Thursday, Nov 28th
Last update09:24:41 AM GMT
Health Glance
The Swine Flu ‘pandemic’ turned out to be nothing more than a storm in a teacup generated by a flurry of conflicts of interest.
A majority of European Health Committee MEPs have nonetheless recently approved a report by Anne Delvaux (PPE) endorsing the existence of what was really an imaginary panic and calling for ‘more cooperation between member states’ to deal with future pandemics.
Are you drinking a cup of coffee right now? Congratulations, you may be lowering your risk of stroke, according to study of nearly 35,000 women published Thursday in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The study led by Susanna Larsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm followed women aged 49 to 83 for an average of 10 years, and found that those who drank more than one cup of coffee a day had a 22% to 25% lowered risk of stroke, compared with women who drank less. Further, the study found, drinking little or no coffee was actually associated with a slight increase in stroke risk.
The first new treatment for lupus in a half-century won U.S. approval on Wednesday, a milestone for patients with the disabling disease and a potential blockbuster for its tiny biotech maker.
Health officials cleared Benlysta, discovered by Human Genome Sciences Inc, to combat the disease that causes the immune system to attack joints and organs and has proved tough to study and treat.
Context The dramatic increase in use of cellular telephones has generated concern about possible negative effects of radiofrequency signals delivered to the brain. However, whether acute cell phone exposure affects the human brain is unclear.
Objective To evaluate if acute cell phone exposure affects brain glucose metabolism, a marker of brain activity.
On top of criticism that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves medical devices with too little oversight comes another troubling finding: Many heart-related devices win FDA approval without being adequately tested on women, despite an agency directive to do so.
This means that heart valves, pacemakers, defibrillators and stents get implanted in women without evidence that they benefit this population, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco say.
Scientists in Europe report they were able to diagnose Down syndrome prenatally by giving a simple blood test to pregnant women, an approach that might one day help them avoid the more extensive procedure used now to detect the condition.
The preliminary report published online Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine is the latest of several recent studies that suggest scientists can spot Down syndrome through fetal DNA that has been shed into the mother's bloodstream.
Children can be exposed to as much as 100 times the recommended limit of cadmium when they mouth or accidentally swallow inexpensive jewelry, toxicologists warn.
Canadian and U.S. product safety authorities are investigating the presence of cadmium in children's jewelry imported from China following an Associated Press investigation in January. It found some Chinese manufacturers have been substituting cadmium for lead in cheap charm bracelets and pendants being sold throughout the United States and possibly Canada.
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