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

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women, after lung cancer. It kills 500,000 people globally every year and is diagnosed in close to 1.3 million people globally.

About 75 percent of these cancers are estrogen-receptor positive, meaning they are driven by hormones. Tamoxifen was the first drug to block the effects of estrogen and the aromatase inhibitors are the next generation.

Studies have shown that women who took tamoxifen for 5 years were 50 percent less likely to have their cancer return and the aromatase inhibitors have similar effects. But if a breast cancer patient has not gone through menopause, tamoxifen is the only safe hormone-based drug to take.

One of the most important treatments for women with postmenopausal breast cancer is anti-estrogen therapy, ASCOs Dr. Harold Burstein, an oncologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a statement.

Our panel carefully reviewed the explosion of research that has emerged in the past five years on anti-estrogen drugs, and filled in gaps in our understanding of how best to use these newer treatments, and what the trade-offs and side effects of therapy would be.

Some studies suggest it is safe to take tamoxifen and an aromatase inhibitorusually a pill taken daily — for as long as 10 years in total, the panel said.

While the two drug classes work differently, overall, most women have relatively mild side effects on either drug, ASCO added.

Reporting by Maggie Fox editing by Paul Simao source

Neal said treating youth with cholesterol-lowering drugs, the so-called statins, would curb the risk that they went on to develop heart problems in middle age. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world.

Based on data from West Virginia, Neal and colleagues found that more than one percent of all fifth-graders had cholesterol levels that warranted drug treatment. But a third of those children didnt have relatives with heart disease or high cholesterol, and so wouldnt have been screened under the current guidelines, issued by the governments National Cholesterol Education Program.

I have gradually become convinced that universal screening in children is not only preferable, but necessary, said Neal. He added that although universal screening would be expensive, it would save a lot of money later on if heart disease could be prevented.

But not all scientists agree that screening is a good idea. For example, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal expert panel, currently doesnt recommend routine cholesterol screening in any children.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that starting a ten-year-old on cholesterol-lowering drugs will prevent heart disease 40 years later, said Dr. Michael L. LeFevre, a member of the task force.

He said statin treatment in children was still controversial, and that no long-term safety data existed.

The new study tapped into data from more than 20,000 children who had been screened at public schools in West Virginia over five years.

More than seven in 10 school kids had first-degree relatives with heart disease, and about one percent of those had bad cholesterol LDL cholesterol levels that might require drug treatment in addition to diet changes and exercise, according to the researchers.

Yet among the kids without heart disease, the percentage of children who might benefit from treatment was closer to two percent than to one, meaning that family history didnt seem to make a difference.

It is therefore prudent to implement universal screening in the pediatric population independent of family history, the researchers conclude.

SOURCE here Pediatrics, online July 12, 2010. source

The FDA called in 2007 for the TIDE study, which aims to enroll 16,000 patients and end in 2015, although some critics say it could take longer.

Analyses of other data since then have convinced some researchers that Avandias risks are greater than those of Actos and have repeatedly called for the trial to be halted.

Glaxo has defended its drug, saying data overall shows it does not increase the risk of heart attack, stroke or death.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, FDAs panel of outside experts will weigh numerous studies and analyses before recommending whether Avandia should remain on the market, be pulled from the market, or various options in between.

They also will be asked to weigh in on the TIDE trial.

In its report, the IOM said randomized controlled trials should only be done when a responsible policy decision cannot be made based either on the existing evidence or on evidence from new observational studies.

It also said studies of real world use of a drugknown as observational studies and often done by reviewing insurance claims and other databases — can yield strong data.

In separate FDA documents released on Friday, FDA staff scientists were split over whether the TIDE trial should continue just as they are divided over whether another major Glaxo trial, RECORD, showed excessive heart-attack risks with Avandia.

Some staff also pointed to studies done since 2007, including an FDA analysis of 52 trials on the drug, as well as a review of Medicare data that showed a greater risk of heart attack and other complications with Glaxos drug.

Based on these findings, any proposed head-to-head trial of rosiglitazone vs. pioglitazone is unethical and exploitative, agency reviewers David Graham and Kate Gelperin wrote.

Rosiglitazone is the generic name for Avandia, and pioglitazone is the generic name for Actos.

Another FDA scientist, clinical reviewer Karen Mahoney, said that the TIDE trial does not have many of the limitations of the earlier RECORD study and could be illuminating.

This trial, if it continues to completion, has the potential to address the question of the cardiovascular safety of rosiglitazone more definitively, she wrote in a separate memo.

