Getting in shape reduces death risk
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:32:53 GMTBy JAMIE STENGLE, Associated Press Writer
DALLAS - The more fit you are, the longer you're likely to live, according to a large study of veterans that applies to black men as well as white men. The Veterans Affairs researchers found that the "highly fit" men in the study had half the risk of death as those who were the least fit. Being "very highly fit" cut the risk even more, by 70 percent.
The research builds on what is already known about the benefits of exercise and fills in some gaps by addressing the effects of fitness in blacks.
"A little bit of exercise goes a long way," said Peter Kokkinos, lead author of the study. "Thirty minutes a day, five days a week of brisk walking is likely to reduce the risk of mortality by 50 percent if not more."
With 15,660 participants, the researchers said the study is the largest to look at the link between fitness and mortality. The study also sets itself apart by looking at how exercise affects blacks, whose death rates are higher than whites. About 43 percent of the veterans in the study were black.
The findings were published Tuesday online in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
A treadmill test was used to determine the fitness level of the veterans at facilities in Washington, D.C., and Palo Alto, Calif. The men — who had an average age of 60 — were then put into four categories ranging from "low fit" to "very highly fit." Researchers followed up for an average of eight years to see who was still alive.
The study showed that as fitness levels went up, the risk of death dropped for both blacks and whites. When researchers looked at blacks and whites with heart disease, results were similar.
In the least fit group, 44 percent died; for moderately fit, 30 percent; highly fit, 15 percent; and very highly fit, 8 percent.
"Exercise is just as beneficial to African-Americans, in fact in some cases it might be more," said Kokkinos, director of Exercise Testing and Research Lab in the cardiology department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington.
Experts say that the study's strengths include its size and that all participants had the same access to health care since they were VA patients. The researchers, however, didn't know the cause of death or how physically active the veterans were.
Kokkinos said the veterans took the exercise treadmill tests for various reasons, including everything from annual checkups to complaints of chest pain. He said they excluded anyone with serious problems.
Dr. Tracy Stevens, a cardiologist with Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., said that the study reinforces the need for doctors to talk with their patients about exercise.
"This is more evidence that exercise is one of the best medicines that we have," said Dr. Randal Thomas, director of the Cardiovascular Health Clinic at the Mayo Clinic.
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On the Net:
American Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org
Food poisoning can be longterm problem
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:33:10 GMTBy LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer
WASHINGTON - It's a dirty little secret of food poisoning: E. coli and certain other foodborne illnesses can sometimes trigger serious health problems months or years after patients survived that initial bout. Scientists only now are unraveling a legacy that has largely gone unnoticed.
What they've spotted so far is troubling. In interviews with The Associated Press, they described high blood pressure, kidney damage, even full kidney failure striking 10 to 20 years later in people who survived severe E. coli infection as children, arthritis after a bout of salmonella or shigella, and a mysterious paralysis that can attack people who just had mild symptoms of campylobacter.
"Folks often assume once you're over the acute illness, that's it, you're back to normal and that's the end of it," said Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The long-term consequences are "an important but relatively poorly documented, poorly studied area of foodborne illness."
These late effects are believed to make up a very small fraction of the nation's 76 million annual food poisonings, although no one knows just how many people are at risk. A bigger question is what other illnesses have yet to be scientifically linked to food poisoning.
And with a rash of food recalls — including more than 30 million pounds of ground beef pulled off the market last year alone — these are questions are taking on new urgency.
"We're drastically underestimating the burden on society that foodborne illnesses represent," contends Donna Rosenbaum of the consumer advocacy group STOP, Safe Tables Our Priority.
Every week, her group hears from patients with health complaints that they suspect or have been told are related to food poisoning years earlier, like a woman who survived severe E. coli at 8 only to have her colon removed in her 20s. Or people who develop diabetes after food poisoning inflamed the pancreas. Or parents who wonder if a child's learning problems stem from food poisoning-caused dialysis as a toddler.
"There's nobody to refer them to for an answer," says Rosenbaum.
So STOP this month is beginning the first national registry of food-poisoning survivors with long-term health problems — people willing to share their medical histories with scientists in hopes of boosting much-needed research.
Consider Alyssa Chrobuck of Seattle, who at age 5 was hospitalized as part of the Jack-in-the-Box hamburger outbreak that 15 years ago this month made a deadly E. coli strain notorious.
