Home > News

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Report: Bonds, Giambi Received Steroids

U.S. investigators were given information that baseball sluggers Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, among others, received steroids from a nutritional supplements lab implicated in a distribution ring, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The information given to the investigators also claims that Gary Sheffield, now Giambi's teammate with the New York Yankees, three other Major League Baseball players, and one National Football league player received steroids from the lab.

It's alleged the players were given the illegal performance-enhancing drugs by Greg Anderson, a longtime friend of Bonds and his personal weight trainer, the paper reports. The steroids reportedly came from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, and date back to the 2001 season, when Bonds obliterated the single-season home run record by slugging 73.

Bonds has won a record six National League Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, including the last three years with the San Francisco Giants, and is in hot pursuit of the all-time home run record. Giambi was the American League MVP in 2000, when he was playing with the Oakland Athletics.

"We continue to adamantly deny that Barry was provided, furnished or supplied any of those substances at any time by Greg Anderson," Michael Rains, an attorney for Bonds, told the Chronicle.

Lawyers for the other players issued statements saying their clients never knowingly used steroids.

-----

NIH Halts HRT Trial

U.S. health officials have halted another hormone replacement therapy trial.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Tuesday it had stopped the estrogen-only segment of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). The decision was made after data indicated that estrogen-alone therapy increased stroke risk, HealthDayNews reports.

"The NIH believes that an increased risk of stroke is not acceptable in healthy women in a research study. This is especially true if estrogen alone does not affect (either increase or decrease) heart disease, as appears to be the case in the current study," an NIH statement explained.

The estrogen-alone study included 11,000 healthy postmenopausal women, aged 50 to 79, who had their uteruses removed in a hysterectomy. The study had been under way for nearly seven years before it was halted.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to assess the estrogen-alone study data to determine whether additional label changes for HRT are necessary.

-----

Increasing Antibiotic Resistance Seen in Common Bacteria

A group of common bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics that have proved effective against them for decades, the New York Times reports.

Since the 1970s, Staphylococcus aureus (staph) infections in healthy people have been routinely and successfully treated with penicillin-like drugs. Staph are the most common cause of skin infections. These bacteria can also cause other infections in the lungs and bloodstream.

But the Times reports that primary-care doctors who use these penicillin-like drugs to treat staph infections may discover their patients get sicker instead of healthier.

These resistant staph strains are more invasive and more pervasive than the staph strains that most primary-care doctors are used to treating, infectious disease expert Dr. John Gullett told the Times.

Other infectious disease experts expressed concern about these antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria and said many primary-care doctors are not aware of them.

-----

Bush Unveils Plan to Curb Illegal Use of Prescription Drugs

The Bush administration announced on Monday a multi-pronged approach to stem the illegal use of prescription drugs, a "widespread and serious problem" that "calls for immediate action," officials said.

The National Drug Control Strategy calls for such measures as wider dissemination of education and training on appropriate pain management and "opioid treatment procedures for physicians authorized to prescribe controlled substances."

It also includes increasing the number of state Prescription Monitoring Programs, which detect suspicious prescriptions and individuals "redeeming prescriptions from multiple physicians ('doctor shopping') to identify abusers," according to a statement announcing the program.

Non-medical use of narcotic pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants, and sedatives ranks second, behind marijuana, as a category of illicit drug abuse among adults and youth. In 2002, 6.2 million Americans were current abusers of prescription drugs, administration officials say.

The program's goal: To reduce illegal prescription drug use by 10 percent in two years, and 25 percent within five years.

-----

Eye Protection Urged for Young Athletes

Young athletes in many organized sports need to wear protective eye gear, says a joint policy statement from the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The policy statement notes serious and sometimes permanent eye injury can be suffered by children playing sports. It ranks baseball and basketball as high-risk sports for eye injury. They're associated with the most eye injuries in athletes aged 5 to 24, the Associated Press reports.

Tennis is ranked as a moderate-risk sport for eye injury.

Safety goggles for basketball, soccer and racket sports, and helmets with face guards for baseball batters and base runners are among the sports eye gear recommend in the policy statement. Fashion eyeglasses are not acceptable as safety gear.

More than 42,000 sports and recreation eye-related injuries were reported in the United States in the year 2000, the AP reports. More than 70 percent of those eye injuries occurred in people under age 25.

Protective eye gear could cut the risk of sports-related eye injury by at least 90 percent, the policy statement says.

-----

Survey Finds Americans Getting Larger

A new national survey of the average American body that looked at more than 240 measurements from head to toe confirms previous findings -- Americans are getting larger.

The SizeUSA survey used a light-pulsing, 3-D scanner to measure more than 10,000 people in 13 cities. It's the first time since World War II that a national survey has taken stock of the average American body. The survey was sponsored by several universities, the Army and Navy, and a number of clothing and textile manufacturers, The New York Times reports.

The survey found that 19 percent of men are "portly," while another 19 percent have "lower front waists." That's a polite way of saying those men have to lift up their belly to find their waist. Men older than 45 are most likely to have potbellies and older men have thinner thighs than younger men.

Among women, the survey found that black women are larger than other women. But black women are more likely to have a classic hourglass figure. Overall, the survey found that 64 percent of women are pear-shaped and 30 percent have a "straight" figure.

Copyright © 2004 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.