Health

For Women, Ill Health, Abuse Tied, Study Finds.  [World] Women who are physically abused by a partner face a similar legacy of health problems whether they live in a modern city in the industrialized world or a traditional village in a developing country, the first global study on domestic violence has found.  In interviews with 24,000 women in 10 countries, researchers found that while there are wide variations in the rate of women experiencing sexual or other physical abuse at the hands of their partners, victims are about twice as likely as other women to suffer ill health -- and the effect seems to persist long after the violence has stopped.  The study -- conducted by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and PATH, a global health organization -- is a landmark, said former UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.  ''It tells a story that unfortunately is universal," said Robinson, who was not connected with the research.  ''Violence by intimate partners is one of the most serious challenges to women's health."  Countries included in the study, released Thursday, were: Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, Namibia, Peru, Samoa, Serbia and Montenegro, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Tanzania.   North America and Western Europe were not included because earlier studies had already examined the situation there.  In the WHO study, rates varied between 15 percent of women having been a victim of domestic violence during their lifetimes in Japan to 71 percent in Ethiopia.  Previous research has found rates of about 20 percent in the United States and Sweden and 23 percent in Canada and Britain, said one of the researchers, Lori Heise of PATH.  Even though the lifetime risk of violence was similar in many nations, women in developed countries were less likely to be currently suffering abuse than were women in developing countries.  The percentage of women who had been attacked by their partners in the preceding year was 4 percent in Japan and in Serbia and Montenegro, compared with between 30 percent and 54 percent in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru, and Tanzania.

Trapped in Reflection.   [World] When it comes to differences between men and women, some are, as the French have always known, highly worthy of celebration.  Others, however, are more often a source of confusion and downright misunderstanding between the sexes.  Among the latter, one of the most distinctive is invisible to the eye.  Men and women differ dramatically in their approach to negative emotions such as sadness.  Specifically, men avoid them, and women don't.  And therein lies a problem, says psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Ph.D.  Unfortunately, women can get stuck in negative emotions, caught in a downward spiral of hopelessness and immobility.  And that, she finds, is a major reason women are twice as likely to develop depression as men are.

Record New HIV Cases in '05.  [World] Almost 5 million people were infected by HIV globally in 2005, the highest jump since the first reported case in 1981 and taking the number living with the virus to a record 40.3 million, the United Nations said on Monday.  The 4.9 million new infections were fueled by the epidemic's continuing rampage in sub-Saharan Africa and a spike in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the UNAIDS body said in its annual report.  "Despite progress made in a small but growing number of countries, the AIDS epidemic continues to outstrip global efforts to contain it," the report said.  More than 3.1 million people have died this year from AIDS, including 570,000 children -- far more than the toll from all natural disasters since last December's tsunami.  Southern Africa, including South Africa -- which has the world's most cases at more than 5.1 million -- continues to be worst-hit.

