1/20/2008 Providence, RI Delphine Schrank Providence Journal (projo.com) In the annals of beauty, the pompadour, the beehive and the Afro all had their day. Now comes the lifesaving haircut. From the padded swivel chairs in his Washington, D.C., barbershop, Clarence “Chile” Brace dispatched two freshly trimmed customers with hypertension straight to the emergency room. Around the corner, at the Divine Transformation Beauty Salon, beautician Arnica Ford cajoled a 300-plus-pound patron into trying a fiber-rich diet. And nearby, Marquita Wise opened her rose-garlanded hair salon, Fresh Cut II All About You, on a Sunday night to check the blood pressure of a client who had nearly fainted after learning that her daughter had died in a car crash. Brace, Ford and Wise are among African-American barbers and beauticians in five D.C. shops with blood pressure machines and digital scales tucked between hair-drying bonnets and bottles of shampoo. They have been enlisted in a program underwritten by insurers CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and the MedStar Research Institute to combat coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death among black Americans. Modeled after a Baltimore program coordinated by the University of Maryland’s Department of Medicine, the D.C. program trains stylists how to screen clients for obesity and high blood pressure and when to urge them to follow up with a doctor. The plan is to be implemented in 12 shops by year’s end. “Everyone wants to be beautiful, whether they go to a hairstylist or barber or whether they go to a doctor,” Ford [...]

1/15/2008 web-based article Wildon R. Farwell et al JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2008 100(2):134-139 Background: Meta-analyses of trials of 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-CoA reductase inhibitors or statins for cardiovascular disease prevention have failed to show any statistically significant benefit of statins for cancer prevention. However, these trials included relatively young participants, who develop few cancers, and their follow-up periods may have been too short to detect an association between statin use and cancer incidence. We investigated this association in a population of veterans. Methods: We identified patients using antihypertensive medications but no cholesterol-lowering medications (n = 25594) and patients using statins (n = 37248) who were enrolled in the Veterans Affairs New England Healthcare System between January 1, 1997, and December 31, 2005. Age- and multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) and its 95% confidence interval (CI) for cancer incidence, excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer, among patients taking statins compared with patients taking antihypertensive medications and among patients grouped by statin dose (as equivalent simvastatin dose). All statistical tests were two-sided. Results: The absolute incidence of total cancers was 9.4% among statin users and 13.2% among nonusers (difference = 3.8%, 95% CI = 3.3% to 4.3%, Pdifference < .001). Statin users had a statistically significant lower risk for total cancer than nonusers after adjustment for age (HR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.73 to 0.80) and multiple potential confounders (HR = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.70 to 0.78). After multivariable adjustment, a statistically significantly [...]

1/13/2008 San Diego, CA Terri Somers SignonSanDiego.com For decades, people with tumors in the head and neck had few treatment options that didn't require surgery. There was general radiation therapy, which had plenty of side effects such as hair loss and damage to healthy tissue. And there was the Leskell Gamma Knife, a technology out of Sweden. It was the long-favored technology of radiologists and neurosurgeons because it applied a precisely focused beam of radiation at a tumor to destroy it, with little to no damage to surrounding tissue. But capitalism, drugs and technology have started to change the market. Now several companies are vying for physician and patient dollars by offering alternative radiation-therapy technologies. One of them is San Diego-based American Radiosurgery Inc., a company founded in 2000 by medical-device salesman John Clark. The company's Rotating Gamma System, which uses cobalt to produce radiation that kills tumors, is trying to grab a piece of the gold-standard Gamma Knife's market. With the friendly, energetic ease of a salesman, Clark describes his mission to expand his 30-employee company, which had about $10 million in revenue last year, as a typical David versus Goliath battle. Clark has his own money and that of fewer than 50 small investors riding on the battle, though he will not say how much. Elekta, the publicly traded Swedish company that makes the Gamma Knife, employs 2,000 people and has multiple products that earned $598 million in sales last year, according to Deloitte & Touche. The Gamma [...]

