CHAPEL HILL, NC - Parents of children with Autism were roughly twice as likely to have been hospitalized for a mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, than parents of other children, states an analysis of Swedish birth and hospital records by a University of North Carolina researcher and colleagues in the U.S. and Europe.  The study was in the journal Pediatrics.  "Establishing an association between Autism and other psychiatric disorders might enable future investigators to focus better on genetic and environmental factors that might be shared among these disorders," said study author Dr. Julie Daniels, assistant professor in the School of Public Health’s epidemiology and maternal and child health departments.  "Our research shows mothers and fathers diagnosed with schizophrenia were about twice as likely to have a child diagnosed with Autism.  We saw higher rates of depression and personality disorders among mothers, but not fathers," she said.

WASHINGTON - Monday Morning in, D.C. disclosed DisabilityInfo.gov now has updated several resources, including information on Cancer in the Workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act, plus Deafness and Hearing Impairments in the Workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act (info.thearc.org).

LOUISVILLE, KY - A review of the most current research shows the link between eating oatmeal and cholesterol reduction to be stronger than when the FDA initially okayed the health claims on food labels in 1997.  Dr. James W. Anderson, professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, co-authored "The Oatmeal-Cholesterol Connection: 10 Years Later" in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine.  Dr. Anderson presents a contemporary analysis to determine if newer studies are consistent with the original FDA conclusion.  He says studies over the past 15 years have, no exception, shown: total cholesterol levels are cut through eating oats; low-density lipoprotein (LDL, "bad" cholesterol) is cut without adverse effects on high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL, "good" cholesterol), or triglyceride concentrations.  "Whole grain products like oatmeal are among some of the best foods one can eat to improve cholesterol levels," he said.  "Lifestyle choices, such as diet, should be the first line of therapy for most patients with moderate cholesterol risk given the expense, safety concerns, and intolerance related to cholesterol lowering drugs."

WASHINGTON - Monday Morning in Washington, D.C. disclosed Winona State University seeks essays for a Siblings and Autism Anthology on growing up/aging with an autistic sibling.  Essays should span generations, cultures, and ethnicities, and go to: Deb Cumberland, English Dept., Winona State University, Winona, MN 55987, or Bruce Mills, English Dept., Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI 49006.  For queries, e-mail dcumberland@winona.edu, or bmills@kzoo.edu.  Send submissions with a SASE by Sept. 15.

SEATTLE – MedPage Today disclosed post-menopausal women who take combination hormone therapy for as little as three years have a four-fold higher risk of invasive lobular breast cancer, scientists said.  Short-term use of estrogen/progestin hormone replacement therapy seemed to have little effect on the risk of invasive ductal carcinoma, said Dr. Christopher Li, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and colleagues.  The case-control study of more than 1,500 women confirms earlier, smaller investigations that linked combination hormone therapy with lobular breast cancer, they wrote in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.  The issue is important because, although lobular carcinoma accounts for only about 15% of all invasive breast cancers, it’s usually hormonally sensitive and deemed more treatable than ductal cancers.  Dr. Li said lobular cancers are more difficult to detect, either by mammography or physical examination.  Hormone replacement therapy has fallen sharply since the Women's Health Initiative study found in 2003 it was linked to an increased risk of breast cancer.

WASHINGTON - Monday Morning in Washington, D.C. disclosed a DOD Special Needs Tool Kit was designed to help military families and others with special needs children navigate medical and special education services, community support, and benefits and entitlements.  The toolkit is in six colorful modules that can be downloaded easily and printed, and is at info.thearc.org.

PORTLAND, OR - Primary school teachers routinely read to their students, but it took an innovative first-grade teacher to interest Portland State University professor Jason Ranker in studying how comic books helped young English-language learners with reading and writing.  Ranker, whose research includes visual literacy and marginalized learners, joined 16 bilingual students one to two mornings each week to observe how their teacher developed sophisticated literacy skills by reading comic books to her class.  "Several researchers have noted the use of simplistic pedagogy when teaching reading to English-language learners," Rankern suggested.  "This teacher didn’t settle for that approach.  Instead, she demonstrated that comic books can help students understand story structure, distinguish between dialogue and narration, and explore broader media issues - in this case, gender stereotypes."

WASHINGTON - Monday Morning in Washington, D.C. disclosed the Hasbro Children's Fund announced a local community grants program (deadline July 30).  Hasbro will accept proposals from eligible groups which focus on: food pantry support; programs assisting children in finding stable homes; after school programs assisting children in need; and programs that help needy children experience the joy of play.  Visit the Hasbro Web site for further information.

BOSTON - Boston.com posted that veterans taking statin drugs had a 9.4% cancer incidence versus 13.2% for those not taking the drugs, researchers wrote in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.  "Our findings support the hypothesis that statins may reduce the risk of cancer, in particular lung and colorectal cancers," said Dr. Wildon Farwell, of the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, who led the study.  "The risk reduction appeared to be around 25%."  For their study, Dr. Farwell and his team checked records of nearly 63,000 vets in the Veterans Affairs New England Healthcare System, Jan. 1997-Dec. 2005.  The veterans were divided into groups that had used either statin drugs - Lipitor and Zocor - or blood-pressure lowering drugs for at least one year.  Dr. Farwell said they chose those groups because patients on both types of drugs have similar health risks and are likely to get about the same access to the healthcare system.  After adjusting for age, prior cancer screenings, smoking, lung disease, and other conditions, researchers found statin users had a reduced risk of all cancer types.

