Stigma Prolongs Global HIV Epidemic Among Gays

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — High rates of HIV among gay and bisexual men continue in many regions of the world because of discriminatory laws and lack of access to preventive services, a new study finds.

“While HIV rates have flattened overall in recent years, we’re really concerned that the HIV epidemic is continuing among gay men and we’re going in the wrong direction,” said study leader Dr. Chris Beyrer, a professor of public health and human rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

“It’s painful that the history of AIDS is looking like its future, but that’s actually where we are,” said Beyrer, who is also president of the International AIDS Society. “But the first step in taking on a problem is recognizing and articulating it, and we’ve really done that here.”

Four years ago, the same researchers laid out a plan to curb HIV epidemics in gays. Among other priorities, the plan called for policy reforms and improved HIV prevention, such as expanded access to pre-exposure medication.

For the latest study, the scientists examined medical research published between January 2007 and October 2015 to identify any improvements. But little progress has been made, they report in the July 9 issue of The Lancet.

HIV infection rates are falling among heterosexual men and women in many countries. Many people with the virus are also living long lives with the help of antiretroviral treatment. But this isn’t the case among gay men, even in middle- and high-income countries, the researchers said.

A new $100 million investment fund from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was set up for at-risk groups, including gay and bisexual men. Several countries also approved or initiated projects to improve access to preventive treatment among gay men, the researchers noted.

Overall, however, preventive services aren’t reaching gays who are HIV-negative and at high risk for infection, the authors found. Loss of civil liberties among the gay community in some countries, including Russia, Nigeria and Uganda, have also played a role in continued high HIV rates among gay men, they said.

In the United States, a 20-year-old gay black man has a 50 percent chance of becoming infected with HIV during his lifetime, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Insured Americans have access to effective preventive treatment, but HIV epidemics continue among gay men in low-income, southern minority communities where Medicaid coverage has not been expanded, the researchers said.

Sodomy is still a crime in many countries. And even websites providing information on HIV have been shut down in certain parts of the world.

“Stigma and discrimination continue to play a very big role in these epidemics,” Beyrer said in a Hopkins news release. “In many countries, these men are just not welcome in health clinics and the fear of discrimination stands in the way of not only treatment, but even just the testing that can go a long way toward stemming the spread of disease.”

Looking ahead, the researchers expect Mexico, Argentina and the Netherlands to expand the use of preventive HIV treatments. They also hope some countries will repeal anti-gay laws.

“The global epidemic of HIV in gay men is ongoing and efforts to address it remain insufficient,” said Beyrer. “This must change if we are ever to ever truly achieve an AIDS-free generation.”

He will oversee the International AIDS Conference, which begins July 18 in Durban, South Africa.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides more on HIV/AIDS.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29m0BEW

All About the Scary Throat Emergency That Nearly Killed Sarah Silverman

Second, Unrelated Cancers Strike 1 in 12 Cancer Patients

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A new study found that 8 percent of patients — or one in 12 — already diagnosed with one form of cancer end up developing a second type of unrelated cancer.

The second cancer was fatal in 55 percent of the cases, the study found.

“As clinicians, we can become so focused on surveilling our patients to see if a primary cancer recurs that we sometimes may not be aware that patients can be at risk of developing a second, unrelated cancer,” said study author Dr. Karim Chamie, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles.

Chamie added that the findings should encourage physicians to adjust the way they tackle follow-up care and monitoring among cancer patients.

The current study included more than 2 million people diagnosed with cancer. Patients in the study were initially diagnosed with cancers of the prostate, breast, lung, colon, rectum, bladder, uterus or kidney, or melanoma or non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Of those who developed a second cancer, only 13 percent died from their initial cancer, researchers said.

Chamie’s team found that patients diagnosed with bladder cancer were the most at risk for developing a second cancer.

Thirty-four percent of bladder cancer patients were diagnosed with a second cancer during the 20-year study. Of those second cancers, 25 percent were lung cancer cases, the study found.

The study team suggested that this finding points to the need for annual screening with a CT scan of the lungs for bladder cancer patients.

“Lung cancer is a very common and extremely lethal disease, and the national screening trial found [in 2011] CT scans actually saved lives,” Chamie explained in a school news release.

“We could make a significant improvement in cancer survivorship, for instance, if we monitored bladder cancer patients annually for second, unrelated lung cancers,” he added.

People initially diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma also faced a particularly high risk for a second cancer, the research team noted. The most common second cancers for these patients were lung, prostate or breast cancers.

