Weight loss and malnutrition are serious threats to patients battling cancer, who can find that their tumors or treatment sap their appetite, cause nausea and other side effects and block absorption the nutrients they do force down. Here are some tips from cancer specialists and dietitians to help:

• Try to eat five or six small meals throughout the day rather than three large ones.
• Cancer patients tend to need more protein than healthy people. Peanut butter crackers, yogurt and fruit, a hard-boiled egg and piece of toast all are good mini-meals.
• Drink between meals, not with them, to avoid filling up on liquid.
• Don’t try your comfort food if you’re vomiting. It may create an aversion.
• Foods high in fat or fiber make nausea last longer.
• White, bland foods tend to help with nausea, such as Cream of Wheat, mashed potatoes, cottage cheese.
• Odors often worsen nausea, and foods served at room temperature rather than warm tend to have milder odors.
• Fresh ginger about 30 minutes before eating also can take the edge off nausea, but not ginger flavoring common in many sodas. A study published last week found ginger capsules work, too.
• Certain cancer medications, particularly painkillers, cause constipation, so keep up the fiber whenever the nausea passes.
• Take special care to stay hydrated when diarrhea strikes. Bananas, rice, applesauce and toast are good options.
• Many patients find foods that once tasted good now taste metallic. Citrus sometimes counters that; try sucking lemon drops, or drinking lemonade with meals, or using citrus-based marinades. Other patients may have a treatment-caused, and correctable, zinc deficiency.
• Tell your doctor about any over-the-counter dietary supplements. Some, such as St. John’s wort, can cause dangerous interactions with numerous anti cancer medications. Even high amounts of acidic vitamin C can worsen stomach problems.
• Staying hydrated and eating foods moistened with sauces and gravies helps dry mouth; doctors also can prescribe an artificial saliva.
• High-protein, high-calorie milkshakes and canned supplements like Ensure help sneak in extra nutrients and are especially helpful for patients with mouth sores. Make your own with whole milk and a few tablespoons of dry milk or protein powder.
• Ask for a consultation with a dietitian who specializes in cancer before you start losing weight. Specially designated cancer centers have dietitians on staff, and insurance may cover other consultations if the doctor orders it. The American Cancer Society’s toll-free hot line — 1-800-ACS-2345 connects patients in the Southeast to dietitians on call, and will find nutrition answers for people elsewhere. To find nearby dietitians, try http://www.eatright.org.
• Look for recipes targeted to cancer patients. The cancer society posts some at http://www.cancer.org, and plans a new cookbook in July.

Technorati Tags: anti cancer medications, Cancer, Cancer nutrition, Cancer nutrition tips, dietary supplements, dietitian, start losing weight

CHICAGO (Reuters) – An experimental asthma treatment that uses heat to reduce airway constriction provided some relief from severe asthma that is poorly controlled with medications, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

They said the Alair device, made by privately held Asthmatx Inc of Sunnyvale, California, cut the rates of extreme asthma attacks by 32 percent and reduced trips to the emergency room by 84 percent in patients with severe asthma.

Patients missed fewer days of work or school because of asthma symptoms and had more symptom-free days compared with people who received a placebo, according to results of the late-stage clinical trial, which was presented at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.

The Alair device uses a thin tube to gently heat the walls of the lung’s air passages, killing off some of the muscle tissue to reduce narrowing of the airways.

“In asthma, what happens is these patients develop enlarged smooth muscles surrounding their bronchial tubes. That contributes to asthma attacks. The idea is to decrease that,” Dr. Mario Castro of Washington University in St. Louis, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Castro and colleagues tested the device in 297 patients with severe asthma in six countries.

Researchers split the patients into two groups. Two-thirds got three treatments with the Alair device, and the rest received a placebo treatment, in which the heat was not applied.

The patients were followed closely for a year.

Overall, 79 percent of patients who got the experimental treatment improved.

Castro said the other group also improved, but the treatment group showed a statistically significant improvement.

