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Health Highlights: June 25, 2003

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 June 2003, 06:00 CDT

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

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Study Debunks Power Lines-Breast Cancer Link

Exposure to electric fields does not cause breast cancer, contrary to what many activists and scientists had suspected, reports a comprehensive study released today.

Researchers with the 10-year, $2.5 million Long Island Breast Cancer Study say they could find no link between breast tumors and the electromagnetic fields from power lines, household wiring and appliances, reports the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday. The electric fields in the homes of 576 women with breast cancer were no different from those in the homes of 585 women without breast cancer.

The cancer specialist who first suggested the possible connection -- epidemiologist Richard G. Stevens of the University of Connecticut Health Center -- agreed with the results. "That's good evidence that [electric] fields at the levels you typically find in homes do not increase risk of breast cancer," he told Newsday.

Stevens and others had theorized that exposure to electric fields suppresses the brain's production of the hormone melatonin, leading to increased production of estrogen. Increased exposure to estrogen has been linked to breast cancer. But a National Cancer Institute spokesman says the new study "laid to rest" this and other similar theories.

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New Weapon Against Anthrax Almost Ready

A new drug to treat anthrax has been cleared for human testing and could be ready for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in a few months, The Washington Post reports.

The drug -- Abthrax, developed by the Maryland firm Human Genome Sciences Inc. -- has been described as a synthetic antibody that would neutralize the main toxin produced by the anthrax germ. Exposure to anthrax killed five people in the United States in 2001 and is feared as a possible bioterrorist agent.

However, the drug's makers say they do not intend to proceed through the final phases of testing unless the federal government agrees to purchase the drug in the end, as the Bush administration has promised it would do if industry developed anti-terrorism drugs, the Post reports.

Human testing would be for safety only, the company says, with volunteer participants not exposed to anthrax spores, which could be fatal.

If granted FDA approval, Abthrax would join antibiotics and a vaccine already on the market to combat anthrax. But proponents of the antibody say it might be the only viable treatment for people exposed to anthrax should terrorists develop a strain resistant to antibiotics.

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FDA Attacks Allergy Product Ads

Advertisements for a popular allergy spray have been called misleading by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has ordered the drug maker to stop running them.

The ads, for Flonase, urged allergy sufferers to ask their doctors about the nasal spray rather than antihistamine pills like Allegra and Zyrtec. But the FDA says that implies that the drugs are interchangeable, which they're not, reports the Associated Press.

GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Flonase, says the ad campaign had already ended by the time it received the FDA complaint, but it promised to comply when creating future advertisements.

The ads began to appear this spring, shortly after insurance companies raised prices for the allergy pills.

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WHO Lifts Last SARS Travel Warning

The World Health Organization says it's safe once again to travel to Beijing, capital of the country in which the SARS outbreak began.

No other SARS-related travel advisories exist around the world, reports CNN, although health officials continue to monitor spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Taiwan and the city of Toronto. But in Beijing, "the chain of person-to-person transmission has been broken," a WHO official told the Associated Press.

In China, half of the country's 347 deaths from SARS occurred in Beijing. Since emerging last November, SARS has killed about 800 people and infected about 8,400 people worldwide.

In Canada, an American epidemiologist who traveled to Toronto to aid health-care workers battling the outbreak told The New York Times that Canada was better prepared than the United States to deal with a major SARS outbreak.

Dr. Trish Perl, the chief hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, specifically cited Canada's handling of the mental health issues facing health-care workers in the midst of the outbreak, as well as the sharing of information between public health officials and private physicians.

"We do not traditionally witness this level of cooperation in the United States," Perl told the Times.

In the United States, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that a North Carolina man who died June 13 after possible exposure to a co-worker who had SARS did not have the disease himself, reports the AP. The man died from heart failure and pneumonia.

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Unfair Bosses Boost Blood Pressure

Bosses considered unfair can drive up their employees' blood pressure and increase the workers' risks of heart disease and stroke, reports BBC News Online on a new British study.

Twenty-eight female nursing workers who worked for a boss they rated as unfair showed an average 15 mg Hg increase in systolic blood pressure (first number) and a 7 mm Hg rise in diastolic pressure (second number) above those who considered their bosses fair, report researchers at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College.

An increase of 10 mm Hg in systolic and a 5 mm HG rise in diastolic pressure represents a 16 percent increased risk of coronary heart disease and a 38 percent increased risk of stroke, the BBC report says.

The researchers, whose study is published in the journal Occupation and Environmental Medicine, say the evidence proves that a boss perceived as unfair represents a health hazard to employees.

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U.S. Plans Crackdown on Counterfeit Drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection plan a major crackdown on counterfeit drugs entering the United States this summer, representatives of both federal agencies told Congress.

The targeted products represent everything from mislabeled substances with no medicinal value to generic copies of real drugs made without FDA supervision or approval, the Associated Press reports. The FDA says it has no way to monitor the quality of drugs made overseas, but warns they are often improperly stored and handled.

To combat the growing trend, inspectors plan to target, examine and test packages at unspecified international mail centers, the AP reports. Few other details were provided.

Government officials who testified before a House of Representatives panel earlier this week cited the growing import of drugs via the Internet. They pointed to one Web site that shows an address in the United States but actually operates from Thailand. Another Internet storefront that claims to be Canadian actually ships drugs from India, the AP reports.

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