A round-up of this week's other health stories in brief
HEALTH WEBSITE: A new website, developed by the Institute of Public Health, will, for the first time, bring together key health information from both the Republic and Northern Ireland. Due to be launched at a conference in Armagh Observatory on Thursday, the resource, for both health professionals and the public, will be known as the "Population Health Intelligence System"(PHIS). See www.inispho.org
BREAST FIT: The fitness regimes undertaken by millions of British women could lead to irreversible sagging breasts, scientists have warned.
Research by the University of Portsmouth has shown that 9.5 million women, out of 12 million in the country undertaking exercise, risk sagging breasts because they do not wear sport bras.
The report by the university's department of sport and exercise science found that breasts move in a three-dimensional figure of eight, going up and down, in and out and from side to side. With the average 36C breast weighing 200g-300g, this uncontrolled movement puts great strain on the breast's fragile support structure, which comprises only the outer skin and a connective tissue known as the Cooper's ligaments.
The report, sponsored by bra manufacturers Shock Absorber, found that each breast moves independently of the body by an average of nine centimetres during each step taken on a treadmill.
The researchers found the two results of this breast movement were pain and discomfort, which is temporary, and a stretching of the Cooper's ligament, which is permanent and leads to irreversible breast sag. Wearing an ordinary T-shirt bra during exercise reduces bounce by an average of 38 per cent, but women fitted with a Shock Absorber sports bra cut breast bounce by up to 74 per cent.
BMD RISK: Women who have high levels of the amino acid homocysteine in the blood are at increased risk of low bone mineral density (BMD), European investigators report.
"Our finding adds to the increasing evidence that homocysteine is important for bone health," said lead author Dr Clara Gram Gjesdal from the University of Bergen in Norway. "If the modest associations observed in our study are causal, the public health implications may be significant because high homocysteine levels respond to intake of folate and other B vitamins," she said.
Using data from a population-based cohort of more than 5,300 middle-aged and elderly men and women, researchers observed that total homocysteine level was inversely related to hip BMD among middle-aged and elderly women, but not among men.
TESTING THE TESTS: Findings from a review of published studies suggest that the newer liquid-based cervical cancer tests are no better than the conventional Pap test for checking for signs of cervical cancer. However, definitive research in this area is lacking, so the authors are calling for large randomised controlled trials.
Developed as an alternative to the traditional Pap smear, liquid-based "cytology" uses a thin layer of cells that yields results faster than the Pap test and is thought to be more sensitive than the Pap smear. The newer tests are also believed to generate fewer unsatisfactory slide results.
In a review of 56 studies, Dr Elizabeth Davey, from the University of Sydney in Australia, and colleagues found little differences in the two approaches. They report in the Lancet this week that the liquid-based tests did not detect any more serious cervical lesions than the conventional tests. Liquid-based and conventional cytology also produced a similar number of unsatisfactory slides.
RESEARCH WINNER: Obesity during pregnancy, diabetes and breast cancer were among the topics examined by 40 students who were funded by the Health Research Board. Eight finalists were selected to compete for the HRB Watts Medal 2006.
The winner was Michael Blake, from the new School of Pharmacy in UCC, who examined ulcers. The aim of the study was to improve drug delivery and help reduce pain.
Mr Blake tried to ascertain what level of pain relief was achieved through the release of morphine in a gel, how well the morphine was distributed through the gel and how quickly the morphine was released to reduce pain. He found that although morphine was mixed with the gel manually, all samples tested met a uniform standard. He then built a model to measure how fast the morphine was absorbed to relieve pain. He found the initial release was rapid, resolving the immediate pain.
According to Mr Blake: "The morphine gel is only applied every two-three days and the results indicate that a high percentage of the morphine is delivered within the first few hours. This means that the pain will get progressively worse between treatments. The next step is to work out how to administer the same dose so it can last for a sustained period."