Health News:100,s of students exposed to TB ♦ Highest rate of poultry food poisoning ♦ Smoking when pregnant increases cancer risk for daughters ♦ plus More

100,s of students exposed to TB at 2 Elk Grove Schools. School District officials announced that about 100 Franklin Elementary and 300 Franklin High School students will undergo skin tests for TB exposure the week of March 16. Continue Reading

Ireland has highest rate of poultry food poisoning bacteria in Europe  A report this week by Ella McSweeney,The Consumer Show has revealed a bacteria that can cause lethal food poisoning in humans is present on more than 98% of Irish chicken. The bacteria, campylobacter, is a potentially lethal food poisoning bacteria and 98% of Irish chickens tested positive for it when they were assessed Continue Reading

Male partner's healthier lifestyle may help infertile obese female conceive  Male partners of infertile obese females may increase the odds of conceiving a child by improving their own weight and dietary habits, Continue Reading

Exposure to endocrine disruptors during pregnancy affects the brain two generations later  Prenatal exposure to low doses of the environmental contaminants polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, change the developing brain in an area involved in metabolism, Continue Reading

Smoking when pregnant increases cancer risk for daughters  Women who smoke when pregnant are putting their daughters at a greater risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer later in life, a new study has determined. Findings also demonstrated that mothers who reported smoking most days while pregnant had daughters who had an earlier age of first menstruation, or menarche Continue Reading

Cancer Deaths Declining from 4 Types of Cancer

The CDC's Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, covering the period 1975–2010, showed death rates for lung cancer, which accounts for more than one in four cancer deaths, dropping at a faster pace than in previous years. The recent larger drop in lung cancer deaths is likely the result of decreased cigarette smoking prevalence over many years.

The lung cancer death rate decline, as well as declines in colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer death rates, has also helped drive decreases in death rates for all cancers types combined, a trend that began about 20 years ago. The decreased death rates for these four cancers accounted for more than two-thirds of the overall reduction in cancer death rates in the period 2001–2010.

However, the report showed that death rates increased for some cancers, including cancers of the liver and pancreas for both sexes, cancers of the uterus in women, and, in men only, melanoma of the skin and cancers of the soft tissue in this 10-year period.

During the period of 2001–2010, overall cancer incidence rates decreased by 0.6 percent per year among men, were stable among women, and increased by 0.8 percent per year among children (ages 0 through 14 years), continuing trends from recent reports.

The special feature of this year's report highlights the prevalence of other disease conditions, (diabetes, chronic lung disease, cardiovascular disease, and 13 others) in cancer patients over 65 years of age, and how they affect survival.

As in previous years, this year's study was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.