On Medicine

Study Finds HPV Test Better at Finding Cancer Than Pap Smear

A new study suggests that testing women older than 35 for human papillomavirus may be key to preventing deaths from cervical cancer, BBC News reports. Researchers looked at data from 95,000 women collected over close to four years. When compared with women who had only the older Pap smear, women given an HPV screening test developed fewer cancers, a result researchers attribute to the latter test's sensitivity. Study author Guglielmo Ronco tells BBC News that the HPV test should be used first to screen women for the virus—ruling out a need for smear testing if no virus is present. Ronco and his team do not recommend the same approach for women under 35, however; they say screening younger women with the HPV test could result in unnecessary treatment, BBC News reports.

[Read Will HPV Test Replace Pap Smear in Cervical Cancer Screening? and HPV Vaccine: Women Have a Choice Between Cervarix and Gardasil.]

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Study Suggests Full Night's Sleep Won't Help Chronically Sleep-Deprived

Don't expect to recoup hours of missed sleep with a full night's rest, a new study suggests. Many nights of restlessness can lead to sleep debt, researchers say, and that can hamper your work performance, HealthDay reports. Study author and neurologist Daniel Cohen characterizes the chronically sleep-deprived as those who get less than six hours each night for a period of two weeks. His team mimicked the condition in a group of nine healthy participants. Over time, the researchers found that participants' focus dwindled—even if they had slept for 10 hours the previous night. Cohen tells HealthDay the team did not learn how many nights of rest it would take to catch up on lost sleep. The study was published in Science Translational Medicine.

[Slide Show: 10 Ways to Get Better Sleep (and Maybe Cure Your Insomnia).] [Read 7 Things That Make Sleep Apnea Worse and When Sleep Problems Become Legal Problems, Neuroscience Can Help.]

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I can't remember a time when I didn't worry about my dad's diabetes. My father, Carl Payne, 67, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes nearly 40 years ago, and despite continuous treatment since then, his blood glucose, or blood sugar, was always too high whenever doctors checked his A1C levels. That changed about a year ago, when he discovered how counting carbohydrates helps to control his blood sugar. That realization came as he was undergoing training to get fitted for a medical device called an insulin pump.

My dad, who has had to take regular insulin injections since the mid-1980s, said he remembers being sent to a diabetes education class in 1970, when he was first diagnosed. At that time, carb counting wasn't as heavily recommended as it is now. After he started counting carbs last year, he discovered what diabetes experts have long known: The more carbs you eat, the higher your blood sugar reading is, and the more you need insulin. My dad recently had his A1C level checked again, and the doctor said it was much improved.

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We've heard the message: HIV is spreading rapidly, so the onus is on us to protect ourselves from getting infected in the first place. Still, even though HIV has been in the news quite a bit recently—especially since National Black HIV-AIDS Awareness Day on February 7—there are still clues that not everyone is listening. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey recently found that some gay and bisexual young black men admit to having risky sex. But there's also been encouraging news from basic research, including the potential that HIV might someday be eradicated via stem cell transplant.

The CDC's February 6 "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" gave the results of a small survey of young gay and bisexual black men living in Jackson, Miss., who were asked questions about the level of safety of their sexual activity. Jackson was selected because a sexually transmitted disease clinic there had reported a spike in HIV diagnoses among black men who had sex with men. Twenty of 29 survey respondents said they'd had unprotected anal intercourse during the 12 months prior to testing positive for HIV—and only three had thought themselves "likely" or "very likely" to get HIV in their lifetimes.

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