Cancer survival has improved across Europe, with eastern European nations beginning to close the gap with western neighbours, according to a study covering the decade up to 2002, released Tuesday. The study, published in the British journal The Lancet, showed a clear link between high rates of survival and the amount spent on health, but pointed out that Britain lagged well behind other countries with similar national health budgets.
An accompanying editorial in the influential journal called for a "fundamental reassessment" of Britain's cancer policy in light of the fact that survival rates were comparable to eastern European countries that spent two-thirds less. "So has the cancer plan worked? The short answer is seemingly no," it concluded, suggesting that the National Health Service should be "divorced from political control and short-term political gains."
The 23-country study, the largest of its kind, said that the survival rate for the most common cancers -- colorectal, lung, breast and prostate -- and for ovarian cancer was highest in Nordic countries, with the exception of Denmark, and in central Europe.
It was somewhat lower in southern Europe, including Spain and Italy, lower still in Britain and Ireland, and lowest in eastern Europe.
Poland and the Czech Republic, however, showed sharp improvement across most major cancers in the period studied, suggesting that eastern European countries were closing the health gap.
From 1991 to 2002, survival rates in eastern Europe improved from 30.3 to 44.7 percent for colorectal cancer, from 60.0 to 73.9 percent for breast cancer, and from 39.5 to 68.0 percent for prostate cancer.
For patients diagnosed in 2000-2002, survival for patients across Europe with tumours was significantly lower than in the United States: 47.3 percent for men and 55.8 for women, compared to 66.3 and 62.9 percent respectively, the study noted.
The journal called for the development of a "pan-European cancer plan" to promote modern diagnostic and treatment facilities.
It noted in particular that Britain should emphasize earlier diagnosis of the disease.
source : news.yahoo.com
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Cancer survival rate up in Europe
Health Care : Egypt death sparks debate on female circumcision
It was a routine procedure undertaken by thousands of Egyptian girls every year, but something went wrong and Budour Ahmed Shaker died while having her genitals cut in a rite known locally as "purification." The death of the 11-year-old schoolgirl at a private clinic in the Egyptian village Mughagha in June prompted the government to outlaw the custom of female genital mutilation, which is so widespread in Egypt that 95 percent of the country's women are estimated to have undergone the procedure.
But the ban may be hard to enforce and activists fear the practice may go underground as the vast majority of Egyptian families still view circumcision as necessary to protect girls' chastity. Most girls are cut by the time they reach puberty. Even in Mughagha, a village of low rise houses hemming the Nile, many women and girls say they want the procedure to be allowed but under more stringent medical supervision.
"If a girl is not purified, she will just go hook up with men. This protects women's honor. Otherwise it will become just like America here and girls will go with guys," said Asma Said, a 16-year-old secondary school student.
"Those who say it doesn't happen are lying 100 percent. There is not one person here not circumcised, and it will continue."
She like many of the schoolgirls in Maghagha who spoke to Reuters said they supported the practice, even if they were frightened of having it done.
The only girl who spoke against the practice was shouted down by her classmates until she conceded that genital cutting was a necessity.
"No one can get married without it," said the girl.
Another classmate, 15-year-old Nesma Radi, chimed in: "Egypt lives in peace and security because there is circumcision."
Egypt imposed a complete ban on female genital cutting -- also known as female genital mutilation or circumcision -- in June after Shaker died of an excessive dose of anesthesia while being cut at a private clinic in Maghagha.
Egypt's state-appointed Grand Mufti, the government's official arbiter of Islamic law, decreed in June that female genital cutting was forbidden by Islam, in his strongest statement yet against the practice.
In Egypt, the cutting is done on both Muslim and Christian girls and typically involves excising the clitoris and sometimes other female genitalia, often by a doctor. Side effects include hemorrhage, shock and sexual dysfunction.
Outside of Egypt and Sudan to the south, the practice is extremely rare elsewhere in most of the Arab world but is common in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.
More than 95 percent of Egyptian women had been circumcised, with the highest levels in poor families living in rural areas of the Nile valley in southern Egypt, according to an Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2005.
source : news.yahoo.com
Friday, August 17, 2007
Health Care : Menopause hard on couple's sex lives
Sexual Health Care
When a woman enters menopause, her sex life and that of her partner may suffer, according to a survey in which more than half of the women reported a decrease in sex drive and in the amount of sex they were having since entering menopause. Overall, 46 percent of menopausal women surveyed reported having sex less than once per month and most women felt that this was hurting their relationship."Menopausal women are having less sex and it's impacting our relationships," Karen Giblin noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health. "Frankly, through the Red Hot Mamas menopause education programs, I have heard that a lot of women would rather go shoe shopping than have sex, and that concerns me."
The survey, including more than 1,000 women, 35 years or older, who were just beginning, just ending, or in the middle of menopause, was conducted between June 20 and July 2, 2007.
