Health News - Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Drug treatment may beat psychotherapy at relieving the major depression felt by many patients with severe heart disease, a Canadian study finds.
The three-month study of 284 people who had already suffered heart attacks or had other problems, such as blockages of cardiac arteries, found treatment with the antidepressant citalopram (Celexa) more effective than weekly psychotherapy sessions at cutting depressive symptoms, according to a report in the Jan. 24/31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Continue reading
From an attack by militants to a decline in snow melt caused by global warming, public fears about the water supply have heightened in the United States. So who would have thought the top worry among water experts turns out to be rusty pipes?
"If you clean up water and then put it into a dirty pipe, there's not much point," said Timothy Ford, a microbiologist and water research scientist with Montana State University. "I consider the distribution system to be the highest risk and the greatest problem we are going to be facing in the future," Ford said. Continue reading
Viagra and similar drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction, often referred to as ED, work for men with diabetes and appear to be safe, according to a research review being published Wednesday.
Diabetes is one of the most common causes of ED, and experts estimate that diabetic men are about three times more likely than other men to deal with erection problems at some point. ED is also typically more severe and difficult to treat in men with diabetes, Dr. Moshe Vardi, of Lady Davis Carmel Medical Center in Israel, told Reuters Health. Continue reading
The government is considering setting higher standards for birth control drugs used by millions, saying that newer pills appear to be less effective at preventing pregnancy than those approved decades ago.
The Food and Drug Administration will ask a panel of experts Tuesday and Wednesday whether it should require new contraceptive drugs to meet a standard of effectiveness before they are approved for the market. More than 60 percent of U.S. women between the ages of 15 and 44 use some sort of contraception, with 11.6 million choosing birth control pills, according to a 2005 survey by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research group. The global market for hormonal contraceptives was $5 billion in 2005, according to an estimate by U.K. research firm Piribo. Continue reading
Cholesterol-raising trans fats may be disappearing from supermarket shelves and restaurants, but one type of fat taking their place may be no healthier, new research suggests.
Artificial trans fats are formed when food manufacturers add hydrogen to vegetable oil to make it solidify, in a process called hydrogenation. Partially hydrogenated oil boosts the stability of a food's flavor, as well as its shelf life, and the oils have long been a key ingredient in baked and fried foods. Research has shown that trans fats in these oils may be even worse for heart health than the saturated fat found in foods like meat and butter. Not only do trans fats raise "bad" LDL cholesterol, as saturated fat does, but they also lower heart-healthy HDL cholesterol. Continue reading