Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients Benefit
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Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients Benefit from Use of Ultrasound-guided Fine Needle Aspiration of Lymph Nodes
Ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (USFNA) of the lymph nodes is a safe, useful, and minimally invasive procedure for diagnosing metastatic disease in patients who are undergoing preoperative staging for breast cancer, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Rhode Island Hospital/Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI.
“We wanted to determine which patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer would benefit most from preoperative fine needle aspiration of the axillary lymph nodes,” said Martha Mainiero, MD, lead author of the study. “This quick and minimally invasive procedure can assist the surgeon in determining what type of axillary surgery is best for patients with breast cancer. Unfortunately many centers do not routinely perform this procedure as there is not yet consensus on who will benefit from it,” she said.
MDCT Accurate in Detecting Stenosis in Calcified Coronary Artery Plaque
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Multidetector CT angiography can accurately predict the presence of obstructive disease (stenosis) in small and moderate-sized calcified coronary artery plaque (CAP), and is even fairly accurate in diagnosing large and heavily calcified CAP, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA.
The study evaluated 31 patients who had one or more calcified CAP, comparing the results from CCTA to cardiac catheterization. “It is commonly believed that when coronary artery plaque is calcified, (particularly when it is heavily calcified), MDCT is unreliable in determining the degree of stenosis,” said David C. Levin, MD, lead author of the study. However, in this study CCTA and cardiac catheterization were concordant in 58 of 61 small calcified CAPs (95%), 20 of 22 moderate-sized (91%) and 29 of 43 large calcified CAPs (67%). The study showed that overestimation of stenosis occurred in 2 of the small lesions, 2 of the moderate-sized lesions and 14 of the large lesions.
Inhaled insulin linked to lung cancer: Pfizer
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Clinical trials of the inhaled insulin product Exubera revealed an increase in the number of lung cancer patient, leading Nektar Therapeutics to end talks with potential partners to market the product, Pfizer Inc and Nektar said on Wednesday
Over the course of the clinical trials, Pfizer said 6 of the 4,740 Exubera-treated patients versus 1 of the 4,292 patients not treated with Exubera developed lung cancer. One lung cancer case was also found after Exubera reached the market.
Pfizer updated the Exubera labeling to include a warning with safety information about lung cancer cases found in patients who used Exubera, which U.S. regulators approved in January 2006.
Drug regime reverses heart disease in diabetics
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Aggressive use of drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure helped reverse heart disease in people with diabetes, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The 3-year study of 499 Native American adults with type 2 diabetes showed that lowering blood pressure and cholesterol more than is usually recommended helped reverse thickening of the arteries and damage to the heart.
This is good news for everyone with diabetes, the researchers said—especially Native Americans, who have high rates of the disease.
Low-impact exercise helps obese boys burn more fat
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For obese boys, lower-intensity exercise like walking may be better at burning fat than more-vigorous workouts, a small study suggests.
In exercise tests of 30 thin or obese 12-year-old boys, French researchers found that obese boys burned the most fat when they worked out at a modest intensity—akin to riding a bike on level ground.
Once the activity became more challenging, their bodies began to use substantially less fat compared with normal-weight boys.
Weight discrimination common, U.S. survey finds
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Discrimination against the overweight may be about as prevalent as racial discrimination, the results of a survey of U.S. adults suggest.
Using data from a survey of nearly 2,300 Americans, researchers at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut found that 5 percent of men and 10 percent of women said they had faced discrimination because of their weight—ranging from job refusals to rude treatment in everyday life.
Among respondents who were severely obese—having a body mass index
(BMI) of 35 or higher—40 percent reported instances of weight discrimination. A body mass index is the ratio between height and weight commonly used to classify individuals as over- or underweight.
Methamphetamine use in pregnancy changes learning ability of the offspring
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Studies have suggested that infants exposed to methamphetamines while in the womb can suffer irreversible brain damage, although the exact effects of these drugs during pregnancy have been hard to pinpoint due to many other negative behaviors that often occur in meth users.
Now, using a guinea pig model that can assess neural changes in offspring born to mothers given methamphetamine during an otherwise normal pregnancy, Dr. Sanika Samuel Chirwa provides new evidence for the cognitive damage of these drugs.
Withdrawal Method of Contraception: How it Works
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Many couples use a form of birth control know as the withdrawal method of contraception, or “the pull out method”. Some couples prefer the withdrawal method of contraception because it allows for spontaneity, is a non-hormonal form of birth control and it is free. When practiced perfectly, the withdrawal method of contraception is about 96% effective in the prevention of pregnancy.
