U.S. and European drug agencies came to a similar decision to severely restrict use of the antidiabetes medication rosiglitazone, or Avandia. But while the European Medicines Agency is suspending sales of the drug in E.U. …
Medicine
The Impact of Alzheimer’s Disease by the (Very Scary) Numbers
Suffering is always hard to quantify — especially when the pain is caused by as cruel a disease as Alzheimer’s. Most illnesses attack the body; Alzheimer’s destroys the mind — and in the process, annihilates the very self. …
Why You Need to Worry About NDM-1: Not a ‘Superbug,’ But Still a Threat
Antibiotic-resistant bugs have been around almost as long as antibiotics, and health officials have long warned about the looming danger of superstrains — bacteria that are impervious to all of our available antibiotic medications.
Explaining the Gender Gap: Obesity Costs Women a Lot More Than Men
On the tail of yesterday’s finding that teenage girls get more weight-reduction surgeries than their male counterparts is a possible explanation: it costs a lot more for them to be obese. Obese women lose out on $4,879 per year …
Why It’s Harder For Older Women to Have Healthy Babies
No one likes being labeled, but celebrate your 35th birthday and get pregnant and you’re out of luck: like it or not, the letters “AMA” get slapped across your chart.
Paradise Paradox: Why Life in Hawaii Leads to Early Death
Most of us think of Hawaii as the perfect escape from our stressed out and fast-paced lives. Island life, after all, seems so idyllic and relaxing.
Clinical Trial Dilemma: Save Lives Now — or Later?
An excellent front-page story by Amy Harmon in Sunday’s New York Times told a heart-rending tale of two cousins. Thomas McLaughlin, 24, was given a promising experimental drug to fight his life-threatening skin cancer in a clinical trial.
Teen Girls Should Stick With Pediatrician for Pelvic Exam
Adolescence is awkward, no doubt, and there are few places where that’s as obvious as the pediatrician’s office.
The Tau of Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention
Following a series of disappointments in Alzheimer’s drug research, scientists report they may have found a clue to predicting a more aggressive form of the disease.
Can Catching a Cold Make You Fat?
Catching a cold is almost a rite of passage for the chilly winter months when people and viruses are often in close quarters. And that’s especially true among children, who aren’t stingy about what they share among friends …
Why White Girls Are Getting More Weight Loss Surgery
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the rate of weight loss surgery in the U.S., including lap band and gastric bypass, went up by 700% between 2005 and 2007. But we already knew that the …
Did the Rise of Cities Help HIV Take Off?
In this week’s Science, researchers led by Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona and Preston Marx of the Tulane National Primate Research Center looked at the history of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) — the primate …
Whooping Cough Cases May Break Record in California
With nine deaths and 4,017 illnesses reported, California is on track to break a 55-year record in pertussis, or whooping cough, infections — a highly contagious upper respiratory illness that affects children in …