Health News

• Women concerned about bone density and who take powerful antacids like Prilosec, Nexium, Pepcid, Tagamet and Zantac should consult with their doctor following the release of a study showing a significant increased risk for hip & thigh fractures. So-called proton pump inhibitors and histamine-2 receptor antagonists reduce stomach acid, but doctors are also worried eliminating it will make patients more at-risk for food-borne pathogens. “Stomach acid is there for a reason,” said the study’s author, Dr. Douglas A. Corley, a gastroenterologist at San Francisco’s Kaiser Permanente Hospital. The pump inhibitors raised the risk of serious fracture 30% while the histamine-2 receptor antagonists increased risk 18%. The mechanism for the fracture increase may be the drugs’ inhibiting the absorption of calcium, which is 60% reduced by pump inhibitors according to other studies. Not surprisingly, the greater the dosage, the greater the risk, which also increased with age (the highest incidence of fractures occurred in participants over 80).

• A Chinese study of 73,223 women has shown promise that a diet rich in soy during the adolescent years might reduce the risk of breast cancer before the menopause by up to 40%. The findings were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and showed the risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer in adults who ate the most soy or soy isoflavones was reduced by 56-59%. China has the world’s lowest occurrence and mortality rates from breast cancer, which hits over 1MM women annually throughout the world. Soy isoflavones are estrogen-like compounds found in soy-based foods and supplements marketed to fight the effects of menopause. Some research in mice, though, has shown isoflavones stimulating breast cancer cells, though population studies indicate women eating a diet rich in soy generally have lower rates of breast cancer.

• Previous studies have reported that, while the underlying mechanism is not known, it is hypothesised that the oestrogenic effects of soy isoflavones cause changes in breast tissue during childhood that may decrease sensitivity to carcinogens later in life. A similar protective effect has been found in studies of overweight girls, perhaps because fat tissue also secretes oestrogen. Replikins, a Boston biotech firm, claims its use of proprietary amino acid peptide-counting software enables it to produce an H1N1 “swine flu” vaccine in 1 week, 100x faster than conventional vaccine makers. The company says that because the vaccine is synthetic, it can be modified more quickly to counter changes by the virus. Even with this development, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) insists it will be several months before a swine flu vaccine is available to the public.

• In other vaccine news, a salmonella vaccine may be coming. With the European Food Safety Authority and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control both listing the pathogen as the single biggest food-borne illness, the news that U.K. scientists have uncovered how the bacterium lives in its hosts has opened the possibility of developing a vaccine. Salmonella relies on glucose in the gut of its hosts, breaking down the sugar to create the energy needed to live and to reproduce. The researchers have created mutant variations of the bug that cannot bring glucose into the immune cells they infect, starving them and inhibiting their ability to replicate. These harmless variants could be used later as vehicles for introducing a vaccine (what scientists call a “vector”). Salmonella food poisoning hits up to 20MM people around the world annually, causing upwards of 200K to die. Additionally, it affect animals, which is how it often is spread to humans.

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