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Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Some Conditions, Study Shows
Gerald Zanetti/FoodPix(NEW YORK) -- Hey, coffee lovers, here's another reason to defend that java habit you just can't kick. A study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine found that coffee drinkers are less likely to die from several common health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, accidents and infections, than non-coffee drinkers are.
Researchers from the National Cancer Institute conducted an observational study from data that included 400,000 adults ages 50 to 71. People who drank three or more cups of coffee per day had a 10-percent lower risk of death from the aforementioned conditions than the non-coffee drinkers.
"Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in America, but the association between coffee consumption and risk of death has been unclear," Neal Freedman, lead author of the study and an investigator in the National Cancer Institute's division of cancer epidemiology and genetics, said in a statement.
"We found coffee consumption to be associated with lower risk of death overall, and of death from a number of different causes,'' he said. "Although we cannot infer a causal relationship between coffee drinking and lower risk of death, we believe these results do provide some reassurance that coffee drinking does not adversely affect health."
And it may not be caffeine that is the protective ingredient. Those who drank caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee had similar health results, which suggests there is some other component in the coffee, not the caffeine, that plays a role in protecting one's health.
Several studies have found that coffee reduces the risk of several other medical conditions, including stroke, depression, dementia and several other cancers.
More than half of American adults drink some form of coffee each day, according to the National Coffee Association, and caffeine is the most frequently consumed stimulant in the world.
Despite the promising benefits, Dr. Cheryl Williams, a registered dietician with the Emory Heart & Vascular Center in Atlanta, said she would advise patients that coffee does indeed contain properties that may promote health, but it also has properties that can negatively affect health. Caffeine can raise blood pressure, she said, and boiled coffee lipids may increase already-high blood cholesterol.
"Overall, more research needs to be done to truly understand the compounds in coffee and their biological activity and effect on health," said Williams.
Drinking coffee is "fine," said Keith Ayoob, associate professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
"It can be part of a healthy diet and lifestyle and may even contribute to such a lifestyle," said Ayoob. "I wouldn't want it to push out nutritious foods, but in and of itself, there is no reason to suggest that drinking coffee is negative, and it may be beneficial."
The study authors did note that coffee drinking was also associated with smoking, poor diets and alcohol consumption, but Ayoob noted that this doesn't necessarily mean coffee is bad for your health like some of the others.
"You're picking up on a long-term lifestyle, for better or worse," said Ayoob. "[But] just because coffee drinking accompanies smoking, inactivity, etc. doesn't mean it's bad, it means coffee is hanging around some bad company."
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
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Early Results Promising for Breast Cancer Vaccine
Comstock/Thinkstock(HOUSTON) -- A vaccine may be able to keep an aggressive type of breast cancer from returning in women who have a history of the disease, according to early results of a new study. The vaccine still needs further research, but breast cancer experts say the results are promising.
Researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston developed a vaccine, called AE37, that trains the body's immune system to attack a common piece found on breast cancer tumors, a protein called HER2, which helps tumors grow.
"With this vaccine, we've educated the immune system to recognize this protein, HER2," said Dr. Elizabeth Mittendorf, the lead investigator on the trial. "If some rogue tumor cell is floating around, it can recognize it and take care of it before it can settle into bone or other parts of the body."
About 25 percent of breast cancer cases have an overactive amount of the HER2 protein, called HER2-positive breast cancer. This form of breast cancer is usually more aggressive and harder to treat than other types. But most tumors usually have some level of the protein, even if the amount is not enough to be classified as HER2-positive.
Mittendorf said one of the most encouraging things about the vaccine is that it seemed to reduce the risk of recurrent breast cancer in women who had both high and low levels of HER2, a group that accounts for about 70 percent of all breast cancer cases.
Mittendorf and her team studied 201 patients who had a history of breast cancer but who were disease-free at the time, giving the vaccine to about half of them. Based on the early outcomes of patients in the trial, the researchers projected that breast cancer would come back for 10.3 percent of the women who got the vaccine compared with 18 percent of the women who had not been vaccinated. That translates to a 43-percent reduced risk of recurrent breast cancer.
The study's results will be presented next month at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Dr. Michele Zembo, 57, was one of the patients who got the vaccine. The pediatric orthopedic surgeon from New Orleans was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2010 and after a year of chemotherapy, a mastectomy, radiation therapy and reconstructive surgery, she knew that her battle with breast cancer may not be over.
"That's just a reality of breast cancer. Somewhere down the line, there is that risk that it will come back," she said. "So you start wondering, what can I do to reduce my risk?"
She got regular exercise, changed her diet and even changed her high blood pressure medication when new evidence suggested beta blockers might reduce the risk of breast cancer. When her doctor told her about the clinical trial testing the AE37 vaccine, she did her research and decided to join the study.
Zembo said she experienced almost no side effects of the vaccine, just a minor rash and pain where the shots of the vaccine were injected. So far, Zembo said she is still free of breast cancer.
"I've tried to do everything that I can do to try to decrease my risk of recurrence. To me, this vaccine is one additional step, and a big step, that does that," Zembo said.
Breast cancer experts said the results of the study so far are promising, but they were cautiously optimistic. The number of patients in the study was relatively small, and they were monitored for less than a year. Women who have had breast cancer are at risk for recurrences for many years after their first diagnosis.
"We've seen a lot of treatments that have very early promise, but with follow-up studies just don't pan out, said Dr. Jay Brooks, chair of hematology and oncology at Ochsner Health System in New Orleans. "But it's interesting and something I would love to use in my practice if it proved successful."
