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 Children with allergies are being bullied with the very food they're allergic to, a survey has found. Following a survey of 353 teens, young adults and parents/caregivers of children with food allergies, researchers at the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, found that one in four children is bullied, teased, or harassed because of a food allergy, with 57% of those bullied reported being touched or harassed by the actual food allergen. Reported incidents included food being thrown at children with allergies and, in one particularly upsetting case, peanut butter was smeared on the forehead of a boy with a known peanut allergy. Fortunately, none of the children in the study suffered an allergic reaction as a result of bullying or harassment, but the disturbing trend reinforces the importance of wearing discreet Medical ID (like the one pictured, which could easily pass as a watch). Food allergies affect an estimated 12 million Americans, including 3 million children.
 The largest ever genetic study into asthma has discovered that allergies do not cause the condition.
Childhood asthma is often linked to allergic reactions but the international study of 26,000 volunteers found genes that cause allergies had little effect on the presence of the disease.
The causes of the disease are poorly understood, but genetic and environmental factors are thought to play roughly equal roles.
Prof Miriam Moffatt of Imperial College London, one of the study's leaders, told Medical ID wearers: "We now know allergies may develop as a result of defects of the lining of the airways in asthma. This does not mean allergies are not important, but it does mean that concentrating therapies only on allergy will not effectively treat the whole disease."
Scientists identified seven genes with roles in the disease which means they can now concentrate on them to provide better treatment. One in seven children in the UK suffers from asthma, which causes the airways to become irritated and narrow, making it harder for them to breathe.
 Experts estimate that more than a million British women are living with heart disease, with huge numbers unaware they have a problem.
Many women ignore risk factors and signs of coronary problems, believing they are more at risk from breast tumours. But heart disease affects 100,000 women a year and kills more than all cancers put together. Now, the British Heart Foundation has launched a campaign to highlight the problem.
BHF's senior cardiac nurse June Davison told Medical ID wearers: "Too many women think heart disease only affects overweight, middle-aged men. But this isn't the case. It is largely preventable and there are many things women can do to reduce their risk, but many are dying needlessly because they aren't aware of their risk factors. It's vital women know what the risk factors are from a young age so they can take positive steps to protect their heart health."
The BHF said quitting smoking, exercise, a balanced diet and cutting down on alcohol are some of the ways to prevent coronary disease.
 A brain scanner designed to look like a space-rocket will soon allow UK doctors to examine the brains of toddlers as they play. A unique feature of the machine is that a child does not have to keep completely still while the scan takes place, making it possible for the first time to carry out accurate surgery on two-year-olds suffering recurrent epileptic fits. The £2 million paediatric magnetoencephalogram (MEG) device being built by British scientists and engineers is the first of its kind in Europe. It is due to be installed in around 18 months at a brain unit opening next year at Aston University in Birmingham. Professor Paul Furlong, leading the design team, told Medical ID wearers: "It will be fun for children to sit in it. You can let them play their favourite video games but at the same time as they're moving the joystick you can assess their motor and visual function." The scanner could also lead to more accurate ways of diagnosing behavioural problems such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
 Eating your greens may help to prevent breast cancer, researchers have found.
Volunteers who ate 80 grams of watercress per day regularly were noticed to have significant health benefits, according to the pilot study, which will be of interest to Medical ID wearers.
Just a single portion of watercress is enough to increase the number of cancer-fighting molecules in the bloodstream within hours and could prevent the condition from developing, researchers at the University of Southampton claimed. Watercress could also prevent the recurrence of the disease in recovering breast cancer sufferers, researchers said.
In 2007, there were 45,972 new cases of breast cancer diagnosed in the UK, according to Cancer Research UK. Last week figures showed that breast cancer survival rates in Britain have increased almost ten per cent in a decade.
Between 1995 and 2006 the proportion of women who lived for at least five more years after being diagnosed increased from 73.4 per cent to 81.3 per cent in England.
