Eating lots of fiber lowers breast cancer risk

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Consuming high amounts of high-fiber
foods, such as legumes, may reduce
breast cancer risk. (Photo courtesy
U.S. Department of Agriculture) 

Women who participated in previous studies of diet and breast cancer and ate the most fiber had a 11 percent lower chance of developing breast cancer. That's the conclusion of a re-analysis of the data pooled from the studies, according to a Reuters report.
Chinese researchers led by Jia-Yi Dong of Soochow University in Suzhou, conducted the meta-analysis, which is a study that combines the data from previously conducted studies. (Link to published site)

CAD software serves as a "second
read" for screening mammography,
marking image patterns for the
radiologist to review. (Image
courtesy of Hologic, Inc.)

Real World Study Questions Effectiveness of CAD  Mammography

Computer-aided detection tools add to the cost of screening mammography for breast cancer but add little in terms of finding undetected harmful tumors, while increasing the number of false positives, a new study shows.

In what may be the largest study of real-world use of CAD mammography, researchers with the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium led by Dr. Joshua Fenton analyzed 1.6 million mammograms from 680,000 women in seven states.  Their study was published online today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. (Link to published site)

Anomalous right coronary artery
in a 17-year-old patient using high
pitch CT scan mode. (Image
courtesy of Dr. Kelly Han,
Minneapolis Heart Institu

New Cardiac CT Technique Reduces Radiation Sevenfold in Children
DENVER – July 17, 2011 – Beta blockade combined with newer multi-detector CT angiography (MDCTA) reduced radiation exposure sevenfold compared to older scanners a new study shows. The new method may be the safest for coronary imaging for certain pediatric patients.

In a retrospective study of all coronary CTAs performed on patients less than 18 years of age at Minneapolis Heart Institute®, researchers found that not only did newer CTA techniques use lower doses of radiation than early CTA, the heart rate reduction using beta blockers allowed radiation doses significantly lower than conventional cardiac catheterization. (Link to published site)

Stress Echocardiography Predictive of Heart Attack or Death in HIV Patients

Abnormal results on a stress echo-
cardiogram in HIV patients with
known or suspected heart disease

 predict dramatically higher risk of
heart attack or cardiac death.
(Image courtesy: Wikipedia, taken by

Kjetil Lenes)

HIV patients with abnormal results on a ultrasound stress test have nearly a 10 times higher risk of a heart attack or cardiac death than the normal population, and more than three times the risk of people without HIV who have an abnormal stress echocardiogram a new study shows.

Senior author of the study, Dr. Farooq Chaudhry, associate professor of medicine, and colleagues at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City performed stress echo tests on 311 HIV patients with suspected or known heart disease. They reported their findings online before the July 12, 2011 print issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.

The researchers looked at whether stress echo can help predict risk of heart attack and death in a high-risk population, in this case HIV patients with known or suspected heart disease. HIV infection and the drugs used to treat it have been associated with accelerated coronary artery disease and cardiovascular events in prior research. While stress echocardiography is an accepted method of diagnosis, risk evaluation and prognosis of coronary artery disease, its prognostic value in HIV-positive patients is unknown. (Link to published site)

Stress Echocardiography Predictive of Heart Attack or Death in HIV Patients

Abnormal results on a stress echocardiogram in
HIV patients with known or suspected heart
 disease predict dramatically higher risk of
heart attack or cardiac death.
(Image courtesy: Wikipedia, taken by Kjetil Lenes)

HIV patients with abnormal results on a ultrasound stress test have nearly a 10 times higher risk of a heart attack or cardiac death than the normal population, and more than three times the risk of people without HIV who have an abnormal stress echocardiogram a new study shows.

Senior author of the study, Dr. Farooq Chaudhry, associate professor of medicine, and colleagues at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City performed stress echo tests on 311 HIV patients with suspected or known heart disease. They reported their findings online before the July 12, 2011 print issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging. (Link to published site)

Weekly Byetta clears heart rate hurdle

July 12th, 2011 by Ryan Luce No Comments

written by Michael O'Leary

Good news for people who have had good results controlling the HbA1c with BYETTA®. The Associated Press, Reuters report that new study results of the once-a-week formulation of the drug show that the drug does not affect heart rate.

Last October, the FDA declined approval of the once-a-week BYDUREON™ for type 2 diabetes and requested that the drug’s maker, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, provide more information about the drug’s effect on patients’ heart rates. (Link to published site)

Hitting targets reduced deaths and heart problems – but not by much

by Michael O’Leary
Early, intensive treatment of type-2 diabetes that targets multiple health factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol reduced the number of people who had heart attacks and died but the difference was not large enough to be convincing, researchers say.

The ADDITION study is a collaboration of doctors in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark. It started with screening for type-2 diabetes followed by a treatment phase comparing the results of usual treatment for the disease to that of rigorously treating patients in order to achieve strict targets for blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. (Link to published site)

First use of Metal Nanoparticles IDs Liver Cancer on X-ray

PROVIDENCE – July 8, 2011 – Using metal nanoparticles for the first time as an imaging agent researchers have developed a new technique to detect heptocellular carcinoma at a much earlier, treatable stage than is currently available, a new study suggests.

A new diagnostic technique can spot tumor-like masses as small as 5 millimeters in the liver. Gold nanoparticles with a polyelectrolyte coating can make smaller tumors more visiblethrough X-ray scatter imaging, enabling earlier diagnosis. (credit: Rose-Petruck Lab/Brown University)

Heptocellular carcinoma is the most common cancer of the liver striking more than half a million people worldwide each year. It is especially prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Because it is usually diagnosed only when tumors have grown to about 5 centimeters in size, most of those afflicted die within six months.  (Link to published site)