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Gardasil Is Found Safe—But Some Families Wonder
Tweet Share on Facebook October 24, 2008 Comment (17)The latest news about the safety of the HPV vaccine is certainly reassuring. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that the Gardasil shot against the cervical-cancer causing human papillomavirus is "safe to use and effective in preventing four types of HPV." That's based on their database surveillance system—called the Vaccine Safety Datalink—which reviewed the medical records of 190,000 girls and young women who have received the shot. This review didn't turn up any increased risk of blood clots, seizures, paralysis, strokes, fainting, or life-threatening allergic reactions. "To date, we have not seen a causal relationship between vaccines and adverse reactions," says CDC spokesperson Curtis Allen.
So does "safe" mean risk free? "You'll never get us to say this vaccine is absolutely safe," Allen responded. After all, the Vaccine Safety Datalink isn't large enough to pick up rare events like anaphylaxis, which occurs in 1 out of every 2 million of those who get vaccines. Indeed, the Datalink, says Allen, didn't detect a single case of anaphylaxis. Nor did it detect an increase in fainting, which even manufacturer Merck admits "has been reported following vaccination with Gardasil." (For this reason, teens who receive the shot are supposed to wait 15 minutes before leaving the doctor's office.) Merck's clinical trial involving more than 25,000 participants has shown an increased frequency of fever, nausea, and dizziness as well as pain, swelling, bruising, and rashes at the injection site compared with those who received a placebo shot.
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Some Thoughts on Suicide in Middle-Aged Women
Tweet Share on Facebook October 22, 2008 Comment (71)When I first glanced at a new study reporting an increase in the U.S. suicide rate, I couldn't believe it was talking about white, middle-aged women. Yes, the rate of suicides in teens rose recently, most likely because of a drop in antidepressant use after black-box warnings were added to the drugs stating an increased risk of suicidal thoughts in youngsters who took them. But Johns Hopkins University researchers now find a spike in suicides—4 percent a year from 1999 to 2005—in white women ages 40 to 64, according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The study didn't explain the reason for the surge but did find that women are more likely to die by poisoning (compared with men, who are more likely to use guns). Perhaps women are simply getting better at poisoning themselves, searching the Internet to find out what sorts of medications are—morbid as this sounds—most effective. "In England, they've limited the amount of Tylenol a person can buy, for this very reason," says Carol Landau, a professor of psychiatry at Brown Medical School and author The New Truth About Menopause. She says that whereas women once tried to overdose on Valium, usually without success, they may be reading up on ways to commit suicide before they attempt it.
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Genes Don't Doom You to Overeat
Tweet Share on Facebook October 17, 2008 Comment (29)Practically every woman knows that chocolate has a druglike quality, but who knew that some women actually need more to get that high? That's the finding of a new study published this week in the journal Science showing that women whose brains were less activated by the "pleasure" chemical dopamine after they were given a milkshake were more likely to be obese and more likely to gain weight over the course of a year. Apparently, they had to eat more to get the same pleasure most of us get from eating less.
The study authors say drug treatments could be developed to correct this problem, but these are far in the future, and far too many obesity drugs have been dismal disappointments. I'm also inclined to think that these findings probably apply to all of us at least to some extent. If you haven't had a piece of gooey fudge in a while, that first bite will cause fireworks in those dopamine brain regions. But if you have several pieces a day...probably not much of a pick-me-up.
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Too Many Infants—and Moms—Die at Birth
Tweet Share on Facebook October 15, 2008 Comment (11)The National Center for Health Statistics offers some encouraging news this morning: The U.S. infant mortality rate seems to finally be dropping, even though we still rank a dismal 29th in the world, tied with Poland and Slovakia. The main reason for that poor showing is the rise in premature births. From 2000 to 2005, the share of preterm births increased 9 percent, to 12.7 percent. Babies born at 34 to 36 weeks were three times as likely to die as were full-term babies, who are born at 37 to 41 weeks of gestation.
But I was struck earlier this week by a related startling statistic while reading a front-page story in the Washington Post about Sierra Leone's shocking rate of women dying in childbirth (1 in 8). Women in the United States have a 1-in-4,800 lifetime risk of dying in labor, according to a 2007 United Nations report—much higher than the 1-in-48,000 rate in top-ranked Ireland. In fact, the United States ranked a dismal 41st out of an analysis of 171 nations, which included underdeveloped countries like Sierra Leone. Even more troubling is that our mortality rate is the highest that it has been in decades, according to the latest report from the National Center for Health Statistics. What gives?
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Heart Symptoms Too Often Blamed on Stress
Tweet Share on Facebook October 14, 2008 Comment (2)Just as the breast cancer awareness movement has its pink ribbons, the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign is using cute red dress pins (and singer Toni Braxton) to wake women up to their No. 1 killer. Trouble is, plenty of doctors still downplay signs of trouble when they see a woman who's, say, going through a divorce or other frazzling event. New research from Weil Medical College of Cornell University suggests that primary care doctors are more likely to attribute shortness of breath, chest pain, and other heart disease symptoms to stress when they see such symptoms plaguing stressed-out women than they do when they see the same signs in stressed-out men.
