UC Irvine center explores, extols health benefits of exercise in childhood.

Dan Cooper, UC Irvine

Dr. Dan Cooper believes that exercise can be the best medicine — so much so that he’s studying how specifically designed exercise programs for at-risk kids can help curb excessive weight gain, fight diseases and foster long-term fitness.

With childhood obesity and asthma emerging as national health crises, Cooper in 2006 founded UC Irvine’s Pediatric Exercise Research Center, and over the past six years, it has shed light on the full benefits of physical activity.

At any one time, PERC hosts 15 to 20 studies of how — and how much — exercise works to avert type 2 diabetes, limit asthma attacks, thwart arthritis, prevent cancer, encourage mineralization in growing bones, and improve the quality of life for kids with chronic diseases and congenital disorders.

“Our purpose is to recognize the importance of exercise for health and growth in children,” says Cooper, professor and chair of pediatrics at UCI and director of the Institute for Clinical & Translational Science, which supports PERC efforts. “We’re one of the few centers in the country to focus on this crucial issue.”

He and PERC’s associate director, gymnast Shlomit Aizik, maintain that exercise is necessary not only for good childhood health but also to prevent later-in-life maladies such as heart disease and stroke.

Cooper was one of the principal investigators for the nationwide Healthy study, which involved healthier cafeteria choices, longer and more intense periods of physical activity, and robust in-school education programs to lower rates of obesity and other risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

Besides its role in overall fitness, exercise also triggers biochemical mechanisms that activate anti-inflammatory cells and important growth factors, Aizik says.

PERC-supported research on these biochemical mechanisms opened the door to understanding the positive influence of physical activity on immune diseases — most commonly asthma and, to a lesser extent, arthritis, which is increasingly seen in obese children — while addressing a pressing question.

“How much exercise is too much?” Cooper says. “Too much can actually worsen these conditions. The challenge is determining the right ‘dose’ of exercise to achieve anti-inflammatory benefits without causing future harm. PE teachers are not trained for this, so we’re establishing programs to help schools properly integrate the correct amount of exercise.”

PERC researchers are also probing the impact of physical activity during key stages of child development. For example, studies show that diet and exercise are linked to proper mineralization in growing bones, which can stave off osteoporosis in middle and old age.

A PERC group is currently looking at the effects of exercise on infants born two to three months early, missing out on a phase of fetal life marked by lots of body-conditioning physical movement. “This is lost when babies are born prematurely, interfering with a critical growth period,” Cooper says.

His team has created an activity program to offset this deficit. It starts, he says, with passive manipulation of a newborn’s arms and legs and progresses over 12 months to include such motions as head lifting and crawling. After a year, researchers will assess the influence of the exercise on body composition, bone mineralization and additional developmental markers.

Another PERC effort — led by Aizik — seeks to increase physical activity among kids with congenital conditions. College students are being trained to engage spina bifida patients at Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach in exercise.

“Youngsters with disabilities rarely get enough physical activity,” Aizik says. “And studies show that it improves and extends the quality of life for these children. We want to measure the psychological and physiological results of this mentor-based program to see how we can incorporate an appropriate amount of exercise into their lives.”

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New parenting book addresses full range of children’s respiratory issues.

Why do infants make snorting sounds during feedings? Is snoring normal in a toddler? Is it safe to give popcorn to a 2-year-old? How many colds a year are normal for a 5-year-old? Does air quality in the home affect a child’s respiratory system?

About 80 to 90 percent of children at one time or another experience breathing problems. In her new book, “Take a Deep Breath: Clear the Air for the Health of Your Child” (World Scientific Publishers), scheduled for publication in January 2012, Dr. Nina L. Shapiro, director of pediatric ear, nose and throat at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA and an associate professor of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, explains all the puzzling and oftentimes distressing breathing patterns children have throughout development.

“We all take for granted the silent ‘in and out’ breathing until a problem arises,” Shapiro said. “Based on my years of experience in treating tens of thousands children with breathing issues, I hope this guide will enlighten and empower parents on some of the most asked questions and concerns.”

“Take a Deep Breath” sheds new light on the latest research in pediatric breathing issues, sleep issues, airway safety and the truth behind “clean, green” home environments. Shapiro addresses what actually happens when a child breathes, and she guides readers through the uppermost part of the breathing apparatus (the nose), down to the lowermost part (the lungs).

