UC Davis professor chaired IOM committee that examined the evidence.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, UC Davis

A national panel chaired by Irva Hertz-Picciotto of UC Davis has determined that there is consistent scientific evidence that breast cancer risk can be reduced if women avoid unnecessary medical radiation and use of hormone therapy and if they maintain healthy lifestyles.

The findings were delivered in a report Wednesday by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at the 2011 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The research, begun in May 2010, was conducted with a grant from Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The independent committee of experts was charged with assessing what is known, as well as what is not conclusive, about environmental risk factors for breast cancer.

The evidence also indicates a possible, though currently less clear, link to increased risk for breast cancer from exposure to benzene, 1,3-butadiene and ethylene oxide, which are chemicals found in some workplace settings and in gasoline fumes, vehicle exhaust and tobacco smoke.

The committee found that avoiding personal use of hair dyes and non-ionizing radiation emitted by mobile devices and other technologies likely will not impact a woman’s risk for breast cancer, as multiple studies have found no connection between these factors and the disease.

Because of insufficient or contradictory evidence, the committee determined that the scientific jury is still out on whether many chemicals of concern, including bisphenol A (BPA), pesticides, ingredients in cosmetics and dietary supplements, and other substances, alter the risk for breast cancer. Women may choose to minimize their exposure to some chemicals, but the committee found the research inadequate to draw conclusions about the potential benefit of such actions. Chemical ingredients in cosmetics, dietary supplements and other products undergo only very limited testing before they are put on the market, and the committee noted the value of efforts to help consumers become more aware of this issue.

According to the IOM, the steps identified in the report have the potential to reduce the risk for breast cancer among women in general, but the committee cautioned that the evidence on how much risk reduction any of these steps offers is inconclusive. Whether it is small or significant, the impact on individuals will vary considerably because women are exposed to a range of substances throughout their lives; in addition, biological, physical and genetic factors influence their individual chances for developing the disease.

“Breast cancer develops over many years, so we need better ways to study exposures throughout women’s lives, including when they are very young,” said Hertz-Picciotto, professor and chief of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health with the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences. “We also need improved methods to test for agents that may be contributing to breast cancer risk and to explore the effects of combined exposures.”

She said, for example, that research is needed on the effects of exposures at specific stages of breast development, and on the cumulative effects of exposures at different life stages or multiple exposures.

An arm of the National Academies of Science, the IOM is an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside government to address pressing questions about health and health care and provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers.

More information on the study is available at www.iom.edu/BreastCancerEnvironment.

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.

UC Berkeley professor shines a light on human exposure to chemicals.

Brenda Eskenazi always had a thing for brains. By the age of 12, she was carving up cow and chicken brains to explore their anatomy. As a young woman at the 1969 Woodstock festival, surrounded by people on hallucinogens, she saw a man dive off a car headfirst into the concrete, thinking it was water. “Of course, at first, I was just horrified,” she recalls. “But then I remember walking back from Woodstock for miles in the rain, and wondering what happened to his brain? How had those chemicals distorted his brain?”

Eskenazi went on to study everything she could about the brain until she picked up the scent of a whole new field in the late 1970s – environmental health. At the time, many scientists thought “environmental factors” affecting human health involved things like social class and nutrition.

But Eskenazi put chemicals in the picture. In the 30 years of research that followed, she explored the impacts of everything from cigarette smoke, caffeine and chemotherapy to pesticides and flame retardants on brains, child development and reproductive health.

As a professor of public health at UC Berkeley, Eskenazi also spearheaded a study of 536 children born to farmworker families in the Salinas Valley between 2000 and 2001. Her research group began this long-term study during pregnancy and has been tracking development of the children ever since. In two recent papers, they found, for example, that children exposed to prenatal pesticides had lower IQs, and those exposed to flame retardants had lower birth weights.

Discussing her career trajectory, Eskenazi described some of the turning points and how she developed her passion for environmental health. Next year, this passion will take her to Africa to take part in one of the first studies of DDT exposure levels on the continent and its effects on human health.