It seems that doctors are so used to diagnosing stress-related conditions in women that they may delay ordering the proper tests to diagnose underlying heart disease. In the study, family physicians and internists diagnosed heart disease in 15 percent of anxious women and 56 percent of anxious men who had strikingly similar risk factors and symptoms. The doctors prescribed heart medications to just 13 percent of women, compared with 47 percent of men, and referred only 30 percent of women to cardiologists, compared with 62 percent of the men. (These were mock scenarios, so no patients were actually hurt in the study.) Interestingly, the gender bias disappeared when stress and anxiety weren't included in the vignettes that the doctors read. So maybe docs have gotten better about recognizing heart disease in women when they're not tripped up by the Hollywood stereotype of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Also complicating the picture: Women sometimes experience different heart disease symptoms than men, as I previously reported, and are slower to seek medical attention.
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A Cautious Approach to Gardasil Shot
Tweet Share on Facebook October 10, 2008 Comment (94)News today cheering the fact that 1 in 4 teen girls has received the Gardasil vaccine sounds to me like some serious spin from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the government agency pushing girls as young as 9 to get the shot. The CDC's Lance Rodewald said this rate was "very good," considering it's a new vaccine. But the Los Angeles Times points out that just 1 percent of Latina teens have gotten the vaccine, and they're a population with particularly high rates of infections with the cervical-cancer-causing human papilloma virus. What's more, the 25 percent figure refers to those who had just one of the three shots required to get full immunity; many teens, especially those who've had painful swelling at the injection site, opt not to get the second and third shots.
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Managing Your Money-Related Stress
Tweet Share on Facebook October 8, 2008 Comment (7)Women are worried. Very, very worried. About their stock investments, balloon mortgage payments, job security. Men are, of course, worried too, but economic stress could be taking a greater health toll on women, according to this survey of more than 2,500 people released yesterday by the American Psychological Association. (My colleague Liz Wolgemuth tells you why in this blog.) The survey found that 80 percent of folks say the economy is a significant source of stress, up from 66 percent in April. Women, though, were more likely to report being stressed about money—83 percent of them compared with 78 percent of men. Female baby boomers (ages 44 to 62) and seniors (63 and over) were most likely to report being worried over the economy, I'm guessing because they need to draw from those investments and retirement funds to send the kids to college and to live on.
Unfortunately, stress is taking a toll on our health. This survey of 104 women from BettyConfidential.com found that half of the respondents are experiencing a general sense of fear and concern, while nearly 1 in 5 is suffering insomnia. One survey taker said: "I don't sleep more than four hours a night. I get headaches. I worry that my kids can't go to college, and my doctor now has me on antianxiety meds. (Thankfully, they are cheap!)"
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Genetic Blood Test for Down Syndrome? Not Yet
Tweet Share on Facebook October 7, 2008 Comment (4)Corrected on 10/07/08: An earlier version of this article incorrectly suggested that all pregnant women should get, rather than be offered, Down syndrome screening.
Pregnant women have been waiting a long time for a blood test to definitively diagnose Down syndrome, and one may finally be on the near horizon. Researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they've overcome a significant hurdle in providing such a test, which won't require them to sort maternal genetic material from a fetus's. Another test manufactured by Sequenom could be ready as early as June, according to the New York Times.
Neither method, though, has been rigorously tested in enough women to ensure that it will predict, with absolute certainty, which babies carry the Down genetic defect and which ones don't. The disorder occurs in as many as 1 in 800 babies and causes mental retardation, facial abnormalities, heart defects, and other problems.
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Where Is Palin on Women's Health Issues?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 3, 2008 Comment (15)In watching the vice presidential debate last night, I kept waiting for this question that never came: Governor Palin, would a McCain-Palin administration make efforts to limit a women's access to abortion and emergency contraception? A lot of other women, I'm sure, are wondering the same thing. We've already heard Palin's personal views on abortion and the morning after pill; as she told Katie Couric, she's against them because she firmly believes that life begins at conception. I do admire her for living by her beliefs, choosing to carry and raise a child with Down syndrome.
But I'd really like to know more about any plans to implement these personal views. Palin also told Couric, when asked if it should be illegal for a girl who was raped to get an abortion: "If you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an...abortion, absolutely not. That's nothing I would ever support." So, does Palin think abortion should be a legal right or not? I'm still uncertain.
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Breast Cancer Awareness Perks to Be Aware Of
Tweet Share on Facebook October 2, 2008 Comment (24)October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While I think we're so oversaturated with days and months dedicated to a specific disease—there are more than 150 health observances, according to this website—that the efforts may be counterproductive, I'm impressed by all the offerings over the next few weeks for breast cancer survivors and those concerned about preventing the disease.
Breast cancer patients can get a complimentary assessment with a medical device called L-Dex to check for signs of lymphedema, a swelling that occurs in the arm following breast cancer treatments, at various Susan G. Komen Foundation events. Some states like Connecticut and Delaware are offering mobile mammography events for women to get screened, and hospitals like St. Vincent's in New York City will be offering free screenings on October 17, which is National Mammography Day.
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