An online poll of 1000 people conducted in January showed one in three Australians had heard stories about the risks of using sunscreens containing nanoparticles and were concerned enough to stop using sunscreens altogether.

Australian Self-Medication Industry executive director Dr Deon Schoombie said despite the weight of scientific evidence showing nanoparticles do not pose a health risk many people are still concerned about the impact of them in sunscreens.

Sunscreens play a vital role in public health and the government should be doing more to inform the public so that they are receiving the right information, he said.

“What is indisputable is the importance of regular sunscreen use as part of the strategy to reduce the risk of sun damage and skin cancer as conclusively demonstrated in long term clinical studies. This is a real risk that should far outweigh concerns about nanoparticles,” he said.

The fear stems from the use of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide in nanoparticle form. When used as nanoparticles the usual white colour effect of the sunscreen is reduced to almost invisibility on the skin, still actively protecting the skin cells against the UVA and UVB light.

The study found the nanoparticles used in sunscreen did not penetrate the skin cells as feared. Instead they remained on the surface and in the outer dead layer of the skin and therefore protect the skin, not posing any harm to the cells.

“Given the degree of public concern, there may be more that government can do through public health information campaigns to accurately explain the real benefit of sunscreens, including those containing nano-sized particles,” he said.

Over 1700 Australians die from skin cancers and 440,000 people are receiving medical treatment for these cancers each year.

Sunscreen has been proven to reduce the risk of skin cancer, in particular non-melanoma skin cancer.

The Cancer Council Australia urges people to protect themselves against the sun with slip, slop, slap, seek, and slide –  Slip on some sun-protective clothing, Slop on some sunscreen, Slap on a hat, Seek shade and Slide on some sunglasses.

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Experts already know that pre-eclampsia in pregnancy can increase the risk of heart problems for women, but little is known about the importance of timing.

The latest study found women who suffered pre-eclampsia in the first 37 weeks of pregnancy had a “significantly higher” risk of a heart problem called ventricular dysfunction than those who developed it after 37 weeks.

The experts, from St George’s, University of London, examined the chances of developing the dysfunction within the first year of giving birth.

Ventricular dysfunction occurs when the one of the heart’s chambers develops problems with pumping blood, and it can lead to heart failure.

The team studied 64 women with pre-eclampsia, divided into those who suffered the condition before 37 weeks and those who had it after, and 78 without.

The prevalence of ventricular dysfunction in women who developed pre-eclampsia before 37 weeks was 56 per cent compared with those who developed it at term (14 per cent).

Pre-eclampsia, which is characterised by high blood pressure and too much protein in the urine during pregnancy, can lead to a higher risk of complications, including miscarriage and stillbirth.

Professor Basky Thilaganathan, who led the study published in the journal Hypertension, said: “This is a breakthrough in our understanding of the relationship between pre-eclampsia and heart failure.

“The risk of asymptomatic heart failure among women with pre-term pre-eclampsia is higher, and occurs much earlier, than anyone imagined.

“Effectively, we can now use pre-term pre-eclampsia as a surrogate marker to identify and prevent underlying heart problems that may become seriously harmful many years after giving birth.”

Earlier this week, experts from Bristol University reported that women with pre-eclampsia are 31 per cent more likely to be at risk of cardiovascular disease by the time they are 48 than those who did not suffer from the condition in pregnancy.

If successful, researchers say the trial could open the door to a treatment which is 100 times cheaper than other drugs available.

The $2 million trial, announced on Wednesday by MS Research Australia, will begin recruiting in Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and New Zealand from April.

Researchers hope to find 150 people with early or suspected symptoms of MS and put them on varying doses of Vitamin D.

“If we can … watch to see if that actually slows the progress or stops the progress, and they don’t actually get MS, then we know Vitamin D is having an effect,” MS Research Australia CEO Jeremy Wright told AAP.

The vitamin, which can be sourced from sunlight and some foods, is gaining credence as an effective treatment in preventing MS.

But all the evidence so far has been circumstantial, Mr Wright said.

“If we can prove the efficacy we are going to come up with a treatment which, would you believe, is about 100 times cheaper than the current treatments,” Mr Wright said.

“But it won’t be a solo treatment. It will join the other treatments and add impacts, is what we expect.”

He said it was hoped the study would show some results in five years.

Some 20,000 Australians are diagnosed with MS, an incurable disease which attacks the central nervous system and can cause bladder dysfunction, spasticity, depression and cognitive problems.

Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, with two in three Australians being diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they are 70.

Each year over 1850 Australians will die from skin cancer, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2010 figures.

The drug Zelboraf is made by Genentech, a US subsidiary of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in August 2011, making it the first new treatment for melanoma in 13 years.

In the latest study, an intermediate phase II trial whose results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed 132 patients at 13 medical sites in the United States and Australia.

