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Getting students to exercise more might not just address obesity issues but also improve their grades with a U.S. study finding physically fit students tend to score higher in tests than their less fit peers.

Test scores dropped more than one point for each extra minute it took middle and high school students to complete a one mile run/walk fitness test, according to Dr. William J. McCarthy and colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Schools and parents seeking to optimize their students’ academic performance should take heed, McCarthy noted in an email to Reuters Health.

For optimal brain function “it’s good to be both aerobically fit and to have a healthy body shape.”

McCarthy and colleagues compared physical fitness and body weight measures with scores on California’s standardized math, reading, and language tests among 749 fifth-graders, 761 seventh-graders, and 479 ninth-graders who attended schools in Southern California between 2002 and 2003.

About half of the students were girls, 60 percent were white, 26 percent were of Hispanic ethnicity, and about 7 percent each were African American and Asian/Pacific Islander.

Almost 32 percent of the students were overweight and about 28 percent were obese, the researchers report in The Journal of Pediatrics. The researchers estimated students’ aerobic fitness according to their one-mile run/walk time on a flat track. With a 15-minute maximum allowed time to complete the test, the boys averaged slightly less than 10 minutes, while the girls averaged a little less than 11 minutes.

McCarthy’s team found that nearly two thirds of the students (65 percent) fell below the state fitness standard for their age and gender. Compared with these students, students who met or exceeded fitness standards had higher average test scores. Allowing for age, social and economic status, gender, ethnicity, and body size did not significantly alter this association.

Compared with students of desirable weight, overweight and obese students also scored significantly lower on tests, the researchers found.

These findings, McCarthy’s team notes, confirm and extend those of previous investigations. They say further studies are needed to figure out why aerobic fitness may play a role in academic performance.

If future studies confirm a cause-and-effect link between lower fitness and reduced academic performance, “schools will have to reverse their recent disinvestment in physical education ostensibly for the purposes of boosting student achievement,” they concluded.

(Reporting by Joene Hendry of Reuters Health, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Certain types of chemotherapy can damage the heart while thwarting cancer, a dilemma that has vexed scientists for years. But a new study in rats finds that injecting the heart with stem cells can reverse the damage caused by a potent anti-cancer drug.

The findings could one day mean that cancer patients could safely take higher doses of a powerful class of chemotherapy drugs and have any resulting damage to their hearts repaired later on using their own cardiac stem cells, the researchers said.

Doxorubicin is a common chemotherapy drug used to treat many types of cancer, including breast, ovarian, lung, thyroid, neuroblastoma, lymphoma and leukemia.

But the drug can have serious side effects, including heart damage that can lead to congestive failure years after cancer treatment ends.

In the study, researchers removed cardiac stem cells from rodents before chemotherapy. The stem cells were isolated and expanded in the lab.

Rats were then given the chemo drug doxorubicin, inducing heart failure. Afterward, the rats’ stem cells were re-injected into their hearts, and the damage was reversed.

“Theoretically, patients could be rescued using their own stem cells,” said study author Dr. Piero Anversa, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

A Phase 1 clinical trial using a similar procedure in people is already under way, said Dr. Roberto Bolli, chief of cardiology and director of the Institute of Molecular Cardiology at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, who is heading the trial.

His lab has U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to treat 30 patients who have heart failure from cardiovascular disease, not chemotherapy.

In the trial, participants’ cardiac tissue will be harvested, the stem cells isolated and then expanded in vitro from about 500 cells to 1 million cells over several weeks, Bolli explained. Several months after the patient has undergone bypass surgery, the stem cells will be re-injected.

Researchers believe the stem cells can differentiate into new heart muscle and blood vessel cells. In addition, the stem cells release cytokines, substances that stimulate the heart’s internal repair system, Bolli said.

The clinical trial is still enrolling participants, and it’s too soon to tell how patients who have had the procedure are faring, Bolli said.

For cancer patients, doxorubicin and other medications in the class of chemotherapy drugs called anthracyclines, can be potent tumor fighters. However, oncologists often must limit doses because of the risks to the heart, Anversa said.

If future research shows the stem cell procedure is safe and effective in people, it could one day mean doctors could give higher doses of chemotherapy drugs, knowing that if stem cells are harvested, there is the ability to repair damage to the heart down the line.

“For people, this could potentially be a very important development,” Bolli said. “Doxorubicin is a very effective anti-cancer drug, but the use is limited by the toxicity. If this issue can be overcome, it would be a major leap forward for anti-cancer therapy.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning the public about criminals posing as FDA special agents and other law enforcement personnel as part of an international extortion scam.

The criminals call the victims — who in most cases previously purchased drugs over the Internet or via “telepharmacies” — and identify themselves as FDA special agents or other law enforcement officials. The criminals inform the victims that purchasing drugs over the Internet or the telephone is illegal, and that law enforcement action will be pursued unless a fine or fee ranging from $100 to $250,000 is paid. Victims often also have fraudulent transactions placed against their credit cards.

