Perhaps only Santa Claus is exempt from the deadly effects of excess abdominal fat, which according to new research published in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine, is more harmful than fat stored in the hips or thighs.

The presence of three specific proteins in cerebrospinal fluid may accurately predict Alzheimer’s disease (AD) prior to the onset of any symptoms, according to a study appearing in the August issue of the Archives of Neurology. The cerebrospinal fluid of 416 patients in their 70s was analyzed for levels of three proteins: amyloid protein, total tau protein and phosphorylated protein.

The Associated Press predicts that China s commitment to ban smoking in all public indoor facilities by January 2011 will go up in a puff of smoke. Unlike the U.S., China which suffers at least one million smoking-related deaths annually ratified a World Health Organization anti-tobacco treaty requiring public places to go smoke-free. Smoking is more deeply entrenched in Chinese culture than in the U.S., with tobacco companies sponsoring Chinese schools.

The FDA issued a warning to Novartis Pharmaceuticals for its use of Facebook Share to promote its new leukemia drug, Tasigna, arguing that:

The efficacy of the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins in preventing cardiovascular disease is under fire again. An article in today s L.A. Times takes the current approach to post-marketing prescription drug assessment to task, saying that the commercial benefits that pharmaceutical companies gain from high selling drugs is a strong disincentive for them to collect data on the drugs efficacy for off-label conditions. Harvard Medical School s Dr.

Denise Grady reports in today’s New York Times that girls today are increasingly likely to develop breasts as young as age 7 or 8. While obesity is thought to play a major role in early-onset puberty, Grady reports that some researchers suspect environmental chemicals with estrogen-like properties are a factor. “That idea is unproved,” Grady adds.

Three members of the U.S. House of Representatives, in conjunction with the activist group Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, are aiming to overhaul current FDA regulations in order to tighten up the control of cosmetic and personal care products through the introduction of the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010.

International supermodel by day and self-styled public health expert by night, Gisele Bundchen provides new moms with controversial advice in her latest interview with Harper s Bazaar UK: Some people here think they don t have to breastfeed, and I think, Are you going to give chemical food to your child when they are so little?

ACSH trustee Dr. Henry I. Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow, had a letter in yesterday s The New York Times debunking a July 25 Times op-ed that blames food-borne illness on the centralization and industrialization of the American food system.

Following positive results from studies in Asia and Africa on the efficacy of rotavirus vaccines in preventing severe rotavirus gastroeneteritis (RVG), international health experts are promoting the distribution of the vaccine in both continents. RVG causes diarrhea, vomiting and fever, and is responsible for the deaths of about half a million children around the world each year.