Month: July 2014

(Reuters) – The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday said that he now recognizes a pattern of safety problems and said he will take sweeping measures to improve the culture of safety at the CDC. The comments by Dr Thomas Frieden came as part of testimony before a U.S. congressional subcommittee investigating recent lapses in safety in the handling of anthrax and avian influenza. “In hindsight, we realize we missed a crucial pattern: a pattern of incidents that reflect the need to improve the culture of safety at CDC,” Frieden said.

An experimental drug from the biotech company Genentech failed to slow mental decline in mid-stage studies on more than 500 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, but showed some promise in the least-impaired participants who received a higher dose.

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Although people who have donated a kidney have passed a rigorous battery of tests and tend to be healthier than the average person, many report difficulty getting or changing health or life insurance policies after the surgery, according to a new study. “These are the healthiest people in the nation, they’ve undergone more health screening scrutiny than anybody else for any process,” said senior author Dr. Dorry L. Segev. “We only allow the healthiest people to do this.” Segev is an abdominal transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, where the study took place. “The thought that somebody who has perfectly normal kidney function will have to fight with their insurance company is troubling,” he told Reuters Health.

By Shereen Lehman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Stress and depression have long been linked with a heightened risk of weight gain, but a new study sheds light on how those mental states may alter the way the body processes fatty foods. Compared to women without stress in the study, stressed-out women burned both calories and fat more slowly for seven hours after eating the equivalent of an average fast-food burger meal. “Stress can promote weight gain by slowing your metabolism,” Janice Kiecolt-Glaser told Reuters Health. “The difference with one stressor versus none the day before was 104 calories, which is no big deal on a daily basis, but over the course of the year that would be up to 11 pounds,” said Kiecolt-Glaser, a researcher with The Ohio State University College of Medicine, who led the new study.

The chief of the US government's top public health agency is to testify in Congress Wednesday over a series of dangerous mixups in the handling of influenza and anthrax. Tom Frieden, who leads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is expected to face tough questions from the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at the hearing, beginning at 10 am (1400 GMT). Last week, the CDC admitted to five incidents over the past decade — two of them in recent months — in which workers shipped anthrax, flu, botulism and a bacteria known as brucella to other labs without following proper de-activation and safety procedures.

By Jillian Rose Lim, Staff Writer Published: 07/16/2014 03:27 AM EDT on LiveScience Men who undergo a vasectomy may have an increased risk of advanced or lethal prostate cancer, a new observational study suggests. Researchers tracked nearly 50,000 men over 24 years, and found those who had a vasectomy were about 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive or potentially fatal prostate cancer than those who had not had the procedure. The researchers called this increase "modest," and said more studies of the possible link are needed. …