Cardiology
Depression and Heart Attacks. Depressed individuals are at least four times as likely to have a heart attack as those who are happier, according to a new study that traced people 13 years after they had been screened for depression. The study, led by Dr. William W. Eaton of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, was published in the December issue of the journal Circulation.
Medications
Aspirin and Bleeding Risks. Buffered or enteric-coated versions of aspirin may not be any safer for the digestive tract, according to a study that found that users of low-dose aspirin, regardless of type, were three times as likely as nonusers to be hospitalized with serious bleeding in the stomach or small intestine. The risk of bleeding in the upper gastrointestinal tract from taking aspirin is directly related to the dose and the problem could be minimized by taking the smallest effective dose of aspirin. The study, led by Judith P. Kelly of the Slone Epidemiology Unit at the Boston University School of Medicine, was published in late November in the Lancet.
Disease Prevention
Prophylactic Mastectomies Add Several Years to Life. According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, women who choose to have mastectomies because they carry the inherited BRCA1 or BRCA@ genes gain an average of three to five years of life. The researchers, from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, noted that the greatest benefit would be gained by women who have the surgery at an earlier age.
Exercise Can Reduce Breast Cancer Risk. A study of 25,000 Norwegian women, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that women who exercise regularly have a lower risk of developing breast cancer. The study found that women who exercised for more than four hours a week had a 37 percent lower risk of breast cancer compared to sedentary women; the risk for premenopausal women was 50 percent lower.
Eat Those Tomatoes.... A research team from Columbia University has studied blood levels of various nutrients in individuals with lung cancer and those who are cancer-free, and found that lung cancer victims had significantly lower levels of a nutrient called lycopene, which is found in tomatoes. The nutrition reports were presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. Other nutrition-related findings include: a substance called nomilin, a limonoid found in citrus fruits, inhibited the growth of cancer in test tubes; people who eat tofu and other soybean products seem to have a lower cancer risk; and women who eat a lot of red meat are twice as likely to develop lung cancer as women who eat little or no red meat.
...And Drink that Coffee. A chemist at the University of California-Davis reports that a group of chemicals in freshly brewed coffee combine to form potent antioxidants that may fight cancer. Takayuki Shibamoto presented his findings at the American Chemical Society. He pointed out that the chemicals escape rapidly into the air; therefore, their beneficial effect may last for only 20 minutes or so after the coffee is brewed.
Treatment
New Combination Therapy for Ovarian Cancer. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute and the Harvard School of Medicine have had success with a combination of three chemotherapy drugs -- Paclitaxel, cyclophosphamide and cisplatin -- to treat advanced ovarian cancer (conventional treatment uses two of the three drugs). Addressing a cancer conference sponsored by the American Medical Association, the researchers reported that one-third of patients receiving this treatment achieved complete remission, compared with only 11 percent of patients at the same stage who received conventional treatment.
Hormone Suppression + Radiation to Control Prostate Cancer. Researchers at the department of radiation oncology at the C. McAuley Health Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., report that suppression of the hormone androgen combined with radiation therapy can improve local control of prostate cancer and reduce the incidence of metastases. According to actuarial projections, 84 percent of patients undergoing androgen suppression and radiation will have no local recurrence, compared to 71 percent in a control group.
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