What's in the news: Nov. 25 -- Vanishing cancers

A round-up of Canadian health news, from coast to coast to coast and beyond, for Tuesday, November 25.

Do some cancers simply vanish into thin air? That's what a new joint American-Norwegian study in the Archives of Internal Medicine claims to show, although some experts doubt the paper's conclusion that the natural course of some breast cancers is to "spontaneously regress." [Archives of Internal Medicine] [New York Times] That means it could be harmful to aggressively treat some breast cancer patients rather than simply waiting to see if their tumours disappear, the Canadian Press reported. [Canadian Press]

There is a huge difference between the health of affluent urbanites and poor urbanites, a Canadian Institute for Health Information study showed. [CIHI] Efforts to remedy that inequality by addressing the underlying poverty have been insufficient, 18 of Canada's top urban public health physicians said. "We have understood for a long time that people with lower socio-economic status experience significantly worse health than those with higher socio-economic status. Yet the lives of far too many Canadians continue to be burdened by preventable poor health. This is not acceptable," said Montreal public health director Dr Richard Lessard in a statement. [Urban Public Health Network]

Many passengers who were potentially exposed to tuberculosis on flights to and from Canada were never contacted and warned of the risk of infection because the airlines didn't disclose the flights' passenger lists to Canadian public health officials, reported The Globe and Mail. [Globe and Mail] The Liberal Party blames the Conservatives. [Liberal Party]

An interdisciplinary meeting on the effects of probiotics on the relationship between the brain and gut, held in Quebec City and sponsored by a probiotics company, came up with some really interesting ideas about probiotics' potential ability to relieve stress and anxiety and reduce psychiatric comorbidities associated with IBS. [news release] I'll wait until I see the data in a peer-reviewed journal to believe it, but the concepts raised about brain-gut interaction -- about which not a whole lot is known -- are fascinating.

Too few Canadians with osteoporosis receive bone mineral density testing, says a new Osteoporosis Canada report. Report cards on the rate of testing and on the public-insurance coverage of appropriate drugs found that most Canadian provinces fare poorly; some even received failing grades. [Osteoporosis Canada]

Get Canadian Medicine news by email or in an RSS reader