NEW YORK – A new study claims HPV, the STD linked to cervical cancer, may be found in half of all adult men. Danielle Friedman on why the disease is no longer just a women’s issue.

The statistic is explosive: a whopping half of adult men may be infected with HPV, the sexually transmitted disease that can lead to a host of cancers in men and women.

The finding, published online in the journal The Lancet, lit up headlines this week. But it’s just the latest in a string of studies that drive home what many doctors have known for years: Human papillomavirus isn’t just a women’s problem. As Howard Markel, a pediatrician and medical historian, said of its incidence: “it takes two to tango.”

The figure also presents perhaps the fiercest case yet that parents, doctors, and public health officials should embrace the vaccines that help prevent the disease—for girls and boys. “one of the most interesting aspects of this study is how it can reframe the debate,” said Alexandra M. Stern, a medical historian and Markel’s colleague at the University of Michigan. “It could lead to broader acceptability.”

HPV is the leading cause of cervical cancer, but it’s also linked to anal, penile, and head and neck cancers, as well as genital warts. while most people show no symptoms of the disease, it can be passed along through mere skin-to-skin contact.

Before considering the future of the vaccine, it’s helpful to look back. in 2006, drug giant Merck released Gardasil, the first HPV vaccine, and the CDC recommended that 11- and 12-year-old girls be routinely immunized. (In 2009, GlaxoSmithKline released a second HPV vaccine, called Cervarix.) Merck also launched a major ad campaign, featuring young women declaring that they wanted to be “one less”—one less victim of cervical cancer—ingraining the notion that HPV is a women’s issue. and it is, to an extent: most women will be exposed to a strand of the virus, at some point, and it poses a greater cancer risk for women than men.

And yet: It’s tough not to view this single-sex approach as part of a larger trend of women bearing a greater burden for society’s sexual health. Women shoulder greater responsibility for contraception, for example, and maternity care. all the while, society still judges women more harshly than men for their sexual behavior. “It’s like how we used to put scarlet letters on women, while men got off scot-free,” said Markel. “maybe this approach is a vestige of this male/female hegemony.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers began proposing measures that would require girls to receive the vaccine, seizing the opportunity to curb a public-health crisis (or perhaps, nursing political ties to Merck). But conservative groups and legislators fought many of the efforts, arguing that the vaccine would encourage promiscuity. 

Today, the HPV vaccine still hasn’t taken off—which is especially puzzling as it’s one of the only proven means of warding off cancer.

“Getting a tetanus shot doesn’t make you romp merrily through rusty fields,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. “You don’t get the vaccine and say, ‘Now I can step on a rusty nail and not worry about it.’”

Today, the HPV vaccine still hasn’t taken off—which is especially puzzling as it’s one of the only proven means of warding off cancer. while a quarter of girls receive the first of the vaccine’s required three doses, only 11 percent get the full batch, according to the CDC. 

The reasons? perhaps it’s because the HPV vaccine is still new, says Stern; the public has rejected or feared new vaccines since the dawn of vaccination. Or maybe it’s because the HPV vaccine is expensive, at over $300—though most insurance companies cover it for women through age 26, and the federal program Vaccines for Children helps out in some cases. Research also suggests that people still don’t understand the disease and its consequences. and because the vaccine is inherently connected to sex, it makes some parents uncomfortable, said Markel: “People still get really nervous about all sorts of issues involved in sexuality.”

Yet studies like the one released this week have the potential to change the way we think about the disease and the vaccine. “it takes the pressure off adolescent girls and their sexuality,” said Stern.

History offers hope: When the hepatitis B vaccine was first introduced in the 1980s, it was stigmatized, since the virus was contracted through sharing needles and having sex. “it was seen as dirty,” said Offit. But pediatricians began vaccinating infants of both sexes, and eventually, it lost its charge. Today, hepatitis B is nearly eradicated in the U.S.

Even if HPV didn’t affect men directly, a strong case is made for vaccinating boys and men to protect women. History offers a precedent here, too: The rubella infection doesn’t pose a great threat to boys, but if a pregnant woman contracts the illness during the first trimester of a pregnancy, her baby is at high risk for developing severe birth defects. So we vaccinate everybody.

