Many people are not getting the recommended cancer screening tests

• Cancer screening tests save lives, but test use falls short of nation’s goals
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• Are you current on all your recommended cancer screenings?
• This Mother’s Day, make sure you can celebrate with your family for years to come.
• Cancer screening saves lives.
• Cancer Screening Tests
• Many adults in the U.S. are not getting the recommended screening tests for colorectal, breast and cervical cancers, according to data published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. For 2013, screening for these types of cancers either fell behind previous rates or showed no improvement.
• Among adults in the age groups recommended for screening, about 1 in 5 women reported not being up-to-date with cervical cancer screening, about 1 in 4 women reported not being up-to-date with breast cancer screening, and about 2 in 5 adults reported not being up-to-date with colorectal cancer screening.
• The report found that colorectal cancer testing was essentially unchanged in 2013 compared with 2010. Pap test use in women age 21-65 years was lower than 2000, and the number of mammography screenings was stagnant, showing very little change from previous years.
• “It is concerning to see a stall in colorectal cancer screening rates,” said Lisa C. Richardson, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control. “We must find new ways to make people and providers aware that getting tested for colorectal cancer could prevent cancer and save their lives.”
• Researchers reviewed data from the National Health Interview Survey 2013, which is used to monitor progress toward Healthy People 2020 goals for cancer screening based on the most recent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines.
• The screening data for 2013 show that 58.2 percent of adults age 50-75 years reported being screened for colorectal cancer; 72.6 percent of women age 50-74 had a mammogram; and 80.7 percent of women age 21-65 had a Pap test. All of these percentages are below the Healthy People 2020 targets.
• The report found that adults without insurance or a usual source of healthcare generally had the lowest screening test use. For example, fewer than one quarter of adults in these groups reported recent colorectal cancer screening, compared with more than 60 percent of adults with private insurance or a usual source of healthcare. More efforts are needed to achieve cancer screening goals and reduce screening disparities.
• The authors did report some good news: the proportion of women in the highest education and income groups who were screened for breast cancer exceeded the Healthy People 2020 target, and the proportion of people age 65-75 who were screened for colorectal cancer was also near the target.
• Through the Affordable Care Act, more Americans will qualify to get health care coverage that fits their needs and budget, including important preventive services such as screening for some cancers that may be covered with no additional costs. Visit Healthcare.gov or call 1-800-318-2596 (TTY/TDD 1-855-889-4325) to learn more.
• CDC’s Efforts to Increase Cancer Screening
• The Colorectal Cancer Control Program provides funding to 25 states and 4 tribes across the U.S. The program supports population-based screening efforts and provides colorectal cancer screening services to low-income men and women age 50–64 years who are underinsured or uninsured for screening, when no other insurance is available
• The Screen for Life: National Colorectal Cancer Action Campaign informs men and women aged 50 years and older about the importance of having regular colorectal cancer screening tests.

FDA Scientists Study Pediatric Brain Function

Study participants repeatedly press a lever on a large machine to make nickels slide out of a tube and drop into a cup. The coins pile up, but this activity in the Food and Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) laboratory at nearby Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) isn’t a game of luck. It is a game that helps researchers compare important brain functions in children and animals—specifically their memory, attention, motivation, and time perception. The results provide the agency with important insights for the evaluation of the effects of pediatric drugs on psychological processes.

NCTR investigators have been studying brain function using this approach since 1988. They recruit human participants from ACH in Little Rock. The animal counterparts—monkeys—that play nearly identical games as the children are housed, cared for and tested at NCTR some 35 miles away.

So why are they doing this research? It is standard practice for the safety and effectiveness of new drugs to be tested in animals before these drugs are studied in humans. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to predict how a new drug might affect brain function in humans based on the data obtained in animals. That’s because the types of tests given to assess brain function in animals often are different from the types of tests given to humans. By having animals and humans take exactly the same tests, researchers hope to be able to better predict the effects of drugs in humans using data obtained from animals.

It is hoped that the findings from these studies will help FDA, health care providers and parents make better informed decisions about medications for children—and to know more about how these medications might affect children’s brain function.

How the Testing Works

“We recruit a lot of our children from the general pediatric clinic. It’s a very broad sample and very diverse in terms of ethnicity, race, gender and age,” says John Chelonis, Ph.D., an NCTR research psychologist. Like all research involving human subjects, this study is subject to the many regulations designed to protect people of all ages who participate in clinical studies. “With human research,” Chelonis adds, “there are a lot of safeguards. If children decide they don’t want to play at any time, they can stop.”

The investigators have tested about 3,000 children since the lab opened. They see an average of eight to nine children per week, and the kids are always accompanied by consenting guardians.

Other NCTR staff train monkeys to participate in the research. The animals work for banana-flavored food pellets. “But they have to practice until they finally understand the rules of the games,” says Merle Paule, Ph.D., director of the Division of Neurotoxicology at NCTR. Some primates have been playing these games for almost 10 years. Once they learn the rules, which often takes months of trial and error performance, they can perform some games with accuracies of 95 percent or more.

“One of the important things about these games or tests is that they’re nonverbal,” says Paule. He explains that young kids don’t have language skills yet, and monkeys have none, and it’s the nonverbal nature of these tests, as opposed to traditional psychological tests, that makes more direct comparisons between the two groups possible.

Researchers study children who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression, and those who do not. “We try not to interfere with these kids’ treatment,” says Chelonis. “For instance, a lot of kids might be on their ADHD medication only during school days, and they’re off it on the weekends. So when we wanted to test the children when they were off their medication, we would typically schedule their sessions for the weekends when they were off of their medication.”

