German researchers testing veggie Viagra: reports

BERLIN (AFP) – German researchers are testing an impotency treatment for men made using only natural ingredients that in some cases works better than Viagra, newspapers reported Monday.
"In clinical trials, 50 men had much better sex afterwards, more fun in bed and just generally felt better about themselves," the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily cited Olaf Schroeder from Berlin's Charite hospital as saying.
"Their libido was even higher than the control group taking Viagra," he said.
The potent cocktail includes tribulus terrestris, a herb already used in alternative medicine, a root vegetable found in the Andes called maca and grape juice extract, newspapers said.
The treatment, dubbed "Plantagrar", is due to be launched in early 2010, the Bild daily said.
But some of those tested had unwelcome side effects.
"Two of the subjects had bad diarrhoea," the Berliner Kurier quoted Schroeder as adding.

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Second-Generation Female Condom Approved

WEDNESDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News) -- The Female Health Co.'s FC2 Female Condom has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the company said Wednesday. The product helps protect women against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
The second-generation condom is similar in design and performance to the FC1, except that it is made of a synthetic rubber called nitrile and costs about 30 percent less, the company said. The FC1 was approved in 1993.
The FDA approval of the FC2 will allow the U.S. Agency for International Development to distribute the condoms via global HIV/AIDS programs, the Associated Press reported.
The first-generation FC1 has been distributed by United Nations agencies in 142 countries, the wire service said.
More information
To learn more about female condoms, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Suriname starts free circumcision project

PARAMARIBO (AFP) – Suriname has launched a three-month pilot project offering free circumcisions in a bid to cut sexually transmitted diseases, Health Minister Celsius Waterberg said Friday.

Circumcision "could also minimize the risk of HIV infection", he said, adding the project would run in the capital city, Paramaribo.

Some two percent of the Suriname population is HIV-infected, about 10,000 people, and the project aims to carry out the operations on 100 men aged between four and 21 years old over the next three months.

If successful then the project will spread nationwide, Waterberg said.

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Weight loss enhances obese men's sexual well-being

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Obese men who undergo gastric bypass surgery will not only lose weight; their sex lives are likely to improve, too, new research shows.
"We wanted to know if obesity was biologically associated with an unsatisfying sex life, and if so, could it be reversible," Dr. Ahmad Hammoud of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who led the study, said in a press release accompanying the new report. "Our results show that the answer to both questions may be yes."
While obesity in men has been linked to low testosterone levels, high levels of estrogen, impaired fertility, and worse sexual quality of life, Hammoud and his colleagues note in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, there is little information on what happens to these men's sex hormones and sexual function if they lose weight.
To investigate, Hammoud and his team looked at 22 men who had undergone gastric bypass surgery and 42 obese men who didn't have the operation. At the study's outset, participants weighed 330 pounds, on average, while the average BMI for the group was 46.2, what is considered to be .
The heavier the men were, the lower their testosterone, and the more likely they were to report dissatisfaction with their sex lives-especially avoiding sexual encounters and having difficulty performing sexually.
Two years later, the men who'd had weight loss surgery had dropped an average of nearly 17 points from their BMI. Their estrogen levels had fallen significantly, while their testosterone levels had gone up. And all showed improvements on each of the four measures of sexual quality of life the researchers looked at: they were less likely to avoid sexual encounters, have difficulty with sexual performance, have little sexual desire, or report not enjoying sex.
There were no significant changes in measures of sexual quality of life or hormone levels in the group of men who didn't have the surgery.
Because other both biological and psychological factors involved in obesity can affect both sexual health and hormone levels, Hammoud and his team conclude, more research is needed to determine whether there is a causal relationship between hormone changes and sexual quality of life.
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, April 2009.

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Insurers offer to stop charging sick people more

