Recent strides in allergy treatment aim to get severe allergy sufferers up and moving with new pill and liquid (oral drop) treatments. If approved, these allergy drugs could work more effectively than and eventually replace traditional allergy shots.

Allergies and hay fever can cause allergy sufferers serious discomfort. In addition to a runny nose and nasal congestion, hay fever can cause sinus pressure, itchy eyes and dark circles under the eyes called allergic shiners. Severe hay fever also can cause sleep issues and sinus infections (sinusitis), and may worsen asthma problems.

Some allergy sufferers rely on injections to address these severe symptoms, especially in the spring and fall when allergies and hay fever peak. Shots are given frequently—as often as twice weekly to twice monthly—for several years to build a tolerance to allergens. This therapy is now available orally in pill or drop form, known as sublingual immunotherapy.

Immunotherapy can cut symptoms by 20-30 percent, slightly higher than the use of nasal sprays (17 percent) and daily antihistamines (12-15 percent). Although immunotherapy drops and tablets have not yet made their way to the United States, they are already being used in Europe. Researchers are still investigating the long-term effectiveness of sublingual immunotherapy. One such investigation appears in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

In the meantime, you can learn more about allergy shots and how to manage allergies and hay fever from the Mayo Clinic website.

You could be getting more than you bargained for in your daily vitamin. According to a story in Consumer Reports, many of America's dietary supplements are also packing carcinogens and kidney- and heart-damaging contaminants.

This information comes from an article in the September issue of Consumer Reports. The article lists 12 different supplemental ingredients associated with negative health consequences. These include bitter orange (an ephedra-like supplement associated with heart attack and stroke), germanium, coltsfoot and colloidal silver, which has been marketed as an immune system booster but is known to cause argyria and kidney damage.

Wonder how these vitamins managed to slip past the FDA? Guidelines for vitamins and supplements differ greatly from those for food and traditional drugs. Supplement manufacturers are responsible for clearing the safety of their products and providing information, but many companies aren’t even required to register products or gain approval. The FDA can’t take action until the product goes to market.

“Supplements are marketed with very seductive and sometimes overblown sales pitches,” Nancy Metcalf, senior program editor for Consumer Reports, said in a news release. “Consumers are easily lulled into believing that supplements can do no harm because they’re ‘natural’.”

Metcalf also noted that not all natural ingredients are safe. “The FDA has repeatedly found hazardous ingredients, including synthetic prescription drugs,” she added.

The guidelines for supplements are flawed, but legislators have been moving slowly to boost the FDA’s oversight. Until then, Consumer Reports urges consumers to take responsibility in educating themselves on the health effects of their vitamins.

Get the full scoop at ConsumerReports.org or get vitamin information from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Improper child safety seat use is one of the top causes for child disability and death. Although statistics indicate that seven in 10 car seats are used or installed incorrectly, most parents are unaware.

The good news is proper installation doesn't have to be cause for distress. Begin with the basics—make sure all straps are secure and fastened, however size is important, too. Here's what you need to know:

INFANTS

From birth to age 1, children should remain in rear-facing safety seats. Rear-facing seats provide greater protection against back or spinal cord injury in case of a frontal crash. A child who is at least 1 year of age may graduate to a forward-facing seat at 20 pounds, but experts recommend waiting as long as 30 or 35 pounds.

TODDLERS&PRE-SCHOOLERS

When children graduate to the forward-facing seat, usually at age 1-4 or when they weigh 20-40 pounds, the preferred model of safety seat for toddlers is the convertible or the combination seat. These seats protect taller, heavier children who have outgrown their booster seats but are too small for an adult or booster seat.

CHILDREN

The final stage of safety seat before the lone seatbelt is the booster seat. Booster seats are great for children between the ages of 4 and 8, and who weigh between 40 and 80 pounds. Booster seats help seatbelts fit appropriately—straps should cross over the chest, and the lap belt should lay over the upper thighs.

LATCH

In any case, remember to use your car’s LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) feature. This federally mandated safety feature is found in most cars manufactured after September 2002. The system makes proper installation easier with “child-size” safety seat straps and anchor attachments that can help prevent seatbelt strangulation.

When in doubt, refer to the user’s manual or consult a professional to check the safety of your car seat. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will locate the inspector nearest you.

Visit the NHTSA site for safety seat guidelines, and don’t forget about Child Passenger Safety Week in September.

Ladies, stand up for yourselves in the doctor's office. Millions of people are misdiagnosed each year, and many of these cases are women. Women who are less likely to speak up may put themselves at risk in an already overwhelmed clinic.

If there’s a bug going around the office and you wake up with some of the same symptoms, you’ll likely assume you’ve got it, too. Most doctors think the same way. If he or she sees three people with colds in one day, it would be an easy guess that the next person with a stuffy nose and fever has the same thing.

