Hormone deputy scored equally to lung cancer risk

Amy Norton Wed Feb 24, 2010 1:14pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who use hormone replacement therapy combining estrogen and progestin may have a higher risk of lung cancer than non-users, a new study finds.

Health

Whether hormone replacement therapy (HRT) itself is to blame is not certain, researchers say. But the findings add to the complicated mix of potential health effects of HRT.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, looked at new lung cancer diagnoses among more than 36,000 women ages 50 to 75 who were followed over six years. During that time, 344 women developed the cancer.

Overall, researchers found, the risk was greater among women who had used HRT containing estrogen and progestin (a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone) compared with women who had never used HRT.

The link was strongest among women who had used combination HRT for 10 years or more; compared with non-users, they were almost 50 percent more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer, even with factors like age and smoking history considered.

Among women who had used the hormones for one to 9 years, the increased risk of lung cancer was not significant in statistical terms.

The vast majority of HRT users did not develop lung cancer during the study period. Of the more than 4,300 women who had used combination HRT for a decade or longer, 54 were diagnosed with the cancer.

"This study doesn"t prove that HRT causes lung cancer," lead researcher Dr. Christopher G. Slatore, of the Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, told Reuters Health in an email.

"But it does say that after adjusting for other factors associated with lung cancer and HRT use, users of (estrogen-plus-progestin) HRT for longer than 10 years had a higher risk of lung cancer."

The study found no link between estrogen-only HRT and lung cancer risk.

Millions of women stopped using HRT after a large U.S. government study in 2002 found that postmenopausal women given estrogen-plus-progestin had higher risks of heart attack, stroke, breast cancer and blood clots than women given a placebo.

HRT has positive effects as well. It remains the most effective therapy for menopausal symptoms like severe hot flashes and night sweats; some alternatives, such as soy supplements, the herb black cohosh and acupuncture, have been studied, but with mixed results. HRT has also been shown to preserve women"s bone mass, and some studies have linked it to a decreased risk of colon cancer.

Given the list of risks, however, experts now advise that when women use HRT for menopausal symptoms, they should take it at the lowest dose and for the shortest time possible.

When it comes to lung cancer and HRT, past studies have come to conflicting conclusions. This latest study sheds more light on the question, according to Slatore, because it looked at HRT use over a long period, showing a stronger association between lung cancer and long-term use.

The bottom line, the researcher said, is that women considering HRT should be aware of the lung cancer-HRT link -- particularly if they have a history of smoking.

"And since we don"t know a "safe" length of time to use HRT," Slatore said, "I"d recommend using it for as short of time as necessary to control (menopausal) symptoms."

It is not entirely clear why HRT would contribute to lung cancer. Lung cancer tumors do have receptors for estrogen and progesterone, Slatore and his colleagues point out, and lab research has shown that estrogen can promote growth in lung cancer cells, while anti-estrogen compounds block that growth.

More studies are needed to understand the potential biological mechanisms, the researchers say. One question is why combination HRT, but not estrogen alone, would be linked to a higher lung cancer risk.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Oncology, online February 16, 2010.

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Nottingham Forest 1 Middlesbrough 0: Davies men on clouded cover 9

Home sweet home: Chris Cohen (right) helped Forest to a ninth straight home win

Nottingham Forest produced a club record ninth straight home leaguewin and moved back into the Coca-Cola Championship automatic promotionplaces after beating Middlesbrough.

Chris Cohen struck midway through the second half as Billy Davies"side surpassed the number of City Ground successes set under thelegendary Brian Clough in 1980.

Forest had to withstand some late Boro pressure and were grateful togoalkeeper Lee Camp for some late saves as Gordon Strachan"s teamsearched for an equaliser.

But the Reds held on to replace West Brom in second place in thetable. However, Albion play Bristol City at Ashton Gate tomorrow.

Davies named the same starting XI that beat Sheffield United inmidweek but his team found it tough going in the first half as as Borobossed the midfield.

Fellow Scot Strachan made three changes with Kyle Naughton, EmanuelPogatetz and Julio Arca recalled at the expense of Justin Hoyte,Jonathan Grounds and Jonathan Franks, who all dropped down to the bench.

Middlesbrough started strongly and put Forest under early pressurewith a flurry of corners but the likes of Pogatetz and David Wheatercoming up from the back were unable to capitalise.

Radoslaw Majewski clipped the top of the crossbar with a free-kickfrom the edge of the area before Forest went close again when Cohen"slob landed on the roof of the net.