"We are the baby-boom generation who is now entering menopause; we are the women who lived through the sexual revolution in the 60s and now we are having our own sexual revolution, of a different kind," said Giblin, the founder of the Red Hot Mamas organization (www.redhotmamas.org), which commissioned the Sex and Menopause Survey. The survey was sponsored by Duramed Pharmaceuticals and conducted by Harris Interactive.
Four hundred sixty nine of these women -- about 44 percent -- reported suffering from vaginal symptoms such as vaginal atrophy (vaginal narrowing or shrinkage), which can cause vaginal dryness and painful sex.
Eighty-eight percent of women experiencing vaginal atrophy said it was causing them problems and 47 percent said that they have avoided, made an excuse, or stopped having sex altogether because of physical discomfort during intercourse.
Vaginal dryness, in particular, plagued more than half of menopausal women surveyed and this resulted in two thirds of them having less sex. "Seventy percent of the women did not know that therapies are available to relieve vaginal dryness," Giblin noted.
"There are over-the-counter products to combat dryness and your physician has a treasure chest of prescription medications to relieve vaginal dryness," she added.
Giblin believes men need menopause education just as much as women. "It's not only important that a woman have a thorough understanding of the menopause process." Men should also because the symptoms of menopause "can be very hard on relationships," Giblin said.
"If a partner sees a decrease in sex with their partner, often times the partner becomes resentful and feels that the woman has lost interest and it isn't necessarily true," Giblin said. "It's very critical for women and their significant other to stay really connected during menopause."
source : news.yahoo.com
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Thursday, August 16, 2007
Health Tip: Living With Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive illness, is characterized by extreme mood swings.
The American Academy of Family Physicians offers these suggestions to help you cope with bipolar disorder:
- Find out as much as you can about the disorder -- ask your doctor for good references and resources.
- Maintain a regular routine of sleeping and waking times, mealtimes and exercise.
- Continue to take your medications prescribed by your doctor.
- Avoid caffeine and alcohol, and don't take over-the-counter cold, allergy or cough medicines.
- Try to reduce stress.
- Monitor your moods, and tell your doctor when you start to notice significant changes.
Indian flooding sparks new worries about polio
India will make "extraordinary efforts" to immunize children against polio in its eastern state of Bihar, fearing disruption by massive flooding may make them more vulnerable to the crippling disease, officials said on Thursday. The country of 1.1 billion people has the world's highest number of polio cases, with 139 being reported in 2007 out of a global total of 345. Defeating the paralyzing disease in India is seen as key in the global war against the virus.
In Bihar, where 20 cases of the virulent Type 1 polio were reported this year, nearly 15 million people -- including millions of children -- have been affected in what officials say are the worst monsoon floods in memory in some areas. The WHO said with thousands of marooned or homeless children living in crowded makeshift camps in the state of 90 million people -- often in extremely unhygienic conditions -- the transmission of the virus could become easier.
"In flood-hit areas, populations mix in unusual fashion which facilitates transmission of the polio virus," said Hamid Jafari, head of WHO's polio project in India.
"There are operational challenges in reaching children in flood-hit areas and going house-to-house to vaccinate them," he said, adding that campaigns were under way in areas health workers could access.
Officials were planning to deploy boats in some areas where there was no let-up in flooding.
Polio is transmitted through the fecal-oral route in unhygienic conditions. It enters the intestine and multiplies there if food is eaten with unwashed hands.
Impoverished Bihar has the second highest number of polio cases after the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. Most of Bihar's cases were reported from districts hit by flooding.
A spike in cases in 2006 in India -- mostly in these two states -- sparked global concern as the Indian strain of the virus reinfected several other countries.
Indian Health Secretary Naresh Dayal told Reuters that the government planned polio immunization rounds in Bihar in the coming weeks as a major national round had to be cancelled on August 5 in several districts due to widespread inundation.
India says it has beaten back the Type 1 virus in the western parts of Uttar Pradesh -- the world's most affected region -- for the first time, with no cases reported this year.
Officials said they did not want the progress in Uttar Pradesh undermined by gaps in Bihar due to the flooding.
"Diarrhea and intestinal infections that follow flooding compromises the efficacy of the polio vaccine," Jafari said. "We must make extraordinary efforts to plug the gap."
source : news.yahoo.com
Monday, August 13, 2007
Extreme Heat Hits Elderly Harder
A combination of age-linked factors helps explain why older adults and the elderly are at higher risk on very hot days, experts say. Due to age-related physical changes, older adults can't cool down as well as younger adults, says the American Geriatric Society's Foundation for Health in Aging. Older people may not feel as hot when temperatures are dangerously high, and they are also less likely to feel thirsty, even when they're almost dehydrated, the experts say.
These and other factors mean that extreme heat can lead to serious health problems and increased risk of death for older adults. Each year in the United States, about 200 people die of health problems caused by high heat and humidity. Most of the victims are age 50 or older.
The foundation also noted that heart disease, diabetes and certain other diseases that are common in older adults can make it more difficult to cope with high heat and humidity. The same goes for a number of drugs, including water pills, allergy and sinus medications, and medicines for depression and nerve problems.
