About a month ago, I took myself off a medication without first contacting the doctor who prescribed it, a step I have often cautioned others never to do. A neurologist had put me on the anticonvulsant drug Keppra as a preventive in case a seizure had caused an otherwise unexplained fall on my head and…
Even moderate alcohol consumption may increase the risk for cancer. Japanese scientists compared the drinking habits of 63,232 cancer patients in Japan with those of an equal number of healthy controls. All reported their average daily alcohol intake and the number of years they had been drinking. After controlling for smoking, hypertension, diabetes, obesity and…
A new paper in Family Practice, published by Oxford University Press, found that the widespread use of statins and cancer screening technology may have altered the benefits of aspirin use. Researchers concluded that aspirin no longer provides a net benefit as primary prevention for cardiovascular disease and cancer. Nearly half of adults 70 years and…
Although HIV infection rates are high among the transgender community in Russia, many transgender people know very little about the virus, as well as their own health status. In Russia’s first study to examine transgender people as an at-risk social group for HIV transmission, demographers attribute these high infection rates to the community’s social stigmatization…
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Dec. 9, 2019 – The National Institute of Nursing Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded Wake Forest Baptist Health a five-year grant worth approximately $2.97 million to study the reasons for attrition in pediatric weight-management programs and develop better ways to predict and reduce dropout rates. “Obesity is…
The prevalence of cannabis, or marijuana, use in the United States increased from 2005 to 2017 among persons with and without depression and was approximately twice as common among those with depression in 2017. The findings, which are published in Addiction, come from a survey-based study of 728,691 persons aged 12 years or older. “Perception…
Hershey, Pa. — Opioid overdoses take the lives of tens of thousands of Americans annually. Two researchers from Penn State College of Medicine have received nearly $5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study whether an already-approved drug can be used to reduce cravings and prevent relapse in those struggling with opioid…
About 10-20 % of all known pregnancies unfortunately end in miscarriage or the loss of a fetus. Despite its common occurrence, there is still a lot of stigma surrounding miscarriage and many women find that their emotional and psychological needs are unmet as they go through a devastating grieving process. In 2014, Dr. Jessica Zucker,…
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Dec. 9, 2019 – Scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine have identified a dead probiotic that reduces age-related leaky gut in older mice. The study is published in the journal GeroScience. But what exactly is leaky gut and what does a probiotic – dead or alive – have to do with…
First-of-its-kind study used machine learning and health data from the entire Danish population to create sex-specific suicide risk profiles, illuminating the complex mix of factors that may predict suicide. A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers finds that physical illness and injury raises the risk of suicide in men…