Exposure to secondhand smoke in early infancy can boost a child's risk of developing allergies, Swedish researchers say.

A team at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, analyzed questionnaires filled out by the parents of more than 4,000 families.

The parents filled out the questionnaires when their children were ages two months, 12 months, 2 years and 4 years. In addition, the researchers collected blood samples from more than 2,500 children at the age of 4 to check for the presence of immunoglobulin E (IgE), which is released by the immune system in response to allergens. High levels of IgE indicate sensitization to allergens.

About 8 percent of the mother smoked throughout their pregnancy, and about 12 percent smoked during part of their pregnancy, but the researchers found no evidence that smoking during pregnancy affected a child's risk of becoming sensitized to certain allergens.

About 20 percent of parents smoked after their baby was born, and about 4 percent of the children were exposed to secondhand smoke from both parents.

Overall, 25 percent of the children had high IgE levels by the time they were 4 years old, with 15 percent allergic to inhaled allergens, 16 percent allergic to food allergens, and 7 percent allergic to both types of allergens.surfboardssurveillanceswitchessynthtable-linenstables

Compared to children of nonsmokers, children exposed to secondhand smoke during early infancy were almost twice as likely to be allergic to inhaled allergens, such as pet dander, and about 50 percent more likely to have food allergies.

The study was published in the journal Thorax.

Sex ed in schools may help delay teen sex ,I think it's true.

Sex education in school may encourage teenagers to put off having sexual intercourse, the results of a U.S. government study suggests.

However, the findings do suggest that having some form of sex education helps delay teen sex, according to the researchers, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

In a national survey of more than 2,000 adolescents between 15 and 19 years old, the researchers found that teens who had sex ed in school were more likely to put off sex until at least age 15. Furthermore, boys who received sex ed were less likely to have started having sex at all.

"Sex education seems to be working," lead researcher Dr. Trisha E. Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC, said in a statement.

In particular, she noted, some of the greatest benefits were seen in the teens who may need them the most -- urban, African-American girls. In this group of girls, those who'd received sex education were 91 percent less likely to have had sex before the age of 15.

Overall, male study participants who'd received sex education were 71 percent less likely to have had sex before age 15 than those who'd had no formal sex ed. Among female participants, sex ed reduced those odds by 59 percent.

Male respondents who'd had sex education were also more likely to say they would used birth control the first time they had sex. No similar effect was seen among girls.

There were certain groups of teens who did not seem to benefit from sex education. Girls from rural areas were more likely to have sex, and white and Hispanic girls who eventually dropped out of high school were less likely to delay sex. The reasons are unclear, according to Mueller's team, and the findings may be due to chance because the numbers of study participants in these groups were small.metal-detectorsmetalsmetalworkingmexicanmicrophonesmilitary

Overall, the researchers conclude that "sex education provides youth with the knowledge and skills to make healthy and informed decisions about sex, and this study indicates that sex education is making a difference in the sexual behaviors of American youth."

SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health, January 2008.

 Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex, according to the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"Sex education seems to be working," Trisha Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC who led the study, said in a statement. "It seems to be especially effective for populations that are usually at high risk."

Mueller's team looked at a 2002 national survey of 2,019 teens aged 15 to 19.

They found teen boys who had sex education in school were nearly three times more likely to use birth control the first time they had intercourse. But sex education appeared to have no effect on whether teen girls used birth control, the researchers found.

Black teenage girls who had sex education in school were 91 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

The researchers did not evaluate the content of sex education programs, including whether students were taught about contraception or about abstinence only.

Earlier studies, which relied on data from the 1970s through the 1990s, suggested sex education did little to persuade teens to delay sex.

The researchers said they think the difference may be that sex education in the United States is now more widespread and is being taught at earlier ages.marblesmarkersmascaramassagersmemorabiliamen

"Unlike many previous studies, our results suggest that sex education before first sex protects youth from engaging in sexual intercourse at an early age," they wrote.

  Syphilis is back: The sexually transmitted disease long associated with 19th Century bohemian life is making an alarming resurgence in Europe.

