TUESDAY, July 28 (HealthDay News) -- A British study adds evidence to support a growing movement to raise the age at which American women should start Pap screening to detect cervical cancer.

In England, the recommended age at which a woman should first have a Pap test was recently raised to 25. In the United States, however, women are told to get regular Pap smears within three years of their first sexual intercourse or at age 21, whichever comes first.

But changes are being considered by the U.S. organizations responsible for Pap test recommendations, said Debbie Saslow, director for breast and gynecological cancer at the American Cancer Society, one of those organizations.

She said that there's a broad-based feeling that the age for first testing should be raised to 21. "What we find is that screening is not very helpful in teenagers, even if we are finding cancer at an early age," Saslow said.

The British study "did show, as we have found many times, that low-grade lesions go away by themselves more often in younger women," she said.

The study, in fact, was undertaken because many British experts believed that a pap test followed by aggressive treatment of moderate cancerous changes in the cervix did more harm than good in women younger than 25. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Pap tests are still offered to women aged 20 to 24.

The researchers, from Queen Mary College in London, compared 4,012 women who were diagnosed with cervical cancer between 1990 and 2008 with a matched group of 7,889 women who did not have the disease. All women were 20 to 69 years old and lived in the same areas.

Three papers published online Tuesday in the journal BMJ reported on three aspects of the study.

The first found no difference in outcomes when young women whose Pap smears showed abnormal cells were either told to come back later for another test or were assigned to have colposcopy, a detailed examination of the cervix to detect precancerous cells.

Pap test screening of women aged 22 to 24 did not reduce the incidence of cervical cancer over the next five years, the researchers reported. Screening of women 30 to 37 years old, however, was associated with a reduction of cervical cancer risk over the next five years of between 43 percent and 60 percent.

The second report found no difference in outcome between young women who underwent colposcopy and had loop excision, which is surgery to remove abnormal cells, and those who did not have the procedure. More physical problems, such as bleeding, occurred in the women who had the surgery.

And the third report, a cost-benefit analysis, found that immediate colposcopy was not more cost-effective than what the researchers called watchful waiting.

A major lesson of the study is that "there is not much to be gained in being aggressive" in dealing with minor abnormalities found in a Pap test of a younger woman, said Eduardo Franco, a professor of epidemiology and oncology at McGill University in Montreal, who co-authored an accompanying editorial.

"When you look at the balance of benefits and harms, surveillance does as well," Franco said.

But the decision on screening and follow-up will continue to be made country by country, he said. "Each society decides on its own threshold of maximum benefit," Franco noted.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government agency, is expected to issue new age guidelines in the near future for Pap tests, Saslow said, as is the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. New recommendations will be made by the American Cancer Society "a year from now," she said.

If the age were to be raised, the United States would move closer to European guidelines, although the difference would still be substantial.

"The Europeans think we are crazy for screening teenagers," Saslow said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on current U.S. screening recommendations for Pap tests.

WEDNESDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- As U.S. officials meet Wednesday to decide who should get priority for potentially scarce H1N1 swine flu shots this fall, the danger the virus poses to pregnant women should vault that group to the top of the list, experts say.

A panel convened by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to release its recommendations on vaccine distribution priorities later on Wednesday. Beyond that, the first trials of a vaccine against the new H1N1 swine flu are set to begin soon, and experts hope for the first batch of viable shots to be distributed by October, if all goes well.

"The panel will get an update on the H1N1 in the United States," said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. "They will get an update on where things stand with the development of a vaccine against novel H1N1 and an update on the steps being taken to plan for a potential vaccination campaign in the fall."

But a study published in the July 29 issue of The Lancet should weigh heavily on the CDC panel's decision. It confirmed that pregnant women are at especially high risk of complications from the new flu strain.

"Pregnant women who have been infected with H1N1 influenza have had a higher rate of hospitalization, about a fourfold increase compared with the general population and a higher proportion than expected of the deaths were among pregnant women," noted study author Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, a CDC medical officer.

Based on those findings, "I would expect that pregnant women will continue to be a high-priority group for vaccination," Jamieson said, so pregnant women who get the H1N1 flu should receive prompt treatment with antiviral medications.

In fact, the first American to die from the H1N1 strain, 33-year-old Judy Trunnell of Texas, fell ill while in late-stage pregnancy. She died May 5 after falling into a coma. Her healthy baby girl was delivered by C-section.

Why does pregnancy put women at special flu risk? Emory University's Dr. Kevin Ault told the Associated Press that pregnancy causes changes to women's respiratory and immune systems that may make it more difficult for them to rid themselves of influenza infection. And the World Health organization recently stated that pregnant women may be "at increased risk for severe disease, potentially resulting in spontaneous abortion and/or death, especially during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy."

