Mediterranean-style diets found to cut heart risks

Pour on the olive oil, preferably over fish and vegetables: One of the longest and most scientific tests of a Mediterranean diet suggests this style of eating can cut the chance of suffering heart-related problems, especially strokes, in older people at high risk of them.

The study lasted five years and involved about 7,500 people in Spain. Those who ate Mediterranean-style with lots of olive oil or nuts had a 30 percent lower risk of major cardiovascular problems compared to those who were told to follow a low-fat diet but who in reality, didn't cut fat very much. Mediterranean meant lots of fruit, fish, chicken, beans, tomato sauce, salads, and wine and little baked goods and pastries.

Mediterranean diets have long been touted as heart-healthy, but that's based on observational studies that can't prove the point. The new research is much stronger because people were assigned diets to follow for a long time and carefully monitored. Doctors even did lab tests to verify that the Mediterranean diet folks were consuming more olive oil or nuts as recommended.

Most of these people were taking medicines for high cholesterol and blood pressure, and researchers did not alter those proven treatments, said one study leader, Dr. Ramon Estruch of Hospital Clinic in Barcelona.

But as a first step to prevent heart problems, "we think diet is better than a drug" because it has few if any side effects, Estruch said. "Diet works."

Results were published online Monday by the New England Journal of Medicine and were discussed at a nutrition conference in Loma Linda, Calif.

People in the study were not given rigid menus or calorie goals because weight loss was not the aim. That could be why they found the "diets" easy to stick with — only about 7 percent dropped out within two years. There were twice as many dropouts in the low-fat group than among those eating Mediterranean-style.

Researchers also provided the nuts and olive oil, so it didn't cost participants anything to use these relatively pricey ingredients. The type of oil may have mattered — they used extra-virgin olive oil, which is minimally processed and richer than regular or light olive oil in the chemicals and nutrients that earlier studies have suggested are beneficial.

The study involved people ages 55 to 80, just over half of them women. All were free of heart disease at the start but were at high risk for it because of health problems — half had diabetes and most were overweight and had high cholesterol and blood pressure.

They were assigned to one of three groups: Two followed a Mediterranean diet supplemented with either extra-virgin olive oil (4 tablespoons a day) or with walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds (a fistful a day). The third group was urged to eat a low-fat diet heavy on bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, fruits, vegetables and fish and light on baked goods, nuts, oils and red meat.

Independent monitors stopped the study after nearly five years when they saw fewer problems in the two groups on Mediterranean diets.

Doctors tracked a composite of heart attacks, strokes or heart-related deaths. There were 96 of these in the Mediterranean-olive oil group, 83 in the Mediterranean-nut group and 109 in the low-fat group.

Looked at individually, stroke was the only problem where type of diet made a big difference. Diet had no effect on death rates overall.

The Mediterranean diet proved better even though its followers ate about 200 calories more per day than the low-fat group did. The study leaders now are analyzing how each of the diets affected weight gain or loss and body mass index.

The Spanish government's health research agency initiated and paid for the study, and foods were supplied by olive oil and nut producers in Spain and the California Walnut Commission. Many of the authors have extensive financial ties to food, wine and other industry groups but said the sponsors had no role in designing the study or analyzing and reporting its results.

Rachel Johnson, a University of Vermont professor who heads the American Heart Association's nutrition committee, said the study is very strong because of the lab tests to verify oil and nut consumption and because researchers tracked actual heart attacks, strokes and deaths — not just changes in risk factors such as high cholesterol.

"At the end of the day, what we care about is whether or not disease develops," she said. "It's an important study."

Rena Wing, a weight-loss expert at Brown University, noted that researchers provided the oil and nuts, and said "it's not clear if people could get the same results from self-designed Mediterranean diets" — or if Americans would stick to them more than Europeans who are used to such foods.

Dr. George Bray of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., said he would give the study "a positive — even glowing — comment" and called it "the best and certainly one of the largest prospective dietary trials ever done."

