Yesterday, we reported on the final recommendation issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), which advised against PSA screening for prostate cancer in men of any age.
Nearly one-quarter of adolescents were either diabetic or pre-diabetic in 2008 an alarming figure, considering the rate was only 9 percent in 2000. Those numbers, which come from a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, are very concerning, according to lead author Dr. Ashleigh May, a CDC epidemiologist.
Men are no longer advised to get a PSA test, regardless of their age, according to the final recommendation on prostate cancer screening issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). The recommendation, initially drafted in 2011, has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Last year, a National Cancer Institute study found that, compared to standard chest X-rays, screening with spiral CT scans reduced lung cancer deaths by 20 percent. Now, based on their own review, the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Society of Clinical Oncology are recommending that high-risk smokers those between the ages of 55 to 74 who have at least a 30 pack-year history of smoking should undergo the annual CT scan, even if they ve quit within the past 15 years.
Just last week, we observed that ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom is about as qualified to write about Ming Dynasty ceramics as The New York Times Nicholas Kristof is to explain the nuances of chemistry which is to say, not at all.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has added all baby boomers to the list of people who should receive screening for hepatitis C, which formerly included mainly those who had injected illegal drugs, are HIV-positive, or who received a blood transfusion or organ transplant before July 1992. Hepatitis C is curable, but since most people who are infected don t know they have it, widespread screening for those at risk could save lives, according to the CDC.
It once was thought that, when we d finally figured out the human genome, we d have all of the answers to the genetic underpinnings of various diseases. A person who had his genome mapped would know all there was about his risk of disease. But now that the human genome has indeed been fully mapped, scientists are starting to realize that the process of understanding the genetic basis of disease is nowhere as simple.
It seems that the widely prescribed antibiotic azithromycin (sold as Zithromax in Z-Paks) may slightly increase the risk of sudden cardiac death when compared to no antibiotic treatment, according to a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
For the first time in over 20 years, the CDC has redefined the level of concern for lead levels in children's blood.
As any regular Dispatch reader knows, recommendations for screening for as well as treating prostate cancer are always shifting. The latest research on treatment comes from a small clinical trial of Zytiga (abiraterone), a powerful anti-androgen: When combined with standard therapy over six months, the drug eliminated or nearly eliminated tumors in about one-third of men whose cancer had a high risk of spreading beyond the prostate gland.
