Booze, Energy Drinks, Casual Sex Combo Common in College: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 7 mins ago MONDAY, July 30 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. college students who drink caffeinated energy drinks mixed with alcohol are more likely to have casual sex, which is often risky sex, a new study finds.

Drinks such as Red Bull & vodka, and Jagerbombs (energy drinks combined with a shot of Jagermeister), rank among the best-selling mixed drinks in bars and clubs serving college-age adults, according to background information in the report.

The study, published online in the Journal of Caffeine Research, included about 650 students at a large public university. Their ages ranged from 18 to 40, but more than 60 percent of them were younger than 21.

The University at Buffalo researchers found that more than 29 percent of the sexually active participants said they had consumed alcohol mixed with energy drinks in the previous month.

During their most recent sexual encounter, about 45 percent of the participants had a casual partner, 25 percent were drunk, and 44 percent said they did not use a condom. Those who reported drinking alcohol mixed with energy drinks were more likely to have casual sex and/or to be drunk during their most recent sexual encounter.

However, students who drank alcohol mixed with energy drinks were no less likely than nondrinkers to have used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter.

The findings suggest that alcohol/energy drink mixes may play a role in the "hook-up culture" that exists on many college campuses, according to study author Kathleen E. Miller, a senior research scientist at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions, in Buffalo, N.Y.

She noted that having casual sex or sex while intoxicated can lead to problems such as unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual assault and depression. Previous research has linked energy drinks with dangerous behaviors such as impaired driving, binge drinking and fighting.

"Mixing energy drinks with alcohol can lead to unintentional overdrinking, because the caffeine makes it harder to assess your own level of intoxication," Miller said in a university news release.

She noted that energy drinks mixed with alcohol "have stronger priming effects than alcohol alone. In other words, they increase the craving for another drink, so that you end up drinking more overall."

The research doesn't prove that drinking energy drinks with alcohol causes drunkenness and promiscuity, Miller said. But she hopes the findings lead to safety legislation or educational campaigns.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about caffeinated alcoholic beverages.

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Combo Therapy May Help Ease 'Ringing in the Ears'

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Two-Drug Combo May Be Safe for Melanoma Treatment

HealthDay – 45 mins ago WEDNESDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) -- A preliminary, first-stage study funded by a pharmaceutical company shows promising results for an experimental double-drug therapy for melanoma.

The two drugs, known as dabrafenib and trametinib, appeared to delay progression of the potentially deadly skin cancer with fewer side effects than an existing drug called vemurafenib (Zelboraf).

However, the research into the drug combination is only in the first of three phases required before the U.S. government can approve its use. The first phase is designed to test the safety of a medication, not whether it works.

Unlike some other cancers, melanoma has stubbornly resisted advances in treatment. About 70,000 Americans are diagnosed with melanoma each year, and about 8,000 of those will die from the disease.

Researchers tested the drug combo in patients with advanced melanoma and a genetic mutation that exists in about half of all melanomas.

"Not only are the two drugs causing shrinkage of the cancer, but we're seeing that a second anti-cancer therapy may actually suppress the side effects of the first," said Dr. Jeffrey Weber, director of the Donald A. Adam Comprehensive Melanoma Research Center at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Fla., in a news release from the American Society of Clinical Oncologists.

Vemurafenib, approved last year, aims to prevent progression of the cancer in these patients. But patients' tumors eventually become immune to its effects.

The new analysis looks at 77 patients who took the combination therapy. Their cancer didn't progress for an average of 7.4 months, similar to what was seen in previous research with vemurafenib only. The researchers haven't released statistics about their survival rates.

Skin lesions, a side effect, were much less common in the patients on the combination therapy than in patients who took vemurafenib.

Ashani Weeraratna, an assistant professor in the Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, agreed that the combo therapy does seem to reduce the skin lesion side effects.

"This is important for patients that, in addition to battling a deadly disease, also have to deal with the discomfort associated with the secondary lesions," Weeraratna said. "Having said that, I do think most of us would pick getting what is essentially an uncomfortable rash over not receiving a cutting-edge therapy that might eradicate our metastatic melanoma."

Dr. Martin Weinstock, a professor of dermatology and epidemiology at Brown University in Providence, R.I., expressed some caution. "Ideally, what we need is to figure out how to cure most people with a regimen that doesn't have devastating side effects," he said. "We don't have that yet, and it doesn't look like this will be that either."

The results were scheduled for release Wednesday, prior to presentation June 4 at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists in Chicago. The data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The study was funded by the drug company GlaxoSmithKline, and Weber has received financial support from the pharmaceutical company.

More information

For more about melanoma, see the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Immune-Based Drug Combo Might Extend Cancer Survival

HealthDay – 1 hr 44 mins ago MONDAY, April 2 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer patients who receive a combination of low-dose interleukin-2 and retinoic acid after conventional therapy seem to live longer than those who don't get the combination.

These new study findings, slated for presentation this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Chicago, were seen across individuals with many different forms of advanced malignancies, including breast, lung and colon cancers.

Retinoic acid is derived from vitamin A. Interleukin-2, a compound that fortifies the immune system, is approved at high doses to treat "metastatic" melanoma and kidney cancer. Metastatic means that a cancer has spread.

The study showed that "these biological compounds may work at low doses. Bigger doses are not always better," said lead author Dr. Francesco Recchia, director of the oncology department at Civilian Hospital in Avezzano, Italy.

Recchia stumbled upon the possibility of using low-dose interleukin-2 (IL-2) when he switched a patient with metastatic melanoma who didn't tolerate high doses to a lower dose, and the patient had an extended response to the therapy.

This study involved 500 patients who had already responded well to chemotherapy. They had a variety of cancers, including ovarian, lung, colon, stomach, kidney, melanoma, breast and pancreatic.

Participants gave themselves the interleukin-retinoic acid duo five days a week for three weeks, then took a break of one week followed by another three weeks -- for five years or until the cancer came back.

Individuals who pursued the maintenance therapy did live longer, the researchers found. About 43 percent of breast cancer patients were alive after five years, versus an expected average survival of about only one-quarter of patients.

Similarly, about 26 percent of lung cancer patients were alive after five years versus about 4 percent expected, nearly 44 percent of those with colorectal cancer were alive as compared with about 12 percent in an average population, and 23 percent of kidney cancer patients were alive versus 11 percent expected.

After 15 years, about 33 percent of patients were alive without having had a recurrence and 37 percent overall were alive, the investigators reported.

"This regimen works by increasing immune response," Recchia explained.

In this case, immune response consisted of an increase in the number of natural killer cells, which are primed to attack tumors, and a decrease in vascular endothelial growth factor, which would normally prompt a tumor to spread.

There were no serious side effects, Recchia said, and the therapy's cost is about $300 a week.

While IL-2 activates the immune system, retinoic acid is an angiogenic agent, meaning it reduces blood supply to tumors, explained Dr. Michael Atkins, deputy director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. He was not involved with the study.

The results are "provocative," Atkins said, but one problem is that all the patients had already benefited from chemotherapy so it's unclear if they would have done well without the immune therapy, he added.

A bigger trial of patients randomly assigned to receive treatment is now starting in Siena, Italy, in breast cancer patients, Recchia said.

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

For more on interleukin-2 and other biological therapies, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

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