News by Subject Medicine & Health

According to a large-scale study of American high school students, legalizing medicinal marijuana has actually led to a drop in cannabis use among teenagers. The study, published today in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse used the results of an anonymous survey given to more than 800,000 high school students across 45 states to calculate the number of teens who smoke cannabis.

As marijuana legalization sweeps North America, use of the substance has been on the rise, and the public's attitude is shifting. An increasing number of people believe that 'weed' is the safest recreational drug, one that carries health benefits that outweigh its risks. Those assumptions are challenged in an article and editorial published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology that examine the story of a patient who developed crushing chest pain and myocardial ischemia after consuming most of a marijuana lollipop.

Research reveals that 1 in 3 complementary medicine (CM) users do not disclose their CM use to their medical providers, posing significant direct and indirect risks of adverse effects and harm due to unsafe concurrent use of CM and conventional medicine use.

Blood cells could hold the key to aging, according to new research out of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In a study published in Aging Cell, researchers found human blood cells have an intrinsic clock that remains steady even after transplant. The researchers say the clock could control human aging and may underlie blood cancers.

A new study in children aged 6 to 12 years of dasotraline, a promising new treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), showed significant improvement in efficacy in the treatment of ADHD compared to placebo beginning at week 1 and continuing throughout the study.

Overall, after six months of treatment, 30 percent of patients reported a significant improvement, 53.7 percent reported moderate improvement, and only 15 percent had slight or no change. Quality of life, mood and ability to perform activities of daily living were assessed prior to treatment and at six months. Good quality of life was reported by 31.3 percent of patients prior to treatment initiation. At six months, good quality of life more than doubled to 66.8 percent.

Smoked cannabis as an adjunctive second-line therapy to treat chronic peripheral neuropathy can be both effective and cost-effective.

Thousands of people can take heart as new research from the University of South Australia shows a dairy-enhanced Mediterranean diet will significantly increase health outcomes for those at risk of cardiovascular disease - and it's even more effective than a low-fat diet.

Positive self belief is the key to recovery from pain, say University of East Anglia researchers. The research team studied over 1,000 people undergoing physiotherapy for shoulder pain. They found that people are more likely to recover if they have the confidence to carry on doing most things, despite their pain. Those who expected physiotherapy would help them were likely to recover more than those who expected minimal or no benefit.