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Three anti-smoking groups announced Tuesday that they have sued the U.S. government yet again after it missed its latest deadline for enacting a ban on menthol cigarettes. This is the second lawsuit that the plaintiffs — the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, Action on Smoking and Health and the National Medical Association — have filed against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over delays in banning menthol cigarettes. The first lawsuit, filed in 2020, demanded that the FDA add menthol to its list of prohibited flavors for public health reasons. Once the agency began to take action on the issue, that lawsuit was dismissed. In the latest lawsuit, the groups claim the agency missed a March deadline for issuing a final rule on a menthol ban. Menthol cigarettes are particularly popular in the Black community. “Because of defendants’ inaction, tobacco companies have continued to use menthol cigarettes to target youth, women and the Black community — all to the detriment of public health,” the lawsuit stated. “As African American physicians, we are deeply disturbed at the continuing delays in FDA’s finalizing of the ban on menthol cigarettes,” Dr. Yolanda Lawson, president of the National Medical Association, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “Our patients, more than any other group, become disabled and die prematurely due to the continued use of these cigarettes.”… read on > read on >

Cutting back on sodium is crucial to treating heart disease, but most heart patients aren’t able to limit their salt intake, a new study finds. On average, people with heart disease consume more than double the daily recommended amount of salt, researchers report. Sodium is essential for human health, but taking in too much can raise blood pressure, which damages blood vessels and forces the heart to work harder, researchers noted. Too much salt also causes the body to retain fluid, which can exacerbate conditions like heart failure. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend that heart disease patients limit sodium to 1,500 miilligrams (mg) per day, and that even healthy people keep their salt intake at less than 2,300 mg/day. But among a sample of more than 3,100 heart patients, nine out of 10 (89%) reported consuming more than the recommended daily maximum of 1,500 mg/day, researchers said. In fact, heart patients consumed an average 3,096 mg/day of salt, only slightly lower than the national average of 3,400 mg/day previously reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the researchers noted. “The relatively small difference in sodium intake suggests that people with cardiovascular disease are not limiting their intake very much compared with the general population and are also consuming more than double what is recommended,” said lead researcher Dr. Elsie Kodjoe, an internal… read on > read on >

Patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder tend to see their conditions ease after four months on the ketogenic (“keto”) diet, a small pilot study finds. While no one is saying the diet should replace standard medications, the researchers believe it could provide additional help for some. “It’s very promising and very encouraging that you can take back control of your illness in some way, aside from the usual standard of care,” said study first author Dr. Shebani Sethi. She’s an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The findings were published March 27 in the journal Psychiatric Research. Sethi said she first noticed there might be a connection between the keto diet and psychiatric health when she was working as a student in a clinic focused on obesity and weight loss. Many people with psychiatric conditions gain excess weight due to medication side effects. Sethi was helping to treat one such patient, who had schizophrenia. The patient’s auditory hallucinations (“hearing voices” can be a common symptom of schizophrenia) quieted down after being on the keto diet, she said. A search of the literature turned up little regarding using the diet to counter schizophrenia, but there was evidence it could ease epileptic seizures. Apparently the diet did so “by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain,” Sethi explained in a Stanford news… read on > read on >

The seeds of high blood pressure in adulthood might be sown in youth, a new study suggests. Children and teenagers with excess weight were more likely to have high blood pressure in middle age, researchers report. In fact, there’s a linear relationship between adult high blood pressure and childhood overweight and obesity, researchers found. The heavier a child is, or the more pounds they put on during puberty, the more likely they are to have high blood pressure as an adult, results show. “Our results suggest that preventing overweight and obesity beginning in childhood matters when it comes to achieving a healthy blood pressure in later life,” said lead researcher Lina Lilja, a doctoral student with the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 1.3 billion adults 30 to 79 have high blood pressure, increasing their risk of strokes, heart attacks and kidney disease. High body-mass index in adults is strongly tied to elevated blood pressure, but it’s not clear whether excess weight in childhood contributes to this risk. To learn more, researcher analyzed data on nearly 1,700 Swedish people born between 1948 and 1968. For these people, BMI readings were taken at age 7 to 8 and again at 18 to 20. Researchers compared this to blood pressure readings, systolic and diastolic, taken among the group at ages 50… read on > read on >

A new warning is being issued over a heart pump whose use could perforate the heart. The device has already been linked to over 100 injuries and 49 deaths. These left-sided Impella heart pumps are made by Abiomed, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson MedTech. Abiomed posted the new warning on the devices on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s website. “The FDA has identified this as a Class I recall, the most serious type of recall. Use of these devices may cause serious injuries or death,” the statement said, although it adds that “this recall is a correction, not a product removal.” The advisory informs those implanting the Impella devices about revised instructions for use, including “carefully position the pump catheter during operative procedures.” These Impella pumps resemble a long straw inserted into the heart. They are used during high-risk cardiac procedures (for example, during certain types of heart attack), to help maintain proper blood flow from the heart to the body. The pump is threaded through major heart vessels and into the heart’s left ventricle, the organ’s main pumping chamber. “Abiomed is recalling its Impella Left Sided Blood Pumps because the pump catheter may perforate [cut] the wall of the left ventricle in the heart,” the company warned in its statement. “During operations, the Impella device could cut through the wall of the… read on > read on >

