Use of two or more common OTC painkillers during pregnancy may increase the risk of cryptorchidism (undescended testicles) in male infants, according to a study published in yesterday’s issue of Human Reproduction. The researchers asked 834 Danish and 1,463 Finnish women about their use of medication during pregnancy.

Even though smoking rates have remained stagnant since 2007 in U.S. adults, many states are cutting funding for smoking cessation programs, The Wall Street Journal reports. In an effort to balance looming budget deficits, Washington state, for example, is reducing funding for its tobacco control program to just $1.4 million in 2012 from the $27 million allocated in 2007.

Systematically immunizing schoolkids against influenza reduces outbreaks in the entire community, according to a study in the December issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Researchers led by ACSH advisor Dr. Paul Glezen at Baylor College of Medicine examined what happened in schools in eastern Bell County, Texas, after 48 percent of elementary school children were vaccinated via a nasal spray in the fall and early winter of 2007.

Alarmed by the spread of the supposed “superbugs” — bacteria that resist modern antibiotics — politicians from both parties are considering policies to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to develop new antibiotics. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), a physician, recently introduced the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now bill, which would extend patent protections for antibiotics for five additional years and speed reviews by the FDA. Rep.

How mainstream are e-cigarettes these days? Last week this writer found a starter kit advertised for $19.99 at the cash register of his local 7-Eleven in Manhattan’s TriBeCa district. Well, if they’re good enough for Katherine Heigl...

An investigative report that appeared over the weekend in The New York Times reveals how the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been funding a marketing agency designed to get Americans to eat more cheese while simultaneously urging people to eat less saturated fat.

This week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication by the CDC, found that the proportion of cigarette smokers who also use smokeless tobacco products — such as snuff and chew tobacco — ranged from 0.9 to 13.7 percent on a state-by-state analysis, according to data from the 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

Soon enough, ‘twill be the season to be traveling, and though we may continue to worry about whether or not we remembered to pack a toothbrush, there’s one thing that we absolutely don’t have to fret over: bodily harm from “backscatter X-ray” body scanners at airports. According to a consumer update released by the FDA yesterday, this new technology meets federal safety standards and delivers an amount of radiation equivalent to four minutes of flight time.

A higher education may have its drawbacks. New research finds that parents in relatively high socioeconomic brackets forgo vaccines for their children more often than poorer individuals. Between 2008 and 2009, vaccination rates in children insured by commercial plans — a surrogate for higher income — dropped nearly four percentage points while vaccination rates for children covered under Medicaid actually increased, according to the annual State of Health Care Quality report.