smoking cessation Archives

Picks of the Week: New recommendations for HIV, fibromyalgia and more!

Posted on July 24, 2016

Over the last days fellow colleagues shared articles, recommendations, and other noteworthy news on the Among Doctors network. Among them, there is also a very interesting blog post on Psychological And Mental Health by Professor Gabriel Ivbijaro (President of the World Federation for Mental Health and Chair of The World Dignity Project) that worths reading. Let’s have a look at the top picks of these news:

Migraine and risk of cardiovascular disease in women: prospective cohort study
Results of this large, prospective cohort study in women with more than 20 years of follow-up indicate a consistent link between migraine and cardiovascular disease events, including cardiovascular mortality.
EULAR revised recommendations for the management of fibromyalgia
Updated guidelines on fibromyalgia have been published by the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR).
2016 Recommendations for Use of ARVs to Treat and Prevent Adult HIV Infection
Updated recommendations on the treatment and prevention of HIV infection, reflecting on the substantial advances of the ARVs, discussing the preexposure and post exposure prophylaxis, and considering the generics and their impact on pharmacoeconomics.
Effects of Pictorial Health Warnings on Smoking Cessation Attempts
Pictorial warnings effectively increased intentions to quit, forgoing cigarettes, quit attempts, and successfully quitting smoking over 4 weeks.
Association of Dietary Fats and Total and Cause-Specific Mortality
Dietary saturated and trans-fats were linked to increased rates of mortality. Replacing 5% of energy from saturated fats with equivalent energy from polyunsaturated fatty acid and MUFA was associated with estimated reductions in total mortality of 27%.
Making Psychological And Mental Health First Aid For All A Global Reality
The 2016 World Mental Health Day theme ‘Dignity in mental health – psychological and mental health first aid for all’ provides an opportunity for us to focus on an area that continues to provide challenges for people with mental ill health and their families, getting the right help in crisis.

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Photo credit: CC BY 2.0 by jonrawlinson

Posted in Picks of the week cardiovascular disease, dietary fats, fibromyalgia, HIV, mental health, migraine, mortality, smoking cessation

World No Tobacco Day 2016

Posted on May 28, 2016

The World #NoTobacco Day is an annual awareness day organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 31st May, aiming at highlighting the health risks of tobacco use and prompting governments to take actions against smoking. According to the WHO, while tobacco use kills nearly 6 million people each year, approximately 1 country in 3 has minimal or no restrictions at all on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

Over the last three years, the WHO has focused on the advertising ban, increased taxation and tackling the smuggling of tobacco products, all of which are actions based on evidence from epidemiological studies. This year, the World No Tobacco Day promotes the implementation of the standardized plain packaging of tobacco products.

Plain packaging is a proven measure that tackles consumption by making tobacco products less attractive to consumers, curbing the use of promotional material on the package, limiting misleading design techniques suggesting that some products are less harmful than others, and increasing the effectiveness of health warnings. The package should bear only the name of the brand and product name in standardized characters and dark colors.

The measure was first adopted in Australia in 2012, where early evidence suggests that it has begun to achieve its public health objectives. Since then plain packaging laws have been passed in France, Ireland and the United Kingdom, while several other countries are evaluating the implementation of such a measure.

Join the AmongDoctors physicians-only professional network and discuss with us different topics on smoking cessation, public health policies and evidence on tobacco use!

Posted in Clinical Highlights public health, smoking, smoking cessation, tobacco, WHO, World No Tobacco Day

Picks of the Week: Stomach cancer, fluconazole, and a few systematic reviews!

Posted on April 29, 2016

Sharing news within Among Doctors network is a way of appraising and curating evidence, contributing to the dissemination of knowledge with your trusted network. Let’s have a look at what news have been shared lately:

Diet, nutrition, physical activity and stomach cancer
The World Cancer Research Fund released a new report on stomach cancer linking for the first time drinking alcohol, eating processed meat and being overweight to an increased risk of developing stomach cancers.
FDA evaluating study examining use of oral fluconazole in pregnancy
FDA is evaluating the results of a Danish study that conclude there is a possible increased risk of miscarriage with the use of oral fluconazole for yeast infections.
Cochrane Systematic Review: A comparison of different antibiotic regimens for the treatment of infective endocarditis
Limited and very low quality evidence suggested that there were no conclusive differences between antibiotic regimens in terms of cure rates or other relevant clinical outcomes.
Association between anticholinergic medication and cognition, brain metabolism, and brain atrophy in cognitively normal older adults
Anticholinergic medication use was linked with risk for future progression to mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease.
Cochrane Systematic Review: Mobile phone-based interventions for smoking cessation
The current evidence supports a beneficial impact of mobile phone-based smoking cessation interventions on six-month cessation outcomes.
Exposure to advertisements and electronic cigarette use among US middle and high school students
The odds of electronic cigarette use increased with greater exposure to electronic cigarette advertising, with Internet advertisements having the strongest effect.

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Posted in Picks of the week alzheimer's disease, antibiotics, anticholinergic medication, brain atrophy, cancer, cognition, electronic cigarettes, fluconazole, infective endocarditis, mHealth, pregnancy, smoking, smoking cessation, stomach cancer

Picks of the Week: Mediterranean diet, PSA screening, and risks in using antidepressants and fluoroquinolones

Posted on April 4, 2016

This week many news updates were shared by colleagues on the Among Doctors network. As many of you have already experienced, with this feature you can appraise and share new articles and evidence with the rest of your network. Why don’t you try it right away: share something interesting from the home page!

Let’s see the latest top news:

Dietary Patterns and Fractures in Postmenopausal Women
Higher adherence to a Mediterranean diet is associated with a lower risk for hip fractures. These results support that a healthy dietary pattern may play a role in maintaining bone health in postmenopausal women.
Avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for major causes of death
The longer life expectancy amongst women with active sun exposure habits was related to a decrease in CVD and noncancer/non-CVD mortality, causing the relative contribution of death due to cancer to increase.
Economic Analysis of Prostate-Specific Antigen Screening and Selective Treatment Strategies
The study reports that if PSA screening is to be cost-effective, it should be used conservatively and in combination with conservative management for low-risk disease.
Antidepressant use and risk of cardiovascular outcomes in people aged 20 to 64: cohort study using primary care database
This study found no evidence that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are associated with an increased risk of arrhythmia or stroke/transient ischaemic attack in people diagnosed as having depression between the ages of 20 to 64 or that citalopram is associated with a significantly increased risk of arrhythmia.
Oral fluoroquinolone use and serious arrhythmia
Oral fluoroquinolone treatment was not associated with an increased risk of serious arrhythmia in the general adult populations of Denmark and Sweden, contrary to previous reports. However, the majority of fluoroquinolones were ciprofloxacin, and it is possible that the risk is with other less frequently used fluoroquinolone.
Gradual Versus Abrupt Smoking Cessation
Quitting smoking abruptly is more likely to lead to lasting abstinence than cutting down first, even for smokers who initially prefer to quit by gradual reduction.
Diagnosing Acute Heart Failure in the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Bedside lung US and echocardiography appear to the most useful tests for affirming the presence of acute heart failure while natriuretic peptides are valuable in excluding the diagnosis.

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Posted in Picks of the week arrhythmia, citalopram, diet, fluoroquinolone, fluoxetine, heart failure, hip fractures, osteoporosis, PSA, PSA screening, smoking, smoking cessation, SSRIs, sun exposure