Circumcision is recommended to fight HIV
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:00:26 GMTBy ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA - U.N. health agencies recommended Wednesday that heterosexual men undergo circumcision because of "compelling" evidence that it can reduce their chances of contracting http://www.who.int/hiv
UNAIDS: http://www.unaids.org
Childrens ads show lots of junk food
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:34:23 GMTBy KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - In a child's buffet of food commercials, more than 40 percent of the dishes are candy, snacks and fast food. Nowhere to be found: fresh fruit, vegetables, poultry or seafood.
For years, health officials have warned that kids were being inundated with commercials about not-so-healthy foods. Now, researchers have put numbers to those warnings in the largest-ever study of commercials aimed at children.
"The vast majority of the foods that kids see advertised on television today are for products that nutritionists would tell us they need to be eating less of, not more of, if we're going to get a handle on childhood obesity," said Vicki Rideout of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducts health research.
Overall, the foundation's researchers monitored 13 television networks. The viewing took place primarily between late May and early September 2005. They saw 2,613 ads featuring food and drinks that targeted children and teens.
Children ages 8-12 see the most food ads on TV — an average of 21 a day, or 7,600 a year. Teenagers see slightly fewer — 17 a day, or about 6,000 a year; and children ages 2-7 see the fewest — 12 a day or 4,400 a year.
"Since are at an age where they're just becoming independent consumers, understanding what type of advertising they are exposed to is especially important," Rideout said.
In December 2005, the Institute of Medicine concluded that marketing practices from the food and beverage industry are out of balance with recommended diets for children and contribute to an environment that puts children's health at risk.
The institute recommended that companies shift their advertising to emphasize food and drink that are substantially lower in calories, fats, salt and sugars.
In November, 10 major food and drink makers, including companies such as McDonald's, The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc., agreed to adopt new voluntary rules for advertising. The companies said they would devote at least half their advertising directed to children to promote healthier diets and lifestyles.
The rules have not gone into effect yet. However, researchers believe that the study released Tuesday will serve as an important benchmark that will help determine whether the voluntary guidelines lead to any significant changes in advertising content.
Sen. Tom. Harkin, D-Iowa, said he hoped the study would also prove helpful to a new Federal Communications Commission task force examining the impact of the media on childhood obesity rates.
"We now have data that conclusively shows kids are seeing an overwhelming number of ads for unhealthy food on all types of TV shows," Harkin said. "The 'childhood obesity epidemic' isn't just a catch phrase. It's a real public health crisis."
The study also recorded the number of public service announcements that children watch on television. The report said that expectations for educational campaigns affecting child obesity rates should be tempered.
Children see few public service announcements compared to food ads. Children under 8 see one announcement on fitness or nutrition for every 26 food ads. For preteens, it's one announcement for every 48 food ads. And for teens, the ratio is one public service announcement for every 130 food ads.
Italy to offer cervical cancer vaccine
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:19:07 GMTROME - A vaccine against the sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer went on sale Wednesday in Italy, the first European Union nation to offer the vaccine free for 12-year-old girls, the Italian Health Ministry said.
The ministry said a campaign will be launched soon to encourage the free vaccination of 12-year-olds but that the vaccine for the human papillomavirus, of HPV, will not be mandatory. Older girls and women who want the vaccination will have to pay for it.
Proponents of the vaccine say it will be most effective when given before girls become sexually active. Ministry officials said the vaccine is being supplied by Sanofi-Pasteur, the vaccine division of Sanofi-Aventis.
Efforts to make the vaccine mandatory have triggered controversy in parts of the United States. Last month, in Texas, the governor ordered that schoolgirls going into sixth grade in 2008 be vaccinated against HPV. Conservatives contended that requiring the vaccine would encourage premarital teenage sex and erode parental rights.
HPV infection can lead to cervical cancer in women. It rarely causes cancer in men.
New Delhi court Dont smoke and drive
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:13:36 GMTBy GAVIN RABINOWITZ, Associated Press Writer
NEW DELHI - Smoking poses serious health risks. So does driving in New Delhi. And combining the two is deadly, according to two New Delhi judges who have barred smoking at the wheel, officials said Tuesday, apparently the first such ban in the world.
Declaring "New Delhi roads dangerous to human life," the city's High Court on Monday imposed a slew of new measures aimed at deterring habitually bad drivers, including the smoking ban and a prohibition on using a mobile phone while at the wheel.
"Anything that distracts the attention of driver is dangerous. The human mind cannot do two things simultaneously," said New Delhi's traffic commissioner Qamar Ahmed, welcoming the ruling, which goes into effect April 9 and only covers New Delhi, a city of 14 million people.
