Health News - Thursday, February 8, 2007
A health research advocate has called the government's decision to approve an over-the-counter version of a diet pill the "height of recklessness." Dr. Sidney Wolfe says studies have linked the prescription version of the drug, called Xenical, with pre-cancerous lesions of the colon.
The director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group says the plans to market a non-prescription version are a "dangerous mistake" in light of what he calls the product's "marginal benefits." He also says the diet pill can have "bothersome adverse reactions." The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it had approved sales of a lower-dose version of Xenical. The non-prescription version is called "alli". Continue reading
A new study by University of California Berkeley shows a pheromone found in male sweat and perfumes can raise levels of the hormone cortisol in women. The study, published in this week's The Journal of Neuroscience, provides the first direct evidence that humans, like rats and some insects, secrete a scent that affects the physiology of the opposite sex.
Similar phenomena have been suggested but not proved before: Studies such as Elizabeth McClintock's work in the early 1970s -- in which women living together in a dormitory were found to have synchronous menstrual cycles -- indicate that a sort of sixth sense exists that allows people's bodies to communicate with one another. Continue reading
A new study bolsters evidence that people partially blinded by a stroke or brain injury may be able to improve their field of vision by teaching new parts of their brain to see, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Using a computer workout program for the brain, about three-quarters of patients in the study could see better after six months of treatment with the therapy, which trains neighboring brain cells to take over for damaged areas. The therapy, which is marketed by NovaVision of Boca Raton, Florida and won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in 2003, is controversial among neurologists because it challenges the widely held belief that vision lost through brain injury or stroke can't be treated. Continue reading
One out of every 150 American eight-year-olds has some form of autism, meaning that 560,000 children in the country have the disorder, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Thursday.
That's a higher prevalence than prior estimates, drawn from a number of countries, that had pegged rates at between 1 in 500 and 1 in 166 children, according to the CDC. "Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a major public health issue," Dr. Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, CDC's chief of the Developmental Disabilities Branch, said during a teleconference about the figures. The full report is published in the Feb. 9 issue of the agency's journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Continue reading