Reporting by Susan Heavey Editing by Tim Dobbyn source

Two of the antibodies can attach to and neutralize 90 percent of the various mutations of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, Nabel said.

This is an antibody that evolved after the fact. That is part of the problem we have in dealing with HIVonce a person becomes infected, the virus always gets ahead of the immune system, Nabel said.

What we are trying to do with a vaccine is get ahead of the virus.

AIDS infects about 33 million people globally, according to the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS. It has killed 25 million people since the pandemic began in the early 1980s and there is no vaccine or cure, although drugs can help control it.

The virus is difficult to fight in part because it attacks immune system cells and in part because it mutates constantly, making it a moving target for drugs or the immune system.

It has been almost impossible to make a vaccine that will affect the virus. Last September, researchers reported their biggest success yet with a vaccine that appeared to slow the rate of infection by about 30 percent in Thai volunteers, but the trial raised many questions.

MOVING TARGETS

Researchers have been looking for parts of the virus that do not mutate so they can design vaccines that will protect against these constantly changing versions.

Nabels team found two of the antibodies in the blood of a patient infected with HIV who had not become ill despite the infection. Such people are called non-progressors and researchers study their immune systems to find out why they control the virus better than most patients.

They then found the immune system cells called B-cells that made these particular antibodies, using a new molecular device that they invented.

In yet another experiment, they managed to freeze one of the antibodies in the process of attaching to and neutralizing the virus, getting an atomic-level image in a process called x-ray crystallography.

Being able to see what the structure looks like could enable researchers to design a vaccine using a process called rational vaccine design, akin to an established technique for making drugs called rational drug design, Nabel said.

It may also be possible to design gene therapy to help patients make these antibodies themselves, or use an older technique that transfuses the antibodies directly.

One of the antibodies, called VRC01, partially mimics the way an immune cell called a CD4 T-cell attaches to a piece of the AIDS virus called gp120, the researchers said.

The antibodies attach to a virtually unchanging part of the virus, and this explains why they can neutralize such an extraordinary range of HIV strains, Dr. John Mascola, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

The discovery of these exceptionally broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV and the structural analysis that explains how they work are exciting advances that will accelerate our efforts to find a preventive HIV vaccine for global use, NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci added in a statement.

In addition, the technique the teams used to find the new antibodies represents a novel strategy that could be applied to vaccine design for many other infectious diseases.

Editing by Cynthia Osterman source

The compound is called P7C3 for now, and the researchers have already started tweaking it to make it more effective. They said it seems safe and appears to work even when taken as a pill.

The compound is similar to Medivation Inc and Pfizer Incs experimental Alzheimers drug, Dimebon, and may provide ways to improve its effects, Pieper and colleagues reported in the journal Cell.

It is also similar to some compounds owned by Serono, the researchers said.

Dimebon, originally a Russian-made antihistamine also known as latrepirdine, failed in a clinical trial for Alzheimers disease in March.

For the sake of patients suffering from Alzheimers disease, it is hoped that the apparently marginal clinical utility of Dimebon might be enhanced by improvements in both its potency and ceiling of proneurogenic, neuroprotective efficacy, the researchers wrote.

If so, our work offers concrete assays for the development of improved versions of these neuroprotective drugs.

Alzheimers gradually destroys the brain and affects 26 million people globally. Drugs, such as Pfizers Aricept, improve symptoms only minimally.

OLD RATS, NEW TRICKS

The researchers went through 1,000 representative compounds from 300,000 chemicals, pooled them and administered them to mice. They then dissected the brains to see whether any of the mice had made new cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with learning and memory.

They eventually narrowed the field to P7C3.

When they gave it to old rats for two months, the elderly rodents did far better than other old rats in learning their way around a water maze.

When dissected, the treated rats turned out to have three times the usual number of newborn neurons in a brain region called the dentate gyrus.

They made a derivative of P7C3 called A20 that worked even better.

When the researchers tested Dimebon and the Serono compounds, they found these drugs also stimulated the growth of new brain cells. Being able to target their effects could lead to better drugs to treat Alzheimers and perhaps other diseases that destroy brain cells like strokes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also know as ALS or Lou Gehrigs disease.

This striking demonstration of a treatment that stems age-related cognitive decline in living animals points the way to potential development of the first cures that will address the core illness process in Alzheimers disease, said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute on Mental Health, which helped pay for the study. source

The research team, from Berlins University Hospital Charite and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, wanted to know if a therapy could be developed that was safe to take by mouth and would reduce the threat of accidental peanut ingestion in peanut-allergic kids.

