A lengthy article in this week s New England Journal of Medicine catalogues a variety of approaches to helping smokers quit within the healthcare setting, including counseling, smoking cessation medications such as bupropion and varenicline, as well as conventional nicotine replacement modalities like gum, inhalers, and patches.
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In keeping with the unimpressive success rate of conventional smoking cessation aids, cytosine, an anti-smoking drug first marketed in 1964, has only an 8.4 percent success rate among smokers, according to the first large modern study of the drug published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers in Poland analyzed data from 740 volunteers who were accustomed to smoking 10 or more cigarettes a day.
There has lately been much debate about how often women should be screened for breast cancer. In 2009 the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended that the standard age for routine screening be raised from 40 to 50, while advising that the frequency be reduced from yearly to once every other year.
Exciting results from a final stage clinical trial of an experimental malaria vaccine reveal that African children s risk of contracting malaria after being vaccinated was reduced by half.
Called RTS,S or Mosquirix, the GlaxoSmithKline-developed shot was administered in three doses to half of a group of 6,000 five-to-17-month-olds in seven sub-Saharan African countries, while a control group received other vaccines and not the malaria vaccine.
In an effort to streamline drug development while saving time and costs, major pharmaceutical companies have joined and invested in the international Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), which in return provides drugmakers with open access to three-dimensional protein structures the initial building block of drug discovery.
Elderly men with naturally high levels of testosterone seem to be less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke than their peers with lower levels of the hormone, reports a study just published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study, led by a doctor at a university hospital in Sweden, measured the testosterone levels and cardiovascular health of 2,400 Swedish men in their 70s and 80s.
Public health officials in sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV remains prevalent, may soon find themselves in another predicament: The results of a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases warns that women who use injectable hormone contraceptives double their risk of becoming infected with HIV. In addition, HIV-positive women increase the risk that their male sexual partners will become infected with the virus as well.
North America s only safe-injection site for drug addicts will be allowed to continue its services, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.
In its 2011 Global Tuberculosis Control Report, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that last year, for the first time, the global incidence of tuberculosis (TB) declined, while deaths associated with the disease dropped to a record low for the past decade. Currently, approximately one-third of people worldwide are infected with TB, a bacteria that enters the lungs and destroys tissue there.
A large study has found that the risk of ischemic stroke the most common type rises over time with diabetes, and may triple ten years after the diagnosis is made. Researchers from Columbia University s Neurological Institute followed nearly 3,300 multiethnic patients over a median of nine years, assessing for diabetes at baseline and annually.
As the nation works to curb smoking, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presented some statistics on lung cancer rates that serve as inspiration for all who work in the trenches of public health: National lung cancer rates have declined, particularly among women, who witnessed a 2 percent decrease between 2006 and 2008. That decline in lung cancer incidence was even greater in the West, which experienced a 4 percent decline.
Alyssa Pelish in Science Magazine, October 28, 2011
For the Democracy of Science
In 1989, hepatitis C, (formerly called non-A, non-B) was first identified. At first it got little attention, but once HIV began to yield to a relentless pharmaceutical assault in the mid- to late-1990s, hepatitis C became the primary target for most antiviral research. And rightly so.
Rotavirus is a virus that causes inflammation of the stomach and intestines, resulting in the kind of severe diarrhea, vomiting, and fever that lead to dehydration and too often death in young children. Because the virus is responsible for an estimated half-million deaths each year in children younger than five years old, the World Health Organization recommends routine use of the rotavirus vaccine in all countries.
Although the premise may seem logical screen people routinely for lung cancer in order to treat it early regular chest X-rays do not in any way reduce lung cancer mortality, a recent report in JAMA confirms.
If there is anyone who still isn t convinced that tanning beds significantly increase a person s risk of skin cancer, a recent study provides even more conclusive evidence. Conducted by researchers from Harvard University and Brigham and Women s Hospital in Boston, the study followed over 70,000 nurses from 1989 to 2009 and tracked their tanning bed habits during high school, college, and between the ages of 25 and 35.
The FDA s efforts to mandate the display of graphic images on cigarette packs have been blocked by a judge s ruling. Declaring that the regulation violates the tobacco companies First Amendment right to free commercial speech and would likely be considered unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon stopped the regulation from taking effect until a lawsuit filed by the companies against the graphic images is resolved.
In a bizarre turn of events, some American parents are not only refusing to vaccinate their children against dangerous diseases, but they re actually actively trying to get their kids sick. Parents across various states are sending and receiving live viruses in the mail, often from complete strangers, in a misguided attempt to give their children immunity via actual infection, without vaccinations.
When it comes to filling prescriptions for new medications, a new study finds that about one in four of us never actually complete the task. After analyzing approximately 425,000 CVS Caremark e-prescriptions for new drugs issued nationwide, researchers from the Brigham and Women s Hospital in Boston found that 24 percent of such scripts were never filled.
People suffering from Lynch Syndrome, a genetic disease carried by about one in every 1000 people, have at least a 10-fold increased risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC), compared to the general population. Out of the approximately 160,000 new cases of CRC that occur in the U.S. every year, Lynch Syndrome accounts for about 8,000.
ACSH staffers have long known that the adverse health effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), according to the 2002 Women s Health Initiative study, were dramatically overstated. Despite this, the public response to this report was drastic: Based on the widely publicized results of that research, 93 percent of U.S. women ceased using HRT or did not obtain a new prescription.
A new study from the German Heart Center in Munich should ease the minds of air travelers with pacemakers or implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs). The researchers found that undergoing metal detector security screenings did not result in any functional abnormalities in such devices.
Radiation following breast conserving surgery for women with smaller cancerous lesions is beneficial in terms of both recurrence and mortality, according to the results of a large meta-analyis of 17 studies published in The Lancet. The analysis was performed by researchers from the Early Breast Cancer Trialists Collaborative Group.
A new prenatal blood test made by Sequenom will test for Down syndrome less invasively in the early stages of pregnancy. Known as MaterniT21, the test determines with a high degree of accuracy whether the baby will have Down syndrome. This condition, in which the child has some degree of mental retardation, is caused by Trisomy-21 three copies of the chromosome 21, instead of the normal set of two.
Despite European consumers longstanding aversion to genetically modified (GM) food products, BASF, the world s largest chemical company, is making headway toward European Union approval of a genetically modified potato.
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