Magnets Muted Pain in Limited Study

Magnets are the treatment du jour in alternative medicine. Amateur athletes wear wristbands containing magnets to reduce pain, and a variety of practitioners claim to have promoted healing and pain reduction using simple permanent magnets and powerful electromagnets.

The problem is that physiologists see no mechanism by which magnets can influence cellular activity or nerve conduction. Many magnets used for such purposes are not even powerful enough to penetrate beyond the skin.

And finally, the magnets have not been shown to work in clinical trials in which neither the patient nor the doctor knew which pad contained the magnet and which contained a placebo magnet, so-called double-blind clinical trials.

Many physicians were thus surprised to see a report in the January American Journal of Pain Management claiming that small magnets could reduce the severe pain of diabetic nephropathy, nerve damage produced as a side effect of diabetes.

In a double-blind trial, Dr. Michael I. Weintraub of the New York Medical College studied 19 patients with severe nephropathy or other painful problems in their feet. The patients received a pad with special low-intensity magnets for one foot and a placebo pad for the other and were told to wear them 24 hours a day, but not which was which.

By the end of four months, nine of the 10 patients with nephropathy reported a significant decrease in pain in the feet with the magnetic pads. Three of the nine with other problems also reported improvements.

Weintraub and critics, however, cautioned that the group was very small and that further studies need to be conducted. But Weintraub argued that physicians should begin using the magnets immediately.

Researchers Assess Lifetime Heart Risk

Massachusetts scientists have for the first time calculated the lifetime risk of developing heart disease for people in various age groups. In the past, researchers have generally calculated the risk only for short terms, such as one, five or 10 years.

The new data were based on the Framingham Heart Study, which enrolled 7,733 people, age 40 to 94 and with no known heart disease. That study has been in progress for half a century.

Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones and his colleagues reported in Saturday’s Lancet that the lifetime risk for a 40-year-old male of developing heart disease is 1 in 2. For women the same age, it is 1 in 3.

If people survived to age 70 without developing heart disease, however, their subsequent risk fell--to 1 in 3 for men and 1 in 4 for women. The researchers and critics cautioned, however, that the data were drawn from a selected group of almost exclusively white men in a single municipality. The results might not apply to other ethnic groups and other locales.

Artery Measurement May Indicate Later Ills

Ultrasound measurements of the thickness of the carotid arteries in the neck might be a good way to identify people at the highest risk of a heart attack or stroke, according to researchers from the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston. Dr. Daniel O’Leary and his colleagues performed ultrasound on 4,476 Medicare recipients with an average age of 72. None had a history of heart attacks, angina, bypass surgery, angioplasty or stroke.

The team reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine that after six years, the 20% of the patients with the thickest carotid artery walls had three times the risk of heart problems or stroke as did the 20% with the thinnest artery walls, even after other risk factors such as high cholesterol, diabetes and smoking were taken into account.

Ultrasound measurements cost about $250, however, and it is unlikely that they will be used for widespread screening, critics said. But they could be used, for example, to determine how aggressively physicians should treat a patient with only one risk factor for heart disease, such as high cholesterol.

In Small Quantities, Alcohol Has Benefits

From the “A little bit is good, but more is not better” file:

A new report from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons finds that consuming one or two alcoholic drinks a day reduces the risk of ischemic strokes by 45%. Ischemic strokes occur when a clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain, impairing the ability of brain cells to receive food and oxygen.

But the team also reported in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Assn. that people who consume seven or more drinks a day have triple the normal risk of stroke.

The protective effect was observed for both sexes, all ages and all ethnic groups. The researchers also found that people who reduced their high consumption reduced their risk.

Inhaled Drug May Help Cystic Fibrosis Patients

An inhaled antibiotic may be more effective than intravenous forms in fighting bacterial infections in patients with cystic fibrosis, a new study shows. Such patients suffer repeated lung infections because the mucus in their lungs is not able to clear away invading bacteria. One of the most common lung infections among patients with the disease, which affects one in every 2,000 U.S. babies, is Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Normally, cystic fibrosis patients with such infections are given intravenous antibiotics for seven to 21 days. Even so, the patients generally lose about 2% of their lung capacity each year until they die from the disease.

Dr. Bonnie Ramsey and her colleagues at the University of Washington School of Medicine studied 520 cystic fibrosis patients for 24 weeks. Half were given inhalable formulations of the antibiotic tobramycin and half were given placebos. The team reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine that those who received the drug had an average 10% increase in lung capacity over the 24 weeks, while those receiving the placebo had a 2% decline. Side effects were minimal.