The withdrawal method of contraception does not prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. That is because the withdrawal method of contraception does allow for contact with bodily fluid. In fact, many people assume the failure rate associated with the incorrect use of the withdrawal method is actually due to the pre-seminal fluid, also known as pre-ejaculate. While pre-seminal fluid does contain sexually transmitted diseases, it does not contain sperm.
Cancer widows are often emotionally isolated
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Many Swedish men have no one to turn to for emotional support other than their partners, not even in particularly traumatic situations, such as when suffering from cancer. However, according to new research, the partners of cancer patients also often lack support outside the relationship.
Previous research has shown that many Swedish men over 50 with cancer confide their feelings and fears about the disease to few other people, if any. For 80 per cent of men who have prostate cancer and who live together with someone else, the partner is the only source of emotional support they have. Seventy per cent of single men with prostate cancer do not share their feelings with another person.
The same group of researchers at Karolinska Institutet has now examined the extent to which women in the same age group who have lost their husbands to cancer confide in other people. Their results show that one third of these women have nobody else with whom to share their feelings.
Psychologist develops post-operative care for heart patients in Bermuda
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31 March 2008: A psychologist at the University of Liverpool is helping to create a potentially life-saving post-operative care service for heart patients in Bermuda.
The service, being developed in conjunction with the Bermuda Heart Foundation, will help support patients who have been fitted with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD). ICDs are used to treat irregular heart beats, which can lead to heart attacks. If the heart rhythm increases in speed the ICD delivers low-voltage electrical impulses to the heart in an attempt to correct the rhythm.
Health care services in Bermuda are unable to offer the implants so patients are referred to Baltimore and other cities in the US where the ICD can be fitted. Patients returning to Bermuda after surgery have no post-operative care available to support them with any emotional or physical effects.
Gum disease linked with gestational diabetes risk
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Pregnant women with gum disease may be more likely to develop gestational diabetes than those with healthy gums, researchers have found.
Gestational diabetes arises during pregnancy and usually resolves after the baby is born, but it can raise a woman’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes later on. It can also contribute to problems during pregnancy and delivery, including maternal high blood pressure and a larger-than-normal baby, which may necessitate a cesarean section.
The new findings, published in the Journal of Dental Research, suggest that gum disease may be a treatable risk factor for gestational diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes self-care challenging for teens
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Young people with type 2 diabetes struggle to maintain healthy eating habits and to get enough exercise, with non-white teens appearing to have a particularly tough time, according to what the researchers call the most comprehensive study to date of self-care among adolescents with the disease.
“The concern is that while they’re reporting some good self-management behaviors, they’re also reporting a lot of not-so-good self-management behaviors and a lot of stress and other barriers to really performing good self management,” Dr. Russell L. Rothman of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
Rothman and his colleagues surveyed 103 individuals 12 to 21 years old with type 2 diabetes. More than 80 percent said they took their recommended medications at least 75 percent of the time, 59 percent reported checking their blood glucose more than twice a day, and over 70 percent exercised twice or more every week.
Short-term exercise improves heart failure
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In patients with heart failure, one month of moderate exercise significantly improves heart function and aerobic capacity and at least partially improves related symptoms, results of a study indicate.
Dr. Stephen F. Crouse from Texas A&M University in College Station presented the study Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Physiological Society, part of the Experimental Biology 2008 scientific conference underway in San Diego.
The study involved 68 women and 298 men with heart failure who were referred to the Center for Cardiovascular Rehabilitation in Bad Schallerbach, Austria for 4 weeks of residential cardiac rehabilitation to improve heart function.
Frequent blood donation doesn’t boost cancer risk
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Frequent blood donation is not harmful to your health, a new study confirms.
“No one should worry that giving blood causes cancer,” Dr. Gustaf Edgren of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health. “If anything, blood donation may actually be good for you.”
People who donate blood show lower cancer and mortality rates than their non-donating peers, Edgren and his colleagues note in their report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Association, but the fact that blood donors tend to be healthier overall could mask any ill effects of frequent donation.
Brazil makes condoms to protect Amazon, stop AIDS
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he Brazilian government began producing condoms on Monday using rubber from trees in the Amazon, a move it said would help preserve the world’s largest rainforest and cut dependence on imported contraceptives given away to fight AIDS.
Brazil’s first government-run condom factory, located in northwestern Acre state, will produce 100 million condoms a year, the health ministry said in a statement.
The latex comes from the Chico Mendes reserve, named after a conservationist and rubber tapper killed in 1988 by ranchers. The government says the condoms would be the only ones made of latex harvested from a tropical forest.
