Incontinent girls may suffer overactive bladder later
Women who had urinary problems as children are more likely to have overactive bladder as adults, a new study shows.
The findings suggest that treating childhood urinary symptoms could prevent such problems in adulthood, Dr. Mary Pat Fitzgerald of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois and colleagues say.
The researchers surveyed 2,109 women aged 40 to 69, asking them about current urinary problems as well as whether they had such problems in childhood. Twenty-nine percent of the women reported having urinary incontinence, or leakage of urine, at least once a week, while 12 percent had daily incontinence.
Imaging of breast cancer diagnosed and treated with chemotherapy during pregnancy
Ultrasound provides a safe and accurate method of detecting breast cancers in pregnant women, as well as assessing response to chemotherapy, according to a study appearing in the April issue of Radiology.
Investigators at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston recently studied the largest group of women to date who were both diagnosed and treated for breast cancer during pregnancy.
“Ultrasound identified 100 percent of cancers in our study, and mammography demonstrated 90 percent,” said Wei T. Yang, M.D., chief investigator of the study and associate professor of diagnostic radiology at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Breast Imaging Section. “We want young women to know that symptomatic breast cancer that occurs during pregnancy can be imaged, diagnosed and treated while pregnant, so they should not wait to seek medical attention if they start to have suspicious symptoms.”
Antibiotic may help asthma symptoms: study
An antibiotic made by French drug-maker Sanofi-Aventis may reduce some symptoms when asthma worsens but it does not improve breathing capacity, according to a study financed by the drug company.
The study published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine found that 278 adults who took the antibiotic telithromycin—sold under the name Ketek—for 10 days after their attacks showed a drop in asthma symptoms.
But using another gauge of success—how much air patients could exhale—the antibiotic showed no benefit. “None of the pulmonary-function tests showed a significant treatment effect by the sixth week of the study,” the researchers concluded.
Medicare rules hit heart device makers
Proposed rules changing the way the U.S. Medicare health insurance agency reimburses hospitals would hurt makers of pricey heart devices the most, and is most favorable to rural hospital companies, analysts said on Thursday.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a major source of hospital revenue, released draft rules late Wednesday with an aim to redistribute profits from highly reimbursed procedures such as some heart surgeries, to conditions seen as underpaid, like treating pneumonia.
The rules are subject to a public comment period and cover 2007 and 2008.
Cholesterol-lowering drug might not promote healthy hearts
Antioxidants, such as beta-carotene and Vitamin E, have been touted for their ability to protect against heart disease.
This protective effect is attributed to their ability to prevent the oxidation of bad cholesterol by free radicals - a process thought to contribute to the build-up of disease-causing fatty deposits on artery walls. But a new study, published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that the heart-healthy effect of one antioxidant has little to do with cholesterol oxidation.
A group of researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia, led by Roland Stocker, studied a cholesterol-lowering drug called Probucol (Lorelco) in laboratory rodents with vascular disease. Probucol reduces the risk of heart disease in humans, but is no longer prescribed in the US and Australia because of adverse side effects: a tendency to lower good cholesterol along with the bad and the potential to induce an irregular heartbeat. Probucol is still available in Canada and Europe.
Engineered yeast may cut cost of malaria drug
US researchers have created a modified form of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that is capable of producing large amounts of artemisinic acid, which is needed to make the anti-malaria drug artemisinin.
Malaria, caused by the one-celled parasite carried by mosquitoes called plasmodium, kills at least one million people every year and makes 300 million people seriously ill. Ninety percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, south of the Sahara, mostly among young children.
Artemisinin is the drug of choice for treating multi-drug resistant strains of Plasmodium species. Unfortunately, the drug, which comes from the wormwood plant Artemisia annua, is expensive and supplies are limited, meaning that many malaria patients in developing countries go untreated.
Early obesity raises risk of hip replacement later
Young adults who are overweight or obese may be particularly likely to need a hip replacement later in life, a large study suggests.
Using national data on 1.2 million adults, researchers in Norway found that those who were overweight or obese were at greater risk of eventually needing a total hip replacement due to severe arthritis. Men and women who were heavy before the age of 25 were especially at risk.
The findings underscore the importance of heading off excessive weight gain in childhood and adolescence, conclude the researchers, led by Dr. Gunnar Flugsrud of Ulleval University Hospital in Oslo. Their report is published in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.
Delayed surgery decreases bladder cancer survival
For patients newly diagnosed with bladder cancer, delays of more than 3 months after the initial diagnosis to surgery results in decreased survival, a study shows.
“There currently are no standardized guidelines for the appropriate timing of cystectomy” (surgical removal of the bladder), Dr. Cheryl T. Lee from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan told Reuters Health. “However, there is growing evidence that cystectomy should be performed within 3 months of a diagnosis” of muscle-invasive disease.
The current study, she said, supports that “patients must undergo cystectomy within 3 months of diagnosis or their survival may be compromised.”
British woman wins Herceptin drug case
A British woman with early-stage breast cancer won a legal appeal on Wednesday to force her local health authority to pay for the potentially life-saving drug Herceptin.
“I feel like I’ve won the lottery,” said Ann Marie Rogers, 54, who had called the initial decision by Swindon Primary Care Trust (PCT) not to give her the costly medication “a death sentence”.
The decision at London’s Court of Appeal overturned an earlier High Court ruling that said the PCT in Wiltshire did not have to pay for the drug, made by Switzerland’s Roche and which costs about 20,000 pounds ($35,000) a year.
