Doctors Calling for Trans Fat Ban
March 16, 2010
Natural News
By E. Huff
The Faculty of Public Health (FPH) in the U.K. is urging British lawmakers to ban trans-fats from the British food supply because the artificial fats are causing heart attacks, strokes, and other serious diseases. Comprised of 3,300 doctors and health specialists, FPH hopes to follow in the footsteps of places like Denmark, Austria, and Switzerland which have all banned trans-fats from their food supplies.
Trans-fats are derived from vegetable oils that have been chemically modified. They bear no nutritional value but are used by food manufacturers to bulk up foods and extend their shelf life. Typically labeled as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated, these artificial fats are commonly found in processed baked goods and desserts, pastries, and fast foods as well as in margarine and shortening.
Experts recognize that trans-fats increase levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol which can lead to serious health problems like heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Because heart disease rates are already very high in the U.K., FPH and others hope to see trans-fats eradicated in order to improve overall public health.
The Royal Society for Public Health, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the National Health Forum all agree with FPH about the dangers of trans-fats and are urging their removal. Since data shows that over 250,000 Britons suffer from a heart attack or stroke every year and almost 140,000 of them die as a result, these groups believe it is crucial that government officials reevaluate their position on trans-fats.
Alan Johnson, former British health secretary, requested back in 2007 that the Food Standards Agency perform an investigation into trans-fats. When the agency declared that all was well and that people were consuming on average far less than the government-established maximums for trans-fats, no action was taken. Citing this previous find, the Department of Health continues to oppose banning trans-fats.
Many British food producers are voluntarily removing trans-fats from their products to meet consumer demand, including all the members of the British Retail Consortium who pledged in 2006 to remove trans-fats from their products. These reduction efforts and others have led to an overall drop in trans-fat consumption to one percent of the total energy being derived from foods.
As it stands, there is no law mandating that manufacturers even have to list trans-fats on their ingredient labels, a transparency failure that many hope will be addressed by government officials. At the very least, people should know whether or not the foods they buy contain trans-fats so they can make informed purchasing decisions.
Click here for the full report.
WHO Research Concludes Cell Phones Cause Brain Tumors
March 16, 2010
Natural News
By David Guttierrez
A large multinational research effort overseen by the World Health Organization has concluded that heavy mobile phone use significantly increases the risk of brain and salivary gland tumors.
The Interphone studies surveyed 12,800 people in 13 countries between 2000 and 2004. Although the final findings have not yet been released, they have been accepted for publication in a scientific journal and will see print before the end of 2009.
The conclusions are particularly surprising given that the industry-funded effort has been widely criticized for designing its studies to minimize the apparent risks of cell phone use.
The studies examined the relationship between cell phone use and the risk of three different types of brain tumor and one tumor of the salivary gland. They concluded that “use of mobile phones for a period of 10 years or more” was associated with a “significantly increased risk” of the tumors.
Six of eight studies found up to a 39 percent increase in the risk of glioma, the most common type of brain tumor. Gliomas can be either benign or malignant. The risk of acoustic neurinoma, a benign tumor of the nerve between the brain and the ear, was found to increase up to 3.9 times in two of seven studies, but problems with participants’ memories interfered with these findings. Another study found a 50 percent increase in the risk of salivary gland tumors.
Some researchers have suggested that the Interphone study probably understates the risks of cell phone use, due to flaws in its methodology. The study has been criticized for including people who made as little as one call per week yet excluding children and young adults (considered the most at-risk population), non-cellular cordless phones (which also emit radiation), several kinds of tumors, and participants who either died before the study concluded or became too sick to answer questions.
Some of the Interphone studies found that short-term cell phone use decreased the risk of cancer, further suggesting research flaws.
Click here for the full report.
