A weekly roundup of news affecting your health:
CANCER TEST BREAKTHROUGH
A new test that looks for cancer-related DNA and proteins in the blood could save millions of people from premature death, US and Australian researchers believe.
Scientists from Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University and colleagues in Australia say the test is capable of detecting eight common cancers before they spread, giving patients the best chance of beating the disease.
The new test yielded a positive result about 70 per cent of the time in more than 1000 patients with early stage tumours.
Researchers say the test, while some way off being widely available, promises to be a game changer in the war against an insidious killer.
It works by looking for mutated DNA that dying cells shed into the blood, and protein biomarkers associated with bowel, breast, liver, lung, oesophageal, ovarian, pancreatic and stomach cancer.
The research team believes the test, dubbed Cancer-SEEK, is ready for testing as a screening tool. "A test does not have to be perfect to be useful," says one of the lead researchers Nickolas Papadopoulos.
Details of the breakthrough, which involved researchers from Australia's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, have been published in the journal Science.
PRENATAL DEPRESSION
Mums-to-be who are deficient in iron could be two and a half times more likely to develop depression during pregnancy.
Canadian researchers have looked at iron levels in 142 women during mid-to-late pregnancy, and which of them went on to suffer prenatal depression.
They found significantly more cases of depression in those who were iron deficient.
The study doesn't definitively say a lack of iron brings on depression in pregnancy, but researchers say screening expectant mums for deficiencies could reveal their level of risk.
There's a known link between iron deficiency and depression in a general population, but until now no research has explored whether the link also affects pregnant women, with iron deficiency affecting about one in five expectant mothers.
The study has been published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada.
GESTATIONAL DIABETES
Women who develop gestational diabetes are 20 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and more than twice as likely to develop a form of heart disease later in life, a New Zealand study has found.
The study analysed a large UK data base and compared the health of about 9000 women who developed gestational diabetes with about 37,000 women of the same age, who were pregnant over a similar time period, but didn't get the condition.
They found women who had condition had vastly higher rates of type 2 diabetes later in life.
They were also twice as likely to develop hypertension, and two and a half times more likely to develop ischaemic heart disease, also known as coronary artery disease.
Researchers say the findings show women who had gestational diabetes must be carefully monitored for those specific conditions later in life.
The study has been published in the journal PLOS Medicine.
NOT-SO-SAFE SEX
Older Aussie blokes are shunning condoms and don't know much about sexually transmitted diseases, sparking calls for a sex education program aimed specifically at them.
Family Planning NSW, with the online dating service RSVP, have conducted one of the largest Australian studies of older men's sexual habits and awareness of STDs, and their latest data isn't good news.
Surveyed older men were more likely to talk about STDs with a new partner - 61 per cent for men over 60, compared to 44 per cent of men aged 18-29. But they were also more likely to have sex without a condom - 54 per cent to 31 per cent.
"We need to include older men in our safe sex campaigns, as this research shows that many men in this age group, who are starting new relationships, are highly sexually active, often with multiple partners," says Dr Deborah Bateson from Family Planning NSW.
"They may not know how simple modern STI testing can be, or that condom technologies have improved."
ENDS
