Foods That Make You Feel Better

 

Once upon a time, food as medicine wasn't such a strange idea?Hippocrates himself vouched for it. And while you may not expect your meals to hold as much importance in an era when doctors can do face transplants, food is still vital for mental and physical well-being. "Our bodies have a remarkable capacity to heal, and what we eat can help with that," says Travis Stork, MD, co-host of The Doctors and a practicing board-certified emergency-medicine physician. The thought that diet enhances mood and wellness may be age-old, but the scientific proof is brand-new. So turn your grocery list into an Rx for what ails you, using this latest research as your guide.

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Screening for HPV May Be Better Than Pap Test, Study Suggests

Screening offered greater protection against cervical cancer three years after either test was given

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

SATURDAY, Nov. 2 (HealthDay News) -- Screening for the human papillomavirus (HPV) is more effective than Pap tests for protecting women against invasive cervical cancer, a new study suggests.

HPV causes most cases of cervical cancer. In a Pap test, cells from the cervix are examined under a microscope for abnormalities that can lead to cervical cancer. In HPV-based screening, the cells are initially tested for HPV.

If cell changes or HPV are detected in either type of screening, the patient is notified and undergoes further screening and examination, followed by treatment if needed.

In this study, researchers analyzed data from four clinical trials in Europe that compared the Pap test and HPV-based screening. The data came from more than 175,000 women, aged 20 to 64, who were followed for an average of six and a half years after having one of the screening tests.

Both methods provided similar levels of protection against invasive cervical cancer for the first two and a half years after the screening tests. But for the remainder of the follow-up period, HPV screening offered 60 percent to 70 percent greater protection than Pap test screening, according to the study.

The findings were published in the journal The Lancet and presented Saturday at a European meeting of experts in cervical cancer control and HPV-associated diseases.

The increased protection offered by HPV screening was particularly notable in women aged 30 to 35. The researchers also found that HPV screening every five years was most protective against invasive cancers of the cervix, compared with Pap test screening done every three years.

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Childhood Arthritis: Aggressive Treatment Better?

Nov. 4,  2013 (San Diego) -- Treating children with juvenile arthritis with multiple medications soon after the disease appears is more likely to make symptoms go away than treating them later or with fewer medications at the start, according to new research.

"Remission is achievable if you treat early and aggressively," says study researcher Carol Wallace, MD. She is a pediatric rheumatologist at Seattle Children's Hospital.

She presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.

About 294,000 children under the age of 18 have childhood arthritis and other related conditions, according to the Arthritis Foundation. Juvenile RA is an umbrella term for several types of arthritis. The common thread: chronic, long-term joint inflammation along with fevers, rash, or eye inflammation.

Wallace and her team compared two treatment strategies for a kind of childhood arthritis known as polyarticular JIA. It affects five or more joints soon after the disease appears.

The study included 85 children ages 2 to 17. The researchers focused on which treatment could produce what doctors call ''clinically inactive disease'' within 6 months. For children, that means they have no arthritis, fever, rash, or other symptoms of JIA. After 6 months of no symptoms on JIA medication they are considered in remission.

The children either received:

Wallace followed the children for a year. Among the trends she notes from her research:

Children on the more aggressive therapy with three drugs got to remission a full month earlier than the others.Children in the aggressive group were symptom-free for close to 5 months, about 2 months longer than those on methotrexate alone.Children who received either treatment within 3 months after the disease started had fewer clinic visits compared to those treated later.Children who responded to either treatment within 4 months were more likely to go into remission.

Timothy Beukelman, MD, calls the study “important and impactful.” He is an associate professor of pediatrics in the division of rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He reviewed the findings.

"A clear result from this study is, it's best to treat juvenile arthritis as early as possible," he says. "This study only looked at 1-year outcome. The results may be ongoing."

Wallace's team is continuing to look at results.

Beukelman and Wallace report doing consulting for or receiving research grants from several pharmaceutical companies.

The study was funded by the National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and the Howe Endowment for Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Research.

These findings were presented at a medical conference. They should be considered preliminary, as they have not yet undergone the ''peer review'' process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.

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Better data needed to accurately rate school systems

Educational statistics expert Joseph Hawkins, one of my guides to the mysteries of test assessment, is impatient with the way the Montgomery County public school system is, as he puts it, "always telling the world how much better it is than everyone else." He finds flaws in its latest celebration of college success by county graduates, particularly minorities.

As a senior study director with the Rockville-based research firm Westat, Hawkins's critique has regional and national importance because it deals with the National Student Clearinghouse. This little-known information source might become the way school raters such as me decide which school families and taxpayers are getting their money's worth and which aren't.

The clearinghouse has a database of more than 93 million students at more than 3,300 colleges and universities. It originally specialized in verifying student enrollment for loan companies. Now it tells high schools how their alumni are doing.

Yeah, sure, Hawkins says, but "data from the clearinghouse is not completely accurate, especially if Social Security numbers for students are not obtained." Also, he says, some of the numbers Montgomery brags about don't look so good when compared with others.

"For example," Hawkins says, "MCPS reports that 26.7 percent of the African American graduates earned a degree in six years. Sounds okay, right? But according to the NCES [National Center for Educational Statistics, part of the U.S. Education Department], the college graduation rate for black kids is 42 percent. The graduation rate for white kids is 62 percent." Why, he asks, are Montgomery graduates doing worse?

Montgomery schools spokesman Dana Tofig works for Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, the most insatiable consumer and promoter of educational data in America, so Tofig is always ready for statistical queries. He says Hawkins is comparing "apples to pumpkins." The county is reporting the percentage of black high school graduates from the classes of 2001 to 2004 who got college degrees in six years. The NCES is reporting the percentage of black college freshmen (not including black high school grads who didn't go to college) who graduated in six years.

It is easy to stumble over these subtle distinctions, which is in part what Hawkins is saying. Montgomery has one of the best school systems in the country but has to be candid about the limits of the data supporting the valid argument that families are getting a good deal for the relatively high taxes they pay for these schools.

Washington area officeholders -- as well as real estate agents -- have been extolling the high test scores of our suburban schools for years. They rarely add that communities with such high average incomes nearly always have high scores. It is an iron rule of educational testing, Hawkins's home ground. We tend to assume a restaurant is good because the customers are well-dressed. In the same way, we think a school is good because the parents are affluent. But that is not always the case for all students.

If the National Student Clearinghouse can improve its data-gathering, we would have more indicators of which districts best prepare for college the disadvantaged students Hawkins and I often discuss.

Hawkins once worked for the Montgomery school system and applauds its many information-gathering improvements. "I'm glad that MCPS is investing in this data," he says. But he wants to see more of it, especially comparing the college success of its minority and low-income students and of those from other places.

If you think this overlooks kids who don't go to college, ask what skills good employers and trade schools want in their high school graduate applicants -- pretty much the same facility with numbers and words you need to get into a state university. I hope Montgomery and Hawkins will pursue their frank and friendly discussion to get us even better information on this.

For more Jay, go to washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.

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