Popular Drugs To Lower Blood Pressure Increases The Risk Of Cancer

Popular Drugs To Lower Blood Pressure Increases The Risk Of Cancer.
Use of a average merit of drugs for high blood pressure and nerve failure is associated with a slight boost in cancer risk, a new review of data finds. The drugs are known as angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) and count medicines such as telmisartan (Micardis), losartan (Cozaar, Hyzaar), valsartan (Diovan) and candesartan (Atacand). Overall, the researchers looked at trials involving over 223000 patients. When they concentrated on five trials involving over 60000 patients, in which cancer was a pre-specified endpoint, "patients assigned to these ARBs had about a 10 percent rise in cancer" germane to those not on the medications, said Dr Ilke Sipahi, aide professor of remedy at Case Western Reserve University, result in author of a report in the June 14 online copy of The Lancet Oncology.

The incidence of cancer in people taking an ARB was 7,2 percent, compared to a 6 percent degree in those taking a placebo, the analysis found. The increase in concrete tumors was concentrated in lung cancers, whose incidence was 25 percent higher in those taking an ARB. Despite the lifted in risk, the researchers noted that there was only a slight increase in deaths from cancer among ARB users - 1,8 percent for those taking ARBs, 1,6 percent for those taking placebo, a change that was not statistically significant.

Most of the masses in the trials - 85,7 percent - were taking the ARB telmisartan (Micardis), while the residuum took other ARBs such as losartan, valsartan and candesartan. The drugs work by blocking chamber receptors for angiotensin II, a hormone that plays an important role in regulating blood pressure. Another distinction of drugs that are used for the same purposes are the ACE inhibitors, which prevent the establishment of the active form of angiotensin. "Experimental studies using cancer cell lines and animal models have implicated the angiotensin procedure in the proliferation of cells and also tumors. Evidence from animal studies show that blockage of angiotensin receptors can inspirit tumor growth by promoting new blood vessel forming in tumors".

But the evidence that ARBs can play a real role in cancer growth remains unclear and these findings only show an association, not cause-and-effect. "Before we rift to that conclusion, I feel we need more analysis".

Poor Diet And Lack Of Physical Activity Remains The Number One Killer Of Both Men And Women In The USA

Poor Diet And Lack Of Physical Activity Remains The Number One Killer Of Both Men And Women In The USA.
There's no deficit of systematic smoking gun proving that staying in shape and eating prerogative are critical to a long and healthy life, but the fact that over 8 million Americans have histories of mettle attack, stroke or heart failure suggests that too few are taking the message seriously. That's the theme of a imaginative scientific statement from the American Heart Association (AHA), which reviewed 74 previously published studies and developed definitive behavioral-health strategies to help people stay heart-healthy.

The AHA finds that common-sense steps - things as basic as writing down how much you exercise each day - can solemnize people on track to stay heart-healthy. "If the patient works with the doctors and writes it down, congenial keeping diaries of either food or activities, that that small bit of information can extraordinarily help translate into the patient keeping motivated to follow the healthier lifestyle," noted Dr Mary Ann McLaughlin, president of the AHA's New York City Board of Directors.

And "This is a well-organized assess of multiple studies that have addressed lifestyle changes as they relate to physical action and diet," added Dr Ralph Sacco, AHA president and a professor of neurology, epidemiology and mortal genetics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "It's a very rigorous painstaking process that grades and reviews all the existing literature that is out there on behavioral change. This paper truly talks about the scientific evidence supporting approaches of how to change".

The new statement was released online Monday and will appear in the July 27 number of Circulation. Heart disease remains the number one Bluebeard of both men and women in United States. Lifestyle factors, namely a poor diet and scarcity of physical activity, are major culprits in the twin epidemics of obesity and heart disease. According to upbringing information in the study, improving such lifestyle factors to eradicate major cardiovascular bug would boost Americans' average life expectancy by close to 7 years.

Having a good divine of your current cardiovascular condition is a good start, the experts said. "'Life's Simple 7' is one modus vivendi people can understand what the risks are and then begin to take control of their own health". The AHA program asks Americans to follow seven guidelines for a shape life, including monitoring their blood twist and staying active.

Nutritional Supplements Affect The Body In Different Ways

Nutritional Supplements Affect The Body In Different Ways.
With three unripe studies determination that a daily multivitamin won't help boost the regular American's health, the experts behind the research are urging people to abandon use of the supplements. The studies found that popping a ordinary multivitamin didn't ward off heart problems or memory loss, and wasn't tied to a longer human span. The studies, published in the Dec 17, 2013 conclusion of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, found that multivitamin and mineral supplements did not work any better in these respects than placebo pills. Dietary supplements are a multibillion-dollar commerce in the United States, and multivitamins tale for nearly half of all vitamin sales, according to the US Office of Dietary Supplements.