When the temperature reaches 90 degrees F, family and caregivers should check on older adults, said the foundation, which also offered hot weather safety tips for older adults:
source : news.yahoo.com
Last Flu Season Was Mild, But Child Deaths Worrying
Although the 2006-07 flu season was comparatively mild in the United States, it still claimed the lives of 68 children, and experts say more must be done to reduce the death toll. They're especially concerned about the steady rise in a potentially lethal combination of infection with flu and drug-resistant staphylococcus, or "staph."
"While waiting to see what this year will bring, we should all plan to roll our sleeves up and get vaccinated and in no way let our guard down," said Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University School of Medicine's Prevention Research Center. In a report released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, experts said the 2006-07 flu season peaked in mid-February. And there were actually fewer pediatric deaths and fewer children hospitalized with influenza than in the past three flu seasons, according to the CDC.
But, among the 68 children whose deaths were associated with flu from Oct. 1, 2006, to May 19, 2007, 21 had influenza plus Stapholococcus aureus ("staph") that was resistant to a leading antibiotic, methicillin, according to the report in the Aug. 10 issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
In comparison, only one child died from flu coupled with S. aureus infection in 2004 through 2005, and three died during the 2005-06 season, the CDC said.
"We are looking into the number of deaths of children combined with staff bacterial infection," said Dr. Joe Bresee, CDC's chief of the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch in the Influenza Division. "From our perspective, it looks like it has increased."
Bresee said the CDC isn't sure if the number of deaths is actually rising, or the increase is due to better reporting. "The actual risk to kids from this is not known, but it is concerning," he said.
Bresee thinks that increasing the number of young children who get flu shots is key to reducing the problem. "They would be less likely to get influenza and, therefore, less likely to get co-infections with S. aureus," he said.
Despite the troubling news that such dual infections may be on the rise, the past season's flu statistics were relatively positive, Katz said.
"Data from the last flu season provide mostly good news," he said. "The number of cases was never unusually high. The strains were mostly of the expected varieties, and vaccine composition was just right. The death toll from complications of influenza was a bit lower than average."
The reasons for the milder flu season aren't clear, said Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine. "It could be increased surveillance and improved care and more awareness of what influenza can do," he said. "It may also be a less virulent strain of the virus."
Katz noted that, even in a good year, the average number of deaths from flu in the United States totals about 30,000, mostly among the elderly.
During the 2006-07 flu season, the influenza A (H1) virus was most common in the United States, but the A (H3) virus was found to be more common late in the season, according to the CDC.
For the 2007-08 vaccine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee has recommended that the trivalent flu vaccine contain A/Solomon Islands/3/2006-like (H1N1), A/Wisconsin/67/2005-like (H3N2), and B/Malaysia/2506/2004-like viruses, the CDC reported.
The influenza A (H3N2) and influenza B components remain the same for the new vaccine. These recommendations were based on antigenic analyses of recently isolated influenza viruses, epidemiologic data, vaccination studies in humans, and the availability of vaccine strains and reagents, the CDC said.
Last season, around the world, influenza A (H1), A (H3), and B viruses were most common. In Africa, small amounts of influenza A and B were seen. In Europe and Asia, influenza A (H3) virus was most common, but low levels of A (H1) were seen. Influenza B viruses were seen at lower levels in Asia and Europe but were most common in some countries, according to the CDC.
The best way to protect yourself from flu is to get vaccinated, experts said. "We had a good flu year. But that was last year," Katz noted.
In terms of the H5N1 bird flu virus, from December 2003 to mid-July 2007, 319 cases of bird flu in humans were reported to the World Health Organization. Among these cases, 60 percent (192) were fatal. To date, no human cases of bird flu have been reported in the United States.
All human cases were reported from Asia (Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Laos, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam) and Africa (Djibouti, Egypt, and Nigeria).
But, "the threat of an avian flu pandemic still looms," Katz said. "To date, deaths from avian flu have been few, and limited to Asia. But no one knows for sure when that might change."
Siegel, author of Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic, noted that although H5N1 has a high mortality rate, "we see year after year that it is confined to birds. There is no indication that it is about to become a massive human problem. There is no indication that it is on the verge of transforming."
source : news.yahoo.com
Friday, August 10, 2007
Health Care : Age-related illness may lead to self-neglect
Elderly people who display "self-neglect" behavior often suffer from common age-related ailments like depression, heart problems, and dementia, a new study shows. "These disorders render the senior unable to perform the tasks necessary for daily living" such as eating and bathing, Dr. Carmel Bitondo Dyer, a researcher from the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, told Reuters Health.
Some elderly persons who neglect themselves simply lack access to support services, whereas others either refuse help, or when provided access to services cannot complete the tasks necessary to obtain these services, Dyer and colleagues note in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The researchers sought to identify factors associated with self-neglect by studying 538 people who were referred to an adult protective service agency because they weren't taking care of themselves. Their average age was 75.6 years and 70 percent were women.
