PARIS (AFP) – Eating tomatoes to help prevent cancer, garlic to prevent AIDS or drinking fruit juice to ward off Alzheimer's? Despite a bevy of research, the impact of food on killer diseases remains to be proved.
Scientists agree that a balanced quality diet is key to good health, and most governments in past years have urged citizens to adopt a daily diet of five portions of fruit and veg, and three each of dairy products and starch, while cutting back fats, sugar and alcohol.
Watching what you eat, experts say, does help prevent illnesses such as diabetes, hypercholesterolaemia -- which leads to cardio-vascular disease -- or osteoporosis.
But researchers are in disagreement over illnesses not directly related to nutrition, such as cancer, AIDS or neurodegenerative diseases -- though again all recommend a balanced diet.
Among the thousands of studies on hand, one European investigation concluded that eating fruit and vegetable fibre might limit the risk of colorectal cancer.
Fruit was tipped as a possible protection against cancer of the lung, and to ward off prostate cancer, the study recommended five cups a day of catechin-rich green tea -- catechins are polyphenolic antioxidant plant metabolites.
Industrial -- or processed -- fats, already known to be harmful for the cardiovascular system, could double the risk of breast cancer while soybeans reduced the risk threefold.
But soybeans, which are rich in anti-oxydants that help cells survive, could increase the risk of infertility.
Lycopene, the bright red anti-oxydant pigment found in tomatoes and other red fruits, also was found by some researchers to reduce the risk of cancer, but the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says there is no solid proof for the claim.
Alzheimer's on the other hand could be kept at bay by pomegranate juice, as well as the polyphenols in a glass of red wine.
But while fish are hailed for their omega-3, a family of unsaturated fatty acids, fish are also rich in mercury and toxic PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls.
"There are no good or bad foods," said France's Afssa food security agency.
But eating five fruit and veggies a day and little animal fat "is plain common sense", said oncologist Dominique Belpomme.
Experts at France's national food and cancer research centre, NACRe, said a varied diet of mainly fruit and vegetables with not too much alcohol would help prevent cancers of the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, lung, stomach, pancreas, colon-rectum and bladder.
After leafing through 7,000 studies from across the globe, the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) recommends avoiding food and drinks high in sugar, salt or fats and low in fibres, and instead eating fruit, vegetables, wholegrain cereals and pulses.
Eating well is also key to treating HIV-positive patients as malnutrition weakens the immune system, lowering resistance to secondary effects.
But good food cannot replace antiretrovirals despite claims to the contrary by South Africa's controversial health minister -- "Dr Beetroot" -- on fighting AIDS with garlic, lemons and veggies.
ATLANTA – The nation's obesity epidemic is exacting a heavy toll: The rate of new diabetes cases nearly doubled in the United States in the past 10 years, the government said Thursday. The highest rates were in the South, according to the first state-by-state review of new diagnoses. The worst was in West Virginia, where about 13 in 1,000 adults were diagnosed with the disease in 2005-07. The lowest was in Minnesota, where the rate was 5 in 1,000.
Nationally, the rate of new cases climbed from about 5 per 1,000 in the mid-1990s to 9 per 1,000 in the middle of this decade.
Roughly 90 percent of cases are Type 2 diabetes, the form linked to obesity.
The findings dovetail with trends seen in obesity and lack of exercise — two health measures where Southern states also rank at the bottom.
"It isn't surprising the problem is heaviest in the South — no pun intended," agreed Matt Petersen, who oversees data and statistics for the American Diabetes Association.
The study, led by Karen Kirtland of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides an up-to-date picture of where the disease is exploding. The information should be a big help as the government and health insurance companies decide where to focus prevention campaigns, Petersen said.
Diabetes was the nation's seventh-leading cause of death in 2006, according to the CDC. More than 23 million Americans have diabetes, and the number is rapidly growing. About 1.6 million new cases were diagnosed among adults last year.
In Type 2 diabetes, cells do not properly use insulin, a hormone needed to convert sugar into energy, and the pancreas gradually loses its ability to produce it. The illness can cause sugar to build up in the body, leading to complications such as heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and poor circulation that leads to foot amputations.
The study involved a random-digit-dialed survey of more than 260,000 adults. Participants were asked if they had ever been told by a doctor that they have diabetes, and when the diagnosis was made. The comparisons between 1995-97 and 2005-07 covered only the 33 states for which the CDC had complete data for both time periods.
