Prevention Matters

A new study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle showing that postmenopausal women who take fish oil supplements may reduce their breast cancer risk was named the “Best Prevention Idea of the Week,” while the recent news from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that about 40 million doses of swine flu vaccine worth about $260 million will be destroyed because it's past the expiration date was named the “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week."

The “Best/Worst” awards are announced each week in “Prevention Matters,” the blog of Partnership for Prevention. Nominees are submitted by Partnership staff as well as the general public, and are voted on by the staff. Partnership for Prevention is a nonpartisan organization of business, nonprofit and government leaders who are working to make evidence-based disease prevention and health promotion a national priority. More information is available at http://www.prevent.org/.

BEST

Study Finds Fish Oil Supplements Linked to Lower Risk of Breast Cancer

Postmenopausal women who take fish oil supplements may reduce their breast cancer risk, a new study suggests.

The study focused on the potential health benefits of 15 different so-called "specialty" supplements to see if they affect breast cancer risk, said study senior author Emily White, an epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Fish oil supplements, made from fatty fish such as salmon, contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids.

In the study, White and her colleagues asked more than 35,000 Washington state women who were between the ages of 50 and 76 and all past menopause to answer questions about their use of "non-vitamin, non-mineral supplements." All were participants in the Vitamins and Lifestyle (VITAL) cohort study, and none had a history of breast cancer.

After six years of follow up, 880 cases of breast cancer were identified.

WORST

40 Million Expired Swine Flu Vaccine Doses to Be Destroyed


About 40 million doses of swine flu vaccine worth about $260 million will be destroyed because it's past the expiration date, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The amount of the outdated vaccine, which will be incinerated, is more than twice the usual surplus and likely sets a record, according to the Associated Press.

One government estimate suggests that about 30 million more swine flu vaccine doses could expire and have to be destroyed. If that's the case, it means that more than 43 percent of the total supply of swine flu vaccine for the U.S. public will have gone to waste, the AP reported.

The possibility of a preventive breast cancer vaccine becoming available for humans was named the “Best Prevention Idea of the Week,” while twenty percent of college students admitting to driving while drunk was named the “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week."

BEST

Breast Cancer Vaccine Possible, Scientists Say

A study in mice suggests that a preventive breast cancer vaccine might be possible in humans, scientists say.

Women may begin taking part in the next stage of research as soon as next year, they added.

"We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines have prevented many childhood diseases," principal investigator Vincent Tuohy, an immunologist in Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, said in a news release. "If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer."

WORST

1 in 5 College Students Admitted to Drunk Driving, Study Found


Drinking and driving among college students is still a major public health problem, new research reveals, with one in five admitting to driving while drunk and 40 percent acknowledging they have ridden with a drunk driver.

Equally worrisome, their tendency to drive under the influence soars when they hit the minimum legal drinking age of 21.

The findings were gleaned from a study co-authored by Amelia M. Arria, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, that followed more than 1,250 first-year college students enrolled at a large mid-Atlantic university.

A recent analysis of surveillance data reported in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that only about one third of adolescent girls ages 13-17 in a six-state sample have received more than one dose of the HPV vaccine.

Since the vaccine first received FDA approval in 2006, little research has been done to assess its use. For this analysis the researchers used data from the 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the 2000 U.S. census on 1,709 girls in Delaware, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia. It is not clear from the study findings why these six states were chosen. 70% of the girls in the study were white and 74% were insured.

The study also found that girls in states with higher poverty levels were less likely to be vaccinated, but those in counties with higher poverty levels were more likely to be vaccianted.

"Although seemingly contradictory, this indicates that while girls in poorer states had overall lower odds, girls living in any state experienced higher odds of vaccination if they lived in counties with higher poverty levels," said Sandi L. Pruitt, PhD, and Mario Schootman, PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis. "This may be partially explained by the limited resources of poor states," Pruitt said.

These findings show the need for interventions to increase vaccination among all eligible girls.

Christianne Johnson
Program Manager
Partnership for Prevention

The Lancet has finally retracted its 1998 article that has fueled a worldwide movement against use of MMR vaccine for infants. The article by Dr. Andrew Wakefield claimed there was link between MMR and autism. The retraction comes days after the U.K.'s General Medical Council, a government regulatory agency, ruled that Dr. Andrew Wakefield acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his research.

Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding has been hired by Merck to head up its vaccine unit, the Wall Street Journal's Jacob Goldstein reports. Vaccines are a $5 billion business for Merck. Gerberdmg ran the CDC from 2002 until early this year.

A Virginia program offering “Drive-through” flu shots were named Partnership for Prevention's "Best Prevention Idea of the Week," while the spread of fake malaria drugs was named “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week.”

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/virginia/300_Get_Drive_Through_Flu_Shots_092609

The Washington Post's Rob Stein writes: "Doctors, nurses and other health-care workers in Indiana and Tennessee will receive the first doses of swine flu vaccine Monday as the federal government launches the most ambitious vaccination campaign in U.S. history."

The campaign's goal is to inoculate at least half the U.S. population against the new H1N1 virus. The federal government has spent $2 billion to purchase about 250 million doses of vaccine and has pledged to buy enough to immunize every American if there is enough demand. But public opinion surveys indicate that Americans are undecided about the vaccine.

 

A community prevention program that cut teen drinking by more than a third was named Partnership for Prevention's "Best Prevention Idea of the Week," while low reimbursement rates for vaccines that are forcing doctors to opt out of offering them was named “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week.”

