medicalcondition:heart disease

  • Liquid used in e-cigarettes damages cells crucial for a healthy heart - EHN
    https://www.ehn.org/vaping-hurts-your-heart-2638041485.html

    The flavors used in e-cigarettes—especially menthol and cinnamon—damage blood vessel cells and such impacts increase heart disease risk, according to a new study.

    The study, published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, is the latest to link e-cigarettes, or vaping — which has been touted as a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes—to heart problems. It is the first study to test how e-liquids affect the endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels. These cells are crucial in delivering the blood supply to the bodies’ tissues and sending cells to promote healthy blood vessels, tissue growth and repair.

    E-cigarettes are small devices that heat up liquids (usually propylene glycol or glycerol) to deliver as aerosol (vape) mixture of nicotine and flavors.

    The study comes as e-cigarette use continues to rise. Roughly 1 in 20 U.S. adults now use e-cigarettes but the real growth is happening among youth: use among U.S. high school students went from 11.7 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent in 2018, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In addition, about 4.9 percent of middle school students use e-cigarettes, the FDA found.

    The study was limited in that the e-liquids weren’t heated, which could alter how the exposed cells react. The research, however, is just the latest linking e-cigarettes to heart impacts.

    In March, researchers presented a study of nearly 100,000 Americans that found e-cigarette users are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes compared to non-users.

    Another large national study in January of 400,000 Americans reported e-cigarette users have a 70 percent higher risk of stroke and a 60 percent higher risk of heart attack, when compared to non-users.

    With use rising, health groups continue to push for more strict regulation. A judge this month ordered the FDA to review all U.S. e-cigarette products.

    The ruling was a response to a federal lawsuit filed by health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, that alleged the FDA hasn’t adequately regulated e-cigarettes and is leaving a generation of U.S kids on the path to nicotine addiction.

    #Tabac #E_cigarettes #Vaping #Santé_publique

  • First-ever private border wall built in #New_Mexico

    A private group announced Monday that it has constructed a half-mile wall along a section of the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico, in what it said was a first in the border debate.

    The 18-foot steel bollard wall is similar to the designs used by the Border Patrol, sealing off a part of the border that had been a striking gap in existing fencing, according to We Build the Wall, the group behind the new section.

    The section was also built faster and, organizers say, likely more cheaply than the government has been able to manage in recent years.

    Kris Kobach, a former secretary of state in Kansas and an informal immigration adviser to President Trump, says the New Mexico project has the president’s blessing, and says local Border Patrol agents are eager to have the assistance.

    “We’re closing a gap that’s been a big headache for them,” said Mr. Kobach, who is general counsel for We Build the Wall.


    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/27/first-ever-private-border-wall-built-new-mexico
    #privatisation #murs #barrières_frontalières #USA #Mexique #frontières #business #complexe_militaro-industriel
    ping @albertocampiphoto @daphne

    • The #GoFundMe Border Wall Is the Quintessential Trump-Era Grift

      In 2012, historian Rick Perlstein wrote a piece of essential reading for understanding modern conservatism, titled “The Long Con” and published by the Baffler. It ties the right’s penchant for absurd and obvious grifts to the conservative mind’s particular vulnerability to fear and lies:

      The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.

      Lying, Perlstein said, is “what makes you sound the way a conservative is supposed to sound.” The lies—about abortion factories, ACORN, immigrants, etc.—fund the grifts, and the grifts prey on the psychology that makes the lies so successful.

      Perlstein’s piece is all I could think of when I saw last night’s CNN story about the border wall GoFundMe, which seemingly has actually produced Wall. According to CNN, the group We Build the Wall says it has produced a half-mile of border wall in New Mexico. CNN was invited to watch the construction, where Kris Kobach, who is general counsel for the group, spoke “over the clanking and beeping of construction equipment.”

      #Steve_Bannon, who is naturally involved with the group, told CNN that the wall connects existing fencing and had “tough terrain” that means it was left “off the government list.” The half-mile stretch of wall cost an “estimated $6 million to $8 million to build,” CNN reported.

      CNN also quoted #Jeff_Allen, who owns the property on which the fence was built, as saying: “I have fought illegals on this property for six years. I love my country and this is a step in protecting my country.” According to MSN, Allen partnered with United Constitutional Patriots to build the wall with We Build the Wall’s funding. UCP is the same militia that was seen on video detaining immigrants and misrepresenting themselves as Border Patrol; the Phoenix New Times reported on the “apparent ties” between the UCP and We Build the Wall earlier this month.

      This story is bursting at the seams with an all-star lineup of right-wing scammers. The GoFundMe itself, of course, has been rocked by scandal: After the effort raised $20 million, just $980 million short of the billion-dollar goal, GoFundMe said in January that the funds would be returned, since creator Brian Kolfage had originally pledged that “If for ANY reason we don’t reach our goal we will refund your donation.” But Kolfage quickly figured out how to keep the gravy train going, urging those who had donated to allow their donations to be redirected to a non-profit. Ultimately, $14 million of that $20 million figure was indeed rerouted by the idiots who donated it.

      That non-profit became #We_Build_The_Wall, and like all good conservative con jobs, it has the celebs of the fever swamp attached to it. Not only #Kris_Kobach, a tenacious liar who failed at proving voter fraud is a widespread problem—but also slightly washed-up figures like Bannon, Sheriff David Clarke, Curt Schilling, and Tom Tancredo. All the stars are here!

      How much sleazier could it get? Try this: the main contractor working at the site of New Wall, according to CNN, is Tommy Fisher. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump had “personally and repeatedly urged the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers” to give the contract for the border wall to the company owned by Fisher, a “GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News,” despite the fact that the Corps of Engineers previously said Fisher’s proposals didn’t meet their requirements.

      Of course, like all good schemes, the need for more money never ceases: On the Facebook page for the group, the announcement that Wall had been completed was accompanied with a plea for fans to “DONATE NOW to fund more walls! We have many more projects lined up!”

      So, what we have is: A tax-exempt non-profit raised $20 million by claiming it would be able to make the federal government build Wall by just giving it the money for it and then, when that didn’t happen, getting most of its donors to reroute that money; then it built a half-mile of wall on private land for as much as $8 million, which went to a firm of a Fox News star whom President Trump adores.