"The data are sufficiently strong to convince me to move my dietary pattern closer to the Mediterranean Diet that they outline," he added.

Another independent expert also praised the study as evidence diet can lower heart risks.

"The risk reduction is close to that achieved with statins," cholesterol-lowering drugs, said Dr. Robert Eckel, a diet and heart disease expert at the University of Colorado.

"But this study was not carried out or intended to compare diet to statins or blood pressure medicines," he warned. "I don't think people should think now they can quit taking their medicines."

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Online:

Journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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S&P 500 falls more than 1 percent

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 declined more than 1 percent on Monday on fears that a divided parliament in Italy would get in the way of the country's reforms and hamper the euro zone's stability.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 100.22 points, or 0.72 percent, at 13,900.35. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 14.69 points, or 0.97 percent, at 1,500.91, after briefly falling more than 1 percent. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 20.86 points, or 0.66 percent, at 3,140.96.

(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Letter From Washington: A Struggle for Control of Republican Party

WASHINGTON — The late William F. Buckley and Karl Rove have little in common, other than the Republican Party and intelligence. Mr. Buckley’s politics were guided by principles; Mr. Rove’s principles are guided by politics.

Yet Mr. Rove, the party establishment’s money and strategy guru, is channeling Mr. Buckley, a founding father of contemporary conservatism, by trying to root out extremism from the Republican mainstream. A half-century ago, Mr. Buckley sought to expunge the John Birch Society, anti-Semites and white supremacists from the party’s inner circles. Today, Mr. Rove is threatening to finance primary campaigns against those he considers right-wing extremists of the type that have already cost Republicans several Senate seats.

It may be the right purpose, but he’s the wrong person. He can’t avoid looking like an inside-the-Beltway kingmaker trying to purge populist insurgencies around the country and make some more bucks while doing it. There is a backlash.

Still, prominent Republicans with more credibility than Mr. Rove need to consider this cause. There are more than a few fringe figures who play a role in defining the party, many of them express a vitriolic dislike of President Barack Obama that turns off possible Republican voters.

There is Representative Steve King of Iowa, who is unrelenting in his criticism of the president. One of his latest targets is the September attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, were killed.

He goes further than other critics: Benghazi, he declares, “is a lot bigger” than other scandals. It is, he says, at least 10 times bigger than Watergate and Iran-contra combined.

Mr. King has made a name for himself with anti-immigrant rants. Last year, he said Americans should select eligible immigrants the same way they would go about picking a “good bird dog.” That means choosing “the one that’s the friskiest, the one that’s engaged the most, and not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner.” He later explained that he meant this as a compliment — he likes bird dogs.

Then there’s Representative Paul C. Broun of Georgia. The former physician said evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of hell.” He once proposed banning Playboy magazine from military installations, which might have jeopardized the survival of the all-volunteer army.

Like more than a few of his colleagues on the right, he directs his greatest vitriol at Mr. Obama. Mr. Broun boasts that he was the first to call the president “a socialist who embraces Marxist-Leninist policies.” The “only Constitution that Barack Obama upholds is the Soviet constitution,” he charges.

These two lawmakers aren’t simply innocuous backbenchers. They are among the leading contenders in Republican primaries for open Senate seats in Georgia and Iowa.

Even some Republicans who aren’t as far out get caught up in the fervor, particularly when it touches on Mr. Obama. This month, Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina likened those who didn’t fight hard enough against the Obama administration’s regulation of for-profit colleges to Germans who didn’t stand up to the Nazis in the 1930s.

Texas, the biggest Republican-dominated state, is a hotbed of Obama-hating politicians. Louie Gohmert, in his fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, asserted in November that the president ousted the dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to allow Al Qaeda to take over Libya.

