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SSRIs increase risk of falling in nursing home residents with dementia

Nursing home residents with dementia who use average doses of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are three times more likely to have an injurious fall than similar people who don't use these drugs. The association can be seen in people who use low doses of SSRIs and the risk increases as people take higher doses. The results are published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

19 Jan 2012

U.S. Ambassador to U.N. warns of potential for famine in Sudan

"The United States and Sudan traded accusations [on Tuesday] over the humanitarian situation in the [border] states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, embattled since the north and south of Sudan split into two nations last summer," the New York Times reports (MacFarquhar, 1/17).

19 Jan 2012

Women aged 67 years with normal bone mineral density may not need screening again for 15 years

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and other organizations have recommended that women ages 65 and older be routinely screened for osteoporosis using bone mineral density (BMD) screening. However, how often women should be screened is a topic that remains controversial and undecided, with no definitive scientific evidence to provide guidance.

19 Jan 2012

Plate size does not help to curb energy intake or control portion sizes

The size of one's dinner plate does not help to curb energy intake or control portion sizes, according to a recent study conducted at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

19 Jan 2012

Research on neuron interaction could lead to potential treatment for addiction

Harvard scientists have developed the fullest picture yet of how neurons in the brain interact to reinforce behaviors ranging from learning to drug use, a finding that might open the door to possible breakthroughs in the treatment of addiction.

19 Jan 2012

Threefold increase in polio cases in Afghanistan concerns experts

The New York Times examines how after years of decline, the number of recorded polio cases in Afghanistan tripled in 2011 to 76, following only 25 cases in 2010, raising concerns among international health experts that polio is seeing a resurgence, "particularly since some of the cases erupted far outside the disease's traditional areas in Afghanistan."

19 Jan 2012

Mephedrone users would switch to a new legal high if it caused less harm

Since mephedrone was made illegal in the UK in 2010, the street price of the drug has risen while the quality has degraded, which in turn may have reduced use of the drug. New research published online today reveals that young people who continued to use mephedrone after it became illegal would switch to a new legal high if it were pure and rated highly by their friends or on the Internet.

19 Jan 2012

Facilitating low-cost innovations in increased usage of health care

The argument that "a country's quickest way to better health for its people is economic development ... is only one factor, and not the most important one, in explaining global health outcomes," Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, writes in a SciDev.Net opinion piece. "The challenge is to ensure that a cheap basic package of health interventions is available to -- and is used by -- all," he continues.

19 Jan 2012

Aspirin may benefit HIV-infected women at risk of cervical cancer

Research conducted by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center global health investigators and cancer specialists in New York, Qatar and Haiti suggests that aspirin should be evaluated for its ability to prevent development of cervical cancer in HIV-infected women.

19 Jan 2012

FDA, pharmaceutical industry reach agreement on user-fee plan for generics

The Food and Drug Administration would collect hundreds of millions of dollars in new fees from pharmaceutical companies to help speed up the review of generic drugs, under an agreement with the industry released by the agency on Friday.

19 Jan 2012

Insufficient sleep increases risk of becoming overweight

New research from Uppsala University, Sweden, shows that a specific brain region that contributes to a person's appetite sensation is more activated in response to food images after one night of sleep loss than after one night of normal sleep. Poor sleep habits can therefore affect people's risk of becoming overweight in the long run. The findings are published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

19 Jan 2012

First Edition: January 19, 2012

Today's headlines include news about a health exchange progress report from the White House and the latest activity on the GOP presidential primary campaign trail.

19 Jan 2012

STSI to present fifth annual educational conference on genomic medicine

Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) will present its fifth annual educational conference exploring the latest achievements and challenges in the use of genomics to diagnose and treat disease and medical conditions on March 1-2, 2012, in San Diego.

19 Jan 2012

Questions raised over accuracy of Afghanistan mortality survey data

"A U.S.-sponsored mortality survey released last year announced huge improvements in health across Afghanistan. But the gains are so great that experts are still arguing about whether it's correct," NPR's All Things Considered reports.

19 Jan 2012

The AJMS publishes updates on type 2 diabetes, STIs

Research is leading to new insights on two major public health challenges: preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and improving disease control for patients with type 2 diabetes. Expert updates on these critical topics appear in a special symposium section of the January issue of The American Journal of the Medical Sciences (The AJMS), official journal of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation.

19 Jan 2012

Community health workers vital to improving health care in Africa

Community health workers (CHWs) "are seen to be a key part of a functioning primary health system," especially in African nations, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, writes in a post on Huffington Post's "Impact" blog.

19 Jan 2012

LCMEI renews accreditation with ACCME

Wolters Kluwer Health, a global leader providing information, business intelligence and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry, announced today that its Lippincott Continuing Medical Education Institute (LCMEI), which provides continuing medical education (CME) to physicians and pharmacists, has renewed its accreditation with the Accreditation Council of Continuing Medical Education.

19 Jan 2012

U.S. ambassador to U.N. food agencies, Ertharin Cousin, appointed to head WFP

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva on Tuesday announced the appointment of Ertharin Cousin, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.'s Rome-based food agencies, to head the U.N. World Food Programme, the Associated Press/CBS News reports.

19 Jan 2012

NIEHS study: 32M people in the U.S. have autoantibodies

A recent study conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), an agency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), shows that 32 million people in the United States have autoantibodies, the most common of which are antinuclear antibodies.

19 Jan 2012

Extending payroll tax cut tops Congressional to-do list

A quick deal on this legislative challenge could result in a short-term Medicare "doc fix" and raises red flags for hospitals, which fear reimbursements could be cut.

19 Jan 2012