Hospital coffee machines have received some side-eye as a potential source of spreading infection, but a new study debunks the belief. “To our great relief…a general ban on coffee makers doesn’t seem necessary,” concluded researchers led by Dr. Sarah Victoria Walker, head of the Institute for Clinical Microbiology and Hospital Hygiene in Ludwigsburg, Germany. For their study, German researchers swabbed 25 automatic capsule coffee makers and espresso machines. Of the machines, 17 were from break rooms and offices in a university hospital in Cologne, Germany, and the other eight were in the homes of staff members. All of the coffee makers had been in use for at least a year.  Researchers swabbed them in five specific places – the drip tray, the outlet, the buttons, the handle of the water tank and the inside of the water tank. The researchers focused on what the World Health Organization calls its high-priority ESKAPE pathogens — Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species. Those bacteria all pose an increasing threat because they are antibiotic-resistant and can lead to fatal blood infections in a hospital setting. Unsurprisingly, bacterial growth was detected on every coffee machine. What’s more, hospital machines were about three times as heavily colonized with microbes as home machines, with 360 strains isolated from 72 swabs compared to 135 strains from…  read on >  read on >

Cinnamon used in applesauce pouches that have been tied to high lead levels in kids may have been deliberately tainted with the toxic element, a source at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says. “We’re still in the midst of our investigation,” Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods, told Politico. “But so far all of the signals we’re getting lead to an intentional act on the part of someone in the supply chain and we’re trying to sort of figure that out.”  The applesauce pouches under recall so far are from three brands — Weis, WanaBana and Schnucks. Each is tied to the same manufacturing facility in Ecuador, which the FDA said it is now inspecting. “My instinct is they didn’t think this product was going to end up in a country with a robust regulatory process,” Jones said. “They thought it was going to end up in places that did not have the ability to detect something like this.” As of the latest FDA update on Dec. 12, 65 children under 6 years of age had been diagnosed with symptoms of lead poisoning tied to the recalled applesauce.  According to Politico, the FDA suspect the deliberate adulteration of cinnamon included in the applesauce products was “economically motivated.” Typically, that involves boosting the perceived quality of a product while producing it at…  read on >  read on >

Federal agents have seized more than 1.4 million illegal vaping products being smuggled into the United States from China. A three-day operation at Los Angeles International Airport resulted in the seizure of 41 shipments of illegal e-cigarettes worth more than $18 million, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. The products included the hugely popular brand Elf Bar, as well as other flavored vapes that have been banned by the FDA. The seized vaping products will be destroyed, the FDA said. Many of the products were intentionally mis-declared as items like toys, shoes or household items in an attempt to evade customs, the FDA said. “Those shamelessly attempting to smuggle illegal e-cigarettes, particularly those that appeal to youth, into this country should take heed of today’s announcement,” Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in an agency news release. “Federal agencies are on to their antics and will not hesitate to take action.” “The significant value of these seized products is also a sobering reminder to these bad actors that their time and money would be better spent complying with the law,” King added. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids applauded the news, noting that Elf Bar was the most commonly used brand among young vapers in the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey. “This is the strongest enforcement action the government has…  read on >  read on >

A California company has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve MDMA, the active ingredient in party drugs like molly and ecstasy, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When announcing the new drug application (NDA) filing on Tuesday, MAPS Public Benefit Corp. noted it has been studying the drug for this use for years. The FDA has 60 days to decide whether whether MDMA will be accepted for review and whether it will be fast-tracked through the approval process, the company said. The drug would be given in concert with talk therapy. “The filing of our NDA is the culmination of more than 30 years of clinical research, advocacy, collaboration and dedication to bring a potential new option to adults living with PTSD, a patient group that has experienced little innovation in decades,” MAPS CEO Amy Emerson said in a company news release. “If approved, MDMA-assisted therapy would be the first psychedelic-assisted therapy, which we hope will drive additional investment into new research in mental health.” MDMA belongs to a class of psychoactive drugs that produce experiences of emotional connection, relatedness and emotional openness. Meanwhile, roughly 13 million Americans suffer from PTSD each year, the company said. The symptoms can be debilitating, and patients can also suffer anxiety, depression and substance use disorder. That doesn’t include the economic burden of treating PTSD,…  read on >  read on >

In a win for telemedicine, new research shows that folks fighting high cholesterol benefit just as much from online coaching as they do from in-person visits with a dietitian. “This study reinforces the idea that comparable clinical outcomes can be achieved using the virtual format,” said lead researcher Dr. Shannon Zoulek, a resident physician at University of Michigan Health. “Improving cholesterol levels may reduce cardiovascular events, and having additional options to access treatment will benefit patients who seek treatment,” Zoulek added in a Michigan news release. More than 20% of American adults are currently using telemedicine, taking their health appointments online rather than traveling to an office, the researchers said in background notes. For the study, the investigators tracked more than 250 patients seen by a registered dietitian between early 2019 and late 2022 at the Preventative Cardiology Clinic of the University of Michigan’s Frankel Cardiovascular Center. Around one in five patients opted for a virtual visit, while the rest had face-to-face visits with their dietitian, the researchers said.  Patients who received this diet coaching experienced significant declines in their “bad” LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, both of which decrease the risk of heart disease. In the end, the researchers found no significant difference in results between telemedicine and in-person visits. The new study was published recently in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology. “Access to nutrition…  read on >  read on >

Folks with a family history of heart disease might benefit from eating more oily fish like salmon, mackerel, herring and sardines, a new study finds. Oily fish contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which cannot be produced by the body and must be obtained from the diet. People’s risk of heart disease increased by more than 40% if they had low levels of omega-3 fatty acids plus a family history of heart problems, a large international study concluded. However, if a person has adequate levels of omega-3 fatty acids, their family heart history increased their risk by just 25%. The results show that heathy habits can overcome genetic risk in some cases, researchers said. “The study suggests that those with a family history of cardiovascular disease have more to gain from eating more oily fish than others,” said lead researcher Karin Leander, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Omega-3 fatty acids have been linked to a stronger immune system, reduced inflammation, lower blood pressure and improved cholesterol counts, according to the American Heart Association. For the study, Leander and her colleagues pooled data from more than 40,000 people, nearly 8,000 of whom developed heart problems like unstable angina, heart attack, cardiac arrest and stroke. Levels of omega-3 fatty acids were measured in all study participants. These levels are a…  read on >  read on >

Hispanic women who experience spikes in blood pressure while pregnant may also face higher heart risks years later, new research shows. These “hypertensive disorders of pregnancy” (HDP) — conditions such as preeclampsia, eclampsia and gestational hypertension — may even have a greater role to play in certain heart risks than regular high blood pressure, the researchers noted. “These findings emphasize the importance of recognizing HDP as an important risk factor for these future problems,” said researcher Jasmina Varagic. She’s a program officer in the Vascular Biology and Hypertension branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. According to Varagic’s team, rates of HDP more than doubled among pregnant women in the United States between 2007 and 2019. The increase was highest among pregnant Hispanic women, resulting in 60 cases of some form of hypertensive disorder per every 1,000 live births. High blood pressure during pregnancy does not bode well for blood pressure long after the baby is born, the researchers noted. Prior studies have shown that HDP raises the odds of having chronic high blood pressure 10-fold. In the new study, Varagic’s group tracked the health of nearly 5,200 Hispanic women who’d had at least one child and who averaged about 59 years of age. The researchers took special scans of each woman’s heart, looking at…  read on >  read on >