Author: Fran Kritz

Public health, obesity, school, business and community experts convened in Washington, D.C. last week at the inaugural workshop of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) new Roundtable on Obesity Solutions. The Roundtable will spend the next few years holding meetings, public workshops and innovation collaboratives and producing background papers with a goal of creating consensus on strategies to prevent and reduce obesity said Bill Purcell, co-chair of the Roundtable, who previously was the mayor of Nashville, Tenn.

In its first such act since gaining tobacco regulatory authority five years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued orders to stop the further sale and distribution of four tobacco products that are currently on the market.

Allowing most women with low-risk pregnancies to spend more time in the first stage of labor may avoid unnecessary cesareans, according to a joint guideline released by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association has released first ever guidelines to prevent strokes in women. “If you are a woman, you share many of the same risk factors for stroke with men, but your risk is also influenced by hormones, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and other sex-related factors,” said Cheryl Bushnell, M.D., M.H.S., author of the new scientific statement published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

About 79 percent of colorectal cancers can be detected by at-home test kits, according to a review of studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last week. The kits also correctly identify 94 percent of patients who don’t have colorectal cancer.