Health Headlines - July 2

Cheney Found Heart-Fit in Annual Physical

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney got good health news Saturday when he was pronounced in stable cardiac health after a routine annual physical examination.

Tests at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., showed that Cheney's cardiac pacemaker was working properly and had not been activated by an irregular heartbeat and that stent-grafts implanted in arteries behind his knees last year were "wide open," according to his spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride.

Cheney, 65, has had four heart attacks, quadruple heart bypass surgery and two angioplasties, procedures to clear blockages in the arteries. And last year he underwent surgery to repair aneurysms in arteries behind his knees, The New York Times reported.

The physical on Saturday consisted of several tests, including an electrocardiogram, follow-up imaging of the repaired aneurysms and a check of Cheney's implantable cardioverter defibrillator, also known as a pacemaker, that he has had since 2001. A stress test on a treadmill is scheduled for the fall, McBride said.

Pomegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer

A daily eight-ounce glass of pomegranate juice may help put the brakes on prostate cancer, according to a new study involving 50 patients.

Studies in mice had already suggested that the juice, which is rich in antioxidants, might help slow the disease. For this study, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles gave the beverage to 50 men who had undergone treatment for prostate cancer, but had shown signs of relapse.

The investigators intermittently measured the patients' blood levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a common indicator of the presence of prostate cancer cells.

Reporting in Clinical Cancer Research, the researchers say it took 54 months for a doubling of PSA levels in men who drank the juice -- a much slower progression than the average 15-month doubling time usually seen in these patients. Some of the men continued to show PSA suppression for more than 3 years, despite receiving no treatment other than the juice.

"I was surprised when I saw such an improvement in PSA numbers," lead researcher Dr. Allan Pawtuck told the BBC. He said pomegranate juice "may be able to prevent or delay the need for other therapies usually used in this population, such as hormone treatment or chemotherapy."

The UCLA team aren't sure which ingredients in the juice help slow cancer progression, The juice is known to have anti-inflammatory compounds, cancer cell-killing isoflavones, plus antioxidants.

Experts: Bird Flu Vaccine 10 Years Away

Experts meeting at a bird flu summit in Paris said that the H5N1 virus is proving a difficult target for vaccine research, and that a viable vaccine could be 10 years away.

Vaccine researcher Dr. David Fedson, a former professor of medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said H5N1 was proving very difficult to grow in culture, according to a BBC report. Researchers were also finding it tough to stimulate an immune system response in humans that would be strong enough to defend against the virus, he said.

"H5N1 is so poorly immunogenic and replicates so poorly that we could immunize globally, with six months of production, about 100 million people," Fedson told the BBC. Compared to the 300 million doses of seasonal flu manufactured each year, the number would be far too small. "From a public health point of view this is catastrophic," he said.

In related news, a report issued Friday by Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt announced that the United States in May sent an undisclosed amount of the antiviral flu drug Tamiflu to a secure location in Asia, where it could be used in the event of an outbreak of bird flu.

As reported by the Associated Press, Levitt said the Tamiflu "could be used as part of the international community's efforts to contain a pandemic. However, if containment was not possible, the Tamilu could be sent back to the U.S. stockpile of antiviral influenza medications."

The H5N1 avian flu virus -- which has so far failed to mutate into a form that is easily transmitted between humans -- has infected 228 people in 53 countries so far, mostly from bird-to-human contact. Half of those infected have died.

NSAIDs Won't Lower Colon Cancer Risk in Smokers

A new study finds that although non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin and ibuprofen do lower risks for colon cancer, they may not do so for long-term smokers.

The study, which is published in the July 1 issue of Cancer Research, included nearly 3,300 Seattle adults averaging 60 years of age, half of whom had a history of colon cancer.

Compared to nonsmokers, people who had smoked for 20 years or longer, and had never used NSAIDs regularly were at highest risk for colon cancer. But researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, found that the risk for colon cancer was also 30 percent higher in long-term smokers who also used NSAIDs on a regular basis.

"Given the damage that smokers receive over their lifetime, even strong anti-progression agents, like NSAIDs, may be ineffective," the study authors wrote.

Norway Cancer Researcher Guilty of Fraud

A commission set up by the hospital employing a disgraced Norwegian cancer researcher announced Friday that it has invalidated most of his work because he manipulated or fabricated data.

Jon Sudbo, 44, has already admitted to fabricating data for studies published in prestigious journals such as The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Sudbo resigned from his post at the University of Oslo and is on sick leave from the National Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center.

According to the Associated Press, Sudbo has blamed his misdeeds on a psychological problems and academic pressures to publish.

In their report, the national hospital's commission said "The errors and gaps that have been discovered are too many, too big, and too obvious that they can be blamed on coincidental errors, incompetence or such like."

The report's authors added that Subo's actions may have harmed patients, although they failed to give details. The commission also criticized the university and hospital for not properly reviewing the researcher's work.

In one of the most egregious examples of fraudulent research, Sudbo published a paper in The Lancet last October that claimed that popular over-the-counter painkillers such as Motrin, Advil and Aleve lowered risks for oral cancer but boosted cardiovascular risk. The journal later retracted the article.