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A drug now used to treat breast cancer might be able to prevent prostate cancer in men with a precancerous condition, doctors said here Saturday. Another study suggested that the widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins might stave off breast cancer. The prostate cancer study was a randomized clinical trial involving 514 men with precancerous lesions analogous to polyps for colon cancer. The condition is called prostate intraepithelial neoplasia, or P.I.N. After statistically controlling for a number of factors like age, smoking and diabetes, the researchers found a 51 percent lower risk of breast cancer among the statin users, Dr. [Vikas Khurana] said. He said data on the specific statins that were prescribed have not been analyzed yet

A drug now used to treat breast cancer might be able to prevent prostate cancer in men with a precancerous condition, doctors said yesterday. Another study suggested that the widely used cholesterol- lowering drugs called statins might stave off breast cancer. The prostate cancer study was a randomized clinical trial involving 514 men with precancerous lesions analogous to polyps for colon cancer. The condition is called prostate intraepithelial neoplasia, or PIN. After statistically controlling for a number of factors like age, smoking and diabetes, the researchers found a 51 percent lower risk of breast cancer among the statin users, [Vikas Khurana] said. He said data on the specific statins that were prescribed have not been analyzed yet

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A drug now used to treat breast cancer might be able to prevent prostate cancer in men with a precancerous condition, doctors said yesterday. Another study suggested that the widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins might stave off breast cancer. The statin study analyzed medical records of 40,000 women in the database of the Veterans Affairs medical system. It found that women who used statins were half as likely to develop breast cancer as those who did not. But such studies looking back at medical records are not as reliable as clinical trials. There is evidence that estrogen, normally thought of as the female hormone, also helps fuel prostate-cancer growth. Dr. Mitchell Steiner, professor of urology at the University of Tennessee, theorized that blocking estrogen might provide a treatment or preventative with fewer side effects

Pancreatic cancer: A study found that the drug gemcitabine can reduce the recurrence of pancreatic cancer when used after surgery to remove a tumor. The drug, sold as Gemzar by Eli Lilly, is now approved for treating pancreatic cancer after surgery is no longer possible. But the finding might apply to only about 20 percent of patients, since most cases of pancreatic cancer are diagnosed after it is too late for surgery, said Dr. Michael Arning, medical director for the drug at Lilly

BACKGROUND: We sought to determine the prevalence of active tuberculosis among ambulatory HIV-infected persons in Tanzania with CD4 cell counts of > or =200 cells/mm3 and a bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccination scar. METHODS: Subjects who volunteered for a tuberculosis booster vaccine trial were screened for active tuberculosis by obtainment of a history, physical examination, chest radiography, sputum culture and acid fast bacillus (AFB) stain, and blood culture. All subjects underwent a tuberculin skin test (TST) and lymphocyte proliferation assays (LPAs) for detection of responses to mycobacterial antigens. RESULTS: Active tuberculosis was identified at baseline in 14 (15%) of the first 93 subjects who were enrolled: 10 (71%) had clinical tuberculosis (symptoms or chest radiograph findings), and 4 (29%) had subclinical tuberculosis (positive sputum AFB stain or culture results but no symptoms or chest radiograph findings). An additional 6 subjects with subclinical tuberculosis were identified subsequently. The 10 subjects with subclinical tuberculosis included 3 with positive sputum AFB stains results and 7 who were only identified by a positive sputum culture result. Compared with subjects who did not have tuberculosis, the 10 subjects with subclinical tuberculosis were more likely to have peripheral lymphadenopathy, positive TST results, and elevated LPA responses to early secreted antigenic target-6 (ESAT). Eight of 10 patients had received isoniazid because of a positive TST result before active tuberculosis was recognized. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical and subclinical tuberculosis are common among ambulatory HIV-infected persons, and some cases can only be identified by sputum culture. World Health Organization guidelines for screening for latent tuberculosis before treatment do not recommend sputum culture and, therefore, may fail to identify a substantial number of HIV-infected persons with subclinical, active tuberculosis

A drug called Avastin, which works by choking off the blood supply to tumors, prolongs the lives of patients with lung cancer and also significantly delays the worsening of breast cancer, according to the results of clinical trials. The cancer drug Herceptin, when used after surgery to remove breast tumors, cuts by about half the chance that breast cancer will recur. Avastin, when added to chemotherapy, extended the median survival of people with advanced lung cancer about two months. After two years, only 22.1 percent of those who got Avastin were still alive, although that was an improvement over the 16.9 percent who got only chemotherapy

Avastin, when added to chemotherapy, extended the median survival of people with advanced lung cancer by about two months. After two years, 22.1 percent of those who took Avastin were still alive, an improvement over the 16.9 percent who received only chemotherapy. Avastin can cause fatal bleeding in the lungs. About one-third of people with nonsmall-cell lung cancer would not be eligible for the drug based on criteria used in the clinical trial. But even though the trial excluded those patients to minimize bleeding risk, eight patients who took Avastin died from complications of the treatment itself, five from bleeding in the lungs. This compared with two deaths from chemotherapy alone. Some newer but still unapproved drugs, however, seek to improve on Avastin. They are pills, while Avastin requires an intravenous infusion. And they try to block not only VEGF but another protein, platelet-derived growth factor, that also spurs the formation of blood vessels. Some also try to block other proteins that spur tumor growth, so these newer drugs might best be called multitargeted therapies

The man did not have atherosclerosis, which accounts for about half of coronary aneurysms, or any of the rarer conditions associated with aneurysms, like syphilis, trauma and lupus and other connective tissue disorders. So Dr. [Timothy D. Henry] asked if the man had ever used cocaine. Three cardiologists examined the angiogram of each patient in the study to determine the presence or absence of coronary artery aneurysms. If all three doctors agreed that a coronary aneurysm was present, they classified it as definite. If two doctors concurred, they considered the aneurysm probable. In the cocaine user group, 24 patients had definite coronary artery aneurysms and 10 had probable ones. Aneurysms in the coronary arteries rarely burst and pose a less direct risk of death than do brain aneurysms or aortic aneurysms. But the study showed that coronary artery aneurysms might kill by setting up cocaine users for a heart attack

All test kits containing a deadly influenza virus that were sent to 4,614 laboratories in 18 countries last fall and winter have been identified and destroyed, the Centers..

More than four months after the Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 200,000 people, tens of thousands of people are listed as missing and thousands of the bodies that have been recovered have not been identified, experts said at a meeting sponsored by the World Health Organization in Phuket, Thailand...