Keep abreast of what your patients are currently seeing in the media with our round-up of popular news stories, available from WHF as abstracts with links to the full-text articles.

From the week of January 28, 2008:

The Pill Protects Against Cancer

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in western nations, and is often fatal. However, a study conducted recently at Oxford University in England found that women who take prescription birth control pills for 15 years halved their chances of developing ovarian cancer. The protective benefit of the pill remained active for roughly 30 years after they stopped taking the pill. The study found that for every 5 years women take birth control pills, their ovarian cancer rate is cut by approximately 20%. Birth control pills also provide protection against endometrial cancer, although the pill has been shown to slightly elevate a woman’s risk for breast and cervical cancer. Other side effects of the pill include the risk of blood clots, migraines, and high blood pressure; smoking while taking the pill can magnify these risks. Because of the possible side effects of birth control pills, doctors are not recommending that women use the pill purely for its protection against ovarian cancer. However, for women already using birth control pills to prevent pregnancy, it is a newly discovered added bonus.

Read the full story on washingtonpost.com

Digital Mammography Better Than Film for Some Women

Researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill recently revisited study results from 2005 on the accuracy of digital versus film mammography. The original study analyzed mammography results of 49,000 women, 42,000 of whom had breast cancer. In the follow-up study, the results were reanalyzed based on 10 different subgroups of women, categorized by menopausal status, age, and breast density. There were no statistically significant differences in the accuracy of film mammography over digital mammography, however there was a small improvement in accuracy of traditional film mammography over digital for women over the age of 65 with fatty breasts. Conversely, for women under 50 who are pre- or peri-menopausal and have dense breasts, digital mammography was significantly more accurate than traditional film mammograms. Breast cancer is typically easier to diagnose in fatty breasts than in dense breasts because of the way dense tissue and fat show up on a mammogram. Approximately 80% of mammogram machines in the US are currently traditional film units, 20% are digital.

Read the full story on healthday.com

Great Drug, but Does It Prolong Life?

Statins are drugs used to lower cholesterol, to reduce risk for heart attack, and are among the most often prescribed drugs in the world. Their efficacy in lowering cholesterol and heart attack risk has been proven, but new studies indicate that they do not actually prolong all patients’ lives. For high-risk groups, such as middle-aged men with cardiovascular disease, statins can prolong their lifespan. For low-risk groups, however, including women with or without heart disease, statins do not appear to have a significant impact on life expectancy. Although patients with heart disease are generally advised to take statins, many doctors feel that too many low-risk patients (women, patients under the age of 70) are also taking them. Critics of statins claim that there is no evidence indicating that statin users have a better quality of life than nonusers. Others believe that the decline in cardiovascular disease death rates in recent years reflects a positive impact of statins. The side effects of statins have not been well studied, but those reported include muscle pain, cognitive problems, and impotence.

Read the full story on nytimes.com

Questioning the Allure of Putting Cells in the Bank

With the recent flurry of excitement over stem cells, some companies are trying to profit from stem cells’ potential by offering services to harvest and store individuals’ stem cells. Cells can be extracted from women’s menstrual fluid, adult blood, fat removed by liposuction, and children’s baby teeth. Collection and processing fees range from $500 to $7500, plus a yearly fee in the range of $90 to $700 to store the stem cells in liquid nitrogen. The claims made by stem cell banks are alluring—saving a woman’s life one day with cells easily collected during her period—but there is no research verifying their claims. Many scientists and doctors suggest stem cell banks are a waste of consumers’ money, because few if any will ever be able to use their stem cells. Menstrual fluid collection is one of the newest services being offered, but most of the treatments advertised by the cell banks are years away from being available, if ever. Menstrual stem cell research is a burgeoning field, yet little is known about how well these cells will function. There is no harm in harvesting and storing these stem cells, except to the bank accounts of consumers.

Read the full story on nytimes.com