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

FDA Approves New Breast Cancer Treatment

A drug currently prescribed to combat advanced breast cancer can now be used to help prevent the disease from recurring in women who have been treated for early forms of the disease, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled Friday.

Letrozole, brand name Femara, can now be prescribed for postmenopausal women who have finished five years of treatment with tamoxifen.

Tamoxifen blocks estrogen -- a hormone responsible for the growth of many breast cancers and can prompt a dormant cancer to begin growing again -- from connecting to cells. But the body can become resistant to tamoxifen after five years or so. Doctors had no follow-up therapy -- until now. Letrozole also blocks the effects of estrogen, according to the Associated Press.

The drug offers a new treatment option for about 100,000 women each year who complete tamoxifen therapy, said Dr. Diane Young, a vice president with Novartis Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the drug. The company said the daily tablet costs about $210 a month, the AP reported.

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More Safety Data Sought on Vioxx Successor

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told the maker of Vioxx, the painkiller pulled from the shelves last month because it was linked to heart trouble, that it must submit more data on the safety and effectiveness of a similar drug.

Merck & Co., Inc., announced Friday that the FDA is seeking new information on the Vioxx successor, called Arcoxia, in light of the recall of Vioxx, the Associated Press reported. Both drugs belong to a relatively new class of stomach-friendly painkillers called cox-2 inhibitors.

One analyst told the AP that the government will probably require further testing on the drug, which won't be sold in the United States for several years. It is available in 48 countries, according to the wire service.

"We continue to believe that Arcoxia has the potential to become a valuable treatment option for many Americans with arthritis and pain," Raymond V. Gilmartin, Merck's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

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Study Explores Link Between Power Lines, Childhood Leukemia

Children living near high-voltage power cables may have double the risk of developing leukemia, a new British study suggests. However, the researchers cautioned that they weren't able to find a definitive link between the cables and the disease, The Times of London reported Saturday.

The seven-year study by England's Department of Health indicated that children living within 100 meters of high-voltage electricity cables were more likely to suffer from leukemia.

A total of 70,000 children under 15 years of age were studied as part of the research, done by the Childhood Cancer Research Group at Oxford University. Half of the children had cancer, the newspaper reported.

The scientists concluded that, for a small number of the children with the disease, high-voltage electricity may have been a factor in their illness. But other factors, including chance, could account for the finding, the researchers said.

Some previous research had suggested that power lines might be to blame for 20 to 30 of the 500 cases of childhood leukemia in England each year, said lead researcher Dr. Gerald Draper. But his new study said the number might be far smaller.

"The findings have been surprising," Draper told The Times. "It has made us want to figure out whether power lines might be to blame. But I feel we have not yet found out conclusively that that is the case."

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Memory Loss Tied to Pulled Teeth

You may be losing more than a bit of your bite when the dentist pulls one of your teeth. You may also be forfeiting some memory.

A Swedish study of 1,962 people compared the memories of those who had lost all their teeth and wore dentures with those who still had teeth.

"When people have no teeth their memories are clearly worse than when they have teeth," researcher Jan Bergdahl, associate professor of psychology at Umeaa University, told Agence France-Presse.

While previous studies on rats and monkeys found a link between teeth and memory, this is the first large-scale study on humans to find the same association.

"Teeth appear to be of the utmost importance to our memories," Bergdahl said.

He and his colleagues don't know how much impact the loss of a single tooth may have on memory. They plan to investigate how many teeth a person needs to lose before their memory is affected, and how tooth decay and tooth implants affect memory loss, the AFP reported.

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Stress Leads to Forgetfulness: Yale Study

You're less likely to remember important tasks when you're stressed out, Yale Medical School researchers confirm.

While this may come as little surprise to busy moms, business executives and college students, the scientists now have an explanation. Stressful situations over which a person has no control appear to activate a brain enzyme called protein kinase C (PKC), which affects the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is responsible for short-term memory and is a factor in conditions including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

By affecting the executive-decision part of the brain, PKC could be a factor in causing the impulsiveness and impaired judgment that characterize those conditions, according to an Associated Press account of the journal report.

PKC appears to target memory that is constantly updated as conditions change, said study leader Dr. Amy Arnsten. "This kind of memory, the ability to concentrate, seems to be impaired when exposed to [even] mild stresses," she told the wire service.

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Group Renews Call for Withdrawal of Cholesterol Drug

A leading consumer watchdog group issued a new warning Friday about the cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor, alleging that patients who use it are 75 times likelier to suffer kidney damage than are patients using any other statin.

Public Citizen has been urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to pull Crestor off the shelves, and contended that the drug was dangerous even before it won FDA approval last year.

Its latest analysis found that the rate of reports to the FDA of acute renal failure or renal insufficiency in patients using Crestor is approximately 75 times higher than the rate for all other statin drugs put together.

"It becomes clearer by the day that this drug is uniquely toxic but offers no unique benefit, and must be removed from the market," Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, wrote in a letter to the FDA. The FDA and Crestor's maker, AstraZeneca, contend that the drug is safe.

Last Updated: Nov-01-2004