The researchers had data for 40 states for the years 2005-07.
West Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Tennessee had the highest rates, all at 11 cases per 1,000 or higher. Puerto Rico was about as high as West Virginia. Minnesota, Hawaii and Wyoming had the lowest rates.
It is not entirely clear why some states were worse than others. Older people, blacks and Hispanics tend to have higher rates of Type 2 diabetes, and the South has large concentrations of all three groups. However, West Virginia is overwhelmingly white.
The report asked about diagnosed diabetes only. Because an estimated one in four diabetics have not been diagnosed, the findings probably underestimate the problem, said Angela Liese, a diabetes researcher at the University of South Carolina.
The underestimates may be particularly bad in the rural South and other areas where patients have trouble getting health care, she noted.
LONDON – About half of American doctors in a new survey say they regularly give patients placebo treatments — usually drugs or vitamins that won't really help their condition. And many of these doctors are not honest with their patients about what they are doing, the survey found.
That contradicts advice from the American Medical Association, which recommends doctors use treatments with the full knowledge of their patients.
"It's a disturbing finding," said Franklin G. Miller, director of the research ethics program at the U.S. National Institutes Health and one of the study authors. "There is an element of deception here which is contrary to the principle of informed consent."
The study was being published online in Friday's issue of BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal.
Placebos as defined in the survey went beyond the typical sugar pill commonly used in medical studies. A placebo was any treatment that wouldn't necessarily help the patient.
Scientists have long known of the "placebo effect," in which patients given a fake or ineffective treatment often improve anyway, simply because they expected to get better.
"Doctors may be under a lot of pressure to help their patients, but this is not an acceptable shortcut," said Irving Kirsch, a professor of psychology at the University of Hull in Britain who has studied the use of placebos.
Researchers at the NIH sent surveys to a random sample of 1,200 internists and rheumatologists — doctors who treat arthritis and other joint problems. They received 679 responses. Of those doctors, 62 percent believed that using a placebo treatment was ethically acceptable.
Half the doctors reported using placebos several times a month, nearly 70 percent of those described the treatment to their patients as "a potentially beneficial medicine not typically used for your condition." Only 5 percent of doctors explicitly called it a placebo treatment.
Most doctors used actual medicines as a placebo treatment: 41 percent used painkillers, 38 percent used vitamins, 13 percent used antibiotics, 13 percent used sedatives, 3 percent used saline injections, and 2 percent used sugar pills.
In the survey, doctors were asked if they would recommend a sugar pill for patients with chronic pain if it had been shown to be more effective than no treatment. Nearly 60 percent said they would.
Smaller studies done elsewhere, including Britain, Denmark and Sweden, have found similar results.
Jon Tilburt, the lead author of the U.S. study, who is with NIH's bioethics department, said he believes the doctors surveyed were representative of internists and rheumatologists across the U.S. No statistical work was done to establish whether the survey results would apply to other medical specialists, such as pediatricians or surgeons.
The research was paid for by NIH's bioethics department and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
The authors said most doctors probably reasoned that doing something was better than doing nothing.
In some cases, placebos were given to patients with conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome. Doctors also gave antibiotics to patients with viral bronchitis, knowing full well that a virus is impervious to antibiotics, which fight bacteria. Experts believe overuse of antibiotics promotes the development of drug-resistant strains of bacteria.
Some doctors believe placebos are a good treatment in certain situations, as long as patients are told what they are being given. Dr. Walter Brown, a professor of psychiatry at Brown and Tufts universities, said people with insomnia, depression or high blood pressure often respond well to placebo treatments.
"You could tell those patients that this is something that doesn't have any medicine in it but has been shown to work in people with your condition," he suggested.
However, experts don't know if the placebo effect would be undermined if patients were explicitly told they were getting a dummy pill.
Brown said that while he hasn't prescribed sugar pills, he has given people with anxiety problems pills that had extremely low doses of medication. "The dose was so low that whatever effect the patients were getting was probably a placebo effect," he said.
Kirsch, the psychologist, said it might be possible to get the psychological impact without using a fake pill. "If doctors just spent more time with their patients so they felt more reassured, that might help," he said.
Some patients who had just seen their doctors at a clinic in London said the truth was paramount.
"I would feel very cheated if I was given a placebo," said Ruth Schachter, an 86-year-old Londoner with skin cancer. "I like to have my eyes wide open, even if it's bad news," she said. "If I'm given something without being warned what it is, I certainly would not trust the doctor again."
