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Shildt Financial Services hopes that you find the following news items to be helpful and informative.
IN REVIEW: Health News Back To September, 2008
Health Highlights (Sept. 18, 2009 to Sept. 25, 2009) Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay: Obesity Could Become Leading Cause of Cancer in Women For women in Western nations, being overweight or obese could become the leading cause of cancer within 10 years, says a new study. Currently, obesity accounts for up to 8 percent of cancers. But European researchers said that could dramatically increase due to the obesity epidemic and a sharp decline in major causes of cancer such as smoking and hormone replacement therapy for women, the Associated Press reported. The researchers calculated that in 2002, being overweight or obese was associated with 70,000 of two million cancer cases in 30 European countries. By 2008, at least 124,000 cases of cancer were linked with obesity. The researchers found that colorectal cancer, breast cancer in postmenopausal women and endometrial cancer accounted for 65 percent of all cancers associated with being overweight or obese. The study was presented Thursday at the joint meeting of the European Cancer Organization and the European Society for Medical Oncology. "Obesity is catching up at a rate that makes it possible it could become the biggest attributable cause of cancer in women within the next decade," said Andrew Renehan, a cancer expert at the University of Manchester in England, the AP reported. ----- FDA Requests Review Of Medical Device Approval System In response to criticism by safety advocates and others, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked the federal Institute of Medicine to review the agency's approval system for certain types of medical devices. The institute will examine the FDA's 510k review procedure, which allows companies to immediately introduce products similar to those already on the market, the Associated Press reported. This system was designed to hasten approval of simple medical devices such as wheelchairs and bandages, but has been used to approve high-risk devices such as heart implants and hip replacements. ----- Green Tea May Protect Bones Chemicals in green tea may help slow bone breakdown, according to a Chinese study. Researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong exposed cultured bone-forming cells (osteoblasts) to a number of major ingredients of green tea for several days. One of the compounds, epigallocatechin, increased the activity of an enzyme that promotes bone growth by as much as 79 percent, United Press International reported. Also, high concentration of epigallocatechin blocked the activity of osteoclasts, which are cells that break down or weaken bones. There was no evidence that epigallocatechin had any toxic effects on bone cells, the news service said. The study was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. ----- Personal Emergency Response Button Poses Choking Hazard: FDA A type of personal emergency response button worn around the neck poses a choking hazard, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Tuesday. Between 1998 and 2009, there were six reports of serious injury or death, including four deaths in the United States, after the cord on the Philips Lifeline Personal Help Button became entangled on other objects, the FDA said. The choking risk is greatest for people with mobility limitations or for those who use wheelchairs, walkers, beds with guard rails, or other objects that could entangle with the device's neck cord. Users and caregivers should consult with health-care providers to determine which style of emergency button is best for an individual patient, the FDA said. Some emergency buttons are worn on the wrist. ----- New OxyContin Offers 'Limited' Resistance to Abuse: FDA A new version of the painkiller OxyContin is somewhat harder to abuse than the current version, say U.S. health officials. The new version, made by Purdue Pharma LP, has a plastic-like coating that's designed to make it more difficult to crush, snort or inject the drug, the Associated Press reported. On Tuesday, U.S. Food and Drug Administration scientists said the new version's resistance to abuse is "limited," but "may provide an advantage over the currently available OxyContin." Last year, an FDA advisory panel told Purdue that it needed to conduct more tests to demonstrate the tamper resistance of the new version. On Thursday, the panel will decide whether new data submitted by Purdue is sufficient to recommend approval of the new version of OxyContin, the AP reported. ----- Exercise Boosts Postmenopausal Women's Cardiovascular Fitness Despite changes in hormones and body composition, postmenopausal women show significant cardiovascular improvements when they do regular, vigorous exercise, according to a U.S. study. The study included 10 healthy but sedentary women, average age 55, who did endurance training on an exercise bike for one hour, five days a week, at 65 percent of their maximum lung capacity, United Press International reported. The women's ability to consume and use oxygen increased by an average of 16 percent, and their resting heart rates decreased by an average of four beats per minute. By the end of the study, the women had the cardiovascular and metabolic traits of women 16 years younger, said the University of California, Berkeley researchers. The study appears in the journal Metabolism. ----- Eye Test Detects Stroke Better Than MRI A quick, inexpensive eye movement test was better than magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at identifying patients with strokes, a U.S. study found. The one-minute eye exam reveals eye movement changes associated with stroke damage in various areas of the brain, United Press International reported. "The idea that a bedside exam could outperform a modern neuroimaging test such as MRI is something that most people had given up for dead, but we've shown it's possible," Dr. David E. Newman-Toker, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a news release. Some stroke patients can't immediately adjust their eye position if they turn their heads quickly to the side, while others may have jerky eye movements when trying to focus on a doctor's finger positioned on either side of their head, UPI reported. The study was published in the journal Stroke. ----- U.S. Issues Alert About Cocaine Laced With Veterinary Drug Doctors, substance abuse treatment centers and other public health officials need to be aware that cocaine laced with the veterinary anti-parasitic drug levamisole is a widespread problem, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said in a nationwide public health alert issued Monday. To date, there have been about 20 confirmed or probable cases of a serious blood disorder called agranulocytosis among people who've used cocaine that contains levamisole. Two people have died, the agency said. The official number of cases of affected people is expected to increase as more health professionals become aware of this issue, SAMHSA said. Ingestion of cocaine laced with levamisole can cause a serious decrease in white blood cell levels, leading to a weakened immune system that's unable to fight off even minor infections. This means that people who used levamisole-contaminated cocaine can suffer rapidly developing, life-threatening infections, the agency said. ----- Model Predicts Postnatal Depression Risk A model to predict postnatal depression is 80 percent accurate in the