In The News This Week … June 15–22, 2008: Cancer, Air Pollution, Coffee, Brains, Diabetes, & Insurance Companies

Lung Cancer & Women

An article published on June 14 in The Lancet Oncology has found that smoking is strongly associated with lung cancer risk in both men and women. However, while women who smoke are no more likely than men who smoke to get lung cancer, women who are nonsmokers seem to have a higher risk of lung cancer than men who are nonsmokers. The findings were based on 279,214 men and 184,623 women from eight states, who were aged 50 to 71 at baseline in 1995 and 1996, and who were followed until 2003.

Treating Melanoma with Cloned Immune Cells

A paper published in the June 19 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine reports success in using a man's own cloned CD4+ T white blood cells to treat his metastatic melanoma. The cells, which were removed from the patient and multiplied in the lab, had been primed to attack a chemical found on the surface of melanoma cells. Two months after treatment with the cloned cells, scans showed the tumors had disappeared, and after two years, the man remained disease-free.

Lifestyle, Diet, & Prostate Cancer

An article published online on June 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at a group of 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer who had decided against conventional measures such as surgery and radiation or hormone therapy. Instead, the men were put on a three-month major lifestyle change regimen, which included eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and soy products, engaging in moderate exercise (e.g., walking 30 minutes daily), and an hour of daily stress management (e.g., meditation). After the three months, not only did the men lose weight and lower their blood pressure, but prostate biopsies showed they had experienced changes in activity in about 500 genes – including 48 that were turned on and 453 that were turned off.

Asthma, Allergies, & Air Pollution

A study published in the June 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine followed approximately 3,000 children in Munich from birth to age six, and found strong positive associations between the distance to the nearest main road and asthmatic bronchitis, hay fever, eczema, and sensitization, and that a distance-dependent relationship could be identified, with the highest odds ratios for children living less than 50 meters (55 yards) from busy streets. A busy street was defined as one with 10,000+ cars using it each day.

Coffee & Long-Term Health

A paper published in the June 17 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine followed 41,736 men and 86,214 women with no history of CVD or cancer at baseline for 18 and 24 years respectively. Researchers found that regular coffee consumption was not associated with an increased mortality rate in either men or women, and concluded that the possibility that coffee consumption provides a modest benefit on all-cause and CVD mortality needs to be further investigated. The study's participants were subjects in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses' Health Study.

Brains & Sexual Orientation

Research published online on June 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that gay men and straight women, and lesbian women and straight men, share some characteristics in common in the areas of the brain responsible for emotion, mood, and anxiety. They wrote, "The results cannot be primarily ascribed to learned effects, and they suggest a linkage to neurobiological entities." The findings were based on the brain scans of 90 volunteers.

Depression & Diabetes

A contribution entitled Examining a Bidirectional Association Between Depressive Symptoms and Diabetes published in the June 18 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that not only can diabetes lead to depression, but depression can lead to diabetes. The authors stated, "These findings suggest that individuals with elevated depressive symptoms have a modest increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes during follow-up, independent of sociodemographic, economic, and metabolic factors. Although this association was no longer statistically significant after adjustment for lifestyle factors, point estimates were largely unchanged by adjustment, suggesting that the association between depressive symptoms and incident type 2 diabetes is not fully explained by lifestyle risk factors." The findings were based on approximately 7,000 male and female participants aged 45 to 84 in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.

MDs Rate Insurance Companies

This week, the American Medical Association released its first National Health Insurer Report Card, which rated Medicare and seven companies: Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, CIGNA Corp., Coventry Health Care, Health Net Inc., Humana Inc., and UnitedHealthcare. Among the findings: doctors are spending as much as 14% of their total earnings trying to get accurate payment for their work. Among those surveyed, the AMA found that Medicare had the highest rate of contract compliance (98%) and UnitedHealthcare the lowest (approximately 62%).

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