Camp kept Boro at bay at the start of the second half when he tipped Gary O"Neil"s free-kick round a post.

Kelvin Wilson thought he had given Forest the lead when he turned home a loose ball inside the box but the Boro defence had pushed out and the big centre-back"s celebrations were cut short by an offside flag.

However, soon afterwards the Reds did break the deadlock.

Boro lost possession deep inside the the Forest half and a flowing counter-attack resulted in Dexter Blackstock squaring a pass across the 18-yard box for Cohen to coolly tuck the ball away.

Camp immediately preserved his side"s lead when he pushed a 20-yard shot from substitute Leroy Lita wide and the Forest keeper produced another fine save five minutes from time to keep out a firm header from Pogatetz.

Boro kept pushing for an equaliser and Stephen McManus had a shot cleared off the line in the first of three minutes of injury time before Camp produced another stop to thwart Lita right at the death.

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China Premier Wen Jiabao says universe risks double-dip recession

Leo Lewis, Middle East Business Correspondent & , : {}

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, sealed the National Peoples Congress event currently with grave warnings that the tellurian economy risked plunging in to double-dip retrogression and that China itself faced a difficult year.

Mr Wens note of warning for the tellurian economy was formed on the still high state of stagnation in most of the markets that buy Chinese exports. Sovereign debt problems and sell rate instability, he said, combined the risk that the universe economy could decrease behind in to a second recessionary downturn.

His discuss enclosed an assertive counterclaim of Beijings promissory note process the puncture preference done at the tallness of the monetary predicament to re-peg the yuan and stop the solid high regard opposite the dollar that began in 2005.

That on all sides has been heavily criticised in Washington and blamed by a little for suppressing liberation in alternative vital economies. In a brief come-back of those charges, Mr Wen pronounced that finger-pointing vigour from alternative nations was to be opposed, could proportion to protectionism and that China was essentially a believer of free trade.

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I dont think the yuan is undervalued, pronounced Mr Wen, who afterwards took target at Washington.

America, he said, should take petrify stairs to encourage investors about the security of dollar assets. China is a large hilt of US treasuries, with a store of at slightest $894 billion (588 billion) at the finish of December.

The comments on the yuan will stoke an increasingly exhilarated discuss inside of monetary markets over when Beijing will disencumber the currencys brace to the US dollar.

Mark Williams, arch China economist at Capital Economics, is in between a series of observers who envision that impulse will come in the center of this year. Economists at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch referred to that todays discuss was a pointer that China would conflict revaluation for the subsequent couple of months.

Mr Wens bearish remarks on the tellurian economy come between a rising clarity of confusion in a little buliding over the state of China itself. It is the key motorist of tellurian commodity prices, staid to pass Japan as the worlds second largest after this year but rife, a little suggest, with intensity sources of made at home trouble.

Although Chinese mercantile expansion has returned to pre-crisis levels, questions have been lifted over the sustainability of the liberation when supervision impulse measures are withdrawn.

Notes of warning have additionally been sounded over origin skill and alternative item froth that have grown in a little cities.

Mr Wen pronounced that the multiple of inflation, a still far-reaching cove in between abounding and bad and determined central crime were intensity sources of instability in China. They even represented probable threats to the Communist Partys hold on power, he added.

One vital area of regard in between tellurian economists is the jot down 9.59 trillion yuan of new loans lengthened by Chinas promissory note zone in 2009 a turn of credit origination that takes China in to untrodden areas of economics and that a little hold sets the compound on a monetary time bomb.

Analysts at Citigroup warned that internal supervision debt in China had been authorised to turn out of carry out in new months and that the countrys rare spend extravagantly of stimulatory bank lending in 2009 competence furnish a $350 billion towering of bad loans. One foresee suggests the probability of a large bailout of Chinese banks in entrance years.

That sort of prophecy might be premature, pronounced Andy Rothman, arch China economist at the investment organisation CLSA. There is a critical internal supervision debt complaint in China. But as in the box of alternative long-term constructional problems such as unfunded grant liabilities, the sourroundings and corruption, internal debt is rarely doubtful to beget a near-term predicament for Chinas promissory note complement or mercantile health, he said.

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Desperate mom killed drug drug dependant son

Dan McDougall in Cape Town & , : {}

As dark falls in Lavender Hill, it is time for the lawabiding to censor indoors.

Here in the Cape Flats, an area of grave housing estates only twenty mins from downtown Cape Town, drug gangs order the streets.

