Food Industry a Target in Obesity Fight
It's tempting to blame big food companies for America's big obesity problem. After all, they're the folks who Supersized our fries, family-portioned our potato chips and Big Gulped our sodas. There's also the billions they've spent keeping their products ever on our minds and in our mouths.
Likened by some to the way tobacco companies seduced smokers, such practices have made the food industry the target of lawsuits and legislation seeking to yank junk food from schools and curb advertising to children.
But some experts say neither the problem nor the solution is nearly so simple.
"You don't have the collusion or the cover-up you had in smoking," says James Tillotson, a business and food policy professor at Tufts' Friedman School of Nutrition. "We want to blame somebody, but the thing is, we're all a part of it."
Sure, companies set the stage with cheap, calorie-dense foods.
But government also has propped up agribusiness, the medical community was slow to take on obesity and good nutrition, and consumers seem determined to move less and eat more, says Tillotson, a former food industry executive.
How much of that burden of blame belongs to the food industry can be difficult to answer.
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Personal responsibility
The food industry emerged at a time when malnutrition was the nation's chief dietary concern. But at some point food became too plentiful, a change that altered the culture of the American diet.
Yale obesity expert Dr. David Katz says that's because companies aggressively peddle food to people who don't need it.
Food industry officials prefer to call it consumer choice.
"We don't think the food industry has done anything particularly wrong in this regard," says Robert Earl of the Food Products Association, a lobbying group that prefers to indict sedentary lifestyles and poor choices.
Companies have tried to help people make better choices, he says, offering healthier products and more nutrition data. But people can't be forced to make the right choice and consumer disinterest doomed many of those products.
He's right. Consumers bear much responsibility for their weight and the fact that two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. It's not the industry's fault that people don't get exercise, or that schools have cut physical education, or that people prefer the taste of Twinkies (500 million sold a year) to tofu (much less).
But critics call Earl's assessment disingenuous. Personal responsibility has limits in the face of a multibillion-dollar marketing whirlwind pushing countless high-calorie treats.
"They (food companies) are putting $36 billion into directing those choices," says Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University and critic of the food industry. "And their methods are very effective."
Meanwhile, efforts to market the healthier products Earl spoke of historically have been lackluster, acknowledges Brock Leach, an executive for new products at PepsiCo Inc.
As for nutrition data, it isn't always helpful. And attempts to standardize or clarify labeling still meet resistance.
Personal responsibility also falters when it comes to children, who are bombarded by junk food ads that undermine parents.
Everything from child-friendly merchandizing of sugary cereals to cartoon ads is designed to give companies more sway over what children eat, says Dr. Susan Lynch, a child obesity doctor and wife of New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch.
Such tactics make it tougher to teach good eating habits to kids who equate food with entertainment, she said.
"It becomes a marketing thing, a fashion thing," says Lynch. "You want to buy the food with the cartoons on the box or the toy."
The industry should have done more to direct the child obesity debate, agrees Pepsi's Leach. Much of the focus has been on getting junk food out of school vending machines, but Leach argues that's just a tiny part of the solution.
He says food companies — including his own, one of the biggest losers in the vending machine fight — should have offered healthier vending options long ago, then redirected attention to other critical issues, such as getting physical education back in schools.
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Science lag
In many ways the food industry is chasing a moving target. For years, food production was a better understood science than nutrition. And so whole grains were abandoned and hydrogenated fats embraced.
The medical community takes much of the blame, says Dr. George Blackburn of Harvard Medical School's nutrition division.
"We didn't even put nutrition in the medical curriculum except in the last 30 or 40 years," he says. "As soon as we got drugs, to hell with nutrition. We're just now getting it to be a professional responsibility to be sensitive to people's healthy eating."
Today, the food industry suffers from nutrition research overload, with tidal waves of new and sometimes contradictory health findings that strain its ability to produce appealing foods that are in sync with the latest science.
Even when companies succeed, they still are susceptible to scientific surprises that can break a business.
When saturated fat was the enemy, companies reformulated their products, says Grocery Manufacturers Association spokeswoman Stephanie Childs. Only later did they learn that the trans fats they had replaced them with were even worse.
But the science lag can't explain the growing ubiquity of food or the ballooning portions of it, from bigger buckets of movie popcorn to McDonald's much vilified — and now defunct — Supersized burgers.
The industry again points to the consumer, saying that starting in the 1970s people demanded convenience and bargains. Smart companies launched family sizes and sold food everywhere from office supply chains to hardware stores.
"It's a tremendous way of getting people to buy more at lower cost to the producer," says Nestle, who notes research has shown that the more food people have, the more they eat. "There's no question that that's an incentive to buy. Everybody loves a bargain."
This has changed how Americans eat. So-called portion distortion has contributed enormously to obesity.
And overeating becomes even easier when food is everywhere, Nestle says. Meal time is all the time when everything from cars to backpacks to grocery carts are redesigned with snack food holders to accommodate constant munching.
But Nestle acknowledges it becomes a chicken-or-egg question. Lifestyles have changed and Americans want to eat big and on the run. Did that lead food companies to change, or did new products change Americans?
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Engineering obesity?
Despite his criticism of the industry's practices, Yale's Katz acknowledges companies are in a difficult position. Ultimately, they sell food, and staying in business means selling the foods people want. Public health is secondary.
But what if those companies engineered their foods to make you eat more of them? Though he acknowledges that evidence is scarce, Katz believes companies do just that, much the way tobacco companies were accused of tinkering with nicotine.
Research shows that people eat more when faced with a variety of foods, or even a variety of flavors within a single food. For example, you are less likely to overeat plain baked potatoes than those drenched in butter, salt, sour cream and chives.
Sugary cereals, Katz notes, have more salt in them than many potato and corn chips. Katz believes that's one way to make a cereal's flavor more complex and appealing to get people to eat more of it.
Industry officials dispute Katz's theory. Earl, of the Food Products Association, says he knows of no company that has knowingly manipulated ingredients as Katz suggests.
Whatever the food industry's share of the blame, Tillotson, the Tufts professor, thinks obesity lawsuits are inappropriate and Congress is considering a measure to bar them. Food companies were asked to feed a hungry nation; suing now penalizes them for doing so, he believes.
Industry officials contend lawsuits divert resources from efforts to educate consumers and to produce healthier foods. Market demand and a sense of social responsibility are better catalysts for change, they say.
And some companies deserve real credit for living up to that.
• General Mills Inc., the nation's No. 2 cereal maker, now makes all its cereals from whole-grain flour.
• Kraft Foods Inc., the nation's biggest food manufacturer, says it's curbing snack food ads to children and will redesign packaging to flag its healthier products. The company also recently cut the fat in hundreds of products and stopped marketing snacks at schools.
• PepsiCo Inc., which credits healthier products with two-thirds of its revenue growth, has launched various healthy eating education efforts and even has tied executive bonus programs to the development and marketing of healthier items.
• The Coca-Cola Co. now labels some of its sodas with nutrition data for the entire bottle, not just one serving.
But while critics applaud the changes, they say industry goodwill and consumer demand aren't reliable enough. The realities of competition can push goodwill aside and consumers can't be counted on to want what's good for them.
Leach acknowledges it's true that industry will follow consumer demand, and that includes high-fat, high-sugar foods.
That's why Richard Daynard, director of the obesity and law project at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, says lawsuits -— some are pending, some were dismissed or settled -— still are needed as part of a larger assessment of the obesity epidemic.
"You can't get to a solution until you get a diagnosis. If you don't see the role of the junk food industry in causing the problem and in continuing to maintain the problem, you've missed a big part of the diagnosis," says Daynard, who is leading a soda industry lawsuit.
"Things that dramatically assign blame, like a lawsuit, help people make a diagnosis."
Ellen Van Gelder, an obese 41-year-old health care worker from Concord, N.H., doesn't need a lawsuit to make her diagnosis.
Though she disapproves of many of the food industry's marketing methods and wishes food companies would make it easier to eat healthier, ultimate responsibility for her weight is her own, she says.
"I would love to blame somebody else. The reality is it's each person's responsibility," says Van Gelder, who has battled her weight her entire life. "You put the food on your plate. You choose whether to eat it."
Study Looks at All the Lonely People
More than a third of adults say they are lonely, especially people in their 40s, a new study shows.
U.K. and Australian researchers conducted 30-minute phone interviews with 1,289 adults in the state of Central Queensland, in Australia.
They found that 35 percent of the respondents said they were lonely. People aged 50 and older had the lowest levels of loneliness. Levels of loneliness began to rise at age 20 and peaked between the ages of 40 and 49.
People with strong religious beliefs were less likely to be lonely than people who had no such beliefs. Women were more likely to have strong religious beliefs, which may explain why women reported lower levels of loneliness than men, the researchers said.
Retired people were less likely than unemployed people to be lonely, and there was a link between household income and loneliness -- people with lower incomes reported higher levels of loneliness.
The researchers found no significant association between loneliness and how long a person lived in their current community.
"Understanding what makes people lonely is very important, as loneliness can increase the risk of health conditions, such as heart disease and depression, and other problems such as domestic violence," researcher Professor William Lauder, of the University of Dundee in Scotland, said in a prepared statement.
"One of the most interesting findings in this study is that it challenges the belief that retirement is linked to diminished social contacts and that people get lonelier as they get older," Lauder said.
Hormone Offers Promise of Youth, Risks
Injecting himself with human growth hormone six times a week and swallowing a handful of dietary supplements each day doesn't seem weird or excessive to 44-year-old Richard Weisman of Las Vegas.
"I have young children. I do it for them," said Weisman, the owner of a luxury and sports car dealership at Caesar's Palace. "I want to be healthy as I get older."
Not only that, he said, he also feels an increase in energy, muscle mass and libido. "My wife loves it and is going to start the program herself," he said.
Weisman is not alone. Other ordinary non-athletic Americans are injecting themselves with human growth hormone as part of a regimen prescribed by fringe doctors and a multimillion-dollar anti-aging industry that — depending on who is talking — is either solidly based on science or mostly hucksterism and quackery.
Much of anti-aging medicine, or as it is more often called in recent years "age-management" medicine, relies on dietary supplements, nutrition counseling and exercise programs.
But a portion of patients also get blood tests that detect supposedly low levels of a marker for human growth hormone. Those patients often go home with a prescription for injectable HGH and a $500 monthly hormone bill that insurance does not touch.
Human growth hormone is produced naturally by the pituitary gland and contributes to normal growth in children. In studies, HGH has been shown to increase muscle mass and reduce fat in men and women, with notable side effects, including diabetes.
A pharmaceutical version is approved for treating children who fail to grow for various reasons, for AIDS patients with muscle wasting syndrome and for adults with legitimate growth hormone deficiency caused, for example, by surgery or radiation.
Other uses are illegal, including to turn back the clock on aging. The FDA says it is investigating violations of the law -— the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act as amended in 1988 and 1990 -— and has sent warning letters to companies selling HGH over the Internet for other uses.
University of Illinois-Chicago epidemiologist Jay Olshansky, who co-authored a paper published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association on legal issues surrounding HGH, said anti-aging doctors were surprised to learn they were on shaky legal ground.
They now are changing tactics by redefining growth hormone deficiency and making questionable diagnoses of their patients, Olshansky said.
"They've been administering growth hormone as an anti-aging intervention for a long time. They haven't been hiding it at all," Olshansky said. "Now they're trying to redefine it as a treatment for growth hormone deficiency."
Most prescriptions for HGH should go to children, according to Dr. Thomas Perls of Boston Medical Center, but 74 percent in 2004 went to people age 20 and older.
"In my opinion, that suggests a large amount of illegal distribution," said Perls, a co-author with Olshansky of the JAMA paper and director of a project that studies people who live to age 100.
Sales of HGH in 2004 totaled $622 million for legitimate and non-legitimate uses.
Weisman, the Las Vegas car dealer, said he pays $1,000 a month for supplements and hormones, and a twice-yearly blood test costs him $650 each time. Plus, he paid $2,000 for an initial evaluation with Cenegenics Medical Institute in Las Vegas, the clinic that designed his program and was featured recently in GQ magazine.
"Some people might think it's expensive, but how do you put a value on health?" Weisman asked.
Whether HGH enhances health in already healthy adults remains uncertain, but small, short-term studies have shown benefits and risks.
In 2003, a placebo-controlled, randomized study of people 65 and older found that growth hormone increased lean body mass and decreased fat mass, but the study subjects experienced frequent side effects including diabetes and glucose intolerance.
Other studies have linked HGH to raised cholesterol levels, heightened blood pressure, joint problems, swelling and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Weisman said he has never experienced side effects, although his doctor informed him about them. Doctors interviewed for this article who prescribe HGH said side effects can be avoided by initial low doses or by giving smaller doses if side effects occur. These doctors insist they prescribe HGH only to patients whose blood tests show a deficiency.
Dr. Evan Hadley of the National Institute on Aging said legitimate research on growth hormone has been blown out of proportion by wishful thinkers and marketers.
"Science doesn't have immediate answers for people who want to know what the fountain of youth is today," Hadley said.
But age-management doctors said their work focuses on disease prevention, and so is an affront to the disease-oriented medical establishment.
"Many of my colleagues have criticized the work I do," said Dr. Geoffrey Jones, who puts about 15 percent of his patients on growth hormone. "I don't blame them. I was in the same shoes they're in. When I heard about it, I was critical of it. It's the old saying: If you're not up on it, you're down on it."
Holy smoke! Chinese city turns cigarettes to medicine
A city in China, a country that's home to the world's most enthusiastic smokers, is crushing fake cigarettes to make medicine, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.
The northwestern city of Xian is using the counterfeit cigarettes to extract solanesol, a compound found in tobacco which is used to treat cardiovascular disease, it said.
"We used to incinerate the fake cigarettes, which is wasteful and causes air pollution," Xinhua quoted Zhou Yaqing, vice director of the provincial tobacco monopoly, as saying.
A kilo of solanesol is worth about $200, and 30 tons of tobacco leaf can produce up to 120 kilos, Xinhua added.
China is the world's largest cigarette producer, with a growing market of about 320 million. Chinese cigarettes are also among the cheapest in the world -- a packet can cost as little as 8 U.S. cents -- and smoking kills 1.2 million people a year in China, according to the World Health Organization.
Fake cigarettes, made of poor quality tobacco and often topped up with wood chips, are commonly sold on Chinese streets.
Food Fact:
Tofu to go.
Smoked pressed tofu products make it easier than ever to add near-perfect protein to your day. This convenience food is ready to be sliced and eaten as is in salads or sandwiches, or cooked in stir-fries and braises. Not all tofu tastes the same, so try different brands to find one you like. It also comes in several flavors: Look for plain smoked, Thai seasoning, barbecue or lemon-garlic flavors at your supermarket or whole-foods store. Fat content varies, so if you're counting calories, try a low-fat brand.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Do a half hour of "power chores."
A "houseworkout" can clean up your act in more ways than one. With a little advance planning, household tasks provide a surprisingly effective aerobic workout. Tackle that closet you've been meaning to clean out, or take the offensive against a scummy sink. Vaccuuming, scrubbing and picking up items off the floor all can be healthful exercise, as long as you keep consistently on the move.
FAQ of the day:
How do I know if I need extra iron?
Only a blood test checked by a health care professional will tell you if you need extra iron. If you're feeling tired, weak or have poor stamina, he or she can take a blood sample to check your hemoglobin level, or your hematocrit (your percentage of red blood cells). If levels are low, you probably need more iron, and will need to take an iron supplement for a time, as well as eat more iron-rich foods.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Health Headlines - March 18
Bird Flu Scarier Than Human Flu This Season
The mere threat of bird flu might have frightened the American public more than the regular human flu did this season.
