A new cervical cancer smear test that could save the lives of hundreds of women each year has been announced after trials by American and British scientists. Present smear tests miss up to one third of all cervical cancer cases but it is claimed that the new smear test picks up almost all of the cancer cases.

The new smear test, known as the Cobas test is capable of detecting the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), which is known to trigger the abnormal cell growth. Another benefit of the new test is that patients may only need to be screened every five years instead of every three years as at present.

Results from the tests will be available the next day, will cost about £15 ($23) and could be available to doctors within 12 months.

The Cobas test has been developed by international drugs company Roche. After the smear test the sample is viewed by a “Cobas machine” for strains of HPV. Women with positive tests would be referred for further tests to see if tumors had yet developed, which could then be treated by drugs or surgery.

Trials were conducted in the US and UK on 47,000 women over the age of 30. The test picked up at least one in ten woman who had already been cleared of cervical cancer using present smear tests.

The head scientist of the trials, Dr Thomas Wright, from Columbia University in New York, said: ‘Up to a third of women diagnosed with cervical cancer have normal smear tests. We think this new test would detect cancers in the vast majority of those a women.’

Prof. Jack Cuzick, who runs the Centre for Epidemiology, Mathematics and Statistics at the Wolfson Institute in the UK, said: “The sensitivity of this test is much higher. There’s a realisation that the smear test is of inadequate quality. Currently 1,000 women die of cervical cancer a year in the UK and many of these deaths are just unnecessary”. 

Canadian researchers at the University of Toronto have announced that two glasses of tomato juice everyday strengthens bones and can ward off osteoporosis.

The ingredient in the tomato juice that is thought to be responsible is lycopene, the antioxidant that this already recognized for reducing the risk of prostrate cancer, breast cancer, atherosclerosis, and coronary artery disease.

Over 75 million people are afflicted by osteoporosis in Europe, USA and Japan alone, never mind the rest of the world. Osteoporosis is most common in women after menopause. In most industrialized countries 50% of women and 25% of men over 50 years of age will suffer an osteoporotic fracture.

Researchers at the University asked sixty volunteers, all post menopausal women aged between 50 and 60 to cut out completely all tomato products from their diets for one month. The result was a significant increase in blood levels of N-telopeptide, a chemical naturally released into the bloodstream when bone is being broken down.

After the month all women were given a daily dose of regular tomato juice containing 15 mg of lycopene, enriched version containing 35 mg, lycopene capsules or dummy capsules for four months.

At the end of the period there was a significant drop in levels of N-telopeptide in the women drinking either one of the juices or taking the capsules. however there was no change in the levels of N-telopeptide in the women taking the dummy capsules.

Regular supermarket tomato juice was just as good as the lycopene enriched juice used in the tests said one of the researchers.

Drinking two glasses a day of tomato juice containing 15 mg of lycopene would be sufficient to strengthen brittle bones and ward off osteoporosis.

A newly announced study has found that people who are overweight have a greater sense of smell for food than slimmer people. News of this research has just been published in the journal Chemical Senses.

Researchers say their early findings may go some way towards explaining why some people struggle to stay slim, following work by a team at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.

It has already been known for some time that part of the brain that processes input about odour is also connected to the feeding centres of the brain.

In the United Kingdom, 25% of adults are obese the prime reasons. However, scientists have been searching for the underlying causes fuelling the obesity epidemic.

For this reason, Dr Lorenzo Stafford and his research team set up a study to see if an extra sensitive sense of smell could be to blame for the extra weight. The team asked sixty four volunteers to take part in a series of tests and experiments that tested their smelling capabilities.

The resulting study discovered that people appear to be slightly better at smelling food odours after they have eaten rather than before eating, when they are hungry. As yet scientists are unable to explain why, but Dr Stafford suspects that it could be the body’s way of detecting and rejecting foods no longer needed in order to maintain the right energy balance for the body and stop a person eating too much.

The tean of researchers discovered that people who are overweight, those with a higher body mass index (BMI), have a more accute sense of smell for food compared to slim people, particularly after they have just eaten a meal.

Dr Stafford thinks this keener sense of smell might encourage the individual to carry on eating, even when they are already full.

