The gap between male and female life expectancy is closing and men could catch up by 2030 according to research at the Office for National Statistics.Prof Les Mayhew said the difference between the sexes peaked at nearly six years in the 1970s.

Life expectancy is going up all round, but the rates for men are increasing faster. Plummeting smoking rates in men are thought to explain a lot of the change.

Prof Mayhew, a professor of statistics at Cass Business School, analysed life expectancy data in England and Wales. He was working out how long 30-year-olds could expect to live.

His findings show men laguishing far behind for decades, but now starting to get closer to women. If current trends continue, Prof Mayhew predicts, both sexes could, on average, be living to the age of 87 in 2030.

He said: “What’s interesting at the moment is that in the last 20 years or so, male life expectancy at 30 has jumped by about six years and if it jumps by the same amount in the next 20 years it will converge with female life expectancy.”

The reason could be down to men living a healthier lifestyle. “One of the main reasons, I think, is the trend in the prevalence of smoking. Smoking took off after 1920 in the male population and at its high about 80% of males smoked.

“This was reflected in more divergence in the life expectancy, so by the time you get to about 1970 it was at its peak – the difference in life expectancy was about 5.7 years.”

Other factors are thought to be safer, more office-based, jobs. Millions of men used to work in hazardous occupations such as coal mining. Healthcare has meant more men live longer as well. People with heart disease, which is more common in men, can expect to live much longer than they did a few decades ago.

By contrast, women started smoking later than men. Rates of lung cancer are still increasing in women, but are falling fast in men.

A boy and a girl born on the same day will still not have the same life expectancies, as the study looked only at people who had already reached 30. Boys are more likely to die in their first year of life and are more likely to take up dangerous sports or be involved in fatal accidents.

Prostate cancer symptoms are unfortunately difficult to spot in the early stages of growth.Only when the cancer has advanced will symptoms usually appear- which is a bad cancer sign and contributes to the approximately 10,000 deaths in the UK every year.

If you experience any of the following symptoms, you must see a medical professional immediately:

• the prescence of blood in urine and/ or semen
• pain or burning sensation when urinating
• erectile dysfunction (inability to have or sustain an erection)
• uncomfortable or painful ejaculation
• in the upper thighs, hips, or lower back, a frequent pain or stiffness
• a general pain in the prostate area
• a need to urinate frequently, especially at nighttime
• difficulty in urinating, both in starting or holding back
• interrupted or weak flow of urine

There are several Risk Factors associated with Prostate Cancer:

• Age – For men with over fifty years of age, prostate cancer is most common.
• Family history – It is also an important indicator. If you have a close male relative who has suffered or is suffering from the disease, you are twice as probable to be diagnosed with prostate cancer yourself.
• Nationality – Your nationality and racial genetics may also play a part. Studies show, for example, that African-Americans are most at risk, followed by Americans and Europeans. Asians (particularly those that live in the East and Southeast portions of the continent) are the least at risk.
• Lifestyle – Even though, the evidence in often conflicting, in the development of prostate cancer, an individual’s lifestyle, and diet may also play an important part.

At present, while prostate cancer is not an avoidable disease, it can be mitigated by alterations in a person’s food consumption and general way of life.

The most commonly employed method of testing for prostate cancer is a basic prostate exam.

It involves a physician inserting a gloved, lubricated finger into the rectum so that the physician can feel the prostate, which is located a few inches up from the rectum. A healthy prostate feels firm; if prostate cancer is present, the prostate may have hard spots on it.

For those who are squeamish towards this type of testing, an alternative method is sometimes used.

Known as a prostate cancer PSA level test, blood is taken from the patient and screened for prostate-specific-antigen levels.

Prostate-specific-antigens are present in all men, but those with prostate cancer often have a heightened level of the antigen.

Alternatively men with the BRCA1 gene have a one in 11 chance of developing prostate cancer by the age of 65, it was found.

Other tests such as X-rays and bone scans may also be useful in detecting the cancer and determining the extent to which it has spread.

Global efforts to cut the number of deaths from measles have fallen short of World Health Organization (WHO) targets.
An analysis published in the Lancet said deaths had fallen by 74% between 2000 and 2010, but the target was 90%.

Outbreaks in Africa and delays in vaccination programmes in India have stalled progress, researchers say.

