Public Health
We know that healthy mitochondria, the energy factories of cells, rely on proper reduction and oxidation to keep us converting food to energy and staving off mitochondrial pathologies. Any number of compounds have been created to try and keep that going as we age. They determine whether cells live or die and they regulate inflammation.
One new compound, (AP39), targets delivery of very small amounts of hydrogen sulfide inside cells. Hydrogen sulfide. H2S. Sewer gas. It's that fart smell. The U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety&Health Administration (OSHA) says it is…
People love to latch onto studies that match their confirmation bias, so studies claiming health benefits for red wine, chocolate and organic food get a lot of attention and not much skepticism about controls. Any epidemiology claim will do when it comes to finding benefit or harm.
A new review calls into question previous studies which suggest that consuming light-to-moderate amounts of alcohol (0.6-0.8 fluid ounces/day) may have a protective effect on cardiovascular health. Instead, they find that reducing the amount of alcoholic beverages consumed, even for light-to-moderate…
Researchers have matched an upward curve in temperatures in the last few decades with increases in patient's seeking treatment for kidney stones, which both reflects and foretells a warming planet's impact on human health, they say. Of course, they also found increases in very low temperatures.
60,000 patients were matched up with hot days between 2005 and 2011 in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The authors described the risk of stone presentation for the full range of temperatures in each city. As mean daily temperatures rose above 50 F (10 C), the risk of kidney…
It's been known for some time that gastric bypass surgery
doesn't just help obese patients lose weight, it also cures diabetes in the majority of patients that undergo it. Type 2 diabetes is linked to diabetes but studies have found that gastric bypass surgery can rapidly put diabetes into a state of remission - regardless of weight loss.
Improved insulin resistance within the first week after surgery remains unexplained but a new paper in Endocrinology says it may be explained by the actions of specialized cells in the intestine that secrete a cocktail of powerful…
You have to admire the consistency of our government, especially when it comes to protecting us.
While the TSA is strip-searching 95-year old women in wheelchairs, a janitor tripped over a box of smallpox samples that someone left in an old Budweiser cooler in some closet.
OK, this may not be strictly accurate. It could have been Bud Lite. And it wasn't really a janitor, but it really doesn't makes much difference in the grand scheme of things.What really happened is that a bunch of sealed vials of the smallpox virus—possibly the most deadly pathogen ever—were discovered in a …
Obesity is so common among U.S. Hispanics, particularly among young Hispanics, that it is at crisis proportions, according to data from a study of 16,344 people of diverse Hispanic origin in four U.S. cities; New York City (Bronx), Chicago, Miami and San Diego. Men were average age 40 and women were average age 41. People with Mexican roots were the largest group (about 37 percent), followed by Cuban (20 percent) and Puerto Rican (16 percent) backgrounds.
This first large-scale data on body mass index (BMI) and cardiovascular disease risk factors among U.S. Hispanic/Latino…
Adults with extreme obesity have increased risks of dying at from cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and kidney and liver diseases, according to results of an analysis of data pooled from 20 large studies of people from three countries.
The analysis led by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) found that people with class III (or extreme) obesity had a dramatic reduction in life expectancy compared with people of normal weight.
"While once a relatively uncommon condition, the prevalence of class III, or extreme, obesity is on the rise. In the United States, for example,…
The number of children with atopic dermatitis - eczema, a painful, itchy skin condition
- is on the rise. Some estimates are that one in five children in the U.S. now suffers from it and many children are prescribed powerful medications like immunosuppressants or topical steroids.
To help find simpler treatment options, researchers at National Jewish Health evaluated an approach known as wet wrap therapy. First described in 1987, wet wrap therapy has rarely been studied and has never been used as a standardized treatment for children with eczema.
The technique involves soaking in…
When people use heroin, their brains become
physiologically dependent on the drug and the behavioral patterns of use become
written alongside this need.
That’s addiction: both behaviorally and
biologically, heroin addicts need the drug. When they don’t get it, they crave
it, even though they may no longer like it
and know the drug is bad for them. If the drug is withheld long enough, the
addict experiences symptoms of withdrawal.
Now, an
important review of food addiction in the Journal of Nutrition points out many
parallels between heroin and food. First, drugs and food make us feel good in…
In modern times, an otherwise healthy pre-term baby has a very strong chance of survival. And that survival chance goes way up in high-volume neonatal units; a counter-intuitive finding for people who think that slower dedicated health care is the way to go. Doctors and nurses in high-volume neonatal units have likely seen it all and have far more experience.
A paper in BMJ Open assesses how organizational factors in England impact clinical outcomes of infants born pre-term. The authors found that for preemies born at less than 33 weeks gestation, the odds of dying in hospital were 32 per…