Health bulletin

Kids falling off bikes costs $200 million a year

More than 10,000 children and teens go to the hospital every year in the United States after falling off or crashing their bicycles, racking up $200 million in hospital fees, researchers reported.

They estimated that 10,700 children are hospitalized annually for bicycle-related injuries, with an average stay of three days. And too few appear to have been wearing helmets.

"Bicycles are associated with more childhood injuries than any other consumer product except the automobile," Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Ohio State University, said.

Writing in the October issue of the journal Injury Prevention, Smith and colleagues said they looked at detailed data on inpatient hospital stays from the federal Agency for Health Care Quality and Research.

The study found motor vehicles were involved in 30 percent of bicycle-related hospitalizations and that a third of the hospitalized children had traumatic brain injuries.

"The top three things that I tell parents they can do to protect their child when riding a bicycle is 'wear a helmet, wear a helmet, wear a helmet,'" Smith said.

Can't stop eating? Blame dopamine

People who just can't stop eating may be able to blame their genes, at least in part, U.S. researchers said.

They said up to 50 percent of the population carries a gene variation that may give them extra pleasure from eating -- and may explain why they are willing to work twice as hard for snacks as the other half of the population.

The gene affects dopamine, an important message-carrying chemical, or neurotransmitter, associated with behavior and movement.

"This gene is not just associated with overeating," said Jennifer Temple, a neuroscientist at the University at Buffalo in New York who worked on the study.

"It has been associated with drug addiction, alcohol abuse, gambling. It is associated with reward decisions," Temple added in a telephone interview.

Writing in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, Temple and colleagues described an experiment in which they gave people access to many tasty snacks, including chips and chocolate. Temple's team watched to see who ate the most.

People with a particular genetic variation worked harder to win treats. The finding may help explain why so many people will continue to eat even when they are not hungry, said Temple.

Obesity big risk for cancer in women

Obesity is the single strongest risk factor for colon cancer in women, U.S. researchers reported.

They found that women with precancerous polyps in the colon were more likely to be obese than women without these lesions. And obesity more strongly predicted who would have these growths than smoking or having a family history of colon cancer.

"Of all the risk factors -- age, family history, smoking -- the most potent risk factor was being obese," said Dr. Joseph Anderson of Stony Brook University in New York, who led the study. "One in five lesions may be attributable to obesity."

Too much support may be bad for kids

Moms and dads who both offer lots of support and reassurance when their young children express negative emotions may not be doing them a favor, new research shows.

Studies in four- and five-year-olds found that the children whose parents reacted with differing levels of support to their emotional setbacks were actually more emotionally mature and handled conflict better, Dr. Nancy L. McElwain of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleagues found.

Newer test better than Pap smear

A relatively new screening test was about twice as accurate as the traditional Pap smear at spotting cervical cancer, according to the first rigorous study of the test in North America.

The new test could replace the 50-year-old Pap in a matter of years, experts say. And there's a bonus for women: They won't need a screening test as often.

The HPV test, which looks for the virus that causes cervical cancer, correctly spotted 95 percent of the cancers. The Pap test, which checks for abnormal cells under a microscope, only found 55 percent, according to researchers at McGill University in Montreal, who published their findings in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

"We've had the Pap test for over 50 years and it's high time it be replaced by technology that's more robust," said Eduardo Franco, director of McGill's division of cancer epidemiology, who led the study.

Franco said some feared the HPV test would result in more false alarms, causing anxiety and requiring more follow-up testing. In the study, there were only slightly more false positives for the HPV tests (6 percent) than the Pap smears (3 percent).

Freezing eggs, gene test experimental

Two experimental fertility procedures -- preserving a woman's eggs by freezing them and testing an embryo for genetic flaws by sampling a single cell -- remain unproven, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine advised.

The group recommended comprehensive counseling for any women seeking egg-freezing services, even though some studies have shown that healthy babies have been born using frozen eggs or ovarian tissue.

A few clinics are advertising these procedures and news reports have been describing them, but the group said women should know they are far from routine.

"With any new technology it is vital that patients understand completely what the process entails and the likelihood of a successful outcome," said Dr. Marc Fritz, chair of the ASRM Practice Committee.

A few reports have shown that a young girl or woman can have her eggs, or in some cases ovarian tissue, frozen ahead of cancer treatment or other procedures that may destroy fertility.

But the society, which is meeting in Washington, said that the currently available data are too limited to allow egg freezing to be considered an established medical treatment. No numbers on how many women have tried the technique were available.

ASRM, a group that includes fertility doctors, also said a growing practice called preimplantation genetic testing remains experimental.

This testing, done on embryos created in lab dishes via in vitro fertilization or IVF, involves the removal of one or more cells to check for genetic problems before the embryo is implanted in the mother's womb.

It is standard for checking for genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, a fatal and incurable condition caused by a single mutated gene.

But the ASRM said evidence did not support the use of the procedure to improve the odds of pregnancy for an older woman, or to reduce the rate of miscarriages.