More Recalls: 14 Brands of Bread and General Mills Green Beans

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Following a bacon recall Tuesday, two more popular grocery items are being stripped from the supermarket shelves due to health hazards. Bimbo Bakeries recalled several bread products, and General Mills has recalled some of its frozen Cascadian Farm Cut Green Beans.

Bimbo issued a voluntary regional recall Wednesday of certain Sara Lee, Kroger, Bimbo, Nature’s Harvest, Great Value, and L’Oven Fresh branded products due to possible glass fragments in the bread products caused by a broken light bulb at one of its bakeries. The recalled items were sold in 11 states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Consumers who have purchased these products can return it for a full refund, per the company statement. A chart with specific packaging information about all products affecte can be found in the company’s press release.

RELATED: 5 Ways to Find Out About Bad Food and Dangerous Products

As for the General Mills green beans, the company released a statement Wednesday that it has voluntarily recalled certain 10-oz. bags of Cascadian Farm Cut Green Beans as a precaution after a single package tested positive for listeria, a bacteria that can cause stomach illness. The infection, known as listeriosis, primarily affects older adults, pregnant women, newborns, and individuals with weakened immune systems, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The affected product, shipped nationwide, is marked by two “Better If Used By” dates, April 10, 2016, or April 11, 2016. The company also confirmed that “no related illnesses have been reported in connection with this product.”

General Mills says consumers who have recalled products can contact Cascadian Farm Consumer Relations at 1-800-624-4123 for replacements.

RELATED: Organic Frozen Foods Recalled Over Listeria Scare

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Even Short Bouts of Activity May Help Kids’ Health

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Even brief spurts of exercise may benefit children, researchers report.

Their study of 28 healthy, normal-weight children found that doing three minutes of moderate-intensity walking every half hour over three hours of sitting led to lower levels of blood sugar and insulin, compared to another day when the children sat for three hours straight.

On the day the children took brief walks, they did not eat any more at lunch than on the day they remained seated for the entire three hours, according to the study published online Aug. 27 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

The findings suggest that brief bouts of activity during otherwise inactive periods could help protect children against type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer, the U.S. National Institutes of Health researchers said.

“We know that 30 minutes or more of moderate physical activity benefits children’s health,” study senior author Dr. Jack Yanovski, chief of the section on growth and obesity at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said in a government news release.

“It can be difficult to fit longer stretches of physical activity into the day. Our study indicates that even small activity breaks could have a substantial impact on children’s long-term health,” he added.

American children spend about six hours a day either sitting or reclining, the researchers said. Previous studies have linked such inactivity to obesity and insulin resistance, a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, the researchers explained.

“Sustained sedentary behavior after a meal diminishes the muscles’ ability to help clear sugar from the bloodstream,” study first author Britni Belcher, a cancer prevention fellow at the U.S. National Cancer Institute and an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, said in the news release.

“That forces the body to produce more insulin, which may increase the risk for beta cell dysfunction that can lead to the onset of type 2 diabetes. Our findings suggest even short activity breaks can help overcome these negative effects, at least in the short term,” Belcher explained.

More than one-third of American children and teens are overweight or obese, which increases their risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and cancer.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about children and physical activity.

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Healthier School Meals Offered Across U.S., Feds Finds

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Most U.S. schools are offering healthier meals that feature more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains and less salt, a new government study reports.

“School meals are healthier now than ever before. We’ve made real progress, but there is much more to do to help American children make food choices that will keep them healthy throughout their lives,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in an agency news release.

Since students consume nearly half of their daily calories at school, school meals are an important source of nutrition for kids, the agency noted.

CDC researchers looked at 14 years’ worth of data to see if schools are implementing U.S. Department of Agriculture nutrition standards issued in 2012. The investigators found a significant increase in the number of schools providing healthy meals.

For instance, in 2014, well over 90 percent of schools offered whole grains each day for breakfast and lunch. Two or more vegetables were offered at 79 percent of schools, up from about 62 percent in 2000. And schools offering two or more fruits rose from about 68 percent in 2000 to 78 percent in 2014.

More than 30 percent of schools offered self-serve salad bars, and 54 percent of schools that prepared their meals in-house used fresh or frozen vegetables instead of canned vegetables. Schools that used low-sodium canned vegetables instead of regular canned vegetables increased from about 10 percent in 2000 to nearly 52 percent in 2014.