He said: “It could be speculated that for those with an inclination to gain weight, their higher than normal sense of smell for food odours might actually play a more active role in food intake. We hope that our research will stimulate more work in this area with the potential to help those who struggle with their weight and those who treat people with excess weight problems.”

Millions of heart patients around the world could benefit from a recently introduced blood thinning drug to reduce their risk of stroke, experts say.

Sufferers of atrial fibrillation (AF), which is a fast and erratic heartbeat, can lessen their risk by up to 20% if they take rivaroxaban instead of the most commonly used treatment, warfarin.



The information comes from a study of 14,264 patients and was presented at the recent American Heart Association conference in Los Angeles.

Twenty percent of people over the age of 70 could well be diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat, which can possibly lead to blood clots and cause strokes.



Warfarin and rivaroxaban both work the same by thinning the blood which can then reduce the risk of clots forming. Those patients who are treated with warfarin are half as likely to have a stroke compared with those taking no treatment.

During the study, researchers randomized participants to receive either 20 milligrams of rivaroxaban per day or an adjusted, but equivalent dose of warfarin. The study was carried on from December 2006 to May 2010, and average treatment for participants lasted 19 months.


Patients being treated and receiving warfarin need to be closely monitored, in some cases once a week. Too high a dose of the drug can cause internal bleeding, which can prove fatal, and too small a dose increases the likely hood of stroke.

However levels of rivaroxaban do not need to be monitored as closely and the necessary dosage is not affected by certain foods or alcohol, as is the case with warfarin.

Already, rivaroxaban is administered by the UK’s National Health Service to people undergoing hip and knee replacement surgery, to reduce the risk of blood clots, during and after the surgery.

Professor Keith Fox, professor of cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, and co-chairman of the research team, said: “Our study showed that rivaroxaban is much easier to administer and patients taking it have fewer strokes and blood clots. We now have an effective alternative to warfarin for those patients with irregular heart beats and one that reduces complications and is easier to administer.”

The medical director at the British Heart Foundation, Professor Peter Weissberg said: “This important study adds rivaroxaban to the list of new drugs that seem to be at least as good as warfarin, the current standard therapy to prevent strokes in AF.”

He went on to say: “The rate at which these new drugs are introduced into routine clinical practice will be determined by the extent to which regulators believe their benefits justify their additional cost.”

The UK Department of Health has invited fast food companies including KFC and McDonald’s to help write the government’s policy on obesity, diet and alcohol related diseases.  processed food and drink manufacturers including Unilever, Kellogg’s, Mars, Pepsi Co. and Diegeo are among the businesses that having been invited by the health Sec. to contribute to five “responsibility deal” networks.

Already this is being criticized by health campaign quotes as an impossible alliance between public health and the business. They say it is like putting the tobacco industry in charge of smoke-free spaces.

Each of the networks will be headed by Minister and charged it to come up with policies in an overhaul of the UK government public health policy. Health  Sec. Andrew Lansley’s reforms are considered as the is for the governments policies on replacing state intervention is private and corporate action.

The networks will work with consumer and public health groups including Which?, Cancer research UK and the faculty of public health that they them selves are dominated by food and alcohol industry members. The networks have been asked to suggest ideas and measures to tackle the increasing obesity and  diet and alcohol related issues.

The UK’s leading supermarkets have already joined and also compass, the  the UK company criticized by TV chef Jamie Oliver for their turkey twizzlers  product. PepsiCo,  the owners of Walkers crisps, head a sub group on calories. The alcohol network is  chaired by the lobby group wine and spirits trade association. Another network focusing on behavior changes is she by the national heart forum.

Sir Ian Gilmore a leading of the specialist has agreed to become involved. However he has questioned whether it can be “a meaningful convergence between the interests of industry and public health since the priority of the drinks industry wants to make money for shareholders of public health demanded a cutting consumption”

His view is shared by food campaign group sustain whose head Jeanette Longfield told the Guardian newspaper, “we know this “let’s all get around the table approach” doesn’t work, because it’s been tried before, including by the last conservative government. This isn’t the society it is big business”.

Increasing the dose of  cholesterol lowering statin drugs could cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 15% compared to just taking the normal dose. This is revealed in a report by researchers and published in the Lancet medical journal.

