While the amount of money that tobacco companies spent on advertising and promotional expenditures fell by 18 percent between 2006 and 2008, nationwide advertising of smokeless tobacco products actually increased by 55 percent during the same time period, according to a new Federal Trade Commission report. In fact, more smokeless tobacco ads may be encouraging smokers to switch from cigarettes to smoke-free alternatives.
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The media are suddenly abuzz with the latest on the putative health benefits of one of our favorite foods: a study just published in BMJ reports that chocolate may improve cardiovascular health.
A new study in the journal Menopause shows that the benefits of hormone replacement therapy aren t just hypothetical. Researchers at the University of Southern California found that the nearly 81,000 postmenopausal women who discontinued their hormone replacement therapy were at a much greater risk of a hip fracture due to lowered bone density, as compared to those who continued on the preventive regimen.
Speaking of smokers, ACSH would like to applaud famed actress Catherine Zeta-Jones for her recent efforts to quit smoking by using electronic cigarettes. According to OK magazine, she s been using this method of clean nicotine delivery for three months now. Our only hope is that more smokers are made aware of the potential benefits of using e-cigarettes to quit their habit of deadly cigarettes.
The widespread West Nile virus epidemic could have been easily prevented if more rigorous insecticide spraying had been implemented in the summer of 1999, when the virus was first detected in birds in the NY region, said ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross, in yesterday s Dispatch. But ACSH advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, would like to clarify Dr.
Antioxidants are the panacea that has never quite panned out. Pom Wonderful (the pomegranate juice in the funny bottle), for instance, made its name with claims of its extraordinary antioxidant content. Tell people a product has antioxidants and many are eager to lap it up, eager for the benefits to their immune system, complexion, mental health, heart, joints, and just about everything else.
Nerve cells, or neurons, process and transmit information. Skin cells, by contrast, don t have that capacity. It s quite exciting, then, that researchers from Columbia University have discovered a way to transform skin cells into fully functioning neurons. This method, reported in the journal Cell, is also notable because it avoids the controversial use of embryonic stem cells.
States across the country are experiencing a marked decrease in their anti-smoking program budgets. In Massachusetts, for instance, funding for such initiatives dropped from $50.5 million in 2001 to $4.1 million in 2011 a decrease of more than 90 percent. Where has the rest of the money disappeared to?
Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology, writes biologist Nina V.
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that doctors are screening women for cervical cancer far more frequently than guidelines recommend. In fact, 67 to 85 percent of six-hundred office-based doctors surveyed opted to screen their patients on a yearly basis instead of the recommended three years.
Pack-a-day smokers are increasingly rare in the average U.S. high school; however, a study just published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has found that teenagers are more likely to be casual, or social, smokers.
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.
For some women on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), the risk of severe asthma attacks may increase, according to a new study led by Dr. Klaus Bonnelykke from the Danish Paediatric Asthma Centre in Copenhagen. Presented Tuesday at the European Respiratory Society meeting in Amsterdam, the study analyzed data from over 23,000 women and found that, after accounting for factors such as smoking and body mass index, those using HRT were 30 percent more likely to be hospitalized for asthma.
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.
Patients suffering from kidney disease rely on dialysis in order to stay alive. Without functioning kidneys to remove the waste and fluids that accumulate in the body, the majority of the 400,000 Americans with this condition have their blood purified by a dialysis machine three days a week.
In 2009, nearly 37,500 people died from drug overdoses in the US. That number, writes Maia Szalavitz in The New York Times, could be significantly lowered if Naloxone (Narcan), a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose, were available over-the-counter and placed in every first aid kit.
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.
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.
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.
Every year, about 36 million people die from non-communicable diseases worldwide. While most attribute these deaths to heart disease and cancer, in fact, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is another major cause. Consisting of chronic progressive respiratory insufficiency due to chronic bronchitis and emphysema which is almost always attributable to cigarette smoking COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in our country, with about 130,000 fatalities in 2009.
The results of an international study comprised of data from 10 case-control studies of cervical cancer and 16 human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence surveys show that women who used an intrauterine device (IUD) had a 50 percent lower risk of cervical cancer, as compared to women who never used one. IUDs are devices that a gynecologist places through the cervix into the uterus in order to prevent pregnancy.
About fifty years ago, Dr. Tu Youyou began her research in China, which led to the discovery of an improved treatment for malaria. This discovery assumed major proportions due to the development of a high level of resistance to chloroquine, the standard of care at that time. After analyzing 380 extracts from 200 herbs, Dr. Tu discovered that the sweet wormwood, Artemisia annua, held the answer to eliminating the malaria-causing microbe in animals.
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.
C-sections account for nearly one-third of U.S. births, and though the procedure is common enough, many may not know that the operation significantly increases a new mother s risk of blood clots. These clots the medical term is deep vein thrombosis (DVT) originate in the legs or groin and can travel to the lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism, which is a serious problem and can even be fatal. During pregnancy and up to six weeks after delivery, as many as two out of every 1,000 women will experience DVT.
The medical community had high hopes for a device that would prevent strokes using a mechanism similar to that used to prevent heart attacks but the study was abruptly halted as the number of strokes in patients with the device continued to rise.
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