Each of the book’s three age-based sections (newborn–3 months; 3 months–1 year; and 1 year–5 years) includes chapters that examine specific respiratory tract locations and potential problems for each age group and provides a “to-do” list offering successful preventions and treatments that can easily be done at home.

“‘Take A Deep Breath’ is a breath of fresh air for every parent and doctor who cares about children,” said Dr. Nancy L. Snyderman, chief medical editor for NBC News. ”Dr. Shapiro cuts through what we need to know and reassuringly tells us what we don’t need to worry about. A must-read for every parent and grandparent.”

For more information, visit www.drninashapiro.com. Advance copies of the book are available to the media; please contact Amy Albin at UCLA Health Sciences Media Relations at (310) 794-8672 or aalbin@mednet.ucla.edu.

UCSF, Kaiser Permanente researchers take aim at genetic links to disease.

An ambitious project, teaming Kaiser Permanente and UC San Francisco researchers, takes aim at genetic links to disease.

At last count, nearly 200,000 members of Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest health maintenance organizations, had “spit for health” or given blood samples — providing a small supply of their DNA for researchers seeking genetic clues to the causes and prevention of many diseases.

The volunteers are part of the nation’s largest, most thorough effort to identify the genetic variations that underlie the aging process, vulnerability to disease and drug effectiveness.

The project goes well beyond the search for genetic links. It surveys patients’ personal habits, such as smoking, diet and availability of healthy food; it also examines environmental exposures, from pollution and pesticides to housing density and crime.

The research lays the groundwork for understanding how inherited traits and the environment affect health, and how genetic differences influence people’s responses to environmental insults and drug treatments.

Referred to as the Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes, Environment, and Health (RPGEH), it draws on Kaiser Permanente’s voluminous electronic patient medical records, which go back at least 15 years.  It is the world’s largest civilian electronic health record, and it is continuously updated to document the health status of all Kaiser members.

The RPGEH is led by Catherine Schaefer of Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research and Neil Risch, director of UCSF’s Institute for Human Genetics.

The current phase of the RPGEH is funded by a $25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. This support so far has enabled the researchers to develop genomic profiles of more than 100,000 RPGEH participants.

“Our goal is to provide a powerful resource for research into the genetic and environmental factors that may affect many common health conditions — such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes and mental health disorders,” said Schaefer, RPGEH’s executive director.

“We expect this comprehensive approach will accelerate development of new ways to treat and possibly prevent these conditions,” she said.

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Nearly 1M California children at risk of secondhand smoke exposure.

CORRECTION:  [Nov. 2, 2011]

A sample size miscalculation in the original version of this publication resulted in errors to the estimated number of children affected by secondhand smoke, although the percentages, interpretation and findings remain correct. The errors were related to pooling three cycles of CHIS data. The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research regrets the error.  A corrected version of the policy brief is attached, as well as an updated version of the original press release.  Specifically, the following numbers were revised: The total estimated number of children annually affected by secondhand smoke was revised from 2.5 million to 966,000. The total number of children estimated to be exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes each year was revised from 561,000 to 224,000. The total number of children estimated to live in homes where there is an adult or teen smoker in the household, but smoking is never allowed in the home, was revised from 1.9 million to 742,000. Race/ethnicity breakdowns changed from 180,616 to 60,800 for white children; 168,285 to 70,400 for Latino children; 121,126 to 41,200 for African-American children; and, 49,016 to 21,300 for Asian children. The correct estimated number of children in the Los Angeles region is 1.7 million and not 4.5 million. All other numbers and percentages in the study remain correct. Please contact the center’s Communications Department for further information: (310) 794-0930.

Despite having the second-lowest smoking rate in the nation, California is still home to nearly 1 million children under the age of 12 who are exposed to secondhand smoke, according to a new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Using data from several cycles of the California Health Interview Survey, the study’s authors estimate that 224,000 children are directly exposed to secondhand smoke in the home. Another 742,000 are at risk because they live in a home where another family member is a smoker, even though smoking may not be allowed in the home itself.

Secondhand smoke exposes children to a greater risk of developing asthma, respiratory infections and countless other ailments. Research shows that children raised by smokers have a greater risk of becoming smokers themselves.

“The next frontier in the campaign against smoking is to reduce smoking at home,” said Sue Holtby, the study’s lead author and a senior researcher at the Public Health Institute, which works with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in conducting the California Health Interview Survey. “California’s fight against tobacco has been a major public health success story, but we still need to spread awareness and ensure that every family knows the dire consequences of addiction.”

