Father Admits Killing Autistic Son / Depression & Autoimmune / Fen-Phen

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Father Admits Killing Autistic Son / Depression & Autoimmune / Fen-Phen

Tuesday, November 23, 1999

[by Pete Brush, an APBnews.com national correspondent.]

RED BANK, N.J. -- A man characterized as a dedicated father was

charged with murder after allegedly stabbing his adult autistic son through

the heart with a kitchen knife, prosecutors said.

ph Cummings Sr., 72, was alone with his son -- who had

recently suffered a stroke -- in a nursing home room Tuesday morning when

the attack occurred, Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutor Honecker

said today.

Honecker said the father told the nursing home staff what he had done,

then waited for police to arrest him, authorities said.

ph Cummings Jr., 46, was pronounced dead just before noon at

the Avante at Red Bank, a local nursing home, Honecker said. The autistic

man had been moved to the full-time care facility about two weeks after

suffering a debilitating stroke on Aug. 10.

Before his stroke, the victim was active in rehabilitative care in

Monmouth County for his autism, Honecker said.

" As a result of the stroke, he needed full-time medical care, "

Honecker said.

Cummings was charged with murder and is being held in the Monmouth

County Correctional Institution on $250,000 bail.

" We're continuing to investigate the motive in this case, " Honecker

said.

Ellen Scano, the administrator of the 180-bed nursing home, said the

incident came as a complete shock. She characterized the victim's family as

loving and devoted.

* * *

Lactobacillus GG Prevents Antibiotic Diarrhea In Kids

Reuters Health - Lactobacillus GG coadministered with antibiotics to

children treated for minor bacterial infections reduces the incidence and

duration of diarrhea.

Lactobacillus GG, unlike other potential probiotics, survives in

gastric acid and bile secretions, colonizes the gastrointestinal tract, and

binds to intestinal epithelium, the authors explain.

Dr. Jon A. Vanderhoof from the University of Nebraska in Omaha,

Nebraska and colleagues gave 1 or 2 capsules containing 10 billion

colony-forming units of Lactobacillus GG (LGG) or placebo to 188 children

during each day of a 10-day course of broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy for

minor infections.

Using the diarrhea definition of at least 2 liquid stools daily on at

least 2 separate days, " ...25 (26%) patients who received placebo but only 7

(8%) who received LGG had diarrhea during antibiotic administration, " the

authors report in the November Journal of Pediatrics.

The average course of diarrhea was shorter among LGG patients (4.70

days) than among placebo patients (5.88 days), the results indicate.

Apart from diarrhea, changes in stool consistency were more common in

the placebo group than in the LGG group, the researchers write. By day 10 of

therapy, stool consistency among placebo patients was significantly less

than that among LGG patients.

" There were no failures resulting from untoward effects of either LGG

or placebo, " Dr. Vanderhoof and colleagues say.

" Twenty to 40% of all children receiving broad-spectrum antibiotics

have diarrhea, " the authors write. " This diarrhea is often merely a nuisance

and rarely causes dehydration. However, it can occasionally result in

hospitalization, markedly increasing the cost of antimicrobial therapy. "

Using LGG to reduce the incidence and duration of

antibiotic-associated diarrhea in children could, therefore, reduce both

morbidity and its direct and indirect costs, the investigators conclude.

" I would use Lactobacillus GG in any child who previously experienced

antibiotic-associated diarrhea, as well as in children taking antibiotics

associated with a high incidence of diarrhea, like amoxicillin, " said Dr.

Vanderhoof in an interview with Reuters Health.

" Used in such susceptible children, " Dr. Vanderhoof said,

" lactobacillus GG can reduce the risk of diarrhea by 75% for only about 50

cents a day. "

J Pediatr 1999;135:564-568,535-537.

* * *

Depression Alters Immune Systems By Decreasing Physical Activity

Women with mild to moderately severe depression show alterations in

their immune systems, according to researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University

and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

" We also found that depression was associated with greater tobacco and

caffeine consumption, less physical activity, and poorer sleep quality, "

said E. , PhD, lead author of the study.