“We’re all responsible for each other,” said Offit. “In 2005, we declared the U.S. rubella-free, and that’s only because boys took the vaccine.”

But HPV does affect men. Although most men show no symptoms of the STD, studies show that the virus leads to thousands of cases of penile and anal cancer in men every year, along with genital warts. and research published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month (and funded by Merck) revealed that Gardasil, which the FDA approved for men in 2009, lowers rates of genital warts in men.

Last month, for the first time, the American Academy of Pediatrics also included the HPV vaccine on its list of recommended vaccines for boys. and Offit expects the CDC to officially recommend it for boys and men within the year.

On a practical level, some question if vaccinating both sexes is cost-effective. at least one study suggests that when vaccination rates among females are low, improving these rates is more beneficial than vaccinating males. But some medical practitioners have a tough time buying this approach, at least in theory. “Boys benefit directly from the HPV vaccine,” Offit stressed.

at the very least, this week’s data—with its shock value and media blitz—will likely raise awareness of the disease. “Maybe we’re just too early” in the vaccine’s history, said Markel of its bumpy path. maybe a decade from now, we’ll look back on these first few years as growing pains.

Danielle Friedman is a homepage editor and reporter for The Daily Beast. Previously, she spent five years working as a nonfiction book editor for Hudson Street Press and Plume, two imprints of Penguin Group. She’s a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

THE biggest-ever study of treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome has found more people recover if helped to try to do more than they think they can – rather than adapting to a life of limited activity.

The findings of the study, published in the Lancet, attracted immediate criticism from patient groups, some of whom believe there is a conspiracy by the psychiatric establishment to brand chronic fatigue as being ”all in the mind”. they insist it is a physical disease, probably with a viral cause.

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Doctors involved in the new trial say they are looking only at treating the symptoms, not the cause. in a quarter of cases, sufferers are unable to leave the house. The symptoms include exhaustion, poor concentration, memory problems, disturbed sleep, and joint and muscle pains.

The trial, funded by the UK Medical Research Council together with the Department of Health, followed 641 patients for a year.

It found that patients showed more improvement – and a small minority recovered completely – after cognitive behaviour therapy, one of the so-called psychological ”talking therapies”, or graded exercise therapy, where the patient is encouraged gradually to become more active.

Although the numbers who recovered were small, Trudie Chalder, professor of cognitive behavioural psychotherapy at King’s College, London, said that ”twice as many people on graded exercise therapy and cognitive behaviour therapy got back to normal” compared with those in the other two treatment groups.

CHRONIC fatigue syndrome can be reversed with counselling and exercise, a new study claims.

Researchers have identified two forms of treatment for the debilitating condition, also known as ME.

The study, led by a team in Edinburgh University, gives hope to the 250,000 sufferers who have to live with the illness in the UK.

Symptoms include severe tiredness, poor concentration and memory, disturbed sleep and muscle and joint pain.

Researchers used cognitive behavioural therapy – counselling to helps sufferers take charge of issues while encouraging activity – or graded exercise therapy, which is based on gradually increasing exercise.

Six in 10 patients reported significant improvements, with half reporting a return to normal energy levels.

Scientists, who spent eight years on the research, believe it could herald a new dawn for treatment.

In journal the Lancet, report co-author Professor Michael Sharpe said: “Previously, it has been thought that these treatments could harm patients and there was a very confused picture.

“This trial has found both have substantial beneficial effects and they are safe if delivered properly.”

Dr. Andrew Wakefield arrives in London on July 16, 2007 to face a disciplinary panel investigating allegations of misconduct. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

(CBS/AP) Dr. Andrew Wakefield is either the victim of  “a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns” as he describes it or a huckster paid by lawyers in 1998 to falsify an autism study to make it appear vaccines were to blame for the disorder. the lawyers later sued the vaccine makers.

The huckster version of events is described in a British Medical Journal piece released this month which rips apart Wakefield’s study and his motivation for writing it.

“Such clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare,” said BMJ’s editor-in-chief Dr. Fiona Godlee in a statement.

