Smoking Does Not Worsen Breast Cancer

(HealthDay News) -- It may be unhealthy in many other ways, but smoking does not appear to raise the odds that a woman with breast cancer will have more aggressive or later-stage malignancy at the time of diagnosis, researchers report.

Their results come from an analysis of data gathered on more than 6,000 women for more than 35 years.

"Smoking did not affect treatment options either," noted lead researcher Dr. Matthew Abramowitz, a resident in radiation oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Abramowitz said he had expected to find that smokers were less likely to have surgeries, such as mastectomies, because of the physical health problems associated with smoking, but the data showed otherwise. Women with breast cancer who smoked or had ever smoked were just as likely to have surgery as those who did not smoke.

About one in 10 of the breast cancer patients was a smoker when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Abramowitz said.

The findings were expected to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, in Los Angeles.

Smoking has been shown to be a risk factor for cancers of the lung, head, neck, esophagus and bladder. However, studies testing for a possible link between smoking and breast cancer risk have been inconclusive.

"This study says nothing about the rate of breast cancer or whether women are more likely to get breast cancer if they smoke. But it's interesting that smoking did not affect the cancer that we saw," said Abramowitz.

Despite the findings, women who smoke are still putting their health at great risk, stressed Dr. Michael J. Thun, vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society.

"The study results don't change anything for women who smoke. They still have a one in two chance of being killed by smoking if they don't quit and a one in eight lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. More American women have died from lung cancer than breast cancer since 1987," Thun noted.

In fact, lung cancer remains the leading killer of both women and men. According to the American Cancer Society, about 70,880 U.S. women will die from lung cancer in 2007, compared to 40,460 who will succumb to breast cancer.

In their study, Abramowitz and his research team analyzed data from 6,162 breast cancer patients who were initially evaluated between 1970 and 2006 at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. The women were asked about their past and present smoking habits as part of the initial health interview. Almost half (45 percent) had ever smoked, although only 9 percent were smokers at the time of diagnosis.

The researchers found no statistically significant correlation between smoking and tumor stage or aggressiveness at the time the women were diagnosed.

There was a slight but statistically insignificant trend toward smokers having more Her2/Neu positive tumors than nonsmokers. Her2/Neu positive tumors are more aggressive and difficult to treat, said Abramowitz, although treatment options have improved in recent years.

The possible correlation between smoking and Her2/Neu tumors could not be explored due to the small number of patients who had undergone Her2/Neu screening, which was not available for the full 35 years of the study period. However, it's a potential avenue for future research, Abramowitz said.

His team also found no correlation between tumor stage at diagnosis and family history of breast cancer, use of hormone therapy or menopausal status. According to Abramowitz, the promotion of early screening for breast cancer during the study period might have had an effect on the stage of the tumors at diagnosis.

Still, too many women continue to put their health in jeopardy by smoking. "The major challenges are to help women who are addicted to nicotine quit smoking and to prevent adolescents from starting," emphasized Thun.

More information
To learn about breast cancer risk factors and screening recommendations, visit the American Cancer

Broccoli May Help Fight Skin Cancer

(HealthDay News) -- What's good for your diet may also guard against skin cancer.

Scientists have discovered that an extract of broccoli sprouts protects the skin against the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays.

That's not the same as calling the extract a sunscreen, however.

"This is not a sunscreen, because it does not absorb the ultraviolet rays of the sun," explained Dr. Paul Talalay, a professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. "We don't want people covering their bodies with broccoli and going to the beach. They will have no protection whatsoever."

Exposure to ultraviolet or UV rays is the primary cause of most skin cancers. The incidence of skin cancer in the United States is on the rise as men and women who had too many sunburns earlier in life get older and develop the disease.

Talalay started working on skin cancer prevention about 25 years ago. "Cells contain an elaborate network of protective genes that code for proteins that protect against four principal injurious processes to which all of our cells are exposed and which are the causes of cancer, degenerative disease and aging," he explained.

Those four processes are: oxidation; DNA damage; inflammation and radiation, namely ultraviolet radiation.

The cells' protective system normally operates at about one-third capacity, so the real question is what would ramp up that system.

"Our strategy has been to find things that will boost the system," Talalay explained. Broccoli, in particular, has previously reported to have some anti-cancer effects.

"We looked in vegetables, and it turned out they had a rather large quantities of a compound that induced this system, particularly in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, et cetera," Talalay said.

The compound, called sulforaphane, is found in broccoli sprout extracts and was first identified by Talalay and his colleagues more than 15 years ago. Sulforaphane has been shown to inhibit tumor development in animals.

