health

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Gluten-Free Sticks for Many Dieters

Mild-mannered wheat protein is the latest dietary scourge

(Newser) - Gluten-free diets, once the purview of those with life-threatening conditions like celiac disease, have hit the mainstream. Docs now estimate that gluten allergies strike one in 100 North Americans, and even those who aren't allergic are turning onto gluten-free, blaming the protein for ailments from infertility to anxiety.

Toxic Cough Syrup Causes Deaths in Panama

How a tailor in China passed glycol off as glycerin, and killed hundreds of children

(Newser) - American drugmakers are on the lookout this week for another in the growing list of potentially deadly Chinese exports. This time, it's diethylene glycol, a sweet-but-toxic chemical that masquerades as glycerin in common medications like cough syrup and that has already killed almost 400 people—many of them children—in...

Melamine Death Toll Passes 8,000 Pets

FDA says health risk for humans unlikely

(Newser) - More than 8,000 deaths of cats and dogs that may be linked to melamine-tainted food have been reported to the FDA in the two months since the pet food recall. The statistics come as the FDA tries to assure Americans that the tainted protein concentrates, also fed to hogs...

Researchers Link Gene, Heart Disease

Common variation dramatically increases risk

(Newser) - A gene that can more than double the risk of heart disease, especially in relatively young people, is present in about half of those of European descent, researchers say. The discovery, reported this week, raises hopes of more accurate genetic testing for heart disease—the world's leading cause of death—...

China Detains Pet Food Contaminator

Beijing cracks down on source of melamine-tainted gluten

(Newser) - Chinese authorities have jailed the head of a company accused of selling pet food makers  the melamine-contaminated gluten that's killed thousands of cats and dogs. The detention of Mao Lijun suggests Beijing is eager to cooperate with the FDA investigators currently on its turf, after initially disavowing any gluten sales...

TB Patient Spends Nine Months In Lockdown

ACLU questions forcible quarantine of man with drug-resistent TB

(Newser) - A tuberculosis patient has been in forced quarantine in an Arizona hospital's jail ward for nine months for failing to wear a face mask and take his medication. Robert Daniels committed no crime, but neither did he follow doctor's orders to avoid transmission of his drug-resistant TB. 

Lefty Women Die Younger
Lefty Women Die Younger
May 2, 2007 12:01 PM CDT

Lefty Women Die Younger

Stunner Dutch study shows 70% higher risk of dying from cancer

(Newser) - Left-handed women have a dramatically higher risk of mortality from just about every disease, a new study reported in the Telegraph shows. Dutch researchers who followed more than 12,000 women for nearly 13 years found lefties had a 40% greater chance of dying from any cause, 70% higher from...

FDA Names Food Safety Czar After Chicken Scare

Democrats seek other roads to effective FDA

(Newser) - The FDA appointed a food safety czar yesterday, as the news that 3 million chickens had been fed melamine-tainted feed exacerbated growing public anxiety about food safety. The FDA said the chickens weren't recalled because most of them would have been sold by now, and the melamine was too diluted...

Preschool Kids Get Socked In the Mouth

Cavities are on the rise for the first time in 40 years

(Newser) - Young children are developing more cavities in their baby teeth than kids were a decade ago, the CDC reported yesterday, a worrisome development that reverses a 40-year trend. Preschool children—"thousands and thousands of kids," in the words of one researcher—were the only age group in which...

Glass Bottles Breaking Into Baby Market

Fears about toxic plastics are turning back the clock

(Newser) - Glass is the new plastic—for baby bottles, at least. A rash of health warnings about plastic—toxicity reports, cancer risks, even longterm fertility problems—is turning many moms on to the glass bottles their own moms dropped as too breakable. eBay prices are soaring, and bottle distributors struggling to...