The 1998 study, which appeared in the prestigious British journal the Lancet, was groundbreaking when it came out. Wakefield examined 12 children with regressive autism – they were developing normally and then went awry. Wakefield said their symptoms appeared soon after receiving a vaccination for measles mumps and rubella called an MMR. In rich nations, almost all children receive the shot.

Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, hypothesized that the vaccine caused both the autism symptoms and gut problems.

Parents with autistic children, desperate to find it’s cause and a cure, quickly rallied around Wakefield’s study. Vaccination rates dropped in Britain as well as the United States. New cases of measles rose.

And so did the cases of autism or at least its diagnosis.

Later studies tried to replicate Wakefield’s findings, but could not. Debate raged about the root causes of autism.

But the BMJ investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that five of the 12 children in Wakefield’s paper had symptoms before the MMR shots. one girl turned out to have a heart disorder. her symptoms disappeared after it was treated. the report claims three of the children turned out to not have autism at all and only one was eventually diagnosed with the regressive form of it described in Wakefield’s paper.

The report also alleges that Wakefield falsified timeliness and when investigators showed Wakefield’s study to parents of the children involved, some claimed he misrepresented their stories.

Perhaps most damagingly, the report claims Wakefield developed his autism vaccine theory only after he was hired by lawyers planning to sue vaccine makers. BMJ claims he was paid more than half-a-million dollars for his efforts.

On Wednesday, Wakefield fired back. Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he claimed the report’s author was “a hit man who has been brought in to take me down” by big pharma.

According to the network, Deer signed a disclosure form claiming he has no financial interest in the matter, but freely admits he was paid by BMJ for his reporting.

“That’s what journalists do,” he told CNN.

Last year, the Lancet formally retracted Wakefield’s study. ten of the 13 authors had earlier done the same.  Wakefield has since been stripped of his medical license in Britain.

But for Wakefield’s supports, the battle drags on.

“I cannot imagine for a second that Dr. Wakefield would have any reason to falsify data,” Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association, told CNN. “He’s a man of integrity and honesty and truly wants to find the answers for millions of children who have been affected by autism.”

IMPORTANT HEALTH INFORMATION FOR BABY BOOMERS

many baby boomers suffer from a breathing disorder called COPD or “chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder”. According to recent research the number of baby boomers suffering from the condition is expected to increase as the boomers age.

A new large international study conclude that the incidences of COPD is likely to be a doubling of the previous estimates and that the majority of sufferers are undiagnosed and untreated

Smoking is the number one cause of COPD and it is imperative for people with breathing problems such as shortness of breath and wheezing to be tested for COPD, particularly if they have a history of smoking and are over 40.

Statements from medical professionals indicate that many suffer COPD in silence. it creep up on people and many blame their symptoms on aging.

Numbers published earlier this year by the medical journal The Lancet found that about 11.5 per cent of men and 8.5 per cent of women suffer from COPD.

“The devastating impact of COPD must be taken seriously.”

COPD is a gradual destruction of the lungs by noxious fumes and it is irreversible.

While COPD is not curable, the symptoms can be treated, especially if the condition is detected early. Early detection of COPD can significantly improve outcomes and quality of life for patients

There are puffers and inhalers similar to those used by people with asthma that help with breathing. (However, the conditions are very different: Asthma is lung inflammation, often triggered by allergies.)

People with COPD can also undertake exercise programs and pulmonary rehabilitation programs. In the advanced stages, sufferers can also use supplemental oxygen in a portable tank.

Do you have COPD?

Here is a brief Lung Health Test designed to help people recognize the symptoms of COPD.

People who are over 40

and are current or former smokers should visit their doctor if

they answer “yes” to any of the following questions:

Do you cough regularly?

Do you cough up phlegm regularly?

Do even simple chores make you short of breath?

Do you wheeze when you exert yourself, or at night?

Do you get frequent colds that persist longer than those of other people you know?

The doctor will perform a spirometry test, which involves blowing into a tube to measure lung function.

If you are a candidate for COPD you should see your doctor as soon as possible.

Source: The Lung Association

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