California files suit on french fry health warning
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California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed a lawsuit to force top makers of potato chips and french fries to warn consumers about a potential cancer-causing chemical found in the popular snacks.
In a complaint filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Lockyer sought an injunction to stop restaurant chains such as McDonald’s Corp. and Wendy’s International Inc. from selling french fries without some form of warning.
Peanut paste helps battle hunger in Africa
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Michel Lescanne lifts the lid of a giant mixer that stirs peanut paste, sugar and a special vitamin mix into a sticky cream at his small village factory in northern France.
The brown paste, known as Plumpy’nut, has become an elixir of life for tens of thousands of African children.
South Africans beef up at gym to battle AIDS, crime
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With bulging biceps and abs like steel, South Africa’s jobless youngsters are turning to bodybuilding to help them fight AIDS and resist a life of crime.
Makeshift gyms are springing up across the country’s poorest and toughest townships, aimed at helping members develop discipline over delinquency and stay healthy as HIV/AIDS ravages their communities.
Starving won’t make people live longer-researchers
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Starving - or caloric restriction - may make worms and mice live up to 50 percent longer but it will not help humans live super-long lives, two biologists argue.
They said Sunday their mathematical model showed that a lifetime of low-calorie dieting would only extend human life span by about 7 percent, unlike smaller animals, whose life spans are affected more by the effects of starvation.
Vets with traumatic stress can kick smoking habit
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Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder have a high rate of smoking and a poor rate of quitting, but new research shows that adding smoking-cessation therapy to their routine mental health care may help.
This “integrated” care, researchers found, was more successful in helping vets kick the smoking habit than the traditional approach of sending them to a specialized smoking-cessation clinic.
Shock wave therapy helps some stroke sufferers
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After a Stroke, some patients develop muscle spasm in their hand and wrist. A small study now indicates that the condition can be relieved with focused shock wave therapy, and the benefits may persist for at least 12 weeks after treatment.
Shock wave therapy is commonly used to break up kidney stones, and it has also proven useful in the treatment of various bone and tendon diseases, but there’s not much known about its use for abnormal muscle tension, or “hypertonia,” Italian researchers note.
China experts say bird flu bigger threat than SARS
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Bird flu now poses a bigger and more worrying threat to people than SARS, medical experts in southern China, the region where severe acute respiratory syndrome first surfaced, said on Friday.
The main reason, they said, was that humans had learned how to effectively control the spread of SARS, but had not done the same for bird flu, which can be spread by wild birds.
Cholera kills hundreds as rain pounds West Africa
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Cholera outbreaks triggered partly by heavy rains battering West Africa have killed hundreds of people in the past few months, prompting appeals for medicine to help thousands of sufferers, U.N. officials said on Friday.
The disease has struck as far afield as tiny Guinea-Bissau, where the government has banned sales of water in markets to combat the waterborne disease, to giant Congo, where 16 people travelling in a military convoy died of the infection.
Heart ailment seems under-recognized in women
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Italian investigators report, that compared to men, women with a hereditary heart condition called Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy are substantially more likely to be diagnosed later in life and with more severe symptoms.
This occurs despite the fact that Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy “should theoretically be present in males and females equally,” said Dr. Iacopo Olivotto, because it is a genetic disease with an inheritance pattern that requires only one parent to have the condition.
US retirees still wary of Medicare drug plan
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Most older Americans say they still do not understand how Medicare’s new prescription drug coverage will work and they are split over whether it will be worthwhile, a study released on Thursday found.
In a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of people aged 65 and up, 60 percent said they did not understand the new benefit, which opens for enrollment in November and is scheduled to start in January.
Drug may keep transplanted kidneys healthier longer
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Transplanted kidneys may survive three or four years longer when treated with an experimental Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. drug instead of the standard drug cyclosporine, a study released on Wednesday showed.
A test of 218 transplant recipients at 22 centers in North America and Europe found that the six-month rejection rate for kidneys treated with either drug was equally low.
Kidney donor exchange programs catching on
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Say you wanted to donate a kidney to a relative, but weren’t a match. Would you donate your kidney to a stranger who could use it, in exchange for a kidney from one of their relatives that was a match to your kin?
Seems like a good idea, and such plans are being set up.
A new Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program launched earlier this month by the New York Organ Donor Network will allow potential kidney donor-recipient pairs who are not suitable for reasons such as mismatched blood type to be matched with other willing donor-recipient pairs.
Sperm banking gives cancer patients emotional lift
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Sperm banking may not only preserve young cancer patients’ ability to have children, but their emotional well-being as well, according to Japanese researchers.
They found that among 51 young men who banked their sperm before undergoing chemotherapy, 80 percent said that the move helped them in the “emotional battle against cancer.” Even those who were unsure whether they wanted to have children in the future gained some peace of mind from sperm banking, according to the researchers.
WHO hopes drugs will buy time against bird flu
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The World Health Organization (WHO) began on Wednesday to build a first line of defense against a feared global bird flu pandemic with a major drug donation from a leading Swiss firm.
The United Nations agency said a donation by Swiss drug maker Roche of enough of its Tamiflu antiviral drug to treat 3 million people could slow the spread of the outbreak among humans, especially in countries too poor to afford their own stockpile.
Painkillers can cause fatal stomach bleeding
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Approximately one third of all hospitalizations and deaths related to gastrointestinal bleeding can be attributed to the use of aspirin or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs) painkillers like ibuprofen, a study in Spain suggests.
Moreover, up to one third of these painkiller-related incidents may be due to low-dose aspirin.
