Gold and silver are good medicine: "Scientists have developed a new 'golden bullet' to help in the fight against deadly cancers. Adding tiny particles of gold to an existing cancer drug boosts its power by 50 per cent, they have found. This then helps the medicine kill off more malignant cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed... The new study by a team at the University of East Anglia is based on a system which uses a light sensitive drug to target cancer cells. The drug homes in on the the tumour and when exposed to light, it starts to produce an active form of oxygen. This oxygen is toxic to the cancer cells so makes them die off. Dr David Russell and his team wanted to see if there was any way of boosting the effectiveness of the system, officially called photo-dynamic therapy. They attached gold nanoparticles to the drug and used it on cervical cancer cells in the laboratory. It emerged that the gold led to 50 per cent more of the active oxygen, known as 'singlet oxygen', being produced. As expected this then led to more cells taking up the drug and dying off... Professor David Philips, an expert in photo-dynamic therapy from Imperial College London said results so far bode well for the future studies. It is also not the first time that scientists have turned to precious metals to help fight disease. Experts have long known silver can tackle the superbug and can be highly toxic to other bacteria. Silver's antibacterial properties were used by sailors in the past, who put silver coins in barrels of water to purify it. The metal is still used today in water purification and is also used in some plasters and hospital dressings to try to prevent infections with MRSA."


Prosperity is making the Chinese fat too: "People in China are becoming overweight at an alarming rate, a Chinese medical professor has said. Professor Wu Yangfeng said that in the 15 years between 1985 and 2000, the number of overweight and obese children increased 28-fold. He made his comments in a special China edition of the British Medical Journal.... China used to be seen as a country with a lean population, but not any more. Today a fifth of the world's overweight and obese people live in China - and the numbers are rising dramatically. Professor Wu Yangfeng said this posed a considerable health problem, calling on the Chinese authorities to act now to prevent further increase. There seems to be a range of underlying causes - from changes in diet to reduced levels of exercise and a rapid increase in the use of cars."

We wuz wrong! -- again: "Doctors have cast doubt on the standard way of measuring whether people are obese or overweight. New research suggests shortcomings in the system of Body Mass Index (BMI) in identifying whether someone is at risk of dying prematurely. Studies show that heart patients identified as 'overweight' by BMI actually survived longer than those judged to have a 'normal' weight. This is because the system fails to identify if a person's excess weight is muscle rather than fat. If someone is heavy because of muscle, they are less likely to die younger - and should not be classed as overweight - compared to someone whose excess weight is mostly fat. According to the BMI, which has formed the basis of defining healthy and abnormal weight for more than 100 years, more than half the UK population is overweight and a further 20 per cent obese".




Now it's pomegranates that are good for you: "Prostate cancer will claim the lives of an estimated 30,000 men in the United States this year. The second leading cause of cancer death in men, its incidence climbs with age. In Western countries, the disease is reaching nearly epidemic proportions among the elderly. However, the cancer can grow so slowly that many men with prostate cancer will die of something else first. A mystery has always been what factors might improve a man's odds of having a slow-growing malignancy. A new study suggests that drinking pomegranate juice might be one of them. Several studies have associated diets high in plant-derived polyphenols-principally, the deeply pigmented antioxidants in many fruits and vegetables-with lower risks of malignancies including prostate cancer. Because the blood-red juice of pomegranates is especially rich in such compounds, Allan J. Pantuck of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and his colleagues decided to test it against metastatic prostate cancer... The researchers calculated that the men's average doubling time in PSA concentrations-a rough gauge of cancer growth-was 15 months. After men drank a glass of juice a day, their average doubling time more than tripled. In nearly one-third of men, Pantuck notes, PSA values actually fell-in a few cases, dramatically."

Cartoons make kids fat?

Cartoons are making our children fat. And not just because they spend an excessive amount of time in front of the television watching them. Promotional packaging using cartoon characters, celebrities, and tie-in competitions and giveaways have become standard in the junk food industry, and consequently integral to the childhood obesity problem, the Cancer Council NSW says.

In what is says is the first study to examine the extent and nature of food promotions at point of sale, the council conducted research in nine supermarkets across the Sydney metropolitan area. The survey revealed 82 per cent of all promotional gimmicks were being used on junk foods, and the vast bulk were aimed at children. "There is no doubt that promotional tactics are a ploy being adopted by unhealthy food companies to try to sell their product," said Kathy Chapman, a nutritionist at the Cancer Council. "It's little wonder Australian children are facing an obesity epidemic, with unhealthy food companies employing such persuasive tactics that could rival the big tobacco companies."

