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A quarter of drug trials submitted in support of new drug applications to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) remain unpublished five years after the fact, says new research published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.
Washington - U.S. health officials have found trace amounts of the chemical melamine in one sample of infant formula sold in the United States, a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
"There's no basis for concern because we're talking about trace levels that are so low ... that there's absolutely no risk," FDA spokeswoman Judy Leon said.
Melamine-tainted formula was found earlier this year in China, where thousands of children fell ill and several died. In September, the FDA sought to assure parents and said there was no similar contamination threat in the United States.
The chemical, normally used to make plastics, has been found in milk power, wheat gluten and other Chinese-made ingredients used in products ranging from pet food to candy.
Melamine's ability to make foods appear to have higher amounts of protein during testing has made it a cheap but dangerous substitute that can damage the kidneys.
"There's no basis for concern because we're talking about trace levels that are so low ... that there's absolutely no risk," FDA spokeswoman Judy Leon said.
Melamine-tainted formula was found earlier this year in China, where thousands of children fell ill and several died. In September, the FDA sought to assure parents and said there was no similar contamination threat in the United States.
The chemical, normally used to make plastics, has been found in milk power, wheat gluten and other Chinese-made ingredients used in products ranging from pet food to candy.
Melamine's ability to make foods appear to have higher amounts of protein during testing has made it a cheap but dangerous substitute that can damage the kidneys.
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's President, is trying to hide the real extent of the cholera epidemic sweeping across his nation by silencing health workers and restricting access to the huge number of death certificates that give the same cause of death.
A senior official in the health ministry told The Independent yesterday that more than 3,000 people have died from the water-borne disease in the past two weeks, 10 times the widely-reported death toll of just over 300. "But even this higher figure is still an understatement because very few bother to register the deaths of their relatives these days," said the official, who requested anonymity.
He said the health ministry, which once presided over a medical system that was the envy of Africa, had been banned from issuing accurate statistics about the deaths, and that certificates for the fraction of deaths that had been registered were being closely guarded by the home affairs ministry.
Yet the evidence of how this plague is hurting the people of Zimbabwe is there for all to see at the burial grounds in this collapsing country. "When you encounter such long queues in other countries, they are of people going to the cinema or a football match; certainly not into cemeteries to bury loved ones as we have here," said Munyaradzi Mudzingwa, who lives in Chitungwiza, a town just outside Harare, where the epidemic is believed to have started.
A senior official in the health ministry told The Independent yesterday that more than 3,000 people have died from the water-borne disease in the past two weeks, 10 times the widely-reported death toll of just over 300. "But even this higher figure is still an understatement because very few bother to register the deaths of their relatives these days," said the official, who requested anonymity.
He said the health ministry, which once presided over a medical system that was the envy of Africa, had been banned from issuing accurate statistics about the deaths, and that certificates for the fraction of deaths that had been registered were being closely guarded by the home affairs ministry.
Yet the evidence of how this plague is hurting the people of Zimbabwe is there for all to see at the burial grounds in this collapsing country. "When you encounter such long queues in other countries, they are of people going to the cinema or a football match; certainly not into cemeteries to bury loved ones as we have here," said Munyaradzi Mudzingwa, who lives in Chitungwiza, a town just outside Harare, where the epidemic is believed to have started.
The incidence of new cancer cases has been falling in recent years in the United States, the first time such an extended decline has been documented, researchers reported Tuesday.
Do more frequent mammograms pick up some breast cancer tumors that might have gone away without treatment? Possibly, according to a controversial study published this week in Archives of Internal Medicine. However, experts caution that the research raises an interesting question, but can't definitively answer it.
Amidst the furor over autism in America, some very simple facts are getting lost in the rhetorical fog of medical denial, corporate self-dealing and civic irresponsibility. They're worth repeating. Autism was once very rare in the United States and required "discovering" by Leo Kanner among a small group of children born in the 1930s. When researchers first measured American autism rates, they were lower than surveys coming from other parts of the developed world, sometimes less than 1 in 10,000. Today, it's nearly impossible to find an American who doesn't know a family touched by autism and rates are over 1 in 100 in some areas of the country. It doesn't take a genius to derive a short list of broad-based environmental exposures that have changed rapidly enough to give us some pretty good ideas about causation.
What comes to mind when you think of arsenic? For most people, it conjures up a deadly poison used by killers in fictional mystery novels and some real-life murderers, too. But the danger of this toxic substance most often comes not from some evil-doer but simply from exposure to it through our environment, including the water we drink. Unwittingly taken into the body over many years, arsenic can result in lung, bladder and skin cancers, as well as heart disease, diabetes and neurological damage.
Writing in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute researchers urge physicians to test for mutations of the fragile X gene in patients of all ages. That's because, after decades of research, it is clear that mutations in this gene cause a range of diseases, including neurodevelopmental delays and autism in children, infertility in women and neurodegenerative disease in older adults.
Seven more people died of a mysterious disease in Goainghat and Companyganj upazilas of the district Friday, raising the death toll from the malady here to 21 in the last seven days. Sources at the Civil Surgeon office said 11 of the victims died in Companyganj while 10 in Goainghat upazilas during the period.
Besides, they said, around 50 people of the two upazilas have been admitted to Osmani Medical College Hospital with symptoms of the mysterious disease. Abdur Rahman (12) of Zakiganj upazila was one of them. He was admitted to the hospital Friday night.
Besides, they said, around 50 people of the two upazilas have been admitted to Osmani Medical College Hospital with symptoms of the mysterious disease. Abdur Rahman (12) of Zakiganj upazila was one of them. He was admitted to the hospital Friday night.
Although Americans are becoming increasingly aware of toxic chemical exposure from everyday household products like bisphenol A in some baby bottles and lead in some toys, women do not readily connect typical household products with personal chemical exposure and related adverse health effects, according to research from the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Brown University sociologist Phil Brown is a co-author of the study.
"People more readily equate pollution with large-scale contamination and environmental disasters, yet the products and activities that form the backdrop to our everyday lives - electronics, cleaners, beauty products, food packaging - are a significant source of daily personal chemical exposure that accumulates over time," said sociologist Rebecca Gasior Altman, lead author of the study, "Pollution Comes Home and Gets Personal: Women's Experience of Household Chemical Exposure." Altman received a Ph.D. from Brown in 2008.
"People more readily equate pollution with large-scale contamination and environmental disasters, yet the products and activities that form the backdrop to our everyday lives - electronics, cleaners, beauty products, food packaging - are a significant source of daily personal chemical exposure that accumulates over time," said sociologist Rebecca Gasior Altman, lead author of the study, "Pollution Comes Home and Gets Personal: Women's Experience of Household Chemical Exposure." Altman received a Ph.D. from Brown in 2008.
