| Top : 2007 : 2007_01_18 |
Cancer deaths drop for 2nd straight yearThu, 18 Jan 2007 04:05:57 GMTBy MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer ATLANTA - Cancer deaths in the United States have dropped for a second straight year, confirming that a corner has been turned in the war on cancer. After a decline of 369 deaths from 2002 to 2003, the decrease from 2003 to 2004 was 3,014 — or more than eight times greater, according to a review of U.S. death certificates by the American Cancer Society. The drop from 2002 to 2003 was the first annual decrease in total cancer deaths since 1930. But the decline was slight, and experts were hesitant to say whether it was a cause for celebration or just a statistical fluke. The trend seems to be real, Cancer Society officials said. "It's not only continuing. The decrease in the second year is much larger," said Ahmedin Jemal, a researcher at the organization. Cancer deaths dropped to 553,888 in 2004, down from 556,902 in 2003 and 557,271 in 2002, the Cancer Society found. Experts are attributing the success to declines in smoking and to earlier detection and more effective treatment of tumors. Those have caused a fall in the death rates for breast, prostate and colorectal cancer — three of the most common cancers. The lung cancer death rate in men has also been falling, but the female rate has reached a plateau. The largest drop in deaths among the major cancers was in colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer deaths dropped by 1,110 in men and by 1,094 in women. Cancer Society officials attributed the decline to early detection and improved treatment. Other experts agreed, saying much of the credit goes to screening exams that detect polyps and allow doctors to remove them before they develop into colon cancer. "The biggest driver in colon cancer's decline in mortality is colon cancer screening, which has proven to save lives," said Dr. Otis Brawley, an Emory University researcher specializing in cancer epidemiology. For more than a decade, health statisticians charted annual drops of about 1 percent in the cancer death rate — the calculated number of deaths per 100,000 people. But the actual number of cancer deaths still rose each year because the growing elderly population — and the size of the population overall — outpaced falling death rates. In 2003 and 2004, the cancer death rate declined by about 2 percent each year — more than offsetting the effects of aging and population growth. The Cancer Society also projected how many cancer cases and deaths will occur this year: more than 1.4 million new cases, and 559,650 deaths. The incidence estimate is based on nine previous years of data. The death projection, based on about 35 years of data, suggests annual cancer deaths will rise again. But the data did not fully capture the trend in declining deaths, said Elizabeth Ward, the Cancer Society's director of surveillance research. Despite the estimate, Cancer Society officials now believe cancer deaths will continue to drop, Ward said. Cancer found more often in dense breastsThu, 18 Jan 2007 04:06:02 GMTBy JEFF DONN, Associated Press Writer BOSTON - Cancer turns up five times more often in women with extremely dense breasts than in those with the most fatty tissue, a study shows, signaling the importance of a risk factor rarely discussed with patients. On mammograms, fat looks dark, but dense tissue is light, like tumors, so it can hide the cancers. But this study confirms that cancers are also more frequent — not just hidden — in women with dense breasts. That means that density is a true risk factor, along with other strong predictors like age and the genes BRCA1 and 2. Yet specialists say that breast density is rarely considered with other risk factors in discussions between doctors and patients. "It's been ignored to an absolutely unbelievable degree," said study leader Dr. Norman Boyd at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. The Canadian study by cancer centers in Toronto and Vancouver focuses on how and when cancers were found over eight years in existing records of 1,112 women collected between 1981 and last year. It is being reported in Thursday's http://nejm.org/ American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org 1918 killer flu tested on monkeysThu, 18 Jan 2007 04:06:39 GMTBy SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer WASHINGTON - Scientists who tested monkeys with the resurrected 1918 killer flu virus now have a better idea of how the deadliest epidemic in history attacked and killed so many people — by over-amping the victims' own immune systems. Those findings in a first-of-its-kind experiment also help explain why so many of the roughly 50 million who died in the Spanish flu pandemic were young and healthy. Based on what was seen in monkeys, the human victims' strong immune systems likely were overstimulated, causing their lungs to rapidly fill with fluid. "Essentially people are drowned by themselves," said University of Wisconsin virology professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka, lead author of a study being published Thursday in the journal Nature. Scientists believe the results open a window into what could happen if the current bird flu in Asia morphs into a highly lethal strain that spreads easily among