For this study, Talalay and his colleagues tested the compound in both mice and humans.
The human experiments involved six healthy volunteers. Each participant was exposed to UV radiation on two circles on their back that were either treated or not treated with different doses of broccoli extract.

The highest doses of the extract reduced UV-induced redness and inflammation (erythema) by an average of 37 percent, although protection varied from 8 percent to 78 percent.

"If you apply an extract of broccoli sprouts that contains high levels of sulforaphane to regions of human skin, you can protect them very substantially," Talalay said. "We believe, to the best of our knowledge, that this is the first demonstration of protection against a known human carcinogen in humans."

One expert was excited by the discovery.

"There is some interesting data here," said Dr. Vijay Trisal, an assistant professor of surgical oncology at the City of Hope Cancer Center, in Duarte, Calif. "Sulforaphane compounds have been known to boost the immune system locally. This has some basic science behind it."
"The same thing happens with interferon, which we use for melanoma. It boosts the natural killer cells," Trisal explained.

The findings do need to be replicated, Talalay noted.

"It's going to take a little while to work out how this should be applied," Talalay said. "We would need to have a preparation rich in sulforaphane that would be easily absorbed through the skin, and this is not yet a reality. But, since we're dealing with a food, we're not dealing with anything likely to have a toxicity."

The study is published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Talalay and a co-author are unpaid consultants to Brassica Protection Products LLC (BPP), which licenses the technology to produce broccoli sprouts. These two authors, along with Johns Hopkins University, are equity owners in BPP. Antony Talalay, son of Paul Talalay, is chief executive officer of BPP.

More information
Visit the National Cancer Institute for more on skin cancer.

Overweight Now a Global Problem

(HealthDay News) -- Worldwide, 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women are now overweight, and 24 percent of men and 27 percent of women are obese, say researchers who looked at data from 63 countries.

The study included information on more than 168,000 men and women ages 18-80 (average age 48), living on five continents. All of them were evaluated by their family doctors.

The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Circulation.

"The study results show that excess body weight is pandemic, with one-half to two-thirds of the overall study population being overweight or obese," lead author Beverley Balkau, director of research at INSERM in France, said in a prepared statement. INSERM is the French equivalent of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

She noted that obesity has become a major clinical and public health problem in many countries.
The data collected from the International Day for Evaluation of Abdominal Obesity also found that 56 percent of men and 71 percent of women had abdominal adiposity (excess fat), which significantly increases the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes.

In this study, abdominal adiposity was determined by measuring waist circumference.

"For men, each increase (in waist circumference) of approximately 5.5 inches (14 centimeters) means an increased frequency of about 35 percent for heart disease and for women an increase of approximately six inches (15 centimeters) equates to a 40 percent increase for heart disease.

Even in people who are lean, an increasing waist circumference means increasing risk for heart disease and diabetes," Balkau said.

Rates of obesity -- a body mass index of 30 or more -- varied between regions, ranging from a low of 7 percent in men and women in South and East Asia to 36 percent in Canadian men and women, the study found.

Other findings from the study:

• Overall frequency of heart disease was 16 percent in men and 13 percent in women.
• Eastern Europe had high rates of heart disease (27 percent in men, 24 percent in women), while Canada had low rates (16 percent in men, 8 percent in women).
• Overall, 13 percent of men and 11 percent of women had diabetes.

Governments need to take more preventive measures -- such as encouraging people to exercise and providing more access to physical activity -- in order to halt rising rates of overweight and obesity, Balkau said.

"Physical activity and good nutrition are key. A change is needed or the public health situation for heart disease and diabetes will become worse," she warned.

More information
The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases outlines the health risks of being overweight.

Simpler Anemia Treatment May Help Kidney Patients

(HealthDay News) -- A new approach for treating anemia in patients with severe kidney disease could help improve patients' quality of life, according to a U.S. study.

Compared with conventional therapy, giving patients an anti-anemia drug as infrequently as once a month could simplify anemia management, concluded Dr. Nathan Levin, of the Renal Research Institute in New York, and colleagues.

The findings are published in the Oct. 20 issue of The Lancet.

Conventional therapy with epoetin (a synthetic form of human erythropoietin that promotes red blood cell production) requires frequent administrations (at least once weekly), changes of dose, and close monitoring of hemoglobin concentrations.

In this study involving patients on dialysis, the researchers compared the use of a long-acting erythropoieses-stimulating agent variant of epoetin (methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta) given intravenously at 2-week or 4-week intervals, with epoetin treatment one to three times per week.