Breaking Down Cholesterol
March 16, 2010
Natural News
By Dr. Julian Whitaker
I’d like to shine the spotlight on one of medicine’s sacred cows- the belief that lowering cholesterol with drugs protects against heart attacks and premature death. Our obsession with cholesterol began in the 1950s when studies linked high consumption of animal fat with high rates of heart disease. This opened the door for clinical trials that laid the foundation of a new paradigm: the cholesterol theory of cardiovascular disease.
This theory has had profound ramifications. It changed the way we eat (fats bad, carbohydrates good) and contributed to our problems with obesity and diabetes. It wormed its way into “clinical practice guidelines”- cholesterol management has become a “standard of care” that doctors are expected to follow. It spawned the invasive heart surgery industry, based on the presumption that cholesterol-laden blockages must be bypassed or propped open. And it led to the creation of the best-selling class of medications in history: cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, which generate more than $15 billion in worldwide sales every year.
But it’s all a house of cards. No matter what you’ve been led to believe, a high cholesterol level is not a reliable sign of an impending heart attack. In fact, growing numbers of experts question whether cholesterol matters at all. As for statin drugs, for most of the 40-plus million Americans recommended to take them for the rest of their lives, they’re an ineffective, expensive, side effect- riddled fraud.
Statin-Free Zone
When a patient taking Lipitor, Zocor, or another statin drug comes to Whitaker Wellness, we discontinue it at once. “But my cholesterol level is 240.” “My doctor told me I’ll have a heart attack if I don’t take this drug.”My father died of heart disease, so I have to take it.” I’ve heard all these justifications and more, and I still recommend that my patients get off statins. Here’s why.
First, they’re not very effective. These drugs do lower cholesterol, but so what? We’re not treating lab numbers. We’re treating patients, and the ultimate goal in cholesterol management is to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease. Except for a very limited number of people, there is absolutely no evidence that statins protect against heart attack or premature death.
Are you over age 65? Not a single study suggests you’ll receive any benefits, even if your cholesterol goes down substantially. A woman of any age? Same story. A man younger than 65 who has never had a heart attack? Ditto, no help at all. For middle-aged men who have had a heart attack, statins may lower risk of a repeat heart attack, but that’s the extent of it.
I know this is hard to buy in light of the multiple drug advertisements and glowing endorsements from doctors. But keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies do a superb job of pulling the wool over the eyes of consumers and physicians alike by withholding unfavorable study results and making false, misleading, and often deceptive claims.
A Statistic We Can Understand
That’s why I want to step around confusing statistics and tell you about an easy-to-understand measure that you’ll never hear about in drug ads. It’s called “number needed to treat,” or NNT, and it describes the number of patients who would need to be treated with a medical therapy in order to prevent one bad outcome. Experts consider an NNT over 50 to be “worse than a lottery ticket.”
Lipitor ads claim that it reduces risk of heart attack by 36 percent. Sounds pretty good until you look at the fine print, do the math (which John Carey did in a great article in Business Week), and figure out that the drug’s NNT is 100. This means that 100 people must be treated with Lipitor in order for just one heart attack to be prevented. The other 99 people taking the drug receive no benefit.
To put this into perspective, the NNT of antibiotics for treating H. pylori, the underlying cause of stomach ulcers, is 1.1. These drugs knock out the bacteria in 10 out of 11 people who take it, making them a reliable, cost-effective therapy. At the other end of the spectrum are statins, which as a class have an NNT of 250, 500, or higher depending on the study you look at. What a deal for drugs that can cost more than a thousand bucks a year and are almost guaranteed to cause problems.
Goodbye Drugs, So Long Symptoms
Statins lower cholesterol by suppressing the activity of an enzyme in the liver involved in the production of cholesterol. But this enzyme has multiple functions, including the synthesis of coenzyme Q10. CoQ10 is a key player in the metabolic processes that energize our cells. No wonder statin users often suffer from fatigue, muscle pain and weakness, and even heart failure- the cells are simply running out of juice.
