Possible reasons salsa and guacamole can pose risk
S. Department of Energys Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.
Awareness that salsa and guacamole can transmit foodborne illness, particularly in restaurants, is key to preventing future outbreaks, Kendall, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
Salsa and guacamole often contain diced raw produce, including hot peppers, tomatoes and cilantro, each of which has been implicated in past outbreaks.
Kendall and colleagues analyzed all outbreaks of foodborne illness reported to the CDC. None were associated with salsa or guacamole before 1984, they found, but by 1998 to 2008 the two dips accounted for 3.9 percent of outbreaks traced to restaurants.
We want restaurants and anyone preparing fresh salsa and guacamole at home to be aware that these foods containing raw ingredients should be carefully prepared and refrigerated to help prevent illness, Kendall said.
In March a coalition of consumer and public health groups said foodborne illnesses cost the United States 152 billion in health-related expenses each year.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill a year ago to reorganize the convoluted U.S. food safety system, but the Senate has yet to act, despite broad bipartisan agreement on the issue.
The CDC estimates that 76 million people in the United States get sick each year with foodborne illness and 5,000 die.
Editing by Paul Simao source
If can identify people who are particularly high risk
If we give them a better start, they may encounter the illness in a more positive way and not get quite so ill.
Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are affected by mental, behavioral and neurological illnesses such as schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD, depression, epilepsy and dementia.
Many people who go on to develop diverse mental health problems will have a history of behavioral problems going back to childhood, but experts say the problem with finding them at that stage is that differences then are often extremely subtle.
In one study, Groom and her colleagues investigated looked at the healthy siblings of people with schizophrenia, who also have a very slightly increased risk of developing schizophrenia compared with the general population.
Using brain imaging to read activity levels, the scientists asked the siblings to perform task which involved playing an alien-zapping computer game in which they needed to respond quickly, and crucially, halt the urge to respond if the wrong kind of alien popped up. The task was called a go, no-go task.
When we measured the brain activity of the siblings of people with schizophrenia, their brain activity was reduced at the time when they needed to pay attention to the stimulus, and when they needed to inhibit their response, Groom explained.
She said this suggested the subtle differences in brain activity may act as a risk marker for the disorder.
In a second study, scientists compared brain activity of children with ADHDa mental disorder that affects between 8 and 12 percent of children, and 4 percent of adults worldwide.
The researchers used the same go, no-go task in various scenarios, including when the children were taking their medication, Ritalin, and when they were not, and then using an additional system of rewards and penalties.
Millions of people take ADHD drugs including Novartis Ritalin, which is known generically as methylphenidate, and Shire Plcs Adderall and Vyvanse. In the United States alone, 2008 sales for these drugs was about 4.8 billion, according to data from IMS Health.
Grooms results showed that children who were taking medication, and children given an incentive, performed better than those who had neither medicines nor incentives.
This suggests, Groom said, that doctors may be able to find new ways to treat children with ADHD using a combination of behavioral strategies and drugs.
Editing by Jon Boyle source
We are disappointed not able recommend everolimus second
However, we have to ensure that the money available to the NHS is used to best effect, particularly when NHS funds, like the rest of the public sector, is under considerable financial pressure.
The decision was criticised by advocacy groups, who said it was another disappointing blow after NICE last year rebuffed three other drugs for kidney cancer patients.
Once again NICE has disappointed the thousands of kidney cancer sufferers in the UK by not approving everolimus, a drug which gives terminal kidney cancer patients and their families some hope, said Nick Turkentine of the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer.
NICE has ruled that only Pfizers cancer drug Sutent will be reimbursed for kidney cancer patients on the NHS, with Roches Avastin, Bayers Nexavar and Pfizers Torisel also rejected as not cost-effective.
Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Elaine Hardcastle source
Fda said research showed mixing antibiotics livestock
Over-the-counter antibiotics have been routinely used for decades to promote livestock growth and feed efficiency.
Emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria poses a serious public health threat, said FDA, so it is looking for ways to reduce overuse of the drugs.
Antibiotics including penicillin and tetracyclines should be used only under the supervision of veterinarians to prevent or treat illness in livestock, FDA said in its 19-page draft.
FDA made its recommendations in a first-round version of a guidance document, which represents the agencys current thinking on an issue. Guidance does not carry the weight of law but generally is adopted by industry.
Were not expecting people to pick up this guidance and change their practice tomorrow, Deputy FDA Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein told reporters.
This is the first step in the FDA establishing the principles from which we could then move, if necessary, toward other mechanisms of oversight, which is regulation, he said.
A final guidance document will be written after FDA reviews responses from livestock producers, drugmakers and other interested groups.
New practices that limit drug use could affect major pharmaceutical companies that produce antibiotics used on farms such as Pfizer, Bayer AG, Merck amp Co Inc, Novartis AG and Animal Health International.
