Study Sees Link Between Mom's Flu, Bipolar Risk for Children

But the risk is small and the connection hasn't been proven, researchers say

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, May 8 (HealthDay News) -- Women who come down with the flu during pregnancy may be at increased risk of having a child who develops bipolar disorder, a new study suggests.

The chance of a child eventually developing the mental health disorder was nearly four times higher when comparing mothers-to-be who had the flu to those who didn't, the researchers reported.

"We don't fully understand this," said study co-author Dr. Alan Brown. "The best guess is it's an inflammatory response. It could also be a result of fever," he noted.

"Mothers should stay away from people who have the flu," said Brown, a professor of clinical psychiatry and clinical epidemiology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.

However, he added, regarding the new findings, "women should not be greatly concerned, because a fourfold increase is pretty high from an epidemiological standpoint, but still the vast majority of the offspring did not get bipolar disorder."

Brown explained that "the risk of bipolar disorder in the population is about 1 percent, so if it's increased fourfold that would make it a 4 percent risk." Moreover, the researchers only looked at one risk factor for bipolar disorder, not all risk factors, which could skew these results, he noted.

The report was published in the May 8 online edition of JAMA Psychiatry.

Bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive illness, causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels and the ability to carry out routine tasks. Bipolar disorder can be treated, and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives, according to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

The condition often develops in the late teens or early adult years. Some people have their first symptoms during childhood, while others may develop symptoms as adults, the agency noted.

For the study, researchers at Columbia University and Kaiser Permanente identified cases of bipolar disorder by database linkages of a Northern California health plan and a county health care system, along with data from a mailed survey.

Participants were mothers who gave birth between 1959 and 1966 and their offspring. Researchers found 92 cases of bipolar disorder and compared them with 722 people matched in terms of occurrence of maternal influenza during pregnancy.

While the new study found an association of pregnant women getting the flu and a higher risk of bipolar disorder in their offspring, it didn't establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

"There is no understanding of the causal factors of this," said Dr. Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was not involved with the study.

"Pregnancy itself puts extra stress on women in general," he pointed out. "Pregnancy also affects the immune system and increases the risk of getting the flu."

Flu during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage, premature birth and low birth weight infants, Manevitz said.

Pregnant women should get a flu shot, both Manevitz and Brown suggested.

Other studies have shown a similar association between flu during pregnancy and the child's risk for autism and schizophrenia -- now there is this association with bipolar disorder, Manevitz said. "This doesn't give us any causal connection," he emphasized.

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Study Hints of Links Between HPV and Lung Cancer

Certain strains of the cervical cancer virus found in tumors from nonsmokers

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) -- Human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that can cause cervical and head and neck cancers, may also trigger some cases of lung cancer, according to a small new study.

Researchers examined 36 tumor tissue samples from patients with non-small-cell lung cancer who had never smoked. Smoking is a major cause of lung cancer, but the causes of lung cancer in nonsmokers can be difficult to pinpoint.

The investigators found that about 6 percent of the tissue samples showed signs of infection from two strains of HPV known to cause cancer. The strains are called HPV 16 and HPV 18.

Further examination of the tissue samples infected with HPV 16 revealed that the virus had integrated into the tumor's DNA, which the researchers said provides stronger evidence that HPV infection caused the tumor.

The study was scheduled to be presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in Washington, D.C. Study data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

If it is confirmed that HPV plays a role in some cases of lung cancer, the next step is to learn more about those tumors so they can be treated more effectively, said the researchers from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. This study, however, did not prove a cause-and-effect link between the virus and lung cancer.

Lung cancer kills more than 1 million people a year. About 10 percent of lung cancer cases occur in nonsmokers.

"Given how many patients develop lung cancer, if even a small percentage of those tumors stem from HPV, that ends up being a large number of patients," study author Dr. Ranee Mehra, an attending physician in medical oncology at Fox Chase, said in a center news release.

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Study Finds No Tie Between Acne Drug Accutane and Crohn's, Colitis

Title: Study Finds No Tie Between Acne Drug Accutane and Crohn's, Colitis
Category: Health News
Created: 2/20/2013 4:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/21/2013 12:00:00 AM

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New SARS-Like Virus May Have Spread Between People

Title: New SARS-Like Virus May Have Spread Between People
Category: Health News
Created: 2/14/2013 11:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/14/2013 12:00:00 AM

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New SARS-Like Virus May Have Spread Between People

Feb. 13, 2013 -- A new illness similar to the deadly SARS virus has probably spread from person to person in the U.K.

Previous cases of this new virus, a coronavirus, have been seen in people who've returned from visits abroad. The latest case is in a person who hasn’t been abroad recently and is thought to have caught it from a relative, British officials say.

However, officials say the threat of the infection spreading remains very low.

Many coronaviruses are not a cause for concern. Some strains cause the common cold but also include SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The new coronavirus was identified in September 2012 in a person who died from a severe infection of the lungs. The virus caused fever, cough, shortness of breath, and breathing problems.