According to Rob Young, the arch of police, drug comment for 80% of aroused crime in the city. In South Africa there is a attempted murder each twenty-five minutes.

The drug widespread is pulling relatives to take unfortunate measures. In the box of Ellen Pakkies, 52, it led her to kill her own son as he lay in a drug-induced stupor.

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For 7 years Abbie Pakkies, an addict, had attacked and terrorised his mom at her home in Lavender Hill. She was forced to waken her residence with iron bars to keep him out. Killing her son, she said, was simply receiving behind her own life. Her movement has finished her a manly pitch of South Africas drug crisis.

Her son proposed smoking dagga (the internal name for a manly aria of marijuana) at eleven and by the time he was fourteen had forsaken out of propagandize and clinging himself to a new drug, methamphetamine, well known in the West as clear meth and in South Africa as tik. It has turn the flay of Cape Town.

Drugs are receiving afar a era here, some-more than anywhere on earth. And we cant censure apartheid. These immature kids never knew it, pronounced Pakkies as we sat in her kitchen.

On the travel dilemma confronting her terraced home, the internal tik play had set up shop. Each handshake he creates counts as a sale. In less than 10 mins I counted some-more than 70 deals. Ive built a enclosure around myself to keep them out, she said.

A decade ago the Western Cape had fewer than 12,000 tik users. Today there are estimated to be 120,000.

Describing the preference to kill her own strength and blood, she removed Abbie, 20, screaming and outcast in the back yard for income to buy tik, prior to he upheld out.

This time Pakkies abandoned his screams. The last of her clothes, together with her underwear, had dead sole by Abbie for drugs.

She had taken to carrying her superfluous belongings, a couple of ornaments and what was left of her clothes, to work in dual cosmetic bags similar to a vagrant.

A week progressing her son had lunged at her with a span of scissors. She had since in, throwing the last of her salary down at his feet in sell for her life. She was afterwards forced to go hungry.

She removed his genocide in clinical detail. Entering Abbies shed outward her residence she beheld a thin square of white rope. She scored equally it in to a knot and slipped it over his neck, as he lay hardly conscious. She told him: Abbie, because dont you conclude what I do for you?

Mammie, Im going to, the kid replied in a handicapped voice that tailed off.

She could no longer listen to him. No, Ive left and had sufficient of that, she said. Pakkies pulled the knot on her sons throat so parsimonious that it cut the skin. Her kid was gone.

What she did subsequent astounded her. I went to work, she said. I was a supporter in an old peoples home. I sat on the sight in my last span of trousers with no underwear. By the time I arrived at the caring home I pennyless down and told an old woman what Id done. She hold me and pronounced I contingency hit the police.

Her box took roughly fifteen months to come to justice and in Dec 2008 Pakkies pleaded guilty to manslaughter. She was condemned to a three-year jail term, dangling for 3 years, and 280 hours of village service.

In new months Pakkies has proposed vocalization about her ordeal. She has since a speak at Pollsmoor, South Africas majority scandalous prison. Her suffering, she claims, seems to set upon a chord with immature offenders.

This tik widespread is out of control. It has changed on significantly, even from the time when someone competence bluster you with a gun or blade and direct you palm over the cash. Now it seems theyll gash or fire you anyway, pronounced Ivor Nober, the headmaster of Levana first propagandize in Lavender Hill.

Nober was not long ago forced to learn immature kids how to steep and hurl to equivocate bullets, after a territory fight pennyless out in between drug gangs, heading to visit gun battles in his playground.

For Pakkies the smell of Cape lavender will regularly remind her of her infant son. Before she put him to bed she used to massage him down with a mix of olive oil and rooi laventel, a lavender remedy, to ease him.

He was, she said, a pleasing present from God: We grew up in tough times as apartheid was fought to a sour end. But afterwards came Abbie, my resplendent light. He was a still baby, a great baby. He gave me so most happiness and I desired him.

Dan McDougalls Panorama documentary More Than Just a Game will be on BBC1 tomorrow at 8.30pm

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Severn surfers float once-a-decade tidal call

Nico Hines & , : {}

A once-in-a-decade tidal call surged down the River Severn yesterday carrying a society of surfers relishing the singular healthy phenomenon.

The Environment Agency personal the call as a top-rated five star eventuality on the widen of stream that boasts the second top waves in the world.

Joanne Hillman, of the British Surfing Association, pronounced house enthusiasts had been competing to take the longest float on the Severn Bore given the 1960s.