After a 15-year hiatus, Steve Stockman returned to the House this year and wasted no time. When the president appeared at a news conference surrounded by children after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Mr. Stockman compared Mr. Obama to Saddam Hussein for using children as props. He’s now talking about impeaching Mr. Obama for proposing gun-control legislation.

The Senate is hardly immune. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who was elected in November, questioned, with no cause, whether Chuck Hagel, the defense secretary nominee, had taken money from terrorist states. The comment was criticized even by the Republican senator John McCain, himself a Hagel critic. Far from expressing regret, Mr. Cruz seemed to revel in the controversy.

This transcends ideology. Mr. Broun has the least conservative voting record of any House Republican from Georgia, according to the latest National Journal survey of voting records. Claiming the president worships the constitution of the Soviet Union isn’t a conservative position — it’s a nutty one, reminiscent of the John Birchers that Mr. Buckley assailed a half-century ago.

Another new senator, Jeff Flake of Arizona, is every bit as conservative as Mr. Cruz, and they will probably vote alike most of the time. Yet Mr. Cruz revels in vilification, while Mr. Flake seeks common ground when possible.

It is the Flake persona that should offer the greatest appeal to younger or more independent voters. Many conservatives insist that the United States is a center-right country, where voters are receptive to the case for limited government and cultural traditionalism. The changing demographic profile of the electorate seems to undercut that case.

That is a good debate to have. But conservatives can’t compete in the argument when their party is identified with bizarre theories, bigotry and a visceral hatred of the president.

That’s going to change when prominent Republicans with conservative bona fides — Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — don’t just talk the talk about a broader-based party but walk the walk and reject the haters.

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Leighton Meester Snuggles with Adam Brody in Venice

Caught in the Act

02/24/2013 at 03:20 PM EST

Adam Brody and Leighton Meester

Deano/Splash News Online

New couple Leighton Meester and Adam Brody stepped out for an early dinner in Venice, Calif., on Thursday evening.

Just after 6 p.m., Brody – who wore a red sweatshirt – and Meester – who dressed in an oversized cardigan – met up with a pal at La Fiesta Brava, a local Mexican restaurant.

An onlooker tells PEOPLE that both Brody and Meester ordered enchiladas while chatting about film with their friend. "She sipped on a Mexican coke and sat back smiling and listening to the boys," the source adds.

As the meal came to a close, the boys split the check – although Meester offered to contribute. But before it was time to leave, the couple shared a romantic moment.

"Adam put his arm around Leighton and the two smiled at each other while she snuggled into his chest before the trio headed out," the source says.

– Jennifer Garcia

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

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Investors face another Washington deadline

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors face another Washington-imposed deadline on government spending cuts next week, but it's not generating the same level of fear as two months ago when the "fiscal cliff" loomed large.

Investors in sectors most likely to be affected by the cuts, like defense, seem untroubled that the budget talks could send stocks tumbling.

Talks on the U.S. budget crisis began again this week leading up to the March 1 deadline for the so-called sequestration when $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts are scheduled to take effect.

"It's at this point a political hot button in Washington but a very low level investor concern," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. The fight pits President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats against congressional Republicans.

Stocks rallied in early January after a compromise temporarily avoided the fiscal cliff, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> has risen 6.3 percent since the start of the year.

But the benchmark index lost steam this week, posting its first week of losses since the start of the year. Minutes on Wednesday from the last Federal Reserve meeting, which suggested the central bank may slow or stop its stimulus policy sooner than expected, provided the catalyst.

National elections in Italy on Sunday and Monday could also add to investor concern. Most investors expect a government headed by Pier Luigi Bersani to win and continue with reforms to tackle Italy's debt problems. However, a resurgence by former leader Silvio Berlusconi has raised doubts.

"Europe has been in the last six months less of a topic for the stock market, but the problems haven't gone away. This may bring back investor attention to that," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

OPTIONS BULLS TARGET GAINS

The spending cuts, if they go ahead, could hit the defense industry particularly hard.

