Public Health

A new study published in the British Medical Journal suggests that people in good health are almost twice as likely to be interested in sex compared to those in poor health. Sexual activity has health benefits and is linked to living longer, but the new study investigated how general health impacts the quality of sex. The study also estimate how many remaining sexually active years healthy men and women have left. The results revealed that at the age of 30, men have a sexually active life expectancy of nearly 35 years and for women it's almost 31 years. At 55, this figure changes to almost 15…

Writing in the latest issue of JAMA, Alec B. O'Connor, associate professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, says the federal guidelines governing the approval of potential new drugs should be much more stringent. The FDA, according to the commentary, should require studies comparing the effectiveness and safety of a new drug to an established first-line drug when considering a drug for approval. Currently the agency does not require such studies, known as "active comparator trials," though some large studies of new drugs do include them. In many cases, to gain approval, the…

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have discovered that exposure during pregnancy to Bisphenol A (BPA), a common component of plastics, causes permanent abnormalities in the uterus of offspring, including alteration in their DNA. The findings were reported the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB J.). The authors say the study is the first to show that BPA exposure permanently affects sensitivity to estrogen. Researchers used two groups of mice, one exposed to BPA as a fetus during pregnancy and another exposed to a placebo. They examined gene…

The jokes just write themselves, really. But poor sanitation is no laughing matter, especially if you're one of the 2.6 billion people on Earth without access to a toilet. And for pennies on the dollar, a Swedish entrepreneur is hoping to help that 40% of the world's population in more ways than one. Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm, is the inventor of the Peepoo. It's not just a clever name - the Peepoo is "a biodegradable plastic bag that acts as a single-use toilet for urban slums in the developing world," reports the NY Times. "Once used, the bag can be knotted…

Imagine a child, standing in a school cafeteria. We'll assume that this child has reached or surpassed the age of reason (7 years old, for non-Catholics out there), meaning they can understand their choices and therefore can make the wrong choice along with the right one. In front of this lovely child is a vending machine filled with tempting soda1 and sports drinks and other such calorie-laden, battery-acid-by-another-name, neatly packaged consumables. The child raises an arm to deposit the GDP of a third world country into the coin slot to obtain one of the aforementioned beverages, when…

 A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that adults tend to eat less pizza and drink less soda as the prices of these items increase, and their body weight and overall calorie intake also appear to decrease. The authors point out that such manipulation of food prices has been the foundation of agricultural and food policy for many years and should also be used as a "a mechanism to promote public health and chronic disease prevention efforts." The study assessed the dietary habits of 5,115 young adults (age 18 to 30) beginning in 1985 to 1986 and continuing through…

Alcohol consumption has been suspected of contributing to weight gain in the United States, but among normal-weight women moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a reduced risk for obesity, according a new study by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at 19,220 U.S. women age 39 or older who had a body mass index (BMI) in the range classified as normal (18.5 to 25). On an initial questionnaire, participants reported how many alcoholic beverages they typically drank per…

Insulin resistance, high cholesterol, fatty liver, greater risk for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are all related to obesity, but are likely not caused by it, according to a review in Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism. In fact, obesity is the body's way of storing lipids where they belong, in fat tissue, in an effort to protect our other organs from lipids' toxic effects. It's when the surplus of calories coming in gets to be too much for our fat tissue to handle that those lipids wind up in other places they shouldn't be, and the cascade of symptoms known as metabolic syndrome…

In the movies  on the crucifixion, were committed a serious mistakes, from the medical point of view, probably dictated by the official iconography that sees the crucifixion with the sounding of the nails at the palms of the hands.  In ancient Rome, things were different because from the anatomical point of view this method would lead to a laceration of the hand and the fall of the body forward, so the crucifixions, took place with the sounding of the nails at the wrists.  Thus the torture lasted for several hours. The condemned tended to make a look "at fontoccio" with…

A study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism reports that Vitamin D deficiency may be more common among young people today than most researchers thought. In the study, 59 per cent of participants had too little Vitamin D in their blood. Nearly a quarter of the group had serious deficiencies (less than 20 ng/ml) of this important vitamin. Since Vitamin D insufficiency is linked to increased body fat, decreased muscle strength and a range of disorders, this is a serious health issue "Vitamin D insufficiency is a risk factor for other diseases," explains principal…