Health Tip: Help Prevent a Herniated Disk

(HealthDay News) -- A herniated (sometimes called "ruptured") disk in the back or neck can cause severe pain and numbness.

Disks are the soft, rubbery pads found between the spine's vertebrae. When stressed or overused from wear-and-tear, the center of the disk can push through its outer edge, putting pressure on nearby sensitive nerves.

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons lists these common risk factors for herniated disks:

• Lifting objects the wrong way.


• Smoking.


• Being overweight, which causes stress on the spine.


• Applying sudden pressure, even slight, on the spine.


• Engaging in repetitive strenuous activities.

New HIV/AIDS Guidelines Suggest Earlier Treatment

(HealthDay News) -- New guidelines for treating HIV and AIDS patients with treatments known as antiretrovirals suggest earlier therapy might be effective.

The findings were slated to be presented at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City Sunday. They will also appear in the Aug. 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The new guidelines were written by the International AIDS Society-USA Panel, and recommend starting therapy before immune-system CD4 cell counts decline to less than 350 cells per microliter. Additional factors should be considered when starting therapy at higher CD4 levels.

"As we now have developed treatments that are easier to take in terms of number of pills, number of doses in the day and potential adverse effects, and we now know there seem to be additional benefits with starting earlier, the pendulum is swinging back to starting [treatment] earlier," noted Dr. Michael Horberg, director of HIV/AIDS policy at Kaiser Permanente Health Plan in Santa Clara, Calif. "Also, importantly, is the recognition of comorbidities that should prompt you to start treatment earlier, including hepatitis B or C, cardiovascular risk, and HIV-associated necropathy."

The authors of the guidelines also recommended that frontline regimens be individualized, and that certain drugs such as Sustiva (efavirenz) be given high consideration.

Patient plasma HIV-1 RNA levels should be monitored regularly, and genotypic testing for drug resistance also should be performed for certain patients.

The guidelines also addressed changing therapies and when to introduce new drugs.

In other news from the AIDS conference:

• Patients taking rifampicin-based therapy for tuberculosis were more likely to experience virological failure (failure to keep viral levels low) when they start nevirapine-based antiretroviral therapy as opposed to efavirenz-based antiretroviral therapy. Nevirapine-based therapy costs less and is used more often in developing areas of the world.


• HIV-infected patients with abdominal obesity and growth hormone deficiency related to their treatment regimens who received low-dose growth hormone showed improvements in fat and blood pressure measurements but worse glucose levels.


• The survival rate between HIV-infected intravenous drug users and non-drug users appears similar after four to five years of active antiretroviral therapy. This is in contrast to previous reports.

"The take-home message is 'prevention is always better than treatment,' which seems to be possible through the utilization of the latest diagnostic techniques," said Srikanth Kolluru, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Texas A&M Health Science Center Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy in Kingsville.

More information
There's much more on HIV/AIDS at the U.S. government's AIDS.gov Web site.

Are Some People Mosquito Magnets?

By Kurt Soller
After this weekend's barbeques and fireworks displays, you might wonder why some people wind up covered in mosquito welts and others are bite-free. It's not a coincidence. Each person's individual body chemistry determines how many mosquitoes will come calling.

According to Joe Conlon, a medical entomologist who advises the American Mosquito Control Association, the insects can detect their targets from nearly 100 feet away. But what are they seeking? Mostly the scent of carbon dioxide and lactic acid, two compounds that indicate to the hematophagous—or blood-sucking—pests that their next landing pad is nearby. (It's worth noting that when a female mosquito latches on to you, she's not looking for food; instead, she sucks out blood to help fertilize her eggs … that's why males don't "bite"). Continue Reading >>

Health Tip: Why You Should Wash Your Hands

(HealthDay News) -- You've heard it over and over, starting from your parents: "Wash your hands."

But if you knew why it's so important, handwashing would always be on the top of your list of ways to stay healthy, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Scientists believe most people get colds and other illnesses by touching a sick person or by touching something a sick person touched.

All you have to do to protect yourself is wash your hands -- after you go to the bathroom, after you touch a cut or sore and and always before you touch food.

