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

Report: Swimming Pools Harbor Unwelcome Germs

Many public pools in the United States are breeding grounds for germs, causing a growing number of Americans to get sick each year.

Reports of pool-related germ outbreaks -- causing primarily bouts of diarrhea -- rose from two in 1986 to 21 in 2000, according to the most recent federal statistics. While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't track how many people were affected in those outbreaks, it does know that most of the 16,800 confirmed illnesses in the 1990s linked to outbreaks in recreational waters occurred in swimming pools and spas, according to the Associated Press.

"There are definitely a lot more cases that are not being reported. We believe some of the biggest outbreaks are in pools," said Michael Beach, an epidemiologist with the CDC's Division of Parasitic Diseases.

Federal health officials ask that pool operators and swimmers do more to prevent the spread of disease. Recommended steps include regular water inspections. And swimmers are urged to stay out of a pool if they have diarrhea, the AP said.

Contaminated pools can harbor a host of water-borne illnesses, including giardia, E. coli, shigella, and cryptosporidium, Joan Rose, a microbiologist at Michigan State University, told the news service.

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Many Heart Patients Don't Get Drugs They Need

Potentially lifesaving drugs to treat heart failure aren't being prescribed often enough, a new study finds.

Nearly one-third of heart-failure patients aren't getting angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and therefore face a higher risk of dying, according to the study in the Aug. 3 issue of Circulation.

Clinical trials have demonstrated the benefits of ACE inhibitors, which work by blocking the effects of angiotensin, an enzyme that causes blood vessels to tighten. ACE inhibitors relax blood vessels, lowering blood pressure and increasing the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart.

To gauge how well clinical trial results were being translated into practice, the study authors looked at records on 17,456 Medicare patients who had heart failure and left ventricular systolic dysfunction. The people were treated either during the period April 1998 to March 1999 or July 2000 to June 2001, according to HealthDay.

Sixty-eight percent of the patients were discharged from a hospital with a prescription for an ACE inhibitor, meaning 32 percent were sent home without a prescription, the study found.

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FDA Approves New AIDS Drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Monday the approval of two "fixed-dose combination drug treatments" for HIV/AIDS.

HIV/AIDS therapy generally requires simultaneous use of three or more drugs from different classes. Combination products bring together different HIV/AIDS drugs in a single medication or co-package, and help make treatment regimens less complicated for patients to follow, the FDA said.

The new drug treatments are Epzicom (abacavir/lamivudine), manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline; and Truvada (tenofovir disoproxil/emtricitabine), which is made by Gilead Sciences, Inc., the agency said.

"Simplifying treatment regimens by reducing the number of pills and times per day patients need to take them provides significant public health benefits," said Dr. Lester M. Crawford, acting FDA Commissioner.

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Cholesterol Drug OK'd for Preventing Heart Attacks

Pfizer Inc.'s cholesterol drug Lipitor has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reduce a person's risk of heart attack, the company announced Monday.

Until now, the company was limited to marketing the top-selling drug as a way to lower high cholesterol. The FDA's action means Lipitor can also be prescribed to reduce the risk of heart attack in people with fairly normal cholesterol levels, but with other risk factors for heart disease like family history, smoking, diabetes, and obesity, Pfizer said in a statement.

The FDA based its decision on trials involving more than 10,300 people with normal or borderline cholesterol levels. Lipitor users' risk of heart attack fell 36 percent, compared to those who took a nonmedicinal placebo, Pfizer said. Because of the significant benefits seen, the trials were halted two years early, the company added.

The new approval also allows the medication to be marketed as a way to reduce angina (chest pain) and to lower the need for artery-opening procedures like balloon angioplasty.

Lipitor is among a class of drugs called statins, which include competing medications like Merck's Zocor and Bristol-Myers Squibb's Pravachol. Both have been sold on their power to cut the risk of heart attack for almost 10 years, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Apple Founder Steve Jobs Has Pancreatic Cancer

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, Inc., and Pixar Animation Studios, says he's had a cancerous tumor of the pancreas removed.

In an e-mail to employees, Jobs, 49, said he's taking the month of August to recuperate, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. According to the newspaper, Jobs told his colleagues that he had a rare but treatable cancer, which he identified as an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.

The e-mail went on to say that, if diagnosed in time, this form of pancreatic cancer represented 1 percent of total cases of the disease. He said his cancer was curable by surgical removal "without the need for chemotherapy or radiation treatment." Doctors caught the tumor in its early stages, he said.

Some 2,500 pancreatic islet cell tumors are diagnosed in the United States each year, according to University of Southern California statistics cited by the Chronicle. The tumors tend to be slow-growing and are treatable even have they have spread, according to USC's Center for Pancreatic and Biliary Diseases.

An Apple spokesman wouldn't comment on when or where Jobs's surgery took place, the Chronicle said. Jobs co-founded the company in 1976, but left in 1985 after a corporate dispute. He founded Pixar a year later, has since returned to Apple, and is now the driving force behind both firms, the newspaper reported.

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Fruits and Veggies Shouldn't Dent Wallet, USDA Says

Eating the recommended daily doses of heart-healthy fruits and vegetables shouldn't drain your pocketbook, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which said an individual's daily tab could run as low as 64 cents.

Noting that this figure accounts for 12 percent of daily food spending for the average person, "that leaves 88 percent [of the] food dollar left for the other three food groups," the USDA concluded from a new A.C. Nielsen study.

The research, which looked at how more than 7,100 homes spent their food money in 1999, found that more than 75 percent of fruits and vegetables purchased cost less than 50 cents a serving, according to an Associated Press account of the study.

While that's less than the cost of a small candy bar, the USDA said, only 7 percent of people eat the minimum daily servings of fruits and veggies, recent research has shown.

Last Updated: Aug-02-2004