The highest level of cartoon and movie promotional material was found on the packaging of confectionary, followed by dairy snacks and snack foods - all classified as high in energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt, and low in dietary fibre and other essential ingredients.

Ms Chapman said food manufacturers and advertisers needed to be reined in, to stop the trend of dressing up junk food as "eye candy", encouraging overconsumption of unhealthy foods through schemes that encouraged children to "collect the complete set", and marketing low-nutritional food as part of an entertainment package. "You can tell what's on at the movies these days just by walking into a supermarket and looking at what's on the shelves," Ms Chapman said.

The large supermarket chains say they are not to blame for the panoply of sales gimmicks attached to products. "Our promotions aim to deliver the best-value products to as many of our customers as possible," a spokesman for Woolworths said. A spokesman for Coles Myer supermarkets said promotions for meat, fruit and vegetables also featured in their catalogues. "It is the domain and prerogative of the food companies to market those products in those ways." The chief executive of the Australasian Promotional Products Association, William Kestin, said the industry had been involved in several promotions to get children active.

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Are You A Fatso? It Might Not Be Your Fault

Are all of your pants split at the seams, it may not be your fault that you are obese. You don't have to look at your pudgy face in the mirror and blame yourself for being too lazy to work out and too weak to resist second helpings. Relax, you don't have to take responsibility for looking like a baby hippo.

The Financial Express Net Edition reports: "The obesity epidemic is caused by a `poisoned' food supply that is altering people's biochemistry and driving them to eat more and move less, according to a hypothesis proposed by a University of California-San Francisco doctor who culled results from thousands of studies on obesity."

Great, we live in a society where nobody wants to take responsibility for their moral failings, and here is an egghead doctor giving people an excuse for being obese. Do you spend half of your salary at your local pub and come home drunk every night? You aren't an irresponsible drunk, you are an unfortunate victim of the disease of alcoholism. Did you spend your mortgage money hitting the slots in Vegas? You aren't a selfish jerk, you are suffering from a gambling addiction. And what happens in Vegas, stay in Vegas anyway!

According to this quack's theory, processed food is loaded with sugars that cause the body to believe that it is hungry, which makes people compelled to consume more calories.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a physician to know that processed foods like potato chips and other snacks aren't good for you. A responsible person will eat a couple of snacks per weak, a weak-willed idiot will gorge on snack foods and then blame his obesity on a "poisoned food supply." The more processed foods you eat, the fatter you will become, and the fatter you become the less you will feel like working out. It's a vicious cycle,and the only way out is by taking responsibility for your obesity - not by blaming it on a conspiracy by food companies to make us addicted to processed foods.

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Bloomberg's $164m private war on smoking

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire and former smoker, is to pour $US125 million ($164 million) of his money into a worldwide campaign against smoking, a cause he said was largely neglected by philanthropists. Mr Bloomberg, ranked by Forbes magazine as the 40th-richest American with an estimated wealth of more than $US5 billion, banned smoking in New York bars and restaurants in 2003. "Tobacco is the world's leading killer," said Mr Bloomberg, who was first elected Mayor in 2001. "Smoking doesn't just hurt smokers, it also harms and can kill people around them."

The personal donation aimed to make the world tobacco-free by improving programs that help smokers stop and prevent children from starting, he said. Mr Bloomberg built his wealth after founding the financial information company that bears his name, and he gives away millions of dollars each year.

Now that the 64-year-old Republican is in his last term and still enjoying sky-high approval numbers, every word he utters and move he makes outside city limits stirs speculation about his future plans. He has said repeatedly he will not run for US president and plans to create a foundation for full-time charitable work when he leaves City Hall in 2009.

Bloomberg, who quit smoking about 30 years ago, said on Tuesday that he recently bought a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to house his foundation and said the anti-tobacco initiative was an example of what the foundation would do. The Mayor typically writes his charitable cheques without announcing that he is doing so, but he made a special effort to publicise this donation, which will be spread among several established organisations that have not yet been selected. "Unless we take urgent action, this century a billion people will die from smoking," Bloomberg said. "It is one of the world's biggest killers, and it has sadly been overlooked by the philanthropic community."

John Seffrin, CEO of the American Cancer Society, said the gift would go a long way towards stopping smoking worldwide. "There has never been this kind of philanthropy dedicated to tobacco control," Dr Seffrin said. "Once again, the Mayor's making history, and this will save more lives than any other way that money could be spent."

