In contrast to some recent research, a new study finds no evidence that men who use aspirin or ibuprofen are at any lower risk of an enlarged prostate.

The findings, reported in the British Journal of Urology International, conflict with an earlier study finding that benign prostatic hyperplasia — the medical term for an enlarged prostate — was less common in men who regularly used NSAIDs.

NSAIDs, or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, include common painkillers like aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen.

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), meanwhile, is thought to involve inflammation. So that raises the possibility that NSAIDs could help limit prostate enlargement, explained Siobhan Sutcliffe, the lead researcher on the new study.

That’s important because although it’s natural for a man’s prostate gland to enlarge with age, it can eventually lead to bothersome problems — like urine leakage or frequent trips to the bathroom at night.

In the U.S., men make about 4.5 million doctor visits each year due to BPH symptoms, according to the National Institutes of Health.

A 2006 study had hinted that NSAIDs could offer some protection. Researchers found that of nearly 2,500 men they followed for a dozen years, those who used an NSAID everyday were less likely to develop BPH.

But that type of study can only show there’s a correlation between NSAID use and BPH risk — and not that the painkillers actually prevent prostate enlargement.

So Sutcliffe’s team tried to confirm the connection in another study group: 4,771 men ages 55 to 74 who were part of a cancer-screening trial. At the start of that study, the men were asked about their use of aspirin and ibuprofen over the past year.

Over the next nine years, 31 percent were newly diagnosed with BPH. but there was no evidence that the risk was any lower for men who’d been regular NSAID users at the study’s start.

Still, it’s not the end of the story for NSAIDs and the risk of prostate enlargement, said Sutcliffe, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“This is really still in the early stages of investigation,” she told Reuters Health.

One limit with the current study, Sutcliffe said, is that it looked only at men’s NSAID use in the year before entering the trial. It’s possible that longer-term use has different effects.

And then there’s the 2006 study that did find a lower BPH risk among NSAID users. It’s not clear why the current study came to different conclusions, according to Sutcliffe.

One reason, she speculated, could be that men in the studies tended to have different reasons for using NSAIDs. but there was no information on why men were using the painkillers, so that’s just a guess.

If future studies do find that NSAID users have a lower BPH risk, then what? for one, Sutcliffe said, it would suggest that low-dose aspirin — which many older adults already take for their heart health — may have an added benefit.

It would also raise the possibility that NSAIDs could help treat BPH symptoms.

There are already ways to manage urinary symptoms. some men find enough relief from lifestyle changes, like cutting down on caffeine and alcohol, and limiting fluids before bedtime.

Other men with bothersome BPH symptoms take medication. Most commonly, that means blood pressure drugs called alpha 1-blockers, which help relax the muscles of the bladder and prostate, and make urination easier. Two other drugs, finasteride and dutasteride, are sometimes prescribed; they work by lowering levels of a hormone that contributes to prostate enlargement.

