Proposed birdflu vaccine said a stopgapWed, 28 Feb 2007 10:09:30 GMTBy ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Even as U.S. health officials decide whether to approve the first bird flu vaccine, Sanofi Aventis SA and others are studying ways of fending off a pandemic with even better shots. The http://www.fda.gov Feds say 20 million have form of HPVWed, 28 Feb 2007 02:32:01 GMTBy LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer CHICAGO - One in four U.S. women ages 14 to 59 is infected with the sexually transmitted virus that in some forms can cause cervical cancer, according to the first broad national estimate. The figure is mostly in line with previous assessments. The highest prevalence — nearly 45 percent — was found in young women within the age range recommended for a new virus-fighting vaccine, according to a report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers have estimated that 20 million Americans have some form of HPV. The study concluded that 26.8 percent of U.S. women are infected, a figure that is comparable to earlier estimates using smaller groups. "We expected the prevalence of any HPV infection would be high and that's what we found," said http://jama.ama-assn.org CDC: http://www.cdc.gov Ice cream may aid fertility for someWed, 28 Feb 2007 02:31:29 GMTBy MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer Ben & Jerry might help you get pregnant, but not in the usual way. A diet rich in ice cream and other high-fat dairy foods may lower the risk of one type of infertility, a study suggests. It sounds too good to be true and probably is, some doctors say. But the findings are bound to get attention because they are from the well-known Nurses Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health and were published Wednesday in the European journal Human Reproduction. Researchers found that women who ate two or more low-fat dairy products a day were nearly twice as likely to have trouble conceiving because of lack of ovulation than women who ate less than one serving of such foods a week. Conversely, women who ate at least one fatty dairy food a day were 27 percent less likely to have this problem. Even the researchers say women should not make too much of these results, which are based on reports of what women said they ate over many years — not a rigorous, scientific experiment where specific dietary factors could be studied in isolation. "The idea is not to go crazy and start to have ice cream three times a day," said the lead author, Dr. Jorge Chavarro, a research fellow at Harvard. "But it is certainly possible to have a healthy diet with low saturated fat intake by having one serving of high-fat dairy a day." Others urged caution. "A good healthy dose of skepticism is good for people," especially when the results are so hard to swallow, said Dr. Patrick Remington, a University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist. After all, the Nurses Health Study also found that menopause hormones could ward off heart disease — something doctors believed until a more scientific study disproved it several years ago, he noted. The new research doesn't even apply to most cases of female infertility — not ovulating is to blame only one-third of the time. The study also found no link between infertility and dairy foods in general — something that bothered another statistics expert, David Allison at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Instead, researchers only saw a link when they separated non-ovulating women who ate yogurt and other low-fat dairy products from those eating more high-fat varieties. When they looked at specific foods — and this is where the numbers really get tricky — they found that women eating ice cream two or more times a week had a 38 percent lower risk of infertility than women consuming ice cream less than once a week. Researchers adjusted the results to reflect differences in weight, exercise levels and other factors, but many specialists said they suspect weight is still mostly responsible for the results. Weight extremes — being too thin or too fat — raises the risk of any sort of infertility, said Dr. William Gibbons, who runs a fertility clinic in Baton Rouge, La., and is president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. Other research shows that women eating lots of low-fat dairy also eat other low-fat foods and try to lose weight, said Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of Weill Cornell University and New York Presbyterian's fertility services. His interpretation of the new study: "It's not that having high fat is protective. It's that being on a diet may be bad for reproduction." The Harvard study, funded by the university and a long-running federal study, involved 18,555 women, ages 24 to 42, who became pregnant or tried to from 1991-99. Among them, 3,430 reported infertility, including 2,165 who saw a doctor for it. Of those, 438 said an ovulation problem was to blame. The women filled out questionnaires every two years on what they ate and how often. Those who ate more high-fat dairy foods were more likely to consume alcohol and to already have had a child, and less likely to exercise than those eating low-fat dairy products. Researchers said they adjusted