The team found that two-thirds of these subjects had physical problems that prevented them from functioning normally, half scored poorly on mental health tests, and virtually all of them (95 percent) had inadequate social support networks.
Patients in the study had a range of illnesses, yet 46 percent were not on any medication. For example, 52 percent had high blood pressure but only 24 percent were taking blood pressure-lowering medication; and 25 percent had diabetes yet only 15 percent were taking an anti-diabetes medication. Other common disorders, which often went untreated, were arthritis, stroke, dementia and depression.
Self-neglect is a very common problem among the aged, Dyer and colleagues note in their report.
"We have a theory," she told Reuters Health, "that if social or medical support is not available or declined by these elders, they may manifest self-neglecting behaviors, such as living in very dirty homes or suffering the consequences of otherwise treatable diseases like hypertension or diabetes."
"Lack of family or social support was the most common finding in this study, which supports our theory," she added.
source : news.yahoo.com
Health Care "Fat" hormone sheds new light on obesity
The hormone that tells us we are full also regulates our desire for certain foods, researchers said on Thursday, in a finding that sheds light on why people gain weight and could lead to new treatments for obesity. The study showed that patients with a rare genetic disorder who lacked the hormone called leptin ate less after receiving injections of the hormone, said I.S. Farooqi, a researcher at Cambridge University who led the study.
Previous research has shown the hormone does not help people with normal leptin levels lose weight, but scientists still do not completely understand how it works, Farooqi said. "By studying patients who have no leptin and then treating them with leptin, we can tell what it is doing," Farooqi said in a telephone interview. "It gives a clear look at how leptin operates in the brain."
In the study, published in the journal Science, researchers searched for "circuits" in the brain that signal when a person is hungry or full and found that they were linked to areas involved in determining the enjoyment of food. To see how the hormone worked, the researchers showed the patients pictures of different types of food, ranging from tasty fare like chocolate cake and pizza to blander choices such as cauliflower and broccoli.
The patients with the genetic disorder -- of which there are about a dozen known cases in the world -- liked all types of food, ate excessively and were obese, the researchers said.
Using magnetic resonance imaging technology, the researchers tracked the patients' brain activity as they responded to the pictures and pinpointed several key areas that play an important role when it comes to a desire for food.
After the patients received leptin injections, the areas that had previously shown activity all the time at the sight of food were only active if the people had not eaten the night before, which was a normal response, Farooqi said.
It showed desire for food is driven by biology -- not greed -- which causes overeating and obesity, Farooqi said.
Knowing how leptin, which is produced by fat cells, triggers different parts of the brain could lead to new drugs that target obesity and help dangerously overweight people take pounds off.
"If you find those molecules that leptin triggers then you can manipulate or target them with drugs to treat obesity," Farooqi said. "The first step is to work out what leptin does and how it does it."
source : news.yahoo.com
Thursday, August 9, 2007
China targets toy and drug manufacturers
China has banned two factories from exporting toys after a high-profile recall of Mattel products including Big Bird and Elmo because of fears about lead in paint. It has also put on trial five drug company managers accused of killing patients with a tainted medicine, exposing corruption and lax safety that have alarmed consumers worldwide. China has been struggling to convince the world its products are safe after a series of scandals over tainted pet food, drugs, tires, toys and toothpaste.
China stripped export licenses from Hansheng Wooden Products Factory and Lida Toy Company, both based in the booming southern province of Guangdong, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine watchdog said on its Web site on Thursday.
Lead is toxic and can pose serious health risk to young children who often put objects in their mouths.
Hansheng, based in Dongguan, was the producer of 1.5 million wooden vehicles, buildings and other train-set toys sold in the United States from January 2005 through June 2007, and then voluntarily recalled by U.S. toymaker RC2 Corp., an Illinois-based company that imports the popular "Thomas & Friends" toys.
About 1.5 million preschool toys made by Lida Toy, a Foshan-based contract manufacturer for Mattel Inc.'s Fisher-Price unit, were recalled across the globe by the U.S. company last week.
Mattel said the toys, which include popular characters such as Elmo, Cookie Monster and Dora, could have contained excessive amounts of lead in their surface paint.
The Chinese watchdog said the problem was with Lida's paint supplier, which had provided "fake lead-free" paint for use in production.
It ordered the companies to "correct" their problems, and said police were investigating.
But it defended the made-in-China brand and said the overwhelming majority of toys met American standards. Of about 300,000 batches for export, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission had only made about 29 recalls, it said.
It added that importers and "brand" companies also had a "very big responsibility" and that it hoped that "foreign toy brands further improve product design and supervision and control to prevent loopholes in toy quality and safety."
The general manager of the Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Company, Yin Jiade, and four other employees are accused of killing patients by using a cheap, fatal substitute ingredient in a drug to treat gall bladder, liver and gastric disorders, the China News Service reported on Thursday.