National & World Ag News Headlines Researchers Apply Large-Scale Sequencing on E. coli USAgNet – 12/02/2011 A team of academic and government scientists from the United States published data presenting the genomic blueprints and outbreak dynamics of the human pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 in previously unprecedented detail. Enterohemorrhagic E. coli of the serotype O157:H7 is the major cause of food borne disease, responsible for more than 76,000 cases alone in the U.S., with a potentially lethal outcome. This included the study of three widely publicized food-associated outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 infections in 2006 that captured the attention of the U.S. Congress as well as the public health, forensic and lay communities, such as the severe 2006 multistate outbreak from ingested spinach that swept through 26 states.This information allowed the team to develop a high-resolution phylogenomic framework and follow the dynamics of pathogenome evolution at a high level of phylogenetic accuracy and resolution. Published in the prestigious international journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research using phylogenetic comparison of more than 30 E. coli O157:H7 isolates from different outbreak related sources to investigate outbreak-specific genome characteristics of this food borne pathogen.Funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, contributed in part to this milestone analysis to help scientists and the medical community better trace and prepare for future outbreaks.The team included Drs. mark Eppinger and Jacques Ravel from the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Eppinger, Research Associate and Dr. Ravel, Associate Director, Genomics at IGS, are experts in microbial genomics and forensics. they sequenced and analyzed several bacterial E. coli O157:H7 genomes that allowed detailed insights into the outbreak during the time course of an outbreak. Just as DNA is revolutionizing criminal investigations, it can be used to understand dynamics during an outbreak through the use of evolutionary theory and genomics analysis.The rapid emergence of Escherichia coli O157:H7 from an unknown strain in 1982 to the dominant hemorrhagic E. coli serotype in the United States and the cause of widespread outbreaks of human foodborne illness highlights a need to critically evaluate the extent to which genomic plasticity of this important enteric pathogen contributes to its diseases severity. Infected patients present with a range of gastrointestinal morbidities such as severe abdominal cramping and bloody diarrhea. An estimated 15-20% of people infected with E. coli O157:H7 present with indications severe enough to require hospitalization. In such cases, symptoms may progress to hemolytic uremic syndrome renal failure (HUS), hemorrhagic colitis (HC) and central nervous system (CNS) failure with potentially lethal outcomes. yet, little is known about the genomic diversity that exists among extant E. coli O157:H7 populations or how various genotypes of this pathogen relate to development and severity of human disease.The work showed that outbreak-specific clades could be identified by unique mutations they have accumulated in their genomes, even among strains derived from the same outbreak. these genomic architecture signatures will be useful for understanding future disease events involving E. coli O157:H7, as this type of DNA fingerprinting can be used to characterize outbreaks derived strains , and ultimately for linking with high accuracy human E. coli O157:H7 infection to its source. While the current molecular assays used in public health microbiology laboratories may be adequate for routine surveillance and identification of E. coli O157:H7, but they often lack the discriminatory power needed to resolve its genetically homogenous population structure.Dr. Eppinger, the lead author on the project, said: ?The sequencing of additional E. coli O157:H7 bacteria was crucial in identifying subtle, yet important sequence and structural differences in this genetically very homogenous lineage to not only discriminate among simultaneously occurring outbreaks caused by different bacterial genotypes but also within outbreaks with a previously unprecedented level of resolution. Our data clearly suggest studying microbial outbreak populations rather than relying on single archetypal reference outbreak strain.?E. coli O157:H7 continues to be a significant public health threat and these data should prove useful for the development of a refined phylogenomic framework for forensic, diagnostic and epidemiological studies in order to better prepare for future outbreaks and better risk assessment in response to novel and emerging E. coli O157:H7 resistance and virulence phenotypes and ultimately to prevent or control future infectious disease outbreaks.

Send this article to a friend

Other National Headlines

Bloating. Abdominal pain. Constipation. back pain. Weight changes.

These are all issues women can experience on a monthly basis, but sometimes it’s not something so benign.

The same symptoms parallel those of ovarian cancer.

The survival rate for women with ovarian cancer depends greatly on the stage at which it is caught and the age of the patient. But because its symptoms are often overlooked and the disease is relatively rare – fewer than 2 percent of women will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime, according to the National Institutes of Health – the disease can go undiagnosed.

In fact, there is no screening for ovarian cancer.

So whatever the reasons may be, the disease often goes under the radar of patients and doctors.

But three women who have been greatly impacted by ovarian cancer are trying to change that – through social media – while coping with their own experiences.

Help keep a Sister Alive

Maggie Heim, now 58, had gone to her doctor complaining of extreme fatigue, bloating and constipation.

The Hermosa Beach resident was told she had a vitamin D deficiency and led a stressful life, so she might consider seeing a therapist – and maybe a gynecologist. there, she was told she was healthy. that was July 2009.

Four months later, unsatisfied with her lack of diagnosis, Heim went to a gastroenterology specialist who ordered a CT scan.

“Next thing I knew I was scrambling to get into surgery to get the thing out,” Heim said of her tumor.

She was diagnosed with stage 3A ovarian cancer.

Though Heim had long been an avid blogger about various issues, she soon began documenting her most personal journey on her cancer-dedicated blog, Help keep a Sister Alive.

“There’s a lot going on in the cancer field in my life and I really need to write about it,” Heim said. “That’s my way of coping with the big questions in many ways and sometimes the small questions, like it’s OK to feel vain about losing your hair.”

Heim had both ovaries removed and her cancer was in remission for a year, but this past July the cancer returned in her lymph nodes.

Her doctor said her best chance of survival was to use the drugs Doxil and carboplatin. But the company that manufactures Doxil, a division of Johnson & Johnson, has an extremely limited supply of the drug and is recommending it be prescribed only to patients already being treated with it.

