Here's your Friday Medical Wrap covering our top stories: Why women are getting needless mammograms, Another way to treat high blood pressure, A new vaccine that could control autism, Why some are silent over e-cigarette's surge in popularity, and more on labeling genetically engineered foods.

It seems like neither women nor their docs are getting the message about mammograms, which have been proven to do more harm than good in younger women. Mammogram rates actually increased slightly from 2008 to 2011, going from 51.9 percent to 53.6 percent, according to researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. [...]
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According to an American Heart Association scientific statement published earlier this week, engaging in an aerobic exercise or resistance training program can be seen as an “adjunctive” therapy to standard medical and dietary therapies for treating hypertension. However, evidence to support the use of biofeedback techniques, isometric handgrip exercise, device-guided slow breathing, meditation, yoga, relaxation [...]
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Fans of irony will be hard-pressed to suppress a smile here. Researchers at The University of Guelph in Ontario are developing a novel vaccine which may help control the gastrointestinal symptoms that are commonly seen in children with autism. The vaccine will have no direct effect on the behavioral aspects of the disease, nor will it in any [...]
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Reports of recent sales and earnings from tobacco companies and surveys of e-cigarette users (“vapers”) yield a drumbeat of near-miraculous good news: parallel historic declines in Big Tobacco’s cigarette sales, paired with annual doubling of e-cigarette sales. Remember two key factors: 1-electronic cigarettes provide vapers with their craved drug, nicotine, along with water vapor and [...]
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Although last year’s move in California to require labeling of genetically engineered foods went down to defeat, the issue isn’t dead yet. Senators Boxer (D-Calif.) and DeFazio (D-Ore.) have introduced legislation that would require the FDA to mandate labeling of all genetically engineered foods, and those made from genetically engineered ingredients. Proponents of these labeling [...]
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Today marks the 7th annual celebration… no, that’s not exactly the best word…the 7th annual official recognition, via World Malaria Day, of the horrendous toll taken by the mosquito-borne infection: Malaria. Historically, malaria has been so severe and widespread as to determine the fates of entire civilizations. A little-known fact is that malaria remained a [...]
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Although it’s common knowledge that the “Mediterranean diet” is supposed to provide heart benefits, it hasn’t been clear how much of its different constituents should be consumed. Now, some preliminary research has provided clues about how much of what product could be effective. The research was presented at the meeting of the European Association for [...]
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According to a study published in Diabetologia, one can of soda can significantly raise your risk of developing diabetes. Good headline, maybe, but some of the worst garbage science we’ve seen. Because, by the second paragraph of the study summary in today’s MedPage Today, it becomes patently obvious that this is so-called study is not only [...]
The post Diabetes and soda consumption? With a straight face? appeared first on Health & Science Dispatch.

This week’s announcement from Mount Sinai Hospital’s World Trade Center Health Program that Ground Zero workers have been found to have a “15 percent higher rate of cancer” than expected set off cries for more compensation for the heroic WTC victims of the toxic dust at the site of the terrorist destruction over 11 years ago. [...]
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