Double protection doesn’t improve HIV prevention
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For prevention of HIV infection, there’s no advantage to using a diaphragm as well as a condom during sex, according to investigators hoping for an effective female-controlled method of avoiding AIDS.
Dr. Nancy S. Padian and her colleagues tested the theory that covering the cervix with a diaphragm and still using a condom would enhance protection against HIV, in a medical trial involving some 5000 sexually active women living in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Bak protein sets stressed cells on suicide path, researchers show
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When a cell is seriously stressed, say by a heart attack, stroke or cancer, a protein called Bak just may set it up for suicide, researchers have found.
In a deadly double whammy, Bak helps chop the finger-like filament shape of the cell’s powerhouse, or mitochondrion, into vulnerable little spheres. Another protein Bax then pokes countless holes in those spheres, spilling their pro-death contents into the cell.
Heart care sub par in older diabetics: study
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A low proportion of elderly individuals newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes receive heart-protecting drugs like aspirin, blood pressure-lowering drugs and cholesterol-lowering drugs, according to a Canadian study.
People with diabetes are at increased risk for developing heart and vascular disease. The results of the current study suggest that the management of cardiovascular risk for type 2 diabetes patients is “less than appropriate,” the study team concludes in the journal Diabetes Care this month.
Maternal, childhood factors affect obesity risk
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Factors ranging from her mother’s body mass index to her own weight gain in early childhood influence the likelihood that a female child will grow up to become overweight, new research hints.
While the findings offer clues to how obesity prevention efforts might target certain time points in a person’s life, they also underscore the importance of maintaining a healthy weight for life, Dr. Mary Beth Terry of Columbia University in New York City told Reuters Health.
The secret of a long life? It’s the moles on your skin
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People with a lot of moles on their skin are used to being told that they are at greater risk of cancer. But now they have reason to celebrate; research suggests they can look forward to a longer life.
“Moley” people have a slightly higher risk of developing melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, but a study comparing more than 1,800 twins found that those with more moles have longer telomeres - a marker of biological ageing found in all cells.
Western diet ups breast cancer risk among Chinese
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Post-menopausal Chinese women who eat a Western-style diet heavy in meat and sweets face a higher risk of breast cancer than their counterparts who stick to a typical Chinese diet loaded with vegetables and soy, a study found.
The researchers, writing on Tuesday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, tracked about 3,000 women in Shanghai, about half of whom were diagnosed with breast cancer.
Internet blamed for Shanghai teen pregnancies
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Nearly half of the pregnant teens in China’s financial hub, Shanghai, met their partners on the Internet, state media said on Tuesday.
Zhang Zhengrong, a doctor who oversees the city’s first-aid hotline for pregnant teens, said 46 percent of the more than 20,000 teenage girls who called the hotline over the past two years said they had had sex with boys they met on the Internet.
Both types of diabetes raise stroke risk: study
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New research indicates that both insulin-dependent (type 1) diabetes and non-insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes is associated with substantially increased risks of stroke overall, and most subtypes of stroke.
Strokes occur when the blood flow to the brain stops, causing brain cells to begin dying within minutes. There are two types of strokes. The most frequent kind is called ischemic stroke and is triggered by a blood clot that blocks a blood vessel in the brain. Hemorrhagic stroke is triggered when a blood vessel breaks and bleeds into the brain.
Your Spouse Can Pass on Good Health Habits
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Being a good role model can truly help a spouse to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
When one spouse quits smoking or drinking, gets a cholesterol screening or rolls up a sleeve for a flu shot, the other spouse is more likely to follow suit, according to a new study published in the journal Health Services Research.
Modified Herpes Virus Keeps Arteries “Free-flowing” Following Procedures
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A genetically engineered herpes simplex virus, primarily known for causing cold sores, may help keep arteries “free-flowing” in the weeks following angioplasty or stent placement for patients, according to research published early in the online edition of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
Christopher Skelly, MD, assistant professor of vascular surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and the study’s lead author says, “One of the drawbacks of balloon angioplasty to open blocked arteries and the use of stents to keep them open is that arteries sometimes experience aggravation from the procedure. The balloon angioplasty, in addition to opening the artery can lead to smooth muscle cell proliferation, similar to formation of scar tissue, known as neointimal hyperplasia. This scar tissue can restrict blood flow not long after the procedures, leading to a recurrence of symptoms. A significant number of these cases end up requiring further intervention to address this complication.”
Antibiotics for Children With Urinary Tract Infection Not Associated With Reduced Recurrence Risk
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The use of prophylactic antibiotics, which involves daily administration of antibiotics to children after an initial urinary tract infection, is not associated with reduced risk of recurrent urinary tract infections, but is associated with an increased risk of resistant infections, according to a study in the July 11 issue of JAMA.
Estimates of cumulative incidence of UTI in children younger than 6 years (3 percent - 7 percent in girls, 1 percent - 2 percent in boys) suggest that 70,000 to 180,000 of the annual U.S. birth cohort will have experienced a UTI by age 6, according to background information in the article.
“America’s Best Hospitals” Not Always
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Heart attack patients admitted to hospitals ranked to be among “America’s Best” by U.S. News & World Report are less likely to die within 30 days than those patients admitted to non-ranked hospitals, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the July 9 Archives of Internal Medicine.
“The rankings, which include many of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, did identify a group of hospitals that was much more likely than non-ranked hospitals to have superb performance on 30-day mortality after acute myocardial infarction,” said corresponding author Harlan M. Krumholz, M.D., The Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine. “But our study also shows that not all ranked hospitals had outstanding performance and that many non-ranked hospitals performed well.”
Discovery about Obesity Drug Helping Scientists Develop New Cancer Treatments
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Based on their surprising discovery that an obesity drug can kill cancer cells, scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have made a new finding about the drug’s effects and are working to design more potent cancer treatments.
Published online today in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, the study is the first to report how the drug orlistat (Xenical® or Alli®) binds and interacts with a protein found in tumor cells. The drug blocks the protein’s function and causes cell death.
Jefferson oncologists show breast cancers to be more aggressive in African-American women
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A study of more than 2,200 women at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson in Philadelphia shows that African American women have more advanced breast cancer at the time of diagnosis than Caucasian women. In addition, African American women tend to have breast cancer tumor types that are more aggressive and have poorer prognoses. The findings, the researchers say, are in line with other recent studies and provide more powerful evidence of the continuing need for early breast cancer screening for African American women and the development of individual treatment strategies.
The research was led by Edith P. Mitchell, M.D., clinical professor of medicine and medical oncology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and Gloria Morris, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medical oncology at Jefferson Medical College.
Delays in cancer diagnosis for children remain poorly understood
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Though delays in the diagnosis of cancer in children are short and attributable to clinical presentation and healthcare system complexity, the impact of such delays on prognosis remains unclear, according to a new study. Published in the August 15, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, a review of the published literature found that delays could be generally attributed to gatekeeper-type healthcare systems, clinical presentation and stage of disease, as well as parent/patient factors. The study concludes that further research should focus on understanding the impact of delays in diagnosis on morbidity and mortality in children with cancer.
Pediatric cancers, such as leukemia and brain tumors, are rare, but in some countries are the leading cause of death in children from birth to 15 years old. In the U.S., almost 10,000 children are diagnosed with cancer annually.