The tainted medicine killed 13 patients in the southern city of Guangzhou, where the trial began on Wednesday. The same Chinese-made chemical has been linked to dozens of deaths in Panama, where it was used in a cough syrup.
Testimony from the defendants has highlighted abuses that have alarmed domestic and foreign consumers and prompted China to execute the former head of its food and drug watchdog, Zheng Xiaoyu, for taking bribes and dereliction of duty in July.
Most of the staff of the company laboratory had no knowledge of chemistry or any training, lab director Chen Guifen was quoted as saying.
The victims died last year after receiving injections of tainted Armillarisni A, made by the Qiqihar No. 2 which is based in the country's northeast.
More than 5 million doses of drugs made by the company had been recalled nationwide since the scam was exposed in May 2006, state newspapers said
source : news.yahoo.com
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Calcium supplements ward of pregnancy complication
Pregnant women who take calcium supplements reduce their risk of developing preeclampsia, sometimes called toxemia of pregnancy, according to a new study. However, calcium supplementation has no effect on the risk of preterm birth or stillbirth. Dr. G. J. Hofmeyr, of the University of the Witwatersrand/University of Fort Hare, East London, South Africa, and colleagues conducted a systematic review of 12 clinical trials, involving over 15,500 women, that compared at least 1 gram of calcium daily during pregnancy with an inactive "placebo" supplement.
Most of the women were at low risk for pregnancy complications, but they had low levels of calcium in their diet. Compared with placebo, calcium supplementation was associated with less high blood pressure and less preeclampsia, the investigators report in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.No overall effect was seen on the risk of preterm birth or stillbirth or infant death before hospital discharge.
"Calcium supplementation during pregnancy for women with deficient dietary calcium intake offers modest benefit for individual women," Hofmeyr's team concludes.
"However, a public health policy of calcium supplementation during pregnancy is unlikely to have a major impact on the incidence of pre-eclampsia," they continue, because in those communities where dietary calcium is inadequate, high-risk women "often attend antenatal clinics late in pregnancy or not at all and so would not benefit from strategies directed at those attending for antenatal care."
The researchers therefore suggest "that future research be directed towards evaluation of improving calcium intake at a population level, for example by food fortification, rather than at an individual level."
source : news.yahoo.com
Monday, August 6, 2007
Two-Drug Combo Tough on Kidney Cancer
Kidney cancer might have met its match in a new combination of cancer drugs, a new study shows. Used together, interferon alpha, a drug that boosts the body's ability to fight off tumors and infections, and sorafenib, a drug that cuts off a tumor's blood supply, led to significant tumor shrinkage in 33 percent of patients in a U.S. pilot study.
"We found that by combining a drug that enlists the immune system's help in combating cancer with one that cuts off a tumor's blood supply, we could substantially increase patients' response rates to treatment," lead investigator Dr. Jared Gollob, of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center in Durham, N.C., said in a prepared statement. Used alone, each drug is only successful in fighting 5 percent to 10 percent of tumors. But the new study finds that the combination works much better. Sorafenib is sold under the brand name Nexavar. The drugs had an additional benefit, the researchers said, in that the combo therapy doubled the time before tumors began to grow again. According to Gollob, most tumors begin growing again after about five or six months when treated by either drug alone.
Reporting in the Aug. 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gollob and his research team gave 40 study patients sorafenib in pill form twice daily and interferon alpha injections three time a week for eight weeks. If the patient's tumor had not grown or had shrunk after eight weeks, they repeated the cycle after a two-week break until the tumors disappeared or the cancer got worse. The researchers monitored the tumors using computerized-tomography (CT) scans.
The approach completely destroyed tumors in two of the 40 patients.
Researchers plan to begin a multi-site clinical trial that will analyze the impact of giving patients increasing doses of sorafenib alone after their tumors have shrunk as much as possible on the combination treatment.
According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, about 51,000 people suffer from kidney cancer every year, and almost 13,000 will die from the disease. The majority of patients are men over the age of 45. The cancer is especially deadly, because it very rarely causes symptoms until it has reached an advanced stage. By the time kidney cancer rates stage IV status, it has spread to other organs such as lungs, liver and bones. People are given six months to two years to live once they reach stage IV, and only about 10 percent are alive five years after diagnosis.
The Duke team noted that one of the biggest challenges facing doctors and patients with kidney cancer is the cancer's resistance to chemotherapy, radiation and other common cancer-fighting tools.
source : news.yahoo.com
Monday, July 30, 2007
Female Cancer Survivors Lack Frank Sex Talk From Docs
Three out of four women treated for genital tract cancer feel their doctors should initiate more conversations about the cancer's impact on their sexual health, new research finds. "We found that these women valued sexuality and participated in sexual relationships and activities at a rate similar to women who had not been through cancer treatment, but they were not adequately prepared for the sexual issues that their cancer or its treatment introduced," study author Dr. Stacy Lindau said in a prepared statement. The sexual problems included pain and limited lubrication.
