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Majority of online pharmacies 'illegal'
Friday July 4th, 2008
Most on-line pharmacies are operating illegally and breaching drug regulations, it was reported today.
Fears are being raised over the number of fake drugs being sold in the internet, as a new report suggests that 62 per cent of medicines purchased online are "fake or substandard".
The findings were uncovered by The European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicines (EAASM) and released on Wednesday (July 2). Their report "The Counterfeiting Superhighway - the growing threat of online pharmacies" was announced at their annual conference in London, UK.
The experts bought products from over one hundred online pharmacies. At no point was a prescription needed. "This is illegal and presents a serious threat to public health," they say.
They analysed the drugs, including those intended to treat serious conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory disease, neurological disorders and mental health conditions, and found that just 38 per cent were genuine. Of these, 16 per cent were illegal non-EU imports and 33 per cent did not come with patient information leaflets.
Overall, 95.6 per cent of online pharmacies researched were operating illegally, and 94 per cent did not have a named, verifiable pharmacist.
Because of the rapid growth of illegal online pharmacies, there is now a higher risk that fake medicines will reach "untrained, unsuspecting, vulnerable consumers" and have "potentially lethal outcomes", say the authors.
Jim Thomson of the EAASM said: "The report findings are shocking and the story it tells demands action. Consumers are susceptible to fake medicines which could harm their health, and in extreme cases be deadly.
"The EAASM calls on all stakeholders including search engines, credit card companies, shipping companies, patient groups and regulators, to take action and halt this dangerous trend."
Cancer treatment saves lives
Thursday July 3rd, 2008
Survival rates from many common types of cancer have doubled in the sixty years of the National Health Service, experts reported today.
In 1950 cancer was recognised as an increasingly common disease - but many more people are diagnosed with it now than sixty years ago.
At the time just 18 per cent of people with colon cancer lived for five years after diagnosis - it is now 47 per cent.
Some 63 per cent of women died from breast cancer within five years - compared with 23 per cent in 1998. But the number of cases of this disease diagnosed every year has quadrupled - reaching some 40,000 a year.
Cancer Research UK said survival rates from two kinds of cancer, stomach and the lung, remained very poor. It worked with the new National Cancer Intelligence Network to compare statistics.
Chief executive Harpal Kumar said: "The improvement in cancer survival, over the years, is a testament to the world class research that has resulted in earlier diagnosis and better treatments for patients.
" But we must not be complacent; we want to see further improvements in survival in the future as we improve our ability to detect cancer early and as treatments become increasingly tailored to individual patients."
Mediterranean dipping fights cancer
Wednesday July 2nd, 2008
New research suggests that consuming just two aspects of the typical "Mediterranean" foods may significantly cut overall cancer risk.
Dr Dimitrios Trichopoulos and colleagues at Harvard University, USA, studied 26,000 Greek men and women for eight years. Daily diet was recorded by questionnaire, and rated on a nine-point scale for adherence to a traditional Mediterranean pattern.
Analysis showed that eating more monounsaturated fats such as those in olive oil, than saturated fats such as those in chips, biscuits and cakes, could lower overall cancer risk by nine per cent. The team also found that making any two changes to the diet, for example eating more peas, beans and lentils and less meat, may reduce the risk by 12 per cent.
"Our results show just how important diet is in cancer risk," said Dr Trichopoulos. "Of the 26,000 people we studied, those who closely followed a traditional Mediterranean diet were overall less likely to develop cancer.
"Although eating more of one food group alone didn't significantly change a person's risk of cancer, adjusting one's overall dietary habits towards the traditional Mediterranean pattern had an important effect."
Results are published in the British Journal of Cancer. Sara Hiom of Cancer Research UK commented: "This research shows that there are a number of things you can do, and that there is no one 'superfood' that can stop you developing the disease."
In the study, a reduced cancer risk was linked to higher consumption of fruit, vegetables, legumes (peas, beans, lentils), cereals, and a moderate-to-high consumption of fish.
Conformity to traditional Mediterranean diet and cancer incidence: the Greek EPIC cohort. British Journal of Cancer. 2008. 99(1).
Junk food affects health of unborn
Tuesday July 1st, 2008
By Leigh Parry
Eating junk food during pregnancy could raise the risk of your child developing heart disease or diabetes, researchers warn today.
High fat and poor nutrition can feed straight through to the unborn baby - just as if it adopted a poor diet later in life, says research published in The Journal of Physiology.
Researchers fed pregnant rats a diet of junk food throughout pregnancy and lactation.
The offspring were not only overweight and born with a taste for junk food, but had a host of medical problems that lasted into adulthood.
This included raised cholesterol and triglyceride levels, unusually high insulin and glucose levels and extra fat around the kidneys, another diabetes risk-factor.
Researchers Dr Stephanie Bayol and Professor Neil Stickland at the Royal Veterinary College, London, said the results showed a mother's diet in pregnancy and breastfeeding was very important for the long term health of her child.
"This does not mean that obesity and poor health is inevitable and it is important that we take care of ourselves and live a healthy lifestyle," Dr Bayol said. "But it does mean that mothers must eat responsibly whilst pregnant."
Professor Strickland said it was "very probable" that the results would translate to humans.
"Humans share a number of fundamental biological systems with rats, so there is good reason to assume the effects we see in rats may be repeated in humans," he said.
Journal of Physiology, July 1, 2008;586;13:3219-3230.
Review exercise guidelines: study
Monday June 30th, 2008
Researchers have called for a review of UK and US guidelines on children's physical activity levels in a study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
The guidelines recommend that children are 'moderately physically active' for at least an hour every day, in a bid to stave off obesity and its health risks.
But a team from the Peninsula Medical School, Devon, UK, said using the body mass index measure to monitor the impact of exercise may be simply too crude.
And they said applying the same guideline to both sexes may also not be appropriate.
The researchers based their findings on the long-term monitoring of 113 boys and 99 girls from 54 schools.
All children were part of the EarlyBird study, which is tracking the long-term health of 307 children born between 1995 and 1996.
The results showed than less than half of boys and only one in eight girls managed the recommended weekly amounts of exercise.
Some children spent as little as 10 minutes a day exercising at the required levels.
The researchers write: "Children who do more exercise clearly benefit, but we still have no idea how to encourage the 60 per cent of boys and 90 per cent of girls who do not meet the deadline to do more."
Online First Arch Dis Child 2008: doi 10.1136/adc.2007.135012
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