Aiming to empower planners and policy-makers to achieve better health for billions of people living in fast-growing urban areas, world health, environmental, behavioural and social science experts today launched a major new interdisciplinary scientific collaboration. Programme goals: Empowering planners and policy-makers with better science to create healthy urban environments and improve wellbeing; Identify and manage unintended health consequences of urban policy; Understand connections between cities and planetary change Leading the consortium of science ...

Opposing views on the potential impact of electronic cigarettes on public health are published in the open access journal BMC Medicine. The commentaries, by two experts, differ in their views on the topic but are united in their call for a rational discussion based on evidence. The authors examine the WHO's recommendations earlier this year. One recommendation was that smokers should not use e-cigarettes and has now been withdrawn, and the other is that policymakers should implement their strict regulation, which is still in force. In one of the commentaries, Peter ...

Sophia Antipolis, 09 December 2014: Heart disease patients have been advised to avoid being outside during rush hour traffic in a paper published today in European Heart Journal.1 The position paper on air pollution and cardiovascular disease was written by experts from the European Society of Cardiology and also recommends decreasing the use of fossil fuels. Professor Robert F. Storey, corresponding author of the paper, said: "More than 3 million deaths worldwide are caused by air pollution each year. Air pollution ranks ninth among the modifiable disease risk factors, ...

There is no need to spray insecticide on walls for malaria control when people sleep under treated bed nets, according to new research. Use of insecticide sprayed on internal walls, when combined with insecticide-treated bed nets in homes, does not protect children from malaria any more effectively than using just insecticide-treated bed nets, the research led by Durham University and the Medical Research Council's Unit in The Gambia found. The researchers said this was important as insecticide-treated nets and insecticide sprayed on walls are commonly used for controlling ...

The system that allows patients rapid access to expensive new treatments lacks transparency and penalises small and low-income countries unable to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the authors of an essay on market-access agreements for anti-cancer drugs, say that while the underlying strategy is to help reduce the likelihood of health systems paying for treatments that turn out not to be cost-effective, the agreements can also be seen as an opportunistic way for pharmaceutical manufacturers ...

Donald Trump's ego may be the size of his financial empire, but that doesn't mean he's the picture of mental health. The same can be said about the self-esteem of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, or unemployed. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, underscores this mind-wallet connection. UC Berkeley researchers have linked inflated or deflated feelings of self-worth to such afflictions as bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, anxiety and depression, providing yet more evidence that the widening gulf between rich and ...

The combined use of spraying insecticide inside homes and insecticide-treated bed nets is no better at protecting children against malaria than using bed nets alone, a study in The Gambia suggests. The findings, published in The Lancet, should encourage donors to invest their limited resources in additional bed nets, the more cost-effective solution to tackling malaria*. Lead author Professor Steve Lindsay, a disease ecologist at Durham University in the UK explains, "Our findings do not support any universal recommendation for indoor residual spraying as an addition ...

The mass die-off of nerve cells in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease may largely occur because an entirely different class of brain cells, called microglia, begin to fall down on the job, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers found that, in mice, blocking the action of a single molecule on the surface of microglia restored the cells' ability to get the job done -- and reversed memory loss and myriad other Alzheimer's-like features in the animals. The study, to be published online Dec. 8 in ...

1. Breast density notification laws substantially increase costs yet save few lives Laws requiring women to be notified of their breast density so that they may discuss supplemental screening options, including ultrasound, with their health care providers would substantially increase costs and save relatively few lives, according to an article published in Annals of Internal Medicine. More than 40 percent of women between the ages of 40 and 74 have dense breast tissue, which puts them at increased risk for breast cancer and affects how well a mammogram can detect abnormalities. ...

In the most comprehensive look yet at the safety of abortion, researchers at UC San Francisco have concluded that major complications are rare, occurring less than a quarter of a percent of the time, about the same frequency as colonoscopies. The study, published online on Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, in Obstetrics & Gynecology, analyzed data from more than 50,000 women enrolled in the Medi-Cal fee-for-service program who obtained abortions from 2009 to 2010, and looked for complications that occurred within six weeks of the procedure. The rate is similar to what has been ...

Glucose is a component of carbohydrates, and the main energy source used by brain cells. By studying rats, a team at Imperial College London identified a mechanism that appears to sense how much glucose is reaching the brain, and prompts animals to seek more if it detects a shortfall. The researchers believe it may play a role in driving our preference for sweet and starchy foods. The study, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Dr James Gardiner, from the Department of Medicine, ...

Patients with plasma cell dyscrasis have high amounts of an abnormal immunoglobulin, called a paraprotein, in their blood. While many patients have no outward symptoms, paraproteins can impair immune function, thicken blood, and damage organs. Plasma cell dyscrasis may be inherited, but risk factors for this disease are poorly understood. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that the presence of a modified host protein is associated with plasma cell dyscrasis risk. Michael Pfreundschuh and colleagues evaluated paraproteins in blood from patients ...