British officials  say 11 confirmed cases have been seen worldwide, including three deaths in Saudi Arabia and two deaths in Jordan. None have been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC.

Previous U.K. cases have been seen in people who travelled to Qatar, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

Officials say two new cases were found in a U.K. resident who had recently been to the Middle East and Pakistan and a family member who had not traveled recently. They are in intensive care at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. The family member has an existing medical condition that makes them more susceptible to infections of the lungs, officials say.

In a statement, Professor John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at Britain’s Health Protection Agency (HPA),  says, "Confirmed novel coronavirus infection in a person without travel history to the Middle East suggests that person-to-person transmission has occurred, and that it occurred in the U.K.

"Although this case provides strong evidence for person-to-person transmission, the risk of infection in most circumstances is still considered to be very low. If novel coronavirus were more infectious, we would have expected to have seen a larger number of cases than we have seen since the first case was reported three months ago."

The HPA says special measures have been put in place to stop the infection from spreading.

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Deciding Between Work and Home After Your Baby's Born

Parenthood brings endless choices. How to navigate your career may be one of toughest.Reviewed by Melinda Ratini, DO, MS

How do you decide between going back to work and staying at home after the baby is born? Jamie Principe, a 38-year-old mother of two who lives in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., has done both. When her girls, now 4 and 5, were younger, she worked outside the home as an architect. Then, she made the surprisingly smooth and easy transition of becoming a stay-at-home mom.

"I left my job not with the commitment to be a stay-at-home mom," Principe says. "I left because the nature of my job had changed and was no longer beneficial to me professionally. At the same time, my long-time nanny's breast cancer had come back. The thought of searching for new childcare and hunting for a job both while still working and trying to be a mother to my kids was more than I could handle. So since my family could manage financially with one income, I decided to make the break."

And she loved it. "I was surprised at how much I loved being home," Principe says. "Having more time to myself. Enjoying mundane tasks. Catching up with friends. But most of all, being there for my kids." She had found it nice in some ways to "outsource" the laborious and often dull routine of caring for small children. "But now that the kids are older," she says, "I feel my presence at home when their school or camp day is over is much more meaningful and important to both me and them."

Still, Principe misses the professional interaction and stimulation she once knew.

To work or not to work outside the home is a dilemma many new moms face. And like Principe, many are surprised at how they feel.

Family psychoanalyst Jenny Stuart says, "You have to leave as many options open as possible through pregnancy and the first year of a first child's life." Stuart says it's difficult to know how you will feel when you become a mother. "Some women who expect to love it are bored and angry and want to work," she says. "Others are utterly taken by surprise by how much they want to stay home."

Stuart advises moms-to-be to not make any major decisions while they are expecting. She also says it's important to remember there is no right answer. "The decision depends very much on the psychology of the woman making it," she says, "and on what types of support networks she has."

Young children do need steady contact with predictable caregivers. "I think they need as much contact as possible with their own parents," Stuart says. "But a very good day care can be a good complement to what a mother or pair of parents can do on their own. So it's not the case that mothers of young children must not work. But they do have to keep in mind the child's actual needs."

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Imaging study identifies relationship between stress and catches

3 Dec. 2012 A study reported here on the 66th American epilepsy Society Annual Meeting has determined that a significant difference in the brain's response to stress in patients who believe stress is an important factor in their herd control relative to patients who do not hold this belief.

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Many epilepsy patients believe that stress is a factor in their herd control, while many other epilepsy patients do not need this perception. To the potential role of stress in these patients better understand, has a functional neuroimaging study of patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy under psychosocial stress imposed conducted by researchers in the departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati. (Abstract # 1.184)

All subjects in the study were given math exercises to complete, initially simple problems during the control task and difficult problems during the stress task. Subjects were equipped with positive feedback during the simple mathematical problems and negative feedback during the difficult ones regardless of how well they were doing.

Both groups of patients responded to the math exercises with similar accuracy and response times. But patients who experienced stress to important in seizure control showed more brain activation during the stressful compared to non-stressful conditions. The activation was seen both bilateral (in the superior temporal gyrus, posterior Cingulate and parietal areas) and one-sided (in the left insula) in subjects who believe as important in their herd stress control; Whereas an increase in activation in the comparison group was not observed.

According to study author Jane b. Allendorfer, Ph.d., in the Department of Neurology, University of Alabama in Birmingham (previously at the University of Cincinnati where the study was conducted), "our study is the first to show a relationship between stress and brain activation in patients who believe stress as a factor in seizure control relative to patients who do not have this perception. We also assume that the difference in the brain activation patterns can be related to why some patients with epilepsy attacks more often than other patients. "

This study is supported by the Charles Shor Foundation for Epilepsy Research.

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The distance between dreams and reality

It is worded as follows:

is discipline.

Time and time again, we see that society rewards those who have discipline, whether it's down to the cake, walk the extra mile or in overtime at work. If you want to be successful, you must be able to put aside your happiness now for rewards in the future.

The next time you are tempted to eat bad or go through your training remember this phrase: is discipline. You can make your dreams come true, but you should stick to your program.

Photo via: I can do it

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