She's now a successful college student but ticks off a list of health problems unusual for a 20-year-old: High blood pressure, recurring hospitalizations for colon inflammation, a hiatal hernia, thyroid removal, endometriosis.
"I can't eat fatty foods. I can't eat things that are fried, never been able to eat ice cream or milkshakes," says Chrobuck. "Would I have this many medical problems if I hadn't had the E. coli? Definitely not. But there's no way to tie it definitely back."
The CDC says foodborne illnesses cause 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths a year. Among survivors, some long-term consequences are obvious from the outset. Some required kidney transplants. They may have scarred intestines that promise lasting digestive difficulty.
But when people appear to recover, it is difficult to prove that later problems really are a food-poisoning legacy and not some unfortunate coincidence. It may be that people prone to certain gastrointestinal conditions, for instance, also are genetically more vulnerable to germs that cause foodborne illness.
For now, some of the best evidence comes from the University of Utah, which has long tracked children with E. coli. About 10 percent of E. coli sufferers develop a life-threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, where their kidneys and other organs fail.
Ten to 20 years after they recover, between 30 percent and half of HUS survivors will have some kidney-caused problem, says Dr. Andrew Pavia, the university's pediatric infectious diseases chief. That includes high blood pressure caused by scarred kidneys, slowly failing kidneys, even end-stage kidney failure that requires dialysis.
"I don't want to leave the message that everyone who had symptoms ... is in trouble," stresses Pavia.
Miserable as E. coli is, it doesn't seem to trigger long-term problems unless it started shutting down the kidneys the first time around, he says. "People with uncomplicated diarrhea, by and large we don't have evidence yet that they have complications."
Other proven long-term consequences:
_About 1 in 1,000 sufferers of campylobacter, a diarrhea-causing infection spread by raw poultry, develop far more serious Guillain-Barre syndrome a month or so later. Their body attacks their nerves, causing paralysis that usually requires intensive care and a ventilator to breathe. About a third of the nation's Guillain-Barre cases have been linked to previous campylobacter, even if the diarrhea was very mild, and they typically suffer a more severe case than patients who never had food poisoning.
While they eventually recover, "We don't know a great deal about what happens to those people five years later. What does 'normal' look like?" Tauxe says.
_A small number of people develop what's called reactive arthritis six months or longer after a bout of salmonella. It causes joint pain, eye inflammation, sometimes painful urination, and can lead to chronic arthritis. Certain strains of shigella and yersinia bacteria, far more common abroad than in the U.S., trigger this reactive arthritis, too, Tauxe says.
What about other patient complaints?
A variety of other organ problems might be triggered by HUS, that severe E. coli — because it causes blood clots all over the body that could leave a trail of damage, says Utah's Pavia. Among his hottest questions: HUS patients often suffer pancreatitis. Does that increase risk for diabetes later in life?
But proving a connection will require tracking a lot of patients who can provide very good medical records documenting their initial foodborne illness, he cautions.
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EDITOR's NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Folk medicines contain lead
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:41:04 GMTBy MONICA RHOR, Associated Press Writer
HOUSTON - Maria didn't mean to poison her children. Quite the opposite. Worried about her daughters' lack of appetite, the young Houston mother was merely following her grandmother's advice when she gave the two girls and a niece a dose of "greta" — a Mexican folk medicine used to treat children's stomach ailments.
What Maria, who asked that her last name not be used, did not know then, but now will never forget, is that the bright orange powder is nearly 90 percent lead.
Fortunately, doctors detected the dangerously high levels of the toxic metal in the little girls' blood during a routine checkup a week later.
But others are not so lucky. Health departments around the country say traditional medicines used by many immigrants from Latin America, India and other parts of Asia are the second most common source of lead poisoning in the U.S. — surpassed only by lead paint — and may account for tens of thousands of such cases among children each year.
Dozens of adults and children have become gravely ill or died after taking lead-laden medicine over the past eight years, according to federal and local health officials.
The dangerous medicines are manufactured outside the United States and sold in the U.S. by folk healers known as curanderas and in ethnic grocery stores and neighborhood shops that offer herbs and charms. They are usually brought into the country by travelers in their suitcases, thereby slipping past government regulators.
