The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) also said that almost 21.4 million new cases of the disease will be diagnosed annually in 2030.

Launching a new database on global incidence of cancer in 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, the IARC said the burden of cancer was shifting from wealthier to poorer nations.

“Cancer is neither rare anywhere in the world, nor confined to high-resource countries,” it said in a statement.

In total, 7.6 million people died of cancer in 2008 and there were an estimated 12.7 new cases diagnosed.

Around 56 percent of new cancer cases worldwide in 2008 were in developing countries and these regions also accounted for 63 percent of all cancer deaths, the data showed.

IARC director Christopher Wild said the data represented the most accurate available assessment of the global burden of cancer and would help international health policy makers develop their responses.

The most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide in 2008 were lung cancer, with 1.61 million cases, breast cancer, with 1.38 million, and colorectal cancers, with 1.23 million. The most common causes of cancer death were lung (1.38 million), stomach (0.74 million) and liver cancers (0.69 million)

The projection for annual death rates of 13.2 million and annual diagnosis of 21.4 million were based on assumptions that underlying rates of cancer would remain the same over the next two decades, the IARC said.

“If you are a user of cocaine, you should be aware that some of the cocaine is not clean and can have other agents that can cause you to have a low white-cell count or skin tissue death,” said Dr. Ghinwa Dumyati, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an epidemiologist for the Monroe County Health Department in New York.

In a report in the June 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Dumyati and doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center discuss two cases involving women with a history of cocaine use who came to the hospital for help when they noticed purplish plaques on their cheeks, earlobes, legs, thighs and buttocks.

Their profiles were typical of toxicity with levamisole, the doctors reported. The medication is a veterinary anti-worming agent, approved for use in cattle, sheep and pigs. It was once used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and kidney problems in humans, Dumyati said. It’s no longer approved for use in people in the United States, she said, because of adverse side effects.

But it’s often used to cut cocaine, before distribution to the user, she said. “Almost 80 percent of the cocaine coming into this country has levamisole mixed in,” Dumyati said.

Exactly why is not known, she said. Some say it might enhance the effects of the drug, which include a euphoric mood or ”high” and a boost in energy. It also might be used to stretch the drug and increase profits.

“The person using cocaine would not know this [levamisole] is in it,” Dumyati said.

In the new report, the doctors concluded, based on the women’s symptoms, that cocaine laced with levamisole cannot only cause problems with white blood cells — a problem previously reported — but also death of the skin’s outer layer. They said that physicians should suspect cocaine abuse when they see patients with skin lesions caused by tissue death.

“The drug may induce an immunological reaction producing inflammation or vasculitis, an inflammation inside the small blood vessels,” Dumyati said in explaining the link to tissue death. “The result can be the death of the epidermis or outer layer of skin.”

But that’s not all that’s bad about levamisole. “It has other side effects,” she said. “It has effects on bone marrow function. There can be a drop in the white blood cell count.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in late 2009 on a cluster of cases of problems with white blood cell counts linked to cocaine use. Called agranulocytosis, the condition occurs when bone marrow fails to make enough white blood cells.

The report noted that levamisole was found in some of the people with agranulocytosis and cocaine exposure.

But the reports of tissue death associated with contaminated cocaine are newer, said Dr. Kurt Nolte, a pathology professor at the University of New Mexico and one of the authors of the CDC report. “Tissue death has been associated with levamisole in a clinical context,” when the drug was used therapeutically, he said. “I’ve not seen any cocaine users with this.”

But it’s not a surprise, given the amount of cocaine that has been laced with the medication, said Dr. Juliet VanEenwyk, an epidemiologist with the Washington State Department of Health, who also contributed information to the CDC report.

“The increase [in cocaine containing levamisole] has been really rapid,” she said. Until a few years ago, she said, probably less than 10 percent of cocaine supplies had it. Now, experts suspect that 80 percent do.

Dumyati said that the skin problem is treatable, but “if you stop using cocaine, most of the cases would get better.”

Agranulocytosis, on the other hand, is a serious illness that requires hospitalization for treatment, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

SOURCES: Ghinwa Dumyati, M.D., associate professor, medicine, University of Rochester, and epidemiologist, Monroe County Department of Health, Rochester, N.Y.; Juliet VanEenwyk, Ph.D., state epidemiologist, Washington State Department of Health, Olympia, Wash.; Kurt Nolte, M.D., professor, pathology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.

A new study, conducted in South Korea and slated for presentation Monday at the American Urological Association annual meeting in San Francisco, finds that not only can these knock-off drugs be contaminated, they may contain too much of the active ingredient or none at all.