Yet in the options market, bulls were targeting gains in Lockheed Martin Corp , the Pentagon's biggest supplier.

Calls on the stock far outpaced puts, suggesting that many investors anticipate the stock to move higher. Overall options volume on the stock was 2.8 times the daily average with 17,000 calls and 3,360 puts traded, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.

"The upside call buying in Lockheed solidifies the idea that option investors are not pricing in a lot of downside risk in most defense stocks from the likely impact of sequestration," said Jared Woodard, a founder of research and advisory firm condoroptions.com in Forest, Virginia.

The stock ended up 0.6 percent at $88.12 on Friday.

If lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on reducing the U.S. budget deficit in the next few days, a sequester would include significant cuts in defense spending. Companies such as General Dynamics Corp and Smith & Wesson Holding Corp could be affected.

General Dynamics Corp shares rose 1.2 percent to $67.32 and Smith & Wesson added 4.6 percent to $9.18 on Friday.

EYES ON GDP DATA, APPLE

The latest data on fourth-quarter U.S. gross domestic product is expected on Thursday, and some analysts predict an upward revision following trade data that showed America's deficit shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years.

U.S. GDP unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter, according to an earlier government estimate, but analysts said there was no reason for panic, given that consumer spending and business investment picked up.

Investors will be looking for any hints of changes in the Fed's policy of monetary easing when Fed Chairman Ben Bernake speaks before congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Shares of Apple will be watched closely next week when the company's annual stockholders' meeting is held.

On Friday, a U.S. judge handed outspoken hedge fund manager David Einhorn a victory in his battle with the iPhone maker, blocking the company from moving forward with a shareholder vote on a controversial proposal to limit the company's ability to issue preferred stock.

(Additional reporting by Doris Frankel; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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The Lede: Reeva Steenkamp, Steve Biko and the Quest for Justice in South Africa

LONDON – The title of the presiding judge 35 years ago was the same, chief magistrate of Pretoria, and the venue for the hearing, a converted synagogue, was not far from the modern courthouse seen on television screens around the world in recent days as Oscar Pistorius, the gold medal-winning Paralympic athlete, fought for bail in the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

The case that unfolded in the last weeks of 1977, like the one featuring Mr. Pistorius, centered on a death that captured global attention. Then, too, it was the role of the chief magistrate, a jurist of relatively minor standing in South Africa’s legal system, to weigh whether it was a case of murder or mishap. Then, too, there were constituencies, inside the courtroom and beyond, that clamored passionately for their version of the truth.

The similarities – and dissimilarities – will have pressed in on anyone who was present in the Pretoria courtroom those decades ago, when the proceeding involved was an inquest, and the death that of Steve Biko, a 30-year-old black activist who was a popular youth leader of the anti-apartheid movement. By the miserable manner of his dying, alone, naked, and comatose on the floor of a freezing prison cell, Mr. Biko became, in death still more than in life, a powerful force for an end to South Africa’s institutionalized system of racial repression.

A British television report from South Africa in 1977, eight days after Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist, was beaten to death in police custody.

The two cases, of course, will find widely different places on history’s ladder. Mr. Pistorius, awarded bail on Friday after a hearing that was sensational for what it revealed of his actions in shooting Ms. Steenkamp, and for the raw emotions the athlete displayed in the dock, became a global celebrity in recent years for his feats as the Blade Runner, a track star who overcame the disability of being born with no bones in his lower legs.

But for all that it has been a shock to the millions who have seen his running as a parable for triumph in adversity, Mr. Pistorius’s tragedy — and still more, Ms. Steenkamps’s — has been a personal one. Mr. Biko’s death was considered at the time, as it has been ever since, as a watershed in the history of apartheid, a grim milestone among many others along South Africa’s progress towards black majority rule, which many ranked as the most inspiriting event in the peacetime history of the 20th-century when it was finally achieved in 1994.

