More data on triclosan, the chemical that makes soap "antibacterial," from the Los Angeles Times health blog.  A research team from UC Davis found untoward effects of the chemical in mice.  Animal evidence is not usually enough to change regulations on a chemical.  But in this case, writer Eryn Brown reminds us, adding the chemical to soap doesn't improve soap's effectiveness.  Hand washing with regular soap and water is a perfectly good germ-killing method. 

Quick post on some of my recent Los Angeles Times articles:

In November 2011, the FDA withdrew its approval for using the drug Avastin in patients with metastatic breast cancer.  Now, two new studies suggest the drug might be helpful in early stage breast cancer.  I parse that confusing message here.

The FDA reneges on one action to reduce antibiotic use in food animals, then moves forward on another. But the agency asserts that both decisions were made in the interest of preserving antibiotics that are medically important for humans. Here's the story.

Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled a decision by FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg to make the so-called morning after pill available without a prescription.  Both parties cite science as basis for their opposing decisions on Plan B. I dig into that science here.

Common sense improvements proposed for school lunches devolve into food vs food fights. For instance, should 1/8 cup tomato paste be counted as a 1/2 cup serving because it's concentrated?

When there's just one cancer drug left to try and you're stuck on the waiting list -- my Los Angeles Times story on drug shortages.

Northe Olague has lived with ovarian cancer six-plus years, with the help of surgery and multiple chemotherapeutic regimens. Earlier this year, tests indicated that her cancer was growing again. Her doctor recommended Doxil, but by the time she was scheduled for treatment, she learned that the drug was unavailable.

Olague: "I was in disbelief."

Oncologist Michael Link, who leads the largest professional organization of cancer care providers: “It’s unfathomable.”

The drug’s maker, Johnson & Johnson, says the shortage was initially caused by production line problems.  The worldwide supply of the drug is made at a single Ohio plant.  Other chemotherapeutic drugs are also in short supply for various reasons, including supply chain economics and doctors' incentives to prescribe pricey brand-name drugs.

My Los Angeles Times article on antibiotic use in agriculture received some outside attention. 

Chris Lindsay of the Critical Wit podcast interviewed me about this and other recent work here. 

And I commented on the issue for This Week in Earth here. 

Antibiotic use in agriculture can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and those bacteria can infect humans.  A new study gave me chance to dig into the issue for the Los Angeles Times.

The study found that the meat you buy at the grocery store is as likely as not to be contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, according to researchers who sampled 26 grocery stores in five US cities.  Yep, that’s a 50-50 chance.  Worse, the staph is likely to be resistant to at least one antibiotic drug. 

Farmers who raise food animals can buy feed with antibiotics in them -- the same drugs (or close enough) that are used as medicines in people.  It’s perfectly legal and easy -- no veterinarian to sign off, just money to buy the food.  A whole host of big name organizations -- the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association to name a few -- condemn this practice and yet it continues.

Photo credit: jon smith photography via Flickr Creative Commons

Are artificial food dyes harmless fun? Or do they make kids bounce off the walls? I explored the science behind these contradictory claims for the Los Angeles Times after an FDA advisory panel decided against warning labels for artificially colored foods. Many studies find behavioral effects of food dyes in kids, but they are too small and too variable to act upon.

One thing is for sure -- no harm in avoiding them. As nutrition researcher Laura Stevens says, “One thing about the food dyes, I don’t know of any nutritious foods that they’re in.”

Photo credit: Mouzzy via Flickr Creative Commons

Screening for cancer makes so much sense. Find the cancer early -- before symptoms show and tumors have grown and cancer has spread -- and have better chance of survival. However, in practice this is not always so. I wrote about an 18-year study in nearly 80,000 women found no benefit of screening for ovarian cancer for the Los Angeles Times. The lack of benefit couldn't have been more clear: no reductions in deaths, no finding cancers at earlier stages.

For the Los Angeles Times, I wrote about a provocative study out of the Netherlands says that more than 60% of kids diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) might be helped by changes in their diet. The study was significant because it did not exclude kids with known allergies or allergy-related conditions, such as eczema and asthma. And yet, doctors in the US are not exactly jumping on the bandwagon and suggesting dietary overhauls for their patients. (Neither are they doing so in Holland, say the study's author Lidy Pelsser.) The docs I talked to all agreed that there may be dietary triggers in some kids and if parents asked, they would help them plan a dietary intervention. But none were going to suggest trying diet before drugs unless asked.

