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Study Finds Obesity Responsible For Significant Portion Of Health Spending
A new report finds nearly 10 percent of health care costs are due to obesity and per capita medical spending is significantly higher for obese people.
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A Vaccine For Ear Infections - Without The Needle
Even when she"s well, little Cammy Barber doesn"t like getting her ears
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Some Routine Cancer Screenings Not Proven To Reduce Deaths, Experts Say
Routine screenings for cancers -- including breast cancer in younger women -- have not proven to reduce the chance of death for people without specific symptoms or risk factors, and experts suggest that some tests could lead to harm, the New York Times reports.According to Ned Calonge, chair of the United States Preventive Services Task Force, screening is only useful if it prevents enough deaths to outweigh harm from treatments that are not medically necessary. He said that although screening in some cases will detect life-threatening cancers that respond to intervention, it also can result in false positives that cause needless worry and unnecessary procedures. Screening also might fail to diagnose an existing cancer, causing patients to ignore symptoms; find slow-growing or stable cancers that are not life-threatening and normally do not need treatment; or find aggressive, life-threatening cancers that do not respond to treatment, Calonge said. Only a handful of screening tests have been proven to significantly reduce death among certain age groups: pap tests to screen for cervical cancer beginning no later than age 21; mammograms to screen for breast cancer starting at age 40; and colon cancer screening beginning at age 50. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no medical proof that routine screening for many other cancers -- including ovarian cancer -- reduces deaths.The Times reports that the Breast Cancer Education and Awareness Requires Learning Young Act of 2009 (HR 1740) -- also known as the Early Act -- has become a central issue in the debate because it would create a breast cancer detection campaign for women younger than age 45. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) introduced the bill in March, and it now has more than 350 co-sponsors. The bill would provide $45 million over five years for teaching young women and their physicians to check for abnormalities; promote healthy lifestyle choices; and provide grants to groups supporting women with breast cancer. The bill focuses on certain ethnic or racial groups at higher risk of developing aggressive tumors. CDC would oversee an expert panel to create the campaign based on the latest medical research, Wasserman-Schultz said.Critics of the bill say that the legislation promotes techniques, such as self-exams, that have not proven to detect cancer at earlier stages or reduce deaths. They also argue that self-exams could lead to many insignificant nodules being biopsied, which can cause scarring and make it harder to detect breast cancer when women are older. According to Susan Love -- a breast cancer surgeon who has encouraged Wasserman-Schultz to abandon the bill -- the public health campaign could cause younger women to overestimate their chances of dying of breast cancer (Singer, New York Times, 7/17).
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Ginger Reduces Chemotherapy Nausea, Study

Taking ginger supplements with standard anti-vomiting drugs beforehand can reduce the nausea that often accompanies chemotherapy treatment by 40 per cent according to a new US study. The phaseII/III study was done at the University of Rochester Medical Center and is to be presented on 30 May in the Patient and Survivor Care Session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Orlando, Florida. Lead author Dr Julie Ryan, assistant professor of Dermatology and Radiation Oncology in the James P Wilmot Cancer Center at Rochester told the press that: "There are effective drugs to control vomiting, but the nausea is often worse because it lingers." Estimates suggest about 70 per cent of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy experience nausea and vomiting. Ryan said nausea is a major problem for patients and a challenge for doctors and scientists working to try and find ways to understand and control it. While other studies have looked at the effect of ginger supplements on easing nausea they have been small and the results inconsistent: this is the largest randomized study to show the effectiveness of ginger and the first to focus on taking the supplement before the chemotherapy. For the placebo-controlled, double blind study (that is neither the patients nor the doctors knew who had the active ingredient and who had the placebo), the researchers recruited 644 cancer patients who were scheduled to have at least 3 chemotherapy treatments. The patients were randomly assigned to one of four groups: one group took placebo, another took 0.5 grams of ginger, a third took 1 gram of ginger, and the fourth group took 1.5 grams of ginger. Everyone on the trial also took anti-vomiting drugs (eg Zofran, Kytril, Novaban, or Anzemet). The patients took the supplements in capsule form once a day for six days, starting 3 days before their first cycle of chemotherapy. They were asked to report their levels of nausea four times a day for the first four days after their chemotherapy finished. They reported their nausea level on a 7-point scale where 1 was no nausea and 7 was the the worst possible nausea. The researchers found that at the end of the first day, the patients on the lowest two doses of ginger supplement scored their nausea level at 1 or 2, whereas the patients on placebo were scoring it at level 4 or 5. This was a 40 per cent reduction in nausea level on the lowest doses, which was maintained for the four days of the study. The higher dose of ginger did not show as good a result. Ryan told WebMD that she expects the effects will last longer than the four days they studied. People are less likely to have bad nausea on subsequent days if their first day is not so bad, she said. Ryan said in theory food or drink that has one quarter to one half teaspoon of fresh or dry ginger should have the same effect. "But if it"s ginger flavoring, that wouldn"t work," she told WebMD. Ginger is readily absorbed in the body and has long been considered a natural remedy for stomach aches, although scientists don"t know how it works. "By taking the ginger prior to chemotherapy treatment, the National Cancer Institute-funded study suggests its earlier absorption into the body may have anti-inflammatory properties," said Ryan in a press statement. s: University of Rochester Medical Center, WebMD. Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD Copyright: Medical News Today Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today


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