The findings are in the July 5 issue of Cancer.

More information

There’s more on second cancers at the American Cancer Society.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29qy0li

Dinosaurs Got Tumors, Too

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Even dinosaurs developed tumors, with some more prone to growths than others, a new study suggests.

An international group of researchers detected a facial tumor in the fossilized jawbone of a dwarf dinosaur (Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus), also known as a hadrosaur.

Subsequent imaging indicated the duck-billed dinosaur had a noncancerous tumor called an ameloblastoma.

This type of growth has been found in people, other mammals and some modern reptiles, according to the study.

“This discovery is the first ever described in the fossil record and the first to be thoroughly documented in a dwarf dinosaur,” said study researcher Kate Acheson, a doctoral student at the University of Southampton in England.

“Telmatosaurus is known to be close to the root of the duck-billed dinosaur family tree, and the presence of such a deformity early in their evolution provides us with further evidence that the duck-billed dinosaurs were more prone to tumors than other dinosaurs,” she said in a university news release.

The jawbone is said to be 67 million to 69 million years old. It was discovered in the “Valley of the Dinosaurs,” an area in Hateg Country Dinosaurs Geopark, in Transylvania, a region in western Romania.

“The discovery of an ameloblastoma in a duck-billed dinosaur documents that we have more in common with dinosaurs than previously realized. We get the same [abnormal growths],” said Dr. Bruce Rothschild, from Northeast Ohio Medical University, in Rootstown. He specializes in the study of ancient diseases and injuries.

The dinosaur’s jawbone reveals it died early but exactly why isn’t clear. The researchers speculate the tumor probably wasn’t painful or the direct cause of the dinosaur’s death.

It may have led indirectly to its death, however. One theory is that predators might have considered the tumor a sign of weakness or vulnerability, leading to an attack.

The study was published July 5 in Scientific Reports.

More information

The National Organization for Rare Disorders provides more on ameloblastoma.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29qxSCc

Smoking in Pregnancy May Be Under-Reported

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A significantly higher percentage of American women may be smoking while pregnant than researchers have previously believed, a new study suggests.

The finding is based on urine tests that can measure nicotine exposure compared to what pregnant women report about their smoking habits.

“We have long suspected that smoking status during pregnancy is under-reported,” study senior author Dr. Jim Greenberg, director of the Perinatal Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said in a hospital news release.

“But now we know just how many women struggle to quit smoking when they are pregnant,” he added.

Smoking while pregnant boosts the risk for premature birth by as much as 25 percent, the study authors noted. Smoking is also associated with the three most common causes of infant death. It’s also considered to be a risk factor for both sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and birth defects, the researchers said.

For the study, the investigators reviewed the birth records of more than 700 women who gave birth at a single hospital in Ohio between 2014 and 2015. In Ohio, such records include pregnant women’s self-reported smoking habits during their last trimester.

These self-reports were cross-referenced with urine samples taken from the same women. Those samples are now routinely obtained in maternity centers in southwest Ohio to test for drug use, so that babies exposed to opioids in the womb can be treated quickly after birth, the study authors explained.

Just under 9 percent of women admitted to smoking while pregnant, but markers for tobacco found in the urine suggested that 16.5 percent had high levels of nicotine exposure during pregnancy. An additional 7.5 percent had low-level nicotine exposure, the study found.

Another 7.5 percent of the women tested positive for exposure to secondhand smoke while pregnant, the findings showed.

About 8 percent of black women in the study group admitted to smoking cigarettes. But urine tests suggested that 21 percent were smokers, according to the report.

“This is extremely important new information for us as we work to better understand risk factors for preterm birth,” Greenberg noted.

The investigators said that the findings point to a need for increased public health efforts to help women — especially minority women — quit smoking during pregnancy.

The study was published online July 7 in the Journal of Perinatology.

More information

There’s more on smoking and pregnancy at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29D21Aj

Researchers Get Closer to Test Predicting Colon Cancer’s Return

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A blood test that detects bits of DNA shed from colon cancers may someday help doctors predict a relapse, researchers report.

This “liquid biopsy” predicted — with imperfect accuracy — the return of colon cancer in patients with early forms of the disease, the team said.

“Although this and other DNA-based blood tests are not perfect, this study shows that when we find tumor DNA circulating in the blood of cancer patients, recurrence is very likely,” said study co-author Nickolas Papadopoulos. He is professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

As the researchers explained, stage 2 colon tumors generally have not yet spread to other organs in the body. This makes it tough to determine which patients stand to benefit from chemotherapy after their surgery.