The drugs could especially be dangerous for men with hypertension or heart disease, the study found.

The message? Stay away from non-prescription erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs, the experts say.

“There are lots of rip-offs,” said Dr. John Morley, director of geriatrics and acting director of endocrinology at Saint Louis University. “There’s still a lot of evidence that many of the things you buy off the Internet without going through a regular pharmacy might appear cheaper or better but they’re usually not and they usually don’t work.”

Drugs known as phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5Is) are used widely by men with erectile dysfunction – and sometimes by those without the condition. Perhaps the best known of the class are sildenafil (Viagra) and tadalafil (Cialis). Since it was developed in 1998, the market for these and similar products — legitimate or not — has mushroomed.

ED drugs are sort of in a special class, given the personal nature of the problem and many men’s reluctance to discuss it, even with a doctor.

“Men who have sexual dysfunction are prepared to try anything and they do try a large number of bizarre things,” said Morley. “They try all the Viagra look-alikes, so people are going to buy them.”

In the study, the South Korean team compared 19 counterfeit erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs against prescription Viagra, obtained directly from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, and Cialis, provided by Lilly.

About one-third of the counterfeit pills actually differed in size from the real thing, while 42 percent differed in color.

Fifty-eight percent had too much active ingredient, sometimes as much as 2.4 times more, while 3 percent had no active ingredient at all.

Some contained unapproved compounds intended to promote an erection.

Only one of the counterfeit drugs contained “proper active ingredients,” the researchers stated. Some contained potential toxins, including mercury and lead.

Even genuine Viagra has risks, experts note, especially for men who take nitrates for chest pain. And there could be drug interactions with both real and fake ED drugs.

“All these drugs have side effects and that’s probably the big reason why patients should be getting them through a physician,” Morley said. “While these things may be cheaper, they potentially have much greater side effects.”

“We would hope by now that men would be happy to talk to their doctor [but] fundamentally, people are still shy of this,” he continued.

SOURCES: John Morley, M.D., director, geriatrics, and acting director, endocrinology, Saint Louis University, Missouri.

Some scientists have questioned similar reports of dogs with such diagnostic powers in recent years, but the lead author of this latest study said the findings are promising and could lead to better cancer-sensing technology.

“The dogs are certainly recognizing the odor of a molecule that is produced by cancer cells,” said French researcher Jean-Nicolas Cornu, who works at Hospital Tenon in Paris.

The problem, he said, is that “we do not know what this molecule is, and the dog cannot tell us.”

Still, the report could represent a significant development since cancer often goes undetected until it is too late to treat.

The detection of prostate cancer has been particularly controversial. Some researchers think many patients are treated unnecessarily because existing tests of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) aren’t accurate enough and fail to distinguish between dangerous and harmless cancers.

Urine tests can turn up signs of prostate cancer, Cornu said, but miss some cases. Some types of molecules give a distinct odor to urine, “but today there is no means to screen odors from urine and separate them,” he said, and no way to link them to cancer.

Enter the dog, whose powers of smell are far greater than those of humans.

For this study, two researchers spent a year training a Belgian Malinois shepherd, a breed already used to detect drugs and bombs.

The dog was trained to differentiate between urine samples from men with prostate cancer and men without. Ultimately, researchers placed groups of five urine samples in front of the dog to see if it could identify the sole sample from a man with prostate cancer.

The dog correctly classified 63 out of 66 specimens.

If the findings hold up in other studies, they’ll be “pretty impressive,” said urologist Dr. Anthony Y. Smith, who was to moderate a discussion on the findings Tuesday at the American Urological Association annual meeting in San Francisco.

Skeptical researchers are concerned about factors that could throw off the results, said Smith, chief of urology at the University of New Mexico. Among other things, scientists wonder if the animals used in such studies pick up on subconscious signals from researchers.

Still, in this study, it’s hard to imagine anything “other than the dogs somehow being able to smell something that we don’t smell,” Smith said.

If these findings are valid, they could lead to the development of more accurate tests that don’t require unnecessary biopsies, Smith said.

The next steps are to determine precisely what the dogs are sniffing and to develop an “electronic nose” to detect it, Cornu said. Other dogs are already being trained, he said.

Could doctors and hospitals employ dogs and researchers to detect prostate cancer? Cornu said that’s possible, but it could cost as much as hiring two full-time scientists.

