While Not Breast Cancer, Rise Is Reported In Uncommon Cancer Linked To Breast Implants
The lymphoma, usually curable by surgery alone, is more likely to occur in women with implants that have a textured coating, as opposed to a smooth cover, the FDA said. In other public health news: in-vitro fertilization testing, scanners for neurological disorders, HIV vaccine trials, a resurgence of mumps, liver transplants, fitness and dementia, early Alzheimer's detection and a bee acupuncture death.
The New York Times:
More Cases Are Reported Of Unusual Cancer Linked To Breast Implants
More cases of an unusual cancer linked to breast implants have been reported to the Food and Drug Administration, the agency said on Wednesday. The case count rose in the past year, to 414 cases from 359, the agency said in an update on its website. The number of deaths it has recorded, nine, has not changed from one year ago; a professional society of plastic surgeons is now reporting 16 related deaths. (Grady, 3/21)
The Wall Street Journal:
IVF Testing Spurs A Debate Over ‘Mosaic’ Embryos
It was her last chance. MaryJo Dunn had been trying to get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization for 20 months. At age 45, she expected it to be challenging. But giving up wasn’t easy. She and her husband had lost their only child, a 17-month-old son, two years earlier to a rare type of cancer. The Dunns were running out of time and money. They had already spent more than $70,000 on fertility treatments and taken out a loan. But the doctor recommended against implanting Ms. Dunn’s two remaining embryos, she recalls, because of the results of genetic tests on them. (Reddy, 3/21)
Stat:
Helmet-Sized Brain Scanner Aims To Improve Treatment Of Kids With Epilepsy
Abrain scanner now used to guide treatment of patients with epilepsy and other neurological disorders is bulky and challenging to use on fidgety young children — but researchers hope it might soon be replaced by a new machine that’s not much bigger than a bike helmet. Scientists at University College London have created a prototype of a lightweight, easier-to-use version of a magnetoencephalography, or MEG, brain scanner. These machines monitor the magnetic field created when neurons communicate with each other, allowing physicians to see how the brain functions from one second to the next. (Thielking, 3/21)
NPR:
HIV Vaccine Needed To Stop AIDS
When Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced that scientists had discovered the virus that caused AIDS at a press conference in 1984, the disease was still mysterious and invariably fatal. Perhaps with a vaccine, AIDS could be ended like smallpox or contained like polio, two scourges that yielded to intense public health interventions. Heckler suggested that experimental vaccine trials were just two years away. (Fitzsimons, 3/21)
The New York Times:
Mumps Is On The Rise. A Waning Vaccine Response May Be Why.
Mumps is resurging. And it may be because the immune response provoked by the mumps vaccine weakens significantly over time, and not because people are avoiding vaccination or because the virus has evolved to develop immunity to the vaccine, a new study has found. (Bakalar, 3/21)
The Washington Post:
Teenage Twins Needed Liver Transplants. One Of Them Lived Long Enough To Get His.
Eighteen-year-old Devin Coats was fighting for a second chance to live. His brother, Nicholas, was waiting to die. The identical twin brothers had both been diagnosed last year with Stage 4 cirrhosis of the liver — severe scarring commonly associated with alcoholism. In this case, it was the result of a gene mutation, and both brothers needed new livers to survive it. (Bever, 3/21)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Dementia Risk And Fitness: Study Says High Fitness Reduces Risk
A high level of physical fitness during middle age may significantly reduce the risk of dementia, new research suggests. The findings, which were published this month in the scientific journal Neurology, showed that women with a high level of cardiovascular fitness during middle age had a nearly 90 percent lower risk of dementia than women who were just moderately fit. (Lemon, 3/20)
Bloomberg:
Spotting Alzheimer’s Early Could Save America $7.9 Trillion
Alzheimer’s disease is among the most expensive illnesses in the U.S. There’s no cure, no effective treatment and no easy fix for the skyrocketing financial cost of caring for an aging population. Spending on care for people alive in the U.S. right now who will develop the affliction is projected to cost $47 trillion over the course of their lives, a report issued Tuesday by the Alzheimer’s Association found. The U.S. is projected to spend $277 billion on Alzheimer’s or other dementia care in 2018 alone, with an aging cohort of baby boomers pushing that number to $1.1 trillion by 2050. (Levingston, 3/20)
The Washington Post:
Woman Dies After ‘Acupuncture’ Session That Used Live Bees Instead Of Needles
A woman in Spain died after undergoing a supposedly routine “bee acupuncture” treatment and then suffering an allergic reaction that put her in a coma. The alternative medicine procedure is more or less what its name conjures up: Instead of a needle, an acupuncture practitioner injects bee venom into the body at certain points. In some instances, live bees are used to sting and inject venom into the person directly. (Wang, 3/21)