      Perlstein wrote in the aforementioned piece that it’s hard to “specify a break point where the money game ends and the ideological one begins,” since “the con selling 23-cent miracle cures for heart disease inches inexorably into the one selling miniscule marginal tax rates as the miracle cure for the nation itself.” The con job was sold through fear: “Conjuring up the most garishly insatiable monsters precisely in order to banish them from underneath the bed, they aim to put the target to sleep.”

      The Trump era is the inartful, gaudy, brazen peak of this phenomenon. This time, instead of selling fake stem cell cures using the language of Invading Liberals, the grifters are just straight-up selling—for real American dollars—the promise of building a big wall to keep the monsters out.

      https://splinternews.com/the-gofundme-border-wall-is-the-quintessential-trump-er-1835062340

    • Company touted by Trump to build the wall has history of fines, violations

      President Donald Trump appears to have set his sights on a North Dakota construction firm with a checkered legal record to build portions of his signature border wall.
      The family-owned company, #Fisher_Sand_&_Gravel, claims it can build the wall cheaper and faster than competitors. It was among a handful of construction firms chosen to build prototypes of the President’s border wall in 2017 and is currently constructing portions of barrier on private land along the border in New Mexico using private donations.
      It also, however, has a history of red flags including more than $1 million in fines for environmental and tax violations. A decade ago, a former co-owner of the company pleaded guilty to tax fraud, and was sentenced to prison. The company also admitted to defrauding the federal government by impeding the IRS. The former executive, who’s a brother of the current company owner, is no longer associated with it.
      More than two years into his presidency, Trump is still fighting to build and pay for his border wall, a key campaign issue. After failing to get his requests for wall funding passed by a Republican-held Congress during his first two years in office, Trump has met resistance this year from a Democratic-controlled House. His attempt to circumvent Congress through a national emergency declaration has been challenged in the courts.
      On May 24, a federal district judge blocked the administration from using Defense Department funds to construct parts of the wall. The Trump administration has since appealed the block to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and in the interim, asked the district court to allow building to continue pending appeal. The district court denied the administration’s request.
      Despite the uncertainty, construction firms have been competing to win multimillion-dollar contracts to build portions of wall, including Fisher Sand & Gravel.

      Asked by CNN to comment on the company’s history of environmental violations and legal issues, the company said in a statement: “The questions you are asking have nothing to do with the excellent product and work that Fisher is proposing with regard to protecting America’s southern border. The issues and situations in your email were resolved years ago. None of those matters are outstanding today.”
      Catching the President’s attention
      The company was founded in North Dakota in 1952 and operates in several states across the US. It’s enjoyed public support from North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, who as a congressman invited the company’s CEO, Tommy Fisher, to Trump’s State of the Union address in 2018. Cramer has received campaign contributions from Fisher and his wife. A photo of the event shared by Fisher in a company newsletter shows Tommy Fisher shaking Trump’s hand.
      The Washington Post first reported the President’s interest in Fisher. According to the Post, the President has “aggressively” pushed for the Army Corps of Engineers to award a wall contract to Fisher.
      The President “immediately brought up Fisher” during a May 23 meeting in the Oval Office to discuss details of the border wall with various government officials, including that he wants it to be painted black and include French-style doors, according to the Post and confirmed by CNN.
      “The Army Corps of Engineers says about 450 miles of wall will be completed by the end of next year, and the only thing President Trump is pushing, is for the wall to be finished quickly so the American people have the safety and security they deserve,” said Hogan Gidley, White House deputy press secretary.
      A US government official familiar with the meeting tells CNN that the President has repeatedly mentioned the company in discussions he’s had about the wall with the head of the Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite.
      Fisher has recently made efforts to raise its public profile, both by upping its lobbying efforts and through repeated appearances on conservative media by its CEO, Tommy Fisher.

      In the past two years, for example, the company’s congressional lobbying expenditures jumped significantly — from $5,000 in 2017 to $75,000 in 2018, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit that tracks lobbying expenditures.

      When asked about Fisher Sand & Gravel’s lobbying, Don Larson, one of Fisher’s registered lobbyists, said: “I am working to help decision makers in Washington become familiar with the company and its outstanding capabilities.”
      Media Blitz
      As part of a media blitz on outlets including Fox News, SiriusXM Patriot and Breitbart News, Tommy Fisher has discussed his support for the border wall and pitched his company as the one to build it. In a March 5 appearance on Fox & Friends, Fisher said that his company could build 234 miles of border wall for $4.3 billion, compared to the $5.7 billion that the Trump administration has requested from Congress.
      Fisher claimed that his firm can work five-to-10 times faster than competitors as a result of its construction process.
      The President has also touted Fisher on Fox News. In an April interview in which he was asked about Fisher by Sean Hannity, Trump said the company was “recommended strongly by a great new senator, as you know, Kevin Cramer. And they’re real. But they have been bidding and so far they haven’t been meeting the bids. I thought they would.”
      Despite the President’s interest, the company has thus far been unsuccessful in obtaining a contract to build the border wall, beyond that of a prototype.

      Earlier this year, Fisher put its name in the running for border wall contracts worth nearly $1 billion. When it lost the bid to Barnard Construction Co. and SLSCO Ltd., Fisher protested the awards over claims that the process was biased. In response, the Army Corps canceled the award. But after a review of the process, the Army Corps combined the projects and granted it to a subsidiary of Barnard Construction, according to an agency spokesperson.
      It’s unclear whether the project will proceed, given the recent decision by a federal judge to block the use of Defense Department funds to build parts of the border wall and the administration’s appeal.
      Fisher, which has a pending lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims over the solicitation process, is listed by the Defense Department as being among firms eligible to compete for future border contracts.

      It has moved forward with a private group, We Build the Wall, that is building sections of barrier on private land in New Mexico using private money raised as part of a GoFundMe campaign. Kris Kobach, the former Kansas Secretary of State who is now general counsel for the group, said a half-mile stretch is nearly complete, at an estimated cost of $6 million to $8 million.