Two out of three women whose reproductive and sexual organs were severely compromised by the treatment also reported that their doctors never brought up sex, according to the study. Writing in the August issue of Gynecologic Oncology, University of Chicago Medical Center researchers expressed concern that if doctors are not discussing the impact of medical treatment on sexuality under these circumstances, sexual health was even less likely to be discussed in other situations, particularly with older women. Previous studies have shown that patients are themselves reluctant to bring up sexual issues.
The research team surveyed 219 women aged 40 to 50 years old who had been treated for a rare form of vaginal or cervical cancer. The women were all members of a registry for people who might have been exposed to synthetic hormones while in their mother's womb. Most of the women had been treated with surgery or radiation therapy when they were in their late teens or 20s and had survived more than two decades after their diagnosis. The researchers then compared the responses from these women with race- and age-matched controls selected from a 1992 national study on sexual norms.
The cancer survivors reported more sexual problems and four times more health problems that interfered with sex all or most of the time, but they were just as likely to be married as the comparison group. Fifty percent of the survivors reported three or more sexual problems, compared to 15 percent of their peers. They were also seven times more likely to feel pain during intercourse and three times more likely to have difficulty lubricating. More than one out of three survivors complained about the scars from their treatment as well as frequent bladder infections and incontinence.
Those of the survivors who reported a conversation with their physician about the sexual impact of treatment were the women who were more likely to have three or more sexual problems at the same time.
source : news.yahoo.com
Ad for safe sex: massive floating condom
Concertgoers at a festival in the Dutch city of Lichtenvoorde were treated to an unusual sight Friday: A pink hot air balloon 127 feet high, shaped exactly like a condom, drifting lazily across the sky. The balloon, with the words "Vrij Veilig" — Dutch for "Safe Sex" — was launched by the public health service in the eastern district of Gelre-Ijssel, near the German border.
The director of the health service, known by its Dutch acronym GGD, said the festival was an ideal opportunity to reach young people. More than 80,000 are expected to attend the three-day Zwarte Cross event — a combination motor-cross race and hard rock concert, with Dutch gothic metal band "Within Temptation" headlining. "This is a playful way of asking for attention to the problem of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and AIDS," said Laurent de Vries. Nurses on the concert grounds also handed out educational material and free condoms as part of the campaign, he said.
source : news.yahoo.com
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
China seizes Viagra in crackdown on fake drugs
Police in China seized one ton of fake Viagra pills during a series of raids on gangs that were making counterfeit drugs to sell domestically and overseas, state press reported Wednesday. Aside from the the popular anti-impotency drug, fake versions of Tamiflu, which is being stockpiled around the world for a potential bird flu pandemic, and anti-malarial medications were uncovered, Xinhua news agency said.
Four gangs were busted making the drugs during a two-year crackdown that involved Chinese and US authorities, as well as Interpol, Xinhua said, citing the Ministry of Public Security. The announcement of the busts come after the former head of China's food and drug watchdog Zheng Xiaoyu was executed this month for taking bribes to approve medicines, some of which were unsafe.
The one ton of Viagra was uncovered in China's southern Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong following a raid late last year made in co-operation with US law authorities, Xinhua said.
The Tamiflu raids in May also took place after acting on intelligence from US authorities, resulting in the arrests of 19 suspects. Xinhua said the gang had been trying to sell the Tamiflu into the United States via the Internet.
Few other details of the busts, or the expected trials of the suspects, were revealed.
No reason was given as to why the information on the raids was released so long after the events.
But following the execution of the former head of the drug watchdog, China has ramped up a public relations campaign to reassure the world it is doing all it can to combat the problem of substandard and fake medicines.
The nation also consistently vows to better work with its global partners to end the rampant pirating in China of all kinds of goods, from software and movies to clothing and auto parts.
source : news.yahoo.com
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Sex education creates storm in AIDS-stricken India
Moves to bring sex out of the closet in largely conservative India have kicked up a morality debate between educators who say sex education will reduce HIV rates, and critics who fear it will corrupt young minds.
It's an emotive issue pitting modernists against conservatives in a country with the world's highest number of HIV cases at about 5.7 million, a figure that experts say may balloon to over 20 million by 2010.
Biology teacher Thelma Seqeira infuriates conservatives in India every time she tells her students about masturbation, condoms and homosexuality.
Seqeira is doing exactly what India's federal government wants the country's 29 states and seven federally-administered regions to do -- fight the exponential spread of HIV/AIDS with information on safe sex.
"Sex education is the best way to prepare my students for adolescence and protect them from HIV/AIDS," said Seqeira, who teaches at a private school in Maharashtra state, western India.
But the governments of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh don't agree. They have banned sex education at public schools because they say the learning modules are too explicit, and some pictures are too graphic.
Private schools are able to continue the lessons, but many have watered them down to avoid controversy.
The southern states of Kerala and Karnataka -- considered among India's progressive states with high literacy rates -- are also considering bans.