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UC Riverside’s David Eastmond named fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, a select group of health scholars.

David Eastmond, UC Riverside

Toxicologist David Eastmond at the University of California, Riverside, has been elected a fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, an organization of international scholars who work towards solutions of occupational and environmental health problems around the world.

Founded as an independent, international academy in 1982 and headquartered in Carpi, Italy, the Collegium Ramazzini is comprised of a select group of no more than 180 fellows from about 40 different countries, each fellow being distinguished by his or her contributions to occupation and environmental health.

“I am very pleased and honored to be selected as a fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, and look forward to working with this esteemed group,” said Eastmond, the chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience.

The Collegium Ramazzini assesses present and future risks of injury and disease attributable to the workplace and the environment, and focuses on the identification of preventable risk factors. It transmits its views on these hazards and their prevention to policy-making bodies, authorities, agencies and the public. The Collegium Ramazzini also translates the policy implications of scientific findings to legislators, regulators and other decision makers.

Eastmond is the second faculty member at UC Riverside to be honored by the Collegium Ramazzini. In 2004, Carl Cranor, a professor of philosophy, was named a fellow of the prestigious academy.

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UC Berkeley study raises questions about trade-offs between human health, environmental conservation.

The red-tinted hair and bloated abdomens of these three young girls in Madagascar are typical signs of malnutrition.

A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that consuming bushmeat had a positive effect on children’s nutrition, raising complex questions about the trade-offs between human health and environmental conservation.

They further estimated that a loss of access to wildlife as a source of food – either through stricter enforcement of conservation laws or depletion of resources – would lead to a 29 percent jump in the number of children suffering from anemia. Among children in the poorest households, the researchers added, there would be a three-fold increase in the incidence of anemia. Left untreated, anemia in children can impair growth and cognitive development.

The findings are to be published the week of Nov. 21 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“When thinking of creating protected areas for diversity, policymakers need to take into consideration how that will impact local people, both in livelihoods and from a health perspective,” said study lead author Christopher Golden, who did the research while a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and at the School of Public Health. “We need to find ways to benefit the local population in our conservation policies, not hurt them.”

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide consume bushmeat a key source of bio-available iron, particularly for those living in rural communities. But when the menu includes endangered species, the researchers said, human nutritional needs must contend with efforts to manage wildlife resources.

Because bio-available iron is primarily sourced from meat, the researchers hypothesized that increased consumption of wildlife would result in a reduced incidence of clinical anemia. They tested their theory by monitoring the diet and hemoglobin levels of 77 children every month for a year.

The children, all under 12 years old, lived in the Makira Protected Area of Madagascar, one of the most critical biodiversity hotspots in the world.  The Makira region is located in a remote part of eastern Madagascar, and its inhabitants rely heavily upon local wildlife – such as lemurs and bats – for food.

Children there who ate more bushmeat had higher levels of hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein in red blood cells, even after factoring in such variables as consumption of domesticated meat, household income, sex, age and nutritional and disease status, the researchers found.

Eating domesticated meat is prohibitively expensive for many households, while wildlife is free, the authors noted. They found that, among impoverished people, bushmeat accounted for up to 20 percent of overall meat consumption. While many of the wildlife species are illegal to hunt, enforcement in the protected areas can often be lax.

“It is clearly not environmentally sustainable for children to eat endangered animals, but in the context of remote, rural Madagascar, households don’t always have a choice,” said Lia Fernald, UC Berkeley associate professor in the School of Public Health, who worked with Golden to design the study. “In places where a diverse range of nutritious food is unavailable, children rely upon animal-source foods – milk, eggs and meat – for critical nutrients like fats, protein, zinc and iron. What we need for these children are interventions that can provide high-quality food sources that are not endangered.”

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Study raises concern that current clean-air standards may be inadequate to protect early childhood health.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, UC Davis

A new international study conducted by researchers at UC Davis Health System and in the Czech Republic has found that exposure to ambient nitrogen oxides in air pollution may increase acute bronchitis episodes in children from birth to 4½ years.

