Public Health

The 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks effected Americans in many ways, even those not directly involved. Now researchers claim that the stress caused by psychological shock from the attacks may have led to an increased number of male children being miscarried in the US. The authors of a new paper in BMC Public Health found that the fetal death rate for boys spiked in September 2001, and that significantly fewer boys than expected were born in December of that year. Scientists from the University of California, Irvine and Berkeley used data from the National Vital Statistics System, which compiles…

Drinking fewer sugar-sweetened beverages may lower blood pressure, according to research published in Circulation.The study potentially has important public health implications, because even small reductions in blood pressure are projected to have substantial health benefits on a population level, according to the authors. The researchers also say further study – particularly randomized controlled trials to establish any cause and effect relationship – is warranted. "Our findings suggest that reducing sugar-sweetened beverages and sugar consumption may be an important dietary strategy to…

Moderate alcohol consumption may prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease, especially if you avoid tobacco, according to a new study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. The effect was strongest in women, the study's authors say. "Our results suggest a protective effect of alcohol consumption, mostly in nonsmokers, and the need to consider interactions between tobacco and alcohol consumption, as well as interactions with gender, when assessing the effects of smoking and/or drinking on the risk of AD," according to lead investigator Ana M. Garcia, PhD, MPH, Department of Preventive Medicine…

 “Around 5.45 am, the captain announced that the plane would be landing in 20 minutes, and he advised passengers to put on their seatbelts. The plane landed at high speed. It jerked severely several times and nearly touched the ground at that speed. But it seemed the pilot couldn't control the plane and it overshot the runway. I don't know the technical jargon –– but he (the pilot) tried to apply the brake hard but failed, and it (the plane) cruised ahead at high speed. At this point it seems the pilot tried to take off again. By that time, it hit a boundary wall and a tree, and caught…

Henry Ford Hospital researchers say it is time for a nationwide public smoking ban. Such a measure would reduce public health care costs by $90 million and significantly reduce hospitalization due to heart attack each year. Their study was presented today at the American Heart Association's annual Quality of Care and Outcomes Research conference in Washington. After analyzing data from the 13 states that don't have a law banning smoking in public places, researchers concluded that more than 18,596 fewer hospitalizations for heart attack could be realized from a smoking ban in all 50 states…

The widely held notion that warming global temperatures will lead to a future intensification of malaria and an expansion of its global range is at odds with the available evidence, according to a new study in Nature. The research, conducted by the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), suggests that current interventions could have a far more dramatic – and positive – effect on reducing the spread of malaria than any negative effects caused by climate change. A steady stream of modeling studies have predicted that malaria will worsen and its range will spread as the world gets warmer. Last year the…

Google Flu Trends is not as accurate at estimating rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza as CDC national surveillance programs, according to a new study presented at the ATS 2010 International Conference in New Orleans. Google Flu Trends uses the popularity of certain Google search queries in real time to estimate nationwide rates of influenza-like illness activity, a non-specific combination of symptoms including a fever with either a cough or a sore throat without any confirmatory laboratory testing. While some traditional flu surveillance systems may take days or weeks to collect and…

A new study suggests that people with asthma should avoid a high fat diet. Study participants with asthma who consumed a high-fat meal showed increased airway inflammation just hours after the binge. The high fat meal also appeared to inhibit the response to the asthma reliever medication Ventolin (albuterol). "Subjects who had consumed the high-fat meal had an increase in airway neutrophils and TLR4 mRNA gene expression from sputum cells, that didn't occur following the low fat meal," said Dr. Lisa Wood, Ph.D., research fellow of the University of Newcastle. "The high fat meal impaired the…

Elevated levels of carbon dioxide predicted by models of climate change can drive increased production of fungal spores, including some associated with allergies and asthma, according to a new study in Environmental Health Perspectives. Plant species have different responses to CO2 at concentrations higher than current levels, but one common response when more CO2 is available is that plants often produce more living material (biomass); that is, they grow larger. The ratio of carbon to nitrogen (C:N) in their leaves also often increases. The C:N ratio reflects changes in the plants’ relative…

To avoid of the health risks associated with traditional cigarettes, attempts have been made to develop cigarettes that contain no tobacco and no nicotine. But a team of researchers writing in Cell Cycle has found that the supposedly safe cigarettes may be more carcinogenic because they actually induce more extensive DNA damage than tobacco products. Using laser scanning cytometry (LSC) technology to measure DNA damage response to the smoke from commercially available tobacco- and nicotine-free cigarettes, the research team expected to find the alternative products were less hazardous than…