Health Report 08-9

Understanding Down SyndromeThis is the VOA Special English Health Report.Deep inside each cell in our body is all the genetic information needed for life. Human genes are normally organized along forty-six chromosomes -- twenty-three from each parent.David Petersohn of Liberty, Missouri, reads with his daughter Darcie, who has Down syndromeBut as a result of a mistake in cell division, some people have three copies of the twenty-first chromosome. There are supposed to be just two.About one in every seven hundred babies has this extra copy. The name for this condition is Down syndrome. A British doctor named John Langdon Down first described it in the eighteen sixties.Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has a son who was born in April with Down syndrome. The Alaska governor and her husband also have four other children who do not have it.Many babies with Down syndrome have low muscle tone, so they need extra support when they are held. Their heads are smaller than average and they can have unusually shaped ears. Also, their eyes often angle upward.People with Down syndrome often have other conditions. These include problems with their heart and with their breathing and hearing. But a lot of these conditions are treatable.As a result, people with Down syndrome are living longer. In nineteen eighty-three, they lived an average of just twenty-five years. Today the average life expectancy is fifty-six.But that longer life has led to a sad discovery. People with Down syndrome may have an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease at an early age.The National Down Syndrome Society says an estimated twenty-five percent of those thirty-five and older show signs of Alzheimer's.In the general population, this brain-wasting disease is usually not found until people are over the age of sixty-five. It slowly destroys memory, thinking and reasoning skills.Down syndrome is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation. Most people with Down syndrome are mildly to moderately retarded. Many are able to attend regular classes with other students. Later, as adults, many hold jobs and lead independent lives.An estimated three hundred fifty thousand people in the United States have Down syndrome. There are tests that can be done to look for it during pregnancy.The risk of Down syndrome is higher for older mothers. The rate for those under thirty is one in one thousand births. In women age forty-four, like Sarah Palin, that number is one in thirty-five.And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. I'm Steve Ember.Teenagers and PregnancyThis is the VOA Special English Health Report.More than seven hundred thousand teenagers a year get pregnant in the United States. The teen pregnancy rate has fallen thirty-eight percent since the early nineteen nineties. And the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy says the teen birth rate has fallen by almost as much. Six out of ten pregnant teenagers in two thousand six gave birth.The nonprofit campaign says these changes have been driven by decreases in sexual activity and increases in contraceptive use. But it points to recent findings that reductions in teen sex and increases in contraceptive use have leveled off. And the teen birth rate is rising for the first time in fifteen years.Last week, many Americans talked about the news that the seventeen-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin is pregnant and will get married. Sarah Palin is the governor of Alaska and the Republican nominee for vice president. Campaign officials said the family released a statement because of claims on the Internet that the candidate's baby son was really her daughter's baby.But there have been other reasons why teen pregnancy has been more of a subject of national discussion lately.The movie "Juno" came out last December. A teenager gets pregnant and decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. This comedy about a serious subject won an Academy Award.And this past June, Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth. The TV star and sister of Britney Spears was sixteen when she got pregnant. Many parents of her young fans were not happy to have to discuss it.Eight out of ten pregnancies in teenagers are unplanned, compared to half of all pregnancies nationally.A two thousand one UNICEF report on teenage births in rich nations showed that the United States had the highest rate. But, as a New York Times columnist just noted, the United States did not have the highest rate of sexually active teens. A few others had higher rates. Denmark had the highest. Yet its teen birth and teen abortion rates were much lower than America's.Part of the debate over what to do about teen pregnancy is how to deal with sex education. Some people argue for an expansion of "abstinence-only" programs. These center on the message that young people should not have sex until marriage. Other people argue that while this may be a good message to teach, it should not be the only one taught in schools.And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. I'm Steve Ember.9.17New Findings on Children and Mental IllnessThis the VOA Special English Health Report.People who are schizophrenic sometimes hear voices or see things that are not real.They might believe other people want to hurt them. They can become fearful and socially withdrawn.Schizophrenia is explained on the National Institute of Mental Health Web site as a brain disorder that is severe and disabling. It is also chronic, meaning long term.The disorder usually appears in males in their late teens or early twenties and in females in their twenties or thirties. Experts say it rarely appears in children, but when it does, it generally affects them more severely than adults.Children with schizophrenia are often treated with "second-generation" antipsychotic drugs. But do these costly newer drugs work better than older ones that cost less? The National Institute of Mental Health recently paid for a study by four universities in the United States. The research teams found that the answer was no.They studied one hundred nineteen people between the ages of eight and nineteen. The patients were observed over an eight-week period. Some received risperidone or olanzapine, two newer drugs. Others received a first-generation antipsychotic drug, molindone.The researchers found that all of the patients experienced about the same improvement. But the risperidone and olanzapine caused serious weight gain.In fact, the institute cancelled the olanzapine research because the patients who took it gained an average of almost six kilograms. The concern was that the weight gain could lead to diabetes.The study appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry.Past studies have shown that children born to older fathers have a higher risk of schizophrenia as well as autism. Now, scientists are finding evidence of a similar link for bipolar disorder. This disorder is marked by periods of extremes in mood and behavior. It was formerly called manic depression.A new study in Sweden involved more than thirteen thousand patients with bipolar disorder. Researchers compared them to similar people of the same age and sex who did not have the disorder.The study found that fathers fifty-five and older were one and a third times more likely to have a bipolar child than fathers twenty to twenty-four. The scientists say the reason could be that older sperm is more likely to cause genetic abnormalities. The findings are in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry.And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. I'm Steve Ember.9.25New Findings Add to Health Concerns About a Chemical in PlasticsThis is the VOA Special English Health Report.Bisphenol A is a chemical widely used to make hard, polycarbonate plastic. Food storage containers, reusable water bottles and baby bottles are among the many different products that may contain BPA. BPA is also commonly used in protective coverings inside metal food and drink cans.People can swallow small amounts of BPA as they eat or drink. An industry Web site says more than forty years of safety research shows that products made withbisphenol A are safe.But others question the safety of BPA. Now, a large study has linked it to diabetes and heart disease in adults.Researchers divided almost one thousand five hundred American adults into four groups based on BPA levels in their urine. All the levels were within the limits considered safe by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Yet the study found that the highest group was more than twice as likely as the lowest group to have heart disease or diabetes, or both.The Food and Drug Administration and chemical industry officials said the study does not show that bisphenol A caused the diseases. The researcher who led the study, David Melzer at England's University of Exeter, agrees. He says the findings must be reproduced and that other studies are also needed.But he also says that if BPA is a cause of these conditions, then just reducing contact with it might prevent some cases. The study appeared last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Earlier this month, United States government scientists from the National Toxicology Program released a final report on BPA. They found that the chemical is of "some concern" for effects on development of the prostate gland and brain in fetuses, infants and children. They made the same finding for behavioral effects.The scientists based their findings mostly on studies of laboratory animals. Even so, the program director said "the possibility that BPA may affect human development cannot be dismissed."In April, Canada became the first country to propose a ban on plastic baby bottles that contain BPA. The government has said it will publish its final decision by October eighteenth.Some plastic goods are now being marketed as BPA-free. But some people wonder whether any other chemicals that might take its place are any better.And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. I'm Jim Tedder.。