The association between nitrogen oxides exposure and acute bronchitis was found to increase with age in the first two years. In other words, those between 1 and 2 years showed a stronger association compared to those younger than 1 year of age.

A similar trend was not observed in children between 2 and 4½ years of age, said study lead author Rakesh Ghosh, a postdoctoral researcher with the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences.

“Ambient nitrogen oxides exposure and early childhood respiratory illnesses” is published online this week in the journal Environmental International.

“Acute bronchitis is relatively common in preschool children,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, professor and chief, Division of Environmental and Occupational Health in the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences and the study’s principal investigator.

“We found an exposure of approximately 35 micrograms per cubic meter of nitrogen oxides increased incidence of acute bronchitis by about 30 percent,” Hertz-Picciotto said.

Acute bronchitis involves inflammation of the main airways to the lungs and often occurs after a viral infection. It causes cough, fatigue and low-grade fever, and may be followed by several weeks of a dry, nagging cough. About 20 percent of deaths in children under 5 years are due to acute lower-respiratory illness.

Nitrogen dioxide is known to be a deep lung irritant and is regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The standard is no more than 188 micrograms per cubic meter for any one-hour average and no more than 100 micrograms per cubic meter as an annual average.

The study was conducted in two districts in the Czech Republic, Teplice and Prachatice, where ambient levels of nitrogen oxides were regularly monitored. The mixture of gases, consisting mainly of nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide, are pollutants that result from burning fossil fuels in industrial installations such as power plants and automobiles.

For the study, the researchers obtained monitored daily ambient nitrogen-oxide levels starting in May 1994 through June 2003. A total of 1,133 children were followed from birth up to 4½ years of age. The children’s respiratory health information was obtained from medical records and additional information was collected using maternal questionnaires.

The researchers also examined what fuels were used in the children’s homes for heating and cooking, i.e. gas, electricity or coal, and other potential exposures, such as second-hand cigarette smoke. The increased association found solely from air pollution persisted even after accounting for these other factors.

“Although our results are not directly comparable, because the current regulatory standards are for nitrogen dioxide and we investigated a mix of nitrogen oxides, the standards are much higher than the levels associated with increased incidence of respiratory illnesses in this study. This means that levels considered safe actually may pose a risk of elevated rates of respiratory disease in young children,” Hertz-Picciotto said.

Other study authors include Jesse Joad, associate dean of Diversity and Faculty Life at the UC Davis School of Medicine; Ivan Benes with the Institute of Hygiene in Teplice, Czech Republic; and Miroslav Dostal and Radim J. Sram, both with the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Academy of Sciences, the Czech Republic in Prague.

The study was funded by the Czech Ministry of the Environment.

The UC Davis School of Medicine is among the nation’s leading medical schools, recognized for its research and primary care programs. The school offers fully accredited master’s degree programs in public health and in informatics, and its combined M.D.-Ph.D. program is training the next generation of physician-scientists to conduct high-impact research and translate discoveries into better clinical care. Along with being a recognized leader in medical research, the school is committed to serving underserved communities and advancing rural health. For more information, visit UC Davis School of Medicine at medschool.ucdavis.edu.

Studies spotlight human health effects of exposure to smoke from open fires, dirty cookstoves.

An estimated 3 billion people in the world still cook with open fires and dirty cookstoves, including this mother in Guatemala.

Two new studies led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers spotlight the human health effects of exposure to smoke from open fires and dirty cookstoves, the primary source of cooking and heating for 43 percent, or some 3 billion members, of the world’s population. Women and young children in poverty are particularly vulnerable.

In the first study, the researchers found a dramatic one-third reduction in severe pneumonia diagnoses among children in homes with smoke-reducing chimneys on their cookstoves. The second study uncovered a surprising link between prenatal maternal exposure to woodsmoke and poorer performance in markers for IQ among school-aged children.

The findings on pneumonia, the chief cause of death for children five and under, will be published in the journal The Lancet on Thursday, Nov. 10, two days before World Pneumonia Day. While previous research has linked exposure to household cooking smoke to respiratory infections, the latest results come from the first-ever randomized controlled trial – the gold standard of scientific experiments – on air pollution.