Glucose is the primary fuel for the brain. Therefore, it has been proposed that the brain must sense glucose and promote eating behaviors when levels are low. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation reveals that activation of an enzyme, glucokinase, in a region of the hypothalamus called the arcuate nucleus specifically increases glucose uptake. Steve Bloom and colleagues at Imperial College London determined that glucokinase levels in the arcuate nucleus are dramatically increased in fasted rats. In their rodent models, activation of glucokinase in the acruate ...

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is one of the few solar system bodies - and the only planetary moon - known to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface. (The others are Venus, Earth and Mars.) New research, using experimental results from the high-pressure wind tunnel at Arizona State University's Planetary Aeolian Laboratory, has found that previous estimates of how fast winds need to blow to move sand-size particles around on Titan are about 40 percent too low. A team of scientists led by Devon Burr of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville reported the findings ...

An enormous spectrum of light streams from the sun. We're most familiar with the conventional visible white light we see with our eyes from Earth, but that's just a fraction of what our closest star emits. NASA regularly watches the sun in numerous wavelengths because different wavelengths provide information about different temperatures and processes in space. Looking at all the wavelengths together helps to provide a complete picture of what's occurring on the sun over 92 million miles away - but no one has been able to focus on high energy X-rays from the sun until recently. In ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When it comes to specialized cancer surgery, it's generally true that the more experienced the surgeon, the better the outcome. The same might hold true for radiation therapy used to treat head and neck cancer, according to a new study led by researchers Evan Wuthrick, MD, assistant professor of radiation oncology at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James), and Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the OSUCCC - ...

A team of researchers at Dartmouth College and University of Pittsburgh found respondents who had smoked water pipe tobacco but not smoked cigarettes were at increased risk of cigarette smoking two years later as recently published online in JAMA Pediatrics. The study followed 2,541 adolescents and young adults for two years. Samir Soneji, PhD, a tobacco regulatory control researcher at Dartmouth and lead author on the study said, "We found hookah smoking increased the probability of trying cigarette smoking over the next two years by 19%." This longitudinal study ...

Drinking or eating from cans or bottles lined with Bisphenol A (BPA) could raise your blood pressure, according to new research reported in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension. BPA, a chemical used as an epoxy lining for cans and plastic bottles, is everywhere, and its consumption has been associated with high blood pressure and heart rate variability. Previous studies have shown that BPA can leach into foods and drinks. "A 5 mm Hg increase in systolic blood pressure by drinking two canned beverages may cause clinically significant problems, particularly ...

Nine in 10 primary care physicians say that prescription drug abuse is a moderate or big problem in their communities and nearly half say they are less likely to prescribe opioids to treat pain compared to a year ago, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. Primary care doctors also appear to recognize many risks of prescription opioid use, including addiction and death by overdose, according to the findings reported in the Dec. 8 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. "Our findings suggest that primary care providers have become aware of the ...

A survey of primary care physicians found the vast majority of practicing internists, family physicians and general practitioners consider prescription drug abuse to be a significant problem in their community and most physicians agreed opioids were overused to treat pain, according to a research letter published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Primary care physicians are critical in maximizing the safe use of opioid pain-relieving medications. It is because of this that Catherine S. Hwang, M.S.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, ...

Smoking water pipe tobacco from hookahs and using the smokeless tobacco snus were associated with initiating cigarette smoking and smoking cigarettes in the past 30 days among previously nonsmoking teenagers and young adults, according to a study published online by JAMA Pediatrics. The Food and Drug Administration regulates cigarettes, loose tobacco and smokeless tobacco products. However, the FDA does not regulate the manufacturing, distribution and marketing of other tobacco products, such as water pipe tobacco, and many of those products are used by teenagers and ...

Salt Lake City - Develop 100 drugs in 10 years. That's the ambitious goal set by a group of scientists and engineers at the University of Utah, founders of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a start-up company that is able to quickly and affordably identify unexpected ways a drug could be used by testing it on diseased cells. The disruptive approach to drug development, aided by custom-designed software capable of tracking changes, or signs of healing, in cells, could speed discovery of therapies for so-called "orphan" diseases. Scientists at Recursion have already identified ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were more than twice as likely to have been exposed in utero to preeclampsia, and the likelihood of an autism diagnosis was even greater if the mother experienced more severe disease, a large study by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute has found. Women with preeclampsia experience hypertension during the latter half of their pregnancies, and may have increased levels of protein in their urine and edema, or fluid retention. Preeclampsia can develop into eclampsia, a life-threatening condition ...

New York, NY, December 8, 2014 - Challenges to global health can evolve from policies and decisions that take years or decades to unfold. An article in the current issue of the Annals of Global Health describes the current state of asbestos use worldwide, a story that began over 100 years ago, and the real and contrived controversies regarding asbestos. At the peak of asbestos use in 1972 in the United States, more than 775,000 tons of asbestos were used, much of it by the construction trades and shipbuilding industry, in addition to the manufacturing of many consumer ...

There are strong economic incentives for governments to invest in early childhood nutrition, reports a new paper from the University of Waterloo and Cornell University. Published for the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, the paper reveals that every dollar spent on nutrition during the first 1,000 days of a child's life can provide a country up to $166 in future earnings. "The returns on investments in nutrition have high benefit-cost ratios, especially in countries with higher income levels and a growing economy," said Professor Susan Horton, of the School of Public Health ...