The Associated Press reported yesterday that the annual winter flu has finally arrived in the United States, and it’s spreading rapidly. The ailment is especially prevalent now in New York City and Illinois and through a broad swath of the South extending from Alabama to Oklahoma.

A study reported in BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) revealed potentially significant health news regarding non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), pain-relievers which are among the most commonly used over-the-counter medicines. A meta-analysis by Swiss researchers of 31 separate studies covering more than 100,000 patients has concluded that taking NSAIDs can more than double the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Shingles is an often painful and blistering skin rash caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus responsible for chickenpox — and is most common in people over 50. That’s why a new study on Merck & Co.’s Zostavax shingles vaccine published in the Journal of the American Medical Association brings good news as results reveal that the shot reduces the risk of shingles in older patients by 55 percent.

In a confusing study from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers compared 71 women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder affecting up to ten percent of women of reproductive age, to 100 healthy women of the same age and weight and found that women with PCOS had higher levels of bisphenol A (BPA) in their blood.

Pregnant women who smoke are ashamed to admit it. That’s the conclusion of a study using data from a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which was conducted from 1999 to 2006. According to the results, 23 percent of pregnant women claimed they don’t smoke even though they had high blood levels of cotinine, a tobacco metabolite and biomarker of tobacco exposure.

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The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is calling for a vegetarian alternative to the food pyramid, claiming that adherence to the current food pyramid is not adequately combating obesity and diabetes, and is thus illegal. It is worth noting that PCRM is not a physicians group. The group is driven by a vegan agenda and animal rights interests.