In the March 17 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, public health officials in New York City report a spike in sales of antiviral drugs in October 2005, seven weeks before any laboratory evidence of human flu activity actually surfaced.
"There was a spike in antiviral prescriptions that preceded positive laboratory evidence of flu," confirmed Claire Pospisil, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Health in Albany. "Laboratory evidence of flu activity in New York City really started to pick up in December 2005."
The spike did, however, coincide with a media frenzy on avian flu, suggesting that people were creating personal stockpiles of antivirals to guard against that possibility.
"Our analysis cannot prove why the prescription spike occurred, [but] it suggests that concern about avian influenza may have been a factor," Pospisil acknowledged.
In contrast to the frenetic activity in antiviral drug sales, experts say this year's human flu season appears to be relatively mild.
So far, numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirm that perception.
From Oct. 2, 2005, to March 4, 2006, there were 9,143 cases of the flu reported in the United States. During the 2004-2005 flu season, 23,549 flu cases were reported. In terms of number of states affected, all 50 have reported flu activity this season, while 42 states reported flu activity during the 2004-2005 season.
"The sale of antivirals is due to a fear of bird flu, not the yearly flu season," said Dr. Marc Siegel, author of Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic and a clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. "Flu season itself got eclipsed by the bird flu."
"It was a fairly bad season on the West Coast, but mild in the East so far," he continued. "It was also a late season, late migrating across the country. It's going to be labeled a mild season overall unless we're still in it."
Even if the flu season had heated up, antivirals might not have been much help.
Four antiviral medications -- oseltamivir (brand named Tamiflu), zanamivir, rimantadine and amantadine -- are approved for the treatment and/or prevention of influenza.
Amantadine and rimantadine are included in the national stockpile to guard against a possible influenza pandemic. Unfortunately, this year's circulating flu virus has developed high levels of resistance to these two drugs, which prompted the CDC in January to advise against using them for the remainder of the 2005-06 flu season. The CDC alert was issued because more than 90 percent of samples tested were resistant to the two drugs.
In other words, both medicines are basically useless.
For the MMWR report, the New York State Department of Health monitored sales of antiviral influenza medications paid for by Medicaid while its counterpart, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, monitored sales by a retail pharmacy chain.
In the past, peaks in sales of anti-influenza medication have coincided with peaks in the percentage of specimens testing positive for influenza.
But this year, the spike that occurred Oct. 23-29, 2005, happened seven weeks before the first World Health Organization laboratory evidence of flu virus circulation (Dec. 11-17 2005). There were no other markers of flu activity, such as nursing home outbreaks or emergency room visits, during October.
In 2004, a smaller spike in antiviral sales took place one week before any laboratory evidence of circulating virus. This coincided with media reports of expected shortages in vaccine supply.
Such personal stockpiling carries its own risks. It means that fewer drugs are available for those who actually need them, and the practice could foster more resistance.
"Inappropriate use of antiviral medications may promote the development of viral resistance," Pospisil said. She added that it is unlikely that the short-term prescribing seen this year would have led to resistance.
Siegel reserved his criticism for the media and for public health officials, stressing that a pandemic stemming from avian flu is not inevitable.
"There's way too much speculation," he said. "We need a new language to communicate risk. Public health officials haven't done a great job of distinguishing that a focus on influenza is different from alarming people."
For now, he added, "there's still a species barrier in place between birds and people, and not enough good explanations about what mutations would be needed. There seems to be a rampant assumption that if this mutation occurs, that automatically signals the end of time. H5N1 is a bad virus in birds, and well worth our attention. Talking about the worst-case scenario could be good in raising awareness, but bad about causing panic."
Tests Show Egyptian Woman Dies of Bird Flu
Initial tests have shown that a woman who died this week had bird flu, making her likely the first human death from the disease in Egypt, a spokesman for the World Health Organization said Saturday.
A U.S. Navy lab in Cairo found that the woman, who died on Friday, had the H5N1 virus, but further tests will be conducted by the WHO to give final confirmation, WHO spokesman Hassan el-Bushra told The Associated Press.
A number of people who came in contact with the woman are also being tested, said el-Bushra, who is the WHO regional adviser for emerging diseases. He would not say how many people were being tested or whether they had shown any symptoms of bird flu.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily between people and become a global pandemic.
That has not happened yet, but at least 97 people -— excluding the Egyptian woman -— have died from the disease worldwide, two-thirds of them in Indonesia and Vietnam, according to figures by the World Health Organization.
Eat Cholesterol-Lowering Foods in Combination: Study
Cholesterol-lowering foods may be most effective when eaten in combination, a Canadian study suggests.
The University of Toronto study included 66 women and men, averaging just over 59 years of age. All of the participants ate a diet high in viscous fibers, soy protein, almonds and plant sterol margarine -- all thought to help lower cholesterol.
The participants were told to follow the diet for a year and to keep records of what they ate. They met every two months with the researchers to discuss their progress and to have their cholesterol levels measured.
After a year, more than 30 percent of the study volunteers had successfully kept to the diet and lowered their cholesterol levels by more than 20 percent. That's comparable to what some of the volunteers achieved after taking a cholesterol-lowering statin drug for a month before they started on the diet.
"The study's findings suggest that the average person can do a lot to improve their health through diet," study author David Jenkins, professor in the department of nutritional sciences and a Canada research chair in nutrition and metabolism, said in a prepared statement.
"The participants found it easiest to incorporate single items such as the almonds and margarine into their daily lives," he said. "The fibers and vegetable protein were more challenging since they require more planning and preparation, and because these types of niche products are less available. It's just easier, for example, to buy a beef burger instead of one made from soy, although the range of options is improving. We considered it ideal if the participants were able to follow the diet three quarters of the time."
The findings appear in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Coming to a Retailer Near You: Health Clinics
Running low on cookie dough? Got your eye on home improvement supplies? Yet also keen on the flu vaccine?
Not to worry. Increasingly, major American merchandisers are blazing new power-shopping trails by bringing health care and hardware together under one roof, partnering with health-clinic chains to provide routine medical services in a mall-like setting.
This retail health care trend -- led by conglomerates such as Wal-Mart and Target; national pharmacy chains like Brooks-Eckerd, Rite Aid, Osco Drug and CVS; and even regional grocers such as Albertson's -- is already well under way.
For both logistical and legal reasons, the retailers do not own, operate or directly profit from the clinics that open on their premises.
Instead, outside medical providers -- including InterFit Health Services (operating the "RediClinic" chain), Solantic, Quick Quality Care, MinuteClinic, and Take Care Health Care Systems -- rent in-store space from their brand-name landlords.
Such independent clinics -- now operating in states like Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas -- typically charge a $25 to $60 up-front fee (only some clinics take insurance) to address a limited range of 25 to 30 acute medical conditions.
Most offer standard care for common ailments -- such as allergies; bronchitis; colds; flu; eye, ear, skin and sinus infections; headaches and gastrointestinal issues -- on an appointment-free basis.
Preventative care needs are also covered, such as blood pressure, cholesterol and body fat exams; vaccinations; physicals; weight management; asthma and diabetes testing; and prostate cancer and heart disease screenings.
Both retailers and health-care tenants say the clinic-within-a-store concept can be a win-win for everyone.
"We're a very customer-focused company, and they're so very busy, and this will just add one more thing on their shopping list that they can do," said Sharon Weber, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer with more than 3,600 stores in the United States alone.
"And these facilities will be open the same hours as our pharmacies," she added. "This means including Sundays. So when Junior needs a physical for the football or basketball team, the family can drop by the Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon and get that taken care of."
This ease-of-use approach has the potential to reshape the American medical landscape by establishing a store -- rather than a doctor's office -- as a patient's first point of medical contact.
And therein lies the rub. Many physicians' groups have expressed concern that not only are patients not being cared for in a doctor's office, but they are -- in most instances -- not being cared for by doctors at all.
With the exception of the Solantic organization, which staffs all its clinics with on-site board-certified physicians, clinics are typically operated by registered nurse practitioners and physician assistants -- with physician advice limited to phone consultation.
"There's certainly no place for these clinics in complicated diagnoses, long-term management, or even a second visit for the same problem," said Dr. Larry Fields, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "Certainly, if any of these situations arise, patients should be sent to a physician," he stated.
"It's not a solution, or even a part of the solution, for a lack of insurance," Fields added. "In most cases, for what these places will be charging, you can see a family physician for the same problem. But, of course, these clinics are going to be open nights and weekends when the doctor's office is not open. So it's a convenience factor."
Michael Howe, chief executive officer of Minneapolis-based MinuteClinic, which currently operates 51 clinics across the United States, agrees with Fields that in-store clinics are best viewed as a convenient supplement to, rather than a replacement for, the medical establishment.
"We make it very clear to our patients that this is not a medical home," he said. "The medical home is a critical part of managing their health on an ongoing basis. We gather a list of primary-care providers in the area who are accepting new patients, and we actually are involved in establishing medical homes for our patients outside of MinuteClinic.
"There is resistance to change," Howe added. "But as we move to more consumer-managed health care, you're going to see more and more the role that these retail-based health clinics will play."
Alzheimer's Drug Helps Brain Tumor Patients
Six months of treatment with the Alzheimer's drug Aricept significantly improved cognitive function, mood and quality of life in brain tumor patients after radiation therapy, U.S. researchers report.
Aricept (donepezil) belongs to a class of drugs called acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors.
"To our knowledge, this is the first study of an AChE inhibitor or any other drug administered to long-term survivors of partial or whole brain radiation therapy in an attempt to reduce the symptoms associated with a brain tumor and its treatments," study co-author Dr. Edward G. Shaw, chairman of the department of radiation oncology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said in a prepared statement.
Reporting in the March 17 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Shaw's team decided to try Aricept on this group of patients after noticing that radiation-induced brain injury resembles Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, both in terms of symptoms and what's seen with brain-imaging technology.
"Each year, more than 15,000 Americans are diagnosed with primary brain tumors, and as many as 200,000 with metastatic brain tumors, nearly all of whom receive radiation therapy," Shaw said. "For survivors of brain tumor radiation, symptoms of short-term memory loss and mood changes similar to those seen in Alzheimer's disease, as well as fatigue, frequently occur, leading to a poor quality of life."
The researchers are now planning a clinical trial to compare brain tumor patients treated with Aricept to those treated with a placebo.
Food Fact:
Hate vegetables?
With a few tips, you can sneak them --painlessly -- into your diet. Try these tricks: At a salad bar, fill up your plate with salad greens before adding anything else; the next time you make pasta with vegetables, use half as much pasta and twice as many vegetables; add frozen vegetables to canned soup; add vegetables to pizza or omelettes.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Take the stairs.
The key to cutting stroke risk may be right inside your house. Studies suggest that climbing just three flights of stairs every day can cut your stroke risk by 20%. If your house has a second floor, find excuses for going upstairs whenever possible. If you live or work in a high rise, make a habit of getting off the elevator a few floors below your apartment or office.
FAQ of the day:
How can I get more iron from food?
Try eating more iron-rich beans, peas, lentils and soy foods, as well as dried fruit. Start your day with an iron-fortified food, such as ready-to-eat cereal. Include foods rich in vitamin C at most meals to improve iron absorption (for example, have an orange with a hummus sandwich). Finally, cook acidic foods in an iron skillet; tomato sauce simmered in a cast-iron pan can pick up as much as 80 milligrams of iron.
The mere threat of bird flu might have frightened the American public more than the regular human flu did this season.
In the March 17 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, public health officials in New York City report a spike in sales of antiviral drugs in October 2005, seven weeks before any laboratory evidence of human flu activity actually surfaced.
"There was a spike in antiviral prescriptions that preceded positive laboratory evidence of flu," confirmed Claire Pospisil, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Health in Albany. "Laboratory evidence of flu activity in New York City really started to pick up in December 2005."
The spike did, however, coincide with a media frenzy on avian flu, suggesting that people were creating personal stockpiles of antivirals to guard against that possibility.
"Our analysis cannot prove why the prescription spike occurred, [but] it suggests that concern about avian influenza may have been a factor," Pospisil acknowledged.
In contrast to the frenetic activity in antiviral drug sales, experts say this year's human flu season appears to be relatively mild.
So far, numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirm that perception.
From Oct. 2, 2005, to March 4, 2006, there were 9,143 cases of the flu reported in the United States. During the 2004-2005 flu season, 23,549 flu cases were reported. In terms of number of states affected, all 50 have reported flu activity this season, while 42 states reported flu activity during the 2004-2005 season.
"The sale of antivirals is due to a fear of bird flu, not the yearly flu season," said Dr. Marc Siegel, author of Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic and a clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. "Flu season itself got eclipsed by the bird flu."
"It was a fairly bad season on the West Coast, but mild in the East so far," he continued. "It was also a late season, late migrating across the country. It's going to be labeled a mild season overall unless we're still in it."
Even if the flu season had heated up, antivirals might not have been much help.
Four antiviral medications -- oseltamivir (brand named Tamiflu), zanamivir, rimantadine and amantadine -- are approved for the treatment and/or prevention of influenza.
Amantadine and rimantadine are included in the national stockpile to guard against a possible influenza pandemic. Unfortunately, this year's circulating flu virus has developed high levels of resistance to these two drugs, which prompted the CDC in January to advise against using them for the remainder of the 2005-06 flu season. The CDC alert was issued because more than 90 percent of samples tested were resistant to the two drugs.
In other words, both medicines are basically useless.
For the MMWR report, the New York State Department of Health monitored sales of antiviral influenza medications paid for by Medicaid while its counterpart, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, monitored sales by a retail pharmacy chain.
In the past, peaks in sales of anti-influenza medication have coincided with peaks in the percentage of specimens testing positive for influenza.
But this year, the spike that occurred Oct. 23-29, 2005, happened seven weeks before the first World Health Organization laboratory evidence of flu virus circulation (Dec. 11-17 2005). There were no other markers of flu activity, such as nursing home outbreaks or emergency room visits, during October.
In 2004, a smaller spike in antiviral sales took place one week before any laboratory evidence of circulating virus. This coincided with media reports of expected shortages in vaccine supply.
Such personal stockpiling carries its own risks. It means that fewer drugs are available for those who actually need them, and the practice could foster more resistance.
"Inappropriate use of antiviral medications may promote the development of viral resistance," Pospisil said. She added that it is unlikely that the short-term prescribing seen this year would have led to resistance.
Siegel reserved his criticism for the media and for public health officials, stressing that a pandemic stemming from avian flu is not inevitable.
"There's way too much speculation," he said. "We need a new language to communicate risk. Public health officials haven't done a great job of distinguishing that a focus on influenza is different from alarming people."
For now, he added, "there's still a species barrier in place between birds and people, and not enough good explanations about what mutations would be needed. There seems to be a rampant assumption that if this mutation occurs, that automatically signals the end of time. H5N1 is a bad virus in birds, and well worth our attention. Talking about the worst-case scenario could be good in raising awareness, but bad about causing panic."
Tests Show Egyptian Woman Dies of Bird Flu
Initial tests have shown that a woman who died this week had bird flu, making her likely the first human death from the disease in Egypt, a spokesman for the World Health Organization said Saturday.
A U.S. Navy lab in Cairo found that the woman, who died on Friday, had the H5N1 virus, but further tests will be conducted by the WHO to give final confirmation, WHO spokesman Hassan el-Bushra told The Associated Press.
A number of people who came in contact with the woman are also being tested, said el-Bushra, who is the WHO regional adviser for emerging diseases. He would not say how many people were being tested or whether they had shown any symptoms of bird flu.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily between people and become a global pandemic.
That has not happened yet, but at least 97 people -— excluding the Egyptian woman -— have died from the disease worldwide, two-thirds of them in Indonesia and Vietnam, according to figures by the World Health Organization.