WASHINGTON – The health insurance industry offered Tuesday for the first time to curb its controversial practice of charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems. The offer from America's Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is a potentially significant shift in the debate over reforming the nation's health care system to rein in costs and cover an estimated 48 million uninsured people. It was contained in a letter to key senators.
In the letter, the two insurance industry groups said their members are willing to "phase out the practice of varying premiums based on health status in the individual market" if all Americans are required to get coverage. Although the letter left open some loopholes, it was still seen as a major development.
"The offer here is to transition away from risk rating, which is one of the things that makes life hell for real people," said health economist Len Nichols of the New America Foundation public policy center. "They have never in their history offered to give up risk rating."
"This letter demonstrates that insurance companies are open to major insurance reform, and are even willing to accept broad consumer protections," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., a moderate who could help bridge differences on a health care overhaul. "It represents a major shift from where the industry was in the 1990s during the last major health care debate."
Insurers are trying to head off the creation of a government insurance plan that would compete with them, something that liberals and many Democrats are pressing for. To try to win political support, the industry has already made a number of concessions. Last year, for example, insurers offered to end the practice of denying coverage to sick people. They also said they would support a national goal of restraining cost increases.
The latest offer goes beyond that.
Insurance companies now charge very high premiums to people who are trying to purchase coverage as individuals and have a history of medical problems, such as diabetes or skin cancer. Even if such a person is offered coverage, that individual is often unable to afford the high premiums. About 7 percent of Americans buy their coverage as individuals, while more than 60 percent have job-based insurance.
"When you have everyone in the system, and you can bring (financial) assistance to working families, then you can move away from health status rating," said Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the leading trade group.
The companies left themselves several outs, however. The letter said they would still charge different premiums based on such factors as age, place of residence, family size and benefits package.
"If the goal is to make health care affordable, this concession does not go far enough," said Richard Kirsch, campaign manager for Health Care for America Now. "It still allows insurers to charge much more if you are old." His group, backed by unions and liberals, is trying to build support for sweeping health care changes.
Importantly, insurers did not extend to small businesses their offer to stop charging the sick higher premiums. Small employers who offer coverage can see their premiums zoom up from one year to the next, even if just one worker or family member gets seriously ill.
Ignagni said the industry is working on separate proposals for that problem.
"We are in the process of talking with small-business folks across the country," she said. "We are well on the way to proposing a series of strategies that could be implemented for them."
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On the Net:
America's Health Insurance Plans: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_he_me/storytext/insurers_sick_people/31419391/SIG=10l8ksrl2/*http://www.ahip.org
Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association: http://www.bcbs.com/

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WHO issues pessimistic global tuberculosis report

RIO DE JANEIRO – The number of people infected with both tuberculosis and HIV is twice what researchers previously thought, top health officials said Tuesday. The World Health Organization's annual report on TB, presented in Rio, indicates that there were 1.37 million cases of people with both TB and HIV in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available. About 700,000 people were infected with both in 2006, according to a report released by WHO last year.
Researchers attribute the numbers mostly to more widespread testing and reporting. They say direct information on the HIV status among TB patients is now available from 64 nations — up from just 13 nations in recent years. More reporting is also coming from Africa, where 79 percent of the dual-infection cases were reported.
In 2007, 1.3 million people died from TB, while another 465,000 people who had both TB and HIV died. About 1.5 million people died in 2006 from TB, according to WHO's report last year. It was not clear how many of those who died also were infected with HIV.
WHO researchers said the new data means HIV-positive people are about 20 times more likely than HIV-negative people to develop TB in countries where HIV is at epidemic levels, and between 26 and 37 times more likely to develop TB where HIV prevalence is lower.
In a message to mark World TB Day, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the epidemic is continuing to decline "but the rate of decline is far too slow, and TB still takes a life every 20 seconds."
"Millions of people are benefiting from treatment through coordinated national efforts, but millions more are still missing out," he said in the message released at U.N. headquarters in New York. "Unless we accelerate action, the numbers of those falling ill will continue to grow."
The WHO's annual report had other pessimistic points: an expected $1.6 billion gap in funding needed to fight the disease this year and an increase in the number of cases of drug-resistant TB.
"We have a situation with very little progress, particularly in Africa and Eastern and Central Europe," said Tido von Schoen-Angerer, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders, who was attending the TB conference. "There is no room anywhere in this report for congratulations."
The survey estimates that 9.27 million people around the globe had TB in 2007 — slightly up from 9.24 million in 2006.
That amounts to a per capita rate of 139 per 100,000 people globally, the report states. That pace, a drop of less than 1 percent a year, has continued for the past several years, said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB program.
He said it would take millennia to wipe out the disease at that rate.
Multiple-drug-resistant cases of TB also rose in 2007 to 500,000. Such cases are more difficult to treat and have a higher rate of deaths.
Aggravating the fight against TB is the global financial crisis.
Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the U.N.-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said funding for programs to fight TB will fall $1.6 billion short in 2009, a gap he estimates will reach at least $4 billion in 2010.
"The crisis is severely affecting developing nations," he said. "But countries should realize health costs are an investment for development and not just a strain on budgets."
Asia registered the most TB cases in 2007, with 55 percent, while Africa had 31 percent. Among nations, India had the most cases with 2 million, China had 1.3 million and Indonesia 530,000.
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Associated Press Writer Edith Lederer contributed to this story from the United Nations in New York.

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