Still, for a reporter who covered the Biko inquest for the Times as the paper’s South Africa correspondent through the turbulent years of the 1970’s, there were strong resonances in the week’s televised proceedings in Pretoria. Among them was the sheer scale of the media coverage, and the display of how live-by-satellite broadcasting and the digitalization of the print press, with computers, cellphones and Twitter feeds, have globalized the news business.

Oscar Pistorius facing the media during his bail hearing this week in Pretoria.

For the Pistorius hearing, there was a frenzied, tented camp of television crews outside the court, a crush among reporters struggling to get into the hearing, and platoons of studio commentators eager to have their say.

The crush among reporters outside the bail hearing for Oscar Pistorius this week in Pretoria.

On each of the 13 days the Biko inquest was in session, I had no trouble finding myself a seat in the airy courtroom. I took my lunch quietly with members of the Biko family’s legal team, and loitered uneasily during adjournments in an outside passageway, eavesdropping on the policemen who were Mr. Biko’s captors in his final days as they fine-tuned the testimony they were to give in court.

In the Pistorius case, the police again emerged poorly, having, as it seemed, bungled aspects of the forensic investigation in ways that could complicate the prosecution’s case that Mr. Steenkamp’s death was a case of premeditated murder — and having assigned the case to an officer who turned out to be under investigation in a case of attempted murder himself. But nothing in that bungling could compare with the sheer wretchedness of the security police officers in the Biko case, who symbolized, in their brutal and callous treatment of a defenseless man, and in the jesting about it I heard in that courtroom passageway, just how far below human decency apartheid had descended.

There was, too, the extraordinary contrast in the deportment of the magistrates in their rulings in the two cases, and what that said about the different South Africas of then and now. Desmond Nair, presiding at the Pistorius hearing, took more than two hours to review the evidence in the killing of Ms. Steenkamp, swinging back and forth in a meandering — and often bewildering — fashion between the contending accounts of Ms. Steenkamp’s death offered by Mr. Pistorius’s legal counsel and those put forward by the police.

Marthinus J. Prins, the chief magistrate in the Biko inquest, took an abrupt three minutes to deliver his finding, a numbing, 120-word exculpation of the policemen and government doctors who ushered Mr. Biko to his death on the stone-flagged floor of the Pretoria Central Prison. “The court finds the available evidence does not prove the death was brought about by any act or omission involving any offense by any person,” Mr. Prins said, reading hurriedly from a prepared statement before leaving the courtroom and slipping away by a rear door.

In finding that nobody was to blame in the black leader’s death, the magistrate brushed aside testimony suggesting what the policemen and doctors involved acknowledged many years later to have been true, when they petitioned for amnesty under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process that sought to heal the wounds of apartheid: that Mr. Biko had been beaten in police custody, suffering a severe brain injury that was left untreated until he died.

The utter lack of compassion, and of anything resembling justice, was expressed in the dull-eyed satisfaction of Mr. Prins when I caught up with him an hour or so after the verdict in his vast, dingy office a few blocks from the courtroom.

“To me, it was just another death,” he said, pulling off his spectacles and rubbing his eyes. “It was just a job, like any other.”

Mr. Prins, who rose to his position through the apartheid bureaucracy, without legal training, appeared at that moment, as he had throughout the inquest, to be disturbingly sincere, yet utterly blinded. Faithful servant of the apartheid system, he had given it the clean bill of health it demanded, and freed the police to continue treating black political detainees as they chose. Among the country’s rulers, the verdict was embraced as a triumphal vindication, while those who chose to see matters more clearly understood it to be a tolling of history’s bell.

Listening to Mr. Nair delivering his ruling in the Pistorius case, there will have been many, in South Africa and abroad, who will have found his monologue on Friday confusing, circular in its argument, and numbingly repetitive. As an exercise in jurisprudence, it was something less than a stellar advertisement for a South African legal system that, at its best, is a match for any in the world, as it was back in 1977.