Eat Cholesterol-Lowering Foods in Combination: Study
Cholesterol-lowering foods may be most effective when eaten in combination, a Canadian study suggests.
The University of Toronto study included 66 women and men, averaging just over 59 years of age. All of the participants ate a diet high in viscous fibers, soy protein, almonds and plant sterol margarine -- all thought to help lower cholesterol.
The participants were told to follow the diet for a year and to keep records of what they ate. They met every two months with the researchers to discuss their progress and to have their cholesterol levels measured.
After a year, more than 30 percent of the study volunteers had successfully kept to the diet and lowered their cholesterol levels by more than 20 percent. That's comparable to what some of the volunteers achieved after taking a cholesterol-lowering statin drug for a month before they started on the diet.
"The study's findings suggest that the average person can do a lot to improve their health through diet," study author David Jenkins, professor in the department of nutritional sciences and a Canada research chair in nutrition and metabolism, said in a prepared statement.
"The participants found it easiest to incorporate single items such as the almonds and margarine into their daily lives," he said. "The fibers and vegetable protein were more challenging since they require more planning and preparation, and because these types of niche products are less available. It's just easier, for example, to buy a beef burger instead of one made from soy, although the range of options is improving. We considered it ideal if the participants were able to follow the diet three quarters of the time."
The findings appear in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Coming to a Retailer Near You: Health Clinics
Running low on cookie dough? Got your eye on home improvement supplies? Yet also keen on the flu vaccine?
Not to worry. Increasingly, major American merchandisers are blazing new power-shopping trails by bringing health care and hardware together under one roof, partnering with health-clinic chains to provide routine medical services in a mall-like setting.
This retail health care trend -- led by conglomerates such as Wal-Mart and Target; national pharmacy chains like Brooks-Eckerd, Rite Aid, Osco Drug and CVS; and even regional grocers such as Albertson's -- is already well under way.
For both logistical and legal reasons, the retailers do not own, operate or directly profit from the clinics that open on their premises.
Instead, outside medical providers -- including InterFit Health Services (operating the "RediClinic" chain), Solantic, Quick Quality Care, MinuteClinic, and Take Care Health Care Systems -- rent in-store space from their brand-name landlords.
Such independent clinics -- now operating in states like Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas -- typically charge a $25 to $60 up-front fee (only some clinics take insurance) to address a limited range of 25 to 30 acute medical conditions.
Most offer standard care for common ailments -- such as allergies; bronchitis; colds; flu; eye, ear, skin and sinus infections; headaches and gastrointestinal issues -- on an appointment-free basis.
Preventative care needs are also covered, such as blood pressure, cholesterol and body fat exams; vaccinations; physicals; weight management; asthma and diabetes testing; and prostate cancer and heart disease screenings.
Both retailers and health-care tenants say the clinic-within-a-store concept can be a win-win for everyone.
"We're a very customer-focused company, and they're so very busy, and this will just add one more thing on their shopping list that they can do," said Sharon Weber, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer with more than 3,600 stores in the United States alone.
"And these facilities will be open the same hours as our pharmacies," she added. "This means including Sundays. So when Junior needs a physical for the football or basketball team, the family can drop by the Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon and get that taken care of."
This ease-of-use approach has the potential to reshape the American medical landscape by establishing a store -- rather than a doctor's office -- as a patient's first point of medical contact.
And therein lies the rub. Many physicians' groups have expressed concern that not only are patients not being cared for in a doctor's office, but they are -- in most instances -- not being cared for by doctors at all.
With the exception of the Solantic organization, which staffs all its clinics with on-site board-certified physicians, clinics are typically operated by registered nurse practitioners and physician assistants -- with physician advice limited to phone consultation.
"There's certainly no place for these clinics in complicated diagnoses, long-term management, or even a second visit for the same problem," said Dr. Larry Fields, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "Certainly, if any of these situations arise, patients should be sent to a physician," he stated.
"It's not a solution, or even a part of the solution, for a lack of insurance," Fields added. "In most cases, for what these places will be charging, you can see a family physician for the same problem. But, of course, these clinics are going to be open nights and weekends when the doctor's office is not open. So it's a convenience factor."
Michael Howe, chief executive officer of Minneapolis-based MinuteClinic, which currently operates 51 clinics across the United States, agrees with Fields that in-store clinics are best viewed as a convenient supplement to, rather than a replacement for, the medical establishment.
"We make it very clear to our patients that this is not a medical home," he said. "The medical home is a critical part of managing their health on an ongoing basis. We gather a list of primary-care providers in the area who are accepting new patients, and we actually are involved in establishing medical homes for our patients outside of MinuteClinic.
"There is resistance to change," Howe added. "But as we move to more consumer-managed health care, you're going to see more and more the role that these retail-based health clinics will play."
Alzheimer's Drug Helps Brain Tumor Patients
Six months of treatment with the Alzheimer's drug Aricept significantly improved cognitive function, mood and quality of life in brain tumor patients after radiation therapy, U.S. researchers report.
Aricept (donepezil) belongs to a class of drugs called acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors.
"To our knowledge, this is the first study of an AChE inhibitor or any other drug administered to long-term survivors of partial or whole brain radiation therapy in an attempt to reduce the symptoms associated with a brain tumor and its treatments," study co-author Dr. Edward G. Shaw, chairman of the department of radiation oncology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said in a prepared statement.
Reporting in the March 17 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Shaw's team decided to try Aricept on this group of patients after noticing that radiation-induced brain injury resembles Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, both in terms of symptoms and what's seen with brain-imaging technology.
"Each year, more than 15,000 Americans are diagnosed with primary brain tumors, and as many as 200,000 with metastatic brain tumors, nearly all of whom receive radiation therapy," Shaw said. "For survivors of brain tumor radiation, symptoms of short-term memory loss and mood changes similar to those seen in Alzheimer's disease, as well as fatigue, frequently occur, leading to a poor quality of life."
The researchers are now planning a clinical trial to compare brain tumor patients treated with Aricept to those treated with a placebo.
Food Fact:
Hate vegetables?
With a few tips, you can sneak them --painlessly -- into your diet. Try these tricks: At a salad bar, fill up your plate with salad greens before adding anything else; the next time you make pasta with vegetables, use half as much pasta and twice as many vegetables; add frozen vegetables to canned soup; add vegetables to pizza or omelettes.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Take the stairs.
The key to cutting stroke risk may be right inside your house. Studies suggest that climbing just three flights of stairs every day can cut your stroke risk by 20%. If your house has a second floor, find excuses for going upstairs whenever possible. If you live or work in a high rise, make a habit of getting off the elevator a few floors below your apartment or office.
FAQ of the day:
How can I get more iron from food?
Try eating more iron-rich beans, peas, lentils and soy foods, as well as dried fruit. Start your day with an iron-fortified food, such as ready-to-eat cereal. Include foods rich in vitamin C at most meals to improve iron absorption (for example, have an orange with a hummus sandwich). Finally, cook acidic foods in an iron skillet; tomato sauce simmered in a cast-iron pan can pick up as much as 80 milligrams of iron.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Health Headlines - March 17
Two More U.S. Women Die After Using Abortion Pill
Two more women have died after using the RU-486 abortion pill, U.S. health regulators said Friday in warning doctors to watch for a rare but deadly infection implicated in earlier deaths of four others who used the pill.
Since 2000, at least six women in the United States have died after taking RU-486, but the Food and Drug Administration can't prove the drug was to blame in any of those cases, the Associated Press reported.
In four cases in California, women who took the pill died from sepsis, an infection of the bloodstream. Those women did not follow FDA-approved instructions for using the drug.
The FDA statement also emphasized that abortion providers should stick to the officially approved regimen when giving RU-486, Mifeprex, and an accompanying drug, misoprostol, The New York Times reported.
The FDA instructions call for women to swallow three tablets of Mifeprex, followed by two tablets of misoprostol two days later. In the California cases, the final two tablets were inserted vaginally instead of being swallowed by the women. This "off-label" use does not have FDA approval but is widely recommended by abortion clinics, the AP reported.
The FDA said it hasn't confirmed the cause of death in the two latest cases, but an agency spokeswoman told the AP that the circumstances and symptoms matched those of the California cases.
Mifeprex has been used in more than 500,000 medical abortions in the United States since its approval in September 2000. The risks of death from infection after using the pill are similar to the risks after surgical abortions or childbirth, officials said according to the Times report.
Problems Plague U.S. Anthrax Vaccine Program
The U.S. government's push to develop a new anthrax vaccine is mired in problems and won't achieve a November deadline to stockpile 25 million doses of a new vaccine, the Washington Post reports.
VaxGen Inc., the California company in charge of the $1 billion project, has reported failure in a major human test and has fallen at least a year behind schedule. The company told the Post that it has isolated the problem with the new vaccine and is well on the way to correcting it.
Even so, there's no chance the company will be able to meet the November deadline to deliver 25 million doses of the new vaccine into the U.S. national stockpile. That means that VaxGen will default on its contract with the government, unless federal authorities grant the contract extension requested by the company.
The delay in the VaxGen program has prompted the U.S. government to buy five million doses of an older, controversial anthrax vaccine, which is enough to treat two million people, the Post reported.
Officials at the U.S. Health and Human declined to discuss the VaxGen situation, but noted they've stockpiled enough antibiotics to treat 40 million people after a large-scale anthrax bioterrorism attack.
Israel Confirms First H5N1 Bird Flu Outbreak
Israel has confirmed its first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu, Israel Radio reported Friday.
According to the radio, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed that H5N1 caused the deaths of more than 11,000 turkeys on two farms in the Negev Desert and another farm near Jerusalem.
Israeli officials have ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of turkeys and imposed quarantines around all three farms as part of the effort to control the spread of the virus, the Associated Press reported.
Five people have been admitted to hospitals and are being observed for symptoms of bird flu, but officials said they did not think the patients had contracted the disease.
The H5N1 virus was detected in Egypt last month and it's possible that the disease may have entered Israel from that country, said Israeli Agriculture Minister Zeev Boim.
Since 2003, the H5N1 virus has been found in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East and led to the slaughter of tens of millions of domestic fowl. The virus has killed more than 100 people.
Alzheimer's Drug Study Causes Concern
Some health experts are concerned about a study that found an unusual number of deaths among patients taking Aricept, the most popular drug to treat Alzheimer's disease.
The study included 974 patients with dementia related to heart disease. There were 11 deaths among patients taking Aricept but no deaths among patients taking a placebo. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is analyzing the study results, The New York Times reported.
The study was conducted by Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company that sells Aricept, which is also sold by Pfizer. An Eisai spokesperson said Aricept is safe and the company is not recommending any changes to the drug's label.
Some experts say the findings suggest that Aricept and related drugs may increase the risk of heart disease. They say that's a potential cause for concern because Aricept provides, at best, only mild benefits for Alzheimer's patients, the Times reported.
Last year, a British study concluded that Aricept does not delay the onset of disability or the need for nursing-home care for Alzheimer's patients. The study said the drug provided little overall benefit and was not cost-effective.
FDA Committees to Review New ADHD Drug
The drug Sparlon -- associated with 31 cases of increased suicide risk, aggression or psychosis during clinical trials for treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children -- will be discussed March 22 at a meeting of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Pediatric Advisory Committee.
The following day, the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee will review a new drug application for Sparlon as a treatment for ADHD. The drug is currently marketed as a treatment for narcolepsy, under the name Provigil.
A central issue in the committee's discussion is likely to be what warnings Sparlon must carry and how the non-stimulant drug will be distinguished from more traditional ADHD stimulant drugs, such as Adderall.
Last fall, the FDA issued an "approvable letter" for Sparlon as a treatment for ADHD.
Food Fact:
Vegetable-hopping.
With just a few easy tricks, you can bring more veggies into your day. Try these no-hassle ideas: Top broiled chicken or fish with salsa; buy ready-to-eat, pre-washed salad greens; keep your kitchen well-stocked with vegetables that won't spoil quickly -- onions, green onions, garlic, potatoes, winter squash, carrots -- and which can be prepared quickly in a microwave or vegetable steamer.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Walk for Fitness.
Even a five-minute walk can boost your health, once you know how to make it count. The key is to do it regularly -- aim for a total walking time of 30 - 45 minutes a day, in as little as 5-minute increments, to give your body a boost.
FAQ of the day:
Does fat cause cancer?
Fat by itself does not cause cancer. Certain animal fats may promote some cancers, but fats that come from natural plant sources and seafood do not. It's also true that a high-fat, high-calorie diet can increase risk by promoting excessive weight gain, but your husband needs to add pounds to get back to a healthy weight. His dietician is advising him to eat fat because it's the most concentrated source of calories. Help him focus on foods with health-supportive fats, such as nuts, avocadoes, olives, peanuts and peanut butter. You may also want to use a little extra olive and canola oil in cooking and on salads. Dried fruits are another high-nutrition concentrated source of calories, with the bonus of cancer-fighting phytochemicals.
Two more women have died after using the RU-486 abortion pill, U.S. health regulators said Friday in warning doctors to watch for a rare but deadly infection implicated in earlier deaths of four others who used the pill.
Since 2000, at least six women in the United States have died after taking RU-486, but the Food and Drug Administration can't prove the drug was to blame in any of those cases, the Associated Press reported.
In four cases in California, women who took the pill died from sepsis, an infection of the bloodstream. Those women did not follow FDA-approved instructions for using the drug.
The FDA statement also emphasized that abortion providers should stick to the officially approved regimen when giving RU-486, Mifeprex, and an accompanying drug, misoprostol, The New York Times reported.
The FDA instructions call for women to swallow three tablets of Mifeprex, followed by two tablets of misoprostol two days later. In the California cases, the final two tablets were inserted vaginally instead of being swallowed by the women. This "off-label" use does not have FDA approval but is widely recommended by abortion clinics, the AP reported.
The FDA said it hasn't confirmed the cause of death in the two latest cases, but an agency spokeswoman told the AP that the circumstances and symptoms matched those of the California cases.
Mifeprex has been used in more than 500,000 medical abortions in the United States since its approval in September 2000. The risks of death from infection after using the pill are similar to the risks after surgical abortions or childbirth, officials said according to the Times report.
Problems Plague U.S. Anthrax Vaccine Program
The U.S. government's push to develop a new anthrax vaccine is mired in problems and won't achieve a November deadline to stockpile 25 million doses of a new vaccine, the Washington Post reports.
VaxGen Inc., the California company in charge of the $1 billion project, has reported failure in a major human test and has fallen at least a year behind schedule. The company told the Post that it has isolated the problem with the new vaccine and is well on the way to correcting it.
Even so, there's no chance the company will be able to meet the November deadline to deliver 25 million doses of the new vaccine into the U.S. national stockpile. That means that VaxGen will default on its contract with the government, unless federal authorities grant the contract extension requested by the company.
The delay in the VaxGen program has prompted the U.S. government to buy five million doses of an older, controversial anthrax vaccine, which is enough to treat two million people, the Post reported.
Officials at the U.S. Health and Human declined to discuss the VaxGen situation, but noted they've stockpiled enough antibiotics to treat 40 million people after a large-scale anthrax bioterrorism attack.
Israel Confirms First H5N1 Bird Flu Outbreak
Israel has confirmed its first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu, Israel Radio reported Friday.
According to the radio, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed that H5N1 caused the deaths of more than 11,000 turkeys on two farms in the Negev Desert and another farm near Jerusalem.
Israeli officials have ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of turkeys and imposed quarantines around all three farms as part of the effort to control the spread of the virus, the Associated Press reported.
Five people have been admitted to hospitals and are being observed for symptoms of bird flu, but officials said they did not think the patients had contracted the disease.
