Ten years after an initial assessment of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) declared that long-term hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increased women’s risk of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease, follow-up data now suggest that estrogen-only replacement therapy (ERT) may actually reduce their cancer risk — but only for women who have had a hysterectomy.

In a unanimous vote Tuesday, an FDA advisory panel recommended the approval of Optimer Pharmaceuticals’ fidaxomycin (Difficid) as a safe and effective treatment for diarrhea caused by the bacterium C. dificile. However, the panel is divided as to whether the oral antibiotic is safe for pregnant women and children and whether it can prevent the recurrence of the bacterial infection.

While U.S. tobacco regulations prevent marketers from truthfully informing smokers about lower-risk products, the U.K. appears to be fostering more harm reduction-oriented tobacco laws. The Wall Street Journal reports that tobacco giant British American Tobacco is establishing a new unit — Nicoventures — devoted to the manufacture of “innovative, regulatory-approved” smokeless products.

Unemployed and looking for a lucrative job in New York City? Don’t mind long walks and occasional arrests? This may be a job for you: According to an article in The New York Times, smuggling and reselling cigarettes on the streets is a profitable practice.

The food police agenda does not stop at attacking fast food. Last week we pointed out how the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), hungry for attention once again, petitioned the FDA to ban artificial dyes from food because they assert it exacerbates hyperactivity in some children (thankfully, the FDA denied their petition citing no evidence of this claim).

An ill wind must have blown an idea from the crackpot Board of Supervisors in San Francisco to the East coast because a fast food toy ban in New York City has been proposed by several City Council members. This wrong-headed proposal would ban restaurants from offering toys in fast food kid meals, unless the meals met numerous nutritional parameters decided upon by that eminent scientific body: the NY City Council.

It seems this year that the influenza virus has mostly been out of sight and out of mind — especially in the media. But as Jennifer LaRue Huget reminds us in her article for The Washington Post, 89 children have already died during this year’s flu season.

The 22nd International Harm Reduction Conference is underway this week in Beirut, Lebanon, and an article published yesterday in The Lancet underscores the goals of the “Beirut Declaration on HIV and Injecting Drug Use: A Global Call for Action,” a new document released at the annual meeting.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health combined in vitro cell culture laboratory studies with a large epidemiologic cohort study to determine that digoxin — a cardiac drug derived from the foxglove plant used to treat congestive heart failure and heart rhythm abnormalities — may also lower a patient’s risk for prostate cancer by 24 percent.

Need a good medical excuse to shave off some extra hours from your work week? Then tell your boss about a new study published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine that finds people who work 11 hours or more per day have a 66 percent increased risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) compared to individuals working seven to eight hours daily.