The Best/Worst Idea awards are a regular feature of Prevention Matters , the blog of Partnership for Prevention. Each week, Partnership for Prevention's staff will choose the designees based on nominations of items in the previous week's news submitted by members, staff and the public at large. To submit a nomination or for more information, contact Damon Thompson at dthompson@prevent.org.


BEST

Community Prevention System Cuts Teen Binge Drinking Rate by More Than A Third
http://ow.ly/oPO4

Rates of binge drinking were 37 percent lower among eighth-grade students in communities in seven states that used a prevention system designed to reduce drug use and delinquent behavior compared to teenagers in communities that did not use the system. Eighth graders in the towns that offered the Communities That Care prevention system also had significantly lower levels of alcohol and smokeless tobacco use and engaged in fewer delinquent behaviors. Under the program, each town assesses the risk factors that contribute to local drug use and delinquency and select two to five of them as their top priorities. They were then given information about scientifically tested programs that addressed each of their priority risk factors, selected programs they would use, and were trained in implementation.


WORST

Rising Vaccine Costs Force Doctors to Slash Vaccines Use
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/08/news/economy/health_care_vaccinations/index.htm?cnn=yes

CNN recently reported that the nation’s pediatricians are increasingly not offering vaccines because their costs have risen above the reimbursement offered by most insurers. For example, one doctor says the chicken pox vaccine runs about $115, but insurers only cover between $68 to $83 of that. “It's not clear exactly how widespread vaccine cutbacks are, but in a recent industry survey, 5% of pediatricians and 11% of physicians indicated that they're seriously considering no longer offering immunizations,” CNN reported.

An FDA advisory committee voted to recommend approval of the vaccine Gardasil for males ages 9 to 26 to prevent genital warts. The FDA advisory committee ruled 7 to 0, with one abstaining vote, that Gardasil's clinical trial data support the vaccine's effectiveness at preventing genital warts in males ages 9 to 26. And in a 7 to 1 vote, the advisory committee ruled that the data show Gardasil to be safe for males in that age range.

Each year, about 200 out of 100,000 males are newly diagnosed with genital warts, according to background information cited by the FDA. Penile cancer and anal cancer are much rarer.
Gardasil already has FDA approval for use in females ages 9 to 26. In females, HPV can cause cervical cancer.

In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites.

The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.

The World Health Organization recommended on Friday that oral rotavirus vaccines be included in all national immunization programs to avert half a million diarrhoeal deaths and 2 million hospitalizations a year.

NEWSWEEK delivers a scathing assessment of much of the health advice delivered on Oprah Winfrey's megapopular talk show. The TV diva's influence is such that she can drive millions of women to pursue better health, but Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert write that "...the truth is, some of what Oprah promotes isn't good, and a lot of the advice her guests dispense on the show is just bad."

"Some of the many experts who cross her stage offer interesting and useful information... Others gush nonsense," they write. "Oprah, who holds up her guests as prophets, can't seem to tell the difference. She has the power to summon the most learned authorities on any subject; who would refuse her? Instead, all too often Oprah winds up putting herself and her trusting audience in the hands of celebrity authors and pop-science artists pitching wonder cures and miracle treatments that are questionable or flat-out wrong, and sometimes dangerous."'

Kosova and Wingert single out for criticism recent appearances on Oprah's show by actress Suzanne Somers to hawk hormone replacement therapy and by Playboy pinup Jenny McCarthy to denounce child vaccines as a cause of autism.

People tend to associate immunizations with children, but there are a number of cost-effective immunizations that not only can help keep older Americans healthy, but can also save their lives. For example, an additional 12,000 lives could be saved each year if the adult influenza immunization rate could be increased to 90%. Dr. Litjen 'L.J.' Tan, the American Medical Association's Director of Medicine and Public Health, says the value of adult immunizations is underappreciated, and he talks with us about how policymakers can help change that. To listen to this podcast, click on the media player below. If there is not media player below, click here.

A coalition of more than 100 groups representing women, immigrants, and public health and reproductive rights advocates are hoping CDC will repeal its rule requiring female immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship to receive the human papillomavirus vaccine. CDC has been conducting an ongoing review of the requirement, and the public comment period ended on Friday.

Currently, female immigrants ages 11 to 26 must receive Gardasil to be eligible for a green card. The CDC advisory committee recommends the vaccine for U.S. residents, but the agency has proposed changing the criteria used to decide which vaccines should be required for immigrants. Critics say many young women are faced with the choice of getting the vaccine or waiting until they reach age 27 to acquire a green card. The vaccination is a three-shot series that costs between $400 and $1,000, which can add to financial strain for immigrants who already pay more than $1,000 in form fees and hundreds of dollars for mandatory medical exams.

Jacob Goldstein over at WSJ's Health Blog recalls the swine flu "non-pandemic in 1976" and says the experience is relevant today.

"That year, more than 200 soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., came down with the swine flu, and one died. Wary of a 1918-style pandemic, the Ford administration rushed out a vaccine," Goldstein writes. "But the new strain of flu didn’t spread widely, and the hastily made vaccine appeared to be linked to a neurological disorder in about 500 of the 40 million people who were vaccinated.

"That’s a reminder of the tightrope public-health officials must now walk, as they try to mount an aggressive response without using the kind of undue haste that can wind up harming the people they’re trying to help."

Gary Schwitzer resurrected some public service announcements promoting swine flu shots during the outbreak in the 1970s that are worth a look.