Adalia blog

U.S. hepatitis C cases down sharply since 1980s

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – New infections of the liver with hepatitis C virus are far less common these days in the U.S. compared to the early 1980s, a new government study finds.

According to the new study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the mid-1980s roughly 70 of every million Americans developed acute hepatitis C each year. Between 1994 and 2006, that rate was 90 percent lower: only 7 per million per year.

Over the years, however, injection drug users have accounted for a growing proportion of cases, and their risk of infection remains an important public health problem, the CDC researchers said in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

New infections with the hepatitis C virus usually aren't obvious. In most cases there are no symptoms at first; hepatitis C quietly damages the liver for years until it's finally diagnosed. But about two or three out of every 10 newly infected patients have what's called "acute hepatitis." They have fever and nausea, their skin gets yellow from jaundice because the liver isn't working properly, and in general they feel very sick.

Tracking rates of acute hepatitis C as they rise or fall gives researchers an idea of whether rates of silent new infections are rising or falling, too.

Hepatitis C is passed through contact with infected blood -- most often by sharing tainted needles -- although a small number of cases are sexually transmitted or passed from mother to baby during childbirth.

So far, efforts to curb hepatitis C transmission among drug users "have had success to some degree," said Dr. John Ward, director of the CDC's division of viral hepatitis, in an interview. Ward didn't work on the current new study, which was led by Dr. Ian T. Williams.

Dr. Williams and colleagues looked at rates of acute hepatitis C reported in six U.S. counties between 1982 and 2006.

In addition to finding that the rate of new infections had dropped, they made some discoveries about certain high-risk groups.

Among people receiving transfusions, for example, the risk of infection from hepatitis C virus in the blood has steadily declined over time, with only five possible cases identified between 1994 and 2006. Since 1992, all donated blood in the U.S. has been tested for hepatitis C, and the risk of receiving a donation carrying the virus is now estimated at one in 2 million, according to the CDC.

The number of cases reportedly related to injection drug use also declined over time. But drug abuse accounted for a growing proportion of acute hepatitis C infections, rising from about 32 percent of cases in the 1980s to at least 46 percent for the years 1994 through 2006.

In another third of cases, there was no clear risk factor, but most of those people reported past drug abuse.

Efforts to curb HIV transmission among injection drug users -- through education and needle-exchange programs, for example -- have been very effective, according to Ward.

But it's proven harder to battle hepatitis C, he explained, because it spreads more easily than HIV. Even a faint amount of blood on a shared needle, for example, might be enough to transmit hepatitis C.

The knowledge of what to do to prevent hepatitis C among injection drug users "is just not as deep as it is for HIV," Ward said.

The other ongoing public health concern with hepatitis C is the large number of Americans with chronic infection who may develop serious liver disease in the future. It's estimated that 3.2 million Americans are living with chronic hepatitis C, Ward said, and about half are unaware of it.

These people often develop inflammation of the liver, scarring of the liver tissue (cirrhosis) and, in some cases, liver cancer. In the U.S. and many other countries, hepatitis C is the most common reason why people need liver transplants.

The CDC recommends that people with risk factors for the infection -- including anyone with a history of injection drug use, and those who received a blood transfusion or organ transplant before 1992 -- be tested for hepatitis C.

Once an infection is discovered, doctors can do regular blood tests of liver function to catch early signs of liver disease. And there are drugs for hepatitis C that can clear the virus in some people.

Regarding the lower rates of new infections, Ward told Reuters Health, "That's great news."

"It shows that prevention can work," he added. "But our work is not done."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/hshlAV Archives of Internal Medicine, February 14, 2011.

First 3-D Mammography Test Cleared

FRIDAY, Feb. 11 (HealthDay News) -- The first three-dimensional mammography system has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The Selenia Dimensions System produces 3-D and 2-D X-ray images of the breast to help doctors in the early detection of breast cancer. With conventional 2-D mammography systems, about 10 percent of patients require additional testing to determine if abnormalities are cancerous, the FDA said in a news release.

Nearly 40 million mammograms are done each year in the United States, the agency said. The U.S. National Cancer Institute recommends the procedure every one to two years for women 40 and older.

In clinical testing of the newly approved system, radiologists showed a 7 percent improvement in the ability to distinguish cancerous and non-cancerous abnormalities, compared with conventional mammography systems, the FDA said.

Noting that the Selenia system exposed women to about double the amount of radiation of a conventional mammogram, the agency said fewer women had to be re-tested with the new system, sparing them exposure to additional radiation.

The Selenia system is produced by Holgoic Inc., based in Bedford, Mass.

