On Monday, we reported that, while heavy smoking among teenagers has dropped from 18 percent to below 8 percent between 1991 and 2009, those who smoke occasionally now comprise close to 80 percent of the teenage population a significant increase. We ourselves were stunned by not to mention a bit skeptical of the latter figure, and it turns out that the report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) requires a bit of clarification.
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The adverse health effects associated with smoking have been well documented, but now a new study from The Lancet suggests that the outcomes could be even worse for women. Led by researchers from the Division of Epidemiolgy at the University of Minnesota and Johns Hopkins University, the results of a meta-analysis on a total of 2.4 million subjects reveals that the risk for coronary heart disease is 25 percent higher among female smokers than among male smokers.
The FDA regulates tobacco products, but it s still determining how to categorize what are known as dissolvable tobacco products. Three different forms of these are currently manufactured by R.J. Reynolds under the Camel brand name, all made from finely ground, flavored tobacco and delivering less nicotine than a cigarette. Camel Orbs are roughly the shape and size of a breath mint, Camel Sticks resemble a toothpick, and Camel Strips fit in a strip over the tongue.
Approved in April 2010, Dendreon Corp. s prostate cancer drug Provenge is revolutionary in that it uses the patient s own cells to stimulate the immune system to fight off the disease. Despite its projected success, however, physicians are hesitant to prescribe the treatment because they are encountering too many reimbursement obstacles a particularly strong disincentive, given its cost.
We’d like to note that ACSH’s newest publication on tobacco harm reduction will be published in the current issue of Harm Reduction Journal. Authored by Dr. Brad Rodu, an ACSH advisor and Endowed Chair in Tobacco Harm Reduction Research at the University of Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center, the paper provides a review of the most recent scientific literature on tobacco harm reduction (THR) methods, such as smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes. Dr.
Fed up with the public s misperception that consuming high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is unhealthy, the corn industry launched a new ad campaign last year with a catchy tag line informing people that, when it comes to HFCS or regular sugar, Your body can t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar. In addition, the Corn Refiners Association, which produced the advertisements, began lobbying the FDA to grant it permission to rebrand HFCS as simply corn sugar a move that will now be left up to the courts to decide after a group of sugar farmers filed a lawsuit contesting the name change.
Harking back to her youth in the 1940s and 50s, New York Times columnist Jane Brody recalls a simpler time when vending machines weren t around, the presence of fast food restaurants was barely perceptible, and ads for prepared foods and sodas were few and far between.
Yeah, right, says ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross. Ms. Brody must have a highly rose-tinted memory; her recollections read like something out of a fairy tale.
Dr. Oz is at it again. On Tuesday, his Dr. Oz Show warned parents that the apple juice they re giving their children may be harmful. Apparently, the celebrity doctor s television show staff arranged to have several samples of store-bought apple juice tested for arsenic, and found that the arsenic levels in some brands were higher than others. The doctor went on from there to warn parents about alleged dangers from these minuscule amounts of arsenic.
The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been getting a lot of press lately, largely due to infighting among Republican presidential candidates. Both former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann have repeatedly attacked Texas Gov. Rick Perry s efforts to require that schoolgirls in his state receive the HPV vaccine.
In one of his most pompous and slanted columns yet, The New York Times' Mark Bittman alleges that the U.S. government is in cahoots with large agricultural biotech companies that sacrifice the environment for profits. Bittman accuses USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack perhaps under pressure from the president of succumbing to the demands of Monsanto.
While the FDA is in the process of assessing how it will regulate modified risk tobacco products, a new study in Harm Reduction Journal reports that smokers remain largely misinformed about the relative safety of these products compared to cigarettes. The study draws from data collected between 2002 and 2009 from over 21,000 smokers in Canada, the U.S, the U.K., and Australia, where public education and access to smokeless products is varied.
An FDA-authored analysis of electronic cigarette contents has just appeared in the Journal of Liquid Chromatography and Related Technologies. The agency has, in the past, gone out of its way to find hypothetical dangers of e-cigarettes even going so far as to try to bar their importation (a Federal judge stopped that attempt). This most recent article s slant is in keeping with the FDA s enduring prejudice against this clean nicotine delivery device.
Last week, The Lancet ran a special 9/11 issue, and several studies published in the journal came to varied conclusions about the health effects of exposure to World Trade Center dust. The first study, led by Dr. David J. Prezant, Chief Medical Officer for the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), suggested a link between cancer and exposure to the dust.
Two distinct efforts to combat increasing U.S. drug shortages are in the works. Recently, a bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill that calls for drug manufacturers to alert the FDA to any impending shortages, which would then theoretically allow the agency to begin seeking alternatives.
A story in yesterday s New York Postturns attention to the increasingly popular electronic cigarette. These clean nicotine delivery devices are designed to mimic the look and feel of conventional cigarettes without delivering any of the carcinogenic by-products of combustion and they re catching on with smokers who would like to quit.
Good news for heart attack patients who wind up in the emergency room and require an artery-opening procedure called an angioplasty: nearly all of the procedures are now performed within the recommended 90 minutes from hospital arrival.
Flavored milk hasn t soured after all: This September, parents and kids will find that the chocolate- and strawberry-infused varieties will contain fewer calories and less sugar.
Another substance for expectant mothers to be wary of may well be the common painkillers known as NSAIDS non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. A new Canadian study has found that 7.5 percent of more than 4,700 women who miscarried had taken an NSAID at some time during the pregnancy. This was compared with the less than 3 percent of the women who had taken NSAIDS without suffering a miscarriage.
Dr. Oz is urging fans across the country to publicly dump soaps and toothpastes containing it; the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has filed a lawsuit to hasten FDA regulation of it; Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) has proposed to ban it; but there remains no scientific evidence that the antibacterial chemical triclosan is harmful to humans.
Fewer women had mammograms done in 2005, and a recent study published in the journal Cancer suggests that the decline is linked to a decreased use of hormone replacement therapy for menopausal symptoms. In order to investigate the drop in mammograms, researchers from the National Cancer Institute looked at data from more than 7,000 women who were interviewed in 2005.
Traditionally, doctors have been advising patients with heartburn to avoid eating a meal within three or four hours of bedtime but is this just a medical old wives tale, or is the recommendation founded on real scientific evidence?
A commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine expresses concerns about the advisability of employing weight-loss surgery for teenagers who are severely obese. While this type of surgery has become increasingly common among adults, it is less clear whether weight-loss surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, should be employed for adolescents.
Harm reduction has been an effective tool in relieving the plight of drug addicts who are at an increased risk of contracting severe infections especially hepatitis and HIV, but also drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA as a result of using contaminated shared needles.
Six percent of adults were told by a health professional last year that they have coronary heart disease (CHD), according to the results of a national survey conducted by the CDC. Published in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, these data constitute a significant decrease compared to 2006, when 6.7 percent of adults were diagnosed with the disease.
In her latest opinion article for Food Safety News, lawyer Michele Simon sets out to condemn the food industry s influence on the annual conference of the American Dietetic Association.
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