The criminals always request the money be sent by wire transfer to a designated location, usually in the Dominican Republic. If victims refuse to send money, they are often threatened with a search of their property, arrest, deportation, physical harm, and or incarceration.

“Impersonating an FDA official is a violation of federal law,” said Michael Chappell, the FDA’s acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. “The public should note that no FDA official will ever contact a consumer by phone demanding money or any other form of payment.”

FDA special agents and other law enforcement officials are not authorized to impose or collect criminal fines. Only a court can take such action, with fines payable to the U.S. Treasury.

Anyone receiving a telephone call from a person purporting to be an FDA or other law enforcement official who is seeking money to settle a law enforcement action for the illegal purchase of drugs over the Internet should refuse the demand and call the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations Metro Washington Field Office at (800) 521-5783 to report the crime.

In addition to posing as FDA officials, criminals have posed as special agents of the DEA, FBI, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Customs Service, as well as U.S. and Dominican prosecutors and judges. In response, the FDA, in conjunction with various federal, state, and local agencies, is actively pursing criminal charges.

The FDA also reminds consumers to use caution when purchasing prescription drugs over the telephone or the Internet. In addition to the increased risk of purchasing unsafe and ineffective drugs from Web sites operating outside the law, there is the danger that personal data can be compromised. For more on FDA’s concerns about unlawful drug sales on the Internet, see http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ProtectYourself/default.htm.

More than four in five parents say their children use the Internet without adult supervision, but at the same time almost two-thirds are worried about online predators, a new survey has found.

The findings, released online Nov. 19 by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, show that parents have a variety of concerns about their children’s safety on the Internet.

The researchers found that 81 percent of parents surveyed said their children aged 9 to 17 use the Internet without being supervised by an adult. Almost half have profiles on social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook; the number grows to two-thirds among kids aged 13 to 17.

Among parents whose kids go online, about two-thirds of the parents said they’re concerned about sexual predators on the Internet, and about half of the parents worry about their children seeing pornography online.

Parents were less concerned about online gambling, video games and bullying, the survey found.

“Parents are quite aware of some online safety risks but seem less aware about others,” Dr. Matthew Davis, director of the poll, said in a news release from the University of Michigan Health System. “We know from other studies that about one in seven children between the ages of 10 and 17 have received sexual solicitation over the Internet, and about one in three children have been exposed to sexually explicit material. So it’s not a surprise that most parents whose kids are online unsupervised are concerned about issues related to sexual predators and pornography. On the other hand, cyberbullying is a very worrisome problem for kids, yet the majority of parents say they are not concerned about it.”

An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus, up from 33 million in 2007, but more people are living longer due to the availability of drugs, according to a United Nations report.

However, more than half of the people who need life-saving drugs are not getting them, according to the 2009 AIDS epidemic update, launched on Tuesday in Shanghai by the World Health Organization and Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Cocktails of drugs can control HIV but there is no cure.

UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe told Reuters in an interview in Shanghai that advances in HIV prevention and treatment were still very lopsided.

“The major problem we are facing today is inequity. It is very important we don’t continue to have 400,000 babies born with HIV in Africa every year,” Sidibe said.

“That is something that the world can deliver. That is why we are calling for virtual elimination of transmission from mother to child by 2015.”

Teguest Guerma, acting director of WHO’s HIV/AIDS department, told a simultaneous press briefing in Geneva that while more than 4 million people were receiving HIV drugs at the end of 2008, up from 3 million at the end of 2007, many more were going without.

“More than 5 million people need treatment and are not receiving it,” Guerma said.

Speaking later to Reuters, Guerma said second line drugs still cost a minimum of $800 per year in low-income countries.

“It is still very expensive … If (patients) fail in the first line regime, they need to switch to the second. One reason it is not being done is because it is not available and it costs too much. Countries are not purchasing it,” Guerma said.

Overall, however, the epidemic seems to be stabilizing, Paul De Lay, deputy executive director of UNAIDS, said in Geneva.

“The data we are seeing confirm this,” he said. “It is a combination of decreasing deaths, more people therefore living, adding to the total number of infected and decreasing new infections.”

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the scourge of AIDS is most keenly felt, there were 400,000 fewer infections in 2008, or down 15 percent compared to 2001.

New HIV infections declined 25 percent in East Asia and 10 percent in south and southeast Asia within the same timeframe.

However, more needs to be done, Sidibe said.

“The findings also show that prevention programing is often off the mark and that if we do a better job of getting resources and programs to where they will make the most impact, quicker progress can be made and more lives saved,” he said.

The report also revealed that HIV played a significant factor in deaths to women during childbirth. Using South African data, about 50,000 maternal deaths were associated with HIV in 2008.

“AIDS isolation must end … half of all maternal deaths in Botswana and South Africa are due to HIV,” said Sidibe, who also called for an end to discriminatory laws in many countries.

