A new study published in The Lancet finds that hydroxyurea, a cancer drug which has been used used to treat sickle cell disease in adults and adolescents since 1995, is also safe and effective for infants. Researchers — part of a team led by Dr. Winifred Wang of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis — studied 193 infants and toddlers, ages 8 to 19 months, at 14 U.S.
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Is there a link between smoking and blindness? If you weren’t aware that there is, it’s probably for lack of a national awareness campaign. Smoking is indeed causally associated with a number of visually impairing eye diseases, including cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, but a recently released international study in the journal Optometry found that most people simply aren’t aware of the risk.
Is your doctor’s necktie transmitting resistant bacteria to your hospitalized loved-one? Quite possibly. The New York Legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit all health care professionals from wearing neckties or jewelry, which have long been known to carry bacteria.
Another misguided but bombastic effort ostensibly about the fight against childhood obesity comes in the form of a letter to McDonald’s Corp that asks the franchise to stop marketing “junk food” to kids, and, specifically, to retire Ronald McDonald. The letter, signed by “more than 550 health professionals and organizations,” is being run as a full-page ad in six metropolitan newspapers in the U.S.
The number of urban and suburban emergency room shut-downs has increased by 27 percent between 1990 and 2009, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And even though you think you may be safe because the ER nearest you is still operating, think again: Closures of nearby ERs will undoubtedly affect your own quality of health care.
Just as it's not advisable to purchase your prescription medications online, it's probably not a good idea to find your drug highs there either. Published in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis, Dr.
Physicians — and consumers — should be aware of particular Ayurvedic medicine products that have been associated with two recent New York City cases of lead poisoning in adults. This report from the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene offers a full advisory in regard to Pregnita, Vasant Kusumakar Ras with Gold and Pearl and Mahashakti Rasayan.
On his tobacco blog, Tobaccoanalysis.com, ACSH scientific advisor Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, addresses the misleading claims of a recent article published in Tobacco Control, in which the authors reprimand the tobacco industry for not doing enough to lower the levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) in cigarettes over the years.
Though today’s New York weather may not look it, spring is in the air and summer is fast approaching. For many, this means that it’s time for spring cleaning. However, as is pointed out in a USA Today article, this season is also a time when many people sustain preventable injuries during their cleaning. For instance, the U.S.
There is a reliable means of reducing the risk of permanent disability from a stroke, though many stroke victims may not act quickly enough to receive it. A clot-dissolving drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) has been approved by the FDA since 1996, but it is used by only a very small percentage of stroke victims, most likely because it must be administered within a few hours of stroke onset in order to be effective.
We were shocked and disappointed to read that an average 40 percent of pregnancies in our country are unwanted or unexpected. Based on a 2006 state-by-state pregnancy intention survey — the first of its kind ever conducted — out of 86,000 women who gave birth and 9,000 who had an abortion, the study found that the highest rates of unwanted and unplanned pregnancies occurred in the South, Southwest and in states with large urban populations.
Although some version of the intrauterine device (IUD) has been available for female contraception since the 1970s, side effects both large and small prevented most women from considering it a valid option. However, advances in design and usage have resulted in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists formal endorsement of the device for all healthy adult women.
Ever since the FDA finally approved silicone gel breast implants in 2006, the procedure has grown in popularity; nearly 400,000 breast enlargement or reconstruction procedures were performed in the U.S. in 2010 alone. While confirming that silicone gel-filled breast implants are safe and effective when used as intended, the FDA emphasized that women should fully understand the risks prior to considering silicone gel-filled breast implants for breast augmentation or reconstruction.
Media coverage of the disastrous E. coli outbreak in Europe has become a source of both anxiety and relief for Americans: In Germany, nearly 3,000 have fallen ill thus far — 700 with acute kidney failure — and 27 have died, but there’s been no sign that this highly virulent form of E. coli has caused any illness in the U.S.
Atrazine, the herbicide most responsible for the well being of the cornfields across so much of the U.S. countryside, has once again been deemed a non-threat to human health. Most recently, the respected ongoing Agricultural Health Study (AHS) found no link between exposure to atrazine and overall cancer risk.
As a heat wave sweeps over New York City and much of the rest of the country, we’d be remiss if we didn’t pass on a recommendation from New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
First of all, it’s important to remember that those at increased risk for hospitalization and death from heat stroke include adults ages 65 and older, as well as patients with cardiovascular disease, psychiatric illness (often involving substance abuse), diabetes, or respiratory illness. Poorer neighborhoods also see a higher rate of heat-related illness and death.
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that, among prostate cancer patients, current smokers have an increased risk of prostate cancer mortality compared with non-smokers. Led by Dr. Stacey Kenfield and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers also found that the number of pack-years smoked was directly associated with an increased risk of death from prostate cancer.
Writing in today s New York Post, ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom points out a troubling trend that may be hindering America s ability to compete globally on the scientific front: science jobs are quickly vanishing in the U.S. As large pharmaceutical companies, starved for revenue, continue to absorb smaller ones, jobs are lost each time. Independent of this, many more research jobs are now being outsourced to China and India. Dr.
It is a common complaint among American doctors, researchers, and investors that the FDA takes much longer than its European counterpart to approve new drugs. However, a seven-year study just published in Health Affairs contradicts the assumption, having found that 23 out of 35 new cancer drugs debuted on the U.S. market before being cleared in Europe.
A series of studies published in the journal Neuron find that genetic mutations may be the underlying cause of a major portion of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Led by Dr. Matthew W. State, associate professor of psychiatry and genetics at Yale University, the study found that 25 percent of ASD cases are caused by inherited gene mutations passed on from parent to child. But what about ASD cases that arise in children with no family history of the disorder?
Speaking of organic sprouts, in his Sunday column for The New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof offers a strange alternative theory of how the E. coli outbreak occurred. In a somewhat bizarre interpretation of the facts, he concludes that overuse of animal antibiotics was one cause:
When it was discovered that an outbreak of Legionnaire s Disease at the Playboy Mansion was responsible for sickening at least 24 attendees of the DomainFest Global Conference in February, it was thanks to Facebook, not the Los Angeles County health authorities. Writing in The New York Times, Bronwyn Garrity describes this recent epidemiological phenomenon that uses social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, to track the spread of diseases.
Too much time in front of the tube as little as two hours a day may increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes or heart disease, according to a new meta-analysis (an analysis of previous studies) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. For the study, a team of Harvard University School of Public Health researchers reviewed eight studies comprised of 200,000 study subjects who were followed for an average of seven to ten years.
In the past 15 months, the FDA has approved three new drugs for the treatment of late-stage prostate cancer. Two of them Dendreon s Provenge and Johnson & Johnson s Zytiga were shown in recent clinical trials to add between two and five months to median survival (about a year and a half after using docetaxel, the current standard of care approved in 2004) for men with late-stage cancer.
The CDC has determined that the 2011-12 flu vaccine formula will remain the same as last season’s. But that doesn’t mean that folks who were vaccinated last year can skip the shot this year. That’s because the immunity conferred by the flu vaccine wears off in less than a year, so you won’t be protected come winter if you haven’t had another shot.
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