(MCT) Out of the mishmash of hormone studies researchers have been serving up lately… (MCT) Out of the mishmash of hormone studies researchers have been serving up lately comes some good news: Birth control pills do not cause cancer.

According to a 36-year survey of some 46,000 British women, use of oral contraceptives may actually reduce a woman’s risk of developing cancer unless she takes them for more than eight years.

The findings should be comforting to the hundreds of millions of women who have taken the Pill, which was developed in the 1960s and is considered the most effective method of preventing pregnancy.

“Many women, especially those who used the first generation of oral contraceptives, which contained higher doses of hormones, are likely to be reassured by our results,” the study concluded. “The cancer benefits of oral contraception outweigh the risks.”

Conducted by a research team from the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, the study appeared in the Sept. 11 issue of the British Medical Journal.

Women who took the Pill at any time during the study had a 12 percent lower risk of developing cancer of any kind compared with what the study called “never-users.”

Pill takers had a slightly higher risk of developing lung, cervical and brain cancer, but those increases were not statistically significant, meaning they could have occurred by chance.

U.S. experts said the British study’s results, though not surprising, were reassuring. “The findings are not way out of line with what we already knew,” Dr. Russell Harris, of the University of North Carolina, said.

The National Cancer Institute’s panel of experts, of which Harris is a member, has concluded the effect of birth control pills on breast cancer risk is minimal, “but there might be a small effect over a long time,” he said.

Judy Peres, Chicago Tribune

(MCT) Researchers call it the “unifying theory” behind the major killers of our times – cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes – as well as scores of other diseases.

It’s inflammation, which most people know by the red, painful swelling that follows an injury, bug bite or other surface wound. But it also exists in tissue far below the skin, and scientists are now convinced this below-the-eye inflammation is the culprit that worsens many chronic diseases.

And while inflammation is the immune system’s response for beating back invaders in the body, inflammation gone awry can lead to heart attacks and strokes, aid cancers in turning deadly, cause Alzheimer’s disease by destroying brain cells and usher in diabetes.

Out-of-kilter inflammation is also linked to clinical depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, osteoarthritis, liver disease and hypertension, among others disorders.

“Retrospectively, it’s what we should have been looking it,” Lisa Coussens, a cancer biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said. “It’s a major area of research.”

Coussens and several other medical experts spoke last week at a conference sponsored by the University of California, San Francisco that gave its audience a snapshot of research to date on the connections between inflammation and chronic diseases.

Some of the best evidence to date of inflammation’s crucial role in exacerbating chronic diseases comes from studies on cancer rates in patients who were counseled to lower their risk of heart attack by regularly taking anti-inflammatory medicines like aspirin. That population has a significantly lower rate of cancer, compared to a similar population not taking anti-inflammatory medicines, Coussens pointed out.

Coussens emphasized, however, that long-term use of aspirin and other anti-inflammatory drugs may cause other severe health complications or dangerous drug interactions, and a physician should be consulted before taking any medicine on a regular basis.

Suzanne Bohan, San Mateo County Times

(MCT) It wasn’t a definitive blow, but it sure sent shock waves through the AIDS world when Merck ‘ Co. Inc., decided late last month to pull its HIV vaccine trial.

Merck had assembled the latest thinking on a 20-year quest to attack the elusive virus. Its researchers had spent more than a decade devising the best ways to take down a supremely canny organism.

And then nearly three years into an international trial, the company, which created the vaccine in Montgomery County, Pa., pulled the plug because the vaccine did not seem to be working. More people among the vaccinated group were getting the virus than those receiving a placebo.

Mark B. Feinberg, Merck’s vice president for Medical Affairs for Vaccines ‘ Infectious Diseases, estimated that roughly 90 percent of vaccine studies were using major elements of Merck’s approach.

So the pullback created a collective gasp. Was HIV-vaccine research careening down the wrong path?

“I must admit I was shocked when I saw the outcome. It was the most promising vaccine we had,” said Hildegund C.J. Ertl, an immunologist at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia who is preparing to test another HIV vaccine.

It is too early to know what Merck’s study means. The firm is still collecting data and promises to share its results.

“To paraphrase some of my colleagues, the trial shows a failure of a specific product but not a failure of the concept,” Gary J. Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institutes of Health, who is also involved in another HIV vaccine trial, said.

“It would be truly remarkable” to develop a vaccine in less than 10 years, Nabel added.

Karl Stark, The Philadelphia Inquirer

(MCT) Reported deaths in natural disasters worldwide are down tenfold since the ’60s, even though the number of natural disasters has sharply increased, according to Princeton University geoscientists.

The reason is better responses to floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other environmental catastrophes, according to a paper in the October issue of Geotimes, which is published by the American Geological Institute.

What was the key to the better responses? Perhaps how democratic the afflicted country was and how rich, according to principal author Gregory E. van der Vink. He and co-researchers found, to their surprise, that a country’s level of democracy and wealth proved better predictors of death tolls in natural disasters than how catastrophic the event was or the density of population at its epicenter.

“When we look at vulnerability to disasters,” van der Vink said, “we’re going to have to go beyond probability, magnitude and population density, and factor in the form of government and a country’s capacity to respond.”

He theorizes that, generally speaking, the more accountable a government is to its people, the better the response to disasters.

The study wasn’t peer reviewed, van der Vink noted, so its findings, while based on authoritative figures, will face further review and research.

According to David Applegate, the senior adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards at the U.S. Geological Survey, the paper “makes a strong case” that a country’s resilience in disaster is “directly related to its participatory governance.” Applegate wasn’t involved with the study.

Frank Greve, McClatchy Newspapers