"No one's testing these medications," said Dr. Stefanos Kales, an assistant professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health who researched the problem. "There's no guarantee it doesn't have dangerous levels of lead."
Lead is added to many of the concoctions because of its supposed curative properties, even though doctors say it has no proven medical benefits. In other cases, powders and pills become contaminated with lead from soil or through the manufacturing process.
"Instead of doing something good for them, I did them more harm," said Maria, whose children have shown no ill effects. "I was so afraid of all the things that could happen to them. It was a terrible experience."
In Harris County, which includes Houston, traditional medicines are blamed for nearly one-fifth of all cases in which children were found to have high levels of lead. In Arizona, home remedies account for one-fourth of childhood lead poisoning cases.
In Texas, California and Arizona, lead poisoning has been traced to Mexican remedies such as greta, azarcon and rueda — powders that are given to treat constipation in children and contain as much as 90 percent lead. In New York City and Rhode Island, high lead levels in the blood have been tied to litargirio, a powder containing up to 79 percent lead. It is used by Dominican immigrants for such ills as foot fungus and body odor.
Dangerous amounts of lead have also been found in ayurvedic medicines, which are used in India and commonly found in South Asian immigrant communities in New York, Chicago and Houston. These medicines include ghasard, a brown powder given to relieve constipation in babies, and mahayogaraj gugullu, for high blood pressure.
Traditional medicines may account for up to 30 percent of all childhood lead poisoning cases in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 240,000 U.S. children were diagnosed with high blood lead levels in 2004 to 2006.
Many more cases are almost certainly going undetected. Only 14 percent of children are tested for lead nationwide. And the source of lead often cannot be traced in cases where paint is not the culprit.
"I don't think anyone has a good handle on the exact prevalence of use," Kales said. "I'm sure it's underreported because doctors don't generally ask about this and patients don't report it."
The use of folk medicine is rooted in generations-old cultural traditions. Ayurvedic medicine, for example, originated more than 2,000 years ago in India, where 80 percent of the population uses it.
"People think, well, my grandmother did it, so it's not a problem. It's extremely hard to change cultures and beliefs," said Brenda Reyes with the Houston Health Department.
In Houston, where one in four residents is foreign-born, Health Department officials routinely pay undercover visits to herbalist stores and try to buy remedies known to contain lead. Often, however, storekeepers are reluctant to admit they carry the medicine, bringing them out only when they know the customer, Reyes said.
In Houston and other places, health authorities can do little more than ask stores to take such products off their shelves.
In a 2004 study that found high concentrations of lead in ayurvedic medicine, Boston University researcher Robert Saper bought 70 different ayurvedic remedies at 30 stores within a 20-mile radius of Boston City Hall. One in five contained potentially harmful levels of lead, mercury and arsenic.
After Saper's study was released, health inspectors in Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and New York City conducted sweeps, and also discovered dangerous ayurvedic remedies on store shelves.
Lead poisoning can cause lethargy, confusion, learning problems and convulsions, and in severe cases can lead to irreversible brain damage and death. In severe cases, children are often given oral medication to reduce the lead in their bodies, or undergo chelation therapy, which captures lead in the blood and allows it to be removed through urination.
Patients sickened by home remedies often have more serious cases of lead poisoning than those poisoned from other sources because the medicines frequently contain extremely high concentrations of lead and are deliberately swallowed, said Mary Jean Brown, chief of the CDC's lead poisoning prevention branch.
In 2004, the CDC reported 12 cases of lead poisoning associated with ayurvedic remedies in Texas, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and California. In one case, a 37-year-old woman, hospitalized with abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, reported taking five different traditional medications for rheumatoid arthritis.
Many state and local health departments have issued warnings about lead in folk medicines, and sometimes use questionnaires to screen youngsters in poor neighborhoods and immigrant communities for lead poisoning from folk remedies. The Food and Drug Administration has also issued alerts about certain medicines, including litargirio.
Maria is doing her best to spread the word about the dangers.
"I told everyone in my family, all my friends, not to use this anymore, not to give your children anything if you don't know what's in it," said Maria, who purchased greta during a visit to her hometown in Mexico.
Maria gave each of the girls less than a teaspoon of greta — enough to send their blood lead levels well over the safe limit. A year later, their levels are still high, but inching closer to the acceptable range. The amount in their systems was not high enough to require any treatment.
