Health and Medicine

While extreme obesity has been associated with heart failure, until now, data have been limited regarding the influence of overweight and lesser degrees of obesity on the risk of this disease. According to a new study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), excess body weight is strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of heart failure. This risk, which increases continuously with increasing degrees of body weight, is 34 percent higher for overweight in

Researchers from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and the University of California, San Francisco, have found evidence that methadone treatment programs are effective platforms for providing tuberculosis (TB) preventive therapy to substance abusers. In the study, methadone treatment combined with directly observed TB preventive therapy improved adherence to and completion of TB preventive therapy by injection drug abusers.

Previous research has shown t

Male patients who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) — the inability to breathe properly during sleep — produce lower levels of testosterone, resulting in decreased libido and sexual activity, according to researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Previous studies had indicated that male sleep apnea patients had reported decreased libidos but the studies were unable to establish a scientific link. The current study, reported in the July issue of The Journal of Clinical End

Burning eyes, burning lungs, skin rashes and other symptoms of illness have been found in a study of residents living near land fertilized with Class B biosolids, a byproduct of the human waste treatment process.

This study is the first linking adverse health effects in humans to the land application of Class B biosolids to be published in a medical journal. It was co-authored by David Lewis, a UGA research microbiologist also affiliated with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)&#

The Department of Nutrition and Bromatology of the Faculty of Pharmacy of Gasteiz, University of the Basque Country, is studying the action mechanism of fluoxetine in genetically fattened rats (Zucker fa/fa). Due to fluoxetine, those rats eat 50 % less. Therefore, the bodies put on less weight and the size of different fat tissues is reduced.
Antidepressants of the type of fluoxetine reduce appetite. More exactly, fluoxetine affects on neuropeptides that regulate appetite. Hence, it is believed

You are less likely to have allergies if:
you have older siblings (especially brothers);
you rarely washed your face and hands as a child;
you have had gastric infections with microorganisms that originated in faeces;
you were brought up on a farm with animals;
you keep a dog;
the dust in your home is contaminated with bacteria;
or you lived in Communist country rather than western Europe. You are more like to be allergic if