Last summer, the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) released a report that was supposed to help guide the FDA in deciding whether to ban menthol cigarettes from the market. Instead of issuing a specific recommendation, however, the TPSAC report merely suggested that the agency should consider all of the potential effects of a menthol ban if it does consider such a policy. Unlike TPSAC, however, ACSH s Dr.

Pharmaceutical sales representatives often get a bad rap, stereotyped as unethical drug peddlers. But in his latest op-ed for Medical Progress Today, ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom points out how important drug reps may be to improving medical care. He observes, for instance, that in the absence of any continuing medical education requirements related to new pharmaceuticals, physicians often rely on these drug reps to keep them informed about new products and drug indications.

E-cigarette use among U.S. adults increased more than three-fold from 2009 to 2010 (0.6 percent vs. 2.7 percent), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And although ACSH staffers were delighted to hear that these effective tobacco harm reduction products are catching on, many anti-smoking groups are still fighting to limit their accessibility, arguing that too little is known about the product s health effects.

I have written in the past that, although pharmaceutical sales reps are usually considered to be one step above head lice on the food chain of life, they actually perform quite a valuable service in educating physicians, many of whom have absolutely no time to time to keep up with the literature on new drugs.
Little surprises me any more, but that changed last week--in a big way.

Teenagers who suffer a concussion are more vulnerable than adults or children to its after-effects, according to a new study in the journal Brain Injury.

A new report suggests that a simple, inexpensive intervention could save up to one million newborn babies each year around the world: testing for and treating syphilis in pregnant women.

Dark roast aficionados and overworked college students need not fear having a few cups of coffee a day, suggests a new study. Researchers from Germany report that people who drink coffee do not have any increased risk of chronic disease such as heart disease or cancer, compared to those who abstain from the beverage and they may even have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Do trans fats increase stroke risk? A new study in the Annals of Neurology seems to suggest that they do, at least among postmenopausal women. But ACSH s Dr. Ruth Kava thinks that the data just don t hold up. Food frequency questionnaires, the method used in this study to assess participants diets, are not the most accurate way to figure out what people eat, she notes. It would be difficult to determine trans fat consumption from this type of survey.

Jennifer Sass can't face off against the American Council on Science and Health, or any expert, when it comes to science, so she has taken to her blog yet again to say anyone who supports science must be a paid shill, this time from the pesticide manufacturer Syngenta.

The nicotine patch has been found no more beneficial in helping pregnant women quit smoking than it is for smokers in general, according to a study just published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study, which was intended to investigate both the efficacy and safety of nicotine patches during pregnancy, was able to assess only the former given the extremely low compliance rate of the study participants.