The problem is that a lot of conditions share symptoms, and it can be misleading if not all the symptoms show up. This makes it easy to make a misdiagnosis—as many as one in five diagnoses are incorrect or go undiagnosed.

For women, the most commonly misdiagnosed conditions include ovarian cancer, autoimmune disease and hormonal imbalances. Heart disease, for example, is more common in men. When women experience the same symptoms, especially young women, a doctor may consider stress to be the cause instead.

The best way to avoid a misdiagnosis is to share all of your symptoms. Seeing the same doctor doesn’t hurt, either. When you and your doctor know your history and get the full story, it’s harder to miss the little details that make a big difference. Finally, don’t be afraid to do some research before your appointment and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

If you don’t stand up for your health, no one will. Get the full scoop from MSNBC.

Proper medication disposal can keep you and those around you safe. That's why it's important to keep track of expired medicines and to dispose of them properly.

Proper drug disposal can help protect against reactions from expired medications, accidental ingestion (i.e., by children), and potential prescription drug abuse by others. It can also protect the environment by ensuring cleaner water sources. We've compiled a list of tips to help you practice drug safety:

• Color-code drug packages/bottles with different-colored stickers according to expiration date (i.e., by season or month). Writing a larger, more visible expiration date on the package with a permanent marker may also help.
• Don’t flush expired drugs down the toilet. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has specific guidelines on what can and cannot be flushed. Flushing drugs can cause pollution to human water supplies and danger to natural aquatic habitats.
• The Office of National Drug Control Policy suggests crushing pills, if possible, and mixing them with sand, coffee grounds, gravel, etc., before returning them to the bottle and throwing away. This ensures that no one will try to use the substance. Always make sure labels with personal information have been removed. Then, simply throw the container in the trash.
• Some communities have drug take-back programs. These programs are organized specifically to safely dispose of prescription drugs and other potentially dangerous household wastes. Talk with your pharmacist about other options to properly dispose of over-the-counter and prescription medications if your community does not offer a drug return program.           

For more on proper medication disposal, visit the FDA’s site for the Department of Health&Human Services.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pushing meat producers to cut the amount of antibiotics given to animals. The concern is that these antibiotics could lead to resistant strains of bacteria that could infect consumers.

Antibiotics have long been used in livestock care. In addition to treating sick animals, antibiotics are used to prevent the spread of disease and further promote healthier, and generally larger, produce. This practice is used to produce more food, which is why some are reluctant to restrict the amount of antibiotics that can be used to raise animals.

“As we know, healthy animals produce safe food,” Sam Carney, president of the National Pork Producers Council, told MSNBC. “We need every available tool to protect animal health.”

Current guidelines allow meat producers to use antibiotics therapeutically (for illness) or sub-therapeutically (for prevention). Certain groups, such as Keep Antibiotics Working, maintain that the overuse of antibiotics leads to hardier, more resistant bacteria—such as salmonella and C. and E. coli—that can be transmitted to humans.

The FDA acknowledges that minimizing antibiotic resistance is “critically important for protecting both public and animal health.” In response, it is encouraging producers to limit the amount of sub-therapeutic antibiotics administered to livestock and poultry.

Read more from MSNBC, or learn more about antibiotic use in animals.

A new liver transplant method adds a new facet to the term "going green". The method of re-seeding liver cells, essentially a form of bio-re-hauling, may become a promising option for patients in need of liver transplants.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Engineering cleared live cells from liver tissue to leave a framework. They “re-seeded” healthy liver tissue into the framework, where tissues eventually regenerated.

The goal is for the tissue to attach to host tissues, where it would take root and redevelop unhealthy tissue. Although experimentation is in its early stages, the method was successful in laboratory rats.

“As far as we know, a transplantable liver graft has never been constructed in a laboratory setting before,” lead researcher Dr. Korkut Uygun told BBC News.

If it proved effective in humans, it could be a realistic answer to the donor organ shortage. Roughly 15,000 people are in need of a new liver each year, while the actual number available is a mere 4,500. This method could help make previously rejected organs acceptable for transplant.

“We haven’t been able to go beyond several hours in the rats,” Uygun says, “but it’s a great start.”

Want to know more? See Uygun’s article in Nature Medicine.

 

There may be a new prevention method within reach for women at risk for developing breast cancer. The answer lies in a vaccine designed to stop the formation of tumors. The vaccine, developed by doctors from the Cleveland Clinic, has been successful in some animals.

Breast cancer forms in the mammary glands and/or ducts. Tissues in these areas grow and multiply at unregulated rates, forming tumors. The body recognizes these tumors as healthy tissues and will not destroy them as it would a virus. According to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, it could take as long as 10 years before a tumor is large enough to detect.

