STROKEBUSTER
Good News For Stroke Candidates


The May 8 issue of the Lancet carries good news for patients prone to have stroke attacks.

A surgical procedure known as carotid endarterectomy (CEA), which aims to clear up narrowings of the carotid arteries has been shown to decrease stroke risk by 50 percent in patients without recent neurological symptoms. In short, CEA can prevent
stroke onset from happening.

Alison Halliday, consultant vascular surgeon, of the St George's Hospital Medical School in London, and lead author of the Lancet article, said that in a trial of 3,000 patients in 126 hospitals in 30 countries, she and her colleagues found that surgery halved the risk of stroke from 12 to 6 percent in high-risk patients after a five-year follow-up. Most of these patients were under 75. Anyone with a blockage in the artery of between 70 and 90 percent would be a candidate for surgery, according to Halliday. Blockages occur in the carotid artery just as they do in arteries linked with heart attack.

Prophylactic carotid endarterectomy, anyone?

Using Doppler and ultrasound, carotid artery thickening can be detected. Finding out if you have significant narrowing can make you eligible for the operation and purposely eliminate any future stroke risk you might have.

This is good news, guys. Second to ischemic heart disease, stroke is the leading cause of death worldwide according to WHO. It is also among the five most important causes of disability and occurs when a blockage stops the flow of blood to the brain. It is also largely preventable with efforts to reduce blood pressure and raised cholesterol levels.

Who are at risk? Who else, but the usual suspects.

People who have high blood pressure, who smoke, who have diabetes or have high cholesterol have an increased risk of stroke.

The following image would further enlighten you on the other risk factors:

EATING OUR WAY TO THE GRAVE
Bad News After Bad News Ought To Wake Us Up!


Image courtesy of NIH

Just when you thought it was only the incidence of childhood obesity that is rising, comes this jolting but expected news that the blood pressure levels of children and adolescents have been steadily rising since 1988 to the year 2000. This is documented in the May 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Another bad news is that caffeine may increase blood pressure and, therefore, the risk of hypertension, in adolescents, particularly among blacks. This comes from the May issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Read the full study here (no subscription needed).

The third bad news is the Wednesday announcement of the World Health Organization (WHO) that the number of diabetics worldwide would more than double to 366 million by 2030, from some 171 million at present. Read their full announcement here. In the year 2000, the latest year for which figures were available, some 3.2 million people died of ailments brought on by diabetes such as cardiovascular disease and kidney failure, as compared with three million deaths from AIDS.

Diabetes therefore, is a much bigger killer than AIDS.

And contrary to what you probably believe that diabetes is an ailment of the wealthy and can be found only in rich, 1st-world countries like the US and Europe, it is in poorer countries that diabetes is growing fastest, with cases seen rising 150% over the next 25 years. Also notable is the finding that while in rich nations diabetes affects mainly older people, in poorer countries incidence is surging among those still economically active.

So, cut on those calories while you can. Exercise! Exercise! Exercise! Avoid refined sugar in any form: ice cream and cakes. Encourage your children to develop a healthy lifestyle, too. Obese children are not cute; you are pushing them closer to their graves by making them eat the wrong foods. Instead of drinking softdrinks, drink water. Walk briskly. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Run and jog at least twice weekly. Don't just spend most of your time sitting in your office and facing your computer. Improve your diet and increase your physical activity. Reduce that waistline now! It's the only way to live longer and beat diabetes.

It is a fact that unlike some other health threats, type 2 diabetes could be prevented by improved eating and exercise habits. The key word is preventable.

What is your choice? Life or an early death? The answer may be obvious, but the rising diabetes incidence rates seem to contradict what most people really choose.

THE IRESSA HOPE
Some Optimism For Lung Cancer Patients


I have never been a fan of prescription drugs being advertised as "wonder drugs" or "cure-alls," but recently a drug known as IRESSA is slowly garnering rave reviews from respected news report accounts worldwide. Its generic name is Gefitinib and its mode of action, as described by its website (click here) is as follows:

"Gefitinib inhibits the intracellular phosphorylation of several tyrosine kinases associated with transmembrane cell surface receptors, including the tyrosine kinases associated with the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR-TK)"

In plain English, that means IRESSA attacks and destroys specific molecules (like EGFR-TK) that are known to promote and encourage cancer growth.

IRESSA belongs to a new class of cancer therapies. Taken orally once a day in its 250mg-tablet form, it is specifically indicated for patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after failure of both platinum-based and docetaxel chemotherapies.

It was only last month when it got the US government approval to be marketed as a last-ditch therapy for lung cancer patients who "tried almost everything" to lick their illness.

Initially, medical experts were at a loss in explaining why IRESSA worked for some patients and why it didn't for most. Lung cancer kills 160,000 Americans yearly and also a significant number of Filipinos locally (no thanks to smoking or pathetic government efforts to stop it). Recently, two groups of researchers writing in Science and the New England Journal of Medicine claim they have found the reason to explain the selective treatment provided by IRESSA: patients who exhibit remarkable improvements have a genetic mutation in their tumors that makes their disease highly vulnerable to the drug. That genetic mutation has something to do with cancer receptor expression. Patients with the EGRF-TK receptors on their cancers are strong candidates for dramatic healing and improvement because IRESSA targets these molecules specifically.

Read the story here. Another insightful report can be read here.

But how happy should we be? What is the reported success rate of IRESSA?

In the 10 percent of patients who respond to the drug--and who now seem to have the key mutations--it's at least 80 percent effective. The average patient has had his tumors shrink and symptoms improve for six months, and for many these improvements have lasted several years.

Finally, some glimpse of hope after long, long years of deaths and exhaustive fights against cancer.