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NYC Health Department’s tactics as disgusting as their gross-out videos

The frequency with which we reach for the saltshaker hasn t changed in the last five decades, a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds.

Researchers announced yesterday that they discovered a new strain of swine flu (H1N1) in Singapore in early 2010 that has since spread to Australia and New Zealand. The new flu variant may require the development of an updated seasonal flu vaccine sooner than expected.

The American Heart Association has recommended new guidelines for the performance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). In emergency people are are now advised to give 30 chest compressions first, and then check the airway and administer rescue breaths as needed to children and adults. Previously the guidelines called for the rescue breaths coming before the chest compressions, a system dubbed ABC, for airway-breaths-chest compressions. Now it’s CAB — compressions, airway, breathing.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is ensuring that ghosts and goblins are not the only things you ll have to fear this Halloween as they send out another infamous scaremongering email. This time EWG is unhappy that the Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF), a national non-profit organization composed of farmers and farm groups, in conjunction with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and the U.S.

Full-term newborns with jaundice are at a higher risk for psychological disorders, including the autism spectrum disorder known as pervasive developmental disorder, according to a very large Danish study published in yesterday’s Pediatrics.

High levels of the amino acid homocysteine have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, so it would make sense that homocysteine-lowering supplements like folic acid could reduce one s risk of heart disease but a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine failed to find evidence supporting such an effect.

CBS 2 News reported yesterday that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been found at “alarmingly high levels” in three New York City schools, falsely reporting the chemicals were banned three decades ago after being “proven to pose serious risks to children’s immune system and brain development.” PCBs were actually banned in 1979 because they were considered carcinogenic, but — as so often is the case — they were labeled “carcinogens” based only on studies of laboratory animals.

A higher education may have its drawbacks. New research finds that parents in relatively high socioeconomic brackets forgo vaccines for their children more often than poorer individuals. Between 2008 and 2009, vaccination rates in children insured by commercial plans — a surrogate for higher income — dropped nearly four percentage points while vaccination rates for children covered under Medicaid actually increased, according to the annual State of Health Care Quality report.

This week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication by the CDC, found that the proportion of cigarette smokers who also use smokeless tobacco products — such as snuff and chew tobacco — ranged from 0.9 to 13.7 percent on a state-by-state analysis, according to data from the 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

Alarmed by the spread of the supposed “superbugs” — bacteria that resist modern antibiotics — politicians from both parties are considering policies to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to develop new antibiotics. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), a physician, recently introduced the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now bill, which would extend patent protections for antibiotics for five additional years and speed reviews by the FDA. Rep.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a ban on Happy Meals that made the Bay Area even more of a laughingstock than usual. The Board of Supervisors passed the measure by a veto-proof margin of 8-3, so we suspect the veto will be overridden, but kudos to Newsom for trying.

The measure will prohibit restaurants from giving away toys with meals unless they meet strict nutritional standards and include fruits and vegetables. Newsom said this wasn’t the way to combat childhood obesity.

A study of first-time heart attack patients at a Minneapolis hospital found that only 10 percent of them had been receiving preventive treatments such as drugs to lower cholesterol, reduce blood pressure or prevent clots. The University of Minnesota researchers studied 815 patients at Abbot Northern Hospital between 2007 and 2010 andpresented their research at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago.

Tara Parker-Pope writes in The New York Times that a study showing CT scans can reduce lung cancer deaths in heavy smokers is already being used in advertisements for a screening center in Atlanta — advertisements seemingly aimed at a broad group, including women who had never smoked.

Last December, the U.S. Preventative Task Force, an independent panel of health experts, raised some controversy when it upped the age at which women should receive yearly mammograms from 40 to 50.

While today marks the 33rd annual Great American Smokeout, put away your firewood because this isn’t a call for a national bonfire, as the name might mistakenly imply, but is instead an event sponsored by the American Cancer Society that encourages smokers to drop the habit for 24 hours. By urging smokers to not puff on a cigarette for a whole day, the ACS hopes that this may be just the right kind of motivation to get them to quit permanently.

An FDA panel has recommended expanding the indications for Merck & Co.’s human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil to include the prevention of anal cancer. The endorsement comes after a clinical trial that followed 4,065 men, 602 of them gay, for 36 months. At the trial’s conclusion, 3 percent of the gay men who received the vaccine had developed anal cancer or anal lesions, compared to 12 percent of the men who got a placebo.

Kids in the Buckeye school district of Arizona may now have yet another reason to tease some of their classmates. Students who are considered obese by a body mass index test administered during gym class are receiving letters to take home to their parents notifying them of the results.
“If I were a parent and got that letter, I’d just be angry,” says Dr. Whelan.

Most of us may already know that smoking is the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing an average of 440,000 people annually. But not all of us know that women who smoke or used to smoke regularly are at a greater risk of dying from breast cancer. Those statistics come from a large prospective cohort study conducted by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and presented at the Ninth Annual American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference.

Halloween may already be over, but the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) hasn’t given up on scaring smokers quite yet. Describing it as “the most significant change in more than 25 years,” the HHS revealed yesterday new, larger, more graphic warning labels that will be required on cigarette packages and ads. The pictures will include images of a dead body in a morgue, a man having a heart attack, and a lung bisected with a surgical scar.

ACSH friend Bill Godshall of Smokefree Pennsylvania supplies some needed background to yesterday’s Dispatchitem about graphic labels on cigarette packs. Commenting on the Department of Health and Human Services’ proposal to mandate scary images on cigarette packs, Dr.

Systematically immunizing schoolkids against influenza reduces outbreaks in the entire community, according to a study in the December issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Researchers led by ACSH advisor Dr. Paul Glezen at Baylor College of Medicine examined what happened in schools in eastern Bell County, Texas, after 48 percent of elementary school children were vaccinated via a nasal spray in the fall and early winter of 2007.

In yesterday’s Dispatch, we discussed the introduction of a bill called Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now, which seeks to provide financial and other incentives for pharmaceutical companies to invest in the development of new antibiotics to combat drug-resistant bacteria (superbugs).