Sydney Kentridge, lead counsel for the Biko family at the inquest, moved seamlessly to England in the years that followed, and became, by widespread reckoning among his peers, Britain’s most distinguished barrister, still practicing in London now, well into his 80’s.

In the 2011 Steve Biko Lecture at the University of Cape Town, Sydney Kentridge spoke about the inquest into his death in 1977.

A host of other South African expatriates who fled apartheid have made outstanding careers as lawyers and judges in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, but many others stayed at home, and continue to serve a court system that has fared rather better, in recent years, than many other institutions in the new South African state.

But even if Mr. Nair, in granting Mr. Pistorius bail, seemed no match in the elegance of his argument for South Africa’s finest legal minds, he nonetheless did South Africa proud. In the chaotic manner of his ruling, which sounded at times like a man grabbing for law books off a shelf, he was, indisputably, doing something that Mr. Prins, all those years before, had not even attempted: looking for ways to steer his course to justice. People will disagree whether Mr. Pistorius deserved the break he got in walking free from that courtroom, but nobody could reasonably contest that what we saw in his case was the working of a legal system that strives for justice, and not to rubber-stamp the imperatives of the state.

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Ian Ziering: Why My Pregnant Wife Pole Dances

Pregnancy does a body good. Then again, for Ian Ziering‘s expectant wife Erin, so does pole dancing.

The mom-to-be took up the sport following the birth of daughter Mia Loren, 22 months, when she found herself searching for a balance to all things baby.

“I think I got so wrapped up in the motherly world, I was looking for something to make me feel more womanly, more myself,” Erin tells The Bump.

After a night out with her friends, among them a pole dance instructor, the first-time mom — who was already pregnant with the couple’s second child — had her answer.

Courtesy Erin Ziering

“She was telling us that it will make you feel better about your body. It makes you feel more self-aware, and more confident, and that it helps with a lot of issues that happen after you have a baby,” Erin says, adding that while safe, she was still advised to check with her doctor first.

“It’s great exercise. I go once or twice a week, and it’s girl time with my friends. We go out to dinner afterwards,” she shares. “It’s been a great experience, and it kept me in great shape during my pregnancy with a lot of extra energy.”

But she’s not the only one seeing the results of her new talent; Former 90210 actor Ziering is also benefiting from the mama-to-be’s latest moves.

“I had some apprehension for Erin to be involved with that because, um, somehow in my past I’ve seen pole dancing, and I was concerned that a pregnant woman shouldn’t be doing those kinds of things,” he jokes.

Noting that her approach to the pole is “really from the workout perspective,” Ziering admits the pay off has been big in other areas as well. “It helps her get in touch with her sensuality, with her femininity, and with her sexuality, and this is great!” he explains.

“It helps her stay positive when she starts to feel [bad about her body]. Being like, ‘Yeah, I might be pregnant, but I’m making it look good!’ And on top of that, she just gets a little sexier! I think it’s great, and I’m really benefiting.”

With the couple’s second child due in May, Erin is ready for round two of baby bliss, determined to not let the anxiety of life with a newborn deter her from enjoying the experience.

“I felt like with Mia, I was always so nervous about everything, making sure I was doing everything perfectly and reading every book,” she says. “I think this time will be nice because I know what’s going on and I will be more relaxed.”

Ziering and Erin’s own childhoods allows the pair to be the perfect tag-team, although her medical background often tips the scale when it comes to making final decisions.

“We both benefit from growing up in very loving, nurturing environments. We come from similar upbringings,” he says. “Because Erin is a nurse, there’s a lot of credibility to her perspective of raising the baby that I really can’t argue with.”

He continues: “She’ll say, ‘I have looked into this,’ and explain it and I say, ‘Okay! You really have your finger on the heartbeat of child rearing,’ because she does. We go with it.”