Most cases of syphilis are in men, and experts point to more risky sex among gay men as the chief cause for the resurgence. But more cases are being seen among heterosexuals, both men and women, too.

Syphilis was the sexual scourge of the 19th Century, and is believed to have killed artists like poet Charles Baudelaire, composer Robert Schumann, and painter Paul Gauguin. But the widespread use of penicillin in the 1950s all but wiped it out in the Western world.

In the last decade, however, syphilis has unexpectedly returned, driven by risky sexual behavior and outbreaks in major cities across Europe, including London, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin.

• In Britain, syphilis cases have leapt more than tenfold for men and women in the past decade to 3,702 in 2006, according to the Health Protection Agency. Among men in England, the syphilis rate jumped from one per 100,000 in 1997 to nine per 100,000 last year.

• In Germany, the rate among men was fewer than two per 100,000 in 1991; by 2003, it was six per 100,000.

• In France, there were 428 cases in 2003 — almost 16 times the number just three years earlier.

• In the Netherlands, cases doubled from 2000 to 2004. In Amsterdam, up to 31 men per 100,000 were infected, while the rate was much lower in other regions.

Similar trends have been seen in the United States.

In 2000, syphilis infection rates were so low that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention embarked on a plan to eliminate the disease. But about 9,800 cases were reported in 2006.

In Europe, Van de Laar said syphilis' reappearance was so surprising that many doctors initially had trouble diagnosing it.

Though these days it mainly affects urban gay men, experts worry that the disease could also rebound in the general population if stronger efforts to fight it are not taken soon.

In 2005, British authorities reported that syphilis was spreading across the entire country, and that more heterosexual men and women were being infected.legolipsticklord-of-the-ringsmagnetsmapsmaps-atlases

"These increases may lead to increases in diagnoses of congenital syphilis over the coming years," said Kate Swan, a spokeswoman for the Health Protection Agency.

Pregnant women with syphilis can pass it on to their babies. Nearly half of all babies infected with syphilis while they are in the womb die shortly before or after birth.

Syphilis is a bacterial disease causing symptoms that include ulcers, sores and rashes. In extreme cases, it can result in dementia or fatally damage the heart, respiratory and central nervous systems. Syphilis is treatable with antibiotics if caught early.

Once there are more than just a few isolated cases, containing the disease is difficult.

Advances made in treating AIDS may have inadvertently boosted syphilis' spread.

"The evidence points to an increase in unsafe sexual behavior since anti-retrovirals for AIDS came along in 1996," said van de Laar.

After decades of being instructed to use condoms and to limit the number of sexual partners, some people are probably suffering from "safe sex fatigue," van de Laar said. The Internet has also allowed people to find sexual partners more easily than before, and some experts link the rise of dating Web sites to the jump in syphilis cases.

For some men, the Internet connections can be especially dangerous.

"Networks of HIV-positive men to find other positive men have sprung up on the Internet," said Jonathan Elford, an AIDS epidemiologist at London's City University.

Some men who have the AIDS virus are seeking condom-free sex with other men who are also HIV-infected. However, they aren't protected against syphilis and other sexually spread diseases. Among gay men who have syphilis in Britain, nearly half have HIV, Elford said.

Amid this resurgence, some officials are now attacking the epidemic online.

Every day, health workers at the Terrence Higgins Trust, Europe's largest AIDS charity, log into chatrooms on a popular British gay dating Web site to spread safe sex messages and answer questions.

"We know that men are arranging hook-ups for sex online," said Mark Thompson, the charity's deputy head of health promotion. "So we decided to tap into cyberspace to try reaching them before unsafe sex might happen."

 Sex education programs do work to help discourage many teens from becoming sexually active before age 15, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"We were obviously hoping to find that sex education is effective. We're glad to see the strong associations," said lead author Trisha Mueller, a CDC epidemiologist. She emphasized that in order to be successful, sex education should take place before young people become sexually active.

Mueller's team also learned that teen boys who attended school were almost three times more likely to use contraception if they had attended a sex education program, compared to those who had not.

However, attendance at a sex education class did not seem to impact girls' use of birth control, the survey found.