“This study is critically important because it provides compelling evidence that reducing household woodsmoke exposure is a public health intervention that is likely on a par with vaccinations and nutrition supplements for reducing severe pneumonia, and is worth investing in,” said Kirk Smith, professor of global environmental health at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and principal investigator of the RESPIRE (Randomized Exposure Study of Pollution Indoors and Respiratory Effects) study.

“There is a huge burden of disease and death due to child pneumonia, and there aren’t a lot of good interventions out there,” added Dr. Arthur Reingold, a UC Berkeley professor of epidemiology and an internationally recognized expert on infectious diseases, who was not part of the RESPIRE trial. “Randomized controlled trials are frequently demanded by funding agencies and decision makers before they are willing to make substantial investments in new technologies or strategies, and this study provides the needed evidence of an intervention that works.”

In the RESPIRE study – which includes partners from Guatemala’s Universidad Del Valle, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, University of Liverpool, Norway’s University of Bergen and the World Health Organization – researchers worked with rural communities in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Households with a pregnant woman or young infant were randomly assigned to either receive a woodstove with a chimney or to continue cooking with traditional open woodfires.

The researchers found that using chimneys to vent cooking smoke outside homes led to a more striking decrease in cases of severe pneumonia compared with total pneumonia cases, possibly because the reduction in smoke with the chimney stoves was insufficient to significantly reduce all risk.

“The amount of smoke exposure babies were getting from the open woodfire stoves is comparable to having them smoke three to five cigarettes a day,” said Smith, whose research in this field began 30 years ago. “The chimney stoves reduced that smoke exposure by half, on average.”

In all there were 265 children in the chimney-stove homes and 253 children in the control homes. During the study, the researchers reported 149 children in the chimney-stove homes and 180 in the open-fire homes with physician-diagnosed pneumonia. For severe pneumonia, characterized by low blood oxygenation, there were 72 cases in the chimney-stove group and 101 in the control group.

In the second study, published online Sept. 24 in the journal NeuroToxicology, Smith led the research team that followed up with some of the families in the RESPIRE trial, which officially ended in 2005 when the infants were 18 months old. In 2010, when the children were 6-7 years old, the researchers recruited 39 mother-child pairs for the study.

The results found, for the first time, a link between exposure to woodsmoke – as determined by carbon monoxide levels measured individually – during the third trimester of pregnancy and lower performance on neurodevelopmental tests when the children were ages 6 and 7. Specifically, the researchers found impairments in visuo-spatial perception and integration, visual-motor memory, and fine motor skills.

“I was surprised because woodsmoke was always considered a risk for respiratory health, but not IQ,” said study lead author Linda Dix-Cooper, who conducted the study for her master’s thesis in UC Berkeley’s Global Health and Environment graduate program. “The implications of our findings are highly worrisome. Neurodevelopmental impacts have societal costs, such as impacts on an individual’s future lifetime earnings and educational attainment.”

Dix-Cooper added that similar cognitive impacts among children have been noted in previous case reports of childhood acute carbon monoxide poisonings and in epidemiological investigations of other prenatal air pollutant exposures in developed countries’ urban centers. However, larger studies are needed to confirm the link with pollution from woodsmoke, she said.

The new studies come amid growing worldwide attention to the need for cleaner, more fuel-efficient cookstoves. Just last year, the United Nations Foundation launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an international public-private initiative championed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In addition to the health consequences of burning wood, charcoal, dung or crop residue for cooking and heating, the alliance noted that use of traditional cookstoves increases pressures on local natural resources, contributes to climate change and puts women in danger when they forage for fuel in conflict zones.

Finding cleaner alternatives to traditional cookstoves has been an area of active research at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) for decades. Some current projects are part of the UC Berkeley-based Blum Center for Developing Economies. They include one led by Smith to replace unhealthy coal stoves in rural China through carbon offsets, and another led by Daniel Kammen, Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy at UC Berkeley, to develop cost-effective methods to disseminate improved cook stoves throughout Tanzania.

