Participants with sleep apnea took a half-second longer, on average, than the controls to stop when the water jet appeared. This means a person traveling at 130 kilometers per hour (about 81 miles per hour), the top speed permitted on French highways, would take 18 meters or nearly 20 yards longer to stop. People with sleep apnea also collided with the water jet obstacle twice as often as those without the condition.

While lab tests found that the sleep apnea patients were not sleepier than the controls, and did not have attention deficits, they did have a more difficult time dividing their attention between two tasks.

Ten of the sleep apnea patients were then retested after three months of treatment with continuous positive airway pressure or CPAP, in which a mask delivers oxygen during sleep to keep the airways open.

After treatment, their stopping distances and reaction times were no different from those of the healthy controls.

Sleep experts have questioned whether treatment is necessary for sleep apnea patients who don't report daytime sleepiness, Mazza and colleagues note. They say their findings show that, even without sleepiness, people with sleep apnea have impairments in attention that can significantly affect driving ability.

"Simple strategies" now available could help identify attention problems and driving impairments in these patients, and should be investigated further.

"Public health policy should take into account the impact of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome on driving ability in order to reduce traffic accidents," they conclude.

SOURCE: European Respiratory Journal, November 2006.

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Sugar-packed diet may boost pancreatic cancer risk

Last Updated: 2006-11-29 16:24:38 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eating lots of sugar and sugar-sweetened foods could increase a person's likelihood of developing cancer of the pancreas, by far one of the deadliest types of cancer, Swedish researchers report.

Dr. Susanna C. Larsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and her colleagues found that pancreatic cancer was significantly more likely to strike men and women who added the most sugar to their food and consumed the greatest quantities of soft drinks.

The researchers followed 77,797 men and women aged 45 to 83 for an average of about seven years. Those who reported eating five or more servings of added sugar daily, for example sugar added to tea, coffee or cereal, were 69 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than those who never added sugar to their food or drink.

People who consumed two or more servings of soft drinks a day had a 93 percent greater risk of pancreatic cancer compared to those who abstained from these beverages. Eating sweetened fruit soups or stewed fruit increased risk by 51 percent.

But there was no association between sweets, marmalade, or jams and pancreatic cancer risk, possibly because these foods are eaten less frequently and in smaller quantities, Larsson and her colleagues write.

Factors involved in the loss of sensitivity to the blood-sugar processing hormone insulin, such as sedentary lifestyle, obesity and diabetes, have all been tied directly to pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills the vast majority of people diagnosed within five years, Larsson and her team note in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Eating too much sugar could therefore conceivably boost pancreatic cancer risk by putting greater demands on the pancreas to produce insulin while reducing sensitivity to the hormone, as well as through a number of other potential mechanisms.

"Given the practical implications of these findings and the poor prognosis of pancreatic cancer, further research on sugar and high-sugar foods in relation to pancreatic cancer risk is warranted," the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 2006.

Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.