Study looks at why poor kids are heavy
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:51:35 GMTBy AMY LORENTZEN, Associated Press Writer
DES MOINES, Iowa - New research discounts a common theory on why poor children are more likely to be overweight than children from wealthier families. Iowa State University researchers say their analysis shows that a lack of food isn't necessarily to blame, although they're not sure why so many children from low-income families are overweight.
Previous research has suggested that poor children weren't getting nutritious food and instead ate junk food, such as hot dogs. Or that children may have eaten well when money was available, but would skip meals when cash was short, a cycle that could slow their metabolism and cause them to gain weight.
By challenging those theories, the researchers hope to encourage more research into the issue. Some studies show that nearly one third of American children ages 10-17 are overweight or obese, and that nearly 40 percent of those kids are from low-income households.
Brenda Lohman, a co-author of the study, said the high number of overweight low-income kids is a public health concern.
"Understanding why the rates are so high .... is needed," she said.
Their findings are reported in February's issue of the Journal of Nutrition.
Donna Matheson, of Stanford Medical School's Prevention Research Center, said the study explores some new elements, but disregards others. She noted that the research only looked at children with weight problems, not those who were underweight.
For the study, the researchers analyzed 1999 data about 1,031 children living in low-income households in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio. They assessed whether the children had enough food for a healthy, active lifestyle, which is called food security by researchers. They looked at the individual child, instead of their entire household as previous studies had done.
The researchers asked the children's mothers whether she had reduced the size of a meal due to lack of food or money, if her child skipped a meal because food wasn't available and if her child went hungry because she couldn't afford more food.
They found that about half of the children in the study were overweight or obese, while only about 8 percent weren't getting enough to eat.
Craig Gundersen, lead author of the study, said children who didn't get enough food weren't more likely to be overweight, even though the two factors often coexisted in the low-income population they studied.
He said the study shows that if the government tries to expand food assistance programs to help children, officials can move forward without worrying about an increase in overweight kids living in poverty.
However, Matheson said she thinks much more research is needed before changes in policy are implemented.
"I don't think we are there yet in terms of saying what really works," she said.
Susan Stewart, an Iowa State sociology professor who was involved in the research, said in a statement that most of the research on childhood obesity comes from the medical community, but there should be a closer look at the family and how factors such as stress affect a child's weight.
"Family life has a lot to do with children's lives, particularly when it comes to overeating and obesity," she said.
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On the Net:
Iowa State University: http://www.iastate.edu/
Journal of Nutrition: http://jn.nutrition.org/
Obesity surgery helps diabetics study finds
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:25:33 GMTCHICAGO - Weight loss surgery can be especially helpful to patients with diabetes and can even help them reverse the disease, Australian researchers reported on Tuesday.
They found that obese patients with diabetes who had weight loss surgery were five times more likely to get their disease under control than those who dieted -- probably because they lost more weight.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is among the first to look at surgery as a potential treatment for obese patients with type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes, which is closely linked to obesity, is on the rise worldwide. At least 170 million people are estimated to have the disease and the number is predicted to at least double by 2030.
Bariatric surgery, which involves altering the digestive system to limit food intake, has been growing at a rapid pace, with the number of procedures rising to 200,000 in the United States in 2006, from just 13,000 in 1998.
John Dixon of Monash University in Melbourne and colleagues wanted to see if surgically induced weight loss could be an effective treatment for type 2 diabetes.
Dixon's team studied 60 obese people with a body mass index greater than 30 but less than 40. Body mass index or BMI is a ratio of height and weight. A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.
Patients got either surgery or a weight loss program that focused on diet and lifestyle changes.
Those in the surgery group were treated with an adjustable gastric banding device that limits food intake. Both groups also received conventional diabetes medications.
At the end of two years, 73 percent of the diabetics who had surgery no longer had diabetes, compared with 13 percent of those in the diet group. People who got surgery also needed far fewer diabetes medications.
The surgical group on average lost 20.7 percent of their body weight, compared with 1.7 percent in the diet and lifestyle group. There were no serious complications in either group.
It was the large weight loss, not the surgery per se, that helped the patients, the researchers said.