WASHINGTON – The government is warning parents about Carter's Inc. baby garments with tag-less labels after about 400 babies who wore the clothing developed rashes on their backs.
The warning applies to the fall 2007 line, which includes about 110 million garments, said Mary Drayna, a manager for the Atlanta company. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said Friday that children should stop using these garments if they develop a rash, but the agency did not announce a recall of the product line.
Drayna said the affected clothing includes knit items such as body suits, shirts and pajamas. She said the items have prompted about 400 reports of baby rashes, but she could not comment on how serious any of the rashes were or if any required hospital visits.
The garments were made in various foreign countries, and they were sold at Carter's retail stores and at department and national chain stores, according to CPSC. The clothing appeared on the market in the fall of 2007 and could still be on retail shelves, although Carter's has released other products since then, Drayna said.
The company's online announcement said it had received reports that some babies with sensitive skin could be allergic to the heat-transferred, or tag-less, labels used in baby clothing.
"It appears that a very small percentage of children can be allergic to one or more ingredients in the labels. The solid, rather than stenciled, background on the fall 2007 labels appears to have produced a more pronounced and noticeable reaction among those children who are most allergic to the ink," the announcement said.
Also, the company's internal review of the product found "no indication that the labels contain any known skin irritants or abrasive chemicals, or that such a rash is anything beyond a rare allergic reaction to an otherwise safe product."
For more information, consumers can call 888-282-4674 or visit http://www.carters.com/corporate/tagless_message.aspx or http://www.cpsc.gov.
WASHINGTON – A vaccine against rotavirus, the leading cause of diarrhea in infants, has led to a dramatic drop in hospitalization and emergency room visits since it came on the market two years ago, doctors reported Saturday.
A bonus: the vaccine seems to be preventing illness even in unvaccinated children by cutting the number of infections in the community that kids can pick up and spread.
"We're a little surprised by the degree of impact given the coverage we've achieved," said Jane Seward of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only about half of young children had received the vaccine and very few had received all three doses when the studies were done.
Results were reported Saturday at an infectious diseases conference in Washington.
Before the vaccine, more than 200,000 U.S. children were taken to emergency rooms and more than 55,000 were hospitalized each year with rotavirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, mostly from January through May. Worldwide, the virus kills 1,600 young children each day.
Since Merck & Co.'s Rotateq came out in 2006, hospital visits and stays due to the virus have dropped 80 percent to 100 percent, studies by the CDC and several other groups show.
Last winter, rotavirus cases started and peaked two to three months later and were much less extensive than in previous years, CDC scientists report. Hospitals in a network that tracks these cases for the CDC saw more than an 80 percent drop in admissions from them, one study showed.
Another study, by Merck, found a 100 percent drop in hospitalizations and ER visits during the 2007 and 2008 rotavirus seasons compared to previous ones. The study was based on a review of health insurance claims for about 61,000 infants and diagnoses by doctors in routine clinical practice.
Rotateq is an oral vaccine given at two, four and six months of age. In June, a second rotavirus vaccine came on the market — GlaxoSmithKline's Rotarix. It requires only two doses, completed by four months of age.
Also at the conference, scientists reported that a new version of Wyeth's Prevnar vaccine seems to better protect kids against germs that cause pneumonia, meningitis and ear infections, but whether it makes it onto the market before dangerous strains become a big problem remains to be seen.
Scientists have been retooling Prevnar, which came on the market in 2000 and is advised for children under age 2. It protects against the seven strains of Strep bacteria that were causing the most serious infections at the time. Since then, new strains have become more of a threat and increasingly are resistant to common antibiotics.
The experimental new vaccine adds six of these to the original seven. Scientists from Wyeth and from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, compared immune responses to the new vaccine, given to 293 babies, versus those of an equal number of babies given the old one.
The new vaccine did about as well as the old one on six of the seven original strains and well on the six new ones, including the one causing the most worrisome, hard-to-treat infections now.
The company has said it plans to seek federal approval for it in early 2009, and review can take a year or more. British-based GlaxoSmithKline has a similar vaccine in final-phase testing that targets 10 strains common in Europe and other regions.
In the meantime, parents should continue to have their toddlers get the existing Prevnar, and to use antibiotics only when needed because they don't work against the common cold and overuse worsens the bacteria resistance problem, said Dr. Cynthia Whitney, a pneumonia expert at the CDC.
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