National

Is it okay for POM Wonderful to say its pomegranate juice protects against heart disease and prostate cancer and remedies erectile dysfunction?

According to a recent legal judgement, no, it is not.

Women for whom a Caesarean section is a matter of preference might want to consider some new research: Babies born by C-section may be more likely than those delivered vaginally to become obese children.

Research published Wednesday in the BMJ journal Archives of Disease in Childhood looked at records for 1,255 mom/baby pairs; 284 of those babies were delivered by c-section, and 971 were delivered vaginally. 

The use of hormone replacement therapy to treat symptoms of menopause has been among the most controversial and confusing issues in the modern medical world.

Once touted as a potential godsend for women suffering from menopause-related hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness, the therapy was under investigation through the Women’s Health Initiative until July 2002, when the research was abruptly halted because an elevated number of cases of breast cancer was detected in the study participants.

In the aftermath of that announcement, women around the world worried whether the therapy had put them at increased risk of developing breast cancer — a concern that appeared to be justified when a subsequent decline in breast cancer incidence was linked to widespread cessation of the therapy.

The July 2012 issue of a journal called Climacteric — the journal of the International Menopause Society — is devoted to revisiting the Women’s Health Initiative findings 10 years later and seeks to sort out what turned out to be true and untrue about the therapy’s impact on women’s health. In more than a dozen articles focusing on hormone replacement therapy’s relationship to breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia and other key conditions, the authors (some of them involved in the original Women’s Health Initiative work) conclude that for younger women undergoing the therapy close to the time of menopause, the benefits generally outweigh the risks.

If you don't think dog bites are a big and serious problem, think again.

Eleasha Gall, director of behavior and training at spcaLA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles), interacts with Tux, a one-year-old pit bull, in an effort to promote behavior to avoid dog bites, at Long Beach, Calif., on Wednesday, May 16, 2012. (Damian Dovarganes - Associated Press) On Friday came the horrible news that a three-day-old baby in Ohio died after being attacked by a family dog at her grandmother's house; the infant was reportedly in a baby swing with her mother and grandmother nearby when the attack took place.

Not as gut-wrenching but still nothing to take lightly is the revelation that 17 postal workers were attacked by dogs in Washington, D.C. in fiscal year 2011, according to figures released Thursday by the United States Postal Service (USPS). That places the District 23rd (tied with Jamaica, N.Y., and Milwaukee, Wis.) in the USPS’s list of the top 25 cities for dog bites. (Los Angeles tops the list, with 83 dog bites to postal workers that year.)

And last Wednesday we learned that insurance companies nationwide paid out $479 million in liability claims related to dog bites in 2011.

The USPS is calling attention to dog bites during National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which started Saturday. And the postal service isn’t just concerned about its employees’ safety; it’s teamed up with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Insurance Information Institute and an organization called Prevent the Bite to raise everyone’s dog-bite awareness and offer tips for avoiding getting bit and what to do if a dog does attack.

Update: The CDC Friday morning proposed that all Americans born between 1945 and 1965 be screened for hepatitis C and is drafting guidelines for implementing that proposal.

Hepatitis C is one of those infections I hear about but never really pay much attention to; naively or not, it never has struck me as something I need to worry about, at least on a personal level.

Apparently I am not alone. A survey conducted by the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) released this week shows that 74 percent of people born between 1945 and 1965 either have not been tested or don’t remember whether they’ve been tested for hepatitis C, which is spread via contact with infected blood.

But the CDC counts about 3.2 million people in the U.S. as having hepatitis C, which can linger without causing noticeable symptoms for years but can cause serious liver damage, failure, or cancer. In fact, according to that agency, it’s the leading cause of those conditions — and the need for liver transplant — in the United States.