Foodconsumer corrects an earlier headline: methylmercury contamination has increased in Pacific Ocean waters, not in Pacific Ocean fish. The item reprints the 2004 FDA and EPA mercury advice for women who may become pregnant, nursing mothers and young children.
Food Consumer
Drug
PARP blockers effective in treating hard-to-treat breast cancers
At the ASCO meeting, a study of 116 triple negative breast cancer patients found those given a PARP inhibitor with chemotherapy lived 3.5 months longer than those on chemotherapy alone. An AstraZeneca PARP inhibitor shrank tumors in 41 percent of BRCA mutation carriers.
Letter to Editor
Why are hormone makers still pushing HRT?
Industry-sponsored studies and marketing now claim women can get hormone therapy's benefits by starting in their early 50s. The piece compares this to tobacco-funded research, noting 5,000 Prempro and Premarin lawsuits and that a cited 2004 study's lead author consulted for Wyeth.
Diet
Home-cooked foods mean leaner kids
Southampton researchers who assessed the diets of 536 children at 6 and 12 months found those weaned on fruit, vegetables and home-cooked food had more lean tissue at age four than the rest. Longer breastfeeding went with lower fat levels.
Lifestyle
Morbidity and Mortality Related to Tobacco Use
Fact-sheet figures on smoking: tobacco kills more than 5 million people a year worldwide and about 443,000 in the United States, where smoking costs over $193 billion a year and roughly 19.8 percent of adults still smoke.
Drug
Chemotherapy drugs help patients with non-small lung cancer
In a trial of more than 700 advanced lung cancer patients, adding Tarceva to Avastin delayed cancer progression to 4.8 months from 3.7, at the cost of more rash, diarrhea, hypertension and fatigue and eight deaths from adverse events. Continuing Alimta extended survival to 13.4 months from 10.6.
Disease
Surgery not neccessary for most late-stage colorectal cancers
Memorial Sloan-Kettering researchers reviewed 233 patients treated for metastatic colorectal cancer and found 93 percent never developed complications that would justify removing the primary tumor. Philip Paty says such patients do better starting chemotherapy right away.
Disease
Swine flu cases climbing
As of May 29, 2009 the WHO counted 15,510 H1N1 cases and 99 deaths across 53 countries, adding Venezuela, Hungary, Estonia, Bolivia and Lebanon. Canadian cases jumped nearly 20 percent in two days, Victoria led Australia's count, and almost half of US patients had underlying conditions.
Disease
Real-time science needed to stop new flu virus
IOM president Harvey Fineberg writes in Science that the 1976 Fort Dix response, a mass vaccination followed by more than 500 Guillain-Barre cases and 30 deaths, shows decision makers must ask what added information would change their course, and ask it while an epidemic unfolds.
Miscellaneous
Pregnancy and weight gain
With nearly two-thirds of US women of childbearing age overweight or obese, the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council issued new guidelines advising obese women, those with a BMI over 30, to limit pregnancy weight gain to 11 to 20 pounds.
Disease
Swine flu: What you need to know
A question-and-answer primer on the 2009 H1N1 virus: where it was first detected, why it was called swine flu, how its quadruple reassortant genes differ from viruses circulating in North American pigs, and which symptoms it shares with seasonal flu.
Disease
Cancer cells need normalcy to survive chaos they create
Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's researchers Ji Luo and Stephen Elledge report that cancer cells depend on normal cell function to survive the stress their own abnormality creates, needing what the authors call equal parts vice and virtue to keep growing.
Vitamins
Vitamin K: Help for Those with CAC
A Tufts study of 388 people with coronary artery calcification found those given vitamin K1 averaged 6 percent less calcification than those who did not take it. Vitamin K activates matrix GLA protein, which regulates calcium build-up in blood vessels.
Environment
E-Groups want “toxic tubs” cleaned up
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported that 61 percent of 48 baby bath products it tested contained formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane, both probable human carcinogens per the EPA. It asked Johnson & Johnson to remove them; the company says trace levels are considered safe.
Disease
Childhood diabetes rates set to soar
A European study of 29,311 type 1 diabetes patients found cases in children under five rising 5.4 percent a year, with experts projecting the number will double between 2005 and 2020. Researchers suspect environmental triggers such as diet, viral infection or C-section delivery.
Disease
Type 1 diabetes -- living with the disease
Sonia Sotomayor has lived with type 1 diabetes since she was eight, and experts say the disease, well managed, should not affect her ability to serve. A French study of patients 50 years into the disease reports life expectancy continuing to improve as care gets better.
Food
Study proves benefit of green tea for leukemia sufferers
A Mayo Clinic study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found high doses of the green tea compound EGCG were tolerated by chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients, stabilized early-stage disease and were accompanied by a 50 percent reduction in lymph node size.
Lifestyle
Americans ditch “healthy lifestyle”
Comparing two National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey samples 18 years apart, researchers in the American Journal of Medicine found only 8 percent of adults aged 40 to 74 kept all five healthy habits, down from 15 percent, while obesity rose from 28 to 36 percent.
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