Pharmaceutical Farming Generates Hopes and Fears

Benefits weighed against risk of food-supply contamination

(Newser) - The battle over genetic modification has a new player: "pharming," or pharmaceutical farming, which uses genetically modified plants to mass-produce drug compounds relatively inexpensively. By altering common plants—for instance, tobacco, which can be engineered to produce an HIV drug—researchers say pharming could transform the treatment of...

Research Gives Alzheimer's Patients Hope

New study suggests disease-related memory loss may be reversible

(Newser) - Alzheimer's patients may be able to recover some memory by using a combo of drugs and mental stimulation, a new study in the journal Nature concludes. Mice with an Alzheimer's-like condition were more likely to remember an electric shock if they had taken a drug stimulating brain-cell growth or lived...

Post-Chemo Memory Loss Isn't All in the Head

Doctors catch onto "chemo brain"

(Newser) - Docs are finally cluing in to "chemo brain," the fuzzy-headed forgetfulness following treatment that cancer survivors have long suffered—and doctors long denied. The condition, suffered by roughly 15% of breast cancer survivors, refers to a laundry list of memory-loss issues that researchers think result from high levels...

Ouch—Doc's Trial Highlights Pain Issues

Was he trafficking narcotics or treating chronic pain?

(Newser) - The drug-trafficking trial of a Virginia pain specialist demonstrates the slippery slope between treating chronic conditions and enabling addicts. Dr. William Hurwitz's jury heard the story of a patient with deblitating migraines who had been treated with anxiety medication that actually caused headaches—by another doctor who happened to be...

Researchers Fight Fat With Baby Formula

Introducing hormone in infancy trims down rats, sparks controversy

(Newser) - The battle to keep pounds off may start with a baby bottle, say a team of British scientists who found that feeding large doses of the appetite-controlling hormone leptin to baby rats led to svelte adult rats. If those results translate to humans, a baby formula that chemically alters metabolism...

Drug Targets Hundreds of Disorders
Drug Targets Hundreds of Disorders
Apr 23, 2007 8:42 AM CDT

Drug Targets Hundreds of Disorders

Magic bullet hits mutations that prompt 1,800 genetic diseases

(Newser) - A magic bullet that could treat cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, hemophilia and more than 1,800 other genetic disorders could be available by 2009. Lee Sweeney of UPenn, leader of the team developing the drug, tells the Times of London: “It doesn’t just target one mutation that causes...

FDA Knew About Food Dangers
FDA Knew About Food Dangers
Apr 23, 2007 8:24 AM CDT

FDA Knew About Food Dangers

Overwhelmed food-safety arm didn't follow up on peanut butter, spinach

(Newser) - The FDA knew for years about problems at the peanut butter plant and spinach farms that led to major disease outbreaks, but took minimal steps to redress them. The agency's food safety arm can't keep up with the explosion in the amount of food it is supposed to regulate, the ...

Stop Periods, Period?
Stop Periods, Period?
Apr 20, 2007 11:01 AM CDT

Stop Periods, Period?

They call it the curse, but women are mixed on birth control pill that stops menstruation

(Newser) - Women may complain about their periods, but would they miss them when they're gone? The FDA is set to approve an oral contraceptive that suppresses periods entirely, sparking controversy—including a documentary making the rounds of college campuses—over the meaning of menstruation.

Cho Diagnosed as Autistic, Say Relatives

Uncle in Seoul says parents didn't have money for treatment

(Newser) - Virginia Tech assassin Cho Seung-Hui's relatives in Seoul, tracked down by the  London Mirror, report that Cho had been diagnosed as autistic after arriving in the U.S. His grandfather's sister, Kim Yang-Sun, said Cho caused his mother "a lot of problems"  as a child and "never...

FDA: Pet Food Poison Added Intentionally

Chinese may have used melamine to boost nutrition rating

(Newser) - The chemical which contaminated over 100 brands of pet food—with disastrous results for dog and cat lovers—may have been intentionally added by Chinese manufacturers in an effort to fudge nutrition ratings on their rice protein and wheat gluten. "That's still a theory, but it certainly seems to...

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