Public Health

A large international analysis of 174,000 patients has shown conclusively that statin treatment reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in women. The study was an international meta-analysis conducted by the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' Collaboration, a joint initiative coordinated between the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, Australia and the Clinical Trial Service Unit&Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), University of Oxford on behalf of academic researchers representing all major statin trials worldwide. The research confirms that statins are beneficial not…

Caloric restriction in mice has been touted for accomplishing everything from increasing longevity to lowering cholesterol, but those animals are weaned on that from birth, and humans will go to jail trying it with their children. It may be unnecessary - and the diet advice we have gotten for the last 30 years may be also. A new study found that a diet of high carbohydrates and low protein - the opposite of what has been recommended - improves insulin sensitivity and can provide benefits similar to those obtained with calorie restriction. The investigators compared three 8-week diets varying…

By using medicines in unconventional ways and treating patients with a 'stepped care' approach (where the most effective yet least intensive treatment is delivered to patients first), scientists have successfully improved blood pressure control among patients with severe intolerance to antihypertensive medication.  The study devised a novel treatment strategy for 55 patients, involving fractional dosing with tablets (halving or quartering pills), liquid formulations of antihypertensive drugs and patch formulations of antihypertensive drugs - plus use of unlicensed drugs that lower blood…

As college students have made their way back to campus this month, many also return to the habits, some good, some bad, that dorm-life promotes. A new survey finds that adults under 25, including high school graduates and college students, are more likely to rate hookah and e-cigarettes as safer than cigarettes, when compared to 25 to 34-year-olds, according to a paper in Health Education&Behavior. Well, they are. E-cigarettes have no smoke, just some nicotine, so every study has found them to be 95% less harmful than cigarettes. A hookah is not great but still far less harmful than…

Last week a paper in JAMA received wide attention from the media, including some decent coverage from Gina Kolata from NYT science, who wrote three separate pieces to discuss breast cancer treatment (the best of which is here).Unfortunately, for the average reader who isn't into biostats, the coverage of what should have been the point of the study (the natural history of Ductal Carcinoma in Situ), has been presented as a terribly difficult topic to sort, with breaking research contributing equivocal findings to a problematic treatment decision. That is simply not the case and the JAMA study…

Not only does organic food have pesticides, which the $100 billion Big Organic industry would rather you forget, but it even has synthetic pesticides. And that "Non-GMO Project" project sticker won't save you, because some boxes of Kashi GoLean Original cereal may have been "verified" by that piece of paper also, yet the food still had glyphosate, according to an analysis by another activist group.  Of course, GMOs and pesticides are different, though you wouldn't know it by listening to Union of Concerned Scientists or Natural Resources Defense Council or the other anti-science groups…

As the use of e-cigarettes has risen dramatically in the United States in recent years, so have calls to poison centers about them, yet most parents are unaware of potential dangers. The devices are used like cigarettes but instead of tobacco, they vaporize a liquid mixture of nicotine, glycerin and glycol ethers. If ingested, a teaspoon of this "e-liquid" can be lethal to a child, and smaller amounts can cause nausea and vomiting that may necessitate a trip to the  emergency room. In a few cases, exposure to skin has also sickened children. A new study at Washington University School of…

Shorter mothers have shorter pregnancies, smaller babies, and higher risk for a preterm birth. New research has found that a mother's height directly influences her risk for preterm birth. Investigators at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center Ohio Collaborative looked at 3,485 Nordic women and their babies, and found that maternal height, which is determined by genetic factors, helped shape the fetal environment, influencing the length of pregnancy and frequency of prematurity. In contrast, birth length and birth weight are mainly influenced by transmitted genes. Preterm birth is…

At the American Council on Science and Health, we have been keeping our eyes on Denmark's Dr. Phillipe Grandjean and the Harvard School of Public Health for quite some time now. He has a long and well-deserved reputation of being in the forefront of "toxic terror" campaigns based on his cohort studies of pregnant women, newborns and pre-schoolers in the North Atlantic's Faroe Islands and their dietary intake of mercury-laden whale meat. Using these data, he has launched and promulgated generalized anxieties about all sorts of fish in our diets as potentially toxic, and more recently has…

E-cigarettes are attracting massive interest for their potential in helping smokers quit, to reduce harm in those who switch from cigarettes or cut down, and in reducing the uptake of smoking in teenagers, where the argument runs that they would be best to vape instead of smoking. Not to mention a third possibility: that they do neither. This week saw the publication in JAMA of data from the world’s first longitudinal study of young teenagers who vape. The Los Angles study reported on six- and 12-month data from a ten-school cohort of 14-year-olds who started off as non-vapers. When data…