African-Americans, Women in Europe Hit Worst By AIDS.  [World] Young African Americans led the number of new HIV/AIDS cases in the United States while the number of women infected via sex in Western Europe showed a sharp spike.  New cases rose 43,000 in the United States to top one million as prevention efforts lagged despite extensive programs to treat HIV, the virus that leads to fatal AIDS, according to the AIDS Epidemic Update 2005 published on Monday.  "African Americans accounted for 48 percent of new HIV cases in the (United States) in 2003. African American women are more than a dozen times as likely to be infected with HIV than their white counterparts.  "AIDS has become one of the top three causes of death for African American men aged 25-54 and for African American women aged 25-34," said the report released in New Delhi ahead of World AIDS day on December 1.
Good Response from Pregnant Women in Delhi for Free Therapy.  [India] The number of children affected by AIDS/HIV in India has considerably increased over the previous years.  More than 340 infant deaths in New Delhi can be attributed to the deadly disease every year, raising concerns regarding the prevalence of the disease among pregnant women.  Nearly 22,837 new born children are infected with the disease and about 11,434 die due to it at the present.  Currently, an estimated 2, 02,000 children suffer from HIV/AIDS in India.   In response to the above situation, a silent campaign has been launched in the capital to ensure protection of a child from the disease.  It is also targeted at institution of Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) to the pregnant mother to improve her health and reduce the risk of mother-child transmission of HIV.  A pregnant mother with HIV has a 30% chance of transmitting the infection to her child.  The risk of transmission during vaginal delivery.  The only way to reduce this type of transmission is encouraging women to come forward to get tested for the virus.
Debating Exercise's Role in Fighting Breast Cancer.  [United States] Medical researchers agree that, at the very least, regular exercise can make people feel better about themselves.  There is less agreement on whether it can also prevent cancer.  If it does, researchers say, there are just two cancers that seem likely prospects: breast cancer and colon cancer.  Even for breast and colon cancer, proof is hard to come by.  Researchers who are enthusiastic about a cancer-exercise connection also caution against too much enthusiasm.  Exercise is like a seat belt, says Dr. Anne McTiernan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, a co-author of "Breast Fitness: An Optimal Exercise and Health Plan for Reducing Your Risk of Breast Cancer."  "It's not a guarantee, but it can reduce your risk," she said.  "The negative side is when a person says, 'The reason I got cancer is that I didn't exercise.'  That's the problem."  Dr. Brian Henderson, dean of the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, knows where the idea that exercise might prevent breast cancer came from.  It was an extrapolation from an observation, and from the start it was filled with untested assumptions.  He knows this because it included work that originated with his research group.  He began with the observation that exercise could affect when girls started to menstruate.  For menstruation to begin, girls must be eating more calories than they burn, Henderson said.  Adolescent girls who exercise strenuously may start menstruating later than more sedentary girls.  Researchers also knew that the older a girl was when she started to menstruate, the lower her risk of eventually developing breast cancer, Henderson said, and "that's where the idea came from that exercise might affect risk for breast cancer."
Sauerkraut Consumption May Fight off Breast Cancer.  [United States] Eating sauerkraut and raw cabbage may protect women from breast cancer, said a team of US and Polish researchers last week.  They believe that high levels of glucosinolates, compounds already demonstrated to have anti-cancer activity in the lab, are responsible for the association between cabbage and sauerkraut consumption, and a lower risk of breast cancer observed in Polish immigrants living in the US.
Study Shows Mammography Tests, Sonograms Both Needed to Detect Breast Cancer.  [Japan] Mammography tests failed to detect breast cancer in about 30 percent of women in their 50s with the disease and nearly 20 percent in their 40s.  But exams using sonograms caught the disease, the Tochigi Public Health Service Association has found.  Doctors at the association emphasized the need for women to undergo both tests to prevent cancerous tissues from being overlooked.  Under the policy of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, women aged 40 and older have been entitled to public-funded mammography tests since April 2004.  The association in fiscal 2000 introduced both mammography and sonogram tests in breast cancer exams.
Get the Facts About Women and Heart Attacks.  [United States] A recent study in the "Journal of Advanced Nursing" shows what some researchers have suspected for a long time: women who suffer heart attacks wait longer to be assessed, admitted to the hospital and treated, than their male counterparts.  The really sad part is that this is true despite that fact that heart disease is the number one killer of women.  On average, women were medically assessed approximately of 30 minutes after arriving at an emergency department, compared to the 20-minute wait for the average male.  Men were likely to receive aspirin therapy about 33 minutes after assessment; women, 55 minutes later.
Florida Disputes Audit of Medicaid.  [United States] Florida is disputing an audit that claims the state owes the federal government $14.5-million it should have collected from Medicaid providers who were overpaid.  The Department of Health and Human Services released an audit Thursday saying the state didn't do enough to get money back from providers who were overpaid.  Some of that money would have been owed to Washington because the federal government splits the cost of Medicaid with the state.  The state Agency for Health Care Administration disputed the findings.  The state spent about $12.5-billion last year on Medicaid, which pays some health care costs for 2-million Floridians, mostly women and children who can't afford health insurance.  The federal department said that in some cases the state agency didn't adequately pursue collection when a provider was overpaid.  In others, the state offered settlements and didn't submit to the federal government what was due, auditors said.