Among the findings:

• African-American children three times more likely to live with smokers
  Nearly 12.6 percent of African-American children live in homes where smoking is permitted, three times the rate of any other racial or ethnic group. Both African-American (13.4 percent) and white children (12.2 percent) are significantly more likely than other groups to have an adult or teen smoker in their household.
• Income level and smoking
  Children living in households at or above 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) are far less likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke than children from lower-income levels.
• Rural children at greater risk than urban
  Approximately 19.4 percent of households in California’s Northern/Sierra region and 14.6 percent of those in the San Joaquin Valley region have someone in the home who smokes. Comparatively, only 9.5 percent of households on the Central Coast contain a smoker. The Central Coast also has the lowest rate of households that permit smoking in the home. In contrast, close to 5 percent of homes in the San Joaquin Valley and Northern/Sierra regions permit smoking indoors.
• Los Angeles paradox
  Although Los Angeles doesn’t have the highest percentage of smoking households (10.8 percent) it has a surprisingly high percentage (4.1 percent) of households with children where smoking in the home is allowed, relative to other regions.

The authors noted that the data can help identify communities that may benefit from targeted messages concerning the adverse health effects of secondhand smoke. In particular, media campaigns aimed at African-American families, as well as families in the Los Angeles area, may effectively communicate the potential risks that secondhand smoke poses to the health of young children, the researchers said.

Service providers and case workers also have an opportunity to deliver smoking-prevention messages to low-income families eligible for a variety of state and federal assistance programs, such as Medi-Cal and the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program. Since Medi-Cal and WIC providers usually screen patients and clients for smoking status, they are ideally positioned to identify those who are most at risk and to point parents toward information about smoking-cessation programs in their areas, the authors said.

The study was funded with a grant from First 5 California.

Read the policy brief: “Children’s Exposure to Secondhand Smoke: Nearly One Million Affected in California.”

First 5 California is dedicated to educating parents and caregivers about the important role they play in their children’s first years. First 5 California’s services and support are designed to ensure that more children are born healthy and reach their full potential.

The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) is the nation’s largest state health survey and one of the largest health surveys in the United States.

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research is one of the nation’s leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health-related information on Californians.

Study finds links to asthma, heart disease, hypertension and stroke.

Vulnerability to asthma, heart disease, hypertension and stroke in adulthood begins very early in life and is linked to low birth weight and poverty, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health and co-authored by an economist at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.

Nearly 26 percent of study participants who weighed less than 5.5 pounds when they were born had asthma at age 50, compared with about 16 percent of those who weighed more at birth.  Those who grew up in poverty were also more likely to have one of these fatal, debilitating conditions by age 50.

These data are the first nationally representative estimates of adult chronic disease onset by birth weight and by childhood family and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage in the United States.

The study findings “provide clues to the childhood origins of racial health disparities in adulthood,” given the well-documented racial differences in socioeconomic disadvantage and low birth weight incidence, said Rucker Johnson, the Goldman School economist and associate professor who co-authored the study, “Early-Life Origins of Adult Disease,” with economist Robert Schoeni at the University of Michigan.

Johnson said the critical period of development from conception to age three is extremely sensitive to stressful environmental conditions because the speed of growth is more rapid then than at any other stage of the life course, and the nutritional needs are greatest.

“Our study shows that interventions and policies that promote early childhood health and reduce childhood socioeconomic disadvantage generate immediate gains in well-being that can justify their existence,” said Schoeni.

The two researchers concluded in their paper that the study may enable more effective policies? to lessen the burden of disease and its economic costs.

Some 4,387 children in the study were first interviewed in 1968 as part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and were followed until 2007, when they were between 39 and 56 years old. The Panel Study has been conducted since 1968 at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.  Major study funding comes from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.

Johnson’s research agenda at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy emphasizes issues of poverty and inequality and examines the intersection of labor markets, the urban economy, and socioeconomic determinants of health over the life cycle.  His work has contributed to the national dialogue between academics, educators, the medical community and policy makers over the most effective health policy interventions and social welfare policies to improve the health and well-being of children and of underserved and vulnerable populations.

He said his research springs from his interest in the interactions between public policies, children’s school, neighborhood and home environments, and how they impact youngsters’ future success.

Johnson joined the Goldman School in 2004.  Earlier this year, he became a visiting scholar with the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City in order to work on a book manuscript extending his cutting-edge paper on the long-run effects of desegregation for adults in areas including education, earnings, incarceration and health.

