Heart hormone has role in bed-wetting
Children who wet their beds frequently have elevated levels of a heart hormone that helps regulate fluid around the heart, a study finds. Additionally, children who habitually snore are about three times as likely to wet the bed as children who don’t snore, but the severity of snoring appears to have little effect on the risk of bed-wetting, according to the research, which is published in the May issue of Pediatrics. Why the levels of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) were raised requires more research, said study co-author Dr. David Gozal of the University of Louisville. But if your child snores and wets the bed, Gozal said, treating the snoring may help reduce bed-wetting.
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Computer program helps drug abusers
The use of a computer-assisted training program, in addition to traditional counseling, helped drug abusers stay abstinent longer than counseling alone, a Yale University School of Medicine study found. The trial included 77 substance abusers who received either traditional counseling alone or traditional counseling combined with computer-assisted training based on principles of cognitive behavioral therapy. The computer-assisted training group had significantly fewer positive drug tests at the end of the study. “[The researchers] have demonstrated how a low cost but carefully conceived procedure can enhance conventional treatment…,” said Dr. William Sledge, interim chair and professor of psychiatry at Yale.
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Working outdoors? Get skin examined
Workers who face the greatest risk of developing skin cancer from overexposure to the sun are the least likely to get regular exams to detect its early warning signs, a new report says. Then again, the rest of the workforce isn’t doing that good of a job either, according to the study published online in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. While 15 percent of all workers in the study had ever received a skin exam, the percentages were lower for farm operators and managers (10 percent), farm workers and other agricultural workers (7 percent), construction and mining (8 percent) and construction laborers (8 percent).