SOURCES: Jean Nicolas Cornu, researcher, Hospital Tenon, Paris; Anthony Y. Smith, M.D., chief, urology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

The American Academy of Pediatrics lists these backyard safety suggestions:
Make sure your child knows the boundaries of your yard if you don’t have a fence, and that someone is always outside supervising your child.
Look for harmful and potentially toxic plants in your yard, and get rid of them or make sure your child can’t reach them.
Instruct your child not to eat anything from an outdoor plant.
Be careful with pesticide use in areas where children gather, and avoid using power mowers and other equipment when kids are playing.
Make sure your child can’t reach the barbecue grill while you’re using it, and teach your child that a grill is like a stove — hot, and off-limits.
Don’t let your child near automobile traffic.

While not all knee injuries are serious, the academy says these warning signs should prompt a trip to the doctor:
Your knee made a popping sound and feels like it “gave out” when you hurt it.
You have significant pain in the knee.
You are unable to move the knee.
You limp when you walk.
Your knee is swollen.

While the importance of rapid treatment for stroke is now widely recognized, less is known about whether people who suffer mini-strokes get prompt care.

People who have these mini-strokes — what doctors call transient ischemic attacks, or TIAs – are now known to be at high risk of full-fledged strokes in the following hours and days, Dr. Arvind Chandratheva of the University of Oxford in the UK and colleagues point out in the journal Stroke. What’s more, it’s fairly easy to identify who among these patients is at highest risk, and starting preventive treatments early is “highly effective.”

The symptoms of a TIA are the same as those of a stroke; the big difference is that they’re temporary. Symptoms can include weakness or an inability to move all or part of one side of the body; feelings of numbness or tingling on one side; visual disturbances; trouble speaking and understanding others; and dizziness and fainting.

Current guidelines state that people should see a doctor within 24 hours of having a TIA or minor stroke. To investigate whether this is happening, Chandratheva and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 consecutive TIA or stroke patients participating in a large study of heart attack, stroke, and other acute events possibly related to a blocked blood vessel.

Among the patients who had TIAs, 459 in all, 67 percent sought medical help within 24 hours, and 47 percent did so within three hours, the researchers found. Among the 541 patients who had minor strokes, 74 percent got medical help within a day, and 46 percent did so within three hours. Three-quarters of the study participants went to their primary care physician first.

There were 129 patients who had a recurrent stroke after their initial TIA or minor stroke; 30 percent had not sought treatment before having a second stroke.

Certain factors like incorrect recognition of symptoms were associated with delays in treatment among TIA patients, the researchers found, but a person’s socioeconomic status, age, or gender had no effect on whether they delayed seeking treatment.

More public education is needed, the researchers conclude, both to help people recognize symptoms of TIA and minor stroke and to understand the need for quick medical attention.

“Without more effective public education,” they conclude, “the full potential of acute prevention will not be realized.”

Researchers looked at 2,168 men in Kenya, aged 18 to 24, who were uncircumcised, did not have HIV and were sexually active. The men were tested for HPV infections at the start of the study and over 24 months. Most of the men were followed-up for 42 months.

At the start of the study, about half (1,089) of the men were infected with HPV on the skin of their penis. After 42 months, 5.8 percent of these HPV-positive men were HIV positive, compared to 3.7 percent of men who didn’t have HPV.

The findings were released online April 23 in advance of publication in the June 1 print issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

“Even when we controlled for circumcision status, herpes and other sexual and sociodemographic risk factors, men infected with HPV at the first study visit were at greater risk for HIV infection than men without HPV,” study lead author Jennifer S. Smith, a research associate professor of epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a news release.

“If our findings are confirmed in other studies, then HPV prevention could become an effective tool for HIV prevention,” she added.

Smith noted that developing “a vaccine to prevent HIV is the greatest hope for curbing the world’s AIDS pandemic, but so far there is no such vaccine. However, there is a vaccine to prevent specific types of HPV infection, and vaccinating young men before they become sexually active could potentially help prevent the spread of HIV.”

SOURCE: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, news release.

Compared with widely used fecal blood tests, stool DNA testing has higher detection rates for curable stage colorectal cancer and for common precancerous polyps (adenomas), according to the Mayo Clinic-led research teams.

The DNA stool test methods were developed at the Mayo Clinic. Some of the study authors and the Mayo Clinic have a financial interest related to technology used with this research.