Those caught smoking at the wheel would pay 1,500 rupees , a hefty fine by local standards. Offenders caught more than five times would have their license revoked, the court said. The same fines apply to using a mobile phone and the less well-defined offense of "dangerous driving."
Many drivers in New Delhi welcomed the court ruling, saying that anything that would control the chaos on the city's roads — where many drivers regard red lights as suggestions and right of way is often determined by vehicle size — was a positive step.
The new codes are "a very good idea. Traffic is very difficult here, it's frightening," said 18-year-old student driver Ankita Maniktala.
"Sometimes I don't know which way the cars are going to be going," she said, referring to the accepted habit of driving the wrong way down streets to create short cuts.
Still, New Delhi's roads — where some 4 million buses, trucks, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, auto-rickshaws, bicycle-rickshaws and horse-drawn carts compete with millions of pedestrians, India's free-roaming cows and the occasional elephant — seems an unlikely place to pioneer new road safety codes.
It's not the first time New Delhi's courts have played an innovative role. A 1998 court order eventually forced all the city's public transport to switch from petrol and diesel to compressed natural gas to cut pollution.
In many instances, court orders are the only way to effect change in the city struggling with massive growth, a tangled bureaucracy, endemic corruption and lax law enforcement.
The court said it decided to step in on its own as the death toll on city roads mounted to over 1,900 annually and existing traffic laws, which have not been updated since their introduction 20 years ago, went largely ignored.
While talking on a mobile phone when driving has been barred in dozens of countries, the no-smoking-while-driving law in private vehicles appears to be a precedent that could be closely watched in other countries.
Several U.S. states are currently considering similar rules, with Vermont lawmakers considering a blanket ban on any activities that could interfere with driving — like smoking, eating, drinking, reading, writing or even interacting with pets.
Other U.S. states and cities and Cyprus have banned smoking when there are children in the car.
There are no blanket smoking and driving bans in European countries, Japan or South Africa where strict anti-smoking laws have been enacted. However, in Ireland, which became the first country to ban smoking in enclosed workplaces, most notably pubs, it is technically illegal to smoke in your home or the cab of your truck if these are your workplaces. But these rules are not enforced.
New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said Tuesday that police were "ready to enforce the court decision." But most drivers were skeptical, noting that with the capital's notoriously corrupt traffic police it would be easy to avoid the new penalties.
"In India I doubt this can be enforced. I can just give a bribe of 50 rupees and get away without paying it ," said Chetan Rawla, 20.
The court also raised fines for traditional traffic violations — like driving through red lights or failing to halt at a stop sign — from 100 rupees to 600 rupees , noting that the paltry sums no longer acted as a deterrent in a country where people have grown increasingly wealthy as the economy has boomed.
Prostate biopsy may be misleading in obese men
Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:31:07 GMTNEW YORK - In overweight or obese men, prostate biopsy may underestimate the aggressiveness of prostate cancer, research suggests.
&;Even if a well-done biopsy shows low-grade cancer in an obese patient, there is still a reasonable likelihood that the patient may have high-grade disease,&; Dr. Stephen J. Freedland of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina commented in a university statement.
A misleading prostate biopsy could lead to inadequate or inappropriate treatment of the cancer, he and colleagues warn in their report, published today in the journal Urology.
The prostate specific antigen, or PSA, is a blood test used to look for early signs of prostate cancer. Men who have a suspicious PSA result often undergo a prostate biopsy, which involves inserting a needle into the prostate to extract tissue for analysis. The results of the biopsy play a critical role in treatment decisions.
Freedland and colleagues analyzed data from 1,113 men who underwent surgical removal of their prostates. The investigators compared the aggressiveness of each patient's cancer, determined by the biopsy tissue, with the actual aggressiveness of disease found by a more extensive microscopic examination of the removed prostate.
Based on inspection of the prostate, the disease of 299 men was upgraded to a worse status and downgraded to a more favorable status in 123 men . Disease status was on the mark in 691 men .
In analyses that took into consideration the influence of potentially confounding factors, obesity was significantly associated with upgrading of the prostate biopsy results.
Obese men were 89 percent and overweight men 44 percent more likely than normal-weight men to have a more aggressive form of prostate cancer than was suggested by the biopsy.
&;We already know it's more difficult to diagnose prostate cancer in obese men because they have lower levels of PSA...and because their larger-sized prostates make it more likely for a biopsy to miss the cancer,&; Freedland said. &;These findings further suggest that we could be missing even more high-grade disease among obese men.&;
Doctors may need to perform more biopsy samples on obese men, according to Freedland, in order to determine the &;true aggressiveness of the prostate cancer and allow treatment to be better tailored to the patients' needs.&;
SOURCE: Urology, March 2007.
