Female migraineurs are less likely to get breast cancer, according to the results of a study published in this month’s Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

In the study, Robert W. Mathes and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center combined information from 2 retrospective, case-control studies involving women between the ages of 55 and 79.

The scientists found that women who gave a history of migraine headaches were one-third less likely to develop breast cancer. The association was limited to hormone receptor-positive tumors. It was not affected by migraine therapy or by the age when migraine headaches began.

The association held for both estrogen- and progesterone-receptor positive tumors, and for the two most common kinds of breast cancer, which are ductal carcinoma and lobular carcinoma.

The scientists speculate that estrogen is the cause of the seemingly odd association.

In women, they write, migraine headaches can be triggered by falling estrogen levels as typically occurs before and during menses. Of equal interest, migraine headaches tend to disappear during pregnancy when hormone levels run high.

The scientists then write, “given that lifetime estrogen exposure is correlated with breast cancer risk, the occurrence of migraines in women, which also has a relationship to estrogen, may be related to breast cancer risk.”

The scientists call for confirmatory studies since theirs is the first to identify the association. It is particularly important to undertake follow-up studies since this study was unable to account for a potential confounding effect of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like Motrin. These drugs are commonly used to treat migraines and have been linked to a reduced risk of breast cancer.

Heck no, everybody knows Al Gore did that but the Big O’s presidential campaign did leverage the Internet to an unprecedented degree, and he will continue to do so as President.

Obama’s Internet strategy promises to be the biggest change in presidential communications since JFK began using television to take his message to the public half a century ago. In reaching directly to supporters using the Internet, the Big O can bypass the mainstream media any time he wants.

Already the Big O’s www.change.gov  Web site incorporates suggestion forms and a blog, harbingers of the sort of immediate feedback his administration will encourage.

But the centerpiece of Obama’s communication strategy will be his email database, which contains 10 million names. 3.1 million people in that database gave money to his campaign. Millions more volunteered to register new voters, organize those scintillating rallies, garner support from wavering voters and generally help the man become President.

The Big O will be banking on those supporters to lobby congress in support of his initiatives, provide feedback on his policies, and get out the vote for his preferred candidates come the 2010 midterm elections.

Smelling a goldmine, Peter Greenberger, Google’s manager of political advertising suggested that the Big O could combine an ad strategy with his database to recruit support for his policies. “If there’s an article in the New York Times or the Washington Post about health-care legislation,” Greenberger told the Post, “the administration or a pro-Obama advocacy organization could run an ad right alongside it.”

Thanks Pete.

Even some Republicans have taken note.  Recently, several members launched www.rebuildtheparty.com which implores the next party chairman to start an Internet-based organization like the one that helped oust them last week.

“Online organizing is by far the most efficient way to transform our party structures to be able to compete against what is likely to be a $1 billion Obama re-election campaign in 2012,” according to the site.

In each of the 4 years since state legislators banned smoking in restaurants, bars and many workplaces, nearly 600 fewer Massachusetts residents died from heart attacks, according to a report from the state Department of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health.

That represents a 30% decline in heart attack deaths, a significant acceleration that was easy to spot amid a gentler, long-term decline reflecting national trends. Officials noted that Boston and surrounding municipalities, which had enacted bans prior to 2004, experienced the steep decline before other areas in the state.

The report explored other possible causes for the drop-off such as improved transportation of heart attack victims to hospitals, medical record coding changes and demographic changes, but there was no evidence they played a role.

“This is the strongest study yet of the effect of smoking bans on heart attacks,” Dr. Michael Siegel told the Boston Globe. Siegel, who had criticized earlier studies of the matter, is an expert on tobacco control programs. “You can no longer argue that these declines would have occurred simply due to medical treatment.”

The findings should impact the debate over secondhand smoke, in which tobacco and hospitality industry lobbyists argue that available data does not support workplace tobacco bans.

It should also further empower the Boston Public Health Commission which had tentatively approved several muscular tobacco control regulations such as ending cigarette sales on college campuses and at drug stores, and closing cigar parlors and hookah bars.

Scientists have known for years that secondhand smoke can adversely affect the cardiovascular system, even if exposure is brief. In particular, such exposure triggers coronary artery spasm, damages coronary artery endothelial cells, and increases the risk of blood clots, all of which can trigger heart attacks.