Health

B.C. women can get mammograms starting at 40, so why aren’t they?

Published

1 year ago

May 10, 2023

VANCOUVER – This week a U.S. health panel changed its mammogram recommendation to begin 10 years sooner. It’s something that is already happening in B.C., but few are accessing.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a draft guidance, calling for biannual breast cancer screenings to start at age 40 instead of 50.

B.C. is one of the few provinces in Canada which allows women to request mammograms starting at age 40, but radiologist Dr. Paula Gordon said only 25 per cent of women who are eligible are doing it.

“The problem is it’s not well known,” Dr. Gordon told CTV News. “The other thing is that if the family doctors would encourage it, that would help, but many family doctors are following what they think are the taskforce guidelines and encouraging women to not have mammograms even though they don’t even need a doctor’s requisition to go.”

Coquitlam mother Rosilene Kraft faced obstacles getting the proper tests from her family physician, who even discouraged her from getting a mammogram because she doesn’t have a family history of it.

“My family doctor said, ‘We only recommend that you do it from 50 onwards, before that, it can even be risky for you because it’s exposing you to radiation,’” she recalled. “He told me to do yoga, that would help.”

After an emergency room visit and several tests later, she was finally diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, meaning it had already spread.

She was 47 at the time.

“I don’t want this to happen to other people,” she said.

In Canada, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women and the second leading cause of cancer deaths.

Dr. Gordon said breast cancer is often more aggressive in pre-menopausal women because the most common form of cancer is a hormone-sensitive kind.

“Those hormones can act like fuel on the fire. They don’t cause the cancer, but if a woman gets a cancer, they can cause it to grow faster,” she explained.

Women of colour often develop breast cancer at a younger age, so it is especially important that they get screened in their 40s, Gordon explained. She added white women, statistically, are impacted in their 50s and 60s.

“If you don’t let Black, Asian and Hispanic women have mammograms starting at 40, many of them will be diagnosed later when the cancer has already spread,” she said.

Adding to the obstacle of getting properly screened, almost a million British Columbians don’t have a family doctor.

Dr. Gordon explained having a family physician isn’t necessary to access a mammogram, but the name of a health care provider is needed.

She said it can be the name of a nurse practitioner, naturopath or even the name of a walk-in clinic doctor.

She stressed early detection is vital to ensure better outcomes, and it can help the patient avoid more intrusive treatment, such as a mastectomy.

“There is a smaller operation for women diagnosed earlier where that complication is far less frequent. And finally, when a woman’s diagnosed earlier, sometimes she doesn’t need chemotherapy, which is a huge benefit of early detection,” Dr. Gordon explained.

She would like to see the province send out invitations for mammograms to women on their 40th birthday, something that used to be done.

Heath Minister Adrian Dix said that is something being considered.

“Our experts will work with people and the BC Cancer Agency to consider new data and perhaps expand such a program. But prevention is a big part of what we have to do in cancer care,” Dix said.

Kraft has been battling breast cancer for the last five years. She is also a patient care advocate, encouraging more people to get screened.

“They need to know their breasts; they need to know the density of their breasts and make a decision on how they’re going to get their mammogram. If they have dense breast tissues, many times, they need to get an ultrasound following the mammogram and they need to know that,” Kraft said.

In B.C., mammogram screening is recommended every two years.

Since cancer tends to grow faster in younger women, Dr. Gordon believes women in their 40s should be screened annually.

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Health

Whooping cough is at a decade-high level in US

Published

1 day ago

October 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.

The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.

Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.

Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.

“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.

But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.

That includes his own teenage daughter.

“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.

It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.

“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”

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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Health

Scientists show how sperm and egg come together like a key in a lock

Published

1 day ago

October 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.

New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.

“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.

The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.

Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.

It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.

Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.

Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.

The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.

The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Health

Turn Your Wife Into Your Personal Sex Kitten

Published

2 days ago

October 17, 2024

Sven Eggers

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