Medical News May 16th, 2008
Posted on May 16, 2008
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Low Levels of Vitamin D Spell Trouble for Breast Cancer Patients
Study found women with deficiency were more likely to suffer recurrence, die from disease
Women with breast cancer who have a vitamin D deficiency at the time of diagnosis are more likely to have a recurrence or to die from their disease, a new study shows.
Surprisingly, the researchers also found that only 24 percent of the patients had adequate levels of vitamin D when they were diagnosed.
“This study found that vitamin D deficiency is very common among women with breast cancer, and it suggests that vitamin D deficiency is linked to poorer outcomes in these women,” Dr. Nancy Davidson, director of the breast cancer program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, said during a May 6 press conference. Davidson is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
Bearing Your Own Twin
Doctors in Greece Thursday removed from the belly of a 9-year-old girl what they believe was her embryonic twin absorbed into her abdomen when they were both in the womb.
Andreas Markou, head of the pediatric department at Larissa General Hospital in Athens, said the 2-inch-long embryo removed from the girl’s belly was a fetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord, according to The Associated Press.
It is phenomenon called “fetus in fetu,” or baby within a baby, said Jay Grosfeld, a professor of pediatric surgery at Indiana University who has written about the “exceptionally rare” condition.
In the first month of pregnancy while developing in the womb, Grosfeld said, one twin “enters into the other through the umbilical cord where it assumes a parasitic position in regard to the host baby. After birth, it presents as an abdominal mass.”
People over 60 Should Get Shingles Vaccine
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on Thursday that people aged 60 and older get Merck & Co. Inc’s vaccine Zostavax to protect them against shingles.
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is a skin rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox, namely the Varicella zoster virus (VZV). After an individual has chickenpox, this virus lives in the nervous system and is never fully cleared from the body. Under certain circumstances, such as emotional stress, immune deficiency or cancer, the virus reactivates causing shingles.
Anyone who has ever had chickenpox is at risk for shingles, although it occurs most commonly in people over the age of 60.
Health insurers to restore coverage to 1,200 Californians
Nearly 1,200 people who lost their health insurance after they incurred high medical expenses will get their coverage back.
Under a deal reached Thursday with the California Department of Managed Health Care, Kaiser Permanente and Health Net agreed to let the patients purchase new policies regardless of preexisting medical conditions.
The settlement comes a month after the department ordered an independent review of policy cancellations by five of the state’s largest health plans and threatened to order them to reinstate 26 people who had been improperly dropped.
Kaiser agreed to reinstate up to 1,092 people who lost coverage between the time the insurer began canceling coverage, known as rescission, in April 2004 to when it ended the controversial practice in October 2006. Kaiser also agreed to pay a $300,000 fine to the state without admitting wrongdoing.
Prison for Man With H.I.V. Who Spit on a Police Officer
A homeless man who spit in the mouth and eye of a police officer and then taunted him, saying he was H.I.V. positive, was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday for harassing a public servant with a deadly weapon: his saliva.
Because of the deadly weapon finding, the man, Willie Campbell, 42, of Dallas, will not be eligible for parole until he has served half his sentence.
In May 2006, a passer-by reported an unconscious man, Mr. Campbell, sprawled outside a downtown Dallas building. Mr. Campbell tried to fight paramedics and kicked the police officer who arrested him for public intoxication, prosecutors said.
Senators describe effects of Alzheimer’s on families
They spoke of heartache and loss, of confusion and pain, of parents struck down by Alzheimer’s disease.
Seven U.S. senators gave a rare glimpse into personal tragedies Wednesday at congressional hearings on the need for a national strategy to deal with this mind-robbing illness. Their openness was inspired in part by a witness who had come to testify: former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whose husband, John, is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.
“He’s not in very good shape at present,” O’Connor acknowledged, while appealing for more support for families and more funding for research and clinical trials.
Nerve block cuts hot flashes after breast cancer
Blocking parts of the nervous system that regulate body temperature can reduce hot flashes and improve sleep in survivors of breast cancer, researchers reported on Thursday.
With the experimental nerve blocker therapy, the average number of hot flashes per week fell from about 80 to just 8. Very severe hot flashes were almost totally abolished and a marked drop in nighttime awakenings was also seen, according to a report in the online issue of the Lancet Oncology.
Hot flashes and sleep dysfunction are common in breast cancer survivors, particularly those who use anti-estrogen agents like tamoxifen. Conventional treatments, such as hormone therapy or herbal remedies, have proven either ineffective or have been linked to important side effects.
GAO Faults State Nursing Home Inspections
The woes of nursing homes and, more importantly, those in their care continue. Already facing a major reform bill in Congress that has divided the industry, nursing homes came under fire this afternoon in a new report from the Government Accountability Office.The GAO review of state-level nursing home inspections found that inspectors regularly overlooked major code violations in the care facilities. In reviews conducted from 2002 to 2007, federal inspectors found that their state-level counterparts missed violations of the gravest nature—those that could put a nursing home resident in immediate jeopardy and inflict actual harm—15 percent of the time. The potential for less serious harm was found in 70 percent of the federal reviews.Read More?
Cleveland Clinic joins UCF in offering medical students free tuition
First the University of Central Florida made history by becoming the first new medical school in the United States to give its first crop of future doctors a free ride. Now the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western University in Ohio is offering a tuition-free education to all its students. Both schools want students to avoid the crushing debt — about $150,000 on average — that medical students face at graduation. But the Cleveland Clinic isn’t playing copy-cat.
Cleveland Clinic officials say it’s always been their goal to find a way to pay students’ tuition, which currently costs about $43,000 a year.
For now, the Cleveland Clinic will use money from its endowment and hospital operations to fund its tuition scholarships. Eventually, the non-profit health organization hopes that contributions to its endowment will cover the entire cost.
Therapy Yields Promise for Fatal Neurological Condition
A new gene therapy that involves injecting a harmless virus into the brain shows promise as a safe and effective way to slow Batten disease, a rare neurological disorder that usually becomes fatal between the ages of 8 and 12.
Children with the disease, also known as Late Infantile Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis, are born with a mutated CLN2 gene. This causes a deficiency in TTP-1, an enzyme responsible for ridding cells of the central nervous system of waste materials. Parts of the neurons in the brain cell eventually become clogged with toxic material.
“It’s like the garbage man of the cell is not able to do its job,” study author Dr. Ronald Crystal, chairman of the Department of Genetic Medicine and chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said in a prepared statement. “The trash keeps getting backed up inside the cell until the cells can no longer function properly and then eventually die throughout the entire brain.”
Obese blamed for the world’s ills
Obese people are contributing to the world food crisis and climate change, experts say.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated the obese consume 18% more calories than average.
They are also responsible for using more fuel, which has an environmental impact and drives up food prices as transport and agriculture both use oil.
The result is that the poor struggle to afford food and greenhouse gas emissions rise, the Lancet reported.
It comes as the World Health Organization predicts the obese population will double by 2015 to 700m.
China child virus death toll up to 43
The death toll rose to 43 from the hand, foot and mouth disease virus that has sickened tens of thousands of children across China, a report said Friday.
A 22-month-old girl from eastern Jiangxi province died Thursday in a local hospital, health officials told the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
As of Wednesday, the hand, foot and mouth disease virus had sickened more than 24,934 children in seven Chinese provinces plus Beijing, Xinhua reported.
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