Medical groups are writing to clinicians urging them to encourage flu shots for pregnant women, who made up 1 percent of the population but 5 percent of swine flu deaths last year. This year's single vaccine covers swine flu and two other strains; pregnant women should avoid the live nasal spray.
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Avoiding Illness
How diet and lifestyle affect cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other illnesses.
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Heart & Blood
Negativity Linked to Heart Ailments
Dutch researchers pooled 49 studies of 6,121 heart patients and found those with Type D personalities, marked by negative moods and emotional reticence, were three times as likely to have cardiovascular problems and three times as likely to suffer clinical depression or anxiety.
Avoiding Illness
Superbug Has Arrived in the US
Hospitals in Massachusetts, Illinois and California have treated three patients carrying NDM-1, a resistance mechanism traced to India; all three had undergone medical procedures there. A CDC epidemiologist notes that carbapenem-resistant bacteria already spread in US hospitals and nursing homes.
Avoiding Illness
Hand-Washing Becoming More Popular
Phone surveys and bathroom observation by two industry and science groups put hand-washing at its highest rate since 1996: 85 percent of those observed washed, 98 percent of women against 77 percent of men, while 96 percent told surveyors they always did.
Avoiding Illness
What Complications Do Flu Shots Prevent?
U.S. flu deaths have climbed to about 36,000 a year from 20,000 two decades ago, which the piece blames on an aging population, only 65 percent vaccination among the elderly, and weaker protection in the most vulnerable. Complications such as bacterial pneumonia kill.
Obesity
CDC: More Babies Being Breastfed
The CDC reports 75 percent of babies born in 2007 were breastfed, meeting the Healthy People 2010 goal, while the 6-month (43 percent) and 12-month (22 percent) rates fell short. A CDC-funded meta-analysis tied each month of breastfeeding to a 4 percent lower pediatric obesity rate.
Heart & Blood
Angioplasty vs Coronary Artery Bypass: Choose Wisely
Data from a European-American study may shift severe heart disease treatment back toward bypass surgery. The piece traces angioplasty from 1977 through the 1994 stent approval, noting elastic recoil in 5-10% of patients and restenosis in 40-50% within three to six months of balloon angioplasty.
Cancer
Pediatric Cancer: Cure Desperately Needed
Neuroblastoma, the most common cancer in infancy, accounts for about 650 of the more than 12,000 pediatric cancers diagnosed in the U.S. each year. It usually starts in an adrenal gland, its early symptoms are vague, and 50-60 percent have already spread by diagnosis.
Other Diseases
Do Cockroaches Hold the Key to MRSA Treatment?
University of Nottingham researchers found nine molecules in the brain and nervous tissue of cockroaches and locusts that killed 90 percent of E. coli and MRSA bacteria without harming human cells. Simon Lee presented the work to the Society for General Microbiology.
Cancer
Pediatric Cancer: Who Will Look for a Cure?
About 46 U.S. children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer each day, more than 12,000 a year. Marking Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month, the piece follows Sam Bish, an Ohio 8-year-old who died a year after an osteosarcoma diagnosis, and the Pediatric Cancer Foundation's research funding.
Avoiding Illness
The C8 Health Project:What Have We Learned?
The C8 Health Project tested blood from more than 12,000 children aged 1 to 18 exposed for at least a year to PFOA-contaminated drinking water in the mid-Ohio River Valley. PFOA and PFOS concentrations averaged 69.2 and 22.7 ng/mL, well above the national median.
Obesity
Short Sleep Duration Linked to Obesity, but Why?
Tracking 1,930 U.S. children over five years, researchers found too little nighttime sleep in infants and preschoolers predicted later overweight or obesity, while among older children only sleep at follow-up tracked with weight gain. Napping did not substitute. The study is observational.
Avoiding Illness
Animal Based Low Carb Diet Boosts Death Risk
A Harvard-led analysis of 85,168 women and 44,548 men found low-carbohydrate diets tied to a 12 percent higher overall death risk. Those eating the most animal fat and protein were 23 percent more likely to die of any cause, while plant-based low-carb diets tracked with lower risk.
Avoiding Illness
Home Cooked Meal with a Side of Food Poisoning?
In a Los Angeles County study where about 13,000 adults completed an online food safety self-assessment, roughly one in seven home kitchens would fail a restaurant-style health inspection. Some 27 percent did not refrigerate partially cooked food held for later, and 28 percent kept jewelry on.
Cancer
Research Sheds Light on Aggressive Breast Cancers
Breakthrough Breast Cancer researchers deleted BRCA1 from both basal and luminal cells in mice. Tumors arose in both, but only those from luminal cells carried the traits of human BRCA1 cancers, contrary to the assumption that such tumors start in basal cells.
Cancer
Michael Douglas diagnosed with throat cancer
Michael Douglas told David Letterman he was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer early in the summer and has finished the first week of an eight-week course of chemotherapy and radiation. He attributed it to drinking and smoking; his doctor's prognosis is a full recovery.
Other Diseases
Promising Malaria Drug on the Horizon
An experimental Novartis compound, NITD609, cleared malaria in mice with a single dose and killed drug-resistant strains taken from patients in Thailand. Safety testing must come first, but the researchers hope human trials can start later this year.
Avoiding Illness
The Flu Shot: How it Came to be, Why it Works
The piece traces flu vaccine development to the 1918 pandemic, when doctors tried bleeding patients, hydrogen peroxide IVs and injections of blister fluid, morphine, caffeine and strychnine. Only blood transfusions from recovered patients seemed to blunt the worst symptoms.
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