Va. gov. proposes cancer vaccine change
Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:23:52 GMTBy KRISTEN GELINEAU, Associated Press Writer
RICHMOND, Va. - The governor on Monday proposed a measure to make it easier for parents to exempt their daughters from receiving a vaccine for the sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer.
Last month, the Legislature passed bills to require all girls entering the sixth grade to get the vaccine for the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's amendment would eliminate the need for parents or guardians to submit written requests for their children to opt out of the vaccine, called Gardasil.
"While I believe that this vaccine shows great promise for preventing cancer, I believe that the decision to administer this vaccine should be made by parents," Kaine said in a statement.
The Legislature will reconvene for a one-day session April 4 to consider Kaine's proposal.
Virginia's legislature was the first to pass a bill requiring the vaccine for girls. Texas Gov. Rick Perry sidestepped the Legislature and ordered the shots for girls there, but lawmakers are considering overriding that order.
Bills were introduced in about 20 states to require the vaccine, but some have backed off because of concerns over the vaccine's safety and protests from conservatives who say requiring it promotes promiscuity and erodes parents' rights.
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On the Net:
General Assembly: http://legis.state.va.us/
http://tinyurl.com/yvnmov
Kids with ADHD may start abusing alcohol in teens
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:55:03 GMTNEW YORK - New research confirms that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are at risk for alcohol problems later in life and indicates that drinking problems may begin around age 15.
Having parents who abuse alcohol, and increased levels of stress in the family, add to the likelihood that teenagers with childhood ADHD will develop alcohol problems, according to the study.
Dr. Brooke Molina, from the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh and colleagues followed 364 children diagnosed with ADHD into their teenage years and adult years .
&;Our findings have revealed that starting around the age of 15, children with ADHD have higher rates of heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems diagnosable as alcohol abuse or alcohol dependence,&; Molina told Reuters Health.
The 15- to 17-year-old children in the study with childhood ADHD reported being drunk 14 times, on average, in the previous year, versus only 1.8 times for age-matched teens who did not have childhood ADHD.
Fourteen percent of 15- to 17-year-olds with ADHD were diagnosed with alcohol abuse or dependence compared with none of the similarly aged subjects without ADHD.
The findings appear in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
&;We also found that by early adulthood, those children with ADHD who continued to have serious behavior problems such as irresponsible behavior, rule-breaking behavior, and unlawful behavior, drink more heavily and have alcohol-related problems too,&; Molina said.
In related research, Molina's team interviewed 142 adolescents with childhood ADHD and their parents and found that parental alcoholism predicted alcohol use among teenagers. This association was partially explained by higher rates of stress in these families and these connections were stronger in teens with ADHD in childhood.
The bottom line, said Molina, is that ADHD &;increases risk for alcohol problems, and that these children are probably best served by ongoing monitoring and involvement by parents and others who may help children with ADHD stay on track academically and socially as they mature toward adulthood.&;
&;Our ongoing work,&; she added, &;is on understanding the myriad reasons why alcoholism is more prevalent in this population. For example, we know that serious behavior problems such as defiance and delinquency usually co-occur with these drinking problems, but we don't know how currently available treatment affects these outcomes in the long run.&;
SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, April 2007.
Type 2 diabetes may raise Parkinson39s risk study
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 04:09:49 GMTWASHINGTON - Patients with type 2 diabetes are more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, although the reasons are unclear, Finnish researchers reported on Wednesday.
They found that people with type 2 diabetes were 83 percent more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson's later in life than people in the general population. This risk was the same for men and women and was independent of other risk factors.
&;Diabetes might increase the risk of Parkinson's disease partly through excess body weight,&; the researchers wrote in the April issue of Diabetes Care.
Being overweight and not exercising enough are linked with type 2 diabetes, which is becoming more common around the world. Diabetes can lead to blindness, limb loss, heart disease and early death.
Parkinson's is a movement disorder caused by the destruction of certain brain cells. People often develop tremors first, but the incurable disease can progress to paralysis and death.
There are no known major risk factors for Parkinson's, but some studies suggest exposure to chemicals such as pesticides may cause some cases. It affects about 1 million people in the United States alone.
Dr. Gang Hu and colleagues at the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland, followed 51,552 Finnish men and women aged 25 to 74 for 18 years. None had Parkinson's disease at the beginning of the study.
About 600 developed Parkinson's by the end of it, and those who did were nearly twice as likely to have diabetes as well, the researchers found.
They said they would investigate the link further.
