LONDON (Reuters) – Leukemia patients who have blood stem cell transplants survive just as long on average as those who undergo the more invasive procedure of having a bone marrow transplant, scientists said on Monday.

Health

But patients with acute forms the blood cancer appear to do better if they have bone marrow as opposed to blood stem cell transplants, the scientists said, suggesting that for some the benefit of the complex treatment is greater in the long run.

Bone marrow transplants involve the collection of stem cells from the bone marrow — a complicated procedure in which the patient must have a general anesthetic and surgery.

In peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT), stem cells are collected from blood, avoiding some of the complications of bone marrow collection.

Researchers from the Charite Medicine University in Berlin, Germany, looked at survival rates in 329 patients from 42 transplant centres in 13 European countries, Israel and Australia who had received PBSCT or bone marrow transplants.

They found that rates of survival after 10 years were similar, at 49.1 percent for blood stem cell recipients and 56.5 percent for bone marrow transplant recipients.

But they found “notable differences in survival in patients with acute leukemia’s,” they said in the study published in the Lancet Oncology medical journal.

After 10 years, patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) had a survival probability of 28.3 percent after bone marrow transplant compared with 13.0 percent after PBSCT. In patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) the probabilities were 62.3 percent for bone marrow and 47.1 percent for blood stem cell transplants.

“Different patient groups might still benefit from transplantation with bone marrow,” the researchers concluded.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Older adults can cut their cholesterol levels by revamping their dietary fat intake — even if they are already on cholesterol-lowering statins, a new study finds.

Health

Conventional wisdom holds that people should follow a healthy diet and get regular exercise to help control their cholesterol and triglycerides, another type of harmful blood fat. But there has actually been little research into how well older adults’ cholesterol and triglyceride levels respond to diet changes.

In the new study, researchers looked at the effects of dietary-fat changes among 900 Australian adults age 49 and older who were followed for 10 years. At the outset, 5 percent were taking a cholesterol-lowering medication, usually a statin; a decade later, one-quarter were using drugs to control their cholesterol.

Overall, the study found, people who managed to cut down on butter, and saturated fats in general, showed subsequent dips in their total cholesterol levels — regardless of whether they were on a statin.

At the same time, “good” HDL cholesterol levels inched upward when study participants started eating more fish and omega-3 fatty acids — healthy, unsaturated fats found mainly in oily fish like salmon and mackerel. People who boosted their omega-3 from food also showed declining triglyceride levels.

The findings imply that older adults can make a difference in their heart health by choosing good dietary fats, according to lead researcher Anette E. Buyken of the Research Institute of Child Nutrition in Dortmund, Germany.

Importantly, she told Reuters Health in an email, it also appears that the “benefits of reducing saturated fat and increasing omega-3 fat are the same for those on statins and those who are not.”

Individually, the cholesterol and triglyceride improvements attributed to each diet change were less than dramatic.

For example, for every 1 percent increase in omega-3 intake, HDL levels rose by about 2.5 mg/dL; HDL levels lower than 40 mg/dL are considered a risk factor for heart disease, while levels of 60 mg/dL or higher are thought to be optimal.

However, Buyken noted, the modest effects of individual diet changes can add up — if, for instance, a person cuts down on butter and swaps red meat, a source of saturated fat, for omega-3-rich fish.

Then there is the fact that healthful foods have benefits that go beyond a person’s cholesterol levels, Buyken pointed out. Omega-3 fats, for instance, have been linked to lower risks of age-related vision loss and dementia among older adults.

The American Heart Association recommends that adults limit their saturated fat intake to less than 7 percent of their daily calories and strive to eat two fish meals per week, preferably omega-3-rich fatty fish.

SOURCE: Journal of Nutrition, January 2010.

ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss biotechnology group Basilea said it would resume recruitment of patients into a late-stage trial of an antifungal treatment in the first half of 2010 after a U.S. safety panel recommended the study’s continuation.

Health

Topline data from the Phase III clinical trial of isavuconazole for treatment of life-threatening invasive Aspergillus mold infections should become available in 2011, Basilea Pharmaceutica AG said on Friday.

The Independent Data Safety Monitoring Board recommended the late-stage trial should continue after analysis showed isavuconazole was not inferior to the current standard of care, Pfizer’s voriconazole.

“Overall, the continuation of the Phase III program for isavuconazole is good news. Voriconazole has a good efficacy profile with more than 70 percent survival after 12 weeks,” said Vontobel analyst Andrew Weiss.

Shares in Basilea traded up 3.9 percent at 0909 GMT, outperforming a near flat DJ Stoxx European healthcare index.