A new campaign to tackle the disease has been launched, which will combine measles and rubella jabs.

In 2000 there were 535,300 deaths from measles. This fell to 139,300 deaths in 2010, according to the analysis.

The Measles and Rubella Initiative, a collaboration of international organisations including the WHO, said the decline in measles deaths was strong up to 2007, but measures “faltered” in 2008 and 2009.

This lead to outbreaks in Africa, Asia and even Europe.

Africa and India accounted for a combined total 79% of all deaths from measles between 2000 and 2010.

Measles is a highly infectious viral illness:

• Causes a fever, coughing and distinctive red-brown spots on the skin
• Contracted by breathing in tiny droplets created when an infected person coughs or sneezes
• Possible complications include pneumonia, ear and eye infections, and croup
• Serious complications include inflammation of the brain (encephalitis), which can be fatal
• Infection during pregnancy can cause miscarriage, premature labour or low birth weights

The next target is a 95% drop in deaths from their 2000 levels by 2015.

The new campaign will see the introduction of a vaccine for both measles and rubella.

Women with embarrassing medical problems are misdiagnosing themselves after consulting search engines.

They have bought the wrong medication after misdiagnosing themselves on the internet and one in ten has suffered unpleasant side effects as a result, research suggests.

Half of women have diagnosed themselves online and bought a treatment without checking with pharmacists if it is the correct product.

A similar proportion said they would seek to treat medical problems themselves before consulting doctors.

A quarter said they “dread” speaking to doctors.

The online world is just as bad as the offline world for misleading people with snakeoil potions.

The moral of the story is to make sure that you only deal with professionals who you can trust.

For medical news we suggest only using websites such as Health Direct which are regularly reviewed by independent experts:
This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.
Remember that Dr Google can’t do anything for you, except make you feel bad and paranoid

Dr Google can’t write prescriptions- nor even examine you verbally or in person.

Also, search engines can’t actually think- though they may be programmed very cleverly.

Common sense should prevail online as well as offline.

If your symptoms are bothering you that much, you should go to a qualified practitioner which in the case of medical issues is a GP.

A new treatment for prostate cancer can rid the disease from nine in ten men without debilitating side effects, a study has found, leading to new hope for tens of thousands of men.It is hoped the new treatment, which involves heating only the tumours with a highly focused ultrasound, will mean men can be treated without an overnight stay in hospital and avoiding the distressing side effects associated with current therapies.

A study has found that focal HIFU, high-intensity focused ultrasound, provides the ‘perfect’ outcome of no major side effects and free of cancer 12 months after treatment in nine out of ten cases.

Traditional surgery or radiotherapy can only provide the perfect outcome in half of cases currently.

Experts have said the results are ‘very encouraging’ and were a ‘paradigm’ shift in treatment of the disease.

It is hoped that large scale trials can now begin so the treatment could be offered routinely on the NHS within five years.

A larger trial is already recruiting patients and men interested in the treatment should speak to their cancer doctor or GP about being referrred, experts said.

Prostate cancer is the commonest cancer in men with more than 37,000 diagnoses each year contributing to approximately 10,000 deaths.

Current treatments include surgery to remove the whole prostate or radiotherapy. Both of which can effectively treat the cancer but often cause side effects such as incontinence and impotence.

However in many men prostate cancer will not progress to a life threatening disease meaning that radical treatment risks side effects unnecessarily. For this reason, research is now focused on reducing side effects.

Focal HIFU involves careful selection of tumours, as small as a grain of rice, within the prostate gland and targeting them with highly focused ultrasound to heat them and destroy them.

The advantage over previous HIFU and other treatments is that damage to surrounding tissue is minimised, meaning there are far fewer side effects.

In the study Focal therapy for localised unifocal and multifocal prostate cancer published in the journal Lancet Oncology, 41 men were treated with focal HIFU. After 12 months, none were incontinent and one in ten suffered impotence.

The majority, 95 per cent, were free of cancer after 12 months.

Dr Hashim Ahmed, who led the study at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust andUniversity College London, said: “This changes the paradigm. By focusing just on the areas of cancer we reduce the collateral damage to surrounding tissue.

“Our results are very encouraging. We’re optimistic that men diagnosed with prostate cancer may soon be able to undergo a day case surgical procedure, which can be safely repeated once or twice, to treat their condition with very few side-effects. That could mean a significant improvement in their quality of life.