      In a statement, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said Fisher Industries has told them that the company has begun construction on private property along the border “in the approximate area of a USBP border barrier requirement that was not prioritized under current funding.”
      The spokesperson added: “It is not uncommon for vendors” to demonstrate their capabilities using “their own resources,” but the agency goes on to “encourage all interested vendors” to compete for border contracts “through established mechanisms to ensure any construction is carried out under relevant federal authorities and meets USBP operational requirements for border barrier.”
      In responses provided to CNN through Scott Sleight, an attorney working on behalf of the company, Fisher maintained that it’s “committed to working with all appropriate federal government officials and agencies to provide its expertise and experience to help secure America’s southern border.”
      The company says it has “developed a patent-pending bollard fence hanging system that [it] believes allows border fencing to be constructed faster than any contractor using common construction methods.” It also added: “Fisher has been concerned about the procurement procedures and evaluations done by the USACE to date, and hopes these issues can be remedied.”
      Relationship with Sen. Cramer
      A month after attending the 2018 State of the Union address with Cramer, Fisher and his wife, Candice each contributed the $5,400 maximum donation to Cramer’s campaign for the US Senate, Federal Election Commission records show.
      Fisher also donated to several Arizona Republicans in the 2018 election cycle, including giving the $5,400-maximum donation to Martha McSally’s campaign, records show.
      A recent video produced by Fisher Sand & Gravel demonstrating its ability to construct the wall includes a clip of Cramer at the controls of a track-hoe lifting sections of barrier wall into place, saying “this is just like XBOX, baby.” Cramer was joined at the demonstration by a handful of other Republican lawmakers from across the country.

      Cramer has been publicly critical of how the Army Corps has handled its border wall construction work, arguing that it has moved too slowly and expressing frustration over how it has dealt with Fisher. In an interview with a North Dakota TV station, Cramer said that he believes the corps “made a miscalculation in who they chose over Fisher” and that the company had been “skunked so to speak.” Cramer added that Fisher “remains a pre-qualified, high level, competitor.”

      In an interview with CNN, Cramer said that the company has come up in conversations he has had with administration officials, including the President and the head of the Army Corps, but while the senator said that he would “love if they got every inch of the project,” he added that he has “never advocated specifically for them.”
      "Every time someone comes to meet with me, whether it’s (Acting Defense Secretary) Shanahan, General Semonite, even with Donald Trump, they bring up Fisher Industries because they assume that’s my thing," Cramer said.
      “One of the things I’ve never done is said it should be Fisher,” Cramer said. “Now, I love Fisher. I’d love if they got every inch of the project. They’re my constituents, I don’t apologize for that. But my interest really is more in the bureaucratic process.”
      According to an administration official familiar with the situation, Cramer sent information about Fisher to the President’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, who then passed it along to the Army Corps of Engineers for their consideration. The source tells CNN that Kushner was not familiar with the company prior to getting information about them from Cramer.
      Cramer said he does recall passing along information about the company to Kushner, but that he did not know what Kushner did with the information.
      On May 24, Cramer told a North Dakota radio station that the President has asked him to examine the process of how federal border wall projects are awarded.
      “We’re going to do an entire audit,” Cramer said. “I’ve asked for the entire bid process, and all of the bid numbers.” Cramer told CNN the President said he wanted the wall built for the “lowest, best price, and it’s also quality, and that’s what any builder should want.”
      Asked about aspects of the company’s checkered legal record, Cramer said “that level of scrutiny is important, but I would hope the same scrutiny would be put on the Corps of Engineers.”
      Environmental violations
      Though its corporate headquarters are in North Dakota, Fisher has a sizable footprint in Arizona, where it operates an asphalt company as well as a drilling and blasting company. It’s there that the company has compiled an extensive track record of environmental violations.
      From 2007 to 2017, Fisher Sand & Gravel compiled more than 1,300 air-quality violations in Maricopa County, culminating in the third highest settlement ever received by the Maricopa County Air Quality Department, according to Bob Huhn, a department spokesperson. That’s a record number of violations for any air-quality settlement in the county, Huhn said. The settlement totaled more than $1 million, though the department received slightly less than that following negotiations, Huhn said.
      Most of the violations came from an asphalt plant that the company was running in south Phoenix that has since closed. While the plant was still running, the City of Phoenix filed 469 criminal charges against the company from August to October of 2009, according to a city spokesperson.
      According to a 2010 article in the Arizona Republic, Fisher reached an agreement with Phoenix officials to close the plant in 2010. As part of the deal, fines were reduced from $1.1 million to an estimated $243,000 and all criminal charges were reduced to civil charges.
      Mary Rose Wilcox was a member of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors at the time the city and county were fighting Fisher over the asphalt plant, which was located in her district. “They tried to persuade us they were good guys since they were a family-owned company. But they were spreading noxious fumes into a residential area,” Wilcox said. “We tried to work with them, but their violations were just so blatant.”
      Michael Pops, a community activist who lived in the area around the plant, remembers fighting with Fisher for six years before the plant finally shut down. “The impact they had on this community was devastating,” Pops said, adding many low-income residents living near the asphalt plant were sickened from the fumes the plant emitted.
      The company has also racked up more than 120 violations with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality from 2004 until as recently as last summer, according to the department.
      In 2011, Fisher agreed to a Consent Judgement with ADEQ over numerous air quality violations the company had committed. As part of that settlement, Fisher agreed to pay $125,000 in civil penalties, and that it would remain in compliance with state air quality standards. Within two years Fisher was found to be in violation of that agreement and was forced to pay an additional $500,000 in fines, according to the state’s attorney general’s office.
      Legal trouble
      Internally, the company has also confronted issues.
      In 2011, Fisher Sand & Gravel agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a sexual discrimination and retaliation suit filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The lawsuit charged that the company violated federal anti-discrimination laws when it “subjected two women workers to egregious verbal sexual harassment by a supervisor and then fired one of them after she repeatedly asked the supervisor to stop harassing her and complained to a job superintendent.”
      The settlement required Fisher to provide anti-discrimination training to its employees in New Mexico and review its policies on sexual harassment.
      Micheal Fisher, a former co-owner of Fisher and Tommy’s brother, was sentenced to prison in 2009 for tax fraud, according to the Justice Department. Fisher pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding the [Internal Revenue Service], four counts of aiding in the filing of false federal tax returns for FSG and four counts of filing false individual tax returns,” according to a Justice Department release.
      The company also admitted responsibility for defrauding the US by impeding the IRS, according to the DOJ. Citing a long standing policy of not commenting on the contracting process, the Army Corps declined to comment on whether Fisher’s history factored into its decision not to award Fisher a contract.

      https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/31/politics/fisher-sand-and-gravel-legal-history-border-wall/index.html

    • Private US-Mexico border wall ordered open by gov’t, fights back and is now closed again

      The privately funded portion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall is now fully secure and closed again after one of its gates had been ordered to remain open until disputes about waterway access could be resolved.

