WEDNESDAY, Dec. 31 (HealthDayNews) -- Although SARS grabbed the global headlines this year by ruthlessly claiming hundreds of lives in Asia and Canada, the year's most troubling health-care news in the United States was actually staring most people in the face: More Americans than ever are so overweight that they are putting their lives at risk.
That was the conclusion of the annual summary of the nation's
health from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The numbers
show that while people are living longer, they are carrying around more baggage with them. Almost one in three (31 percent) of the population is now obese, double the rate of the late 1970s. Among children, those who are overweight more than doubled, from 7 percent to 15 percent. Not surprisingly, one in seven American adults, or 29 million, now suffer from diabetes or are well on their way toward the blood sugar disease.
Is it any wonder? A report in the Journal of the American Medical
Association leaves little doubt as to the root cause of the expanding
problem: "Between 1977 and 1996, food portion sizes increased both inside
and outside the home for all (food) categories except pizza," it says.
Here are all the details on how much food Americans are plunking down on their plates these days.
Obesity might have been the top health story in 2003, if only for the
sheer number of persons affected by it. But it was by no means the only health story with long-range consequences.
The viral respiratory disease from Asia known as SARS caused havoc both in terms of health and economics in some of the two dozen countries it ravaged. The image of street crowds and travelers wearing surgical masks in Beijing, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Singapore and even Toronto is a lingering hallmark of the deadly disease, which sickened more than 8,000 people and killed 774 in a seven-month span. This story sums up all that scientists have discovered about SARS since its appearance.
Health policy was also in the forefront of the news as Congress shook off years of contentious debate to narrowly pass a radical enlargement of the Medicare program. For the first time, the elderly will get a prescription-drug benefit. The move came as federal regulators scrambled to find a way to deal with the growing tendency of Americans to buy drugs on the Internet and from Canada, where they are cheaper.
The great rush north for less expensive prescription medicines is only a part of the overall drug story. Even though some relief is possible from the new Medicare rules, the effect of the shift in health care away from surgery and other procedures to a reliance on expensive pharmaceuticals to treat chronic conditions such as arthritis and heart disease shows no sign of slowing
down. Indeed, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine documented how changes in prescription drug insurance plans have
forced some to stop taking
their prescribed medicines.
And that would be a shame, as news continually comes of yet another
promising pharmaceutical development. Last year, researchers halted a major
international trial of letrozole, part of a new class of breast-cancer drugs called aromatase inhibitors, because the results were so promising. Tamoxifen has been a great success for women who have
estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer, but its benefits cease after five years. Letrozole could be an effective alternative for the many women who suffer recurrences of their cancers after five years. This story sifts through the implications of Letrozole.
In yet another promising medical advance, researchers also reported a
number of encouraging, albeit incremental, developments in the battle
against Alzheimer's disease. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee recommended approval of memantine, a drug which seems to slow progression of moderate and severe Alzheimer's by blocking the overproduction of a brain chemical called glutanate. Other drugs used to treat Alzheimer's attack the disease by boosting levels of another brain chemical, acetycholine. Researchers believe the two medications could one day be used in concert to treat the the mind-robbing disease.
The prognosis for AIDS treatments was less optimistic, however, as the nation
paused to note World AIDS Day. After a disappointing year of research
findings, scientists are a little closer to developing a vaccine for the deadly disease. In the meantime, health officials have learned what
combination of drugs provides the best therapy for those who have HIV, the
virus that causes AIDS. Read about the elusive search for a vaccine.
While stymied by such ravaging diseases as AIDS, the medical community
can take some comfort from continuing progress against the U.S.'s No. 1
killer -- heart disease. And researchers learned again this year that often the
simplest answers are the best ones. Angioplasty, in which a tiny balloon is
threaded into an artery to clear it out, trumps clot-busting drugs for
those suffering a heart attack. The only problem? Not every hospital is
equipped to perform one, and time is of the essence. The best advice is to get to the hospital as fast as possible.
No such simple answer exists for women considering hormone replacement therapy. Studies seem to indicate the drugs used in women who are menopausal are OK, but only in the short term. The analysis follows a well-publicized 2002 study that was halted after menopausal and postmenopausal women taking a combination estrogen and progestin therapy recorded an increased risk of breast cancer, strokes and blood clots. That left many women, who had been told to continue such therapy for life, confused and scared.
In the wake of the study's findings, doctors scrambled to rewrite the
rules on dealing with the symptoms of menopause, including hot flashes and
night sweats. Here's the latest research on hormone replacement therapy.
Meanwhile, there was some clarification about an age-old concern for the 1.5 million Americans with peanut allergies. It turns out the peanut is not to blame. Rather, it is an abnormal response of the person's immune system, British researchers found. What's more, there was news of an
experimental medication, called TNX-901, which raised the amount of peanuts that would have to be eaten to trigger an allergic response.
Whatever the medical news in 2003, some decisions and discoveries just
don't sit well with some folks. The FDA, in particular, annoyed and angered
some with a series of controversial decisions. Among them: approval of silicone breast implants, which were banned in 1992 following reports of rupture and associated unspecified immune-system diseases; and a preliminary ruling that cloned animals are safe to eat.
And in the final hours of the year, the agency moved to ban ephedra, the herbal weight-loss supplement linked to more than 150 deaths. The announcement was greeted with criticism for not having been done sooner.
