Breast tumor genes no hinder to cancer survival
Women who develop breast cancer because they carry defective genes are no less likely to survive over the long term than other breast cancer patients, Canadian and Israeli researchers said on Wednesday.
Women with and without the best-known cancer genes had virtually the same overall survival rate after 10 years, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Therapy for depression cuts suicide attempts
Treating people with depression—by means of either medications or psychotherapy—leads to a drop in suicide attempts, according to a new report.
The findings relate to the controversy about treating young people with antidepressant drugs, and the suspicion that doing so may be linked to increased suicide rates.
Newer beta-blocker doesn’t up weight in diabetics
Unlike earlier beta-blocker drugs used to treat high blood pressure, the newer drug carvedilol does not cause weight gain in people with diabetes, according to findings from a new study.
“Increases in body weight have been documented with long-term therapy of traditional beta-blockers,” Dr. Franz H. Messerli, of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York, and colleagues write in the American Journal of Medicine. “Any weight gain is of concern in patients with type 2 diabetes because of the rise in insulin resistance associated with excess weight and obesity.”
PepsiCo, others settle benzene suit: plaintiffs
Soft drink companies including PepsiCo Inc. have settled a lawsuit alleging that their products contained ingredients that could form the carcinogen benzene, the suit’s plaintiffs said on Thursday.
The settling companies, which also include Sunny Delight Beverages Co., Rockstar Inc., Polar Beverages Inc. and Shasta Beverages Inc., agreed to reformulate or had already reformulated some products to lessen the chance that their ingredients would form the cancer-causing chemical.
New drugs lower blood glucose without weight gain
wo new antidiabetes drugs are modestly effective at reducing blood glucose levels without causing weight gain in people with type 2 diabetes, according to a review in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
Both drugs target incretin hormones that are produced in the gastrointestinal tract and boost the release of insulin triggered by glucose. This “incretin pathway” appears to be weakened in type 2 diabetes.
Double protection doesn’t improve HIV prevention
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
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.