An umbrella group representing drug makers said they welcomed the FDAs guidance and but want to ensure farmers and veterinarians can continue to get antibiotics needed to protect animal health.
An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are fed to healthy animals to promote weight gain, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Proponents of a ban on the use of antibiotics in livestock feed said the FDA guidance did not go far enough.
The FDA has proposed good steps, but they have not gone far enough or moved fast enough, said Representative Louise Slaughter, chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, a New York Democrat who has led Congressional efforts on a ban.
Legislation is stalled in Congress that would ban subtherapeutic use of seven classes of antibiotics in livestock.
It doesnt say when or how, but thats at least a small step in the right direction, said Laura Rogers of the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.
The National Pork Producers Council said only a small fraction of antibiotics are used in hog production to promote growth, and there is no scientific link between livestock use and antibiotic resistance.
Before you go restricting antibiotic use in food animal production, maybe you better find out, are we the main problem said Dave Warner, a spokesman.
The poultry industry said it already has ratcheted down by a large margin its use of antibiotics.
Bernadette Dunham, director of FDAs Center for Veterinary Medicine, noted voluntary efforts to reduce antibiotic use and said, We believe additional steps are necessary to have a real impact on this problem.
Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Christopher Doering, Susan Heavey and Alina Selyukh source
Tempting kids with toys is unfair and deceptive
The group, which previously took on fast-food chain KFC over artery-clogging trans fats, alleged that the practice is illegal under consumer protection laws in states including California, Texas, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Its a creepy and predatory practice that warrants an injunction, Stephen Gardner, CSPIs litigation director, said in a statement.
McDonalds called the groups charges a misrepresentation of its effort to sell healthier food and safe toys.
Getting a toy is just one part of a fun, family experience at McDonalds, spokesman William Whitman said in a statement.
In 2006, the latest year for which data is available, fast-food companies, led by McDonalds, spent more than 520 million on advertising and toys to promote childrens meals, according to a U.S. Federal Trade Commission report.
The latest Happy Meal promotion from McDonalds is a tie-in with the popular DreamWorks Animation film Shrek Forever After. The meals include toy watches fashioned after the movies characters Shrek, Donkey, Gingy and Puss in Boots.
Those characters also appear in television and Internet ads for McDonalds. A recent recall of cadmium-contaminated Shrek-themed glasses is unrelated to the CSPI action.
Such advertising appears to have significant influence over youngsters and has come under renewed scrutiny in the United States, where obesity in children is under attack.
A study published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics found that children preferred snack food in packages decorated with popular cartoon characters. However, using the cartoons did not have the same effect in encouraging the youngsters, aged 4 to 6, to eat carrots.
Offered the identical snack with and without a character on the packaging, the children consistently said the snack from the cartoon-decorated package tasted better, Christina Roberto of Yale University in Connecticut and colleagues found.
Weve talked to McDonalds over the years about at least limiting the toys to the healthier Happy Meals, and never made any progress, Jacobson said. I think its indisputable that cheap, high-calorie foods epitomized by fast foods have been a major contributor to this obesity epidemic.
McDonalds and other U.S. food companies recommend regular physical activity and offer some healthy food options while also marketing food packed with calories, fat and salt.
McDonalds shares closed 1.8 percent lower on Tuesday to 68.64 on the New York Stock Exchange, on a day of broad losses for stocks.
WANT FRIES WITH THAT
In 2007, McDonalds and other large U.S. food and drink companies like Coca-Cola Co and General Mills Inc pledged to adopt stricter controls on advertising aimed at children under the age of 12.
McDonalds U.S. advertising focuses on Happy Meals with chicken nuggets, apple dippers and low-fat milk. But CSPI said its own study found that when children or parents ordered Happy Meals, they were given French fries 93 percent of the time and offered soda first in 78 percent of visits.
The number of calories in the 24 available Happy Meal options ranges from 450 to 700. Every Happy Meal has more than 430 calorieswhich CSPI said would represent about one-third of the 1,300 daily calories recommended for children aged 4 to 8 — and each one comes with a toy.
McDonalds practice of dangling toys in front of children is illegal, regardless of what meal the child eventually gets, CSPIs Gardner wrote in a June 22 letter addressed to McDonalds executives and released to the media.
Not only does the practice mobilize pester power, but it also imprints on developing minds brand loyalty for McDonalds, said Gardner. Most of the fast-food chains menu options are of poor nutritional quality, he added.
U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is pushing companies to offer healthier food for kids IDnLDE62G1PI, and some elected officials are taking matters into their own hands and passing laws and taxes aimed at curbing obesity.
Lawmakers in Californias Silicon Valley have passed a law that would prevent restaurants from giving away free toys and other incentives with unhealthy kids meals.
