Drinking just a glass of wine a day increases women’s risk of breast cancer, as well as several other types of the disease, a new study concludes. The research, carried out among more than a million UK women, says that alcohol accounts for 5,000 cases of breast cancer every year.
What do we know already?
Many of us enjoy relaxing with a glass of wine at the end of the day. But it’s an unpalatable fact that alcohol can damage your health, especially Read the rest of this entry »

SUNDAY, Feb. 8 (HealthDay News) — Perhaps five years from now, you might actually hear your doctor casually say, “While we’re at it, let’s do a blood test to see if your genetic makeup puts you at high risk of having a heart attack.”
So says Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of preventive cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the leader of a group that has identified three Read the rest of this entry »

MONDAY, Feb. 16 (HealthDay News) — People with a family history of melanoma are twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease, a new study finds.
While the reasons for this association are not clear, other studies have shown that people with Parkinson’s diseases are at greater risk for developing melanoma.
“For people with a family member with melanoma, they may be at risk for Parkinson’s disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Xiang Gao, an instructor Read the rest of this entry »

Could an unhealthy diet increase the risk of developing dementia later in life?
That is the question that led neurodegeneration researcher Jeffery Keller from the Sanders-Brown Institute on Aging in Lexington, Ky., to the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in July to study dementia.
“We saw our work in dementia moving toward understanding how nutrition, obesity and diabetes are emerging as risk factors in dementia and the elderly,” Read the rest of this entry »

A glass of wine each evening is enough to increase your risk of developing cancer, women are being warned.
Consuming just one drink a day causes an extra 7,000 cancer cases – mostly breast cancer – in UK women each year, Cancer Research UK scientists say.
The risk goes up the more you drink, whether spirits, wine or beer, the data on over a million women suggests.
Overall, alcohol is to blame for about 13% of breast, liver, rectum, mouth and Read the rest of this entry »

Metabolic syndrome in adults occurs when they have at least three risk factors from among abdominal obesity (waist circumference more than 35 inches for women; 40 inches for men); low HDL (“good”) cholesterol; high triglycerides; high fasting glucose; and high blood pressure.
Although sometimes difficult to diagnosis in children, similar clustering can appear in childhood. The report, published online Jan. 12 in
, called for clinicians to measure Read the rest of this entry »

The number of prescriptions for the drugs written for children and adolescents doubled to 4.4 million from 2003 to 2006, in part because of increases in diagnoses of bipolar disorder. Their efficacy in children and Alzheimer’s patients has never been demonstrated, experts said.
Eli Lilly & Co., the manufacturer of Zyprexa, is expected to settle a lawsuit with the federal government as early as today, paying a record $1.4 billion in civil and criminal Read the rest of this entry »

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Human bird-flu infections may rise in
Asia as people handle more poultry for next week’s Lunar New Year
celebrations, according to a United Nations veterinarian who
tracks the virus in birds.
Health authorities in China, South Korea and Vietnam have
stepped up surveillance of H5N1 avian influenza among poultry
ahead of the festival, which starts Jan. 26. Production of
chickens and ducks swells as much as three times in the Read the rest of this entry »

Marian L. Neuhouser, PhD
Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, PhD
Cynthia Thomson, PhD, RD
Aaron Aragaki, MS
Garnet L. Anderson, PhD
JoAnn E. Manson, MD, DrPH
Ruth E. Patterson, PhD
Thomas E. Rohan, MD, PhD
Linda van Horn, MD, PhD
James M. Shikany, DrPH
Asha Thomas, PhD
Andrea LaCroix, PhD
Ross L. Prentice, PhD
Arch Intern Med.
 2009;169(3):294-304.
Millions of postmenopausal women use multivitamins,
as cancer and cardiovascular Read the rest of this entry »

Q. What is HPV?
A. HPV stands for Human Papillomavirus. The term papillomavirus indicates that a given virus causes warts (papillomas) that might appear on hands, feet or on the genital area; however, not all HPV viruses cause warts.
Q. What are genital warts?
A. Genital warts are flesh-colored growths that are usually caused by certain types of HPV, and usually appear on the outside of the genitals or near the anus of females and males. Sometimes, Read the rest of this entry »