The H5N1 virus was detected in Egypt last month and it's possible that the disease may have entered Israel from that country, said Israeli Agriculture Minister Zeev Boim.
Since 2003, the H5N1 virus has been found in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East and led to the slaughter of tens of millions of domestic fowl. The virus has killed more than 100 people.
Alzheimer's Drug Study Causes Concern
Some health experts are concerned about a study that found an unusual number of deaths among patients taking Aricept, the most popular drug to treat Alzheimer's disease.
The study included 974 patients with dementia related to heart disease. There were 11 deaths among patients taking Aricept but no deaths among patients taking a placebo. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is analyzing the study results, The New York Times reported.
The study was conducted by Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company that sells Aricept, which is also sold by Pfizer. An Eisai spokesperson said Aricept is safe and the company is not recommending any changes to the drug's label.
Some experts say the findings suggest that Aricept and related drugs may increase the risk of heart disease. They say that's a potential cause for concern because Aricept provides, at best, only mild benefits for Alzheimer's patients, the Times reported.
Last year, a British study concluded that Aricept does not delay the onset of disability or the need for nursing-home care for Alzheimer's patients. The study said the drug provided little overall benefit and was not cost-effective.
FDA Committees to Review New ADHD Drug
The drug Sparlon -- associated with 31 cases of increased suicide risk, aggression or psychosis during clinical trials for treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children -- will be discussed March 22 at a meeting of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Pediatric Advisory Committee.
The following day, the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee will review a new drug application for Sparlon as a treatment for ADHD. The drug is currently marketed as a treatment for narcolepsy, under the name Provigil.
A central issue in the committee's discussion is likely to be what warnings Sparlon must carry and how the non-stimulant drug will be distinguished from more traditional ADHD stimulant drugs, such as Adderall.
Last fall, the FDA issued an "approvable letter" for Sparlon as a treatment for ADHD.
Food Fact:
Vegetable-hopping.
With just a few easy tricks, you can bring more veggies into your day. Try these no-hassle ideas: Top broiled chicken or fish with salsa; buy ready-to-eat, pre-washed salad greens; keep your kitchen well-stocked with vegetables that won't spoil quickly -- onions, green onions, garlic, potatoes, winter squash, carrots -- and which can be prepared quickly in a microwave or vegetable steamer.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Walk for Fitness.
Even a five-minute walk can boost your health, once you know how to make it count. The key is to do it regularly -- aim for a total walking time of 30 - 45 minutes a day, in as little as 5-minute increments, to give your body a boost.
FAQ of the day:
Does fat cause cancer?
Fat by itself does not cause cancer. Certain animal fats may promote some cancers, but fats that come from natural plant sources and seafood do not. It's also true that a high-fat, high-calorie diet can increase risk by promoting excessive weight gain, but your husband needs to add pounds to get back to a healthy weight. His dietician is advising him to eat fat because it's the most concentrated source of calories. Help him focus on foods with health-supportive fats, such as nuts, avocadoes, olives, peanuts and peanut butter. You may also want to use a little extra olive and canola oil in cooking and on salads. Dried fruits are another high-nutrition concentrated source of calories, with the bonus of cancer-fighting phytochemicals.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Health Headlines - March 16
Chiron Recalls Nearly 5.5 Million Vaccine Doses
California-based biotechnology company Chiron Corp. announced Thursday that it's recalling and withdrawing almost 5.5 million doses of a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine distributed to developing countries and in Italy.
The move was made because the vaccine caused a higher rate of such adverse effects such as fever, allergic reactions and glandular swelling than other similar vaccines, the Associated Press reported.
The reactions occurred just after inoculation and do not indicate any long-term risk, according to Chiron, which described the recall and withdrawal as a precaution. About five million doses of the vaccine were distributed to developing countries and about 450,000 doses were distributed in Italy.
Other Chiron vaccines are not affected by the recall, the AP reported.
In 2004, Chiron failure to deliver half the United States' expected 100 million flu shots triggered widespread public health concern. The company couldn't fill the order because contaminated vaccine was discovered at its plant in Liverpool, England.
Last fall, Chiron said problems at the same plant meant the company wouldn't ship out as many flu shots as initially planned, the AP reported.
Doctors May See Fewer Medicare Patients if Reimbursement Rates are Cut
A proposed U.S. government cut to doctors' Medicare reimbursement rates may mean that some doctors will stop accepting new Medicare patients or see fewer of them, the American Medical Association (AMA) warned Thursday.
The AMA wants the government to change the formula used to reimburse doctors for more than 7,000 healthcare services covered by Medicare. The formula calls for a cut of about 4.6 percent in 2007, the Associated Press reported.
In an online AMA survey, about 29 percent of doctors said they would reduce the number of Medicare patients they treat and 16 percent said they'd stop accepting new Medicare patients if the reimbursement rate cut goes ahead next year.
Last year, the AMA successfully lobbied Congress to cancel a cut in reimbursement rates, the AP reported.
A report released last year by the nonpartisan research group, the Center for Studying Health System Change, said that doctors continued to treat comparable numbers of Medicare patients after reimbursement rates were cut by 5.4 percent in 2002.
Report Highlights Youth Inhalant Abuse
Over three years, about 1.8 million American youth, ages 12 to 17, started abusing inhalants such as glue, gasoline and aerosol sprays, says a new U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report released to mark National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week.
The report, based on data from 2002 to 2004, found that 30 percent of those who began inhalant abuse were ages 12 or 13, while 39.2 percent were ages 14 or 15, and 30.8 percent were ages 16 or 17. The majority of the youth were white and from homes with incomes well above the poverty line.
The most popular inhalants for these youth are: glue, shoe polish or toluene (30.3 percent); gasoline or lighter fluid (24.9 percent); nitrous oxide or "Whippets" (24.9 percent); spray paints (23.4 percent); correction fluid, degreaser or cleaning fluid (18.4 percent); other aerosol sprays (18 percent); amyl nitrite, "poppers," locker room deodorizers or "rush" (14.7 percent); and lacquer thinner or other paint solvents (11.7 percent).
These inhalants can damage the brain, liver, heart, kidneys, and lungs.
Many Older People Able to Cope with Spouse's Death
The death of a spouse may not affect older people as severely as previously thought, says a U.S. study that tracked 1,500 couples over the age of 65.
The study found that 46 percent of widows or widowers said they had satisfying marriages but had been able to cope with the loss of their spouse without much grieving, BBC News reported.
"They believed life is fair and they accepted that death is part of life," said researcher Deborah Carr, a sociologist at Rutgers University. She began the study when she was at the University of Michigan.
She noted that many of the surviving spouses took great comfort in their memories of their partners, BBC News reported.
The findings contradict the belief that widows or widowers who show minimal grief are in denial or lacked close attachment to their spouse.
The study also found that 10 percent of the widows and widowers said the death of their spouse was a relief because they'd been trapped in a bad marriage or had been burdened by difficult caregiving duties.
Sixteen percent of the widows and widowers suffered chronic grief lasting more than 18 months after the death of their spouse.
Bush Nominates von Eschenbach to Head FDA
Andrew C. von Eschenbach, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, has been nominated by President George Bush to be the new permanent commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, the Washington Post reported.
Von Eschenbach, a Bush family friend, has served as acting FDA commissioner since September, when Lester M. Crawford abruptly vacated the position after less than three months in the job.
For much of the Bush administration, the FDA has been without a permanent commissioner, a situation that many feel has harmed the agency's reputation and effectiveness, the Post reported.
Despite the need for a permanent FDA commissioner, it's possible that von Eschenbach's nomination could be stalled for months or even years.
Shortly after von Eschenbach's nomination was announced, Democratic Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington state said they'd block a vote on von Eschenbach's nomination until the FDA makes the "morning-after" emergency contraception pill available without a prescription, the Post reported.
The application has been pending for two years and has been held up by opposition from social and religious conservatives, even though FDA staffers have endorsed making the morning-after pill more readily available, the newspaper said.
Von Eschenbach's nomination was criticized by the advocacy group Public Citizen.
In a statement, Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, described von Eschenbach as "yet another Bush appointee whose main reason for being selected is that he is a family friend, someone who has been warmly embraced by the regulated industries -- especially the pharmaceutical industry -- and someone who has been and will continue to be loyal to the White House agenda."
"He is a very poor choice to head this critical agency, and his nomination must be defeated. Otherwise, the FDA will be further weakened and the public health further damaged by someone who is so unqualified," Wolfe said.
Food Fact:
Take a veg pledge.
Put just a few more veggies on your plate, and you can reduce your disease risk. People who live in regions where vegetable consumption is greatest live the longest. How can you eat more veggies? Toss a bag of baby carrots into your bag or briefcase, and nibble on them throughout the day. Add frozen vegetables to canned soup. Add crunch and brilliant green color to salads with snow peas and sugar snap peas -- first cook them briefly, then refresh them under cold running water.
Fitness Tip of the day:
When to say "when?"
Exercise is great, but learn to recognize signs your body needs a break. While exercise promotes a healthy heart, strong bones, reduction in body fat and more, rest is an important part of the equation, too. In order to prevent injury and avoid "burnout," it is best to take scheduled breaks from exercise. Typically, a week of rest is a good idea after a couple of months of steady training; it allows your body to heal.
FAQ of the day:
Does eating more soy cut my risk of cancer?
It's the shock of the new: Your family may be reacting to the unfamiliar sight and texture of those little white squares, or feeling they're being denied the meat they enjoyed. So maybe you should try something a little less jarring. One idea: Make shakes in the blender with silken tofu, which is softer and creamier than regular tofu. Blend 1/2 cup of silken tofu, one cup of frozen raspberries, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 cup of low-fat milk or soy milk in a blender until smooth. Of course, you can use different fruits and fruit combinations, such as blueberries, strawberries, peaches and bananas. If you don't tell them it's a soy shake, they'd probably never even suspect it.
California-based biotechnology company Chiron Corp. announced Thursday that it's recalling and withdrawing almost 5.5 million doses of a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine distributed to developing countries and in Italy.
The move was made because the vaccine caused a higher rate of such adverse effects such as fever, allergic reactions and glandular swelling than other similar vaccines, the Associated Press reported.
The reactions occurred just after inoculation and do not indicate any long-term risk, according to Chiron, which described the recall and withdrawal as a precaution. About five million doses of the vaccine were distributed to developing countries and about 450,000 doses were distributed in Italy.
Other Chiron vaccines are not affected by the recall, the AP reported.
In 2004, Chiron failure to deliver half the United States' expected 100 million flu shots triggered widespread public health concern. The company couldn't fill the order because contaminated vaccine was discovered at its plant in Liverpool, England.
Last fall, Chiron said problems at the same plant meant the company wouldn't ship out as many flu shots as initially planned, the AP reported.
Doctors May See Fewer Medicare Patients if Reimbursement Rates are Cut
A proposed U.S. government cut to doctors' Medicare reimbursement rates may mean that some doctors will stop accepting new Medicare patients or see fewer of them, the American Medical Association (AMA) warned Thursday.
The AMA wants the government to change the formula used to reimburse doctors for more than 7,000 healthcare services covered by Medicare. The formula calls for a cut of about 4.6 percent in 2007, the Associated Press reported.
In an online AMA survey, about 29 percent of doctors said they would reduce the number of Medicare patients they treat and 16 percent said they'd stop accepting new Medicare patients if the reimbursement rate cut goes ahead next year.
Last year, the AMA successfully lobbied Congress to cancel a cut in reimbursement rates, the AP reported.
A report released last year by the nonpartisan research group, the Center for Studying Health System Change, said that doctors continued to treat comparable numbers of Medicare patients after reimbursement rates were cut by 5.4 percent in 2002.
Report Highlights Youth Inhalant Abuse
Over three years, about 1.8 million American youth, ages 12 to 17, started abusing inhalants such as glue, gasoline and aerosol sprays, says a new U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report released to mark National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week.
The report, based on data from 2002 to 2004, found that 30 percent of those who began inhalant abuse were ages 12 or 13, while 39.2 percent were ages 14 or 15, and 30.8 percent were ages 16 or 17. The majority of the youth were white and from homes with incomes well above the poverty line.
The most popular inhalants for these youth are: glue, shoe polish or toluene (30.3 percent); gasoline or lighter fluid (24.9 percent); nitrous oxide or "Whippets" (24.9 percent); spray paints (23.4 percent); correction fluid, degreaser or cleaning fluid (18.4 percent); other aerosol sprays (18 percent); amyl nitrite, "poppers," locker room deodorizers or "rush" (14.7 percent); and lacquer thinner or other paint solvents (11.7 percent).
These inhalants can damage the brain, liver, heart, kidneys, and lungs.
Many Older People Able to Cope with Spouse's Death
The death of a spouse may not affect older people as severely as previously thought, says a U.S. study that tracked 1,500 couples over the age of 65.
The study found that 46 percent of widows or widowers said they had satisfying marriages but had been able to cope with the loss of their spouse without much grieving, BBC News reported.
"They believed life is fair and they accepted that death is part of life," said researcher Deborah Carr, a sociologist at Rutgers University. She began the study when she was at the University of Michigan.
She noted that many of the surviving spouses took great comfort in their memories of their partners, BBC News reported.
The findings contradict the belief that widows or widowers who show minimal grief are in denial or lacked close attachment to their spouse.
The study also found that 10 percent of the widows and widowers said the death of their spouse was a relief because they'd been trapped in a bad marriage or had been burdened by difficult caregiving duties.
Sixteen percent of the widows and widowers suffered chronic grief lasting more than 18 months after the death of their spouse.
Bush Nominates von Eschenbach to Head FDA
Andrew C. von Eschenbach, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, has been nominated by President George Bush to be the new permanent commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, the Washington Post reported.
Von Eschenbach, a Bush family friend, has served as acting FDA commissioner since September, when Lester M. Crawford abruptly vacated the position after less than three months in the job.
For much of the Bush administration, the FDA has been without a permanent commissioner, a situation that many feel has harmed the agency's reputation and effectiveness, the Post reported.
Despite the need for a permanent FDA commissioner, it's possible that von Eschenbach's nomination could be stalled for months or even years.
Shortly after von Eschenbach's nomination was announced, Democratic Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington state said they'd block a vote on von Eschenbach's nomination until the FDA makes the "morning-after" emergency contraception pill available without a prescription, the Post reported.
The application has been pending for two years and has been held up by opposition from social and religious conservatives, even though FDA staffers have endorsed making the morning-after pill more readily available, the newspaper said.
Von Eschenbach's nomination was criticized by the advocacy group Public Citizen.
In a statement, Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, described von Eschenbach as "yet another Bush appointee whose main reason for being selected is that he is a family friend, someone who has been warmly embraced by the regulated industries -- especially the pharmaceutical industry -- and someone who has been and will continue to be loyal to the White House agenda."
"He is a very poor choice to head this critical agency, and his nomination must be defeated. Otherwise, the FDA will be further weakened and the public health further damaged by someone who is so unqualified," Wolfe said.
Food Fact:
Take a veg pledge.
Put just a few more veggies on your plate, and you can reduce your disease risk. People who live in regions where vegetable consumption is greatest live the longest. How can you eat more veggies? Toss a bag of baby carrots into your bag or briefcase, and nibble on them throughout the day. Add frozen vegetables to canned soup. Add crunch and brilliant green color to salads with snow peas and sugar snap peas -- first cook them briefly, then refresh them under cold running water.
Fitness Tip of the day:
When to say "when?"
Exercise is great, but learn to recognize signs your body needs a break. While exercise promotes a healthy heart, strong bones, reduction in body fat and more, rest is an important part of the equation, too. In order to prevent injury and avoid "burnout," it is best to take scheduled breaks from exercise. Typically, a week of rest is a good idea after a couple of months of steady training; it allows your body to heal.
