A brief wrap-up of some of the week's more left-of-centre medical stories.
Left-handed risk: Left-handed women may be more at risk from breast cancer, according to new research. A team in the Netherlands studied the relationship between handedness and breast cancer in more than 12,000 healthy, middle-aged women who were born between 1932 and 1941.
The study, published online by the British Medical Journal, found left-handed women were more than twice as likely to develop pre-menopausal breast cancer as non-left handed women. The researchers said the origins of the link might lie in exposure to high levels of sex hormones in the womb.
Memory foods: Certain fruit and vegetables could boost the memory, according to research from King's College London to be reported today at the British Pharmaceutical Conference in Manchester.
Extracts found in five fruits and vegetables - broccoli, potatoes, oranges, apples and radishes - were found to contain substances that act in the same way as drugs used to treat Alzheimer's disease. Most of the drugs act as inhibitors of acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
It had been suggested that some veg might have anti-acetylcholinesterase activity. This study showed that broccoli had the most potent activity, which were idenitified as glucosinolates, a group of compounds found in the cabbage family.
QUOTE: "His blatant disregard for the law and his attitude to responsible prescribing is incompatible with his professional status" - Alison Foster, for the General Medical Council at the beginning of an inquiry of the conduct of Dr Michael Irwin, (74).
Dr Irwin has admitted travelling to the Isle of Man in October 2003 with about 60 Temazepam sleeping pills with the intention of helping his friend, Patrick Kneen, to die. Mr Kneen was too ill to take the class C drugs and died a few days later.