Laws criminalizing homosexuality and prostitution for example end up driving these high-risk groups underground so they are unable to access treatment or services. Ultimately, infections spread into the general population.

Strains of antibiotic-resistant infections normally found in the community are increasingly showing up among hospital outpatients, raising the risk that inpatients could become infected, new research says.

From 1999 to 2006, researchers found a sevenfold increase in the incidence of outpatients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections. Outpatients include people treated in emergency departments or surgical centers but not admitted, or at doctors’ offices associated with hospitals.

This poses a risk to inpatients because many resources are used by both sets of patients. These include surgical centers and the doctors themselves, who often treat patients both inside and outside of hospitals.

“What this is suggesting is that outpatients are a significant source of MRSA, especially community-associated MRSA strains,” said the study’s lead author, Eili Klein, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and a researcher at Resources for the Future, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “This suggests the need for incentives to make sure hospitals are not only taking steps to prevent hospital-associated strains from spreading among inpatients, but preventing the spread of community-associated strains through shared resources.”

The study is published in the December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

MRSA, which burst into the public consciousness in the 1990s, is named for its resistance to methicillin and other antibiotics. There are several strains, including those that emerged in hospitals, called “hospital associated,” and those that emerged outside hospitals and tend to spread in schools and gyms, called “community associated.”

While both types can cause serious, life-threatening illness, hospital-acquired strains are generally more virulent. The bacteria can get into wounds, causing deadly blood or lung infections. About 20,000 people in the United States die each year from the MRSA infections, according to background information in the study.

Community-associated strains have also caused some deaths in otherwise healthy people, including several children who were killed by MRSA infections in the late 1990s. Typically, however, community-associated strains cause skin or other soft tissue infections that are treatable with newer antibiotics.

According to the research, the number of hospital-associated infections remained relatively stable from 1999 to 2003, even decreasing a bit from 2003 to 2005. Some of the reduction was due to better infection-control measures, such as more thorough and frequent hand washing among doctors, Klein said.

Community-associated strains, however, are becoming far more commonplace. Among outpatients with staph infections, MRSA infections increased by more than 90 percent, according to the data culled from 300 microbiology labs serving hospitals across the nation.

Most of the increase was due to community-associated strains, which rose from 3.6 percent of all MRSA infections in 1999 to 28.2 percent in 2006, the study found.

The increases pose a risk to hospital inpatients, who may become infected by contaminated equipment in surgical centers used for inpatients and outpatients or by the doctors themselves.

The study did not find an increase in hospital-associated strains spreading in the community.

After hearing reports of community-associated MRSA strains showing up in hospitals, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed the data it has collected on invasive MRSA infections, said Dr. Fernanda Lessa, a CDC medical epidemiologist.

The CDC report found that the proportion of community-associated MRSA infections in hospitals, compared with MRSA infections overall, remained small and that the infections were no more virulent than those already present.

“So far it hasn’t been a big problem,” Lessa said. “Our data suggested the community-associated strain doesn’t seem to be taking off in hospitals and is not causing worse disease.”

Other research also has shown a rise in community-associated strains. A study in the January issue of Archives of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery found that MRSA infections in the ears, nose or sinuses of children more than doubled from 2001 to 2006, going from 12 percent to 28 percent of head-and-neck area infections.

Though the use of fertility drugs does not seem to generally increase uterine cancer risk, a Danish study identified small increases in risk from certain fertility drugs used for longer duration.

Dr. Allan Jensen, with the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen, and colleagues identified higher uterine cancer risk among women who used follicle-stimulating hormone and human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG) for more than 10 years.

They saw similar risk among women who ever took six or more cycles of clomiphene, an established treatment for women not ovulating normally, or when clomiphene did not work, when women were injected with six or more cycles of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG).

In each of these scenarios, uterine cancer risk seemed about two times the usual risk, Jensen and colleagues report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Even so, “the absolute risk of developing uterine cancer is still not very high,” Jensen emphasized in an email to Reuters Health.

From a group of 54,362 women treated for infertility between 1965 and 1998 and followed for 16 years on average, Jensen’s team compared the use of fertility drugs among 83 who developed uterine cancer and 1,241 of similar age who did not develop cancer of the uterus.

Overall, 51 and 50 percent of the women who did and did not develop uterine cancer, respectively, used fertility drugs. Those with uterine cancer ranged from 28 to 67 years old (50 years on average) when diagnosed.

In analyses that allowed for number of births, the investigators did not find significant differences in uterine cancer risk.

Differences in risk, as noted, became evident in analyses of specific fertility drugs used and the length of use. These risks remained when the investigators further allowed for number of births, use of a single or multiple fertility drugs, causes of infertility, and any history of oral contraceptives.

The researchers are continuing to monitor the study group to more definitively assess ties between fertility drugs and uterine cancer risk.

They caution, however, that any unfavorable effects from fertility drugs need to be balanced against the physical and psychological benefits of pregnancies that may only be possible with the use of fertility drugs.