LONDON - An elderly person's risk of falling is too often overlooked when trying to prevent them from getting serious fractures, of the hip or wrist, states an article in BMJ.  The Finnish authors say studies show that if the focus were to be switched to how at risk someone is of falling, rather than whether they have the bone disease osteoporosis, then considerably more fractures in elderly people could be prevented.  However, many important publications completely overlook falling as a risk factor and it’s still very poorly recognized and assessed by doctors.  Dr Jarvinen and colleagues say current fracture prevention methods have serious limitations.  At the moment an individual is screened to see whether they have osteoporosis, and is then treated with medication.  Yet the test which determines whether someone has the disease is flawed; it assesses bone mineral density and can often either over- and under-estimate that density.

ST. PAUL, MI - People who have had depression are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than people who have never had it, states a study in Neurology.  The study involved 486 people 60-90 without dementia.  Of those, 134 people had experienced at least one episode of depression that prompted them to seek medical advice.  The participants were followed for an average of six years and 33 people developed Alzheimer's.  People who had experienced depression were 2.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's than people who had never had depression.  The risk was even higher for those whose depression occurred before the 60; they were nearly four times more likely to develop Alzheimer's than those with no depression.

DALLAS - A shortage of CPR trained people adds to the 150,000 U.S. out-of-hospital heart disease deaths yearly, the American Heart Association (AHA) told MedPage Today.  AHA noted, "Despite electrical defibrillation and implementation of lay rescuer defibrillation programs, the vast majority of these victims don’t leave the hospital alive.  In studies over the past 15 years, only 1.4% of patients with out-of-hospital arrest in Los Angeles made hospital discharge; in Chicago, 2%, and in Detroit, 1%."  The solution, AHA stated, is to implement recommendations for rapidly raising the number of those trained in CPR and beef up community support of CPR programs.  AHA urges: Governments provide CPR education; EMS and 9-1-1 systems implement and support dispatch-assisted CPR; CPR instructors, EMS leaders, and government agencies boost public awareness of Good Samaritan laws and potential of bystander CPR; EMS systems and CPR instructors focus on rigorous CPR performance and objective quality assessment for certification; research targeted toward improving methods of CPR education, improving skill retention, and developing creative methods for CPR education.

STONY BROOK, NY - The world will experience much higher speed of population aging in coming years but slow down by mid-century, states a study by Warren Sanderson, professor and co-chairman of the Dept. of Economics at Stony Brook University; and his team from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.  In the 21st century, global aging will peak 2020-2030 and decline, but there will be more hikes in the level of aging over the century.  The findings were online at Nature.  The study uses traditional and new concepts that include changes in longevity to measure the speed of population aging in 13 major regions.  Standard measures of aging are based on a fixed-age boundary; for example, assume that a 60-year-old person in 1900 was as old as a 60-year-old person in 2000.  Sanderson and his team introduce and quantify three new indicators that take into explicit account changes in remaining life expectancy.  "The speed of aging is crucial to understand because it is during the period of the fastest change when adjustments will be the most difficult," said Sanderson.  "Policymakers will need to know ahead of time when peak aging will occur so they can have adjustments in place, especially those dealing with the financing of pensions and healthcare for the elderly."

BOSTON - TIME magazine disclosed that for Alzheimer's disease, no one has the best way to halt gradual slips in memory and other brain functions that are disease hallmarks.  Researchers in the Netherlands found a nonmedical intervention may be as effective as drugs to keep elderly patients sharp.  Eus Van Someren, at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, states in the Journal of the American Medical Association that elderly patients with dementia exposed to bright lights in long-term care facilities scored 5% better on cognitive tests and had 19% fewer depressive symptoms than similar patients residing in less well-lit facilities.  Van Someren's group used 1,000-lux bulbs in overhead lights, which is equivalent to brightness of TV studio lights, and compared their effects to those of 300-lux bulbs found in office and retail settings.  "I was surprised by the results on cognition," says Van Someren.  "I expected, based on previous studies, that we’d find improvements in sleep, but I hadn't expected to see the effect on cognition."

CHICAGO - Researchers using a new cocktail of cancer treatment drugs report the best survival rate to date in patients with an aggressive type of advanced breast cancer.  Results were announced at the 2008 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).  The study included 76 patients from 28 centers who had HER-2 positive breast cancer, in which the cancer had spread to distant sites such as bones, liver, lungs, or brain.  Ages ranged 33-78; the median age was 50.  Patients received Herceptin®, which targets HER-2 positive cancer cells, along with two chemotherapy drugs: Taxotere® and Navelbine®, and 93% of them survived for at least one year.  The median time the spread of cancer was in check was 21 months; the median survival was 39 months.  In prior studies on similar patients, median survivals ranged from 18.4 months to 38 months; the median length of time the cancer was in check ranged from three to 13.8 months.  "I think doctors will start to use this combination once they see these results," said Dr. Kathy Albain, a co-author and member of the national leadership team that designed the study.  She is a professor in the division of hematology/oncology, Dept. of Medicine at Loyola University/Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

HOUSTON - Reuters reported a high dose of the arthritis drug Celebrex showed early signs it may help prevent lung cancer in heavy smokers, researchers said.  Pfizer Inc.’s drug, a.k.a. celecoxib, works by blocking the COX-2 enzyme that causes inflammation, which has been linked with cancer.  A six-month study of 212 current or heavy smokers found a reduction in a specific type of precancerous change in lung cells in people who took a high dose of Celebrex versus those who took placebo.  None of the study participants had any heart-related problems, such as those with Merck & Co.'s withdrawn arthritis drug Vioxx, another COX-2 inhibitor.  "Celebrex was safe and we didn’t see any cardiovascular events," said Dr. Edward Kim, of M.D.  Anderson Cancer Center, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.  He said the study suggests a high dose of Celebrex might alter some of the cellular changes that lead up to lung cancer, but the finding is very early and would need to be confirmed in longer, larger studies.