FAQ of the day:
Does eating more soy cut my risk of cancer?
It's the shock of the new: Your family may be reacting to the unfamiliar sight and texture of those little white squares, or feeling they're being denied the meat they enjoyed. So maybe you should try something a little less jarring. One idea: Make shakes in the blender with silken tofu, which is softer and creamier than regular tofu. Blend 1/2 cup of silken tofu, one cup of frozen raspberries, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 cup of low-fat milk or soy milk in a blender until smooth. Of course, you can use different fruits and fruit combinations, such as blueberries, strawberries, peaches and bananas. If you don't tell them it's a soy shake, they'd probably never even suspect it.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Health Headlines - March 15
6 Men Hospitalized in Clinical Drug Trial
Two men are in critical condition and another four men are in serious but stable condition in a London hospital after they all suffered serious side effects while taking part in a clinical trial of an experimental drug.
The men were taking part in a clinical trial, conducted by Massachusetts-based Parexel International Corp., involving a monoclonal antibody called TGN 1412, which is being developed to treat conditions including leukemia and rheumatoid arthritis. The United Kingdom's Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency halted trials of the drug and has launched an investigation, Bloomberg news reported.
All the men were admitted to North West London Hospital, which refused to reveal their identities.
But Ganesh Suntharalingam, clinical director of intensive care at the hospital, said, "The drug, which is untested and therefore unused by doctors, has caused an inflammatory response which affects some organs of the body."
News reports said the six victims were among eight volunteers involved in the trial. The other two men in the group had been given a placebo and were unharmed.
TGN 1412 is being developed by TeGenero AG of Germany. Clinical trials of the drug had started only in England ,but TeGenero had received approval to test the drug in Germany, Bloomberg news reported.
In an e-mailed statement, Herman Scholtz, head of clinical pharmacology at Parexel, said: "Since our unit is located within the hospital, we have immediate access to world-class medical care and we did everything possible to get the patients treated as quickly as possible."
Paraxel's clinical trial site in London specializes in testing the effects of drugs given to humans for the first time.
Sweden Confirms First Case of Bird Flu
Sweden has confirmed its first cases of H5N1 bird flu in two dead wild ducks and Denmark is testing a wild bird to see if it's the first case of H5N1 in that country, BBC News reported.
The dead ducks were found at the end of February in Oskarshamm, on Sweden's southeastern coast. Since then, an H5 bird flu virus subtype has been found in other wild birds. Tests are being conducted to determine whether those birds also had the H5N1 virus. So far, there are no reports of bird flu in domestic fowl in Sweden. The H5N1 virus has already been found in birds in a number of European countries. It has also been found in cats in Austria and Germany.
Along with Europe, the virus is currently present in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. So far, more than 100 people have been killed by H5N1, which can be caught through direct contact with infected birds.
While it's believed that the virus has not yet been passed from human to human, experts fear H5N1 will mutate into a form that can be transmitted between people. This could trigger a flu pandemic that could kill millions, BBC News reported.
Bush Acknowledges Problems With Medicare Drug Plan
President George W. Bush acknowledged on Tuesday that the new Medicare prescription drug program has been plagued by problems in the early stages.
The admission, made in a speech in Canandaigua, N.Y., appeared to be an attempt to ease the barrage of complaints from retirees and pharmacists. Bush's speech about the Medicare drug program echoed previous speeches in which he conceded mistakes were made in the Hurricane Katrina response and the Iraq reconstruction, The New York Times reported.
In Tuesday's address, Bush said he had anticipated that the new drug program would have a difficult start.
"Any time Washington passes a new law, sometimes the transition period can be interesting," Bush said.
He also noted that several programs were available to explain Medicare options to beneficiaries, the Times reported.
Ambien Linked to Sleepwalking
Ambien, the leading prescription sleep medication in the United States, may be linked to incidents of sleepwalking and cases of people doing other strange and potentially dangerous things while they're asleep, including eating, talking on the phone, shoplifting, and driving, the Washington Post reported.
When they wake up, people have no memory of doing these activities.
There are a growing , though still inconclusive, number of reports that associate Ambien with such incidents, sleep experts and researchers say. A number of cases have been included in articles published in medical journals.
Patient and doctor reports to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration indicate that Ambien is associated with more sleepwalking incidents than all other sleep aids combined, the Post reported.
Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center researcher Timothy Morgenthaler said he's seen many cases of people sleepwalking and sleep-eating after taking Ambien.
"I feel pretty comfortable that this is a real phenomenon," he told the Post.
Ambien is made by French company Sanofi-Aventis, which issued a statement saying that sleepwalking and related incidents are a known but rare side effect that's fully disclosed on the drug's labeling.
BiDil Benefits All Black Heart Failure Patients: Study
Both female and male black heart failure patients benefited from taking the drug BiDil in addition to standard heart failure therapy, according to a study presented Tuesday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta.
Findings from the African American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT) showed that both women (228) and men (290) treated with BiDil (isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine hydrochloride) experienced improved clinical outcomes for heart failure.
While all-cause death appeared to be lower in women than in men treated with BiDil, there was no significant difference in the benefit of BiDil on survival between men and women, the study said.
Additional data from A-HeFT showed that BiDil efficacy in black patients was not limited by severity of LV Ejection Fraction.
"These two analyses are significant as data from A-HeFT continue to provide valuable insight into the treatment of heart failure in black patients," Dr. Michael L. Sabolinski, chief medical officer of NitroMed Inc., said in a prepared statement.
Food Fact:
Culture club.
When yogurt's live active cultures colonize your digestive system, they draw a line in the sand against disease. The cultures -- especially acidophilus and bifida - muscle out potentially threatening bacteria. Low-fat or fat-free yogurt has a lot of other things going for it: It's easy to digest, especially for those who are lactose-intolerant and have difficulty digesting milk and many cheeses; it's an excellent source of calcium, protein, riboflavin (a B vitamin), vitamin B-12 (which may be low in vegetarian diets) and vitamin A; and provides selenium, potassium and magnesium.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Make exercise fun.
Revving up your workout routine can be as easy as making a list. When beginning a new exercise program, jot down your favorite everyday activities, and incorporate them into your fitness plan. If you enjoy walking with your dog, schedule longer walks along with more traditional forms of exercise such as weight training, flexibility training and cardiovascular programming.
FAQ of the day:
Can certain foods prevent cancer?
No one can say with absolute certainty how powerful is diet in preventing cancer. But at least a third (and possibly more) of all cancers have been linked to diet. People who eat the most fruits and vegetables have been shown to have about half the risk of developing cancer as people who rarely eat them. Your genes and other lifestyle factors, such as smoking, have a strong say in your susceptibility to cancer. But it's likely that improving the typical American diet would make a big dent in new cases of cancer, the nation's second biggest killer after heart disease.
Two men are in critical condition and another four men are in serious but stable condition in a London hospital after they all suffered serious side effects while taking part in a clinical trial of an experimental drug.
The men were taking part in a clinical trial, conducted by Massachusetts-based Parexel International Corp., involving a monoclonal antibody called TGN 1412, which is being developed to treat conditions including leukemia and rheumatoid arthritis. The United Kingdom's Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency halted trials of the drug and has launched an investigation, Bloomberg news reported.
All the men were admitted to North West London Hospital, which refused to reveal their identities.
But Ganesh Suntharalingam, clinical director of intensive care at the hospital, said, "The drug, which is untested and therefore unused by doctors, has caused an inflammatory response which affects some organs of the body."
News reports said the six victims were among eight volunteers involved in the trial. The other two men in the group had been given a placebo and were unharmed.
TGN 1412 is being developed by TeGenero AG of Germany. Clinical trials of the drug had started only in England ,but TeGenero had received approval to test the drug in Germany, Bloomberg news reported.
In an e-mailed statement, Herman Scholtz, head of clinical pharmacology at Parexel, said: "Since our unit is located within the hospital, we have immediate access to world-class medical care and we did everything possible to get the patients treated as quickly as possible."
Paraxel's clinical trial site in London specializes in testing the effects of drugs given to humans for the first time.
Sweden Confirms First Case of Bird Flu
Sweden has confirmed its first cases of H5N1 bird flu in two dead wild ducks and Denmark is testing a wild bird to see if it's the first case of H5N1 in that country, BBC News reported.
The dead ducks were found at the end of February in Oskarshamm, on Sweden's southeastern coast. Since then, an H5 bird flu virus subtype has been found in other wild birds. Tests are being conducted to determine whether those birds also had the H5N1 virus. So far, there are no reports of bird flu in domestic fowl in Sweden. The H5N1 virus has already been found in birds in a number of European countries. It has also been found in cats in Austria and Germany.
Along with Europe, the virus is currently present in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. So far, more than 100 people have been killed by H5N1, which can be caught through direct contact with infected birds.
While it's believed that the virus has not yet been passed from human to human, experts fear H5N1 will mutate into a form that can be transmitted between people. This could trigger a flu pandemic that could kill millions, BBC News reported.
Bush Acknowledges Problems With Medicare Drug Plan
President George W. Bush acknowledged on Tuesday that the new Medicare prescription drug program has been plagued by problems in the early stages.
The admission, made in a speech in Canandaigua, N.Y., appeared to be an attempt to ease the barrage of complaints from retirees and pharmacists. Bush's speech about the Medicare drug program echoed previous speeches in which he conceded mistakes were made in the Hurricane Katrina response and the Iraq reconstruction, The New York Times reported.
In Tuesday's address, Bush said he had anticipated that the new drug program would have a difficult start.
"Any time Washington passes a new law, sometimes the transition period can be interesting," Bush said.
He also noted that several programs were available to explain Medicare options to beneficiaries, the Times reported.
Ambien Linked to Sleepwalking
Ambien, the leading prescription sleep medication in the United States, may be linked to incidents of sleepwalking and cases of people doing other strange and potentially dangerous things while they're asleep, including eating, talking on the phone, shoplifting, and driving, the Washington Post reported.
When they wake up, people have no memory of doing these activities.
There are a growing , though still inconclusive, number of reports that associate Ambien with such incidents, sleep experts and researchers say. A number of cases have been included in articles published in medical journals.
Patient and doctor reports to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration indicate that Ambien is associated with more sleepwalking incidents than all other sleep aids combined, the Post reported.
Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center researcher Timothy Morgenthaler said he's seen many cases of people sleepwalking and sleep-eating after taking Ambien.
"I feel pretty comfortable that this is a real phenomenon," he told the Post.
Ambien is made by French company Sanofi-Aventis, which issued a statement saying that sleepwalking and related incidents are a known but rare side effect that's fully disclosed on the drug's labeling.
BiDil Benefits All Black Heart Failure Patients: Study
Both female and male black heart failure patients benefited from taking the drug BiDil in addition to standard heart failure therapy, according to a study presented Tuesday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta.
Findings from the African American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT) showed that both women (228) and men (290) treated with BiDil (isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine hydrochloride) experienced improved clinical outcomes for heart failure.
While all-cause death appeared to be lower in women than in men treated with BiDil, there was no significant difference in the benefit of BiDil on survival between men and women, the study said.
Additional data from A-HeFT showed that BiDil efficacy in black patients was not limited by severity of LV Ejection Fraction.
"These two analyses are significant as data from A-HeFT continue to provide valuable insight into the treatment of heart failure in black patients," Dr. Michael L. Sabolinski, chief medical officer of NitroMed Inc., said in a prepared statement.
Food Fact:
Culture club.
When yogurt's live active cultures colonize your digestive system, they draw a line in the sand against disease. The cultures -- especially acidophilus and bifida - muscle out potentially threatening bacteria. Low-fat or fat-free yogurt has a lot of other things going for it: It's easy to digest, especially for those who are lactose-intolerant and have difficulty digesting milk and many cheeses; it's an excellent source of calcium, protein, riboflavin (a B vitamin), vitamin B-12 (which may be low in vegetarian diets) and vitamin A; and provides selenium, potassium and magnesium.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Make exercise fun.
Revving up your workout routine can be as easy as making a list. When beginning a new exercise program, jot down your favorite everyday activities, and incorporate them into your fitness plan. If you enjoy walking with your dog, schedule longer walks along with more traditional forms of exercise such as weight training, flexibility training and cardiovascular programming.
FAQ of the day:
Can certain foods prevent cancer?
No one can say with absolute certainty how powerful is diet in preventing cancer. But at least a third (and possibly more) of all cancers have been linked to diet. People who eat the most fruits and vegetables have been shown to have about half the risk of developing cancer as people who rarely eat them. Your genes and other lifestyle factors, such as smoking, have a strong say in your susceptibility to cancer. But it's likely that improving the typical American diet would make a big dent in new cases of cancer, the nation's second biggest killer after heart disease.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Health Headlines - March 14
Human Bird Flu Death Toll Climbs Above 100
Three deaths in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan have pushed the worldwide human death toll from bird flu to 101 people, Agence France Presse reported.
The World Health Organization has yet to verify the deaths, but Azerbaijani officials said the H5N1 virus was identified in the three victims from the southern Salyan region. Tests did not detect H5N1 in six other patients hospitalized with flu symptoms in the same area of Azerbaijan.
As bird flu continues to spread in various regions of the world, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Monday that Americans won't be able to count on a vaccine to protect them during the first six months of a pandemic, the Associated Press reported.
Leavitt said it would take at least six months to produce a vaccine to protect humans. That's because the virus is changing and there's no way to know in advance which strain may become capable of human-to-human transmission.
Once such a virus strain is identified, it will take time to test a vaccine to make sure it's safe and then to mass-produce it, the AP reported.
"If we have a person-to-person, transmissible virus and we enter a pandemic condition, we will be operating without a vaccine for the first six months. We will be dependent upon traditional public health measures to contain and limit it," Leavitt said at a news briefing.
Heart Defect Repair Helps Some Migraine Patients
Repairing a congenital heart defect called patent foramen ovale, a hole between the upper chambers of the heart, can reduce the severity and frequency of migraine headaches, according to preliminary findings from a British study of 147 patients.
However, the researchers said this repair, which uses an implanted device, does not prevent migraines altogether, The New York Times reported.
Forty-two percent of patients who had their heart defect repaired reported at least a 50 percent decline in the number of days they had migraines. About half as many patients in a control group that did not have the repair reported the same kind of reduction in migraines.
The findings were presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta. More details about the study results will be released in three weeks at a major neurology meeting.
The researchers said they identified a higher-than-expected correlation between patients with large holes in their hearts and severe migraines, the Times reported.
Each year, more than 30 million Americans suffer some form of migraine.
Switching to Vegetarian Diet Slowed Weight Gain: Study
People who switched from eating meat to a vegetarian diet gained slightly less weight over five years than people who didn't make major diet changes, says a study by Cancer Research UK.
The research on 22,000 meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans found that the overall weight gain was about 4.5 pounds, but people who had switched from a meat diet to a vegetarian diet gained about a pound less weight and people who switched to a vegan diet showed slightly smaller weight gains, BBC News reported.
"Contrary to the current popular views that a diet low in carbohydrates and high in proteins keeps weight down, we found that the lowest weight gain came in people with high intake of carbohydrate and low intake of protein," said research team leader Prof. Tim Key of Oxford University.
The study also found that people who did the least amount of exercise gained the most weight.
"This confirms that the best way to prevent obesity is to combine a healthy diet with exercise," Key told BBC News.
Mad Cow Case Confirmed in Alabama
An Alabama cow has tested positive for mad cow disease, the U.S. Agriculture Department confirmed Monday.
A routine test last week had indicated the presence of the disease. Results were confirmed by more detailed testing at a government laboratory in Ames, Iowa, said the department's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, according to an Associated Press report.
