Chocolate is more than an indulgence! It lowers blood pressure and the consequent risk of heart disease–especially dark chocolate–say German scientists who published the heartening news in the European Heart Journal.

The scientists added that just a small square of chocolate per day is enough to reap the cardiovascular benefits…after that, it really is just an indulgence.
 
To reach these conclusions, Brian Buijsse and colleagues followed 19,357 people between the ages of 35 and 65, for at least 10 years. They found that people in the highest quartile for chocolate consumption  (averaging 7.5 grams of chocolate per day), had lower blood pressure, a 27% lower risk of heart attack, and a 48% lower risk of stroke than those in the lowest quartile for chocolate consumption (about 1.7 grams per day).

Buijsse’s team believes it’s the flavanols in cocoa that are responsible for these beneficial effects. There are more flavanols in dark chocolate than milk chocolate.
 
“Flavanols…are responsible for improving the bioavailability of nitric oxide from the cells that line the inner wall of blood vessels–vascular endothelial cells,” explained Buijsse. “Nitric oxide…causes smooth muscle cells of the blood vessels to relax and widen. This may contribute to lower blood pressure. Nitric oxide also improves platelet function and makes vascular endothelium less attractive for white blood cells to attach and stick around.”
 
Buijsse warned that people who chose to increase their chocolate intake should not increase their overall caloric intake or their consumption of healthy foods. “Small amounts of chocolate may help to prevent heart disease, but only if it replaces other energy-dense food, such as snacks, in order to keep body weight stable,” he told BurrillReport.

When Viagra first hit the market, there was hope it might work in women as well as men, giving a pharmacological boost to those with low levels of sexual arousal (referred to clinically as “female sexual dysfunction” or “female sexual arousal disorder”).

With the possible exception of woman who experience loss of libido as a side-effect of antidepressant drugs, that hasn’t turned out to be the case.

But now scientists at Pfizer, the company that markets the little blue pill, claim to have made an advance that could eventually lead to a female version of the wonder drug.

Their rather dry write-up is titled “UK-414,495, a selective inhibitor of neutralendopeptidase, potentiates pelvic nerve-stimulated increases in female genital blood flow in the anaesthetized rabbit.” It appears in the British Journal of Pharmacology.

Ironically, the subjects of their research were rabbits, whose reputation suggests they don’t need much help in the breeding department, but whatever.

According to the scientists, UK-414,495 enhances blood flow to a female rabbit’s clitoris and vagina after its pelvic nerve is stimulated. It does this by blocking destruction of VIP, a neurochemical that dilates blood vessels.

Viagra, in contrast, works by increasing nitric oxide availability in the small blood vessels of the penis…a completely different mechanism from UK-414,495. No wonder it doesn’t do diddly for women!

Although the experimental drug in this study isn’t fit for human use, the Pfizer scientists say their work may unlock the door to other compounds that are.

Even if that were the case, they add that “the translation of results obtained in the rabbit to humans is unknown, especially since the link between blood flow and subjective arousal remains controversial.”  Apparently however, some studies do suggest that women with arousal disorders are helped by enhanced genital blood flow.

The FDA has announced plans to review the safety of triclosan, an antibacterial agent found in hundreds of consumer products including soap, toothpaste, toys and clothing. The stepped-up regulatory scrutiny was prompted by recent lab studies showing that bacteria can evolve resistance to the chemical using a mechanism that would help them resist antibiotics as well.

In making the announcement, the FDA said there is no evidence that triclosan is directly harmful to humans or that bacteria in nature have become resistant to triclosan.

The “FDA does not have sufficient evidence to recommend changing consumer use of products that contain triclosan at this time,” the agency said.

The new development did not satisfy Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, who called for a ban on the substance. “There are many troubling questions about triclosan’s effectiveness and potentially harmful effects, especially for children,” Markey told MSNBC.

The Soap and Detergent Association has consistently said triclosan is safe. It has been used to reduce bacterial loads in consumer products for nearly 30 years.

An environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, hailed the FDA’s announcement.

“It’s about time FDA has finally stated its concerns about antibacterial chemicals like triclosan,” said the Council’s Sarah Janssen.