      “Our border wall & gate are secure again and we still have not had a single breach. I want to thank the IBWC for acting swiftly and we look forward to working with you on our future projects,” triple amputee Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage posted to Twitter on Tuesday night.

      Kolfage created We Build The Wall Inc., a nonprofit that is now backed by former Trump Administration Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. The group crowd-funded more than $22 million in order to privately build a border wall and then sell it to the U.S. government for $1.

      A portion of that wall has been constructed in Texas for between $6 and $8 million. The 1-mile-long wall is located on private property near El Paso, Texas, and Sunland Park, New Mexico.

      However, the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) had ordered a 33-foot gate within the private border wall to remain open – not locked and closed – over a waterway access issue, according to BuzzFeed News. The IBCW addresses waterway issues between the U.S. and Mexico.

      “This is normally done well in advance of a construction project,” IBWC spokesperson Lori Kuczmanski said. “They think they can build now and ask questions later, and that’s not how it works.”

      BuzzFeed reported that the IBWC said the gate “had blocked officials from accessing a levee and dam, and cut off public access to a historic monument known as Monument One, the first in a series of obelisks that mark the U.S.–Mexico border from El Paso to Tijuana.”

      By Tuesday night, the IBWC said the gate would remain locked at night and issued a statement.

      “The U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) will lock the privately-owned gate on federal property at night effective immediately due to security concerns,” it said.

      The statement continues:

      The USIBWC is continuing to work with We Build the Wall regarding its permit request. Until this decision, the private gate was in a locked open position. We Build the Wall, a private organization, built a gate on federal land in Sunland Park, N.M., near El Paso, Texas, without authority, and then locked the gate closed on June 6, 2019. The private gate blocks a levee road owned by the U.S. Government. After repeated requests to unlock and open the private gate, the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC), accompanied by two uniformed law enforcement officers from the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office, removed the private lock, opened the gate, and locked the gate open pending further discussions with We Build the Wall. The gate was also opened so that USIBWC employees can conduct maintenance and operations at American Dam.

      The USIBWC did not authorize the construction of the private gate on federal property as announced on We Build the Wall’s Twitter page. The USIBWC is not charged with securing other fences or gates as reported by We Build the Wall. The international border fences are not on USIBWC property. The USIBWC did not open any other gates in the El Paso area as erroneously reported. Other gates and the border fence are controlled by other federal agencies.

      When the proper documentation is received for the permit, USIBWC will continue to process the permit application.

      Before the statement had been released, Kolfage posted to Twitter.
      https://a

      mericanmilitarynews.com/2019/06/private-us-mexico-border-wall-ordered-open-by-intl-group-later-closed-locked-after-security-concerns/

  • The Simplest Way to Drastically Improve Your Life: More Sleep - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/smarter-living/how-to-get-better-sleep.html


    Bonne nuit.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called sleep deprivation a public health crisis, saying that one-third of adults don’t get enough sleep. Some 80 percent of people report sleep problems at least once per week, and according to a 2016 study, sleep deprivation “causes more than $400 billion in economic losses annually in the United States and results in 1.23 million lost days of work each year.”

    If that’s not enough, here is a non-comprehensive list of the ways your sleep deprivation is personally harming you:

    Your overall cognitive performance — particularly your visual attention and ability to form memories — deteriorates. (More colloquially, this is that “brain fog” we all experience after a late night.)

    Your ability to learn new information is impaired, both by sleep deprivation before you learn new information and afterward.

    You’re less likely to correctly read facial expressions, even interpreting some expressions — even neutral ones — as threatening.

    You’re likely to be more cranky and react worse when presented with obstacles.

    Beyond your severely impaired mental abilities, your body is affected, too: A lack of adequate sleep can contribute to weight gain, puts you at a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, and makes you far less resistant to the common cold.

    That is insane! All of this from just not getting enough sleep!

    So what are we to do?
    ...
    First, learn how much sleep you need. Generally, if you’re waking up tired, you’re not getting enough.

    #wtf #sommeil

  • Alcohol Is Killing More People Per Year Than The Opioid Crisis, And Most Deaths Are Young Women
    https://www.newsweek.com/alcohol-killing-more-people-year-opioid-crisis-and-most-deaths-are-young-1

    lcohol is killing more adults in the U.S. than the opioid epidemic according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The opioid epidemic kills an average of 72,000 people per year, while alcohol kills 88,000. In those 88,000 deaths are 2.5 million years of potential life lost, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The surge of alcohol related deaths is new. In ten years, the number of deaths by alcohol have increased 35 percent according the new report shared by USA Today on Friday. The statistics are based on findings from 2007 to 2017.

    Most affected by the rising alcohol epidemic are young women. Among women, deaths rose 67 percent, while for men, the percentage rose only 27 percent.

    Women are more susceptible to alcohol-related risks because they typically weigh less than men, and can feel the effects of alcohol faster, according to the National Institute on Alcohol and Abuse and Alcoholism. The complications that most affect women who drink excessively are Liver Damage, Heart Disease, Breast Cancer and complications with pregnancy.

    #Addiction #Opioides #Alcool

  • What the Numbers Really Tell Us About Living Longer in Retirement
    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/903969

    [...] overall, the study [1] found that Americans are faring worse in a wide range of measures, including infant mortality and low birth weight, injuries and homicides, drug-related deaths, obesity and diabetes, heart disease and chronic lung disease. Many of the conditions sharply reduce the odds of reaching age 50 - and for those who do, the conditions contribute to poorer health and greater illness later in life, the report found.

    “If health were an Olympic event, we have been getting beat by lots of other nations,” said Stephen Bezruchka, a professor at the School of Public Health of the University of Washington in Seattle.

    The poor performance does not stem only from problems with access to healthcare, he notes. “We tend to confuse health and healthcare,” he said, adding that research shows that medical care accounts for no more than 15 percent of the mortality gap between the United States and other rich countries.

    Epidemiologists have documented that societies with less economic equality have worse than average health. Some of this stems from the inability of lower-income households to meet basic needs such as adequate nutrition and shelter. But at the high end of wealth, Bezruchka notes, there is a diminishing-return effect - money can purchase only so much health.

    “Those with more income do have lower mortality, but you get a greater return on average health by taking a little from the rich and giving it to the poorer person.