The cow, a beef cow that was at least 10 years old, spent the past year at one Alabama farm, he added, noting the department is investigating where the animal was born and raised.
The animal hadn't entered the food supply for people or animals, Clifford said.
Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease for humans. A majority of those deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s.
There has been only one confirmed case in the United States, although the federal government believes the person got the disease in Britain. U.S. agricultural investigators found two cases of mad cow disease: in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state and June 2005 in a cow born and raised in Texas. Since then, the government has increased its level of testing.
High Dose of Lipitor Helped Kidney Disease Patients: Study
A high dose of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor provided significant improvement to kidney disease patients, according to new research involvong almost 8,000 men and women in 14 countries.
The five-year study found that normal kidney function was restored in 50 percent of patients with kidney dysfunction who took the highest dose (80mg) of Lipitor, atorvastatin. Overall, kidney function in the patients taking the 80 mg dose improved by 8.5 percent over five years, compared with a 5.6 percent improvement in patients taking a 10 mg dose, United Press International reported.
The findings were released Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta. The patients in the study were between the ages of 35 and 75.
High cholesterol increases the risk of kidney disease.
Exercises Help Ward off Fainting
Simple muscle-tensing exercises can help prevent fainting, say researchers in the Netherlands who studied 223 frequent fainters, ages 16 to 70.
The study volunteers were divided into two groups. One group received standard counseling about avoiding stress and other fainting triggers, along with increasing their salt and water intake in order to raise their blood pressure, the Associated Press reported.
The other group were taught to do three exercises when they felt a fainting spell coming on: crossing their legs at the ankles while squeezing their thighs together and tensing their abdominal muscles; a hand gripping exercise that involves interlocking the fingers and pulling arms in opposite directions; and tensing the arms by rhythmically squeezing a soft ball while also tensing thighs and abdominal muscles.
Both groups were tracked for 14 months and about a third of the people in the exercise group suffered a fainting spell during that time, compared with about half of the people in the standard care group, the AP reported.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta.
Food Fact:
Go mango.
Nature packs a lot of vitamins A and C into these low-calorie appetizers. Half a medium-sized mango supplies 40% of the vitamin A and 50% of the vitamin C that most of us need daily. All for a mere 67 calories. And it tastes great!
Fitness Tip of the day:
"Hidden" exercise.
Raking leaves, shoveling snow, cutting grass. This is exercise! All activity helps us keep fit. Take heavy yard work, for example -- treat it just as you would a more formal workout. Make sure your body is warmed up and pace yourself accordingly. Pay careful attention to they way you lift, stay hydrated and schedule breaks during the day.
FAQ of the day:
Is it true grapefruit juice and prescription medications don't mix?
Amazingly, grapefruit juice can interfere with some prescription medications. Grapefruit and its juice contains a phytochemical that inhibits the enzyme needed to break down antihistamines, calcium-channel blockers, immunosuppressants, sedatives and protease inhibitors (treatments for AIDS), among others. As a result, blood levels of those drugs stay higher than expected, with potentially serious side effects. If you drink grapefruit juice regularly and are prescribed medication, mention it to your health care provider.
Three deaths in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan have pushed the worldwide human death toll from bird flu to 101 people, Agence France Presse reported.
The World Health Organization has yet to verify the deaths, but Azerbaijani officials said the H5N1 virus was identified in the three victims from the southern Salyan region. Tests did not detect H5N1 in six other patients hospitalized with flu symptoms in the same area of Azerbaijan.
As bird flu continues to spread in various regions of the world, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Monday that Americans won't be able to count on a vaccine to protect them during the first six months of a pandemic, the Associated Press reported.
Leavitt said it would take at least six months to produce a vaccine to protect humans. That's because the virus is changing and there's no way to know in advance which strain may become capable of human-to-human transmission.
Once such a virus strain is identified, it will take time to test a vaccine to make sure it's safe and then to mass-produce it, the AP reported.
"If we have a person-to-person, transmissible virus and we enter a pandemic condition, we will be operating without a vaccine for the first six months. We will be dependent upon traditional public health measures to contain and limit it," Leavitt said at a news briefing.
Heart Defect Repair Helps Some Migraine Patients
Repairing a congenital heart defect called patent foramen ovale, a hole between the upper chambers of the heart, can reduce the severity and frequency of migraine headaches, according to preliminary findings from a British study of 147 patients.
However, the researchers said this repair, which uses an implanted device, does not prevent migraines altogether, The New York Times reported.
Forty-two percent of patients who had their heart defect repaired reported at least a 50 percent decline in the number of days they had migraines. About half as many patients in a control group that did not have the repair reported the same kind of reduction in migraines.
The findings were presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta. More details about the study results will be released in three weeks at a major neurology meeting.
The researchers said they identified a higher-than-expected correlation between patients with large holes in their hearts and severe migraines, the Times reported.
Each year, more than 30 million Americans suffer some form of migraine.
Switching to Vegetarian Diet Slowed Weight Gain: Study
People who switched from eating meat to a vegetarian diet gained slightly less weight over five years than people who didn't make major diet changes, says a study by Cancer Research UK.
The research on 22,000 meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans found that the overall weight gain was about 4.5 pounds, but people who had switched from a meat diet to a vegetarian diet gained about a pound less weight and people who switched to a vegan diet showed slightly smaller weight gains, BBC News reported.
"Contrary to the current popular views that a diet low in carbohydrates and high in proteins keeps weight down, we found that the lowest weight gain came in people with high intake of carbohydrate and low intake of protein," said research team leader Prof. Tim Key of Oxford University.
The study also found that people who did the least amount of exercise gained the most weight.
"This confirms that the best way to prevent obesity is to combine a healthy diet with exercise," Key told BBC News.
Mad Cow Case Confirmed in Alabama
An Alabama cow has tested positive for mad cow disease, the U.S. Agriculture Department confirmed Monday.
A routine test last week had indicated the presence of the disease. Results were confirmed by more detailed testing at a government laboratory in Ames, Iowa, said the department's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, according to an Associated Press report.
The cow, a beef cow that was at least 10 years old, spent the past year at one Alabama farm, he added, noting the department is investigating where the animal was born and raised.
The animal hadn't entered the food supply for people or animals, Clifford said.
Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease for humans. A majority of those deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s.
There has been only one confirmed case in the United States, although the federal government believes the person got the disease in Britain. U.S. agricultural investigators found two cases of mad cow disease: in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state and June 2005 in a cow born and raised in Texas. Since then, the government has increased its level of testing.
High Dose of Lipitor Helped Kidney Disease Patients: Study
A high dose of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor provided significant improvement to kidney disease patients, according to new research involvong almost 8,000 men and women in 14 countries.
The five-year study found that normal kidney function was restored in 50 percent of patients with kidney dysfunction who took the highest dose (80mg) of Lipitor, atorvastatin. Overall, kidney function in the patients taking the 80 mg dose improved by 8.5 percent over five years, compared with a 5.6 percent improvement in patients taking a 10 mg dose, United Press International reported.
The findings were released Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta. The patients in the study were between the ages of 35 and 75.
High cholesterol increases the risk of kidney disease.
Exercises Help Ward off Fainting
Simple muscle-tensing exercises can help prevent fainting, say researchers in the Netherlands who studied 223 frequent fainters, ages 16 to 70.
The study volunteers were divided into two groups. One group received standard counseling about avoiding stress and other fainting triggers, along with increasing their salt and water intake in order to raise their blood pressure, the Associated Press reported.
The other group were taught to do three exercises when they felt a fainting spell coming on: crossing their legs at the ankles while squeezing their thighs together and tensing their abdominal muscles; a hand gripping exercise that involves interlocking the fingers and pulling arms in opposite directions; and tensing the arms by rhythmically squeezing a soft ball while also tensing thighs and abdominal muscles.
Both groups were tracked for 14 months and about a third of the people in the exercise group suffered a fainting spell during that time, compared with about half of the people in the standard care group, the AP reported.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta.
Food Fact:
Go mango.
Nature packs a lot of vitamins A and C into these low-calorie appetizers. Half a medium-sized mango supplies 40% of the vitamin A and 50% of the vitamin C that most of us need daily. All for a mere 67 calories. And it tastes great!
Fitness Tip of the day:
"Hidden" exercise.
Raking leaves, shoveling snow, cutting grass. This is exercise! All activity helps us keep fit. Take heavy yard work, for example -- treat it just as you would a more formal workout. Make sure your body is warmed up and pace yourself accordingly. Pay careful attention to they way you lift, stay hydrated and schedule breaks during the day.
FAQ of the day:
Is it true grapefruit juice and prescription medications don't mix?
Amazingly, grapefruit juice can interfere with some prescription medications. Grapefruit and its juice contains a phytochemical that inhibits the enzyme needed to break down antihistamines, calcium-channel blockers, immunosuppressants, sedatives and protease inhibitors (treatments for AIDS), among others. As a result, blood levels of those drugs stay higher than expected, with potentially serious side effects. If you drink grapefruit juice regularly and are prescribed medication, mention it to your health care provider.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Health Headlines - March 13
Menstrual blood a good source of stem cells
Japanese researchers have harvested stem cells from human menstrual blood. These stem cells could potentially be a source of specialized heart cells, which might be used to treat failing or damaged hearts.
Stem cells are young, undifferentiated cells that have the ability to become various specialized cells that make up the different tissues of the body.
At the meeting of the American College of Cardiology here, Dr. Shunichiro Miyoshi reported that he and his colleagues at Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, collected menstrual blood from six women and harvested stem cells that originated in the lining of the uterus, the endometrium.
They were able to obtain about thirty times more stem cells from menstrual blood than from bone marrow, Miyoshi told Reuters Health.
When the stem cells were cultured in a way to induce them to become heart cells, after five days about half of the cells contracted "spontaneously, rhythmical and synchronously, suggesting the presence of electrical communication" between the cells, Miyoshi announced. That is to say, they behaved like heart cells.
The researcher explained that already stem cells derived from bone marrow have been shown to improve the function of the heart -- mainly by producing new blood vessels rather than new heart-muscle tissue. He emphasized that it is important that these cells be obtained from younger patients, because they would have a longer lifespan than cells harvested from older donors.
Stem Cell Mobilization Doesn't Heal Heart Attack Damage: Study
A new study appears to contradict earlier research in animals and humans that injections of stem cell-mobilizing granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) may promote repair of heart muscle damaged by heart attack.
It had been hypothesized that G-CSF would increase the release of adult stem cells from the bone marrow into the bloodstream and that these stem cells would enter the heart wall and turn into new heart muscle cells.
The new Danish study of 78 patients found that patients who received injections of G-CSF less than 12 hours after the onset of heart attack symptoms did show increased stem cell counts but had no greater improvements in their hearts' pumping efficiency than patients who received placebo injections.
The findings were presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta.
Despite the results, the researchers said their study does not eliminate the potential usefulness of G-CSF in heart attack patients.
"Our trial only settles the question regarding G-CSF injections initiated soon after an acute heart attack and using one specific dose without accompanying angiogenic therapy to increase blood vessel growth," senior author Dr. Jens Kastrup said in a prepared statement.
"We did not test another dose at another time, such as three weeks after an attack when some angiogenic factors in the blood have reached peak concentration."
Myanmar Reports 1st Bird Flu Outbreak
Myanmar has reported its first outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus and it's highly likely that the virus has been found in Afghanistan for the first time, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) officials said Monday.
The virus was confirmed in 112 chickens that died in northern Myanmar while an H5 bird flu virus subtype was found in poultry in Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The U.N. officials said there was a "high risk" that further tests would identify H5N1 as the virus found in Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported.
On Sunday, Cameroon became the fourth African nation to announce that it had been hit by the H5N1 strain.
Myanmar officials said there was no evidence of human infection in that country and that measures were being taken to control the outbreak among poultry.
Last month, the FAO warned that H5N1 would reach Afghanistan and criticized the Afghan government and donor nations for being slow to prevent an outbreak there, the AP reported.
Bird flu first appeared in Asia in 2003 and has recently spread to Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Tens of millions of poultry have been slaughtered to control the spread of the disease, which has claimed the lives of at least 97 people.
New Medicare Drug Plan Hurting Pharmacists
Some independent pharmacists may have to close their doors because they're losing too much money under the new U.S. Medicare prescription drug plan. The pharmacists say they're not being paid adequately or promptly under the new plan, The New York Times reported.
A group of Texas pharmacists met last week with White House officials to discuss the issue. They claim that pharmacists have given away millions of dollars worth of prescription drugs over the last two months -- medications that should have been covered by the new Medicare plan.
"If pharmacists don't receive immediate relief, some will go broke. Others are hurting so bad that they will choose not to participate in Medicare or Medicaid," Bill C. Pittman, former president of the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, told The Times.
Pittman, who arranged the White House meeting, is chairman of Pharmacists for Bush, a political fund-raising group.
Under the new Medicare plan, pharmacies have contracts with private health plans subsidized by Medicare. While Medicare officials said they would help pharmacists enforce the terms of these contracts with private insurers, the pharmacists said that isn't enough. They said the private insurers typically offer the contracts on a "take it or leave it" basis, The Times reported.
Plavix, Aspirin Combo Not Always Safe
Taking the blood thinner Plavix and aspirin to try to prevent a heart attack could be a dangerous treatment strategy, a new study suggests.
Not only did the combination have little effect in most patients, it raised the risk of death, heart attack and stroke in those who didn't have clogged arteries but who did have other risk factors for cardiovascular trouble, such as hypertension and high cholesterol, the Associated Press reported.
The startling finding was presented by Cleveland Clinic researchers Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting, in Atlanta.
"They actually were harmed," said study co-author Eric Topol, who is now with Case Western University. "This was a trial to determine the boundaries of benefit, and it did. You don't use this drug for patients without coronary artery disease."
The trial involved more than 15,000 people in 32 countries, the wire service said.
New Device Helps Treat Heart Failure
A new twist on an old idea seems to be safer than water pills at removing excess fluids from the bloodstream in heart failure patients, new research finds.
The discovery could affect the 5 million American who have heart failure and often find themselves in the hospital, unable to breathe, the Associated Press reported. A Minneapolis-based company used a device that is already on the market, but employed a simpler way to administer it. A tube is inserted into a vein in the arm, leg or neck for eight hours while excess fluids are drained.
"It's really pretty exciting," Dr. Clyde Yancy, from UT-Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told the AP. "You could use this right now... based on this information." Yancy had no role in the study, which was presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting, in Atlanta.
The method was tested against water pills in 200 people at 28 hospitals around the country. Two days later, the group that got the device had lost more fluid and more weight than those in the pill group, the wire service said.
Possible Mad Cow Case Found
A possible case of mad cow disease has been found during routine testing by the U.S. Agriculture Department, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
The cow did not enter the human or animal food chain, said USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford. More detailed tests are being conducted at the department's laboratory in Ames, Iowa, and the results should be available within four to seven days.
Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease for humans. A majority of those deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s. There has been only one confirmed case in the United States, although the federal government believes the person got the disease in Britain. U.S. agricultural investigators found two cases of mad cow disease, in December 2003 and June 2005.
Food Fact:
Dr. red pepper?
Peppers rank surprisingly high on the list of healing foods. For instance, hot chile peppers contain capsaicin, a compound that acts as an anticoagulant and may help prevent heart attacks and strokes caused by blood clots. A half-cup of chopped red bell peppers provides 141mg of vitamin C and 4,250 IU of vitamin A -- more than an adult's daily needs for both. And whether they're mellow and sweet or fiery hot, all peppers are all good sources of potentially cancer-fighting antioxidants, especially vitamin C.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Get a grip.
