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Health Highlights: March 29, 2006
(HealthDay Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:
Tobacco Companies Contest Payment to States: Report
Large U.S. tobacco companies are negotiating with states in a dispute involving $1.2 billion of a $6.5 billion payment the companies must give the states by mid-April under the $246 billion Master Settlement Agreement of 1998.
The companies contend that they're entitled to pay less because the states did not "diligently enforce" statutes that require smaller tobacco companies that aren't part of the agreement to create escrow accounts to cover losses in any future legal action that might include them, The New York Times reported.
Because of this, the large tobacco companies say they should not have to pay $1.2 billion of the next installment of $6.5 billion that has to be paid to the states by April 17.
"We believe the states have diligently enforced their statutes. We are negotiating with the companies to make sure they pay the full amount," Tom Miller, the Iowa attorney general and co-chairman of the National Association of Attorneys General tobacco committtee, told the Times.
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Doctors Remove 2 Dead Fetuses From Baby Girl
Doctors in Pakistan operated on a 2-month-old girl to remove two dead fetuses that grew inside her while she was in her mother's womb.
The infant was in critical condition following the two-hour operation Tuesday.
"It is extremely rare to have two fetuses being discovered inside another. Basically, it's a case of triplets, but two of the siblings grew in the other," Zaheer Abbasi, head of pediatric surgery at The Children's Hospital at Pakistan Institute of Medical Science, told the Associated Press.
Abbasi led the operation to remove the two partially grown fetuses that weighed a total of about two pounds. The two fetuses had died at about four months' gestation.
He said it was the first such case -- called fetus-in-fetu -- he was aware of in Pakistan. He did not know what caused it, the AP reported.
Fetus-in-fetu occurs in about one per 500,000 births, said a report in the June 2000 issue of the journal Pediatrics.
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No Safety Concerns About Benzene in Soft Drinks: FDA
Tests for cancer-causing benzenes in soft drinks have raised no safety concerns, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday. But the agency did not release details about the test results.
The FDA began testing soft drinks after a private study released in late 2005 said it found small amounts of benzene in some soft drinks, the Associated Press reported.
While a few of the drinks sampled had slightly elevated levels of benzene, the vast majority did not have any benzene or had levels that were below the U.S. federal limit for drinking water, the FDA said.
The agency will continue testing soft drinks and plans to release findings "when we have a more complete understanding of the current marketplace," Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, wrote in a letter released Tuesday.
The FDA's letter was criticized by the Environmental Working Group, which wants the agency to warn the public about soft drinks that contain two ingredients -- ascorbic acid and benzoate preservatives -- that can form benzene.
"Notably, they don't give us the data," Richard Wiles, the group's senior vice president, told the AP. "We simply asked them to disclose the results of their testing. If there's nothing to hide, why won't they show us numbers? It might be a small percentage, but there is some percentage of drinks that have very elevated levels of benzene."
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Americans Uninformed About Lung Cancer Testing
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, but many Americans are uninformed about options for lung cancer testing, according to a national survey released Tuesday by the Lung Cancer Alliance.
The survey found that only 37 percent of Americans have talked to a health professional about getting tested for lung cancer. The survey also revealed a large gender difference: 23 percent of men thought about getting tested for lung cancer, compared to 9 percent of women.
Younger people were more likely than older people to think about getting tested for lung cancer -- 19 percent of those ages 18 to 54 compared to 9 percent of people 55 and older -- even though lung cancer risk increases with age.
The lack of public knowledge was highlighted by the finding that 48 percent of the survey respondents said they'd heard about a blood test for lung cancer -- something that doesn't exist.
Many of the respondents knew about older tests for lung cancer, such as chest x-ray (80 percent), MRI or CT scan (74 percent); only 26 percent knew about a new and effective test called autofluorescence bronchoscopy.
"The survey confirms a desperate need to educate Americans about lung cancer testing and underscores the need for new testing options," Laurie Fenton, president of the Lung Cancer Alliance, said in a prepared statement.
Lung cancer will kill about 163,000 Americans this year.
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Virtual Reality Games May Help Correct Lazy Eye
People with lazy eye (amblyopia) may benefit from playing virtual reality (VR) computer games, say researchers at Nottingham University in the U.K.
They found that it's possible to use this approach in order to encourage the lazy eye to be more active and to get both eyes working together. As a patient plays a game, the computer sends different images to each eye. The eyes have to team up in order for the patient to be successful at the game, BBC News reported.
"Traditionally, VR has been used to present realistic environments in 3D so you imagine you're there because of the depth of the world around you," said researcher Richard Eastgate. "But we're using VR to make something unrealistic. You could call it virtual unreality."
In one experiment, one hour of a virtual reality racing game achieved the same results as 400 hours of the traditional approach that forces the lazy eye to work harder by wearing a patch over the good eye, BBC News reported.
"The technique hasn't been proven with rigorous trials, but the early results show a very rapid effective treatment through this system," Eastgate said.
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HIV Treatment Program Misses Goal: WHO
Each day, about 18,000 babies worldwide are born with HIV because their mothers don't get the antiretroviral drugs they need, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report that said a program to expand access to the drugs had failed to achieve its target.
The report said fewer than 10 percent of pregnant women with HIV in developing countries received antiretroviral drugs between 2003 and 2005.
Currently, about 1.3 million people get the drugs, which is well short of the goal of three million by 2005 set by the WHO and UNAids in 2003, BBC News reported.
The "Three by Five" target was not achieved due to inadequate supplies of drugs, weak health systems in developing countries, and ineffective partnerships among aid providers, the report said.
Even so, expanded access to antiretroviral drugs averted 250,000 to 350,000 premature deaths and 18 countries met the goal of providing antiretroviral treatment for at least half of their people in need, BBC News reported.
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