The survey did not differentiate between programs that emphasized abstinence and those that educated about contraception. Instead, researchers focused only on whether the teens had ever attended any sex education program in a formal setting, such as school or church.

The study was expected to be published in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

According to earlier, 2005 data available from the CDC, 47 percent of high school students said they had already had sex. Of those who were currently involved in a sexual relationship, one-third said they were not using a condom.

Curious about the effectiveness of sexual education on these behaviors, Mueller and colleagues examined data from more than 2,000 teen boys and girls between 15 and 19 years of age who participated in the door-to-door 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

"Formal sex education is beneficial for youth who are considered to be at-risk," noted Mueller, who cited as an example the 88 percent reduced risk of initiation sex before age 15 among urban black females who had received any sex education. Urban black teen girls who were still in school at the time of the survey had a 91 percent reduced risk of initiation sex before age 15, the survey found.

The research also showed that boys living in single-parent households were more likely to delay sex past age 15 if they had attended a sex education class.

Mueller and her team were interested in teen sexual decision-making before and after the age of 15, because the federal governments' Healthy People 2010 initiative treats 15 as a dividing line. Healthy People 2010 sets a wide array of health goals for states and communities to achieve over the first decade of this century. One of its objectives: to reduce the number of teens under age 15 who are having sex for the first time. kitchen-furniturekitesurfingkniveslaboratory-equipmentlanternslaser-printers

"First and foremost, the report makes clear that the timing of sex education is quite important. That is, providing sex education to young people at an early age seems quite important in helping delay sexual activity," said Bill Albert, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The researchers said the study could not explain why sex education might have a stronger effect in delaying sex among teen boys and black girls, but Albert offered an explanation.

"It is the case that declines in sexual activity among teen boys, as opposed to girls, and African-American teen girls, as opposed to other racial/ethnic groups, have been much more dramatic over the past decade. This may, in part, explain why the effect of sex education seems stronger. It may also be that concern about HIV/AIDs may be particularly strong among these two groups," said Albert.

However, certain sub-populations of teens deserve further research, said Mueller. The data suggested that both rural, white teen girls and white or Hispanic teen girls who had dropped out of school might be more likely to have sex before age 15 if they had sex education, but Mueller said the number of people in those groups in the study was so small that the results could be a statistical fluke.

"They were kind of opposite findings," said Mueller, who acknowledged that "some subgroups may not benefit from sex ed the same way as the larger group of teens."

This research comes in the wake of data released Dec. 5 by the CDC showing that the annual rate of births to teens has increased for the first time in 14 years. Between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for girls 15 to 19 rose 3 percent -- from 40.5 births per 1,000 in 2005 to 41.9 per 1,000 in 2006.

Considering both studies, Albert said, "The early wins may have been won. Future efforts may well have to be more intense, focused, and creative if the nation is to make continued progress in reducing teen pregnancy and childbearing. Put another way, yesterday's way of doing business will no longer suffice."

More information

To find more data about teenagers and sexual decision-making, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 A man who gained national media attention by claiming he was not allowed to adopt a baby because of his weight was awarded temporary custody of the child, but the judge chided him and his wife, saying they knew the primary reason the boy had been removed from their home had nothing to do with obesity.

After their petition to adopt the baby, Max, was denied in July by another judge, the couple publicly said it had been because Gary Stocklaufer weighed 550 pounds at the time. The 35-year-old underwent gastric bypass surgery for free from a Dallas clinic in August after the publicity and has lost about 200 pounds.

"He seeks to extort a favorable result by his accusations," O'Malley said. "Fortunately, Missouri courts base decisions on the weight of the evidence, not the weight of the litigants."

The judge said he took the unusual step of making his order public because of the publicity surrounding the case. He likened the attention to a "parade that would embarrass P.T. Barnum."

O'Malley said the Stocklaufers took advantage of the confidentiality of court proceedings in adoption cases. "Knowing the other parties could not respond, Mr. Stocklaufer made his physical condition an ersatz issue," he said.

Under Missouri law, it is a felony to bring a child into the state for adoption without getting a court order first. The Stocklaufers failed to do that, O'Malley said, but the judge still agreed to award them temporary custody.