The second most frequent adverse effects of statins are problems with memory, mood, suicidal behavior, and neurological issues. Other common complaints include sexual dysfunction, and liver and digestive problems. Symptoms range from minor (achiness, forgetfulness) to serious (complete but temporary amnesia, permanent memory loss) to lethal (congestive heart failure, rhabdomyolysis or complete muscle breakdown). One statin drug, Baycol, was taken off the market a few years ago after it caused dozens of deaths from rhabdomyolysis. Several studies have also linked statin drugs with an increased risk of cancer.
Because physicians rarely warn of these side effects, few patients suspect their drugs may be the reason they begin feeling bad- and it’s often a revelation when they put two and two together. Simply discontinuing these medications can result in tremendous improvements in health and well-being. Texas cardiologist Peter Langsjoen, MD, published a study showing that when symptomatic patients got off their statins and started taking 240 mg of CoQ10 per day, they had significant decreases in fatigue, myalgias (muscle aches), dyspnea (shortness of breath), memory loss, and/or peripheral neuropathy.
Not a Drug But a Program
As you can see, we need to shift away from this myopic focus on statin drugs and lowering cholesterol, and take a more holistic view. Folks, you don’t need statins- you need a program that addresses all the known risk factors for heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular disorders.
Inflammation, not high cholesterol, is the primary cause of heart disease. Harvard researchers have discovered that a high blood level of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, is more predictive of heart disease than cholesterol. To get a handle on inflammation, lose weight- especially if you carry excess fat in the abdominal area. Exercise. Stop smoking. Eat plenty of vegetables and several weekly servings of salmon, sardines, and other omega-3 fatty acids, and avoid sugars and starches.
The beauty of this program is that it targets not only inflammation but other conditions that contribute to cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, diabetes, even cholesterol. Best of all, it’s a foundation for overall good health.
Necessary Nutrients
Your program should include a well-rounded nutritional supplement regimen, as well. My number-one suggestion for inflammation in all its guises is fish oil. This supplement also improves blood flow, discourages excess clotting, helps normalize heart rhythm, and saves lives by reducing risk of sudden cardiac death.
Folic acid and other B-complex vitamins are important because they lower levels of homocysteine, a toxic substance that damages the arteries. The mineral magnesium relaxes the arterial walls, which improves blood flow, lowers blood pressure, and helps prevent arrhythmias. And antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, provide protection against damaging free radicals- another contributor to cardiovascular disease.
Supplements that boost the heart’s energy are recommended as well. One is coenzyme Q10. In addition to serving as a potent antioxidant, CoQ10 also increases the heart muscle’s efficiency and protects against the adverse effects of statin drugs. Another is D-ribose, a natural sugar that is the structural backbone of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy that fuels cellular function.
Click here for the full report.
Cancer Treatments Can be Worse Than the Disease
March 16, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Large numbers of men who undergo treatment for testicular cancer suffer serious and long-term side effects or illness, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Oslo and published in the journal BJUI.
In the past, the rate of long-term side effects has not been well known because doctors are only required to report side effects that require medical intervention or threaten the patient’s life.
“Current patients with testicular cancer should be informed about the risk of short-term and particularly long-term side-effects of their highly effective treatment” lead author Sophie D. Fossa said. “It is important to focus on reducing risks through healthy lifestyle choices and consider important issues like preserving future fertility.”
Reviewing 40 studies published between 1990 and 2008, the researchers found that a full 30 percent of patients undergoing cisplatin-based chemotherapy may suffer from damage to their sensory nerves, while 20 percent of testicular cancer survivors suffer from hearing loss or ringing in their ears. The rate of chronic fatigue in survivors is 17 percent, which is twice as high as in the general population. As many as 25 percent of survivors suffer long-term damage to their circulatory systems. Testicular cancer survivors also have 1.8 times the general risk of developing another form of cancer.
“Gastrointestinal side-effects are common during both chemotherapy and radiotherapy and chemotherapy carries added risks like infections and blood clots,” Fossa said. “Long-term problems include secondary cancers, heart problems, and conditions related to lower hormone levels.”
