Our round-up of today's health headlines on Friday 30 September 2011
GPs will be able to prescribe a bee sting 'vaccine' that protects people vulnerable to severe reactions, the Telegraph reports. About one in 200 people suffer from anaphylaxis when stung by a wasp or bee, says the newspaper.
However, the same paper says that NICE has blocked the prescription of a drug on the NHS that can give advanced prostate cancer sufferers an extra two months to live. Cabazitaxel, reportedly administered to Lockerbie bomber, was ‘not a cost-effective treatment for men who have already undergone hormone therapy.'
In a separate Telegraph story (not on website) Harvard School of Public Health research is quoted as finding that men who ate three or more eggs a week were 80% more likely to contract a lethal form of prostate cancer. The Prostate Cancer Charity warns that the research should be seen in light of the fact that men who ate that many eggs also tended to have a poorer diet, be obese and smoke – all risk factors of the disease.
The Times [behind paywall] reports that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has warned that the more than a million illicit doses of pharmaceuticals from epilepsy drugs to asthma inhalers being seized a year on their way to the UK were part of a dangerous ‘boom' in internet-bought medicines.