"This has important implications as it suggests that intensive weight-loss therapy may be a more effective first step in the management of diabetes than simple lifestyle change," they wrote.
In a commentary in the same journal, Drs. David Cummings and David Flum of the University of Washington in Seattle said policy and health leaders will need to balance the costs and risks of surgery against the chance of reversing diabetes.
But, they said, "the insights already beginning to be gained by studying surgical interventions for diabetes may be the most profound since the discovery of insulin."
Cervical cancer vaccine costeffective EU agency
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:37:40 GMTLONDON - The vaccine against the sexually transmitted virus that causes the most cases of cervical cancer is cost-effective and should be given to adolescent girls before they start having sex, an EU agency said on Tuesday.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in a report that Merck & Co Inc's Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Cervarix vaccines could best help reduce cervical cancer when used with screening programs.
"We are saying the vaccine is probably cost effective and should be given to girls before they start their sexual life," Johan Giesecke, the agency's chief scientist, said in a telephone interview.
Most cases of cervical cancer are caused by the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus and is the second most common type of cancer in women. The disease kills 300,000 each year, mostly in developing countries.
Five EU countries -- Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy -- have introduced the vaccination into their national health programs and most are considering it, Giesecke said.
The report offers guidance to those member states considering a vaccine and also urges countries already using it to ensure women do not let down their guard and skip screening.
This is important because the vaccine does not protect against all strains of the human papilloma virus, Giesecke added.
"If you get infected before you get the vaccine, it (the vaccine) really doesn't help," he said. "We also don't know how long immunity lasts because the vaccines are quite new."
The report, requested by the European Commission and several member states, recommended that girls receive the vaccine between the ages of 12-15 and said delivering the vaccines in schools would likely be the most cost-effective option.
It also said "catch-up" programs for slightly older girls could also be helpful in getting the most benefits out of the vaccine.
Ancient Maya scarified boys not virgin girls study
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:12:17 GMTMEXICO CITY - The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday.
The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate palaces in the jungles of Central America and southern Mexico before the Spanish conquest in the early 1500s.
Maya priests in the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula sacrificed children to petition the gods for rain and fertile fields by throwing them into sacred sinkhole caves, known as "cenotes."
The caves served as a source of water for the Mayans and were also thought to be an entrance to the underworld.
Archeologist Guillermo de Anda from the University of Yucatan pieced together the bones of 127 bodies discovered at the bottom of one of Chichen Itza's sacred caves and found over 80 percent were likely boys between the ages of 3 and 11.
The other 20 percent were mostly adult men said de Anda, who scuba dives to uncover Mayan jewels and bones.
He said children were often thrown alive to their watery graves to please the Mayan rain god Chaac. Some of the children were ritually skinned or dismembered before being offered to the gods, he said.
"It was thought that the gods preferred small things and especially the rain god had four helpers that were represented as tiny people," said de Anda.
"So the children were offered as a way to directly communicate with Chaac," he said.
Archeologists previously believed young female virgins were sacrificed because the remains, which span from around 850 AD until the Spanish colonization, were often found adorned with jade jewelry.
It is difficult to determine the sex of skeletons before they are fully matured, said de Anda, but he believes cultural evidence from Mayan mythology would suggest the young victims were actually male.
Vitamin E may ward off physical decline in elderly
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:30:32 GMTBy Will Dunham
WASHINGTON - Vitamin E may help elderly people keep their vim and vigor, researchers said on Tuesday.
The researchers measured levels of certain vitamins in the blood of 698 people ages 65 and up in Italy, and then used three tests -- a short walk, balance and standing up from a seated position -- to gauge their physical functioning.
They found that volunteers with lower levels of vitamin E performed worse on these physical tests than those with higher levels of the vitamin.
Levels of the other vitamins -- folate, B-6, B-12 and D -- did not seem to affect the tests, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"We consistently found that a low concentration of vitamin E was associated with subsequent decline in physical function," researchers led by Benedetta Bartali of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, wrote.
Poor nutrition may play a role in leading elderly people to become physically disabled, but there had been little strong evidence backing up this notion, the researchers said.
Vitamin E is an antioxidant, meaning it can protect tissue from damage caused by unstable substances called free radicals that can harm cells, tissues and organs. It is also involved in the formation of red blood cells.
