British researchers link obesity to more cancers
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Obesity can double the risk of several cancers, according to a study published on Friday that for the first time also links being overweight with a number of less common forms of the disease.
The analysis of 144 published studies incorporating some 282,000 men and women also showed that gender can make a difference in the relationship between obesity and some cancers, the researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal.
The findings come after a major report from the World Research Cancer Fund in October showed that excess body fat was likely to cause some cancers, said Andrew Renehan, a cancer specialist at the University of Manchester, who led the study.
Hispanics have more difficulty controlling diabetes than non-Hispanic whites
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Results of an analysis of multiple studies show diabetes control is more challenging for Hispanics than non-Hispanic whites, according to researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and colleagues.
The results revealed that Hispanic patients with diabetes have approximately 0.5 percent higher levels on a test that measures blood sugar control, called the A1C test, than non-Hispanic white patients. The researchers noted the consistency of these findings across the studies.
An A1C test measures hemoglobin linked with glucose, or blood sugar, over a time period of two to three months. Higher A1C values indicate patients have difficulty controlling their blood sugar.
New Model Helps Identify What Works in Mental Health Treatment
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In a race to achieve accountability and credibility, the mental health profession has looked to develop evidence-based treatments (EBTs)—psychotherapeutic procedures that have been shown in empirical research to work for the majority of patients.
The problem with EBTs, however, is that researchers often have multiple ways to measure improvement; things like reductions in symptoms, more harmonious relationships, or improved grades. Invariably, different ways of gauging outcomes yield inconsistent conclusions and this makes for a murky picture as researchers attempt to deem treatments as evidence-based or not.
But Andres De Los Reyes of the Institute for Juvenile Research and Alan Kazdin of Yale University believe they have developed a way to make sense of this information. In the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, they detail what they have dubbed “The Range of Possible Changes Model.”
Expert Available To Discuss Recent Diabetes Study
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Last week it was reported that the National Institutes of Health abruptly halted part of a major study on diabetes and heart disease following an unexpected number deaths among patient enrollees. The study, which aimed at reducing blood sugar to normal levels in type 2 diabetics. The study included patients that were at especially high risk of heart attack and stroke, resulting in 257 deaths (as compared with 203 in the standard treatment group). Perhaps more alarming than the number of reported deaths: the NIH’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute stressed they were unable to link the increased number of deaths in the survey to any drug, including Avandia.
“It is imperative for diabetic patients to take their condition seriously when it comes to controlling their glucose levels,” says Richard M. Goldfarb, MD and medical director of the Buck County Clinical Research Center. “Everyone knows a diabetic or has diabetic brother, boyfriend, uncle, or mother who eats that piece of chocolate cake first and pops a pill second.
Should Doctors Advocate Alternative Sources of Nicotine?
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Should doctors suggest alternative sources of nicotine to people who are unable to give up cigarettes, asks this week’s BMJ?
Smoking currently kills over 100,000 UK citizens each year, predominantly from lung cancer, heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, writes John Britton, Professor of Epidemiology at City Hospital, Nottingham. Currently 77% of UK smokers want to quit, and 78% have tried and failed, mainly because of nicotine addiction.
He argues that health professionals should strongly advise smokers to quit all nicotine use, and do all they can to support this. However, for those who try repeatedly and fail, or for those who are not ready to stop using nicotine, switching to a medicinal nicotine product is the logical best option.
PSA Testing Can Predict Advanced Prostate Cancer
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A single prostate specific antigen (PSA) test taken before the age of 50 can be used to predict advanced prostate cancer in men up to 25 years in advance of a diagnosis, according to a new study published by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Lund University in Sweden. The findings, published in the online open- access journal BMC Medicine, should help physicians be able to identify men who would benefit from intensive prostate cancer screenings over their lifetime.
Previously, the team’s research has shown that a single PSA test at age 50 or younger could predict the presence of prostate cancer in men up to 25 years in advance of diagnosis. “This latest study is a unique, natural experiment to test whether we can predict advanced prostate cancer many years before it is diagnosed,” said lead author Hans Lilja, MD, PhD, a clinical chemist with joint appointments in the Departments of Surgery and Medicine at MSKCC.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men after lung cancer. This year, more than 230,000 new cases will be diagnosed, and according to the American Cancer Society, more than 27,000 men died from prostate cancer in 2006.
Lack of sleep unlikely to impact weight over time
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Regularly getting 5 hours or less of shut eye a night does not appear to have a considerable influence body weight or waist size over time, according to findings from a long-term study of British workers.
While some past research has identified a relationship between obesity and a lack of sleep, this research could not affirm which came first—the lack of sleep or the weight problem.
To clarify whether lack of sleep over time might be related to obesity, Francesco P. Cappuccio and colleagues analyzed information from more than 10,000 white-collar British civil servants participating in a long term forward-looking study called the Whitehall II study.