Wash your hands front and back and between the fingers. Soap up your wrists, too. And don't forget your fingernails. A good nail brush does the best job there.

Nanoparticle Stops Cancer From Spreading

(HealthDay News) -- California researchers say they have developed molecular "smart bombs" that stop pancreatic and kidney cancer from spreading in mice while causing fewer side effects and damage to healthy surrounding tissues than traditional chemotherapy.

A team from the University of California, San Diego, designed a "nanoparticle" anti-cancer drug delivery system that zooms in on a protein marker called integrin avB3, which is found on the surface of certain tumor blood vessels. The marker is tied to the development of new blood vessels and malignant tumor growth.

While the system had little impact on primary tumors, it halted the metastasis of pancreatic and kidney cancers throughout the bodies of mice. Cancer metastasis normally is much harder to treat than the primary tumor, and it usually leads to the patient's death.

The findings were published in this week's online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the report, the system works with a lower dose of chemotherapy because it attacks the cancer with such precision. In most chemo treatments, the destruction of healthy tissue is a side effect as it floods the body with cancer-killing toxins.

"We were able to establish the desired anti-cancer effect while delivering the drug at levels 15 times below what is needed when the drug is used systemically," study leader David Cheresh, vice chairman of pathology at UCSD, said in a university news release. "Even more interesting is that the metastatic lesions were more sensitive to this therapy than the primary tumor."

UCSD engineers and oncologists together designed the nanoparticle -- a microscopic particle made of lipid-based polymers -- to work with the cancer-killing drug doxorubicin.

"Doxorubicin is known to be an effective anti-cancer drug but has been difficult to give patients an adequate dose without negative side effects," Cheresh said. "This new strategy represents the first time we've seen such an impact on metastatic growth, and it was accomplished without the collateral damage of weight loss or other outward signs of toxicity in the patient."

"Traditional cancer therapies are often limited or non-effective over time, because the toxic side effects limit the dose we can safely deliver to the patient," he said. "This new drug delivery system offers an important advance in treating metastatic disease."

More information
The National Cancer Institute has more about nanotechnology uses in cancer treatment.

Tomatoes May Not Be Only Source of Salmonella Outbreak

(HealthDay News) -- Experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now say they're no longer sure that the nationwide salmonella outbreak is due to tomatoes alone, or some other food source.

"Whatever this produce item is that's causing illness is probably still out there making people sick," Dr. Patricia Griffin, chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the CDC, told reporters late Friday at a special press teleconference. She did not say what source other than tomatoes, if any, might be suspected.

The number of people sickened in the outbreak has now jumped to 810 across 36 states, according to the latest CDC numbers presented Friday.

Health officials said the most recent reported case of infection with Salmonella Saintpaul occurred June 15. However, more illnesses may be waiting to be identified: According to experts, it typically takes an average of 16 days before doctors can pinpoint the onset of an infection.

The exact source of the outbreak remains unknown. Tomatoes are still considered the most probable cause, stressed Dr. David Acheson, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for food protection.

"The most recent case appeared to have onset just 12 days ago, and that raises the question is there something still out there that people are consuming that is leading to illness," he said. "Just because the outbreak is ongoing doesn't mean it can't be the tomatoes. It certainly could be the tomatoes, there's nothing to indicate that we should be looking at anything else," he said.

"We have no evidence that the outbreak is over... I would say that the source of contamination has been ongoing at least through early June and we don't have any evidence that whatever the source is has been removed from the market," Griffin said.

One factor complicating the search for the cause of the outbreak is a common industry practice called "repacking."

"Repacking is a situation in which a supplier or a distributor will repack tomatoes to meet a specific customer's request," Acheson explained. "So, if a customer is wanting small, ripe tomatoes and the supplier does not have a box of small ripe tomatoes, then they will typically go through multiple boxes and pull out ones that meet customers' specifications and repack them. It's a very, very common practice. We've seen reports that it may be as common as 90 percent of tomatoes get repacked, but we don't have confirmation that the number is that high. Obviously this complicates the trace-back," Acheson said.

He also said that it was possible that tomatoes were contaminated at a packing and distribution center, not a particular farm. That means that produce from states that have been cleared may have gone through packing or distribution houses elsewhere, and become contaminated there.

