Month: April 2013

An Arkansas dentist may have contaminated 100 of his patients with “infectious material,” prompting the state health department to contact them and recommend blood tests. Patients of Dr. William Jarrod Stewart who received intravenous medication between Nov. 20, 2011, and Feb. 20, 2012, are at…

An Arkansas dentist may have contaminated 100 of his patients with “infectious material,” prompting the state health department to contact them and recommend blood tests. Patients of Dr. William Jarrod Stewart who received intravenous medication between Nov. 20, 2011, and Feb. 20, 2012, are at…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Assistant White House chef Sam Kass, who cooks weekly for President Barack Obama and helps run a program to battle childhood obesity, said on Tuesday he will be furloughed because of federal budget cuts. Kass mentioned the furlough while talking to reporters about Let's Move, a childhood obesity initiative of first lady Michelle Obama. The program will not be affected by automatic budget cuts that took effect on March 1 but he said, "We're being furloughed. …

By Dave Warner PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Lawyers argued in federal court on Tuesday over whether 4,200 former NFL players can sue the league over brain injuries or whether the issue should be decided under the players' collective bargaining agreement. In what could be a high stakes challenge for both sides, the players want the case heard in court, their attorney David Frederick said on Tuesday. He argued that the league failed to disclose information about the risks of playing football and "glorified violence at the expense of the players. …

CHICAGO (AP) — Robotic surgery is being done more and more often for a variety of operations. But experts say there's a lack of strong evidence that it's any better than standard surgery in most cases — and it's usually costlier.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — With billions of dollars on the line, a Nevada jury was deliberating Tuesday whether the state’s largest health management organization should pay punitive damages in a negligence lawsuit stemming from a Las Vegas hepatitis outbreak called the largest in U.S. history.

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Regularly eating cereal for breakfast is tied to healthy weight for kids, according to a new study that endorses making breakfast cereal accessible to low-income kids to help fight childhood obesity. One in every four American children lives in a food insecure household where breakfast isn't a sure thing, lead author Dr. Lana Frantzen told Reuters Health. …

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – An inexpensive drug that can prevent some life-threatening heart rhythm problems is unavailable in most places, according to a new survey of doctors in 131 countries. Quinidine prevents arrhythmias among people with Brugada syndrome, an inherited condition in which the heart’s bottom chambers quiver chaotically and don’t properly circulate blood. …

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Most major medical journals don’t spell out how they handle the omission from a published study’s author list of a person who substantially contributed to the work, according to a new study from Spain. So called ghostwriting raises concerns about the validity of research findings because it can involve researchers submitting as their own work an article that was largely drafted by a pharmaceutical company’s paid writers, for example. …

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Intrauterine devices are safe for teenagers, according to a new analysis of more than 90,000 women who used the long-term contraceptives. Researchers found less than 1 percent of all women developed serious complications from the devices, such as pelvic inflammatory disease, regardless of their age. And teens were only slightly more likely than older women to lose their periods or become pregnant while using an intrauterine device (IUD), according to findings published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. …

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – The largest study to date looking for genetic causes of Alzheimer’s in African Americans may offer new clues about why blacks in the United States are twice as likely as whites to develop the deadly, brain-wasting disease. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday, show that mutations in two genes that play a role in whites also contribute to Alzheimer’s risk in blacks. One of those, known as ABCA7, may double the risk in blacks who have the mutation versus those who don’t. …

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African officials say they have detected bird flu on an ostrich farm but that it is unrelated to the strain that has killed eight people in China.