“Some of these [stage 2] cancers will recur, and we need to improve our diagnostic approaches to detect recurrence earlier than it can be found with current, conventional methods,” Dr. Bert Vogelstein, co-director of the Ludwig Center at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, said in a hospital news release.

A test that could spot patients with a high chance of cancer recurrence would help with those decisions, the researchers said.

In the study, investigators at Johns Hopkins and the University of Melbourne followed 230 patients with stage 2 colon cancer treated at 13 hospitals in Australia for four years.

The researchers collected more than 1,000 blood samples from the participants before and after surgery, and also performed genetic analysis of tissue samples derived from the patients’ tumors.

During the study, cancer-related mutations in each blood sample were monitored using DNA tests. Patients also underwent a CT scan of their entire body every six months after surgery for two years, looking for tumor recurrence.

Among the 230 patients, 20 did show telltale cancer-linked DNA fragments in their blood, the study authors reported.

Of these 20 patients, six went on to receive additional chemotherapy, and three of those six did experience a cancer recurrence.

Of the 14 who did not undergo additional chemotherapy, 11 developed a recurrence of their tumor, detected on a CT scan, according to the report.

The test was not perfect: The researchers noted that another 14 patients experienced cancer recurrences, even though their blood tests did not detect cancer-linked DNA.

Good methods to predict patients’ risk for cancer recurrence are needed, the researchers said, and labs around the world are working to develop DNA-based tests. However, at the present time there are no such tests for cancer approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Cost could be an issue, too: According to the study authors, it’s estimated that, if approved, these blood tests would cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and it’s unclear if insurance companies would reimburse the cost.

Two colon cancer experts agreed that the new study is promising, but more research is needed.

“This study is an important first step, but it remains a first step of a likely long road ahead to perfect this technology to the point where it can be clinically useful and affordable to our health system,” said Dr. David Bernstein, chief of hepatology at Northwell Health in Manhasset, N.Y.

Dr. David Rivadeneira directs colon and rectal surgery at Huntington Hospital in Huntington, N.Y. He agreed that although the new findings are “encouraging . . . it is still early in the process and is not to be considered standard of care.”

The study was published July 6 in Science Translational Medicine.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about colon cancer detection.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29D1MW5

HPV-Linked Cancers Still Climbing in U.S.

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Cancers linked to the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) keep rising in the United States, even though most cases are preventable, health officials reported Thursday.

Cervical cancer, and mouth and throat cancers in men, accounted for most of the nearly 39,000 HPV-associated cancers diagnosed annually from 2008 to 2012, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HPV vaccination and cervical cancer screening could keep more than 28,000 of these cancers from developing, the agency estimated.

“Most cervical cancers are preventable with regular screening for precancerous lesions among women aged 21 to 65 years, linked with follow-up for abnormal test results,” the CDC researchers wrote in the report.

But cancer experts said that public perception may have to change first, especially with respect to HPV vaccination.

“In order to increase HPV vaccination rates, we must change the perception of the HPV vaccine from something that prevents a sexually transmitted disease to a vaccine that prevents cancer,” said Electra Paskett. She is co-director of the Cancer Control Research Program at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer in Columbus.

“Every parent should ask the question: If there was a vaccine I could give my child that would prevent them from developing six different cancers, would I give it to them? The answer would be a resounding yes — and we would have a dramatic decrease in HPV-related cancers across the globe,” Paskett added.

At current rates, these sexually linked cancers are developing in almost 12 of every 100,000 persons, the CDC said. In the previous five-year period, fewer than 33,500 of these HPV-linked cancers were diagnosed annually.

Using data from national cancer registries, CDC analysts looked for certain cancer types — cervical, head and neck, and anal, among them — that have links to HPV. They found an average of 38,793 such cancers annually from 2008 to 2012.

When looked at closely, researchers confirmed the HPV connection in 79 percent — or 30,700 — of cases. This included about 19,200 cancer diagnoses in females and 11,600 diagnoses in males.

The agency estimates that as many as 28,500 of these were preventable with recommended HPV vaccination.

In men, the head and neck cancers mainly involved the tongue, tonsils and pharynx — or “oropharyngeal” cancers, the agency reported. They’re often symptom-free, but may include persistent sore throat, earaches and pain when swallowing, according to the CDC.