The Indian government has been unable to stop these bans even as it seeks to curb the spread of HIV. In India, about 86 percent of HIV infections occur through sexual intercourse, one key reason being that migrant workers in cities visit prostitutes and infect their wives when they return home.
KAMA SUTRA
Ignorance about sex is widespread in the land of the Kama Sutra, where explicit sex acts are celebrated in ancient temple architecture.
But at home, mothers hesitate to talk to daughters about something as simple as menstruation, and even the basics of the human reproductive system are taught with much embarrassment in schools.
Experts are calling for a change in prudish attitudes to help counter the spread of HIV/AIDS. They say the winds of change must first blow through the country's schools.
"Sex education does not mean you are encouraging sex which is how it's interpreted," Renuka Chowdhury, India's minister for women and child development, told Reuters last month.
"Sex education is an insurance for your child. It will protect your child."
Among the course elements that have generated much heat are discussions on homosexuality and descriptions of sex acts, including masturbation.
Proponents of the ban say the sex education course -- modeled on those taught in many Western countries, will make students imbibe "decadent western morality."
They point to polls showing that an increasing number of young people -- mostly India's moneyed youngsters that live in cities -- have postponed marriage, but not sex.
An India Today poll revealed one in four Indian women between 18 and 30 in 11 cities had sex before marriage. One in three said she was open to having a sexual relationship even if she was not in love.
"AIDS is spreading because of cultural decadence and sexual anarchy," said Shajar Khan, a prominent student leader who opposes sex education at schools.
Analysts say conservative political parties, such as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, India's main opposition group, are panning sex education courses at least partly to make political capital out of opposing the West.
But for parents bringing up children in rapidly modernizing India, sex education may be a matter of life and death.
"The argument that if you teach about sex the children are going to run out and have sex is very unfounded," said Roshni Behuria, a mother of two girls.
"Killing the education bit won't reduce the propensity towards sex. But it just might end up killing safe-sex ignorant young people."
source : news.yahoo.com
Sanofi obesity drug faces tough EU safety review
Sanofi-Aventis SA's obesity pill Acomplia faces a tough review from European drug safety experts this week, with data suggesting officials see issues over the drug's link with suicidal thoughts.
The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) safety assessment comes a month after a U.S. advisory panel recommended the drug should not be approved in the world's biggest market because it may increase depression and suicidal thinking.
That decision prompted France's Sanofi to withdraw its pending application to sell the medicine in the United States, dealing a major blow to what had been its biggest new drug hope.
In Europe, by contrast, Acomplia -- which is also known by the brand name Zimulti and generically as rimonabant -- has been on sale since last year.
Most industry analysts expect European officials to allow it to stay on the market but with stricter warnings that will limit its commercial potential. Acomplia use is already limited to patients with no history of major depression.
The EMEA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) convened in London on Monday and is due to announce its decision on Thursday. It has a range of options available.
"They will recommend whatever they think is appropriate. It ranges from nothing to new warnings or other restrictions or contra-indications to suspension or withdrawal," an agency spokeswoman said.
Doing nothing seems unlikely.
Data compiled by the EMEA and presented to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel last month underscores suspicions about Acomplia's link to psychiatric side effects.
After just one year on the market, the EMEA's post-marketing data showed there were 208 psychiatric adverse events reported with Acomplia, including 27 cases of suicidal thinking.
That compares with 14 cases of suicidal ideation with Roche Holding AG's obesity drug Xenical in the nine years since its 1998 launch and 15 cases with Abbott Laboratories Inc.'s Reductil/Meridia, which went on sale in 1999.
The figures are not directly comparable, however, since the Acomplia reports are a result of patient monitoring while those for Xenical and Reductil were unprompted.
Acomplia is the first in a new class of drugs that switch off the same brain circuits that make people hungry when they smoke cannabis.
Its unique mode of action and ability to reduce several risk factors for cardiovascular disease led to predictions it would become a multibillion-dollar-a-year blockbuster. In practice, however, sales to date have been modest.
Worldwide sales of Acomplia in the first quarter of 2007 totaled just 15 million euros ($20.7 million), down from 20 million in the fourth quarter of 2006.
source : news.yahoo.com
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Shanghai teen pregnancy blamed on Web
Nearly half of pregnant teens in China's financial center Shanghai met their partners on the Internet, according to a newspaper report that also spotlighted widespread ignorance about sexual health.
Fully 46 percent of the more than 20,000 girls who called the city's pregnancy hot line during the past two years said they had sex with boys they met online, the China Daily said, citing Dr. Zhang Zhengrong of Shanghai's No. 411 Hospital.
Most of the would-be fathers disappeared after being told of the pregnancies, while in some cases the girls did not even know their partners' true names, the report said.
The report said calls to the hot line have shot up 12 percent since the start of school holidays, which began two weeks ago and run through August.