1/13/2008 Alamagordo, NM Penny Downs www.alamogordonews.com Chew, dip, snuff, whatever you call it spit it out for Thru With Chew Week. Thru With Chew Week is Feb. 17 -23, with Thursday, Feb. 21 being "Great American Spit Out," a day spit tobacco users are ask to quit for the day. No matter what kind of tobacco you use, the results are the same. According to the American Cancer Society, use of spit tobacco contributes to the more than 30,000 cases of oral cancer diagnosed each year. Because these cancers are preventable if users kick the habit, the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery has designated Feb. 17-23 as Through with Chew Week. If you have switched from cigarettes thinking smokeless is harmless, think again. All forms of tobacco will speed up your heart rate, raise your blood pressure and increase the nicotine level in your bloodstream. All tobacco can cause cancer; it doesn't matter if it is smoked, sniffed, dipped or chewed. According to AAOHNS, spit tobacco increases the risk of many cancers, including lip, tongue and throat. But cancer isn't the only health problem. Users face heart attacks, strokes, higher cholesterol levels and mouth lesions called leukoplakia. Leukoplakia is often the first sign that cancer may be developing in your mouth. Leukoplakia is a small white, leathery patch seen in the mouth where the tobacco is held. These patches will disappear when spit tobacco use stops. Spit tobacco users need to be diligent about checking their mouth [...]

1/13/2008 web-based article Shelly Gehshan Health Affairs (content.healthaffairs.org) Dental care is the largest unmet health need among low-income children, yet it garners relatively little attention from policymakers and grantmakers. Foundation giving for dental education and dental care totaled $55.6 million in 2005—a mere 1.6 percent of total health grant making and 0.34 percent of total foundation giving. Health foundations have played a critical role in advancing the U.S. health care system. The need for investments from grantmakers to spur innovation and change in the dental care system is great. This paper describes a range of ideas for strategic grant making to improve oral health in the United States.

1/9/2008 Brooklin, Ontario, Canada staff CancerPage.com China's booming medical biotechnology industry is producing controversial drugs and gene therapy treatment programs that are being sought out by critically ill foreigners seeking potential cures unavailable elsewhere. China's Beike Biotechnologies harvests stem cells from the umbilical cord or amniotic membrane and injects them into patient's spinal region. More than 1,000 patients, including 60 foreigners, have been treated for a variety of conditions including Alzheimer's disease, autism, brain trauma, cerebral palsy and spinal cord injury, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology. "We met foreigners there who were happy with Beike's treatments," said Peter Singer of the McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health at the University of Toronto and co-author of the study. However, China's regulatory agency, the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), did not require clinical trials, making it difficult to evaluate the efficacy of these therapies, Singer said. It is a controversial approach and Beike and others in China would be considered "rogue companies" in North America or Europe, he said. Although less than 10 years old, China's medical biotech industry has become both an innovator and a place where the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies contract out their very expensive clinical research and trials. One of China's largest firms, WuXi PharmaTech, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and recently acquired a US biologics firm. "The Chinese biotechnology industry is like a baby dragon, which will grow quickly and soon become hard to ignore," Singer said. In [...]

1/7/2008 Rochester, NY Stephanie Veale and Daniel Wallace www.rochesterdandc.com Wegmans Food Markets' decision to stop selling cigarettes drew sharp reaction Friday, from customers angry at the loss of choice to those who applauded the grocery chain's decision to turn down certain sales. Wegmans, which has 71 stores in five states, will sell its remaining inventory until Feb. 10 and will not order new tobacco products between now and then, said spokeswoman Jo Natale. The family-owned retailer said it came to the decision after weighing the role smoking plays in people's health with respect for a person's right to smoke "We believe there are few of us who would introduce our children to smoking," stated a letter to employees from Wegmans CEO Danny Wegman and his daughter, Colleen, the company's president. Wegmans doesn't expect massive numbers of customers to quit smoking, Natale said. "But we employ 37,000 people. Many of them are young people under 21. If this sends the right message to them, we will have accomplished something." Wegmans is a major local employer, with 14,013 employees in the greater Rochester area as of November, Natale said. While Target stores stopped selling tobacco products in 1996 — and many grocery chains specializing in organic or health food never have sold cigarettes — Wegmans is the first major grocery store chain in New York state to pull tobacco products from its shelves, according to the state Health Department. The move could have a major impact on people's smoking habits due to [...]

