FDA approves vaccine to prevent cervical cancer
|
Last Thursday the FDA approved the first vaccine to help prevent cervical cancer. It is called Gardasil and can prevent cancer and other diseases such as genital warts caused by Human Papillomavirus (HPV) types 6, 11, 16 and 18.
Worldwide 300,000 women die from cervical cancer, 4,000 women in the US. Around half of adults in the US are infected with HPV however it is mostly harmless.
Unfortunately it is only been approved for women and girls from ages 9-26. Apparently it is only effective if given before a person has been infected with the virus.
Gardasil is given as a series of three shots over a six month period, which cost about $360 or more.
Women who get the vaccine still need to have regular cervical cancer screening since the vaccine doesn’t stop all cancer-causing HPV strains.
Meanwhile studies are being done to test Gardasil in older women and in men.
Gardasil is made by Merck & Co. Inc.
For more information see:
FDA Approves Gardasil Cervical Cancer Vaccine,
FDA Approves First Vaccine Against HPV, Leading Cause of Cervical Cancer or Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Recombinant Vaccine Approved by FDA.
Also a great discussion about how Focus on the Family is against the vaccine even though it could save thousands of live can be read here: Focus on the Family Opposes HPV vaccine
(Technorati Tags: cervical cancer, Gardasil, Human Papillomavirus, HPV, virus, Merck, vaccine)
________________________________________
If you like this post please share or vote for it below:
Stumble: Kirtsy: delicious: reddit: Digg:
________________________________________
If you like my blog please subscribe to read updates in a
feed reader (what does this mean?)
or by email!
Thanks! I really appreciate all your support!
________________________________________
Related Posts:
- Women’s Health Weekly Review – April 19-25
- This week in health and science – 8/18/07
- A possible antiretroviral therapy of the future
Favorite Blog Goals
|
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger asked us to blog about our favorite blogs from his latest writing project.
Here are some of my favorites (in no particular order):
With great changes comes great responsibility… by Jennie Rosenbaum.
Lofty Blog Goals And Attempt To Beat Shyness by Helen.
Sanity Check! by Ann Michael.
My Father’s Saloon — A Blogging Story by ‘Liz’ Strauss.
Prevent a Midlife Crisis — Blog! by Sheila Scarborough
Day 5: Have Goals (or unGoals) by Jill Murray
My Digital Photography School Goals
And I promise I will get back to blogging about women and women’s health after this post!
________________________________________
If you like this post please share or vote for it below:
Stumble: Kirtsy: delicious: reddit: Digg:
________________________________________
If you like my blog please subscribe to read updates in a
feed reader (what does this mean?)
or by email!
Thanks! I really appreciate all your support!
________________________________________
Related Posts:
June 7, 2006
Quick blog round-up here:
|
I don’t have time for a regular post today but I’ve found some good links recently that need to be shared:
1) Marjory and Gordon Cameron have a new blog about Marjory’s breast cancer. Gordon is a family doctor and Marjory is a nurse. Their blog has some great information about breast cancer treatments and research a lot of which I don’t have time to cover here. So if you are looking for more specific information or want to follow one person’s story about how they are dealing with their situation – you should read their blog: Beating Breast Cancer
Good Luck Marjory – I hope it all goes well!
2) You may not have heard of Barbara Ehrenreich. She’s written a few books. One of which I read some time ago – Nickel and Dimed – which is about the struggles many people in the US experience working minimum wage types of jobs. She went undercover and worked at some of these places to see if she could really make ends meet, etc. She has a newer book now too, which I haven’t read yet. Well, she has a blog now too. She has a regular web site too, I don’t know why she didn’t put her blog there though instead of blogs.com. Here’s the link: Barbara’s Blog.
3) Here’s another health story I just came across today but don’t have time to look up information to blog about it: Plastics chemical alters female brains. A brief – very brief – summary is that a substance found in polycarbonate plastic (bisphenol A) such as the resin lining food cans and dental sealants can leach out and that bisphenol A behaves a lot like estrogen. More research needs to be done though, but if bisphenol A does get into our food and does cause health problems it is a concern. To soon to say for certain though. The abstract for the paper is here:http://endo.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/en.2006-0189v1
4) And lastly I want to say ‘Hello!’ to the people I met last night at Liz’s Successful Blog open mike post: Liz, Joe, Chris Cree, Ben, Claire and Mike – and I’m sorry if I missed anyone!
