Health Glance
Fish oil supplements may work slightly better than a popular cholesterol-reducing drug to help patients with chronic heart failure, according to new research released Sunday.
Chronic heart failure is a condition that occurs when the heart becomes enlarged and cannot pump blood efficiently through the body.
Fish oil outperforms statin in heart failure study
Flu shot does not cut risk of death in elderly
"Over the last two decades in the United Sates, even while (flu) vaccination rates among the elderly have increased from 15 to 65 percent, there has been no commensurate decrease in hospital admissions or all-cause mortality," added co-investigator Dr. Dean T. Eurich, who is also with the University of Alberta.
"Further, only about 10 percent of winter-time deaths in the United States are attributable to influenza, thus to suggest that the vaccine can reduce 50 percent of deaths from all causes is implausible in our opinion," he added.
Court bars meatpacker tests for mad cow
The Agriculture Department is within bounds to bar meatpackers from testing slaughter cattle for mad cow disease, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel said in a 2-1 ruling on Friday.
Study outcome won't sway company on eye drug
What does a company do when there's anecdotal evidence that two of its drugs are equally effective in treating a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, one costing patients $60 per treatment and the other $2,000?
In the case of Genentech Inc., nothing.
The company declined to seek federal approval for the cheaper drug, Avastin, to treat the wet form of age-related macular degeneration. Nor would it help finance _ or cooperate with _ a National Eye Institute study comparing the effectiveness and safety of Avastin, a cancer drug, and the more expensive eye drug, Lucentis.
WHO study backs universal health care
Major inequalities in health and life expectancy persist worldwide, according to an independent World Health Organization commission which on Thursday called for all countries to offer universal health care.
"The health inequities we see in the world are absolutely dramatic in their scale," Michael Marmot, a WHO health researcher, who chaired the commission, told reporters.
Low Cholesterol Increases Cancer and Death Risk
In a major shot fired across the bow of the statin marketing machine, the levels of LDL cholesterol that are the artificial targets of "health" promoted by the American Heart Association (AHA) are now found to be associated with a significant increased risk of cancer and death.
The AHA recommends an LDL level of 100 for prevention and 70 for high risk patients. In the new study an LDL level of 107 was associated with a 33% increased risk of cancer and death, an LDL level of 87 was associated with a 50% increased risk. As the LDL goes lower the risk keeps getting worse. These arbitrary AHA levels for LDL cholesterol were established by "experts" with direct financial ties to the statin industry, who knew full well that reaching their artificially low target levels for LDL would require double and triple doses of statin drugs, thus dramatically increasing sales (which has indeed happened).
BLACK RASPBERRIES SLOW CANCER BY ALTERING HUNDREDS OF GENES
Stoner notes that black raspberries have vitamins, minerals, phenols and phytosterols, many of which individually are known to prevent cancer in animals.
“Freeze drying the berries concentrates these elements about ten times, giving us a power pack of chemoprevention agents that can influence the different signaling pathways that are deregulated in cancer,” he says.
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