Health Highlights: June 11, 2008

The chemical has come under intense scrutiny. In a recent draft report, the U.S. National Toxicology Program said animal studies suggest bisphenol A may cause changes in behavior and the brain, and reduce birth weight and survival in fetuses, theAPreported.

The Canadian government plans to ban bisphenol A in baby bottles, and proposed U.S. legislation would ban the chemical in children's products.

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Chemical Changes May Identify Defects That Lead to Cancer

Subtle changes in cell chemicals may help identify people at risk for cancer before they actually develop the disease, according to researchers at the U.K. Institute of Food Research.

They detected these changes in apparently normal cells taken from the intestines of bowel cancer patients,BBC Newsreported.

"We looked at changes in 18 genes that play a role in the very earliest stages of colorectal cancer and detected clear chemical differences in these genes in otherwise normal tissue in cancer patients," said lead researcher Professor Ian Johnson. "This represents a new way to identify defects that could eventually lead to cancer."

The study was published in theBritish Journal of Cancer.

While this is an interesting finding, it requires much more research, Henry Scowcroft, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, toldBBC News. He noted the chemical changes detected in the normal cells could occur in response to already having cancer or to cancer treatment.

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Smoking, High BMI Increase Risk of Hearing Loss

Smoking and high body mass index (BMI) increase the risk of hearing loss, says a European study that included 4,083 people in seven countries.

The more years a person smoked, the greater their risk of high-frequency hearing loss, said the study, which also found that people with higher BMIs had more pronounced hearing loss across the frequency range tested,CBC Newsreported.

Interestingly, moderate alcohol consumption appeared to protect against hearing loss. The study was published online in theJournal for Research in Otolaryngology.

The researchers couldn't explain their findings, but noted that smoking and high BMI lead to cardiovascular disease, which has been linked in previous studies to hearing loss,CBC Newsreported. And previous research has suggested that moderate alcohol consumption may help protect the heart.