“The biggest collection of people working in the area of cookstoves in the world is at UC Berkeley and LBNL,” said Kammen, who co-authored a 2001 study linking smoke from cookstoves and health in Kenya that also appeared in The Lancet. “We are the center of this field in the academic community.” Kammen just returned to campus from a one-year stint as the first clean-energy czar at the World Bank, one of the biggest sources of funding for cookstove projects and technology

Funding for The Lancet study was provided by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the World Health Organization. The NeuroToxicology study was supported by the Northern California Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, NIEHS and the Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health at UC Berkeley.

Related information:

• Household Energy, Climate, and Health Project (School of Public Health project)
• Cutting greenhouse pollutants could directly save millions of lives worldwide (UC Berkeley press release)
• UC Berkeley, Princeton team demonstrates cheap way to reduce toll of respiratory illness from indoor cooking fires in Third World (UC Berkeley press release)
• Cookstoves, Climate Change & Health (Blum Center project)
• Fuel Efficient Stoves for Darfur Refugees (Blum Center project)
• Establishing Effective Cookstove Dissemination Strategies in Tanzania (Blum Center project)
• Ghana Cookstoves Feasibility Study (Blum Center project)

First evidence that long-range wind transport of an infectious agent might result in human disease.

Jane Burns, UC San Diego

Kawasaki disease (KD) is a severe childhood disease that many parents, even some doctors, mistake for an inconsequential viral infection. In fact, if not diagnosed or treated in time, it can lead to irreversible heart damage. After 50 years of research, including genetic studies, scientists have been unable to pinpoint the cause of the disease.

Now, surprising findings of an international team of scientists organized by Jane C. Burns, M.D., professor and chief, Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, suggest that KD cases are linked to large-scale wind currents that track from Asia to Japan and also traverse the North Pacific.

“Our findings suggest an environmental trigger for Kawasaki disease that could be wind-borne,” Burns said. The paper will appear in Nature Scientific Reports on Nov. 10.

Signs of KD include prolonged fever associated with rash, red eyes, mouth, lips and tongue, and swollen hands and feet with peeling skin. The disease causes damage to the coronary arteries in a quarter of untreated children and may lead to serious heart problems in early adulthood. There is no diagnostic test for Kawasaki disease, and current treatment fails to prevent coronary artery damage in at least one in 10 to 20 children and death in one in 1,000 children.

While seasonality of the disease has been noted in many regions — particularly in Japan, the country of highest incidence for KD — the search for factors that might contribute to epidemics and fluctuations in KD occurrence has been elusive. A study of KD cases in Japan since 1970 showed three dramatic nationwide epidemics, each lasting several months and peaking in April 1979 (6,700 cases), May 1982 (16,100 cases) and March 1986 (14,700 cases). These three peaks represent the largest KD epidemic events ever recorded in the world.

To investigate a possible influence from large-scale environmental factors, researchers including Daniel R. Cayan, Climate Atmospheric Science and Physical Oceanography (CASPO) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, and Xavier Rodo and Joan Ballester of the Institut Català de Ciències del Clima and the Institució Catalana de Recerca (IC3) in Barcelona, Spain, investigated a set of atmospheric and oceanographic measures, which revealed a link to pressure patterns and associated wind flow from the surface to mid-tropospheric atmospheric levels during the summer months prior to onset of the epidemics.

“The Japanese dataset revealed that a low number of KD cases were reported prior to the epidemics, a period coinciding with southerly winds which blew across Japan from the Pacific Ocean during the summer months,” said Rodo, the study’s first author. “However, the numbers rapidly mounted all over Japan when winds turned and blew in a southwesterly direction. After the peaks, the winds again shifted, blowing from the south when the number of cases again decreased.”

“Importantly, subsequent to the three epidemics, years with increased numbers of Kawasaki disease cases in Japan were significantly associated with enhanced local northwesterly winds, as a result of low pressure centered to the north,” said Cayan.