    #santé #inégalités #états-unis

    [1] rapport annuel de la Society of Actuaries (SOA): "mortality improvement scale”

  • Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study...
    https://diasp.eu/p/7891268

    Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

    Being unfit should be treated as a disease that has a prescription, called exercise, the study’s author said. Article word count: 764

    HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18264436 Posted by nikolasavic (karma: 503) Post stats: Points: 97 - Comments: 48 - 2018-10-20T17:45:05Z

    #HackerNews #and #diabetes #disease #exercising #finds #heart #not #smoking #study #than #worse

    Article content:

    [1]High intensity workouts can help you live to 100

     Fitness leads to longer life, researchers found, with no limit to the benefit of aerobic exercise  Comparing those with a sedentary lifestyle to the top exercise performers, the risk of premature death was 500% higher.

    Atlanta, Georgia (CNN)Weʼve (...)

  • Vitamin D, the Sunshine Supplement, Has Shadowy Money Behind It - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/business/vitamin-d-michael-holick.html

    Enthusiasm for vitamin D among medical experts has dimmed in recent years, as rigorous clinical trials have failed to confirm the benefits suggested by early, preliminary studies. A string of trials has found no evidence that vitamin D reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease or falls in the elderly. And most scientists say there isn’t enough evidence to know if vitamin D can prevent chronic diseases that aren’t related to bones.

    Although the amount of vitamin D in a typical daily supplement is generally considered safe, it is possible to take too much. In 2015, an article in the American Journal of Medicine linked blood levels as low as 50 nanograms per milliliter with an increased risk of death. That’s within the level considered healthy by the Endocrine Society, which defined vitamin D “sufficiency” as between 30 and 100 nanograms, Rosen said.

    #corruption #conflit_d’intérêt #santé #pharma #vitamine_D

  • Facebook Building 8 explored data sharing agreement with hospitals
    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/facebook-building-8-explored-data-sharing-agreement-with-hospitals.html

    CB FULL Christina Farr 180405
    Facebook health partnership on hold on concerns of data privacy
    15 Hours Ago | 05:37

    Facebook has asked several major U.S. hospitals to share anonymized data about their patients, such as illnesses and prescription info, for a proposed research project. Facebook was intending to match it up with user data it had collected, and help the hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment.

    The proposal never went past the planning phases and has been put on pause after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal raised public concerns over how Facebook and others collect and use detailed information about Facebook users.

    But as recently as last month, the company was talking to several health organizations, including Stanford Medical School and American College of Cardiology, about signing the data-sharing agreement.

    While the data shared would obscure personally identifiable information, such as the patient’s name, Facebook proposed using a common computer science technique called “hashing” to match individuals who existed in both sets. Facebook says the data would have been used only for research conducted by the medical community.

    The project could have raised new concerns about the massive amount of data Facebook collects about its users, and how this data can be used in ways users never expected.

    Facebook provided a quote from Cathleen Gates, the interim CEO of the American College of Cardiology, explaining the possible benefits of the plan:

    “For the first time in history, people are sharing information about themselves online in ways that may help determine how to improve their health. As part of its mission to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health, the American College of Cardiology has been engaged in discussions with Facebook around the use of anonymized Facebook data, coupled with anonymized ACC data, to further scientific research on the ways social media can aid in the prevention and treatment of heart disease—the #1 cause of death in the world. This partnership is in the very early phases as we work on both sides to ensure privacy, transparency and scientific rigor. No data has been shared between any parties.”

    Health systems are notoriously careful about sharing patient health information, in part because of state and federal patient privacy laws that are designed to ensure that people’s sensitive medical information doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.

    To address these privacy laws and concerns, Facebook proposed to obscure personally identifiable information, such as names, in the data being shared by both sides.

    When asked about the plans, Facebook provided the following statement:

    “The medical industry has long understood that there are general health benefits to having a close-knit circle of family and friends. But deeper research into this link is needed to help medical professionals develop specific treatment and intervention plans that take social connection into account.”

    “With this in mind, last year Facebook began discussions with leading medical institutions, including the American College of Cardiology and the Stanford University School of Medicine, to explore whether scientific research using anonymized Facebook data could help the medical community advance our understanding in this area. This work has not progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analyzed anyone’s data.”

    “Last month we decided that we should pause these discussions so we can focus on other important work, including doing a better job of protecting people’s data and being clearer with them about how that data is used in our products and services.”

    Facebook has taken only tentative steps into the health sector thus far, such as its campaign to promote organ donation through the social network. It also has a growing “Facebook health” team based in New York that is pitching pharmaceutical companies to invest its ample ad budget into Facebook by targeting users who “liked” a health advocacy page, or fits a certain demographic profile.

    #Facebook #Santé_publique #Données_médicales #Data_madness

  • Men will live as long as women by 2032 because fewer men are now smoking | Daily Mail Online
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5542909/Men-live-long-women-2032-fewer-men-smoking.html

    Men will live as long as women by 2032 - for the first time since records began.

    According to a new report published this week, life expectancy will be the same for both sexes within 15 years.

    Rather than facing years of widowhood, a woman who marries at 30 will typically enjoy 58 years and six months with a husband of the same age - just short of a diamond wedding anniversary.

    Experts said the biggest reason for the narrowing of the life expectancy gap is the changing levels of smoking between the sexes cigarettes account for about 100,000 deaths a year in the UK from cancer and heart disease. 

    After the Second World War, more than 80 per cent of men smoked, while female smoking peaked at 40 per cent. 

    Men have quit the habit faster than women, with both now down to about 16 per cent.

  • Scientists Discover a Bone-Deep Risk for Heart Disease - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/health/heart-disease-mutations-stem-cells.html

    L’accumulation d’un clone de cellules souches hématopoïétiques mutées appelées « #CHIP » (pour « Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential »), apparaît tôt ou tard avec l’âge et est un facteur de risque indépendant d’#athérosclérose.

    CHIP [...] increases a person’s risk of dying within a decade, usually from a heart attack or stroke, by 40 or 50 percent.

    The condition becomes more likely with age. Up to 20 percent of people in their 60s have it, and perhaps 50 percent of those in their 80s.

    But how might mutated white blood cells cause heart disease? One clue intrigued scientists.

    Artery-obstructing plaque is filled with white blood cells, smoldering with inflammation and subject to rupture. Perhaps mutated white cells were causing atherosclerosis or accelerating its development.

