SWEET NEWS Do raisins stick to your teeth? That’s OK — they may also be preventing bacteria from sticking. That’s the suggestion of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry. Despite raisins’

sugary taste and sticky feel, they contain phytochemicals — natural antioxidants found in plants — that could help fight cavities and gum disease.
“Foods that are sticky do not necessarily cause tooth Jecay,” explains Christine Wu, PhD, who led the study. “It is mainly the added sugar that contributes to the problem.” The scientists — whose
•esearch was funded by the california Raisin Marketing Board — identified five phytochemicals in raisins withoral-health-promoting
properties.

Wu and colleagues did not, riuwever, show that people who eat raisins actually have healthier mouths.

Women with type 2 diabetes have a 26 percent increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation, a potentially life-threatening irregular heartbeat, new findings suggest.

The overall incidence of atrial fibrillation was 3.6 percent among people with type 2 diabetes, while the rate for people without the metabolic condition was only 2.5 percent, according to the study, which will be published in the October issue of Diabetes Care.

“We found that people with diabetes have about a 44 percent higher prevalence of atrial fibrillation,” said study author Gregory Nichols, an investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. “When we stratified the data by sex, the association was still elevated for men — but not statistically significant — but for women, it was still statistically significant.”

The researchers were not able to tease out from the data in this study why women with diabetes might have a higher rate of atrial fibrillation. The authors theorize that diabetes may affect the cardiac autonomic nerves in much the same way the disease damages peripheral nerves and causes a condition known as peripheral neuropathy.

Not everyone is convinced that cardiac neuropathy is to blame, however. “In people with diabetes, the cluster of other cardiac risk factors, like obesity and hypertension, increases the risk of atrial fibrillation,” said Dr. Howard Weintraub, clinical director of the Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

Diabetes is a known risk factor for heart disease. As many as 65 percent of people with diabetes will die from heart disease and stroke, according to the American Diabetes Association. Death rates from heart disease are up to four times higher for people with diabetes when compared to people without diabetes.

The current study culled data from more than 10,000 members of an HMO diabetes registry who had type 2 diabetes, and then matched them by age and sex to more than 7,000 people without diabetes. The study period was January 1999 through December 2008.

Over an average follow-up time of about seven years, people with type 2 diabetes developed 9.1 cases of atrial fibrillation per 1,000 person-years, according to the study. During the same period, there were 6.6 cases (per 1,000 person-years) of atrial fibrillation in people without diabetes.

When the researchers adjusted the data to account for other factors, such as obesity and high blood pressure, they found that the increased risk of atrial fibrillation in people with type 2 diabetes only remained for women.

Nichols said that this information is important for doctors to know because they might not always look for atrial fibrillation in women.

But, he added, in this study, “among women, diabetes was a stronger predictor of atrial fibrillation than obesity and elevated blood pressure.”

Weintraub pointed out that this study didn’t include comparisons of echocardiograms (an imaging test of the heart), which would have allowed researchers to assess heart health at the start of the study, and ensure that no one with preexisting, but undiagnosed, heart disease was included. Additionally, the researchers didn’t look to see if blood sugar control made a difference in the rates of atrial fibrillation.

“Diabetes is a metabolic disorder in which heart disease risk factors cluster,” said Weintraub. He added that one important take-away message from this study is to try to aggressively control your weight and blood pressure levels, particularly if you have diabetes, because it increases your risk of atrial fibrillation and other forms of heart disease.

http://www.diabetes.org/type-1-diabetes/well-being/taking-care-heart.jsp

Dentists can now size up the mineral content of tooth enamel non-invasively with the help of laser-generated ultrasound, says a new study.
This is the first time anyone has employed such a tool to find the elasticity of our teeth, besides assessing dental health and predict tooth decay and cavities. Enamel goes through a cycle of mineral loss and restoration, through a lifetime, in which healthy teeth maintain a high mineral content.
If the balance between mineral loss and gain is lost, however, teeth can develop areas of softened enamel — known as carious lesions — which are precursors to cavities and permanently damaged teeth.
“The ultimate goal is to come up with a quick, efficient, cost-effective, and non-destructive way to evaluate the mineralisation of human dental enamel,” says study co-author David Hsiao-Chuan Wang, graduate student at the University of Sydney (U-S).
Wang and his adviser Simon Fleming, physics professor at the U-S Institute of Photonics and Optical Science, worked on the study with U-S dental researchers and ultrasonic researchers from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.
Stronger than bone, enamel is the hardest and the most mineralised substance of the human body — one of the reasons why human teeth can survive for centuries after a person has died. It envelops teeth in a protective layer that shields the underlying dentin from decay, said an U-S release.
Enamel demineralisation is caused by bad oral hygiene. Not brushing, for instance, can lead to the build-up of dental plaques, and bacteria in these plaques will absorb sugars and other carbohydrates a person chews and produce acids that will dissolve the minerals in tooth enamel.

Tooth implant restores blind man’s sight

In a rare surgical feat, doctors in Britain have successfully restored the sight of a blind man by transplanting his tooth into his eye.

A team, led by Dr Christopher Lui of the Sussex Eye Hospital, carried out the rare procedure on the 42-year-old Mr Martin Jones who was blinded for 12 years after a tub of hot aluminium had exploded in his face as he worked in a scrapyard.

The procedure began when one of Mr Jones’ canine teeth was removed and converted into a holder for a special optical lens by drilling a hole in it. The tooth was then inserted into his cheek for three months to enable it to grow absolute new tissue and blood vessels. Then finally came the delicate operation to insert the tooth, complete with the fitted lens into Mr Jones’ right eyeball. And, within two weeks of the operation to implant the tooth in his eyeball his sight returned, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

“I met my wife when I was blind and when I found out there was a chance I would get my sight back the first person I wanted to see was her. The doctors took the bandages off and it was like looking through water and then I saw this figure and it was her. She’s wonderful and lovely. It was unbelievable to see her for the first time,” Mr Jones was quoted as saying.

“When I first heard about the technique I couldn’t believe it. (Now) I feel fantastic getting my sight back. I can’t really describe it, it’s beyond words. I was blind for 12 years and when my sight came back everything had changed,” he said.