While the amount of money that tobacco companies spent on advertising and promotional expenditures fell by 18 percent between 2006 and 2008, nationwide advertising of smokeless tobacco products actually increased by 55 percent during the same time period, according to a new Federal Trade Commission report. In fact, more smokeless tobacco ads may be encouraging smokers to switch from cigarettes to smoke-free alternatives.

It would seem that the chest pain many patients fear to be a heart attack in the making does not accurately predict one s risk of having acute coronary syndrome or a heart attack (acute myocardial infarction, AMI), says a new study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The findings of the newest study on the link between childhood brain cancer and cell phone use will be a dropped call to those convinced that heavy cell phone users are a few minutes away from developing cancer.

In yesterday s Chicago Tribune, a reporter asked ACSH s Dr. Ruth Kava if government anti-obesity interventions, such as taxing junk food, effectively reduce the toll of obesity. Countering the predictable opinions of groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which came down in favor of enforcing restaurant menu postings of calorie counts, Dr. Kava argues that many of these initiatives simply won t cut the fat.

We’d like to note that ACSH’s newest publication on tobacco harm reduction will be published in the current issue of Harm Reduction Journal. Authored by Dr. Brad Rodu, an ACSH advisor and Endowed Chair in Tobacco Harm Reduction Research at the University of Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center, the paper provides a review of the most recent scientific literature on tobacco harm reduction (THR) methods, such as smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes. Dr.

We were very happy to hear that U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has come to his senses, ruling in favor of government funding of human embryonic stem cell research funding that he had halted just a year ago. This time, Judge Lamberth dismissed the legal challenge to the funding and ruled that the U.S. National Institutes of Health guidelines do not violate federal law.

A new study in the British Medical Journal should give pause to doctors considering intensive glucose lowering treatment for their type 2 diabetic patients. While tightly controlling a patient s blood sugar levels seems like an obvious approach, and does indeed have some benefits, such as a slightly lowered risk of heart attack, the new study found a 100 percent increase in the risk of dangerously low blood levels (hypoglycemia), which in some cases can be fatal.

As a rule, diabetic patients have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Now, the results of a study published in Archives of Internal Medicine suggest that a patient s blood level of glyco-hemoglobin (HbA1c, an indicator of long-term blood glucose control) might be a more precise indicator of that risk. What s more, if these study results are applicable, HbA1c level could also be used as a predictor of cardiovascular disease risk for non-diabetic patients.

Devoting more funds to prescription drugs for Medicare patients saves money in the long run, a study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found. In their study examining the effects of the Part D prescription drug program, Dr. J. Michael Williams, Dr. Alan M. Zalasky, and Dr. Haiden A.

After 20 years of intense research, the first two antiviral drugs (protease inhibitors) to treat hepatitis C, bocepravir (Victrelis, Merck) and telaprevir (Incivek, Vertex) were approved by the FDA one week apart. Incivek, the more potent of the two, may become the preferred first-line therapy for a disease that affects 4.5 million Americans, and as many as 200 million people worldwide. The infection, if left untreated, causes gradual deterioration of the liver, leading to cirrhosis, cancer, and end-stage liver disease.