Research teams from Australia and the UK conducted trials in which about 40000 patients received either the regular Staten treatment or the more intensive treatment. After one year it was found that the intensive treatment produced a “highly significant” reduction in the cases of heart attack, stroke and coronary bypass when compared to the regular dose treatment.

The two studies reported in the Lancet were carried out at universities in Sydney and Oxford and the results were  combined together to give a more reliable conclusion on the likely benefits and risks of increasing the dosage levels.

Not only was there a 15% reduction in in heart attacks, fatal and none fatal, but there was a 19% reduction in heart disease operations  and a 16% fall in the number of strokes. In the UK alone, almost 2,000,000 people are prescribed statin drugs.

Statins are the biggest selling prescription drugs in the world and work by reducing the so-called “bad” artery clogging LDL cholesterol, thereby reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes in patients with a high risk of an attack.

Medical experts have warned that a bigger dose of statin could potentially produce more cases of side effects. Even the authors  of the study have warned that raising the dosage of the most commonly used statin, simvastatin, available over-the-counter from pharmacies, might be counter productive.

A rare  side affect of simvastatin is muscle weakness, known as myopathy.   Taking the regular dose. 03% of patients developed myopathy, whereas when a higher dose was taken this jumped to .9%.

One of the researchers, Dr. Louise Bowman said “It may be safer to lower cholesterol using low doses of the more potent statins rather than increasing the dose of simvastatin.”

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said “We know that cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease – cutting it cuts your risk of a heart attack. However it’s been unclear whether going the extra mile to lower cholesterol even further, pays off.”

In  a big two cut illegal cannabis cultivation  Dutch households are to be given marijuana scented scratch cards to help people recognize what cannabis smells like. Around 30,000 homes will receive a card in a bid to find illegal urban cannabis plantations.

Arnie Loos, a spokesman for a government-appointed working group on cannabis cultivation, said “Citizens must be alerted to the dangers they face as a result of these plantations, and if they become aware of any suspect situations they must report them,”

The Netherlands decriminalized the use and possession of under 5 g of cannabis in 1976, and authorities turned a blind eye to people growing no more than five plants for their own use. However the trade in bulk cannabis production by criminals is worth  some to $2.8 billion a year.

The new green scratch cards measuring 8” x 4” [20 cm x 10 cm] reveals a scent, when scratched as well as a police number and the message “Assist in combating cannabis plantations”.  The card also lists other indicators  to help people recognize illegal plantations such as the sound of ventilators,  curtains that are kept closed and  suspicious looking electricity supply connections.

The hope is that once more people are familiar with the smell of cannabis they will recognize if any of their neighbors are producing the drug from an illegal plantation on neighbouring properties, in a bedroom, in an attic or in a garage for example.  It is quite easy for up to 200 plantss to be grown in an attic once the necessary equipment is in place.

Each year around four plantations are discovered each week in Rotterdam alone. Mr. Loos  said that if people do call the police number listed on the card then the scratch cards will be distributed nationally.

Researchers in Australia say that forcing food manufacturers to cut levels of salt in processed food could help reduce heart disease rates. High salt by its Arlington to high blood pressure, this intern increases risk of developing heart disease.

The theoretical study by a team from the University of Queensland says that mandatory salt limits could help reduce heart disease by up to 18%, which is far more than by using existing voluntary measures.

It is recommended by heart charities that the maximum salt intake per day should be 6 g for an adult, about a teaspoonful. Many countries around the world including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and France use a salt reduction program based on voluntary cuts by manufacturers and food labeling.

In Australia food manufacturers can use a health promotion logo on the packaging if they voluntarily cut salt content. The research team have calculated that voluntary use of the “Tick” logo as reduced heart disease rates by almost 1% in Australia.

The team also calculate that if the logo was mandatory health benefits could be up to twenty times greater. “If corporate responsibility fails, maybe there is an ethical justification for government to step in and legislate,” the research team, led by Linda Cobiac, write in the journal Heart.

It is calculated that about three-quarters of the salt eaten daily in the Western countries is already in the food when it is purchased. Very little of the salt we consume is added at the time of cooking,

Spokeswoman. Katharine Jenner of the Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) said the UK had pioneered a voluntary approach where all food sectors reduce the amount of salt they put in food.

She said “This cost-effective approach has been very successful and has already led to population average salt intakes falling by 10%,”