A study released yesterday in The Lancet reveals that about 50 percent of men in the general population are infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Though approximately 120 different strains of HPV exist, the most worrisome types — HPV-16 and HPV-18 — are sexually transmitted and cancer-causing (oncogenic).
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In testimony before the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claimed that cuts to the EPA’s budget would devastate both the country’s land and water and the health of its people. Her assertions were made in response to proposals from both the Obama administration and House Republicans to cut her agency’s budget. The Obama administration wants to cut the EPA’s budget from $10.3 billion in the present fiscal year to $9.0 billion in the next fiscal year.
Environmentalists are agitated by chemical industry trade group CropLife America’s increased spending to thwart EPA efforts to create stricter regulations on pesticide use. According to The New York Times, CropLife America spent $751,000 on lobbying in the last three months of 2010 — a 58 percent increase from the previous year’s expenditures — in response to signs that the EPA aims to increase regulations.
In a partial draft report released yesterday, the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) says menthol cigarette use is on the rise among minority teenagers. Over 80 percent of African American and more than half of Hispanic teenagers who smoke, smoke menthol cigarettes, which the committee says is “very high.” As part of an advisory panel to the FDA, TPSAC will hold a public meeting on Thursday and Friday to discuss their findings.
The journal Obstetrics and Gynecology offers a new and intriguing study of 84,401 low-income California women taking birth control pills.
In a survey asking approximately 250,000 people about their current and past smoking habits, researchers learned that smoking causes half a million deaths annually in the U.S. — an increase from the prior estimates of about 450,000 deaths. To put this in perspective, about 2.5 million Americans die each year from all-cause mortality, indicating that smoking-related deaths account for approximately 20 percent of all fatalities.
Lung cancer deaths aren’t the only fatality on the decline. New estimates released today by the Transportation Department show that 32,788 Americans were killed in traffic-related accidents in 2010, which is the fewest number of deaths since 1949.
While sitting at the physician’s office, some people may become anxious as they await their looming encounter with The Doctor. The phenomenon is common enough that health care professionals have even coined a term for it — white-coat syndrome — since it may manifest as an increase in blood pressure (BP) or heart rate.
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association will make for some provocative headlines. A group of researchers from Tufts University studied the cardiovascular risks of episodic physical and sexual activity, specifically in a cohort of habitually inactive patients.
Following a report issued by the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) last week claiming that a menthol cigarette ban would be beneficial to public health, journalist Denise Mann revisits the issue in her article for WebMD, “Are Menthol Cigarettes Riskier Than Non-Menthol?” Ms.
Though today’s oral contraceptives are less likely to cause weight gain because of a lower estrogen dose, many young women are still hesitant to use the pill for fear of packing on extra pounds. Nearly one-third of women on birth control pills stop using them within a few months because of undesirable side-effects, especially perceived weight gain.
After the widespread implementation of the Tdap (Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis) vaccine among children, the U.S. nearly achieved complete eradication of pertussis, better known as whooping cough. But in the past two decades, the number of cases of this highly contagious bacterial disease has been on the rise, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A new study presented this week at the American College of Cardiology conference in New Orleans and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine has some rather surprising results: bypass surgery does not improve survival for heart failure patients already on optimal drug therapy. Dr.
Recent evidence indicates that the mass media is not too quick on the uptake when it comes to “studies” purporting to link some environmental “toxin” to health effects in rodents or humans. As a soon-to-be-classic example, this week’s news is replete with a second round of breathless coverage of a report that didn’t even warrant its initial coverage: the study in question was first published online March 16 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
It comes as no surprise to ACSH staffers that the newest CDC statistics indicate that prediabetes is on the rise in the U.S. One obvious reason is that more and more Americans are becoming overweight or obese.
Back pain sufferers unable to find relief from physical therapy or pain medications may look to alternative therapies for a solution, particularly acupuncture. If you are considering acupuncture, you may want to consider the results of a new meta-analysis showing that the procedure may pose more risks than benefits.
The food police agenda does not stop at attacking fast food. Last week we pointed out how the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), hungry for attention once again, petitioned the FDA to ban artificial dyes from food because they assert it exacerbates hyperactivity in some children (thankfully, the FDA denied their petition citing no evidence of this claim).
ACSH would like to issue a correction to yesterday’s Dispatch item regarding the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) draft report, which noted the incidence of mentholated cigarette smoking among American teens.
What good are drugs if patients don’t take them? That’s exactly what reporter Katherine Hobson asks in her article for The Wall Street Journal, “How Can You Help the Medicine Go Down?” According to the World Health Organization, half of chronically ill patients in the developed world don’t take their drugs properly, while another study estimates that 90,000 premature deaths in the U.S. are due to poor adherence to high blood pressure treatment alone.
When it comes to treating elderly patients in hospitals and nursing homes, Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician at Brown University, believes doctors should adhere to the mantra “less is more.” In a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr. Dosa and his colleagues analyzed the medical records of 172 residents of two Rhode Island nursing homes who had been diagnosed with urinary tract infections (UTI).
In a desperate attempt to solve Boston s obesity problem, Mayor Thomas Menino has officially banned the sale of sodas and other sugary drinks deemed unhealthy from city-owned property. The policy would ban non-diet sodas, sweetened iced teas, refrigerated coffee drinks, energy drinks, juice drinks with added sugar and sports drinks.
Alzheimer’s disease is a condition afflicting about 26 million people worldwide, a number that is estimated to markedly increase as a greater proportion of the population ages. Unfortunately, there are very few, if any, effective treatments to counter the disease, and scientists are still trying to figure out what causes it.
The results of a study released last week conducted by researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix found that 47 percent of beef, chicken, pork and turkey samples were contaminated with Staphylcoccus aureus (S. aureus), a bacteria linked to illnesses ranging from mild skin infections to life-threatening diseases.
Just in time for the 41st annual Earth Day last Friday, the news media went wild reporting on a trio of highly flawed studies published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, a periodical now notorious for reporting on junk science research.
USA Today has begun a series this week pedalling the supposed link between trace level chemical exposure in consumer products and children’s health.
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