“This study provides the proof-of-concept we need to develop a much larger trial to look at whether focal therapy is as effective as the current standard treatment in protecting the health of the men treated for prostate cancer in the medium and long term.”

The research programme is led by Professor Mark Emberton, of UCL and UCLH. He said: “Focal therapy offers harm reduction – it is a strategy that attempts to redress the balance of harms and benefits by offering men who place high utility on genito-urinary function an alternative to standard care.

“In fact, the concept is not new – tissue preserving strategies have been used successfully in all other solid organ cancers such as breast cancer by offering women a lumpectomy rather than mastectomy.”

Professor Gillies McKenna, director of the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, said: “Clinical trials, like this one supported by the MRC, are a fantastic tool for telling us whether experimental new treatments are likely to be effective in the clinic.

“If these promising results can be confirmed in a randomised controlled trial, focal therapy could soon become a reasonable treatment choice for prostate cancer alongside other proven effective therapies.”

An investigation has started after figures emerged suggesting that a number of NHS hospital patients in England have been discharged overnight to free up beds.The Times newspaper discovered, via Freedom of Information requests, that 100 NHS trusts sent 239,233 patients home last year between 23:00 and 06:00.

NHS medical director Prof Sir Bruce Keogh said people should be sent home only when it was appropriate and safe.

The paper had contacted 170 NHS trusts in England but only 100 responded.

However, the rates of those discharged varied widely between different hospitals.

The paper reported that some 3.5% of all hospital discharges took place between those hours and this rate had steadily held for the past five years.

On the face of it, it seems shocking that any patients are being discharged at night. The data obtained by The Times suggests this may be happening in 3.5% of cases.

But that needs putting into context. It seems some hospitals are including patients who have died in their figures, while some patients, such as women who have had a baby, may choose to leave at night.

Nonetheless, it is clear there are also many cases of inappropriate discharges.

This reflects the pressure hospitals are under. Admissions to A&E units have been rising for years – and if more people are coming in, more have to leave.

The problem is compounded by the fact hospitals have very little wriggle room. They are supposed to operate at only 85% capacity, but all too often they are closer to 100%.

It means when there is a surge in patients, there is no leeway in the system – and something has to give.

If the remaining 70 trusts discharged their patients at similar rates, this would add up to 400,000 such discharges a year and almost 8,000 a week, the paper added.

Derby Hospitals Foundation Trust sent 8.7% of its patients home overnight but the trust told the Times there may have been a problem with its records.

Others with rates above 7% include the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham and Countess of Chester and University Hospitals of Leicester trusts.

Newcastle Hospitals Foundation Trust and Southend University Hospital Foundation Trust both said they did not discharge patients during the night.

The Times does state that the data is variable and while some hospitals admitted to keeping detailed records, others said they could not guarantee the accuracy of the figures as details were not necessarily recorded accurately.

The paper also adds that some hospitals categorise deaths as “discharges” while others do not.

Surgeons have been warned to stop using a particular type of metal hip implant because it has an “unacceptably” high failure rate.The UK health regulator, the MHRA, said after four years, over 10 percent of the implants needed to be replaced.

An estimated 270 patients in England and Wales have had them fitted.

Surgeons are being advised to closely monitor all affected patients. The implants are no longer being manufactured or distributed.

Hip implants are made up of an artificial cup and head, replacing the original hip joint. They can be made entirely of metal, of ceramic, or of a combination of metal and plastic.

The implants in question are a particular combination of metal cup and metal head- with the brand names Mitch TRC and Accolade.

Surgeons are being advised to stop using them because the National Joint Registry for England and Wales shows a revision rate of 10.7% after four years of implantation, much higher than average.

The advice follows a recent study warning that metal-on-metal total hip replacements fail more frequently than other options.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has already recommended annual checks for people with large head metal-on-metal implants.

It is thought tiny pieces of metal break off implants and leak into the blood. This might cause muscle and bone damage as well as neurological issues.

The clinical director of the MHRA, Dr Susanne Ludgate, said the revision rate for this particular combination of hip implant was unacceptably high.

“That is why we have advised surgeons to stop using this combination and to monitor their patients closely,” she said.  “We have previously taken prompt action in February to investigate safety concerns and provided advice on patient management to relevant healthcare professionals.”

