Although Asian people have the lowest incidence and mortality rates of prostate cancer in the world, these rates have risen rapidly in the past two decades in most Asian countries. Prostate cancer has become one of the leading male cancers in some Asian countries. In 2000, the age-adjusted incidence was over 10 per 100000 men in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Israel. Although some of the increases may result from enhanced detection, much of the increased incidence may be associated with westernization of the lifestyle, with increasing obesity and increased consumption of fat. The differences in incidences between native Americans and Asian immigrants are getting smaller, reflecting a possible improvement of diagnostic efforts and changes of environmental risk factors in Asian immigrants. Nevertheless, the huge variations in incidences among ethnic groups imply that there are important genetic risk factors. The stage distributions of prostate cancer in Asian populations are still unfavorable compared to those of Western developed countries. However, a trend towards diagnosing cancer with more favorable prognosis is seen in most Asian countries. Both genetic and environmental risk factors responsible for elevated risks in Asian people are being identified, which may help to reduce prostate cancer incidence in a chemopreventive setting.

Although children do well on ART, there is high early mortality. Scaling up HIV testing and simple diagnostic tests for infants and children, expanding routine provision of cotrimoxazole prophylaxis, and investigating the role of nutritional interventions are three measures that, if implemented and expanded countrywide, may improve ART outcomes.

Abstract:Effects of exposures to the PM 2.5 in ambient air have increasingly attracted attention of health communities and government regulatory agencies as it has been implicated with a growing list of adverse health effects, including cardiopulmonary issues, premature death and lung cancer. However, the rates of adverse health effects and long term exposure to PM 2.5 in different populations have not been well quantified due to the lack of data. In this article, 25,427 daily PM 2.5 concentrations collected from the 73 air monitoring stations throughout Taiwan are extrapolated to 290 townships by Kriging method using GIS data. These townships are then stratified into 5 levels (in µg/m 3 ) of PM 2.5 : 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40 and above. Data on female lung cancer mortality taken from national statistics and the estimated PM 2.5 concentrations, considered as an exposure biomarker are combined to assess the effect of PM 2.5 on lung cancer. The average annual PM 2.5 concentration in Taiwan is 35.6±0.4 µg/m 3 . It is estimated that lung cancer mortality has a mean increase of 16% (6%-25%) for each 10 µg/m 3 increment of PM 2.5 concentration and one out of 9 female lung cancer deaths (11%) in Taiwan is attributed to the PM 2.5 exposures. This assessment is conducted using the commonly accepted principle of making the best use of available data for the stated objective. The limitations of data and the resultant conclusion are carefully articulated and discussed to advance further research.

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