News

Sometimes being in the top spot isn't a good thing. A new study shows that Canada has one of the highest -- possibly the highest -- rates of inflammatory bowel disease in the world.

An estimated one in every 300 Canadians suffers from the painful condition, in which the lining of the intestinal tract becomes red and raw and is prone to bleeding.

IBD, which includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, is also very common in other northern countries.

"There is a genetic component to this disease -- it does tend to run in families," said lead researcher Charles Bernstein of the University of Manitoba.

However, environmental factors also seem to play a role and scientists are at a loss to explain why Canada is such a hot spot. (Scientists can't even say for sure that Canada has the highest rate because there are not a lot of reliable statistics from other countries.)

The researchers came up with their Canadian estimate by examining medical records from five provinces -- British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. They then made a projection for the rest of Canada.

Dr. Bernstein said scientists are toying with several theories to explain why people living in some lands -- especially developed countries such as Canada -- seem especially prone to IBD. One is the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which relates to our obsession with cleanliness.

Some scientists argue that young children need to be exposed to a lot of common germs for the normal development of their immune systems.

Still, why should Canadians be more prone to IBD than other developed countries?

A clue might lie in Dr. Bernstein's new study, published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

One of its findings is that IBD rates are significantly lower in British Columbia than other provinces. Possibly the climate of balmy British Columbia somehow mitigates the disease. Dr. Bernstein says it will be "fascinating" to watch what happens to the children of recent immigrants who come from areas of the world where the disease is less common.

"Will their rates of IBD be as high as other Canadians?" he wondered.

Solving this mystery could pay big dividends.

"If you understand what causes it, you can develop treatments for it," he said.

Obesity adds to cancer risk

Ovarian cancer is often a killer. About 70 per cent of the women stricken with the disease die within five years of diagnosis.

However, if a woman is obese, she has an even slimmer chance of beating the disease, a new study concludes.

The researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles compared 216 patients of different weights.

Those who were obese had lower survival rates than other women, according to the study published in the journal Cancer.

"Our study suggests that fat tissue excretes a hormone or protein that causes ovarian cancer cells to grow more aggressively," said lead researcher Andrew Li, whose lab is now trying to identify "the exact biological mechanism" fuelling the tumour.

Dr. Li also speculated that excess weight might interfere with treatment by making anti-cancer drugs less effective.

Although a lot more study is needed, Dr. Li suggests obese patients might improve their survival odds by losing weight.

"Maintaining an ideal body weight will help patients fight ovarian cancer as well as reduce the chances of developing other conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes," he said in an e-mail interview. Ovarian cancer strikes about one in every 60 women.

Anger hurts the lungs

If you often get so mad you feel like screaming, then do your best to hold your breath. A new study shows that feelings of anger and hostility can actually harm your lungs.

U.S. researchers recruited 670 men and gauged their overall levels of hostility as well as their lung power (determined by the amount of air they expelled in a fixed amount of time).

The men were tested three times over an eight-year period.

The results revealed that the angriest men experienced the most significant decline in lung function.

Researchers noted that lung capacity generally declines with age. And feelings of hostility seem to speed up this natural aging process, according to the study in the journal Thorax.

They speculate that anger creates a hormonal imbalance that disrupts the immune system, leading to a state of chronic inflammation that can damage body tissues, including the lungs.

This certainly isn't the first study to suggest that anger is bad for your health.

Previous research indicates that hot heads are prone to heart disease and other life-shortening conditions.

The latest study simply provides another good reason that you should learn to chill out.

Brain stimulation

A new "electric" age is dawning in the treatment of brain disorders. German researchers found that deep-brain electrical stimulation is better than traditional drug therapy for treating patients with advanced Parkinson's disease.

Doctors have been using neurostimulation, which is delivered by a pacemaker-like device, for years. But the new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, marks one of the first times that a group of Parkinson's patients has been randomly assigned to received either stimulation or drug therapy.

Deep brain stimulation represents "a huge progress for the treatment of Parkinson's disease," Guenther Deuschl, who led the study at Christian Albrechts University near Kiel, Germany, said by e-mail. "Our study suggests they have a reasonable possibility to get a 25-per-cent increase in life quality" compared with drug therapy alone. The disease destroys a part of the brain involved in movement and, over time, patients lose their ability to move with ease.

The treatment comes with some risks. One of the 156 patients in the group assigned to get neurostimulation died from bleeding when the electrode was surgically implanted in his brain.

Nonetheless, the treatment is so promising doctors are increasingly using it for a wide variety of disorders, ranging from chronic pain to depression.