Grab a tennis or racquetball for a quick workout off the court. Squeeze one and strengthen the muscles of your hands and arms at the same time. Simply grasp the ball and perform 12 - 15 reps per hand. You may want to start with a "used" tennis ball at the start, then graduate to a ball with more resistance as your conditioning improves.
FAQ of the day:
When did garlic get its heart-healthy reputation?
Even ancient man suspected garlic was good for the heart. Dioscorides, the Roman who codified Greek herbal medicine in the first century A.D., wrote in his "Materia Medica" that garlic "clears the arteries." The ancient Indian Ayurvedic text "Charaka Samhita" holds that garlic "maintains the fluidity of the blood, strengthens the heart and prolongs life." But it's only in the past few decades that garlic's effect on blood cholesterol, blood clotting and other heart disease risk factors have been systematically studied.
Japanese researchers have harvested stem cells from human menstrual blood. These stem cells could potentially be a source of specialized heart cells, which might be used to treat failing or damaged hearts.
Stem cells are young, undifferentiated cells that have the ability to become various specialized cells that make up the different tissues of the body.
At the meeting of the American College of Cardiology here, Dr. Shunichiro Miyoshi reported that he and his colleagues at Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, collected menstrual blood from six women and harvested stem cells that originated in the lining of the uterus, the endometrium.
They were able to obtain about thirty times more stem cells from menstrual blood than from bone marrow, Miyoshi told Reuters Health.
When the stem cells were cultured in a way to induce them to become heart cells, after five days about half of the cells contracted "spontaneously, rhythmical and synchronously, suggesting the presence of electrical communication" between the cells, Miyoshi announced. That is to say, they behaved like heart cells.
The researcher explained that already stem cells derived from bone marrow have been shown to improve the function of the heart -- mainly by producing new blood vessels rather than new heart-muscle tissue. He emphasized that it is important that these cells be obtained from younger patients, because they would have a longer lifespan than cells harvested from older donors.
Stem Cell Mobilization Doesn't Heal Heart Attack Damage: Study
A new study appears to contradict earlier research in animals and humans that injections of stem cell-mobilizing granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) may promote repair of heart muscle damaged by heart attack.
It had been hypothesized that G-CSF would increase the release of adult stem cells from the bone marrow into the bloodstream and that these stem cells would enter the heart wall and turn into new heart muscle cells.
The new Danish study of 78 patients found that patients who received injections of G-CSF less than 12 hours after the onset of heart attack symptoms did show increased stem cell counts but had no greater improvements in their hearts' pumping efficiency than patients who received placebo injections.
The findings were presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta.
Despite the results, the researchers said their study does not eliminate the potential usefulness of G-CSF in heart attack patients.
"Our trial only settles the question regarding G-CSF injections initiated soon after an acute heart attack and using one specific dose without accompanying angiogenic therapy to increase blood vessel growth," senior author Dr. Jens Kastrup said in a prepared statement.
"We did not test another dose at another time, such as three weeks after an attack when some angiogenic factors in the blood have reached peak concentration."
Myanmar Reports 1st Bird Flu Outbreak
Myanmar has reported its first outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus and it's highly likely that the virus has been found in Afghanistan for the first time, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) officials said Monday.
The virus was confirmed in 112 chickens that died in northern Myanmar while an H5 bird flu virus subtype was found in poultry in Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The U.N. officials said there was a "high risk" that further tests would identify H5N1 as the virus found in Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported.
On Sunday, Cameroon became the fourth African nation to announce that it had been hit by the H5N1 strain.
Myanmar officials said there was no evidence of human infection in that country and that measures were being taken to control the outbreak among poultry.
Last month, the FAO warned that H5N1 would reach Afghanistan and criticized the Afghan government and donor nations for being slow to prevent an outbreak there, the AP reported.
Bird flu first appeared in Asia in 2003 and has recently spread to Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Tens of millions of poultry have been slaughtered to control the spread of the disease, which has claimed the lives of at least 97 people.
New Medicare Drug Plan Hurting Pharmacists
Some independent pharmacists may have to close their doors because they're losing too much money under the new U.S. Medicare prescription drug plan. The pharmacists say they're not being paid adequately or promptly under the new plan, The New York Times reported.
A group of Texas pharmacists met last week with White House officials to discuss the issue. They claim that pharmacists have given away millions of dollars worth of prescription drugs over the last two months -- medications that should have been covered by the new Medicare plan.
"If pharmacists don't receive immediate relief, some will go broke. Others are hurting so bad that they will choose not to participate in Medicare or Medicaid," Bill C. Pittman, former president of the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, told The Times.
Pittman, who arranged the White House meeting, is chairman of Pharmacists for Bush, a political fund-raising group.
Under the new Medicare plan, pharmacies have contracts with private health plans subsidized by Medicare. While Medicare officials said they would help pharmacists enforce the terms of these contracts with private insurers, the pharmacists said that isn't enough. They said the private insurers typically offer the contracts on a "take it or leave it" basis, The Times reported.
Plavix, Aspirin Combo Not Always Safe
Taking the blood thinner Plavix and aspirin to try to prevent a heart attack could be a dangerous treatment strategy, a new study suggests.
Not only did the combination have little effect in most patients, it raised the risk of death, heart attack and stroke in those who didn't have clogged arteries but who did have other risk factors for cardiovascular trouble, such as hypertension and high cholesterol, the Associated Press reported.
The startling finding was presented by Cleveland Clinic researchers Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting, in Atlanta.
"They actually were harmed," said study co-author Eric Topol, who is now with Case Western University. "This was a trial to determine the boundaries of benefit, and it did. You don't use this drug for patients without coronary artery disease."
The trial involved more than 15,000 people in 32 countries, the wire service said.
New Device Helps Treat Heart Failure
A new twist on an old idea seems to be safer than water pills at removing excess fluids from the bloodstream in heart failure patients, new research finds.
The discovery could affect the 5 million American who have heart failure and often find themselves in the hospital, unable to breathe, the Associated Press reported. A Minneapolis-based company used a device that is already on the market, but employed a simpler way to administer it. A tube is inserted into a vein in the arm, leg or neck for eight hours while excess fluids are drained.
"It's really pretty exciting," Dr. Clyde Yancy, from UT-Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told the AP. "You could use this right now... based on this information." Yancy had no role in the study, which was presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting, in Atlanta.
The method was tested against water pills in 200 people at 28 hospitals around the country. Two days later, the group that got the device had lost more fluid and more weight than those in the pill group, the wire service said.
Possible Mad Cow Case Found
A possible case of mad cow disease has been found during routine testing by the U.S. Agriculture Department, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
The cow did not enter the human or animal food chain, said USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford. More detailed tests are being conducted at the department's laboratory in Ames, Iowa, and the results should be available within four to seven days.
Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease for humans. A majority of those deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s. There has been only one confirmed case in the United States, although the federal government believes the person got the disease in Britain. U.S. agricultural investigators found two cases of mad cow disease, in December 2003 and June 2005.
Food Fact:
Dr. red pepper?
Peppers rank surprisingly high on the list of healing foods. For instance, hot chile peppers contain capsaicin, a compound that acts as an anticoagulant and may help prevent heart attacks and strokes caused by blood clots. A half-cup of chopped red bell peppers provides 141mg of vitamin C and 4,250 IU of vitamin A -- more than an adult's daily needs for both. And whether they're mellow and sweet or fiery hot, all peppers are all good sources of potentially cancer-fighting antioxidants, especially vitamin C.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Get a grip.
Grab a tennis or racquetball for a quick workout off the court. Squeeze one and strengthen the muscles of your hands and arms at the same time. Simply grasp the ball and perform 12 - 15 reps per hand. You may want to start with a "used" tennis ball at the start, then graduate to a ball with more resistance as your conditioning improves.
FAQ of the day:
When did garlic get its heart-healthy reputation?
Even ancient man suspected garlic was good for the heart. Dioscorides, the Roman who codified Greek herbal medicine in the first century A.D., wrote in his "Materia Medica" that garlic "clears the arteries." The ancient Indian Ayurvedic text "Charaka Samhita" holds that garlic "maintains the fluidity of the blood, strengthens the heart and prolongs life." But it's only in the past few decades that garlic's effect on blood cholesterol, blood clotting and other heart disease risk factors have been systematically studied.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Health Headlines - March 12
Possible Mad Cow Case Found
A possible case of mad cow disease has been found during routine testing by the U.S. Agriculture Department, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
The cow did not enter the human or animal food chain, said USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford. More detailed tests are being conducted at the department's laboratory in Ames, Iowa, and the results should be available within four to seven days.
"This inconclusive result does not mean we have found a new case of BSE [mad cow disease]," Clifford said in a statement. "Inconclusive results are a normal component of most screening test, which are designed to be extremely sensitive."
Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease for humans. A majority of those deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s. There has been only one confirmed case in the United States, although the federal government believes the person got the disease in Britain. U.S. agricultural investigators found two cases of mad cow disease, in December 2003 and June 2005. Since then, the government has increased its level of testing.
Cameroon Fourth African Country to Report Bird Flu
Cameroon became the fourth African country to report the deadly bird flu virus, the government announced Sunday.
The Associated Press reported that a laboratory in Paris confirmed the finding.
The H5N1 bird flu strain was found in a duck on a farm near the northern town of Maroua. That town borders Nigeria, which was the first African country to be struck by the virus when it was discovered on a commercial poultry farm in February. The virus has since been reported in Niger and Egypt.
Experts are worried that the virus is spreading undetected in Africa, where there are no laboratories set up to test for the virus and officials are poorly equipped to deal with such a crisis.
Since 2003, the H5N1 virus has spread from Asia to Africa, Europe and the Middle East. It has decimated poultry flocks in many countries, and has killed more than 90 people. Experts worry that the continued spread of the virus increases the likelihood that it will mutate into a form that's easily transmitted between humans, resulting in a pandemic.
The virus has already been transferred to two species of mammals, including a stone marten (a type of weasel) in Germany, and cats in Germany and Austria.
Platelet Donation Restrictions Shelved By Panel
Personal donations of platelets shouldn't be limited, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has ruled, the Associated Press reported Friday.
The federal proposal, which first surfaced as part of a tightening of donation guidelines, suggested limiting each person to 24 pints a year. Platelets -- the component in blood that makes clotting possible -- are scarce in the United States because they only last five days after they are collected, the AP said. For some, including certain cancer patients, regular transfusions are necessary because they can't make their own platelets.
The current guidelines limit platelet donors to 24 times a year, which would average roughly 72 pints, the wire service reported. The new proposal set off a firestorm among donation centers, which argued that healthy donors can quickly replace lost platelets, the wire service said. The FDA advisory panel apparently agreed. The full agency doesn't have to follow a panel's recommendations, but usually does.
The panel did recommend that if people donate two to three pints at one time, they shouldn't donate again for at least a week, the AP reported. During donation, platelets are removed through a process called apheresis, where the blood is drawn through one arm, put into a centrifuge to remove the platelets, and the remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm.
Polio Drugs Should Be Developed, Council Says
Drugs to combat polio should be developed to protect against any outbreaks that might occur once worldwide vaccination programs have ended, a committee of the National Research Council suggested.
The Associated Press reported Friday that the committee was concerned that, despite the fact that the number of polio cases worldwide has plummeted from 355,000 in 1988 to 784 in 2003, if the disease is indeed eliminated in the next few years people will stop getting vaccinated. The World Health Organization plans to keep using the current vaccine for three years after the disease is eradicated. The current oral vaccine uses a weakened polio virus, although the injected vaccine used more often in the United States uses a dead virus, the wire service said.
"The development of one or more antiviral drugs against poliovirus, although expensive, serves as an insurance policy that provides an additional means of reacting to repeated outbreaks due to continued circulation of vaccine-derived strains, should they occur," the committee concluded.
Teens Think 'Alcopops' Are 'Fun and Cool'
Many California teens think that drinking fizzy and fruity alcoholic beverages called "alcopops" is fun and cool and that they won't get drunk, according to comments collected from more than 300 young people from around the state.
The teens are bombarded with ads that glamorize alcopops, which include products such as Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade. Here are some of the comments the teens made about alcopops:
* "It's a drink you can control without passing out. You feel comfortable drinking them."
* "Most alcopops are very popular because it doesn't have any effect and it's like a soft drink."
* "The more you see it, the more obligated you feel to taste it. If it tastes good, you will want more."
* "People in the ads are always cool and sober, they aren't drunk or acting stupid."
The findings were released Friday by the Center for Applied Research Solutions, in conjunction with a public hearing by the California Senate Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, which heard submissions about the negative effects that underage drinking has on communities.
Measles Death Toll Cut by 48 Percent
The number of people killed by measles around the world has declined by 48 percent since the late 1990s, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The global measles death toll went from 871,000 in 1999 to 454,00 in 2004. The largest reduction was in sub-Sahara Africa, where measles cases and deaths declined by 60 percent, BBC News reported.
The two organizations, which pledged in 2001 to cut measles deaths in half by 2005, say that vaccination programs are the reason for the success.
Under an umbrella organization called the Measles Initiative, a number of groups targeted their prevention efforts in 47 countries that account for 98 percent of measles deaths. Between 1999 and 2005, nearly 500 million children received measles vaccinations, BBC News reported.
Food Fact:
Coffee on the dark side?
If p.m. coffee leaves you too perky to sleep, try cutting it off earlier rather than cutting it out completely. Coffee's stimulatory effects usually take 6 - 8 hours to wear off, so consider your bedtime when you reach for an afternoon or evening cup. The effects -- it can exacerbate insomnia, nervousness, anxiety and even panic attacks -- may last longer in women taking oral contraceptives and in older people. But coffee isn't a demon, either. Short-term studies have found that a cup's worth -- 100mg -- can increase self-confidence, energy and motivation to work.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Run for your life?
If you don't want to run alongside traffic, you're not alone. If you need to run or walk in an area where traffic is an issue, always run against the flow of traffic. Also be certain to wear reflective clothing so that you are clearly visible at all times.
FAQ of the day:
What's the healthiest way to handle garlic and onions?
The way you handle garlic and onions affects their health-protective compounds. The more you cut, chop, smash or otherwise disturb raw onions or garlic, the more compounds they will release. If you're going to cook garlic, for example, it's a good idea to smash or chop it about 10 minutes before.
A possible case of mad cow disease has been found during routine testing by the U.S. Agriculture Department, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
The cow did not enter the human or animal food chain, said USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford. More detailed tests are being conducted at the department's laboratory in Ames, Iowa, and the results should be available within four to seven days.
"This inconclusive result does not mean we have found a new case of BSE [mad cow disease]," Clifford said in a statement. "Inconclusive results are a normal component of most screening test, which are designed to be extremely sensitive."
Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease for humans. A majority of those deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s. There has been only one confirmed case in the United States, although the federal government believes the person got the disease in Britain. U.S. agricultural investigators found two cases of mad cow disease, in December 2003 and June 2005. Since then, the government has increased its level of testing.
Cameroon Fourth African Country to Report Bird Flu
Cameroon became the fourth African country to report the deadly bird flu virus, the government announced Sunday.
The Associated Press reported that a laboratory in Paris confirmed the finding.
The H5N1 bird flu strain was found in a duck on a farm near the northern town of Maroua. That town borders Nigeria, which was the first African country to be struck by the virus when it was discovered on a commercial poultry farm in February. The virus has since been reported in Niger and Egypt.
Experts are worried that the virus is spreading undetected in Africa, where there are no laboratories set up to test for the virus and officials are poorly equipped to deal with such a crisis.
Since 2003, the H5N1 virus has spread from Asia to Africa, Europe and the Middle East. It has decimated poultry flocks in many countries, and has killed more than 90 people. Experts worry that the continued spread of the virus increases the likelihood that it will mutate into a form that's easily transmitted between humans, resulting in a pandemic.