The legislation, which got final approval from Santa Clara Countys Board of Supervisors in May and goes into effect in August, would set basic nutritional standards for childrens meals and allow restaurants to give away toys only with meals that meet national nutritional criteria for children.
Additional reporting by Maggie Fox in Washington editing by John Wallace and Tim Dobbyn source
Exelixis said on sunday it will continue to develop drug
We have the resources to take this forward for some time, Exelixis Chief Executive George Scangos told Reuters, noting that the company may seek another partnership.
Under a deal signed in late 2008, Bristol-Myers had paid Exelixis 240 million for the rights to XL184 and another drug, called XL281a 195 million upfront cash payment, plus additional license payments of 45 million in 2009.
Bristols decision to return the drug to Exelixis really does reflect a need for both companies to prioritize their portfolios, Scangos said. We were unable to reach an agreement with BMS on what the appropriate clinical program would be.
He said Exelixis plans to move forward later this year with a Phase 3 trial of the drug in patients with recurrent glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer.
The company first announced plans for the pivotal trial earlier this month, disappointing some investors who had speculated that the developers might be able to use results from an ongoing mid-stage trial for a regulatory filing.
Results from a Phase 3 trial of XL184 in patients with medullary thyroid cancer are expected in the first half of next year.
Scangos said Exelixis also expects to report at a November medical meeting in Berlin early-stage data on XL184 in patients with five other types of solid tumors.
XL184 is an oral drug designed to block the vascular endothelial growth factor, the same target as drugs like Roche Holding AGs Avastin, as well as MET and RET, two other drivers of tumor formation,
Scangos said Exelixis, which recently entered into two debt financing deals for a combined 160 million80 million of which will be used to extend the maturity of an existing obligation — will update investors on the companys cash position when second-quarter results are reported.
The CEO said the incremental cost for the XL184 program is less than 20 million this year.
Editing by Marguerita Choy source
Drawing from a national cancer register
What the data is showing is that for most patients with low-risk cancer, there is no need to panic, said Grace Lu-Yao, a cancer researcher who was not involved in the new study. Prostate cancer really is no longer a fatal disease.
With modern screening tests, said Lu-Yao, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in New Brunswick, many prostate cancers are found that might never have developed into serious disease. In such cases, the slight reduction of risk by surgically removing the prostate or treating it with radiation may not outweigh the substantial side effects of these treatments.
In the Swedish study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers compared deaths among more than 6,800 men with prostate cancer who underwent treatmentsurgery or radiation — or were simply monitored regularly by their doctors, the so-called watchful waiting approach. With watchful waiting, patients are only treated if their cancer progresses.
The men, who were younger than 70, had low- or intermediate-risk cancers, as judged by several factors, including blood levels of prostate-specific antigen PSA and Gleason score, a measure of abnormal cells in the prostate.
After about eight years, 20 percent of the men in the watchful waiting group had died, almost twice as many as in the treatment group. However, the number of deaths was no different than what would be expected in the general population. Less than three percent had actually died from prostate cancer, and those who werent treated turned out also to be sicker in the first place.
The researchers calculated that of those men with low-risk cancer, 2.4 percent would die from the disease within 10 years without treatment. While this number was about three times higher than in men who had had surgery or radiation therapy, it wasnt clear how much of the difference was due to worse general health in the men who didnt get treatment.
The Swedish findings jibe with earlier results, including a large US study.
Given the overall low death risk, the researchers said watchful waiting appears to be suitable for many men with low-risk prostate cancer.
Instead of panicking, Lu-Yao said, men diagnosed with this type of cancer should see it as a wake-up call, an opportunity to improve their health, for instance by exercising more and eating a more healthy diet. That, she said, was much more likely to influence their chances of living a long life.
SOURCE link.reuters.com/quj82m and link.reuters.com/ruj82m Journal of the National Cancer Institute, online June 18, 2010. source
But percentage of women who choose to have other
But the percentage of women who choose to have their other, cancer-free breast removed at the same time for preventive reasons is increasing, Dr. Elizabeth B. Habermann of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and her colleagues found.
In 1990, the National Institutes of Health recommended breast-conserving surgery-lumpectomy, in which only the tumor and surrounding tissue are removed-along with radiation as the preferred treatment for breast cancer in one breast. Numerous studies done in the previous decade had found that women fared just as well with lumpectomy and radiation as they did with mastectomy, a more radical operation that carries greater risk of complications.
Before the NIH statement, most breast cancer patients had mastectomies, Habermann and her team note, but since then, mastectomy rates have been dropping.
Habermann and her team decided to conduct their study after investigations by researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, the Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found rates of mastectomy at their institutions had risen substantially in recent years.
Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database, Habermann and her colleagues identified more than 230,000 women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 2000 and 2006.
