Few Young Women With Cancer Take Steps to Preserve Fertility

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Weight-Loss Surgeries May Beat Standard Treatments for Diabetes

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Ob/Gyn Visit a Good Time to Screen for Heart Disease: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 45 mins ago MONDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Women should be screened for heart disease -- a leading cause of death among women in the United States -- during routine visits to obstetrics and gynecology clinics, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City found that heart screenings performed during visits to obstetrician/gynecologists could help identify women with undetected risk factors for the condition. In addition, the screenings could significantly increase awareness among women about heart disease prevention and treatment, the researchers added.

"There is a real disparity in the medical community where we tend to think heart disease is a disease of men, and historically we have not done a very good job of screening women for cardiovascular risk factors," the study's principal investigator, Dr. Roxana Mehran, director of interventional cardiovascular research and clinical trials at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said in a news release from the American College of Cardiology.

"It often doesn't occur to women that they could have a heart problem until their symptoms are very advanced, so we have to think differently and be creative about how we identify, educate and treat women at risk," Mehran explained.

In conducting the study, the researchers asked 10 ob/gyn clinics to put a screening program in place to identify women with symptoms or risk factors for heart disease. Over the course of two years, more than 2,200 women completed a one-page survey on traditional and gestational heart disease. Women who were never screened for heart disease before also had their blood pressure taken.

The program revealed that 69 percent of the middle-aged women screened had heart disease risk factors. Meanwhile, 42 percent also had symptoms of the condition. The investigators also found that 18 percent of the women screened considered their ob/gyn to be their primary health care provider.

Among the women in the study, a significant number either had never been checked or were unsure if they had been checked for high blood pressure (21 percent), high cholesterol (38 percent) or high blood sugar (19 percent). Following the screenings, 25 percent of the women were referred to a primary care physician or another specialist for further treatment for heart disease.

"We found a real lack of awareness among many of these women that they had risk factors, including diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Ob/gyn practices have an incredible opportunity to make an impact on heart disease in women by screening, educating and directing women to the right providers, so we hope to see continued research in this area," Mehran said.

The study authors noted that more research involving a larger group of women is needed to determine if screenings at ob/gyn clinics improve outcomes among women with heart disease.

The study findings were scheduled for presentation Sunday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Chicago. The data and conclusions of research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about heart disease in women.

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CT Scans Can Spot Heart Trouble Fast

HealthDay – 1 hr 45 mins ago MONDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Most people who go to the emergency room with chest pain aren't having a heart attack, but it can take hours or days to make a definitive diagnosis.

However, a new study finds that a special kind of CT scan given in the emergency room seems to identify a heart attack faster than traditional methods, so patients can be sent home safely sooner.

"You can go to an emergency department with chest pain, be concerned it might be a heart attack -- get a CT scan, like we do for everything else in the emergency department -- and we can say it's not your heart and you can go home, within a couple of hours," said researcher Dr. Judd Hollander, clinical research director of the department of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

"We can now answer the questions faster, and let people go home sooner," he said.

Using the CT scan is faster, Hollander said, noting it can take 25 hours to get the results of blood tests that indicate whether a patient has had a heart attack.

"And an EKG only shows if you are having the big one," Hollander added. "So, if it's negative it doesn't tell you if you are having a smaller heart attack, and two-thirds of heart attacks will have an EKG that's not diagnostic."

For every 100 patients who go to an ER with chest pain, only 10 or 15 have cardiac disease, Hollander said. "The other 90 percent end up with nothing serious," he added.

In addition, ERs are busy and crowded, and this is a way to move patients out faster and increase the ability to see more patients sooner, he said.

The findings were to be presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Chicago. They will also be published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, Hollander's team randomly assigned more than 1,300 patients with chest pain, but no previous history of heart disease or risk factors such as high blood pressure or diabetes, to CT scans or regular care.

The scans generate three-dimensional images of the heart and the blood vessels surrounding it, the researchers noted.