Also, nearly two-thirds of schools are using seasonings instead of salt compared to 33 percent in 2000. And the percentage of schools that use low-salt recipes or reduced the amount of salt in recipes doubled between 2000 and 2014.

The study was published Aug. 27 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“We are encouraged that more schools are offering a variety of fruits and vegetables, and finding ways to reduce the sodium content of school meals,” lead author Caitlin Merlo, a health scientist in CDC’s School Health Branch, said in the news release.

Salt is sodium chloride. Too much of it causes your body to retain water, which puts an extra burden on the heart and blood vessels, the American Heart Association says.

“Schools play a critical role in demonstrating and reinforcing healthy eating behaviors by making sure that nutritious and appealing foods and beverages are available and promoted to students,” Merlo explained. “This is particularly important because children’s eating patterns carry into adulthood.”

Despite the encouraging findings in this study, much more can be done to get students to eat more fruits and vegetables, and to reduce the amount of salt in school foods, the researchers said.

Childhood obesity — the result of poor eating habits and inactivity — has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years, according to the CDC.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about child nutrition.

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How Reliable Are Medical Studies? Half of Findings Couldn’t Be Replicated

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Independent researchers couldn’t reproduce the findings of more than half of 100 experiments previously published in three prominent psychology journals, a new review reports.

This review should fuel skepticism over scientific claims, particularly if those claims are based on shaky statistics, said one of the new study’s authors, Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Nosek is also executive director of the Center for Open Science, the non-profit group that coordinated the project.

Only 47 percent of the follow-up studies were able to reproduce the same effects of the original studies, the review found. The strength of findings found during original studies also appeared to diminish when successfully replicated, Nosek said.

The new review also calls into question the statistics used in the original studies. About 97 percent of the original studies showed a statistically significant result, but only 36 percent of the replication studies did the same.

“Reproducibility is a central feature of science,” Nosek said. “A scientific claim doesn’t become believable because of the status or authority of the person that generated it. Credibility of the claim depends in part on the repeatability of its supporting evidence.”

The study was published in the Aug. 28 issue of Science.

People reading about new studies should approach them with a skeptical eye and the understanding that each new finding is just a small addition to a vast scientific panorama that is constantly growing and shifting, said Stephen Lindsay, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and editor of one of the journals reviewed, Psychological Science.

“I think the really important thing the public needs to understand is that they should be very skeptical about results they hear from a single study, unless it’s a really huge study that’s done in a very impressive way,” Lindsay said.

Nosek agreed. “That’s the reality of science — we’re going to get lots of different competing pieces of information as we study difficult problems,” he said. “We’re studying them because we don’t understand them, and so we need to put in a lot of energy in order to figure out what’s going on, and it’s murky for a long time before answers emerge.”

Based on these findings, academic journals need to take a harder-nosed approach to articles they’re considering for publication, said Alan Kraut, executive director of the Association for Psychological Science, which publishes one of the journals involved in this study.

“We’ve changed how articles are published in our flagship journal, Psychological Science, changes that encourage greater transparency, stronger statistical analyses, and provide special recognition for preregistering hypotheses and for sharing materials and data,” Kraut said.

The new review included studies published in 2008 in the journals Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.

More than 270 researchers from all over the world agreed to take on someone else’s earlier experiment and do it over again, to see if they could produce the same results.

This initial effort focused on psychology because members of the team that started the project are psychologists, Nosek said. But, Nosek’s center has since started working on a similar project in cancer biology, and hopes to expand to other fields in the future.

“There are reasons to expect that there might be similar issues across disciplines, since the incentives driving individual scientist’s behavior are very similar across disciplines. It’s a very competitive marketplace in all research disciplines,” Nosek said.

Lindsay added that “the pressure to publish keeps ramping up and up and up, and the criteria for acceptance in these major journals has been more and more surprising results, more and more interesting results.”

Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of Science, said that “studies like this are going to help lead to a better understanding of the level of quality control and documentation that facilitates reproducible research.”

More than 500 scientific journals have signed onto a set of standards presented by Science earlier this year, which call for promotion of transparency and openness in the process by which studies get published, McNutt said.