But a growing body of evidence suggests that multivitamins come forward little or nothing in the way of health benefits, and some studies suggest that high doses of inevitable vitamins might cause harm. As a result, the authors behind the new research said, it's tempo for most people to stop taking them. "We believe that it's clear that vitamins are not working," said Dr Eliseo Guallar, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In a strongly worded think-piece on the three studies, Guallar and his co-authors urged consumers to hinder spending money on multivitamins. Even a representatives of the vitamin industry asked kinsmen to temper their hopes about dietary supplements. "We all need to manage our expectations about why we're taking multivitamins," Duffy MacKay, evil president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a work group that represents supplement manufacturers, said in a prepared statement.

So "Research shows that the two vital reasons people take multivitamins are for overall health and wellness and to fill in nutrient gaps. Science still demonstrates that multivitamins exert oneself for those purposes, and that alone provides reason for common man to take a multivitamin". However it's not clear that taking supplements to fill gaps in a less-than-perfect chamber really translates into any kind of health boost.

Some Pills For Heartburn Increased The Risk Of Pneumonia

Some Pills For Heartburn Increased The Risk Of Pneumonia.
Popular heartburn drugs, including proton grill inhibitors and histamine-2 receptor antagonists, may escalate the peril of pneumonia, new research finds. Researchers in Korea analyzed the results of 31 studies on heartburn drugs published between 1985 and 2009. "Our results suggest that the use of acid suppressive drugs is associated with an increased jeopardy of pneumonia," said Dr Sang Min Park of the bailiwick of subdivision medicine at Seoul National University Hospital in Korea. "Patients should be wary at overuse of acid-suppressive drugs, both high-dose and long duration".

Sales of these enormously popular drugs - the relocate best-selling category of medications worldwide - reached nearly $27 billion in the United States in 2005, according to experience information in the study, published Dec 20, 2010 in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Proton examine inhibitors (PPIs) cut acid production in the stomach and are used to treat heartburn, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and gastric ulcers. They embody omeprazole (Prilosec), lansoprazole (Prevacid) and esomeprazole (Nexium).

Histamine-2 receptor antagonists, often called H2 blockers, use a abundant mechanism to reduce stomach acid and incorporate cimetidine (Tagamet), famotidine (Pepcid), nizatidine (Axid) and ranitidine (Zantac). According to Consumer Reports, sales of a Nexium tout hit $4,8 billion in 2008. Yet recently, studies have raised concerns about the drugs. Several studies have linked PPIs to a higher chance of fractures and an infection with a bacterium called Clostridium difficile.

Some c whilom studies also linked heartburn drugs to a higher endanger of pneumonia, but the research has been mixed, according to the study authors. Their meta-analysis combined the results of eight observational studies that found that taking PPIs increased the chances of developing pneumonia by 27 percent, while taking H2 blockers resulted in a 22 percent increased endanger of pneumonia.

An criticism of 23 randomized clinical trials found ancestors taking H2 blockers had a 22 percent increased stake of getting hospital-acquired pneumonia. "Gastroenterologists in general have become more cognizant of the fact that these drugs can have some lesser effects," said Dr Michael Brown, a gastroenterologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. "For a lengthy time, we were very happy to suppress people's acid without thinking about the consequences. Now we are starting to get the drift some issues".

Mammogram Warns Against Cancer

Mammogram Warns Against Cancer.
Often-conflicting results from studies on the value of procedure mammography have only fueled the argument about how often women should get a mammogram and at what age they should start. In a new examination of previous research, experts have applied the same statistical yardstick to four large studies and re-examined the results. They found that the benefits are more in conformance across the large studies than previously thought. All the studies showed a affluent reduction in breast cancer deaths with mammography screening.

So "Women should be reassured that mammography is completely effective," said study researcher Robert Smith, senior manager of cancer screening for the American Cancer Society. Smith is scheduled to present the findings this week at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The findings also were published in the November distribution of the weekly Breast Cancer Management.

In 2009, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an self-assured group of national experts, updated its recommendation on mammography, advising women elderly 50 to 74 to get mammograms every two years, not annually.The group also advised women venerable 40 to 49 to talk to their doctors about benefits and harms, and decide on an lone basis whether to start screening. Other organizations, including the American Cancer Society, on to recommend annual screening mammograms beginning at age 40.

In assessing mammography's benefits and harms, researchers often demeanour at the number of women who must be screened to prevent one death from breast cancer - a issue that has ranged widely among studies. In assessing harms, experts defraud into account the possibility of false positives. Other possible harms include finding a cancer that would not otherwise have been found on screening (and not been questionable in a woman's lifetime) and anxiety associated with additional testing.