For February -- American Heart Month -- I reviewed the latest American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines for heart health for the Los Angeles Times. The AHA has boiled their advice down to seven things: some are straight numbers (blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose) and some are behaviors (not smoking, diet, and exercise) and one is a little bit of both (maintain a healthy weight).

Easy to understand, seemingly easy to do, and yet surveys say that only 1% of Americans actually hit all seven criteria.

A new study says less is more in breast cancer treatment. I wrote about this counterintuitive finding for the Los Angeles Times. In women with small tumors and signs of lymph node invasion, it turns out that surgically removing cancer-containing lymph nodes from under the arm makes no difference in a woman's survival. Breast cancer experts say this shift in strategy has been a long time coming.

Why wouldn't cutting out cancer help? It's because by the time cancer shows up in lymph nodes, it's proof of escape from the initial tumor site, and many routes are open to spreading cancer cells including the blood and the lymph. "You can't cure metastatic disease with a scalpel," says UCLA's John Glaspy.

In March, I wrote about prostate cancer for the Los Angeles Times, after radio talk show host Don Imus announced he had the disease. Two large studies found that screening for the cancer has had a negligible effect on how many men die from the disease. Rather, more men are getting tests and treatments that may expose them to more harm than the disease itself. One big problem is doctors' inability to determine which prostate cancers will morph into killers and which will remain harmless. One doctor I talked to put it this way, "Prostate cancer is like the cat family. You have house cats and you have tigers."

I wrote several stories for the spring 2009 issue of the Dean's Discovery Report, a biannual newsletter that features faculty researchers and new facilities and centers at the medical school campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.

I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times about last year’s outbreaks of two childhood diseases — Hib and measles — that are generally considered vanquished in the US. Scientists say that clusters of unvaccinated children in certain communities may give rise to more outbreaks. Fear of autism may be one reason why parents opt-out of vaccinating their children, but also today’s parents haven’t witnessed these diseases, and how severe they can be. Hib used to be the most common cause of bacterial meningitis and killed some 1,000 children each year.

Another LA Times story focused on a move by the FDA to put a black box warning on metoclopramide, a drug that stimulates stomach digestion. The reason? Metoclopramide can cause tardive dyskinesia, a neurological disorder that can be irreversible.

Moving on to February...

I reported on a new study ranking antidepressant drugs for the Los Angeles Times. Researchers compiled data from more than 100 clinical trials and concluded that two antidepressants -- Zoloft and Lexapro -- bested the rest. Another study found that antidepressants were largely equivalent in their therapeutic effect. More damning is a third study that used internal FDA documents to prove that published studies exaggerate the benefits of antidepressants by publishing only those trials with positive results. The take home message (and my favorite quote, thanks to UCLA psychiatrist Lon Schneider): "They may be comparing a relatively ineffective drug with another relatively ineffective drug."

In Nature (access limited to subscribers), I profiled ecologist Simon Lewis, who has studied tropical forests in Africa and thinks that they absorb and store more carbon dioxide than has ever been realized -- enough to affect atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas. In a recent study, Lewis used data collected by the forest service of a number of African countries to monitor the growth of forest trees over four decades.

I've fallen terribly behind on posting my stories. Here's my first effort at catching up.

I wrote about genetically engineered animals for the Los Angeles Times in January, soon after the US Food and Drug Administration decided how they should be regulated. Essentially, these are farm animals to be raised for food or to produce biologic drugs. The engineering of genes are a high-tech way of breeding animals with certain desirable traits, such as fast-growing salmon that reach market weight much faster or pigs that make heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids -- nutrients not usually found in pork. My Q&A article explains how genetic engineering is done, what products are under development, and what exactly the FDA will regulate -- and what it won't.

For Nature (subscription only), I profiled German scientist Marcel Kuypers, who discovered a new dynamic among gases, bacteria, and fishes in deep ocean waters. When oxygen levels drop -- as they do with algal blooms -- hydrogen sulphide levels can rise, poisoning fish and crustaceans in the vicinity. In Nambia, where the discovery was made, natives have long known that the smell of rotting eggs means that lobsters will congregate on the beach. Kuypers measured high sulphide in the absence of any surface smell or discoloration, and further analysis of his samples showed that unusual bacteria were feeding on the sulphide and thereby shielding it from animals that live in the surface waters, as well as from human detection. His finding suggests that sulphidic events are probably much more common and widespread than previously thought.

Can you avoid exposure to cold and flu germs? What preventative measures really help? Such a simple question prompts a very complicated answer from science -- mostly because it's not clear how the viruses travel from one person to the next. One paper I read while researching my two-part story for the Los Angeles Times was entitled: "Rhinovirus transmission: One if by air, two if by hand."

