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Choo choo,
the Chattanooga kidney express
DENVER —
After much debate, doctors agreed on October 19 to perform
the first web-matched kidney transplant. The donor and
recipient met through MatchingDonors.com, a private
website. Despite legal and ethical concerns, the hospital
in Denver made a "compassionate exception" for Bob Hickey,
allowing him to get a new kidney from a perfect stranger
he met online. Donor Rob Smitty of Chattanooga, TN,
wasn't paid for the organ but did receive $5,000US to
cover the cost of his trip and any lost wages.
World
Bank's health fund: all talk, no action
AWKA, NIGERIA
— The governor
of the state of Anambra has accused the World Bank of
squandering up to 80% of its healthcare fund on "endless
seminars and workshops" rather than spending it on healthcare.
Dr Ann Okigbo-Fisher — who leads the team World
Bank Health Systems Development Programmes Fund —
charged back that if the states funnelled money from
the $5-million project properly, it would go a long
way in reducing infant/maternal mortality.
Gov't
to UK docs: stop abetting the work-shy
LONDON
— British
doctors are being urged by the government to help put
an end to "sick note culture." The number of people
off work and claiming long-term sick benefits has tripled
in the last 20 years and health officials imply that
UK doctors are perhaps a little too ready to sign the
disability forms. Tony Blair's Labour government is
also planning to implement a number of programs aimed
at getting the chronically unemployed, including those
on disability and on stress leave, back to work.
Breast
cancer body ideal
COPENHAGEN
— A Danish
study in the October 14 NEJM shows that girls
who experienced their growth spurt between 13 and 14
had a 16% lower risk of developing breast cancer than
girls who experienced their growth spurt between age
11 and 12 and who remained tall and thin. They also
determined the ideal recipe for warding off breast cancer:
be born light, grow slowly into a short and stubby child,
maintain fat mass until menopause and then lose all
excess weight immediately.
New and
improved psychotic reaction
STOCKHOLM
— A presentation
at the 17th annual European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
Congress could shape up how acute agitation is treated
in psychotic patients. A study of 357 agitated patients
injected with either aripiprazole, haloperidol or a
placebo showed that aripiprazole calmed patients as
quickly as the old standby haloperidol, and significantly
faster than the placebo. Moreover, the drug did not
leave patients overly sedated and less than 2% of the
aripiprazole-injected subjects reported pain at the
site of injection.
New
CRC staging system works
LOS ANGELES
— The new
colorectal cancer staging system is far better than
the old system at predicting the future of cancer patients.
Instead of the four stages the old system described,
the new system is based on seven. The five-year survival
rates for 119,363 colon cancer patients were determined
according to both the old and new staging systems. It's
clear that the new system provides better estimates
of patients' prognoses, and may help in designing new
therapies. The study appears in the October 6 issue
of Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
FDA approval
scandal: Walnutgate?
WASHINGTON
— The FDA
has long set the global agenda for food and drug safety
regulations, stretching back to Teddy Roosevelt's days,
but over the last few years some of their decisions
have been kinder to cronies than consumers. Earlier
this year California walnut growers sweet-talked the
FDA into allowing them to use packaging that boasts
of potential heart benefits in eating the nuts, even
though the study authors said the results were inconclusive.
The FDA also recently nixed a ban on misleading sunscreen
packaging and warning labels on foods high in trans
fat.
Academic
lightweights
EAST LANSING,
MI — Infants
of low birthweight struggle with mental heavy lifting
later on. A study of 773 17-year-olds, half of whom
weighed less than 2.5kg at birth, showed that the low
birthweight teens were about 50% more likely than normal
birthweight kids to earn below-average marks on reading
and math tests. The findings, published in the October
issue of Pediatrics, held up for teens from inner-city
Detroit and from silver-spooned suburbs alike.
Pneumococcal
vaccine shocker
ROCKVILLE,
MD — The
safety of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is in doubt
after reports of potentially serious side effects like
seizures and anaphylactic shock. But Dr Robert P Wise
of the FDA defends the vaccine in the October 13 issue
of JAMA, and says that the adverse events reported
in the two years since licensure were at a reasonable
4,154 cases or about 13.2 adverse events per 100,000
doses. Only 14.6% of these reports involved serious
problems, which is a safety profile that Dr Wise says
is comparable to other vaccines.
Let's
not drink to atrial fibrillation
AARHUS,
DENMARK —
The way to adversely set a man's heart aflutter may
be to give him booze. According to a study published
in the October 11 issue of the Archives of Internal
Medicine, there's a significant correlation between
alcohol consumption and atrial fibrillation and/or heart
flutter diagnosis in men, with greater amounts of booze
corresponding to a greater likelihood of coming down
with heart troubles. Interestingly, there seemed to
be no such relationship for women.
Kiss
of death pays dividends
HAIFA —
An American and two Israeli scientists won the $1.3-million
Nobel Prize in chemistry on October 6. Their groundbreaking
work could help researchers find new ways to fight cancer
and other diseases. The scientists have discovered a
process that gives doomed proteins the "kiss of death"
— a chemical label that marks them to get chopped
up. This process plays a role in DNA repair and cell
division. If there's a glitch in the pathway, it can
lead to diseases like cervical cancer. The protein-destroying
process was previously believed to be non-existent —
so the discovery was completely unexpected.
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