Testicular cancer treatments increase a man’s risk of pulmonary complications, death from heart complications, fertility reduction and dry ejaculation.
The best way to reduce the risk of dangerous side effects, Fossa said, is to maintain an active lifestyle and healthy weight, avoid tobacco, and for doctors to “provide adequate follow-up for patients who could develop life-threatening toxicity.”
Although side effects of cancer treatment can pose serious risks throughout a person’s lifetime, most patients receive only five to 10 years of follow-up care, at most.
Click here for the full report.
New Jersey Mom Aspires to be World’s Fattest Woman
March 16, 2010
Fox News
Meet Donna Simpson. She’s going to cost you. A lot.
Simpson, of Old Bridge, N.J., is 42 years old, has two kids and a boyfriend, and she weighs 602 pounds. That’s right … 602 pounds.
She’s on a diet, of course, because she has a goal in mind:
She wants to weigh 1,000 pounds.
That’s right … 1,000 pounds. It’s a nice, extra-round figure — almost as big as what her unhealthy choices will ultimately cost taxpayers.
Simpson claims she is normal and healthy, and she has a right to eat what she wants and weigh what she wants.
“I love eating and people love watching me eat,” she says. “It makes people happy, and I’m not harming anyone.”
But she needs to use a motor scooter when she goes grocery shopping, because she can’t walk more than 20 feet. The human body, after all, is not designed to scarf down 12,000 calories a day in the quest to weigh half a ton.
Simpson is definitely harming someone — herself, says Dr. Carla Wolper, a registered dietitian and research faculty member at the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York.
And you, the taxpayer, could wind up paying for it.
“We don’t know her medical history, but one of the most dangerous health issues she faces is an increased risk of sudden death from having a heart attack due to electrical problems in the heart,” Wolper said.
Other possible causes of death for Simpson include stroke, immobility, breathing problems, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and inflammation of heart tissue. Each year, nearly 300,000 Americans die from heart failure.
Simpson, experts say, is putting herself at risk for all these medical conditions, and those conditions have a hefty pricetag.
“The baseline cost for someone like to go to the emergency room is $993 for one visit,” Daniel Emmer, public relations manager of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, the largest health insurance provider in New Jersey, told FOXNews.com.
Simpson’s main source of income to support herself financially is by appearing on a Web site where men pay to watch videos of her gorging on food and showing off her hundreds of pounds of extra bulge in a bikini.
But it’s anyone’s guess whether her revenue from Web videos will cover the cost of her inevitable health risks.
“Someone with diabetes costs $11,744 more per year to provide health care, which is twice as much as the average person,” Emmer said.
It is unclear what type of insurance Simpson has, if any. But there is no question that whatever her health care position is, it could come at a high cost.
“Obesity causes a minimum $1,429 increase, or 42 percent in medical costs,” Emmer said. “Research shows lifestyle choices and behaviors drive 87.5 percent of the cost for health care claims.”
“When people are very, very overweight, they are at an increased risk for a condition called prolonged QT syndrome,” Wolper told FoxNews.com.
Prolonged QT syndrome is a heart rhythm disorder that can potentially cause fast, chaotic heartbeats, the Mayo Clinic says on its Web site. In some cases, the heart may beat erratically for so long that it can cause sudden death.
“Another problem this woman faces is related to the circulatory system,” Wolper said. “When people are that big, circulation is often impaired in the legs. This can cause blood to pool in the legs leading to formation of blood clots. This leaves morbidly obese people at an increased risk for a pulmonary embolism.”
A pulmonary embolism occurs when one or more arteries in the lungs become blocked. In most cases, pulmonary embolism is caused by blood clots that travel to your lungs from another part of your body — most commonly, your legs, according to the Mayo Clinic. One of the major risk factors is excess weight, which increases the risk of blood clots, especially in women who smoke or have high blood pressure.