Researchers assess whether children’s responses vary in the presence or absence of medication and analyze the results based on gender and age. One of the tests that involves repeatedly pushing a lever on the behavior panel measures motivation. Children sit in front of the panel, which is positioned against a wall. They’re told to press one of the levers to get nickels. The first press releases one nickel. Children must press the lever 11 times for the second nickel (10 more than for the first nickel), 21 times for the third nickel, 31 times for the fourth nickel and so on, until the 10-minute game ends. The number of nickels earned depends on the strength of their motivation—how many times they press the lever.

Another game tests timing ability. For this, kids must hold one of the response levers down for at least 10 seconds, but not more than 14 seconds, to receive a nickel. It sounds simple. “But it’s a hard game,” says Chelonis. “It’s the cadence with which you count that gets you the nickel.” For this test, animals and kids tend to hold the lever down just long enough to meet the 10-second requirement. The timing ability of children with ADHD improves while on their medication. When children with ADHD are off their ADHD medication, they make more responses that are either too short or too long in duration compared to when they are on their ADHD medication.

What Researchers Hope to Accomplish

These FDA investigators are seeking to further validate their NCTR Operant Test Battery (OTB), the instrument they use to assess complex brain function in both children and monkeys.

They want to show:

• How OTB task performance relates to IQ and other clinical tests that measure mental function in humans;
• How OTB task performance relates to behavioral conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression;
• Whether OTB task performance is affected by drugs used to treat behavioral conditions such as ADHD; and
• How children’s OTB performance compares to that obtained using animal models.

NCTR researchers have published many of their findings in a variety of scientific journals, including Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Behavioral Processes and Neurotoxicology and Teratology.

The value of animal models to predict clinical outcomes is important to FDA, Paule says. As researchers gain a better understanding of how animal OTB performance compares to human OTB performance, they’ll be able to develop better ways of using animal models to understand human behavior and better predict drug effects on human brain function. This eventually could help parents and medical professionals make more informed decisions about medication use and to understand the positive and negative effects that drugs may have on behavior.

FDA researchers are also studying the potential toxicity of general anesthetics and sedatives in children. Animal models suggest that a single episode of general anesthesia during critical stages of brain growth can cause lifelong deficits in brain function. The scientific community currently does not have enough human data to know whether this is a problem in the clinic, but it is suspected that prolonged or repeated exposures in children also could have cognitive consequences.

“Biology is basically the same across different species,” adds Paule, reflecting on NCTR’s comparative research. “Animals can do many things that we can do if we give them the right opportunity, and they can also show us a lot about drug effects if we can figure out how to look.”

4/21/14 Health News: Highly Infectious Disease May Soon Arrive in the U.S. ♦ Most Hospital Pregnancy Tests Unreliable ♦ New test for Prostate Cancer Can Save Millions of Men Painful Examination

Highly Infectious Disease May Soon Arrive in the U.S.

When Claire Rourke woke up one morning March of last year with a sore toe, she didn’t worry too much about it. She, her husband and their three daughters were living in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, for a few months as part of a family year abroad. She and her husband had traveled widely — But by the middle of that day, Rourke was sicker than she had ever been before. “I hurt in so many places — my feet, hand, wrists, ankles, elbows and knees,” she says. “I actually remember thinking that I just might die.” Her joints were so swollen, hot and painful that she couldn't rest her elbows on the bed.Continue Reading

Most Hospital Pregnancy Tests Found to Be Unreliable

After First Few Weeks of Pregnancy Though the 11 most popular hospital urine pregnancy tests perform well in the first month after conception, a new study published in Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC, reveals the alarming statistic that nine of these tests become significantly more likely to produce false-negative results after the 5th to 7th week of pregnancy. Continue Reading

New test for Prostate Cancer Can Save Millions of Men Painful Examination

Each year prostate tissue samples are taken from over a million men around the world - in most cases using 12 large biopsy needles - to check whether they have prostate cancer. This medical procedure, which was recently described by an American urology professor as 'barbaric', shows that 70% of the subjects do not have cancer. The examination is unnecessarily painful and involves risk for these patients, and it is also costly to carry out. A patient-friendly examination, which drastically reduces the need for biopsies, and may even eliminate them altogether, has been developed . Continue Reading

10/26/ 2013 Daily Health News: Catholics Exposed to Hepatitis, Faster Tests for Sepsis and Lyme disease, Urine Test Detects Blood Clots

North Dakota Catholics warned of possible hepatitis exposure from bishop during communion

Hundreds of people may have been exposed to hepatitis A during ...the communion wafer and wine, "Catholic mass will continue," he said. Continue Reading

New Blood Test 'Detects Sepsis in Hours'

A rapid blood test to diagnose blood poisoning, or sepsis, at the hospital bedside could potentially save thousands of lives..Continue Reading

Nanotechnology Urine Test Could Detect Deadly Blood Clots

Blood clots, often unexposed until they break away and result in a stroke or heart attack, can form for a number of reasons in anyone. But now, researchers from MIT have developed a simple urine test that uses nano particles to detect thrombin, a major blood-clotting element.Continue Reading

Lyme Disease Tests Draw Scrutiny

The announcement spread quickly through the Web to Lyme disease patients across the United States. A small private lab had made an exciting breakthrough, the email said, developing a surefire way to identify the debilitating disease in people. To throngs of sick people in New England, where Lyme disease has become a major health concern, the note offered hope that finally, they would have proof that their chronic health problems were caused by Lyme disease. Continue Reading