By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff The US Food and Drug Administration has received about 900 reports from dog owners and veterinarians in recent months about severe illnesses and even deaths in dogs that have been linked to chicken jerky pet treats from China. “No specific products have been named or recalled because a definitive cause has not been determined,” said FDA spokesperson Tamara Ward in an e-mail. “The FDA continues to actively investigate the problem and its origin. If the FDA identifies the cause, the agency will take appropriate action and notify the public.” Dried chicken jerky products, intended for dogs, may also be sold as tenders or strips. Dog owners have reported that their pets have experienced decreased appetite, vomiting, diarrhea, and increased water ... Continue reading →

News releases FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE5/21/12 CONTACT: Sarah Christens, (608) 890-3074, christens@wisc.edu EDUCATIONAL GAMES TO TRAIN MIDDLE SCHOOLERS' ATTENTION, EMPATHY MADISON - Two years ago, at a meeting on science and education, Richard Davidson challenged video game manufacturers to develop games that emphasize kindness and compassion instead of violence and aggression. With a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is now answering his own call. With Kurt Squire, an associate professor in the School of Education and director of the Games Learning Society Initiative, Davidson received a $1.39 million grant this spring to design and rigorously test two educational games to help eighth graders develop beneficial social and emotional skills - empathy, cooperation, mental focus, and self-regulation. "By the ... Continue reading →

By Deborah Kotz and Globe Staff, Massachusetts scored decently among states for injury prevention, in a national ranking released Wednesday by the non-profit groups Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The state has the third lowest rate of injury-related deaths, with 41.1 per 100,000 people dying from fatal injuries every year, compared with a national rate of 57.9 per 100,000. The report included a checklist of 10 research-based injury prevention policies, such as seat belt laws, drunk driving laws, and policies to prevent domestic violence. Massachusetts had 7 out of 10 items checked off. (Only two states, California and New York, had 9 out of 10, and none had all 10.) Where is Massachusetts doing well? The state has laws mandating ... Continue reading →

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff A government panel recommended on Monday against screening healthy men for prostate cancer with the PSA blood test, concluding that harm from the widely used test outweighed its benefits in all age groups. The US Preventive Services Task Force determined that based on evidence from two large randomized trials, the lifesaving benefits of screening were “at best very small” and were offset by overdiagnosis and overtreatment of non-lethal cancers. But whether doctors and patients will follow the panel’s advice is unclear -- groups representing cancer doctors and patients objected to the recommendation, and a top official of the American Cancer Society said physicians by and large do a poor job of discussing the PSA tests’ benefits and risks with patients. ... Continue reading →

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff For the first time, the government is urging all baby boomers to get a blood test to see if they’re infected with hepatitis C, according to draft recommendations issued on Friday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in 30 Americans born from 1945 through 1965 has been infected with hepatitis C, but most don’t know whether they carry the virus, since it often doesn’t cause symptoms until after irreversible damage is done to the liver. Hepatitis C -- which can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer and is a leading reason for liver transplants -- was identified only a little more than two decades ago and is spread primarily through needle sharing among drug users or ... Continue reading →

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff In a finding sure to fuel the debate over the harms of saturated fat, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital published a study Friday suggesting that saturated fats -- found in red meat and full-fat dairy products -- causes the brain to age more rapidly than other kinds of fat. Olive oil, avocado, and other monounsaturated fats appear to slow brain aging. The study, published online in the Annals of Neurology, compared dietary surveys taken from nearly 6,200 healthy women over age 65 with cognitive functioning tests taken about five years later and found that those women who reported the highest saturated fat intake also had, on average, the worst scores on reasoning and memory tests. Those with the highest ... Continue reading →

In an effort to stem the smoldering epidemic of hepatitis C, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is proposing today that all Baby Boomers—anyone born between 1945 and 1965—have a one-time test for hepatitis C. This widespread but often silent disease can lead to liver damage, liver cancer, and even death. More than three million Americans are infected with the virus that causes hepatitis C. About three-quarters of them are Baby Boomers, many of whom got it through a blood transfusion. The virus was identified in the 1990s and testing of donated blood for it, which began in 1992, virtually eliminated this route of infection. Today, the most common source of the infection is sharing of infected needles for injecting drugs. The one-time test ... Continue reading →

Attempts to trivialize serious issues are a regular problem in American political discourse. The bottle bill, seat belt safety, the fight against tobacco use, all were targeted by opponents by trying to change the question or divert it to some silly or superfluous side alley of conversation. Sadly, the most recent example of this technique is the replacement of serious conversation about the dangers of obesity with a meaningless kerfluffle over selling fudge brownies at school bake sales. As an advocate in the fight against obesity and the chronic illnesses that it triggers, I was disheartened when my wife texted me objecting to the “new law” which she understood from misleading stories to abolish the time honored tradition of the school bake sale. Continue reading ... Continue reading →

Satisfactory The lead of the story says, “A new method of performing virtual colonoscopy using a CT scan — which doesn’t involve the dreaded laxative preparation to clear the colon the night before — may be about as effective as a standard colonoscopy at identifying the large polyps most likely to become cancerous, according to research conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and elsewhere.” Later, it amplifies this claim by providing the numbers from the study: “In the study of 605 patients, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the prep-free virtual colonoscopy was able to identify more than 90 percent of suspicious polyps that were 10 millimeters or larger, compared with 95 percent identified when the same patients later had ... Continue reading →