Trees help kids breathe easier
Young children who live in neighborhoods with lots of trees have lower rates of asthma than children who reside in areas with fewer trees, a new study finds. Researchers looked at asthma rates among children age 4 to 5 in New York City. Asthma rates decreased by almost one-quarter for every standard deviation increase in tree density, equivalent to 343 trees per square kilometer, the study found. The researchers said that trees may help reduce asthma rates by encouraging children to play outdoors more or by improving air quality. The study was published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
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Bad combination: Obesity, asthma
A study of women with a wide range of body-mass indexes (BMIs) found that obesity may worsen the impact of asthma and also mask its severity in standard tests. It’s the first prospective study to find a significant difference between obese and non-obese people in how the lungs and airways respond to a simulated asthma attack. The findings indicate that “obese individuals lose the ability to inhale as deeply or exhale as fully as normal-weight individuals,” said principal investigator Dr. D. Robin Taylor of the University of Otago in New Zealand. The study was published in the first issue for May of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
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New treatment for Parkinson’s
By implanting specialized cells found in the human eye into areas of the brain damaged by Parkinson’s disease, researchers were able to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life in people with moderate to severe Parkinson’s. The new treatment, dubbed Spheramine, reduced symptoms by 44 percent for as long as four years. Quality-of-life measurements were up about 23 percent, according to the study, expected to be presented at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons’ annual meeting in Chicago.
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Infections can be good for kids
Children who attend day care or play groups are about 30 percent less likely to develop the most common type of childhood leukemia, according to University of California at Berkeley researchers who reviewed 14 studies involving nearly 20,000 children. It’s believed that early infections that prime the immune system may help fight off acute lymphoblastic leukemia, BBC News reported. “Combining the results from these studies together provided us with more confidence that the protective effect [of social interaction and exposure to infection at a young age] is real,” said lead researcher Patricia Buffler.