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17590832

The most senior doctor in the NHS is demanding that hospitals have a full complement of doctors at weekends to make the health service more convenient to access as “people get sick seven days a week”.Sir Bruce Keogh, Medical Director of the NHS, criticised the culture in hospitals of only treating emergency cases at the weekend with little or no routine surgery or diagnostic testing done outside normal office hours.

He said the current system ‘lacks compassion’ because patients are forced to wait for investigations or take time off work or arrange childcare in order to be seen.

Studies have shown that patients are around 16 per cent per cent more likely to die if they are admitted to hospital at the weekend due to a lack of senior staff.

His comments come as a survey revealed that four in ten doctors are opposed to hospitals operating a seven-day service saying they would need extra pay to work unsocial hours.

Sir Bruce is attempting to reform NHS hospital working hours by talking to hospital chief executives around the country to identify which services can be opened at the weekend first.

He said: “What other industry shuts down for two and half days a week? People get sick seven days a week, they need help seven days a week.

“I want to get to a position where the NHS is indistinguishable on a Saturday from a Wednesday but we won’t get there overnight.

“Twenty years ago there was a debate about Sunday trading and the situation has changed quite substantially. Now in a secular world, the prime occupation on a Sunday is shopping.

“There is a really powerful moral and professional argument for seven day routine services. It would contribute to people’s lives, to the economy and bring a bit of convenience into healthcare.”

In London alone it is estimated that 500 lives a year could be saved if mortality rates at the weekend matched those in the week.

A poll conducted by the website, Doctors.net, has found that four in ten doctors are opposed to such a move.

A seven day working week would mean senior doctors would have to be paid more for working at the weekend and that services would be reduced in the week when staff needed days off in lieu, they said.

Some claimed the NHS is unable to afford proper staffing for a five-day working week, let alone seven days. Childcare issues were also raised as a major stumbling block to doctors working all week.

Currently hospital wards are staffed mostly by nurses and junior doctors often covering hundreds of patients each with consultants and other senior staff on call from home.

Research commissioned by Sir Bruce found that NHS patients were ten per cent more likely to die if they were admitted on a Saturday compared with a Wednesday and 16 per cent more likely to die if they were admitted on a Sunday.

Not all of the deaths were emergency cases, showing that patients seen routinely were at greater risk too.

Chairman of the British Medical Association’s Consultants Committee, Dr Mark Porter, said: “This snapshot poll reflects consultants’ abiding concern for the quality of patient care. Some patients clearly need acute specialist care on a 24/7 basis with appropriate diagnostic and support teams.

“It may be appropriate for other departments to have an on-call consultant available out-of-hours, rather than having a senior doctor present at all times. Hospitals have to be flexible to patients’ needs.

“This is a complex issue and we need to look at the evidence and determine what works best for different areas of medicine.

“The ongoing cuts in NHS resources at present make a consultant-based service more difficult as the NHS is often at full tilt just covering emergencies at weekends.”

Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians, which has called for weekend working said: “It is good news that doctors are recognising and supporting the need for seven-day working.

“In December 2010, the Royal College of Physicians called for consultant physicians to be available to care for very sick patients at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

“I am worried that patients are still not getting the best care that they deserve at night and at weekends. Too many junior doctors are covering too many very ill patients, and this has to change.

“To support this change, consultants will need diagnostic and other support services, such as radiography and support from junior doctors. We will also need changes to workforce planning and working patterns.

President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Norman Williams, said: “The evidence continues to mount that we need to rethink how surgical care is delivered for patients’ seven-days-a-week. In particular, mortality and complication rates vary widely for patients admitted as emergencies at the weekend.

“In order to address this, clinicians and managers must work together to reconfigure hospital services in a way that strengthens the quality of care given to patients regardless of when they are admitted.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Hospitals-should-operate-seven-days-a-week-NHS-top-doctor

A third of older people are at an increased risk of dying because they do not fully understand the instructions on medicine labels, a study has found.Researchers at University of College London asked almost 8,000 adults over 52 to take part in a test of how well they could read and understand a basic medicines label, for a mocked-up aspirin product.

It comprised of four simple comprehension-style questions, such as ‘What is the maximum number of days you may take this medicine?’ and ‘List three situations for which you should consult a doctor’. The answers were on the bottle’s label.