The risk of H1N1 during pregnancy has even led some health officials in Britain and Switzerland to advise that women consider delaying pregnancy during an H1N1 outbreak. No such call has come from U.S. health officials, however.

There's also the issue of whether a flu shot might confer some protection to newborns, who have relatively undeveloped immune systems. A study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine found just such a transfer of protection among a group of Bangladeshi women and their offspring who received the seasonal flu vaccine.

Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City, agreed that pregnant woman should be of special concern. "Pregnant women are semi-immunocompromised, they are a target population for any infection," he said. "It is not surprising that they are at risk of flu, any flu."

In addition, today's pregnant women are younger than women born before 1957, who appear to have some immunity to the new H1N1 swine flu, Siegel said. "I put pregnant women up near the top of the list of those who should get the H1N1 vaccine," he said.

Women should not be afraid of being vaccinated against the H1N1 flu, he added. "Any fear of vaccines is greatly outweighed by the benefit of being inoculated against an emerging virus," he said. "The best way to protect a pregnant women is for everyone around her to be vaccinated in addition to her."

Another expert agreed that moms-to-be should be at the head of the line for the H1N1 shot.

"In addition, because of the greatly increased risk of death for pregnant women from either the seasonal flu or from the H1N1 swine flu, those infected with an influenza virus should [also] be promptly treated with appropriate anti-viral agents," said Dr. Pascal James Imperato, dean and distinguished service professor in the School of Public Health at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York City.

The seasonal flu vaccine will offer no protection against the H1N1 swine flu, Imperato added. "This means that some groups in the population will need to receive more than just one flu shot in order to be protected against all of the influenza strains in circulation," he said.

There's also the lingering memory of the 1976 swine flu vaccination program, during which some 500 Americans came down with a rare neurodegenerative condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which many experts believe was linked to the shot. Twenty-five of those 500 people died.

"The potential for more severe illness and many more deaths caused by this new strain of influenza weighs heavily on our minds -- as does the unfortunate outcome of the 1976 swine flu vaccination program," said CDC spokeswoman Arleen Porcell-Pharr.

But the H1N1 flu vaccine will be very much like seasonal flu vaccines, which have an excellent safety profile, Porcell-Pharr said. "However, no vaccine is 100 percent safe. This vaccine will be no exception," she added.

If the vaccines are recommended for use, those who choose to be inoculated will receive information sheets describing the vaccines' risks and benefits, signs of side effects to look for after vaccination, and information on how to report adverse events, she added.

"We will be watching very closely for any signs that the vaccine is causing unexpected side effects, and we have systems in place to investigate those signals rapidly," Porcell-Pharr said.

More information

For more information on swine flu, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

TUESDAY, July 28 (HealthDay News) -- A simple urine test could help reduce men's risk of persistent chlamydia infection and the likelihood of transmitting it to their sex partners, U.K. researchers report.

Currently, chlamydia infection is diagnosed by nucleic acid amplification tests, such as the polymerase chain reaction. But these tests are expensive, technically complex and can take several days to get results, according to background information in a news release from BMJ, which published the study online July 28.

Previous research found that the urine test, called the Chlamydia Rapid Test, provided fast and accurate results in women. The new study compared the test to the polymerase chain reaction test using urine samples from more than 1,200 men, ages 16 to 73.

The rapid test had a high level of sensitivity (82.6 percent) and specificity (98.5 percent) and provided results within an hour. Quick availability of results means that male patients can be offered treatment while still at a clinic, the researchers said.

This kind of "test and treat" approach, they said, could help reduce the risks of persistent infection and chlamydia transmission.

Left untreated, chlamydia infection can cause serious complications in women, including pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Recent research has suggested that untreated chlamydia infection in men can cause infertility.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about chlamydia infection  .

FRIDAY, July 24 (HealthDay News) -- HIV infection and chronic drinking can deal a double blow to short-term memory, a new study has found.

The study, appearing in an online early view of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, found that more than half of clinic patients with the virus that causes AIDS are also heavy drinkers and they appear to have more problems with short-term episodic memory, while long-term working memory seems unaffected.

"Results showed that individuals were able to retain information over time, which suggests that retrieval of information was intact, whereas lower scores on immediate memory suggested that difficulties were associated with ability to learn, or encode, information," study corresponding author Edith V. Sullivan, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a news release issued by the journal's publisher.

This inability to learn can affect many aspects of the person's life, including adhering to medication routines to help combat HIV, Sara Jo Nixon, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Florida, said in the same news release. Strategies to help these patients need to be employed, she added.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more about alcohol problems.