All 673 patients in the study received conventional epoetin treatment for the first four weeks of the study. After that, one group of patients received methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta every two weeks, another group received methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta every four weeks, and the third group continued receiving conventional epoetin treatment.

After about 42 weeks, there were no statistically significant differences in hemoglobin concentrations between the three groups. Based on their findings, the researchers recommended that methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta be introduced as an option for simplified management of anemia in patients on dialysis.

However, the authors of an accompanying Comment article called for more research.

"Before we can concur on a precise clinical role for this molecule, we need to explore issues other than simply the non-inferiority with other epoetins to reach certain unvalidated surrogates.

Different doses and molecular characteristics of epoetins may affect patient-level endpoints, independent of achieved hemoglobin. When these issues are examined, we might be truly confident that a newer molecule is non-inferior to existing ones," wrote Dr. Rowan Walker of the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Monash University Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and Dr. Giovanni Strippoli, of the University of Sydney, Australia, and the Mario Negri Sud Consortium in Chieti, Italy.

More information
The U.S. National Institute on Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about anemia.

Health Tip: Donating Blood

(HealthDay News) - Donating blood is a safe and easy procedure that can help save lives.
Here is information on what to expect when you donate blood, courtesy of the American Red Cross:

• You'll have a mini-physical exam, where volunteers will check your blood pressure, pulse and temperature. They'll also ask questions about your lifestyle and health.
• The injection site on your arm will be sterilized, then a sterile needle will be inserted. Some minor stinging or discomfort is common when the needle enters the skin.
• It takes about 10 minutes to collect a pint of blood.
• You may need to lie still for a few minutes after the donation, and have a snack or a drink.
  If you donate to the Red Cross, you'll be given a form with follow-up instructions and a phone number to call in case you realize that your blood may not be safe to give to another person.
• A small number of donors may experience dizziness, fatigue or bruising at the injection site.

Concerns Rise Over U.S. Food Safety

(HealthDay News) -- In the last week:

• Topps, which billed itself as the leading U.S. maker of frozen hamburger patties, declared bankruptcy after the company recalled 22 million pounds of beef due to E. coli contamination.
• Sam's Club issued a nationwide recall of 840,000 pounds of a brand of beef patties believed to be responsible for four cases of E. coli poisoning.
• ConAgra Foods asked stores to remove its popular Banquet Chicken and Turkey pot pies after they were linked to at least 139 cases of salmonella in 39 states.
• 145 cases of food poisoning were reported in the United States.

A coincidence? Or is there a larger -- and worrisome -- problem with food safety in the United States?

Experts say the events of the last week owe to a combination of heightened public attention as well as significant flaws in the nation's food-safety system, including both production and oversight.

"This is just all an indication of the problems we have in the system," said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union. "There's a heightened awareness about it, because the media is picking up on things. The [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] data shows an uptick of food-poisoning cases. And, in a heightened environment of attention, the government acts more."

These problems are just the latest in a long line of mishaps. For example, ConAgra, which made the questionable pot pies, also made the peanut butter tainted with salmonella that sickened 625 people in 47 states earlier this year.

What's going wrong?

For one thing, it's likely that given the current environment of heightened sensitivity to food safety, consumers -- and patients -- are connecting the dots more frequently.

"I think with the media attention over the past couple of years, people are more careful when they go to physicians to make a connection between some event, especially when they have a gastrointestinal-type disorder, and physicians are quicker to make a connection," said Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Medical Center.

But part of the problem is also the food production and distribution system.

Any one beef patty will contain meat from several different animals. "One contaminated animal can screw up a big batch of ground beef," said Dr. Helene Andrews-Polymenis, assistant professor of microbial and molecular pathogenesis at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.

And it's not that easy to spot which animals really are sick, because those carrying potentially harmful germs in their intestines don't have any symptoms, Andrews-Polymenis said.

"Obviously sick animals get removed from the slaughterhouse, but these animals aren't sick," she said. "We have to find better ways to figure out what's going on. One of the ways is doing basic microbial testing on carcasses. The more public money spent on research and food-safety issues, the less we're going to have these problems."

Hansen added that supplies of meat used for hamburger patties will often be used from one day to the next. If it's not kept under strict conditions, it's a recipe for growing bacteria.

Then there's the larger issue of the industrialization and centralization of the nation's food system.

"The [2006] spinach recall was Natural Selection foods. They packed spinach for how many different brands? Dozens and dozens," said Hansen. "When you start concentrating things, a little problem can become quite a big one."

