HEALTH TRENDS

Study calls sugar 'addictive' and a 'dangerous drug'

A new study from out of Amsterdam is calling sugar "addictive and the most dangerous drug of our times", and lawmakers there want to see sugar regulated.

Backers of the study want to see cigarette-style warnings on sweets and soft drinks telling consumers that sugar is addictive and bad for their health.

A similar study in the United States last year found that sugar can be addictive and that the average American eats a third of a pound of sugar every day or 130 pounds per year. That much sugar consumption puts people at risk for obesity and diabetes.

The Dutch study is the first to call for such tight regulations on the sweet stuff.

FDA panel backs pre-surgery drug for breast cancer

A United States federal advisory committee cleared the way last week for the first approval of a cancer drug that would be used to treat patients before surgery to remove their tumours.

The advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted 13 to 0, with one abstention, that Perjeta, a Genentech drug approved last year for late-stage breast cancer, could also be used at the disease's earliest stage.

Such pre-surgery treatment might help make some inoperable tumours amenable to surgery, or make tumours small enough to allow for breast-conserving surgery rather than complete removal of the breast.

Moreover, the approval could serve as a model for a new path to quicker approvals of cancer drugs.

"This is a historic moment," Dr Mikkael A. Sekeres, an associate professor at the Cleveland Clinic who served as the chairman of the advisory committee, said immediately after the vote.

"We are supporting the rapid movement of a highly active drug for metastatic cancer to the first-line setting, with the hope that women with earlier stages of breast cancer will live longer and better."

The FDA still has to formally approve Perjeta for the new use but officials indicated it was likely to do so.

Vitamin B supplements may decrease risk of stroke - study

Taking supplements containing vitamin B may help cut your risk of stroke, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Zhengzhou University in China analysed 14 clinical trials involving nearly 55,000 subjects. The results, published online in the journal Neurology, found that there was a seven per cent lower risk of stroke among those patients who took vitamin B supplements.

However, the findings showed that vitamin B supplementation didn't have much impact on reducing the risk of heart attack. The study also showed taking folic acid, which is also known as vitamin B⁹, could reduce the benefits of taking of vitamin B supplements.

Still, the researchers advise that you talk to your doctor before taking any supplements.

Previous studies regarding vitamin B have yielded conflicting results, with some suggesting that the vitamin can protect again stroke and heart attack, while others have shown that it can actually increase the risk. Previous research has also shown that vitamin B³ may help boost recovery in patients who have suffered a stroke.

Low oestrogen levels blamed for big belly in men

In a surprising new study, oestrogen, the female sex hormone, turns out to play a much bigger role in men's bodies than previously thought, and falling levels contribute to their expanding waistlines just as they do in women's.

The discovery of the role of oestrogen in men is "a major advance," said Dr Peter J. Snyder, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, United States, who is leading a big new research project on hormone therapy for men 65 and over.

Until recently, testosterone deficiency was considered nearly the sole reason that men undergo the familiar physical complaints of mid-life.

While dwindling testosterone levels are to blame for middle-age men's smaller muscles, falling levels of oestrogen regulate fat accumulation, according to a study published earlier this month in The New England Journal of Medicine, which provided the most conclusive evidence to date that oestrogen is a major factor in male mid-life woes.

As for sexual desire and performance, both men and women require oestrogen and testosterone, and they increase steadily as those hormone levels rise.

"Some of the symptoms routinely attributed to testosterone deficiency are actually partially or almost exclusively caused by the decline in oestrogen," said Dr Joel Finkelstein, an endocrinologist at Harvard Medical School and the study's lead author, in a news release.

Both men and women make oestrogen out of testosterone, and men make so much that they end up with at least twice as much oestrogen as postmenopausal women. As levels of both hormones decline with age, the body changes. But until now, researchers have focused almost exclusively on how oestrogen affects women and how testosterone affects men.