But McNutt added that the results of this new review should not prompt broad skepticism aimed at science in general, and doesn’t necessarily invalidate all of the findings published in the original papers.

“It’s so important for everyone to remember that just because a result is reproducible does not necessarily make it right. There are many examples of results that were completely reproducible and yet, were fundamentally wrong,” she said.

“And the failure of a result to be reproduced does not necessarily make it wrong,” she added.

More information

For more on the scientific method, visit NASA.

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Injuries Tied to Illegal Meth Labs on the Rise: CDC

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Chemical burns, respiratory ailments and even deaths tied to accidents in illegal methamphetamine labs are on the rise in the United States, a new study shows.

Overall, 162 people were injured between 2001 and 2012 in the five states covered by the study. Those states were Louisiana, Oregon, Utah, New York and Wisconsin. The injuries included 26 children and 42 law enforcement officials, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

After 2005, legislation by states to restrict over-the-counter access to ingredients used by “meth” labs led to a drop in the number of injuries for a few years. But the lull didn’t last.

“In 2008, as meth producers learned to circumvent laws and obtain restricted precursor drugs, and introduced the hazardous ‘shake and bake’ meth-making method,” injuries began to rise again, reported a team led by CDC investigator Dr. Natalia Melnikova.

For the past two decades, officials have seen a rise in illegal meth labs throughout the country. In these hidden “kitchens,” drug-making “cooks” fabricate methamphetamine using various ingredients, including ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, typically found in cold and cough medications.

States began to clamp down on access to ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in 2005, the CDC team noted. But meth makers figured out how to get around the laws by using fake names and buying small quantities from multiple locations.

Around 2008, the ‘shake-and-bake’ method of meth production became increasingly popular. “This method involves shaking smaller amounts of precursor chemicals in a two-liter [half-gallon] plastic bottle, which frequently bursts, causing burns and environmental contamination,” Melnikova’s team said.

In their study, her team reviewed data from over 1,300 meth lab-related “chemical incidents” in the five states. They found 162 injuries occurring in 87 incidents. Most (84 percent) of the injuries were so bad that people were sent to a hospital. That number included 19 children, all of whom required inpatient care.

Injuries are getting worse over time, the CDC team noted. In 2001-2004, 75 percent of meth lab-linked injuries required hospital care. By 2008-2012, that number had risen to 90 percent, the study found.

And, the researchers found that two adults died from meth lab incidents — “one, who might have been a meth cook, was found dead in a meth laboratory; the second was a law enforcement officer,” the researchers said.

Along with the 42 law enforcement officials who were injured, seven firefighters also sustained injuries in meth lab-related incidents, the study noted.

In terms of the types of injuries sustained, burns led the list (43 percent) followed by respiratory issues (37 percent), the researchers found.

Dangers lurk even after a meth lab is identified and closed down, because people can still come into contact with leftover hazardous materials.

“Employees working as cleanup contractors, or in housekeeping, patient intake and other high-risk occupations should be alerted to the dangers,” the study authors said.

What can be done to reduce these dangerous incidents? According to Melnikova’s team, tougher enforcement by states can help, but too often meth-making gangs simply skip over the border to a state with less strict regulations.

For example, after Mississippi passed strict laws restricting access to prescription meds used to source meth-lab ingredients, “meth-related chemical incidents increased in neighboring Louisiana,” where laws weren’t so tight, the CDC team said.

“To most effectively reduce meth production, a regional, rather than state-by-state approach,” may be necessary, they noted.

More also needs to be done to properly train and protect law enforcement officials and firefighters who are sent to meth labs.

The study authors also noted state laws aimed at protecting children from meth-linked injuries would help. For example, Georgia passed a law in 2004 mandating “serious penalties to meth producers if a child is present or is seriously injured during meth production,” the researchers said.

The bottom line, according to Melnikova’s team: “Public health outreach aimed at protecting the general public [including children] and law enforcement officials, the groups most often injured in meth incidents, is urgently needed.”

The study is published Aug. 27 in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

More information

There’s more on methamphetamine addiction at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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Growth Hormone May Lower Odds of Fractures in Older Women

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Older women with osteoporosis could get lasting benefits from a few years on growth hormone, a new, small trial suggests.