New Immune Reserves To Fight Against HIV

New Immune Reserves To Fight Against HIV.
Scientists reveal they've discovered conceivable new weapons in the war against HIV: antibody "soldiers" in the inoculated system that might prevent the AIDS virus from invading human cells. According to the researchers, these newly found antibodies lock with and neutralize more than 90 percent of a group of HIV-1 strains, involving all notable genetic subtypes of the virus. That breadth of activity could potentially move research closer toward advancement of an HIV vaccine, although that goal still remains years away, at best, experts say.

The findings "show that the exempt system can make very potent antibodies against HIV," said Dr John Mascola, a vaccine researcher and co-author of two imaginative studies published online July 8 in the record Science. "We are trying to understand why they exist in some patients and not others. That will hand us in the vaccine design process".

Antibodies are warriors in the body's immune system that utilize to prevent infection. "Neutralizing" antibodies bind to germs and try to disable them, explained Ralph Pantophlet, an immunologist and aide-de-camp professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

An Effect Of Hormone Therapy On Breast Cancer

An Effect Of Hormone Therapy On Breast Cancer.
Although several overweight studies in latest years have linked the use of hormone therapy after menopause with an increased danger of breast cancer, the authors of a new analysis claim the evidence is too limited to confirm the connection. Dr Samuel Shapiro, of the University of Cape Town Medical School in South Africa, and his colleagues took another air at three eminently studies that investigated hormone therapy and its credible health risks - the Collaborative Reanalysis, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) and the Million Women Study. Together, the results of these studies found overall an increased jeopardize of breast cancer centre of women who used the combination form of hormone therapy with both estrogen and progesterone.

Women who have had a hysterectomy and use estrogen-only group therapy also have an increased risk, two of the studies found. The WHI, however, found that estrogen-only remedy may not increase breast cancer risk and may actually decrease it, although that has not been confirmed in other research. After the WHI scrutinize was published in July 2002, women dropped hormone cure in droves.

Many experts pointed to that decline in hormone therapy use as the reason breast cancer rates were declining. Not so, Shapiro said: "The declivity in breast cancer extent started three years before the fall in HRT use commenced, lasted for only one year after the HRT dab commenced, and then stopped". For instance between 2002 and 2003, when large numbers of women were still using hormone therapy, the numeral of new breast cancer cases fell by nearly 7 percent.

In taking a bearing at the three studies again, Shapiro and his team reviewed whether the evidence satisfied criteria superior to researchers, such as the strength of an association, taking into account other factors that could influence risk. Their conclusion: The fact is not strong enough to say definitively that hormone therapy causes breast cancer. The go into is published in the current issue of the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care.

Risks And Benefits Of Treatment Kids' Ear Infections With Antibiotics

Risks And Benefits Of Treatment Kids' Ear Infections With Antibiotics.
Antibiotics may servant more children with on the qui vive ear infections recover quickly, but the drugs also come with the endanger of side effects, concludes a new analysis of previous research. Between 4 and 10 percent of children know side effects, such as diarrhea or rash, from antibiotic use, according to the analysis. "If you have 100 fit children with an acute ear infection, about 80 would get better with just over-the-counter pest and fever relief - but if you treated all 100 of those kids with antibiotics, you would quickly smoke 92 of them.

But, the number of children who would benefit is similar to the number of children who would experience stand effects like diarrhea and rash," explained the study's lead author, Dr Tumaini Coker, an aide-de-camp professor of pediatrics at the Mattel Children's Hospital and the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles. "Parents genuinely have to weigh the risks and benefits of care when a child has an ear infection".

In addition to finding that early prescribing of antibiotics offers some improve in the treatment of ear infections, the researchers also found that newer, name-brand antibiotics didn't appear to be any more efficacious than old stand-bys, such as amoxicillin, which are often generic and less expensive. "Parents need to know that when a child gets an attention infection, antibiotic treatment might not always be the best option," said Coker, who is also a researcher at the RAND Corporation, a non-profit enquire institute. "And, for most healthy children with a newly diagnosed ear infection, we couldn't realize any evidence that newer antibiotics worked any better than older ones".

Acute ear infection (otitis media) is the most worn out reason that antibiotics are prescribed for children in the United States, according to CV information in the study. The average cost of an ear infection is $350 per child, which ends up costing the express health-care system about $2,8 billion annually.

Stem Cells From A New Source For The Treatment Of The Heart

Stem Cells From A New Source For The Treatment Of The Heart.
Stem cells from the amniotic sac that surrounds a fetus may someday be old to renewal impair caused by a heart attack, Japanese researchers report. The work, so far only conducted in animals, raises the feasibility of a non-controversial source of stem cells to expound not only heart disease but also many other conditions, said Dr Shunichiro Miyoshi, an assistant professor in the cardiology subdivision at the Keio University School of Medicine, and co-author of a report in the May 28 online dissemination of Circulation Research. "I believe these cells may be utilized in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as SLA systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis".

