Entries for November 2008

The mammogram has suffered a lot of setbacks in recent years. Breast cancer researchers have questioned the value of the screening test in women younger than 50 and berated the X-ray for its high rate of false positives, those suspicious-looking abnormalities that turn out to be benign. Now, the test itself takes another hit, though women may actually benefit from the news in the end. Some tumors that mammography accurately diagnoses, it seems, may not need treatment. According to a study published in yesterday's Archives of Internal Medicine, a fraction of the tumors it detects would vanish on their own.

The researchers compared about 2,000 Norwegian women ages 50 to 64 who either had screening mammography three times in four years or just one mammogram at the end of the four-year study. The frequently screened group had 22 percent more breast cancers diagnosed compared with the one-time-only group, which could mean that some of the tumors detected initially in the first group would have regressed had they not been spotted. "The hypothesis suggests that about 20 percent of the women in the multiple screen group received unnecessary treatment because the tumors would have disappeared on their own," write the authors of an editorial that accompanied the article.

Breast cancer gene screening is all the rage these days, but women who think they can rest easy if they're told they don't carry one of the two gene mutations—BRCA1 or BRCA2—should think again. Family history plays a prominent role in predicting breast cancer risk even in the absence of these mutations, according to new research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting. In fact, a strong family history can increase your risk of breast cancer by nearly four times, giving you a 30 to 40 percent lifetime risk of breast cancer compared with the average woman's 12 percent risk.

What's meant by a "strong family history"? The study researchers defined it as having two or more first-degree relatives (mother, sister, daughter) who were diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50 or having three or more close relatives who were diagnosed at any age. So I wouldn't fall into this category even though my grandmother and her two sisters died of breast cancer. If you do, you might want to consider visiting a high-risk breast cancer center. And you might want to ask your doctor about more aggressive screening and preventive measures, according to lead study author Steven Narod, a senior research scientist at the University of Toronto. These include:

Women's health activists are fist-bumping each other over Obama's slam-dunk win, and they're hoping that he'll reverse some of the policies put in place by Bush. Yesterday, I had a chance to catch up with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards in between her strategy meetings and blogging for the Huffington Post. She predicted seven things that would change in the new administration.

1. No more federal funds for abstinence-only education. Two years ago Obama told a conservative Christianaudience that abstinence-only education was not enough to prevent teen pregnancy and that he "respectfully but unequivocally" disagrees with those who oppose condom distribution to prevent HIV transmission, according to the reproductive health blog Reality Check. He's also an original co-sponsor of the Prevention First Act, which mandates that all federal sex-education programs be medically accurate and include information about contraception. That legislation could be resurrected in the new Congress.

It strikes me as bizarre that pharmaceutical companies are still pursuing a drug to treat a "disorder"—low sexual desire in women—that appears manufactured, in my opinion, by the companies trying to treat it. In this week's New England Journal of Medicine, researchers triumphantly tout a testosterone patch, saying that it appears to increase the number of satisfying sexual encounters that women have.

Those on a 300-microgram dose of the patch, called Intrinsa, had gratifying sex an average of 2.1 times in four weeks, compared with 1.2 times for those on a lower dose and 0.7 time for those on a placebo. (Before you ask what constitutes seven tenths of a sex act, remember: These were averages.)

Right on the heels of Halloween, it seems like it's "scare pregnant women" week. A British Medical Journal study out today warns that pregnant women who indulge in one or more daily cups of caffeinated coffee—or the caffeine equivalent in chocolate, tea, and soft drinks—are more likely to have low birth weight babies, who often have respiratory problems and learning disabilities.

I was shocked to see that the British government decided, on the basis of this one study, to lower the recommended daily limit of caffeine consumption from 300 mg to 200 mg. (Granted, other studies, like this recent one, suggest that drinking a cup or two of coffee a day increases the risk of miscarriage.) While there is no such recommended limit in the United States, even for pregnant women, many doctors tell expecting moms to reduce their caffeine consumption.