    In separate studies, Dr. Ebert and Dr. Walsh gave mice a bone-marrow transplant containing stem cells with a CHIP mutation, along with stem cells that were not mutated. Mutated blood cells began proliferating in the mice, and they developed rapidly growing plaques that were burning with inflammation.

    “For decades people have worked on #inflammation as a cause of atherosclerosis,” Dr. Ebert said. “But it was not clear what initiated the inflammation.”

    Now there is a possible explanation — and, Dr. Ebert said, it raises the possibility that CHIP may be involved in other inflammatory diseases, like arthritis.

    #santé

  • Nothing Protects Black Women From Dying in Pregnancy and… — ProPublica
    https://www.propublica.org/article/nothing-protects-black-women-from-dying-in-pregnancy-and-childbirth

    A black woman is 22% more likely to die from heart disease than a white woman, 71% more likely to perish from cervical cancer, but 300% more likely to die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related causes.

    • Travail impressionnant ! Cette histoire m’a bouleversée.
      C’est en comparant avec ce genre d’analyse systémique qu’on ne peut que regretter l’absence de statistiques mêlant race classe et genre en France. Interdire de dresser 1 éventuel constat sur ce genre de conséquences du racisme est un gros problème.

    • The disproportionate toll on African Americans is the main reason the U.S. maternal mortality rate is so much higher than that of other affluent countries. Black expectant and new mothers in the U.S. die at about the same rate as women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan, the World Health Organization estimates.

      What’s more, even relatively well-off black women like Shalon Irving die or nearly die at higher rates than whites. Again, New York City offers a startling example: A 2016 analysis of five years of data found that black college-educated mothers who gave birth in local hospitals were more likely to suffer severe complications of pregnancy or childbirth than white women who never graduated from high school.

      The fact that someone with Shalon’s social and economic advantages is at higher risk highlights how profound the inequities really are, said Raegan McDonald-Mosley, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who met her in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University and was one of her closest friends. “It tells you that you can’t educate your way out of this problem. You can’t health-care-access your way out of this problem. There’s something inherently wrong with the system that’s not valuing the lives of black women equally to white women.

      For much of American history, these types of disparities were largely blamed on blacks’ supposed innate susceptibility to illness — their “mass of imperfections,” as one doctor wrote in 1903 — and their own behavior. But now many social scientists and medical researchers agree, the problem isn’t race but racism.

  • Climate Change is Turning Dehydration into a Deadly Epidemic | JSTOR Daily
    https://daily.jstor.org/climate-change-dehydration-deadly-epidemic

    Richard J Johnson, a kidney specialist at the University of Colorado, helped organise the World Congress of Nephrology in Canada in 2011. There, he learned about the strange new form of chronic kidney disease spreading through Central America. Researchers from various countries were beginning to get together and discuss the evidence. Like others, Johnson began to think about possible causes.

    His own research was focused on the sugar #fructose – identifying its role in obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease. When a person eats fructose, the liver bears most of the brunt, but some of the sugar eventually ends up in the kidney. With each meal, fructose enters the kidney tubules, where it is metabolised into uric acid and causes oxidative stress, both of which can damage the kidney.

    At first, Johnson thought people in the sugarcane fields could be eating so much of the plant itself that they were generating high levels of uric acid and oxidative stress in their kidneys. But, he calculated, even sucking on sugarcane all day wouldn’t produce enough fructose to cause disease. Then he discovered that, under certain conditions, the body processes regular carbohydrates to make its own fructose. And one of the triggers of this deadly alchemy is simple dehydration.

    Until that point, nephrologists had thought that dehydration could only cause acute kidney injury, but Johnson’s findings put a new spin on the role of insufficient water intake. Could dehydration day in, day out be causing continuous fructose overproduction that, in turn, could be leading to long-term kidney damage?

    Johnson took his theory to the lab, where his team put mice in chambers and exposed them to hours of heat at a stretch. One group of mice was allowed to drink unlimited water throughout the experience, while a second group had water only in the evenings. Within five weeks the mice with a restricted water intake developed chronic kidney disease. During the day, loss of salt and water caused the mice to produce high levels of fructose, and crystals of uric acid would sometimes form as water levels dropped in their urine. When the scientists disabled the gene that metabolises fructose and repeated the experiment, neither group developed chronic kidney disease.

    Johnson took these results to a meeting of the Program on Health and Work in Central America, or SALTRA, in Costa Rica in 2012, where they caught the attention of García-Trabanino: “I was astonished. His animal models were absolutely in line with our findings.”

    The two collaborated to investigate the biochemical effects of dehydration on workers in the fields of El Salvador. Levels of uric acid started high in the morning and increased throughout the day. “Some patients just had sheets of uric acid crystals in their urine,” Johnson says.

    From these studies, Johnson believes that heat stress and dehydration drive the production of fructose and vasopressin, which also damages the kidney. However, he believes that another mechanism may also play a part in the epidemic: rehydration with sugary drinks. Frequently, not trusting the quality of local drinking water, workers drink sodas and soft drinks, and experimental evidence suggests that doing so can lead to even more kidney damage.

    “At this stage, that heat stress and dehydration might be causing this problem is still a hypothesis,” Johnson admits. “Although it is a strong one.”

    #sucre #reins #climat #déshydratation

  • Édulcorants artificiels : leurs dangers enfin prouvés ?
    http://www.futura-sciences.com/sante/actualites/nutrition-edulcorants-artificiels-leurs-dangers-enfin-prouves-68032/#xtor=RSS-8
    Une nouvelle étude a découvert un lien entre les édulcorants artificiels et plusieurs problèmes de santé, parmi lesquels la prise de poids à long terme, le risque accru d’obésité, le diabète, l’hypertension et les maladies cardiaques.

    « Il convient de rester prudent tant que les effets des édulcorants artificiels à long terme sur la santé ne sont pas complètement connus », explique Meghan Azad, auteure principale de l’étude, dont l’équipe au Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba est également en train d’étudier les effets de la consommation d’édulcorants artificiels pendant la grossesse sur la prise de poids, le métabolisme et la flore intestinale de l’enfant.

    Artificial sweeteners linked with weight gain, little health benefit
    http://www.wsaw.com/content/news/Artificial-sweeteners-linked-with-weight-gain-little-health-benefit-435409873.

    Two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and those who diet sometimes turn to alternative sweeteners — including aspartame, sucralose and stevioside — to cut calories.