The amniotic sac is typically discarded after childbirth. SLA is an autoimmune disability in which the body's exempt system cells mistakenly seize healthy tissue. The cells that Miyoshi and his colleagues have used in mouse studies can simply be obtained in large numbers and offer another major advantage: they bypass the need to match donor-recipient apartment typing.

So "At the present time there is no barrier for clinical utilization. We can secure amniotic membrane from every delivery. We do not need to match donor-recipient matching of complicated HLA typing". HLA refers to the protein markers that are found on most of the body's cells. Transplanted cells that be at variance from the recipient's HLA quintessence will be attacked and destroyed by the immune system.

The Keio researchers have begun a series of studies aimed at the good-natured use of the amniotic stem cells. "Now we are performing the test on a swine model. Immediately after we get a good result, we are planning to perform clinical trials. I maintain it will go on within a few years. But it may depend on the strength of our government regulation".

The journal report describes laboratory make in which stem cells obtained from amniotic membranes were transformed into heart cells, 33 percent of which form spontaneously and which improved rat heart function by more than 34 percent when injected two weeks after a insensitivity attack. The injected cells decreased the room of heart damage by 13 percent to 18 percent and survived for more than four weeks in the rats without the use of drugs to run-in immune rejection. The amniotic cells are much easier to convert into kindness cells than stem cells from other sources, such as bone marrow or fat.

Chemotherapy Is One Of The Main Ways To Treat Cancer

Chemotherapy Is One Of The Main Ways To Treat Cancer.
Women fighting an forward appearance of breast cancer may benefit from adding indisputable drugs to their chemotherapy regimen, and taking them prior to surgery, new research finds. This pre-surgical stimulant therapy boosts the likelihood that no cancer cells will be found in breast tissue removed during either mastectomy or lumpectomy, according to two untrained studies. The approach, called "neoadjuvant" chemotherapy, is being given to an increasing include of women with what's known as triple-negative breast cancer.

Currently, the approach results in no identifiable cancer cells at mastectomy or lumpectomy in about-one third of patients, experts estimate. In such cases, the imperil of a tumor recurrence becomes lower. "Chemotherapy before surgery does piece in triple-negative chest cancer. What we want to do is make it work better," said study researcher Dr Hope Rugo.

Rugo is kingpin of breast oncology and clinical trials education at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco. Triple-negative cancers have cells that deficit receptors for the hormones estrogen and progesterone. In addition, they don't have an remaining of the protein known as HER2 on the cubicle surfaces.

So, treatments that work on the receptors and drugs that object HER2 don't work in these cancers. In two new studies, researchers got better results by adding drugs to the pattern chemo regimen prior to surgery. However, both studies are condition 2 trials, so more research is needed. Both studies are due to be presented Friday at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Moderate Consumption Of Coffee Or Tea Reduces The Risk Of Heart Disease

Moderate Consumption Of Coffee Or Tea Reduces The Risk Of Heart Disease.
Drinking coffee or tea in moderation reduces the jeopardize of developing empathy disease, and both tipsy and deliberate tea drinking reduces the jeopardy of dying from the condition, according to a large-scale study from Dutch researchers penises. The study, led by physicians and researchers at the University Medical Center Utrecht, examined material on coffee and tea consumption from 37,514 residents of The Netherlands who were followed for 13 years.

It found that men and women who had two to four cups a lifetime of coffee had a 20 percent lop off gamble of heart disease compared to those drinking less than two or more than four cups a day. Moderate coffee intake also marginally - but not significantly - reduced the endanger of finish from heart disease and all causes.

Tea's performance was stronger on both counts. Drinking three to six cups of tea a daytime was associated with a 45 percent reduced chance of death from soul disease, compared to drinking less than one cup a day, and drinking more than six cups of tea a hour was associated with a 36 percent drop risk of getting heart disease in the first place.

The clear protective effects may be linked to antioxidants and other plant chemicals in the beverages, but how they wield is unclear, according to researchers. No effect of coffee or tea consumption on the peril of stroke was seen in the study. Study authors found, however, that coffee and tea drinkers in The Netherlands had very abundant fitness behaviors, with more coffee drinkers smoking and having less trim diets.

Dr Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and marrow disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, prominent that there has been continued controversy about the impact of daily tea and coffee consumption on health. "Here is another deliberate over that reaffirms there is no increased risk of crux disease and stroke, and in fact, when drinking coffee in moderation, there is Deo volente a reduction in your risk of heart disease," she wrote on behalf of the AHA.

Experts note, however, that it's too anciently to make established recommendations on coffee and tea drinking for the sake of better health, without thought a growing number of studies that suggest the beverages may help nurture against heart disease. "Based on current evidence, it is very difficult to come up with an paragon amount of coffee or tea for the general population," said Dr Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.