“The public deserves to know that these so-called antibacterial products are no more effective in preventing infections than regular soap and water and may, in fact, be dangerous to their health in the long run.”

Experts agree that that triclosan-containing soap does little or nothing more to remove bacteria from the skin than plain soap. Washing hands physically removes excess bacteria from the skin. Soap helps this, with or without triclosan.

The Obama administration has taken a baby step forward in its effort to simplify communication with the US government by clarifying how the Paperwork Reduction Act applies when new media like tweets, blogs and wikis are used in communication between federal agencies and the public.

The PRA was enacted in 1995, just before American life made a wholesale migration to the Internet. It requires that federal officials file an 83-I form with the Office of Management and Budget whenever they collect information from the public, to justify the effort.

That process routinely took months, but a new document appearing on the White House Web site lists a number of instances in which information collected using social media need not trigger the PRA process.

Among them:
– Federal wiki pages can support communication between federal agencies and the public without violating any law. 
– Webinars, blogs, discussion boards, forums, message boards, chat sessions, social networks and online communities can all go forward without triggering a PRA review.

On the other hand, “If an agency takes the opportunity of a public meeting to distribute a survey, or to ask identical questions of 10 or more attendees, the questions count as information collection,” that should trigger the PRA process, according to the document.

At the same time this document was released, several federal agencies released plans to expose more data and other federal information to the public.

For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it will post new information about homelessness. In addition, the Energy Department said it created a wiki to share information about clean energy, and HHS plans to post additional data about community health services.

Aging motorcyclists are nearly twice as likely as their younger counterparts to die in a motorcycle accident, say researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

To reach this conclusion, Mark Gestring, who directs the Center’s trauma program and his colleagues studied nearly 62,000 motorcycle crashes in the US between 1996 and 2005. The ages of involved riders ranged from 17-89 years old.

The scientists found that during that 10 year period, the mean age of bikers who were involved in crashes rose from 34 to 39, and the proportion of injured riders who were at least 40 years old increased from 28% to 50%.

Motorcyclists in the 50-59 year age range experienced the most rapid rise in injuries, while those in the 20-29 year-old age range had fewer accidents in 2005 than in 1996.

“We made the clinical observation that older patients — people in their 50s, 60s and even 70s — were being injured on motorcycles with increasing frequency,” Gestring told MSNBC. “We wanted to see if this observation was true on a national level and we found that it was.”

The scientists also noted that riders who were at least 40 years of age had more severe injuries and longer lengths of ICU stay than younger bikers. 

“Treating a 60-year-old who has been in a motorcycle accident is very different from treating a 21-year-old who has been in a similar accident — 60-year-olds bring a lot more medical baggage with them, and this can adversely impact outcomes following injury,” Gestring said.

The write-up appears in American Surgeon.

Physicians often have negative attitudes regarding obesity, and many express dissatisfaction about caring for obese patients. Meanwhile, obese patients often feel their physicians are disrespectful or biased against them because of their appearance.  Such observations raise concern that obese patients may receive lower quality care than non-obese patients.
 
Thankfully however, a recent study by Virginia Chang and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that medical care for obese patients is at least as good, and in some instances marginally better than that provided to other patients.

To reach these conclusions, Chang’s group compared physicians’ performance on 8 common outpatient quality measures for obese vs. non-obese patients. The study population included 36,122 patients from the Medicare Beneficiary Survey (1994-2006) and 33,500 patients from the Veterans Health Administration (2003-2004).

The scientists tracked performance for diabetes care (eye examination, glycated hemoglobin testing and lipid screening), pneumococcal vaccination, influenza vaccination, screening mammography, colorectal cancer screening, and cervical cancer screening. Data were obtained from administrative claims, survey data and chart review.

Overall, they found no evidence to suggest that obese or overweight patients received “recommended care” less frequently than normal-weight patients. In fact, obese patients received recommended care for lipid screening (72% versus 65%) and glycated hemoglobin testing (74% versus 62%) more frequently than normal-weight diabetic patients.

“Even though physicians might harbor negative attitudes towards obese patients, it doesn’t seem to be borne out in the quality of care they’re delivering,” Chang told MedPage Today. “So I think both physicians and patients can feel some degree of relief on that front.”

The write-up appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.