In another story for the Los Angeles Times, I wrote about some rare but serious side effects linked to the osteoporosis drug, Fosamax.

For Nature (subscription only), I profiled a scientist who studies AIDS vaccines in animal models. Dan Barouch was in the midst of a three-year long study in monkeys when an important human vaccine trial was called off because it wasn't working. Barouch's vaccine was of a similar type (based on an adenovirus), but his method was different enough that he stuck with his experiment -- to a positive end. While much remains to be learned about vaccinating against HIV, this work shows that the regimen is as important as the vaccine itself.

Eating fish is good for you and bad for you at the same time. Omega-3 fatty acids are brain food for fetuses, babies and children, and they promote cardiovascular health in adults. But fish also are contaminated with mercury, a toxin which interferes with the development of the nervous system in those same fetuses and babies. I wrote about the science behind a controversy brewing between two federal agencies that regulate fish for consumption -- the FDA and the EPA -- in a two-part article for the Los Angeles Times.

After carbon dioxide, methane is the second biggest contributor to the greenhouse gases involved in global warming. A new natural source of methane was identified by a monitoring station in Greenland during freeze-up in the fall of 2007. Results were published in Nature earlier this month and I interviewed the lead author, Torbin Christensen of Sweden, about the story behind the story (subscription only) for Nature's Authors Page.

I wrote about the movement towards broader testing for HIV for the Los Angeles Times. In the past, the test was only offered to people in high-risk groups, such as i.v. drug users and gay men. Now, everyone between the ages of 13 and 65 should be screened, says the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Age 13, you say? So did I, as the mom of a 12-year-old. Think of it as a necessary education in today's world. AIDS isn't going away soon, and as teens contemplate their sexuality and parents do their best to talk to their teens, a doctor saying, let's test for cholesterol and HIV, will drive that point home.

For the Author's Page at Nature (subscription only), I profiled Barry Trost, a medicinal chemist who found a shortcut to a complex chemical structure -- one that may pave the way for new anti-tumor drugs. Trost believes chemistry and development of synthetic tools is the key to improving the quality and the diversity of leads pursued by the pharmaceutical industry.

Is one city really "healthier" than another? After Burlington VT made news by being called the healthiest city in the US, I explored city rankings in general, and the basis for Burlington's honor specifically, for the LA Times . Another thing? All the cities in a top ten list are likely to be equivalent -- in other words, #10 (and maybe even #25) is not measurably different from #1.

Two weeks ago, I looked into the issue of drinking during pregnancy for the LA Times. No one disputes the damaging effects on the baby, called fetal alcohol syndrome, when a pregnant mom drinks a lot. What's not known is where the threshold lies between total abstinence and dangerous drunkenness. A recent study may help doctors reassure women who imbibe every once in a while, and have that reassurance be based on scientific evidence.

I explored a rather grim topic for the LA Times Health section -- whether suicide might increase as the economy falls. Two recent deaths in Los Angeles were seemingly triggered by large financial losses (in one case) and home foreclosure (in the other). In fact, people rarely, if ever, commit suicide over one bad event. Studies have shown that some 90% of suicides occur in people with mental disorders (which makes them preventable by treating mental illness).

I told a scientist's story on the Nature (subscription only). While studying a factor involved in immunity, Peter Creswell discovered one pathogen -- food-borne Listeria -- that turns the factor into a traitor, benefitting bug over host.

For Skidmore's alumni magazine, I found out why seven alums work in the same office at NYU Langone Medical Center. One of them, boss Andrew Rubin, has found Skidmore grads to be his best source of motivated, ambitious employees. By recruiting at Skidmore, Rubin has also found a way to give back to his alma mater.

My LA Times article this week considered the science behind the claim that energy drinks, packed with caffeine, sugar, and supposedly active botanicals, might lead to substance abuse. The so-called gateway hypothesis says that certain "soft" drugs such as marijuana or alcohol are stepping stones to using harder and more addictive drugs. Energy drinks, such as Red Bull, Wired, Boo-Koo, and Fixx, have been linked to drinking more booze and to abusing prescription stimulants such as Ritalin.

I also have a short article in Parenting magazine about finding math in everyday children's activities, everything from playing tea party and building block towers to singing the ABC’s and putting away toys. Most of us think of math as counting and addition tables -- what educators call "math facts" -- but that’s not all it is. Concepts such as sequencing, categorizing, and patterns lay the groundwork for much of the math that kids will encounter in school.