U.S. back pain costs rise but pain still there
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The total cost of treating back pain in the United States has risen 65 percent in the past decade, but after all the pricey treatments, many people are still left with an aching back and an increasingly empty wallet, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
They said treating spine problems in the United States costs $85.9 billion a year, rivaling the economic burden of treating cancer, which costs $89 billion.
Higher spending on prescription drugs, more advanced diagnostic tests and more frequent outpatient visits helped drive the increases, as well as greater patient demand for treatment and more use of spinal fusion surgery and instruments, they said.
Older men with prostate cancer can wait and see
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Men in their 70s and older who are diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer can safely “watch and wait” because they are not likely to die of it, researchers confirmed on Wednesday.
Their findings, presented at a meeting of specialists, backs up the widely held belief that prostate cancer rarely kills men if it strikes late in life. Something else will kill them first, said Grace Lu-Yao of the The Cancer Institute of New Jersey.
Her study of more than 9,000 older men with prostate cancer that had not spread beyond the prostate showed that just 3 to 7 percent of the men with low or moderate-grade tumors died of it after 10 years.
Breast cancer risk linked with fertility timing
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A longer interval between the age a woman first begins to menstruate and her age when she first gives birth is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, the results of a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests.
Age at menstruation and first birth are “established risk factors for breast cancer,” Dr. Christopher I. Li, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, and colleagues write. The interval between these ages may also influence breast cancer risk because the breast becomes more susceptible to carcinogenic exposure during this period period, they note. “However, few investigators have studied this relation.”
To investigate further, Li’s group used data from the Women’s Contraceptive and Reproductive Experiences Study (1994 to 1998), including 4,013 women with breast cancer and 4,069 women without breast cancer (the controls).
Diabetes, Cholesterol, Anti-obesity Drugs Top Spending
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U.S. adult consumers spent nearly $36 billion for prescription drugs to lower blood sugar, reduce cholesterol, or help with other metabolic problems in 2005, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Role identified for glaucoma gene and related signaling pathway
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Researchers have found that a gene and a related signaling pathway play a role in the development of glaucoma, which is a common cause of visual impairment and blindness worldwide. The team was led by Alcon Research and included investigators from the University of Iowa and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The study, which revealed that over-expression of the gene, sFRP1, elevates pressure in the eye, could help improve glaucoma diagnosis and lead to the development of sight-saving treatments. The study results appeared online Feb. 14 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“The cause of glaucoma and the resulting elevation of intraocular pressure has been poorly understood,” said Abe Clark, Ph.D., Alcon’s vice president of discovery research and head of glaucoma research. “This new discovery may allow researchers to develop therapies to treat the underlying cause of the disease.”
U of I study: exercise to avoid gallstones!
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A new University of Illinois study shows that exercise-trained mice get far fewer gallstones than sedentary mice and identifies potential mechanisms to explain why this occurs.
The study, recently published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, can be viewed online at: http:// jap.physiology.org/cgi/reprint/01292.2007v1.
“For the first time, we have direct evidence that physical activity reduces gallstone formation, adding to the ever-increasing number of reasons that people should get more exercise,?said Kenneth Wilund, a faculty member in the U of I Division of Nutritional Sciences and an Assistant Professor in Kinesiology and Community Health.
Cigarette after Valentine snuggle deadlier for some
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The proverbial cigarette after a Valentine’s Day snuggle can prematurely end a love affair, as new evidence emerges that a common defect in a gene significantly increases a smoker’s risk of an early heart attack. Researchers say that as much as 60 to 70 percent of the population has a gene defect that delivers a one-two punch to smokers: In a recent published study, heavy smokers with this common gene variant experienced a heart attack around the age of 52.
“We’ve all heard the stories: Someone’s great-uncle has smoked three packs of cigarettes since he was 14, and now, at the age of 88, he’s living a fine, healthy life,” said Arthur Moss, M.D., director of the Heart Research Follow-up Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “Contrast that with the 52-year old neighbor, who also was a heavy smoker, and just last week, dropped dead from a heart attack. Why is it that some smokers seem unaffected by their habit and even outlive the healthiest individuals, while many other smokers suffer significant cardiac events at a relatively young age? We think we now know why.”
Anxiety Tied to DCIS Patients’ Overestimation of Cancer Risks
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Elevated levels of anxiety may cause women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common form of non-invasive breast cancer, to overestimate their risk of recurrence or dying from breast cancer, suggests a study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
“Although DCIS typically is very treatable disease, many women diagnosed with DCIS develop inaccurate risk perceptions,” said Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, the study’s lead author and a breast oncologist at Dana-Farber. “This exaggerated sense of risk needs to be addressed, as it may cause women to make poor treatment choices and adversely affect their emotional well-being and subsequent health behaviors.”
The study’s findings will be published online by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Feb. 12 and later in a print edition.
