Following a split vote by an FDA advisory panel in July on whether Avandia was safe to stay on the market after evidence surfaced implicating the diabetes drug with an increased risk of heart attack, the FDA announced yesterday that it will place stringent restrictions on Avandia’s availability. Patients who wish to continue use of Avandia will have to enroll in a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) program along with their doctors and pharmacists.
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The front page of Sunday’s New York Times featured a heartbreaking story about two cousins, both suffering from widespread melanoma, a lethal type of skin cancer. Both young men’s melanoma had a specific gene mutation called B-RAF, which is specifically targeted by a new drug being tested by Roche Pharmaceuticals.
The silly season in the fight against obesity is spreading, it seems, from the West coast to the East coast. The latest metropolis to join in the battle against soda is Boston, where city officials are considering a ban on selling sugar-sweetened beverages in government buildings. The anti-soda craze was started by Mayor Gavin Newsom in San Francisco, and now Boston is following suit.
If the thought of abstaining from alcohol for the entire length of pregnancy sounds like a daunting task, moms-to-be can breathe a slight sigh of relief, as a new study from the Journal of Epidemiological and Community Health suggests that having one or two drinks weekly may be safe during pregnancy.
Genetically modified crops benefit both farmers (by reducing the need for purchasing expensive pesticides) and consumers (by providing crops that studies have shown are safer and healthier than conventional food, as well as cheaper, given the economic benefits to farmers).
As much as we will it to be, science is often not a simple case of black or white, a point reporter Anthony DePalma makes in a Huffington Post article describing the complexity of measuring 9/11 health effects. Mr. DePalma points out that while there is much known about the World Trade Center dust composition, the knowledge surrounding its health impact is limited; therefore, such legislation as the James Zadroga bill, which aims to reopen the Sept.
Severe acne is more likely to cause suicide and depression in young people, not the drug Accutane often used to treat it, a new study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology finds.
A new study suggests that most men do not need frequent prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests to screen for prostate cancer after they turn 60, the age at which PSA levels can predict one’s risk of dying from the disease.
File under, you reap what you sow : Caving to the complaints of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Ben & Jerry s has decided to remove the all-natural label from its ice cream.
In her role in the 1997 movie The Beautician and the Beast, actress Fran Drescher plays a New York cosmetologist who is mistakenly thought to be a science teacher. It seems that life imitates art, as Ms. Drescher is embarking on a “scientific” crusade by lending her name to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an activist organization dedicated to scaring the public about the so-called carcinogens they’ll find in cosmetic products.
The headline of an article in Aquatics International reads “Highly publicized studies link cancer, DBP’s,” which kindly stated, is much ado about nothing. Based upon three studies, researchers found that disinfection by-products (DBPs) — certain byproducts of chlorine sanitizers used in swimming pools — may correlate with respiratory problems and bladder cancer.
When a patient experiences a stroke, time is of the essence in order to qualify for the most effective treatment — but often stroke victims are unable to determine or communicate when their stroke started. MRI scans could be useful in those cases, according to a study published online Tuesday in the journal Radiology.
The NFL, NHL, NCAA and MLB are all taking concussions seriously and the American Academy of Neurology is following suit with a new set of guidelines announced yesterday that call for athletes of all ages suspected of suffering a concussion to be evaluated by a specialist before returning to play.
Your iPhones and BlackBerrys may need some sort of viral “pesticide” because they may be harboring “more germs than a toilet in a subway bathroom,” a new study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology finds.
As drugs continue to be taken for longer periods of time, unexpected complications may arise that were absent from short-term clinical trials.
The last time you were at McDonald’s, you may have thought twice about whether or not to indulge in a Big Mac after reading its total calorie content — or maybe you didn’t.
Parents philosophically opposed to the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine are responsible for hundreds of sickened children in the last few years, government data show.
Well, BPA is finally making us sick too... no, not the plastic chemical, but all the junk science floating around about it, especially in breathless (but false) media headlines. But a new study is getting a lot of press attention, so there’s no way we can avoid giving it a mention.
A court in Brazil has awarded a former McDonald s franchise manager $17,500 in damages after the manager sued the fast food chain for allegedly making him fat. The 32-year-old says that his employer caused him to gain 65 pounds in 12 years by pressuring him to taste-test the food and offering him free lunches. A similar lawsuit from 2002 tried to accuse the fast food industry of creating addicting foods that ultimately lead to obesity and other health complications.
Use of two or more common OTC painkillers during pregnancy may increase the risk of cryptorchidism (undescended testicles) in male infants, according to a study published in yesterday’s issue of Human Reproduction. The researchers asked 834 Danish and 1,463 Finnish women about their use of medication during pregnancy.
Soon enough, ‘twill be the season to be traveling, and though we may continue to worry about whether or not we remembered to pack a toothbrush, there’s one thing that we absolutely don’t have to fret over: bodily harm from “backscatter X-ray” body scanners at airports. According to a consumer update released by the FDA yesterday, this new technology meets federal safety standards and delivers an amount of radiation equivalent to four minutes of flight time.
Many thanks to one of our readers for calling attention to an error in yesterday s Dispatch. In our story covering the Consumer Product Safety Commission s (CPSC) new voluntary guidelines for the allowable level of cadmium content in consumer products, ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross questions whether the CPSC conducts its own research. But as it turns out that, according to our knowledgeable (but shy) Dispatch reader:
The Associated Press is calling it the most hopeful day in the history of the AIDS epidemic. Yesterday there was news of a new daily pill that dramatically reduces new infections; the pope approved condoms as the the lesser of two evils for preventing HIV infections; and the United Nations declared that the number of new HIV cases worldwide had dropped by a fifth over the past decade.
The vast skepticism held by many Americans about vaccines may be the reason why in excess of 70 million doses of H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine were left unused in the spring of 2010, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Even when word of the H1N1 pandemic broke out last year and fear of the virus was widespread, fewer than half of all adults surveyed were willing to get vaccinated.
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