Month: March 2014

Mammograms can help detect breast cancer. But these screening tests did not reduce the number of advanced breast cancer cases diagnosed in older women. So says a study in the Netherlands. The study looked at the effect of extending regular screenings to women between the ages of 70 and 75. It included more than 25,000 women in this age group. All had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 1995 and 2011. While early stage breast cancer cases rose quite a bit in these women over those 16 years, advanced breast cancer cases did not show marked improvement. Researchers expected that, with increased detection of early breast cancer, advanced breast cancer diagnosis would significantly decrease. It did not. Regular mammograms in this older age group could do more harm than good, the researchers said.

Under new guidelines, statin drugs could be recommended for up to half of U.S. adults between 40 and 75. That’s an increase of nearly 13 million Americans. The estimate comes from a new study. It focuses on the effect of new guidelines for reducing LDL (“bad cholesterol”). The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology published them last fall. The new group eligible for statins includes adults ages 40 to 75 who have a 7.5% risk of developing heart disease in the next 10 years. Researchers looked at medical records for 3,700 people. They found that statin use would increase most for those 60 to 75. Under the old guidelines, about 30% of men in this group who did not have heart disease were eligible to take statins. The new guidelines would boost that to 87%. Statins would be recommended for 53% of women ages 60 to 75 without heart disease.