Health Highlights: June 5, 2008

• Race, Region Affect Patient Care in U.S.: Report
• Pesticides Increase Diabetes Risk
• Pop Star's Breast Cancer Boosted Screening Among Young Women
• Cigarette Decline Outpaces Marijuana Drop Among Teens
• Merck Won't Have to Monitor Uninjured Vioxx Users: Court
• Asian-Pacific Islanders at Greater Risk of Hospital Complications

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Race, Region Affect Patient Care in U.S.: Report

In the United States, a person's race and where they live can have a huge influence on the course and quality of medial treatment they receive, says a new study by researchers at Dartmouth College.

Their analysis of Medicare claims data identified a number of racial and geographic disparities, The New York Times reported.

"In U.S. health care, it's not only who you are that matters; it's also where you live," wrote study leader Dr. Elliott S. Fisher and colleagues.

Among their findings:

• The rate of leg amputations for blacks was about six per 1,000 in Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, compared with less than two per 1,000 in Colorado and Nevada. The rates for whites in the southern states were about 1.3 per 1,000, double the rates for whites in the two western states.
• The mammogram rate for black women in California was 48 percent, compared to 72 percent in Massachusetts. California and Illinois had the widest racial gaps in mammogram rates -- a 12 percent difference between black and white women.
• In all but two states, blacks with diabetes were less likely than whites to receive annual hemoglobin testing. Blacks in Colorado were far less likely to receive this screening than blacks in Massachusetts -- 66 percent vs. 88 percent.
• There was wide variation in the percentage of patients who'd seen a primary care doctor within a two-year period, ranging from 65 percent in New Jersey to 86 percent in Nebraska.
• Hawaii, Utah, and Washington had far higher rates of unnecessary hospitalization than Kentucky, Louisiana, and West Virginia.

The study was commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which on Thursday is expected to announce a three-year, $300 million project to reduce racial- and geographic-related health disparities, the Times reported.

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Pesticides Increase Diabetes Risk

Exposure to pesticides increases a person's risk of diabetes, say U.S. researchers who analyzed data from 31,787 licensed pesticide applicators in North Carolina and Iowa. Of those, 1,171 reported a diagnosis of diabetes over five years.

The study found that applicators in the highest category of use (more than 100 lifetime days) of any pesticide had a 17 percent higher risk of diabetes compared to those in the lowest pesticide use category of zero to 64 lifetime days, United Press International reported.

When the researchers looked at specific pesticides, the increased risk of diabetes ranged from 20 percent to 200 percent. The study appears in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

"The results suggest that pesticides may be a contributing factor for diabetes along with known risk factors such as obesity, lack of exercise and having a family history of diabetes," study co-author Dale Sandler, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in a prepared statement, UPI reported.

"Although the amount of diabetes explained by pesticides is small, these new findings may extend beyond the pesticide applicators in this study," Sandler said.

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Pop Star's Breast Cancer Boosted Screening Among Young Women

Publicity about pop star Kylie Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis in April 2005 led to a large increase in mammography and ultrasound procedures among low-risk women, says an Australian study.

In the six months following Minogue's diagnosis, mammography and ultrasound procedures increased 30 percent among women ages 25 to 44, who are considered to be at low risk for breast cancer. Breast biopsies in this age group increased 46 percent, CBC News reported.

In women ages 35 to 44, breast imaging increased 25 percent and breast biopsies increased 37 percent, the University of Melbourne study found.

There was no overall increase in rates of surgery to remove breast tumors. The study appears in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

"Raising women's awareness of the need to get screened is generally a good thing," study leader Margaret Kelaher said in a prepared statement, CBC News reported. "But these findings suggest that thousands of additional imaging procedures and biopsies did not improve breast cancer detection among young women. It appears there has been a situation where publicity has led to many low-risk women using -- and probably overusing -- screening services."

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Cigarette Decline Outpaces Marijuana Drop Among Teens

Cigarette use among high school students fell markedly in 2007 to 20 percent from 23 percent two years earlier, a new federal report shows. But marijuana use among these teens over the same span dropped only slightly, to 19.7 percent in 2007 from 20.2 percent in 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance report.

"Efforts to curb cigarette sales to teens have been wildly successful, and it's past time that we applied those lessons to marijuana," Aaron Houston, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Washington, D.C., said in a prepared statement.

A second analysis released this week, the 2007 Annual Synar Report on tobacco sales to youth, showed a decline in illegal tobacco sales to underage kids for the 10th straight year, the MPP statement said. In 2007, 10.5 percent of retailers violated laws against tobacco sales to minors, compared to 40.1 percent in 1997, the report found.

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Merck Won't Have to Monitor Uninjured Vioxx Users: Court

Merck & Co., maker of the now defunct painkiller Vioxx, won't have to monitor former users of the drug who aren't claiming injury, the New Jersey Supreme Court said Wednesday.

Ruling 5-1, the court dismissed a lawsuit brought by users of the painkiller, who said they didn't have current symptoms but were more prone to health problems for having used the drug, the Associated Press reported.

Late last year, Merck agreed to settle for $4.85 billion thousands of lawsuits alleging that users' cardiovascular problems were caused by Vioxx. The drug was withdrawn from the market in September 2004 after a company study found that Vioxx doubled users' risks of heart attack or stroke.

In its ruling on Wednesday, the New Jersey court said that since these users weren't claiming injury, they "cannot satisfy the definition of harm" in seeking to get Merck to pay for monitoring their conditions, the AP reported.

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Asian-Pacific Islanders at Greater Risk of Hospital Complications

People of Asian-Pacific Island ancestry are 16 percent more likely than whites to die from deadly complications acquired in U.S. hospitals, a new federal report finds.

The 12.5 million Asian-Pacific Islanders in the United States include native Hawaiians, Samoans, and people who trace their ancestry to nations including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and India.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality study cited possible reasons for the disparity in preventable complications, including Asians being treated at hospitals that provided lower-quality care, receiving inferior care compared with people in the same hospital, cultural or language barriers that affected quality of care, and being more vulnerable to complications than people of other origins.

The study found that Asian-Pacific Islanders having surgery were:

• 42 percent more likely to acquire a blood infection (sepsis).
• 35 percent more likely to develop kidney failure.
• 21 percent more likely to develop internal bleeding or a blood clot.
• 14 percent more likely to need a breathing ventilator.

The report analyzed race and ethnicity data from 23 states.