Breaking down the figures, whites had higher rates of oral and throat cancers than blacks and Hispanics, the report found.

However, Hispanics and blacks were more likely to have cervical cancer than whites. The state with the highest cervical cancer rate was West Virginia; Vermont’s rate was the lowest, according to the report.

“Full vaccination coverage of the U.S. population could prevent future HPV-attributable cancers and potentially reduce racial and ethnic disparities in HPV-associated cancer incidence,” according to report author Dr. Laura Viens and colleagues.

The findings were published in the July 8 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The CDC recommends routine HPV vaccination at ages 11 to 12 for boys and girls, and through age 26 for females and age 21 for males if they were not previously vaccinated.

Anyone who has ever had sex — genital or otherwise — can get HPV, scientists say.

Oral cancers in particular are HPV-related, said Dr. Jill Rabin of Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, N.Y.

“This is important since oral-genital contact may be quite prevalent and teens may not consider this as ‘true’ sexual activity,” Rabin said. Oral-genital sex also places teens at risk for penile, rectal and vulvar-vaginal cancers, she said.

“The reason the vaccine is given to girls (aged 9 to 26) and boys (aged 9 to 21) is that the younger the person is vaccinated, the better they will respond in making antibodies which help fight and prevent the HPV,” Rabin explained.

“We give the vaccine now, in other words, to protect against exposure to HPV later, when they are older,” she said.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more on HPV vaccination.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29D2iDj

Depression Strikes Nearly 3 Million U.S. Teens a Year

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — In just one year, almost 3 million U.S. teens suffered a major bout of depression, a new government report shows.

“Adolescence is a critical time in a person’s development, and battling with depression can be devastating for teens unless they receive effective treatment,” said Paolo del Vecchio, director of the Center for Mental Health Services at the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

“Effective treatment is available, but parents, teachers and all concerned members of the community must work to assure that adolescents in need get help,” del Vecchio said in an agency news release.

These young people feel depressed and lose interest in their activities for at least two weeks. They may also have trouble sleeping, eating or concentrating, the agency explained.

The overall rate of depression among young people jumped to 11 percent between 2013 and 2014, up from 9.9 percent the previous year, the SAMHSA report found. The report was published July 7.

While 13 states saw statistically significant increases in the prevalence of major depressive episodes among teens, 37 states and District of Columbia saw little change.

Rates of major depressive episodes among young people between the ages of 12 and 17 were highest in Oregon, with an annual average of 14.6 percent. Other states with a greater prevalence of depression included Arizona, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Washington state and Wisconsin.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the District of Columbia had the lowest prevalence of major depressive episodes among teens, with an annual average of 8.7 percent. Rates of this condition were also low among teens in Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Tennessee.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health provides more information on teen depression.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29kV29G

Innovative Trials Produce Promising Breast Cancer Drugs

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — An innovative set of clinical trials have identified two drugs that could provide a fighting chance for women with advanced breast cancer.

The drugs, neratinib and veliparib, both appear effective in helping women diagnosed with stage 2 or 3 breast cancer, researchers report.

These are the first two drugs to come out of the I-SPY clinical trials, a research effort intended to streamline drug testing by better guiding treatments to those who would most benefit from them, said one of the study authors, Dr. Laura Esserman. She is director of breast cancer care at the University of California, San Francisco’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The results:

• Neratinib halted the spread of cancer in 56 percent of women with HER2-positive, hormone-receptor-negative breast cancer, compared with 33 percent of a control group receiving standard chemotherapy alone.
• Veliparib stopped the spread of cancer in 51 percent of women with triple-negative breast cancer, compared to 26 percent in the chemo-only control group.

The I-SPY clinical trials use genetic information from patients to steer them to experimental drugs that are most likely to work, Esserman explained.

The trials also use adaptive design, a process in which doctors use early data from current patients to steer treatment for the next patients in line, she added. For example, a patient might be given a different drug in the trial that is working better in women with her particular type of breast cancer.

“The whole idea of the framework is to allow us to be more innovative and thoughtful, and to drive faster to combinations that might make a huge difference in the response to these agents in women who need them most,” Esserman said.

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said that adaptive design is the wave of the future for clinical trials of cancer drugs.

Genetic research has provided a bevy of new ways to attack cancer, by finding very specific targets against which different drugs can be utilized, Brawley said. Unfortunately, traditional clinical trial design cannot keep up with the pace of genetic revelations concerning cancer, he added.