To assess whether such variations in wind patterns were associated with KD case fluctuations on the other side of the North Pacific, similar analyses were conducted for San Diego. According to the scientists, the atmospheric connection from continental Asia to Japan and San Diego is intermittent and can take different routes. However, it was possible from their analysis to identify the major anomalous yearly peaks of KD cases occurring in San Diego from 1994 to 2008 as belonging to two main atmospheric configurations.

In fact, the major fluctuations in KD case numbers in Japan, Hawaii and San Diego were linked to a seasonal shift in winds that exposed Japan to air masses from Central Asia. One key pattern simultaneously exposed Hawaii and California to air masses from the western North Pacific.

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Mathematical models can be used to characterize, quantify these effects.

Food supply and environmental conditions affect the growth rates of organisms, which in turn influence future survival and reproduction. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Glasgow shows how mathematical models can be used to characterize and quantify these effects.

“Over the last fifteen years, we have recognized that events early in the life of organisms, including people, can have great consequences for health in later life,” said Marc Mangel, distinguished professor of applied mathematics and statistics in the Baskin School of Engineering at UCSC and senior author of the study, published in the journal American Naturalist.

The paper describes complex patterns of feeding, growth rates, and reproductive success in fish. First author Who-Seung Lee worked on the study as an associate specialist at UC Santa Cruz and a graduate student at the University of Glasgow. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

The researchers investigated the optimal rates of growth under different environmental conditions for fish and other “cold-blooded” animals (known as ectotherms). In these animals, growth is sensitive to ambient temperature even when food is not limiting. Compensatory growth can make up for a period of slow growth early in life, resulting in normal adult size, but the costs of an accelerated growth rate can reduce fitness. Costs may include increased exposure to predators due to more active foraging behavior, as well as increased accumulation of biomolecular damage during periods of higher metabolic rates.

“One expected consequence of climate change is that fish will experience growth conditions quite different from the ones in which they evolved. Our work suggests that even if it appears that a fish has ‘caught up’ when a period of poor growth is followed by one of good growth, there may be unforeseen consequences for its survival and reproduction, and our work provides a framework for assessing these consequences,” said Mangel, who directs the Center for Stock Assessment Research (CSTAR), a collaboration between UCSC and NOAA Fisheries Service labs.

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UC Davis, Chinese institute announce partnership to establish state-of-art genome center in Sacramento.

UC Davis Vice Chancellor for Research Harris Lewin (right) shakes hands with BGI Executive Director Jun Wang

The University of California, Davis, and BGI, the world’s largest genomic institute, based in China, have signed a historic agreement that will change the landscape of genomic sciences in California and the Western states, and foster critical breakthroughs in the areas of food security and human, animal and environmental health. The new partnership will establish a state-of-the-art BGI sequencing facility for immediate use on the UC Davis Health System campus in Sacramento, and initiate planning for a permanent BGI Davis Joint Genome Center.

The new sequencing facility will be used to support research initiatives and collaborations and leverage existing strengths across the Davis and Sacramento campuses in human and animal health and medicine, food safety and security, biology, and the environment. When complete, the permanent center will occupy about 10,000 square feet on the health system campus in Sacramento, initially adding approximately 20 high-skilled jobs. Ultimately, the center will increase UC Davis’ DNA sequencing capability approximately tenfold and generate an estimated 200 new jobs in the Sacramento region.

A signing ceremony for the BGI Davis Partnership was held Monday night at the UC Davis MIND Institute in Sacramento. Participating in the ceremony were Harris Lewin, vice chancellor for research at UC Davis; Jun Wang, executive director of BGI, headquartered in Shenzen, China; and Greg Wang, chief executive officer of BGI Americas, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. Also taking part were Qin Xu, the mayor of Shenzhen, and Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento.

“UC Davis brings to this partnership phenomenal faculty conducting cutting-edge research on food, health, energy and the environment, while BGI is a world leader in genome sequencing and analysis,” said UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. “Together, as partners, UC Davis and BGI will be able to take on the biggest challenges in biology, medicine and the environment — right here in Sacramento.”