Most current efforts to treat breast cancer focus on how to destroy or stop the growth of already-present cancer cells using tumor antigens. The problem is that these methods essentially kill the tissues. It can also compromise the autoimmune systems of already vulnerable cancer patients. The Cleveland Clinic's vaccine takes a new approach: It’s designed to stop tumors before they’ve had a chance to develop.

Lead researcher Dr. Vincent Tuohy observed mice predisposed to breast cancer for 10 months. The vaccine targeted alpha lactalbumin, a specific protein found in most breast cancer cells. Half of the mice were given the vaccine, while the other half acted as a control group. At the end of the trial, none of the vaccinated mice had developed breast cancer. All of unvaccinated mice had.

"We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines prevent polio and measles in children," Tuohy said in a Cleveland Clinic press release. "If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer."

Although there is still much more to investigate before the vaccine is ready for human trials, the research team hopes to be able to administer the vaccine to women older than 40 and women at high risk in the next 10 years.

Visit the Cleveland Clinic’s website to read the press release, or visit Nature Medicine to read the study’s abstract.

Summer is here, which means it will soon be time to hit the beach. Every beachgoer knows the importance of sun block, but are all sunscreens the same? Your sunscreen may protect against sunburn, but not all sunscreens provide equal protection from the UVA rays that cause skin to age.

Comparing Apples to Oranges: UVA&UVB Rays

According to The Skin Cancer Foundation, long-wave UVA rays make up about 95 percent of the UV rays that hit Earth. These rays aren’t as intense, but there are 30-50 times more of them, and they’re present year-round in all daylight conditions. UVA rays have deeper penetration, too, and can cause wrinkles, aging, and skin cancer.

Although the effects of UVB rays are more superficial, they can cause serious damage to the epidermis. These rays are responsible for skin reddening and those nasty sunburns you get at the beach. UVB damage is more visible, and can also lead to skin cancer.

SPF: Get to Know Your Sunscreen

“For sunscreen to be really effective in preventing skin cancer, it has to provide broad-spectrum coverage,” Dr. Henry Lim, chairman of dermatology at Henry Ford Hospital, told MSNBC. “The U.S. is the only country with no guidelines for UVA protection, so consumers here have no way of knowing.”

One common misconception about a sunblock’s sun protection factor (SPF) is that the numbers—15, 30, and clear up to 100—indicate the level of protection. In actuality, it represents the amount of time a person can be exposed before the skin starts to redden. Dr. James Spencer, a St. Petersburg, Florida, dermatologist explains:

“SPF is very misleading,” he told MSNBC. “If I were a logical consumer, I would think that SPF 30 is twice as good as SPF 15. But SPF 15 blocks 94 percent of UVB rays. SPF 30 blocks 97 percent. Past 30, there isn’t much additional benefit to be had.”

Where to go from here:

The best thing you can do for your skin is to protect against both UVA and UVB rays.   Seek shade during peek daylight hours (10 am to 2 pm), wear clothing that will cover or protect the skin, and find a sunscreen that has ingredients that protect against both UVA and UVB rays. These ingredients include dioxybenzone, ecamsule, oxybenzone, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.

Read more about UV rays at MSNBC.com, or contact the FDA about establishing guidelines for UVA protection.

Magnets may be a treatment option for people with depression who don't respond to antidepressants. In a small study by the Medical University of South Carolina, 14 percent of individuals who underwent magnetic therapy reported no symptoms of depression.

Dr. Mark George and colleagues from the Medical University of South Carolina recruited 190 adults to participate in the study. Participants had been depressed anywhere from 3 months to 5 years, and all had been unresponsive to treatment with antidepressants.

Half of the participants received a simulated placebo treatment, while the other half were treated using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a form of magnetic therapy in which electric pulses are used to stimulate the brain. TMS is currently being used treat depression, as well as chronic pain, migraines and Parkinson’s disease.

After three weeks, 13 of the 92 patients (14 percent) who underwent TMS treatment reported no depressive symptoms, compared to 5 percent of people in the simulation.

"This study should help settle the debate about whether rTMS works for depression," said George, who led the research team. "We can now follow up clues suggesting ways to improve its effectiveness, and hopefully further develop a potential new class of stimulation treatments for other brain disorders."

Remission more than doubled in another similar study in which all participants underwent TMS. Although these results may seem meager, this could spell relief for many of the 17.5 million Americans who suffer from depression. Further studies will provide more concrete information on the long-term effects of TMS.

“We have settled a fundamental question about (TMS) therapy, which is: ‘Does it work?’” George told Health Day. “The answer,” he said, “ is ‘yes’.”

Learn more about the results of this study from the National Institute of Health, or visit the Archives of General Psychiatry to view the study’s abstract.