New Study Finds Strawberries may Slow Precancerous Growth in Esophagus

  • Author: Health Informer
  • Filed under: Health News
  • Date: Apr 7,2011

A new study by The Ohio State University suggests strawberries may help prevent human esophageal cancer. This news comes at a time when, according to the American Cancer Society, more than 16,000 new cases of the disease will be diagnosed in the United States this year.

According to lead researcher, Tong Chen, M.D., Ph.D., strawberries may help protect those at risk of esophageal cancer. This study builds on previously published research by Chen and colleagues in China, who found that freeze-dried strawberries significantly inhibited tumor development.

These results were presented at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Orlando, Florida. This study examining the beneficial impact of strawberries on cancer prevention was funded by the California Strawberry Commission.

Researchers from The Ohio State University are also investigating the effects of strawberries on reducing inflammation-associated colorectal cancer. Read the rest of this entry »


Mayo Clinic, Geisinger, Kaiser Permanente, Intermountain Healthcare, and Group Health Announce Plan to Securely Share Patient-Specific Data Through Care Connectivity Consortium

Five innovative and leading health systems, each of whom are pioneers in the use of electronic medical records for their patients, joined together to announce a new initiative to securely exchange electronic health data, with the first data exchange planned in the next year.

Electronic medical information is one of the most important care support tools available in world health care today. That tool works much better when the caregivers for a single patient can connect electronically. These leading care systems have created the Care Connectivity Consortium to pioneer the effective connectivity of electronic patient information in an approach that protects patient confidentiality.

Collectively bringing together both the latest technology and a shared mission to deliver patient-centered high-value health care to the citizens of this nation, Geisinger Health System (PA), Kaiser Permanente (CA), Mayo Clinic (MN), Intermountain Healthcare (UT), and Group Health Cooperative (WA) today announced the creation of an interoperability consortium. The consortium will utilize standards-based health information technology to share data about patients electronically.

“Five of the nation’s premier health care providers have decided to form this consortium to help lead the health care discussion in this country with this unprecedented health IT collaboration created to deliver high-quality, patient-centered care,” said Glenn Steele, Jr., MD, PhD, president and chief executive officer, Geisinger Health System.

The goal of the consortium is to demonstrate better and safer care with better data availability. Patients will benefit. If a patient from one system gets sick far from home and must receive health care in another system — or if any system sends patients to another — doctors and nurses at each of the consortium systems will be able to easily and quickly access invaluable information about the patient’s medications, allergies, and health conditions, allowing them to provide the right kind of treatment at the right time and avoid unintended consequences like adverse medication interactions. Read the rest of this entry »


Consumers can search for food and other product recalls easier and quicker on FDA’s website than previously. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) signed into law in January by President Obama called for a more consumer-friendly recall search engine.

To provide greater ease of use for consumers, the search results provide data from news releases and other recall announcements in the form of a table. That table organizes information from news releases on recalls since 2009 by date, product brand name, product description, reason for the recall and the recalling firm.

The table also provides a link to the news release on each recall for more detailed information. The news releases were chosen as the source of information for the table because they provide the most up-to-date and user friendly information about any recall.

The new display of the search results is markedly different from the previous display, which provided links in a scroll-down format.

Under FSMA, FDA was required to provide a consumer-friendly recall search engine within 90 days after the law went into effect. Further, for recalls conducted under FSMA, it requires FDA to indicate whether the recall is ongoing or completed. Prior to passage of FSMA, FDA did not have mandatory recall authority for food and feed products other than infant formula.

“Recalls, mandatory or otherwise, are serious and we must do everything possible to make it easier for people to know about these recalls so they can take all appropriate steps to protect themselves and their families,” said Mike Taylor, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods. “We encourage people to check out our new recalls search page for themselves, and use it whenever they have a question about a recall.” Read the rest of this entry »


Promising new research reveals a potentially highly effective treatment for heterotopic ossification (HO), a painful and often debilitating abnormal buildup of bone tissue. HO comes in two main forms—one that appears in children and is congenital, another that strikes wounded military personnel and surgery patients and is triggered by severe injuries and wounds.

An animal study by developmental biologists shows that a drug that interrupts a signaling-nuclear protein pathway can prevent HO. The study appeared online today in Nature Medicine.

“There are currently no effective treatments for this disease,” said study leaders Masahiro Iwamoto, D.D.S., Ph.D., and Maurizio Pacifici, Ph.D., developmental biologists in the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Surgeons can remove the abnormal bone masses, but surgery itself may trigger more of those growths.”

Calling the work an “elegant study,” Frederick Kaplan, M.D., said that it “addresses a vast unmet need in clinical medicine.” Kaplan, the Isaac & Rose Nassau Professor of Orthopaedic Molecular Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who wrote a commentary on the research in the same issue of Nature Medicine, added that the study “provides great hope, insight and direction for the development of effective medications to prevent and treat catastrophic extraskeletal bone formation.”

Iwamoto and Pacifici recently came to Children’s Hospital from Thomas Jefferson University, where they performed the study. Pacifici holds the new Bong Lee Endowed Chair in Pediatric Orthopaedics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he is director of Orthopaedic Research. Read the rest of this entry »


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