He will return to the Goldman School in summer 2012. More information about Johnson and his research is online.

Finding could lead to a change in how severe asthma is managed.

Esteban Burchard, UC San Francisco

Asthma patients could clearly benefit from personalized medicine, a new study suggests. However, the new discovery of a key gene, while exciting, does not mean that day is here quite yet.

Asthma treatment response depends on whether patients have two copies of a common genetic variation, researchers reported in the September 26 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine  (NEJM).

The discovery raises hopes that personalized medicine and genetic testing might one day be used to improve patient outcomes for asthma and other respiratory conditions treated with the same class of drugs.

“This is a newly identified genetic variation, and the finding needs to be replicated in larger studies,” says UCSF’s Esteban Burchard, M.D., M.P.H., who also studies genes in asthma. “But it could lead to a change in how we manage severe asthma.”

One-in-six study participants had two copies of a variation in the gene called GLCCI1. Their lung function was less than half as likely to improve to a clinically significant degree in response to inhaled corticosteroid treatment.

About 30 million people in the United States have had asthma or currently have asthma, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease is responsible for about 17 million trips to the doctor each year, including nearly one-half million hospital stays.

For decades, first-line treatment for all but the mildest cases has included an inhaler, which patients use to deliver corticosteroid medicine into the lungs’ airways.

The medicines have side effects, especially for children, so physicians often initially prescribe a lower dose and increase dosage if the patient’s asthma does not improve. But one-third or more of patients do not respond to treatment with any standard dosage of an inhaled corticosteroid.

“It can be a long period of wasted time,” Burchard says. “If we knew that you had severe asthma and we knew which genetic mutations were associated with differences in drug response, then we could test you, and we would then know and be able to discuss which drugs were likely to work or not work for you.”

The researchers, led by Harvard Medical School scientists, surveyed the entire genomes of pediatric asthma patients and their parents, using a method called a genome-wide association study (GWAS). Enlisting parents of asthmatics, including many who also had been affected by asthma, allowed researchers to use fewer study participants to home in on genetic variants likely to affect treatment response.

The scientists discovered the gene in blood from participants in a study called the Childhood Asthma Management Program. They then found a significant association between the genetic variant and treatment responses in patients from three out of four additional small studies examined.

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Asthma education is associated with better management.

Michael Cabana, UC San Francisco

The problem of overuse of antibiotics has been a big issue for over a decade due to concerns about breeding drug resistance. Despite this knowledge, a University of California, San Francisco, study has found that certain antibiotics may be overused for children with asthma.

“We wanted to see how often are antibiotics being used for asthma, even though the guidelines don’t suggest or don’t recommend that pediatricians use an antibiotic,” study leader Michael Cabana said.

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Children with severe asthma are 3.6 times more likely to have been exposed to tobacco smoking before birth.

Esteban Burchard, UC San Francisco

Children with severe asthma are 3.6 times more likely to have been exposed to tobacco smoking before birth — even without later exposure — than children with a mild form of the disease, according to a multicenter study led by researchers at University of California, San Francisco.

The prenatal exposure also was associated with three times the number of daily and night-time asthma symptoms later in the child’s life, as well as nearly four times the number of asthma-related emergency room visits, even when the researchers controlled for other risk factors, such as current tobacco exposure, ethnicity and allergies.

The findings could have a direct impact on public health campaigns. In the United States alone, more than one in seven pregnant women smoke and the cost of asthma is estimated at $56 billion per year in premature deaths, health care and days missed from school and work.

The prenatal impact far outweighed the role of exposure to cigarette smoke during the first two years of life, or current exposure to smoke, the study found. Findings will be published in the September 2011 edition of the journal Pediatrics and can be found in the advance online edition at pediatrics.aappublications.org.

While tobacco exposure has been linked clearly to childhood asthma before, previous studies were inconclusive on the role of prenatal exposure in asthma severity, particularly among the racial and ethnic populations with the highest incidence of the disease.

This research team, which spanned 16 institutes and centers in the continental United States, Puerto Rico and Mexico, set out to determine when that exposure has the greatest impact — before birth, in the first two years, or at the time of the child’s symptoms. They assessed 295 children with asthma, age 8 to 16 years, from an existing study group of participants with Mexican, Puerto Rican and African American heritage.

The surprise was how significant prenatal exposure turned out to be.