The virus has already been transferred to two species of mammals, including a stone marten (a type of weasel) in Germany, and cats in Germany and Austria.
Platelet Donation Restrictions Shelved By Panel
Personal donations of platelets shouldn't be limited, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has ruled, the Associated Press reported Friday.
The federal proposal, which first surfaced as part of a tightening of donation guidelines, suggested limiting each person to 24 pints a year. Platelets -- the component in blood that makes clotting possible -- are scarce in the United States because they only last five days after they are collected, the AP said. For some, including certain cancer patients, regular transfusions are necessary because they can't make their own platelets.
The current guidelines limit platelet donors to 24 times a year, which would average roughly 72 pints, the wire service reported. The new proposal set off a firestorm among donation centers, which argued that healthy donors can quickly replace lost platelets, the wire service said. The FDA advisory panel apparently agreed. The full agency doesn't have to follow a panel's recommendations, but usually does.
The panel did recommend that if people donate two to three pints at one time, they shouldn't donate again for at least a week, the AP reported. During donation, platelets are removed through a process called apheresis, where the blood is drawn through one arm, put into a centrifuge to remove the platelets, and the remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm.
Polio Drugs Should Be Developed, Council Says
Drugs to combat polio should be developed to protect against any outbreaks that might occur once worldwide vaccination programs have ended, a committee of the National Research Council suggested.
The Associated Press reported Friday that the committee was concerned that, despite the fact that the number of polio cases worldwide has plummeted from 355,000 in 1988 to 784 in 2003, if the disease is indeed eliminated in the next few years people will stop getting vaccinated. The World Health Organization plans to keep using the current vaccine for three years after the disease is eradicated. The current oral vaccine uses a weakened polio virus, although the injected vaccine used more often in the United States uses a dead virus, the wire service said.
"The development of one or more antiviral drugs against poliovirus, although expensive, serves as an insurance policy that provides an additional means of reacting to repeated outbreaks due to continued circulation of vaccine-derived strains, should they occur," the committee concluded.
Teens Think 'Alcopops' Are 'Fun and Cool'
Many California teens think that drinking fizzy and fruity alcoholic beverages called "alcopops" is fun and cool and that they won't get drunk, according to comments collected from more than 300 young people from around the state.
The teens are bombarded with ads that glamorize alcopops, which include products such as Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade. Here are some of the comments the teens made about alcopops:
* "It's a drink you can control without passing out. You feel comfortable drinking them."
* "Most alcopops are very popular because it doesn't have any effect and it's like a soft drink."
* "The more you see it, the more obligated you feel to taste it. If it tastes good, you will want more."
* "People in the ads are always cool and sober, they aren't drunk or acting stupid."
The findings were released Friday by the Center for Applied Research Solutions, in conjunction with a public hearing by the California Senate Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, which heard submissions about the negative effects that underage drinking has on communities.
Measles Death Toll Cut by 48 Percent
The number of people killed by measles around the world has declined by 48 percent since the late 1990s, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The global measles death toll went from 871,000 in 1999 to 454,00 in 2004. The largest reduction was in sub-Sahara Africa, where measles cases and deaths declined by 60 percent, BBC News reported.
The two organizations, which pledged in 2001 to cut measles deaths in half by 2005, say that vaccination programs are the reason for the success.
Under an umbrella organization called the Measles Initiative, a number of groups targeted their prevention efforts in 47 countries that account for 98 percent of measles deaths. Between 1999 and 2005, nearly 500 million children received measles vaccinations, BBC News reported.
Food Fact:
Coffee on the dark side?
If p.m. coffee leaves you too perky to sleep, try cutting it off earlier rather than cutting it out completely. Coffee's stimulatory effects usually take 6 - 8 hours to wear off, so consider your bedtime when you reach for an afternoon or evening cup. The effects -- it can exacerbate insomnia, nervousness, anxiety and even panic attacks -- may last longer in women taking oral contraceptives and in older people. But coffee isn't a demon, either. Short-term studies have found that a cup's worth -- 100mg -- can increase self-confidence, energy and motivation to work.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Run for your life?
If you don't want to run alongside traffic, you're not alone. If you need to run or walk in an area where traffic is an issue, always run against the flow of traffic. Also be certain to wear reflective clothing so that you are clearly visible at all times.
FAQ of the day:
What's the healthiest way to handle garlic and onions?
The way you handle garlic and onions affects their health-protective compounds. The more you cut, chop, smash or otherwise disturb raw onions or garlic, the more compounds they will release. If you're going to cook garlic, for example, it's a good idea to smash or chop it about 10 minutes before.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Health Headlines - March 11
Platelet Donation Restrictions Shelved By Panel
Personal donations of platelets shouldn't be limited, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has ruled, the Associated Press reported Friday.
The federal proposal, which first surfaced as part of a tightening of donation guidelines, suggested limiting each person to 24 pints a year. Platelets -- the component in blood that makes clotting possible -- are scarce in the United States because they only last five days after they are collected, the AP said. For some, including certain cancer patients, regular transfusions are necessary because they can't make their own platelets.
The current guidelines limit platelet donors to 24 times a year, which would average roughly 72 pints, the wire service reported. The new proposal set off a firestorm among donation centers, which argued that healthy donors can quickly replace lost platelets, the wire service said. The FDA advisory panel apparently agreed. The full agency doesn't have to follow a panel's recommendations, but usually does.
The panel did recommend that if people donate two to three pints at one time, they shouldn't donate again for at least a week, the AP reported. During donation, platelets are removed through a process called apheresis, where the blood is drawn through one arm, put into a centrifuge to remove the platelets, and the remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm.
Polio Drugs Should Be Developed, Council Says
Drugs to combat polio should be developed to protect against any outbreaks that might occur once worldwide vaccination programs have ended, a committee of the National Research Council suggested.
The Associated Press reported Friday that the committee was concerned that, despite the fact that the number of polio cases worldwide has plummeted from 355,000 in 1988 to 784 in 2003, if the disease is indeed eliminated in the next few years people will stop getting vaccinated. The World Health Organization plans to keep using the current vaccine for three years after the disease is eradicated. The current oral vaccine uses a weakened polio virus, although the injected vaccine used more often in the United States uses a dead virus, the wire service said.
"The development of one or more antiviral drugs against poliovirus, although expensive, serves as an insurance policy that provides an additional means of reacting to repeated outbreaks due to continued circulation of vaccine-derived strains, should they occur," the committee concluded.
Teens Think 'Alcopops' Are 'Fun and Cool'
Many California teens think that drinking fizzy and fruity alcoholic beverages called "alcopops" is fun and cool and that they won't get drunk, according to comments collected from more than 300 young people from around the state.
The teens are bombarded with ads that glamorize alcopops, which include products such as Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade. Here are some of the comments the teens made about alcopops:
* "It's a drink you can control without passing out. You feel comfortable drinking them."
* "Most alcopops are very popular because it doesn't have any effect and it's like a soft drink."
* "The more you see it, the more obligated you feel to taste it. If it tastes good, you will want more."
* "People in the ads are always cool and sober, they aren't drunk or acting stupid."
The findings were released Friday by the Center for Applied Research Solutions, in conjunction with a public hearing by the California Senate Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, which heard submissions about the negative effects that underage drinking has on communities.
Physicians' Letter Condemns U.S. Force-Feeding of Prisoners
A letter condemning the United States for force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been signed by more than 250 medical experts from seven nations. The letter appears in the new issue of The Lancet medical journal.
The letter says doctors at the prison must respect hunger-striking inmates' rights to refuse treatment and that physicians who use restraints and force-feeding on prisoners should be punished by their professional organizations, BBC News reported.
"We urge the U.S. government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned," said the letter, signed by doctors from Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The letter urged the American Medical Association to take disciplinary action against any of its members known to have violated the World Medical Association's prohibition against force-feeding, BBC News reported.
Inmates at the prison have said prisoners on hunger strike were restrained in chairs and force-fed through tubes inserted in their noses.
The United Nations and human-rights groups have urged the United States to close the Guantanamo Bay facility, where about 500 terror suspects are being held without trial.
Measles Death Toll Cut by 48 Percent
The number of people killed by measles around the world has declined by 48 percent since the late 1990s, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The global measles death toll went from 871,000 in 1999 to 454,00 in 2004. The largest reduction was in sub-Sahara Africa, where measles cases and deaths declined by 60 percent, BBC News reported.
The two organizations, which pledged in 2001 to cut measles deaths in half by 2005, say that vaccination programs are the reason for the success.
Under an umbrella organization called the Measles Initiative, a number of groups targeted their prevention efforts in 47 countries that account for 98 percent of measles deaths. Between 1999 and 2005, nearly 500 million children received measles vaccinations, BBC News reported.
Study Looks at Stem Cell Treatment for Childhood Brain Disease
The first U.S. clinical trial using fetal neural stem cells to treat infants and children with a rare and fatal brain condition called Batten disease is set to begin at Oregon Health & Science University.
Batten disease is a genetic disorder that causes blindness, loss of speech, and paralysis before patients die.
The stem cells, taken from fetal tissues, not developing embryos, will be injected into the children's brains to determine if the treatment is safe.
Food Fact:
Chew on this.
If you visit the candy machine, sticking with gum may help you control calories. At 5 - 10 calories a sugar-free stick, it's a good alternative to hard candy, which is loaded with sugar and can contain up to 50 calories per little piece. And how many of us ever stop at one? One more bonus: Getting your jaw moving to chew burns about 12 extra calories per hour!
Fitness Tip of the day:
Keep it clean.
Could your water bottle be making you sick? The gym is a great place to get fit; it is also a great place to pick up unwanted germs. If you use a water bottle during your workouts, clean it with mild detergent and water after each use. Also, be sure to wash your hands as often as possible or wear gloves when exercising.
FAQ of the day:
Does garlic lower blood cholesterol?
Studies differ over garlic's effect on blood cholesterol. While earlier studies were optimistic, more recent ones have not shown that garlic powder supplements effectively lower blood cholesterol. Few studies have looked at fresh garlic, either raw or cooked. Whether or not garlic lowers cholesterol, it has other benefits, such as inhibition of blood clots, that earn it a place in a heart-friendly diet.
Personal donations of platelets shouldn't be limited, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has ruled, the Associated Press reported Friday.
The federal proposal, which first surfaced as part of a tightening of donation guidelines, suggested limiting each person to 24 pints a year. Platelets -- the component in blood that makes clotting possible -- are scarce in the United States because they only last five days after they are collected, the AP said. For some, including certain cancer patients, regular transfusions are necessary because they can't make their own platelets.
The current guidelines limit platelet donors to 24 times a year, which would average roughly 72 pints, the wire service reported. The new proposal set off a firestorm among donation centers, which argued that healthy donors can quickly replace lost platelets, the wire service said. The FDA advisory panel apparently agreed. The full agency doesn't have to follow a panel's recommendations, but usually does.
The panel did recommend that if people donate two to three pints at one time, they shouldn't donate again for at least a week, the AP reported. During donation, platelets are removed through a process called apheresis, where the blood is drawn through one arm, put into a centrifuge to remove the platelets, and the remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm.
Polio Drugs Should Be Developed, Council Says
Drugs to combat polio should be developed to protect against any outbreaks that might occur once worldwide vaccination programs have ended, a committee of the National Research Council suggested.
The Associated Press reported Friday that the committee was concerned that, despite the fact that the number of polio cases worldwide has plummeted from 355,000 in 1988 to 784 in 2003, if the disease is indeed eliminated in the next few years people will stop getting vaccinated. The World Health Organization plans to keep using the current vaccine for three years after the disease is eradicated. The current oral vaccine uses a weakened polio virus, although the injected vaccine used more often in the United States uses a dead virus, the wire service said.
"The development of one or more antiviral drugs against poliovirus, although expensive, serves as an insurance policy that provides an additional means of reacting to repeated outbreaks due to continued circulation of vaccine-derived strains, should they occur," the committee concluded.
Teens Think 'Alcopops' Are 'Fun and Cool'
Many California teens think that drinking fizzy and fruity alcoholic beverages called "alcopops" is fun and cool and that they won't get drunk, according to comments collected from more than 300 young people from around the state.
The teens are bombarded with ads that glamorize alcopops, which include products such as Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade. Here are some of the comments the teens made about alcopops:
* "It's a drink you can control without passing out. You feel comfortable drinking them."
* "Most alcopops are very popular because it doesn't have any effect and it's like a soft drink."
* "The more you see it, the more obligated you feel to taste it. If it tastes good, you will want more."
* "People in the ads are always cool and sober, they aren't drunk or acting stupid."
The findings were released Friday by the Center for Applied Research Solutions, in conjunction with a public hearing by the California Senate Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, which heard submissions about the negative effects that underage drinking has on communities.
Physicians' Letter Condemns U.S. Force-Feeding of Prisoners
A letter condemning the United States for force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been signed by more than 250 medical experts from seven nations. The letter appears in the new issue of The Lancet medical journal.
The letter says doctors at the prison must respect hunger-striking inmates' rights to refuse treatment and that physicians who use restraints and force-feeding on prisoners should be punished by their professional organizations, BBC News reported.
"We urge the U.S. government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned," said the letter, signed by doctors from Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The letter urged the American Medical Association to take disciplinary action against any of its members known to have violated the World Medical Association's prohibition against force-feeding, BBC News reported.
Inmates at the prison have said prisoners on hunger strike were restrained in chairs and force-fed through tubes inserted in their noses.
The United Nations and human-rights groups have urged the United States to close the Guantanamo Bay facility, where about 500 terror suspects are being held without trial.
Measles Death Toll Cut by 48 Percent
The number of people killed by measles around the world has declined by 48 percent since the late 1990s, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The global measles death toll went from 871,000 in 1999 to 454,00 in 2004. The largest reduction was in sub-Sahara Africa, where measles cases and deaths declined by 60 percent, BBC News reported.
The two organizations, which pledged in 2001 to cut measles deaths in half by 2005, say that vaccination programs are the reason for the success.
Under an umbrella organization called the Measles Initiative, a number of groups targeted their prevention efforts in 47 countries that account for 98 percent of measles deaths. Between 1999 and 2005, nearly 500 million children received measles vaccinations, BBC News reported.
Study Looks at Stem Cell Treatment for Childhood Brain Disease
The first U.S. clinical trial using fetal neural stem cells to treat infants and children with a rare and fatal brain condition called Batten disease is set to begin at Oregon Health & Science University.
Batten disease is a genetic disorder that causes blindness, loss of speech, and paralysis before patients die.
The stem cells, taken from fetal tissues, not developing embryos, will be injected into the children's brains to determine if the treatment is safe.
Food Fact:
Chew on this.
If you visit the candy machine, sticking with gum may help you control calories. At 5 - 10 calories a sugar-free stick, it's a good alternative to hard candy, which is loaded with sugar and can contain up to 50 calories per little piece. And how many of us ever stop at one? One more bonus: Getting your jaw moving to chew burns about 12 extra calories per hour!
Fitness Tip of the day:
Keep it clean.
Could your water bottle be making you sick? The gym is a great place to get fit; it is also a great place to pick up unwanted germs. If you use a water bottle during your workouts, clean it with mild detergent and water after each use. Also, be sure to wash your hands as often as possible or wear gloves when exercising.
FAQ of the day:
Does garlic lower blood cholesterol?
Studies differ over garlic's effect on blood cholesterol. While earlier studies were optimistic, more recent ones have not shown that garlic powder supplements effectively lower blood cholesterol. Few studies have looked at fresh garlic, either raw or cooked. Whether or not garlic lowers cholesterol, it has other benefits, such as inhibition of blood clots, that earn it a place in a heart-friendly diet.
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