By SUSAN ASCHOFF and Times wires
Published April 6, 2004
NATIONAL ALCOHOL SCREENING DAY is Thursday and sites across the country will offer education on the risks of alcohol abuse and assistance for people seeking help. In Pinellas County, Operation PAR marks the day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at its Community Assessment and Intervention Center, 2735 Whitney Road, in Clearwater. Participants can complete a written self-test about their drinking habits, hear presentations and talk with a health professional, confidentially and at no charge. Referrals to local treatment facilities and support services also will be available. Heavy drinking raises the risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, car accidents, violence and suicide. More than 150 medications also interact with alcohol, sometimes causing dangerous health problems. For more information, phone Operation PAR at 1-888-727-6398. For the location of other screening sites in the Tampa Bay area, phone 1-877-311-6273.
HEALTH RISKS OF TOBACCO are well-known, but several studies have shown cigarette smokers have lower rates of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. A team of neuroscientists at the University of South Florida College of Medicine say they've found one clue to why. In laboratory experiments, researchers demonstrated that nicotine inhibits activation of brain immune cells related to inflammation. Inflammation is a step toward nerve-cell death. They also identified the specific site, the alpha-7 acetylcholine receptor subtype, where nicotine binds to the cells to block activation and damage. By understanding nicotine's therapeutic effects, drugs that mimic nicotine's positive actions without its unhealthy side effects may be developed, according to USF researchers R. Douglas Shytle and Jun Tan.
LIVING ORGAN DONORS are being asked to "speak up" in a new national campaign to get more people interested in the issue and to consider donating. More than 6,000 people annually agree to become living organ donors, providing hope for the more than 80,000 people on transplant waiting lists. The campaign is sponsored by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which provides accreditation and other services to health care organizations. For more information, go to www.jcaho.org and click on "Speak Up."
WOMEN OFTEN LIVE beyond their reproductive years, a characteristic that defies the biological imperative that a creature's purpose is simply to pass on its genes. Now scientists in Finland say they've found a "Grandmother Hypothesis" to help explain humans' increasing longevity. In research reported in the journal Nature, scientists at the University of Turku in Finland looked at multiple generations in Finland and Canada. They found that a woman's postmenopausal survival affected both the reproductive success of her children and survival of her grandchildren. If there was a grandma around, couples tended to have children sooner and raised more of them to adulthood, likely with grandma's help. Couples had fewer children if grandma was not living in the same village. In addition, that long-lived grandma passed her good genes to her descendants, increasing their odds of a long life not only by caring for them but giving them a physiological edge.