Mr Bloomberg, who outlawed smoking in city bars and restaurants during his first term, said the funds would help jump-start an international no-smoking drive over two years. Recipients will use the cash for programs that help smokers quit and educate children about the dangers of starting; for funds to push for bans and higher tobacco taxes in other cities and countries; and for a system to track global tobacco use and the effectiveness of anti-smoking efforts. According to the World Health Organisation, an estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide are smokers. In 2003, the WHO adopted an anti-tobacco treaty that requires participants to restrict tobacco advertising, put tougher health warnings on cigarette packets, enact tax hikes and impose smoking bans. The effort mirrors what Mr Bloomberg already has begun. Besides the smoking ban, the city health department runs an aggressive program focused on quitting. Nearly 1.2million New Yorkers smoke, and health officials have given out thousands of free nicotine patches.

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"Trans fat" panic spreads to Australia

The consumption of popular brands of croissants, sandwich spreads and pastry goods can increase the chance of developing coronary heart disease by more than 20 per cent, research shows. But unlike many other developed countries, legislation in Australia does not even require manufacturers to disclose the presence of the offending ingredient on the foods' packaging. Clinical trials conducted by two researchers at Oxford University found that an increase of as little as 2 per cent in the consumption of common foods containing trans fatty acids can lead to a 23 per cent increase in coronary heart disease.

The research published recently in the British Medical Journal adds weight to arguments by an increasing number of nutrition experts that there is no safe level of trans fats consumption. Trans fats are added to most fast foods, and to a range of baked supermarket goods, confectionary and sandwich spreads, to improve taste, texture and shelf life. While trans fats occur naturally in small amounts in dairy products and meat, artificially produced trans fats are manufactured in large quantities by a process called partial hydrogenation.

A review of the Foods Standards Code in Australia last year concluded that saturated fat intake here was of more concern than trans fats, so the labelling of trans fat was only necessary if the product made a nutritional claim such as being low in fat or cholesterol. A spokeswoman for Food Standards Australia New Zealand said yesterday the revised code was now being reviewed again, and the statutory agency was in the final stages of collecting data on the prevalence of trans fatty acids in locally produced food. "But anecdotal evidence suggests there is less reliance here on soy and corn oil [which have a high trans fat content] than overseas," she said. "We tend to use canola more."

However, an analysis last year by the Australian Consumers Association's Choice magazine showed 18 common foods - including Nutella, some shortcrust pastries, party pies, pasties and sausage rolls, and supermarket-baked croissants - had dangerously high levels of trans fats, some even higher than a McDonald's burger and fries. Professor Garry Jennings, the director of the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, said trans fats should be identified on the label, if not removed completely. "There is no doubt that trans fats cause coronary disease and their presence in diet is unnecessary," he said. "It certainly seems that there would be no downside to eliminating them from our diet completely." Barbara Eden, the national nutrition manager for the Heart Foundation, said there was a strong case that trans fats were far more harmful than saturated fats.

Source. Note: The medical article concerned appears to be "Trans fatty acids and cororonary heart disease" by Robert Clarke and Sarah Lewington of Oxford University, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on 29 July 2006. Judging by the publicly available portion of it, it is in fact policy advocacy rather than a report of new research. See here for the other side of the story. It should be noted that the BMJ is notorious for its Leftist political biases and all the disregard for the full facts of the matter which that implies

Believe it if you like: "The man who made the Statue of Liberty appear to vanish may soon claim to do the same for unsightly bags and wrinkles. Master illusionist David Copperfield says he has found the "Fountain of Youth" in the southern Bahamas, amid a cluster of four tiny islands he recently bought for $US50 million. One of his islands in the Exuma chain, Musha Cay, is a private resort that rents for up to $US300,000 a week. The other islands serve as buffers to keep prying eyes away from celebrity guests on the white sand beaches. Copperfield is coy about his reasons for the Fountain of Youth claim. But the man best-known for entertaining with grand deception insists his archipelago also contains the legendary waters that bestow perpetual youth. "I've discovered a true phenomenon," he said. "You can take dead leaves, they come in contact with the water, they become full of life again. "Bugs or insects that are near death come in contact with the water, they'll fly away. "It's an amazing thing, very, very exciting." Copperfield, who turns 50 next month, says he has hired biologists and geologists to examine its potential effect on humans but he is not inviting visitors to swim in or drink from it just yet."


