Health Highlights: June 3, 2009

June 3, 2009 RSS Feed Print

Curry May Protect Against Alzheimer's: Report
China Closes Thousands of Milk Inspection Stations
FDA Approves First Cancer Drug for Dogs
FDA to Warn of Antidepressants' Impact on Tamoxifen: Report

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

Curry May Protect Against Alzheimer's: Report

Regular consumption of curry may help protect against Alzheimer's disease, a U.S. researcher told the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain.

Studies suggest that curcumin, a component of the spice tumeric, appears to prevent the spread of dementia-associated amyloid protein plaques in the brain, said Professor Murali Doraiswamy of Duke University, BBC News reported.

There's evidence that people who consume curry two or three times a week are less likely to develop dementia, said Doraiswamy, who added that researchers are examining the effects of higher doses of curry.

"There is very solid evidence that curcumin binds to plaques, and basic research on animals engineered to produce human amyloid plaques has shown benefits," the Duke University professor told the meeting, BBC News reported.

"The next step is to test curcumin on human amyloid plaque formation using newer brain scans and there are plans for that." said Doraiswamy. A clinical trial is underway at the University of California, Los Angeles, to test curcumin's effects in Alzheimer's patients, he said.

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China Closes Thousands of Milk Inspection Stations

The Chinese government has closed more than 3,900 substandard milk collection stations in the wake of last year's contaminated-milk scandal that killed at least six children and left about 300,000 other children with kidney and urinary problems.

State media reported that all of China's 20,393 milk stations were inspected between November 2008 and April this year, and 3,908 were shut down because of lack of proper equipment or poor hygiene, Agence France Presse reported.

Last year's scandal, which involved milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, led to worldwide recalls and bans of Chinese dairy products.

Milk collection stations became the focus of attention after investigators learned that middlemen had added melamine to diluted milk in order to make it seem to have a higher protein content, AFP reported.

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FDA Approves First Cancer Drug for Dogs

The first drug specifically developed to treat cancer in dogs has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Palladia, made by Pfizer Animal Health Inc., can be used to treat canine cutaneous (skin-based) mast cell tumors, a type of cancer that causes about 20 percent of skin tumors in dogs, the FDA said. Canine mast cell tumors can appear small and insignificant, but can be a very serious form of cancer in dogs.

Common side effects associated with Palladia are diarrhea, decrease or loss of appetite, lameness, weight loss and blood in the stool.

"This cancer drug approval for dogs is an important step forward for veterinary medicine," Bernadette Dunham, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said in a news release.

"Prior to this approval, veterinarians had to rely on human (cancer) drugs, without knowledge of how safe or effective they would be for dogs. Today's approval offers dog owners, in consultation with their veterinarians, an option for treatment of their dog's cancer," Dunham said.

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FDA to Warn of Antidepressants' Impact on Tamoxifen: Report

The U.S. government plans to warn doctors that the interaction between the breast-cancer drug tamoxifen and popular antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft increases the risk of breast-cancer recurrence, the Wall Street Journal reported.

A study that included about 1,300 women found that the drug combination increases the risk of breast-cancer recurrence from the normal rate of 7.5 percent to 16 percent. As a result of the findings, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would alert doctors to the negative interaction, the Journal said.

The study, led by researchers at Medco Health Solutions Inc., found that tamoxifen does not have this negative association with all antidepressants. Women who took drugs such as Celexa, Lexapro and Luvox didn't have a statistically higher rate of breast-cancer recurrence.

The findings were released last weekend at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Tamoxifen is used to prevent the return of estrogen-dependent tumors, one of the most common types of breast cancer.