So, Heim waits. And has for months.

She currently is only being treated with carboplatin but could become platin-resistant – a condition in which the body does not respond to any platin (platinum-containing) drugs, including carboplatin and cisplatin – at any moment.

“I’m being treated at Cedars-Sinai, they have no Doxil. They couldn’t get it but my oncologist said some of the smaller hospitals are getting it,” Heim said. “It just depends on the vendors you’re working with, but such a small supply was released in late August, it’s like gold. They are making decisions about who’s going to get a drug that is, for many people, life-saving.”

The cause of the drug shortage isn’t publicly known, though Heim believes it’s because Doxil is not a profitable drug for the manufacturing company.

Doxil is not the only cancer drug that has a shortage. According to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, more than 180 drugs are in short supply.

“I think I decided to make it a completely dedicated cancer blog because of the drug shortage issue and because of the advocacy issues,” Heim said.

“I think there’s so much going on and my big issue is that right now people not ignore ovarian cancer and people really get behind this problem with the drug shortages.”

Ovations for the Cure

Patty Franchi Flaherty founded Ovations for the Cure after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1999.

She noticed the state of the fight against the disease was stagnant – that the same research and the same treatments were available as when her mother was diagnosed with the disease 20 years earlier.

Flaherty’s mother lost her battle in 1974, and Flaherty lost her own battle in 2008.

To date, the group she created has funded $1.4 million of research, including $60,000 to the City of Hope in Duarte, where Flaherty was treated.

Aside from fighting ovarian cancer through funding research, raising awareness and creating patient programs, the group also provides an online space where patients and caretakers can come together.

“It only affects one in every 70 women, so it doesn’t have the same statistics as breast cancer, and with the survival rate still 20 percent over the last 20 years, the survival rate isn’t as high as breast cancer,” said Lisa Madden, director of operations for Ovations for the Cure.

“So there’s not as many survivors, so there’s not as much of a network. The blog enables survivors to communicate to each other and it gives them a base, a foundation, for other patients to talk. Strength in numbers.”

The group’s blog is titled The Whisper Network because women often keep their diagnosis a secret, Madden said.

She compares ovarian cancer to where breast cancer was 20 years ago.

“People used to not talk about their breasts. It was taboo. It wasn’t socially accepted,” Madden said.

“Ovarian cancer has been going through the same phenomenon with now being comfortable to talk about your ovaries, your uterus, when it’s been taboo. so it was always the whisper disease because people wouldn’t like to talk about it. You’re talking about a woman’s femininity.”

But now women are talking. And they are looking for hope and other words of encouragement.

So Madden has some to offer.

“We are going to make a difference,” she said. “Through their support and their increase of talking about it amongst everyone they know, we will make a difference in this disease.”

Shawn’s F.a.C.T.S

Cancer doesn’t happen to 22-year-olds. or that’s what Shawn Berrina of Northridge thought until she was lying in a hospital bed after having a 3-pound tumor and her right ovary removed.

She was supposed to be studying for finals at USC, but instead she was told she had stage 1 ovarian cancer.

When Berrina began having symptoms, she, like many others, chalked them up to something else. she thought her back and hip pain was from her mattress. The sharp abdominal pains were probably due to her upcoming menstrual cycle. And her extended belly was likely from eating too much holiday food.

After about three weeks of symptoms, her mother took her to the hospital where the tumor – which was the size of a volleyball – immediately appeared on a CT scan.

Following her diagnosis, Berrina decided to start a blog for her family and friends so she wouldn’t have to update each person individually. But soon, Shawn’s F.a.C.T.S became something much more.

“I just thought, I might as well put it all out there. What if this happens to somebody else? or what if somebody else is looking for a situation like that?” the now 23-year-old said.

“When I got diagnosed I went to the Internet to look for cases like mine or people like me who were affected by it and how they were handling it and I really didn’t find a whole lot. so I was like, let me just do it for that. also to raise awareness and let people know about it.”

Her blog’s acronym stands for Fight Against Cancer Testimonials. To raise awareness off the Internet, she sells teal bracelets that say “Face the F.a.C.T.” – which stands for “Face the Fight Against Cancer together.”

