If you haven’t had your life-isn’t-fair moment today, here it is: a lack of health insurance might have led or contributed to the deaths of nearly 17,000 hospitalized U.S. children during the past 20 years, according to new research from scientists at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, MD.
The study, appearing tomorrow in …
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 …
Pregnant women with significant signs of depression may react more strongly to the seasonal flu vaccine than women with milder cases of the common mood disorder, according to a new study slated to appear in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. The study was small but carefully designed. Researchers had 22 pregnant women fill out …
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 …
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 …
Disney’s recently announced decision to offer a refund to parents who purchased its popular “Baby Einstein” videos vindicates researchers who had been attacked by the company. Their study, published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics, showed that each daily hour of viewing of these kinds of “educational” videos by children …
A dramatic rise in antidepressant prescriptions given by general practitioners has led to an increased number of people popping the mood boosters long-term, say researchers at the University of Southampton. The study, published today in the British Medical Journal, shows that despite a drop in the number of new patients diagnosed with …
Republicans suffered a set back last November in more ways than one. A new study appearing today in the medical journal PLOS One shows that, in the hours after Obama was announced the 44th president of the United States, male, college-aged McCain fans experienced an immediate drop in testosterone. For the study, 183 people offered up …
If you have someone in your life who stubbornly refuses to get in line by going online, here’s a carrot. Yesterday, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, presented their study showing that when adults (ages 55 to 78) go online their brains get bigger. Well, maybe not physically bigger, but they did reclaim …
Weight-loss surgery is often heralded as a relatively risk-free procedure, especially compared to the health problems that can go hand-in-hand with obesity. But, for the heaviest among us—the so-called superobese—the decision to go under the knife is not one to be taken lightly. According to a study published in this month’s Archives …
In our science-via-soundbite culture, it’s easy to glom onto health news that validates the things we love—what? coffee might prevent Alzheimer’s? pass the triple Americano—and ignore headlines that threatens to dampen the fun, such as the drawbacks of drinking.
Everyone’s heard the news that moderate drinking may thwart heart …
In a study of 811 people treating major depression over a 12-week period with the drugs nortriptyline (marketed as Aventyl and Pamelor) and competitor escitalopram (marketed as Lexapro and Cipralex), researchers found that men taking nortriptyline showed a dramatic increase in suicidal thoughts, compared to those taking the competing
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