Following an FDA investigation which found trace amounts of a contaminant — an aromatase inhibitor — in the “muscle building” supplement ArimaDex, the manufacturer Genetic Edge Technology voluntarily pulled the supplement off the market. Aromatase inhibitors are a class of drugs that block the synthesis of estrogen, which have been used in the treatment of breast and ovarian cancer in postmenopausal women.
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The Consumer Product Safety Commission is in over its head with complaints filed by toy makers who argue that they should be exempt from the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which requires children’s products to undergo stringent and expensive safety testing to ensure reductions in the amount of lead and phthalates used following an influx of lead-tainted toys imported from China in 2007.
A less-aggressive type of surgery to treat early stage breast cancer is just as effective as the standard, more extensive treatment, according to a new study.
Balance, leg strength, and impact training may help protect high-risk elderly women from sustaining hip fractures, according to a new study published in yesterday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.
Activist groups yesterday urged an FDA advisory committee to recommend mandatory labels for Aquabounty’s genetically-engineered Atlantic salmon, to distinguish it from conventional salmon.
Only 5 percent of Americans perform vigorous physical activity in any given day, according to a study published last week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
ACSH staffers over the weekend received commentary from a reader condemning our recent praise for Dr. Paul Offit after she mistakenly confused his rotavirus vaccine Rotateq with Rotashield. While Rotateq remains on the market as a highly effective vaccine, Rotashield was removed from the market over ten years ago after a very small number of children developed obstructed bowels, even though the vaccine likely prevented thousands from getting sick from rotavirus.
Do higher taxes on alcohol reduce a wide range of social ills? ACSH staffers were skeptical of a study last month purporting to show just that, reasoning that drinking is fine in moderation and alcohol abusers would buy it at nearly any price.
There s more and more beneficial and lifesaving drugs on the market, so it should be no surprise that more Americans are taking them. But a New York Times article on a study the National Center for Health Statistics released six weeks ago sensationalizes and misrepresents the data.
Boehringer Ingelheim s new anticoagulant drug Pradaxa was approved yesterday by the FDA to prevent blood clots in patients with atrial fibrillation. Compared to warfarin, an anticoagulant medication that has been in use since the 1950s, Pradaxa does not require frequent monitoring with blood tests. Further, it was more effective at preventing strokes the result of clots being embolized to the brain than the older drug in clinical trials.
Anyone taking baby aspirin to prevent future heart attacks may also be protected against colon cancer, according to a new study published in today’s issue of The Lancet.
With the European Union regulators recently reaffirming the safety of bisphenol A, ACSH friend Jon Entine has a long (but breezy and well-written!) piece in the Huffington Post asking, “at what point will the science prevail?”
Following the 2008 federal CPSIA law restricting lead content in children s toys, the Associated Press found in a January investigation that Chinese jewelry manufacturers were supplanting lead with cadmium. Subsequently, the Consumer Product Safety Commission initiated its first of many recalls of cadmium jewelry due to safety concerns associated with the metal. One immediate effect of the CPSC s warning was that McDonald s voluntarily pulled 12 million Shrek glasses last spring after the comission advised parents of the possible toxicity of cadmium.
Health officials in Ontario are realizing that the government’s anti-tobacco policies may actually be bolstering the cigarette black market since 43 percent of high school smokers use contraband cigarettes, according to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health published online in the journal Tobacco Control.
The number of U.S. adults with diabetes will escalate from the current rate of one in 10 to as many as one in three adults by 2050, a new analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the journal Population Health Metrics predicts. According to the study authors, a largely aging population, an increase in high-risk minorities, and people with diabetes living longer are all causes that will contribute to the projected increase.
His new title could be the King of New York City Bans. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to institute yet another proscription, requesting permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bar the city’s 1.7 million food stamp recipients from using the stamps to purchase sugary drinks. Mr. Bloomberg believes the demonstration project would aid in curbing the city’s obesity epidemic, which New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley and New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Richard F.
USA Today reports that a new study “strongly” links adult diabetes to air pollution exposure — even where pollution levels fall below EPA safety limits.
Patients with the brain cancer glioblastoma the disease that killed Sen. Ted Kennedy are usually dead within a year. That s why results of a small study of a brain cancer vaccine made by Celldex Therapeutics Inc. are so encouraging.
My mother smoked while she was pregnant with my sister and me. I used to light her cigarettes while she was driving. One time I handed her a lit Benson & Hedges backwards, burning her lip and nearly causing a huge freeway accident. Swerving wildly, she managed to avoid the car in front of her — and quickly grabbed for the cigarette, which had flown out of her hand. Puffing rapidly, she got the cherry back up to a glow, and a look of calm passed over her face as she blew out her first inhale.
The scale of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current assault on industry is unprecedented. That’s the view of an editorial in yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal.
Tobacco companies such as Philip Morris International (PMI), spun off from Altria Group Inc. in 2008 to expand the company s foreign market share and evade American regulation and litigation, have assumed the role of big, bad bully on the foreign block. The companies and others like it are using expensive lobbying campaigns and lawsuits to prevent ad restrictions, larger health warnings and higher cigarette taxes from being enacted in countries like Brazil, the Philippines and Mexico.
After New York Times columnist Ariel Kaminer conducted a risk-to-benefit analysis of seasonal flu shots in her most recent article, ACSH staffers ran a similar analysis and concluded that while Ms. Kaminer’s science-based discussion on the safety of the vaccine is a good for her readers, the article’s headline “Flu Shots: No Panic, Just ‘No’” is not.
A zap to the kidneys might safely reduce hypertension in patients whose high blood pressure is resistant to three or more medications. The new treatment works by deactivating nerves in the kidney (renal denervation) using a catheter that sends a burst of radio frequency energy directly to kidney nerves.
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