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Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. publishes its list of Castle Connolly Top Doctors at , as well as in a wide variety of printed directories, partner publications and on partner/affiliate websites including US News and World Report's annually updated list of "Top Doctors." All told, fewer than 35,000 physicians - less than 5% of the nation's licensed physicians - have been selected as Castle Connolly Top Doctors in their regions for their specialties.

Castle Connolly Top Doctors are selected by Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. after being nominated by peer physicians in an online nomination process. Nominations are open to all board certified MDs and DOs and each year tens of thousands of doctors cast many tens of thousands of nominations. Honorees are selected from the nominees by the Castle Connolly physician-led research team based on criteria including their medical education, training, hospital appointments, disciplinary histories and more.

About Kavita Aggarwal:a short profile by and about the honoree:

Dr. Aggarwal earned a Mechanical Engineering degree from MIT, medical degree from Cornell University Medical College. Following her training, she joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Now she is working at Mount Kisco Medical Group. Additionally, she and her husband have organized several humanitarian missions to South America to provide general medical care and cleft palate repair surgeries to children. She also maintains her academic interests by precepting first year medical students and has a faculty appointment at New York Medical College.

For more information on this Castle Connolly Top Doctor, please visit Kavita Aggarwal's profile on

Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.'s President and CEO Dr. John Connolly has this to say about Dr. Aggarwal's recognition: "Only a small percent of physicians are selected to be Castle Connolly Top Doctors. Our goal is to make it easier for an average person to find the right doctor for them in what can be an overwhelming process at a difficult time in a person's life. Dr. Aggarwal was nominated by Board Certified peers and selected by our research team at Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. Selection is an impressive accomplishment worthy of recognition. My congratulations to Dr. Aggarwal."

To find out more or to contact Dr.Kavita Aggarwal of Poughkeepsie,NY, please call 845-471-3111, or visit .

This press release was written by American Registry, LLC and Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., with approval by and/or contributions from Kavita Aggarwal and was distributed by PR Newswire, a subsidiary of UBM plc.

Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. identifies top doctors in America and provides consumers with detailed information about their education, training and special expertise in printed guides and online directories. It is important to note that doctors do not and cannot pay to be included in any Castle Connolly guide or online directory. Learn more at .

American Registry, LLC, recognizes excellence in top businesses and professionals. For more information, search The Registry at .

Contact Information:Dr.Kavita AggarwalPhone: 845-471-3111

SOURCE American Registry

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Herbal supplements aimed at improving men's sexual abilities often contain the active ingredients in erectile dysfunction pills such as Viagra, according to a new study.

Additionally, researchers found that some of these over-the-counter herbal remedies contained more of the ingredient than is allowed in prescription-only pharmaceuticals.

"It's pretty scary stuff," said Neil Campbell, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Pfizer, which sells Viagra. "These products are not herbal at all, they're adulterated."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is in charge of regulating herbal supplements, posted 11 warnings to consumers in 2013 alerting them of unlabeled pharmaceuticals being found in these products.

Campbell and his colleagues analyzed 91 samples from 58 products.

They sent undercover consumers into convenience stores and gas stations in the Atlanta and Baltimore areas, and bought products such as Rize 2 The Occasion, Stiff 4 Hours, and Man King.

Although 57 of the products claimed to be "all natural," 81 percent of them contained the tadalafil or sildenafil (marketed as Cialis and Viagra, respectively) or similar ingredients that are not approved by the FDA.

The products also had labeling problems, indicating poor quality production, according to the authors. In some cases, expiration dates or lot numbers were missing, manufacturers could not be identified, or samples of the same product had different appearances.

"There's so little effort to do something the right way to produce a legitimate product," Campbell told Reuters Health. "This is an all time low."

None of 10 supplement companies contacted by Reuters Health responded to a request for comment, nor did the FDA.

Campbell said given the potential side effects and health risks associated with prescription erectile dysfunction drugs, men are "risking their lives" taking herbal sex enhancement drugs.

"Almost one patient a day says they've tried Mojo or one of these over-the-counter products," said Dr. Gregory Lowe, an assistant professor of urology at Ohio State University who was not part of this study.

"One of the big concerns is that we don't know what the patient's getting," he added.

Seven samples that Campbell's group analyzed contained only unknown substances.

"Commonly, I hear patients say, 'it worked one time and it didn't work other times.' And that fits in well with what they found here" that quality control is lacking, he added.