    Now, a new review of many studies suggests that doing so might not be the best idea.

    The scientists took a comprehensive look at more than 11,000 studies and found that, for overweight individuals or those with high blood pressure (hypertension) or diabetes, the benefits of consuming zero-calorie, “non-nutritive sweeteners” were modest to nil. For other people, there was an increased risk of weight gain, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke and heart disease. [7 Biggest Diet Myths]

    “Overall, the evidence does not support the intended purpose of weight loss and suggests that there might be adverse effects in the long term,” said Meghan Azad, lead author of the review and an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba.

    Previous research had suggested that non-nutritive sweeteners were not the healthiest choice, but those studies were smaller in scope than the new review, and tended to focus on one outcome at a time, said Azad, who researches the development of chronic diseases.

    Regular Consumption of Artificial Sweeteners Linked to Increased Risk of Obesity, Diabetes, Other Health Issues
    A literature review of 37 studies has found that regular consumption of artificial sweeteners is associated with long-term weight gain and an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
    http://www.sci-news.com/medicine/regular-consumption-artificial-sweeteners-linked-risk-obesity-diabetes-050

    dossier #edulcorants (nb : je suit hyper intolerante aux edulcorants de synthèse, qui sont parfois cachés dans certains produits d’où le suivi de ce sujet.) #alimentation #bombe_a_retardement

  • Trump’s New CDC Chief Championed Partnership with Coca-Cola to Solve Childhood Obesity
    https://theintercept.com/2017/07/08/trumps-new-cdc-chief-championed-partnership-with-coca-cola-to-solve-ch

    The new chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which monitors significant public health concerns, including the impact of sugary beverages on obesity and heart disease, will be led by Brenda Fitzgerald, a Georgia physician whose signature childhood obesity project was underwritten by Coca-Cola.

    Coca-Cola was so fond of Fitzgerald’s approach to obesity issues that an opinion column authored by Fitzgerald is featured prominently on Coca-Cola’s website.

    Public health officials around the country have made obesity a top issue of concern. The United States has the distinction of having the highest rate of childhood obesity in the world, according to a recent report from the New England Journal of Medicine. And multiple reports have found that regular consumption of sugary beverages is a leading driver of obesity, which is linked to heart disease, diabetes, kidney diseases, cancers and hypertension.

    More exercise, of course, is a good thing, but the Georgia SHAPE program notably eschewed another well-known step toward healthier living: curbing sugary beverage consumption

    The CDC in particular has also been targeted by Coca-Cola, which has long disclosed attempts to lobby the agency to influence public health policy.

    Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know revealed that executives from Coca-Cola and the International Life Sciences Institute — an organization founded with support from Coca-Cola — had pressured the agency to partner with the soda giant and allow it to weigh in on debates over sugary soft drinks. In one particular email chain with a CDC official, a former Coca-Cola executive discussed strategies for influencing the World Health Organization’s call for greater regulation of soft drinks. The former Coca-Cola executive called the WHO’s efforts a “threat to our business,” and invited the CDC official out for dinner to further discuss ways to sway decisions at the international body. Clyde Tuggle, the former Coca-Cola executive, was included in the email chain.

    #alimentation #conflits_intérêt #boissons_sucrées #obésité

  • Rare Gene Mutations Inspire New Heart Drugs - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/health/heart-drugs-gene-mutations.html

    One sibling had been a heavy smoker, had high blood pressure and even had Type 2 diabetes, a powerful risk factor for heart disease. Yet there was no plaque in his arteries.

    Dr. Stitziel went on to lead an international group of researchers who looked for mutations that destroyed the gene in 180,180 people. It was a rare event, occurring in just one in 309 people.

    #santé

  • Is fat bad for you ? — Quartz
    https://qz.com/969095/is-fat-bad-for-you
    https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/look-at-all-that-good-fat-edit.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=16

    In all the studies they could find, lowering fat levels in diets failed to reduce heart attacks, strokes, or other kinds of heart disease. Although cholesterol from fats is bad, it’s been overly vilified.

    (…) The authors of the review don’t specifically say why there’s been a reporting bias around the risk of cholesterol, fats, and heart health. But they do make a point to say there’s “no business model or market” for promoting good diet and exercise.
    The global market for statins, the drugs that lower LDL cholesterol, was $20.5 billion in 2011.

    #pharma #gras #cœur #santé

  • Evolocumab and Clinical Outcomes in Patients with Cardiovascular Disease
    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1615664#t=article

    Pratiquement toujours en prévention secondaire et presque toujours associé à une #statine,

    Il ressort que la réduction du risque cardio-vasculaire est loin d’être à la hauteur de la réduction du taux de LDL et ... du prix de ce médicament (14.000 USD/an)

    • An End to Heart Disease? Not Quite
      https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/health/ldl-cholesterol-heart-disease-drugs-pcsk9-inhibitors.html

      On Friday, investigators reported the results of a highly anticipated trial of a PCSK9 inhibitor called evolocumab (brand name Repatha). This medication reduced LDL levels to an almost unfathomable 30 mg/dl from about 90 mg/dl on average, which is typically considered low.

      Over about two years of study, the researchers found that the new drug, when added to statin therapy, further reduced the risk of heart attack or stroke by about 15 percent. For about every 70 people treated with the drug, one person benefited in this way. This is not far off the size of the benefit that statins provide.

      So the drug works, which is good news for patients. And no safety concerns emerged. But the applause from heart experts has been muted, because expectations were so much higher. Their hope had been that drastically low LDL cholesterol levels would make it difficult — or even impossible — to have a heart attack.

  • All fights in #Dragon_Ball_Z
    http://www.datasketch.es/january/code/nadieh

    By following characters from fight to fight you can recognize distinct moments from Dragon Ball Z. #Goku, although appearing in most fights overall, is still missing in action for very large periods of time. The reasons are the fact that he’s dead during the start of the Vegeta saga, recovering from injuries (twice) during the Frieza arc, suffering from a heart disease at the start of the Cell arc, and, well, dead again during the start of the Buu arc.

    And, if you’ve seen the show, were you aware of how often Krillin participates in a fight? Or that Gohan doesn’t actually fight a bad guy in between the end of the Frieza saga and when he snaps and turns Super Saiyan 2 at the end of the Cell arc? (that’s more than 50 episodes!) Browse through all ±200 fights below to investigate the path of your own favorite character or, if you’re new to the show, get an understanding of DBZ through its fights.