for these factors and still saw the link to ovulation-related infertility. If women do eat more high-fat dairy foods to try to boost their odds of conceiving, it would be important to cut calories elsewhere to avoid gaining weight, doctors said. They also should switch back to low-fat dairy foods once the baby is born, to limit saturated fats. ___ On the Net: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/eshre/press-release/freepdf/dem019.pdf Britain lets mother keep obese sonWed, 28 Feb 2007 02:38:15 GMTBy THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer LONDON - A mother who feared she might lose custody of her obese 8-year-old son unless he lost weight was allowed to keep the boy after striking a deal Tuesday with social workers to safeguard his welfare. The case has set off a debate over child obesity and raised questions about whether genetics, junk food or bad parenting is to blame. Connor McCreaddie, of Wallsend in northeastern England, weighs 218 pounds, four times the weight of a healthy child his age. Connor and his mother, Nicola McKeown, 35, both attended a child protection meeting Tuesday with North Tyneside Council officials. Before it began, McKeown, a single mother of two, said she hoped she would not lose custody of her son. "I'm not too good, and I'm very nervous about the meeting. I'm hoping for the best," she said. Afterward, the Local Safeguarding Children Board issued a statement saying it "was able to confirm that its hope and ambition is to enable this child to remain with his family. In order to move this matter forward, we have made a formal agreement with the family to safeguard and promote the child's welfare." The agency provided no details about what Connor or his mother would have to do to fight his obesity. The hearing was held under the Children Act, which places a duty on the local authority to conduct an inquiry if it has "reasonable cause to suspect that a child ... in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm." The boy's case attracted national attention after his mother allowed an ITV News crew to film his day-to-day life for a month. When he was 2 1/2, Connor was too heavy for his mother to pick him up, and at 5, he weighed more than 126 pounds, said The Journal, a regional newspaper. Now the boy, who is tall for his age at 5 feet, wears adult clothes and size eight shoes, the newspaper said. Sky TV showed footage of Connor's mother serving him meals of french fries, meat and buttered bread. "He'll hover around the kitchen for food. He'll continually go in the fridge," McKeown said of her son. "I just keep telling him to get out of the fridge, wait until meal times and stuff. But at the end of the day, he was born hungry. He has always been hungry." "Bacon. Mmmm... That's my favorite. Um ... chicken , steak, sausage," the boy told the camera. Obesity is essentially caused by eating more calories than you burn. Obese people are sometimes thought to have lower metabolic rates than normal, meaning they need less food to maintain their weight. Childhood obesity is of particular concern because it greatly increases the risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, skeletal disorders and strokes. Certain cancers are also associated with obesity, and obese children have a higher chance of premature death. Several genetic conditions also contribute to obesity, such as Prader-Willis syndrome, a rare disease characterized by excessive appetite, problems in the central nervous system and a low IQ. Another rare genetic disease, Bradet-Biedl syndrome, can lead to problems such as vision loss, obesity and being born with extra fingers and toes. Levels of obesity have tripled in England since 1980, according to the Food Standards Agency. More than half of women and about two-thirds of men are either overweight or obese, it said. Obesity causes about 18 million sick days and 30,000 deaths a year in England alone, the National Audit Office said. It remained unclear whether doctors had determined whether diet and lifestyle were the only cause of Connor's obesity. Neville Rigby, a director at the International Association for the Study of Obesity in London, declined to discuss Connor's case. But he said the public often stigmatizes overweight people without knowing their situation and assumes they are guilty of self neglect. "Obesity and diabetes used to be seen as middle-age problems, but now we're seeing more and more children with both problems," Rigby said. "But remember, in this era of nonstop advertising about low-nutrient, high-calorie foods, many parents find it difficult to tear their children from sweets and persuade them to eat fruit and vegetables." He said he hoped social workers would find out what has caused Connor's obesity. Obese British boy to stay with familyTue, 27 Feb 2007 20:25:29 GMTLONDON - British social workers decided on Tuesday to allow an eight-year-old boy who weighs almost 200 pounds to remain at home with his mother, who has refused to stop feeding him junk food. Connor McCreaddie's mother says her 14-stone son will not eat healthy food like fruits and vegetables and had rejected a suggestion that she put a lock on the fridge. Social workers had considered taking into care the boy, whose plight has prompted