“The work of the heart is tremendously increased when someone is that big because there’s so much more blood in the body,” Wolper said. “When this happens, the heart has to pump against the pressure of all that fat that is pressing against the blood vessels, and as a result the heart enlarges, and not in a good way.”
As Simpson’s appetite increases, so will the cost of health care for the severe medical conditions that she is likely to have — conditions that are preventable by healthier lifestyle choices. Whereas her $750-a-week grocery bill is merely gastronomical, her hospital bills will be astronomical — and the taxpayers of New Jersey may well have to pay her tab.
Meanwhile, in her effort to boldly go where no woman has gone before, Simpson says she tries to stay sedentary, so she burns as few calories as necessary.
She consumes five times more than the recommended daily calories for a woman her age.
“My favorite food is sushi. But unlike others I can sit and eat 70 big pieces of sushi in one go,” she told the Daily Mail.
“I do love cakes and sweet things, doughnuts are my favorite.”
The current record for fattest woman is held by a woman also from New Jersey, who weighed an unbelievable 1,800 pounds when she died in 2008. She was 49 years old.
Simpson is proud of the Guinness World Record she holds now for the world’s fattest mother, and her boyfriend is proud of her too.
Philippe, 49, supports her thousand-pound goal, even if that is nearly seven times his own weight of 150 pounds.
“I think he’d like it if I was bigger,” Simpson said. “He’s a real belly man, and completely supports me.”
Someday, the experts say, we all may support her.
Click here for the full report.
Non-Melanoma Skin Cancers On The Rise
March 16, 2010
Businessweek.com
By Jenifer Goodwin
The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer has steadily increased since the 1990s, making it by far the most common form of cancer, affecting more people than all other cancers combined, two new studies find.
More than 2 million Americans on Medicare were treated for non-melanoma skin cancer in 2006, up from 1.6 million in 1992, according to one study. The other found that one in five 70-year-olds has been treated for non-melanoma skin cancer.
Researchers called non-melanoma skin cancer an “epidemic” that is only going to get worse as all those bathing beauties and sun worshippers from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s get older, and their cumulative sun exposure racks up.
“We are dealing with a problem that is not going away,” said Dr. Howard Rogers, a dermatologist in Norwich, Conn., and lead author of one of the studies. “The number has kept going up and up at a rate of 4.2 percent every year, on average, from 1992 to 2006,” he said.
The studies are published in the March issue of the Archives of Dermatology.
The two types of non-melanoma skin cancer are basal cell and squamous cell. While basal cell carcinoma is slow-growing and rarely fatal, it can damage the surrounding tissue and bone if it’s not caught early, causing disfigurement when the cancer is removed.
Squamous cell carcinoma is also rarely fatal, though it can metastasize and spread to the lymph nodes and other organs, Rogers said. When caught early, squamous cell carcinomas are also highly treatable.
In the study by Rogers and colleagues, the researchers analyzed data from two Medicare databases and national surveys. They found the total number of procedures to treat skin cancer in the Medicare population increased by nearly 77 percent between 1992 and 2006. Between 2002 and 2006 alone, skin cancer procedures increased by 16 percent.
In the second study, Dr. Robert Stern of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, developed a mathematical model to estimate the prevalence of non-melanoma skin cancer in the United States.
With about 13 million white non-Hispanic U.S. residents having been treated for at least one non-melanoma skin cancer at the beginning of 2007, that means non-melanoma skin cancers have struck five times as many people as breast or prostate cancer. More people have had non-melanoma skin cancer than all other cancers combined over the last 31 years, according to the study.
Most of those who had a non-melanoma skin cancer had more than one, with the average being 1.6, he noted.
“This is only going to get worse,” said Dr. Suephy Chen, an associate professor of dermatology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. “Our population is aging. Those people who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s when there was not a big sun-protection message out there are now coming into their 50s and 60s and are starting to develop skin cancers.”