“The only outcome that had an impact on the severity of asthma was smoking during pregnancy,” said Dr. Haig Tcheurekdjian, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who was the co-senior author on the paper with UCSF’s Esteban Burchard, M.D., M.P.H. “Even after controlling for all of the other co-factors, the children who had the most severe forms of asthma were more than three times more likely to have had a mother who smoked while she was pregnant.”

Smoking during pregnancy has been known to have myriad effects on the fetus and later childhood, including low birth weight, sudden infant death and impaired lung function. It also previously has been linked to asthma, the researchers said, but why prenatal exposure would affect the child’s lungs is unclear, since they’re not inhaling the smoke. Researchers have speculated that this involved a genetic predisposition to lung inflammation, impaired lung development or the negative effects of tobacco smoke.

The current study points to genetic changes that occur long before a child takes its first breath.

“There are environmental factors that leave their fingerprint on DNA and may have their expression several years out,” explained Burchard, a UCSF clinical professor of bioengineering & therapeutic sciences and medicine who studies asthma genetics. “In this case, something that happened in the womb is having a dramatic effect eight years later.”

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Researchers discover genetic variation associated with increased asthma risk in people of African ancestry.

Esteban Burchard, UC San Francisco

Asthma rates in the United States are higher among African Americans and Latinos in comparison to European Americans, but the causes of asthma in all populations still are only poorly understood.

Researchers now have discovered a genetic variation associated with increased asthma risk in people of African ancestry — the result of a new DNA analysis spanning the entire genomes of thousands of asthma sufferers. The scientists also have confirmed an asthma association for four other common gene variations that came to light late last year in a large study of Europeans. The new study demonstrates that these genes appear to affect risk in other populations, as well.

The consortium of scientists who reported the findings online on July 31 in advance of print publication in Nature Genetics hail from nine independent research groups. They pooled and compared data from their own separate study populations to empower their statistical analysis.

The research collaborators discovered that a genetic variation in a gene called PYHIN1 was associated with about a 34 percent higher risk of asthma in African Americans and African Caribbeans. The variation is common in these groups — close to 30 percent of those with African ancestry inherited this variant. However the variation was not found in populations of European ancestry, and was present in only a few Latinos in the study.

The consortium researchers determined that four other markers of common genetic variations that last year were found to be associated with increased asthma risk in a large European study also are associated with asthma risk in the other ethnic groups. The large size of these studies was a key to identifying these genes, the researchers say.

Additional research will be required to pinpoint the specific DNA and biological mechanisms responsible for the associations discovered in the study.

Most searches for genetic variations associated with elevated risk for specific diseases have been conducted with DNA from people of European ancestry. But according to UCSF’s Esteban Burchard, M.D. — a member of the consortium whose own asthma studies focus on Mexican American, Puerto Rican and African American populations — risk genes discovered in white populations should not be assumed to be similarly important in other populations. Some gene variations that elevate disease risk in one group may be absent or have little effect in another.

“There are population-specific risk factors for disease,” he says.

The consortium’s results highlight the value of studying the role of genetic variation in health and disease in diverse populations, according to the researchers.

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UC’s California Agriculture journal reviews whether what we eat can help cure what ails us.

Many foods contain biofactors ­ biologically active compounds ­ that may prevent and treat illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to new studies published in the July-September 2011 issue of the University of California’s California Agriculture journal.

The Center for Health and Nutrition Research (CHNR) at UC Davis received $6.4 million from the Vitamin Case Consumer Settlement fund, which was used to fund 33 research projects. Several are published in a special issue of California Agriculture, “Food as medicine: Can what we eat help cure what ails us?” To read the articles and issue in full, go to: http://ucanr.org/repository/CAO/issue.cfm?volume=65&issue=3.

“CHNR pilot projects focused on how micronutrients, biofactors and phytochemicals can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases,” said CHNR administrator Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr, a UC Davis Cooperative Extension nutrition specialist. “For example, the omega-3 fatty acids in foods such as walnuts, flax seeds and salmon may protect against a range of diseases associated with inflammation, including asthma and the hypertension-related inflammation that can damage kidneys.” Read more.

CHNR research also reviewed science related to soybeans, which contain estrogenlike compounds called isoflavones that may protect against heart disease. Likewise, phytochemicals in olive oil and red wine may protect against heart disease and diabetes.

The traditional Mediterranean diet ­ mostly vegetables, fruits and whole grains, with moderate amounts of nuts, olive oil and red wine ­ is associated with lower rates of heart disease, cancer, and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. The Mediterranean diet is rich in phytochemicals that boost mitochondria (organelles in our cells that convert glucose and other nutrients into energy) and so are known as mitochondrial nutrients. When mitochondria are scarce or have genetic defects that keep them from working properly, this can generate toxic metabolites and damaging free radicals.

