Health bulletin: Hypertension often undiagnosed in U.S. kids

Hypertension often goes undiagnosed in U.S. kids

High blood pressure among children and adolescents, a growing problem linked to increasing juvenile obesity, often goes undiagnosed in the United States, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This is dangerous, as high blood pressure can quietly damage the organs, especially the kidneys, researchers reported.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, often signals another disease in children, like endocrine disorders, kidney or heart disease.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland examined more than 14,000 young people ages 3 to 18 and found 507 cases of hypertension. Nearly three quarters of that group, or 376 cases, had not been diagnosed despite at least three previous medical checkups.

An estimated 3.6 percent of the children had high blood pressure, within the range found in other studies, Dr. Matthew Hansen and colleagues found.

They suggested that electronic medical record keeping could be upgraded to better diagnose the problem by comparing the findings of earlier checkups, even though juvenile hypertension is difficult to confirm because it varies by sex, height and weight.

Weight loss may predict dementia

Women destined to develop Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia may start losing weight at least a decade before being diagnosed with such a condition, U.S. researchers said.

Women who developed dementia began losing weight between 11 and 20 years before their diagnosis, and the weight loss accelerated in the decade before diagnosis, researchers led by Dr. David Knopman of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found.

U.S. approves new osteoporosis drug

Swiss drugmaker Novartis A said it had won U.S. approval to sell the first once-a-year treatment for the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis. The drug, Reclast, is administered annually in a 15-minute infusion for women with post-menopausal osteoporosis.

Pathogens rife in unpasteurized milk

A survey of unpasteurized milk samples drawn from dairy farms across Wisconsin found a significant presence of Coxiella burnetii and Listeria monocytogenes, two different types of bacteria that can cause serious infection and even death in some people. These findings have particular relevance for consumers seeking raw milk products.

Green tea extract may fight cancer

Healthy subjects who received daily caffeine-free green tea extract capsules had an increased production of detoxification enzymes, which may provide some cancer-fighting benefits, study findings show.

"Concentrated green tea extract could be beneficial to those who are deficient in the detoxification enzyme and shouldn't be harmful for those who have adequate detoxification enzyme," said lead investigator Dr. H.H. Sherry Chow, of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Advice to the lovelorn: You'll survive

Despite the laments of pining pop stars and sad sack poets, U.S. researchers now think breaking up may not be so hard to do.

"We underestimate our ability to survive heartbreak," said Eli Finkel, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University, whose study appears online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Finkel and colleague Paul Eastwick studied young lovers -- especially those who profess ardent affection -- to see if their predictions of devastation matched their actual angst when that love was lost.

The nine-month study involved college students who had been dating at least two months who filled out questionnaires every two weeks. They gathered data from 26 people -- 10 women and 16 men -- who broke up with their partners during the first six months of the study.

The participants' forecasts of distress two weeks before the breakup were compared to their actual experience. Not surprisingly, they found the more people were in love, the harder they took the breakup.

"People who are more in love really are a little more upset after a breakup, but their perceptions about how distraught they will be are dramatically overstated when compared to reality," Finkel said. "At the end of the day, it is just less bad than you thought."

Children's fear of foods is genetic

Researchers from the United Kingdom have provided an explanation for why some children hate to try new foods -- it's in the genes. In a large study of twins, which included both identical and fraternal twin pairs, Dr. Lucy J. Cooke of University College London and her colleagues found that nearly 80 percent of children's tendency to avoid unfamiliar foods was inherited.

Activity helps knee heal from surgery

The more frequently a person plays sports after having surgery to restore damaged knee cartilage, the better he or she will fare long-term, German researchers report.

Dr. Peter Cornelius Kreuz of University Medical Center Freiburg and colleagues found that patients who engaged in competitive sports at least once a week after initial recovery from the operation showed better knee function and cartilage regrowth as measured by MRI than their less active peers.