It's unclear where the ingredients are coming from.

Lowe advises men who are interested in taking these pills to talk to their doctors first.

He says patients often turn to these products because they are cheap - costing between $2.99 and $17.99, according to Campbell's study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

But they are taking a health risk in doing so.

Erectile dysfunction medicines can be unsafe for men taking nitrates for chest pain, but only 14 of the samples in the study included a warning against combining the drugs.

"Unfortunately, to an unwitting patient they think they're taking an herbal product," said Campbell. "It really poses a really scary threat for patient health and safety."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/17KGjiu Journal of Sexual Medicine, online May 1, 2013.

Knox, 25, spent four years in prison for the murder of Meredith Kercher while they were exchange students in Perugia, a hilltop Italian university town popular with foreigners. Knox, who became a tabloid sensation in Britain and Italy, was acquitted on appeal in 2011. She returned to her Seattle-area home, but Italy's high court last month ordered a retrial.

In the hotly anticipated memoir, published by HarperCollins and in bookstores on Tuesday, Knox maintained her innocence and wrote that she regretted that in prison she had never reached out to Kercher's family to say that the girl's death had been a "heartbreak to so many."

The memoir was released in conjunction with an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer that is due to air on Tuesday evening.

Knox wrote that she wished she had reached out to Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner whom Knox falsely accused of the murder. Lumumba, who was briefly jailed and then cleared, said in 2011 that Knox's accusation destroyed his life.

"Naming him was unforgivable, and he didn't deserve it, but I wanted to say that it wasn't about him," Knox wrote. "I was pushed so hard that I'd have named anyone."

Knox penned letters to both, but her lawyers advised against sending them because it would hurt her legal case.

In the 457-page memoir, Knox writes of arriving in Italy at age 20 with "rookie Italian" and a penchant for "immature antics," eager to develop independence and come into her own.

Knox writes that she and Kercher bonded right away: "We did what all girls do: we talked about the guys we liked in Perugia and the ones we'd left behind."

She denies that the relationship soured and describes a friendly final encounter as Knox and her new boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, left the shared apartment hours before the murder.

Knox writes that she did not understand that she was a suspect in Kercher's murder, and believed that she could help investigators find the killer.

"I was too confused to know what the truth was," she writes at one point, after implicating Lumumba and saying she witnessed the murder.

Her "bafflement" at the situation eventually gave way to "quiet indignation and defiance," Knox writes.

"I followed their directions like a lost, pathetic child," she writes of the investigation leading up to her arrest. "I didn't question, I didn't object, I just put my head down when they told me to and trusted that this would all make sense soon."

Knox, dubbed "Foxy Knoxy" in many early media reports, was initially portrayed as promiscuous and dishonest but a lobbying campaign by her family helped change perceptions.

Kercher's half-naked body, with more than 40 wounds and a deep gash in the throat, was found in the apartment she shared with Knox in the town in central Italy. A student at Leeds University, she was 21 when she died.

The Italian high court in March also overturned the acquittal of Sollecito, Knox's former boyfriend, and ordered a new trial on a date still to be set.

The acquittal came after independent forensic experts said the police scientific evidence was deeply flawed and the investigation had been bungled.

An Ivorian drifter named Rudy Guede, was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years in a separate trial. He is now the only person serving time for the murder, although prosecutors say he could not have killed Kercher by himself.

(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Lisa Shumaker)

A spokeswoman for the Dusseldorf opera house said Tuesday that members of the audience "booed and were shocked" by Saturday's opening performance.

Monika Doll said the company of Deutsche Oper am Rhein is debating whether to tone down the provocative parts, added to the original by producer Burkhard Kosminski.

"Members of the audience booed and banged the doors when they left the opera house in protest before the end of the show," the head of the city's Jewish community told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Michael Szentei-Heise called the adaptation at the city's Deutsche Oper am Rhein "tasteless and not legitimate."

The director, Christoph Meyer, said in a statement that the opera company never wanted to hurt the feelings of the viewers. "This is not about mocking the victims, but mourning them," Meyer said.

At the opening of the Duesseldorf performance, performers could be seen inside glass chambers, falling to the floor as white fog flowed an allusion to the mass killings of the Jews in the Nazis' death camps. After a half hour, the music stopped and a family stepped on stage. The parents and their children were having their hair shaved off and then they are shot dead another reference to treatment of Jewish captives during the Holocaust.