 If you struggle to get a good night's sleep, you may be putting yourself a risk of diabetes, a new study has found.
Researchers from the University of Warwick found people who slept for less than six hours a night were three times more likely to develop a condition which leads to diabetes and heart disease than those who enjoyed six to eight hours' rest.
Looking at six years of data from 1,455 participants in the US, the British team, working with the State University of New York, discovered a shorter period in bed was associated with an increased risk of a pre-diabetic condition known as incident-impaired fasting glycaemia (IFG).
People with IFG are unable to regulate glucose as efficiently as they should, making them more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes - where the body does not produce enough insulin.
Lead author Dr Saverio Stranges told Medical ID wearers: "More research is needed but our study does suggest a very strong correlation between lack of sleep and type 2 diabetes and heart disease."
 A new experimental treatment may hold the key to a cure for food allergies. Researchers at Duke University Medical Centre in the US have been testing the treatment, called 'oral immunotherapy,' which uses peanuts to build up tolerance. Starting out with a minute dose of peanut powder - the equivalent of 1/1000th of a peanut - study participants eat it with food on a daily basis. "They build up to a higher dose and that goes on for about 6 to 8 months and then at a certain point their immune system begins to change so that they're no longer having reactions," said Dr Wesley Burks. In one study, 75% of children with peanut allergies who ate increasing amounts of peanut protein daily for 3 to 5 years can now eat unlimited amounts of peanuts. In a separate year-long study, 16 children on treatment could tolerate 15 peanuts before developing symptoms - providing a potentially lifesaving buffer of protection. Researchers say this type of therapy goes beyond peanuts: the same approach is currently being tested for allergies to milk and eggs. While the results are encouraging, there are no guarantees the allergy is gone for good. "We don't know long term if it really will make it go away. And that's where the studies are really concentrated on right now," Burks told Medical ID wearers. And while this concept sounds simple enough, experts warn it should not be tried at home.
 The World Health Organization says tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death globally, killing more than 5 million people each year from heart disease, cancer and lung disease.
But US research has found that the diabetes drug metformin may hold promise as a way to keep smokers from developing lung cancer.
A team led by Dr. Philip Dennis of the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, said metformin prevented lung tumor growth in mice exposed to a cancer-causing agent found in tobacco smoke, and because it is already widely used in people, it may be worth further study.
Other studies have shown that metformin can cut diabetics' risk of pancreatic and breast cancers, and the latest findings were so strong the team now wants to test it in smokers to see if it can keep then from developing tumors.
"Although smoking cessation is the most important step for current smokers, over half of lung cancer cases are diagnosed in former smokers, raising the importance of identifying those at highest risk and identifying effective preventive treatments," Dennis, whose findings were published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, told Medical ID wearers.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 20 percent of U.S. adults smoke. Tobacco kills one-third to one-half of those who smoke.
 New research suggests that mothers who breastfeed their children for at least one month are less likely to develop type 2 diabetes later in life than those who have never nursed. The findings, published in the September issue of the American Journal of Medicine, confirm results of earlier studies suggesting a link between breast-feeding and diabetes. But unlike the other studies, which looked at longer durations of breast-feeding, the new study indicates that nursing for as little as one month can make a difference. The study included more than 2,200 women between the ages of 40 and 78. Of those, 56 percent had ever breastfed. Researchers found that women who breastfed all of their children for at least one month developed diabetes at about the same rate as women who had never given birth. But mothers who had never breastfed were almost twice as likely to develop diabetes. The link was there even after controlling for factors such as family history of diabetes, body mass index and level of physical activity. Lead author Dr. Eleanor Bimla Schwarz of the University of Pittsburgh told Medical ID wearers that the association appears to be related to belly fat. "Our study found that moms who hadn't breastfed had significantly larger waist circumferences," she said. "Prior work has shown that the bigger your waist, the higher your risk of diabetes."
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