Mayo Clinic Study: Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have THREE TIMES RISK Of Hospitalization For Flu

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — The inactivated flu vaccine does not appear to be effective in preventing influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma. In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research that will be presented on May 19, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.

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Flu vaccine (trivalent inactivated flu vaccine—TIV) has unknown effects on asthmatics.

“The concerns that vaccination maybe associated with asthma exacerbations have been disproved with multiple studies in the past, but the vaccine’s effectiveness has not been well-established,” said Avni Joshi, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. “This study was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the TIV in children overall, as well as the children with asthma, to prevent influenza-related hospitalization.”

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend annual influenza vaccination for all children aged six months to 18 years. The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (3rd revision) also recommends annual flu vaccination of asthmatic children older than six months.

In order to determine whether the vaccine was effective in reducing the number of hospitalizations that all children, and especially the ones with asthma, faced over eight consecutive flu seasons, the researchers conducted a cohort study of 263 children who were evaluated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota from six months to 18 years of age, each of whom had had laboratory-confirmed influenza between 1996 to 2006. The investigators determined who had and had not received the flu vaccine, their asthma status and who did and did not require hospitalization. Records were reviewed for each subject with influenza-related illness for flu vaccination preceding the illness and hospitalization during that illness.

They found that children who had received the flu vaccine had three times the risk of hospitalization, as compared to children who had not received the vaccine. In asthmatic children, there was a significantly higher risk of hospitalization in subjects who received the TIV, as compared to those who did not (p= 0.006). But no other measured factors—such as insurance plans or severity of asthma—appeared to affect risk of hospitalization.

“While these findings do raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine, they do not in fact implicate it as a cause of hospitalizations,” said Dr. Joshi. “More studies are needed to assess not only the immunogenicity, but also the efficacy of different influenza vaccines in asthmatic subjects.”

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided byAmerican Thoracic Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172045.htm

How to protect your children in today’s health landscape — a plea to parents

by Robyn O’Brien, founder, Allergy Kids Foundation.

The landscape of children’s health has changed. If you have any doubt whatsoever, ask your grandmother. Did she have friends juggling breast cancer and play dates? What about autism and allergies? ADHD and diabetes?

And while there were other things that they worried about, as parents today, we sit beside each other on the sidelines of soccer fields, in concert recitals or in the pews at church, and with few words spoken, we understand that things have changed.

Today, 46 kids are diagnosed with cancer every day. It is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of fifteen. Diabetes, obesity, asthma and food allergies are a tsunami of conditions raining down on the health of our children. And autism now impacts 1 in 88 American children.

Our grandmothers weren’t navigating these statistics. We know that it hasn’t always been this way. And we see firsthand how hard it can be, as we share the heartache of a friend, witness the grief of a sister or help a neighbor struggling with the cost of care. We say our prayers at night, grateful for the blessings we have received and mindful of how quickly things can change.

Our children have earned the title of Generation Rx because of how pervasive these conditions have become. The number of US kids with autism is up 78% reports the CDC, impacting 1 in 54 little boys, while 1 in 3 is overweight or obese, triple the rate of 1963, reports the American Heart Association, and 46 kids are diagnosed with cancer and 1,500 Americans – moms, dad, sisters, brothers, children – die from cancer every single day.

It didn’t used to be this way. And as this landscape of health has changed so quickly in such a short time, it begs the question: Why? Why have our families become so allergic? Autistic? Diabetic? Cancer stricken?

Since when did the landscape of childhood feel like a landmine of disease?

A lot of theories are out there, enough to cause doubt and confusion, but mounting scientific evidence, from the President’s Cancer Panel to the American Academy of Pediatrics, urges us to protect the health of our children by reducing our exposure to environmental toxins, especially those now found in and on our food.

With the President’s Cancer Panel and Stanford University urging pregnant moms and those with children to reduce their exposure to artificial ingredients now found in our food supply (things like artificial growth hormones in dairy, weed and pest killers used so frequently on our fresh produce as well as other artificial ingredients), we find ourselves reading labels in grocery store aisles – no longer just for fat and sugar content, but also for the list of allergens, artificial colors or genetically modified ingredients or any indication of the manufactured chemicals that they may contain.

And while the task can be overwhelming, we do it anyway for the love of our families. We find the strength, tenacity and courage to continue to move forward, asking questions, researching and reading, trying to do everything we can to reverse this tidal wave of disease.

And we are not alone. Thankfully, more corporations in the traditional food sector and those in the organic industry are doing what they can to help us. Some have been doing it for a long time, others are just beginning to make change. But the important thing is this: we are all doing what we can, where we are, with what we have, recognizing that the health of our country depends on the health of our children. Because while our children may only represent 30% of the population, they are 100% of our future.

So we have a choice: to let their health conditions bring us to our knees or bring us to our feet.

