This week in the medical journals
By Peggy Peck
Medpage Today Senior Editor
Editor's note: CNN.com has a business partnership with MedPageToday.com, which provides custom health content. A medical journal roundup from MedPage Today appears each Thursday.
A medical first
The medical journals made front-page headlines this week, and the biggest story of them all was news of a baby born after a twin-sister ovarian transplant, a first in the annals of medicine.
The New England Journal of Medicine reported this pioneering medical achievement, the account of a baby born to a woman who had fertility restored via the transplant of ovarian tissue from her identical twin.
The 25-year-old Alabama woman, who was sterile for at least 10 years, conceived without any assisted reproduction. She gave birth Monday to a 7 pound, 15 ounce baby girl, and the journal rushed out a prepared report via an online release. The St. Louis-based researchers, who described the ovarian tissue transplant in the NEJM, said the same technique may someday be used to restore fertility in women who are sterile following cancer treatment.
A first: Baby born after ovarian transplant restores fertility
More breaking news
NEJM followed up the baby report with another early online release, this one describing just what seemed to have gone terribly wrong with a drug called Tysabri.
This drug had once seemed so promising for multiple sclerosis patients. Yet Tysabri was withdrawn from the market on February 28 after reports that its use was associated with a usually fatal infection. The research, which was originally slated for publication in late July, was released early after a press report of still another patient with the infection. The NEJM studies suggested that Tysabri interacts with other drugs to turn on a usually inactive virus called JC polyomavirus.
This virus is found in the kidneys and lymph glands of more than 50 percent of healthy adults. But when JC polyomavirus is activated, as it apparently can be by Tysabri, it unleashes progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), an opportunistic infection of the central nervous system. Three patients taking the drug developed PML. Two of the patients died and the third became quadriplegic and lost the ability to speak. That patient has improved somewhat once Tysabri was discontinued. News of the fourth patient was unconfirmed.
Also jumping the gun with an early online release was The Lancet Oncology, which reported that an occasional beer, glass of wine, or even a dry martini, apparently reduces the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Current drinkers reduce their risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by about 27 percent compared with teetotalers. The emphasis, however, was on moderate drinking. More beers did not add up to less risk.
Possible cause of Tysabri-related deaths proposed
High-voltage leukemia link
Children dominated a number of the research studies released this week, starting with a report from England that claimed children living in the shadow of high-voltage electrical lines have a slightly increased risk of leukemia.
The researchers, who reported their findings in BMJ, said that the power line risk --if confirmed -- is likely to account for about five of the estimated 400 to 420 cases of childhood leukemia diagnosed annually in England and Wales.
The researchers wrote that the most obvious explanation for the increased risk "is that it is a consequence of exposure to magnetic fields." But a BMJ commentary that accompanied the study said the magnetic field theory doesn't hold up because the magnetic fields surrounding power lines are "very weak, so it would be surprising if they caused leukemia."
The commentary concluded that childhood leukemia is probably the result of DNA damage that occurs in the womb "probably in response to infection, chemicals, ionizing radiation or other environmental exposures."
Proximity to power lines at birth may increase leukemia risk
Got too much milk?
No matter where children live, if they drink too much milk they are likely to be fatter than children who are more moderate milk-drinkers, according to research by a group of Harvard nutritionists.
Contrary to ads that suggest milk can help people lose weight, the researchers said that schoolchildren who drink more than three glasses of milk a day gain more weight in a year than children who drink only one or two glasses a day. And, it's not the cookies that go with milk that are putting on the pounds, it's the milk itself, the researchers reported in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Drinking more milk means consuming more calories, and more calories add up to more weight. Moreover, children who drink more than three glasses of reduced fat or skimmed milk were just as likely to gain weight as children drinking whole milk.
High milk consumption linked to obesity in children
Hello mother, hello father
June marks the beginning of the summer camp season for many families.
Pediatrics celebrated the season by issuing detailed health guidelines for summer camps, advising, for example, that camps not only have doctors and nurses on call but also dentists and orthodontists.
Parents, meanwhile, should make sure that their progeny have a complete camp physical, and that health insurance will cover the little campers when they are away from home.
Pediatricians issue health guidelines for summer campers
What you see is what gets you
Adolescence is rarely a walk in the park, but another study in this week's Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine points out just how painful the experience can be for some teens.
Researchers from the CDC reported that a teen's perception of body image is a more significant factor in risk of suicide than the reality of their weight. Teens who think they are too fat or too thin are more likely to think about suicide, the researchers report.
Moreover those images are often divorced from reality, since 37 percent of the normal weight girls in the study described themselves as overweight and 12 percent said they were underweight.
And problems that vex teens often continue into adulthood. Consider the woes of depressed TV mobster Tony Soprano and the success of Dr. Phil's instant fixes for dysfunctional families. But research reported in Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that the extent of mental illness in American remains underestimated.
Harvard researchers said that more than 46 percent of Americans will experience mental illness sometime during their lives and about of the time onset is by age 14. At any time during a year about 26 percent of Americans will experience mental disorders, the researchers reported. Moreover, just like Tony Soprano, people with depression are most likely to seek treatment.
Perception of body image raises risk for teen suicide
Mental disorders strike nearly half of all Americans
TB in the spotlight
In a departure from its standard multi-disease format, this week the Journal of the American Medical Association devoted its entire issue to tuberculosis, a disease that claims 3 million lives each year worldwide. But it rarely makes the radar screens of U.S. physicians.
The reason for this apparent lack of interest is that while an estimated 9 million cases of TB will be diagnosed this year, few of those cases will be diagnosed in the United States. Nonetheless, cases of multidrug resistant TB have been steadily increasing in California, the state with the greatest number of TB cases. And most of the TB cases in the United States are brought into the country by immigrants.
So the United States has more than an altruistic motive for joining the worldwide TB fight, according to JAMA's editor, who said the journal's goal was "getting people to understand that TB is a global problem and it affects them."
TB has small presence in America, but remains huge worldwide
Female orgasm in the genes
Finally, a little-known publication called Biology Letters made news this week with the report that female orgasm -- or lack of same -- may be a matter of genetic hard wiring.
In studies of twins, the researchers found that the ability to reach orgasm during either intercourse or masturbation appears to be at least partly inherited, a finding they said was confirmed by the similar rates of orgasm reported by identical twins.
Endnote: Blame your mother.
A woman's failure to achieve orgasm may also be genetic
