IN BRIEF (Page 19)
BEIJING
Heart patients forgo treatment
Just one of every 10 Chinese patients in need of cardiac surgery would receive the treatment, a meeting of Asian surgeons has heard.
More than 800 cardiothoracic surgeons and scientists around the world attended the 15th Annual Meeting of Asian Society for Cardiovascular Surgery held in Beijing from May 17 to 20.
With the combined influence of rapid economic development and an aging population, China has a total of 60 million latent heart disease patients. But of 8 million people in need of cardiovascular surgery, only 80,000 underwent necessary operations.
Only large hospitals in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai commanded sophisticated surgery techniques, says Wu Qingyu, congress president of the meeting and hospital president of Tsinghua University's first affiliated hospital.
Cardiac surgery remains an important method used to keep coronary arteries open in patients with coronary artery disease. But the surgeons say they face increasing challenges from the development of more popular stents technology.
Japanese doctor Akira Furuse says recent research shows that while long-term mortality rates and the risk of complications between stenting and surgery are similar, surgery performed much better to alleviate the heart pains in the short-term, and has a much lower chance of re-intervention.
PARIS
Four genes of 'silent killer'
Scientists on Sunday announced they had uncovered four more genes that play a role in breast cancer, widening the portrait of one of the stealthiest slayers of women.
British-led researchers found them after sifting through the DNA of nearly 50,000 women, half of which were healthy, while the other half were breast cancer patients.
Genetic factors account for between 5 and 10 percent of breast cancer cases, with "lifestyle factors" such as smoking and environmental factors accounting for the rest.
Much remains to be learnt about these four genes - especially, whether they react with each other or with lifestyle factors in a way that boosts the risk for some women, it added.
NEW YORK
Veggies warding off cancer
Substances found in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower may reduce the risk of bladder cancer, a new study shows. People who consumed the most of these substances, called isothiocyanates (ITCs), had a 29-percent lower risk of the disease than those who consumed the least, Dr Hua Zhao and colleagues from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston found.
Cord cells produce insulin
Stem cells taken from the umbilical cords of newborns can be engineered to produce insulin and may someday be used to treat diabetes, US and British researchers reported on Friday. They said they were able to first grow large numbers of the stem cells and then direct them to resemble the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas that are damaged by diabetes.
US minorities short on folate
A government study shows that despite requirements that grains be fortified with folic acid, many US women - particularly blacks and Hispanics - are not getting enough of the B vitamin. Folic acid is the synthetic form of folate, which is found naturally in green vegetables such as spinach and broccoli, as well as in oranges and orange juice, and in dried beans and peas.
STOCKHOLM
No increased risk of cancer
Blood transfusions from patients treated for cancer do not appear to increase the risk of cancer in recipient patients, a team of Danish and Swedish researchers said.
Although cancer patients are not normally allowed to serve as blood donors, sometimes donors with undetected cancer give blood before being diagnosed, giving rise to the query of whether there was a risk that cancer was transferred.
Researchers analyzed 1.3 million transfusion recipients in Sweden and Denmark, and were able to identify some 12,000 patients who had received blood from donors who were diagnosed with cancer within a five-year period after the transfusion.
Agencies-China Daily
(China Daily 05/30/2007 page19)
