BBCFri, 09 Dec 2005 12:00 UTC
Scientists are warning about the risks posed by paracetamol after it emerged the painkiller had become the leading cause of liver failure in the US.
The annual proportion of cases caused by paracetamol - known in the US as acetaminophen - had risen from 28% in 1998 to 51% in 2003, researchers said.
The US team found just 20 pills a day - the recommended maximum is eight - was enough to kill, New Scientist reported.
Experts said restrictions on sales had helped cut the number of UK cases.
Since 1998 in the UK, pharmacies have been advised not to sell more than one pack of 32 paracetamol tablets to any individual.
Salt Lake City, Utah - When Steven Hawks is tempted by ice cream bars, M&Ms and toffee-covered almonds at the grocery store, he doesn't pass them by. He fills up his shopping cart.
It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than five years.
Decaffeinated coffee may be worse for drinkers' health than the caffeine-laden kind, scientists reported yesterday.
In the first randomised study of the two coffees, researchers found that the decaffeinated variety raises the level of fats and "bad" cholesterol in the blood more than caffeinated blends.
The finding was presented to a meeting of the American Heart Association after a study of 187 people by the Fuqua Heart Centre in Atlanta, Georgia.
Thorkild Sørensen of Copenhagen University Hospital and his colleagues looked at data from the Finnish Twin Cohort Study, in which volunteers filled in questionnaires about their health and lifestyle, first in 1975 and again in 1981. These included questions about height, weight and motivation to lose weight. Even after controlling for smoking and excluding anyone with a chronic illness that could have led to weight loss, Sørensen found that overweight or obese people who intended to lose weight in 1975 and succeeded were nearly twice as likely to have died by 1999 compared with those who had no intention to lose weight and stayed about the same (Public Library of Science Medicine, vol 2, e171).
Mexico probably will surpass the U.S. in obesity rates for the first time next year as the Latin American nation adopts the fast food and sedentary lifestyles of its neighbor to the north.
CTV.ca Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:00 UTC
Teenagers with allergies have to let their friends know.
A Quebec teenager with a peanut allergy has died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich hours earlier.
Fifteen-year-old Christina Desforges died Monday. She went into anaphylactic shock and in spite of being given an adrenalin shot, could not be revived.
Desforges lived 250 km north of Quebec City in Saguenay.
The official cause of the teen's death has not yet been released.
Washington - Just a few minutes spent patting a dog can relieve a heart patient's anxiety and perhaps even help recovery during a visit to the hospital, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
UK IndependentTue, 15 Nov 2005 12:00 UTC
European medicines regulators have ordered a safety check on Tamiflu after reports that two teenage boys died in Japan in apparent suicides after taking the anti-flu drug.
The link between the abnormal behaviour and the drug could not be ruled out, but at the same time the drug could not be singled out as the sole cause of the behaviour.
The latest experiment reinforces theories that existing, latent infection can be activated when parts of the body, particularly the feet and nose, get wet and cold.
Hugh Muir and James Meikle
The GuardianMon, 14 Nov 2005 12:00 UTC
A spokeswoman said: "I can confirm that he has a positive and a negative test. I can't confirm that he's shaken it off, that he's been cured. Disclosures in his case arose not from medical research or peer review but from legal correspondence relating to an action Mr Stimpson was pursuing against the health trust. He had feared the positive results might have been wrong and had sought compensation. The trust's contention that both sets of blood tests were accurate emerged as it tried to defend itself from litigation.
Experts stress that the complexities of HIV make any one of a number of scenarios possible in this case. Tests usually indicate antibodies rather than the virus. They are usually accurate but one of the number of tests he has undergone may have been wrong. In any event a test for the virus itself is more conclusive.