From the urological society meeting this week: pomegranate juice for prostate cancer. A phase II clinical trial was reported at the AUA meeting. 48 men were followed for six years. To qualify for the study they had to have rising PSA after initial radiation treatment for prostate cancer. I'm dealing with this exact scenario right now in my practice and the current answer is chemotherapy. Wouldn't it be nice if we could use pomegranate juice instead? The outcome was impressive: the pomegranate juice group had improvment in PSA progression. They only ran the study for six years.

This one caught me off guard: maybe teens who smoke marijuana are actually self-medicating. A study published this week claims that up to 1/3 of marijuana-smoking teens say they do it to mitigate depression anxiety or sleep problems. No word on whether the substance is helpful at all for these problems. Perhaps we have a rationalization for a behavior here? What I believe about medical marijuana is that in general there are "conventional" medications to treat just about every problem it supposedly treats.

Something I didn't realize--autistic kids don't sleep well. Add this to the other difficulties parents of these children face and you have numerous serious disruptions to family life. Looks like melatonin works to improve sleep patterns in these children at least in a small randomized trial. The researchers used a dose of 3mg per day. Now there might be unknown long-term side effects to melatonin supplementation in kids but for families at the end of their rope this might be something to discuss with a pediatrician. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090420/hl_nm/us_melatonin_autistic

Researchers are calling for clinical trials of high-dose IV vitamin C in cancer treatment since the discovery that the supplement reduces cell proliferation in mice independent of an antioxidant effect. This goes against fifty years of theory dating all the way back to Linus Pauling. Turns out the vitamin turns off gene expression in genes critical to cell growth. Who new? This goes back to the T.S. Kuhn concept of science defined by its tools and techniques. When you had ways of measuring things by their oxidation activity you called them antioxidants.

Big surprise: antioxidants don't prevent cancer The list of documented conditions improved by antioxidants remains: chronic pancreatitis. If there are any others I am not aware of them yet.

This is the first documented benefit of antioxidants that I can remember coming across in a long time. If anybody can show me evidence of medical benefits of antioxidants in the mainstream literature I will be happy to see it. http://www.physorg.com/news150024131.html "In this placebo-controlled double blind trial 127 patients ages 30.5+/-10.5 were assigned to placebo or antioxidant groups. After six months the reduction in the number of painful days/month was significantly higher in the antioxidant group compared with the placebo group (7.4±6.8 versus 3.2±4 respectively)." Nice.

Regular use of alcohol can lead to an accumulation of fat in the liver which can cause liver diseases like cirrhosis and fibrosis of the liver. However this could be prevented by consuming resveratrol according to a new study appears in the American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology published by The American Physiological Society on mice. The study titled "Resveratrol alleviates alcoholic fatty liver in mice " was carried out by Joanne M. Ajmo Xiaomei Liang Christopher Q.

Prostate cancer remains one of the most frequent malignancies in older U.S. men with about 186 000 new cases and 29 000 deaths predictable for 2008. Many people look to vitamin pills for prevention of chronic diseases like cancer though benefits have been few and far between. Several earlier studies suggest that vitamin E may reduce or delay the risk of prostate cancer. The most persuasive data sustaining a role of vitamin E in the prevention of prostate cancer have come from the Finnish ATBC (Alpha-Tocopherol Beta Carotene) Cancer Prevention Trial.

Good news for doctors pilots and other people who work night shifts.  A new treatment for jet lag is in the offing in the next few years since researchers recently reported a drug based on the hormone melatonin or N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine can restore the body's natural sleep pattern. Currently long-haul travelers can take days or even weeks to recover from jet lag.  Standard melatonin has been advocated as a jet lag treatment but fails to keep many people asleep the whole night through. Researchers have been studying melatonin's sleep-inducing properties since the early 1980's.

Melatonin derivative posts encouraging sleep results What was wrong with plain old melatonin?