Earlier reports have cited a 30 percent increase in abortions by teens during holidays, with high school students between 16 and 18 accounting for a growing percentage of those seeking to end their pregnancies.
Zhang said callers to the hot line generally knew little about birth control or the physiological aspects of sex and widely considered abortions to be harmless.
About 10 percent who called had undergone multiple abortions, while "there were some who were unaware they were even pregnant until very late," Zhang was quoted as saying.
While underage sex remains taboo in China, abortion is widely available without the requirement that parents be notified. China has long promoted abortion as part of its attempts to enforce policies limiting most families to just one child.
Zhang said 79 percent of high school and university girls cited the Internet as their main source of information about sex in a survey conducted by her hospital.
Just 7.9 percent of parents discussed sexual matters with their daughters, she said, while 46 percent of parents said it was the responsibility of schools to provide sex education. The survey gathered results from 2,043 parents, 2,680 teachers and 1,577 teens.
source : news.yahoo.com
Indian minister laments country's lack of sex education
India's health minister on Wednesday lamented opposition from several states to a government plan to introduce sex education from next year, a report said.
"In our country, we do sex. But we don't want to talk about it and that is why we have a billion population," Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said at an event to mark World Population Day.
"In our close-knit society, we have to enlighten and create awareness among our children," he was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.
The government has been fighting with around a dozen out of 29 states to introduce sex education in a bid to spread awareness of AIDS and condoms as well as family planning.
The Council of Boards of Education of India, which sets the teaching curriculum for schools, has prepared a package on sex education, according to a Times of India report earlier this year.
"We have recommended to make it a mandatory subject to be taught twice a week," Ramadoss said.
"They will be the losers if awareness is not created at the right age," the minister said of state opposing the plan.
Schools in the conservative nation, which ironically brought the world the Kama Sutra, have shied away from educating youngsters about such topics as human reproduction.
But the minister said education would not provoke promiscuity.
"We are not taking up sex education in a blatant manner, but in a subtle way," said Ramadoss. "We don't want to create controversy. But we have 55 per cent population that falls in the reproductive age and we have to create awareness among them."
source : news.yahoo.com
Female circumcision a problem in Britain
Female genital mutilation, commonly associated with parts of Africa and the Middle East, is becoming a growing problem in Britain despite efforts to stamp it out. London's Metropolitan Police, Britain's largest police force, hopes a campaign beginning on Wednesday will highlight that the practice is a crime here.
To make their point, police are offering a $40,000 reward for information leading to Britain's first prosecution for female genital mutilation, Detective Chief Superintendent Alastair Jeffrey said.
In Britain, the problem mostly involves first-generation immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.
Police say they don't have comprehensive statistics about the number of victims. But midwife Comfort Momoh, who specializes in treating them at London hospitals and clinics and who works with police, told the news conference she treats 400 to 500 victims every year.
Arranging or carrying out the procedure — in Britain or abroad — is a criminal offense punishable by up to 14 years in prison, but no one has been prosecuted since it was banned under British law in 2003, Jeffrey said. Police estimate up to 66,000 girls in Britain face the risk of genital mutilation.
"The timing of this campaign is for one good reason: so we can get in before the summer holidays, a time when young girls are taken abroad and subjected to genital mutilation," he told a news conference Tuesday.
Mutilated infants, girls and women face irreversible lifelong health risks — both physically and mentally, according to UNICEF and other charity groups.
Authorities believe the number of genital mutilation cases peaks in the summer, because the extended school vacation gives girls more time to recover — thereby making it easier for those responsible to cover up their actions.
Female genital mutilation usually involves the removal of the clitoris and other parts of female genitalia. Those who practice it say it tames a girl's sexual desire and maintains her honor.
It is practiced by Muslims and Christians alike, deeply rooted in the Nile Valley region and parts of sub-Saharan African, and is also done in Yemen and Oman. Through migration, the practice has spread to Western countries like Britain.
U.S. federal law specifically bans the practice.
Between 100 million and 140 million women are believed to have been subjected to the practice in Africa and an additional 3 million girls face the threat of female genital mutilation every year, according to UNICEF.
Detective Inspector Carol Hamilton, who has been investigating the practice since 2004, said some immigrants in Britain may bring practitioners from their home country to mutilate several children because it is cheaper.
She said children not only suffer terrible physical injuries, but can also be left emotionally scarred.
Salimata Badji-Knight was mutilated when she was 4 years old in her native Senegal.
Now married and living in London, she fears she may not be able to have children because of the procedure. She hopes that by sharing her experiences she can prevent parents from subjecting their daughters to similar abuse.
"Why do they need to go and mutilate a young innocent person without her knowing what is going to happen, just for culture?" Badji-Knight said. "It does not add up for me."
Somali-born supermodel Waris Dirie survived a traditional form of the practice that kills hundreds of girls each year.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is set to present the "Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur" to her on Thursday for her work as a leading critic of female genital mutilation, which has seen her tour parts of Africa to speak out against the practice.
source : news.yahoo.com