“I think it’s a meaningful advance,” Castro said. “We have very limited options for these patients, who are very disabled.”

He said all of the patients were taking inhaled drugs combining a corticosteroid and a long-acting beta-agonist, such as in GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s best-selling drug Advair. But they were still not getting adequate relief.

The only other option for these patients is taking Xolair or omalizumab, Novartis AG’s drug for treating allergic asthma, but not everyone has asthma caused by allergies, Castro said.

Asthmatx Inc is seeking U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the device, Castro said, and a decision is expected this fall. The treatment has been approved in Europe.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

Technorati Tags: advair, allergic asthma, asthma symptoms, asthma treatment, asthma treatment device, experimental asthma treatment, severe asthma

GENEVA – As swine flu cases topped 6,600 worldwide, vaccine makers and other experts met Thursday at the World Health Organization to discuss the tough decisions that must be made quickly to fight the evolving virus.

Pharmaceutical companies are ready to begin making a swine flu vaccine — but as the virus may mutate, questions abound: How much should be produced? How will it be distributed? Who should get it?

The expert group’s recommendations will be passed to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, who is expected to issue advice to vaccine manufacturers and the World Health Assembly next week.

WHO’s flu chief said the meeting of industry representatives and independent experts sought to answer questions including when to recommend to manufacturers that they switch from a seasonal vaccine to one that works against the pandemic strain.

“No big decisions, no announcements,” Keiji Fukuda told reporters after the meeting. “These are enormously complicated questions, and they are not something that anyone can make in a single meeting.”

But some feel the main decision has already been made.

“It’s a foregone conclusion,” said David Fedson, a vaccines expert and former professor of medicine at the University of Virginia. “If we don’t invest in an H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine, then possibly we could have a reappearance of this virus in a mild, moderate, or catastrophic form and we would have absolutely nothing.”

Most flu vaccine companies can only make one vaccine at a time: seasonal flu vaccine or pandemic vaccine. Production takes months and it is impossible to switch halfway through if health officials make a mistake.

Vaccine makers can make limited amounts of both seasonal flu vaccine and pandemic vaccine — though not at the same time — but they cannot make massive quantities of both because that exceeds manufacturing capacity.

“What is really going to be wrestled with is that seasonal influenza itself has a significant impact on people,” said Fukuda. “This is an infection which is estimated to kill some hundreds of thousands of people each year around the world, so there is a real trade-off if you just say we’re going to stop making that vaccine.”

At the moment, health officials aren’t sure how deadly swine flu is, and whether they will need more seasonal flu vaccine or swine flu vaccine. And if the swine flu mutates, scientists aren’t sure how effective a vaccine made now from the current strain will remain.

WHO estimates that up to 2 billion doses of swine flu vaccine could be produced every year, though the first batches wouldn’t be available for four to six months.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently working on a “seed stock” to make the vaccine, which should be ready in the next couple of weeks. That will be distributed to manufacturers worldwide so they can start producing the vaccine.

Until vaccine manufacturers get the seed stock, they won’t know how many doses of vaccine they can make or how long that would take. Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s biggest vaccine producer, said Thursday it is waiting for the green light from WHO before it starts making swine flu vaccine.

WHO is also negotiating with vaccine producers like GlaxoSmithKline PLC to save some of their swine flu vaccine for poorer nations. Many rich nations like Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Switzerland and the United States signed deals with vaccine makers years ago to guarantee them pandemic vaccines as soon as they’re available.

As of Thursday, at least 33 countries reported more than 6,600 cases of swine flu worldwide, with 70 deaths. The figures are based on tallies provided by national governments and WHO. According to the global body’s pandemic alert level, the world is at phase 5 — out of a possible 6 — meaning that a global outbreak is “imminent.”

“It’s a no-brainer,” Fedson said of the decision to make swine flu vaccine. “All that’s being discussed now is the details of how to make sure you have enough seasonal flu vaccine and the logistics of making the switch to H1N1 vaccine production.”