Thanks for making me feel welcome and putting up with my Dr. Who obsession! (A Dr. Who blog – what do you think? Should I do it?)
(Technorati Tags: health, Liz Strauss, Barbara Ehrenreich, Dr. Who, breast cancer)
________________________________________
If you like this post please share or vote for it below:
Stumble: Kirtsy: delicious: reddit: Digg:
________________________________________
If you like my blog please subscribe to read updates in a
feed reader (what does this mean?)
or by email!
Thanks! I really appreciate all your support!
________________________________________
Related Posts:
- Breast cancer and the environment
- Stay fit to reduce risk of breast cancer
- New breast cancer gene discovered
June 6, 2006
New drug for HER2/neu breast cancers may be available soon!
|
At the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Atlanta postitive results of a study testing a new drug for treating breast cancer were announced.
The new drug is called Tykerb. The study involved 321 women with advanced breast cancer who were divided into two groups. One group only took the drug Xeloda (a standard chemotherapy drug for use in breast and some other cancers). The other group took both Xeloda and Tykerb.
The study was actually stopped early because the results looked so good. The growth of the tumors were delayed about twice as long in the group that was also taking Tykerb.
The target of Tykerb is the protein HER2/neu, which is a member of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) family. Around 20-25% of breast cancers involve the overexpression of the HER2/neu protein.
Tykerb functions similarly to Herceptin, but also targets another protein and works from inside the cell. Other advantages of Tykerb include few side effects, its taken in a pill form rather than intravenously and is a smaller molecule which may be able to cross the blood-brain barrier and attack metastatic brain tumors also.
Tykerb is made by the British company GlaxoSmithKline PLC. There are additional studies taking place now with Tykerb and it may be approved for use in the US either this year or next.
(Technorati Tags: breast cancer, HER2, neu, Herceptin, Tykerb,health)
________________________________________
If you like this post please share or vote for it below:
Stumble: Kirtsy: delicious: reddit: Digg:
________________________________________
If you like my blog please subscribe to read updates in a
feed reader (what does this mean?)
or by email!
Thanks! I really appreciate all your support!
________________________________________
Related Posts:
- Recent developments in breast cancer research
- Breast cancer update – 7/16/07
- Women’s Health Weekly Review: July 6 – July 12
June 5, 2006
Blogs, my Goals and Everything
|
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has a new post on his blog about Blog Goals and I have decided to participate.
What I need to do to participate is to write a post about what my goals are – that’s what I’m doing now. Then when I am finished I need to send him an email with the url for this post.
Hopefully these goals are written in a general enough way to be useful to anyone else who has a blog too.
My blogging goals:
1) Post more frequently and consistently: I’d like to try to post about 3-5 times a week – that may not seem like much to some people, but the time I can spend on this blog is limited and some of my posts take a while to write.
2) Improve post topic quality: I need to spend more time reading original science journal articles to post about – and have 1+ posts a week based on a journal article.
3) Participate more at and with other blogs: This something I’ve been bad about not doing in the past.
4) Keep on topic: Occasionally post about something other than the main topic of my blog, no more than one post a week that is not health related.
5) Increase interactivity with readers: I will add a poll to this blog to get more feedback from readers. I’m not sure how to get more people to comment though.
6) Improve writing skills: I need to work on letting my personality show through more in my posts
7) Start a new blog: I’d like to start a general science blog, this is something that I would really like to do someday, it would mean a lot to me.
8) Find a paying blogging opportunity: I would like to find a way to get paid to blog, unless I can get my own traffic up quite a bit.
Issues that may interfere with achieving these goals:
1) Time – this could effect goals 1-3 and 7.
2) Money – if I don’t make more money by other means I may not be able to do 7.
3) Me being shy and not knowing enough people could be a problem with 8.
That’s all I can think of now – I’ll add more if I think of something.
(Technorati Tags: Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, blogging, goals)
________________________________________
If you like this post please share or vote for it below:
Stumble: Kirtsy: delicious: reddit: Digg:
________________________________________
If you like my blog please subscribe to read updates in a
feed reader (what does this mean?)
or by email!
Thanks! I really appreciate all your support!
________________________________________
Related Posts:
« Previous Page — Next Page »