While non-melanoma skin cancers are the most common, melanoma is a serious worry. Though melanoma accounts for less than 5 percent of all skin cancers, it was expected to lead to an estimated 8,650 deaths in 2009, according to the American Cancer Society.
In a third paper in the same journal, researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute found survivors of one melanoma are about nine times as likely as the general population to develop a second melanoma.
Of nearly 90,000 patients who survived at least two months after an initial melanoma diagnosis between 1973 and 2006, about 12 percent developed one or more other primary cancers. One-fourth of those were additional melanomas, according to the study. Women with head and neck melanoma and patients younger than 30 had even higher increased risks of developing another melanoma.
As incidence has risen, so has the cost of treating melanoma. In adults 65 and older, melanoma treatment costs about $249 million annually, or about $28,000 per patient lifetime, according to a fourth study in the same journal by Chen and her colleagues at Emory University.
Catching melanoma early is critical for saving lives and controlling costs, Chen said. About 40 percent of the annual cost for melanoma goes to treating stage 4 (advanced) cancers, even though they account for only 3 percent of melanomas.
“It’s a huge difference in the cost of taking care of a stage 1 versus a stage 4 patient,” Chen said. “It makes a lot of sense to invest in early detection and prevention measures such that the economic burden is not so high.”
In an accompanying editorial, researchers from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, called for a “revised health strategy” that treats skin cancer as a chronic disease requiring not just a one-time treatment, but ongoing monitoring of patients, prevention and education.
To lessen your chances of getting skin cancer, dermatologists recommend applying broad-spectrum sunscreen liberally and often; wearing hats and other protective clothing when out in the sun; avoiding sun exposure when the sun’s rays are the strongest — between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. — and never using tanning beds.
It’s especially important to take these steps with children and teens (to the extent they will listen), Rogers said. Skin cancer is turning up in younger and younger patients. In the past week or so, he removed non-melanoma cancer off the cheek of a 17-year-old boy and removed a melanoma from an 18-year-old girl.
And even if you have memories of basting yourself with baby oil, or you’re a retiree and loathe to miss your weekly tee time, it’s never too late to start decreasing your exposure.
“Think of sun exposure like putting money in a bank that you can’t withdraw,” Rogers said. “You can’t get rid of the damage you have, but continued sun exposure accelerates the rate at which you will develop new skin cancers. Protecting your skin from the sun will help decrease the rate.”
Click here for the full report.
Ingredient in Bananas May Prevent HIV Transmission
March 16, 2010
Topnews.us
By Jacob Ramsey
A new study reveals that a chemical has been found in bananas which may help prevent the transmission of virus causing AIDS.
The scientists from the University of Michigan said that the chemical lectin in bananas has been found as effective as two anti-HIV drugs, when tested in a laboratory. The scientists are now examining how this lectin could help combat AIDS.
Condoms and drugs are still in use to prevent the transmission of virus during sexual intercourse that causes AIDS. Scientists revealed that women living in poor countries require other forms of treatment to prevent the disease.
Lectin may help prevent the disease as it is very useful and is less expensive.
Lectins are sugar-binding proteins which play a vital role in recognition phenomena. This protein helps to identify the virus.
“That’s particularly true in developing countries where women have little control over sexual encounters so development of a long-lasting, self-applied microbicide is very attractive”, revealed study Senior Author Dr. David Marvovitz.
Click here for the full report.
Erectile Dysfunction May Predict Heart Risk
March 16, 2010
Los Angeles Times
By Thomas H. Maugh II
For the first time, researchers have shown that erectile dysfunction is a strong predictor of the likelihood that men will die of heart disease.
Men who suffer from the problem, which some consider more an emotional than a physical issue, are twice as likely to succumb to cardiovascular disease or heart attacks as those who do not have the problem, German researchers reported Monday in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Assn.
Researchers have known for years that there is a link between erectile dysfunction, commonly abbreviated as ED, and heart disease, said Dr. Sahil Parikh, an interventional cardiologist from University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland who was not involved in the study. “But now there is pretty clear evidence that there is a substantially increased risk of heart attack and death when patients have erectile dysfunction.”
