundation to make it affordable for women in
poor and middle-income countries where the cancer kills more than 250,000
women annually.
Cervical cancer is the second most common genital malignancy in the United
States. It is caused by only a few of the 150 strains of the human
papillomavirus. Women begin to collect strains of the virus when they become
sexually active, and over 90 percent of cases clear up of their own accord
within two years and therefore do not require treatment.
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