Dentists urged to look for cardiac risk

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Dentists can play key roles in identifying people at risk of fatal heart attacks and referring them for further evaluation, doctors in Sweden suggest.

Dentists are encouraged to use HeartScore, a computerized system that calculates the risk of a person dying of a heart attack within a 10-year period, the European Society of Cardiology said in a release Thursday.

HeartScore measures cardiovascular disease risk in people ages 40-65 by factoring the person's age, sex, blood pressure and smoking status.

People with HeartScores of 10 percent or higher, meaning they had at least a 10-percent risk of having a fatal heart attack or stroke within a 10-year period, were told by dentists to see a doctor about their condition.

Using HeartScore, which was tested in Sweden, dentists can identify patients who are unaware they need medical intervention, the American Dental Association said in a release Thursday.

Dentists "may find themselves in an opportune position to enhance the overall health and well-being of their patients," the association said.

Right-handed have a 'right' bias

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Nov. 6 (UPI) -- In left-handed people equal parts of the brain are devoted to each arm but in the right-handed more of the brain is devoted to the right, U.S. researchers say.

University of Virginia in Charlottesville psychologists Sally Linkenauger, Jonathan Bakdash and Dennis Proffitt found right-handed people have more cortical area in the brain devoted to the right arm than to the left one. This may affect how they "see" their right hand.

In experiments, left-handed volunteers judged both of their arms to be the same length but right-handed participants underestimated the length of their left arm and consistently perceived their right arms as being longer.

In addition, right-handed volunteers thought their right hands were larger than their left, when in fact, they were both the same size. When guessing how far they could reach with their arms, left-handed volunteers estimated they could reach equally far with both arms while right-handed volunteers predicted they could reach farther with their right arm.

The study, published in Psychological Science, also involved researchers Jessica Witt of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and Jeanine Stefanucci of The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Gonorrhea drug halts tumor growth

BALTIMORE, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- A gonorrhea medicine used since the 1930s has shown an ability to halt the growth of blood vessels in cancerous tumors, scientists in Maryland say.

Preliminary tests showed mice engineered to develop cancer had no tumor growth if treated daily with the gonorrhea drug acriflavine, said Jun Liu, who teaches pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

"Often times we are surprised that a drug known to do something else has another hidden property," Liu said in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Acriflavine stops blood vessel growth by inhibiting the protein hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1, which turns on genes necessary for building new vessels, said Dr. Greg Semenza, director of the vascular program at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering.

"To continue growing, a tumor must create new blood vessels to deliver oxygen to the tumor cells," Semenza said.

Rotavirus vaccine needed in more countries

NEW YORK, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Rotavirus vaccines could save an estimated 228,000 lives worldwide each year by reducing deadly diarrhea, the World Health Organization said.

Strains of rotavirus, disease surveillance and vaccine-cost effectiveness are outlined in special edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, which supports WHO recommendations that rotavirus vaccines be included in every country's national immunization program.

Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrheal disease and exacts a heavy toll on the world's poorest countries, said Dr. John Wecker, director of the Vaccine Access and Delivery Global Program at PATH, a non-profit health group.

"Rotavirus is one of the most deadly diseases children in the developing world face," Wecker said in a release Thursday. "Vaccination holds the key to making it one of the most preventable diseases."

Vaccines preventing rotavirus have been licensed in more than 100 countries. The vaccines, however, have not yet reached many of the places where the rotavirus burden is greatest, especially in African and Asian countries.

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