WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — Despite recent studies suggesting that the injected diabetes drug Lantus (insulin glargine) might boost cancer risk, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday urged patients who are on the medication to continue using it.
Three of four studies published last Friday in Diabetologia showed a potential link between Lantus — an insulin analogue made by French drug company Sanofi-aventis — and increased risks for various tumor types. Read More
WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — Two drugs prescribed to help people quit smoking, Chantix and Zyban, will now carry “black-box” warnings on the potential risks of psychiatric problems, including depression and suicidal thoughts, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was mandating the black-box warnings, the strictest possible, based on reports to the agency of these side effects and on a review of clinical trials and scientific literature. Read More
WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — Older people who signed up for Medicare’s prescription drug coverage, called Part D, spent more on drugs after enrolling than they had before but less on other types of medical care, researchers have found.
Their study, in the July 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, also found that spending varied depending on the type of drug coverage participants had before enrolling in Part D.
Although the report was not designed to look at improvements in health, another study on Part D, presented at the AcademyHealth meeting in Chicago, did. Read More
WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — Despite efforts to fine-tune the procedure for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, the survival rate for older people given CPR has not changed much in recent decades, new research has found.
Just 18 percent of adults older than 65 who received CPR while in the hospital survived long enough to be discharged, according to a new study in the July 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. However, during the study period, from 1992 to 2005, the number of people in this age group who were given CPR before they died jumped 37 percent — from 3.8 percent in 1992 to 5.2 percent in 2005. Read More
WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — The rates of adult obesity in the United States increased in 23 states during the past year and did not decrease in any state.
And the number of obese and overweight children has now climbed to 30 percent in 30 states, a troubling trend that could signal decades of weight-related health problems such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease as these children become adults.
Those are just some of the worrisome findings in an annual report on obesity in America, released Wednesday by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Read More
TUESDAY, June 30 (HealthDay News) — Fluctuating hormone levels may explain trends in the timing of women’s susceptibility to neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Tourette’s and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, new research suggests.
Significant estrogen level changes occur at various stages of women’s lives, including adolescence and menopause, and as a result of menstrual cycles. The onset or exacerbation of neurological diseases are most likely to occur at these times, said researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Read More
WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — Watching food ads on TV leads to a boost in snacking among children and adults, increasing the risk of weight gain, U.S. researchers say.
Yale University researchers conducted a series of experiments to test the effects of food commercials on television. One test found that children aged 7 to 11 who watched a half-hour cartoon that included food commercials ate 45 percent more snack food while watching the show than children who watched the same cartoon with non-food commercials. Read More
WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — Repeated use of antibiotics to treat acute ear infections in young children increases the risk of recurrent ear infections by 20 percent, according to researchers in the Netherlands who called for more prudent use of antibiotics in young children.
The researchers found that 63 percent of children given the antibiotic amoxicillin experienced a recurrent ear infection within three years, compared with 43 percent of children given a placebo at the time of their initial infection. Read More
TUESDAY, June 30 (HealthDay News) — An analysis of studies supports a growing belief that guidelines for prescribing cholesterol-lowering statin drugs should be expanded to include healthy people without established heart disease, cardiologists say.
The meta-analysis of 10 trials involving more than 70,000 participants found that statin therapy reduced overall mortality by 12 percent, major coronary events by 30 percent and strokes by 19 percent. Read More
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