Its flattering dangerous with trees and waste in the H2O so usually learned surfers take on the Bore, she told The Times.

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It contingency be one of the toughest surfing hurdles in the universe since they key is to float the call for miles. Most surfers would onslaught to last the distance.

Steve King, a father of 3 from Saul, nearby Gloucester, mastered the Bore in 2006 to recover the Guinness World Record for Britain by staying on his house in the Severn bay for 7.6 miles.

He snatched behind the pretension from Serginho Laus, a Brazilian, who had surfed for 6.3 miles along the Araguari stream in northern Brazil.

Mr Kings attainment was achieved in an typical year on the Severn where usually four-star tidal waves were recorded. A surge the distance of todays wave, around dual metres high, was last available on Saturday Mar 30, 2002.

A mouthpiece for the Environment Agency pronounced the majority absolute waves were seen rounded off once each ten years. The materialisation is caused by the flue figure of the estuary, that narrows as it moves internal from the Bristol Channel thereby forcing the H2O turn to rise.

Large open tides come a integrate of times a year but when Atlantic tidal levels mix with the right stream conditions you have these some-more absolute Bores, she said.

The Bay of Fundy, located in in between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in Canada is the usually place in the universe to have available a incomparable climb in in between low and high tide. On the Severn the disproportion in any one day can be some-more than 14.5 metres.

England fans should not spin a play in to a crisis

Patrick Barclay, Chief Football Commentator & , : {}

World Cup insanity I love it. I love it all, together with the photographs of Englands domicile in a state of dearth or unreadiness, and was gay to see the convention being confirmed this week; some-more tastefully than in 1982, when the majority vivid picture was of a passed dog on a beach nearby Bilbao.

Of course, no dog would be seen passed in the Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus as it is now, let alone the customers of monarchs pragmatic by the name, but a stately mutation is betrothed by early Jun and we have no reason to disbelief it. Fabio Capello positively seemed happy enough. At slightest until the England physical education instructor detected that he would have to find someone for Wayne Bridges room.

Before we go any farther, let it be ostensible that Bridges preference to repel from the World Cup finals was for him alone. Because of the prudent march directed by Capello, who deprived John Terry of the captaincy whilst maintaining him in the team, it was regularly going to be a wily one for the Manchester City left behind and should simply be ostensible and respected, not carefully thought about for flaws.

What it means, in football terms, is that a daze has been removed, or at slightest diminished. The withdraw side, an enlarge in the stress turn over Ashley Coles ankle and matrimony fractures, is marginal.

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Bridges significance as a emissary has been farfetched for thespian effect, but Cole is the majority appropriate left behind in the universe and but him no make a difference who transposed him Englands chances of apropos champions would be reduced.

And thats it. The rest of the ostensible England damage predicament is usually World Cup mania, a strangely English form of it, a rather in contact with melancholy about all that happens in propinquity to the tournament, great or bad. It is manifested in contention of chastisement shoot-outs. Everyone thinks that England teams are firm to lose them, as if no alternative nation ever did. No one mentions the law of averages.

Anything to do with fitness is means for consternation. If Rio Ferdinand misses a couple of matches for Manchester United with behind trouble, Englands counterclaim has collapsed. If Wayne Rooney displays the form and fitness of Superman, this is even some-more worrying in conditions of the conflict for certainly he will be burnt out by June.

To lay that one to rest, stop 2002, when a long, tough deteriorate culminating in the Champions League last and there were no fewer than twelve organisation matches in those days did not forestall Roberto Carlos, of Real Madrid, and Lúcio, of Bayer Leverkusen, from winning the World Cup last with Brazil. Nor were the likes of Bernd Schneider and Carsten Ramelow as well sap to reach the last with Germany.

Rooney never looks tired. He is display each pointer of completing his growth in to Englands Maradona. I contend that not in the technical clarity it is not satisfactory to review any one to Diego Maradona but since Rooney, too, appears usually as well peaceful to run himself in to the belligerent for the cause.

Also, Capello is propitious that Rooneys bar manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, pays such courtesy to the charge of energy. As and when Rooney needs to be complacent and rested by United, he will be. That was piece of the reason Ferguson intent Michael Owen.

Ferdinand is different: older, less compress in figure and expected to great (although it competence appear inhuman to contend so) from the complaint that will keep him out of Englands accessible compare with Egypt on Wednesday.

