'False-alarm mammograms' linked to increased breast cancer risk

Eileen Moleski has received mammogram results suggesting she has breast cancer four times, but further testing showed, each time, that she didn't have the disease. 

Now, she gets anxious each time she's due for another mammogram, said Moleski, 44, who lives in the Philadelphia area. 

A new study suggests that, for women like Moleski who've had a false-positive mammogram , continuing to be watchful for signs of breast cancer may be a good idea - such women are 67 percent more likely to eventually develop the disease, compared with women who've only had negative mammogram results, the findings showed. 

The findings suggest "that either that the false positive mammograms may not be false at all, or that the false positive mammograms may be representative of a biological process which contributes to elevated risk of developing breast cancer in the future," said Dr. Richard Bleicher, of the Fox Chase Cancer Center, in Philadelphia. 

The study is published today (April 5) in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

A heightened risk 

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen compiled mammography data from more than 58,000 Danish women. The women in the study were between 50 and 69 years old, and were screened between 1991 and 2005. 

The findings showed that 339 cases of breast cancer would be expected in one year in a group of 100,000 women who had only negative mammograms , whereas 583 cases would be expected in a year in a group of 100,000 women who'd previously had a false-positive mammogram. 

The increased risk of breast cancer remained for six years after a false positive mammogram, compared with women who always had a negative mammogram. 

The findings showed an association, not a cause-and-effect link, and further work is needed to confirm the results. 

Still, similar findings have been shown in the United States, said Dr. Jeff Tice, of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center in San Francisco, who was not involved in the study. 

The link might be explained by breast density , Tice said. Women with higher-density breast tissue may be more likely to get a false positive mammogram, and studies, including one that Tice worked on, have shown these women also have increased risk of developing breast cancer. 

Dr. Dana Whaley, an assistant professor of radiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., agreed that breast density may be the common link. 

"Breast density is an independent risk factor for breast cancer, and it is more significant than family history most of the time," Whaley said, though he added that why this is the case is not understood.

The study researchers said that the new findings suggest that false positives are a sign of some change occurring in breast tissue. It's not likely, they said, that there actually was a tumor that was missed in follow-up evaluation: women in the study with a false-positive mammogram tended not to develop cancer within two years of their false-positive tests. 

Skepticism of a link 

Some experts raised cautions about the new findings. 

"We don't know other critical factors about the risk of the patients in the study — family history, genetic mutations, hormone use," Bleicher said. The false-positive test might not, in itself, be the risk factor for cancer— it may be related to something else entirely. 

The findings would be more convincing if the study researchers had linked the specific location within the breast of the abnormality that caused the false positive with the location of later breast cancer, said Dr. Karla Kerlikowske, also of the Diller Cancer Center. 

The underlying biology that might increase the risk of breast cancer in these women needs to be explained with follow-up studies, Kerlikowske said. 

Like Moleski, many patients with previous false-positive mammograms have anxiety, Whaley said. But that anxiety is usually about the detection of cancer, not the false-positive result. "When and how this information is presented to women is very important in preventing unnecessary anxiety,"hesaid.

General Effects of Smoking on the Body

For most it is not surprising to hear that smoking harms your body in many different ways. Not only does smoking damage the immune system it increases the risk of infections. Generally, smokers tend to be less healthy than non-smokers.

Compared to non-smokers illnesses tend to last longer for smokers and because of this more time is missed at work. If hospitalized due to an illness smokers tend to require longer stays.

Smokers have a greater risk of complications and have a lower survival rate after surgery because of damage to the body’s defenses. They are at increased risk of infections, pneumonia, and other respiratory complications.

At times we all know what it feels like to be growing old. Sometimes our muscles and bones remind us vividly how we are aging. Compared to non-smokers, smoker's bone density tends to be lower.

Although arteriosclerosis is more commonly thought of as a heart disease, it can affect arteries anywhere in the body, including those in the legs and brain. Healthy arteries are strong, flexible and elastic, and the inner walls are smooth, allowing blood to flow freely through them to nourish tissues and organs.

