Health News - Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Depression, especially its physical signs, such as fatigue and loss of appetite, may contribute to thickening arteries, an early sign of cardiovascular disease, researchers report.
Previous research has suggested that negative emotions like anxiety and anger can increase the risk for heart disease. But in the new study, depression -- and its physical symptoms -- was the emotional linchpin to early signs of heart disease. "In other studies, anxiety, depression, anger and hostility have all separately been linked to future risk of heart disease," said lead researcher Jesse C. Stewart, a member of the psychology department at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. But the problem with those studies was that they didn't look at these negative emotions together. And since their symptoms can overlap, it has been hard to tell which emotion plays the most important role in heart disease, he said. Continue reading
Patients given aprotinin, a drug used to limit blood loss in heart bypass surgery, are at greater risk of dying over the next five years than those given two other medications, a new study finds.
The report, published in the Feb. 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, comes from the same group that last year linked aprotinin to an increased risk of kidney failure, heart failure and stroke. "Our present findings deal with death," said study author Dr. Dennis T. Mangano, director of the Ischemia Research and Education Foundation, a California-based nonprofit group. "The death rate for aprotinin patients far outstrips that for the other two drugs." Continue reading
Newer, "third-generation" birth-control pills that contain the synthetic progestin desogestrel are nearly twice as likely to cause potentially fatal blood clots than older pills and should be banned immediately, Public Citizen said Tuesday in a petition filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"While the use of any type of combined oral contraceptive holds an increased risk of venous thrombosis (blood clots), third-generation birth-control pills double that risk without preventing pregnancy any more effectively than older pills do," Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, said in a prepared statement. Continue reading
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved on Tuesday a new genetic test that's designed to determine the likelihood that early stage breast cancer will recur within five to 10 years after treatment.
The intended value of the test is that it could help doctors decide whether or not a woman needs chemotherapy after initial cancer treatment for early stage disease that hasn't spread beyond the breast. However, the test, called MammaPrint, has shortcomings, Dr. Steven Gutman, director of the FDA's Office of In Vitro Diagnostic Device Evaluation and Safety in the Center for Devices, said during a teleconference. Continue reading
Two new vitamin D studies have revealed new prescriptions for possibly preventing up to half of the cases of breast cancer and two-thirds of the cases of colorectal cancer in the United States.
The work was conducted by a core team of cancer prevention specialists at the Moores Cancer Center at University of California, San Diego, and colleagues from both coasts. The breast cancer study, published online in the current issue of the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, found that individuals with the highest blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, or 25(OH)D, had the lowest risk of breast cancer. Continue reading
Most teenagers are more afraid of losing their sight than suffering from cancer but are unaware that smoking can increase the risk of blindness, researchers said on Tuesday.
They know that smoking causes lung cancer and is a risk factor for stroke and heart disease but only a small portion know it is linked to age related macular degeneration -- the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. "The vast majority, over 90 percent, didn't know it," said Dr Simon Kelly, an ophthalmologist at Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust in northern England. "The majority of adults don't know this either," he added. Continue reading