If there weren’t already enough reasons for cigarette smokers to quit, more incentive just appeared in the form of a longitudinal study published in the December issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism. The report demonstrated that Blacks who smoke face a dramatically increased likelihood of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Further, the more smokers light up, the greater the risk.

Reuters reports that U.S. health officials have stepped up warnings to new mothers about the risks associated with the increasingly popular trend of sharing unscreened breast milk offered through internet sources, such as Eats on Feets. Health officials are instead encouraging mothers seeking breast milk for their infants to either switch to formula or ask their physician about using breast milk from certified human milk banks.

Faced with 56,000 new HIV infections each year, the CDC proposed in 2006 that HIV testing become part of the routine evaluation that patients would receive unless they opt out — but more than half of America’s high-risk population is still unaware of their HIV status, Reuters reports.

A new study lessens concerns that radiation exposure from diagnostic CT scans — a medical procedure that has become more common in the past decade — has substantially increased cancer incidence.

Josh Bloom, The New York Post, December 1, 2010
The 'pariahs' who tamed AIDS

By a vote of 73 to 25, the Senate yesterday passed the Food Safety and Modernization Act. The bill, which was opposed by TV news commentator and Tea Party activist Glenn Beck, among others, will now be up for consideration by the House of Representatives. The bill would give the FDA the power to mandate food recalls — authority it has not previously possessed. Its stated aim is to improve procedures assuring food safety.

A new study appearing in today’s issue of JAMA, which examines 200 commonly-sold liquid non-prescription (OTC) medications for children, suggests that there is a serious problem of mislabeling with respect to dosage. In many cases, the study’s authors say, the dosage instructions on the label do not match the dosage measurements produced by using the product’s cap.

Celebrity Vitamin D advocate Gwyneth Paltrow may (or may not) have a legitimate deficiency of the nutrient, but the notion of a pervasive problem of vitamin D and calcium deficiency in U.S.

FDA hearings begin today on the possibility of expanding the list of approved uses for Avodart and Proscar, two drugs widely prescribed to shrink enlarged prostates. This treatment relieves annoying urinary symptoms in men with BPH — benign prostatic hypertrophy.

In an op-ed in today’s New York Post, ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom comments on what should be especially noted this World AIDS Day — the success drug company researchers have had in developing anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV and AIDS: