Month: October 2012

Oops: Harvard affiliate apologizes for promotion of "weak" study

Your Health Matters

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A Harvard-affiliated hospital is backing away from its decision earlier this week to promote a paper linking the artificial sweetener aspartame and cancer, now saying the evidence was “weak.” Brigham and Women’s Hospital said in an e-mail to reporters that data in the paper, which was published Wednesday in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “is weak, and that Brigham and Women’s Hospital media relations was premature in the promotion of this work.” The hospital apologized to reporters for wasting their time. …

Hormone therapy may cut Alzheimer’s risk in menopausal women

Your Health Matters

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The latest data from a long-running study of hormone therapy suggests women who started taking hormone replacements within five years of menopause were 30 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than women who started years later. The findings, reported on Wednesday in the journal Neurology, add to evidence suggesting that taking hormone treatments around the time of menopause may be doing more than just helping women cope with hot flashes and night sweats. …

US doctors can consider spinal taps for more steroid patients-CDC

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. doctors monitoring patients for signs of fungal meningitis can consider performing spinal taps, possibly weekly, on some of those who received contaminated steroid injections, even if they show no symptoms, health officials said on Wednesday. The revised guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reflect concern that the last groups of patients who received the steroid may be at a higher risk of deadly infection. The recommendation took some physicians by surprise. “Are we going to do spinal taps on thousands of people once a week?” asked Dr. …

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Study: Cancer patients overestimate value of chemo

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Most patients getting chemotherapy for incurable lung or colon cancers mistakenly believe that the treatment can cure them rather than just buy them some more time or ease their symptoms, a major study suggests. Researchers say doctors either are not being honest enough with patients or people are in denial that they have a terminal disease.

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