“Mitochondria are central to aging,” said UC Irvine biochemist Edward Sharman. “Improving their function may modulate or delay the onset of diseases related to aging, such as type 2 diabetes and age-related macular degeneration [vision decline].” Mitochondrial dysfunction also plays a key role in chronic illnesses such as heart disease and the inflammation contributing to arthritis, type 2 diabetes and other diseases.

One of the most promising mitochondrial nutrients is hydroxytyrosol, which is abundant in the extra-virgin olive oil that provides most of the fat in the traditional Mediterranean diet. Moreover, the red wine that is integral to the Mediterranean diet also increases hydroxytyrosol levels, even though it contains relatively small amounts.

“Another promising mitochondrial nutrient is pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ), which was first found in nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria and is now known to be ubiquitous,” said CHNR co-director Robert Rucker, UC Davis nutrition professor. While Escherichia coli and other common gut bacteria do not make PQQ, soil bacteria provide it to plants in our diet. Good sources include fermented soybeans, wine, tea and cocoa.

Rucker and his colleagues found that depriving rats of PQQ compromised their immune systems and retarded their growth and reproductive rates. In contrast, restoring PQQ to their diets reversed these effects and returned them to good health. Moreover, PQQ stimulated nerve growth and counteracted aging in cultured cells.

“Understanding what biofactors do in our bodies could ultimately lead to personalized medicine, where nutrition-based treatments are tailored to the particulars of each person’s biochemistry,” Rucker says.

Also reported in the July-September 2011 issue of California Agriculture:
· Proper nutrition can prevent negative health outcomes in young female athletes. Read more.
· In the northern Sacramento Valley, blue oak stumps sprouted vigorously after harvesting; models were developed to help predict resprouting and growth rates to aid in oak regeneration.
· The increased use of insecticides to control thrips that spread an onion disease appears to be limiting the pollination of seed onions by honey bees, dramatically reducing yields.

With the July-September 2011 issue, California Agriculture is launching its first E-Edition, the publication of timely peer-reviewed research online (but not printed in the journal). The E-Edition includes:
· A review of risks that transgenic rice ­ which is commercially available but not grown in California ­ would pose to the sales of California rice in global markets, and the impact of the California Rice Certification Act.
· A study that shows switchgrass, a native Northern American grass, performed well in California field trials, and is promising as a high-yielding crop for biofuels.

Clinical trial starting to determine whether macrolides could be an effective therapy.

Michael Cabana, UC San Francisco

Currently the National Institutes of Health do not recommend antibiotics as a treatment for asthma exacerbation in children. But a new study from the University of California, San Francisco, reveals that despite this guideline, a significant portion of doctors are overprescribing antibiotics to their asthmatic patients.

“Anecdotally we heard that pediatricians are using antibiotics to help bring down inflammation,” researcher Michael Cabana said. “But before we try anything out with kids we want to make sure we have good evidence before promoting that specific recommendation.”

Cabana is starting a clinical trial to determine whether antibiotics called macrolides could be an effective therapy to treat asthma exacerbation in kids.

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UCLA findings could shed light on pulmonary diseases like asthma, cystic fibrosis.

Brigitte Gomperts, UCLA

Researchers at UCLA have identified a new stem cell that participates in the repair of the lungs’ large airways, which play a vital role in protecting the body from infectious agents and toxins in the environment.

The airways protect the body by generating and clearing mucus, which is largely produced by the airways’ specialized mucus glands. While the mechanisms of normal and excessive mucus production are not well understood, this newly discovered lung stem cell for the mucus glands will likely yield insights into this critical process.

The study, by scientists at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, represents the first time anyone has found the cell of origin for the many types of cells that make up the mucus glands and which can also repair the surface epithelium. The finding, the study states, is of “major importance to the field of lung regeneration.”

“We’re very excited that we found this population of cells because it will allow us to study mechanisms of diseases of the upper airway,” said Dr. Brigitte Gomperts, a UCLA assistant professor of pediatrics and hematology–oncology and the study’s senior author. “For example, there currently are no treatments for excess mucus production, which we see in cystic fibrosis, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But if we can understand the mechanisms of how these stem cells repair the mucus glands, then we may be able to find a way to put the brakes on the system and prevent mucus over-production.”

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