Study subjects survived an average of 15.9 months, when typical survival among people whose melanoma has spread to other organs is about nine months, it said.

“We knew this drug would make the melanomas shrink in a large proportion of patients and that it worked better than chemotherapy,” said senior author Antoni Ribas, a professor of haematology and oncology and researcher at University of California Los Angeles’s Jonsson Cancer Centre, on Wednesday.

“We did not know that patients taking Zelboraf were living longer until now.”

The drug can be used to treat about half of all patients with metastatic melanoma, or about 4000 patients in the United States each year, the researchers said.

Zelboraf, a twice-a-day pill, works by blocking a protein that is involved with cell growth in patients with advanced melanoma whose tumours express a gene mutation called BRAF V600E.

About 53 per cent of patients with that mutation see their tumours shrink by more than 30 per cent, while an additional 30 per cent of patients see tumours get smaller but not quite as much.

The drug failed to elicit a response in 14 per cent of patients.

Another drawback is that patients appear to develop resistance to the treatment over time, but scientists are trying to find ways to stop that from happening, Ribas said.

Patients with advanced melanoma have few options for effective treatment, with less than 10 per cent showing a response to other available therapies, the study authors said.

According to the World Health Organisation, skin cancer leads to 66,000 deaths annually worldwide, 80 per cent of which involve melanomas.

“New research commissioned by the Organ and Tissue Authority found that the majority of 18-29 year olds (84%) cite the chance to save a life as the key motivation to decide about becoming an organ and tissue donor,” said Ms Yael Cass, Chief Executive Officer of the Organ and Tissue Authority.

“Although the majority (79%) say that religious or cultural beliefs would not be a barrier to deciding about organ and tissue donation, 40% of 18-29 year olds are concerned that their family would not want them to become an organ and tissue donor. One in two young adults mistakenly believes that doctors would not work as hard to save their lives if they had decided to become an organ donor.

To encourage more young adults to talk about organ and tissue donation, three video stories have been produced, featuring young Australians from the DonateLife Book of Life, a collection of more than 250 life-saving and life-changing stories from people affected by organ and tissue donation.

The petition, at www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-cuts-to-psychological-services, says the Better Access to Mental Health Care program has cut psychological services  to just 10 appointments.

“Research has consistently shown that at least15 to 20 sessions of brief therapy is the recommended minimum treatment. Thousands of Australians have objected to these cuts, but the Government is simply delaying these changes until later on in the year. They have claimed that alternative programs, such as ATAPS, can replace services that are being lost in these cuts, however, we know that this is simply not true,” says the site.

A video has been produced promoting the petition and the need for better mental health access for “everyday people”.

Photo courtesy of Lannon J. Harley - Vision 2020

DARWIN - The eye health of indigenous people could be vastly improved if state and federal governments kick in $70 million, researchers say.

ADELAIDE - Mental health sufferers will have access to a new website informing them of their insurance rights.

A study by scientists at the Faculty of Medicine at Switzerland’s University of Geneva to be published next month in the Journal of Applied Toxicology studied the relationship between aluminium chloride – an ingredient in many underarm deodorants – and the incidence of breast cancer.

The research has been picked up by some media and by bloggers.

But the study concludes that it does not “formally identify aluminium as a breast carcinogen’’, like studies before it that looked at the same link, head of Cancer Council Australia Professor Ian Olver said.

“This study comes as no surprise because this topic has been around for a long time, it comes back cyclically,’’ he said.

Prof. Olver said the impetus for the current study was a concern that “over time the number of cancers in the upper outer quadrant of the breast is greater than anywhere else in the breast and that’s where you put deodorant’’.

“The problem with that is that, very simply, that’s not the reason there are more cancers in the upper outer quadrant of the breast, the reason there are more breast cancers there is that there is more breast tissue there in which to develop cancer.’’

Dividing the breast into four, he said, meant that the tissue closest to the underarm has “a tail’’ that extends to the armpit, creating a larger area of tissue.

The newest research paper claims changes associated with aluminium contact with cells look like the changes seen at the start of cancer formation, while another section of the paper states that the changes seen with known carcinogens are not present with aluminium contact.

The paper concludes that the studies’ results suggest “that aluminium is not generically mutagenic, in other words, doesn’t cause cancer’’, Prof Olver said.

Prof. Olver was concerned that the periodic raising of the aluminium-in-deodorant issue unnecessarily alarmed deodorant users.

“I think it’s perfectly reasonable to study it since the question has been raised, but I don’t think this paper should make people any more worried about it because it’s failed to make the observation it would have liked to make, and that is that aluminium is a carcinogen in breast cancer, which it hasn’t been able to show.’’

“When the research becomes positive people should be made aware of that, but while it’s not positive, people should go on with their normal activities and if someone is particularly upset, there are plenty of underarm deodorants that don’t have aluminum in them.’’