As envisioned under the agreement, UC Davis faculty and students will gain access to the capabilities and expertise of one of the world’s premier genomics and bioinformatics institutes, while BGI researchers will be able to access the university’s diverse resources and expertise in education and research, especially in biology, human and veterinary medicine, agriculture, and the environment.

Hailing the new partnership, BGI’s Jun Wang stated, “UC Davis is among the top research universities in the U.S., especially in the areas of agricultural, environmental and biological research, and we look forward to a highly productive relationship between our two institutions.

“Given BGI’s expertise in genomic sequencing and bioinformatics, we expect our partnership with the university and the establishment of the planned permanent BGI Davis Joint Genome Center to lead to significant scientific breakthroughs for the betterment of mankind and our planet,” Wang said.

Lewin, who oversees the university’s $684 million annual research enterprise, said the partnership will have far-reaching impacts: “This marks the official start of a scientific partnership between two world-class institutions, and a platform for the potential expansion of our relationship in the future. It will provide exciting new opportunities for both UC Davis researchers and for BGI, and a catalyst for bringing new companies and businesses into the city of Sacramento.”

Having access to world-class genomic sequencing and bioinformatics capabilities on campus “will enable UC Davis faculty to attack bigger and more ambitious problems, as well as to compete for bigger grants and projects by expanding cooperation and collaboration teams in agriculture and health,” said Bart Weimer, professor of population health and reproduction at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and a member of the university’s leadership team assembled to work with BGI on the partnership.

“As mayor of Sacramento, I’m excited to forge a new friendship with BGI and the people of Shenzhen,” said Johnson. “Today’s signing is an essential step in advancing a positive partnership with UC Davis, BGI, and the entire Sacramento region and I’m honored to be a part of this historic day. BGI and UC Davis are leaders in their fields and will make advancements in science and technology that have the potential to change the world. I look forward to seeing the impact it will have on the region when it comes to groundbreaking research, the economy and future job creation.”

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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.

New book critiques obesity orthodoxies.

Julie Guthman, UC Santa Cruz

Countering the so-called obesity crisis with local, organic, and seasonal food is a nice idea but one that is not likely to work, writes Julie Guthman, associate professor of community studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Guthman challenges many widely held assumptions about the “obesity epidemic” in her new book, “Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism” (University of California Press, 2011).  “I have nothing against “good food” – I eat it myself,” says Guthman, a self-confessed “foodie” whose father could be called a health-food nut in the 1950s and ’60s, “but the approach is based on assumptions about obesity’s causes and consequences that don’t hold up to scrutiny.”

[Related: Read Q&A with Guthman; listen to podcast]

While she acknowledges that Americans have gotten bigger over the past several decades Guthman is not convinced that obesity is the problem it’s made out to be. “The way statistics are constructed and presented tend to overstate the problem,” she says. For example, the body mass index (BMI), a ratio of height to weight, “doesn’t take into account people with big bones or lots of muscle.”

And besides it’s not necessarily the case that being bigger is unhealthy, she says, referencing studies that show people in the “normal” range of BMI do not live longer than those who are overweight or even slightly obese. “In general, we need to be more concerned with pathology and less with size.”

The widely accepted direct cause of obesity is a disrupted energy balance – too many calories taken in, not enough energy expended through exercise to burn them off. But it’s more complicated than that, according to Guthman’s analysis.

First, socioeconomic status is strongly correlated to weight, Guthman writes. Many assume that the reason poor people are bigger is that they can only afford to buy cheap, fattening food. “But there’s more to the story,” she says. “Studies have shown that fat people are subject to discrimination in education, job placement, wages, and health care. Thinness doesn’t guarantee high status, but obesity pretty much guarantees low status. So maybe low economic status is as much a consequence of obesity as a cause.”

Then,  there are environmental factors. Guthman points to studies that suggest that toxins in our air, water and food contribute to the body storing fat. “Emerging research is showing environmental toxins may be playing a big role in obesity, in ways that have little to do with people’s daily habits. Many of these toxins are endocrine disrupting chemicals that can affect development before birth, for example by directing stem cells with no particular destination to become fat cells,” she says.

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