GAO: FDA Ruling On 'Morning After Pill' Was Unusual.  [United States] Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Mark McClellan voiced strong doubts about a proposal to make the ''morning after pill" more easily accessible months before the agency overrode the advice of its staff and an expert panel and rejected the application, government investigators reported.  The Government Accountability Office report said the apparent involvement of McClellan and other top officials was one of four unusual aspects of FDA's handling of the politically sensitive decision.  The investigators reported that several key FDA officials told colleagues that the application to allow over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive would be rejected months before the decision was announced.  The proposal for nonprescription sales of the ''Plan B" contraceptive was actively supported by FDA staff and by a joint advisory panel of experts, and the decision caused considerable internal dissent.
Deaths After Abortion Pill to Be Studied by Officials.  [United States] Federal drug regulators have discovered that all four women in this country who died after taking an abortion pill suffered from a rare and highly lethal bacterial infection, a finding that is leading to new scrutiny of the drug's safety.  Since all four deaths occurred in California, an unusual clustering, the Food and Drug Administration quietly tested to see if abortion pills distributed in California were somehow contaminated.  They were not.  Stumped, officials from the F.D.A. and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have decided to convene a scientific meeting early next year to discuss this medical mystery, according to two drug agency officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.  Among other issues, the experts hope to explore whether the abortion pill, called Mifeprex or RU-486, somehow makes patients vulnerable to an infection with Clostridium sordellii, the lethal bacteria.  If so, they will explore how such an infection "could be more easily diagnosed and even prevented," one official said.
When the Body Clock Gets It Wrong.  [England] For women who experience it prematurely, the menopause can be devastating.  It's a female rite of passage, but not one most women think about until it begins.  As a 16-year-old studying for her GCSEs, Liz Fraser had given little thought to the menopause, let alone the idea that she might be in the midst of hers.  Nor did her GP when she told him that she hadn't had a period for four months.  “He just put it down to exam stress and told me to come back in six months' time if they hadn't come back," says Fraser.  When the six months were up and there was still no sign of a period, her GP carried out some blood tests.  As they revealed that Fraser's hormone levels were out of sync, he referred her to a gynecologist.  "It was the same story.  He spent five minutes with me, said my hormones were fine, and told me to come back in six months if nothing had changed," says Fraser.  While it's rare in someone so young, premature menopause, or ovarian failure - when a woman experiences the menopause before the age of 45 - is relatively common.  The average age of women undergoing the menopause in Britain is 50, but it's estimated that about one woman in 100 experiences it before the age of 40, one in 1,000 when they're under 30 and one in 10,000 at under 20.  There are a number of reasons for premature menopause - an abnormal chromosome can be to blame or it can be the result of an auto-immune condition in which antibodies mistakenly attack one of the ovaries.  Surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy can also damage ovaries, and a hysterectomy will obviously bring on the menopause, as the entire uterus - ovaries included - is removed.  But sometimes, doctors are unable to identify what causes the ovaries to stop producing estrogen and progesterone, depleting their supply of eggs.
C-Sections in U.S. Are at All-Time High.  [United States] The rate of Caesarean sections in the U.S. has climbed to an all-time high, despite efforts by public health authorities to bring down the number of such deliveries, the government said Tuesday.  Nearly 1.2 million C-sections were performed in 2004, accounting for 29.1 percent of all births that year, the National Center for Health Statistics reported.  That is up from 27.5 percent in 2003 and 20.7 in 1996.  The increase is attributed to fears of malpractice lawsuits if a vaginal delivery goes wrong, the preferences of mothers and physicians, and the risks of attempting vaginal births after Caesareans.  The C-section rate increased for all births, even those that involved healthy, first-time pregnancies with a full-term, single child.  In the government announced a national public health goal of reducing the C-section rate for such births to 15 percent by 2010, but the actual rate now is about 24 percent and rising.
Gynecologist Convicted of Sexual Abuse.  [United States] A jury Wednesday convicted a gynecologist of raping and fondling women who came to his clinics for treatment.  Charles Momah pleaded not guilty last year to two counts of rape and two counts of indecent liberties with patients.  Prosecutors alleged that Momah performed gynecological exams without wearing gloves, flirted with and touched patients inappropriately, and probed them unnecessarily with a vaginal ultrasound wand.
Spending Weeks in Bed in the Name of Science.  [France] The French nurse has spent 50 straight days confined to bed for space research.  She is not allowed to stand or sit up, ever; a 24-hour surveillance camera makes sure of that.  She showers lying down and even jogs in bed, strapped into a vertical treadmill that makes her feel she's running up a wall.  ''Running while you're on your back takes some getting used to,'' says 36-year-old Theil, one of 24 Europeans who volunteered to boldly go where few women have gone before -- to bed for 60 days.  The joint study by the European Space Agency, the French space agency CNES, the Canadian Space Agency and NASA will fill in unknowns about protecting female astronauts from the side effects of weightlessness.

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