While nearly 41 percent of the women diagnosed in 2000 had mastectomies, 37 percent of those diagnosed in 2006 did, the researchers found.
But the percentage of women who had their other, non-cancerous breast removed as well increased to around 6 percent by 2006, from around 2 percent in 2000.
The reason why mastectomy rates were increasing at the three centers while continuing to decline overall isnt clear, Habermann said. Patients who are referred to these centers might be seeking more aggressive treatment than women treated elsewhere in the US, she added.
On the other hand, according to the researcher, its possible that these cancer centers are seeing trends ahead of whats going to happen nationwide.
There was a small increase in mastectomy rates between 2005 and 2006, Habermann noted. While this increase wasnt statistically significant, meaning it could have been due to chance, it could also signal a future rise in mastectomy rates.
She and her colleagues will continue to follow the trend in mastectomy rates, and are particularly interested in monitoring outcomes for the women who opt for having both breasts removed.
There are some good things about it, Habermann noted. Its very uncommon to have breast cancer after having both breasts removed. However, she added, there are issues…because its a larger operation and there may be more complications.
SOURCE here
Journal of Clinical Oncology, online June 14, 2010. source
Many such drug distribution programs may driving drug
Drug resistance is a natural occurrence, but careless practices in drug supply and use are hastening it unnecessarily, the Centers Rachel Nugent, who led the group writing the report, said in a statement.
Millions of children in the developing world die every year from drug-resistant strains of malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and other diseases, the report found.
Since 2006 donors have spent more than 1.5 billion on specialized drugs to treat resistant bacteria and viruses, and this could worsen, the report cautions.
So-called superbugs such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureas, or MRSA, now cause more than 50 percent of staph infections in U.S. hospitals.
Bacteria and viruses begin to evolve resistance to drugs almost as soon as they first encounter them. If drug treatment leaves even one microbe alive, it will reproduce and whatever genetic attributes helped it survive will be multiplied in the next generation.
Last week, experts told a Congressional panel that U.S. regulators need to provide a clear path for drug companies to develop new antibiotics and should consider offering financial incentives.
The Centers report looks for even broader action, urging WHO to lead others, including pharmaceutical companies, governments, philanthropies that buy and distribute medicines, hospitals, healthcare providers, pharmacies and patients.
The report finds clear links between increased drug availability and resistance. For instance, in countries with the highest use of antibiotics, 75 to 90 percent of Streptococcus pneumoniae strains are drug-resistant, it found.
Poor quality drugs, counterfeit drugs, incomplete use of drugs and other factors all contribute to the problem, the report found. And this problem will worsen as drug access programs succeed, it cautions.
The number of people being treated for HIV/AIDS, for example, increased 10-fold between 2002 and 2007 there was an 8-fold rise in deliveries of drugs for malaria treatment between 2005 and 2006, and the Stop TB Partnerships Global Drug Facility has expanded access to drugs for TB patients, offering nearly 14 million patient treatments in 93 countries since 2001, the report reads.
While increased access to necessary drugs is clearly desirable, it brings challenges in preserving the efficacy of these drugs and ensuring they are used appropriately.
For instance, in 2008, an estimated 440,000 cases of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis emerged.
The Center for Global Development, an independent, nonprofit group, specializes in research on global poverty and inequality.
Reporting by Maggie Fox Editing by Paul Simao source
A research team led institute cancer research scanned gene
The genes located in these regions give us clues to the mechanisms by which testicular cancer develops, said Nazneen Rahman, an ICR professor who worked on the study. In time this may allow us to develop new treatment options.
The team confirmed their findings by analyzing another 670 testicular cancer patients and 3,500 men without the disease.
The results, published in the journal Nature on Sunday, take the number of genetic regions associated with testicular cancer risk to six, after earlier studies identified others.
This study represents further, important progress toward identifying men who are at increased genetic risk of testicular cancer, said Clare Turnbull, who led the study.
Finding those men at highest risk may allow early detection or prevention of the disease.
Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 15 to 45 years. It is considered one of the most treatable cancers because it usually responds well to chemotherapy, but survivors often have fertility problems after treatment.
The disease has a strong genetic component and men who have a brother affected by testicular cancer have an eight- to tenfold increased risk of developing the disease than men with no family history. These inheritance risks are much higher than in other cancer types, which are generally only two-fold.
The three genes identified by the British team are called TERT, ATF7IP and DMRT1.
Turnbull and colleagues explained in their study that TERT and ATF7IP were important in maintaining the correct length of the ends of chromosomes, which are called telomeres.
Shortened telomeres are known to occur in many cancers and genetic variants in TERT have already been linked to other cancers, including lung, bladder, cervical, pancreatic, skin and prostate cancer.
The third gene found in this study, DMRT1, plays an important role in sex determination and has been implicated in the development of testicular cancer in mice. source