A link between exposure to traumatic stress and cancer has long been suspected—but researchers don’t yet fully understand how severe stress could produce this insidious effect or which types of cancer might be most affected. A new study of cancer risk amongst Holocaust survivors offers some clues.
The research also suggests that …
Should young women worry about “spiked” drinks and “date rape” drugs? A new study published in the British Journal of Criminology including surveys of both American and British coeds suggests that the real problem is what’s already in the glass, not what a surreptitious date or stranger might add to it.
“The students who …
During the past decade, a new class of drugs, called TNF inhibitors, has improved the lives of tens of thousands of people who suffer from painful autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and Crohn’s disease. But there is a catch: the same drugs that offer unmatched pain relief today might trigger a …
More good news on fertility: three new studies presented at a recent meeting of fertility doctors found that frozen eggs are as good as fresh– and that babies conceived via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) appear to be smarter than those conceived the old-fashioned way.
The research was presented at the latest meeting of the American …
Over the last 15 years, the vast majority of American gynecologists have switched from using the traditional “pap” smear to screen for cervical cancer to another screening method called “liquid based cytology” (women may know the test by the popular brand name, ThinPrep). But a new study of nearly 90,000 women in Holland finds …
A new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) calls for honing strategies to monitor people’s exposure to cancer-causing chemicals in the environment, including enhancing toxicity testing, enforcing regulatory standards, and lowering the public’s exposure when possible. Authors of the report put minimizing exposure to …
A 7-year study peering into the heart health of 20,000 Canadian teens uncovered that most already have at least one major risk factor for heart disease. The findings, presented this week at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress, showed that rates of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and obesity among the sampling of the country’s 14- …
Watch out for that mid-life speed bump—turns out age 45 is a doozy. A report published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine upends conventional wisdom about fitness and aging.
Until now, most experts thought people’s fitness levels declined in a linear fashion as they aged. But the new report suggests the downward march …
A long-held view among HIV researchers is that overlapping multiple sexual partners (aka concurrency) fuels the spread of HIV in Africa. But the authors of a new paper published in the journal AIDS and Behavior are questioning the strength of the supporting evidence. “This theory, which we accept as fact, is really just the strong …
For two decades, the public-health message has been that cancer screening saves lives. In some cases, especially with cancers of the cervix and colon, screening does, in fact, work as it should: sniffing out disease at its earliest and most curable stages. But for breast and prostate cancers—two of the most widespread in the U.S.—the …
Just buying ergonomic desks and chairs isn’t enough to quell pain caused by poor posture at work reports a new study in this month’s Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Such equipment is useless, say the authors, unless a professional ergonomist sets it up and adjusts it. Researchers came to this conclusion by taking a …
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine say they may be hot on the heels of the Holy Grail of cancer therapy: a means to protect healthy tissue from the harmful effects of radiation treatment while speeding tumor death. The study, published this week in Science Translational Medicine, could one day be a game changer …
A new study seems to confirm what many obese people have long suspected…that doctors think less of their heaviest patients. For the study, published in the November issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, collected data from 238 obese patients …