"Our study, however, was not aimed at identifying possible pathways by which low levels of vitamin E may contribute to decline in physical function," Bartali said by e-mail.
Scientists have been examining the role vitamin E may play in preventing or treating certain health conditions including cancer and heart disease.
Vitamin E can be found in foods including wheat germ, corn nuts and seeds, olives, green leafy vegetables such as spinach and asparagus, sunflower, soybean and cottonseed oils.
But some research has indicated very high amounts of vitamin E can be harmful, raising one's overall risk of death.
The researchers in the current study said future studies should try to determine whether there is an optimal level of vitamin E for reducing physical functional decline and the onset of disability in the elderly.
Study participants, who came from two municipalities close to Florence, were examined initially from 1998 to 2000 and then tracked for three years. Just one participant was taking a vitamin E supplement, the researchers said.
Caffeine May Lower Ovarian Cancer Risk
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:02:10 GMTBy Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Jan. 22 -- Drinking alcohol doesn't seem to boost a woman's risk of ovarian cancer, while caffeine may help protect against the disease, a new study found.
In the same study, smoking cigarettes wasn't linked with an increase in the most common types of ovarian cancer but was associated with an increase in a rare subtype of the disease.
It's too soon to recommend drinking caffeine to lower ovarian cancer risk, said study senior author Shelley S. Tworoger, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.
"The results do need to be confirmed in other studies," Tworoger said. The lack of risk for alcohol and smoking has been found in other research, she added.
For the study, Tworoger and her colleagues looked at data from questionnaires in the Nurses' Health Study, which includes 121,701 U.S. female registered nurses. The study began in 1976, with women then aged 30 to 35 completing questionnaires, then replying every two years to update the data.
Tworoger's team looked at the association between smoking and ovarian cancer risk among 110,454 of the women, and the association between alcohol and caffeine and ovarian cancer risk among 80,253 women, all followed from 1976 to 2004. For the smoking analysis, the researchers found 737 confirmed cases of epithelial ovarian cancer, the most common type of ovarian cancer. For the diet analysis, they found 507 women with epithelial ovarian cancer.
No association was apparent for drinking alcohol and ovarian cancer, or for smoking, with one exception. "It [smoking] does appear to increase the incidence of a rare type, mucinous ovarian tumors," she said, a subtype of epithelial ovarian cancer.
However, the researchers found an "inverse trend" for total caffeine intake and caffeinated coffee consumption and ovarian cancer, but the individual risk reductions didn't reach statistical significance.
The association for caffeine was strongest if the women had never used either birth control pills or hormones after menopause, Tworoger said. Why caffeine may be protective isn't certain, she said, but its consumption may lower estrogen levels, at least in postmenopausal women.
The study findings are published in the March 1 issue of Cancer.
Sherry Salway Black, executive director of the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance and an ovarian cancer survivor, agreed it's too early to recommend caffeine as a risk-lowering strategy.
Tworoger said her team plans to further study the caffeine-ovarian cancer link.
For now, she advised: "Always talk to your doctor before you make any huge lifestyle changes." And keep the risks in perspective, she added. "Because ovarian cancer is relatively rare, women should talk to their doctor first about the risk of getting ovarian cancer."
Black agreed, adding: "Know the symptoms of ovarian cancer. Know your family history and your risk and talk with your health-care provider." Get advice about what to do, she said, especially if you have a higher-than-average risk.
About 22,430 new cases of ovarian cancer were found in the United States in 2007, according to the American Cancer Society, and about 15,280 women died of the disease that year. Ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer in women -- not counting skin cancer -- and it's the fifth-leading cause of cancer death in women.
Symptoms include bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, urinary frequency and difficulty eating or feeling full quickly.
In another study published this week, caffeine was found to increase the risk of miscarriage. Kaiser Permanente researchers in California looked at 1,063 pregnant members of the HMO and found those who drank 200 milligrams or more of caffeine a day -- about two or more cups of coffee or five 12-ounce sodas -- had twice the miscarriage risk of those who avoided caffeine entirely. Even smaller amounts increased risk, with women drinking less than 200 milligrams of caffeine a day showing more than a 40 percent increased risk of miscarriage, compared to those who took in no caffeine.
The study was published online in the January issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
More information
To learn more about ovarian cancer symptoms, visit the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance.
