A round-up of this week's other health stories in brief
• DITCH THE SUPPLEMENTS:People should not rely on vitamin supplements to cut their risk of cancer, with some doing more harm than good, a leading expert has warned.
A healthy diet full of fruit and vegetables is known to cut the risk of cancer, whereas there is far less confidence about the effect of supplements, he stated.
Prof Martin Wiseman, medical and scientific adviser for the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), urged people to ditch the supplements in favour of a healthy diet.
He said: "Many people still think they can reduce their cancer risk by taking supplements, but the evidence does not support this.
"This is why we need to get across the message that supplements should not be taken for cancer prevention and instead people should be aiming to get the nutrients they need from their diet alone."
• EARLY REHABILITATION:Starting rehabilitation within 24 hours after a person has a stroke appears to be safe and beneficial, Australian researchers have reported.
"Surprisingly," Dr Julie Bernhardt said, "this type of intervention has not been tested before in high-quality trials, most likely due to the fact that people have believed that early after a stroke, patients could not participate in early intensive exercise therapy or that it might not be safe."
Bernhardt, of the National Stroke Research Institute in Heidelberg, Victoria, and colleagues conducted a study of 71 stroke patients who were randomly assigned to very early rehabilitation plus standard care or to standard care alone.
At three months after the stroke, eight of the 38 patients in the very early group and three of the 33 in the standard care group had died. This difference was not significant from a statistical standpoint, and almost all deaths were in patients with severe stroke.
After adjustment for factors such as age, patients in the early rehab group were more likely to have a good outcome at the one-year mark - 38.9 per cent versus 24.2 per cent.
• FLIGHT PATH DANGERS:Living near an airport isn't just irritating, it is also unhealthy, researchers have said, in a study that showed loud noise instantly boosts a sleeping person's blood pressure.
The louder the noise, the higher a person's blood pressure went, a finding that suggests that people who live near airports may have a greater risk of health problems, said Lars Jarup, who led the European Commission-funded study.
"Living near airports where you have exposure to night-time aircraft noise is a major issue," said Jarup, an environmental health researcher at Imperial College London.
The research team showed that people living for at least five years near a busy airport and under a flight path have a greater risk of developing chronic high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, than those who live in quieter areas.
The data was published in the European Heart Journal.
• PEPPER PATCHES:A key component of black pepper could offer hope to people suffering vitiligo, a condition that causes pale patches to develop on the skin, new research suggests.
A study on mice found that the compound piperine, which makes black pepper pungent, can stimulate the skin to produce pigment.
Some derivatives of the compound created in the laboratory have a similar effect, the study showed.
Results were better when the compounds were used alongside a standard therapy involving ultraviolet light.
Vitiligo is a fairly common condition that affects around one in 100 people in Britain.
It causes pale, white patches to develop on the skin due to a lack of the pigment melanin.
Melanin gives the skin its colour and helps protect it from the sun's harmful rays.
• NO FIRM FACTS ON SLEEP AND WEIGHT:Regularly getting five hours or less of sleep a night does not appear to have a considerable influence on body weight or waist size over time, according to findings from a long-term study of British workers.
While some past research has identified a relationship between obesity and a lack of sleep, this research could not affirm which came first - the lack of sleep or the weight problem.
The research is contained in the latest issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.