Some pain-relieving skin products contain potentially harmful doses of the numbing agent lidocaine and should be avoided, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns. These creams, gels, sprays and soaps are marketed for topical use to relieve the pain of cosmetic procedures like microdermabrasion, laser hair removal, tattooing and piercing, the FDA said. The agency has issued warning lettings to six companies that are marketing products containing concentrations of lidocaine heavy enough to harm people, particularly after cosmetic procedures that could cause the cream to be absorbed more readily through the skin. Products containing lidocaine over 4% can contribute to health problems like an irregular heartbeat, seizures and breathing difficulties, the FDA explained. They also can interact with other medications or supplements a person is taking. “These products pose unacceptable risks to consumers and should not be on the market,” Jill Furman, director of the Office of Compliance in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. “We are committed to using all available tools to stop the sale of these illegal high-risk products.” The companies and products covered by the warning letters include: TKTX Company: TKTX Numb Maximum Strength Pain Reliever, Mithra+ 10% Lidocaine, TKTX During Procedure Numbing Gel 40% and J-CAIN cream [LIDOCAINE] 29.9% SeeNext Venture, Ltd.: NumbSkin 5% Lidocaine Numbing Cream (15 grams), NumbSkin 5% Lidocaine… read on > read on >

Seniors wound up with lower blood pressure after they were coached to get up and move more often, a new study says. Health coaching successfully reduced sitting time for a group of older adults by just over 30 minutes a day, according to a report published March 27 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Sitting less led to a reduction of nearly 3.5 points in the seniors’ average blood pressure, researchers said. By comparison, increased physical activity typically leads to an average 4-point reduction in blood pressure and weight loss an average 3-point reduction, they noted. “Our findings are really promising because sitting less is a change that may be easier for people than increasing physical activity, especially for older adults who are more likely to be living with restrictions like chronic pain or reduced physical function,” said lead researcher Dori Rosenberg, a senior scientific investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle. Older adults typically sit between 65% and 80% of their waking hours, researchers said in background notes. Such sedentary behavior can lead to heart disease and diabetes. The new study involved 283 seniors ages 60 to 89 covered by Kaiser Permanente’s health system in Washington state. The seniors all received a tabletop standing desk, an activity tracker and 10 health coaching sessions during a six-month period. In these sessions, participants… read on > read on >

A major review of data confirms that getting less than the recommended amount of sleep each night is a risk factor for high blood pressure. Data collected in 16 studies conducted from 2000 through 2023, involving over 1 million people in six countries, revealed a 7% rise in the risk for hypertension among folks who got less than seven hours of slumber each night. People who got an average of five hours of sleep per night saw their risk for high blood pressure rise by 11%, compared to people who got the recommended seven or eight hours, said a team from the Tehran Heart Center in Iran. “Based on the most updated data, the less you sleep—that is less than seven hours a day—the more likely you will develop high blood pressure in the future,” said study lead author Dr. Kaveh Hosseini, an assistant professor of cardiology at the center. “We saw a trend between longer sleep durations and a greater occurrence of high blood pressure, but it was not statistically significant. Getting seven to eight hours of sleep, as is recommended by sleep experts, may be the best for your heart, too.” His team will present its findings April 7 at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta. The sleep and heart health of people who were involved in the… read on > read on >

Fried foods not only wreck the waistline, but they could also be harming the brain, a new study of lab rats suggests. Fed chow that was fried in sesame or sunflower oil, the rodents developed liver and colon problems that wound up affecting their brain health, researchers found. These brain health effects not only were found in the lab rats that munched down the fried food, but also in their offspring, noted lead researcher Kathiresan Shanmugam, an associate professor with the Central University of Tamil Nadu in India. These results suggest that reused frying oil could affect connections between the liver, gut and brain, Shanmugam said. “Deep-frying at high temperatures has been linked with several metabolic disorders, but there have been no long-term investigations on the influence of deep-fried oil consumption and its detrimental effects on health,” Shanmugam said. “To our knowledge we are first to report long-term deep-fried oil supplementation increases neurodegeneration in the first-generation offspring.” Scientists stress that this is early research, however, and animal studies don’t always pan out in humans. The study was presented Sunday at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Deep frying adds loads of fat calories to food, researchers noted. In addition, frying oil that’s reused often loses many of its natural antioxidants and health benefits, while gaining harmful compounds.… read on > read on >

Federal regulators are taking a second stab at banning the controversial use of electroshock devices to manage the behavior of patients with intellectual and developmental disorders. The devices deliver electric shocks to a patient’s skin, in an attempt to stop them from harming themselves or lashing out physically at others, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in its Monday announcement. These devices — called electrical stimulation devices or ESDs — now are in use at just one U.S. facility, the Judge Rotenberg Education Center in Canton, Mass., the FDA said. “We estimate around 50 individuals currently have a treatment plan that includes the use, or potential use, of” these devices, the FDA statement said. A special United Nations report in 2013 concluded that the Rotenberg Center’s use of the shock devices on students constitutes a violation of the U.N. convention against torture. The FDA previously attempted to ban the use of the devices in 2020, but a federal court ruled that the agency didn’t have the authority to enact its proposed ban. “Since ESDs were first marketed more than 20 years ago, we have gained a better understanding of the danger these devices present to public health,” Dr. William Maisel, director of the Office of Product Evaluation and Quality in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a news release… read on > read on >