Current guidelines do not recommend osteoporosis screening for men. While current smoking is a recognized risk factor for osteoporosis, neither smoking history nor COPD are among criteria for bone-density screening.
"Our findings suggest that current and past smokers of both genders should be screened for osteoporosis," said Elizabeth Regan, MD, assistant professor of medicine at National Jewish Health. "Expanding screening to include men with a smoking history and starting treatment in those with bone disease may prevent fractures, improve quality of life and reduce health care costs."
Now, if the 12 million will vote....
Close to 12 million people are covered by health insurance plans purchased from an Obamacare exchange, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said at the White House Monday.
More than half of these enrollees are new to the program, said Burwell, speaking at an event commemorating the close of the second open enrollment period for subsidized private health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act's exchange marketplaces. The enrollment total surpasses the Department of Health and Human Services' projections, but is lower than what the Congressional Budget Office expected.
"Nearly 11.7 million Americans signed up or were re-enrolled through the marketplace as of Feb. 22," Burwell said. "We are finally moving the needle on reducing the number of uninsured."
Biologics are those drugs advertised on TV for autoimmune disorders like psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis. Very expensive...
The Food and Drug Administration approved the first copy of a biotechnology drug for the U.S. market, firing the starting gun on a new industry that could help the U.S. curb its $376 billion in yearly drug spending.
The drug is a rival version of Neupogen, an Amgen Inc. treatment prescribed to chemotherapy patients. The copycat medicine, Zarxio from Novartis AG , is the first approved under a new regulatory framework designed to introduce competition for costly biotech drugs, which are produced in living cells and typically administered by infusion or injection.
New research estimates the cost in Europe alone to be in the billions of dollars. As these endocrine disrupting chemicals have been inflicted on the global population, and are found in countless everyday products and materials, the costs to society are huge (and the profits to the chemical and pharmaceutical companies are equally huge).
The treatment, which is self-administered by the patient for 120 seconds at home, involves placing the small, hand-held gammaCore device on the skin of the neck over the vagus nerve. In this study, patients carried out either two or three 120-second doses of stimulation twice per day - morning and evening - while acute attacks were treated with up to six doses at the onset of the attack. Patients reported no serious adverse events.
A video; this is one of a growing number of such stimulation devices for pain....
By stimulating nerves, Quell can help relieve chronic pain without the need for medication.
"Intranasal sphenopalatine ganglion blocks are image-guided, targeted, breakthrough treatments," he elaborates. "They offer a patient-centered therapy that has the potential to break the migraine cycle and quickly improve patients' quality of life."
The study of more than 200,000 people, published this week in BMC medicine, found about 67 percent of smokers perished from smoking-related illness. That rate is higher than doctors previously estimated.
Tobacco smoke can boost the risk for least 13 types of cancer. The earlier you quit, the better. “The relative risks of adverse health effects increase with increasing intensity of smoking,” the study states, “measured by the amount of tobacco smoked per day, and with increasing duration of smoking.”
Smoking 10 cigarettes daily doubles the risk of death, the research showed. Smoking a pack daily quadruples it.