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Health Highlights: May 29, 2008
Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay: San Francisco Fittest Large City San Francisco is the fittest of the United States' most populous cities, according to a study that looked at 16 large metropolitan areas, according to the American College of Sport Medicine. The report analyzed several health and fitness-related factors and found that San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area scored above average on a number of indicators:
Rounding out the top five were Seattle, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. The bottom five were Detroit (lowest), Riverside, Calif., Los Angeles, Houston, and Indianapolis. ----- Bicarbonate Changes May Warn of Early Cancer Using MRI scans to check for changes in naturally-produced bicarbonate may help identify cancers in the very early stages, says a Cancer Research UK study. Bicarbonate plays a role in the body's balancing of acid and alkali. It's known that cancer turns bicarbonate into carbon dioxide, BBC News reported. Almost all cancer has a lower pH, which means it's more acidic than surrounding tissue. Currently, there is no way to safely measure pH in patients. In test on mice, the researchers boosted MRI sensitivity more than 20,000 times and found they were able to monitor changes in bicarbonate and identify early-stage cancer. The findings were published in the journal Nature . "This technique could be used as a highly-sensitive early warning system for signs of cancer," lead researcher Professor Kevin Brindle said in prepared statement. "By exploiting the body's natural pH balancing system, we have found a potentially safe way of measuring pH to see what's going on inside patients." As well as detecting cancer, Brindle said this method could be used to determine if cancer patients are responding to treatment, BBC News reported. ----- Hormone's Activity Influences Men's Heart Risk, Life Expectancy Higher levels of activity of the hormone IGF-1 (insulin-growth factor 1) may reduce men's heart risk and boost their life expectancy, according to a study by researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. IGF-1 is released by the liver and is similar in molecular structure to insulin. The researchers said the hormone plays an important role in childhood growth and continues to have an effect in adulthood, United Press International reported. At the start of the study, serum samples were taken from 376 healthy men, ages 73 to 94. The men were followed for up to eight years. Men with the lowest level of IGF-1 activity had a significantly higher death rate than those with the highest level of activity. The researchers said the results were especially significant in people at high risk of death from cardiovascular complications, UPI reported. The study was published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism . ----- 60% of U.S. Adults Have at Least One Chronic Condition In the United States, 60 percent of people aged 18 and older have at least one chronic medical condition, defined as one expected to last at least one year and result in limitations or the need for ongoing care. The latest News and Numbers summary from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality looked at 2005 data, finding that:
----- Drug Doesn't Stem Bleeding in People With Rare Disorder: FDA The unapproved GlaxoSmithKline drug Promacta doesn't appear to restrict bleeding in people with a rare blood disorder called chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, reviewers from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. Glaxo studies submitted to the FDA "do not provide robust evidence" to back the company's assertions that the drug controls the severity and frequency of bleeding, the Associated Press quoted agency reviewers as saying. The anti-clotting disorder of the immune system, affecting some 60,000 people in the United States, leads to abnormally high bleeding and bruising. It causes the body to destroy its own blood platelets, which are necessary for clotting. Promacta is designed to raise levels of blood platelets. But a pair of studies sent to the FDA for review showed no significant difference between Promacta and a non-medicinal placebo, the wire service reported. On May 30, an FDA panel of experts is set to meet and announce whether to recommend approval of the drug. The full agency isn't bound by the decisions of its advisory panels, but usually follows them. ----- Big Increase Reported in Intestinal 'Superbug' Infections The number of Americans hospitalized with the dangerous intestinal superbug Clostridium difficile has been increasing by more than 10,000 a year, and the germ was a factor in nearly 300,000 hospitalizations in 2005, more than double the number in 2000, a new study says. Lead author Dr. Marya Zilberberg, of the University of Massachusetts, and colleagues looked at more than 36 million annual discharges from non-governmental U.S. hospitals to create national estimates for C. difficile cases, the Associated Press reported. The researchers also concluded that 2.3 percent of C. difficile cases in 2004 were fatal (about 5,500 deaths), nearly double the percentage of C. difficile cases that were fatal in 2000. C. difficile has developed resistance to some antibiotics and has become a common threat in hospitals and nursing homes. "The nature of this infection is changing. It's more severe," Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the AP . He was not involved in the study, which is published in the June issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases .
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