"In spite of their unlawful actions at the start of this process, they did care enough to step forward and are responsible for bringing (the baby) into the state and their home," O'Malley said. He added that the Stocklaufer home has a "loving, close environment."

Max, who has been cared for by a family in Missouri, is to be transferred to the Stocklaufers by Dec. 31.hubsjewelryjewelry-boxesjudaicakaraokekeychains

Cindy Stocklaufer, 34, would not comment on the judge's remarks.

"I'm very excited," Stocklaufer said by phone from her home in Independence. "We're very excited. We're just waiting for him to come home. That's all that matters."

She referred all other questions about the case to the couple's attorney, Gerald McGonagle.

McGonagle, who was not the Stocklaufers' attorney during the first hearing, agreed that the earlier ruling denying custody was "not totally" based on Gary Stocklaufer's weight. He added that the couple never intended to break the law.

McGonagle said Gary Stocklaufer had gone to the media "to bring attention to what he thought was an injustice."

"What I'm concerned about is that the court made what I think is the appropriate decision in the case," the lawyer said.

O'Malley's order is for statutory adoptive custody with a new hearing in six months to finalize the adoption, McGonagle said.

Angie Flores, director of patient relations for the Renaissance Hospital in Dallas, which performed Stocklaufer's surgery, said she is "ecstatic" for the Stocklaufers.

"Everything I saw had to do with his weight," Flores said. "I actually got to see the documents and how they talked about his weight." The documents she was referring to were from the guardian ad ltem in the case, not the court.

The Stocklaufers have been married 15 years and have an 8-year-old son they also adopted.

 Very obese people who need a kidney transplant are far less likely to get one than normal weight people, and when they do, their wait is an average of a year to 18 months longer, a new study found.

The study showed that morbidly obese patients — those who average about 100 pounds over their ideal weight — were 44 percent less likely to get a transplant than normal weight patients. Those just slightly less obese were 28 percent less likely to get a transplant, the researchers found.

The results also mean very obese patients are more likely to die; each year about 8 percent of all patients waiting for a transplant die.

The research was based on an analysis of records of 132,353 patients on the national kidney transplant waiting list between 1995 and 2006. The work was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Obesity can be a reason to exclude a potential transplant recipient because of the risk for complications.

However, once someone has been accepted for the waiting list, that patient is supposed to progress to the top as time passes, said Dr. Dorry Segev, the Johns Hopkins University transplant surgeon who led the study.

Segev said he did not believe doctors or transplant staff were consciously choosing slimmer candidates over obese patients. However, he said two factors may be combining to create the bias.

The main insurer for kidney transplants, Medicare, pays a fixed rate regardless of the difficulty of each case, meaning the transplant hospital bears the burden of added costs for complications. And transplant centers with lower survival rates risk losing Medicare funding.

"I don't think any of this is conscious," Segev said. "It would be hard to imagine any of us in our field would deliberately act against the welfare of our patients. That's not what we do, but there are all sorts of subconscious forces that are happening and there's clearly an unintended bias in practice."

Segev's group found the wait to get a transplant increased along with the patient's body mass index, a height-weight formula. Non-obese patients waited on average 39 months, the overweight waited 40 months, the obese waited 42 months, and the severely and morbidly obese, waited 51 and 59 months, respectively, the researchers found.

Transplant centers normally won't give an organ to a patient with a body mass index over 40, which is morbidly obese, said Dr. Benjamin Philosophe, head of transplantation division at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Such patients are at higher risk for a number of complications.

However, Philosophe said he and many doctors "will give them the benefit of the doubt that they will lose the weight and will put them on the list hoping that while they lose that weight they will accumulate waiting time."

Patients who fail to lose weight can be placed on inactive status, Philosophe said.

Also clouding the issue is the fact the database maintained by the United Network for Organ Sharing does not capture all details on patient condition, said Dr. Kenneth Andreoni of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, vice chairman of the UNOS kidney transplantation committee.

For example, whether a candidate has diabetes is simply a yes or no checkoff. The lack of more detail on diabetes and other conditions can make it difficult to draw conclusions, he said.