months after a woman gives birth, Spanish researchers say. The researchers studied 1,397 women who gave birth and used a type of modeling they call artificial neuronal networks, United Press International reported. The model includes a number of risk factors, including a mother's amount of social support, emotional changes during birth, neuroticism, mutations in the serotonin transport gene, and family history of psychiatric problems. During the study, the researchers found that being older and working during pregnancy decreased a woman's risk of postnatal depression, UPI reported. The study was published in the journal Methods of Information in Medicine. "Now (the model) needs clinical evaluation, and for psychiatrists to start to test it directly on patients in order to study that true potential of these tools," lead author Salvador Tortajada, of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, said in a news release. ----- Sunshine, Vacation Linked to Lower Summer Death Rate The health benefits of increased exposure to sunlight and vacations may explain why fewer people in northern countries die in late summer and early fall, according to a new study. American and Greek researchers found that death rates are lowest in August in North America and Sweden, in September in the Mediterranean, and in March in Australia, CBC News reported. The link between these times of the year and lower death rates may be due to the physiological effect of increased vitamin D production by the body due to sun exposure, coupled with the stress-lowering benefits of vacation, the study authors suggested. Vitamin D "may have beneficial effects for cardiovascular disease, renal failure, certain malignant diseases, autoimmune disorders and infections, including influenza," wrote Dr. Matthew Falagas, of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Greece, and his colleagues, CBC News reported. ----- Aspirin May Reduce Colon Cancer Risk Taking aspirin daily can reduce the risk of colon cancer in people with a genetic susceptibility to the disease, according to European researchers who studied more than 1,000 people. The participants had Lynch syndrome, a genetic mutation that puts them at increased risk for colon and other types of cancers. The syndrome causes about 5 percent of all colon cancer cases, the Associated Press reported. For about four years, half the participants took aspirin daily while the others took a placebo. Six people in the aspirin group developed colon cancer, compared with 16 in the placebo group. The findings were presented Monday at a meeting of the European Cancer Organization. "We are delighted" with the results, study leader John Burn of Newcastle University in Britain said in a news release, the AP reported. "All the more so because we stopped giving the aspirin after four years, yet the effect is continuing." Further research to determine how aspirin fights colon cancer might lead to new treatments, the researchers said. ----- Patients in Vegetative State Able to Learn Patients in a persistent vegetative state may still be able to learn, according to British scientists who studied 22 patients with severe brain damage who didn't appear to have any signs of consciousness. The researchers played a noise prior to delivering a puff of air to the patients' eyes and found that some of the patients learned to anticipate the puff, causing their eye muscles to twitch, BBC News reported. "They were clearly anticipating the stimulus would come, so there is some kind of perception and from the point of view of the patient who is allegedly unconscious this could have profound implications," said study leader Dr. Tristan Bekinschtein of Cambridge University. He said it had been believed that learning to link one stimulus with another was dependent on explicit awareness of the association, BBC News reported. The findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, may lead to tests to identify severely brain damaged patients who could recover, the researchers said. ----- Delinquents Misinterpret Facial Expressions Teen boys who run afoul of the law appear to have difficulty interpreting other peoples' facial expressions, Japanese researchers say. The researchers showed photos of faces expressing six basic emotions to 24 young male offenders and found that they were more likely to mistake disgust for anger than peers who hadn't been in trouble with the law, BBC News reported. The findings offer the first real evidence that young offenders may have difficulty telling the difference between disgust and anger in others. This type of misinterpretation may cause them to regard a situation as more hostile than it actually is, the researchers said. "This bias towards misrecognising other emotions as anger is particularly significant because anger appears to play an important role in delinquency," said study leader Wataru Sato of Kyoto University, BBC News reported. "Taken together the data suggest that delinquents might be projecting their own heightened angry emotions onto others when they misperceive others' negative, but not hostile, emotional states as anger." ----- FDA Approves New AIDS Test The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a new test that detects both types of the virus that causes AIDS. The FDA said Friday that Abbott Laboratories' Abbott Prism HIV O Plus test can detect HIV types 1 and 2. HIV type 2 is mostly found in West Africa, while HIV type 1 is made up of various virus subgroups found in both the United States and West Africa, the Associated Press reported. The test will be used to screen for HIV in blood and organ donations. HIV attacks the body's immune system, eventually causing AIDS. More than 1.1 million Americans are estimated to have HIV and 232,000 do not know it, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ----- FDA Warns About Stolen Respiratory Medicines Consumers should be watchful for stolen respiratory medications that may not have been stored or handled properly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Thursday. The medications are Ipratropium Bromide Inhalation Solution, 0.02 percent, and Albuterol Sulfate Inhalation Solution, 0.083 percent, made by Dey L.P., a subsidiary of Mylan Inc. The medications were part of a shipment on a tractor trailer that was stolen in Tampa, Fla., United Press International reported. The stolen drugs are from the following lots:
The FDA said consumers can get more information by contacting Dey at 800-527-4278, UPI reported. ----- Brain Infection Warning Added To Safety Info About MS Drug A warning about cases of rare brain infection has been included in updated safety information about the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency's update says the risk of developing progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) "appears to increase with the number of Tysabri infusions received." The average number of infusions received by patients before they were diagnosed with PML was 25, Dow Jones reported. "There is minimal experience in patients who have received more than 35 infusions of Tysabri," according to the FDA update. Patients receive the drug through an intravenous infusion about once a month. The FDA emphasized that the overall rate of PML among patients taking Tysabri remains below the one-in-1,000 rate noted on the label, Dow Jones reported. Concerns about PML prompted the FDA to pull Tysabri from the market for 18 months in 2005. Since the drug was allowed back on the market, there have been 13 confirmed cases of PML.
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