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New cancer drug wins approval

WASHINGTON - The first drug that promises to attack cancer by choking off its blood supply won federal approval Thursday, a treatment called Avastin to treat advanced colon cancer.

It's not a cure, cautioned the Food and Drug Administration: Avastin can extend patients' lives by a median of five months, meaning half live longer than that and half less.

But it's a significant development. Few other drugs for advanced stages of this cancer have provided even that much benefit.

Also important, Avastin becomes the first drug proven to work according to a novel theory that tumors must form a network of blood vessels to survive - a process called angiogenesis - and that shutting down that process could fight cancer in a new way.

The number of Americans with asthma rose nearly 3 percent in 2002, and minority groups have a more difficult time controlling disease than whites, federal officials said Thursday.

About 7.5 percent of Americans reported having asthma in 2002 - the most recent year figures are available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That is up from 7.2 percent a year earlier - a 2.7 percent increase.

About 16-million Americans have asthma, the CDC said.

Specialized training exercises can activate circuits in the brains of children with dyslexia that match those used by normal readers, researchers have found.

Another team of researchers at the University of Washington has found that brains of people with autism can be "trained" to recognize faces.

Taken together, the two reports suggest instruction can affect brain regions that previously might have been considered developmentally "broken," scientists said.