The researchers believe they have found a brain-behavior connection

that links the altered immune response of mildly to severely depressed women

outpatients to their typically low level of physical activity. From 42 to 63

percent of the differences in specific immune functions between depressed

and non-depressed study participants was related to physical activity, the

researchers found. They used the participants' production of lymphocytes

under stimulation by mitogens to measure the impact of various

depression-related factors on their immune function.

The study, appearing in the November/December issue of Psychosomatic

Medicine, presents the first published data to identify a behavior that

might be responsible for the immune system alterations that occur in

depressed women, the researchers pointed out.

These new findings have potentially wide future impact because the

observed immune differences between depressed and non-depressed women could

help to explain the higher rates of sickness and death observed repeatedly

among depressed individuals, the scientists said.

The Pittsburgh scientists worked with 32 non-hospitalized clinically

depressed women and 32 healthy non-depressed women matched as controls.

and colleagues Sheldon Cohen, PhD and B. Herbert, PhD,

investigated a broad spectrum of both endocrine and health practice pathways

through which depression might influence immune function.

The possibility that depression might influence immune function through

the neuroendocrine system was tested by measuring participants' levels of

hormones such as norepinephrine, cortisol, estradiol, epinephrine, and

progesterone. Researchers found, however, that hormone levels did not

account for differences in immune response between the groups of depressed

and non-depressed women.

The health practices assessed by the researchers were those often

associated with depression: alcohol, tobacco and caffeine use, nutrition,

and sleep quality and efficiency -- as well as physical activity. While a

variety of the health practices were associated with immune system

processes, physical activity was the only one to explain why depressed women

had immune alterations compared with the control group.

" An important next step of this research is to determine whether

interventions aimed at increasing physical activity can buffer people from

the immunologic changes associated with depression, " said .

###

Support for the study was provided by the National Institute of Mental

Health and the National Institutes of Health.

* * *

Fen-Phen Not so Bad

[Fenfluramine, in addition to being used for weight loss, was also

used experimentally with autism. From The Medical Tribune.]

New evidence supports the contention that the weight-loss drug

dexfenfluramine - the " fen " of the once-popular " fen-phen " combination -

does cause heart-valve damage.

However, a new study shows that the damage is relatively mild and that

it may be at least partially reversible by just discontinuing treatment.

Links between dexfenfluramine and heart-valve damage led to the drug being

removed from the market.

Researchers led by Dr. Bruce K. Shively, an associate professor of

medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, studied the

echocardiograms - images of the heart and major blood vessels - of 223

patients who had been taking dexfenfluramine for an average of seven months.

The echocardiograms were taken an average of 8.5 months after drug treatment

had been discontinued. The echocardiograms were then compared to those of

189 patients who had not received treatment with dexfenfluramine.

Results showed that 7.6 percent of the patients who took

dexfenfluramine had mild aortic valve disease or moderate mitral valve

problems, compared to 2.1 percent of participants who did not take the

weight-loss drug.

The study is published in the November issue of Circulation

http://www.circulationaha.org ).

" The results show that dexfenfluramine - and probably fen-phen -

doesn't cause nearly the frequency and severity of heart-valve problems that

were initially feared, " Shively said. " It's quite a different picture than

the earlier reports suggested. "

The researchers also found that the heart-valve damage may not be

permanent. Heart-valve problems were detected at twice the rate among

patients who stopped treatment with dexfenfluramine less than eight months

before their echocardiogram, compared to those who had been off the

medication for longer than eight months. This led the researchers to

conclude that the longer a patient is off the drug therapy, the more the

heart-valve damage will regress.

Dexfenfluramine (Redux) and fenfluramine (Pondimin), both marketed by

American Home Products, were recalled by the company in September 1997,

following warnings issued by the Food and Drug Administration. Initial

echocardiograms revealed a thickening of heart valves in 30 percent of 291

patients who were taking either drug as part of the fen-phen weight loss

combination. It is estimated that more than 18 million prescriptions for

fen-phen were written prior to the recall.

Copyright 1999 The Medical Tribune News Service.

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