Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals refused to reevaluate an appellate court’s December 2010 decision to not grant the FDA the authority to regulate e-cigarettes as medical devices. The FDA has lost another battle in the effort to require e-cigarette manufacturers to conduct expensive clinical trials to prove their devices are safe. These regulations are required of other smoking cessation products such as nicotine patches.
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The American College of Physicians (ACP) announced new guidelines for the assessment of lower back pain that call for fewer imaging scans. According to the ACP “best practice advice,” routine, imaging such as X-rays and CT or MRI scans often reveal abnormalities that are not, in fact, life-threatening.
There’s good news for women worried about their annual mammogram — the FDA has just approved a new 3-D mammography device that may help doctors more accurately detect breast cancer.
City Council member Peter Vallone, Jr. was not happy with ACSH’s recent response to his efforts to ban the fluoridation of New York’s tap water. Ignoring decades of evidence that the addition of fluoride, a substance that protects against cavities, has been one of the most effective public health measures of the century, Mr. Vallone insists that its continued use poses a health risk. Mr.
Late last week brought news that the World Health Organization (WHO) has been working to facilitate a worldwide ban on ads for foods high in sugar, fat and salt intended for children. To that end, the WHO has arranged for a meeting of heads of state to discuss restrictions on ads for foods the WHO considers unhealthy.
Yesterday also brought word that the widely-read online journal Salon was deleting a 2005 story by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the purported — but actually non-existent — relationship between autism and childhood vaccination.The son of the former U.S. Attorney General, Kennedy is a lawyer with an undergraduate degree in literature and history.
ACSH has long been a leader in the fight against cigarettes, and we take pride in the work we have done to inform the public about the vast (and little-known) spectrum of real risks posed by cigarettes.At the same time, we firmly believe that educating the public on this important issue requires truth-telling and not appealing to hysteria.
Three different heart groups — the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology and the Heart Rhythm Society — all have just announced that the recently approved anticoagulant dabigatran (Pradaxa) should be considered as an alternative to warfarin (Coumadin) as treatment for patients suffering from atrial fibrillation.Researchers have concluded that Pradaxa offers some significant advantages to Coumadin.
In a surprise ruling, the FDA decided yesterday to reject the weight-loss drug Contrave even though an advisory panel ruled 13-to-7 to recommend its approval in December. Developed by Orexigen Therapeutics Inc., Contrave was shown to reduce body weight by 5 percent or more in at least 35 percent of patients, but the agency dismissed the drug’s potential benefits after research revealed it caused a slight increase in blood pressure and pulse rates compared to placebo.
It’s time to hit the seafood buffet as a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms what we knew all along: exposure to mercury in fish has no clinically adverse effect on cardiovascular disease. After analyzing data from two U.S. cohorts comprised of over 170,000 participants, researchers selected 3,427 patients who were identified as having new onset of cardiovascular disease.
Though not an endemic problem in the U.S., diarrhea remains a common life-threatening event in third-world countries, killing about 1.4 million children under the age of five every year. But there are preventive measures and treatments that can reduce this number, and a new study by Christa Fischer Walker of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health used a computer program to model how some of these methods can impact diarrhea incidence in 68 target countries.
Though the rate of smoking among U.S. adults has remained relatively stagnant over the past few years — hovering around 20 percent as reported by the CDC in September — there is still some good news to be had. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association uses two large, population-based surveys comprising a total of 1,662,353 respondents to determine if smokers are smoking fewer cigarettes.
A meta-analysis of 16 studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds that low-radiation heart CT scans, known as gated CT’s, are equally effective in diagnosing heart problems as a coronary angiography, the current gold standard. The angiogram, done via a catheter inserted through an artery into the heart, however, is invasive and not without risk, so some doctors resort to a CT scan for diagnosing patients with chest pain instead.
A new study sheds light on the difficulties physicians experience when trying to control the lipid levels in patients with coronary artery disease. Published in the American Journal of Cardiology, the study reviewed the electronic records of approximately 10,000 patients seen at a cardiology practice between September 2008 and September 2009 to assess whether the patients were achieving recommended cholesterol and triglyceride goals.
According to a report released yesterday by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, the overall rate of new breast cancer cases diagnosed among white women did not significantly change between 2003 and 2007. This contrasts with a sharp decline of 7 percent which took place between 2002 and 2003, according to an analysis of data published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention.
A new study published in the journal Gastroenterology contains some unexpected and seemingly highly significant findings: the data indicate that those patients who have gallstones or who have had their gallbladder removed are at an increased risk of death over an 18-year period than people without the disease.In fact, researchers examining the medical records of more than 14,000 people found that patients with gallbladder disease (eit
A disquieting new study published online in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes shows that research into heart devices isn’t properly considering the effects of these devices on women or employing comparable numbers of female test subjects.A research team led by Dr.
Whether it’s in preparation for an upcoming wedding or a high school reunion, many of us find ourselves seeking a quick path to weight loss.
Yesterday the AP offered its readers a rather creepy story about at-home genetic testing intended to determine if children have certain genes associated with improved athletic performance.
Drug companies often exclude people with depression from clinical trials, even though it is well known among physicians that depression often coincides with other disorders. By purposefully eliminating this cohort from early testing stages, drug manufacturers hope to gain faster FDA approval, but they may be shooting themselves in the foot once the treatment is mass-marketed and its widespread effects are better known.
A new Wisconsin bill sponsored by state Sen. Sheila Harsdorf (R-River Falls) and Rep. Erik Severson (R-Osceola) — who is, sorry to say, a physician — aims to repeal a Department of Natural Resources (DNR) rule requiring all municipal water systems to disinfect their drinking water by chlorination. Although 88 percent of Wisconsin municipalities already chlorinate their water, the remaining 12 percent that comprise 66 municipalities don’t.
On March 7, the Medicare Rights Center in New York won a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): a federal judge ruled the Medicare Part D drug coverage program is responsible for covering off-label use of drugs when treatment is medically necessary.
President Barack Obama acknowledged last week that the current FDA infrastructure is not capable of assessing recent advances in medicine and biotechnology. He calls for a modernization of the FDA that balances safety with economic interests in the creation of drug and medical device regulations:
Don’t let the Lexington-Herald Leader headline, “Madison County health board bans electronic cigarettes,” fool you. The Madison County Board of Health has actually added electronic cigarettes to their list of indoor smoking restrictions, perhaps due to an FDA warning in 2009 cautioning that the nicotine-delivery devices supposedly contain “toxic” ingredients.
In the developing world, more than 1,000 mothers and 2,000 newborn babies die each day from preventable birth complications. Many of these deaths could easily be avoided by providing pregnant women with trained midwives who can assist during birth.
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