Among those with a normal scan, none died or had a heart attack within a month after being seen in the ER. In addition, more of these patients were sent home than those who received usual care -- about 50 percent versus 23 percent, the researchers found.

Those who received scans spent less time in the hospital and had heart problems diagnosed faster.

Scans are also cost-effective, Hollander said. The tests, which are like a standard CT scan, cost about $1,500. Patients who have a normal scan can be sent home within a few hours. A patient who is admitted to the hospital can run up bills of more than $4,000 for stress tests and monitoring alone, the researchers noted.

Chest pain is one of the most common reasons people go to the emergency room in the United States, accounting for as many as 8 million visits each year, at a cost of several billion dollars, they noted.

Many patients with chest pain are suffering from anxiety, pneumonia or indigestion that can cause the same symptoms as a heart attack, the researchers explained. Yet, more than half of patients with chest pain are admitted to the hospital for observation or testing such as cardiac catheterization or a stress test.

Commenting on the study, Dr. Gregg Fonarow, director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center and co-director of the UCLA Preventative Cardiology Program, said that "there are 8 million men and women that present to emergency medical centers with chest pain each year."

There has been great interest in developing strategies to more efficiently evaluate these patients and identify which ones can be safely discharged, he said.

The trial demonstrated that these scans may be useful to screen low- to moderate-risk patients, Fonarow said.

"However, further studies are needed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of this strategy and how it compares to protocols using high-sensitivity troponin tests," he added.

A troponin test measures the levels of one of two proteins, troponin T or troponin I, in blood, Fonarow explained. These proteins are released when the heart has been damaged, such as during a heart attack. However, this test is usually repeated over 12 to 16 hours, so the results do not come back as quickly as a CT scan.

More information

For more on heart attacks, visit the American Heart Association.

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'Freezing' Secondary Breast Cancer Tumors Shows Promise

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Columbia University sues Illumina over DNA patents

Reuters – 1 hr 16 mins ago (Reuters) - Illumina Inc, a gene-mapping company facing a $5.7 billion hostile takeover bid by Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG, was sued by Columbia University on Monday for allegedly infringing five patents related to DNA sequencing.

According to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, Illumina commercialized its so-called next-generation sequencing (NGS) products despite knowing about the patents, obtained between 2009 and 2012 and assigned to Columbia.

The university said its patents cover NGS technologies that allow rapid and precise DNA sequencing, which are particularly important in using individuals' genomic DNA sequence information as a basis for providing health care.

Illumina makes products that decode a person's entire genome. Spokesman Matt Benson had no immediate comment.

Each patent has several inventors, including Columbia chemical engineering professor Jingyue Ju, according to the complaint. The university is seeking royalties, triple damages and other remedies.

"Columbia is proud of the outstanding research efforts of its faculty and will defend its patented technology," university spokesman Robert Hornsby said.

The university filed its complaint hours after Roche extended its $5.7 billion cash takeover bid for Illumina. The bid values the San Diego-based company at $44.50 per share, but Illumina considers the offer "grossly inadequate.

Acquiring the company would give Basel, Switzerland-based Roche a leading position in gene sequencing, which could help better identify patients who might benefit from using particular drugs.

Illumina in 2011 posted profit of $86.6 million on revenue of $1.06 billion.

In its annual report, the company projected that expansion in the sequencing market and its product portfolio would drive demand for its technology over the next several years.

Analysts expect Roche to raise its takeover bid, and shares of Illumina have traded above $44.50 since the original bid became public on January 25.

In afternoon trading, Illumina shares were down 31 cents at $50.15 on the Nasdaq.

The case is Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York v. Illumina Inc, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware, No. 12-00376.

(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Caroline Copley in Zurich; editing by John Wallace and Gerald E. McCormick)

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Supreme court unlikely to delay Obama healthcare ruling

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Student fitness improves with anti-obesity program

Reuters – 32 mins ago New York (Reuters Health) - Obesity rates continue to climb in California schools, but exercise and nutrition programs may be having a positive effect on student health, a new study suggests.

