GOOD NEWS

Cancer detection

Patients with locally advanced prostate cancer can spot the spread of cancer cells, that are not detected at an initial examination, by immunochemical testing of the lymph node, a study says. Moreover, the presence of hidden prostate cancer cells that have spread (metastasised) to the lymph nodes increases the risk of recurrence and death, investigators report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.Therefore, when hidden lymph node metastases are detected in patients with locally advanced prostate cancer, “our results suggest they should be treated as high-risk patients”, advise Dr Richard J. Cote from the University of Southern California.

HPV testing

Testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) may be a useful first step for cervical cancer screening in women younger than 35 years, preliminary findings indicate. Testing for HPV is better than standard cell testing at picking up pre-cancerous changes, but it is also more likely to yield false results. This is particularly true among young women, where there is a higher rate of infection, Dr Guglielmo Ronco from the Centre for Cancer Prevention in Turin, Italy told Reuters. The follow-up of this study should provide information to help guide “the decision to switch to HPV testing as a routine method for cervical screening”.

BAD NEWS

Depression damage

Depression triples the likelihood of a nursing home resident with dementia to be physically aggressive, a new study shows. Delusions, hallucinations and constipation also appears to be risk factors for physical aggression in these patients, says Dr Ralph Leonard of CALM-MD, LLC, in St Louis Park, Minnesota and colleagues from Yale Medical School. About seven per cent of the 1.3 million people living in US nursing homes become physically aggressive each week, which can be traumatic for the residents and the staff as well.

Job stress toll

Workers who are under constant stress may start to reflect it in their blood pressure readings, say researchers. In a study that followed more than 6,719 white-collar workers for 7.5 years, at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, indicates that those with high job demands, and low levels of social support in the office, tended to have higher blood pressure. As a group, men with high job strain had higher blood pressure than those with less stressful work.