The original Tannhauser opera is set in the Middle Ages and was first performed in Dresden in 1845. It is based on a traditional ballad about the bard Tannhauser and features a singing contest at the Wartburg Castle in south-central Germany.

Szentei-Heise, the Jewish community leader, objected to the inclusion of scenes reminiscent of the Holocaust, which occurred nearly a century after the opera was first performed.

"This opera has nothing to do with the Holocaust," Szentei-Heise said. "However, I think the audience has made this very clear to the opera and the producer."

Wagner, an ardent anti-Semite, remains a controversial figure in Germany and elsewhere nearly 130 years after his death. Adolf Hitler was an admirer, and playing Wagner's music is still considered a taboo in Israel.

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- The image was chilling: Snowmobile rider Caleb Moore, launched over his handlebars on a backflip gone wrong, rolled down the landing hill with his 450-pound machine somersaulting behind him.

Run over by his sled, Moore lay on the snow for several minutes before being helped off the course. As of Wednesday, he was hospitalized in critical condition because of bleeding around his heart and a complication involving his brain.

Moore's was the worst accident at the Winter X Games, which wrapped up Sunday night after four days of competition, but it wasn't the only harrowing moment. The wipeouts included a runaway snowmobile that sent spectators scrambling.

Even the highlights were hardly tame. Snowboarding star Shaun White soared a competition record 24 feet into the air during the superpipe competition, and fellow boarder Elena Hight showed off a difficult trick called a"double alley-oop backside rodeo" that involved a couple of backflips and a 180-degree rotation. It had never been seen in a competition.

All that, plus Moore's crash, has some wondering whether dialing up the difficulty each year improves action sports or has simply made them too dangerous.

"Should we be asking these questions? We absolutely should be," said Dan Lebowitz, the executive director of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, which examines the role of sports to promote healthy development and social responsibility.

The people performing these superhuman feats "really are just human," he said. "How do we maintain safety in that progression when that progression sometimes pushes every envelope to some amazingly extreme point?"

Moore's injuries underscore the dangers at Winter X, which was filled with numerous cover-your-eyes crashes.

Halldor Helgason of Iceland over-rotated on a flip in the snowboard big air competition and had to be taken off on a sled with a concussion. Rose Battersby of New Zealand sustained a lumbar spine fracture in a wipeout during practice before the skiing slopestyle competition, which will be an Olympic sport next winter at the Sochi Games.

Then there was this: Summer X Games motocross champion turned snowmobile newcomer Jackson Strong tumbled off his machine during the best trick competition, the throttle sticking and the sled swerving toward fans as they scurried away. The machine came to a rest when it got tangled in some netting and no one was seriously hurt.

Such a scenario had already crossed the mind of Levi LaVallee, a snowmobiler who captured two gold medals only to be sidelined for the final two competitions after tearing a muscle in his back.

"I've always thought about, 'What happens if the thing tips over and the throttle sticks?'" LaVallee said. "It was good, though, because it showed that X Games has a good setup with the fencing."

Whether action sports are too dangerous is an issue that's been raised before.

When freestyle skier Sarah Burke died in a training accident a little more than a year ago in Park City, Utah, there were questions about the halfpipe. Before that, the sport was examined when snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a severe brain injury in a fall in the same pipe as Burke two years earlier. Pearce has recovered and served as an analyst at Winter X.

But in general, the athletes accept the risks and defend their disciplines.

"To lose Sarah was such a blow to this entire industry," said snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, who didn't compete this year as she recovers from a serious eye injury she suffered in training. "This sport brings so much joy, happiness and balance to my life and that far outweighs what could happen. You can't ever live your life with what could happen."

In a statement, X Games officials said they've paid close attention to safety issues over the event's 18-year history: "We've worked closely with athletes, risk management specialists, sport organizers and event managers to present the best possible experience for athletes and spectators. Further measures are constantly being evaluated."

Athletes say they prepare as best they can by trying out new tricks into foam pits and air bags set up at the bottom of courses. But even all the caution in the world can't prevent the fact that sometimes well-practiced maneuvers can go wrong in the air.

"You don't want to live your life in fear because of a situation," LaVallee said. "Look, I'm driving down the road right now and the worst-case scenario is a car could swerve over into my lane and run over me there it is, end of the road.