The results are probably not too surprising, added Dr. Robert Kloner, a cardiologist at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, “because arteries in the penis are smaller, so atherosclerosis shows up there sooner,” perhaps three to four years before the onset of cardiovascular disease.
The take-home message, both experts said, is that when a patient seeks treatment for ED, typically from a general practitioner, he should be given a full physical work-up to look for heart disease and referred to a cardiologist.
“When they are treated aggressively early, we can prevent heart attacks and stroke and they can have many years added to their lives,” Parikh said.
Existing guidelines for treating men with ED from the Princeton Consensus Conference already state that “a man with ED and no cardiac symptoms is a cardiac (or vascular) patient until proven otherwise.” Kloner, a coauthor of those guidelines, said that when the guidelines are updated this year, they will probably carry a stronger recommendation that a patient presenting with ED get a cardiovascular examination.
Dr. Michael Bohm, a cardiologist at Germany’s Saarland University, and his colleagues studied 1,519 men from 13 countries who were involved in a study of two drugs to treat cardiovascular disease. The men were also queried about their ED at the beginning of the study, two years into it and at the end at five years. A full 55% of the men had ED at the beginning of the trial, nearly double the normal incidence of about 30% in the population at large.
The team reported that, in the five years of follow-up, men with ED were 1.9 times as likely to die from heart disease, twice as likely to have a heart attack, 1.2 times as likely to be hospitalized for heart failure and 1.1 times more likely to have a stroke. The risks increased with the severity of the ED.
Disappointingly, the two drugs tested in the study, ramipril and telmisartan, did not improve the course of the ED.
That’s not surprising, said Dr. Peter Pelikan, a cardiologist at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, “because it takes years and years and years to get any resorption of cholesterol” that would reduce blockage of the penile arteries. “The study was too small and too short to see that.”
Many men with ED see a general practitioner or a urologist to get treatment and are prescribed drugs like Viagra or Cialis, Bohm said in a statement. “The drug works and the patient doesn’t show up any more. These men are being treated for ED, but not the underlying cardiovascular disease. A whole segment of men is being placed at risk.”
Click here for the full report.
Commercial Drug Comparison Studies Non-Existent
March 15, 2010
Reuters
Most of the so-called comparative effectiveness research is done at academic institutions or by other noncommercial enterprises, and less than 20 percent examine the safety of treatments, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Most of the comparative effectiveness studies we reviewed simply tested whether medication ‘x’ is better than medication ‘y,’ rather than addressing fundamental questions such as: How can we use this medication more effectively? When is this medication better than surgery? Which among two effective approaches is the safest?” said Dr. Danny McCormick of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the study.
McCormick and Dr. Michael Hochman of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles chose 328 studies in major medical journals that evaluated drugs.
About a third, 104 of them, compared a drug to something else. Forty-three percent compared one drug to another, 11 percent compared a drug to a non-drug therapy, 15 percent focused on different dosing schedules, 19 percent looked at safety and just 2 percent included an analysis of cost effectiveness.
While most drug trials are sponsored by companies, noncommercial entities paid for 87 percent of the comparative effectiveness studies, Hochman and McCormick found.
“Many of our nation’s research priorities are driven by the pharmaceutical industry,” Hochman said in a statement.
“These companies, not surprisingly, focus most of their attention on new therapies.”
NEW NOT ALWAYS BETTER
Healthcare reform is U.S. President Barack Obama’s signature political strategy and he has proposed comparative effectiveness research as one big component. Last year Congress approved $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research as part of an economic stimulus plan.
“Additional information about existing comparative effectiveness research could help guide policy makers as they determine the amount and types of comparative effectiveness research that are most needed,” Hochman and McCormick wrote.
“In particular, our findings suggest government and noncommercial support should be increased for studies involving nonpharmacologic therapies, for studies comparing different therapeutic strategies, and for studies focusing on the comparative safety and cost of different therapies.”
