Olive Oil May Prevent Breast Cancer
A primary component of olive oil known as hydroxytyrosol has been the subject of a Houston Methodist study of women who are at increased risk of developing breast cancer. In this study 50 premenopausal and 50 postmenopausal women will be enrolled. Each of the patients will take one 25 mg hydroxytyrosol capsule for 12 months and undergo checkups every three months. It has been shown in previous research that olive oil provides many health benefits which include lowering the risk for heart disease, high blood pressure and possibly stroke. Tejal Patel, M.D., breast medical oncologist with Houston Methodist Cancer Center, who led this study, said, “We know there is a correlation between breast density and breast cancer. A decrease in density of one percent can potentially translate into a nearly two percent reduced risk of developing breast cancer”.
Drug Companies Accused of Holding Back Complete Information on Clinical Trials
Clinical trial results are being routinely withheld from doctors, undermining their ability to make informed decisions about how to treat patients, an influential UK parliamentary committee has claimed. MPs have expressed "extreme concern" that drug manufacturers appear to only publish around 50% of completed trial results and warned that the practice has "ramifications for the whole of medicine". Dr Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, told the MPs that the pharmaceutical industry published more positive results than negative ones from their trials. She noted that the journal had published very clear summaries of systematic reviews of data on individual medicines or classes of medicines where, "when you add together the published and unpublished evidence, you get a very different picture of the quality and effectiveness of those drugs".
We've Reached The End Of Antibiotics, Period
In an interview that aired on PBS's Frontline, an associate director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, said that "for a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about 'The end of antibiotics, question mark?' Well, now I would say you can change the title to 'The end of antibiotics, period.'"
"We're in the post-antibiotic era," he continued. "There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can't."
Green Tea May Have Brain Healing Properties
Green tea may have powerful brain healing properties, especially when it comes to preventing and perhaps even treating so-called 'incurable' neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. This, according to a new study published in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research. The authors write, “Using natural products with neuroprotective properties, such as green tea polyphenols, would be a highly useful complementary approach for inexpensive long-term treatment of these diseases”.