people. The 1918 virus was reconstructed with reverse genetics, relying on tissue from victims of the early-day flu pandemic. The virus is kept only in two labs where scientists are studying it: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the Public Health Agency of Canada's lab in Winnipeg where the monkey experiment was done. When seven macaques were given the virus at the high-level biosafety lab there, scientists were struck by how suddenly and overwhelmingly the flu struck. The virus spread faster than a normal flu bug and triggered a "storm" response in the animal's immune systems. Their bodies' defenses went haywire, not knowing when to stop, researchers said. The lungs became inflamed and filled with blood and other fluids. The scientists believe the virus had the same effect on humans in 1918. The macaque experiment was supposed to last 21 days, but after eight days the monkeys were so sick — feverish, in pain, and struggling to breathe — that ethical guidelines forced the researchers to euthanize them. "There was some surprise that it was that nasty," University of Washington virologist and study co-author Michael Katze said. "It was the robustness of the immune system that helped victimize them." The virus is very good at replicating itself, said Peter Palese, chairman of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Its effect on the immune system "triggers what one refers to as a cytokine storm," he said. Cytokines transmit messages among cells in the immune system. Palese wasn't part of the study but has worked on the resurrected virus before. No other flu virus is deadly to monkeys, and the speed in its spread and the overwhelming immune system response is similar to those in the H5N1 bird flu, Kawaoka said. If bird flu spreads person-to-person, scientists believe understanding the 1918 virus may give them clues about how to protect people from the new one. The new work "gives us another tool," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, who was not part of the research. Fauci praised the study and said what it found in the effects on the body are stunning: "There aren't a lot of things that can induce that robust of an inflammatory response that quickly." The 1918 flu research suggests that those fighting the bird flu in the future could try using drugs that reduce inflammation and control the body's immune response, Katze said. In the Winnipeg research, the first controlled introduction of the 1918 flu to primates, the monkeys were given extra high doses of the flu virus by nose, mouth, eye, and direct injection into the trachea to ensure infection. The virus had been tested before on mice, but macaques provide better models of how viruses work on humans, the scientists said. The fate of the monkeys was sealed within hours of their infections, Katze theorized. In normal flu, the immune system response wanes, but in the 1918 flu "the innate response stayed up and didn't go down," Katze said. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a Mount Sinai microbiology professor who conducted some of the earlier mouse work, cautioned that it may be a mistake to focus so heavily on immune system response. The 1918 flu "induces an overwhelming and probably damaging immune response system" but it is largely because the virus grows so much, he said. In mice, when the overactive immune response was eliminated, mice died because of high viral levels. "It's like a vicious circle, you get more viruses, you get more immune response and this results in damage," Garcia-Sastre said. ___ On the Net: http://www.nature.com Starbucks to drop milk with hormonesWed, 17 Jan 2007 22:27:32 GMTSEATTLE - Starbucks Coffee Co. is ending its use of milk products that contain an artificial growth hormone, starting in much of the West and New England. Less than a month after announcing that the chain would stop selling items with trans fats in half its U.S. stores, Starbucks said Tuesday it had begun buying only milk products without bovine growth hormone in those areas. Starbucks has not raised prices and is working with suppliers on the cost of milk, half and half, whipping cream and eggnog, spokeswoman Sanja Gould told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Starbucks has 5,668 stores in the United States, but the number affected by the change was not immediately available. It covers company-owned Starbucks outlets in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, Northern California and New England. Earlier this month Starbucks announced plans to stop selling food containing trans fats at half the company's U.S. outlets. For more than a decade, some advocacy groups have asserted that there has not been enough research on the effects in humans of milk products from cows that were given the hormone, which is administered to dairy cattle during the middle phase of lactation to boost milk production. "We think it's good news, and we are happy to hear it," said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch in Washington, D.C., after learning of the Starbucks move. Large-scale dairy operators there is no scientific evidence to suggest any effect on humans from the recombinant bovine growth hormone, , which is marketed as Posilac by Monsanto Co. of St. Louis, which obtained approval from the http://www.seattle-pi.com/ |