Globalization of food production also plays a part. "We're getting products from all over the world more frequently now than ever before," said Tierno, author of The Secret Life of Germs and Protect Yourself Against Bioterrorism. "The diarrheal disease in the Third World experienced last week may visit your house tomorrow."

Combine these trends with regulatory shortcomings, and the problems are magnified. Experts such as Hansen say there aren't enough inspections of food plants in general. And that's because there aren't enough government inspectors to go around.

In fact, inadequate inspections are just one of a number of problems plaguing the government's food-safety system, experts say.

Another problem is the lack of a mandatory recall authority. All product recalls are voluntary on the part of the company. "The government not having mandatory recall authority is just absurd," Hansen said.

Some have proposed that a centralized food "czar" be put in control of all food-safety issues, rather than the current fragmented system, which is divided unequally -- and many say inequitably -- between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"They had been talking about making this a cabinet-level position," Tierno said.
Obviously, much of the burden for remedy lies with big business and the government, but there are things consumers can do.

"Consumers can cook things to higher temperatures if they're concerned about killing bacteria," Hansen said.

Also, be careful not to cross-contaminate surfaces. If you've chopped a chicken on a cutting board, clean the board and the knife before using it on salad or vegetables.

"People can focus on things more locally and go to farmer's markets or join a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture]," Hansen said.

More information
Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on food safety.

Surge in U.S. Cases of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

(HealthDay News) -- Reports of tick-transmitted Rocky Mountain spotted fever in the United States almost tripled from 695 in 2001 to 1,936 in 2005, researchers say.

The potentially fatal disease is caused by Rickettsia rickettsii bacteria, which is transmitted to humans through the bite of the dog tick or Rocky Mountain wood tick. Within 14 days after being bitten by an infected tick, a person typically develops a fever, headache, body aches upset stomach and rash. If not treated with antibiotics, organ failure may develop. About two percent of people with the disease die.

"This disease is becoming more common in cities and suburbs, likely because people are going to rural areas and coming home to the cities, and possibly also because suburbia is encroaching on rural, tick-infested areas," study author Dr. David Swerdlow noted in a prepared statement.

At the time of the study, Swerdlow was team leader for the Rickettsial Zoonoses Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The researchers analyzed 6,598 Rocky Mountain spotted fever cases reported in 45 states from 2001 to 2005. There were 22 deaths reported, but Swerdlow said the actual number was likely higher.

Nationwide, 53 counties had a fivefold increase in infections, and 51 percent of counties were newly affected by the disease between 2001 and 2005. The largest increases were seen in South Atlantic states. Suburban areas had a greater incidence of the disease than rural areas.

Only five states did not report any cases: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Maine and Washington.

The findings were to be presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of North America, in San Diego.

More information
The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has more about Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Primitive Plants Have Complex Sex Life

(HealthDay News) -- Primitive plants called cycads use heat and scent to manipulate pollinating insects, a new study reveals.

Cycads, a group of plants that has been around for 250 million to 290 million years, look similar to ferns or palms but are not related to them. Cycads are gymnosperms, a group that also includes modern coniferous tress such as pines and firs.

Reporting in the Oct. 5 issue of Science, a team at the University of Utah has discovered that the plants heat up and emit an intense odor in order to evict thrips (small flying insects) that have been feeding on pollen found in male cycad cones.

The plants then release a milder odor to attract the pollen-covered thrips into their female cones in order to achieve pollination.

This unusual approach may represent an intermediate stage in the evolution of plant pollination, the researchers said.

"People think of plants as just sitting there and looking pretty and sending out some odors to attract pollinators, but these cycads have a specific sexual behavior tuned to repel, attract and deceive the thrips that pollinate them," principal author Irene Terry, research associate professor of biology, said in a prepared statement.

More information
The University of California Museum of Paleontology has more about cycads.

Health Tip: Treating Fatty Liver Disease

(HealthDay News) - Fatty liver disease is a condition whose name describes it perfectly: excess fat builds up in the liver.

This excess fat can cause inflammation in the liver, and this can eventually lead to dangerous hardening of the organ.

Although fatty liver disease cannot be cured, here are some treatments to help reduce or reverse damage, courtesy of the American Liver Foundation:

• Lose weight sensibly through a healthy, balanced diet and regular exercise.
• Lower triglyceride levels through diet and exercise, or through medications.
• Do not drink alcohol.
• Diabetics should keep their disease well under control.
• Eat a healthy, low-calorie and low-fat diet.
• Exercise regularly.
• Have regular checkups and exams with a doctor who specializes in liver diseases.