1/5/2008 Marietta staff www.cancerpage.com Compared with combined chemo/radiotherapy, total laryngectomy improves survival in patients with stage IV laryngeal cancer, according to a report in the Archives of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery for December. The results also show that black patients and those with Medicare or Medicaid insurance have inferior outcomes, which may be the result of limited access to care. Dr. Amy Y. Chen from Emory University and Dr. Michael Halpern from the American Cancer Society, both in Atlanta, assessed factors predictive of survival in advanced laryngeal cancer by analyzing data from 7019 patients drawn from a national registry involving Commission on Cancer-approved treatment facilities. In the overall analysis, survival was highest for patients treated with total laryngectomy than for those given chemo/radiotherapy or radiotherapy alone (p < 0.001). Compared with total laryngectomy, the hazard ratios for death were 1.6 with radiotherapy and 1.3 with chemo/radiotherapy. Further analysis showed that total laryngectomy and chemo/radiotherapy provided comparable and better survival outcomes than radiotherapy alone for patients with stage III disease. For patients with stage IV disease, however, total laryngectomy was clearly superior to the other two treatments (p < 0.001). Women were 12% more likely to survive during follow-up than were men (p = 0.002). Compared with whites, blacks were 14% more likely to die (p = 0.004). Relative to private insurance, Medicaid insurance was associated with a 57% increased mortality risk, while with Medicare mortality was increased by 30% to 35% depending on age. Dr. Chen and Dr. Halpern note [...]

1/4/2008 web-based article Steven Reinberg health.usnews.com Two new studies offer further evidence of the health risks posed by the anemia drugs known as erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs), U.S. officials announced Thursday. The studies showed that patients with breast or advanced cervical cancer who took the drugs as treatment for chemotherapy-induced anemia died sooner or had more rapid tumor growth than patients not on the drugs, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said in a prepared statement. On Nov. 8, the FDA approved new "black box" warnings on labels of the three ESAs -- Aranesp, Epogen and Procrit. The warnings detailed the dangers to patients with cancer and patients with chronic kidney failure. Those dangers include heart attack, stroke, heart failure and cancer tumor growth and shortened survival, the FDA said. The drugs had been touted as a treatment to lessen fatigue and improve quality of life among cancer, HIV and other patients with anemia, but the revised label said there was no evidence to back that claim. The label change was the fifth such change since Procrit was approved in 1989, FDA officials said. Results of the two studies released Thursday were not among the six studies that led to the Nov. 8 label revision. Taken together, all eight studies show more rapid tumor growth or shortened survival when patients with breast, non-small cell lung, head and neck, lymphoid or cervical cancers received ESAs compared to patients who didn't get this therapy, the FDA said. The FDA said it plans to [...]

1/4/2008 web-based article Kris De Leon www.buddytv.com Colleen Zenk Pinter was diagnosed with oral cancer last spring and now her character Barbara Ryan on As the World Turns is suffering a similar fate. The 54-year-old soap veteran who has been playing the beleaguered fashionista turned criminal since 1978 was actually the one who initiated and suggested for the show to mirror what she experienced in real life. Her character Barbara recently learned about her startling diagnosis, which was unfortunately on the same day she was banned from the baptism of her grandchild. "I set up a meeting to pitch the idea to our executive producer, Chris Goutman, even though I wasn't sure I was emotionally ready to do such a story," the As the World Turns actress said. "We sat down and, before I could say anything, Chris pitched the same idea to me." "She's all alone and desperate when she gets the diagnosis," Pinter said of her character. "She ends up at the church after the christening, praying for help. Let me tell ya, that was a tough scene to get through." Unlike Barbara, who is just about to grapple with her illness, Pinter has already been treated and is now completely cancer-free after going through numerous surgeries and internal radiation treatment. And though it's hard to tell what's in store for Barbara's future, Pinter remains hopeful that she'll stick around on As the World Turns. "Hard to tell because of the writers' strike," she said. "But I told [...]