Health News - Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Nutrition and health advocates call them "hybrid horribles": bacon cheeseburger pizzas, buffalo-chicken-stuffed quesadillas and lasagna with meat balls.
Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said these offerings "are seemingly designed to promote obesity, heart disease, and stroke." His nonprofit health organization gained a reputation as the "food police" in the 1990s, when it declared fettuccine Alfredo "a heart attack on a plate." Continue reading
An antibiotic often used in hospital intensive care units to treat serious staph infections resistant to other medicines may cause a sometimes-fatal bleeding condition, researchers said on Wednesday. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine linked the antibiotic vancomycin to a disorder called thrombocytopenia.
It is associated with abnormal bleeding and marked by a decrease in blood platelets -- cells that help the blood to clot. Vancomycin, in use for about three decades, can be used to treat infections in many parts of the body, and is seen as the drug of choice for serious staphylococci infections that are resistant to most other antibiotics. It can have other serious side effects, including hearing and kidney damage. Continue reading
Antioxidant vitamins has long been regarded as panacea to slow the aging process. But a most comprehensive study of the popular supplements may smash the miraculous images these pills have, said Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to the analysis of separate studies on thousands of people, no evidence was found that taking beta carotene, vitamin A or vitamin E extends lifespan and, in fact, the supplements increase the likelihood of dying by about 5 percent. Vitamin C and selenium appeared to have no impact on longevity. Based on the findings, published in the journal, the researchers warned that consumers should be cautious about taking supplements containing the nutrients. Continue reading