Berrina began documenting her entire journey, including written blog entries and videos. she asked for people’s advice on whether she should shave her hair or let it fall out on it’s own, and once she made the decision to shave, she filmed the experience.

It’s all a part of the roller coaster of cancer, the physical aspects as well as the emotional and psychological, Berrina said.

And what she wants people to realize from reading her blog is that cancer happens to everyone; it doesn’t discriminate against age, race or color.

Though she is now in remission, Berrina, with the thought of getting a recurrence in the back of her mind, will continue to blog in support of ovarian cancer patients and survivors because, as she says in one of her posts, “Every scar I have makes me who I am.”

Stephanie Cary 310-540-5511, Ext. 6630

Find out more

Read more about Shawn Berrina’s journey with ovarian cancer at Shawns F.a.C.T.S

Learn more about Patty Franchi Flaherty’s legacy at Ovations for the Cure at Ovations for the Cure

Read more about Maggie Heim’s fight against ovarian cancer and the drug shortages on Help keep a Sister Alive Blog

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who took medication to treat herpes infections during pregnancy weren't more likely to have a baby with birth defects than women who didn't take these drugs in a study of over 800,000 babies born in Denmark.

While the finding doesn't rule out a link between these antivirals and specific types of birth defects, it does show that the drugs aren't causing a lot of birth defects, said Dr. James Mills.

Some medications, including some seizure and acne drugs, have been linked to higher rates of birth defects – a famous side effect of the drug thalidomide that was used in the 1960s to combat morning sickness in pregnant women. But not much was known about the effects of antiviral drugs used to treat herpes.

"As with many drugs used during pregnancy there wasn't much evidence to show they were safe," Mills, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, told Reuters Health. Even though there wasn't a major concern about these drugs, medication use during pregnancy is "always an issue," he said. Mills is co-author of an editorial accompanying the Danish study, which is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Herpes viruses hide out in nerve cells in the body where they periodically cause outbreaks of painful conditions, such as cold sores, genital herpes and, later in life, skin blisters called shingles. the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 1 in 6 Americans between 14 and 49 years old is infected with genital herpes, and one study showed that 1 in 4 people will get shingles at some point.

These infections are typically treated with antiviral drugs such as acyclovir (Zovirax). While herpes can't be cured by medication, antivirals can help control the symptoms and outbreaks and relieve pain.

Dr. Bjorn Pasternak and Dr. Anders Hviid, epidemiologists at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark, looked at the records of all babies born in Denmark between 1996 and 2008 – almost 840,000 births. They also examined data from nationwide registries that keep track of all diagnoses of major birth defects and all prescriptions filled at pharmacies in Denmark.

Comparing these registries, the investigators were able to figure out when in the course of their pregnancies women had filled prescriptions for (and presumably taken) herpes medication, and which women gave birth to babies with birth defects.

Pasternak and Hviid focused on medication that pregnant women took during their first trimester, the window of time when organs are developing and most susceptible to drug effects.

During the 12-year study, about 1,800 babies were born to mothers who filled prescriptions for acyclovir, valacyclovir (Valtrex), and famciclovir (Famvir) during their first trimester. forty of those babies had birth defects – 2.2 percent of them. in comparison, close to 20,000 of the 836,000 babies whose mothers didn't take those drugs during the first trimester had birth defects, or 2.4 percent.

Women who filled prescriptions for antivirals during their second and third trimesters also weren't any more likely to give birth to a baby with birth defects than women who didn't fill these prescriptions.

Despite the size of the study, the authors did not have enough data to determine whether there might be a link between any of these drugs and specific birth defects.

Pasternak said more research is needed to rule out a link between herpes medications and specific birth defects, and to answer the question of whether these drugs affect pregnancy complications such as spontaneous abortion.

But, he told Reuters Health, "from a public health perspective it is important to know that women who take antivirals early in pregnancy are not placing themselves at risk of having a child with a birth defect" on the whole.

While the study can't rule out whether an individual taking a herpes antiviral drug might put her baby at risk for certain kinds of defects, "this is the best we can do at the moment," Pasternak said.

The study was funded by the Danish Medical Research Council and the Lundbeck Foundation, which invests in pharmaceutical companies.

SOURCE: link.reuters.com/xyg86n JAMA/Journal of the American Medical Association, August 25, 2010.