intense media interest in a country increasingly concerned about rising child obesity levels. But after a meeting with Connor and his mother Nicola McKeown, 35, the local council in North Tyneside in northeastern England said he would remain at home. "We have had a useful discussion today during which all agencies and the family confirmed that the priority in this matter is the eight-year-old boy," the council said in a statement. "The Local Safeguarding Children Board was able to confirm that its hope and ambition is to enable this child to remain with his family." The council said it had made a formal agreement with the family "to safeguard and promote the child's welfare." It gave no further details. Single mother McKeown, 35, who suffers from depression, had dismissed allegations she had been neglecting her son, who is four times the healthy weight of same-age children and was even heavier at 15 stones 81b before Christmas. Connor, from Wallsend, Newcastle, has lost one-and-a-half stone since the start of the year after his mother sought advice from health workers and a dietician. With studies showing Britain has the worst rate of obesity among children in Europe, the country's media regulator plans to ban television advertising for junk food aimed at school-age children from next year. Quarter of US women infected with cervical cancer virus studyWed, 28 Feb 2007 13:14:47 GMTWASHINGTON - About a quarter of females in the United States aged 14 to 59 may have the sexually transmitted infection human papillomavirus, which is linked to cervical cancer, according to research published Tuesday. &;Our study provides the first national estimate of prevalent HPV infection among females aged 14 to 59 years in the United States,&; said the team of scientists led by Eileen Dunne of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, writing in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association dated February 28. HPV is the most commonly sexually transmitted infection in the United States. &;Our data indicate that the burden of prevalent HPV infection among women was higher than previous estimates,&; they wrote. The most virulent types of HPV can cause cervical, anal and other genital cancers. HPV types 16 and 18 are responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancers worldwide, according to background information in the article. The study was based on DNA testing on 2,026 self-collected vaginal swabs among females aged 14 to 59 participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2003-2004. Nearly 27 percent of the samples tested positive for HPV DNA. The principal risk factors cited by the scientists were age, marital status and increasing numbers of sexual partners. The study comes amid an uproar about an HPV vaccine developed by the German pharmaceuticals Merck which targets young teenaged girls. The Merck vaccine is effective against the four most common types of HPV and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in June 2006. The vaccine is aimed primarily at girls aged nine to 13 because, to be highly effective, it should be administered before the first sexual relations. But Merck was forced to stop lobbying on behalf of the vaccine last week in the face of opposition from religious groups that promote sexual abstinence and critics of the huge profits reaped by major drug firms. AIDSravaged Malawi debates male circumcisionWed, 28 Feb 2007 09:14:35 GMTBLANTYRE - AIDS-ravaged Malawi launched a two-day national debate on Wednesday on whether to adopt male circumcision in a bid to reduce the levels of HIV infection in the southeast African country. International health experts, donors, representatives from UNAIDS and local traditional healers will all attend the conference in Blantyre in the wake of trials showing male circumcision more than halves the risk of infection. &;We want candid and frank discussions to chart the way forward,&; Bizwick Mwale, executive director of the National AIDS Commission , told AFP. &;We want to consult as much as possible before any decision is made whether Malawi should embrace male circumcision.&; Trials recently conducted in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa found that men who were uncircumcised were twice as likely to contract the human immunodeficiency virus compared with circumcised counterparts. The data were so dramatic that the trials in Kenya and Uganda were halted ahead of schedule, for it would have been ethically wrong to continue them. Mwale said that the meeting would &;basically analyse all data available supporting male circumcision&;. &;We also want to hear from UNAIDS for their perspective on this issue,&; the NAC chief added. The conference is expected to hammer out recommendations to guide policy makers to decide whether to adopt male circumcision in HIV prevention. Mwale said only about two percent of the population, mainly Muslims living along the vast Lake Malawi shore, has been circumcised on religious grounds. Around 14 percent of Malawi's 12 million-strong population is infected with HIV, according to official figures. There are about 78,000 AIDS-related deaths and 100,000 new infections every year. The pandemic has cut life expectancy in Malawi to 36. Device aids older men