Health & Medicine
Health Watch: Answers a Snip Away
Those wondering whether they've been exposed to mercury from seafood, dental fillings, or pollution can find out. Scientists at the University of North Carolina-Asheville are collecting hair samples from volunteers across the nation for the largest mercury exposure study done in the United States.
Participants in the study will get the added benefit of finding out how high their own mercury levels are. The study kits cost $25 and are available through the websites of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, which are sponsoring the project. Volunteers snip off a few locks and, in about a month, get the results. Researchers have about 7,000 samples so far and hope to get at least 3,000 more before they issue a report on what risk factors--such as where people live or what they eat--might lead to higher mercury levels. Mercury accumulates in the body most commonly by eating seafood, especially shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or golden snapper. Fetuses are especially susceptible to its effects, and the metal has been blamed for birth defects such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation.
Health Watch: Follow the 'Yellow Book' Guide
For decades doctors have relied on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Yellow Book" to tell travelers things like which malaria pill to take for that trip to Mozambique. Now the CDC is letting everyone in on the fun. For the first time, the book, properly known as Health Information for International Travel 2005-2006 (Elsevier, $24.95), is available to the public. This more user-friendly edition may prove helpful both to primary-care doctors who couldn't tell leptospirosis from leishmaniasis and to travelers themselves. Included are up-to-date recommendations on vaccines and advice on avoiding travel hazards from earthquakes to dog bites.
Health Watch: Less Asthma With Less Medicine
Wheezing, coughing, and a panicked fight for air: Asthma attacks are miserable. Regular use of inhalers with corticosteroid drugs helps. Too high a dose, however, raises the risk of cataracts and osteoporosis. Now a study describes a way to cut steroid doses nearly in half. Nitric oxide in a patient's breath can be a guide, say researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine . The gas increases in proportion to airway trouble, so the less gas, the less drug needed. The researchers compared patients whose doctors adjusted drug doses this way with patients whose docs used other methods. Both groups had equal asthma control. But the nitric oxide group used a drug dose that was 40 percent lower.
Health Watch: Double-Duty Drugs
Scientists reported last week that statins, medications that lower levels of blood cholesterol, can do extra duty by also reducing the risk of colorectal cancer. The study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that people who took a statin for five years had a 47 percent reduced risk of developing colon cancer compared with those who didn't. It's too soon to start prescribing the drug for cancer prevention, says Ernest Hawk, a National Cancer Institute scientist, until further research is done. And the drugs, notably Crestor, are controversial because of rare side effects, including muscle damage.
Health Watch: Exercise and Breast Health
Doctors have long urged breast cancer survivors to jump on the treadmill, but a new Brigham and Women's Hospital study found that walking just three to five hours per week could be a matter of life and death. Published in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association , the study looked at almost 3,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer and compared the survival rates of the active to those of the inactive. As little as one hour a week helped promote survival, while three to five hours reduced the risk of death or recurrence by a whopping 50 percent.
This story appears in the June 6, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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