Although he cherishes his recent role of a lifetime — dad! — fatherhood comes with its fair share of hardships. “I think the most challenging thing is keeping the stress level down during the times when the baby is inconsolable,” Ziering, 48, admits.

“But I understand that this is all a part of the work, and this is what I signed up for, and that it’s bond-building. I know that the view from the top is worth the climb.”

Joking that life with a toddler has left her less than prepared for the big arrival — “I could be pregnant longer, and it would be okay!” Erin says — she’s anticipating plenty of one-on-one time with baby after the birth.

“Mia will go to school for a couple of hours in the morning, and it will be a nice transition for her,” she explains. “She’ll be able to socialize, learn and be in a safe environment while I’m having bonding time with the new baby. We’re looking forward to that.”

Click here to read the full interview at The Bump.

– Anya Leon

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

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Investors face another Washington deadline

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors face another Washington-imposed deadline on government spending cuts next week, but it's not generating the same level of fear as two months ago when the "fiscal cliff" loomed large.

Investors in sectors most likely to be affected by the cuts, like defense, seem untroubled that the budget talks could send stocks tumbling.

Talks on the U.S. budget crisis began again this week leading up to the March 1 deadline for the so-called sequestration when $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts are scheduled to take effect.

"It's at this point a political hot button in Washington but a very low level investor concern," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. The fight pits President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats against congressional Republicans.

Stocks rallied in early January after a compromise temporarily avoided the fiscal cliff, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> has risen 6.3 percent since the start of the year.

But the benchmark index lost steam this week, posting its first week of losses since the start of the year. Minutes on Wednesday from the last Federal Reserve meeting, which suggested the central bank may slow or stop its stimulus policy sooner than expected, provided the catalyst.

National elections in Italy on Sunday and Monday could also add to investor concern. Most investors expect a government headed by Pier Luigi Bersani to win and continue with reforms to tackle Italy's debt problems. However, a resurgence by former leader Silvio Berlusconi has raised doubts.

"Europe has been in the last six months less of a topic for the stock market, but the problems haven't gone away. This may bring back investor attention to that," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

OPTIONS BULLS TARGET GAINS

The spending cuts, if they go ahead, could hit the defense industry particularly hard.

Yet in the options market, bulls were targeting gains in Lockheed Martin Corp , the Pentagon's biggest supplier.

Calls on the stock far outpaced puts, suggesting that many investors anticipate the stock to move higher. Overall options volume on the stock was 2.8 times the daily average with 17,000 calls and 3,360 puts traded, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.

"The upside call buying in Lockheed solidifies the idea that option investors are not pricing in a lot of downside risk in most defense stocks from the likely impact of sequestration," said Jared Woodard, a founder of research and advisory firm condoroptions.com in Forest, Virginia.

The stock ended up 0.6 percent at $88.12 on Friday.

If lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on reducing the U.S. budget deficit in the next few days, a sequester would include significant cuts in defense spending. Companies such as General Dynamics Corp and Smith & Wesson Holding Corp could be affected.

General Dynamics Corp shares rose 1.2 percent to $67.32 and Smith & Wesson added 4.6 percent to $9.18 on Friday.

EYES ON GDP DATA, APPLE

The latest data on fourth-quarter U.S. gross domestic product is expected on Thursday, and some analysts predict an upward revision following trade data that showed America's deficit shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years.

U.S. GDP unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter, according to an earlier government estimate, but analysts said there was no reason for panic, given that consumer spending and business investment picked up.

Investors will be looking for any hints of changes in the Fed's policy of monetary easing when Fed Chairman Ben Bernake speaks before congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Shares of Apple will be watched closely next week when the company's annual stockholders' meeting is held.

On Friday, a U.S. judge handed outspoken hedge fund manager David Einhorn a victory in his battle with the iPhone maker, blocking the company from moving forward with a shareholder vote on a controversial proposal to limit the company's ability to issue preferred stock.

(Additional reporting by Doris Frankel; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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