More information

The FDA has more about this approval.

Payrolls barely grow, but jobless rate plummets

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Employment rose by a meager 36,000 jobs in January, far less than expected, as severe snow storms slammed large parts of the nation, but the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since April 2009.

Despite the conflicting signals in the Labor Department's report on Friday, economists agreed a job market recovery was proceeding apace if not gaining speed. Many investors also saw the data as a sign of strength. Government bonds sold off, while the dollar rallied against the yen and the euro.

The payrolls gain reported by U.S. employers was a quarter of the 145,000 gain economists had expected. But a separate household survey, which is used to determine the jobless rate, showed nearly 600,000 more people reported they were employed.

That surge pushed the unemployment rate to 9 percent from 9.4 percent in December. It has dropped 0.8 percentage point since November, the biggest two-month decline since 1958.

"The payroll details and the drop in unemployment signal that there is an underlying improvement in the labor market buried under the snow and ice," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Still, the decline in the jobless rate is unlikely to discourage the Federal Reserve from completing its $600 billion government bond-buying program to support the economy.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday sounded a more upbeat note on the economy, but said "it will be several years before the unemployment rate has returned to a more normal level."

Economists estimated that blizzards, which pounded the Northeast in January and buried cities in knee-deep snow, reduced payrolls by between 50,000 and 100,000.

Signs of underlying strength in the labor market were also yielded by revisions to November and December payrolls, which showed 40,000 more jobs created than previously estimated.

The U.S. Treasury debt sell-off pushed the spread between two-year yields and 10-year yields to an 11-month high. Stocks on Wall Street were little changed in mid-afternoon.

JOBS MIGHT BE UNDERSTATED

Though the Labor Department's payroll count continues to show moderate growth, independent surveys have suggested a pick-up in the pace of job creation, raising concerns that the government might be missing growth coming from new businesses.

Labor Department chief economist Betsey Stevenson told reporters the count was likely falling short, just as faulty estimates of how many companies were created or destroyed led to an understatement of job losses during the recession.

"It's a challenge for the establishment survey to be able to accurately record the number of businesses that are starting up and the number of businesses that are shutting their doors," Stevenson said.

"Now that we are in a recovery it's most likely, but we won't know for sure until next year, that we are missing a lot of businesses that are opening their doors and that we're over estimating the number of business that might be shutting their doors."

The labor market's recovery has lagged the broader economy, which grew at a 3.2 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. Getting the job market on a solid growth path is critical for President Barack Obama who faces re-election next year.

The head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Austan Goolsbee, told Reuters Insider the employment report showed "continued progress but it's not fast enough."

A Labor Department official said the household survey found that 886,000 Americans had been kept home by the heavy snowstorms, roughly double the number who are snow-bound in a typical January.

Still, the separate survey of establishments counts someone as employed even if they worked only one hour during the survey period.

Economists said the data, excluding the weather effect, was consistent with economic growth above 3 percent. They will be watching to see if the drop in the jobless rate is sustained.

If it is "it will be a further signal that underlying job growth is stronger than reported and conditions in labor markets are better than advertised by the establishment survey," said Michael Gapen, an economist a Barclays Capital in New York.

Last month's drop was encouraging because it reflected more people finding work. In recent months, a large portion of the decline in the jobless rate had reflected people giving up the search for work, meaning they were no longer counted among the ranks of the unemployed.

WEATHER HITS CONSTRUCTION

A broad measure of unemployment that includes workers who want a job but have stopped looking and those working part time for economic reasons dropped to its lowest level since April 2009. The number of long-term unemployed also fell.

Last month, the private services sector added only 32,000 jobs after increasing 146,000 in December. Payroll increases in goods-producing sectors rose 18,000, with manufacturing recording its largest gain since August 1998.

Severe weather hit construction payrolls, which dropped 32,000 last month. There were also large declines in the employment of couriers and messengers.

Government payrolls dropped for a third straight month, pulled down by state and local governments.

(Additional reporting by Emily Kaiser in Washington and Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

OReilly: My Obama interview will be the most watched interview in history

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly says his upcoming pre-Super Bowl interview with President Barack Obama is going to make history,The Huffington Post.

During an episode of “Happening Now” that aired Friday morning, O’Reilly said that his much-hyped interview, “will be the most watched interview in history. More people will see this interview than any other interview that’s ever been done in the history of mankind.”

TVNewser, which firston O’Reilly’s ambitious prediction, added that Barbara Walters holds the current interview record for her 1999 sit-down with Monica Lewinsky. The interview had 70 million viewers.

