Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) today is releasing materials presented to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in a scientific briefing requested by the MPAA last Feb. 23, 2007 in Hollywood on the health impact of youth smoking and the behavioral influence of films that depict tobacco use.
Treatment with insulin revolutionized the life of individuals with diabetes. However, because insulin acts to lower blood glucose levels, it can cause hypoglycemia (low levels of glucose in the blood), which, if prolonged, can lead to brain injury and coma.
Scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno are at the forefront on a number of seismological fields, including helping the world better determine whether an earthquake is big enough to generate an ocean-wide tsunami.
Not necessarily, according to the American College of Physicians. In a new set of guidelines for clinicians of 40-something patients, the group recommends that mammography screening decisions be made on a case-by-case basis.
Fatal poisonings involving paracetamol (acetaminophen) fell after a law introduced in the UK restricted the number of tablets that could be sold across the counter. But new research has concluded that this reduction may not have been a result of the change in the law.
One of the persistent riddles of the deadly 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic is why it struck different cities with varying severity. Why were some municipalities such as St. Louis spared the fate of the hard-hit cities like Philadelphia when both implemented similar public health measures?
Institutes of Health has awarded the University of Georgia a $7.4 million contract to collaborate with Emory University through its new Regional Center for Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance. Emory and UGA will receive a total of $32.8 million over seven years from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to establish one of six new national influenza centers.
A mutation in one gene HNF4A, associated with diabetes in the young, has been shown to be associated with an average increase in birthweight of 790g. In the current issue of PLoS Medicine Andrew Hattersley and colleagues from the Peninsular Medical School, report the findings from a study of 108 individuals from15 families where the mutation was present.
The number of children and teenagers prescribed antidepressant medications appears to have decreased following public warnings about suicidal behavior potentially associated with the drugs, according to a report published in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, antidepressants are now more often prescribed to this age group by psychiatrists rather than primary care physicians.
People with physical disabilities endure substandard health care and a pervasive sense that they are a burden to doctors, according to a Northwestern University physician who is lead author of a commentary in JAMA. These patients often ram into roadblocks when they try to obtain basic care and life-saving diagnostic tests, reports Kristi Kirschner, M.D. Patients and health care workers have been injured because of inadequate facilities. Kirschner offers an overdue blueprint for change.