A third failed to answer all four questions correctly. One in eight got two or more answers wrong.

The academics then followed the health of the volunteers for five years, all of whom were part of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing project. Over that period 621 died.

They found those with poorer literacy – who got more answers wrong – were more likely to have died, the research published in the British Medical Journal found.

Specifically, 16 per cent of those who got two or more answers wrong died, nine per cent of those who got one wrong died, while only six per cent of those who answered all questions correctly did so.

Sophie Bostock, a research associate at UCL’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, said: “You can’t say the higher death rates are due to these people not reading medicines labels – the reasons for them dying early are complex – but poor literacy is certainly an indicator that they are more vulnerable.

“We do think there’s something specific about underlying literacy that has an impact on mortality.”

She noted that failing eyesight and dementia were not reasons for people being unable to read or comprehend the labels, and that the study was designed to examine fundamental literacy.

Despite poor literacy usually being a lifelong, intractable problem, she said there were ways to ensure such people lived longer, by targeting them with campaigns to make them understand their health problems better.

The team’s research chimes with recommendations made by Sir Michael Marmot, a Government advisor on health inequalities. He has said that improving children’s literacy is one of the most powerful ways of bettering public health.

Poor underlying literacy has long been known to be related with premature death, partly because those who fail to develop their reading skills at school are more likely to take up unhealthy habits like smoking and over-eating as adults.

However, there have been few attempts to quantify the scale of the problem or how it impacts on life expectancy.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Misreading-medicine-labels-puts-elderly-at-risk-of-dying

People can significantly reduce their chances of being diagnosed with cancer by taking an aspirin a day for as little as three years, according to new research.The cheap drug not only appears to stop cancers developing in the first place, but also prevents them from spreading to other parts of the body, the new work shows.

Those who start taking low dose (75mg) aspirin daily in their 60s appear to benefit just as much as those who start taking it earlier.

The study Effect of daily aspirin on risk of cancer metastasis published in The Lancet, add to the argument that low dose aspirin should be taken widely from middle-age, said the lead author, Professor Peter Rothwell, of Oxford University’s Stroke Prevention Research Unit.

His team found that taking low dose daily aspirin for between three and five years reduced the chance of being diagnosed with cancer at that time by 19 per cent. Five years or more after starting taking aspirin, the reduction rose to 30 per cent.

He said: “These data do push the argument in favour of taking daily low-dose aspirin, particularly if you have a family history of heart disease or cancer.

“We showed previously that daily aspirin substantially reduces the long-term risk of some cancers, particularly colorectal cancer and oesophageal cancer, but that these effects don’t appear until about eight to 10 years after starting treatment.

“The delay is because aspirin is preventing the very early development of cancers and there is a long delay between this early stage and the eventual clinical presentation with a cancer.

“What we have now shown is that aspirin also has short-term effects, which are manifest after only two to three years.”

The effect was just as marked in those who started taking it after they had turned 60.

The short-term effect appeared to be caused by aspirin slowing the progression of cancer. Another new study showed aspirin almost halved the chances of diagnosed cancer spreading to other organs, over 6.5 years.

Prof Rothwell said: “This is important because it is this process of spread of cancer, or ‘metastasis’, which most commonly kills people with cancer.”

After five years, the chance of having died from cancer if on aspirin was 37 per cent lower.

The findings also raised “the distinct possibility that aspirin will be effective as an additional treatment for cancer – to prevent distant spread of the disease”, he said.

Aspirin has long been hailed for its blood-thinning properties, leading some to argue that it should be prescribed to those who are at a higher risk of heart attack or stroke, even if they have never had one.

However, researchers have been increasingly worried that the benefits of reduced heart attacks and strokes are cancelled out by the raised risk of stomach bleeds, which are occasionally fatal.

But Prof Rothwell said the new research showed that aspirin had a far greater effect on reducing cancer than reducing heart attacks and strokes. Nine out of 10 deaths it prevented were “non-vascular”, according to one of the studies.

Critics of widespread aspirin use point out that it triggers stomach bleeding in some people, which can occasionally be fatal. Even advocates concede it should be used with caution in over 75s.

Prof Rothwell said their studies showed that while aspiring doubled the risk of bleeds in the first three years, after that the risk fell so there was no difference to not taking it. Aspirin also did not increase the risk of fatal bleeds, he said.