By Nancy Lapid
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Human papillomavirus, along with causing several types of cancer, appears to significantly increase the risk of heart disease, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session in Chicago this week.
Pooling data from seven studies that tracked nearly 250,000 volunteers for up to 17 years, researchers found that HPV-positive patients had a 40% higher likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease and twice the risk of developing coronary artery disease in particular, compared with HPV-negative patients.
Even after accounting for sociodemographic factors, medical history, lifestyle behaviors, family history of heart disease and use of blood pressure-lowering drugs, HPV-positive patients still had a 33% higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
The researchers say doctors could consider closer heart monitoring for people who test positive for HPV, in keeping with recommendations for patients with other known heart disease risk factors.
“We always talk about cardiovascular risk factors like smoking, high blood pressure and so on, but we know that about 20% of cardiovascular disease cannot be explained by these conventional risk factors,” study leader Dr. Stephen Akinfenwa of UConn School of Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut, said in a statement. “This makes it important to identify non-conventional risk factors like HPV that could potentially be targeted.”
The reason for the association is not clear, but it’s likely related to chronic inflammation, he said.
“We would ultimately like to see if reducing HPV via vaccination could reduce cardiovascular risk.”
PROSTATE SURGERY TECHNIQUE IMPROVES ERECTILE OUTCOMES
A modified prostate cancer surgery technique leaves significantly more men with preserved erectile function compared to standard surgeries, UK researchers reported on Monday at the European Association of Urology Congress in Madrid.
The nerves that run through the prostate’s outer layers are thought to be responsible for producing erections. Whether these nerves can be left intact without leaving some cancer cells behind has been hard for surgeons to discern, and they tend to err on the side of safety and remove the nerves if unsure.
In a randomized trial, researchers assessed the benefit of adding an extra step, called neurovascular structure-adjacent frozen-section examination, or NeuroSAFE, in which pathologists examine samples of nerve-adjacent prostate tissue while the patient is on the operating table. If the analysis doesn’t find cancer cells, the nerves are left intact.
Researchers studied 344 patients undergoing robot-assisted radical prostatectomy who had no prior issues with erectile dysfunction. One year later, 39% of those in the NeuroSAFE group had no or mild erectile dysfunction, compared to 23% of those who had standard surgery, according to a report of the study published in The Lancet Oncology.
Rates of severe erectile dysfunction were 38% in the NeuroSAFE group versus 56% after standard surgery.
The technique did not increase the overall proportion of patients who were fully continent at 12 months, but NeuroSAFE patients who recovered their urinary control did so faster than patients who underwent standard surgery.
NeuroSAFE’s real-time evaluation “opens up the option of nerve-sparing surgery for many more men, without compromising on the chances of controlling the cancer,” study leader Dr. Ricardo Almeida-Magana of University College London said in a statement.
Dr. Derya Tilki of the Martini Klinik Prostate Cancer Center in Hamburg, Germany, where the NeuroSAFE technique was developed decades ago, noted that the trial was not designed to determine longer-term cancer outcomes. “But based on the data we have from using the technique for over 20 years, NeuroSAFE does not appear to affect these.”
CHILDHOOD TB CASES KEEP RISING IN EUROPE
Childhood tuberculosis cases were up by 26% in European Union and European Economic Area countries in 2023, according to newly released data.
That marks the third successive year with an uptick of TB diagnoses among children younger than 15 years old in that region, which accounts for the vast majority of the continent, the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe reported on Monday.
Overall, the region saw almost 30,000 new tuberculosis cases in 2023, with children and adolescents under age 15 accounting for 4.3%.
Given that young children have an increased risk of developing tuberculosis disease during the first year after infection with the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, childhood TB serves as a marker for ongoing transmission within a community, the researchers said.
For one in five children with tuberculosis in the region, it is unknown whether they completed their TB treatment. Incomplete treatment may result in the emergence of drug-resistant TB and further transmission of the disease.
Only about half of patients with multiple-drug resistant TB completed their treatment, according to the report.
While the global targets set by the WHO aim for treatment success rates of at least 90%, that rate in 2023 was 67.9% in the EU/EEA countries and 77.2% in the rest of the WHO European Region.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; editing by Bill Berkrot)
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