The food poisoning scare ranks as the largest on record in terms of illnesses linked to tainted produce, the CDC said. "This is so far the biggest outbreak with this number of illnesses confirmed by culture," Griffin noted.

More than 300 of the total cases from the current outbreak come from Texas. Patient ages range from under 1 year old to 99 years old. Half the victims are women.

In addition, at least 95 people have been hospitalized; there have been no deaths, the CDC reported.

The FDA had sent teams of investigators to Florida and Mexico as of last weekend to inspect farms, packing houses and distribution centers. There has been no word yet on what has been found.

The increase in people sickened by salmonella was not unexpected. Three weeks ago, the count was below 200; it jumped to more than 380 a week later.

The CDC had predicted last week that for every reported case, there would be 30 more that had gone unreported.

And health officials had warned that the end was not yet in sight.

"The marked increase is not due to new infections, but mainly because some states improved surveillance in response to this outbreak, and laboratory identification of many other previously submitted strains has now been completed," said Casey Barton Behravesh, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during a June 19 teleconference.

According to the numbers on the CDC's Web site -- which do not include the latest cases -- the victim count breaks down by state to: Arkansas (10 persons), Arizona (38), California (10), Colorado (6), Connecticut (4), Florida (1), Georgia (15), Idaho (3), Illinois (66), Indiana (11), Kansas (11), Kentucky (1), Maryland (25), Massachusetts (17), Michigan (4), Missouri (12), New Hampshire (3), Nevada (4), New Jersey (4), New Mexico (80), New York (18), North Carolina (5), Ohio (3), Oklahoma (17), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (6), Rhode Island (3), Tennessee (6), Texas (330), Utah (2), Virginia (22), Vermont (1), Washington (4), Wisconsin (6), and the District of Columbia (1).

On June 20, Acheson said the investigation into the outbreak had zeroed in on "a number of farms" in both Florida and Mexico.

Health officials have said all along that the bulk of the tomatoes available at the start of the outbreak in mid-April had come from Mexico and parts of Florida.

Salmonella is a bacteria that can cause bloody diarrhea in humans. Some 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported in the United States each year, although the CDC estimates that because milder cases are not diagnosed or reported, the actual number of infections may be 30 or more times greater. Approximately 600 people die each year after being infected.

However, the strain of Salmonella Saintpaul had been previously considered rare. In 2007, according to the CDC, there were only three people infected in the country during April through June.

More information
Visit the CDC for more on the salmonella outbreak.

The Reality of Mammograms and Breast Cancer False Alarms

Better technology means more scares, but if you have breasts like mine, you have to believe it's worth it
by Sally Chew

On my way into St. Vincent's Comprehensive Cancer Center recently to get my annual mammogram, I happened to read in the paper that the greater accuracy of the new digital mammograms means more false alarms—more scares, more visits.

I don't know if it was technical improvements that sped me through the masher more quickly than usual that day. More likely, it was the usual exasperation with the dense tissue of my ultra-fibrocystic breasts.

Digital mammograms are intended for women with dense breasts, but mine would defy even Superman’s powerful stare—or so I've been told. Radiologists dutifully study my "films" each year but rarely expect to see what's really going on till I lay back, down the hall, for a cool, sticky ultrasound.

Which is where I was dispatched last week so they could snap these:

The shadowy globes at the top of each image above are cysts, among a dozen or so I carry around from year to year. We track them every spring like so many migrating whales.

I crane my neck to see the screen while a technician punches measurements into her computer with one hand and drags that chilly wand around my breasts with the other.

Actually, she's more interested in those white, wispy "calcifications" and any brand-new dark shapes—like the pebble that prompted an open biopsy a few years back on that very same hall.

At the time, it seemed like pure luck that I emerged from surgery with a benign diagnosis (and a pretty scar). I hadn't yet experienced enough bump-by-bump monitoring to understand the benefits of the false alarm.

I get it now, though. As long as the statistics continue to be in my favor—did you know that 80% of biopsies are benign?—and the folks manning the machines actually seem to be paying attention, count me in for the extra whale-watching.