Kids entered fifth grade more obese every year, but they did not gain more weight and their overall fitness improved as they moved to higher grades.

"We accomplished a significant first step and that is to slow obesity," said Dr. William Bommer, a cardiologist at the University of California, Davis, who worked on the study. "But we importantly were not able to reverse it."

The researchers, whose report is published in the American Heart Journal, recorded the fitness gains after California mandated exercise time and healthful eating in public schools across the state in 2005.

While the findings suggest the prevention programs may be helping, they can't prove the programs caused the health improvements.

Obesity is associated with high blood pressure, diabetes and other ailments in children and adults. About 17 percent of children and teens in the United States are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In response to rising obesity trends, California required public schools to provide an average of 20 minutes of physical exercise per day for kids in kindergarten through fifth grade, and 40 minutes for grades six to 12. Schools also had to increase the quality and quantity of health education and could no longer serve high-fat, high-sugar foods and drinks.

Bommer's team tracked data from more than six million students in fifth, seventh and ninth grade from 2003 to 2008, after these measures took effect.

At each grade level, the students took fitness tests which included body mass index (BMI) measurements, endurance runs, push-ups and shoulder stretches. The researchers analyzed those test records for changes in obesity and fitness.

They found some encouraging signs. Though the number of obese kids continued to increase (two percent more children were overweight or obese in 2008 than in 2003), the rate of increase seemed to be slowing.

Obesity rates rose an average of 0.3 percent per year during the study, compared with about 0.8 to 1.7 percent per year in previous national studies.

Students showed small improvements in body fat and weight as they progressed from fifth to seventh to ninth grade. They also got better -- or at least did not get worse -- in physical fitness areas such as abdominal strength, upper body strength and flexibility.

One particular finding defied researchers' expectations: more students entered fifth grade obese every year, however they didn't gain further excess weight between fifth and ninth grades.

"We thought that probably what we'd find was the entrance class was about the same (every year) and kids were gaining weight during the school years," Bommer explained.

Nor did the fifth-graders lose the weight as they progressed through the grade levels. Indeed, Bommer's team attributes the overall rise in rates of obesity and overweight seen among all students during the study period mainly to the rise among the incoming generations of fifth graders.

Further research is needed to determine whether this early obesity develops before kids get to kindergarten or during elementary years, Bommer told Reuters Health, as well as where future interventions could make a difference.

"If you become obese as a student or adolescent, it's very difficult to reverse that obesity when you're an adult," he added.

Dr. Maura Frank, a professor of clinical pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, described the California programs as a model for other states.

"When we work with individual families or schools, if we don't have the support of public policy, nothing can be done," said Frank, who wasn't involved in the study. "It's a prerequisite for change on a population level."

The findings on growing obesity rates among fifth graders are equally important, she told Reuters Health. "It highlights the need to start with interventions earlier," she said.

SOURCE: American Heart Journal, February 2012.

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French medical orders target diet guru Pierre Dukan

"Doctor Pierre Dukan is pictured in 2011. French medical orders have filed complaints against the celebrity diet guru whose diet was reportedly used by the Middleton family ahead of Kate's wedding to Britain's Prince William. (AFP Photo/Loic Venance)" title

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US announces deal to ensure medical isotope supply

President Barack Obama says the United States and several European countries have struck an agreement meant to sustain the supply of lifesaving isotopes without the use of highly enriched uranium.

Medical isotopes are used to treat cancer and heart disease worldwide. Scientists have been working on using low enriched uranium because highly enriched uranium can be used to create nuclear bombs.

Obama announced the agreement on Monday during a nuclear security summit in Seoul. The other countries are Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

World leaders are in Seoul to seek ways to improve nuclear security.

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Studies: Surgery can put diabetes into remission

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Too much, too little sleep linked to heart woes, study tells

"Two visitors are seen napping on a couch at a furniture store in Beijing, in February. People who sleep less than six hours per night or more than eight are more likely to suffer heart problems than people who sleep between six and eight hours, according to a US study. (AFP Photo/Ed Jones)" title

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