The study is ongoing, and Mittendorf said it should finish in the fall of 2012. She hopes to launch a larger trial for the vaccine after that.
Mittendorf said the vaccine isn't useful for treating patients with advanced forms of the disease and isn't intended to replace other forms of treatment but to work in conjunction with them to fight breast cancer.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
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Startling Birth Control Ad for Pets
Comstock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Parents of teens know that at that certain age they can’t avoid having the dreaded “sex talk” with their kids, but what about with their pets? What if pet owners started thinking of their pets as their teens when it comes to avoiding pregnancy?
That’s the dramatic, but humorous, approach taken in a new series of public service announcements and advertisements produced by the Best Friends Animal Society, the nation’s largest sanctuary for homeless animals.
In the spots, voiced by NCIS: Los Angeles actress Linda Hunt and Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet, parents appear to be reacting to their kids’ promiscuity, only to have the kids replaced by their pets. In other words, once you start thinking of your pets as your kids, it’s a lot easier to think of what needs to be done to keep them from delivering offspring.
Called “Prevent more. Fix at month four,” the campaign is the first national effort to educate pet owners on when, not just why, they should spay and neuter, according to the Society.
“We felt it was important to present the messaging in an attention-getting way that didn’t make people feel guilty or sad,” Amber Ayers, the society’s senior marketing and creative manager, told ABC News. “When we looked at the research, most people planned on spaying or neutering their pets, but there was just a lot of confusion about when to do so and this leads to the ‘oops’ litter. ”
The Utah-based non-profit says it hopes the ads will grow into a “cultural movement.”
“We are hoping to maintain long-term traction by shifting the mindset of our country,” said Ayers. “It will become commonplace to fix your pet at four months, reducing the number of pets that enter, and ultimately never leave our shelters. ”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
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Z-Pak Antibiotic Raises Death Risk for Some, Says Study
iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) -- Patients prescribed the antibiotic azithromycin are more likely to die than those prescribed a different antibiotic, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. These results were especially pronounced for those who died from heart attacks, strokes, sudden cardiac death and other cardiovascular causes.
Azithromycin, commonly known by the trade name Z-Pak, is prescribed to almost 50 million Americans every year. Like the popular antibiotic amoxicillin, azithromycin is commonly prescribed to help fight off bacterial infections. But while they are often prescribed for similar conditions, the two drugs work differently from one another.
Wayne Ray, professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn., and lead author of the study, says he thinks many doctors prescribe azithromycin instead of amoxicillin because of its easier regimen; patients on azithromycin take fewer pills over fewer days, which means they are more likely to finish their entire course of medicine. Finishing the entire course not only leads to more effective treatment, but it also lessens the risk of the patient developing a drug-resistant bug.
But, Ray says of azithromycin, “the risk of death may outweigh convenience and compliance, at least for high-risk patients.”
These high-risk patients would seem to be those who have certain types of cardiovascular disease. Some doctors have suggested that azithromycin may cause irregular heartbeats known as arrhythmias, which in some people can lead to death. In Ray’s study, which looked at Medicaid patients from 1992 to 2006 and analyzed millions of prescriptions, he and his colleagues found that patients on azithromycin had two and a half times the odds of dying from a cardiovascular cause while taking their medication than did patients on amoxicillin. The gap was widest when looking at the 10 percent of patients with the worst cardiovascular disease.
The study wasn’t able to tease out which patients were on azithromycin because they had allergies to amoxicillin.
Cardiologist Leonard Ilkhanoff, director of the Inherited Arrhythmia Program at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, says that while it’s impossible to know what precisely is causing the increased risk of death, the study is very interesting. But he cautions that patients on azithromycin should not panic.
“Patients shouldn’t be thinking, ‘If I’m on azithromycin, I’m going to die,’” he says, adding that sometimes azithromycin really is the proper antibiotic for a patient.
“It’s appropriate, though, to discuss the risks and benefits with your doctor.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
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FDA Advisory Panel Approves Home HIV Test Kit
ABC News Radio(WASHINGTON) -- Americans are a step closer to being able to quickly determine in the privacy of their own homes whether they’re infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Tuesday voted 17-0 in favor of approving the OraQuick In-Home HIV Test, which produces results within 20 minutes of a quick swab along the gum line. A positive test result still must be confirmed with a traditional blood test performed in a laboratory.
The FDA, which isn’t bound by the recommendations of its advisory panels, is expected to make a final decision about the home test this year. A thumbs-up for the over-the-counter test kit from OraSure Technologies Inc., of Bethlehem, Pa., has the potential to reduce the number of people who unknowingly spread the virus because they’re unaware they’re infected. An estimated quarter million Americans are HIV-positive, but haven’t been tested. Each year, about 50,000 Americans become infected.
The FDA has estimated that 2.8 million people might test themselves in the first year after the over-the-counter test becomes available. FDA projected that the test could pick up 45,000 infections that otherwise would have remained undetected, while missing 3,800 infections, based upon the test’s 93 percent rate of correctly identifying infections in clinical trials. In addition, the agency estimated that by identifying 45,000 HIV-positive people, the test could prevent them from unwittingly transmitting it to another 4,000 people.
“This is a big step forward for HIV prevention. Anything that encourages people to get tested is a good thing,” said Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News chief health and medical editor, and a former acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Twenty percent of Americans with HIV don’t even know it. It’s hard to prevent the spread if you don’t even know you’re infected. HIV is now a treatable as well as preventable disease.”
Besser said it’s important that anyone who gets tested, whether at home or in a doctor’s office, “is connected to support services.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