Smoking causes many types of cancer, especially lung cancer, which is the second leading cause of death among Americans. It is responsible for one of every four deaths in the United States. Each year more than half a million Americans, more than 1,500 people a day, die of cancer.

Lung cancer was one of the first diseases linked to smoking. In 1964, the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health concluded that smoking causes lung cancer. In later years, the list of diseases linked to smoking has grown.

A sneeze can contaminate surroundings for hours

London: A single sneeze infests a room with deadly bugs and the contamination can last for hours.

Microscopic droplets sneezed or coughed out float around the air in large enough concentrations to spread disease, researchers say.

A sneeze typically contain as many as 40,000 droplets, some of which leave the body at more than 160 kmph.

Breathing in airborne specks of virus found in a typical office, plane or train could infect a person after just one hour, the Journal of the Royal Society Interface reports.

It also highlights why so many holidaymakers pick up coughs, colds and sniffles at the start of their trip, following a flight, according to the Daily Mail.

Flu passes from person to person through direct physical contact, or when someone sneezes or coughs.

US researchers collected samples of air from the waiting room of a healthcare clinic, three rooms in a nursery and three cross-country flights. Half the samples contained small droplets containing the flu virus.

Scientists found that a typical cubic metre of air contained an average of 16,000 particles of flu virus. Most were less than 2.5 thousandths of a millimetre across, which remain suspended in the air for hours on end.

"Given these concentrations, the amount of viruses a person would inhale over one hour would be ­adequate to induce infection," said Linsey Marr, who led the study at Virginia Tech.

"The virus-laden aerosols are small enough that the smallest ones can remain suspended for days," she added.

Coffee beans roasted till dark brown produces valued antioxidants

Washington: A study by food scientists has found that when coffee is roasted to a dark brown it produces very valuable antioxidants.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have been able to trace the complex chemistry behind coffee’s much touted antioxidant benefits, and they found it all depends on the roasting process.

Lead author Yazheng Liu and co-author Prof. David Kitts found that the prevailing antioxidants present in dark roasted coffee brew extracts result from the green beans being browned under high temperatures.

Liu and Kitts analysed the complex mixture of chemical compounds produced during the bean’s browning process, called the “Maillard reaction”.

The term refers to the work by French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard who in the 1900s looked at how heat affects the carbohydrates, sugars and proteins in food, such as when grilling steaks or toasting bread.

Antioxidants aid in removing free radicals, the end products of metabolism which have been linked to the aging process.

“Previous studies suggested that antioxidants in coffee could be traced to caffeine or the chlorogenic acid found in green coffee beans, but our results clearly show that the Maillard reaction is the main source of antioxidants,” Liu, an MSc student in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems (LFS) said.

“We found, for example, that coffee beans lose 90 percent of their chlorogenic acid during the roasting process,” Kitts, LFS food science professor and director of the Food, Nutrition and Health program, added.

The UBC study sheds light on an area of research that has yielded largely inconsistent findings.

While some scientists report increased antioxidant activity in coffee made from dark roasted beans, others found a decrease. Yet other theories insist that medium roast coffees yield the highest level of antioxidant activity.

Their findings will appear in a forthcoming issue of Food Research International.

Food in early life affects fertility

A new research by the University of Sheffield has revealed that the reproductive success of men and women is influenced by the food they receive at an early stage in life.

The research is the first study of its kind to show that early life food can have a serious influence on the life-long fertility of individuals.

The research team, led by Dr Ian Rickard from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University, used a combination of church record data on births in 18th century Finland and agricultural data on crop yields of rye and barley from the same time and place.

The study showed that in men and women born into poor families, food in very early life was related to the probability of reproducing. Approximately half of the poor people who were born in a year in which both rye and barley yields were low would not go on to have any children during their entire lives. However almost everyone from a poor family born in bumper harvest years, when both crops were high, would reproduce at least once in their life.

These results indicate that food received during prenatal or early postnatal life may limit the development of the reproductive system.

Rickard said: "Our results show that the food received by children born into poor families had an influence on their later reproductive success. These results have implications for our understanding of early environmental effects on human and animal health and will help shed light on our current understanding of fertility and whether it is influenced by individual or social factors."

The research has been published in the journal Ecology.