Researchers found that when women with the bone-thinning disease took growth hormone for three years, their fracture risk was still reduced seven years later. Before entering the study, 56 percent of the women had suffered a bone break; over the 10-year study period, 28 percent sustained a fracture.

But the study, reported online Aug. 27 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, only involved 55 women who used growth hormone.

And experts said it is unlikely to become an approved treatment for osteoporosis any time soon.

Still, the results are “pretty exciting,” since they show a sustained effect on women’s fracture risk, said Dr. Jerome Tolbert, an endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York City.

“Osteoporosis is a serious problem, and we need to do a better job of preventing and treating it,” said Tolbert, who was not involved in the study.

However, more research is needed before growth hormone could become a treatment option. “Do we need more studies to confirm the safety and effectiveness? Yes, we do,” Tolbert said.

In the United States, about 52 million people have low bone mass or full-blown osteoporosis, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation. And among women older than 50, roughly half will suffer a fracture due to thinning bones.

There are a number of bone-protecting medications that can cut that fracture risk, including bisphosphonates such as Actonel, Boniva and Fosamax, plus generics; the injection drugs denosumab (Prolia) and teriparatide (Forteo); and raloxifene (Evista), a pill that has estrogen-like effects on bones.

A recent review found that, overall, the drugs reduce the risk of spine fractures by 40 percent to 60 percent. They also curb the risk of other bone breaks, including hip fractures, by 20 percent to 40 percent.

But while many options exist, Tolbert said he could foresee “a place for growth hormone to fit in.”

What’s “interesting,” he added, was that it only had to be taken for a finite amount of time in this trial, and not continuously. So that’s a potential advantage, he said.

Right now, growth hormone is approved to treat just a few medical conditions, including growth hormone deficiency in children and adults.

It is not approved to remedy the normal decline in growth hormone that comes with aging. However, some “longevity clinics” have been promoting growth hormone as a fountain of youth that can increase muscle, trim fat and improve stamina in aging adults, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

For women with osteoporosis, growth hormone does indeed stimulate bone formation, according to Dr. Emily Krantz, the lead researcher on the new study.

It may also enhance muscle mass and balance, which could help women avoid falls, said Krantz, of Sodra Alvsborgs Hospital in Boras, Sweden.

But there are also risks. According to the FDA, the side effects of growth hormone include fluid retention, joint and muscle pain, and elevated cholesterol and blood sugar. There are also concerns about a potential link to cancer risk.

In this trial, though, there were few side effects, according to Krantz. Some women had swelling in their hands and feet, but there were no lasting effects on blood sugar or cholesterol levels.

The findings are based on 80 women with osteoporosis who were randomly assigned to take daily injections of either growth hormone or a placebo for 18 months. After that, the hormone group continued on the treatment for another 18 months. All of the women took calcium and vitamin D.

Krantz’s team also compared the study group with a random sample of 223 women the same age who did not initially have osteoporosis. Over 10 years, the rate of bone fracture in that group rose from 8 percent to 32 percent.

In contrast, the study patients saw their fracture rate drop by half over time — from 56 percent to 28 percent.

That decline, Tolbert said, is “pretty remarkable.”

It’s not clear, though, how much of the credit goes to growth hormone. There was no significant difference in fracture rates between women who’d used the hormone and those who’d used a placebo. And part of the benefit, Krantz’s team said, could have come from awareness of fall prevention and other medications that some women took during the seven-year follow-up.

And in the “real world,” there are practical barriers to using growth hormone for osteoporosis — including its high cost.

“It’s unlikely,” Krantz acknowledged, “that it will be used [for osteoporosis] in the foreseeable future, because the treatment is so expensive and has to be overseen by a specialist clinic.”

Krantz said her team has no plans for a larger trial, but will keep following the patients who’ve already received growth hormone.

More information

The National Osteoporosis Foundation has more on treating osteoporosis.

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Antibiotics Linked to Type 2 Diabetes Risk

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Taking antibiotics might increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, new research suggests.

Danish researchers found that people with type 2 diabetes tended to take more antibiotics in the years leading up to their diagnosis than Danes without the condition.

