In the developing world, more than 1,000 mothers and 2,000 newborn babies die each day from preventable birth complications. Many of these deaths could easily be avoided by providing pregnant women with trained midwives who can assist during birth.

A new Mayo Clinic study suggests that when assessing heart disease risk, looks can be deceiving. Reporting in the American Heart Journal, Dr.

If you read the recent headline on msnbc.com, “Sweet! Candy eaters surprisingly slimmer,” you might think that candy is the next diet food. Sadly, this is far from factual.

Last week ACSH reported on the recent finding that beginning in 2003, lung cancer death rates in women decreased for the first time.

For patients with hepatitis C, the only available treatment up till now has limited efficacy and debilitating side effects. But that is all about to change.
In a rather astounding coincidence, 22 years after the hepatitis C virus (HCV) was discovered, both Vertex’s telaprivir and Merck-Schering’s boceprivir are expected to receive FDA approval next month. These drugs will be the first two specific antiviral agents against the disease.

While sitting at the physician’s office, some people may become anxious as they await their looming encounter with The Doctor. The phenomenon is common enough that health care professionals have even coined a term for it — white-coat syndrome — since it may manifest as an increase in blood pressure (BP) or heart rate.

Over the past few years, prostate cancer screening using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test has received a lot of media flack while various health organizations and physicians struggle to outline specific guidelines for the exam.

Lung cancer deaths aren’t the only fatality on the decline. New estimates released today by the Transportation Department show that 32,788 Americans were killed in traffic-related accidents in 2010, which is the fewest number of deaths since 1949.

In a survey asking approximately 250,000 people about their current and past smoking habits, researchers learned that smoking causes half a million deaths annually in the U.S. — an increase from the prior estimates of about 450,000 deaths. To put this in perspective, about 2.5 million Americans die each year from all-cause mortality, indicating that smoking-related deaths account for approximately 20 percent of all fatalities.

Sometimes politics and science do not mix, as illustrated by the GOP effort in Minnesota to push a so-called cloning ban that, as written, would bring the state’s stem cell research to a halt. Republican state Sen.