    #data

  • Grabbing the bull by the horns: it’s time to cut industrial meat and dairy to save the climate
    https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5639-grabbing-the-bull-by-the-horns-it-s-time-to-cut-industrial-meat-and-dair

    @odilon

    Box 1. Added benefits of reducing meat and dairy consumption

    In addition to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, reducing consumption in the countries that currently eat too much meat and dairy could have significant health and social welfare benefits. One study shows that reducing meat consumption as a means of fighting climate change would also cut the risk of colon cancer, heart disease and lung disease worldwide by 34 per cent.[31] Another says it would reduce global mortality by 6 to 10 per cent by 2050, translating into a healthcare cost savings of US$735 billion per year.[32]

    Other scientists point out that cutting meat and dairy consumption would cut infectious disease and reduce the emergence of antibiotic resistance, and have secondary effects as well.[33] One model shows that the worldwide adoption of a healthy diet could reduce mitigation costs for the energy sector by more than 50 per cent by 2050.[34] It would also free up land now used for animal feed production and, if combined with other policy measures, could help small farmers access much needed land.

  • Life Expectancy in U.S. Declines Slightly, and Researchers Are Puzzled - The New York Times
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/health/life-expectancy-us-declines.html

    American life expectancy is in decline for the first time since 1993, when H.I.V.-related deaths were at their peak. But this time, researchers can’t identify a single problem driving the drop, and are instead pointing to a number of factors, from heart disease to suicides, that have caused a greater number of deaths.

    #états-unis #démographie #espérance de vie #mortalité

  • On average, people born in the U.S. in 2015 will live 36.5 days fewer than those born in 2014
    http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-us-life-expectancy-drops-20161208-story.html

    The main reason for this decline is that eight of the nation’s 10 leading causes of death were deadlier in 2015 than in years past, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease and suicide all claimed more lives last year.

    #espérance_de_vie #démographie #USA #Etats-Unis #régression #it_has_begun #mortalité

    Le #rapport:
    Mortality in the United States, 2015


    http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db267.pdf
    #statistiques #chiffres

  • Les États membres craignent de froisser l’industrie automobile – EurActiv.fr
    http://www.euractiv.fr/section/transport/news/eu-stalls-pledge-to-carry-out-independent-checks-on-car-emissions

    Les États membres enterrent la mise en place d’un système de vérifications indépendant pour les émissions des véhicules, selon des documents obtenus par notre partenaire, The Guardian.

  • No one knows how many patients are dying from superbug infections in California hospitals
    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-torrance-memorial-infections-20161002-snap-story.html

    An epidemic of hospital-acquired infections is going unreported, scientists have found.

    University of Michigan researchers reported in a 2014 study that infections – both those acquired inside and outside hospitals – would replace heart disease and cancer as the leading causes of death in hospitals if the count was performed by looking at patients’ medical billing records, which show what they were being treated for, rather than death certificates.

    [...]

    California does not track deaths from hospital-acquired infections. And unlike two dozen other states, California does not require hospitals to report when patients are sickened by the rare, lethal superbug that afflicted McMullen, raising questions about whether health officials are doing enough to stop its spread.

    McMullen’s daughter Chen said she called the Los Angeles County public health department to report that her mother had been diagnosed with CRKP, which stands for carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, at Torrance Memorial. When the bacteria gets into a patient’s blood, it kills as many as half its victims.

    A county employee told her it was not a reportable infection. “She said, ‘It’s everywhere,’” Chen said.

    #infections_iatrogènes #bactéries #antibiotiques #résistance_aux_antibiotiques #santé

  • How the sugar industry has distorted health science for more than 50 years
    http://www.vox.com/2016/9/12/12864442/jama-sugar-industry-distort-science

    “[...] Is it really true that food companies deliberately set out to manipulate research in their favor? Yes, it is, and the practice continues.” Nestle has been documenting the instances where companies fund nutrition studies that overwhelmingly return favorable results to the industry sponsors.

    “Our research emphasizes that industry-funded science needs to be heavily scrutinized, and not taken at face value,” said Kearns, the lead author on the JAMA paper. “There are so many ways a study can be manipulated — from the questions that are asked, from how the information is analyzed, even to how the conclusions are described in the paper.”

    In this case, the sugar industry involvement in science influenced not only the scientific enterprise but also public-health policy, and potentially, the health of millions of people. Kearns points out that the most recent World Health Organization sugar guidelines focus on reducing consumption because of sugar’s role in obesity and tooth decay — not the heart risk.

    #sucre #santé

  • Women’s long work hours linked to alarming increases in cancer, heart disease | News Room - The Ohio State University
    https://news.osu.edu/news/2016/06/16/overtime-women

    Women who put in long hours for the bulk of their careers may pay a steep price: life-threatening illnesses, including heart disease and cancer.

    Work weeks that averaged 60 hours per week or more over three decades appear to triple the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart trouble and arthritis for women, according to new research from The Ohio State University.

    The risk begins to climb when women put in more than 40 hours and takes a decidedly bad turn above 50 hours, researchers found.

    Women – especially women who have to juggle multiple roles – feel the effects of intensive work experiences and that can set the table for a variety of illnesses and disability,” said Allard Dembe, professor of health services management and policy and lead author of the study, published online this week in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

    People don’t think that much about how their early work experiences affect them down the road,” he said. “Women in their 20s, 30s and 40s are setting themselves up for problems later in life.
    […]
    But prior to this study, efforts to examine a connection between long hours and chronic illness have had mixed results, in large part because it’s difficult to obtain long-term data on work patterns and health, Dembe said.

    This study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, administered by Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research and sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which includes interviews with more than 12,000 Americans born between 1957 and 1964.

    Dembe and his collaborator, Mayo Clinic researcher and former Ohio State doctoral student Xiaoxi Yao, examined data for survey participants who were at least 40 in 1998, when interview questions began to include questions about health status and chronic conditions.

    They averaged the self-reported hours worked each week over 32 years and compared the hours worked to the incidence of eight chronic diseases: heart disease, cancer (except skin cancer), arthritis or rheumatism, diabetes or high blood sugar, chronic lung disease including bronchitis or emphysema, asthma, depression and high blood pressure. They also examined the results by gender.

    Intéressante (et rare) #étude_longitudinale