"That's kind of the same thing we think when we're competing. Hopefully, the preparation and countless hours of training and practicing will prevent the worst-case scenario from happening."

Tucker Hibbert the Shaun White of snowmobiling after winning his sixth straight SnoCross title just hopes casual fans understand that what they see on television is not true snowmobiling.

"You're seeing the most extreme side of what we do," Hibbert said. "That's a lot different than what the average person does on a snowmobile."

Hibbert doesn't participate in events such as best trick because, "I just wasn't born with those skills. I sit back and watch those guys, enjoy what they do."

He paused.

"You just hate to see anyone crash, anyone get hurt," Hibbert said.

Moore was in the middle of an impressive run in the freestyle event when he caught the top of the hill that was serving as a landing area. He initially walked away with help and went to a hospital with a concussion.

Moore later developed bleeding around his heart and had surgery. His family said that Moore, of Krum, Texas, also had a complication involving his brain.

Colten Moore, Caleb's younger brother and defending champion in the event, separated his pelvis in a crash later that same night.

LaVallee is no stranger to horrific wipeouts.

While training for the "Red Bull: New Year. No Limits" daredevil series two years ago in Southern California, LaVallee lost control of his snowmobile high in the air and landed violently on his side, bouncing down the landing ramp. He broke ribs, cracked his pelvis, collapsed one lung and punctured the other.

But he returned the next year and jumped a record 412 feet, 6 inches.

"We're passionate about the sport that we're in," LaVallee said.

"Anyone who competes has that drive to succeed, to go bigger than the next person or be the first one to do it."

The mentality is similar throughout action sports, even if the bar keeps getting raised.

"There are going to be benchmarks set and people trying to exceed that benchmark," Lebowitz said. "That's just the essence of our society and our social culture."

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Close to two-thirds of women favor making contraceptive pills available over the counter, according to a new nationally-representative survey.

In addition, about 30 percent of women using either no birth control or a less effective method - such as condoms - said they would likely take the Pill if it was sold without a prescription, researchers found.

"Of course it's a hypothetical question, and it remains to be seen how this would play out in reality," said Dr. Daniel Grossman, from the University of California, San Francisco and the nonprofit Ibis Reproductive Health, who led the new study.

But the finding "gives us some indication that making the Pill over the counter could help improve use of more effective contraception and help women use the method they'd like to use," Grossman told Reuters Health.

It could also potentially reduce unplanned pregnancies, he noted.

"There's mounting evidence that this is safe, this is effective and women really want it."

The results come amid news on Wednesday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is appealing a court order directing the agency to make the "morning after" emergency contraceptive Plan B available over the counter to women of any age.

Late last year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a statement recommending that birth control pills be available over the counter (see Reuters Health story of November 20, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/UH0Zz9).

For the new study, researchers surveyed just over 2,000 women aged 18 to 44 about their attitudes toward over-the-counter access to the Pill. None of those women was pregnant or trying to become pregnant, and all had been sexually active with men in the past year.

About 31 percent of participants each said they were "strongly" or "somewhat" in favor of women being able to buy birth control pills without a prescription, according to findings published in the journal Contraception.

"It shows that, just as I think physicians' attitudes seem to be changing over time, women's attitudes are also changing over time," said Dr. Kavita Nanda, a contraception and family planning researcher at FHI 360 in Durham, North Carolina.

Women in the study said over-the-counter access would make getting the Pill more convenient, save time and money and prevent unintended pregnancies. However, they also noted some downsides, such as women possibly choosing a pill that's wrong for them.

Nanda, who wasn't involved in the new research, said resistance to making birth control pills more accessible has stemmed from concerns that women need a doctor to determine whether the drugs are safe given their particular situation, and that the women won't go to regular check-ups if they can get pills without a doctor's help.

But those theories haven't played out in other studies, she told Reuters Health.

Research suggests, for example, that women are able to look at a checklist of contraindications and determine if the Pill is safe for them, she said. Having uncontrolled high blood pressure or a history of breast cancer or blood clots may all make birth control pills less safe, she noted.

Grossman agreed with Nanda that any safety issues have largely been addressed.

"There was one piece that was missing from the research that had been done to date, and that was really documenting the demand for this among women," he said. "Women really are interested in this."

Close to half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I see this issue, of moving the regular birth control pill over the counter, as the next big advance in improving access to effective contraception," Grossman said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/YejQYh Contraception, online April 23, 2013.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There is not enough evidence to recommend for or against screening for oral cancer, a government-backed panel said today, due to a lack of data on possible benefits and harms tied to screening.

