Month: January 2012

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Prostate Cancer Robotic Surgery Side Effects: Impotence & Incontinence?

Marketing, profit drive demand for robotic surgeries: Aggressive marketing is driving exploding demand for robotic-assisted surgery for prostate cancer, even if new research shows that it isn’t any better than low-tech surgery.

And marketing, in turn, is driven by big bucks that makers and operators of the new laparoscopic robots can make, the New York Times suggests in a report.

One in six American men develop prostate cancer in their lifetime. Treatment options include radiation and watchful waiting, but the most popular is surgery.

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NuvaRing Blood Clot Risks and Side Effects: Is It Safe for You to Use?

NuvaRing Blood Clot Risks and Side Effects: Is It Safe for You to Use? Are you thinking about using the NuvaRing, the birth control vaginal ring? If so, take note: health experts say that women wanting to use NuvaRing because of its effectiveness and convenience must balance these qualities against the fact that the contraceptive may pose a higher risk for blood clots.

The world’s first when it was approved by health regulators in 2001 and hailed as a “no-muss/no-fuss alternative” to the birth control pill, NuvaRing is currently facing a massive, multidistrict federal case in the United States over safety issues. Trials are scheduled to begin this year.

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AICAR Exercise Pill Benefits: It Prevents Heatstroke?

AICAR Exercise Pill Benefits: It Prevents Heatstroke?: Here’s good news for athletes who are raring to compete in, say, Tucson, Arizona on a hot summer day or cocky soldiers wanting to go on this summer’s tour of duty to Afghanistan, but who are barred from doing so because of an extreme heat sensitivity called malignant hyperthermia.

New research shows that the compound dubbed the AICAR exercise pill or “couch potato pill” because it slows muscle fatigue and improves muscle endurance without exercise may also be used to prevent heatstroke—at least in mice. The findings are found in a paper published by the journal Nature Medicine.

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Vaginal Mesh Implants: Safety and Side Effects Study Ordered by FDA

Vaginal Mesh Implants: Safety and Side Effects Study Ordered by FDA. If you’re a woman and you suffer from urinary incontinence, take heed. The United States Food and Drug Administration recently issued an order requiring makers of implantable surgical mesh used to treat urinary incontinence in women to study the rates of organ damage and complications linked to vaginal mesh implants.

U.S. regulators were responding to reports by patient advocates claiming the devices have caused infections, pain other complications and even serious injuries in women.

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Teen Breast Cancer: Is Alcohol a Risk Factor?

Teen Breast Cancer: Booze raises risk in teenage girls with breast cancer family history: At the exact time when many teenage girls are most tempted to play “bad girl” and engage in binge drinking—that’s precisely when the main window of opportunity for breast cancer prevention occurs. New research shows that adolescent girls who avoid or limit their alcoholic intake significantly lower their chances of developing breast cancer later in their lives.

Girls and young women with a family history of breast disease in particular—either cancer or the benign lesions that can become cancer—would be better off avoiding booze, or at least limiting the amount they drink, the study says.

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Broccoli Helps Fight Heart Disease, Undo Diabetes Damage

Eating broccoli can help protect against heart disease and even undo the damage that diabetes wreaks on blood vessel cells because it contains a potent compound called sulforaphane.

Two studies conducted in 2008, one done by American researchers and the other by a British team, came to this conclusion.

Findings of a study conducted by a team from the University of Connecticut’s cardiovascular research center suggest that eating broccoli may trigger the production of proteins that protect against heart damage. The study was published in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2008.

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