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As the number of countries reporting intravenous drug use has increased over the last decade, a new study suggests that as many as 3 million of these addicts may be HIV-positive.

The data, published online in The Lancet, found the proportions of injecting drug users (IDUs) who are HIV-positive exceeds 40 percent in nine countries. Yet, the variation between countries is extreme.

For example, in the United States, just less than 1 percent of 15- to 64-year-olds are IDUs, 15.6 percent of whom are HIV positive; meanwhile in Argentina, the proportion of IDUs is far lower (0.29 percent), but the proportion of those with HIV is more than triple at 49.7 percent. In the United Kingdom, though, 0.39 percent of the same age group inject their drugs yet only 2.3 percent are thought to be HIV positive.

“Areas of particular concern are countries in southeast Asia, eastern Europe, and Latin America, where the prevalence of HIV infection among some subpopulations of people who inject drugs has been reported to be over 40 percent,” the authors wrote.

While noting a dearth of information from Africa, they added that a “constellation of risk factors exists for the development of injecting drug use, as has occurred elsewhere.”

The researchers estimate that almost 16 million people worldwide inject drugs. They identified 148 countries with IDU and 120 of those having HIV among IDUs, up notably from a 1998 review that found 29 countries with IDU and 103 with HIV among IDUs.

In an accompanying commentary in The Lancet, Kamyar Arasteh and Don Des Jarlais, of Beth Israel Medical Center’s Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute in New York, call for massive worldwide intervention.

“The one optimistic aspect of this rather gloomy situation is that, if HIV-prevention efforts are implemented on a large scale when prevalence is low in injecting drug users, it is possible to avert HIV epidemics in users. Thus it should be an imperative for both resource-constrained countries and international donors to implement large-scale evidence-based programs for HIV-prevention whenever there is an indication of a developing injecting-drug-use problem,” they concluded.

The potential link between mobile telephones and brain cancer could be similar to the link between lung cancer and smoking — something tobacco companies took 50 years to recognize, according to US scientists’ warning.

Scientists are currently split on the level of danger the biological effects of the magnetic field emitted by cellular telephones poses to humans.

However, society “must not repeat the situation we had with the relationship between smoking and lung cancer where we … waited until every ‘i’ was dotted and ‘t’ was crossed before warnings were issued,” said David Carpenter, director of the Institute of Health and Environment at the University of Albany, in testimony before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform.

“Precaution is warranted even in the absence of absolutely final evidence concerning the magnitude of the risk” — especially for children, said Carpenter.

Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute — one of the top US cancer research centers — said that most studies “claiming that there is no link between cell phones and brain tumors are outdated, had methodological concerns and did not include sufficient numbers of long-term cell phone users.”

Many studies denying a link defined regular cell phone use as “once a week,” he said.

“Recalling the 70 years that it took to remove lead from paint and gasoline and the 50 years that it took to convincingly establish the link between smoking and lung cancer, I argue that we must learn from our past to do a better job of interpreting evidence of potential risk,” said Herberman.

A brain tumor can take dozens of years to develop, the scientists said.

Carpenter and Herberman both told the committee the brain cancer risk from cell phone use is far greater for children than for adults.

Herberman held up a model for lawmakers showing how radiation from a cell phone penetrates far deeper into the brain of a five-year-old than that of an adult.

The committee were shown several European studies, particularly surveys from Scandinavia — where the cell phone was first developed — which show that the radiation emitted by cell phones have definite biological consequences.

For example, a 2008 study by Swedish cancer specialist Lennart Hardell found that frequent cell phone users are twice as likely to develop a benign tumor on the auditory nerves of the ear most used with the handset, compared to the other ear.

A separate study in Israel determined that heavy cell phone users had a 50 percent increased likelihood in developing a salivary gland tumor.

In addition, a paper published this month by the Royal Society in London found that adolescents who start using cell phones before the age of 20 were five times more likely to develop brain cancer at the age of 29 than those who didn’t use a cell phone.

“It’s only on the side of the head where you use the cell phone,” Carpenter said.

“Every child is using cell phones all of the time, and there are three billion cell phone users in the world,” said Herberman.

He added that, like the messages that warn of health risks on cigarette packs, cell phones “need a precautionary message.”

Carpenter described the situation as “a critical public health issue,” and called on the US government to support further research and for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in charge of monitoring the use of the radio spectrum, “to review their standards.”

Also testifying was Julius Knapp, who heads the FCC office of engineering and technology — responsible for setting limits for human exposure to radio frequency (RF) energy from electronic devices like telephones that they approve, to prevent it from heating up live tissue.

“It is important to understand that we rely on guidance from US health, safety and environmental agencies in setting those limits,” Knapp said.

He added: “The FCC staff is not sufficiently qualified to speak with authority to the science of health effects of RF absorption in the body.”

A Canadian study has found that if women with early-stage breast cancer get a shorter, more intense course of radiation, they have a lower risk of side effects and recurrence of the cancer more than a decade after the treatment.

Currently, women with early-stage breast cancer typically first undergo a lumpectomy to remove the cancer followed by a five-week standard course of radiation therapy to kill any remaining cancer cells.

But the Canadian study has found that the intense three-week course of radiation therapy - called accelerated hypo-fractionated whole-breast irradiation - is as effective as the standard five-week course of radiation after the surgery to remove the malignancy.

Timothy Whelan, a radiation oncologist and professor of oncology at McMaster University at Hamilton near Toronto, presented his study at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology in Boston early this week.

Whelan said there has been renewed interest in the shorter radiation therapy ‘due to the potential radiation advantages, patient convenience, quality of life and lower costs’, though long-term effects about this treatment remained a potential concern.

However, he said, their study has allayed this concern.

‘We were surprised that the risk of local recurrence and side effects for women treated with accelerated whole-breast irradiation was so low even at 12 years. Our study shows that this treatment should be offered to select women with early-stage breast cancer,’ said Whelan.

As part of their study, Whelan and his team randomly picked 1,234 women from Quebec and Ontario provinces in Canada to be treated with either accelerated whole-breast radiation or standard whole-breast radiation between 1993 and 1995.

After the treatment, the researchers monitored the women for 12 years to know whether the three-week accelerated whole-breast radiation was as effective as the standard five-week treatment.

The team found that a decade after treatment, breast cancer returned in 6.2 percent of women subjected to the three-week accelerated radiation therapy, compared to 6.7 percent for patients treated with standard five-week therapy.

Whelan said: ‘This shorter treatment may not be for everyone. However, I would encourage women whose breast cancer is caught early to talk to their oncologist to see if they are a good candidate for this shorter therapy.’