The most common causes of oral cancer are cigarette smoking and alcohol as well as the sexually-transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV. The American Cancer Society estimates 36,000 people will be diagnosed with oral cancer in 2013 and close to 7,000 will die of the disease.

Evidence is lacking on whether screening can accurately detect oral cancer and if earlier treatment of cancers found during those tests improves long-term health, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) found.

"It's not that oral cancer screening has been shown to be ineffective or too risky or that it's been shown to be effective. The huge problem is a lack of studies," said Dr. Maura Gillison, who researches head and neck cancers at The Ohio State University in Columbus.

Researchers found just one study of the effect of oral cancer screening on deaths from cancer, an Indian trial that tracked 192,000 people over nine years. That study did not show screening saved lives overall, but a second look suggested smokers and alcohol drinkers benefited from the cancer checks.

Seven other studies that looked specifically at detection of oral cancer during screening found a wide range of accuracy rates in healthcare workers' positive and negative diagnoses. Those studies were largely conducted in places with more oral cancers than the U.S., such as India and Taiwan, the Task Force noted.

None of the trials estimated how many people suffer screening-related harms, such as from further tests and treatments tied to false-positives.

The new recommendations, currently in draft form, will be available for public comment through May 6 here: http://bit.ly/cy0SzP.

Gillison, who is not part of the USPSTF, said it's still a good idea for doctors and dentists to know the early signs of oral cancer, including red or white patches, ulcerations or a mass in the mouth or swelling of the lymph nodes.

Researchers "are trying to alert primary care providers to the signs of a cancer, so that there isn't a delay in appropriate diagnosis and treatment," Gillison said. "We are all in favor of increased knowledge, increased awareness."

"This is not a recommendation about what to do if you have a symptom," agreed Dr. Albert Siu, co-vice chair of the USPSTF from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

"If you find something in your mouth, if you're concerned about something in your mouth, by all means bring it to the attention of your doctor or your dentist," he told Reuters Health.

For people without symptoms, he said, the lack of evidence one way or another makes screening an individual call.

"If you have risk factors - heavy smoking, heavy alcohol use - it's something to discuss with your doctor in terms of if it's worth looking in your mouth to check," Siu said. "I think that's something that would be reasonable."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cy0SzP U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, online April 8, 2013.

The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars.

Those findings combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars complicate President Barack Obama's effort to expand pre-K programs across the country. While Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continue to promote the president's proposal, researchers say existing programs are inadequate, and until their shortcomings are fixed there is little desire by lawmakers to get behind Obama's call for more preschool.

"The state of preschool was a state of emergency," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which produced the report.

During his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed a federal-state partnership that would dramatically expand options for families with young children. Obama's plan would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income was below twice the federal poverty rate.

If it were in place this year, the plan would allow a family of four with two children to enroll students in a pre-K program if the family earned less than $46,566.

Students from families who earn more could participate in the program, but their parents would have to pay tuition based on their income. Eventually, 3-year-old students would be part of the program, too.

As part of his budget request, Obama proposed spending $75 billion over 10 years to help states get these new programs up and running. During the first years, Washington would pick up the majority of the cost before shifting costs to states.

"It's the most significant opportunity to expand access to pre-K that this nation has ever seen," Barnett said of the president's proposal.

Obama proposed paying for this expansion by almost doubling the federal tax on cigarettes, to $1.95 per pack.

Obama's pre-K plan faces a tough uphill climb, though, with the tobacco industry opposing the tax that would pay for it and lawmakers from tobacco-producing states also skeptical. Conservative lawmakers have balked at starting another government program, as well. Obama's Democratic allies are clamoring to make it a priority.

To help it along, Duncan and Sebelius planned to join the report's researchers on Monday at a news conference to introduce the report, along with administration allies. They planned events later in the week to reiterate their support.

Yet those public events were unlikely to sway lawmakers who are already fighting among themselves over spending cuts that are forcing students to be dropped from existing preschool programs, the levying of higher fees for student loans and deep cuts for aid to military schools.

States spent about $5.1 billion on pre-K programs in 2011-12, the most recent school year, researchers wrote in the report.

Per-student funding for existing programs during that year dropped to an average of $3,841 for each student. It was the first time average spending per student dropped below $4,000 in today's dollars since researchers started tracking it during the 2001-02 academic year.