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The UNOS official noted that obese patients who never would have been referred for a transplant in the past are now put on the waiting list and rules changes have taken effect over the 11 years studied.

 what can we learn from this new?

A man who weighed 698 pounds died Friday of heart failure after undergoing an operation to remove 80 percent of his stomach in a desperate effort to reduce his weight.

"He had two heart attacks in 20 minutes, there was nothing we could have done for him," Sandigo said. He said Marroquin's heart and kidneys had begun failing even before the procedure.

Marroquin's family checked him in to the San Juan de Dios Hospital's obesity clinic for treatment after they were told that nothing more could be done for him at a local hospital in his home town of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, southwest of Guatemala City.

 The morbidly obese may not be the only people who should be eligible for bariatric surgery to lose weight, U.S. researchers report.

BMI is calculated based on height and weight. A healthy BMI ranges between 18.5 and 25. A person with a BMI of 40 -- for example, someone 5 feet 9 inches tall and 270 pounds -- is considered morbidly obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three adults is obese.

Bariatric surgery options include gastric bypass and lap band surgeries. Typically, a person must have a BMI of 40, or be at least 100 pounds over their healthy weight, to qualify for these surgeries. People who have a BMI greater than 35 and suffer from a life-threatening illness, such as non-insulin dependent diabetes, sleep apnea or heart disease, can also qualify.

However, researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas published data in the December issue of Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases suggesting that some otherwise healthy overweight people with a BMI lower than 40 may benefit. And they may benefit more from the surgery than people who are morbidly obese, the team added.

The study is gogglesgucciguitars among the first to evaluate the risk-factor relationship between BMI and cardiovascular disease as it relates to bariatric surgery criteria, said study author Dr. Edward Livingston, chairman of GI/endocrine surgery at UT Southwestern.

"Our results show that cardiovascular risk factors do not necessarily worsen with increasing obesity," Livingston said in a prepared statement. "They also support the concept that obesity, by itself, doesn't trigger an adverse cardiovascular risk profile or increased risk of death."

The research team analyzed health data from more than 17,200 adults who had a BMI greater than 20 and had participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination. The researchers assessed their heart disease risk factors with respect to their BMI. They found a subgroup of people whose BMIs were lower than 40 but who had significant heart disease risk factors.

This suggests that some patients who are obese but not morbidly obese could benefit from bariatric surgery, which can help reduce cardiovascular disease, said Livingston.

The research team theorized that some morbidly obese people may be more efficient than moderately overweight people at storing fat in their cells, so it does not have as great an effect on the cardiovascular system.

 Liza Minnelli collapsed on stage during a performance in Sweden and was rushed back to the United States for medical treatment, concert organizers said Thursday.

"As she walked down the steps, she passed out. She was taken immediately to her hotel where a doctor was waiting," Nedanovski told The Associated Press.

He said Minnelli was flown to the United States on Thursday on the advice of her doctors there.

"They decided together with her management that it's best for Liza to go to the U.S. right away," Nedanovski said, adding he did not know what her medical diagnosis was.

"She had felt a bit dizzy before she got up on stage," but decided to proceed with the show anyway, Nedanovski said.

Minnelli's spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg confirmed in a statement that the artist "had complained of dizziness" before the show and "became very ill after the show began."

"As a result, she was unable to finish her performance and was rushed back to her hotel by her manager," Rosenberg said.

She said a doctor examined Minnelli "and in consultation with her New York physician, determined that it would be necessary for the Oscar winning actress and singer to immediately return to New York City to receive further medical evaluation."

In a separate statement, released by concert organizer Svensk Nojesutveckling, Minnelli's manager Gary Labriola said: "We don't yet know what happened, we are all very worried."

Minnelli was performing alongside several Swedish artists in a show called "A Classic Christmas Night." It was the fourth and final show in a series of four concerts in Sweden, Rosenberg said.

Minnelli won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in the 1972 film "Cabaret." She won an Emmy for the 1972 TV special "Liza with a Z." She also won Tony Awards in 1974 and 1978.