These patients were carefully selected to have an extremely low probability of growing out of their peanut allergy, said Shreffler, who now practices at Bostons General Hospital.

In the study, the first of its kind, tiny amounts of crushed peanuts were given by mouth to build up tolerance to peanut proteins. To limit the danger of a fatal reaction, the 23 children enrolled in the study were admitted to the hospital for the first week of therapy.

It took an average of 7 months of increasing doses for the kids to work up tolerance to one kernels worth of crushed peanut or 500 milligrams, more than is usually eaten in an accidental ingestion, the investigators say. After they reached 500 mg and were able to consume it daily without side effects for 8 weeks, they took two weeks off and then faced a new peanut food challenge.

Before this time, however, more than a third of the kids 35 percent dropped out of the study, a rate quite high compared to other studies, the investigators note. Allergic reactions ranging from upset stomach to wheezing were common in all the children. Four, or 17 percent, dropped out because of a bad allergic reaction, a higher adverse reaction rate than some previous work. One patient quit during the hospital phase because of anxiety. Two, including the youngest participant, who couldnt stomach the taste of the peanut/applesauce concoction, were dropped because they wouldnt follow the trial rules.

Fourteen children made it to the end of the study. At the final food challenge, all but two of them were able to tolerate 1 gram of peanut compared to .19 gram at the beginning of the study, leading the investigators to conclude that some patients might benefit from this approach known as oral immunotherapy.

The glass is half full, Shreffler said. The therapy was able to increase tolerance levels in many more than would have had any change on their own, he said while urging caution.

Whether the protection lasts longer than two weeks is not answered yet.

Theres evidence there may have been a permanent shift, but we havent proven that yet. Weve only taken the first step, Shreffler said.

The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate therapies such as this and Shreffler urges patients to be wary of anyone offering it.

Theres nothing regulatory to prevent Johnny allergist from starting to give crushed up peanuts to patients in the office, he said.

If a pill is developed, the FDA would become involved.

Thats the best hope. It could be in a pill form or it could be a well defined protocol, Shreffler said, but a good understanding of whats safe and who would benefit is at least five years away.

Clinical trials are underway testing other therapies too, he said, but in the meantime, total avoidance of peanuts and keeping an EPI pen on hand for an emergency injection in case of accidental ingestion, are the only sure ways to protect against a fatal reaction.

According to U.S. government figures, peanuts and tree nut allergies are the leading causes of fatal and near fatal food-allergic reactions.

SOURCE link.reuters.com/nyx36m Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, July 2010 source

An advanced type of heart stress test called myocardial perfusion imaging, in which doctors inject a radioactive tracer in patients to test blood flow, accounted for 74 percent of radiation exposure from heart scans.

Heart catheterization and stentingprocedures in which thin tubes are fished through blood vessels to open blocked arteries — were the second biggest contributor to radiation exposure, Chen said.

More than half of the heart procedures using radiation were done in the doctors own office, the team found.

Policymakers have been concerned that there is a rise in physician office imaging and a rise in total use of imaging, Chen said in a telephone interview.

I think there is legitimate concern that easy availabilityconvenience — makes the threshold for testing lower. Whether it is inappropriate or not, our study cant say.

While doctors disagree over how much, most agree that radiation can cause cancer, and researchers are growing concerned that an explosion in the use of medical imaging is making it more likely that patients may develop cancer.

A report last year by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement found that Americans receive seven times more radiation from diagnostic scans than in 1980.

Chens team, looking specifically at radiation exposure from heart imaging procedures, studied medical claims records from nearly 1 million patients aged 18 to 64 insured by United Healthcare.

They calculated the annual radiation dose based on three exposure ranges less than 3 millisieverts a year, the average exposure level for people from the sun and environment between 3 and 20 millisieverts a year and more than 20 millisieverts a year, the upper safety limit for workers exposed to radiation.

Of those who got heart procedures using radiation, most fell into the middle range but more than 3,000 patients got more than 20 millisieverts a year over the three-year period and 75 people got more than 50 millisieverts a year.

The average patient who gets a nuclear stress test is going to get 16 millisieverts each time. Its going to increase their risk on a statistical basis, Chen said.

Dr. Pamela Douglas of Duke University in North Carolina and a former president of the American College of Cardiology said doctors need to pay attention to radiation but she said the benefits of these heart tests and procedures should be weighed against the risk that a cancer might develop down the road.

