A widely used class of blood pressure drugs may slightly increase the risk of cancer, US researchers said, and they are calling on regulators to take a closer look.

They said an analysis of available data on drugs in the class known as angiotensin-receptor blockers showed patients were 1.2 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with a new cancer over four years than others who did not take the drugs.

Most patients in the trials (86 per cent) took German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim's telmisartan, sold as Micardis.

"The increased risk of new cancer occurrence is modest but significant," Dr Ilke Sipahi and colleagues from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in the journal Lancet Oncology.

There were not enough data in the studies to say if individual drugs in the class raise the risk or if it is a so-called class effect shared by all such drugs.

Even so, Dr Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said in a commentary the findings were "disturbing and provocative, raising crucial drug safety questions for practitioners and the regulatory community."

He said regulators need to look more closely at the risk of cancer with ARB use and that doctors should be more cautious about prescribing ARBs, and especially Micardis.

Privately held Boehringer Ingelheim defended the safety of its drug, saying in a statement its own "internal safety data analysis of primary data contradicts the conclusions" of an increased cancer risk.

Sipahi and colleagues did a so-called meta-analysis, pooling all publicly available data from randomised trials of ARBs published before November 2009.

Other drugs in the class include Merck & Co's Cozaar, sold generically as losartan; Diovan or valsartan made by Swiss drug firm Novartis; irbesartan, jointly marketed by Sanofi-Aventi and Bristol-Myers Squibb as Avapro; Daiichi Sankyo's Benicar or olmesartan; and Solvay Pharmaceuticals' Teveten or eprosartan.

Overall, they found that patients taking the drugs had 7.2 per cent risk of having a new cancer diagnosis, compared with 6 per cent risk for patients in the control groups.

When they looked at cancer types, only lung cancer stood out, with 0.9 per cent of patients taking blood pressure drugs developing a new lung cancer compared with 0.7 per cent of patients in the control arm.

The drugs did not appear to increase the risk of death from cancer, but the team said cancers can develop slowly and cancer deaths might not show up in the relatively short studies.

Just three out of seven FDA-approved drugs - telmisartan, losartan, and candesartan - were studied, and it is not clear what affect other drugs in the class might have on cancers.

Nevertheless, they said given how widely the drugs are used, the risk is worth further study.

Other experts stressed that patients need to keep taking their blood pressure medications.

"At the moment there isn't enough evidence to draw any firm conclusions about how blood pressure drugs might affect cancer risk and this will need further investigation," Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK, said in a statement.

Scientists have identified symptoms of male menopause but they say this impacts just two percent of elderly men unlike the female menopause that affects all women.

Male menopause is relatively rare and is linked to poor health and obesity. The findings should provide new insights to physicians prescribing male testosterone therapy.

The researchers from University of Manchester, Imperial College London, University College London and other European partners measured the testosterone levels of 3,369 men between the age of 40 and 79 years. Details were sought about their sexual, physical and psychological health.

The team found that only nine of the 32 symptoms were actually associated with low testosterone levels, the most important being the three sexual symptoms - decreased frequency of morning erection, decreased frequency of sexual thoughts (sex drive), and erectile dysfunction.

The study concluded that the presence of all three sexual symptoms, together with low testosterone levels was required to establish a diagnosis of late-onset hypogonadis (male menopause), although other non-sexual symptoms may also be present.

Other symptoms included three physical symptoms - inability to engage in vigorous activity such as running or lifting heavy objects, inability to walk more than one kilometre, and inability to bend, kneel or stoop.

Psychological symptoms included, loss of energy, sadness and fatigue. But non-sexual symptoms were only weakly related to low testosterone.

Additional symptoms, often associated with the male menopause were discounted as not being testosterone related. These includeed changes in sleeping pattern, poor concentration, feeling worthless, nervousness or anxiety and difficulty getting up from a chair.

Ex-Medical Council of India chief Dr Ketan Desai, in judicial custody for a graft case, has been admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for treatment of a bacterial infection on his face. Desai, who has been lodged in Tihar Jail, was admitted in the old private ward of the AIIMS surgery department on June 11. He is undergoing treatment for a pus cavity or abscess caused by bacterial infection on his eye, said doctors.

Pregnancy may worsen or trigger obsessive compulsive disorder in some women.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder , or OCD, is an anxiety disorder in which people have persistent, unwanted thoughts that compel them to repeat routines and rituals over and over. An obsession with germs or cleanliness, for example, may drive a person to wash his or her hands constantly throughout the day. A few studies have found that OCD can also arise during or soon after pregnancy, and that pregnancy may worsen OCD symptoms in some women who already have the disorder.

To examine the impact of pregnancy, childbirth, and menstruation on OCD, researchers used medical records and interviews with 126 American women treated at the Yale OCD Clinic.

It was found that of the 78 women who had ever been pregnant, 24 (32 percent) had their first OCD symptoms during or soon after pregnancy. When the researchers looked at pregnancies among women with pre-existing OCD, it was found that the women's OCD symptoms worsened one-third of the time. In a smaller number of pregnancies (22 percent) symptoms actually improved.

It was also found that women whose pre-pregnancy OCD typically got worse in the premenstrual period were at greater risk of exacerbations during pregnancy. That finding supports the notion that there is a hormone-related subtype of OCD that affects some women.

Incidence of swine flu cases continued to be reported in Kerala with the total number of patients who tested positive this month increasing to 30 by last night.

According to H1N1 monitoring cell of the health department, the highest number of 16 cases were reported from Thiruvananthapuram followed by Kollam (7), Kannur (3) and Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur and Malappuram one each.

However, no death has been reported after one patient died of the infection at Ernakulam General Hospital on June 9, taking the H1N1 toll in the state to 47 since its outbreak last year.

Meanwhile, the spread of other types of viral fever continued to cause worry in several parts of the state with patients pouring into government and private hospitals.

However, health department sources claimed the siutation was under control and all possible measures had been taken to check the spread of the disease.

In many of the fever cases, the patients were given medicine and were asked to take bed rest at home since there was no need for hospitalisation, a health department spokesman said.

Mobile medical services had been pressed into service in worst affected areas. Hygiene campaign had also been stepped up with the involvement of state agencies, civic bodies and NGOs since viral infections were caused by mosquitoes.