Bone-Building Drug Aids Both Genders
Steroid users have a new weapon against bone loss. Alendronate, trade name Fosamax, can prevent and treat osteoporosis in both men and women who are taking steroids as treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and inflammatory bowel diseases. So said researchers at a meeting Sunday of the American College of Rheumatology in Washington, D.C. It is the first time that any drug for osteoporosis has been shown to work in men, according to Dr. Ken Saag of the University of Iowa.
Nearly 30 million Americans are at risk of osteoporosis because they are taking steroids. Some lose as much as 15% of their bone density in the first year alone. The study of 560 men and women showed that alendronate increased bone mineral density in the spines and hips of men and women of all ages.
Stimulant Doesn’t End With a ‘Crash’
A new anti-sleep drug called modafinil can keep people awake without the hyperactivity associated with stimulants such as amphetamines and without the “crash” that normally follows, Stanford researchers reported in the Nov. 6 Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. People who use stimulants generally try to make up all the lost shut-eye in the first sleep period after their use. Experiments in mice, however, show that sleep loss caused by modafinil is made up gradually over several days, according to sleep researcher Dale Edgar.
Modafinil is available by prescription in France and the United Kingdom and is currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for excessive sleepiness due to narcolepsy.
Heartening News for Surgery Patients
Less invasive surgery may be as successful as the open-chest method for repairing heart valves. Patients undergoing minimally invasive surgery for repair of valves experience success rates comparable to those who receive the conventional surgery, without the physical trauma and extensive recovery periods, New York physicians reported Sunday at the American Heart Assn. meeting in Orlando.
Dr. Aubrey Galloway of the New York University Medical Center reported that 98.5% of 151 patients who underwent the procedure had proper valve function afterward. Mortality was 4%, about the same as for open-heart surgery.
Promiscuity, Anal Cancer Linked
Sexually transmitted infections resulting from increased promiscuity may cause most cases of anal cancer, according to Danish researchers. Anal cancer has increased substantially in recent decades, especially in women, although it is still rare. About 3,400 cases are expected to be diagnosed in the United States this year.
Experts suspect that among possible triggers of the disease is the papilloma virus, which is also thought to cause nearly all cervical cancer in women. A study in the Nov. 6 New England Journal of Medicine strongly links anal cancer with having a relatively large number of sex partners and with anal intercourse. Among other things, the researchers found that the risk of anal cancer among women reporting 10 or more lifetime sex partners was nearly five times the risk of those with a single lifetime partner. Men with 10 or more female partners had three times the risk of those with two or three partners.
Put Cholesterol on the Run
Adding running or very brisk walking to a low-fat diet helps reduce cholesterol levels even further, California researchers reported in the November American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The team found that vegetarians, who already have healthier cholesterol levels than meat eaters, could improve them more if they ran.
Vegetarians who ran had lower levels of LDL or “bad” cholesterol and higher levels of HDL, the so-called “good” cholesterol that carries fat away from the arteries, than those who didn’t run, says Paul Williams of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Boy or Girl--Take Your Pick
A French scientist claims that he has developed a method for choosing the sex of a fetus that is almost 100% effective. Patrick Schoun of LaSeyne sur Mer in southern France said the technique is based on the fact that the membrane of human eggs alternates electrical polarity between positive and negative. When it is positively charged, it attracts sperm that produce girls, and when it is negatively charged, it attracts those that produce boys.
Using sophisticated computer programming and specific details about a woman’s age, blood type and dates of first and last menstrual periods, Schoun says he can produce a personalized calendar of a woman’s ovum polarity. The technique has not been published in a medical journal, but Schoun said at a recent news conference that it has yielded the desired sex in all but two of 155 test cases.