While the vaccine question hangs in the air, WHO has given Indian pharmaceuticals giant Cipla the medical go-ahead to produce a generic version of the anti-viral medication Tamiflu. The drug, also known as oseltamivir, is one of two anti-virals shown to work against swine flu.

WHO said Cipla’s generic version was as effective as the original made by Swiss firm Roche Holding AG and would hopefully make the drug more accessible to poor countries.

North America has been the hardest-hit continent. The United States has reported 3,352 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu, including four deaths. Arizona officials reported Thursday the latest case, a woman in her late 40s who died last week from what appeared to be complications from the illness.

On Thursday, New York City closed three schools in response to a swine flu outbreak that has left an assistant principal in critical condition and sent hundreds of kids home with flu symptoms, in a flare-up of the virus that sent shock waves through the world last month.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that four students and the assistant principal have documented cases of swine flu at a Queens middle school.

Mexico has 2,656 cases and 64 deaths, while Canada has 389 cases with one death, according to WHO figures.

Mexico confirmed 374 more cases Thursday including four more deaths, but Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said the new cases show the virus is appearing less deadly. Mexico’s swine flu deaths now represent 2.4 percent of its confirmed cases, he said.

Spain and Britain have the most cases in Europe, at 100 and 78 respectively.

In Central America, Costa Rica has eight cases and one death and Panama has 29 cases.

___

Maria Cheng contributed from London.

Technorati Tags: pandemic vaccine, seasonal flu vaccine, seasonal influenza, swine flu, swine flu vaccine

THURSDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) — Preliminary research suggests people who suffered fatal cardiac arrest were more likely to have taken antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs than those who survived heart attacks.

But the findings haven’t been confirmed elsewhere, and it’s not clear whether the medications directly cause any problems. Those who take the drugs could have other medical issues that contribute to a higher death rate, the researchers noted.

“It is too early to give concrete advice” to patients who take the drugs, said study author Dr. Jussi Honkola, a researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland. “We need further studies about this possible relationship.”

In other words, there’s no indication that anyone needs to change the drugs that they take for conditions such as depression and anxiety.

At issue is sudden cardiac death — when someone dies suddenly and unexpectedly, often within minutes, after the heart stops functioning properly. Heart attacks can lead to cardiac arrest and then sudden cardiac death. But heart attacks are technically something else — the death of heart tissue because blood flow is disrupted.

A variety of conditions can cause sudden cardiac death, including the clogging of arteries caused by coronary heart disease.

And, “despite many years of intensive research we still don’t know how to identify people who are at risk for sudden cardiac death,” Honkola said.

In the new study, the Finnish researchers examined the medications taken by 321 victims of cardiac death compared with those taken by 609 patients who survived heart attacks.

The findings were to be released Thursday at the Heart Rhythm Society’s annual meeting, in Boston.

The study doesn’t reveal specifically which psychiatric drugs were examined, but it does say that those who died of cardiac death were more likely to have taken one of three types.

Almost 11 percent of those who suffered sudden cardiac death took antipsychotics, compared to 1.4 percent of those who survived heart attacks. The numbers for antidepressants were 7.4 percent and 3 percent, respectively, and 18.4 percent and 5 percent for benzodiazepines, which include drugs such as Xanax.

Those who survived heart attacks were more likely to take aspirin and the heart drugs known as beta blockers.

The findings “are interesting, even provocative, but much more work remains to be done in order to have a high degree of confidence in the results,” said Dr. Robert A. Harrington, director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C.

“For now, society should insist upon randomized clinical trials during and after the drug approval process that test therapies in patients who will likely take the drugs in ‘real life,’” Harrington said.

That means those who take part in tests of drugs represent those who ultimately take them when it comes to their medical conditions and the other drugs that they’re taking, he explained.

Technorati Tags: antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, cardiac death, clinical trials, heart drugs, medical, psychiatric drugs