Lets not get hysterical, she said in a telephone interview.

Overall, patients with heart disease are doing way better. The procedures are helping people. If we can change them or tweak them to help reduce radiation exposure even more, that would be wonderful.

Editing by Eric Walsh source

But, he added, more than a third of Americans who need to be screened havent been screened.

CDC researchers analyzed survey results from the state-level 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey for the report, available at www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns.

They found colon cancer screening rates rose from 52 percent of those who should get the tests in 2002 to 63 percent in 2008. Americans are advised to get a colon cancer screen, usually in the form of a colonoscopy, starting at age 50 and at age 40 if there is a family history of the disease.

A separate report found that 81 percent of women aged 50 to 74 got mammograms in 2008, virtually the same as in 2006.

The findings indicated that more than 22 million men and women have not had a potentially life-saving screening test for colorectal cancer and about 7 million women age 50 to 74 have not had a recent mammogram, the CDC said in a statement.

Any screening is good and the overall increase is the main message there, Frieden said. Nevertheless, there is a lot more progress we could make with colon cancer screening.

Frieden said there are differences of opinion over how many lives could have been saved by early screening. Colonoscopies can detect and remove pre-cancerous growths before they become tumors and mammograms can catch tumors while they are small and easily removed.

LIVES SAVED

The American Cancer Society says that more than 106,000 Americans were diagnosed with colon cancer in 2009 and nearly 50,000 died of it.

What is debated is exactly how many of those would be prevented by colon cancer screening getting as high as can plausibly be expected, Frieden said.

You can argue for 10,000. You can argue for 30,000, he added. I think we can certainly say more than 10,000 very comfortably. For every person who dies from preventable colon cancer it is one too many.

In 2009, 194,000 Americans got breast cancer and 40,000 died. Each year about 12,000 lives are saved as a result of mammography, Frieden said.

If insurance companies stopped requiring co-payments for screening tests, that could help increase the number of people willing to be screened, Frieden said.

The report also showed that people with health insurance are far more likely to be screened for cancer, with 66 percent of those insured getting the recommended breast or colon screening compared to 36 percent of those without.

Currently, about 46 million Americans, or 15 percent of the population, has no health insurance. A new healthcare law signed in March is projected to extend coverage to 32 million more Americans, mainly by requiring them to buy it. source

What is significant about the work is that for a long time folks thought this was just an issue in shorebirds and ducks, Tom Smith of the University of California Los Angeles, who directed the study, said in a telephone interview.

We havent been doing surveillance on wild passerines. Most of the money for doing disease work in birds comes when one works on game species.

Using National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health funds, Smith and colleagues teamed up with David DeSante at the California-based Institute for Bird Populations to test songbirds for avian influenza viruses at the same time they were banding the birds for other research.

They tested more than 13,000 birds from 225 different species in 41 U.S. states, and found low-pathogenic avian influenza in 22 species, notably fox sparrows, Cassins finches, Swainsons thrush and Western tanagers.

NEW RESERVOIR

Ducks are considered the main reservoir for avian influenza viruses. Even highly pathogenic influenza rarely sickens most species of duck, but it wipes out chickens and sometimes other poultry such as turkeys.

Low-pathogenic viruses rarely make birds sick, and Smith said it was not clear what effect the infections had on the songbirds. They were certainly flying around, he said.

The team has also found avian influenza viruses in songbirds in Africawork that has not been published yet.

UCLAs Trevon Fuller said the team looked at satellite data and information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and found a big factor was farming.

There is less habitat for wild birds, Fuller said. So the wild birds are being forced to congregate in smaller areas, and with higher density there is more opportunity for infected birds to shed virus, he said.

In farms you have things like starlings and cowbirds and house sparrows all interacting. Those are areas where you would want to be more vigilant.

H5N1 bird flu has killed or forced the destruction of more than 300 million birds, according to the world animal health organization OIE.

It rarely infects people but has been documented in 500 people since 2003 and has killed 296 of them.

Experts say the danger is that the virus will evolve just slightly into a form that people can easily catch and pass to one another, causing the transmission rate to soar and producing a pandemic in which millions of people could die.

H1N1 swine flu is the result of a so-called reassortment between pig and avian flu viruses. It has so far been about as deadly as seasonal influenza in terms of numbers but has killed far more children and young adults around the world than flu usually does.

Editing by Paul Simao source