“Patients with type 2 diabetes are overexposed to antibiotics compared with matched control persons without diabetes,” said study researcher Dr. Kristian Hallundbaek Mikkelsen, a medical-doctoral student at the Center for Diabetes Research at Gentofte Hospital and the University of Copenhagen.

“The overexposure is seen after, as well as 15 years, before the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes,” Mikkelsen said.

Although the researchers uncovered an association between antibiotic use and type 2 diabetes, it’s important to note they did not establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

For the study, the scientists tallied antibiotic prescriptions filled by more than 170,000 Danes with type 2 diabetes and about 1.3 million other adults between 1995 and 2012. The men and women were identified using records from national health registries.

Individuals diagnosed with type 2 diabetes filled an average of 0.8 antibiotic prescriptions annually, compared to 0.5 a year among those who didn’t develop diabetes. The more prescriptions, the more likely those people were to have type 2 diabetes, the researchers found.

People with type 2 diabetes don’t make enough of the hormone insulin, or the insulin doesn’t work well to clear sugar from the blood. About 29 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, which increases the risk of heart disease and other problems.

The study was published online Aug. 27 in the Journal of Clinical Endocriniology & Metabolism.

Those who took an antibiotic, regardless of the type, were 50 percent more likely to get a diabetes diagnosis if they had filled five or more prescriptions compared to those who filled none or one, Mikkelsen said. Narrow-spectrum antibiotics such as penicillin V conferred a slightly higher risk than broad-spectrum antibiotics.

What drives the higher risk for diabetes isn’t clear, Mikkelsen said. It’s possible that the condition develops over time, increasing the risk of infection — and need for antibiotics — before an actual diabetes diagnosis, he said. Or, perhaps repeated infections somehow increase diabetes risk, or exposure to antibiotics boosts the odds.

Research in animals has found that antibiotics may change the gut bacteria and affect sugar and fat metabolism, Mikkelsen said. “Also, it has been suggested that certain gut bacteria may contribute to the impaired ability to metabolize sugar seen in people with diabetes,” he added.

The findings are not surprising, said Dr. Maria Pena, director of the Center for Weight Management at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. There has been speculation about the role of gut flora and antibiotics in the development of diabetes, she said.

“It could be that people who are going to develop diabetes are predisposed to get infection,” she said. Another theory is that the infection changes the gut bacteria, or microbiome, and that leads to obesity, a risk factor for diabetes, she said.

Her advice? “Be careful when it comes to antibiotic use,” Pena said. Take them only when needed and recommended by a doctor.

More information

To learn more about lowering your diabetes risk, see the American Diabetes Association.

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How This Man’s Contacts Left Him Partially Blind in One Eye

If you’ve ever been tempted to keep your contacts in overnight, you must read this: A 39-year-old man in Cincinnati, Ohio, slept in his contact lenses only to wake up with an infection that will likely leave him partially blind in one eye.

Local12/WCKR-TV in Cincinnati reports that Chad Groeschen first noticed some itchiness in his eyes last month, which he chalked up to allergies. But the following day, Groeschen woke up with excruciating pain in his left eye and foggy, “opaque” vision—and that’s when he really started to worry.

After visiting a specialist, he learned that his eye was severely infected with a bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is associated with the use of “extended wear” lenses like the ones Groeschen uses. These lenses are actually FDA-approved for overnight wear, but doctors say infection can and—and does—happen, and sometimes leads to an ulcer forming in the eye.

Groeschen told Buzzfeed that his doctors said, “(the) contact kind of acts like a petri dish,” trapping the bacteria and allowing it to flourish.

RELATED: 5 Foods for Healthy Eyes

Now he is being treated with antibiotics and healing slowly, but he will likely need a cornea transplant to fully regain his vision. “It’s probably going to, even at the best when he heals, leave a substantial scar,” William Faulkner, MD, an ophthalmologist who treated Groeschen at the Cincinnati Eye Institute, explained to Local 12.

Michelle Akler, MD, medical director of Akler Eye Center in Dearborn, Michigan, told Health that even lenses approved for continuous wear aren’t necessarily safe for it. “There are contact lenses that are approved for overnight wear, and even though that is an approved use there are many studies that show that this is the main risk factor for these severe sight-threatening infections like the one this person developed,” she said.