Obesity pill: "A drug which treats obesity by reducing the desire to eat has been launched in the UK. But NHS chiefs warned people not to expect it to become widely available straight away as the cost-effectiveness of the pill needed to be assessed. Rimonabant is the first drug to target factors governing the body's appetite, metabolism and energy use. Trials showed it can reduce weight by a tenth. UK experts said it could not replace healthy food and regular exercise. In the UK, it is estimated that one in five men and a quarter of women are obese. But at a cost of over 55 pounds for a month's treatment, it could end up costing the NHS billions of pounds of money. The drug still has to be assessed by NHS advisers the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The review is not expected for another two years and NHS bosses warned the public not to expect its widespread use immediately".

Paracetamol best for mild pain: "Old-fashioned paracetamol is more effective for treating ongoing back pain and arthritis aches than many newer painkillers, health professionals say. The National Prescribing Service (NPS) has released advice to doctors based on new research showing the benefits of paracetamol. Professor Milton Cohen, from Sydney's St Vincents Clinical School, said recent studies confirmed that paracetamol had very few side effects and was the best choice for mild-to-moderate pain relief. The old-fashioned drugs were available in a slower release formula suitable for people with persistent pain and had a better safety profile than many newer painkillers, Prof Milton said. "Some of the newer analgesics have been shown to have harmful reactions in people with stomach and heart problems as well as interactions with other drugs, so professional advice is recommended for safety as well as pain relief," he said"


We can't win: "There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts. US professor Barry Popkin said all countries - both rich and poor - had failed to address the obesity boom. He told the International Association of Agricultural Economists the number of overweight people had topped 1bn, compared to 800m undernourished. Speaking at an Australian conference, he said changing diets and people doing less physical exercise was the cause. Professor Popkin, from the University of North Carolina, said that the change had happened quickly as obesity was rapidly spreading, while hunger was slowly declining among the world's 6.5bn population. The biggest increases are being seen in parts of Asia with certain populations more susceptible than others. He told the conference at the Gold Coast convention centre near Brisbane: "Obesity is the norm globally and under nutrition, while still important in a few countries and in targeted populations in many others, is no longer the dominant disease." [The usual medicalization of a normal condition]

Dangerous "natural" remedies for women

Women are being urged to avoid so-called natural hormone replacement therapy because of health fears. Some women using the therapy, also known as bio-identical hormones, have suffered elevated hormone levels that could lead to excessive bleeding, increased risk of breast and uterine cancer and blood clots.

Dr John Eden, director of the Sydney Menopause Centre at Randwick's Royal Hospital for Women, said in the past year he had referred two cases of uterine cancer in patients who had been taking natural hormone replacement therapy, to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Dr Eden said these "handmade hormones" were prepared by chemists - known as compounding chemists - without scrutiny. Although the process is legal, it is beyond the regulatory control of the TGA and state-based pharmacy boards. "There's a whole stack of women being treated out there with handmade hormones. It's untested hormone replacement therapy," he said. "Many women think they are getting a herbal treatment and are shocked to learn they are getting a hormone treatment."

One of the NHRT's major wholesalers, Professional Compounding Chemists of Australia, defended the practice, citing an exemption in the TGA Act that allows the preparation of medicines for individuals. The medication is usually made into troches, or lozenges, with the hormones absorbed through the lining of the mouth. NHRT contains the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone, sourced from yams or soy and synthesised in laboratories. However, NHRT can also include the male hormone testosterone, which has not been approved in Australia for use on women. Some compounds also include thyroid hormone, the little-understood sex steroid pregnenolone and a steroid called DHEA, which converts to testosterone and is banned from manufacture in Australia.

Dr Helena Teede, research director at Australia's leading women's health organisation, the Jean Hailes Foundation, said many women were unaware preparations were not approved by the TGA. "There has been very limited research into these preparations and women taking the compounds are essentially guinea pigs," she said.

A leading compounding chemist Richard Stenlake, in Bondi Junction, said he would welcome more regulation of the industry and there were discussions taking place about how it could be done. Mr Stenlake said he was one of the few compounding chemists with the expertise to do regular testing of NHRT preparations to make sure there was the correct dose of hormones. "There should be parameters put on compounding pharmacists that drug companies face," he said. "You have to make sure the dose prescribed by the doctor is the dose that goes out to the patient."

The PCCA defended the safety of the practice, citing an exemption in the TGA Act which allows the preparation of medicines for individuals. However, it acknowledged in a written statement there was no formal testing of the products. "Since compounded products are made on an individual basis according to the needs of a specific patient, it is not possible to test each product before supply to a patient without making the cost prohibitive. Many pharmacies do test samples of products that are made frequently," it said in the statement.

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