The first study found that stool DNA testing detected five out of five cases of colon cancer and four out of five cases of a precancerous lesion called dysplasia in 10 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

“This study shows that cancer and precancer in IBD can be detected noninvasively,” senior investigator Dr. David Ahlquist said in a Mayo news release. “The 90 percent detection rate by stool DNA testing is remarkable. It’s important for people with IBD because they are at much higher risk for colorectal cancer than the general population. Given the limitations of colonoscopies in detecting these lesions, stool DNA testing could play a complementary role to improve the effectiveness of cancer surveillance.”

In the second study, the researchers found that stool DNA testing had a success rate of 71 percent in detecting serrated colorectal polyps, compared to a 7 percent detection rate with fecal blood tests.

Serrated colorectal polyps, which are believed to be the forerunner in about 30 percent of colon cancer cases, can be difficult to detect using most types of colorectal cancer screening. Unlike common polyps, they tend to be flat and the same color as the colon lining.

The studies are slated to be presented on Monday and Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Gastroenterological Association.

“Detection of these important types of precancer by stool DNA testing offers promise in our efforts to more effectively and affordably prevent colorectal cancer. However, findings from both pilot studies need to be corroborated in larger studies,” Ahlquist said.

SOURCE: Mayo Clinic, news release.

“Erectile dysfunction [ED] is frequently a dissent of underlying cardiovascular problems.
It even precedes cardiopathy – it can be an early telling, in that laurels,” said Dr.
Andrew McCullough, movie maker of male sexual wellbeing, fertility rate and microsurgery at New York Educational institution Body of Drug in New York City.

The coming of sildenafil, cheap generic cialis and Levitra has put the inquiry prominence back on ED, and a connexion of studies are suggesting that, for most men, the illness has physiological, not psychological, origins.

Early in 2004, researchers led by Dr.
Alan Bank of the St.
Paul Center Health facility in Minnesota published a discipline viewing that the arteries of men with ED expanded less efficiently than men without erectile difficulties — a possible action sign of underlying internal organ disease.

McCullough likened ED to a common utility question: “If you turn on your kitchen faucet and you don’t get any flow, either the faucet’s broken or the pipes are clogged.”

For men with advanced courageousness disease, the clogged-pipe intellection probably holds true, since accretion of cholesterol in arteries can greatly reduce ancestry flow.

But many men with ED aren’t anywhere near this degree of cardiovascular diminution.
For them, the faucet — the vessels surface the penis and the smooth strength around them — may be broken on a biochemical spirit level.

“We’re encyclopedism that erectile dysfunction is largely due to reduced nitric oxide in the endothelium, the inner liner of rake vessels,” explained Dr.
St. David Gutterman, professor of penalisation at the Medical Building complex of Wisconsin River in Milwaukee.

As debauchee flow demands physical process (as happens during an erection), the endothelium releases nitric oxide to help initiation roue watercraft elaboration. “Nitric oxide is very important for normal erectile mathematical function,” Gutterman said. “It’s also — and here’s the link to sum disease — very important as an anti-atherosclerotic functionary, resisting ‘hardening of the arteries.’ “

In that knowingness, ED may serve as an early signaling that descent vessels elsewhere in the body aren’t expanding as they should, either.

It’s no co-occurrence, then, that drugs such as sildenafil — which helps physical process nitric oxide levels in the endothelium — were gear mechanism studied as opening treatments for cardiac occurrence.

“However, it was found that these drugs do this punter in some organs rather than others,” Gutterman said.
Hunting at the question from the other side, Bank’s team is currently researching whether or not the statin relative of cholesterol-lowering drugs might help tilt ED.

“We do know that statins improve the part of the enzyme, nitric oxide synthase, that produces nitric oxide region the stemma vessels,” Gutterman pointed out. “That’s probably related to the very performance that helps get rid of ED.”

In the meantime, men with erectile difficulties should stop and consider the opening underlying drive of that dysfunction, McCullough said.

“Initially, when sildenafil was get-go approved, there were all kinds of direct-to-consumer ads associating ED with a physiologic mental process, to convince men that it wasn’t just psychological, and that it might be linked to underlying cardiovascular disease,” he said.

“But now, there’s a minimalization of all that in these ads.
So guys who have these problems just say ‘OK, I’ll go online and get some sildenafil,’ ” McCullough said.

But that type of noesis has its dangers, he said.

“One of the most serious things, in my mind, is the guy who fails sildenafil, tadalafil, Levitra.
Because to me, that suggests he’s got more serious underlying disease than some guy for whom it activity,” he said.

McCullough’s advice? “Go see your theologist.”

Gutterman agreed. “Some ancestry with undiagnosed center disease might not get body part pain get-go, but they’ll get erectile dysfunction.