Brawley noted that in the I-Spy Trials, researchers are using a 70-gene panel to help determine which drugs might be right for which breast cancer patients. Testing each gene or combination of genes with individual drugs would be costly and time-consuming.

“The real aim here is to use the smallest number of people in the shortest period of time to figure out if a drug works,” Brawley said. “It’s especially important to do that as we learn that the number of diseases that we’re going to be testing these drugs on is increasing exponentially as we better understand and define cancer genomically [based on genes].”

A traditional clinical trial focuses on a single drug or combination of drugs, comparing the new treatment to the current standard of care, Esserman said. This amounts to a costly “educated guess” of the experimental treatment’s effectiveness, with no way to change things until the trial is completed.

It typically costs more than $2 billion and takes 12 to 15 years with the involvement of 2,000 to 8,000 patient volunteers to bring one drug to market, the I-Spy Trials notes on its website. Despite the cost and painstaking research, 60 percent to 70 percent of these drugs fail their clinical trials.

The I-SPY Trials currently are in their fifth year, Esserman said, and have included 12 different experimental drugs in the stable of options available to patients. Drugs are cycled in and out of the trials, with about four or five active at any one time.

Neratinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, which fights cancer by interrupting chemical signals that drive tumor growth. Researchers found that neratinib is particularly helpful in women with HER2-positive breast cancer, in which a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 promotes the growth of cancer cells.

On the other hand, veliparib is a PARP inhibitor, which helps kill cancer cells by weakening them and leaving them more vulnerable to traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

When combined with traditional carboplatin chemotherapy, veliparib showed promise in treating women with so-called “triple-negative” breast cancer — a tumor that isn’t linked to the three best-known genetic causes for breast cancer.

“All of a sudden you have something that shows really good results against triple-negative breast cancer,” Brawley said. “For the longest time we have not had really good therapy for [triple-negative breast cancer].”

The reported results are for the phase 2 trials of neratinib and veliparib, which establish that a drug has the potential to treat a specific disease, Esserman said. The researchers now will proceed to phase 2 international trials, which are aimed at confirming the results found in phase 2.

The I-SPY Trials are a public/private partnership between QuantumLeap Healthcare Collaborative, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, 16 leading academic centers and the Safeway Foundation, according to the trials’ website.

More information

Here’s more on the I-SPY trials.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/29kVa93

Fish taco bowls with three salsas recipe

 

Get your Mexican fix with this fish taco recipe by pro surfer Sally Fitzgibbons. 

 

What you'll need (serves 4)

• 8 flour tortillas
• 600g white fish fillets
• Canola oil spray
• Flour (for dusting)
• Butter (for frying)
• 1⁄2 iceberg lettuce, finely chopped

 

Guacamole

• 2 ripe avocados 1⁄2 red onion, finely diced 1⁄2 red chilli, deseeded, pith removed, finely sliced 1⁄2 cup coriander leaves, finely chopped
• Juice of 1⁄2 lime Juice of 1⁄2 lemon.

Tomato salsa

• 4 fresh tomatoes, diced 1⁄2 cup coriander leaves, finely chopped 1 red chilli, deseeded and pith
• removed, nely sliced

Mango salsa

• 1 ripe mango, diced 1⁄2 red chilli, deseeded and pith removed, finely sliced Juice of 1 lime 1⁄2 cup mint leaves, finely chopped

Method

1. To shape the tortilla bowls, preheat your oven to 180°C. Wrap four of the tortillas in foil and place on oven tray for 10 minutes just to warm them up.

2. Remove tortillas from foil and spray lightly with oil. Place them between the holes of an upside-down muffin tray, lightly pressing them down in the centre to form the base of the bowl. Repeat with three remaining tortillas. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven, allow to cool, and repeat with the other four tortillas.

3. To fry the fish, coat both sides of the fillets with our. Heat 2 tbsp of butter in a pan and cook 2 fillets at a time on medium-high heat, 2 minutes per side. The fillet will fall apart when cooked.

4. Serve fish in the tortilla cups with chopped lettuce and salsas.

*If you prefer to a hit of chilli, add the chilli as you go to suit your tastes. 

Catch Sally at the Perth Fitness & Health Expo, August 20-21 at the Perth Convention & Exhibition Centre and the Brisbane Fitness & Health Expo, October 22-23 at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. For more information visit the official website.

 

{nomultithumb}

 

Source : Diet & Nutrition http://ift.tt/29qnIjx