This will be O’Reilly’s first sit-down with Obama since he has assumed presidency. O’Reilly did interview then-candidate Obama during the 2008 presidential election.

The interview will air at 4:45 ET on Superbowl Sunday.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

Q&A with CNN Worldwide president

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – As president of CNN Worldwide, Jim Walton oversees the news operation's television, online and mobile businesses around the world.

A day after CNN's parent company Time Warner reported its latest earnings, Walton spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the cable network's 2010 financials, the early performance of Piers Morgan Tonight and the importance of U.S. primetime show.

The Hollywood Reporter: CNN had a record operating profit in 2009, and I hear you brought in another record profit for 2010. Is that true, and how big was it?

Jim Walton: We had a really good year in 2010. We had a fantastic year, and yes, we grew up profits over 2009. It was another earnings record, so we are really pleased...I am speaking about the worldwide business of CNN.

THR: How big a profit?

Walton: As you know, Time Warner doesn't break out our earnings, so I am not allowed to either. I can't.

THR: That is several record years in a row, isn't it?

Walton: That is seven years in a row of profit growth. That's pretty good. While the journalism industry is under siege, we continue to grow.

THR: What were the main drivers of your growth?

Walton: There are a lot of men and women here who work really hard. We have a pretty diverse business that is spread out around the world. And we got multiple revenue streams - television, the Web and mobile. It's not one television network. It's a big old honking news machine.

THR: The continued profit growth seems to be in some contrast with your continued U.S. primetime ratings challenges that are often in focus. Is that just not as important a factor?

Walton: I don't want to minimize it. The primetime programming on CNN U.S. is very, very important, and those ratings are important to us. But the ad revenue generated by our primetime programming on CNN U.S. is only about 10% of our total revenues. We have other parts of our business that are as big or bigger than that.

THR: What were some of the growth drivers for CNN last year?

Walton: Over the years, as various economies go up and down around the world, we are in so many different economies that we have a lot of touch points and are not weighed down by any one thing. We also have television, Web and mobile. Advertising is a huge component of our business domestically and internationally, but the distribution business is big for us. The Web business is big for us, mobile is growing, and we are in the syndication business as well.

THR: What do you predict for your business for this year?

Walton: I'm not allowed to give forward-leaning statements on financials. What I can tell you is that I am confident that we are going to have another great year. We have some new programs on CNN. We will be launching a new primetime program on HLN. We have some digital additions that we are going to make over the next four, five months. And the international business continues to evolve. So, I am very confident that we are going to have another strong year.

THR: You mentioned new programs. How do you feel about the performance of Piers Morgan so far?

Walton: It's spectacular. I'm really pleased. He is so clever, he is really smart, he is a big personality. And he works hard and does his homework. He's been stepping into the Egypt story now. We couldn't be happier.

THR: What about ratings? Have you noticed what kind of guests and topics do better for him or whether the show does better when he steps into breaking news versus has celebrity guests?

Walton: It's really too early to put a stamp on it. Piers and his producers and Ken Jautz who runs CNN U.S. will work together and look at what happens each day, review and always try to make it better each day. I can assure you that Piers will be every bit a part of the conversation, and the interview will be the basis of what that program is. But I think it is in its early days. He has tried all sorts of different types of shows in the two and a half weeks he has been on the air. Maybe that's what it will always be like.

THR: Parker Spitzer has been on the air longer, and you have tweaked that a bit. How happy are you with it now?

Walton: Much has been said and much has been written about the program. If you look at it just on its merits, it's one of the smartest programs on television - whether cable or broadcast. It fits very much within the brand of CNN and what it stands for. And if you look at the last 10 days or so, its performance has gotten a lot better and the past couple of nights it has beaten MSNBC. It's got some momentum right now.

THR: How do you explain that?

Walton: We had a couple of folks who weren't television professionals, and now they have got some time under their belts. They are performing, and the show just gets better and better.

THR: Anything you can say about the chatter that it will be just Spitzer one day?

Walton: I have got a little saying here at CNN internally that you can't burp without somebody somewhere writing. CNN commands a lot of attention, which is great. What you can count on is that we have Dr. Drew coming on HLN in primetime soon. That's the talent focus for our company right now.

THR: You have added personalities to primetime since Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes joked last year that some time CNN may be a bit boring. Do you feel you have made real progress?

Walton: It's in the eye of the beholder. What is funny to somebody is not funny to somebody else. What is exciting to one person might be boring to somebody else. But everybody who performs at CNN in an anchor role needs to be very, very smart and be able to relate to and be relevant to their audiences. We are not trying to be funny necessarily.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)