Invasive fungal infections, mainly caused by species of Candida and Aspergillus fungi, cause high mortality rates, particularly for cancer or transplant patients with compromised immune systems, meaning patients have to be treated at the earliest possible stage with the most effective treatment.

“Regular assessments of safety parameters by the IDSMB have not revealed any major or unexpected safety concerns. With numerous differentiating features over current therapies, isavuconazole has the potential for a best-in-class antifungal,” said Basilea CEO Anthony Man.

Two more Phase III trials are investigating isavuconazole’s potential as a treatment for yeast infections and rare moulds.

Basilea is also seeking approval in the European Union and United States for ceftobiprole, a broad-spectrum antibiotic to fight hospital superbugs, with U.S. partner Johnson & Johnson

“(The) Key short-term trigger remains the EU panel decision on ceftobiprole due in the first quarter of 2010,” said analysts at Julius Baer in a note.

(Reporting by Jason Rhodes; Editing by David Holmes)

LONDON (Reuters) – Eating foods like celery and parsley which contain the naturally occurring flavanoid apigenin may help prevent leukemia, Dutch scientists said Thursday.

Science  |  Health

Maikel Peppelenbosch of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands said tests showed that apigenin — a common component of fruit and vegetables — was able to halt the development of two kinds of cells in leukemia and cut their survival chances.

The findings suggest apigenin could hold promise for preventing leukemia, Peppelenbosch said.

But he warned that his study had also found the compound has chemotherapy resistance properties, suggesting it might interfere with standard treatments for people already diagnosed with leukemia.

“Apigenin might be a useful preventative agent for leukemia, but it should not be taken at the same time as chemotherapy for established disease as it could interfere with the positive effects of treatment,” Peppelenbosch wrote in a study in the Cell Death and Disease scientific journal.

Flavanoids are compounds with antioxidant properties that protect cells against damage by oxygen molecules.

Previous studies have shown that apigenin, which is found in celery, parsley, red wine, tomato sauce and other plant-based foods, may also be beneficial in protecting against ovarian cancer.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland. Editing by Ralph Boulton)

LONDON (Reuters) – Moderation appears to be the best approach to controlling blood sugar in a form of diabetes that affects many adults, researchers said Wednesday, since lowering it too far can be as risky as letting it stay too high.

Health

The scientists also found that people suffering from type 2 diabetes who used insulin to get blood sugar levels down to near normal were 50 percent more likely to die during the study period as those who used a combination of oral drugs, such as metformin and sulphonylurea.

But in a large study published in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers from Cardiff University said this may have been because type 2 diabetics who need insulin tend to be older and sicker to start with.

The findings suggest keeping diabetics on oral drugs that increase the body’s sensitivity to insulin, combined with diet and exercise, may be the safest way of controlling blood sugar in type 2 diabetics, and doctors should strive to keep their patients on this treatment for as long as possible, they said.

“This study will raise a few eyebrows,” said Craig Currie, who led the study by a team from Cardiff’s medical school.

“Conventionally, doctors have always been told to drive down (blood sugar levels) as low as possible. It will come as a major surprise to many doctors that taking people down too far appears to be quite risky,” he said in a telephone interview.

Currie said the findings on insulin should not prompt urgent action, but patients should “arrange to see their doctor sometime over the next few weeks to discuss it with them.”

The study is the latest of several investigating whether using aggressive drug treatments to achieve near normal blood sugar levels can help prevent some of the most serious risks of diabetes, such as heart attacks and strokes.

A U.S. government-sponsored trial called ACCORD was stopped in February 2008 because there were 20 percent more deaths among diabetics with heart problems who got intensive treatment compared to those who were treated more conservatively.

Type 2 diabetes — often called adult-onset diabetes — is a common disease that interferes with the body’s ability to properly use sugar and insulin, a substance produced by the pancreas which normally lowers blood sugar after eating.

Diabetes is reaching epidemic levels, with an estimated 180 million people suffering from it around the world.

Overweight people have an increased risk of developing it, and cases are predicted to rise swiftly in coming decades as obesity rates also increase.

In this study, scientists analyzed links between death rates and blood sugar levels in almost 48,000 patients who were over 50 and being treated for type 2 diabetes. The data were taken from the UK General Practice Research Database from November 1986 to November 2008.

They found that both patients with the highest blood sugar levels and those with the lowest levels had increased risk of death — 79 percent and 52 percent respectively. The lowest risk of death was in those with blood sugar levels of 7.5 percent.

Death risk in people given insulin-based treatment was 49 percent higher than those give oral medicines, they said. They also pointed out a possible link between use of insulin and cancer progression that had been reported in a previous study.

(Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, editing by Michael Roddy)