Women with breast cancer have more aggressive disease and lower survival rates if they are overweight or obese, according to findings published in the March 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. “The more obese a patient is, the more aggressive the disease,” said Massimo Cristofanilli, MD, associate professor of medicine in the Department of Breast Medical Oncology at The University of Texas M.D.

A compound found in soybeans almost completely prevented the spread of human prostate cancer in mice, according to a study published in the March 15 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Researchers say that the amount of the chemical, an antioxidant known as genistein, used in the experiments was no higher than what a human would eat in a soybean-rich diet.

The Iowa House on Tuesday voted 97-0 to pass a bill (HF 2539) that would expand health insurance to nearly all children in the state by 2011, the Des Moines Register reports.

CMS on Wednesday said Medicare will continue to pay for a form of CT scan that can detect heart disease, despite “uncertainty regarding any potential health benefits” from the procedure, the New York Times reports.

Medicare has agreed to pay 667 hospitals $666 million to settle a lawsuit over a reimbursement policy from the 1980s, the Wall Street Journal reports. The policy, which took effect in 1986, changed Medicare reimbursement rules to exclude certain low-income patients from the formula used to determine whether hospitals qualify for greater compensation for treating a disproportionate number of indigent patients.

International donors are expected to “drastically” reduce their contributions to HIV/AIDS programs in Indonesia in part because donors now consider the country to be a middle-income nation, Indonesian Welfare Minister Aburizal Barkie said Wednesday, Reuters reports. Foreign aid currently accounts for 70% of the funds for HIV/AIDS services in the country.

Several editorials recently responded to a CDC report that found that about 25% of U.S. girls and young women ages 14 to 19 have at least one of four common sexually transmitted infections. The findings, when extrapolated to the general population, show that 3.

Humana on Wednesday reduced 2008 and first-quarter earnings estimates, “adding to broader worries that accelerating health care costs could erode health insurers’ profits,” the Wall Street Journal reports (Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal, 3/13). For 2008, Humana officials said that the company expects earnings of $4 to $4.25 per share, compared with a Feb. 4 estimate of $5.35 to $5.55 per share.

Health regulators in the US city of Boston, Massachusetts, have voted unanimously in favour of banning trans fats in restaurants and grocery stores, according to various media reports.A number of US cities have already taken similar steps. New York City’s Board of Health, after a voluntary campaign that did not work, introduced a phasing out of trans fats in restaurant foods that started in July last year and completes in July this year.

Members of Congress can “participate in something extraordinary” by “resisting the ideological extremes” and reauthorizing the U.S. global HIV/AIDS program with the same compromises on HIV prevention programs reached five years ago, Michael Gerson — columnist for the Washington Post, senior fellow at the