with leaky bladderWed, 28 Feb 2007 01:34:54 GMTNEW YORK - Inserting an artificial sphincter around the outlet of the bladder can improve the urine leakage that many elderly men experience following removal of the prostate gland for cancer and other diseases, according to a report in the journal Urology. The results suggest that age in itself is not a barrier to this treatment. "Just because a patient is elderly doesn't mean that he won't be able to benefit from an artificial urinary sphincter for treatment of...incontinence," Dr. R. Corey O'Connor from Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin told Reuters Health. O'Connor and associates evaluated outcomes of sphincter placement in 29 men, 75 to 83 years of age, who had incontinence after prostate removal. The artificial sphincter used by the group was the AMS 800, developed by Minnesota-based American Medical Systems. The device requires surgical placement and features three main components: a cuff, a pump, and a balloon. The cuff encircles the urine tube, or urethra, and most of the time it is inflated with salt water fluid so that it squeezes the urethra and prevents urine leakage. When the patient wants to urinate, he presses and releases the pump, located in the scrotum, which causes the salt water to shift from the cuff into the balloon, allowing urination to occur. A few minutes later, the cuff automatically refills. The device markedly reduced the number of pads needed to deal with urine leakage. In fact, seven of the men no longer required any pads. Most men reported no complications and needed no additional intervention, the results indicate. However, four men required a revision of the sphincter and four required removal. "The results of our study have shown that elderly men do well" after sphincter insertion for urinary incontinence after prostate removal. "The procedure should not be withheld solely on the basis of patient age," the team concludes. "Factors that make me reluctant to offer an artificial urinary sphincter to an elderly man include poor manual dexterity and/or poor overall functional status (physical or mental)," O'Connor commented. SOURCE: Urology, January 2007. Scientists tout new prostate cancer testWed, 28 Feb 2007 02:31:22 GMTPORTLAND, Ore. - Oregon scientists say a simple test can identify men at high risk of life-threatening prostate cancer even after a biopsy finds no signs of it. The key, researchers say, is "PSA density," which compares the size of a man's prostate with his levels of a cancer-related protein called prostate-specific antigen. Men with the highest PSA densities were much more likely to later be diagnosed with aggressive cancers than men with lower scores in an Oregon study, even though both groups had clean prostate biopsies. If it survives scientific review, it could help save the lives of men with serious cancers and avoid repeated biopsies in others. "It's that 1-in-10 men that do have a life-threatening cancer that we wanted to identify," said Dr. Mark Garzotto, an Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researcher, who recently presented the study at a cancer conference in Florida. Prostate cancer will kill about 27,000 U.S. men this year. Doctors usually check for tumors with a prostate biopsy, which uses needles to gather cells from the gland. More than a million U.S. men get prostate biopsies each year. The tests find more than 200,000 tumors, meaning many cancer-free men get unneeded biopsies. Studies estimate that the test fails to find the tumor in 20 percent to 33 percent of men who have one, usually because the needles sample only bits of the gland. "With less than 1 percent of the prostate sampled, we're trying to get the pathologist to tell us if the guy has cancer or not, which is an impossible task," said Garzotto. So doctors recommend second biopsies a few months after a clean test. To narrow the need for repeat tests, Garzotto and co-workers studied 511 patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he works. All the men had clear initial prostate biopsies. But 112 were later found to have cancer, 52 of them aggressive tumors that can be deadly. The scientists found that "PSA density, by itself, was the best discriminator between guys in the high-risk group and the guys in the low-risk group," Garzotto said. By 2 years after their clean biopsy, 23 percent of the men in the high-risk group had aggressive cancer compared with 4 percent of low-risk men, Garzotto said. At four years, the rate was 36 percent in the high-risk group and 9 percent in the other. "I feel more comfortable now about recommending repeat biopsies to this group," he said. Another simple test may identify which men with advanced prostate cancer have the worst outlook, according to a different OHSU study presented at the Florida conference. Dr. Tomasz Beer found that among men with advanced cancer, those with the highest level of C-reactive protein died significantly sooner than men with lower levels. C-reactive protein is a sign of inflammation, which doctors increasingly think is "associated with cancer progression and cancer resistance to treatment," Beer said. He urged more studies. T.J. Koerner, director of research information management for the http://www.oregonlive.com |