Adjusted for inflation, per-student funding has been cut by more than $1,000 during the last decade.

Yet nationwide, the amounts were widely varied. The District of Columbia spent almost $14,000 on every child in its program while the states of Colorado, South Carolina and Nebraska spent less than $2,000 per child.

"Whether you get a quality preschool program does depend on what ZIP code you are in," Barnett said.

Among the 40 states that offer state-funded pre-K programs, 27 cut per-student spending last year. In total, that meant $548 million in cuts.

Money, of course, is not a guarantee for students' success. But students from poor schools generally lag students from better-funded counterparts and those students from impoverished families arrive in kindergarten less prepared than others.

In all, only 15 states and the District of Columbia spent enough money to provide quality programs, the researchers concluded. Those programs serve about 20 percent of the 1.3 million enrolled in state-funded prekindergarten programs.

"In far too many states, funding levels have fallen so low as to bring into question the effectiveness of their programs by any reasonable standard," researchers wrote.

Part of the reason for the decreased spending are the lingering effects of the economic downturn in 2008, coupled with the end of federal stimulus dollars to plug state budgets.

"Although the recession is technically over, the recovery in state revenues has lagged the recovery of the general economy and has been slower and weaker than following prior recessions. This does not bode well for digging back out of the hole created by years of cuts," the researchers wrote in their report.

Nationally, 42 percent of students or more than a half million students were in programs that met fewer than half of the benchmarks researchers identified as important to gauging a program's effectiveness, such as classrooms with fewer than 20 students and teachers with bachelor's degrees.

That, too, suggests problems for Obama's plan to expand pre-K programs, especially if Washington insists its partners meet quality benchmarks to win federal dollars.

LONDON (Reuters) - The euro and commodities gained ground on Thursday as evidence of a weakening U.S. economy put the dollar under pressure, while investors waited to find out whether Britain's stagnant economy had fallen back into recession.

Markets are looking to the British first-quarter gross domestic product number (GDP), due at 0830 GMT (4.30 a.m. ET), to see whether it reinforces the gloomy global economic picture painted by recent releases from Germany, China and the United States.

"We had a run of weak data across the global board, I wouldn't be surprised to see a softer number coming out of the UK," said Rainer Guntermann, a strategist at Commerzbank.

Britain's $2.4-trillion economy is expected by analysts to have eked out growth of 0.1 percent in the first three months of 2013 to March, according to a Reuters poll.

That would avoid a second quarter of contraction - the definition of a recession - after GDP shrank by 0.3 percent in the final three months of last year.

The recent run of weak economic data, culminating news of the biggest drop for seven months in orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured products, saw the dollar fall 0.3 percent against a basket of major currenciesto 82.7.

This helped the euro add about 0.2 percent to $1.3042 and move further away from a two-and-a-half-week low of $1.2954 recorded on Wednesday.

The single European currency was also being supported by falling government bond yields in heavily indebted Italy and Spain and by hopes that Italy is about to have a new coalition government after two months of post-election political deadlock.

Most of Europe's stock markets opened on a subdued note following two days of strong gains as the signs of a growing economic slowdown across the region increased talk that the European Central Bank will cut rates next week. Senior sources have told Reuters that momentum is building for monetary action to help revive growth.

The broad FTSE Eurofirst 300 indexof top European shares gained about 0.2 percent in early trade, with the Paris CAC-40and Frankfurt's DAXflat to 0.2 percent higher.

Britain's top share index, the FTSE 100was up 0.5 percent, setting a fresh three-week high, ahead of the national GDP data. U.S. stock futures were up 0.1 percent, indicating a calm Wall Street open.

Earlier MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japangained 0.7 percent, with Hong Kong sharesrising 1.1 percent and hitting a three-week high, spurred by recovering commodity prices.

Gold and copper prices were close to one-week highs, while Brent crude oil held firm at $101.75 a barrel.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose to $7,098 a metric ton (1.123 tons), its highest since April 18, before paring gains to be around $7,043.

Gold stood at $1,443 an ounce by having hit a high of $1,447.66 an ounce earlier in the session, its loftiest level since April 15, the day it posted its biggest ever daily drop in dollar terms.

(This story corrects the time of UK GDP release to 0830 GMT)

(Additional reporting Ana Nicolaci da Costa; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)