The Food and Drug Administration should require such studies for drug approvals when possible, they added.
In a separate commentary, Dr. Alec O’Connor of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York agreed.
“Given the continued progress of science, approval of a new drug or device implies to physicians and the general public that the product represents an advance over older treatments,” O’Connor wrote.
But this is not always true. Recent studies have shown, for instance, that older, cheap drugs such as generic diuretics to treat high blood pressure, or metformin to treat diabetes, work better than newer drugs in many cases.
“For example, if a new medication to treat depression is approved based only on placebo comparisons, it’s very difficult to know how the new drug compares with the dozens of medications already approved for depression,” he added in a statement.
Click here for the full report
Food Manufacturer Knew Plant Had Salmonella
March 15, 2010
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
The company at the heart of a growing recall of processed foods knew that its plant was contaminated with salmonella but continued to make a flavoring and sell it to foodmakers around the country, according to inspectors at the Food and Drug Administration.
Managers at Basic Food Flavors of Las Vegas learned on Jan. 21 that samples taken a week earlier from their Nevada facility tested positive for salmonella, a potentially deadly bacterium, but they kept shipping their product to foodmakers, according to FDA inspection records.
The company makes hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP, a flavor enhancer used in a wide variety of processed foods, from potato chips to sweet and sour tofu. The additive, which comes as a powder or a paste, is mixed into foods to give them a meaty or savory flavor — similar to the use of monosodium glutamate.
Basic Food Flavors tested surfaces near food-processing equipment throughout its plant twice in January and once in February, and each time the samples showed salmonella contamination, according to FDA records. The company continued to ship products and to make more HVP without cleaning the plant or the equipment in a way that would have minimized contamination, the records said.
“The FDA is reviewing the evidence in association with the current inspection of Basic Food Flavors to determine the appropriate regulatory response,” FDA spokeswoman Meghan Scott said.
It is illegal to knowingly sell food products that are contaminated with salmonella.
Officials at Basic Food Flavors did not return calls seeking comment.
No one is thought to have fallen ill from contaminated HVP, and the health risk is considered to be low because most products containing HVP are cooked during processing or carry cooking instructions for consumers, so any salmonella probably would be destroyed before the food was eaten. Ready-to-eat products, such as chips and other snack foods, would carry greater risks.
“It highlights why we need strong rules that would prevent contamination in the first place, so the FDA isn’t swooping in like the cops after the fact,” said Erik Olson, director of chemical and food safety programs at Pew Charitable Trusts.
Legislation that would require companies to take measures to prevent contamination was overwhelmingly passed by the House last year but has been held up in the Senate.
Federal officials were alerted to a problem with Basic Food Flavors in early February by a foodmaker who detected salmonella in one lot of HVP it purchased from the Nevada manufacturer.
Federal inspectors went to the plant within days of the complaint and conducted 14 inspections in the span of about two weeks. They documented dirty utensils and equipment — mixers and tubing coated with brown residue — and cracks and fractures in the floor, as well as standing water on the floor — all conditions where bacteria can breed.
In one area where paste mixers and belt dryers were positioned, FDA inspectors noted “standing, grey/black liquid” in the drain near the area where the hydrolyzed vegetable protein was turned from paste to powder. “We sensed an odor in the vicinity of this drain,” the inspectors wrote.
The company is one of only a handful that manufacture hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and its customer list is extensive. It produces about 20 million pounds of the food additive annually, according to a food industry source.
The contamination is believed to date to September 2009, meaning millions of pounds of potentially tainted HVP — all of which the company has recalled — was shipped in bulk to foodmakers over five months. Many of those companies then sold their products to other clients, complicating the distribution chain and making it hard for federal officials to gauge the scope of the problem.
Food companies had recalled more than 100 products as of Tuesday afternoon, ranging from dips to salad dressings to soup bouillon, and that list is expected to balloon over the next several weeks.
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