In fact, the American Academy of Ophthalmology released a statement back in 2013 that warned that “overnight wear, regardless of contact lens type, increases the likelihood of corneal infection,” adding that studies have shown people who use extended wear lenses have chances of infection that are 10 to 15 times that of daily wear users.

RELATED: 5 Ways You’re Using Contact Lenses Wrong

“The organism that gentlemen had is known to cause severe corneal scarring within a couple of days,” Dr. Akler said, adding “but it’s not very common.” Still, she notes that this underscores the importance of proper care for your lenses.

“I think the daily contacts are the safest and the most convenient for all of us with our busy lives,” she said. “We may not have time to appropriately care for the other types.”

For those who are not using a fresh pair of contacts each day, Akler recommends taking them out every night, and only using a commercial sterile solution to clean and store lenses.

She also adds that regardless of the contacts you wear, you should always visit a doctor right away if you are experiencing any redness or discomfort in your eye.

Noted.

RELATED: The Gross Mistake You’re Making With Your Contact Lenses

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Gains in Life Spans Seen Around the Globe

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Average life expectancy among people worldwide has risen by more than six years since 1990, and healthy life expectancy has climbed by more than five years, a new report shows.

The analysis of data from 188 countries found that life expectancy for both sexes increased from just over 65 years in 1990 to 71.5 years in 2013, while healthy life expectancy rose from almost 57 years to slightly more than 62 years.

The findings regarding healthy life expectancy versus total life expectancy mean that people are living more years with illness and disability, according to the authors of the study published Aug. 27 in The Lancet.

“The world has made great progress in health, but now the challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability,” study author Theo Vos, a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a journal news release.

In 2013, Japan had the highest healthy life expectancy (73.4 years), while Lesotho, in southern Africa, had the lowest (42 years).

Other countries with the highest healthy life expectancies were Andorra, Canada, Cyprus, France, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Singapore and South Korea.

Other countries with the lowest life expectancies were Afghanistan, Chad, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, South Sudan, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The rise in overall life expectancy is due to significant declines in illness and death caused by HIV/AIDS and malaria, the researchers said, along with major advances in combating infectious diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and mother and baby health problems.

In 2013, the leading causes of health loss worldwide were heart disease, lower respiratory infections, stroke, low back and neck pain, road injuries, diarrhea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, premature birth complications, HIV/AIDS and malaria.

Health loss from HIV/AIDS rose more than 341 percent between 1990 and 2013, but fell by nearly 24 percent since 2005 due to an international focus on fighting the disease, the study found.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine offers resources on healthy living.

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Longer Colonoscopy Time May Cut Cancer Risk

THURSDAY, Aug. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Don’t hope for a quick colonoscopy.

The longer your screening takes, the less likely you are to get colon cancer, a new study suggests.

The findings provide strong evidence to support current guidelines about how long colonoscopies should last, the researchers said.

In a colonoscopy, a doctor inserts a thin tube with a tiny camera on it into the patient’s colon. After it’s fully inserted, the tube is slowly withdrawn, enabling the doctor to carefully examine the lining of the colon for signs of cancer or precancerous growths.

The guidelines state that “normal” colonoscopy withdrawal time is at least six minutes. In a normal colonoscopy, the doctor does not see any abnormalities or remove any tissue samples for biopsy.

Researchers reviewed nearly 77,000 screening colonoscopies performed over six years by 51 gastroenterologists at a large practice in Minnesota. On average, colonoscopy withdrawal times lasted nearly nine minutes, but about 10 percent of the doctors had individual averages of less than six minutes, the investigators found.

Patients whose screenings were performed by doctors whose average colonoscopy withdrawal time lasted less than six minutes were twice as likely to develop colon cancer within five years as those whose doctors’ colonoscopy withdrawal time averaged more than six minutes, the findings showed.

Colonoscopy withdrawal times that went beyond eight minutes did not seem to provide an extra reduction in cancer risk.

“Our results support the use of withdrawal time as a quality indicator, as recommended by current guidelines,” study lead author Dr. Aasma Shaukat, of the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, said in a VA news release.

The reasons for shorter colonoscopies vary, but “generally, every physician aims to do a complete inspection of the colon lining, regardless of their withdrawal time,” Shaukat said.

The study was published online recently in the journal Gastroenterology.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about colonoscopy.

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