And when we decide to stand, we do so out of love, knowing that we do not stand alone. Millions of citizens in countries around the world stood for their right to know what is in their food, and now, millions of Americans who share this deep concern are doing the same.

A corporation will always have the right to make a profit, but Americans should also have the right to know what we are eating, so that together, leveraging this collective information and insight, we can protect the health of our country.

See Robyn O’Brien’s excellent talk at TEDx in 2011:

About the Author

Robyn O’Brien: Founder, Executive Director, Allergy Kids Foundation.

As a former food industry analyst, Fulbright grant recipient, author and mother of four, Robyn O’Brien brings compassion, insight and detailed analysis to her role as the founder of the organization and her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of children.

Click here to view the Allergy Kids website.

PHOTO: SEAN DREILINGER

http://gmoawareness.org/2012/09/29/protect-your-children/

Frequent red meat eaters at higher risk of stroke

A high-protein diet might benefit health in some ways, but depending on what kind of protein a person consumes, it could raise their stroke risk too, suggests a large new study that finds eating lots of red meat ups the likelihood of having a stroke while poultry lowers it.

“The main message from this paper is that the type of protein or the protein package is really important for the risk of stroke. We have to consider protein in the context of the foods,” said Dr. Frank Hu, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the authors of the study.

He and his colleagues collected data from two massive health surveys that tracked tens of thousands of men and women from roughly middle age to their senior and elderly years.

Over 20-some years of the study, nearly 1,400 men and more than 2,600 women had a stroke.

Caused by a blood clot or a burst blood vessel that stops blood flow to the brain, stroke is the third most common cause of death in the United States. Twenty-six out of every 1,000 people in the U.S. have experienced a stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and about 800,000 die of stroke each year.

To see what influence different types of dietary protein have on stroke risk, the researchers divided up the people in the study based on how much red meat, poultry, fish, dairy and other sources of protein they typically ate each day.

Men who ate more than two servings of red meat each day — which was at the high end of the meat eaters — had a 28 percent increased risk of stroke compared to men who averaged about a third of a serving of red meat each day, the low end of the red meat eaters.

The researchers considered a serving of red meat as four to six ounces of beef or a hamburger patty.

Women who ate nearly two servings of red meat a day had a 19 percent higher risk of stroke than women who ate less than half a serving each day.

A 19 percent increase in stroke risk means that instead of 26 out of every 1,000 people having a stroke, 31 out of every 1,000 people would have one.

The researchers also looked at the change in stroke risk that would come with substituting different forms of protein for one daily serving of red meat: swapping in one serving a day of poultry lowered stroke risk by 27 percent, a serving of nuts or fish was linked to a 17 percent drop in risk and a serving of dairy dropped the risk by 10 to 11 percent.

Dr. Adam Bernstein, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, said he was not surprised to see that red meat eaters suffer more strokes.

“We’ve also done work on red meat and diabetes and red meat and coronary heart disease. So it makes sense that these cardio-metabolic diseases are grouped together,” Bernstein told Reuters Health.

An earlier study, led by Susanna Larsson at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, also found that eating red meat had a link to stroke risk (see Reuters Health story of December 31, 2010).

What was new in the current study, Larsson said, was that frequent poultry eaters showed a lowered risk of stroke.

People who ate the most chicken or turkey each day — about a half serving for women and three-quarters of a serving for men — had a 13 percent reduced risk of stroke compared to those who ate barely more than a serving a day.

One serving was considered four ounces.

“I do not think that poultry has been considered as a protein source that might lower the risk of stroke. This is new,” Larsson told Reuters Health in an email.

Also surprising in the study was that fish seemed to offer no protection against stroke.

Larsson pointed out that earlier work has found fewer strokes among groups who eat fish often.

It’s possible that the benefits of fish depend on how it’s served, Bernstein said.

“There’s a lot of variation in how people cook and prepare fish, and we couldn’t get down to that level,” he said.

The researchers didn’t prove that beef is to blame for the increased number of strokes, but Bernstein said it could be that the fat and iron in red meat play a role.

Larsson said the findings support current recommendations to limit how much red meat people eat, and to opt for chicken and fish instead.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/12/frequent-red-meat-eaters-at-higher-risk-stroke/#ixzz22zp7SJ3k

CDC Recommends All Baby Boomers (born 1945-65) Get Tested for Hep C Why Now?

CDC recommends all baby boomers (anyone born between 1945 and 1965) get tested for hepatitis C (http://1.usa.gov/JxXnMl ).   Why do you need to be checked when you’ve never used needles or had a blood transfusion?  Why does every Baby Boomer need to be checked now?

Check out the video describing an unusual cause of transmission you may have never thought of:

From NutritionFacts.org

Boomers’ hep C tests may torpedo insurance chances, experts say

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/18/12285739-boomers-hep-c-tests-may-torpedo-insurance-chances-experts-say?lite