“Revising Medicare’s Physician Fee Schedule — Much Activity, Little Change,” New England Journal of Medicine: In the perspective piece, Paul Ginsburg, president of the [click link for full article]

Eating a high-fat diet may lead to an increased risk of invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women.Although environmental and animal studies have suggested that greater fat consumption may increase the likelihood of developing breast cancer, the results of epidemiologic studies have been inconclusive.Anne Thiébaut, Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. [click link for full article]

Patients with arterial disease have relatively high rates of experiencing a cardiovascular event (such as heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular death) within one year, and these increase with the number of arterial locations afflicted, according to a large, international study in JAMA. [click link for full article]

President Bush “has few allies left in the stem cell debate,” and he should sign legislation (HR 3, S 5) that would expand federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, a [click link for full article]

Many allergy sufferers are afraid to admit that their beloved pet may be worsening their symptoms. And, many of these people avoid seeing an allergist for fear of being told…

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death among women in the United States. In 2006, the American Cancer Society estimated that there would be 212,920 new cases of invasive breast cancer, and in that year, 40,970 women would die from it. Many women”s lives could be saved if this cancer was diagnosed earlier, and early diagnosis could be achieved if there were more and easier opportunities to do so.Sebastian Z. Paige and Charles F. [click link for full article]

The following highlights recent state news related to human papillomavirus vaccines. Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline’s HPV vaccine Cervarix in clinical trials have been shown to be 100% effective in preventing infection with HPV strains 16 and 18, which together cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases. [click link for full article]

After an initial chemotherapy treatment, radiation may be a better choice than surgery for patients with stage IIIA non-small-cell lung cancer, according to a randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The authors suggest that a combination of chemotherapy and radiation should be the preferred treatment option for these patients. [click link for full article]

Results from the EVEREST (Efficacy of Vasopressin antagonism in Heart Failure Outcome Study with Tolvaptan) clinical development programme, published today in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) showed that once-daily oral tolvaptan improved the signs and symptoms of acutely decompensated heart failure (ADHF) in hospitalised patients, with a favourable short- and long-term safety/tolerability profile. [click link for full article]

Cultural differences and beliefs, as well as language barriers, likely contribute to the high teen pregnancy rate in a Santa Cruz County, Calif., community that is mostly Hispanic, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports in a two-part series. [click link for full article]