Health News This Week (January 16, 2010)
Unsung heroes work hard to cut hospital-acquired infections – January 21, 2010: For years, Alfonso Torress-Cook followed the rules in his quest to eliminate hospital-acquired infections. Patients at his hospital received large doses of antibiotics and were scrubbed down with alcohol-based soaps, as he and his colleagues aimed to kill every bacterium possible. Search and destroy was the mantra.
Study: Cutting salt intake would boost nation’s health – January 21, 2010: If Americans cut their salt intake by just half a teaspoon per day, it would produce public health benefits on par with reducing high cholesterol, smoking, or obesity, a new study has found. The number of heart attacks in the U.S. could decline by up to 13 percent if adults could just slash their daily salt intake by 3 grams, or about 1,200 milligrams of sodium, according to the study, which was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. New cases of heart disease and the number of strokes could also be expected to decline, by up to 11 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
The surprising reason why being overweight isn’t healthy – January 21, 2010: It’s shocking, but it’s true: Being a woman who’s more than 20 pounds overweight may actually hike your risk of getting poor medical treatment. In fact, weighing too much can have surprising — and devastating — health repercussions beyond the usual diabetes and heart-health concerns you’ve heard about for years.
Top foods to fuel your heart – January 15, 2010: CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at the top 10 foods for your heart.
Gene mappers untangling common cold mysteries – January 18, 2010: A cure for the common cold has eluded scientists since the dawn of mankind. Common colds — also known as human rhinovirus — affect billions of people worldwide every year and have more than 100 different, but related, strains. Each of these strains can cause a variety of symptoms in sufferers. Doctors say that variety is what makes the common cold so hard to understand and so hard to treat. Last year, researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced that they had taken the first step in finding a cure for rhinovirus by mapping each strain’s entire genome.
CDC: As many as 80 million infected by H1N1 – January 16, 2010: As many as 80 million Americans were sickened by and another 16,000 died because of the H1N1 influenza virus between April 2009 and December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Those numbers are at the high end of the CDC’s estimate. The number of infected could be closer to 39 million while deaths could be about 8,000.