United design him to lapse towards the finish of the month and, if his behind proves docile thereafter, he should be in rise condition for the World Cup. Only if the difficulty recurs will he figure in any crisis.

Another who should be brighter at the World Cup for an enforced rest is Glen Johnson, a Liverpool absentee at present. The same relates to Aaron Lennon and, perhaps, Joe Cole, whilst Martin ONeills provident make use of of Emile Heskey at Aston Villa should assistance the warhorse to lift a trot in South Africa. We contingency pretence that Capello is to keep the 4-2-3-1 figure with that England qualified, rather than bearing Rooney to the front, where he has been you do so well for United.

All in all, there is less to be concerned about than you competence think. But all the wringing of hands is no bad thing if it keeps the together vigour of expectancy at bay. Capello will have remarkable it with approval.

Gloom can be put to great effect, as I detected on the opening day of the 2004 European Championship in Portugal. A obvious pundit from a sure country, asked how his group would fare, wailed: Help! Various players are fighting with each alternative and majority have had problems with their clubs. Just let us have 3 important defeats and go home. Yet Greece won it.

Legally Blonde is a melodramatic manoeuvre Peter Bradshaw Film

Blonde ambitions … Sheridan Smith (second from left) and Amy Lennox in Legally Blonde at the Savoy Theatre. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

A integrate of nights ago, carrying initial consulted the examination by my co-worker Michael Billington, I went to see the new entertainment low-pitched version of the movie Legally Blonde, that is removing marvellous notices and great word-of-mouth. This British entertainment show is in all rumoured to be not only improved than the American Broadway show from that it sprang, but improved and some-more beguiling than the movie itself, that starred Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, the drunken nonetheless razor-sharp blonde who gets in to Harvard Law School with the purpose of snaring a immature man – and finds that, improbably, she is a authorised whiz.

Now, I have sat by a small flattering lifeless entertainment versions of important drive-in entertainment – the horrible When Harry Met Sally comes to mind – and I was a small sceptical.

But Legally Blonde unequivocally is such outrageously great fun that all worries evaporate. It might have something to do with it being British, and the actuality that British actors are cheerfully pastiching the black of American prestige. The primarily womanlike assembly whooped madly at each coming of Duncan James – that is, Duncan from Blue – personification the caddish child who has unsuccessful to introduce matrimony to Elle. But even this was piece of the enjoyably stay Rocky-Horror-Show vibe, that the movie, though ideally excusable in the way, could not provide. Then there were the songs. Perhaps, similar to Hairspray and The Producers, Legally Blonde will turn the own movie-musical remake.

There was an additional frisson to this entertainment show that the movie couldn"t match. On the night I went, the star Sheridan Smith could not go on, due to a "sudden indisposition". This was dramatically voiced by the producer, who appeared in front of the fate only prior to the show began. The student was Amy Lennox, who each alternative night had to calm herself with a small role. The poke of beating was transposed by genuine play and fascination. How would Amy Lennox do? Had she unequivocally been doggedly keeping the total lead piece uninformed in her head, rehearsing and re-rehearsing, holding herself in willingness for this moment? What was the ambience similar to in her sauce room now? At what entertainment in the afternoon would Sheridan Smith have done the preference not to go on? Presumably, she would have indispensable to give her deputy a possibility to run by the complete show at slightest once prior to curtain-up — or may be there was no time. And how contingency Sheridan herself be feeling all the approach by the evening?

In his letter Theatre and Cinema, Andre Bazin wrote, "The shade has no backstage." In a film, the characters vanish once they have left the screen, and we accept it. But the teeming, stroke backstage hold up of the entertainment was never so clear as on the night I went to see Legally Blonde. The eventuality had this fizzing extra-textual hold up that the cinema, I have to say, does not have. Amy Lennox had a couple of rootless dress moments, but she was a triumph. A star was born. And, luvvy-ish though it fundamentally sounds, it was unfit not to be held up in the celebratory atmosphere.

There was something else too. Watching the entertainment Legally Blonde so shortly after examination Pretty Woman for the rerelease done for an engaging comparison. When Julia Roberts"s impression is flustered by nasty emporium assistants on Rodeo Drive, she needs a abounding man to strike behind on her behalf. But when a byotch of a sales partner tries to palm Elle off with last season"s past-it merchandise, Elle sees by this pretence and neatly insists on the genuine thing: Elle creates Julia Roberts see similar to a genuine wuss.

So there you are. Sometimes the entertainment experience of a movie unequivocally is an improvement.